Parker Rossman - Sexual Experience Between Men and Boys: Exploring the Pederast Underground

Parker Rossman

Maurice Temple Smith

For fifteen years I have been exploring undergroundsreligious, criminal, sexual, politicalof which there are many. Bribing ones way across borders and taking midnight jeep rides to mountain hideouts to talk to guerrillas hints at adventure, the satisfying of curiosity, even of titillation, but important issues also are involved. Todays underground may surface as tomorrows counter-culture, or even may be the seedbed for explosive revolution. An underground may have a profound influence even before it surfaces, as, for example, the impact of the youth drug subculture on music, art and literature. Nor is it enough to examine the behavior of one drug addict or one sex deviant apart from the supporting subculture which shapes his attitudes and behavior. From a moral point of view each individual must assume responsibility for the consequences of his actions, but to change moral behavior requires an understanding of the support systems holding psychological and cultural factors together.

Undergrounds like the drug subculture or the pederast are associations of outcasts which have resulted in part from the failure of established society to help the young cope with certain basic needs. Many persons are driven into one underground or another as a result of what they consider to be oppressive, inconsistent and irrational laws and societal pressures. This decade has seen the surfacing of the gay-homosexual underground as a counter-culturealthough many gays are still in the closet, as are most pederasts. There are other sexual undergroundssex freedom groups, wife-swapping clubs, and so onbut none are so mired in a conspiracy of silence and none represent so much potential for tragedy as the one to be described here.

Spread across my table are newspaper clippings which tell of the arrests of pederasts for sex play with boystwo state senators with a page boy; a policeman with a youngster he arrested; a junior-high-school teacher, a clergyman, a Scoutmaster, a boys club worker, a doctor, a social worker, an athletic coach, a reformatory psychologist, an adopted father, a newspaper reporter, a school psychiatrist, a legal-aid attorney, a university professor, a YMCA staff member, a film director, a businessman, a TV star, a youth probation officer, and many, many moreurban and rural, rich and poor, old and young, educated and uneducated. Their arrests represent a surfacing of an underground which is much larger than is generally realized, yet about which very little is known.

The general public seems to prefer to know nothing about such man-boy sexual experience even in those neighborhoods where a map of arrests shows one such offense in nearly every block. And for every arrest there may be a hundred or perhaps even a thousand other incidents that remain unknown and unpunished. Only limited data about this underground have been available to social scientists, whose theories and proposals have therefore been inadequate to prevent the tragedies represented by these arrests. Even the terminology is confused, as illustrated by the use of the term pederast to mean diametrically opposite things. For example, Bastin (1970) uses the term to include sex play between women and girls, Katchadourian (1972) for anal intercourse with a child, Clemmer (1958) for anal intercourse between adults, Dorian (1965) for a type of prostitution which is a perversion of the jet set. Andre Gide (1965) described himself as a pederast, a man who loves boys. In this book, in the last ten years, as well as in films, ballet, opera, poetry, biographies and autobiographies, as well as in legal and psychiatric cases, other scholarly studies and in the newspapers.

Yet lawmakers, moralists, parents, and scholars and scientists alike have lacked adequate validated data about pederast experience, with the result that their views are still largely formed on the basis of pre-scientific theory. A survey which is also the way we meet sex offenders in the newspapers and in case studies.

Therefore, instead of beginning with hypotheses to prove, instead of categorizing people and labeling them, an effort is made here to introduce the reader to some human beingsadults and adolescentswho are puzzled about their sexual desires and behavior. We search out with compassion the uniqueness of each person, letting the evidence assume its human shape, and give faces to persons who usually have been treated as stereotypes or generalizations.

Pederasty is a subject deserving of serious attention for several reasons. First, because there is evidence to suggest that one out of every eight men has at least occasional pederastic inclinations, and that the number of normal heterosexual men and boys who engage in such sex play at least once in a while is large. A study presented to the Legal Psychiatric Society in Amsterdam, for example, found that over one million such illegal incidents take place in Holland each year. Existing statistics are quite inaccurate and are frequently confused with gay-homosexual numbers. Nearly all males have had deviant sexual experiences in fantasy. Society, which often smiles at the discomfort of a youngster when an adult tells a dirty joke, or which frequently considers it only normal for teen-age boys to be victims of sex teasing and horseplay, does not always make it clear in law and elsewhere precisely at what point such teasing constitutes illegal corruption of a minor. Indeed, what is tolerated or even encouraged in one social class or one neighborhood may be taboo and reason to summon the police in another. Nor has the impact and influence of one class or society on another been adequately noted in a world which becomes increasingly pluralistic. American tourists and overseas military or business personnel are frequently tempted in other lands by the opportunities they find for varieties of sex play which are acceptable or tolerated in these other societies. When they return home, men with deviant sexual experience overseas may need counsel and guidance before they fall into difficulty with the law, for there is an increasing minority in Western society which seeks recreational sex purely for fun in any form which is found pleasurable and exciting, as sex is more and more dissociated from procreation.

A second reason for research into pederasty is that many men fall into it accidentally, without intending to break the law. A study of such offenders in prison revealed that many such men became involved with boys organizations through altruism and were startled to realize that their affection and interest had assumed sexual overtones. and has dangerously sought to repress such inclinations, thus making it difficult to cope humanely with the phenomenon. The psychiatrist points out that the ancient Creeks acknowledged the pederastic temptations of all men; they brought such desires to the surface, and they sought to redirect these impulses into constructive channels. The man who is aware of such a weakness and temptation can be helped and strengthened to cope with it. Indeed, this psychiatrist says that open acknowledgment of the temptation may be a sign of a particular psychic strength, whereas repression may lead to neuroses, mental illness, and emotional homophobiathe rage which many males feel when they read of such sex offenses in the newspaperswhich makes it difficult for society to help the man who unintentionally falls into such a disastrous situation. One purpose of this book is to seek an answer to a question so often asked by friends and family: How and why did a fine man like this get mixed up in illegal sex play?

A third use for this study is to provide facts for evaluating the opinions of those who are advocating the repeal of the laws against consenting sexual activity of adolescents over puberty.