Архив портала "Право любить"

День памяти и солидарности 2025

Sun, 13 Jul 2025 22:16:06 GMT

День памяти и солидарности отмечается ежегодно 14 июля в память об убийстве Биджана Эбрахими, британца иранского происхождения. 14 июля 2013 года соседи совершили над ним самосуд на основании лишь того, что он фотографировал детей, залезших в его сад.

В этот день мы вспоминаем людей, пострадавших от педоистерии. Трудно точно установить их количество, потому что несправедливо арестованные люди представляют собой лишь вершину айсберга, большая часть которого это люди, чья жизнь была тем или иным образом разрушена из-за педофобных предрассудков. Это и те, кто покончил с собой на свободе или в местах заключения. И те, кто стал жертвами преступных нападений на почве ненависти к педофилам. И те, кто впал в депрессию из-за невозможности открыто взаимодействовать с миром, не пряча свои чувства.

Человечество вновь наступило на грабли "охоты на ведьм" и заново породило инквизицию, жертвами которой являются огромное количество людей. В погоне за популярностью политики вновь и вновь ужесточают наказания за преступления в этой сфере и вводят всё новые и новые запреты. Из-за этого за простой просмотр детской порнографии во многих странах можно получить срок больше, чем за убийство, а требование регистрации в публичной базе данных после выхода на свободу ставит крест на возможности вернуться хоть к какой-то нормальной жизни.

В последние годы педоистерия продолжает уносить жизни и разрушать судьбы невинных людей. В 2023 году в Пенсильвании 19-летний Ахмад Аль-Аззам, известный в сети как "realjuujika", ворвался в дом 73-летнего мужчины, связал его и жестоко избил молотком, обвиняя в попытке связаться с несовершеннолетним. Жертва была госпитализирована с кровоизлиянием в мозг, потребовалась операция. Аль-Аззам транслировал нападение в интернете, а зрители поддерживали насилие, называя его "реальным Бэтменом". (The New York Times)

В Техасе в 2024 году 24-летний Джеймс Льюис Спенсер заманил 37-летнего Шона Коннери Шауэрса, ранее осужденного за хранение детской порнографии, под видом несовершеннолетнего через приложение Kik. Спенсер расстрелял Шауэрса из автоматического оружия в парке, назвав это "исполнением правосудия". Прокурор назвал это хладнокровным убийством, подчеркнув, что никто не имеет права быть судьей и палачом. Спенсер арестован и ожидает суда. (Daily Mail)

В Австралии в 2020 году, но с приговором в 2024 году, 36-летний Энтони Дэвис ворвался в дом 74-летнего Кеннета Кэмпбелла, ошибочно обвиняя его в педофилии. В состоянии алкогольного опьянения Дэвис избил пожилого мужчину, нанеся смертельные травмы головы. Кэмпбелл, страдавший от инвалидности после аварий, умер в мучениях. Суд признал Дэвиса виновным в непредумышленном убийстве, приговорив к девяти годам лишения свободы. (The North West Star)

Эти случаи — лишь часть волны насилия, подпитываемой педоистерией и безответственными действиями "охотников за педофилами", которые используют социальные сети для самосуда и монетизации своих актов. Жертвы этих нападений, часто не совершившие никакого преступления, сталкиваются с физическим и психологическим насилием, а общество аплодирует, игнорируя принципы справедливости.

Насаждаемые в обществе страхи приводят к изоляции людей, испытывающих влечение к несовершеннолетним. Новоявленные инквизиторы под маской "борьбы с педофилами" прикладывают огромные усилия для сохранения этой изоляции, а некоторым удалось даже монетизировать свою деятельность, выбивая гранты и собирая большие пожертвования. Результатом этих усилий были и многочисленные попытки закрыть сайт "Право любить" и форум "Нимфетомания", одна из которых случилась в прошлом месяце. Несмотря на это, наши ресурсы возобновили работу по предоставлению честной информации и оказанию поддержки единомышленников в эти трудные времена.

День памяти и солидарности является призывом для всех думающих людей вне зависимости от ориентации вспомнить страшную цену педоистерии и мотивирует прикладывать усилия для победы над ней, как бы трудно это ни казалось.

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В будущем с ИИ нет убежища для педосексуалов

Fri, 20 Jun 2025 16:36:07 GMT

Автор рассказывает о блокировке своего аккаунта в Instagram из-за ИИ, заподозрившего его в «эксплуатации детей» за просмотр легальных видео с девочками. Законопослушный девочколюб, он размышляет о будущем, где ИИ-алгоритмы делают невозможным сохранение анонимности, собирая данные о просмотрах и лайках. Это может привести к слежке, шантажу и общественному осуждению, но также выявить, что многие педосексуалы — уважаемые и законопослушные люди. Автор видит в этом потенциал для преодоления стигмы.

Оригинал статьи: https://heretictoc.com/2025/06/17/cloud-looms-but-with-a-silver-lining/

Недавно у меня был интересный и тревожный опыт на Instagram, связанный с их относительно новой системой искусственного интеллекта, предназначенной для выявления предполагаемых случаев «эксплуатации детей» на множестве каналов платформы. Это должно волновать всех MAP, а также тех, кто использует социальные сети, такие как Instagram и TikTok, для продвижения определённых бизнес-моделей. Фактически, это может стать переломным моментом для MAP в обществе, но не без значительного хаоса и вызовов для нас в ближайшем будущем.

Опасности любования юной красотой

Как известно всем, кто знаком со мной в MAP-сообществе (и в реальной жизни), я всегда был полностью законопослушным MAP. Я стараюсь быть добрым и щедрым человеком для всех, кого знаю, но иногда не достигаю этой цели из-за естественных человеческих несовершенств, присущих всем нам. Прошу прощения у тех, кому пришлось столкнуться с моей более сложной стороной.

Я решил быть открытым в разной степени относительно своих предпочтений (в основном гебефильных) перед другими, но не афиширую эту информацию, особенно перед теми, с кем знаком недостаточно долго, чтобы они могли узнать и доверять мне как личности. Я, как правило, избегаю любых взаимодействий с несовершеннолетними (меня привлекают только девушки), особенно в ситуациях один на один, чтобы избежать обвинений или необоснованных подозрений. Я прекрасно осознаю, насколько глубоко укоренились ненависть и страх к MAP в нашем обществе, и никогда не недооцениваю этот факт и потенциальные опасности, которые он для меня представляет.

Поэтому, как и большинство законопослушных MAP, я вынужден любоваться девушками только издалека и исключительно законным образом. Это означает полное избегание даже мыслей о поиске незаконного контента и ограничение себя аудиовизуальным восхищением девочками, которые появляются в многочисленных модельных и танцевальных видео, а иногда и на личных каналах в популярных социальных сетях. Родители и профессиональные компании в большинстве случаев модерируют и контролируют эти каналы, и существует прибыльный рынок для девочек, которые демонстрируют танцевальные и другие наряды для компаний в фотосетах или видео, их часто называют «примерочными обзорами». Однако некоторые девочки сами загружают такие видео на YouTube.

Как ценитель красоты и личностей девочек, я смотрел такие легальные фото и видео, которые часто встречаются на этих каналах, даже если я специально их не искал. Как и все зрители, я иногда «лайкал» некоторые из них и добавлял в папку «избранное» на своём аккаунте. Я никогда не отправляю личные сообщения и не оставляю комментарии, ни провокационные, ни иные (большинство подобных комментариев часто оставляют тролли, а не настоящие MAP). Я выбираю нейтральное имя пользователя и аватар, которые не раскрывают мой возраст или внешность, чтобы не беспокоить модераторов или девушек, представленных на канале, и оставаться уважительным, ненавязчивым «лицом в толпе».

Можно было бы подумать, что это не создаёт проблем. Но ИИ-система, установленная на Instagram для замены человеческих «охотников за педофилами», похоже, решила иначе. Мой аккаунт недавно был заблокирован за простое просматривание различных обычных и полностью легальных модельных, танцевальных и личных каналов с участием девочек, без каких-либо действий, кроме «лайков» некоторых фото и видео или добавления их в «избранное».

Да, вы правильно прочитали. Автоматическое уведомление, которое я получил, гласило, что «наша технология определила, что вы нарушили наши стандарты сообщества против эксплуатации детей». Что? Ещё одно автоматическое уведомление сообщило: «Наша технология определила, что вы, возможно, столкнулись с детской порнографией и просмотрели её», и оставило мне конфиденциальный номер для связи с консультантом, чтобы обсудить это. Что?! Какого чёрта?!

Как именно они сейчас определяют «детскую порнографию» и «эксплуатацию детей»? Неужели они намекают, что это основано не на самих изображениях, а на том, что я, возможно, думал, просматривая полностью легальные и очень распространённые фото и видео, которые можно найти повсюду в социальных сетях?

Подавляющее большинство MAP законопослушны и ограничивают выражение своих предпочтений частным восхищением красотой и привлекательностью молодых людей. Это всё, что у меня было, и всё, что я когда-либо делал. И… теперь существует технология, предназначенная для выявления и предотвращения этого? Ненависть зашла так далеко, что слежка и «профилактика» достигли такого уровня?

Что это всё значит — будьте готовы

Мой недавний опыт с ИИ-управляемой «охотой за педофилами» на Instagram ясно показал, что ждёт MAP в будущем. Я думаю, что для сообщества MAP наступает интересный переломный момент.

С учётом текущей моральной паники против всё более расширяющегося понятия «эксплуатации детей» и против взрослых, которые находят несовершеннолетних привлекательными, на фоне быстрого развития алгоритмов ИИ для «выявления», мы скоро достигнем точки, когда станет практически невозможно для любого MAP скрывать свой статус от общественного обнаружения. А также избежать технологически обусловленного осуждения просто за то, что смотришь и имеешь запретные мысли о легальных и общедоступных изображениях. Если только не жить полностью вне сети, так сказать.

Если вы смотрите определённые, совершенно легальные и часто загружаемые фото и видео на любой социальной платформе — Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter/X — алгоритмы ИИ вычислят вас и соберут данные о вас на основе ваших привычек просмотра, ваших «лайков» и «избранного» для определённых фото или видео, частоты повторных просмотров и т. д.

Система будет знать, затем это узнают человеческие администраторы. А вскоре и правительство будет в курсе, поскольку оно теперь полностью сотрудничает с технологическими корпорациями. Вас будут дальше отслеживать, и вы будете внесены в официальную базу данных, где будут перечислены большинство MAP по всему миру (или, по крайней мере, живущих в WEIRD части мира).

ИИ TikTok вычислит вас и соберёт данные о вас на основе ваших привычек просмотра. То же самое касается других социальных сетей.

И поскольку все данные о гражданах теперь собираются крупными технологическими компаниями, такими как Palantir, вы будете перекрестно сопоставлены между всеми этими платформами и другими местами в интернете, которые вы посещаете. Вскоре вся ваша социальная сеть, работа, основные места покупок и т. д. станут легко доступны государственным органам, НКО, торговцам, с которыми вы ведёте дела, и работодателям. О вас также могут сообщить правоохранительным органам для наблюдения и процедур «предотвращения преступлений». Вас легко могут шантажировать из-за крайней опасности быть «разоблачённым» как человек, которому нравятся несовершеннолетние, включая публичное осуждение. И ваша «личная характеристика» будет доступна для всех, от политических оппонентов до агентств по трудоустройству и правоохранительных органов, ищущих цели.

Теперь станет почти невозможно «скрываться на виду», потому что наш цифровой след позволит альянсу корпораций и правительства вычислить нас всех.

Таким образом, завершаются те дни, когда вы можете делиться этой сверхчувствительной информацией о себе лишь с несколькими доверенными людьми. Это станет своего рода революцией как для нашего сообщества, так и для общества в целом.

Каков может быть конечный результат?

Давайте посмотрим на положительную сторону грядущего полного раскрытия MAP в обществе WEIRD благодаря прогрессу ИИ-технологий. Да, такая сторона действительно может быть.

Сначала это массовое технологическое выявление будет продвигаться как способ идентификации «детских хищников» — или тех, кто «потенциально» таков — и будет расхваливаться как мера безопасности для несовершеннолетних (которые всё ещё не имеют никакого голоса в обществе). Публика, конечно, воспримет это с энтузиазмом… по крайней мере, изначально. «Теперь мы узнаем всех хищников!» — провозгласит какой-нибудь политик или ненавистник MAP.

Но вот что они не учитывают: это раскрытие также покажет, сколько MAP действительно существует в обществе, сколько из них занимают важные позиции и сколько из них известны как хорошие люди.

И сколько из них не имеют судимостей и являются законопослушными, несмотря на то, что смотрят фотографии и имеют мысли, которые общество приучено считать «жуткими» и потенциально «опасными».

Это также привлечёт внимание к тому факту, что люди, которые продвигает личные бренды девочек-моделей, танцоров и инфлюенсеров — включая многих родителей и компании, которые помогают их продвигать, — прекрасно понимают, насколько привлекательна молодёжь, особенно молодые девушки, и как это помогает продавать модную одежду и продукты для ухода за собой.

Они продвигают это в открытой, но незаметной манере, что приносит им много желанных просмотров. Это, в свою очередь, улавливается алгоритмами и способствует дальнейшему продвижению для большего числа заинтересованных глаз. Однако вскоре они увидят, что значительная часть их аудитории платит огромную цену за поддержку этой бизнес-модели своими массовыми просмотрами и «лайками».

Будет ли общественный протест с требованием полностью ликвидировать такие каналы или поставить их под полный контроль правоохранительных органов? Как это скажется на бизнес-модели или на типе контроля, который родители обычно хотят иметь сверх государственного? Будут ли родители и компании, продвигающие эти каналы, осуждены за использование изображений, которые помогают эффективно продавать?

Администрация Трампа незаметно использует Palantir для сбора личных данных каждого американца, вызывая опасения по поводу конфиденциальности и неправильного использования данных — сообщение в New York Times.

Для широкой публики также станет ясно, сколько людей, которых они любят, уважают и которым доверяют, являются MAP. Люди, которые спасли множество жизней, которые всегда были рядом в трудные времена, которые заслужили их доверие многими способами; и, что самое важное, которых они знают как не социопатических монстров, никогда не вредивших детям и обладающих самоконтролем, чтобы оставаться законопослушными.

Как долго можно продолжать ненавидеть MAP и считать их естественные (и невыбираемые) предпочтения злым изъяном характера или извращённой болезнью, когда это ваши любимые и уважаемые родители, братья или сёстры, возлюбленные, лучшие друзья; или врачи, или пожарные, которые спасли жизнь вам или вашим близким?

Или тот добродушный сосед, которого вы знали и уважали всю свою жизнь? Или тот учитель, который дал вам мудрый совет, помогавший преодолевать жизненные трудности, и который никогда не пытался использовать или эксплуатировать вас?

Что тогда? Не обернётся ли эта технология раскрытия, основанная на алгоритмах, против своих создателей? Не заставит ли она MAP, вынужденных оказаться под общественным вниманием, громко заявить о себе? Как на это отреагируют молодые люди, которые являются мезофилами (те, кому нравятся люди среднего возраста)?

И не будут ли люди, которые вне MAP-сообщества, но которые нас любят, уважают и доверяют нам, вынуждены отказаться от своего молчания или своего (часто показного) участия в травле MAP?

Что в ответ на это сделает ныне разрушенное движение за освобождение молодёжи, особенно учитывая, что страх перед MAP заставил его умеренных участников практически уничтожить это движение?

Посмотрим, как всё это разыграется, когда почти каждый, кто является MAP, станет в ближайшем будущем так же известен, как сегодня ванильные ЛГБТК.

Страшные — но, несомненно, интересные — времена нас ждут впереди.

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Слава Украине!

Tue, 20 Sep 2022 19:47:26 GMT

Администрация портала выражает поддержку народу Украины, его защитникам и защитницам. Мы убеждены, что Украина освободит все свои территории от российской оккупации.

Мы осуждаем преступную войну, развязанную Россией против Украины в 2014 году и чудовищное вторжение, случившееся 24 февраля 2022 года. Мы надеемся, что в результате краха этой кровавой авантюры в России произойдут демократические перемены и она начнёт долгий путь к обществу, в котором уважаются права человека.

Мы надеемся, что и Украина, и Россия смогут стать гуманными странами, в которых будет комфортно жить людям любых национальностей и любых сексуальных ориентаций, включая педосексуалов.

Среди нас (людей, имеющих отношение к порталу), есть как граждане Украины, так и граждане России. И мы все желаем, чтобы этот кошмар поскорее закончился и можно было приступить к решению сложных проблем по типу борьбы с педофобными стереотипами в здоровом правовом государстве.

Слава Украине. Свободу России. Свободу Алексею Навальному и всем несправедливо осуждённым (в том числе и по "педофильским" статьям)!

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День Памяти и Солидарности 2020

Sun, 01 Mar 2020 03:49:22 GMT

Недавно мы проводили голосование по выбору даты для Дня Памяти и Солидарности с жертвами педофобии.

На основе результатов голосования мы предлагаем в 2020 году отметить этот день 14 июля, в день убийства Биджана Эбрахими, ставшего жертвой общественной ненависти к педофилам. (При этом он им не был, но это не важно.)

Мы понимаем, что проведённое голосование далеко не идеальное по ряду причин:

Проголосовать смогло лишь небольшое число людей. Многие просто не знали о голосовании.

Не было никакой защиты от накруток голосов.

Среди предлагаемых вариантов даты не было представлено многих других вариантов. Например, 20 октября - день, в который в 2010 году покончил с собой учитель начальных классов Нил Вилкс, отстранённый от работы из-за "ненадлежащего" отношения к ребёнку. Он был влюблён в свою 8-летнюю ученицу и перед смертью отправил ей сообщение "Я люблю тебя и всегда буду любить".

Если в будущем появится запрос на проведение нового голосования, то мы проведём его в начале 2021 года. Пожалуйста, продолжайте присылать нам информацию о жертвах педофобии. На основе имеющихся материалов будет составляться книга памяти. Её русскоязычная версия будет открыта на нашем сайте.

Как именно отмечать этот день? Что можно сделать, чтобы выразить свою солидарность? Вы можете:

узнать адрес какого-нибудь зарегистрированного сексуального преступника и написать ему письмо со словами поддержки;

оказать моральную или материальную поддержку какому-нибудь человеку, арестованному за преступление против половой неприкосновенности несовершеннолетних;

найти информацию о нарушении прав людей из-за педофобии и поделиться ею с другими людьми;

написать в интернете комментарий против педофобии;

прочитать материалы о жертвах педофобии и провести минуту молчания в память о них;

или вы можете сделать всё то, что сочтёте нужным.

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День памяти и солидарности с жертвами педофобии [ОПРОС]

Sun, 16 Feb 2020 19:05:26 GMT

За последние годы у педосообщества появились особые праздничные даты. Девочколюбы отмечают 25 апреля День Алисы. Бойлаверы празднуют Международный День Бойлава дважды в год - в первую и последнюю субботы между днями солнцестояния (включительно). Но до сих пор нет дня, который объединил бы всё педосообщество.

В связи с этим мы предлагаем отмечать День памяти и солидарности с жертвами педофобии.

Это день памяти о тех людях, которые не совершили никакого насилия, но чьи жизни были разрушены антипедофильскими законами и общественной ненавистью. Жертвами педофобии могут быть мужчины и женщины, педосексуалы и непедосексуалы, взрослые и дети. Этот день может стать хорошим поводом поддержать тех, кто отбывает тюремный срок, вынужден регистрироваться как сексуальный преступник или страдает от других подобных ограничений.

В прошлом году мы провели голосование по выбору даты для этого дня. Но было решено провести повторное голосование с большим числом вариантов.

Проголосовать вы можете ниже или на портале "Право любить".

1 марта

Это День отказа от дискриминации. Педофобия (неприязнь к педофилам) это одна из самых чудовищных и распространённых форм дискриминации, существующих в наши дни.

Кроме того, 1 марта это первый день весны, что символизирует надежду на перемены и на более терпимое общество для всех нас.

18 марта

Дата убийства Пола Купера (Великобритания).

40-летний Пол Купер вырос и жил на севере Манчестера. У него была собака по кличке Блю. Из-за аварии на квадроцикле он стал инвалидом и был вынужден ходить с тростью. Несмотря на это, он каждый день навещал свою маму, которая жила неподалёку [1] [2].

18 марта 2005 года домой к Полу ворвался 22-летний Нил Рид и стал избивать его руками, ногами и ножом. Рид нанёс ему более 40 ножевых ранений. Причиной нападения послужила уверенность Нила, что Пол педофил и что Нил в детстве подвергался сексуальным домогательствам со стороны Пола. Фактов, которые бы это подтверждали, полиция не обнаружила [3] [4].

Пол и ранее подвергался угрозам и нападениям со стороны Нила, который смог убедить окружающих людей в его виновности в сексуальных преступлениях [5].

16 апреля

Дата убийства Уильяма Эллиота (США).

Ширли Тернер, сжавшая фотографию своего сына Уильяма Эллиота, со своим мужем Полом

Уильям Эллиот в 19 лет имел добровольный секс с 15-летней девушкой, которой оставалось 3 недели до 16 лет, возраста согласия в их штате (Мэн). Родители девушки узнали об этом, в результате Эллиот был обвинён в сексуальном насилии над несовершеннолетней и отсидел в тюрьме 2 года [1]. (По другим данным 4 месяца [2].)

После выхода из тюрьмы Уильям решил жить отдельно от мамы, купил трейлер и устроился работать строителем. 16 апреля 2006 года к нему домой пришёл Стивен Маршалл и с порога выстрелил Уильяму в лицо. При задержании Стивен покончил с собой. Уильяму было 24 года, когда он погиб. Его убийце было 20 лет [3].

Маршалл нашёл адрес Уильяма в реестре сексуальных преступников штата Мэн. Джо Рейсдорф, друг Стивена Маршалла, рассказал, что в подростковые годы они между собой иногда обсуждали сексуальных преступников, о которых слышали в новостях. Стивен и Джо сходидилсь тогда во мнении, что сексуальные преступники это отвратительные и бесполезные люди и что они хуже убийц [4].

В этот же день жертвой Маршалла стал ещё один зарегистрированный сексуальный преступник - 57-летний Джозеф Грэй. Реестр сексуальных преступников штата Мэн работает по сей день.

22 апреля

Дата смерти Романа Цыро (Белоруссия) и Эдварда Бронгерсмы (Нидерланды).

22 апреля 2019 года был жестоко избит и похоронен заживо 26-летний житель Полоцка Роман Цыро. Убийцами были трое его знакомых - Слава (16 лет), Юрий (17 лет) и Вадим (20 лет)[1].

Роман общался с 16-летней школьницей. Вероятно, он был в неё влюблён. Сама девушка считала их отношения дружескими. Тем не менее, Слава, Юрий и Вадим сочли это недопустимым.

В ночь с 21 на 22 апреля они позвонили Роману, попросили взять такси и заехать за ними, что он и сделал. Они приехали домой к Роману. Молодые люди потребовали от него, чтобы он отказался от своей девушки и написал расписку, подтверждающую отказ. После того, как Роман отказался сделать это, его начали избивать. Его били руками, лопатой и другими подручными средствами. Затем убийцы закопали его во дворе. Предположительно, Роман был ещё жив [2].

Страница Романа в ВК - [3], видео с ним на его ютуб-канале - [4], интервью с его отцом - [5]

Эдвард Бронгерсма (1911-1998) был нидерландским политиком и доктором юридических наук. В течение нескольких лет он был членом голландского сената от лейбористской партии и председателем сенатского судебного комитета. Всю свою жизнь он защищал права педофилов.

В последние годы своей жизни Бронгерсма получал угрозы и подвергался общественному преследованию. Он умер в результате добровольной эвтаназии 22 апреля 1998 года после того, как увидел, что политический климат в его стране и во всём мире повернулся против тех сексуальных реформ, за которые он боролся так долго и упорно.

Его интервью с английскими субтитрами - [1]

Почитать больше о нём: [2](en), [3](en), [4](en).

14 июля

Дата убийства Биджана Эбрахими (Великобритания).

14 июля 2013 года 44-летний инвалид из Ирана Биджан Эбрахими был сожжён заживо его соседями Ли Джеймсом и Стивеном Норли, которым было по 24 года. Они считали Биджана педофилом и полагали, что это достаточное основание для причинения человеку вреда.

Из-за инвалидности Биджан нигде не работал, жил у себя дома, заботился о своей кошке и саде. 11 июля соседские дети забрались в его сад, чтобы нарвать цветов. Биджан сфотографировал детей, чтобы иметь доказательства произошедшего в его сад вторжения. Соседи увидели, как он их фотографирует и стали обвинять его в педофилии. Приехала полиция и арестовала Биджана под апплодисменты толпы и выкрики "Педофил! Педофил!".

Полиция проверила фотоаппарат Биджана и его компьютер и убедилась, что он ни в чём не виноват. 12 июля он был отпущен и вернулся к себе домой. Тогда его молодые соседи Ли Джеймс и Стивен Норли решили взять "правосудие" в свои руки. Рано утром 14 июля они выволокли Биджана из его дома, избили, облили его уайт-спиритом и подожгли.

Подробнее об этом убийстве и о событиях, которые ему предшествовали можно почитать тут: [1](en), [2](en), [3](en). Видеорепортаж: [4](en). Интервью с его сестрой: [5](en).

19 июля

Предполагаемая дата убийства Джозефа Доуса (Франция).

Джозеф Доус (1945-1990) был отлучённым от Церкви бельгийским баптистским пастором. В 1976 году в Париже он основал Центр Христа-Искупителя. В ЦХИ были рады и предоставляли голос представителям сексуальных меньшинств: гомосексуалам, транссексуалам, садо-мазохистам, педофилам. Пастор Доус был одним из основателей Международной Ассоциации лесбиянок и геев.

Из-за его поддержки педофилов французская полиция стала интересоваться им. Доус жил вместе со своим бойфрендом Гаем Бондаром. Бондар рассказал, что вечером 19 июля 1990 года двое мужчин в штатском постучались в их дверь, показали удостоверение полиции и попросили Доуса пройти с ними для допроса. Доус больше никогда не вернулся домой. 24 октября 1990 его сильно разложившееся тело было найдено в лесу Фонтенбло к юго-западу от Парижа. Доус был задушен вскоре после того, как Бондар видел его последний раз.

Утверждалось, что Доус был целью Rensignements Generaux (RG), отделения французской национальной полиции, которое расследовало политические вопросы. RG имела репутацию незаконной и коррумпированной организации. Французский министр внутренних дел распустил RG, частично в результате исчезновения и убийства Доуса. Его убийство никогда не было раскрыто.

Почитать больше о нём: [1](en), [2](en), [3](fr).

24 июля

Дата убийства Роберта Бердика (США).

24 июля 1985 года 78-летний учитель на пенсии и сооснователь NAMBLA Роберт Бердик был зарезан у себя дома 37-летним Джозефом Паттерсоном, которому Бердик предоставил кров, позволив Паттерсону жить жить у себя дома после освобождения из тюрьмы. Паттерсон объяснил журналистам свой поступок тем, что, по его мнению, Бердик совершал сексуальные злоупотребления детьми.

