Heretic TOC invited the GL website Visions of Alice (VoA), some time ago to comment on the lively discussion going on here at that time about T. Rivas’s book Positive Memories. A contribution was duly forthcoming but unfortunately did not arrive until after I had closed the debate, after it descended into something of a “war of attrition”. As I invited the contribution, though, it would be churlish not to run it (albeit quite heavily edited), especially as it makes an interesting point about secrecy from the child’s point of view. It also provides a suitable opportunity to run a further comment, directly related to the issue of secrecy and disclosure, which I have received from the author quite independently of VoA. As for why I invited VoA in particular to contribute, this was simply because I had been corresponding with them in connection with an article of mine (“A modest proposal”) that appears in the new issue of their magazine Alicelovers, and because they were first in the firing line of the recent denial-of-service attack by cyber-vandals Anonymous. Here, then, are the two contributions, starting with the one from VoA:
If a sexual interaction between an adult and a minor were to take place, assuring a positive experience for the younger partner would be a core value for a true Child Lover.
In the Rivas study (A positive sighting of 118 black swans, Author Rivas defends ‘black swan’ sightings and Rivas takes his analysis deeper) the children chose to keep their intimacy a secret because most people’s opinions in present-day society would tend to be negative. This negativity, and the secrecy to which it gives rise, are likely to reduce significantly our awareness of positively experienced age-disparate relationships, and this inevitably means that available and credible data about them are in short supply.
This secrecy may protect such relationships from ending abruptly, but it has an incalculable negative psychological impact on the child’s well-being, since the child cannot gain valuable insights or knowledge from his or her peers, teachers, parents, or mentors, nor lessons that may enlighten the minor regarding their rights in any sexual relationship — either underage, or as an adult.
An adult authority-figure’s past experiences can potentially be useful to a child, because sharing such knowledge in a safe and non-threatening environment provides the unschooled partner the needed awareness of their own level of control in an intimate situation. It also affords them the skills necessary to make sound decisions regarding any other intimate sexual experience they may contemplate with another person – younger or more mature, the opposite gender or their own – and how to correctly and safely respond to undesired advances.
Currently children do not have the freedom or support structure to discuss topics of sexual intimacy with adults without potential condemnation or suspicion of the older party. If a child were to ask an adult about sexual relationships at best the adult would be inclined to tell the child to “worry about that when you’re older,” and at worst the adult would become paranoid, concerned for their own safety, and possibly believe the child had been molested.
The Rivas study isn’t a comprehensive evaluation nor a complete understanding of positive child/adult sexual intimacy and/or relationships, but it does illustrate that positive experiences are possible and actually happen, thereby exposing as false the belief that all sexual relationships with an adult are harmful to a child. Drawing any further conclusions from such a small dataset would be statistically invalid, and more needs to be done to encourage an open dialog between children and adults so the younger person’s perceptions and awareness can be clearly understood.
Given the current hysteria related to age-disparate sexual relationships, positive or not, it is highly unlikely that additional information will be added by younger partners in any significant quantities or at an accelerated pace. It is probable that many other positive relationships exist today in secret, but public hostility towards these contacts, and the fiercely punitive attitude that prevails towards the adult partner, mean children may wish to maintain their silence and preserve what they feel is to their benefit.
The parents should almost always be informed
By T. Rivas
What I meant by informing the parents if they have a relatively good relationship with their children is that the parents should almost always be informed. In other words, this should not be limited to parents with whom the child has an excellent relationship, but any parents who have a relationship with the child which is basically okay should be informed. The phrase “relatively good relationship” is not meant to limit the number of parents, but rather to include most parents. The only legitimate exception would concern really abusive parents who don’t have the child’s interest in mind – meaning that everyday problems between parents and child won’t do as an excuse for not informing the parents.
Also, informing the parents should be not a one-sided process because ideally the parents should take on an active non-directive monitoring or supervising role.
Concerning disappointments about the nature or duration of the relationship, I say several things in the Discussion. See Ethical Criteria 4 and 10. I believe most disappointments could be prevented this way. [TOC adds: Rivas is here referring to the Discussion section in his book Positive Memories, pages 227-242 of the printed version. Ethical Criterion No. 4 begins “The adult must be honest about the nature and extent of his or her feelings…” No. 10 begins “Relationships should never be ended abruptly…”]
Part of my data consist of online self-reports whose reliability can’t be checked (although a circumstantial assessment of their reliability is possible in most of them) but it is not true that all of these stories are like that. Some of them are derived from live interviews conducted by others or indeed myself. Other cases are derived from books and articles by reliable researchers or biographers. If it had been possible to go even deeper, I would certainly have done so. I’ve simply gathered all the cases I could find. I actually write something about this in the Discussion: “I recognize the fact that some of these accounts are better documented than other stories, ranging from an anonymous remark on an Internet forum to stories based on extensive personal correspondence or conversations. However, in my view, the main things that all of these cases taken together clearly seem to demonstrate are simply… etc.”
in a new study 11- to 18-year-ols having sexual experiences with adults were brainwashed by therapists and asked to draw revenge —but they still “did not draw the perpetrator and drew schematic figures.”
I remember how Susan Clancy was surprised that “victims” weren’t angry at sex offenders.
the latest the detection of serial “CSA” perpetrator is, the “more pre-pubescent child victims” he has:
It seems that younger children don’t see the need to complain contrary to the pubescent ones taught to believe they’ve been abused.
Also, the late detected sex offenders “had more psychopathic traits” on one hand, and “more often be in professional employment and have less antisocial… indicators”. Psychopaths without anti-social indicators? Is it possible? Seems that psychopathic traits are the result of the investigators’ prejudice.
according to a new study, ~40% of self-identified “victims” do not report because they aren’t sure whether they are victims:
it is written in a new study that “sexual minority men (SMM) with a history of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) may be reluctant to disclose such experiences or may appraise them as consensual because of cultural norms.”
What a culture has such norms!? The main thing is that “victims” reject being considered as victims.
parents with childhood illegal experiences help therapists, working with their “sexually assaulted children”, less:
Perhaps, know from their experiences that sex isn’t assault and does not suppose any therapy
according to a new study, anti-MAP “anxiety levels of the parents(,) parents’ concerns differ significantly according to gender, age, income level, educational status variables.”
Does it mean the poor or educated parents aren’t afraid if their children have sex lives?
“The results (of a new study) suggest that youth are more likely to rely on their friends for help and less likely to seek help from formal resources. Girls are more proactive than boys in help-seeking… youth with a history of child sexual abuse were found in greater proportion in the friend-oriented group” of “help-seekers”
It seems that boys with illegal sexual experience are less inclined to consider themselves as victims than girls
a new study tells “that in the UK one in 20 children have been sexually abused, with one in three not telling anyone about it at the time of the abuse.”
It is interesting to compare with the French data from your book, where ¹⁄₃₀₀₀ of offences are disclosed instead of ⅔
Again, this appears to be a study that does not consider consenting contacts. Conclusions about “CSA” are misleading in the absence of this distinction.
in a new survey among 16–21-year-old “victims” of CSA “most participants stated that they did not need any professional support.”
