PAEDOPHILIA AS A SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION 

Paedophile Activist Viewpoint 

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One theory of paedophilia portrays the paedophile as a victim of society (Brongersma, 1984), although similar ideas have been put forward by others. Some consider such points of view as merely paedophile propaganda, but for our purposes this does not mean that they are of no interest. Paedophile lobbying is part of what we need to understand, not what we have to accept. 

Because Brongersma refers to how social institutions generate self-serving conceptions of adult- 
child sex, it can be regarded as a social constructionist account (Gergen, 1985), albeit somwhat crudely expressed. Brongersma often alludes to psychological and other social scientific ideas, and proposes explanations of anti-paedophile anger which treat it as asocial construction. He is a very public figure in the micro-politics of paedophilia or the boy-love movement. One account describes Brongersma as: 

"... one of its most articulate spokespersons. He has been a member of the Dutch Parliament on and off since 1946, but his career was interrupted by an arrest in the 1950s for sexual contact with a boy of 16. He went to prison. Subsequently ... establishing the Brongersma Foundation, which houses a significant collection of paedophile literature ..." 
(Plummer, 1991, p. 321) .

One major international conference at the University of Swansea in 1978 was subject to considerable media and public furore when he was scheduled to speak there as part of a discussion on paedophilia (Cook and Wilson, 1979; Plummer, 1981b) but was eventually denied 
the opportunity. 

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Brongersma paints a picture of history until the nineteenth century sympathetic to the notion of childhood sexuality. Up to this point children were not seen as distinct from adults and lacking in sexuality. Indeed, he suggests, the genitals of children were commonly and openly touched by adults such as their parents and friends. Children of the age of 11 could be married and sexual intercourse take place: 

"No one took offense at Dante's love for nine-year-old Beatrice. The City Fathers of Ulm, in Germany, had to make regulations to stem the flow of 12-14 year old boys to the brothels ... And in England ... 13-year-old Elisabeth Ramsbotham complained officially about the fact that her 11-year-old husband John Bridge had not yet deflowered her."
(Brongersma, 1984, p. 80)

But during the nineteenth century a form of aggression against those who "love" children and "want to express their feelings for them with bodily tenderness" (p. 79) emerged. Sex between children and adults was not seen as inevitably causing damage to the child. There were no legal penalties for intergenerational sex since children and adults had identical rights; like adults, children were protected by statute from rape, violence and similar crimes. The law was not involved in preventing them from having consenting sex with adults 

(although see the caveats above about similar claims by Killias, 1991).

Changes in the law, which occurred fairly simultaneously throughout nineteenth century Europe and elsewhere, had nothing to do with the harm caused to individual children by sex with adults. Increasing needs for educational and technical sophistication following the industrial revolution were responsible through extended (and universal) schooling and apprenticeships. The new industrial bourgeoisie valued the amassing of money and property through the twin virtues of industriousness and thrift. In contrast, sexual reproduction was a sheer waste of human energy and was consequently deplored:

"These two rather prosaic factors together engendered a fairy tale. Society had ... no use for a child's sexuality; so it simply declared that a child didn't have any. And so emerged the fairy tale, depicting the child as asexual, pure, innocent: pure because the child was not contaminated by such a dirty thing as sex, and innocent, because the child was not sharing the guilt of adults who committed this sinful activity."
(Brongersma, 1984, p. 81) 

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During the latter part of the nineteenth century legislation against "indecent" behaviour with children was introduced. The age of consent reveals the arbitrariness of the legislation since it varied from 12 years in one country to over 21 years in another. 

There is always a danger in relying on readings of the historical record since these may well be self-serving interpretations that adopt a curiously one-sided perspective. The notion of childhood innocence is a particularly good example. It is inherently the case that if children are construed as innocent then those who despoil them have taken away from them the essence of childhood; if they are regarded as sexual beings then those who engage with them sexually on a consensual basis might be regarded more as benefactors than abusers -- or so the paedophile argument goes. But this cuts very little ice with some, and distorts the record too much. 

