Elites Pushing Acceptance of Pedophilia

by **proldic** » Sun Aug 07, 2005 7:22 pm

Denver Post Sunday, August 07, 2005: "Dangerous ground, dangerous art With a bold attitude and a little self-doubt, indie filmmakers are exploring kids, adults and sex" By Lisa Kennedy Post Film Critic ...In the world of real bodies, the proximity of dangerous adults to children is more harrowing. The border between adult desire and kid sexuality is territory trawled by pedophiles. Just consult the headlines. Yet over the past year a growing number of movies - comedies and dramas alike - have taken a look at kids, adults and sex in startling ways. While most do it in...nuanced...ways, few of these films end with the standard lessons that sexual predators are purely evil and their prey purely innocent. That news will strike some as disconcerting if not downright unacceptable. But filmmakers are creating discomfort zones, and they are asking viewers to do some fresh thinking. Even when focusing on such acts as abuse, they are bent on exploring these issues in ways intended to make us squirm with understanding rather than rise to judgment. "The Woodsman," released in late 2004, tried to extend our sympathies to the devil, the child molester. The dark high school satire "Pretty Persuasion" (slated for Aug. 26) features a 15-year-old who gets two friends to accuse a smarmy teacher of molesting them. Pedro Almodóvar's recent "Bad Education" gives us a noirish take on the repercussions of a priest's abuse of a schoolboy. Gregg Araki's "Mysterious Skin" relies on the unreliable but moving recollections of two young men struggling with childhood sexual abuse... At this year's Sundance Film Festival a number of films touched on the subject. Along with "Pretty Persuasion" and "Mysterious Skin," audiences saw "Me and You and Everyone We Know," Kevin Bacon's "Loverboy," Rebecca Miller's "The Ballad of Jack & Rose," "Steal Me," as well as documentaries "Twist of Faith" and "The Education of Shelby Knox." It's easy to believe that this sort of trend, coming as it does mostly from indie filmmakers and destined for art houses, is out ahead of the rest of the culture, where notions about children and sex are firmly fixed. But that's a misperception... On one side are those never-ending headlines about the Catholic Church sex-abuse scandal. The Amber Alerts and heart-rending stories about repeat offenders and the children they destroy. On the other are anecdotes about high school girls wearing different-colored bracelets to signal what sort of sexual act they're willing to perform, and the notion that some kids believe, like a certain former president, that oral sex isn't sex... ...Many of these filmmakers came of age after the sexual revolution. A number of them are women or gay. A different frame of reference...allow these artists to ask different questions... In "Me and You and Everyone We Know," 7-year-old Robby and his 14-year-old brother Peter sit in front of a computer monitor, composing a sexual missive to a stranger... ...Later, when Robby figures out how to cut and paste, he conducts his own chat with the anonymous stranger. It sounds more horrifying than it is. Which doesn't mean the Sundance audience simply absorbed the scene. There's a reason it's called hysterical laughter... "I'm specifically interested in how to create a vocabulary about children's sexuality. That it exists at all, and that it exists in an adult world," said Miranda July, whose "Me and You and Everyone We Know" depicts the sexual curiosity of children... "There are going to be points of contact. That's just a fact. That it's not inherently bad. In reality, the way that the two worlds interact are often very, very subtle, almost inarticulatable."... ..."This too is something that exists in the world, and yet there's really only one way to talk about it: It's terrifying, and it ends badly. Someone has to recover. Someone has to be blamed. "It seems like there must be all different ways that this exists, some of them even OK. And quite natural. And it seems if you leave that conversation to pedophiles, that's where perversion comes from."... Black-and-white ideas that all victims share a same tragic fate become shaded with gray...In the film two young men respond in different ways to their molestations. Brian believes he was abducted by aliens. Neil calls the betrayal love... ...With the Catholic Church (the issue of child sexual abuse) is out there but in this very kind of superficial way. It's like a TV movie cliché. 'Oh I was abused as a child,' then you have the violins start to play, and you have a flashback. "It's become this cheesy cliché in our culture and your response to it is this automatic pity,"... If there were a disclaimer at the end of these edgy movies, it might read: No Children Were Harmed in the Making of This Movie. Now if there was something to quell the roil we feel about how children fare in the real world. Film critic Lisa Kennedy can be reached at 303-820-1567 or lkennedy@denverpost.com.

