...to wordpress, which is cooler, and which now hosts my blog.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Thursday, December 18, 2008
like rainbows
Like rainbows, like shadows in glass, the crows gather in the world, a murder in the dull light. I'm like two people whose telephone line just cut, their communion shut off, returned to themselves. Golden light over the fields; blue sky and blue-grey and grey clouds, a cold dusk in the late afternoon. Clouds like cream, like Rose's skin, holding the light over dark rows of trees. Four days go by, the clocks go back and it's winter and dark. Turbines turn against the rainy gloom and the glow of dust and sky on the horizon in the East. In the West the clouds' scars burn gold and mauve and the sky is pale cyan; pylons move at the edge of the world. We lack the language to understand the mystery, or even to frame it. I'm the only one gazing at the bright golden sunset and the crumpled clouds lit up like curtains in the distance. The trees are copper, fields are malt, slim trunks shine white, flowers lie like snow. Trees stand as sentinels to the cold forests.
It's all come together and we can do little more than bow our heads in wonder. This mystery is thick, I don't want this feeling, but there's only to accept it: a headache, the babble play of sounds and the slide of the city and the land. To sleep and wake up safe, warm, untroubled.
It's all come together and we can do little more than bow our heads in wonder. This mystery is thick, I don't want this feeling, but there's only to accept it: a headache, the babble play of sounds and the slide of the city and the land. To sleep and wake up safe, warm, untroubled.
Friday, November 7, 2008
Poetry and controversy
Having transcribed these scribbles into an email to a friend, I've decided to blog them here...
Post-apocalypse
all its strivings came to this:
fallen spires returned to rubble,
palisades of broken walls,
deserted fountains, empty of laughter and noise.
Spreading trees standing amid the black,
the cold gloom, mossy cobblestones and rats
remaking the decay.
Unfelt winds, unseen sunlight moving
over empty floors, the consequence of
anything.
----
By contrast, a small hut on a hillside
vanishes in three seasons. The roof
falls in, the walls collapse and bake
away to stones and dust, a circle
in the earth remains,
a scar of ash and order, eventually
healed by the rain.
Or the way her blonde hair changes
and returns with her skin, her flesh
to the air and the earth, white bones
crumble in the loam, crushed by roots
seeking a hold. She is dissipated
in the tree, in the worm, in the hills.
----
fragments of thought falling through my awareness
like a waterfall of broken glass, shards blinking
to catch the eye, then vanishing, replaced by the next,
or followed to their end in the pool of the familiar.
One roaring stream.
----
An elegant Japanese in black boots and trenchcoat, long hair, thin moustache and glasses with plum-tinted lenses. "Come and blend in," coaxes a poster in a standard cursive. The flatness of this country perhaps dooms it to mediocrity. Bus passengers gather at a railing in the car park where the bus has parked. They all face the same direction, faces grim with the pensiveness of long-haul road travel. Watching them, I turn to look at their view: a small parking lot, a convenience shopping centre. Cigarettes only are smoked; near at hand a cardboard sign's bound to a traffic signal, a voice in the subtle chorus of consent, from the police: "We're closer than you think!"
Departure time approaches. Pale, aborted butts are flicked into a puddle. The smoking gaggle extinguish and file in. A solitary woman sucks her cigarette down avidly, defiantly from behind small, round frames, then chucks it away half-finished. The wind rolls it into the water.
----
'Economic growth' should never do to a country what it has down to England, parts of Europe and, I suspect, large portions of America: rendered the entire population and every mile of land subservient to the daily grind, to making ends of perpetual means, to small, intermediate, homogenous lives, to a crushed and packaged human spirit, to nationwide mediocrity and the manufactured simulation of greatness. To flatness, allotments, municipal authorities and the perpetual incitement of commerce.
What began as a promise and misguided pursuit of utility, convenience and luxury (read: ease, laziness) has become a monstrous monotony and dullness. Even the poverty and privation of South Africa's poorest areas is not worth exchanging for this featureless gruel. We must find different ways to address our sufferings, not to seek their avoidance (for which mediocrity is a goal and a likely end) but to understand, cherish and transform them into delights. 'Economic growth' does not suffice as a measure of this project but leads to the bland morass of mediocrity.
