GENETIC BASIS FOR PEDERASTY? BY PARKER ROSSMAN

The following is one of the sections of the fourth chapter of Dr. Parker Rossman’s Sexual Experience Between Men and Boys (originally published in 1976), entitled "Why Do They?", introduced here, and intended to explain why in general some men desire boys, though in practice limited in its evidence to what was then recent in countries with a Judaeo-Christian tradition.

Genetic Basis for Pederasty?

“If you want to understand my emotions,” said one pederast, “imagine laws against sexual intercourse between men and women. Would the threat of prison prevent it?” Genetic research is not yet able to say conclusively whether or not there is some combination of genetic factors which may affect sexual preferences. Why are some men attracted to fat women, and others to pubescent boys? There may be genetic factors influencing delinquency, and there are differences in sexual capacity, sensitivity, and gender which are genetic. Genetically based chemical processes cause sexual heat in animals and human beings. A European pederast writes: “My cousin and I have been aware of each other’s innate tendencies from an early age. He has become a geneticist precisely to research why it is that as early as we can remember he has been gay. He always wanted to be with men, so his father assumed that meant he was going to be heterosexual. I wanted to follow along with older boys. I tormented every young teen-age boy I knew to provoke him into hitting me, for that was better than being ignored or having no physical contact at all. I was attracted to them like a bee to honey, or as animals are sexually attracted to each other. Gide wrote a book[1] describing male-male sex play among animals to deduce that pederasty is a natural phenomenon. Something similar to pederasty exists between older and younger baboons, and may be at the basis of all male friendship and therefore a foundation for human society.[2] A psychiatrist points out that men and older boys instinctively use sexual gestures similar to those of animals to put down and discipline younger boys who easily fall into the same authority-submission patterns that characterize the younger ape when threatened by a stronger male. Such sexual gestures, symbolic in their human intent and meaning, have a pederast pedagogic role which is innate in masculine society. Tendencies to respond erotically also seem to surge up in men and boys in situations involving corporal punishment. This suggests that research into sexual experience which is not primarily on the male-female procreation model, will reveal innate tendencies and desires for sexual pleasure which may naturally be expressed in play as well as in coitus. Perhaps my cousin was conditioned to be gay as an infant or through other experiences, whereas perhaps I was conditioned or scripted from infancy to find adolescent boys erotically attractive. In either case, however, there had to be something there in the first place to be conditioned. My body responds with joy to certain types of physical contact, in mutual masturbation for example, which seems as natural, innate, and genetically determined as coitus.”

[1] André Gide, Autumn Leaves. New York: Philosophical Library, 1950. [Author’s footnote]

[2] Hans Blüher, “The German Boy Scout Movement as Erotic Phenomenon” in Die Rolle der Erotic in der Mannlichen Gesellschaft, Stuttgart: Ernst Klett, 1962. [Author’s footnote]

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