Salon Provides Platform for "Non-Practicing" Pedophile

[tapitsbo]

I thought plato wanted an ascetic cryptocracy, maybe even more disturbing in this context.

Sarah Nyberg learned that sexual desire was okay as a child but still ended up as a pedophile.

And yes pedophilia is normal in some non-Western cultures, see the thread on Afghanistan.

[elfismiles]

Thanks PW for your contributions (to this thread specifically and RI topics in general).

The issues of such pedo's becoming perps, serving there terms, probable recidivism, being released into "Civil Commitment" programs where apparently they stay "forever" was recently brought to my attention.

State defies judge on Minnesota sex offender program
By Elizabeth Mohr / emohr@pioneerpress.com
Posted: 09/24/2015 12:01:00 AM CDT
http://www.twincities.com/crime/ci_2887 ... er-program

The 21-year-old program, which houses more than 700 convicted sex offenders who have been civilly committed by the state after serving jail or prison time and claims to be a treatment program, has been under fire for years. Critics say the program fails to adequately treat offenders or work toward their release, essentially amounting to a prison sentence with no expiration date. Frank has called the program draconian and unconstitutional.

New facility sparks hope for sex offenders and downtrodden town
By Mike Ward | September 23, 2015

Senator John Whitmire talks with Ronald Mitchell in the Bill Clayton Center Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2015, in Littlefield. The state's new home for sex predators, Billy Clayton Center, located in an isolated fly speck of a town in West Texas, looks more like a prison than a treatment center. There are complaints about too-tiny portions of food, lack of treatment programs and commissary, and the nowhere location - some which officials are working to correct, others which they cannot. Fact: After a two-year search, this was the only place the state could find to house them. ( Steve Gonzales / Houston Chronicle )

LITTLEFIELD - For the first time in years, there is hope on both sides of the razor wire in this remote West Texas town whose population has swelled by nearly 200 people - all of them convicted sex offenders - in the past month.

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/po ... 525356.php
http://civil-commitment.blogspot.com/20 ... r-sex.html

Judge refuses to order five sex offenders into reformed civil commitment program
By Mike Ward and Anita Hassan | September 16, 2015

Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire plans to seek a ruling from the state attorney general regarding the legal questions.

AUSTIN - A state district judge in Conroe has refused to order five offenders to join a new treatment program for sex predators, the latest legal kink in Texas' plan to overhaul its troubled civil commitment program.

The judge's ruling leaves the men in legal limbo because lawmakers, en route to passing a bill to reform the state's civil commitment program for violent sex offenders, abolished the previous treatment program in which the men had been placed by court order.

State officials acknowledged Wednesday that despite the unresolved legal questions posed by the judge's ruling, the five men will remain in civil commitment and an appeals courts will settle the issue.

"We're following the court's orders. The men will not be put into the new tiered program," said Marsha McLane, executive director of the Texas Civil Commitment Office, which oversees the more than 200 offenders who are assigned to the program.

Other officials and attorneys familiar with the program said the surprise decision by visiting state District Judge Putnam Reiter raises other key questions: Will the state have to operate two separate treatment programs for offenders in the civil commitment program? And, because the old program has been deleted from Texas law, what authority does the state have to continue to confine the five men?

More Information

By the numbers

5: Number of offenders state district judge refused to order into new treatment program for sex predators after they refused to sign a waiver

200: Number of sex offenders in state's civil commitment program

Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire, the architect of the program's overhaul during this year's legislative session, said he will seek a ruling from Attorney General Ken Paxton to resolve the legal questions.

An attorney general's representative had no immediate comment Wednesday.

"The state will keep these people under supervision until this is decided, absolutely, because the public is best served by having them in some form of custody and supervision," said Whitmire, D-Houston. "We'll have to get some answers. … If we hadn't changed the existing program, we'd have lost our right to supervise these people on a continuing basis. We had no choice."

Texas is one of 20 states that have statutes allowing for the civil commitment of convicted sex felons who are believed to have a likelihood of committing new sex crimes after their prison sentences are complete. Those offenders are court-ordered into confinement at facilities where they are supposed to undergo treatment until they can be reintegrated into society.

