On Pedophilia

Pedo-erotic urges exist in everyone to varying degrees, often subconscious or not strong enough to elicit our attention, but existing nonetheless. It's pretty clear there may even be an evolutionary basis for pedophilia--that men have it in abundance because they need to be attracted to "younger" females who are more fertile for child-rearing--and that we've understood this for a long time without calling it what it is. It's highly likely that if women have a pedophilia strain in them, it's in regards to child-rearing itself. And since there is very little outward distinction in sex physicality between boys and girls, pedophilia may even express itself in contrast to the traditional Kinsey scale of sexual orientation. In any case, we need not feel dirty for this underlying desire so long as we understand the difference between attraction and self control.

Self control may not be something our modern society expects from us as it constantly seeks to cripple our sexual resolve for profit, but it is important for all of us to maintain, pedophile or not. Pedophilia is as human as anything else, for better or for worse, so we need to understand that people only become child molesters when they break the law, regardless of whether they were pedophiles or not. After all, any child who has ever had a crush or an infatuation or attraction to another child below the legal limit is a "pedophile" too, perhaps not clinically, but socially. And that goes for everyone, of every sexuality.

Much of what we call pedophilia in a "clinical" sense though might simply be an untimely pairing of biological directives and modern cultural norms. In the modern world, artificial age limitations have no relation to the biological time clocks we used to observe, when puberty was the final hurdle for procreation. Times may have changed, but kids are still biologically capable of reproducing after puberty. It's a fact of nature, no matter how inconvenient it may be to our modern sensibilities. Wait a while and our sensibilities may change again.

But while the scathing vitriol regarding pedophilia is allowed to rage unmitigated, how rational are the sensibilities we actually defend? That old-time "final hurdle" of sexual cognizance is creeping toward the middle-aged and upwards, where people often have to resort to costly medications to even achieve arousal. And as if to compensate, we add further insult to nature by denying even the existence of child and adolescent sexuality when it is biologically in its prime. Youth can't participate legally because we keep them from knowing the rules socially, so this creates an ecological situation perfect for child sexual exploitation to thrive.

It's simply unnatural to bear children as relatively late in life as we do, but we do it because that time period tends to be more stable and secure for child-rearing in our middle-class culture. It's also simply unnatural to deny all children and adolescents their sexual cognizance, but we do it because we want to maintain their ignorance and prolong their potential victimization, which serves us as adults. We subjugate youth by forcing their abstinence and dehumanize them by re-classing their biological drives as dangerous promiscuity, and we do it because we want to punish the rapists among us--the adults. And since "no punishment is enough" for the adults who commit these crimes, the only ones who end up adequately paying the price for the adult evils are the children themselves, once they too step over the line with other kids. There are just as many 5 year old sex offenders as there are 55 year old sex offenders*. There is no distinction.

And our sentiments remain intact, and so does every child's ignorance. Rape and biology go together better than rape and morality, and we let morality dictate what is biological now. We seem to think that because the worst among us might rape children, all children must be subject to forcible abstinence under penalty of law. So once suppressed in our youth, our immoral biology then continues to ride under the surface of our so-called "civilized" appetites. I'd even take it a step further and say that so much of what we consider to be female sexual objectification is actually very childish in appearance. The modern idealized female form, with its emphasis on smooth skin, thin limbs, and wide eyes, is an attempt to transplant the features of a child into those of a legally and culturally acceptable adult.

And as to the sexual preference for youth and its appropriateness by itself (outside its connection to molestation), where do those standards originate anyways? The same society that actively encourages our sexual attraction to automobiles, food, alcohol, and any object that can be bought and sold, is then going to tell us what sexual attractions are "unnatural?" Just compare one unnatural urge with another one. Our culture is still youth-based, otherwise our economy would hinge on the attractiveness of saggy, middle-aged adults. Even as much as the middle-aged, middle-class adults would like to think this is the case, it is not.

