Butterfly Kisses: Researching Female Pedophilia

[RoosterDance]

The Intimacy of Children
by Punkerslut


Introduction

...legislative bodies and courts deciding what we can and can't do with your bodies. Whether they have any right to do so or not is beside the point. They have the power to do it, and when they exercise it, the result is much more likely to be repression than freedom.

Boys and Sex, by Wardell B. Pomeroy, first edition, published by Laurel-Leaf Books, page 55.

There can be no doubt that pedophilia today is associated with thoughts of cruelty and depraved behavior, and that it is treated with bitterness and hate. The Pedophile today is in a position that is not much different than any other oppressed class of previous generations. African humans were lynched in a time when they were "liberated from slavery," thrown into the palms of a Capitalist tyranny. The hatred that is held for those who engage in pedophilia is savaged and brutal. One hundred years ago, there was no doubt what race a person was, so the government did nothing to stop the lynchings. Today, the government has gone to extensive steps to mark convicted sex offenders in public. Registered sex offenders are required by law to inform the public of their crimes. The government believes that prison was not enough, that torment and viciousness by an unjust society is not enough. The government has gone to steps to make sure that the public knows who is a Pedophile and who is not, recreating the lynching conditions that African humans had to suffer through.

What is the origin of this villification, this absolute hatred of pedophilia and its adherents? With only a little inquiry into the matter, it's obvious to see the answer to this question. For centuries, or even milleniums, the greatest regard has been given for children, and particularly in the matter of sexuality. Only fifty years ago, parents forbid their children from dating others of another race; and they were backed up by the law. Only one hundred years ago, girls were not allowed to date without the explicit permission of the father. We go back even further, and we find that the law disallowed marriage between people unless the father of the bride gives consent. In fact, the marriage ceremony, as it is still practiced, symbolizes the father giving away his daughter as property. Fortunately, the lawgivers have been humane enough to give these people the right to date and to marry whomever they wish. Too many women have been condemned to live unhappy lives because of their fathers believing that they have the power to controll others. Maybe in a younger state of life, these fathers were men, pining for the affection and love of a young woman — but they were denied, because of the father's ignorance and brutality. It's funny how the oppressed moves to a station in life where he becomes the oppressor.

While a new society was brave enough to hold hands with justice and embrace Feminism, bold enough to allow each woman the right to her own life, society still holds bigotry and prejudice. From the same origins that put woman and child into subjegation — tightly bondaging the wrists of every woman to absurd prejudices — that made every man a first class citizen among subordinates, we still have the idea that pedophilia is a cruelty, a brutality, a thoughtless and ignorant practice. The poison of sexism made the flower of civilization wilt and weaken. Ignorance fueled cruelty. The result was this discrimination, this opposition to the idea that virtue is found in individuality, that kindness can come from any palm, that beauty is not restricted to obscure and outlandish rules. Most of those ideas, fortunately, are limited to history books and people still living in their own neanderthalic age. Sexism continues to die a little more every day, as the tree of liberty continues to grow strong and powerful. But, from this past era, we find these other ideas. These cruel ideas, that men can control the lives of women, we find the idea that pedophilia is abominable, a brutality, a greviance against the poor and innocent everywhere.

But, why... why is it that I could ever want something like pedophilia to be defended, or at least thrown in to the public light, where it can be considered? Why would I ever commit such a vile act? Some may ask these questions, and they will also say that I do nothing but stir the emotions of those who have been hurt, that my only accomplishment is to bring tears to those whose wounds we have tried to heal. To my reader, I must say this. I understand the situation of pedophilia in our society, I understand how it is considered by the members of society. I know that the hatred towards youthful sex runs long, deep, and in all channels. If our society ever bleeds its worries, it will say that it is afraid of drug dealers, afraid of radical political theorists, of murderers and rapists. We are afraid of the poverty that seems to drown us as we struggle to sing. We are afraid of the misery of third world nations coming to our door steps, of the constant turmoil in our own country, of terrorism, and we are afraid of child molestors. But, above all, child molestation is considered to be the most cruel of all things. They say that it stems from such sick, mentally defective individuals, that it targets the youngest and most defenseless of society, that it targets a part of the world that we naturally love and cherish the most, and above all, that it aims to harm this class of individuals with the worst crimes known to man.

Understand, my dear reader, that I know exactly what you are thinking when I step up to question the idea that pedophilia is bad. I know what light society has thrown on it.

But, let me say this much... I am gently offering a new idea. These are words on a page, my own opinion, which I have a right to. In this piece, I do not mean to offend, to insult, or otherwise to use words as a sword. My only enemy is ignorance. I only fight superstition and bigotry. All of my effort is directed with the fluid and beautiful motions of liberty — I try to live life as though I am writing poetry. I am questioning the condemnation of pedophilia not to create chaos in the minds of those who believe in honor and truth. I am questioning it so that an old idea is allowed its own right to a new consideration.

Imagine if the idea of Sexism was never challenged. Imagine if the domination of the male gender was forever wholly accepted. Think of the kind of society that would exist then. The idea of love, based on liberty and mutual reciprocity, would not be growing, but would be stagnant — it would not be allowing a new outlet of life for people, but it would be creating a new prison for women whose entire lives were already without freedom. The idea of liberty would not flourish, but it would decay. Imagine if the idea of Racism was never challenged. Think of schools continuing to teach children that they are superior because of skin color, filling their minds with lies and their souls with prejudice. Think of a nation founded on the irrevocable treachery of slavery. The spirit of justice would find its relief in the musings of those in shackles, poems written on prison walls. And let's not solely consider social progress. Imagine of the antagonistic attitudes of the church were never questioned. Science would still be a handful of books with inaccurate information, history would just be a few chapters of the Bible, and literature would be the dead stories of the saints. The people of the past believed the earth to be the center of universe, that matter is simply composed of four elements, that astronomy is based on lies, that the theory of evolution was an attack on their religious sentiments as much as the theory of gravity.

The brave men and women who questioned social standards and scientific knowledge were met with inquisition, literal and figurative. They were shouted down as oppressors, as tyrants, as men who wanted to destroy everything that had meaning. So, I consider it nothing miraculous when I am given the same insults as Jane Addams, as William Lloyd Garrison, as Thomas Paine. The people we recognize as heroes today were insulted and disgraced by their enemies in ways that I shall be.

But, am I honestly shedding every humane idea from me from I question the condemnation of pedophilia? Am I really promoting the idea that there is no humane law, that there is no ideal of justice fruiting in the heart of the downtrodden and oppressed? I shall tell you precisely what I still believe.

I believe that every man and woman should be entitled to his right of personal property, of liberty, and life. I hold the idea that the governing of any nation should not be done by dictators or kings, but by the people themselves. That the fruit of labor should go to the laborer, that a person may do what they desire so long as they harm none, that experimentation with mind-altering substances should be legalized, that wars should be avoided and a free school serves a better purpose than a locked up prison. These are the creeds I adhere to; these are the values and ideas that I have come to hold as sacred, since they appeal to the spirit of universal kinship, the ideal of compassion.

So, then, what do I believe when it comes to the idea of pedophilia?

I do believe that if a child is forced into any sexual activity, that it is wrong. I do believe that a child has a right to say yes or no to physical activities. All those cases of child rape are cruel, thoughtless, and stem only from a person's lack of humanity.


The Nature of Children

...having sex is a joyful and enriching experience at any age.

Boys and Sex, by Wardell B. Pomeroy, first edition, published by Laurel-Leaf Books, page 2.

What is pedophilia? It is sexual, or even just physical, relations between an adult and a child. What does society see pedophilia as, then? Society sees it as the rape of a child, as taking advantage of those who are innocent and defenseless. The fault of this view is obvious: children are very capable of consenting. They can say that they do want sexual activity or that they don't want sexual activity. Physical and sexual relations as they happen between adults and children, then, are not strictly limited to rape. They can engage in sexual activity that is consensual. Rape or forced sex is not the only conclusion that can happen when there is sex between an adult and child. Thus the relationship between a child and an adult is no more unjust or cruel or brutal, than any relationship between any two consenting adults. With this understanding, that there can be consent between an adult and a child in sexual matters, the great deal of logical and reasonable people will agree: that pedophilia, in this sense, is not wholly bad. And, what of relationship would exist between an adult and the child he was sexually active with? It would not be a relationship based on exploitation, or pressures, or otherwise cruel and vindictive behavior. No, such a relationship between a child and an adult would be based on the same principles that a relationship between any two consenting adults would be. The relationship would be an extension of one's own personal self; it would be poetry, it would be beauty, it would be kindness, affection, and a willingness to be open. By loving another person, we allow ourselves to push through and break boundaries that are otherwise unsuccumbing and intimidating. We cannot and should not treat a lover as something that makes us whole, but as an extension of our current self. This is the type of relationship that would exist between an adult and a child.

One may inquire or ask about those Pedophile relationships that exist, that are not based on mutual trust, that are based on exploitation, cruelty, and abuse? When I hear of these cases, I can only reply that I find them to be absolutely disgusting. I cannot say that "true Pedophiles oppose that," because what is to distinguish between true and untrue? Especially, since Pedophile is only defined as "an adult who has sexual or physical relations with a child." No Pedophile, that believed in honor, in kindness, in warmth, in being humane and just, would ever force any child to do what they did not want to do. That is the great truth of the matter. One may pose the idea, though, that these cases of child rape or so brutal, so severe in their heartlessness, that we should prohibit pedophilia entirely. By preventing any sexual activity between adults and children, we are preventing any ability of adults to exploit or rape children. This argument is flawed in so many ways. It states that we should prevent all physical encounters between adults and children, because of the instances of force involved. Apply this logic to adult relationships. Rape does happen between two adults. Does that mean that we should prohibit all sexual relations between any two consenting adults, just because of the instances where force was involved? It would be absurd to do so. Even so, I imagine that such a law would have little effect to hinder rape, because rape is already a violation of law — the fact that sex also becomes illegal changes nothing in the rapist's mind, who is already commiting an illegal act. It is the same as to say, "It is illegal for any man to punch or stab or physically hurt any other man. To prevent cases of assault, let us make it illegal for any man to even touch any other man, or, we could go further still, and make it illegal for any man to come within ten feet of any other man. With such limitations, assault will marginally decrease to records historically unknown!"

I must say, very strongly right here and right now, that I am completely opposed to legalizing any form of rape; that is, forced sexual or physical contact. Every person, of any age, must be allowed to their right of liberty and life. Any act to cause misery and suffering must be detested, and any act that is asserted by unfounded authority must be deemed an act of tyranny.

Some may say that by allowing children to engage in sexual or physical relations with adults, that it would increase all potential for children to be abused in these manners. Not just as a "it comes with the territory" argument, but as an argument that children are more susceptible to abuse, that they are more submissive and more likely to be abused, since they are naturally weaker, mentally and physically. I must admit, children are in fact weaker mentally, physically, and emotionally in our current society. They are, for these and other reasons, much more easier to abuse. But, the culprit here is not the pedophile. The culprit is a society that has raised children to be submissive and easily exploited. Hundreds of years ago, when women were raised to be submissive and accept whatever is given to them, whether beatings or mistreetment or abuse or exploitation or even rape ("arranged marriage"), many women were accepting of these conditions. Why? Because they were raised to be. In our society, children are raised to be exploited in the same manner. As children, they are easily abused, and once adults, they are easily treated unfairly. In our school system, a child is not allowed to use the bathroom without permission. Their behavior is constantly subjected to rules and regulation, and finally subjected to judgment and punshiment. The greatest tool of tyranny is found in our school system: it raises children to an early response to authority. Fascist leaders created a generation that would accept cruel and vicious ideals, because they were raised to believe and accept what they are told. Our children are raised no differently. Themes like, "honor thy parents," or "treat all adults with respect," are simply immoral, by any standard. Logically: Stalin was an adult, one who can only be respected for his great crimes against humanity. And socially: adults are in fact a group of people who commit mass amounts of crime and oppression. Besides, no person can automatically be deserving of respect just by belonging to a single class — it is through individual acts of merit and virtue that any person must be awarded respect.

When all of the arguments are considered, it seems highly probable that a sexual, or even just physical, relationship between an adult and a child, can be fulfilling, rewarding, and enjoyable by both partners. But, before making such a bold statement in the climate of today's society, there is still one question, one argument, to speak its voice. It is the question of consent. Are children capable of consenting to a sexual act? It seems to be a very serious argument, made by psychologists and others in various fields. I really don't see the importance or even the strength of such an argument. I see it much more as bigotry's last stance to defend itself from the progressive ideals of a new, more humane world. Let's just consider the argument in all seriousness, though. And let's just say, for the sake of the argument, that the age of consent for sexual activity is 16 in fact. Does that mean, that every offer made to the child, up until the day they turn sixteen years old, was an offer that was abusive and exploitational to the child? That would mean that food given to the child from parents was an act of exploitation. Even though the child understood the situation, understood that food was edible, that it would satiate the pangs of hunger, it would be considered exploitation according to the theory of consent by age. But, these individuals argue that only sex can have an age of consent. Why? It seems so arbitrary. The act of sex is just as natural as the act of eating food or socializing. It is something that is most intrinsic in all human beings, because it is there for providing a method of procreation, as well as recreation. To say that a child cannot "really" consent to sexual activity until a certain age, is about just as unsupported as the theory that a child cannot "really" consent to eating food until a certain age. If the physical contact with adults manages to provide children with an enlightening, meaningful, educational, and beautiful experience, by what right can it be denied? As I said earliear, I think that this "age of consent" is made to defend a bigotry, and I feel that it holds no true merit.


A Working Model

No harm is done by preadolescent sex play, which nearly all children do in one way or another.

-- Wardell B. Pomeroy
Girls and Sex, by Wardell B. Pomeroy, third edition, published by Dell Press, page 11.

When a person finds themself sexually and physically attracted to another person, is the first question that enters that person mind, the age of their affection? The question of how old the person they're attracted to never comes in to mind. Attraction, lust for the physical body, is a very natural and inherent part of the mind's psychology. To react to these desires, as one might react to the desire of hunger or rest, cannot be unjust when compared to the other desires. Yes, it is immoral and unjust when a person reacts to the sex urge with rape — just as it is immoral and unjust when a person reacts to the hunger urge with theft. But, to react to these urges in a manner that does not cause harm, misery, or suffering, and only works to create harmony, happiness, and a meaningful society, to react in this way, cannot ever be unjust. There is no doubt that adults have had sexual attractions to children under the age of 18, sometimes as young as 12. These desires, in and of themselves, cannot be immoral or cruel or vicious. They are as natural as the desire to drink water to avoid dehydration, as natural as the desire to eat food to avoid starvation. When a person engages in these natural desires, whether it is physical activity with children or not, it is not inherently immoral, either. When a relationship between an adult and a child can create an emotionally strong bond between the two, allowing for personal development, why should it be shunned?

If a man were to enter a society that was as confused and scared as our was, and was to bring with him an idea that was so purely gentle and affectionate, but taboo, he would be outcast as the most heinous heretic.

So, what is a working model of pedophilia in our society? I leave that up to others to lead. It is quite clear that a relationship between two consenting adults can be very emotionally reinforcing for them, as well as creating memories that they will cherish. I see no reason why this is not the case with children and minors. Why should it be? Opponents have offered no reason, but their fervered convictions and bigotry. With all this said, I can only hope that people find this piece of writing as an inspiration, not a source of more prejudice — as a means of liberation, not a way to create a new slavery.

For Life,
Punkerslut

[RoosterDance]

They're 'Out' at School, and Tension Is In
by Susan Snyder


Philadelphia high schools are struggling with a new problem in student behavior: rising tensions between heterosexual and openly lesbian girls.

Nationwide, lesbians increasingly are declaring their sexual orientation and publicly displaying their affection for each other at younger ages, and Philadelphia appears in step with that trend.

The phenomenon has led to embarrassing moments in some cases and physical clashes in others. Accusations of intimidation have surfaced on both sides: from lesbians who say they are being harassed and from heterosexual girls who say they have been grabbed and bothered.

At Simon Gratz High last month, a fight broke out in the cafeteria between a group of lesbians calling itself Lipstick and other girls, according to police. In December, a student was beaten outside Kensington High after she "interfered" with a relationship between two girls who were openly lesbian, police said. At Northeast High last spring, staff and students were taken aback when some girls were seen unabashedly groping each other in the halls.

"It's new territory when it comes to counseling and discipline," said Paul Vallas, chief executive officer of the Philadelphia School District. "Administrators and faculty are reluctant to deal with these issues, because they don't know how."

Vallas says it is difficult to pinpoint the root of the tensions. He has received complaints from three schools this year that lesbians were behaving aggressively toward others. Meanwhile, "DTO" — an acronym for Dykes Taking Over — has been scrawled on walls at several schools.

When complaints arise, Vallas said, "the challenge that you face is distinguishing between consensual activity, or cases where the girls are responding to harassment from other girls, or when the girls are threatening other girls. They're all unacceptable. Consensual sexual activity isn't going to be tolerated in the schools either — same-sex or opposite-sex."

Eric Braxton, executive director of the Philadelphia Student Union, a student activist group, said he first heard about conflicts between gay and straight girls in city schools four or five years ago.

"It always seemed like something folks were very uncomfortable talking about. In the last few months, it's risen to levels that it's become an issue that people are talking about," he said.

The district has heard enough concerns about the issue that it plans in April to provide training for teachers, administrators, aides, school police and other staff on gay and lesbian issues. That instruction is being developed by the Mazzoni Center, a Philadelphia gay and lesbian health agency, and by the Mayor's Advisory Board on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Issues. The district also plans to incorporate new lessons for students on respect and tolerance in its high schools beginning this September and in elementary schools in September 2005.

Jeanne Stanley, a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania who studies gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender issues, said teens were responding to "a degree of outness in general and more acceptance."

And although some teens are sure of their sexual identities, others experience "fluidity" during this time of sexual questioning, Stanley said.

School districts across the country have encountered some of the same situations as Philadelphia, according to the National School Safety Center, based in California. (Administrators at several area high schools in the suburbs, however, said they were not seeing more out lesbians, or experiencing conflicts.)

Educators say they are not finding the same problem with boys, who tend not to be as open about their sexuality in school, possibly because they don't feel as safe doing so.