by **enkidu** » Sun Aug 07, 2005 7:38 pm

proldic, have you read any of Lloyd deMause's work? See www.psychohistory.com

by **proldic** » Sun Aug 07, 2005 7:38 pm

By Robert Stacy McCain THE WASHINGTON TIMES A new book that says child molesters are not a major peril to children is part of a larger movement within academia to promote "free sexual expression of children." The movement to legitimize sex between adults and children is "gathering steam," warns Stephanie Dallam, researcher for the Leadership Council for Mental Health, Justice and the Media in Philadelphia, an organization that deals with prevention and treatment of child abuse. "Some people view children as the next sexual frontier," Ms. Dallam says. Feminist writer Judith Levine's book "Not Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Kids from Sex" has been condemned by those who say she excuses sexual abuse of children — a charge she strongly denies. Ms. Levine says she was "misunderstood" after a news article last month quoted her saying a boy's sexual experience with a priest "conceivably" could be positive. "Do I advocate priests having sex with their child parishioners? No, absolutely no," she said in a telephone interview. However, she said, "The research shows us that in some minority of cases, young — even quite young — people can have a positive [sexual] experience with an adult. That's what the research shows." Featuring a foreword by Clinton administration Surgeon General Dr. Joycelyn Elders, Ms. Levine's book endorses a Dutch law, passed in 1990, that effectively lowered the age of consent to 12. Ms. Levine cites research about "happy consensual sex among kids under 12," and writes: "America's drive to protect kids from sex is protecting them from nothing. Instead, often it is harming them." The book has sparked a political backlash against her publisher, the University of Minnesota Press. he speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives condemned the book and called for the university to halt its publication. Instead, the university press last week ordered a second printing of 10,000 copies after media attention helped drive Ms. Levine's book as high as No. 26 on the Amazon.com best-seller list. But researchers and activists say the book is only the most recent in a series of academic arguments for "consensual" sex involving children: • In 2000, the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco published an article, "Sexual Rights of Children," saying there is "considerable evidence" that there is no "inherent harm in sexual expression in childhood." • San Francisco State University professor Gilbert Herdt, co-author of the 1996 book "Children of Horizons: How Gay and Lesbian Teens Are Leading a New Way Out of the Closet," said in an interview with the Dutch pedophilia journal Paidika that "the category 'child' is a rhetorical device for inflaming what is really an irrational set of attitudes" against sex with children. • John Money, professor emeritus of psychology at Johns Hopkins University, gave an interview to Paidika about "genuinely, totally mutual" sex between boys and men. In the introduction to a Dutch professor's 1987 book called, "Boys on their Contacts with Men: A Study of Sexually Expressed Friendships," Mr. Money wrote that opponents of pedophilia are motivated by "self-imposed, moralistic ignorance." • Harris Mirkin, a professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, published a 1999 article in the Journal of Homosexuality complaining that boys who have sex with men "are never considered willing participants, even if they are hustlers." He has also written that "children are the last bastion of the old sexual morality." • A 1998 "meta-analytic" study in an American Psychological Association (APA) journal argued, among other things, that "value-neutral" language such as "adult-child sex" should be used to describe child molestation if it was a "willing encounter." Radio host Laura Schlessinger led a campaign against that study by Temple University psychology professor Bruce Rind and two other academics. Congress eventually voted unanimously to condemn the Rind study — which has already been used as evidence to defend accused child molesters in at least three court cases. Ms. Levine's book favorably cites the Rind study and, in a telephone interview, she defended the study as "methodologically meticulous." But Baltimore psychologist Joy Silberg, whose clinical practice involves treating child-abuse victims, says the study is "horribly flawed." "I can't call it science," she said. One co-author of the 1998 study was Robert Bauserman, now employed by the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. As early as 1989, Mr. Bauserman had written about "man-boy sexual relationships" in Paidika. He also co-authored a 1993 article with Mr. Rind about "adult-nonadult sex." Academic defenses of sex between adults and children are not new. Indiana University professor Alfred Kinsey claimed in his famous 1948 and 1952 reports on human sexuality that "children are sexual from birth" and included charts of "data" gathered by pedophiles about the children they molested. As early as 1977, author Judith A. Reisman says she learned of the existence of an "international academic pedophile movement" influenced by Kinsey's teachings. Ms. Silberg, the Baltimore psychologist, agrees that the "whole academic movement" to legitimize sex with children "is growing." Many academics defended the 1998 Rind study, saying its authors were victims of a "McCarthyesque witch hunt," and a number of groups, including the American Library Association, issued a statement saying they "strongly support" the University of Minnesota Press for its "courageous" decision to publish the Levine book. Such reactions show that "the efforts of people who would like to legitimize relationships between adults and children are actually being successful," Ms. Silberg said. Critics say that pro-pedophilia activism cannot be dismissed as an irrelevant fringe movement, because it has real-life consequences. One connection between advocacy and action was revealed last week when court documents showed that a Catholic priest accused of repeatedly raping a boy was present at the founding of the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA). At a 1979 conference in Boston, documents show that the Rev. Paul Shanley claimed that a child had been "helped by a boy-lover" who had sex with him. Intellectual defenses of pedophila are "a huge concern" because they can function as "a green light" to would-be child molesters, says Claire Reeves, president and founder of Mothers Against Sexual Abuse (MASA). "Adults who might have a propensity to hurt a child might say, 'See, it's not harmful, these people are Ph.D.s, they must know,'" Mrs. Reeves said, adding that she began warning about the pedophilia movement in 1995. "I started saying seven years ago that there was a movement to make pedophilia an alternative lifestyle, and my colleagues looked at me like I was crazy," said Mrs. Reeves, who founded MASA after discovering that a relative had been sexually abused. "Here we are seven years later and that is exactly what's happening."

