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August 25, 2006
Projection?
I was planning to let this pass, but as Lee Siegel digs himself deeper and deeper into some catacomb of self-righteousness over James Kincaid, he's begun flinging his dirt all across the left, a schtick that's grown tiresome. Now, because too few people appear to agree that Kincaid is a child molester, we're all a bunch of "liberal automatons" and "clueless knuckleheads" who "respond like growling Pavlovian dogs to any suggestion that people cannot indulge their every sexual appetite."
So let's talk this one out -- one blogofascist to another. Kincaid is an English professor who studies the sexualization of children in American media. The other day, he wrote a piece for Slate on the reemergence of Jon Benet, arguing "JonBenet would not get all this attention did we not want to bestow it. It's not the media forcing on us something we'd rather not have: We're lining up at the trough to be fed...[it] allows us to fulminate against trivial problems while ignoring huge problems close to home, meanwhile wallowing in self-righteous porn babble: We are able to use the half-clothed bodies of children as centerfolds while professing shock that anyone would so display them. The story is always the same: Somebody else finds the bodies of children irresistible and we want the chance to rail against these monsters, meanwhile relishing the details of the very bodies we claim indifference to. It is a classic example of scapegoating."
Siegel criticizes Kincaid for being a "a very snide and superior writer," which, for obvious reasons, I can't help but point out (Writer, heal thyself!). More alarmingly, in three posts entitled "James Kincaid and Pedophilia," he asserts that Kincaid's belief that we view children sexually and so take a subconscious glee in fulminating endlessly about those who would sexualize them, obviously reveals him as a pedophile. Siegel, floating high above any evidentiary standards or textual support, has now made this accusation with ever greater degrees of explicitness, the last of which accused the left of being in cahoots with pedophiles. His advice for us, as I understood it, was that we'd begin winning elections when we ceased supporting NAMBLA. Wonder why James Carville never thought of that.
I grew interested in the Kincaid smears, though, so I took a look into his book "Erotic Innocence: The Culture of Child Molesting." Here's the capsule:
Citing examples from the tabloids, celebrity trials, and popular movies starring children, the author explains society's need for horrors such as ritual abuse, "kiddie porn," and accusations against clergy and day care workers. Preoccupation with this misguided sexuality allows the public to ignore the poverty, neglect, malnutrition, and poor education that constitute true child abuse. Kincaid suggests abandoning the Gothic model and acknowledging that erotic feelings are a normal part of life that rational adults can control.
I assume the preschool gangbang comes later. But maybe his views are different in the Slate piece Siegel's focusing on. Let's take a look:
For kids really do not fare very well in our culture: Millions of children are, in fact, abused in unspeakable ways. Five hundred thousand kids every year are classified as "throwaways" (children whose parents or guardians will not let them live at home, as distinguished from "runaways"). As many as 800,000 are beaten horribly. Even more are subject to emotional abuse and neglect. How much attention do they get? Instead, we focus our attention, almost all of it, on stranger-danger: things like abductions, of which there are between 100 and 200 annually. Our carefully controlled outrage is generated for our own purposes, certainly not to protect the children.
Oh. While Kincaid is irritated by the excess attention lavished on this murdered white princess while the nation's urban children suffer far more systemic, and controllable, ills, Siegel is irritated by Kincaid's self-righteousness:"[Kincaid] He apparently has never tried to imagine what kind of society would let the murder of a little girl pass without massive amounts of attention and anxiety."
A glance at Siegel's blog shows that Benet's reemergence went unnoticed until Lee got in a huff about Kincaid's article. But a check of the Siegel ouvre is more interesting. So far as I can tell, the only thing Siegel has written on pedophilia is a lament that he didn't engage in it. In the March 15, 1999 issue of TNR, he published a diarist detailing one of his life's great regrets: His refusal to fuck Uma Thurman when she was sixteen, and he was her 26-year-old tutor. As Siegel tells the tale, "Uma was a model at the time I met her, not yet famous. She had an open face and slightly swelled features and pale blue eyes that seemed wide with surprise and also moist with deep recognition of the nature of their surprise. Just hanging out, she looked like she was on the brink of physical ecstasy. She seemed to be willing her inwardness out through her pores, all for the pleasure of others...She began to flirt with me. Putting her cat provocatively in her lap, she stroked it and described a suggestive fantasy to me." I can't imagine why Kincaid thinks the media describes children in erotic terms.
Lee was not aroused, and it appears to have caused him considerable psychic anguish throughout the years. His unwillingness to abuse his position as a tutor and sleep with a sixteen-year-old caused a decades long shame so acute he finally had to exorcise it, 13 years after the fact, in the pages of a national magazine, copiously detailing the years of regret and resentment he endured. Siegel did not commit an act of pedophilia (or, for that matter, statutory rape), and he spent a decade plus feeling ashamed of it. And now, he has the gall to accuse Kincaid of pedophilia for believing that our culture sexualizes children. Children, like the sixteen year old English student who "an open face and slightly swelled features and pale blue eyes that seemed wide with surprise and also moist with deep recognition of the nature of their surprise...[and] looked like she was on the brink of physical ecstasy."
What's that Kincaid wrote about scapegoating?
August 25, 2006 | Permalink
Comments
It's pretty clear, isn't it?
Methinks Siegal doth protest too much?
Somebody caught him in the act of being a little too interested in poor JonBenet's story--and image--and now he's lashing out in every direction.
Yes, Lee, Prof. Kincaid (whom I've had the pleasure of having for a professor--he's very good) is on to you. And we all know it. Now shut up and stop making it worse.
Posted by: Lolly | Aug 25, 2006 12:02:09 AM
Amazing catch with the Uma Thurman bit. That about ends it, I think.
Posted by: Lukas | Aug 25, 2006 12:07:17 AM
I wonder if Siegel got his job at TNR because Martin Peretz was tired of being their most ridiculous writer.
Somebody linked this post in the TNR comments, under the impressively blunt sentence, "Siegel wanted to fuck a child."
Posted by: Neil the Ethical Werewolf | Aug 25, 2006 12:10:06 AM
I think Atrios's 'Ew.' pretty much says it all. Frank Foer really does need to start reading what gets published under his editorial imprimatur.
Posted by: ahem | Aug 25, 2006 12:11:19 AM
Now shut up and stop making it worse.
Hopefully it's too late and Kincaid will sue his ass.
Posted by: Vladi G | Aug 25, 2006 12:16:30 AM
"So far as I can tell, the only thing Siegel has written on pedophilia is a lament that he didn't engage in it. In the March 15, 1999 issue of TNR, he published a diarist detailing one of his life's great regrets: His refusal to fuck Uma Thurman when she was sixteen ... Children, like the sixteen year old English student ..."
Siegel is crazy as usual. Kincaid makes sense.
But...
Post-pubescent sexual desire ain't pedophila. A sixteen year old Uma is only partly a child.
K-Lo has a post over at The Corner that pissed me off when I read it earlier today.
Now compare and contrast K-Lo's post with a post over at Yglesias today that is just fine and dandy with "child" sex.
Siegel deserves to be torn apart. His piece has the logicial consistency of a Marty Peretz piece, albeit with more coherent writing. And had he slept with Uma, it would have been a move of questionable morality (and illegal in certain states) which is certainly fair game.
But I find something very bizarre about the mainstream debate that uses the same terms for the sexuality of five year olds and seventeen year olds.
Posted by: Petey | Aug 25, 2006 12:26:12 AM
What Siegal wrote about Uma Thurman is disgusting. It's not that he found her, at 16, to be attractive. He describes her using words and phrases intended to evoke images of a child even younger, one who is barely entering puberty, rather than one most likely having gone through that stage already.
