[UA] Re: TABOO

[Royal Minister of Stuff]

--- David M Jacobs <dmjacobs at zipworld.com.au> wrote:
> 
> OTOH, some Pacific Islander societies that were
> cited by certain feminist 
> anthropologists as "gay-friendly" matriarchies in
> fact turned out to be 
> just humouring researchers; the concept apparently
> hadn't crossed their 
> minds.  (Imagine an alien walking up to you and
> saying, "We have sex with 
> our spaceships all the time.  You have sex with your
> spaceships, too, 
> right?"  Most people would shrug and mumble, "Um,
> yeah, sure.")

This is probably a pretty good analogy for mysticism
in general and UA discrepancies in particular.

Most cabals form around adepts who only sorta know
what they're doing.  The drink the booze and get the
power, that's what they know.  

> I'm curious, has pedophilia always been considered
> res ipsa a crime, ie, an 
> abominable act separate to fornication and other
> taboos?  There's always 
> the element of trauma, but it seems that modern
> abhorrence for the act 
> revolves around the notion of loss of innocence --
> itself a concept which 
> really only dates to the 19th Century.

Well, it's true that there's a kind of sliding age
scale for pedophilia.  Most cultures are pretty much
against sex with babies, but that has a pretty obvious
practical basis.

On the other hand, the 19th Century did feature 12 and
14-year-old brides.  Catamites have been a popular
past time in, um, ages past.  I recall the Roman view
of catamites being kind of uncertain.  



=====
-- Rp Bowman, Royal Minister of Stuff
The Electronic Nation of Yokeltania:
http://www.geocities.com/yokeltania/

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Games - play chess, backgammon, pool and more
http://games.yahoo.com/

_______________________________________________
UA mailing list
UA at lists.uchicago.edu
http://lists.uchicago.edu/mailman/listinfo/ua