by **mother** » Sun Aug 07, 2005 8:54 pm

I've encountered the type of people mentioned in these articles for years. They still make me puke. They are a Near Occaision of Sin for me, given the temptation to...deal out justice. The temptation to hate. Some of them have a very seductive talent, like Vladimir Nabokov. Others, like the friend of Crowley "sexologist" Alfred Kinsey used hundreds of children in sex acts, according to the author of Blood on the Altar Craig Heimbichner, had no talent save that of deluding many, many people. I have only met Mr. Heimbichner once, but in my opinion he's a genuine truth-seeker. At least two of my adopted children have been severely misused to satisfy the demonic lust of adults. You don't even want to know the types of behavior they need to use in order to stay safe from adults, what they need to do to show us how very broken and filthy they feel. Hell is real, and waiting for those sophisticated, savvy, smart movie makers and equally hip film critics, who are tools of the occult elite, who will be chewed up and vomited back up when they are no longer useful.

by **robertdreed** » Sun Aug 07, 2005 9:04 pm

I support the right to discuss the subject. That means MY viewpoint, too. I'm anthropologically trained, but I haven't thrown all of my "traditional values" out the window. I'm an adherent to "cultural relativism." Not "cultural egalitarianism." Don't give me any of that "It's normal practice among the tribes in New Guinea..."

by **wintler** » Sun Aug 07, 2005 9:51 pm

How do folks see sex or erotic play between children? I agree with W.Reich that it is to some extent natural and its suppression contributes to dysfunction or imbalance. I'm meaning sexual play among kids close in age, whatever their gender, with no adult involvement what so ever (except perhaps in providing some language to talk about it and ensuring safety of setting). Problem is how to quarantine that from predatory &/or self deceiving adults, for which i have no new solution. Adult-child sexual relations cannot, IMHO, be other than exploitative and damaging, it must remain illegal and be more heavily punished, AND stronger interventions be permitted (such as forced treatment of paedophiles).

