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Today's Stories April 15 / 16, 2006 Ralph
Nader April 14, 2006 Col.
Dan Smith Saul
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April 12, 2006 Vijay
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April 11, 2006 Al
Krebs Lawrence
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of the Day
April 10, 2006 Ralph
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of the Day April 7 -9, 2006 Alexander
Cockburn Jeffrey
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Brauchli Todd
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Brand Ronan
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of the Weekend
April 6, 2006 John
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Fisk
April 5, 2006 Dick
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April 3, 2006 Saul
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Morris
April 1 / 2, 2006 Alexander
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Underhill Earl
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March 31, 2006 Gary
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March 30, 2006 Uri
Avnery Sen.
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March 29, 2006 CounterPunch
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March 28, 2006 Sharon
Smith Paul
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Cockburn
March 27, 2006 Patrick
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Alexander
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Farhat St.
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March 24, 2006 Cockburn
/ Sengupta / Duff P. Sainath Todd
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March 23, 2006 Charles
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March 22, 2006 David
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March 21, 2006 Paul
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March 20, 2006 Paul
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March 18 / 19, 2006 Cockburn
/ St. Clair Werther Chris
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Carlsen Eamon
Martin Julie
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St. Clair Poets'
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of the Weekend
March 17, 2006 Eduardo
Galeano Greg
Moses Richard
Falk / David Krieger Cindy
and Craig Corrie Amira
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Petas and Robin Eastman-Abaya Website
of the Day
March 16, 2006 Norman
Solomon Tom
Philpott Heather
Gray Amira
Hass Missy
Comley Beattie Sen.
Russell Feingold Lucinda
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Jonathan
Cook Winslow
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March 14, 2006 Earl
Ofari Hutchinson Dave
Lindorff Kevin
Zeese Todd
Chretien Jason
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/ St. Clair Website
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March 13, 2006 Uri
Avnery Dave
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Whitney David
Green Jeremy
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/ Hassen Robert
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March 10, 2006 Ben
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of the Weekend March 3, 2006 Laura
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March 2, 2006 Paul
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March 1, 2006 Mairead
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Weekend
Edition Women as Rapists and Pedophiles? The Sex Police State By MICHAEL KUEHL William F. Buckley reminisces about a dinner in Monaco with Prince Rainier and David Niven:
Obviously, in telling this "ribald" and "rollicking" tale, Niven didn't think of himself as a "victim" of "rape" or "child sexual abuse." Nor did Buckley, Rainier, or anyone else, male or female, think any such thing. Nor, apparently, did Buckley and the editors of Forbes FYI think any such thing in 2000, when this article was published. And indeed, even today, many people would react like the prince or with a more subdued amusement. But if Niven were alive today and had "launched" into this "autobiographical account" as the guest speaker at a convention of "mental health professionals," social workers, police investigators, victim's advocates, prosecutors, and judges, virtually no one would be "rollicking," or even mildly amused. At best or worst, there might be some nervous laughter concealed by hands over mouths. Almost to a man, and especially woman, poor David would be viewed as a "victim" of "child sexual abuse," and his delight in telling this story would be attributed to "denial" and/or "male socialization." The virtually unanimous response would be indignation, for