It means they don’t consider their sexual experience, even “severe” one, as abuse of power
Good one, Cyril. Looks important. Fortunately, a large part of the text is publicly available.
while 43% of Indian respondents are called victims of CSA, “Nearly 64% of respondents had an idea about an online complaint system for child abuse, and 70% were aware of the availability of a one-stop centre at a respondent’s hospital. The majority (68%) were aware of the POCSO (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences) Act on sexual abuse.” That’s why “There is a need for continued education (…) to improve the diagnosis and reporting of CSA.”
It means they knew how illegal their sexual experiences were and can be considered as accomplices of “sex abuse”, not as victims
a new study on “Legal Implications of False Denials Among (sexually) Abused Children” concludes “that statements should not be dismissed based solely on previous denials”:
Sounds sinister. What next? Thumbscrews to extract “confessions” from kids?
In a new study by Breton et al. (2022) it is investigated why children cease to call their sexual experience abusive:
Breton et al. (2022) reject that children may cease considering their experience as abusive because they have shown some pictures to the children, and the children called the depicted events abusive. But who knows what was depicted there?
>they have shown some pictures
I think you mean the “vignettes”, which would actually be brief written descriptions. These are in supplementary data, which the authors say at the end “will be made available on request”. I don’t think pursuing this would be a good use of time, but your first two bullet points, gleaning information from earlier studies, look interesting.
a unexpected discovery: children develop empaty towards ones they had sex contacts with:
Something else has just come up that is very relevant to this thread, concerned with onset of puberty, precocious sexuality and fertility.
I attended the annual UWA Institute of Agriculture PhD showcase this afternoon, to hear a presentation on enhancing fecundity in sheep. Oh well, yes, sheep, though sheep are mammals and over a few beers afterward the presenter and I got together to compare notes on humans, from an anthropological perspective.
But first, the research. A fairly new hormone has been discovered related to the balance between prepubertal adipose fat and muscle bulk called Leptin. What is interesting is that Leptin activates the ‘puberty trigger’ in the brain.
His doctoral research in sheep husbandry mates ewes with a ram while they are still lambs, prior to and during puberty at between 5-8 months, putting vasectimised rams over the lamb during that period, then at completion of puberty an entire ram.
The results were startling; the only issue being that their earlier hypothesis that another hormone called follistatin produced by muscle tissue assisted in the increase in precocious puberty, sexual activity and fecundity when they found from their field trials that in fact it had a damping effect.
Later, over the beer, I introduced myself explaining that what I do in anthropology is childhood sexuality, precocious puberty and coming-of-age dysfunction in humans, to which he pricked up his ears.
I expressed my concern over ongoing issues in Western society not only with childhood obesity among other things, but with precocious puberty in some populations contrasting with pathologically delayed and prolonged puberty in others.
He bought me another beer, then went on at length at how mammals are all exactly the same; that not only are all mammals the same but male and female are the same, in all these respects.
Now, relevance to this thread on why would children keep such secrets is, to my mind, and in my experience, is that children know intuitively what is happening to their body, and in the climate also know they’ll get into trouble for it.
Everyone here will know by now that I have long been very interested in why a child will approach a trusted adult for help and support during this phase, and why they display as they do; no doubt further aware of my concern at the harm being done by repressing what’s happening.
After more than an hour comparing notes on raising children on the basis of this hormone model as against the prevailing social model (he has two daughters while I have two sons), we agreed on every point of comparison.
The guy is here studying at UWA from Mexico. On the way out the door I mentioned to him that Anglos don’t think this way and are unlikely to allow such research to be made public, and he as excitedly turned and said, yes, that’s right; you should come visit us in Mexico.
it being the one sided narrative you hear in the media when it comes to inter generational sex and affairs.i spent some time with an asian family whom son i got to know,so much so he would be in my thoughts all the time,i had to leave that sunny climate,business was slow,when walking through the streets with him,most of the negative reactions were from british tourists,the locals was more of a mixed bag,they seem to mind their own a lot more.
im not sure it will change in my lifetime and im still quite young.the tate gallery is on the news again,listening to some popular uk radio stations,you would have thought radio presenters would take a more balanced view.while the general public call the government soft,not doing enough,some talk of lethal injection,one presenter thinks anyone who looks at an image on his pc more than once should get ten years.1930s germany comes to mind.
I became curious to know what is the “it” being cited here.
I can only presume that it refers to what gets reported “on the news”, as if that’s relevant to anything, or of the least importance.
For my part, I cannot see the quality of Anglophone journalism changing one iota, in my lifetime or any other. I never watch TV or read newspaper, and I raised my sons for nearly 7 years of their formative childhood blissfully without a TV in the house.
One thing I have learned over the years about writing, is that none of it is much more than ink marks on paper used most commonly to wrap tomorrow’s fish and chips.
The digital equivalent isn’t even as useful as that.
I wrote: “What I think is worth focusing on is the sort of comparisons scientists would seek: hold everything else constant in society and ask: is it better to let men have sexual activity with young children (who apparently consent) or better to forbid it?”
Gil wrote, “No, “ethane72?, sorry, but humans are not and can never be guinea pigs to suit somebody’s politically driven hypothesis-testing agenda. That’s not science.”
I wasn’t proposing performing controlled experiments, and I have no idea why you would think I was. I was just saying that conceptually that’s the way to limit the problem to a reasonable scope in terms of how we think about it.
As stated, your position seems to be unfalsifiable. Negative reports are all due to the contamination of society’s attitudes, while positive reports are genuine and to be taken at face value.
How are we to know, without knowing who you are or what you do, aside from your constant repudiation of common sense in dealing with contentious social issues on the basis that none of it is OK with you to start with, whether you mean to merely conceptualise (vainly I suggest) THE way to “limit the problem to a reasonable scope in terms of how we think about it” or want to perform controlled experiments on people?
I do mean, how are we to know that, especially on the basis of what you write here and elsewhere?
Why do you want to “limit the problem”? What is a “reasonable scope”? What does “how we think about it” mean? Who is “we”?
For my part I have no position beyond ascertaining facts. A simple fact is that every single morning the sun rises in the east. That’s not a position I take, falsifiable or otherwise, it’s simply the fact of the matter. All I need to do is go out again every morning to independently confirm the fact.
When the day comes, if ever, that the sun does not rise in the east, then the assumption and expectation I make is rendered false, along probably with life on earth.
That simple illustration is merely put to explain to the layman what is meant by the way in which scientific method operates.
You will no doubt argue, of course, that it’s not OK for the sun to rise every morning because it will make parts of the planet hot, which from what I can gather is in the nature of your proposal.
My rejoinder, of course, as you’d expect, is not whether it is OK but that it is in the nature of the sun to rise every morning regardless of who thinks it’s OK. Tough titties. The sun is gonna do what the sun is gonna do.
