Вредно для несовершеннолетних

Terrorists have replaced pedophiles in our nightmares as the in­scrutable, obsessive, and endlessly proliferating cultists of perverse aggression. But the political psychology surrounding the two phe­nomena is similar. Repression cannot operate without fear. If there isn’t enough danger, it must be exaggerated or invented. Yellow alert to red alert; predator to sexually violent predator—the boogeyman can be as scary as anyone wants him to be. As Harmful to Minors shows, how he becomes scary in the public imagination is a complex process, engaging the sometimes-antagonistic efforts of authoritari­ans and well-meaning healers, political ideologues and media sensa­tionalists.

Sexual peril is real, just as terrorism is real. But the kind of “pro­tection” that is mobilized by fear, the kind that purports to keep the young safe by locking them in their rooms, ignorant and scared to death—policies like abstinence-only education—will not protect them. Like the U.S.A. PATRIOT Act, such policies offer only illuso­ry security, because they do nothing to stop the wellsprings of dan­ger. Ironically or intentionally, those wellsprings are the very igno­rance and terror we’re instilling in kids, whereas the means of their self-defense are knowledge and courage, as well as rights and re­spect, political and sexual citizenship.

Such “security” imperils something else we cannot afford to de­stroy: freedom. For in sex or in democracy, freedom is not a luxury; it is constitutive. We need to balance respect for young people’s sexual freedom with adults’ obligation to protect them. In danger­ous times, we must discern which dangers threaten us for real, in the form of a virus, a rapist, or a flaming jetliner, and which are of our own making.

¹ As I write, the Kansas State Senate has voted to cut $3 million from the state university budget unless the school ceases to purchase “obscene” materials used in a popular sexuality education class, such as slides of naked five- and ten-year-old girls.

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