Civil commitment

Created by the Texas Legislature as an out-patient treatment program, no one has been released from Texas' civil commitment program since it began in 1999, although one man was given a provisional release in January. Of the more than 350 men ordered into the civil commitment program, nearly half have been sent back to prison for violations of program rules, raising questions about the constitutionality of the way the 16-year-old program has been operated.

Under the reforms passed by the Legislature, offenders in the civil commitment program are supposed to be in a multi-tiered treatment program that allows them to progress to increasing levels of freedom toward an eventual release back into the community under supervision.

The five offenders whose cases were before Reiter were among 97 who were sent to court for hearings because they refused to sign waivers agreeing to voluntarily enter the new program. Another 85 civil-commitment offenders signed the waivers.

Officials said Wednesday that only a handful of offenders still have upcoming hearings. The rest have been moved in recent weeks to the Littlefield facility from halfway houses in Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth and El Paso and a boarding house in Austin.

Still being confined

While Reiter kept them out of the new program, a move that could have sent them back to a halfway house where they had lived for several years, the five men were transported by officials early Wednesday from Houston to a confined facility in Littlefield, a remote town about 40 miles northwest of Lubbock, where about 174 offenders in the new program now are housed.

"They're going to Littlefield because we had no place else to send them," McClane said, adding that the men will participate in treatment at the facility but not in the tiered program.

Bill Marshall, an attorney representing eight of the committed sex offenders said his clients refused to sign the waiver because their final judgments stated that they were entitled to outpatient treatment. Marshall called the judge's ruling interesting because it states that the mens' behavior and progress in treatment would not benefit from placement in new tiered program.

"I would like to know what evidence was presented that led to the conclusion that it would not benefit them," he said.

William Habern, a Houston lawyer familiar with the civil commitment program, said the state's decision to move the men to Littlefield was legally questionable.

"It would appear that these people have been adjudged to be sexually violent offenders, but that the program that was created when that occurred no longer exists in the statutes," Habern said. "So, they may be men without a country."

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/po ... 509930.php

Troubles with state’s civil-commitment program include 2 freed sex offenders
Eric Gaines of Fort Worth is a convicted sex offender who is closest to getting out of a failed state civil-commitment program that legislators are trying to revamp. Paul Moseley - Fort Worth
By Cindy Horswell / Houston Chronicle / July 10, 2015
http://www.star-telegram.com/news/state ... 02044.html

Texas Law To Update Sex Offender-Civil Commitment Program
June 18, 2015

AUSTIN (CBSDFW.COM/AP) — Governor Greg Abbott has signed into law a bill to update the Texas sex offender civil-commitment program and clarify when offenders face return to prison.

According to a Texas newspaper, Abbott signed the measure Wednesday.

A federal judge hours earlier declared Minnesota’s sex offender treatment program unconstitutional, amid concerns about the rights of people locked up indefinitely.

The Texas program, started in 1999, also faces challenges to the continued confinement of repeat sex offenders, such as in halfway houses, after they complete prison terms.

Supporters say the new Texas law could help resolve legal and administrative issues.

Offenders will no longer would be criminally punished for minor violations, such as being late for treatment meetings, which landed some back in prison. The offenders would instead face sanctions such as increased confinement.

There are currently some 375 sex offenders in the Texas program, with more than half being kept in county jails and halfway houses in Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, El Paso and Houston.

http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2015/06/18/texa ... t-program/

Civil commitment case goes to Texas Supreme Court
Posted: Friday, January 16, 2015 8:40 pm
http://www.yourhoustonnews.com/courier/ ... 9bb66.html


State allows sex offender out of civil commitment program
By Mike Ward and Anita Hassan | September 9, 2014
http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/po ... 744920.php

[yathrib]

With regard to the OP, I think the increasingly dreadful and embarrassing Salon was punked. Even the smallest bit of research would have revealed that the author was a manipulative creep in addition to his other qualities. He's non-practicing because he has it down pat.

L'affaire Sarah Nyberg is not clear to me. Certainly the gamergaters are not the most reliable witnesses... To be honest, I'm not sure I want to look into this. Can someone just summarize?

