What’s in a name?
The word “adultophilia” has its champion here on Heretic TOC (see willistina556’s response to The real silenced voices) to describe children’s sexual attraction to adults. Another commentator, Gil Hardwick, favours “teleiophilia”, this being “in uniformity with the original Greek”.
The latter term is a bit of a bugger for those whose spelling isn’t great but is favoured (also part of the downside, some would say) by the psychological research wallahs. Actually, it was Ray Blanchard who coined the term, as recently as 2000, although Gil is right that the word is wholly Greek in origin. One of the good things coming out of work by Blanchard et al. in recent years has been to strengthen the evidence that paedophilia is a sexual orientation, thus giving the lie to feminist claims that its primary motivation is power abuse, and the more traditional sin-sniffing view that it is a wicked lifestyle choice serving to revive the jaded appetites of those who have grown bored of every other kind of depravity.
More about the research another time. Meanwhile jedson303 amusingly affects mock horror at the idea that anyone could find adults attractive. Seen through the prism of our own tastes, the horror of some of us (me included) is real enough. The majority, though, however bizarre we may feel such a desire to be, are indeed turned on by adults.
But children? Surely not? They’re all little asexual innocents these days, as every ignorant bigot knows. Not so a century ago, when Sigmund Freud gave the world his theory of infantile and child sexuality, including boys’ Oedipus Complex and its female equivalent. These described sexual desires very much directed at adults: in the first instance, the children’s own parents.
Not so half a century ago, either, when Alfred Kinsey was documenting childhood orgasm from infancy onwards. Even Alfred the Great, though, would have been hard pressed to drum up funds for researching children’s sexual desire specifically for adults. Fortunately, memoirists have occasionally given some revealing glimpses into their own childhoods.
Tom Driberg (1905-1976) is a case in point. Driberg, a high-profile journalist and long-serving Member of Parliament was openly gay at a time when few dared to be. And in his book Ruling Passions he came out as an adult-oriented gay youth, gay child, and even gay toddler!
As it happens, I started reading Ruling Passions just this week. I haven’t got far into it yet, but already there is this, on pages 8-9:
There was…much half-informed speculation on the processes of sex and parturition at the prep school to which I went at the age of eight. But some sexual impulses had made themselves felt at a much earlier age. I was crawling about on the carpet in my father’s study (called the smoking-room), and cannot therefore have been more than two or three, when I found myself between the flannel-trousered legs of my eldest brother [aged 19 or 20], who was standing in the middle of the room talking. Looking up towards the crotch, I perceived a small hole – some stitches loose in the seam. Gently, I inserted a finger – so gently that I don’t think my brother noticed – and, though I did not quite touch flesh, I experienced what I clearly recall as the first authentic sexual thrill of my life.
The next incident that comes to mind brought no satisfaction: it was merely a remark, made by me, and I have never understood why I made it in the circumstances in which it was made. At the age of five I was sent to a kindergarten, conducted by two elderly sisters, the Misses Hooker, in a house named Hookstead. Each day I was walked there by our gardener, a middle-aged man with a drooping greyish-ginger moustache, named Hemsley. One morning, on our way to Hookstead in the main Beacon Road, I stopped, looked up at him and said: “Hemsley, will you please take down your trousers?” I cannot remember his reply: I suppose that it was dismissive.
A few pages further on Driberg reveals that by the ripe old age of 12 he was regularly picking up middle aged men in public lavatories: he couldn’t get enough of them!
When young teens or preteens are attracted to adults of the opposite sex, this is simply standard heterosexuality, there is no point calling it adultophilia, or worse, gerontophilia. Young boys will get excited by Playboy’s center spreads, but will consider girls of their age as not sexy. Young girls will fantasize about adult male actors or singers, but will consider boys of their age as dumb and silly. In practice they date their age peers, because that it is their only possibility, and they are told over and over that they should do it. Similarly, elderly people date each other because they don’t hope for anything better and feel rejected by youth, but given the prospect of a love affair with a young person, they will be ready to give up everything in order to pursue it.
It is just a dogma of our epoch that normal sexual attraction is towards age peers. For instance Blanchard says that when men grow older, their age preference moves up. Quite to the contrary, standard heterosexuality is basically attraction to young adults of the opposite sex. (I can’t speak for homosexualiity, this is outside my domain of competence).
Bringing Freud into a serious discussion seems like a bad idea but Alfred the Great is, well, great!
I stumbled onto this site looking for the definition of a word in an article that I had not heard of. Is this a mutual admiration society for a bunch of people who are sexually attracted to children – who being thus disposed research incidents of children being interested in sex in order to reconcile their behavior of charming children into “enchanting” relationships because after all they know they want it? It sure looks that way. Kind of looks like an ‘if it feels good do it’ philosophy which seems of unevolved for human beings.
In a word, no. But you could try reading the About page, Vicky, or any of the many blogs in the archive. How about starting with the latest one?
