Would you care to comment on this? “…this video…[shows] a boy [being] sexually assaulted and molested by an adult woman, to the huge entertainment of a bullying, out of control crowd. The boy is obviously trying to go along with good humor, fear-grin plastered across his face, but as things progress it’s obvious he’s being humiliated, shamed, and disturbed over sexual behavior he doesn’t fully understand, and being mocked the whole time for it…”
(Readers can watch the video at the link if they like, but it isn’t necessary to follow my response). As you probably know, I vehemently oppose characterizing adolescents of either sex as “children”; it’s hard to tell the boy’s age from that video, but I’d guess he’s in puberty rather than pre-pubescent, and therefore not a “child”. And if he’s not a “child”, that can’t be “child molestation”, Q.E.D. Furthermore, I consider the criminalization of every possible transgression to be a smoothly-paved road to totalitarianism; there are at least five distinct levels of offense, of which criminality is the most serious. When one uses a legalistic term like “child molestation”, one is at least strongly implying (if not outright stating) that one believes state violence would be an appropriate response to the situation; I do not agree that sending a goon squad to beat, chain, humiliate, cage and ostracize that woman for life would be an appropriate response to her offense.
Next, we have to consider the principle of harm reduction. No matter how much prudes and child cultists wish to pretend otherwise, the evidence is that adult-adolescent sexual contact usually has few if any long-term effects; as I wrote three years ago, “most of the trauma associated with sexuality involving minors derives not from some mystical property of sex itself, but from the considerable fuss adults make over it when it is discovered (including endless invasive and uncomfortable interviews with creepy strangers asking highly personal questions), not to mention guilt over getting someone else in trouble”. When I was gang-raped by three cops (which I’m sure you will admit was a far more egregious violation of my person than what we see in this video) I did not report it because “from my viewpoint the rape could last an hour and be over except for nightmares and flashbacks, or I could let lawyers and judges and cops subject me to a waking nightmare, a slow-motion rape that might go on for months or years.” Some people who have been raped or sexually assaulted want to go through the legal process in order to gain closure, exact vengeance or attempt to protect others from violation, while others do not; it is nobody’s business which the victim chooses but his or her own. Even full-out aggravated rape is not the end of the world, and non-violent sexual humiliation far less so; in the case of the boy in the video, the emotional and psychological damage from a protracted criminal prosecution would be vastly greater than any he experienced during this episode, and to what end? To please adults whose sensibilities were offended, or who just have an axe to grind? I think not.
Then there’s the issue of projection. As a side-effect of empathy, human beings have the unfortunate tendency to project their own emotions onto other people; we ask ourselves, “how would I feel in that situation?” When it helps us to connect to others, to view their hurts as serious and their needs as worthy of consideration, it is a good and positive thing. But when it causes a person to overrule the statements or wishes of the other, to say, “no, you’re wrong, you don’t feel that way because I would feel differently in your place”, or to demand state violence be inflicted on someone against the wishes of the actual victim, that is a horse of an entirely different color. It’s fine for you to say, “I would be humiliated and upset if I were in that boy’s place”, or even “I believe that boy was absolutely mortified and traumatized”. It is not fine, however, for his parents to demand retribution unless he wants it himself, and it is tyrannous for the state to demand such retribution on the grounds that the “victim” is state property. Moreover, it is absolutely outrageous for uninvolved strangers to demand such retribution against the victim’s wishes on the grounds that it made them uncomfortable; that is the basis for virtually all prohibitionism, and thus a moral and social abomination.
I believe that what that woman did was probably wrong (in a moral sense) and certainly inappropriate; since I know nothing about the people involved I cannot say anything else for certain. If I had been there I would have put a stop to it, but since no responsible person did we are left with nothing but a very limited amount of information…far too little to ruin two lives over.
(Have a question of your own? Please consult this page to see if I’ve answered it in a previous column, and if not just click here to ask me via email.)
Well, very provocative and well done. You have courage to say outright things that I must admit I hedge on out of fear that my blog will be shut down (it has happened once already). Good for you.
You got your blog shut down? WTF were you saying on it? Shit man, even Al Qaeda blogs stay up regardless of what bullshit they spew. You must have been talking some really horrific shit! 🙂
Meh … I’d put her in jail for a few days.
This is interesting … because normally I’m all for the double-standard of older women / younger men. My first time was with a 35 year old woman and I was 17 – but she was trying to help me out (mercy fuck). She was an angel.
I don’t think this woman did any long term damage to the kid but I think it’s clear in that video that the kid was like “WTF?” and didn’t know how to respond to it and the woman was clearly trying to humiliate him. If it had been me I’d have gone right for her tits to see how goddam serious she was. Two can play that game.
It didn’t make me uncomfortable. But I’m sorry – I’m not gonna stand by and watch someone else treated like this. Had I been on that bus … I would have stood up and got between those two and said … “You wanna play, bitch? Play with me – cause I can hit whatever goddam pitch you throw.”
I wasn’t on the bus though – so I’m for listening to her side of the story (which I don’t think she really has a legitimate one) and then throwing her in jail for a few days.
Or she can go apologize to the kid and let him have his way with her … doing it the right way. That would actually be the better thing.
It won’t permanently damage her. 😉
I agree with Mrs. MacNeill’s article and I agree with your comments. I think the idea that that was this guy’s mother is very strange. I also get tired of these weird beta/omega MRA articles about men being “raped by women”. If this fellow had been myself at that age and this woman was say a friend of my mother or friend of a sister or even a drunk stranger, I would have been nervous because I would have wanted it to be real but would have been afraid of her reaction out of inexperience. Now I know the correction response would have been to grab her lovely body with the back tattoo. If she fled the young fellow would have reasserted control and if she hadn’t it would have been rather nice. 🙂
Different topic – this notion about the victim being the one who should decide if retribution should happen or not.
I don’t agree with that. Your rapists should have been prosecuted and put away. Since they weren’t – they likely have victimized other women besides you.
Now – to report the crime or not – that’s your choice of course. The rape happened out of plain sight and society can’t do anything about crimes it’s not aware of.
