On Perversions, Pedophiles, and the Homophobes of the Left
Here's something interesting on the Foley thing:
One of the great drawbacks of our “enlightened” times is that we cannot speak honestly about sexuality. There are basic truths about human sexuality that your grandparents took for granted, but which cannot now even be discussed in impolite elite society. It is the opposite of sophistication or openness--it is a willful and destructive naiveté. Make no mistake: this modern attitude has nothing to do with freedom or liberation, but falsehood and slavery. But if you speak openly about it, the dogs of political correctness will be unleashed.
I remember about a month ago, seeing a knuckleheaded member of the MSM--I believe it was Matt Lauer--interviewing that creepily attractive female teacher in Florida who had had sex with a student. Lauer was confronting her about the fact that she had received no jail time, lecturing her that what she had done was was no different than if an adult male teacher had raped a teenage girl. The vacant eyed teacher--who is nevertheless not as vacant as Lauer--stumbled and stammered to explain how her situation was different. She couldn’t explain why. It just was.
In fact, given the constraints of political correctness, it is not possible to explain the vast moral gulf that exists between the two situations. Why? Because leftist dogma demands that men and women are absolutely identical, so that the concept of rape becomes completely “symmetrical.” A woman sleeping with a teenage boy is no different than a man seducing a teenage girl. The thoroughly PCified Lauer saw absolutely no difference between the two situations.
I am hardly excusing what the female teacher did. However, there are reasons why we have laws against dogs biting men but not men biting dogs (before PETA, anyway). Laws should apply to the real world, not to some abstract, fanciful leftist world.
Let us stipulate that there is something problematic about male sexuality. In fact, if we cannot agree that this is so, this is a fine example of how far from reality the “reality based community” is. Virtually all perverts are men. I don’t have the statistics--nor do I need them--but I am quite certain that nearly all violent rapists are men, as are almost all pedophiles. It is well understood that nearly all of the paraphilias--what used to be called perversions, which is a judgmental and not nice word, so it had to be changed by the left--apply to men.
For example, I once had an elderly patient with a shoe fetish. His entire sex life revolved around fancy high heeled shoes--wearing them, having sex with them, wearing them while having sex, etc. It’s almost unimaginable that a female patient would enjoy having sex with a sweaty old tennis shoe. When they have a shoe fetish, it involves compulsively purchasing them, not intimate companionship with them.
It is interesting to read the hysteria coming out of the left regarding the situation with Congressman Foley, who I wholeheartedly agree is a pervert. Furthermore, it is fascinating to hear the left using this normally shunned word so freely and openly. Normally, the left specializes in defining deviancy down, so they are definitely at cross purposes with themselves in this matter.
In fact, someone left a shrewd comment about Foley on La Shawn Barber’s blog, that “Twenty years from now, he will be able to marry a 16 year old boy.” Seriously, who could argue with this comment? Is this not the trend that the left has been working toward over the last 40 years? Twenty years from now this might be an epic story of forbidden love overcoming the hidebound, benighted, and unprogressive attitudes of sexual oppressors.
But there is a much deeper reason the left is at cross purposes with itself. They keep stridently referring to Foley as a “pervert.” While I certainly agree that he is a pervert, I am quite sure I don’t understand why they do. Is it because he is attracted to young men? If that is the case, why is he a pervert, when all normal heterosexual men are just as attracted to young female flesh? Can I get a witness? I'm hardly excusing it. "Is" is not synonymous with "ought." In fact, this is why society must have "oughts" in place that acknowledge the problematic nature of male sexuality.
On dailykos they keep calling Foley’s actions “pedophilia,” but this is amazingly deceptive. Pedophilia specifically revolves around fantasies, urges, or sexual behaviors involving sexual activity with a prepubescent child, a very different thing. Therefore, we can take the charge of pedophilia right off the table.
