I’ve been mulling over a few articles I want to write lately about sex-related things done “for the children”, like sex offender registries, obscenity legislation and adult porn censorship. These thought patterns have me currently re-reading Judith Levine’s terrific book Harmful to Minors (which has prompted spontaneous, between-the-sheets readings from the book to Hacker Boy whenever I get all worked up about a point). So when Praemedia sent me this excellent interview today, Sex Panic! – An Interview With Debbie Nathan, I read it with a special interest. The interviewer is the notorious Susie Bright, so it’s a firecracker of a read from start to finish, and you may or may not agree with the sentiments expressed. Extra kudos to my pals at 10 Zen Monkeys for publishing this extremely controversial piece, which will likely have a huge backlash. Snip:
Editor’s note: We experienced some hesitation at publishing this piece and having Google searches by society’s biggest perverts lead to our site. But given the players, including the New York Times, the Justice Department, the Internet, and Free Speech itself, we feel confident that it will start an important debate on a number of issues that are usually dominated by hysterical, reactionary voices. (…)
Debbie Nathan is the expert on sex panics and is perhaps best known for her book, Satan’s Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt, about some of the widely covered sex panic cases that rocked the U.S. in the ’80s and ’90s, such as the McMartin preschool case in California. Susie and Debbie share a deep distrust about former New York Times journalist Kurt Eichenwald’s much talked about articles on Internet child pornography.
SUSIE BRIGHT: First of all, you uncovered the bizarre, so-called “satanic abuse scandals” that were happening in Southern California in the 1980s, and I remember thinking, “How could people re-create the Salem witch trials in this day and age?” And the next time you popped up in my life, I was reading these sensational stories in the New York Times by a reporter who said that he had sat around just looking at tons of child pornography, which he described in amazing, titillating detail – and of course he was on a campaign to stop it.
Nevertheless, I put down the newspaper I was reading, and I said, “How does this guy get to look at anything that is remotely like ‘child pornography,’ when the whole genre is utterly and completely illegal in the United States? What is the deal… Did he do a deal with the Justice Department? And what are THEY showing him?” And, “How come he doesn’t talk about any of this?” The very next day, there’s an article in Salon – by you, Debbie Nathan. And it had this provocative title, Why I Need To See Child Porn.
DN: And then the next day, it was gone.
Link.
