Flaptekst

"Loving Boys is the first multi- discliplinary, cross-cultural study of sexual relations between men and boys ever to be published in the English language. The author eschews both the common Judeo-Christian belief that man-boy contacts are morally wrong and the traditional psychiatric premise (never honestly tested) that they are unnatural, perverted and harmful for boys. Instead, he examines ethnological, historical, behavioural and cultural records to show what other peoples (and our own ancestors) thought about this phenomenon at different times: how their societies rejected it or put it to work in a constructive way." [mijn nadruk]

"Dr. Edward Brongersma is one of Holland's most distinguished jurists. In 1946 he became a member of the Dutch Upper House of Parliament or Senate. Four years later he was arrested for having sexual contact with a l6-year-old boy - under an archaic law which he helped repeal in 1971. After release from 10 months in prison, he rebuilt his shattered law career and returned to the Senate in 1963. where he was chairman of the important Judiciary Committee from 1968 until his retirement in 1977."

(9) Introduction (by Vern L. Bullough)

"Almost no subject of scholarly investigation arouses more controversy than the subject of paedophilia, i.e. erotic relations between adults and minors. It almost immediately brings to mind an image of a man with a huge penis trying to shove it into a tiny orifice of a mortally terrified child. Inevitably the frightened child is scarred for life, unable to adjust to a normal sex or family life. Undoubtedly there are some men who literally rape small boys (or girls), and there are children involved in sexual relations with adults who are emotionally if not physically wounded for the rest of their lives. But man/boy-love, at any rate, is a far more complex subject than a simple horror story. It has a long history, and sometimes, as among the ancient Greeks, it was regarded as the highest form of love."(9)

"Personally I believe a child is not mature enough to make a decision for himself or herself about sex with an adult, and it would be very difficult for many young people to avoid coercion if confronted with such a situation."(9)

[Dat lijken me kernpunten in de discussie hierover: kan een jonger iemand zelf beslissen om zoiets te willen en is een jonger iemand in staat om vormen van dwang te herhennen en er tegenin te gaan als hij of zij beslist heeft niet te willen.]

"From experience I know there is a large audience for such a sex book, since there are many people out there who have felt ostracized and cut off from society and have gone underground rather than confront a hostile society. Few of them regard themselves as the vile, dirty, dishonest adults so often portrayed in the popular media. Yet no one seems willing to defend them. Obviously this book speaks for them and to them, but it would be unfortunate if they are the only readers of this book, since there is a real need for all elements in society to know more about the motivations, the drives and the impulses of those who identify themselves or are identified by others as paedophiles. This book attempts to do just this."(10)

(13) Author's Preface

Aan het boek ligt o.a. correspondentie ten grondslag met mensen in 27 landen die net als de auteur ervaring hadden op dit terrein. Daarnaast vormde recente literatuur een belangrijke bron. Maar de interesse is niet puur academisch, aldus de auteur, die is ook persoonlijk.

"As a result one journalist wrote in a nationally distributed Dutch newspaper that my professional written work in this area could be dismissed because it was obviously coloured by personal preference (Van Vlodrop, 1980).
What curious reasoning! Arguments, then, should no longer be tested on the basis of their validity, or met with counter arguments. To dismiss them one only need say that they were put forward by an "engaged" author.
Are matters really as simple as that? Must a book on marriage be suspect if written by a married man or woman, a book on religion dismissed if written by a monk? Or doesn't a personally engaged person have some unique opportunities to see the living reality of a phenomenon and so gain better insight into it, especially in the case of a hidden, often inaccessible aspect of human life, a secret or semi-secret subculture? Won't he have talked more frequently and more openly with members of this subculture? Might he not have been welcomed in homes where the door remained closed to others? And, in any case, isn't it more honest at least to hear him out and evaluate what he reports before pushing aside all he has to offer as being suspect?"(14)

[Ja, zo gemakzuchtig, op de man spelen ... Met de opkomst van internet en de sociale media en het populisme in de politiek is dat alleen maar erger geworden. Maar Brongersma is iets te positief: naast de voordelen aan die betrokkenheid is er toch ook zeker het gevaar van gebrek aan objectiviteit en afstand, vertekening van resultaten, etc. en een nog groter gevaar is een omgekeerd op de man spelen: jij hebt dit nooit meegemaakt dus jouw tegenargumenten kan ik rustig negeren.]

Dit gaat over intieme vriendschappen tussen mannen en jongens, inclusief seksualiteit als dat daarin een rol speelt (wat niet altijd het geval is).

