English Public Schools and Buggering

[MonkeyMensch]

I was reading the faggot etymology thread and was reminded of a line from Four Weddings and a Funeral. Hugh Grant is talking to a guy in the pub and this guy is recalling someone he knew in school.

"He buggered me senseless, of course"

Does that sort of thing actually happen? Underclassmen being used as sex toys?

[Chez Guevara]

Does it happen? It's a tradition.

[MonkeyMensch]

Well, N, I can't tell from the brevity of your reply if you're being facetious. If it is true isn't it rather like, not to put too fine a point on it, rape? And how do the underclassmen feel about it? Aside from the fact that they'll be dishing it out in a few years...

[Chez Guevara]

Perhaps it's not so much a tradition (except at Cambridge), it's more of a widely held view.

I didn't attend a public school but I did board. There was never any suggestion of faggotry at my school.

Homosexuality at boarding schools in this country is a sphere of interest which is difficult to quantify. To try and answer your question, the law of averages suggests that it does happen. Wherever you have hundreds of teenage boys confined at close quarters it would be strange if it did not.

From one or two anecdotes I heard at the time (from boys at other schools) I suggest that any sexual interaction between pupils at a boarding school is inspired by curiosity, and it takes place between boys of similar age and inclination rather than the outright buggery referred to by Hugh Grant's pub acquaintance. These second hand stories also indicate that very few boys would entertain full-blown anal sex.

I think that any incidence of senseless buggery is definitely overstated.

Sorry, no cite.

[bmerton]

Having been educated at an English public school myself, I can honestly say that there is no truth to it nowadays. However, this was not always the case. At the turn of the last century, the Provost of Eton's wife allegedly remarked that buggery was 'every Etonian's way of passing the time'. Homosexuality was not something that people discussed openly in those days, so I feel that the anecdote may be slightly apocryphal. Nevertheless, anyone of my grandfather's generation would certainly have come across 'buggery' in some form or another when they were at school. That is not to say that everyone was having sex but that it was tacitly understood to be going on all the time.
The authorities recognised this and did very little to stop it. At many of the schools, to be caught in bed with a boy would only warrant suspension but you would be expelled if you were caught in bed with a girl. I am told that this is still true today but have no examples of disciplinary action being taken on such matters.
The environment at a public school early last century was very different to what it is now. Aside from the fact that many have turned co-educational recently, there is much more exposure to the opposite sex generally. I was at a single sex school from the age of 8-18 and the environment is such that there is a HUGE stigma attached to homosexuality. I know of a number of people who 'came out' almost the day they left because the attitude of the other boys would have made life unbearable were they to admit it at school.
However, public schools are still intrinsically associated with 'buggery'. To many, single sex establishments seem to be odd enough as it is. Combining that with a past reputation for homosexual activity and you have a bountiful source of jokes.
Your question 'underclassmen being used as sex toys?' is ambiguous. Just to explain - 'public' school in the UK means private school. The opposite is called a 'state' school. The reason for this was that a long time ago everyone from a 'good' background would have been educated by private tutors. People did not go to school and those that did were usually poor and went on some sort of scholarship to a school for the public. As the educational system evolved, people stopped using private tutors and started sending their children to these 'public' schools. The name has just stuck. Buggery is only associated as a generalisation to public (private) schools in the UK. Typically, private education is not associated with 'underclassmen' (it is associated with the aristocracy)and the man in Four Weddings to whom you refer was himself privately educated.
The humour is based on the long standing association of public schools with homosexuality and the character's typically English indifference.

[MonkeyMensch]

Originally posted by bmerton
Just to explain - 'public' school in the UK means private school. The opposite is called a 'state' school....
...Buggery is only associated as a generalisation to public (private) schools in the UK. Typically, private education is not associated with 'underclassmen' (it is associated with the aristocracy)and the man in Four Weddings to whom you refer was himself privately educated.
The humour is based on the long standing association of public schools with homosexuality and the character's typically English indifference.

Just to clarify: I assumed from the character that he had attended a public school. Some of us Yanks know the difference. And, at least on this side of the pond, the term underclassmen refers only to Freshman or Sophomore standing, not to social classes.