Роберт Бердик был борцом за права детей, геев и бойлаверов. Против Бердика никогда не выдвигались официальные обвинения в каких-либо сексуальных преступлениях против детей.

Подробнее о Роберте Бердике [1] (en) и его убийце [2] (en).

22 сентября

Дата убийства Дэниса Брокена (Нидерланды).

22 сентября 2000 года [1] (nl) 37-летний Люсьен встретил в супермаркете 22-летнего Дениса Брокена и нанёс ему 10 ножевых ранений. Мотивом убийства послужило то, что Дэнис ранее совершил сексуальное "преступление", одной из "жертв" которого стал сын Люсьена. За это Дэнис был осуждён и отбыл своё наказание [2](nl).

"Преступление" Дэниса заключалось в том, что он скачивал детскую порнографию и пригласил к себе домой группу детей, играл с ними в компьютерные игры и прикасался к ним [3] (nl).

Общество сделало из убийцы чуть ли не национального героя, рукоплескало ему и требовало наградить вместо того, чтобы наказывать.

1 октября

Дата нападения на Джона Массера (Великобритания).

1 октября 2017 года 49-летний Джон Массер был жестоко избит 37-летним Стивеном Киблом на улице. Спустя два дня Джон скончался от полученных травм.

Причиной нападения послужило то, что Джон Массер был обвинён в том, что в 1986 году совершил сексуальное преступление против 16-летней девушки. Массер отрицал эти обвинения.

На месте нападения была толпа людей, которые одобряли и подстрекали нападавшего. В толпе были женщина и дети.

Подробнее: [1](en), [2](en), [3](en).

23 октября

Дата убийства Джейдена Ленескара (США).

23 октября 2009 года 4-х летний Джейден погиб от длившихся два дня избиений со стороны своих родителей. Причина побоев была в том, что Джейден потрогал свои гениталии [1].

27-летний Стивен Дадей и его 26-летняя жена Мирна Ченпанг увидели, как их сын Джейдан прикасался к гениталиям (видимо, маструбировал) и стали его избивать, желая выяснить, кто его этому научил [2].

Свидетельские показания соседей и родственников говорят от том, что это была благополучная семья, в которой не было распространено насилие [3].

(Оценивая данную ситуацию, недостаточно сказать, что родители мальчика не понимали, что в детской мастурбации нет ничего плохого. Необходимо отметить, что даже если бы мальчика действительно кто-то научил мастурбировать, в этом тоже не было бы абсолютно ничего плохого.)

View Poll: День солидарности с жертвами педофобии/День борьбы с педофобией/День педосолидарности

Comments

Frequently Asked Questions

Mon, 24 Dec 2018 10:14:41 GMT

1. How can there be equality in an adult-child relationship when there is such a power imbalance?

2. How absolute is your belief that pre-pubescent girls should not be penetrated?

3. Exactly what do you consider an ‘appropriate’ age for sexual relationships? And why?

4. What can anyone do to stop the abuse towards children?

5. Don’t you worry that the content of your website will drive some people to act upon their urges?

6. What you think about preteen modeling sites? Do you amarsi like to look at these pictures and if so, why? I have heard of cases where men who look at these sites go on to commit crimes. So don’t you think that these pictures are dangerous if they fan the flames of desire in these men?

7. If consensual relationships between children and adults are not harmful, why am I having so many emotional and psychological problems as a result of a consensual relationship I had as a child?

8. What does The Amaros Concern think about the Michael Jackson trial?

9. Why do you think Megan’s Laws are unconstitutional? Since the registration requirement is known at the time of sentencing, is it not part of the same punishment?

10. I have been a victim of pedophilia, and I know how a child feels in that particular situation. It is absolutely ludicrous to say that a child would fully understand a sexual situation.

11. How is consent defined in the context of an intergenerational relationship?

12. What do you think about a man who exposes himself to children when their parents are not around?

13. Do you think the world will ever get to a point in the future where consensual romantic relationships between adults and children will be legal and, most importantly, accepted by society as ‘normal’?

14. How can you believe that children who still believe in Santa Claus and the boogeyman are capable of making complex emotional decisions?

15. Aren’t all of your nice words just a cover for your depraved desire to have sex with children?

16. Don’t you think that an intimate relationship is between an adult and a child is always going to be manipulative because he views the adult as an authority figure?

17. Aren’t you afraid that a child will grow to regret his relationship with you?

18. What happens when a child you love gets older? Will you stop loving him?

19. Why do you use words like ‘girllover’ and ‘childlover’?

20. How can you believe that a young child can consent to sex?

21. Aren’t you concerned that if consent laws are changed, there will be an increase in child molestation?

22. I am the parent of a young child. Why should I trust you with my child?

23. Don’t you know that it’s illegal to do the things that you do?

1. How can there be equality in an adult-child relationship when there is such a power imbalance?

Most of the relationships that children have with adults involve some sort of power imbalance, yet many of these relationships are considered by society to be highly beneficial, even essential to the child’s development. Relationships with teachers, coaches, clergy, child minders, bus drivers and others all involve this power imbalance. Of course, the most imbalanced relationship a child has — with his own parents — is also central to the child’s existence. You can read more about how lopsided this relationship is in my essay Power Imbalances in the Parent-Child Relationship.

Adult-child relationships are not the only ones that involve power imbalances. Many, if not most, relationships between adults also involve significant power imbalances. One partner is often significantly more physically powerful than the other. One partner often has a significant economic advantage over the other. One partner may be more socially or intellectually gifted than the other. True parity is a myth in the majority of relationships and the assumption that the fact that both parties are over the age of eighteen means that they are equal is a dangerously fallacious one. Power imbalances are an unavoidable element of most relationships and the more powerful party has an ethical responsibility to not use this advantage unfairly over the less powerful party.

2. How absolute is your belief that pre-pubescent girls should not be penetrated?

As I understand it, there are many increased risks to girls who engage in sexual intercourse before they reach puberty. Firstly, especially in younger girls, the vagina often is simply not large enough to accomodate an adult penis and attempting to do so could cause serious internal damage to the girl. Secondly, the vaginal wall is much thinner before puberty, meaning that penetration with a penis or even a finger can cause it to tear. Thirdly, there is a higher risk in young girls of infection with the widespread human papilloma virus, some strains of which are directly linked to cervical cancer. Whilst there is a new vaccine against this virus and condom use is known to virtually negate the increased risk, this vaccine is not yet widely in use and we cannot assume that people engaging in penetrative sex with young girls (especially in commercial sex situations) are using condoms.

I agree that there is significant anecdotal evidence that many pre-pubescent girls have engaged in (and enjoyed) full sexual intercourse without suffering harm. Still, my belief is that menarche is as clear a biological signal as any that the body is truly ready for intercourse. Whilst some (perhaps many) pre-pubescent girls’ bodies may be able to handle intercourse, virtually every pubescent girl’s body will be able. It is therefore useful as a threshold for consent in a legal context because it is verifiable and is not as arbitrary as age-based thresholds.

It is evident that proscribing an activity will not result in its eradication. Existing prohibitions have certainly not stopped the commercial exploitation of children. That being said, I continue to believe that it is in society’s best interest to discuss ethical limitations that look after the best interest of all of its members. It is in this spirit that I have proposed my Manifesto which includes the menarche threshold for sexual intercourse. I do not mean for this limitation to apply to two peers experimenting together, but to sexual congress between young girls and adults.

Ultimately, I strive for a day when there are no ages of consent at all. I believe that this is only possible in an environment of openness and when society is tolerant of all forms of sexual expression. A partner who truly loves a girl and cares about her welfare will certainly do all he or she can to make sure that she does not come to harm as a result of their intimacy. In an open society, such a relationship could take place in an environment of transparency so that that all concerned parties could be comfortable that exploitation or harm was absent from the relationship. I would also point out that intercourse is not necessarily the sine qua non of intimacy. A caring adult and a young girl have many other options such as oral or intra-femoral sex that can also be mutually fulfilling without introducing the risks of intercourse.

3. Exactly what do you consider an ‘appropriate’ age for sexual relationships? And why?

I state quite clearly throughout this website that I do not advocate penetrative sexual activity between pre-pubescent children and adults. I believe, however, that there are many forms of non-invasive forms of physical intimacy that can be shared and enjoyed by both parties in an amaros relationship without causing any physical damage to either party. There is ample medical evidence that even infants are capable of orgasmic response as well as copious evidence to suggest that many children, from infancy onwards masturbate to achieve orgasm. We also know quite clearly that all children desire and need lots of physical affection as a part of healthy psychological development. Considering that children are sexual beings from birth, there is no reason, except for irrational societal views on intimacy, why children of all ages should not be able to engage in some forms of intimacy with another person with whom there is a mutual bond of love and respect.

4. What can anyone do to stop the abuse towards children?

Whilst I cannot claim that I or this website can stop anybody from hurting a child, I believe that this website could certainly cause some people who might be considering hurting a child to reconsider this course of action. Whilst most child molesters are not actually childlovers at all, some sadly are. I believe that part of the reason that some of these childlovers might hurt children is because they have been led to believe by society that their sexual orientation inevitably leads to an offense. They may hate themselves and have low self-esteem because they understand that they are the pariahs of society. This combination may help them to justify actions that they would otherwise not consider.

One of the primary purposes of this site is to give amarsi hope and to help them understand that they are not alone in the world. Throughout, I tell people that they have free will and that the ‘inevitability myth’ — the false assumption that a childlover will inevitably molest because he is unable to control his actions — is completely false. I believe that if childlovers can see amaros outside of the context of the rape/abuse paradigm and instead see it as part of the ideal of consensual childlove, they will have little inclination whatsoever to hurt children.

For a more thorough treatment of this issue, I recommend my essay What is a Childlover ; What Is a Child Molester? Practical Steps on Preventing Child Sexual Abuse.

5. Don’t you worry that the content of your website will drive some people to act upon their urges?

The Amaros Concern advises quite clearly against breaking the law and provides advice on how to live with amaros in a constructive fashion. Rather than driving people to break the law, I believe that The Amaros Concern may well do the opposite. Once people realize that they are not alone and are not evil because of their thoughts, they are able to gain a proper perspective on life and gain hope, two things that will make them less likely to break the law.

Evidence that written or visual material drives people to break the law is not at all conclusive. Many attempts have been made to link viewing of pornography to violent crimes, but studies do not show that this effect is consistent, suggesting that other factors within the perpetrator himself are much more influential on his decision to break the law. Ultimately, each person must take responsibility for his own actions. Any visitor to this site is mindful of what is legal and illegal where he lives and the decision whether to break the law is his alone.

6. What you think about preteen modeling sites? Do you amarsi like to look at these pictures and if so, why? I have heard of cases where men who look at these sites go on to commit crimes. So don’t you think that these pictures are dangerous if they fan the flames of desire in these men?

I think that preteen modelling sites are a good thing so long as the girls involved are doing so of their own free will, are being properly compensated and are not being exploited in any other way. I can think of many such sites where this appears to be the case and I am fully in support of these sites’ continued existence and prosperity.

Not only am I totally certain that amarsi very much enjoy viewing these pictures, I believe that these sites are being completely disingenuous if they say that amarsi are not their primary target market.

As to why many amarsi look at these pictures, I suppose it is for the same reason that so many men eagerly await the annual Sports Illustrated swimsuit edtion: the girls on the sites are beautiful and somebody who finds girls attractive likes to look at pictures of pretty girls. Furthermore, as amarsi are not by law permitted to realise their sexual orientation, this is just one way that they are able to substitute for the physical and emotional intimacy that they are unable to experience. Whilst these pictures are a very poor substitute, for many they, along with an active imagination and self-stimulation are the only possibilities for any semblance of an erotic life.

I believe that every person is responsible for his or her own actions and outside influences, such as pictures, are not a significant factor. Just as a few disturbed individuals may view such pictures as a prelude to an awful crime, others may drink alcohol, take drugs, listen to violent music or watch violent films before committing atrocities. The fact is that the vast majority of people can do these things without going on to engage in antisocial behaviour. Similarly, most childlovers can enjoy these pictures without going on to harm children.

7. If consensual relationships between children and adults are not harmful, why am I having so many emotional and psychological problems as a result of a consensual relationship I had as a child?

Unfortunately, even though you may have had a sexual encounter as a child that you consented to and even enjoyed, society teaches that any such sexual contacts are bad. Therefore, even though you willingly participated in activities that brought you pleasure, the incessant flow of messages that such activities are bad, have caused you to believe that you were a victim and that what happened was bad. You need to realize that you are not to blame for what happened and, if the relationship was consensual, that your partner is also not to blame. You both brought pleasure one to another and there is nothing at all wrong with that. You need to question the society that has pushed you to feel dirty and ashamed about the relationship. Why does it continue to do this? And why is this society so violent and repressive of human sexuality? You are not the victim of abuse, you are the victim of incorrect indoctrination at the hands of a dysfunctional society.

8. What does The Amaros Concern think about the Michael Jackson trial?

I do not wish to pass any judgment on the Michael Jackson case as I am a firm believer in the principle of innocent until proven guilty. I would only make observations about what is known. It is apparent that Michael Jackson has a strong affinity for children. He has admitted as much in his own public statements. He has admitted to sharing a bed with young boys, and I see nothing wrong with that. Like him, I agree that such an experience need not be sexual and can in fact be a very beautiful thing. If it were to come out that he used force, coercion or manipulation in order to gain sexual favors from any other person, I would certainly condemn such activity.

Due to the high profile of this case, I am not confident that we will ever know what really happened. I fear that the case may be won or lost on technicalities or on the ability of one legal team to present a more believable story than the other. My primary hope is that no young people have been hurt or abused.

9. Why do you think Megan’s Laws are unconstitutional? Since the registration requirement is known at the time of sentencing, is it not part of the same punishment?

I believe that so-called “Megan’s Laws” violate three amemdments to the United States Constitution. Firstly, they violate the fifth amendment, which guarantees that a person not be punished twice for the same offense. Secondly, they violate the eighth amendment, which forbids cruel and unusual punishment for crimes. And thirdly, they violate the fourteenth amendment, which guarantees the right to privacy.

If a person serves a prison sentence and is released, his debt to be society for his crime has been discharged. He should be free to rebuild his life and move on. Sex offender reporting laws, however, guarantee that a person will continue to be punished for his crime and often make it very difficult for a person to lead any semblance of a normal life. There have been numerous cases of people on sex offender registries who find themselves unable to find a place to live or work. Being listed on such an offender registry is the modern-day equivalent of wearing the scarlet letter. The former offender is stigmatized for life. Unlike a parolee or a probationer, who must report to a member of the judicial or law enforcement establishment, the sex offender is required to register on a public registry, open to all who wish to see it. Especially since we see that these registries are being made available on the Internet, it is becoming ever more difficult for these people to ever have a chance at re-integrating successfully into society.

Besides being unconstitutional, sex offender registry laws are both discriminatory and unproductive. No other type of offender is required to participate in similar registries. People convicted of property crimes like burglary, theft and arson, offenses for which recidivism rates are significantly higher, are released into society regularly with no public record of where they might be. Even perpetrators of violent sexual offenses against adults are not required to register.

Saddest of all, however, these laws give society a false sense of security. Forensic statistics show time and again that sexual offenses against children by strangers are extremely rare. The vast majority of sexual offenses against children are carried out by the child’s own family or close friends. Unfortunately, however, these laws do not address these sources of the problem, instead choosing to address the more sensational ‘problem’ of ‘stranger danger’.

10. I have been a victim of pedophilia, and I know how a child feels in that particular situation. It is absolutely ludicrous to say that a child would fully understand a sexual situation.

It is a common logical fallacy for people to assume that everybody will experience a particular situation the same way as they do or have. Because you had a negative experience does not mean that every child having a sexual experience will consider it to be negative. I also had some early childhood sexual experiences with an adult. Some of the experiences were positive; others were negative. But I am not going to try and apply my experiences universally. For example, I find BDSM to be abhorrent; the thought of engaging in such activity makes me queasy. If somebody were to subject me to such an experience, it would undoubtedly be negative for me. But many people find both enjoyment and sexual satisfaction from those sorts of activities. Who am I to judge them for that and to say that it is sick or disgusting simply because I find the thought of it distasteful?

Incidentally, one does not become a victim of ‘pedophilia’, since amaros is only a sexual orientation, not an action. Furthermore, forensic data shows us quite clearly that the majority of child molesters are not actually childlovers at all, but are what are known as ‘situational offenders’, or people whose primary sexual attraction is not children, but have turned to children either due to impaired judgment or the inability to find suitable partners within their primary attraction group. Researchers such as Ralph Underwager, Hollida Wakefield and Fred Berlin, persistently point out that many childlovers never in their lifetimes ‘act upon’ their attraction.

It is absolutely ludicrous to make such a statement about every single child in every single culture in every single nation in the world. Furthermore, it is important to ask oneself why a child might not “fully understand a sexual situation”. Is it because they are incapable of doing so? Or is it because the adults in their lives (parents, teachers, church leaders) have intentionally withheld information from them and kept them in the dark in order to perpetuate the myth of ‘childhood innocence’? It is useful to point out that this cult of childhood innocence is, historically speaking, a relatively new phenomenon, having only emerged fully in the nineteenth century.

11. How is consent defined in the context of an intergenerational relationship?

Children are often not given nearly enough credit for their thoughts. While many argue that children do not have the ability to make decisions regarding their emotional relationships, the interaction inside of any classroom or playground indicates otherwise. Children are certainly capable of understanding the emotional consequences of many of their social interactions and therefore can make choices about which relationships they wish to be a part of.

The same applies to intimate relationships between consenting children and adults. Children are not necessarily as easily fooled as any other person. Indeed, children often have an uncanny ability to spot insincerity and falseness in people. If they are educated properly about their sexuality and about intimacy, and if physical intimacy is not unduly stigmatized, then they are empowered to make decisions about whether and with whom to engage in intimate activities.

In a society that believes that children are astute enough to make consumer decisions on the basis of the onslaught of advertising that they are exposed to, it appears disingenuous that it believes that they are incapable of making decisions that it perhaps does not wish for them to make.
What do you think about a man who exposes himself to children when their parents are not around?

While I think that there is nothing wrong or shameful about nudity per se, I think that the context of nudity is important. If somebody is exposing himself surreptitiously, especially if he tries to conceal his actions when an adult approaches, he is going to prejudice the child’s conception of nudity by reinforcing the myth that the human body is bad or shameful. Unfortunately, this negative message is often made even worse by the extreme reaction of adults who discover the activity.

Some people who engage in exhibitionistic behavior may be amarsi who are having difficulties finding a constructive way to cope with their feelings. Since they are forced to conceal their orientation for fear of ostracism, discrimination and persecution, they often feel uncomfortable sharing their thoughts and feelings with therapists, mental health professionals or with their friends and family. Unfortunately, some of them turn to various forms of anti-social behavior. Since society disallows any legal manifestation of a pedophilic sexual orientation, it should at least ensure that those with such an orientation are able to seek guidance and counseling so that the likelihood of this occurring is minimized.

12. Do you think the world will ever get to a point in the future where consensual romantic relationships between adults and children will be legal and, most importantly, accepted by society as ‘normal’, or do you think that this goal is ultimately unachievable because of the many many years of negative media coverage etc. of child molestation?

I am convinced that at some point in the future, adult-child romantic relationships will be both legal and societally acceptable. The emancipation of slaves, labor unions, women’s suffrage, civil rights for minorities and gay rights all at some point in their evolution appeared to be unattainable dreams. It is true that there have been many years of negative media coverage of amarsi and amaros , but these years are a very short period of our collective history. There have been many more years where the propagation of such misconceptions and persecution did not exist.

That being said, our struggle will be difficult and long. It is more likely that our emancipation will be achieve by a sea change in societal perception rather than in a cataclysmic event. Furthermore, amaros advocacy is only a single element in the puzzle. As well as the rights of amarsi to the same civil rights as all other citizens, society needs to recognize the rights of children and grant them as well as to overcome its tendency to treat sex as something that is dirty and shameful.

13. How can you believe that children who still believe in Santa Claus and the boogeyman are capable of making complex emotional decisions? Even teenagers have delusions of growing up to be somebody famous.

Mythical knowledge such as the legend of Santa Claus or the boogeyman is received not inherent. In order for children to believe in such things they have to have been told about it by somebody. The fact that they continue to believe such things perhaps even after one might expect them to no longer believe them is a result of their environment. If the myths have not been properly dispelled or have been reinforced by the actions of those around them, then they will continue to believe them. On the other hand, if they are given access to correct information about relationships and their sexuality rather than having facts willfully withheld from them, they would be capable of both assimilating and using that information.

In the case of adolescent youth who have false hopes or illusions, the same applies. Modern society has effectively abnegated its responsibility to offer young people a meaningful education. All too often, schools are inadequate, and parents frequently lack the time or the commitment to offer assistance to the young people with whom they have been entrusted to develop emotionally, intellectually and spiritually. Youth are not ignorant per se; they are the products of their environments and some do not manage to rise above the mediocrity in which they have been placed. It is truly a pity that with increasingly regularity they are receiving an eduation from the mass media rather than from individuals and institutions that truly care about their well-being.

14. Aren’t all of your nice words just a cover for your depraved desire to have sex with children?

I do not deny in any way that I am both physically and sexually attracted to children. At the same time, however, physical desire is just one facet of the relationships I seek. I believe that two people should have the right to decide for themselves what they wish to do with each other, up to and including physical intimacy. In most cases, the mutual desire for physical intimacy is the result of two people who have grown to love each other on an emotional level desiring to express that love in a physical manner as well.

15. Look at all the men who are still suffering because of abuse they suffered as children at the hands of priests. Isn’t that evidence enough that such relationships are bad?

Actually it is not. The men who have been coming forward to accuse priests of abusing them as children were abused against their will. They were manipulated or coerced by priests who used their position of authority to get what they wanted and to keep the boys silent afterwards. I do not in any way advocate non-consensual activity between any persons, regardless of their ages, and I most certainly are against adults using a position of authority, trust or power to get their way with young people who do not wish to have a physical relationship.

16. Don’t you think that an intimate relationship is between an adult and a child is always going to be manipulative because he views the adult as an authority figure?

No. A friendship that arises between an adult and a child does not have to include an overt authoritative aspect. Indeed, many childlovers treat their young friends as equals. Of course, manipulation could occur, but manipulation can also occur in any other relationship the child has. He can be manipulated by his parents, his teachers or other authority figures and even by his own peers. This manipulation can occur in the absence of any intimate relationship. Any manipulation or coercion in any relationship can be harmful to the child. Manipulation itself should be combatted and it should not be assumed that particular types of relationships are more prone to manipulation than others. Openness to adult-child relationships would reduce the probability of such a relationship becoming manipulative as it would be conducted in full view of all, including the child’s parents.

17. Aren’t you afraid that a child will grow to regret his relationship with you?

I believe that in an open society that accepts child sexuality and prepares its children to make informed decisions for themselves about their relationships and bodies, a child should not have to grow to regret a relationship he has had with an adult. Indeed, if a child has a positive experience in a relationship and is not stigmatized by society or told repeatedly that his relationship is bad, there is absolutely no reason for future regret. Much evidence suggests that the most emotional damage to a child who has had an intimate relationship with an adult comes not from the relationship itself, but from the reaction of other adults to the discovery of the relationship.

18. What happens when a child you love gets older? Will you stop loving him?

Absolutely not. I am fully committed to allowing any relationship we begin with a special child to run its full course and reject the notion that I would terminate a relationship based upon a superficial criterion like his age. Relationships, like children, develop and grow and I welcome these changes. Many men remain attracted to younger women throughout their lives, yet remain committed to their wives whom they love. Similarly, although a childlover remains attracted to children, the bond of love is stronger than simple physical attraction. At the same time, the childlover recognizes that the young person, who is undergoing many changes in his life, may wish to terminate the relationship, and is committed to allowing that person to move on with grace and love. Although the romantic portion of a relationship may end, many childlovers continue to love their young partners and continue to maintain relationships with them, albeit on a less intense level than before.

Here are links to some essays I have written that address this issue:

Strange Bedfellows

Ethical Considerations in Relationships with Young Girls

What Happens When My Girlfriend Gets Older?

19. Why do you use words like ‘girllover’ and ‘childlover’?

While some of us do not object to calling ourselves pedophiles, many others have problems with the word since its meaning has been so warped by society and the media. The Greek roots of the word pedophile mean literally child lover (pais = ‘child’ and philia = ‘love’) and that is the meaning I wish to retain. The word pedophile, however, has grown to take on the meaning and connotations of an evil person who lurks in parks luring children with candy so he can abduct them and rape them. Many of us simply do not resemble or relate to this stereotype, so I have chosen to adopt terminology that better describes what I am.

20. How can you believe that a young child can consent to sex?

I do not believe that every child will be interested in having a romantic relationship with an adult. I do, however, believe that some will. By romantic relationship, I do not necessarily mean penetrative sex. I advocate age-appropriate romantic activity between consenting persons.

There is ample scientific evidence that children are sexual beings and can both enjoy and initiate intimate activity with both peers and with older people. I believe that those young people who do seek to have physical relationships should be allowed to do so without fear of getting in trouble, and should be provided with education and support that allows them to make wise decisions for themselves regarding their bodies and their sexuality. I would like to stress here that I do not advocate penetrative sex with pre-pubertal children under any circumstances as I believe that this can lead to physical harm coming to the young person. However, there are a wide range of intimate activities which do not involve penetration which I feel are appropriate for consenting pre-pubertal children.

21. Aren’t you concerned that if consent laws are changed, there will be an increase in child molestation?

No. Those people who want to molest children, or engage in coercive or manipulative physical relationships with children are already doing so, and will do so regardless of what the law says. Laws restricting consensual relationships only penalize the young people who desire to explore their sexuality and those who respect the wishes of these young people and are willing to share the joys of romantic relations with them in a manner appropriate to their level of mental and physical development. Actually, I believe that a change in laws could lead to a decrease in molestation charges as openness towards sexuality would lead allow people to express their sexuality in a positive environment.

22. I am the parent of a young child. Why should I trust you with my child?

Firstly, it is important for you to understand that I do not wish to replace you or compete with you. I respect your position as a primary caregiver and do not wish to undermine your influence on your child. I am willing to be honest and open with you regarding my love for your child and am open to your involvement in our relationship in a manner that respects both your concerns as a parent as well as the wishes and desires of your child.

23. Don’t you know that it’s illegal to do the things that you do?

Actually, I am not doing anything illegal. Although I strongly advocate consensual romantic relations between adults and young people, I am very careful to abide by the laws of the countries in which I live. I do, however, seek to employ democratic means to bring about changes in the legislation of our countries so that they no longer discriminate against young people and those who would love them.