Likewise, by his nature, a boy is gonna get a boner no matter who thinks it’s OK or not, and sometime or other, sooner or later, somebody’s gonna suck it; you better believe it. The question merely arises on whether that somebody will be male or female, or significantly younger or older, and what the hell difference does it make?
Now, we have been presented with significant numbers of positive reports of sexual and other intimate relations between children and adults, yet to you they are still not OK I can only guess because they are “illegal” or ‘society’ thinks they are not OK.
OK, come up with some verifiable negative reports. The proper way for you to have responded to Titus is not your endless nit-picking through his text but compiling your own report and presenting it to us.
Why don’t you do that? Why haven’t you done that?
[snipped: abusive]
Your response Gil touches on some important issues – a mix of the very big and a brief reference to the very particular. That mix Gill may be very difficult to balance out.
The very big is this premodern, modern, postmodern, language. I have Marxist friends and read authors who are very concerned about the claims of those who push the language of postmodernism. As you have done in your text, you talk of the paramodern, they point back into those ‘spaces’ labelled the modern, premodern and so forth, those spaces viewed as ‘over’/ no longer the way things are, and argue there is truth ‘back’ there. More than this I read them as arguing there is no back there at all! W hat we have now is linked in a continuous movement that is us, and my guess is this is what you suggest by use the the term paramodern.
This discussion links to the taxonomy of sexual categories, gay, straight, lesbian, pedophile, and so on. My comment will become far to long if I attempt to develop this in detail.
The very particular in what you write is your reference to the 10 year old boy. You also use the notion ‘community’ you deploy to argue his presence in your home as a sleep over is a positive thing. You do not specify when this took place and because of this it is not so easy to comment. Recent events in your life story play a significant role, in my view, when it comes to decisions about who comes close. The position you are in requires real skill to keep things in balance. Your text invites a response Gil, and what I say here is intended to be both honest and non-judgemental.
I don’t think we can take a set of linguistic categories being used today, along with the discourses which govern them, and ask their language to just stop being there. The task involves a path that begins from inside those discourses and leads somewhere else, somewhere better one would hope.
Adults socially branded pedophile or minor attracted are in a real sense deeply ‘unlucky’ in a period of social prejudice and moral righteousness. There is value, importance, in helping people see the language used and the philosophical world-views that are held, have real consequences for those involved.
I don’t think we can hope for a sweeping shift where it all changes over night.
Gil, I read your text and I find your message confusing. At the same time I want to stress a message that is open Gil.
I looked at trends inside New Zealand culture and society recently in a postgraduate course at Victoria University in Wellington. Sociologically the older notion of family is a very poor model for understanding the social relationships people negociate now. My intention in my text was to offer a flexibity, an ‘open’ attitude to what the term family points to. I must be open myself and ask did I fail to communicate that sense of openess in an unambiguous way when I put up my comment?
I find your text confusing in that you clearly value the notion of community and inter-connectedness that is offered up via the cultural mix that is Australia, and by that I am pointing to non-Eurocentric models of community and family, but at the same time in your text I see a message of judgement and rejection. It is valid to say some relationships and social practices are deeply flawed.
I am critical of societies and cultures that block and undermine emancipation and genuine anthropological variety. I hope my text conveys that. I am aware of how notions of family have at times imprisoned people. I was part of that group of people who thought maybe after the1960s and 1970s the family might be replaced by ‘something else’. As it is the family has resurfaced not as the mere return of an old model, now it seems to be ‘under construction’ yet again, gay parents, mixes and varieties that may offer new and better outcomes.
I will not stress what I intended to say; no, it is much better I acknowledge how you read my text, you wrote “I read that as acceptance that any old condition is fine…”. I am with you all the way Gil, quality of live matters a great deal. My use of the term family is intended to incorporate a new openess to new ways of having shared lives. I don’t think the idea of family will be tossed out the window any day soon, and now, 2013, I don’t seek that. I do want things to be better, significantly better. I’m glad you offer me the change to make that point.
I accept, Peter, that I may appear an anachronism, That to me appears only to bear however within linearity, category, objectification and alienation.
Rather than seeing the modern as ‘old’; the premodern primitive, prehistoric, in which the postmodern forever yearns after the unreachable ‘new’, why not look around more widely, contemporaneously?
There is a great deal of thought behind my finally replacing such terms with ‘paramodern’, and in that embracing the Other as not only acceptable but desirable, especially against the ongoing ignorance and poverty currently on offer.
What about, instead, I offer some real life experience, in which children of ‘other families’ in the community will spontaneously come to sleep over, ‘sleep around’ in fact, all with the full approval in fact applause of the community.
I had one 10 year-old boy who refused to go home. He was angry with me because after a week I sent him home.
Unheard of?
Think about it. There lies a real dilemma. What’s important?
We have not only the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we have the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Who has even read those documents, both nonetheless ratified by governments?
Why don’t we simply stop worrying so much about who might happen to be ‘gay’, or a ‘lesbian’, or a ‘paedophile’? Why construct such categories to start with?
Why not simply accept each other as fellow human beings, and in the complexity decide for ourselves who we are to consider brother, sister, father, son, mother, daughter, grandpa, grandson, lover, and make up our own minds who we want to live and associate with; whose bed we want to sleep in, and negotiate things organically around that?
What I am getting at here is not ‘what difference does it make’, but what is the best all-round solution for all concerned?
I merely contend that maybe the ‘primitive’, ‘premodern’, ‘prehistoric’, had already thought it intelligently through, and come up with workable social solutions resulting in elegant and extensive systems that the contemporary West (I can only guess through ignorance and superstition) persistently repudiate.
And worse, refuse to allow the alternate vocabulary circulation.
Hello Gil
I have not responded to your comments, or indeed posted on this blog, before. However, I keep seeing glimpses of really interesting material coming from you, but it is usually followed by some form of confrontation and an admonition from you that the commenting readers should educate themselves before commenting.
Might I ask where to go for this education. I have done a superficial search for any outputs attributed to you, but all that turned up was a study on the Irish presence in Western Australia. Is there a website or body of published research that you can refer me to for reading? Even better, is there a single book that I could refer to for a good introduction?
My primary interest is not in arguing against your ideas, but more in comparing them to material I have collected over the last two decades dealing with Maningrida (in particular) and Arnhem Land (more generally) where clearly different conceptualisations of the family have collided with bureaucratic attempts to impose a western conceptualised social structure, with devastating consequences.
Just for background, I am a South African long term student in the social sciences and have witnessed similar disruption of families and customs here. The more banal aspects of these disruptions are well documented almost everywhere, but we also have more insidious effects the consequences of which have yet to manifest. Reference was made to one of them here recently – the problem of baby rape.
I look forward to your feedback.
Peter
Hi Peter, see my website:
http://gilhardwick.com.au
Where I long had one ‘Papers’ tab there are now two: ‘Books’ and ‘Essays’.
If you are interested, my early life was growing up among Yorta-Yorta and Warradjeri, then Tiwi on Bathurst Island, Murrinpatah, and later Walmatjari and Noongah,
I have found little real difference among them in kinship terms, especially in the context of these discussions in the idea of Uncling and Auntying, and kids free to go live with who they want.
