From: chapin@cbnewsc.cb.att.com ( Tom Chapin )
Subject: Re: Adults, Children and sex
Organization:  Hickory Ridge - Lisle, IL
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 21:22:50 GMT

Richard Soyack writes:

>Tom Chapin writes:
>>
>>>Sigh.  A memory from a better, saner world.
>>Yes.  Once when ...  ...    Again, the memories were of how to
>>turn down the requests without hurting the other person, and I knew
>>that I was the one in power in the situation

>What a bunch of self-serving bullshit.  By these asshole's
>reasoning, there is no rape.  

I feel deep compassion for Rich and whatever experiences he or his
loved ones underwent that have led him into his incoherence on this
topic, and inability to even read what was written.  Note that there
is no way in which anything that has been said was in any way self-
serving to anyone writing on the subject.

The topic in question concerns sexual activities between adults and
children.  One side comprises those who state categorically that there
can be no such activities without the children being abused, and in
fact that even bringing up the subject to children is abusive because
the children are unable to reject advances without danger.

On the other side are those who state that they have proof by their
experiences that the first side is wrong.  Either they had such
activities which were not traumatic, or they received advances and
rejected them without any further undue consequences.  Their
existence and experiences are a contradiction to the view of the
first side.

>		If you are so emotionally damaged that you
>need to have sex with children, then you should lock yourself
>up.

Again, in his incoherent rage, Rich is responding to a nonexistent
topic regarding the feelings of *adults* who request sexual activities
with children.  But the topic here is about the feelings of the
*children*, and later effects on the children of such experiences.

>Am I angry about this, yes, as angry as a woman who had been
>raped might be when reading how when a rape attempt is made
>her only problem is avoiding the sex without hurting the other
>person.

Yes..."angry"...enraged in fact.  So enraged as to respond, not
to the reality in front of him on the screen, but instead to
his fantasies in his mind of what he emotionally feels reality
to be.

I believe that very little evil is committed by those who are
deliberately evil or sociopathic.  I believe that the vast
preponderance of evil in our world is committed by good people,
by good people who have been abused, abused so badly that they
have become enraged.  So enraged, in fact, that they feel that
they must strike back against the evil that attacked them.

But when people become enraged and try to attack evil, they
become so blind to reality that they strike out wildly and
harm other good people, who all too often react with anger
and rage and become abusers in their own turn.  The worst
problem with abuse, and especially child abuse, is not just
the pain inflicted on the abused, but the turning of the abused
into another abuser, sometimes an abuser who attacks directly,
and sometimes an abuser who attacks indirectly by trying to turn
institutions into abusers.

While I feel for Rich's pain, and I appreciate the essential goodness
behind his venting of his rage in a cathartic and harmless or even
beneficial manner through rather non-violent CRT screens rather than
against those physically close to him, I hope he can find his way
beyond his pain to find another form of response beyond rage (and the
emotional abuse of anyone who does not identify strongly enough with
his rage).  He's not the only one to be abused or to have those
around him abused.   But there have to be more loving and compassionate
means found to respond, in order to hope to break the cycle of abuse
begetting abuser.

-- 
	     tom chapin                tjc@hrcce.att.com