Introduction
The public view of the situation faced by minor attracted adults(MAAs - pedophiles, hebephiles, and ephebophiles, who together make up nearly half of males with no more than 5% of that half consisting of pedophiles) today, and the 'pedophile' hysteria, is that it is utterly unique in history. So this is why it can be cogently argued that it might last forever, so we need to own up to this fact and realize that fighting for change is futile.
Those who argue this are either truly ignorant of history, or are "playing dumb" to facilitate their beliefs. The "pedophile panic" and sex abuse hysteria is what is known as a moral panic, and they have occurred on a cyclical nature throughout history, usually when certain political or economic factors cause the powers that be in society, along with any defenders of the status quo, to fear deterioration of the current institutions that place the former in an advantaged situation; or the latter simply in a situation they are accustomed to and conditioned to believe are the "proper" way of things, respectively.
All moral panics have involved witch-hunting and rationalizations for draconian laws(such as Australian parliament's proposal to criminalize all adult pornography featuring all small-breasted adult females of legal age because the imagery might arouse a pedophile); all involved minority stereo-typing; all of them ran afoul of scientific credibility; and all of them inflamed some type of societal fear to get common citizens so terrified of some nebulous but allegedly omnipresent menace that they agreed with just about any repressive policy proposed by the government to "combat" this menace; all such panics had prevailing mainstream liberals of the time too terrified to oppose it, lest they commit career suicide or come off looking like a bunch of insensitive jerks; and no moral panic ever stood the test of time.
The current moral panic in question has lasted for about 35 years now. As a cursory examination of moral panics in the past will show, 35 years is not an extremely long period of time for such a hysteria to last from a historical perspective. It's viewed as long by some people because that span of time is a significant portion of the individual human life span. However, it's but a tiny portion of time in regards to the span of human history in general.
And there is nothing about this current moral panic that suggests it will do any better than the many previous variations in cheating history and lasting forever.
The rapidly growing number of truly open-minded research papers and studies conducted on MAAs by very brave and fair-minded researchers(most who are non-MAAs) over the past decade who are doing the right thing and speaking out against the current status quo(Dr. Bruce Rind, Sandfort, Susan Thompson, Susan Clancy, Richard Green, Andrew Extein, Carin Freimond, Alyson Walker & Vanessa Padfil, Marshall Burns, Mikkel Rast Pedersonm and Sara Jehnke) seem to assume that the inherent immorality of adult-minor sex is a given rather than being neutral on the issue, but nevertheless take a strong acknowledgement in favor of recent research indicating pedophilia (and, by proxy, hebephilia) is a legitimate sexual orientation and that social control and stigmatization are not warranted. What Susan Clancy has done is to be commended and admired. She deserves a lot of props, and despite the ignorance of many of her claims against MAAs and men in general, she is nevertheless a supremely courageous woman and deserves all the accolades in the world. What she has done in her book is exceedingly important and groundbreaking. Though antis and much of academia will do their best to either denounce it or ignore it, it's not going to go away, and its implications on the validity of the war on youth sexuality, and its expression and legitimacy thereof, cannot be denied.
I(and many others) have concluded that the available evidence makes it clear that the hysteria has just about peaked, if not peaked already, and is now a bit past its heyday.
Currently the public consensus opinion is that adult-minor sex is harmful--except the scientific evidence collected thus far does not back up the beliefs of the consensus. As just one prominent example, the 1998 meta-analysis known as the Rind Report, which was conducted with objective and legitimate scientific methodology by three MHPs [Mental Health Professionals] who are not MAAs, concluded quite clearly that common beliefs on this subject are not consistent with scientific data. Further, he noted that children of about six and over are capable of what MHPs term "simple consent," meaning they are capable of telling the difference between experiences that are pleasurable to them and those that are not, and that adults who had these experiences as children--and who were not "found out" and forced into receiving "therapy," or weren't sociogenically conditioned to believe they were "victims" by a host of peers and adults who derided them for not feeling "victimized" by the experience if revealed to such people--insisted in retrospect that they were capable of consenting to the activity. The Rind Report's conclusions were fully replicated in a duplicate study conducted in 2005 by an entirely different group of MHPs, led by Heather M. Ulrich, as reported in an essay appearing in the Fall/Winter 2005-06 issue of The Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice.
We have read all the literature on this topic a thousands of times over, and have learned that most of it does not come from actual research, but rather simple assumptions that were based on solely using forensic or clinical samples of adult offenders (a large percentage of whom were likely not genuine MAAs, situational offenders, or confined for mutually consensual interactions with underagers), or youths who specifically had non-consensual interactions with adults that involved incest, violence, and obvious coercion to build opinions and data on intergenerational interactions in general. After looking at the data, the ONLY way we could possibly understand why anyone would consider it remotely objective or based on research involving non-forensically obtained samples of minors or MAAs is if they never spoke to actual MAAs before, or read any of the contrary literature involved.
Hence, the fact remains that the science does not back up the consensus belief, meaning that it is, plain and simply, a belief, even if a very pervasive one that is accepted by many, smart people included. But being smart does not preclude them from having an agenda. It's not about the tiniest percentage of people buying this. Rather, it's about all but the tiniest percentage of people being afraid to take on this subject in the first place, far less of them still willing to do it totally objectively and bereft of an agenda, and the many who "buy" the non-consensus view or at least find room for nuance being minimized in discussions; and when only those researchers who are strongly on the side of public opinion get all the publicity, then we can expect Wikipedia administrators to either "get the message" and be afraid to allow full objectivity on the topic, or come to the incorrect conclusion that there is only one "professional" opinion on the topic since the many that go against the consensus are rarely seen due to constant censorship.
Considering the fact most people in eras past, and not too far in the past at that, used to believe things that were demonstrably untrue simply because it appealed to them on some deep emotional level means that we shouldn't find it so galling that we do not always give the benefit of the doubt to consensus opinion. This is especially when said opinion lacks logic, lacks any substantive evidence, and closely resembles similar types of beliefs that were popular in the past but since proven wrong.
False beliefs concerning homosexuality, black people, and women were once pervasive beliefs, as well, thus making it clear that what we consider the conventional wisdom of any given era is not always right. As another modern example interconnected with the subject at hand, the idea that the adolescent brain is inherently "faulty" and inclined towards incompetent decisions is presently a pervasive belief, yet much scientific study over the previous decade has effectively refuted that claim--though not the pervasiveness of the belief.
I wrote several essays and a very lengthy one named "The Importance of Truth". It was extensively researched and very heavily cited with links. It's quite long and thorough, so for those want want to read it (and I highly recommend doing so), then I suggest not trying to do so in a single sitting, but reading it in bits and pieces as time and tolerance for sitting permits, which shouldn't be too hard because I divided the essay into different sections, each tackling a specific myth relevant to this topic. Based on everything I know we are likely living a time of universal deceit.
Essays:
1. The Truth Behind The Age Of Consent Laws 2. The Importance Of Truth 3. The Trauma Myth--My Analysis Of The Susan Clancy Interview 4. Why Most Teens Will Not Support The Age Of Consent Laws If Given The Choice 5. The Ultimate Pandora Box The Philip Greaves Case And The First Amendment 6. An Analysis of Attacks on Intergenerational Attraction on Cracked(@)c o m 7. A Response To A Person Who Expressed Concern Over Intergenerational Attraction 8. Why The Legality Of Child Pornography Is Relevant To The Youth Liberation Movement 9. Why CP Should Be Legal 10. The Greatest Horror Of Them All--Being Labeled A Sexual Predator 11. Minors Can Be Victimizers--A Brief Analysis Of An Incident Showing Us Who Truly Has The Power In An Intergenerational Relationship 12. Peru Lowers Its Age Of Consent--My Analysis 13. The Beckii Cruel Situation 14. The Roman Polanski Circus 15. A Startling Revelation About The Celebrity Known As Jewel 16. The Failure of Progressive Discourse on CP
Articles:
1. 30 Common Traits of Antis 2. Why Do Liberals Deride Admiration Of Young Women 3. How the Anti & SJW Mindsets Are Similar 4. The Nuclear Family Unit 5. Youths and Cyberspace
and more. (TBA)
Stories:
1. Hero Imperfect - A Sci-fi fiction story 6 chapters long concerning a super-hero, Solar Man, who is the most revered and respected hero among many in his world... but he harbors the "dark" secret of being a hebephile. He spent the first several years of his super-heroic career in denial of this, but after meeting a cool 13-year-old super-hero called Ultra Girl--who also happens to be a youth liberationist, and part of a team of teen heroes who are all youth liberationists; and who also happens to be a gerontophile--and the two fall in love with each other, he finds that he can longer keep up the denial. The two begin a secret romantic relationship, and have to deal with what could happen if both their fellow heroes and the general public found out about Solar Man's attraction base, as well as the nature of their relationship. The public and their respective super-teams are led to believe Solar Man has just taken her on as a sidekick, but some of them begin suspecting there is more to it than that...
Poems
I wrote many GL-oriented poems inspired by real-life GMs. I will add them later.
Q and A - compilation of questions I've been asked during my years in the YL and MAA community and my answers. More will be added to the Q and A over time. It will likely be over 1000 questions long when it's done.
Before reading understand that:
1. Most pro-choicers are not advocating for full adult-minor intercourse, only freedom of choice for some activities depending on age of the youth in question. 2. True MAA attraction is about much more than sex and involves emotional, social, and aesthetic components that are constantly ignored. 3. Nearly half of guys are MAAs. Shockingly, I learned that I am a MAA and that many people who are close to me are MAAs during my studies. Since learning this I decided to join the MAA community and have been a long term member of many MAA boards. 4. Most pro-choicers don’t think the AOC should be fully abolished, only tweaked to give more consideration to individual merits of youths on a case-by-case basis. The temporary solution that I support is a compromise of ASFAR and the ED Test of Adulthood with guardian approval. 5. The current system designed to protect youths actually makes them more prone to abuse and needlessly imprisons and harms people of all ages. Hundreds of millions of people are affected. While it may not seem like it there is a big discussion going on about this right now, and most are in favor of changing the current system due to the restrictions on freedom and liberty it imposes on everyone.
Also, I recommend going over the following in depth research about the youth and adult-based chronophilias before proceeding:
Chronophilia - a sexual attraction to people of a certain age range. The term was coined by John Money.[1][2][3]
Chart of chronophilias (also called age-based paraphilias):
Chronophilia| preferred age range | prevalence
Nepiophilia | infants 2-3 | 1% or less Pedophilia | prepubescents 3-10 (in some cases up to 13) | 3-5% Hebephilia | pubescents from ages 11-14 | 16-20% Ephebophilia and Teleiophilia | post-pubescents 15-17 (sometimes up to 19) and young adults in their 20's and 30's | 75-86% Mesophilia | middle-aged adults in their 40's and 50's | 48%
Prevalence rates are only for males and are based on a combination of studies and phallometric research.[4][5][6][7][8]
These refer to attractions to people of a certain age range, not the act of sex or romance with people in those ranges.
Technically, chronophilic labels do not relate to age itself but to preferences for human sexual maturity stages(body type, muscle development, etc.)[1]
There is no evidence that preferred ages among men change as they themselves age, but for older women this may be different.[18]
Each of the chronophilias is based on a stage of the Tanner scale of human development which defines development based on sexual characteristics of human beings from childhood to adulthood. Physical features may not be the only measurement. Ex: some pedophilic males have reported "playfulness" as part of what they find attractive in prepubescents.[1]
The term minor-attraction has been used as an umbrella term to group the chronophilias in the lower age ranges. Any person person attracted to someone in these lower ranges is said to be a minor-attracted person (MAP).[19][23] The use of this term has been rapidly growing since 2017 and has drawn a lot of controversy among academics.[24] ________________________________ These can also overlap; people can have more than one chronophilia: pedohebephilia hebeteleiophilia pedohebemesophilia etc.[1][12]
So just like some people are equally attracted to both males and females, some are equally attracted to post-pubescents and young adults, etc. ________________________________ Note: while chronophiles are more likely to seek romance and/or sex with someone in their preferred age range they aren't any more prone to 'seeking' for sex or romance in general than teleiophiles are. Having any of the lower range youth-based chronophilias does not imply that someone is a sex-crazed animal whose sole urge is to seek these things out in the same way that most higher range adult-based chronophiles aren't normally addicted to these things. Just like how most teleiophiles naturally meet, fall in love with someone then gravitate to sex later in the relationship, most hebephiles are the same way. Thus, other than having different attractions, their drives are really no different than those of teleiophiles.[1][12] ________________________________ More on prevalence:
Studies using phallometry have found that most men show at least some arousal to prepubescents, with a significant minority demonstrating a clear preference. We do know that when expanding the definition of pedophilia to encompass attraction towards ages as high as 12 or 13 (i.e. "pedohebephilia"), phallometry consistently suggests that around 20% of men are equally or more aroused by "children".[4] As James Kincaid says:
A recent study of ideal desirability using a computer program called FacePrints found that "the ideal 25-year-old woman... had a 14-year-old's abundant lips and an 11-year-old's delicate jaw." that small lower face providing also the prominent eyes and cheekbones of prepubescents. We are told to look like children if we can and for as long as we can, to pine for that look.
Further, the number of preferential hebephiles and ephebophiles is likely to be at least 10 times that the number of pedophiles.[1] According to Michael Seto and the DSM-5, the actual prevalence of Pedophilia is unknown, with an estimate of up to 3-5% (American Psychiatric Association, 2013).[4][8] Evidence concerning women is for all practical purposes, absent.
Cross-cultural, historic and species literature appears to suggest this, as put forth by Rind and Yuill. Further, present-day modeling studies display a hebephilic/ephebophilic Minor-Attracted optimum for male heterosexual attraction:
"For example, Johnston and Franklin (1993) had subjects "evolve" a beautiful female face over iterated generations on a computer program designed to simulate natural selection. In the end, the most attractive versions of females' faces had proportions typical of girls aged 11-14. Braun, Gruendl, Marberger, and Scherber (2001) used morphing software to vary female characteristics and found that facial shapes of girls of about 14-years-old, with smooth, pure skin, produced the highest attraction ratings. They found that even the most attractive mature female faces could be made more attractive by morphing into them greater and greater degrees of immaturity. [...] The foregoing considerations suggest a range of female ages, which most typically are capable of producing adaptive attraction responses in mature males with respect to reproduction. This range extends from puberty, when reproductive value is maximal, into the 20s, when fertility is greatest, and beyond while fertility lasts. Within this range, male preferences may typically peak, for example, at female ages of 17 or 18, a compromise of highest reproductive value (ages 12 or 13) and fertility (ages 22 or 23) (cf. Williams, 1975). Depending on local social and cultural conditions, this peak may be shifted (i.e., recalibrated) to younger or older female ages (Buss, 1989)."[7] _______________________________ NEPIOPHILIA: _______________________________ Corresponds to Tanner stage 1. The rarest of the chronophilias. _______________________________ PEDOPHILIA: _______________________________ An ongoing attraction to prepubescents from ages 3-10 and in some cases up to 13 depending on the Tanner stage of the Tanner scale of human development being used. (Many 14 or 15-year-old's would not be pubescent/reached puberty, i.e., in Tanner stages 2 or 3 of development; many would instead be in Tanner Stage 4, and a few might appear to be in Tanner Stage 5.)
-It may surprise one to know that most adults who engage in sexual contact with prepubescents or pubescents aren't even pedophiles/hebephiles or primarily attracted to them.[9][10][11]
-Also, most pedophiles never actually engage in sexual contact with prepubescents; the rate of how many do varies but many journals put an estimate at 5-20%.[21]
-Additionally, few NON-pedophiles and non-hebephiles engage in contact.[21]
-Furthermore, most contact is 'with permission', not forceful in nature.
-Finally, most contact (either 'with permission' or forceful) with prepubescents/pubescents is from people with antisocial traits (ex: sociopaths - people with low empathy who commit crimes).
The in-built personality of the contactor has more impact on whether they are more likely to contact than their age. All of these contactors were likely to make contact as children and teens as well.[6] _______________________________ HEBEPHILIA: _______________________________ This term was coined by Bernard Glueck in 1955(14) but didn't become widespread in literature until it was popularized by Ray Blanchard the 1980's.[15]
The age range of this chronophilia typically corresponds to Tanner stages 2 and 3.
More about hebephiles - a lot of these people are only hard-coded to form pair bonds with younger teens right around middle school age. Many adults may get bored of listening to a 7th grader talk for more than a few minutes but thoroughly enjoy lengthy discussions with other adults - however this is the design of people primarily attracted to 18+ YOS. Hebephiles, on the other hand, could listen to a 12/13 year old talk for hours on end without getting bored. They are endlessly fascinating to them, but older females bore them. Their hearts just don't resonate with older females. They just don’t click with them; it doesn’t feel right. It’s only ever when they are interacting with middle school aged teens that they feel a sense of belonging. - this is the design of teen attracted adults.[12] _______________________________ EPHEBOPHILIA: _______________________________ Ongoing pattern of sexual attraction toward post-pubescents youths from 15-17 (late teens) and sometimes up to 19. Some experts say this corresponds to tanner stage 4; but this is highly disputed as the age of puberty appears to be decreasing.[13]
Sex between an adult and individuals in this age range is legal in some countries and all US states. The age of consent is 16 in 32 US states and most of Europe(it is legal for anyone 16 and up to have sex with anyone regardless of age gap in 32 states unless the older partner is in a position of trust or authority). This means the lower limit of ephebophilic sexual intercourse is allowed nearly everywhere.
Also considered "normophilia".[20]
Some experts have considered reclassifying ephebophilia as teleiophilia, combining them, or even declassifying it as a chronophilia due to the fact that many elements of ephebophilia do not match up with the definition of a paraphilia(atypical sexual interests). Ex: post-pubescents are as reproductively viable as middle-aged adults.
Some sexologists, experts, and MAPs question this category, sometimes arguing that the majority of ephebophilic men might be "normative"/teleiophilic. A major criticism that lends to this argument is the implausibility of a chronophilia category that orients itself roughly to the beginning of Tanner Stage 5, and ends in a developmental no man's land" at age 18-19. However in comparison, pedophilia and hebephilia can be seen as well-aligned with "developmental milestones".
Another criticism is the implausibility of a primarily preferential ephebophile ever existing at all, when adjacent labels describe attractions that are very similar in nature.[13][17][23] _______________________________ TELEIOPHILIA: _______________________________ Coined by Blanchard in 2000; usage of this term has been slowing in comparison to more recent ones.[16] One of the main adult-based chronophilias. A sexual preference for younger adults in their 20's or 30s. Most people are teliophilic.[1] Tanner stage 5. _______________________________ MESOPHILIA: _______________________________ Preference for middle-aged adults aged 40 to 50.
The prevalence of mesophilia(term coined by Michael Seto) in society is hinted at by the relative popularity of the slang MILF (which stands for "Mom I would Like to *"), as well as the derived acronym DILF. Results from an online survey about paraphilic sexual interests suggest that 34% of women and 48% of men have reported sexual fantasies about older partners.[1] ________________ Some personal thoughts:
While I haven't done any real experiments on the prevalence rates of the chronophilias myself, a simple and easy experiment one can do at home is to show any straight guy a picture of 5 females, some 18+ and some under those ages all in the same picture without revealing their the ages and asking if they find them attractive. Many females who are 18 or up don't look any different from ones who are less than 18, so a lot of guys, if honest, would probably say nearly all of them are.
Some other good indicators of these rates is the fact that it was legal for adults to have sex with 10-12 year old's literally everywhere for nearly all of history until the 1920s without any guy complaining about it and the sheer popularity of lolicon (sexual fictional media of young females) in Japan. While lolicon doesn't seem to be as popular in the west from the surface, I imagine that it could possibly be due to social and legal oppression to it.
Another thing, guys seem repulsed by the idea of expressing interest in a 17 YO, but the very second she turns 18 they all appear to change their minds. So if the max age of consent(AOC) was 16 worldwide I imagine the same would apply.(Currently the AOC is 16 in 31 US states; anyone 16+ can have sex with someone 16+ regardless of age difference. It's 17 in 7 states and 18 in 12 states.) That is, they would not be interested in the 15 YO initially, but the very second she turns 16 they would be. Barely legal is one of the most popular porn categories right now, so if the 'barely legal' age was 15 one has to wonder if it would still be just as popular.
An observation I made that seems to be an indicator of the prevalence rates are an overwhelming number of sexual comments by guys with thousands of upvotes on a picture of two fully clothed twins both around the age of 13, one with long straight light-brown hair and another with a small short black braided ponytail in a Taekwondo school posing in a picture with their groins and feet against each other. I would compare it to a double banana split in the air. It is on a website named 9gag. For those interested, simply go to 9gag(@)c o m, do a search for twins. It should appear in one of the results. _______________________________
Citations:
1.Seto MC (January 2017). "The Puzzle of Male Chronophilias". Archives of S... 46 (1): 3–22. (w w w(@)justpaste.it/cscx4); Link between Mesophilia and the term MILF - final paragraph on page 14, for prevalence percentages see page 10, "labels do not relate to age itself but to preferences for human sexual maturity stages" - page 7, final paragraph on left column, For info on overlapping chronophilias, see page 16, third paragraph on the left column. "Nonexclusivity can encompass nonadjacent age categories, for example, some men are equally attracted to children as and adults, just as other men are equally attracted to males and females." 2.Money, J. (1986). Lovemaps: clinical concepts of sexual/erotic health and... isbn 978-0-8290-1589-8, pages 70, 260 The term chronophilia was coined by John Money 3.Money, J. (1990). Gay, Straight, and In-Between: The Sexology of Erotic Orientation. isbn 978-0-19-505407-1, pages 137, 183 4.Schuster, Filip, (2014) Every fifth boy and man is pedophilic or hebephilic; a combination of studies (w w w(@)ipce.info/sites/ipce.info/files/biblio_attachments/every_fifth.pdf); see the results on page 7 for prevalence rates. 5.Hall, G.C.N., Hirschman, R., Oliver, L.L. “Arousability to Stimuli in a Community Sample...” Behavior Ther., 26, no. 4 (March 2, 2006): page 681–694. (w w w(@)sciencedirect(@)c o m/science/article/abs/pii/S0005789405800395) 6.Exact Copy of the DSM-5, American Psy. Association(APA); page 717 "The highest possible prevalence for pedophila in the male population is approximately 3%-5" (w w w(@)docdroid.net/qSmIApN/dsm20v-pdf#page=730); URL shows page 730, but redirects to page 717. See under prevalence. 7.Rind, B, and Yuill, R (2012). "Hebephilia... A Historical, Cross-Cultural...review" Archives of Sexual Behavior, Jun 28 2012. (w w w(@)ipce.info/library/journal-article/rind-yuill-hebephilia); also for more see an analysis of normative Hebephilia: https://mapbiology.wordpress(@)c o m/adolescentophilia 8.Stephenson, B. W. (2014, July 29). How many men are paedophiles? BBC News; 5% figure is mentioned in the fifth paragraph. (w w w(@)bbc(@)c o m/news/magazine-28526106) 9.“Indeed, Howells (1981) maintains that “There is good reason to think that such persons [pedophiles] form a minority in the total population of people who become sexually involved with prepubescents” (p.76). Other researchers have come to a similar conclusion (Bromberg & Johnson, 2001; Mohr, Turner, & Jerry, 1964; Swanson, 1968).”(http://web.archive.org/web/20090106010254/http://w w w(@)attractedtochildren.org/2007/quotes-on-the-occurence-of-paedophilia-in-csos) 10.Okami, P., & Goldberg, A. (1992). Personality Correlates of..." JoSR, 29(3), p. 297-328 “only a relatively small portion of the population of incarcerated against minors consists of persons for whom minors (particularly prepubescents) represent the exclusive or even primary object of sexual interest or source of arousal (http://web.archive.org/web/20090106010254/http://w w w(@)paedosexualitaet.de/lib/Okami1992.html) 11. Lautmann, Rüdiger (1994). “Attraction...” “In any case, as already mentioned," most sexual contact between older and younger people are by, "not pedophiles, but by non-pedophilic” people. (http://web.archive.org/web/20090106010254/http://w w w(@)attractedtochildren.org/2007/quotes-on-the-occurence-of-paedophilia-in-csos) 12.Martijn, F.M., Babchishin K., Seto M. “Sexual Attraction and Falling in Love in Persons with Pedohebephilia” Arch Sex Behav., 49, no. 4 (Feb. 20, 2021): p. 1305–1318. (w w w(@)pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih(@)g o v/32086644/); full paper here: (w w w(@)justpaste.it/c84at) 13."The decreasing age of puberty". Texas A&M Health Science Center. 10 January 2018. (w w w(@)vitalrecord.tamhsc.edu/decreasing-age-puberty) 14.Glueck Jr BC, 1955. Research project for the study and trea... New York State Dept. of Mental Hygiene 15.Blanchard, Ray; Amy D.; Lykins; Wherrett, Diane; Kuban, Michael E.; Cantor, James M.; Blak, Thomas; Dickey, Robert; Klassen, Philip E. (2009). "Pedophilia, Hebephilia, and the DSM-V". Arch of Sex Behav. 38 (3): 335–350 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih(@)g o v/18686026) 16.Blanchard R, Barbaree HE (2005). The strength of sexual arousal as a... SA, volume 17, issue 4, pages 441–460, pmid 16341604, doi 10.1177/107906320501700407, s2cid 220355347 (w w w(@)pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih(@)g o v/16341604), full paper here - (w w w(@)justpaste.it/ao5xh) 17.Walker, A. (2019). “I’m Not Like That, So Am I Gay” The Use of Queer-Spectrum Identity Labels Among Minor-Attracted People. Journal of Homosexuality, 1–24. doi:10.1080/00918369.2019.1613856, full paper here(https://justpaste.it/da2js) CHARTS: Guys Like Women In Their Early 20s Regardless Of How Old They Get - Business Insider; charts from the book 18.Dataclysm (w w w(@)businessinsider(@)c o m/dataclysm-shows-men-are-attracted-to-women-in-their-20s-2014-10) 19.Lievesley R, Lapworth R. (February 2022). "We Do Exist": The Experiences of Women Living with... Arch of Sexual Behav., volume 51, issue 2, pages 879–896, doi 10.1007/s10508-021-02160-z, pmc 8888496, pmid 34791582 (w w w(@)link.springer(@)c o m/article/10.1007/s10508-021-02160-z) 20.Hames, Raymond and Blanchard, Ray (2012). Anthropological Data Regarding the Adaptiveness of Hebephilia. Archives of Sexual Behavior, volume 41, issue 4, pages 745–747, doi 10.1007/s10508-012-9972-0, pmid 22644593, s2cid 254261711, issn 1573-2800 (w w w(@)digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1050&context=anthropologyfacpub) 21.Fagan, Peter J., and more (2002) "Pedophilia" JotAMA, 288, p. 2458-2465."Not all individuals who fulfill the diagnostic criteria for pedophilia actually" engage in contact with minors. (https://justpaste.it/brgyv); see the paragraph in the middle below the box on page 2459 in particular and the final paragraph. 22.Seto, M. (2009). "Pedophilia," Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 5, p. 391-407. They, "followed a sample of" underage pornography viewers, "for an average of 2.5 years. The majority of them, "were determined to be pedophiles". A small proportion (4%) engaged in sexual contact, "during this time period". Quotes regarding the pornography viewers are found on page 398, last paragraph on the left column. (w w w(@)justpaste.it/9me47) 23.Lievesley et al (2022). Primary Health Professionals' Beliefs, Experiences, and... Arch of Sexual Behav, volume 51, issue 2, pages 923–945, doi 10.1007/s10508-021-02271-7, issn 1573-2800, pmid 35084616, pmc 8793822 (w w w(@)justpaste.it/b8m7i) 24.Jahnke, Sara et al (2022). Minor-Attracted Person? Attitudes Toward Labels Among People Who are... Arch of Sexual Behav., volume 51, issue 8, pages 4125–4139, doi 10.1007/s10508-022-02331-6, issn 0004-0002, pmc 9663395, pmid 36175817 (w w w(@)justpaste.it/cj4rz)
Most pages of these publications have been posted on the following sites:
w w w(@)sites.google(@)c o m/view/chronophilias
archive.ph/5xhKO
I highly recommend everyone save this page as it may not be up forever. To do this right click anywhere and click "save as".
To immediately go to a particular essay or article:
1. Press CTRL+F. A search box will appear 2. Type the name of the essay or article.
The Truth Behind The Age Of Consent Laws
Since much scientific evidence has emerged to make it clear that younger people do not receive severe emotional damage following sexual contact with a significantly older adult if mutual consent was a factor, and no fully objective, scientifically validated evidence to the contrary has ever been gathered by any of the mainstream naysayers out there, what are the real reasons that contemporary society supports the continued existence of the AoC laws? Why does society generally feel equally dedicated to enforcing AoC laws in regards to adolescents in addition to children when it's empirically obvious that the former are actually young adults? What is the reason for all the negative stereotypes and assumptions directed at both adults who engage in relationships with much younger people as well as the young people who may reciprocate the interest? This essay will seek to answer those questions by explicating my thoughts and observations on this subject based upon my many years as a hebephilia(not to be confused with pedophilia) activist on the pro-choice side of the coin, and my many more years as a youth liberationist (the latter going back to my own early adolescence).
Please note that this particular essay will not describe the specific circumstances that led to the creation of the AoC laws as we know them today back during the 1880s in England. That will perhaps be the subject of a future essay, and the circumstances in question are well documented in a scholarly manner in Judith Walkowitz's excellent tome about sexual dangers and hysterias running rampant in late Victorian London, The City of Dreadful Delight. Instead, this essay will focus upon the modern rationale behind the continued enforcement of these laws and the societal attitudes that back up these laws in the minds of the great majority of the general public in the present era, while still keeping the historical perspectives in mind.
The first reason for the widespread modern societal support for these laws and accompanying attitudes is a very simple one: intergenerational sexual activity is currently offensive to the emotional sensibilities of many people raised under the present day cultural milieu, much as homosexual acts are considered aesthetically repulsive to many of a certain ideological stripe (e.g., fundamentalist Christians and other homophobes). The advantage that mainstream gay activists had over the youth community of today, however, is that the heart of the movement was composed of legal adults who had their full civil rights, whereas people under 18--during the heyday of the modern civil rights movement as well as now--do not. Those whom the government legally designate as "minors" today are essentially the glorified property of their parents and helpless to resist the "protection racket" mentality of the State.
Underage people in contemporary society also represent a strongly ingrained paradigm that people, influenced by the many lingering remnants of the Victorian mindset, consider to be sacred to them. This is the idea that enforced ignorance about the world (our culture uses the word "innocence" as a feel-good euphemism to sugarcoat this form of ignorance) is somehow blissful and beautiful, and that the supposedly carefree nature of childhood and early adolescence that comes along with this blissful and beautiful ignorance implies a degree of inner purity that adults are believed to lose once they learn about the world and all of the “horrible” and emotionally “complicated” things that exist within it outside of the confined safety of a child’s world. As such, our culture perceives such ignorance as immensely precious, regardless of how all of the younger people who are currently forced to conform to that paradigm may or may not feel about it.
Due to prevailing negative attitudes about sex, sexuality is therefore considered "dirty" and the introduction of it to minors is perceived as somehow tainting that blissful ignorance. Our culture therefore considers this perceived besmirching of "innocence" to be a heinous act (e.g., "stealing someone's childhood" or "violating their innocence"). Thus, the introduction of sexuality into a minor's life is viewed by most in our society to cause these kids to "grow up too fast," thus undermining that perceived wondrous state of bliss and purity of spirit that our culture believes childhood to personify in a material sense. Of course, in actuality, the presence of sexual knowledge and the full freedom to practice it in a mutually consensual manner is correctly recognized as a liberating experience for adults that is important to their emotional health, which one may think to cause many open-minded people to feel bemused over why we feel the exact opposite is true when it comes to sexual knowledge and experience being given to someone who has yet to reach the vaunted Magic Age. But the recognized liberating effects of sexual knowledge and experience is the very crux of the matter here, because the vast majority of people in our contemporary culture do not want kids to be liberated; they want them to remain legally, economically, and socially dependent on legal adults, and to stay within the parameters of the wonderful state of socially constructed "childhood"--and thus firmly under adult control--for as long as possible. Society rationalizes the artificial extension of childhood for teens under 18 as being beneficial to their spirit because of the ideological glorification of our present day paradigm of childhood. After all, the defenders of our society will say, childhood is so wonderful, blissful, and carefree, why wouldn’t someone want to be a child for as long as possible, and enjoy the beauty of this existence until society legally forces them to suddenly “grow up” once they reach their 18th birthday?
If an adult has consensual sex with someone who is underage (i.e., legally a child regardless of their individual level of biological or emotional development), he may not be harming a person in a demonstrable or objective sense but he is nevertheless harming a very sacrosanct idea in the eyes of modern Western culture, and thus demeaning what our society believes to be a idyllic and beautiful state of being that children (i.e., anyone who is legally a child, of course) represents to our ideological mindset. As such, people raised in this society take huge offense to such an act, with many actually finding this act to be literally worse than murdering a child.
Also thrown into the mix to rationalize such attitudes are the beliefs that young people under 18 are inherently incompetent and prone to bad decision-making. In other words, they are stereotyped, and their supposed lack of competency to make such "emotionally complex" decisions are assumed on the arbitrary basis of chronological age rather than judged according to individual merit. The justification to have this same attitude towards teens as towards actual children is bolstered by common societal myths that teens have inherent neurological malfunctions that render them very prone to making "bone-headed" decisions. An earlier biological myth described how teens were supposedly subject to hormonal swings that caused their behavior and decision-making abilities to be erratic, but more recently we have seen the development of the belief that the teen brain is inherently "defective," which therefore allegedly causes them to have a great propensity for making incompetent decisions. These all-too common discriminatory beliefs have been challenged quite well over the past decade in scientific studies conducted by clinical psychologist Dr. Robert Epstein in several of his articles, beginning with "The Myth of the Teen Brain" [available online] and in his excellent book, The Case Against Adolescence from 2007 and its 2010 update, Teen 2.0. As a result of this thinking, teens--like children--are seen to be in a perpetual state of "not knowing any better"...until they reach their 18th birthday, of course, where they officially become legal adults and are then assumed to be competent to make their own decisions regardless of individual merits. Legal adults have their full civil rights, so they must be given the benefit of the doubt and allowed to take emotional risks regardless of their perceived or actual individual merits, and this is the way it's supposed to be in a democracy. But people under 18 do not have these civil rights because they are not recognized as "adults" (according to current legal definitions), and thus the very important democratic right to take risks and grow as a person at their own pace--and to judge the rapidity of that pace for themselves--is not recognized.
Also add this to the mix: people in general are often reluctant to give up any power that they have over others. Why should either the majority of parents or the State willingly give up control over an entire class of people? Both see the civil liberation of individuals under 18 as a threat to their ability to mold young people to fit whatever paradigm our culture wants them to fit during their formative years, and many belonging to either of these two institutions therefore consider it to be very important to leave younger people in no legal or political position to resist such molding. That tactic is the basis for the famous maxim, "Give me a child until he is seven, and I will give you the man." Now imagine how much truer that saying is if you give both parents and the State near-full control over the child for the first 18 years of their lives. This is why youth liberationists continually stress that it's vitally important to grant people their full civil liberties during their formative years, and why it's ridiculous for opponents of youth liberation to claim that kids cannot be considered a true oppressed minority group simply because they will be automatically awarded their full citizenship once they reach their 18th birthday (well, almost; they still retain a few limits on their full rights until they reach their 21st birthday). The various powers-that-be in our society seem to feel that 18 years of pre-citizenship is a long enough time for the "molding" or indoctrination effect to have a maximum chance of "sticking" (and most often, it does).The various powers-that-be in our society seem to feel that 18 years of pre-citizenship is a long enough time for the "molding" or indoctrination effect to have a maximum chance of "sticking" (and most often, it does).
The reason many mainstream liberals (or, as some of my activist friends may prefer, "libruls") believe that it's okay for teens to have mutually consensual sex with each other but not with adults is because some people take a stab at being "open-minded" and "sex positive" in their own eyes by grudgingly accepting the fact that teens, including young teens, are sexual beings and that attempting to deny this completely is not only futile, but also counterproductive to their well-being (which is true, of course).
However, having been raised in the same culture as the rest of us, they will only allow their open-mindedness to go forward to a limited extent, i.e., to a level that is considered politically "safe" to hold among "reasonable" people on the Left of the political spectrum, who fear being called names by their opponents on the Right if they do otherwise. Hence, though they do not believe that consensual sexual activity between two teens of the same general age group is automatically going to have emotionally negative effects on the participants, they are still repulsed from an aesthetic standpoint by the idea of an adult engaging in sexual activity with someone that young regardless of the issue of consent. Simply put, such age disparate pairings are "icky" to them. So they justify this attitude by the stated belief that adults automatically have "too much worldly experience" for teens under the Magic Age, and this is believed to enable the adult in question to easily control the teen and manipulate them into doing something that these "libruls" do not want to believe any teen would willingly do unless they were manipulated into doing it, and therefore may have only thought they wanted to do it, or that they found it a positive and enjoyable experience.
Of course, this was the exact same rationale used by Southern white bigots in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to lynch black men who had sex with white women. Such men of color were always accused of "rape" regardless of whether or not the woman consented because the white men of this era and locale were so offended by the idea of interracial sex--bolstered by then still prevailing beliefs that women were easily led astray by "selfish" and logically superior men (an attitude that has since been aimed at people according to age rather than gender)--that they rationalized their lynchings with a firm belief that no self-respecting white woman could possibly have desired to have "icky" sex with a black man of her own volition. Because of their disdain for sex between black men and white women, these white bigots concluded that if the women weren't forced into sex with these black men then they must have been manipulated into it by the suave nature that reputedly gave all men an advantage over and above the inherent naivety and easily led astray female psyche. This enabled them to justify such harsh and unnecessary acts of retribution that were in actuality done solely out of hatred for blacks and revulsion over interracial relations between black men and white women, the latter of whom white men felt they were supposed to be "protective" of in the sense that these white women belonged to them alone (sound familiar?).
This exact same dynamic is played out today, though not in regards to race but rather in regards to age. Blacks have since earned enough civil rights that it's no longer possible for the legal system--or for too many even mildly open-minded white people--to justify miscegenation laws. And women have earned much more respect in regards to their perceived level of competence during that same time as a result of their own movement for emancipation, so they are no longer automatically assumed to have been manipulated when they have a consensual relationship with a black man (they are simply said to have "jungle fever," and left at that). But the important thing to consider about teens under 18 is that, like children, and like blacks and women in the past, they currently lack the civil rights and legally recognized autonomy to escape from these stereotypes, and thus lack any substantial opportunities to prove their competence. They are also forcibly kept from obtaining certain "age inappropriate" information that would enhance their knowledge and ability to make competent decisions, which causes them to appear to "naturally" fit the stereotype of "ignorant" young people that is actually culturally imposed upon them--which is obviously a major case of political dirty pool played upon them by a combination of parents and the State. Those minors who obviously do not fit the stereotypes and rise above their legally and culturally imposed disadvantages are dismissed as "exceptions to the rule" or sometimes as prodigies, and not enough reasonable opportunities exist for sizable numbers of young people to prove their individual levels of competence at the present time. But people in our culture are indoctrinated into believing that this is the "natural" state of being for young people, while encouraged to ignore all of the historical and anthropological evidence that strongly suggests otherwise [recommended reading: Centuries of Childhood by Phillipe Aries, which traces the very gradual socio-cultural construction of the "child" as we know it today].
Another thing to consider is that teens, like children, are expected to conform to a certain cultural hierarchy. In our gerontocentric culture, older individuals are believed to be due respect by underage people simply by reaching the Magic Age and becoming a legal adult. This is seen to automatically confer legal adults with a level of authority over those who have not achieved the automatic esteem our culture feels one is due simply for reaching their 18th birthday. Thus, all adults are arbitrarily considered to be authority figures over people under 18, regardless of whether or not the adult in question has any real degree of power over the life of any given young person, such as that possessed by a parent, teacher, coach, etc. This authority is seen as inherent in the role one is expected to take on as an "adult," and as such, our society instantly perceives anyone who is granted full citizenship that comes with the legally recognized age of adulthood to have a power advantage over people under 18.
As a result of what I described above, intergenerational relationships are perceived as having an inherent power imbalance in favor of the legal adult regardless of any of the many other factors that could be present to effect that aspect of the relationship, and assuming how likely it is for any two people of any age group to form a relationship that is entirely equitable in every conceivable manner. As a result, according to our cultural mindset, if people see an intergenerational relationship--no matter how nice and egalitarian-minded the adult in the relationship may be--they nevertheless believe that they can never be "quite sure" that the girl doesn't actually want the relationship, but is merely acceding to her older lover's "authority" and doing everything he wants her to do simply because he commands it rather than because she wants to do it--so the law must intervene "just in case." No evidence needed or required, because the basis of the AoC laws are very arbitrary and are based on overriding assumptions that do not need to be backed up by evidence, a situation is supposed to the be the very antitheses of American law. The AoC laws are among the very few laws under American jurisprudence where assumptions without evidence are accepted in court, because it's believed that if there is even a remote chance that the adult in question is guilty of manipulating the girl into a relationship in which she doesn't consciously realize that she actually doesn't want to participate in, then no "good" and "responsible" court can possibly take the chance of granting him and the relationship clemency no matter how much the evidence may support doing so--and regardless of what the individual merits of the girl in question happen to be. This is because she is not yet a legal adult, and therefore not a full citizen whose right to take emotional risks, and whose competency is given the benefit of the doubt sans any compelling evidence to suggest otherwise, have to be taken into consideration.
While many people in our culture may still consider a relationship between a 45-year-old man and a 19-year-old woman to be "icky" and morally and ideologically objectionable due to all of the stereotypes and assumptions I mentioned above, a 19-year-old woman is nevertheless a full citizen legally, so her right to take such risks is grudgingly recognized despite all the stereotypical assumptions thrown at the two of them by polite society (e.g., he must be a control freak who is looking for a partner that is "easy" to manipulate, and she must see him as a surrogate "father figure" rather than as an actual relationship partner and has "issues" that she needs to work out, etc., et al.).
The same attitude persists today, albeit now directed towards people according to age rather than gender. If too many adults treated people under 18 as equals, it may grant a potentially high degree of empowerment to these underagers, and our culture believes that young people should be kept in “their proper place." And if these youngsters were given too many opportunities to prove they are capable of much more than the common contemporary attitudes claim they are, this may gradually erode the justification for the law enforcing their disadvantaged status as "pre-citizens." In other words, mutually consensual intergenerational relationships pose an inherent threat not to young people, but to the existing power structure in society. The government considers itself to be a protector of the prevailing status quo first and foremost, and people are raised and indoctrinated with a belief that the present status quo is basically good for everyone, and that it's the job of every decent citizen to work to preserve it, thus further explaining the uncritical, widespread acceptance of so many draconian laws and negative cultural attitudes used to suppress such relationships, and youth rights in general.
MAAs are also stereotyped. The public often portrays them as emotionless animals who only want to 'seek' out younger people and pounce on them when an opportunity arises. But most MAAs aren't usually prone to 'acting on' their attractions in the same way most adult attracted adults(AAAs) aren’t. This is not just about sex as the media and so-called “experts” would have you believe. Most of these people are only wired to meaningfully connect with younger teens. They can't simply date a nice 30-year-old woman down the street who would most likely be less picky than the average 19-year-old. Hebephiles who are very young-minded, tend to mesh considerably better on an emotional and social level with much younger women, who are as close as they can legally get to being with their true preferred age group. Their preferences on all levels are not a choice; they would not mesh well socially with the 30-year-old, and they would have no inclination to be physically intimate with them. Were they to lie and lead her on just to placate societal expectations, they would truly be committing an unethical against her, because they would be fully aware from the get-go that they cannot give her a genuine romantic relationship, and she deserves to have that as much as they do. Their hearts just don't resonate with older females. They just don’t click with them; it doesn’t feel right. It’s only ever when they are interacting with middle school aged teens that they feel a sense of belonging. They experience love just like anyone else. They just want to be with someone who wants to be with them. Their drives and motivations are different in nature to our own. It’s always talked about as ‘urges.’ or ‘impulses'. They have the exact same feelings of love and affection as AAAs, but they aren't allowed to have any positive qualities ascribed to them. They want a real relationship full of love, happiness, laughter, and joy but complete strangers who don’t know them are somehow entitled to decide for them what’s right and what’s wrong and dictate how they are allowed to live their personal lives, and people are allowed to lie, spread disinformation about, and demonize these people with impunity.
The general public still refuses to understand that these people are not typically sociopathic, and that their attraction base encompasses much more than a crude physical desire for sexual activity, has strong emotional and social components, and that adult attraction to youths is not simply lust-driven (when they want a younger person they want them to be happy and like them as a person in return, it's always claimed that they have ulterior motives). This is partly derived from our culture's gerontocentric bias against younger people, i.e., the belief that youths couldn't possibly have any personality traits, interests, or intelligence that an adult would find appealing in an emotionally or socially romantic way. At least, not any "normal" adults, as the bias goes.
Few know the distinction between genuine GLers, child fetishists (CFs), and teen fetishists(TFs). GLers have an attraction for minors (either LGs or AGs, or both) that runs the full spectrum of attraction, and is not limited to sexual lust only. For instance, a true girl-attracted pedophile or hebephile will have an emotional, social, and aesthetic component to their attraction for females in their respective age group (or for both age groups, in the case of pedohebephiles) that is every bit as powerful, at least, as the sexual component of their attraction. They will have a strong proclivity towards being able to actually fall in love with girls, and they adore their characteristic personality traits and enjoy their company under general principles, and tend to treat them with a degree of respect for their feelings overall and reverence for their entire being that they rarely receive from AAAs. They also tend to enjoy making friends with females whom they do not have particularly notable degrees of sexual interest in, and they have a strong interest in the entire social world that girls have built for themselves; for example, a female-attracted pedophile would actually enjoy having a tea party with a girl whom he loved, or sitting and watching a movie with her that she picked out, and wouldn't just be going through the motions to placate her.
In contrast, a CF or TF will tend to have a strictly sexual interest in females of a respective age group (or both); and will not have any greater degree of respect for them or liking of them as people in a general sense, or great interest in their social world, then the typical AAA will, including AAAs who have a general platonic love of youths. These individuals have a mere fetish, not a full attraction base for females, and are not the same thing as genuine GLers, and we can no longer deny that the prevalence of these males is widespread. We often hear that the popularity of virtual pornography depicting minors in Japan, particularly Lolicon is "even more disturbing" than the idea of admiring younger people "in that way." Today, barely legal pornography is one of the most popular categories. Could this possibly mean that such attractions are relatively common? Could this mean that hebephilia (and maybe even true pedophilia) are not as rare as enlightened individuals like to believe? Could it mean that adult attraction to younger people might be as normal as adult attraction to members of the same gender despite its social unpopularity amongst conservative factions in Western society? Could it mean that 5% of males are pedophiles, 1/5 of males are hebephiles, and a 1/3 or more are ephebophiles? Are such a vast number of adults in Japan truly so disproportionately depraved compared to us open-minded and enlightened folks in the West, or can it simply be that the large amount of legal, cultural, and social oppression of MAAs in America and its fellow Western nations causes the bulk of pedophiles and hebephiles native to the West to stay far inside the closet? I'm sure the thought that hebephilia and pedophilia could be as common in America as they are in Japan is just too unsettling a thought for many consider! It's much better to follow the party line of the American media than it is for people to do their own thinking or research on this subject.
Just taking into account hebephiles alone, 40 million men in the US alone are programmed to fall in love, form an emotional bond, and strike up a relationship with a pubescent female the exact same way as someone attracted to older females. This implies that if only hebephiles are considered 80 million parents in the US alone have a child whose sexuality, core fundamental and immutable design, is not only criminalized, but is openly hated at about the same level as Jews in Nazi Germany. If we cut that 20% in half and say that half of them aren't seriously affected by modern consent laws, that still leaves 20 million men in the US alone. 40 million American parents have a son living anywhere between a subpar and unfulfilling life ranging anywhere from dissatisfaction to pure torment to a downright miserable existence; whose love has become demonized and unfairly cut off from the possibility of true love, and that is not right. Even the most cherished concept of freedom of speech is tossed out the window to silence the few brave enough to speak out and try to defend themselves. Something is SERIOUSLY wrong here. This is a tough pill for everyone to swallow, but we have all been deceived about this on an unimaginably massive scale.
However, l should note that there are a few brave souls out there(Debbie Nathan, Dr. Bruce Rind, Dr. Robert Epstein, Susan Thompson, Susan Clancy), who are doing the right thing based on truth because to them this is much more important to them than doing the convenient thing based on strictly moralizing concerns that have no basis in scientific fact. History only moves forward and social progress only occurs thanks to the efforts of such individuals. Though it's still too early in the game to expect many aside from MAAs (including those within the youth liberation movement) to openly champion for MAA rights specifically, that situation is slowly changing, due in part to the reaching out methods of newly emerging offline support orgs such as the Maryland based B4U-ACT. The fact that there are a growing number of individuals who are openly fighting for youth rights and asking the questions that others failed to ask in their otherwise bold and courageous studies about the current cultural conceptions of young people should be seen as a welcome state of affairs for anyone who has any degree of respect for civil rights and liberties for everyone in society. These brave individuals are fighting for the rights of youths because it's the right thing to do, and thus do so without worrying about detractors lamenting, "If young people gain their rights, that means they might end up having sex with 'pedophiles!'" If we had more such pioneers living in any given time period, imagine how much faster social progress and justice for everyone in society would have occurred. These brave purveyors of the truth have courage beyond that of any anti who has ever walked the Earth, because unlike the latter hate-mongers these seekers of the truth have taken huge personal risks and sometimes made major personal sacrifices to disseminate research that contradicts a widely held belief. As it is now, taking a specific stance on AOC laws (or any other) topic is difficult simply because it's politically popular and deeply imbedded in the cultural fabric.
