

go back to previous page SO MUCH SLIME, SO LITTLE TIME

The Transgression of Pro-Feminism

Part II THE "PROGRESSIVE" CONNECTION TO PEDOPHILIA One of the main strategies of pedophile groups right now is public relations work: they seek legitimacy by association with feminist/pro-feminist/gay and other so-called "progressive" movements. For example: UD's editor, throughout all of his writings, aggressively works (and he has encouraged other pedophiles to do the same) to garner support from leftists, anarchists, and civil libertarian-type groups so as to make room for pedophile ideology and practice in "liberal" constituencies. That's why the UD and NAMBLA ads were placed in Changing Men in the first place. Of course, the pedophile movement's ultimate goal remains to recruit, encourage, and defend men who are considering - or already practicing - pedophilia.

A political platform that advocates fucking children and encourages taking and publishing nude, erotic photographs of children tends to upset people. Hence NAMBLA's and UD's bad standing with the general population . . . except of course, many doggedly "non-judgmental" liberals.

The pages of C-Men are not the only instances where pro-feminist men and pedophiles have found themselves cozily in bed together. In 1989, at a Pittsburgh National Organization for Men Against Sexism conference, I confronted noted pacifist George Lakey - a conference panelist and long-time pro-feminist - about his having represented the liberal First Amendment Fundamentalist position on a previous panel at a NAMBLA conference. Was Lakey used as a front man for men who are hot to fuck children? Was it another 'accidental' lapse that allowed NAMBLA to use Lakey's credentials to give credibility to their exploitation of children? Yeah, let's discuss it.

Some pedophiles, particularly the ones affiliated with UD,also want "feminists" to carry their banner. In order to disguise their specifically male power/sex gambit, they need to identify, trot out, embrace, and, failing that, invent women who are sexually abusive of children. UD has been particularly interested in establishing an alliance with sado-fascist women. They have run ads, and gotten subscribers, in the pseudo-feminist publication On Our Backs.

I have found that working with apathetic, confused, non-discriminating, and even complicit liberals to try to cut off pedophile's access to children, or deal with sexual predators of any kind, does not produce satisfying results. It's just not a priority for them. Hell, even convicted felons despise child abusers (in jail, they call them "short-eyes") and send them a clear message that hitting on kids is just "not OK" - that they are putting their lives on the line by doing so. And child abusers listen. Sometimes they even commit suicide rather than go to jail. (An interesting solution, it that saves the taxpayers a lot of money and saves the children a lot more.) But liberals, hey, they just love everybody (except of course those humorless, strident anti-pornography/sex abuse activists). DON'T FUCK WITH CHILDREN OR WE'LL FUCK WITH YOU As soon as I heard that Changing Men could run an ad from NAMBLA, I knew they would positively welcome a pitch for two new fantasy discussion groups, NAMBLAH and REPKA. Both were lovingly created to expose the double standard of First-Amendment Fundamentalists and "progressive" publications that support the "rights" of pornographers and pedophiles to exploit women and children, and then work to diminish and censor the voice and the rage of survivors of sexual abuse.

Those fantasy groups are: NAMBLAH (New Activist Men Berating Liberal Ass Holes) and REPKA, whose motto is: "Don't fuck with children or we'll fuck with you!" REPKA stands for Regional Pedophile K***er Association. (They wouldn't let me use the K word! Shesh, it's only another four letter word.)

Like NAMBLA members, REPKA members "break no laws" but just want a safe and nurturant place within our communities for discussion about - and intellectual consideration of - "the possible societal benefits of humanely destroying men who rape children."

In the spirit of NAMBLA, REPKA members only discuss their mutual preferences - and all the k***ing would be consensual.

Nothing wrong with the free expression of a vivid imagination, right? Besides, REPKA offers vindication and justice that lots of survivors of childhood sexual abuse can really get off on. "Experiment with a truly 'trangressive' sexual remedial politic," advises a REPKA spokesperson.

And wouldn't you know it? - REPKA's anthem basks in the spirit of free speech and artistic expression. Just as Ice-T's popular "Cop K***er" warns racist cops to lay off, REPKA sends a hippity-hop message to sexist men who target children. So shuck off those censorious attitudes, bro, and that liberal timidity too - and rap along with us:

Hey short-eyes

I'm the kid's big sister

and Mister

You're in for a surprise

We saw ya

And we're comin' for ya

We know where you live -

Kiss your ass good-bye!

