#im so sick of constantly seeing other gay men praise historical figures as icons only to then turn around and be like

[housecatclawmarks]

It feels important to note that while there can be very healthy age gap relationships between adults and there are ppl in their 20s who seek out much older partners (which im not gonna tell them not to! they’re adults w a right to fuck & it’s none of my goddamn business), there is not a ‘positive tradition of gay age gap relationships’ and I think it’s good to asses that statement critically when someone says it to you.

The historic frequency of age gap relationships in Western gay culture specifically, especially Britain, does not come from roots that have anything intrinsically to do with homosexuality. What it comes from is specifically rich, mostly white queer men doing what many, many rich white men have done throughout history regardless of sexuality-using their racial & class power to have consensual or coercive sex with young working class people & people of color. The power imbalance between age&experience AND financial status was romanticized a Lot by these rich gay men in the late 19th and early 20th century (think about ppl like Oscar Wilde, Walt Whitman, E.M. Forster, Edward Carpenter, etc) and relationships with poor young men & sometimes teenaged boys were sought out enthusiastically under the guise of imitating ‘the Greek acceptance of homosexuality’-which makes sense when you consider where & how a lot of these men were educated.

The illegality of gayness & oppression of lgbt people definitely made it hard to find examples of same-gender attracted people in society, which helps contribute to the Greek imitation thing but also more importantly created situations where young lgbt people who were working class, who were immigrants, who weren’t white were facing the most severe consequences under the law for their sexuality & gender expression, were living the hardest lives, & were easier to exploit by rich and powerful men because of it. The ones doing the exploiting weren’t doing it because they were gay, the criminalization of homosexuality just made it easier for them to take advantage as they did the same thing their heterosexual peers did to young women & girls who were working class, immigrants, & women of color.

If anything the fact that conditions in the UK & US have improved so much legally and socially for cis gay people has made it much more achievable to have ethical, healthy age gap relationships between people who want them, even though these issues do still exist. Again, it definitely can and does happen, and adults have the right to date & fuck each other if they want to, but that type of relationship does not need to be culturally tied to something unhealthy, coercive, & produced by classism and racism.

It’s a subject I think a lot of western gay people & historians shy away from talking about and really seeing as what it was because we’re so often wrongly smeared as pedophiles & gay sexuality is accused of being predatory to children & teens as way to harm and criminalize gay people, and I understand the fear of playing into that, which is why it’s so important to me to emphasize again that this exploitation was a product of class and racial inequality and homo/transphobia, not an innate quality of gay or trans society. But we do need to talk about it! We need to address it! And (saying this As one) white gay men NEED to find queer history & role models who aren’t rich, imperialist pedophiles-there have been SO MANY OF US who aren’t that! the majority of queer people in history have not been that! We have a rich culture and history to draw from here without glorifying or toning down really gross, predatory behavior from a handful of wealthy men & the class that enabled them.