A few quotes from Havelock Ellis’s Sexual Inversion (you can read the whole thing, which has much on childhood sexual activity, here: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/13611/13611-h/13611-h.htm):
“I can remember, when I was about 6 years, how I fell in love with a very good-looking 26-year-old German. He had very curly hair and his hands were very beautiful. He was very fond of me and I used to call him ‘my Boy.’ When visiting us he often used to ‘tuck me in’ after the nurse had gone down. He always had sweets or something for me. I can remember how I used to fling my arms round his neck and cover his face with kisses. I would then draw his head down on my pillow and he would tell me fairy-tales and I would go off to sleep quite happy.”
Another research subject, who I think was John Addington Symonds: “Sexual consciousness awoke before the age of 8…he became subject to curious half-waking dreams. In these he imagined himself the servant of several adult naked sailors; he crouched between their thighs and called himself their dirty pig, and by their orders he performed services for their genitals and buttocks, which he contemplated and handled with relish.”
Another: “At a very early age, between 6 and 8, he was deeply impressed by the handsome face of a young man, a royal trumpeter on horseback, seen in a procession. This, and the sight of the naked body of young men in a rowing-match on the river, caused great commotion, but not of a definitely sexual character.”
I was hugely impressed, many years (or rather decades) ago, when I first dipped into Ellis’s Studies in the Psychology of Sex, so I am pleased to see he is still being mined for interesting material.
I see, A, that you have posted a number of comments today, all of them excellent. Many thanks. You make many points that are worthy of discussion. My fear is that they will not be sufficiently noticed if they are left just as responses to blogs from some time ago. I will simply post them all without further comment for the moment, but when I get a chance I may find a way of trumpeting their presence.
The great Anglo Victorian-Edwardian-Georgian sexologist and eugenicist H-Ellis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics
________________________________
It is certainly interesting that Ellis favoured eugenics, along with the socialist (definitely not national socialist!) George Bernard Shaw and many other intellectuals a century or so ago. Hitler later did a remarkably thorough job of discrediting it, but we should be wary of judging the early enthusiasts with 20-20 hindsight (but I’m not accusing you of that, Tina). As a writer on Shaw noted not so long ago:
“That word [eugenics] has acquired some highly unpleasant baggage, so we need to explain carefully what it is that Shaw meant by the term, which is capable of producing near-hysterical reactions in otherwise levelheaded people. These people seem to believe that because eugenics was evoked to justify Nazi genocide, eugenics must necessarily be evil. The well-intentioned people who wished to rid the world of congenital defects cannot be held responsible for racists who promoted genocide, and the attempt to tar Shaw with that brush is simply stupid.” Stuart Eddy Baker, Bernard Shaw’s remarkable religion: a faith that fits the facts. Gainesville, Florida: University Press of Florida, 2002 (pp. 169–170)
[…] that, oddly enough, we might have to go back much further. It has been noted before here at Heretic TOC (search for “The Clitoral Truth” in the comments) that ultrasound evidence has demonstrated the […]
(Yet another) good article:
“Civil Commitment Without Psychosis: The Law’s Reliance on the Weakest Links in Psychodiagnosis”
Journal of Sexual Offender Civil Commitment: Science and the Law, 1, 17-82 (2005).
Zander, Thomas K.
http://www.wisspd.org/htm/ATPracGuides/Training/ProgMaterials/Ch980s/CCWP.pdf
ABSTRACT
Civil commitment of mentally disordered persons in the United States was generally limited to persons who were clinically and judicially determined to have psychotic disorders, until 2 U.S. Supreme Court decisions in 1997 and 2002 sanctioned the commitment of nonpsychotic sex offenders who had completed their prison sentences. Such commitments are based on diagnoses of paraphilias and personality disorders – often using the miscellaneous “not otherwise specified” designations for these diagnostic categories. These diagnoses have poor conceptual validity and low interrater reliability. Accordingly, civil commitments that are based on diagnoses of such nonpsychotic disorders have a weak foundation.
—————–
Note: Includes more than is indicated in abstract above.
Very interesting read.
:- |
Whatever…
Hmm… I don’t have a TV (well, there’s one in the living room that I’ve never turned on), don’t read newspapers, nor cartoons, and don’t listen to (today’s) comedians… Most of the materials I read are NOT posted in such a way that I (or anyone) can find them easily/cheaply.
As a non-university affiliated researcher/consultant but unable to spend as much as 1000 AUD/month on Elsevier/Springer articles, I have to dig things up the hard way.
As for anthropology – I am interested in field-work performed by experienced, knowledgeable researchers, those with more than just a “passing familiarity” of the languages of the cultures (and, I would hope, the boys) being studied. I have spoken to too many “armchair” anthropologists already, who pass on second- or third-hand “information” about how things (supposedly) are in other cultures.
Yes, I “mine” material on the Internet. Material that remains (mostly) unknown, little read, even less understood, and mostly unacknowledged. I bring this material to the attention of others, so they many educate themselves.
