l****z
发帖数: 29846 | 1 'Paedophilia is natural and normal for males'
How some university academics make the case for paedophiles at summer
conferences
By Andrew Gilligan
9:10PM BST 05 Jul 2014
"Paedophilic interest is natural and normal for human males,” said the
presentation. “At least a sizeable minority of normal males would like to
have sex with children … Normal males are aroused by children.”
Some yellowing tract from the Seventies or early Eighties, era of abusive
celebrities and the infamous PIE, the Paedophile Information Exchange? No.
Anonymous commenters on some underground website? No again.
The statement that paedophilia is “natural and normal” was made not three
decades ago but last July. It was made not in private but as one of the
central claims of an academic presentation delivered, at the invitation of
the organisers, to many of the key experts in the field at a conference held
by the University of Cambridge.
Other presentations included “Liberating the paedophile: a discursive
analysis,” and “Danger and difference: the stakes of hebephilia.”
Hebephilia is the sexual preference for children in early puberty, typically
11 to 14-year-olds.
Another attendee, and enthusiastic participant from the floor, was one Tom O
’Carroll, a multiple child sex offender, long-time campaigner for the
legalisation of sex with children and former head of the Paedophile
Information Exchange. “Wonderful!” he wrote on his blog afterwards. “It
was a rare few days when I could feel relatively popular!”
Last week, after the conviction of Rolf Harris, the report into Jimmy Savile
and claims of an establishment cover-up to protect a sex-offending minister
in Margaret Thatcher’s Cabinet, Britain went into a convulsion of anxiety
about child abuse in the Eighties. But unnoticed amid the furore is a much
more current threat: attempts, right now, in parts of the academic
establishment to push the boundaries on the acceptability of child sex.
Jimmy Savile exploited the trust of a nation for his own vile purposes
A key factor in what happened all those decades ago in the dressing rooms of
the BBC, the wards of the NHS and, allegedly, the corridors of power was
not just institutional failings or establishment “conspiracies”, but a
climate of far greater intellectual tolerance of practices that horrify
today.
With the Pill, the legalisation of homosexuality and shrinking taboos
against premarital sex, the Seventies was an era of quite sudden sexual
emancipation. Many liberals, of course, saw through PIE’s cynical rhetoric
of “child lib”. But to others on the Left, sex by or with children was
just another repressive boundary to be swept away – and some of the most
important backing came from academia.
In 1981, a respectable publisher, Batsford, published Perspectives on
Paedophilia, edited by Brian Taylor, a sociology lecturer at Sussex
University, to challenge what Dr Taylor’s introduction called the “
prejudice” against child sex. Disturbingly, the book was aimed at “social
workers, community workers, probation officers and child care workers”.
The public, wrote Dr Taylor, “generally thinks of paedophiles as sick or
evil men who lurk around school playgrounds in the hope of attempting
unspecified beastliness with unsuspecting innocent children”. That, he
reassured readers, was merely a “stereotype”, both “inaccurate and
unhelpful”, which flew in the face of the “empirical realities of
paedophile behaviour”. Why, most adult-child sexual relationships occurred
in the family!
The perspectives of most, though not all, the contributors, appeared
strongly pro-paedophile. At least two were members of PIE and at least one,
Peter Righton, (who was, incredibly, director of education at the National
Institute for Social Work) was later convicted of child sex crimes. But from
the viewpoint of today, the fascinating thing about Perspectives on
Paedophilia is that at least two of its contributors are still academically
active and influential.
Prof Ken Plummer, left, and former PIE head Tom O'Carroll
Ken Plummer is emeritus professor of sociology at Essex University, where he
has an office and teaches courses, the most recent scheduled for last month
. “The isolation, secrecy, guilt and anguish of many paedophiles,” he
wrote in Perspectives on Paedophilia, “are not intrinsic to the phenomen[on
] but are derived from the extreme social repression placed on minorities …
“Paedophiles are told they are the seducers and rapists of children; they
know their experiences are often loving and tender ones. They are told that
children are pure and innocent, devoid of sexuality; they know both from
their own experiences of childhood and from the children they meet that this
is not the case.”
As recently as 2012, Prof Plummer published on his personal blog a chapter
he wrote in another book, Male Intergenerational Intimacy, in 1991. “As
homosexuality has become slightly less open to sustained moral panic, the
new pariah of 'child molester’ has become the latest folk devil,” he wrote
. “Many adult paedophiles say that boys actively seek out sex partners … '
childhood’ itself is not a biological given but an historically produced
social object.”
