SEXUAL MORALITY IS ANTI-CHILD
BY WOLF VOGEL
This is the thirteenth chapter of Secret Love: Eros between Boy and Man (2022), an anonymous translation of Wolf Vogel’s Heimliche Liebe: Eros zwischen Knabe und Mann (Hamburg: John & Ernst, 1997).
The life-examples in this book make clear that many persons who had sexual encounters or relationships with adults in their childhood or youth remain in favor of them when they themselves reach adulthood and have children of their own.
They have fond memories of the encounters, and are able to recognize—with the benefit of many years distance—that these “secret loves” really have been advantageous to them. However, there are also persons who, under the influence of familial and social moral attitudes, have come to develop uneasy feelings in these relationships, or—as presumably occurs more frequently—concealed the relationship from their environment, due to a fear that it would be judged in a negative light.
In our cultural group, the Christian church has always had a formative influence on social attitudes regarding which sexual forms are allowed to be practiced, and which are not. Notably, at the Roman synod of the year 386, Pope Siricius was already trying to assert that sexual relations rendered persons impure per se: the view that, therefore, the lives of priests should remain sexually chaste stems from this era.
The influence of this hostility to sex can still he felt today. Thus Stefan Pfurtner, renowned professor of moral theology and social ethics, writes that a deep inconsistency is perceptible in questions of human sexuality and their life-culture, adding that: “With some topics, public discussion is so emotionalized, the positions are so entrenched, that a material dialogue is no longer possible, innumerable citizens have to suffer under what have become dubious moral traditions, with all their potential for strife and oppression.”
On another occasion: “There is no doubt that social power and control is exercised via morality (as the continued existence of tradition, as doctrine and practice). It is just as indisputable that such exertions of influence can become immoral, and indeed, virtually take the form of moral terrorism.” (Pfurtner)
With regard to the sexual behavior of children and youth, and the assessment of this behavior by the family, the school, the church, and the state, it is no wonder that children frequently have to put aside their own wants and needs, in order to comply with moral norms, and not place their social bonds in jeopardy.
The following is an excerpt from the transcript of a police interrogation. A thirteen-year-old was summoned to provide incriminating evidence against an adult staff member of a group home for boys, accused of having had sexual relations with them.
Question (Police Officer): Has Mr. X ever asked you beforehand if you were in the room, and then started to touch you with his hands, and take off your clothes?
Answer (Boy): Yeah, he’d usually ask beforehand. Later on, though, it went without saying, and that was okay by me. He could assume that I was always up for it.
Question: Has Mr. X asked you not to mention anything about the friendship to other students or teaching staff?
Answer: I’d promised Mr. X not to say a word to classmates or anyone else. He’d spoken to me about that, and we swore to each other.
Question: Have you done similar things with any other men?
Answer: No. Mr. X liked me, and told me that two people can also do it together. I’d already done it before just myself, but quietly and secretly, under the covers.
Question: Did this secret make you feel good?
Answer: No, I was always afraid that the whole thing might get out.
Question: Do you think that an instructor is educating a child when he is involved with him in this way?
Answer: No. I think it’s filth, not education. I don’t want to talk any more.
At this point, the interrogation record concludes. In addition to the details concerning what actually occurred, which he had undoubtedly already ascertained, the examining officer also felt obliged to bring up the moral issue. In the end, this provoked within the boy an inner compulsion to condemn as “filth” events which he had previously depicted as thoroughly positive. The fact that he was disinclined to say anything further following that surely shows the embarrassment and elicited unpleasantness at having to justify an amorous contact for which no justification whatsoever had previously been required.
The American author Germaine Greer describes a case in which a girl belatedly condemns an amorous contact:
“During her childhood, a friend of mine enjoyed the sexual relations she had with her uncle. It was only when she started school that she realized it was anything unusual. What made her feel depressed at that point was not what her uncle had done to her, but rather, the attitude of the teachers and the school psychiatrist. They all assumed that the whole thing had to have been traumatic for her, that she would now be disgusted by it, and needed special help. In order to correspond with their preconceived expectations, she feigned certain symptoms until, eventually, she really did feel guilty because, prior to that, she didn’t know she’d done anything wrong. It got to the point where she severely reproached herself for her own innate physical urges.”
