So, are we pedophiles?
By: C.C.
When building a brick wall, we always seem to wall in a couple of girls. It is said that boys who come in touch with us can be found in plastic bags floating in the river a while later. Babies, so I hear, in our eyes exist to be raped and ripped up, and to serve as footballs in our type of soccer match.
These bizarre assertions, among countless others, can be concluded from the people's talk. From the impressive factual knowledge of the high-principled vice squad. I'm waiting for the gentlemen of the law to come and tear down the walls at my place (I'm sure they have my address), so as to remove numerous dead children. We're all part of this murdering and raping mob - we: anyone who wishes to call himself a pedophile. Giving a definition of that term isn't up to us; applying the law of the jungle, we find that it's up to the 'normal' part of humanity. The 'pedophile' has been treated to a poisonous injection and isn't able to bite out the poison. The more he convulses and the louder he shouts: "Help, I'm a ped!" the quicker it spreads. Scattering about the term 'pedophile' in order to gain a little sympathy quite obviously has a contrary effect.
Dr. Edward Brongersma, one of our scarce Christ-like figures, didn't tactlessly call his magnum opus Pedophilia: the Facts, but Loving Boys. People understand what loving boys means - it can never be linked to sick masonry. Pedophilia (pais + philem) is Greek, and we know the expression: it's Greek to the people. Once upon a time the word meant love for children, but everything points out that the majority of humanity explains it quite the opposite way these days: hating children, having gruesome murderous compulsions. 'Pedophiles' themselves have become the poison.
Of course this is nothing new. But child lovers have to take advantage of their knowledge of the enemy. The term pedophilia; that's where the shoe pinches. So is it wise to use it time and again when we want to announce our preference?
When I was still living with my parents, my mother secretly read my writings and concluded from them that I was 'a pedophile'. Panic - clamor - horrible - always a vice - period. I took up arms. Had I never supported the term, but declared to be a homosexual - well now. This word isn't wholly unblemished either, but it can at least be mentioned in most places. And isn't it logical for a fourteen-year-old homo to love children of the same sex around that age? The question whether I also felt attracted to, say, six-year-olds wouldn't have occurred to my parents so quickly. Of course, loving a six-year-old isn't approved of even when you're merely fourteen, but I might not have kicked up a din if I'd avoided the word pedophilia. We say pedophilia, the people hear Dutroux (or any notorious child murderer in your country).
Terms are extremely easy. The scum we're reported to be should be very conscious of pigeonholing and labeling. Perhaps we could take advantage of the people's urge to label things that frighten them. The plebs so love to have the word pedophilia, they're hooked to it, they talk about nothing else - let's give it to them. Let's sacrifice the poisoned term pedophilia instead of handing people the possibility to push us into the narrowest of holes. He who calls himself a pedophile is instantly blackened. He who relates that he's had an affair with a boy or a girl where there was quite an age difference... well, we're all peculiar people. All so-called heterosexuals are homosexual to a certain extent, and many adult men tend to glimpse at minor girls. Find out what you have in common with the person you want to explain yourself to. Let Marc Dutroux and his fellow-murderers be pedophiles.
An acquaintance of mine, and others before him, handed me this notion. We shouldn't be mounting the barricades with cries that have been totally twisted by the people. It would be best if each child lover applied a different term for himself, or rather no term at all, no matter how proud he is of his preference. We must spread confusion among those who believe they can destroy us. My friend, a clergyman, never called himself a pedophile at the time of his coming out. He wouldn't have survived it. No: he said he was a homosexual, which is correct. He never stressed his preference for boys around the -age of seventeen by applying an unpopular term for it.
OK magazine of the MARTIJN Association inevitably has an enormous stigma. The police are controlling its contents in ways that bear a resemblance to the methods of the Nazi regime. In a way, the periodical is fly paper that the law system can easily pick us flies off. So had the magazine better not exist?
It's a good thing that on the cover it plainly says: magazine for adult-child-relationships. Yet there seems to be a tendency among the contributors to call themselves pedophiles without giving it thought I have done so too. But whatever we write and whatever names we give to ourselves, the police will never have difficulty seeing this magazine as a bulwark for rapists. Little can be done about that.
OK magazine is the only remaining legal Dutch-language magazine about child love. Fewer and fewer book-shops still dare to sell it. The Amsterdam gay & lesbian book-shop Vrolijk is now fencing it from its shelves as well. The magazine is one of the few items still obtainable that are of special interest to child lovers. What good are Playboy's aesthetics to us? Where else do we still find stories and articles pro child sexuality and contra age limits? (On the Internet.) At any rate OK's existence is comforting.
Furthermore, MARTIJN's goal still is to achieve the acceptance of relations between adults and children. These days there aren't many traces of acceptance and understanding, but the idea on itself should be stimulating. It is better to form a front than for all of us to become cave dwellers. But then a front without the customary slogans. A front that can't be easily labeled. A front that pleads with expertise, scatters the opponents, and distances itself from a terminology that has become extremely disputable and makes it easy for the outside world to generalize. We're not one big sluggish creature called The Pedophile; we're all different people!
To stress just that, I've presented an opinion that I'm sure won't be shared by all of my fellow child lovers.
source: 'So, Are We Pedophiles?' by C.C.; Translation of: Zijn wij dan pedofielen? - Jan '99; OK Magazine, no. 67; March 1999