Sometimes when I ask a question I’m really trying to point out why coming to any conclusion aside from the one I’m in the process of explaining makes you an imbecile.
This is not one of those posts.
Yesterday I saw a documentary on ‘The Family’ - not the mafia, or the band, but ‘The Children of God’ - a religious cult (and they almost always are) who institutionalized paedophilia and drove a lot of abused kids (like River Phoenix) to depression and suicide. According to the film makers, they taught their children to have sex with each other and, from the age of five up, adults. Nasty, twisted stuff which was all done in the name of religion.
It came a day after reading the New York Times unintentionally amusing piece on child modeling sites. Humorous because it went out of its way to confirm that the sites weren’t about modeling, and because that suggests making money off your four-year-old is okay as long as they’re not being penetrated. I’m not sure it is.
The question, to which I have no answer, is how do we protect children from being exploited without curtailing adult freedoms? Stopping paedophilia is easy, sexual abuse is criminal, but how do you cope with the non-nude sexualization of children if no criminal abuse is involved? We’re back to ‘I know it when I see it’ and that argument’s shit.
My take on the dilemma’s radical, almost certainly impossible and logically consistent. Best of all it solves the problem in an instant:
If we accept children have limited power to consent, let’s remove their right to consent to work.
Told you it was simple. I don’t see a huge difference to standing in room wearing clothes and working in a shoe factory so why the double standard? At least the kids in shoe factories get paid. Child models cash goes straight to their pimp parents. I could live without child actors (they all suck) and models (if you can’t buy clothes whose sizes span 2-year gaps without seeing them modeled you’re retarded and shouldn’t be allowed near children) and Harry Potter movies (though I’m a little pumped about the ‘His Dark Materials’ trilogy). Why do we need any children in the workforce in 2006?
Assuming my view doesn’t prevail, how do we draw a reasonable line between pictures in Gap of kids in bikinis, pictures on the web shot for paedophiles and cherubs in frescoes by Da Vinci? We have to try or risk the bad laws which are traditionally handed down in the name of child-protection and do little for kids and nothing for adult freedoms. Perhaps the answer’s to do nothing at all, nearly-nude child modeling being something a free society simply has to live with. Is it? I hope not, the stuff freaks me out.
Answers please…
You raise an interesting point. Though I think you need to be more specific toward your objection; are you opposed to pedophiles getting their jollies from such images, or are you opposed to parents, agents, distributors, etc. profiting from those jollies.
The question then becomes are kids allowed to post photography of varying degrees of sexuality of flicker? Should uTube prevent the plethora of young girls (and boys) dancing and singing in questionably sexual ways? Again you get to the “I’ll know it when I see it” rubbish.
The problem is that people who find kids sexy will find them sexy regardless of context. If a child model showing off the latest in kids underwear is barred I imagine pedophiles will be excited by the Smith family beach vacation photos. If men in Arab countries can get excited by women in burkas then it isn’t really about over exposure of flesh.
Are you drawing the line at the profitability of sexualizing children, because I cannot see stopping it.
What about putting the burden on the parents? So far the “let’s save our children” type laws punishes people other than the parents, ie using the word Barbie to lure minors to websites.
The parents bred and raised the child so it’s their responsibility to keep that child sheltered from the big bad world. Plus isn’t it easier to get social services called on families that convict a modeling site of peddling to paedophiles?
From what I’ve heard of pageant mothers who insist on sexualizing their young girls by dressing them up in grown up clothes, ala Jon Benet, that seems pretty wacked.
Then we adults wouldn’t have our internet freedoms curtailed because little Johnny might see an ass cheek. Instead Johnny’s parents would get in trouble for letting him log on and watch The Purple Head of Cairo.
Sam, I saw the NY Times article, and my thoughts were that they were doing everything that they could to condemn the practice without actually accusing the parents of wrongdoing. The way things work in the US legal system at this point, if one of the parents sued and the materials were found not to be obscene the Times would lose a buttwad of money in damages. Asscovering happens everywhere.
These sites actually started with somewhat older models, there have been 15 and 16 year olds doing near pornographic modeling while partially clothed as long as there has been an internet. Remember that 18 is the age of consent to porn acting in the US, and that photos of 17 year olds are actually illegal here (you might recall the Tracy Lords scandal. That issue of Penthouse with her first photo set is illegal to own or sell in the US because she was 15 at the time). It’s just spread to younger children recently, gone beyond the “Buffy Teen Model” type site.
The difficulty with doing anything about this material lies in the notion that there is a difference between “sexually suggestive” material and the odd snapshot of a naked 2 year old lying on a bearskin rug. Courts have been reluctant to apply these laws to parents because most of us of a certain age have appeared in snaps taken while we were frolicking in a bathtub, chasing around towel wrapped and the towel suddenly goes south, and that type of thing. Criminalizing all child nudity and sexual suggestiveness would place most of middle America under interdict. There is also, at least in the US, the question of “artistic merit”, which when present invalidates claims of obscenity. This argument also went stratospheric following the murder of the Ramsey child when the average American first became aware of “pagaent mothers” and their sexualization of near-infants. This contributed to no end to the amount of scorn and hostility directed at the Ramseys.
