What about a 8-9 years old boy or girl who has sex play with children who are 4-5 years old?
This question was part of a post on the Sexnet forum in response to my own posting there of the kindergarten oral sex story. The implication appeared to be that such an age difference would necessarily be problematic. I think it will be worth posting my reply in full. It includes a very telling personal story briefly mentioned in the comments here a few days ago. Here, with slight editing, is what I said:
What’s the problem? As Roosevelt said (or near enough!), “We have no problem but problematisation itself.” Judith Levine copiously demonstrated in her book Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex that problematising children’s sexuality serves only to create victims rather than offering protection. Let me, though, instead of quoting from Levine, give you an idea of what she and I mean in a very up-to-date example that surfaced earlier this month following the kindergarten sex story:
Ashley1988:
“I have experience as one of those kids. When i was 9 I was caught naked with 7 year old half brother. I had no idea what sex was being raised in a Mormon family. We were not touching or anything. Just comparing our bodies because we thought it was funny that they were so different.
“I was snatched out of bed at 2 am and brought to the police station by my step mother. I was interrogated by the police on camera. I got yelled at and called a sex offender and predator. I was even had to take a lie dectector test which I of course passed, but it didn’t matter.
“I was signed over to state custody, and placed in a facility for sex offenders that included men more than twice my age in a distant state. While growing up there I was sexually assaulted and raped. The group therapy sessions consisted of admitting that you are a sex offender or you could never get placed any where better. If I tried to explain it wasn’t sexual they said I was a sick perverted slut justifying my behavior and/or minimizing.
“I signed myself out the very day that I turned 18 and got a cheap apartment. I am now almost 25 and now I refuse to let anyone see me naked. It terrifies me, nobody has seen me naked since that day when I was 9, not even doctors. Other than the 68 year old man that raped me. Therapists also terrify me since they were the ones calling me a horrible sex offender. I would never be anything like those sex offenders I had to grow up with, but had to pretend I was to survive or be allowed to go to a safer place.
”I also have a deep fear of men and so I have only dated women, but still refused to let them see me naked.
“Please don’t ruin these kids lives by making things into them being sex offenders. When adults overreact they end up traumatizing them.” In Jezebel.
If you read Levine you will see that this sort of horror story has become endemic in modern America. You might ask, what about when a kid really is abusive? I would say they have better ways of dealing with things elsewhere. But that can wait for another day.
Back to Heretic TOC, here and now:
This blog’s spies report that Jimmy “the Screamer” Cantori, notorious hit person for the Toronto mob (aka James Cantor), has today been screaming like crazy on Boy Chat of all unlikely places, posting over 30 comments. Dipping into a selection, it soon becomes clear the style is very much the Screamer’s, so it is most unlikely this could be an imposter – as he once accused Heretic TOC of being. The big question has to be, why BC? Is this meant to be a public “education” exercise? If so, some might feel the Screamer’s bombastic, you-schmucks-know-nothing, style does him no favours. What does him even fewer, if favours can go into minus zero territory, is his refusal to engage with criticism based on a close reading of his work.
“Observer” posted on BC saying “Cantor, Blanchard, and others of the Toronto Centre for Pedophile Pursuit have made up their minds that sexually expressed older male/boy attraction is a mental defect/illness, and the only data they seem to consider is that which confirms their bias. Tom O’Carroll…has a running battle going on with Cantor, and also duels with him on Mike Bailey’s Sexnet mailing list.”
The Screamer replied:
“I’m in a battle with O’Carroll? Mostly, O’Carroll is just in a battle with his own personality. I have nothing to gain (or lose) by communicating with him at all. He merely summons my name up when he needs a purpose.”
Ah, that would be like now, I guess! And thanks, Jimmy, for the free psychoanalysis about me being in a battle with my own personality. If I hesitate to disagree with you, it is probably because my numerous schizophrenic “alters” are battling for who should go first!
He adds that he “stopped participating in Sexnet a while back”.
Yes, that would be right after he had zilch to say in response to my series of detailed critical questions about so-called white matter deficits in the paedophilic brain. He says he has nothing to gain or lose by communicating with me. But unless he is capable of giving good answers to my questions there is one thing he will lose whether he answers or not: scientific credibility. As reported here, the highly rated blogger Neurosceptic, himself a neuroscientist, said he felt my questions were “highly astute” and that he basically agreed with everything I said. The questions I raised in The dubious analogy of the ‘extra arm’ and Hand to hand on handedness need to be answered, and answered well, or the Screamer’s reputation is toast.