There’s a principle of chivalry here that needs to be maintained that says that men don’t let other men behave in this manner.
I watched the video. I couldn’t make out what was really going on; at one extreme it might be a random act by a stranger, at the other it might be a mother and her son. There’s a man’s voice at the end who seems to be saying, “no, don’t” as if the boy has had enough. This voice has an English accent. My very dubious conjecture would be that of a rather tipsy mother whose son has done something naughty, and she is teaching him a “lesson”; from the cacophony around them, it sounds as if the others were a bit tipsy too.I don’t think it’s really possible to construct any realistic or accurate account.
And all the rest is conjecture, including the remarks in the blogpost before the video. You could infer any scenario you wished to fit into your political views, and use this video as “evidence”. Except that there is no evidence. I can’t even agree with Maggie’s final paragraph: as we don’t know what really happened we can’s say if we would have intervened or not.
“Never mind the evidence, feel my views.”
LOL … That was his MOM?! Come on brother! 😀
Why not? Explain to me in words of one syllable why it wasn’t. You have only the “evidence” of the video, not the comments below it.
Why do I only get to use one syllable? Just curious. Are you goofing on my communication skills? Just asking.
“In words of one syllable” is a local expression, meaning express it simply. My point is that you can read this video however you choose; and if you read the introduction to it, then I think it’s quite probable that you have been conditioned to read it as an assault. But I think there are lots of other explanations, not all of them sinister.
I don’t agree with ANY of that article. It’s full of beta-male bullshit. Shit like … female on male sexual assault is a real problem. It’s not. It’s a bunch of crying from a guy who’s been castrated so completely that he runs into the arms of “male victim” mode. He’s clearly using the video for propaganda purposes. He might be a woman hater – or some guy who has poor luck with women. Maybe some girl laughed at him once when he whipped it out – I don’t know but his beta-male attitude gives me the creeps and I pray to GOD someone puts a bullet in my head if my estrogen level EVER gets so high that I agree with this guy – on anything. I’m not associated with him. I am the master of my destiny – I am not a victim. No one can victimize me – certainly NO WOMAN can physically victimize me.
I see a woman grinding on a kid who looks uncomfortable. Maybe he’s enjoying it? Talk to him – if he says he liked it then no harm no foul. I still think it’s worth at least talking to the woman and saying … “What the FUCK were you thinking you dumbass!?”
I don’t agree with the article either; but I don’t agree with your assessment. Remember, this seems to be a video of something that happened in England; it might well appear quite differently to a US audience.
A video like this can be taken and used to support almost any point of view.
Hey, I can agree with you on that point … that’s why I said they should talk to the peeps on the train – or was this a bus? Whatever, doesn’t matter.
One syllable words …
WHO … CARES … IF … IT … WAS … HIS … MOM? WOULD … THAT … FACT … CHANGE … THINGS … IN … THE … LEAST?
I win Korhomme!! 😀
It actually all reminded me of an “initiation” I went through once – at the motherfucking WHITE HOUSE.
I was on my first trip, with H.W. Bush. The rest of the comm team I was with had this little thing about “hazing” new members of the team – of which I was one.
There were several of us “newbies”. I saw the “veterans” chase a Black Air Force Officer around the hotel – laughing and giggling the whole time till they caught up with him and “crucified” him on one of those luggage carts the consigliore use.
Then came my turn. Well, I wasn’t going to give them the enjoyment of chasing me – and I knew if I vested any effort in resistance that I’d likely clock one of the dickheads. So I just told them … “where you want me?” Hell, I went through US Navy Chief Petty Officer initiation – there was nothing these Army and Air Force pukes could do to me that I couldn’t deal with.
So they told me to sit down in a chair – and they “tie-wrapped” my hands and feet to it.
“You’re no fun!” That’s what they told me.
But once they had me completely helpless – they then turned to a FEMALE newbie and grabbed her. Then they lifted her in the air – and spread her legs and brought her toward me like they were going to put her in my lap with her legs straddling (i.e. “coitus” position). I wasn’t worried about me – she was attractive … but I damn sure became concerned of how that would make HER look. This resembled the Star Trek scene where the “Gods” take control of Kirk and Uhura’s body and make them kiss.
I knew she couldn’t stop ’em. What could I do tied to a goddam chair?
Well, I have a “look” that I get when I go into “combat mode” that will terrify Satan. That “look” has saved me the trouble of a lot of fights and a lot of men back down on me when I break it out. It’s the look of “there’s not a doubt in the world you are about to DIE motherfucker.” Best thing my Dad ever gave me and Charles Manson would shit his pants if he saw it.
And I told one of the guys … “You are DEAD MAN if you put her on me.” I almost whispered it.
They backed off.
What happened next is too long to write about here. Suffice it to say – I got one over them. Didn’t use violence or threats to rat them out – but a practical joke of my own that had them shitting their pants for a good fifteen minutes and one that taught them that these little “games” they played – could have disastrous repercussions. For a good fifteen minutes – the O’s on that trip thought their careers were over until I let ’em off the hook. Haha … Navy Chief Petty Officer – we train our Navy Officers – why not give the O’s of the Air Force and Army a taste of it? LOL – they didn’t like it but they DID learn. Nothing like the look of an Army West Point grad when she thinks she just destroyed her career. Best teaching tool evah!
But back to what I was saying – my concern wasn’t for me – it was for the female they were harassing. Yeah I know a lot of women are tough and could deal with it – but some can’t and I honestly didn’t know what “column” this girl fit into. So I defaulted to a conservative position. That’s what this woman – and the bystanders should have “defaulted” to with this boy. I believe the fact that they didn’t realize this reveals a character flaw in themselves – so I have no sympathy for any of them – but the kid in this situation.
I think you expressed my thoughts very well. There’s a rampant tendency – at least in many western countries – to criminalize any sort of behavior with which society is currently uncomfortable. Police are now routinely involved in school-yard fights, for example, to say nothing of hysterical reactions by the commercial media and therefore by society to anything remotely sexual.