[tapitsbo]

I'm no expert on it but she mentioned her lesbian parents encouraging her to masturbate in front of them

Sort of the opposite of judeo-christian repression

[guruilla]

That contention is not borne out by either the extensive research on the subject, nor my personal experience as a CSA activist for nearly 30 years. The vast majority of survivors do not develop pedophilia tendencies, even to a slight degree, quite the opposite. They develop an idiosyncratic range of sexual expressions depending upon myriad factors including their sex role indoctrination, sex in relationship to perpetrator(s), sex of perpetrator(s), ability to disclose, familial and community response to disclosure, capacity for dissociation, level of identification with perpetrator(s), capacity for resilience, environmental support for resilience, etc., etc. Seriously, there is no scientific basis for your assertion.

Do you have some links with studies and stats to back this up? I’m definitely willing to question my assumptions about this (and about everything), and I'm glad I used RI as a sounding board for that post rather than put it out there “untested.”

But at the same time, I can counter your 30 -year experience as a CSA activist with my 30-year experience exploring my own psyche and family history. We have perhaps opposite, but I think potentially complementary, approaches, yours being (I think) deduction based on social research, testimonies, and scientific statistics, mine being a more psychological approach in which I delve deeply into specific psyches, primarily but not exclusively my own, and extrapolate from that. In terms of how they react to trauma, I don’t think psyches differ greatly, any more than biology differs. (Not that there isn't a wide variety of nuance and adaptation strategies, but in the fundamental mechanisms, rupture, bleeding, scar tissue, etc).

I also think it’s worth questioning how sure we can be that people are going to be 100% honest about their own pedophilia tendencies, even with themselves, and even within the most seemingly safe of contexts. As this thread demonstrates, there isn’t much sympathy for an admission of having had urges of this sort.

Also, my point about victims of sexual abuse developing pedophiliac tendencies was secondary to that about most pedophiles being victims of some sort sexual abuse, even if mild. This was meant to illustrate that there is a continuum between sexual abusers and abused, and that, insofar as understanding or compassion goes, it has to be applied to that continuum. This was my main point.

My own sense is that when a child’s libido is mishandled (sabotaged) by an adult or adults during its formative stages, the child may remain ‘stuck’ at that level of sexual development. Biologically of course they will grow to adulthood, but emotionally, psychologically, and sexually, they are still at the age when the abuse occurred. Hence it is “natural” for them to be attracted to children of a similar age. It is what feels safe.

Again, the science on the issue does not bear out your assertion, even though you go on to deftly describe the internal processes by which an abused child may develop the paraphilia. Not all pedophiles were sexually abused as children, although there are studies that show a correlation with other forms of abuse, and attachment disorders.

To recalibrate a bit then, my point about poison containers doesn’t require that all sexual predators or sociopaths, or whatever we want to call these people (I would prefer not to label individuals so much as behaviors), were sexually abused, only that poisons were put in them and that sexual abuse is one of the most effective ways to do so; congruently, the primary motivation for sexual abuse, I believe, is the offloading of psychic poisons into another.

Children are the perfect poison containers because they are defenseless and pure, empty vessels who can receive a lot of poisons. If we want to trace this mechanism far enough back, or deep enough in, maybe it is one of the reasons people have children in the first place, as receptacles to put their poisons into? This may seem like a bleak view, but again, my own experience bears it out, as does the prevalence of child abuse in our culture.

This has always perplexed me because I approached the subject with the same presumptions you've outlined in your post. They make the most sense on many levels, especially to a lot of survivors. However, as the commenter who spoke to narcissism pointed out, the capacity for empathy and how it gets wrapped up in sexual expression is the issue, and sexual abuse is not the only experience or factor that impacts empathy.

Unless we widen our definition of sexual abuse and allow also for the sexual objectification of a child through the parent’s (or primary caregiver’s) gaze, through fantasy, through emotional incest, and the like.

The perennial question for me has always been, if pedophilia, or more accurately, child sexual abuse, is as widespread and persistent as it seems to be, what possible functional role could it serve in our species' survival? An idea came to me only recently. Sexual selection is an ongoing battle within every species, with spectacular biological and behavioral outcomes in many cases. Pedophilia impacts mate selection, it arguably lowers female agency in the majority of cases. So it is not out of the realm of possibility that it is a (relatively in behavioral terms) naturally occurring behavior that generally aids the male sex in the war to control mate selection. Well, that's my shallowly informed theory on the matter. Would love to hear what others think.

