(9) Chapter 4 - Negative Aspects of Presumed and Real Man/Boy Relations

Beschrijving van hoe de tegenstanders (gelovigen, medici, psychiaters, wetenschappers) van pedofilie altijd weer redenen vonden om er tegen te zijn.

[Ik citeer het helemaal, omdat hier werkelijk alles in zit wat me interesseert: ]

"Once, long, long ago it was customary for men to sleep with boys and have sexual relations with them. All the men did this, and the real boy-lovers among them did it with even greater joy than the others.

Then the Christians appeared on the scene and told everyone that it was a very great sin to sleep with boys. And from that moment on whenever the Authorities managed to get hold of them, boy-lovers were burnt alive, strangled, drowned or beheaded.

That went on until the French Revolution, when a new breed of philosopher began to say that penal law should be used only to protect society and prevent individuals from being illegally harmed, not to enforce morality. The boy-lovers took heart; they started sleeping with their young friends again, and nobody bothered them.

But it wasn't long before some people began to preach that this kind of activity was enornously harmful to the child, for children were pure, innocent creatures who were quite unaware of such a vile thing as sex. So once again boy-lovers were hunted down, and when the authorities got hold of them they were ruined and cast into prison.

Then came Freud and his followers who affirmed that children weren't asexual creatures at all. He even went so far as to call them "polymorphously perverse". Boy-lovers, of course, had known this for centuries; once again they took heart.

But along came the medical doctors, the same ones who had been busy telling everyone that masturbation caused horrible illnesses and brought on premature death; now they said that any boy who had sex with a man would invariably be turned into a homophile himself, and would remain one for the rest of his life. Legislators listened to these expert opinions and they made the laws much tougher; now men were sent to prison for having sex not just with pre-pubertal boys, but with adolescents and even young men.

Then some psychiatrists were able to demonstrate that this was all nonsense and gave rise only to misery and injustice. ln several countries the old harsh laws were repealed. But now another group of scientists started to maintain that it may very well be true that children were sexual from head to toe, and it may be quite healthy for them to have sexual play among themselves, but this by no means proved that they wanted to play in the same way with adults. Children had not matured enough for that. So the boy-lovers whom the police had managed to catch stayed in their prison cells. Moreover, as the aggression of society grew stronger and science progressed, they were subjected to torture by brain surgery and aversion therapy.

Now a group of researchers came forward with many examples of boys who wanted to establish intimate relationships with adults because adults could give them a feeling of security and protection which friends of their own age simply could not. Once again, the boy-lovers began to take heart. But the traditional psychiatrists and psychologists immediately raised the objection that in this kind of relationship the partners weren't equal: the adults dominated the boys. There was, of course, nothing wrong with dominating boys as long as it was done to teach them their lessons, send them to church, discipline them and bring them up properly, but where sex was involved,it was absolutely impermissible. And so boy-lovers caught by the Authorities continued to go to prison.

Then one psychologist came up wittr the crazy idea that even this concept of the man dominating the boy needed to be investigated. He studied in detail a number of such relationships and how the balance of power actually was held. And in none of them did he find any evidence that the man dominated the boy. On the contrary, in several instances it was the boy who dominated the man! In each case the boy wholeheartedly consented to the relationship, including all its sexual aspects. Boy-lovers once more began to take heart.

Then, however, a psychiatrist who had evidently studied the work of Jung rose to declare that when children involved in such relationships say "yes", what they really mean to say is "no". "And when they say 'no'", the boy-lovers asked hopefully. "Then they also mean 'no'," the psychiatrist replied. So when the police managed to catch boy-lovers they still went to prison, and stayed there for years on end.

And the universities began to enlarge their medical faculties enormously, for wasn't it evident that, in the future, every child had to be provided with his own individual psychiatrist? Otherwise who could tell his parents, teachers and pedagogues what he really meant when he said "yes" and what he really meant when he said "no"?

But now a group of scientists came along doing follow-up studies of individuals who, as children, had consented to sexual activity with adults. These researchers agreed ttrat they could find no trace, even after fifteen years, of damage resulting from their youthful sexual experiences. Once again the boy-lovers began to take heart,but almost immediately the psychiatrists answered that the lasting damage done by early sex with adults might take longer than fifteen years to become apparent. The boy-lovers shrugged their shoulders and asked for proof. And, lo and behold, along came a physician who shouted triumphantly, "It's not up to us to prove there is damage; it's up to you to prove there isn't!"

Now this threw the boy-lovers into considerable confusion. No researcher had ever been able to prove that sexual relations with a boy were harmless, nor had it ever been satisfactorily established that sexual relations with anyone were harmless - nor, for that matter, that travelling in a train was harmless, nor the eating of green peas. And we all well know that under penal law every man is guilty until acquitted, that in this world everything is forbidden unless one's government specifically permits it.

The situation became even more confused when another psychiatrist (Fraser, 1981, 41) proposed that we should ignore entirely any data or arguments submitted by people showing even the slightest trace of paedophilic desires themselves. The principle in itself seemed sound. Only bachelors should be allowed to write treatises on marriage; all sexological books should be compiled by scholars utterly devoid of sexual feeling. Never listen to the man with personal experience, never listen to the man who comes to the defence of something you don't like, for isn't that the essence of mental health?

