Responses to Attempts to Normalise Paedophilia.
Recently I've been hearing things on pushes to normalise or legalise paedophilia. It seems a bit far fetched and hard to believe that such a thing would be on anyone's agenda, but it the evidence is there that this really is being talked about and openly, by some.
Child sexual abuse is not a subject I'm comfortable discussing normally, but when what these people are suggesting is coming across as seeming almost reasonable, I can't stand by and not dispute it. It's hard to imagine that anyone not already a paedophile could actually be swayed by it, but people are being convinced. So I think it's time to challenge some of these suggestions.
Gert Hekma is a teacher of gay/lesbian studies at the University of Amsterdam. In this interview Marthijn Uittenbogaard asks some questions on his views on child sex. Reading through the whole interview you realise that Hekma is coming from a childhood of repressed sexual/homosexual desires, so the later things he expresses about children and sex likely stem from that and truly do seem reasonable to him. He is also aroused by SM, which is his prerogative, but it rings alarm bells for me when he seems quite liberal with the idea of sex and children.
Initially he describes the viewpoint of an author, Donatien Alphonse François de Sade, that he is a fan of:
As for Sade it is like you need to be forced a bit to learn what you like. We accept this in many, many areas. You are forced to go to school. You are forced as a child to eat your food. You are forced to crap and pee neatly at certain times. The child is being forced endlessly, but as for sex it suddenly is not allowed anymore. Sade indicates: exactly with a little pressure you learn how nice sex is.
Then he goes on to say himself:
I think you should force children. Children are boring creatures as well, whom you need to put on a right track one given moment. And this goes for sex too.
Okay, right off the bat, I can think of no situation where anyone should be forced into anything unless it’s going to save their life and how likely is an event like that going to occur? It's worrying that it is compared to how children are forced to go to school, because this is actually widely accepted; so too is not being able to use the toilet until break times. Forcing a child to eat is arguably not so acceptable these days. Now, this interview is translated from Dutch, so perhaps the word “force” is a bit of a harsh translation, but “made” or “pushed” doesn't seem much better.
Does a child who is forced to go to school learn to like it or find it nice if they didn't like it in the first place? Does a child who is forced to eat a food they don't like suddenly decide one day it's nice? Well actually they might if it wasn't forced upon them, but coming with a bad memory is likely to put them off for life. Then these people think it a good idea to push children into sexuality...
The thought occurred to me that perhaps Hekma was talking more about teenagers who are maybe just under the age of consent, until he said this:
Minister Visser said too, every age of consent is rather arbitrary. You can say at twelve, but there are also children who are ready to have sex at ten or at six.
Seriously?! There are also children who aren't ready for sex at 15 or even 17. Who's to make that decision? It’s apparent that he feels it's not the children who, it seems, should be pushed into it sooner.
In this video a Dutch politician is interviewed as he attempts to make paedophilia acceptable.
His reasoning seems to be that children crave attention and this must include sexual attention.
Actually every human being likes and loves children which is great for children, because children need affection. And there is a need for it to be expressed. This can not only happen mentally. A child is very physically oriented and also needs that affection to be physically expressed. Well, there are hugs, kisses, touching. And you just have to look at the expression of the child when that happens. The lovely enriched expression that the child gets with that, which clearly shows that children need this.
I can't deny that young children do crave affection and will likely take any good attention going when gently offered and if severely deprived even bad attention will do. However, young children don't comprehend sexual attention and no matter how gently it's done there will come a point where the paedophile will move on to penetration and no matter which orifice is used it’s going to be painful for the for the child. I can categorically say that at this point the child will be confused, afraid and pretty much feel betrayed. That craving for attention then conflicts with the fear of the pain that now seems to be attached to the attention. This is the best case scenario of paedophilia.
Very few survivors of child sexual abuse manage to have healthy relationships as adults. The damage is long reaching and forever with them.
What adds insult to injury is that this attempt of normalising paedophilia as just another sexual orientation is being tagged onto the LGBT movement. Gays are already being tagged as paedophiles and Hekma's opinions aren't helping them much. Then at what point do we want to cut off sexual orientations? I'm pretty sure that there are some people who are aroused at torturing others; surely that's a sexual orientation too!
Hekma may have been sexually curious at 6 years old, but that doesn't make it normal. I've bred animals and have never seen an adult attempt to mate with a juvenile, even a horny teenage rooster! Animals are running on much more basic instincts than us, so if attraction to undeveloped juveniles was normal then they'd likely be having their way with the youngsters. In ancient Egypt they may not have had an age of consent, but it was generally accepted that you didn't have intercourse until a girl had had her first period, signalling physical maturity.