Confrontations between gay and heterosexual girls surfaced publicly four years ago at University City High School. Then-principal Florence Johnson, who discussed the matter in a WYBE-TV (Channel 35) documentary that aired in 2002, said that students had complained that lesbians were "brushing up against us, watching us in the bathrooms, gathering in corners, and talking about us."

Students also battled each other near the school, and parents' complaints mounted.

Johnson held an all-girls assembly to discuss concerns. The assembly riled gay-rights advocates, who said Johnson had unfairly singled out lesbians and portrayed them as predators. They said she should have met privately with the students involved. Johnson, who has since moved to a central-office job, said she dealt with the issue at an assembly because the whole school knew about it.

Dexter Green, the district's chief safety executive, said he believed conflicts involving lesbian students had increased, though he did not have statistics; information about sexual orientation usually does not appear on reports.

In the Gratz case, such information did. Michael Lodise, president of the school police officers union, said the Gratz officer indicated that the Lipstick group seemed to be trying to "recruit" others.

Several students involved in the incident, however, said they were not aware of Lipstick and that the fight had nothing to do with sexual identity. But they said that the school had experienced tension between straight and gay students.

Gratz principal Delores Williams did not return a call seeking comment.

In the last two years, 10 city high schools that experienced conflicts involving lesbian students sought help from Danny Horn, education director of the Mazzoni Center.

Horn said educators at those schools complained that some girls in lesbian-identified groups were grabbing and harassing other girls. He said he usually found some truth to the reports, but noted that lesbians also were banding together to bond and to ward off provocation by others.

A recent national survey by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network indicated that four of five gay, lesbian and bisexual students reported that they had been verbally or physically harassed in school.

In the case at Northeast High, recognized by gay advocates as being one of the best in dealing with these issues, some staff and students complained about girls who they thought were being overly affectionate in the halls.

"People were being embarrassed," said Cynthia Jenkins-Hassan, a nurse and director of the school's Gay-Straight Alliance, a club whose purpose is to foster discussion and better understanding of gay and lesbian issues.

Jenkins-Hassan and an administrator told the girls such activity had to stop. The girls countered that opposite-sex couples did the same.

"Some people felt like they were discriminating," said a 16-year-old student who described herself as gay and asked not to be identified.

Jenkins-Hassan and the administrator told the girls that such activities by heterosexual couples also would not be tolerated. The school has followed through with that promise, said both the 16-year-old and Jenkins-Hassan.

It's not clear where the declaration DTO started, but the acronym has been embraced by some lesbian-identified girls. One 16-year-old who attends a North Philadelphia high school displays those letters on her book bag. She said that the letters were merely a symbol, like the rainbow used by gays to proclaim their sexual identification, and that no formal DTO exists.

As the girl, whose mother would not let her daughter's name be used, put it: "It lets people know who we are, and we're proud of it."

She said being open about her sexuality had helped her improve her grades, and had stopped suicidal thoughts over her sexual identity.

At William Penn High, some staff and lesbian students describe an atmosphere of intolerance toward gay students.

Tiffany Powell, 18, a senior who is openly gay, said school police officers and teachers had made disparaging comments to her. She said one school police officer told her, "Girl, you know you want a man. You know you're too pretty for this."

She said she sometimes lashed back, and got suspended as a result.

William Penn principal Leonard A. Heard did not return calls seeking comment.

Vallas said he would investigate. He says he supports the creation of gay-straight alliances in every high school; about a dozen of the district's more than 50 high schools have such groups.

Carole Greenauer, vice president of PFLAG Philadelphia (Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays), said the Vallas administration had adopted a positive approach.

"He has made it clear to the principals that they are to be supportive of gay-straight alliances and to keep those kids safe," Greenauer said.

But Rita Addessa, executive director of the Pennsylvania Lesbian and Gay Task Force, said the district could better deal with such concerns if it had correctly implemented a 1994 policy adopted by the school board. That policy — passed to ensure that students receive multicultural, multiracial and gender education — requires curriculum and staff training.

"This board," Addessa said, "has never invested the money, time and talent to implement [the policy], and has only been engaged in token efforts over the last 10 years."

[RoosterDance]

Does She Have Children, Other Than You?
by Maureen Phillips


Years ago, when I was 26, I met a nice 24-year-old lesbian who I found very attractive. So I tried to date her up. She ever so politely declined, saying she was romantically occupied and in any case, she was only interested in older women. And by older she didn’t mean five years — she meant 25 years.

Add to this the fact that the older woman who was the object of her affection was at least 50 and someone I found attractive; I would have picked her over me in a heartbeat. How interesting, I thought, to have such a clearly defined preference, especially because my own preferences had yet to be revealed and I naïvely believed that desire was more like a force of nature rather than a highly organized system of which I was in charge.

The experience familiarized me with the concept of intergenerational lesbian relationships. So imagine my delight years later when I found myself involved with someone almost 20 years my junior. It was as though my moment had arrived.

Being part of an intergenerational couple has certainly made being a lesbian more fun. It’s a bit like being thrown back into an earlier time in my life when the mere fact of having sex with another woman seemed decidedly transgressive and therefore a distinct turn on.

Let’s face it, living life a little differently has always been a huge factor in the same-sex world and given recent over-emphasis on assimilating into straight culture, it’s positively thrilling to be visibly contrary.

And there’s a lot to be said about the ego boost it gives me.

There were some adjustments, particularly in the area of fashion. The bell-bottoms reminded me too much of the early 1970s, but at least I don’t have to wear them. On the other hand, her fitted T-shirts are just fine. There are other interesting twists, like how it’s difficult to distinguish the person from their age. Is she supremely confident because she’s young or just because that’s who she is?

What I wasn’t prepared for was the commentary our relationship inevitably provokes. My girlfriend’s mother, on learning that her 25-year-old daughter was involved with someone over 40, got right to the point, asking, “Does she have children, other than you?” That sort of response was enough to make me momentarily nostalgic for the time when people weren’t out to their parents, back when parental input was a non-issue.

I was also caught off-guard by the jocular, metaphorical backslapping comments from friends around my age, lesbian and straight, who, while envying me and my youthful action, implied I was getting away with something. They’re right, of course. Sex certainly has something to do with it. But it also seems harder for people to look beyond what’s obvious and see the relationship as more fully dimensional emotionally and intellectually.

Everyone knows what’s in it for me, following the standard theory that youth is inherently attractive and who wouldn’t mind a taste of it, if it became available? I don’t mind admitting that I agree, though, of course, there’s more to it than that.

Friends my age offer up the expected kind of comment — most of us were in university when she was still in diapers. What’s funny about it is the way we assume that age equals knowledge and therefore youth equals lack of knowledge, even though half the time people my age can’t remember half of what they used to know anyway.

When we find ourselves in a younger crowd, we get a very different response. It’s almost as if the relationship is invisible. It takes people a lot longer to figure things out, which is to say no one quite realizes that we’re together. It took nearly the entire soccer season for some of my lover’s teammates to realize we were an item. Wasn’t it obvious? Why else would I be there? To cruise some of the older players in the league?

Even if I am old enough to be her mother, I certainly don’t behave in a maternal fashion; we never fight about clothes or music and certainly not in public. Don’t even get me started on the lack of family resemblance.

We’ve all seen older men/younger men pairings in gay male relationships. Though they often make perfect sense, they can also trigger bitchy comments and negative stereotypes. Intergenerational homo sex, with its allegedly predatory gay men and unsuspecting boys, remains a loaded concept both within the queer realm and in the larger world.

The rareness of it in the lesbian world remains a mystery. I haven’t come across many lesbians whose relationships span so many years. It’s not like I’m looking for a support group, but I am curious about the shortage. Are lesbians so fixated on sameness that it doesn’t occur with any frequency? Is it just a phase young lesbians grow out of? Is there an unspoken anxiety about the insurmountable obstacle of age difference that makes connection too difficult? Is it really hugely important that one’s partner grew up watching the same television shows and listening to the same popular music?

And speaking of popular music, if you think I’m overly sensitive, let me say that the Britney Spears/Madonna kiss was controversial not only because of its lesbo flavour, but also because of the age factor. It was one of those any publicity is good publicity moments.

[RoosterDance]

Case History: A 21 Year Old Woman Reveals Her Long History of Abnormal Experiences With Adults of Both Sexes From Age 5
by Dr. Trimble

Introduction

Any study of pedophilic behavior and psychology involves serious research among the "victims" of pedophiliacs as much as it does with the adult "offenders". This opening case history will provide one of the broadest insights into the scope, forms and psychology of pedophilia in the U.S. that is possible.

It is difficult for the average person to conceive that such a strikingly beautiful, intelligent and well-poised young woman as Jan W. has led a life of sexual debauchment since she was 5 years old. Yet her very surroundings and social situation at the age of 21 reveal immediately that she is far from the mainstream of society.

Jan W. lives in a ramshackle walk-up apartment in the slum-ghetto "hippieland" area of a major American metropolis with her unemployed 24-year-old boy friend and her 18-month old daughter. Their total income is derived from Jan's prostitution, posing for nude pictures and acting in stag party movies where she performs any kind of sex act required by the perverse tastes of her employers.

Physically, Jan's majestic beauty and appearance, her long brown hair, the classic features of her lovely face, could rival those of a top-rated movie actress or high-fashion model. Standing five feet eleven, weighing 130 pounds and possessing a firm 36-25-36 body, Jan is the type female who exudes sensuality with each gesture and movement, each phrasing of speech in her slightly husky and exciting voice. This latter quality, incidentally, she uses to advantage in catering to clients who are coprolalic and achieve sexual satisfaction from "sexy" talk with a woman on the telephone.

An intelligent girl who was a straight-A student in high school and turned down a teaching scholarship, Jan has a very astute insight into the psychology of her own problem and that of the men with whom she was involved. I shall present here the transcript of a very frank and outspoken interview that I tape recorded with her:

[...]

Jan: The next thing...I was still seven... there was a girl in the neighborhood who used to come down and play with me. She was 15 when I first met her. We used to go down into my basement and she wanted me to play "house" with her one day. So, uh... she pretended to be the father and I was supposed to be the wife. And she started kissing me... and feeling me ... and taking my clothes off, and this ended up in a lesbian relationship that lasted for almost two years.

Dr. Trimble: In other words, when you were seven to nine, you had a lesbian relationship with a girl who was 15 to 17... eight years your senior?

Uh-huh.

What was the appearance of this girl then? What was your appearance?

She was a blonde, very attractive, very well developed. Just a very pretty and lovable high school girl who was built! I was tall...for seven years old. I was told I had a pretty body. My legs were pretty enough, but I had no breast development. I admired her body because...curiosity, wonderment. I think her breasts absolutely fascinated me, they were so big, bigger than my mother's, and I just never could believe I'd have breasts of my own that nice.

What specific acts did you engage in?

Uh... she would eat me quite-often on the average of three times a week and vice versa.

Did you experience orgasm?

Yes... I did. This was the first time.

In addition to sex, was there an emotional attachment to this girl?

A very STRONG one, I considered her my BEST friend and, uh, I admired her, LOVED her.

What did your mother think of this?

If she knew anything about our affair, she never let me know. We certainly thought we were hiding it from her.

You were seven to nine... when would you say was the first time you experienced orgasm with this girl?

Uh...two months after we started these little games. I was still seven.

Do you remember that first time?

Uh-huh. She was sucking my vagina. I had my panties off and my dress up. She would kiss the doll I was holding, then kiss me, going down farther each time until she was sucking my vagina quite strongly and tonguing me around the top inside. I was lying on my back in the bed and... she was at my side, crouched ... over me kind of.

Did you also cunnilingue her at this time?

About nine...to ten months later, I started responding to her, kissing, sucking her vagina.

Before then, she was content to do this to you only?

Yes, very content. She orgasmed while I was orgasming. She climaxed when I climaxed, and... oh, it was wonderful. She seemed perfectly content if I was content.

Did you like to cunnilingue her?

Yes... yes, it wasn't dirty. I liked to see her enjoy it... get hot, and have her climaxes. I enjoyed it...even the kissing, the taste of her wasn't unpleasant. It was... well, part of it.

What broke up this relationship? You must have been hit pretty hard, weren't you?

She moved away...yes, it took me a time to adjust. I didn't have any other friends.

[...]

In other words, you ran away from home. Did your mother pursue you?

Yes, she had the police looking for me, and they picked me up. I was sent to a receiving home there...and this is very funny. There were some Mexican girls there, and in the dormitory at night there was a big orgy... a big sex orgy between the girls.

What was the average age there?

Fifteen to seventeen. I was twel...uh, thirteen then. I was a kid compared to them.

And what went on during these orgies?

Going down on each other, and playing around, and using broom handles as dildoes.

Did the girls achieve orgasm with these broom handles?

Oh, they were the...the sexiest, hottest bunch of... just nymphos I've ever seen. One of the girls used to orgasm just LOOKING at the broom handle. It was unbelievable! When the matrons were around and we had to behave, the other girls would gesture at Molly with a broom handle or stick it at the front of her dress and the poor girl would have orgasms and go out of her mind she wanted it so bad.

Were you a favorite, being so young and well developed... fresh?

Yes, I was the center in the bunkroom at night. They would make me lay across a cot, and sometimes five ...or six, or seven or eight would kneel around it, licking me and sucking me all over, fighting ... actually fighting, to eat me. If I needed attention, I sure got it there. It was unbelievable!

Did you cunnilingue any of the girls?

Yes... all of them, I guess..I didn't really LIKE it with all of them. It was to be a part of the group, contribute, get them to orgasm and satisfy them.

Did you become emotionally attached to any of the girls there?

One of the older ones was like a mother or sister to me.

Did any of them become very emotionally attached to you?

One woman who became attached to me was the matron, the head woman of the home. She wasn't Spanish like all the other girls... or Mexican, I mean. And, uh, she really became attached to me. She used to call me in her office, and she would...put her arm around me if I was crying, and rub my head against her breasts. Oh, she was really turned on by this and enjoyed it tremendously.

How old was she?

Oh... forty-five. She wasn't married.

Did she do anything... a real overt sexual approach... feeling your breasts, undressing you...?

Feeling my breasts. She never undressed me. She did this in a way I could see turned her on sexually, but she did it in a way so she could stop if I cried rape, and she could claim I was trying to frame her. Through... through my uniform... it was thin and the bra was nothing .. . she would press her hand around my breast... a breast ... and move her hand slowly and moan and sigh. I could tell her thighs were tensed... tight together, and I'm sure she orgasmed.

And what happened when you were returned home?

Nothing much for awhile. I went back to school, played being a good little girl.

After all these experiences...and then to be more or less confined, did you feel a need to masturbate? Did you masturbate?

Yes... with a teddy bear.

How did you do this, with the arm of the teddy bear... how?

The whole teddy bear. I would get on my knees on the bed... with my legs apart, and push, push the teddy bear up against my open vagina and rub him hard, very hard back and forth across my clitoris and just go into ecstasy, he felt so good. I could orgasm three, four, oh, I don't know how many times.

When did you first masturbate?

Umh . . . nine.

And this was to climax?

Uh-huh.

And you used this teddy bear then as a masturbating device whenever you were not in contact with people sexually?

Yes...and even when I was in contact with people sexually, when I would go out with men and I wouldn't be satisfied, I'd come home to my teddy bear.

This was a teddy bear you'd had since...

Yes, since childhood... ha-ha... yes, really.

Do you feel that you had any emotional attachment to the teddy bear?

Oh, quite a bit.

Whatever happened to the teddy bear?

Well, my grandmother kept yelling at me to get rid of him because he was so dirty... ha-ha-ha... you know, I'd had him for years and he'd been everywhere with me. I never cleaned him after I used him, but to me it was a very personal thing. You don't see or smell dirt on something you love like that... Well, one day, she threw him away. And this REALLY upset me.

Do you ever wish you could see the teddy bear again?

Yeah...yes, I really do, just to have him around. I think it would be nice...

Dr. Trimble's comment: After Jan was thirteen, she could not possibly have been considered a child any longer. Her worldliness, her physical and facial appearance, everything about her appealed as a matured female. She remained sexually active, having both male and female lovers, but her attraction was not to any pedophilic urge in the adult. Because of Jan's ability to analyze herself and to understand much of the psychology involved with this current study, it will be interesting to repeat some of her own comments that were taped during that same interview.

How do you think this all came about, Jan... that where the average girl would never come into contact with this, you did?

I think it started...because all I ever heard from my mother from the time I was a small child until I would be running away from home, was...'go out, marry someone with money, get money, get ahead, get someone to take care of you.' I had it drummed into me that man - MAN - was security.

Then why did you submit to a girl?

It was different...something I knew my mother wouldn't like. It was a way to rebel.

Judging from your experience, Jan, what type of man is it who prefers young girls? Is he afraid of older women, afraid of his ability to perform with them?

That, I found to be true. Not necessarily older men either. Middle-aged and some young men prefer young girls, because they haven't been around, and then can satisfy a little girl, or they think they can satisfy them. They don't hear any complaints.

Was there usually a gift or payment that helped to persude you as a child? I ask this because of your mother's idea that men represented money... security.

Yes ... but I think the men ... and the women I went with, they appealed to me. I was strongly attracted to them. They gave me things, but I would have gone with them anyway. Like...the man who had been to prison and used to fuck me every day nearly when I was twelve. His attraction was...was that he wasn't any good. He had been in jail and he wasn't any good and it was rebellion against my mother, because she was saying, 'Go out and get the RICH young boys.' So I rebelled, I went out to get the BAD young MEN!

What about your father, Jan, the father you never knew. Do you think he enters into this in any way?

Well, I've always looked for security in a guy as a father image. I've always been told that I was no good and just like my father... since I was four.

Perhaps you were looking for someone just like him, who was no good? And this way you could also rebel against your mother again.

Yes, I'm sure of that. Sometimes, my mother was mad at me and she'd sit there and just stare at me with hate in her eyes and tell me how much I looked like my father... and then send me out of the room. It was pretty disgusting.

Could your mother have had any incestuous ideas toward you?

No, I don't think so, but she was a very sexy woman. She couldn't talk about anything without bringing sex into it. She was obsessed by sex and... even now, she comes on so strong with sex stories and risque jokes. She turns everything into sex. And she always has.

How did your mother treat your sisters, by comparison?