Prof Plummer confirmed to The Sunday Telegraph that he had been a member of
PIE in order to “facilitate” his research. He said: “I would never want
any of my work to be used as a rationale for doing 'bad things’ – and I
regard all coercive, abusive, exploitative sexuality as a 'bad thing’. I am
sorry if it has impacted anyone negatively this way, or if it has
encouraged this.” However, he did not answer when asked if he still held
the views he expressed in the Eighties and Nineties. A spokesman for Essex
University claimed Prof Plummer’s work “did not express support for
paedophilia” and cited the university’s charter which gave academic staff
“freedom within the law to put forward controversial and unpopular opinions
without placing themselves in jeopardy”.
Graham Powell is one of the country’s most distinguished psychologists, a
past president of the British Psychological Society and a current provider
of psychology support services to the Serious Organised Crime Agency, the
National Crime Squad, the Metropolitan Police, Kent Police, Essex Police and
the Internet Watch Foundation.
In Perspectives on Paedophilia, however, he co-authored a chapter which
stated: “In the public mind, paedophile attention is generally assumed to
be traumatic and to have lasting and wholly deleterious consequences for the
victim. The evidence that we have considered here does not support this
view … we need to ask not why are the effects of paedophile action so large
, but why so small.”
The chapter does admit that there were “methodological problems” with the
studies the authors relied on which “leave our conclusions somewhat muted”
. Dr Powell told The Sunday Telegraph last week that “what I wrote was
completely wrong and it is a matter of deep regret that it could in any way
have made things more difficult [for victims]”. He said: “The literature [
scientific evidence] was so poor in 1981, people just didn’t realise what
was going on. There was a lack of understanding at the academic level.” Dr
Powell said he had never been a member of PIE.
In other academic quarters, with rather fewer excuses, that lack of
understanding appears to be reasserting itself. The Cambridge University
conference, on July 4-5 last year, was about the classification of sexuality
in the DSM, a standard international psychiatric manual used by the police
and courts.
After a fierce battle in the American Psychiatric Association (APA), which
produces it, a proposal to include hebephilia as a disorder in the new
edition of the manual has been defeated. The proposal arose because puberty
in children has started ever earlier in recent decades and as a result, it
was argued, the current definition of paedophilia – pre-pubertal sexual
attraction – missed out too many young people.
Ray Blanchard, professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto, who led
the APA’s working group on the subject, said that unless some other way
was found of encompassing hebephilia in the new manual, that was “
tantamount to stating that the APA’s official position is that the sexual
preference for early pubertal children is normal”.
Prof Blanchard was in turn criticised by a speaker at the Cambridge
conference, Patrick Singy, of Union College, New York, who said hebephilia
would be abused as a diagnosis to detain sex offenders as “mentally ill”
under US “sexually violent predator” laws even after they had completed
their sentences.
But perhaps the most controversial presentation of all was by Philip
Tromovitch, a professor at Doshisha University in Japan, who stated in a
presentation on the “prevalence of paedophilia” that the “majority of men
are probably paedophiles and hebephiles” and that “paedophilic interest
is normal and natural in human males”.
O’Carroll, the former PIE leader, was thrilled, and described on his blog
how he joined Prof Tromovitch and a colleague for drinks after the
conference. “The conversation flowed most agreeably, along with the drinks
and the beautiful River Cam,” he said.
It’s fair to say the Tromovitch view does not represent majority academic
opinion. It’s likely, too, that some of the academic protests against the
“stigmatisation” of paedophiles are as much a backlash against the
harshness of sex offender laws as anything else. Finally, of course,
academic inquiry is supposed to question conventional wisdom and to deal
rigorously with the evidence, whether or not the conclusions it leads you to
are popular.
Even so, there really is now no shortage of evidence about the harm done by
child abuse. In the latest frenzy about the crimes of the past, it’s worth
watching whether we could, in the future, go back to the intellectual
climate which allowed them. | r**********n
发帖数: 5281 | | i******b
发帖数: 1780 | 3 这是左逼在造舆论给民众舆论和教育洗脑了,下一步就是承认恋童癖是合理自然的,和幼
女性爱合法化,卖淫合法化.家里有小女孩的得多留心点了. | O*****g
发帖数: 1257 | 4 这些人渣都该给化学阉割掉，省得出来祸害人
【在 l****z 的大作中提到】
: 'Paedophilia is natural and normal for males'
: How some university academics make the case for paedophiles at summer
: conferences
: By Andrew Gilligan
: 9:10PM BST 05 Jul 2014
: "Paedophilic interest is natural and normal for human males,” said the
: presentation. “At least a sizeable minority of normal males would like to
: have sex with children … Normal males are aroused by children.”
: Some yellowing tract from the Seventies or early Eighties, era of abusive
: celebrities and the infamous PIE, the Paedophile Information Exchange? No.
|
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