The aforementioned reason and all of the above factors combine to explain why people are so willing to swallow the many obvious contradictions related to the AoC laws, and support all of the silly rationalizations and stereotypes that we are indoctrinated into accepting as reasonable justification for them. They also explain why the government enforces and promotes these attitudes and beliefs while outright condemning any valid scientific study or empirical observations that disprove any of the rationales—a prime example of this occurred when the entire U.S. Congress voted unanimously to condemn the Rind Report after it was published in 1998 despite the fact that it was fully peer-reviewed and used perfectly credible methodology to exact its results, has never been successfully refuted anywhere else by any objective study (and proved fully replicable by another group of researchers in 2005). This made it quite clear that truth is far less important to the government than preserving custom and the belief systems that rationalize the defense and retention of the present status quo. The fact that this status quo, and the laws and cultural mores designed to preserve it, may be based on a series of lies isn’t important as long as these fallacies best enable the powers-that-be to maintain the present gerontocentric cultural hierarchy, civil rights be damned.
The Importance of Truth
Every so often, a particularly important and inspirational statement is made by someone in the public eye, be it courtesy of a writer, a politician, a lawyer, etc., that everyone in the world should take heed of and which should be preserved in perpetuity. Such a quote was made in an early 2010 article/interview:
w w w(@)salon(@)c o m/2010/02/04/david_aaronovitch_conspiracy_theories
of British journalist David Aaronovitch, who was discussing his new book detailing some of the greatest conspiracy theories of the 20th century to the first decade of the 21st, Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History (the quote will be given down below in the summation paragraph of this essay, so be patient!). Though the book has nothing to do with the Minor Attracted Adult (MAA) community, it should be noted that it does have a lot of relevance to MAAs. This is because it can be argued that many of the lies aimed at the members of the MAA community, including the highly inaccurate image of them constructed by the media and since emblazoned into the mindset of popular culture, have been a litany of urban legends that could possibly be combined to include what future historians and journalists may consider a massive conspiracy theory of sorts (especially since the sex abuse hysteria includes the underage porn scare, aspects of which that are commonly reported in the media may constitute an urban legend of its own). That is pushing the definition of "conspiracy theory" a bit, of course, but consider some of the incorrect beliefs that have been part of the interconnected sex abuse hysteria and "pedophile panic" that have since been totally disproven, or at least received a major challenge in a mainstream book or research paper to the point of providing enormous evidence against these dubious credences. The following disproven or greatly challenged assumptions were once accepted parts of our society's conventional wisdom that weren't challenged for many years each (listed below in no particular order):
1) Children never lie when they say they have been sexually abused. That once very popular belief, which all but doomed almost every single adult who was ever accused of this crime regardless of the fact that there may have been zero evidence to back up any given accusation, was finally disproven beyond a shadow of a doubt with the tragic McMartin pre-school incident: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMartin_preschool_trial The above incident put the kibosh on this once thoroughly accepted assumption forever after a bunch of unscrupulous female social workers with a moralizing political agenda got caught on tape bullying kids into making up extremely grotesque and outrageous stories about many bizarre types of abuse that evidently happened to these kids at the McMartin day-care center...all of which turned out to be complete fabrications. Info on the aspect of the sexual abuse hysteria that claimed that such abuse of kids was occurring in epidemic proportions in American day-care centers, of which the McMartin incident was the culmination of, can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_care_sex_abuse_hysteria
2) Every adult who commits genuine acts of sexual abuse against minors have and are primarily motivated by a sexual attraction to them. Some very good objective studies, many of which are quoted here:
w w w(@)web.archive.org/web/20100105232443/http://w w w(@)attractedtochildren.org/2007/quotes-on-the-occurence-of-paedophilia-in-csos
with links to the full reports, have provided extremely compelling evidence that close to 90% of all cases of genuine, demonstrable sexual abuse against minors are not done by true pedophiles and hebephiles, but by what are often called situational child molesters (SCMs). Those who fit the latter definition are defined as adults (and sometimes teens) who SA youths for reasons that have nothing to do with sexual desire but most often due to an array of other factors, including alcoholism, power trips over these kids whom such adults have particularly heavy authority over, marital problems, heavy stress, and other personal issues that have nothing whatsoever to do with a sexual desire for underagers.
Below is a summary of some of the studies:
“. . . most data suggest that only a relatively small portion of the population of incarcerated against minors consists of persons for whom minors (particularly prepubescents) represent the exclusive or even primary object of sexual interest or source of arousal (Freund, Watson, & Dickey, 1991; Gebhard et al., 1965; Howells, 1981; Lang et al., 1988; Langevin, 1983; McCormack & Selvaggio, 1989; Marshall, Babaree, & Butt, 1988; Marshall & Eccles, 1991; Mohr et al., 1964; Quinsey, Chaplin, & Carrigan, 1979; Righton, 1981; Rowan, 1988; Schofield, 1965; Swanson, 1968).”
~Okami P., Goldberg A. (1992). “Personality Correlates of Pedophilia: Are They Reliable Indicators?,” Journal of Sex Research, 29 (3): 297-328 (1992).
“In some studies, 30% of those convicted tested did not show sufficient arousal [to children] to derive a usable score (Barbaree, Seto, Serin, Amos, and Preston, 1994; Freund and Blanchard, 1989).”
~Wogan, Michael (2002). Measuring Sexual Preferences Using Eye Movement Data. (The portion of preferential offenders isn’t mentioned.)
“This exhaustive and authoritative work is based on a three-tiered typology of" those who engage in sexual contact with prepubescents and adolescents, "[the first type being] the true pedophile [who] has a general interest in social contact with minors, including a sexual dimension. […] In this book I am concerned exclusively with the first type, which constitutes approximately 5% of all pedosexually active men.”
~ Lautmann, Rüdiger (1994). “Attraction to Children.”
“In any case, as already mentioned," most sexual contact between older and younger people are, "committed not by pedophiles, but by non-pedophilic” people.
~ Magnus Hirschfeld Archive for Sexology, “Prohibited Sexual Behavior and Sexual Violence.”
Of all cases of extrafamilial contact between adults and young adults, "from 1990-1995, only … 14.8% of the total … had been identified as suspected or actual pedophiles.”
~ Joint submission from the Northern Territory Government and Police, 9 March 1995, p. 4. Cited by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on the National Crime Authority.
“Indeed, Howells (1981) maintains that “There is good reason to think that such persons [pedophiles] form a minority in the total population of people who become sexually involved with children” (p.76). Other researchers have come to a similar conclusion (Bromberg & Johnson, 2001; Mohr, Turner, & Jerry, 1964; Swanson, 1968).”
~ Seto, M. C., Cantor, J. M., & Blanchard, R. (2006). “Underage pornography watchers are a valid diagnostic indicator of pedophilia,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 115, 610-615. However, according to the authors, the 35% figure may be inflated because study participants were referred due to clinical or legal concerns about their sexual interests or behavior, and the study included an inordinate number of people who had convictions for both underage pornography and sexual contact with minors.
Some have a persistent sexual preference for prepubescents beginning in adolescence, while others have a preference for adults but act with prepubescents due to situational factors (e.g., marital problems, loss of wife, abuse of alcohol, or stress). Most theories focus on the former type since the latter type are really not pedophiles. However, most clinical and criminal studies find the latter type to be the majority of those who offend.
~ Howells, K. (1981). “Adult sexual interest: Considerations relevant to theories of aetiology,” in Cook, M. & Howells, K. (eds.), Adult sexual interest in children, London: Academic Press, pp. 55-94; as summarized on MHAMic
The majority of reported acts of sexual contact by adults with young people, "are not committed by pedophiles,” but by guys in relationships with adult women and men, said John Money, of Johns Hopkins, a preeminent expert on sexual abnormalities.
~ Levine, J. (2002). Harmful to Minors, p.25-26
More important, sexual contact with a child does not a pedophile make. “The majority of reported acts of sexual abuse of children are not committed by pedophiles,” but by men in relationships with adult women and men, said John Money, of Johns Hopkins, a preeminent expert on sexual abnormalities.
~ Levine, J. (2002). Harmful to Minors, p.25-26
Also, the bulk of SCMs operate within the home, boarding school, or other places where adults have the most stringent power and authority over minors. This strongly suggests that it's this element of power and not a mere erotic attraction to minors that most often acts as a catalyst for genuine non-consensual abuse of minors. FBI statistics that can be found with a modicum of research admit this (though the FBI, of course, does not distinguish between genuine non-consensual abuse and mutually consensual contact between minors and adults since all such contact is equally criminalized under the present day age of consent laws).
3) Kids have no real sexual desire. A recent collection of the Web surfing habits of youths--including pre-pubescents of both genders as young as seven years old--that was conducted by Symantec discovered that some of the most common topics searched for online by these underagers...well, let's just say that this data proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the concept of "innocence" in regards to childhood is about as realistic as a big fat man in red clothing sliding down the chimney of every house in the world on Christmas Eve:
w w w(@)stuff.co.nz/technology/3175376/Young-kids-search-for-sex-online
4) Kids were being sexually abused in truly horrific and often preposterous ways in the U.S.--and possibly across the world--by groups of mysterious and diabolical cultists who worshipped Satan and were abusing these kids in "honor" of the ultimate Lord of Evil. This particularly bizarre manifestation of the ongoing sex abuse hysteria that has been plaguing Western society for the past three decades was once accepted as absolute fact by the usual suspects who benefit from all permutations of this hysteria. These suspects include child "protectionist" groups, victim feminists, politicians of both major political parties seeking brownie points with the public and any excuse to increase police powers over all society, right-wing fundamentalist Christians, prosecutors without a conscience (including the later Waco, Texas mass murderess and good friend of Hillary Clinton, Janet Reno), and corrupt social workers and therapists with a less than savory agenda and an eye for a career boost at the expense of destroying the lives of innocent people.
Following a few totally unsubstantiated rumours that began early in the 1970s, the satanic ritual abuse hysteria began in earnest with the 1980 publication of the book Michelle Remembers by psychologist Dr. Lawrence Pazder and his patient (and later wife) Michelle Smith: w w w(@)en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Remembers Thousands of innocent people, including numerous day-care center workers, were victims of this twisted tomfoolery, and as usual, people who were truly and wisely skeptical of this atrocity were too afraid to speak out for the risk of being called names that may have led to them losing their jobs as a result of questioning the hysteria.
This aspect of the hysteria was finally (and thankfully) totally disproven in the extremely important book Satan's Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of A Modern American Witchhunt:
w w w(@)web.archive.org/web/20101123111330/https://w w w(@)fsu.edu/~crimdo/jenkins.html
or
w w w(@)archive.ph/ogc5m
by the uber-courageous journalist Debbie Nathan and the uber-honorable lawyer (yes, there are a few of those!) Michael Snedeker, both of whom should be hailed as heroes. A page of links leading to many important articles on this particular manifestation of the sex abuse panic can be found here.
w w w(@)web.archive.org/web/20111207012324/https://w w w(@)smwane.dk/content/section/5/30
5) Innumerable people who were sexually abused in their childhood were so traumatized by the alleged abuse that they repressed the memory deep into their subconscious, which could subsequently be retrieved at any point in their adulthood by deep hypnosis. The "repressed memory syndrome" was another major component of the sex abuse hysteria that was considered a scientifically valid concept despite no real evidence to support it when ignorant and outright unscrupulous therapists with (often questionable) talent in hypnosis claimed that individuals who showed any number of emotional problems in adulthood may have these symptoms as a result of experiencing extreme trauma in their childhood after being sexually abused, but which, according to this pseudo-scientific theory, these alleged victims would repress and thus no longer consciously remember the events.
The "repressed memory syndrome" also got its start in the infamous book Michelle Remembers (discussed above), which claimed that the horrific memories of an alleged victim of severe sexual abuse via her mom's non-existent satanic cult was repressed until retrieved by her therapist (and later husband) Dr. Lawrence Pazder by way of hypnotic regression. As one might expect, many other individuals with less than altruistic intentions soon exploited this newly recognized "syndrome" to further their own moral or political agenda. For instance, this phoney psychological condition got a further boost towards popular acceptance in the notorious book The Courage to Heal by agenda-ridden victim feminists Ellen Bass and Laura Davis. The latter two "victims' rights activists" jumped on the sex abuse bandwagon so popular with members of their specious ideology to spread the word to their many readers that just because they don't remember being sexually abused doesn't mean that it didn't happen. Bass and Davis not so sagely asserted that any number of personal issues that can be caused by any number of non-traumatic factors in the type of society that we live in today were often indicative of forgotten sexual abuse during their childhood.
Two particularly telling quotes from the book that are representative of the typical statements made within its pages make it quite clear how devoted to scientific validity and objective reason its authors weren't in the original edition of the book: "If you are unable to remember any specific instances like the ones mentioned above but still have a feeling that something abusive happened to you, it probably did" (p.21). And if that wasn't indicative enough of the type of chicanery which filled the pages of this book, behold this utterly anti-scientific gem that is also found within this charming little tome: "Demands for proof are unreasonable" (p. 137).
So according to the authors, it's more important to be "kind" and "considerate" to the feelings of the alleged victim of the alleged abuse than it is to call for an investigation or any type of inquiry into the truth if the evidence doesn't back up the allegations of this supposed victim. Obviously, the faux social science of "victimology" certainly doesn't fit well into a society that is supposed to be based on democratic principles, nor a legal system that purports to be based upon the notion of innocent until proven guilty. Just imagine if this ideology was allowed to infest our entire system of jurisprudence without challenge. Excuse me, but I would like to think that anyone who is devoted to the truth and the simple concept of social justice would gladly risk being "insensitive" to the feelings of the alleged victims by demanding evidence of their claims before taking the risk of prosecuting someone who may be entirely innocent.
A book review of The Courage To Heal that is courtesy of therapist Ralph Underwager can be found here:
w w w(@)ipt-forensics(@)c o m/journal/volume4/j4_4_br1.htm
Ignore some of Underwager's psychobabble in regards to various psychological theories he expresses in the review (including the rather unproven contention that psychopathic tendencies have a genetic basis according to one of the theories he seems to support), and you will find a cogent and not overly long critique of the type of "theories" that Bass and Davis push in their book to support their anti-male, anti-heterosexual, and anti-scientific agenda.
Perhaps it should be noted that the most recent edition of The Courage To Heal added a chapter that attempted to refute the statements made by the book's many detractors who dared to ask for scientifically verified evidence of the claims made therein. It's sad that this book is still considered a legitimate source of objective info for female sexual abuse victims to seek out as a means of healing. But for those particular women who espouse the concept of "victimology" and are therefore interested in revenge rather than actual healing, creating a whole social identity around their "victimhood" (i.e., becoming a Victim rather than simply a victim, if you know what I mean), and to consider themselves "damaged goods" for the rest of their lives since truly healing and moving past their pain would deny them the perceived right to convey sociopathic behavior towards others who try to get close to them, especially men who may express an interest in them and family members who may offer their shoulder, and then calling all of the above individuals "insensitive to their pain" if they dare complain about such aberrant behavior being directed at them for no justifiable reason.
Thus was born a new psychological concept, which contended that when people suffer extreme trauma they will very likely repress it deeply in their subconscious and that hypnosis was supposedly a reliable method of retrieving these buried and forgotten memories. As a result, numerous therapists with even a minor degree of skill in hypnosis jumped on the bandwagon, and before you knew it, people were "remembering" previously repressed memories of sexual abuse in massive numbers, a number that included actress and comedian Roseanne Barr (a.k.a., Roseanne Arnold, a.k.a.,...isn't it just plain old Roseanne now or did she end up taking the last name of that bodyguard of hers that she married?). These allegations were taken extremely seriously by the courts and the media, as well as many in the mental health profession.
Of course, it's now known that people who suffer severe trauma very rarely, if ever, suppress such memories but instead suffer from empirically demonstrable conditions like post-traumatic stress syndrome, which often afflicts former soldiers who had truly horrific experiences in combat, victims of extreme forms of physical abuse by parents and/or their peers when younger, and victims of various violent crimes. This well documented condition made it clear what most often happens when someone undergoes a truly traumatic experience, which is the exact opposite of what the purveyors of the "repressed memory" nonsense claimed, i.e., that traumatic events in someone's life, which was believed to be a common reaction by children to sexual abuse until later studies (documented below) proved otherwise, would very often be forgotten as the result of an alleged natural self-defense mechanism of the psyche.
After thousands of innocent people, often parents and other relatives, were falsely accused of SA and dragged through legal hell over the course of a decade due to events that were allegedly forgotten by their supposed victims until retrieved by hypnosis, the "repressed memory syndrome" was finally exposed beyond a shadow of a doubt as the junk science that it was in the book The Myth Of Repressed Memory: False Memories And Allegations Of Sexual Abuse by psychologist and memory expert Dr. Elizabeth F. Loftus with the assistance of Katherine Ketcham.
Other books and articles have appeared in the mental health literature since then which cast further aspersions on the concept of "repressed memory," such as this excellent and extraordinary article on Loftus' book by Karen Adler:
w w w(@)web.archive.org/web/20110105095150/https://ishk.net/myth_of_repressed_memory.pdf
A page containing many links to other articles on this topic can be found here:
w w w(@)web.archive.org/web/20111207131728/https://w w w(@)smwane.dk/content/section/6/31
And let's not forget how the "repressed memory syndrome" and the irresponsible use of hypnosis combined with other factors to create the alien abduction phenomenon that was popularized by such books as artist Budd Hopkin's series of tomes on the subject starting with Missing Time near the end of the 1970s, on the eve of the beginning of the SA hysteria, and author/actor Whitley Strieber's equally popular series of books on this topic beginning with Communion in the 1980s. One cannot ignore the blatant sexual aspects and confabulation of fantasy and reality with "memories" retrieved via hypnosis that is highly evident in this phenomenon that became most popular during the days when "repressed memory syndrome" was at the peak of its societal acceptance. The alien abduction phenomenon was quite possibly influenced in certain ways by the sex abuse hysteria that was going on alongside it, which is evident when you analyze the reports closely enough and see how many youths were supposed to be involved in this phenomenon.
6) All cases of what is legally considered underage pornography are always produced by adults and never by the minors themselves. That simultaneously stereotypical and comforting idea to victim feminists and antis was blown out of the water completely once the sexting phenomenon came to light towards the end of the first decade of the 21st century:
w w w(@)web.archive.org/web/20120224210002/w w w(@)cbsnews(@)c o m/stories/2009/01/15/national/main4723161.shtml
or
w w w(@)archive.ph/nVxP
This revelation shouldn't have taken the public by surprise, since it was revealed a few years earlier that teens were routinely taking and uploading nude pics of themselves on socnet sites like MySpace, as noted here:
https://w w w(@)cantonrep(@)c o m/story/news/2009/03/27/girl-14-arrested-after-posting/42649884007
or
w w w(@)web.archive.org/web/20100405063512/http://w w w(@)sodahead(@)c o m/business/14-year-old-arrested-for-uploading-nude-pics-on-myspace-should-justice-be-served/question-293484
This time, it wasn't possible for the media to blame adults for this increasingly popular method of underagers to express their sexuality, nor could the mental health industry and victimologists decree their famous mantra, "It's not the fault of the kids!"
The above examples of wishful thinking by our gerontocentric society were blown to hell once and for all with the revelation of Justin Berry's story. For those who are not familiar with the case, Justin Berry was a youth who started a lucrative business for himself by making and distributing pornographic videos of himself masturbating online, beginning when he was 13 on a website of his own creation. He built a large clientele for himself and was very financially healthy as a result. He eventually came to the attention of author and reporter Kurt Eichenwald, who wrote a much balleyhooed article on Justin Berry's story in The New York Times, which was filled with all the typical mainstream propaganda about how Berry was the victim in this situation, how his homosexual male clientele "exploited" him, how the advent of webcams and other new technology is a terrible thing for young people to have in their possession, how the Internet is allegedly filled to the brim with predators, etc. However, there were many things that Eichenwald didn't mention about Berry's story in his bias-filled article, including the fact that he directly insinuated himself into Berry's life by giving him money to allegedly try and help him "turn over a new leaf." Eichenwald was even found to have high-level access to one of Berry's illegal sites, and Eichenwald later convinced Berry to speak out on Internet predation in public by officially going along with Eichenwald's claims that he was a victim. Hence, once Berry turned 18 and was no longer sale material to his homosexual hebephile clientele, playing the "victim" card was probably seen as the wisest thing for him to do, since he had great potential to become a media darling as a result and to possibly make a killing by having Eichenwald's sanitized and 'socially acceptable' version of Berry's life story turned into a profitable movie. However, once the facts on the case came out, Eichenwald and Berry lost their movie potential, as well as the chance to turn Berry into a victim-turned-activist-media-sweetheart.
Journalist Debbie Nathan, who had previously debunked the satanic ritual abuse nonsense with her book Satan's Silence in 1995, composed a lengthy article for CounterPunch in 2007 that revealed the full truth behind Justin Berry's story and put all of Eichenwald's politically correct claims to question. That article can be found here:
w w w(@)counterpunch.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/vol-14-no-7-8.pdf
Nathan's article makes it quite clear that Berry was hardly a saint, and his full story will make one question who exactly benefited from his situation the most and who was truly exploited.
Further, Eichenwald's breach of ethical conduct in regards to his behavior during the entire affair is likewise illustrated in the above linked article, and his claims about Berry's innocence and victim status, along with his assertions about Internet "predation" and underage porn for sale and profit being problems of epidemic proportions, are likewise debunked. Another good article detailing Eichenwald's handling of the Justin Berry story is John Farmer's 2006 essay that can be found here:
w w w(@)web.archive.org/web/20140204005827/http://massis.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/TELECOM_Digest_Online2006-2/1358.html
or
https://archive.ph/V6Chw
Farmer does make some disparaging comments about younger people in this article (such as expressing his doubts that a 13-year-old possesses the intellectual and emotional wherewithal to think of creating the type of online business that Berry created without "encouragement" from adults) and he does seem to have no problem with parents incessantly invading the privacy of their kids, but he nevertheless asks many important questions about Eichenwald's portrayal of Justin Berry that need to be asked, and he should be commended for this.
7) The brains of adolescents are inherently faulty due to innate biological factors and thus they have an inherent tendency to make poor decisions that necessitate denying them most of their civil rights and keeping them under the control of their parents and other adults for their own good. This idea has been fashionable since the turn of the 19th/20th century when the early stages of the Industrial Revolution eliminated what was left of the rights that young people used to enjoy, and the mid-19th century Victorian concept of the "innocent child" was extended to include anyone under the age of 18.
As a result of this, the concept of a distinct phase of life that came to be called "adolescence" entered the official public consciousness in a major way, and this concept was mostly pioneered by the beginning of the 20th century courtesy of the social conservative psychologist and author G. Stanley Hall. Hall used aspects of what we today call Social Darwinism and misuse of evolutionary biology to claim that the life stage of adolescence was a natural biological reality rather than a social construct. He diligently opposed what he referred to as "precocity" in young people, which can easily be translated as, "Do not let young people do anything more than what society believes they should be doing at that current age, and society should insure that young people at this newly conceptualized stage of life universally adhere to the socio-cultural paradigm we have established for their age group."
As Hall biographer Nancy Lesko said in this article:
w w w(@)education.stateuniversity(@)c o m/pages/2026/Hall-G-Stanley-1844-1924.html,
"The shapers of the modern, scientific adolescent made growing bodies and sexuality primary foci and the measures to prevent precocity enhanced youth's economic dependence" [emphasis mine]. Sociologists and psychologists who have studied the concept of adolescence later in the 20th century and up to the modern era (it's early February of 2010 as I write these words) have increasingly come to question Hall's biological conception of adolescence as being a distinct and natural phase in human development that marks a period between childhood and full adulthood that requires individuals in this intermediate stage to have the same degree of legal and social controls as it came to be believed that children should have since the Victorian era began. This new social construct resulted in young people under the age of 18 who fit into this new category to be given the same legal and social status that pre-pubescents ended up with during the Victorian period (indeed, Western culture tends to view adolescents under 18 as older children rather than young adults). Hall's increasing number of opponents in the social sciences over the course of time began to view his conclusions as outdated.
Major and notable challenges to Hall's theory on adolescence include French sociologist Philippe Aries' book Centuries of Childhood (published in the French speaking world in 1960 and first translated into English in 1962). This tome ended up having a major impact on the social sciences during the liberal era of the 1970s when progressives of that decade began to reassess society's attitude towards younger people that was largely established by Hall and his Victorian predecessors. These reconsiderations of the status of youth included questions regarding their subservient role in the present day social institutions (such as within the nuclear family unit and within the modern elementary and secondary school systems). This was a truly progressive idea that was sadly derailed when the onset of the sex abuse hysteria and the conservative takeover of government, beginning with Ronald Reagan's presidential election in 1980, rolled back the emerging youth liberation movement of the '70s (begun notably in Ann Arbor, Michigan). Further, the combination of the sex abuse hysteria and the conservative takeover of government (which complimented each other heavily) cowered most of the liberal elements of society who began considering the validity of youth competence (including their sexual rights) in the '70s into silence and outright capitulation to the demands of the newly empowered social conservatives. This, of course, was motivated by these progressives' fears of being called "pro-pedophile," "anti-family," "insensitive to victims of child abuse," and other highly unpleasant, potentially career-destroying epithets.
And so things remained until the Internet bloomed to the level we recognize it as today in the late 1990s when the youth liberation movement was reborn in a significant way with the establishment of ASFAR (Americans for a Society Free from Age Restrictions) and, later, the even bigger and more influential youth lib org NYRA (National Youth Rights Association; created by somewhat less radical individuals who had left ASFAR).
All of this led to the pioneering efforts of more scholars in the social sciences such as, perhaps most prominently today, clinical psychologist Dr. Robert Epstein:
https://web.archive.org/web/20120522170542/https://drrobertepstein(@)c o m/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=10&Itemid=29
Dr. Epstein began his work in this area with a highly important and much discussed article published in an issue of Scientific American Mind entitled "The Myth of the Teen Brain" (a digital version of the latter issue of Scientific American Mind containing Dr. Epstein's aforementioned article was purchasable online for $7.95 here in 2011):
https://web.archive.org/web/20110221085733/http://w w w(@)sciamdigital(@)c o m/index.cfmfa=Products.ViewIssuePreview&ARTICLEID_CHAR=9F1EBAA7-2B35-221B-6CBD51A39316C4D6
Here is a new link to a free copy:
https://drrobertepstein(@)c o m/pdf/Epstein-THE_MYTH_OF_THE_TEEN_BRAIN-Scientific_American_Mind-4-07.pdf
Epstein continued and expanded his studies into the reality of adolescent competency with an extremely groundbreaking book The Case Against Adolescence: Rediscovering the Adult in Every Teen in 2007, and quickly followed it up with an updated and expanded version in 2010, TEEN 2.0: Saving Our Children and Families from the Torment of Adolescence. A list of the various cultural myths our society has of adolescents that Dr. Epstein tackles in his book can be found here:
https://teen20(@)c o m
His Young Person's Bill of Rights, written in celebration of the first annual National Youth Rights Day on April 14th, 2010, can be accessed via a link found on the same page as the preview to Epstein's newest book at this writing.
Though I consider Newt Gingrich, the far right-wing former Speaker of the House of Representatives, to be a mortal political nemesis of mine, I have no choice but to commend him (along with his ideological cohort Rush Limbaugh for the same reason) for coming out in favor of this book and the principles for which it stands, something that I am sad to say is much more than most prominent media pundits of the mainstream Left have done thus far. To quote Gingrich:
"Adolescence is a social experiment that failed. Dr. Epstein's book traces the history of the problem, demonstrates with unrelenting perseverance that much of the turmoil of our teens is a creation of our culture, and offers a specific and detailed proposal for getting our young people back on track. If you are concerned about America's young, and about America's future, this is a must-read."
And as physician and author Deepak Chopra importantly noted about this book: We need to re-examine our basic assumptions about young people, and Epstein shows us how.
Another very important article about youth liberation by Dr. Epstein, this one specifically aimed at how the modern secondary education system that we call high school needs to be dispensed with to a great extent, and which also details the circumstances that led Dr. Epstein to question modern cultural attitudes towards young people and ultimately embracing youth liberation, is his 2007 essay published in an issue of Education Week entitled, "Let's Abolish High School":
w w w(@)drrobertepstein(@)c o m/downloads/Epstein-Lets_Abolish_High_School-Education_Week-4-4-07.pdf
A very important thing to note here is that in the latter article Dr. Epstein mentions the fact that he is a father of four children, which should further demolish the self-righteous claim of many of those who do not support youth liberation (both outside of and sometimes within the MAA community) that only people who are not parents could possibly support youth liberation, and that any youth liberationist who becomes a parent will quickly repudiate their support of youth lib, or that that youth liberation is inherently incompatible with and hostile to the institution of parenthood. In fact, Epstein describes in the opening paragraph of this essay that his status as a parent actually led him to embrace youth lib, not automatically reject it, as those who are hostile to or ambivalent about the youth lib platform will often claim.
As all of the above makes clear, there are now serious challenges to the societal assumptions that adolescents are inherently incompetent due to a "faulty" or "underdeveloped" brain, and these challenges are being increasingly supported by a growing number of individuals in the social sciences. These latter social scientists are now being joined by others who are familiar with the history of childhood and how different conceptions of "The Child" in the pre-Victorian era were in comparison to afterwards. And this as opposed to the conception that was adopted since that ideology's paradigm for children became the dominant one in our society, and later expanded to include young adults who are under the arbitrary age of 18.
8) Mutually consensual sexual contact between anyone today considered to be 'minors' and those who are adults is always traumatizing for the younger person and will likely cause lifelong psychological 'damage' to them, no matter how much the minor in question may have enjoyed and desired the experience. This powerfully imbedded and very widely held cultural assumption causes even many of the most outspoken and generally brave progressives and liberals to cower like an animal confronted with fire whenever this subject is brought up, and such individuals are more than quick to throw aside their ideology's devotion to open-mindedness and do nothing more than mindlessly agree with the mainstream view of this truly hot button topic. To show even the slightest deviation from the mainstream view, or even to ask for empirical evidence of its validity, runs the risk of being called a series of very unpleasant names and likely doom a planned political campaign or future job promotion.
The conservative conquest of our national mindset beginning with the Reagan victory in 1980, along with the onset of the ongoing sex abuse hysteria and the accompanying "pedophile panic," is one of the most potent weapons used to keep those we today call 'underagers' or 'minors' under the direct control of both their parents and the state despite the fact that the largest amount of real abuse directed against young people of all kinds--including sexual abuse and even murder--occurs by individuals living within the home and who possess the most direct and stringent power over these minors.
The tragic kidnapping and murder of eight-year-old Adam Walsh in his home town of Hollywood, Florida by a deranged serial killer (who is believed to have been a man named Otis Toole who died while in prison for an unrelated offense later in the 1980s and thus never brought to justice specifically for Adam's brutal murder) caused Adam's very understandably grief-stricken father John Walsh to declare war not on the small number of dangerous serial killers and other SCM who target kids per se (which would have been entirely justifiable), but on Minor Attracted Adults specifically. Picking up on the SA hysteria that was in its early stages when his son was killed, John Walsh spread what came to be called the highly disingenuous "stranger danger" phenomenon. He proved to be one of those individuals in this mess whose desire for vengeance over that of reasonable justice, along with his total disregard for truth on this subject, caused the sex abuse hysteria to reach the epidemic level that it remains at today, three decades after the tragic loss of his son. John Walsh largely accomplished this by exploiting his situation and the hysteria accompanying it to establish a major media career for himself that promulgated one of the greatest myths of this hysteria: that "pedophiles" (which Walsh, like most of the rest of the media, use as a blanket term for both genuine pedophiles and hebephiles) are responsible for effectively all of the sexual abuse inflicted upon minors in society. In his eyes, there is no such thing as a SCM, i.e., what even the FBI admits are adults, and on some occasions adolescents, who commit the bulk of all real non-consensual and coerced acts of sexual violence on minors and who usually do not have a strong or preferential attraction to them and are therefore not real pedophiles or hebephiles in the vast majority of cases.
Walsh also pushed the idea that the threat of strangers who kidnap and SA and murder minors constitute a menace of epidemic proportions, thus totally ignoring the facts. The facts are that most SCMs who commit acts of genuine and demonstrable abuse against them operate within the home and sometimes within other institutions where adults have the most direct and strictest degree of power over them, such as boarding schools. The SCMs who are strangers to youths, including the very rare breed of serial killer that targets them, are extremely rare.
Youth liberationists do not consider John Walsh to be an ally by any means, because his efforts have resulted in draconian laws that have imposed further and further restrictions on the rights of young people, not to mention an increase in the cultural attitude that they are inherently incompetent and always in extreme danger of being kidnapped and assaulted or even murdered by deadly trenchcoat wearing strangers. Therefore, according to the ideology of the "child advocates" that Walsh had a big hand in empowering, young people under the age of 18 are in dire need of this increased parental control "for their own good."
Youth liberationists are also angered by the manner in which Walsh has worked to further empower the institutions where minors suffer the greatest amount of actual abuse of all kinds, such as the hierarchal structure of the nuclear family unit, and deceived the public as towards the real reasons why the vast majority of the 100,000 minors reported as missing every year were not at home. And if any of our opponents (or any of the "moderate" elements from the MAA community, for that matter) doubts that the youth liberation movement could possibly have any beef with John Walsh and the many misleading bits of information spread about the threats to the safety of young people in America by the organization he founded, the National Center For Missing and Exploited Children, please take a gander at this article: w w w(@)youthrights.net/yt/v2n6.pdf from 2001 by youth liberationist Lisa Freeman that appeared in an issue of Youth Truth, ASFAR's official zine. And please note that Freeman has nothing whatsoever to do with the MAA community and there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that she is an MAA herself. This is true of the great majority of the youth lib movement, in case our enemies (including Walsh himself) might attempt to claim that Freeman must be a "pedophile" for denouncing an esteemed organization like the NCFMEC.
Walsh was soon joined by another major player in his mindless and vindictive crusade against MAAs who also did more than her fair share of contributing to the growth of the SA hysteria and its accompanying industry. Oprah Winfrey came on the scene in the 1980s a few years after John Walsh began building his influential career in the media and ended up building an even bigger and more lucrative career than Walsh did. Winfrey is often credited with the invention of what came to be known as "trash TV," a method of doing a talk show that made the once respectable genre under the hands of serious seekers of the truth like Phil Donahue into something that ravenously sought superior ratings via the exploitation of serious topics by means of sensationalism rather than objective discussion and consideration which analyzed all sides of any issue. If one has any doubts about this, then simply look at the difference between the early talk shows of the '70s, heralded by Donahue, and what passes for them today, with the likes of Jerry Springer having such huge ratings and popularity.
Oprah's constantly growing influence and self-serving grab at big ratings effectively helped turn all talk shows against serious discussion of adult attraction to minors, and also helped further popularize the "victim mentality" (described above in my discussion of The Courage To Heal). However, Winfrey didn't simply push such a mentality on adult women, but also upon anyone who had any type of intimate relationship with an adult prior to turning 18 regardless of consent. Of course, she also pushed anti-male attitudes in general on her huge audience that consisted mostly of women, the latter attitudes being (according to a theory of mine) a major component behind the justification of the age of consent laws. When Oprah revealed that she was SA by an uncle when she was a child (the real details of which have never been fully investigated at this writing to determine things such as whether or not Oprah's uncle was a true pedophile, nor the authentic nature of the incidents she describes), she used this as a justification to officially declare open season on MAAs. She has done as much as John Walsh has to popularize the idea that young people under 18 can never be anything other than victims in relationships with adults. To this day she continues to spread an increasing number of sometimes truly bizarre and outright outlandish and nightmarish lies about MAAs. A good example of this is her recent outrageous claim that the "pedophile" community had posted an online instruction manual supposedly giving each other advice on how to sexually abuse kids, some as young as infants, in extremely graphic and disturbing ways, including the insertion of knives and other implements in their sexual organs. Predictably, no one in any of the many MAA boards I am familiar with has any idea what she was talking about or has ever even seen, let alone participated in the creation of, such a horrendous instruction manual. A few in the MAA community have conjectured that if this instruction manual actually exists anywhere on the Net (and that's a huge if) it's probably nothing more than a very sick joke composed by Internet trolls.
Considering how Winfrey continues to terrify the public with outrageously horrid claims like the one mentioned above, which no one outside the community ever bothers to substantiate or even question, is it any surprise that her many viewers hate and fear MAAs with such a passion? And then there was the 9000 penis's affair which at least served to embarrass her when it was revealed that it was a hoax from a troll at her website and not a true pedophile, but this incident still didn't humiliate her enough to tarnish her stellar reputation among her viewers, nor to expose her singular lack of concern for seeking the truth when it comes to this subject.
As a result of the SA hysteria being helped along by the likes of Walsh and Winfrey, both of them since its early days, the idea that youths under 18 are terribly and irreparably traumatized by any type of sexual contact with adults, regardless of the matter of consent, was considered an irrefutable fact that has rarely been questioned by any politician or researcher. But there were some dissenting views here and there which did have an impact, and the massive amount of courage it took these lone voices in the wilderness to go against conventional wisdom when it comes to this particular topic was immense and commendable in the extreme.
One of the first reports to come out that did a serious study of the issue of trauma during the SA hysteria was the Rind Report: w w w(@)eng.anarchopedia.org/Rind_Report a government funded study conducted by (taken from the above link) Bruce Rind, Department of Psychology Temple University, Philip Tromovitch, Graduate School of Education Temple University and Robert Bauserman, Department of Psychology, University of Michigan.
The stated goal of the report was to do an objective study on the following common assumptions:
-"Child sexual abuse (CSA) causes psychological harm;
-this harm is pervasive;
-this harm is intense; and
-boys and girls experience CSA equivalently."
This meta-analysis ultimately concluded, "Self-reported reactions to and effects from CSA indicated that negative effects were neither pervasive nor typically intense, and that men reacted much less negatively than women. The college data were completely consistent with data from national samples. Basic beliefs about CSA in the general population were not supported" [emphasis mine].
Of course, there is no doubt that the Rind Report is flawed to some degree, because it seemed to be conducted under the premise that all such contact is to be considered "abuse" in an absolutist sense (though, as you will see, it did take the matter of consent into account), and the report's loaded statement that girls are much more likely to receive a negative experience from all forms of sexual contact with adults has been challenged and contradicted elsewhere (I will get to that soon), though virtually no other aspect of Rind's study has been successfully refuted anywhere else by any objective study.
As a result of the above mentioned flaw, a certain number of BLers who have no interest in promoting the rights of GLers and girls along with those of BLers and boys often justify this lack of consideration for the rights of adults and minors who do not fit their own gender preference by quoting the above conclusion of the Rind Report and deciding that girls are much more likely to perceive even mutually consensual contact with men (if not also with women) negatively than boys. This provides the rationale of these "old school" BLers for not working with GLers politically or supporting the emancipation of girls in equal degree to their support for the rights of boys, and thus exclusively arguing for the societal legitimization of man/boy love and the rights of boys while ignoring and occasionally even denouncing the equal legitimization of man/girl love (or even women/girl love) and the right for girls to choose whom they can love in addition to the rights of boys to do the same. Such BLers never seemed to bother asking the important question of who the girl participants in Rind's study happened to be, whether or not their sexual liaisons with adults were consensual or non-consensual, or (perhaps most importantly) whether or not these girls engaged in liaisons with adults that were found out, and if the girls who reported these negative experiences had therefore been subjected to the infamous intervention process by the police and agenda-driven social workers whose "interview" methods (perhaps more correctly referred to as interrogation methods) came to public attention during the previously mentioned McMartin day-care incident that occurred years earlier.
Thanks to my fellow GL activist SuiDream, I was notified that the Rind Report did indeed have a flaw in it that was recognized as such by the three psychologists who conducted the meta-analysis. So I did a thorough search of the Rind Report and found out that there is indeed a flaw in the original correlations made in the meta-analysis that claimed girls are much more likely to have a negative reaction to a sexual liaison with an adult than boys (which I will get to in a moment).
The Rind Report was not entirely flawed as the antis claim, however, because no alternate objective research on this subject that included boys and girls have found any evidence that boys react more negatively to sexual contact with adults than girls do, but this other research (including that conducted by Sharon Thompson, which didn't include boys at all) has found that girls in addition to boys generally do not react negatively to sexual relations with adults when such contact is mutually consensual and does not involve incestual advances by those with the most direct power over these youths.
When one does a thorough reading of the Rind Report, one will notice a certain passage which makes it abundantly clear that a likely reason why the girl participants expressed a much greater likelihood of having a negative reaction to their sexual liaisons with adults is because the samples of college students used included a disproportionately large number of those who were subject to incestual advances. Note the following passage from the Rind Report itself:
A chi-square test of the homogeneity of the sample-level effect sizes revealed that they were not homogeneous, X2(53) = 78, p < .01. In an attempt to achieve homogeneity, we examined the distribution of sample-level effect sizes to determine whether outliers existed. We defined outliers to be effect sizes that were at least 1.96 standard deviations away from the unweighted mean effect size (i.e., falling in the extreme 5% of the distribution). Three outliers were found (r = .36 in Jackson et al., 1990; r = .40 in Roland et al., 1989; r = -.25 in Silliman, 1993) with z scores of 2.71, 3.16, and -3.60, respectively. The Jackson et al. study included only incest cases in the CSA group, and the Roland et al. study included a large proportion of incest cases [emphasis mine]. Moreover, Neumann et al. (1996) also found the Roland et al. result to be an outlier. Measures used in these studies from which effect sizes were computed included: the SAS, BDI, RSE, and DSFI (Jackson et al., 1990); the MMPI form R (Roland et al., 1989); and the LOC and TSCS (Silliman, 1993). These measures were all used in other studies whose effect sizes were not outliers, implying that the outlying results were not a function of these measures. Removing these outliers resulted in homogeneity, *2(50) = 49.19, p > .50, based on k = 51 samples, with N = 15,635 subjects [emphasis mine]. The recalculated unbiased effect size estimate (/- = .09) and the 95% confidence interval (.08 to .11) were unchanged after rounding. The obtained small unbiased effect size estimate implies that, in the college population, the magnitude of the relationship between CSA and adjustment is small, which contradicts the assumption that CSA is associated with intense harm in the typical case [emphasis mine].
Initial meta-analyses yielded 8 homogeneous and 10 heterogeneous results. In an attempt to achieve homogeneity with heterogeneous sets, we examined the distribution of effect sizes within each of these sets to detect outliers, as defined previously. We removed all such deviant effect sizes and then recomputed the meta-analyses. If homogeneity was achieved in a particular set, then the search for outliers stopped for that set. Otherwise, the reduced set of effect sizes was examined for new outliers, and, if found, the outliers were removed and the meta-analysis was performed again. If the set of effect sizes was still heterogeneous and no additional outliers were found, the set was considered to be heterogeneous. This procedure resulted in achieving homogeneity in 7 of the 10 initially heterogeneous sets, yielding 15 out of 18 homogeneous sets [emphasis mine]. Effect sizes remained heterogeneous only for hostility, self-esteem, and sexual adjustment. Of the 9 effect sizes removed in the 7 sets that became homogeneous, the majority came from two of the studies that contributed to the heterogeneity of effect sizes in the sample-level metaanalysis 5 from Roland et al. (1989) and 1 from Jackson et al. (1990). These six effect sizes and one additional effect size from Bendixen et al.'s (1994) female sample were removed from the upper end of their distributions [emphasis mine]. Two effect sizes were removed from the lower end of their distribution (Fishman, 1991; Fromuth & Burkhart, 1989, Southwest sample). Measures on which removed effect sizes were based in Jackson et al.'s and Roland et al.'s studies were listed previously in the sample level meta-analysis section; Bendixen et al. and Fishman used investigator-authored items, whereas Fromuth and Burkhart used the SCL-90-R. Many studies with no outlying effect sizes used investigator-authored items and the SCL-90-R, implying that the outlying results were not a function of the measures used.
In Table 3, the original numbers (i.e., number of samples, number of participants in these samples, unbiased effect size estimate, and homogeneity statistic) associated with the heterogeneous results for the seven sets that became homogeneous are shown in parentheses, whereas the numbers associated with the reduced homogeneous sets appear directly under the column headings. Removing outliers showed itself to be productive in achieving homogeneity [emphasis mine]; further, this procedure had little effect on effect size estimates, indicating that the large majority of effect size estimates can be considered to be reliable estimates of true effect sizes in the college population. The unbiased effect size estimates for all 18 symptoms were small according to Cohen's (1988) guidelines [emphasis mine]. The effect size estimates ranged from ru = .04 to .13. Despite these small values, all effect size estimates, except for one (locus of control), were statistically significantly greater than zero, as is indicated by their 95% confidence intervals. These findings indicate that, for all symptoms but one, CSA participants as a group were slightly less well adjusted than control participants. The small magnitude of all effect size estimates implies that CSA effects or correlates in the college population are not intense for any of the 18 metaanalyzed symptoms [emphasis mine].
The overabundance of cases involving incest was very likely present in many more of the girl participants in the study than the boy participants, thus likely accounting for the discrepancy. And, as noted in the above excerpt (all taken from pp. 31-32 of the Rind Report), once the above outliers were adjusted and removed from the female samples, there was much less disharmony with the male samples. Hence, the Rind Report actually admitted that the above-mentioned flaw was indeed a discrepancy in the meta-analysis, and the final draft of the report recognized and corrected this. It's unfortunate that so many people seem to have failed to read this section of the Rind Report, and have used it as an excuse to imply that girls are less capable of handling their sexual rights than boys are. Or, within the MAA community, that BL is more legitimate from a moral standpoint than GL is. It seems rather clear from the above study that girls appear to be much more often subject to incestual advances by parents and other close relatives within the home than boys are. This fact would certainly account for the above noted discrepancy in the study results. But that should have little bearing on girls' typical reactions to sexual activity with adults who do not live within the home, do not have a direct degree of authority over them, are not related to them, and for which the relationship was entirely consensual.
There are further good reasons to ask the questions I just asked about the female participants in Rind et al.'s meta-analysis. This is because other researchers who have interviewed underage females that engaged in specifically mutually consensual sexual liaisons with men who had no direct authority over them and were not related to them, such as Sharon Thompson in her monumentally large study of teen girls' sexual lives that was recorded in this very important book Going All The Way: Teenage Girls' Tales of Sex, Romance, and Pregnancy:
https://books.google(@)c o m/books?id=xfObOu5n99sC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Going+All+The+Way+by+Sharon+Thompson&source=bl&ots=CW3SetgFrl&sig=DXrM7T9vnmo_pi2vi-WDVvycL1g&hl=en&ei=tvttS8WnIZCRjAfG06D0BQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false
,have reported things quite differently than the initial results of the Rind Report before the above mentioned discrepancy was accounted for. In this study she tackled the subject of these young girls' romantic relationships with adult men in Chapter 7 of that book, and she made the issue of consent quite clear in the questions she gave to her girl interviewees. She didn't make the mistake of lumping all sexual encounters together under one heading, without taking the important matter of consent into account.
As Peggy Ornstein said in her online review:
w w w(@)nytimes(@)c o m/1995/08/27/books/sex-and-the-teen-age-girl.html?pagewanted=1
of Thompson's book, "Sharon Thompson's Going All the Way takes a brave approach to one of the most emotionally and politically charged issues of our times: sex and teen-age girls. Let me make this clear: this is not a book lamenting teen-age pregnancy rates. It is not a rant against promiscuity. Ms. Thompson is simply, without censure, reporting on how young women see their sexual selves." Hence, the objectivity--not to mention courage--of Thompson's study of this subject is made quite clear in Ornstein's review (and for anyone who reads the book), and to her credit Thompson was concerned more with establishing the truth than she was with promoting a certain popular moral agenda that ends up effectively stereotyping teen girls by showing them little if any respect.
Regarding what was said by the many interviewed girls regarding their mutually consensual liaisons with adult men, Ornstein reports, "And while the girls with adult male lovers generally reported enjoying sex [emphasis mine], they too operated on a barter system, often swapping erotic favors for surrogate fathering." It's quite possible that most of the females that Thompson interviewed with this particular set of questions were not gerontophiles, and thus weren't naturally oriented towards adult men sexually and emotionally. However, the "surrogate fathering" thing, another stereotype directed at teen girls every time they get involved romantically with adult men, may be translated as girls who seek out relationships with men for reasons that are not entirely honest to the men in question. Nevertheless, the fact that these females found surrogate "fathering" from their adult male lovers, and made it clear that they were not psychologically damaged or felt degraded by the sexual aspect of the relationship, it can be surmised as an educated guess that these girls' genuinely wanted the sex and may have had a strong sexual attraction to the men they had these relationships with even if they described themselves as "exchanging" sex for "fathering" in their interviews with Thompson.
There are plenty of reasons why such stereotypes should be questioned. For one thing, it's well known to anyone who is either a parent or has worked with kids, or to anyone who has ever been a kid, that very few young people, both pre-pubescents or adolescents, ever do anything that they truly do not want to do or are not compelled to do out of absolute necessity. The idea that sexual activity is the one thing in the world that underagers will engage in if they don't want to with adults, let alone those particular adults who do not live with them or have any particular degree of strict power over them, is quite baffling and entirely devoid of common sense, to say the least. Further, it's well known that there are many adult men that do not have a romantic preference for adolescent girls but who still have a measure of respect for these girls that would gladly play the role of surrogate father for them without expecting erotic "favors" in return. Why don't girls who are only seeking a platonic father surrogate--and nothing more--simply find men who are not hebephiles (and thus do not have a preference for teens) and make it clear to them from the get-go that they are looking for a platonic friend or "father figure" and nothing more? Furthermore, since the hebephile attraction base encompasses far more than a simple sexual attraction to teen girls, and includes (at least in most cases) a strong social component to it, why couldn't these girls approach a caring hebephile and make it clear from the get-go that they were simply looking for platonic friendship and support?
One is forced to suspect that many of these girls who were interviewed by Thompson found adult men whom they had a degree of physical attraction to, came onto them sexually, and convinced these men that they were in an actual romantic relationship with these girls when in actuality the girls hoped to keep these men around for their friendship and the feeling that they were a surrogate father figure of some sort who would perhaps take care of them in certain ways that they wouldn't have if the girls didn't feign a romantic interest in them. If so, this would constitute disingenuous and even manipulative behavior on the part of the girls, who may have felt that convincing these men they had a sexual/romantic interest in them would serve to wrap them around their fingers more, and to be more likely to keep them around in their lives. This, of course, contrasts heavily with the contention by many that these girls could never be anything other than a victim of these men, and that the adults in such cases are always without exception the ones in the wrong because unlike anyone who is under 18, adults are always believed to "know better." In other words, our society believes that it's impossible for an underage girl to manipulate an older man, and that only the reverse is possible because of the common ageist belief that older people always have superior wisdom and worldly experience than younger people do. Of course, if this was true, one wonders how the large number of young con artists working for fraudulent telemarketing companies have managed to so effectively bilk senior citizens out of their life savings.
