With regard to guys like Dave, I wonder what sort of an iceberg society may be in the process of foundering itself on. Who knows what proportion of people had some attraction to mid-teens or younger kids in "the old days"? -- when you read the accounts written by all the people who were child-abused in the days before anyone talked about it, you may be led to think even that large number of perps must represent the tip of an iceberg of people who thought about it. The attraction to juveniles may be very common indeed, even if usually unspoken and not acted on.

Sweet Sixteen in particular used to be part of our culture: it was assumed that most (of at least the younger) hetero adults would find mid-teen girls cute as could be. And surely this was correct. Moreover, the idea was taken rather casually in pop culture before the anti-pedophilia Ice Age began in the 1980's. Have a look at the lyrics of "Hey Girl" from Van Morrison's group Them from the mid-60's (same people who recorded Gloria, G-L-O-R-I-A)

*********
Let's go walking where the boats go by
And watch them sail across the bay
Let me hold your hand in the morning fog
Little child I want to walk your dog

Hey, hey girl
Hey, hey girl
You're so young
I don't know what to do

And let's go walking up that mountain slope
And look down on the city down below
I will make a fool of you

Hey, hey girl
Hey, hey girl
You're so young
You make me lose my mind
Hey-ey-ey girl
Hey, a-ha, there goes your baby sister
FADES-
Lookin'

*********

Deffo should be on the "Best of GL" compilation. [Scary idea: change to "Hey Boy" and make a contemporary recording]. Anyways, now people can browse around the internet and if a stray erotic idea pops into mind, something they would probably never act on in real life, then it's easy enough to plug a few words into the search engine and see what happens. There's seldom a temptation to haul out the credit card if something is found: the danger involved in doing so has shifted the whole interest group to free exchange. However, a few naive guys like Dave may still be duped into paying.

Unfortunately, the internet feels like part of your own mind, and its objects feel like a fantasy. Whatever surfs up for free seems to just be pre-existing, and people think, I believe, "it can't do any harm if I just make one more electronic copy of this thing, since I didn't support its manufacture in any way." They may feel somewhat queasy about the contents and about their attraction to the contents, but they don't feel causally responsible for aiding or abetting their production (or, in most cases, their distribution, since these people are mostly simply harvesting available freebies).

And though well meaning people have decided the first five years of the traditional post-bar/bat mitzvah marriageable years (13-17) are off limits for porn, that doesn't in any way limit the natural interest of even non-CL (non-BL, non-GL) people in that age range. Reams of legal material in that age range were made in Europe in the 60's to early 80's and became illegal later [I lived in a European country when the legal porn age was changed from 16 to 18, and had visited there earlier when porn right down to prepubescent was legally sold] and the idea that all downloads are based on kids recently pressed into service is pure media mythology. I mention that not to seem to excuse that ancient cp morally, but rather to underline how abundant the available material is and how negligible any need for new production is. Americans who didn't visit the Red Light districts of Europe in their heyday have no idea.

At this point the penalties are extreme and yet hordes are being apprehended. The actual numbers who are downloading cp must be astronomical.**[see bottom of post] It is, in fact, trivial to avoid detection for those who are computer-semiliterate, at least in the moderately long term, so at this point cp must be becoming very close to having the same status as prostitution did in the Victorian era: countless people are doing it by night, but all are horrified by day.

If society wants to meat-grind a whole lot of its citizens this way for what in most cases will be the crime of having an unruly imagination (and why not, I guess, the process is very entertaining and sells lots of newspapers) then I guess it may continue to do so, and historical cruelty can simply proceed as usual in the never-ending, undulating holocaust that is built into human politics. But I think we could possibly think of better ways of handling these attractions. I've said elsewhere in this board that discussing them with other conscientious people may be a big help in bringing such attractions under control, and it would be productive, I think, if the topic of attraction to kids and teens were not so dangerous to discuss. At the very least, I think helping professions such as clergy should always be in a position not to have to report or disclose people who reveal to them that they have such thoughts.

** my recent sample for this statement is the experience of a older teen BL boy overseas who, against the strong objections of his corresponding AF who is my own contact, briefly created a 14-year-old alter-ego for himself on a very active social networking site (NOT a heavily monitored, big name site like myspace or facebook, though) in order to maximize his porn collection. This was a kid who had collected cp once before, then destroyed it all in a burst of conscience, but then started collecting again. He was soon being treated to vast quantities of free material by cp sugar daddies out there, and it was his capacity-handling problem from the large volume that soon led to his being caught by his parents and put out of the cp business (though fortunately, not arrested.)