With support from the Anchorage ACLU, the Anchorage Public Library and University of Alaska are celebrating “Banned Books Week” by showing a film adaptation of a “very controversial book.”
The book and film are so controversial that the social media event posted by the sponsors cannot bring itself to mention the name of the book or film on their social media event posting.
The promoters just say it’s about a middle-age man who becomes sexually involved with a young girl.
OK, we get that it’s Lolita, so why not just come clean? In the book, she’s 12. In the film, the producers attempt to make it marginally more pallatable by making her 14. In either, she’s not of the age of consent.
Perhaps the Anchorage Public Library is keeping it on the down low because even with today’s increasingly permissive standards, pedophilia is still very unlawful.
Spoiler alert: In Kubrick’s adaptation of the book Lolita, Dolores Haze (Lolita) is a prepubescent sexualized femme fatale, which makes it seem quite OK that Humbert Humbert finds her irresistible.
By any other name, this is rape of a child. And a bit of incest, since the man is her stepfather.
Anchorage Public Libraries, a space to bring books to enlighten the public, is evidently all-in on this salacious, soft porn film.
Related: Pedophilia is being made normal.
Pedophilia is the sexual attraction to children, not the sexual abuse of a child. As such, it is not “still very unlawful,” in fact, it is perfectly legal to have pedophilia. Pedophilia is a minor factor in roughly one-third of sexual abusers, and most (90-96%) with pedophilia do not abuse children. Conflating these two terms makes sexual abuse seem like the result of a disorder, and pedophilia seem like a choice where neither are the case.
Perhaps Ms. Downing needs to look into the facts about pedophilia (https://www.csaprimaryprevention.org/about-pedophilia.html) and child sexual abuse (https://www.csaprimaryprevention.org/about-child-sexual-abuse.html).
TNF 13
Advocate for the Primary Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse
TNF, You apparently don’t live in Alaska. And you definitely don’t live in a lawless Bush village in a place like the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. In those villages child sexual abuse is the norm, where 90% of pedophiliacs cross the line to sexual abusers. For Anchorage to show films that glamorize pedophilia is an insensitive and clueless urban insult to the thousands of rural child abuse victims in Alaska. Though insulting and tasteless, this cluelessness towards the rest of Alaska is not surprising given the pathetic mayor, Assembly and municipal administration that is running Anchorage. They insulate themselves from Alaska, and reality.
Mr. Hendrix,
I wonder if you have actually read any research or spoken to any of your corrections leaders to ask how many abusers have pedophilia- my guess is they will say around a third, because that is what reality indicates. How do you know how many people who live in “a lawless bush village” even have pedophilia? Statistics say less than 5% of the male population has pedophilia. Try this: https://psmag.com/facing-disturbing-truths-about-pedophilia-could-help-us-keep-kids-safer-edc3379c43ae#.xx4cbawne
Pedophilia is a sexual attraction- full stop. It is not the abuse of a child, nor does it predict who will abuse a child. You cannot glamorize pedophilia any more than you can glamorize heterosexuality or homosexuality. You can obviously glamorize sexual abuse, heterosexual sex, and homosexual sex, but all three of those are different from attraction.
If we hope to prevent sexual abuse – which seems like something you would agree with – then we must pay attention to the facts of how it happens, why, and what we can do to stop it. That means paying attention to the realities around pedophilia and how it differs from child rape. If you are new to the subject, I recommend this article: http://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/douglas-todd-pedophilia-and-how-what-we-dont-know-about-it-further-hurts-us
TNF 13
Advocate for the Primary Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse
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