Any man who has been actively dating for any length of time have met the type of young woman described above, and hebephiles are well aware that there are adolescent girls who do exactly the same thing as these women who are legally adults do and are just as competent and capable of pulling it off, which should be expected since adolescents are essentially young adults.
True gerontophiles, however, are not usually looking for a surrogate father figure when they enter into such relationships with adults, but have a genuine physical, emotional, and social orientation towards adult men (or women). Hence, their feelings for much older men (or much older women), and their reasons for seeking them out as lovers, are for reasons that are no different than why teleiophile women seek out adult men for romantic relationships.
The main point is, however, that these many females who had mutually consensual sex with much older adult men found the physical intimacy they shared with them generally enjoyable and did not later report psychological damage or overwhelming feelings of being used and abused as a result. Further, the many female gerontophiles who have visited the MAA community in the past have made it quite clear that they did not suffer any psychological damage or negative reaction to sexual relationships with adult men if the relationships were mutually consensual.
It should be noted that the remaining number of BLers who ignore the rights of girls and GLers, and who may not consider them as morally legitimate as the rights of boys and BLers to choose to have relationships with each other, have thankfully greatly diminished over the past decade now that there are several message boards, including Newgon, where BLers and GLers routinely interact with each other, learn about each other, support each other, and perhaps most importantly, where the BLers who participate in these joint boards have met as many female gerontophiles as they have their male counterparts and are thus quite aware that girls are not more likely than boys to receive a negative reaction from a mutually consensual relationship with a man (or a woman, for that matter). The ever diminishing number of BLers who still feel that man/boy love is morally superior to man/girl love, and who show signs that they may believe that girls are less capable of handling their rights as boys, prominently appears to include the author whose otherwise excellent work is archived on the SafeHaven Foundation Press website: w w w(@)shfri.net/shfp/shfp.cgi that he established to keep his work available to the public. This particular BLer author should know better given the several decades he has been doing research on this subject, yet he evidently still uses one of the few faults of the Rind Report to justify his total lack of interest in fighting to legitimize Girl Love as well as Boy Love. If he had bothered to interact with GLers as so many other BLers do nowadays rather than posting on boards exclusively inhabited by BLers, and if he met and talked to as many female gerontophiles as he has done with their male counterparts, he would indeed know this and not blindly follow the conclusion made by the Rind Report regarding the experiences of girls who had experiences with men being much more likely to be negative than that of boys who did the same when there is good reason to question that statement due to all of what I mentioned above.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Rind Report was "condemned and denounced" by Congress despite the fact that its findings and methodology was further peer reviewed by representatives of the APA, and psychologist Ray Fowler, representing that org and its review of the Rind Report, concluded: "Because the article has attracted so much attention, we have carefully reviewed the process by which it was approved for publication and the soundness of the methodology and analysis. This study passed the journal's rigorous peer review process and has, since the controversy, been reviewed again by an expert in statistical analysis who affirmed that it meets current standards and that the methodology, which is widely used by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop guidelines, is sound." But Congress' denunciation of the Rind Report's conclusions by a unanimous vote of 355-0 [!], which made it clear that no politician of either major political party will dare to be open-minded about this subject right now, and that the government officials' unwillingness to put science and truth before deeply held cultural beliefs no matter how much evidence is presented to counter such beliefs, should encourage more people to question the "wisdom" of the government far more often than they do. Sadly, due to all the outside attacks on his studies in this area, Dr. Rind was scared away from pursuing this particular research any further and has since put his time and efforts into other, less controversial areas of study.
However, as noted in this very important article: w w w(@)archive.ph/Mqkqv by Dr. Frans Gieles that offers a detailed counter-argument to the detractors of the Rind Report, Dr. Rind and his fellow authors of the report made this statement when the issue of consent was brought up by the many detractors of their study, specifically in regards to the ability of adolescents to consent, which was readily and officially recognized by the APA in a 1989 statement to the Supreme Court, and also made a strong implication that the studies suggested that pre-pubescents may be able to give what was defined as 'simple consent' (if not the more commonly used 'informed consent'), which was still found to result in positive or at least neutral outcomes by children who have utilized it in non-coerced and non-incestual relationships with adults:
It should also be made clear that when Congress, the Leadership Council, the Family Research Council, or even the APA is talking about 'children' in the context of sexual relations with adults, they are not using biological definitions of childhood, but instead are referring to minors under the age of consent, which is generally from 16 to 18 in the U.S. Thus, they are talking not only about prepubescent children, but also adolescents. It is thus informative to review what the APA has had to say in the past about adolescents' ability to provide informed consent in a different context. In an October, 1989 amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court, the APA argued, based on a review of the developmental literature, that pregnant girls do not need parental consent to obtain abortions, because they are capable, in an informed consent sense, to decide for themselves. They wrote:
"Psychological theory and research about cognitive, social and moral development strongly supports the conclusion that most adolescents are competent to make informed decisions about important life situations [emphasis mine]. . . . In fact, by middle adolescence (age 14-15) young people develop abilities similar to adults in reasoning about moral dilemmas, understanding social rules and laws, and reasoning about interpersonal relationships and interpersonal problems. . . . By middle adolescence most young people develop an adult-like identity and understanding of self. . . . Thus, by age 14 most adolescents have developed adult-like intellectual and social capacities including specific abilities outlined in the law as necessary for understanding treatment alternatives, considering risks and benefits, and giving legally competent consent. . . .
[Additionally,] there are some 11-to-13-year-olds who possess adult-like capabilities in these areas.
"In view of these conclusions, which are based on the developmental literature, it seems inconsistent to reject even simple consent [emphasis mine] as a moderating variable in a rigorously peer-reviewed article, given that many of the CSA [child sexual abuse] episodes analyzed involved adolescents. In short, the scientific data demonstrate the utility of consent, in the sense of simple consent or willingness, as a moderating variable. Thus, simple consent is a valid scientific construct for predicting and understanding the outcomes associated with CSA experiences [emphasis mine]."
It should be noted that the above quoted amicus brief given to the Supreme Court by the APA in 1989 likewise backs up the research and assertions made by Robert Epstein that was mentioned in a previous section of this essay.
The Family Research Council said in response to the Rind Report: "Whatever the children's perceptions were, we know, "that they were not capable of legally, ethically, morally, mentally, or emotionally consenting to sex with anybody, much less an adult." Thus, what we are left with is a study that should never have seen the light of day, much less publication in a professional journal."
It's a typical ageist move for adults with a moral agenda to protect the integrity of the current institutions of society while masquerading as "protecting" the children to disregard just about anything that kids say unless it somehow fits their agenda to do so, such as when so many people insisted that believing everything the kids said in the McMartin pre-school incident despite the complete lack of evidence of what the kids were claiming, its utter outlandishness, and without considering what effect the bullying 'interview' methods of the social workers involved in the case may have had on the kids.
In regards to the issue of consent being impossible for minors, Dr. Gieles remarks:
Several authors before Rind et al. have accepted that their participants told them that their experiences were wanted in a certain percentage of the cases. A scientist has to accept this as a matter of fact [emphasis mine]. The fact is: "the participants told me"
As the authors [i.e., Rind and his collaborators in his report] said it: "In the research we reviewed on the effects of CSA, "consent" has meant the victim's own perception of his or her level of participation - from being forced to willingness - because this is known to affect a victim's reaction to the experience [emphasis mine]. Given that our study is a review of dozens of other studies, many of which explicitly examined how victim's own perceptions of their level of participation affect outcomes, it was appropriate for us to examine this factor as well." Thus, “consent” was not a premise, nor a central concept, but one of the factors that could vary the participant’s perception of the CSA event [emphasis mine].
If one rejects the possibility of willingness, one should reject every study that finds a difference between willing and unwilling experiences. But if consent to sex - informed or not - is impossible for children to give to adults, one has to then wonder why it makes such a dramatic difference in outcomes. Though a self-perceived level of consent may be of no interest to FRC [the Family Research Council], the meta-analysis demonstrates that the self-perceived level of consent makes a huge difference to actual children [emphasis mine].
The FRC statement cited above, "Whatever the children's perceptions were, we know that the children were not capable" is quite clear. What children say and feel is not important because FRC knows better.
I couldn't have said it better myself. And it now becomes clear why the FRC and other orgs like it sought to suppress the findings of the Rind Report so strongly...those findings went against the political and moral agenda of such orgs, and violated not children's safety but rather society's cultural norms.
Dr. Gieles concludes: "If the children say they were harmed, they must be believed. NAMBLA has to accept the facts. But if they say they were not, they must still be believed. FRC has to also accept the facts. Otherwise, the children are just being used."
I agree that children should be listened to if they say they were harmed by sexual contact with an adult. However, I think it's an entirely valid concern to sometimes question the verisimilitude of such statements if the youth in question had mutually consensual sexual activity with an adult and was subsequently found out and the youth in question was forced into what passes for "therapy" within the clinics of the sex abuse industry. Why didn't the members of the Rind commission take this into consideration? Come to think of it, why didn't Dr. Gieles do the same thing in his article? It's a very well known and extremely obvious fact to anyone who has ever spoken to someone who has been through this "therapy" that a huge dose of behavioral, conceptual, and moral modification is done to the young person if they say they weren't harmed by the contact with their adult lover and if they assert that the experiences were positive.
I have personally known a brave teen female gerontophile activist (she used to post on some of the MAA boards as Fayla) who spoke out in defense of mutually consensual relationships between adults and youths under 18, both on the boards and in a series of audio recordings she uploaded to Youtube. When her real identity was found out by the notorious anti-MAA hate group called Perverted Justice, and her parents, her school, and the police in her home city were notified of what she was doing by this organization, she was forced against her will into this "therapy." She described to me the entire ordeal of any underage person who dares openly disagree with the moralizing imperatives thrown at them by the police and the corrupt therapists who oversee such programs. They relentlessly insisted that she was emotionally ill as a result of her preference for adult men, that she was "abused" by her adult boyfriend and that he couldn't possibly have loved her but was only using her for his own selfish purposes, that it's not possible or "normal" for an adult to love a person under 18 (any MAA will tell you that this common belief is a total load of bull), and that she should feel resentful against him and do everything in her power to see to it that he is put in jail. She had previously had other adult boyfriends whom her therapists likewise told her couldn't possibly have had any genuine feelings for her and couldn't have done anything other than having used and manipulated her for entirely selfish reasons, that she should hate every single one of them for what they did "to" her, and that she should do her utmost to cooperate with her "rescuers" by giving them the identities of these men so that they can be arrested. If you resist this attempt at brainwashing (which is what it clearly is), she said, her therapists only grow more and more relentless with it and they will not let any youth out of this "therapy" unless they begin telling these individuals what they want to hear, which can easily be argued is a form of thought control that is very similar to what adult sex offenders--whether they are real MAAs or not--go through in the prison "sexual recovery" programs. It's far from uncommon for youths who are not activists, and thus not as strong-willed as those who are, to be successfully brainwashed after their initial attempts to resist and deny what these cops and "therapists" are trying to convince them of.
As an example, I remember that during my days posting on the now defunct Open Hands forum, we would periodically receive visits from adult women who had been intimate with an adult man when they were underage, who would make comments that were often a close variation of this:
"When I was 13, I had a sexual relationship with a man many years older than me. I enjoyed the experience, he was always there for me, we spent a lot of time together, he treated me kindly at all times, and he told me that he loved me. But if he really loved me, how could he have hurt me in that way?"
I think any moderately rational person would be entirely justified, after reading such a post, to respond with a loud, "Huh?!" This would automatically make at least the pro-choicers among the MAA posters on that board who read such a post to logically suspect that this woman and her older lover had their relationship "found out" and that she was consequently pushed through enforced "therapy" by the system. Thus, she was ultimately convinced that despite how much she admits she enjoyed the experiences she had with this man, she was nevertheless "hurt" by him. And sure enough, it usually turned out that women who made such posts had indeed been through "therapy" and thus coerced by those conducting her "treatment" via intense and utterly relentless repetition of psycho-propaganda into believing that her older lover had harmed her even though she continued to clearly recollect the pleasure and comfort she received from this relationship, and even recalled that the man always acted like he loved and cared about her.
Of course, our opponents would love to jump at claims by women posters on the MAA frequented boards like the one I just described above and shout, "See! See! This proves that kids are hurt by such experiences even if they enjoy them!" The problem is, the latter common statement greatly conflicts with the experiences reported by the multitude of adult gerontophiles of both genders that we in the MAA community have met in the past when they came to the boards looking for support and camaraderie, many of whom said they had had mutually consensual sexual experiences with adults when they were underage and who were never "found out" and thus never put through any of those "therapy" programs. These women (and men on the BL boards) always without fail told a markedly different story than those who had either had their relationships discovered and they were forced into "therapy" as a result, or, on a few occasions, those who were given an extremely hard time by peers and family members who found out about the relationship some time after it had ended and told her over and over again, very harshly and very maliciously, that her relationship with that man was absolutely shameful, that she is a disgrace for enjoying it, that there was no possible way he could have actually loved her or truly cared for her well being, that he couldn't have been motivated by anything other than a purely selfish desire to use her for his personal sexual gratification, that she suffered a stain on her soul for enjoying such experiences, that she was obviously mentally unbalanced for her positive perception of the relationship, and that she clearly only thought she enjoyed it but actually could not have (as if they were mind-readers). Some have even claimed that people who reported having mutually consensual relationships with adults when they were minors that had positive effects on their self-esteem must be suffering from Stockholm Syndrome! Those girls who told the wrong people about the relationship long after it happened ended up having those moralism-driven individuals impose a huge amount of guilt on them for feeling good about the relationship. This resulted in a heavy blow to their self-esteem along with great encouragement to blame the relationship they had with their adult lover for this shame and severe blow to her self-image and confidence and not the highly emotionalistic and totally irrational reaction that so many people she told about it had.
I think that the above point is extremely important to mention, and any researcher who conducts such a study needs to take this into consideration and ask their interviewees if they had been through the system or not, or if they had ever revealed their relationship to others and, if so, how these others reacted to it and what they said to her or him, because there can be no doubt that these factors are potentially going to tremendously influence their perception of the experience.
In response to some detractors of Rind's study claiming that his findings were "bad news" because now it would encourage MAAs to "molest" kids, Dr. Gieles said:
"The conclusion that there is less harm than has always been supposed and that children are more resilient than was thought, is a message of hope. The Rind study is nothing more than another confirmation that children are resilient [emphasis mine]. There are many studies showing that a percentage of children are able to endure horrific experiences in childhood and yet go on to lead normal healthy lives without apparent damage. People accept such a conclusion when the experiences concern things like deaths of parent or siblings, car accidents, fires, war, or natural disasters. They seem unwilling to accept the same result showing up in this particular circumstance."
The above points represent yet more substantive evidence that the agenda of the antis and other groups who are hateful towards intergenerational relationships are entirely based on moralism and an emotionalistic fear of a natural thing which more and more evidence is making clear that it's not likely to cause any demonstrable harm to young people who participate in it of their own free will. And this finding also blows a hole in the commonly held belief that children and adolescents are extremely fragile emotionally, when in actuality all the evidence suggests that kids are quite resilient emotionally and thus can handle the "complications" of a sexual life with whomever they may please, be they peer or adult, just fine.
Dr. Gieles next says: "If there is harm - and there is harm in some cases - than it's better to know which cases are the most harmful. Those are the cases in which the child suffers from a bad family environment, which has far more influence than the sexual experiences [emphasis mine; this is the closest anyone connected to the Rind Report came to actually questioning the totalitarian nature of the various social institutions that children and teens find themselves trapped within today, where it's well known that the lion's share of real abuse of all kinds, including sexual abuse, is inflicted upon minors]. Well, this is "bad news" for organizations that want to keep and protect "Family Values.'"
Could it be that most of the cases where there was harm are cases that included genuine force or coercion? And could it be that if kids have been proven capable of healing quite well from actual abuse contrary to the popular belief that there is absolutely nothing more horrible and traumatizing to a youth than sexual abuse, can it not also be concluded--or at least logically conjectured--that kids could handle mutually consensual relationships with adults much better still, and that even negative experiences in such a mutually consensual relationship (e.g., getting involved with a particular older lover they weren't compatible with) will still result in the young person coming out of it with their sanity and overall emotional health fully intact, as opposed to the popular belief that they will be "scarred for life" as a result of this relationship? It's simply logical and reasonable to conclude that if young people can indeed recover fully from genuinely abusive relationships (which should certainly result in the abuser being punished by the law; the MAA community does not condone genuine abuse; MAAs simply insist on the word "abuse" being limited to instances in which the younger person clearly did not want the contact they experienced), then they can deal with mutually consensual relationships with adults just fine. If this is indeed the case, then the only possible reason so many elements in society can be against mutually consensual intergenerational romantic/sexual relationships (as well as all civil rights for young people) is because they find such liaisons aesthetically repulsive.
Another important statement made by Rind in defense of his report that further demolishes the sacred belief in question of the various entities that spread and benefit from the sex abuse hysteria was:
"In fact, if adverse childhood events are found to be less psychologically harmful than previously thought, or in some cases not measurably harmful at all, researchers have an ethical duty to report this. In the case of CSA, this finding has some positive implications: victims do not have to believe that they are 'damaged goods' and will inevitably suffer personality disorders and other psychopathology [emphasis mine], and clinicians may have solid grounds for providing reassurance and hope to those who have had such experiences. Ignoring such data may bring harm to those who have had such experiences by perpetuating feelings of being "damaged.""
Well said, Dr. Rind. The constant insistence by unscrupulous therapists and social workers, not to mention vengeful media moguls like Oprah Winfrey and the authors of The Courage To Heal, who have embraced the "victim mentality" that enables these individuals to profit from the sex abuse hysteria in many ways, and to convince the public to further support the legal enforcement of the sexual suppression of young people (as well as all other forms of oppression imposed upon them), helps to further enable these mental health professionals who foster this mentality to further control their patients and to secure them as paying customers for life by assuring them that they are "damaged goods" forever. Of course, they will tell their hapless patients that they have the "pedophiles" to blame for their pain, even if the person who abused them was actually a situational offender, most likely a parent or other relative in the house who didn't possess the emotional and sexual preference for younger people that characterizes true pedophiles and hebephiles. And of course, if there is no evidence whatsoever that these women were actually sexually abused by anyone at all, they will be told that they repressed the memory due to the trauma of the event (thankfully, "repressed" memories that were supposedly uncovered by hypnotic regression with no evidence to back them up are no longer admissible in court).
Of course, Rind didn't question or in any way take into consideration the institutions of society where kids currently suffer from the greatest degree of real and demonstrable abuse of all kinds, including sexual assault and murder, which is within the home, and that was a very glaring omission that future researchers on this subject who truly purport to care about the welfare of kids over and above preserving the integrity of any single institution within our society, especially when the present version of said institutions may contribute heavily to the genuine abuse of youths. Such researchers need to address this matter if their research is to have a full degree of objectivity. Any seeker of particular truths which may be uncomfortable to the majority of people in society to come to terms with and accept need to expect to be called names and to acquire many enemies as a result, and should expect to suffer attempts by whatever org they work for to have them fired or even to receive anonymous death threats from various individuals. Rind and his crew should have anticipated this reaction and not been so taken aback when the hate-mongers came pouring in. A seeker of the truth who lacks courage and a very thick skin is not going to have a career in seeking these truths for very long. This is why the great majority of people who may have an inkling of the truth, or a genuine desire for learning it, do not pursue it or voice their opinions publicly, or they quickly cower into silence and complicity with the mainstream attitude after doing so once they have been attacked and insulted by protectors of the prevailing conventional wisdom. This creates the public illusion that "everyone" other than members of the MAA community themselves are supportive of the demonized status that pedophiles, hebephiles, and ephebophiles have to live with in society today.
A similar situation faces anyone who supports the principle of youth liberation, and such people are often similarly criticized for supporting youth rights by detractors who claim, "If kids are awarded their civil rights, 'pedophiles' will have sex with them!" This is why the largest youth lib org in America, NYRA, currently has no official position on the sexual rights of youth even though they fully acknowledge the importance and validity of such rights on their message boards when the discussion is broached there.
Backing off from supporting youth rights is not justified for this reason, because as icky and revolting as so many people currently feel intergenerational sexual activity to be, and as much as people generally dislike MAAs for the nature of their romantic desires, the fact remains that it's becoming increasingly clear that the vast majority of them are not dangerous or deranged in any way, and all the common myths about underage people being unable to give meaningful consent to sexual contact with adults or being traumatized for the rest of their lives as a result of such contact are false. It's also becoming quite clear that MAAs are fully capable of truly loving and caring about kids in our respective age of attraction (AoA), despite the common belief that they are only capable of self-serving sexual gratification when involved romantically with minors. If all the above evidence is taken into rational consideration, then one is ultimately forced to admit that the incessant dislike for MAAs even in the face of such evidence is based more or less entirely upon moralistic and aesthetic reasons, and not anything to do with protecting minors from demonstrable harm that can be verified or even suggested by empirically observable scientific study. Denying minors support for their civil rights when it becomes evident they are capable of handling them competently (as the APA explicitly noted in its 1989 amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in regards to adolescents, and as Rind's study has suggested in regards to pre-pubescents being capable of what those in the mental health profession call 'simple consent') solely because one does not like pedophiles, hebephiles, and ephebophiles, and are personally offended by the thought of minors enjoying mutually consensual sexual relationships with adults is extremely unjust and an affront to the youth community.
I think Dr. Rind and his crew should be reminded of this because despite their strong attempts at scientific objectivity, they still fall victim to catering to the type of moralism-driven attitudes that was the motivation behind the detractors of the Rind Report (as will be seen a bit below).
Dr. Gieles then seems to leave his objectivity behind a bit when he says: "...in my personal opinion, the 'good news!' cry of NAMBLA may not be interpreted as a green light for sexual acts with children; there is less harm than we had thought, but still there is harm in some cases."
So minors shouldn't be allowed to take the emotional risks, despite the mounting evidence that it's highly unlikely that mutually consensual sexual contact between two people of different generations will harm them in any way? It's impossible to completely remove all degree of risk from the life of a child or teen. If the possibility of harm is not likely, then it makes no logical or ethical sense to deny them the right to make such decisions, especially when it's a well known fact that riding in cars and taking a swim in a pool is far more risky for minors than engaging in mutually consensual sexual activity with either peers or adults, yet we continue to allow them to do the former things because the general public does not consider riding in a car or swimming in a pool to be 'icky' or offensive to their personal sensibilities.
One of Rind's detractors was politician Joseph R. Pitts, who said: "The authors write that pedophilia is fine - as long [as] it is enjoyed." Um, if an intergenerational relationship was enjoyed by the younger person, how could it not be fine? Or is Mr. Pitts making nothing other than a moralizing argument here, which is exactly what I suspect? Unfortunately, loaded and moralism-based comments like the one spewed by Mr. Pitts up above serves to scare seekers of the truth into falling short of actually challenging the laws and social institutions that suppress the rights of youths even when those latter two things are found to be far more harmful on many occasions than any mutually consensual relationship with an adult could ever be.
Dr. Rind made it clear that he was only willing to be objective and courageous to a certain extent when he made the following statement to his detractors in response to their claim that the findings of his report "condoned" the abuse of youths:
"[...] critics have implied that [our] conclusions condone sexual abuse. In fact, in our article, we clearly state that our review of the research literature does not condone CSA, and changes nothing with regard to moral or legal views of abuse. We wrote that 'lack of harmfulness does not imply lack of wrongfulness,' that moral and legal codes of society need not be (and often are not) based on findings of psychological harmfulness, and that 'the findings of the current review do not imply that moral or legal definitions of or views on behavior, currently classified as CSA, should be abandoned or even altered.'"
Once again I feel forced to utter an audible "Huh?!" at the above statement, as I would like to think any person who was truly committed to rationality, logical reasoning, and objectivity would also do after reading it. So let's be clear on what Dr. Rind is trying to say in order to pacify his detractors and probably society in general. First of all, I think we can all agree that Rind and everyone else (including--and especially--the MAA community) should never condone genuine abuse and should always support the moral and legal prosecution of those who would force or otherwise coerce anyone of any age to commit some act against their will. However, Dr. Rind saying that his study should have no impact on how society, from both a moral and legal standpoint, defines the word "abuse" is completely absurd and forces one to ask themselves why the study was even conducted in the first place if it was never intended to have any effect on the law or society's perception of what constitutes abuse when minors have sexual interactions with adults, and what our social attitudes and legal policies should be in regards to it. Worst of all, Rind and his partners in the study actually used the tired old moralism-based statement, "lack of harmfulness does not imply lack of wrongfulness." How can anyone who purports to put science and reason above moralism and emotionalism possibly support such a dubious old saying? How can one suggest that the legal system of a supposedly democratic society could use such unbridled moralism to justify any type of law? Could any law based on such an ideology be anything other than draconian and have anything less than very serious negative implications for everyone living in the society that adopts them? Does the fact that a certain act or relationship may greatly offend the personal sensibilities of "polite society" justify keeping it illegal and doing nothing to question its moral basis if reliable, peer-reviewed scientific studies make it clear that such an act, as long as it's mutually consensual, is not likely to cause any real demonstrable harm to anyone participating in it? And Dr. Rind opines that society's current moral views and legal definitions of any type of behavior should "not be abandoned or even altered" even if objective scientific studies suggest very strongly that these attitudes and definitions should indeed be questioned and re-evaluated? Or, in other words, as long as such forms of behavior happen to offend society's aesthetic sensibilities and go against its "traditional values" (just as homosexuality used to do, and still does to social conservatives and Christian fundamentalists), then we shouldn't change our moral views and legal policies against such behavior even if reputable scientific evidence suggests that such mutually consensual acts are highly unlikely to cause any demonstrable harm to anyone? Are we living in the Dark Ages here, or at least in a theocracy?
And perhaps most important of all, no matter what someone may feel about MAAs and their "icky" romantic/sexual desires, if Rind can go so far as to quote an APA study that made it very clear that the mental health industry has great evidence to suggest that at least adolescents, including younger adolescents, are fully capable of giving informed consent to many things and clearly have intellectual and reasoning faculties on par with those who are legal adults, and if Rind's own findings suggest that pre-pubescents are at least capable of what he calls 'simple consent,' and that this basic form of consent also means that children who participate in activities that they consider enjoyable, pleasurable, and mutually desired are highly unlikely to suffer any psychological damage out of the blue, what exactly justifies Dr. Rind or most anyone else in the mental health profession who has done any degree of serious study into this topic to continue supporting the current moral attitudes and legal definitions towards the concept of youth rights in general and intergenerational sexual relationships in particular?
Dr. Rind is supposed to be a man of science, as are others in the mental health profession, and their job is to seek empirically demonstrable truths on a rational basis, and this objectivity and devotion to scientific truth is enormously compromised when they attempt to pander to the customs and attitudes of the current status quo when the latter two things conflict with scientific validity and are based entirely on moralism-derived precepts. This is no different than supporting laws based upon Biblical scripture, such as laws designed to save the souls of people rather than protecting them from actual harm that is demonstrably observable (such as murder, robbery, arson, assault and battery, genuine rape, etc.). And there is also the very serious issue of civil rights here, not simply those of MAAs, but also those of youths under 18, and the extremely important question of whether or not it's in any way justifiable to deny any group of people their civil rights simply because having those rights might result in those people engaging in some activities that, while causing no one any demonstrable harm, would offend the general public, or (in the case of the youth community), would conflict with "traditional values" that support the subservient, third class citizen status of people under 18 out of a desire to preserve the "traditional family" (i.e., the nuclear family unit) and its hierarchal structure. And this despite the fact that it's well known to the various law enforcement agencies that the current nature of the institution known as the nuclear family unit is where the great majority of demonstrably real abuse towards minors actually occurs.
Ignoring the latter situation, and trying to divert blame away from the institutions in question simply because they are in harmony with what we call our "traditional values" by passing laws that harass and oppress both MAAs (who all real evidence suggests are no more harmful to society as a group than are homosexuals) and youths under 18 (via denying them the vote, forcing them into a totalitarian educational system rather than seeking alternate methods of learning that are more in harmony with our society's supposed democratic tenets, passing restrictive curfew laws on them, denying them freedom of speech and association, invading their privacy with impunity, punishing them for any instance of expressing themselves sexually, etc.), is not justifiable from an ethical or democratic standpoint by any stretch of the imagination. Both the lawmakers and the mental health industry should know better than to do things like this, and I would have thought better of Dr. Rind and his collaborators after their initial bout of courage.
Dr. Gieles then goes on to say this in defense of the Rind Report: "If politicians with their power (supposedly without reading or understanding the study), decide to condemn and denounce the facts, found in careful scientific research, it's the end of science, but also the end of a correct discussion about morality."
Again, I couldn't agree more. Yet, it's allegedly okay, according to Dr. Rind and even Dr. Gieles, after stating a commitment to science over moralism and truth over assumptions, that it's more than okay to continue denying young people their full civil rights and continuing to denounce mutually consensual intergenerational sexual activity as being intrinsically "wrong," almost as if some absolute law of the universe decrees it to be so. This line of thinking has no more logical validity than someone who claims that gold has intrinsic value over and above the fact that our society says it does.
And of course, according to Dr. Rind, there is no reason for society to change either its moral attitude towards adult attraction to minors (and vice versa, of course) or to change its cultural conception of those we today label 'minors', despite all the evidence accumulated and mentioned above, both in Rind's own meta-analysis and the 1989 APA briefing to the Supreme Court. So much for Dr. Rind's loyalty to science and reason over that of moralism and cultural bias.
Finally, Dr. Gieles wraps up his article with this sage observation:
"Everybody has to accept the conclusions from careful scientific research, until further research gives other conclusions. The FRC wrote: 'If psychology finds no harm in something considered morally wrong, we believe they are not looking carefully enough' [emphasis in original]. This is the essence of what passes for respectful criticism of Rind et al. At least, it is not a personal attack. It is, however[,] an attack on the very idea of science [emphasis mine]. Think what this means: Social scientists would be sent back to the drawing board, until their facts agree with popular prejudices."
Very well said, Dr. Gieles. However, I must ask why you (yes, you, Dr. Gieles) didn't take Dr. Rind et al. to task for doing the very same thing as his detractors did when he said that scientific findings shouldn't have any effect on social policy, the law, or moral attitudes of society as long as the herd's beliefs about something are strong and emotionally charged enough, and this regardless of whether or not the beliefs that support it are proven wrong by sound scientific research. And even more, if such scientific findings may risk casting aspersions on some of society's most sacrosanct socio-cultural institutions, however justified it may be in doing so, that is also apparently a good enough reason to avoid questioning the moral attitudes and legal policies connected to any given type of behavior.
Moving away from the Rind Report and all that it entails, we now move onto the final point of this section of the essay, and a tome published in 2009 that may have cast the final nail in the coffin of one of the antis'--and general society's--most potent beliefs in favor of the denouncement of mutually consensual sexual activities between adults and underagers, albeit very inadvertently on the part of the author in question. That book is The Trauma Myth by Susan Clancy.
Clancy's research dovetails nicely with the findings of the Rind Report, and her research makes it clear that underagers do not usually experience trauma and lifelong devastation as previously believed simply for having a sexual experience with an adult. Although, predictably, Clancy has been viciously attacked by detractors who claim she is "promoting pedophilia" or taking a "pro-pedophile" stance in her book, she has clearly kept her open-mindedness to a greatly limited extent and has done no such thing. She vehemently condemns all adult sexual contact with anyone underage out of hand for all of the usual stereotypical reasons (such as youths being inherently incapable of consenting to sex with adults due to their lack of life experience and understanding of what sex actually is, blah blah blah...). But she was very courageous simply to challenge this deeply held assumption that has been propagated by the media for three decades now, and even suffered self-imposed exile to Nicaragua as a result of her colleagues turning on her as a result of her objectivity in these studies.
However, she doesn't go anywhere near being pro-youth or even display any basic consideration of the actual potential of younger people in her studies of this subject, as does previous authors who were likewise courageous enough to challenge society's deeply held notions about young people since the Victorian era and the Industrial Revolution, such as Judith Levine and Robert Epstein.
But what she did with this book was certainly iconoclastic enough, and one can hope that if she is capable of challenging deeply held societal myths like those concerning "repressed memory" (which she did in a previous book, Abducted, where she dealt with the claims of "repressed memory syndrome" and the hypnotic retrieval of allegedly buried memories as they pertain to the alien abduction phenomenon) and the widely held belief that trauma, repressed or otherwise, always happens when kids come into sexual contact with adults, she may eventually come to challenge other social myths endorsed and spread all over the globe by the sex abuse industry in their incessant attempts to keep the current hysteria going strong so that those who profit from it in the realms of the mental health industry, government office, the media, and entertainment can continue to keep the money flowing in. The book remains extremely important to both the MAA community and the youth community as both struggle for their basic civil rights despite the fact that Clancy clearly wrote this book and conducted the studies recorded therein to help neither emancipation movement, but simply for the expressed purpose of benefiting sexual abuse victims.
I already analyzed Clancy's interview that appeared on Salon(@)c o m in another essay, so I will not reiterate those points here. However, despite Clancy's demolition of one particular common assumption that is entirely false (one corroborated by other objective studies, such as the previously described Rind Report) and her previous demolition of another such myth in a different study, her book is full of other assumptions that she doesn't bother to challenge or do any research on. Instead, she continues to perpetuate these other myths and specious beliefs in regards to the subject of intergerational love with reckless abandon almost as much as Oprah Winfrey, John Walsh, and the rest of their ilk do.
Nevertheless, Clancy certainly has a commendably large degree of courage and integrity, along with a sincere desire for honesty against popular falsehoods that have become part of our society's conventional wisdom, and these are admirable character traits that are alien to the personas of Winfrey and Walsh. Also, I believe that Clancy is driven by a sincere desire to help sex abuse victims, rather than being driven by a combination of revenge and a desire to maintain popular appeal so as to preserve their lucrative media careers, as is the case with Walsh and Winfrey.
Still, there is much to nitpick about in Clancy's study seen in The Trauma Myth, including this statement by the unnamed book reviewer on the page I linked to up above:
"Because children don't understand sexual encounters in the same ways that adults do, they normally accommodate their perpetrators-- something they feel intensely ashamed about as adults." Of course, there can be no doubt that kids feeling the need to accommodate advances by parents or other adults who have direct power over them within the home (or sometimes within a boarding school) being a common result of their legal powerlessness and their lack of civil rights within these institutions...is a subject that Clancy didn't even bother to go near in her interview despite the extreme importance of doing so, an omission mirrored a decade earlier by Rind and his partners.
I haven't yet read Clancy's book at this writing, but her interview on Salon(@)c o m strongly suggests that she isn't likely to do much, if any, questioning of these institutions at all since she lumps all adults in the same boat when it comes to having power over kids, so she feels no need to cast any stones on the institutions where kids are abused most often in a genuine sense of the word. Thankfully, both Levine and Epstein did these very things, as have various youth liberationist authors in the past, such as John Taylor Gatto and John Holt. And since Clancy doesn't distinguish between parents and other older relatives living within the home and adults from outside the home that have no direct power over the youths in their respective AoA whom they may share a mutually desired relationship with, she does a great disservice to the topic--and to the truth. In fact, Clancy even trotted out the "lack of harmfulness does not imply lack of wrongfulness" line previously used by Rind in regards to the same subject. So I guess that statement in defense of moralism over empiricism is going to become the official catch phrase that researchers who compile data on this subject will use in the future to assure the public that regardless of the nature of their findings, they will not repudiate the moralizing assumptions that their research effectively refutes as not being based in scientific reality.
It may be fruitful for many in both the MAA community and the youth liberation movement to peruse this metafilter blog: https://w w w(@)metafilter(@)c o m/88964/The-Trauma-Myth-by-Susan-Clancy, which contains a large number of responses from various people outside of both the MAA community and the youth liberation movement, as it's interesting to see these individuals struggling to understand the subject that Clancy raises while pleasantly maintaining all of the typical biases and assumptions that each of these individuals have towards the topics of sexual abuse, the concept of childhood, adults who have a preferential attraction to minors (pedophiles, hebephiles, and ephebophiles, though these people only know the term "pedophile"), the general state of psychiatric knowledge of all of these topics, etc. The aforementioned responses range from people who are trying their hardest to be open-minded despite the cultural influences they have grown up with, to people who are perhaps hopelessly ignorant and incorrigible about this subject. And the comments even include a response by someone that claims to be a mental health professional herself (scroll down low on the page linked to just above to find this one), and who happens to possess every single stereotypical conception of underagers in the book. As one might expect from her, she outright denies the capability of minors to consent to sexual activity with an adult despite the fact that Rind and his partners recognized the concept of simple consent along with the better known category of informed consent, and concluded that even pre-pubescent children are capable of this basic form of consent because they are well aware of what activities are pleasurable and positive to experience, and they fully recognize this as consent upon retrospect after growing up. That is, of course, provided they aren't forced into "therapy" or otherwise told by dozens of people whom they may have mistakenly told of their experience who insisted that the kids in question should be ashamed of having enjoyed the contact and all the other connected stereotypes and assumptions. In other words, intergenerational sexual activity is always intrinsically wrong in an absolute sense no matter how much it may have been mutually consented to and enjoyed by the younger person.
The alleged mental health professional who made a comment on the metafilter I linked to up above didn't even seem to be aware of the concept of simple consent, but Rind et al's study made it clear that such a category of consent is indeed recognized in the psychiatric field (I highly doubt that Rind and his collaborators in the study made the definition up out of thin air, as they displayed great care in conducting their research on this very testy and controversial subject).
As can be seen by the various commenters on the metafilter linked above, these following assumptions in regards to the general subject Clancy raised seem to be all too common and not challenged nearly enough:
a) Youths have an inherent lack of ability to consent to sexual contact with adults because they do not understand what sex is. This despite the fact that it's been proven in many studies that pre-pubescents, let alone adolescents, are fully capable of experiencing sexual pleasure and enjoyment and are not traumatized by mutually desired contact of this nature with either peers or adults [I should note here that I am not promoting any type of sexual activity between adults and pre-pubescents that is developmentally inappropriate for pre-pubescent children, such as full penetrative intercourse, and the great majority of genuine pedophiles I have met have no interest in engaging in such activities with kids that have not yet reached puberty. What I am talking about here is what is often called "sex play" (and referred to by various euphemisms ib) Youths are "pre-sexual" (yes, one of the commenters actually uses the latter term). n the past, such as "playing doctor"), which pre-pubescent children often engage in with peers and sometimes initiate with adults.] Is it all that hard to understand that some things bring pleasure and other things do not?
b) Youths are "pre-sexual" (yes, one of the commenters actually uses the latter term). al" (yes, one of the commenters actually uses the latter term). This fashionable assumption is flatly contradicted by any child who has ever engaged in "playing doctor" with each other, peeked in at their older sister or cousin when she was changing her clothes, pulled up the dress of a peer, was caught masturbating, secretly told each other "dirty" jokes, or who surfed the Web looking for porno sites (which was revealed by that study conducted by Symantec that I mentioned and linked to up above in one of my previous points in this essay). Children are well known to be sexually curious, and this sometimes manifests in the ways described above or even with full blown sexual experimentation (i.e., "sex play") initiated with a peer or a trusted adult. While it's certainly true that pre-pubescent children do not have the same type of sexual desires as adults do, and generally do not seek to engage in all of the activities that adults (and adolescents, who are young adults) do with each other, they are clearly not entirely asexual as is commonly believed, and are naturally curious about sexuality. It's amazing how many adults wilfully forget what it was like being a child and practice denial of this aspect of their childhood.
c) Even if children can receive pleasure from mutually consensual sexual contact with adults and are not magically traumatized by it, it's still always a form of abuse on the part of the adult because children and younger teens cannot understand the full ramifications or consequences of engaging in such activity. What type of consequences are likely to result from sexual activity as long as sufficient precautions are taken in regards to STDs, pregnancy (in regards to teen girls), etc? Should kids be denied the right to take risks when it's been established via good and objective scientific studies that such risks are not extreme or are not likely to result in any serious psychological problems? Is sexual activity really too "complicated" for children and even teens to understand? Again, is it all that "complicated" to understand what brings you pleasure and what doesn't?
d) Intergenerational sexual contact is always a form of abuse by the adult because of the inherent power differential between adults and minors. This power differential is an artificial one created by society, and youth liberationists are working hard to remedy it by establishing civil rights for young people under 18. Even in the absence of civil rights for youths, if we can trust adults to raise kids and to teach them without abusing them despite the very strict degree of power that such adults have over minors, why can't we likewise trust adults who may share a mutual desire to have romantic relationships with kids when these particular adults will most likely not have anywhere near the same degree of power over these kids as do parents and teachers? And should we ignore the fact that most of the real abuse of power directed at kids which harm them in very demonstrable ways occurs courtesy of those who live with them or otherwise have the most direct power over them? And if one attempts to define "power differential" as the physical power imbalance between adults and minors, I will have to remind them that such a physical power imbalance exists between men and women on most occasions yet we don't consider such relationships inherently abusive on the part of the man if the woman consents to the relationship and reports it as a positive experience.
Please allow me to also remind such people, before they say "Children and women are not comparable in this situation because women are adults who fully understand sex and children don't!" that it was also once believed that women were "innocent" of all sexual desire at one time, that men who initiated sexual activity with them outside of marriage were abusing or corrupting them, and that women didn't understand the ramifications of such relationships (sex between men and women was tolerated within the bounds of marriage only as a "necessary evil" that was grudgingly accepted due to the fact that such activity was essential for propagating the human species, but it was believed that women didn't actually enjoy sex).
In regards to the idea that all romantic relationships must have a complete "balance of power" in order to be considered legit and non-abusive, please note these words from psychologist Paul Okami, who has studied this topic in detail:
The problem with the "balance of power" argument is that dyadic power can be in constant flux within a relationship and, in any event, is always multidimensional. Who has the greater power in a relationship? A black man or his white wife? A smart, beautiful, well-heeled female medical student or her somewhat dim-witted, cab-driver boyfriend (who is built like Arnold Schwarzenegger)? A teacher who is desperately in love with her 15-year-old former student or the 15-year-old who doesn't much care one way or the other and could imprison the teacher for a hefty stretch with a few words? One simply cannot say which type of power is more significant socially or more important to the partners themselves - race versus sex, physical strength versus intelligence and wealth, age versus degree of "wanting" the relationship (being in love), social versus dyadic. ... Moreover, there is nothing logically intrinsic in power discrepancy that violates principles of justice or fairness in sexual relationships or that is necessarily harmful to the "less powerful" participant, unless one views sexual relationships as similar to hand-to-hand combat (e.g., heavyweight vs. flyweight contestant). The instability and multidimensionality of dyadic power and the fact that a "power-balanced" relationship is clearly mythological (in the sense that it can never be logically ascertained) lay to rest as useless the "power imbalance" argument. At best, this argument is a fine example of late twentieth century cultural-feminist silliness [Peer Commentaries on Green (2002) and Schmidt (2002) Archives of Sexual Behavior, Vol. 31, No. 6, December 2002, pp. 479-503].
In order to clarify Okami's words in regards to what he is saying about power imbalances in relationships, my fellow GLer activist who posts in the MAA community under the nick Hen-Wen had this to say: "I think the salient point is that power imbalances are unavoidable in relationships, and that what matters is how that power is used or not used. Power balance is something that you create in a relationship, not something ready-made to be sought out. In terms of so-called precociousness, I find it attractive not because it gives the girl more power, but because it demonstrates that the girl has achieved some mental and emotional maturity (which is something that is to some degree independent of age), and which allows me to have more meaningful interactions with her. While it's true that the power imbalance argument has its root in Christian ideas about sex, the specific power-imbalance argument has its roots in feminist criticisms of power imbalances inherent in heterosexual sex."
e) Sexual activity that occurs between adults and minors is always initiated by the adult because minors "don't do that stuff." This popular assumption is entirely untrue, and is easily refuted if one bothers to read the multitude of posts left on MAA boards over the entire history of the Internet by teen and legally adult gerontophiles of both genders who made it clear that they frequently sought out contact of all sorts, both romantic and social, with adults of the gender they were attracted to when they were underage (or at least desired and frequently fantasized about such contact even if they didn't actually experience it).
Of course, all of these posts made by gerontophiles of both genders were either ignored or assumed to be made by middle-aged MAAs pretending to be minors. And this despite the fact that some of the MAA community's worst enemies, most prominently hate groups like Perverted Justice and Absolute Zero United, are well aware that at least some of these underage gerontophiles are actual teens because a few of them have been outed and forced into "therapy" as a result of these orgs finding out these teens' real identities and reporting their online activities to their parents, school staff, and local police. If anyone reading this essay doubts what I just said, then I suggest that you go to Perverted Justice's infamous Wikisposure site and read the entry called "The Fayla Incident," as this event will also show the sad fate that can happen to any underage gerontophile who becomes an activist for their civil rights, particularly their sexual rights, if they are outed and their activities are reported to their parents, their schools, and the police.
Gerontophilia is a real and distinct form of attraction base experienced by a significant minority of young people, and as this community is arguing, it constitutes a genuine sexual orientation that deserves to be acknowledged and respected rather than either ignored altogether, or declared to be an emotional illness or solely as cases of young people exchanging erotic favors for platonic friendship or surrogate fatherhood/motherhood from adults that they are supposedly not actually attracted to in a romantic or sexual manner. Young people who seek out adults for the latter deceptive reasons do actually exist, of course, but that doesn't change the fact that many other young people do indeed have a natural orientation and preference for significantly older people that is clearly romantic, emotional, and sexual in nature. Genuine gerontophiles, as opposed to girls, and occasionally boys, who seek to "exchange" sexual favors for surrogate fathers or mothers, usually do not perceive the adults they seek these relationships out with as the equivalent of a substitute parent.
Many hebephiles are also attracted to adult women and actively seek out legal relationships with much younger women in the age range of 18-early 20s, and I have met numerous gerontophiles in that age group who have discussed how they routinely initiated sexual contact with adults when they were underage. This sometimes included the desire to engage in such activities--and frequent fantasizing about initiating them-- ever since they were pre-pubescents. I plan on making a point of bringing several of these gerontophiles who are now of legal age into this debate in the future, as they will make it very clear that not only are there many young people who have a natural sexual, emotional, social, and spiritual preference for significantly older people, but that most of them (like most MAAs) are entirely sane, were not traumatized or psychologically damaged in any way by these experiences (provided they were mutually consensual), that underagers can readily tell the difference between coercive and non-coercive relationships and react much differently to each, and that society's legal and moral definitions of "abuse" need to be differentiated (even if Dr. Rind doesn't think his scientific studies and conclusions necessitate this; common decency and a simple appeal to social justice suggests otherwise).
f) Pedophilia is a mental disorder. Though pedophilia is considered to be a mental disorder by many in the mental health profession today and is listed as such in the current edition of the DSM (Diagnostics and Statistical Manual, the "bible" of the mental health profession), there are a growing number of MHPs (mental health professionals) who are challenging this notion. These open-minded MHPs are not making such challenges to "promote pedophilia" as their detractors will claim, but rather in the interest of advocating the truth. As such, these MHPs who have a dedication to truth and science over politics and moralism believe that putting pedophilia in the DSM has nothing to do with scientific validity and everything to do with making the DSM cater to cultural biases against any given form of desire or behavior that is not currently considered to be socially acceptable. The less than honest MHPs who cater to such cultural attitudes even when they do not coincide with the truth are often rightfully accused of politicizing science.
It should also be mentioned that hebephilia(prevalent in 18% or more of men), which is much more common than true pedophilia(5% of men) and which is often conflated with pedophilia by the media and the various anti groups out there, is not considered a mental illness in the current edition (nor any previous edition) of the DSM despite its degree of social unacceptability.
g) The word "trauma" can have many different meanings or conceptions, and Susan Clancy only uses one of them in her book. Hence, her research and the main premise of her book is faulty. This is a claim that Clancy should have expected to hear from her detractors, especially since almost any word in popular usage can be twisted to mean pretty much anything that someone wants it to mean. However, Clancy uses the official definition of "trauma" that is accepted and utilized by the mental health industry, a definition that appears to be the most commonly understood usage of the word by the general public and the media also. As such, I am not certain as to what pet definitions or variations of the word are used by her various detractors who make such claims.
Considering how some of the commenters in the above linked metafilter discussing Clancy's new book still believe implicitly in "repressed memory syndrome" despite its near-universal refutation by all credible MHPs based on real, objective study and available evidence, as well as their adherence to any number of myths regarding this topic that I mentioned in this sub-list, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if some of these commenters are members of the Flat Earth Society, or who unquestionably believe any number of the conspiracy theories mentioned and debunked in David Aaronovitch's aforementioned new book. In truth, the claims of the people who make up the staff of the Repressed Memory Foundation (yes, such a foundation continues to exist to please the "victimology" advocates!) have about as much validity as those made by the members of the Flat Earth Society and those individuals who believe that the American government faked the 1969 mission to the moon.
The brave purveyors of the truth documented in the preceding sections of this essay have courage beyond that of any anti who has ever walked the Earth, because unlike the latter hate-mongers these seekers of the truth have taken huge personal risks and sometimes made major personal sacrifices to disseminate research that contradicts a widely held belief. How many people have ever been fired from a job for being an anti? They may claim they receive death threats from MAAs for their work, but even if that were true, how many more MAAs have received death threats from people in their community as a result of being outed by antis than the antis have from actual MAAs? And how many people ever get ostracized by their community for being antis? Considering the mental health of many antis, I would like to see them deal with the type of adversity that MAAs routinely deal with, not to mention the Non-MAAs who seek out truths that society is not comfortable with hearing, and see how well they dealt with the situation if it were reversed.