Comments

An Open Letter to Wolak, Finkelhor and Mitchell

Sat, 22 Dec 2018 09:53:21 GMT

An Open Letter to Wolak, Finkelhor and Mitchell

Why are adult-teen relationships illegal?

Dear Drs. Wolak, Finkelhor and Mitchell,

In 2004, you released a paper that showed in detail the circumstances surrounding sexual liaisons between adults and teens that were initiated over the Internet. The findings of the study, Internet-initiated sex crimes against minors: Implications for prevention based on findings from a national study, were contrary to popular belief. While many believe that young teens are deceived into sexual relationships with adults, your study showed that this is not usually the case. On the contrary, it showed that most teens entering into such relationships do so with the full knowledge that the relationship is going to be sexual. Furthermore, it appears to inidicate that sex does not traumatize the teens as much as the drama resulting from the discovery of the relationship by other adults. Indeed, 73% of the teens in the study met their adult lovers more than once; 59% of them meeting three or more times.

Despite these findings, however, you concluded that education needs to be improved to show teens how dangerous and risky such relationships can be. Amongst other things, you mention that teens need to be aware that their actions can land their lovers in prison and that the details of the relationships might wind up being heard in a court of law. You also mention that participating in such relationships could increase the risk to other teens despite your findings that the adults involved in such relationships rarely used force or deception in their dealings with the teens. I am baffled that you took the luxury of moralizing and speculating in a paper that was otherwise impeccable in its objectivity and methodology. Why did you feel the need to contradict your own findings and why is the most dangerous risk you cite the discovery of the relationship and the subsequent prosecution of the adult? It appears that many teens willingly enter into and enjoy these relationships, so why are the relationships illegal? Rather than trying to prevent and proscribe these relationships, should we not be asking why such restrictive laws are on the books in the first place?

Deception Not a Factor

Adults’ Openness about Sex
Lied about sexual motives	21%
Brought up sexual topics	80%
Engaged in cybersex	20%
Sent sexual pictures	18%
Sent adult pornography	10%
Sent child pornography	9%

Public perception says that ‘Internet predators’ deceive their victims, either by lying about their motives or their age. Your report, however, turns these assumptions on their heads. Instead, you discovered that the adults spoke quite openly about sexual matters, bringing it up 80% of the time. In fact, only 21% of the adults lied about their sexual motives.

Adults’ Age
18-25	23%
26-39	41%
39+	35%
Claimed to be under 18	5%
Stated lower than actual age	25%
20+ years older than teen	47%

Considering the age differential between many of the adults and teens, the adults were generally quite honest about their age as well. Only 5% of the adults claimed to be minors. A more common (25%) deception was to state an age that was lower than their actual age, but still significantly higher than the teen’s age. Thus, the vast majority of adults were honest about the fact that they were significantly older than the teens and were well aware of the fact that they were communicating with minors. Only nine percent of the teens claimed to be adults.

Coercion Not a Factor

What Happened at Meetings
Teen went somewhere with adult	83%
Teen spent night with adult	41%
Sexual activity	93%
Intercourse or oral sex	89%
Rape, violent Sex	5%
Abduction	3%
Illegal detention	8%
Violence or threatened violence	5%
Coercion	16%

In 76% of the cases used in your study, online contacts led to face-to-face meetings. Despite the age differences involved, the face-to-face meetings did not scare the teens off. Instead, 93% of the meetings led to some sort of sexual activity. While 46% of first meetings occurred in a public place, the young people were usually willing to go somewhere more private with the adults. Fully 83% of the teens willingly rode in a vehicle and went somewhere with the adults. 41% of the young people spent the night with the adult.

First Meetings Not Traumatic

Face-to-Face Meetings
At least one meeting	73%
Two meetings	13%
Three or more meetings	39%
Moved in with adult	20%

One would expect that if these first encounters were negative or traumatic for the teens, they would decline further meetings. Your report, however, shows that the young people overwhelmingly elected to continue in these relationships. To be precise, 73% of the teens had at least one more meeting. 13% had two meetings, 39% had three or more meetings and a fifth of the teens actaully lived with their adult lovers for some period of time.

Courtship Is a Factor

Length/Quality of Relationships
<1 month before first meeting	27%
1-6 months before first meeting	48%
6+ months before first meeting	16%
Adults gave money or gifts	47%
Teens in love/felt close to adults	50%

While the common stereotype says that the adults in such cases are only interested in sex, your study suggests otherwise. Only 27% of face-to-face encounters occurred within one month of the initial online contact, while nearly half (48%) took place after 1-6 months of correspondence. 47% of the adults gave money or gifts to the young people. Fully half of the young people said that they were in love or felt very close to their adult lovers. The fact that nearly three quarters of the young people who had face-to-face meetings with their friends continued on to subsequent meetings also indicates that the adults succeeded in cultivating more than just a selfish relationship with the the teens.

Discussion

Considering that the discussion and conclusions you present after your results fly in the face of the data you presented, it seems necessary to inquire about some of your specific statements:

“Most offenders took time to develop relationships with victims. Sixty-four percent communicated with the victims for more than one month.”

This does not appear to be any different than online courtship between two adults or two teens. What is it then that makes the cultivation of this sort of relationship bad and what evidence do you have that a relationship between an adult and a teen is harmful to the teen?

“In summary, Internet-initiated sex crimes involved teenagers too young to consent to sexual intercourse that were described by respondents as in love with or close to the offenders they had met online.”

Why are teens considered to be incapable of consent? It appears that the teens in this study made their decision to have sex over a period of time. Why is their consent then considered invalid? What is the harm of falling in love? If teens are experiencing genuine love in these relationships then what is the reason for proscribing them? Do you have any evidence that suggests that these adult lovers are any less sincere in their love than another teen might be?

“These were nonforcible crimes, committed by men who were much older than the victims. The victims knew that they were interacting with adults who were interested in them sexually. The length and variety of communications and multiple fact-to-face meetings in most cases indicate that many victims viewed their interactions with much older adults as desired relationships.”

Once again, it is not apparent why such relationships are considered harmful. Other than the events that occurred after the exposure of the relationships and perhaps the need for secrecy throughout, what part of these desired relationships damaged the teens? Your evidence appears to suggest that even young teens are indeed capable of understanding the dynamics of romantic relationships and deciding for themselves what they desire. How then do you justify prevention of such relationships and support for consent legislation?

“Although they undoubtedly manipulated juveniles in a number of ways, the offenders in these Internet-initiated crimes did not generally deceive victims about being older adults who were interested in sexual relationships. Victims usually knew this before their first fact-to-face encounter with offenders.” [italics mine]

Where is your evidence of ‘undoubted manipulation’ by the adults? What are the ‘numerous ways’ that this ‘manipulation’ took place? Are these supposed manipulative behaviors any different from behaviors common to courtship between two adults or two teens? Do you have any evidence that suggests that the teens were incapable of coping with these behaviors or that they did not engage in courtship behaviors of their own?

“The data suggests that a major challenge for prevention is the population of young teens who are willing to enter into voluntary sexual relationships with adults whom they meet online.”

If this is the case, rather than concentrating on prevention, should we not be examining why teens seek out adult partners? Would it not be wise to examine the validity and purpose of consent laws? Are not such laws discriminatory against the teens and adults who desire these relationships?

“One avenue is to educate teenagers directly about why such relationships are a bad idea. Young teens may not be fully aware that the adult in these relationships are committing a crime and can go to jail. They have probably not considered that the publicity, embarrassment, and life disruption likely to accompany a public revelation of such a relationship.”

It appears that your most compelling argument for discouraging these relationships are external to the relationship and are the result of legislation that makes the relationship a crime. On the other hand, your results showed that the young people desired the relationships that they were in. If these things are true, should not the external negative factors be removed so that teens and adults can engage in relationships they desire without fear of these negative external factors coming into play?

“They may benefit from understanding the manipulations that adult offenders engage in, and from understanding that adults who care about their well-being will not propose a sexual relationship or involve them in risky encounters.”

The study results do not seem to indicate deception and manipulation. Where is your evidence that these relationships are manipulative? What is the basis for the statement that caring adults are never interested in sexual relationships with teens? Are these encounters risky only becase of external factors? If so, should the validity of these external factors be examined?

“They should know that corresponding with adults trolling for teenaged partners can encourage offenders and endanger other youth, even when the relationships are confined to the Internet.”

Where is the evidence that such relationships endanger youth? Your study results show that there was little danger to teens in these relationships other than public exposure. Is falling in love dangerous?

“In addition to monitoring for unhealthy online relationships adults, parents and professionals working with children need to discuss the reality and inadvisability of these relationships.”

What is unhealthy and inadvisable about these relationships other than external factors? What ‘reality’ of these relationships needs to be discussed? That many teens willingly entered into, desired and enjoyed these relationships? (That would not appear to be an effective prevention strategy.)

“Further study about the nature and characteristics of online relationships in general will help to distinguish between the qualities of healthy and unhealthy relationships so that prevention can be aimed at the latter while not discouraging the former.”

What are the criteria of a ‘healthy’ and an ‘unhealthy’ relationship? Are these criteria based upon what is actually beneficial or desired by the teen or upon whether the relationship will run afoul of external limitations such as consent legislation?

“We also ned to evaluat the impact of victimization by nonforcible sex crimes on adolescents. Internet-initiated crimes, especially when perpetrated upon naïve adolescents, could involve elements of projection and betrayal that could increase their harm.”

Do you have any evidence that a teen having a relationship with an adult is at greater risk of disappointment or betrayal than a teen in a relationship with a peer? What is the evidence that the teens involved in these relationships are naïve? Your study results suggest that they had the necessary sophistication to make these decisions for themselves.

Conclusion

Your study suggests that the primary risk factor to teens in relationships with adults are the possibility that the adults in their lives will discover the relationship, that it will subsequently be reported to the police and the adult arrested and that this will result in the relationship being publicized, the details even being dragged into court. In other words, nearly all of the damage appears to be the result of the refusal by society to accept such relationships and of the laws they have enacted to prohibit such relationships from taking place. Furthermore, while these laws are ostensibly in place to protect young people from predatory adults, they appear to be only effective in criminalizing consensual and mutually beneficial love relationships between teens and adults. What is really needed is research into the negative effects of the enforcement of consent statutes on these youth as well as an examination of how the adverse publicity arising from these relationships causes them harm and emotional trauma.

Sincerely,

L. A.

Comments

What is a Childlover; What Is a Child Molester?

Sat, 22 Dec 2018 09:49:35 GMT

What is a Childlover; What Is a Child Molester?

Practical Steps for Preventing Child Sexual Abuse

In our society today, whenever one hears about children being abducted or molested, the automatic reaction is to assume that a pedophile did it. This is so much the case that the word pedophile has become synonymous with child molester. But is this association accurate? Many specialists in human sexuality have stated quite clearly that there is a clear distinction between the two. Furthermore, they have shown that much of the child molestation that takes place is at the hands of people who are not childlovers at all. So what then is a childlover?

The Definition of Pedophilia

The American Psychiatric Association in its main diagnostic manual, the DSM-IV TR, defines a pedophile as somebody who “over a period of six months, [has] recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges or behaviors involving sexually activity with a prepubescent child or children (generally age 13 or younger)”. It further states that the person has either acted on these urges or as a result of the urges has experienced marked distress or interpersonal difficulty. In other words, the pedophile may have acted upon the urges but did not necessarily do so. Sex researchers Ralph Underwager and Holida Wakefield in Special Problems with Sexual Abuse Cases wrote:

“Although the terms are often used interchangeably, a distinction must be made between ‘sex offender against a minor’ and ‘pedophile’. The former refers to a criminal sexual behavior and the latter to an anomalous sexual preference. Many pedophiles never act on their impulses. At the same time, not all sex offenders against a minor are pedophiles.” [italics mine]

Fagan, Wise, Schmidt and Berlin in a 2002 paper entitled Pedophilia wrote:

“Terms such as ‘child sexual abuse’, ‘incest’, ‘child molestation’ and ‘pederasty’ are not equivalent to pedophilia. Terms that denote sex with minors are criminal actions; pedophilia is the sexual attraction to children. Not all who sexually abuse minors are pedophilic. For example, some who sexually abuse minors may opportunistically select minors simply because they are available. Sex with a minor is not, ipso facto a determination of pedophilia. Also, not all individuals who fulfill the diagnostic criteria for pedophilia actually abuse children.” [italics mine]

Pedophilia, while considered by some to be a mental disorder, is also accepted as a sexual orientation that is not chosen. Fagan, et al. write:

“During psychosexual development, no one decides whether to be attracted to women, men, girls or boys. Rather, individuals discover the types of persons they are sexually attracted to, ie, their sexual orientation.”

The Situation Offender

“The [situational] offenders appear to be sexually interacting with the child victims for reasons other than a true sexual preference for children. The children are substitute victims, and the abusive activity may have little to do with pedophilia.”

Kenneth Lanning, Investigator’s Guide To Allegations Of “Ritual” Child Abuse

As you can see, much child sexual abuse takes place at the hands of non-childlovers. So who are these child molesters? The psychiatric community defines a ‘situational offender’ as a person who is normally attracted to adults but for one reason or another has turned to a child for sexual satisfaction. He may have poor social skills that make it difficult for him to find a partner within his primary attraction group. He may be in a sexless relationship. He may be alone after the dissolution of a relationship. Whatever the case may be, he is often also in a situation where children are available. Perhaps these are children living in his own home or children in his neighborhood with whom he is acquainted. Perhaps he attends a church or is involved in a social group where children are present. Then a situation arises (or is created by the situational offender) that gives him the opportunity to be alone with one of these children. Maybe stress, alcohol or drugs have lowered his inhibitions and he takes advantage of the situation alone with the child to find sexual satisfaction. Lanning, of the FBI’s behavioral sciences unit wrote in his 1987 paper, Child Molesters: A Behavioral Anaylysis:

“Situational-type sex offenders victimizing children do not have a true sexual preference for children. They may molest them, however, for a wide variety of situational reasons. They are more likely to view and be aroused by adult pornography, but might engage in sex with children in certain situations. Situational sex offenders frequently molest readily available children they have easy access to such as their own or those they may live with or have control over. Pubescent teenagers are high-risk, viable sexual targets. Younger children may also be targeted because they are weak, vulnerable, or available. Morally indiscriminate situational offenders may select children, especially adolescents, simply because they have the opportunity and think they can get away with it. Social misfits may situationally select child victims out of insecurity and curiosity. Others may have low self-esteem and use children as substitutes for preferred adults.”

It is cases like these that comprise the vast majority of child sexual abuse. Lanning believes that situational offenders make up 90% of all child molesters. Clearly these people are not childlovers. they have had few, if any, sexual fantasies about children. They have merely taken advantage of an opportunity that presented itself. They may avail themselves of a child or children on multiple occasions but they would still ultimately prefer an adult. For them, the child is merely a substitute for an adult rather than a preferred sexual partner.

Do Childlovers Molest Children Too?

There are occasions where childlovers also break consent laws by having illegal sexual encounters with children. In these cases, however, their modus operandi is often different to that of the situational offender. While the situational offender is merely taking advantage of a situation where a child is available to fulfill sexual needs he has been unable to fulfill elsewhere, the childlover crosses the line within the framework of a relationship with a child he may have been cultivating over a period of time. For the childlover, the child is the desired sexual partner and he desires not only sexual satisfaction, but love. While the law considers the relationship to be illegal, the childlover sees it as a natural progression, a genuine expression of the love that has arisen between himself and the child. Many childlovers, however, never cross this line, realizing the inherent dangers of doing so both to themselves and to the children involved.

Unfortunately, there are also cases where childlovers, out of desperation or anger, exhibit pathological behaviors and abuse children, not out of love but out of selfishness. The pressure of concealing their sexual identity may have become too great. In the case of exclusive childlovers — those that are not attracted to adults at all but only to children — the sexual tension may become to great to bear. Other factors in their lives may have caused an immense amount of stress to build up. Whatever the case, their normally loving and benevolent feelings towards children have been short-circuited and they act out in an aggressive, coercive or violent manner.

Preventing Molestation: Some Practical Steps

Clearly, the most important issue to deal with in child sexual abuse cases is how to prevent situational offenders from offending, since they make up the largest portion of child molesters. Since their primary attraction is not to children, it is virtually impossible to identify who they might be in advance. The best strategy, therefore, is to endeavor to educate the public at large about the possible results of stress or sexual frustration in the hope that people encountering these circumstances will seek help before they carry out their frustration on children. People who are acquainted with such at-risk persons might also approach these persons in a spirit of love and try to convince them to seek assistance.

Empower Children

Short of outright prevention, the best deterrent to child sexual abuse is an empowered child. Child molesters operate primarily with the assumption that they will not be found out. If they believe that the child involved will report their activities, however, they will be very disinclined to molest. In order to empower children, they need to be told that unwelcome sexual advances to them are not their fault and that they have done nothing bad if this takes place. They also need to understand that they can tell any adult they know about any unwelcome sexual activity, not just their parents. They also need to know that if their parents or relatives are the ones responsible for the abuse, it is still not acceptable and that their love for them is being violated and taken advantage of if they are being forced to do things they do not want to do.

Rehabilitation

Child molesters often feel great remorse once they realize the pain that they have caused by taking advantage of children. They realize that imposing their will on children and forcing them to do things they did not want to do was wrong. Therefore, part of the rehabilitation process, as well as any incarceration, must be therapy to help them see that molestation was not the correct way to ameliorate their stress or frustration and to find more productive and less harmful ways to cope with future stress and frustration in their lives. Dr. Fred Berlin of the National Institute for the Prevention, Study, Prevention and Treatment of Sexual Trauma said in an interview for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops:

“We talk about the triggers that heighten the urges that people experience, and just as an alcoholic may drink to feel better when under stress, someone who has sexual difficulties may turn to sex to feel good during stress or depression or even boredom. Part of the treatment is to teach people about these triggers — either internal states, such as stress or boredom, or external situations.”

Once they are once again in society, they need to have support groups made available that they can turn to in times of crisis to help them stay mindful of what they have learned. Most importantly, they need to have supportive families and friends who can help them to remain positive and to help them recognize the signs of distress in time to seek help.

It is also important to note that the added stigma of public notification may not be beneficial to the rehabilitation process. Fagan, et al. write:

“Community statutes require public disclosure of the fact that a given individual is a registered sex offender. To the extent that doing so may make it difficult to find housing, employment and public acceptance, such statutes may make treatment success more problematic.”</blockquote>

Working with Childlovers

In the case of amarsi, a more comprehensive program is needed. This is because amaros is a lifelong orientation and therefore one that must be dealt with on an ongoing basis. Since society is demanding that the childlover suppress his sexuality for his entire life, it has a responsibility to not only understand the causes of amaros but to make it easier for the childlover to lead a satisfying life.

Research

Currently, we know very little about what causes amaros, most research being reliant upon data gathered from clinical or forensic settings. What knowledge we do have comes primarily from forensic or clinical settings, ie, from people — childlovers and non-childlovers alike — who have been convicted of child sexual abuse or have spent time in mental institutions for uncommon sexual urges. Yet this is only the tip of the iceberg. There are so many other amarsi, those who have never acted upon their sexual orientation, about whom we know little or nothing.

Fagan, et al. write:

“Pedophilia is a diagnosis applicable to only a portion of individuals who sexually abuse children. Information has been drawn from published research about pedophilia and child sexual abuse in general to present the current state of knowledge. Despite a sizeable body of published, peer-reviewed articles about topics such as child sexual abuse, child molestation, and sexual offenders, data and our knowledge base about pedophilia have significant limitations.”

The fact that we know little or nothing about amarsi makes it virtually impossible to offer any assistance at all to people with pedophilic attractions. If we are to find the best ways to live with the amarsi in our society, we need to encourage research rather than discourage it and make it possible for amarsi to participate without fear of exposure. Considering that estimates of how many people with pedophilic feelings in our society range from 2-20% of the overall population, or 6-60 million people in the United States alone, it behooves society to take decisive steps to better understanding them rather than marginalizing and stigamatizing them.

Declassification

Pedophilia is currently classified by the APA as a sexual disorder. It most certainly is not the most common sexual orientation, but does that make it a disorder? In a paper entitle DSM-IV TR and the Paraphilias: An Argument for Removal, Moser and Kleinplatz write:

“The DSM-IV TR (2000) sets its own standards for inclusion of diagnoses and for changes in its text. The paraphilia section is analyzed for how well the DSM meets those standards. The concept of paraphilias as psychopathology was analyzed and assessed critically to determine if it meets the definition of a mental disorder presented in the DSM: it does not. The paraphilia diagnostic category was critiqued for logic, consistency and clarity, and whether it constitutes a distinct mental disorder. The DSM presents ‘facts’ to substantiate various points in the text. The veracity of these ‘facts’ was scrutinized. Little evidence was found in their support. Problems with the tradition of equating particular sexual interests with psychopathology were highlighted. It was concluded that the Paraphilia section is so severely flawed that its removal from the DSM is advocated.”

Rather than a valid classification, Moser and Kleinplatz concluded that the classification is largely the result of cultural beliefs that do not withstand scientific scrutiny:

“Which sexual interests are proscribed often changes: masturbation, oral sex, anal sex and homosexuality were once considered mental disorders or symptoms of other mental disorders but are now typically accepted as part of the spectrum of healthy sexual expression. Similarly, there are conditions that were accepted as ‘normal’ in the past, but are now classified as mental disorders (e.g., hypoactive sexual desire, sexual aversion disorder, and female orgasmic disorder). It is exceedingly difficult to eliminate historical and other cultural factors from the assessment of unusual sexual desires. As such empirically based, scientific definitions of healthy and pathological sexual behavior continue to elude us.”

If the reasons for classification are therefore societally or culturally, rather than scientifically based, should it not then be declassified? How does a liberal democracy such as the United States justify such an irrational classification?

The effect upon childlovers of this classification is grave. Even though they have usually committed no crime, this scientifically unwarranted classification isolates them and makes them fearful for their well-being. Especially in a nation whose legal precedent has legitimized the pre-emptive commitment to mental institutions of amarsi as was the case in Kansas vs. Hendricks, amarsi are driven yet further underground, going to ever greater lengths to conceal their sexual orientation. The resultant stress leads to depression, low self-esteem and lowered productivity amongst other things. In extreme cases it can even lead to some of the pathological behaviors we have already discussed.

Counselling

Currently, society expects amarsi to respect its laws, yet at the same time provides them with no way to work through their feelings. For a person with any other condition that is societally unacceptable or undesirable, there is a wealth of opportunities for discussion or therapy. People with addictions can seek medical treatment or seek professional or clerical counselling. The same goes for people with eating disorders, compulsive disorders or those suffering from depression and low self-esteem. Even people with extreme political views, be they racist, fascist, anarchist or communist, have outlets for their views as well as the right to assemble in public and otherwise propagate their ideas. But the childlover, due to the extreme prejudice against him, rarely has any safe place to turn to for succor. By making any statement at all of his sexual orientation, the childlover risks rejection by family and friends, ostracism within his community, the loss of his job or home or even being reported to the authorities for alleged crimes against children. Berlin says:

“More treatment has to be made available for amarsi. People who experience these cravings need to know that treatment is available. Society is so punitive and stigmatizing about this problem that people with these desires have to be encouraged to get help by assuring them that the will be assisted rather than hurt.”

It is unsustainable for society to expect a childlover to completely deny himself the realization of his sexuality and to give him nowhere to turn. Therefore, it is the duty of society to provide amarsi with a safe, anonymous and non-threatening means to discuss his feelings and find a way to live with them. Mental health professionals and clergy need to be taught how to deal with amarsi with compassion and understanding and to offer solutions and coping strategies rather than treatment. After all, amaros is a sexual orientation, not a disease that can be ‘cured’.

Fagan, et al. write:

“Historically, dealing with the complexity and the accompanying social ostracism have resulted in relatively few mental health resources available to persons with pedophilia, and relatively few psychiatrists or psychologists trained to conduct research or to treat the patients.”

Ultimately, the best solution will be total destigmatization of amaros and amarsi. Even if it chooses to continue its criminalization of pedophilic activity, society ought not to make non-practicing amarsi de facto criminals or social pariahs. If amarsi are able to publicly affirm their sexual orientation without fear for their safety, much of the pressure they are under would be alleviated and they would be able to have much more fruitful and fulfilling lives than they are now.

Comments

Use of the Word "Pedophilia" - A stock letter to distribute to those using the word incorrectly

Sat, 22 Dec 2018 09:46:20 GMT

Introduction

Unfortunately, our society uses the word “pedophilia” interchangeably with the term “child molester”, even though there are many pedophiles who would never dream of harming a child and there are many child molesters who are not pedophiles. It is important for pedophiles to point out incorrect usage of terminology whenever possible and to encourage the media and private organizations to make the distinction and use correct terminology.

As part of my support for Pedophile Pen Power, I have written a number of letters pointing out egregious misuse of terminology. The letter that I use is very similar in each case. I am printing a stock version of this letter here in the hopes that others will be stimulated to write similar letters themselves. Feel free to use this letter, modify it or adapt it as you see fit.

The Letter

Dear [insert name],

I am writing you concerning your website/article of [insert date] which appeared in [insert link/reference]. Whilst I am firmly opposed to child sexual abuse I must point out that your article/statement contains a factual error which is both defamatory and dangerous.

Pedophilia is a physical and romantic attraction to children. Pedophilia does not imply any action whatsoever upon this attraction. Therefore, pedophilia is not of itself criminal. Whilst many modern societies have chosen to criminalize sexual activity between adults and young people, the attraction itself is not illegal. There are a great many pedophiles who never engage in physical intimacy with young people and are firmly committed to never harming any child. On the other hand, there are many people who do molest children who are not actually pedophiles.

Ralph Underwager and Hollida Wakefield in the 1997 textbook Coping With Psychiatric and Psychological Testimony, in the chapter entitled Special Problems with Sexual Abuse Cases, write:

“Although the terms are often used interchangeably, a distinction must be made between ‘sex offender against a minor’ and ‘pedophile’. The former refers to a criminal sexual behavior and the latter to an anomalous sexual preference. Many pedophiles never act on their impulses. At the same time, not all sex offenders against a minor are pedophiles. All mental health professionals acting in an expert witness capacity should know this distinction.”

The result of such misuse is that those pedophiles who have never committed any offense are needlessly stigmatized by society, leading to further isolation. Having to live a life in which full realization of one’s sexuality must be foregone due to its illegality is exceedingly difficult. Society needs to recognize that there are many who do precisely that and should strive not to stigmatize them as it currently does. Instead, it should work to provide these people with not only the ability to publicly acknowledge their orientation, but full access to counseling or therapeutic services without fear of ostracism, discrimination or perseution.

I would urge you to reconsider the wording of your statements and to pay especial attention in the future to not use incorrect terminology.

Sincerely,

[Insert name]

Recent Recipients

The following parties/organizations have received this letter or one similar to it recently:

Corrupted-Justice.com (Terminology is used incorrectly on this page)

Shy Keenan, Phoenix Survivors (Keenan consistently mixes terminology incorrectly)

NAOMI House (Ran a defamatory billboard campaign. The campaign has since ended and the pictures have been removed from their website.)

