An extract from Rachel Hope Cleves's How to Write the History of Pederasty in the Age of Groomers.
All this talk of male privilege erases an important theme of Unspeakable, which Funke expands upon in her review: the role of women and non-binary people as participants within the robust culture of adult-child sexual relations during Douglas’s lifetime. One of the puzzles that transfixed my research was how so many radical and queer women and people assigned female at birth could have adored Douglas while they were perfectly aware of his sexual pursuit of boys. It’s out of keeping with present expectations, to put it mildly. But Funke’s review reminds us that women and non-binary people, like the modernist writer Bryher, often modeled themselves as “boys” within the context of their same-sex intimacies. One of the founders of lesbian history, Martha Vicinus, wrote about the centrality of the boy figure within fin-de-siècle lesbian culture. Although I was aware that Bryher identified as a boy (thanks in part to Funke’s scholarship), I didn’t really think through the possibility that Douglas and Bryher’s relationship itself had a pederastic dynamic. I appreciate Funke’s post for opening my eyes, and for asking new questions about the “complex traditions of age-differential desire between people assigned female at birth.”
Cass |4 pointswritten 1 year ago ago
ummm what
edit: I think some FtMs are influenced by yaoi manga, which often depict young men (who are actually women the authors stick a dick on) in toxic relationships with much older men. The mentally unstable female readers of gay manga read it and go "hmm I identify with this character, who acts like me and kinda looks like me and bc he's a man I must be a man too" or smth like that.