David Tuller on sex between adolescent boys and adult men
At Salon, David Tuller argues that "Sex between teenage boys and older men is not always coercive -- and it can be more ecstatic than traumatic." Like Judith Levine, Tuller makes clear that he's talking not about children but about sexually curious and willing adolescents.
However, adolescence -- let's say starting at 12 or 13 for some boys, at 14 or 15 for a great many more -- is a different matter entirely. Gay men compare coming-out stories like kids today trade Pokémon cards, and over the years I've heard many tales of teenage escapades with older men, of sex with an uncle, sex with a married neighbor, sex with an unknown man driving a shiny Chevrolet, sex with a teacher. Sex in a park at night, sex in a train station toilet, sex in a stranger's home. Sometimes the sex was great, sometimes awful. Sometimes the experience was tender, sometimes rough, sometimes somewhere in between. Most of the time the kids wanted it, like I did; they were just a bit braver, or more desperate.
Salon ran some letters to the editor later in the week.