REPKA's gonna get ya

Gonna find ya

REPKA's gonna stop ya

No matter what

Your fancy lawyers say

Hey short-eyes

I'm the kid's big brother

Got a problem

Take it up with me

Wanna grab some guy

Try someone bigger

I'm gonna wrap your head

Around this tree! "Paedo Killer" REPKA Raps Ya

David J. Rothbell PRO-FEMINISTS! SHIT OR GET OFF THE POT So what about it, C-Men editors and readers? I'd like to know how adult-on-child sex ads can run in your magazine - not once - but twice, the UD ad passing without one single published critical comment. Are supposedly "enlightened" men such easy marks that they fall for the pedophile's bullshit in their ads about justice, egalitarianism, oppression, and consensuality? Are you unable to figure out what "intergenerational" really means? Are many of you just so apathetic that you can't bring yourself to care much one way or the other? Or does such material actually reflect the type of (to use the trendy obscurantist term) "sexualities" that the average reader adheres to? I doubt it, but I can't be sure based on the evidence at hand.

By giving the girl and boy fuckers some of the credibility that they seek, that they so desperately need, and by helping pedophiles to network and recruit new members, C-Men has contributed irreparably to the problem of child abuse in our culture. Now what are you going to do about it? REMOVING UNCOMMON DESIRES

FROM UNDER THE UMBRELLA OF THE PRO-FEMINIST AGENDA As for Changing Men, I don't want to just hear how sorry its editors are. I want them to show us. They need to begin by undoing some of the damage they have done in the pages of their magazine. Here are my suggestions.

Changing Men needs to sever once and for all public support for pedophiles and their sympathizers by refusing them access to the pages of their magazine. That will be harder than one might think once this article goes into print and all those cards and letters start rolling in about how great adult/child sex is. Brace yourself.

Changing Men editors need to commit to publishing articles about pedophile organizations (men's groups all of them), identifying on an ongoing basis, their leaders and members who have been arrested on rape, child molestation and/or child pornography charges.

Changing Men editors need to adopt and enforce a strict policy prohibiting ads for any businesses that exploit and demean women, and any organizations advocating adult-on-child sex in their magazines, as if it mattered.

Changing Men editors must establish clear editorial guidelines that define the vague "a healthy life-loving non-oppressive masculinity" with terms like "egalitarian" and "non-exploitative." If not, the feminist community should have serious reservation about any alliance with this magazine. Until "non-oppressive" is understood to mean "egalitarian" and "non-exploitative," the notion of "healthy" masculinity" will remain an oxymoron.

Changing Men editors need to commit to publishing articles that expose the exploitation of children and women by sexual predators, and that deal with related issues like incest, issues of power and dominance (as abuse! not as fun and games) in sexual relationships. They need to publish articles by feminists that reveal the child's perspective and not the abusers. They need to set aside, immediately, issues devoted to "Accountability," and "Sex & Sexuality Revisited" (to be edited by people who hold equality in the highest esteem - above orgasm, above masculinity, and even above libertarian arguments).

Here's a few things pro-feminists can do if you want to be allies with women who are working to end sexual exploitation:

Document and publicize the pedophiles' efforts to secure unregulated access to nude photos of children (local and national naturist organizations are an excellent place to start). Expose their strategies to make adult-on-child sex more available. Don't give them credibility. Don't be on their panels. Don't lose any opportunity to write letters and articles to block their attempts to expand their power base. You can help push these guys - NAMBLA, UD, Victims of Child Abuse Laws (VOCAL, a reactionary men's rights lobbying organization) and all the others - back to the criminal subculture from where they came.

If you are a man who has been a victim of childhood sexual abuse, it is a good time to consider coming forward with your personal history and analysis to challenge all the myth-making in progress about man-on-youth sex.

If you have encountered a pedophile in the men's movement (or the nudist/naturist movement), I'd very much like to discuss it with you. Your privacy will be protected.

Taking responsibility for men's violence and sexual abuse, for real pro-feminists, is not optional. Get involved with local and national pro-feminist men's organization working to end men's violence. If there's not one in your area then start one. Act as if women and children's lives mattered.

RAINING ON NAMBLA'S PARADE I got goose bumps when Melissa Farley told me about what she did at the 1992 Gay Pride Parade, attended by some 500,000 spectators, in San Francisco. It's an excellent example of how we can publicly challenge NAMBLA and other organizations of that ilk. Like some of the best actions, this one was a spur-of-the-moment thing. When she got to the parade, she first searched the length of it to find the NAMBLA contingent. She spoke with many of them, one of whom proudly informed her that he had just been released from two years in jail in Thailand on charges of child trafficking. She then marched, much to their dismay, directly behind their group, carrying two signs that read: "Pedophilia NOT!" (the NOT! in multi-colored glitter, of course), and "The Solution to Teenage Homophobia is not Pedophilia."

