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Comments

• [1] TOM November 16, 2007 - 11:48AM

  are you kidding me? could or could not be traumatizing?

  
  
• [2] Paul from Brooklyn November 16, 2007 - 11:56AM

  I don't know Tom, I masturbated when I was young, I never felt traumatized. Maybe it's just me.

  
  
• [3] ab November 16, 2007 - 11:58AM

  I agree with Paul's comment and I agree with most of Ms.Nathan's views. I think that this country sometimes ventures into hysteria when it comes to this subject.

  
  
• [4] Ruby from Brooklyn November 16, 2007 - 01:03PM

  Children are influenced by what adults suggest.

  An adult trying to seduce a child is not to do with "sexual experimentation" for the adult, it's

  a violent act-taking advantage of the imbalance of power.

  Nathan's using the quote about "then they came for the Jews" was ludicrous, and offensive.

  
  
• [5] Eric from New York November 16, 2007 - 02:32PM

  Ruby,

  Believe it or not Debbie is spot on. Pedophiles (and children who choose to be sexual) are the equivalent in our society to what the Jews were in Nazi Germany.

  I myself am a pedophile (in the line of Plato, Wilfred Owen, Allen Ginsberg...), and I'm part of a very large, educated (I'm a PhD student) pedophile community that is watching and critiquing current events as they relate our lives.

  These days we usually sit in stunned silence as more and more draconian (Nazi-esque) laws are passed against ourselves and the children to whom we are attracted.

  I myself have observed the rush to punish consensual sex between adults and children; every year the laws grow more strict; and we are now at the point where some states are using the death penalty to punish pedophiles (good people) for consensual sex with a child. If that doesn't make us the "New Jews" then what does?

  
  
• [6] Elizabeth from New York November 17, 2007 - 02:19PM

  I think one of the most important points Nathan makes in this piece, and one that so easily gets lost in the discussion, is the distinction between "children" and "teens," especially "older teens." We seem too ready to fall into a dichotomy of "child/adult" when the range of maturity levels among teenagers is enormous, and when especially for older teens (16, 17, 18, 19) the line between adult/child is pretty fuzzy. Nathan's call for reason over fear as we engage in these discussions is so important. As she points out, these "crises" emerge during times of tremendous cultural anxiety. Those are times we need reason more than ever!

  
  
• [7] Erin from Connecticut November 17, 2007 - 09:03PM

  I am also a Ph.D student, and educated enough to know that child pornography is illegal, not because of cultural hysteria, or or needless over-reacting. It is illegal to have sex with a child, because it has proven to be damaging. That is why it is criminal to have sex with a child. Children do not have the cognitive ability to make that decision. Science has already proven that.

  So, Eric, the pedophile community are not an educated bunch, one look at the online message boards tell everyone exactly how ignorant and uneducated they are.

  Eric, to put a child-rapist in any kind of comparison to what the Jews went through, is just another example of exactly HOW ignorant a pedophile can be.

  You are not a Ph.D student, you are just playing one on the internet....

  
  
• [8] Tom November 18, 2007 - 12:31AM

  Don't be so naive, Erin. Even the US Congress, could not *identify* one single flaw in the Rind Report in their censure (H.Con. Res.107 Agreed to July 30, 1999). Without being able to identify one single flaw in the methodology, Congress asserted the study to be "flawed" based on the rationale that the results could be used to justify arguments for upsetting the status quo - in particular, lowering the age of consent. As Debbie Nathan points out, part of the pedo-hysteria is due to parents' fear of losing control over their minor children.

  The fact is that the American Psychological Association and many others had already published numerous studies with the well-known result, that adult-child sexual contact with willing children is generally not harmful. Alfred Kinsey and John Money held the same opinion. Even Oprah Winfrey once made a remark on her show that in the case of adult-child sexual relationships it's not the sex that causes any harm, but the secrecy, and her guest psych immediately agreed whole-heartedly.

  Tom

  
  
• [9] Eric from New York November 18, 2007 - 11:00AM

  Erin,

  You're correct in assuming anyone can play anything on the Internet. Considering that if I were to prove anything to you--say that I'm a student at NYU and I live at such and such a place--I'd probably start getting harassing phone calls late at night; the department in which I teach would probably be contacted with all sorts of allegations against me; and I'd probably lose my job at the pizza joint where I work. Yeah, life for us is getting frighteningly similar to the way it was for the Jews. To prove my point all anyone has to do is visit any one of these vigilante web sites and look at the organized harassment that comes from them. I mean, hell, there's even popular TV shows that make millions off of such tactics. One would think that if Hitler were alive today he'd have a reality TV show called "To Catch a Jew". Can you imagine?

  Indeed, the very fact that you are, in your post, "Othering" the "pedophile community" (forgive me for using academic terms here) is proof enough of what I'm trying to get across. You're practicing a time honored tradition of dehumanizing those you hate in order to guiltlessly inflict your persecution--just as the Nazis had to dehumanize the Jews before they gassed them.

  
  
• [10] Willy from USA December 24, 2007 - 11:32AM

  "The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation. "

  - Adolph Hitler (Mein Kampf)