Talk:Historical pederastic couples

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Historical pederastic couples article.
Article policies
Archives: Index, 1
This article is within the scope of the following WikiProjects:
Articles for deletion This article was nominated for deletion on October 22 2006. The result of the discussion was keep.
This article must adhere to the policy on biographies of living persons. Controversial material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libellous. If such material is repeatedly inserted or if there are other concerns relative to this policy, report it on the living persons biographies noticeboard.
Discussions on this page may escalate into heated debate. Please try to keep a cool head when commenting here. See also: Wikipedia:Etiquette.
This talk page is automatically archived by MiszaBot I.
Any sections older than 15 days are automatically archived. An archive index is available here.
Archive
Archives (Index)
Archive 1
About archives • Edit this box

Contents

[edit] Problems

I've just removed a couple of entries pertaining to those over 18. The problems with this article:

  • It's called "Historical pederastic couples", but pertains only to man/boy.
  • There's no clear cut-off line for ages. A relationship between a 22-year-old and a 17-year-old would not normally be described as "pederastic". Heterosexual couples can get married at those ages in many jurisdictions and no-one would consider the age difference unusual (admittedly just misses the "half plus seven" rule).
  • Like it or not, the term "pederastic" suggests a form of sexual deviance which most societies find unacceptable. This means when one applies the same standards applied to historical relationships to people still living, there are instant WP:BLP issues.

—Ashley Y 08:43, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

This is not an encyclopedia of vernacular use nor a compilation of urban myths. Pederasty has a very clear definition in sexology and anthropology, which you can read about in the various articles covered by this category. A couple of minutes of study should clear up most of your questions, which seem to be based on an unfamiliarity with the topic.
As for the two examples you removed, that is open to discussion. Both Isherwood and Auden had pederastic relationships, participated in the pederastic underground in Berlin in the twenties, and their relationships with these boys, albeit 18-year old boys, fit the pattern. If you note the sources, Bachardy himself says that people thought he was a child prostitute. Haiduc (talk) 14:32, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Possible solution to documentation of modern relationships?

Would appreciate comments on the feasability of listing modern relationships without raising BLP issues by cloaking somehow the name of the younger partner (initials only? age only? other?) Haiduc (talk) 00:37, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I think using initials alone would be fine. MB83 (talk) 06:16, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Time to split?

This article is getting top-heavy and I was thinking of taking out the Greeks and Romans into an article titled Pederastic couples in classical antiquity. Any thoughts? Haiduc (talk) 04:18, 22 January 2008 (UTC)


[edit] JAPANESE PEOPLE

I am Japanese and have many data on historical pederastic couples in Japanese history. And I've found so many famous couples were lacking in the "Historical pederastic couples". (e.g.) Oda Nobunaga and Maeda Toshiie. Maeda Toshiie was one of the most renowned beloved boys of Oda Nobunaga. Of course there were so many other beloved pageboys to Oda Nobunaga. And Tokugawa Ieyasu's most beloved boy Ii Manchiyo was Ii Naomasa(his adult name). Hadrianvs et antinovs (talk) 13:27, 28 January 2008 (UTC)talk:Hadrianvs et ntinovs|talk]]a.k.a."sebastianvs".

Mon cher, I am pleased to see you are willing to contribute. Please, by all means, lend a hand and put your shoulder to the wheel. But please be so kind as to provide scholarly references whenever possible, as they will be of invaluable use to future researchers, and it is the new modus operandi here. Regards, Haiduc (talk) 13:58, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
Merci beaucoup, mon cher. Although I do not write English language well, I'll try to specify historical sources to the best of my ability. However most of them were not translated into English yet. So please help me and correct my errors. Thank you very much ! (Hadrianvs et antinovs (talk) 14:30, 28 January 2008 (UTC)Hadrianvs et antinovs).
Dear Hadrianvs, your work is splendid, and I will shortly proofread it more carefully to deal with the very few minor corrections necessary. What is your opinion, especially if you intend to contribute many more entries, on our creating a separate article for the Japanese culture just as I did recently for classical antiquity? That may enable you to write a more appropriate introduction, rather than the merely generic one presently there. In either case, please be assured it is an honor for me to collaborate with you. Regards, Haiduc (talk) 09:56, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
My dear Haiduc, I am very glad to hear your proposal of collaboration. Of course I'll accept your proposal with great pleasure. And I must say "Thank you very much!", for your correction on my numerous errors. I've written entries taking medicine of insomnium, therefore you might found countless mistakes. Although I have many data of interesting stories and historical anecdotes, it is difficult for me to translate in English language well. By the way, what is the original source of the "Gong Wei and Wang Qi "? "Analects of Confucius" or "The Zuo Zhuan"? Hadrianvs et antinovs (talk) 17:52, 29 January 2008 (UTC)hadrianvs
Very well, then at the first opportunity I will break out the material on Japanese couples and set it up in an independent article. Please do not hesitate to include short historical vignettes for each couple as that is much more illustrative of the relationship than merely listing the names. I especially appreciated your specifying exactly why that lover was killed in the bath, it quite changes the context. As for the Confucius material, it was my impression it came from the Analects, but I may have jumped to conclusions. Do you have contrary information? Haiduc (talk) 21:59, 29 January 2008 (UTC)