Take, for example, Carey's (1993) review of Kincaid's (1993) book broadly sympathetic with paedophiles:

 "Kincaid ... adds that believing children innocent is a silly modern fad 
anyway -- just another bit of our 'cultural myth-making'. Until the late 18th century, nobody thought childish innocence existed, or even noticed that children were different from adults. Kincaid has learned these facts from the somewhat outmoded historian and theorist Phillipe Aries, but he is inclined to shrink the time-scale even more than Arires does. 
The innocent child is a 'very-late Victorian or, more likely, modern imposition' ... Come again? How about those two men in Shakespeare's Winter's Tale who recall their childhood conversations: 

'What we changed 
Was innocence for innocence. We knew not 
The doctrine of ill-doing, nor dreamed 
I'hat any did'? 

How about the founder of Christianity: 

'Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of God'? 

Children mayor may not be innocent, but texts like these show that the innocent child is far more ingrained in Western thought than Kincaid realises. How come a professor of literature should be so ill-informed?" 
(Carey, 1993, p. 8) 

But the issue of childhood innocence is not anything that is meaningful in any absolute terms; it is wholly dependent on conceptions of adults as un-innocents. Revelations about the lack of innocence among children has no real bearing on the issue of adult-child relationships. 

For example, Freud's claims about the sexuality of children are a remarkable contrast with the notion of innocence, in that they portray children as desiring, in fantasy, incest with their parents (Freud, 1962). This is not construed as a lack of childhood innocence which would warrant sexual intrusion. Similarly, knowledge 

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that quite young children are sexually inquisitive and masturbate is not regarded as a justification for adults to masturbate them. Indeed, during the Victorian period, the "age of childhood innocence", such knowledge spurred attempts to stop masturbation, as we have seen (Haller and Haller, 1974). 

Knowledge that a recent British survey revealed that one in five women between 16 (the minimum age of consent) and 19 years had had sex under the age of consent would not be seen as good cause for adult sexual interest in underage girls.

The extremes of ideology should be conceived as just that. Just as paedophile activists portray a picture of adult-child sexuality in the phrase "boy-love" as desired by the boy, we have to be a little wary of accepting the reverse of this as being the truth and the relationship is nothing but  exploitative. 

It probably contributes nothing to the understanding of paedophilia as a social process to strongly hold the view that children never can play a part in child abuse, that they are always to be constructed as inadvertent victims. 

At the very beginning of this book we saw in the childhood of a paedophile a pattern of seeking to be abused which needed to be understood in order to comprehend his adult paedophilia. While his father's abuse of him was responsible for initiating the deviant lifecycle, it would be pointless to attempt to understand this particular case in terms of him being the inadvertent victim of repeated, unconnected, paedophile interest. This in no sense means that the adult men who were sexually involved with him were seduced. To describe him as an innocent or as a seducer almost seems an unnecessary, arbitrary choice. 

Research and professional publications on paedophilia contribute their own ideologically based distortion of reality, according to Brongersma (1990): 

"Most papers and books on the subject ... seem to have been born in another world where laboratory and theory remain aloof from living reality." 
(Brongersma, 1990, p. 146)

There are a number ways in which such a major "intellectual error" is fabricated: 

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In Brongersma's view, man-boy sex may be normative given that there is some anthropological evidence that there have been cultures in which all adult men were expected to engage in sexual activities with boys. To Brongersma this 

"suggests that sexual attraction to boys is more or less present in every human male" (p. 153).

Furthermore, Brongersma (1984) quotes Stekel as suggesting that 

"pedophilia constitutes a nearly normal component of the sexual impulse" (p. 84). 

Paedophobia is based on people's incompletely recognized paedophiliac impulses -- we are paedophiliac because we are constitutionally paedophile. 

He frequently reverses ideas held by others about the nature of offending. Thus, the child may exploit the adult rather than being a victim. Included in his anecdotal evidence for this is the case of an Austrian paedophile in a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old boy. The man was beginning to fall in love with the boy: 

"And so one day he invited him to the movies, to be followed by a good meal at a restaurant. But the boy flatly refused. 'Oh, no. I don't want any of that. I come here to get fucked and nothing else!'" 
(Brongersma, 1984, p. 157) 

To Brongersma, the problem is not of sex but of violence; he is in favour of legislation to protect children from violence, threats or the abuse of authority. If the child likes the adult and the sexual relationship, the law should not intervene. The offences that might cause the child to feel odd, disgusted or similar negative emotions should be played down by parents and state authorities: much as if the child had witnessed a bad road accident, the events are best passed over. 

