And Melons for Sheer Delight

Via an email correspondent, and speaking of moral dandyism. WILL NO ONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!?

Westerners certainly have no right to lecture others about the perversity of their sexual mores. The absurdity of our super-sexualized cult of youth sitting uneasily next to our vicious shaming of female and adolescent sexuality hovering uncomfortably over our insane denial that childhood sexuality even exists decently ought to prevent us from opening our goddamn mouths. You may disapprove of it and find it abhorrent, but the plain fact of the matter is that the sexual practices identified in this article are incredibly ancient; they may indeed represent the broad, civilized norm of our species since the advent of agriculture. They were certainly perfectly ordinary practices in the plurality of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cultures in pre-Roman antiquity. Similar practices have been widely observed from Amazonia to the highlands of New Zealand to, of course, the tribal regions of Central Asia. I will tell you one thing that's for sure, the predate the advent of Islam in Pashtun culture, so you can put that cudgel right back into your pocket.

I mean, here you have a guy complaining about the supposed rape of thousands upon thousands of boys and young men and approvingly quoting the need to give it more of our "attention." What are we going to do, bomb it? You want to know what is worse for the boys of Afghanistan than a socio-sexual custom that's three thousand years old? How about invading their country, destroying their society, and continually bombarding their homes? I mean, listen, if I find out that the guy next door is beating his wife, and then I bust down the door and blow both of their heads off, the cops are gonna question my means, uh, my means of addressing an unfortunate situation.