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When quotations surfaced of alt-right shock-journalist Milo Yiannopoulos supporting the extremely controversial idea of “pederasty,” I was neither surprised nor shocked. The idea, based on the belief that men and teenage boys can have a fully consensual sexual and intellectual relationship, is new to most people, but I had experience dealing with proponents of the idea.

During my hayday at Wikipedia, someone once came to me seeking help. I received a message asking if I could save a page related to Lord Byron from deletion. My heart lept; I loved to write on the Romantic poets, and I felt it was my task to breathe new life into the great writers by restoring their lacking entries. Then I looked further.

The page was on Nicolo Giraud (found here). My heart dropped. It became hard to breathe. My vision started to get fuzzy. I became the immortal fluff and stuff: “Oh bother.”

On one side, Giraud was an interesting boy who took Byron’s intellectual fancy, a youth that he could train in the art of Romantic thought. On the other, he was the poster child of pederasty, the ideal of man-boy love, and they sought to normalize pederasty by connecting it to the famous poet. It was a mine field of the worst proportions.

Wikipedia attracts some of the strangest advocates of the strangest ideas. As center of the modern techno-based world, Wikipedia articles are the bastion of “truth” in an age of relativity. Control what is said and you can control what is believed.

I built the page, pulling from every major source. Yet, I had the advocates of pederasty, those who wished to say that it had historic precedence (and, therefore, it was “acceptable”), constantly hounding me. From top to bottom, I included every important detail by the major scholars, and I made sure to lay out the whole truth about Giraud and any possible relationship he may have had with Byron.

It was a notable relationship that could not simply be brushed under the rug. Some scholars used the idea of Byron having a sexual relationship with the boy as an accusation against him, while others saw it as a step towards liberty. There was even a silly, but mildly famous, poem (“Don Leon”) written about the relationship.

In the end, I managed to create a scholarly piece that the community decided was worthy of being a “Featured Article” and being displayed on the main page. Tens of thousands of people have since read the history of an obscure, but important, detail in the life of one of the world’s most famous poets.

The article was honest yet not biased. It included the accusations without transforming them into truth. The advocates of pederasty were not happy, but it would be impossible for them to ever be happy.

My personal belief is that Byron’s sex life was exaggerated by everyone, especially himself. Most of the scholarship that promoted the belief that Byron and Giraud had a sexual relationship is based on innuendo. Like an iceberg, they claim, the visible tip hides what lies below.

But sexual activity is full of bravado. Men, as a whole, tend towards macho bragging, and Byron was no stranger. Of the Romantic poets, Byron was the greatest braggart, and he built his own cult of personality around a version of himself that doubtful could ever truly exist. He was a legend, but legends are fiction.

Behind the curtain, Byron was a great man with many issues. His mother, Catherine, raised him on his own. His father, John, was a womanizer and a scoundrel who used rich women to pay off his gambling debts, and he abandoned Catherine after selling off her property to pay his creditors (then fled to escape the rest). When they were together, John and Catherine had many disputes until John’s death when Byron was three. It was a rocky relationship that greatly affected Catherine’s economic and mental stability.

From all accounts, Catherine was a literary woman, stubborn, and religious. She also had a temper, which the young Byron adopted. She was from money, yet she was laid low by her husband’s recklessness. She never lost her pride, and it festered in the young Byron. They were victims in a world gone made, but they would let others know that they were still better.

As a boy, Byron’s mother dominated most aspects of his life, and he was unable to fit in. By the time he was made “Lord,” at the age of 10 due to the death of his great-uncle, he had title but no civility or income. Byron’s lack of a proper early education, combined with a lame foot, caused him to struggle at Harrow School, and he had a reputation for misbehavior.

There was little to hold him back, and he saw himself as a victim to the world. He had his pride, but little else to his name. When he became a successful poet, he was quick to use his wit and talent in an aggressive manner. He compensated, often attacking his fellows and promoting his own grandeur, to hide from his early struggles.

In this context, it is easy to see Byron as a sexual braggart, someone who wishes to show off raw physicality that was lacking in his youth. It is also easy to interpret his self-proclaimed sexually-libertine behavior as a way to challenge and disrupt a society that he felt refused to give him his due.

The relationship between Byron and Giraud was probably innocent. Byron could have seen in the boy much of himself: someone who lacked a comforting upbringing, a fortune to get what he deserved, and a means to fully use his potential. The obsession with Byron’s sex life is probably due to the individual proponent of pederasty’s feelings of inadequacy or history of abuse, hoping to justify some of his own experience by connecting it with Byron. After all, how could pederasty be anything but normal if this famous poet indulged in it?

When Milo’s words in defense of pederasty came out, he revealed that much of his feelings were due to abuse that he suffered as a child. He was brought into a relationship with an older man, but it must have been unsatisfying. To compensate, he idealized the situation, trying to connect it to a historical concept to re-contextualize his own experience.

This is not to say that there aren’t healthy relationships between generations. Instead, it is the sexual component that is the problem. In his original controversial statement, Milo said, “In the homosexual world, particularly, some of the relationships between younger boys and older men, the coming of age relationships, the relationships in which these older men help those young boys to discover who they are, and give them security and safety and provide them with love and a reliable rock where they can’t speak with their parents.”

If it is just communication, security, safety, and love between an adult and a teenager, then there would be no problem. Byron, as mentor to a young Giraud, would be a good thing that most would support. However, it is the possible sexual dynamic, especially in a situation where an older, powerful individual can sway a young, naive child into a relationship that is one sided. But Milo did not limit his comments to the non-sexual, most likely due to his own sexual experience.

Pederasty will never be socially acceptable because of the potential to destroy the trust between generations. Within the LGBT community, pederasty is a fringe belief that is hated because it is often an adult taking advantage of someone without power. In a group that is predisposed to feel vulnerable in society, it is antithetical to ally with those they see as predators.

It is natural to the human spirit to want to lift up the next generation. Often, those who have suffered from a particular childhood ailment are those who try to prevent others from experiencing the same. It is more likely that Byron falls into this category, and his relationship with Giraud was one of helping and not abusing. The problem comes when an individual who has suffered tries to further the cycle of pain and destruction through normalizing the abuse in hope that it would minimize his own suffering.