Merci beaucoup, mon cher ! Iam going to read "論語" again. Hadrianvs et antinovs (talk)hadrianvs


[edit] Non- Japanese couples

I'd like to know whether the relationship of famous German couple Walther Rathenau and his lover Wilhelm Schwaner was "pederastic" or not. Please tell me kindly in easy English or in Japanese. Hadrianvs et antinovs (talk) 20:07, 30 January 2008 (UTC)hadrianvs et antinovs

Tu blagues! Not only have I never come across their names before, but a quick search reveals little besides this: http://askesis.hautetfort.com/hist._idees/ and this: http://www.tertia-roma.com/library/jollrathenau.html
Rathenau was born in 1867, yet his friendship with Schwaner seems to have flourished around 1916, thus aged 53, and his friend active in politics. I point out also that Schwaner was already an editor in 1900. That suggests a relationship between adults. Haiduc (talk) 22:17, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Hadrian and Antinous?

I would have thought Hadrian and Antinous to have been the prototype of such couples. I suppose others have thought about them before I did and there is a reason why they are not listed here... but can't figure it out. S.Camus (talk) 21:13, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

A certain editor keeps coming in here and taking them out, and I did not want to fight with him. But yes, they are the very archetype. Haiduc (talk) 21:40, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Is 21st Century Historic

There is a reference to an relationship that happened in 2007. I wouldn't consider this an historic relationship. Perhaps it should be in another article.Mysteryquest (talk) 19:33, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

How old does an event have to be to be historical, in your opinion? Haiduc (talk) 11:11, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
historical: as a: famous or important in history <historic battlefields> b: having great and lasting importance <a historic occasion> c: known or established in the past <historic interest rates> d: dating from or preserved from a past time or culture <historic buildings> <historic artifacts> I tend to use the definition under "d:"Mysteryquest (talk) 14:20, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
"c" will suffice here. Haiduc (talk) 15:45, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Verne, Beethoven and the Uranians

I would be interested to know on what basis the first two were removed, and the last two added. My impression is that the first two relationships have been cited in the literature and the last two may have not necessarily have been pederastic. Haiduc (talk) 11:21, 6 May 2008 (UTC)


Hi, I will start with a response on Beethoven and try to get to Carpenter, Verne, and Dolben over the next few weeks when I have time to pull up some resources. I have more than a little familiarity with the history of the Beethoven issue and it also seems easier than the other three for me to resolve which is why I'm starting there.

First, you are absolutely right that Beethoven and his nephew have been cited in the literature as a pederastic relationship. This idea originated in the late 1940's early 1950's, when Richard and Edith Sterba, a big-name husband and wife team of psychoanalysts, produced Beethoven and His Nephew: A Psychoanalytic Study of Their Relationship. This caused quite a stir and excitement at the time, and led to quite a fair amount of debate among experts in the field at the time, with some coming down firmly on either side. Move forward an odd 50 or so years to today, and this theory (and the original work by the Sterbas) has largely been discredited and fallen to the wayside due to lack of supporting evidence (and a large amount of evidence in Beethoven's letters to the contrary). The original Sterbas' publication remains important today, but for historical reasons as an early work in the musical psychobiography. Interestingly, the psychoanalytical theories on which the Sterba thesis was based have similarly fallen by the wayside or discredited within the fields of psychology and psychiatry (with the exception of some clinical practice). With some exceptions, Freudian psychoanalysis is generally treated in these fields the same way say some classical Greek notions of medicine are treated- of historical interest. (There is also a whole history of later psychoanalysts rebelling against their predecessors in reshaping psychoanalytic theory, which is a whole other story in itself.)

