Letters to the Editor
AJCalhoun
Published Letters: 945 Editor's Choice: 126
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Note to Lemur Master
[Read the article: They called me a child pornographer]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Nice try at protecting thought. Seriously. That was a nice gesture on your part. Now you need to educate yourself a little bit about your highly varied clientele. The reason I say this is that the guy who buys European nudist videos in order to become aroused (we're assuming, now) by the sight of naked children without "victimizing" anyone is, first of all, victimizing those children by proxy, but that's beside the point and also within the First Amendment purview you seek to defend.
But wait! There's more! And how do you not know this? These guys (and they are 95 per cent guys - men - males) do not get aroused in a vacuum. They are either firing up or they will progress, in time, to approaching and, if successful, to accosting and, if successful, to abusing - or worse - children like the ones in the videos. It's not some paranoid fantasy. This is fact. They are progressive. Some outraged soul earlier suggested law enforcement "vet out suspicious behavior" before it gets out of control, but then your scenario would have come true, the thought police would have arrived, and that fine line would have been crossed (and it routinely is in certain areas anyway, but that's a whole nother can of worms). You CAN, however, take note of these guys, as you already have, and let your conscience be your guide. There are, indeed, victimless crimes, but there are also crimes just waiting to be committed. You can't do much else, but you can watch, take notes, and when the police come around with a picture of the German nudist video enthusiast because he or someone like him has been reported to have groped or assaulted a child, you'll not only be able to verify he comes into your store, you can also feel really good about having helped him get himself fired up.
Sorry man - reality sucks.
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One More Time re: progressive behavior in pedophiles
[Read the article: They called me a child pornographer]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Dear Lemur Master: I hate to make this short, but the Lunesta is kicking in, so I'm gonna reduce it to the essential part of your rebuttal to my remarks (and I do understand and even sympathize with your position - at least up to a point, which is coming up here in a sec..).
You said:
"Come to think of it, I'm happy to admit that I'll masturbate to images of beautiful women. Women who I'm confident that I'll never sleep with. By your logic, at some point I'll have to fullfill that fantasy. I'll rape some beautiful woman I guess."
Yeah, me too. Masturbate to images of beautiful women, I mean. Yep. And have for 48 years without ever having attacked one. Of course, rape is a very different behavior from that of child molestation. This is what I've tried to point out; the "fact" (based on unfortunate personal experience, interaction with law enforcement, my work in the EMS and healthcare field and the marathon debriefing sessions with my wife, a social worker specializing in child sexual abuse) is a well-established one: that people (oh hell, men) who express a singular and prurient interest in images of children almost without exception either will progress to actual accosting and sexual abuse (or worse) or already have. Certainly an argument could be made, hypothetical by necessity, that your customer is one of those extremely rare people who is either rather unique or has broken new ground in the world of pedophiles. But the overwhelming preponderance of experience and training (I have to be trained in this myself in order to satisfy that mandated reporting of suspected abuse) and my wife's shared training and experience, as well as unfortunately necessary discussions with police specializing in this area (due to something that happened involving one of my children - a truly bizarre incident I won't go into here) all serve to support the "fact" of progressive behavior among this subset of "fetishists." There is no parallel between men who like women and occasionally jerk off to their fantasy girl and guys who feel a wholly unnatural and, in my thinking irrational interest in young children. You see, the "logic" you cite isn't there to follow. I wish it were. I wish there were some logical path to follow in order to somehow understand the mind of a pedophile. It's not there. It is a discontinuity which enjoys no earthly connection with normal, hetero or homosexual fantasy. It is something else entirely. And it damages everyone who comes into contact with it in one way or another. You may choose to set it aside by attempting to apply logic to something that is inexplicable among normally socialized human beings, but those dots are never going to connect.
That's the price of my experience, my learning, and my daily exposure to the business of understanding something that cannot fully be understood. Nothing personal, and no attempt to convert you. Just a discussion about something that's frankly awfully strange. And not nearly as short as I had intended. My apologies for the load of words.
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To Anyonymous
[Read the article: They called me a child pornographer]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If I didn't listen to my wife's talking about her work chances are she wouldn't listen to me talking about mine. But of course, I married her in order to hear this bullshit. I "admitted" I'm married to a woman who lives largely to protect children from sexual predators. I must be one sick somebody. Get the net. Round up everyone married to a social worker. What the fuck?
Anon., there's really no art to being an asshole. And yet you make it look so...so...artful.
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For Millionth Monkey
[Read the article: They called me a child pornographer]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Actually I've been pissed most of my life because my father did take such pictures of me, and they really do make me uncomfortable. That makes me some sort of pervert in reverse, right?
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Dear Meg
[Read the article: They called me a child pornographer]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'll make a call in the morning. Maybe I can get her fired by early afternoon and locked up before the sun goes down.