[lbo-talk] Irish priests beat, raped children

heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk
Fri May 22 06:08:45 PDT 2009


Lenin writes "The NSPCC's figures suggest that 16% of girls and 7% of boys are sexually abused"

Yes, but they are well-known for setting the definition of abuse very low: including things like being flashed, for example; and including any instance of abuse with systematic abuse.

Also the higher figures of (not necesssarily sexual) abuse include some very subjective findings, like emotional abuse, which might include not being sufficiently supportive and so on. There is a whole industry dedicated to manufacturing scare stories about working class family life.

Judith Reisman is not alone in finding fault in Kinsey's research, and it is an ad homnem argument to say that her views discount her findings. She drew attention to a real problem: around half of Kinsey's random sample were in fact prisoners.

"there is a bigger problem than you are willing to admit, and that this is tied up with a proprietorial conception that still lingers about children (the outraged parents in the UK who demand the right to smack their children is an obvious instance of this)"

This I think is a canard. I know many parents who think that smacking is always wrong, but none that have never smacked. (A mother told me at a birthday party the other day that she did not believe in violence agaist children: it was a shame her son did not share that taboo, since he was battering my daughter at the time.) But most parents I know think that it can be right to smack their children. And these are good people who love their children.

Many representatives of the intrusive state-sector vilify parents' attitudes as "proprietorial". But the facts are that children are - as long as they are not raised by the state - the special responsibility of parents. Those parents are properly resistant to being lectured by outside agencies who take no responsibility for the outcome.



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