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.
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.
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.
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.
Please.
Edmund has contributed substantially to this thread and the fact that he mentions his book is incidental.
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.
Note to self: Thread has no pictures.
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…
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.
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
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: Another Country - Wikipedia
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
Nice post/username combo!