I’m not really able to follow the logic of this theory. How does pedophilia impact mate selection, since children can’t be considered mates? (If they can procreate then they aren't children, if we want to get primal about it.)

You might want to bring in neoteny, and how younger-looking (more neotenous) females are more attractive to men because they signal increased fertility; how neoteny relates to brain development during a state of play, how sexual abuse sabotages brain development by activating the fight-or-flight defense mechanism repeatedly so the organism can’t ever recover and develop a natural, undefended way of being in the world, or of relating to others. I cant see how this would help a species to survive, but I can see how it would help a dominant culture and the power behind it to flourish.

I knew someone once who claimed that homosexuality was the species’ way of controlling its population, which is superficially plausible I suppose. I’m not much good at evolutionary models, so I’m at a loss to say how pedophilia might contribute to the species survival. But wouldn’t a species-adaptation view of pedophilia be the ultimate rationale for it? Not that this is reason not to look into it, just throwing that out there.

I have the feeling that pedophilia would disappear if we all attended church in the buff. Glib as that sounds, I'm only half joking. Transgression heightens arousal and desire in a culture such as ours. Remove the surface level rules and the transgression disappears along with it's accompanying arousal.

I used to believe something similar. Then I found out how many similar “solutions” were present at the early(?) stages of what we are now starting to recognize as the problem, that of systematized and rationally justified sexual abuse. People like Havelock Ellis would certainly agree with the above sentiments, and they were central to the Fabian psycho-sexual research of the early 1900s and the “progressive” schools that sprang up soon after, as well as the vegetarian movements and wiccan fraternities (complete with churches in the buff), etc., all of which appear to be central to the social engineering program, including or especially the sexualization of children.

The problem is, I think, when people are driven by poisons in their unconscious, whatever wonderful and progressive, anti-suppressive solutions they come up with, they will always just be subterfuges. The poisons will go where they want to go, which is into the next generation.

How much did Reich have right?

Didn’t Reich advocate the sexual interaction of adults with children?

[Project Willow]

We're soaking in it. I am convinced that Judeo/christian suppression of the natural expression of the libido is the root cause of much of the world's sorrows. We don't teach our kids about their bodies and their desires. We don't even acknowledge our kids' desires. Or if we do, we directly or indirectly make it clear that their desires are 'wrong' and that they should hide their desires and by implication be ashamed. We don't like to acknowledge as individuals how much of our desires, perceptual biases and behaviors are formed by early childhood imprints. What this deep seated anti-nature cultural moralizing produces in the absence of rigid, vigorously enforced and unambiguous rules and taboos is just the opposite of what it claims to create and on the surface seemingly intends. I have the feeling that pedophilia would disappear if we all attended church in the buff. Glib as that sounds, I'm only half joking. Transgression heightens arousal and desire in a culture such as ours. Remove the surface level rules and the transgression disappears along with it's accompanying arousal.

I believe that the major religions are cultural expressions and enforcement systems of patriarchal social orders, and a central concern of patriarchal social orders is the control female sexual agency, that is, to limit female choice in mate selection. I don't know how it would be possible to disentangle culture from biological impulse at this point in order to find some sort of ultimate "normal" concerning the natural expression of libido, especially in children. Any efforts put forth in freeing children from social constraint over sexual self exploration should be free of ulterior motives on behalf of those who lack empathy for them (such a pedophiles). But I can say that what sticks in my mind are the words of Ellen Bass, speaking to the shameless (in a good sense) freedom of her children when they hit a stage of development where they rejected their clothing and wanted to run around naked, and her regret at having to make sure they were clothed when in sight of the neighbors. Any honest and open minded parent could relate similar stories, and perhaps strategies they employed to help lessen the shame we tend to attach to infantile discovery and exploration of sex organs.

Research question:

Are their or have their been other cultures where pedophilia was much less prevalent or maybe even non-existent? If yes, Why?