It was that model that I deployed in the Southwest, specifically because I had been approached to consult with them on community development.
My own experience with ending up with so many kids in the house, while for many years widely supported until the paedophile hysteria broke out, was to me a good measure of dysfunction in the community, and what we were working to ameliorate.
Hi Gil
Thanks for the pointers. I have started reading through the material on your site, although it will be a while before I get through all of it.
I also had a look at some of your books. You say that you publish in electronic format, but the links all lead to hard-copies. For many reasons, not least the environment, I prefer the electronic option. Am I looking in the wrong place?
Regarding the phenomenon of “many kids ending up in one house”, we have seen it here in various scenarios since the end of apartheid. The most surprising to me was the disintegration of poor white Afrikaner families that became destitute when affirmative action rendered breadwinners unemployed. No social service agency anticipated this and, when it manifested, all professed to be overburdened and unable to help.
I was aware of at least one group of about 12 boys aged 11 to 17 who resorted to prostitution (malls and street corners) to survive and “slept each night in the dwelling where the alcohol and parental violence were least”. The reaction of the police to this was to load the gang up and drive them far enough into the country that it would take longer than a day for them to walk back. This took the nuisance off the streets for that day.
Make of that what you will. It does not imply an acceptance of child prostitution or child sex in South Africa, but definitely points to that group as being significantly devalued.
I will pick up an appropriate thread with you when I have read some more.
Regards
Peter
Log Amazon, Peter, and you will see my books listed in both paperback and Kindle. Enter my name in the search bar and they’ll come up.
I should also point you to the work by Tom Fisher, my nom de plume invoked so as to allow those books a fair reading, which explore issues closer to your argument.
Alternately, log Smashwords where you can get them all in PDF, EPUB, etc.
One in particular I’d like to send you is ‘Outbound’, completed as a result of my doing a unit in Creative Writing to find the students liked my stuff, and has since attracted good reviews.
While it contains nudity but no explicit sexual activity, it does explore the differences between white and Aboriginal growing up.
Contact me separately.
Rick makes a very interesting point about how things may indeed work when discussing a parent. He states, “Note that since these children were genetically unrelated, these are not cases of biological incest, and the psychodynamics involved are quite different from those of cases where children have been raised in the home since infancy.”
It was my experience in blended families, men who became parents to children who were not those children’s biological father, Rick’s observation became important to take on-board. Children in blended families often viewed the man their mother chose as her second partner differently from the man who was their genetic father. It was almost as if the biological father was an assumed person in the room when a problem or conflict arrived. The child would think to themselves, “my real dad, he wouldn’t say that; treat me that way”; or in some cases where the biological father was unknown the child would invent a person to fill the gap. Once you realized this as a possible thought process for the child, then you became that much better able to be of some use to the child, and the ‘family’ they belonged to. (I take on board the observation Gil has made about the social construction of the family, and I also know its modern forms are far from the old Mum/Dad/Kids model of old – but, family all the same.
My advice to a man in a blended family was that it was unwise for him to say to the child of his partner that he was replacing the child’s father. To do that was to set up a dynamic that would ultimately undermine the goal of caring for the child. Where that desire to care became known by the child through how he behaved towards him or her, he would be respected, indeed loved, based on that understanding/observation.
Let me repeat, with a stress on the psychodynamics of the adult/child relationship Rick has pointed to, biological parents do not make good sexual partners for children. It is also my view minor attracted men who try the move, ‘let me be the good Dad you never had’, that move is not recommended.
John Money certainly brings to the table some very interesting work when it comes to the sexual lives of the minor-attracted, as well as the lives of those that person knows and interacts with.
When you say “family, all the same,” Peter, I read that as acceptance that any old condition is fine on no more substantial grounds than that it’s all they have anyway.
It’s like saying of a cabbage and a few potatoes shared among 10 people during famine, that it’s “food, all the same.”
No, it’s not all the same. There is dire social poverty quite as much as economic poverty. There is yearning for kinship with others quite as much as there is needing income, and food on the table, and a roof overhead and a bed to sleep in, and healthcare and education.
Family counseling in that light is allowing an extra potato, not prosperity and community and a life worth living.
What we have been dealing with here in Australia, and Western Australia in particular, is so-called ‘families’ consisting of a sole mother with 5-6-7 children by 2-3-4 different men.
I met one guy here recently who already has 6 kids by six different women, and a seventh now 3 1/2 months pregnant. This is the 21st Century for crying out loud!
Nobody can say that any of those people was “sexually abused as a child” or “traumatised by a paedo”; quite to the contrary, except they are fobbed off by the apologists for failed bureaucracy as “blended families.”.
This is the ‘society’ produced by the hypocritical, high-handed, self-righteous, moralising, teach them nothing and take them nowhere brigade.
I have proven this beyond doubt. It is the very reason I ventured into the Lower Southwest 20 years ago to investigate, answering a petition from the community itself being affected by the phenomenon. It is the basis of all my fieldwork over the past 20 years, and now the subject of my novels.
All the Aboriginal kids, when asked why do they burgle houses, say “I just want something nice like the other kids; a TV, nice furniture.” All the kids looking out for an adult in their life, say “I just want a friend, I want to be loved.”
If they don’t get it inside “the family” they’ll go outside “the family.”
That’s what extended kinship is all about, and the reason so many traditional societies not only allow it they encourage it.
Interrupting this closed-loop conversation just for a moment, I dare suggest that it is not merely a continuation of the same waste of time and effort, but is positively misleading and harmful.
I suggest that because far too many background assumptions are being taken for granted, and being in factual error render the entirety invalid.
Again, firstly, there is no such thing as ‘society’; any uniformly consistent social agglomeration with a common and mutually agreed point of view on this or any other matter.
In fact, expanding any survey out far enough into very very large numbers the data while it may not quite turn mushy it will at least be predictable and thus useless; it doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know; that there is no rule.
Social scientists study specifics, small sample groups, exceptions, deviations, in this case ‘paedophiles’ (whatever or whoever they are supposed to be), and build their theories around them, not some purported generality.
Secondly, the assumption about families is that they are nuclear Dad, Mum and on average 2.3 children. The biologically nuclear family is a recently imposed construct, an artifact of the mass military-industrialisation and I should add urbanisation of the mid-late 20th century.
With due respect, Peter, but what you have been counseling is not ‘families’ but the effect of an aberration on humanity, that plainly as a result NEEDS counseling on an ongoing basis; spawning an entire industry. Of course it does, it’s industrial to start with; arising from the simple fact that humans as a species are in rampancy.
You outline the resulting parameters of suffering very well.
My position is that imposed, authoritarian, mass-industrial family nuclearity is and has long been the single most insidious disaster inflicted upon mankind, the single most devious state-imposed confidence trick ever perpetrated, manipulating human intimacy and sentiment to their own military and mass-industrial ends; at the root of all this trouble to start with.