Comments

What Is an Amarso? Favorite Son or Subversive?

Sat, 22 Dec 2018 09:43:17 GMT

Introduction

Sitting on a park bench

Eying little girls with bad intent

Snot is running down his nose

Greasy fingers smearing shabby clothes

Drying in the cold sun

Watching as the frilly panties run

Feeling like a dead duck

Spitting out pieces of his broken luck

—Jethro Tull, Aqualung

For the most part, society has given up the conception that the amarso is a monster, an homme armé to be feared as he travels about the countryside, leaving a trail of terror in his wake. Rather than being relieved, however, that it has ridded itself of its bête-noire, society feels even more uncomfortable. The monster it has long reviled has not gone away. Instead, the wolf has donned sheep’s clothing and entered mainstream society; the evil, supposedly once readily identifiable, has become invisible. Worse still, the evil has become familiar; the childlover is a highly-respected member of the community, the last person you would expect to be one. Worst of all, rather than fearing him, the children in the community love him.

Authors writing to warn people about the threat posed by childlovers and how they can be spotted rarely cite the highly publicized abductors and rapists of children, nor do they cite the ranks of priests who have brought disgrace to their profession and their church by abusing their position to prey on the youth entrusted to their ministry. Instead, they paint a picture which in any other context would be considered admirable. They admit that the childlover is good with children and that he is loved by them. They admit that he is a respected member of the community. They often even admit that he often does not even act upon his sexual attraction, and that when he does, he rarely uses force. Indeed, the ‘experts’ on amaros create for us an image of somebody that every family would like to count amongst their friends.

From whence, then, arises the loathing that society heaps upon the amarso? How is it that the childlover is unable to capitalize on the good will he has fostered in the community and gain acceptance for what he is? Firstly, the secrecy in which the childlover purportedly carries out his relationships with children is alarming. That which cannot be seen is always more terrifying than that which is visible. Secondly, the fact that the amarso is an ordinary member of society forces it to look into the mirror when looking for the amarso.

Most importantly, however, society is unable to allow an emotion as powerful as love to be left in the hands of children. To do so, to allow children to have romantic and sexual feelings too early would be to abnegate the absolute control society prefers to wield over its youth. Society, in its role as the guardian of its heritage and guarantor of its posterity considers itself uniquely qualified to manipulate and coerce its youth. It fully understands that love is a force more powerful than the tools it has at its disposal to ensure obedience and loyalty: patriotism, duty and responsibility. Therefore to allow children to love before they have been molded into compliant citizens is to risk losing their loyalty and respect. This makes the childlover, in the eyes of society, a subversive: the person who, in the words of King Solomon, “stirs up and awakens love before it pleases”. Society must therefore employ the more reliable tools of intimidation and fear to quell this threat. As Machiavelli wrote in The Prince, “While it is better to be both feared and loved, it is safer to be feared than loved.”

Before amarsi, therefore, have any chance of being considered as anything but dangerous elements of society, they must address all three of these primary issues. They must have the courage to take their relationships public, show society that while they are a part of society they do not define it, and prove that they will not corrupt and subvert society’s youth, but reinforce and affirm its positive values.

Know Thy Enemy

“Do you think you could detect a pedophile in a police line up simply by the way he looks? Maybe you picture him as a dirty, old man or a young scar-faced man. Pedophiles or serial child sex abusers come in every age, size, race and social class. They may be the hard-working father and husband next door. They may be the Professor at the local University or the pastor of a youth group. You cannot tell a child molester by his looks.”

Source: Susan Marie Jeevens, ‘Profile of a Pedophile’

Strictly speaking, a childlover is somebody who loves children. More specifically, the childlover is a person who is romantically or sexually attracted to children. Quite often, the childlover is open about his general love for children, and is often encouraged and appreciated by the parents whose laughing children are delighted by his stories and the attention he gives them. The childlover communicates well with children because he appreciates the pure, untainted nature the child, not yet corrupted by the conditioning of socialization, possesses. Unlike other adults, he is less likely to try and suppress this original nature, instead quite happy to allow it to manifest itself as it will. The child gravitates to the childlover not because he is funny or entertaining, but because he is genuine. Children can quite easily distinguish between those who pretend to like them and those who actually relate to them.

The ability to relate to children well, of course, is not exclusive to the childlover. Many people who are not childlovers also possess this gift. What then, distinguishes the childlover from any other person who is good with children? Why is one person able to work with children his entire life with no romantic feelings towards them whilst the next person is beset with butterflies in his stomach every time a particular child enters the room? When does the platonic love many people have towards children cross the line into romantic love? This quantum leap, between ordinary love towards children and a very extraordinary love towards them occurs when a person not only relates to the young person, but respects him to the point that he treats him as an equal partner in the relationship. Only when the young person and the adult can see eye to eye can true romantic love blossom.

Regrettably, there are many cases when adults do use children for their own selfish aims, exploiting them and forcing them into situations they do not wish or for which they are not prepared. At the same time, however, there are many cases when a true and edifying love is demonized by society and the child is traumatized firstly by being rent from his lover, and then by being forcefully conditioned into believing that the positive feelings and sensations he experienced with his lover were wrong, improper and dirty. Yet the reason that society chooses to perceive these relationships in this light is not, as many might conjecture, because of its negative experiences with child molesters any more than it condemns consensual relationships between two adults because of its negative experiences with rapists. Instead, society looks dimly on romantic child-adult relationships because they take place in secret.

Most childlovers would argue that the romantic portion of any relationship with a minor must be carried out in secret due to the perception of society to such relationships. Yet in this they are only partially correct. True, society, for many reasons, is very resistant to such relationships, but I would suggest that many such relationships could gain acceptance by the parents of the young person involved if the two involved parties were open about their feelings for each other. Certainly, admitting the attraction to the parents is fraught with risk; still, there is the chance that the parents will realize the depth of the attraction as well as appreciate the courage it has taken to be honest with them about the true nature of the relationship.

This is not as far-fetched as it sounds. Consider for a moment the normal friendships a young person has. Those friendships, even with peers, that are conducted in secret are generally looked upon dimly by parents. Parents like to know who their children’s friends are, and resistance on the part of the young person or the friend to be open about the friendship raises suspicion. In the case of friendships with adults, parents are often quite happy for their children to have adult friends so long as the adults in question are known to the parents and do not attempt to hide the relationship from them. It is the fear of the unknown that is greatly responsible for parental opposition to any sort of relationship. To be sure, openness is not the only factor involved in determining parental consent for a romantic relationship between their child and adult. But parents confronted with an adult openly requesting their blessing for his romantic attraction to their child are likely to at least consider the possibility. Let me clarify here that I am speaking at this point about a romantic, not a sexual, relationship.

What does the childlover achieve by openness? Firstly, he obtains a degree of separation from those who would harm and exploit children. Secondly, although he may be denied the opportunity to pursue his romantic attraction to the young person he loves, he gains the respect of the parents. Lastly, and most importantly, he emphasizes to the young person that their love is nothing to be ashamed of.

The Enemy Within

“Though there is no hard and fast profile of a pedophile, here are some general characteristics:

Popular with both children and adults.

Appears to be trustworthy and respectable. Has good standing in the community.

Are primarily (but not always) male, masculine, better-educated, more religious than average.

Are usually family men, have no criminal record.”

Source: Tammy L. Ruggles, BSW, MA, ‘Profile of a Pedophile’

Society would be happy if the amarso did look like Aqualung. It would be easier if the amarso was a loner, socially maladjusted and lurking on the edges of acceptability. Yet as this example proves, even those opposed to amaros recognize that the childlover is often just the opposite of the stereotype. Indeed, he is often the pillar of society, a person looked up to and respected within his community. While not all childlovers in fact fit the profile I have presented, the fact that society perceives that they often do presents it with a difficult dilemma. It is very likely for this reason that society has chosen to emphasize cases of stranger abductions and of evil, coercive relationships perpetrated by child molesters. It is much more comfortable to castigate the person who clearly violates society’s mores than to condemn the person who, in many ways, embodies the ideal to which many aspire. In order to validate its own morality, society needs to excise the elements it finds distasteful in such a manner that it does not directly relate to them. Therefore, it attributes to them characteristics that emphasize their differences. Criminal elements emerge from minority and immigrant populations and childlovers are drawn from the ranks of those unable to adjust to the mainstream.

When it becomes clear, however, that the childlover is married with children, has a university education, attends church and is a member of civic organizations, society is unable to cope. To cast such a paragon out is tantamount to admitting that society itself is flawed. How else can it explain that one of its favorite sons possesses a sexual orientation it considers anathema?

Yet no matter how much society denies it, it is evident that amarsi, far from being a fringe group on the periphery of greater society are actually a cross-section of it. The definition or profile of an amarso is as fluid as society itself and no stratum of the population is amarso-free. The singular thing that sets the childlover apart from everybody else is the fact that he has a different aesthetic to the rest of society, and possesses a special gift in his ability to recognize and fully appreciate the surpassing beauty and charm of the young.

If the amarso is actually much more like society than he is different from it, why is it so difficult for him to garner affirmation for his sexual orientation? Why does society feel that it is necessary to constantly demonize him and set him apart from the mainstream? Firstly, society is naturally conservative and resistant to that which is different. The reason for this is simple self-preservation. The fact that the society has survived as long as it has is the result of having done things a certain way. The amarso, and anybody else who possesses an alternate sexual orientation, challenges this tried and true way of doing things, and therefore, in the common wisdom of mainstream society, presents a credible threat to its survival.

The reason for this irrational fear is a lack of understanding. People by nature fear the unknown, and they remain woefully under-informed about the true nature of amaros. They fear that amaros is contagious and that to affirm amarsi is to risk that their number, as a proportion of the whole, will dramatically increase. They also fear that romantic relationships with adults will result in the young people involved themselves becoming childlovers when they reach adulthood, despite ample evidence to the contrary. But perhaps worst of all, people fear that, since the amarso is so much like them, they might themselves be or become amarsi. Only once their own insecurity is addressed and they realize that amaros is an involuntary orientation rather than a conscious lifestyle choice will society be able to look at the amarso next door and see him as a person rather than as a monster.

The Child Inviolate

“The first priority of pedophiles is having sex with children.”

Source: Susan Marie Jeevens, ‘Profile of a Pedophile’

“A child not always recognizes when he or she is being abused, manipulated, or groomed by a pedophile. Unless the pedophile is a sexual sadist, he does not have to threaten a child into silence. The trust, gifts, secrecy, and “relationship” are enough.”

Source: Tammy L. Ruggles, BSW, MA, ‘Profile of a Pedophile’

Society at large prefers to believe that the childlover is interested solely in a sexual relationship with young people. The connotations of accepting that the childlover truly loves the child, and that the child loves the childlover, are simply unacceptable. Therefore, the loving relationship between a young person and an adult friend which is discovered to have a romantic element is immediately demonized. The loving affections of the childlover, once admired and even encouraged by parents are now seen as nothing more than efforts by the childlover to curry the favor of the child.

More than anything else, the childlover encounters the most difficulty of all convincing people that he truly loves children, and that any physical element to the relationship is an affirmation of the love he feels for the child rather than the raison d’кtre for the relationship. The reasons for this difficulty are two-fold. Firstly, society, which has conditioned itself to view young people as asexual beings, can neither understand nor accept that they have the capacity—indeed the inclination—to have romantic and sexual relationships. Secondly, it is unable to comprehend that anybody could be romantically or sexually attracted to a child.

Therefore, a loving romantic relationship between a young person and an adult is an impossibility. Either the relationship is purely platonic and edifying by the standards of society, or it is evil and harmful to the child. The society that has difficulty accepting its own emerging sexuality and its own departure from the strict moral codes of its recent past is unable and unwilling to accept the sexuality of its children. Therefore the person who awakens the ‘non-existent’ sexuality of the child must be evil, and the efforts previously praised must be denounced as mere manipulation.

Even the mental health community has accepted this bias. Amongst other things, the American Psychological Association’s definition of a childlover states that the “…the [pedophile] may be attentive to the child’s needs in order to gain the child’s affection, interest and loyalty and to prevent the child from reporting the sexual activity.” The possibility that a childlover is attentive to a child’s needs because he actually loves the child does not apparently even merit mentioning.

Since society is unable to accept that an adult can have true romantic feelings towards a child, it has also given the romantic attentions the adult bestows upon the young person a different name. Rather than courting or romancing the young person, the adult is said to be grooming him. The buying of gifts, sharing of common interest and other relationship-building activities, considered desirable and positive in peer relationships, are considered subversive and dangerous when they occur between a child and an adult. Even when the young person fully consents and participates in the relationship and benefits from the love he has received and the affirmation and building of his self-esteem, society is inclined to take great pains to convince the young person that he was taken advantage of by his adult friend.

In fact, all of the language used to describe the relationship between an adult and a young person is designed to paint the childlover in the colors of a subversive. Indeed, he is perceived to be a danger of the most insidious sort: a person who undermines and corrupts the social order from within. This perception fully explains the McCarthyist zeal with which many people pursue amarsi and perceived amarsi. For them, the childlover is the serpent in the Garden of Eden, offering their children the enticing fruit of the tree in the center of the garden.

While parents do indeed worry that somebody could abuse or molest their child, they often possess an even more powerful underlying fear: that their child will consent to, and enjoy, an intimate relationship with somebody else. The sexual self-awareness of the child is perceived as a direct threat to the authority of the parents, who fear that the child’s affections and loyalty will transfer to the lover.

Until childlovers can convince parents that they do not wish to compete for the young person’s affections, but to augment and reinforce the emotional framework the family already provides to the young person, will they ever have any chance of acceptance in society. For the childlover who is already considered in other respects to be an asset to his community, this is not as insurmountable a task as it seems. He needs to learn to redirect attention from the ways he is different and focus it on the ways he is similar. If society is convinced that he is supportive of the fundamental values of society rather than a threat to the established order, they will be much more prepared to entrust their most valuable asset—their youth—to him.

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Significant Other: Living with a Childlover

Sat, 22 Dec 2018 09:40:45 GMT

It can be very difficult to discover that your partner, the person you have learned to love and trust, is a childlover. Even if you are confident that they have never engaged in illegal activity, you may have feelings of inadequacy, jealousy and confusion as to what their feelings mean and how it affects your relationship. Here is some practical advice on dealing with your partner and his attraction.

Honesty

As in any relationship, honesty is very important if a relationship with a childlover is to have any chance of lasting. If you have discovered your partner’s attraction independently of that partner, you need to approach him with your discovery. This may be a very difficult task to complete. Firstly, you may fear that your partner will believe that you have been spying on him and therefore undermine whatever trust you have in your relationship. Secondly, your partner may very well have been hiding his attraction not only from you but from himself and therefore may be reluctant to admit his attraction to you. For this reason, it is important to approach him in as loving a fashion as possible. You need to tell him that you still love him and want to continue in your relationshp despite his attraction but that you need to find a way to proceed together.

Even if your partner has come out to you of his own accord, there are many issues that must be dealt with in a spirit of openness and honesty. Both of you need to discuss how openly and how often you wish to discuss his sexual orientation. You may be willing to discuss his thoughts and feelings but uninterested in having him point out to you every attractive child that he sees or just how sexy he thinks that child is. It is also important that he listen to your thoughts and feelings and that you are able to be open about how his sexual orientation is affecting you and your relationship with him. If you are having trouble, you need to be able to express this to him and expect that he will be just as accepting of you as you are of him.

Love and Respect

You have a right to be loved and respected for who you are regardless of what your partner’s sexual orientation may be. The fact that you have chosen to stay with your partner despite his orientation does not mean that you should accept any less from him than you would from any other partner. If your partner is unable to give you just as much love and respect for who you are as you could reasonably expect from another partner, then you should not stay with him. Yes, your partner does have sexual feelings and desires for children, but if he is unable to appreciate you, not only for your open-mindedness, tolerance and longsuffering, but for the human being that you are, then he is not worthy of your love.

At the same time, by your decision to remain with a childlover in a relationship, you have taken on a commitment to be understanding and supportive of his very difficult position in life. It is exceedingly difficult in our society to live with a sexual attraction that is so roundly rejected and the result of this rejection is a great deal of pain, depression and doubt. Your partner will often need you to help him through these difficult times. Your uncritical encouragement, compassion and kindness will go a long way towards overcoming much of the negative feedback he receives from society. But do make sure that he is in turn just as willing to help you through your difficult times. His path is difficult, but your path alongside him is no less difficult.

Jealousy

It is perfectly natural to feel a certain amount of jealousy when your partner looks longingly at an attractive child. Even if you know that nothing will ever come of his attraction to the child, you may feel inadequacy or even despair that you can never possibly measure up to the child. You have a right to be appreciated for your own beauty and qualities and seeing your partner ecstatic about the beauty or charms of a young child can leave your own feelings of self-worth undermined. Indeed, this may be one of the greatest challenges of living with a childlover and is one of the greatest reasons that open communication is of vital importance. You need to be able to discuss these feelings with your partner and your partner needs to be sensitive to them. You may need to remind your partner that you also need praise and appreciation and to know that he thinks that you are beautiful as well.

You may find that your jealousy is even more acute if your partner happens to have a special child in his life. It may be very difficult for you to see your partner with this child, to see his boundlesss joy and admiration for the child. You may feel left out and unwanted when you see his excitement and anticipation about an upcoming meeting with the child. You may wonder if he can ever love you that much or be so happy to see you as he is to see that child. If you are having these kinds of feelings, it is important to tell your partner about them. You should tell him that while you wish to share his joy at seeing his young friend, you deserve just as much love and appreciation as the child receives.

Sex

Regardless of your partner’s sexual orientation, you have a right to a fulfilling sex life. If your partner is unable or unwilling to give you sexual satisfaction, then you really should not remain with him. If you sacrifice your own sexual needs in order to stay in a relationship with a childlover, you are depriving yourself of a vital ingredient of your own happiness. You should never be made to feel that you are simply a substitute for something your partner cannot have. You have a right to be appreciated sexually for who you are —an adult— and to have a partner that is attentive to your sexual fulfillment.

Role-play is one thing that many amarsi and their partners engage in. It is one way for the childlover to act out his desires in a safe and legal fashion. It can also be a valuable tool in helping the non-childlover partner to understand pedophilic attraction. If you choose to engage in role-play, however, you should make sure that you maintain your own sexual identity rather than becoming simply the tool of your partner to fulfill his unattainable fantasies. You should never let yourself become a mere object for the gratification of your partner. You have a right to your own fantasies as well, and your partner should be just as willing to allow you to realize or act out these fantasies as you are to help him realize his.

Compassion, Not Pity

One of the most harmful traps that a childlover can fall into is that of self-pity. Some amarsi virtually wallow in it. When they do so, they lose all opportunity for self-development and enrichment because they are so consumed with the task of feeling sorry for themselves. As the partner of a childlover, you may find your partner trying to enlist your help for his pity party. But going along with this is beneficial neither to him nor to you. Whilst your partner certainly does need your compassion and understanding, one of the finest things you can do for him is to help him pull himself from the quagmire of self-pity that he may get himself into. Remind him of the many positive things that he has to be thankful for in his life. He has a loving and understanding partner, he has freedom, health and a specially-attenuated sense of aesthetics. Whilst these things perhaps do not fulfil his deepest desires, they are not to be trifled at; many people lack even these things.

Conclusion

Living with and loving a childlover is never going to be an easy task. If you choose to do so , you need to be careful to stand up for your own rights in the relationship. While your partner does need a lot of love and support in dealing with his sexual orientation, he needs to recognize your needs as well. If you both maintain committed to being open about your feelings and frustrations, finding solutions to them and seeking ways to make one another happy, then you have a chance of enjoying a very unique love relationship.

Comments

Child Sexuality and Modern Society

Sat, 22 Dec 2018 09:38:36 GMT

Many people assume that as a childlover, I must appreciate the move in society towards the sexualization of children, particularly in the news media. They think that I must derive some sort of benefit from the encouragement of increasingly sexual behavior amongst children as well as the marketing of increasingly provocative clothing for children. Unfortunately, just the opposite is true. The commercialization of sex and the elevation of a child as a sexual object are precisely the opposite of that for which I strive.

The Hypocritical Society

I find it astonishing the amount of child sexualization that society has accepted in light of the repressive attitude the same society takes towards sexual activity by young people. It is disingenuous to allow the constant flow of sexual images and messages reaching young people today and then push to teach abstinence to these same young people in the nation’s schools and churches. It is not even necessary to watch television to be exposed to these messages. Advertising is full of images that sexualize children, and many films targeted at youth have blatantly sexual themes.

At first blush, this may indeed appear to be a boon for amarsi by those who do not understand us. It is, however, very counterproductive to our cause. The primary reason is that the main message emerging from modern media is that sex is a commodity and that sexiness is a method by which one can obtain what he/she desires.

Sacred versus Profane

While the site of a young provocatively dressed girl does indeed arouse me, my goal is not to obtain the girl for merely sexual purposes, but to become her friend and her lover. Sexual activity is not my primary focus. My primary focus is establishing a relationship with the girl, to enter her world and to reveal to her my world; to see the world through her eyes, and enable her to capture a glimpse of the world she does not yet know. Sexual activity with her is then the physical expression of the emotional and spiritual bond that has grown between us, an intimate affirmation of the trust and respect that we feel for each other.

One of the primary objections raised by those opposed to amaros is that young people are not sufficiently equipped to cope with the deep emotions related to sexuality. I would counter that young people are very much a product of their environment. If their environment constantly reinforces to them that gratuitous sex is acceptable, even desirable, then it is very unlikely that they will understand that sexual activity can be a profound spiritual experience. If their environment demonstrated to them that sex can be a positive and enriching experience with somebody that you love, rather than teaching them that sex is ‘dirty’ or ‘nasty’, then they are much more likely to develop a healthy attitude towards sexuality.

Ignorance Is Not Bliss

The real danger to young people today is that they are unable to reconcile the blatantly glamorized sexual media images they receive with the current of repressive attitudes towards sexuality that they receive from society. Yet more damage is done by withholding practical information from young people. A lack of information is not a deterrent. Especially in a world awash with sexuality, we should expect that children will experiment with their sexuality. Instead of telling them to stay away from something that they find exciting and know to be immensely pleasurable, we should provide them with as much knowledge as possible so that they can distinguish themselves between sacred and profane love.

If young people are not emotionally equipped to handle sexual relations, it is not their fault. It is our fault for not guiding them correctly. Proper role models, open discussion and a more positive attitude towards sexuality would empower young people to make sensible choices about when and with whom to become intimate. Society has tried for long enough to deny the universality of sexuality, and like St. Paul has gone about persecuting those who have more enlightened views towards sex. The road to Damascus is nigh.

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The Scarlet Letter

Sat, 22 Dec 2018 09:36:10 GMT

It is now official. Brad Henry, the governor of Oklahoma, has signed a new scarlet letter measure, Senate Bill 35 into law. Under the new legislation, which takes effect on the first of November this year, will require the driving licences of registered sex offenders to bear the text ‘Sex Offender’. Within one hundred eighty days of the law coming into effect, all sex offenders in the state will be required to surrender their existing licence and receive a new one. This way, everybody who might need the bearer to identify himself will know that he is on the sex offender registry. If the affected person wishes to apply for a job, apply for housing, open a bank account, write a cheque, apply for a loan or credit card, purchase alcohol, rent a car, check in to a hotel, deal with the government, travel by air or any of a myriad other things, he will, in effect, have to inform the people that he is dealing with that he is a registered sex offender. Many people will say that this is a good thing. But is it really?

I had a good long look at the text for this Draconian measure and there was no clause anywhere that prohibited discrimination against a person because of his status as a sex offender. There is no similar law on the books anywhere else in Oklahoma law. We must conclude, then, that it is now open season to discriminate against sex offenders in the state of Oklahoma. A shopkeeper might refuse to sell merchandise to a sex offender. A motel might refuse him a room. Prospective employers might decide not to hire him and landlords migh refuse to allow him to live in their properties. A bank might refuse him a loan. Bureaucrats might become less helpful. To add it all up, it could well mean a life of endless frustration for somebody whose crime may not have even been violent. Somebody who did something foolish as a juvenile might be forced to wear this scarlet letter for the rest of his life.

This new law, along with the already Draconian Oklahoma Sex Offenders Registration Act may make life so difficult for sex offenders that they might make one of two choices. Firstly, they might choose the path of civil disobedience by refusing to get a new licence and refusing to inform the police of their address. In fact, this is already taking place. Law enforcement agencies throughout the state are reporting a decline in registrations. Furthermore, they are reporting that some people, after being told multiple times that their chosen residences are off limits to them, stop coming back. Secondly, of course, a sex offender might decide to move to a different state where registration requirements are not so stringent. Actually, there is a third choice as well. A person might become so frustrated, alienated and isolated from society that he might decide to lash out at that society. He might actually do a lot of harm. Is this ostracism really what we want? Will it really provide the protection that its proponents claim that it will? Not likely. If anything, it will do much more damage than good.

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Introduction To Cultural Anthropology: The Sambia

Fri, 21 Dec 2018 21:42:33 GMT

by Michael Moffatt

Today we are talking about our last, and 6th or 7th, Famous Culture -- the "Sambia" of New Guinea. On Weds. we're having our second hourly. I'll devote the last 20 minutes of today's lecture to a brief summary of the relevant readings for that hourly.

I discussed last time how the Yanomamo as studied by Chagnon were in almost the last place in western hemisphere still unreached by global civilization in the mid-1960s -- the Parime highlands between Venezuela and Brazil.. The only other place so remote -- perhaps the very last place in the world where one could still find relatively unknown cultures as late as the early 1970s -- was New Guinea (Viz). There is no such place today as far as I know, in the late-1990s. Even New Guinea, by much ethnographic evidence, has now very much joined the global world. Dozens of exotic cultures were documented by anthropologists in New Guinea at this very last moment, in the 1960s and 70s. Perhaps the best known of them are the Sambia of the eastern Highlands. Why? Because they led such odd sex lives, their men at least -- a mix of homosexuality and heterosexuality otherwise unknown to anthropology, and more than a little challenging to western psychology.

The Sambia are not famous because they were the only such culture in New Guinea. It turns out another 20 or 30 nearby cultures had similar odd sexual beliefs and practices. It also turns out that this had been quietly known among NG specialists in anthropology since the 1930s.. Only in the 1970s, however, did anyone feel free to conduct extensive research in one such culture, and to write it up (as Guardian of the Flutes, 1981, by Gilbert Herdt). Before that, prior to the western sexual revolution of the 1960s, sexuality, especially homosexuality, was apparently considered just too indecent and inappropriate for intellectual study and academic writing in the English-speaking world (50s, Latin).

Gilbert Herdt, our Famous anthropologist in this case, just happened to document these practices among the Sambia. A number of other NG cultures could be equally famous if somebody else had managed to study and write up their odd men's sex lifes in them first.

