The Next Chapter in the Sexual Revolution?
My view of human nature was not exactly improved last week, when, over at Pajamas Media, I happened to read Rob Taylor's exposé on B4U-ACT, an organization that bills itself as watching out for the mental health of "minor-attracted people" but—quelle surprise—goes a good deal further by overtly and covertly seeking to undermine social stigmas against pedophiliac sexuality. I highly recommend the piece. Taylor takes a look into the wicked world of pedophile activism, a world where child molesters are given the cutesy name "boy lovers" (or, as the case may be, "girl lovers"), accurate labels like "predator" and "pervert" are condemned as fomenting bigotry, and hack grad students deconstruct "the binary between adult and child." A fascinating topic, I'm sure, but not one I'd trust a pedophile sympathizer to handle with fidelity to the truth or to common decency.
It's easy to read about these lunatics and not to take them seriously. They shock and appall, undoubtedly, but it's hard to feel that we really need to worry about the impending normalization of pedophilia. Alas, I am not so sanguine. The logic and vocabulary of political correctness are already so well developed that we can only hope to avert their natural conclusion. Within our lifetimes, we may well be hearing incessantly about the need to "affirm" everyone's desires, including those of "the minor-attracted community"; "relationship experts" will release their concocted theories about how to conduct "mutually satisfying" pederasty; sympathetic psychologists will discover supporting "data"; and historical anthropologists will more and more frequently read cultural pedophilia (like that of classical Greece) as speaking to the inherent "social constructedness" of our revulsion therefrom.
This said, I don't think pedophilia is the unfolding battleground in the sexual culture wars. That is almost certainly polygamy or "polyamory." And after marriage is legally opened up to plural relationships (should we be so unfortunate), I speculate that bestiality—excuse me, "zoophilia"—advocates will be next to clamor for their slice of the sexually liberated pie. The counterargument that animals can't consent will be recognized for the evasion that it is (since neither can they withhold consent; as far as they're concerned, the question of will is more or less irrelevant), and hey, once you've jettisoned the idea that some sexual acts are beneath human dignity, what's stopping you? Dan Savage's repeated tergiversations on the issue are simply ahead of their time.
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Re: The Next Chapter in the Sexual Revolution?
I really don't think this is out of the question when the our culture is increasingly drifting towards believing that there is no "good and evil" but merely "healthy and unhealthy". Why have moral responsibility when you can just get a shrink?
Jun '10
Re: The Next Chapter in the Sexual Revolution?
"The binary between adult and child"
What the heck does this even mean? Plenty of the other terms have been around a while, like "minor-attracted." I find it such a strange coincidence that the perverts rarely seem to be attracted to confident minors from stable homes, with involved parents. Somehow the loner child with no protection network has more appeal........hmmmm.
These pervert apologists can continue to stretch and torture the languge in an attempt to normalize pedophilia. I will continue to "affirm my desire" to beat them to a pulp. Has there been any study on the binary between violence inspired by pedophile revulsion and the pervert's recidivism rate?
Oct '10
Re: The Next Chapter in the Sexual Revolution?
I'm not sure that any society can break down this much without total collapse or a war ("wars are good for morality" as the old saw goes). I think there's a limit to American crazyness.
Oct '10
Re: The Next Chapter in the Sexual Revolution?
StickerShock, don't let it get to you. Even neo-Nazis use the same tactics. The "civil rights model" can work for ill as well as good; the Islamists taught us that. Distasteful groups all over the world use the language of tolerance and anti-bigotry to suck up to the Western elite. It's sickening.
May '11
Re: The Next Chapter in the Sexual Revolution?
Ugly subject but exquisite writing.
Some years ago I prosecuted an animal-cruelty case where a labrador retriever was raped by an acquaintance of her absent master. She showed many of the symptoms of rape trauma syndrome: extreme fearfulness, isolation, humiliation, and severe depression. The dog may have been incapable of giving or withholding reasoned consent, but it's clear that she didn't like what happened to her and must have resisted. That's consent withheld in my book.