Post-apocalypse
all its strivings came to this:
palisades of broken walls,
deserted fountains, empty of laughter and noise.
Spreading trees standing amid the black,
the cold gloom, mossy cobblestones and rats
remaking the decay.
Unfelt winds, unseen sunlight moving
over empty floors, the consequence of
anything.
----
By contrast, a small hut on a hillside
vanishes in three seasons. The roof
falls in, the walls collapse and bake
away to stones and dust, a circle
in the earth remains,
a scar of ash and order, eventually
healed by the rain.
Or the way her blonde hair changes
and returns with her skin, her flesh
to the air and the earth, white bones
crumble in the loam, crushed by roots
seeking a hold. She is dissipated
in the tree, in the worm, in the hills.
----
fragments of thought falling through my awareness
like a waterfall of broken glass, shards blinking
to catch the eye, then vanishing, replaced by the next,
or followed to their end in the pool of the familiar.
One roaring stream.
----
An elegant Japanese in black boots and trenchcoat, long hair, thin moustache and glasses with plum-tinted lenses. "Come and blend in," coaxes a poster in a standard cursive. The flatness of this country perhaps dooms it to mediocrity. Bus passengers gather at a railing in the car park where the bus has parked. They all face the same direction, faces grim with the pensiveness of long-haul road travel. Watching them, I turn to look at their view: a small parking lot, a convenience shopping centre. Cigarettes only are smoked; near at hand a cardboard sign's bound to a traffic signal, a voice in the subtle chorus of consent, from the police: "We're closer than you think!"
Departure time approaches. Pale, aborted butts are flicked into a puddle. The smoking gaggle extinguish and file in. A solitary woman sucks her cigarette down avidly, defiantly from behind small, round frames, then chucks it away half-finished. The wind rolls it into the water.
----
'Economic growth' should never do to a country what it has down to England, parts of Europe and, I suspect, large portions of America: rendered the entire population and every mile of land subservient to the daily grind, to making ends of perpetual means, to small, intermediate, homogenous lives, to a crushed and packaged human spirit, to nationwide mediocrity and the manufactured simulation of greatness. To flatness, allotments, municipal authorities and the perpetual incitement of commerce.
What began as a promise and misguided pursuit of utility, convenience and luxury (read: ease, laziness) has become a monstrous monotony and dullness. Even the poverty and privation of South Africa's poorest areas is not worth exchanging for this featureless gruel. We must find different ways to address our sufferings, not to seek their avoidance (for which mediocrity is a goal and a likely end) but to understand, cherish and transform them into delights. 'Economic growth' does not suffice as a measure of this project but leads to the bland morass of mediocrity.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
bus trip back
keep my distance and these green flat fields and ivied walls, silver clouds exploding in the afternoon and church spires trying to prick the sky. Tractor-scar brown gouged through meadows, healthy scars of mud. I lifted my head too late to the window: now the fields are turned to factories. Open lands with Mercedes-Benz turbines turning on the horizon, microwave towers, steaming chimneys and hedgerowed quadrangles of land in the muted sunlight. A chaos of hedge raised beside the motorway to quiet it, one tree in every thousand a miracle of crimson or yellow. Promiseless red berries.
We curve and turn towards Newcastle, its sameness spread over the land like a colony of mold. Over the broad, quiet river Tyne and into the littered Sunday street, the tops of spires painted the green of rusted copper, a fake tan of antiquity. Two boys sit on a bench beneath a placard for McDonalds. Chlorophyll is leaking from the leaves of the roadside trees, back down the trunk and into the earth, escaping the town through the hole cut out of the tar. Like the tiny spider on my arm (abseiled from my fringe) which finds itself inside a coach, far from the trees it needs to spin its webs; children in the city, constricted and detained.
We stop and the bus fills up. My spider returns to a roadside garden.
