Do they offer the fact that Ginsberg was a pederast?
That is usually avoided.
shareThis movie concerns the 18 year old Allen Ginsberg. He wasn't a pederast then, so there would be no reason to include that.
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MovieChat Forums > Kill Your Darlings (2024) Discussion > Do they offer the fact that Ginsberg was...
Ginsberg was NOT a pedophile. He liked young men, not little boys! Sort of like every straight guy likes young women/girls. Attraction to people who are "young and pretty" isn't pedophilia; it's pretty stereotypical maculine sexuality, whether heterosexual or homosexual.
He was enough of a counter-cultural lighthing rod with plenty of powerful Establishment enemies that I'm sure the authorities would have imprisoned him in a heartbeat if he had actually engaged in pedophilia.
They wrote "pederast," not "pedophile." They are two different things. A pederast likes young men, not little boys.
shareHis homosexuality is dealt with.
I don't mean to impose, but I am the Ocean.
Like you, for many years I thought Ginsburg was a pedophile. This was based on my knowledge of a later in life Ginsburg defending a group called NAMBLA (North American Man/Boy Love Association)- a rather detestable bunch, advocating the legalization of man/underage boy sexual relationships. However in researching the backstory of this movie, I found out Ginsburg merely was defending their right to exchange their ideology out in the open rather than being the semi-secret society they are.
Don't get me wrong, I think Ginsburg was on the wrong side of this issue (even GLAAD has condemned NAMBLA), but he apparently wasn't a pedophile; he was just being a free speech activist, albeit in my opinion misguided.
Ummm...it was a tad bit more than simply defending a group's right to free speech:
He wrote in the NAMBLA Bulletin:
"Attacks on NAMBLA stink of politics, witchhunting for profit, humorlessness, vanity, anger and ignorance [...] I'm a member of NAMBLA because I love boys too -- everybody does, who has a little humanity."
In a 1974 interview:
"...it's very old and very charming for older and younger people to make it-which you realize as you get old too-and nothing to be ashamed of, defensive about, but something to be encouraged; a healthy relationship, not a sick neurotic dependency. The main thing is communication. Older people have ken, experience, history, memory, information, data, power, money and also worldly technology. Younger people have intelligence, enthusiasm, sexuality, energy, vitality, open mind, athletic activity-all the characteristics and sweet, dewy knowledges of youth; and both profit from the reciprocal exchange. It becomes more than a sexual relationship; it becomes an exchange of strength, an exchange of gifts, an exchange of accomplishments, an exchange of nature-bounties...So as in other relationships, the combination of old and young is functionally useful. It's far from sexist, in the sense that the interest of the younger person is not totally sexual; it's more in the relationship and the wisdom to be gained. In Edward Carpenter's and Whitman's time the older person made love to the younger person, blew the younger person, and there was the absorption of the younger person's electric, vital magnetism (according to charming, theosophical, nineteenth century theory). And it's something that somebody older like myself does experience as a natural fact. When you sleep with somebody younger you do gain a little vitality of breadth and bounce..."
He also appeared in NAMBLA's film: 'Chicken Hawk: Men Who Love Boys' (which profiled members of NAMBLA who discuss sexual relationships between men and boys below the age of consent), and in it read his 'Graphic Ode to Youth'.
In 1997 he said: The public's propensity to narrowly define or label sexual feelings is like "the whole labeling of pedophiles as 'child molesters' -- "to label pedophilia as criminal is ridiculous."
"I will not go gently onto a shelf, degutted, to become a non-book." ~ Bradbury
Pretty hard to defend that!
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