Are we in the midst of paedogeddon?
Not my question, but Suzanne Moore in today’s Guardian. She gets it right that all the Jimmy Savile brouhaha and panic over paedos in Downing St is wildly OTT, but then predictably comes out with the tired old feminist mantra that child sexual abuse (CSA) is largely an ordinary family thing.
She’s right that abuse – mainly emotional, neglectful and violent – thrives in nuclear families as it does in other forms of closed institution. But after decades of supposedly “silenced” victims screaming constantly through every conceivable communications medium, the truly silenced voice is that of children who have sexual encounters with adults and do NOT feel abused.
Moore hints at their existence when she tells us, “I have been inundated with stories from women who have been abused mostly in familial circumstances. Some of them are confused about whether they really have been abused.”
Confused? Or just unwilling to accept the dominant abuse narrative because they were happy to take part at the time, look back on it fondly, and have never been traumatized as feminists and other victimologists insist they must have been?
Moore’s unwitting admission comes just days after a conference in America at which David Finkelhor, doyen of anti-CSA gurus, let slip a related unmentionable, when he said “Kids are sometimes aggressive in seeking out sexual relationships with adults.”
He meant – and his audience would have understood – that these kids should be reined in; their sexuality should be monitored and suppressed. His idea of “listening to the children”, like that of so many in our society who see sex in terms of danger rather than pleasure, is to pry on them, pounce on what they are up to, and kill it dead.
[…] too close to being snuffed out ourselves for that to be good symbolism. The very first blog, titled The real silenced voices, began with the words “Are we in the midst of paedogeddon?” This was a reference to the Jimmy […]
Of course, an anthology of anecdotal accounts by adults of positive sexual experiences in childhood would be widely disbelieved, but still a valuable addition to the available evidence in the public domain IMO. Is anybody working on one? How/where would it be published?
[TOC adds: Yes! Recently published! See Heretic TOC’s blog titled A positive sighting of 118 black swans, 2 May 2013, for discussion of new book Positive Memories by T. Rivas.]
it never ceases to amaze me the ignorance of journalists in the uk.there is a london radio station discussing csa,one bloke said it was not the sex that was traumatizing,but the reactions of parents and counselors.the radio presenter said well paedophiles must be cleaver to survive so long,as if we are all up to no good.before on talksport they had a late night current affairs phone in,to be fair no topic was to hot to handle.one night there was a discussion about a spoof doc called the execution of gary glitter,where they read my sms out defending gary,not just because of the mob rule knuckleheads,but i made the point that his compensation has probably extended the girl and the families life.
Cognizant of the fact that this is not my blog, I find myself nonetheless constrained to respond to this, to me, endlessly repetitive idea of “those who outright hate people like us.”
What you say generally resonates intimately, with me and many I expect, far less around being fondled our molested or whatever than with the persistent question of why we as children were not taught sexual etiquette.
It seems to me the Victorians were far more interested in the decorum of newly invented fish knives in public eating houses than they were with the practical reality of having a nice little dickie that somebody wanted to fondle and touch, and the confusion of growing up with that.
In that respect, they were guilty more of a serious crime of ommission than commission.
That said, my view is that there is a better interpretation in “those who outright hate”, leaving the “people like us” out of it entirely.
There is no reason, I thus feel, why one should adopt as personal identity an abstract category of person “us” then take as personally something that presumably happened to somebody else merely by dint of an idea that they belong to the same category.
That’s not a child abuse question, merely one of taxonomy.
It seems to me far more fruitful to reconsider this idea of “outright hate”, and think of it in terms of their own suffering. Maybe your cousin wonders to this day why you rejected him.
Perhaps they merely ‘outright suffer more than people like us’, are more confused than were are, about the same thing, and most probably for the same reason.
Just maybe, inside, they too weep inconsolably.
Most days, I feel like the absolute only voices even allowed heard, are of those who outright hate people like us…All other voices are gagged, unless they are submissive to those intolerant voices.
Everything inconvenient to their rigid social structure, they want whitewashed…
…and I have had far too many run-in’s with self identified victims [many quite loud, obnoxious and abusive], to ever buy into the lie that “victims have no voice”. Some of them are extremely nasty, abusive and even criminal in “exercising their voice”.