We curve and turn towards Newcastle, its sameness spread over the land like a colony of mold. Over the broad, quiet river Tyne and into the littered Sunday street, the tops of spires painted the green of rusted copper, a fake tan of antiquity. Two boys sit on a bench beneath a placard for McDonalds. Chlorophyll is leaking from the leaves of the roadside trees, back down the trunk and into the earth, escaping the town through the hole cut out of the tar. Like the tiny spider on my arm (abseiled from my fringe) which finds itself inside a coach, far from the trees it needs to spin its webs; children in the city, constricted and detained.
We stop and the bus fills up. My spider returns to a roadside garden.
Friday, October 3, 2008
Letter to America
Dear America,
This letter is addressed to you, America, and it is crucial to be clear on that fact. I do not address 'Americans', who are people -- individual, sentient, concrete -- but America; a meme, vague, conglomerate and imagined.
You exist in the minds of people; loved, admired, feared, derided, hated. Your identity is historical, your actions are the frenzied consequences of human political expedience, the shortsighted and self-interested agenda of beings beholden to an ignorant, passionate multitude. You are the object of their allegiance, which they have made, and you are the agent of their will. You are as constructed and ephemeral as a circus tent: whatever efforts are made, a day will come when America is no more.
Your behaviour has been like that of a frightened child; jealous of rivals, desirous of resources, inwardly convinced of your sovereignty. Your friends are contingent, temporary allies in the playground of the Earth. Your overlords are underlings: they remain enchanted by the imagined notion to which they pronounce their allegiance, in whose empty name they act. They are creatures of passion and delusion, they see themselves in you and forget themselves.
There is no need for the fear that motivates your most destructive acts. The nations you see as your rivals in glory and wealth are no less ephemeral than you yourself, and your destinies are interlinked and identical. You will achieve greatness and longevity only if your citizens realise the true nature of their idols, their flag and their anthem, set them aside and treat the world as it is: empty of borders and separations, empty of nation-states, an ecology of individuals who depend on each other and share a common imperative.
You are blinded by a fictional self-interest; your true self-interest requires you to see things as they are. America is not great in itself and will never be great nor glorious while others are poor and downtrodden. America can be great alongside the greatness of others, in a community where others' welfare is known to be essential for one's own.
May you realise your true nature, which is empty and imagined. May you renounce selfishness at the expense of others, and be a true light for the welfare of all of humankind.
With love and compassion,
Patrick
This letter is addressed to you, America, and it is crucial to be clear on that fact. I do not address 'Americans', who are people -- individual, sentient, concrete -- but America; a meme, vague, conglomerate and imagined.
You exist in the minds of people; loved, admired, feared, derided, hated. Your identity is historical, your actions are the frenzied consequences of human political expedience, the shortsighted and self-interested agenda of beings beholden to an ignorant, passionate multitude. You are the object of their allegiance, which they have made, and you are the agent of their will. You are as constructed and ephemeral as a circus tent: whatever efforts are made, a day will come when America is no more.
Your behaviour has been like that of a frightened child; jealous of rivals, desirous of resources, inwardly convinced of your sovereignty. Your friends are contingent, temporary allies in the playground of the Earth. Your overlords are underlings: they remain enchanted by the imagined notion to which they pronounce their allegiance, in whose empty name they act. They are creatures of passion and delusion, they see themselves in you and forget themselves.
There is no need for the fear that motivates your most destructive acts. The nations you see as your rivals in glory and wealth are no less ephemeral than you yourself, and your destinies are interlinked and identical. You will achieve greatness and longevity only if your citizens realise the true nature of their idols, their flag and their anthem, set them aside and treat the world as it is: empty of borders and separations, empty of nation-states, an ecology of individuals who depend on each other and share a common imperative.
You are blinded by a fictional self-interest; your true self-interest requires you to see things as they are. America is not great in itself and will never be great nor glorious while others are poor and downtrodden. America can be great alongside the greatness of others, in a community where others' welfare is known to be essential for one's own.
May you realise your true nature, which is empty and imagined. May you renounce selfishness at the expense of others, and be a true light for the welfare of all of humankind.