They've always been the good girls. I've always been the bad one. I was the bad sheep, mainly because my other two sisters were just like my mother. I liked the thought of being like my father because... ha- ha... he was pretty groovy as far as I was concerned. He's in Mexico now.

What's he doing there?

Ha... just getting stoned and ...fucking all the chicks... ha-ha-... really! He's groovy. I saw him last summer and I talked to him a lot.

Did you ever see him as a child?

Not until I was around nine.

Was there any feeling of an erotic interest between you and your father?

There's always been a... a wink of the eye and an understanding. He's never condemned me for anything I've done. He's very good looking. I had ... a very strong sexual feeling for him last summer when I saw him. Um-mm... very handsome man, very well built, and it just didn't seem like he was my father.


It is quite rare that we find a willing "victim" of pedophilia with this high a degree of insight and understanding who is willing to talk about herself, but has made no attempt to change her profligate life. While Jan knows and comprehends the factors which made her what she is today — a marijuana-smoking, hippie-oriented prostitute and sex-film actress who keeps a 24-year-old lover — she has no apparent desire to pursue more constructive paths.

Of course, Jan is far from being alone. There are thousands, many hundreds of thousands of young girls, from similar backgrounds, who offer themselves as ready targets for the clever pedophiliacs capable of recognizing them. If this case does nothing else, it will help the reader to understand the complimentary personality of one very prevalent type of child who is fair game for the pedophiliac.

[RoosterDance]

Teaching Sexuality
by Jane Rule
This article appeared in The Body Politic, June 1979, p 29


The furor created by The Body Politic's "Men loving boys loving men" posed hard political questions for me. On the one hand, I deplore repressive police action designed not only to stifle any discussion of the subject of sexual activity across generations, but also to intimidate anyone even so involved with the paper as to be a subscriber. On the other hand, I understand the rage against sexual exploitation by men not only of children of both sexes but of women and other men, the pleasures of which The Body Politic can sometimes be accused of advertising. I am convinced that censoring serious discussion of unconventional sexual relationships does nothing to protect those who might be exploited. To test, to contest, is the only way to reach forward into understanding areas of human experience vulgarized by either taboo or glorification.

As a society we are so fearful of sexual initiation we pretend that by ignoring it, it will not take place. What we really want is not to know when or how it does. We no longer frighten our children with threats of insanity and death as results of masturbation. It is, instead, clumped with picking one's nose, belching, farting something not to be done in public, by implication not to be done by nice people at all but we give our children enough privacy so that the guilty pleasure can be discovered and practiced not only alone but in the company of other unsupervised children. Children caught may be shamed, the more sexually aggressive children ostracized, but it is not, as it used to be, a cause for brutal retribution.

Our embarrassed liberality on this matter does not extend to encounters between children and adults. Though anyone who spends any time with very young children knows that they are aggressively curious about bodies everyone's bodies apt to stick a finger not only in another's eye or nose but to reach for a nipple or penis, we pretend that these assaults have nothing to do with sex, are only part of the random and innocent activity which can be ignored or distracted. The adult who actively participates in sexual instruction of children whether the nurse who teaches a child masturbation as a sedative or the adult male who complies with a four-year-old's demand, "Show me your penis" is simply criminal.

Sexual education in this culture, when undertaken at all, is presented impersonally in abstract diagrams, unlike any other teaching of bodily function or domestic habit. Once the breast is unavailable for nourishment and the lap outgrown, sexual pleasure is presented as a far off and nearly mystical reward for years of asexual (or at least secret) behaviour. If defecating and eating were left to the same secrecy and chance we might face the same problems with basic sanitation and nutrition that we do with sex. When the relatively simple task of teaching table manners takes so many years, why do we assume that sexual manners need not be taught at all?

Formal sexual initiations in other cultures may serve as bad examples of what we might teach if given permission: the mutilation of female genitals and the equating of sexual gratification with the kill in males. Both these puberty rituals express attitudes toward sexuality in our own culture, and it is no wonder that we can therefore be alarmed at exposing children to adult sexuality. If we viewed sex as a basic appetite normally satisfied and gradually cultivated, we would not need to keep our children isolated and in ignorance for so long, building in them what we have ourselves experienced: intense fear and desire which, so long uninstructed, produce dangerous stupidity. Of course we don't want dangerously stupid adults initiating our children. Fear of that leaves the children to themselves, not out of our conviction that children are, in this matter, the best teachers, but by default. We have so little trust in what we have to teach that we not only abdicate our responsibility but label criminal any adult who might attempt instruction.

There are adults who do sexually exploit, damage and kill children. It makes no more sense to deal with the question by taking them as the norm than it would to take rapists as the norm for heterosexual relationships between adults. To say that any sexual activity between adults and children is exploitative because of the superior size and power of the adult is really to acknowledge that, overall, relationships between adults and children are unequal. Why we feel more concerned over children's sexual dependence than over their physical, emotional, and intellectual dependence says more about us as sexual incompetents than as responsible adults.

Children are at our mercy. They are at each other's mercy as well. It makes about as much sense to leave children's sexual nourishment to their peers as it would to assume that the mud pies they make for each other are an adequate lunch. I use the term "sexual" rather than "sensual" because it seems to me that both our embarrassment about and focus on genitals make us the inept sexual creatures most of us are. A child's need for physical contact is as sexual as our own. It takes as little imagination to know that a child's sexual appetite is different from an adult's as it does to figure out that a newborn baby can't eat an apple or a steak. We don't therefore refuse to feed an infant.

If children's sexual independence were as thoughtfully taught as their ability to feed themselves, masturbation would become the satisfying accomplishment that it should be. Being able to gratify oneself provides an autonomy that is basic to self-respect and therefore respect for others. Sexual play based on the understanding of pleasure can have associated with it as many small courtesies as eating with other people, as much ritual wonder as the most sacred of games. Just as children gradually learn greater autonomy and responsibility in all other aspects of living, so their development in sexuality should be gradual until they come to the choices of commitment in relationships, in parenting, not as sex-starved barbarians willing to barter anything for the experience so long forbidden, not as infantile, gluttonous, guilty and dangerously stupid, but as warm, sexually intelligent human beings.

Until we have a responsible view of our own sexuality, we will go on shirking our responsibilty to our children. We live in so homophobic a society that most adults are terrified of expressing any affection with children of their own sex, and even discourage those friendships often most meaningful among children. Mothers can be jealous of, rather than delighted in, their daughters' sexuality, so ambivalent about themselves as women that they don't know what sort of victimization to recommend. Fathers compete with sons, warning them off the lotus land of sexual pleasure which will only deter them from the conquest of whatever world has been chosen for them, be it military service or medical school. For every child traumatized by overt and brutal sexual treatment, there are many, many more suffering the damage of ignorance and repression which makes masochistic women and sadistic men the norms of our society.

The choice is not really between child-rape and chastity into late adolescence, nor is it between perversion and orthodox heterosexuality. We do have the further option of accepting our own sexuality and therefore that of our children as a complex blessing which we and they must learn neither to exploit nor deny but to enjoy with sensitivity and intelligence.

Such a change in attitude doesn't come-quickly or easily. It will not come at all unless we are willing to address the question seriously and openly. Police who use violence and intimidation to silence such discussion, who see in every adult interested in the sexuality of children a molester and murderer, are themselves victims as well as perpetuators of our sexual sickness. If we discover through reading "Men loving boys loving men" that we question the motives of the men involved, we must as certainly question our own in allowing our children to choose such experiments while pretending not to. We must also examine the motives of all interaction between adults and children (how much has ever been done "for their own good," how much we simply reinforce our own values) before we are too purely suspicious of anything but disinterested altruism in adults who relate to children.

More important than judging the quality of other people's experience and relationships is the exercise of our own memories. Certainly my own initiation came long before I was legally adult. Though a number of males around my age offered to participate, a woman ten years my senior was "responsible," at my invitation and encouragement. The only fault I find with that part of my sexual education was the limit her guilt and fear put on our pleasure, the heterosexual pressure even she felt required to put on me. What she did "for my own good" caused both of us pain. If I were to improve on that experience now, it would not be to protect children from adult seduction but to make adults easier to seduce, less burdened with fear or guilt, less defended by hypocrisy.

If we accepted sexual behaviour between children and adults, we would be far more able to protect our children from abuse and exploitation than we are now. They would be free to tell us, as they can about all kinds of other experiences, what is happening to them and to have our sympathy and support instead of our mute and mistrustful terror. There are a thousand specific questions, all hard to answer, but we can't begin dealing with them until our basic attitude changes.

Children are sexual, and it is up to us to take responsibility for their real education. They have been exploited and betrayed long enough by our silence.

[RoosterDance]

Constructive Questions Regarding Paedophilia
by Theo Sandfort


In the literature concerning paedophilia, it is generally seen as a paraphilia or a perversion.1 Here I shall consider whether all sexual involvement between adults and children is appropriately labeled paedophilia, and whether it might not be useful to consider paedophilia as an identity.

Because paedophilia is considered a priori a paraphilia by some authorities, almost all scientific publications on this subject are concerned with unravelling its etiology, and ways to eliminate paedophile desires and replace them with what are, from society's point of view, more appropriate or acceptable forms of behavior. Most of these contributions derive from therapeutic practice with "offenders" and "victims" or from correctional programs in prisons.

Of course psychiatrists and therapists see a lot of pathological behavior, in intergenerational sex as elsewhere. Society is justifiably concerned about sexual abuse of children. But is all sexual involvement between adults and children abusive? Whether or not these involvements are abusive may be partly determined by the motives of the adults.

Adults who have sex with children do so for a variety of motives. For some the child is primarily a substitute for an adult partner who for some reason is inaccessible at the time. Others act out of a general feeling of attraction to children themselves. This distinction is supported by the results of a study by Barbaree and Marshall, which shows that the situation is even more complex. Adults who had had sexual contacts with children were differentiated on the basis of five distinct age preference profiles of penile response, as measured with a plethysmograph.2

It is not, however, possible to equate certain penile responses with paedophilia, although this is common practice. A man's penile response pattern may inform us about his sexual object choice; it will not predict in what way that person will act upon this orientation. Besides, this approach limits the concept of paedophilia to its sexual component alone. This is in line with medical tradition. From the turn of the century, the medical establishment has played an important part in the creation and maintenance of concepts of sexual deviancy, as well as in defining same-aged heterosexuality as the only "healthy" form in which sex should be practised. Historical studies, as well as contemporary research, suggest that for people who consider themselves paedophiles, their desire often includes much more than sex.3 It may include an interest in how children feel and think, a longing to be with them, and sometimes also a desire to guide or educate them.

At this point, the meaning of "children" has to be specified in relation to paedophilia. Within the field of psychiatry a biological criterion is used: there paedophilia is considered to be attraction to pre-pubertal or pubertal children. Another criterion could be based on the desired person's psychic sexual maturity; still another based on the age of consent in the local Penal Code, which is complicated because this varies greatly between countries.

Associated with paedophilia are terms such as pederasty, ephebophilia, hebephilia, Greek love and Man/boy love. The choice of a particular label and its interpretation, of course, has political implications. For instance, Man/boy love, a current term in the United States, stresses the unproblematic affectional side of the phenomenon, and suggests reciprocity or even symmetry between both parties. The latter, of course, is not always present. In the following discussion I shall use "paedophilia" as a general term to denote feelings of attraction to children as well as young adolescents.

There are individuals who experience these feelings of attraction in a strong, sometimes exclusive way. Some scholars argue that everybody experiences these feelings; according to them, people with paedophile desires differ only quantitatively and not qualitatively from others.4 The confirmation of this hypothesis must depend on the way paedophilia is defined and assessed. However, I believe the outcome will not affect conclusions about paedophilia.

The origin of paedophile desires, like the origin of other sexual orientations including heterosexuality, is still unknown. A number of theories have been proposed from psychodynamic and behavioristic viewpoints. But where hypotheses derived from these theories have been tested, the results don't support the theories. So, in a recent overview of research studies, Langevin concludes that the origin of paedophilia is still an enigma.5

The fact that we see sexual involvement between adults and youth in many different societies across time and space suggests that there might be a biological component. The divergent patterns and rules that can be discerned, however, show that society has a strong influence on the way this involvement is expressed. While in some cultures these relationships form an important vehicle for passing on skills and customs, our contemporary Western culture forces paedophilia to be practised more or less underground. It is striking that in all the traditional theories about paedophilia, this diversity, as well as the influence of society, is not accounted for.

Whatever the origin, people with paedophile desires exist. All together they constitute a rather diverse group. Among them there are people in whom symptoms of psychopathology can be observed. such as the inability to socialize with peers, chronic depression, or distrust of other people. As others have already argued, it is however unclear how these symptoms and paedophilia are related to each other. It goes without saying, that discovering a sense of apartness from more conventional peers, induces feelings of alienation. These feelings are intensified when the moral condemnation of paedophile attraction is realized. Compared with homosexuality there are even fewer opportunities for paedophiles to resolve the resulting identity confusion. Thus some pathology might be the consequence of discovering one's paedophile attraction and finding out about society's disapproval of it. Although more definitive data is needed, the possibility that there are cases in which paedophilia is the outcome, or one of the symptoms, of a pathological development should not be precluded.

Besides pathological cases, there are people who label themselves as paedophiles and live meaningful and happy lives; they don't want to get rid of their desires. I came across these people in the paedophile milieu. I also saw some of them in the research done at the State University of Utrecht on a small group of paedophiles.6 This study suggested why some paedophiles adjust better than others. The ones that do better seem to be those:

• who regard their paedophile desires in a predominantly positive way;
• who have integrated paedophilia into their lives along with other interests and activities;
• who are in touch with and experience support from other paedophiles;
• and who have been able to develop satisfying contacts or relationships with boys.

Of course this topic needs to be studied much more deeply. Proper research might reveal that contacts with people with the same feelings are of great help in coming to terms with them. Such contacts give one the opportunity to recognize one's paedophilia, they legitimize one's desires, and help with the acceptance of these desires. Likewise, one can obtain answers to many questions about practical matters.

These observations suggested that the concept of a paedophile identity might be useful. By "paedophile identity" I mean the answer of someone with paedophile desires to the question: "What am I sexually?" This is not a simple question. Finding out about one's paedophile desires might in itself be a complex process. All the perceptions and skills that have been learned in order to be a heterosexual are simply not usable in this situation. A lot of questions arise that have to be answered to organize one's life. New skills have to be developed. Without pretending to be exhaustive, I want to give you an impression of the kind of questions that are involved.

Among the first questions that paedophiles will ask themselves are: What are these feelings? Am I sane? What do these feelings mean to me? What do sex and friendships with children mean to me? What do I think about society's disapproval, how do I come to terms with it?

How central to my life do I want paedophilia to be: is it the core of my personality, which dominates all other interests and activities, or is it just one important concern among others? It might be that in the beginning, while someone is first becoming aware of his desires, paedophilia is paramount and rules that person's life completely. I expect however, that within a healthy personal development a paedophile will learn to integrate his desires along with other interests and activities in his life, in such a way that he rules his paedophilia, instead of the other way around.

Other questions deal with paedophile desires. How shall I act upon them: shall I repress them, or do I want to express them? If so, in what way? And, regarding overt sexuality, do I sublimate and decide in favor of platonic relationships? Are the children with whom I get involved at risk? How do I minimize these risks? How do I get in touch with children? How should I interact with them and build relationship? What, about power in these relationships? And the parents of the children with whom I get involved: how honest and open with them do I have to be, what is sensible?

What about the law? How do I develop friendships with children and, at the same time, minimize the chances to be detected? Should I prepare the child for things that might happen when people find out about it, and how do I do this without frightening the child?

What about my relationships with other people? Should I disclose myself to them? What are the risks of disclosure and are there any advantages? How should I deal with rejection?

Finding out about one's paedophilia will also raise doubts about the future: What are my prospects, will I become a "dirty old man", a lonely, pathetic creature?

To the extent that there are consistent patterns of answers to all these questions, paedophile identities can be distinguished. The question "Am I a paedophile? " is in itself irrelevant; to concentrate on it leads one away from the more constructive questions. it is likely that the importance of some of these questions changes during a paedophile's development. Possibly there is a sequence in which certain questions tend to emerge. This development of paedophile identities could become the main subject of new research into paedophilia.

Thinking of paedophilia in terms of identity is useful for the persons involved. Using the concept of identity fosters a reflective attitude about one s desires. It suggests to them that they, to a certain extent, can construct their own lives, and it implies responsibility for the ways paedophilia is handled and expressed by them.

In my opinion, adopting the use of the concept of paedophile identity opens up a radically different approach to paedophilia in therapy and counselling. Many people will consider the suggested approach as being synonymous with promoting child sexual abuse. I have already noted that it is unclear to what extent paedophiles are responsible for genuine cases of sexual abuse of children. Actually it might work just the other way around. If paedophiles are no longer forced to live underground and to be secretive about their relationships, but instead their desires are recognized as legitimate, and they are guided towards a responsible expression of their desires, we might prevent some cases of genuine sexual abuse.


Editor's Note:
Dr. Theo Sandfort is a member of the Gay and Lesbian Studies Department of the State University of Utrecht, the Netherlands, and is currently engaged in social scientific AIDS research. He is the author of The Sexual Aspects of Paedophile Relations: The Experiences of Twenty-Five Boys (1981), Boys on their Contacts with Men: A Study in Sexually Expressed Friendships (1987), and numerous articles on paedophilia. His doctoral thesis, Het belang van de ervaring, has just been published in the Netherlands.


Notes:
1. John Money, Gay, Straight, and In-Between (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 137-9, 154-6, 216, for example, defines paedophilia as a condition in which sexuoerotic arousal and the facilitation or attainment of orgasm are responsive to, and dependent upon having a juvenile partner of prepubertal or peripubertal developmental status. A paraphilia is defined by him as a condition of being compulsively responsive to and obligatively dependent upon an unusual and personally or socially unacceptable stimulus perceived or in the imagery of fantasy-for optimal initiation and maintenance of erotosexual arousal and the facilitation or attainment of orgasm.
2. H.E. Barbaree and W.L. Marshall, "Erectile responses amongst heterosexual child molesters, father-daughter incest offenders and matched non-offenders: Five distinct age preference profiles." Paper presented at the annual meeting of the international Academy of Sex Research, August 1986, Amsterdam.
3. J2. Eglington, Greek Love (New York: 0. Layton, 1964), Chapter V.
4. E. Brongersma, Loving Boys (Elinhurst, N.Y.: Global Aca demic, 1987), pp. 42-51; K. Freund, "Pedophilia and Heterosexuality vs. Homosexuality", Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy, 10:3 (1984), pp. 193-200.
5. R. Langevin, Erotic Preference, Gender Identity and Aggression in Men (Hillsdale, N.j.: L. Erlbaum Associates, 1985).
6. Th. Lap, De binnen- en buiten kant van kinderen. Wat pedofielen aantrekkelyk vinden in kinderen (Utrecht: privately published, 1987).

