An article in the New Yorker goes into surprising historic detail about an academically supported, sexually active paederast who was given foster placements in Berlin starting in 1973. An interesting dimension is author Rachel Aviv’s documentation that this disastrous experiment was part of an overly radical reaction against the unbearable abusiveness of Nazi child-raising.
The German Experiment That Placed Foster Children with Pedophiles
Well… it certainly is an interesting, albeit disturbing read.
What bothers me the most here is the fact that it was known that this man was committing sex acts against the young boys in his care and that nobody did anything to prevent it. To argue that this was a tolerable consequence of some experiment is to argue against the very ethics and standards that guide the scientific and medical communities.
What’s disturbing to me about the contents of this article is that the mindsets of Kentler and these other groups are somewhat oriented in the right direction, yet fail spectacularly at understanding what drove the Nazi, authoritarian ideologies to overtake a calm, moderate political climate that was pre-war Germany. I find it even more disturbing that children were routinely exploited in the name of shedding off or progressing past the shackles of Nazism.
Sexual suppression was a big part in it, yes, even the suppression of those “forbidden interests” such as pedophilia, sadism, incest, etc. but it was not wholly emblematic or representative of the cultural shift that took place.
It was the deprivation of the self and their own tastes, wants or needs, replacing one’s own individualism with the perceived interests of a communal entity, in this case, being that of race and ethnic preservation through rigid enforcement of cultural antecedents. The freedom to indulge in the fruits of other cultures, to have a worldly mindset while maintaining mutual respect for your rights along with the rights of others was forcefully and apathetically taken by a culture whose only conditions were allegiance and conformity, or punishment or death. Freethinking was functionally synonymous with treason. It was this heavy-handed execution that gave weight to the fascist ideology.
Where this approach of sexual liberation falls flat, however, is the allowance of actual children in adult-child sexual scenarios. It immediately loses its traction when it allows homeless or runaway children to barter for goods and services with sex and sexual favors, as though a culture that doesn’t place such acts in a negative pedestal, in any way negates the harm caused to the children.
This isn’t a moral stance or a cultural ident, but rather a factual understanding backed up by decades of academic inquiry.
The pro-contact pedophile, who believes that sexual encounters between adults and children can be beneficial so long as they are not “forced” are, in my view, closer to the fascist ideology inherent in Nazism than most people care to realize.
The fascist mindset would not entertain actions it takes to accomplish its own goals as “wrong”, so long as their goal is achieved. They do not consider the interests of others who may be affected by their actions, and should any harm be caused by them, it is likely that those outcomes wouldn’t even be perceived as harms in the first place, in spite of plainly visible symptoms of harm caused.
A person who sees children as appropriate sexual partners may not even consider the psychology of a child or how said child may interact with them, as opposed to a peer of similar age, or how sexual acts may affect their bodies. Genital-genital penetration between an adult man and a female child can and does cause irreversible damage to their body, damaging their vaginal canal and possibly their ability to derive pleasure from sexual activity. Same goes for genital-anal intercourse, whether it’s between adult men and young boys or young girls, and if explained why these types of activities are innately harmful and damaging to children, they may deny them followed by drawing upon anecdotes from their childhood or attempt to discredit the evidence by some other illegitimate means, or will simply shrug and claim its somehow acceptable or that they’re “not that bad”.
I’ve personally seen this song and dance from pro-contact pedophiles before, and trying to convince them otherwise is like trying to convince a Nazi of the inherent flaws in their fascist mindset.
What differentiates a pro-contact and a non-contact pedophilic individual/MAP in this regard is their understanding of sexuality as it applies to children in the real world and how that understanding shapes their perspective and actions.
Of course, compliance with criminal law is a good motivator, but actually knowing how these types of acts affect children and having safe, healthy, and acceptable ways for themselves to express or indulge in their own tastes or desires and cope are indicative of an understanding that the fascist mindset simply isn’t capable of producing.