With love and compassion,
Patrick
Friday, September 26, 2008
Sympathy for Paedophiles
On with the freak show! After my controversial post about the legalities of zoophilia (specifically sex with sheep), here is the post on paedophilia at which I hinted in that article.
I'd been considering this for a while, but a catalyst has finally appeared... who'd have thought it would be the Polish Prime Minister?
Sex and Sensibility
Michael Trapido writes on Thought Leader that Poland is considering chemical castration (the compulsory administration of libido-lowering drugs that greatly reduce testosterone) for paedophiles in the wake of the very distressing Fritzl case.
To doctors' and liberals' concerns regarding human rights, Donald Tusk, the Polish Prime Minister, responded: "I don't think you can call such individuals — such creatures — human beings. I don't think you can talk about human rights in such a case." 84% of Poles approve of the proposed bill.
This event occurs within a current moral climate of hysteria surrounding paedophilia and sexual morality, with which my sheep article was tangentially concerned. Recent news corroborates: a quarter of the UK's adult population are required to undergo testing for paedophilia; the controversial practice of "naming and shaming" convicted paedophiles continues; a paediatrician's home was 'bricked' by vigilantes who thought her job title meant she was a paedophile; and adults walking alone in a Shropshire park can now be stopped and questioned on suspicion of paedophilic intent. In the UK this attitude is fomented by unapologetically sensationalist press headlines (such as "Child Sex Beast").
This hysteria gives me the screaming heebie-jeebies. So it's time for another dive into the phenomena of this weird moral climate.
Mummy, Where Do Paedophiles Come From?
That's an excellent question, my darling. Where do paedophiles come from? Are they, in fact, human beings? Or is it better to follow the Polish Prime Minister's example and not think of them that way?
How does paedophilia arise? According to Wikipedia, citing the American Academy of Pediatrics:
What is almost certainly true is that an individual's sexual orientation is not chosen by that individual, but rather is formed during childhood entirely without the individual's knowledge or consent. Whether someone is attracted to men, women, children, animals or plants is not a choice.
Therefore, people may not be held morally accountable for their preferences; only for their actions. An inclination to paedophilia is not abhorrent, nor should it be a crime. A hatred of paedophiles is the moral equivalent of a hatred of homosexuals, just more fashionable.
But What About The Children?
Today's moral climate sees children as vulnerable beings, in need of protection and sees child sexuality as latent and inactive. Thus we may speak of "male sex" and "female sex", but "child sex" strikes a strange chord, for the latter is assumed not to exist. It is also assumed that t'were always thus, that today's paternalistic attitude towards children is absolutely appropriate; a true and eternal good.
But this is far from the case. In many cultures, in many places and many times, children are and have been seen as beings capable of a wide range of sexual behaviours and emotions. They have partaken in sexual acts and rituals without harm or distress. This has not been a moral wrong; no evidence of degeneracy or other unfavourable result is seen to have arisen from these practices.
For example, in the Sambia tribe of New Guinea, boys performed fellatio on older men as a cultural ritual that was understood to be the method whereby they gained semen of their own and became fully developed men. It's an unstigmatised, healthy ritual. Researcher Gilbert Herdt argues that "the sexual behavior of the Sambia shows how profoundly Sambia sexual desires -- and thus, by implication, sexual desires in any culture -- are conditioned by historical and cultural influences."
And that's the crucial point: today's sexual moral climate is contingent, conditioned, a product of its time and other forces in today's culture (religious moral norms, for instance). It is by no means absolute, right or true in and of itself.
Protecting Children From Themselves
Our moral culture also sees children as being incapable of consent. In fact, it goes further: a child's consent or lack thereof is seen as irrelevant. Judge Atherton of the Manchester Crown Court recently ruled that a child's consent was irrelevant to the underage sex sentence he meted out, saying that the child's willingness in engaging in sex acts with the defendant "did not meet the essential fact that the law ... was also designed to protect children from themselves."
In contrast to the blunt view of the law, it is not a given that children are incapable of consent; in fact it is very much debatable. As easy as it is to see today's moral attitude as protecting children (doubtless the law's express motivation) it is also easy to see it in another light: disempowering them.
