Pedophilia
Related: NAMBLA - incest - paraphilia - children
In mainstream novels: Lolita (1955)
In mainstream films: Lolita (1962) - Death in Venice (1971) - Pretty Baby (1978) - Beau Pere (1981) - Happiness (1998)
Pedophilia in art and photography: Eva Ionesco and Jacques Bourboulon - David Hamilton - Sally Mann - Jock Sturges - Balthus
When Jock Sturges, who lives in Colorado, published his pictures of pre-teens lounging about in their birthday suits, the FBI seized all his photographs and kept them for two years while they tried to prove that he sought to promote pedophilia. When booksellers displayed David Hamilton's book of budding breasts, the booksellers were indicted for purveying obscenity by grand juries in Alabama and Tennessee. But Sally Mann, who photographed her children naked in rural Virginia, has so far escaped censorship, although she lives among the Christian Right. --Christopher H. Pyle for http://www.mtholyoke.edu/offices/comm/oped/Disturbing.shtml
The Beautiful Boy (2003) - Germaine Greer [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
In 2003, The Beautiful Boy was published, an art history book about the beauty of teenage boys, which is illustrated with 200 photographs of what The Guardian called "succulent teenage male beauty", alleging that Greer had appeared to reinvent herself as a "middle-aged pederast." Greer described the book as an attempt to address women's apparent indifference to the teenage boy as a sexual object and to "advance women's reclamation of their capacity for, and right to, visual pleasure" (Greer 2003). The boy pictured on the cover was Bjørn Andresen, who has said that the use of his picture is "distasteful", and he was not consulted about its use. [Jan 2007]
David Hamilton's Bilitis caused considerate controversy throughout the world when it was released in 1977. As much of Hamilton's work depicts early-teen girls, often nude, he has been the subject of some controversy and even child pornography allegations, mostly from North America and Britain, similar to that which the work of Sally Mann and Jock Sturges have attracted. [Jan 2007]
Definition
The act or fantasy on the part of an adult of engaging in sexual activity with a child or children. --Amerian Heritage DictionaryDefinition (2)
In medicine, pedophilia (American English), alternatively spelled paedophilia or pædophilia (in British English), is sexual attraction of an adult to prepubescent children. In common usage, pedophilia or under-age sex is sexual attraction and sexual acts towards children generally, including adolescents who are far beyond a prepubescent level of physical and psychological development. This article will discuss these two concepts separately. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PedophiliaResearch guide
"Though we know children do have sexual impulses, we prefer not to be brutally confronted with evidence of these. Still less do we like to be confronted with images which may, at some deep level, arouse unacceptable feelings in ourselves. We cannot, despite our familiarity with Freudian concepts, deal with the idea that parental love or its surrogates may contain a barely controlled sexual element. Our extreme self- consciousness about images of this kind has had a curious result. During a decade when the boundaries of tolerance, certainly in the English-speaking world, have gradually loosened to the point where almost any sexual image can be published or exhibited, they have become noticeably tighter where photographic representations of children are involved. It is not Robert Mapplethorpe's photographs of male S&M activities that now cause concern, but his picture of a little girl throwing up her skirt to reveal her pudenda: the record of a spontaneous moment of exhibitionism of a sort very common in small children. Even Edward Weston's beautiful frontal torso of his young son has become the kind of image that publishers are reluctant to deal with. In these cases, the standard excuse is made: 'It is not, you understand, that I am disturbed by this particular image myself. It's just that other people might take it the wrong way.' " --Edward Lucie-Smith to the recent 'Looking At Kids' special issue - "Eros and Innocence"...Research on pedophilia in academia, and writings on pedophilia in heavyweight journals -- an internet research-guide for students and scholars
Beau Pere (1981) - Bertrand Blier
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Beau Pere (1981) - Bertrand Blier [Amazon.com]
This daring and controversial film by Bertrand Blier (Too Beautiful For You, Get Out Your Handkerchiefs) pushes the lines between love, lust and morality. After the sudden death of his wife, Remy (Patrick Dewaere), a burnt out piano player, is forced to take care of his 14-year-old stepdaughter (Ariel Besse) who, unbeknownst to him, has fallen in love with him. The two grow closer and what begins as a relationship between a girl and a man, ends up being a relationship between a woman and a man. --From the Back Cover
Harmful to Minors (2002) - Judith Levine
Harmful to Minors (2002) Judith Levine [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children From Sex (ISBN 0816640068) is a book by Judith Levine that was published in 2002 with a foreword by former United States Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders.
In the book, Levine lambasts US laws concerning child pornography, statutory rape, and abortion for minors. It also analyzes abstinence only sex education, which Levine considers counter-productive and dangerous.
Because of its controversial nature and content, it was nearly impossible for Levine to find a publisher-one prospective publisher even called it "radioactive." University of Minnesota Press eventually agreed to publish the book, despite cries of outrage from the right wing of Minnesota's political establishment.
It became famous after it won the Los Angeles Times Book Award. Conservatives such as Joe Scarborough and Robert Knight inaccurately accused Levine of promoting pedophilia for her suggestion that the US adopt statutory rape laws similar to those in the Netherlands. Some demanded the book be removed from libraries. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmful_to_Minors [Feb 2005]
Child-Loving: The Erotic Child and Victorian Literature (1994) - James R. Kincaid
Child-Loving: The Erotic Child and Victorian Literature (1994) - James R. Kincaid [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
From Library Journal
Why are we obsessed by stories of child molesting by strangers or child care workers, despite the evidence that such events are very rare? The author (English, Univ. of Southern California) offers startling views on this and other issues concerning child sexuality. His material spans a number of disciplines, including 19th-century literature and child care books, modern social history, court transcripts, and sex manuals. While the book suffers from a surfeit of deconstuctionist verbiage, the author's wide-ranging scholarship and provocative ideas more than make up for the shortcomings. Recommended for most academic and research libraries and for larger public libraries that collect academic material for educated lay readers.
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