The real problem lies in that the “christian right” who are in charge of America right now honestly do not see a difference between types of porn. Gonzales, if questioned about why he isn’t addressing this issue, will look straight at you and say that he is, then point to the recent attempted crackdown on producers with incomplete or faulty verification of documents. They honestly can’t see the difference, it’s all evil to them, and no one has the right to consent to evil. Porn is porn is porn, in their eyes if it makes your pecker hard it’s illegal. immoral, and probably fattening.
A reasonable administration would of course address the issue. This one won’t, at least until forced to do so, because there ain’t no reason in em.
The parents running the sites feel that they ain’t doing nothing wrong, why if anyone tried to touch their kid they’d blow em to Pakistan with this here pistol. The administration will only take this as an opportunity to crack down on that there smut on that there internet. Evangelicals are in fact incapable of making this sort of moral distinction. They just don’t have the “larnin” to be able to distinguish the acts of consenting adults from the predatory capitalism of parents who will do this sort of thing.
Don’t expect legislation in the US. There are good children’s welafare agencies who can and will prosecute these parents if they are identified, something the Times was careful not to do. The laws are in place to shut them down by removing the children from what is obviously a bad home. If you know some child who is being exploited call the local child protection authorities. That’s all we can do.
The problem with stopping child labor is that they aren’t getting paid in the first place, and no US court would see this as applicable (sorry Sam, it’s a good idea).
Stopping pedophilia is easy? Try IMPOSSIBLE. How would you stop homosexuality? Hmmmmm? But that wouldn’t be politically correct, now would it?
I’m not saying children should be abused - I’m saying pedophilia is a condition of the mind and soul, not the physical act. There’s a different word for the physical act - in the US it’s called rape, and that’s a crime. You can lock up all the rapists today, there will be more tomorrow.
How is it that the media and government tells us to fear these “predators” and yet as many as a third of all entering college freshmen have reported being molested in some way by an adult before their 18th birthday - most by parents, step parents, uncles, siblings or close friends, and most of the time in their own home - that’s a HELL of a lot of predators!
Banning children from photographic and film work is an insane non-solution. It didn’t work when Moldova elected its first female leader (a western educated, reactionary feminist) who, in the wake of their own child sex scandal involving high level government officials, banned ALL modeling work by anyone under 18.
The solution is for those in the press to stop playing the governement’s game of big brother through the backdoor and playing into this witch hunt. The solution is talking about this problem in an objective manner and acknowledging that MOST OF THE TIME ITS THE FAMILY DOING THE MOLESTING.
Once we’re on that one, maybe then we can start talking about the fallacy of a “child welfare” system that separates children from their parents almost at whim, often putting them into homes where they are WORSE off, sometimes even where they are KILLED at the hands of their new “parents.”
We need more freedom, not less. Less intrusion into our lives, not more. A little tolerance would buy a lot of healing in this society. Sex happens - get over it.
robber.baron - I don’t see any way of stopping the inappropriate sexual thoughts of certain people but I think that in order to protect adult freedoms we have to know what the limits of acceptability are on our end though. I’d love to know how to tread on peadophiles without treading on all of us.
Vixen - To ‘punish’ parents they must be guilty of something. I’m suggesting that outlawing child-labor might be the crime we need. Pimping children then becomes illegal and Dakot Fanning stops annoying me.
Aurelius - We have to talk about paragraphs. I’m not into criminalizing nude images of children. Only the sick are turned on my kids. however we could stop children being used to generate profits. Take the incentive away and the loopholes use by pedophiles dissapear. It’s a simplification - as we can’t define porn, get them for something simple which we can all agree on. I bet there is some money involved. I know the older ‘nearly nude’ models were paid a fortune - the money being used to soften the parents.
Okay - other option, revolution!
Man that was a tough article to read.
Got me thinking.
I kept getting reminded of the thing that upset my mother most of all when I got into porn - “Men see these films and go out and rape some girl…. yada yada yada…”
Of course that’s bullshit. Rapists don’t need catalyzes.
Never the less I can’t help but think about the consumer of those sexual photo’s of 5 year olds.
Do you think it exempts their urge to kidnap and rape? Do all pedophiles have that urge?
If it starts and ends with looking at photos, as revolting as may be, I say - let it be.
Well, I think that we as a society can’t stop sexualizing children - it is all in the eyes of the beholder. If a person sees my 5 year old kid as a sexual object, the problem is with that person and that person doesn’t belong in society if he or she can’t fix their illness.
So if I choose to use my right to sell photos of my kids in positions I find cute and some fucking pedophile might find stimulating - let me be. Just like with porn, if a rapist decides to watch my movie to stimulate his or her coercion you can’t and shouldn’t hold me responsible.
