ROBERT J. LEWIS - DECONSTRUCTING PEDOPHILIA @Arts & Opinion

There’s no precedent for it in the animal world: Homo sapiens is the only species on the planet that sexually preys upon members of the same species who are not sexually mature. From the Latin paedo, signifying child, and phile, meaning love, we get paedophile or pedophile (American spelling). Ninety six percent of pedophiles are male.

Since Homo sapiens is the only life form that includes pedophiles among its numbers, and is sentient (self-conscious), we must conclude that among certain members of the species there a very particular linkage between being self-conscious and the impulse to engage in sex with unselfconscious forms of life, such as children and animals.

Of the human condition and its constants, there is perhaps none as unnerving as having to deal with self-consciousness, which is why all cultures, without exception, encourage the regular ingestion of substances that numb or partially disable the neocortical functions of the brain. Freud went so far to suggest that all humans harbour a secret death wish, or longing to return to the inanimate (unselfconscious being). Being self-aware before the gaze of the other is a source of angst for which there is no cure other than sleep or escaping the public domain, which is why we comport ourselves one way in public and another in private.

When it comes to smoothing out the rough edges of self-consciousness, most men make do with a spliff or a couple of doubles at the end of the day, but for others (the hermit, the monk), a life of solitude is the only practical response to the anxiety produced by any kind of social contact – a withdrawal doubtlessly blessed by every mother of a small child. The ascetic life, however, is a high-minded, discipline-heavy state of affairs that will not appeal to the majority of sexually disabled pedophiles for whom sexual gratification is a recurring appetite that must be satisfied at all costs. These types quite naturally gravitate to environments where they will be free from the apprehension and paralysis produced by self-consciousness.

THE BLAME GAME

Brain scans now confirm that homosexuality isn’t learned but is innate. And now pedophiles, between kiddie stalking and plea bargaining sessions, are looking to hitch a ride on the “I was born that way” bandwagon. Appealing to science without any consideration of moral correctness, they would have us believe that their predatory predilections are as DNA-ordained as hetero- or homosexuality.

Studies indicate that pedophiles are disproportionately left-handed, have lower IQs by 10 points and are an inch shorter than normal. And while outcomes vary considerably from one study to the next, a significant percentage of sexually abused children become sexually abusive adults. We also know that there is a cause and effect relationship between pedophilia and the pathological displacement of erotic excitement (fetish), where sexual imprinting is linked to an object or exceptional event. An adolescent who experiences his first ejaculation in and around a slipper may become dependent on the slipper for his sexual pleasure, and if he experiences the same playing with a small boy (a younger brother, a cousin) he risks becoming dependent on the presence of a child for sexual gratification. But all of these facts and arguments in their aggregate do not explain or predict the prevalence of pedophilia.

Irrespective of pedophilia's complex and multi-faceted etiology, what all pedophiles have in common is their sexual attraction to persons (children) who do not possess critical faculties of judgment. Closely related to pedophilia is bestiality (animal sex), preying on the mentally challenged, or women who have been rendered unconscious by drugs (date rape) and/or alcohol, and necrophilia (sex with the deceased) – sexual environments where men do not have to fear being judged on their sexual performance.

Unlike women, men have to perform sexually when they engage in sex; they are judged and just as importantly judge themselves on their performance, and a small percentage of men, for whatever reasons (physiological, psychological) who are not up to scratch, who are sexually disabled, are only able to perform sexually in the presence of or in conjunction with persons (children) lacking critical faculties of judgment. It should be noted that mature men are not attracted to children like they are attracted to a Playboy centerfold: they are attracted to the judgment-free zone that only children can provide. These people are not born pedophile; their perversion is not innate. Pedophilia is the last resort of the sexually disabled.

Not all sexually disabled men are pedophiles. The majority, for whom conscience and morality still count for something -- in this, the Age of Decadence -- choose to address their sexual needs through more acceptable outlets: from abstinence to masturbation and even bestiality. The latter, however disconcerting and theologically problematic, is by far and away more acceptable than pedophilia since the presumably orifice capable beast is neither harmed by the visit nor is consent an issue. There is a moral case to be made that -- one to which most mothers of small children would surely subscribe -- what happens in the OK Corral after midnight is more than OK if it results in one less pedophiled 5-year-old.

Some pedophiles, with the exceptional ability to confuse fantasy for reality, are able to perform if their consenting partner is dressed up like a child or doll. That they are stigmatized and ridiculed for their left of center proclivities (ersatz pedophilia) is unfortunate since they are harmlessly displacing desires that might otherwise require the presence of an innocent child.

Related to pedophilia and the sexually disabled man is the staggering suicide differential between men and women. In Canada, according to 2001 figures, men are almost four times more likely than women to commit suicide. In all walks of life men have to perform in a variety of competitive circumstances, and that includes the sexual arena where there is no circumventing the judgment (self-consciousness) that attaches itself to sexual performance. However tough is a woman’s lot, especially for the luckless at the bottom end of the looks scale and those systematically beaten down by misogynist culture, the disproportionate male to female suicide ratio forces the conclusion that it is existentially much more difficult self-actualizing as a man than a woman.

One of the unintended effects of women’s liberation movements, the speed of which has taken many men by unpleasant surprise, is that more and more men are becoming sexually disabled. It is surely not a coincidence that since the 1960s, the beginning of the sexual revolution, the teenage suicide rate has spiked along with ‘reported’ incidences of pedophilia.

With the advent of the Internet and computer simulated life (VR=virtual reality), there is considerable anecdotal evidence that youngsters who are regularly exposed to on-line pornography develop unrealistic expectations as it concerns performance. It wasn’t so long ago an adolescent’s first exposure to sex was via the brassiere section of a Sears catalog or Gauguin’s nudes. Nowadays, just after being tucked into bed by his mother, 8-year-old, iConnected Billie turns on his cell phone, clicks www.everythingispermitted.com, and seconds later is watching Fatima giving head to a camel. Surely, we should be curious, if not concerned about what kind of sexual inclinations Billie the adult will be bringing to the bedroom or dungeon. Small wonder that our culture is producing more and more dysfunctional males, and by extension, dysfunctional societies.

If the writing is on the wall -- not enough of it on prison walls -- we, as a society, are in denial. Like a proliferating virus gone viral, the Internet is an expanding lawless universe that has been subverted by its own insatiable, self-perpetuating appetites, while the erstwhile link between freedom and responsibility, the bedrock of every civilization, has been co-opted by the one-size-fits-all Internet link. God is dead and we’re dying right along with him to the effect that our way of life is producing more and more perverts who don’t care about anything, especially themselves, and of course the children they hi-jack, abuse and sometimes murder.

With the 21st century unwell on its way, man’s once set-in-stone, precious androcentric view of the world is crumbling all around him, and the gender war casualities, the new nihilists on the block, can no longer be ignored. The pressure on men to be men has never been so onerous and uncompromising, resulting in more male suicides and deviant sexuality, of which pedophilia is but one symptom of an emerging social pathology painted in black. If this trend is to be reversed, if men are to find their way out of this ever widening gyre of a black hole, it must begin with the young, which makes it both a pedagogical and deontological challenge.

Education should have as its first priority the goal of turning impressionable young boys into healthy and wholesome adult men, naturally accepting of the growing number of keen and confident women in their midst. Only when men come to accept that women hold up half the sky will there be fewer disabled men on the loose, and by extension fewer pedophiles and damaged children, most of whom will become damaged and delinquent adults.

Not unrelated to this colossal challenge is the obscenely easy access to Internet porn and its effects on the young in shaping their views of women and sexuality. Since the "for 18-years-and-older" restriction has zero purchase on the Internet, censorship is a surely question whose time has come.

Best said by André Malraux: “A man becomes truly Man only when in quest of what is most exalted in him.”