The anger and vitriol in Siegal's writing is bad enough. However, there is an element to it that quite throws me off balance. When he advises people to grab their Wellbutrin, I wonder if that is an almost-unconscious intrusion from another part of his brain, letting us know that Siegal's own psychotropic medications are not quite working the way they should.
If the Democrats do well this November, and especially if Lieberman loses, I expect Siegal to take some time off to get some "rest." He clearly needs it.
Posted by: Stephen | Aug 25, 2006 12:28:00 AM
A 16-year-old isn't a child in the pedophile sense. We rightly have laws regarding age of consent, and grown men are seriously fucked in the head that go with teenage girls. But they aren't pedophiles, just assholes. It isn't a sexual perversion to find a 16-year-old girl attractive.
But Ezra's right on the larger point. Siegel is confronted with a hot 16-year-old flirting with him (though I'm not as sure as Siegel is that Miss Thurman actually wanted to have sex with him), and he can't maintain, can't put it into perspective. It does support Kincaid's point, which is that a lot of our prudery/puritanisms are really motivated by our lusts and our revulsion at them. Siegel's posts this week insinuate that you have to be a pervert to make this point. But his Uma ruminations put his current vehemence in quite an interesting light.
Posted by: kth | Aug 25, 2006 12:32:11 AM
For the record, the term "pedophilia" is frequently applied inaccurately. It's a very specific clinical term referring to an incurable disorder in which the sexual preference of an adult is for children under the age of puberty.
Adults who lust after biologically sexually mature children are *not* pedophiles, nor do they suffer from a sexual disorder.
That's not to say by any means that it's OK for adults to sleep with 16-year-olds, but that's a cultural and legal standard, not a clinical one.
Molesting JonBenet Ramsey was pedophilia; screwing a 16-year-old Uma Thurman would have been statutory rape.
It may seem pedantic to insist on the distinction, but these are really two *very* different types of aberrant behavior.
Posted by: Swift Loris | Aug 25, 2006 12:34:14 AM
What Petey said.
It's all a confusing mess, but I think that equating the sexuality or lack thereof of a 18-minus-one-day year old with pedophilia. We set up an artificial barrier that is only too easy to cross (at least mentally) as you're watching a 17 year old Britney Spears marketed sexually...
The "underage" thing becomes a marketing ploy, sexually mature females are dressed like little schoolgirls, children are marketed like little women, everything gets blurred and for a few warped people it makes it easier to let that age limit creep lower.
Something else I've noticed, and I think its related if only tangentally... maybe a manifestation of the same few cells in the human brain:
Since the age of the net, suddenly everything that was previously innocent is labelled "porn."
Tasteful nudes of adults, or even not nudes - just women draped in something, etc., are now generically referred to as "porn." You see it all the time these days on the net, people blurring that distinction.
An artistic pose of a woman facing away from the camera with a bathrobe half slipping off in muted lighting is categorized with fisting videos.
Sorry for the tangent, but it just seems like our whole country is deliberately sexually confused at the moment, and a lot of it has to do with marketing.
Posted by: craig | Aug 25, 2006 12:43:29 AM
The term for lusting after post-pubescent youths is hebephilia, or ephebophilia, or derbyshirism.
Posted by: Kip Manley | Aug 25, 2006 12:46:54 AM
"derbyshirism"
Hah. Come to think of it, why hasn't Foer given the Derb a blog yet? Not only is he a better writer than Seigel, he's more likely to say non-insane things (hell, apparently Derbyshire is more progressive on abortion rights.)
Posted by: Scott Lemieux | Aug 25, 2006 12:51:59 AM
Seigel is disgusting. Of course there's a difference between a five year-old and a sixteen year-old. But, seriously, how fucked up is it to expose your fantasy about a sixteen year-old whom you name? And at least the "Seigel wants to fuck a child" commenter is technically correct. Is there any evidence at all that Seigel is?
Can we at least get the major media to stop using TNR folk as representatives of the Democrats? Things look good for November, and we don't really need to be associated with defenses of Coulter, horrific arguments, wild accusations of pedophilia, and soft-core fantasies about kids under a tutor's care.
Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Aug 25, 2006 1:04:00 AM
Personally I think Siegel is an engaging--if not reliable--book critic, so it's unfortunate to find out that he's a bitter lunatic.
If you want a good time with Siegel, check out this interview with, um, Spike Lee.
Slate: To come back to this, I have to say, I really don't like these movies like Barbershop and Beauty Shop. I just don't. I think of what you were doing—yet you made these films possible, right?
Lee: Don't put that on me.
Slate: No, but you created an open field for black filmmakers.
Dude is not right.
Posted by: whetstone | Aug 25, 2006 1:09:13 AM
"Come to think of it, why hasn't Foer given the Derb a blog yet? Not only is he a better writer than Seigel, he's more likely to say non-insane things"
I have no inside knowledge of the inner workings of TNR, but my suspicion is that Siegel doesn't report to Foer.
I always think of TNR in the same way I think of the WSJ, with an insane 'editorial page' and excellent 'news pages'. I put Siegel in the 'editorial' camp.
Posted by: Petey | Aug 25, 2006 1:15:48 AM
Betcha Uma Thurman is probably going "Yuuuuuck!" right now.
Posted by: Phoenix Woman | Aug 25, 2006 1:16:58 AM
"If you want a good time with Siegel, check out this interview with, um, Spike Lee."
That's a funny, funny piece. Perhaps Siegel is actually a performance art comedian along the lines of Ali G.
Posted by: Petey | Aug 25, 2006 1:24:15 AM
art critic : Lee Siegel :: artist : people who can draw Tippy the Turtle from the Art Instruction Schools commercial?
Posted by: jfaberuiuc | Aug 25, 2006 1:40:30 AM
How long before he uses the word "paedofascism" ?
Posted by: anthony baxter | Aug 25, 2006 1:53:28 AM
Before I would say the media fascination with Jonbenet implicated a nation of paedophiles I would need to extract out those elements the story has in common with missing white women, Tom & Katie, Britanny's babies. There would likely be some paedophilia left.
Posted by: bob mcmanus | Aug 25, 2006 3:40:24 AM
Did Siegal ever write a review for "Dangerous Liasons"? In which a 15yo is taught to perform fellatio....by her tutor? I have to wonder how much of Siegel's memories of Thurman as a student come from his own fevered imagination.
While 16 is not grounds for paedophilia, I believe it is still technically jail bait, especially for someone ten years her senior.
And someone tell Herr Siegel that it's automata, not automatons.
Posted by: Taylor | Aug 25, 2006 5:10:36 AM
Betcha Uma Thurman is probably going "Yuuuuuck!" right now.
Probably getting rid of her cats, too.
Posted by: Randy Paul | Aug 25, 2006 7:07:20 AM
I don't think a 16-year-old is a "child", but that Siegel is still salivating at the missed opportunity and is quite willing to drool in public about it indicate that he's more obsessed with this subject than is, uh, normal.
And his preoccupation with a pretty pubescent blonde girl (16 year olds are girls, if not "children")who later becomes famous, well, it kinda proves Kincaid's point in a way. That is, that there is a sick sort of fascination with pretty, fragile, famous rich white girls that objectifies them and dehumanizes them-- and takes our minds off reality. Now I know that we're supposed to think that Ms. Thurman, being famous, has no right to privacy. But here Siegel is, drooling about her years later, when she's got children and a life, acting as if she exists primarily as a salacious memory, describing her in highly sexualized terms and using her name in a possibly apocryphal experience -- she came on to him! She licked her lips! Her eyes said yes yes yes!
