Art and fiction depicting childhood sexuality has a long history of controversy, censorship, and occasionally, critical acclaim. But little is known about how these taboo materials are used by individuals who are sexually attracted to children. A collaborative research project between SUNY Oswego (USA) and Nottingham Trent University (UK) that we officially launched in September aims to shed new light on this topic.

The project specifically aims to investigate how the use of fictional and fantasy sexual outlets that depict children contribute to various outcomes among people who are sexually attracted to children. Among the issues investigated are how these outlets contribute to sexual health, emotional wellbeing, and risk to commit sexual. This last outcome is investigated in direct response to a raft of recent U.S. state laws banning sex dolls that resemble children.

The researchers believe that individuals have diverse reasons for using fictional and fantasy sexual outlets, including using them as a surrogate for physical or emotional company, and maintaining a sense of emotional wellbeing. Loneliness is itself a risk factor that can facilitate child sexual abuse by people who are sexually attracted towards children. It is important to know whether sexual outlets may operate as a protective factor for some such individuals that could reduce their likelihood of committing child sexual abuse.

Over $50,000 of funds—about 40% of our 2021 budget—have been contributed by Prostasia Foundation towards this vital research, with more to come. Jeremy Malcolm, Executive Director of the Foundation said, “Clinicians and policymakers lack sound scientific guidance on how they should treat the use of fantasy and fictional sexual outlets. This research centers abuse prevention as the appropriate guiding principle to use in making these decisions.”

Dr Gilian Tenbergen, Principal Investigator on the project  from SUNY Oswego, will be presenting with Dr Malcolm at the Annual Conference of the Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers (ATSA) on October 1. Their poster presentation on the research is titled, “The use of fantasy and fictional sexual outlets and offending behavior among MAPs: what do we need to know?”

by Larry

In late 2019, I decided to purchase a sex doll. My wife had passed away several years previously and I wanted to have some sex without the complications of dating. I found an article on sex dolls in general and a number of specific dolls. The article explained the differences between Silicone dolls and Thermo Plastic Elastomer (TPE) dolls. Silicone is less likely to stain or tear, but TPE feels more like skin and cheaper. They all have steel skeletons so that they can be posed. Since my middle name is cheap, I went with TPE. 

Next, I came to choices. Doll sizes range from 65cm to 175cm. That’s 2‘ 2” to 5’ 8” for Americans. Most are female, but some are male. The vast majority are cis, but there are a few that are trans. Most can be customized, with choices such as different heads, wigs, skin and eye color, bust size, etc. There are even fantasy types; elves, vampires, anime characters and so forth. You can even get a head and torso only doll. They are lighter and cheaper since they have no arms or legs, but that seemed too macabre. One important item I found in the article was that a full-size doll weighed around 35 to 54 kilograms (75-120 pounds). Not convenient to move around at my age. I decided the 65 and 100 cm (3’ 3”) were too small, so I concentrated on the 120-140 cm range (4-4.5”). They weighed about 18-23 kilograms (40-50 pounds). My motivation was the same as that of most people who buy sex toys—to use it as a masturbation aid.

Since this was considered a child sized doll, I did some research on the subject. First, I wanted to make sure I wasn’t breaking any laws. I found the CREEPER Act, but discovered that it had not been passed by the Senate and wasn’t a law. I also found that in a court case in Alabama, a sex offender with child pornography also had a doll similar to those that I was looking for. The judge ruled that the doll was not against the law. Next, I started Googling dolls.

I found one that I liked. I then searched for the best price. On February 19, 2020, I ordered the doll from a storefront on AliExpress.com. As I was tracking the package, I noticed it stalled in Honolulu for Customs clearance. After conversing with FedEx, I finally found that it was seized by Customs and Border Protection (CBP). CBP determined my purchase was a “Child Sex Doll” (CSD) and was obscene and subject to forfeiture in a letter dated May 12, 2020. 

Well, lawyers are very expensive. I do not have that kind of money. I contacted a lawyer through justanswer.com, who informed me that Customs would never release a CSD, even though they are not illegal. 

I started researching for any organization that would defend my rights and came across Prostasia. Prostasia was the only organization that opposed the criminalization of sex dolls on the basis that this was a distraction from actual abuse prevention efforts and might be counter-productive. I spoke with Jeremy Malcolm there, then decided to petition the Fines, Penalties and Forfeitures (FPF) office at Customs. The petition showed the doll did not meet any one of the three legs of the Miller Test for obscenity as established by the Supreme Court in 1973. All three legs are required to be met, to be judged obscene. I sent the petition on May 25, 2020.

In a letter dated October 15, 2020, FPF amended the seizure notice to state that the original notice was in error and that the item was seized because it was smuggled or clandestinely imported into the United States by having false or fraudulent customs documents. In a subsequent telephone conversation, Tony, in the FPF office informed me that the doll was listed in the customs papers as a mannequin and not a doll. 

