Gay men need to talk straight about paedophilia

This was the original headline of my 2001 article, but the piece is as relevant today as it was then. Child abusers, including gay men, often hide behind a smoke screen

This article was first published by the Guardian in 2001 - 23 years ago.

Protest against the Paedophile Information Exchange, 1970s

Sat 3 Mar 2001, by Julie Bindel

The protests about Eminem's lyrics by gay rights activists have raised issues of homophobia in the media. One way anti-gay bigots seek to poison minds against homosexual men is to label them all child abusers. While this is clearly an offensive generalisation, gay men need to ask themselves if they are doing anything to fuel this argument.

Recent allegations that Field Marshal Montgomery was a "repressed homosexual" and "fell in love" with boys not yet in their teens is likely to cause a stir among some gay men, who might feel that he has been branded a paedophile, when really Montgomery was just a "lover of boys". The word '"paedophile" is bandied around with impunity, but no word in our language is so dangerously misused. It means, literally, "lover of children". Child sex abusers seek solace in this term, and it is easy to see why it is to their advantage to embrace the label. If they were called by their real name - child sex abusers and child rapists - they might be seen as dangerous criminals and not "ill".

On the other hand, "paedophilia", as in the News of the World campaign after the death of Sarah Payne, monsterises stranger sex abusers to the point that male family members who abuse children in the home are made invisible. "Paedophile activity" conjures up images of Sidney Cooke types, not the more common culprit: the jolly uncle or grandfather using his place in the nuclear family to hide his foul activities.

The recent revelations that some of the heroes of the 1968 revolution in France were advocates and defenders of "paedophilia" is one example of how you can get it wrong. They saw sex between adults and children as part of the wider anti-authoritarian movement against the establishment. And it must be acknowledged that gay men have been some of the most vocal apologists for this gross activity. Let's look at the evidence.

In the late 70s, when the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) reared its ugly head, it won support from some gay men and libertarians, who bought the line that these abusers were an "oppressed sexual minority" and invited them to join the "rainbow coalition" of transsexuals, adult nappy wearers and other "sexual outlaws". The hideous PIE publication, Paedophilia: The Radical Case, was favourably reviewed by Gay News and other gay publications.

Jimmy Saville, visiting a facility for disabled children

What is different today? In the late 90s, Peter Tatchell of Outrage!, now campaigning for lowering the age of consent for all to 14, reviewed a grotesque and shocking book, Dares to Speak: Historical & Contemporary Perspectives On Boy-Love. Tatchell wrote: "Abusive, exploitative relationships are indefensible but... [there are] many examples of societies where consenting intergenerational sex is considered normal, acceptable, beneficial and enjoyable by old and young alike."

Many gay activists, like Tatchell, rightly claim that one tactic of homophobes is to point the finger at gay men for the abuse of children. This serves to demonise all gay men in the eyes of those such as Baroness Young and her cronies, and is deeply unfair to homosexuals who believe that sex with minors is abhorrent. (This is not about two 15-year-old boys having consensual sex; the reason we have an age of consent is to protect children from adult abusers.) It does, however, have another serious consequence. As a result of this offensive generalisation, many people now strive not to implicate gay men in sex abuse cases. Some liberal social workers and academics have contributed to the fact that many child protection agencies now refuse to acknowledge that any gay man could also be a child sex abuser. This is ridiculous. When I was a young, idealistic feminist, I used to come out with the nonsense picked up from gay male friends that 99% of child sexual abuse is perpetrated by heterosexual men. The truth is that gay men are as likely to abuse as any.

Peter Tatchell

As Christian Wolmar points out in his fascinating study of institutional child abuse, Forgotten Children, the equal opportunities culture of some London boroughs in the 80s was such that, in order to promote the employment of "minorities", criminal convictions of gay men were often not checked in case it was seen as discriminatory. He quotes a 1995 report by Ian White about Islington council: "We were told that managers believed they would not be supported if they triggered disciplinary investigations involving staff who may be... members of the gay community." This, of course, simply enabled child abusers to obtain jobs in children's homes and other places where they could gain access to vulnerable children. (Only 5% of child sex abusers are women.)

If gay men are going to, on the one hand, campaign for sexual access to younger and younger boys, but bleat about public perceptions of them as a league of child abusers, is it any wonder that the whole thing is such a mess? If more gay men faced the fact that the eroticisation of sex with boys (or "chickens", as they are known on the scene) is a part of gay culture, then the ones who care could challenge it. The advocating by some gay activists of sex with children seems to be based on the rewriting of their own childhood sexual abuse as a "positive initiation ceremony" into the gay lifestyle. Rather than campaigning to lower the age of consent, it might silence anti-gay bigots if at least some gay men spoke out against these atrocities towards children.

It is a myth that serves heterosexual men and homophobes very well that gay men are abusing children left, right and centre. We also know that men who sexually assault children do so because they are abusers, not because of the gender of their preferred adult relationships. But in the way that heterosexual men need to think about their sexualisation of girl children, such as joking about little girls "flirting" with them or teasing them about "boyfriends" almost from birth, gay men need to ask some serious questions about their culture and lifestyle. Is it really acceptable, for example, that Elton John defended his prancing around on stage with boy scouts as "camp fun"?

If gay men are serious about distancing themselves from child sexual abuse, then it's up to them to make some real efforts to join forces against this gross violation. It is no use anyone moaning that it's "not our problem" or that it's the responsibility of society to address prejudicial assumptions. But we cannot escape the fact that, so far, more gay men have attempted to explain the "erotic nature" of inter- generational sex, or shown sympathy and understanding of "boy lovers", than have joined forces with those of us who wish to see an end to child sexual abuse.