by **FourthBase** » Mon Aug 08, 2005 2:00 am

Impermeable difference between child-child sexuality and adults-raping-children. Children can be harmed by not acknowledging their capacity for sexual feelings. But of course, one of the worst harms is being exploited by predator adults. There may be a fraction of victimized children who did not experience victimization and indeed gained something somehow. That should in no way distract anyone from fighting the war against adults who prey on children.

by **maggrwaggr** » Mon Aug 08, 2005 3:14 am

No, indie filmmakers are not "elites". They are people who want to make films and want to get noticed, and to get buzz at film festivals about their films. So they want to make something edgy, something controversial. What subjects are left? Almost none. OH YEAH! Child sex. That is why you are seeing these films. No other reason. These people WANT to be elites, they are not elites at this time. The catholic church? Well that's a whole nuther ball of beans.

by **robertdreed** » Mon Aug 08, 2005 4:04 am

I agree that the indie filmmakers aren't "elites." But academics and critics fit that bill, in a sense.

by **jenz** » Mon Aug 08, 2005 5:51 am

independent film makers may not qualify as "elite", though undoubtedly have some influence, but the article from Denver Post gives the oxygen of publicity, once again, to the promotion of the myth that children are sexual in the sense that adults in their inter adult relationships understand the term. As for the idea that children can get something positive from being abused by an adult, there has been a fair bit of evidence that adult paedophiles, especially males, who initially claim to have enjoyed that experience themselves as children, later, when the defenses are down, admit to the feelings of humiliation which were engendered. the loss of power which the child feels is concealed by the adult he becomes, in the pretence that this experience was good. there has also been work on the process by which children, who know they will be abused, as it were invite the abuse, to bring it into their control to at least the degree of knowing when it will happen. this adds to their feelings of guilt and implication, which have to be worked through if/when they are to begin to recover. ( no adult present promoting paedophile relations, no paedophilia. the child is not responsible. sorry to state the obvious, but I don't want any misunderstanding of this point to creep in). this item concerns me, not just for the average safe adult in our society, who must worry about his children, but also for the effect on people who are trying to recover from abuse. having just managed to face the fact of abusive past, now they are being told - abusive no, hell you should have enjoyed it. exactly what abusers regularly tell the children they subject to even the most frightful and appallingly sadistic abuse. there has been a sustained attack on that last bastion of freedom and independence, the human family, for many years. separating children from their birthright to a safe, undemandingly loving space in which to develop at their own individual pace, and form an understanding of human relationships. Its evil, in whatever guise its dressed.

by **ZeroHaven** » Mon Aug 08, 2005 11:40 am

Not having access to see those movies, I can only speculate that the intentions would be the same as mine. Bringing some real reality to light. I spout my life again: There is a big difference between active molestation and willing participation. I quite clearly remember my days as a 10 to 15 year old.. and I remember my own and my friends' attitudes. The child-child activity began as early as fourth grade, when many of my peers began to hit puberty. By 7th grade there were plenty of kids who no longer looked nor acted like children, and were actively pursuing relationships wherever possible. By the age of 12, my best friend at the time became pregnant with the child of a 25 year old. Completely willingly, and somewhat forcefully. I'll spare you the details, other than to mention that she had no history of abuse and knew fully well the responsibilities involved. (She had two more children later and last I heard was living well.) I remember how ludicrous the age-of-consent laws seemed when viewing a 16 year old dating a 20 year old.. popular opinion was very simply 'these laws are full of crap'. In high school (before the WWWeb) there were couples aplenty that consisted of people dating someone up to 15 years older. It was only viewed as a problem by the 'concerned adults' who believed it to be wrong. My point is, intentional 'molestation' of an unwilling individual is downright wrong no matter the age of the participants. It's called rape. I cannot find the problem with willing participants who understand the consequences of a consentual act. I like the quote in the review: "It seems like there must be all different ways that this exists, some of them even OK. And quite natural. And it seems if you leave that conversation to pedophiles, that's where perversion comes from." It does exist in all different ways, and there are true pedophiles that deserve to be penalized. On the other hand, who should get penalized when the 14 year old gets the 30 year old drunk/stoned/etc and rapes them? Yes, it happens. Btw, green means you're willing to try anything. <img src="http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a239/ZeroHaven/tinhat.gif"/>

by **robertdreed** » Mon Aug 08, 2005 12:19 pm

ZH, I'm interested in the location and class stratum of the social milieu of your teenage years.... East Coast? West Coast? In between? City, suburb, small town, rural? Etc.