How many times in suggestive advertising have you seen a woman with batted eyes and a finger to her lips in that "opps, silly me" stance? Is that not childish in appearance  Is that not what Nabokov might have called, the "nymphet" amok in the eye? In general, the whole "cute kid" gimmick in films and advertising speaks to these underlying desires en mass. "Cute" and "sexy" stimulate the same pleasure centers of the brain biochemically, as do psychoactive substances and food. The whole practice of schoolmasters flogging kids on the ass was a highly sexually charged release of the adult's pent up aggression, and many still swear by it, so is that not clinical pleasure seeking? Afterall, is not rape more concerned with conquest than sexuality? Do typical adults not dream of child conquest as they go about their business with children in tow?

Of course they do, they just don't realize that it is a desire one and the same with that of child molesters--the only difference being that child molesters actually do what the typical adult only dreams of doing. One doesn't have to be a pedophile to harm children or to dream of doing it, but anyone who actually does harm a child sexually is automatically branded one. Rape is an atrocity no matter where it crops up and who the victim or perpetrator is or what their sexuality is, but rape can and does exist contrary to sexuality, and outside of pedophilia people understand this. Pedophilia is an attraction, rape is a loss of self control. Child molestation exists whether pedophilia does or not, and likewise. Child molestation is solely a product of  a weak resolve, and still pedophilia exists whether or not self control is present.

This is also true when speaking about the popular assumption of a pedophile's weak self control, and where that expectation actually originates. Heterosexuals have the luxury of being able to express their sexuality freely and openly. They grow accustomed to doing it and assume it is the same for everyone, but it isn't. They make the conclusion that repressed sexual feelings will inevitably lead to harmful consequences, but it isn't necessarily so. Fringe sexualities with a sound mind actually have to learn self control in more constant, realistic terms, so they may actually have a higher degree of it than their "normal" peers, who are accustomed to building erections at the sight of beer bottles and automobiles. If most straight men don't rape feminine-shaped cars or curvy bottles, then it's possible even fewer "pedophiles" rape children.

Those who do though, are deserving of the worst.

* United States Bureau of Justice Statistics. (2000). Sexual Assault of Young Children as Reported to Law Enforcement. 8 (Figure 6). Retrieved July 19, 2012.

Predator Panic

Our modern culture is fixated on child molestation, predation, kidnapping, and pedophilia. It is obsessed with the concept of children getting picked off and preyed upon, and there is no low the media won't stoop to, no far-fetched connection they won't try to harmonize with, and no half-baked conclusion they won't try to draw, in order to connect child molestation to every depiction or reference to children and childhood in popular culture, whether real or fake. Children in fiction as well as life seem to exist solely to perpetuate the narrative of "predation and rescue," or "child in distress," if only to soothe the guilty adult conscience for the state of society, but the repetition of this narrative has its unforeseen consequences.

Children and youth still have no standing or legitimacy for themselves under the predation narrative, because it exists for the benefit of adults. Such thoughts do not flow from the spring of respect or dignity, and only produce the tainted waters of iniquity and conceit. It may even get to the point where we can't bring children to mind without conjuring the imagery of abduction and molestation, abuse and dismemberment. Such a schema is not child-centric, or even child concerned, since it only exists for the adult's purposes. Predator panic is a function of selfishness. It soothes the adult mind and guilt. It's about justifying the decadence of adult indulgence and maintaining adult control of youth. Why do you think vigilantes latch onto it with such zealotry and demagoguery? Selfishness is their raison d'etre. Why do you think victimology is such a profitable market? It is a sickness, and many have already fallen prey to it. But I suspect its time is slipping away, and soon the tide may turn and we may see a generation more immune to the sickly fascinations that prey upon the mental defects of this current one.

