Only men?
Joseph Maiello,
Director, North American Men's Activist Network (NAMAN)
Re: "Men and Sex With Young Girls" column by Paul Willcocks, Weekend Edition (Victoria News)
Oct 15.
Willcocks uses the following words in describing predominately male behaviour "predatory older male"; "end sexual abuse"; and "sexual predator interested in a relationship with a young girl", without also describing predominately female corresponding behaviour such as:
younger female as financial predator"
"end financial abuse";
and "financial predator interested in a relationship with an older man".
Reality is not only how males interact with females, but also how males and females interact with each other. To not see how both relate is to not see what is actually happening
What I find disturbing about Willcocks' column is the way the author has ignored female participation. This is an example of the way the "Lace Curtain" operates which is to allow only a feminist perspective on gender issues.
The Iron Curtain shut out opinions considered to be a threat to communism. The Lace Curtain shuts out opinions considered to be a threat to feminism. In an Iron Curtain country, Capitalist-bashing was the norm. In a Lace Curtain country, man-bashing is the norm. (Warren Farrell in Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say)
Also, Willcocks excludes (the notions of) women having sex with adolescent boys, al though, ironically, he writes, "apparently, as a society we care much less if girls, not boys, are the sex objects
The blindness goes deeper, as Willcocks not only does not see boys as sex objects, but he does not see them as financial, slave objects either.
Women are not only given less time in prison for bedding an underage boy, but if a convicted rapist becomes pregnant, the rape victim is ordered by the courts to pay child sup port.
Just such a case is that of the rapist Kay Latourneau, a 39-year-old U.S. teacher convicted of the statutory rape of a 13-year-old male student
After raping her victim and giving birth to his child, the victim was required by the courts to pay child support to the rapist.
I wonder what Willcocks' opinion would be of a society where, after a 13-year-old boy is sexually raped, he also gets financially raped?
Male-female relationships are not static, but dynamic. Willcocks' column describes what males do to females as if females were nothing more than machines. Thus, an appropriate title would have been, "Men and Sex with Robots."
Joseph Maiello
Editor's note: The Paul Willcocks column this Letter refers to called for tougher laws and penalties against men who have sex with underage girls