There’s
no precedent for it in the animal world: mature males forcing
themselves sexually on immature members of the species.
That it has been scientifically documented does not make
it any less anomalous, meaning all exculpatory efforts to
take an exceptionally isolated incident and extrapolate
it into a precedent or predictor of the human behaviour
will fall spectacularly short of minimum requirement. In
those exceptionally rare
instances in the animal world where
pedophilia has been documented, it is mostly due to mistaken
identity, where an adult misperceives the sexually immature
as adult.
Homo
sapiens is the only species on the planet that deliberately
sexually preys upon members of the same species who are
not sexually mature. From the Latin paido, signifying
child, and pile, meaning love, we get paedophile
or pedophile (American spelling). Ninety
percent of pedophiles are male.
Since Homo sapiens
is the only life form that includes pedophiles among its
numbers, and is sentient (self-conscious), we must conclude
that among certain members of the species there is a very
particular linkage between being self-conscious and the
impulse to engage in sex with unselfconscious forms of life,
such as children and animals.
Of the human
condition and its constants, there is perhaps none as unnerving
as having to deal with self-consciousness, which is why
all cultures, without exception, encourage the regular ingestion
of substances that numb or partially disable the neocortical
functions of the brain. Freud went so far to suggest that
all humans harbour a secret death wish, or longing to return
to the inanimate (unselfconscious being). Being self-aware
before the gaze of the other is a source of angst for which
there is no cure other than sleep or escaping the public
domain, which is why we comport ourselves one way in public
and another in private.
When it comes
to smoothing out the rough edges of self-consciousness,
most men make do with a spliff or a couple of doubles at
the end of the day, but for others (the hermit, the monk),
a life of solitude is the only practical response to the
anxiety produced by any kind of social contact – a
withdrawal doubtlessly blessed by every mother of a small
child. The ascetic life, however, is a high-minded, discipline-heavy
state of affairs that will not appeal to the majority of
sexually disabled pedophiles for whom sexual gratification
is a recurring appetite. These types quite naturally gravitate
to environments where they will be free from the apprehension
and paralysis produced by self-consciousness.
THE BLAME GAME
Brain scans
now confirm that homosexuality isn’t learned but is
innate. And now pedophiles, between kiddie stalking and
plea bargaining sessions, are looking to hitch a ride on
the “I was born that way” bandwagon. Appealing
to science without any consideration of moral correctness,
they would have us believe that their predatory predilections
are as DNA-ordained as hetero- or homosexuality.
Studies
indicate that pedophiles are disproportionately
left-handed, have lower IQs by 10 points and are an inch
shorter than normal.
And while outcomes vary considerably from one study to the
next, a significant percentage of sexually abused children
become sexually abusive adults. We also know that there
is a cause and effect relationship between pedophilia and
the pathological displacement of erotic excitement (fetish),
where sexual imprinting is linked to an object or exceptional
event. An adolescent who experiences his first ejaculation
in and around a slipper may become dependent on the slipper
for his sexual pleasure, and if he experiences the same
playing with a small boy (a younger brother, a cousin) he
risks becoming dependent on the presence of a child for
sexual gratification. But all of these facts and arguments,
in their aggregate, do not explain or predict the prevalence
of pedophilia.
Irrespective
of pedophilia's complex and multi-faceted etiology, what
all pedophiles have in common is their sexual attraction
to persons (children) who do not possess critical faculties
of judgment. Closely related to pedophilia is bestiality
(animal sex); preying on the mentally challenged or women
who have been rendered unconscious by drugs or alcohol (date
rape); and necrophilia (sex with the deceased) – or
any sexual environment where men do not have to fear being
judged on their sexual performance.
Unlike women,
men have to perform sexually when they engage in sex; they
are judged and just as importantly judge themselves on their
performance, and a small percentage of men, for whatever
reasons (physiological, psychological) who are not up to
scratch, who are sexually disabled, are only able to perform
sexually in the presence of or in conjunction with persons
(children) lacking critical faculties of judgment. It should
be noted that mature men are not attracted to children like
they are attracted to a Playboy centerfold: they
are attracted to the judgment-free zone that only children
can provide. These people are not born pedophile; their
perversion, their sickness of being, is not innate like
heterosexuality. Pedophilia is the last resort of the sexually
disabled.