An interesting aside. A number of years ago, leftist sexual activists put pressure on the American Psychiatric Association to actually change the DSM definition of pedophilia (imagine the furor if conservative activists had done the same thing, redefining a mental disorder to make it conform with their agenda--say "feminist sexual disorder"). In the DSM III, pedophilia was simply defined as any sexual urges or fantasies toward a prepubescent child. But in the DSM IV, the criteria were changed, so that the diagnosis could only be made if the fantasies, urges, or behaviors cause clinically significant distress to the perpetrator! In other words, according to DSM-IV criteria, even if the boy had been underage, so long as Foley was not distressed or conflicted about his behavior, then he is entirely normal. He gets a pass. He is no different than a heterosexual man--say, John Derek--who was attracted to 16 year-old Bo Derek. Now, in my opinion, John Derek may have been an immature man or a silly man or reckless man or a lucky man, but he was not a perverted man. Hiyo!
It is well understood that almost all true pedophiles are men. This is hardly a knock on men. Saying this does not make me an androphobe. Furthermore, the majority of pedophiles are heterosexual, which is perfectly understandable, since they constitute over 98% of the male population. But let’s be honest. Let’s just look at the statistics, and see if we can draw any inferences from them aside from the truism that male sexuality is problematic for civilization--or that, for that very reason, both cultural mores and laws must be designed to guide male sexuality toward healthy, or at least pro-social, outlets. Otherwise, men will be inclined to “do what they do” in a state of nature, and be reduced to what George Gilder called the “naked nomad.”
In proportion to their numbers, homosexual males seem to be significantly more likely to engage in sex with minors. Let’s take the homosexual priest problem that afflicted the Catholic church. It is again deceptive to call this a “pedophile priest” problem, since the majority of victims were post-pubescent teenage boys. This is apparently consistent with studies indicating that “While no more than 2% of male adults are homosexual... approximately 35% of pedophiles are homosexual. Further, since male-on-male pedophiles victimize far more children than do heterosexual pedophiles, it is estimated that approximately 80% of pedophilic victims are boys who have been molested by adult males.”
Of course, it is only anecdotal, but there is no question that the majority of homosexual patients I have seen had their first encounter with an older man when they were still adolescents. Now, I am neither a researcher nor a statistician, but let us suppose that the above statistics, which were published in reputable journals, are roughly true. That they are in the ballpark.
Let’s put it this way. I am not a member of the American Psychological Association, for the simple reason that it has been taken over by agenda-driven leftist activists, including sexual activists. In their prestigious Psychological Bulletin in 1998, the APA published a ho-hum research paper arguing that the harm from childhood sexual abuse was vastly overstated, and that even then, much of the harm was probably due to extrinsic factors such as family disapproval. In other words, it was not intrinsically harmful, much less pathological (or, needless to say, immoral). For many, it was actually a positive experience.
“Moral passion” is an interesting thing. Just like other impulses and drives, it will find a way to express itself. On dailykos, this situation is generating the kind of moral passion usually reserved for blind Bush hatred. Assuming it is genuine and not merely opportunistic, it makes me very curious. Why? Because there are many on the psychological left who would argue that what Foley did was not only not pathological but perfectly healthy, so long as the boy didn’t object, and Foley didn’t use his position of authority to exert illegitimate power over the boy. At bottom, it would be considered nothing more than an office flirtation with a willing participant.
And so, if Foley is neither a pervert nor a pedophile, what has the left so morally exercised? Is sexual corruption of minors really on their radar? If so, they had better be careful what they wish for, because they are aligning themselves with the cultural conservatives they normally despise. Can we start with MTV? Not banning it, of course, but stigmatizing it as the psychosexually toxic moral cesspool it is. Or, if (I said if) the above studies linked to are correct, how about addressing the more general problem of adult male homosexual seduction of underage teens? Make it a special category of "love crime," or something.
But if this is just about abuse of authority, then surely what President Clinton did was far worse, because 1) he actually acted on his urges (rather than just talking about them), and 2) felt no real remorse, unlike Foley, who immediately stepped down from his position in shame. So is it just because the left is homophobic?
(By the way, if my meaning is too ironic or oblique, you may find that some of the comments shed additional obscurity on my point.)
POSTED BY GAGDAD BOB AT 8:03 AM
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