Terms Used for Child-lovers - Version 3.
Ianthe
A chronological list of names
and euphemisms used to describe
child-lovers.
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Version 3. September 1995
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Yet another version, which just shows
how the speed of scholarship can become
multiplied when communications are
carried out in a matter of hours and
days rather than months and years.
[What follows is _not_ meant to be an
endorsement of any of these terms
as correct/accurate/useful - only
to document some of the many labels we
have had applied to us by others or
have chosen for ourselves. I feel the
mere fact that there have been so
many attempts to slap a label on us
illustrates the extent to which our
desires are able to evade being 'known'
by official discourses.]
Early
-----
eraste's [active - Laius]
ero'menos [passive - Ganymede, Pelops]
catamite [passive; for which Swinburne's 'calamite' was a
Whitmaniacal pun based on a mis-spelling of
Whitman's homoerotic 'Calamus' poems]
Sodomite
Paederast
Paiderastia
Doric
Dorian
'In the Cretan manner'
'Socratic' ['Socratic love' was common up to the late 18th & early 19th,
when it began to lose ground under the classical renaissance
and the realization (through more people learning Greek)
that Socrates had actually rejected Alcibiades.]
Middle
------
bugger [from 'bougerie'; which would then account for Noel Coward's
"we can always call them Bulgarians"]
'Lover of green fruit'
'Greek love'
Paiderastia
Pederast
Sodomite
sodomit
sodomight
sodamite
sodemyte
Late: 1850s onwards
-------------
'Greek love' [for the well-educated]
Invert
Third-sexer
Knabenliebe ['boy-lover' - Germany]
Intersexual
Uranian
Urning
Urningthum
Bugger
Maryanne [slang, applied mainly to camp queens]
Queer
Calamite [coined by Swinburne, after Whitman's Calamus poems. Although
a pun on Catamite, not meant harshly, as Swinburne had a taste
in boys.]
Pedophil [early 1890s ? in a letter by Symonds. Symonds uses 'paiderastia'
a lot (and unisexual once, though he doesn't like it, and hates
the macaronic 'homosexual', preferring Urning and Urningthum.]
'Love that dare not speak its name' [after trial of Wilde]
Paedophile [1890s/1900s onwards - in sexology literature ? OED has:
"Paedophile, also pedo (from the Greek for 'loving children')
- a person with paedophilia." Citations from 1951-1977.
"Paedophilia, also pedo, paido - an abnormal, esp. sexual,
love of young children." Citations from 1906-1973.]
Comrade
Chivalry [not used as an identity label per se, but used to identify
boy-loving desires. Another Whitman term, parallel to Comrade]
Manly love [ditto]
1950s onwards
-------------
Chicken-hawk [USA gay subculture, inherited from negro use ?]
'Like Lewis Carroll'
Nympholeptic [from 'Lolita']
Ephebophile [lover of teenagers - in sexology literature only]
Nonce [slang - southern England only ?]
Homophile [USA]
Pedophile [Americanism of paedophile]
Late 1970s onwards
------------------
Child-lover
Boy-lover
Girl-lover
Korephile [Woman who loves girls]
1990s
-----
Troll [applied by some USA gay men to boy-lovers, slang]
'Stranger' [in the literature and pronouncements of the child-abuse industry]
Abuser
Serial pedophile
Heterosexual pedophile
Homosexual pedophile
Queer [in the usage which is inclusive of all forms of sexual dissidence.
There is another parallel usage which is meant to indicate a hyper-
aggressive and _ex_clusive adult-adult homosexuality.]
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ian...@duende.demon.co.uk
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ends.