The problem with this proposal, however, was that sexologists had long ago established that there was a bit, and sometimes more than a bit, of paedophilia in every human adult, thus all discussion of boy-love would have to cease immediately. How, then, could you sendboy-lovers to prison if you couldn't even talk about what they did? So this idea had to be dropped. For a brief moment boy-lovers thought they again saw a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel when a few psychiatrists declared that any kind of sex in which a child willingly engaged was in itself completely benign, but then their hopes were dashed when these men of science added, "Such activity, however, brings the child into conflict with the standards of his environment and the society in which he lives, and that is very detrimental." So the boy-lovers, half-crushed already, surrendered. They were well aware of how powerful the standards of society were. In Hitler's Third Reich a Jewish girl was in deep trouble if an Arian became enamoured of her. In South Africa a black youth is lost if a white woman takes him as her lover. So the boy-lovers ran weeping to the psychiatrists, begging for help, for it isn't only in Soviet Russia that psychiatrists are called upon to adapt people to the standards of society.

But the children didn't give in. They continued to seduce nice adults and called those who reproached them for this silly fools. For in the meantime they had learned a bit about psychoanalysis. They said, "For every objection they were forced to abandon, these stupid men and women immediately produced another. Could it be that, though they don't realise it, ttrey are just trying to hide the secrets of their own innermost souls? Aren't they simply a little bit afraid of sex itself?" But nobody bothered to listen to what they said, for how could truth ever come from the mouths of children?"(9-12)

[Wat er zo boeiend aan is, is dat ideologie / een bepaalde set van waarden en normen belangrijker gevonden wordt dan de resultaten van wetenschappelijk onderzoek. Dat dat zo is in de oordelen van religieuze mensen ligt voor de hand, maar het is ook zo in de oordelen van de medici en psychiaters die zoals zo vaak doen alsof wat ze beweren op het vlak van de moraal wetenschappelijk verantwoord is, terwijl die beweringen niet meer zijn dan vermomde waardeoordelen over wat normaal en abnormaal is. Wat je ook vindt van liefde voor jongens, medici en psychiaters en juristen blijken slechte inspiratiebronnen.]

(12) The Usual Objections

"The Child is Not Yet Mature Enough for Sex" is het eerste bezwaar dat wordt afgewezen. Dat hangt af van je defnitie van 'seks'. Kinderen zijn van jongs af aan in staat om te genieten van hun lijf / van seks. Maar een volwassenen relatie met iemand onderhouden is inderdaad wat anders, alleen gaat het daar niet over in deze context.

"The Child Cannot Give Informed Consent" is het tweede dat wordt afgewezen. Kinderen moeten allerlei andere keuzes maken in hun leven op basis van vage informatie en ontbrekende informatie (bv. schoolkeuze, relatie met iemand). Waarom is dat bij seksueel contact met een ouder iemand ineens een probleem?

"We are discussing - and this must constantly be kept in mind - the consequences of the sex per se. If later a boy is disturbed, to a greater or lesser degree, about his earlier sexual activity, it is never because the sex itself harmed him, but because it has collided with the ethical standards of the people about him. This collision with social morality will occupy us elsewhere in this chapter. " [mijn nadruk] (14)

"A World Where the Child Doesn't Yet Belong". Kinderen worden door de meeste volwassenen niet serieus genomen, als onschuldige, domme wezens gezien:

"In this context we must stress that adults in our culture usually underrate by far the maturity and capabilities of the child (O'Caroll 1980, 134-135) (...) Thus it is not unreasonable to suppose that children possess far greater capacity in the realm of sexuality than adults commonly suppose."(15)

[Ik ben het daar zeer mee eens. ]

"The Child Will Be Traumatised". Brongersma haalt vele onderzoeken aan waaruit blijkt dat dat niet zo is - als er tenminste geen sprake was van geweld. Wat er ook tegen spreekt is dat de percentages van mensen met vroege seksuele ervaringen met volwassenen enorm zijn.

" A fairly large percentage of such children are psychologically traumatised by their living conditions (Gibbens and Prince 1963) or by the unbalanced reactions of their social environment and/or police interrogation (Burton 1968, 168). Thus it is most remarkable that Rasmussen, Brunold, Lempp and Burton, working with samples of especially unfavourable cases, arrived at the same conclusions as the other researchers [dat er geen sprake is van trauma's - GdG]."(20)

"Thus it is clear that sexual contacts between older and younger partners are rather commonplace occurrences and that the number of cases reflected in criminal statistics is only a faint echo of what really goes on ... (...) After the publication of the Kinsey reports nobody could spread the old masturbation scare stories with a clean conscience. Likewise, no one who is acquainted with the relevant research proving the frequency and universality of sex with children can any longer promulgate in good faith the myth of its traumatic consequence.
If parents really loved their children above all else they would be happy to see science prove that something which they had feared, regarded as threatening or horrible, was really quite harmless. But most people appear to be more attached to their sexual phobias than to their children, and so they cling compulsively to the myth of traumatisation. This reluctance to give up old terrors is especially to be deplored since the myth itself may really hurt children." [mijn nadruk] (24)

"So we can see that the legend of the wicked stranger is very dangerous. Nonetheless, many a caring parent continues to spread it. These are the same caring parents who do a more thorough job of distorting their children's sexual evolution than any child molester could have done."(26)

"We will have more to say about this in Chapter Five. For the present we will limit ourselves to observing that the only acceptable and effective way to protect a boy against unwanted physical attentions by an adult is to give him honest and ample information about the possible dangers, to increase his self-confidence and to teach him that he and only he must decide who may touch his body in an intimate way (Lamping-Goos 1982, ll7; Baurmann 1983, 276, 480-481). Children taught to hold adults in awe and always obey them, who come from families with very rigid views about sexuality and who enjoy less freedom than the majority of their peers have proved more liable to hurt and traumatisation by sexual offenders than those with a more liberal upbringing (Baurmann 1983, 454)." [mijn nadruk] (27)

"The Boy Will Be Turned Into A Homophile". Is duidelijk onzin.

"The Partners are So Unequal". Er zijn natuurlijk enorm veel andere seksuele relaties waarin de partners niet gelijk of gelijkwaardig zijn. Ook niet qua leeftijd. Dus dat is niet typisch voor relaties tussen jongens en mannen. In de praktijk heeft de jongen trouwens meestal de controle over de seksuele relatie met een oudere man.

".Sexual play among children is permissible but an adult will spoil it (Sebbar 1980, 292). Wolters (1982, 13-14), for example, describes all sexual activities between adults and children as "sexual abuse" because "1) the relationship is unequal; 2) the adult has all the power on his side; 3) freedom and opportunity of choice are limited; 4) the older partner is strongly motivated by the desire for satisfaction of his own personal sexual desires." Writers like Wolters and A. Nicholas Groth who begin with the assumption that all adult/child relationships are due either to sexual pressure or sexual force exerted by the man (Howells 1981, 82) have from the very start made it impossible for themselves to gain any real understanding of the phenomenon. They are acting exactly like those feminists who consider every form of sexual activity, even if it is mutually consensual, rape if the partners are in some way unequal (Califia 1981, 137-139). " [mijn nadruk] (31)

"The criticism of dominating the child and restricting his freedom, made so unjustly of boy-lovers, should be turned instead against those who utter it. With all of their laws and prohibitions, they undeniably protect the child's freedom to say 'no' to any sexual approach - and we cannot criticise them for that - but they deprive him of the parallel freedom, the right to say 'yes'. They have given the child freedom only in a negative sense (Baurmann 1983, 53-54).. "It is simply assumed that children cannot give consent to a sexual act and that any sucl act is always harmful. However, this view is irrational and oppressive." (Haeberle 1978,355) Parents are not allowed to cut off their son's hand, so why are they permitted to cut off his sexuality? (Duvert 1980,126)"(39-40)

". There are psychiatrists - and lawyers who prepare legislation have taken their side - who claim that consent by the child is impossible and so this possibility does not have to be taken into consideration. The child is simply not able to give consent; any apparent consent he might give is invalid, thus sexual activity with a child of any kind is equivalent to rape. (...) No child really wants sex with an adult, according to these psychiatrists; even if the boy says 'yes' what he really means is 'no'." [mijn nadruk] (40)

"So we can see that every declaration of the child is manipulated by such psychiatrists in order to make it conform to their preconceived theories. And they call this defending the child against the manipulation of his consent."(41)

"The Child Is Manipulated". Ja, zeer, altijd weer. En zxoals altijd werkt het nauwelijks.

"Certainly in bringing up a child a great deal of manipulation is used and this is generally accepted. Only when the manipulation concerns sex is it suddenly perceived to be so detrimental to his well-being." [mijn nadruk] (41)

"In everyday life adults frequently show little enough concern over whether the child will consent to something or not. They say, "You're going to do this!" "Parents especially are prone to confuse their right to voice their own convictions with the right to impose these upon their offspring; their right to live according to their own convictions with their right to compel their children to live according to them too. With no other altemative than to live with their family, subject to parental control, parental will, parental ethics and life style, dependent upon family circumstances, culture, religious beliefs, ideals, prejudices, hatreds, intents, children see themselves permanently subject to unlimited compulsion. Were they not under such pressure, threatened with deprivation of love or food, blackmailed about their futures and given an occasional box on the ears, what really would be left of one's right to bring up one's children in the way one would wish?" (Duvert 1980,122) Modern education, Duvert says elsewhere [1976] with biting sarcasm, maintains 'that in a democracy everybody is entitled to the free development of his own personality, but that - if you wish to be happy and develop yourself properly - it is better to behave just like everyone else.'"(42)

"We have seen, then, that the usual blanket objections to man/boy relationships are invalid. There are, nevertheless, situations which can render them risky or even undesirable. We will now examine a few of them."(46)

Incest komt vaak voor - ondanks dat het taboe is. Het probleem is volgens Brongersma weer niet zo zeer de seksuele ervaring, het hangt er zoals altijd gewoon van af hoe een en ander wordt aangepakt (geweld leidt zoals altijd tot ellende, jongens ervaren het anders dan meisjes). Problemen ontstaan vooral door de angst rondom incest, door het ingrijpen van de autoriteiten.

[Ja, maar dat is dan wel een gegeven. Zoals wel vaker wijst Brongersma terecht op een gegeven, maar dat feit op zich zegt ook weer niets over wat je zou moeten doen. Incest is wettelijk verboden, wat je er zelf ook van vindt. Dat alleen al is een reden om je twee keer bedenken voordat je incest bedrijft. Maar daarnaast heb je in gezinsverhoudingen al heel snel de ouder-kind-machtsverhouding. Kan een kind seks met een ouder weigeren? Dat zal niet gemakkelijk zijn. Bovendien vraag ik me af hoe vaak incest samengaat met dwang en geweld. Vaker dan Brongersma suggereert, denk ik, maar ik weet dat verder ook niet. ]

Seks tegen een vergoeding (niet per se prostitutie dus) is een ander onderwerp. Voor jongens met mannen ligt dat weer anders dan voor meisjes met mannen. Meisjes krijgen zoals altijd vaker te maken met dwang en agressie, zogenaamde beschermers als pooiers, etc. Voor jongens is het vaak een tijdelijke fase om een inkomen te hebben.