Yes, it's vitally important and you'd think there'd be lots of studies, but there aren't. All I can say is, I've never read an account of a culture that specifically stated there was no pedophilia. Last account I read was of an isolated hunter gatherer group where young boys are taken from their mothers and sent to live with a group of men who guide them into manhood. Part of this guidance is to teach the boys how to perform sexually, and this teaching is done directly with the boys sexually pleasuring the men while in their care. At the age of maturity the boys are sent off to find wives within the tribe. It was noted that some men who train the boys never leave the training group, preferring instead to have ongoing sexual relations with generations of young boys. This does suggest that culture has a huge impact on how pedophilia is expressed, which is not a big surprise at all. What was left unstated was how this culture dealt with adult homosexuality, and if that were positive, how many of the men would leave the training scenario and take adult male partners.

How much did Reich have right?

A brief overview of some of Reich's thoughts:

http://www.wilhelmreichtrust.org/sexual ... _03_21.pdf

edited to add:

I've not read this. Might need to get a copy.


CHILDREN
OF THE
FUTURE
On the Prevention of
Sexual Pathology

http://www.wilhelmreichtrust.org/childr ... future.pdf

I haven't read the latter either. On the former, seems like a standard liberal call to end shaming of natural sexual responses, which may have been controversial in its time, but shouldn't be now, by any means, if it weren't for the religious right and the lingering shame from centuries of harsh patriarchal religious indoctrination.

[tapitsbo]

Agree with lots of the above, it's interesting how natural sexual responses are shamed in new ways in atheist societies that aren't much concerned with reproduction at all let alone limiting female mate selection. There's still an interest in disciplining people via their sexual energies

[tapitsbo]

I've read enough Reich to have been exposed to passages where he calls for training of the "orgasmic function" in infants.

His writing is very interesting to me but for sure unsettling in this context

[tapitsbo]

I'm not sure I agree with you guruilla about human beings being born in a state of "purity"

I still think sex with children is a very bad idea.

I think guruilla has posted lots of very relevant material on this board about how many of the architects of the shift from patriarchal repressive religion had their own interests in managing eroticism, trauma, etc. (especially through the "disciplinary power" of social sciences!) for a new social engineering agenda that built on the old order even as it overturned it. Maybe this is inevitable to some degree - it is great that this material is being exposed, though

It's clear to me that "sex-positive child-rearing" or whatever is not some panacea that will end rape and abuse of children

[Project Willow]

Do you have some links with studies and stats to back this up? I’m definitely willing to question my assumptions about this (and about everything), and I'm glad I used RI as a sounding board for that post rather than put it out there “untested.”

But at the same time, I can counter your 30 -year experience as a CSA activist with my 30-year experience exploring my own psyche and family history. We have perhaps opposite, but I think potentially complementary, approaches, yours being (I think) deduction based on social research, testimonies, and scientific statistics, mine being a more psychological approach in which I delve deeply into specific psyches, primarily but not exclusively my own, and extrapolate from that. In terms of how they react to trauma, I don’t think psyches differ greatly, any more than biology differs. (Not that there isn't a wide variety of nuance and adaptation strategies, but in the fundamental mechanisms, rupture, bleeding, scar tissue, etc).

There are too many studies to cite. A brief search should suffice, and also will show there are multiple contributing factors.

I cannot extrapolate my personal experience to an entire population of people, and neither can you, as tempting as it may be, and it is indeed often tempting. This is especially the case when we're talking about different sexes, as each undergoes significantly different sex role enculturation, and may indeed be biologically predisposed to different strategies, (science is very unclear in this arena, and what is there is highly contended, especially by feminists). I have a highly structured DID system, with multiple responses to the same stimuli performed by various (severed amnestically) aspects of my personality. There is no other dissociative survivor of extreme trauma who dissociates in exactly the same way that I do. It just doesn't work like that, and I'm only talking about a small percentage of survivors. The range of experiences and responses is too large to make any generalizations.

I also think it’s worth questioning how sure we can be that people are going to be 100% honest about their own pedophilia tendencies, even with themselves, and even within the most seemingly safe of contexts. As this thread demonstrates, there isn’t much sympathy for an admission of having had urges of this sort.

Absolutely agree there. It's very hard to control for that factor. However, one factor I mentioned that argues against your overall presumption is that what drives the formation of an abuser aspect is identification with the original abuser(s). This process of identification can be affected by sex role socialization. In females, negative feelings are turned inward and directed against the self, so we see a lot of self harm symptoms, like cutting and eating disorders. In males negative feelings are turned outward, producing rationalization systems for projection, so we get a lot of anti-social behavior. This may be why we see higher rates of pedophilia among males than females.