"Now, it is precisely this sexual aspect which provokes disgust in our Western culture. If a teacher, youth leader, friend of the family is nice to a boy, devotes his spare time to him, troubles himself with the boy's problems, the parents are grateful and appreciative. But the moment the man gives physical expression to the relationship - fondling him or allowing a sexual contact to take place (and it doesn't matter whether man or boy is the instigator) - most parents react with extreme indignation. The law, in criminalizing such physical behaviour, obviously reflects the feelings of the majority of Western adults." [mijn nadruk] (14)

Seksuele activiteiten tussen jongens, maar ook tussen volwassen mannen en jongens komen veel vaker voor dan men wil weten. Dit boek gaat daar over. En zonder preuts te doen. Wie moeite heeft met het genieten van naaktheid en seksualiteit moet dit boek niet lezen, zegt Brongersma.

(19) Chapter 1: Why Sex?

"It is possible that a child at a certain age is not mature enough for one kind of sex but quite able to handle another kind."(19)

"We must now examine four possible answers to he question, "Why sex?" One: The purpose of sex is procreation. Two: Sex is a means of expressing emotions. Three: Sex is simply meant for pleasure. Four: Sex unites us with Nature, is a way of experiencing our link with the Divine."(20)

(20) Different aspects of sex - 1. Sex for procreation

Plato's opvattingen:

"Procreation is seen as the only moral justification for sexual intercourse; it is the lustful feelings which accompany it that make the activity abominable and an infringement on human dignity. (...) Sexual activity, then, should be strictly limited to the bare minimum sufficient to assure procreation. These teachings had little or no influence during classical Antiquity.
We also find no traces of this pagan doctrine in the words of Jesus and the gospels; nevertheless it came to dominate European culture and its extensions for many centuries. Shorn of its veneration of the boy's body, it entered history as "Christian sexual morality", but all its elements were already present in Plato: celibacy is ethically more highly esteemed than marriage; youth should be inured against the temptations of lust by means of exercise and sport." [mijn nadruk] (20)

"The protagonists of this now-traditional morality make a laughing stock of themselves when they appeal in all seriousness to "nature" without expending even a minimum of effort to study natural realities or take into account the relationship and distinction between nature and culture. They condemn as unnatural (or even anti-natural) all sexual activities which do not have procreation as an objective (e.g. intercourse using contraception) or where procreation is impossible (e.g. homosexual acts)."(21)

Er is niets natuurlijks in die opvattingen. Het is in allerlei omstandigheden heel normaal voor mensen om zich tegen bepaalde natuurlijke gevolgen te wapenen. En homoseksualiteit komt in het dierenrijk erg vaak voor en is in die zin juist net zo natuurlijk als heteroseksualiteit.

"Nowhere do the protagonists of this traditional view of sex-as-procreation reveal the essentially materialist, rationalist and unspiritual character of their morality more clearly than in their compulsion to see homosexuality and intercourse with contraceptives as unproductive behaviour."(21)

"Any person who is not limited in his thinking to the purely biological aspects of sex cannot be blind to the fact that sexual pleasure contributes enormously to happiness, to a sense of well-being, to mental and physical health, and is, therefore, indirectly a source of energy and inspiration." [mijn nadruk] (22)

Er bestaat geen enkele cultuur waar seks beperkt wordt tot de voortplanting, het is een onnatuurlijke rationalistische visie op seks.

"Of all the meanings of sex, exclusive procreation is the most animal-like, and the least human."(24)

(24) Different aspects of sex - 2. Sex as expression of an emotion

A) Positive

"Clearly, even in heterosexual intercourse, procreation as a reason for sex has now given way to a far different justification.(...) The coupling of two bodies was increasingly viewed as the expression, first and foremost, of the emotion of love.
The sex-for-procreation protagonists, on principal averse to sexual lust, struggled against this evolution as long as possible. And no wonder: the consequences, from their point of view, were disastrous. For if love justifies sexual intercourse it is no longer clear why this should apply only to married couples." [mijn nadruk] (24)

Inderdaad werden seks voor het huwelijk en homoseksualiteit steeds meer aanvaard. Maagdelijkheid van meisjes werd minder belangrijk. Zowel mannen als vrouwen mochten genieten van seks. Anticonceptie hielp daarbij. En scheidingen namen toe, omdat liefde de maatstaf werd, met als kanttekening dat Romantische liefde vaak samengaat met een beeld van exclusiviteit en monogamie en dat is niet in alle culturen zo. Er zijn culturen die veel toleranter staan tegenover seks buiten je relatie.