It's just weird and juvenile and obsessive. I don't doubt many men look back and wish they'd done something with someone... but to talk about a real person -- in print-- like she's nothing but a Playboy centerfold his mother confiscated before he could masturbate over it-- and he's accusing someone else of being obsessive?
He's the one objectifying a girl. And he's just proving Kincaid's point that this behavior is irrational.
(Not that Siegel has harmed any little girls-- I don't make his mistake of projection.)
But anyway, here he is foaming at the mouth again about "liberals"-- I swear, it makes him sound like a nusto John Bircher circa 1957. Have all these TNR guys gone unhinged? Do they really think "liberals" (who after all are the only people who have ever paid for that magazine) are the real villains in the country? It's almost laughable, this spittle-flecked focus on "liberals" and "bloggers". And George Bush is still president... maybe they haven't noticed that.
Posted by: pippen | Aug 25, 2006 7:32:43 AM
Obviously a sixteen year old isn't a five year old -- but both are underage, and, for their age, oversexualized. That Siegel would make such a stink over Kincaid while having so determinedly contributed to the sexualization of children (and a sixteen year old is a child, particularly compared to someone nearing thirty) is a bit hypocritical. As I said, I was going to let this pass, till Siegel began tarring the whole of the left with the sexual deviant brush.
Posted by: Ezra | Aug 25, 2006 8:11:30 AM
Jeff Wells is always way out there, but there's always a hint of "holy crap, this COULD be true"...
Posted by: mikebdot | Aug 25, 2006 8:52:02 AM
I think Pippen gets this just right. The other thing that repulses me about Siegel's post is the description of Thurman's physicality as implying consent: "an open face and slightly swelled features and pale blue eyes that seemed wide with surprise and also moist with deep recognition of the nature of their surprise. Just hanging out, she looked like she was on the brink of physical ecstasy. She seemed to be willing her inwardness out through her pores, all for the pleasure of others...[and] looked like she was on the brink of physical ecstasy."
She was pushing herself outward for him, seemed to be on the brink of orgasm just sitting there -- it echoes what the New York Times article on pedophiles mentioned, that they transform even the most innocuous movements and moments among children into come-ons and teases. That's what I mean about his sexualization of Thurman -- she's a young kid, but every word used to describe her makes her into nothing but a vehicle for intercourse. It's unsettling.
And remember -- Siegel didn't do anything and I'm not suggesting otherwise. He's in no place, however, to criticize Kincaid for believing our culture sexualizes the young.
Posted by: Ezra | Aug 25, 2006 9:04:44 AM
There's always an agenda, especially at Joe Lieberman weekly -- Possibly Lieberman coming out for corporate control of the Internet with a big speech about how our children need to be protected?
Posted by: lambert strether | Aug 25, 2006 9:06:01 AM
Curious, in the country where I live 16 is the age of sexual consent: anyone can have sex with a 16-year-old, even grandpa and grandma. What is the age of consent in most U.S. states? 18, then?
Posted by: Quentin | Aug 25, 2006 9:19:58 AM
In other news, we are the Romans at the end of our empire- wow new and original
Posted by: akaison | Aug 25, 2006 9:39:51 AM
This Siegle should shut his trap before he hurts himself... oops too late.
Posted by: Northern Observer | Aug 25, 2006 9:50:28 AM
"What is the age of consent in most U.S. states? 18, then?"
It varies widely by state, from a low of 13 or 14 up to 18.
But legality aside, current American social mores frown on any age gap between sexual partners of more than 3 months.
As a guide to how attitudes have changed over the past generation, I recently caught the 1984 movie Blame It On Rio on cable. It tells the story of a married man of forty-seven having an affair with his best friend's seventeen year-old daughter as a lighthearted comedy. In the unlikely event that movie were to be re-made today, it would be done as a very different genre.
Posted by: Petey | Aug 25, 2006 9:50:50 AM
Sheesh. The photos of JonBenet clearly are of a sexual nature. They are intended to "sex her up". Uncatagorically and inarguably. For shit's sake! She's a little girl all dressed up in miniature adult woman clothing with makeup plastered on like some Victoria's Secret model. What the f*ck does dickwad Siegel think the point of "dolling" a little frickin' girl, all adult-like, is? To celebrate childhood innocence?
Me thinks that Siegel's outrage is in response to the fact that it worked on him. He is turned on by the JonBenet pics and he just can't deal with it. Me? I think the parents were guilty of sexually exploiting their little girl at least as much as the corporate machine that sexed her for her photo shoots. The pics piss me off towards the parents and the idiot/pervert freaks in the modeling industry.
Posted by: Praedor Atrebates | Aug 25, 2006 9:53:08 AM
Curious, in the country where I live 16 is the age of sexual consent: anyone can have sex with a 16-year-old, even grandpa and grandma. What is the age of consent in most U.S. states? 18, then?
Posted by: Quentin
I'm not a lawyer, but I think 16 is pretty common. In fact, I'd guess it's average — there are no doubt some states where it's 18, and a few where it's 14 or something really scary. And then there are "Romeo and Juliet" laws in a lot of states, so a 17-year-old can't be arrested just for having sex with his 15-year-old girlfriend or two 15-year-olds can't be charged with raping each other.
Just to complicate things a bit more, the age of legality is 18 around the country. Which governs, among other things, whether a person can legally appear in porn. No one is alleging that Lee Siegel took advantage of Uma Thurman, and even if he did no one is alleging that he broke the law in doing so... but that creep better not have taken nude pictures of her!
I don't know, maybe it's just because my personal mental definition of "young" is "at or below my sister's age" — in other words, four years younger than me — so I felt just a little weird when I was a senior in college and noticed hot freshman girls and later found out they were "young". But I definitely join the crowd in saying that if a guy in his mid-twenties or later is lusting after a 16-year-old, that's fucked up regardless of whether or not he acts on it.
Posted by: Cyrus | Aug 25, 2006 10:00:31 AM
Thanks, Ezra, for the precis of Kincaid, since going just by the pieces you linked to, Lee Siegel seems to have gone right off the deep end (jumping the shark in the process) - with his "pedophilia" charges: like Lolly said in comment # 1, his rants really come off as "doth protest too much". WAY too much.
I can't see how anyone could interpret Kincaid's Slate piece as any sort of "defense of pedophilia" - maybe context with his other writings is necessary, but by itself, it seemed fairly innocuous (to me - if a tad academic/opaque). Lee Siegel obviously has his own take on it: but it's the political stuff that is truly beyond-the-beyond: the connection between the media/public's unhealthy obsession with the JonBenet Ramsey case and "liberals" is just plain lame: but sadly typical of all too much of the sort of scolding right-wing screedmongering which passes for "commentary" in too much of the media.
First: there is, apparently, a formulation issue: James Kincaid writes about the sexualization/commodification of young children in our culture - but he doesn't include ritual denunciations of the practices or lard his text with the "proper" moral lessons, therefore he must approve of the disgusting issues he discusses. It's a common (if simple-minded and usually incorrect) trope in right-wing commentary: the assumption that objectivity equals approval of what they assume should be clear-cut matters of "right" and "wrong": Siegel's attitude here seems to be an echo of George Bush's: "You're either with us, or with the [terrorists/pedophiles]"
Secondly: his injection of specific political positioning into the issue is just plain bizarre: the "connection" between liberalism and the condonation of pedophilia, which he capsulizes as:
"Do you want a Democratic president, and a Democratic Congress? Cut the cord between progressive politics and the ethics of cultural abandon.
is really off the wall: Ann Coulter/Michael Savage territory (though without those commentators' comedic value). Lee Siegel would be well-advised to look deeper into exactly which geographic/cultural/socioeconomic group it is who is most prone to support and maintain the child-beauty-pageant subculture which apparently proved fatal to poor JonBenet Ramsey. He might be surprised to find few Berkeley latte-liberals among them.