many even rage, directed at the "rapist" and especially a society that could brainwash a "victim" and "survivor" into believing he enjoyed a heinous and life-destroying violation. If Niven's joyous "rite of passage" or "coming of age" had occurred in America today and was reported to the authorities, the "accomplished lady of the night" would be sentenced to anywhere from 6-months in county jail, if lucky, to 10 years in prison. At sentencing, prosecutors and psychiatrists would compare his trauma to that of people who've experienced warfare, torture, vicious beatings, dog attacks, gruesome car accidents, and internment in concentration camps. The woman would be classified as a deviant and compelled to underago "sex-offender treatment" as well as register with the police for 20 years if not the rest of her life so people could be notifed that a "convicted sex offender" is living in their community or neighborhood. And so, too, with the woman played by Jennifer O'Neal in The Summer of 42. If this movie were remade today, it should end or begin with Jennifer O'Neal being transported to prison in handcuffs attached to a waistchain and leg-irons. "This is also an area where the traditional double standard remains powerfully apparent, in that Western culture attaches little stigma to a relationship between an underaged boy and an adult woman," wrote Philip Jenkins in Priests and Pedophiles. (p. 83.) He surely can't believe this anymore. In Jenkins' defense, he probably wrote this in the early-middle 1990s, and his book was published in 1996, a year before Mary Letourneau was transformed by the media into the most opprobrious female sex criminal in American history, and ultimately sentenced to 7 1/2 years in prison with no possibility of parole, for "fallling in love" with a Samoan "child" who hounded her for sex and forced himself on her the first time they had intercourse. But well before 1996, amongst large and influential segments of our ruling elites and governing classes, a consensus had emerged that sex between women and underaged teenage males was a grave crime that devastated and "traumatized" the "victim." Many people, especially men, may still attach "little stigma to a relationship between an underaged boy and an adult woman," but not those with the power to ruin lives and massively influence public opinion: the zealots, charlatans, ignoramuses, and paltry inquisators of the "child sexual abuse industry," and, consequently, most politicians, journalists, newspaper editors, pundits, police officers, prosecutors, and judges. In the 1980s and early 1990s, of course, CSA victimologists had other demons, largely chimerical, to exorcise. Remember McMartin, Bakersfield, Jordan, MN, the Kelly Michaels case, "Little Rascals," the Amirault case, El Paso, Country Walk, Wenatchee, WA, etc. The "ritual sex-abuse hoax," the "mass-molestation" daycare and "sex-ring" cases, the "recovered memory" insanity -now that all of this has been "discredited," exposed as fantasy and hysteria to all but the most deluded and irrational "true believers," the "child sexual abuse industry" has redirected its fanaticism, enormous power, vast fortune, and inquisatorial cruelty to uprooting the pandemic evil of what was once called "statutory rape," with a growing emphasis on consensual sex between adult women and underaged teenage males. And since the Letourneau hysteria, the media has served as an agent of victimology propaganda, just as it did while covering McMartin and similar outrages during the 1980s. Carol Tavris summarizes, only
somewhat satirically, a dogma of the "child sexual abuse
industry": "Teenagers, whom we all know have no sexual
feelings of any kind until they are 16 (at which time they magically
become mature adults), are incapable of wishing to have sexual
relations, so if they do have seuxal relations before age 16,
said relations must be oppressive, traumatic, and coerced."
(Carol Tavris, "The Uproar Over Sexual Abuse Research and
it Findings," Society, May/June 2000, p. 15.) CSA victimologists and their dupes believe that "(a) CSA causes harm, (b) this harm is pervasive in the population of persons with a history of CSA, (c) this harm is likely to be intense, and (d) CSA is an equivalent experience for boys and girls in terms of its widespread and intensely negative effects (emphasis added)." The media has created "the image that CSA produces intensely negative effects for all of its victims" and "some have attempted to explain much or all of adult psychopathology as a consequence of CSA." (Bruce Rind, Robert Bauserman, and Philip Tromovitch, "A Meta-Analytic Examination of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse Using College Samples," Psychological Bulletin, 1998, Vol. 124, p. 22.) For debunking such idiocies in their infamous Psychological Bulletin article, i.e., for telling the truth and living in the real world and getting the facts staight, Rind et al. were officially condemned by the United States Congress. Differentiating between pubescents and young children and between males and females -e.g., contrasting the incestual rape of a 5-year-old girl with "the willing sexual involvement of a mature 15-year-old adolescent boy with an unrelated adult"...