I know this is a bit harsh, but I truly believe in freedom of speech as I see it.
Sam, I’m putting in paragraph breaks. Your software just places most of my paragraph breaks at the same place as a line wrap I’ll double enter from now on.
I’m sure the older models did make money. That’s my point. We can not have selective enforcement. Because a lot of people marginalized the 15 year old in suggestive poses sites and said things along the lines of “Well, she is legal in some places”, the pedophiles extrapolated and generalized and here we are.
Child labor laws in the US specifically exempt labor done for the parents. It’s a sop thrown to that great American hero the farmer. AS long as the parents are in charge there is nothing the law will do.
The reasons for not criminalizing all photos of nude children we’ve already covered, as also the reasons why the Justice Department will not willingly act on these sites.
I would suggest making ownership records of web sites easier to access, but that would endanger lives in some countries so it’s not really an option. I’m not sure I particularly want George W to be able to easily lay hands on the smuck who sets up warcriminal.com with Bush’s picture as the centerfold.
All I’m saying is that the laws are in effect to stop these sites. Child welfare laws will do nicely. The problem is making the authorities aware of the children being used this way.
Look at it this way: there are dozens of women who were forced to shut down legal web sites because of harassment by the community. What will the community do if they become aware of this sort of thing? Distribute sample photos with identifying details to appropriate child welfare agencies. Start a national child welfare agency with the power to follow these cases across state lines. Hold ISP’s and web hosts responsible for the material distributed through their system, even if all that is happening is that their bandwidth is being used to upload to a server in Russia (but require notification first, ala TOS type matters). Try to stop the public from criminalizing the children involved in abuse so that we don’t feel that accidentally revealing their faces ruins their lives.
I have to say that I do have a problem with the adage that only looking shouldn’t be criminalized in this case though. Looking at photos of children in sexual poses makes us think of children in sexual ways, cause and effect. It doesn’t make you go out and rape a child, but even looking ala child beauty contests and 13 year old Brittany Spears makes people view children as sexual beings, and that is a large part of the problem, IMHO.
Is this better Sam? I’m sorry about the previous posts. They look ok before they’re posted.
All I can say is… ban “Bugsy Malone” :-/
Adele - you could still make Bugsy Malone but you couldn’t charge money for it
Aurelius - Nice job. Paragraph-tastic. I follow your argument but the ‘thought crime’ aspect of banning explicit images scares the pants off me. There has to be a better way…
Thought police? How bout this one Sam. The technology exists to “cure” pedophilia. It’s not difficult. Put the pedophile in a chair, put a strap with a sensor attached around his penis, show him images of children in sexual poses and situations, if he shows signs of arousal give him a taser type electric shock. This would be even more effective if there were a way of making cat and pet scans portable enough so that arousal could be shown by brain waves. The arousal will extimguish itself really quickly. However, you would have a person who is homicidally angry on your hands. Murder of children woud probably increase, not decrease.
The same technology could be used on everything from homosexuality to foot fetish type behavior, gambling to rape. It’s universal in it’s applications.
This wouldn’t prevent the development of new perverts though. As long as human males are evolutionarily programmed to have plastic sexuality this problem will continue to arise. Sexuality, particularly in men, is learned as much as it is biological.
Altrenatively, we could recognize that pedophilia is incurable short of the above, and lock them up for life after one offense. There could be widespread voluntary censorship of material that sexualizes children, no more Mary Kay 2 year olds and 12 year old slut pop performers. This would protect children.
No attacks please, I’m not advocating the above. I merely mention it as an example of true “thought police” type justice.
My thought is that the penal system and a true one strike you’re out attitude towards violent crime is most likely the best we can hope for. Take all the smucks that are in prison for possession of drugs out and replace them with people who are uncurable, rapists, child molesters, men who force their girlfriends into porn so that they can get laid more, that type thing. Some children will be hurt, some women will be assaulted, short of truly draconian measures that make the above look like summer camp this won’t stop. We can minimize it though.
Just call me ‘the devil’s advocate”.
the more harsh the punshement the more psychological harm it may do since a lot of the psychological harm is done when the child lerns of these act against as worng when they learn that these acts ware worng its makes them feel worse so a zereo tolernce policy would make seem even more worng and then in turn hurt these children more
the more psychological harm the victim incurs. the more likely he or she is to repeat these acts so lock up the victims to
I dont think zero tolernce is the answer but a gradual slide away the sexualzion of are children or just look at the african tribe himba witch kinda went the other direction as the mary as a puberty and have well no violence of any kind so in end maybe you can’t change instinct at least it take hundreds or thosands generations can we wait that long to solve this promblem in the end i suspect in a hundred years or so from now we might see that but here and now that idea woud disgust us and seem to go the haert the promblem
please note my post are usually politically blunt