Also, my point about victims of sexual abuse developing pedophiliac tendencies was secondary to that about most pedophiles being victims of some sort sexual abuse, even if mild. This was meant to illustrate that there is a continuum between sexual abusers and abused, and that, insofar as understanding or compassion goes, it has to be applied to that continuum. This was my main point.

I'm glad it's secondary because, from a political perspective, we're never going to effectively combat the issue if the assertion is made, whether or not it is true. It becomes a closed loop, and the non-involved public will flush the whole of it away, innocent survivors included.

My own sense is that when a child’s libido is mishandled (sabotaged) by an adult or adults during its formative stages, the child may remain ‘stuck’ at that level of sexual development. Biologically of course they will grow to adulthood, but emotionally, psychologically, and sexually, they are still at the age when the abuse occurred. Hence it is “natural” for them to be attracted to children of a similar age. It is what feels safe.

That's one theory, and it may indeed apply in some cases, but it does not apply in all cases, not in my experience, or from what I have learned of the subject.

To recalibrate a bit then, my point about poison containers doesn’t require that all sexual predators or sociopaths, or whatever we want to call these people (I would prefer not to label individuals so much as behaviors), were sexually abused, only that poisons were put in them and that sexual abuse is one of the most effective ways to do so; congruently, the primary motivation for sexual abuse, I believe, is the offloading of psychic poisons into another.

Children are the perfect poison containers because they are defenseless and pure, empty vessels who can receive a lot of poisons. If we want to trace this mechanism far enough back, or deep enough in, maybe it is one of the reasons people have children in the first place, as receptacles to put their poisons into? This may seem like a bleak view, but again, my own experience bears it out, as does the prevalence of child abuse in our culture.

That could be a very poetic way of describing a process that may be described via other modes of thinking. We could say something similar using the language of attachment theory, or get close to it via other theories or systems of belief. Until you and I agree on a common approach, it's difficult to have a discussion. I have to say straight out however, and I grieve to think of how you came to the conclusion, but no, I do not believe most humans have children in order to use them as vehicles for offloading psychological stress .

I’m not really able to follow the logic of this theory. How does pedophilia impact mate selection, since children can’t be considered mates? (If they can procreate then they aren't children, if we want to get primal about it.)

You might want to bring in neoteny, and how younger-looking (more neotenous) females are more attractive to men because they signal increased fertility; how neoteny relates to brain development during a state of play, how sexual abuse sabotages brain development by activating the fight-or-flight defense mechanism repeatedly so the organism can’t ever recover and develop a natural, undefended way of being in the world, or of relating to others. I cant see how this would help a species to survive, but I can see how it would help a dominant culture and the power behind it to flourish.

I knew someone once who claimed that homosexuality was the species’ way of controlling its population, which is superficially plausible I suppose. I’m not much good at evolutionary models, so I’m at a loss to say how pedophilia might contribute to the species survival. But wouldn’t a species-adaptation view of pedophilia be the ultimate rationale for it? Not that this is reason not to look into it, just throwing that out there.

Arguably, adult females who are survivors of child sexual abuse, and especially incest, are impacted in their ability to enforce safe personal boundaries and exercise choice in mate selection. This is borne out by just about every study on prostitution, teen pregnancy, domestic violence, addiction, etc., all of which are correlated with childhood trauma.

The theory is that homosexuality obtains as a strategy in that the offspring of siblings of homosexuals get a leg up by the added care-giving energy of their non-reproducing aunts and/or uncles. The theory has been substantiated in a few studies.

[tapitsbo]

I'm still curious what evo-psych explanation you guys are going to give for women who rape children (I've met quite a few victims of this).

[brainpanhandler]

I have the feeling that pedophilia would disappear if we all attended church in the buff. Glib as that sounds, I'm only half joking. Transgression heightens arousal and desire in a culture such as ours. Remove the surface level rules and the transgression disappears along with it's accompanying arousal.

