Out of the closet - Touching young girls
By: Norbert de Jonge
If we were able to decide who we fall in love with, then it would all be much easier, but also much less magical.
When I was twenty years old, I fell in love with Sara, a ten year old girl. I had never been in love before, thus it was a special enriching experience. I constantly thought of her, wanted to be with her as much as possible and her happiness became of essential importance to my own happiness. I enjoyed music even more than usual. I even started writing poems, which I had never expected of myself. Already at the age of twelve, I decided to accept my sexual and emotional interest in young girls, only to subsequently suppress and ignore these as tactically as possible. The latter is after all what is to be expected from a good citizen. I tried to do the same with my feelings for Sara, but in order to provide enough counterbalance to my feelings of love for her, I would have had to cultivate hatred against her. I felt I would have to destroy all good inside of myself and I therefore decided to stop this useless fight. It was time to give shape to my feelings for young girls the best way possible.
It is very painful for me to hear in the media about pedophile rapists, who have forced themselves upon children by means of coercion and predominance. To me it was clear that something like that could not result from feelings of love, such as I had for young girls. I lack malice. However, I may have no bad intentions, but I still have these unusual feelings. Could I be mentally disturbed or am I merely different than most people? In order to answer that question it is of high importance to know why I feel mostly attracted to young girls and especially why I wish to touch young girls. I'm not the only one who is curious to know the answer to that question, but probably also a lot of people who cannot imagine that someone could have that kind of feelings. So my feelings brought about a definite opportunity, which I just had to seize. I could write an article about what attracts me to young girls and where I personally think my feelings for them come from. Therefore, with this article I hope to give insight into feelings which most people will never experience.
When I was nine years old I tried out under the shower a jerk-off motion, which I had seen a classmate make that day. At first I wondered how that could work, which such a slack willie, but the answer came quickly when it became harder. I continued and got an orgasm. It was without ejaculation, but the feeling was very satisfactory. As from that moment I masturbated regularly for the pleasant feeling of it and to provide for my need to release sexual tension. During the last years of elementary school I got sexually excited about everything and everybody, including my teachers and family members. Everything was erotically charged and I fantasized about all kinds of sexual situations with others, from cuddling to oral sex. It would then be an adult who initiated the sexual contact and we would enthusiastically enjoy it together. My body longed badly for sex and concentrating was often difficult if I was not sexually satisfied. My erotical feelings were much stronger and more chaotic that period than nowadays. I was fed up of still being so young and wanted to pull just anyone from the street for sexual contact.
I was in fact looking for a way to share my sexuality with someone and get confirmation for my feelings. I wanted to have a direct experience of the lust of an older person, so as to see and experience for myself how they too enjoy these feelings. I would have been proud and happy if I could have generated sexual longing, if my small body could have awakened vehement passion in a big human being. Then I would have let myself be caressed nicely. But although sex appeared to be so cool, everybody was secretive about it and nobody gave me any signs of being involved with it. I once even stood naked in front of a window, in search for responses around the subject. Maybe I could jolt people awake this way and they would start talking openly about it. But nothing changed and I slowly adapted myself. Apparently, children can't get any sex, so I decided to wait until I was older and to keep silent about the subject henceforth.
At kindergarten I was already totally fed up with school. I had enough boyfriends and girlfriends there, but I felt imprisoned in a rigid system, in which there was no room for discussion; the adults hardly listened to me and companionship with them thus turned out to be impossible. All the time it was about fulfilling an assigned task duly within a group. Why we learned things and how they related to one another was never a matter of discussion. There was no room for entering into debate and philosophizing about personal values and insights. We learned how to solve all kinds of puzzles and smalltalk was not a problem, but the importance of integrity and nuances was never talked about. This system does not acknowledge children's uniqueness and competence. The standard curriculum and the grade system stimulate competition and put a brake on emotional development.