The all-encompassing bans on sexuality that were characteristic of western morality half a century ago have been replaced by a number of focused taboos of much more intense and rigidly enforced opprobrium.
A part of the problem is that legal bans and social taboos – even when they have some social justification are one-size-fits-all prescriptions, where real life is very multi-faceted.
Obviously the woman in this video was humiliating the youth, who – I’d guess – probably did know what was going on but wasn’t ready for it or comfortable with it at that moment in that context. It was non-consensual (not primarily because of his [unknown] age, but because he didn’t want it there and then) and therefore, wrong. But to send the woman to jail, give her a criminal record, a listing as a sex offender for life, effectively banning her from any normal career? Total overkill as a social response to a minute and a half of inappropriate behavior that probably inflicted no lasting mental – to say nothing of physical – harm.
As to reporting crimes, this issue is highly complex as well, because each individual case is a part of a broader social reality. Reporting criminal behavior by policemen is therefore particularly thorny and likely to backfire on whoever complains. Such is the power structure.
Sometimes the odds can be overcome – as when those in power seek to bolster their authority by prosecuting one of their ‘bad apples’ in public. Frequently, though, the authorities prefer to solve such issues ‘internally’ and turn the complaint against the complainer. This is particularly true if the reputation of the victim who files a complaint can in any way be impugned. And in those cases the perpetrators are not deterred by the righteous challenges of the determined victim, who, instead can be the one to suffer permanent difficulties as a result. Sun Zi (“Sun Tzu”) said, “fight no battle you are not sure of winning.”
Fighting the system head-on works on TV and in films, where virtue always triumphs in the end. In real life the balance of power is stacked against the individual.
I wouldn’t excuse a man doing that to a 12(ish)-year-old girl. I won’t excuse a woman doing it to a 12(ish)-year-old boy. I don’t see much relevant difference between a man, egged on by other men, pinning down a struggling 12-year-old girl and pulling some of her clothes off, and this situation. Silly, faux-macho fantasies of boys just wanting a good screwing notwithstanding, boys have a right to say no for good reasons, stupid reasons, no reasons, etc. The boy was clearly saying no and the woman clearly didn’t care.
Sexual assault. Of a minor.
I wish I had seen the same video you guys saw, because the video on the MRI site shows a boy having fun. Of course, he was anxious and stressed,but no less than an average boy on an average school day. The text introducing the video on the site is blatantly slanted to support the MRI agenda. Tell me what the kid has to say about what happened and how he felt (his own words), not what MRIs want to read into it.
When I was about 10 a teenage boy propositioned me, and I refused because I was afraid at the moment. But I later regretted having refused. Anybody who calls me a “victim” and demands punishment of the “perpetratort” is selling his own products and services.
When I was 12 I was falsely accused of “rape” by a 14-year-old girl who had sex with me and many other boys many times before. (Her accusation was prompted by a public scandal.) Would you guys have been demanding my conviction and imprisonment in a juvenile institution?
While I do feel the MRAs dramatically overreacted due to their lens (just as feminists tend to), I still feel the woman’s behavior was inappropriate. And had I been there, I would have told her so. Party pooper? Maybe. But I think that kind of “party” is best kept a private one at such a tender age.
If you had been there, you would almost certainly have more facts than are in the video; if you came across this scene, you might well have asked some of the onlookers what was going on before intervening. But viewers of the video can’t do this. We don’t know if this is an accurate record of (part of) what happened, or if it has been edited in some way. We are asked (expected) to come to a conclusion based on incomplete data. It’s not just what we can see and know that’s important; it’s also what we can’t see and don’t know. And not just the “known unknowns” but also the “unknown unknowns”.
Twelve-year-old boys and girls are perfectly capable of expressing refusal when they don’t want to do something. They sometimes refuse even when they want to do something, just to get something extra in the bargain. Try to get a 12-year-old to eat his vegetables, and see if he is unable to refuse.
And the ones capable of saying “no” to adults are the ones who will most probably be able to avoid such relationships or exit them when they become uncomfortable.
It’s the ones people like you think are ‘consenting’ when they are too scared, browbeaten or conditioned to obey to refuse who suffer the most serious damage. And if you seriously think there are no twelve year olds who fall into those categories you are not just kidding yourself, you are probably part of the problem.
Of course there are individuals who are scared and browbeaten, even at age 30. But where are all these 12-year-olds who are conditioned to obey? You seem to be confusing 8-year-olds with 12-year-olds.
Come off the grass, sh.
We all know people of all ages who mindlessly obey authority.
The difference is that even the most simpering adult doesn’t automatically see other adults as authority figures. “Well behaved” (ahem) 12 year olds do, especially if they’re parents, priests, school teachers, “uncles”, …
Exactly, where are all these well-behaved 12-year-olds?
Why do you ask? Are you on the prowl?
When I was in Boy Scouts I’d say about a quarter of the boys in my troop fitted that description. I can think of several boys and rather more girls I went to school with who were the same.
And the reason I put “well behaved” in scare quotes is because often kids like that are totally obedient to adults while in their presence but much less so when there’s none around. In fact they are often the bullies who use their ‘teacher’s pet’ status to lord it over other kids.
And if you want to know where they went when they grew up, I suggest you check the military, police forces and government bureaucracies.
No, I’m not on the prowl, but I’m very suspicious of anyone who claims something definitely exists without specifying where someone could verify that claim.
So where are all the 12 year olds “perfectly capable of expressing refusal when they don’t want to do something”?
You must be very suspicious of yourself.
Probably wise, given what you write on your blog.
Don’t leave yourself alone with nine year olds – especially if you feel the urge to ‘inadvertently’ display a ‘spontaneous erection’ to them.
Here’s how to find obedient 12 year olds sh.
Go to anywhere that adults are likely to exert large amounts of authority over 12 yo kids not in their family. Scout troops, church youth groups, police boys clubs, military cadets, sporting clubs, boarding schools – I’m sure you can think of plenty of other examples. Now check out the kids who have been selected by those adults to delegate authority to. Scout patrol leaders, school prefects, group leaders etc. Not all of them will be subservient and obedient to adults in their presence but a high proportion will be – unless things have changed a lot since I was a kid. The ones who are particularly dictatorial to other kids are prime suspects.
