aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Pornography: The Internet changes everything
This post has been percolating for a while; it’s tricky and not fully formed. My thesis is that while we’re fretting hysterically about predators preying on children online, we’re busy producing a whole new kind of predator via Internet porn.
So how to explain?
I’ve quoted and accepted the statistics I’ve come across that say that most perpetrators of child sexual abuse are known to the victim. But I’ve also taken very seriously the December NYTimes piece that found a boy and his webcam garnered 1,500 - fifteen hundred! - perpetrators. The article makes clear that this individual boy is but one of many, many more.
That I believe. And, significantly, the perpetrator is no longer known to the victim.
The Times article didn’t identify the perpetrators - I expect that will come - but the recent ”To Catch a Predator” Dateline series did.
We find that they are lawyers and rabbis and doctors and teachers and yes, one or two losers and run of the mill sex addicts.
My questions about the methods of that particular program aside, there is clearly a big bad ugly bear of a problem here. And much as we might like to think that these folks are just sick monsters who should be hung, it looks to me like they are your neighbors and mine, or worse, our sons, daughters, sisters, brothers, friends and co-workers. People we know and like. And it’s my supposition that the roots of this growing problem are in Internet porn.
Now I’ve never been big on porn myself, maybe because I was a gay child so my father’s hidden Playboys found by my brothers did nothing for me. But those magazines had built in limits. There were only so many photos. And if we wanted more, we had to go to a store and get some.
The Internet’s supply is unending. And as one clicks from site to site, fantasy to fantasy, they really may just accidentally run into something of questionable legality. The other element at work here is that, sitting in the privacy of wherever they are, they can kid themselves that they’re really doing no harm; that they are not actually physically doing anything.
I’m lost here, out of my league. I’ll explore it more. I’m not trying to say that these perpetrators are sweet innocents, but it seems to me that if we don’t do something about the cause, our problem will just keep getting bigger.