Posted by: Jay C | Aug 25, 2006 10:10:15 AM
Lee Siegel is a cad. No gentleman would tell the Uma Thurman story.
Posted by: CJColucci | Aug 25, 2006 10:24:09 AM
Siegel writes: "Do you want a Democratic president, and a Democratic Congress? Cut the cord between progressive politics and the ethics of cultural abandon."
Jay C responds: "Lee Siegel would be well-advised to look deeper into exactly which geographic/cultural/socioeconomic group it is who is most prone to support and maintain the child-beauty-pageant subculture which apparently proved fatal to poor JonBenet Ramsey. He might be surprised to find few Berkeley latte-liberals among them."
I think most of Siegel's screed is a Big Bucket of Wrong, (as the kids say,) but this single line of his is entirely true in an electoral sense.
Whatever the actual social mores of blue states vs red states, post-Lewinsky, the Democratic Party has a serious perceptual gap on issues of sexual morality. This gap has cemented the total domination of the conservative block by the Republicans, and allowed them to win two Presidential elections in a row we should have won.
Now with the minor inconveniences of a lost war, a lost American city, and high gas prices, voters this November will likely have more pressing concerns to parse. But the sexual morality perceptual gap for the Democrats will likely continue until we nominate someone with a resolutely 'traditional' or 'square' family to wipe away the memory of the Big Dog's extracurricular activities.
If you want reason #37 for why HRC shouldn't be the nominee, there you go.
Posted by: Petey | Aug 25, 2006 10:31:01 AM
... but of course that whole "perceptual gap on... sexual morality" is a trope, anyway, kind of the way Siegel decries the supposed pedophilic fascination of Kincaid while lusting after a teenage Uma. Who has the issue, exactly? Well, mostly conservatives, actually, since they're the ones more likely to have "scandals" around divorce, affairs, coming out, etc. Which you would, of course, if you turned the common events that most people have - like divorce, homosexuality and other sexual matters - and turn them into high moral quandaries. I'm not saying that Dems don't have to deal with this; what I am saying though is that, like with Siegel, the first mistake is agreeing to the other side's terms. There's nothing, except for rude innuendo, to suggest anything bizarre or deviant about Hillary Clinton. To say that "sexual morality" is a problem she brings to the table is perverse. And to say that her husband's extramarital dalliance(s) automatically disqulaifies her from running is already disproven. Next?
Posted by: weboy | Aug 25, 2006 10:43:07 AM
It might be instructive to look at another article that Kincaid wrote for Salon in 2000. You can find the article here:
http://archive.salon.com/mwt/feature/2000/01/31/ki ncaid/index.html
That article includes the following:
"We all should be drawn to and fascinated by the beautiful and the arresting, including beautiful and arresting children, without being terrified by the erotic aspect in our fascination."
Now, I don't know whether or not Kincaid is a pedophile, but I find something terribly awry with a man who says we should "be drawn to and fascinated by" certain types of children and not be "terrified" if we have "erotic fascination" for them.
He continues:
"Admitting to an erotic attraction is not the same thing as admitting to rape or assault: We do not commonly attack what we love and we do not feel the need to act on every impulse. Finding something erotic does not drive us irresistibly to mount it."
It is true that not all of s "irresistibly" "mount" things we find erotic. But the problem with sexualized children, and child pornography more generally, is not necessarily or merely that pedophiles will "irresistibly" "mount" the young ones (although obviously pedophiles do commit acts of rape and assualt on children).
The problem is the exploitation and harm that come from the mere act of sexualizing a child and creating the child pornography. These actions in and of themselves harm the child and, even if from a distance, encourage or feed the pedophiles' appetite.
Sexualizing children robs them of their opportunity to be children while making them players on an adult stage at a time in their life when they should see adults not as potential sexual peers or liaisons but as protectors.
At its worst, this sexualizing of children leads to child pornography, which can lead to harm - not only to the subjects of the pornography but also to children who fall victim to those pedophiles who cannot control their irresistable desire to "mount" what they find erotic.
Posted by: epackard | Aug 25, 2006 10:46:38 AM
"but of course that whole "perceptual gap on... sexual morality" is a trope, anyway, kind of the way Siegel decries the supposed pedophilic fascination of Kincaid while lusting after a teenage Uma"
I'm not going to defend Siegel, because he's not worth defending.
But in politics, if a trope is shared by wide spectrum of the electorate, it has become a political reality, and usually one that will not be easily displaced.
We're at the 10 yr anniversary of Clinton removing race as an electoral millstone around the Democrats' necks by signing welfare reform. But we're also around 8 years into Clinton re-establishing sexual morality as an electoral millstone around Democrats' necks with L'affair Lewinsky.
"There's nothing, except for rude innuendo, to suggest anything bizarre or deviant about Hillary Clinton. To say that "sexual morality" is a problem she brings to the table is perverse."
The issue with HRC has nothing to do with the claims of that smear book of a year ago. The issue with HRC also has nothing to do with anything about her personal behavior.
Instead, the issue is that her family dramatically breaks down from the aspirational appeal of 'normalcy' or 'traditional-ness' or 'squareness' in the royal family that many pale red voters would need to see to be able to put the issue aside once and for all.
Posted by: Petey | Aug 25, 2006 10:59:45 AM
Kincaid writes: ""We all should be drawn to and fascinated by the beautiful and the arresting, including beautiful and arresting children, without being terrified by the erotic aspect in our fascination.""
epackard complains: "I find something terribly awry with a man who says we should "be drawn to and fascinated by" certain types of children and not be "terrified" if we have "erotic fascination" for them."
What would you suggest the proper emotional response should be to the video footage of the hyper-sexualized JonBennet in her pageant competitions, wearing garish makeup and suggestive costumes, all the while dancing lewdly?
I understand that "pure horror" is likely the popular answer, but I don't think the healthy human mind is usually wired with that much discretion.
Posted by: Petey | Aug 25, 2006 11:08:40 AM
This gap has cemented the total domination of the conservative block by the Republicans, and allowed them to win two Presidential elections in a row we should have won.
Again, some of us are not Southern conservatives, Petey, and don't want to be in a party that is led by them. Not getting those votes is better for us, even if it means we don't win. And it's not clear that it means we won't win, DLC talking points notwithstanding.
Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Aug 25, 2006 11:12:58 AM
"Again, some of us are not Southern conservatives, Petey, and don't want to be in a party that is led by them. Not getting those votes is better for us, even if it means we don't win."
It's not merely a matter of Southern conservatives. It's also the conservatives that make Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Minnesota too close for comfort.
It's about eliminating roadblocks to Dems improving their share of the rural vote nationwide, which will help at the Senate level in the plains states, and in Congressional districts nationwide.
And, yes, it's also about some states on the periphery of the South, like Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Florida.
It's about a huge chuck of voters, many of whom would like to vote Democratic, but have been held firmly in the GOP tent over the past decade, due to sexual morality issues.
"Not getting those votes is better for us, even if it means we don't win."
But when you say things like this, SCMT, I find the need to refer you to a guide on how we determine who gets to administer the awesome power of the US federal government for the good or ill of hundreds of millions of human beings in this country alone, and probably many more human beings overseas.