"A great deal of recent research into the sexual habits and opinions of young people make it evident that the vast majority approves of premarital intercourse and feels that it is morally permissible - but only if a real love relationship unites the partners. Kruithof and van Ussel (1963) found this to be true in Belgium, Hertoft (1968) in Denmark, Schofield (1965) in England, Giese & Schmidt (1968) and Sigusch & Schmidt (1975) in Germany, Kooy (1976) and Noordhoff (1969) in The Netherlands, Zetterberg (1969) in Sweden, Sorensen (1973) and Yankowski (1965) in the U.S.A. The most important requirement, said the majority of their subjects, was to make the partner happy."(25)

B) Negatief

Seks kan ook samengaan met agressie, vernedering, etc. (denk aan verkrachting en zo).

(26) Different aspects of sex - 3. Sex just for pleasure

Andere mensen hebben nog een andere opvatting:

"Are procreation and love the only things which can give it a positive value? Do lust, joy, the pleasurable relief from tension have no positive value? Is recreation less necessary to humanity than procreation? And what kind of valid objection could you make if two individuals agree to give each other joy and pleasure with their bodies in a way that doesn't hurt anyone else? Horror of sex and the negative evaluation of lust have distorted our culture long enough and caused enormous destruction." [mijn nadruk] (26)

"Prescott (1975) compared a great number of different cultures from all over the world and found a direct relationship between, on the one hand, repression of sexuality and deprecation of lust feelings and, on the other hand, cruelty and criminality. Children who grew up in sexual freedom were not only far happier and healthier, they were also gentler and more peaceful. Those brought up in sexual abstinence were harder and more cruel, more quickly provoked to violence and crime. Prescott was convinced that (sexual) pleasure was society's best prevention against violence." [mijn nadruk] (26)

"Why should the pleasure we can experience and produce with our sexual organs become suddenly immoral if there is nothing to justify it? Why this exception for one of our senses? (...)
In truth, everything that delights the senses - a sweet morsel, a fine perfume, a beautiful sight, good music, the orgasm of sex - all bear fruit in beautifying our existence, in making us happy, in vitalizing our lives."(27)

"There is only one valid precondition to sex: one must respect everyone's right to dispose of his own body as he wishes, to decide freely if, with whom, how, where and when he will have sex. Nothing can be permitted without consent, and in the special context of sex this consent may be withdrawn at any time - even during the act itself. This liberty to decide for himself about himself is a sacred right of every individual regardless of gender and age. Yet the penal codes of the so-called civilised nations do not protect this right very well - and this is truly immoral. In The Netherlands, for instance, a husband cannot be punished if he rapes his own wife, while at the same time the freedom to give his consent to sexual activity is denied a fifteen-year-old (Penal Code, sections 242 & 247)." [mijn nadruk] (28)

(29) Different aspects of sex - 4. Sex in surrender to the forces of nature

Religieuze vervoering in de vorm van seksuele overgave zoals in de Dionysische roes kwam vaak voor. Meisjes en jongens stelden zich daartoe ter beschikking in de tempels.

"There, and in numerous other places in Greece, in Sicily, in Babylon, in Persia, in India, in many African countries, in Mexico, etc., religious prostitution was wide-spread. Mankind still understood the truth that "sacrifice" was not the same as denial or pain, that it was essentially a surrender of the ego - and that such surrender may be positive and lustful, too."(29)

(32) The aspects of sex in relation to children

"In postponing more and more the age of marriage, social evolution has created an enormous and obvious conflict between the traditional ethical insistence that sex be used only for procreation (thus that sexual abstinence be maintained until the wedding night) and the demands of nature. One might have expected that the Christian churches, with their belief that nature was created by God and is an expression of his divine will, would have protested and fought against this trend. But exactly the contrary happened: the churches conformed to the social evolution and, instead of protesting, allied themselves to the secular authorities in their drive to repress youthful sexuality or - even worse - deny its existence." [mijn nadruk] (32)

Vroeger en in andere culturen werd er veel eerder getrouwd, kreeg men veel eerder kinderen. Seks alleen voor de voortplanting binnen een huwelijk wordt een probleem als die huwelijken alleen zo veel later plaats mogen vinden (bijvoorbeeld: wachten totdat de man goede economische vooruitzichten had, denk aan Freud). Dit werd temeer een probleem door het bestaan van voorbehoedmiddelen: jongeren konden seks hebben zonder dat er een zwangerschap uit voort kwam.

