not sure
Submitted by F.O.D. on November 13 2001 07:01:01
In reply to infantilism ? submitted by nicolai on November 11 2001 04:25:19
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I don't think I'd say BL is closer to heterosexuality than adult homosexuality. I guess you could argue it is in the sense that it has the sense of "other" - other in age rather than in gender. But apart from that homosexuality and boylove are the same in the sense that you feel comfortable with your friend because of the shared experience of gender, and feel you can, being both male, understand each other profoundly in a way that a girl could never understand you. It might make a bit more sense to sense that BL has a degree of "infantilism" - not wanting to grow up. We were discussing something like that not so long ago, wondering why it is we find it so easy to be attracted to boys, while it's a lot harder to be interested in a guy our own age. Even when, interestingly, we're (or I am) still attracted to a YF as he's grown into a young man (the attraction doesn't stay fixated at the one age). The message I got out of those discussions was that boys are more open, more ready to let us see into their souls, and that makes it easy to love them. Adults, however, have learnt to build walls and barriers around them, which makes it a challenge to learn to love one. So in conclusion, rather than seeing BL as strictly a desire to remain in one's past, I'm more inclined to see it as a kind of "loving along the path of least resistence". A kind of laziness, if you like ;) The conclusion is that it should be perfectly possible for us to be able to make the effort to learn to love an adult someone. Might take more strain, but the final product of love is the same, I suppose. And the corollary, for the very brave, is that we likewise should be able to find it possible to learn to love a woman ;) (congratulations on your happy marriage :) ) If it's any consolation, I've got a lot of church friends (not BLers) who happily and defiantly cry out "to hell with old age and maturity"... Fod |
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