[amanset]

Originally posted by MonkeyMensch
And, at least on this side of the pond, the term underclassmen refers only to Freshman or Sophomore standing, not to social classes.

And here be the problem.

Everyone is using terms that are specific to their culture but assuming that everyone understands them. Two examples:

1.The word "underclassmen" would only ever refer to social status in Britain. It has no meaning regarding standing in education.

2.You also refer to "Sophomore". The word is not used in Britain and hence very few Brits know what it means.

Methinks both sides of the discussion have to be more clear in their terminology.

[Moonshine]

Having been to public school myself I have to call in with bmerton and say that it hardly exists at all anymore, and I'm sceptical if it ever did in the amounts that popular myth would have it. You're living in a closed environment for months at a time; imagine a fire on a ship, you either put it out right away or everybody gets burnt. As for

'the law of averages suggests that it does happen. Wherever you have hundreds of teenage boys confined at close quarters it would be strange if it did not.'

What is the basis for this suggestion? Do teenage boys have some predisposition towards homosexuality that is just waiting for release? I think not.

There was in the past something called 'fagging', which I believe still exists in the army in the form of your 'batman'; I was the first year at my school who didn't have this practice anymore. The fag was usually a boy in the lowest form, who had to assist one of the boys in the final year with just about everything so that he could concentrate on his studies. This would include cleaning his room, doing chores, that sort of stuff. I don't think buggery was a part of being a fag though.

[thecolonist]

Well I'm a Brit and I want to know what you public school boys have to say about 'Soggy Biscuit'.

[Chez Guevara]

Originally posted by Moonshine

'the law of averages suggests that it does happen. Wherever you have hundreds of teenage boys confined at close quarters it would be strange if it did not.'

What is the basis for this suggestion? Do teenage boys have some predisposition towards homosexuality that is just waiting for release? I think not.

To clarify my comment, if you take all the boarding schools in this country, there are many thousands of teenage boys sharing dormitories. It would be strange if sexual activity failed to occur in some of these dormitories.

This is because homosexuality exists in human society. There are people contributing to this message board who will confirm that assessment.

It might help if we defined it. It in the context of my remark is homosexual activity. It is not senseless buggery. It could be mutual masturbation for example. Or oral sex. I'm not an expert on the kind of physical love teenage boys can enjoy together short of full anal penetration.

Of course, this presupposes that masturbation and oral sex constitute sex. I think there was a cause celebre a few years ago, involving a failure to do some dry-cleaning on somebody's part, which served to confirm at least that a blow-job is a sexual act.

[Aguecheek]

Stephen Fry gives a first-hand account of public school life in his autobiography Moab is my Washpot.

He mentions that on occasion, some minor sex play would take place (mutual masturbation, etc.), but the rampant buggery that has become the stereotype was, in his experience, nonexistent.

I am not a Brit, nor have I attended British public schools, but from Fry's book, I took away the impression that a schoolful of pre-adolescent and adolescent boys, paired with the complete lack of a female presence, led to somewhat higher than normal homosexual experimentation, but that's about it. YMMV.

[MonkeyMensch]

Well as the OP I can only say thanks, one and all. You guys are terrific as always...

[Edmund]

I realise this is resurrecting a topic after eleven years, but it still crops up in a Google search, so in case anyone else who comes across it is seriously interested in homosexuality at Eton, I would like to point out that I have written a novel, Alexander's Choice by Edmund Marlowe (available on Amazon), which describes attitudes in 1984 in detail, as well as their evolution in the preceding decades. Briefly though, I concur with everything bmerton says, though I was there well before him. The irony is that it was mostly the legalisation of homosexuality that killed it off in public schools.

[gaffa]

I would think that isolated, same-sex schools have roughly the same incidence of "situational homosexuality" as prisons, that is heterosexuals having sex with each other simply because there is no one of the opposite sex available.