Ook liefde kan voor kinderen / jongeren een reden zijn om seks te hebben met iemand.

"Isn't it curious, when children are generally expected to love their mothers and their fathers, to be deemed at the same time incapable of loving a friend?"(33)

Seks om wille van het plezier is voor kinderen juist het meest vanzelfsprekend.

"This is the most primitive side of sex and therefore is the side children most easily understand."(34)

Babies masturberen al om zichzelf plezier te bezorgen [dat zal wat moeilijk worden met die eeuwige luiers van vandaag de dag - GdG] en zelfs orgasmes zijn mogelijk bij kleine kinderen.

"Van Ussel put it very aptly: 'Children are mature for sex at birth; they become mature for procreation only later.'(1975, 100)"(35)

"In rejecting the sexuality of children and adolescents, our traditional culture is rather exceptional when compared with others - and it isn't even as traditional as is commonly supposed. The rejection is a distortion of formerly recognised truths, caused by the socio-economic changes of the last two centuries. The concept of the child as an asexual being quite different from the adult is a recent phenomenon."(36)

"Only in the last century (1886 in The Netherlands) did legislation make consensual sexual activities with children criminal. Thus, from a historical perspective, this has been a rather recent addition to our own penal laws; in other cultures it is quite unknown, even inconceivable (Killias 1979)."(37)

(41) Chapter Two: Adult lovers

(41) Sexual variety in men

"One of the most striking findings of sexology is the incredible variability of all human sexual aspects - the physical as well as the mental. This is sorely neglected in sexual education and instruction."(41)

Beschrijving van die variaties.

"Now there is nobody whose sexual appetite or impulse is excited or provoked by every human being he meets. Physical properties, personality characteristics which to one individual are highly exciting may leave another completely indifferent - or may even seem repellent. How this fixation on particular properties originates remains obscure and unexplained. Perhaps it is inborn (or at least a disposition to be attracted to certain traits is inborn); perhaps it is partly acquired after birth." [mijn nadruk] (42)

"Thus we remain circumscribed by our knowledge that other people feel differently from the way we do. To forget this is to be narrow-minded and stupid. But if we raise such stupidity to dogma and proclaim that only our inclinations are "normal" and all others abnormal, perverse and disgusting, we become intolerant and immoral. Doing this we base our ethics upon our lack of imagination."(43)

(43) A) The importance of the partner's sex

"The clear demarcation between the majority of heterophiles and the small minority of homophiles made by researchers into homosexuality in the second half of the last and the first half of the present century has become dubious since Kinsey's sociological investigations. (...)
If one constructs a scale with one extreme 100% heterosexuality and the other 100% homosexuality, various gradations, complementary proportions of either end member will occur between. Every human being, then, would find his place on this line, on this sliding scale. The man leading an entirely bisexual life would stand in the middle." [mijn nadruk] (44-45)

"The striking bisexuality which Verveen uncovered among his students may astonish people who grew up in the Judeo-christian culture. Yet in every culture which has a positive view of sexuality, men are accustomed to have intercourse with women as well as with members of their own sex: exclusive heterosexuality is as rare as exclusive homosexuality, and if we were more tolerant we would probably find the same was true in our own society."(48)

(51) B) The importance of the partner's age

"Charting attraction by age would be a much more complicated proposition than placing a person on the scale of human affectionate response we previously proposed between pure heterophilia and pure homophilia. This is because of the diversity of age groups. Moreover, where a real love relationship has been established, a sexual partner may keep his appeal for his lover Iong after he has grown out of the preferred agegroup. Limits, therefore, tend to be blurred."(51)

"By the time a child is five or six years old his sexual inclinations are fixed so firmly as to be almost impossible to dislodge. In puberty or even before puberty the individual becomes conscious of being sexual and by then his inclinations are simply fact, linked so closely to his whole sense of being that they appear completely natural, in the sense that he always had them. Neither social acceptance nor rejection can alter his sexual preferences, although environmental attitudes toward it may have the greatest importance in determining his peace of mind or his worry, his happiness or misery. A moral system which wishes to contribute to human happiness should take this into consideration; it must insist on sexual tolerance. This isn't just a question of morals, moreover; it is a question of justice, for the direction of a person's sexual inclination is not consciously and freely chosen; nobody can be held responsiblefor his own sexual nature." [mijn nadruk] (52)

