Elizabeth Kates
Elizabeth J. Kates is a practising Florida Attorney at Law and feminist who uses her website to misrepresent and attack child abuse researchers. Although Kates also holds anti-joint-custody and pro-fatherless views, her opposition to psychiatry distinguishes her from otherwise like-minded feminists.
Arguments
Kates puts forward a simple argument against the body of research demonstrating little or no long term harm arising from child sexual abuse, basing it on an assumption that researchers are attempting to legitimise the sex:
- "If we discovered through "research" that a significant majority of college students who had broken bones in childhood suffered no obvious long-term effects from it, would that then make it okay for adults to sock a kid on occasion and break a few ribs?
- Child abuse does often cause lasting detrimental effects, but that doesn't mean if there aren't (obviously discernable) lasting effects, it wasn't "abuse"!"[1]
She uses her "Liz Library" website to paint researchers including Bruce Rind, Robert Bauserman, Ralph Underwager and Warren Farrell ("Pedophile? Or just the worst kind of two-faced opportunist there is") as advocates of child abuse, often casting doubt upon percieved "agendas". However, Kates rarely attempts to explain how said agendas interfere with the accuracy of research, and completely fails to analyse her own.