[RoosterDance]

Sexual Outlaws v. The Sex Police
by Pat Califia

“Sexual Outlaws v. The Sex Police” deals with age-of-consent laws, the state's attempt to control solicitation and public sex, the results of then-President Ronald Reagan's Meese Commission on pornography, and the implications of narcotics laws and public policy for IV drug users and the AIDS pandemic. From time to time, our government declares war on nearly every aspect of libidinal expression, so of course it would have been possible to address the issue of the social control of sexuality and other pleasures by looking at a dozen other topics. But these four battlegrounds are keys to understanding how and why cops and politicians go after vice.


Few issues generate more anger than the dreadful specter of child abuse and sexual molestation. “The Age of Consent: The Great Kiddy-Porn Panic of '77” and “The Aftermath of the Great Kiddy-Porn Panic of '77” were very scary to write. After they appeared in print, I had a bad bout of paranoia that was exacerbated by all the funny clicks on my telephone and by mail that arrived at my house already opened. To those of you who feel that the only solution to the problem of child abuse is to raise the age of consent and increase penalties for the manufacture and distribution of child pornography, let me just say this: The penalties for having sex with a minor or having anything to do with creating erotic images of minors could hardly be more drastic. Are children and teenagers safe yet? Have we managed to stem the tide of violence against young people? Is it any easier to come out as a sixteen-year-old gay man or a fifteen-year-old lesbian than it was seventeen years ago, before many of these laws got passed?

I find that many people undergo a weird process of internal splitting when this issue is discussed. Very few of us waited until we were eighteen to have sex. And some of us who waited would rather have been active earlier. How many of us remember having a crush on an older person whom we admired? Were these feelings evil? If they had been reciprocated, would the sexual experiences or relationships that followed necessarily have been any more painful or awkward than our first clumsy sexual experiences with peers who were just as dumb about sex as we were? Wouldn't it have been easier to have a warm and caring escort through some of the pitfalls of becoming an adult gay man or woman? And why doesn't this information color the discourse on the sexual rights of young people?

I believe that we are afraid to give children and teenagers the support, information, and power they need to be safe and to control their own bodies. The family as we know it simply could not survive such a challenge. I urge everyone to take a look at the actual letter of the law that controls young people's sexuality and outlaws child pornography. Look at how age-of-consent and antipornography laws are implemented and what their effects have been on society. Don't simply take them at face value. The kiddy-porn panic is one of the biggest con games ever run on a gullible public.

The federal child-pornography law is both broad and vague, ostensibly because protecting children is so important that law enforcement must be given great latitude in going after the monsters who prey on young people. The kiddy-porn panic it fuels has had some truly alarming results. Just this year, Wayne State University photography professor Marilyn Zimmer found herself being investigated when she threw away a roll of film that contained nude photos of her three-year-old daughter. A janitor discovered the film and turned it over to the university's Department of Public Safety (DPS). The DPS tried to have Zimmerman charged with criminal child sexual abuse. The Wayne County Prosecutor's Office eventually refused to press charges against her. But before that, they searched her home and office, seizing eight boxes of her family photos and some other personal belongings. No other photos of nude children were found. Wayne County prosecutor Nancy Diehl sought testimony from art experts about the nature of such photos. More than fifty photographers and artists from around the country contacted Diehl's office on Zimmerman's behalf. This response, plus the fact that the contact sheet was never developed, persuaded Diehl to drop all charges. Zimmerman is now suing the university for invasion of her privacy. This is not an isolated case. Photographer Robyn Stoutenberg was embroiled in a similar controversy in Pima County, Arizona, over a nude photo of her son that was displayed in an art gallery. While Stoutenberg was never prosecuted, her home was searched, her name was damaged by sensationalistic press coverage, and the prosecutors decided to keep the controversial photo of her four-year-old son!

This law is so poorly written that the Supreme Court recently agreed to decide whether or not the government must prove that those who distribute or receive sexually explicit films or photographs of minors are aware that the performers are not adults. This issue arises because federal law-enforcement agencies have been conducting huge kiddy-porn entrapment schemes. People's names are taken from confiscated mailing lists of adult bookstores and video companies, U.S. customs lists of seizures of allegedly obscene material, and the personal address books of people arrested earlier. These people are sent flyers, brochures, or letters urging them to order erotic material. The notices often don't specify that the material will depict minors. Euphemisms may be used, such as “students” or “youthful-appearing” models. If anyone is careless or stupid enough to take the bait, the government ships a package of child pornography (of which it seems to have an ample supply). Postal officials have been known to correspond with some people for years before persuading them to violate the law in this fashion. When the package arrives, the luckless individual is arrested, and her or his home and business is searched.

A federal appeals court ruled in 1992 that because the child-pornography law does not require knowledge that the material depicts minors, it violates the First Amendment. The Justice Department is seeking to have that ruling overturned. Federal prosecutors are also seeking a new trial in the child-pornography case of Stephen A. Knox. Last fall the Supreme Court asked the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia to review his case after the Justice Department admitted that Knox had been convicted on a faulty legal premise. This “faulty premise” was the fact that the so-called “pornography” in his case consisted of videos of girls dressed in leotards, bathing suits, or underwear. There was no sexual activity in the material; there wasn't even any nudity. President Clinton reprimanded Attorney General Janet Reno for making such an admission and directed the Justice Department to draft legislation to tighten laws against child pornography! The Senate unanimously passed a resolution calling for the same thing. In this social climate, it does not seem very likely that the Supreme Court will substantially alter the wording or interpretation of this law.

The fact that many of the founders of the gay-liberation movement were (and are) boy-lovers has well-nigh disappeared from the official history of our rebellion. The very term “boy-lover” is rarely heard in gay discourse. True, there have always been political disagreements within our community about the age of consent and cross-generational relationships. But the decade of FBI harassment suffered by the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) probably has more to do with the mainstream gay movement's drawing away from this issue. It is a serious and terrifying thing to confront such a powerful institution. So perhaps it was inevitable that the Stonewall 25 organizing committee would vote to exclude all organizations advocating the repeal of age-of-consent laws from its June 26, 1994, march. A group called the Spirit of Stonewall (SOS) formed to protest this ban, and has invited NAMBLA to march with them. I was proud to be among the people who signed SOS's petition for inclusion of all gay organizations in the Stonewall anniversary celebration. Perhaps Father Bruce Ritter, one of the original Meese Commission members, will be marching with SOS. (Ritter resigned from his position as president of Covenant House, a New York City shelter for runaways, after private investigators found “extensive evidence” confirming sexual misconduct with shelter residents.)

* * *

Today the issue of public sex is, if anything, even more hotly debated in the gay community than it was in 1982. Two years after the article “Public Sex” was written, the bathhouses in San Francisco were shut down. Then-Mayor of San Francisco Dianne Feinstein, under the prodding of openly gay journalist Randy Shilts, ordered Public Health Director Mervyn Silverman to close them in 1984. The city of New York closed its bathhouses in 1985, beginning with the notorious S/M club, the Mineshaft. Perhaps to head off any perception that they were discriminating against gay people, the same authorities also closed down Plato's Retreat, a straight swing club. About a dozen gay men's public-sex establishments were also closed. This action was taken against the recommendation of the New York City Health commissioner Dr. David Sencer, who said in a letter to Mayor Koch that “closure of the bathhouses will contribute little if anything to the control of AIDS.” Around the same time, many bathhouses were closed in other major American cities.

Gay people who advocate closing the baths feel that their existence is indefensible in the age of AIDS. The baths have come to represent an age of sexual license and irresponsibility which many gay men resent both because it is over and because it was supposedly responsible for creating or spreading a lethal sexually transmitted disease. Those who believe the baths should remain open claim that they provide good central locations for conducting safer-sex education. They point out that closing the baths doesn't really stop unsafe sex: it simply moves it to more dangerous locations where it's more difficult to enforce safer-sex guidelines, such as highway rest areas and adult bookstores. Many antibaths activists seem to have forgotten that it was mass arrests in places like these which led to the creation of the baths.

Local newspapers routinely print the names and addresses of men arrested in sweeps of public cruising areas. This recently prompted a New Hampshire man named Arthur Richardson to fight the charge of public lewdness. When cops arrested him, he says he was only taking a leak, but he planned to keep quiet about the charges and plead guilty until he learned that one of his fellow defendants, Paul Eastman, had shot himself to death with a rifle before going to trial. Richardson went public. He told reporters this was “a needless tragedy” and found an attorney who would defend him. He said, “Whether Mr. Eastman was guilty of anything more than having to relieve himself.. will never be known with certainty, but the fact remains that his arrest and the reaction which followed made his life unbearable.” Richardson, an apparently straight man who had lived with a woman for fourteen years, labeled the rest-area crackdown “homophobic.” It's interesting that so many of us have trouble seeing it in the same clear light.

In most cities, the baths have acquired twilight status similar to that of gay bars in the '60s. They are allowed to remain open as long as they are not too large or public (and as long as the appropriate palms are greased). But in an election year or at the whim of a newspaper editor who decides to boost circulation by running an exposé about “AIDS dens,” they can be closed. This marginal status makes the baths harder to find. Since the profits that owners can rake in from these clubs is limited, they usually have little motivation to make them attractive or safe or keep them clean or well-lit. Fire codes and other safety regulations are routinely ignored. This fosters a stereotype that public sex is inherently furtive, dangerous, and dirty.

Was sexual license the only thing that the baths promoted? I don't think so. As the most visible gay institutions, they made it possible for many men to experiment sexually with other men. They facilitated coming out (as well as made it easier for some men to remain in the closet and still have lots of gay sex). The baths generated large profits, some of which funded early gay-rights organizations. By offering employment to out-of-the-closet gay men, these businesses created an economy that could support activism and assumption of a full-time, totally open gay identity. By allowing large groups of men to come together and bond with one another, the baths became the heart and soul of '80s gay activism. They taught gay men to see themselves as members of a common tribe with similar interests and needs. The same men who prowled those steamy hallways in their little white towels also turned over police cars and set them on fire during the May 21, 1979, White Night riots in San Francisco, which followed Dan White's trial for the murders of Mayor George R. Moscone and city supervisor Harvey Milk.

Throughout the '70s and '80s, the “gay family” consisted of the entire community. There was a strong sense that an injury to one was an injury to all. Gay baths and backroom bars were part of a system of territorial marking that delineated the boundaries of our neighborhoods. This was important because it made the community palpable. We had territory that we could defend. And people did police these neighborhoods to eliminate gay bashing and police harassment.

The gay family of the '90s is an isolated couple committed to its own financial success and perhaps a desire to raise a child. The emphasis on monogamy and long-term couples has created a less radical style of activism. I do not wish to deride the dedication it takes to hold such a relationship together. Same-sex partnerships ought to be accorded the same respect and benefits that heterosexual couples receive. However, I am uncomfortable with claims that we are “just like everybody else” or “want the same things straight people do.” Do people have value only if they go about in pairs? It's wonderful when health insurance, for example, is extended to a domestic partner. But people should not have to be in a relationship to qualify for health care. This raises the issue of what will happen to those of us who are obviously not just like sedate, married heterosexuals. Does privatization and the retreat to a ranch house in the suburbs really make us safer, happier, or more free?

The baths are often condemned for enforcing a narrow, racist standard of masculine attractiveness. It is certainly true that many establishments did (and still do) exclude men who are overweight, nonwhite, effeminate, middle-aged or elderly, or men who simply piss off whoever is minding the door. These egregious acts of discrimination frequently provoked boycotts and protests, as well they might. However, the baths (along with gay literature, pornography, disco culture, and radical politics) created a new sort of homosexual man—one who was not necessarily a sissy. For the first time, it was possible for a gay man to be butch without trying to pass as straight. The concept of masculinity was changed forever by the specter of body-builders and other macho types who were hot to go home and fuck each other.

Not every gay man was capable of synthesizing an identity that incorporated both nelly and butch components, but a lot of them did. This emphasis on reclaiming masculinity made it imperative for gay men to demonstrate physical courage. They began to fight back against gay bashers, the police, right-wing politicians and religious authorities, and the rest of their enemies.

* * *

Liberals and civil libertarians snickered when the Meese Commission turned in its final report. Nobody took this bunch of political-cartoon types seriously. The panel had been selected with such a heavy hand that its bias was pathetically obvious. Its hearings had been kangaroo courts in which porn was tried and found guilty of' causing everything from premarital sex to homosexuality to serial murder. Although it generated some opposition, everyone basically heaved a sigh of relief and went away after the commission issued its report.

That was a tactical blunder. The fact is that the Meese Commission has gotten practically everything asked for in its report. The Justice Department promptly formed the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS), a title which guaranteed the unit's activities would not be subject to much scrutiny, and proceeded to use it to crack down on the adult-entertainment industry. In its heyday, CEOS had at least ten litigators working in its national headquarters and trained U.S. attorneys all over the country in new techniques and strategies for obscenity prosecutions. In cooperation with the FBI, the IRS, the postal service, U.S. customs, and state and local police, CEOS has chalked up hundreds of porn busts. Whenever possible, it mounted multiple prosecutions of the same company in different states, thus making the cost of defense astronomically high. Many people in this predicament chose to just plead guilty, pay big fines, and sign pledges to never again do business in the sex industry.

Federal Court of Appeals Judge Joyce Hens Green recently issued an injunction that forced the Justice Department to drop multiple prosecutions against Phil Harvey, the owner of Adam and Eve, but it is not clear if they have abandoned the tactic completely. They still have the Racketeer-Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) to fall back on. RICO was originally passed by lawmakers who believed it was necessary to give the police sweeping powers to wipe out organized crime. But RICO's definitions are extremely broad. If you commit an illegal act in concert with another person, you could qualify for a RICO prosecution. In at least one case, a drug dealer has been busted under RICO for conspiring to commit a crime with the police informant who bought his merchandise and then placed him under arrest. In a RICO case, police are allowed to seize anything that might have been used to commit criminal acts—personal and business records, computers, vehicles, business property and homes, inventory, etc. This obviously makes it very difficult to muster a defense or even make a living until the case is settled, and that can take years.

Sexually explicit material has not only become less available in this country; the content is also restricted. Since the law is not clear about exactly what constitutes obscenity, most porn producers overreact and delete anything that might be controversial (such as interracial sex, anal sex, fisting, or any hint of domination) from their magazines and videos. If there's any chance that a particular image might catch the eye of an ambitious attorney general or district attorney, a digitized patch is placed over the action. While the quality of the merchandise has steadily declined, the cost of pornography has increased. Small companies that were trying to make higher-quality films or videos that would appeal to women are finding it difficult to stay in business under these conditions. Many straight companies that used to have gay product lines have shut them down.

Civil libertarians were unsuccessful in preventing these developments because most people still find it difficult to defend the freedom to rent or buy pornography. A lot of the people who turned up to testify before the commission on behalf of the First Amendment did not focus their testimony on the issue of pornography. They chose instead to speak about the dangerous impact that censorship could have on the arts, theater, and literature. Although the chilling effects of the Justice Department's antiporn campaign have spread beyond the adult entertainment industry, the commission was always very clear about its intention to simply wipe out smut, beginning with the most explicit and stigmatized images, then proceeding to images of mainstream sexual practices. So the folks who could not stand up at the Meese Commission and say, “I want to be able to see somebody get spanked, tied up, and soundly fucked in a full-color film with a gorgeous soundtrack,” the folks who could only muster an embarrassed reference to the innocence of Playboy, now find themselves in the quandary of not being able to enjoy much vanilla porn.

This is the price that we pay for driving sexuality underground. Most people seem to want to visit sex as if it were a brothel or a shooting gallery, get their fixes, and then go home without getting busted and publicly labeled as perverts or sex fiends. They don't want to try to integrate whatever they find in pornography that is so rewarding with the rest of their lives. We routinely trade sexual frustration for respectability. The fact that porn, prostitution, and other illicit pleasures can be found only in sleazy neighborhoods where they are meted out by disreputable characters allows us to lie and tell ourselves that these experiences are not very important. But they are. They must be. Otherwise the sex industry could not continue to thrive in these harsh circumstances. Erotic entertainment is the only thing that gets a lot of people through bad and boring marriages, hateful jobs, health problems, divorce, aging, or tedious relationships with their friends and families. But it seems that consumers won't wise up about this until the secret source of juice and joy dries up completely.

* * *

This section of Public Sex includes a piece about IV drug users and AIDS. Its age can be seen by the references to HTLV-III (this was before “the virus” was known as HIV). Government policies toward this vector of AIDS transmission have not changed significantly. But one important recommendation in the article needs to be updated—the suggestion that people clean needles and cookers with a 10 percent bleach solution.

Recent studies have found that cleaning needles with diluted bleach does not kill HIV in the injection equipment. In fact, a Baltimore study found no difference in seroconversion rates between injection-drug users who cleaned their works regularly and folks who never bothered. A 10 percent bleach solution apparently causes blood to clot, which makes the virus inaccessible to the disinfectant. Now the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is recommending that people rinse their needles three times with clean water, completely fill the needle and syringe at least three times with full-strength bleach (leaving it in for at least thirty seconds each time), shake the rig to loosen any debris, then rinse it three times with new, clean water.

These guidelines were apparently formulated by people who have never hurt for their next shots. I'd like to see some white-coated M.D. from the CDC try to remember how to count to three while his upper lip is beaded with sweat, his hands are shaking, and his stomach is turning over. It is unreasonable to expect that an addict will go through this tedious and time-consuming process. Not only are people usually in a hurry to get high, they are often injecting in situations where the environment won't allow them to set out all this paraphernalia and wait for the bleach to work.