Consider: would we ever question whether a child can actively "not-consent"? It's quite clear that children can and, infuriatingly, often do the opposite of consent: they refuse, resolutely and often loudly. We would not think of denying them the right to refuse, for this would entail forcing something upon them. Why, then, does our law deny them the right actively to consent? This amounts to denying them something they rightly desire. (In anthropological discourse, children are often spoken of as the last remaining colonised people; a subclass.)
This aspect of disempowerment becomes clearer in the light of Judge Atherton's ruling above. He, and the law, in convicting and sentencing the defendant, explicitly disregarded the child's wish to be sexual, following the sentiment that children are incapable of understanding sex or of acting 'rightly' upon their sexual feelings. This is an attitude of paternalism, myopia and condescension towards children.
Sexual Children
The law may not agree, but in natural fact children are highly sexual. In the family I lived with in London, the children would regularly play games with obvious sexual elements. Other events from my own childhood and those of my friends (games of "doctor, doctor" and "kiss catch") serve as examples that children are highly curious about sex. There is no question of consent in these games; the children merely get on with it.
In Paedophilia - The Radical Case (a truly amazing read for anyone who is interested), written in the first person by a paedophile, the author describes:
Children are obviously enthusiastic to experiment sexually with themselves and with each other, and this behaviour is normal, healthy and innocent. So, what changes to make sex acts abnormal, unhealthy, even criminal when an adult is involved?
Apparently, the problem lies not with the child but with the adult, even though the adult behaves just the same with the child as the children do with one another. Partly, to be sure, the problem is one of an uneven power relationship, although this too is an aesthetic judgment and not by any means an a priori wrong: power dynamics in some adult relationships are far more skewed than in some relationships between adults and children, and power is almost never equally allocated in any relationship.
But more than this, I believe it is not so much the adult nor the child in an adult-child sexual relationship that makes it a problem. Rather, it is the adult who comes after the fact, the morally judging adult who problematises an act that, but for this problematisation, would otherwise be as harmless as sex play between two children or sex between consenting adults. It is a self-created problem of taboo, fear and guilt surrounding sex, fuelled by mistaken assumptions regarding children's sexuality and capacity to consent and by prejudice regarding the nature and motivation of the paedophile.
And it is the idea and pervasive culture of sex-as-taboo-and-perversion, which adult culture and media have created, that fosters the atmosphere of hysteria, paranoia and suspicion surrounding paedophilia and children's sexuality. In brief, it is a moral hangover.
Clearing The Moral Hangover
An adult who performs sexual acts with a girl has no necessary intention to hurt that girl. It would be as ridiculous to assume as much as it would be to assume that an adult has harmful intentions when having sex with another adult. The sinister atmosphere that attends to the imaginary scenario of man-and-girl is the result of an irrational moral hangover. In essence, there need be nothing harmful or sinister about it whatsoever. In natural fact it is as pure and innocent as sex within a homosexual couple.
It is society's own, prejudiced and irrational condemnation of sexual acts between children and adults, and not something intrinsic to such acts themselves, that creates the self-loathing and psychological problems that often (and not always) arise in child and adult participants after sex acts.
Paedophilia is just as natural a phenomenon as homosexuality (as heterosexuality for that matter!); children are highly sexual beings; and sexual acts between adults and children do not necessarily involve harm to either party; yet the prejudice against it has now progressed to the point where people are seriously considering that paedophiles are sub-human.
To witness the extent of the prejudice you have only to open a newspaper in the UK, look at the comments following an online article that reports a paedophile's incarceration, or look at the number of people favouring chemical castration of paedophiles in Poland. But the problem is not a new one or a shallow one.
Have Your PIE And Eat It
A direct quote from Wikipedia:
PIE and its associated movements have been disbanded and pushed underground by the weight and hostility of popular moral prejudice. Their attempts to create a meaningful dialogue, to foster genuine and mutual understanding of the natural phenomenon they exemplify, have met with prejudice and rejection. It is little wonder that paedophilia today is a shadowy and sinister world about which very little is known and so much is feared, for the man whose nature inclines him to love boys is considered a freak, sub-human, deserving isolation at least and punishment at best.
