Nebraska Dave News and Reviews

So, there's this article at Spectator USA that wrote about Lisa Ruddick, a professor of English at the University of Chicago, who – in her criticism of a different article – said that, "There is a place in academe for scholarship that responsibly weighs the benefits and costs to children of sex with adults."

Source: http://archive.fo/hYwTl

It's actually something I've been wondering about, in particular in relation to Queer Theory which spawned the modern conception of "gender spectrum," along with gender theory which was partially the basis of Queer Theory (so was feminist theory & critical theory as well), which shows this to be somewhat of a pattern. No "conspiracy theories" and whatnot, just things people have stated, mainly form prominent figures when it comes to both.

So, Focault, often described as "the godfather of queer theory" had signed a petition in support "decriminalization of all consensual relations between adults and minors below the age of fifteen." (So has Jacues Derrida, since we're on the subject of academics).

Simone de Beauvoir, whose work had significantly influenced feminist theory and early conceptions of gender, signed the petition as well. As she notably stated, "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman." Other than supporting pedophilia, she was fired several decades earlier from her teaching job for “behavior leading to the corruption of a minor.” As a NY Times article notes:

The minor in question was one of her pupils at a Paris lycée. It is well established that she and Jean-Paul Sartre developed a pattern, which they called the “trio,” in which Beauvoir would seduce her students and then pass them on to Sartre.

Another person that contributed quite a bit to gender theory is John Money, the sociologist most notably known for trying to raise David Reimer as a girl after a botched circumcision. Other than sexually abusing him, which he justified with his belief that "childhood 'sexual rehearsal play'" was important to form "healthy adult gender identity," and arguing on subject of pedophilia that there's an important distinction between sadistic & affectional pedophilia, he also testified for the editors of the Body Politic defending their publication of an essay on pedophilia, wrote a favorable introduction to Theo Sandfort's Boys on Their Contacts with Men, was interviewed by "pedophile movement publications" Paidika and OK, both based in Netherlands, and claimed that:

[W]hen a grandfather fondles his own beloved grandchild while sleeping in the same bed, the act is not incestuous in the same sense as when a visiting uncle forces his screaming, terrified, new pubertal niece to copulate with him.

Page 15 for the source

Anyway, back to Queer Theory. Other than Foucalt, Gayle Rubin wrote an article called "Thinking Sex" which is "widely regarded as a founding text of gay and lesbian studies, sexuality studies, and queer theory." Gayle Rubin wrote this on the subject:

“Like communists and homosexuals in the 1950s, boy lovers are so stigmatized that it is difficult to find defenders for their civil liberties, let alone erotic orientation. Consequently, the police have feasted on them. Local police, the FBI and watchdog postal inspectors have joined to build a huge apparatus whose sole aim is to wipe out the community of men who love underaged youth. In twenty years or so, when some of the smoke has cleared, it will be much easier to show that these men have been the victims of a savage and undeserved witch hunt. A lot of people will be embarrassed by their collaboration with this persecution, but it will be too late to do much good for those men who have spent their lives in prison.”

And argued that this has "more in common with ideologies of racism than with true ethics."

Judith Butler, according to wiki, is "an American philosopher and gender theorist whose work has influenced political philosophy, ethics, and the fields of third-wave feminist, queer, and literary theory."

While she's in some article, I believe, stated her opposition to pedophilia, she's said this about incest:

“It is not necessary to figure parent-child incest as a unilateral impingement on the child by the parent, since whatever impingement takes place will also be registered within the sphere of fantasy. In fact, to understand the violation that incest can be­–and also to distinguish between those occasions of incest that are violation and those that are not–­it is unnecessary to figure the body of the child exclusively as a surface imposed upon from the outside.”

“The reification of the child’s body as passive surface would thus constitute, at a theoretical level, a further deprivation of the child: the deprivation of psychic life.”

So I keep adding this qualification: ‘when incest is a violation,’ suggesting that I think that there may be occasions in which it is not. Why would I talk that way? Well, I do think that there are probably forms of incest that are not necessarily traumatic or which gain their traumatic character by virtue of the consciousness of social shame that they produce.”

“It might, then, be necessary to rethink the prohibition on incest as that which sometimes protects against a violation, and sometimes becomes the very instrument of a violation.”

Meanwhile, Queer Theorist/activist Pat Califia, who had according to some observers a "notable role" in Feminist sex wars of 70s/80s, has stated that "any child enough to decide whether or not she or he wants to eat spinach, play with trucks or wear shoes is old enough to decide whether or not she or he wants to run around naked in the sun, masturbate, sit in somebody's lap or engage in sexual activity. We should be working to end the artificial state of sexual ignorance that children are kept in – not perpetuating it or defending it."

