Content Note: This article contains detailed discussion of child sexual abuse.

On the 26th of April 1895, Oscar Wilde stood before the hateful eyes of Victorian England and did the unthinkable. Indicted for sodomy charges on insurmountable evidence, the typical response would have been to plead guilty, beg for forgiveness, and promise repentance. Yet Wilde, with his chin tilted defiantly towards the heavens, spoke shamelessly of the “love that dare not speak its name”. It was this revolutionary act that was to disgrace Wilde for his life – but help cement his place in history.

Today, Wilde is a poster child, our champion for loud and proud queerness. But what exactly was the love he spoke of? Although now we would like to think Wilde was talking about same-sex love in its broadest sense, he wasn’t. To Wilde, the superior love was always “between an elder and a younger man, where the elder man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope, and glamour of life before him”.

When thought of like this, the glamour of Wilde’s act is perhaps a little dulled.

It may make us squeamish to think that one of the first modern ‘gay icons’ was advocating for a kind of romanticised grooming. It confirms every homophobic narrative out there. Championing the love between lascivious old queers and innocent young boys simply isn’t good optics when civil rights are on the table. Macklemore might have been received a little differently if he was waxing lyrical about his insatiable desire to make love to a handsome youth. Conservative parents rejoice! “We told you!” I hear them jeering already, “Our children are being corrupted by the homosexuals.”

“I would hope that, in England at least, the LGBTQ+ community is in a position to speak about this phenomenon frankly and openly without having to cower from homophobic repercussions”

Pederasty is a problem as old as Ancient Greece, as Wilde highlighted in his attempt to justify it. It was this relationship that Plato was describing when he coined the concept of an ‘other half’ in which we are so enamoured. Although we would like to think that the customs of Ancient Greece are buried deep in the tomb of time, pederasty isn’t behind us. As anybody with a Grindr profile can tell you, younger boys and adult men are still secretly bound up in a kind of fatal dance.

My first time happened on a family holiday in Cornwall. At age fifteen I am a gawky figure of five foot nine, topped with a bleach blonde quiff and a Tumblr account. I am messy and defiant and newly out. I am also impatient – my stupid teenage heart has been overcome by a longing for boys, and a tide of heartache and sexual frustration threatens to drown me. This circadian rhythm of loneliness and arousal is punctuated by changing rooms, rugby boots, and the smell of Lynx deodorant. But even if we stand side-by-side before P.E, boys are still alien and exciting to me. To them, I am more of a circus animal; they’re bemused by me, but would never consider me seriously.

Unbeknownst to me, my life is about to change forever: I am about to be introduced to Grindr. One night, a friend of mine wants to set up a profile with me – as a joke, of course – I am more than happy to comply. The internet is a revolution for any queer teenager from a suburban town. You learn that you are not alone in the world, that queer people exist, that they have names and faces and ages and heights and weights. And you can contact them. A kind of giddy thrill has animated me for the first time.

“Queer spaces are so centred around adults, bars and clubs and hookup apps, that queer youth are alienated not only from their straight peers but from their own community”

The next day, I reach out to Louis. Louis is almost double my age – a man of twenty-nine – but I am too lost in the thrill of someone actually wanting me. After a short text exchange, I arrive at his house trembling with nervous exhilaration and think I could be sick. Two hours with Louis pass. The walk back is significantly slower. I’ve finally done it, I am thinking to myself, but why did I? Very soon, I begin to feel ashamed. Yet I will use Grindr to seek out men like Louis repeatedly throughout my adolescent years to try and put an end to the cycle of loneliness and arousal, which only continues.

Is this what Plato meant by finding my Other Half?

When I was older, as soon as I had queer friends, I learned my experiences were not mine alone. Somehow, we had all had similar experiences – experiences of sneaking out to go to men’s homes, experiences of sitting on the train at 1am with a man twice our age trying his luck. We had all been stumbling, I think, messily and clumsily in our hunger to fulfil our various emptinesses – trying and failing to unite blind sexual frustration with some abject hope of being understood. Growing up, I had seen my female friends get boyfriends, and I was jealous and yearning. I knew that it was strange that the men I slept with were twice my age, but my desperation for fulfilment overcame these concerns. Yet these random nights with older men only made me feel more hollow, more dead.

I would hope that, in England at least, the LGBTQ+ community is in a position to speak about this phenomenon frankly and openly without having to cower from homophobic repercussions. If I could go back to Cornwall and talk to that nervous fifteen-year-old, I would have begged him to wait. But I had no responsible queer adults to turn to. Queer spaces are so centred around adults, bars and clubs and hookup apps, that queer youth are alienated not only from their straight peers but from their own community. There can seem like no other option but to plunge into an adult world they aren’t psychologically equipped for, with predators standing by to take advantage of them. When I was a teenager, most straight people didn’t know about Grindr. I could slip through the gaps of heteronormative expectations and roam without being noticed. My parents would never suspect me “just going over to a friend’s house”. In this no-man’s-land I was abused by older men. But there can only be a gross power imbalance between a boy and a man his father’s age.

In my experience, I have found the LGBTQ+ community deeply divided between generations, with the deep scar of the AIDS epidemic between us. But queer people are family to one another. We have the responsibility to protect our youth from the predators within our community, because consent laws alone aren’t going to do it for us. The consent laws of 1885 – the ones we still follow today – were created with the vision of protecting young women from older men. They were created by straight people, for straight people, and thus can only work effectively in their heteronormative contexts. ‘Homosexual acts’ were, once legalised in 1967, set at an age of consent of 21, until this legislation was assimilated into heterosexual consent laws in 2000. We can see how different our histories are, how our experiences were treated as completely alien until this millennia. Yet, even if the laws surrounding queer people assimilate, our experiences do not. If we are going to protect the minors in our community, the solution is going to be a queer one.