Cognitive clarity and a human rights-based approach
This is today's example of good thinking. it is from dave's blog, and quoted here out of context. The wider entry (Cognitive Liberty, it's called) is an interesting topic and worth consideration, but i wanted to take this paragraph as an example of the approach to the world which i aspire to and give most respect. Readers of dave's blog (and i know there's at least one of you) will remark at how succinct and clear it is, as a side note.
"I consider paedophiles in themselves to be just normal people with unfortunate sexual proclivities. This is not the same thing as condoning paedophiles who treat children in nasty and vicious ways. I am not homophobic but I am still against male on male rape. I am not a man hater but I still condemn male on female rape. I am not a hysterical peodo killer but I still condemn the rape of children. But many paedophiles are gentle, they don't mean to disturb and distort the sexualities of the children they "molest" and are often both under the delusion that what they do is consensual and under the non-delusion that they are in love with the child. Also many of them struggle against their urges. They may look at child porn but they don't fuck children. They may expose themselves to children but they don't rape them. There are huge grey areas around these issues that people just don't want to talk about. Like children consenting or appearing to consent. Like the sexuality of children. Like the cycles of abuse where a paedophile is often repeating the pattern of sexuality that they are familiar with – the whole abused becoming abuser thing."
Cheers dave.
(And on the other, there should be no enigma - I'm not usually quite so lost for words. my flatmate called me enigmatic yesterday, but she had good reason.)
"I consider paedophiles in themselves to be just normal people with unfortunate sexual proclivities. This is not the same thing as condoning paedophiles who treat children in nasty and vicious ways. I am not homophobic but I am still against male on male rape. I am not a man hater but I still condemn male on female rape. I am not a hysterical peodo killer but I still condemn the rape of children. But many paedophiles are gentle, they don't mean to disturb and distort the sexualities of the children they "molest" and are often both under the delusion that what they do is consensual and under the non-delusion that they are in love with the child. Also many of them struggle against their urges. They may look at child porn but they don't fuck children. They may expose themselves to children but they don't rape them. There are huge grey areas around these issues that people just don't want to talk about. Like children consenting or appearing to consent. Like the sexuality of children. Like the cycles of abuse where a paedophile is often repeating the pattern of sexuality that they are familiar with – the whole abused becoming abuser thing."
Cheers dave.
(And on the other, there should be no enigma - I'm not usually quite so lost for words. my flatmate called me enigmatic yesterday, but she had good reason.)
posted by chris at 5:42 AM
8 Comments:
I like to think that like shakespeare what I really need is a good editor.
Yes, this is definitely a much-neglected subject. I agree with much of what is written. Although at the point where the blogger implies the viewing of child pornography to be a lesser crime than child rape I'd have to take issue... At the risk of descending into abstract hysterics I'd personally posit that child porn IS child rape.
I think a lot of society's trouble is that it hides its ambivalence towards child sexuality, and the child's role in the interaction, behind an exaggerated hatred of the 'adult offender'.
I read an article really recently (I'll have a look to see if it's on-line) about the apparent increase of child-on-child rape and sexual assault in South Africa.
If this is not restricted to this region then child sexuality is something society as a whole is going to have to stop sweeping under the carpet.
The other question it raises is when does a child become an adult? The ages of sexual consent differ widely across the globe, and I believe there are people of 'adult' age, even in western society, not in a position to give their consent.
I'm glad there are people talking about this. It would be good to see this discussion continued...
My initial two cents (I have to run to lunch) buy the following: emphasis on the word "crime" - while in some conceptual framework, there may be no denying the link between (impersonal) child porn and (personal) child rape (or indeed between rape-porn and rape), and while both acts (viewing the porn and committing the rape) share an effect, namely of dehumanising and de-dignifying (?) the child in question, I think this has greater implications for moral judgement than for criminal judgement. I think when writing laws and implementing them with punishments attached, account must be taken of the implications of the individual act. While perhaps punishments for involvement in the world of child rape and sexual exploitation through the viewing of the images produced ought to be stronger than at present, there should certainly be a much stronger punishment handed to those actually committing the acts. Partly because, as noted, most people viewing will not go to the point of producing their on if they can't get their eyes on it, and partly because there is some serious ambiguity (and thoughtpolice-ishness) in the equation of porn with rape that you make. More later, sorry...
chris
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6399471.stm
Jenni,
I think the question of when a child becomes an adult arises in various different ways. Regarding sexuality, I would say a) gradually and b) never - gradually because there seems generally to be some movement toward settled sexuality (in terms of what you do and how you feel about it - a lessening of exploration) as people get older, albeit moving from nervous excitement to bitter, compromised disappointment in some cases. And never because the process is never over and sexuality varies to some degree from person to person and partner to partner. I suppose as regards 'becoming an adult' in terms of sexuality, one tends for various reasons (including those distinct from sexuality, such as raising children) to have fewer new sexual partners as one gets older. With luck, because one is lucky enough to find a Right Person.
(This is all just my impression. I haven't conducted statistically significant interviews.)