It is more important than ever for injection drug users to have access to clean needles. Lawmakers keep arguing that such access will encourage drug use. But many researchers, including Dr. Peter Lurie and Dr. John Watters at the University of California, have found that needle-exchange programs reduce HIV infection without increasing the numbers of drug users. Dead junkies don't go into treatment. If we want people to get help (instead of just writing them off as subhumans who deserve to die because they are addicts), we have to adopt a more compassionate and reasonable public policy. Before they die, HIV-positive drug users often infect their sexual partners, and their children also become infected. The numbers of new HIV infections among women could be cut dramatically if only people could walk into pharmacies and buy clean needles as easily as they can buy condoms.

Nevertheless, many district attorneys continue to prosecute needle-exchange volunteers, charging them under the laws against possession of drug paraphernalia. The defense that these people are forced to break the law because a health emergency exists has often been successful. Alameda District Attorney John Meeham recently lost a case in Berkeley against health worker Scott Halem. A jury unanimously acquitted him of illegal possession of syringes. This case cost taxpayers an estimated $50,000 to $150,000 to prosecute. But Meeham turned right around and busted volunteers at Alameda County Exchange (ACE). It took four squad cars to give one volunteer a citation and to seize five hundred needles. The minute the cops left, ACE volunteers resumed their life-saving work.

The next time officials in your area complain about not having adequate funds to feed, clothe, house, and treat people with AIDS, they should be reminded that we can't afford to waste public money on wild goose chases like Meeham's vendetta. Any police crackdown on “immoral” behavior is very expensive and does little if anything to eliminate the targeted behavior. In this era of hard times, it's difficult to understand why the public continues to allow its elected officials and public employees to engage in these spendthrift public-relations boondoggles.

[RoosterDance]

The Age of Consent: The Great Kiddy-Porn Panic of '77
by Pat Califia


At what age did you realize you were a sexual being? Most people (if they're honest) can recall having tingly feelings and nasty thoughts when they were little cherubs with lamentable table manners. I have a much clearer memory of naughty experiments performed with my prepubescent companions (oh, those golden days of carefree crossdressing, lighthearted medical malpractice, and simulated white slavery) than I do of more pragmatic experiments with shoelaces and buttons, the telephone, and prayer. I was more worried about finding enough privacy to masturbate than I was about almost anything else except perhaps getting rid of my lima beans before my mother got back to the dinner table. I don't remember learning my alphabet or singing nursery rhymes, but I do remember prying sex secrets out of my mother while she gave me my bath.

Culturally induced schizophrenia allows parents to make sentimental speeches about the fleeting innocence of childhood and the happiness of years unburdened by carnal lust—and then exhaust themselves policing the sex lives of their children. Children are celibate because their parents prevent them from playing with other little kids or adults. They are shy because they are not allowed to go naked any longer than is absolutely necessary to take a bath. They are not innocent; they are ignorant, and that ignorance is deliberately created and maintained by parents who won't answer questions about sex and often punish their children for being bold enough to ask. This does not make sex disappear. The erotic becomes a vast, unmapped wilderness whose boundaries are clearly delineated by averted eyes. Sex becomes the thing not seen, the word not spoken, the forbidden impulse, the action that must be denied.

Even though many prominent sex researchers have documented the existence of sexual capacity in children (for instance, Kinsey verified the occurrence of orgasm in girls and boys at less than six months of age),1 our society is fanatically determined to deny it. Legally, young people are assumed to be incapable of agreeing to engage in a sexual act until they reach the age of consent, which in many states is still eighteen. Sex between an adult and a minor is called statutory rape, and someone convicted of this dubious crime can receive a heavier sentence than someone convicted of manslaughter. Contrary to what you would expect from a system ostensibly committed to protecting and nurturing its children, the minor partner is often subjected to blackmail, humiliating and punitive police interrogations, and public exposure (which can lead to painful conflicts with parents and peers). She or he may be coerced into testifying against her or his adult partner or lover in court. Age-of-consent laws don't make sense even if you believe that the desire and ability to have sex don't develop fully until puberty. These laws are completely arbitrary and do not take into account the varying degrees of physical and emotional maturity possessed by young people or the fact that puberty is occurring at earlier and earlier ages. Unfortunately, new laws that make this bad situation truly nightmarish were railroaded through state and federal legislatures in 1977 and 1978.

* * *

There are few adult lesbians and gay men who have not suffered under the campaign to extirpate any sign of eroticism in young people. Even heterosexuality, the choice approved by church and state, is hedged about with ominous warnings and tainted with guilt. Young women and men who would like to have sex with each other are impeded by lack of privacy and free time and by very limited access to birth control, abortion, sex counseling, and medical treatment for sexually transmitted diseases. Parents are so panicked by the possibility that their children might grow up to be gay that they sometimes try to prevent their children from even hearing the words “homosexual” or “lesbian.” I don't know what's worse—having a persistent, vague, uneasy feeling that you just won't grow up to be like Mommy and Daddy or hearing your secret self described with mockery, pity, and opprobrium. Many kids who should be gay because they would be happier that way probably give up and conform and never find their way into our community. The young women and men who refuse to recant have an ugly fight on their hands. At the very least, they must learn to do without approval and love from their families and friends. They may have to cope with the loss of economic support and defend themselves against physical violence at home or at school. If they are religious, they will be threatened by the loss of salvation and Cod's love. They may be forced to submit to homophobic “counseling.” As a last resort, parents may turn an “incorrigible” youth over to the juvenile justice system and wash their hands of her or him.

These young people are our next generation. Whatever we suffered in the process of coming out is still being inflicted on them. Why is there no systematic attempt to reach out to them, bring them into our movement and our community, and help them to reach healthy gay adulthood?

The squeamish attitude of today's lesbian and gay movement toward youth liberation can be traced directly to the Great Kiddy-Porn Panic of 1977. We all know that 1977, the year of Hurricane Anita and Dade County, was a very bad year for gay liberation. But most of us don't realize just how serious it was. In 1977 our march toward civil rights was met by a tidal wave of hysteria over the issue of gay sex and kids. The mainstream lesbian and gay movement was frightened into a hasty and ill-conceived retreat from this issue, which allowed the police to mount a terrorist campaign against gay youth and their adult lovers. In 1980 we are in the middle of a homophobic backlash that can only be compared to McCarthyism. Boy-lovers (and girl-lovers, though they are less visible) are the new communists, the new niggers, the new witches.

The flurry of panic over child prostitution, kiddy porn, and gay youth was engineered on a national level by a group of right-wing politicians, would-be celebrities, fundamentalist Christians, and vice cops. These people took advantage of the public's ignorance, fear of sex, and hatred of homosexuality to pass repressive laws that are probably unconstitutional; obtain state and federal grants; build powerful Careers; and make themselves famous. Unfortunately, they succeeded in doing even more than that: They split our movement. Other gay men are turning against boy-lovers, and lesbians are turning against all gay men. No matter what your position on the issue of young people and sex, it is clear that this split makes it much more difficult for us to organize action on any gay issue. The April 12, 1980, “March on Albany for Lesbian and Gay Rights” is a perfect example. Because David Thorstad of the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) was asked to speak, the Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Rights and New York NOW withdrew their endorsement of the march. Participation was drastically reduced to only a couple of hundred people.

This controversy could destroy the modern gay movement, which is why we must understand how and why the Great Kiddy-Porn Panic of 1977 developed. In February 1977, Dr. Judianne Densen-Gerber, director of New York's Odyssey House, a drug-addiction treatment facility, toured the country, making inflammatory speeches about the “huge” child pornography industry and warning Americans that homosexuals were seducing their children into prostitution. Robert Leonard, president of the National District Attorneys' Association, set up a special Task Force on Sexual Exploitation of Children at the Association's spring meeting. CBS, that great friend of gay people, broadcast a “60 Minutes” special on kiddy porn on May 15.2 After a brief mention of adult males with sexual interests in young girls, the program focused on magazines full of erotic pictures of young boys and footage of teenage male hustlers working the streets. Also in May 1977. the Chicago Tribune ran a series of articles linking rape, prostitution, pornography, and child molestation with gay liberation. Shortly thereafter, three Chicago men were arrested and accused in the press of constituting a child pornography ring. One of the men was eighteen years old. It turned out that they could hardly have formed a “ring” of any kind since they didn't know each other. Anita Bryant surfaced in the news with her crusade to Save Our Children from the lavender menace, and Los Angeles cop Lloyd Martin traveled to many cities, making speeches similar to Dr. DensenGerber's and helping local police track down pedophiles. Martin's Sexually Exploited Child Unit received funding from the city of Los Angeles in 1977, which supposedly made him a national expert on the subject.

All this furor culminated in a call for federal legislation against the sexual abuse of children. On May 23, 1977, the Kildee-Murphy hearings began. Congressmen Dale E. Kildee and John W Murphy proposed federal legislation that would make it a felony to photograph or film a “child” (anyone under sixteen years of age) in the nude, engaged in sexual activity with another person, or masturbating. The penalty would be a fine not to exceed $50,000 or up to twenty years in prison or both. The Kildee-Murphy Bill would impose a similar penalty on depictions of simulated acts, clerks who knowingly sold child pornography, or anyone who knowingly permitted a child to engage in prohibited sex acts. The existence of a “feminist” antipornography movement made it possible for some politically active women to sympathize with the campaign against kiddy porn and cross-generational sex, which Ms. magazine exploited in a special issue in August 1977 (“Is Child Pornography... About Sex?”). Ms. included an article, 'America Discovers Child Pornography” by Helen Dudar, which featured uncritical interviews with Densen-Gerber and Martin.

As the media blitz continued, so did arrests. Peter LeGrow, the owner of a Seattle disco for gay youth, was busted on August 30 and charged with promoting the prostitution of two teenage boys. The local newspapers covered his arrest in a distorted way; columnist Hilda Bryant's series on boy hustlers debuted the next day. LeGrow was clearly the victim of entrapment. His alleged crime was assisting an undercover cop to find two young men for a date. He took no money for making this introduction, and one of the boys was also employed by the police as an informer. But the most outrageous bust of the year occurred on December 8 1977. Twenty-four men were arrested in the Boston area and indicted in what the newspapers called a child-pornography and prostitution ring. The police established a hotline to take anonymous tips that would lead to further arrests, and lesbian legislator Elaine Noble actually urged the gay community to cooperate. Luckily, her point of view did not prevail, and the Boston/Boise Committee organized to publicize the arrests, challenge the media's sensationalistic coverage, and help the defendants.3 As a matter of fact, none of the indictments were for pornography, none of the men arrested knew each other, and of the sixty-three boys involved, most were fourteen years of age or older.

This pattern of homophobic mass-media exposés, arrests, and public pressure for harsher penalties for cross-generational sex was not limited to the United States. In December of 1977, The Body Politic, a Toronto gay monthly, was busted for obscenity after publishing an article on boy-love. The article included no erotic illustrations or descriptions, and The Body Politic is still in court defending itself against these charges in 198O.4 Similar campaigns against kiddy porn, child prostitution, and boy-lovers have been conducted in Australia, England, Turkey, Sweden, Denmark, and other countries. Kiddy porn was outlawed or penalties dramatically increased in England, Australia, Sweden, and Denmark.


The language used by Densen-Gerber, et al, makes it difficult to figure out what is wrong with their position. The term “child abuse” conjures up images of babies scalded with boiling water or children beaten with blunt instruments. “Sexual exploitation of children” makes us think of teenagers being fed drugs and forced onto the street by unscrupulous pimps. “Kiddy porn” evokes a picture of little bodies torn and damaged from copulation with adults. Who wouldn't oppose such dreadful things? Who doesn't feel heart-rending sympathy for the children who are helpless to resist the violence of their parents, teachers, or other adults? Three-minute “interviews” on television or one-page articles in Time magazine don't give detailed enough pictures of what Densen-Gerber, Martin, Leonard, etc., think of human sexuality. Happily, all of the stars of the kiddy-porn crusade turned up to testify at the Kildee-Murphy hearings, and their testimony has been published by the U.S. Government Printing Office. This book, Sexual Exploitation of Children, should be required reading for membership in the gay liberation movement. It should certainly have received closer attention from the editors of Ms., who should be embarrassed for not digging a little deeper into the political beliefs of Lloyd Martin and Judianne Densen-Gerber.

The hearings (portions of which were televised) provided an amusing yet distressing glimpse into American sexual mores. Everyone on the committee and every speaker assumed that it is a terrible thing for children to have sex—any kind of sex. It was stated as fact that sexually active children grow up to be prostitutes, drug addicts, incestuous parents, impotent, frigid, homosexual, or some combination of the above. Yet no research was cited to prove this. Numbers were tossed around: there were 1 million children being used in pornography; no, 2 million; 30,000 boys in Los Angeles were working as prostitutes and 120,000 in New York; the child pornography industry was grossing $1 million a year; no, $1 billion. None of these statistics was substantiated. The testimony revealed the unexamined beliefs that fondling a child's genitals is just as abusive as punching her or him in the mouth; that the term “child prostitution” just as accurately describes a man who picks up a teenage runaway and gives him a ride, $5, and a blow job as it describes a pimp with his stable of addicts; and that “kiddy porn” includes snapshots taken by boy-lovers of their young friends as well as the commercial material sold in adult bookstores. The committee was not concerned with preventing rape or violence against children. It was concerned with keeping them asexual. Information indicating that children may seek sexual contact or enjoy it was manipulated as additional evidence that society has become hopelessly corrupt. Descriptions of affectionate, cross-generational relationships were presented as the ultimate perversion—as if people who would engage in such relationships were too sick and depraved to feel the appropriate guilt and remorse. The term “child” was used indiscriminately to refer to infants, grade-schoolers, and teenagers. The only witness to offer a dissenting opinion was Heather Grant Florence of the American Civil Liberties Union. She said:

The ACLU's basic position is that while it is perfectly proper to prosecute those who engage in illegal action, constitutionally protected speech cannot be the vehicle. Accordingly, the ACLU submits that those who directly cause and induce a minor to engage in a sexual act, or engage in it with a minor, are those who violate the laws; those who recruit and offer children for sexual acts clearly should be prosecuted.. In contrast, those who have not participated in causing or engaging in the sexual activity but who may profit as a result of it, such as a publisher, editor, distributor, or retailer, are not violating the law.5

Florence's only objection to the Kildee-Murphy bill was the threat it posed to the First Amendment. She did not object to the committee's position that sex is bad for children, and she even suggested that it would be appropriate for them to increase the legal penalties for adults who have sex with minors. The committee greeted this comparatively mild speech with derision and outrage.

* * *

Who are the stars of the Great Kiddy-Porn Panic, and how have they fared since their moment in the limelight? Ironically, after making it easier for police to entrap pedophiles, Congressman John Murphy was himself the victim of entrapment, caught in the Abscam scandal. Anita Bryant (who did not testify at the Kildee-Murphy hearings) is getting a divorce, and her Ministries for Counseling Homosexuals have been charged with financial mismanagement; 1978 tax returns show that the Ministries raised $1 million; $450,000 was spent on “direct fees for raising contributions,” including the antiporn and anti-child abuse activities of the illegal subsidiary Protect America's Children. Only $150 was spent on counseling.6

The National District Attorneys' Association's Robert Leonard's primary contribution to the hearings was a diagram drawn for him by an incarcerated boy-lover which was supposed to outline a “national network” of pedophiles. This ridiculous document consists of a page of boxes, circles, and triangles connected by a tangled network of arrows and dotted lines. The “network” is apparently made up of such entities as the Internal Revenue Service, The Advocate, porno shops, mail-omatic operations, children's nudist camps in Vermont, a geologist, the Church of the New Revelation, Walnut Creek, legal assistance, Frank's second car, Big Brothers of Ann Arbor, Wayne State University, and the European network. After condemning those who would corrupt the morals of youth by buying their sexual favors, Leonard was convicted of embezzling $100,000 in federal money to build himself a house on the California coast.

Detective Lloyd Martin is still going strong, so he bears closer examination. Martin began working on the sexual exploitation of children in 1971, when Sam Yorty was mayor of Los Angeles and Ed Davis was chief of police. He was assigned to the pornography squad in 1973 and founded the Sexually Exploited Child (SEC) unit in 1976. His main contribution to the hearings was to provide estimates of the number of children involved in prostitution and pornography and to reaffirm the paranoid fantasy of a national porn/boy hustler ring by claiming that a book called Where the Young Ones Are had sold seventy thousand copies. This book, supposedly a directory of playgrounds and bus stations where loose kiddies convene, was never presented for the committee's examination.

Martin wants every police department in the country to set up an SEC unit. To this end, he frequently gives interviews and helps organize entrapment schemes. He readily admits that children can initiate sexual activity with adults. In his testimony at the Kildee-Murphy hearings, he said, “The most difficult concept for most people to understand and accept is that very often, these children are consenting partners in the sexual activity. In some cases they initiate the sexual activity with direct propositions or with seductive behavior.”7 Martin has also said that the relationship between a man and boy is often very warm and affectionate, and that “only 1 case in 200 involves a child who is the victim of force.”8 He complains that the affection children feel for their adult “molesters” is so intense that they rarely can be forced to testify against them. He defines a pedophile as “somebody paying more attention to the child than the parent would,”9 an odd definition that would place all kinds of people under suspicion and hardly seems to imply sinister or damaging behavior. Nevertheless, Detective Martin has made a career of hunting down boy-lovers because he believes that having sex with minors is worse than murdering them:

To me a crime against a child has no equal. It's worse than a homicide. A homicide is terrible, but it is over with very shortly. The victim of sexual exploitation has to live the rest of his or her life with those memories of what pornography and sexual deviation brings upon them.10

The “sexual deviation” Martin refers to is homosexuality. He believes that boys who have sex with men grow up to be gay, and it is obvious to him that they would be better off dead. Martin is so obsessed with homosexuality that he hardly mentions heterosexual pedophilia when discussing the sexual exploitation of children. He tries to hide his homophobia by publicly stating that he is not after homosexuals, just boy-lovers, but he urges other gay men to turn in pedophiles to the police. He believes that pedophiles cannot be cured, so they should receive lifetime prison sentences.