Mar '11
Re: The Next Chapter in the Sexual Revolution?
We'll know we've reached the next chapter when we start hearing accusations of pedophobia.
Dec '10
Re: The Next Chapter in the Sexual Revolution?
An aspect of the normalization we already experience is the near impossibility of a kid getting a paper route. It was normal for me, when I was 11 in the early 1970s, to be up at 5 am, folding papers, then to head off on my bike.
This is now, apparently, unheard of, even in my relatively rural area. No one will hire kids to do that sort of job, now, because of the kiability, a liability that is magnified as we otherwise normalize people that should be behind bars. NAMBLA was not on my paper route.
Apr '11
Re: The Next Chapter in the Sexual Revolution?
Hey, they promised me there would be no problems after making the definition of marriage open ended. You mean they lied?
Nov '10
Re: The Next Chapter in the Sexual Revolution?
As Aristotle pointed out, it's with respect to food and sex that man is worse than the beasts. The scholarly consensus on Aristotle's implied meaning of "sex" here is precisely bestiality, incest, and man-on-man jiggy action.
Really, why should there be opposition to such monstrosities as bestiality, when, hey, Martha Nussbaum -- who is God's gift to the world of rarefied intellect and SO much more intelligent than anyone here at Ricochet -- has conclusively shown that the "ick" factor is impermissible for opposing, not only same-sex marriage and indeed "gay liberationist" culture in general, but also incest marriages?
People for whom "disgust" constitutes the grounding of their opposition to same-sex marriage and incest marriage are, to use her words, "morally obtuse."
Conservative students back in the 80s and 90s who met campus "gay awareness days" with their own "bestiality and incest awareness days"* -- and who were ruthlessly mocked by the Left as being beyond polite company for drawing such comparisons -- today stand vindicated. Thanks, Nussbaum.
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* See Harry Jaffa's classic treatment of this as it played out at Claremont McKenna College.
Edited on Sep 4, 2011 at 3:27pmOct '10
Re: The Next Chapter in the Sexual Revolution?
Robert Lux:
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* See Harry Jaffa's classic treatment of this as it played out at Claremont McKenna College. · Sep 4 at 3:21pm
Edited on Sep 04 at 03:27 pm
Eek, that's a bit extreme. I hate that sort of vapid moral hyper-reason; human morality isn't a neat intellectual framework that is logically consistent and intellectually coherent. As a bisexual who hates the anti-family gay left, I sympathize with those who fear degrading the family, but that article goes way too far.
Nov '10
Re: The Next Chapter in the Sexual Revolution?
Joseph Eagar
Robert Lux:
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* See Harry Jaffa's classic treatment of this as it played out at Claremont McKenna College. · Sep 4 at 3:21pm
Edited on Sep 04 at 03:27 pm
Eek, that's a bit extreme. I hate that sort of vapid moral hyper-reason; human morality isn't a neat intellectual framework that is logically consistent and intellectually coherent. As a bisexual who hates the anti-family gay left, I sympathize with those who fear degrading the family, but that article goes way too far. · Sep 4 at 11:22pm
Homophobia is quite often simply a form of self-loathing among the nominally heterosexual, see for example, this study. Sort of the mirror image of those on the Left who declare TPers "racist" or "extremist".
Mar '11
Re: The Next Chapter in the Sexual Revolution?
I'd take all studies using this methodology with a grain of saltpeter.
HalifaxCB
Homophobia is quite often simply a form of self-loathing among the nominally heterosexual, see for example, this study. Sort of the mirror image of those on the Left who declare TPers "racist" or "extremist". · Sep 5 at 6:42am
Nov '10
Re: The Next Chapter in the Sexual Revolution?
As for polyamory, here is the most sensible argument I have seen yet that polyamory is wrong.
Nov '10
Re: The Next Chapter in the Sexual Revolution?