Source can be found here

“Boy-lovers and the lesbians who have young lovers are the only people offering a hand to help young women and men cross the difficult terrain between straight society and the gay community. They are not child molesters. The child abusers are priests, teachers, therapists, cops and parents who force their stale morality onto the young people in their custody. Instead of condemning pedophiles for their involvement with lesbian and gay youth, we should be supporting them. They need us badly. Forty years in prison is a long, long time. Only a very sad society with some very sick attitudes toward sex could think such a sentence is just. Forty years for what? For experiencing sexual pleasure? When the capacity to have orgasms is present at six months of age and possibly even earlier? God help us, it's a wonder any of us manage to feel love or make love with training like that.

Source can be found here.

Lastly, while not a Queer Theorist but an "equity"/"liberal" feminist & academic, Camille Paglia has said some relevant things about it that I found interesting. It bears nothing that while she's seen as one of the more "sane" feminists, in her Slate column about 20 years back when asked about Allen Ginsberg, an American poet, philosopher, writer, and NAMBLA (North American Man-Boy Love Association) supporter, other than stating he had enormous influence on her intellectual development, she said:

As far as Ginsberg's pro-NAMBLA stand goes, this is one of the things I most admire him for. I have repeatedly protested the lynch-mob hysteria that dogs the issue of man-boy love.

Source: http://archive.li/e2UwB

She was also interviewed by Bill Andriette who at the time was Features Editor at The Guide, which seems to be a gay travel and entertainment magazine. Later on, he became a pro-pedophilia activist and spokesmon for NAMBLA.

While the original source of the article isn't available, it can be found here, in which she argues that gay people who distance themselves from the issue of pedophilia are in effect committing "cultural suicide," that she felt she had a "moral obligation" to speak out against the persecution in the "puritan Protestant Culture," wonders what is wrong with anything which gives pleasure "even if it does involve fondling of genitals," that she'd like to "force that issue right into the front of the cultural agenda," and wonders: "Where is the harm to the children if they are getting polymorphous perverse pleasure from it, except in the harm as society forces secrecy on everyone and makes everyone neurotic?"

More on the topic of Queer Theory though, she said this:

In her book Sex and Destiny, Germaine Greer says that the standards for adult-child contact in the non-Western world are very, very free. She says that adults take pleasure in physical contact with children, take pleasure in their bodies, in ways that are considered absolutely criminal here. Now this was an utterly explosive and momentous thesis. I totally agree with it, and I think that an authentic queer studies, one based on scholarship and not propaganda, would be pursuing this issue.

All of these posturing academics, the queer studies people and so on, have been completely cowardly. They pretend they're so bold, oh so bold, taking stands against the far right. But on this issue they have been almost completely silent. I don't know if now and then there might be one who has expressed himself or herself on the issue of man-boy love. I'm not aware of it at this point. I know that outside of academe it's more likely that you will get figures who will speak out.

There are some others that have talked about similar things, as well. Such as Jane Rule, a feminist & academic:

If we accepted sexual behaviour between children and adults, we would be far more able to protect our children from abuse and exploitation than we are now.

Source can be found here

Or Kate Millet, another prominent feminist who according to Wiki had a "seminal influence on second-wave feminism." She wrote a book called Sexual Politics. In an 1980 interview that was reprinted in the book "The Age of Taboo," she said that:

Certainly, one of children’s essential rights is to express themselves sexually, probably primarily with each other but with adults as well.

“Do you think that a tender, loving erotic relationship can exist between a boy and a man?” Millett was asked.

“Of course,” she answered, “or between a female child and an older woman. Men and women have loved each other for millennia, as have people of different races. What I’m concerned about is the inequitous context within which these relationships must exist. Of course, these relationships can be non-exploitative and considering the circumstances they are probably heroic and very wonderful; but we have to admit that they can be exploitative as well – like in the prostitution of youth.”

Source can be found here. It's not a good one, however, like with another of examples, I've mostly verified it. Wiki also talks about this interview, noting that:

In an interview with Mark Blasius, Millett was sympathetic to the concept of intergenerational sex, describing age of consent laws as "very oppressive" to gay male youth in particular but repeatedly reminding the interviewer that the question cannot rest on the sexual access of older men or women to children but a rethinking of children's rights broadly understood. Millett added that "one of children's essential rights is to express themselves sexually, probably primarily with each other but with adults as well" and that "the sexual freedom of children is an important part of a sexual revolution … if you don't change the social condition of children you still have an inescapable inequality."

I'd repeat that this aren't random internet people, but some of key figures when it comes to feminism/gender theory/queer theory (along with some others). Thoughts?