[Edmund]

While there is considerable logic underlying your assertion, I think you will find that the prevalence of situational homosexuality in same-sex boarding-schools until the early seventies, and most certainly before the nineteenth century, was far greater than it has ever been in prisons. The key to understanding this is that old-time boarding-school homosexuality was pederastic, not gay. It typically invoked an intense bonding between lusty eighteen-year-olds and pretty, hero-worshipping thirteen-year-olds who were felt to have feminine appeal. The impulse involved was far more akin in spirit to the heterosexual one than to the modern gay one, so much more easily satisfied in a boys' boarding-school than in a prison.
Edmund, Author of Alexander's Choice, an Eton love story.

[AK84]

This is 11 years old!

Paging RNWTB

[Edmund]

But it remains an interesting topic.

[Dewey Finn]

Reported post by Edmund as spam. He revived the thread merely to promote his book.

[Edmund]

Why is it "spam" to mention having written a book that tries to answer the questions raised in this thread, one that remains of interest to many people? It is wrong to tell people where they may find what they say they want to know?

[the_diego]

A lot like the US military schools, according to Kurt Vonnegut.

[Ruken]

I recall reading in some newspaper a few years back about some lawsuits in GB re: teacher/student molestation. I believe there were issues with the statute of limitations.

[md2000]

Reminds me of the limerick:

There once was two girls from Birminghan,
and this is the story concerning'em
They lifted the frock,
and diddled the cock,
of the bishop as he was confirming'em.

The bishop was nobody's fool,
He'd been to a large public school,
He dropped his britches,
and buggered those bitches,
with a twelve-inch episcopal tool.

But that didn't bother those two,
they said as the bishop withdrew,
"Oh, the vicar is quicker,
and thicker, and slicker,
and longer and stronger than you."

-Asimov's book on Limericks, IIRC?

Obviously, if it's in a Limerick, it must be true.

[ed anger]

Originally Posted by Moonshine

What is the basis for this suggestion? Do teenage boys have some predisposition towards homosexuality that is just waiting for release? I think not.

about 10% of them, yeah.

[md2000]

Originally Posted by ed anger

about 10% of them, yeah.

Not to mention an additional small number who are pederast predators, not to be confused with consensual gays. The "older boys dominate, don't make trouble" is an ideal environment for private exploitation... by older boys or staff.

[Edmund]

Predators are a possibility anywhere, but I never even heard of one during my years in boarding-schools. Certainly the very intense emotional (and occasionally sexual) bonding that sometimes developed between older and younger boys had nothing to do with predation. I don't think it had much to do with adult homosexuality either. The consequences were only lasting if they were caught.

[KarlGauss]

Originally Posted by Dewey Finn

Reported post by Edmund as spam. He revived the thread merely to promote his book.

Please.

Edmund has contributed substantially to this thread and the fact that he mentions his book is incidental.

[Edmund]

Thank you KarlGauss. I did want to make a genuine contribution to a subject I have studied for many years. I forgot to mention that by far the broadest study of public school homosexuality over the whole course of the 20th century is Alisdare Hickson's "The Poisoned Bowl. Sex and the public school" (1996), a fascinating history for which several hundred old boys from all the public schools contributed. My book is fictionalised and about Eton only. I know only what I have read about the other public schools.

[moriah]

Note to self: Thread has no pictures.

[The Great Cornholio]

Many of us verminous lower-class wastrels who didn't go to Public School like to perpetuate the idea of trembling first years being sodomised within an inch of their lives by leering, hairy prefects from the Lower 6th.

It makes us feel good about ourselves , that when we were getting stinky fingers behind the bike sheds at Crapstick Comprehensive School from Wendy Wide-on in 4G, some buck-toothed posh Rugger Bugger was making George Osborne, David Cameron and co's eyes pop out by shredding their ballon knots with some vigorous dry anal. Daily. For hours.

It's one of our little victories (as Norman Stanley Fletcher would say), one we like to hold onto, as we grit our teeth and bend over for the now-grown Cameron and Osborn to fuck us in the arse with their policies, over and over again....

Ha, at least I don't have to fetch their smoking jacket afterwards and say thank you for my "treatment". It still bloody hurts though...

