The thing is, I do believe the very insular and isolated nuclear family unit does need to be accountable to the greater community.





How? Are you accountable to the wider community as a paedophile? Yes you are accountable to the law, but that's not the community.

Because I do not believe parents should be the owners of their children, and make every single major decision for them with no opportunity for the kids to air any legitimate grievances. Children would be considered part of the community, not part of an insular household, the inner happenings of which would be fully unknown to the rest of the community. And as a member of that same community, as a hebephile I would most definitely be accountable to the community. if my conduct was demonstrably harmful to other members of the community, I would expect them to step in and put a stop to it. If my conduct was merely "offensive" without actually causing any demonstrable harm to anyone, then I would expect the law to protect my rights.



Aha, but this I sense resembles quite a different form of community than what is commonly understood to constitute community in the standard Western world today. I venture you envision something socially more along the lines of the experimental European communes of the 70's?



Emotional abuse is a severe and largely overlooked problem





I wouldn't deny that, but to police and criminalise this area is very hard, and will lead to more harm than good, because as you concede..

It wouldn't be about policing or criminalizing, as I noted. It would be about simply but strongly allowing children and younger adolescents who were not happy in any given household the opportunity to leave if that was what they wanted.



I understand.

I'm concerned about these State Appointed Guardians, as I worry they will simply become a third parent of sorts, rather than a true objective voice for children to air their legitimate grievances with.







So they have an agenda, and not one which tallies with my outlook or I feel your own outlook.

If they made decisions over and above what the children in question wanted, then no, they would not. If they acted as a force to enable children to act upon their own volition if their interests conflicted with that of their parents' desires, then I would support them. In other words, would they represent the will of the state (i.e., a second and conflicting authoritarian party) or would they represent the enforcement of the child's right to exercise their own volition? That diff would make all the diff to me, but the word "Guardian" gives me pause. In such a case, we would both oppose such a thing, but probably for different reasons: You would oppose the state contravening the power of the parents; I would oppose a state rep becoming a sort of third parent that doesn't take the volition of the child into account at all. So I'm honestly not sure how much in accord our opposition and position on these State Guardians would be.

Children need a voice and a committee to hear their grievances,







Agreed. Pink Party!!!

Stop it.



Unstoppable!!

so if they are unhappy and subject to emotional abuse, then they can leave the home in question. That's what youth lib is all about.



Really? Well, Frank Furedi, (who is one of the very very few voices this side of the pond to frequently speak out against paedo-hysteria) says it's about a self-serving agenda to facilitate the predilections of some adults.. at least, he said that as regards the classic child liberation movement of the 70's, including PIE.

He said that because he is offended by the idea of intergenerational romance, and he doesn't want youths making decisions that go against his personal sensibilities. He also said that to demonize MAPs who are not against acting upon their feelings in an open, mutually consensual and respectful manner with knowledgeable younger people who are treated as full citizens. He does this by promoting the bigoted notion that if we have a desire to act upon the sexual component of our attractions, then sexual gratification must be the only thing we could possibly want. That is a classic anti-sex attitude translated into a specifically intergenertional relationship context. Mr. Furedi may not like witch-hunts from the standpoint of his respect for civil rights, but he clearly thinks civil rights should be stifled if they conflict with cultural values and established hierarchies.



Tom O' Carroll calls Furedi's piece a "shocking dissapointment", inferring.. 'Seriously, Frank, this essentially ad hominem way of shutting us up is a cheap shot, and unworthy of you. It makes you look like the politicians and judges who have been in such a hurry lately to publicly renounce their previous support for the basic civil rights of paedophiles: with their careers under immediate threat they appear to have panicked.'



I'm not aware of Furedi ever having expressed such support in the past, but O'Carroll is right that quite a number of legs in the UK political establishment where running last year when the Daily Mail went on the crusade. Male and female political and judicial figures.



There are many individuals who try to paint the era of the 1970s as a breeding ground for perverts and monsters as a backlash towards certain progress made that is no longer supported in the more conservative post-'70s climate.



One of the more controversial assertions is that the GLF in UK and it's equaivalent organisations in the US, effectively made a Faustian pact to exclude organisations such as PIE and NAMBLA in return for mainline civil rights and respectability. I have heard this argument repeated by scholars and commentators, but I was a kid then and don't know how fair a critique it is. I do know that as recently as circa 2000, ACLU stood up for NAMBLA against the State, on grounds of free expression.