My bad…
And then there are those who have not simply *studied* certain things, but *lived* them as well. Their opinions are truly *informed* opinions – worth much much more than the opinions of those who may *think* they are informed, but in fact are just indoctrinated with their culture’s “received wisdom”.
Some of us have those kinds of informed opinions. Others don’t. But I don’t know you, Gil, aside from your sniffer-dog site (I believe I’ve read most everything on it – quite a long read!). So you are one of us then, aren’t you?
One of whom, Marti? Who is us?
I ask that since I have fully identified myself while you maintain forum anonymity, for some reason (from what I can access) known only to yourself.
If you want journal articles without paying $AUD1,000 a month (???) please ask and I’ll obtain them for you through my account.
No problemo, assuming you want to learn something.
If on the other hand you plan nothing beyond battering others with your second hand views and political opinions, please don’t bother.
I will not help you with that.
It would be wonderful if someone could “mine” the materials I have suggested for the “gems” they contain. I am more like an “Internet geologist” who spends his time searching the Net for terrain that contains valuable “ore”, then hoping that others – perhaps better qualified than I – can do the extraction and purification of the “golden” data relevant to our cause.
Finding the stuff is the first step. I’m like the geologist discovering which plots of land contain gold, then telling others, “Dig here! Then I go off looking for other sites that contain worthwhile things.
I feel that the best use of my time and effort is in *finding* the material itself. I still stumble (not entirely by accident, of course) on excellent studies done long ago – ignored because they are not PC – and which the current hysterics, femi-nazis, and witch-hunters do not wish – and have not wished! – to reach a wider audience.
We lack hands to do the “dirty work”. I only hope that some day others will build upon my meager contribution – the initial *locating* of knowledge compiled by others – to further the cause and “fight the good fight”.
Marti, with all due respect, the materials you ‘mine’ on the Internet are nothing more than our reports, papers, articles, blogs responding to questions raised in public debate, based on our researches and field experience, and posted in such a way that you can find them.
The very good reason we put our names to them, and include footnotes and references pointing to the work of colleagues, is so students who read our papers can read more widely, and if they have a question contact us directly.
For my part, at times it is astonishing that so many are still being distracted by third and fourth hand press and media hype, feeling that they must wade through all that bullshit to find the rare gem.
It’s a sad state of affairs. Allow me to suggest that you switch off the TV, ignore newspaper headlines, even the cartoonists and commedians, and work with us directly.
It’s no problem, no worries. Direct networking is the real power of the Internet.
Another interesting study (but not an easy read due to the “agenda” of the author) is:
http://www.hawaii.edu/hivandaids/Easy_Money_in_Male_Prostitution__An_Imperialist_Apocalypse_Now_in_the_Philippines.pdf
Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, Vol. 14, No. 1, 2000
`Easy Money in Male Prostitution’: an imperialist Apocalypse Now in the Philippines
GRETA AI-YU NIU, Department of English, State University of New York, College at Brockport
“According to Estafania Aldaba Lim, a former minister of social welfare who has studied the Pagsanjan situation, local residents discovered the easy money in male prostitution when American filmmakers came to town to shoot scenes for Apocalypse Now.”
[…]
Introduction
Globalization as First Worldism has been taking place for much longer than current interest in the topic demonstrates: numerous examples from nineteenth-century colonialism and twentieth-century imperialism provide background for late capitalist projects by transnational corporations. This paper examines the way in which US media participate in the process of globalization on a different scale from transnational or multinational corporations. Reporting on a particular aspect of globalization—international sex tourism—newspaper articles conflate a film crew and a film with the creation of a local economy that relies largely on tourists and ignores the history of US involvement from the 1970s to the early 1990s in Vietnam and in the Philippines.[…]
Interwoven in the above is detail about boylovers/loved boys in Pagsanjan.
Marti’s post is much longer than the 200 words I set as a maximum but he has given good academic references, and that is something I would like to encourage. Brevity remains important, though, so please keep to 200 or face strong likelihood of post being discarded or cut drastically.
Speaking of “primates at play”… Several interesting studies were recently done in 3rd-world countries, where sexual activity is still thought of as being normal and natural – even for those under the “magic age of 18 years” – can be found in “Wagadu – A journal of transnational Women’s and Gender studies”:
YOUTH SEX WORKERS ON THE U.S.-MEXICO BORDER
Abstract: The everyday lives of youth sex workers remain largely ignored in global debates about the impact of criminalization and policing on sex workers. Youth sex workers are often portrayed as victims of commercial child sexual exploitation, with little acknowledgement of their everyday worlds. Using data from a mixed method study with youth and adult sex workers in Tijuana, this paper will explore […]”
http://appweb.cortland.edu/ojs/index.php/Wagadu/article/view/528/772
FOCUSING ON THE CHILD, NOT THE PROSTITUTE: SHIFTING THE EMPHASIS IN ACCOUNTS OF CHILD PROSTITUTION
Abstract: Most media accounts of child prostitution rely on brief vignettes describing in detail the abuse endured by children who sell sex. In contrast, ethnographic studies look more holistically at these children, discussing their families, their social and economic situation and their lives before, during and after prostitution. This article will compare the various ways of portraying these children, arguing that in focusing so much on selling sex, the children’s lives away from prostitution are overlooked.”