"There are people who, innocent of any first hand experience with the different ways of living and thought pattems of foreign cultures, weep copiously over the 'scandalous prostitution and exploitation of children' in Asia, projecting abroad their western horror of sex. They should better concern themselves with the widespread prostitution of children in their own countries, or, better yet, ask themselves to what extent their own moralistic repugnance of sexuality and the laws it inspires have contributed to the Third world prostitution they so heartily despise and the abuses inherent in it. "Sex tourism", in the final analysis, is simpty symptomatic of a kind of socialpathology rampant in most of the rich countries. Western laws make it unacceptably dangerous for many a boy-lover to establish with a boy at home a relationship satisfactory for both. That is why, in order to experience any sexual satisfaction at all, he must travel half-way around the world to enjoy a brief encounter with a paid partner in a more tolerant social setting (O'Canoll 1980, 184). "(59)

". The African, South American or Asian boys who on occasion sleep with tourists are markedly more exuberant, happy and healthy than the hundreds of millions of poor children in these parts of the world who, without eaming a single tear from the virtuous crusaders against "sex tourism", are slowly withering away or becoming crippled for life by back-breaking labour. Sex, sometimes at least, can be tender and enjoyable; work on Third World municipal rubbish dumps or in child sweat shop factories never is. But since no sex is involved in picking ttrough garbage or working 16 hours a day in a garment factory, some people find it preferable ... We should fight against the exploitation of children not because (and only where) sex is involved, but because (and where) children, without respecting their freedom and personal feelings, are compelled out of need to do things which they find repellent. That is where the line must be drawn, the distinction made." [mijn nadruk] (59)

[Ik denk dat Brongersma dat goed inschat. Alles is goed zo lang het etiketje 'seks' er maar niet aan hangt. Hij komt later met voorbeelden van ouders die hun jonge kinderen tot topsporters vormen, met alle dwang en zo die daar bij komt kijken. Maar dat vinden we prima. Van de andere kant blijf ik een skeptisch gevoel houden bij al die schriftelijke en mondelinge bronnen die duidelijk moeten maken dat jongens zich vrijwillig prostitueren en dat ze zich daar goed bij voelen. Ik kan moeilijk geloven dat er niet sprake is van een hoop ellende in die wereld. Brongersma noemt dat wel, maar ik denk te weinig. ]

"But money is not the only, and often not even the main reason. The real driving force, which even the boy himself may not realise, often has more tragic roots: he longs for an adult to take an interest in him and pay aftention to him."(61)

"d. It is sheer social hypocrisy for those who provide an indispensable service to be forced to operate in an aura of illegality and criminalify. If we want to combat excess, sex work should be regarded as a profession just as any other serving our physical needs. Sex workers would then be less vulnerable to exploitation and bad working conditions. (...) The most significant thing about prostitution is that it is work, not that it is sex."(76)

[Ook daar ben ik het mee eens. Seks wordt veel te belangrijk gemaakt. En natuurlijk altijd weer in negatieve zin.]

Volgt een stuk over pornografie, in deze context het maken van afbeeldingen van jongens.

" Looking at erotic pictures will only make people more liberated and tolerant (Frenken 1976, 61). It is those, on the other hand, who respond with fear and disgust when confronted with this aspect of Creation, who we find campaigning for censorship and prohibition.
Throughout the first half of the 20th century, a period of strong sexnegativism, it seemed self-evident that the depiction of sexual activity, even of the nude body, was enormously harmful and had to be prevented by all means at the disposal of sociery. Supposedly the circulation of obscene matter would, first, incite people to commit rape and other sexual crimes; and, second, encourage the growth of "perversions", especially homosexuality, paedophilia and sadism. Third, it was a particular danger for young people: on the one hand a brutal confrontation with sex would cause such ineradicable disgust in innocent, naive youths that they would forever be impotent; on the other hand it would convert them into satyrs wittr raging, uncontrolled sexual impulses. Finally, fourth, it undermined moral sensibility and encouraged depravity.
Almost nobody contested these views. That doesn't mean there was no production and circulation of erotica. Quite the contrary."(82)

[Dat zijn ook de argumenten die steeds weer opduiken in de discussies over de seksualisering van kinderen. Onderzoek laat steeds weer zien dat die vier argumenten niet meer zijn dan 'bullshit'.]

"Of the four kinds of alleged harm caused by pornography, not one could be substantiated by objective examination."(83)

"The conceit of censors is really most amusing. If pomography actually has such a deleterious influence upon those who come into contact with it, the character of these good ladies and gentlemen who are professionally obliged to consume this poison in order to protect their fellow citizens from it must themselves be inetrievably corrupted. Their altruism, evidently, never makes them fear for their own souls, only the souls of others, especially of inexperienced youth (Armand 1931, 430)"(84)

[Welnee, die worden beschermd door hun enorme weerzin tegenover seks.]

"The crusade against pornography has made victims among the protagonists themselves. It can hardly be coincidence that among twelve leading personalities of the American antipomography movement, six were later sentenced for abuse and rape of children"(84)

"And youth? Shouldn't young people at least be protected from dangerous publications? If so, logically we would first have to determine just what sorts of things are really dangerous to the young mind. We will discuss this further in the following chapter. Also we would have to balance the pros and cons of any measures we might take."(86)

"Only a totally hostile attitude about sexuality could give birth to the strange notion that erotic pictures degrade the model by tuming him or her into a lust object. People of both sexes (and not just the young!) try to do everyhing in their powerto make themselves physically attractive, i.e. to excite the sexual response of the people they meet. If they are successful they feel flattered; it is a boost to their self-confidence."(87)

"Some countries have tried to resolve the "problem" of pomography by simply forbidding the production and sale of pictures of naked children. The effect might well be an increase in criminality. Kutschinsky (1970) demonstrated convincingly that erotic pictures are a kind of safety-valve for sexual aggression against children; thus, with prohibition, the number of assaults upon and rapes of children will be relatively higher. At the same time the illicit trade will continue - penal laws are not very effective! - but now in secrecy, as a black market for the wealthy, and out of control. The relatively cheap books and magazines which once gave pleasure to customers will disappear. The legal prohibition of pomography frequently serves the interests of the producers, since prices tend to skyrocket."(92)

Vervolgens gaat het over geweld in pederastische relaties. Dat komt veel minder voor dan in pedofiele relaties tussen mannen en meisjes. Daarna gaat het over sadistische / masochistische voorkeuren die hier ook voorkomen. Een onderwerp is weer hoe seks in een samenleving werd gereguleerd.