Paedophiles are People
Nevertheless, the fact remains that paedophiles are people. It is not a stretch to consider that they live, love, suffer, laugh and die in the same way as the rest of us. They are humans in every respect, including their sexuality. They deserve the same respect, the same compassion, and the same rights that the rest of us would like for ourselves.
The present attitude of condemnation, hatred and prejudice towards paedophiles is an outrage - to say nothing of a bill that proposes chemical castration as a suitable punishment for adults who engage in sex acts with children.
I'd been considering this for a while, but a catalyst has finally appeared... who'd have thought it would be the Polish Prime Minister?
Sex and Sensibility
Michael Trapido writes on Thought Leader that Poland is considering chemical castration (the compulsory administration of libido-lowering drugs that greatly reduce testosterone) for paedophiles in the wake of the very distressing Fritzl case.
To doctors' and liberals' concerns regarding human rights, Donald Tusk, the Polish Prime Minister, responded: "I don't think you can call such individuals — such creatures — human beings. I don't think you can talk about human rights in such a case." 84% of Poles approve of the proposed bill.
This event occurs within a current moral climate of hysteria surrounding paedophilia and sexual morality, with which my sheep article was tangentially concerned. Recent news corroborates: a quarter of the UK's adult population are required to undergo testing for paedophilia; the controversial practice of "naming and shaming" convicted paedophiles continues; a paediatrician's home was 'bricked' by vigilantes who thought her job title meant she was a paedophile; and adults walking alone in a Shropshire park can now be stopped and questioned on suspicion of paedophilic intent. In the UK this attitude is fomented by unapologetically sensationalist press headlines (such as "Child Sex Beast").
This hysteria gives me the screaming heebie-jeebies. So it's time for another dive into the phenomena of this weird moral climate.
Mummy, Where Do Paedophiles Come From?
That's an excellent question, my darling. Where do paedophiles come from? Are they, in fact, human beings? Or is it better to follow the Polish Prime Minister's example and not think of them that way?
How does paedophilia arise? According to Wikipedia, citing the American Academy of Pediatrics:
"sexual orientation probably is not determined by any one factor but by a combination of genetic, hormonal, and environmental influences."
What is almost certainly true is that an individual's sexual orientation is not chosen by that individual, but rather is formed during childhood entirely without the individual's knowledge or consent. Whether someone is attracted to men, women, children, animals or plants is not a choice.
Therefore, people may not be held morally accountable for their preferences; only for their actions. An inclination to paedophilia is not abhorrent, nor should it be a crime. A hatred of paedophiles is the moral equivalent of a hatred of homosexuals, just more fashionable.
But What About The Children?
Today's moral climate sees children as vulnerable beings, in need of protection and sees child sexuality as latent and inactive. Thus we may speak of "male sex" and "female sex", but "child sex" strikes a strange chord, for the latter is assumed not to exist. It is also assumed that t'were always thus, that today's paternalistic attitude towards children is absolutely appropriate; a true and eternal good.
But this is far from the case. In many cultures, in many places and many times, children are and have been seen as beings capable of a wide range of sexual behaviours and emotions. They have partaken in sexual acts and rituals without harm or distress. This has not been a moral wrong; no evidence of degeneracy or other unfavourable result is seen to have arisen from these practices.
For example, in the Sambia tribe of New Guinea, boys performed fellatio on older men as a cultural ritual that was understood to be the method whereby they gained semen of their own and became fully developed men. It's an unstigmatised, healthy ritual. Researcher Gilbert Herdt argues that "the sexual behavior of the Sambia shows how profoundly Sambia sexual desires -- and thus, by implication, sexual desires in any culture -- are conditioned by historical and cultural influences."
And that's the crucial point: today's sexual moral climate is contingent, conditioned, a product of its time and other forces in today's culture (religious moral norms, for instance). It is by no means absolute, right or true in and of itself.