Humans left free to make up their own minds live inherently in extended kinship networks, in non-industrial small societies comprising both agnatic and cognatic kin, and believe it or not quite as commonly classificatory kin, and in doing so both liberate their relations with one another and at once limit and contain their population.
Accordingly, there is really no such thing as a ‘father’, and while the birth mother and her sisters may or may not assert some closer tie to a given child, that’s not guaranteed either; in short there is no such thing as a ‘mother’. There is, in essence, only sperm being transmitted, to fertilise an ovum to be gestated for 9 months until parturition.
To handle it intellectually, in different societies and cultures there are simply different ways of constructing, of conceptualising and naming, different categories of kinship.
As a result, accommodation, residential and other living arrangements within each group’s range or territory also vary enormously. This is all standard, common or garden variety Anthropology, given to freshers in Anthrop 100.
When we are discussing the history of ‘paedophilia’ what we are actually discussing is the history of childhood outside the Western nuclear family construct, where children were and often still are free to roam, and decide for themselves who they want to live with, and in whose bed they want to sleep.
It would help an awful lot were this [snipped]
[TOC adds: 154 words snipped as abusive. Shame, really, it was going well up until then. As for “there is no such thing as ‘society'”, readers outside Britain may not realise that this became one of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher’s most famous sayings. She was castigated over this for being overly individualisic. That, to my mind, was a fair criticism of her policies, but I don’t think Gil intends his statement to be understood in anything like the same way that Thatcher did. Her politics were aimed at bolstering the nuclear family; Gil, by contrast, alerts us to the traumatising (psychologically if not materially) economics that created it.]
Ethan, thanks to saying again that for you it is an issue of risk and public policy that underpins your position on no sexual contacts across generations.
If I stand back it seems we are similar. For you risk and it’s avoidance plays a role; for me there is danger, but not embedded in the relationship being examined – the links between the young and the old. For me the danger comes from what I take on board from the authors I read (Derrida, Foucault, Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell, Slavoj Zizeg, Alain Badiou), and how global history following the two world wars shapes Western debates.
Hitler, Stalin, the list is rather extensive, all shared a feature that is truly frightening – the cult of the authoritarian leader. George Orwell showed in his novel 1984 what he thought could follow their defeat – the continuation of that very spirit of authoritarianism. In 2013 I find his predictions a remarkable read.
For me a marker of how authoritarianism lives on is a desperate desire for certitude. I view the way many seek to calculate out all risk, the wish to eliminate all ‘feared outcomes’ a sign we are making the same mistakes all over again. The collateral damage from the desire for certitude and the social fears that dominate Western cultures today is very serious.
The opposition of unwanted sexual approaches from others is a rallying cry we can all stand behind. The suffering this involves is massive. However the suffering that comes via this collateral damage from our modern forms of authoritarian attitudes, the crushing of friendships that may well have no trauma attached to them, other than what other people’s prejudice and malice generates, needs to be factored in as well. It is that suffering I am just as opposed to as you are concerned to preach a message of no sex, and for pragmatic reasons you would say, ever.
For me a minor attracted person’s non-involvement in sexual relations with the young does not close off the issue of human suffering. Authoritarian inspired, blinkered and punitive societies and cultures are of concern as well. The damage they sustain I argue can be great. There is suffering lived out by those who have consensual sexual contacts, and I refer here to both the young and the old, and who live in societies that make them feel less than human. I do not refer to possible futures here, I speak of what is happening now, even if that suffering has no permission to speak.
“For me a minor attracted person’s non-involvement in sexual relations with the young does not close off the issue of human suffering.”
I presume you’re not really talking about the totality of human suffering here, of which I think we would all agree that apparently consensual sexual activity with minors is a tiny portion.
“Authoritarian inspired, blinkered and punitive societies and cultures are of concern as well. The damage they sustain I argue can be great. There is suffering lived out by those who have consensual sexual contacts, and I refer here to both the young and the old, and who live in societies that make them feel less than human. I do not refer to possible futures here, I speak of what is happening now, even if that suffering has no permission to speak.”
I and I think most/all commenters here would agree that society makes people feel unnecessarily guilty about sex, is punitive and prudish, etc., etc. We would agree that non-sexual relationships between men and kids should be allowed.
But the scope of this blog is not the entire range of human suffering. What I think is worth focusing on is the sort of comparisons scientists would seek: hold everything else constant in society and ask: is it better to let men have sexual activity with young children (who apparently consent) or better to forbid it?
We have lots of anecdotal data (though no percentages) saying that some kids benefited a little from the sex, but far more often they loved the support, friendship, mentoring, etc. In terms of the good things for kids that are lost when forbidding sexual activity, it looks like this to me: a man says “I’d be a friend and mentor to this kid, but if there’s no chance of some sexy interactions then it’s not worth it to me so I won’t bother.” To my mind, that reflects more poorly on the men than on the society that prohibits the sexy interactions.
And if that’s how a man feels about it — if the sexy interactions really are central to his satisfaction — than how much should we trust him to observe all the T. Rivas restrictions?
No, “ethane72”, sorry, but humans are not and can never be guinea pigs to suit somebody’s politically driven hypothesis-testing agenda. That’s not science.
The reason your proposal will not be carried out, has never been carried out and will never be carried out, is that it will always be heavily contaminated by experimenter bias, and worse affected throughout by experimenter reflexivity.
What is most plainly obvious throughout this recent hysteria is the extent to which the abuse profile is manufactured by religious ranters, interrogating ‘psychologists’, prosecutors and lawyers, to the extent that anyone at all seeking to discern what’s going down, even highly qualified professionals auditing the process, is themself targeted, arrested, pilloried and incarcerated.
At risk, again, of being considered abusive, to me you are an extremely dangerous person. You construct your own sex-crimes, then as you state here wish to got out seeing if you can find ‘paedophiles’ committing them to see if any harm is being done.
You are even prepared to consider, even hypothetically, putting the planet on hold while you are doing it. To me your ideas are fascist in the extreme.
By God, I found out later (at the time I was extremely busy with other work and anyway depressed and on medication – I simply wasn’t paying attention – call me naive I didn’t even suspect that people could do such a thing) that children were being sent to my house, encouraged to go to my house, and to report back on whether I’d touched them, or done anything to them.
Children sent by people saying they are there to protect children from a suspected paedophile, yet specifically sending children into ‘danger’ for no other purpose than to ‘get something on him’? You seriously have to be joking. The very idea makes me want to puke.
That in itself is one of the very best measures of harm to children, and community attitudes on what harm a presumed paedophile might cause a child, than any I could possibly encounter anywhere.
The ethical, professional, valid and reliable approach is to merely carry out properly supervised longitudinal studies monitoring nothing more than the general state of the host community, using such empirical measures as frequency of diagnosed depressive episodes, for example.
One thing I guarantee, unless you have inside access to some kiddy-porn operation in Los Angeles, or somewhere in Istanbul or Odessa or maybe Minsk, you will not once observe a child having sex with other children, much less with any adult.