"Until 1886 there was no section in the Dutch Penal Code which prohibited consensual sex with children, boys or girls. This changed during the Victorian Age (Smidt 1891, II, 317). Except for modern economic offences and dispositions concerning environmental protection and traffic regulations,"sexual assault on minors" is the most recent addition to penal law (Killias 1979,2).
How did this come about? How was it prepared? Historians could give long, necessarily complicated explanations (Aron & Kempf 1978; Dasberg 1975; Schérer 1974; Taylor 1953; van Ussel 1968). Let us point out only two factors: a considerable increase in knowledge and technology necessitating a great deal more instruction; the rise to power of an industrious bourgeoisie bent on accumulating riches through diligence and thrift."(123)

". In modern industrial sociery, more and more years elapsed between reaching physical maturity and being able to marry and during this time the sexuality of boys and girls was simply superfluous, of no use (Monis 1976,135).
But in those days nearly every expression of sexuality was thought of as superfluous - and suspicious as well. Sex was disturbing: it kept people from working and studying.(...)
The joys of sex should be restricted to useful, productive people in the full vigour of their lives. Such pleasures were not for the unproductive, the old or the young.
These rather prosaic concepts gave birth to a fairy tale. Society, as we have seen, had no use for a child's sexuality, so it simply decided that a child did not have any. And so emerged the myth of the asexual, pure, innocent child: pure because it had not yet become contaminated by something as dirty as sex (Bleibtreu-Ehrenberg 1978, 383), and innocent because it did not share in the guilt of adults who carried on this sinful activity." [mijn nadruk] (124)

[Mooie weergave van het ontstaan van die ideologie van het aseksuele, pure, onschuldige kind, vind ik. En ondanks alle onderzoek van de laatste 150 jaar is dat nog steeds de dominante ideologie. Droevig.]

"Woe, now, to the criminal who dares soil this pure being, to destroy his innocence! It was unthinkable that any child could ever have anything to do with sex, spontaneously, out of his or her own free will. If something did happen, the evil adult was at fault; the initiative could only have come from him Hanry 1977, 14). And so, as the 19th Century progresses, we witness one penal code after another being extended by a totally new provision: an article prohibiting indecent behaviour with children (Killias 1979)." [mijn nadruk] (124-125)

"Under the impact of laws making it criminal to show sexual tenderness and love to a child, and firmly believing the fairy tale about the child's asexuality, innocence and purity (as spread by pedagogues and moralists), public opinion has been incited to a frenzy of fierce hatred against paedophiles, and this has found its natural outlet in demands that these criminals be jailed for life, shot or castrated. "If it had been my own child that he'd touched, I'd have strangled him with my own hands!" a well known television personality exclaimed, and he was vigorously applauded.(...) That children were battered to death or severely injured by their own parents, killed or maimed for life by drunken drivers, never raised half so much fury. This already makes such demands suspicious, as Potrykus & Wöbcke (1974, 82) rightly observe. "(125)

" It is the law's duty to guarantee the sexual liberty of everyone. Sexual liberty does not mean that everybody has to sleep with everybody else, but that the authorities will not interfere with freely chosen personal relationships. Justice should intervene only in cases of violence, compulsion, subjugation of one human being by another, or where one person is treated as the property of another. In sexual liberty it is essential that, first, nothing happens without the consent of all partners; second, every parmer is empowered to wittrdraw his or her consent at anymoment (Duvert1980, 111-112).
It is not a question of giving children more rights; rather it is a question of making less exceptions for them in the rights adults take for granted (Schérer 1978, 185-186)."(127)

"So the vicious circle is complete: repressed paedophilia maintains the laws against paedophilia. The harshness of society's fight against sex with boys can only be explained by emotions aroused by its own repressed lustful eagerness for boys."(130)

[Ik weet niet of dát nu de reden is voor het blind handhaven van het taboe van kinderlijke seksualiteit. De stelling dat iedereen onbewust seksuele verlangens naar kinderen heeft is zwak, vaart te veel op de vaagheden van de psychoanalyse. Dat er sprake is van een angst voor kinderlijke seksualiteit lijkt me wel. Maar het is wel erg gemakkelijk om die toe te schrijven aan verdrongen verlangens. Misschien moeten we het eerder zoeken in de redenen waarom vooroordelen tegen beter weten gehandhaafd blijven, iets sociologisch of psychosociaals. Waarom blijven mensen iets geloven wat niet waar is? De behoefte aan zekerheid, de angst voor twijfel, conformisme, koste wat kost er bij willen horen.]