by **enkidu** » Mon Aug 08, 2005 12:20 pm

Laws pertaining to Age of Consent are kinda boxy and clumsy, I was thirteen when I lost my virginity (to an older female) and I was also sexually molested by an older male ("friend of the family") in the same year--which I always felt effectively configured my sexuality for good and all--and when I was eighteen, a "legal" adult, I was dating a fifteen-year-old girl, with every intention of marrying her until she dumped me, but her father could have, I suppose, had me thrown in jail for loving his daughter, if he wanted to. But as unwieldy as it is I support having that mechanism in place, legal authority to say to a minor, "You are legally incapable of Consent," precisely because it's one of the few laws protecting children from sexual predators that we have.

by **professorpan** » Mon Aug 08, 2005 12:26 pm

I also find the term "elites" to be problematic. Artists will always probe the boundaries of human behavior. Addressing something within an artistic framework does not mean the artist condones the behavior. Someone mentioned "Lolita," which is a fantastic novel, not a how-to manual for pedophiliacs. Art allows us to look at subjects that are taboo or unsettling, and to understand them more fully.

by **mother** » Mon Aug 08, 2005 3:25 pm

I spent my early years around my parent's art gallery, one which cultivated at least 2 world-respected artists. One a blues musician, and another a powerful feminist/Green/painter. I studied art for years, painted, showed and sold pretty much work. I've also been a lifelong bibliophile. I am still passionate about learning new things, although my own stupidity has led me into misfortune any number of times, and it threatens to undermine me at any given minute. There are as many rationalisations for the sexual use of children as there are paedophiles. With my lifelong involvement in art I can state that ANYTHING whatsoever can be declared to be art. No matter how beautifully one expresses their sympathy for the use of children sexually, it is still absolutely evil. The elites control most of what the average guy sees for entertainment. If "they" did not want paedophilia to become commonplace most everybody trying to pass it off as "art" would be ignored. It certainly would never be a career boost in any meaningful manner for an aspiring artist. It's the really elite who dictate art and culture, at any given point in history, depending on who who's running things. How well aware I am of the desperate attempts to gain artistic recognition by "pushing the boundaries" Who owns all the most valuable works of art? People like you and I? Next time you visit a museum, check out who donated their collection. And to whomever it was who admires W. Reich(sp) I assume the guy who invented the Orgone therapy materials, and who claims sex and kids is natural, I'm going to have to say that I know little boys have little legs which naturally love running. They'll run right in front of cars. They appear to have a natural curiosity about everything. Just because it's natural for kids to be interested in life is still no excuse for any child to be robbed of his innocence. Hey, I know a really cool woman who was raped and she swears it didn't impact her life badly...and I certainly cannot see anything wrong with her. So anything is possible. But the tools of the occult elite, writing high-brow critiques which serve to "mainstream" paedophilia, still make me puke. No, Lolita is not a how-to manual for paedophiles. I read it when I was 10 1/2 and found it to be a how-to manual for nymphettes. Later on, I found the insights to have greatly enhanced my popularity among young men. Ain't nobody better mess with any of my babies, 'cause they're gonna wish they hadn't. Mothers have a natural instinct for fierce and deadly protection of their young.

Elites Pushing Acceptance of Pedophilia

Elites Pushing Acceptance of Pedophilia

Lloyd deMause

Children: The Next Sexual Frontier

tools of the occult elite

Free expression and academia

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indie filmmakers are "elites?"

Re: indie filmmakers are "elites?"

elites

More perspective

Re: More perspective

Consent

Re: More perspective

occult elites

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