http://appweb.cortland.edu/ojs/index.php/Wagadu/article/view/545/780
OUR LADY OF HELP: SEX, TOURISM AND TRANSNATIONAL MOVEMENTS IN COPACABANA
Abstract: Analysis of sexual tourism has generally concentrated on the subjugation of women as devalued objects of exchange shuffling between the so-called “developing” and “developed” worlds. Basing our analysis on ethnographic fieldwork among tourists and prostitutes in the Copacabana neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro, we seek to demonstrate how women’s ability to create and manipulate symbols enables the international movement of both Brazilian women and foreign men. This article recovers the agency of Brazilian women involved in tourism-related sex work, situating them as neither victims nor victimizers, but as active participants in the creation and management of both affective and commercial sexual relationships.
URL http://appweb.cortland.edu/ojs/index.php/Wagadu/article/viewArticle/556/795
These studies are especially interesting because they (try to) approach “the problem” more from the point of view of he participants, and (attempt) to avoid “researcher bias”, but with varying degrees of success.
Another similar study is here:
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10611-011-9330-5?LI=true
http://www.scribd.com/doc/73123404/Beach-Boys-or-Sexually-Exploited-Children-Competing-Narratives-of-Sex-Tourism-and-Their-Impact-on-Young-Men-in-Sri-Lanka-s-Informal-Tourist-Economy-1
NOTE: I am NOT in favor of sex-for-money relationships, so-called “sex tourism” or (genuine) abuse of young people by adults, sexual or otherwise.
Oh, there’s a conference coming up, in case people haven’t heard:
PG Conference 2013
The Young Sexualities
Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Conference
Cardiff University, 25th January, 2013
“An exciting opportunity to share emerging research, promote interdisciplinary awareness, discussion, and collaboration, and connect with other postgraduates studying gender and sexuality in youth and childhood.
We are privileged to be hosting Diederik Janssen from the Netherlands as keynote speaker. Editor of TYMOS: Journal of Boyhood Studies and Culture, Society and Masculinities, Janssen’s prolific publications record focuses primarily on young male sexualities whilst also offering extensive comment on the development of queer theoretical approaches and issues surrounding sexual health and the role of the sexual in developmental psychology. His CV is available…
[…]”
http://youngsexualities.org/events/82-2/
Everybody wants something . . .
Yes, of course – everyone is always “out to get something for themselves”, if only the pleasure from contributing to a good project, or by helping others. I know nothing about this conference – are the fees fair? Does it seem to be a “for-profit” enterprise, or one designed to simply cover expenses.
Still, the goals of the conference – on paper, at least – sound worthwhile. Whether the expenditure in time, effort, and money would be worthwhile, I have no idea. Does anyone have experience with previous conferences, etc. organized by these people? Can he/they comment here about those experiences?
Oh, Gil – there’s another anthropological study, done in the early years of the last century (how strange to be saying those words! “the last century”):
“The sexual life of savages in north-western Melanesia; an ethnographic account of courtship, marriage and family life among the natives of the Trobriand Islands, British New Guinea (1929)”
… available here:
www26.us.archive.org/details/sexuallifeofsava00mali
The .PDF file is a reproduction of the original book (the other formats were OCRd but not proofread completely, so still contain many errors)
www26.us.archive.org/download/sexuallifeofsava00mali/sexuallifeofsava00mali.pdf
… but beware – it’s about 48 megabytes to download.
See Chapter 3 – it’s the most interesting (to me/us, I’d imagine.)
You know, unspoilt young people exploring their sensuality/sexuality, unhindered by adult “interference”.
Of course, adults sometimes “played around” with the kids, too. But that was just fine.
You know, way it’s *supposed* to be.
Yes, anthropologists typically have libraries full of this stuff, most of it not quite ANTHROP 100 but Upper Level, Year 3 and Honours leading into prostrgraduate research. There is no special reason for any of us to continue downloading reams and reams of material that is already familiar, and adds nothing further to the debate.
Two points need to be raised here, the first being that ‘child’ and ‘adult’ are Victorian English constructs based around physiological maturation, the transition being puberty with the prepubescent cast as somehow ‘innocent’, ‘pure’, ‘ideal’, where in traditional societies ANY new person is considered a child, as having no knowledge, no rank, no place in society, and needing to be contained.
That is what is interesting to me about the Van Reeuwik thesis – it replicates typical field induction, and the way in which anthropologists starting learning about the society through the children, and in the process like all children about other children.
