What's the difference between stoats and goats? I think it's visceral clutch, which is, as you no doubt remember, a gut response to sexual matters that paralyses reasoning. And without reasoning there can be no solutions to problems. Paedophilia is causing widespread visceral clutch just now. A fortnight ago, Gerald Stone, editor in chief of The Bulletin, said this on the ABC: "I realise how horrendous it is when small children are brought into this ... but most of what [Phillip] Bell has been accused of is dealing with teenage kids, many of whom are as randy as goats ... and I don't think you can call a 15 or 16-year-old teenager a child."
According to press reports, Justice James Wood rebuked him sharply, saying "a view was floated ... that at the age of 15 there really isn't too much harm occasioned to children of whatever sex who are unlawful sexual activity at the hands of adults ... because to use his expression they are, quote, 'randy little stoats'."
If the issue was not so serious, I would ignore what could simply be an excited reporter's error. Stone was not attempting to defend paedophiles but to locate child sex abuse in the context of other abusive sexual relationships. They are all regtretable. Nevertheless, adolescent boys are as different from children as goats are from stoats.
The word "child" means different things to different people. To the police, a child is simply someone below the age of consent. To the biologist, a child is below puberty. Psychologists emphasise that children's social maturity does not develop in step with their intellect of physique. Some socially immature boys are ejaculating like goats or stoats at 10, while some intellectually advanced youths are not shaving at 16. The age of consent laws embody an arbitrary legal definition that simply does not meet the complexity of transition between childhood and adulthood - particularly the disjunctions between physical, social and sexual maturity and the relative needs for protection.
One of my loveliest memories as a mother is the vision - caught through a half-open bathroom door - of a beautiful eight-year-old, stark naked and without pubic hair, admiring his erection in a full-length mirror. His penis was trying to kiss his belly button. He was not masturbating - just twisting and turning to get a better view. Another, less happy memory, is a distressed cleaning lady complaining that my 14-year-old had humped his pillow so enthusiastically that the inside cover was rotting.
The development of biological sexuality is almost infinitely slow and it begins early.
Until the end of puberty, boys develop more slowly than girls, yet boys are more interested in sex and in seeking sexual information. Ronald and Juliette Goldman's comprehensive study, "Children's Sexual Thinking", is only one among many that reveal this difference.
The term "paedophilia" creates a fog of anxiety around nightmares of unimaginable cruelty. This is no way to solve the problem. The evidence before the commission illustrates what research into clinical and prison samples alreadt shows; almost no children or adolescents are kidnapped, chained, drugged or coerced. Free to come and go, they return to the paedophile again and again.
What is going on? Some, like the complainants against Phillip Bell, are in it for the lollies, the money and the motorbike rides. Some are lonely, neglected and hungry for attention. Some boys are sexually curious, become more curious with age, and do not need inducement because sex itself is the inducement. They are hot for they know not what. Some regret their involvement later but most don't. Police have enormous difficulty enforcing age of consent laws because so many boys and adolescents doi not feel aggrieved and do not complain. Law enforcement is even more difficult with abuse within the family where children - overwhelmingly girls - have no escape and are too terrified to complain.
If the Wood royal commission is to produce anything useful, it must resist visceral clutch and either concentrate on police corruption or delve for the social, psychological and economic realities in cross-generational sexual contact. Masculine sexuality is a good place to begin. Stone's remark has dispersed a little fog and broadened the discussion.