History only moves forward and social progress only occurs thanks to the efforts of such individuals as described in this essay (e.g., Debbie Nathan, Dr. Robert Epstein, Dr. Bruce Rind, Susan Thompson, Susan Clancy, etc.). Though it's still too early in the game to expect anyone from outside the MAA community (including those within the youth liberation movement) to openly champion for their rights specifically, that situation is slowly changing, due in part to the reaching out methods of newly emerging offline support orgs such as the Maryland based B4U-ACT: w w w(@)b4uact.org This organization has, in just a few years of existence, provided for mutually respectful discussions between MAAs and MHPs who are open-minded seekers of the truth that are willing to take great risks, both personal and professional, to learn what is true and what isn't about adults who have a preferential attraction to minors of all age groups from an objective scientific standpoint. Taking a specific stance on this (or any other) topic simply because it's politically popular and deeply imbedded in the cultural fabric is not ethically justifiable to those individuals who have a genuine desire to learn the reality behind this complex social phenomenon.
As all activists remind those who grow impatient with the speed of progress in their chosen cause: one step at a time. The fact that there are a growing number of individuals who are openly fighting for youth rights and asking the questions that Dr. Bruce Rind and Susan Clancy failed to ask in their otherwise bold and courageous studies about the current cultural conceptions of young people should be seen as a welcome state of affairs for anyone who has any degree of respect for civil rights and liberties for everyone in society. These brave individuals are fighting for the rights of youths because it's the right thing to do, and thus do so without worrying about detractors lamenting, "If young people gain their rights, that means they might end up having sex with 'pedophiles!'" The Robert Epsteins of the world strongly believe in the rights of young people and consider what has been discovered about them using valid scientific research and a detailed objective look at history to be more than enough of a good reason to strive to change both the laws and the moral conceptions of young people without being concerned about the possibility of these emancipated youths engaging in activities that might offend the sensibilities of many in society or inspire moral outrage in them. To those who are more concerned with matters of social justice than they are with offending sensitive people clearly believe that capitulation to societal attitudes that are based entirely on moralism rather than scientific accuracy (as Dr. Rind had no problem with doing) would constitute a vast injustice to the young people who these youth liberationists rightfully view as oppressed.
In other words, to a few brave souls out there, doing the right thing based on truth is much more important to them than doing the convenient thing based on strictly moralizing concerns that have no basis in scientific fact. If we had more such individuals living in any given time period, imagine how much faster social progress and justice for everyone in society would have occurred.
Going back to the subject of journalist David Aaronovitch's 2010 book on conspiracy theories that was mentioned in the opening paragraph of this essay, a book dedicated to the idea that learning the truth about any given subject is extremely important, Aaronovitch made the following statement in response to interviewer Thomas Rogers' query as to why it matters if people believe in things that are categorically untrue and whether or not people aren't entitled to believe whatever they want to believe:
"I do think it actually matters what is true. The search for the truth is an important search, and if it isn't, we're lost in all kinds of ways. We're lost in the fields of Holocaust denial. We're lost in being able to compare what is good and what is bad because we can't agree what actually happened. We're lost when it comes to guarding minorities against populist agitation [emphasis mine]. Nobody's going to die from saying Shakespeare wasn't Shakespeare, but in other areas, when the truth suffers, our decision making suffers. When there is no authority to the truth, prejudices thrive [emphasis mine]."
Though Aaronovitch certainly didn't make the above quote with either the MAA or the youth community in mind, it's nevertheless very applicable to the latter two groups as much as to anyone else, and should serve as one of the most inspirational quotes made in this decade. Aaronovitch's sage quote should also serve as a strong reminder to everyone who reads it that seeking the truth is extremely important to the world. Those who are courageous enough to seek the truth in opposition to some of the most deeply ingrained and even outright sacrosanct falsehoods in society should receive a huge amount of gratitude from everyone on this planet (particularly anyone who has ever been oppressed or harmed by false beliefs), because without these individuals social progress for the betterment of the entire world could never occur.
Addendum
The following bonus section of this essay features brief responses to the sub-list of social myths regarding young people and intergenerational attraction which I mentioned above by my fellow MAA activist Quoth.
1) Children never lie when they say they have been sexually abused.
Bullies in the legal system certainly do try to force kids to say what they want to hear, and will also try to twist whatever they do say to fit their agenda. A friend of my family's was in this position a few years ago, after drawing the ire of the local child "welfare" agency due to her "interference" with a teen girl. What she was actually doing was trying to help a teen girl, who was facing emotional abuse by her father, but the father had some influence and complained about it. Next thing she knew, social workers were trying to fabricate proof that she was abusing her foster kids, and they tried to bully the kids into saying that. Fortunately, their bullying tactics were unsuccessful (and unfortunately nothing was ever done about the girl's emotionally abusive father, as far as I know), but this is a typical example of how legal authorities can and do try to fabricate cases of child abuse for political reasons. Do a search for "child protective services make false allegations" on Google or Yahoo and you'll find plenty of stories like this.
2) Every adult who commits genuine acts of sexual abuse against kids have and are primarily motivated by a sexual attraction to them.
Of course, abuse of any form is about exerting power over someone else. It really shouldn't be a surprise that those who commit abusive acts are often in a position of power over their victim. On the other hand, attraction has nothing whatsoever to do with exerting power over someone else, and implies quite generally that someone views the person they are attracted to as an equal.
3) Youths have no real sexual desire.
I've always wondered how those that make this claim can do so with a straight face. Do they not remember anything at all before the Magic Age? And is their doublethink really good enough that they can deny that their own sons and daughters have sexual desires, especially when their spying software logs the kids searching for sex and porn, and notes that they are top ten search terms?
4) Kids were being sexually abused in truly horrific and often preposterous ways in the U.S.--and possibly across the world--by groups of mysterious and diabolical cultists who worshipped Satan and were abusing these kids in "honor" of the ultimate Lord of Evil.
Mass insanity at its finest.
5) Innumerable people who were sexually abused in their childhood were so traumatized by the alleged abuse that they repressed the memory deep into their subconscious, which could subsequently be retrieved at any point in their adulthood by deep hypnosis.
This idea was always so laughable that it should have been rejected by serious psychologists without consideration. I think "repressed memory syndrome" is just another symptom of a larger problem within the study of psychology, in that any "theory" is automatically true until proven false. It should be the other way around.
6) All cases of what is legally considered child pornography are always produced by adults and never by the minors themselves.
Kids were taking sexual pictures of themselves long before cell phones were invented. The sexting cases are simply the modern way of doing this.
7) The brains of adolescents are inherently faulty due to innate biological factors and thus they have an inherent tendency to make poor decisions that necessitate denying them most of their civil rights and keeping them under the control of their parents and other adults for their own good.
The proponents of this claim always like to use cases where teens "act out" to justify it. Of course, they never mention that this is almost universally in response to the unjust, broad denial of their civil liberties. And they never even attempt to justify their claim that a person can go from being incapable of making any decisions to being a fully capable human being in a single day.
8) Mutually consensual sexual contact between anyone today considered to be 'minors' and those who are adults is always traumatizing for the younger person and will likely cause lifelong psychological 'damage' to them, no matter how much the minor in question may have enjoyed and desired the experience.
The thing that people desperately need to realize is that the only valid definition of "wrong" is that which brings harm to someone.
Mutually consensual sexual contact itself cannot be traumatizing for the very simple fact that it is consensual. Trauma from the contact can only occur where there is some kind of force or manipulation used, but if it does, the contact is no longer consensual in any way.
The treatment that 'minors' get if they happened to be involved in a consensual relationship that is discovered is what is traumatizing. Moreover, hearing over and over again that any sexual contact between adult and child/teen is inherently harmful will have a severely negative impact on those who had some consensual contact that went undiscovered. And for the victims of genuine abuse, the way that they are treated by the legal system only traumatizes them further, in some instances far more than the actual abuse itself ever did.
I'd love to see someone who supports this ignorant claim struggle (and inevitably fail) to refute this: "The idea that sexual activity is the one thing in the world that underagers will engage in if they don't want to with adults, let alone those particular adults who do not live with them or have any particular degree of strict power over them, is quite baffling and entirely devoid of common sense, to say the least."
a) Children have an inherent lack of ability to consent to sexual contact with adults because they do not understand what sex is.
Knowing if something is pleasurable is not a difficult concept, at all. And moreover, it is awfully hard to say with a straight face that kids don't understand what sex is when they are frequently searching for sex and porn online, as noted by the Symantec study of kids' surfing habits.
b) Children are "pre-sexual" (yes, one of the commenters actually uses the latter term).
A convenient term to begrudgingly acknowledge that kids, in fact, do have a sexual nature, while keeping it fully separated in their minds from "real" sexuality.
c) Even if children can receive pleasure from mutually consensual sexual contact with adults and are not magickally traumatized by it, it's still always a form of abuse on the part of the adult because children cannot understand the full ramifications or consequences of engaging in such activity.
How could something mutually consensual ever be considered abusive? Moreover, learning about the possible risks of sexual activity is not difficult, and those risks can also be largely negated by some simple precautions.
d) Intergenerational sexual contact is always a form of abuse by the adult because of the inherent power differential between adults and children (a situation that could include teens under the age of 18 also).
A power differential which exists solely because divisions based on age exist.
e) Sexual activity that occurs between adults and minors is always initiated by the adult because kids "don't do that stuff."
Wishful thinking doesn't make it so.
f) Pedophilia is a mental disorder.
A "mental disorder" which does not meet the DSM's definition of what constitutes a mental disorder.
g) The word "trauma" can have many different meanings or conceptions, and Susan Clancy only uses one of them in her book. Hence, her research and the main premise of her book is faulty.
Only if "trauma" is taken to mean something completely different than what any reasonable definition of the word would say. And in any event, playing a game of semantics with a word does not undermine what someone claims if one looks at what the person is actually trying to convey.
Sources
1. URL for David Aaronovitch's interview on Salon(@)c o m about his new book on famous conspiracy theories from the early 20th century to the first decade of the 21st century:
w w w(@)salon(@)c o m/books/feature/2010/02/03/david_aaronovitch_conspiracy_theories?source=newsletter
archive/alternative link in case the site goes down:
w w w(@)web.archive.org/web/20100406035134/http://w w w(@)salon(@)c o m/books/feature/2010/02/03/david_aaronovitch_conspiracy_theories?source=newsletter
archive 2:
w w w(@)justpaste.it/akq0k
2. URL for the Wikipedia entry on the McMartin pre-school incident:
w w w(@)en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMartin_preschool_trial
3. URL for the Wikipedia entry on the general day care sex abuse hysteria that once plagued America:
w w w(@)en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_care_sex_abuse_hysteria
4. URL for the section of the AttractedToChildren.org site describing some important facts about pedophilia:
archive 1(in case site goes down):
w w w(@)web.archive.org/web/20100105232443/http://w w w(@)attractedtochildren.org/2007/quotes-on-the-occurence-of-paedophilia-in-csos
archive 2:
w w w(@)justpaste.it/ci3v0
5. URL to the article on Stuff.co.nz about the Symantec data collection project that proves pre-pubescents and underage adolescents routinely search for porn and sex sites online:
w w w(@)stuff.co.nz/technology/3175376/Young-kids-search-for-sex-online
archive 1:
w w w(@)justpaste.it/9vxyb
archive 2:
w w w(@)web.archive.org/web/20220428114306/http://w w w(@)stuff.co.nz/technology/3175376/Young-kids-search-for-sex-online
archive 3:
w w w(@)archive.ph/wip/VV1UU
6. URL to the Wikipedia entry on the book Michelle Remembers, the 1980 tome that was largely responsible for starting both the satanic ritual abuse hysteria and the "repressed memory syndrome" fiasco:
w w w(@)en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Remembers
7. URL to the article about the book Satan's Silence, a tome which effectively debunked the satanic ritual abuse hysteria:
w w w(@)web.archive.org/web/20101123111330/https://w w w(@)fsu.edu/~crimdo/jenkins.html
archive:
w w w(@)archive.ph/ogc5m
8. URL to page containing various important articles on the satanic ritual abuse hysteria:
w w w(@)web.archive.org/web/20120908111624/http://w w w(@)smwane.dk/content/section/5/30/
archive:
w w w(@)justpaste.it/94p5o
9. URL for article about the book The Myth of Repressed Memory, a tome which effectively disproved the once popular but almost entirely fallacious "repressed memory syndrome" phenomenon:
w w w(@)primal-page(@)c o m/myth.htm
archive:
w w w(@)web.archive.org/web/20190225013855/http://primal-page(@)c o m/myth.htm
10. URL to another very excellent article on the book The Myth of Repressed Memory:
w w w(@)researchgate.net/publication/273715071_The_Myth_of_Repressed_Memory
archive:
w w w(@)web.archive.org/web/20170811073918/http://w w w(@)ishk(@)c o m/myth_of_repressed_memory.pdf
11. URL to a book review of The Courage To Heal:
w w w(@)ipt-forensics(@)c o m/journal/volume4/j4_4_br1.htm
archive:
w w w(@)web.archive.org/web/20220314055823/w w w(@)ipt-forensics(@)c o m/journal/volume4/j4_4_br1.htm
12. URL to a page containing links to many other articles on "repressed memory syndrome":
w w w(@)web.archive.org/web/20120331002330/http://w w w(@)smwane.dk/content/section/6/31
13. URL to a CBS News article describing the sexting phenomenon:
w w w(@)web.archive.org/web/20110525060229/http://w w w(@)cbsnews(@)c o m/stories/2009/01/15/national/main4723161.shtml
archive:
w w w(@)archive.ph/nVxP
14. URL to an article on the Sodahead(@)c o m website describing the reality of underage girls uploading nude pics of themselves on socnet sites:
w w w(@)cantonrep(@)c o m/story/news/2009/03/27/girl-14-arrested-after-posting/42649884007
archive 1:
w w w(@)web.archive.org/web/20100405063512/http://w w w(@)sodahead(@)c o m/business/14-year-old-arrested-for-uploading-nude-pics-on-myspace-should-justice-be-served/question-293484
archive 2:
https://archive.ph/hGKf8
15. URL to a biography of psychologist G. Stanley Hall, the creator of the modern day concept of "adolescence":
w w w(@)education.stateuniversity(@)c o m/pages/2026/Hall-G-Stanley-1844-1924.html
archive:
w w w(@)web.archive.org/web/20111105202840/w w w(@)education.stateuniversity(@)c o m/pages/2026/Hall-G-Stanley-1844-1924.html
16. URL to Dr. Robert Epstein's website:
https://web.archive.org/web/20120522170542/http://drrobertepstein(@)c o m/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=10&Itemid=29
archive/backup:
w w w(@)archive.ph/jMJaA
17. URL to the section of the Scientific American Mind website where you used to be able purchase (for $7.95) a digital copy of the issue containing the article, "The Myth of the Teen Brain":
https://web.archive.org/web/20110221085733/http://w w w(@)sciamdigital(@)c o m/index.cfm?fa=Products.ViewIssuePreview&ARTICLEID_CHAR=9F1EBAA7-2B35-221B-6CBD51A39316C4D6
New url here with a free digital copy:
https://drrobertepstein(@)c o m/pdf/Epstein-THE_MYTH_OF_THE_TEEN_BRAIN-Scientific_American_Mind-4-07.pdf
archive/backup:
w w w(@)web.archive.org/web/20230521151641/https://drrobertepstein(@)c o m/pdf/Epstein-THE_MYTH_OF_THE_TEEN_BRAIN-Scientific_American_Mind-4-07.pdf
18. URL for a page containing links to a preview for the book TEEN 2.0: Freeing Our Children and Families From the Torment of Adolescence and the Young Person's Bill of Rights that was created by Robert Epstein:
w w w(@)teen20(@)c o m
archive/backup link in case the site goes down:
w w w(@)web.archive.org/web/20230605182634/http://teen20(@)c o m
19. URL to the article "Let's Abolish High School":
w w w(@)drrobertepstein(@)c o m/downloads/Epstein-Lets_Abolish_High_School-Education_Week-4-4-07.pdf
archive 1:
w w w(@)archive.ph/1IF58
archive 2:
w w w(@)justpaste.it/5gx1e
20. URL to the archived article from ASFAR's official zine Youth Truth explaining why the NCfMAEC is no friend of the youth liberation movement:
w w w(@)youthrights.net/yt/v2n6.pdf
21. URL for Anarchopedia entry on the Rind Report:
w w w(@)eng.anarchopedia.org/Rind_Report
alternative links:
w w w(@)archive.ph/66eqk
w w w(@)web.archive.org/web/20220428114310/w w w(@)eng.anarchopedia.org/Rind_Report
w w w(@)toptal(@)c o m/developers/paste-gd/Cxj7A8w5
22. URL for Google page containing info on the book Going All The Way, a seminal study of teen girls' sexual lives:
w w w(@)books.google(@)c o m/books?id=xfObOu5n99sC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Going+All+The+Way+by+Sharon+Thompson&source=bl&ots=CW3SetgFrl&sig=DXrM7T9vnmo_pi2vi-WDVvycL1g&hl=en&ei=tvttS8WnIZCRjAfG06D0BQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=&f=false
23. URL for a New York Times review of the book Going All The Way:
w w w(@)nytimes(@)c o m/1995/08/27/books/sex-and-the-teen-age-girl.html?pagewanted=1
alternative links:
w w w(@)web.archive.org/web/20220428114303/http://w w w(@)nytimes(@)c o m/1995/08/27/books/sex-and-the-teen-age-girl.html?pagewanted=1
w w w(@)archive.ph/OOIua
24. URL for the Safehaven Foundation Press:
https://web.archive.org/web/20170423063650/http://w w w(@)shfri.net/shfp/shfp.cgi
25. URL for a detailed article that counters the common claims of the Rind Report's detractors:
https://archive.ph/Mqkqv
alternative links :
https://justpaste.it/4cp8l
w w w(@)toptal(@)c o m/developers/paste-gd/uouzXu0T
26. URL for Debbie Nathan's CounterPunch article about the life of Justin Berry and Kurt Eichenwald's misrepresentation of it:
w w w(@)counterpunch.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/vol-14-no-7-8.pdf
alternative:
w w w(@)web.archive.org/web/20230322061250/w w w(@)counterpunch.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/vol-14-no-7-8.pdf
27. URL for John Farmer's good article on Telecom-Digest Online about the Justin Berry story and Kurt Eichenwald's highly selective interpretation of it:
w w w(@)web.archive.org/web/20140204005827/http://massis.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/TELECOM_Digest_Online2006-2/1358.html
or
w w w(@)archive.ph/V6Chw
28. URL to a book description of The Trauma Myth, an important work of research that refutes the commonly held belief that sexual contact between underagers and adults is always highly traumatic for the younger person:
w w w(@)ebookstore.sony(@)c o m/ebook/susan-a-clancy/the-trauma-myth/_/R-400000000000000187401
As of 2023 the link is down. Here is a new one:
w w w(@)psychotherapynetworker.org/article/trauma-myth
29. URL for metafilter blog featuring numerous comments by people (both those making a commendable effort to be open-minded and those who are extremely and blissfully ignorant about this topic) discussing The Trauma Myth and the implications of the research contained within:
w w w(@)metafilter(@)c o m/88964/The-Trauma-Myth-by-Susan-Clancy
alternative:
w w w(@)web.archive.org/web/20190923224313/http://w w w(@)metafilter(@)c o m/88964/The-Trauma-Myth-by-Susan-Clancy
30. URL for B4U-ACT, a Maryland based org that is the historical first ever offline support group for MAAs:
w w w(@)b4uact.org
alternative:
w w w(@)web.archive.org/web/20230529061301/https://w w w(@)b4uact.org
_______________________________
All links in clickable format here. (Most of the articles and text have also been pasted, so it is not necessary to go to the links):
https://sites.google(@)c o m/view/atimeofuniversaldeceit
Alternative links:
w w w(@)justpaste.it/a5u4q
w w w(@)archive.ph/MfC8x
w w w(@)TIOTtext.blogspot(@)c o m
w w w(@)tiottext.wordpress(@)c o m
w w w(@)web.archive.org/web/20231016170357/w w w(@)justpaste.it/a5u4q
w w w(@)web.archive.org/web/20231016222205/https://sites.google(@)c o m/view/atimeofuniversaldeceit
Clickable links without the pasted articles and text:
w w w(@)archive.ph/lFzJQ
Alternative links:
w w w(@)writeurl(@)c o m/ErML0UgfPeG6N9Xk
w w w(@)sharetext.me/y7clp1fgkb
w w w(@)tiotlinks.blogspot(@)c o m
w w w(@)linkslist.app/PL1JMWe
I recommend anyone interested in learning more about all of this to read the books listed, in particular The Trauma Myth.
I mean no harm by spreading this message; I’m just a good Samaritan speaking the truth during a time of universal deceit.
Most of these sites have been archived(permanentely saved). If any links are down, go to w w w(@)archive.org or w w w(@)archive.is, and search for the site. You may still be able to view a snapshot of it.
The Trauma Myth--My Analysis Of The Susan Clancy Interview
This essay concerns an article on the progressive news site Salon(@)c o m about the sex abuse industry, this time an interview: that columnist Thomas Rogers conducts with controversial author Susan Clancy regarding her extraordinary 2009 book, The Trauma Myth:
w w w(@)salon(@)c o m/books/int/2010/01/18/trauma_myth_interview/index.html
This book is perhaps as important to the cause of the pro-choice segment of the Minor Attracted Adult [MAA] community's movement, as well as the youth liberation movement, as any other book before it, because it dispels one of society's most fervent myths about adult interaction with youths--that such interactions are always traumatic for the young person, and will transform all such youth participants into emotionally "damaged goods" for the rest of their lives.
However, be advised that Clancy is no friend of the MAA community (very few would admit to be today), nor is she open-minded regarding youth sexuality, as are other controversial authors such as Judith Levine and Robert Epstein. She is actually quite adamant that youth/adult sexual interactions are always and intrinsically wrong and therefore should always be considered a crime, and I will respond to her statements along those lines in this analysis. However, just as Clancy made a major challenge to the once fashionable myth of "repressed memories" in a previous book, she now challenges the myth of mandatory/intrinsic trauma for "abuse" victims, and this nevertheless opens the door to a future where young people are allowed to enjoy sexual interactions with whomever they choose to be with.
Let's start by looking at some excerpts from the article and break them down:
"In a 2003 New York Times magazine profile about her, well-known trauma therapist Daniel Brown lashed out at Clancy's 'political agenda,' and Clancy's hate mail has included accusations of cheering on adults who engage in sexual contact with youths and even engaging in sexual contact with them herself."
Whenever someone challenges the established orthodoxy of the sex abuse industry that allows for lucrative careers for people like Daniel Brown--even though their careers are based on treating nothing but a myth, and therefore perpetuating it--you must be a defender of "abuse" in their eyes. Despite Clancy's hysterical attitudes and even a degree of anti-male sentiment (yes, she is that type of "feminist") towards the subject, she is nevertheless a seeker of truth who may one day change her tune on other aspects of this SA industry in the future, and her willingness to challenge the industry even to this limited but important extent deserves commending.
Clancy: "The title [The Trauma Myth] refers to the fact that although sexual acts by adults with minors are usually portrayed by professionals and the media as a traumatic experience for them when it happens — meaning frightening, overwhelming, painful — it rarely is. Most of them do not understand they are being victimized, because they are too young to understand sex, the perpetrators are almost always people they know and trust, and violence or penetration rarely occurs. 'Confusion' is the most frequently reported word when victims are asked to describe what the experience was like. Confusion is a far cry from trauma."
It's thoughtful of Clancy to point this out, but what she sails over, of course, is exactly why a youth is "victimized" if they are not traumatized by the incident. Is it possible that the "confusion" may be the result of the fact that they enjoyed a mutually consensual experience while always hearing from others that such interaction constitutes "abuse"? One can indeed argue that sexual interaction with older family members can be considered abuse, since young people are in no position to say 'no' to such authority figures (but this may be a complex issue in and of itself that is not entirely black and white, and I will perhaps tackle it in a future essay). What I am talking about here is non-familial adults who do not live in the home, and therefore do not have such direct and extreme authority over the young people whom they may have mutually consensual interactions with.
Clancy: "You get all these people who are keeping it a secret because they're ashamed — because what happened to them is not what is portrayed in the media or psychological and medical circles."
Hmmmm...is this perhaps more indication that people are ashamed of mutually consensual experiences in their youth because this is how the various institutions of society tell them they should feel? And are they actually made to feel guilty because they were not traumatized by the experience? Once again, I am not talking about definitively non-consensual and unwanted sexual experiences with older people that occur within the home; I am talking about those that occur with adults whom they trust, and who do not have direct authority over them--and especially those whom the younger person may even initiate such contact with (though I strongly recommend that both minors and adults avoid breaking these laws due to the possible consequences for both people if they are "found out"...I am fully law-abiding myself and I would never advocate breaking the law).
Clancy: "For 30 years we've been working on preventing sexual abuse. But we've skirted around what sexual abuse really is. The kids don't know what's going on, and they often enjoy it. They're not going to resist [emphasis mine]."
Of course, the fact that someone enjoys something and receives pleasure from it, and the fact that they don't resist as a result, isn't cause for Clancy (or too many other people, for that matter) to question whether we should continue to categorize something as "abuse." Instead, it's assumed that the youth in question "doesn't know what's going on," because if they did, according to the logic being presented here, they would resist. This is a case of stereotyping younger people as much as it is their "abusers."
Clancy: "In the 1950s and 1960s, psychiatrists were very open and honest about sexual abuse, but there was also that tendency to think it was the child's fault. Feminists were naturally infuriated, because it's not the children's fault! But the way they got attention to it was to portray the sexual abuse in a way that would shock people. They did that by comparing it to a rape. Before that, the reaction from the medical and psych communities was, 'This is not something we really care about.' It wasn't until feminists and child-protection advocates misportrayed it that we were able to arouse massive medical and scientific attention to the topic."
No one from the MAA community has ever suggested that intergenerational sexual interactions are "the child's fault." What Clancy and the establishment cannot conceive of is the concept that it's actually possible for the youth to initiate such contact, or that it's actually possible for a younger person to desire an older person, because the prevailing "wisdom" on this subject is that minors (even those as old as 16) do not understand their sexual desires and therefore have no conception of sexual pleasure unless such contact is foisted upon them. Further, it's an established belief on this topic that blame has to be assigned to either party when two people of disparate age groups act on a mutual desire, and the blame is always on the older person since adults are always expected to "know better." Once again, this is a case of stereotyping in both directions. Also, Clancy seems to suggest that the attempt by certain elements of society (which she identifies as "feminists" and "child-protection advocates") to bring attention to the problem of adult-minor sex by “misportraying” it in a way that would "shock" the public was ultimately a good thing, a case of the ends justifying the means, despite this attitude being responsible for creating a huge mess that Clancy is working to clear up.
Clancy: "Ninety-five percent of victims never seek treatment because of what they falsely assume and fear about sexual abuse. Many of them do not even think they were abused [emphasis mine]. This is a huge problem."
Could it be that such cases are a "huge problem" because society cannot accept the idea of young people finding pleasure in sexual interactions with others, particularly older people? Now don't get me wrong...if force or coercion was used, I would expect the event to be an extremely negative one for the youth in question, and such youths would indeed be victims in a true and accurate sense of the word. And, of course, adults who are responsible for such coercion should be considered to be guilty of a crime and treated accordingly by the law. I am not saying that youths cannot be victims, because they most certainly can; anyone of any age can. I doubt a young person, or someone of any age, would experience pleasure and "feel good about" a forcible rape or a sexual interaction they capitulated to as a result of blackmail. But how the young person felt about the interaction, and the important question of whether or not it's always the adult who initiates such interactions, are important things to consider that Clancy completely shunts aside because she cannot conceive of the validity or possibility of either. And it's very telling that Clancy never goes so far as to question the fact that the bulk of real sexual abuse goes on within the home, often by parents, stepparents, grandparents, etc., even though this "open secret" and shameful condemnation of the hierarchal nature of the prevailing family unit is readily available via FBI statistics. She never seems to consider that the legal and civil empowerment of youths--and society taking their potential, intelligence, and desires seriously--may be a good antidote to the problem. But since Clancy doesn't consider young people and their desires any more worthy of consideration than the establishment she opposes on various issues, she never reaches these conclusions (at least, not at this point in her career; I am giving her a chance).
Clancy: "You have people who call me and say, 'My uncle attempted sexual penetration when I was a child, but I'm not sure if I qualify as a SA victim.' I say, 'How in God's name do you not think you're a SA victim?' It's because in most cases of SA, it was not traumatic when it happened [emphasis mine]."
As everyone in the MAA community who knows me is aware of, I am not a fan of adults engaging in full sexual penetration of pre-pubescents, even if the young person requests it, because I do not think it's a responsible thing to do for reasons of physical safety (but I am not against the mutually consensual practice of outercourse, i.e., mere "sex play," between adults and willing pre-pubescents who may initiate the contact with both peers and adults whom they like and trust). I do not believe that pre-pubescents are miniature adults, and I do believe that the type of sexual interaction they desire with others (peers or otherwise) are quite different in many ways from those that adolescents and adults desire to engage in, and this needs to be considered. Also, I am not someone who encourages or supports incest for a variety of reasons (which I will get into in a future essay; however, for the record, I do not believe that mutually consensual incestuous activities should result in prison for any of the participants). Nevertheless, I need to point out that Clancy doesn't distinguish the age of the person she is discussing when they say they were penetrated as a "child," and some of her other statements make it clear she is one of those willfully blind people who considers adolescents under 18 to be "children" simply because they share a legal status with pre-pubescents; hence, her conception of adolescents appears to be no different than her conception of pre-pubescents.
Also, Clancy makes it clear once again with her above statement that she considers all sexual interactions between adults and youths under 18 to be "abuse" regardless of the fact that the younger person wasn't traumatized or emotionally "damaged" by it in any sense. She will justify this by uttering the popular attitude, "They can't consent." This is a cultural belief and a stereotypical attitude towards younger people that grew out of the Victorian era mindset that children are essentially asexual beings who are "tainted" by sexual experiences, and that only adults would initiate sexual activity with them, but never the other way around. And in case someone accuses me of "blaming the victim," I am not assigning any blame at all on either participant, regardless of who initiated it, as long as the sexual encounter was willing and pleasurable to both people who participated in it. It takes two people to tango, not just one. If someone can concede that sexual activity between people of disparate age groups where no force or coercion was involved is not only non-traumatic, but even pleasurable to the younger person as well as the older person, why is it still considered "abuse"? Is it an abuse of a person or in actuality an abuse of a cherished societal paradigm? Why can’t the many detractors of the phenomenon simply call a spade a spade and be honest about this?
Rogers then makes the following observation: "It's a very fine line between what you're saying and saying that they aren't hurt by SA."
Eager not to allow him to go further in that direction, Clancy forcefully responds with: "I will never say that. I could not be more clear. This is an atrocious, disgusting crime. People have a tendency to assume I'm saying it's not a big deal or it's the minor's fault."
Okay, let me try to understand Clancy's logic here. She concedes based on objective study of her own (regardless of how uncomfy the conclusions of such studies make so many people) that "most" youths (meaning, perhaps, those who weren't forced or coerced into sexual interactions with adults?) who have non-coerced sexual interactions with adults are not traumatized by it, and often actually report deriving pleasure from it, but it still hurts them nevertheless because, as conventional wisdom tells us, they are incapable of understanding sexuality. Hence, according to this logic, even if they aren't harmed by mutually desired contact of this nature, we must always cry foul when it happens.
As for Clancy's concern that taking a morally neutral stance on non-forced and non-coerced sexual interactions between youths and adults will result in her being accused of "blaming the youth," I again respond to such a ridiculous and loaded assertion by asking: why must blame be assigned to anyone in a situation where both participants found it pleasurable, and where both were fully willing?
Clancy continues: "Most people don't want to think too hard or thoroughly about these things."
Good observation, Susan. Now why don't you ponder that statement further and take your own advice?
Rogers then further cautions Clancy: "One could argue that your claims could encourage abusers — or convince them that what they're doing isn't wrong. How do you respond to that?"
Clancy replies: " Forcefully! As I hope to have made clear in the book, SA is never OK. No matter what the circumstances are, or how it impacts the victims, SA is an atrocious, despicable crime. Just because it rarely physically or psychologically damages the child does not mean it is OK."
So in other words, according to Clancy (and our esteemed conventional wisdom that she iconoclastically opposes, albeit only to a certain extent), despite the fact that sexual interactions between adults and minors under 18 are rarely physically or psychologically damaging to youths (with those "rare" occasions perhaps being the occasions when force or coercion of some sort is used), no matter what the circumstances are (e.g., even if the youth initiates it themselves), or how it may impact the "victim" (e.g., even if the youth finds it entirely positive, pleasurable, and conducive to the enhancement of their life experience) it's always "atrocious" and "despicable," it should always be considered a crime, and it always constitutes "abuse." Is Clancy, and those who make similar declarations, in any way conscious of how much they sound like they are engaging in nothing more than petty moralizing here? And not to mention how they sound as if they are condemning something that she admits causes no discernable or demonstrable damage to those who participate in it willingly simply because it offends their personal sensibilities and the cultural conception of younger people that they have been indoctrinated with all of their lives? However, since Clancy is still a highly courageous woman, I am not going to go so far as to say she is taking this stance simply because she hopes that by doing so it will lessen the condemnation she is receiving from society for making the observations that she has in her book.
Clancy further ruminates: "Harmfulness is not the same thing as wrongfulness."
So, just because something doesn't cause any harm and may even be positive and pleasurable to experience that doesn't mean that it isn't wrong in some intrinsic sense. Hasn't the same things been said in the past about women enjoying sex, homosexual sex, masturbation, recreational sex in general, and the "doggie style" sexual position? I am hoping that Clancy does more thinking in the future since she has shown that she is indeed capable of it.
Clancy then goes for the gold: "And why is it wrong? Because children are incapable of consent."
Leaving aside the too commonly accepted stereotype Clancy uttered above to justify her moralizing about this topic (there is no proof that they are cognitively incapable of consent, especially not if they receive objective and comprehensive sex education early in their lives), does the fact that young people are capable of experiencing pleasure and reporting positive experiences with mutually consensual sexual interactions with adults mean absolutely nothing? Does that not make it clear that they are fully capable of understanding sexual activity? The Rind Report made it clear in the past that even pre-pubescents are capable of something that Dr. Rind et al. referred to as simple consent, and that those who experienced interactions of this sort with both peers and adults felt, upon becoming adults, that they were capable of consenting to activity that clearly felt pleasurable to them. Once again, I am not condoning aggressive incestuous advances by family members or other adults who have such a heavy degree of authority over youths in question; I am talking about adults they trust who they may share an interest in interacting with in such a way, and who do not have such a high and direct degree of power and authority over them.
Clancy then goes further still to distance herself from taking the next logical step in understanding the intricacies of sexual interactions between underagers and adults: "They do not understand the meaning or significance of sexual behavior. Adults know this, and thus they are taking advantage of innocent children — using their knowledge to manipulate them into providing sexual pleasure. Sick."
Can Clancy possibly be any less overt with her spewing of pure emotionalistic rhetoric rather than reasoned analysis of the subject? The term "sick" is often used to denote something that offends someone's sensibilities regardless of whether or not it's actually harmful in any demonstrative sense. Yet Clancy engages in it without a second thought when it comes to such a topic. According to Clancy, children (again, without even specifying her exact definition of the word) are "incapable of understanding the meaning or significance of sexual behavior." What is the meaning and significance of sexual behavior? Progressives seem to agree that sexual behavior is often done for the mutual giving and receiving of pleasure; because it's fun to engage in; and because it can further a strong emotional bond and affection between two people or perhaps work to establish one that didn't already exist. Is its significance not the fact that when done with mutual respect between two people who seek to exchange pleasure with each other it can be a positive experience on one's self-esteem and personal growth? Is sexual activity not an important learning experience in life? With those observations in mind, and with Clancy's concession that sexual activity is often reported to be positive and pleasurable by young people under 18 who have engaged in it in a mutually consensual manner either with peers or with adults, is this not a strong indication that young people are every bit as capable of "getting" and understanding the meaning and significance of sexual behavior as well as anyone who is X number of years older?
Of course, according to Clancy, children are always "innocent" (she actually used the word in her above statement), which by our societal definition means inherently asexual. Therefore, their conceptual image and what they represent to society is "tainted" if they experience something as "dirty" and "impure" as sexual behavior. And Clancy never seems to recognize the cultural significance of such attitudes, nor does she, as a self-professed feminist, even seem to realize that such an attitude was once applied to women to deny the validity of their sexual nature and desires.
But adults, according to Clancy, always know the meaning and significance of sexual behavior which, as I mentioned up above, is about the mutual exchange of pleasure and emotional bonding between two human beings. Thus, they are always being "manipulative" when they engage in a mutually pleasurable activity with younger people (perhaps because they "taint" the spiritually pure cultural image of these young people), because adults who either respond to young people's advances (something Clancy seems to deny the possibility of), or initiates the advances themselves, are "manipulating young people into providing sexual pleasure," something that they should never be engaging in--because of the "damage" this does to their cultural image, even though it does no damage in a purely physical, demonstrable sense--and the assumption being that the adult only cares about their own sexual pleasure and couldn't possibly care about the youth they are interacting with in any possible way. The latter attitude constitutes nothing more than making a huge and totally unsubstantiated assumption based upon nothing more than a stereotype.
Also, I think in the future Clancy needs to talk to some gerontophiles [younger people with a preferential attraction to significantly older individuals who are not necessarily elderly] who have passed the Magic Age, as they will make it clear to her that some people under 18 are not only sexually aware--sometimes at a surprisingly early point in their lives--but have a sexual and emotional preference for significantly older people and often make the advances themselves. One thing the MAA community needs to do in the future is to gather together all of those gerontophiles we have met in the past to speak on behalf of both themselves (i.e., youth sexual rights and youth rights in general) and our community in the future. Clancy and other researchers need to hear their stories and acknowledge the reality of their existence, along with what it implies about the validity of the conception of youthful "innocence" that our society is so fond of preserving and perpetuating.
When Thomas asks Clancy why she is so opposed to the "repressed memory" concept, she responds: "Because it doesn't exist. There is not one single research study showing that people exposed to horrifying, overwhelming, painful events 'repress them' and recover them later on. Rather, people exposed to horrifying events report that they often remember them all too well [emphasis mine]. Ask any child exposed to the recent earthquake in Haiti if they 'repressed it.' None will. True trauma will always be remembered. Richard J. McNally's Remembering Trauma is a comprehensive critique of repression. Repression is a psychiatric myth [emphasis mine]."
In this good statement, Clancy helps rebuke one of the most glaring examples of junk science and (as she calls it) "psychiatric mythology" used to justify and perpetuate the SA hysteria of the past 30 years, one which began with the publication of the utterly debunked but socially influential and destructive book Michelle Remembers (which also started the equally infamous and socially destructive "satanic ritual abuse" hysteria, now likewise debunked). She has now moved on to tackle and debunk another myth perpetuated by the sexual abuse hysteria: the belief and assumption that young people under 18 are always traumatized by sexual interactions with adults (in particular, at least).
However, despite her doing something that takes a good degree of courage and open-minded critical thinking, which is commendable, Clancy (at least at this point in her career) refuses to take this critical thinking to the next level so as to repudiate the SA hysteria itself, even as she has denounced two of its most sacred though terribly incorrect tenets. The next logical leap, of course, would be to actually do what she is already accused of doing by her detractors: to consider that if it's not true that minors are traumatized by sexual interactions with adults as long as such interaction is not the result of force or coercion of some sort, then maybe their ability to experience pleasure from it is an indication that they do indeed have a sexual aspect to their nature that is every bit as legitimate for them to explore and experience as that of adults--and that it can potentially have the same benefits for them as it does for adults. Perhaps society's prevailing image of kids is wrong; perhaps they aren't inherently "innocent." Perhaps they can sometimes initiate sexual contact with adults and it's not always adults who foist their advances on them. And perhaps adults who have a sexual attraction to them may have more than a selfish desire for their own personal sexual satisfaction, and they may have at least as great an interest in the pleasure and emotional comfort of the younger person as they do their own. Maybe it's possible for an adult to actually love a youth in a true romantic sense, and vice versa. Maybe "manipulation" can work both ways in some isolated cases, not just on a one-sided adult-to-youth manner. And maybe, just maybe, kids have the potential to make their own decisions in other matters not related to sexuality (thus resulting in a comprehensive pro-youth stance by Clancy and feminists like her in the future). If such is the case, should we perhaps stop defining the term "abuse" so broadly, and in such an absolutist fashion? And maybe, just maybe, should we consider that perhaps other factors in society, such as poverty, warfare, and (just perhaps) the oppressive third class citizen status of kids are far, far more harmful to them than mutually desired sexual experiences between these youngsters and anyone they may choose to share such intimacy with?
In fact, Judith Levine (further to her credit and pro-youth credentials) devotes a whole chapter in her book Harmful To Minors to poverty and how it negatively affects minors in many more ways than the expression of their sexuality ever could, even going so far as to make the bold declaration that poverty doesn't simply cause abuse, but poverty is a form of abuse. And, of course, Levine challenged the validity of the "pedophile panic" in another chapter of her aforementioned book. Can it be, as Levine suggests, that the priorities of the "child advocates" are totally mixed up and single-mindedly focused on things that aren't the worst problems that our young have to face in modern society? And if so, wouldn’t our society and its child protective industry be guilty of placing priority on issues of moralism as opposed to material issues with an actual tangible effect on the lives of minors?
But Clancy has yet to take these steps and currently seems to define her conception of "child safety" and "child advocacy" almost solely on the basis of protecting minors not simply from SA (which is an admirable goal that those in the MAA community fully support), but from protecting them from their own sexual desires. That is a case of suppression masquerading as "protection."
Continuing on this subject, Clancy then makes this telling observation: "The idea of repression ultimately hurts victims. It reinforces the notion that SA is and should be a traumatic experience when it happens — something done against the will of the victims. Since for most victims this is not the case, they end up feeling 'alone,' 'isolated' and 'ashamed.'"
Once again, though Clancy concedes that sexual activity between older and younger people (which she always labels "abuse") is not normally traumatic and not even against the will of the younger people it is nevertheless always wrong and harmful. The question I raised before remains: is such mutually consensual activity harmful to them, or harmful to society's conception of them, and therefore to perhaps the continued justification for the civil oppression of people under 18?
And is it possible that the reason so many of them feel "ashamed" when they think back to their sexual interaction with adults is because of the attitudes society has against younger people's expression of their sexuality--i.e., that sexual behavior is a "dirty" thing to engage in--and not because sexual activity has an inherently "shaming" affect on younger people?
When Rogers asks Clancy about how she was treated back at Harvard when she first proposed her controversial work on the myths of the sex abuse industry, she said: "It's bad enough I moved to Nicaragua. When I was at Harvard — the peak of my career, at the university you want to be, surrounded by all the people who were the titans in the field — there was just so much bullshit going on. People focused on a type of abuse that affects maybe 2 percent of the population, millions of dollars for funding that doesn't apply to most victims, best selling books written by therapists misportraying SA. I would try to tell the truth. I would be attacked. Grad students wouldn't talk to me.
"Professors would tell me to leave for other fields. I just felt disillusioned. I got this opportunity from the World Bank to do cross-cultural research on how SA is understood in Latin America. I came down to Central America, and I've stayed."
So, Clancy had to move to another nation on another continent to escape the chastisement of her peers in the academic and intellectual field for daring to make even a moderately controversial challenge to the accepted orthodoxy of our culture even though she remains firmly entrenched in society's overall belief system and cultural conception of younger people as inherently "innocent," asexual, and incompetent. Isn't that interesting considering how many people in the MAA community have either done the same thing (i.e., self-imposed exile from their native land) or strongly contemplated doing the same thing for the exact same reasons as Clancy did? I guess maybe in the future Clancy will be able to understand exactly how people from this community feel for having desires and/or views that challenge society's most sacrosanct beliefs. And it should be noted that Clancy is all too aware that some of the greatest intellectual minds in academia, who are present at Harvard, are less capable--or perhaps less willing--to make even a relatively modest challenge to the existing orthodoxy regarding youth sexuality and the intrinsic nature of those we today label 'minors' than many people who are not college educated but do so on the basis of their personal experiences (like the bulk of gerontophiles who have described positive and both physically and emotionally fulfilling sexual interactions with adults even prior to reaching the vaunted Magic Age).
I am sorry that Clancy felt forced into self-imposed exile from her native country in order to continue her work, but I think this should be all the more reason for her to consider questioning the Western cultural attitudes and assumptions even further than she has already to see what other firmly held beliefs and policies may be based entirely on social or psychiatric mythology. And it's probably a good thing that Clancy is now living in Latin America, because not only does that section of the world have a much more open-minded view on the nature of "abuse" than does the Western nations, but there is even an emerging tendency there to be more respectful of the sexual desires of younger people and of the damage that legally enforced repression of their sexual expression can cause, a state of affairs made clear when one Latin American nation--Peru--recently lowered its age of consent from 17 to 14.
When Clancy is asked to address how depictions of sexual abuse of youths in movies that are based on the type of psychiatric and cultural assumptions that she has worked to refute, she says:
"I think it does a disservice to victims. There were a number of movies in the last few years where people were so traumatized by SA that they needed hypnosis to bring back the memory. In 5 percent of cases it is awful, and medical attention is required. For 95 percent of victims, that's not what happens [emphasis mine]."
Can it be that the 5 percent of the cases (and probably a bit more) that Clancy mentions above which are "awful" may perhaps be cases where actual force was used, and actual beating of the youth occurred, and thus physical and emotional damage did indeed result? In such a case, no sane or compassionate person would argue that the youth was anything other than a true victim of genuine abuse. Of course, I am not saying that physical damage needs to occur in order for a case to be genuine abuse. Coercion can take other forms, such as blackmail or threats where the violence wasn't actually carried out due to the youth's unwilling compliance as a result of the threats. In such cases, the youth is also a genuine victim, and I have little doubt that a youth (or someone of any age) that experienced such a thing would feel extremely hurt and emotionally devastated as a result, but such cases are extremely rare outside the home. And as Clancy's research (which matches with FBI statistics) seems to indicate, the great majority of youths who experience sexual interactions with adults do so in a manner that is fully consensual and thus non-traumatizing without any type of psychological damage, save a possible degree of shame and guilt that is not an inherent result of the experience itself but rather is based on society's reaction to the interaction, or how society conditions the youth to perceive the experience (i.e., an entirely sociogenic effect). That latter condition can be remedied by a combination of sex positive education for minors at an early age and a strong challenge to the attitudes of a society which insists--against all available evidence--that sexual activity is always negative for people under 18 no matter how positive it generally is on many levels for people who were past the Magic Age.
Clancy gives an example of the above:
"Look at Mystic River. In that movie child SA involves a faceless priest. The child is destroyed for life. There's a sadistic aspect to it that has nothing to do with what happens to most kids."
Well said. Yet, Clancy will then turn around and argue that even if an intergenerational sexual interaction is totally bereft of any sadistic aspects and the youth is not "destroyed for life," it is still always wrong because a lack of "harmfulness" is not always commensurate with a lack of "wrongfulness."
When Thomas asks Clancy if she is aware of any movie or TV show which depicts a sexual interaction between an adult and a minor in an accurate way, she says:
"There's a moment on HBO's True Blood in the first season, where Sookie Stackhouse is talking to Bill, her vampire lover, about what happened between her and her uncle, and I thought that was a very good depiction. She said it didn't ruin her life, but it's sad that something like that has to color her feelings about sex and intimacy as an adult."
Um, if the sexual interaction wasn't traumatizing and didn't ruin her life, and if the interaction was mutually consensual, then how would it "color" her feelings about sex and intimacy as an adult? Is it even remotely conceivable that an experience looked upon as positive by a youth may enhance her ability to achieve successful intimacy with another person later in life? Clancy won't go there, of course.
In regards to the matter of accurate depiction of an attraction between an adult and a youth on TV, I would like to refer her to an incredibly daring storyline from the defunct but greatly missed TV series Once And Again, where high school student and regular character Grace Manning (played by Julia Whelan) fell in love with her drama and creative writing teacher August Dimitri (played by Eric Stoltz), and he ended up reciprocating the feelings. It should be noted that Grace pursued August, not the other way around. This was a rare acknowledgement in our popular culture that sometimes the younger person can be the initiator, not only the adult. It should be noted here that their physical intimacy never went beyond a single kiss--Grace moved in and kissed August (not the other way around)--and he neither moved away nor responded in kind despite his desire to do the latter. Fearful for the consequences that both would face if he allowed things to progress any further, he immediately suggested that they proceed to the play that both of them had plans to attend, with Grace incorrectly upset over feeling that the reason he didn’t return her affection was because she was unappealing.
The storyline came to an explosive head when Grace's stepmom Karen Sammler discovers a semi-romantic poem that August wrote for Grace and all hell broke loose after that. Grace is terribly upset that due to society's conventions she is unable to have a relationship with her teacher, someone she loves, respects, and trusts--and would therefore greatly enjoy sharing her first intimate sexual experience with--and when her mom sees how the ensuing investigation by the school board that Karen initiated against August due to a relationship that she pursued first is causing her daughter such emotional turmoil, she does something extremely selfless that is nearly unthinkable for a "concerned" parent in our current society: she considers her daughter's feelings for her teacher and what the investigation by the school board will likely result in for August, and she drops the charges and even allows her daughter to say goodbye to August as he packs up and leaves the school—and Grace’s life--for good. August tells Grace that the whole thing was his fault, not hers, but she declined agreeing with him, likely because it was something that she wanted as much as he did [does this perhaps suggest that there is absolutely no need to assign blame to either participant?].
This didn't mean that Grace's mom was as forgiving of him, however; as August was leaving he ran into Karen Sammler, and when he attempted to talk to her to explain his side of things to her, she simply closed her eyes and firmly said, "I don't want to hear it." Despite her continuing disdain for August, however, at least Karen Sammler ultimately respected the feelings of her stepdaughter and came to reluctantly accept the fact that, in words passionately spoken earlier by Grace, "I don't need to be protected from this person!"