[Edmund]

I can certainly sympathise with that fantasy. I was at Eton with Cameron, though I didn't know him, but I too don't like his tone or many of his policies. I think you understand though that it is just a fantasy. Sodomy was already extremely unusual at Eton by then. Moreover, if Cameron had been sodomised by an older boy, it would certainly not have been brutally or without his consent.

However, Cameron's three Old Etonian predecessors as PM, Eden, Macmillan and Douglas-Home were at school when things were very different indeed. Emotional bonding between older and younger boys was then a common phenomenon, often accompanied by lust and sometimes leading to sodomy. Though if Eden & co. were sodomised by prefects when they were 13-14, which we shall never know, it again would not have been brutally or without their consent.

If you find it difficult to imagine how an early-teen boy, typically a future heterosexual, would feel first hero-worship and then a willingness for sex with a dominant, older one, then for a brief visual encapsulation, I recommend the scene in the film "If", where a 14 year-old watches the gymnastics of an older boy he later sleeps with.

I would further venture to suggest that if Eden & co. were sodomised by older boys, their experience of having been willingly at that end of an unequal affair would likely have made them more understanding once they became dominant males and might go some way to explain why as PMs they were less arrogant and more sensitive to others' opinions than Cameron.

[Colibri]

Originally Posted by Dewey Finn

Reported post by Edmund as spam. He revived the thread merely to promote his book.

Originally Posted by KarlGauss

Edmund has contributed substantially to this thread and the fact that he mentions his book is incidental.

Moderating

While thread reports are appreciated, my assessment of this particular case is the same as KarlGauss's. While Edmund's initial post was in reference to his book, subsequent ones have made a contribution to the subject.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

[Elendil's Heir]

Didn't Flashman mention somewhat frequent buggery in school when he was a student?

The 1984 movie drama Another Country is, in part, about homosexuality at a British public school, and the role it played in bringing together several like-minded young men who later became Soviet spies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Another_Country_(film)

[Edmund]

Exactly so. Another Country was a fictionalised account of the future spy Guy Burgess's time at Eton in the 1920s. It makes it clear that though Burgess himself was homosexual after Eton, having being traumatized by punishment for it, he slept with a huge swathe of willing boys in his house, most of whom may be presumed to have been heterosexual afterwards.

[The Great Cornholio]

Thanks for destroying that little fantasy Edmund, it used to keep me warm when the shirt was torn from my back.
Never mind, I can accept that ferocious buggerings were a thing of the past by the time Cameron & Co got to their Public Schools, perhaps this is the reason for Dave's willingness to embrace gay marriages in church - those who were done up the wrong 'un, consensually via hero-worship or not, would surely not want to go anywhere near that field of activity again, in any way? Remember what they say :

"I design great buildings, do they call me David the Superb Architect? Nope. I make incredible bridges, do they call me David the Incredible Bridge-Maker? Nope. I suck just one cock..."

Perhaps the death of this perceived institutionalised sodomy will transfer favorably into other old Public Schoolboys' attitudes in their chosen careers. Like, ooooh, let's say, for no particular reason, with the BBC? Maybe they will be less likely to fail to recognise sex offenders right under their noses, or in-house Soviet spy rings. I won't hold my breath.

As an old Etonian, how often, if ever, have you said "I went to Eton" and then used the disclaimer "but I didn't get bummed"?
Do you find that people think you will have obviously had some hot man-on action after lights out? (In a similar way, I know a chap who was unfortunately incarcerated for a time in LA County Jail. He seems to be unable to say "I was in LA County Jail" without adding the phrase "but I wasn't anyone's bitch". The lady doth protest too much, IMHO...)

Personally, I find that gents of a certain age and up (and you will be about the last of that vintage), who attended Public School, will be asked how many times they were thrashed (by Mr Quelch, presumably), as if random, harsh, excessive CP was as prevalent as rampant sodomy in these schools. (I have a prediliction for "La Vice Anglaise", but no Public education to blame it on. Meh)

That brings us neatly back to Dave & Co, I suppose, their former Chief Whip was known as "Thrasher" for his enthusiasm with the cane at Rugby School (where the fictional Flashman stories were set, Elendil's Heir). Better than being known as The Assmaster, I suppose.