"In most Western lands, children are protected more strongly from sexual contacts than from violence and physical abuse. The onesidedness of this "protection" is blatantly conspicuous: it is used to insulate him from all actual sexual experience but not to shield him from sexual neglect and traumatising sexual miseducation. While it guards a minor's right to reject a sexual approach, it denies him the liberty to accept one (Baurmann 1983, 53-54)." [mijn nadruk] (133)

"In the meantime, however, the gradual crumbling of the myth of the "pure", asexual child has helped us become aware that children are erotically attractive creatures, and not infrequently act like determined little seducers (Albrecht 1964; Bender & Blau 1937; Kerscher 1978; Lafon et al. 1961; Landis 1956; Lempp 1968; Rossman 1976; Sandfort 1982). Virkkunen, certainly not a proponent of paedophilia, said that in over 64% of the cases he investigated the child himself had helped precipitate, or at least contributed to, the seduction, as, for instance, by making repeated visits to the adult partner (1981, 128). (Cf. Powell & Chalkley 1981, 71, 73). We have already dealt with this matter in Chapter Three."(135)

Volgt een stuk over de bedenkelijke manieren waarop artsen en psychiaters zich altijd weer inzetten om pederastische en pedofiele neigingen te 'genezen'.

[De belangrijke vraag die hier niet gesteld wordt is: waarom laten die beroepsgroepen zich zo gemakkelijk lenen voor het handhaven van bepaalde maatschappelijke taboes op een manier die op geen enkele manier verdedigbaar is vanuit hun medische ethiek. Waaom laten ze zich voor het karretje spannen van conservatieve ideologieën in de samenleving? Omdat ze er deel van uitmaken misschien. Het is schokkend.]

"A striking example is confrontation with an exhibitionist. "There are some relatively harmless adult males who cannot relate to adult males or females, have doubts about their own sexuality, and who expose themselves to others, sometimes to children. (...) children are not traumatised by a 'flasher' and frequently accept the behaviour with better grace than do their parents. Any trauma, as in most sexual abuse, comes from adult interpretation and handling of the event. When parents get upset and a police dragnet is instituted, the commotion often causes much more concem to the child than the event itself." (Walters 1975,130)" [mijn nadruk] (150)

"Even today parents - who exploit, assault or abuse their children are comparatively well treated by the courts and public opinion."(153)

Het is niet eens zo lang geleden - zeg twee eeuwen - dat leeftijdsgroepen belangrijk werden en de samenleving als het ware opsplitste in kinderen. volwassenen en ouderen. Het onschuldige kind dat beschermd moest worden ontstond. Nog een paar andere thema's komen aan de orde.

"Perhaps Sandfort (1980, 196) is right in saying that adults tend to see marriage, union for life, as the sole valid model for every love relationship, and thus are all too inclined to call boy-love, with its in-built transitory nature, tragic. This modelling becomes a bit hypocritical when it tums a blind eye to the fact that heterosexual relations, too, are subject to a high degree of instability and change. 'Love makes time pass by, and time makes love pass by,' goes an Italian proverb."(160)

"Boy-lovers as a group are no better than other people; among them are evil and merciless egoists as well as kind and considerate men."(164)

[Dat is het probleem, nietwaar? Omdat een kleine minderheid dingen fout doet en asociaal gedrag vertoont - stelen, pesten, met alcohol achter het stuur gaan zitten, hun vrouw of kinderen slaan - maken we wetten om die groepen aan te kunnen pakken en te straffen. Wat is er dan zo raar dat we wetten maken om kinderen te beschermen tegen de egoïsten die hen willen gebruiken voor hun eigen gerief ten koste van die kinderen? Dat is het probleem niet. Het probleem is dat die wetten kinderen tegen het verkeerde willen beschermen, namelijk tegen de seksualiteit in plaats van tegen dat egoïstische handelen, geweld, onderdrukking, etc. van een kleine minderheid. Worden ouders die kun kinderen slaan of mentaal mishandelen ook zo hard veroordeeld? Ik denk het niet. De wet zit gewoon een bevooroordeeld spoor te volgen. Geweld mag, seks mag niet.]

(175) Chapter 5 - Sexual Repression and Sexual Liberation

" Since it's known that people sexually mature long before they get married, how can society expect people to wait?" (Hass 1979, 137) Why should sexual morality be different for boys, especially after their bodies have matured, than for adults? In sex a boy is certainly the man's equal: nature drives him even more frequently and tempestuously toward sexual contacts than it does the adult male. When adults deny boys the same degree of sexual freedom they allow themselves, youth can only consider society a system where adults have made of sex a status symbol for themselves which they defend under the pretence of protecting morality (Killias 1979, 206). Here the well-known battle of the generation gap is not caused by the young but by their elders (Hanry 1977,92,138)."(176)

Wat zijn de gevolgen van die seksuele onderdrukking van jongeren?

"We will discuss them under four topics: 1) nervous troubles, 2) increased aggression, 3) guilt feelings, 4) sexual obsession."(177)

"We must make a careful distinction between freely accepted, self-imposed abstinence - apparently possible for a number of people-and abstinence imposed by others, or by a system, or by the authorities. It is the latter which makes people ill (Bomeman 1978, 31)."(177)

Volgt een reeks bronnen die duidelijk maken hoe slecht de repressie van seksualiteit is voor de geestelijke gezondheid.

". This investigation clearly shows how individuals growing up in a sex-negative environment suffer its consequences from then on in their sexual lives and impaired marital relationships. The idea that a woman normally enjoys sex less than a man - or even not at all - originated in occidental Christianity, and nowhere else in the world is this belief shared (Ellis 1913, III 194,197)." [mijn nadruk] (179-180)

" For forcing on people rigid sexual morality is an attack on their mental health. For proof we need only look to the difference between Western society and cultures with more positive sexual attitudes."(182)

Vervolgens wordt de relatie tussen seksuele onderdrukking en agressie verder uitgewerkt met voorbeelden en citaten.