As to the sexual aggression of children…I can personally attest to this in my own experience…not as an adult, but as a kid. The person who I had my first sexual relations with [a female cousin of mine] pursued me relentlessly, when I was a tween. It stretched on for days…She was doing things like spontaneously sliding her hands down the front of my pants, into my underwear and grabbing me, even after I’d turned her away several times before…I eventually relented, because she was making/keeping me so damned horny. Prior to this point in my life, I had never looked at her in a sexual manner [I was attracted to other boys, after all]…But she decided she was going to have me. All things told, it was a nice experience…She never complained, either…Heck, it was her doing…She had/has no grounds for complaining…I was actively pushing her in the direction of not doing this, but she wouldn’t have any of that.
Some kids get extremely aggressive, when they want sex.
There are a lot of people, “professional” and laymen, who would tell me that I was sexually molested and sexually assaulted because of this life experience…Some might even suggest, that my cousin was also.
I prefer to allow my memories and cognition to speak for themselves.
Maybe I was genuinely molested in the beginning, since I didn’t really want to go through with that, with her…But it evolved into something which I can live fully at peace with.
My own experience as a boy, has been a powerful reason why I reject the claim that sexual contact destroys children…She was not the only one…I got unwanted sexual advances from another person, durring this time window. He was another “grabber”, and did pretty much the same thing as the girl…but that did not evolve anywhere. I was just really pissed off at him for a few days…after which, it was water under the bridge.
Similar to my experience, I’ve also had another BL share with me the story of his first sexual experience…an event that went way over the top, in my opinion [though sounded like mind blowing fun]…Similar to me, he also came to see this event in a positive way.
The worst thing about childhood, is that they never taught any of us anything about sexual ettequete. Consequentially, all the sexual encounters I had as a kid were ones that I stumbled clueless into…There was no negotiation…Just another frisky kid coming onto you, and helping themselves to your body [even when you were telling them “no”].
I suppose, it’s natural…and kids aren’t given the social tools to navigate their sexuality any better…So I can look past it, as regards to the individual kids behaviors. Things still shouldn’t be that way…and I blame it on the efforts to suppress childhood sexuality.
I really wish I’d not been kept so naive, for such a long span of my life…I was affraid of sex, on the grounds of religious mind conditioning…Thinking back to that aggressive boy, I now know that he was truly the one best chance I ever had, for a boy/boy sexual relationship.
…I could have lived with the fact, that he also was my cousin…but it was too bad, that he wasn’t more “my type”…Contrary to what many people think about BoyLovers, being attracted to boys in a general sense, does not mean that you have the same, equal attraction to all boys…Still, I think it would have been a very positive and exciting relationship to experience, had we both been able to embrace it…I’m sure it would have been a great memory.
I kick myself hard, over that lost opportunity…somewhat frequently…
…and that is what I think about the person, who legitimately molested me.
What can I say?…Life is complicated…And the supposed rules of how a kid is supposed to react to these things, in my experience, is utter hogwash.
Let me try to be serious for a minute. This business of the minor’s attraction to the major is actually quite interesting. I think that by and large the minor does not care one way or another about how big, hairy, wrinkly or ugly the major is. The relationship is asymmetrical. The lover and the beloved. The major is primarily attracted to the beauty (physical, emotional, characterological) of the minor. The attraction of the beloved, on the other hand, is that he is loved — that he is found to be beautiful and interesting. His attraction, in other words, is narcissistic. (I don’t mean that in a negative sense. The evidence suggests that if narcissistic needs are not met, the development of love of the other may be hampered.) I say “mainly” in describing the love of both the minor and the major. The minor may see characteristics in the major that he finds attractive and wants to emulate. Conversely, the major may see something of himself as a child in the minor. Love of self and other are intertwined in this manner, for both partners. But the center of gravity is different. That, at any rate, is my take on it.
Contrary to the common and I think deliberately propagated view, in my experience it is the child who is the lover, and [whoever] is the beloved.
But of course, we all know that children are incapable of such things, being so ‘powerless’, the relationship so inherently ‘assymetrical’ . . .