I do not know of any study that discusses adults who “played around”, I guess you mean sexually, with children that has not emerged as highly problematic, or the way “it’s *supposed* to be”.
What does that mean? Am I expected to come out and declare that on the basis of ethnographic field studies adults having sex with children is even contextually acceptable?
I think my colleagues will agree, there is no society in which these matters are not problematic, only that different societies handle the problem differently, have different rules and conventions. Having said that, I argue myself that all of sex and sexuality is problematic. These are the most sacred and intimate of relationships among human beings, and must be treated with utmost respect. That’s where the present debate continues to fail abysmally.
I wrote my 1st Anthropology Honours thesis on this in 1989, entitled ‘Totemic Power and Ritual Responsibility: Education in Traditional Aboriginal Australia.’ I was not then and am not now centrally concerned with sex and sexuality as such but with education and coming-of-age, beyond the insidious influence of feminist, queer, and other deviant sorts of intellectualising on the biased interpretation of raw field data, and worse appropriation and mobilisation of those interpretations for their own political purposes.
Here on this forum, the focus is on the more heretical, subversive aspects of sexual development, sexuality, and the nature of relationships between children and adults, against the imposed norms of Anglo-American, late-modern, mass industrial ‘society’. Again, I don’t find anywhere that it’s fine – it’s highly problematic – else we would not be bothered hosting these forums.
For the record, I take a dim view of self-flagellating Western paedophiles taking their liberties in Asian countries, trying to make out they are some sorts of refugee from injustice when I know from my communications with many of them that their first action in arriving in villages is to ‘line the ducks up on the wire’. But they have no standing, in any society.
To balance that, I take an even dimmer view of similarly Western moralisers and campaigners running around, police in tow, searching out paedos under every bed, like latter-day Gestapo or KGB units, dictating human sexuality and interfering in our privacy at even a whiff of nudity.
The marauding paedos are few, and can sensibly be managed quite well, everything being equal. The fascists taking any excuse are many and affect the whole of society.
For the most part the issue being addressed is an Anglophone problem. I do not find the same problem emerging in traditional societies, where as I have already discussed the matter has generally long been sorted, albeit not in the same way the English or the Americans may prefer.
My view is, perhaps those people might choose finally to learn from other people rather than forever dicating to them, lecturing to them, solving ‘their problems’ for them. Or failing that, just bugger off.
Am I clear on all that yet? I mean, I have been doing this for over 30 years, and arrive at the conclusion that the best thing Gadiya can do in the world is clean the wax out of their ears finally, or better, get their heads out of their arse.
Hi Gil!
Actually, I proofread (for the most part) chapter 3 of the book:
““The sexual life of savages in north-western Melanesia; an ethnographic account of courtship, marriage and family life among the natives of the Trobriand Islands, British New Guinea”, and posted it at BoyChat. You may read it here:
http://www.boychat.org/messages/1321795.htm
Note that the researcher dismissed the claims of the natives regarding adult/child sexual interactions. To be expected, of course.
You said, ” There is no special reason for any of us to continue downloading reams and reams of material that is already familiar, and adds nothing further to the debate.”
That may be true, but different materials all have a slightly-different viewpoint, and with all materials these days (and usually in the past) one must consciously separate the wheat from the “culturally-biased” chaff.
You continued, “…‘child’ and ‘adult’ are Victorian English constructs…”.
Yes, of course. This is repeatedly stated in materials dealing with morality and child-sexuality. And it is a very important point, which bears repeating as often as possible!
Then you add, “… and needing to be contained. [as children do with regards to their sexuality]”
If you read the above post that I proofread and posted on BoyChat, you will see that according to the researcher, the natives did *not* feel that the childrens’ sexuality needed any kind of “containment”. I think the concept of containing ones physiological processes (as long as they are not clearly destructive/harmful) is a Western Judea-Christian construct. We must “contain” what is “dirty” and “sinful”. I personally think the human expression of sexual appetites and desires is neither.
The the Van Reeuwik thesis is, I agree, important as it appears for the most part to be allowing the *actors themselves* to relate what they think, and how they feel, rather than “re-conceptualizing” their thoughts and beliefs to be in accord with those of the researcher.
As to your comment, “I do not know of any study that discusses adults who ‘played around’, I guess you mean sexually, with children that has not emerged as highly problematic, or the way ‘it’s *supposed* to be’.”
I think you’ll find the Melanesian study does just that – it suggests (actually, the natives state clearly) that some adults were involved in sexual activity with young people (not “children” – childhood is a construct of the Victorian era, isn’t it?).
You continue, “What does that mean? Am I expected to come out and declare that on the basis of ethnographic field studies adults having sex with children is even contextually acceptable?”
Well, yes – you could do that. Everything is “problematic”, of course, but the problems that are possible to occur with sexual activity which is non-penetrative, not (highly) coercive, (of simple) consent are actually very few, if any – aside from any “guilt” and “shame” from society’s opprobrium, which is unnecessary in a society that accepts the body (with all its functions/fluids/excretions/etc.) as normal, natural, and not to be condemned.