"The more a society orders its members to suppress their impulses, the crueler it becomes (Borneman 1978, 1475)."(185)

"It is the essence of aggression that the weak are always the first to be victimised: animals and children for exemple. Almost always parents who are in the habit of physically abusing their children have very unsatisfactory sex lives.
Christianity has always shown more tolerance for passionate outbursts of violence and for intemperance in eating and drinking than for passionate intemperance in sex."(185)

Vervolgens wordt ingegaan op de samenhang tussen schuldgevoelens en de ondrukking van seksualiteit. En tot slot op seksuele obsessie en die onderdrukking. Allebei de thema's worden onderbouwd met vele bronnen.

"Sexual intolerance is always symptomatic of inner weakness, and its most striking result is that it stimulates, if not creates, precisely what it attempts to prevent."(197)

Vervolgens wordt een geschiedenis van de repressie beschreven en wordt ingegaan op wat seksuele vrijheid nu eigenlijk is en hoe die zich verhoudt tot vrijheid in het algemeen.

[Ik ga dat hier niet herhalen. Het is het bekende verhaal van Grieken en Romeinen en vooral van de negatieve manier waarop Paulus en Augustinus over lijfelijkheid en seksualiteit schreven. De echte repressie begon dus met het Christendom en was ook te vinden in alle latere al of niet religieuze totalitaire ideologieën.]

"After World War I, the League of Nations "began to meddle in the sexual customs of previously permissive societies," Haeberle writes and, quoting Guyon, "The countries outside Europe and America, almost without exception, have framed their Penal Codes more or less exactly after European criteria, in order to show the world that their civilisation was not inferior to the Western civilisation taken as an unquestionable model of progress. (...) The Doctrine of Sin, which Missionaries tried for so many years to introduce in those countries, without any great success, was suddenly imposed on them by a trick which has gratified to the full the host of anti-sexually minded people." (Haeberle 1983, 164-165)"(206)

[Een voorbeeld in deze is dus Japan en haar opstelling tegenover enjo kōsai.]

"All dictatorships are chaste: in this respect they are alike, and it doesn't matter whether they are Marxist or Fascist, Islamic or Christian. "Sex, one of the essentials for human happiness, is characteristically persecuted by every patriarchal, political or religious tyranny." (Danielou 1979, 23) All those who exercise absolute power, be it secular or spiritual, all tyrannies listed by the Indian legislator Manu - the tyrannies of priests, warriors, merchants and of the working classes - all try to limit the sexual freedom of their subjects and impose prohibitions and taboos upon their sexual activities."(206)

". They always look with disfavour upon the expression of love, pleasure or primeval impulses through the medium of sex."(207)

"In the countries which gave birth to it, capitalism finally managed to eliminate the scarcity of consumer goods, and this meant the highest economic purpose of life shifted from production to consumption. Thrift ceased to be a virtue; it was no longer necessary, possibly even detrimental. And thus sexual morality changed and the Western world had its "sexual revolution" with its demand for greater freedom and tolerance. The new economy was directed towards immediate, large-scale satisfaction of new, artificially inflated needs (Killias 1979, 21). This included sex, and now performance became all-important, the sexual athlete our social idol. Tender love-making was defective if there was no insertion of the penis, no ejaculation. Both partners had to have orgasms every time, preferably simultaneously and not too soon; if this didn't happen something must have gone wrong. Movies and television spread this new gospel."(208-209)

"So the fight for real sexual freedom must be fought on two fronts: on the one, against the communist, fascist, Christian and Islamic fear of the independent personality; on the other, against the well-publicised message of the media urging us to have sex in all its forms and as much as possible, wether you want it or not."(210)

"Dr. Frits Wafelbakker, state inspector of public health, said at a meeting of the Netherlands Association for Sexology in 1982 that the following rights of children ought to be recognised:
1. The right to receive information.
2. The right to enjoy their feelings and to develop them by means of:
a. masturbation,
b. sexual play with age peers, for which opportunity should be provided,
c. sex with older partners.
3. The right to decide for themselves whether to say "yes" or "no" when approached sexually by others."(216)

[Dan is het de laatste decennia van kwaad tot erger gegaan ... Dit zijn dus de waarden en normen die Brongersma en vele anderen verdedigen. Ze nemen kinderen serieus. Maar in allerlei landen is tegenwoordig zelfs seksuele voorlichting aan kinderen een probleem geworden. 'Je moet je van seks onthouden,' is de boodschap daar. En in de landen waar die voorlichting op scholen en zo er wél is betreft de informatie zoals bekend meestal alleen maar het biologische voorplantingsproces als een soort van traditionele voorbereiding op het huwelijk waar seks mag. Het gaat vrijwel nooit over seks als 'communicatiemiddel', als iets van sociaal gedrag en emoties, van plezier beleven aan je eigen lichaam of dat van een ander, en zo verder, iets dat van alle leeftijden is. Het is schokkend als je er over na wilt denken. Het is ook hier weer heel jammer dat Brongersma niet een boek heeft geschreven dat in het algemeen over kinderen gaat. Die voortdurende verwijzing naar jongens is een keuze natuurlijk, maar ik zou een algemene insteek veel zinvoller gevonden hebben.]

"It is disgraceful if children are sacrificed to the sexual passions of adults - a traumatising experience - which society is quite justified in trying to prevent. But it is no less scandalous if the budding feelings and desires of children are sacrificed to sexophobia, to the sexual anxieties, frustrations and misinformation of their teachers and those who bring them up. It is an open question whether they really aren't hurt. much more badly by the latter. But society refuses to punish those responsible for such abuse; instead it often honours them for their activities, considering them virtuous and beneficial. The total number of children victimised by true molesters is infinitesimal compared to those sexually crippled by their own parents and guardians." [mijn nadruk] (221)

[Goede conclusie, vind ik.]