However this isn't the 70's, and whilst I would not subscribe to the old PIE agenda.. I do profess a healthy girllove from which the desire for change stems from, and i've brought this to the board for respectful and robust debate this past week. There is a need for reform, where kids can have a voice independent of both the state and stakeholder agencies on the one hand, and the nuclear family on the other hand. Because I agree with you on this, that neither parents or the state can always be trusted to act in kids best interests.. nor the wider mainstream community either. But community can take many forms and mean many things to many people, just as the definition of family varies widely.

Accordingly, the community can be seen as a form of extended family. These things should be defined by individuals, rather than decided upon by widespread cultural fiat. And while we seem to be in accord on certain things, I do not see how the basic agenda of PIE was incompatible or "too extreme" for the granting of choice and agency to younger people. The PIE agenda in no way gave MAPs any type of disproportionate power over younger people.



Well yes, consent and power dynamics are big issues. Even the women who were in the communes in the 70's admitted that as wonderful as these social experiments were, power was sometimes misused.



You talk of the community as an extension of family. This is a concept I first became acquainted with on Dutch sex therapist Cora Emens site many years ago. It's like an alternate form of peer support and mentoring or nurturing. I think that vision has a lot to commend it, and has well documented anthropological precedents through the work of Margaret Mead and the guy I forget his name. But again, these things are open to abuse.

Um, Alice, are you aware from reading my posts that I'm a youth liberationist, not a parental power advocate? Many others here are also, which I would imagine you should have gleaned from reading the recent posts. There were many youth libbers here during your previous tenure on the board years ago too, including me, if you recall. It's fine that you think differently..







No, it's a rhetorical device, more to highlight the level of state and outside intrusion into peoples lifes, rather than unconditional approval of the nuclear family.

I know what you mean there. The problem is, currently younger people have little to no rights at all, and are consequently fully at the mercy of their parents and other familial "guardians" in these very closed off and secluded nuclear family households. The question therefore remains this:



If the greatest amount of real abuse of all kinds occurs in such insular units of extreme power imbalance, how can kids subjected to such abuse escape from it?



Is that premise fair? Sure, it's accurate to say that the step-parent situation frequently leads to conflict and abuse.. but that could be asserted as actually presenting an argument IN FAVOR of the very traditional God-fearin' household...!



I always remember Xalex on BK coming out with the Evolutionary hypothesis that maybe nature intended CL people, in order to protect orphans. It was a cute theory.



What about kids who are simply not happy due to emotional abuse, or not being a good "fit" with their families as housemates? Again, I'm not saying parents should go to jail for every little thing. There could be alternative choices that do not entail anyone being arrested.



Those celebrated, divorce my parents cases!

As I said, controlling instrusive bastards come in many forms, whether, family, workplace, school, community, or services. They just want to invent problems which don't exist and then 'help'. As Pink Floyd sang............ Hey Teacher, leave them kids alone...

In that case, the kids should have some democratic committee they could approach outside of the household to simply help them leave a household in which they are terribly unhappy, and not treated like full human beings.



Pink Party Policy!! =)

And since when are you familiar with Pink Floyd???



Oh my cultural erudition knows no bounds Dissident.... ;)

Speaking for myself, Alice, I have never been seeking a Carrollian kind of GL regarding young adolescent girls, but a full, unabashed emancipation agenda







Good luck with that...

Emancipation movements have occurred many times in the past, even though the generation immediately before them often resigned itself to believing it would "never" happen (note again how Ralph Waldo Emerson said that "no man living today will ever see the end of slavery"... a mere six years before the resolution of the Civil War ended slavery). We don't need "luck"; we just need historical forces to reach the point where gradual progression (now embodied by the youth liberation movement) finally comes to fruition. As I also noted before, revolutions tend to be the simple culmination of evolution. I likely will not live to see the full emancipation, but that in no way invalidates it as a worthwhile endeavor to strive for.



Now, Veteran, gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, makes a similar point about how rapid the transformation from oppression to full civil rights have been, and explores the forces behind that. But does this not demonstrate the point that once the gay community became a branded coherent and popular movement, it was in a position to advance it's cause? I remember how antagonistic the gutter press where towards the gay community in the 80's, and how they smeared the Gay Times editor with paedophile allegations. It was in the Scottish Daily Record. The mainstream media were at that time (on the back of the Thatcher governments Clause 28 'no-promotion of homosexuality' law) out to crush the gay political agenda.. The book Sophie lives with Bill and Ben or something in the mid 80's.. just gave the bastards fodder to have a field day.

where they have control over their own lives, the right to vote, a mutually respectful relationship with their parents, and the right to choose full romantic relationships. I wish the same thing for children, who I believe have much more potential than they are currently allowed to achieve or express. I seek to earn the trust of all society that MAPs are decent people, but the trust of parents, as important as that would be to me, would always be secondary in importance to the trust of their kids.

