Comment by graemep
2 years ago
Lots of people who do good work have done awful things.
I love Oscar Wilde's plays, but he was a paedophile sex tourist. Eric Gill created beautiful stuff, including typefaces most of us probably use or read fairly often, and he sexual abused his children and his dog.
"Pedophile" back then often just meant "gay". In French pedé (pedophile) was the regular way to say "homosexual".
Also the age of consent was lower back then, and untold numbers of "normal respectable ethical people" who back then would otherwise condemn Wilde as "pedophile" did marry girls at 14 or so. Before the 20th century basically after 13-14 kids were considered more like short adults than as a special category of teens. Wilde surely wasn't any kind of pervert going with prepubescent kids or anything like that. In fact, the guy he went to prison for being a lover to was 21.
As for his "sex tourism", it was basically travelling in countries you could have gay sex with locals and the local authorities would turn a blind eye.
No. He had sex with boys, and he had sex with boy prostitutes while traveling abroad.
> In fact, the guy he went to prison for being a lover to was 21.
Yes, he had sex with adult men too. Also with adult women too - he was married to one and they had kids.
It's not like I didn't already cover that in my comment above...
Yeah, right.
Yeah: right.
> paedophile sex tourist
Did you lift that quote from here? https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199899/cmhansrd/vo99...
> Oscar Wilde was a paedophile and a sex tourist.
I Googled for: was Oscar Wilde a pedophile?
There is lots of debate. Not so straight forward.
No, not seen that. Multiple articles and I read some letters etc by Wilde, Gide and others years ago.
Some defences either ignore the key evidence - for example the first I found was this which just looks at his attraction to adult young men, and ignores his attraction to teenagers: https://www.makingqueerhistory.com/articles/2016/12/20/the-t...
The others base their case on distinguishing between a paedophile and an ephebophile. It may well be true, but the latter is still a criminal offence in most countries (albeit lesser in some countries). Combined with travel and prostitution it is still pretty horrible behaviour.
> Oscar Wilde's ... was a paedophile sex tourist
I've never heard of him being into children, have you a link for this, thanks (also, 'sex tourist'?)
Apparently he went to North Africa and Italy. Plus he was what would be called a rapist today.
Mind you, I don't know if this is a reliable source.
https://thefederalist.com/2018/09/18/time-left-stop-idolizin...
I'm not really a fan of applying modern standards in historical contexts. Times change, but even today the age of consent is 16 in the UK. Condemning him for being 30+ and having sex with 15-16 year old boys just doesn't make sense to me. It seems people try to apply American puritanical standards to a historical person from Europe, who lived in the 1800s Victorian era.
If we were to apply modern standards, you should be condemning over 1B people around the planet for following the teachings of a 30yo+ guy who married a six year old girl.
Even if you accept that, the age difference and the hiring of poor boys as prostitutes makes a difference.
Differences of an year or two in age of consent is one thing and some variation is one thing. The article you link to mentions a 14 year old. How far will you take "it was acceptable in their culture". Child brides in modern Yemen or many other places? Romans being into little boys?
Legal does not mean socially acceptable either. 16 might keep you on the right side of the law here in the UK, but a 40 year old who is found to have had sex with a 16 year old is likely to be badly regarded.
> If we were to apply modern standards, you should be condemning over 1B people around the planet for following the teachings of a 30yo+ guy who married a six year old girl.
A lot of them claim he did not have sex with her until she was much older. I would condemnd them if they had sex with six year olds themselves.
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Extremely informative, thanks. Agree with you about the difficulty of interpreting morality over timespans and cultures.