For some years now, I have been recounting the following episode to my own circle of acquaintances: A married couple had brought their two children—an eleven-year-old girl and a six-year-old boy—along with them on holiday to an FKK[1] camp. There, the father took photographs of his wife and the two kids. The girl was particularly fascinated by the photos, which hinted at her incipient physical maturation. Brimming with pride, she brought a selection of the nicest pictures—showing her with as well as without clothing—along with her to school and showed them to a select group of (female) classmates, as well as her (female) teacher. Upon first laying eyes on the FKK-photos, the teacher’s mouth remained wide open in astonishment,as the girl rather amusedly recounted. In the following days, the teacher tried—referring to the photos—to impress upon the girl that the FKK photos really should not have been taken at all, let alone shown to others. Nevertheless, the girl would not allow herself to be swayed by this, telling the teacher, in front of her classmates: “I think I’m beautiful, and I stand by my beauty, and therefore, I will decide who I’ll show the photos to.” The parent-teacher conference that was then convened by the latter only made the girl dig her heels in deeper; all the same, as time went on, the teacher never did desist in her efforts to give the girl a guilty conscience.
Just how much children have inwardly suffered when they have adopted traditional notions of sexual morality as their own is described by Fritz Leist in his book “Of Hidden Problems Among Priests,” from which the following example shall be cited:
“I’d even asked myself often enough in early puberty—but even at the time of first confession—whether I hadn’t been rejected by God, and was going to hell, because I’d looked at my sister real close a couple of times. At gymnasium, I played the role of the ‘studious youth.’ There I read the commentaries on the 6th Commandment over and over again, in order to find out whether I had already committed a mortal sin, or merely a venial sin. A Jesuit Father consoled me by explaining that although it was a good sign in a boy when he regarded everything covered by the 6th Commandment as a mortal sin, there absolutely also would be venial sins here. Another Jesuit Father, however, plunged me into deep anguish when, in spiritual exercises for the 13-year-olds, he depicted hell so vividly that I already saw myself there.”
It would he a mistake to dismiss such reports as isolated cases involving young people who were identified with particular religious or social groups, characterized by unusually ascetic sexual moralities. Just how much children and youth are still—even today—instilled with fear and distrust of any and all sexual encounters—even those involving same-age peers—has been demonstrated by the pugnacious feminist Katharina Rutschky:
“Whereas, even now, no one is worried about an absence of desirable sexual-erotic activities among children, checklists are created in which conspicuous, inappropriate, and basically just impertinent and naughty behaviors are lumped together and ticked off.” Rutschky also laments the “general lack of respect for children’s privacy, which people think they can invade and control whenever they feel like it.”
In over half of the conversations that I’ve been able to have with adults who experienced an erotic relationship as a child, the topic of “photography” came up. Though it was typically mentioned in passing, it was sometimes expressly emphasized that during the relationship, photographs were occasionally taken. There were photos of trips or sightseeing tours taken together, photos of sports competitions at or outside of school, but also photos which documented the children developing into adolescents and adults, clothed and unclothed.
Of course, even the topic of “nude photographs” is subject to extremely negative valuation. Adults usually fail to see that children employ a completely different set of criteria for assessing photographs. Most adults would probably endorse the view that a nude photograph would make one vulnerable, or even, open to blackmail. Children cannot comprehend this view. It is only with the onset of puberty, when the capacity for abstract thought begins, that youth start to become susceptible to the adult fear that a photo depicting one’s own nakedness could have negative consequences for the person portrayed. Children do not have this fear, because they themselves have never been tempted to use nude photos to make others vulnerable or blackmail them. This is adult thinking.
Children happily allow themselves to be photographed, though admittedly not so much in arranged poses, in which they have to remain still for quite a while, because the photographer doesn’t understand how to handle a camera. Most children are proud when an adult offers to photograph them. Children themselves are also interested in these images, and make no demands that they be professional- Photographer quality. Children often put up such photos on their bedroom walls; at the same time, it is of no importance whether the children are clothed or unclothed in the pictures, insofar as the environment does not react negatively.
Uninfluenced children and youth frequently also have no objection when photos of them are published in magazines or calendars. Anyone who takes a close look at magazine ads or TV commercials can see the joy and pride on the faces of young models. Young people only become angry—and rightly so!—when the transmission or publication of their photos takes place against their wishes, or without their consent. But in that case, the focus of their scorn is the breach of trust, not the images themselves.
With such photos, which we adults characterize as “nude photos” (and basically do not even know when this definition is justified and when it isn’t), children distinguish neither between decent/indecent, nor pornographic/non-pornographic. This—among adults—controversial topic, which fills entire legal volumes, would be regarded by children as extremely silly, if they were actually asked for their opinion. Nonetheless, when they are assessing photos of themselves, children really do judge them based on whether they are good, or not so good. This takes place based on criteria which are just as subjective as the ones which we adults employ. Of course, we are not happy with every photograph of ourselves, either.
[1] Freikorperkultur, = nudist [Translator’s note] More specifically, it refers to the German national nudist movement [Website note]