That particular storyline of a great drama series that left the air after a mere three seasons was the only open-minded depiction of intergenerational love on a TV series to my knowledge where the adult was not condemned as an utterly deplorable human beings for his feelings, and where the feelings (if not the competence) of a girl under 18 was honored in the end (though I do recall an episode from the truly awesome first three seasons of the radical 1990s TV series Picket Fences where the age of consent laws were duly questioned, but it that case it was a situation involving a 16-year-old girl having consensual sex with an 18-year-old boy, so the American audience may have been somewhat more sympathetic for that situation than the one depicted in Once And Again). Maybe Clancy should have watched the episodes of this series containing that storyline, and think hard and critically about the themes presented therein.
Interestingly, at least in the past few years, reruns of the show were aired on the Lifetime channel, a station that is notorious for producing telefilms that are not just poor in quality, but which espouse strong anti-male and anti-youth rights themes, including propping up the main tropes of the SA industry whenever possible, and you would think Clancy would have an interest in whatever airs on that network for these reasons. The refuns of Once And Again must have stood out as a shining gem compared to the usual dreck seen on that channel when you consider the themes seen on many of its self-produced telefilms, especially that one particular storyline involving the romantic feelings between Grace Manning and August Dimitri; that must have stood out on the Lifetime channel like an X-rated film airing on the Disney Channel. But even if Clancy cannot watch the reruns on Lifetime anymore (either because the network isn't available on any Nicaraguan stations or because the series is no longer rerun on that channel) the entire series is now available on DVD. I would urge Clancy and other "feminists" of her particular stripe to purchase the series and watch it with an open mind and heart.
Clancy concludes her thoughts about the above fictional example of the accurate reminiscence of an intergenerational sexual experience on True Blood with this:
"It wasn't out of control. They didn't make it sensational."
Imagine that! But isn't the continuation of the current attitudes towards youths and adults interacting with each other sexually even with the acknowledgement that non-coercive experiences of that nature do not automatically traumatize and damage the youth for life, as well as society's attitude towards youth sexuality and any expression of it thereof (not to mention the broader issue of youth competence in general), going to prolong the existence of the hysteria for much longer than it has to even as we incrementally undercut all the popular myths associated with it? And won’t this prove that the main beliefs used to justify it in the first place are nothing more than myths? Shouldn't that encourage us to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the entire gamut of beliefs and assumptions regarding youth sexuality and even youth competence in general? And, perhaps most importantly, shouldn't we perhaps listen to what the youths themselves have to say about this, and how they feel about non-coerced interactions and relationships with both peers and adults, without telling them how we think they should view such interactions?
This is what Clancy had to say about the legal use of the term 'statutory rape':
"It's outside my bailiwick to comment on legal terms, but in an ideal world I don't think that's the term we should use. I think there should be clear legal terms to differentiate SA that involves touching and no force, and SA that's penetrative, and SA that involves force and violence. You have to make it clear that in all cases it is a crime, but clumping all of them under one title — when they range from genital stroking to anal penetration — is a bad thing."
That's an interesting and not overly bad idea, leaving aside the fact that Clancy insists that all instances of youth and adult sexual interactions, even when no force or coercion is involved, should be considered a crime and be labeled "abuse."
Now, here is what Clancy had to say when asked about whether or not Roman Polanski should be put in jail:
"The Roman Polanski case is a clear case for SA. It's infuriating that people are losing the main point. He's a guy who had sex with a child. If she had been beaten or if she had been rushed to the hospital, it would have been an entirely different situation, but because she wasn't physically traumatized nobody cares. She was drugged, the poor thing. If he had slapped her around, if he had pushed her up against the wall, he would have been locked up. Ninety-five percent of children don't fight it because they don't understand what's happening and because when they tell the truth nobody cares."
Okay, let's look at the various portions of Clancy's totally predictable response and do some analytical nitpicking:
"He's a guy who had sex with a child..."
Why doesn't it surprise me that a supposed progressive like Clancy views an adolescent girl--even a younger adolescent--as a "child"? Obviously, she cannot see beyond the legal definition of "child" and willfully confuses someone who is subject to that legal terminology with empirically evident reality.
"If she had been beaten or if she had been rushed to the hospital, it would have been an entirely different situation..."
Yes, it certainly would have, and that is one of the main points of my essay.
"…but because she wasn't physically traumatized nobody cares..."
Nobody? I see plenty of people out to hang Polanski by a noose simply because he had sex with a girl under the age of 18, with none of the other factors usually being relevant in the least. I believe it's entirely possible for a youth to be a victim of genuine abuse even if no actual physical violence had occurred, of course, but there are too many questions and holes involved in the Polanski situation, especially when you consider that Polanski was not known for being either violent, or for coercing any lady of any age into sexual situations with him, and he has been friends with many young women in his life due to his predilections as a hebephile (please see my essay The Roman Polanski Circus for my detailed analysis of the Polanski situation).
"She was drugged, the poor thing..."
Yes, there is good evidence that Polanski gave Samantha Geimer a qualuude prior to having sex with her. But though she implied that she was "out of it" in her famous grand jury testimony and told Polanski "no" and that she wanted to go home repeatedly, it was revealed by the judge who tried the initial case that Geimer had taken qualuudes before and was familiar with how they would affect her, especially if washed down with alcohol. But she took the pill anyway, and considering how the drug scene was in the '70s when this incident took place, it can be argued that Polanski gave her the pill to relax her, not to dope her up to the extent that she couldn't resist his advances [please permit me to point out that this is something I do not personally agree with; I would never give any hypothetical teen girl I was about to be intimate with a recreational drug or alcohol of any sort to relax her or to "get her in the mood," no matter how familiar she was with its effects on her or even if she requested these things herself...I would simply put on some sweet music, and if that didn't work, I would simply have lunch or dinner with her and that's it].
But I don't get the impression that Geimer was totally zonked out of her mind when she and Polanski had sex. If Clancy was reading this, she would likely berate me with a variation of the following: "How could you be so insensitive? You're simply defending Polanski because he is a hebephile like you, and you would probably defend him even if he did beat her to a bloody pulp before having sex with her!" Not true, and a very poor assessment of my character such a statement would be. As I wrote in my previous essay on the Roman Polanski situation (noted above), there is something fishy about that grand jury testimony that Geimer disseminated when you consider that she has never made any disparaging comments about Polanski at any point in her life following the incident, not even 30 years later, and she has recently said she wants no part of the sensational media circus surrounding Polanski's arrest in Sweden, except to say that she holds no ill will towards him and that she thinks the case against him should be dropped.
But there is something even more important to take into consideration when analyzing the veracity of that grand jury testimony. Clancy should be well aware of the fact that police and social workers often do a bit of coercing themselves, especially when it comes to their highly suspect method of interrogating minors whom they are trying to get them to help the cops make a case against an adult (or even another minor in some instances) who is accused of SAing them. Clancy must also be aware of how this situation was exposed beyond a shadow of a doubt with the infamous McMartin pre-school incident.
Of course, Clancy, like many other authors who recently appeared on Salon and elsewhere, would likely respond to Geimer's request that the charges be dropped by saying that how she felt about the situation--even from the perspective of her current adult mind (which Clancy would presumably have more respect for than the judgment capabilities of a 13-year-old)--was totally irrelevant, that what Polanski did should still be a crime, and the situation should be considered a clear case of "abuse" no matter what Geimer's emotional reaction to it was, either then or now. Sexual activity between adults and people under 18, no matter how mutually consensual, no matter how pleasurable it was to the younger person, no matter who initiated the contact, no matter how much love and affection may have been shared between the two as part of the experience, and no matter how evident it was that no trauma or emotional damage of any sort had occurred to the younger person, is always wrong in some intrinsic absolute moral sense because minors can't understand sex, and as a result of that, they just don't "get" the fact that it was wrong.
"Ninety-five percent of minors don't fight it because they don't understand what's happening and because when they tell the truth nobody cares..."
Wrong on both counts. I think minors, particularly adolescents (though Clancy doesn't make the distinction anyway), are fully capable of understanding sexual intimacy and are well aware of the difference between something that gives them pleasure and something that hurts them, and there is no evidence to suggest otherwise. If a parent, stepparent, or grandparent does push them into the situation, yes, it can be confusing to the minors in question, which is why it's important to question the power imbalance that exists within the hierarchal family unit of the present in a society where minors under 18 are effectively without most of their civil rights, and are therefore little more than the legal property of their parents in one sense and wards of the state in another sense (if the prevailing family unit was democratic in structure, as it would be in a youth liberated society, however, things may well be different; again, I will try to tackle this issue in a future essay). Clancy has yet to do this, of course, so she has yet to go to the root of the problem where a good 85% of all genuine abuse directed towards minors by adults occurs. A situation with an adult that did not have direct power over them would be much different, especially if the youth initiated it. Even pre-pubescents often engage in sex play with each other and they fully understand that this type of experimentation is fun when conducted between two willing individuals. Why would it be any different with an adult that does not live in their house and does not have direct power over them? I think it’s likely that Clancy would respond to my latter question with a variation of this: “That’s different, because adults ‘know better’ and minors do not!” What, exactly, do adults “know better” than them when it comes to understanding that mutually desired sexual contact can be pleasurable and fulfilling? I guess what that statement really means is that it’s commonly believed that adults are mentally sophisticated enough to understand that even mutually consensual sexual interaction between themselves and younger people who are legally designated as “minors” is supposed to be intrinsically “wrong” in some absolutist, cosmic sense—or, perhaps more accurately, are better able to understand that offending the moral sensibilities of the majority and those who run the state apparatus is very unwise.
And Clancy says that nobody cares when minors tell the truth? At the risk of coming off as impolite, I think Clancy has a lot of nerve to complain about people not listening to minors, since she only considers listening to them if they tell her something in harmony with her worldview regarding youth sexuality, and though she will believe them if they insist they weren't traumatized or damaged by the experience since that goes along with the conclusions of her research, she will argue with them until she is blue in the face if they should also insist that what they did wasn't intrinsically wrong regardless of how they themselves felt about it.
When asked how SA victims should be treated by the system, she says:
"I think practically, SA victims need to hear loud and clear that what happened to you is what happens to most people. It was wrong and not your fault, and you should report the crime, and the perpetrator should be punished. I don't think that they in most cases need years of therapy to get over the betrayal. What they need first and foremost is the straightforward truth: You are not alone, you have nothing to be ashamed of, it's his fault, and this is a crime."
What if the young person insists it was not abuse? What if they question the absolutist edict that their experience was "wrong" if they felt it was a positive experience? Yes, it's a crime in the sense that it is against the law, but shouldn't what we have learned thus far open the door to questioning the wisdom of these laws? And once again, as for telling them it wasn't their fault even if they initiated it or pursued the adult--because unlike them adults always "know better"—then why must any blame be assigned to either participant in the first place? And if you keep telling them that what they did with an adult that may have made them feel loved and gave them pleasure was inherently wrong, isn't that all the more likely to make them feel ashamed about what happened if they see things differently than you do?
With her next statement, Clancy goes a bit off the deep end and displays how much of her attitudes are based on raw emotion rather than reason when she makes it clear how much of her attitude is based on her interpretation of "feminism":
"There's something I would like to add. Despite all of this media and research attention on adult-minor sex for the last 30 years, I still don't hear the answer to one question: What the fuck is wrong with all of these men?"
Um, considering all the media and research attention on adult-minor sex for the past 30 years, this is the one question that Clancy wants the answer to? As if none of the other questions I raised above in this essay should even be considered?
"Sexual abuse is not women; it's men [emphasis mine]. Every once in a while a woman will SA, but in 95 percent of cases it's a man that is known to the child — a teacher, a friend, a family member."
It was very revealing of you to point out this bias of yours, Dr. Clancy, which adds more credence to my theory that age of consent laws are largely based on negative stereotypes our society has on men. But is it true that a whopping 95% of all those who engage in actual sexual contact with minors are men? Could it be that reports of women engaging in sexual contact are simply underreported to a huge extent because if the reality was made crystal clear via the media, it would besmirch the warm and cuddly image society has of women being inherently nurturing and loving of kids? This would be in contrast to the cultural conception of men being inherently predatory and possessing a disproportionately voracious sexual appetite in comparison to women. Hence, would this serve to encourage society to ask uncomfortable questions about various institutions--including that of raising kids--that favor women? More on that in a bit.
Clancy elaborates further:
"These are high-functioning people in society who are choosing to engage in sexual contact with children. All this focus on the psychology of the victim is a way to sidestep this central question: What is going on in society that so many men are choosing to get off on small children? I can find almost no studies on the subject. People will go into jails and interview a perpetrator, but most of these people don't go to jail, and most of them aren't caught."
Now she says "small children," which implies very young kids as opposed to adolescents even though she has previously made it clear that she doesn't make a distinction, so I will continue to go with that; perhaps Clancy believes that by saying "small children" this will pack a greater emotional punch to her readers by emphasizing what she considers to be the inherent helplessness of kids.
Now, as for what is going on in society that makes so many men "get off" on kids...that depends on whether you are talking about MAAs, child fetishists, or situational molesters. Of course, Clancy will not make the distinction at this point in time, and will likely rank all of the above three categories under the blanket term "pedophile" just as much of the media does. That is highly inaccurate, as members of the MAA community are well aware, but I will get to that after answering Clancy's main question raised up above.
First of all, sexual/romantic attraction and admiration of those who are today labeled as “minors” is not truly rare, nor is it a trend that suddenly appeared in society out of the blue 30 years ago.(I'm sure if it was rare most adults would have tried to criminalize adult-child sexual relationships long ago). This is especially true in regards to adult attraction to adolescents, who are basically young adults themselves. The four sub-categories of MAA [Minor Attracted Adult]--pedophiles(5%), hebephiles(18%), ephebophiles(30%+), and nepiophiles(1%)--have existed throughout human history in equal numbers to what each of these groups exist today. The beauty of youth among all age groups has been recognized by many artists and writers throughout history, and it was only during the Victorian era of the mid-19th century that the concept of everyone labeled under the term "child" (a term that has since been expanded to include adolescents under 18 by the beginning of the 20th century) were considered to be pure and asexual, and this was due to a general disdain for sexuality and sexual expression itself that was the hallmark of this era. Since adult women were gaining more rights and gradually making it clear that they were capable of feeling sexual desire and having a positive reaction to sexual experiences, Victorian society took advantage of the gradually decreasing rights of younger people that were occurring at the same time to treat them as a political and cultural "consolation prize," and to use them to take women's place as society’s treasured paragons of asexual purity.
At this time, it was also “minors” that took the place of women as being the individuals in society who were considered to have an inability to make competent decisions outside the realm of some other group's authority (men in the case of women in the days before their suffrage, adults 18 and over in the case of those we today label “minors”). The culmination of the Industrial Revolution that happened shortly after the Victorian mentality gained a foothold in Western society delivered the final blow to what was left of youth rights, along with the expansion of the definition of both the term and the cultural conception of the "child," including the creation of an intermediary phase of youth between childhood and adulthood, which came to be called adolescence. All but the oldest people under the latter intermediary stage of human development were relegated to the legal status of "child" and were no longer treated as young adults but rather as older children.
As a result of the above, society began to see adult attraction to people under the arbitrary age of legal adulthood as unnatural and pathological, and utterly ignored the existence of art and literature from the classical and medieval world that made it clear how common adult attraction to both pre-pubescents and (especially) adolescents have always been throughout history, and did its best to legally and culturally suppress all newly produced works of art carrying this theme by condemning them as "obscene." Youths under a legally designated arbitrary age, now bereft of most of the rights that young boys at least once enjoyed, and firmly entrenched at the bottom rung of the hierarchal nuclear family unit, were harshly disciplined for expressing their sexual nature in any way, a situation that occurs to this day when tweens and teens under 18 are actually brought to court and put on offender registries for expressing their sexual side by doing things such as taking nude or otherwise provocative pics of themselves and posting them on socnet sites like MySpace and Facebook, or sending them to other people via their cell phones (i.e., the sexting phenomenon), or even when pre-pubescents are caught "playing doctor" with each other. This recent state of affairs forced almost all expressions of adult attraction to minors into the closet as it now became an "issue" in society.
But the issue didn't truly explode until the beginning of the SA industry that coincided with the conservative takeover of the government that started with the Reagan years, where liberals were beaten back and felt compelled to repudiate their previous development of an open-minded stance on certain "hot button" issues, including this one, which led to the type of progressive we most often see today that is epitomized by Clancy and the other Salon writers I mentioned in my essay "The Roman Polanski Circus." This is in marked contrast to the progressives who existed during the truly liberal era of the early 1970s that applauded books like Show Me for their educational and scientific value to minors without worrying about whether a "pedophile" might become aroused after viewing the pics in that book. Imagine how Clancy and most other modern progressives would react to that book if it was published today? Judith Levine and possibly Robert Epstein would likely be among the relatively few lone voices even in the progressive world who would be arguing on its possible merits rather than falling all over themselves to come up with stronger words of condemnation for the book. Progressives of today are reluctant to even fight for sex education of young adolescents that doesn't place a high moral emphasis on abstinence.
That is what created the illusion in the minds of Clancy and others who think as she does that adults (erm, okay...men) with a sexual attraction to minors is some deviant aberration that sprang up out of the dark depths of decadent 20th century society. This only seemed to occur when the idea of adult attraction to those the legal system today designates as “minors” became a major "issue."
Needless to say, the great majority of MAAs probably do not get involved in sexual relationships with youths in their respective age of attraction, and even less initiate such mutually consensual experiences that do still occur. Instead, the bulk of modern MAAs who enjoy having youngsters in their lives seek to interact with them in legal and socially acceptable ways, and there are many (like myself) who steer clear of having them in their lives altogether because they fear being accused of something even if they didn't actually do anything illegal, and/or because they find it emotionally troubling to always have to stifle their true feelings for minors they interact with should a greater than platonic interest develop on either end, or because they may be activists who are "out" as MAAs in real life and therefore do not find it wise to interact with them even in a legal and socially acceptable manner due to the risk of being accused of something by a panicky bigot (this author belongs to the latter category; as a heterosexual hebephile who is not in the toybox at all, I stay as far away from adolescent females as possible in almost all cases out of fear that I might get accused of something illegal despite the fact that I am entirely law-abiding). Regardless, the popular belief that it's MAAs of any of the three aforementioned sub-categories that are involved with the bulk of intergenerational sexual interaction that does occur in this society in spite of the laws is another major myth that needs to be addressed much more often than it has been thus far.
Secondly, there are individuals that may best be called child or teen fetishists(CFs). There are probably a lot of these individuals in society today, and they have likely been around for as long as human history has been around too. What distinguishes them from bona fide pedos, hebes, ephebos, and nepis (i.e., those who together make up the broad political categorization of Minor Attracted Adults, or MAAs) is that their interest in minors is strictly sexual, and can even harbor violent fantasies to a much more prevalent degree than that which occurs amongst bona fide MAAs. This is in contrast to those better defined as MAAs, who tend to possess an attraction for minors that is as much emotional, social, and aesthetic as it is physical. However, CFs rarely act out their fantasies and most of them are quite harmless from a demonstrable point of view. Most of the relatively small number of them I have met personally when they gravitate to the MAA community display varying but often high degrees of guilt over their strictly sexual attraction to minors as a result of the societal condemnation of it, and do not believe it should ever be acted out, though many of them believe that viewing and possessing underage pornography should be legal. The only thing CFs are routinely found guilty of is downloading and viewing underage pornography. Hence, I think few CFs (save for the small number of them that may lack good self-control) are involved in the genuine harm of youths discussed in this article. It should come to no surprise to Clancy that large numbers of these fetishists exist, because human beings can have almost anything you can possibly imagine as a sexual fetish. If there can be small but notable groups of people with sexual fetishes for depictions of animals having sex, plushies, dolls, and even shoes it should come as no surprise to anyone that children and teens could be the subject of many adult's personal fetish too.
Next, we come to the situational molesters(SMs), and it is from individuals like these that most genuine abuse of minors occurs, including outright force if not by various types of coercion. To Clancy's credit, she does not push the "stranger danger" myth, and she recognizes that most people who initiate sexual acts on minors are those who live with them or who they otherwise know (though this can be a rather broad definition, since minors could obviously be said to know any adult whom they developed an interest in). As has been noted in FBI statistics and many other sources but not at all acknowledged by Clancy is that the great majority of SMs do not have a sexual preference for minors, but initiate sexual acts with them for a variety of other reasons(most adults who perform sex acts with minors are not pedophiles or hebephiles and aren't attracted mainly to them), including severe emotional stress resulting from things like marital problems, the detrimental effects on behavior and judgment that can result from alcoholics who do not get any help and frequently consume alcohol, or simply from particularly severe power trips that are the natural consequence of the hierarchal nuclear family unit that is the socially dominant model of today. Such adults initiate non-consensual sexual contact with minors for much the same reason that heterosexual prisoners rape fellow inmates of the same gender, i.e., not because of a simple sexual desire alone but rather as a way of exercising power in an utterly corrupt way and establishing dominance and inflicting humiliation on an easy victim. The power that parents and other adults in certain positions in society have over children and adolescents under 18 make these individuals very easy victims in many cases, and this is something that our current heavily gerontocentric society doesn’t want to acknowledge, let alone deal with in any realistic manner.
There are a minority of situational molesters who do not operate in the home, of course, and this small number of individuals simply see minors as easy victims due to their small size and are malevolent opportunists. It's these people who are responsible for the tiny number of kidnappings and murders of minors that the press often make sensationalistic stories about, and use as the impetus to rationalize a new wave of heavily draconian laws that hurt far more innocent people than they protect, further increase police powers over society, further encroach upon what few positive rights youths under 18 currently have, and further perpetuating the already pervasive sex abuse hysteria. However, it should be noted that the very tiny number of SMs who are strangers to the minors they kidnap or even murder pales enormously in comparison to the number of minors who are SAed or physically abused in many other ways, including murder, by parents every year. Clancy has so far refused to ask the very difficult questions about the nature of kids' politically disempowered status in society and the hierarchal structure of the present day family unit and school system that are together the cause of by far the greatest amount of real demonstrable harm inflicted upon kids every year. Judith Levine took a halting step towards identifying these things as major problems for kids in Harmful To Minors, but she didn't go into it in detail, possibly so as to avoid offending a major target audience of her book any more than she had to.
Hence, SMs, who are the cause of the vast majority of actual sexual interactions with minors (and neither MAAs nor typical child and teen fetishists), including most instances that are truly abusive and non-consensual in nature, tend to "get off" on power and dominance more than they do on simple sexual interaction with minors, and to them they are simply targets of convenience due to both their present disempowered status in society (including within the schools) and their current servile role within the dominant family unit.
Okay, with that out of the way, let's turn to Clancy's contention, a popular one in society, that it's "not women, but men" who sexually engage with minors and see if it holds up to scrutiny or is nothing more than a myth perpetrated by "victim" feminists. This is going to be lengthy, because I want to gather as much evidence to back up my contention as possible, and any or all of this info may be highly valuable to future researchers on this or related topics.
First, note this section: w w w(@)canadiancrc(@)c o m/Female_Sex_Offenders-Female_Sexual_Predators_awareness.aspx of the Canadian Children's Rights Council, which is not a youth liberationist org but rather one of those "child advocacy" orgs that Clancy seems to be so fond of, but it devotes a whole section of the site to the phenomenon of female SOs across North America. The site proves its "CA" credentials with its attitude towards all sexual activity between minors under 18 and adults, and it ignorantly combines articles from various places where the sexual relations between adult women and minors were clearly consensual with articles that are clearly describing acts of true abuse and outright sadism perpetrated by women against minors (such as the Melissa Huckabee incident), a shameful practice that perpetuates the idea that all sexual activity between adults and minors constitutes "abuse."
However, despite the wrongful equation of mutually consensual acts between women and minors with true acts of violent sadism committed by women against minors, the articles and statistics on that site make two things clear that will make "feminists" like Clancy quite uncomfortable: 1) It's not all that uncommon for women--be they MAAs or those without a sexual preference for minors who simply happen to unexpectedly fall for a minor--to have mutually consensual sexual relations with minors; and 2) a large degree of actual violent abuse committed against them by adult women, including mothers, is a problem that is much more widespread than society is willing to face up to for a variety of reasons. Let's look at some of the highlights from the above site:
"Female sexual predators(SPs) go unreported because of a lack of awareness by the public."
"75% of female SPs are male and 25% are female."
Though the majority of sex offenders in North America are indeed male, the number of women who engage in illegal sexual acts with minors are much greater than the mere 5% Clancy imagined, according to this report.
"86% of the victims of female SPs ors aren't believed, so the crimes go unreported and don't get prosecuted."
This is in contrast to the situation faced by men, where almost all accusations against them are believed no matter how unfounded the accusations may be in many instances, and which greatly discourage men from taking jobs where they will be working closely with minors, such as teachers or babysitters. This is due to the very different cultural perceptions of men and women that I mentioned up above. Hence, these statistics suggest that contrary to Susan Clancy's claim that few women commit such crimes, in actuality it may simply seem this way due to the fact that women are rarely arrested for them. But "feminists" like Clancy do not, of course, consider this, since if they did it would conflict uncomfortably with their worldview about men being more prone to violence and/or sexually voracious than women.
Now, check out this section: http://w w w(@)canadiancrc(@)c o m/Newspaper_Articles/MovingF_Female_perpetrators_Child_sexual_abuse_JUL94.aspx of the site, which features a detailed analysis of female offenders by author Lisa Lipshires, which, of course, includes both mutually consensual experiences between women and minors and those who suffered genuine abuse at the hands of female situational molesters, though both are labeled as "abuse" here. Some highlights I would like to point out and maybe comment on:
"Betsy K. and Marcia Turner are part of a small, growing number of people confronting the issue of female-perpetrated child sexual abuse. Many feel they are fighting an uphill battle against societal denial and cultural stereotypes of women and men [emphasis mine]."
"In her 1993 doctoral dissertation, 'Female Sex Offenders: Societal Avoidance of Comprehending the Phenomenon of Women Who Sexually Abuse Children' (University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, MI), Boston psychologist Laurie Goldman analyzed the ways society minimizes the scope and impact of adult-minor sexual contact by women."
So it would appear that some women academics who are not blinded by "feminist" stereotypes not only acknowledge the existence of women who have sex with minors, as well as women who commit actual acts of violence against them (I will distinguish between the two though the article and Clancy herself does not), but actual studies have been conducted on it. Hasn't Clancy ever read any of these studies? Let's take a look at what Dr. Goldman has to say about this phenomenon:
"Unable to obtain subjects for her study, Goldman decided to focus on the societal denial that makes female perpetrators such an elusive population [emphasis mine]."
This should be interesting...
"Goldman discovered that denial of female perpetration is woven into the very systems meant to protect children."
Translation: the very system that pushes the SA hysteria in the interests of "protecting" minors from their own sexual desires works to suppress not only the culturally unacceptable idea that they can be sexual beings, but also the almost equally culturally unacceptable idea that women can possibly be anything other than nurturing in a strictly maternal way towards minors.
"In the State of Washington, for example, one human services professional reported that when an accused female offender was brought before a judge, the judge declared, 'women don't do things like this,' and dismissed the case. In another case, a New England prison warden told Goldman that she had only one woman in her system who had been convicted of CSA because 'public sentiment did not allow for such charges to be brought to trial in her conservative state.'"
Imagine that! I see that our esteemed Harvard scholar and expert on CSA—that’s you, Dr. Clancy--needs to do more research, and just as she commendably works hard to dispel certain myths perpetrated by the sex abuse hysteria, there are certain myths she needs to work to dispel from her own psyche first.
"This comes as no surprise to Gail Ryan, facilitator of the Kemp Center's Perpetrator Prevention Project in Denver. She has found that female adolescent sex offenders 'are much less likely than male adolescent offenders to be caught or charged.'"
In other words, adolescent female "offenders" who have sexual contact with pre-pubescent kids are much less likely to be charged than their male counterparts who engage in the same activities for the reasons mentioned above by Goldberg, and they are also much less likely to be caught because people no doubt keep less of an eye on them around minors than they do with adolescent boys. This is very similar to how black shoplifters are much more likely to be caught while committing the act of theft than white shoplifters, not necessarily because whites shoplift less but simply because store employees and security guards tend to watch black shoppers much more closely than they do white shoppers due to common stereotypes of blacks as being more prone to commit crimes than whites.
"Iowa State University sociologist Craig Allen, who conducted a study Of 75 men and 65 women who had been convicted of SAing a minor, refers to this process as a form of societal 'gate keeping.' By the time female offenders could be referred to a therapist for treatment, he writes in Women and Men Who Sexually Abuse Children: A Comparative Analysis (Brandon, VT: Safer Society Press, 1991), 'only those women would be left whose behaviors were so deviant' that their abusiveness could not be denied 'at any of the preceding 'gates' in the system.' Allen's gate keeping hypothesis could account for why female perpetrators appear so rarely in therapists' case studies and why, when they do, they are generally described as psychotic or otherwise severely disturbed."
The above observation by Allen is easy to interpret. Basically, in his case studies conducted on female sex offenders, it was clear that the only female perps who received state enforced therapy were those who were likely to have truly abused minors in a real sense, including the use of violence. Those who engaged in what was most likely mutually consensual relationships with minors were let go. This is certainly fair in my opinion, but the point of the above is that men are hardly ever given this type of deal, and they tend to be sent to therapy regardless of whether their sexual interactions with a minor was clearly mutually consensual or actually abusive. This can largely account for why there are so many more male offenders in prison and therapy than females.
"Ruth Matthews, a St. Paul psychologist who has worked with 50 adolescent and 70 adult female sex offenders, says another major reason why adult female perpetrators are rarely seen in treatment is that many are mothers. In such cases, she says, dependent children are generally reluctant to turn in their mothers."
Hmmmm...imagine that. This is an uncomfortable fact for our gerontocentric society that youth liberationists have been trying to get across to the public for many years now. Most of the cases alluded to in the above excerpt probably did constitute actual abuse and coercion, since the bulk of all real abuse of underagers--sexual, physical, and (rarely considered to be a problem) emotional--are committed by parents or any other adult who lives within the home and therefore wields great power over them. I have no doubt that minors are much less likely to report a mother than a father, and even if they do, a guilty mother is much less likely to be investigated, let alone convicted, than a guilty father, as the above evidence makes clear. And the above study displays (however inadvertently) the fact that our young are forced into dependence on their parents much longer than is necessary, and because there is no community overview of younger people who could not be on their own even in a youth liberated society, are major reasons why they would be much more reluctant to turn in a parent than they would a total stranger, or a person who lived down the street that may have genuinely abused them. And since mothers are usually awarded custody of their kids when a divorce occurs via one of the most blatant examples of favoritism given towards them due to the cultural belief that women are inherently more nurturing and thus make better parents in most cases than men do, it stands to reason that much parental abuse inflicted on their young results from mothers.
"If children -- whose disclosures still provide the primary means of reporting offenders -- are being abused by mothers who are single parents or who carry out the abuse with male partners, disclosure would cause them to be removed from their homes and placed in foster care. By contrast, when there is an offending father and a non-offending mother, a child's disclosure would not mean 'as much of a loss,' says Matthews. 'They still will have their home, they still will have a parent, and their family will stay intact.'"
Very good observation on Matthews' part. And one Clancy and her fellow "feminists" need to pay attention to.
"If minors seldom disclose, and if female abusers are often winnowed out of investigations and court proceedings, how much female perpetration is actually going on? Because of the hidden nature of CSA[at least within the home] and because of problems with the way in which CSA data are collected, nobody can provide a definitive answer to this question."
The above is a point that makes it all the more clear that Clancy's claim of 5% for female perps of SA--and most importantly, real abuse that actually harms minors--was simply pulled out of her...well, you know where. In other words, it was a total assumption on her part based on "feminist" ideology and nothing more.
"In a 1981 study, 60 percent of 412 male and 10 percent of 540 female undergraduate psychology students at the University of Washington who recalled sexual contact with a post-pubescent person at least five years older than themselves when they were minors said the adult who made contact with them were female. (Fritz, G., Stoll, K., and Wagner, N. 'A Comparison of Males and Females Who Were...,' Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy, 1981, vol. 7,54-59.)"
Despite the biased comment in the above quote that refers to all the instances of sexual interaction between kids of both genders and females who were at least five years older than themselves as being "abuse" without even taking the issue of consent into consideration, the aforementioned study nevertheless makes it clear that older kids who are female engage in sexual contact in a general sense with other kids several years younger much more often than is commonly believed.
"Researchers do not know why some studies uncover a higher rate of female perpetration than others, but The National Resource Center on CSA(NRCCSA) asserts that because of a lack of standardization in reporting and inconsistencies in research methods and definitions of SA [emphasis mine], 'the firm statistics everyone desires' on the prevalence of abuse 'simply are not available.' (NRCCSA News, May-June 1992, vol. 1, no. 1.)"
This excerpt makes it clear that one of the problems with getting consistent statistics of illegal sexual activity involving adults of either gender with minors is often because the definition of "sexual abuse" tends to be inconsistent from one study or another, and all based upon often loaded and culturally biased definitions of what constitutes "abuse."
"The abuse that females perpetrate can range from subtle, non-contact forms such as exhibitionism and voyeurism to overt sexual touching and/or penetration."
"Other therapists, including those specializing in younger males who have engaged in sexual contact with older females, have noticed an apparent pattern in clients' reports of female-perpetrated abuse. Minneapolis psychologist Peter Dimock has counseled 400 to 500 male survivors of SA since 1980. He found that, for the 25 percent who recall being abused by a female, most experienced the abuse as subtle or seductive. Very often, Dimock says, if the female abuser is in a parental or caretaking role, she will perpetrate the abuse 'under the guise of caretaking, where it has involved putting medication on the minor's genitals, inserting suppositories or enemas,' or she will make an excuse to expose her body to the boy, 'clearly with an intent to arouse, but, again, under the guise of normalized behavior.'"
Imagine that!
"Nic Hunter, a psychologist from St. Paul, author of Abused Boys: The Neglected Victim of Sexual Abuse, and editor of The Sexually Abused Male, Volumes I and II (all from Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1990), has also found in his work with hundreds of males that approximately 25 percent were SAed by females and that in general, the abuse was 'very covert in that it was disguised as something other than a sexual contact.' Dimock adds that female abusers frequently treat the younger person like romantic partners, taking them on 'date-like outings.'"
Okay, the above excerpt contains the conceit that an adult and a youth cannot actually be romantic partners, and that the adult taking their younger partners on "date-like outings" (maybe to the movies, the park, out to dinner, etc.?) is a form of "abuse." It would appear that any type of interaction between minors and adults that remotely contains romantic connotations can be labeled as "abuse" these days. These were most likely instances of mutually consensual relationships that were "found out," and the boys were then "convinced" it was abusive and that they were "victims" after being forced into "therapy" (just a theory of mine, but quite likely to be accurate since I'm sure not only girls are forced into therapy when mutually consensual relationships with adults are discovered; such "therapy" sessions are a routine part of the state intervention process). But again, such statements would make it clear to Clancy that many more women engage in romantic relationships with minors that she is willing to believe.
"Not all survivors or victims report that SA by females was subtle or covert. Of the 93 women who perpetrated in Michigan therapist Bobbie Rosencrans' recent four-year study of survivors of maternal incest, 65 percent reported that their abuse had been violent. Karen K., a survivor of maternal incest from Washington State who edits the newsletter S.O.F.I.E.(Survivors of Female Incest Emerge!), has read nearly 500 letters from survivors in the past 18 months. She feels that women are more creative and more brutal in their abuse [emphasis mine]."
Since the above analysis was based on studies of maternal incest, it's far more likely that these incidents constituted actual abuse by women who were SMs rather than MAAs. And to think that it's been said by some survivors of maternal abuse that women are more creative in their abuse than men, and also more brutal. This proves that women can be as violent as men when it comes to abusing the power that society grants them over their biological kids in the currently dominant family unit.
"One of the most common reactions to female-perpetrated abuse is shame about gender identity. Phyllis E, who was SAed by both her mother and her father, remembers feeling a deep disgust for her mother's body -- a disgust that carried over into a hatred of her own female self. 'I couldn't stand my own body for years,' she says. 'I couldn't understand how men could stand women's bodies.'"
Very interesting. "Feminists," take heed!
"Tom, a therapist and who was abused by three females, including his mother, has also felt a deep confusion about his gender identity. Along with subjecting Tom to unnecessary enemas, masturbating him in the bathtub, and making him sleep in her bed and watch her dress, his mother perpetrated against him a type of behavior that Indiana therapist Christine Lawson refers to as 'perversive abuse.' Perversive abuse, Lawson writes in 'Mother-Son SA: Rare or Underreported? A Critique of the Research' (CA & Neglect, vol. 17, no. 2) is abuse of a minor's sexuality and 'may include behavior such as forcing the boy to wear female clothing ... and generally discouraging the minor's identification with males.' Tom says that 'until I was five, I hadn't the foggiest notion that I wasn't a girl.'"
It would appear that the above report constitutes a case of actual abuse conducted by a female situational offender with many psychological issues that she took out on her son, and it serves as a chilling reminder to the depth that mothers can sink to when they turn abusive on their young. In fact, though I have no idea if it has happened or not, I have yet to hear of a father or other male authority figure who forced minors under their care to undergo enemas, which are highly unpleasant to endure even if necessary and done by yourself or a medical professional.
"A widespread societal belief that female-perpetrated sexual contact is improbable -- particularly if the one making contact was one's mother -- has made it especially difficult for survivors of female abusers to disclose their experiences and has left them with perhaps an even deeper sense of isolation."
"Karen K. remembers believing for years that she was the only survivor of mother-daughter incest. 'I felt completely isolated and alone with who my perpetrator was,' Karen says. In response to Rosencrans' study (Safer Society Press, 1994), one woman wrote, 'I've never met anyone who was sexually abused by their mother. I didn't know that 93 other people existed.'"
Yet another allegation that suggests the real number of female situational molesters who assault their own kids is not as rare as many seem to think, but simply swept under the rug.
Now, to further refute Clancy's specious and arguably sexist claim, let's take a look at this article: w w w(@)web.archive.org/web/20100711170820/http://sexual-abuse.suite101(@)c o m/article.cfm/sexually_abusive_mothersby Karen Richardson, which is specifically devoted to sexually abusive mothers. This means that it's likely that real abuse was occurring in all of the true accounts by female SMs who were operating within the favorite and safest place for all SMs who are parents to operate--within the loving home. In almost every single one of these cases, I would agree with Clancy that they constitute a real problem, though I am not quite sure our respective suggestions at solutions would coincide.
"SA perpetrated by mothers is an uncomfortable subject for many people. A mother committing sexual acts on their child in unthinkable – yet it happens. It defies everything we want to believe about mothers. Yet statistics validate that sexually abusive mothers do exist."
"ChildLine is a helpline operated by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Minors (NSPCC). According to their 2008/09 statistics, 2,142 minors who called about SA reported that the perpetrators were women. Out of these callers, 1,311, or 11% of all calls cited their mother as the abuser [emphasis mine]."
"Other female perpetrators reported by minors who called CL were a female acquaintance, aunts, sisters, stepmothers and grandmothers."
Wow. What a humbling stat for "feminists" like Susan Clancy to digest.
"Dr. Christine Hatchard has a Masters degree in Counseling Psychology and Human Services and a doctorate in Clinical Psychology, with a specialization in Psychological Assessment. She founded Making Daughters Safe Again in 1999 and has worked with hundreds of survivors of mother-daughter sexual abuse."
Imagine that. This is the second organization I came across in the course of this research that is exclusively devoted to abuse survivors who were victims in the home by mothers, and not fathers. Are the "feminists" of Clancy's stripe absolutely certain that her immortal declaration--"Sexual abuse is not women; it's men"--are based in reality?
"According to Dr. Hatchard, the vast majority of female SAers are married and heterosexual. The mother may be a survivor of abuse and act out her experiences on her daughter or son. She writes on her website, 'The mother may find it unbearable to see any part of herself in her daughter, and displace her own anger and shame over her sexuality onto her daughter. The mother often wishes to dominate and control her daughter [emphasis mine], while also seeking emotional support from her, sometimes resulting in a reversal of roles.'”
Though I think the claim that someone who was SAed by parents will likely grow up to become abusers of their own children in turn is a highly dubious one, I think the crux of the above excerpt is the commonly reported observation that genuine SA of minors is often the result of the power that parents currently have over them, something that few if anyone outside the youth liberationist movement are seriously challenging for obvious political reasons. This is because such power all too often results in a desire to dominate and control those who are in a subservient position to themselves, and the above is a disturbing reminder that women are just as capable of taking advantage of this power they wield and resorting to abuse as men. This is also evident in how many female politicians tend to be every bit as warmongering and inimical to the civil rights of those under their rule as any male politician (e.g., Indira Ghandi, Margaret Thatcher, Hillary Clinton, the female perpetrators of prisoner abuse in the Abu Ghraib scandal), but that is a whole other subject that I will not go into now; I just mentioned it here quickly since that is a further bit of evidence to refute the common societal belief that women are inherently nurturing and more peaceful than men when in positions of power and authority.
"There is agreement that this is a highly under-reported crime. An NSPCC report on female sex offenders in 2005 suggests that determining a precise prevalence rate is difficult because sometimes even professionals do not acknowledge that a woman is capable of committing such a heinous crime against her own child [emphasis mine].
"Less than 1% of members at Dr. Hatchard’s 'Making Daughters Safe Again' report that they had intervention as a child. Dr. Hatchard states that some of the reasons this is highly under-reported include:
⦁ "Therapists, doctors, social workers and other professionals know very little about this form of abuse or they simply do not consider it a possibility [emphasis mine].
⦁ "Perpetrators overwhelmingly appear like a caring mother.
⦁ "Low physical evidence that can’t be detected upon a routine physical exam.
⦁ "Lack of protection by physically or emotionally absent fathers or abusive fathers.
⦁ "Abuse is hidden under the guise of normal medical care or hygiene routines."
So societal biases against men and in favor of women cause abusive mothers to get away with their bullshit far more often than abusive fathers do. Nice. Also, it amazes me that "feminists" like Clancy and others who look the other way in regards to the prevalence of maternal abuse of minors due to a belief that abuse against them (as well as spouses) is a thing that almost only men do never seem to consider the fact that since women do not produce semen and men do, it can be much more difficult to use laboratory testing to prove (or disprove, admittedly) that a woman committed an act of sexual violence than men.
"For the sake of the children whose mothers have sexually violated them, it’s time society acknowledges that women can and do commit SA[emphasis mine]."
Granted, men may indeed commit acts of abuse against their kids much more often than women do, and there is undoubtedly many more male situational molesters than there are female in a general sense, but ignoring the sizable number of cases that women are responsible for is totally unjustifiable and yet another result of cultural beliefs being confused with facts. And the number of female perps is clearly well above a mere 5%.
Here is the link to Making Our Daughters Safe Again: w w w(@)web.archive.org/web/20110831135728/http://mdsasupport.homestead(@)c o m/home.html, the site mentioned above that is devoted to the cause of raising society's awareness that many minors (specifically girls in this case) are abused by their mothers, much more so than is commonly believed. Didn't Clancy ever happen upon the site of this org before? Or did she do so and just willfully block it out of her mind? I will give her the benefit of the doubt and presume the former, which shows that she needs to do more research before spouting her “feminist” rhetoric. I have no doubt she is fully capable of getting past these biases of hers, as she has proven to be willing to sacrifice everything in pursuit of the truth.
Next we find this article: w w w(@)independent.co.uk/life-style/love-sex/taboo-tolerance/female-sexual-abuse-the-untold-story-of-societys-last-taboo-1767688.html by Charlotte Philby. Though, as we might expect, this article contains a certain number of ignorant assertions (that I will nitpick a bit), such as the claim that CSA is a result of "pedophilia" in general--which is not accurate, as the bulk of real SA occurs in the home by SMs who do not have a sexual preference for minors--pedophilia (as well as hebephilia) is a set of feelings and a state of being, and does not denote or imply any type of action. The article also fails to differentiate between mutually consensual sex between women and minors and the type of genuine abuse all too often inflicted by those adults who have direct power over them. And of course, the article refuses to take the next logical step of some of its findings and suggest that perhaps the civil disempowerment of minors and their forced role as "lowest person on the totem pole" within the confines of the present family unit may be the biggest source of these problems. But it does at least provide a lot of good info that further refutes Clancy's claim.
"The story that Sharon, who is now 40, has been unable to tell before today is one that few would wish to hear: from as far back as she can remember until the day she left home at the age of 16, Sharon, an only child, was SAed by her mother. The particulars of her abuse are too horrific to bear repeating in detail; this was sustained sexual violence, which she suffered silently at the hands of the one person who was supposed to love and protect her above all others [emphasis mine]."
Do parents in general, including mothers, really do such a stand up job of protecting their kids from harm when statistics show that it's most often parents who commit acts of violence, including murder, on their kids than either peers or strangers every year?
Granted, many parents are decent and caring human beings, but that doesn't make their current level of power over their kids any less justifiable (as the saying goes, a benevolent dictator is still a dictator). Let me make it clear that I do not believe it's the institution of parenthood itself that is the problem, but rather the type of near-absolute power they currently have over their kids. Parents are not the enemy of kids, and are in fact potentially the greatest resource they have in their lives, but the type of hierarchal power that they and other adults currently have over youths under 18 may very well constitute an "enemy" to these minors. In other words, it’s power and not any group of people that is the enemy, because too much power tends to corrupt people, even ordinarily good people. This holds true regardless of the person’s gender.
"It was at the age of 30, when she became pregnant with her own daughter, that Sharon finally summoned the courage to speak to her GP for the first time about what had happened to her. Her fear was that if she didn't seek help to overcome her issues, they could in turn have a damaging effect on her unborn child. But her doctor's response was: 'Don't be silly, mothers don't SA children. You're understandably worried about becoming a parent yourself, but don't let your imagination run away with you.'
"And it seems this reaction is all too common."
Is it really that hard to believe that a mother, who wields the same type of power over her young as their father does, is any less capable of abusing that power?
"While researching this piece, I spoke to a number of adults – men and women – who as minors endured horrific SA at the hands of their mothers, aunts, grandmothers and female [care providers] [emphasis mine]. Very few of them had ever had a chance to tell their story before, and the effect of keeping their experiences to themselves for so long has had a disastrous effect on their mental state."
Though I think there is a good amount of evidence that even minors who suffer genuine abuse are not destined to be "damaged goods" for life because of it, and should be able to heal fully with sufficient support and some competent therapy, I can understand that the perceived need to hide abuse committed by a close family member, particularly a mother, can cause extreme anxiety and depression.
"The systemic denial of female SA is one of the scandals of our times. While in recent years the issue of male paedophilia has been placed firmly at the forefront of public debate in Britain, with endless high-profile media and Government campaigns bringing this formerly underground issue into the public spotlight, it seems that the involvement of women in cases of CSA is an enduring taboo, and in order to break that wall of silence we must start by addressing a series of serious shortfalls that run throughout the protection services in this country."
For starters, as I said above, the issue of genuine SA of minors has nothing to do with the topic of "pedophilia" per se. And the existence of MAAs has never been an "underground" issue; they have existed as long as human history has existed. It simply wasn't an issue at all until relatively recently in history because it's only in recent history that youth sexuality, along with their general potential and competence, has been denounced and suppressed to the extent that they are today. It can be argued, though, that the SA that all too often occurs within the home by mostly situational molesters has been an "underground" issue for obvious reasons.
As for the shortfalls that "run throughout the child protection services" in any Western country, these governments do not dare address that issue directly, because it would risk undercutting the current structure of one of modern society's most revered institutions, as well as bringing up the matter of youth rights. So instead, it's much safer to blame the existence of MAAs for this problem, and attributing all the cases that involve arresting adult perps who live in the home to the problem of "pedophilia" rather than parental power and the civil disempowerment of youth.
"Yet, while such figures have forced us to face the reality of male CSA in the UK, there are enduring myths that surround our ideas of paedophilia – including ideas about the type of people who abuse."
It's nice of the author to recognize the above, but it's a shame that she won't consider the idea that there may be other myths regarding adult attraction to minors also.
"As well as founding Kidscape, Elliott is also a child psychologist with 40 years' experience and the author of Female Sexual Abuse of Children: The Ultimate Taboo. She understands all too well that predators come in all shapes and sizes, male and female. In the early Nineties,while researching her book on female sex abuse, Elliott was a guest on the Richard and Judy breakfast show. During her brief television appearance, she invited viewers with personal experiences of female SA to phone in and share their stories. Immediately, she says, the lines started buzzing. There was barely enough time on air to answer a fraction of the calls she received from men and women of all ages, from across the country, getting in touch to share their stories."
Though I would question the definition that Elliot uses for "predator," I think it's quite telling that there has been enough hoopla about females who abuse minors--or at least those who have mutually consensual sex with them--that a book has actually been written about it. I guess Clancy and other "feminists" of her particular stripe didn't see that, either.
"Since then, Elliott has been contacted by some 800 victims, 780 of them in the UK, each desperate just to talk. In a large percentage of these cases, the abuse took place within the family home, which is one of the reasons why cases of female sexual abuse are so incredibly hard to spot [emphasis mine]. Yet, sadly, this doesn't mean that the abuse isn't happening. As Elliott points out: 'Considering that I am just one woman working for one relatively small charity, and this many people have managed to get in touch with me, I dread to think of the true scale of the problem.'"
Please note what the author said up above (which I italicized), because it's a very important acknowledgement and it is something that the welfare agencies purporting to "protect" minors need to open their eyes to and start criticizing the real reasons why so many of them get physically and SAed so often in the Western nations. And I wish Clancy would see that too.
"Extraordinarily, in the vast majority of cases involving female SA (of both boys and girls), the child's mother turns out to be involved in that abuse, whether offending alone or with another woman or a man [emphasis mine]."
Are you getting all of this, Dr. Clancy?
"Very few have ever before felt able to talk about the abuse because they feared they would not be believed – and those who have already come forward, to a doctor or therapist, have usually had their worst fears realized. One man, now 60 years old, recalls: 'When I tried to tell my therapist of my abuse when I was 35, I was told: 'You are having fantasies about your mother and you need more therapy to deal with that.' In reality, my mother had been physically and SAing me for as long as I can remember. The abuse was horrific, including beatings and sadomasochistic sex.'"
Are you this too, Dr. Clancy?