This molestation fixation is neither healthy, nor does it benefit children anything. In fact, it may even be one causal factor influencing our reactions toward minor misconduct, particularly toward minor sexual expression, formed in zealotry and expressed with draconian simplicity. Easing the worried mind, troubled by the constant thought of destruction, becomes the highest priority when all we are lead to believe is that destruction is everywhere. The moment we lose sight of reality, we lose a hold of our future. And if children are our so-called future, inhabiting reality, you'd think it would behoove us to keep our minds firmly rooted, rather than let them drift to fantasize the inevitable destruction of children and childhood at every turn of the page, every flip of the channel, and every thought in the head. Some are rooted well, still others are out to sea.

In any case, fixation on child endangerment by its ceaseless repetition in our thoughts and culture does nothing to stem the tide on actual child abuse, which has no total abatement, nor does it actually inform us of the reality of it. Instead, this fixation only contributes toward the increasing infantilization and marginalization of all young people by the paranoid and restless adult psyche. Teachers may have their own "teacher's pet" without gaining the assumption of pedophilia. Coaches may still pat their players on the back without gaining the same assumption about their motivations for doing such. Boys may still be allowed to perform in Catholic church choirs, and sign up for Boy Scouts without the need for viewer-hungry tabloid journalists to assume potential child abuse connections between everyone involved. Girls may be allowed male tutors or mentors without the need for bureaucratic entanglements -for if we were to suspect all men of being pedophiles when it comes to working with girls, we may as well outlaw every daughter's father, every niece's uncle, or every sister's older brother as well.

When we have broken up enough families though, disallowed enough youth from community outreach organizations, and severed all bonds between adult and child in society, do you think our fearful minds will finally be at ease, even then? Do you think that children will be safe, even then? It takes a perverse mind, a sick mind, to look upon that which has no sexual or abusive context and contrive out of it "sex abuse of children," so even if every draconian reaction were set in stone, that perversity already there would only continue to infect and grow. It takes a healthy mind to look upon things for what they are and see them for what they are--to look upon children and see them as children rather than "potential victims." Children grow into adults, and will serve the future. "Potential victims" only serve the current paranoid adult's darkest fantasies.

Superficial Rejuvenation

Who needs the attainment of wisdom at the foot of one's mortality when we have rejuvenation cosmetics? Where once we had faith, now we have so-called rationality, and while one produced simple humility in its adherents, the other produces little but vanity. Mankind no longer goes gently into that dark night, but instead spends the rest of it actively fighting the natural aging process. If life is all there is to this body and soul, it behooves the holder to hold it as long as possible--regardless of whether it's natural or healthy to do so. Where once the aging were encouraged to feel humbled before the infinite, we now have a population vainly empowered by the shorter number days they have left (thus making everything a "limited time offer").

Civilization shirked off this deference to a charismatic authority hell-bent to improve the soul and character of mankind, and in its place, built the establishment of consumerism to cater to their psychological defects instead. Is that the end of the saga? Hundreds of years of rationalism so that we can now have superficiality and vanity in the place of integrity? So that we can have anti-aging lotions, wrinkle creams, and "hair removal" regimen? It's as if we have nothing better to do with the remaining 50 years of our lives than try to make ourselves look like we did in the first two decades. When eternal deference was cut off to the heavens above, it seems like human beings then had no problem turning the same so-called "blissful ignorance of reality" onto themselves instead.

Most children are encouraged to do little else more universally than "get bigger" or "grow up." For children, aging is a prime directive, and the older and more mature one is, the more that simple status is regarded with coveted dignity. As soon as a "child" passes the threshold of adulthood though, all that anticipated growing has come to its final and premature peak, and society expects the young person to then look out on the road ahead and see nothing but a repulsive downward trajectory. How quick are we to really experience life when we are either stuck in an upward current or in a downward spiral? One way or the other, we're made to feel destined to a particular fate, with no acknowledgment of our life in the present--the "right now."

