All C for me.

It isn't that I'm a waffler. I came into this world with an all-B point of view and some of the things I've seen have loosened me up a little, but not to the point of convincing me to A on anything.

But there's a dearth of data. Long time members might recall that I discerned six BL ethical approaches to intergenerational sex: abstinent (all B in the current context), persuadable (responding positively to an unambiguous invitation from the boy), persuasive (making suggestions to the boy), aggressive (taking liberties, such as making heavy going suggestions, doing erotic touching in tease or in sleep, etc., pressure sales tactics) and lunatic (grab and rape, lock in basement, etc.). My opinion is that persuasive, aggressive, and of course the rhetorically spun lunatic can be ruled out as ethical possibilities. Persuasion has some advocates in the BL world, but most of us in the civilized forums agree that boys are too likely to be persuaded to do something that they may later regret or even be traumatized by. There are two grey areas around 'persuadable.' Between it and abstinent, there is 'checking motivation:' I think some BLs might allow themselves to be persuaded by a boy if they boy could assure them he really wanted a sexual relationship and was not just trying to please or get attention or exercise curiosity. In between 'persuadable' and 'persuasive' there is 'deadlock breaking' or 'Alphonse-and-Gaston relief,' where perhaps the BL is sure the boy is hinting consistently at getting sexual but can't quite make it explicit, and is waiting to have some explicit confirmation. I was just reading the other day something along the lines of "this 12-year-old kept coming up to me with an erection in his shorts and I knew perfectly well what he wanted, but I decided to ignore it." Another man might have popped Mae West's famous question, which though likely ill-advised, wouldn't, to my mind, be formally unethical.

There are people on the BL sites who gladly admit to having liked intergenerational sex when they were prepubescent boys themselves, and they tend to sound credible. The problem is that you can never tell when someone on the web is living out a fictional alternative persona and just making up a life experience. It's not so uncommon. One person I chatted with for awhile said he had an 8 yo YF who was always pressuring him to become a little more intimate, and they worked up from a shy little touch in the shower to nights of non-penetrative bliss, then got scared and went back to minimal eros. Well, this fellow later confessed he'd made the whole thing up. He could have been lying about that, too, but I tend to think this was his truthful moment.

So, then, this cast doubt on two other people I knew who had similar tales that were less embellished and hadn't progressed as far. I certainly do have a very real friend who was seducing 17 year olds when he was 10, but ARE there prepubie boys so androphilic that they seriously try to persuade even older guys? I suspect there probably are, but they must be extremely rare.

And that's where I think this poll ultimately falls down as a serious issue. I think that perhaps such actions could be morally and spiritually acceptable, but it would be easier for a camel to walk through the eye of a needle than to find that set of circumstances in real life.