Reply #55: My question is why wasn't it illegal until 1982? Why did we care so much all of a sudden?

[readmoreoften]

Child pornography wasn't considered much dirtier than other forms of pornography. I own an after-school special from 1980s about a 6th grade girl who falls in love with a pedophile and poses for child porn mags. When the mother finds out (from an ad for child porn in a regular porn mag left in her boyfriend's car) she yells at the daughter, "have you been making dirty pictures!?" This scene would be so impossible to imagine today.

I'm more concerned about finding the kids and making sure they're okay than I am about revenge against pedophiles. If people are caught with pictures of children having sex, but they never had contact with these children, I think that intensive in-house therapy for the offenders (and forcing offenders to help authorities trace the photos) is an excellent start. If the perp is involved in actually taking the photographs and has had contact with the children, I think putting the guy (it's usually a guy) in a high-security home permanently is a good idea.

But I think hysteria is a terrible way to deal with this. It helps no one. For example, when people like Elton John are prosecuted for owning Nan Goldman photos and so forth. My policy is that if it has ever been in the Museum of Modern Art and is currently published in a photography book then it is absurd to prosecute people in possession of such a photo as owning 'child pornography'. It is also silly to prosecute photo collectors who happen to own a collectable daguerrotype from 1896 of a nude teen dressed in classical greek attire staring off into the distance. I also don't approve of prosecuting people for 'simulations of child pornography' as in cartoon characters or 30 year old models dressed up in cheerleader outfits. Criminalizing people's fantasies of making it with a cheerleader in high school is not relevant. The issue of child pornography is that the photo has already hurt a real child. The criminality of viewing the photo is that it perpetuates the trauma for the child.

But really, my thesis is that we became hysterical about child pornography since women's liberation. Helen of Troy syndrome. The purity of women used to be the reason to fight and die for your nation. Now we need a fetish object to remain utterly pure, a romanticized victim to rally behind. We cry over the rape victim at the age of 10, but after we weep and walk away, she still lives her life in confusion. Then when she's 18 and lost and she becomes a stripper or a hooker the same people who boo-hooed over her abuse at 10, call her a dumb bimbo, or trailer trash (poor kids are at the highest risk for abuse.) Why? Fetishization of children. Fuck 'em when they grow up. Somehow in those 8 years of absolutely no help at all (exacerbated by the fact that the family has no money for a therapist and so forth because--come on--who does?) the kid was supposed to have pulled herself up from her bootstraps! We all agree that "it's a crime that destroys a child inside out". So what are we doing for all these destroyed kids after we 'rescue' them? Or is putting the perp behind bars how we rescue them? In other words, nothin' we can do for you, kiddo. Your purity is gone. You don't reflect back to us that wholesome joy we want to see when we look at a child. You're already dead. The best we can do is protect other innocents from coming into contact with the monster. Basically, if we throw away the victim after we play hero--I think all we really wanted was a reason to play hero.

Considering that in the Victorian era parents were urged by doctors to watch their children as they slept to monitor them for signs of masturbation, that children were sent to psychiatric hospitals for masturbating, that some doctors even suggested parents perform surprise home-clitorectomies on girls caught masturbating in their beds, and that cornflakes were designed by an anti-masturbation activist who believed that regular bowel movements would stop the practice in children--considering that all this was normal 100 years ago, I have to question why we have moved from the model of child as innately sinful degenerate to child as blank slate of pure goodness. Especially as we economically rape the children of the world and train paramilitary organizations that target children for extermination through the SOA.

Sometimes I think we care more about the concept of childhood than we do real children.


:rant: