Table of Contents

Not all statements and background articles are (still) translated

Essays or Statements        Weblogs

Essays or Statements

#1: Counter Balance ... Why?
Counter Balance is a registered foundation with the aim to share discussion in society, particularly about human relationships, so say the articles of the foundation.
The foundation will give some counter balance to some tendencies in the discussion about human relations.

#3: Littleton: North American Rumble - and How to Avoid It 
On 20 April 1999 two Unites States teenagers, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, shot thirteen fellow students and then themselves at their high school in Littleton, Colorado. It was their aim to kill more people, but that did not happen. There have been more school shootings, a sad list - North American rumble.
Counter Balance has gathered views on this subject. We pose the questions: [....]
Our main source is not what many school principals, police officers or politicians have said about it, but what youngsters themselves have said about this issue.
It's not a dangerous subculture, but the suppression of deviant subcultures, which is the problem.

# 4: Sexual Intolerance 
For centuries, the Netherlands has been regarded as a tolerant country. Dutch and Turkish children are playing together and churches and mosques are peacefully located next to each other. In the city you can see a Chinese, Mexican and Turkish restaurant. Apparently and logically, no taste is the same and anybody should be allowed to follow his predilection. Except ... ... when we are talking about sexuality.
"Faggot" is about the worst example of name calling at the schoolyard. Well, "Pedophile" or "Dutroux" is even a bit worse. We really can't consider this sexual tolerance. 
What are the motives behind this intolerance?

# 5: What's Wrong With Our Children? ... Or With Us?
One has to wonder: what has gone wrong with our children?
Counter Balance likes to rephrase it: what's wrong with the way we deal with our children? What kind of counterweight would be appropriate?
Counter Balance has collected ideas and articles about this.

#6: Time for Boys 
It seems to be wrong with the boys in our society. Girls achieve better at school. Boys have far more behavior and learning problems. Boys seem to be in a permanent crisis. [...]
What's happening? What's wrong? What can we do?
Last years, there is written a lot about this subject. Counter Balance gives its own opinion in this statement and offers a selection from literature.

 

# 7: The Right to Intimacy ... Also for Children? 
Children are in need of intimacy in order to grow in a balanced way - also intimacy with adults, intergenerational intimacy.
Regrettably, nowadays almost nobody dares to offer intimacy, it has become suspect.
Particularly in education and child care, the new rule is better to keep a distance than to be viewed as a pedophile. Children and adults meet each other merely in a functional role, quite seldom as a person. The children miss intimacy.
This is a pity for the children - and bad for society. 

 

# 10: American Ruble … Do We Want Them?  
 “American ruble” is a Dutch expression for situations which should be avoided. We used this expression in Statement # 3 about the shooting teenagers in Littleton. Surely situations to avoid.   
Such situations do not appear out of the blue. In the background is a culture that more and more also appears in The Netherlands. Do we want this?   
We might learn from the North-Americans in some respects, we might avoid other aspects. Concerning things like winning battles and technical performance, they are good. In the area of meaning and human relationships, Europeans are better.  
Three subjects are a great problem for North-Americans: sexuality, children, and the combination of both.   

Statement # 11: Intimacy: danger or opportunity to grow? 
We’ve repeatedly pointed at the importance of intimacy, including intimacy between the young and adult people. The less intimacy, the greater the chance of violence later in life. So we need to have room for intimacy. However, there is a problem.
Nowadays, such intimacy is soon identified with what is called incest or pedophilia. These concepts are directly linked to sexual intimacy, which in turn is usually known as sexual abuse and evokes the notion of permanent damage.
This is a subject for research. We will limit ourselves here to voluntary intimate contact outside the family. 

# 13: The research of the Rind et al. Team
Intimacy between children and adults is important. The more intimacy for the child, the less is the chance for violence later on. Nevertheless, there is a problem.
People name intergenerational intimacy quickly as ‘incest’ or ‘pedopilia’ and think immediately of sexual intimacy. Then, it’s called child sexual abuse and the first notion is that there will always be life long harm.
Research has told that permanent harm is factually quite seldom. Still there is resistance against the very idea of intergenerational intimacy.
In this section, we present the research of Dr Rind and his team. We also will tell about the resistance against his report and the replies to this resistance.
In this introducing statement, we give also a frame of reference: the ideas of Habermas about the discourse. 
Read the Rind et al. Files: Index RBT Files

# 15: Gay Teenage Boys; They don't fit into a feminist's model 
Gay teenage boys definitely exist. Sexual orientation awakens quite early. Boys usually have their first sexual experiences in their young teenage years. How should we think about this? [...]
Nowadays, people usually think about such experiences using a feminist model. [...]
This model is nearly always used when referring to the sexual experiences of youth, including those of gay identified teenage boys who sought their first sexual experiences themselves, in keeping with their sexual orientation. 
This model does not mach the facts. [...] research has been done, at least among boys.

