an idea for an academic paper...

i love a lot of what's being said here Michael, but like BlackMyHeart and Hen-Wen, i have strong reservations about the name, which simply seems to presuppose an inevitability about MAA's acting out their sexual attraction to children.

this is the single most pernicious assumption i have come up against in attempting to be relatively open about my orientation, and it seems utterly deflating to see it so enshrined in an initiative that otherwise seems to advocate on behalf of people like me.

all that aside, i have a suggestion for a small piece of academic work that might function as a litmus test for those involved in b4u-act.

i've been reading a book published recently, "Pedophilia and sexual offending against children" by Michael Seto. it has been hailed as bringing a "welcome balance" to this subject, and i think that in itself sheds a great deal of light on the current state of academic discourse.

Seto begins well, by emphasizing that paedophilia and child sexual abuse are distinct. Unfortunately the rest of the book thoroughly belies this statement, and is a catalogue of ideological bias, abuse dogma and biological illiteracy. it reveals an inability to distinguish fact from conjecture and a paranoiac fixation on pathologising strategies.

in isolation, this book could easily be dismissed as a mish mash of half baked opinion. unfortunately it has been presented as a serious contribution to the understanding of paedophilia (which it is anything but) and a summary of the current state of belief in american clinical practice to paedophilia (which is chilling). it demands an academic roasting.

i would be very impressed if some of the mental health professionals you are working with were to have a look at this book and review it for the academic press. I think any points of difference identified would provide a useful reference.