What were these practices, in any case? How did they fit into wider Sambian culture? And what sorts of challenges do they offer to wider concepts of human sexuality cross-culturally? I'll switch into the ethnographic present, 1974-1976, the years of Herdt's field research with the Sambia.

Politically and in social structure, as Herdt knows the Sambia in these years, they are somewhat like the Yanomamo. They are simple farmers, shifting horticulturalists who move around from time to time, to avoid their enemies and to keep their jungle gardens from getting exhausted. Herdt is trying to keep their identity as a group confidential in his 1981, so there are few photos of them in it -- here is about the only one, a rather dim black and white of their villages in their jungly envirnoment (viz). They live in an isolated highly forested area on the edge of the Highlands. They live in patrilineally organized small villages and clusters of villages, with headmen but no strong political leaders. These clusters of villages either exchange women in marriage with one another, in which case they are allies (once again, like the Y., often favoring cross-cousin marriage), or they fight with one another they engage in ongoing war against one another (and possibly against some other groups it's not clear in H.).

The sexual beliefs and practices we're about to outline are believed by the Sambia to make men who are capable of having babies with women ‚ they're about sexual reproduction of children. But they're also men's rites of passage, rituals of collective ordeals intended to build the strong and brave men who can be good warriors defending their own villages and families against their enemies. So here we go:

In ways Herdt gives you multiple examples of in the reading I've assigned, the Sambia believe that semen, male sexual fluid, is all important to human life, is in short supply, and must therefore be circulated through people, through both males and females, very carefully.

Semen is male essence of course; A female's sexual essence is her menstrual blood ‚ which is very scarey to men ‚ it along with vaginal secretions and lubricants during sex are the stuff of elaborate prohibitions and avoidances for men ‚ but menstrual blood is also an indication of the sexual and reproductive power of women (in ways H. also details in your reading, an opposition betwene women and men based in part on fears of one anothers sexual substancescuts all the way through the culture. Here's one of the few drawings in Herdt's book, of how a married family and their children sleep at night, in their hut (viz)

Both women and men, the S. believe, are born with an internal organ called a tingu, somewhere in the lower body cavity, that secretes their sexual substance . The tingu of females is believed to be full of blood at birth; it is believed to develop naturally, with no ritual help; it is believed to become fuller and fuller of blood that by late teenage years, this blood suddenly bursts out of a girl, at her first menstruation, signally that she is more or less ready to reproduce ‚ she is, without elaborate initiation, 'naturally' ready for sex, marriage, and having babies (there is a brief woman's secret initiation just before her first act of sexual intercourse with a man, however, about which H. could find out nothing)

The poor old male tingu, on the other hand, the Sambia believe, is born shrivled and dry -- its ability to produce semen is developed slowly through childhood and adolescence, through certain practices. These practices take place in a lengthy male initiation process, which literally takes years, and proceeds as follows.

A baby, male or female, is believed to be formed in its mother's womb by regular infusions of semen from its father. Since according to S. culture, it's very dangerous for men to have sex with a women (though they believe it is sexually pleasurable) -- since it's dangerous and they also believe that a man must have penis-in-vagina sex many times with his wife to make a baby -- these two things contributes to the notion -- discussed at length in your reading ‚ that the S. see some sex as "work" [sex like this] and some as "play" [examples to follow].

The only substance contribute the mother makes to the baby in the womb, it is believed, is blood, which passes from mother to baby. Everything else is built up from the father from his strong and life-giving semen

After birth, the baby gets all its nourishment for a while from the mother, from her milk. The mother's ability to have lots of breast milk, however -- and the physical toughness she needs to get through childbirth -- are given to her in part by male semen, whose route into her body for this purpose will be explained later.

At the age of 7 to 10, Sambia boys are taken away from their mothers (girls continue to live at home); boys are taken to a men's house in the village, where they will live for the next ten or so years of their lives. In their first three or four years in this house, mature men start teaching them men's ritual secrets, threatening them with death if they tell these secrets to women. They introduce them to complex ritual associations between the penis, sacred flutes played only by the men and associated with powerful spirits, and nose bleeding (mature males often get rid of the pollution they believe they take in when they sleep with women by forcing themselves to have violent nose-bleeds). And they introduce them to the key act by which they are given what they need to mature (older teenage boys in later stages of male initiation are inforcers of all this men's knowledge, beating up younger boys who don't concentrate or go along with all they're being taught).

What is this key act by which their maturation is insured? Regular fellatio ‚ putting the penis of another male in their mouth ‚ regular fellatio of an older youth, physically and sexually mature, aged roughly 14-18 [we'll come to their point of view when we get to later stages of this] ‚ the younger boys are taught to fellate the older teenagers, and -- all important, to bring them to orgasm and to ingest (swallow) the semen or sexual fluid the older boys' penises produce.

For this is the whole point of S. initiation ‚ or one of its main points ‚ to build up the poor little dry baby tingus of the young boys by feeding them the semen of older, stronger, late-teenage young men.

The Sambian technique, one-way fellatio (young boys always fellate older boys; an older boy never fellates a younger boy) ‚ Sambian ritual fellatio is not a casual business. It's supposedly very secret. When it's done, it's not done around other males in the men's house: it's done very privately out in the bush at night between an older and younger boy who have agreed to met. The older boy -- the fellated -- represents his superior position by standing, while the fellator represents his youth and status inferiority by kneeling in front of him.

At first, the older partner demands the fellatio, or older boys tell younger boys to find someone to fellate or they'll get beaten up.. Later, juniors regular initiate fellatio. Juniors are reluctant at first, eventually becoming used to it, H. reports. They are motivated by fear of punishment, but they are also typically soon motivated by what might be called cultural desire -- by the pervasive cultural instruction that they must do it to become men, which is of course what they want to become. Once you learn and accept S. men's culture, in fact, the older fellated male is actually doing the younger fellator the bigger favor. The fellated is only getting a little sexual pleasure from the act. The younger fellator is acquiring the the much more valuable, all important, semen -- at a certain risk on the part of the older partner -- any male can have his semen depleted if he's not careful.

Another part of the Sambian cultural justification of fellatio at this early stage of initiation is, the yonger bosy are told: just as very little S. boys sucked white milk from their mother's breast when they were infants, now too they're sucking white semen from the older boys penises. In various instructions and cultural symbolism to which they're exposed, the penis of the older boy = mother's breast; semen = mother's milk

The younger males rarely report any particular sexual pleasure from being fellators -- this is their introduction to sex as "work," as something difficult you must do for aanother important reason. As trhey approach puberty, however, some of them begin to find it stimulating ‚ they report getting their own erections while doing it (they presumably just have to let this early male erections subside; given the S. concern with the value of semen, masturbation is virtually unthinkable among them, H suggests -- also, the S. believe that male wet-dreams, involuntary orgasms while asleep, are equally regretable, and have to do with bad spirits coming and seducing them in their sleep, and making them waste their semen.

While engaging in this initial fellatio, the younger males are repeatedly told to avoid all contacts with mature females; women's sexual substances are believe to be especially dangerous to males at this fragile developmental period in partiuclar -- only when you've gone most of the way through this process, they are told, and have a well-functioning tingu, and know a lot of male secrets, will you be ready for dangerous but exciting business of mature adult sex with women.

Fellatio as initiating males practice it must always be non-reciprocal -- older males must always be fellated, younger males must fellate -- but between groups of older and younger boys, fellatio follows a relatively collective or promiscuous pattern; fellators and fellateds can switch off regularly; there's no particular person-to-person bonding reported. But: you can only fellate a non-kinsman, the Sambians say, someone in the same category of male from whom you might get a wife in marriage. To have homosexual relations with a male kinsman is the same as -- and as bad as -- incestuous sex with a close female relative; it's believe to be as bad as sex with a sister. One of the big points of the article I've given you as that, according to Herdt's analysis in it,: semen flows through the same channels as hetersexuality and marriage; it defines the same group relations as heterosexuality and marriage.

After learning all they have to learn and practicing fellatio several times a week for 3 to 6 years, around the ages of 13 or14 the younger boys start to mature physically and sexually -- their bodies develop, their sexual organs get bigger, their muscles get stronger, and the Sambians say, in effect, "hey, look, it works; this is why we do it!"

So the older men in charge of boy's initiation throw a big public intiation ceremony for all the boys of this age, to report that they've made it to junior adult, as it were -- to a phase which Herdt calls "bachelor"; this status is also considered "junior warrior" in the prestigous Sambian adult male warfare complex. Soon these older male teenagers will be physical authorities over a new crop of younger boys being taken into stage 2 at the ages of 7 to 10. And they now switch positions in the fellatio of maturation -- they going from being the weak and inferior fellators to the strong and virile fellated.

Now, in exchange for the semen they can donate to the younger males -- now, for the first time, not too surprisingly, these older teenage males talk of experiencing significant sexual pleasure on a regular basis for the first time. From now on, as your reading indicates, sex starts being "play," for fun, as much as it was "work" before (to develop), and will be again (with your wife, to make a child).. According to psychological work H reports elsewhere in the book from which this article was taken -- H has also had training in psychoanalysis --now adolescent Sambian and adult males report being erotically turned on by images of younger male's mouths -- they "fetischize" them, they compare them, they fantasize about them, Herdt tells us. But they also do the same about women in their sexual fantasies even at these years, even when they're still engaged in exclusively male homosexual practices.

As I noted before, however, older adolesent males being fellated lose valuable semen to younger men. How can the older males tolerate this? First of all, with their maturity, it is believed that their tingus are really working, strongly enough to sustain some semen withdrawals for a good collective purpose like helping younger males develop. And by now these older youths have learned some mens ritual secrets about things other than penises that help them build their semen - the nuts and sap of certain trees, one or two meats, a few magical practices. Nevertheless, these older youths are also advised to limit the duties and pleasures of being fellated somewhat -- to be moderate in the good works of their fellatio to the masses.

Still another 3-4 years after this, at the ages of 17-18, as late as 21 -- after years of being fellated bachelors, the men are now married. This is only marriage, stage 1, however. Their wife is typically a woman arranged to be their wife from birth (men arrange their children's marriages at birth in many cases, often agreeing to exchange daughters between sons when all the parties involved are still infants or children) -- the wife is typically married (stage 1) when she is 14 or 15, two or three years before her first menstruation (which in a typical third-world, non-modern nutrition pattern occurs at the ages of 17 or 18).

Couples married stage 1 don't set up housekeeping together -- the young man stays in the men's house, the woman with her family. But they do meet quietly to talk and for regular sex. Only it's oral sex, the husband now being fellated by his wife -- who ingests his semen, and this semen is believed to toughen her up on the eve of her own maturity -- for menstruation itself, for the rigors of childbirth, and to have abundant milk thereafter (I told you women would be getting semen too, other than through sexual intercourse -- here's how).

During this stage 1 of marriage, Sambian males also go on being fellated by younger males, so this is acutally a period of bisexuality for them, when it comes to oral sex -- being the all-powerful fellated for younger and weaker females and males alike. How come yonger males can go on fellating these older half-married males if female substance is so dangerous to younger males. Shouldn't a penis that is being regularly fellated by a female be very polluting to any male who approaches it? Apparently not, because the female has made contact with it with her mouth, not nearly as polluting as her vagina. And a premenstrual female is far less dangerous to a maturing Sambian male than a menstrual one is.

Which is related to the logic of why, stage 5, a male must suddenly stop engaging in any homosexual fellatio at all, now and for the rest of his life -- once his maturing wife has her first menstruation, once they celebrate Sambian marriage part 2, once they move in together to set up household on a fulltime basis, and once they experience -- for the first time in either of their lives -- man-woman penis-in-vagina sexual intercourse.

Now the man is considered strong enough and knowledgeable enough to engage in the work of sex with a woman for the purpose of procreating his own children. Now he must no longer allow younger males access to his nuturing penis, for it will now be a threatening penis -- too polluted by sex with women to ever be safe for men again.

As a little transtion for him, his wife can go on fellating him, for her own toughening and his own pleasure, presumably. And sometimes young husband go on sneaking a little male fellatio for a year or two, Herdt discovers.. But on the whole, Herdt reports, this odd pattern of homo- heterosexual development is so carefully taught, so culturally supported, so natural in Sambian assumptions that almost everyone goes along with it, quite strictly; H. estimates about 95% compliance, with the 5% deviants deviating in both directions -- too much heterosex when they're supposed to be homosex, too much homo sex when they';re supposed to be heterosex. But the compliance rate again is, in H's educated guess, a very impressive 95%.

This Sambian pattern ought not to be possible by most western assumptions of sexual development. Most western psychologists would probably argue that, whatever way a maturing male has enjoyed sex during his first ten years of sexual experience -- whatever his basic 'orientations' have proven to be, or been encouraged, during these years -- however he has been sexually in his formative years, so he should go on wanting to be for the rest of his life. Homosexuals just do not turn into heterosexuals like this, most westerners would probably assume

But maybe most westerners would be wrong. Maybe human sexual nature is more flexible, more susceptable to cultural conditioning, than common western suggest. The great founder of modern psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud himself believed that human sexual nature was 'naturally' bisexual, or polysexual; Sambian patterns seem to leave the possiblities of both homosexual and heterosexual pleasure equally wide open, though distributing them carefully across the phases of the male life cycle in very different proportions.

Even when the female claimed that she was above the age of consent, if she was shown to be younger, then the accused could be convicted.¹⁷ What about when the girl was just slightly above the legal age? The Georgia Supreme Court argued that in such cases the jury should take into account the mental and physical development of the girl. In Pounds v. State (1898), the court said that, although the girl assaulted was over ten years old, if the jury concluded that "she was a child in stature, constitution and physical and mental development, and they believed from her age and appearance that she was incapable of consenting," then the accused should be convicted of rape, "although she made no objection to the intercourse."¹⁸ The southern appellate judiciary insisted, however, that the indictment had to indicate the age of the girl and the prosecution had to present sufficient evidence of her age; otherwise, the judges would not hesitate to grant defendants a new trial.¹⁹

Or possibly, as Herdt himself believes, though Sambian men enjoy their homosexual pleasures, they enjoy their heterosexuality even more. The opposition between homosexuality and heterosexuality is our problem. As they construct male sexual development, what we see as HS they see as their youthful way of getting ready for women. They don't deny these can be erotically enjoyable. And as mature adults they often rememeber their boy-to-boy erotic pleasures happily, almost as though they were parts of their innocent youth. But the whole point of all their activities, as their culture defines them, is to get them ready as strong developed men for the much more exciting and reproductively and culturally important bueinss of sex with women, the stuff of real adult life, and the stuff in male sexual fantasy even more exciting that youthful sex with boys (Herdt works on this through analysis of dreams, listening in on male sex talk, and free assocation techniques -- they have happy memories of sex with one another, but their real lust is for women).

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Running Away with Older Men: The Real Tragedy

Fri, 21 Dec 2018 21:40:17 GMT

In recent years, much has been made of the phenomenon of teenaged girls running off with older men. This is not necessarily because it is happening now significantly more often than it did in the past. Instead, there are two factors that have brought it to the fore. The hysteria about amaros and the Internet, which makes it possible for girls to conduct relationships more privately than they have been able to in the past. Yet while society sees that such occurrences are tragic, it fails to understand why they are tragic. Society believes that the tragedy is that these girls run away, but the real tragedy is that they must run away.

If a girl is living in a home where she is fully satisfied, she will see no reason to absent herself from it. Even when she is not fully satisfied, she often still elects to remain. So what is it that causes a girl to abandon her primary support network and rush into the arms of an older man? There are many possible reasons. Here we will explore three: she is not receiving the support she needs at home; she is unable to pursue the relationships she desires; and she feels unempowered.

Lack of Support

While the family unit is meant to be the primary support network for each of its members, it often falls short, especially in a society that is highly materialistic. Rather than cultivating human relationships, family memebers are more object-oriented. Television, computers and other diversions take precedence over people. Longer hours at work are necessary to obtain the objects people want or believe that they need. Unfortuantely, it is the young who suffer the most from this. Economically and politically disenfranchised, they have little choice in how the family operates. Particularly in suburban or rural settings they may feel even physical isolation due to a lack of mobility.

It is not then particularly surprising that a girl who believes that she is playing second fiddle to her parents’ career or other interests may choose to remove herself from the home. After all, what emotional benefit is she receiving? Especially if there is somebody who pays attention to her, talks to her about the things that are important to her and listens to her, she may well decide that she would be better off somewhere else. If she perceives that the other person can provide not only the emotional support that she craves but also the economic support that she needs, her decision to leave may be even easier.

Prohibitions

Perhaps the girl has all of the economic support that she needs and her parents work hard to provide emotional support as well, yet at the same time prevent her from realizing her romantic or sexual needs and desires. This is not uncommon in a society that steadfastly refuses to accept the sexuality of the young, insrtead futilely attempting to convince them to suppress these desires and to classify the desires themselves as unhealthy.

Each young person has a different level of romantic and sexual desire as well as a different rate of psycho-sexual development. So while discouragement or prohibition of romantic activity may not affect some young people significantly, it may be wholly unacceptable to others. In these cases, regardless of the reasons given by the parents why they wish for them to refrain from physical intimacy and romantic encounters, their entreaties will fall upon deaf ears. For such a girl, her organism has begun signalling her that it is ready and desirous of such activity and she will be unhappy until she satisfies her longings.

In some cases this girl begins her quest wholly unprepared. If she has been shielded from experience and information, then she often lacks the power of discernment and her understanding of human nature is so rudimentary that she is incapable of making a wise choice of partner. This is especially the case if her primary sources of information about romance and relationships have been television programs, films, pop music and pulp fiction. Fortunately, it appears that, at least in cases where romances take place over the Internet, young people are sophisticated enough to be able to decide for themselves what relationships they wish to pursue.

Disempowerment

Throughout human history, puberty has been widely accepted as the threshold of adulthood. Only in the 20^th century did the idea of the ‘long childhood’ come into fashion, with disastrous results. For whille information is more readily available than ever before and society, in many ways, is more liberal than ever before, young people are being expected more than ever before to remain obedient and dependent. While their bodies are sending them powerful hormonal signals telling them to make their own decisions and be independent, society is telling them that they are incapable of doing so and striving to deny them the information that would allow them to do so. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that the average age of puberty has fallen significantly in the last hundred years. Therefore, enforced ‘childhood innocence’ is being imposed for an ever longer period on young adults whose genetic hard-wiring is patently incapable of accepting it.

It is no wonder, therefore, that many young people choose to rebel against the authorities in their lives, some of them going so far as to remove themselves from the sphere of influence of the authorities limiting their independence. While some youths may submit to the ever-more-visible hand controlling their lives, for others, this influence is stifling enough to cause them to abandon whatever security they may have had in order to gain their freedom.

Conclusion

In a society that recognized the sexuality of young people and accepted their sexual aspirations rather than repressing them, fewer young people would be inclined to engage in secret liaisons. If families were to trust young people with information rather than enforcing ignrance and entrust them with responsibility rather than enforcing compliance, young people would better gain life experience and the ability to make wise decisions. If society were to accept that human attraction can take place even between people of disparate age and encouraged openness about such attractions, those adults genuinely intersted in forming loving relationships with young people would have the opportunity to prove their motives and young people interested in adults would have a safe environment in which to select a partner. Until these fundamental changes take place in our society, it is unlikely that the number of girls running away with older men will decline.

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Pharmacological Child Abuse

Fri, 21 Dec 2018 21:37:58 GMT

The first long-term study on the effect of Ritalin™ on preschoolers has been published in the Evil Empire. Not surprisingly, considering the prevailing tendency to prefer pharmacological rather than holistic approaches to behaviour modification, the study concluded that, whilst risks do exist, the stimulant can be effective at dampening the ‘hyperactivity’ of some of the youngsters. Whilst the studies authors stress the effectiveness of this drug in some cases, the study concludes that fully four in ten of its subjects experienced complications from the use of methylphenidate (the drug’s generic name). In eleven percent of the cases, the side effects were so severe that the children had to drop out of the study completely. Overall, the drugged children grew less and gained weight less rapidly than is normal for their age range. These findings ought to be enough to result in loud public calls to put an end to the drugging of children, yet only a few prominent voices are saying this and these voices are largely drowned out by the pro-doping lobby. Whatever happened to the Hippocratic Oath? I thought that doctors were supposed to not do harm, yet it is obvious that many children are indeed being harmed by this drug. The explosion of prescriptions of this drug in the Evil Empire over the last decade (it has been in use for forty years) and a half, not only for preschoolers but for minors in general, is nothing less than institutionalised abuse.

The study’s authors plead their case for drugging, saying that the children involved exhibited extreme behaviours such as “hanging from ceiling fans, jumping off slides or playing with fire”. Indeed, these behaviours can be very dangerous for young children to engage in. I wonder, however, why these children were doing these things? How much (or little) exercise were the children receiving? How much sugar were the children eating and were they receiving a balanced diet? How much love and attention were they receiving from their families? Could these behaviours have been a call for attention from children not receiving enough or a reaction of the children to the regimented indoctrination institutions they were being forced to attend? Were they protesting against having too much expected of them? Were these children simply sick and tired of being forced to be like everybody else and sit quietly and submit to their indoctrination? Rather than drugging children into submission, I think that the educational establishment needs to be re-engineered to meet the needs and desires of children rather than the desires and expectations of adults.

What is methylphenidate anyway? It is a stimulant, very similar in structure to cocaine. It is a Schedule II controlled substance, meaning that there is a potential for abuse due to its addictiveness. It is already widely abused by folks who crush the tablets up and snort them like cocaine. Its side effects include sleeping difficulties, appetite loss, irritability, nervousness and a host of other unpleasant things. Five percent of children on this drug report hallucinations involving worms, snakes or insects. In other words, this is a truly nasty substance to be forcing children, whose behaviour does not meet society’s expectations, to be taking, especially when, over the forty years that this drug has been around, not a single study has ever been conducted on its long-term effects. If we as society do not like the way that certain children are behaving, we need to be more creative in discovering why they are behaving as they do and finding outlets for their energy that are not destructive. Drugging them into submission is a blunt “ and dangerous ” object to wield against them.

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The New Sexual Revolution

Fri, 21 Dec 2018 15:37:36 GMT

The new sexual revolution is upon us. As religious conservatives and media sympathetic to them watch on in horror, this revolution takes root. It does not yet spread like wildfire; its spread is more haphazard, like the hot spots that flare up in some brush fires. Still, there is good reason to believe that this spread will hasten in coming years, despite the frantic efforts of many who would like to see it stopped. No matter how hard churches, schools and parents try, they are not going to stop their children — even their younger children — from having sex. Sexual knowledge and curiosity — much of it fueled by media, popular culture and, more recently, the Internet — has now saturated the awareness of children to the point that it is inevitable that more and more of them will attempt to engage in sexual activity. Many of those will succeed. Whether this new sexual revolution becomes an experience that affirms and celebrates the sexuality of all people or a traumatic experience that threatens not only the moral fiber of society but the psychological and physical wellbeing of its participants depends very much on how adults respond to it.

Of paramount importance is information. Young people have a right to it. They deserve factual information about sexuality as well as its risks and responsibilities. They deserve to be empowered to make sexual decisions for themselves and have the right to both privacy and respect from the adults in their lives. If society continues its present course of trying to restrain them, keep them ignorant and coerce them into useless chastity pledges, the results will be catastrophic. Young people will engage in more high risk sexual activities in locations ill-suited for such activities. Furthermore, they will have fewer opportunities to explore how their sexuality might exist within the framework of a friendship or love relationship.

The New Openness

Up until recently, perhaps, the new sexual revolution appeared to be merely present amongst adolescents, who, since society began wrongly classifying them as children, have formed the vanguard of rebellion against established standards of behavior. Furthermore, open sexual rebellion amongst adolescents generally occurred only within certain segments of the adolescent population and was largely limited to experimentation with peers. Nowadays, however, casual sex amongst adolescents has become ever more acceptable within the mainstream, especially as the long-standing standard of committed relationships, or “going steady”, has eroded in some quarters, leaving the standard of casual encounters, or “hooking up”, in its place.

The Internet has also been an important factor and tool in the increase in adolescent sexual exploration. Not only has it revolutionized communication and access to information, but it has also presented new opportunities for exhibitionistic and voyeuristic behaviors that have never existed before. Ease of use has put a wide range of activities within easy reach of even novice computer users. Now young people can, from the safety of their homes, access all manner of information, talk explicitly with relative anonymity and engage in social networking up to and including the arranging of erotic liaisons.

The Internet has also made it very easy to realize an even more rebellious form of adolescent sexuality: sexual liaisons with adults. Certainly, these sorts of relationships have always existed, but the Internet has made them much easier to establish and maintain without detection. Increasingly, when teens go missing, investigators check their computers to look for traces of activity on social networking sites where they may have met somebody that they decided to meet in real life. Where such relationships may have been nearly impossible to conduct via traditional means, the Internet has liberated young people and put the choice of partner back into their own hands. Traditional gatekeepers — parents, guardians and other trusted adults — can now be effectively circumvented by young people. Furthermore, contrary to popular belief, many of these young people are finding immense enjoyment from these liaisons. A 2004 study by Wolak and Finkelhor showed that a very high percentage of these young people not only knew from the outset that the meetings would be sexual in nature, but also returned for second, third and additional meetings.

Nowadays, the sexual revolution is not just limited to adolescents. Primary school students are increasingly engaging in sexual activity. Indeed, in recent weeks there have been two major stories about children having sex at school. In the first case, it has emerged that students and teachers in an Indiana school for months covered up a tryst between two sixth graders that occurred during school hours in a busy classroom with a teacher present. In the second case, fifth grade students at a school in Louisiana had sex in a classroom they found unattended. And whilst many primary school students may not be engaging in intercourse, they are increasingly engaging in other sexual activities such as petting and fondling as well as discussing sexuality amongst themselves in ever more explicit terms.

The Backlash

Religious conservatives have already been fighting youth sexuality for many years. In recent years, however, these efforts have been ratcheted up, partly in response to the failure of previous initiatives. In the nineties, their primary weapon was abstinence education. With the beginning of the Bush presidency in 2001, of course, they gained a sympathetic ear and were able to make their abstinence programmed de facto federal policy. These programmers have now been proven to be ineffectual. Bearman and Bruckner’s 2005 study, Adolescent Virginity Pledges and Risky Sexual Behaviors, showed that the majority of teens who took virginity pledges eventually broke their pledges and were more likely than non-pledges to engage in unprotected sex. The pledges only served to delay sexual debut. Pledges generally married younger than non-pledges.

In the face of this fiasco, the religious right regrouped and has since launched two major new initiatives. The first is the so-called “born again virginity” movement, targeted at those who have had pre-marital sex. The idea is to get these abstinence backsliders to renew their commitment to pre-marital abstinence. The second initiative indicates that the conservatives have also taken note of the increased occurrence of sexual activity amongst primary school students. Their current answer to this phenomenon is the Purity Ball. At purity balls, girls as young as ten or eleven up through teenaged girls accompany their fathers to a solemn ceremony where they pledge to their fathers to remain chaste until they marry.