"Every human being is to a greater or lesser degree paedophile. We will return to this theme in Chapter Four.
But this idea, despite the truth in it, meets with the most violent opposition. Many people will raise the objection that it mistakenly equates the sexual, the erotic with the bestowing of loving care upon a child in the process of bringing him up. For to admit to oneself the erotic element of this human activity is in our culture enormously more difficult than in the case of homophilia. And the reason is that Western society has been deceitfully indoctrinated during the last two centuries in the concept of children as "innocent" and "pure" - i.e. asexual creatures. Creatures, therefore, who should be carefully guarded against any contact with sexuality. Within the ethics of sex-only-for-procreation it is immoral enough for a man to approach a fellow male with sexual intentions; it is much, much worse if he does so with a child." [mijn nadruk] (53)

[Ik vind de eerste stelling in het laatste citaat erg aanvechtbaar en gemakzuchtig. Zoals ook de daarmee samenhangende opvatting die vaker terugkeert in dit boek dat mensen die zich tegen pedofielen verzetten in feite bang zijn voor hun eigen neigingen tot pedofilie. Dan krijg je weer een beroep op onbewuste zaken, op verdringing, op psychoanalytische vaagheden kortom.]

(55) Attraction to children

Een reeks psychoanalytici (Stekel) en onderzoekers op andere terreinen hebben vastgesteld dat bij veel mensen seksuele verlangens naar kinderen voorkomen. Er is simpelweg niet een grote kloof tussen 'normale mensen' en pedofielen zoals altijd beweerd wordt.

"But even keeping this in mind, we must not lose sight of the fact that there are those men and women for whom eroticism with children has a very special significance or importance. There are many intermediate positions between being poor and rich but this doesn't keep us from designating a certain group of people as wealthy. Thus we can define as child-lovers (paedophiles) those people in whom the (universal) attraction to children is more pronounced than in the majority of their fellow beings: it is so clearly pronounced, in fact, that it takes on the greatest importance, dominates, colours and gives direction to the sexual side of their lives." [mijn nadruk] (56)

"Adults especially attracted to children can be either male or female; their appetites can be directed chiefly along homosexual or heterosexual lines. Thus there are four possibilities. Three of these we will deal with now, briefly, to confine ourselves for the rest of this work to the fourth."(57)

Man / Girl

Onderzoek laat zien dat meisjes niet veel vaker met sexuele avances te maken hebben dan jongens. Meisjes verleiden mannen 13- en 14-jarige meisjes gaan met mannen naar bed en genieten ervan.

"It is also true that it is in this kind of relations that the worse of what can be done sexually by an adult to a child occurs most frequently: violence, rape and, more traumatizing still, abuse of authority to compel the girl to tolerate sex activiries which she abhors."(59)

Woman / Girl

Daar is heel weinig over gepubliceerd, seksuele relaties tussen vrouwen mochten eeuwenlang gewoon niet bestaan. Pas de laatste decennia duiken er getuigenissen over op.

Woman / Boy

Wordt meer geaccepteerd dan dan seksuele relaties tussen mannen en jongens en komt ook veel vaker voor dat men wil weten.

"A woman cuddling and kissing a little boy in public is thought of as a dear soul; a man doing the same thing is likely to be looked upon as a child molester."(60)

Man / Boy

Het hoofdonderwerp van dit boek.

"It should not be equated with the others just discussed. All of human history and even the precursors of human behaviour in the animal kingdom, suggest that we are dealing here with a much more important phenomenon."(66)

[Dat is een vreemde opmerking en de stelling wordt ook verderop niet waargemaakt.]

Niet elke seksuele relatie tussen mannen en jongens betreft 'boy-love'. Het kan gaan om 'tijdelijke oplossingen', zoals er in gevangenissen en zo ook veel meer homoseksuele contacten voorkomen dan in het normale leven. Dat tijdelijke zegt in het geval van boy-love juist dat er dan geen sprake is van pedofilie, omdat zo iemand weer terugkeert naar bv. een vrouw als het mogelijk is.

"In the great majority of males the sexual appetite is so imperative that it demands some kind of satisfaction, and if the preferred object is absent it is compelled to make do with a less desirable one."(68)

"Of course, for the most part these children are girls. It has been established that in cases of criminal abuse of girls (instances of rape, indecent assault, coercion) the offender is mostly an ordinary heterophile. Heterosexual contacts with children moreover are much less objectionable to the general public than homosexual activities. Boys are very rarely victims of violence ..." [mijn nadruk] (70)

"Paedosexuality (that is, sexual activity with a child) can thus be consummated both by paedophiles and non-paedophiles, and so it is important to make a distinction between the paedophile and the pseudo-paedophile."(71)