[Edmund]

I shall answer your questions to me honestly, The Great Cornholio. I'm sorry if they're not what you want to hear.

I don't say "I went to Eton" unless someone asks or Eton is the topic, as here. I have never added the disclaimer "I didn't get bummed" and no one has ever suggested to me that they thought I must have been. At most, I've been asked if that sort of thing went on, again as in this topic.

As for being thrashed, yes, I've been asked that often enough. Caning was finally abolished at Eton just as I arrived there. For the previous nine years it had been administered by the headmaster only for the most serious non-expellable offences only: use of alcohol or soft drugs and buggery. Interestingly, the punishment for sex with a girl was, in contrast, always expulsion.

The nearest I've ever come to being thrashed was at prep school when I was nine and the matron beat me on the bottom with her shoe for reading with a torch after lights out. It didn't hurt much, though it was a bit of a shock.

[Mk VII]

I'd be very doubtful that such was ever the case, or that so-called 'deprivation homosexuality' exists. People who were indulging in it at school were probably going to be gay in any case.
Of course some people go through a phase of experimenting with their sexuality at that age.

[gaffa]

Originally Posted by Mk VII

I'd be very doubtful that such was ever the case, or that so-called 'deprivation homosexuality' exists. People who were indulging in it at school were probably going to be gay in any case.
Of course some people go through a phase of experimenting with their sexuality at that age.

Situationality homosexuality is a very well-established phenomena. Prisons are filled with heterosexual men having sex with each other.

[Mk VII]

Prisons are hardly a representative section of society.

[gaffa]

Originally Posted by Mk VII

Prisons are hardly a representative section of society.

No, but they are a representative example of sexually segregated societies. Hell, the activities that occur during the "shellback" ceremony aboard a Navy ship when crossing the equator are a lot more freaky than anything I've seen happening in Gay bars!

[Tangent]

Originally Posted by The Great Cornholio

Many of us verminous lower-class wastrels who didn't go to Public School like to perpetuate the idea of trembling first years being sodomised within an inch of their lives by leering, hairy prefects from the Lower 6th.

It makes us feel good about ourselves , that when we were getting stinky fingers behind the bike sheds at Crapstick Comprehensive School from Wendy Wide-on in 4G, some buck-toothed posh Rugger Bugger was making George Osborne, David Cameron and co's eyes pop out by shredding their ballon knots with some vigorous dry anal. Daily. For hours.

It's one of our little victories (as Norman Stanley Fletcher would say), one we like to hold onto, as we grit our teeth and bend over for the now-grown Cameron and Osborn to fuck us in the arse with their policies, over and over again....

Ha, at least I don't have to fetch their smoking jacket afterwards and say thank you for my "treatment". It still bloody hurts though...

Nice post/username combo!

[Edmund]

Originally Posted by Mk VII

I'd be very doubtful that such was ever the case, or that so-called 'deprivation homosexuality' exists. People who were indulging in it at school were probably going to be gay in any case.
Of course some people go through a phase of experimenting with their sexuality at that age.

I agree that much of it was experimental, but whether it was or not, you will find in Alisdare Hickson's The Poisoned Bowl: Sex & the Public School, the clear testimony of hundreds that during the first two-thirds of the 20th century, huge numbers of future heterosexuals indulged in homosexuality in public schools. The extent varied greatly by time and place, and at Eton there were great variations between houses, but it is clear that at peak periods the majority of boys engaged in some kind of sex play, which makes it impossible that it had much to do with being gay.

[Siam Sam]

Originally Posted by Elendil's Heir

Didn't Flashman mention somewhat frequent buggery in school when he was a student?

The 1984 movie drama Another Country is, in part, about homosexuality at a British public school, and the role it played in bringing together several like-minded young men who later became Soviet spies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Another_Country_(film)

I am a Flashman fan, but as an American I don't have any personal experience with British schools. But I seem to recall Flashman -- or maybe some other book(s) -- treated it as more of a punishment than a sexual thing? A power play by bullies.

[The Great Cornholio]

Originally Posted by Edmund

I shall answer your questions to me honestly, The Great Cornholio. I'm sorry if they're not what you want to hear.

