Phillip R Greaves

I do love a good controversy. So when I saw all the frenzy surrounding this book, my first instinct was to read it.

Let’s get one thing straight: this is a disturbing book. Not all of it, but I could happily have gone through life without reading the chapter titled “Two Tales of Pedophilia”. Given all the controversy, though, I felt obligated to read the book because there’s another aspect of the situation that I find even more disturbing than the book's content: the eagerness with which people will jump on the censorship bandwagon when they have almost no knowledge of the work in question.

Yup, I said censorship. It’s probably necessary to define that term before going any further. Wikipedia says that censorship is “suppression of speech or other communication which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient to the general body of people as determined by a government, media outlet, or other controlling body.” I’ve seen the arguments that Amazon isn’t the government, and therefore it’s not censorship if they try to prevent people from reading this book. That’s not really the point here. Is Amazon a “controlling body”? Maybe not now, but they certainly seem to be controlling an ever-larger share of the book market, driving independent booksellers out of business. When Amazon stops selling a book, that book becomes a fair bit harder to obtain. And I just don’t want Amazon deciding what books are or are not fit for my consumption. Sure, it’s pedophilia today, but maybe tomorrow it will be homosexuality (actually, we’ve already been there), and who knows what else.

Of course, people say that pedophilia is different. It’s illegal and morally wrong (because of course, homosexuality was never illegal and no one would claim that it’s morally wrong). Let me state unequivocally that I do not support child molestation. But neither do I support wild mobs that pull out the pitchforks at the slightest provocation.

Oh, but surely this isn’t a slight provocation? Surely freedom of speech ends with the incitement of criminal activity? And child molestation is undeniably criminal activity, right?

Before going further into unfounded speculation, it might be worth looking further at what the book in question actually has to say on the topic. I’m sad to say that this is apparently a really novel idea. There’s been plenty of ranting, but only a few people actually bothered to read the book. Here are a few key quotes:

“Now it may come as a surprise to some, but it is not illegal to be a juvephile, or a pederast, but it is against the law to act on these feelings….”

“[R]ecognize that masturbation is your best friend and avoid becoming sexually involved with actual minors of any age.”

“Furthermore, if one desires it, the combination of fantasy and masturbation can be used to refocus and redirect one’s sexual interest away from minors and toward young adults or beyond, in gradual stages.”

Is it possible to write a how-to guide for pedophiles without promoting illegal activities? Apparently it is. I think there’s some merit in advising pedophiles on how to deal with their sexual urges in a non-criminal way. In fact, I wouldn’t mind a whole series of how-to books for would-be criminals that focused on what to do as an alternative to committing the crime. My point here is that a guide for pedophiles is not automatically a despicable thing.

Unfortunately, this particular book is not entirely focused on avoiding acts of pedophilia. There are also arguments in favour of sexual relations with minors. As I mentioned earlier, I found the two examples of pedosexual relations to be very disturbing (pedosexual being the author’s word of choice for one who actually engages in sex acts with minors, as opposed to the pedophile who merely “loves” children, potentially just feeling the attraction but choosing not to act on it). The author is at pains to say that the children engaged in the acts willingly and were treated with respect by their older partners, but I was left with a strong impression that they just didn’t know what they were getting into.

And this is perhaps the most reassuring thing about the book: it’s just not very good. There are some interesting ideas, but the arguments are generally not convincing. For example, sexual attraction is attributed to auras. If the great white shark and the duckbill platypus can sense auras, then maybe people can see auras too, and surely innocent children would be the most likely people to have this ability. Uh, what? There aren’t even any citations about this presumed animal aura-sensing, or about any other topic. Instead, the reasoning tends to go something like this, on the causes of pedophilia: “There may be genetic influences which express a tendency in this direction… but it is doubtful genes play the determining role. Nor is it likely to be caused by an entirely emotional influence. It seems most likely that genetic factors might play a role regarding those children who find themselves attracted to pedophiles, but not necessarily.” There’s just no real content here. The book is also full of grammatical errors.

Basically, it’s a bad book. It’s sufficiently short and unedited that it didn’t really deserve to be published as a book, but could just have been posted on the author’s website where it would have languished in obscurity. This book only got any attention at all because people like to make a fuss about something. It isn’t going to convince people that pedophilia is okay and it doesn’t provide pedophiles with tips on how to molest your children. It does *try* to argue that pedophilia is okay, it does give pedophiles tips for dealing with their issues in a legal way, and it does contain some disturbing anecdotes of pedophilic relationships. Because of this last point, you probably don’t want to read it. But if some people did read it, it wouldn’t be the end of the world.… (mehr)