Beatrice Faust

The positive testimony of Beatrice Faust

Beatrice Eileen Faust AO (19 February 1939 – 30 October 2019) was an Australian Feminist author and women's activist, who wrote sympathetically on MAPs and youth sexuality. In 1966 she was president of the Victorian Abortion Law Repeal Association. She was also a co-founder of the Women's Electoral Lobby in 1972 and co-founder of the Victorian Union of Civil Liberties c. 1966.

She attended Melbourne University in the 1950s, where she became acquainted with Germaine Greer and they extended their feminist inclinations through various cogitations, earning her bachelor's degree in English and subsequently her master's degree. Much later in her life, the higher degrees of PhD and LLD were conferred upon her, the former for her 1991 book Apprenticeship in Liberty and the latter for her life's work in general, as a social reformist and researcher.

She was one of the first women to argue for civil liberties, abortion law reform and well-informed sex education for all. In 1966 she co-founded the Victorian Union of Civil Liberties to advocate for civil rights and, in 1972, the Women's Electoral Lobby, to agitate for legislative reform along specifically feminist lines and to give Australian women a greater voice in politics.

In 2001 Faust was awarded the Centenary Medal. In the same year, she was inducted into the Victorian Honour Roll of Women. In 2004 she was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia.

Among her early writings, she contributed to the Australian edition of The Little Red Schoolbook, a book written by two Danish schoolteachers in 1969 which encouraged and instructed young people to question social norms. Translated into many languages in the early 1970s, the book aroused much controversy, moral panic, and even censorship via successful prosecution under the UK's Obscene Publications Act for a British edition.

Beatrice Faust's pro-sex feminist writings on MAPs and youth sexuality

• Faust, B. (1986). 'The paedophiles', in The Betrayal of Youth: Radical Perspectives on Childhood Sexuality, Intergenerational Sex, and the Social Oppression of Children and Young People, Edited by Warren Middleton (CL Publications: London), pp. 107-115.

[Newgon: Faust discusses Glenn Wilson's study of PIE members, "Childlovers" (1983), contrasting it with Paul Gebhard's (1965) book "Sex Offenders," and Paul Wilson's (1981) book on practicing MAP Clarence Osborne's positive intergenerational experiences.

"Orthodoxy teaches that children are, or should be, sexless, equating innocence with ignorance and immaturity. Suffragettes in all countries initiated age of consent and incest laws to protect children from sexual exploitation - which was a real hazard - and premature sexual awakening - which was a Victorian middle-class phobia. [...] Even now, in the 1980s, the problems continue. Despite much extensive research, children are still regarded as sexless" (p. 111).

"In ten detailed biographies [in Wilson & Cox], we find that no less that two hundred children were involved in relationships which lasted from six months to ten years. [...] Ages of consent and indecent assault laws did not prevent these incidents [...] [T]he pedophile is not simply playing a temporary role, for his/her preference is at the core of his/her sexual identity, although he/she can choose whether or not to express this proclivity. Therapy or punishment is useless." (pp. 112-114).

• Faust, B. (1995) "Child sexuality and age of consent laws: The Netherlands model." Australasian Gay and Lesbian Law Journal, 5, pp. 78-85.

Other works of interest:

• Faust, B. (1980). Women, Sex and Pornography (Penguin Books: Melbourne). [Book].
• Faust, B. (1991). Apprenticeship In Liberty (Angus & Robertson: North Ryde NSW). [Book].

External links

• Wikipedia article on Beatrice Faust, with sources used in this article.