Edgar Degas Four Dancers painting

Edgar Degas Four Dancers paintingEdgar Degas dance class paintingEdgar Degas Ballet Rehearsal painting
long as my circumstances were as they were, he said, and my motives remained free of perversion, he saw little to choose between auto- and homoerotic activity: masturbation, while more normal in the eyes of most New Tammanians and less liable to cause public embarrassment, carried its dangers in the same single-handedness that recommended it: loveless and reclusive, it fed the fantasies of the timid and could aggravate any tendencies to impotence or withdrawal from engagement with others -- narcissism and schizophrenia, he asserted, were the masturbator's inclinations in the realm of psychopathy. Pederasty, on the other hand, though regarded in New a semi-criminal perversion, had at least to be said for it that it involved a passionate, perhaps even a loving, engagement of the self with others. So long as it was practiced in for normal relations with women, any more than my casual past connections with does would be. He cautioned me, however, to abandon the practice once I matriculated, lest it lead me into scandal, fistula, or logical realism-the Maios and Scapulas, which Max declared to be as favored by pederasts as was solipsism by masturbators.