It is simply not going to happen. There is no way such people would allow you such access to their privacy.
And when you do find harm, you will find it impossible to prove that it was CAUSED by the sexual encounter and not some other predetermining factor like general community paranoia, or as mentioned depression.
By contrast, the vast number of volunteered, unsolicited and uncontaminated direct statements by people is that the encounter caused no harm, and was either neutral (nothing to worry about) or positive (left me feeling really good about myself and my friend).
Yet you still want to go out and conduct your bizarre experiments on no better grounds than that to you it’s not OK, regardless of what anyone involved might think or feel.
What makes it your business to start with?
My experience of seeing child porn (many years ago, I should add, and which resulted in a criminal conviction) included kids who gave every indication of being enthusiastically engaged. Some kids these days, mainly teenagers but younger ones too, have taken to uploading “indecent” and “pornographic” stills and webcam footage of themselves quite independently of any adult involvement. This is unwise, of course, but it hardly confirms that all youngsters are greatly concerned over privacy. As for “some kiddy-porn operation in Los Angeles” etc., the media love to build up the idea of sinister mafia-type exploitation, but police reports actually point out that amateur production is more prevalent: a great deal of material is swapped online with no commercial gain to anyone.
Outrageous indeed. This reminds me of the British secret services in 1950s Cyprus when the UK government wanted to put pressure on Archbishop Makarios, who later became the first President of the Republic of Cyprus. Rumour has it that the spooks set up a honeytrap using a boy as bait after finding out the archbish was interested in young boys. Using the evidence thus obtained they blackmailed him into signing a major agreement about the future of Cyprus with terms that suited the British but not Makarios. Nigel West, an expert on such skullduggery, wrote a book saying British Foreign Office officials “showed him their files on his proclivities”, but I don’t think West embarrassed the British government by saying in his book how the evidence (photographic, presumably) in those files had been obtained! If West, an Establishment insider, had mentioned the honeytrap in print he would surely have been beheaded as a traitor — or, even worse, blackballed from his club!
Sure, I haven’t argued that ‘Mafia’ (whatever that is) are involved, but suggest rather your ‘amateur’ scenario, in short, give a kid a camera.
And yes, I recall somebody mentioning to me back then that the kids were enjoying things immensely, telling me they were “loving every minute of it.”
As one would.
I was never found or charged with possessing such material, only a few nudes consistent with the anthropology texts on my shelves, a few of which were considered to display an erection, and some writing on pubescent experimenting consistent with what I had observed among the kids anyway.
The arresting officer went apoplectic viewing even them, and I thought ‘What, this guy hasn’t even seen a dick before’, poor bastard. But then, he resigned (forced out) from the police force only a few weeks later to join the vigilantes.
I mean, a lot of those people seriously need help.
Ah, but, having a bit of fun and given reason for all the attention and its aftermath, I thought later, might have adequately balanced things for me, but alas.
Cool to see VoA’s article and different branches of the free-love movement collaborating. Bravo!
Ethan makes an interesting point here about the development of society over decades or centuries. This very much depends on one’s general outlook on human nature and the progress of civilization and society. Are we capable of making a moral progress through the ages with only temporary setbacks or is the development of society a purely arbitrary or cyclical process mostly driven by the interests and whims of the powerful. In my view, the development of human and ‘even’ animal rights since the period of Enlightenment is part of an inevitable progress in civilization and leaving behind barbarity. There may be reactionary forces that try to undo what has been achieved (Nazism being one shocking example, the growing intolerance against morally sound pedophiles being another), but basic universal principles such as the rights of the individual and the need for rational moral consistency will prevail by the sheer force of their soundness and simplicity. Call it an overly optimistic (and appallingly anti-relativistic) view, but this is what I sincerely believe in. After a certain point, the moral and emancipatory progress cannot be undone anymore, because it has become an intrinsic part of rational moral progress. This point has been reached with women’s and gay rights in many parts of the Western world and more and more people are realizing that animal rights are simply another strictly logical consequence of respect for the individual. One day, the same will happen with erotic and relational rights of children and pedophiles. I think that one may be optimistic about that, because it is just another aspect of a general, rational rights philosophy striving for moral consistency. Just like with gay rights today, there will come a point in which acceptance of children’s and pedophiles’ relational and erotic rights is so much part of the established moral discourse (after reactionary forces have become a small minority, something like a relic of a barbarous past), that it will be felt as simply irrational to sacrifice the present to a very improbable, purely hypothetical dark future. So I would say, patience is good (perhaps none of us will be around when emancipation has been realized) but groundless pessimism is not. In the end, reason and humanity will prevail.
I read Jonathan Haidt’s book and thought it was very interesting and important. In his terms, I am a liberal, (feeling conservatives are welcome to use their own values and rules within their communities but not to impose them more widely). Yep, adult brothers can sleep with adult sisters, and you can eat the family dog if it’s road kill.
I feel like I’ve covered my position, some of it more than once, in comments on this blog (in case you had time to do what is by now lots of reading). I do not feel that intergenerational sex is morally wrong per se. I think it is the risk of harm and the inability to know that risk in advance that make it wrong (combined with small benefit, adults managing their children’s risks, and sexual desire as a risk factor in poor judgment). (I have said I’d like to see a society where a prosecutor would decline to take a case where the young person remains enthusiastic about what happened — but in advance, the relationship is wrong and legally is at the man’s peril.) It is wrong at the level of social policy. Saying “not never, ever” is trying to avoid hubris of thinking we know the parameters of how society will develop over many decades or centuries. If I stay with society’s normal usages, I should just simply say “never”. I’ll bring up again the judge who rules on a case where his son is one of the parties. Is that wrong? Yes, as a matter of policy. It doesn’t say that the judge might not reach a fair verdict despite the conflict of interest.
>I think it is the risk of harm and the inability to know that risk in advance that make it wrong (combined with small benefit…<
Just how much is that risk of harm? As you may be aware, in the definitive study of child sex abuse published by the American Psychological Association's most prestigious journal in 1998, in a majority of cases involving boys, outcomes ranged form neutral to positive.
Yes, that does mean that there were still some negative outcomes, but if you look more closely at the data combined with what has been found in other studies, it turns out that those with negative outcomes involve coercion or violence. So actually yes, we do know in advance that the risk in mutually willing adult-child sexual relationships is quite small.
But the only small you mention is the benefit from such relationships. I know of cases of boys adopted out of poverty as older children all of whose needs were taken care of, given a good education, and turned out to be quite happy and successful adults. Surely none of those is a small benefit, but such outcomes are potentially foregone when such relationships are disallowed from the start.
“Rick a écrit, “I know of cases of boys adopted out of poverty as older children all of whose needs were taken care of, given a good education, and turned out to be quite happy and successful adults. Surely none of those is a small benefit, but such outcomes are potentially foregone when such relationships are disallowed from the start.”
We are not discussing advantaged or even ‘normal’ childhoods here, but often pathologically neglected childhoods. Children from such family environments are not on par with others but way behind the 8-ball, developmentally and in many other respects, and are often institutionalised.