Here are a couple of relevant articles somewhat accessible via the internet that might help. The first one comes from a 1950's article from the American Journal of Psychiatry (which remains the top academic publication in the field of psychiatry, followed by the Archives of General Psychiatry) (http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/pdf_extract/113/1/36). Unfortunately I am unable to link to the full article, but the first page should give you a gist of things. I admit this is of more interest in pointing to changes in the fields of psychology and psychiatry from a psychoanalytical approach to the more empirically-based one that predominates today but it is from the 1950s and talks about the Sterba theory. By today's standards, it's language probably comes across as a bit strong, and I would not be surprised if there's a bit of homophobic (in addition to anti-psychoanalytic) basis to the writing.

The second, more neutral/balanced (despite the misleading title which refers to the portrayal of Beethoven as unpleasantly inhuman rather than as a homosexual) article from the New York Times, will probably be more informative (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950DEEDD1238F936A35752C1A96F948260&scp=3&sq=richard+sterba&st=nyt). It does a good job (and with more concision than I can manage) tracing the whole history of this issue.

Here are some additional readings that are not available electronically:

Solomon, Maynard. Beethoven. (London and New York, 1977) Solomon, Maynard. Beethoven Essays. (London and New York, 1988) Sterba, Editha and Richard. Beethoven and His Nephew: A Psychoanalytic Study of Their Relationship. (New York, 1954). Wolf, Stefan. Beethovens Neffenkonflikt. (München, 1995)

I apologize if I am a bit wordy, digressive/tangential (I know I have a tendency to do this), or too thorough but I hope this sheds some light into why I had the Beethoven entry removed.--OWgreenflower (talk) 23:54, 6 May 2008 (UTC)


Well, at the risk of engaging in original research, I would say that the NYT article reads a bit like a superficial waffle. It does not address the destruction of the conversation books and fluffs up Beethoven's relationships with women, seemingly to polish his (nonexistent) heterosexual credentials. Let's face it, passionate geniuses who want to get laid get laid, in copious amounts. Beethoven was a man who could have done anything he wanted, and he did: he stayed away from women. It also has nothing to say about the man's physical and emotional collapse at the loss of the boy.
The piece by Johnson (is it ironic or sarcastic? I cannot quite decide) must be read in the context of the year it was written, a time not known for dealing warmly with intimations of homosexuality in the lives of paragons such as Beethoven. Furthermore, what it attempts to refute is the psychoanalytical mechanism suggested by Sterba. But that dynamic is of no interest to us here. We are only concerned with his possessive love for a boy, to the exclusion of love for women, and accompanied by no small amount of misogyny to boot.
Nevertheless, such material must be recognized and I certainly would not be averse to including a paragraph on the critics of this theory. I have a feeling you are far more qualified than me to write it. By the way, I find this conversation very interesting and look forward to the next installment. Haiduc (talk) 00:23, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

This is the same author as OWgreenflower, but I'm very embarrassed to say I have mentally misplaced the password to that account, leaving me with no alternative but to create a new one. I'm very glad that you are enjoying this conversation just as much as I. I'm always concerned I am boring my students or others with my digressions so it is always reassuring when this is not the case. If there is any aspect of what I've discussed thus far that particularly interests you, I'd be more than happy to pull up some resources, time permitting of course, and supply you with additional readings. Moving from Beethoven to the other three, there is a precipitous drop in my knowledge and my ability to speak on these topics but I will try my best to make the current installment almost as interesting as the first.

Before moving on to Carpenter, I'd like to offer a brief response to your most recent post. I agree with you the piece by Johnson was mostly tangential, and more an expression of my interest in a topic than of direct relevance to our discussion. I'm just amazed by what people thought and wrote in looking back to these old articles. It sounds so antiquated by the standards of today. It is also unfortunate how traditional psychoanalysis is now commonly treated with scorn and contempt within the field in which it originated. Many of its theories may be outdated and discredited, but its influence and contribution to the development of its field cannot be denied, and for these reasons it should be valued.

I agree with you the NYT article did not go in much depth with the topic and gives a broad brush stroke treatment, but there are several reasons for that. First is its the medium; it is a newspaper and not an academic journal, so an in depth critique is not its purpose. Instead, it is more a response to Sterba's death, an acknowledgment or reflection on Sterba's main contribution to the field, and how it has played out over time. Second, his thesis is no longer current, having been largely discarded, and so there is no need for a length discourse supporting or refuting its position, since this would be redundant. By this I mean it was widely debated in the field in the 1950's and 1960's but this is no longer the case today. The consensus in the field is that Beethoven's relationship with his nephew Karl was certainly obsessive but not romantic in nature. A rough, contemporaneous analogy but one that easily illustrates this point would be to argue that prefrontal lobotomies are not the best treatment for mental illnesses. Back in the day, it was a widely accepted practice, to the point that its pioneer, António Egas Moniz, won the 1949 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. To argue against its use today either within the field or to the general public would be unnecessary.