You state, “I think my colleagues will agree, there is no society in which these matters are not problematic, only that different societies handle the problem differently, have different rules and conventions. Having said that, I argue myself that all of sex and sexuality is problematic. These are the most sacred and intimate of relationships among human beings, and must be treated with utmost respect. That’s where the present debate continues to fail abysmally.”
Well, don’t count me among your colleagues, I suppose. I strongly disagree that sexual expression is something “magical” and of such high spiritual import. I see sex as a natural bodily function, one which demands expression, and not something “problematic” at all! And I believe I am familiar with other, non-Western cultures that demonstrate that the preceding is true.
The key, it seems to me, to understanding a culture in-depth is to be fluent in that culture’s language, and to live among the native speakers of the language (as best one can) “as one of them” in order to understand how the ideas (expressed in the language) are reflected in the actual behavior, as opposed to any “ideals” of perfection (perhaps striven for, but never ever truly realized) which may exist within the culture.
Some “boylovers” have done this, and been surprised to discover that expressed sexuality had *not* been condemned. Yes, seen as unusual, strange, little-understood, but now subject to legal constraints.
I am skipping some further comments you made in your response (perhaps I can come back to them at another point) but I would like to respond to one other point you made.
You said, “My view is, perhaps those people might choose finally to learn from other people rather than forever dictating to them, lecturing to them, solving ‘their problems’ for them. Or failing that, just bugger off.”
I fully agree! But, how does one listen to others without speaking their languages, and living among them? And, if one has been unable to do so, then perhaps, failing that, one should perhaps refrain from judging them for their particular mores, as alien as they may seems to be?
(Note: I am currently not permitted to post on BoyChat. I have upset some members of the forum by expressing some rather unpopular ideas – some which go against all they think and believe, apparently due to their cultural conditioning.)
Sorry, folks, I must call a halt to this. If I let long posts continue I’m not going to be able to do a good job moderating them. I expect I’ll put up a policy note on the About page soon, but for the moment consider posts limited to 200 words. This one is nearly 900.
The outcome of the Mead/Freeman debate went beyond difference of opinion to centre focus not merely on semantics and semiotics, but on reflexive context and the role of the ethnographer as a social actor. In that there can be no subject/object relation, and no universal principle that can be distilled from it via some sort of ‘scientific method’. All there is, at the end of the day, is a field report.
Here in this matter, as a case in point, I have not argued on sex or sexual activity as spiritual experience. I am not talking about sex at all but the manifold and highly complex nature of relations between children and adults; the most delightful and fulfilling being enchanting, magical, and in which in my view if there is perchance a sexual component, and to that extent, it is frankly nobody else’s business.
Sex as such I find boring, salacious, unbecoming. That is the very definition of pornography. I’m prepared to wager that kids finding their adult friend boring and salacious will soon walk away seeking something more in a relationship, and someone who sees far more in him than just another porn session.
Given the enchantment, on the other hand, call it being in love if you will, I am as prepared to wager that any sex between them, even touching and fondling, is magical.
Go figure . . .
From a Homo Sapiens wise pure anthropological view, it’s just primates-at-play.
But since the unwise Homo Ignoramus religio/socio/politico/industrio period ongoing unchecked for greed/ratings/profit-not-protection – it’s now pervs-must-pay.
Current high-tec style, ” We Say U PayPal.”
Not quite an aside, it is commonplace in Psych 100 to test for nerve ending concentrations using the fairly primitive ‘two point test’.
It is no accident that the nose, ears, lips, tongue, fingertips, toetips and genitalia all show up with the highest nerve concentrations. Those are the key points of sensory interaction with the world, the interface if you will.
There is even a creature called The Sensory Homunculus now used as the standard model of healthy central and peripheral nervous system development – the archetypal gollum.
Peter Jackson and Andy Serkis were being seriously prudish. Their gollum despite his flapping tatter of a loin cloth doesn’t even have a dick, when true to type he should have a whalloper.
Back to the point being made. To me, children growing up sensually, with a highly developed interface with the external world, as I have written often enough, is cause for celebration.
Rites of passage the world over are the medium of celebration, and have been for millenia. This is core anthropology, nothing else.
Children going through first do so because they are the bright young up-and-comers, the new leaders, the achievers and net contributors. The repressed become losers, withdrawn, suicidal.
Go figure.
Hi Gil
There’s an interesting book available, an ethnographic study of Tanzanian school children and their sexuality. Here can be found a review:
muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/africa_the_journal_of_the_international_african_institute/v082/82.2.montgomery.html
Chapters may be downloaded from here:
dare.uva.nl/record/305838
Of course, it merely confirms what we already know about (yet unperverted) youth sexuality.