"And this view is one corroborated by a number of frustrated officials currently working in child welfare organizations and different parts of the British justice system, who wish to remain anonymous. These individuals say they just aren't being given the tools they need to address this issue, or even being made aware that it is an issue at all. This is perhaps not surprising when you learn that there is hardly any official information available pertaining specifically to the area of women who SA children, and barely any research being carried out, either [emphasis mine]. There have been a couple of Government-led initiatives to educate officials in welfare agencies about the issue – including a conference held in Manchester last April entitled 'Child Abuse: The Female Offender'. But still nowhere near enough is being done."
I guess Clancy never heard of that conference in Manchester. Maybe the communications were down in her area of Nicaragua at the time.
"All things considered, we might do better to look somewhere other than the Government data for an idea of the prevalence of cases of child abuse involving female offenders in the UK – and the most widely respected sources for this are the independent studies from CL and the NSftPoCtC, which are believed to provide a much more accurate picture. Suddenly, the issue of female SA doesn't look quite as uncommon as we might otherwise have believed [emphasis mine]."
Imagine that.
"...as Zoe Hilton, the [NSftPoCtC] policy advisor for child protection, suggests: 'The true extent of female SA is still a hidden picture.' Furthermore, it is not a picture that many seem in any hurry to clarify [emphasis mine]."
"One of the biggest problems, of course, is that the idea that women can and do SA minors [or at least be sexual with them in a mutually consensual manner--D] is highly provocative in itself [emphasis mine]."
Doesn't Clancy know that!
"'Women are perceived as the nurturers, those who are there to look after our young people," explains a spokeswoman for the online child protection act in Britain, adding that female sexual abuse is often even more threatening than male SA as it undermines what we understand about the way women relate to children [emphasis mine]. In order for us to recognize it, the spokeswoman continues, we have to set our preconceptions aside. Otherwise, children will continue to suffer in silence: 'How can a child be expected to understand they are being abused and that what they are enduring is wrong if we as a society cannot recognize women as abusers?' she asks."
It's relatively easy for a kid to tell if something that is done to their body by another person is right or wrong: if it gives them pleasure, if it doesn't cause any physical or psychological damage, and if they desire the activity in question, then it shouldn't be considered "wrong." Most often (at least in our culture) they do not grow up thinking of their parents in such a way (the Freudian concepts of the Oedipus and Electra Complexes notwithstanding), which is why such activity often bothers them when initiated by a parent. Also, with the very direct power that parents have over their young, the latter are in no position to say "no" to such sexual advances (which are why I have reservations about supporting in-the-home incest, at least during a time period when youths do not have most of their civil rights recognized by the law). As for the particular sentence I italicized up above, that one is on target.
"Understandably, this is a sensitive and highly emotive subject, the fallout from which Michele Elliott of Kidscape has witnessed at first hand. In 1992, she held a conference in London while compiling her book on the subject of female sexual abuse. She recalls how 30 women turned up to disrupt her address: 'They stood up and started yelling about how terrible it was that I was detracting from the fact that male power was to blame [emphasis mine]. It is very disappointing when you encounter such extreme and closed-minded reactions [bwah-hah-hah! The pot calling the kettle black here? Sorry, I couldn't resist--D]. I was simply responding to what victims had told me."
Instead of blaming the abuse of minors on specifically male power, why not the dangers of female power also? Since when do women act any kinder than men when in positions of power? Has any of these people ever studied the policies and positions of female politicians, or had a female boss at a job in the past? And isn't parental power, which women share with men, one of the most prominent examples of power granted to women in society? I think parental power in general needs to be blamed here. And yes, I agree with Elliot that close-mindedness, particularly in its extreme forms, is truly a negative force in society. People in both this community and the youth community know that all too well. Which is why I couldn't help laughing when I saw that comment Elliot made in the above excerpt.
"And such closed-mindedness is rife in the criminal-justice system too, Hilary Aldridge confirms: 'There is a tendency in the courts to see the woman as a victim of a male counterpart.' But this isn't always the case by any means. Even when there is a male co-offender, this doesn't automatically mean that the female partner is an unwilling accomplice."
The above point made by Aldridge is extremely important, because the courts in all the Western nations, not just Britain, all too often make the exact same stereotypical assumptions, i.e., that all women who commit horrendous acts of abuse on minors, even murder, are most likely a dupe of some monstrous man. A very glaring example of such a thing was the case: w w w(@)web.archive.org/web/20120419204251/http://w w w(@)trutv(@)c o m/library/crime/serial_killers/notorious/bernardo/index_1.html involving the horrific Canadian serial killer Paul Bernardo and his very willing accomplice--his wife Karla Homolka.
Bernardo is especially loathed by hebephiles like myself (as well as the entire MAA community, of course) because he was one of those rare serial killers who targeted teen girls. His first kill was the most shocking one of all, as it was Karla's own younger teen sister Tammy (even though he only intended to rape the girl after drugging her, which was abominable on its own), but the most horrible part of the entire incident was that Karla helped him drug and rape her own little sister at his request. Since Karla worked at a veterinary clinic, she stole some halothane, a chemical used to anesthetize animals before surgery, and Bernardo used it to keep Karla's sister unconscious after knocking her out by slipping a halcion pill in a drink he made for her without the girl's knowledge. In fact, while the rape was going on, Paul requested that Karla join in on the sexual assault, and she complied. Think about this for a minute...she did this to her own sister. Unfortunately, an already horrific situation got far worse when Tammy choked to death on her own vomit. As per another of Bernardo's requests, Karla helped him hide the drugs and the camera they used to film the rape-turned-deadly, and to cover up the fact that they were responsible for Tammy's death, thereby convincing her grieving parents that she and her husband had nothing to do with the fact that the girl choked to death. After all, how could the Homolka's possibly suspect that their daughter was remotely capable of doing such a thing to her own little sister? Since Karla was home that night, they couldn't imagine that she would let her husband do anything to her sister without fighting like mad to protect her.
After this, the horrid activities of Bernardo continued as he targeted two other teen girls before he was found out and arrested, but he couldn't have successfully kidnapped either of those girls without Karla's help. Bernardo’s and Karla's modus operandi for kidnapping these girls would be for Karla to drive up to the curb near where the girls were walking without her husband in the car and call the girl over to her vehicle to ask for directions. Both girls did so in succession because, as Bernardo had anticipated, they would be much more likely to trust approaching a strange woman than they would a man. When the girls were talking to Karla, Bernardo, who was hiding nearby, would sneak up behind them and force them into the car at knifepoint. What followed for both of his following victims were days of torture and sexual abuse, all of which Bernardo caught on camera--and all of which Karla directly participated in, which included her sexually assaulting the girls in various ways at Bernardo's direction. Bernardo then killed both of his victims, deliberately this time, and disposed of their bodies, and Karla helped with that, too.
Luckily, Bernardo's obsessive and perverse need to get the sexual abuse on film proved to work against him when he finally went to court, since the films provided proof of what he did. What the confiscated films also showed the jury during their trial was Karla's direct involvement, and though her attorney pleaded with the jury to accept his claim that Karla only did this because she was forced to do so under threat of death by her husband, the jurors noted that she participated in the sexual assaults of the girls with a lot of evident enthusiasm, and she seemed to be very aroused while doing so. Could she fake that and put on such a good performance under duress? And even if she was threatened by her husband to help him drug and rape her little sister, wouldn't anyone expect her to defy her husband and fight to protect her sister even if it may have meant her own death? Couldn't she have told her husband she would go along with it and then shove a knife in his back when he wasn't looking, before they actually went through with it? Needless to say, the jury had trouble believing the claims of Karla's attorney and found her as guilty of the horrible crimes as her husband was (as noted before, not only did she directly participate in all of them, but Bernardo couldn't have gotten his hands on those girls--including Tammy Homolka--nearly as easily without Karla's help). Despite the verdict by the jury, the judge decided to go soft on Karla with the sentencing, so she only got a mere seven years in prison while her husband (thank the gods!) got life imprisonment. Why didn't Karla get put away for life also? This partial travesty of justice wouldn't likely have occurred if Bernardo's loyal accomplice had been male.
Next up, there was an article that appeared on Salon(@)c o m on the very same day and under the very same category (Sexual Abuse) as Clancy's interview that further blows holes in Clancy's rather sexist assumption.
The following article: w w w(@)salon(@)c o m/news/opinion/feature/2009/08/17/nuns on Salon(@)c o m by feminist progressive author Frances Kissling and you will see yet another set of allegations of SA towards minors in the Catholic hierarchy, only this time not perpetrated by priests but by nuns. I am not making any judgments on how true all of these allegations are since I have not yet conducted a detailed study of these claims against the Catholic clergy, but since priests and nuns are authority figures and Catholic boarding schools are extremely authoritarian in nature, with minors being oppressed there to a heavy degree, it doesn't surprise me too much if SMs would flourish in such places. This is because most SMs operate within the home, boarding schools, or other places where adult religious authority figures have such a huge degree of power over minors, and where the environment takes the place of the home for students residing there. So it's not surprising that the same type of abuse that all too often goes on in homes would go on there too.
And since several Catholic priests and nuns may have serious personal issues as a result of forcing celibacy and general sex negative attitudes upon themselves, this may indeed be the reason why some of them segue their natural authoritarian attitudes into particularly corrupt power trips that involve abuse of a sexual nature. Such power trips may cause them to "act out" their deeply sublimated sexual frustrations on those who currently are compelled to be under their authority. And since (contrary to Clancy's attitude) nuns in these authoritarian institutions often have the same degree of power over kids that the priests do, should it be surprising to anyone that they will often take advantage of their power and authority in ways similar to their male counterparts in the hierarchy? This is an especially good question when you consider how nuns are at least as notorious as any male members of the clergy for dispensing cruel abuses of their authority, sometimes including outright physical abuse, against minors under their charge in such places. Please look at this one single excerpt from Kissling's article:
"Instances like this [i.e., numerous reports of physical abuse by nuns] were child's play compared with some of the stories told by boys and girls abused by U.S. sisters at the same time as lucky girls like me were flourishing in Catholic girls' schools. Pamela Miller, a reporter for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, reported on a press conference of survivors of nun abuse held in June 2006. Five women who were among a dozen Minnesotans and an 'estimated 400 men and women who have recently come forward to talk about being sexually abused by nuns' [emphasis mine] told their stories."
Please keep in mind again that the above article was composed by a fellow female feminist of Clancy, and it may be surmised that Kissling is a member of a class of feminism that is closer to the true essence of a noble movement dedicated to achieving female empowerment and equality of opportunity in society, which includes being harsh on members of the female gender when necessary, rather than the man-hating spin-off of the movement that wrongly uses the same moniker ("feminism"), the latter of which can see women and girls as being nothing other than victims or innocents, and rarely if ever perpetrators of abuse when in positions of power themselves.
No analysis of this subject can be complete without reminding Clancy (and other "feminists" of her stripe) of the truly horrifying murder of a teen girl that was taken under the wing of Gertrude Baniszewski: w w w(@)en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertrude_Baniszewski. In 1965, Baniszewski, who was a single mom that adopted several kids, viciously and brutally tortured Sylvia Likens, one of the teen girls she had adopted whom she grew to despise. This torture continued over a prolonged period of time and left the girl in extreme agony for far too long before the mercy of death finally released her. Not only that, but Baniszewski had her own adopted kids join in on the brutality inflicted upon the hapless girl, and also invited young boys from the neighborhood to likewise join in. The horrors inflicted upon Likens ran the entire gamut of psychological and physical brutality of the highest extreme, and this included SA such as frequently raping the her with a Coke bottle to the extent that Likens' vagina was almost swollen shut by the time her body was discovered and an autopsy was performed to determine the extent of the damage (as horrible as the actions of serial killer Jefferey Dahmer were, at least he typically drugged his male victims into unconsciousness before dismembering them). The sexual abuse inflicted upon Likens by Baniszewski was so extreme that Likens became incontinent as a result, and because of this Baniszewski kept her chained in the basement, often naked and with a minimum of food, from that time onwards.
The full extent of the unspeakable brutality that this teen girl suffered under the hands of Baniszewski and her young accomplices is described in detail in the link provided above, and a warning is in order: that particular entry on Wikipedia is not for the weak of stomach, and because of that I will not repeat any more of it in this essay (and what I did report here was, sadly, merely the tip of the iceberg). Needless to say, what happened to Sylvia Likens as a result of Baniszewski's extraordinary cruelty was labeled "the single worst crime perpetrated against an individual in Indiana's history" by one of the people involved in her court case when the woman was tried for first-degree murder. Ultimately, Baniszewski was sentenced to 18 years in prison following an appeal, and despite the intense protests by groups such as Protect the Innocent and SALM, as well as an equal degree of protests all over the media by Sylvia Likens' family, Baniszewski was paroled and released from prison due to almost two decades of good behavior behind bars (mm-hmmm). If Baniszewski was a man, it can be readily assumed that her appeal would have been denied and she would have gotten life imprisonment without the possibility of parole (Baniszewski died in 1990 of lung cancer). Baniszewski should never have been released from prison, and had her parole occurred in more recent years, you can rest assured that the MAA community would have been foremost in protesting her release.
The Baniszewski incident was chronicled in the recent film An American Crime starring Catherine Keener as Gertrude Baniszewski and Ellen Page as Sylvia Likens, and it was released on Showtime in 2008. It's now available on DVD, and I urge those with reasonably strong stomachs to watch this film and think upon its implications. I further urge anyone who may have doubts as to the capability of women committing such horrible crimes against minors under their charge to watch this film regardless of their gastro-intestinal constitution because they need to experience the shock out of their current mode of thinking that this film of a true story will help provide.
Of course, Clancy and other "feminists" of her camp would insist that cases like Baniszewski's are incredibly rare, but based on the rest of the info on this subject which I have presented in the latter portion of this essay, such horrible abuse inflicted upon minors by women within the home or other institutions where adults have such near-total control under them in their care (such as the Catholic boarding schools mentioned above) is much more common than "feminists" such as Clancy--and our entire society in general--are willing to admit.
Yes, women can be very nurturing and caring to kids under their care, and in the majority of cases, they are. So can men, however. There are any number of single fathers out there who treat their young quite well under the circumstances. And yes, men do commit acts of violence against youths under their care much more often than women do. But the fact remains, however unpleasant it may be for certain elements of society to admit, that women who are in positions of extreme authority over minors commit acts of often horrifying abuse against them under their care much more often than is frequently believed. And as the above reports suggest, such women often commit acts that are of even greater savagery and brutality than their male counterparts do, which includes severe cases of SA and murder. Further, the above info makes it quite clear that many decent, non-abusive women will engage in illegal but mutually consensual relationships with minors of both genders, and that female MAAs are certainly far more common than our society will admit.
As I have often said in my various writings within the MAA community, the problem is neither men or women, but rather the degree of power that adults are given over our young in the modern nuclear family unit and in most of its educational institutions. You will note, for example, that I have never heard of a single case of abuse inflicted upon minors by either the men or women who are part of the staff of the democratic schools based upon the Sudbury model, and this speaks volumes as to the future solution of the problem of CA once society gets over its love affair and consequent blind eye turned towards the current gerontocentric, hierarchal institutions in society that are run like totalitarian governments. Since Clancy is a woman dedicated to uncovering truth no matter how uncomfortable society is with hearing it, I think there is a good possibility that she is capable of eventually embracing the tenets of youth liberation in the future. Time will tell, but lets all give Dr. Clancy a chance.
Finally, here is a link to another book (again written by a woman!) that Dr. Clancy seems to have missed: Sexual Abuse of Children by Women by Michelle Elliott: http://books.google(@)c o m/books?id=KKTr_bJbcXwC&dq=Sexual+Abuse+of+Children+By+Women&printsec=frontcover&source=in&hl=en&ei=eGJXS-vbNcuTkAXtnLHjBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=11&ved=0CC0Q6AEwCg#v=onepage&q=Sexual%20Abuse%20of%20Children%20By%20Women&f=false
I trust I have made my case on the above point. If Dr. Clancy believes that either mutually consensual sex between adult women and minors, or genuine SA of minors by mothers or other female relatives and those who are in positions of heavy authority over kids (and yes, I will make that distinction, unlike her, because like it or not it's a major distinction), she needs to put her "feminist" biases aside and do a lot more research. If I could do it, then so could she.
If Dr. Clancy ever reads this essay, I hope she will one day forgive me for coming off as harsh on her, but I would like to think she can understand the strong degree of passion that an activist of any particular cause can have. And I am sure that she can fully understand the strong desire for anyone to make the truth about a certain controversial subject known, regardless of how uncomfortable society may be in confronting and acclimating to that truth.
Okay, in overview of all the above in this essay:
The Trauma Myth is probably going to become one of the most important books written in terms of its impact on both the MAA community and the youth community for the first decade of the 21st century since Judith Levine's Harmful To Minors and Robert Epstein's The Case Against Adolescence and its more recent update, Teen 2.0. It contains a highly controversial--but very necessary--refutation of one of the most powerful myths used to propagate the SA hysteria that causes both the media and the government to mercilessly persecute MMAs, as well as wage a war on youth sexuality and any possible expression of it. This includes the passing of more and more Orwellian laws that not only increase the already prodigious chains around the freedom of youths under 18, but also attacks the civil liberties of everyone in this country under the auspices of "protecting minors." The main objective of such laws and the hysteria that bolsters support for them is to keep youths under 18 in their current place, and a major part of that is to suppress their sexual nature. MAAs are simply the equivalent of "collateral damage" in the hysteria and accompanying witch-hunting by the government (to borrow a very apt usage of military vernacular from a fellow activist, qtns2di4).
After the publication of this book, Clancy has made it very explicit ("forcefully," as she puts it in her Salon interview) that she has not written this book to advance the rights of MAAs (who she seems to loathe as much as anyone else), nor has she written this book to advance youth rights or legitimize their sexual nature (as has Judith Levine in the latter case, another fellow feminist progressive writer, albeit one who takes her status as a progressive much more seriously). She simply has the stated goal of helping victims of SA (both real and culturally constructed), and she feels that the continuation of any type of sociological, psychological, or cultural myths that may hinder the understanding of what SA victims go through is wrong and must be opposed no matter how controversial and politically unpopular pointing out these truths may be, and no matter what the personal costs to herself may be. For this, as I said before, Susan Clancy is to be commended and admired. She deserves a lot of props, and despite the ignorance of many of her claims against MAAs and men in general, she is nevertheless a supremely courageous woman, and I am going to give her the accolades she deserves.
I will also remind everyone in the MAA community and youth communities, as well as all of those in the ever-growing youth liberation movement, that the publication of this book is no small thing. What Susan Clancy calls the "trauma myth" was perhaps the most powerful of the several socio-cultural myths disguised and mistaken for some sort of objective truth used to justify societal condemnation of intergenerational relationships. It has made crystal clear what pro-choice members of the MAA community, a sentiment echoed by many gerontophiles who have had positive relationships with adults while legally underage, have been saying for as long as I have been an active participant in this community, and also much longer. It is a validation that mutually consensual and mutually desired romantic/sexual relationships between younger and older people do not automatically and magickally cause trauma or lifelong emotional damage to the younger person involved in the relationship. This book proves the contention of the activists in both the MAA and youth communities that progress towards change is indeed occurring incrementally, and that there is hope for the future. Once again, Clancy did not intend the book to serve this latter purpose and she makes it very clear in her interview that she is not "pro-pedophile" in any way, shape, or form. Nevertheless, the book still serves to dispel one of society's greatest myths in the SA hysteria, one used as an extremely potent weapon to justify all the draconian legislation designed to prevent youths under 18 from any type of sexual interactions with legal adults--or oftentimes even with peers—not to mention pretty much any type of youth sexual expression--no matter how much it may erode our democracy (or pretenses to it, at least).
Please note that I am not saying that we don't still have a long way to go before making the case for the legitimization of this orientation, as well as the achievement of respect for youth competence that will lead to the establishment of all of their civil rights. There are many important questions that Clancy does not bother to tackle in her book, such as the manner in which the legally disempowered status of youths and their forced dependence on adults for the first 18 years of their lives may play in the rampant amount of abuse of all kinds (including but not limited to the sexual) that is perpetrated against them; the role that the authoritarian and hierarchal nature of the currently dominant family unit--the nuclear family unit, where the majority of actual abuse of all kinds, including the greatest number of non-accidental deaths, inflicted upon minors occurs-- plays in this situation; the way the "pedophile panic" is inexorably transforming the Western nations into borderline police states; the manner in which the war on youth sexuality is causing many young teens who express themselves sexually to be arrested and placed on sex offender registries (e.g., the “sexting” phenomenon); and the questioning of why she still considers it intrinsically "wrong" for adults and youths under 18 to enjoy mutually consensual romantic/sexual relationships with each other if the evidence she has compiled for this book--which has been stated in similar objective studies in the past, including the Congressionally condemned Rind Report-- establishes once and for all that no trauma or emotional damage automatically occurs as if by some mystical force when two people of disparate age groups share a mutual desire for intimacy with each other. These are all questions that need to be confronted and addressed in the future, and though Clancy is not going to be the one to do this (at least not at this point in her career), what she has done in this book is still exceedingly important and groundbreaking. Though the antis and much of academia will do their best to either denounce it or ignore it, it's not going to go away, and its implications on the validity of the war on youth sexuality, and its expression and legitimacy thereof, cannot be denied.
As a short addendum to this essay, my fellow activist on GC, Baldur, had this to say:
"Just noticed this from the Clancy interview:
"'In the 1950s and 1960s, psychiatrists were very open and honest about SA, but there was also that tendency to think it was the youth's fault. Feminists were naturally infuriated, because it's not their fault! But the way they got attention to it was to portray the abuse in a way that would shock people. They did that by comparing it to a rape. Before that, the reaction from the medical and psych communities was, 'This is not something we really care about.' It wasn't until feminists and child-protection advocates misportrayed it that we were able to arouse massive medical and scientific attention to the topic.'
"In essence, Clancy is saying that when the Feminists realized that their arguments were ineffectual, they decided to lie to get what they wanted.
"It is something that this variety of Feminists are still doing. They can't get their way by honest means, so they lie. They commit fraud. And they're proud of it.
"We heard about it lately with regards to the fight against sex trafficking: the activists lie because the truth doesn't bother people."
Why Most Teens Will Not Support The Age Of Consent Laws If Given The Choice
I would like to thank some of my fellow pro-choice activists for their contributions and editorial assistance with this essay, including Summerdays, Baldur, qtns2di4, and Bella.
One of the biggest questions I ever receive from those--both within and outside of the MAA [Minor Attracted Adult] community--who supports the continuation of the age of consent [AoC] laws as we know them today is a variation of the following:
"I don't think the elimination of the AoC laws as they now stand is in any way a legitimate part of youth liberation politics, because I don't think that most underage girls [or boys, as the case may be] have any interest whatsoever in having sexual relations with adults. So, I think it's just pure selfishness on the part of MAAs for trying to alter these laws, as well as pure wishful thinking on their part that a youth liberated society would be some sort of 'pedo paradise.'"
Individuals who frequently make variations of the above statement clearly fail to realize that even if it did happen to be true, it is nevertheless totally and completely beside the point of the very foundation of liberation, including youth liberation. They also make the error of assuming that pro-choice MAA activists are in turn assuming that there would, for some reason, be lines of youths in our preferred gender and/or age group standing outside of their homes and begging for the sexual and romantic contact with MAAs that they were denied for the duration of time that these laws were heavily enforced.
The point of liberation—the main point, in fact--is not to give people the right to do only the things that the vast majority of the population want to do, but rather to give them the choice to do what they want even if some of their decisions may be uncomfortable to the majority of both the people who comprise their particular group, and the majority of people in the greater society around them. The key word here is choice. That is the crux of liberation, it's the crux of the pro-choice stance amongst MAA activists, and it should be the crux behind the platform of youth liberation, as well. This stance doesn't advocate any type of activity, nor does it say that everyone who belongs to a certain group should or should not engage in a certain type of activity, nor does it make any type of moral judgments on those who either do or do not engage in any particular type of activity. What it does advocate, plain and simply, is the importance of choice, which is why the stance is referred to as pro-choice rather than something less accurate and more loaded in context, like "pro-sex."
Making the above statement and supporting the continuation of the AoC laws more or less as they are today due to the strong belief that the above statement is true, is no more logical or ethical than the great heterosexual majority refusing to support the granting of rights to the homosexual minority simply because the majority of people have no desire to engage in homosexual relationships or marry someone of the same gender themselves; or, for that matter, because we don't personally know anyone who supports these rights. Of course, the latter of which, if true, is more likely due to the case of us happening to live in an area of the nation, or under a specific political climate in any given era of history, where most people with non-normative desires are firmly in the closet, and thus firmly silent about these desires. For instance, how many heterosexual people who lived during the 1940s were aware of anyone they knew being a homosexual? And how many homosexuals who lived during that era were open and honest with every one of their heterosexual friends about their preferences? Obviously, AAMs [Adult Attracted Minors, a term for gerontophiles who are legally underage] are mostly in the closet these days just as firmly as MAAs, and for very good and obvious reasons. Hence, I certainly don't understand why anyone would expect large numbers of them to be talking openly about their desire to date and socialize with significantly older people even with some of their closest friends, who in the current climate may very well panic upon hearing this and relay the news to their friend's parents and/or teachers.
I do not personally believe that the great majority of young adolescent girls [AGs] would actually desire to have a more than platonic relationship with MAAs even if we lived in a youth liberated society, and I do not believe that the great majority of MAAs believe this in regards to themselves either; but I do think that it's totally ridiculous to assert that very few, if any, would harbor such a desire, or that there wouldn't be a possibly significant minority of them who would do so, either as a result of their natural preferences or due to simple curiosity as to how well a relationship with an older man (or woman) may work for them, if the choice was allowed. Individuals who claim otherwise are not only ignoring the very real existence of gerontophilia [a sexual, emotional, social, and aesthetic preference for significantly older though not necessarily elderly individuals]--which may exist to varying degrees amongst the youth population as often as hebephilia occurs amongst legal adults today--but they are also ignoring the full range of diversity of desire and curiosity in regards to sexual preferences and proclivities that exists amongst the human species overall. Those that do deny such things may actually be the one's who are engaging in wishful thinking here, not those amongst the pro-choice segment of the MAA community.
As my fellow activist qtns2di4 noted:
"The argument that it's 'a very tiny minority' is well debunked, but the gay example isn't even the best example you can think of. 'How many slaves wanted to be free?' 'How many women wanted to go to university, work, and vote?' If you are willing to dive into more dangerous waters, 'how many people support some form of drug legalization yet have never taken drugs and don't plan to do it once it's legal?' 'How many people support abortion that have never had one and don't plan to have any?' Liberal audiences should be even more receptive to the argument, given the subsidies to opportunity that which liberals usually promote: those are usually for a tiny minority, at least when they begin."
As noted by my fellow activist Summderdays:
"Freedom is not an issue of, 'if we give these people this freedom, will it benefit us or not benefit us, overall?' Freedom is simply freedom. People deserve to be free - free to make choices, even when those choices are ones we don't like. Anything else is like saying, 'okay, you're free to choose, but only if you make a decision I'm happy with.' It would be less offensive if these people actually admitted that they don't support freedom, but what really bugs me is they act like they do support freedom at the same time that they deny it of people."
Hence, a youth liberated society would not be a "pedo paradise," of course (regardless of how someone may define such a place), but it would be a much more liberated and ultimately more enlightened society where the range of--and respect for--the right of choice would be considerably greater than it is today. Such a society would benefit younger people every bit as much as it would older people with a preference for much younger individuals, and such a system of tolerance of all activities that respected consent and didn't cause demonstrable harm to another human being would ultimately be beneficial for society itself. For a truly free, democratic, and liberated society to exist, people have to try to empathize with the perspectives of those who exist outside their own, and not to limit their respect only for the type of mutually consensual activities that they believe are either common or which do not have an “ickiness” factor according to their personal sensibilities.
As such--and getting back to the comparison to gay rights--I will always support the right for individuals to engage in homosexual relations as their individual tastes and emotional needs decree despite the fact that it may appear on the surface that the criminalization of such relations wouldn't impact upon me personally, nor the heterosexual majority I belong to. Further, the large number of bisexuals in this country would continue to have a greater range of choices regarding who they may or may not date or have sexual relations with if the matter of choice in regards to this is allowed and respected.
However, I would argue that if I supported the criminalization of any activity that was outside my personal tastes, as well as the personal tastes of the majority of society, then that would constitute selfishness on my part, not selfishness on the part of the minority of people who would desire homosexual relations to have this choice open to them. I would also be aware that the ramifications on our democracy over such an Orwellian decision would certainly be extreme, and if I agreed to allow one particular type of choice to be denied to others simply because I didn't think the taste was common, or because it wasn't a taste that I personally shared, then this would make it easier for the government to rationalize further restrictions on such choices in the future. Because of the tendency for such draconian legislation to be cumulative in effect, eventually I could expect one of my personal tastes to be criminalized, as would likely be the case for all of my fellow heterosexuals, be they teleiophiles or not [a teleiophile is an individual with a sexual, emotional, and social preference for individuals in the same general age group, regardless of gender or race, and are presently the ‘norm’ in Western society]. As I always say, when discussing civil rights and the criminalization of any type of choice--as long as it honors mutual consent and does not lead to the demonstrable harm of anyone else--the big picture always needs to be considered. An emphasis placed upon the much smaller picture that only relates to what our own personal desires happen to be, or what we perceive to be common amongst the general population, is highly counter-productive to the notion of freedom and the right to the pursuit of happiness in the long run. Minority desires and lifestyle choices always need to be respected as much as the "normative" choices made by the majority in a democratic society.
It should also be considered that most people who lived during the decades prior to the 1970s would swear that no one they knew had any desire to engage in homosexual relations, because most mainstream gays back then were firmly in the closet. This is something that someone living in today's era should consider when they insist that they are totally (or almost totally) unaware of any underager who actually has gerontophiliac desires, regardless of whether or not they themselves are underagers and thus have a large group of peers and friends who are also tweens or teens.
Now, as for the question as to whether most young people would have no interest in having the AoC laws lowered or abolished simply because the great majority of them had no interest in having sexual/romantic relations with adults. Is this really the crux of the matter in regards to this one particular aspect of youth liberation? I would like to say there is some good evidence that the answer to the above question is a resounding no.
Back in 2000, there was an article by Nicole Martin posted on the online version of the British newspaper known as The Telegraph (still available today) that discusses what many adolescent girls in Britain consider to be the highly inadequate and hugely unrealistic sex education courses available to them in middle school and high school, which among other things was, "out-dated, uninformative and taught too late." A poll was taken amongst numerous schoolgirls in Britain between the age range of 12-16 by wickedcolors(@)c o m which yielded some results that make it quite clear that the majority of AGs in the West may have attitudes about sexuality that contradict the moralizing values of the West's heavily gerontocentric culture:
Not only did 9 out of 10 of these girls polled say that it's unrealistic to expect young people to wait until they are married to have sex, but 87% of the adolescent girl respondents on that poll said that they wanted the AoC in Britain to be lowered from its current status at 16. In that article, Martin said, "Lucy Laverack, a founder of wickedcolors(@)c o m, which conducted the survey, said the poll showed how frustrated young girls were with the Government's inability to understand what they wanted. She said: 'Girls today are head-strong, opinionated and intelligent. They are career driven and politically and economically very aware.'"
That sounds like something that youth liberationists have been arguing about for years now, and this makes it clear that the question of sexual rights is far from irrelevant to the entirety of youth liberation, even though it’s hardly the only important right that younger people need to win, with voting rights, labor rights, free speech rights, educational rights, and rights of association and movement also very important (and with voting rights probably the most important of all the rights the “underage” youth community needs to win).
As noted by Summerdays regarding that poll (in bold face):
There's a novel idea - ask the girls themselves who are underage rather than extrapolate from what adults retroactively believe (or have convinced themselves to believe) they would have wanted, or worse yet, what they want kids to want, regardless of reality.
It's not about giving adults the right to be intimate with kids. It's not that at all. It's about giving the kids the right to choose for themselves what they want to do with their bodies. Whether that involves adults or not.
Funny how anyone could get the idea that a position that promotes choice would be anything but disdainful of non-consent. The idea that people want to give kids a “choice,” just so that they can then go and force them to do things they wouldn't want to do. How ridiculous is that? If I want kids to have a choice, that means I intend to respect that choice.
A link to that article can be found here:
http://w w w(@)telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1376140/Girls-say-teenage-sex-campaign-is-out-of-touch.html Many thanks to my friend and fellow activist Bella (no, not actress Bella Thorne!) for providing me with a link to that article.
So, should any of the naysayers be surprised about the above results from that poll? And do those results indicate that the great majority of adolescent girls between the ages of 12 and 16 want to have sexual relations with much older adults? The answer to both questions is certainly no. That is not what the above poll results indicate, and again that is entirely beside the point of the AoC question when it comes to youth liberation. What I believe those above poll results do indicate is that AGs support the simple freedom of choice to carry out their personal dating and sex lives as they see fit--in concert with whatever their personal desires and tastes may happen to be--and that they wish that sex education classes would prepare them for making whatever decisions they might want to make for themselves from an early point in their lives--nothing more, and nothing less than that. No “pedo paradise” (or “hebe paradise,” for that matter), but simply a society that honored freedom of choice, a situation that would benefit everyone whatever their age, race, gender, or personal tastes happened to be.
As Summerdays further lamented on this point:
"I will never be able to understand how sex could be an exception to a person's freedoms. If sex is not included, then a person is not completely free. If it were true that kids aren't interested in sex, then what difference does giving them the freedom make? As long as we continue to honor choice, none of the kids will be having sex. And if it so happens that some of them are interested in sex, then not giving them that choice is a restriction of freedom. Seems pretty simple to me."
Thus, the question of the AoC laws most definitely is a valid aspect of youth liberation, even if some youth lib orgs are afraid to touch the issue due to the fact that it's such a highly emotionally charged topic. Nevertheless, this issue is every bit as important as other major components of the youth lib platform such as the other rights mentioned above, and may be surpassed in importance only by (in this order) voting rights, free speech rights, and educational rights.
In another essay, I tackle the question of what our culture all-too-often refers to as "child pornography" as it relates to the overall issue of youth liberation.
The Ultimate Pandora Box: The Phillip Greaves Case And The First Amendment
The State must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as government is perceived as working for the benefit of children, the people happily will endure almost any curtailment of liberty.
- Rabbi Daniel Lapin
The December 20th, 2010 arrest of Phillip R. Greaves, author of the uber-controversial self-published e-book The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure: a Child-lover's Code of Conduct, on obscenity charges filed against him from a Florida court (despite the fact that the author resides in Colorado) makes a very important point very clear in our society: the current anti-pedo hysteria may not be compatible with the Bill of Rights, particularly the First Amendment. The whole story can be read about here: w w w(@)cbsnews(@)c o m/news/the-pedophiles-guide-author-philip-ray-greaves-ii-arrested
The words of the Polk County Sheriff who had Greaves arrested, Grady Judd, goes a long way towards revealing the real reason why the powers-that-be in our society argue for the power to single out certain ideas that it considers particularly offensive to warrant an arrest for those expressing such "forbidden" thoughts through the written word despite our pretenses towards a constitutional democracy that is supposed to protect unpopular speech as readily as our most popular and cherished opinions. That is basically what the crime of "obscenity" is designed to do. Its parameters are usually vague enough that you can arrest people for almost any type of speech or imagery that offends the sensibilities of a large number of people in either any given community--or the entire nation--if you can't build up charges for anything more substantive, such as evidence for some type of demonstrable harm suffered by a human being (as opposed to a cherished idea or paradigm). And it's also quite telling how powerful the "obscenity" laws of a single small county within a state can be when the author of the offending words lives in another state located far from the prosecuting court or the jurisdiction of the LEOs [law enforcement officers] who ordered the arrest.
Let's note a few of Sheriff Judd's ever-so-enlightened words for bringing Greaves to what he considers to be "justice" [as excerpted from the above linked article on CBS News]:
"I was outraged by the content," Judd told The Associated Press. "It was clearly a manifesto on how to sexually batter children ... You just can't believe how absolutely disgusting it was."
Sexually battered children? Since Greaves said he in no way promoted any illegal activity in his book, it's quite clear that the powers-that-be--like the vigilantes who run notorious hate groups like Absolute Zero United [AZU]--enjoy twisting words and meanings so that advocating an open-minded or neutral attitude towards intergenerational love and sexuality is automatically encouraging "rape" and "molestation"--or in this case, "sexual battery." This is a classic "trap" situation that these pundits of purity and ideological orthodoxy place before authors who dare to tackle this subject in any way other than total condemnation, because this attitude allows the vigilantes and LEOs to label fully consensual sexual contact as "rape," "molestation," "sexual battery," etc., simply because the law says that is the case solely due to the age of one of the two participants regardless of whether or not the matter of consent was present and how the younger participant may have felt about the experience. This enables the pundits of the law and arbiters of anti-youth sexuality to bring an extremely loaded context to the entire discussion or purpose of the author in question, and to define actions according to what the law refers to them as, rather than what the actual definition of the word entails. If merely arguing that intergenerational sexual contact should be legal if consent from both parties is duly respected constitutes the advocating of "rape" or "molestation" in the eyes of the law, then what does this mean in regards to the First Amendment right of people to peacefully challenge laws which they do not agree with via the written word? Isn't this a massive case of political and intellectual dirty pool being leveled against those who may wish to oppose a certain topic that the current national mindset considers unpopular to challenge? Attorneys who are truly loyal to constitutional rights need to directly confront this issue in the near future, and I can only hope that Greaves' legal team does so.
Another matter brought up by Judd is a classic reason for leveling charges of "obscenity" against someone: that the topic they are discussing, and the stance they take in regards to that topic--and possibly some of the scenarios they use to illustrate their points--come off as "disgusting" (i.e., a visceral, knee-jerk negative emotional reaction) to those who read it. Sheriff Judd actually used that adjective, so I can hardly be accused of putting words in his mouth or distorting the meaning of what he tried to say. So, in other words, if certain types of speech and certain means of conveying points, such as through hypothetical scenarios, happen to offend the personal sensibilities of people badly enough, then the vice police should have the legal power to arrest and indict that person. Is this what you are saying, Sheriff Judd? If so, then you need to take a crash course on constitutional law, and learn what the meaning of the First Amendment is, so that you can understand that a true constitutional democracy doesn't limit its protection of ideas to only those which are popular and do not offend anyone. If such was the case, then we shouldn’t pretend we have a democracy—even a nominal one—in the first place.
I would like to say here that I have spoken with a MAA [Minor Attracted Adult] who reviewed Greaves' e-book, and he said the tome is certainly deserving of a certain degree of criticism. For instance, his hypothetical scenarios of sexual contact spoken from a faux child's point of view may arguably be considered unwise in the present climate, and the inclusion of these scenarios were bound to make the case for an "obscenity" charge somewhere in the nation. This is not to say, however, that I think the charge was justified, because those scenarios he described in his book were not actual events, and it shouldn't matter whether or not the ideas expressed by those scenarios offended a large number of people or not. Change and social evolution cannot occur without a large amount of outrage as the old ideas are challenged and new ones suggested in their place, and the normative ideas of one century are very often the highly controversial or radical ideas of a previous century. Greaves' e-tome and other publications like it are putting our purported commitment to democracy and freedom of speech to a major test, and it's a shame that individuals like Sheriff Judd are determined to make our nation fail that test. What will it mean to future generations if the nation ends up miserably failing that all-important test on a wide scale? This question is especially important when you consider how the U.S. often seems determined to drag the rest of the world down whatever abyss it chooses to plunge into itself by way of its presently unrivaled economic and military power (though China and Russia are both rising powers in the global arena, as if we really needed more "super power" nations in the world; but that is a whole other topic).
Let's take a look at another excerpt from the above linked article, which includes more of Judd's spurious comments:
"‘What's wrong with a society that has gotten to the point that we can't arrest child pornographers and child molesters who write a book about how to rape a child?’ said Judd, who keeps a Bible on his desk and is known throughout Florida as a crusader against child predators.
“Florida'[s] obscenity law - a third-degree felony - prohibits the ‘distribution of obscene material depicting minors engaged in conduct harmful to minors.’"
It's rather interesting how Judd considers Greaves to be a "child pornographer" and a "child molester" despite the fact that he took no illegal pictures of nude minors or of minors engaged in sexual situations, nor has he ever been accused of illegal sexual contact with a minor. Yet, because of his mere ideas, and the first person narrative style he used to explicate fictitious scenarios to illustrate a specific idea to his readers, he has actually been referred to by these shameful monikers from an officer of the law, an obvious attempt to garner a specific emotional reaction of outrage towards Greaves despite the fact that his actions in no way fit the true definition of such terms. Does this not make it clear that these terms are becoming more and more broad, and pretty much slowly evolving in the popular and even legal lexicon to mean nearly anything the person using those terms wants them to mean? Does this mean that pro-choice MAAs who are fully law-abiding are now considered "child molesters" simply because of their views, regardless of having had no actual sexual contact with a minor? Does the exercise of free speech in defense of fully consensual intergenerational romantic/sexual relationships now constitute an act of "child pornography?" I am not currently sure how graphic Greaves' first person fictional narratives were, but I will say that the mere written word is not currently against the law in America, though authors have been arrested on "obscenity" charges for such written material in the past. That is the joy of the "obscenity" charge for prosecutors--the charge can be applied to nearly anything that happens to offend them or others badly enough.
Also, is it any wonder that Sheriff Judd keeps a Bible on his desk? Not to disparage the Bible for whatever truths or insights it can provide to those who read it, but that tome has been infamous for the number of fundamentalists who have used various scriptures within it to justify any number of totalitarian policies or bigoted attitudes. Never mind the fact that there is clearly nothing in the Bible that speaks out against mutually consensual intergenerational relationships, as the "pedophile problem" was a non-issue in the long ago era when the Bible was written since younger people were not conceptualized in the same way then that they are today, i.e., as helpless, naïve innocents who are always harmed by participation in even mutually consensual sexual activity. Then again, Bible-thumpers of any given era have always felt free to interpret and twist any given scripture to mean pretty much anything they want it to mean, and to help them rationalize any given moralizing crusade they may have up their sleeves in any given decade or century.
Further, Sheriff Judd is known throughout Florida as a crusader against "child predators," yet another term that appears to be used more and more broadly as time goes on. So Greaves is now a "child predator" because of his ideas and opinions? What does that make anyone who dares to speak in an open-minded fashion about mutually consensual intergenerational sexual contact? Is it any wonder that the mainstream progressives and liberals--a political tendency whose adherents have not been known for their courage over the past three decades since the conservative mindset took over the nation with Reagan's election back in 1980—usually tend to speak out as mindlessly ignorant about this subject as any conservative whenever they care to discuss it publicly? By broadening these terms to apply to individuals with no criminal records who simply have unpopular ideas, this is a clear attempt at intimidating people into not speaking out against the hysteria, to not look at the general subject of youth sexuality in a remotely progressive fashion (at least not publicly), and to not in any way challenge the feeding of people who benefit and acquire power via the ongoing "child predator" and sex abuse hysteria like Judd out of fear of being called all the usual names. It takes real courage to challenge the extreme damage that people like Judd are doing to the foundation of our democracy, and this courage is in short supply today as anyone who merely challenges the popular reigning conception of youth sexuality, or our present day paradigm of the "child" in general, can be labeled a "child predator" or a "child molester."
Of course, Judd made sure to justify his "obscenity" charge against Greaves by saying that it's unlawful in his Florida county to distribute "obscene material depicting minors engaged in conduct harmful to minors." Never mind the fact that all of the available objective and peer-reviewed science has found no evidence that intergenerational sexual activity is harmful to minors if the matter of consent was honored and respected by the older participant (see Rind, 1998; Green, 2010; and Bailey, 2011). How long are we going to ignore science and continue to allow the law to create policies that are based on a social myth? Isn't this problem especially grave now that freedom of speech and the free expression of unpopular ideas that a lot of people consider to be "disgusting" are at risk of being stifled by the power of the state? If this precedent is allowed to continue, how far will it go? Where will it end? What type of society will be the ultimate result of this tendency taken to its logical conclusion?
Thankfully, this major threat to democracy in general and the First Amendment in particular has not gone entirely unnoticed by those who have worked within the legal system. Note this other excerpt from the above linked article:
“Legal experts questioned whether Greaves' right to free speech would come into play if there's a trial. If prosecutors can charge Greaves for shipping his book, they ask, what would prevent booksellers from facing prosecution for selling Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, a novel about a pedophile [sic]?
"‘As bad as this book may be, the charge opens a very big Pandora's box,’ said Dennis J. Kenney, a former police officer in Polk County and a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. ‘The charge sounds to me like a significant overreach.’"
It's nice to see that some people like Prof. Kenney can put aside the emotional effect that this book has on him long enough to realize what is actually at stake when it comes to the type of legal actions taken by Sheriff Judd and his many ideological partners-in-crime. Hence, there is hope on the horizon, but will we end up in a Second Dark Age before this hysteria and those who benefit from it are exposed for what they really are, and for what the implications they represent on our core freedoms really entail? That is the major question we should all be concerned with.
Finally, Sheriff Judd made a comment in the above linked article that is all too common from any pundit looking for an irreproachable excuse to circumvent democracy and arrest people for promulgating "offensive" or "dangerous" ideas:
"‘If we can get jurisdiction ... we're coming after you,’ Judd said. ‘There's nothing in the world more important than our children.’"
As long as that intellectually dishonest excuse is made, virtually any curtailment of our essential freedoms and liberties can be rationalized, and those who do cherish democracy are often afraid to challenge anyone making such statements for fear of being accused of being a "child predator," "child molester," "soft on child abuse," etc., regardless of the fact that it's quite obvious that what Judd is actually concerned about is not the safety of children, but rather an attempt to make it a case of political suicide to challenge the sacrosanct idea of what the conceptual image of the "child" is supposed to represent in our society.
As one of my fellow activists who reviewed this e-book said to me about this situation via e-mail:
"He was arrested for 'distributing obscene material depicting minors engaged in conduct harmful to minors.' Obviously, Amazon is at least as guilty. They, not Greaves, sent it to me. Should I report them to the police?
"Seriously, if Greaves is going to be arrested over this, we should all push for Amazon, Jeff Bezos, and all his minions under him to be arrested. What better way to make people realize the absurdity of all this?"
To further underscore the seriousness of this situation, how much of a threat this hysteria poses to our democracy, and exactly what happens when mob rule takes over and people allow their emotions to cloud their reasoning faculties, my fellow MAA activist Scotty made this observation about the Greaves arrest:
"He did not send the material to a minor; he sent it to an adult police officer. He violated Polk County law, not state law.
"Then the sheriff asks Colorado to arrest the man and extradite him to Florida, and they do it? He WAS NOT arrested by Polk County deputies in Colorado where they have no jurisdiction; Colorado authorities did it.
"Now, a red-neck county in Florida seeks to impose its will upon the rest of the United States.
"I went to AC360 to comment, and I could not believe the things that were posted there. The vast majority agreed with the sheriff AND said that if the author cannot be prosecuted under the Constitution of the United States as it is presently written, then we should change it to allow that!
"Do you see where this is heading? If such a constitutional referendum came before the people now it would probably pass.
"The powers-that-be are using pedophilia to take away our freedoms! The posters also wanted the people who purchased the book to be jailed, and Amazon to be prosecuted for selling it!
"Playboy magazine interviewed noted international security consultant Philippe Bacard and asked him if it were possible to turn America into a police state. His reply:
"'Easy. First, keep a dossier of every schoolchild from the beginning, so that every future American will grow up knowing that the government is keeping a record of his activities.
"'Second, scare the people into surrendering their freedoms by filling the news with stories of drug dealers, pedophiles, and terrorists.
"'In fact, it is happening now!'"
As of December 22nd, 2010, Greaves has declared that he will continue his habit of courage by fighting the charges against him, as reported here:
w w w(@)abcnews.go(@)c o m/Technology/author-pedophiles-guide-arrested-obscenity-charges/story?id=12440853
An excerpt from the above linked article notes:
“Greaves said he plans to fight the obscenity charge, and he expects to win.
“One lawyer says Greaves will walk out of jail a free man.
“ ‘I don’t think that this case has a chance of being successful for Grady Judd and Polk County authorities,’ said defense attorney and First Amendment expert Lawrence Walters.”
Though many people will balk at the fact that a "pedophile" will likely be granted the freedom of speech to express his opinions openly, this predicted resolution will actually be a victory for everyone in America, because ultimately the Constitution and the principles we defend under American law will prevail over knee-jerk emotional reactionary attitudes, and one less book will be censored as a result.
My thanks to fellow MAA activist LOD for providing me and the rest of the community with the information from the above linked article.
ADDENDUM
The early drafts of this essay generated a good degree of further discourse amongst MAA activists on the GC forum, and their words deserve to be included in the last section of this essay.
My fellow activist qtns2di4 had this to say while quickly evaluating my first draft:
"Obscenity statutes have so far been upheld as valid 1A exceptions.
"I wouldn't fight it, because of this, as a 1A issue.
"I am much, much, much more convinced that it is a violation of the Federation arrangement through the Commerce Clause. This is very clearly Interstate Commerce. Federal jurisdiction. The states have no authority over that. The police officers have to be arrested for possession, but there is no fault either from the Colorado guy [Greaves] or from Amazon because they are in other states, so they are regulated by the Federal in this interaction."
Lateralus responded to the above with the following anecdote:
"It doesn't matter on what grounds you fight this; it will stand at the local level, though it might be overturned at the state/federal level. The reason is simple: if you have a jury trying this case, the jury will uphold anything having to do with pedophilia, because most people are ignorant and high-strung when it comes to this issue. I believe juries should be outlawed in the U.S. at this point. They used to be fairly reliable. You could count on the average person to exercise fairness with regard to their peers and be pretty well up on the laws. That time is no more. Juries were invented to counter the biases inherent to the class system, but they are no longer very useful because average people are idiots who make decisions based on emotional gut reactions, not on facts or higher principles."
Though Lateralus' words towards his fellow 'common' citizens were rather harsh and arguably ad hominem territory, it cannot be denied that the essence of his statement was true: too many people think with their emotions when it comes to this issue, and anti-democratic, agenda-pushing pundits like Sheriff Judd count on this. If Judd didn't think that he could count on this type of emotionalistic attitude from his fellow citizens, he never would have wasted the time to push such an unconstitutional case in the first place. He knew Greaves' opinions were unpopular enough that many people in a possible jury--along with many in the press on any side of the political spectrum--wouldn't care about the important foundations of American jurisprudence as long as a "disgusting" pedophile was arrested and his book censored.