Martin advocates raising the age of consent in California to eighteen. He teaches a course on child sexuality and the exploitation of children at the University of Southern California and announces that he has never read the Kinsey reports.11 Some of the most colorful testimony for the Kildee-Murphy bill was given by Dr. Judianne Densen-Gerber. She turned up at the hearings with a trunk full of child pornography which she told the committee had been purchased by her seventeen-year-old daughter and a friend. To the consternation of the committee, she flashed covers and read titles while the TV cameras rolled. When Congressman Ertel chided her for displaying this material on television where his children might see it, she snapped, “So why don't you clean it up so I don't have any magazines to show?”12 Densen-Gerber has a lot of spunk.

She also has a lot of ambition. Her career began in 1966 when she established Odyssey House, a drug-addiction treatment program in New York City. What is the connection between drug addiction, kiddy porn, and child prostitution? Densen-Gerber believes that sexual activity in childhood is one of the primary causes of drug addiction and prostitution, and that drug addicts and prostitutes (she makes little or no distinction between these two groups) sexually abuse their own children.

By making powerful friends, capturing the attention of the mass media, and putting pressure on government agencies, Densen-Gerber expanded Odyssey House into a little empire, including programs in seven other American cities and in Australia. At its high point, Odyssey was receiving about $3 million annually in state and federal funding. Odyssey's spin-offs included a briefly funded program for teenage prostitutes and a house for addicted mothers. Densen-Gerber did not restrict her activities to the United States. She instigated another kiddy-porn panic in Australia and traveled to England to help Mary Whitehouse and Cyril Townsend pass the Protection of Childhood Act, a measure that resembles the Kildee-Murphy bill.13

In 1979 Attorney General Robert Abrams announced that he was launching an investigation of alleged financial mismanagement at Odyssey. Former staff members and patients have claimed that private donations and government funds were used to maintain DensenGerber's expensive lifestyle; that the census of patients was tampered with to inflate reimbursements from state and local agencies; that patients were kept in filthy conditions and sent to beg for food at supermarkets; that residents were forced to wear paper donkey ears and tails or made to scrub the floor with toothbrushes to learn humility; that Densen-Gerber used patients as personal servants; that staff were asked to light candles to her to pledge their loyalty; that residents were punished for such things as holding hands; that the treatment program was not clearly understood by staff; that patients were allowed to write their own evaluations; and that there was no follow-up to determine whether or not Odyssey successfully treated drug addiction.14 These accusations are still under investigation.

In January 1979, Odyssey received a federal grant of $90,000 for the Midtown Adolescent Resource Center (MARC), a program for teenage prostitutes. This grant proposal was funded after being turned down by the three reviewers, which is very unusual. After about nine months of controversy, which included the resignation of two directors and apparent difficulty keeping kids in the program, the federal government sent out a review team and cut off funding for MARC. Had they not done so, the original grant could have been renewed for three years. The first director of MARC claims he quit because Densen-Gerber was exploiting two teenage prostitutes in national-television appearances instead of treating them. The review team found that these two young women were housed with, treated like, and counted as addicts to boost state funds. They were subjected to strip searches, including rectal examinations, when they entered and left the building. Their personal belongings were confiscated, and they were forced to wear punishment signs—cards with humiliating messages written on them, such as “I lie” or “I steal”—when they misbehaved. One member of the review team said these women had been “misused” and quoted Densen-Gerber as stating, “There are times when as in war children must be sacrificed for other long range ends.” This evaluator believed that some Odyssey practices “might have constituted child abuse.”15

Odyssey's Mabon program on Ward's Island, the project to assist addicted mothers, has encountered similar embarrassing charges. The Mabon project sometimes included women who were not addicts but needed temporary shelter for themselves and their children. On at least three occasions, when such women tried to leave, Odyssey officials reportedly tried to keep them in the program by refusing to release their children. Mobilization for Youth had to get a writ of habeas corpus to get two children returned to their mother and filed a $100,000 suit for false imprisonment that is still pending.16

In her Kildee-Murphy testimony, interviews with the press, and her own writings, Densen-Gerber shows herself to be a flamboyant source of misinformation. She repeatedly refers to child pornography as “mutilation” and agrees with Detective Lloyd Martin that parents who batter their children cause less psychological damage than parents who have sex with them.17 Among her bloopers are such curious statements as “The fact that the children for sexual snuff films are.. .purchased from Mexico is well known,”18 and “The prepubescent child having intercourse does not have a vaginal pH which protects against infection... children who have prepubeseent intercourse have the highest incidence of cervical carcinoma of all women.”19 While she concedes that good sex education is needed, she believes that “anatomy and warnings about masturbation are not a substitute for dealing with the very real concerns and frustrations of adolescence.20 The fact that such distortions were never questioned by the committee is a gauge of its total lack of objectivity. Most child pornography consists of nude pictures of kids and teenagers. There are no commercially available snuff films, despite rabid references to them in feminist antipornography literature and the Kildee-Murphy hearings. Pedophiles report that they rarely engage in intercourse with their young partners. Oral and manual techniques are most commonly used, and if anyone gets fucked, it is usually the older partner.21 Densen-Gerber's claim that sex with a parent is more damaging than being beaten and her apparent belief that sex education should include warnings about masturbation are ludicrous.

It was easy to classify Anita Bryant as politically regressive since she enthusiastically identified herself with the right wing. DensenGerber, on the other hand, has won a lot of liberal support. After all, she was involved in treating drug addiction and ending child abuse. But her sexual politics don't really seem to be that different from Anita Bryant's. Densen-Gerber believes that “something has to be done to help the American family be able to rear its children in less oppressive permissiveness”22 and warned the Kildee-Murphy committee that “present child rearing is not working. We can't leave it all in the present laissez-faire state.”23 She blames politically liberal and permissive parents for child abuse (which includes allowing a child to be sexually active), drug addiction, prostitution, pornography, and homosexuality.

At least one researcher, Dr. James W. Prescott, would dispute Densen-Cerber's beliefs about the causes of child abuse. His cross-cultural studies and other investigations have led him to conclude that child abuse is caused by our society's acceptance of violence and hatred of sexual pleasure. He points to corporal punishment by parents and schools, unwanted births, lack of physical affection between parent and child, and repression of premarital and extramarital sexuality as factors that lead to brutal treatment or the murder of children. Dr. Prescott theorizes that people who espouse traditional values (e.g., that pain and suffering build character, that sex is dirty, that war is necessary, that adultery should be punished by law and abortion made unavailable) are more likely to batter or murder their children than people with more Positive attitudes toward sex, who do not believe violence is an effective way for individuals or nations to resolve conflicts.24 Densen-Gerber believes that the fringe or minority elements of our society are not entitled to rear children. Referring to Harlow and Prescott's work on infant monkeys who were separated from their mothers, she says:

Their work showed that when there is no family socialization these monkeys compensated by precocious and promiscuous sexualization. That is what we are seeing. We have 2.4 million children in the care of substance-abusing mothers. Prostitutes average 2.8 children and they are selling their kids.25 [Author's note: This study actually showed that infant monkeys deprived of physical contact with their mothers were unable to engage in sexual activity.]

Densen-Gerber also told the committee that foster parents are led to abuse children in their care when the state gives them financial aid. Monetary assistance supposedly encourages foster parents to view these children as potential sources of profit, and from there it's one short step to the porno studio.26 She also told the committee that “researchers working with deviant women report that 50 to 70 percent have been sexually traumatized as children,”27 and went on to repeat her theory that depraved parents prey on their children, who then grow up equally depraved and ready to prey on their children. Her list of unfit parents thus includes “deviant” women as well as prostitutes, drug addicts, poor people, and those whose politics are not conservative. Frankly, this reminds me of a Nazi eugenics program.

People who are nonconformists, disenfranchised, or underprivileged can raise children with love and care. But Densen-Gerber and her compatriots in the Great Kiddy Porn Panic are concerned with maintaining the nuclear family and everything it stands for—middle-class values, homophobia, uniformity, and puritanism—at all costs. The Kildee-Murphy committee bewailed the existence of one million runaways, acknowledged that most of them were mistreated at home, and did nothing to address this problem but outlaw child pornography and prostitution. A minor in America is, with rare exceptions, unemployable. A young woman or man who wants to exist independent of the family has few options other than the sex industry. Closing down this industry without providing alternative employment is equivalent to sentencing young people to frustration, abuse, or suicide in cozy little suburban ranch-style prisons. The fact that Densen-Gerber hinted at ending financial aid to foster parents, thus closing off another escape route from a bad family situation, is an outrage. The Great Kiddy-Porn Panic of 1977 was a huge success. The Kildee-Murphy Bill is now Public Law No. 95-225, and many states have enacted similar legislation. Police have closed down many boy-love publications in this country and are using confiscated mailing lists and entrapment to bust shocking numbers of gay men. Sentences of twenty to forty years are common. The campaign against kiddy porn succeeded because it confused the issue of violence against children with the issue of children and sexuality. Everyone, gay and straight, is appalled at the idea of children or teenagers being raped, forced into performing sex acts in front of a camera, or exploited by a pimp. But many gay people are not appalled at the idea that young people want to break away from their families and sometimes grow up to be gay.

The members of the Kildee-Murphy committee were much more upset by a teenage hustler who leaves home to get away from his alcoholic father than they were by parents who starve their kids or beat them. The law that they passed is being used to punish gay men who cross the barrier of age and establish sexual intimacy with consenting young men. It has done nothing to prevent violent child abuse. Kids need better sex education, so they can understand the implications of sexual proposals and make informed choices. They need economic independence so that their parents can no longer use money to coerce them into stultifying lifestyles. They need protection from adults who use or threaten assault to intimidate them. Instead the Great Kiddy-Porn Panic has locked minors even more firmly into the status of property and has increased the risk that parents who do not raise their children according to traditional values will lose them.


Notes:

1.Wolman, B.B., and J. Money, eds. Handbook of Human Sexuality, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. Inc., 1980, 20.
2. On April 26, 1980, CBS aired 'Gay Power, Gay Politics,” a schlockumentary anchored by Harry Reasoner which made San Francisco look as if it were run from behind the scenes by leathermen and drag queens. The report focused on the 1979 mayoral election and was especially derogatory in its treatment of Dianne Feinstein. Randy S hilts eventually managed to get the producer of the show, George Crile, and his associate, Grace Diekhaus, censured by the National News Council. My sarcastic remark about CBS in this essay was an attempt to remind readers that we could not trust CBS to tell the truth about child pornography any more than we could trust the netwrok to honestly depict the grassroots struggle to gain civil rights for gay men and women in San Francisco.
3. The Boston/Boise Committee was named in reference to a McCarthy-era roundup of gay men in Boise, Idaho. Dozens of lives were ruined by this witch-hunt. For more information, see the comprehensive book by former Time and Newsweek editor John Gerassi, The Boys of Boise: Furor; Vice and Folly in an American City, New York: MacMillan, 1955.
4. The Body Politic was busted in 1979 for obscenity after publishing Gerald Hannons article, "Men Loving Boys Loving Men" and found not guilty. But because Canada has no law against double jeopardy, the Crown filed for a new trial, This trial was still pending in 1980 when the entire collective was arrested again, this time for publishing "Lust with a Very Proper Stranger, an article about fisting by Angus MacKenzie. Eventually The Body Politic stopped publishing.
5. U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary, Sexual Exploitation of Children. Hearings before the Subcommittee on Crime, 95th Cong., 1st sess., May 23, 25, June 10, and September 20, 1977, Serial #12, 118-119.
6. Pan: A Magazine about Boy-Love, Vol. 1, No. 5, May 1980, 8.
7. House Committee, Sexual Exploitation of Children. 57.
8. "The Men Behind the Kidporn Industry." San Francisco Examiner; February 17, 1980, 13. ibid., 12.
9. Mitzel, John. "The Great Kiddie Porn Panic of 1977." NAMBLA Journal #3, 6-8.
10. Gay Community News, February 9, 1980, 3-8.
11. House Committee, Sexual Exploitation of Children, 49.
12. Pan: A Magazine About Boy-Love, Vol. 1, No. 2, August 1979, 24.
13. Komisar, Lucy. "The Mysterious Mistress of Odyssey House." New York, November 19, 1979, 43-50.
14. ibid., 46.
15. ibid., 47.
16. "The Battle-Line: Dr. Judianne Densen-Gerber as Witch of the Week. Pan: A Magazine about Boy-Love, Vol. 1, No. 3, November 1979, 28.
17. House Committee, Sexual Exploitation of Children, 43. ibid., 47.
18. "The Battle-Line: Dr. Judianne Densen-Gerber as Witch of the Week," 28.
19. Thorstad, David. Interview by Guy Hocquengheim in Semiotext(e) Special Large Type Series: Loving Boys, Summer 1980, 21.
20. House Committee, Sexual Exploitation of Children, 47
21. ibid., 51.
22. Prescott, James W, Ph.D. "Child Abuse in America: Slaughter of the Innocents." Hustler; no date available.
23. House Committee, Sexual Exploitation of Children, 45.
24. ibid., 51.
25. ibid., 40.

[RoosterDance]

The Aftermath of the Great Kiddy-Porn Panic of '77
by Pat Califia


How would you feel if you could be sentenced to spend twenty years in prison for owning a nude photograph of your lover and another twenty years for actually having sex with her or him? If your partner is a minor, you could easily receive such a sentence under new kiddy-porn laws and old age-of-consent legislation. It is a federal offense to produce, own, or distribute sexually explicit material if the subject is sixteen or younger. Thirty-five states enacted similar legislation in 1977 and 1978. The penalties for “statutory rape” (sex between a legal adult and a minor) are grim. Convicted pedophiles may do more time for having sex with minors than they would for manslaughter. Once incarcerated, they have a difficult time securing probation or parole, and other prisoners harass, beat, and even kill inmates who are known to be “child molesters.”

The kiddy-porn laws were passed during a flurry of public outrage over violent child abuse and the sexual exploitation of children, but they have done nothing to diminish the brutal treatment of young people. Children and teenagers are still being sexually abused, beaten, and sometimes put to death by their adult custodians. Young people are still the property of their parents (or, if the parents are not appropriately conservative, the state). They are the poorest group in our society. A minor who attempts to become self-supporting faces discrimination in jobs, housing, and every other area of her or his life. Minors have no control over their educations, their places of residence, or their religious beliefs. They are routinely denied the full protection of the Bill of Rights and thus are subject to searches, curfews, and other indignities that would be illegal if applied to any other group. The laws that make it illegal for minors to work in the sex industry or have adult lovers also make it unlikely that a young woman or man will be able to escape from an abusive family. So, under the guise of protecting children, the great kiddy-porn panic has intensified their oppression.

These laws are being used against segments of our society which are far more vulnerable than the porn business. For instance, artists often do not have the resources or the experience to successfully defend themselves against vice charges, and they may have suspect politics or unconventional lifestyles, making them ideal targets for censorship and harassment. Photographer Jacqueline Livingston's 1980 Village Voice interview was illustrated with erotic photographs she had taken of her son, Sam. These illustrations prompted the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children to insist on a meeting with staff members of the Voice to discuss “kiddy porn” in their newspaper. Livingston was accused of child abuse, investigated by the Tompkins County Department of Social Services, and only narrowly missed losing custody of her son.1

Gay men who have sexual relationships with boys (and the boys themselves) are the real victims of the kiddy-porn crusade. This result could have been predicted by anyone familiar with Dr. Judianne DensenGerber, Anita Bryant, Detective Lloyd Martin, and their compatriots. These people repeatedly condemn youthful sexual activity of any kind because they believe it turns kids queer. This absurdity is being touted as the new theory of the etiology of homosexuality.

In fact, since 1977 the media has latched onto this theory, conducting and publishing numerous exposés on the subject of child sexuality and its relationship to adult homosexuality. In a New York Post three-part series published in 1979, Stephen E Hutchinson, vice president and general counsel for Odyssey Institute, is quoted as saying that most pedophiles were seduced themselves at early ages. The article also makes the dubious claims that pedophiles operate a national underground network through which they exchange “millions of dollars worth of filth”; that federal, state, and local laws dealing with pedophilia are weak: and that “There is a marked tendency toward leniency toward pedophiles.” Typical of the “statistical” evidence quoted are these two contradictory estimates: Lloyd Martin's claim that there are thirty thousand kids up for sale in New York alone and an estimate that there are twenty thousand pedophiles in this country. The article also states, “The venereal disease rate among children under fourteen has doubled in the last decade and has been termed epidemic.2

In a 1980 San Franciso Examiner article, the experience of Berkeley police officer Seth Goldstein (Northern California's version of Lloyd Martin) is reported as follows: “ten pedophiles have confessed to him. Each one had sexual experience as a child. As adults, their desire for children is overpowering.” Paul Burkhardt, director of the Sexual Orientation Program at Atascadero State Hospital, states that most of the two hundred male pedophiles confined there “had sexual activities with other children as youngsters.”3 Since most kids experiment sexually with other children, this reminds me of Krafft-Ebing's contention that masturbation must cause criminal behavior and insanity since most of the inmates of prisons and asylums he interviewed confessed to practicing self-abuse.

Also in 1980, the San Francisco Chronicle published a piece which implied that young female prostitutes can be transformed into lesbians by the nature of their work: “'I'm thinking about women who like to trick with women,' said Brown Sugar, a small boned girl with several gold chains around her neck. 'I'd go for it because men treat me like trash. Seems like women treat a lady the way they are supposed to.'”

Although the article repeatedly refers to the young female and male prostitutes in the article as “children,” the youngest one interviewed was a fifteen-year-old boy. Brown Sugar, the “child” quoted above, has one child of her own and has served a year in a Los Angeles prison for the attempted murder of a trick.4

* * *

Erotic pictures of boys play an important role in a subculture where actual contact between youths and adults is difficult to arrange. Some pedophiles express their sexuality primarily through the use of erotic materials as aids to masturbation. So the federal government's making kiddy porn illegal was a brilliant stroke because it is now actually possible to enforce age-of-consent laws.5 Boy-lovers often take pictures of their youthful partners (doesn't everybody take pictures of loved ones?) and help each other get these pictures developed. They may share photographs with friends. This is a far cry from the myth of the Hydra-headed kiddy-porn industry that is trotted out to horrify and agitate the public, but such photographs do fall under the legal definition of child pornography. So, if police can find such material in the possession of a boy-lover, they usually can locate the boy and try to pressure him into testifying against his adult partner.

Armed with these draconian laws, the police are already making a frightening number of arrests.6 Even more frightening, however, is evidence that the police may be preparing for mass arrests on an unprecedented scale. Three major busts have given the police literally thousands of names and addresses of gay men who might possess prosecutable material.