Protecting Children From Themselves
Our moral culture also sees children as being incapable of consent. In fact, it goes further: a child's consent or lack thereof is seen as irrelevant. Judge Atherton of the Manchester Crown Court recently ruled that a child's consent was irrelevant to the underage sex sentence he meted out, saying that the child's willingness in engaging in sex acts with the defendant "did not meet the essential fact that the law ... was also designed to protect children from themselves."
In contrast to the blunt view of the law, it is not a given that children are incapable of consent; in fact it is very much debatable. As easy as it is to see today's moral attitude as protecting children (doubtless the law's express motivation) it is also easy to see it in another light: disempowering them.
Consider: would we ever question whether a child can actively "not-consent"? It's quite clear that children can and, infuriatingly, often do the opposite of consent: they refuse, resolutely and often loudly. We would not think of denying them the right to refuse, for this would entail forcing something upon them. Why, then, does our law deny them the right actively to consent? This amounts to denying them something they rightly desire. (In anthropological discourse, children are often spoken of as the last remaining colonised people; a subclass.)
This aspect of disempowerment becomes clearer in the light of Judge Atherton's ruling above. He, and the law, in convicting and sentencing the defendant, explicitly disregarded the child's wish to be sexual, following the sentiment that children are incapable of understanding sex or of acting 'rightly' upon their sexual feelings. This is an attitude of paternalism, myopia and condescension towards children.
Sexual Children
The law may not agree, but in natural fact children are highly sexual. In the family I lived with in London, the children would regularly play games with obvious sexual elements. Other events from my own childhood and those of my friends (games of "doctor, doctor" and "kiss catch") serve as examples that children are highly curious about sex. There is no question of consent in these games; the children merely get on with it.
In Paedophilia - The Radical Case (a truly amazing read for anyone who is interested), written in the first person by a paedophile, the author describes:
At other times, boys of no more than nine or ten have flaunted erect little penises at me in the changing rooms, introduced the subject of masturbation into the conversation, asked questions about homo-sexuality, requested me to take photographs of them urinating, and invited me to inspect 'operation' scars in private places – in all cases with a positive disinclination on my part to introduce what I thought for them might be a distasteful or frightening subject. Such incidents might happen to any adult who likes children enough to spend a lot of time in their company, and who is able to gain their confidence.
Children are obviously enthusiastic to experiment sexually with themselves and with each other, and this behaviour is normal, healthy and innocent. So, what changes to make sex acts abnormal, unhealthy, even criminal when an adult is involved?
Apparently, the problem lies not with the child but with the adult, even though the adult behaves just the same with the child as the children do with one another. Partly, to be sure, the problem is one of an uneven power relationship, although this too is an aesthetic judgment and not by any means an a priori wrong: power dynamics in some adult relationships are far more skewed than in some relationships between adults and children, and power is almost never equally allocated in any relationship.
But more than this, I believe it is not so much the adult nor the child in an adult-child sexual relationship that makes it a problem. Rather, it is the adult who comes after the fact, the morally judging adult who problematises an act that, but for this problematisation, would otherwise be as harmless as sex play between two children or sex between consenting adults. It is a self-created problem of taboo, fear and guilt surrounding sex, fuelled by mistaken assumptions regarding children's sexuality and capacity to consent and by prejudice regarding the nature and motivation of the paedophile.
And it is the idea and pervasive culture of sex-as-taboo-and-perversion, which adult culture and media have created, that fosters the atmosphere of hysteria, paranoia and suspicion surrounding paedophilia and children's sexuality. In brief, it is a moral hangover.
Clearing The Moral Hangover
An adult who performs sexual acts with a girl has no necessary intention to hurt that girl. It would be as ridiculous to assume as much as it would be to assume that an adult has harmful intentions when having sex with another adult. The sinister atmosphere that attends to the imaginary scenario of man-and-girl is the result of an irrational moral hangover. In essence, there need be nothing harmful or sinister about it whatsoever. In natural fact it is as pure and innocent as sex within a homosexual couple.
It is society's own, prejudiced and irrational condemnation of sexual acts between children and adults, and not something intrinsic to such acts themselves, that creates the self-loathing and psychological problems that often (and not always) arise in child and adult participants after sex acts.