Some of those organisations will have a facade of democracy whereby the kids get to vote for their own leaders. Mostly that’s irrelevant as the adults will still exercise right of veto over the insufficiently subservient or the voting system will ensure the adults’ votes outweigh those of the kids sufficiently to overrule them. If you find a truly democratic example of the organisations I listed above, try somewhere else. There’s plenty around.
Except for the ones who obeyed the priests, scout masters or sports coaches who wanted to bugger them of course. A lot of those are in prison or in the cemetery due to overdose or suicide.
I have nothing but the highest regard for former boy scouts who now work for the government squandering taxpayers’ money by spending all day hunting for witches online instead of doing some productive work.
I meant MRAs.
[…] http://maggiemcneill.wordpress.com/2014/06/25/adolescence-ambiguity-and-axes/ […]
Long term reader of this blog – just lost. i saw the video and may blood boiled. If that woman had done it to one of my sons (and that boy is YOUNG …very young, and in clear distress…are you blind?) then you bet she’d be in big trouble.
Anyway, with an ugly fat woman assaulting ME (at 49) I’d be distressed too. But seriously, what boy wants a fat old woman holding him down and assaulting him. This is far far far worse than what the entertainer Rolf Harris just got convicted for (apologies to those in the US if you don’t know the case).
Dennis Waterman, I appreciate your honesty in admitting that your reaction would be very emotional if one of your sons was in that situation. What if your son consented and enjoyed it, as the boy in the video apparently did? Would you say: To hell with my son’s consent and enjoyment! The important thing is his father’s feelings?
Let’s not bother debating what this boy’s reaction or another boy’s reaction actually was or would be. (We all could be wrong about that.) Once when I was very young two teenage girls held me (one on each arm) and paraded me down Main Street, and I loved it. Is your problem with the issue of consent and enjoyment, or is there something else bothering you?
You’re wrong, Maggie.
If it was just about the sex you may have a point, but it almost never is. We’re talking a hugely skewed power relationship where one party probably has little or no experience of mutual, non-exploitative sexuality. The adult will almost invariably couch their exploitation, humiliation and/or abuse as love and it’s that rather than the reaction of prudes that does the damage.
Yeah, some teens are resilient enough to suffer no lasting harm but others will be suspicious, rejectionist and cynical towards anyone who expresses love for them for a long time to come. Worse are the ones who will believe it and spend their lives going from one abusive relationship to another, mistaking them for love. Worst of all are the ones who will internalise it so much that they themselves go on to become abusers and perpetuate the cycle.
You’re dead right about the limitations of empathy, and that applies to you too. The fact that an adolescent Maggie may have welcomed a sexual relationship with a much older partner and suffered no harm from it does not mean the principle applies to others. You don’t need much empathy to understand that a lot of the graduates of such relationships have a disproportionate amount of pain in their lives. The prisons and youth refuges are full of them.
Maggie is right. The best evidence does not support the folk belief that child sex abuse is usually seriously harmful.* You claim you’re concerned about buggering, but a lot of unscrupulous opportunists make money pretending to rescue the supposed victims of normative sex play, and face financial ruin if sex abuse “professionals” are exposed as charlatans. Is that the real danger you are concerned about?
The boy in this video isn’t being “buggered.” Why do you feel a need to exaggerate dangers and draw attention to extreme cases? Many more children’s lives are destroyed in car crashes. Why aren’t you focusing your attention on protecting young people from the much more frequent and more deadly dangers they face? What is it about “buggering” that fascinates you?
*Rind, Bruce et al. “A Meta-Analytic Examination of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse Using College Samples” (Psychological Bulletin 1998, Vol. 124, No. 1, 22-53); and Rind et al. “The Validity and Appropriateness of Methods, Analyses, and Conclusions in Rind et al. (1998): A Rebuttal of Victimological Critique From Ondersma et al. (2001) and Dallam et al. (2001)” (Psychological Bulletin 2001. Vol. 127. No. 6. 734-758).
No sh, you are – as usual – full of it.
What Maggie said is “the evidence is that adult-adolescent sexual contact usually has few if any long-term effects”. Taken at face value the statement is clearly preposterous. Every cause has an effect which is part of a near infinite chain of causality. All of your sexual contacts are part of what you are now just like what you had for breakfast on your fifth birthday.
What Maggie obviously intended to say is “There is evidence that adult-adolescent sexual contact has few long term negative effects on the adolescent” – being caught, going to prison and being put on a sex offender register for life would probably be considered negative by most adults but she is probably right in assuming that they are not usually caught.
In fact there is an extreme paucity of evidence one way or another. We have no idea how often it happens and we have little understanding of what factors from the past might cause, say, schizophrenia or suicide attempts in a fifty year old. So the evidence definitely does not support Maggie’s rather strong assertion.
However there is a strong correlation between childhood sexual abuse (somewhat weaker, but still present for adult-adolescent sexual contact) and future imprisonment. Between 57% and 90% of women in the NSW prison system report having suffered sexual abuse as a child or adolescent, compared to 15% to 28% in the general female population (when using equivalent definitions and data gathering methods). The correlation is similar for men imprisoned for sexual offences. Now correlation isn’t causation any more than finding your DNA at a crime scene is guilt – but it is evidence. Anyone who denies it is not only flying in the face of facts but engaging in the sort of denialism that both delegitimises the lived experiences of many people and encourages the community to turn a blind eye, as it did for decades – if not centuries – towards clerical sexual abuse of minors.
I didn’t bother watching the video and was not addressing it. I was addressing Maggie’s statement – which is far more general than the events in the video and incorporates the extreme cases. Such as those that are paraded through our courts on a daily basis.