Posted by: Petey | Aug 25, 2006 11:27:26 AM
Petey, you know how Republicans point out that the hardcore segregationists were Democrats? They're right. You know how we point out that those same people and their natural heirs became Republicans? We're right. Specific political goods, like attitudes toward desegregation, don't have to track consistently with parties. And it's OK to want specific or even fairly general political goods rather than a simple win for your team. It was good that we were able to offer up a non-segregation option, even if it cost us clear dominance in the long run.
And it's nice to be able to offer people a non-crazy, non-Southern conservative option. I think there's a majority to be built on that basis. You don't. This is roughly the basis for many of our disagreements, from Dean to the DLC to TNR. We just want different ends, ultimately.
Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Aug 25, 2006 11:39:17 AM
Petey, are you suggesting that adults are wired to be respond positively in a sexual way to a child of 6 years of age that has been sexualized by her parents?
And if so, would you argue that is just something we should accept as normal?
Posted by: epackard | Aug 25, 2006 11:40:16 AM
"And it's OK to want specific or even fairly general political goods rather than a simple win for your team."
Given the current US political situation, no, I don't think it's OK to want something other than a win for the Democratic team.
"And it's nice to be able to offer people a non-crazy, non-Southern conservative option. I think there's a majority to be built on that basis."
I didn't bring up region here, SCMT. I just advised that the Dems would be wise to nominate someone with a First Family that stylistically looks 'traditional' and 'square'. You went from those stylistic aspects of a candidate's nuclear family to region? I think I vaguely follow how you got there, but you're talking about something very different than what I'm talking about.
Russ Feingold would be a lousy nominee for Dems under my criteria were he from Wisconsin, Mississippi, Utah, or Guam. The fact that the middle of the electorate is looking for a reassuring stylistic model for their aspirational royal family has close to do zero to do with region.
Posted by: Petey | Aug 25, 2006 11:49:03 AM
"Petey, are you suggesting that adults are wired to be respond positively in a sexual way to a child of 6 years of age that has been sexualized by her parents?"
I'm suggesting that the hyper-sexualization of JonBennet is hard to miss for many viewers. And I am in sympathy with Kincaid's position that if you notice mild stirrings in yourself from being fooled by the makeup, dress, and dance into seeing her partially as sexual, recoiling in abject terror is probably not the healthiest response.
"And if so, would you argue that is just something we should accept as normal?"
I think we should accept some mild reaction of the viewer as normal. OTOH, I think we should view JonBennet's parents as unbelievable creepy and tacky.
Posted by: Petey | Aug 25, 2006 11:57:08 AM
Given the current US political situation, no, I don't think it's OK to want something other than a win for the Democratic team.
As I said above, this is precisely the point that explains the various disagreements we have. The basic criticism of the DLC is that it sees power as its own end, while many Dems see power as a means to specific ends, whether towards universal healthcare or as, in my case, a bullwark protecting certain political goods that are a lot of what makes (in my mind) America special. For example, I don't think it was worth supporting the Iraq war to get a win, and I don't think it's worth supporting a war with Iran to get a win. I happen to also think it's possible to create a winning coalition without doing those two things. My willingness to believe that is almost certainly influenced by my specific policy committments, as your unwillingness to believe that is influenced by the absence of those policy committments.
Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Aug 25, 2006 12:14:32 PM
Petey, it's just my opinion, but if an adult is unable to distinguish his response to an adult's makeup, dress and dance from his response to a 6 year old's makeup, dress and dance, then I have concern for that adult.
Perhaps Lee Siegel is right when he asks: "Is it any wonder that conservatives run the country when liberals respond like growling Pavlovian dogs to any suggestion that people cannot indulge their every sexual appetite?"
The fact people may not recoil in terror at an adult sexual reponse to a very young child's dress and demeanor is very much a sign that part of our culture is deteriorating and becoming dystopian.
Posted by: epackard | Aug 25, 2006 12:32:13 PM
epackard, the key word is indulge. Kincaid argues that we can't help but think something, where we is some unstated part of society as a whole. You and Siegel convert this into arguing that we can't help but act on those thoughts. Sins of the mind aren't sins at all, they are instinctual reactions that really fall outside our control. People are judged on actions, and Kincaid doesn't seem to disagree on this point.
You can try to argue that some people are so pure of mind that they never have an improper thought, in any way, about anything. I think these poeple are kidding themselves.
Posted by: jfaberuiuc | Aug 25, 2006 1:09:44 PM
jfaberuiuc, I did not argue that people necessarily act on the thoughts they think or the reaction they have to something. I would argue though that, in my opinion, the vast majority of adults do not have sexual responses, instinctual or otherwise, to little girls or boys that are sexualized.
You say that "sins of the mind aren't sins at all, they are instinctual reactions that really fall outside our control" ... You seem to suggest that humans may have a innate sexual desire for pre-pubescent children. I don't buy that.
It's one thing to notice the dress and demeanor of some child like JonBenet. It's another to have a sexual response to it.
Further, I didn't argue that anyone is so pure of mind they never have an improper thought. But I truly doubt that any large percentage of the adult population has improper thoughts like sexual responses to 6 year old girls.
It does not bode well for our society if we are convinced that sexual responses to young children are okay just as long as we do not act on them.
Posted by: epackard | Aug 25, 2006 1:54:45 PM
it's just my opinion, but if an adult is unable to distinguish his response to an adult's makeup, dress and dance from his response to a 6 year old's makeup, dress and dance, then I have concern for that adult.
There's a distinction to be made between the response of the "lizard brain" or whatever you want to call it, that responds to those cues on a subconscious level, and the response of the thinking part of the brain that puts together those cues with the knowledge that she's 6 years old and reaches an appropriate conclusion. Both are "responses", both are basically sane and healthy, but I'm glad we don't have one without the other.
Posted by: Violet Slandre | Aug 25, 2006 2:48:14 PM
Violet Slandre, I'm afraid I do not buy the idea that our natural inclination (i.e., the response of the "lizard brain" as you put it) is to respond to the dress and demeanor of a sexualized 6 year old child the same way we would respond to the dress and demanor of a sexualized 21 year old -- and that only through cognition do we understand that the 6 year old is not a sexual object.
Your argument might actually apply to a 13 or 14 year old girl who has advanced development of her primary sexual characteristics or who dresses or acts in a particular way.
Posted by: epackard | Aug 25, 2006 3:31:30 PM
Siegal is just plain... GROSS.
Posted by: cowboyneok | Aug 25, 2006 4:16:54 PM
Wonder OLSEN Twin Powers - ACTIVATE!
PINK PANTHERS BLOG!
Posted by: cowboyneok | Aug 25, 2006 4:17:40 PM
We're lining up at the trough to be fed.
Um, we are? Personally, I don't give a fuck.
Posted by: Adrock | Aug 25, 2006 5:19:15 PM
"[Kincaid] He apparently has never tried to imagine what kind of society would let the murder of a little girl pass without massive amounts of attention and anxiety."
Abeer al-Janabi ring a bell?
Posted by: dk | Aug 25, 2006 5:21:55 PM
> It does not bode well for our society if we are convinced that sexual responses
> to young children are okay just as long as we do not act on them.
And thus we advance one more step on the road to 'everyone must think alike'. (I.e. 'there are some things it's not okay to think.') How do you determine what is okay to think and what isn't, just out of curiosity? Is that just left to, y'know, communal societal norms? If the whacko Christian contingent really does become the majority in the country, are you okay with having them decide that it's not okay to think thoughts about evolution? And no, this isn't a spurious argument: either people should be free to *think* anything they like, no matter what it is, no matter how vile we think it is, or they shouldn't, and there needs to be someone in charge of deciding what it's okay for them to think. It really is that stark.