It was a brave action because she did not know what to expect, NAMBLA having been an established part of the parade for 15 years, with only pockets of resistance so far. She figured she'd be hissed and booed, but instead it was NAMBLA that the crowd berated. After the parade, a television reporter approached her and said NAMBLA had claimed that 80% of the gay and lesbian community supported them. But, after seeing the crowd's positive response to her signs, he said it was obvious there was "very little support for NAMBLA in the gay community in the Bay Area."

"It feels like the tide has turned," Melissa told me. Indeed, there have recently been rip-tide intense letter exchanges in the gay newspapers in San Francisco, with increasing numbers of people calling for the immediate expulsion of NAMBLA from future parades, not only because of their exploitation of children but also because of NAMBLA's opportunistic leeching onto the lesbian and gay community. One letter said: "They must be politically isolated and allowed to twist in the wind of their own hypocritical rhetoric."

Mike Echols, an imposing activist who had infiltrated the San Francisco Chapter of NAMBLA by posing as a rich homosexual pedophile who wanted to give NAMBLA money, set up an exposé with several Bay Area reporters. NAMBLA was barred from holding public meetings at their usual public library location after their meeting was broadcast by KRON television. I'd have given anything to have been there when Echols and reporters pulled out a hidden video camera and NAMBLA members scrambled for cover like cockroaches when the kitchen light goes on.

Several days later Echols dealt NAMBLA another blow during a brief but memorable television interview when it was revealed that a spokesman for NAMBLA, who claimed that none of the groups' members had ever been arrested in San Francisco, had himself been arrested, convicted, and was currently on probation for solicitation of a 9-year-old boy. Subsequently the man was arrested for violating his probation because of information that came to light as a result of Echol's work. Why can't more people take his initiative?

These stories illustrate how much can be accomplished by people who care about stopping sexual exploitation. Both these activists have had a significant impact on reducing NAMBLA's public image, and are role models for true feminist and pro-feminist activists! So you guys want to really transgress? Want to really break some fucking rules? Try bucking hard up against male power and dominance. One way to do that is to challenge, in any way, men's rights to sexual access. Try standing up to men who wish to extend and legitimate male sexual privilege. When you do, it's surprising how fast they begin to show their true colors: you learn a lot. Besides, if you can succeed at grappling just a little bit of that prick entitlement away from them, then you will be making the world a safer place for all living entities.

In the meantime, when - for women - often the mean determine the end, I have adopted this creed: If, in my life, I can make these sexual predators' existences a little bit more pained, fearful, guilt-ridden, costly, and/or paranoid - if I can just manage to be a nuisance to them - if I can prevent even one of them from exerting his power to exploit a child, then my work will not have been in vain.

You see, I became convinced a long time ago, that if we - women and children - are to survive male violence, we must become as strategic, relentless and obstinate as the male sexual predators who are stalking us. Women, as June Jordan has said, must learn to become a menace to their enemies. I am working on it. So are a lot of others. Besides, it's hard to help but notice that many feminists are starting to take seriously the simple fact that wild warriors pumped up on testosterone only seem to respect people they fear. Are we a "civilized" culture, yet?

I hope that these suggestions and my work will encourage and excite those Changing Men readers, and their feminist friends, who want to really do something about the sexual exploitation of children; and I for one don't mean to limit any one's imagination when going after sexual predators. Yeah, yeah, I know: Two wrongs don't make a right. But, like Sister Souljah says, it damn sure makes things even.

I hope that pro-feminist men, like an increasing number of critically thinking and/or politically pressured gays and lesbians, will discover creative ways to rain on NAMBLA's and UD's parade by challenging pedophiles, incest perpetrators, child pornographers and all other sex-as-playful-violation "transgressors", in every community - in every way you can imagine. Nikki Craft has lived a notorious life of outrageous political activism/street theater/civil disobedience. Besides pedophiles and the naturist movement for their alliance with them, she has taken on pornographers, "beauty" pimps and libertarians, and she has a long history of challenging conventional mores. Beside REPKA, her current endeavors include the A.C.L.U. (Always Causing Legal Unrest) and Pushing Buttons, a motherlode of sacrilegious patriarchy-bashing "fantasy". For four years she has edited and published the ICONoclast, a newsletter that exposes pedophiles in the nudist/naturist movement. Feminist scholar Diana Russell has dedicated her latest book Femicide: The Politics of Woman Killing to her among others, as has Andrea Dworkin. go back to main page

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