Or are they? Experience a 9-10-11 year-old boy coming onto you, and the last thing you’d say is they are powerless.
Perhaps in this boring, stultifying, bureaucratic modernity people have lost sight of what power is, apparently whatever political theorists say it is and nothing else.
This theoretical power construct is all delusionary. Again, experience a boy coming onto you and the entire planet shifts on its axis.
I have no problem writing this. It’s the truth.
Somehow, Gil, we seem to be talking past each other. I did not mean that childdren are powerless, are not able to know what they want, or any of the things you seemed to think I meant. I guess the word the brought in the confusion was “asymetrical.” I certainly did not mean to allude to the view that because of the “power imbalance” children are incapable of real choice. By “asymetrical” I simply mean the men and boys are not necessarily looking for the same thing in the relationship.
If we actually disagree on something, that’s OK. Anything should be open for discussion. But I’m not sure whether we do disagree. Its hard to tell because what I meant to say was not at all what you heard me saying.
jedson
No, it’s OK, fine. I am simply more conscious perhaps of the fact that here on this Internet thingie we are not, as the deceptive nature of the thing would tend to suggest, all sitting in the one room sharing common backgrounds and meanings.
I live literally around the other side of the planet. Diametrically opposite us is a point just east of New York and north of Bermuda.
I live in and grew up on a remote colonial frontier, generations of us, historically dominated by males both in sheer numbers and in terms of gross gender polarisation in a harsh landscape, with over 30% never married or in any sort of relationship with a woman.
Until this recent paedophile thing came up I’d never heard of men grooming boys, especially as they come of age, quite to the contrary. I never heard of anyone who needed to. I’d barely heard of the term ‘homosexual’ or ‘gay’, only that somebody might be ‘a bit queer’, or who boys could safely visit or live with without anyone saying anything. Yes?
Like David Marr, the idea that all those boys and men are somehow going to remain celebate all their lives is an absurdity. I can only think that those guys going to Asia do so for a bit of variety, not because there is nothing here.
I only later discovered that in some towns those boys got beaten up, and had to go live in the city where they congregated in droves. That’s a bad move. Since then the legislation has been changed, and rightly so.
I’ve been in strife for saying these things openly, when it came to the issue, because people don’t want them said. I reply, well, you raised the matter, I’m just giving you the facts of life. The problem you have is an issue in the current state of legislation, like most things, not in the empirical reality of people’s lives.
I don’t get along very well with people who talk constant bullshit, especially lawyers, and may come across that way. No offense intended.
Only later did I start running into all this Weberian power assymetry theory at university, to find myself more than somewhat bemused by it. It comes out of left-wing sociology textbooks, nowhere else. Your use of words merely triggered my habitual rejoinder.
I think it’s way past time everyone just cut the crap finally. I have written essays on this and discussed it openly in law school intensives. Given the huge background of endemic human sexual activity, how on earth can any court of law then turn around and differentiate something called ‘sexual offending’, or even classify something like ‘penetration’.
The matter in law is ‘malum prohibitum’, illegal because that’s what the state of current legislation says, not ‘mala in se’ which means evil in itself. Have a look at the governments who legislated it, and that tells you everything.
My own view is that all the anti-paedophile campaigners are nothing more than voyeurs, perverts. I can only suggest they get a life finally, go indulge their own fantasies.
Technically, ‘teleiophilia’, in uniformity with the original Greek. ‘Adultophilia’ mixes Latin with Greek, that’s why the word sounds so chunky and awkward, like ‘sociology’.
Aside from the simple fact that the Romans only sodomised their slaves and had apparently little regard for loving one another, lacking finesse in these matters, I trust members will suffer my continued inclination toward the Greek.
Adultophilia??? Now that’s going too far. I mean I’m a liberal minded, tolerant sort of guy. But adults?Do you know how big and hairy they are? Have you ever seen a naked one? You’d think twice if you had. The idea is really disgusting. I just sort of got used to the idea of homosexuality — you know, all those homosapiens running around having sex with each other. And now this!
Thanks willistina556.
By analogy with paedophilia, you would presumably define adultophilia as children’s sexual attraction to adults. That would be worth a book, certainly, in fact plenty of them.