If you two you don’t mind me just popping my head around the door for a second, there’s this:
Giorgi, G. & Siccardi, M. (1996). Ultrasonographic observation of a female fetus’ sexual behavior in utero. American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology, 175(3), 753.
It’s been cited a lot but there’s no Abstract. Anybody read it?
There is this quote from it, though, from p.139 of The Clitoral Truth by Rebecca Chalker (see Google Books search inside):
“We recently observed a female fetus at 32 weeks’ gestation touching the vulva with fingers of [her] right hand. The caressing movement was centered primarily on the region of the clitoris. Movements stopped after 30 to 40 seconds, and started again after a few moments. Further, these light touches were repeated and were associated with short, rigid movements of the pelvis and legs. After another break, in addition to this behavior, the fetus contracted the muscles of the trunk and limbs, and the climax, clonicotonic movements [rapid muscle contractions] of the body, followed. Finally she relaxed and rested. We [several doctors and the mother] observed this behavior for about 20 minutes.”
King Heretic-TOC, peering from behind that big book.
” We [several doctors and the mother] observed this behavior for about 20 minutes.”
Surely now historic, multiple vile offenders. Revelling in 20-minutes of illegal-scans depravity, and not calling neo-Victorian nanny Esther Rancid’s ‘FoetusLine’, launched Oct ’86.
Vile pre-childsex retro criminals (no better than past Rock n Rollers) all due now for semi-paramiltary, bent-media backed, massed dawn-raids by 1-eyed-Cyclops/CEOP, launched Apr ’06 by neo-Neanderthal Grim Jim Grumble.
Another possibility may be this:
http://archive.is/1xZq
… it’s a letter to the editor of the journal, with a similar quote
There’s a “free 30-day” subscription offer.
Try:
http://www.ajog.org/article/S0002-9378%2896%2970566-5/fulltext
… but you need access through a subscriber or institution with a subscription.
(I removed the “http://” to see if the URL will publish correctly – other sites have problems with truncated URLs if this is not removed)
Cheers!
I’ve said all along that this obsession with sex is counter-productive. It has been raised in Law intensives time and time again, yet all the discussion then turns to is this ‘dark figure’ rather than what to do about it, if anything.
For me, it’s not a matter of schools needing ‘strong policies’ – we’ve been battling for generations now to humanise them – but effective teacher training that helps build good constructive relationships between teachers and pupils that lead to their gaining a education. Which is the point of going to school, isn’t it? Or have I been missing something all this time?
Failing that core purpose, kids will rebel in all sorts of creative ways, in fact rarely violent despite what the text-books suggest, but as in most human cultures by reducing the construct subversively to its base elements. The technique is studied formally in undergraduate theatre.
The costume is the construct, the school uniform the first point of discipline. To subvert the construct children will revert to the body, not always sexually, except that genitalia are inevitably the quickest and most potent form of expression.
Here it is more usual for a boy to poke his dick out, and for a girl to show her panties. I know of one episode where a team of builders working on a new classroom were subject to a row of pubescent girls lining up for a flash without even their knickers, in response to their constant wolf-whistling at them.
I’ve had boys in the house bend over and give me a ‘brown-eye’, which is another common form, when I’ve asked them to get dressed and stop fooling around.
Anyway, for the moment, I am interested in obtaining a copy of this report. It is important.
Can you help, by sending a link or better attach a copy?
No one else in the room, Gil. So here’s our links (of which 1 should work) to the bent-mainstream Brit best-selling daily Sex-filled ‘Family Friendly’ SUNazi for greed, ratings, profit. Mass Deception masked as so called ‘Child Protection’.
Further research can access the intial, May ‘010, sources to: “The scale of the harassment is uncovered in logs kept by local councils and just released under the Freedom of Information Act.”
Along the same route, there’s an annual UK (and elsewhere?) Headteachers’ summer conference, also minimally bent-mainstream reported. Which in our sparse knowledge since around the late-1990s has noted such ‘disturbing’ proactive, predatory, ‘grooming’ of adults by Adultophile kids as young as 1st-year, ages 5 or six, Late-starters in our long experience.
For, well known now in this same high-tec era, pre-natal scans show wanking-in-the-womb by unborn babes. Natch, needing good old fashioned neo-Victorian fascist raps-on-the-knuckles ?
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3096988/.html#ixzz2CPEHDU
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/30969…her-sex-abusers.html
21st Century Adultophilia, a rational case.
There has never been such an immoral, low, dishonest in-denial age, as the raving-Right/Wrong-uns, neo-Victorian, mock-Puritan Sex & Age-obsessed Anglophone late-20th/early-21st century – multi-media 24/7 mass deception.
For greed, ratings, profit, their daily sex-filled so called ‘Family Friendly’ moralising bent-mass media sexualizes their own non-victim Adultophile/kids 6 thru 16. Excited, and incited by ‘glamour’ near nude adults, crotch-thrusting Pop music, adverts, and much more.