(Rind., p. 23.)- was "perhaps the researchers most inflammatory finding (Tavris)." Victimologists of the right as well as the left were also outraged by their contention that boys are innately different from girls and thus far more likely to react positively to sexual encounters with adults -with "Dr. Laura" and her ilk viewing this distinction as an insidious endorsement of homosexual exploitation of male adolescents. Unlike the unjustly maligned Rind et al. study, Harris Mirkin's notorious article ( for which he almost lost his job at the University of Missouri-Kansas City) is full of leftist nonsense, fashionable and unfashionable, harmless and harmful. Nonetheless, he accurately describes the bizarre and pernicious dogmas of CSA victimologists: "In the same way as adolescents are merged with little children, all sexual activity is equated with violent or coerced activity. Issues of control in the sexual area are treated differently from those in other areas. Pubescents and adolescents are usually thought of as hard to control, and attempts to mold their behavior and initiate them into legal and enjoyable adult activities are considered valuable. However, in the sexual area these assumptions are reversed. It is asserted that they are easily controlled, and they are conceptualized as little children who have no sexual desire of their own and can only be passive victims. According to the dominant formulas the youth are always seduced. They are never considered partners or initiators or willing participants even if they are the hustlers...It is argued that they cannot give consent, that they cannnot enjoy sex even if they think that they do, and that they suffer physical and psychological harm even if they are not aware of it. Contradictory symptoms (like heightened or reduced sexual desire) are attributed to childhood sexual experiences. All future evils will be attributed to past experiences of child abuse, while all future good things that are done will be attributed to overcoming the effects of child abuse, incest, or molestations...Moreover, harmful effects that come from social attitudes towards intergenerational sex are confounded with harmful effects that come from the acts themselves." (Harris Mirkin, "The Pattern of Sexual Politics: Feminism, Homosexuality, and Pedophilia," ipecweb/Library, 6-6-2003, p. 9.) What he means, of course, is that "harmful effects" induced by negative "attitudes towards intergenerational sex" are attributed to the "acts themselves." The belief that children have no sexual feelings and are "traumatized" for life by even a single act of nonaggravated molestation is demonstrably false even when applied to prepubescent children. Nonetheless, apart from a lunatic fringe, nobody is advocating the legalization of sex between adults and prepubescent children. Thus it's imperative to clearly distinguish between young children and pubescent teenagers and, just as importantly, between males and females. It can't be emphasized often or strongly enough that when victimologists argue that "children" are" incapable of wishing to have sexual relations," "cannot give consent," are always "traumatized," and the like, they're refering not only to biological children but also to pubescent teenagers, and to male as well as female adolescents, and to male teenagers who have sex with women as well as homosexuals. And that is why their ideas are so preposterous, irrational, stupid, delusional, and malignant. Almost everything I'll say from now on applies exclusively to sex between women and young men under statutory age. Such dogmas are espoused with
fanatical unconditionality, wholesale denial of the realities
of age and intrinsic sexual differentiation, obliviousness to
facts and circumstances, an inability or refusal to make intelligent,
rational, objective, and pellucid distinctions. Thus it doesn't
matter if the "victim" is a male and the "victimizer"
a female. It doesn't matter if the "child" is as old
as 16 or 17; it doesn't matter if he's "sexually-active,"
if he's had sex 39 or 139 times before with 6 or 16 different
partners; it doesn't matter if he insists he's not a "victim"
and that the intrigue was "positive" and "rewarding."