Admittedly, you're in good company when you say this. As I recall, in Pennsylvania there was a gentleman (and I use the term admittedly loosely) who bought a bunch of videos of kids playing in bathing suits. He was arrested and sentenced to jail for some absurdly long time, because although the videos were in no way illegal (or even sexual, I believe) in and of themselves, the jury decided that they acted as child pornography to him and thus he should be sentenced as if he had pictures of a real, actual child who was actually being subjected to some horrible sexual activity. That this video was just as bad as actual child pornography, because he thought of it sexually.
That somehow pictures of kids playing on a beach are just as bad as pictures wherein an actual child was actually harmed in the making of this film. And all for the sake of mind control.
I didn't have any words at the time, and I still don't.
-fred
Posted by: Fred Fnord | Aug 25, 2006 5:34:56 PM
I'm afraid I do not buy the idea that our natural inclination (i.e., the response of the "lizard brain" as you put it) is to respond to the dress and demeanor of a sexualized 6 year old child the same way we would respond to the dress and demanor of a sexualized 21 year old
At some level, the lizard brain's sole input data amounts to "i see smooth skin, red lips, pink cheeks", and the lizard brain has no way of knowing that those visual cues are attached to a 6 year old or a 21 year old. I think you might be surprised to find out how long it takes for the secondary data to get processed by the rest of the brain.
None of which is to excuse pedophilia. But it does excuse a double-take.
Posted by: Violet Slandre | Aug 25, 2006 6:00:09 PM
Um, Petey, have you never seen Woody Allen's Manhattan, in which a 40-something, already decrepit Allen conducts an affair with 17-year-old Mariel Hemingway? Of course in 1979 that scenario was considered less alarming than it would be today, but at the same time, the widespread sexualization of children, which is now commonplace but sits alongside a hyperhysteria about spectacular sexual crimes against children, hadn't saturated the culture either. When Robert DeNiro's character Travis Bickel flips out in response to the exploitation of child prostitute Jodie Foster in 1976's Taxi Driver, it's within the context of someone who's on the margins of society addressing a very marginal situation, and when Brooke Shields appeared in Pretty Baby two years later, in 1978, it caused quite a scandal. On the one hand, the former movie wouldn't cause an eyeblink, while a the plot of the latter might just appear on HBO, MTV or some other channel. And don't even get started on the rampant ephebophilia in so much *gay* American porn.... Why don't Americans want to grow up and be adults any more?
Posted by: phlox | Aug 25, 2006 6:13:49 PM
epackard -
you seem to be implying that you see nothing at all wrong in dressing lil' kids up in the way the Ramsey kid was dressed. After all, you seem to be saying that an image of a 6 year old cannot (should not) generate an erotic response except in a few individuals who are mentally unbalanced.
Now, I see 6 year old beauty pageant contestants, and 12 year old make-up models, and 15 year-olds spreadeagled on sofas in billboard jean commercials, and I ask myself, why does this mildly upset me? What is the source of my feeling that this is 'wrong'? I see pictures of babies and boobies and kids in hats all the time in 'Mothering' magazine and don't have the same reaction.
It's because I recognize the images as erotic appeals, and know rationally that manipulating a child in that way skews that child's (and other children's) psychological development by distorting their self image. It shifts the locus of control from internal (How do I perceive me?) to external (How do others perceive me?). In other words, producing and displaying this kind of image mildly damages children.
But how do I recognize the eroticism? To mangle Justice Potter Stewart, I can't define 'erotic' but I know it when I see it.
All folk are saying is that they recognize their own reaction to the erotic appeal that has been deliberately introduced into the image. And when we deny that we have such an erotic reaction, we create a psychological dissonance. We deny to ourselves that the image is 'sexy' while at the same time responding (slightly). (By the way - we respond in this way because the erotic is not in the picture - it's in us, the viewers.)
Kincaid's major point is that this psychological dissonance resolves itself in socially non-optimal ways. We emphasize stranger danger and the death of pretty white children, while we de-emphasize poverty and far more common and damaging practices inflicted on children.
I'm still puzzled about what Seigel is saying, though. 'Cept about Uma. She's hawt.
Posted by: pgb | Aug 25, 2006 6:31:21 PM
In context, the quote from Kincaid's earlier Slate article did not refer to hypersexualized children like JonBenet; to the contrary, he was discussing the problem of photo labs turning in adults who had taken snapshots of their children naked.
The most arresting point in the piece, IMHO, comes early, but it relates directly to the quote being discussed:
"Since it is what is outside the frame (the intention of the photographer, the reaction of the viewer) that counts legally, we are actually encouraged to fantasize an action in order to determine whether or not this is child pornography."
Thought provoking.
Posted by: Swift Loris | Aug 25, 2006 7:25:59 PM
pgb, you said that I "seem to be implying that you see nothing at all wrong in dressing lil' kids up in the way the Ramsey kid was dressed. After all, you seem to be saying that an image of a 6 year old cannot (should not) generate an erotic response except in a few individuals who are mentally unbalanced.
I'm not implying that at all. In fact, I find it pretty strange a parent would dress their child that way or have a child that age act out sexualized behavior.
Additionally, though, I do not think it's normal for an adult to have a sexual response to a child like JonBenet and, unlike Kincaid and some others commenting here, I do not think that such a response is a norm in society.
You also said that "all folk are saying is that they recognize their own reaction to the erotic appeal that has been deliberately introduced into the image."
I'm unsure why you, Kincaid and others presume that everyone has this sexual response to images such as those of JonBenet. But, if you each have that kind of response, I hope you each will keep it to yourself rather than act upon it so that no child is harmed.
Posted by: epackard | Aug 25, 2006 10:43:17 PM
Fred, you make the comment, in response to my own, that my kind of thought leads us to "advance one more step on the road to 'everyone must think alike'. (I.e. 'there are some things it's not okay to think.')"
I will not apologize for thinking it's unnatural and even offensive for an adult to think of a pre-pubescent child in sexual terms.
People are free to think what they will. But they must also accept that in society, there can be positive and negative consquences for one's thoughts. Some people will agree with you. Others won't.
Having freedom of thought though doesn't necessarily give positive value to your thoughts. And our nation is not strengthened when people try to one-up each other on how tolerant we can be.
You then ask, "How do you determine what is okay to think and what isn't, just out of curiosity? Is that just left to, y'know, communal societal norms?"
I determine what is okay or not okay by my own value system. And in terms of this topic, I dare say that more people in society would agree with me than with those who think that sexualizing someone like JonBenet is okay.
Additionally, though, your suggestion is on the mark. Societies do develop a general consensus on norms. And as societies change, that consensus may change too.
Maybe one day, pedophilia will become accepted in society as normal and not deviant. That would be a sad day though, to me.
You continue by asking, "If the whacko Christian contingent really does become the majority in the country, are you okay with having them decide that it's not okay to think thoughts about evolution? And no, this isn't a spurious argument: either people should be free to *think* anything they like, no matter what it is, no matter how vile we think it is, or they shouldn't, and there needs to be someone in charge of deciding what it's okay for them to think.
I do not think anything I wrote supports the idea of thought police. Just because I think some thoughts are deviant or abnormal does not mean I think government should be able to punish someone for thinking them.
Freedom of thought (or even freedom more broadly) does not mean we necessarily must live in a society built on moral relativism. In fact, freedom presupposes that we each make judgements for ourselves based on our own set of values.
