Schoolboy Homoeroticism

i've been reading about homosexuallity in ancient Greece, and i think it's a good insight in the 'schoolboy' category. greece was a very male-oriented society, and also one that has an organised hierarchy in all areas of society including education. in a sense, they already had schoolboys then. there was something about the relation between seniority and sexual roles - the younger ones are always the "beloved", and the older ones are the "lovers". most of the time there are many lovers for a single beloved.

Thanks to Artemis - that bit about the ***ging was rather hilarious to read on wiki (because I'm so mature; ).

This is definitely one of my favourite genres of outside-anime BL ! England being a supremely classist society even now does seem like ripe ground for that kind of servant tradition in boarding schools etc. I remember seeing it in Another Country and some French boarding school stories~ It's rather terrible looking at it from a realistic point of view, and it's well and good that it's been pretty much stamped out, but isn't it rather fun in media? As to the Gakuen Heaven bit I'm pretty sure that Keita would have been all but beaten to a pulp by the other students, even if just for being so darn uke. Kaze to Ki no Uta is really just all around more accurate IMHO even if it goes way off the edge of many people's comfort zones. Such is old June.

Although I think the Greek tradition of Erastes and Eromenos is a bit different, I also see a lot of that in these stories, like Peyrefitte and Montherlant's schooboy novels/plays, which always have an older student taking on a much younger student in a very Greek tutoring/romance relationship. As much as it's historically correct and I'll really take anything homoerotic, I wish there were more about boys who were closer to the same age... What do you guys think?

Also, I'd really like to know what poet that was D: Can you give me a point in time or anything? Because really any of the Uranian poets (like Wilde) or even WWI poets (of whom at least Sassoon, Owen and Graves had homosexual experiences in English public school) or really anyone into the 60s could have written that kind of thing XD; I need a starting point at least.

For anybody who wants to read/watch some all-boy boarding school stories (non-anime/manga) and hasn't found any, here's the result of many years spent reading gay:

Exactly this genre: (all of these have books AND movies)

-Les Amities Particulieres (Roger Peyrefitte)
-Le Ville Dont le Prince est un Enfant (Montherlant)
-Another Country (Julien Mitchell)
-The Loom of Youth (Alec Waugh) (no movie sorry, and you can only find this on Gutenberg)


Kind of this Genre but in college so they're not young XD; :

-Maurice (E.M. Forster) (book + movie)
-Brideshead Revisited (Evelyn Waugh) (book + movie + BBC miniseries)


Slightly off-genre movies that still have all-boys schools and gay:

-NaPolA (nazi training camp in Germany, don't worry it's not sympathetic to nazis XD; )
-The History Boys (I don't care that it's not really this genre just watch it if you haven't)
-Like Minds (kind of thriller horror, not for terribly weak stomachs, but oh so homoerotic)

Rest assured there's a lot more out there, but I'm in Japan right now and don't have access to my stash so this was all off the top of my head D: I hope my list can be of help to anyone~!

Sorry, I have no idea what time period it was exactly as the action was inside a traditional british school, so the uniforms were the norm. It was the end of the XIX century or start of the XX (up to the II world war). But I have no closer idea. That it was story about the poet I got from the TV program reviews and their quality is quite low. He was reciting some poems in the club, but as I do not specialize in the british litereture (I am more close to the german one - oh, Rilke!), so I have no idea. Sorry, but I am not the person, who remembers all the telephone numbers or names. I am quite awful in fact.

Hmmmm.

My friend's son goes to an ancient all-boys boarding school in the UK. Apparently it's like any other school. They have an impressive amount of personal freedom. And anyone who is, in fact outwardly homosexual, is treated with indifference/general disdain, as in most places.

