Vortex
Member
Good lord. One hardly knows where to begin engaging with the sophistry displayed in this post. It reads as one long apologia for paedophilia. A few points:
First of all, Michael – I’m unpleasantly surprised and disappointed by your highly emotional, yet baseless response. It’s probably the first furious rant I’ve ever read from you; knowing you, I was waiting for a calm tone and valid argumentation, not repeating of pretty popular, yet entirely factually wrong, misconceptions.
Well, you’re not the only clever person who loses his or her reasoning abilities at the moment child and intergenerational sexualities are positively mentioned: these topics (especially the latter one, concerning sex between adults and children/adolescents) have a tendency to simply overwhelm people emotionally. It’s understandable, since they touch the earliest (and, therefore, the strongest) aspects of social conditioning to which all of us were, to some extent, subjected; falsehoods and cruelties which were pushed into our minds by nearly everyone around, and the best of intentions from them. Yet good intentions do not erase the fact that sexually repressive indoctrination that kids routinely undergo in the modern Western societies is based on sheer mythology – mythology that is percieved as sacred by many (and, as I described, it indeed has its roots in “religions of salvation” like Christianity), but in my evidence-supported opinion, just stupid.
1. Children begin to sexually mature at puberty, usually in their teens. This coincides roughly with an increase in intellectual and emotional maturity that doesn't, however, peak straight away. In fact, Id say that intellectual and emotional maturity are rather rare even in adults. This means that children are only prohibited from having sex (in England at any rate) for 2-3 years after puberty. About the length of an apprenticeship. Hardly a huge imposition on their human rights. Let's face it: kids tend to be somewhat foolish, even more so than adults.
What?!! It is known, at least, since Alfred Kinsey’s famous reports on sexuality (or, more precisely, RECALLED since Kinsey’s reports, while it was known for everyone for millennia) that active sexuality begins in early childhood, if not babyhood, and not with puberty. What begins in puberty is a reproductive capability, not sexual response; the latter is entirely natural even in young children, and easily reach the level of having full-blown orgasms – that, to general society’s horror and rage, was found by Kinsey. Later, similar observations were made by many researchers and child (mental) health practitioners - such as, for example, sociologist Floyd Martinson, child psychiatrist Alayne Yates, or child psychologist Larry Constantine. Martinson’s “Sexual Life of Children” and “Infant and Child Sexuality”, as well as Yates’ “Sex without Shame”, may be found as free PDFs on the Web.
As for the absence of observable harm – studies that does not take the harmfulness of child-adult sex as an axiomatic assumption usually do not find any harm in most cases. It is shown both by detailed interviews with children themselves. There are meta-analyses beyond the most (in)famous one by Rind et al, such as earlier one by Larry Constantine – or successful replication of Rind’s and his colleagues’ work by Heather Ulrich, Mickey Randolph and Shawn Acheson. There are sets of detailed interviews with people who experienced sex as children – beyond Sandfort’s work (did you read it at all – haven’t I provided a link?), there are others like Terry Leahy’s “Negotiating Stigma”, which cover female as well as male cases and may be found as a free PDF as well.
2. Speaking of adults, they are generally able to recognise this and would spurn any "advances" made by children, in the latter's own interests. If they couldn't, it wouldn't say much for their intellectual and emotional maturity.
Since, as I said above, children are sexually active and responsive from the earliest age, and are not harmed by sex with adults (as long as no coercion on adult’s part is involved), it is NOT in their interest to be sexually repressed, to be deprived from learning about sexuality by their own experience, to be fed adults’ intimidating misconceptions about “bad touches”, “sex predators” and so on, or to be damaged by an enforced breakdown of a positive sex-involving relationship with an adult because of adults’ misguided fears.
3. Prepubescent children, especially babies and infants, should be nurtured and protected from adult sexual advances, which can and do harm them physically, intellectually and emotionally. If anyone feels any differently, ask them how they'd react to an adult molesting their own children, or to having been molested themselves as children.
For those adult paedophiles who do molest their own children, ask if they themselves were molested as kids. They often were, and hence have lost their moral compass and become unable to judge properly the effect of their actions (which alone speaks volumes about the harm that paedophilia causes). Other adults necessarily have to intervene to protect the child and give it the best chance of developing normally, even if the child is precocious. Most kids aren't precocious, however.
Yet another common misconception – most paedophiles didn’t have sexual contact with adults as children. They just found, usually in their early adolescence, that their sexual drive is as directed at children as when they were children themselves. Such realisation of paedosexuality was a heavy burden for many of them, since they faced either a prospect of a life-long secrecy and celibate, or total dehumanisation and cruel persecution by society if they will ever enact (or simply disclose) their sexual preferences – no matter how consensual and harmless such enactment would be. It’s not surprising that many of these juvenile paedophiles chose the third option – suicide… This horrible choice is very similar to the one which tormented young homosexuals before Gay Liberation and positive social reevaluation of their sexuality which it brought. Such similarity was noticed by many scholars, such as criminologists Allyson Walker and Vanessa Panfil, who compared modern society’s treatment of paedosexuality with its earlier attitudes to homosexuality – and found them very close to each other, if not largely identical.
And, while it may seem unthinkable nowadays, in 1970s Netherlands some parents knew about their children’s relationships with paedophiles, and was entirely content with them. Some of them actually walked alongside their children and their adult lovers in public marshes! And it was not because they were “molested” by anyone while they were children; they just were intellectually, socially and spiritually liberated people who saw nothing terrible in their children’s consensual, harmless and pleasant relationships. The horrified and disgusted attitude to such sexually expressed intergenerational friendships are simply a result of a massive, persistent sex-negative crypto-religious indoctrination to which most of us were subjected. Yet, people from other cultures, or indoctrination-resistant types from own one, do not share our artificial, societally enforced anti-sexual vicissitudes.
