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Ad hominems galore. Fine. Let's go point by point. The translations given were not my own. Seeing as you dug through the Greek, it's rather odd that you did not bother to check the English, which I had also provided, where these excerpts are sitting there. One word being slightly altered to make it more readable to non-Classicist audiences also doesn't deduct from the overarching points, that you have yet to cite any passages that describe him as a boy in a way that contradicts claims of him prostituting hhimself as an adult, that the prostitutes described are almost certainly adults, and that Timarcus was repeatedly described as beyond his boyhood, aka an adult. Trying to discount my views wholesale because of a slight technical inaccuracy that I did not even make, is extremely intellectually dishonest. Reducing these examples to just being a "red herring" is further evidence of intellectual dishonesty. Practices being described within its own cultural frame is not relevant to the practice itself? You claim that 18 was the upper limit, and yet within this Greek text itself, there is evidence that it persisted into what was recognised as adulthood. Note also that I never made the claim that equal age adult male relationships have historical acceptance. My underlying argument has been that the dynamic is better understood as between a youth and a more mature partner, hence why adolescents and young men were primary targets of attraction. Some societies (Rome especially) skewed younger, others (like Japan) could skew much older, into the mid 20s or beyond. While it is true that fully mature, egalitarian relationships as seen in the modern gay community were not historically accepted, and indeed many subsections of the gay community probably would have been looked upon disfavourably by pederastic societies, denying continuity between the two at all is very silly. Age gap relationships are uniquely common to the gay community, e.g a 40 year old dating a 19 year old. Because of your own agenda, you seem poised to deny all connection, hence why you poisoned the well against modern scholarship, and are eager to see me as trying to "gaywash", despite me never making claims that they were "gay". My argument all along has been that "pederasty" and "gay" are themselves a modern division, one initially used by gay rights activists precisely to cut off pederasts from their activism, and now ironically later by people like you, seeking to carve out a new identity. This does not mean that these practices were "gay" in the modern sense. Again, I have never made that claim. What it does mean, is that there is an underlying bridge that both sides are seemingly failing to see, re:the heteronormativity and occasional homophobia I see on here and other pederastic sites, and the vitriolic hatred expressed by the modern LGBT community towards pederasty. Undermining that bridge seems more beneficial to me especially re:activism, a "gay" relationship between a 16 and 22 year old would be rhetorically more palatable than a "pedophile" 22 year old abusing a 16 year old boy. |