As well as these primarily church-sponsored campaigns, prosecutors are increasingly becoming aggressive in their prosecution of young people who engage in sexual activities with each other. In many places, particularly in the American Midwest, prosecutors are using consent laws as a bludgeon to punish young lovers even if they are age peers. Despite a degree of public outrage over some of these incidents, these zealous prosecutors vigorously defend their actions as being in the public interest. In some cases, judges have become activists as well. Recently in England, a judge, sentencing a twenty-three year old man for a relationship he had started with a twelve-year old girl, noted that despite her active participation in the relationship the girl needed to be “protected from herself”.

On the Internet front, websites targeting young people that provide candid information about sex are under assault. One of the most open, All About Sex, where young people could get non-judgmental answer to even highly controversial questions, was voluntarily closed down by its operators, who felt increasingly intimidated in the Bush era. Sugar and Spice, a site that I run on Puellula, has also come under harsh criticism in recent years and several people have tried to get it shut down. As well as suppressing this supply of information, efforts are being redoubled to limit the access of young people to the Internet. Filters are becoming more commonplace and, in some areas, mandatory. Some schools, like the St Hugo of the Hills Catholic School in Michigan are banning students from using popular social networking sites such as MySpace. Many groups are calling on such sites to increase monitoring of traffic on their sites as well as limit the access of minors to them.

The Response

It is not possible for the genie of child sexual liberation to be put back into the bottle. No matter how hard conservatives oppress, children will find new avenues, new ways to circumvent the limitations being placed on them. As they de-mystify sex for themselves and discover that it is an enjoyable pastime, they will not easily give it up. If they are grounded, they will turn to the Internet. If their Internet privileges are taken away, they will turn to their mobile telephones. If these are taken away, they will turn to their friends who have access to these technologies. If all else fails, they will remove themselves from homes and environments that are oppressive. The more clever children may pay lip service to the status quo, saying the words and going through the motions that are expected of them, knowing full well inside that they have no intention of being shackled any longer. Others will simply scoff at these attempts and raise the ire of those wishing to indoctrinate them. Like other liberation movements before them, children will gain inspiration and courage as they hear the stories of others who have broken the mold and charted their own course. The Internet makes the dissemination of such accounts easier than ever before. Furthermore, the Internet is the medium of the young, who are often much more skillful at its use than the adults trying to restrain them.

If the oppression continues, the sexual encounters the young people will have will remain risky and the potential for satisfaction will diminish. Rather than being able to explore their sexuality in their homes, where they have the time and privacy they need, they will be pushed towards rushed encounters in public and semi-public places, like the two cases in schools mentioned earlier. Anonymous encounters or encounters with relative strangers will be more common, rather than encounters that take place within the framework of a friendship. Many encounters will be accompanied by the excessive use of controlled substances. Many others will take place without adequate protection. Some participants may find themselves coerced, cajoled or pressurized into encounters that they might not wish to pursue. In short, many of the high risk behaviors seen in the free love era and in the earlier stages of the homosexual liberation movement will grow in evidence in the era of the children’s sexual revolution.

If information is withheld from children by adults, they will turn to the information sources that they have available: popular media, the Internet and their peers. Whilst they might find some useful information, they will likely receive the warped view of sexuality and the roles of genders in sexual relationships that are propagated by popular culture. For lack of better role models, they will be more likely to imitate the behavior of the hip hop artists, pop stars and movie actors that dominate the media. They will take their lessons from the songs, films and television programmers produced by these celebrities.

The Solution

It may well be impossible to convince religious conservatives of how misguided their approach is. As their morality is not rational, no amount of rational reasoning with them will be of any effect. The only effective approach is to attempt to mitigate the effects of their efforts. Where one information resource is suppressed, another one will rise. Where one avenue of communication is blocked, another presents itself. Where one door is locked shut, another is opened somewhere else. For every place where ring the voices of condemnation and intolerance, the sounds of encouragement and hope are raised somewhere else.

Young people have their own sexual liberation in hand. Where today one hundred defy convention, tomorrow will be a thousand. And from that thousand will emerge ten thousand more. As those young people become adults, they will join those of us who have encouraged them to encourage those who are still struggling for their emancipation. In time, there will be too many voices for emancipation for the forces of oppression to overcome.

This article originally appeared in True Innocence Magazine.

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Is it Possible to Have a Meaningful Relationship with a Young Girl?

Fri, 21 Dec 2018 15:34:18 GMT

Many people mistakenly assume that a girllover is solely attracted to young girls for sexual purposes because they do not think that it is possible for an adult to have a meaningful relationship with a young person I believe, however, that it is indeed very possible, and can be very beneficial for both parties. Our society teaches us that young people are incapable of thinking for themselves and clings to the idyllic myth that children are a blank book. Yet while young people have a more rudimentary education than those who have completed their schooling, they are by no means incapable of having deep thoughts.

I remember as a 10-year old boy pondering a great many things that have been pondered throughout the ages by our most august thinkers. Fortunately, I had a very good adult friend (non-sexual) who was very much like a mentor to me, with whom I could discuss my ideas and nascent philosophies. He always treated me as an equal, not condescending, and rather than telling me what his perception of the truth was, he asked me questions structured so that I could see the inconsistencies in my logic or gain affirmation for my conclusions. Admittedly, I was by no means a typical child. Nevertheless, I remain convinced that many such children do exist, and that it is indeed possible to have very deep relationships with them.

That being said, most relationships in the world are not terribly deep on an intellectual level at all. What is it that keeps two people who are physically attracted to each other together? In most cases, it most certainly is not sharing a deep understanding of Hegel or Kant, but a commonality of experiences, values and backgrounds. That is to say that by and large, people wind up choosing partners who are from a similar socio-economic, ethnic, cultural and religious background. These ties are strengthened yet further by sharing specific experiences and memories with the partner. There is no reason to believe that such commonality is not possible between two people of disparate ages. Yes, there are differences, but these can be overcome, just as in today's multi-cultural world many people overcome great differences in order to forge a deep relationship with the person they love.

I am often asked what I would talk about with a young girl if I were to go out with one. My answer usually starts by asking what adult lovers talk about. Most of the time, they talk about relatively mundane topics: the weather, who they met in the street, what happened at work etc. Having a university degree is by no means a prerequisite to forming a meaningful relationship with anybody. Therefore, I would talk with my young lover about things that we both find interesting. Moreover, the more time that we spent together, the more memories we would create together to talk about and remember later.

For some reason, people presume that because a young person has not completed their education that they have nothing to say. What a nonsense that is! Anyone who has been around young people knows that they are full of ideas. While many adults choose to treat young people and their ideas in a condescending fashion, they ought to learn to listen and enjoy. Young people have a lot of ideas and opinions. They would love the opportunity to share them with others. Some of us have chosen to listen to them, and for that, we have been richly rewarded.

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Child Protection: Where New Draft Law Falls Short

Fri, 21 Dec 2018 15:30:39 GMT

Amidst great fanfare, yet another draft ‘child protection’ statute has been introduced. The new law, the Children's Safety Act of 2005 promises to get tough on sex offenders to ensure that they are unable to get close enough to children to harm them. On the surface, such a goal seems noble. In a year that has seen such high-profile cases such as Jessica Lunsford, Sarah Lunde and Shasta and Dylan Groene, the public, hyped to a fever pitch by sensational ‘child protection’ advocates such as John Walsh, is baying for blood. Unfortunately, however, this new law does not address the real sources of the problem of child sexual abuse. All it achieves is to brand yet more visibly those who have been convicted of such offenses in the past, ensuring that they will be yet more stigmatized and unable to re-integrate into society. Fortunately, at least one voice, that of Patty Wetterling, a United States Senate hopeful and the mother of a missing child, is questioning several of the provisions of the draft bill.

The Children's Safety Act of 2005, drafted by Republican representative James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, seeks to do the following:

create a national, publicly-accessible (via the Internet) sex offender database;

ease the transfer of sex offender records across state lines;

broaden the definition of ‘sex offender’ to include misdemeanors;

increase monitoring of sex offenders who have been released from prison;

increase sentences for sex offenses against children.

Sensenbrenner has drafted his bill to combat what he refers to as a “national crisis” of “monsters” who are targeting children. Whilst I agree that every case of sexual violence against children is tragic, the two hundred or so ‘stereotypical abductions’ that occur each year do not constitute a national crisis. On the other hand, the eleven million American children living below the poverty line are indeed a national crisis. Unfortunately, however, the hordes of inner-city and rural poor children do not have nearly as much media appeal as the handful of beautiful, middle class children who are snatched from their suburban bedrooms in the dead of night. Furthermore, the bill fails to acknowledge or address the reality that the vast majority of child abuse occurs in the child’s own home at the hands of his own parents. It also conveniently forgets that only a small percentage of those convicted of sexual offenses against children reoffend.

When he announced the bill, Sensenbrenner was joined by the ubiquitous publicity hound John Walsh, who launched his career on the unproven claim that his son, Adam, had been abducted and sexually molested (His son was abducted and killed, but police have no way of determining if he was molested, since only his head was ever found. The case remains unsolved.). Walsh added to Sensenbrenner’s hyperbole of a “national crisis” with the equally ludicrous statement that the draft law is “the most important piece of child-protection legislation in the history of the United States”. Personally, I would think that early twentieth-century legislation that curtailed the exploitation of children in factories was of vastly greater import to the cause of protecting children.

The provisions of this new draft law will commit large amounts of resources to apply unproven remedies to an insignificant problem. Publicly-accessible offender databases have not stopped evil acts against children from occurring. Both John Couey, who allegedly confessed to killing Jessica Lunsford (but has pleaded innocent), and Joseph Duncan, who has been charged in the case of Dylan and Shasta Groene, were registered sex offenders at the time of their alleged offenses. Both had been previously been convicted of felonies. Both were subject to frequent monitoring by law enforcement. Duncan served all of a twenty-year sentence for an offense he committed at the age of sixteen. In short, none of the provisions of Sensenbrenner’s new law would have prevented these terrible acts from occurring.

On the other hand, these new provisions will serve to further isolate and stigmatize released sex offenders. Whilst it is not unreasonable to expect law enforcement to monitor released sex offenders, it is cruel and unusual punishment to make registries available to the public and therefore a violation of the Eight Amendment to the United States Constitution. In addition, public registries violate the Ninth Amendment’s guarantees of the right to privacy. Public registries expose a former offender to job discrimination, housing discrimination, public ostracism, harassment and possibly even violence. The former offender must live at all times in fear of discovery and can easily become disillusioned and embittered, even to the point of becoming pathological.

Worse still, Sensenbrenner’s new draft would make absolutely no distinctions between types of sex offenders. Under this law, an eighteen-year old who had sex with a sixteen-year old would be treated the same as a forty-year old who raped a twelve-year old at knifepoint. A thirty-year old who had a consensual (albeit illegal) sexual relationship with a fifteen-year old youth would be treated the same as a thirty-year old who molested an eight-year old child after drugging him. Offenders who committed offenses before reaching the age of majority would be treated no differently than adult offenders.

Fortunately, at least one well-known child advocate finds this one-size-fits-all approach to be flawed. Patty Wetterling, whose son Jacob was abducted in 1989, said of the bill “The challenge is, you can't treat all sex offenders the same; they’re not.” Wetterling, a native of Minnesota and the head of a foundation named after her son, plans to seek the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate seat that will become vacant in 2006. She prefers the tiered system in place in her home state that distinguishes between violent and non-violent offenders.

Mark Kennedy, a Republican representative also from Minnesota, backs the bill despite its flaws. Kennedy, who plans to seek the same Senate seat as Wetterling, acknowledges that the bill has weaknesses, but has this to say: “On balance, this is a bill that advances the safety of our children, and it will have my support.” In other words, the bill is damaged goods but at the end of the day it’s the thought that counts. I wonder if this is the same sentiment that prevailed when the United States Congress recently voted to extend the Civil Liberties Emasculation Act (aka the Patriot Act). It is truly shocking that the American people stand by and watch as this confederacy of dunces systematically strips them of the very rights that their nation has come to symbolize.

Comments

Protecting Girls from Themselves?

Fri, 21 Dec 2018 15:25:29 GMT

A number of recent cases have once again shown the idiocy of consent laws. In these cases, adults have been sent off to prison for consensual relationships with young girls who actively participated in — even initiated — activities they found enjoyable with a person of their own choice. In fact, the active role of the girls in question have even been acknowledged by the judges in these cases. So why do we continue to criminalise such activity when it is increasingly evident that children are indeed able to determine if they wish to be initimate with another person?

In the first case, a young Welsh girl gave her minders the slip and went out on the town. During that time, she encountered a twenty year old painter and made it quite evident that she wanted to have sex with him. He subsequently took her to his home and at some point asked her how old she was. Her response? “Does it matter?” Following this, the pair had intercourse twice. She was found by authorities searching for her the next day. Whilst she told them what she had been up to the previous night, she subsequently refused to cooperate with their investigation into the event. By all accounts, the young girl looks older than she is. In fact, her lover was apparently shocked when he was told that she was only ten years old.

Fortunately for Liam Edgecombe, both the prosecutor and the judge accepted that he believed that the girl was sixteen years old (the age of consent in Wales). In fact, both of these officials made telling statements at the trial. The prosecutor said that there was no doubt that the girl had consented to sex, adding that it was only because of her age that the activity was considered rape. The judge was more direct: “She was looking for a man and got what she wanted.”

Of course, all of these statements about the girl’s obvious desire to have sex were qualified by other statements by the main characters in this farce that indicated their belief that she needed to be protected from herself. Edgecombe’s barrister, Janet Gedrych said “she is a vulnerable girl and needs protecting from herself”. This comment came shortly after Gedrych described how the young girl had virtually jumped on Edgecombe. The judge, Roderick Evans mentioned that he needed to “balance the need to protect young girls and the need to punish Edgecombe”.

The second case is nearly as absurd as the first. Twenty-three year old Michal Lockwood met a twelve-year old girl over the Internet. After several months, during which the pair swapped naked images and professed their love one for another, they agreed to meet in person. At that point, the girl was thirteen years old. During the first meeting, although they kissed and snuggled together, there was no sexual contact. A month later, however, the two lovers arranged to meet again and at that point engaged in sexual activities (but apparently not intercourse) in a hotel room. The relationship came to light when the girl told school friends about the relationship and these friends in turn informed their parents.

Once again, there is no question of consent. The girl in question willingly was involved in a relationship lasting several months. She met Lockwood in person more than once, indicating quite clearly that she felt comfortable with him and desired to be with him. Both partners expressed their love for each other. Even the judge acknowledged that the girl was an active participant in the relationship, but added that “girls of this age must be protected from themselves”. Aha…

The phenomenon of young girls falling for older men has been explored by playwright David Harrower in his play Blackbird, which recounts the tale of a twelve-year old who becomes involved with a forty-year old man and the consequences of that relationship over fifteen years. The volatile subject has obviously spurred some very strong reactions. Harrower, however, says that he has been approached by quite a few women who had relationships with adult men as pre-pubescent girls and reacted positively to his play. “They absolutely concur with what is written in the play. They were not abused. They knew what they were doing when they were twelve. I’m not going to argue with them.” Nor should we.

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Proposition 83

Fri, 21 Dec 2018 15:22:03 GMT

Last week, California voters approved Proposition Eighty-Three overwhelmingly, by a margin of seventy-one percent to twenty-nine percent. The measure, which is the most Draconian of the so-called ‘Jessica’s Laws’ to take effect so far in the Evil Empire, bans people on the sex offenders registry from living within two thousand feet (six hundred metres) of a school or a park, requires lifetime satellite tracking of sex offenders, makes more sex offenders eligible for indefinite, involuntary commitment to mental hospitals and increases sentences for a number of offenses. In other words, the Golden State’s voters have passed a resolution that runs afoul of the constitutional ban on being punished twice for the same crime (no matter what anybody says, this measure is indeed punitive), spits in the face of the ban on cruel and unusual punishment and effectively bans anybody on the offenders registry from living in most urban and suburban areas. Yet even before the proposition’s supporters could finish their bubbly, a federal injunction blocked key provisions of the law pending judicial review of its constitutionality. Furthermore, prosecutors in Iowa, where a similar but less Draconian law has already been in effect for a couple of years, are warning openly that the law may be doing more damage than good.

Evil Empire District Judge Susan Illston issued a temporary restraining order against the proposition the day after the election in response to a legal challenge to the legislation by a sex offender whose offense dates back two decades and has lived a clean life in his community with his wife ever since. The lawsuit states that the new measure “effectively banishes John Doe from his home and community for a crime he committed, and paid his debt for, long ago”. Judge Illston herself believes that John Doe’s challenge will succeed, stating that the proposition “is punitive by design and effect”. In fact, the court agreed to keep the plaintiff anonymous in order to protect his safety, a tacit admission that ‘naming and shaming’ offenders can cause real danger to them.

The current challenge pertains primarily to the two thousand foot rule, not the other provisions of the measure. It also seeks to clarify if the law can be applied retroactively or if it can be applied only to new offenders. Still, it is an important step in the fight against the imposition of a new era of Jim Crow laws that seek to marginalise society’s new underclass, ensuring that they will be unable to find gainful employment, housing and access to professional services. Indeed, in Iowa, where such a law already exists, even its proponents are realising that it is having a negative effect. Experience with the law has shown that offenders affected by the law either live in outlying or rural areas where they are isolated from their families or they are disappearing and going underground rather than complying with the law’s reporting requirements. Corwin Ritchie of the Iowa County Attorneys Association has said that the law gives a false sense of security as well as “isolating an individual for whom isolation might aggravate the possibility of re-offending”. He also points out that the residency requirements are largely ineffective, as ninety percent of offenses are not at the hands of strangers but at the hands of family members, friends and others to whom a child’s parents have entrusted his care.

Whatever the result of the current challenge, more challenges are necessary. More importantly, better education of the public is necessary to show them what these laws will actually achieve. People need to realise that this law will net not just violent offenders, but non-violent and even juvenile offenders, effectively sentencing them to a life of isolation, ostracism and poverty. In order to comply with these laws, many of these people will have to live on the periphery of society, unable to find jobs or housing. Many will wind up friendless and even homeless, lacking an even rudimentary network of support to work through their issues. Is this what society really wants? Do we really want to create a marginalised, bitter underclass with unresolved issues? How can this possibly be in the public interest?

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Why we are Making Little Progress in our Cause

Fri, 21 Dec 2018 15:19:20 GMT

Introduction

Many of us amarsi continually complain about the lack of progress we are making in winning acceptance for our orientation. Indeed, we are quick to point out how resistance to amaros is in many places actually increasing rather than the reverse. At the same time, however, the methods we are employing are inadequate and must be augmented by other types of activities if we are ever to have a chance of winning acceptance from the wider public.

Unfortunately, the reason that our methodology is inadequate is often because there is actually no methodology at all as we are doing little or nothing to promote our cause. Instead, we often rely on the work of those who do not share our orientation at all to demonstrate its validity. What methodology we do have is too heavily reliant on facts and generally deficient in emotional and aesthetic content.

The Childlover ‘Militia’

Niccolo Machiavelli quite strongly discouraged the use of mercenaries in his primer for pragmatic dictators The Prince. The reasons he gives for his distaste for hired help is their unreliability and the fact that they can just as easily turn against you as fight for you. Yet too much of our apologetics today relies on the work of researchers whose support for our cause is, at best, neutral.

Many of us spent much time during 2002 rejoicing the publication of Judith Levine’s book Harmful to Minors. Yet, while the cause of a less restrictive approach to adolescent sexual experimentation is indeed related to our own, Ms. Levine has quite clearly stated that she did not argue in favor of adult-child relations at all. The only indication whatsoever that she might be sympathetic towards our cause is her article Summer of Love, where she discusses the feelings she felt towards an adult photographer when she was a teenager at a summer camp.

Many of us also applauded Professor Harris Mirkin for his article The Pattern of Sexual Politics, when the furore over it erupted last summer. Yet once again, although we may consider Mirkin’s thesis to be positive for us, he gives absolutely no indication that he supports our cause. As a political scientist, he has merely pointed out the parallels in various sexual movements and the public reactions to them over the years. While he does point out the inefficacy and irrationality of the public debate over these movements he does not endorse them at all.

Perhaps a more dangerous tactic is the tendency of a few people to point to the 1998 Rind report to prove that child-adult sexual contact is not necessarily harmful. Firstly, since the study is a meta-analysis of several other studies conducted over a wide period of time, other researchers have challenged the veracity of its conclusions. More importantly, however, the report is an examination of assumed properties of child sexual abuse. In spite of the fact that the United States Congress denounced the report as pro-pedophilia, we ought to be careful how closely we ally ourselves with it, as it may cause many to believe that we support child sexual abuse (e.g. If it doesn't cause long-term damage, then there is no harm in doing it.).

In all three of these cases, our adoption of these researchers and their works is foolish. While we can and should use their results to augment our arguments for our cause, we should cease to use them as the centerpiece of our arguments. To do so could cause resentment from the researchers themselves, causing them to publicly distance themselves from us, which would do more damage than their results do us good. They could also in future papers make statements or arguments that argued against our cause as well. Since they are not open supporters of amaros, we cannot assume that they support us or that we know their motives or agendas. Therefore, we need to concentrate our efforts towards generating data in support of our cause from the academics in our own midst or from those who, although not amarsi themselves, are willing to publicly speak out in support of our cause. Only then can we ensure that what we perceive as a boon now does not later turn out to be a bane.

Truth and Beauty

It seems that many of us have an Apollonian conviction that if we can just show the world the truth we will be accepted. We argue ad infinitum that there is ample evidence that children are sexual beings and that they begin sexual experimentation at an early age. We argue that age of consent laws are a modern convention and that historically, children often became sexually active at puberty. We point to statistics indicating that the majority of child abuse occurs in the home rather than at the hands of strangers. While these facts are very useful, they will achieve absolutely nothing in convincing society to accept us. In order to do that, we must appeal to it on an emotional level as well.

If rational argumentation were truly effective at swaying public opinion, there would be no debate about the placement of telephone towers. Companies would need only to explain that the towers are erected to provide a higher level of service to subscribers. We all know, however, that public acceptance of such towers is generally quite low, and that many communities are even willing to undertake legal action to prevent their construction. Why then, if people have such a visceral opposition to steel towers, are they willing to travel thousands of miles in order to see one in Paris? Are not telephone towers infinitely more useful than the Eiffel Tower? Do they not demonstrably raise the quality of life of their users? Yes they do, but people hate them because they are perceived to be ugly.

As amarsi, we are also perceived as being ugly or distasteful. In fact, most people probably can be convinced without too much effort that amaros is an orientation, that children are sexual and that they do engage in sex play. Many already fully understand that most child sexual abuse is not at the hands of strangers. Yet we could also argue that recidivism is caused by a number of social factors or is even genetically inherited. Yet this does not soften the hearts of the population towards criminals. By the same token, we cannot assume that facts will cause people to warm up to our cause either.

While logic and reason can be used quite effectively to combat ignorance, they are wholly ineffectual in allaying fear and loathing. While these two things themselves are caused in part by ignorance, they are also perpetuated through our culture. Therefore, in order to combat them effectively, we must appeal not only to people’s minds but to their hearts as well. Logic and reason will never provide us with more than the foundation and frame for our cause. To make our building beautiful and appealing, we must begin to employ our creative talents more effectively to demonstrate that child love is beautiful, non-threatening and edifying. Only this way can we convince people that we do not require rehabilitation but acceptance.

Conclusion

If we are to believe estimates as to what percentage of the population shares our pedosexual orientation, then there are ample numbers of people to provide us with all of the talent required to effectively make both the logical and emotional cases for our cause to the public. Even amongst the few of us who are already fully cognizant and accepting of ourselves there is considerable talent. Therefore, we need to turn our attentions not to re-processing the works of those outside of our community, but marshalling the forces we already possess within our own ranks to bring our message to bear.

We also need to redouble our efforts to ensure that our offering is not only factually correct, but aesthetically pleasing. Facts on a plain page, no matter how convincingly presented, have a much lower impact than a graphic image. The two together are yet more effective still. Packaging is of vital importance; there is little mystery in why the peccadilloes of JFK are looked upon with a much more forgiving eye than those of Bill Clinton.

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Children, Profit and Ethics - On the Acceptability of Suggestive and Pornographic Images of Children

Thu, 20 Dec 2018 22:41:03 GMT

Introduction

Children are money-spinners.

Throughout history, the talents of children and their images have been a commercial boon for those who have had the opportunity to harness and sell these commodities. Even in mainstream society today, the market is flooded with images of children, films featuring children and other commercial enterprises featuring the talents, bodies and faces of children. While often concerned voices have been raised to question the moral and ethical correctness of this commercialization of youth, society has always chosen to disregard these concerns and the profit motive, as it so often does, has proven a stronger factor in determining acceptability.

The hysteria in recent years over amaros, however, has brought the issue once again to the forefront of public debate. While legislation in most Western countries has made the production and sale of ‘blatantly sexual’ images illegal, there is considerable uncertainty over the definition of blatantly sexual. On the one hand, some have attempted to label even artistic nudes of young children as ‘child pornography’, whilst on the other hand, a significant industry has arisen on the Internet of so-called ‘pre-teen models’, where, for a price, members can view galleries of scantily-clad young children. Many of these sites have risen to notoriety because of the indefatigable efforts of certain interest groups, although law enforcement has made little move to limit them.

It appears, then, that what society is willing to accept has very little to do with the underlying ethical issues of producing and distributing such images, and more to do with the profit motive and the current political climate. Here we attempt to address these ethical issues in an attempt to determine what should and should not be acceptable, and what regulation and safeguards are necessary to ensure that children are not exploited or abused in the process.

Types of ‘Questionable’ Images

Ever since it has been possible to mass-produce images, there have been ample examples of child images used commercially. Picture postcards from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries feature children both clothed and unclothed. Now, with the advent of the Internet and digital photography, the proliferation of child images has accelerated rapidly, and it is now possible without any trouble to locate and obtain these images. There are four primary classes of commercially available images which are currently found to be ‘objectionable’ by various segments of society:

Artistic photographs of nude or scantily clad children;

Non-nude images of teens and pre-teens on so-called ‘modeling’ sites;

Nude images of teens and pre-teens on so-called ‘lolita’ sites;

Explicit images of children engaged in sexual activity.

While many, if not most, people do not have a fundamental objection to the first category of images, most people object to the last category. The trouble is, however, that the definitions used to classify these categories of images are themselves highly subjective, and societal attitudes are in a constant state of flux, making it nearly impossible to determine what is unobjectionable. Images perfectly acceptable today may have been considered vulgar or obscene twenty years ago; paradoxically, some other images which would have been considered totally acceptable within a certain context twenty years ago can now be cause for prosecution. Furthermore, the concept of ‘art’ is so abstract as to be virtually indefinable. In fact, there are images in all four of the categories we have listed which somebody could claim are ‘artistic’.