When I went to that same school (quite a while back), it was slightly different, in a ...different way. Mostly cultural differences - the buildings look exactly the same, only with more glass, and H&S (individual separate shower cubicles now, less bunks, smaller rooms, what luxuries). Then again, everyone's experiences of the same school would be different - physical 'houses' were a major cultural divide - each one governed itself socially, pretty much. I remember most of it, but the entire system was complex as ****. I managed to take advantage of it pretty well though, I think

@PollyW
Humiliation circles & hazing? That's still in place, circa 2010, minus the sex of course. Most schools have decided to semi-regulate it in order to minimize actual damage. For example, in the school mentioned in my first paragraph, every second year is allocated a first year to 'mentor'. This forms family trees up year groups. In practice, in the first year, you're everybody's ***** (unless you can make friends real quick with some people up top). As you get more senior you gain the power to order juniors around (nowadays, the maximum you can do with this without overstepping personal boundaries is getting someone to wake you up with a hot meal). The school in question actually allows the top two years to give out official punishments (detention) with regulations, but they also apparently have the power to give casual punishments with reason. A popular one, apparently, is getting someone to colour in every closed circle in a page of The Daily Telegraph. This is all current stuff, everything was different when I was there (the system was less neutered and regulated). But I digress. That was a pretty mundane paragraph.

Of course, if you multiply that by a large amount, you get school in the earlier 20th century, which is the impression I got after talking to some of the older masters.

I still read the schoolboy porn anyway, I don't quite know why.

****, I just read the post date. Screw it, I wrote this much, I'll post anyway.

Don't feel bad about replying to an old topic. These are slow-moving conversations I find I think the people in this group (big surprise) are awfully busy, and in any case, most responses are necessarily long so as to do the topic and the previous poster justice. Those take time to formulate.

I don't think that paragraph was mundane. In fact, it clued me in to something ... that there is (or could be) a HUGE difference between schools and boarding schools in the US and the UK. I can't see the kind of behavior you outlined in that paragraph flying in a US school. Why, I wonder? Why did this behavior not carry over to the states? Because the school systems were built on that "we want to be a class-free society!" concept? Certainly I know early American schools turned their backs on old-fashioned English and continental educational ideas like learning Ancient Greek and Latin. Maybe this "ranking" system, too?

I love school-related BL stories, too That's partly why I love Katekyo Hitman Reborn so much. Love the potential school boy romances! I even love Dino x Hibari ... my one and only adult x teen pairing! Crazy

Yes, this is a very slow-motion conversation.

Thanks for the nice info purpleghost as there are no such traditions in a boarding-schools in my country. Usually, there is a teacher staying close, in the room next to the communal room with all the pupils or in one of the rooms on the same level in the building if pupils live in separate rooms (usually 3-5 per a room), who is responsible for the order. There is sometimes a student helping the teacher to keep order, but the student in this position changes every week. So, this is much less ordered. However, due to the rampant homophobia, the sexual relations are usually quite restricted and mostly used to humiliate the second person (the uke).

However, I also like to read BL school stories, no matter how unrealistic they are for me.

Homoeroticism in boarding schools... Huh. I thought everyone knew about it? I mean, why else is intercrural called "Princeton First-Year" and "Oxford Style"?

I don't think there's as big of a tradition of paederasty in America because of the whole "this country was founded by BIBLE-THUMPING PURITANS" thing.

I'd say more but apparently a lot of what I want to say has already been said...

Well, Ceri, not everyone knows about it clearly Discussion and sharing of ideas is how knowledge gets spread.

I wouldn't speculate so broadly about why the tradition does not much exist in America; for one thing, America is not as big on boarding schools, and that has more to do with educational theory (anti-Classics, anti-class system, etc.) than religion.

I think even if it had boarding schools I'm pretty sure the whole Bible-thumping cultural roots (ignoring the aboriginal Americans because they're not the dominant culture... yay for imperialism!) would get in there somewhere.

If this deep-rooted conservatism affects entertainment (and it does–Ma vie en rose got rated R, and alien side boobs got an M) then I'm sure it'd affect our education system. And it already has... Texas school book controversy. Ugh.

The British-style boarding school started out originally as a medieval monastery, then evolved to become a mini-university mimicking Cambridge, Harvard, etc, then again to become the school where you send your kids to while you're off in Africa expanding the empire and stroking your gallant moustache, then to today's schools with board and 'tradition'.

Personally, I reckon it is the lack of gallant moustaches that betrays the USA's lack of historical paederasty, rather than people not wanting to talk about it due to cultural bounds, or the lack of monasteries or an empire. Then again, I could be wrong.

You get all sorts everywhere, though I don't think I would find as many Marxists at a school in Texas, than a school in the UK, or New York or something. Then again, Marxism nowadays consists of bearded old men and skinny hipsters drinking microbrews and wearing turtlenecks and red hats, so that's not really a fair comparison, is it?