CONCLUSIONS ON THE CONSENTING BOYS BY PARKER ROSSMAN
The following is one of the sections of the eleventh chapter of Dr. Parker Rossman’s Sexual Experience Between Men and Boys (originally published in 1976), which he entitled "The Consenting Boys" since, as he explained in the introduction to it, most of the three hundred boys he interviewed had taken the initiative and most of the rest had already imagined themselves ready and willing. The experiences described would seem all to have been then recent ones in the U.S.A.
Some Concluding Observations
- Our data from boys correlate with similar information from men in prison for pederastic offenses,[1] confirming that a high percentage of boys who are involved sexually with men actually were first seduced by other boys, and boys who are sexually experienced with each other are more likely to respond to pederast overtures or to become adventurous in seeking sex play with men out of curiosity, for money, or for other reasons.
- Since boys are responsive sexually and so often take initiative in seeking sexual adventures, the Gebhard study suggests that it is unfair to depict all pederasts as aging “aunties” who prey upon and seduce the immature, for “in many instances a real and deep relationship” exists.[2] The notion that pederasts are senile or “dirty old men” is disproved by the fact that such offenders in prison are on the average thirty-two years old. Only 5 per cent of them had any record of mental or emotional illness, even those who had been arrested or imprisoned. The average age of the boys involved with them was 14.1 years, and in one case out of ten there was no sexual intercourse. One fifth of the men arrested had simply masturbated the boy, and 50 per cent of them had fellated a boy. Many of the imprisoned men had started such activity when they were teenagers and had simply continued the behavior into adulthood without interruption. A high percentage of them had had sexual intercourse with boys aged 12 to 15 when they were older teenagers.[3] Many of them had continued this sex play with younger boys because of the “naïve interest in sex coupled with quick response” on the part of the youngster, who “exhibits an intensity of response matching or frequently surpassing that of an adult.”[4] The Institute of Sex Research study says that this sexual attractiveness of young adolescent boys is well known to many men who “are thereby subjected to temptation.” If young girls, the study concludes, had libidos as well developed as teenage boys “our penal institutions would burst at the seams.”[5]
- The young boys involved with arrested pederasts showed “a high degree of participation” and co-conspiracy - indeed, more than in other types of sex crime. Less than 6 per cent of boys involved with imprisoned pederasts had in any way resisted the man’s overtures.[6] Force and threat were infrequent and untypical as also shown in Merrill’s earlier study.[7]
- Boys involved with pederasts do not seem to become homosexual or pederast, unless they are preconditioned by earlier childhood experience or by young adolescent experience with other boys. Indeed, our data suggest a hypothesis for further study: that a pederast relationship with a masculine man seems to direct many boys away from confirming a homosexual identity and into normal heterosexuality. Exclusively pederast sources, of course, are not adequate for studying that thesis. One repeatedly discovers, however, that a paiderastia relationship frequently salvages boys from sexual and other delinquency.
- The experience that strongly influences a boy to become either gay or pederastic may most often be fantasy or imaginative experience. For this reason, the most dangerously seductive homosexual experience may be dirty jokes, or teasing gestures from other adolescents or from heterosexual men. An actual perverse act, on the other hand, is often found to be distasteful and can result in a decline of interest in the deviant sex which had seemed so fascinating when it was purely imaginative. Our study provides little evidence that young adolescent boys are swayed to the gay side by adult homosexual seduction. The most important and decisive factor may well be the preparatory imaginative experience, plus the interpretation given by adults and other adolescents to minor homosexual episodes. This suggests the need for more study of erotic fantasies.
[1] Paul Gebhard et al. Sex Offenders: An Analysis of Types. (New York: Bantam Books, 1967) [Author’s note].
[2] Paul Gebhard et al. Sex Offenders: An Analysis of Types. (New York: Bantam Books, 1967) p. 316 [Author’s note].
[3] Paul Gebhard et al. Sex Offenders: An Analysis of Types. (New York: Bantam Books, 1967) p. 313 [Author’s note].
[4] Paul Gebhard et al. Sex Offenders: An Analysis of Types. (New York: Bantam Books, 1967) p. 231 [Author’s note].
[5] Paul Gebhard et al. Sex Offenders: An Analysis of Types. (New York: Bantam Books, 1967) p. 299 [Author’s note].
[6] Paul Gebhard et al. Sex Offenders: An Analysis of Types. (New York: Bantam Books, 1967) p. 321 [Author’s note].
[7] L. Merrill, “Findings in a Study of Sexualism Among a Group of One Hundred Delinquent Boys,” Journal of Delinquency 3, no. 6 (Nov. 1917). [Author’s note]
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