Some have attempted to solve this problem by stating that the acceptability of an image is based not upon the content of the images, but upon the purpose for which the image was either produced or possessed. This, however, creates even greater problems than trying to determine whether the content of an image is acceptable or not. It is nearly impossible to classify the purpose of an image, as its purpose may vary from person to person. While certain images might be used by a medical professional for educational purposes, the same image could be appreciated by somebody else for aesthetic reasons, and considered by yet another person to be sensual or erotic. Furthermore, the question of proving intent for the possession of images is immensely troublesome. Legislation is a poor arbiter of moral behavior, for, as we have seen, morality cannot be successfully defined and is in a state of constant flux. This leaves it open to abuse by over-zealous prosecutors, and to the establishment of precedents which become irrelevant and even ridiculous as society and its attitudes change.

The Real Issues

The trouble with current legislation governing such images is that it attempts to define morality in a rapidly shifting environment whilst failing to address the fundamental issue. Rather than a question of morality, the issue of the production, sale and distribution of child images is one of ownership, consent and rights. Since few people will challenge that the person who is photographed is the undisputed owner of his or her body, we need to pay especially close attention to the issues of consent and rights. All too often, financial benefit is gained from the sale of images by those distributing the images, whilst the producers and/or subjects of the images are either compensated poorly or not at all for their participation. Alternatively, subjects are unaware that they are being photographed at all, or are aware and even willing to be photographed, yet are unaware that the images will be used commercially. Therefore, legislation needs to be focused on ensuring consent for one’s likeness to be used commercially, and ensuring that any profits derived from the distribution and sale of images are fairly shared between all of the parties involved. Additionally, whilst it is impossible to totally eliminate copyright infringement, there needs to be a strong legislative and enforcement regime to battle the commercial abuse of copyrighted images.

Consent

In the age of the Internet, the issue of consent is much more complex than simple agreement to allow oneself to be photographed. It is now important for any potential photographic subject to understand that modern technology now allows nearly unlimited duplication and distribution of an image. Furthermore, the subject needs to be fully aware that the longevity of any given image is infinite, and that once published, it is virtually impossible to eradicate an image totally from existence.

In the case of images of minors, it is important therefore, that they understand the ramifications of their likeness being available widely around the world in order for them to be able to provide their informed consent. If the minor involved is able to accept this possibility, then the decision to provide consent boils down to a determination of whether the he or she is willing to accept virtual immortality. This decision is greatly dependent on the potential model’s personal feelings about his or her body, as well as the feelings of the society in which he or she lives. If the model appreciates his or her inherent beauty and lives in a society which does not treat nudity as shameful, this should not be a problem. Only in more prudish societies would such images be probable to cause embarrassment or subject the model to ridicule.

Images which are blatantly sexual are an exception to this rule, but only in degree, not in matter of substance. If the images are blatantly sexual, then the model needs to take special care in considering whether he or she wishes to have such images widely proliferated. For the purpose of this argument, we will define blatantly sexual as images which either focus exclusively on the genitalia of the subject, depict auto-erotic activity, or erotic activity with other participants. Here the issue is not simply a matter of whether one consents to his or her image being spread, but whether or net he or she wishes to have acts, which many consider to be intensely personal, available for viewing by the public.

Compensation

Considering the immense profitability of child images, it is necessary also to ensure that the models themselves are properly compensated for their participation. All too often, distributors enjoy the lion’s share of profits in many creative industries, whilst the active participants, in this case, the photographers and the models, receive an inadequate share of profits for their efforts.

In order to ensure that minors receive proper compensation, they need to be correctly represented by people competent to correctly understand and inform them of the real possible value of the enterprise in which they intend to involve themselves. Modeling contracts also need to clearly set out which distribution channels will be used, as well as the end user prices which will be charged, so that models and their agents will be able to properly appraise whether the share of the projected profits is fair and adequate.

While it is probably impossible to fully eradicate copyright infringement and the derivation of additional profits from illegally obtained and used images, it is necessary to create legislative protections for models that will punish those who profit from infringement to a degree that serves to deter and discourage such activity. It is important to apply culpability to all parties along the supply chain in such a way that makes it desirable for each party which can profit from the trade to make a maximum effort to ensure that the images being used are being obtained and used legally, and that any suppliers have the rights to supply the images being used.

It is important to recognize that there will always be jurisdictions in the world which will choose to ignore proper protections and where the rule of law will not be strong and open to corruption and abuse. However, by leading the way in instituting a regulatory regime oriented towards protecting the rights of all parties in the supply regime rather than simply protecting the profits of distributors, reputable nations and suppliers have the opportunity to lead by example, as well as creating a premium level of content for those who are concerned about the well-being of the models who appear in the content they wish to view. Whilst ethical behavior cannot be totally enforced or legislated, there is good reason to believe that financial disincentives to unethical behavior as well as public pressure to ensure proper behavior over time are effective at bringing about changes in the way that the industry organizes itself.

Exploitation

In spite of the best intentions of the primarily rich consumers and the nations where they live, it is virtually impossible to ensure that no exploitation takes place. Despite the efforts of these people and their governments, as long as there are regions of the world where laws are not enforced and where massive economic imbalances exist, there will be instances in which some people who are either enlisted into this trade without providing their consent, or whose consent is dictated by gross financial necessity. While such manipulation and coercion is reprehensible, its mere existence is not just cause to prohibit the trade everywhere. At the same time, it is important to take as much action as is possible to reduce the financial incentives of those involved, and to prosecute their agents and affiliates who remain in jurisdictions where this is possible.

At the same time, however, it is important to recognize the cultural differences between nations and to be sensitive to them. That is, it is unfair to expect one sovereign state to adopt the cultural mores of another, while it is fair to expect that participants in the creation of images in poor countries realize a fair portion of the profits generated by their images being marketed and sold in rich countries. While this is contrary to the prevailing practice and to the basic premises of free market economics, it is necessary to maintain a higher ethical standard in an industry which has earned a poor reputation because of a history of exploitation and abuse. Abuses will always remain, especially in the ‘borderless’ world of the Internet, but by forcing mainstream distributors to become accountable for the content they provide, many of these abuses and distortions can be eliminated.

In order for such a system, however, to work effectively, there must be a change in perceptions towards the industry. If the image industry remains stigmatized and the possession of such images remains a criminal offense, the distributors of such content will continue to remain on the fringes of society. If, however, society recognizes the fundamental rights of people to consent to participate in the creation of such images and to view and possess these images, major steps can be taken to redress the wrongs committed by the industry in the past. Once legitimized and regulated, the major providers of such content will be able to use their market power in the rich countries to attract a sizable market share and deny unscrupulous producers the hitherto unlimited profits they have enjoyed. This is because the reputable purveyors will be able to commit resources to providing a higher quality of content than those who do not, as many of the models who worked for them in the past will be able to work for much better rates for more respectable operations.

Conclusion

Hopefully, as societal attitudes change, the production, distribution and sale of child images will be de-criminalized. As with many other prohibitions, this one simply has not worked, as neither supply nor demand has been tempered by its criminalization. Society needs to understand that there is nothing inherently wrong with such images so long as the models involved are able to give their informed consent to the production of the images and there are guarantees in place which ensure that the models are properly compensated. Indeed, many of these people will be able to participate in the production of something in which they can remain proud for a long time to come. The time of being ashamed of one’s body needs to come to a close, and the right to view and appreciate that beauty needs to be affirmed and upheld.

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The Inalienable Rights of Amarsi

Thu, 20 Dec 2018 22:36:02 GMT

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

—The Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonies

A Concerned Citizen

As a law-abiding citizen of the United States, I am entitled to enjoy the same freedoms and privileges as any other citizen. As a childlover, however, I feel that I am the subject of discrimination and infringements of my rights and my dignity. Therefore, I decided to write a letter to my elected officials, at both the state and the federal level, to inform them of my situation and ask them what actions they are taking to protect my rights as a citizen. I sent letters to the following people:

George W. Bush (R): President of the United States of America

president@whitehouse.gov
John F. Kerry (D): United States Senator

Massachusetts

http://www.johnkerry.com
Edward M. Kennedy (D): United States Senator

Massachusetts

http://kennedy.senate.gov
Michael E. Capuano (D): United States Congressman

Massachusetts, 8th District

http://www.house.gov
Mitt Romney (R): Governor, Commonwealth of Massachusetts

http://www.mass.gov/
Dianne Wilkerson (D): Massachusetts State Senator

2nd Suffolk District

Dianne.Wilkerson@state.ma.us
Marty Walz (D): Massachusetts State Representative

8th Suffolk District

marty.walz@state.ma.us

My Letter

Dear [ name inserted ],

I am a childlover. I am writing to you today to inquire what steps you will take as my elected representative to preserve the civil liberties and due process to which I am entitled as a citizen of the United States of America. I am concerned about the infringement of my rights because we live today in an atmosphere where people like myself are seeing our rights trampled upon and ignored due to the moral panic about amaros.

Please allow me to elaborate. By classifying myself as a childlover, I am admitting that I have a primary attraction to pre-pubescent girls. I would stress, however, that this attraction has never led me to engage in any illegal activities. I have never had sexual experiences with any children. I therefore cannot be classified as a child molester.

Unfortunately, however, society and the mainstream media have made the terms pedophile and child molester synonymous. This has put immense pressure on me and others like me to conceal our identities and to live in constant fear that our attraction will be discovered and we will be subjected to public ridicule.

I have three specific concerns. Firstly, I fear that my physical safety may be in jeopardy. My reason for this fear is that there seems to be an increase in anti-childlover violence as well as official negligence that allows some of this violence to take place. Specifically, the murder of John Geoghan in a Massachusetts prison and the beating of Kevin Kinder, who was placed in a Florida jail cell with a former victim, show that the authorities are not careful enough to protect the right to life that amarsi, convicted or not, should be afforded.

Secondly, I am concerned about a disturbing trend to police my thoughts. I am referring specifically to the case of John Doe v. City of Lafayette, Indiana, where the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a former offender could be banned from certain public areas because of thoughts he had about children he saw there.

I am also concerned about the unchallenged activities of vigilantes such as perverted-justice.com. Organizations such as this act as judge and jury and rob their victims of due process under the law when they publicize their personal details and engage in public harassment campaigns against them. These campaigns are based upon unverifiable chat transcripts that the vigilantes claim prove that their victims engaged in sexually explicit online chats with underaged teens. Both this vigilante activity and the court ruling I cited above infringe upon my privacy and liberty.

Thirdly, I am concerned about the difficulties that amarsi like myself have finding any kind of counselling. We are afraid to discuss our pedophilic feelings with qualified psychologists and other mental health practitioners because we fear that we will be discriminated against, misunderstood or reported to the authorities, who will make the assumption that we are sexual offenders. The case of John Doe v. City of Lafayette came to light originally because he spoke of his thoughts in a group therapy session and his therapist reported his speech to his former probation officer.

Very little research has been done on amarsi outside of a forensic setting. Therefore, amaros is not understood sufficiently by either the scientific or the medical establishment. Despite this, pedophilia is classified by the American Psychological Association in their DSM-IV diagnostic manual as a paraphilia.

While sufferers of most 'mental disorders' can avail themselves of the medical establishment to treat their ailments, amarsi can only do so if the are willing to risk being branded as a criminal by the authorities and as an evil pervert by the general public. At the same time, as amarsi we are under a legal obligation to suppress our sexuality. Yet even if we never commit any crime, if our sexual preference becomes public, we are subject to ridicule and discrimination. In such an environment, it is wholly impossible for us to pursue happiness.

Dr. Fred Berlin of the National Institute for the Study, Prevention and Treatment of Sexual Trauma estimates that childlovers may comprise four percent of the population. A 1989 study conducted by John Briere, Ph.D and Marsha Runtz, Ph.D entitled University Males' Sexual Interest in Children concluded that twenty-one percent of males had some sexual attraction to children. Therefore, somewhere between one in twenty-five and one in four citizens have pedophilic feelings. Yet, society prefers to bury its head in the sand and ignore the needs of amarsi.

The result of this prejudice and ignorance is that our inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are under threat. I am a member of a not insignificant constituency and I am calling upon you as my elected representative to discuss ways to ensure that I, and others like me, are able to enjoy the same freedoms and privileges as other Americans.

Sincerely,

L. A.

Results

I originally sent this letter in August, 2004 to the recipients listed above. Several of these elected representatives were running for re-election (and in one case, running for an even higher office), so admittedly that was not the ideal time to send such a letter (for we all know that politicians are not inclined to do the “right thing” during a campaign). Still, I am perturbed by the fact that I got absolutely no responses at all other than an automated email stating that my missive had been received. I will try again when the dust from the campaign has settled. Perhaps I will have better luck then?

Second Attempt

I resent the letter in March, 2005. Paul Demakis, who decided not to run for re-election, was replaced at the Massachusetts State Assembly by Marty Walz, his hand-picked successor. Therefore, she received my letter for the first time. I will let you know what responses (if any) I receive.

Comments

The Cult of Childhood and the Repression of Childhood Sexuality

Thu, 20 Dec 2018 22:30:36 GMT

by Bill Paris

(Author's note: The following should be regarded as a preliminary document. In it I attempt to highlight issues in which I have had a considerable interest for a number of years, about which I have done some research and about which I have even written in a previous paper, "The Body, Sex and Christianity". I intend to continue my study and produce a more comprehensive report later, perhaps in a different form. However, the understanding of childhood sexuality in our culture is deplorable at this point. The attitude of both Christians and even secular people seems to be growing more reactionary and paranoid in spite of the notion that our society is becoming more liberal sexually. In addition, questions and issues related to childhood sexuality are often raised in our Internet discussions. These reasons seem to call for an attempt at this time to begin dealing with some of these critical issues.)

What Is Childhood?

In my opinion, much of the confusion that exists in our society about childhood sexuality traces to a failure to understand historical and cultural developments. There is, for example, a prevailing view in our society that "children" shouldn't "have sex." When this is said, what is meant by "children" and what is meant by "having sex"? Should childhood be defined by civil law that indicates the legal age at which a person may engage in sexual intercourse (is this what is meant, by the way, by "having sex"?)? What about the fact that in the United States this age, referred to as the "age of consent," varies widely among states? These ages range from a low of 12 in Delaware to 18 in many states. Or does childhood end when a person can legally buy and consume alcohol, which also varies state to state and does not necessarily coincide with the age of consent. Or does a person become an adult when he can drive, vote or marry? These ages, also, do not necessarily coincide in any state, much less among the states.

The age thresholds above are legal boundaries. What about biological and psychological ages, especially puberty? Should a person be legally "qualified" to have sex at puberty? In fact, in the few states where the age of consent is quite low, puberty and legal age do roughly coincide, but these states are in the minority.

And what does "having sex" mean? In the popular mind it probably means engaging in sexual intercourse. (By the way, civil and criminal laws do not use the popular term "having sex," but instead refer to sexual intercourse or other forms of sexual contact.) What about these "other forms" of "sexual contact"? State laws discuss such things as oral sex (still illegal even for adults in many states) and mere "touching" of the genitals or breasts in terms of punishable sexual offenses when "children" are involved. Some of these provisions differ depending on whether one person is a legal adult or not. Do these other kinds of contact, which can be very erotically pleasing or even produce orgasms, qualify as "having sex"?

One could go on about the confusion, both popular and legal, which exists in our society on the subject of childhood sexuality. Perhaps this small discussion is sufficient to point up the problems.

This desperate situation in which children and adults find themselves in our sexually ignorant and repressive society seems to me to call for an understanding of how we got to where we are.

How Did We Get Here?: Childhood in History

The Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, the period of the Enlightenment of the 18th century and the Industrial Revolution of the same period produced profound effects in Europe and America on the attitudes of society and church toward children. These changes altered permanently the definition of childhood and adulthood and the sexual roles, rights and obligations of youth in society.

Prior to these historical developments, children had been regarded mostly as potential adults (infants and toddlers) or actual adults (older children and adolescents) in terms of the economic structures of families, tribes and larger social groupings. Children were seen as essential workers in these structures. The focus of this phenomenon was in the mostly agricultural societies of the entire world prior to the Industrial Revolution. In these societies the hard physical work of the entire family was necessary for survival.

These spiritual, intellectual and mechanical revolutions ultimately changed the way in which human beings looked at themselves and their personal and societal relationships. This period of time was probably the beginning, in Europe and North America at least, of the kind of human self-consciousness and self-analysis that ultimately produced the social sciences, especially psychology and related fields.

As for the Reformation, driven partly by a new spiritual freedom Christians became more concerned for the health and social welfare of one another. It is not that works of mercy towards the poor and sick had not existed before, but this period saw a tremendous explosion of such efforts.

One development in this period was the growing consciousness that children were perhaps not physically suited for much of the hard labor that they were typically called on to do. There was also a new concern for orphans, who often went about in bands of beggars or thieves and were generally neglected or even abused by society.

The Industrial Revolution was the engine that began to drive the populations of Europe and North America away from the farms and into the cities where manufacturing and its supporting enterprises demanded workers to produce the goods and services that offered the promise of a better life. During this period children often suffered, being coerced into factory work that was probably harder than what they had done on the farms.

Yet the churches and other caring people also took notice of their plight, eventually leading to the development of child labor laws for their protection.

The focus of life in Western Europe and America shifted even more certainly from the rural to the urban in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Life really did get "better" and easier for almost all classes, compared with the previous few centuries. Physical health and life expectancy improved. Diseases were better controlled. Wars diminished, enabling the human race in these societies to get on with living rather than dying.

As these developments occurred, the lot of children improved, but their role as productive, even essential, members of society diminished.

The development that closed the circle of the "cult of childhood" was compulsory public education. It was the product of the earlier developments that lessened the practical usefulness of children. It was also a new force that restructured childhood so that youth would from now on be socially defined as "children" and "students," not proto-adults. From now on the child's task, never entirely clear to him, but steadfastly maintained and managed by the educational institutions, was to pilot himself through many years of schooling toward the abstract goal of "graduation." After graduation there was either college (more years of economically unproductive activity) or possibly work and, finally at some point, marriage.

Even the church got involved in the 19th century with "education," creating the SUNDAY "school."

The development of institutional education for children was both the product of and a shaper of another incredibly important development of this period of time, namely the change in family structure from the extended family to what we know today as the nuclear family. Prior to this period families had lived in larger units, including grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and so forth. Within this structure most of the education of children took place. While in older times probably little verbal instruction was given about sex in the modern sense of "sex education," children learned by seeing and hearing what went on in these larger households and what verbal instruction was given was of a very practical sort--the how-to's of male-female bonding. And there was a variety of perspective included in this education because there was a variety of adults, not only parents, to do the instructing. As the extended family disappeared and outside institutions took over the education of children, this natural, family form of sex education began to disappear along with much of the rest of traditional instruction.

With these developments, children were now to be completely "protected," cared for, nurtured in various ways, treated as fragile and really viewed as an entirely different class of beings from adults. Thus was created a "cult of childhood." The result in our day is that, in some ways, children are almost worshipped and certainly "spoiled," yet have little to do with the practical, productive life of our civilization.

The Two Childhoods: Biological and Social Conflict and the Creation of the Nonsexual Child

Something appears to have been missed during this several-hundred-year period of the development of the cult of childhood. This was the progressive development of a clash between the biological and sexual maturity of children and the social roles now assigned to them, which included no socially sanctioned outlet for their sexuality.

Indeed, when this conflict was eventually noticed, both the secular society and the church were forced by their own bondage to the childhood culture they had created to essentially declare children to be nonsexual. When faced, however, with a pesky biological reality which wouldn't go away --the "nonsexual" child who could not help feeling and acting sexual--the adult social, educational and religious powers turned to a variety of repressive tactics to keep the little beasties down. These tactics ranged from instruction about how "good" children didn't "play with themselves" or others to physical and legal punishments for sexual behavior. (The 19th century was the heyday of chastity belts and diabolically ingenious mechanical devices to prevent masturbation.)

The church began to create, virtually out of whole cloth, a set of dogmas, mostly hitchhiking on a misunderstanding of the New Testament Greek term "porneia," whose purpose was to prop up the socially developed notion of the nonsexual child. (For discussion of the real meaning of the term "porneia," mistranslated "fornication" in most English Bibles, see other Liberated Christians' biblical studies.)

These doctrines are not biblical at all. In Old Testament times sex was seen as much more natural and normal than in our day, even though there were certain sexual restrictions that were necessary either because of the lack of birth control or because of the necessity of preserving family heritage in a patriarchal society. (See other Liberated Christian studies on adultery and the patriarchal system of the Old Testament.) Old Testament culture was also an extended family culture in which the kind of natural sex education referred to above would have taken place. It should also be remembered that the modern ideas of childhood did not exist in biblical days.

Through the use of these doctrines the church could justify what has amounted to the persecution of its own children the name of God for their audacity in attempting to express their sexuality, a sexuality actually given them by God himself.

Persecution is a harsh word, but I think that nothing less has gone on throughout church history and goes on today in the way children are treated in terms of their sexuality. I am only one of countless numbers of people who can recall the fear, the reprimands and even the physical punishments connected with sexual development as a child. Beginning with their own ignorance and following the negative teachings of traditional Christianity, millions of parents have passed on to even more millions of children the belief that their sexuality (and bodies) is something to be ashamed of, hidden and not talked about. Indeed, what is God-given is hated and constantly put down as evil. What else is this than persecution and an imprisonment of both soul and body?

One of the areas in which this treatment of children has taken place is marriage. Throughout most of human history societies have allowed marriage at or near the time of puberty. The church itself for centuries tended to follow the Jewish pattern of a minimum age of 12 for girls and 13 for boys, though by no means did all marry that early. In effect, childhood ended at that point and adulthood began. In many societies just prior to the permissible marriage age came the "rites of passage" or "puberty rites," which formally signaled the entrance of the youth into the privileges and responsibilities of adulthood. These practices remain in some cultures today and in some modern American Indian tribes young people are expected to be sexually active at least by puberty and some begin raising families at that age, even though white man's law may forbid it.

As will be discussed later in this article, in societies that expect early marriage it is typical that children are at least permitted or even encouraged in sexual play and experimentation from a young age. This is seen as the beginning of a natural process that prepares them for full roles as sexual adults. Perhaps one of the worst kept secrets in the sexual life of our culture is that our children also participate in various kinds of sex play. Yet, because that play is either ignored, actively discouraged or even punished, it becomes part of the secret life of our youth and contributes significantly to the whole pattern of living our sexual lives in the dark.

In spite of much-hyped liberal sexual attitudes of our culture, there remains the notion that real sexual activity only begins in marriage. Even if healthy sexual functioning in marriage was not inhibited by the negative teachings we receive as children, more damage is done by the typical postponement of marriage far into the years of sexual maturity.

In the affluent nations of the world (not coincidentally the nations that so greatly stress the importance of formal education) the marriage age has steadily advanced through recent centuries, especially in the United States,where in the mid-nineties the median age for first marriage has risen to 26.

Not lost in theory on some professionals in education, medicine and psychology, but utterly ignored practically, is the inconvenient fact that the age of the onset of puberty has been steadily dropping in affluent countries at least for all of the 20th century, while the marriage age has been rising.

I have already said that God created us to be sexual adults at puberty and to be sexually active at some level much earlier. The implication of this is that the historical and modern efforts to repress youthful sexual activity are in fact in opposition to a God-created normality, rather than being supportive of his "moral" will, as claimed by conservative Christians.

In my opinion, the evidence from history, culture, biology and psychology is overwhelming: our Creator intended us to be sexually active as children and adolescents, each age at its own level, capacity and purpose, and that activity should prepare us for the more permanent relationships of adulthood. Yet our culture so inhibits this natural growth process that we enter adulthood seriously crippled sexually and often unable to enjoy satisfying lives of sexual intimacy. It should be said very clearly and without apology that the primary source of these sad results is the sexual persecution and bondage inflicted on children by the traditional negative views of Christianity and a Christianized culture.

It is said that a military commander once referred to a "retreat" as an "advance to the rear." I think it can be seen from the history I have presented that the "advances" of our civilization in the social welfare of children, the changes in family structure, the improvement of health and the creation of public education have been an "advance to the rear" in terms of childhood sexuality.

The advance of civilization is always a mixed bag: often true advances in human welfare are offset by losses in other areas. Ancient abuses of children have diminished. The slow death of the patriarchal system has probably benefited children, especially girls, as well as adult women. In spite of these positive examples, the natural, God-created sexual development of children, on its psychological side, has been sacrificed on the altar of other progress.

Childhood Sexuality in Other Cultures: The Role of Parental Nurture and Intimacy

Parents and other adults in some cultures observe what parents in our culture observe, but see entirely different implications. Biologically, children in all cultures are alike and infant girls lubricate vaginally and infant boys experience erections on a regular basis. In some cultures these events are understood as natural phenomena that will develop in time into greater and more conscious efforts at sexual self-exploration and experimentation with their peers.

In cultures that recognize these events as normal and natural, there is often the involvement of parents themselves in stimulating the genital areas of their infants, an activity that is simply accepted as a way of heightening their children's interest in a very positive aspect of their development. It would never occur to these parents that such an activity could be considered harmful to their children as is the case in our culture.

In other cultures parents even teach their children how to masturbate and some fathers or other male adults initiate daughters by having intercourse with them. There is no indication that these practices in any way harm the children, but are in fact the parents' way of teaching their children good sexual skills.

Children learn how to do everything else, from writing the alphabet to hammering a nail, from older, more experienced people. But when it comes to sex--gasp--such is taboo! Yet, this is purely a cultural prejudice, based on a long history of sexual repression and negative teachings, much of it religious. It is not based in any psycho-developmental reality of human nature.

On the island of Mangaia in the South Pacific "infants are special people, rocked and indulged by all family members. Bare genitals are playfully or casually stimulated and lingual manipulation of the tiny penis is common." "Privacy is unknown, as each hut contains five to sixteen family members of all ages. [Remember our discussion of the extended family and its role in sex education?] Adolescent daughters often receive lovers at night and parents 'bump together' so that young children may be awakened by the slapping sound of moist genitals. Although adults rarely talk to children about sex, erotic wit and innuendoes are common.

"At the age of three or four, children band together and explore the mysteries of the dense tropical bush....Sex play flourishes in the undergrowth and coital activity may begin at any time."

Children also learn about sex from one another and "young girls also learn from elderly women who teach by telling stories and by direct practical instruction. The young boy is taught at puberty by older males. [Remember the puberty rites discussed above?] [He] is coached in techniques such as the kissing and sucking of breasts. He is told about lubrication and trained in methods of bringing his partner to climax several times prior to his own ejaculation." (Alayne Yates, Sex Without Shame: Encouraging the Child's Healthy Sexual Development, pp. 71-72)

And so on and on goes the description of the sexual education processes in this culture, processes which are natural and practical and are based on an acceptance of sexuality itself as normal and natural. Children in such a "primitive" culture grow up with greater knowledge, understanding and acceptance of their own sexuality, as well as sexual competence in relationships, than almost any children in our culture. And yet, not only would most Americans criticize the general permissiveness of this culture, but the notion of the explicit peer and adult instruction would be regarded as unacceptable, if not abusive.