"Paedosexuality (or sexual activity with children), therefore, is no sure indicator of paedophilia. A man can only be considered paedophile if, for him, children are the most important elicitors of sexual arousal. On the other hand, the fact that a man may never have had sexual relations with a child is hardly proof of the absence of paedophile tendencies in him. For there are paedophiles who, for one reason or another, never touch a child."(73)

"All those who cry loudly that the paedophile ought to be castrated, who would like to strangle him with their own hands, who think he should be shot or put in jail for the rest of his life are themselves highly suspect of paedophilia."(76)

"The "normal" man simply loves what is youthful. Having been brought to recognise this, the next step would be to bring him to understand that he could also love boys.
In our world only very superior individuals have the courage to admit this." [mijn nadruk] (76)

[Zie mijn opmerking hierboven. Er kunnen heel andere redenen zijn waarom mensen bezwaar maken tegen pedofilie. En verder: als je als man van jong houdt kan je voorkeur net zo goed uitgaan naar meisjes, zoals de auteur daarnet nota bene zelf heeft uitgelegd. Dit is zo'n voorbeeld van doorslaan omdat je zo betrokken bent en is echt te generaliserend.
De beschreven intolerantie is normatief en zeker te ondoordacht en gemakkelijk. Maar ook al voert Brongersma eindeloos veel bronnen en feitelijkheden aan zoals hij doet in de komende bladzijden, zoals altijd betekent dat niet dat het normatief te verdedigen is in alle contexten. Ook tolerantie is normatief. Er zou dus een normatieve discussie moeten komen met betrouwbare 'feiten' op de achtergrond.]

"Summing up, we may conclude that men having sex with boys is an omnipresent human phenomenon. The motives may differ: sometimes it is done to facilitate education and strengthen character, sometimes to reinforce the boy's sexual potency, or to strengthen and develop his body; sometimes simply to satisfy a man's lust. Thus it has been, in all nations and in all ages. Goethe was right in saying that boy-love is part of the nature of man. Only the ignorant could call it unnatural or deviant.
In so saying we voice no opinion about its morality or immorality. Moral kindness as well as immoral cruelty are present everywhere in mankind; each is as integral a part of human nature as boy-love. Its morality or immorality has nothing to do with its frequency; it depends entirely upon the good it brings to boy and man or the harm it inflicts upon them. These are problems we will take up in the second volume of this work." [mijn nadruk] (90-91)

[Precies. Ook al komt pedofilie feitelijk vaak voor, dat zegt normatief niet zo veel, dat is een heel andere discussie. Die volgt dus pas later in het boek, zegt Brongersma.]

Veel 'boy-lovers' zijn getrouwd, maar die huwelijken lopen vaak spaak. Vrouwen gaan er verschillend mee om als ze de voorkeur van hun man ontdekken. 'Boy-lovers' hebben meestal wel voorkeur voor een bepaalde leeftijd, maar:

"... statistics about the age-preferences of boy-lovers are completely unreliable ..."(95)

Het enige punt dat uit lijkt te maken is de grens van de puberteit, van of een jongen seksueel rijp is, van beharing e.d.

"Tony Duvert defines those who love immature boys as "paedophiles" and the others as "pederasts". The picture is complicated, however, by the fact that an affectionate, close relationship tends to continue after the boy has passed the upper age limit which the man finds attractive. A "pederast" will rarely be satisfied with an immature boy; only under exceptional circumstances will he be induced to have sex with such a partner. But it is not at all exceptional for a "paedophile" to continue having sex with his young friend for some time after the boy reaches puberty. In the case of men looking less for casual pleasure with some attractive boy than for a lasting love relationship, the upper age limit is thus very flexible. The same holds true for "pederasts", for with them it is frequently difficult to decide where boy-love ends and adult homosexuality begins." [mijn nadruk] (99)

"According to Loes Rouweler-Wutz, men loving girls have for the most part casual, passing contacts, while those loving boys strive much harder for lasting relationships.(...) On the other hand, one-time-only contacts are frequent; under certain conditions they may attain for both partners a striking intensity and depth and in every way take their proper place within the limits of a healthy sex life. Immorality resides in arousing false expectations."(100)

"In any case, it is quite senseless to divide boy-lovers into categories of the morally superior (having steady friendships) and the morally inferior (prefer- ring one night stands). In putting a taboo on boy-love, society itself made it impossible for many men to built a steady relationship based on pedagogical eros without placing themselves and their young friends at great risk from the aggression of their fellow-citizens or the forces of justice." [mijn nadruk] (101)