In response to the above response by Lateralus, qtns2di4 stated:
"In most states (and for most felonies) the defendant can freely choose whether to go jury or bench trial.
"In this particular case, the Commerce Clause argument would be about admissibility in the court, so it would have to be argued pre-trial, and would always be bench, not jury, because it is a Technicality.
"The First argument is about the merits of the case. Here is where it might be jury (don't know the specifics, there might be choice or there might be a statute determining it is one or the other). Evidently, for the same reasons you point out, I would choose bench. But still, if the presiding judge is only county level, not state level, then it might still stick - at least until it made it to the state level. Any state level judge should know better than that (should is, of course, no guarantee that they do).
"Notice that the book need not be declared legal in Polk County for Greaves to be acquitted; all the defense needs to prove is that it was a legal material to sell or possess in his own jurisdiction and that there was no way he could prevent its sale to pockets within the USA where it is not legal. Much like, e.g., small wineries, breweries, and distilleries that only sell online cannot realistically know when they are selling to a dry county - yet I am sure if any such case was tested the cops are the only ones that would be jailed - and at least they would be very publicly embarrassed. (Now of course, if the verdict makes the book legal, that is welcome! I just wanted to remind [here] that it doesn't have to go that far to acquit Greaves)."
My fellow MAA activist Summerdays then had these important words and observations to add to this discussion:
"Our 1st Amendment 'rights' have been watered down to the point that 'freedom of speech' hardly means anything anymore. That is the insidious way to do it. Most people will say, 'well, we still have freedom of speech, there are just certain kinds of speech that don't deserve protection, that's all.' This is how people are tricked into believing they have freedom of speech when they don't. Into believing that censorship in some way serves our rights - by providing us protection at the expense of liberty. Unfortunately, most people these days seem far more concerned with protection than liberty, they'd gladly sacrifice the latter for the former, and it's apparently beyond them to consider why that's a bad thing. I'd rather take the risk of being free, than the protection of living in a cage.
"And people will still argue, 'the ones in power are sensible, they'll only censor things that really ought to be censored to begin with.' Slippery slope arguments don't seem to faze these people. Most of them are lucky enough to have thoughts and opinions that go along with the status quo, or are otherwise too susceptible to suggestion. If it's censored, then it ought to have been censored. People argue that the topic of pedophilia is rightly censored because what kind of civilized society would allow the spreading of speech that depicts the 'rape' of children? But the reality of it is, I could have an extremely positive romantic fantasy about having an intimate moment with another human being, but if that human being is a minor, and I choose to share that fantasy with the wrong person, I could be subjecting myself to a world of hurt (if not at the hands of the law, then at the hands of my peers at least). There's nothing sensible about censoring the topic of pedophilia. There's nothing civilized about it either."
Summerdays continued with a few responses to various points I made in the above essay (which will be repeated in bold face to make it clear which points Summerdays is referring to, while Summerdays' responses will be in standard text in quotation marks):
"I was outraged by the content," Judd told The Associated Press. "It was clearly a manifesto on how to sexually batter children ... You just can't believe how absolutely disgusting it was."
"This cop is going up against a phantom. A 'sexual predator' who wrote a book about committing heinous crimes. Except the predator, and the book, exist only within his mind, and the minds of those who believe his lies. Unfortunately, though, that phantom has been projected onto a real person who wrote a real book, and he's being punished for this cop's tortured fantasies. I can't believe the system encourages this gross abuse of 'justice.'
"Obscenity law is unconstitutional."
Here I must say that I totally agree with Summerdays on that assessment, because the notion of "obscenity" doesn't stand well as a legal concept in a constitutional democracy, since the term is very subjective, what it covers changes not only from decade to decade but also according to the personal opinions and sensibilities of any given judge depending upon what type of community he/she happened to have been brought up in or happened to be adjudicating within. It's not a concept that can have a specific definition that holds up to the test of time or all sensibilities, and as such it results in judges and LEOs using their own discretion upon which material to judge "obscene" or not. Also, and most importantly, what the "obscenity" laws basically legalize is the power of the courts and LEAs [law enforcement agencies] to criminalize any type of text or image that they find personally offensive, or which a majority of people in the nation (or certain areas within the country) may find offensive, and that is not conducive with democratic principles. This is also why hate speech and anti-war speech must be allowed in a true constitutional democracy despite the highly offensive nature of such words or images.
So Greaves is now a "child predator" because of his ideas and opinions?
"Judd laid a trap for Greaves. I think it's obvious which one of the two is the predator."
It takes real courage to challenge the extreme damage that people like Judd are doing to the foundation of our democracy[...]
"The people who stand up for democracy are labeled criminals and thrown in jail. The people who continue to erode our democracy are awarded positions like 'sheriff,' 'judge,' 'mayor.' It's disgusting."
I would opine here that all too often people in positions of power attempt to protect the sanctity of certain ideas while masquerading as an attempt to protect actual people. However noble this may sound to too many people in essence, it's not harmonious with the principles of a true constitutional democracy. And before any detractor of ours chimes in here with the following oft-used statement to attempt to defend anti-democratic actions, "the U.S. actually isn't a democracy, it's a republic," let me remind you that the only 'differences' between a democracy and a republic are purely semantic.
Of course, Judd made sure to justify his "obscenity" charge against Greaves by saying that it's unlawful in his Florida county to distribute "obscene material depicting minors engaged in conduct harmful to minors."
"Personally, I think Judd should be held responsible for requesting material that he knew was illegal in his county. I don't give a damn that he's a cop, that doesn't give him the right to break the law with impunity, especially for the purpose of luring others into legal traps. And it doesn't make a difference to me whether this constitutes legal 'entrapment'; I think the cop should be punished regardless, for his blatant disregard for the law, as well as his petty victimizing (not to mention the lies - no, cops should not be allowed to lie to anyone).
"What a world we live in."
After this, qtns2di4 then weighed in with the following responses to Summerdays' above points [the former of which are in standard text within quotation marks, the latter of which are again in bold face]:
Most people will say, "well, we still have freedom of speech, there are just certain kinds of speech that don't deserve protection, that's all."
"'Freedom of speech is there to protect the ideas which are uncomfortable to us. The ideas everyone agrees upon need no legal protection.' (Miloš Forman)"
Into believing that censorship in some way serves our rights - by providing us protection at the expense of liberty. Unfortunately, most people these days seem far more concerned with protection than liberty, they'd gladly sacrifice the latter for the former, and it's apparently beyond them to consider why that's a bad thing.
"Larry Niven's Equation: F * S = k "(The product of Freedom and Security is a constant. Any increase in either comes at the expense of the other)."
And people will still argue, "the ones in power are sensible, they'll only censor things that really ought to be censored to begin with."
"Politicians are not suddenly more sensible or ethical because you happen to agree with their current position. They are the same politicians you hate every other day of the calendar, when they are not busy screwing up pedophiles, but screwing up someone else."
Personally, I think Judd should be held responsible for requesting material that he knew was illegal in his county. I don't give a damn that he's a cop, that doesn't give him the right to break the law with impunity, especially for the purpose of luring others into legal traps. And it doesn't make a difference to me whether this constitutes legal "entrapment," I think the cop should be punished regardless, for his blatant disregard for the law, as well as his petty victimizing (not to mention the lies - no, cops should not be allowed to lie to anyone).
"If he had requested a product from a country under U.S. embargo, he'd already be in federal jail, no matter what his title is - and independently of whether anyone else would also get charged with distribution (likely yes)."
Thus, it would appear that LEOs are liable for violating some laws when seeking arrests, but not any that happen to more blatantly inconvenience the federal government as opposed to the rights of common citizens.
A single statement/request by Tester is worth mentioning here:
"Anderson Cooper, Bill O'Reilly, and other TV news anchors all said on National TV that they purchased this book. I want these TV news anchors arrested for possession of [obscene material]."
The source for the above can be seen here: http://w w w(@)youtube(@)c o m/watch?v=jOxI52FRVO4&playnext=1&list=PL01FE48A945663615&index=83
If these news anchors are not prosecuted as Tester has requested, then it would appear we are sent the message that what type of material you may have in your possession doesn't matter so much as why you have possession of it. If this is the case, then why do the LEAs continue to prohibit respected journalists from viewing the content of their child pornography files for the purpose of verifying all of the often outrageous claims made by the LEOs in regards to what type of imagery exists in those files? (And yes, you're damn right I'm going to bring this subject up again, even if only briefly!) Once again, it would appear that certain laws are honored or ignored by the courts depending upon whom they may or may not happen to inconvenience.
Courtesy of my fellow GChatter LOD, as of April 6, 2011, it was reported in this article: http://w w w(@)miamiherald(@)c o m/2011/04/06/2154135/author-of-pedophilia-book-gets.html#ixzz1ImTQnWAf that Phillip Greaves has decided to plead "no contest" to the charges against him.
An excerpt from the above linked article (in bold face):
LAKELAND, Fla. -- A Colorado man who wrote The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure has been sentenced to two years probation in Florida.
As part of a deal with Polk County prosecutors, 48-year-old Phillip R. Greaves II pleaded no contest Wednesday to distributing obscene material depicting minors engaged in conduct harmful to minors. He will serve his probation in Colorado. He will not have to register as a sex offender.
In response to that on the GC board, qtns2di4 said:
"No contest ≠ Guilty plea.
"It doesn't set a precedent (good for us), and doesn't necessarily prevent double jeopardy (bad for him).
"I would still have fought it purely by Commerce Clause, trying to create a constitutional crisis."
In response to the above, LOD said:
"I know there are superficial differences but it basically means guilty, otherwise there would be no punishment."
A response from yours truly to the above was:
...it should be noted that his punishment--such as it is--was extremely light, especially when you consider there was no SOR [sex offender registration] requirements. So it may not be the equivalent of a full admission of guilt, and the very light probation may have been added just to make it clear that the court did "something" in exchange for his plea.
Nevertheless, I do wish he had chosen to fight this, and maybe even bring it all the way to the Supreme Court, out of principle rather than simply pleading "no contest" to something he clearly didn't do, when you consider what nebulous and subjective legal terms "obscenity" or "material depicting acts harmful to minors" can be. I suspect that his lawyer talked him into taking the easy way out of this one, probably saying something to him like, "With an accusation like this, you are all but guaranteed to lose in a trial by jury, so I strongly suggest you let me work out a plea bargain deal with the judge, because you don't want this going to a jury trial, and such a plea should be easy and light since the whole thing is simply over words in a book and you have no prior criminal record."
In response to the above comment of mine, Taf-kat weighed in with:
"Diss, I know it smacks of a sell-out, but when you have been given the option of a plea-bargain, like I have, it takes a man braver than me to decline it - despite pleading guilty with tears running down my cheeks it's something I would do again; sometimes you have to lose a battle and hope you win the war at a later date."
My reply to the above was:
Understood, and I'm sure I would have strongly considered taking the plea bargain too, especially such a light one, rather than face a jury trial against accusations of that nature. I have heard how difficult and trying such a situation can be, so I am not unsympathetic.
Nevertheless, I wish he had gone the distance because his case is so important to the issue of civil rights and free speech in general; it was over something as important as unpopular ideas expressed in a book rather than his being caught with illegal pics or engaging in illegal sexual activity; and it was based on an accusation that is very vague and subjective, i.e., the "obscenity" nonsense and the "material that is harmful to minors" claptrap. Your situation was different from his in a major sense, in my opinion. I wish he had found a more courageous and heavily principled defense attorney in the field of constitutional law.
An Analysis of Attacks on Intergenerational Attraction on Cracked(@)c o m
Everybody hates pedophiles (and hebephiles, of course, but too few people these days have the slightest interest in making the distinction anyway, so you know what I mean). Hating and attacking pedophilia in a mindless, knee-jerk manner is a bona fide trend. It's a trend that is equally popular among conservatives and liberals alike, which is saying something! If you want to cast any literary character in a bad light, make him (or her) into a pedophile [i.e., a Minor Attracted Adult, or MAA, a political blanket term covering pedophiles, hebephiles, and ephebophiles]. Just don't expect anyone to accept that such a character can possibly have any shades of gray in his persona, or any degree of complexity of character at all. If he is written as a pedophile, he is evil. He is psychotic. His mind is more depraved than that of a serial killer, because let's face it, everyone knows that actually murdering and cutting people to pieces is by far the lesser evil than some grown man who simply thinks about how sexy a girl under 18 is, regardless of whether or not he actually does something as gut-wrenchingly horrifying as sharing a mutually desired kiss on the lips with her. After all, serial killers merely take the lives of adult women in usually incredibly painful and sadistic ways--they do not do the far more horrible thing that MAAs do: they do not steal the indescribably beautiful "innocence" of young girls by engaging in mutually consensual sexual activity that may bring the girl so much pleasure that the poor naive and idiotic child may actually have no idea whatsoever that she actually hated it, and had something so incredibly precious stolen from her! So it's easy to see why MAAs are hated by everyone, and considered to have no gray in their character whatsoever, while even a serial killer can be depicted as an emotionally complex character with arguably commendable traits in a popular TV series on Showtime. Just imagine an MAA character being depicted as anything less than a total bag of filth in human form, and being shown to display even an ounce of humanity in an ongoing TV series aired during today's climate.
Far be it from the usually prescient people who bring us the uberly-hilarious and usually insightful online zine Cracked(@)c o m to risk bucking such a popular trend by attempting to be any more open-minded or informed about this hot button topic than anyone else. Which brings us to this article by Connor Thorpe describing the "5 Greatest Books With Psychotic Fan Bases," a list that includes (at number one, no less!) the classic novel Lolita. Take a wild guess who Nabakov's infamous tome has as a "psychotic" fan base? I'll give you a small hint if you can't figure it out on your own--it isn't Trekkies, in case that was your first guess.
As you can see from reading the article, author Thorpe's problem isn't so much the "pedophiles" in America, who are rightfully ostracized and denied even the meager right to look at computer generated images of fully-clothed minors if there is any possibility they might become aroused by viewing the fictitious simulation of a girl, but rather the the "pedophiles" of Japan, since they actually have legalized lolicon! Okay, though Lolita was actually about a hebephile, not a pedophile, and the largest amount of lolicon features young teen girls rather than little girls, why squabble over a simple term when the one being used invokes the strongest mental reaction in people than another more accurate term that would pack far less of an emotional punch in the gut, right? I mean, since accuracy is rarely the forte of any article that purports to discuss pedophilia and/or hebephilia, why expect any one single detail to be accurate, no matter how obvious the detail (i.e., the obvious physical differences between children and adolescents), right?
Let's look at some of the highlights of the section of Thorpe's article that presents such a humorous (read: laughable) condemnation of Lolita's contemptible fan base of evil "pedophiles" and my response to each of them:
"Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita is the story of the unfortunately named Humbert Humbert, a middle-aged professor who's also basically a deranged pedophile. Humbert kidnaps a young girl, Lolita, and travels the country with her, until she runs off with another middle-aged man [Quilty]."
Um, Humbert is deranged? Granted, he isn't depicted as a saint in the book, and he certainly isn't a role model for any hebephile (or actual pedophile) to follow, of course, but he's hardly Hannibal Lecter or Michael Myers--then again, the latter two characters merely brutally murdered numerous people in hideously grotesque ways, and the unfortunately named Humbert has a romantic/physical preference for young adolescent girls--I would hate to further besmirch the character of Lecter or Myers by comparing them to the likes of Humbert!
And Humbert kidnapped Lolita? From what I recall from reading the book, he simply took legal custody of her when his wife Charlotte, who was Lolita's mom, died after being struck by a car, and Lolita didn't resist going with him in any way because she shared the attraction to Humbert. Of course, I wouldn't expect Thorpe to mention an insignificant little detail like that because it might make Humbert look ever so slightly less vile, and I can understand him not wanting to take that chance. So it's better to use the word "kidnapping," because every ignorant, er, smart person knows that under no conceivable circumstance would any girl on the planet, regardless of her personal preferences or individual level of experience, willingly go anywhere with a filthy "pedophile" like Humbert.
"The term lolicon specifically refers to animated pornography that depicts children [specifically girls] in an erotic context. Even more disturbing? The sheer volume: almost half of the animated porn released in Japan every year (which is, like, all of it; they seriously love to hump cartoons in the Land of the Rising Sun) fits comfortably into the lolicon genre."
Hmmm, yea, the depiction of underage girls in an erotic context, and acknowledging their physical attraction in any way, shape, or form, is indeed disturbing. Much more so, in fact, than any depiction of extraordinarily graphic violence and torture that routinely appears in Japanese film like their infamous Guinea Pig movie series, or their "pink" films (and no, I am not suggesting here that the uber-violent films should be banned simply because they upset the sensibilities of many people any more than lolicon should). When it comes to the erotic admiration of girls' (or boys') youthful beauty, that is waaaayyy over the line of decency that no enlightened society should ever tolerate. Bring on the violence and butchery any day, but leave the "innocence" of underagers alone, damn it!
Author Thorpe also points out that the large prevalence of lolicon production in Japan is "even more disturbing" than the idea of admiring younger people "in that way." Hmmmm, could this possibly mean that such an attraction is relatively common? Could this mean that hebephilia (and maybe even true pedophilia) is not as rare as enlightened Americans like Thorpe would like to believe? Could it mean that adult attraction to younger people might be as "normal" as adult attraction to members of the same gender despite its social unpopularity amongst conservative factions in Western society? Could it mean that 5% of males are pedophiles, 18% of males are hebephiles, and a third or more of them are ephebophiles? https://w w w(@)newgon.net/wiki/Research:_Prevalence
Are such a vast amount of adults in Japan truly so disproportionately depraved compared to us open-minded and enlightened folks in the West, or can it simply be that the huge amount of legal, cultural, and social oppression of MAAs in America and its fellow Western nations causes the bulk of pedophiles and hebephiles native to the West to stay far inside the closet? I'm sure the thought that hebephilia and pedophilia could be as common in America as they are in Japan is just too unsettling a thought for Mr. Thorpe to consider! It's much better to follow the party line of the American media than it is to do your own thinking or research on this subject.
Here is the kicker from this section of Thorpe's article: "Though the studies aren't exactly concrete, many do suggest that the prevalence of lolicon in Japan has reportedly led to significantly increased sex crime rates against children and teens."
Um, Mr. Thorpe needs to get his facts straight, if that isn't too much to ask of someone when they are doing something as innocuous and socially acceptable as bashing pedophiles and hebephiles.
One need look to the Research section of Newgon on https://w w w(@)newgon.net/wiki/Child_Pornography to find cited quotations from numerous studies, most of which were not conducted by MAAs, and one of which even dealt directly with the prevalence of sex crimes against minors in Japan, that make it quite clear that contrary to Thorpe's statement there is no convincing confirmation whatsoever that viewing erotic material featuring minors is any more likely to increase an adult's chances of committing a sex crime against a child or teen than viewing adult pornography is likely to cause an adult man to sexually assault a woman. I will directly quote the report specifically dealing with sex crimes against minors in Japan, since the Japanese acceptance of adult attraction to young adolescents was the prime "offender" in Thorpe's article:
"Diamond, Milton, and Uchiyama, Ayako (1999). 'Pornography, rape, and sex crimes in Japan,' International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 22, 1-22.
"However, there are no specific child pornography laws in Japan and SEM depicting minors are readily available and widely consumed. [...] The most dramatic decrease in sex crimes was seen when attention was focused on the number and age of rapists and victims among younger groups (Table 2). We hypothesized that the increase in pornography [in general], without age restriction and in comics, if it had any detrimental effect, would most negatively influence younger individuals. Just the opposite occurred. The number of juvenile offenders dramatically dropped every period reviewed from 1,803 perpetrators in 1972 to a low of 264 in 1995; a drop of some 85% (Table 1). The number of victims also decreased particularly among the females younger than 13 (Table 2). In 1972, 8.3% of the victims were younger than 13. In 1995 the percentage of victims younger than 13 years of age dropped to 4.0%."
Note to Mr. Thorpe: I understand that bashing pedophilia and hebephilia, and denouncing these poorly understood and poorly researched attraction bases is the "in" thing for almost everyone to do these days, and I also understand how important it is for Americans and other Westerners to pass judgement on cultural differences in nations that exist outside of the West that our own customs do not personally agree with--along with confusing our "normative" tastes with laws of nature--but please at least show us the courtesy to do your research effectively and provide citations to back up such claims, even if such claims are widely accepted and most of your readers do not care if you say inaccurate things about a certain social phenomenon as long as the targeted group is unpopular enough. Cracked(@)c o m is an awesome site, and it would be even more so if you guys showed equal care for accuracy regardless of what topic you are covering. Further, the site would be a truly refreshing face in a sea of mindless and ignorant condemnation if you actually made fun of the hysteria itself rather than mindlessly joining in on it.
"The message of Lolita is hardly 'pedophiles are awesome!'"
I don't think any MAA, be they a pedophile or hebephile, has ever interpreted that as the message behind Nabokov's book. We simply perceive it as a character study of a hebephile, and Humbert is hardly considered a role model for hebephiles and pedophiles to follow, but he was depicted as a complex character who wasn't unequivocally evil, but had issues that were largely related to the way his attraction base was treated by society. That didn't make much of his behavior in the book ethically right, of course, but it did put it into important context.
"In fact, it's pretty much the exact fucking opposite. Remember how everybody dies and all? We don't know how the translation was handled, but we're pretty sure the Japanese version didn't end with all the characters laughing and leaping into the air for an '80s sitcom style freeze-frame."
I guess the Japanese do an injustice to what happened at the end of Nabokov's novel every time they do a story involving a hebephiliac relationship that doesn't end in horrible tragedy for all concerned, right, Mr. Thorpe? Oh, and by the way, not every story touching on this theme in Japanese manga or cinema is patterned after Nabokov's book. The tradition of society-wide admiration for the beauty of young girls in the Land of the Rising Sun goes back long before Nabokov's novel saw the light of publication. The Japanese have never needed Nabokov's "encouragement" to feel that it's not the epitome of vileness or evil to admire the erotic aspects of young girl beauty.
"Most of the interpretations of Nabokov's famous novel point to Humbert being a gigantic collection of dick-shaped blobs--a completely and utterly reprehensible human being that should by no means be emulated. Nabokov himself even hated the character, as evidenced by the fact that he wrote him as a goddamn pedophile [emphasis in original]."
First of all, where does Mr. Thorpe get the impression that any hebephiles (or pedophiles) anywhere in the world are trying to emulate Humbert when they openly express their admiration for young girl attractiveness? I have yet to meet a fellow MAA who finds Humbert worthy of emulation. And newsflash, Mr. Thorpe: the great majority of MAAs are decent people who do not act like Humbert or Quilty in their personal dealings with people of any age simply because they have an unpopular attraction base that disgusts you and much of the rest of "polite society." They are as multi-faceted and diverse in character traits and range of interests as any human being with a socially acceptable attraction base.
As for your contention that Nabokov "obviously" hated Humbert simply because he wrote him as a "pedophile," well that is certainly on target since no individual or character so obviously deserves condemnation and hatred more than a pedophile or hebephile, and there is no way in hell that anyone can possibly like an MAA since it's quite "obvious" that all of them are psychos and monsters who cannot possibly have a single positive quality to our character considering our icky attraction base, correct? And also by the way, Mr. Thorpe, are you aware that sexual crimes against children and teens are extremely rare outside of the home and other institutions (such as boarding schools) where adults have the greatest degree of power and control over minors, and that most adults who engage in sexual contact with minors do not have a preferential attraction towards them? If real MAAs were as universally evil and depraved as you seem to think, crimes against children and teens by adults who did not live in the same home with them would be astronomical in number, as opposed to the rare crime that it actually is.
Should I have expected better from one of Cracked(@)c o m's authors when tackling this issue? I suppose not, because some trends are just too popular to risk going against via a modicum of open-mindedness and attempts at accurate research. I certainly hope that none of Mr. Thorpe's family or close friends--especially not one of his children--turns out to be an MAA(considering how there's a 50% or more that one of them have one of the chronophilias), or they will be quite reluctant to ever be honest with him about these feelings--despite the fact that they didn't choose this attraction base any more than a mainstream homosexual chose to be gay, nor will his articles contribute to their sense of self-worth as human beings above and beyond their attraction base.
Addendum:
An observation in regards to how Japanese stories tend to conclude:
"[Mr. Thorpe] writes:
"'In fact, it's pretty much the exact fucking opposite. Remember how everybody dies and all? We don't know how the translation was handled, but we're pretty sure the Japanese version didn't end with all the characters laughing and leaping into the air for an '80s sitcom style freeze-frame.'
"The author doesn't seem to understand Japanese literature. A novel in which all the most important characters die at the end...is typical, and has nothing to do with whether those characters are considered noble or ignoble."
A Response To A Person Who Expressed Concern Over Intergenerational Attraction
The following is a grammatically corrected and slightly edited copy of a response I made to a woman who had two bad experiences with adult men when she was underage, and then asked questions to the MAA [Minor Attracted Adult] community. The questions from the woman are in bold face, with my comments and responses made in standard text. It begins with my response to her initial respectful but guarded query to the forum.
Welcome, and thank you for your questions. Strictly speaking, I'm not a pedophile, but a nonexclusive hebephile...that is, an adult with a primary romantic preference for adolescent girls aged 11-14(considering how at least 18% of guys are preferential hebephiles odds are very likely that any males reading this could be one too. There is also no doubt that at least 50% of men reading this are ephebophiles, that is they are attracted to post-pubescents from 14-19. If this is hard to believe consider how lolicon constitutes almost half of the animated porn released in Japan every year and it was legal for adults to have sex with 12 year olds everywhere until the 1900's and none of the adults have ever made a fuss about it for so long. Thus there is no shame for any guy to admit that they have one of these attractions.) although I am also equally attracted to females from 14-30 as well. For academic research on prevalence see: https://w w w(@)newgon.net/wiki/Research:_Prevalence Since this includes some girls who are 12, and you had a bad experience at that age, I will step in here and give you some answers in addition to all of the great responses you have received here from genuine pedophiles.
When I was about eight, an unknown man tried to make me go into his car so he could "take me to the beach" *I was on my way to the public pool* and insisted about it until I run away in tears and scared out of my mind. I never talked to a stranger again during the rest of my childhood and my early teenage years. Then another man, this one known by my family, tried to touch me *and I'm not talking about my arm* and even offered me money to go with him, saying that he was being generous because I was "fresh" and that he could find a hooker for way less but he liked me better. I was twelve then and could confront him. He left me alone when I threatened him to call the police if he ever dared to even look at me or any of my friends again.
This man doesn't sound like a typical pedophile to me. He sounds more like some creep with a purely sexual fetish for underage females. Most pedophiles are not like this. It's possible the man was a pedophile, but 90% of all adults who commit these crimes are not real pedos. Pedos CAN be bad people, just like people from any group can be bad, but MOST of them are decent people, just like most blacks, most Jews, and most homosexuals are decent people. To be honest, I had a bad experience with a homosexual man when I was a few months shy of my 18th birthday, and this occurred soon before I graduated high school; he unsuccessfully tried to pick me up in his car as I walked home from school on two separate occasions. As a result, I had negative opinions of gay men for a while, but that changed in time because I came to realize that not all gay men are like that. Many people who are attracted to little girls [LGs] or adolescent girls [AGs] are good people who would not try to force themselves upon a girl or impose unwanted attention upon one. In fact, if you read the posts here carefully, you will see that most pedos and hebes believe in letting the girl initiate the contact first, if it was legal to do so. But since it's not legal, and since responding to such advances would put us in jail and have the girls forced into brainwashing “therapy” if the incident was found out, we refrain from engaging in such illegal sexual activities.
There is a huge difference between someone forcing their attentions on a girl and mutually consensual sexual activity between two people. Most girls who engage in mutually consensual sexual behavior with adults have reported much different experiences than girls who were forced into having sexual contact with someone against her will (that is, until the girl is forced into “therapy” and brainwashed into hating her former lover, along with all adults who have his attraction base, and the very idea of this particular attraction base in general). Too many people have had negative experiences with non-consensual contact and then turn against intergenerational contact in general, ultimately developing a deep hatred for love and sexual contact between the generations—and all based on an experience (or two) with non-consensual contact. As a related example, some men who were raped in prison by other men who were likely not even genuinely homosexual sometimes developed a deep hatred for all homosexual contact, all the while not considering that there is a big difference between how people experience non-consensual as opposed to mutually consensual sexual activity of any sort. Sexual activity between the generational gap can be quite harmful if the younger person was unwilling (as you well know), but it can also be very beautiful and life-affirming if both people were willing and shared a mutually strong desire for the contact (which you do not seem to be aware of, due to a combination of your negative personal experiences and what you have read and watched in the media).
Of course, with the law being the way it is today, all such contact is demonized as being "abusive," and when people read about this in the media it creates a heavily distorted picture of intergenerational love and sexual contact.
These two episodes have been in my mind since then and I still can't understand why someone can be sexually attracted to a little girl.
Personally, I don't understand how a male could be attracted to another male. But I understand that it exists and I accept it as a valid form of love and sexual pleasure between two people who both have this as a natural orientation. Pedophilia is a natural orientation, also; it in no way fits the criteria for a mental illness despite being included in the DSM [Diagnostic and Statistical Manuel, the “bible” for mental health professionals in North America and even abroad] for purely political reasons. I'm not attracted to pre-pubescent girls myself, but I accept it as a natural orientation just as I accept homosexuality despite not “swinging” in that direction either.
When I see one of them, I just think of princesses and cardboard castles, tea parties, playing with mom's make-up and things like that. I thought about it a thousand times but I still can't understand why anybody would be aroused by them, they're so tiny and fragile, an adult would hurt them if s/he tried anything sexual with them.
As I understand pedophilia from my years of participating in this community, most pedos actually have sexual desires on the level of a child. This means that they most often do not want to have sexual relations on the same level as two adults would have it, i.e., via sexual intercourse. I agree that many, if not most, LGs are too physically fragile for sexual intercourse with an adult, and most pedos I know do not desire adult-level sexual interaction with a LG. They prefer mutual cuddling and kissing more than anything else, and would probably not be averse to mutual touching, but generally desist from touching any "private" areas to avoid breaking the law. Low-level 'outercourse' like this would not "break" a LG, and most pedos would probably be happy with simple cuddling, kissing, and hand holding. As for those social aspects of a LGs' lives that you mentioned (e.g., tea parties, playing with mom’s make-up, etc.), most genuine pedos have a strong interest in a LG’s social life and find this appealing, albeit in a different way than you. I'm not sure myself how this translates into an overall romantic interest in LGs, but some people feel that I'm "out of line" for finding the various social aspects of an AG's life to be appealing in the same sense. I'm not sure if you are attracted to men or women (or both), but if you are attracted to men, I'm sure that you find many aspects of their typical social life (e.g., watching sports on TV, their frequent fascination with cars) to be appealing in ways that I and other heterosexuals wouldn't understand.
Also, trying on make-up can be interpreted as a LG's way of trying to act more "grown up."
They don't even understand sex yet! *please, don't try to prove me wrong on this point, I have a niece who's 6 and I know for a fact she doesn't understand what it is*
Let me ask you an honest question: has your niece been sheltered in any way? Has she been educated about her body properly in school? Or is she forced to learn everything from peers? I think whether or not a six-year-old girl would know anything about sex depends on a lot of factors; e.g., what type of family they were raised in, what type of school they went to (i.e., what the curricula consisted of), the knowledge base and experiences of the peers they hang out with, what they watch on TV, etc. I have known girls that young who surprised me with their knowledge of sexual matters by saying things that astounded even me and caused my jaw to drop to the ground.
Also, have you ever considered that your niece may possibly be afraid to let you know what she knows about that subject, because she is well aware that you would disapprove of it if you did know, and perhaps she fears you would love her less or shatter the “perfect” image you have of her if she let you know how much she really knew? Kids will often say or avoid saying things depending upon how they suspect the adults in their lives would react. Maybe she is aware that she is not "supposed" to know about anything sexual. I'm not saying that she has thoughts about adult-level sexual activities, but she may be aware of simple means of seeking pleasure. When I was six years old my friends and I made a pastime out of telling "dirty" jokes to each other in private, and of discussing things we weren't "supposed" to know out of earshot of all adults. So it's possible that your niece is not as totally in the dark as you think (or would prefer to believe, as the case may be).
Reading this board, I have to say I'm scared of letting her go out of my sister's house anymore. I'm sorry but things like "OMG! That 8-year-old girl is HOT!" or "I saw a LG wearing a dress and she was wearing white cotton panties, nice view!" scare me. A LOT. With this I'm not saying you should go to jail or anything like that, in case you're just talking about it or thinking about it. But I can't help to be scared of it. I hope knowing the answer to my questions can take the fears away or, at least, make them smaller.
I have often told the posters on this board to please be careful of how they express the sexual side of their interest in girls, and I also frequently remind them that this forum is a public board that is read by many, many people who may well be scared or "creeped out" by any sleazy or seemingly disrespectful comments towards underage girls that they read. When I say this, I will receive much agreement but I also usually get a response from someone who tells me that it doesn't matter what we say or do on these boards because we're going to be hated no matter what, so we might as well make all the sleazy and crude comments about girls that we want. In other words, they argue that the quality of our behavior ultimately makes no difference at all to the general public’s perception of us. You're living proof that it does matter very much what we say and do on these public boards, and that how we express ourselves in public can make the difference between terrifying a Non-MAA [Minor Attracted Adult, our community’s political blanket term for both pedophiles, hebephiles, ephebophiles, and nepiophiles] who may be "on the fence" on this issue and possibly turning them completely against us, or having them gain a more sympathetic view of an attraction base they are not familiar with by seeing the very real human side most of us have that includes a huge degree of respect and admiration for all aspects of a girl’s being, not just those relating to their physical attractiveness. Hence, being respectful in what we say in public can help make a fence-sitter or someone seeking objective information about us feel more comfortable with us as a community and developing a more positive view of both the sexual component of our attraction base, along with youth sexuality in general.
Also, some MMAs are so angry with the general public over the way they are treated and perceived that they have developed as little respect for the public as the public has of them, and are therefore appalled at the thought of utilizing self-control in regards to what they say or do on this board, and do not care in the least if they offend the general public with what they say. I'm sorry that some of the less respectful people here got you scared...I can assure you that the vast majority of them in this community are very respectful of girls and take great care in how we present ourselves publicly, and particularly how they would present themselves with girls privately if such was legal. If you read enough posts on this board you will see the immense level of respect that typical MAAs of every stripe have of girls in their respective age of attraction [AoA]. You will also see that many of them support more civil rights for young people, not simply so they can have unfettered sexual access to youths (though many of them do want the right to have mutually consensual relationships with youths in our respective AoA, and this is a normal human desire that all human beings share), but it's more about wanting to see the people we love be allowed to reach their full potential and be considered full citizens of their respective nation rather than treated like emotionally fragile china dolls and denied full citizenship based upon the arbitrary factor of their chronological age regardless of their individual merits or general level of competence.
You have no reason to be scared of letting your niece outside, as most real pedos would be disgusted at the treatment you received by those two men you mentioned in your past, and would have come to your defense had they been there. Most pedos who were attracted to your niece would truly care about her well-being, just as you do.
Why do you think you're attracted to LGs? Please, don't answer that with "Just because" or "Why are you attracted to men/women?" because I can answer that. I really want a truthful answer to this one.
To explain why I am attracted to AGs: for me, hebephilia is a natural orientation(again it's important to understand that 18% or more of guys are hebephiles, so there's no shame in any of them admitting an attraction to AGs also!), or perhaps just a preference within the general framework of the typical heterosexual attraction base (in my case, as there are homosexual and bisexual hebephiles too, of course). I think AGs are the most wonderful, creative, and appealing human beings on this planet on all conceivable levels, and I think they are much more attractive on a physical, emotional, social, and spiritual level than most adult women. I would opine that pedophiles feel this way about LGs, just as mainstream gay men feel this way about other men and mainstream adult lesbians feel this way about other women, even those of different orientations cannot quite understand it from their own perspectives.
If a pedophile molests/has sex/tries to have sex/takes nude pics of a LG *I'm not talking about a teen here, I'm talking about a child*, do you think that is a correct behaviour?
When you use the term "molests" I am presuming that you mean non-consensual sexual contact. I believe that non-consensual contact obtained via force or coercion (or a combination of both) is always wrong and should be punished by an arrest and a jail sentence. As I noted above, I do not think that mutually desired contact that is on the level of a child is inherently wrong, though I encourage all pedos to refrain from such activity in today’s world because of the way the current system treats such contact, and virtually all pedos, hebes, ephebos, and nepis I have known in the community are fully law-abiding.
As for nude photos, I believe that it is a legitimate form of art that should not be criminalized or discarded simply because an MAA may fantasize about the girl (or boy) in the pic. Recently, there was a story from Australia where an 11-year-old girl defended the artistic nude photos her professional photographer mom took of her when she was six years old (the same age as your niece). The prohibition line should, in my opinion, be limited to non-consensual behavior or any type of behavior that could physically injure a LG, or to place any LG (or AG) in a situation that they do not personally want to be in.
Are you sexually attracted to other people/things/whatever or just LGs? If the answer is yes, do those interests have anything in common with the one discussed here? Why?
Like many hebephiles, I am also attracted to legally adult women from ages 18-early 30s (though rarely above that, unless they look and act particularly young for their age), but the attraction level decreases exponentially as the age of the woman increases. Since I am not normally attracted to LGs (as opposed to young AGs), I would presume that it's much easier for you to understand how I could be attracted to AGs, since they are basically young adults with the same general physical and emotional features.
Thank you for asking us questions and taking the time to get to know us. Some of us may respond with angry posts, but this is to be expected when you consider the degree of misunderstanding and persecution that is directed at us on a regular basis(It's actually shocking how the anger outside of the community isn't greater in general considering how literally 50% or more of guys are MMAs!). And I know that you were primarily interested in hearing from pedophiles, but I figured that you would like to hear the perspective of a hebephile who supports the fair and objective treatment of pedophilia, ephebophilia, (and nepiophilia) too.
Note: The above woman (or poster who claimed to be a concerned woman, though there was no major reason to doubt this) responded to the offer to register on GC in order to continue posting there and join our discussions, and did so under the nick MeMyselfandI. However, she rarely posted afterwards under that nick, and at this writing has not participated in discussions on GC for a very long time.
Why The Legality of Child Pornography is Relevant to The Youth Liberation Movement
"Whenever any government, or any church, or anyone else for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects: 'This book you may not read, this film you may not watch, this image you may not see, this knowledge you may not have,' then the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives." - Robert A. Heinlein, "If This Goes On..."
Recently I composed an essay designed to answer a question I often hear from individuals as to why the age of consent [AoC] laws are of any importance to the youth liberation movement, and if perhaps the pro-choice faction of the MAA [Minor Attracted Adult] community is simply being "selfish" for arguing that it is. Today, I move on to what may be considered the second part of that essay, which brings the same question to the fore regarding the many types of imagery and writing that may be classified as CP [child pornography] by the government of any given country. In other words, in this essay I will give a response to the many variations of the following question and an accompanying comment that I often hear in concert with it: "What does CP have to do with youth liberation? I don't think any youth under the age of 18 would ever have the slightest interest in appearing in erotic photography or videos, so I think it's foolish, selfish, and counter-productive for the pro-choice faction of the MAA community to support its legalization even in a future youth liberated society." That is quite a bold question and follow-up statement, but does it actually hold up to close scrutiny and logical analysis?
To begin with, one who has the above contention would have to answer the question as to why so many young people over the age of 18 so obviously have a desire to appear in films and photoshoots of an erotic nature, yet be simultaneously certain that absolutely no young person under the age of 18--even just a few years younger--would have a similar desire to do so. Does it make logical sense for youth liberationists to argue that those we today designate 'underagers'--particularly those in adolescence--have many of the same capabilities or desires as older people with the sole exception of the desire to publicly express their sexuality?
First of all, what does the heavy proliferation of the sexting phenomenon amongst underagers who own cell phones say about this? Please note the following online news reports--here(http://w w w(@)cbsnews(@)c o m/stories/2009/01/15/national/main4723161.shtml), here(http://w w w(@)msnbc.msn(@)c o m/id/34422197/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets), and here(http://abcnews.go(@)c o m/Technology/WorldNews/sexting-teens/story?id=6456834).
The above linked articles provide just a few examples that one can find with a simple Google search. Although one can and will argue that sexted pics are designed entirely for the eyes of significant others and not for public consumption, one has to consider a few things: 1) it's illegal for underagers to post nude or overly provocative pics of themselves on public venues, and 2) many do so anyway on their socnet pages on MySpace and Facebook, and not all who do this keep those pages--and therefore access to their photo sections--private.
One then has to consider the proliferation over the past two decades of the online youth modeling sites, many of which remain legal despite strong attempts by the American government to criminalize the entire industry. These modeling sites often feature girls (and sometimes boys) in highly revealing clothing and sometimes even arguably provocative poses. When one of the biggest and most well known companies producing material for youth models, Webe Web, was eradicated from existence after its three owners were brought up on CP charges (some say spuriously), the hope of the government that the entire industry based in the U.S. would be destroyed along with Webe Web was ultimately quashed. This is because several of the young models previously hosted by Webe Web subsequently went off on their own following Webe's demise and continued working in the industry, many of them under new websites run by their parents. When the legal European youth modeling company known as the Gegg Agency fell for similar reasons, several of the girl models who were hosted by that site have likewise reappeared on other sites, also often under the auspices of their parents, who have interestingly refused to cooperate with LEAs [law enforcement agencies] in many cases; very few of these parents actually made a fuzz in the media about alleged "abuse" going on at the Gegg Agency, thus suggesting that the closing of the agency was more the result of pressure coming from the U.S. and Britain than anything more substantial. Pressure from the U.S. with likely help from Britain was known to have a large effect on the closure and indictment of youth modeling agencies situated in the Ukraine, who produced images--sometimes including nudity--that were not legal in the U.S. and certain other jurisdictions, but as my fellow activist qtns2di4 said, "it's not clear that they broke local laws." As he also noted, "As with Webe and C&G, girls and parents reappeared [on other youth modeling sites] and did not collaborate with police." Clearly, the government and parents are often at odds when it comes to the subject of youth modeling, and what does or does not constitute "appropriate" images, including the matter of simple nudity.
There are some in the MAA community who totally enjoy these still legal modeling sites but seem to be totally against young models and actresses appearing in more obviously erotic films regardless of what the youths themselves may feel about appearing in such videos. These dissenting voices strongly deny that any of the youths who appear in today's legal but controversial modeling sites would ever have the slightest desire to appear in actual erotica even in a youth liberated society. Because of this belief, they argue, the CP question is entirely irrelevant to the general youth liberation platform, and pro-choice MAAs--along with youth liberationists in general, of course--need to leave this topic alone for the "good" of the movement. Apparently, some people seem to believe that adolescent youth activists themselves do not want people in their age group to have certain choices that they have no problem with people over the age of 18 to possess. And the reason for this appears to be that they personally consider some of these possible choices to be so "icky" that the right to choose should be forfeit in these cases. In other words, if certain choices would offend society's sensibilities enough, and if it's strongly believed that very few, if any, people in a certain group would even want to make these choices in the first place, then it's okay to legally deny freedom of choice for such people in these particular cases.
As my fellow activist Summerdays noted, "Freedom [includes] the freedom to let others do things we don't like (as long as it doesn't hurt us or anyone else non-consensually, and in a real way)." He further notes, "If youths are to be free, they must be allowed the freedom to pursue avenues that are morally offensive to some, if they so choose.
"It's the same argument made against adult performers in the field of erotic entertainment - but again, with adults, we allow them the freedom to pursue their own vision of happiness, even if that vision disgusts and offends us. Minors, however, are not given such freedom. They may only pursue their vision of happiness if it falls within accepted boundaries as defined by certain adults."
The problem is that the above examples of sexting, uploading nude and provocative pics of themselves to socnet sites, and the proliferation of the youth modeling industry would seem to indicate, quite logically, that in a youth liberated society there may be some youths--perhaps a sizable amount—who would not only be happily willing to make films where they do nude scenes and even appear in outright erotic scenarios, but some may even be willing to appear in films or photoshoots that specialize in erotic content. Why is one to assume that exhibitionist tendencies would be entirely unique to people 18 years of age and older? Does the empirical evidence really suggest this to be the case?
While some assert that arguing for the legalization of much of what we today call "CP" in a youth liberated society--or even in today's society--is counter-productive and is not in the best interests of the young people we are fighting on behalf of, there are actually much better reasons to argue that the exact opposite may be the case.
For one thing, what type of message does the condemnation of all forms of youth erotica give to society when uttered by youth libbers? Such a message would appear to be that youths engaged in erotic activity on film, or in any way publicly expressing their sexual desires, is somehow inherently "disgusting" and "improper" despite the fact that youths are well known to have such desires. Yet, at the same time, it's believed by most of these same people that such activities are perfectly okay and proper for someone who is of the arbitrary age of 18 or over to do to any degree that they please, as if young people under this arbitrary age doing the same thing has some type of innate "ickiness" factor attached to it.
What, exactly, is inherently ugly about the nude body of youths under a certain arbitrary age? Or, perhaps more specifically, what is particularly ugly for young girls under 18 displaying their breasts and genital region on camera that is not similarly inherently ugly, demeaning, or exploitative for young women 18 and over who choose to do the same thing? What is it about youths willingly engaging in the mutual exchange of a pleasurable display like sexual activity on camera somehow disgusting or "wrong" in an inherent sense? Conversely, why is it perfectly okay and non-exploitative for young people of the arbitrary age of 18 and over to do the exact same thing? Why is the right to sexual expression liberating for people over one specific arbitrary age demarcation, yet somehow demeaning and exploitative for any person with the same desires who may fall anywhere beneath that same arbitrary chronological demarcation? What is it about sexual expression in particular that is so inherently anti-youth that no one under a certain arbitrary age would ever want to do it? What is so inherently anti-youth about sexual expression that even some purported youth libbers appear to insist that we must continue to legally prohibit anyone under the age of 18 from having the opportunity to make this choice? What is so inherently pivotal about the specific chronological age of 18 that suddenly allows everything of this nature to become “ok” in the eyes of our culture? Why does this specific age carry so much divine weight in our society’s collective mind, as if its great legal importance was somehow akin to a law of cosmic significance? And again, perhaps most importantly, what type of message does this send to the public when it comes from a political platform that is supposed to be based upon liberation rather than some type of moralizing form of protectionism? In what way would the continued criminalization of such erotica benefit the general principle of liberation amongst any group of people? When, exactly, has censorship of any sort and the concept of liberation ever walked hand-in-hand with each other and comfortably shared a proverbial bed?
Some of these individuals will argue that the legalization of CP would hurt young people under 18 even in a youth liberated society, and is therefore against their best interests. Let us take a look at this claim by using a few excerpts from one of the above linked online articles (specifically, the third) about what the current CP and "obscenity" laws have done to some underagers who were caught sexting [excerpt in bold face]:
News reports are increasingly documenting legal repercussions after indecent photos appear online. And attorneys say there are many unanswered questions about whether young people who send their own photos could face prosecution for obscenity or child pornography.
This year in Wisconsin, a 17-year-old was charged with possessing child pornography after he posted naked pictures of his 16-year-old ex-girlfriend online.
In Alabama, authorities arrested four middle-school students for exchanging nude photos of themselves. In Rochester, N.Y., a 16-year-old boy is now facing up to seven years in prison for forwarding a nude photo of a 15-year-old girlfriend to his friends.
"I don't think that's what was contemplated when the laws were written," says the Rochester teen's attorney, Tom Splain, who has worked on several similar cases this year. "I think it was more for the older pedophile [sic] collecting pictures of young children; we're now running into high school students getting swept up in these charges."
So it would appear that these pundits of protectionism now claim that laws originally intended to prevent "older pedophiles" (actually, hebephiles) from obtaining pics of underage teens that they may end up (god forbid!) fantasizing about in the privacy of their own mind had unforeseen negative consequences on another segment of the greater population: the very segment of the population that such laws were intended to "protect" in the first place. Many activists, however, believe that it's entirely hypocritical for these pundits to act as if they are shocked that underagers themselves ended up being prosecuted under these laws instead of just the older "perverts" that these laws were allegedly created to "protect" them from. These pundits are clearly playing dumb here, since it's well known amongst any politician with an I.Q. over 40 that any type of draconian law will inevitably have such "unforeseen" consequences on every segment of society, including those whom these laws were supposedly intended to "protect" from the horrible crime of having an older person fantasize to their image in the privacy of his or her own thoughts.
One now feels obliged to ask some very important questions whose answers may be disturbing to contemplate. What will happen in the future once these laws continue to expand so that underage teen girls get into legal trouble for sending pics of themselves in their strapless or otherwise “sexy” homecoming or prom dresses to a friend? Moreover, what will happen to parents in the future if they should send such a pic to one of their adult friends simply to show off how beautiful their daughter looked on that special evening? What would happen, for example, if the law suspected that one of the adults these parents sent the pic to may be likely to get aroused by viewing it? If you think I am being comically facetious here, then please consider how nebulous and broad all of the various things that fit under the general umbrella of CP are becoming. Consider, for instance, the many occurrences since the beginning of the sex abuse hysteria at the close of the 1970s and its resulting draconian laws of parents being arrested for taking nude pics of their babies and young children while the latter were in the bathtub or happily frolicking on the beach. This has been a common thing done by families since the invention of the camera that was intended to be entirely innocent, yet the very laws that most parents initially applauded have--predictably--come back to bite even them on the proverbial ass in many cases. No segment of society--not even the very architects of these laws themselves in some instances (*waves to former Senator Mark Foley*)--are spared the consequences of these draconian legislative measures.