To address your questions about the documents destroyed by Schindler and Beethoven's emotional collapse following Karl's return to his mother, it would probably take considerably more space and time to share the full context and details, so I will try to condense this down as much as possible. First, the destroyed conversation books numbered over 250 out of an approximate total of 400. They certainly included exchanges between Beethoven and Karl, but these constituted the minority of the burned documents. Beethoven strongly detested Karl's mother Johanna, who he believed would ruin her son, and he sought to mold his nephew to his own liking as the lone successor to the family line. There were certainly contemporaries who found his behavior towards Karl bizarre but only in the same manner that many of his behaviors were perceived as bizarre. He was perceived as "over-controlling" in his interactions with Karl, but he was never suspected of being romantically interested in his nephew by people who witnessed his behavior. In our own lives, we can think of people with no children of their own who become attached to those of their relatives, but with no romantic interest. Unfortunately, there are also many parents who obsessively control their children, and in many of these cases the children have a poor psychological outcome. Given Karl's attempted suicide and return to his mother, it is little wonder that Beethoven was devastated, be his relationship romantic or not. The existence of romantic relationships with women, however many or few, do exist and is not contested. Regardless of his relationships and attitudes to women, to say that he is a misogynist is not the same as claiming he is interested in other men. We also know that he was an irritable, demanding person in general, and so many men did not escape similar treatment or harsh remarks.

I think it would be very appropriate to include Beethoven in this article if it were the 1950's or 1960's but to do so today would be 50 years out of date.

Now for Edward Carpenter: There is no disputing that Edward Carpenter was gay, so I will make no comment on that point. However, it could be argued that as a student at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, he formed a romantic relationship with Andrew Beck, the eventual Master of the college. What I suspect is your main point of contention, is the possibility that Beck might not have been gay, in which case Carpenter's affections would not have been reciprocated. The main strength of the argument for a pederastic relationship is Carpenter's contention that there was a "touch of romance" to their friendship (here's a decent internet accessible source: http://www.edwardcarpenter.net/ecbiog.htm). Of course to what degree Carpenter was truthful in this claim is unknown, but there is also the question of what did he have to gain by fabrication. The answer would be much more clear-cut if Beck admitted to having had a romantic relationship with Carpenter, but as you likely know, unfortunately many such relationships are far from clear-cut in the historical record.

I hope you find installment 2 an interesting read and I look forward to your response.TheGreenSerene (talk) 22:33, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm just hopping on quickly to answer your question below. I hope you've enjoyed the installments thus far and, time allowing, I promise to get the next ones out over the next few days.TheGreenSerene (talk) 02:29, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, that was a very informative and convincing argument. I especially appreciated your lobotomy analogy, I found it very apt. Conceding the point on Beethoven, and moving on to Carpenter, my only objection was his possibly aging out of the pederastic range. However, as we see in the case of the Japanese, pederastic relationships can indeed take place throughout the teenage years, so if Carpenter was still a teenager at the time, I would have no objection to his inclusion. Nor would he, no doubt. He was a great admirer of the Greeks, as I am sure you know all too well. On that same note, I think it is high time someone in academia pointed out that Wilde's relationship to Douglas was also pederastic in nature, but we may wait a long time for that one, for a number of reasons, mostly political in nature.
Skipping ahead a bit, I checked the Jules Verne article and found it vandalized of the very material supporting his inclusion in this list. I restored the section in question, you may want to take a look at it before you launch into a defense of his exclusion. Haiduc (talk) 02:21, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

I see your point about Carpenter. He was born in August 1844 and entered Cambridge in 1864, making it all but certain he was already 20 when he started his studies, let alone met and formed a relationship with Beck. Unfortunately that puts him just outside the required age range. It does not exclude the possibility that he was part of pederastic relationships later in life, but it will likely take quite some searching to uncover relationships in which the younger partner can be identified. For the present, I will have to agree with you in excluding Carpenter from the article, but I remain hopeful that a basis will eventually be found for his inclusion. My instinct tells me there is a pederastic relationship to be found and I just find it odd not to find Carpenter on this list. The considerable challenge of tracking down identifiable younger partners remains the main obstacle.