It is interesting that “David Finkelhor, doyen of anti-CSA gurus, let slip a related unmentionable, when he said ‘Kids are sometimes aggressive in seeking out sexual relationships with adults.’”
This observation was made decades ago by Bender, L., & Blau, A. (1937). The reaction of children to sexual relations with adults. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 7, 500– 518, by Gebhard, P., Gagnon, J., Pomeroy,W., & Christenson, C. (1965). Sex offenders: An analysis of types. New York, NY: Harper & Row, and by various others.
It seems strange that Finkelhor has just now finally awakened to this known and obvious fact.
Good News.
Today’s aMused-not-aBused, all-SeXting/camphone/DIY-C.P ‘Generation SeX’ just laugh at crap sex-laws. And mock those neo-Victorian Anglo-fascists trying (and failing) to enforce them with their criminal psycho-lonialism.
The unstated mantra of pre-legal Generation SeX: “My Mind, My Body, My Choice, My Partner/Pedo – Mind Yer Own !”
When Generataion SeX CUMS of a age, and rules in a few years, they’ll re-write and write-off for all-time this low dishonest era late-20th / early 21st century as, ‘ The Time That Good Sex Forgets ‘.
To slightly misquote the first femme-lib Swingin ’60s/Lurve Generation naughty boys & gals gone by, ” It’s Only SeX But We Like It – Some Still Do. “
Yes, I like this “neo-Victorian Anglo-fascists” tag. I like it a lot. That’s just exactly the way it is, I can post pics of some of them.
Maybe add ‘recolonising’, not only other countries but minds and bodies as well.
Yech! Get out of my undies!
Thanks Gil.
Words are our only weapons against mass deception masked as child protection.
Without their lies, they lose.
Meanwhile Heretic TOC should be given every encouragement to complete his trilogy of masterworks, with a mainstream-mashing, bullshit-busting final volume, “Adultophilia: The Rational Case”.
In case study after case study, I am not the only field researcher who has observed the fact that for every one child put up as a recovering victim of paedophile sexual abuse there are at least 20 queued at the guy’s door.
In my own case alone, after I was myself accused of interfering sexually with children and my name splashed through the media (I can still only guess to discredit my research findings), it was me calling the police at 1:00 am to report children and adolescents at the front door, or tapping on my bedroom window, wanting to get into bed with me. In the event, it was my own kids who took turns from living with their mother to come and stay with me and keep an eye on things.
In the aftermath, analysis of transcripts of interviews with children, repeatedly the child is led by the interviewer, as the ‘offender’ in treatment is led by their ‘therapist’. Yet in cases where real abuse of children is substantiated and demonstrable, as distinct from healthy sexual play and experiementation, the sexual component consists of typically less than 14-18% of the overall abuse profile.
Why the focus on sex? Why so little concern about the violence and emotional abuse of children, the long-term psychological duress, the chronic neglect most commonly with not even enough food in the house?
Real questions still needing to be addressed. I will be editing and publishing some of my more recent papers in due course.
Tom – what can I say? You’re *great*! Thank you for having been born! (I’m serious).
I’m “a member of the club” and I’m doing what I can “for the cause”, though it can not nor ever will equal what you have done. Keep up the good work! And best of luck! I feel honored to be able to make contact you, even if it is just as an anonymous responder on your blog. We all must do what we can to end the pedo-chaust, and the great suffering it entails – for boys as well as men! Again – good luck in all you do.
Your comrade-in-spirit,
marti
Praise is very welcome. Thanks! But the best thing is this: I’m doing what I can “for the cause”. That’s the spirit!
Hey Marti, don’t forget the gals !
LoL.
That comment by Finkelhor (the “foremost authority” on this issue) is very important. It undercuts one of the main tenets of the Sex Abuse Industry. That is that children never are interested in such contacts, and certainly don’t like them. Finkelhor knows the children often are interested in such contacts, and that they are by no means always traumatic or damaging. Ultimately his position is that sexual contact between adults and minors is *immoral* and that society has the right to declare anything immoral that it wants to. That premise wold lead to a whole new debate.
Finkelhor was very boring for nearly two hours before suddenly coming out with that interesting admission. It was well worth the wait though. Thanks for perceptive comment jedson303