How to learn to be a man? Men are clear - the Roman practice of "towel boys" will help to acquire manhood

Italian model versus ancient Roman sex

The first wave of bizarreness was kicked off by a post on the X network: in late 2022, a certain @SCHIZO_FREQ shared a video that showed a close-up of (at the time almost 16-year-old) Italian model Gio Scotti. The close-up of her freckled face enhanced her youthful appearance - and with a bit of goodwill, you could probably say that her shorter haircut made her look a bit androgynous.

But it's hard to find sympathy for the comment that Gia Scotti inspired: "This is what the towel boys that ancient Roman warriors had sex with looked like . Yes, "WTF" is the reaction you're looking for.

Let's leave aside for the moment who the "necita" was supposed to be that took away the ability of today's mature men to sexually abuse teenagers. If you have no idea what "towel boys" we should be talking about, since you don't recall a single homoerotic scene from the movie Gladiator, let's do a brief historical window.

The social norm and the "guy" insult

In ancient Greece and Rome, the Latin word "catamītus" referred to a pubescent boy who became the intimate companion of an older man. The age difference between the two, which would make such a relationship seem extremely inappropriate today, was fully accepted and even encouraged by society at the time - so-called pederasty was widespread and seen as a stage in the development of a boy into a man. That is why the term "catamītus" was sometimes used by grown men among themselves if they wanted to insult each other.

So, going back to the birth of the "Roman towel boys" cause - it's no wonder that nostalgic evocations of this era have inspired a spontaneous avalanche of memes on the internet. The shock of someone publicly pining for a time when ephebophilia was the "cool" norm is simply hard to process without absurdist humor.

Kamala Harris voters as a gay concubine?

Anyone who hoped that "towel boys" wouldn't be brought up on the networks anymore was wrong. On Monday, November 4, the day before the US presidential election, when tensions between the two camps of voters were at their peak, a certain Robert J. O'Neill recalled the sexual enslavement of underage boys. He was provoked into a sick retweet by TikToker Harry Sisson when he took a picture with his peers in a car wearing caps supporting the Democratic candidate. The 22-year-old Democrat, who is followed by more than a million users on TikTok, credited the group selfie: "We are Generation Z voters and we all voted BADLY for Kamala Harris! Real men support Harris!"

The aforementioned Robert J. O'Neill - who is actually not some random guy, but a former Navy SEAL who personally took out Osama bin Laden - responded to the photo of young Kamala Harris supporters by saying, "You're not men, you're boys. If there were no social networks, you would be my concubines."

So is that why men think of the Roman Empire?

Well, what can I say. If Facebook, Instagram, and X are the only thing that stands between us and a return to an ancient social order, they have even more power than we've yet imagined. The Japanese-American actor George Takei probably responded best to the tragicomic nature of the whole situation. The towel boys apparently reminded him of another tiktok trend last year, in which women asked their husbands and partners on camera how often they thought of the Roman Empire.

To everyone's surprise, it turned out then that the men - quite seriously - think about the Roman Empire daily, or at least several times a month. And no, it's not just Italians or history buffs, but everyone. In September 2023, the hashtag #RomanEmpire had over a whopping 893 million views, sparking a debate about why this particular stage of history has earned such a permanent "reservé" in the minds of men.

In the context of this peculiar male predilection, we must applaud the quick-witted insularity of George Takei, who merely added to O'Neill's statement about "boy concubines", "I didn't realize [men] were thinking about THIS part of the Roman Empire."

Martin "The Mickey Mouse" Mikyska was right. The Internet is indeed a very strange place.