In a democratic nation though, people who are like-minded about values may band together to enforce those values so people do not harm one another. So, while government shouldn't be able to punish you for your thoughts, it most certainly will punish you for behaviors that have been deemed harmful when perpetrated against a fellow citizen.
You seek to paint me as someone who is close-minded and intolerant. I imagine, though, that you hold a number of beliefs and thoughts in your head that could get you labelled the same. In fact, you have already pointed out one. You apparently are intolerant of people who think it is wrong to view a 6 year old girl as a sex object. And let's not miss your thoughts on "whacko" Christians.
You also seem to be intolerant of people who do not accept evolution as "proven" rather than theory. Whether their disregard for evolution is based on religious beliefs, a lack of understanding of the science on which evolution is founded, or a disbelief that we can know with 100% certainty what happened millions of years ago -- these individuals have a right to their own beliefs just as you do.
I would much rather be in the company of someone who doubts evolution than someone who thinks that a 6 year old is fair game for an adult's sexual interests.
Posted by: epackard | Aug 25, 2006 11:10:08 PM
epackard,
your posts on this whole topic have been disingenous in the extreme. People have wrestled honestly and, especially in the case of pbg intelligently, with the issue of image and intention in the case of jonbenet or any other sexualized child. Your own insistence that you can tell apriori that an image is wrong/sexual and that you can tell that without being aroused/affected by the image is absurd. You can't. I, for example, find young girls dressed inappropriately to be very disturbing--I have two young daughters. I find that dressing them as brides, which many people do at halloween, is as disturbing as dressing them as little cowgirls with makeup would be, as jonbenet was. Which image is "eroticized?" which image do you think is "wrong" and why? To you, the "bride" image may be, in some sense, a virginal image and therefore "ok" for you and the child, ok for your response. To me it may not be. Which of us is sick? which of us is eroticizing the child? you can't say definitively because you can't even determine a prior what an erotic response is. as pbg pointed out much of what happens happens between the viewer and the image--its not inherent in the image. A six year old teetering on her mommy's heels? sexy or childish? Its not in the image.
And as for your absurd remark "I would much rather be in the company of someone who doubts evolution than someone who thinks that a six year old is fair game for an adult's sexual interests"--those things are not at all in opposition as a cursory glance at the arrest records of prominent christian right wing nuts would reveal. The molestation and sexual abuse of young children, girls and boys, has notoriously happened at the hands of anti evolutionists and hysterical christian bigots. Just google the phrase christian leader and child sex abuse and see what comes up--you'll get a lot of self righteous moralizing and more than a few criminal records.
aimai
Posted by: aimai | Aug 25, 2006 11:44:10 PM
aimai, your take on my posts is disingeneous.
For those who need to "wrestle[] honestly" with whether they have a sexual response to images of a pre-pubescent child, I feel for them and hope they are able to work that out.
I never said that I "can tell apriori that an image is wrong/sexual." I agree with Kincaid's point in his article about photo labs. A photo of a nude of a child is not necessarily pornography. My point is that I do not have sexual responses to images of children that have been sexualized. I'm not sure what's disingenuous about that, unless you are agree with Kincaid that everyone has a sexual response to children.
Additionally, I never said that I am not "affected" by images of sexualized children. In fact, I am. I am just not aroused by them. I don't know if some of you feel it's some sort badge of sophistication to be aroused by young children, but I don't share that response and am surprised that so many of you act as if it's perfectly normal to have it.
I'm not sure what's so absurd about my remark "I would much rather be in the company of someone who doubts evolution than someone who thinks that a six year old is fair game for an adult's sexual interests"
I never said those two categories were mutually exclusive. You talk about disingeneous. It's disingeneous to me that you wish to make that point. You speak so scornfully of Christians who molest children (and yes, they should be scorned) while at the same time apparently joining the ranks of people here who seem to think having a sexual response to a 6 year old girl is normal and acceptable.
Posted by: epackard | Aug 26, 2006 7:39:56 AM
SCMT,
"The basic criticism of the DLC ... I don't think it's worth supporting a war with Iran to get a win."
Are you sniffing airplane glue again? Are you eating a diet lacking vitamin B? Are you chemically imbalanced and off your meds? Are you writing parody?
I write a post about how the Democratic Party has an electoral problem with how it is on perceived on sexual morality, and how that problem can be partially solved by the entirely stylistic move of pushing forward a front person with a 'traditional' or 'square' family, and you respond by accusing me of:
- Wanting a Southern dominated Democratic Party
- Wanting a war with Iran
- Pushing a DLC agneda
Leave aside for a moment the issue that my post ended with a plea not to nominate the favored DLC candidate. I'm mainly just curious how you think your points connect up with the stylistic aspects of a candidate's family?
Posted by: Petey | Aug 26, 2006 9:33:25 AM
one thing i just don't understand about siegel -- why the hell did he write that thing about his desire for una thurman for publication? to me, that borders on narcissism, if it doesn't cross the line into it.
call me prudish. i don't care. if you're going to write something like that, write it and then put it away with no chance of publication until, say, 50 years after the deaths of all involved. then it won't be so embarassing.
Posted by: harry near indy | Aug 26, 2006 9:53:02 AM
epackard -
What do you find 'wrong' with the way the Ramsey child was 'sexualized'? How do you recognize that she was 'sexualized'?
Sexuality and eroticism are basic impulses. One does not need to become 'aroused' in a clinical sense to recognize their presence. But if one is unaffected (unaroused in any way) by something, what on earth makes it sexual or erotic?
If the bulk of the population was unaffected by Calvin Klein's sexually exploitative images of kids in jeans, what was the problem with them?
I'm prepared to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you're being honest with yourself. In which case, rest assured, advertizers don't spend millions of dollars exploiting ephebophilia because it appeals to a tiny, disfunctional segment of the population.
Posted by: pgb | Aug 26, 2006 12:02:16 PM
Heh, love the catch. Now obviously going for a 16-year-old is a sign of being fucked up but not of being a pedophile. But by Siegal's own measure, his obsession with Kincaid makes him a de facto pedophile, if writing about pedophila=being one.
Posted by: Amanda Marcotte | Aug 26, 2006 5:05:53 PM
Siegal may not be a pedophile, but I will point this out---pedophiles often concoct fantasies that their victims wanted it and stick to those fantasies despite all evidence to the contrary. Siegel's erroneous insistence that Thurman was trying to seduce him is quite evocative of a pedophile who blames the victim.
Posted by: Amanda Marcotte | Aug 26, 2006 5:10:18 PM
pgb,
You answered your own question, and then you contradicted yourself to try to take issue with my comments.
Posted by: epackard | Aug 26, 2006 10:02:18 PM
Wow.
Posted by: Bruce | Aug 27, 2006 1:16:30 PM
Regarding "old enough" and age differences:
Legal age of consent to sexual behavior falls under state law and varies from state to state, as others have noted. This article (try using Google cache if it doesn't load) says that Thurman was living in New York at the age of 16, and became a legally emancipated minor (a legal adult by court order) apparently at or around that age. According to this chart, the age of consent in New York is now 17; I don't know what it was then. So Siegel's fantasy, if acted on, may or may not have been legal depending on timing and possibly location.
But, legal deadlines aside, what do we really think about such things?
I suspect many of us were sexually active, to one degree or another, before the age of 18. I suspect most of those who were don't regret it. I suspect most of us would like to see teens develop a healthy appreciation of their sexuality, at their own pace and time, and are comfortable with the idea of pre-18 sex under those circumstances.