HalifaxCB: since you're unaware that positivism (or Popper's attempt to make positivism make sense via falsifiability; alas his theory itself is not falsifiable, etc.) does not even remotely trump the claims that Leo Strauss makes in his scholarship, I can hardly say you're a candidate to understand the moral-political problems at play in the attempt to domesticate homosexuality within a civilization.
Same-sex attraction/activity can and has been be tolerated in various qualified ways, so long as it is understood within a hierarchy of ends regarding the best way of life. But it has never been domesticated in any civilization hitherto, such as is urged by the liberationists and social constructionists in our midst. By your line of argument, all of human history -- the vast, overwhelming majority of which has considered, at best, homosexual acts to be not worthy of domestication whatsoever -- must have been one collective neurosis: they must have been frustrated (or "nominal" as you say) homosexuals! Brilliant!
Nov '10
Re: The Next Chapter in the Sexual Revolution?
Feel free to address the research Robert, it might do you some good.
As for the history of homosexuality in various cultures around the world, you can start here.
Or, in both cases, feel free to put up your own research, I'm happy to read all sides of an issue.
Aug '10
Re: The Next Chapter in the Sexual Revolution?
Not every philosophical slope is slippery, but the philosophy of sexual license certainly is. Once traditional taboos are struck down on the basis that they can't prove their own rightness through logic and reason, we are compelled to follow logic and reason wherever it leads. I can think of no impenetrable logic that fences homosexuality off from those other taboos that have not yet fallen. On what ground can one argue that aversion to homosexuality is merely a form of bigotry, but aversion to incest (or polyamory, or pedophilia, or bestiality, or necrophilia) isn't?
Nov '10
Re: The Next Chapter in the Sexual Revolution?
Paul, I guess I would first start by asking you to substantiate the assertions of your first two sentences. On the third sentence, I would (I suppose) ask you to consider what fences there are that have already fallen with respect to sexual activities - e.g., people over here no longer advocate killing masturbators, adulterers, or those who participate in other than straight missionary position sex, nor do they consider mixed race marriages a crime. In light of such things, just how slippery is your slippery slope?
(Sorry to be brief, I think your final question is definitely worth exploring. I just have to get to work)
Edited on Sep 6, 2011 at 5:23amOct '10
Re: The Next Chapter in the Sexual Revolution?
I my experience, disgust at homosexuality has two causes: a breakdown of what you might call "same-gender sexual trust" (people of the same gender won't act sexually towards you) and the historical memory of pederasty (the only form of bisexuality to ever achieve social acceptance in human civilizations, to the horror of later generations).
The first part has always struck me as odd; sexually-repressed--which I approve off, within reason--heterosexuals flirt with members of the same sex all the time (which frankly grosses me out, it's incredibly creepy when people mock sexual orientations they do not actually have).
The chances of pederasty returning is nill; homosexuality between adults in modern society is tolerated orders of magnitude more than that between children and adults, so the society pressure is going the opposite direction.
Aug '10
Re: The Next Chapter in the Sexual Revolution?
If your point is that the current taboo toppling is just a continuation of a long historical process, I'd argue that something fundamental changed half a century ago, when the courts began taking the lead, using the liberal/libertarian argument to impose changes on a substantially resistant polity (e.g., Roe v. Wade, legalizing pornography). Taboos have always risen and fallen, but now that the law has asserted that rationality shall govern sexual rules, cultural taboos, being intrinsically irrational, may only fall.
And fall they do, to the horror of the majority. Yet the majority has no ground on which to fight, because the very source of its objections has been officially declared off limits. It can only flail around impotently.
Re: The Next Chapter in the Sexual Revolution?
I don't exactly understand. Of course, right now, adult homosexuality is considered copacetic and pedophilia is ugly. On the other hand, this doesn't indicate a social pressure in the direction of tolerating pedophilia still less. What I worry about is that our culture no longer has the moral and intellectual resources to resist a strong push to normalize pederasty such as may emerge in the coming decades, given our replacement of Judeo-Christian sexual ethics (which, to be sure, were never perfectly followed in any age, but at least provided an ideal) with an increasingly ad hoc, do-as-you-please free-for-all.