"But although deeds are important, so is speech. In sex therapy, in popular magazines, one can witness time and again the misery of people who cannot explain to their partners what they really want in bed. The sexual pathology of our culture makes it impossible for many people to talk with their partners about their sexual tastes with the openness they would about their tastes in food."(229)

"Latin sexual euphemism is just another symptom of sexophobia and an attempt to indoctrinate children against sex. It separates personal emotions and experiences from a subject which is seemingly devoid of value (Baurmann 1983, 47). If teachers vigilantly insist that children always say "penis" or "member", never "cock" or "prick", always "vulva", never "cunt", it suggests to the children that there is a very unchildish difference between proper and dirty sexuality, and this is definitely harmful."(231)

"Shamelessness is inconsiderate provocation with the intent to shock. Quite different, and greatly to be desired, is the serenity and self-assurance that comes with freedom from shame."(233)

En dat betreft ook de omgang met naaktheid die in West-Europa heel lang normaal werd gevonden en pas later werd veroordeeld als iets waarvoor je je zou moeten schamen. Religies zijn meestal negatief over naaktheid.

"Nudity poses more of a problem for boys than for girls, since their genitals are more conspicuous and have their own mute, but even more conspicuous way of expressing themselves: the erection (Langfeldt 1991, 109)."(237)

"The research of the well-known doctor couple Masters & Johnson, moreover, demonstrated that shame is not at all an inborn, ineradicable instinct."(244)

[Schaamte is niet iets natuurlijks, maar iets cultureels, zoals Brongersma aan de hand van vele voorbeelden uit de geschiedenis en de culturele antropologie laat zien. Nudisme is dus ook heel voor de hand liggend.]

"These examples show us how relative feelings of shame really are. With most boys, shyness is not based upon reverence for the loftiness of sexuality - a notion both noble and praiseworthy - but upon an indoctrinated misconception that nudity and sex are indecent, obscene, dirty and disgusting."(250)

[Daarna volgt een lofzang op de schoonheid van het mannenlichaam en op de grootte van de penis die ik niet begrijp. Zoiets is natuurlijk zo betrekkelijk als wat. Je ziet er aan dat Brongersma zich soms nogal verliest in kleine onderwerpen en het vermelden van allerlei bronnen zonder bepaalde kwestie te doordenken.]

Het volgende stuk Sexual Abstinence and Self-Control begint met:

"It is coming to be more and more widely recognised that sex information is an essential element of education . Omitting it is simple neglect. It is pretty well understood, too, that imparting this information should start early and be successively adapted as the child matures. But broach the subject of actual sexual exercise and practice and there will be, at best, general hesitation. Even penal law seems grounded on the conviction that the awakening of the sexual instinct,and certainly the commencement of sexual activity, in girls and boys is intrinsically harmful and fatal to their further development. This, of course, is quite mistaken." [mijn nadruk] (255)

[Ja, vind ik ook. Ik vind al die pleidooien voor zelfbeheersing en abstinentie behoorlijk naïef. Het onderliggende mensbeeld deugt simpelweg niet.]

"Chastity, understood as total celibacy, is not a virtue. Like most non-Christian peoples, the Greeks had no word for it (Szasz 1982,97). Sexual asceticism is an expression of a dangerous character defect ... "(256)

[Prachtig. ]

"A sexual upbringing worthy of the name should aim at control of sexual capacities, but a true control, not the brutal repression most moralists advocate. True control means making use of sexual capacities according to the dictates of reason and sentiment, activating or not activating them in perfect freedom."(360)

"One is struck by how very little research there is on the effects of exposure to such material [expliciet materiaal zoals in pornografie - GdG]. It would cause a great commotion, a loud outcry of disgust, if scientists were to confront a large experimental population of minors with hard-core pornography in order to study their reactions. That no such outcry is heard when similar experiments are made on children with pictures and movies of hard-core violence is just another demonstration of how much less alarming our society finds physical cruelty than physical tenderness. " [mijn nadruk] (268)

[Ook daarmee ben ik het helemaal eens. ]

"Sexual instruction and education will always remain incomplete unless there is provision for experiment and practice. Like all other primates, the human child must discover these things with all of his five senses (Bomeman 1978, 109). Boys need practical experience even more than girls, as is true of all mammals (de Boer 1978,35; Ford&Beach 1968, 209-210, 259-260). Since the male partner is expected to show more initiative and more skills in sex, his is the more difficult task. " [mijn nadruk] (275)

[Soms staart Brongersma zich wat blind op de mannelijke seksualiteit, want dat laatste lijkt me onzin. Vrouwen hebben minstens zo vaak grote moeite met 'techniek' en 'vaardigheden', dus met er voor te zorgen dat ze zelf en hun partner kunnen genieten van seks. En wat er van mannen aan initiatief en zo verwacht wordt is natuurlijk puur cultureel, we zijn geen apen. Waarom zouden vrouwen geen initiatief nemen en zo? Waarom zouden ze dat niet leren?]

"Ford and Beach also note that in those societies where sexplay is liberally permitted in childhood and adolescence the prospects for lustful and mutually satisfactory sexual relations in marriage are better (1968, 211)."(275)

[Dat is nu algemeen bekend inderdaad.]

"In the hedonistic conception, sex is play and therefore it doesn't matter who plays, what their ages are, or whether they are married. Sex is fun and subject to the morality of fun. What objection, then, could possibly be raised against older people teaching younger people about games and sport? (Gagnon and Simon1973, 305) "(285)

"Everything we know points to the conclusion that parents should not only tolerate the sexual experiments of their children but actively encourage them, be they homosexual or heterosexual."(304)

[Vanaf p.310 volgt dan een sectie Ethics for Boy-Lovers met veel herhaling en daarna volgen er nog allerlei secties met praktishe tips. Ik houd het boek verder voor gezien. ]