self education and blogs?

Yes, these are not good times for promoting our views but I'll be supportive of any valid strategy. And it's good for us to debate what are the possible ways forwards.

But I'm puzzled about your refering to talk of child sexuality as being 'cock-talk'. Should children's sexual lives become something unmentionable amongst paedophiles?

Isn't the way society aggressively pretends child sexuality doesn't exist, defuses it, expunges it and starves it, an integral part of the problem?

Aren't paedophiles the only people in our society who are genuinely happy and accepting of child-sexuality? Paedophilia and child-sexuality seem to me to be two sides of the same coin.

It's no coincidence that paedo-hysteria and the systematic denial of child sexuality have gone hand-in-hand. Sometimes I suspect that paedophiles are so hated because they are a persistent reminder to society of children's sexuality.

If there were a more important battle for us to fight than paedo-liberation I suggest that it would be children's right to knowledge and information about their sexuality, to express their sexuality and, yes, to choose, within limits (and I know that that is where the Devil's detail lies) their sexual/sensual partners.

The antis have told me: 'of course you'd argue for child sexuality - you're a paedo'.

To which I reply with the question - 'given that child sexuality does exist what other group in society is there that doesn't feel uneasy or negative about it? Parents? Doctors? Social Workers? Police? Teachers? Psychologists? Which ones of these are predisposed to stand up for a positive attitude to children's sexuality?'

The answer is of course 'none'. People may not like paedophiles defending child sexuality - but there's no one else out there who's going to do it.

Moreover who is there out there who can bear a positive testimony to its existence?

All the above groups do their best to discourage the phenomenon, with their evident embarassement, with their 'stop that', with their 'you ask too many questions'. If a 3 year old girl starts licking the face of a parent, a doctor, a teacher - who amongst them won't react in such a way as do discourage the child? Only a paedophile would wish the girl to continue. Anyone else would stamp out the small blossom of that child's inchoate sexuality/sensuality.

Yes, paedophiles are not impartial witnesses, but neither are parents, doctors etc etc - if we're prone to encouraging child sexuality, the rest are highly prone to discouraging it. They discourage it and stamp it out, then point at the vacuum their shaming has created and declare 'child sexuality doesn't exist!'.

But neither does reading without an adult to encourage it, neither does walking without a parent to hold the baby's hands, neither does speech if the child has no-one to listen or talk to.

That is why I see it as an integral part of my/our struggle to promote and defend child sexuality - we are the only group in society who will bear a positive witness for it.

I sense and share your impatience, Alice. You say you have been with GC for 15 years so I'm guessing you are a seasoned campaigner. Myself I remember the days of PIE, though I was just a little too young to actually be involved.

Things have gotten worse since then. PIE didn't succeed - but not through any fault of its own, I think, but simply because the optimistic, idealistic society that PIE emerged from was darkening and shrinking under the aegis of Thatcher and the interests she served. They could not have succeeded.

It's a dangerous mistake to think that every problem has a solution - a revolution in thinking is, sadly, not available to us. Society has to change first - paedophobic ideas are locked into the structure of our society - especially since the 1980s.

But we can be part of a slow change - an acorn can fall on a rock, but if it makes use of every gram of soil and every drop of moisture to grow eventually that oak tree will grow stronger than the stone that restricted it and split it apart.

That's why I think we need to concentrate on ourselves - we need an articulate, informed, educated community. Ideas, facts, evidence and, yes, those feelings the ignorant condemn, are our strongest weapons.