I used to believe something similar. Then I found out how many similar “solutions” were present at the early(?) stages of what we are now starting to recognize as the problem, that of systematized and rationally justified sexual abuse. People like Havelock Ellis would certainly agree with the above sentiments, and they were central to the Fabian psycho-sexual research of the early 1900s and the “progressive” schools that sprang up soon after, as well as the vegetarian movements and wiccan fraternities (complete with churches in the buff), etc., all of which appear to be central to the social engineering program, including or especially the sexualization of children.

The problem is, I think, when people are driven by poisons in their unconscious, whatever wonderful and progressive, anti-suppressive solutions they come up with, they will always just be subterfuges. The poisons will go where they want to go, which is into the next generation.

Indeed, as Willow says, "Any efforts put forth in freeing children from social constraint over sexual self exploration should be free of ulterior motives on behalf of those who lack empathy for them (such a pedophiles)." But of course not all people are "driven by poisons in their unconscious". In fact, hopefully you would agree that most people are not driven by poisons in their unconscious. I think its a pretty small percentage of people who lack empathy.

How much did Reich have right?

Didn’t Reich advocate the sexual interaction of adults with children?

I don't believe so. At least I don't ever recall reading that anywhere in his writing or in others writing about Reich, unless it was his political enemies in Germany. I think there were smear campaigns that tried to paint him as a pervert for advocating for adolescent sex education, contraception, and a frank recognition that the natural purpose of sex is rarely if ever solely procreation. This would have been in the early 30's I believe and Germany was no place to be preaching that sort of enlightened view.

Sadly Reich missed the mark on homosexuality. He was a complicated figure and not always a font of light and wisdom, but to the day of his death he was constantly revising his views, which to my mind is the hallmark of a free thinker unafraid of criticism.

[Jerky]

I'm still curious what evo-psych explanation you guys are going to give for women who rape children (I've met quite a few victims of this).

Evo-psych is an increasingly worthless field, as far as I'm concerned. It's too easily bendable to personal predilections and far too over-reliant on the persuasive power of metaphors to be taken seriously as anything other than rhetoric.

J

[tapitsbo]

Rhetoric is something that should be taken seriously

[tapitsbo]

I have the feeling that pedophilia would disappear if we all attended church in the buff. Glib as that sounds, I'm only half joking. Transgression heightens arousal and desire in a culture such as ours. Remove the surface level rules and the transgression disappears along with it's accompanying arousal.

I used to believe something similar. Then I found out how many similar “solutions” were present at the early(?) stages of what we are now starting to recognize as the problem, that of systematized and rationally justified sexual abuse. People like Havelock Ellis would certainly agree with the above sentiments, and they were central to the Fabian psycho-sexual research of the early 1900s and the “progressive” schools that sprang up soon after, as well as the vegetarian movements and wiccan fraternities (complete with churches in the buff), etc., all of which appear to be central to the social engineering program, including or especially the sexualization of children.

The problem is, I think, when people are driven by poisons in their unconscious, whatever wonderful and progressive, anti-suppressive solutions they come up with, they will always just be subterfuges. The poisons will go where they want to go, which is into the next generation.

Indeed, as Willow says, "Any efforts put forth in freeing children from social constraint over sexual self exploration should be free of ulterior motives on behalf of those who lack empathy for them (such a pedophiles)." But of course not all people are "driven by poisons in their unconscious". In fact, hopefully you would agree that most people are not driven by poisons in their unconscious. I think its a pretty small percentage of people who lack empathy.

How much did Reich have right?

Didn’t Reich advocate the sexual interaction of adults with children?

I don't believe so. At least I don't ever recall reading that anywhere in his writing or in others writing about Reich, unless it was his political enemies in Germany. I think there were smear campaigns that tried to paint him as a pervert for advocating for adolescent sex education, contraception, and a frank recognition that the natural purpose of sex is rarely if ever solely procreation. This would have been in the early 30's I believe and Germany was no place to be preaching that sort of enlightened view.

Sadly Reich missed the mark on homosexuality. He was a complicated figure and not always a font of light and wisdom, but to the day of his death he was constantly revising his views, which to my mind is the hallmark of a free thinker unafraid of criticism.

I find Reich very interesting myself but I distinctly remember reading in The Murder Of Christ passages about training the orgasmic function of infants, as I mentioned before.

Now, it's likely he's talking about something other than actual sexual activity with children here. It's worth noting, however.