Child Sexual Abuse

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Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) is a modern social and legal term used to distinguish minor-adult sex as a separate category with unique and innate harmful properties. Those effected by CSA are in turn said to be CSA survivors.

There is no broadly accepted age limit for the minor, nor an accepted age gap for instances of adolescent-child abuse, meaning that catch-alls such as COCSA are often used for the relatively vast number of sexual contacts involving minors but no adults.

CSA as a construct, was popularized by American moral entrepreneurs, sexual abuse/trauma researchers and feminist theorists of the late 1970s and early 80s. This influence, has since percolated thru western law, medicine and other sciences such as psychology, into popular culture.

While modern CSA theory is arguably rooted in feminist critiques of power-difference, it also owes a lot to long-held conceptions of childhood as a unique and special period of life, and moral/religious views on sexuality as a topic which can be analyzed and governed through the lens of "valid" and "invalid" subtypes. Much of the early amplification of CSA-adjacent discourse can be ascribed to religious and moral entrepreneurs such as Judianne Densen-Gerber and Lawrence Padzer.

MAPs as a group have embraced different approaches towards engaging with and addressing the CSA survivor discourse:

1. Radical deconstruction (usually radical pro-c). The proponent will attempt to argue that the construct of CSA lacks empirical validity as per Rind et al. The risk here is that the proponent can be attacked as denying the lived experience of abuse survivors, since abuse experiences are incredibly diverse. This approach is addressed in later sections of this article.
2. Critical/pragmatic constructivism (neutral/reformist/pro-choice). The proponent here acknowledges the lived experience of abuse survivors and does not challenge the basis of its reality. Instead, they raise contrary examples such as Accounts and Testimonies, using the empirical literature to argue that these are too common to ignore. A key argument here is that the singular CSA discourse robs youth of their agency and forces individuals who might otherwise not feel they suffered abuse to internalise victimhood. It also risks trivialising the most severe experiences of abuse, by confusing them with "consensual crimes" and "inappropriate relationships". When there is only a singular abuse narrative, this allows victims to suffer in silence, as abusers can hide their power by taking advantage of other adults' biases (i.e. all abuse is "rapey", all victims are passive and female, queer victims are complicit, the perpetrator must fit a certain mould).
3. Harm Reduction/Preventionism (neutral-c and anti-contact). The harm reduction approach is often utilized in combination with the above approach, particularly among neutral and anti-c MAPs who otherwise support the rights of youth. CSA is acknowledged as lived experience, and some individuals, i.e preventionists such as Virtuous Pedophiles emphasize that MAPs are natural partners in preventing CSA. Central to this argument is that fighting stigma and poor mental health helps prevent abuse. More "neutral" approaches center the experience of the MAP, and their right to live in truth and dignity, regardless of what values and causes they support (it can be pointed out that many abusers are situational offenders and not MAPs).

Sociological Background

See: Moral panic.

Since CSA became a popular idea and identity, a generalized moral panic has ensued, peaking with a variety of more specific mass hysterias (such as Satanic Ritual Abuse in the 80s/90s), and continuity themes (Institutional Child Sexual Abuse in the 00s and 10s). This moral panic is one of three distinguishable panics concerning adult-youth sexual contacts since the industrial revolution, and we are at the beginning of a fourth. As applied to Minor Attracted People (particularly pedophiles), the idea of CSA represents a key development in the late pathologization and early problematization stages of the problem-cycle:

1. Identification (turn of 19th/20th Century)
2. Pathologization (20th Century, inc. postwar era)
3. Problematization (explosion of discourses and taxonomies such as CSA, late 70s+)
4. Normalization (starting early 21st Century). Normalization of pedophilia describes a fear that society will one day come to accept MAPs, and is a predominantly 21st Century phenomenon.

Charting the cycles of panic

In the Victorian Era and following decades, panic set in around the purity of young girls, with crackdowns on prostitution. While not highly influential at the time, the sciences started the process of pathologizing and categorizing deviant forms of sexuality. Then between the 30s and 50s, the state focused on the sexual psychopath and stepped up its legal efforts against homosexuals and gender nonconformists. From the mid-70s, children took center stage - in a phase of problematization that remains partly in effect. From around 2020, a fourth phase began, concerning the normalization of the "Minor Attracted Person" and his purported modes of deviance.

In focus: Radical criticism of CSA's empirical validity

A large, but not yet critical number of experts now hold that the concept of CSA is empirically invalid and pseudoscientific. This view is also unsurprisingly held by a number of Minor Attracted People and is also sometimes expressed in a round-about way by laypersons - particularly those who lived long before contemporary CSA panics. This section argues from such a position, and highlights evidence to support those contentions.

Orthodoxy

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 contradicting 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 sexual interactions believed to be consensual and non-traumatic when they took place. 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, only to incur the full wrath of a shameful society expressing its insecurity by casting 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

CSA is used to describe nearly all sexual activity between adults and considerably younger minors; that is to say it has "universality" in both the subject matter it describes and the characteristics it ascribes to said subject matter. According to some American psychiatrists, even activities such as being naked in the presence of a child (deemed normative in some parts of Europe and the non-western world) 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 age-disparate 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 the acts are held to be ethically indistinguishable from one another - and thus the concept of all such activity as rape or assault becomes an axiom. This blurring of language has also infected the media, professional bodies and NGOs.

As a result, any distinctions in the usage of the term (historically more clearly demarcated) have in the last few decades become increasingly blurred. For example, when reading a generic local news report, it is no longer possible to be sure what kind of "abusive" acts actually took place - leaving the reader to speculate as to the horrors described as sexual assault, or indeed rape. With the victim-oriented feminist and lesbian push to blur the lines between violent rape, "date rape", "statutory rape" and even regretted encounters during the eighties and following decades, many people now sadly use terms such as "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.

Can CSA be deemed theoretically valid?

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. Within the moderate and harm-reduction approaches to CSA already outlined, lived experience is given precedence, and thus CSA is considered theoretically valid on that basis.

However, as contended in the section on empirical validity, stigma/iatrogenesis is the source of all harms exceeding intrinsic physical and psychological traumas, meaning the "CSA category" might be seen as a completely unwarranted "nativization" of cultural baggage.

As repeatedly identified by Bruce Rind, erotophobia and antisexualism (i.e. moral values) are assimilated into the scientific and public discourse, resulting in a series of absurd pseudo-objective ethical circulars.

Among the most provocative contentions of radical pro-c's, is that the above 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.

Assuming the above, it might be contended that this unfortunate circumstance is best described as sexual abuse of a child, by way of moral conflicts capitalized upon by special-interest lobbies and elite interests, at the expense of a person's capacity to feel erotic pleasure. At the same time, we are left guessing who the abuser might be, and whether all the parties (the adult partner, the children's parents, law enforcement, therapists) should be described as abusers, since they all had some knowledge of what they were doing and the risks it entailed. One conclusion to this dilemma might be to acknowledge that social values and institutions are also culpable, as these events do not take place in a vacuum.

Experts debunking CSA

As mentioned, Bruce Rind is perhaps the one researcher who has statistically challenged the concept of CSA with a thorough, controlled analysis of its assumed characteristics and their relationships with one another. His work can be said to have credibility, while also carrying a burden of notoriety and stigma, hence why it is important to highlight other researchers, including those who have supported him in the following sections.

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.
• Minor-adult sex

External links

• CSA - Wikipedia presents a victimological perspective.
• John Henley in The Guardian - Paedophilia: bringing dark desires to light - Distinguishes Pedophilia from CSA and challenges the outcomes of CSA.