On October 30, 1979, New York City police broke up a call-boy ring and seized the mailing list of clients, some three thousand names. A few of the call boys were minors. On November 30, 1979, Lloyd Martin raided the Athletic Models Guild (AMG) and seized its photographic equipment and mailing list. AMG produced a wide range of erotic gay male material; however, they are not a source of kiddy porn. The justification for this raid was an alleged complaint from a fourteen-year-old whom police say was photographed at the studio. Police do not have the name or address of this complainant.

George Jacobs, a commercial photographer, was arrested in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, on September 13, 1979. His photographic equipment and mailing list were also seized. The police claimed Jacobs was the center of an international child-porn ring. Jacobs says he helped a group of eight to ten men get their pictures of boys developed, and kept some copies for himself.

The police went to a lot of trouble to get Jacobs. Lloyd Martin apparently got his hooks into a boy-lover named Ralph Bonnell and pressured him into becoming an informer. Bonnell was flown all the way from California to Massachusetts, where he set up a meeting with his old friend Jacobs. After spending a few hours at Jacobs's home, Bonnell was picked up by Irving M. Peterson, team leader of the Mail Fraud and Prohibitive Mailings Investigation Unit for the Northeast. After grilling Bonnell, Peterson got enough information to obtain a search warrant. This elaborate effort resulted in Jacobs's being arrested, tried, and sentenced to thirty-nine years in prison. After the verdict, Judge Wagner told Jacobs, “You are a despicable, vile creature, a disgrace to the human race. This conduct is worse than murder.” All but fourteen months of Jacobs's sentence was waived, possibly because he threatened to challenge the constitutionality of the Massachusetts kiddy-porn law. But his troubles are far from over. He could be diagnosed a sexually dangerous person, which means he would stay in prison until that diagnosis is reversed.7 Also, Peterson is urging the feds to try Jacobs under the federal kiddyporn law.8

In addition to the mailing lists, address books, and correspondence they have obtained via arrests, the police are assisted by photo labs which turn in customers who send in film of young people. There is some evidence that they may have acquired names from the Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center VD Clinic in Los Angeles.9 Martin Locker, New York's “prohibited mail specialist,” inspects foreign mail specifically to intercept incoming kiddy porn. He has also resorted to placing sex ads soliciting boy-lovers whom he asks to exchange porn with him, and to answering ads. Locker has counterparts in other cities. For example, in Washington, D.C., Postal Inspector Obie Daniels has been involved in actions against child pornography.10

What are the police going to do with all this information? United States vice cops may share their lists with agents in other countries and solicit similar material from them.11 Irving Peterson has been quoted as saying that the U.S. Attorney General has informed him that actions against pedophiles and child pornography are a priority for 1980. It looks like a full-scale offensive is being planned. The gay civil-rights movement ought to be worried.

Boy-lovers are of course frightened already, and they have reacted the way oppressed groups traditionally do: they have organized. In December 1978, a group of concerned individuals sponsored a Boston conference, “Man/Boy Love and the Age of Consent.” After the conference, thirty legal adults and minors formed the North American Man! Boy Love Association (NAMBLA).

Members of NAMBLA risk penalties which a garden-variety lesbian or gay man currently doesn't have to sweat about. It obviously takes considerable courage for them to go public, but the mainstream gay movement has not been supportive. Many gay papers refuse to carry ads for pedophile individuals, publications, or groups. Three exceptions are Pan: A Magazine About Boy-Love (published in the Netherlands), Gay Community News, and Gay Insurgent. The ban on open debate of boy-love is so pervasive that at least one gay journalist, Sidney Smith, lost his job for not observing it. Smith worked for a gay radio show in New York City. He aired an interview with Dutch Senator Edward Brongersma, a regular contributor to Pan. Smith was fired on the grounds that the material did not represent and might hurt the interests of the gay community.12 Ironically, Smith was also employed by the station's art and literature department, which retained him despite its being a “straight” department.

At least three major gay events have been disrupted by conflicts over how much support should be given to boy-lovers and sexually active youth. In addition to drastically reduced participation in the April 12, 1980, March on Albany that resulted from a dispute over NAMBLA spokesperson David Thorstad's participation, the October 14, 1979, March on Washington dropped its demand for the abolition of age-of-consent laws because conservative lesbian and gay groups threatened to withdraw their support, and New York City's gay-pride march was torn in half this year because members of the Lesbian and Gay Pride March Committee were “vociferous in their opposition to the abolition of age-of-consent laws and the participation of NAMBLA. ..as well as transpeople, in the gay rights movement.”13

This hostility is sad, but it isn't surprising. Despite all our hard work, the economic and political situation in this country is getting worse, not better. Our standard of living is dropping. Jobs are getting harder to find, and working conditions are worse than ever. Financial hardship results in more violence in the streets (much of it directed against visible lesbians and gay men) and makes it more likely that our nation will go to war. This atmosphere of scarcity and patriotism encourages the use of gays as scapegoats. Our civil liberties are being eroded by a Supreme Court that steadfastly refuses to extend equal protection under the law to homosexuals. We can't even get the ERA passed! The right wing has got us on the run.

In this climate, the cost of dissent has risen sharply. Gays comprise one of the most well-behaved minorities, perhaps because we are always trying to get back into our parents' good graces. We also have the illusion of the option to go back into the closet if things get too tough. Nobody wants to come under surveillance by the secret police. Nobody wants to go to prison. We can't seem to do anything to halt inflation, curb jingoism, or silence the well-financed voices of bigotry. And yet we can succeed at purging our own movement, jettisoning the controversial planks of our platform, and doing some of the vice squad's dirty work. But in so doing, we postpone open warfare—and our own liberty—for a few more decades, perhaps indefinitely.

Many well-intentioned people in our movement are working overtime to do just that. Steve Endean, our first gay lobbyist in Washington, D.C., and a speaker at a NAMBLA-sponsored forum, expressed this fear:

“What NAMBLA is doing is tearing apart the movement. If you attach it [the man/boy love issue] to gay rights, gay rights will never happen.”14

Endean's view of boy-lovers corresponds to Edmund White's:

That's the politics of self-indulgence. Our movement cannot survive the man-boy issue. It's not a question of who's right, it's a matter of political naïveté.15

Who's being naïve is debatable. First of all, nobody is fooled when we proclaim that the gay movement has nothing to do with kids and their sexuality. Lesbians and gay men don't magically spring into existence at some arbitrary age of consent. Many of us know from the time that we are small children that we are attracted to members of our own sex. Many of us—both women and men—had our first homosexual experiences with partners who were older than ourselves. Parents start looking for signs of homosexuality in their kids at about age two. Sexual repression isn't one hundred percent effective, but it does keep some young women and men from forming gay identities. To leave that repression unchallenged is to leave a major bastion of gay oppression untouched. It's absurd to say that sex between a man and a boy or a woman and a girl is not a gay issue. It certainly isn't a heterosexual issue.

Second of all, the police do whatever we let them get away with. They don't bust the biggest gay-lib organization or the most popular bar in town. They close down the hustlers' bars, the drag bars, and the leather bars. Right now they can get away with collecting the names and addresses of gay men who might be pedophiles, entrapping boy-lovers, and putting them in prison. They can get away with intimidating and persecuting lesbian and gay minors. Does anybody seriously think they will stop there unless we force them to? There are enough archaic sex laws on the books—laws relating to pornography, sodomy, public sex, and prostitution—to put many of us in prison if the police are allowed to use entrapment and surveillance. Even states that have decriminalized sodomy could easily alter their statutes so that they applied only to heterosexual activity, making homosexual oral and anal sex special, prosecutable offenses. It would take only an uproar of public outrage similar to the Great Kiddy-Porn Panic of 1977. Are you sure the police don't have your name and address?

Endean and others who argue for a politics of expedience are dead wrong. Gay rights is a question of right and wrong. Our strength comes from the conviction that we are combating injustice. Our enemies espouse simple-minded obedience to outmoded, inhumane superstitions. They are not moral: they are moralistic. But our movement is profoundly moral. It stands for the ethics of self-determination, for human happiness, and against the tyranny of conformity. By abandoning boy-lovers to the police and gay kids to their homophobic families, we may hasten the day when adult lesbians and gay men have full civil rights, but will we ever be able to forgive ourselves? Can we honestly say we have freedom if gay minors do not? Our movement cannot survive the loss of its conscience.

Of course, there are those who claim that we must disassociate ourselves from pedophiles as a matter of principle. They agree with the stars of the great kiddy-porn panic that it is wrong for adults and young people to have sex with each other. It is sometimes hard to tell the rightwing position on this issue from the position that many prominent lesbian-feminists have promulgated. For instance, there's Elaine Noble's response to the 1977 Boston/Boise arrests:

Gross personal abuse and effrontery of innocent children is a sacrilege of the highest order. Adults involved in the corruption of unprotected, impressionable children by drugs, alcohol and sex must be immediately halted and reprimanded. We will not tolerate nor in any way condone through lack of aggressive action the perpetuation of such deviant, defiant behavior. 16

When the police set up a hotline to take anonymous tips that would lead to further arrests, this lesbian legislator actually urged the gay community of Boston to cooperate.

As a sacrilegious, defiant deviant bent on corrupting anyone who's susceptible, I am angered by the sight of another lesbian's vehemently waving the American flag and spouting apple-pie slogans. Noble blindly accepts the Judeo-Christian belief that sex is dangerous and bad and the ridiculous notion that children are asexual. Young lesbians and gay men don't need to be protected from “corruption”—they need protection from their repressive families; nonjudgmental information about human sexuality and gay lifestyles; and the economic freedom to make their own choices. The “gross personal abuse and effrontery” they suffer usually does not occur in their relationships with older lesbian and gay male friends and lovers. It takes place on the school playground, where they are hounded for being “bulldaggers” or “fags.” It takes place in the school counselor's office, the rabbi's or the minister's office, and over the supper table, where they are bullied and harangued about being freaks and about disappointing their parents. Robin Morgan has congratulated Noble for having the courage to express this “unpopular” opinion. I do not see how it could have taken great courage for Noble to urge the gay community to inform on itself and turn its back on its younger generation. In the middle of a police crackdown, a right-wing backlash, and inflammatory attacks in the press, Noble chose to side with the police, the right wing, and journalists eager to discredit the gay movement. This choice represented a simple loss of nerve. It is no cause for congratulation.

Robin Morgan gave to Jill Clark her own views on cross-generational sex. They are less simplistic than Noble's, but have the same law-and-order flavor.

I think boy-love is a euphemism for rape, regardless of whether the victim seems to invite it. That is what has been said of the woman rape victim. When somebody relatively powerless is getting fucked, literally and figuratively, by somebody powerful, that is a rape situation. Let's not blame the victim.17

Morgan acknowledges that children are sexual, but states, “the only way that sexuality has a chance of flowering in any non-damaging, power-free relationship is with another child.” If there is a difference of more than three or four years between the children or if one partner is bigger and stronger than the other, Morgan questions the consensuality of their relationship. She believes that young people are not attracted to adults because they are sexually appealing or have likable personalities, but because “power is attractive and interesting, especially to the powerless.” She perceives a female/male split over the issue of boy-love (and pornography, sadomasochism, and promiscuity) which she attributes to “the bonding of women, straight or gay,” which opposes “the bonding of men.” She goes so far as to state that “the issue of child-love is almost zilch among lesbians.” Her theory is that women don't eroticize children because they raise them. Specifically, she mentions the process of changing a diaper and dealing with baby shit as an experience that prevents women from being sexually turned on to children's asses. She suggests that if more men performed child care, fewer of them would find children sexy. This interview includes an interesting statement: “There comes a point when you realize that sexuality and emotions are involved with one another, and to break the one off from the other is to do something horribly divisive to your own psyche and spirit, let alone to the other person.”18

The core of Morgan's argument is her characterization of boy-love as “a euphemism for rape.” Feminist antirape activists have worked long and hard to educate the public about the difference between consensual intercourse and rape. Many people, if not most, blur these two categories and believe that every sexual act involves a degree of force which a woman invites and enjoys. Thus there is no such thing as rape, just a more or less forceful attitude on the part of the male partner. This view of sex is based on the assumption that women don't enjoy sex, don't initiate it, and never give clear consent to engage in it. Thus, women must be taught to initiate sex and explicitly indicate their interest or lack of interest in it.

The onus of guessing when “no” means “maybe” must be taken from men's shoulders. People also need the kind of sex education that makes mutually pleasurable sex possible. Morgan's specious redefinition of rape could undo years of laborious public education. There is a clear difference between a consensual sex act which takes place between two people of different social status and a sexual assault (which can easily take place between people of equal social status). Her concept of rape implies that all kinds of relationships are inherently nonconsensual—sex between men and women, between people of different racial or ethnic backgrounds, between people of different socioeconomic levels, between able-bodied and physically challenged people, and even between partners who differ greatly in size and strength. It harks back to the days when everyone believed that homosexuals forcibly seduced impressionable victims into lives of vice and misery. It seemed obvious then that nobody would freely choose a lesbian or male homosexual lover.

Our society is made up of class systems and runs on arbitrarily assigned privilege. Loving relationships provide ways to cross barriers, forge alliances, and redistribute power. Granted, they cannot substitute for full-scale social change. But we cannot forgo all intimacy until these inequities are finally abolished. There is nothing wrong with a more privileged adult offering a young person money, privacy, freedom of movement, new ideas, and sexual pleasure.

Morgan's assumption that adults have more power than young people is not an adequate description of the social conditions that surround cross-generational relationships. Any minor has the potential power to send an adult partner to jail for half of her or his life. It is condescending to assume that young people are so dazzled by the power of adults that they cannot tell the difference between being molested and being in love or being horny. Any child old enough to decide whether or not she or he wants to eat spinach, play with trucks, or wear shoes is old enough to decide whether or not she or he wants to run around naked in the sun, masturbate, sit in somebody's lap, or engage in sexual activity. We should be working to enil the artificial state of sexual ignorance in which children are kept—not perpetuating or defending it.

Morgan's contention that there is a natural female/male split on this issue is questionable. It seems to be based on an acceptance of traditional sex roles. To begin with, all women are not mothers. Some of us find the notion of pregnancy and child rearing repugnant. It is possible that sexual activity occurs more often between mothers and children or other women than between men and children. Women have more access to kids, and there are fewer taboos surrounding women's handling young people's bodies. Granted, given feminine conditioning the women who have erotic contact with young people probably don't think of it as sex, but this is hypocrisy, not liberation.

The assumption that only men engage in cross-generational sex with girls and boys permeates nearly every feminist argument against it. Lesbian Feminist Liberation of New York (LFL) is against any lowering of the age of consent because “the repeal of the age of consent laws presents greater dangers to young women as 97—99 percent of molested children and teenagers are girls who are raped or taken advantage of by heterosexual men.” This dubious statistic comes from Florence Rush, who is achieving some prominence in the lesbian-feminist press as an expert on child molestation. LFL's position is based in part on Rush's research, which supposedly “shows vast differences between young women's and men's feelings about their sexual experiences with adults.” Rush reports that most of the young women in her sample felt coerced into sex and carried fear, guilt, and shame about the experience. The boys tended to have mixed reactions. “Those who were approached 'man-to-man' tended to feel natural about the experience while those who were coerced like the young women felt ashamed or guilty.” LFL rather smugly denies that age-of-consent laws are a children's liberation issue.19 This position is heterosexist, homophobic, and ageist.

Why is there no discussion of the frustrating and tragic situation of young girls who know they are lesbians in grade school, junior high, or high school? As Beth Kelly has pointed out in her autobiographical article, “Speaking Out: Woman/Girl Love,”20 relationships between young girls and women do exist. Kelly's article contains a moving and beautiful description of her relationship with her great-aunt, which began when she was about eight years old. She says, “I think I can safely say, some 20 years later, that I was never exploited physically, emotionally, or intellectually...I can only empathize with all of the young women and men out there now, who are being and will be sold short by adults who will not or cannot face these issues.. .We seem to be so hung up on trying to protect ourselves and our hard-won gains that we are willing—and quick—to deny powerless others the right to be and affirm themselves sexually.. .I must reiterate that lesbians have no room for righteous indignation.”

Why are lesbians willing to cooperate with the patriarchal conspiracy to silence the truth about the intensity and diversity of female sexuality? This attempt to define pedophilia as a male issue simply alienates and estranges women whose lesbian experiences include cross-generational contact. It is one more brick in the Great Wall of Feminist Propriety that separates the ladylike lesbians from the female sex perverts. This new category of sexual deviant, created by real feminists, includes women who do S/M, women who crossdress, butches and femmes, women who are promiscuous, women who use pornography, transsexual women, women who work in the sex industry, women who have fetishes, girl-lovers, bisexual women, and just about anybody who has a clearly defined sexual preference and spends time trying to fulfill it.

Rush's research clearly demonstrates that it is consent, not gender, that makes the difference in young people's reactions to sex with adults. It also seems to indicate that the sexual orientation of the adult is an important factor. Boy-lovers seem to have more concern that the desire for sex be mutual than heterosexual men do. The study might justify a condemnation of heterosexual child rape (not pedophilia, since the sample included no consenting sexual activity between young girls and men), but it is being used to trash gay men.

LFL has no right to speak for children's liberation. That is the right of young people. It is odd that LFL's definition of liberation does not include a young person's right to control her or his own body. This implies that sex isn't so important for young people as for adults. Try telling that to a fourteen-year-old who's in love with her gym teacher.

The antiporn movement's position on boy-love doesn't differ that much from the other arguments cited above. It's just more extreme. Women Against Violence in Pornography and the Media (WAVPM) sees erotic activity between adults and young people as a part of the backlash against feminism. According to their analysis, as women become more powerful men become so intimidated that they turn to helpless little girls and pictures of helpless little girls. Thus, by definition, every pedophile is antifeminist. A 1977 issue of WAVPM's newsletter stated the following argument:

We see this proliferation of pornography, particularly violent pornography and child pornography, as part of the male backlash to the women's liberation movement. Enough women have been rejecting the traditional role of subordination to men to cause a crisis in the collective male ego.. As women have become stronger and more assertive, some men find it easier to feel powerful with young girls, including children. Hence the enormous increase in child pornography in recent years.21

This argument is tautological: Boy-love is bad because it is antifemmist. How do we know David Thorstad is antifeminist? Because he is a boy-lover. Never mind that Thorstad has worked for many years to support the goals of the women's movement (and made himself unpopular with many gay men in the process). His political identity is being defined by his sexual identity—which is like saying that all homosexuals are godless communists or that all sadomasochists are secret fascists. There is no one-to-one correlation between an individual's sex life and her or his political views.

