Erotic Innocence: The Culture of Child Molesting

Rating:
Summary: Denial vs Genetic Understanding
Review: What the author approaches but avoids (for practical reasons in this age) is that our fascination with the subject may come from our pious denial that sexual awareness and fulfillment, like every other aspect of adulthood, begins in childhood. Rather, our fascination comes from the unresolved conflict of that denial with our "genetic" understanding (further back than Gothic) that sexually-expressed friendships (not rape, abduction or molestation) between child and mentor (usually of the same sex), far from being one-sided and abusive, helped children (before "the child" was invented) to thrive. He paints as an "old story" the survival value in attracting a loving mentor, which, by the way, children do with more than "cuteness" and "vacancy" (for an adult to write on), but also with sharp wits and surprisingly profound wisdom--attributes that a caring elder would want to help to survive. Kincaid is right when he says that no one has asked the children. We are afraid of the answer. But we needn't worry. We won't hear it. We've already scared them (in some cases, literally) to death.