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Sociological Theory

While it may be an appropriate purpose of theory to identify paedophilia's causes, it is not the only objective. Indeed, it is doubtful whether a complete understanding of the origins of paedophilia is possible, and we should not ignore other approaches for one limited quest. 

For example, paedophilia may be seen usefully as a life "career" choice, albeit one that leads to social condemnation. Furthermore, paedophilia can be regarded as a social movement
involving pressure groups akin to the Gay Rights movement, which revolutionized society's response to homosexuality.

Plummer (1981a, 1981b) relates paedophilia to conceptions of deviance in sociology, and, consequently, his views appear less hostile to the paedophile than those of some others. He suggests that these four main arguments need to be considered: 

During the 1970s there had emerged, in Britain, paedophile self-help groups similar to ones established elsewhere at about this time 

(e.g. the North American Man-Boy Love Association founded in 1979).

The Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) and the Paedophile Action for Liberation (PAL) provided advice, legal help and counselling, as well as an educational and information programme for the general public. They hoped to change society towards greater acceptance of paedophilia. Plummer discusses some of the main arguments put forward by paedophile activists. One of these he refers to as ageism, meaning those parts of social structure determined by age criteria. One result of ageist social structures is that members of one age band cannot mix freely with another band. In terms of indicators of social worth, the middle age band is relatively highly valued, but children and the elderly not so: 

"If one can imagine society without these features 

(and of course they are both heavily contingent upon the importance of a particular kind of family for their existence) 

... then one could perhaps imagine a society without 'a paedophiliac problem'."
(Plummer, 1981a, p. 115) '-

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Another argument stressing the sexuality of children is made by people irrespective of their attitude to paedophilia. Adult repression of childhood sexuality is held responsible for malfunctioning, neurotic or perverted adults. 

While paedophile activists mention psychologists such as Freud and Wilhelm Reich to support this view, broadly speaking, many contemporary experts agree that the repression of childhood sexuality is unhealthy. 

Revisions of the age of consent have proposed by paedophile activists to take into account the ability of a child to validly communicate consent to an older person; children of less than four years are presumed unable to communicate consent at all, thus sexual activity with them should remain unlawful. In comparison, 10-year-olds are generally capable of communicating consent, so if a child of this age group has freely consented to sexual activity with an adult, the criminal justice system has no role to play. Only where the child's mental capacities are insufficient should the law prohibit consenting sex. Between the ages of 4 and 10 years the child is also capable of communicating consent. Here the law should not intervene unless the parent or some other responsible person claims that a particular child is incapable of communicating consent. Finally, there would not be any prohibitions against children in the same or adjacent age categories engaging in consensual sex. 

For Plummer the issue is a dilemma of liberalism: 

"... we are confronted with the classic problems of liberal theory ... it is largely an asocial theory which does not allow for any drastic structuring of society. While children may generally be incapable of consent in this society, and likewise may generally be in subordinate roles, we should not see this as inevitable. And if one could envisage a society where children were both equal and able to consent, pedophilia may not be so condemnable." 
(Plummer, 1981b, p. 238) 

We might contrast this with Kitzinger's (1988) discussion of the ideologies of childhood, in which she sees in the notions of childhood innocence and protecting the weak the means by which children are repressed. Childhood innocence allows adults to repress children's expression of sexuality and to deny them the control of their own bodies. The ideology of protecting the weak she feels ought to be replaced by one of "empowerment" since 

"... the notion of children's innate vulnerability 

(as a biological fact unmediated by the world they live in) 

is an ideology of control which diverts attention away from the socially constructed oppression of children"
Kitzinger, 1988, p. 82). 

She goes on to suggest: 

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"... despite some encouraging individual aspects of the contemporary child protection movement, the mainstream campaigns conspicuously fail to take any overall stand against the structural oppression of children. They are, therefore, not only severely limited in what they can achieve, but they also often reinforce the very ideologies which expose children to exploitation in the first place." 
(Kitzinger, 1988, p. 85) 

One of the intriguing things about this is that paedophile activists would probably take very little exception to the sentiment of liberating children from structural oppression, which, after all, is partly responsible for taking some choices about sexuality out of the power of the children themselves. Although Kitzinger is broadly with the aims of those who seek to help children to avoid abuse, it is striking that shifts in ideologies of childhood of the sort she describes overlap with what paedophiles themselves might seek