With the evidence piling up on how governments are tearing apart the family unit, it's not becoming such a huge leap to wonder if they are starting to try and push through the legalisation of paedophilia. Holland is already seen as pushing the boundaries in taboo areas such as drugs and sex. Could it be the perfect testing ground for something like this?
This is telling! If a pre-pubescent child shows any signs of sexuality (which is more than just 'wishful thinking' on the part of the 'predator'), then it is clear that this child has likely experienced some form of sexual abuse, to some degree or another, in the past (else how do they know?). Thus the appearance of 'readiness' to the eye that looks for such things.
A source of confusion in adult survivors of child sexual abuse is the issue of 'love/Love' and 'affection'. The child's primary need for these fundamentals are taken advantage of, and twisted. The child may be enticed into the situation by sugar-coated fakery, and if there isn't much real Love and Affection to be had in the child's life, the manipulation and deception are easily executed! The effects are profound and spiral up through life.
Read innocently, this is very true. Children have a need for affection to be expressed energetically, verbally, physically; adults may love kids coz they remind them of their own lost innocence (relive childhood) and this can be great for kids, who really do expand and grow with attention, Love and Affection. However, the pernicious twist is any suggestion that because there is a demonstrated need in the child for affection/attention, that this is extendable to physical intimacy, touch in the manner that adults express love and affection to each other. Perhaps this extension may apply to two post-pubescent teens in close age proximity (and in an abuse-free society, healthy guidance and support would probably be available), but to use this to justify the crossing of this line between adults and children is something else altogether! This is the pernicious twist.
A lot of confusion in adult survivors of sexual abuse is the confusion around feelings of 'pleasure' that accompany the instances and memories of sexual abuse. 'Fake' love and affection are deeply integrated with the abuse experience, the child's internal psychological mechanism hard at work compartmentalising what cannot emotionally be coped with. Abuse is not always the stereotypical pattern of dramatic assault and victim, although the very first time (or the first however many times, for this is complex, subtle as well as overt) it always always IS! The power/control-differential is ever-present.
Also @life-relearnt, excellent point about no demonstrable 'pedophilia' in the animal kingdom. With animals, 'lust' for juveniles is not something that happens. In the phenomenon of human pedophilia POWER and CONTROL seem to be the primary drivers, rather than 'lust'.
Child Sexual Abuse is widespread, it is WIDESPREAD, it is WIDESPREAD.
'Normal' discussions of it may be one of the ways of combating any attempts to normalise it in society, for that is always done through stealth, and when there is hesitation or fear (or guilt/complicity) preventing acknowledgement and discussion amongst the punters! Normalising talking about it in an objective and non-sentimental manner (rather than "hang, kill, lock-up all pedos!") is the only way in which this phenomenon, which forms the background heaviness in so many many human lives, can be brought into conscious awareness, such that action and discussion is no longer a thing of shame, where the lynch-mobs often really want to cover their own dirty secrets rather than tackle the phenomenon itself!
The video ends with a man of religion defending compassion towards pedophiles. Many of the visible pedophiles who are locked up were themselves abused as children. This cannot be ignored, for, if they are victimisers NOW, then surely as anything, they were the victims on that first occasion when they were children, and their innocence was stolen! It is not easy to take this perspective, and one is easily targeted for it.
Dr David Hawkins has said (paraphrase and sorry no source) "the age range that we are sexually attracted to expands as we go through life (it is added to). It thus includes the age-range we were attracted to when we first started being sexually attracted to other people". This must have a correlation with the commencement of sexual activity in life, even if this be unwanted and abusive and this may allow some understanding of the phenomenon as it perpetuates itself. But of course there are countless humans who do not have this 'normalisation' of sexual attraction towards children as a result of having been sexually abused themselves (although they are likely to have been abused in other ways!) - the numerous non-sexually-abused pedophiles.
And on top of it all, the monster that dwarfs the hitherto discussed tip-of-the-iceberg and concealing a LIE so massive that it remains hidden in plain view, is organised Ritual Child Sexual Abuse. Check out @kida, check out #donaldmarshall.
Namaste!
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Thank you for a very inciteful comment. You have touched on some other areas that have come to mind since writing this and that paraphrase from Dr Hawkins adds another interesting facet to it.
I think you're onto something here. When we keep things hidden and take the lynch mob mentality then I think even the abused will keep quiet about things out of shame. I once heard someone telling about a none acting paedophile who set up a support group for none offending paedophiles. The proviso was that they must never have acted upon their desires. I can respect that, especially if the support helps to keep them from doing something that they and others will regret. I'm sure we've all thought of doing bad things in our lives at some point, especially in anger. However, as long as it's not acted upon then no harm is done.
Curated for #informationwar (by @truthforce)