# 17: A Loser Shoots 
At the end of April 2002, a 19-year-old male youth in Erfurt, Germany, shot 17 people and himself. In the US such things happen more frequently. 
The murdered people urge us to ask: is this an incident, or are there trends we should recognize?
We have to speak about the contact between parents, teachers and youths - or the lack of this contact, about large schools and alienation, about violence on TV or in computer games, and about the handling of emotions - or learning how to handle them - especially for boys.
OK - and can we do something meaningful?

#19: Listen to the Children - But Bush stumbles over sexual openness 
A slogan often to be heard in the USA: "Listen to the children!".
Do they do that, there? No. Unless a child might speak, after hours-long interrogation, about sexual abuse. Politicians use the slogan, but do not listen to children. Politicians stumble over sexual openness.
At the UN's Children's top, 400 children from all over the world could speak. 

# 22: “… Hold fast that which is good" - On the new conservatism in the Netherlands 
After the pull to the right in the Netherlands, and already before, people with conservative opinions saw their chance to step forward. Whereas before ‘conservative’ was equal to ‘not good’, now ‘the new conservatism’, or also known as ‘neo-conservatism’, was launched with great enthusiasm. 
What are then the ideas of this new conservatism?
Do they demand any kind of Counter Weight, and if yes, what kind?

# 23: Fundamentalism 
"By grimly campaigning against abortion, the US president Bush has  endangered the health of millions of women, babies and children world-wide. "
(Dutch media, 3 December 2002.)
Besides neo-conservatism we must differentiate between a number of ideologies, their proponents, and the implications thereof. When one is talking about Islam, this does not always happen. 
In the countryside of an Arabic state, there are influences of Islam that take the place of religion, an ancient culture of herder-tribes, and politics of a dictatorial regime which blend naturally with one another. For an analysis one really must differentiate between them. 
The West must look at itself. 

#25: Overprotection and distrust, a vicious circle  
Before and after school hours, it is very busy around the schools: a traffic jam of cars.

"Why do you bring your child to school by car?"

"It is too unsafe with all that traffic."

"You mean: all those cars? That's why you add still one car to that dangerous traffic?"

There are more such vicious circles

 

#26: The ultimate peril: sex 
We spoke about the overprotection of children: too much protection does not protect. By playing outdoors, children learn social abilities and to avoid cars. 
Yet, many people do not see that the car is the greatest child murderer, followed by suicide of teens due to problems at school or at home. The next danger is threats from the child's own family.
But the greatest fear is that children might have sex: the ultimate peril.
In the Anglo-Saxon countries, this fear has reached a very high level. In the US and the UK, fear of 'pedophiles' has become irrational and hysterical. The effect is the endangerment of education, sports, culture, family life and civil rights, 'to protect the youth'. This fear is the far greater threat.

# 31: Children too fat;  Only to be overcome through communal responsibility and shared action; June 2004       
It is increasingly more common, youths and children who are too heavy. Children who suffer from obesity, otherwise known as ‘overweight’.

# 32: Man in the 21st Century, immature or mature? September 2004  
I want to talk about the modern ma: there are different types of men that I would like to review in passing:

The machoman, 
The metroman and 
de Highly Involved Man. 

The modern man is a highly involved man, who has a positive self-perception, is not afraid to be dependent, and who loves children.

Weblogs

'Pedophile' priests? The RC Church & sex - Weblog # 129, March 15, 2010

Is the point here whether, as a Dutch bishop said, 'a small group of fathers and sisters with a distorted sexuality' - individuals with a distortion? I don't think so. The point is here a church with a distorted sexuality and, moreover, an obsession with sexuality since the first ages of its existence, a church that denies this distorted obsession in its system, a church that project its obsessive distortion on individuals, on 'a small group' of its servants. 
Supposedly, the celibacy is one of the working factors, but other factors are as well working