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Birkett, Dea, Why little boys are not sex offenders, November 21, 2000, The Guardian

It is not surprising that the report's findings show physical abuse to be seven times more prevalent than sexual abuse. But the coverage has focused almost entirely on the sexual element. This focus on child-on-child sex abuse has arisen from exactly the same professional quarters that introduced us to the atrocities of adult sex offenders.
But you cannot and should not apply the same judgments and analysis to children's behaviour. A seven-year-old showing his willy to a four-year-old is not the same thing as a 40-year-old man flashing at a woman in the park.
Kiss chase in the playground is not a form of indecent assault. It's a game, even if occasionally an unwelcome or unwanted one. The intention, understanding, meaning and effect are entirely different

Blackburn, R.,  "Family Values" do not include good sexual health, from http://www.allaboutsex.org/

You might be thinking that this title sounds a little odd. You might be thinking that your family's values certainly include the health of your children. If you are thinking that something seems "amiss", that there must be a "catch" . Well, I'm sorry to say that there isn't.

Gieles, Frans, 'Harmful to Minors' -  The perils of protecting children from sex
Lecture about the book of Judith Levine, Harmful for Minors, The perils of protecting children from sex, 2001, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis / London  
Rotterdam, The Netherlands, 1 November 2002; Study conference 'Aljen Klamer group', Paul' s Church, "Abuse by definition? Image and reality"

Protecting children from sex is dangerous, says Levine in the subtitle.
To say this is also dangerous in contemporary USA. 

How Our Paranoia About Paedophilia Is Compromising Bonds Of Trust, Obsession that now blights every man's love for a child; 7th December 2000 [Author & source unknown]

I see men holding back when they might have picked a child up, rejecting hugs, making excuses.
I see parents, too, reining their children in, over nannying them, shutting them away. This generation of children will go through their teenage years without their parents bringing out bath-time pictures to embarrass them in front of their girlfriends and boyfriends, they're too scared to take bath-time pictures in case people (the developers? the police?) misconstrue them.
The reason for this caution is our obsession with paedophilia and it is an obsession, make no mistake.
We have no evidence of a higher incidence of paedophilia now than there ever was yet we are more frightened than we have ever been. We 'see' paedophiles at every street corner, by every school gate

Kincaid, James R., Is this child pornography? from Mothers Who Think, Salon.com., January 31, 2000

American photo labs are arresting parents as child pornographers for taking pictures of their kids in the bath

Kirkegaard, Hugh & Northey, Wayne, The Sex Offender as Scapegoat, Vigilante Violence and a Faith Community Response; Emory.edu/College.

In May of 1996, an offender was released from prison to a halfway house in Toronto.  The response of the community to his presence in their midst was anger and hostility, and the insistence that corrections officials remove him. [...]
Viewed through the lens of mimetic theory these realities beg the question, ‘Is it possible that sex offenders have become scapegoats among us?’ [...]
[...] how we view and treat the perpetrators of these crimes in our communities, says something about us and the human condition. [...]
In summary, scapegoats are different, vulnerable, illegitimate, and powerful.
The violence of the scapegoat is reciprocated in a cycle of violence such that the "contagion" emanating from the scapegoating response appears worse than the original "disease". [...]
In a paradoxical way perhaps the sex offender has something to teach us about ourselves, our own sexuality, our understanding of community.

McHarry, Mark, Two reviews - From Alternative Press Review (Arlington, Virginia), Spring 2000, Volume 5, Number 1, pp. 74-75

Pedophiles on Parade; Vol. 1: The Monster in the Media, Vol. 2: The Popular Imagery of Moral Hysteria, David Sonenschein; San Antonio, TX: D. Sonenschein, 1998, Paperback, 562 pages, footnotes, list of works cited, filmography, index, $40 institutions; $36 individuals plus $5 S/H: PO Box 15744, San Antonio, TX 78212
Moral Panic: Changing Concepts of the Child Molester in Modern America, Philip Jenkins; New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998, Hardcover, 302 pages, footnotes, index, $30

There are several books and articles by academicians exposing facets of the current child-sex panic but none that take on the whole smarmy show. These two do.

Randall, John L., From Bad Language to Crooked Thinking - Chapter 1 from Childhood and Sexuality, A Radical Christian Approach, Dorrance Publishing Co. Inc., Pittsburg, Pa., 1992

In the field of human sexuality the words we use reveal very plainly the deep-seated attitudes of our culture.  We live in a society which is strongly negative toward sex. This may seem a surprising comment to some readers, especially since the 1960s and 1970s were supposed to have ushered in a more enlightened age. Yet despite the very real changes which occurred during that period, our underlying attitudes remain basically negative. 

Scott,Sue;  Stevi Jackson & Kathryn Backett-Milburn,  Swings and roundabouts: risk anxiety and the everyday worlds of children, Sociology 11/1998

A number of key antinomies have emerged in relation to children and childhood in late modernity: in particular, contradictions between recognising children's autonomy and the increasing emphasis on child protection; the paradoxical perception of children as both at risk and as a potential threat to other children and to social order. These contradictions may be expressed as tensions between two conceptualisations of children: as active, knowing, autonomous individuals, on the one hand, and as passive, innocent dependants, on the other. Our focus here is on risk and risk anxiety in general and more specifically on the sexualisation of risk in relation to children and the consequences of this for children's daily lives. In a climate of increased public and professional anxiety about the sexual abuse of children, notions of sexual risk increasingly inform political debate, public policy and child education campaigns around safety and danger.

Talbot, Margaret, Against Innocence; The truth about child abuse and the truth about children, in: The New Republic 15 March 1999.

We owe it to our children not to invent them according to our own needs and our own desires. It is our duty to know them as they are, and to nurture and to protect them on the grounds of what they are. Their enchantment is certainly great enough to survive our disenchantment; and our enchantment has anyway not served them very well. They are not pure. They are merely helpless and human.

Walker, Kirsty, A cuddle a day can keep a life of crime at bay - in: Express Newspapers, 18.01.2000.

CHILDREN who are not cuddled when they are young are in danger of turning into violent adults.
New research has shown parents who starve their children of physical affection are damaging them emotionally and physically.
Leading psychologists say they have also found a strong link between high levels of crime and societies where touching is frowned upon.
Fears about claims of sexual abuse and the threat of lawsuits have made parents and teachers increasingly nervous about touching children in public.

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