Don't you feel that in order to "earn" trust towards reaching some of your more achievable goals, there has to be some self-reflection revision and compromise?

Alice, pro-choicers like me have compromised plenty: 1) We strive to fully obey the laws regardless of how we may feel about them; 2) We have resolved to work only within the system to effect changes, in ways that are entirely harmonious with democratic principles; 3) We have striven to establish peaceful dialogue with the general public, to earn their trust by deeds rather than simple words; and, 4) To work hard to live ethically upright and productive lives despite the flaws we share with the rest of the human race. How much further must we compromise to make you and the general public satisfied? Seriously.



You are right in saying that they are slow to recognise law-abiding behaviour and genuine effort, but quick to look for devious and dirty ways to obliterate the agency of anyone with any association to this whole spectrum; whether through the police, mental health system, or hey.. the community.

Some acceptance that not a lot of inroads are being made, things are getting darker and more censorious, and a fresh approach is needed, no? Because at the moment, where you are, and where mainstream society is on the issue of children, is a million miles apart.

But we seem to be reaching a point where the hysteria (at least in the U.S., where it mostly originated in the first place) has reached or nears reaching its peak. It's become more clear that there are many open-minded Non-MAPs who were simply silent out of fear to dissent during the worst of the hysteria. I don't think society should be hit with a full emancipation agenda right now, and I agree that society at large is not yet ready for it. But that doesn't mean it should be taken entirely off the table, declared forever "unachievable," and not discussed on its own merits on certain venues (such as this board and information archives like Newgon and IPCE).





I agree with you, that it is remarkable how uniform politicians commentators critiques and celebrities are as regards children and child protection etc etc etc. Anything to do with children and they run a mile or speak the same bland orthodoxy like their in a Hitler youth camp. The all-pervasive fear of any of them being tainted, can lead to some outrageous treatment of.....



To be fair to Furedi, he is one of the very few consistently outspoken against child protection entrepreneurs and pedohysteria.

There is no dialogue taking place.

There is dialogue taking place thanks to orgs like B4U-ACT and (I must concede) VirPed (I don't pretend they don't exist like they often try to pretend that B4U-ACT doesn't, or downplay its achievements). Neither of these orgs are hitting the public with an emancipation agenda. But we have reached the beginning of dialogue.

Just polarised positions - with society (thanks to media and political scaremongering granted) consequently having a largely erroneous negative and distorted impression of those who profess girllove. Without change, not only are you limiting your own cause, but equally importantly failing to help and reach out to those millions of people who hide repress or misunderstand their feelings.. because there is nowhere for them to turn, neither to GC or VP; One approves of sex, the other is guilty about sex, but there are millions for whom that is not what girllove is about.

Well, then it appears there needs to be other orgs or fora who simply promote a form of GL that is based entirely upon aesthetic appreciation, with the sexual component more or less off the agenda or discussion itinerary. Different MAPs will want to focus on different things, but all aspects of GL legitimate in their own way. GC is not just about "sex" either; it's a place to discuss all aspects of GL. The fact that the majority of us are pro-choice means that the sexual component will not be given short shrift or rejected, and the right to express it naturally and youth lib will be frequent topics.



Here we have agreement, and I appreciate your acceptance that there can be other forms of girllove.





You have every right to talk about other aspects of GL that are important to you here, as it would add a lot of flavor and beneficial diversity to the community. But if you try to present it as being something superior and intrinsically preferable to the pro-choice agenda, instead of simply being a different but equal aspect of GL, then you are going to meet heavy resistance. That's to be expected, I'm sure you know.



Well my thoughts were how to accomplish greater understanding and acceptance of girllove within society, and totally refuting that it is about sexual abuse of children. Not to me it isn't.



I don't set out to change GC, just to share where I am coming from and read about where others are coming from. As you suggest, perhaps from there other fora or expressions of my own form of girllove can emerge, be shared and celebrated. GC will do what GC does, I may not share all of it's perspective, but I would never seek to censor anyone. Everyone has to follow their own path.



Perhaps we have reached a consensus.