Child Sexual Abuse

Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) is an empirically invalid and pseudoscientific concept popularized by mainly American victimologists throughout western culture, law and the life sciences. CSA has its roots in the feminist and psychiatric-industrial traumatalogical sexual abuse theorizing of the late 1970s and early 80s, peaking with a variety of moral panics in the 90s, 00s and 10s.

Notwithstanding the lack of scientific support for such a theory, CSA has attained the status of a monolithic belief system, or orthodoxy that may not be challenged, even by personal experiences that contradict its narrative. As well as causing pre and post-conditioned harms via social stigmatization and legal processing, the dangers of CSA as a belief system also extend to unprosecuted relationships held by both partners to be consensual and non-traumatic at the time. Consider for example, a person - male or female, who had a voluntary contact with an older person at the age of 12, and is now an adult. In most western cultures, they are left with two options:

• 1. Stay silent, and assimilate society's shame, as their experiences are deemed to have been invalid.
• 2. Speak out, and incur the full wrath of a shameful society that diverts its insecurity towards trying to cast them as a victim, liar or heretic. All at the risk of incriminating their ex-partner.

Despite a complete lack of proof for a causative chain in the harms supposedly intrinsic to CSA, and evidence of widespread neutral and positive recall of events deemed to be abusive, official bodies and lawmakers continue to irresponsibly perpetuate the associated social stigmas and harms under the proviso of protecting the vulnerable.

Theoretical hubris: "Universality"

CSA is used to describe nearly all sexual activity between adults and considerably younger minors. According to some American psychiatrists, even other activities such as being naked in the presence of a child (deemed normative in some parts of Western Europe) are counted as abusive. CSA is (sometimes) distinguished from rape by its "manipulative" and/or recurring nature. In other words, whilst rape is generally considered to be a violent act of forceful sex, child sexual abuse, when distinguished from rape, is considered to be an ongoing series of unwanted sexual interactions gained through manipulation or grooming - forms of subtle coercion ranging from flattery through emotional blackmail, to bribes. However, most academia and legal systems are prone to describing any sexual activity below a certain age as rape. This tendency is similar to the idea of statutory rape (as applied to older teens), but in this case, there is an axiomatic commitment to the idea that all sexual contact is actual rape. This blurring of language has also infected the media, professional bodies and NGOs.

As a result, any distinctions in the usage of the term (which were historically more clearly demarcated) have in the last few decades become blurred to the point where it is no longer possible to be sure from a news report for example, what kind of "abusive" acts actually took place. With the move during the eighties and following decades, spearheaded by victim's rights groups and select, victim-oriented feminist and lesbian interests, to blur the lines between violent rape, "date rape", "statutory rape", and even regretted encounters, many people now sadly use the terms "child sexual abuse", "child molestation", "pedophilia" and "rape" interchangeably.

Opponents of this blurring of boundaries argue that lumping these categories together undermines severe abuse and punishes misdemeanor/non-abusive acts, thus doing a disservice to parties with a range of experiences, from the positive, thru the forgettable, to the profoundly traumatic. Indeed, despite the actual definition and literal implications of the term "abuse", very rarely is the issue of consent or coercion relevant to the term's modern use. That is to say, given the assumption that no child is capable of consenting to sexual activity, any instance of sex with a child is considered child sexual abuse, regardless whether or not the child consented, desired or even sought the act.

Is there real CSA?

It can not be denied that some seriously harmful acts do involve both coercion and genital contact, so in essence, they are both sexual (in the conventional, erogenous sense) and abusive. However, as already explained, stigma/iatrogenesis is the source of all harms exceeding intrinsic physical and psychological traumas, meaning the "CSA category" is in essence a completely unwarranted "nativization" of cultural baggage. As repeatedly identified by Bruce Rind, erotophobia and antisexualism (morality) is assimilated into the scientific and public discourse, resulting in a series of absurd pseudo-objective ethical circulars. These circular arguments live-real, as a series of self-fulfilling prophecies such as the consenting juvenile (often a female) who goes on to earnestly believe she is a victim of rape, due to misogynistic sex stigma. It is perhaps this, which qualifies as real sexual abuse, since the resulting moral conflicts can be capitalized on by power-hungry elites and special-interest lobbies, at the expense of a person's capacity to feel erotic pleasure.

Debunking CSA as a concept

• Bruce Rind is perhaps the one researcher who has thoroughly debunked the concept of CSA, towards a better categorisation of sexual contacts between minors and adults.

See also

• Research - A portal containing many references on CSA.

  Research: Prevalence of Harm and Negative Outcomes

  Research: Secondary Harm

  Research: Association or Causation

• David Finkelhor - A key proponent of CSA as a concept (and axiom)
• List of obfuscatory terms used by authorities
• Child Pornography - Laws and research on the true nature of Child Pornography are linked.
• Adult-child sex

External Links

• CSA - Wikipedia Presents a victimological perspective.