Paedophilia is just as natural a phenomenon as homosexuality (as heterosexuality for that matter!); children are highly sexual beings; and sexual acts between adults and children do not necessarily involve harm to either party; yet the prejudice against it has now progressed to the point where people are seriously considering that paedophiles are sub-human.
To witness the extent of the prejudice you have only to open a newspaper in the UK, look at the comments following an online article that reports a paedophile's incarceration, or look at the number of people favouring chemical castration of paedophiles in Poland. But the problem is not a new one or a shallow one.
Have Your PIE And Eat It
A direct quote from Wikipedia: The Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) was a UK pro-pedophile activist group, founded in October 1974. It officially disbanded in 1984 though it was not until many years later that the Paedophile Unit finally arrested the last of its members on child pornography charges, with activist David Joy warned by his sentencing judge that his beliefs may preclude his release ever from jail.
PIE and its associated movements have been disbanded and pushed underground by the weight and hostility of popular moral prejudice. Their attempts to create a meaningful dialogue, to foster genuine and mutual understanding of the natural phenomenon they exemplify, have met with prejudice and rejection. It is little wonder that paedophilia today is a shadowy and sinister world about which very little is known and so much is feared, for the man whose nature inclines him to love boys is considered a freak, sub-human, deserving isolation at least and punishment at best.
Paedophiles are People
Nevertheless, the fact remains that paedophiles are people. It is not a stretch to consider that they live, love, suffer, laugh and die in the same way as the rest of us. They are humans in every respect, including their sexuality. They deserve the same respect, the same compassion, and the same rights that the rest of us would like for ourselves.
The present attitude of condemnation, hatred and prejudice towards paedophiles is an outrage - to say nothing of a bill that proposes chemical castration as a suitable punishment for adults who engage in sex acts with children.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Electronicas
These two songs have kept my head bobbing for more than six months. That's at least 5 months and 20 days more than the average, three-minute, four-chord FM filler of today's crap-saturated airwaves is likely to spend on any thinking person's playlist.
Beautiful Life (9:29, by Gui Boratto) starts in happy street and marches along on a journey of nine minutes of ceaseless positive affect without a trace of the corny or the contrived. Proceeding via Spreading Smile Crescent and Peace-and-Love Boulevard, it takes an extended sojourn in Euphoria Road before heading home along Optimism Avenue. The composer's wife sings ("what a beautiful life / what a beautiful life / what a beautiful world") and sounds rather blissed out herself. It's a masterclass in joy.
By contrast, I'll Lick Your Spine (6:29, by Let's Go Outside) evokes a sweaty club basement full of beautiful people, including one particularly edgy, assertive and sexy female. It's all steel and glass: everyone's wearing sunglasses, water sprays from sprinklers on the ceiling, tops cling to bodies and the listener is on quite excellent drugs. A three-note minor hook slides in and out of the track as the aforementioned girl whispers into your ear a seduction that won't be refused.
Iwould love to share these with you respect music copyright laws, so you can tell me what you think had better not ask. If you do ask, I'll direct you to a download link have to refuse you.
Beautiful Life (9:29, by Gui Boratto) starts in happy street and marches along on a journey of nine minutes of ceaseless positive affect without a trace of the corny or the contrived. Proceeding via Spreading Smile Crescent and Peace-and-Love Boulevard, it takes an extended sojourn in Euphoria Road before heading home along Optimism Avenue. The composer's wife sings ("what a beautiful life / what a beautiful life / what a beautiful world") and sounds rather blissed out herself. It's a masterclass in joy.
By contrast, I'll Lick Your Spine (6:29, by Let's Go Outside) evokes a sweaty club basement full of beautiful people, including one particularly edgy, assertive and sexy female. It's all steel and glass: everyone's wearing sunglasses, water sprays from sprinklers on the ceiling, tops cling to bodies and the listener is on quite excellent drugs. A three-note minor hook slides in and out of the track as the aforementioned girl whispers into your ear a seduction that won't be refused.
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