Unlike you, sh, I do not have the luxury of selecting minority studies that disagree with virtually all of the criminological data in order to flog an agenda. Also, unlike you, I have not had sexual contact with young children in my care that I can dubiously interpret as evidence for the ‘healthy’ sexual curiosity of kids – even though it reads very much like the standard apologia of child sex offenders (i.e. “Lolita was the aggressor, not me”).
As you have not included links to your references I have no way of knowing how they defined ‘abuse’ nor how you define ‘usually seriously harmful’.
I too have read a lot of academic studies of sex offending and its effects but my direct experience consists only of the several years I worked closely with the victims of child and adolescent sex abuse – including a few who had gone on to become perpetrators. Neither you nor I know how representative that sample is but I can tell you for sure these people were seriously fucked up and to pretend there is no evidence for their suffering and its links to sexual abuse is reprehensible.
Where you have a point is that there are many things out there that are more likely to fuck up a kid’s life than the risk of sexual abuse. But would I be justified in playing down the danger of allowing kids to swim in shark infested waters simply because they are more likely to be struck by lightning than eaten by a shark?
And where you have another point is that many sex abuse “professionals” are charlatans. I presume you have earned some money from your book so I would place you firmly in that category. But the biggest frauds perpetrated by these professionals (and many academics) is not that they are making up evidence of harm where none exists. It does exist. But rather it’s by claiming that sex offenders are at extreme risk of recidivism (they’re not – at least compared to most other categories of criminal offending) and that sex offender rehabilitation programs can be shown to substantially reduce that risk (they use the same statistical tricks that promoters of drug rehab and homosexuality ‘cure’ programs use to come up with that nonsense.)
You didn’t bother watching the video, but you study the comments and enthusiastically participate in the discussion about it? Isn’t that rather odd? Isn’t that like critiicizing book reviews without bothering to read the books under review? Why would you do something like that?
So if some people you knew were participating in a conversation about, for example, a Sharon Stone movie you had never seen, and one said “But the character was completely unrealistic. No women are sexually assertive unless they are drunk or have been paid to be.”, you would stand by and say nothing? I suspect not.
I have neither criticised the clip nor commented on it in any way. Nor have I criticised comments made about the clip.
I know you are not as stupid as you pretend to be sh. Very few people are. What I can’t decide is whether you are merely very hypocritical or as totally bound up in self-deception as, say, Humbert Humbert.
Nobody is denying that 1) some children and young people are insensitively exploited (physically, sexually and emotionally), and 2) some of those individuals are subsequently observed acting crazy. Although there may be a causal link between those two facts in some cases, we have no idea if there is really any causal link at all. In every single case there are unknown variables before and after the event that honest researchers can’t control for, and hence can’t understand, predict, or pronounce judgment on.
The rational question is one of priorities. We know for a fact that thousands of children and young people die every year while riding unrestrained in a motor vehicle. How many individuals die every year due to buggering? If many adults are more worried about “buggering” than motor vehicle safety, pool safety, falls, etc., that is mass hysteria.
Children are diagnosed every day with fatal diseases like neuroblastoma. Hundreds of thousands of children are living in chaos: their caregivers can’t even feed them or prevent them from dying of diarrhea, but some heroic crusaders busy themselves wondering about the possible effects of buggering?
You are contradicting yourself when you admit “there is an extreme paucity of evidence either way,” and then you go on to refer to “a lot of” unspecified but likely weak retrospective studies of biased samples based on unreliable self-report as your “evidence.”
You also carefully avoid replying to the pesky Rind meta-analysis of 59 unbiased studies (hardly a “minor” study as you claimed) which I cited clearly and does not support your agenda.* Your excuse is that there is no link, but don’t you know how to use a library? Do you limit your in-depth study of “buggering” only to what’s conveniently available online? Are sex abuse heroes that lazy?
Drugs to treat attention deficit/hyperactivity have passed rigorous prospective, randomized, double-blind placebo controlled trials. That is much stronger evidence than any research ever done on sex abuse, yet that strong evidence is still imperfect and highly controversial. In some countries such drugs have not been approved and the very diagnosis is suspect. But you’re absolutely convinced sexual experience in childhood is an international emergency?
It’s not surprising that you began attacking me personally, since your position is otherwise indefensible. But thanks for mentioning my blog and book (which blog and which book?). Although you misrepresent my content and intent, and you resort to vague innuendo rather than extensively quoting and specifically responding to what my blogs and books actually say, if more open-minded readers study my information more carefully they might be grateful to you for drawing attention to it.
So you would advocate exploiting them sensitively instead?
All adult-child sexual relationships are exploitative, sh. The power imbalance alone ensures that. However people who are prone to sexually exploiting kids fill the communication gap with their own fantasies of sexually aggressive children and equal power relationship (or even insist that the child is the empowered driver of the sexual encounter). As do you in the anecdote you relate on your blog.
Oh, only some of them act crazy (i.e. descend into violence, drug addiction, suicide, anorexia, sex offending …), eh? That’s all right then. Nothing at all to worry about.
The FACTS, sh, are that there is an overwhelming body of research linking child sex abuse victimisation with PTSD, depression, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, suicidality, substance abuse, violent and sexual offending, further sexual and violent victimisation, sexual dysfunction, fear of men, self harm, difficulty forming and maintaining relationships, bed wetting, sleep disturbances, homelessness, imprisonment, psychiatric hospitalisation, dissociation, anger management and impulse control problems, obsessive behaviour, fainting and dizzy spells, low self esteem …
Yes, there have always been a few outlier studies that have claimed only weak association between childhood sexual abuse (CSA) and those outcomes, but they are in a tiny minority. And while practically all research in the field is plagued with methodological and analytical problems the studies that fail to find strong correlations between CSA and negative outcomes seem particularly pernicious that way (e.g. Ramey’s 1979 study, Dealing with the last taboo in which he claims that adult-child sexual contact is beneficial to the child, but filters out all subjects with symptoms of neurosis or psychosis from his sample group, saying ‘their testimony is unreliable’. A bit like how you dismiss women who disagree with your juvenile theory of female sexuality by insisting they are ‘victims of repression’).
