CHILD SEX ABUSE

I received a vigorous response to a tweet I made concerning Camille Paglia. The respondent had issues with Paglia, whom was labelled in the response as a supporter of paedophilia, among other things. The respondent cited Paglia's references to Ancient Greek mentor-student relationships between men and boys back when hysteria concerning NAMBLA hit media. 

Paglia's revolutionary defense of the innate right of the individual to experience sexuality with healthy pleasure did not entail promoting inappropriate sexual exploitation of anyone. She approached the subject from an esoteric point of view which was confusing to some without a Classics education. 

The North American Man-Boy Love Association began rather innocently during the early days of the Gay Liberation movement. At that time, the conservative reaction of authorities against gay male liberation included witch-hunting gay man seen with a younger companion. Before gay rights legislation, older gay men frequently sheltered young gay runaways who were fleeing abuse. This was not always a sexual situation. 

The simple truth of it is that very few mainstream gay men of the Stonewall generation even knew a NAMBLA member. Many gay men had never heard of the group. 

Some NAMBLA members were associated with child pornography in the subsequent era of early internet pornography and email. Appropriate arrests were made. NAMBLA was disgraced and its public national organization disbanded. And that was appropriate justice in the name of prevention of child trafficking and exploitation. 

NAMBLA has since become a bogeyman of gay-hating conservatives in the U.S.. Especially the fundamentally religious. If you read the trashy rhetoric of the more homophobic, you are likely to see NAMBLA referred to in the same breath as Gay Pride or Gay Rights of Gay Marriage. Why? I guess this is just one permutation of the "all gay men are paedophiles" myth which has plagued us in The West for immeasurable decades, perhaps centuries. 

Perhaps this simply evolved from a misunderstanding of Classical Greco-Roman society. Perhaps. I speculate, it may be a convenient cover for something much more pervasive and sinister in society. The fact is that most child sexual abuse is committed by adult male family members within their own family groups or social peer groups. And the vast majority of those abusers identify as heterosexual.

The relevance of wariness against child sex abuse today in the LGBTQI+ subculture should be focused on the sexualizing of children by parents who have used the transgender movement to do so. The proliferation of male children being dressed up and made up as drag queens can be seen on YouTube. And some of the behaviors these children are encouraged to perform are grotesquely suggestive of adult sexuality. 

Another inappropriate behavior exhibited openly on YouTube by parents is the exposure of young children to strippers and drag performers whose performances are sexualized. The lack of discretion in posting these videos exhibits a disconcerting boldness in exposing children to adult sexual behaviors. As a mental health professional, I question if some of these videos are seeking to justify more pathological behaviors in these homes. 

More concerning than the videos themselves is the lack of interest in them among authorities whose mission is supposed to be child protection. YouTube and Twitter have both allowed these videos to be displayed without censorship. And this paradox exists in the same society which still has deep stigmatization of homosexual men as potential sexual predators. 

Some of this is to be expected. Crossing the line of known pathology by allowing transgender activists to promote transgender behavior as normal in media and in law has opened this door to deteriorating standards for child protection from parental abuse. This has just begun to permeate the child-rearing habits of The West. It may well corrupt whatever protections children may have had against sexual abuse within their own homes.