Numbers of watershed professionals dealing with such children, from Bettelheim through Giels, have focused specifically on their condition, while governments oddly enough prefer them because they tend to make blindly obedient bureaucrats; either that or criminals, drug addicts, and homeless dropouts.
Denying them any form of intimacy and affective contact with other human beings, much less extended kinship with numbers of significant others is, to me anyway, the height of cruelty.
There is no doubt whatsoever, as many many case studies on fosterage and adoption reveal, generally outside of these more recent ‘paedophile studies’ but inevitably including the same intimacy and care that other children enjoy; the same interpersonal attention, the same access to resources, the same chance at a good education, that such relationships are disproportionately beneficial to the child concerned.
Now, here we are, with the very idea that those involved might shower together, snuggle up in bed together, engage in a bit of pee-pee touching occasionally, talk and learn about sex and healthy relationships with other people, suddenly all that goes out the window.
I mean, why not simply lock everyone up in strictly age-segregated dormitories, and if they play up in an isolation cell; feeding them through a hole in the door, just so there’s no risk to them of even a hug from a grownup, ever?
Here in Australia tens of thousands of children were abducted from their supposedly ‘dysfunctional families” to that very end, and tens of thousands more shipped out here from England “for their own good.”
Here we are experts on them, we are still living with them day after day.
Nobody will ever persuade me that their lives would have been worse off with people who loved them and cared for them. The idea is cruelly preposterous.
Ethan I wrote a longish draft exploring a point that I may put on the table later, but before that happens let me check out how you position yourself.
You write, “I don’t literally say “never, ever”, but I’d half-jokingly say that if the enlightenment you seek is ever to be achieved, the first step is to stop striving for it.” Interesting that position, not ‘never, ever, but …” Can I take it that for you it is morality that shapes your position? All the references to structure and argument are nice, but in the end they serve something else – a moral position?
Have you read or had any conversations on Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion? In it he shows how people who hold very different moral views can be seen as being part of a single species. I think, at times, we can have the disturbing feeling our fellow debaters are aliens, at a core level it seems they are not like us.
By the way, I am not all that shocked to learn that for you sexual relationships across generational groups is always wrong.
Clarity and reading skills are sufficiently covered by now, Ethan, yes, we certainly agree on that by now.
>But let me ask you about your current view. Would you agree that to meet your criteria, the adult and child must be able to identify a set of parents or caretakers to keep informed? That if there is no one in that role who they have informed and is monitoring the relationship, then it does not meet your criteria?<
My standpoint remains: the adult must be open towards benevolent adults in the child's life aka the parents or care-takers and respect their decisions.
If there really is no benevolent adult around, I mean after a revolution would have taken place in favor of morally sound relationships, the adult could try to find a suitable foster parent for the child (also for the child's general well-being of course) and ask this foster parent to monitor the relationship.
Only if this turns out to be impossible as well (due to very unique circumstances), the adult should be excused, as long as he or she can prove to have really tried to find such a suitable person. That would be very rare, exceptional situation though.
“So there really is very little room for the kind of ‘cheating’ or self-deception you’re alluding to, if an adult seriously wants to stick to my ethical criteria.”
We’ve covered our disagreement on just how clear the book is or is not in expressing this. But let me ask you about your current view. Would you agree that to meet your criteria, the adult and child must be able to identify a set of parents or caretakers to keep informed? That if there is no one in that role who they have informed and is monitoring the relationship, then it does not meet your criteria?
If you sign on to that (even if you view it as an unnecessary elaboration) my concern would be largely addressed. (Though as constant background to this discussion, I personally don’t think such criteria are enough to make a relationship OK).
“You write “Yes, we all agree that this should all only be relevant in some future when society has changed to be more accepting, … ” Have you, very quitely and without fanfare, just acknowledged that the future is open, that the ‘never, ever’ line I have attributed to you is really not your view? If so, I am dealing with a man who will indeed consider all the permutations, and take my hat off to you if that is the case.”
Alas for your estimation of me, no. I should have said that we all agree this should not be relevant AT LEAST until society is more accepting. Well-intentioned relationships engaged in by perceptive men would be less risky if society wasn’t hysterical about them. But I still wouldn’t say they are OK.
I don’t literally say “never, ever”, but I’d half-jokingly say that if the enlightenment you seek is ever to be achieved, the first step is to stop striving for it.
In your message, I don’t follow the relationship of being out versus closeted and integrity. I realize those of you who are out are taking a risk and some, like Tom, have paid a steep price.
You write: “The ‘no sex ever’ message is really so close to a fatal blow against the person’s sense of self worth you may as well go ahead and say ‘be someone else; being you just won’t do’.”
I agree this is at the heart of what divides us, though I would hope that it should not be tied up with a sense of self-worth.
Let me try a couple analogies. A widowed father is supporting young kids with a boring job. But in his bones he knows he’s a writer and would love to support himself writing fiction. To give his writing a chance, he has to quit his job. If he becomes a best-selling author, his family will live in luxury, if he doesn’t, they will suffer severely. I would argue that it is immoral of him to quit his job. I am not denying him his identity as a writer, I’m just saying that is a possibility that is ethically closed off to him the way the cards lie.
Or, suppose a judge has a lawsuit come up where his son is one of the parties. Some judges would reach a fair verdict. But society requires him to hand the case to another judge. The judge doesn’t feel that this rule is an insult to his integrity as a person.
Ethan, as you know one of the concerns in today’s world is the issue of identity. I open with this point because I want to use my life experience to underpin a point but that can’t happen unless I put out there a link to my real life.
I worked as a family therapist, and through that work I have had access to people’s life stories and situations that has offered me a window into many lives, not just my own, not one man’s story. The reference to ‘family’ and my work with them, matters because you refer to how a minor attracted person might stand in for a father or parent who does a poor job, and that in taking this move, for you, no sexual activity should happen.
My position is to disagree with you, not about the sex issue, but about the choice to ‘make up for’ a parent who performs poorly as a father, or a mother. I see this as a bad move and I want to explain why I think this.
On the sex issue I need to be clear. I don’t subscribe to parents having sexual relations with the children they parent. I also don’t subscribe to your views Ethan on ‘no sex ever’ for the minor attracted person; please note, I do not promote sexual contacts at this time. So in this sense Ethan, we are radically different because for you sexual lives for the young must never ever include those who are older. For me the future is more open-ended.
A person who holds my view, and there is no need to be minor attracted as a person to do this, is socially vulnerable, I acknowledge the risk I take. It goes without saying to hold my views and be minor attracted makes that element of risk for a person expand greatly, at least as things are at present in most Western countries.
For all that Ethan there will be people like me who will choose to speak and use our life experience in a way that locates us via our real names, as well as link back to the work we have done. For me there is a link between what I argue here and what Rivas has done in offering a varied set of life narratives for a reader’s consideration.