A new article describes which sexual behavior of children is considered problematic: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37343427/
“a potential diagnostic instrument for young suspected victims of sexual abuse” including observation of “the child’s verbal responses,.. non-verbal behavioural reactions and… the interviewer’s overall impression of the child’s verbal and non-verbal behaviour during the interview” is claimed to be reliable (though not valid!):
[…] blogs. I gather she is a linguistics specialist. This piece was offered as a comment in response to The only problem is problematisation itself but is the right length for a blog and eminently suitable for one. […]
I emailed James while we were chatting on BoyChat and he sent me a prompt reply that indeed it was him.
But why is he there?
Whatever the reason I don’t think it is a bad thing that he came to BoyChat. There is nothing wrong with exchange of ideas. Maybe he had an epiphany and wanted to explore something on BoyChat. Him coming to us can’t be a bad thing.
I think he was there for personal exploration.
James Cantor may well be right about there being less white matter in the paedophile brain but wrong to believe that it has been caused by an event such as head injuries. I suspect, but do not know, that there is a natural variation in the quantity of white matter in the brain, just the same as there is a natural variation in the quantity of grey matter. Even if this is true, it still does not establish cause and effect. According to Cantor’s studies, paedophiles may well have less white matter but just because a person has less white matter does not necessarily mean that they are a paedophile.
I think that the story you have shared with us is highly valid. I think it speaks for itself. I think the story about James Cantor going onto to Boy Chat and having arguments about you is very revealing too.
I have previously said that THEY treat children like empty fools, but I now add that they do this only when it suits them. Anyone fairly viewing kids as PEOPLE in their own right must also see them as vitally curious and full of fun — moreover, full of affection where affection is offered — rather than subjects fit for criminalization because they are, finally, human…
I, too, am at a loss to figure out exactly why Cantor is investing so much time, effort, and “tap-dancing” into BoyChat. He has made reference to developing acceptance there, perhaps with an eye to recruiting “subjects” for his pseudo-investigations. He may succeed in entrapping a few of the less discerning, and perhaps one or two who are apparently quite capable of crossing swords with him may toy with him as he toys with BoyChat. But I think by and large his biases and intentions are just too transparent. We shall see.
If that’s his style we have very serious grounds for formal complaint.
ALL research involving humans, and animals; all sentient beings, are subject to strict ethical supervision.
Somebody please log this man’s posts and compile a dossier. I will most certainly support a formal complaint to his university, and indeed to any of his hosting institutions.
Already the man is an utter disgrace. I can’t believe that anybody at all might be being allowed to get away with such behaviour for so long.
I almost hesitate to be first to comment – appear to be first to comment – yet it remains the simple fact that it is 9:00 am around this side of the planet, and I am going through my morning emails.
On this topic, I don’t see things that way. I don’t read the text, it seems, the same way others may read it. I have 40 first cousins. As kids we all bathed together, and run around in the nuddy (as Mum used to say), and went skinny dipping. I attended boarding school, with no toilet doors and showers arrayed along an open trough.
I swam and played footie, lived in Aboriginal communities, and at one stage lived in a commune where literally everybody went about their day entirely naked, from toddlers to wrinkly grandmothers.
Later as a Dad I raised my own sons likewise, and all the rest of the kids in the house over the years, with all the fun and laughter that goes with it.
In short, I do not know life to be otherwise. It has only recently been brought to my attention that there are people who have never been seen naked, who have never seen another person naked. Gad, all I could think was, poor lonely creatures . . . a good topic for a novel . . .
So, again, for that reason I continue to argue that none of this business has anything to do with sex, or nudity, or bodies, but abject tyranny. No wonder people today have so many problems, and then call out a therapist to help them deal with it.
I would point out further that what the Americans do to their own children they do to whole countries.
I argue that what we need to address here is not sex but mindless ignorance and tyranny and violence. We are not talking about sex, but people being cruel to each other, in this case perhaps children being cruel to one another, which they are at times.
All that needs is a bit of parental supervision at most, not state protection, or police intervention and incarceration. But, for being naked with another boy, having a bit of a chuckle?
Leaving the kids to themselves ordinary peer engagement, group pressure, quickly irons out any behavioural creases.