Re: Gay boys

...these gay boys would rather be called and self-identify as trans. This has provoked resistance from a lot of gay movement oldtimers, who think these boys should be identifying as gay, and boylovers, who think they should be identifying as boys. And especially sometimes from gay movement oldtimer boylovers. I am sympathetic to critiquing this trend. But not when it reaches the point of alliance with those who want to use government to fight it. If we want to advise these boys that trans isn't the way to go, fine. But if we want to stop them without convincing them, then we are not respecting their agency. We may think we know what is best for boys, but if they are making wrong choices, we need to still support their right to choose their own path. And there is a good reason for this trend. Beginning in northwest Europe some 350 years ago, masculinity increasingly came to be defined in terms of not being too feminine, and especially not having sex with other males, since having sex with males was understood to be a quintessentially feminine behavior. In identifying as trans boys are resisting this definition of masculinity, or at least are resisting masculinity as so defined. And we should be supportive of this resistance for many reasons, among them the fact that this definition of masculinity is inimical to the pederastic tradition. When these boys identify as trans that does not necessarily mean identifying as female. It primarily means not identifying with the hegemonic (and homophobic) masculinity. Trans offers a variety of alternatives. Gay, by contrast, typically does not. Gay identification has become increasingly encumbered with a gay-straight binary that is just as inflexible as the male-female binary. Bisexuality is a disparaged identification. Homosexuality, heterosexuality and bisexuality emerged as categories because of the inflexible binaries that became hegemonic only in the modern era (and initially only in northwest Europe, not coincidentally the part of the world in which the property relations characteristic of modern capitalism developed). When and where pederasty flourished, these categories did not. hugzu ;-p