As a therapist I saw how people endeavour to fit in, make themselves be who they are not, and attempt to answer what they believe to be the needs of others. It didn’t always work for the clients who came to me for help, sometimes it would go horribly wrong for them. Let’s be frank also and say these situations would include others who were part of their lives.
Where a minor attracted person sees a youth or child has parents who are ‘doing a bad job’ I would not recommend that they attempt to stand in for the father who seems absent or abusive. That can often be the wrong move altogether. Not only is it possible they will be as bad at this role as the person they view as being a ‘failure’, there is a very good chance the young person later will be bitter that this ‘well-meaning’ adult has distracted them from coming to terms with the one real father they have. I am no Freudian, but it seems to me the size of the problem created here can be very large indeed.
Integrity it seems to me is a good guide about how to conduct our lives, both with the old and the young. For me Ethan, and my guess is this is not your real name, your text blocks human integrity for the minor attracted person. The ‘no sex ever’ message is really so close to a fatal blow against the person’s sense of self worth you may as well go ahead and say ‘be someone else; being you just won’t do’.
I am not and do not promote or advise minor attracted persons to have sexual relations with youths or children; nor would I suggest they try and fill in for a person who is failing in their job as a parent.
Finally I most definitely subscribe to the view that human integrity is the best ‘life-style’ choice a minor attracted person can adopt.
Thank you for working as a family therapist, which I know is often a very stressful job. I’m sure you helped many families.
On further thought, I agree with you that pedophiles should very rarely if ever try to take over parental responsibilities. (Maybe temporarily or in extreme cases, but ‘never’ will do). A more appropriate role for a pedophile would be to work with the child to get good parenting from his parents or elsewhere: aunts, grandparents or, in extreme circumstances, the state’s family services department.
Rivas gives parents an important role in supervising a relationship, but he provides no procedure for finding replacements if the parents are deemed to not have the child’s best interests at heart. A reasonable loophole-plugging rule would be that there must be someone in the parental role who can be informed, or else the relationship is forbidden.
I remain very wary of pedophiles trying to make judgments about the best interests of a child who they are sexually attracted to. My fear is the rationalization of, “His parents are totally crazy and don’t have his best interests at heart, so we can’t tell them, of course, but I love him and he loves me, and everything is great between us. I guess Mr. Rivas says we should get some parental supervision, and we should keep thinking about how to do that. Meanwhile…”
Yes, we all agree that this should all only be relevant in some future when society has changed to be more accepting, but we know not everyone is going to wait, and some who mean well may justify themselves by looking at a list like T. Rivas’s and seeing how many items they can check off.
Ethan, I’m talking about parents OR CARE-TAKERS.
Ethical Criterion 6 in the Discussion of my book reads:
“In case the child or teenager has a relatively good relationship with his or her parents or care-takers”
Below that we can read: “A role for the parents or care-takers”
followed by: “Ideally, the parents or care-takers have an important role to play”
In many or even most cases, a child who grows up in a dysfunctional family (especially in Western countries) will get a foster parent or other type of care-taker.
More generally, in Criterion 7, I write:
“The adult should not spoil the child too much but rather support a positive development of his or her self-esteem and self-control, personal talents and potential, social skills, and a moral, pro-social attitude. Sexuality should not replace other emotional or relational needs and the frequency of erotic contacts should be moderate to avoid so-called sexual addiction.”
So there really is very little room for the kind of ‘cheating’ or self-deception you’re alluding to, if an adult seriously wants to stick to my ethical criteria.
Ethan, I can write other things, but first I must check. You write “Yes, we all agree that this should all only be relevant in some future when society has changed to be more accepting, … ” Have you, very quitely and without fanfare, just acknowledged that the future is open, that the ‘never, ever’ line I have attributed to you is really not your view? If so, I am dealing with a man who will indeed consider all the permutations, and take my hat off to you if that is the case.
>I remain very wary of pedophiles trying to make judgments about the best interests of a child who they are sexually attracted to. My fear is the rationalization of, “His parents are totally crazy and don’t have his best interests at heart, so we can’t tell them, of course, but I love him and he loves me, and everything is great between us. I guess Mr. Rivas says we should get some parental supervision, and we should keep thinking about how to do that. Meanwhile…”<
The late Father of Sexology and John Hopkins Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics and Psychology John Money described pedophilia as a fusion of romantic and parental love. Pedophiles generally have a desire to nurture/care for/parent the children to whom they are attracted. There is a population of pedophiles who have adopted chldren at an older age (say, 8 or above) who have acted as both lovers and parents for a number of years with positive outcomes.
Note that sincve these children were genetically unrelated, these are not cases of biological incest, and the psychodynamics involved are quite different from those of cases where children have been raised in the home since infancy.
Like parents in general, most pedophiles in these circumstances have the best interests of their charges in mind, and I'd hazard a guess that they commit errors of judgment at appriximately equal rates. I see no need for extra precautions nor supervision in such cases.
My only concern here is that children are under no more obligation to talk to other people about their private business than any adult. Why should they be expected to, and worse demanded?
Demanding of a child full disclosure of all their personal matters is a far more fundamental breach of the rights of the child than their right to intimacy and sexual expression.
The exception is as always those who are close to the person, who will know anyway; at least sense the shift in the pattern of relationships, and being so close have a right of inclusion. Such people will always be more nurturing and protective, by definition, so here of course I agree once more with Titus.
Many children, on the other hand, come unfortunately from what I call toxic families, and I would be the first among them to tell their parents and siblings nothing, and take them nowhere, which of course provides clear reason for such children to cast about and find a friend they can trust and in whom they can confide.
Against that background; those more fundamental rights of children, the occasional pee-pee touching lapses into an irrelevant absurdity.
I am glad to read this clarification, because I don’t think this is clear in the book. While I believe that T. Rivas intended this all along, I think it is an important clarification for men who are morally challenged and might take this list as guidance today despite T. Rivas’s clear statement elsewhere that it does not apply under today’s circumstances.
But regarding the exception, “The only legitimate exception would concern really abusive parents who don’t have the child’s interest in mind”, I would suggest an improvement. If a child has abusive parents and a man wants to step in to help, it should be in the missing parental role, not a peer or romantic or sexual role. If you really love the kid, you give him/her what he/she needs most, which is not any sort of mixing of parent and romantic partner. It also closes a loophole (for the morally challenged) and leaves a simple rule: if you can’t tell the parents, no sexual activity.
In reading Lolita and seeing a couple movie versions, that is one thing that struck me. The most fundamental harm to Lolita is that she doesn’t have a mother, and Humbert is trying to function as both parent and lover. If he was a decent guy he’d stuff his sexual attraction at that point and be a good father. If Lolita’s mother had lived and the girl had chosen to mess around with an older guy with the secure knowledge that she could count on her mother as parent, I’d still not be in favor, but I think the potential harm to Lolita would have been far less. (Yes, I’m stripping a work of art of its artistry to draw mundane lessons.)
This is hypothetical for me, as I think all such relationships are wrong if sexual activity is ever included. But I do recognize differences in degree of wrongness.