More on pedophilia and sex

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!...this may be provocative to some.

See also:

• Gay teens and sex

• They are for real

• Party for pedophiles

The new NVD political party established by pedophiles makes news again, this time in a court case. A security company argued that the new political party can no longer use the abbreviation NVD, because the company used it first.

To be fair, before writing about this issue I thought this was just a party for pedophiles, but I’ve come to realise that my views before were based misunderstanding and unwillingness to look beyond the obvious. So to balance the bias I had before, I give you what the NVD declared on its website:

“We are not a ‘pedo-party’ and do not represent the pedophile community in the Netherlands. We embody the interest of NVD-voters, not only those of pedophiles. Our party agenda is much broader than the viewpoints related to pedophilia and child sexuality.”

More news: apparently the NVD is not the first party to call for lowering the age of consent to 12. The Labour Party (PvdA) and D66 (Democrats) have in previous years also discussed calls for the change (Metro, 6 June 2006).

Pim Fortuyn wrote something before in 1999 arguing that pedophilia—“The modern totem of shame” he calls it— has received a received an unjustifiably bad name. It is as natural and genetic as sexual orientation, and something that cannot be changed, however many times you lock the pedophile up to ‘repent’:

“Pedophilia is just like hetero- or homosexuality. It is something that is in the genes, you can do little or nothing about and against it, you are who you are. The social context [contributes] little [to it], sooner or later the tendency will irresistibly arise. It is just as impossible to cure as hetero- or homosexuality. […] During and after the stay in the cell the pedophile may be told that this is not allowed and that he or she must control him/herself, but these are people like you and I. Therefore 100 percent certainty that the pedophile [does not recidivate] is not given.”

The discovery of sex and sexuality is a natural right of a child. How many grew up playing ‘doctor’ with the neighbours or friends? Under the overprotective and over-reactive intervention of ‘experts’ anything remotely intimate is automatically labeled as ‘traumatic’:

“Since the colonization of the world of the child by adults [exploration of sexuality by children] immediately falls under the chapter of immoral and undesired intimacies, and before children have got it figured out, a procession of ‘experts’ are [already] sheltering them. In this way something that was not a problem before—the discovery of the world of the other sex—suddenly becomes a great problem. And if the children were to be traumatized by anuthing, then it is from this ridiculous attention and concern about nothing.”

The overreaction toward pedophilia and pedophiles specifically is not only perpetuated by the state’s insistence in trying to ‘change’ the pedophile through education and prison sentences, but even normal citizens have taken an active role to blacklist and hunt down pedophiles in their neighbourhoods. This is a step back, from the sexual revolutions of the sixties and seventies, Fortuyn argues:

“After the invention of the pill [came] the liberation of sex. Homo(sexual)-sex was accepted, and why should—under strict condition that the child wants it and that it is not being forced— pedo(phile)-sex be not allowed? This enlightened point of view has since been abandoned and under the influence of ‘experts’ the child is portrayed as completely and all free of sexual desires, in any case in contrast with adults.”

Hm, I must agree to an extent, like I’ve already mentioned before. It’s a sensitive issue, but one that has been oversensitivised because we (or society in general) tends to latch a taboo and certain degree of ‘hush-hush-ness’ to the issue. Human beings are sexual beings, but we try to deny it because we want to believe, and make ourselves believe, that we are better and more civilized than animals. Sex is an instinct, just as there is an instinct to seek shelter, food, warmth, and community. I believe in free will, one that is unhindered by any sort of internal and external inhibitions. And whatever form or however sexual contact takes place, it should be based on that very principle.

Step back and you'll see that this is more than a debate about pedophilia. It's about the values and norms that society as whole places on sexuality.

And the reigning (twisted) values and norms that seem to be dominant today:

-when it comes to sex most people are out to 'get' some ('get laid'), and less concerned about giving
-a girl who sleeps around is a slut, but a guy who does that is a 'man'
-it's taboo to have sex with children, but why are porn magazines full of young looking boys/girls who just happened to be '18+'?
-cheating is immoral and frowned upon, but prostitution (whether legal or illegal) is the oldest industry around

Sex today is something that is 'shameful', 'embarrasing', 'guilty', 'hush-hush', even though everyone is engaged in it, one way or another, either alone or with someone else. Which is also one of the reasons why I'm writing in depth about this here, instead of on my main blog. Some people simply cannot take such issues head on.

To quote a friend, "Sex should be like brushing your teeth, you do it at least twice a day".
So where does this taboo around sex come from? Stereotypes, reenforced by centuries of (especially!) religious and political indoctrination, misinformation, and more recently the prevelance of sexually transmitted diseases which further exaggerate on the inherent feeling of shame through fear.

I guess my point is that a party like the NVD puts the debate back into sexuality/sex, and can be beneficial . It may just overthrow the long silence and shame associated with sexuality with proper debate and exchange, and may be liberating for society as a whole.

Unless bias and intolerance silence the party first, that is...