Not all sexually
disabled men are pedophiles. The majority, for whom conscience
and morality still count for something, choose to address
their sexual needs through more acceptable outlets: from
abstinence to masturbation and even bestiality. The latter,
however disconcerting and theologically problematic, is
by far and away more acceptable than pedophilia since the
presumably orifice capable beast is neither harmed by the
visit nor is consent an issue. There is a moral case to
be made that -- one to which most mothers of small children
would surely subscribe -- what happens in the OK Corral
after midnight is more than OK if it results in one less
pedophiled 5-year-old.
Performance
anxieties preclude pedophile-sex worker relationships. And
while the vast majority of sex workers have no expectation
beyond the business transaction, simply being in the same
room as someone in possession of faculties of judgment creates
an environment which is a non-starter for the pedophile.
Some men, with the exceptional ability to confuse fantasy
for reality, are able to perform after they have dressed
up their surrogates like children or dolls: ersatz pedophilia.
That they are stigmatized and ridiculed for their left of
center proclivities is unfortunate since they are harmlessly
displacing desires that might otherwise require the presence
of an innocent child.
Related to pedophilia
and the sexually disabled man is the staggering suicide
differential between men and women. In Canada, according
to 2019 figures, young men are almost four times more likely
than women to commit suicide.
In all walks
of life men have to perform in a variety of competitive
circumstances, and that includes the sexual arena where
there is no circumventing the judgment (self-consciousness)
that attaches itself to sexual performance. However tough
is a woman’s lot, especially for the luckless at the
bottom end of the looks scale and those systematically beaten
down by misogynist culture, the disproportionate male to
female suicide ratio forces the conclusion that it is existentially
much more difficult self-actualizing as a man than a woman.
Camille Paglia, from Sexual Personae:
One of the unintended
effects of women’s liberation movements, the speed
of which has taken many men by unpleasant surprise, is that
more and more men are becoming sexually disabled. It is
surely not a coincidence that since the 1960s, the beginning
of the sexual revolution, followed porn's invasion by invitation,
the male teenage suicide
rate has spiked.
With the advent
of the Internet and computer simulated life (A.I.), there
is considerable anecdotal evidence that youngsters who are
regularly exposed to on-line pornography develop unrealistic
expectations as it concerns performance. It wasn’t
so long ago an adolescent’s first exposure to sex
was via the brassiere section of a Sears catalog or Gauguin’s
nudes. Nowadays, just after being tucked into bed by his
mother, 10-year-old, iConnected Billie turns on his cell
phone, clicks www.everythingispermitted.com, and seconds
later is watching Fatima giving head to a camel. Surely,
we should be curious, if not concerned about what kind of
sexual inclinations Billie the adult will be bringing to
the bedroom or dungeon. And small wonder that our culture
is producing more and more dysfunctional males, and by extension,
dysfunctional societies.
If the writing
is on the wall -- not enough of it on prison walls -- we,
as a society, are in denial. Like a proliferating virus
gone viral, the Internet is an expanding lawless universe
that has been subverted by its own insatiable, self-perpetuating
appetites, while the erstwhile link between freedom and
responsibility, the bedrock of every civilization, has been
co-opted by the one-size-fits-all Internet link. God is
dead and we’re dying right along with Him to the effect
that our way of life is producing more and more perverts
who don’t care about anything, especially themselves,
and of course the children they hi-jack, abuse and sometimes
murder.
With the 21st
century unwell on its way, man’s once set-in-stone,
precious androcentric view of the world is crumbling all
around him, and the gender-war causalities, the new nihilists
on the block, can no longer be ignored. The pressure on
men to be men has never been so onerous and uncompromising,
resulting in more male suicides and deviant sexuality, of
which pedophilia is but one symptom of an emerging social
pathology painted in black. If this trend is to be reversed,
if men are to find their way out of this ever widening gyre
of a black hole, it must begin with the young, which makes
it both a pedagogical and deontological challenge.
Education should
have as its first priority the goal of turning impressionable
young boys into healthy and wholesome adult men, naturally
accepting of the growing number of keen and confident women
in their midst. Only when men come to accept that women
hold up half the sky will there be fewer disabled men on
the loose, and by extension fewer pedophiles and damaged
children, most of whom will become damaged and delinquent
adults.
As it concerns
Internet porn and its effects on the young in shaping their
views on sexuality, censorship is a surely matter whose
time has come. That countries such as France, Brazil and
Australia have banned social media access to under 16 is
encouraging.
Best said by
André Malraux: “A man becomes truly Man only
when in quest of what is most exalted in him.”
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