For discussion: If you were a pedophile

[Clodfobble]

I was able to follow along with what you were saying, right up until this point:

Originally Posted by sean

Of course children deserve protection from sexual abuse, but all too often this 'protection' is simply a cipher for social control of their sexuality and of sexuality in general. Children themselves are now being routinely subjected to accusations of sexual abuse of peers and are subsequently exposed to serious institutional abuse by the judicial system. As if sexual curiosity were a heinous crime.

Screeching halt. Standard party line of many abusive pedophiles is that what they are doing is not abuse if the child is willing. And I take issue with the assertion that "children" in the sense you mean are going through the judicial system--worst case scenario is teenagers being accused of statutory rape with their teenage girlfriends. You are not discussing teenagers, you are discussing little children. I think there may have been one story that I can recall in the last 10 years about a kindergartener who was suspended for kissing another kindergartener on the playground. That's hardly "insitutional abuse" by the "judicial system."

When you insert this topic in with the rest, your sincerity takes a big hit.

[sean]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

I was able to follow along with what you were saying, right up until this point...

I know where you're coming from, Clodfobble. I have a similar reaction to 'child love' advocates claiming to be working for the sexual emancipation of children. The problem for me is, philosophically I have to agree with them. Social control of sexuality, beginning in childhood, is the bedrock of authoritarian culture.

When you use lines like the standard party line of many abusive pedophiles you are simply inverting my own impulse to reject the 'standard party line' of sex negative puritans.

As a Popperian, I understand the difference between absolute and relative belief, and central to this is the significance of falsification. Like black swans, positive childhood sexual experiences with adults do occur, however rarely. These occurrences require us to reject the hypothesis that such experiences are necessarily harmful. The parameters of what we should term 'abuse' are therefore subject to negotiation.

But before you burst a blood vessel, I have to tell you that as an autonomous being with a capacity for independent thought, rather than a mouthpiece of the 'abusive pedophile party', I have given a great deal of thought to resolving these areas of conflict, especially where they impact on my personal relationships. Whatever my personal beliefs, I understand the social constraints on adult sexual conduct with children, and I'm quite able to conform to them.

That said, I've never compromised my personal beliefs or logic to ingratiate myself with friends, even tho there have been many occasions where it would have made my life much easier. What I have done is learn to hear their side of the story. This has been made much easier for me by their reciprocal respect for my own point of view. Being listened to and having people seek to understand why I feel the way I do has made it much easier for me to respect their feelings; in particular their visceral and intuitive, but not always logical protective instinct for their children.

There's a lot to this. I don't need to be convinced of the absolute need for particular limits a parent wishes to place around another adult's conduct with their child. The parent has a right to place those limits, however trivial. (And in the case of children for whom nobody cares, well perhaps love is something they can use, even if it includes an element of desire. What I won't forgive is adults who exploit disadvantaged children for their own personal satisfaction.)

Also, and this is important too, if the harms of non-violent, non-coercive adult/child sexual contact (or 'abuse') are primarily sociogenic, as I believe they are, that does not mean they are not still harms. Teaching a child to swim is not generally considered harmful, but if the water is infested with sharks, as these waters assuredly are, then it would be irresponsible to lead a child into them. Involving children in transgressions, causing them to keep secrets, exposing them to shame and embarrassment, all of these are clearly potentially harmful, even tho they are all consequences of society's negative evaluation of sexual pleasure. Nobody who claims to love them could expose children to any of this with a clear conscience.

But fabricating and exaggerating extreme harms as a putative consequence of certain kinds of benign childhood sexual experience, as occurred during the masturbation panics of the past two centuries, and as is now occurring with respect to childhood sexual experiences with adults, amounts to a kind of hate speech directed against paedophiles. The suggestion that paedophilia is a kind of praeternatural evil, that calls for extraordinary measures outside the usual limits of law enforcement, is no different to the mass hysteria that drove the witch trials and constructed the Third Reich. I don't want to strike a note of aggression, but I've suffered at the hands of this moral panic, and I have a right to defend myself against it.

Finally, children do routinely suffer institutional abuse as a consequence of normal sexual conduct, in my country and in yours. I could provide more specific and recent references than I have (below) but I'm sorry I don't have them at my fingertips. One very recent case near where I live involved a six year old boy excluded from school, exposed to a wave of community hostility and subjected to intervention by child protection agencies following his pulling down a little girl's pants in the playground. I have no doubt he was harmed by his experience, and frankly it makes me nauseous to think of it. I don't want to get into a poor me thing here, but as a child I suffered serious physical and emotional abuse at the hands of adults in authority as a consequence of harmless sexual exploration. I'm irritated by your suggestion that this kind of thing is trivial or nonexistent.

Here are a couple of articles you might find enlightening.


m o l e s t e d
A mother discovers that the legal system's nightmarish "cure" for child sexual abuse can be worse than the disease.

A Question of Abuse
An influential group of therapists is promoting a new scare: children who molest other children. Those who question the murky evidence are said to be in denial. But it is the kids, taken from home and given intense therapy, who might be sufferering the most.


I'm sorry my sincerity has taken a hit. I'm trying to be as open and honest about my situation and beliefs as I can be in the circumstances. Why should your disagreeing with me constitute a mark against my honesty?