It may be a predictable response, but in terms of children becoming adults in the eyes of the law, I instinctively think later is better than earlier. As in, in the case you raise (see also here), the children should be treated as victims, perhaps as dangerous victims but nonetheless as victims, which should prompt two responses, namely a) that rehabilitation is the aim and the offender is helped to see why everything is not okay (see dave's comment about paedophiles being gentle), and b) that we put our own (wider, judgemental society's) house in order when it comes to child sexuality and sexuality more broadly. Some degree of sexual abuse among humans is inevitable, but I can't think it helps to approach sexuality with this don't ask, don't do, and if you do do, still don't ask, just learn from MTV. Imagine one hand trying to cover the mouth and eyes, simultaneously holding one eye wide open to the other hand jizzing all over the twin buttocks of dignity and shared pleasure.
As a tangent: do we risk running into the problem that sexuality is so talked-about and public that it ceases to be private and mysterious any more?
"It would be good if this discussion was continued", she says, and then buggers off for a few weeks! Sorry; relying entirely on internet for communication with people does mean that conversation that should take a few minutes usually takes me a few weeks!
I read the BBC article: that's ludicrous! It's like an entire state trying to lock up all their doubts about their own sexual deviances together in one cell with one scape-goated ogre to be guardian of, and tormented by, society's ambivalence towards sexuality in equal measure, for 200 hundred years no-less!
I could be accused of making odious comparisons now, but never-the-less, on the one hand you have paedophiles getting 200 hundred years in prison, and meanwhile rapists only getting a few months... Something's gone askew...
I do take your point about the thought-police-ishness of equating porn with rape, and I admit that I can get a bit Andrea-Dworkin-esque about porn, but I tend to think along the lines that porn doesn't have to be the only name for sexual imagery, even though all sexual imagery tends to get categorised as porn, when much of the time porn doesn't bear any resemblance to the sexual act at all. Of course drawing lines and making distinctions is eternally problematic. And although this might help me with where I'm coming from on a rape-porn connection, it doesn't help me much on the paedophilia issue, since sexual imagery of children would also not be ok...
Hmmm...
The wider-scale problem with people doing no more than viewing child porn is the active part this plays in the perpetuation of it, and since I can only assume that there is a resemblance between what children are required to do for porn and what adults are required to do, I don't think it can be presumed that there is anything 'innocent' about the set-up of the videos or photographs, and so violence and abuse become involved in the making of the porn: porn that would not be made if there was no market for it.
As for when children become adults, it’s kind of an unanswerable question and is probably so much down to each of us individually that trying to draw any dividing line is impossible. Personally I agree - the later the better - but 'childhood' as we recognise it is a privilege of the wealthy world, where children are not required to take on adult responsibilities as early as they are in the developing world; where 'children' take an active role in contributing to the running of households, including financially. If 'children' are cooking for their family, helping to raise the youngest children, to farm, to go out to work and earn money, having sex earlier becomes part and parcel of entering the adult world earlier.
I'm more inclined to think that generally we have a very strange and regularly damaging view of sex and what sex is, perhaps largely founded and driven by the dominance of religion throughout Europe and the western world, and the enduring equation with sin that this has left, even if subliminally.
You mentioned that maybe society is actually talking too much about sex, and that having some mystery again might help, but I think whatever this sex thing that is plastered all over magazines, music videos, and whatever else, has almost no connection to the sex and sexuality that non-MTV people are acquainted with. The sex we see and hear about everywhere isn't sex: it's largely very soft porn! And hence we're back to why I have a problem with porn...
...I see I've written a whole lot of stuff that doesn't get us anywhere... Oh well...
First of all, your comparison is anything but odious. Sexual violence, coercion and manipulation should not be more acceptable against adults than against children. And the woman-hating approach to rape by society and especially those people supposed to protect the members of society is in stark contrast to the hysteria around all forms of child sexuality, of which even the ‘right’ part, against paedophilia, is completely lacking in self-reflection.
I do however see a case to be made for distinguishing child and adult porn. I would say that, given the need to define these things at some arbitrary point, all child pornography should be assumed to be exploitative and abusive of the individuals involved, while I wouldn’t say the same for adult pornography. Of course adult pornography is very often a caricature of sexuality, and I would assert that one of its most damaging effects is in teaching teenage boys that this is what love is, or at least what sex is about. (And this isn’t helped by the failure of society in general, be it parents, schools or the media to offer anything sufficient to counter this.)
Adult porn is also a highly exploitative industry, and this is perpetuated by the exclusion of the pornographic industry from normal regulation, the worst possible solution, whereby the film censors may approve final content but working conditions and so on are ignored by a society in quasi-denial. (Linked of course to our not knowing how to feel about prostitution, and going back eventually to the virgin mary and the injuries of our judeo-christian background.)
And then nudity need not equal sexuality – Egon Schiele was imprisoned for having minors pose nude for him. Not knowing whether he took sexual pleasure in this (and not saying it is necessarily abusive if he did), do we really want a society where nude children are sexualised? (But then, chicken and egg questions arise.)
But while I seem to be okay with being thought-policeish about child porn, in preventing its production, your point distinguishing porn from other forms of sexual portrayal is important. The word ‘porn’ for me conjures up tackiness, as outlined in my previous comment and in yours, while that definitely need not describe all sexual art. All sex need not be rape (although I daresay much is infected with the attitudes of male supremacist society that Andrea Dworkin highlights), nor need all sexual portrayal be abusive.
But maybe this is ideal-society discussion, and in our Britain there can be no credible faith in the rehabilitation of sex as a social phenomenon. (And again, heaven forbid the government start putting posters on the tube advocating g-spot stimulation…)
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