I dont mean to defend him here but wrt the amount of Victorian and early 20th century gay men who had sex with 16-ish year old boys they would obviously be considered a pedophile in the modern era but I doubt they thought of themselves as pedophiles or people who pursued children for sex. It seems more to me that alot of modern gay men who are into "twinks" but say they are not pedophiles would also have fucked a 16yo boy or two had they lived in this era. Back then there were no "teenagers", that is a mid 20th century invention. You were basically just expected to grow up and become an adult when you were 16 or so if you weren't super privileged and sheltered, and even then they were all at boarding schools fucking each other lol. I want to be clear that its a good thing our society is not like this any more, and people having sex with 16 year olds back then were def pederasts/pedophiles in the modern sense of the word. but I highly doubt that they or most other contemporary people would have described themselves as such unless they have a specific disposition towards young boys, which it is clear that Keynes didn't have from his diaries, there's men of all ages in there. Im not even a Keynes fan on account of me being a communist lol but i feel like hes indicative of a certain type of gay man (ok technically bi) from this era (like is from 1901-15).