If, then, it's not wrong for teens to have sex, if they can and do make reasonable and personal decisions to do so, is it wrong for others to have (consensual) sex with them? The answer may well be "yes", but it's not automatically yes, if we think that teens can and should be sexual if they choose. We can note the real problems that exist across a significant age barrier, especially with young persons (even sexually autonomous young persons): the artifical influence older persons have on younger ones; the common context of an influential relationship (teacher, priest, etc.) between adults and teens; the likelihood of a manipulative or selfish desire on the older person's part, and so on. Relationships arising from such circumstances are suspect, and those circumstances are common in adult/teen pairings. So we should look askance at sexual relationships in such contexts. But . . . we don't want to do so by condemning the teens for their sexuality, or consigning them all to forced celibacy, Ringy Thingies, and Incest Balls.
It seems at least possible that some adult/mature teen relationships could arise from non-objectionable circumstances. (As a teen boy, I fervently believed so!) And if we think teens have an appropriately sexual nature, then it's strange to think adults can't or won't notice or respond to it, even if they are bound by propriety not to act on that recognition. Note, too, that Thurman was made a legal adult, presumably, because she was capable of making adult decisions on adult matters (it was done for the sake of her acting career, but there still had to be a justification for it). So in at least some circumstances, I think, if we respect (some, appropriately mature) teens as decision-makers about their own sexuality, we have to respect their decision to accept an older partner. And if teens have a kind of sexuality that can (again, in particular circumstances) emerge with an older partner, we can't condemn older persons merely for desiring what we agree is appropriately desirable. If Thurman could - legally and psychologically - consent in a real way to sex with Siegel, is it impossible that Siegel could consent to sex with her? If not, what does it mean to say we recognize Thurman's adulthood and sexual autonomy? (We recognize it only if she doesn't use it?) We can and must hold adults to strict accountability for taking advantage of younger partners, but in the way we also hold adults responsible for taking advantage of adult partners (by lying to them, getting them drunk, being emotionally manipulative, abusing a work, or therapeutic, or priestly relationship, etc.). That can't mean it's always wrong to enter into relationships that aren't abusive - or "consent" would have no meaning in the first place.
I'm not offering a brief for adult/teen sex in general, or defending Siegel (who was boorish, at the very least, toward both Thurman and Kincaid). But I want us to be able to condemn bad behavior in respect of teen sexuality without condemning teen sexuality, which would seem to include the logical possibility of teen sex that involves older partners.
Posted by: Kevin T. Keith | Aug 28, 2006 12:44:27 PM
Heh, you folks need to go see Little Miss Sunshine, if you haven't already done so.
Posted by: Paul-Andre Panon | Aug 29, 2006 2:49:17 AM
Before me is a cup to sip from - for I am thirsty, oh so thirsty.
Not to drink, but to hide my thinking, while I’m sinking a moral shrinking.
Because I'm being human, even if I can - I can stop myself from breathing - if only for a span. My heartbeats growing faster, as I turn away - I have no guilty conscience and that's how it’s going to stay - Mad World.
Posted by: worriedman | Sep 1, 2006 11:35:47 PM
Oh come on, being attracted to teenagers isn't pedophilia.
Posted by: quafggg | Sep 2, 2006 4:01:10 AM
By the way, I think Kink-aide does have pedophilic feelings if he thinks the Jon Bene Ramsey stuff is "sexual". A little kid in a dress and makeup is no more "Sexual" or "Titilating" then a dog in a dress and make up (which would turn *some* people on as well!)
JBR is Creepy, but that creepiness comes from the uncanny valley, not anything sexual. These kids look like weird, inhuman robots, that's what makes them disturbing.
Posted by: quafggg | Sep 2, 2006 4:04:29 AM
Taylor said: "And someone tell Herr Siegel that it's automata, not automatons."
That is patently false. Automata and Automatons both have the same meaning - look it up. Before a person pronounces that he or she knows it all, perhaps that person should consult some references like, I don't know, a dictionary. Don't correct grammar if you don't know what you are talking about. That is just a pet peeve of mine.
And 16 isn't "technically" jail bait. It is either jail bait in states with age of consent laws higher than 16, or it is not. Adding "technically" to a phrase attempts to say "yes, but....," but in this case there is no but. One doesn't "technically" run a stop sign. Either you do, or you don't. People over use terms like "technically" or "literally" because they have heard others use it and hope to color their language. An example of this is saying that 16 is jailbait, "especially for someone 10 years her senior." 1, 10, 50 years her senior - it’s all the same, NOT especially for some arbitrary group. Loose language can cloud meaning.
Without actually understanding when to properly use those words, one not only makes themself look bad, one also taints the vocabulary of whoever listens to him or her and does not know any better. So do not profess to correct grammar when you have poor grammar yourself.
Posted by: James | Sep 2, 2006 10:47:01 AM
Lee Siegel is right.
Posted by: Hattie | Sep 3, 2006 2:27:43 AM
As far as the age question. My great grandmother was married at fifteen which then (c. 1880) was not unusual. Looking back, both she and her husband, my great grandfather, were working teachers at the time, so at least there was parity in that respect. In 1913, the historian Will Durant fell in love with and married his fifteen-year old pupil Chaya (who as Ariel Durant also became his equal lifetime partner). Durant resigned his post as a teacher in order to marry her.
I think the repellent thing in the Uma Thurman affair (over and above the disrespectful language used in describing her beauty) is the boasting. Siegel is so dazzled by Thurman's later celebrity that he has had the flawed judgement to blare her indiscretion (if that is what it was) to the world, thinking that it would make people dazzled, rather than disgusted, by him. (Incidentally, Thurman's mother, also very beautiful, when extremely young had been very famously seduced by a much older Timothy Leary before she married Uma's father -- so conceivably the knowledge of this event could have been a disturbing issue with the young Miss Thurman.) Whatever she may or may not have said, done, or written, it deserved confidentiality.
Another instance of loutish behavior comes to mind: At the time of her kidnapping, Patty Hearst's boyfriend (also her former teacher) also behaved with caddish indiscretion to the press.
Posted by: Harold | Sep 5, 2006 3:32:06 PM
It strikes me as very ungentlemanly for Mr. Siegel to blare Ms. Thurman's teenage indiscretion (or attempted indiscretion, since nothing was ever consummated) to the world. Doesn't she deserve privacy?
Posted by: James Kabala | Sep 6, 2006 4:17:19 PM
well siegel's obsession with the regret of not fucking 16-year old Uma is a bit wierd, however him wanting to boink the 16 year old is not. Age of consent is for the safety of the minors, however i'v seen 14-year olds who look more developed than 18 year olds. Maybe they should base the age of consent on biological sexual maturity age, and if that doesnt exist they sould invent it!!
Posted by: Babyface | Sep 17, 2006 12:20:30 PM
Umm i am sixteeen and in no F*cking way do i think ANY sixteen year old is developed/"mature" a enough to make a decision to have sex. i kinda understand what these people are talking about, whats wrong with this sexualization, growen adults shrug their shoulders, go Eh its normal for fiveteen year olds to have sex! cant suppress it. my aunts/grandma were having babies at 14 but i thought we had somehow progressed? if there full of enough persons to be sexual caricatures then why cant siegel a sexual been notice a respond to a 16 yr old? your wrong. agreed though that a six year old "sex up" I.e makeup, come hither glances, adult-like is the same thing as a dog in makeup, but it dosen't make it right! unhealthy for a society & child.
Posted by: mell | Mar 24, 2007 3:53:44 PM