Imagine feeling as though you're on the death bed at the age of 21. Such is how we seem to expect our 21-year-olds to feel. On the contrary though is everyone over that age, who is then expected to want to be that age the rest of their lives! There is no period of human life that our culture has reserved for us to revel in the fact of being a whole individual at one place and time, without either "needing to be older" or "needing to be younger." Being whole is not as profitable as needing a hole patched. The perversity of it is revealed through close observation of nearly all commercial media surrounding anti-aging products, and nearly all products in general to a greater or lesser extent. I say perversity because this is a perversity, forged by Babylon itself, and is no less disgusting to my tastes than any other form of perversity.

Reality dictates that we all grow, decay, and eventually die, and yet only the most rational of the so-called later-day rationalists would accept this to be true. They'd rather bust out all their science to fabricate products to profit off the widespread lack of fulfillment that infects so many a person over thirty these days. Most seem to think or have been bred to believe that wasting one's good time is preferable to using it toward constructive ends, but only because nothing profitable for someone else has ever had anything to do with a consumer being constructive. And since those idolized "first 20 years" are the same years that the average human being exists simply to make money for other people, it's no wonder why that same individual would then want a refund after that time has passed and has gained them little. It is all too easy to "grow up" lacking fulfillment only to "live" a mature life in continuous want of a refund.

That "refund" is another way of saying "rejuvenation." Where once the passage into adulthood meant something to the primitive roots of culture, now it is simply the age at which a youth realizes for the first time that he or she has been gypped for the first 15 or so years of life. It is no matter though, for God willing, there is another 50 years left to waste trying to earn back the time that was lost during their so-called "good years." Who needs to be "born again" in the so-called eternal spirit when superficiality and artificiality accomplish the same trick for twenty-seconds at twice the price?

Don't Stone the Abstinent

I've been asked about my sexuality and it seems that because I require more than your average one or two words to explain it, it means I am abnormal. I am abnormal because I choose to be abstinent and people can not accept this. What I have come to find is that sexuality is enforced for adults where it is denied to young people. Choosing to express one's sexuality differently than the majority only seems to become a crime against nature when one has crossed that artificial and arbitrary edifice into adulthood, into the coven of humanity. It seems voluntarily going without intercourse is a greater crime against nature than forcing others to involuntarily abstain.

It's as if human sexuality is some prize to be won for years spent in enforced abstinence. Suddenly as an adult, you're supposed to be living it up, you're required to be expressing your sexuality, enjoying it, because you earned it. Decadence is how adults celebrate the fact that they've made it to adulthood, it's how they reap the benefits bestowed on them for simply being an adult, and one of the most obvious is the way they are expected to express their new-found sexuality. The adult way of doing things is indeed steeped in unhealthy decadence. Sexuality is natural, and however an individual chooses to express or not express it should be acceptable (as long as it doesn't conflict with the rights and dignity of others)--this either/or extremism between involuntary abstinence and involuntary decadence is not. It's a perversion.

Because adults enforce that no individual below their line in the sand edifice for sexuality is allowed to be sexual, they expect and require sexuality from each other. Abstinence is first required, expected, and then it is stoned to death. People react, with the same shock, to the incongruities of a sexual child as they do at an asexual adult--or at least, an adult with a sexuality that deviates from the norm. If one has to explain their sexuality in more than one or two words, then it is considered abnormal.

Normal sexuality for adults is whatever advertisers have told us it is. It is an erection at the sight of a beer bottle, a sleek car, or a hamburger. What is normal for the adult only becomes an abomination, it seems, when the same effect rubs off on a child. Children are not supposed to have a normal sexuality after all, they are in fact required to have no sexuality. When they express a sexuality, it is an automatic abomination--so says the west.

However, it seems the moment a youth reaches this magical deadline, sexuality is not just expected from them, but demanded of them. Adults will not accept one of their own confessing to be asexual, or at least, confessing to have a sexuality that is not one the consumer culture has picked out for them. When adults speak candidly about their sexuality when gloating on their self-defined "ability to be sexual," they react with little more than scorn when one member of their group does not jump right in line with their sexual fetish proselytizing. Sexuality is demanded from the adult, and with it, the open and constant expression of it, lest they become outsiders.