It should be obvious that the contrast between the typical American treatment of children's sexual development and that of Mangaia is a contrast between bondage and freedom, between emotionally unhealthy and healthy attitudes and really, if I may put it so strongly, between unloving and loving ways of relating to children.

Even in our culture studies have shown that infants who experience greater non-sexual physical intimacy with their parents are more likely to masturbate than children who receive less such attention. One study reported that when there was tender, loving care of the infant by the mother, genital play was present in all the infants in the study. According to this researcher, such autoerotic activity on the part of an infant in the first 18 months of life may be a reliable indicator of the quality of parenting. (Human Sexuality--An Encyclopedia, p. 112)

Not to be overlooked here are the non-sexual physical and emotional benefits of physical touch between parents and children. Children who receive positive physical affection generally develop better emotional adjustments both as children and adults than children who do not receive such positive touch or who receive mostly negative touch (physical punishment). Their long-term relationship with their parents also is more positive on an emotional basis. This is beneficial not only to the children but to the parents as a very satisfying result of parenting. For myself, I never received a great deal of physical affection in childhood (at least so far as I can remember). By others, however, I was taught the value of this for my own children and have seen both them and myself reap the benefits as they near adulthood. They have even seen their parents divorce, yet remain physically affectionate with me. (I would point out that there have never been any sexual implications in our demonstrations of physical affection.) As pointed out in earlier material by Dave Hutchison, physical touch also stimulates healthy endorphins in the body that promote physical and emotional health.

The fact that physical touch combined with emotional intimacy promotes both physical and emotional health for children makes the failure of so many parents in these areas all the more serious. It could probably be argued that much of the emotional and even physical sickness of our society traces to the lack of such intimacy in childhood.

As the infant develops, its exploration of its body becomes progressively more complex and sophisticated. While not capable in its first year of the complex movements that characterize deliberate masturbation, the simple handling of the genitals can be noted as giving pleasure. Between the second and third year the infant develops rhythmic manipulation of the genitals with the hands, which foreshadows the deliberate masturbation techniques of later years (Human Sexuality--An Encyclopedia, p. 113)

American Culture: Parental and Religious Repression of Childhood Sexuality

While in some cultures the parental awareness of these developments brings the satisfaction that the infant is developing normally in an area of great importance, in our culture it is typical that such behavior produces consternation in parents whose own sexual experience is troubled with repression of the past and who are often neurotic regarding masturbation.

Since mothers are generally responsible for the sexual socialization of their infants, the way the mother reacts to her infant's sexual play is critical to its future development. In the encyclopedia referred to above the authors say that in our culture the mother's task has "generally...been to discourage sexual self-stimulation, inhibit sexual impulses toward family members, supervise and thus frustrate attempts at sexual play with peers, and teach children to be wary of strangers." Parents also attempt to control what their children learn of the "facts of life" and from whom. There develops a "conspiracy of silence [in which] parents maintain a secrecy and privacy concerning their own sexual activity...," closing bedroom and bathroom doors, separate bathing for children, especially segregating by sex in later years, the inculcation of "modesty" regarding nudity and dressing and undressing habits, etc. These methods have "an implicit goal of keeping dormant the young child's pervasive curiosity and imitativeness, postponing the onset of sexual self-gratification, and limiting sexual activity." (Encyclopedia, p. 114)

Of course, Christian parents have become quite skilled at such repressive methods, all the more so because the "doctrine" I have mentioned provides what they believe is a God-given mandate to discourage sexual activity among children of any age.

Yet it is impossible for Christian and cultural taboos to eradicate the need and desire young people have for sexual intimacy. When young people seek sexual intimacy, with or without the approval of church or society, they are simply following God's natural way, even though at later ages they may do so in careless ways because of the inadequate teaching they have received.

These are not "wicked" children. The wickedness lies in the sexual repression of church and society. Instead of being badgered about the evil nature of their sexuality and intimidated into an unnatural and unworkable celibacy (or, worse, forced into irresponsible sex), children should be taught how to love, respect and care for others and to enjoy their own sexual urges safely, without any harm coming to them.

A recent TV movie portrayed the uneasiness of a father and teenage son grappling with the potential sexual involvement of the son. The dialog went something like this:

Father: "So you're going out tonight? Are there girls involved?" Son: "Yeah, there'll be girls." F: "I think its time we talked." S: "Oh, is this the 'facts of life' thing?" F: "Yes." S: "OK, Dad, what do you want to know?" F: "Very funny. I suppose you know all about being safe?" S: "Sure, Dad." F: "Well, just be sure you don't do it tonight with someone you won't care for in the morning."

This scene can hardly represent an adequate piece of sex education, but I was struck by the father's small spoonful of wisdom about caring for the person with whom his son might become sexually involved. I am afraid that most Christian parents whom I know would not even try to determine whether their children knew about sexual safety in the fear that such knowledge would encourage "promiscuity." This neglect of teaching, combined with repression, could lead their children to careless or thoughtless sexual involvement with partners about whom they would not "care for in the morning."

In my own Christian community I believe that the moralistic blinders worn by many parents would cause many of them to actually prefer that their children become pregnant or contract STDs than to teach them safe, responsible sexual behavior. Such parents go on humming the tune that sex education promotes promiscuity and that telling their children to "just say NO" is still the best advice, even while their children pursue their natural sexual inclinations behind their backs.

At the risk of appearing harsh and unkind, I must ask if people demonstrating the attitudes just mentioned are really looking out for the best interests of their children? I think not. Sadly, most of these would be horrified to think that they were actually harming their children by their constant harping about abstinence and other sexually repressive advice. In fairness, it should be said that few have any idea of the shabby history of the traditional negative views about sexuality; few Christian professionals (pastors, biblical scholars, even church historians) even realize that these views arose out of the non-Jewish, non-Christian philosophies of the ancient world and were imported into Christian teaching by Christian teachers in the early days of the faith, teachers whose formal education had been based on these philosophies. These terroristic, abusive tactics have become part and parcel of the meaning of Christianity for most people and are simply not recognized for what they are.

It is this situation, of which I am so painfully aware, that has given me the burden to write this paper, with the hope and prayer that some parents and other adults may implement real change in the way children are treated. The Christian message is a message of FREEDOM; it is time that we applied that message to our own sexuality and that of our children.

A number of researchers and child development psychologists have recommended for years the kind of sexual openness with children that has been traditional for centuries in some cultures. They suggest that not only is sexual self-play normal and healthy, but sex play among peers is also. They suggest that it is actually harmful to stifle such play, not to mention being rather futile. A recent Internet message suggested that with all of the overwrought emphasis on child sexual abuse in our society, much of it degenerating into witch-hunting, the real abuse of children lies in not recognizing and encouraging their natural sexual development, including its play and experimentation aspects.

Normality in Body and Sex

Another critical issue concerning "God-created normality" in the lives of our children is that of the attitude towards the body. Dave Hutchison and I have written extensively elsewhere on the issue of nudity and body acceptance. Suffice it to say here that what most children are taught is some form of body shame or body hatred. I mentioned above that parents commonly teach their children "modesty" about nudity and dressing. This is no more nor less than teaching children that their bodies are shameful and must be covered up to avoid sexual activity or "temptation." The teaching of body shame and sexual shame necessarily go hand in hand--you can't have the one without the other. This is often overlooked even by professionals. While the social nudist movement is flawed in its overdone attempt to dismiss a link between nudism and sexuality, many nudists are aware (and research studies have proved) that nudist children generally have healthier sexual attitudes than non-nudist children.

Adult-Child Sexual Contact: Healthy or Sick?

Patterns of the Past and Other Cultures

From the above discussion we understand the importance of healthy sexual development for children and the importance of parental understanding and nurture in this area. We also realize that parents in other cultures do not hide their own sexual activities from their children and may even have some physical involvement with them in developing and encouraging their sexual growth. The question, then, may be asked : How far should adults go in helping educate their children sexually?

The taboo of all taboos, as far as our society is concerned, is that of adults engaging in specific sexual activity with children. We recognize that even people who consider themselves open-minded about sexuality might come down on us pretty hard for raising this issue. Are we discussing these things in order to find justification for adult-child sexual activity? The reader will have to make up his or her own mind as to our motives. We are not raising this issue to offend anyone or to propose such activity, but it is critical to remember that we discussed earlier the difficulty of drawing a clear line between childhood and adulthood from a cultural/historical point of view. We then pointed out that in reality children are sexual adults at puberty.

It must also be said that in older cultures, before children began to be regarded as excessively fragile and in need of a kind of care that has reached pampering stages in our culture, sex between "adults" and "children" was not at all uncommon. Marriages between very young girls and much older men have been common throughout history in many cultures. I say this without passing any particular value judgment on the wisdom of such unions.

It should also be noted that both religious and social rules and laws on this issue are culturally conditioned and not God-given. Among all the sex laws of the Old Testament, for example, so far as I know there is not even one on the subject of what we would call adult-child sex.

Is the whole religious, social and legal pattern, which so severely stigmatizes adult/child sex, really an improvement on the patterns of the past? We might wonder in the light of the practices of other cultures and the silence of the Scriptures.

Sexual Abuse: Problems and Paranoia

Let's look at some of the results of this negative modern attitude. The last fifteen to twenty years has seen the creation of almost a cottage industry devoted to convincing us that there are probably sexually-abusing parents on our block or among our relatives and child molesters among our children's teachers, neighbors and loving uncles. This began in the late 70's and climaxed in several notorious pre-school molestation cases and the "don't-talk-to-strangers" push in the 80's. The 90's has seen accusations of adults coming out of the repressed memory craze.

Undoubtedly the huge increase in the "discovery" and prosecution of abuse and molestation cases in this country during this period is due in part to a greater awareness of the possible problems, whereas such activities in previous times were simply overlooked or more successfully hushed up.

On the other hand, the trail of both discovery and prosecution of such cases in this period is littered with witch-hunt tactics and coached testimony by even accredited child "experts," social workers and prosecutors, as the notorious and failed McMartin Preschool case attests. Numerous other high-profile cases have been thrown out or reversed on appeal, but not before people accused of being society's greatest monsters have been ruined emotionally, professionally and financially.

There are several classic cases in the 70's in which the children of nudist parents were taken away on the basis of sexual abuse accusations by vindictive relatives or nosy and self-righteous neighbors. The children were eventually returned, but in at least one case were separated from their parents for five years while the case snailed its way through court after court. Perhaps it is understandable to some extent why social nudists labor overtime to convince the public that nudism and sex have nothing to do with each other.

Newly-hatched crusades typically engage in excesses and this one, which plays on both instinctive desires to protect children and the culturally-created notion that children couldn't possibly choose any kind of sexual activity with adults, is no exception.

Parent and Child in Healthy Intimacy

Returning to Human Sexuality--An Encyclopedia, we learn a lot about parents' intimacy with their children or the lack thereof: Long before there is any possibility of much mutual adult-style enjoyment of sexual activity between children and adults, the children of our culture have learned without verbal instruction that adults, even their parents, are seldom physically intimate with them on any level, especially beyond a certain age. Child-parent intimate interaction becomes restrained and the child's experience of intimacy enters a stage of deprivation that lasts at least until adolescence and the beginning of the dating stage.

"'Too much' touching, especially for boys, causes discomfort for many parents." "Sons, imitating their fathers, express noticeably less physical affection than do daughters for friends and relatives as well." Homophobic attitudes among males develop early and researchers think that these attitudes play a significant role in the intimacy fears of boys and men. (pp. 114-115)

The abuse and molestation obsession of current culture adds dramatically to the fears of adults in touching children, even their own, and the fears of children in being touched. We have reached a point where parents and adults have been brainwashed to think of themselves as perverted if they are very physically intimate with preadolescent and adolescent children, especially of the opposite sex, even when such physical contact can't reasonably be construed as sexual.

Internet correspondents with Dave Hutchison have pointed out that it is acceptable to display shocking degrees of violence to children, including Rambo movies, violent war games and violent sports such as boxing or hockey, but it its not acceptable to allow them to see sexually explicitly motion pictures, to display physical affection towards them in public or talk explicitly to them about sex.

Different studies have drawn different conclusions about the connection between children seeing violence on TV and in movies and committing violent acts. Yet some youth violence has clearly been copied from what youth have seen in the media, according to their own confessions.

But the same Internet correspondence mentioned above points out that there is no clinical evidence that observing the sexual activity of others is in any way harmful to children, especially when it is explained to very young ones as not being an act of violence or pain. Healthy curiosity, even fascination and then acceptance is the usual reaction. Some evidence also indicates that some sex offenders have received little or no sex information as children and have been exposed to little or no sexually explicit materials. This is exactly the opposite situation to that claimed by some conservatives who crusade against sex education, pornography and sex in the media.

A 13-Year-Old Who Enjoyed His "Abuse"

Recently a male adult posted this message on the Internet: "I have experienced a situation of sexual approach myself as a 13 year old. What most people forget is how a child is affected is largely due to the reaction of and conditioning by society at large. I wouldn't have had half the trauma if it hadn't been for the implantation [of the idea] that sex is bad for anyone, [but that the adult] who approached and touched me was an evil scumsuccer and I had been 'violated'--even though I did enjoy the experience while it happened and had a good orgasm. It felt good! What followed was an aftermath of confusion and distress because what I had experienced was 'improper.' So I went through a few years of difficulties, not because of the actual incident itself, but due to my antisexual conditioning."

He continues with an account I cannot independently verify: "A few years ago (on a talk show) a 16 year old boy said when he was 13 he had an affair with a female school custodian that lasted two years. He later stated that while it lasted it was great--he loved every second.... Well--his parents threw a fit. Boy was sent to a shrink and is told he was abused. A year of conditioning later he sits on this talk show and says what a horrible thing this woman did to him--and still stated that he thought it was great while it lasted--he didn't know he was being abused at the time. Now who the hell I ask you caused the damage here?"

The Confusion of Culture and a Word of Caution

This person's report perhaps demonstrates more eloquently than I or a line-up of professionals could how the confusion in our culture about sexuality and childhood, the impossibility of drawing a line between childhood and adulthood and the general ignorance and misunderstanding of sexuality calls into question the popular and legal dictums about adult-child sex.

Variations exist among professional researchers regarding the harmfulness or benefits of sexual experiences shared by children and adults and some professionals are suggesting that there may be no harm at all in non-coercive experiences. Such opinion seems to fit with the testimony of people such as the one just quoted. This shift in opinion among those who study childhood sexuality at least suggests that adults are not committing the "unpardonable sin" merely by rethinking these issues.

In spite of not wanting to need to say this, we must say that we do not advise or condone adults having sex with youth under "legal age" for at least two reasons. The first is JAIL (no small reason, unfortunately) and the second is because the psychological implications of such activity in our culture could be vastly different from the implications in cultures where such activity has long been the norm.

We cannot suddenly convert ourselves to the permissive and radically open norms of other cultures, no matter how attractive they may be. That is not the point of this discussion. I would, however, like to summarize what we have learned in this discussion of childhood sexuality. Then I will make some suggestions that, if followed, might help parents and others towards a healthier and more practical approach to dealing with childhood sexuality. Before this, however, I would like to cite some recent media-reported examples of the weirdness that goes on in our culture today regarding children and sexuality.

Sexual Weirdness in Our Culture: Two Contemporary Cases

First, the recent flap over the Calvin Klein ads using teenagers, ads that were pulled from magazines and TV after public allegations that they were "obscene" and exploitative of minors:

So far as advertising is concerned, these ads are clearly intended to use sex to sell clothes--no new phenomenon in our culture. The reactions to the ads by irate parents and the "moral" high-brows and even the FBI are examples of the ridiculous and futile efforts to deny that "children" (teens, no less, in this case) are sexual.

Second, the same religious and cultural narrow-mindedness is illustrated by the conservative outcry against the new fall TV shows in prime-time whose content the media coyly refer to as involving "adult themes." This, of course, is in contrast to the formerly sacred "family viewing" hours of early evening programming. When we clear away all the smoke-screen language, what this controversy is all about is the new inclusion of sex in prime-time. The traditional bottom line is that sex is not a "family value."

What Have We Learned and Where Do We Go from Here?

These are just more (tiresome) examples of our denial that children and sex should have anything to do with one another. It is precisely this kind of nonsense that should light a fire of reform among those who claim to be more open-minded about sexuality. It will do little good for future generations if those of us who make such a claim do not begin acting to change attitudes in our families, churches and communities, including our schools.

What is needed is sane, sensible, practical, open-minded teaching and management of childhood sexuality in order to raise children who appreciate their sexuality, accept it as normal, recognize its spiritual dimensions, respect the sexuality of others and enjoy sexual activity in appropriate ways. What is needed is to abandon the ancient religious and cultural shortsightedness of seeing sex as only or primarily for procreation (and therefore only permissible in marriage), help our youth to enjoy it responsibly for the sake of building relationships now, as preparation for the relationships of later life and for the sake of its legitimate role of pleasure giving and receiving.

What Have We Learned from This Discussion of Childhood Sexuality?

The change in attitudes towards children in the past several centuries has produced the belief that children are nonsexual. This results in the reluctance to educate children sexually in the belief that they shouldn't engage in sexual activity and that they cannot reasonably consent to such activity with their peers or with adults.

The distinction between childhood and adulthood is not hard and fast either biologically or psychologically, varies from culture to culture and has changed through history.

Ancient cultures and some modern ones regarded sexuality as normal and sexual activity among youth as natural and to be encouraged rather than repressed.

There is an appalling ignorance and many negative attitudes towards sexuality in our culture, which are the result of both Christian and other cultural prejudices.

The Christian church has created doctrines to support its negative attitudes to sexuality and civil governments have created corresponding laws to enforce the moral values enshrined in these doctrines. These doctrines and laws are not founded on true biblical teachings and in fact contribute to a physical and spiritual bondage by inhibiting the full potential of our humanity in its sexual aspect.

Children of all ages are sexual beings, capable of certain types and levels of sexual activity and enjoyment.

The sexuality of children is God-created, normal and beneficial, rather than sinful and harmful.

Children develop their sexual attitudes towards themselves and others based on the attitudes and teaching of their parents; in our culture the repressive tactics of parents result in negative sexual attitudes in children.

The negative sexual attitudes developed in childhood inevitably produce negative sexual attitudes and functioning in adulthood.

The most serious sexual problem in our society is not premarital sex, unwanted teen pregnancies or even AIDS; it is the failure to accept our children's sexuality and teach them to accept it and enjoy it responsibly.

The examples of other cultures and the bizarre and harmful results of the overemphasis in our culture on child sexual abuse suggest that our culture is far from mature in its views of adult-child sexual activity.

Where Do We Go from Here?: Suggestions For Growing Sexually Healthy Children

Christian laypersons and ministry professionals should commit themselves to restudy the Scriptures in the light of historical and linguistic evidence to determine whether the traditional negative teachings of Christianity regarding sex are what the Scriptures really teach. They should also be aware that the Bible is not a textbook on sexuality and that, therefore, many issues cannot be resolved directly from its teachings. This suggests that we are given freedom to choose our own preferences in relationship to many sexual issues and that God is not concerned about them the way many Christians are. (One case in point: the Bible makes no reference to pornography [better called "erotica"]; thus it is a false use of the biblical text to reason that passages dealing with "lust" can be applied to pornography.)

Since most conservative Christians cannot accept radical new interpretations of Scripture that challenge their tightly-held traditional views, people in conservative churches who have greater light on these issues should try to get the attention of more open-minded pastors and youth leaders and show them from Scripture that the traditional views do not stand up under serious study. It is likely that only respected leaders will be able to help the rank and file of Christians to change their views about sexuality.

Adults must tackle the problem of accepting, healing and exploring their own sexuality as a God-given aspect of their humanity and spirituality. They should seek out people, published resources and even professional therapy that can help in this process. There is hope for children only if the significant adults in their lives begin dealing with their own attitudes towards sexuality.

Adults, especially parents and church leaders, should search for quality sex education materials prepared to help them help their children, as well as materials specially prepared for children of various ages. Conservative Christian parents will have to go outside their traditional boundaries and into the materials of more "liberal" churches or secular sources to locate such materials and then adapt them to their own Christian perspective.

Parents and other concerned adults should seek out one another to discuss and pray regarding their own sexual issues and those of their children. They should find strength in one another to plan and execute, perhaps with professional help, new ways of teaching their children.

Parents should not go on a guilt trip if they realize they have failed to promote healthy development and freedom for their children in terms of sexuality, but have tended to follow the negative ways of tradition. Rather, they should realize that these way can be changed, not easily, perhaps, but with determination and help from other sources.

With careful help and support from one another, parents should rethink their tendency to back off even from general physical affection-showing towards their children. This may be scary and it may be very difficult to recreate this affection with older children who have not experienced it in recent years--and there is no guarantee of success. Parents of younger children should examine their physical affection patterns and realize that it is better to err on the side of too much than too little. These challenges may confront adults with their own problems with physical intimacy (not sexual activity), which may demand that they seek their own healing in these areas.

Children need to be taught that it is OK to explore their own sexuality and, with proper direction and support, to experiment with their peers. The difficulty with the latter is that parents of other children may not be open-minded about such things. Interestingly, children carry out some of this without their parents' knowledge, so it may be best to simply let your children know that such exploration is OK with you and be willing to deal with other parents if necessary.

Adolescent and teenage children need to be taught the details of sexual life and the techniques of sexual relationships. Most of all they need to be taught how to LOVE others and to understand that sexual loving is acceptable to God at any age. They need to be taught about true intimacy in relationships and not just how to "have sex." Then they need to be taught how to be responsible in their loving, which includes safe-sex procedures.

Children need to see that their parents are not ashamed of their own sexuality. Parents of small children should seriously consider not hiding their own sexual encounters from their children so they grow up realizing that there is nothing shameful about these activities.

Parents should become aware of what their children are being taught in school about sexuality. Among the reasons given by the religious right for opposing sex-ed in the public schools is that such things should be taught at home. They are technically right, but not only are their motives suspect (they don't want open-minded thought on sex reaching their children), but they don't really teach their children much at all about sex at home. If all parents did so, then perhaps public school sex-ed would not be necessary. If parents feel inadequate to teach their children, then they should at least support healthy school programs that really teach children responsible sexual behavior and not just abstinence, which really doesn't work.

Parents should stand up for their own sexual rights and not let them be dictated by the religious right and their legislative or over-reacting enforcement authorities, whether this is in the area of censorship of sexually explicit materials, anti-nudity legislation or the rights of adults to enjoy any area of sexual activity that does not infringe on the rights of others.

I have no great advice to give in the area of adult-child sexual activity. Changes in this area will come slowly, as in all areas where ancient prejudices are at work. Parents should search their own motives and their consciences and seek to create healthy, responsible and always non-coercive ways to relate physically and emotionally to their children. In spite of the controversial nature of these issues, perhaps parents should at least break the silence taboo and talk with others about their feelings, ideas and what they may be learning from materials such as this paper. Perhaps future generations will more fully recognize the merging nature of childhood and adulthood, rather than insist on the present view of a radical break between these phases of life. Perhaps these generations will look back on some of the overwrought concerns of our day with amusement that we were so immature.

Finally, I invite readers to give Liberated Christians their feedback to the ideas in this paper. Dialog is never bad and should promote understanding, especially in difficult areas of thought and practice. We are not experts, but are open to sharing what we believe we understand, creating means for group discussion to take place and learning from others.

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Frequently Asked Questions

1. How can there be equality in an adult-child relationship when there is such a power imbalance?

2. How absolute is your belief that pre-pubescent girls should not be penetrated?

3. Exactly what do you consider an ‘appropriate’ age for sexual relationships? And why?

4. What can anyone do to stop the abuse towards children?

5. Don’t you worry that the content of your website will drive some people to act upon their urges?

6. What you think about preteen modeling sites? Do you amarsi like to look at these pictures and if so, why? I have heard of cases where men who look at these sites go on to commit crimes. So don’t you think that these pictures are dangerous if they fan the flames of desire in these men?

7. If consensual relationships between children and adults are not harmful, why am I having so many emotional and psychological problems as a result of a consensual relationship I had as a child?

8. What does The Amaros Concern think about the Michael Jackson trial?

9. Why do you think Megan’s Laws are unconstitutional? Since the registration requirement is known at the time of sentencing, is it not part of the same punishment?

10. I have been a victim of pedophilia, and I know how a child feels in that particular situation. It is absolutely ludicrous to say that a child would fully understand a sexual situation.

11. How is consent defined in the context of an intergenerational relationship?

13. How can you believe that children who still believe in Santa Claus and the boogeyman are capable of making complex emotional decisions? Even teenagers have delusions of growing up to be somebody famous.

14. Aren’t all of your nice words just a cover for your depraved desire to have sex with children?

15. Look at all the men who are still suffering because of abuse they suffered as children at the hands of priests. Isn’t that evidence enough that such relationships are bad?

16. Don’t you think that an intimate relationship is between an adult and a child is always going to be manipulative because he views the adult as an authority figure?

17. Aren’t you afraid that a child will grow to regret his relationship with you?

18. What happens when a child you love gets older? Will you stop loving him?

19. Why do you use words like ‘girllover’ and ‘childlover’?

20. How can you believe that a young child can consent to sex?

21. Aren’t you concerned that if consent laws are changed, there will be an increase in child molestation?

22. I am the parent of a young child. Why should I trust you with my child?

23. Don’t you know that it’s illegal to do the things that you do?

An Open Letter to Wolak, Finkelhor and Mitchell

An Open Letter to Wolak, Finkelhor and Mitchell Why are adult-teen relationships illegal?

Deception Not a Factor

Coercion Not a Factor

First Meetings Not Traumatic

Courtship Is a Factor

Discussion

Conclusion

What is a Childlover; What Is a Child Molester?

What is a Childlover; What Is a Child Molester? Practical Steps for Preventing Child Sexual Abuse

The Definition of Pedophilia

The Situation Offender

Do Childlovers Molest Children Too?

Preventing Molestation: Some Practical Steps

Empower Children

Rehabilitation

Working with Childlovers

Research

Declassification

Counselling

Use of the Word "Pedophilia" - A stock letter to distribute to those using the word incorrectly

Introduction

The Letter

Recent Recipients

What Is an Amarso? Favorite Son or Subversive?

Introduction

Know Thy Enemy

The Enemy Within

The Child Inviolate

Significant Other: Living with a Childlover

Honesty

Love and Respect

Jealousy

Sex

Compassion, Not Pity

Conclusion

Child Sexuality and Modern Society

The Hypocritical Society

Sacred versus Profane

Ignorance Is Not Bliss

The Scarlet Letter

An Open Letter to Wolak, Finkelhor and Mitchell

Why are adult-teen relationships illegal?

What is a Childlover; What Is a Child Molester?

Practical Steps for Preventing Child Sexual Abuse