From: chapin@cbnewsc.cb.att.com ( Tom Chapin )
Subject: Re: Adults, Children and sex
Organization: AT&T
Date: Sun, 30 Aug 1992 13:36:56 GMT

ljf writes:
>	I realize it's easy to overstate your case when you get pissed
>off, but to compare the drubbing you're taking in here to being raped
>is a gross exaggeration.  If another poster posted that I was a
>lunatic who only fantasized about being molested as a child and was
>really a child molester, this still wouldn't compare to rape.

I am truly sorry that I cannot go easy on the potential effects of
emotional abuse, nor of the horrors which can be perpetrated by
emotional abusers as compared to sexual abusers.  But as a result
of my own experiences of abuse, I have looked into the history of
emotional abuse.

Five hundred years ago, it was a horrible offense to be a Jew.  If
"another poster posted" that you were a Jew, you would be arrested 
by the Holy Office of the Inquisition, tortured until you confessed,
and burned to death.

Too long ago and too far away?  Three hundred years ago in New
Salem, Connecticut, a black woman babysitter named Tituba was
taking care of three young girls.  One of them accused her of
witchcraft, of casting a spell on her.  Tituba was arrested, tried
with all due formalities, and killed.  And many other women were
then similarly accused by children and were killed, many after
trials by torture to attempt to extort a comfession.  (Obviously,
these women were all really witches, because we all "know" that
children "never lie about things like this.")

Still too long ago?  A hundred years ago, after Reconstruction,
it was considered the most horrible of crimes for a black man to
rape a white woman.  Since the Federal government had perverted
the legal system of the South, the courts could not be depended upon
to defend the rights of precious Southern white womanhood, so the
city fathers and important people of the town had to band together
behind white sheets to enforce the laws.  If you were black, and 
"another poster posted" that you had offended a white woman, even by
what was called "eyeball rape" (the act of looking a white woman in
the eyes, you would be ripped out of your bed at midnight, beaten
and tortured, covered with hot tar and feathers, tied to a tree,
and burned to death.

If you were white, and accused of being a "nigger lover" your fate
would not be much better.  Having been married to a black, and
having a black child, I do not take potential threats of mob
violence lightly.

But we have advanced in the last century, and "it couldn't happen
here"?  Thirty years ago, a demagogue named Joe McCarthy was the
"poster" who "posted" that the country was ridden by communists.
He succeeded in destroying the lives of a great many people, and
driving several into suicide.  Anyone accused of "following the
party line" was destroyed even if they were personally against
communism, but had the temerity call for public discussion of the
ideas in a fair way, rather than rely on mob violence.

Have we advanced in the last thirty years?  How many years has it
been since a black man was attacked by the police and nearly killed?
And how long has it been since blacks offended by that abuse, became
abusers in turn by ripping a white man out of the cab of his truck
and repeating the abuse in their turn?

All these acts of physical violence sprang from acts of emotional
violence, from someone publically claiming that someone else is
guilty of committing horrible acts, or supported others who did, or
failed to attack those who were horrible.  Not just yesterday, but
here today, there are people committing acts of violence while
self-righteously proclaiming that they are merely attacking abusers
who "deserve it".  Many people believe that those who commit acts
of homosexuality deserve death.  Many people believe that people
who have sex with people outside their race deserve death.  And
these people are willing to destroy those merely accused as well as
those who are guilty.  And they are willing to accuse at the merest
pretext.

Certain of those who attack child molestation are showing themselves
to be no different in any way from the Klan or the Aryan Nation or
other groups in their willingness to falsely accuse: in their
willingness to look for "fellow travelers" or those who "appear to
follow the party line."  Their attempts to try to twist any
discussion of the topic into a promotion of the "NAMBLA party line"
is most clear evidence of that willingness.

The riots in LA, the attacks against Korean shopkeepers, the attacks
against Jews, blacks, gays, and who know who all else show that were
are perilously close to mass mob violence in this country.  If such
violence were to take place, NAMBLA would be an almost certain
target, and anyone linked, however tenuously, would become a target.
Which is precisely why those addicted to abuse would attempt to make
such links.

I am happy for you that you are "fortunate" enough to be able to
discount the possibility of being a target yourself.  If you lay low
and don't take any politically incorrect stands on any issues, and
in fact don't even try to discuss emotionally loaded topics, you may
remain unscathed.  But even though the gentler forms of emotional
abuse, such as those perpetrated on the Net, certainly "wouldn't
compare to rape," the potential consequences of such abuse could
make the horrors of sexual abuse look tame by comparison.  Because
rapes and other sexual abuses are performed beyond the pale of the
law.  All too often, emotional abusers have succeeded in perverting
the very legal system itself into becoming the instrument of their
abuses.  

It can happen here.  Because it already has.

-- 
	     tom chapin                tjc@hrcce.att.com
Newsgroups: soc.men