If you look back to my previous essay where I dealt with the AoC laws and their relevance to youth liberation in general, you will remember that I noted how even the passage and toleration of a single draconian law in a purportedly democratic society will almost certainly have a cumulative effect on future legislation in this area. The result will invariably be further and further rationalizations for greater and increasingly insidious and far-reaching draconian laws. Predictably, as the years roll on large segments of the population are being convicted for things that they never would have realized were covered under the aegis of these laws when they were first instituted under totally noble pretenses. The ultimate result is an inexorable dive towards a borderline police and surveillance state where privacy is an alien concept, and anxiety over inadvertently breaking some pernicious law is a common fact of life. How is this supposed to benefit or protect younger people from harm? What about the serious implications upon the general adult population and the civil rights that they, unlike people under 18, currently enjoy? And how could it be argued that most teen activists who support youth liberation would actually agree with continued restrictions on their choices in just this one particular area? (The only other area in the realm of youth liberation that even approaches sexual rights in terms of the level of emotional contention is respect for youths' Second Amendment rights, but that is a whole other topic.)
Of course, one will then argue that the act of sexting can have many unforeseen consequences of its own [see endnote 1 for example]. Such concerns are certainly valid, but is the outright criminalization of something that people over the age of majority are allowed to do despite the same attendant risk factors constitute the correct solution to this problem?
The above question needs to be asked, because freedom of choice is extremely important to any platform dedicated to liberation, and this prominently includes the right to take risks. There are any number of ways in which girls (and boys) can be cautioned about indiscriminately sending nude pics of themselves to significant others or friends over their cell phones that belie the need for protectionist prohibitions on freedom of choice [see endnote 2 for some examples of these fully democratic alternatives].
The question of how many youths under a certain arbitrary age would or would not want to appear in erotic films or photoshoots is totally irrelevant to the importance of freedom of choice [see endnote 3]. Freedom of choice is perhaps the most important aspect to any program or platform that purports to be based upon liberation, and this includes choices that the activists involved may not be totally comfortable with, or which they personally deem "inappropriate" for someone to make for whatever reason [see endnote 4].
Another question the naysayers have to consider is how the full range of these CP laws as we know them today hurt the very foundation of a democratic society in a general sense. This includes the well-being of everyone in society, regardless of what their personal tastes in erotica--or the lack of same--may happen to be. How could such a thing be the case, you may ask? The answer is very simple and very logical, and would be much more clear to everyone if they simply compelled themselves to put logic and reason before emotion when confronting any given subject.
As I have said numerous times before, any society that purports to be based on democratic principles suffers immensely with the introduction of even a single draconian law into the penal framework, no matter how genuinely noble or good the intentions of those who pass or support such a law may be. History has shown, over and over again, that draconian laws passed within the context of a democratic society are clearly cumulative in nature and ultimately destructive to such a society's most cherished principles. In other words, the passage and toleration of even one such law within a democratic system tends to gradually lead to further and further justifications of more draconian laws of increasing severity and scope as time marches on. This is because the rationalization of the "need" for one such law can easily lead to further rationalizations for other such laws as time progresses, especially when a certain type of hysteria rears its hideous metaphorical head.
This is why placing laws pertaining to the possession and viewing of CP in a "special" class of image (and sometimes text) that is immune to First Amendment protections has gradually escalated into further and increasingly irrational prohibitions that have begun encroaching upon imagery where no actual minors are involved and erotic material that consists entirely of actors who are legal adults [see endnote 5 for specific examples]. This makes it clear that such legislation inevitably ends up targeting ideas rather than imagery of material beings or objects, a very dangerous prospect for a democratic system to engage in.
The above factors make it abundantly clear why it's so highly detrimental for a purportedly democratic society to allow any type of draconian law, or any type of censorship regarding what type of imagery or text that people can or cannot view or possess--or any type of idea that they may advocate, either in a subtle or overt fashion, or access information about (be it written or visual). This is regardless of whatever good intentions one may offer to justify banning such imagery or text--and the "dangerous" ideas one feels to be implicit in each--and regardless of how much you may be offended or upset by the imagery or text in question. And this, of course, goes equally for the politically motivated rationales for censoring footage or reports of war atrocities, but that is a whole other topic despite its equal level of importance to the realm of censorship law and its implications on a supposedly free society [again, see endnote 5 for more examples of imagery and footage that are banned by various Western governments under similar justifications].
Now, just so I am clear on this and no misinterpretation can be made, I do not, of course, support the production of CP that features children or teens literally being forced into sexual activity against their will and/or actually tortured in brutal ways on camera, or allowing these heinous producers to sell such imagery on the open market for profit, any more than I would support the existence of adult "snuff" porn if a burgeoning international market for such a product was actually true as per the claims once made by our esteemed bastions of the truth, i.e., the law enforcement agencies [LEAs] and their frequent enablers in deception, the corporate-controlled media. Unfortunately, when one thinks of the term "CP," such imagery is precisely the first thing to come to mind thanks to the constant popular image promulgated endlessly by the mass media, much as (with equal relevance to youth liberation) people automatically thinking of horrid sweatshop conditions whenever the term "child labor" is mentioned, as if it was totally impossible for younger people to desire employment, or to find such employment under perfectly humane and reasonable conditions in an advanced society like our own (though again, this is a whole other subject for another essay).
The fact of the matter remains, the various LEAs have never bothered to provide the public with proof of the frequent and often totally outrageous claims of what the CP they have in their vaulted collection consists of. Further, their utter refusal to allow even a few objective and well-respected journalists to view such material for the purpose of confirming the veracity of these often incredible claims is very telling [see endnote 6 for more examples of such chicanery perpetrated by the LEAs with a lot of help from the media in the not too distant past]. Hence, it's utterly absurd for even those who hate the very thought of CP to claim that it's in no way fishy or suspicious that the LEAs in question will not allow the viewing of these pics and vids even to a few well-respected journalists so they can confirm the veracity of the former statements about what the imagery in those pics and vids largely consist of. This is especially pertinent given the long record of dishonesty amongst the world of law enforcement and the frequently bizarre nature of the claims being made by them about different things they target. It's been said that extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof (or at least some evidence), but people seem all too willing to make exceptions in the case of anything that they want to believe for purely emotional reasons, no matter how much these comforting beliefs may defy common sense (note the popular but highly incorrect belief in the "stranger danger" epidemic, but more on that below).
But what reason would the LEAs have for so massively deceiving the public about this subject, as they have with other subjects in the past? [Again, see endnote 6 for three major examples] This is actually a silly question for anyone with even a modicum of knowledge about law enforcement and politics--and how each of them works--to ask, but I will explicate the three major reasons for such deception here anyway:
1. The hefty paychecks enjoyed by the officers who comprise the various task forces of the LEAs that are dedicated to combating what the system refers to as crimes of "vice" depend upon the continuation of public hysteria and exaggerated moral "concern" about certain activities going on in our society. Hence, the LEAs have to convince the public and the media that the "problem" they are paid so handsomely to combat is one of such extremely high magnitude to the safety of our children and society in general that the common rules of democracy must be dispensed with to deal with them effectively. In other words, the highly lucrative career opportunities for LEOs [law enforcement officers] that can potentially arise via the generous flow of government funds are seen as extremely important by LEAs to maintain. These heavily valued career opportunities include the creation of future task forces and promotions within them, and they require a steady stream of arrests to build the reputations of the officers involved, and to justify the steep government (read: taxpayer) expenditures required to keep the cash flowing from Congress. This is why the officers who comprise these particular LEAs try to assure a constant supply of arrests by going after the easiest targets, such as those who download, possess, or simply view the banned imagery online rather than conducting the more sensible and less draconian action of tracking down and arresting the alleged plethora of people producing this new CP, and rescuing the supposed legion of kidnapped and horribly abused kids whom these officers claim are forced into making this product by the producers for profit.
2. In order for the public and the media to continue supporting the vast amount of government funding--read: taxpayer support--of such expensive and ultimately futile programs for combating the appearance and expression of every instance of youth sexuality on camera they can find necessitates the claims of the various LEAs that the perceived problem is one of extreme magnitude. Therefore, the LEAs frequently claim that as many as several million children worldwide are being victimized by this allegedly underground but powerful industry, and that the purveyors of these atrocities are so powerful, well-connected, and crafty--and that the demand for such product is so incredibly high across the globe--that they always remain one step ahead of the best and most well-funded of these LEAs' efforts. This enables the LEAs to demand a continuously larger amount of taxpayer-acquired funds every several months to a year, along with further encroachments on our democratic liberties every year, in order to combat this "menace." Of course, any demand for proof of the validity of these claims that are used to justify the perceived need for the Orwellian legislation and the excessive pilfering of taxpayer monies to fund the task forces to carry out its directives are never provided. Instead, we are expected to simply trust our government-funded "protectors" and take absolutely everything they say at face value, despite the fact that their record for honesty when it comes to matters of this nature is alarmingly poor [once again, see endnote 6 for a little sojourn down memory lane in regards to the honesty of law enforcement officers]. Worse, those of us who are disgusted with the very idea of CP on an emotional level truly want to believe the claims of these LEAs. This results in such citizens forming strong attempts to rationalize away the LEAs' refusal to grant freedom of the press to journalists who want to confirm the validity of their claims despite the fact that such people may be well aware of their duplicity in other aspects of the ongoing sex abuse hysteria over the past three decades [ibid]. Note the similar lamentations given to the notorious War On Drugs, though again that is a whole other if equally important topic.
3. Not only does the ongoing panic and disgust with any possible depiction of youth sexuality on camera throughout our culture enable the aforementioned lucrative careers for those officers who work in this particular area of law enforcement, they also serve to increase the rationale of these organizations to continuously demand increased police powers over society in a general sense [see endnote 7]. This is another reason why the successful passage of even one draconian law within a democratic framework can result in the latter framework being gradually eradicated as more and more draconian legislation is rationalized as different aspects of the hysteria or differing simultaneous hysterias (more than one often occur at once) combine to constantly create new aspects of the panic from which the government and its enablers in the media claim we need to be "protected" from.
In other words, those who work within law enforcement and other areas of government have a lot to gain from these hysterias, even as we, the common citizens, and anyone who may--now or in the future--dissent in any way from the imposition of any established norm, will end up paying a huge penalty in the long run. But terrified and intolerant people all too often do not think with their reasoning faculties, and instead let their emotions take over during such manufactured crises.
This is why I believe that it's entirely justified to accuse the various LEAs of yet another horrendous act of duplicity due to their adamant refusal to allow their highly outrageous claims to be validated by a few objective and well-respected journalists in the name of freedom of the press and freedom of information. There is no reason whatsoever to believe that the bulk of CP consists of children or teens being forced into sexual acts against their will and brutally tortured on camera, let alone the existence of a multi-billion dollar international industry that deals in the widespread production and sale of such horrific material. Such pics of genuine abuse do exist, of course, but there is no evidence to suggest that they make up a sizable proportion of the overall rubric of what is broadly defined as CP. Further, there are no known outlets for such product to be distributed profitably just as there was never a large-scale profitable business for adult "snuff" films as the LEAs once claimed. There are many truly depraved human beings in the world, granted, but there is no evidence that there are organized bastions of depravity of such a huge scale who possess such a vast amount of capital and exceptional technical skill amongst their number that an international demand of such a degree for this type of product is being successfully produced and sold for such a huge amount of profit. Arguing otherwise is to argue that MAAs with "extreme" tastes are so disproportionately vile and nasty compared to teleiophiles [people who have a preference for members of the same general age group] with similar "extreme" tastes that simulations of such activity featuring actors who aren't being tortured in actuality will not suffice in place of the real thing for these particular MAAs or child and teen fetishists.
Yet there is no evidence that an adult with a preferential attraction to minors, or even one who has a mere sexual fetish for minors, is in any way more likely than a teleiophile to be of such an aberrant or violent nature that they will absolutely demand the real thing over acted simulations on a large scale. To say otherwise is, whether intentionally or not, admitting that you buy into the worst form of stereotype towards MAAs imaginable sans a single shred of evidence that this stereotype is in any way a part of reality. We need to let common sense and simple logic prevail before we adopt such extremist beliefs about any single group of people. Let's not forget what happened to the Jews and other ethnic and sexual minorities living in Germany during the Holocaust when similar hysterical claims became widespread beliefs amongst the general populace of a particular nation, with government policies reacting accordingly.
As fellow activist Summerdays noted: "...I think this idea is fueled by the (erroneous) belief that the sexual attraction to minors is itself a vile and nasty perversion of normal adult attraction. Thus, anyone who could be so twisted as to be attracted to children [or adolescents] must undoubtedly harbor such disturbing tastes that would lead them to desire things - and to pursue those things - that not even the most perverted teleiophile would consider. But this is quite ridiculous. It's a bogeyman. It's not reality."
Also, such naysayers appear to buy into the common belief that the bulk of what is legally considered CP involves pre-pubescents as young as five years of age. The few individuals who have reported seeing such material--both within and outside of the law enforcement vocation--have stated that the majority of such images consists of adolescents, not pre-pubescents; that the vast majority of these images are old and were produced prior to the criminalization of CP beginning in the early 1980s; and those that feature explicit sexual acts are far fewer than those that feature 'simple' nudity which may or may not highlight the breasts (of teen girls) or genitalia. The type of pics that seem to be actual depictions of real acts of violence and torture appear to encompass by far the smallest amounts of this material in existence. Further, it's very difficult to tell which of the small amount of pics depicting torture and bondage themes are simulated and which are actual footage of real non-consensual abuse.
One must also consider the following logical questions: if such a vast amount of underagers across the globe were literally being kidnapped and forced into sexual activity against their will before a camera, and this material is being distributed to a huge corrupt clientele with deep pockets, then why has there been virtually no instance of such girls appearing in public after they had reached adulthood to make a plea before the world media to end such a horrific global industry? Where are the supposed multitude of adults who one would expect to have a body full of cigarette burns, savage wounds made by blades, or lacerations made by a whip appearing before the media to show these horrific wounds to the public in attempts to get this alleged powerful and heavily profitable industry eradicated once and for all? Moreover, where are the parents of all of these allegedly millions of kidnapped kids who one would expect to appear in the media daily making similar pleas on behalf of their missing children, especially since such parental public pleas and media noise is well known to be very common whenever one of the very small cases of stranger abduction occurs every year? Are we to believe that almost every single one of these multitudes of children supposedly being kidnapped and enslaved for the CP industry are killed and effectively disposed of after the films are made? And even if such was actually the case, what about the multitude of parents and other family members that we should expect to hear the impassioned pleas from on the public airwaves?
In other words, how do the LEAs--along with those who believe these claims--rationalize what may be called The Great Silence regarding an issue such as this? The only voices we ever usually hear are those of the LEAs and a certain number of CAs ["child advocates," who should never be confused with youth liberationists] and a smidgeon of miscellaneous Web surfers (including a few within the MAA community, it must be noted) who claim to have come across whole websites that are allegedly full of pics depicting such horrendous material. No proof or even any good evidence is ever offered that such a thing is occurring on anywhere near the scale that the LEAs and CAs often claim, yet the belief continues to proliferate via the sheer force of emotion that such propaganda stirs up amongst the masses. Hitler and Stalin would truly be proud of the contemporary American media if they were still alive to see the current sex abuse hysteria and its attendant "pedophile panic," along with the widespread irrational beliefs and draconian laws spawned by them.
Of course, I have no doubt that such abusive films have been made, and continue to be made, from time to time, but in such cases, it often turns out that the perpetrators of these non-consensual films and even on camera torture are usually not some stranger who abducted the kids in question for the purpose of selling videos of the abuse and torture on some nefarious underground market, but rather the parents or stepparents of these abused kids. This is very likely to be true because it would certainly explain why the great parental silence on this subject is so ubiquitous across the media, and why the media would be highly reluctant to report these facts due to what they may say about what happens to the supposedly sacrosanct institution of parenthood due to the reality of the present hierarchal nature of the much-beloved nuclear family unit in our modern non-youth-liberated society that the current status quo loves to promote so devotedly--and attempt to preserve at all costs--as inherently good. The latter statement is not intended by this author to disparage the institution of parenthood and the close bond shared between members of the family; rather, it's to make clear that the very concerns this essay was written to address most often occurs--when it actually does occur--as the result of the same laws that legally and civilly disempower younger people, and leave them as little more than the property of their parents. This situation leaves children and teens all the more vulnerable to the very thing that the platform of youth liberation in general is hoping to rectify. Hence, the eventual success of this movement will decrease the likelihood of the more unscrupulous parents out there from successfully forcing their kids into sexual servitude, or genuine abuse of any sort for that matter.
As Summerdays noted on this topic:
"I could imagine a completely alternate reality where pedophiles [and hebephiles] worked in tandem with peace officers to prevent the abuse (actual abuse) of children. By allowing the [MAAs] their trade - most of whom, as human beings, would be concerned about the treatment of the children in the pictures - they could bring to the attention of peace officers any pictures that looked suspect, which could then be followed by an investigation. If abuse is proved, then score one for the good guys. Otherwise, if the material has not been produced through abuse (and of course, the child's opinion will be paramount in this determination), then let it flow."
As such, I--and the entire pro-choice segment of the MAA community that I am aware of who supports the general legality of youth erotica--only support the production of such erotica that was made with the willing consent of the young people in question. This is particularly true concerning such material that is created by young people themselves; the idea that it's mostly or entirely adults who produce youth erotica is yet another falsehood that the twin phenomena of sexting and uploading of nude pics to socnet sites clearly debunk in no uncertain terms.
Moreover, I do not support any type of "hardcore" production of erotica for pre-pubescents, or anything that would be developmentally injurious to their age group (such as full onscreen sexual penetration of either their vaginas or anuses), so my support of the legalization of youth erotica is entirely geared towards mutually consensually produced products that are within reason, and I do not by any means take an "absolutely anything goes" type of attitude towards youth erotica, especially not when applied to pre-pubescents. Of course, I would never have a problem with any depiction of simple nudity, especially not within the context of a mainstream film that is designed to explore the intimate lives of youths in every detail to a realistic extent [see endnote 8].
One thing we should all keep in mind is that since what is often considered CP has such a great and ever-increasing broadness to it, one must first define what they consider to be CP rather than attacking "CP" in a general sense, since anything that is today legal can be declared CP by a single legislative decision tomorrow. Thus, many personally believe that the legal youth modeling sites of today should be considered CP, and are actively petitioning the Western governments to officially declare them illegal on those grounds. Hence, what does or does not constitute CP can be a personal as well as a legal definition, and the two are often incorrectly and irresponsibly conflated with each other by anyone discussing the subject.
Now, onto the final very important question as to why any type of imagery should be legal to possess or at least to view, even if not to produce or distribute for financial gain.
The idea that even the most deplorable images of CP should be criminalized to view or download because they depict a crime scene and will cause great emotional distress to the victims and family of such crimes must consider the following questions to prove that imagery specifically depicting the sexual exploitation of younger people must be considered part of a very special category of 'crime scene.' For starters, why isn't it illegal to download or view images or vids of actual war carnage, including that involving children getting or having had their limbs blown off as a result of accidentally getting caught in the crossfire of two opposing military forces (i.e., what our government and media loves to call "collateral damage")?
Why aren't pics and vids of actual murders and the horrible torture and execution of reporters and other non-military personnel by terrorists and foreign armies illegal to possess or view? What about the many actual pics of the horrifying carnage wreaked by real serial killers upon their victims that are fully legal to print in any number of serious books about the nature of serial killers? Perhaps very importantly, why isn't it illegal for anyone to possess or view pics of the extreme and very non-consensual sexual humiliation inflicted upon many Middle Eastern male prisoners by American security guards (some of them women) that occurred at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq a few years ago, which resulted in one of several major scandals to erupt from this duplicitous war? The latter case is especially true when you consider the deep level of humiliation that a man raised under a conservative Islamic culture will experience as a result of being forced to engage in simulated homoerotic contact with several other males while being photographed in the act for the amusement of their captors. And please note that many of these men were never even accused, let alone convicted, of a crime--in case some of you attempt to say that these men deserved this atrocious humiliation for allegedly being terrorists, or for being nationalist insurgents who dared to oppose the invasion and lengthy occupation of their nation by a foreign military that too many Americans wrongly identify with their own interests simply due to their citizenship. I am sure it can be cogently argued that these men and their families will be heavily emotionally distressed to realize that people across the world have possession of, and unencumbered access to, these pics.
Further, I am sure that there are many homosexual male and probably even some female bondage fetishists out there--that are otherwise very good and decent people in their dealings with anyone they know in real life--who are actually sexually aroused by viewing such pics and fantasizing about either being in the place of those guards, or of the men who were sexually victimized by them (since many people harbor fantasies of actually being raped). The Islamic male victims in question would certainly be highly emotionally distressed to receive confirmation of those pics being used for such a purpose. Yet I have seen all of the aforedescribed type of pics legally distributed all over the Web and in print, and all ostensibly for informative and/or political purposes. Why isn't anyone arrested for the possession or even simple viewing of such pics, especially when we do not have the slightest idea what happens to be going through the minds of anyone who may be viewing them? Can we possibly take the chance that some of these viewers may have such filthy and depraved thoughts while viewing these pics of what to many constitutes actual footage of a war crime? Is this, perhaps, because we do not favor any type of thought control, no matter how deplorable or vile we may consider such thoughts to be? Should any type of fantasy be criminalized, no matter how awful it may be to our collective sensibilities, as long as it stays entirely within the realm of fantasy? Is there any proof that anyone who has truly awful fantasies are likely to eventually "act out" these fantasies on a real victim? Have we seen even a single Abu Ghraib "copycat" crime perpetrated in the few years these pics have been legally available all over the Web?
As my fellow MAA activist who posts under the nick LGL noted in regards to the Abu Ghraib debacle:
"The thing you hear the anti-CP crowd holler is that children cannot consent, so this is another reason why CP should be illegal. But what of the men who had their pictures taken in Abu Ghraib? These men did not consent to these videos and pictures. They were humiliated. It's even legal to possess these pictures and upload them, but it's illegal to have LS model type pictures even though the girls were paid for posing. They are about the same as Playboy or Penthouse."
LGL further laments:
"And what of the victims of the Holocaust? You can buy books in many bookstores with pictures of women and children stripped naked [and] heading off to be slaughtered. This was humiliating and terrifying for all these people involved. They did not consent, yet these pictures are [publicly accessible and legal to view and possess]. I'm sure that the survivors feel traumatized by such an experience, yet this crime is viewed by millions of people over time."
"All these pictures, including CP and child erotica, should be legal to possess and view. There's a lot of pictures and videos I do not care to look at or own but I will fight for the right to be able to look, read, view, own, and distribute any source of media available."
Let us also keep in mind the famous pic of a Vietnam War atrocity where an 11-year-old girl was photographed running through her village streets in extraordinary agony after napalm was dropped on her by American military forces (it should perhaps be noted that the girl is entirely nude in the pic, and her secondary sexual characteristics are clearly visible). The girl is known to have survived this horrific incident despite incurring a great amount of permanent scars, both physical and emotional, as a result. Yet this pic is widely and legally available to view and possess in many print and online resources that cover war atrocities. Can it not be argued that the now adult woman and her surviving family may be extremely emotionally distressed as a result of coming across this pic in so many sources? Do we know beyond a shadow of a doubt what purpose absolutely everyone who takes possession of this pic may use it for, or what thoughts everyone who views this pic may possibly have while viewing it? Do we ever make such assumptions in regards to this pic? Or is the simple fact that it doesn't have a sexual context to it automatically cause us to accept the fact that it has the possibility of being viewed or possessed for non-puerile or non-insidious reasons?
What exactly justifies the legality of this pic to view or possess, but not anything considered CP by the various governments? Does anyone accuse people who possess the above-mentioned pic for whatever conceivable reason, and for supporting the continued legality of possessing it, to be supportive of war atrocities? What if some bigot or American with a twisted sense of patriotism (and there are many of those, unfortunately) uploaded that pic to a website with a horrible statement saying something like, "Burn the Gooks!"? Isn't there a possibility of that happening if this pic remains legal to view, possess, download, and upload wherever and for whatever purposes one pleases? If someone insists that this matter is "different" than CP, and that these questions should not apply to pics of atrocities inflicted upon a minor that does not have an obvious sexual context to it no matter how much emotional distress the public distribution of such pics may have on the victim and her family, then can they explain exactly why the presence or absence of an overt or suggested sexual context should make or break the legality of any type of imagery? What is it about sexuality that Western society is so hysterical about? Why does that subject elicit such a disproportionate degree of irrationality in our culture?
In regards to the oft-made assertion that the simple distribution of such pics or vids without the expectation of monetary gain will automatically create a huge swelling of demand that will result in a huge surfeit of such material being produced in the future is totally without proof, especially if the demand in question is of material that is illegal. Without the hope of a vast amount of financial remuneration being present to make the production of such dangerously illegal material on a large scale worth the effort for any number of insidious individuals who would comprise such an industry--which would include the high degree of logistical difficulties in doing so [see endnote 9]--then why would they do it? This is why such incidents are extremely low, why there is no logical way possible that such material could constitute a sizable degree of what is considered CP by the law, and it explains exactly why The Great Silence described above exists [see endnote 10 for a logical but highly disturbing reason as to why both the LEAs and the media may be highly reluctant to explain the truth behind the tiny amount of genuinely abusive CP, though this matter was already strongly hinted at above].
These are all of the reasons why CP should be entirely legal to possess and view in a democratic society, why all forms of censorship and draconian laws should never be tolerated or resorted to in a democratic system (or one that purports to be) in order to combat any perceived problem or threat, and why the issue of CP most certainly does pertain to the platform of youth liberation.
Endnotes
1. One such example is the possibility of a girl who sends nude pics of herself to her boyfriend being double-crossed as he shares the pic with several of his friends without her permission, or which he may even post online.
A cogent statement made by my friend and fellow activist CatcherintheRye on this point is the following:
"One thing that frustrates me about cases of sexting is how people hardly ever confront the people that bully young girls who have sexted and tell them how wrong their behavior is. Instead, they seem to instill guilt in the girls themselves. Sure, it is risky to sext with the laws the way they are, so I guess there's nothing wrong with informing young people about that, but I just find that they are really placing a sense of guilt and shame onto the wrong people."
Several months later, in regards to a case of the U.S. practice of bullying people under 18 who sext each other that was being discussed on GC, another friend and fellow activist of mine, Summerdays, made this valuable anecdote:
"The moral of this story is: if you sext, we will make your life hell. So don't sext."
"Notice how the bullies protect themselves by emphasizing the dangers of sexting, placing the blame on kids who make the 'poor decision' to sext, and not those who make sexting dangerous (i.e., the bullies themselves, be they peers, or school administrators, or prosecutors, or what have you)."
"You know, because bullying kids to the point of suicide is a whole lot better than telling them it's okay to take sexy pictures and share them with friends."
2. Democratic solutions to the risk factors involved with sexting includes such eminently common sense options as parents offering cautionary advice to their kids the first time the youths in question purchase a cell phone and start an account. In a youth liberated society, parents will accept the fact that their kids may utilize the technology for this purpose, and will not have to feel hesitant to offer this advice to them.
Further, sex education courses can offer similar advice during the teaching of the section that includes risks that young people should be aware of in regards to any type of sexual-oriented activity. This cautionary, value neutral advice doesn't have to be limited to discussions of the possible physical consequences of sexual intercourse amongst adolescents, such as STDs and unwanted pregnancies. The advice given in these courses can also include risk factors amongst the various social choices that young people may make in the course of a relationship, including those related to the use of technology such as cell phone cameras and that pertaining to the online world. Every problem a democratic society will ever face, either perceived or totally legitimate, can always be dealt with effectively via a democratic solution, and a draconian response that denies freedom of choice should never be the preferred solution in such a society, no matter how "serious" the problem is considered to be, or how good or noble the intentions behind it are believed to be (as noted above in the main text).
As my fellow activist Summerdays opined in regards to including objective and value neutral discussions about the risk factors associated with sexting in sex education courses:
"It's the same problem I see often with sex education in general. Assuming kids will practice abstinence (in this case, from taking sexy pictures and sharing them), and gearing the education toward that assumption, results in kids being kept from some very important safety information they should know. And the ones who don't abstain - and they will always exist - suffer because of it. Whether we want kids to sext or not, we ought to recognize that it's going to happen anyway, and we ought to have the responsibility to inform them about what the risks are, and the best ways to do it safely if that's what they end up choosing to do. No moral judgments, no behavioral prescriptions (or proscriptions) - just honest, accurate information."
3. Such possible sources of youth erotica that may exist in a future youth liberated society may include print and/or online publications similar to Playboy, but which are instead dedicated exclusively to displaying and celebrating the great beauty of youth.
4. Any alleged platform of liberation that denies or prohibits freedom of choice in its itinerary of goals, or which defines freedom in the context of "freedom from..." rather than "freedom to..." (as explicated in the classic book The Handmaiden's Tale), is in actuality a protectionist racket masquerading as "liberation." Do not be fooled by tyrants dressed in a liberator's clothing, or enticed by the proposition of safety in the arms of a "benevolent" dictator. Any platform of solutions to any perceived problems in society must offer much more than simply good intentions; their proposed solutions must be in harmony with the principles of a free society regardless of the genuine nature of their intentions.
5. Specifically, the aforementioned escalation that has arisen following the passing of the initial CP laws has exponentially increased from the simple viewing or possession of pics featuring minors engaged in explicitly sexual acts to the...
criminalization of pics or vids featuring simple nudity of minors without any blatant signs of sexuality;
-criminalization of pics or vids featuring legal adults pretending to be minors engaged in sexual activity or appearing nude;
-criminalization of cartoon representations and drawings or CGI [computer generated imagery] of sexually active or nude minors;
-criminalization of any serious attempt at artwork which may depict nude or "provocative" imagery of minors;
-criminalization of minors wearing scanty clothing (since such imagery might arouse a "pedophile");
-criminalization of fully clothed minors who may be posing in a "provocative" manner or having an "enticing" expression on their faces, for the same reason as above;
-utterly absurd and mind-blowing serious proposal amongst the Australian parliament to criminalize adult pornography featuring adult women of legal age with small breasts. In case anyone thinks I'm actually making this last one up, check out the following excerpt that can be found by scrolling down a bit on this blog:
http://exileonmoanstreet.blogspot(@)c o m/2010/01/wtf-australian-censor-board-demands.html
The blog states (quotes in bold face):
Australian Classification Board (ACB) is now banning depictions of small-breasted women in adult publications and films. They banned mainstream pornography from showing women with A-cup breasts, apparently on the grounds that they encourage paedophilia, and in spite of the fact this is a normal breast size for many adult women. Presumably small breasted women taking photographs of themselves will now be guilty of creating simulated child pornography, to say nothing of the message this sends to women with modestly sized chests or those who favour them. Australia has also banned pornographic depictions of female ejaculation, a normal orgasmic sexual response in many women, with censors branding it as "abhorrent."
The Board has also started to ban depictions of small-breasted women in adult publications and films. This is in response to a campaign led by Kids Free 2 B Kids and promoted by Barnaby Joyce and Guy Barnett in Senate Estimates late last year. Mainstream companies such as Larry Flint's Hustler produce some of the publications that have been banned. These companies are regulated by the FBI to ensure that only adult performers are featured in their publications. "We are starting to see depictions of women in their late 20s being banned because they have an A cup size", she said. "It may be an unintended consequence of the Senator's actions but they are largely responsible for the sharp increase in breast size in Australian adult magazines of late.”
For further clarification of what the toleration of any type of draconian law or justification for censorship of any sort eventually leads--and so you do not think the above excerpt was posted on that blog by yours truly and thus has no actual validity--check out this link: http://w w w(@)smh(@)c o m.au/opinion/society-and-culture/weird-politics-of-small-boobs-and-bodily-fluids-20100129-n278.html?comments=27 (as columnist Bella Counihan said of this topic: "You can't make this stuff up").
And be sure to check out the coverage of this topic on the following parody site http://encyclopediadramatica(@)c o m/Operation_Titstorm -- parody often does a very good job of pointing out the sheer idiocy of very serious political matters, something seen regularly in the pages of MAD magazine, TV shows like Saturday Night Live, and the work of many excellent stand-up comedians such as Bill Maher and the late, great George Carlin.
Is it a coincidence that the move by Australian parliament to ban the appearance of small-breasted women in erotic films and mags occurred in the same legislation that is also trying to ban filmed or photographed depictions of female ejaculation? Is it so important that our society goes out of its way to such an extent to ban anything that may be remotely believed to "encourage 'pedophilia'" (or hebephilia, as the case may be) that certain rights of how legal adults may be depicted on camera should now be curtailed? Is it just a coincidence that encroachments on what legal adults can and cannot do on camera appear to be the result of legislators with a moralizing agenda starting out with censoring "easy" targets like CP before moving on to more "difficult" targets like adult porn? The answer to all three of these interrelated questions would appear to be a resounding no.
Since it's becoming increasingly evident, as noted in the main text of this essay, that these laws are intended to target a specific idea rather than to actually "protect" minors from appearing on camera while engaged in sexual activities, the common argument in defense of the continuation of this Orwellian legislation is that the proliferation of such imagery may encourage MAAs to "act out" on their urges with real minors. The problem comes when these individuals are asked to provide actual scientific evidence that this is actually the case, and not simply to make assumptions in the absence of such evidence. A far bigger problem arises, with far-reaching negative implications for the survival of what is left of our democracy, when those individuals who actually bother to respond to the above concern do so with a variation of, "We shouldn't have to ask for evidence! If there is even the slightest chance something like that may happen, and even one child per year may be 'abused' as a result, then that possibility makes these laws more than justified! And I don't care how draconian these laws may be when the 'safety' of children is at stake!"
My fellow MAA activist and youth liberationist, qtns2di4, made the following very important statement regarding the above argument being used to justify the criminalization of the viewing and possession of any type of image or text, by making a comparison to the only other two types of imagery or text that are routinely legally banned by governments in the Western world (both outside of America):
"Regarding bans on imagery that are rationalized as helping prevent copycats, there are two non-CP, non-blasphemy-laws, categories that have been made illegal or of controlled access in many countries. One is animal cruelty, and pics or vids featuring it have been banned in some countries. While the argument is [to prevent] an inspiration for others to do the same, a) as you argue, devoting resources to the banning of the images distracts them from prosecuting the culprits of the acts, and b) the [public accessibility of the] images themselves act as prevention and as awareness-building. The second category I am thinking of is Nazi and Nazi camp imagery. Apart from the above objections, which still apply, it is hard to see how [the public accessibility of] Nazi camp imagery helps create another Holocaust. That needs thousands, maybe millions, of collaborators, and they have to be in the broad daylight. A random Neo-Nazi, on the other hand, will not need a camp image to get inspired to commit any atrocity themselves, but will still be limited to what a single person can do. Though these cases are not identical, they are both cases of censorship allegedly as prevention of the commission of the action, akin to that of CP laws."
6. The concern with the validity of the often sensational claims made about the content of much of the CP collected by law enforcement task forces since the first laws were instituted is especially crucial in light of the fact that the LEAs and their hangers-on in the media once thoroughly promoted the reality of the "snuff" film market, the prevalence of rampant satanic ritual abuse of children occurring within day care centers across the entire breadth of North America, and their promotion and widespread acceptance of the "repressed memory" phenomenon that had (and still has, in some cases) a major effect on the mental health industry in the Western world--all of which has since been proven to be total bunk [the satanic ritual abuse and "repressed memory syndrome" phenomena were tackled in detail in my previous essay, The Importance of Truth, which includes a large amount of links and citations to relevant sources; info on the once widely circulated and non-existent "snuff" film industry can be obtained via a simple Google search.
7. All of the justified admonitions by civil rights advocates against the government's increasing rationalizations for increased police powers over society, which includes: 1) greater surveillance on the general public; 2) increased intrusions in our privacy, such as monitoring our phone calls and e-mail transmissions; 3) increasing the creation of the number of "special" categories of crimes and groups of people that are exempt from common constitutional protections (note what is occurring in the simultaneously ongoing "War On Terror"); 4) and the increased justifications for various forms of censorship that such hysteria's and "moral panics" cause, are thrown by the wayside by a terrified public and cowardly politicians who are too afraid to argue against these continued Orwellian encroachments on our basic civil liberties due to the perceived magnitude of the "threat."
8. These include the many examples of cinema that were produced in foreign countries like France and Denmark for the "coming of age" genre that featured pre-pubescent nudity, any type of artistic production designed to celebrate the beauty of the youthful form of children or adolescents, or any type of film that is intended to be of an educational nature. This would include the re-legalization of once renowned and heavily lauded educational books such as Show Me, as well as all artistic photojournals produced by artists like Sally Mann, Tierney Gearon, Violeta Gómez, and Bill Henson, which feature the celebration of the nude youthful form that has been a major subject of art throughout human history.
9. The logistical nightmares would include the obtainment of a continued supply of victims and what to do with those victims once the films are made and sent to the hypothetical buyers without gaining the attention of the young person's family, friends, or the local police in the process, totally belies common sense and credulity. This is why it's far more likely that in the instances in which genuinely abusive CP is actually produced, it is most often done by parents or stepparents who have continual closeted access to the child victims in question, rather than an organized network of strangers who are motivated entirely by profit on a large scale. This is also why such highly rare products are most often not intended for public consumption but rather for the small number of utterly corrupt fetishists who may share such a horrid interest.
Note the following excerpt of a quote taken from German defense attorney Udo Vetter from this article: http://archiv.sueddeutsche.de/25F38V/2996588/Simple-Loesungen-fuer-ein-komplexes-Problem.html that appeared on the Süddeutsche Zeitung news site (translated into English courtesy of GirlChat's webmaster NFiH, who is fluent in German, and which can be confirmed via a translation from Google's software):
You cannot physically abuse children on the Internet. But you can look at pictures or movies of child abuse and trade them. "Of course paedophiles use the Internet to trade child porn," says lawyer Udo Vetter, who has acted as a defense lawyer in hundreds of child porn cases. "But there is no such thing as a commercial market."
...There is no effective system of money transfer for the distribution of illegal pictures and movies. According to Vetter, "you simply can't receive millions of dollars online anonymously." Money flow is monitored by the authorities of many states, including the USA.
...According to Vetter, none of his clients ever paid for pictures or movies[;] 80 to 90 percent of the files found by the police are identical. "Some of these pictures are 30 to 40 years old." In contrast to the claims made to justify Net censorship[,] the amount of child porn available on the Internet is rising extremely slowly. None of these pictures and movies have been produced professionally (the only exceptions being movies with teenage victims which may have been legal when they were produced) [emphasis mine].
If you remove the value judgment terms "abuse" and "victim" from the above excerpt--which were likely made to appease the readers of this article by using the type of language that they are used to seeing in the media when it comes to this subject--the entire article pretty much says it all about the silliness of the widespread claims by LEAs and their status quo-defending allies in the press that CP production is a huge multi-billion dollar international business.
See also this article: http://lapsiporno.info/landslide.html about the infamous Texas case involving Landslide Productions, where its webmaster Paul Reeve was arrested for what amounted to a witch hunt. This article also shows the length that LEAs will go to get someone indicted even when the evidence collected doesn't warrant it.
My thanks to NFiH and qtns2di4 for the above tidbits of info.
10. An examination of the two most prominent of the very few victims of what they described as truly non-consensual CP while in their childhood to come forward via the media would appear to reveal the reality behind the tiny amount of genuinely coercive examples of underagers participating in CP production. This reality clearly doesn't lead towards the common, conspiratorial conception of CP being largely the product of an organized, well-funded group of criminal strangers kidnapping kids across the globe and forcing them to participate in sexual activity with adults on camera for the purpose of selling the footage for a sizable profit.
Two of the very few girls to loudly come out in the media for such a reason after reaching adulthood are Masha Allen, who participated in a relatively lengthy series of sexually explicit videos in her childhood--she was given the nickname "Disney Girl" in the media due to the fact that some of the pics of her were taken next to Disney World--and Kylie Freeman, who participated in a similar series of videos during her childhood under the nickname of "Vicky." These two girls, now adults, are perhaps the only two prominent victims of what were said to be coerced participants in the production of new CP that occurred during the age of the Internet, and Masha in particular has become something of a poster girl for LEAs as they engage in their never-ending battle to combat the dissemination of CP. There is a good degree of info on Masha: http://w w w(@)inquisition21(@)c o m/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=150 here on the Inquisition 21 website, and I thank my fellow activist Baldur for bringing this to my attention, and FreeThinkerGL for finding me the specific link.
However, as noted above, neither of these girls were the victims of an organized group of criminal strangers who kidnapped them and forced them to appear in such films for intended sale to a corrupt, international clientele of buyers who demanded such product. According to Masha, she was coerced into participation in such films by her adopted father, and Kylie was forced into doing the same thing by her biological father. Neither series of CP videos were produced with the intention of selling them for profit to some corrupt underground market, but were the result of fetishistic parents who made them for free distribution on P2P [peer to peer] video sharing networks that were available to a small circle of private acquaintances during the earlier days of public access to the Internet. There have been subsequent claims by those in the know that the very small amount of truly coercive CP produced for free consumption in the P2P online file sharing networks have all been the product of parents who have this sort of fetishistic "hobby," and not by organized criminal cartels controlled by strangers who kidnap kids for the purpose of producing CP for sale to a large international group of clients (see below for a highly important shared anecdote about the prevalence of CP distribution on P2P networks, now and in the past).
The above evidence and claims are actually entirely logical, because it's well known to both the FBI and youth liberationist orgs alike that the greatest amount of genuine abuse of all kinds perpetrated on minors by adults--including physical and emotional abuse in addition to that of a sexual nature, and even including murder--occurs at the hands of parents and stepparents, but not strangers. This unsettling fact is obviously very uncomfortable for the present day status quo to accept, and since the political overseers of modern society are dedicated to preserving the currently hierarchical version of the nuclear family unit at any cost, it's fully understandable as to why it's far preferable for the media to promote the concept of "stranger danger" and to portray the home as the safest place for children and young teens to be despite all the readily available evidence to the contrary.
Again, this reality is not mentioned here as an attempt to disparage the institution of parenthood or the sanctity of the family, but simply to make it clear that the current state of affairs with young people lacking most of their civil rights and the parents having such a near-total control over every aspect of their children's lives, as well as a near-monopoly on adult interaction with their kids--save for a few "authorized" non-familial adults, such as teachers and coaches, who are currently discouraged from actually befriending the kids under their charge for obvious reasons related to the ongoing sex abuse hysteria--is the very crux of the greatest and usually the most severe cases of genuine child abuse that occurs in society today. Love shared by family members is a very good thing, but the introduction of such a high degree of power into the equation predictably corrupts this love in too many cases and results in abuse, with some of the less scrupulous parents all too often taking this abuse into some truly horrific directions. The solution that youth libbers promote is not to break up the family unit or destroy the bond between parents and children, but simply to legally empower kids so that they can much more easily resist or escape being subject to any type of abuse or harm by others in their lives, whether it originates from the hands of strangers, teachers, co-workers, peers, or parents.
This is also why, despite the impassioned declarations of Masha and Kylie themselves, arresting people who simply download and view their pics--including the many who likely have no idea that they were supposedly taken under coerced circumstances, and also considering the only place these pics remain readily accessible to the public is on entrapment sites set up by the FBI in sting operations of highly questionable ethical and constitutional acceptability--is not conducive to democratic principles. The only solution that works within a democratic framework is to empower children and teens in a legal and civil manner so as to greatly increase their ability to willingly escape from truly abusive situations of any sort, and to prosecute the producers of any non-consensual material of this nature. Ironically, it should be noted that Masha Allen is now suing the state as a result of their 'post-rescue' operations, including the use of imagery she says were made under coerced circumstances for use in federal entrapment schemes, such as phony sting websites.
Doesn't the fact that upon 'rescuing' Masha from the reportedly abusive clutches of her adoptive father, she was placed under the foster care of a woman who claims to be a victim of sexual abuse who not only lost a case in court where she apparently frivolously accused her pastor of sexually abusing her, but also accused her parents of being part of a satanic cult who forced her to take part in human sacrifice (remember my discussions of the now thoroughly debunked satanic ritual abuse hysteria in my previous essay, “The Importance of Truth"?), mean that such foster care parents were bound to have a distorting effect on Masha's ideology, fueling her with feelings of revenge rather than healing, and into becoming an advocate of vengeful draconian rather than productive empowering solutions for other kids who may find their way into situations similar to hers as the result of abusive parents? Can this be the reason why Masha is so stringent upon penalizing people for looking at pics of her alleged abuse rather than focusing upon the notion of parental power that prevented her from leaving the abusive situation she found herself in? It should also be noted that the U.S. attorney who handled Masha's case following her 'rescue,' Mary Beth Buchanan, was fully aware of the past of Masha's foster mothers whose custody she was placed in. This forces us to wonder if Buchanan did so purposely, so as to increase the chance that victims like Masha would be subject to the type of irrational, vengeance-driven rhetoric from her foster parent so as to better ensure that the girl would develop a mindset conducive to furthering any political agenda that Buchanan and other LEOs like her may have. For the source of this info, go here.
Nevertheless, despite the very few lone voices in the wilderness like Masha and Kylie, the Great Silence continues, and these few voices of protest that do arise are from girls who were forced into abusive sexual situations on camera by parents, not by an organized, multi-national cabal of strangers, and their resulting pics and vids were produced for consumption by a small group of like-minded fetishists via a P2P online network with no money passing any hands, and not for profit to a huge underground international market of vile MAAs. The cases of these two girls should speak volumes about the reality of CP, a reality that bears no resemblance to the urban legends created by the LEAs and their allies in the mass media.
Also courtesy of my fellow activist FreeThinkerGL is this link to another essay on Inquisition21 that explains exactly how the American police often create crimes: Two Little Girls in a Doorway(http://w w w(@)inquisition21(@)c o m/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=146). As FreeThinkerGL mentioned to me about the latter article, "This was written before the Masha story above, but Masha's story gives it new significance." Many thanks and appreciation to FreeThinkerGL for the link to this article.
On the subject of P2P file sharing networks and their relation to CP distribution and all the myths that have sprung out of that, my fellow activist qtns2di4 makes the following important observations [in bold face]:
A few words about P2P.
P2P requires every user to identify themselves, therefore IP addresses are always visible to others, either by default or with little technical expertise needed to uncover them. This makes it an extremely vulnerable platform for sharing, and esp. for sharing illegal content. Any step taken to protect IP address information also makes the use of P2P less efficient to the user, so users will normally try to avoid doing it. That is not even to mention the dangers of malware transmitting through P2P, which are independent from the risks of giving IP address information publicly.
P2P reached its peak of use during the music sharing days. It was very adaptive to the technology of the time. It declined [in popular usage] as copyright lobbies and LEAs infiltrated it in order to combat music piracy. Obviously, while this use is also illegal, it doesn't have the emotional load, the harsh legal penalties, and the niche market characteristics that CP has, so it is not surprising that traffic involving music piracy, at any time, accounted for far more P2P traffic than CP ever could. I don't know if there is any analysis about the use of P2P that relates it directly to the sharing of CP. However, simple intuition would dictate that as P2P declined in use with the combat of music piracy and greater infiltration by LEAs, so did sharing of CP through it. Notice that, because of its structure, it is impossible to establish a payment system that works in assigning you rights of downloading in P2P sharing. That is why music pirates can use it but recording companies cannot. It also means that any CP that arrived into a P2P network became pirate, and therefore impossible to earn money from.
Traditional P2P networks today still exist, but, because of (otherwise legal) music and video piracy, they are completely full of LEOs [law enforcement officers], thereby making it ever less safe for sharing of any content, and CP will always be much less safe than any pirated music album. Their obvious successors are torrent networks, which work under some of the same basic assumptions of P2P, but which are more stable in themselves, less vulnerable (though not 100% safe) to malware, better adapted to larger file sizes, where it is possible to establish some form of payments system, and it is easier to hide IP addresses without obvious efficiency losses. However, the structure of sharing in torrents would also make it harder to share CP openly.
In short:
- P2P overall use coincided with the curve of (pirated) music sharing.
- There are no reasons to suspect CP was ever a large part of P2P traffic.
- P2P sharing has declined the more that LEOs and copyright lobbies have infiltrated it in their anti-piracy operations, but there is no reason to suppose that this doesn't spill over to CP, as it is also illegal content.
- Since the P2P structure doesn't allow for payments to be used, any CP diffused through this means was diffused for free (whether or not it was originally produced for profit)
- same as music [in the form of mp3 files] always was.
- Because of the changes undergone since then, it currently should be far more difficult to diffuse CP, new or not, via publicly accessible channels than it was during the golden age of P2P.
My thanks and appreciation to qtns2di4 for sharing this important info with me and thereby enhancing the informational basis of this essay.
A few important anecdotes have also been offered by my fellow GL in the MAA community who hails from the Netherlands and posts under the name Sancho Panza [in bold face]:
The view on what CP really is has changed dramatically over the years; I remember our Lolita magazine in the '70s of the last century. Freely available back then, but probably good for a couple of months on water and bread these days.
The Ukrainian child pornography raids are also interesting; the LS material I saw didn't look like CP by any standard to me, yet American influences managed to shut down the whole thing.
[P2P networks] like [LimeWire] will be history soon, not because of the availability of CP, but because of copyright infringements (as confirmed by the following excerpt from the LimeWire home page): http://w w w(@)limewire(@)c o m/nl
LimeWire is under a court order dated October 26, 2010 to stop distributing the LimeWire software. A copy of the injunction can be found here. LimeWire LLC, its directors and officers, are taking all steps to comply with the injunction. We have very recently become aware of unauthorized applications on the internet purporting to use the LimeWire name. We demand that all persons using the LimeWire software, name, or trademark in order to upload or download copyrighted works in any manner cease and desist from doing so. We further remind you that the unauthorized uploading and downloading of copyrighted works is illegal.
It's all about money; few people are really concerned with the well being of children, I'm afraid.
Sancho's latter statement is quite interesting when you think about it. Despite the fact that P2P networks have allegedly been a bastion of CP trading over the past decade, the biggest creators of such software were never shut down by any of the LEAs for that reason as long as they cooperated with the police. But now they are rapidly getting shut down by LEAs for entirely financial reasons related to the money allegedly being lost by the big record companies due to the well known proliferation of mp3 file sharing through these networks. The fact that money trumps proclaimed morality shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone in our capitalistic society, since that's pretty much business as usual. It also makes you wonder if the U.S. government and the many large corporations that control it wouldn't be covertly financing the production and sale of CP if their ridiculous claims that it was actually an international multi-billion dollar a year industry were actually true.
All my essays, articles, and a FAQ here: www(@)justpaste.it/1v
The FAQ is a work in progress and will be over 1000 questions long with lengthy in depth answers to each one when done.