It doesn't matter if he's the initiator, the predator, the aggressor,
even to the point of assaulting the woman -as in the actual case
of Melissa Bittner. It doesn't even matter if he initiated the
affair by raping the woman -as in the actual case of Cassandra
Sorenson-Grohall. Even a punk who rapes his teacher is "incapable
of wishing to have sexual relations," not even with the
woman he assaulted, and "said relations must be oppressive,
traumatic, and coerced" -for him! Even a punk who rapes
his teacher is a "victim" of "sexual assault"
and "child sexual abuse"! Since definitions and judgements are disconnected from objective reality, the women are always "predators" and "manipulators" even when their "victims" are the predators and manipulators. The "victim" is always "seduced" by the woman even if he's the aggressor and initiator. The women are vilified as "pedophiles" and "child molesters" for having sex with teenage males as old as 16 and 17 who might be 6',4" with 10-inch penises and outweigh their "abusers" by 50-150 pounds. They're described as "rapists" and perpetrators of "sexual assault" when there's obviously no "use or threat of force or violence" (Wisconsin's criminal statutes) to secure compliance and their definitional "victims" are perfectly willing and knowing participants. Most insanely, both in the media and under the law, the women are guilty of "rape" and "sexual assault" even when they've been raped and sexually assaulted by their theoretical "victims." As we'll see, I'm talking about actual cases, not hypothetically. Pedophilia: Anyone with even a cursory knowledge
of the subject knows that a pedophile is a man (or male adolescent)
with a sexual fixation on young and prepubescent children. Ralph
Underwager and Hollida Wakefield elaborate: "...The DSM-IV
American Psychiatric Association (1994) defines pedophilia in
terms of recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual
urges, or behaviors involving sexual activity with a prepubesent
child or children (emphasis added), and requires that the fantasies,
urges, or behaviors cause clinically significant distress or
impairment in social, occupuational, or other important areas
of functioning. It is therefore possible for an individual who
meets these criteria to have never engaged in illegal sexual
behaviors. At the same time, not all sex offenders against a
minor are pedophiles. All mental health professionals acting
in an expert witness capacity should know this distinction."
/"Special Problems with Sexual Abuse Cases," in Coping
With Psychiatric and Psychological Testimony (Los Angeles: Law
and Psychology Press, Fifth Edition, 1995), p. 1336. Moreover, even if a woman has sexual contact with a young child, she isn't necessarily a "pedophile" under the APA definition. In fact, it's debatable if a woman can even be a "pedophile" under this definition. Child Molestation: "Child molester" evokes images of "dirty old men" lewdly fondling little children. The term connotes a violation of purity and innocence, an exploitation of impotence and vulnerabliltiy, physically and psychologically, the abuse of the weak and small by the large and powerful. But in affairs between women and underaged teenage males, the "child" is almost invariably bigger, stronger, more aggressive, more lascivious, more physically intimidating, than the adult. For this reason alone, it's ludicrous to decribe such acts as "child molestation." And so, too, with "child sexual abuse"! Child sexual abuse: First, pubescent teenage males are not children but young men and, secondly, unless the woman uses sex as an instrument of vengeance and humiliation, exactly how is he "sexually abused." Exactly how is he "sexually abused" by coitus and vaginal penetration? How is he "traumatized" and devastated by jamming his penis into a woman's vagina and thrusting until he ejaculates inside her? Exactly how is he "abused" by sex that he initiated? Exactly how is he "abused" when he's had sex many times before -simply because the woman is an adult instead of a underage girl of comparable age? Exactly how is he "abused" by sex that he finds "rewarding" and "positve" and intensely pleasurable? Rind et al. summarize the findings of several studies: "A number of researchers have commented on differences in male and female reactions to CSA. Schultz and Jones (1983) noted that men tended to see these sexual experiences as an adventure and as curiosity-satisfying, whereas most women saw it as an invasion of their body or a moral wrong. Fritz et al. (1981) made nearly identical observations. West and Woodhouse (1993), comparing their male sample with Nash and West's (1985) female sample, observed that women's remembered reactions at the time were "predominantly of fear, unpleasant confusion, and embarrassment...