Thank you for the notice about the Verne article. I took a look at what surprisingly is not much of a meaningful discussion. It is very clear that the people arguing for excluding mention of pederasty are just arguing from a dislike of the possibility rather than on the basis of any meaningful evidence, which I am sure you would agree convinces no one. —Preceding unsigned comment added by TheGreenSerene (talk • contribs) 21:24, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] A Question of Age

I don't plan on being a regular contributor owing to time (and health) but a question I had in making additions and subtractions going through the list, and a question others are likely to have, is what is the qualifying age of the younger member of a pederastic couple. There is a variation in what is accepted and the Pererasty article has 12 to 17. At the risk of making things more complicated but also for the sake of accuracy, I would like to propose that we adopt the relevant culture's concept of "boy" vs. "man." Otherwise we would be imposing our own culture's definition. TheGreenSerene (talk) 23:03, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

OK, what concept is that? Is it other than the definitions offered by students of the subject? Haiduc (talk) 19:55, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I must apologize. My mind must still have been on anthropology when I wrote this. In many cultures, and I was thinking of tribal ones in particularly, there are very different notions of adulthood, often with rites of passage for boys at particular ages. What this means is the age of adulthood for them sometimes differs from ours. Reading my proposal now, I must admit it makes little sense for the purposes of this article as the couples included are mostly Western ones. TheGreenSerene (talk) 02:36, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

The article I mentioned at your talk page has some interesting information bearing on this subject: "For example, in ancient Greece pederastic relations lasted from the time the boy was 12 until he was about 17 or 18 (Cantarella, 1992; Percy, 1996), and in early modern Japan these relations went from the time the boy was 11 to about 19 (Saikaku, 1990; Schalow, 1989)." Haiduc (talk) 03:46, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Shakespeare

Here is discussion about this at the Wiki Shakespeare project: [1]. In addition, the majority of scholars reject the "Oxford theory," which is apparent in the Wiki article about de Vere. The first folio was dedicated not to one person. And the relationship between de Vere was "reputed," not established. This is too much dubiousness, and with only US News and World Report as a source. (First, it is highly dubious that Shakepeare was de Vere, then it is speculative that de Vere and Southhampton had a relationship.) -PetraSchelm (talk) 14:56, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

We don't remove views that are merely "dubious." The World piece would probably be undue if given mention at William Shakespeare, but this article is dedicated to listing suggestions of paederasty. --AnotherSolipsist (talk) 03:05, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
The fact that many scholars reject a theory does not prohibit us from mentioning it as a theory. And if I were you I would not give my own opinion precedence over that of the US News and World Report. I think they have a little bit more credibility then us, lowly Wikipedia editors. And please stop making a hash of the references. If you did even a little bit of research you would discover that Halsall is a university professor, and that Dall'Orto is a journalist and published authority on gay history. Haiduc (talk) 03:17, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
Scholars who are reliable sources can surely be cited in reliable sources then, not on their personal websites. (If they haven't published this anywhere, perhaps it is not notable.)Also, as I noted, one was of translations only, and yet OR conclusions were drawn from this by an editor here. The "Oxford" theory re Shakespeare is not believed by many people. It is really a stretch to combine two dubious claims--that de Vere was Shakespare and that he had a relationship with Southmapton; neither or confirmed and both are specualtive. This article should be un-dedicated to listing "suggestions" of pederasty--that is quite dubious in itself, only confirmed relationships, unless the speculation is notable in itself. -PetraSchelm (talk) 03:27, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
I think that the main point here is that we are not looking for the degree of evidence required in a court of law. In history we look for indications and we report conclusions. And it is ALL provisional, otherwise historians would be out of a job. As for de Vere and friend, it is enough that they were an item, the rest is simply reporting of a theory, not a claim of fact. Haiduc (talk) 03:37, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
The personal websites of scholars are, in fact, reliable sources. Even a blog authored by an authority can qualify, according to WP:RS. --AnotherSolipsist (talk) 03:33, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
"Can" is the operative word--they are not de facto included; there are permissible exceptions. I'm not seeing the justification here (esp. for unpublished translations which make no observations about the work). -PetraSchelm (talk) 03:46, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
We are trying to gather data on set subjects. If the data is authoritative, it is notable for that subject. J*Lambton T/C 08:18, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
Manipulation of sourcing guidelines > Revisionist's dream. J*Lambton T/C 08:19, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Speciak term for death by having the body broken on the wheel

I'm copying and pasting an entry from the article. Hammeler is described as being broken on the wheel. There is a specific term to describe death by this method, which escapes me at the moment.

Franz Desgouttes and Daniel Hammeler

   * Daniel moved in with his twenty five year old lover, a Swiss lawyer, at the age of sixteen in 1810, and lived with him for seven years, until he was murdered by Frantz in a fit of jealousy. His lover was executed by being broken on the wheel, an event that galvanized the early Swiss homosexual emancipation movement.[42]  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Shallaq (talk • contribs) 06:31, 10 June 2008 (UTC)