No problem, the truth of the matter being discussed has absolutely no bearing on what we, the filthy State Schooled shit-munchers, believe. We WANT to believe, and so we do. As I said above, it makes us feel better.

To us here in the gutter, we see Mr Cameron et al, the ex-Public Schoolboys who rule our lives, as a dirty, incestuous clique. We know that they are all in each others' pockets, eating live rats and poor peoples' babies at their dinner parties*, and worst of all, sliding in and out of each others' arseholes at every possible opportunity. They learned it at Public School. This is fact, as far as we are concerned.
Hey, even their own side say they are "arrogant posh boys who don't know the price of a pint of milk" (Nadine Dorries. This is what happens when you let common birds have a say, eh?)

However, this isn't a pop at the current Govt, it matters not which political party, and indeed, is not limited to the world of politicians. Heads of corporations, quangos, anyone what talks all posh and stuff, and plays golf with his old schoolmates, the Landed Gentry, and so on, all ex-Public School.

It is down to the Old Boys' Network, we can never join in, we aren't intimate enough with that lot, literally. We won't be starting a revolution, though - we don't want to join in any club where our donut takes a shredding. The status quo remains intact (erm, so to speak).

Whether it is degrading punishment which brings Little David & George down to size, or good old-fashioned Upper Class perversion, it matters not to us - Public School = Buggery.

Who lets the truth get in the way?


* Like the end of the 1989 film "Society".

[Edmund]

Please believe me: I really do understand what you are getting at. Many Old Etonians can. By a big coincidence, I have just come online from watching the film Another Country, recently mentioned in this thread, for the third time in my life. What do you make of it? In case you are not familiar with it, it is set at Eton in the thirties and offers a credible explanation of how Guy Bennett (aka Burgess) came to hate the establishment, ie. his own class, so much that he became a communist dedicated to betraying them, and precisely because of the topic under discussion: homosexuality. I am intrigued now. Do you despise or sympathise with Burgess?

[md2000]

I recall a review of a memoir by one of the defectors to the Soviet Union decades ago - one of the Philby gang or something, IIRC. Anyway, the reviewer made mention of the author's point that many of the British spies joined the Soviet cause because in their early 20's burst of egalitarianism, the Bolsheviks proclaimed homosexulaity was Ok and legalized it. He mentioned this, more than socialist ideals of the brotherhood of man (poor choice of words?) or other ideals of social justice, was why they embraced the soviet ideal. A few years later Stalin cracked down on internal "perversion" but by then they were compromised and it was too late to back out of the spy game. They had been recruited at British universities (no indication of the role of public schools, but presumably that's where these upper class types got started...)

Burgess?

[Mk VII]

I think we need to get back to 'how it is today' rather than how schooling was in the distant past, which many people make the mistake of assuming has not changed at all.

[gaffa]

Originally Posted by Mk VII

I think we need to get back to 'how it is today' rather than how schooling was in the distant past, which many people make the mistake of assuming has not changed at all.

The OP was about a line in a 1994 movie spoken by a character in late middle age, who presumably was in a public school in the late 40s-early 50s. So it's germane.

I was at school with his brother Bufty. Tremendous bloke. He was head of my house. Buggered me senseless. Still, it taught me about life.

[gaffa]

Originally Posted by Chez Guevara

Does it happen? It's a tradition. .

Don't talk to me about naval tradition. It's nothing but rum, sodomy and the lash. -- Winston Churchill

[Mk VII]

Originally Posted by gaffa

Don't talk to me about naval tradition. It's nothing but rum, sodomy and the lash. -- Winston Churchill

When asked if he'd said this, he said that he wished he had.

[Edmund]

Originally Posted by Mk VII

I think we need to get back to 'how it is today' rather than how schooling was in the distant past, which many people make the mistake of assuming has not changed at all.

But in this case it is only by understanding how things have been done and felt differently by people in a different age that we may understand a phenomenon that has largely disappeared. Failure to understand such things can surely only be impoverishing for us.

We look on past ages with condescension, as a mere preparation for us, but what if we're only an after-glow of them?