My - for that matter kind and involved - parents also exclusively rewarded socially desirable behavior. With them too there was little room for discussion, perhaps because they are both teachers. Especially for my mother, behavior in accordance with socially applying norms and values was of the utmost importance. She did her very best there for herself and she saw it as her task to get others, especially her son, to do so as well. Perhaps partially so as to prove to be a good parent. I totally disliked such a behavior-oriented education, which I knew about from school. I constantly pointed out to her the relativity of things and subsequently felt not taken seriously when it turned out, just like with others in school, dialogue was impossible with her. Her lack of flexibility came across as unsympathetic to me, but criticism thereupon or onset to discussion about it was incomprehensible to her, because she just did her best to do everything the way it should be. But that was exactly the problem.
Waiting until I got older, as with sex, as far as these experiences with school and my parents were concerned was not an option. I was constantly being confronted with them. Therefore I kept resisting even though my criticism was experienced as inappropriate.
Ever since my twelfth year, I have felt mainly attracted to young girls. They always make the best out of it, see the relativity of things, are flexible and have few prejudices. What makes them attractive to me is their vitality, inquisitiveness, spontaneity, idealism, sincerity, enthusiasm, friendliness, rich fantasy world, solidarity and authenticity. Emotionally, I thus do not associate child nature with immaturity, inexperience, ignorance and more of these 'non-characteristics', but with positive characteristics which adults have generally lost. With their relatively big white eyes and primal-feminine body language it takes little effort for young girls to make me lose my head.
Most adult women on the other hand come across to me as minimally authentic. They have adjusted themselves to the common concept of adulthood, which leaves less room for directness, spontaneity and open-heartedness. As a result of social constructions and behavioral codes many women have become prisoners of their image, which they need in order to feel comfortable. An image which possibly originates from comparing and imitating a particular type of woman from the commercials around them. The Western woman has become more independent and stronger because of her emotional self-control, but as a result, in my experience, regrettably also much less charming.
Children are also sexual beings by nature. Self-exploration and masturbation of children is completely normal. They usually do not do this with the conscious goal of orgasm, but they notice that touching, caressing and rubbing their genitals can bring a pleasant feeling. I know that as a child I was very consciously involved with sex, but most people seem to remember little of their sexual quest. Maybe they have repressed this? Maybe this has to do with self-awareness, after which self-remembrance just really starts? Or maybe it's because this kind of feelings become so intense during puberty that all before that seems to have represented nothing? In any case, people think sex does not fit with children. That apparently has to do with how one sees sex. In my opinion sex is something beautiful, a source of joy, strength and inspiration, an expression of love and a pleasant liberation of tension and thus it actually fits children well.
In my opinion, children's emotional wealth is being underestimated and often not taken seriously. Being in love for example is dismissed as puppy love, but not taking children seriously applies just as much to other feelings children have. For instance, many people are surprised that children can be heavily depressed at a very young age and can have suicidal tendencies. I am enormously annoyed by adults who think they're getting better contact with children if they express themselves in an infantile manner.
As a child I was looking for an adult to share my sexuality with. An adult as a companion, who would also understand my resistance to the current educational system and my skeptical, critical attitude towards the behavior people expected of me; an adult who attaches importance to enjoying instead of striving. I think I have become such an adult myself. If I want to touch a girl it has little to do with satisfaction of a physical need. It is not an uncontrollable urge, but a natural expression of the love I feel for her. I think physical intimacy can be pleasant for her, because she can experience my feelings of love, warmth and affection extra strongly because of it. With physical contact I do not think of complete sexual intercourse, but of thousands of forms of playful eroticism, like the mutual enjoyment of being close to each other, cuddling, caressing, horse playing, tickling, et cetera. She could receive sincere and honorable love for a period of time and my positive appreciation of her body can contribute to a healthy emotional and sexual development.
Physical contact can convince children that they are capable of inspiring love. It also shows expressively the fundamental equivalence of child and adult. The child experiences that breaking the usual interpersonal distances can be pleasant; it is interesting to have contact with someone outside the family who is older, but does not have the same authority as the parents. I, initially a stranger, can give girls a sense of well-being and a feeling of security, give them friendship and with my knowledge, support. It would give them a chance of learning to appreciate the strangers around them more instead of just being afraid of them.