(while men's) remembered reactions were mostly either indifference, tinged perhaps with slight anxiety, or of positve pleasure, the latter being particularly evident in contacts with the opposite sex (emphasis added).These gender differences in reactions to CSA experiences are consistent with more general gender diifferences in response to sex among young persons. For example, boys and girls report very different reactions to their first experience of sexual intercourse (Sorenson, 1972), with girls predominantly reporting negative reactions such as feeling afraid, guilty, or used, and boys predominantly reporting positive reactions such as feeling excited, happy, and mature. These differences are likely due to an interaction between biologically based gender differences and social learning of traditional sex roles. (Rind et al., p. 43.) Especially "biologically based gender differences." "Social learning of traditional sex roles" -which has been eviscerated by 35 years of feminist catechism and indoctrination- is rooted in innate sex differences. Since biology preceded culture, biology created culture, not vice versa. Culture is what we make of our biology. It should also be emphasized that they're refering to young boys as well as pubescent teenagers, and to male children and adolescents who've had sexual experiences with homosexuals as well as adult woman. If such research were limited to male teenagers under age 18 who had consensual sex with adult females, the "victims'" reactions would be almost exclusively positive. Rape: First, unless one believes that teenage males have the mentality of young chilldren, the sex is consensual. In defining "consent" under the law, the question is not whether young men under age 18 are as sexually mature as Mike Tyson or William Jefferson Clinton. The question is whether they know what they're doing when they have sex with adult females. Likewise, when punishing teenage criminals under age 18, the question is not whether the average 15-year-old is as mature as the average 20- or 25-year-old. The queston is whether they're old and mature enough to form the mens rea or criminal intent to murder, assault, rape, steal, etc.; whether they know what they're doing, legally and morally, when they commit violent felonies. And in every state and jurisdiction, teenage males ages 14-17 are routinely "waived into adult court" for committing murders, assaults, robberies, violent rapes, etc. (In many jurisdictions, even children as young as 12 and 11 and 10 can be prosecuted as adults.) But even if they aren't "waived into adult court," the law still assumes that teenagers under age 18 are old and mature enough to form the criminal intent to commit murder and other serious transgressions. Clearly, if teenage "minors" are old and mature enough to form the mens rea or criminal intent to perpetrate violent crimes, then they're old and mature enough to consent to or inititate sex with adult females. If they know what they're doing, legally and morally, when they murder and rape and rob and break into homes, then they know what they're doing when they have sex with women. Victimologists are scandalized when defenders of Mary Letourneau note the youth Vili was exceptionally mature for his age; that he was pubescent at age 10 and, though only 13 when their love was consummated, acted more like a 16- or 17-year-old; and that he was the aggressor, hounding Mary for sex and forcing himself on her the first time they had intercourse. But let's assume that Vili forced himself on Mary under different circumstances -i.e, a situation in which Mary was in no sense to blame, in which there was no prior frendship and she did nothing to encourage his aggressions- and that she reported the assault to the police. If so, Vili would have been arrested and charged with rape under Washington law. And if he had used a knife or gun or committed aggravated assault, he probably would have been "waived into adult court" even though he was "only 13." And even if wasn't "waived into adult court," the prosecutor(s) would have argued that Vili was exceptionally mature for his age; that he was pubescent at age 10 and acted more like a 16- or 17-year-old; that he was old enough to form the mens rea to commit violent-forcible rape; that he knew what he was doing, legally and morally, when he raped Mary; and that he should be held criminally responsible for his actions and punished accordingly. Also, when the "victim" is the aggressor, the issue of consent relates to the passive and receptive actor. Vili didn't consent to sex with Mary. Since he was the aggressor, she consented to sex with him after he forced himself on her the first time they had intercourse. And how can a teenage male be "raped" by sex that he initiated? Lastly, since women don't have penises, they can't rape men and boys in the pure sense of that word. Diana Trilling writes:"This fundamental distinction between the active and passive sexual roles is an irrefutable fact in nature -the most active sexual seduction or participation on the part of the woman cannot relieve the male partner of his primary responsibility in their sexual union. To put the matter at its crudest, the male can rape the female, the female cannot rape the male." (Quoted in Irving Howe, The Critical Point (New York: Dell Publishing, Paperback Edition, 1973), p. 226.) Also, males can rape men and boys, but females can't rape women and girls. Diana Trilling's point is that "rape" signifies not only violence, not only criminal force, but also penetration. And, with female victims, penetration involves possible impregnation. Contrary to the law and it's "gender neutrality," androgynous fantasies notwithstanding, for an underaged teenage girl to be penetrated by an adult male is not the same thing as an underaged teenage male penetrating an adult female. And the impregnation of an underaged teenage girl by an adult male is not the same thing as an underaged teenage male impregnating an adult woman. Only the female, whatever her age, experiences the vulnerability of penetration and possible impregnation. In this sense, the experience of an adult woman who is penetrated by a teenage male under statuory age is identical to that of an underaged teenage girl who is penetrated by adult male. Obviously, Mary didn't penetrate and impregnate Vili; he penetrated and impregnated her. No teenage male ever got pregnant from having sex with an adult female. The most harmful effect of what was once called "statutory rape" -the impregnation of millions of underaged teenage girls by adult men since, let us say, the advent of the "sexual revolution" in the early 1960's- obviously doesn't apply to coitus betwen women and underaged teenage males. But, legally, the "victim" is "raped" and "assaulted" by penetrating, and possibly impregnating, the "criminal"! In a Movieline interview, James Woods explains why even women in Hollywood are "conflicted" about sex: "...Just the nature of the sex act. I mean someone enters their body. For women, sex in the purest, primal form -is a vulnerable act." (February 2000, p. 68.) Profundity, realism, and appreciation of sex differences from a Hollywood liberal. For a woman, even if she's the initiator, allowing a teenage male to enter her body is a "vulnerable act." Conversely, for a teenage male, entering the body of a women is not a "vulnerable act." For him, vaginal penetration is a supremely empowering act. Vulnerability is not a matter of age but of penetration, and possible impregnation. The question of age doesn't alter the physical realities of the animal act, the sexual distinction of penetrator and penetrated, the unique female experience of parturition, and the psychological ramifications of such biological differences. What an odd sex crime: in which the sex is fully consensual; in which the "victim" is nearly always bigger, stronger, more aggressive, more physically intimidating; in which the "victim" is often if not usually the aggressor, the initiator, the predator; in which the "victim" penetrates, and occasionally impregnates, the "victimizer"; in which the "victim" enjoys the sex far more than the "criminal"; in which he derives more intense satisfaction, phsyically and psychologically, from the actus reus than the "predator" who supposedly "abused" and "exploited" him for purposes of "sexual gratification"; in which the "victim" is the envy of his peers and the actus reus is the realization of almost every teenage male's fantasy; in which the theory of "abuse" is the reality of joyous affirmation; in which a fantasy of "trauma" compared to warfare and similar horrors is in fact the most pleasurable and wonderful experience of a young man's life. How much of this applies to sex between men and underage adolescent girls? Categorizing teenage males who have sex with adult woman as "victims" of "rape" and "child sexual abuse" -especially if they're as old as 16 or 17, are the aggressors and/or "sexually-active," etc.- is victimology at its most detestable and ridiculous. Contending that male youths under statutory age are "devastated" and "traumatized" for life by having consensual sex with adult females is as preposterous as arguing that they're traumatized by having consensual sex with underage girls of comparable age. How is the act any different, physically and psychologically, simply because the woman he penetrates is an adult and a little or much older? To argue that a teenage male only thinks he enjoys having sex with an older woman because of "male socialization" is like arguing that men only think they enjoy having sex with their wives and girlfriends because of male socialization. Once again, how is the act any different, profoundly and qualitiatively, simply because the woman is 5 or 10 or 20 years older? Maintaing that male teenagers under statutory age are too young and innocent to consent to or initiate sex with adult women is like arguing that teenagers under 18 are too young and innocent to form the mens rea to commit murder, aggravated assault, muggings, violent rape. And words are inadequate to describe the insanity and odiousness of equating male pubescents who have consensual sex with adult females with the victims of slavery, torture, warfare, sadistic beatings, vicious dog attacks, gruesome car accidents, internment in concentration camps. Pity poor Dan Savage, a CSA "survivor" who was "raped" as a "child" by both a man and a woman. He describes the "traumatization," the devastation of his life, the "scars" that will last until the day he dies:
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