Millions of predatory Adultophiles then proposition and prey on mass victims such as teachers and other adults, while seXting & making DIY-camphone CP brazenly defiant of crap so called ‘Sex Laws’ – 90% all unreported natch.
O.K. one totalitarian mainstream-tabloid told it true – once in ‘010.
Since then, no follow up, just a deafening silence. Swept under their naZty neo-Victorian/mock-Puritan fascist carpet, and then resume standard perverse Ostrich pose. Arrogant heads stuck raving-right back up their own arses.
U really couldn’t make it up, but hey, they don’t have to make it up. It’s happening 24/7-365 ongoing unchecked – now 99.9% all unreported natch.
” PUPILS as young as SIX have subjected teachers to sexual abuse, shocking reports reveal today. Kids all over Britain have ogled, groped and even threatened to rape staff in growing numbers, figures show.
Hundreds of teachers have been propositioned or ridiculed and children have even fondled themselves in class to embarrass them.
The scale of the harassment is uncovered in logs kept by local councils and just released under the Freedom of Information Act. They detail incidents over three years involving both primary and secondary school teachers. Most culprits were only suspended, then allowed back. In some cases no action was taken at all.
In one incident a boy aged six made “sexual suggestions” to a 49-year-old woman teacher in the West Midlands. A boy of eight licked a teacher’s leg and touched her breast in Cambridge. In Scotland a 16-year-old announced to his class he was going to rape their teacher. Other women were grabbed by the bottom or breasts and one was even followed into the loo. In one case a GIRL flashed her undies at a male teacher and “massaged herself in a sexual manner” in front of him.
The reports list a total of 305 incidents, but they were compiled by only 45 of 206 local authorities responsible for education and experts fear the true size of the problem is far worse. The Association of Teachers and Lecturers said: ‘This behaviour is not appropriate. Schools need strong policies.’ ”
This bent-Anglo mainstream unreported issue ain’t going away anytime soon.
In this very boring, age-stratified, bureacratic and abstracted late modernity in which in Berman’s words everything solid melts into air, and even Giddens returns to map the consequences and explore trajectories of self, ‘childhood’ and ‘sex’ have become rendered as objects.
But they are not objects, they are life processes.
For a hoary bearded older guy who spent many years raising boys, with often as many as 12-15 at once in the house, as often naked coming in from swimming in the nearby river or from showering, I can tell you from experience that the attractions are manifold.
As a child is not a small adult, an adult is not merely a grownup child. Knowing a lot about electronics and building computers is hell wicked. Being a writer able to tell stories is right out there. Being a really good cook serving up yummy dinners every night is beyond belief. Having someone to snuggle up to, to hear worries and concerns, to give advice and tend to hurts, is just about everything else.
Seeing their faces light up, the happy smiles and laughter, wanting to come back time and again, wanting to live with me, not go home, says everything.
I’ll not discuss anything else because it’s private, and this is a public forum. There is no other area of sexuality and sexual expression discussed openly in civil society for the same reason.
My considered view is that sex and sexuality are rightly embedded in a whole lot of growing up and subsequent living, and should not be filtered out and distilled like some sort of radium from pitchblend, appropriated and mobilised into something else.
Those kids today whose parents consider me a paedo, by contrast, who restrained and punished their children, have got nowhere. A lot of them still hang around town bored, on drugs, often unemployed, with governments routinely sending in social workers to attend to them.
Our kids have all since graduated from university, or are in good well-paid jobs with really nice, smiling girlfriends, or occasionally a boyfriend. They still come over for dinner, a few beers, a good yarn, a game of euchre, backgammon or monopoly, and a lot of laughs.
Suffice here that I have now submitted two Honours theses focused on coming-of-age, one in traditional society and the other in literature, all well-informed by 30 years of active field research in children’s sexuality and growth.
And I would do it all over again. The benefits are extensive and undeniable.
BTW, read my ‘Tom Fisher’ novel, “Educating Nicolas”, about how this one boy who found a life for himself. I’d post a link here but it seems they go live. Click through my website.
Androphilia is of course sex specific to men, whereas adultophilia and teleiophilia both refer to either gender. Nothing wrong with androphilia when correctly used, though, and nothing wrong either with the paper you refer to. In fact I recommend it.
Well, this usage – contrasting androphilia with paidophilia (more correctly paiderastia) – is quite esoteric. Usually androphilia and gynaikophilia are used to designate the sexual orientation as it is, physiologically at least, viz. existing independently from one’s own sex.
There is a correlation, but no more. The old terminology, homo- and heterosexuality, suggests at least that the sexual orientation is determined with reference to one’s own sex, from which it seems to follow, that homosexuality is somehow “perverted”.
At the risk of being repetitious, or of being seen as egotistical and self-serving, the theme of “The Role of Androphilia in the Psychosexual Development of Boys” (http://www.boyandro.info) dovetails quite nicely with this present discussion.