"Our hostile, taboo-ridden laws have yet another effect: they make proper research into boy-love and boy-lovers next to impossible. Science is unable to study a group which is treated by its social environment with so much hatred, contempt and fear that it renders itself open to punishment if it acts in accordance with its innate tendencies." [mijn nadruk] (102)

Vandaar ook de vele totaal onzinnige en zinloze onderzoeken in het verleden waarin niet eens werd onderscheiden tussen pedofielen en pseudo-pedofielen. Door dat onderzoek werd een heel negatief beeld gecreëerd van de pedofiel als zwakkeling met grote psychische problemen. Maar de populatie van echte pedofielen is even divers als de populatie van heteroseksuele mensen. DE pedofiel bestaat gewoon niet.

"The contrast between reality and the ridiculous picture emerging from the supposedly scientific specialist literature would be laughable were it not for the enormous amount of misery, injustice, immorality and damage the latter has caused. As we have already pointed out, by mixing a low percentage of healthy boy-lovers with an overwhelmingly larger percentage of often mentally troubled pseudo-paedophiles, the results couldn't be otherwise. A technical research sampling error - with fateful results.
Its echos are resounding in some scientific publications - and still reverberate loudly in public opinion and the sensationalist press."(105)

(121) Chapter 3 - Boys and Their Sexuality

Over de fysieke ontwikkeling van jongens. Het blijkt erg moeilijk vast te stellen wat normale afmetingen en zo zijn. Bovendien zijn allerlei zaken gewoon slecht of niet onderzocht.

"The mystery remains, and may only be solved when the sexual lives and activities of young people can be openly discussed and examined rather than hidden under a shroud."(126)

Over de psychoseksuele ontwikkeling.

"Writers - scientific, political, philosophical and artistic-hardly speak with a unified voice on this subject. In the opinion of some, the difference between the sexuality of the child and the sexuality of the adult is so great that a full-fledged relationship is quite impossible. Others, however, reject just as strongly any reference to "child sexuality", asserting that there is no difference between it and adult sexuality. According to the Gay Left Collective both are wrong."(128)

"Admitting that there is an apparent, even a real, continuity between childhood and adolescence, we should nevertheless recognise that there is an essential caesura at the time of puberty, one accentuated by the rather remarkable amnesia which sets in - after puberty - for all prepubertal sex activities. People simply don't remember them any longer and so later can come to believe, quite sincirely, that during this part of their lives they were "innocent"."(133)

[Dat vind ik een vreemd verhaal. Is dat nu waar? Dat zou toch ook betekenen dat iemand zich allerlei nare ervaringen uit die periode simpelweg niet meer kan herinneren? Discutabel.]

Over initiatieriten schrijft Brongersma hier ook.

"It would be impossible to do justice in a brief summary to all that has been discovered about puberty rites and initiation in all the tribes of the world. Many volumes have been filled with descriptions and reflections. A few examples may serve to take measure of this field."(159)

Over de ontwikkeling van seksualiteit.

Seksuele contacten beginnen in allerlei culturen en subculturen al vroeg. Brongersma geeft vele voorbeelden daarvan.

"Anyone who is tempted to consider this a typically modern corruption of childhood innocence should recall that people in medieval Europe married and had intercourse at the age of eleven. The most famous of all lovers, Romeo and Juliet, were 14-year-old children. In chapter one we have already noted examples of how common and socially accepted early sex was in former times."(174)

"It seems incredible that adults have such little knowledge of children's sexuality, since they had all obviously once been children themselves. Borneman proposes a "postpubertal amnesia syndrome": apparently pre-pubertal sexual events are systematically repressed from conscious memory during the course of adolescence."(174)

[O, daar komt die theorie vandaan. Vermoedelijk speelt de repressie door de samenleving hier een grote rol. Als het al waar is.]

Over uitlaatkleppen als masturbatie. Cultureel gezien zijn er opvattingen die het stimuleren en opvattingen die er tegen zijn. De kwalijke rol van de kerk en de medici in het Westen in de veroordeling en bestrijding ervan.