There is no reason for me to assume the existence of a god, but I do not want to take away anyone's faith which supports them in life or gives them comfort in suffering. I do however find most religions intolerant, because there is just one almighty omniscient moralistic god who has to be worshiped. For too many believers their god is ultimately worth more than the fellow man. Faith urges us to hate the fellow man who does not obey the god in question. It is not strange that certain people start searching for some kind of personification of an almighty omniscient god on earth and then start following someone like Saddam Hussein. But the most dangerous influence of faith is in my opinion the oppression of physical enjoyment. The doctrine often emphasizes a duality between mind and body and thereby still creates fear for (certain forms of) physical enjoyment. There is a vast history of oppression of essential enjoyment because of religious persuasions. Sex and love are being pulled apart: uncontrollability and spontaneity of sexual acts and feelings are considered as a sin and proof of disorder between god and man. Sometimes it is even thought that physical enjoyment would work against mental broadening. All too often physical enjoyment is being ignored or rejected.
People no longer dare touch children. Fear of pedophilia and pedophiles causes people to deny the importance of affectionate relationships in youth, when it's these very relationships which mold peaceful characters later on. A main cause of tending towards violent behavior is lack of sensual enjoyment. The presence of one prevents the presence of the other. During childhood a predisposition to violence or enjoyment is being created. Touch, affection and sexual freedom is then of the utmost importance so as to combat depression, aggression and drug abuse. But people are mainly busy protecting children's 'innocence'. One of the consequences of that is, in my opinion, that fathers barely dare cuddle their children nowadays and that almost no man chooses to teach at elementary school anymore. What children do get as to male role models are the television heroes, who mainly get what they want through brute force and acts of violence.
Unreasonable violence towards 'strangers' by young people is not all that strange. Already as children they were talked into fearing strangers and they got no chance whatsoever to receive love from them. Chances are big that young people get overwhelmed by fear of failure in a performance society like ours. If the only accepted appreciation from strangers is based on your achievements, who will you then take out your frustrations on when the moment arrives that you cannot keep up with things?
Children should be protected against fear of sex, because that prevents them from learning to see sex as an expression of love. Young people's first sexual experiences are all to often an attempt to prove their own maturity instead of lovingly sharing affection and pleasure. This is because as children they were never shown in practice that sex can be connected to passion, loving care and respect. It is not the too premature arousal of sexual (or mathematical, arithmetical, linguistical, sportive, musical, et cetera) stimuli and desires that has a curbing effect on the mental and emotional development of the child, but the suppression of it. Just like for example playing soccer, sexual behavior is something that has to be taught. Not by children among each other, because that results mainly in a cultivation of each other, but by adults. Of course, adults would always misuse their greater physical and mental power. And children would not be able or daring to give signs of disapproval or agreement on whichever form of sexual experimentation or after that at least withdraw from such a relationship. Politics therefore chooses to forbid all sexual contacts with children under a certain age. For the sake of convenience.
I also enjoy touching young girls because I believe and feel it can be good for them. That I experience cuddling them as pleasant may perhaps be logical, because if I only did it because it can be good for them, little of it would come across. I feel mainly attracted to young girls. I think just like homosexuals, I have a predisposition for certain feelings and those circumstances and experiences which I have had have stimulated and intensified them. Partially my genes are behind it and partially a process of socialization. That I now, in my twentyfifth year, experience certain things differently from most people at that age, does not immediately make me mentally unstable. Just because I so consciously give shape to my feelings, I have total control over them and my preference does not result in any form of compulsive acts.
If feel not just attracted to young girls, but also to women with certain youthful characteristics, so luckily there are many things possible for me even in current society. My contacts with adults are completely normal and I do not lack adult friends. What I hope is that people will not hate and prosecute me because of what I'm like, but look at what I do. That this publication for example is not held against me, but that one can appreciate my honesty.
Text as pdf-file: Touching young girls
Text as pdf-file (in Chinese): Touching young girls
source: 'Out of the Closet #1: Touching Young Girls' by Norbert de Jonge; This is the English translation of "Jonge meisjes aanraken"; OK Magazine, no. 87; October 2003