photo: Marthijn Uittenbogaard
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Voluntary pedosexual contacts an sich are not harmful

© 31 August 2020 Marthijn Uittenbogaard

Last year, Canadian sexologist James Cantor in an interview on YouTube said the following:

James Cantor
James Cantor

"The research is more complicated than most people would appreciate. What appears to cause the greatest harm [...] the research seems to indicate that it's less the actual physical contact, and more the pressure and the coercion and the techniques that the perpetrator uses in order to gain access to the kid. It's the manipulation, it's the threats, it's the threats of what the perpetrator will do if the kid tells anybody. The betrayal of not being able to talk when other family members are present (the majority of these cases happen inside families). That kind of psychological manipulation surrounding the physical abuse, that does the primary psychological damage. Now as I said that's something that requires some expansion so as to not be misinterpreted. I'm not talking about the profoundly violent rape, the forced penetration of orifices. I'm talking about the cop-a-feel kissing inappropriate grossly abusive full leg of the law should be there, but not causing great physical trauma on the kid. As I say it's very strange to be taking child abuse and saying "oh that's not so black and white." But when is looking at what is causing what in trauma, and again is going to actually treat it, one has to realize that the majority of this is really from the manipulation and the psychological stuff that went on rather than the physical touching, even though most adults imagination is, oh we imagine what the rape of an adult would be, oh it's physically traumatic, and we start projecting what we think it was like from the kid's point of view, but that's not really generally the kid's point of view. With exceptions, that does happen, and we need to deal with them, and we need to treat them as the exceptions." [1]

Someone on BoyChat responded to this text with: "We could have told him 20 years ago". [2]

It is common knowledge to everyone open for facts, that the harm is usually secondary harm. Indirect harm. Cantor blames the "perpetrator" as the one to blame. But if society would accept pedosexual contacts, then why should the "perpetrator" threaten with violence if the child speaks out? And why the forced secret, if there is nothing secret about it anymore? This, Cantor does not answer. I believe that like actual rape, grown-ups that threaten children with violence if they speak out, are also the exceptions. Most people are kind to children. Maybe, some are even distorted in their thinking and acting out, because of the hysterical climate, that they are internalizing the view society has of them, with all the negative consequences (for themselves and for children and minors too).

If James Cantor was honest - which he is not - he would say that most harm comes from external factors like hysterical parents, hysterical neighbors, the police, the mass media. And that in a lot a cases there is no harm at all, if the relationship was consensual. I believe that it is important if a child - and later grown up - is capable of holding truth to their own experiences, or if they are conformists. A conformist will much easier adept the prevailing view a society has on the matter. That view is, unfortunately as we know, very negative today.

By the way, an sich is German, but we Dutch also use this term. Google Translate gives us: 'per se' as the translation. But English speaking people are also allowed to use this term. Let's mix languages some more.

In 2009, Susan A. Clancy published the book The Trauma Myth. In this book she wrote that she believed that child sexual abuse victims were harmed physically during the abuse and that they were very scared during the abuse. She found out, in speaking with so called child abuse victims - mainly women she spoke - that they felt not being abused when the sex happened, but that they later learned that it was abusive.

You as a child had a Jewish friend at school. You did homework together, played football together and had lots of fun. Later you learned that he or she was Jewish and therefor bad and that you were a victim of his or her manipulations. So you felt abused and you abandoned your former friend.

That's how conformists 'think'. That's why some neighbors start to hate each other, when Croats and Serbs start a war and you happen to be a Croat and your neighbor a Serb (or vice verse), which was never ever a problem between the two of you. But to fill in your group, you act the way the majority expects from you (or forces you) to act. Most people are conformists.

The truth is almost illegal to say or to write in The Netherlands. But it is still the truth. Voluntary pedosexual contacts an sich are not harmful. (And allowing them would give much more freedom to all in society, but mostly to children/minors.) It is time that society accepts the truth, instead of keeping taboo subjects with all the negative consequences for society.

Notes
[1] A Crash Course in Sexology | with Dr. James Cantor - Interview by Benjamin A. Boyce - www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6oJj6b5FQM&t=5055 - YouTube - 19 January 2019
[2] Cantor might not be so bad - www.boychat.org/messages/1550487.htm - BoyChat - Posted by Cherubino - 30 August 2020

Does the above text accidentally contain a typing, spelling, grammatical or factual error?
Or do you want to react to it? Then I hope you will get in touch.
"Wees eerlijk en laat zien wie je bent."
"Kinderen moeten veel meer zeggenschap krijgen."
"Alle zedenwetten moeten weg."
"Pedohaat heeft niets met seks te maken."
"We gaan verkeerd met seksualiteit om."
"Hoe zinniger wat je zegt, hoe bozer men wordt."
"Zonder pedofilie zou de wereld veel armer zijn."