"The truth of the matter is that such pedagogues - honoured and praised by their society - all too often managed, with their lies, to hound young people to death, to cause, themselves, the very suicides which they attributed to the habit of masturbation.
This went on until 1948, when the Kinsey Report put a stop to it. Now, finally, massive, painstaking research established what priests as confessors had always known but carefully kept secret: almost every boy masturbates, and most of them do it intensively. After Kinsey, no one could watch a school football or basketball game without laughing at the myth that masturbation impaired the health of boys.
Liberated from moralistic inhibitions, medical science now developed quite different opinions: positive values were attributed to masturbation; the absence of masturbation was considered an abnormality."(180)

"In any case, the campaign against masturbation - so often waged with naked sadism upon helpless children - is a fight against the fullness of human potential and the order of creation. He who carries on this battle with the idea ihat it is pedagogically beneficial inflicts upon the child permanent emotional problems; he who does so motivated by religion is a megalomaniac bent on correcting the work of the Creator in whom he claims he believes. Both fight against pleasure and joy. But the man who has learned to view pleasure positively should value masturbation as one important source of happiness."(196-197)

"Regular intercourse with girls, it seems, does reduce masturbatory activities. In the NISSO research it was found that the percentage of masturbating boys diminished from 98 to 65 for those who had regular intercourse."(197)

[Dat is deels ook te danken aan de heersende waarden en normen. Veel jongens denken nog steeds dat ze moeten stoppen met masturberen als ze een vriendin hebben om seks mee te hebben. Of waarschijnlijker: veel van die vriendinnen vinden dat, omdat ze dan denken dat een jongen niet genoeg aan hen heeft.]

[Een ander ding: Het gaat in de pagina's hier nu de hele tijd over 'sexual intercourse' alsof er geen andere manieren zijn om plezier te beleven aan seks. Vreemd.]

"Often boys seem to have intercourse only to feel macho and important, or to dominate and humiliate the girls."(202)

[Dat is een losse opmerking in een citaat. Maar ik denk dat die heel erg klopt. Ik begrijp al dat competitieve en agressieve machtsvertoon van jongens en mannen niet. Rol patronnen: nog steeds de belangrijkste hindernis in de betrekkingen tussen mannen en vrouwen, vreselijk.]

"The main cause of all these unpleasant, harmful and sometimes even dangerous imbroglios is that boys and girls, during the years of their sexual maturation, have characteristically such different attitudes about sexuality that they simply don't make suitable partners for each other."(203)

[Ja, was het maar zo simpel iets van leeftijd, iets waar je na verloop van tijd overheen groeit. Maar dat is niet zo. Ik denk ook dat er nu een reeks oordelen volgen die erg bekritiseerbaar zijn zoals: jongens gaan van meisjes houden als ze met haar gevrijd hebben, terwijl meisjes pas gaan vrijen als ze van een jongen houden (205), en zo meer. Meisjes en jongens zeggen wat ze denken dat ze moeten zeggen en de onderzoekers hebben daar te weinig oog voor.
En ook hier weer: er zijn zo veel manieren om te vrijen; waarom hebben al die onderzoeken het dan zo vaak alleen over neuken en wat een jongen of een meisje daarvan vindt?]

"For girls it is more important to have a personal relationship than for boys. A boy wants girls in general; a girl wants a particular boy, a special boy. In girls desire may be erotic, often romantic, but it is directed toward tenderness and doesn't demand the immediate coupling of the sexual organs."(208)

[Idem]

"Boys come through sex to love, girls through love to sex. Younger boys and girls, those just past puberty, are ill-suited as sexual partners for each other. Since the boy urgently needs sexual experience, he can often better get this first with partners of his own sex and wait, for heterosexual coupling, until he finds an older woman willing to help him or until his female contemporaries are more open to physical approach."(211)

[Wat een zielige conclusies. Volgen allerlei pagina's over die homoseksuele contacten tussen jongens en jongens en mannen, die ik niet interessant vind.]

"Every individual's sexuality lies somewhere on the scale between pure heterophilia and pure homophilia. That is to say, it integrates a certain percentage of homophile tendencies. It is a great help, then, to his self- awareness if the boy who is evolving into a predominantly heterophile man discovers and investigates this other side of his sexuality. If, by so doing, he reaches the conclusion that homosexual activities give him less pleasure than he feels with a girl, he will thenceforth have nothing to repress and suppress when he begins going around exclusively with women. It will only make him a better balanced, more liberated heterophile than the man in whom the latent desire for homosexual activities was never satisfied or was repressed into the unconscious."(242)

[Dit gaat dus weer uit van het bestaan van een latent verlangen bij alle mannen naar homoseksuele activiteiten, dat naar het onbewuste verdrongen is. Wat een onzin. Zo'n stelling is nooit te bewijzen en immuun voor kritiek zoals zo veel beweringen die stoelen op de psychoanalyse. Als een neiging latent en verdrongen is, hoe zouden we dan ooit kunnen weten dat die neiging er is?]