WAVPM's theory does not explain why an adult man would prefer boys (who have more social and physical power than girls) if he is motivated simply by a fear of powerful partners. It also does not explain why women have sexual relationships with girls. Yet this theory, which might explain heterosexual pedophilia, is being used to attack gay men.

What is missing from all this sanctimonious cant is the fact that some adults and young people care so deeply about each other that they are willing to risk long prison sentences, social stigma, and violence to make contact with each other. Morgan is right: sexuality and emotions cannot be separated from each other without doing something horrible to the human spirit. But what makes her think that tenderness is not present in cross-generational relationships? The shrink establishment used to say that about lesbian relationships—that they were hopelessly neurotic because two women couldn't really love each other.

I think it is interesting that so much of the new, ostensibly feminist morality dovetails with the old, Judeo-Christian morality. But while the American left is used to dealing with its own sectarian elements, the women s movement is not. We do have a conservative wing trying to turn feminism into a campaign against pornography, boy-lovers, sadomasochists, drag queens, transsexuals, and prostitutes. It cannot be mere coincidence that so many groups of people who already have been outlawed, depersonalized, and termed sick are being turned into symbols of women's oppression. The feminist jargon that justifies this process is becoming the new language of sexual repression, the new justiiication for punishing or eradicating dissenting sexualities. It may replace the language of the New Testament and psychiatric rhetoric.

Fortunately, not every feminist falls back on conventional sexual mores when the issue of sexual variation comes up. Jane Rule has written a very sensible article, “Teaching Sexuality,” in which she argues that adults should take more responsibility for educating children about sex. She says, “When the relatively simple task of teaching table manners takes so many years, why do we assume that sexual manners need not be taught at all?” She argues:

Children are at our mercy. They are at each other's mercy as well. It makes about as much sense to leave children's sexual nourishment to their peers as it would to assume that the mud pies they make for each other are an adequate lunch.. .If we accepted sexual behavior between children and adults, we would be far more able to protect our children from abuse and exploitation than we are now. They would be free to tell us, as they can about all kinds of other experiences, what is happening to them and to have our sympathy and support instead of our mute and mistrustful terror.22

Kate Millett has also made a statement supporting youth sexuality, including children's right to express themselves sexually with adults if they choose to do so. Of course she believes that increased sexual freedom for young people must be part of a complete program for their liberation.23

It is disheartening that some boy-lovers have not taken note of the diversity of feminist thinking on this issue and assume that all women oppose cross-generational sex. This assumption has been the excuse for some boy-lovers' misogynist statements, which do nothing to further their cause with lesbians and feminists.

Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the whole debate over youth sexuality is that the opinions of young people and youth liberation groups are rarely solicited. Back in 1978, when this controversy was heating up, FPS: A Magazine of Young People's Liberation put out a special editorial statement on children and sex. It's a pity that more adult lesbians and gay men have not used FPS's position to inform their own. The editors of FPS believe that children (even very young children) are capable of making their needs and wishes known if adults will pay attention to them and that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with young people's having sex with each other or with adults. They say, “current morality more often inhibits people who would be good with children rather than the abusers.” They believe that in a sexually liberated, economically just society, prostitution would not exist. However, until that time they support the right of young people to have access to all jobs, including prostitution. They call for better working conditions, decriminalization, and an end to stigmatization of prostitution. They oppose any attempt to ban child pornography because such a ban would weaken the Bill of Rights, and they remind their readers that “taking nude photographs of children doesn't necessarily involve force or evil.” Instead of censorship, they support working to end the sexual repression they believe makes such material profitable. FPS's editors acknowledge that many other issues are crucial to the liberation of young people and regret having to defend youth liberation on the grounds of prostitution and pornography. However, they point out that these areas of young people's liberation are currently under attack, and that we have no choice but to meet that attack head on.24

Mark Moffett, a fifteen-year-old boy who has had relationships with men, was interviewed for FPS by Sylvere Lotringer. This interview provides rare insight into cross-generational sex from the point of view of the minor partner. Moffett believes that it is easier for gay boys to find adult gay men than it is for men to find boys, and he documents the fact that boys often must locate, proposition, and persuade their older partners. This is his position on age-of-consent laws:

I think the age of consent should be lowered and probably abolished. But only after coercion laws have been strengthened and there has been an adequate education of prepubescent children. As it stands now, a lot of kids would be in danger since they don't know that much about sex and sexual relationships. ..It all comes back to education. After that children can be expected and given the freedom to have sex with whomever they want to have sex with...I don't think rape is being stopped now with the age of consent laws.

The lesbian and gay movement must stand firm against attempts to isolate us from gay youth and their adult partners. We must make it costly for the state to attack any segment of our community. The police must be taught that they cannot go after drag queens, leathermen, boy-lovers, visible lesbians, or hustlers without having to deal with all of us. There is no other way to keep the witch-hunt from spreading. We are, after all, a minority. We must present a unified front. There are not enough of us to make any other strategy practical.

We also must avoid replicating oppression within our own movement. Straight society would like to deny us the right to choose our lovers, our sexuality, and our lifestyles. Gay freedom means freedom to choose, freedom to be different, freedom to live openly without fear. The outside world does not make the same fine distinction between political theory and sexual practice that we do. Conservative gays may object to drag, leather, sex with youth, hustlers, or other fringe aspects of gay culture because they aren't erotically appealing, seem shocking, or don't appear to be politically correct. But straight society recognizes only two categories—heterosexuals and queers. America does not reward conservative gays for being emotionally stable, working hard at their jobs, or having long-term relationships. It rewards them for being invisible. And America does not hesitate to use whatever vicious tactic is necessary to destroy homosexuals who get too rebellious. The irony is that fringe gays are often the most active, committed, and vocal workers in the lesbian and gay liberation movement. There is nothing more embittering than being sold out by other lesbians and gay men to a society that holds all of us in contempt.

Feminists must realize that we have little to gain by perpetuating outmoded concepts of childhood and repressive methods of child rearing. The subservience of women is built on the idea that every adult human female ought to spend most of her life caring for helpless children. We ought to be creating child-rearing methods that produce self-managing girls and boys. We also ought to be prepared to have them talk back to us. Truly autonomous girls and boys are entitled to accurate information about sex, and lots of support—but they will make their own choices.

Kids should not have to become prostitutes or porn models in order to escape their families. But if we support a campaign to do away with youth prostitution, ban kiddy porn, and stop at that, we leave the nuclear family intact and mandatory heterosexuality unchallenged. We should probably be doing just the opposite—demanding that workers in the sex industry receive the same decent, safe working conditions, wages, respect, and benefits that other workers feel entitled to. We need openly lesbian and gay teachers in the schools. We need to get good information about homosexuality into sex education programs. Foster homes should be available for lesbian and gay kids who cannot live with their parents. We have to make our movement more accessible to young people—let them know where to find it, hold our events in places and at times that will allow them to attend, listen to them, and help them instead of ignoring them and discounting them. Gay money should be allocated to provide employment for young lesbians and gay men, and our social-service agencies should be educated and pressured into giving them full assistance.

Boy-lovers and lesbians who have young lovers are the only people offering a hand to help young women and men cross the difficult terrain between straight society and the gay community. They are not child molesters. The child abusers are teachers, therapists, cops, and parents who force their stale morality onto the young people in their custody. Instead of condemning pedophiles for their involvement with lesbian and gay youth, we should be supporting them. They need us badly. Forty years in prison is a long, long time. Only a very sad society with some very sick attitudes toward sex could think such a sentence is just. Forty years for what? For experiencing sexual pleasure? When the capacity to have orgasms is present at six months of age and possibly even earlier? God help us, it's a wonder any of us manage to feel love or make love with training like that.

We were capable of smashing windows at City Hall and torching police cars when somebody we loved was taken away from us—and it was already too late. It is not too late to stop the police from seizing vulnerable members of our community and sentencing them to a living death. We should not allow one more boy-lover to go to prison. If we do, his misery is on our heads.


Notes:

1.Stambolian, George. “Creating the New Man: A Conversation with Jacqueline Livingston.” Christopher Street, Vol. 4, No. 9, May 1980, 8-17.
2.Ruffini, Gene. “Those 'Solid Citizens' Who Lust for Children.” New York Post, November 6. 1979.
3.“The Men Behind the Kidporn Industry.” San Francisco Examiner, February 17, 1980.
4.Sward, Susan. “A Sordid Story of Life on the Street.” San Francisco Chronicle, August 18, 1980, 6.
5.Thorstad. David. Interview by Guy Hocquenghem in Semiotext(e) Special Large Type Series: Loving Boys, Summer 1980, 30.
6.Mitzel, John. “Clown Nabbed in NY on Kid Porn Charge.” Gay Sunshine News, July 5, 1980. Martin Locker, New York's prohibited mail specialist, arrested a priest who is also a boy-lover by entrapping him through Fetish Times and other sex ads. The priest led Locker to Ronald Drew, a teacher. Since his arrest, the education commissioner has tried to take away Drew's pension. Locker also entrapped Marvin Matthow, who did children's television programs as “Baldy the Clown. Undercover police entrapped Matthow by offering him money to procure models for a film.
Pan: A Magazine About Boy-Love. Vol. 1, No. 3. November 1979, 6. Officers of the Pedophile Information Exchange (PIE) were arrested in London and charged with a conspiracy to corrupt the public morals. The PIE newsletter is not pornographic and repeatedly warned readers against committing any illegal act. Nevertheless, police apparently went after PIE simply because its newsletter put boy-lovers in touch with one another. The charge carries a potential life sentence, and the “conspiracy” need not even be for an illegal purpose.
Pan, Vol. 1, No. 4, February 1980, 9. It's hard to sympathize with some of the people who get caught by these laws. Pennsylvania Republican State Representative David S. Hayes protested when Governor Dick Thornburgh proclaimed a Gay Pride Week. On December 17, 1979, he was arrested and charged with anal and oral intercourse with a seventeen-year-old boy.
Pan, Vol. 1. No. 3, November 1979, 4. Anti-boy-love sentiment does more than get people arrested. It can get them killed. In July of 1979, Edgar Quann was reportedly beaten to death by members of a small New York Muslim sect for having sex with the son of a church member.
7.Richard Peluso, one of the Boston/Boise defendants, is still in prison because he was diagnosed as a sexually dangerous person. Most of the other defendants are either out on probation or had their charges dropped.
8.Mitzel, John. “Man Sentenced to Total of 39 Years on Charges of Child Pornography, Rape.” Gay Cotnniunity News, February 9, 1980, 3, 8-9.
9.Homosexual Information Center News Release, November 20, 1976.
10.Penn, Stanley. “Martin Locker is a 'Prohibited Mail Specialist.'” Wall Street Journal, January 23, 1980, 48. Locker is fortunately prohibited from opening first-class mail within the United States.
11.“The Battle-Line: Los Angeles Cop Lloyd Martin.” Pan: A Magazine About Boy-Love, Vol. 1. No. 5, May 1980, 28. A Pan correspondent in Sydney, Australia, reported that the police there had received a list of names and addresses of gay men from the FBI and had been asked if they had received any complaints about unsolicited child pornography. The FBI also stated that they were willing to fly such a person to the U.S. to testify, according to this article. Pan states that Sydney newspapers reported that it was Lloyd Martin who gave George Jacobs's list to Australian police.
12.Pan, Vol. 1, No. 5, May 1980, 8-9.
13.Gay Community News, Vol. 7, No. 49,July 5, 1980, 1.
14.Shehadi, Philip. 'Adult/Youth Relationships Discussed at NYC Forum.” Gay Community News, July 5, 1980, 7.
15.White, Edmund. States of Desire. New York: E.P.Dutton, 1980. 320.
16.Hudson, John Paul. “The Gay Almanac: The Boston Boise Affair and the Censorship of Sexual Minorities.” Gaysweek, March 6, 1978.
17.Clark. Jill. “Interview With Robin Morgan.” Gay Community News, January 20, 1979, 11-12.
18.ibid.
19.Shapiro, Lynne. “Women Loving Women Denounce Men 'Loving' Boys.” Lesbian Tide, September/October 1979, Vol. 9, No. 2, 14.
20.Kelly, Beth. “Speaking Out on 'Women/Girl Love'—or, Lesbians Do 'Do It'.” Gay Community News, March 3,1979, p 5.
21.Lederer, Laura, and Diana Russell. “Questions We Get Asked Most Often.” WAVPM Newspage, November 1977, 3.
22.Rule, Jane. “Teaching Sexuality.” The Body Politic, June 1979, 29.
23.Millett, Kate. Semiotext(e) Special Large Type Series: Loving Boys, Summer 1980, 44.
24.“A View from the Staff: Children and Sex.” FPS: A Magazine of Young People's Liberation, No. 60, April-June 1978. 13-16.

[RoosterDance]

Interview: Irina Ionesco
Reprinted from black+white photography magazine


Irina Ionesco is (in)famous for her photographs of women. Young women, among them her own preadolescent daughter Eva, who inhabit an isolated closed space, shut off from the external (masculine) world. An unidentified but symbolically loaded place that is once harem, convent, brothel and coven. Or, better still, the semi-sacred space of the bourgeois lady's boudoir, where no sign of time or context is permitted to infringe. In this way, each of Ionesco's women becomes an eternally languid Alice, skipping seductively around the razor-sharp looking glass' edge.

Fond of quoting Baudelaire, Romanian-born Ionesco started out as a snake-charming contortionist, intoning her mantra that "in art, only the bizarre is beautiful", and setting about proving her point. She soon moved to the theatre, and from the theatre to painting until one day in 1968, her then boyfriend gave her a camera. "It was there," shrugs an ingenious Ionesco, "so I began to use it." But if her craft became photography, her influences remained theatrical and, at base, literary. Baudelaire's ethereal 'Fleurs du Mal' find temporary transgressive flesh in Ionesco's girls.

The aphorism of Georges Bataille, to whom she constructed various homages, that "Eroticism is the approbation of life right up until the point of death", finds no better affirmation than in the work of Ionesco. But perhaps Marguerite Duras best articulates Ionesco's demarche. Like Duras, Ionesco delights in the deferral of narrative, of the smothering of evidence in a blanket of ambivalent signs: for Duras all cities are the same, all seas the one sea that surrounds them; time does not exist. All that remains for both women is the theatre. Theatre, in the precise sense of a closed operating 'theatre' — and it's Ionesco adroit manipulation of the artificial theatrics of the mise en scene that has informed her work from the start.

black+white: What is photography to you?

Irina Ionesco: Photography, for me, is an essentially poetic element by making very stylised images because I was used to the theatre: to the stage, the lighting, the mystery — all those elements that can be created with only a thread of light. These early images were created in one single blow, they were already prepared, if you like.

What's striking is the closeness of the space, the blackness of the interiors which are not illuminating — or illuminated by — the women.

I have always worked in fairly closed spaces, mostly personal spaces, for both economic and aesthetic reasons. Either way, I didn't want to work in immense studios. By working in a personal space, I take a place that is part of my life and in it I create another life.

The objects that you use to create this 'other life' are usually your own. Does this amount to a kind of fetishism?

Most of the things in the photographs are personal objects, but it's not really a question of fetishism. For me, it's more like acting out in front of the mirror. A search. Almost something of an analysis. As for the objects, they could almost be sacred. They are like totems, or antique statuaries. The mise en scene of women who are half-animal is a kind of period pornography. One can discern all kinds of objects which are felt to be effectively symbolic, magic, for protection or reflection. I use such objects in order to enter into the spirit.

This idea of mirror is interesting...

I have always been attracted by the idea of crossing through the mirror, by reaching the other side of reason. Madness is something that interests me very much — les extravagances — and the more extravagant madnesses have been highlighted by the psychoanalysts.

Your 'Baby Jane' project was, fundamentally, about the woman in the little girl and vice versa. Tell me about Eva.

Eva is now 29 years old (in 1995). I photographed her up until the time she was 13, after that it was finished. She posed for me like that from time to time, but it was more for her than for me.

Yet people still question the use of your own daughter?

Yes. I used her because I loved her, I found her beautiful, like a doll, so I did it for that reason. But I have never asked myself why I did it. Obviously, people have asked many questions, but me? Never.

Were people disturbed by the eroticism of a young girl?

Yes, but that is just like in the theatre. It's of a theatrical dimension. You know, my childhood was very emancipated, and so was my daughter's. My mother was a trapezist who led an artistic life, surrounded by people who talked about all sorts of things — nothing villainous — such as literature and films. One can't deny the past; it's that which influences the person, and makes us evolve, no? I haven't committed a moral sin by putting my daughter in front of a lens in stockings and suspenders! It's true that these images were fairly widely protested against and sometimes caused a lot of drama, but then all creation is open to this kind of attack. But strangely we don't make the same moral demands of painting — Balthus used his little niece in erotic poses and nobody asked him to account for it because it was a painting. But photography is widely seen as someone's reality.

Why do you focus so much on women in your work?

I have photographed men from time to time, but it's true that for the most part my photographs involve women. I've never asked myself why. It may be, simply, that what I have to say is more prettily said on women than it is on men. I don't think you can put a men in those kinds of contexts. If you are carrying out such a search, it's something that a woman lives. It's a mystery, but it's also the reality of women: her jewellery, her stockings, her feathers — her ornamentation, and by extension, herself.

Are they 'erotic' photographs?

I don't know. Why not? Everything is erotic, no? This chair is erotic, if you like. Eroticism is life. It 's one feeling of human existence. A desire. My photographs are a part of the human world, so doubtless they are erotic.

Why is Bataille important to you?

I like him first and foremost because he so vigorously contested religion even though he was once religious himself, and, secondly, because of the liberty of his language. His words were obscene, yet they weren't obscene because they were so desperate. Bataille was a genius. He said things that nobody had said during an epoch when it was very difficult to hear such things. Nowadays, he isn't demode, but perhaps we have gone even further and he begins to be forgotten. But he continues to exists.