In fact it is virtually impossible to show definite causality linking either genetics or experience to any long term outcomes. There is no definitive causal link between smoking and cancer either – just very strong correlative evidence for it being a risk factor. As is equally the case for CSA and the outcomes I listed above.
Welcome to the real world.
Yes, that is a rational consideration. But you consistently imply that, for example, restraining kids in motor vehicles has some kind of opportunity cost that must be played off against trying to protect them from adult sexual predation. It does not.
A rational playing off of priorities would be to de-emphasise the ‘stranger danger’ aspect of so much childhood education in favour of pointing out that the most likely sex abusers are family, friends and carers. Otherwise we are making children more vigilant towards those of lower risk and possibly driving them towards those of higher risk. Another more rational approach would be to stop focusing obsessively on sex offenders who have been detected while neglecting the overwhelming majority that victim surveys indicate will never end up in court or on a sex offender register.
No, it is merely inability to calculate relative risk. Most – probably all – of us fall victim in one area or another. It’s the bread and butter of the gambling and insurance industries. It does not mean people are hysterical. See Gerd Gigerenzer’s excellent book Reckoning with Risk for some very interesting widespread examples as well as an explanation of some of the underlying psychology behind problem.
But I say again, just because pool and motor vehicle safety is probably more important than precautions against child sexual abuse it does not mean you should neglect the latter as you insistently imply. To plagiarise Pratchett, standing on top of a hill during a thunderstorm while wearing copper armour and screaming “All gods are bastards!” probably won’t get you reduced to a pile of smoking slag, but it is still not a good idea.
Erm, my studies are simultaneously ‘unspecified’ and ‘likely weak retrospective studies of biased samples based on unreliable self-report’, eh sh? Do you actually think before you type?
In fact the majority are retrospective, because prospective longitudinal cohort studies are very expensive and take decades to produce results. Nonetheless there are two large, rigorous and very widely respected studies of that kind in this part of the world alone. The Dunedin Longitudinal Study and the Christchurch Health and Development Study. And whaddya know? They agree with the overwhelming bulk of other research in the field and disagree with you.
If we are talking bias, what would you call cherry picking from the tiny fraction of childhood sex abuse studies that fail to find a link between CSA and serious negative long term outcomes?
And why am I not surprised that you call people who self report being sexually abused as a child ‘unreliable’? Even in old historic cases that get to Australian courts there is almost always correlating evidence from other sources – such as the 30 year old clerical abuse case currently in Newcastle courts in which there are church records of the alleged perpetrator being accused of very similar offences in multiple dioceses as well as medical records of the victim being treated for rectal trauma at the time of the alleged offences.
Funny. There are many meta-studies that have confirmed the links between CSA and negative outcomes (see the link above for some examples).
In any case, what you cite is not a study at all. It is a response by Rind to two of the many critics of his earlier study which has more methodological problems than most others in the field. Firstly he limits his sample to college students – a fairly high functioning subset of the population who would be less likely to suffer crippling disorders than most. You aren’t in college if you’re in a prison, looney bin or cemetery. Secondly college students are just at the threshold of the age at which most serious long term psychological problems emerge. If he had followed them up a few decades later he may have got very different results. Thirdly, his selection of studies was bizarre. He claimed to be looking at child sexual abuse but four of the seven largest studies in his sample were of people reporting sexual abuse when they were seventeen or older. He also ignored, without explanation, several large and reliable studies of childhood sexual abuse that showed strong results contrary to his findings. Fourthly, Rind ignores externalised responses to CSA, though numerous studies have shown that male victims in particular suffer from such reactions and many of the studies he includes in his meta-analysis had a high proportion of male subjects. In other words, sh, Rind’s scholarship is a lot like your own. Crap.
Of course the fact that Rind’s co-author, Bauserman, had previously written pedophilia decriminalisation advocacy articles for a Dutch pro-pedophilia magazine does not necessarily further undermine the validity of the research, but it does make you wonder about their agenda.
I know how to avoid wasting my time in a library looking for research that has already been thoroughly debunked. I also know that given the huge preponderance of research contradicting Rind that a handful of outliers like his are not significant. And finally I know – because I checked – that several of the studies you footnoted on your own website do not support the conclusions you attribute to them so there is a good chance I would be wasting my time looking for support for your arguments in Rind, et al too.
So the only evidence acceptable to you would be if we randomly divided up a large group of children, actively sexually abused some of them while performing ‘placebo’ sexual abuse on the others then followed them up for three months to a year to see how fucked up they become? Actually there is a child sex abuse test that reminds me of. Reflex anal dilation. You get a stranger in a lab coat to diddle a kid’s arsehole and if he doesn’t clench up you declare he has been sexually abused. As indeed he has been.
No. Just a major ongoing problem that causes a heck of a lot of suffering. At least if that experience is as power imbalanced as adult-child sexual contact invariably is.
Of course you are the exception sh. You are absolutely powerless in the face of sexually aggressive nine year old girls. As are many child sex offenders if we are to take their word for it.
Actually you misrepresent your own content sh. I have seen at least two versions of your anecdote about the little girl who grabbed your dick and they are incompatible in regards to important points. So I know that in at least one of them you were lying.
The common factors are your own lack of agency. The erection you had while facing a classroom full of 8 and 9 year olds was ‘spontaneous’. Your display of that erection to them was ‘inadvertent’. But the child had full agency in both.
In the first version you claim she commits social suicide by walking up to you and grasping your erect penis in front of a classroom full of her peers. If that had happened it would have been all over the schoolyard by the end of the next recess and would have got back to parents and school staff by the end of the day. She would have been a pariah and you would have been unemployed at the very least. Yet you insist her reaction was ‘healthy curiosity’ and not at all indicative of a damaged or handicapped child.
In the second version there has been an unspecified classroom accident – strangely lacking in detail compared to the other aspects of your account – and you exercise some agency. Specifically you rush to aid the victim with your cavalry banner flying from your fly. But now that underaged opportunist has even more agency. She “takes advantage of the confusion” to cop a feel of your stiffy. As Humbert Humbert observed, you just can’t keep these demonic nymphets away from it can you?