4. Childhood is the one time in life when we get to experience innocence. Having experienced it myself, I can attest to its worth later in life in helping evaluate my spiritual growth. Had I lost that innocence prematurely, I wouldn't be who I currently am. I thank God for my precious period of innocence and can't imagine what life would have been without it. Children don't know this yet, and so it's up to every adult to protect them from its early demise.
Here our life histories are in direct opposition, since I, as many kids of 1990s Russia, never was subjected to compulsory “innocence” by adults.
In 1990s, Russia was effectively a “failed state”, with the society being in economic collapse. The life was hard for many; yet it had a bright side as well – the fall of ideological system that kept Soviet mentality together brought a delightful cultural chaos of proportions comparable to 1960s and 1970s in the West. The sense of liberation was there, despite all hardships and disasters, and it was not limited to adults: kids were usually granted a remarkable degree of freedom, both by their family and a general society, and may do what they want. They accessed any information they wanted – watched any films and programmes, read any books and magazines. Due to the effective absence of age restrictions, their choice was almost unlimited, so their learning was unimpeded by adult interference. Erotica was an interesting for kids to watch, yet it was also exciting to enact playfully: explicitly sexual games of prepubescent children, with kids taking example from erotic activities of adults, were a common occurrence – and were tolerated by adults, who saw them as natural part of kid’s exploration of world and oneself. (The second in popularity among Russian kids of the 1990s were games concerning magick and mysticism, which were booming in Russia in the very same time; attempts to perform some simplistic imitations of magickal rituals and ceremonies were normal among children.) And kids’ freedom was not limited to informational and sexual spheres: it included freedom of movement as well. Many of children had played and walked in the streets after dark, since there were still no age-based curfews at all. Schools were a free-to-enter zones, which any adult may simply walk in and out without any surveillance or restriction. (Most of the non-parent, non-educator adults who were entering school grounds were visiting their former teachers, with whom they had friendly relationships – no, not sexual ones, just social ones; giving friendly visits to former teachers were a kind of tradition, left from Soviet times.) Older kids and adolescents were often drinking, smoking and using other psychoactive substances; such practices were usually met in unfriendly manner by parents and other adults, but still not with horror which would be expectable from a modern Western grown-ups; oftentimes, adults looked the other way, and occasionally initiated kids into drink-and-smoke themselves.
Oh, 1990s in Russia were an epoch of innocence-free growing for so many kids – including me!
But nowadays, things have greatly changed for the worse – “child protection” has reached Russia. Recent years in Russia were characterised by hysterical “paedophile panic” which lead to severe restrictions of children’s freedoms in nearly any areas. Now Russia has all the child-suppressive practices of Western states: schools turned into fortresses, with security checkpoints which no adult may pass without scrutiny; strict curfews for anyone “underage”; age-based limitations to information access; and so on. Child “innocence” is now heavily defended; yet kids do not seem to be happy about it!
Let’s be explicit – as child liberationist educator John Holt (whose book “Escape from Childhood”, a well-argued defense of children’s freedoms, is a highly recommended reading both for you and for anyone else here), said, children do not want to remain children; they want to grow up. The part that parents and other adults are playing in this growing-up process should be supportive, not preventive. All attempts to “defend” kids from their own exploration are based on nothing but an oversentimental, nostalgia-tripping reshape of childhood memories by adults indoctrinated into the “innocence” legend, which is a crypto-religion, presenting itself nowadays as a “social science”, yet containing nothing but ancient religious mythology.
The problem is, Michael, any case for “innocence” can’t be based on anything but a sheer religious devotion, an aversion to corporeal life and embodiment preached by Salvationist religions. It is no more valid or sensible that Christian Fundamentalists’ insistence that everything paranormal is “demonic”, their tendency to portrait researchers and experiencers of paranormal phenomena as “Devil’s dupes”.
I, personally, quite positive that non-physical spirit does exist, but our bodies and bodily-sensed world are not separated from it; body is a manifestation of spirit. The rejection and torment of one’s embodied form is simply a distorted projection of our own pain and fear, perpetuated by authoritarian societies and oppressive religions (and ideologies) that justify their existence.
5. I don't give a damn how many treatises from woolly-minded intellectuals seek to justify child molestation. They're wrong, wrong, wrong.
These treatises are not just empty words, Michael – they contain a lot of actual evidence and quite strong argumentation. So, as Alex likes to say, LOOK AT THE EVIDENCE!!!
And, to end all this… Michael, aren’t you the one who, in numerous anthropogenic global warming debates, always criticised devout environmentalists for their crypto-religious Salvationism? Aren’t you the one who always remained calm and kept analysing the data looking in the cases which emotionally overwhelm nearly everyone, such as HIV-AIDS skepticism? Aren’t you the one who always, in the midst of the polarising debates, insisted on scrutiny instead of furious dismissal or enthusiastic praise?
The one who, like me, maintained that separation between “mind” and “matter” is rather a conceptual trick than anything real, that physical is the form and manifestation of the spiritual?
And, damn it, why you cannot see that now you’re acting exactly as deeply passionate, messianic types who insist that they always know better and have the right and duty to enforce their worldview on anyone without consent, to suppress any alternative? That now it is YOU who wants to push forward a emotionally charged prejudice, without looking at the available data?
So, I said what I thought. It is for you decide whether to look at pro-intergenerational sex side of the story or not.