So I know you’re lying because you tell two incompatible versions of the same story.
I hope you just made the whole thing up as a bogus anecdote to support your nonsensical theories.
But I suspect it’s a wish fulfillment fantasy – like many of those letters to the ‘real life experience’ sections of men’s magazines. There is probably a core of truth. The erection perhaps. The rest of it is not what happened but what you wish had happened. Of course such fantasies are unlikely to harm anyone but you sh, but more worryingly, people who have such fantasies often try to make them come true.
But after all this criticism I feel I should concede another point in which we are in strong agreement. Sending sex abusers to prison is nothing but mindless punishment that benefits no-one.
No independent studies have ever shown that prison based sex offender programs reduce the (relatively small) risk of re-offending but some have suggested that they increase the risk that further offences will be increasingly violent. I have personal experience of one case in which that was tragically true.
While locking sex offenders away for years probably does slightly reduce sex offences against the unimprisoned population it almost certainly increases those committed against other inmates. Most of the victims are in for minor offences and will be released after having been traumatised by prison rapists and are at increased risk of going on to commit more serious crimes in the future. Convicted sex offenders are at increased risk of being both perpetrators and victims of sexual violence in prison.
Prison is mind numbingly expensive so it does come at an opportunity cost to other government funded, evidence based programs to reduce sex offending or to assist its victims.
And it’s just plain inhumane. Imprisoned child sex offenders are the lowest of the low. ‘Rockspiders’. Hated by prisoners, guards and even their therapists. Even if they spend their entire sentence in protection they are at high risk of suffering violence or worse at the hands of prisoners or guards. They are usually denied visits from their own children even if they were not the victims. They are often not even allowed to have photos of them. And most of the ‘therapies’ offered are tantamount to psychological or physical torture. Like the one that killed Alan Turing.
Besides, some of them have been wrongfully convicted.
Oops. That should read “Rind ignores internalised responses to CSA”.
Men are more likely to report that childhood sexual experiences with adults were positive, yet show similar negative long term results to women who report them negatively.
Sorry I don’t have time to read all your comments at the moment. I’m not supported by any self-interested government agency or private organization that profits from the mass hysteria over child sex abuse, and I have more important priorities. I’ll try to read your efforts eventually.
Here, again, is the reference to the Rind Study: Rind, Bruce et al. “A Meta-Analytic Examination of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse Using College Samples” (Psychological Bulletin 1998, Vol. 124, No. 1, 22-53); and Rind et al. “The Validity and Appropriateness of Methods, Analyses, and Conclusions in Rind et al. (1998): A Rebuttal of Victimological Critique From Ondersma et al. (2001) and Dallam et al. (2001)” (Psychological Bulletin 2001. Vol. 127. No. 6. 734-758).
I’ve never imagined for an instant you’re in it for the money, sh.
And while it would be easy to draw more sinister conclusions about your motivations I don’t really believe that either.
Rather I think that like many others who share your – *ahem* – ‘interests’ you are very psychosexually immature and at some level you know it. Your obsessive and heavily skewed ‘scholarship’ is an attempt to justify your own predilections to the world at large and – more importantly – to yourself.
Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts.
Here, again, is the reference to the meta-analysis of 59 unbiased studies that doesn’t support the hysterical belief that child sex abuse is usually seriously harmful, in case anybody missed it:
Rind, Bruce et al. “A Meta-Analytic Examination of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse Using College Samples” (Psychological Bulletin 1998, Vol. 124, No. 1, 22-53); and Rind et al. “The Validity and Appropriateness of Methods, Analyses, and Conclusions in Rind et al. (1998): A Rebuttal of Victimological Critique From Ondersma et al. (2001) and Dallam et al. (2001)” (Psychological Bulletin 2001. Vol. 127. No. 6. 734-758).
Y’all know that’s available as a PDF on my Resources page, right?
You are aware of it’s systemic biases aren’t you Maggie?
Rind states that he believed that all other reviewers and their subjects had been influenced by the Satanic Ritual Abuse panic, resulting in confirmation bias in their findings. So he deliberately excluded all samples but college students to avoid ‘biasing’ from subjects who had received psychological treatment or been through legal proceedings.
In other words, he specifically excluded the most severely damaged CSA survivors from a study intended to measure the amount of damage to CSA survivors.
He further ‘controlled’ for dysfunctional family environment – effectively removing most data about incest CSA survivors from his results (a group known to suffer some of the worst outcomes). Even if your family wasn’t dysfunctional to start with, it soon will be with one member preying on another behind a wall of secrecy.
Lo and behold. Rind concludes that CSA is damaging, but not as damaging as those who didn’t trim their data to fit their thesis found it to be.
Surely you don’t think I accept any study as an authority on anything? It’s there as a data point, not as Holy Writ.
Yeah, I guess I’ve got a bee in my bonnet about research designed to produce misleading headlines. There’s a lot of it about.
If you carefully read Rind’s report (as I now have – thanks for the link), the facts are there. He explains his data selection criteria, applies more-or-less appropriate statistical methods and comes up with results that fit the data-set and analysis he chose. He then might have been able to draw some valid conclusions about the severity and prevalence of CSA linked pathologies in college populations that might have helped inform the allocation of support services, etc.
But no. He goes off on a wild tangent arguing that ‘willing’ sexual contact between adults and children should not be considered abuse at all. A conclusion unsupported by his data and rejected by another team who performed a very similar study a few years later and got similar results. He also erects straw man arguments about the prevalence of the most serious outcomes of CSA so he can pretend to demolish them with data that has been intentionally blinded to those outcomes.
But conclusions like that guarantee headlines. And headlines like that start a frenzy. And so second rate researchers like Rind get to present themselves as martyrs to scientific independence and free speech. And courtrooms – notorious venues for the abuse of science at the best of times – hear Rind’s nonsense from defence attorneys applied to situations completely outside the scope of his research as if it was ‘scientific’ to do so.
It’s small wonder people like sexhysteria then go on to completely misinterpret and misrepresent it in order to prop up half-baked pet theories.
Oh yeah, that again.
The paper widely criticised by other researchers in the field but lauded and promoted by pro-pedophilia groups. Even the authors themselves promoted it at pro-pedophilia conferences and in the pages of the the world’s largest circulation pro-pedophilia magazine.
Yes, Ma’am!
So the truth or falsity of the Rind (or any) study depends on the scandalous use made of the findings?
No. Any knowledge can be abused whether or not it is ‘true’.
That’s why academics should be careful to avoid presenting their knowledge in a way that encourages it’s abuse.
By drawing scandalous bogus conclusions that don’t flow from the data Rind almost ensured there would be a media circus around his work and that it would be abused. It’s hard to believe he didn’t anticipate it and his subsequent media work actively encouraged it.
It’s not just Rind I’m down on here. I’ve got a long standing gripe with science journalism and misleadingly over-hyped research. I attack it regularly on my own blog as well.
Either you’re poorly informed or else you are deliberately trying to distort the facts.
There was no controversy in academia after Rind published his study. The controversy began when religious fundamentalists heard about it and popularized it, and subsequently profiteers in the sex abuse rescue business felt threatened by the publicity.
Only then did self-interested sex abuse counselors publish criticism in an academic journal, which was easily refuted by Rind (see my reference above), a well as by other scholars. An independent meta-analysis later replicated Rind’s major findings (cited in the Wikipedia article).
You accuse other people of being “full of it,” but you need to get your own facts straight.
Who is distorting things, sh?
Yes, there was a delay between publication and when the media picked it up and the frenzy started. Yes, religious fundamentalists were among those who condemned it, along with Rind’s fellow academics, people who work with sex abuse victims and pretty much anyone who cares about integrity in academic research.
Some of the criticisms leveled at Rind were ill-informed. Meta-analysis was still controversial back then and skeptics of it lined up to take a shot at him over it. One of the reasons meta-analysis had so many critics was because of it’s potential to amplify bias in selection criteria – most notably publication bias that ensures that few failed studied ever see the light of day to be included in the meta-analyses. Until Cochrane specified inclusion criteria that made the process more robust it was people like Rind who gave meta-analysis a bad name.
Rind answered a handful of his critics out of the hundreds, validly with regards to most of his methodology, but raising straw men with regards to his conclusions which he mostly failed to answer. In fact the follow up study by Ulrich, et al, that was meant to replicate Rind’s but correct for some of it’s statistical and methodological errors, came up with similar results but the authors still utterly rejected Rind’s conclusions.
Why?
Because his conclusions don’t flow from his results.
Rind’s team had a political agenda. It’s objectives were to argue for the removal of age-of-consent legislation and to rubbish other researchers in the field who Rind accused of being biased by the Satanic Ritual Abuse panic. So Rind explicitly selected studies into college students only, with the stated intention of minimising the contribution of CSA survivors who had received extensive counseling or had been through the legal system. In other words, like Ramey 20 years before him, he deliberately excluded the most seriously damaged subjects from his data pool before concluding that CSA does not cause as much serious damage as well over 90% of other studies say it does.
The fact that he selected college students also eliminated the many CSA survivors who only develop their worst symptoms in later life – particularly after marriage and the birth of their own children. And he also ignored the pathologies known to strike primarily male CSA survivors before concluding that male survivors show particularly little evidence of harm.
In his various wafflings and blusterings Rind fails to seriously address any of those systemic biases in his sampling methods, only repeating that he is trying to adjust for SRA induced panic. Yet more than a decade after SRA hysteria died down the overwhelming majority of studies – including other meta-analyses, twin studies and prospective longitudinal studies – consistently refute Rind’s conclusions.
However I am not surprised that you see some kind of world-wide conspiracy behind the fact that pretty much no-one in the field agrees with you or Rind. I mean counseling SRA survivors is a multi-billion dollar business right? (Despite the fact that according to Rind there’s nothing wrong with them so they’re wasting time and money going to counselors.) And doubtless because there’s so much money in it, these evil counselors have no trouble corrupting criminology, psychology and psychiatric researchers all over the world to get them to agree with them, right sh?
You can’t recognise a shonky researcher when he’s staring you right in the face. Not even when he’s staring from the bathroom mirror. Maybe you should go back to school and learn some basic statistical analysis.
Sorry I don’t have time to read all your comments. But do feel free to elaborate, since you seem to have a lot more free time on your hands.
Rind, Bruce et al. “A Meta-Analytic Examination of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse Using College Samples” (Psychological Bulletin 1998, Vol. 124, No. 1, 22-53); and Rind et al. “The Validity and Appropriateness of Methods, Analyses, and Conclusions in Rind et al. (1998): A Rebuttal of Victimological Critique From Ondersma et al. (2001) and Dallam et al. (2001)” (Psychological Bulletin 2001. Vol. 127. No. 6. 734-758).
I know that at that age and in those circumstances I would have been terribly embarrassed, whether the woman was a relative, a stranger, some neighbor I’d fantasized about, etc.
Now, just because I would have been terribly embarrassed doesn’t mean that he was terribly embarrassed, but he looks like he was. The public stripping would’ve been worse for me than the lap dancing. Even so, I would almost certainly hove sported wood and fantasized about it later. Fetish fuel isn’t always what I want to burn in real life.
If I were to find myself at that age and in that situation in some sort of Quantum Leap-ish way, then like Krulak I’d’ve groped her big titties right there, just as the best way to react to a joke at your own expense is to laugh louder than others. But when I was eleven to fourteen I wasn’t like I am now, and I wouldn’t’ve have grabbed for the boobs.
If anybody thinks child sexual experience is an international emergency, check out this documentation of the hysterical reaction to the Rind study:
Rind, Bruce, et al. Science versus orthodoxy: Anatomy of the congressional condemnation of a scientific article and reflections on remedies for future ideological attacks. Applied & Preventive Psychology 9:211-225 (2000). Cambridge University Press. https://www.ipce.info/library_2/rbt/science_frame.htm