In a letter of February 19, 2021, they stated that under the United States Harmonized Tariff Schedule (USHTS), the doll ought to have been shipped in a category headed “Toys, games and sports requisites; parts and accessories thereof” which included “doll carriages, dolls, other toys…” (Emphasis added.) In short children’s playthings. A four-foot tall, forty-four-pound life sized figure, that is anatomically correct, is clearly not a child’s play toy. The shipping category that had been listed on the customs form was for items including “Tailors dummies and other mannequins…,” clearly a more appropriate category. 

Pointing this out, I requested that my case be referred immediately to the US Attorney for a court decision. That letter was sent on May 12, 2021, and I continued to call the Customs staff, politely of course, but persistently until my case was transferred to the US Attorney’s office on August 6th.

On August 20, 2021, I received an email from the Honolulu FPF, stating:

Aloha Mr. XXX,

Attached is our FINAL decision letter informing you that the US Attorney’s Office has declined to pursue the case. Therefore, we are preparing the property to be returned to you.

The letter has also been sent to you via Certified Mail today. Kindly acknowledge receipt of this email. 

Thank you,

Tony

OH MY GOD! I WON!!! On August 24th, I received an email from FedEx that Customs had shipped my item and that the anticipated date of arrival was August 26th. I received my package on the 26th, only to find when I opened it, they hadn’t repacked it correctly, there were fingerprints and stains on it and one of the fingers was damaged. This seems like a Pyrrhic victory at best. In reviewing the internet, it seems CBP has no responsibility or liability for damage done to items examined or held. 

Lessons learned: Do your research. First, deal with a reputable sex doll company that takes care of Customs for you or has US facilities. Then it is their responsibility to get the doll through. The lawyer I spoke to was right, Customs had no intention of releasing the doll to me and was hoping I would give up. I could have insisted on the referral to the US Attorney sooner, but I wouldn’t have known all the shenanigans FPF used to delay me. Despite the adage “The man who defends himself in court has a fool for a lawyer and a jackass for a client,” once I knew all the arguments and had answers, I felt as if I could represent myself in court, if need be. So, the slow and deliberate method, while time consuming, was probably the best choice for a non-lawyer.

Early in September Prostasia was the center of a social media firestorm on Twitter. The attacks started with opponents of sex workers, but soon spread across the political spectrum, including some progressives, some centrists, and many people with strong connections to alt right networks.

Prostasia has been targeted before. This attack was larger and more violent than some in the past. We decided to have a discussion with some of Prostasia’s leadership about the motivation for these social media pile-ons, the accusations themselves, and how they have affected Prostasia. The discussion included Prostasia’s Executive Director Jeremy Malcolm, Prostasia’s Program Director Meagan Ingerman, and Prostasia’s Director of Communication, Noah Berlatsky.

In The Fear of Child Sexuality: Young People, Sex and Agency Steven Angelides argues that crusades that claim to protect children are often rooted in a discomfort with children’s sexuality rather than in a fear of child abusers. Angelides writes that fear of homosexual pedophiles, for example, "is as much a child sexuality panic as it is a pedophile panic, even though a focus on the latter routinely serves to occlude the former.”

Adults and those in authority often stigmatize, reject, and punish even older teenagers who express their sexuality in developmentally normal ways. This is the case even (or especially) when older teens perceive sexual experiences or expression as positive and pleasurable. But as Angelides points out, our "fear, anxiety, and panic around child sexuality” does not make them safer from abuse. On the contrary, "there is an important role for the acknowledgment of child sexuality and agency that supports the goal of child protection and the alleviation of harm at the same time as it denounces child sexual abuse.”

Angelides provides many examples. In chapter 1, he recounts the panic over Australian artist Bill Henson's nude photography of adolescent subjects. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd notoriously said of these images, “I find them absolutely revolting.” This reviewer remembers seeing these haunting and evocative works exhibited in Melbourne, several years before police seized them and launched a failed obscenity prosecution against the artist. Rudd seemed to have little concern about how the pubescent subject would feel about having her agency erased, her likeness described as "revolting,” and her participation in the endeavour reduced to how her body would be viewed by pedophiles.

The final chapter considers the issue of sexting between teens. Our society, Angelides says, has sought to "reign in and control teenage agency” by utilizing "fear and shame—and, indeed, the fear of shame.” Angelides makes a compelling comparison between teens being blamed for fueling the problem of child pornography, and "blaming rape victims for wearing short skirts.”

Teen sexting, Angelides says, is viewed only as "childish mimicry of adult behavior” or as the result of predatory grooming. Authorities vigorously deny the possibility that teens might find the practice fun and relatively harmless. The erasure of young people’s choices or agency is supposed to protect them. In fact, it often leaves them vulnerable to social censure, punishment, and even criminal prosecution for taking pictures of their own bodies. 

Angelides also discusses the fearful opposition to the introduction of comprehensive sex education programs in Australia beginning in the 1960s. Previous pedagogies relied on withholding sexual information from teenagers and issuing moral proscriptions against pre-marital sexual activity. The inclusion of information about consent, pleasure, and normative teen sexual expression provoked an extensive backlash, which resulted in those programs being delayed or watered down.

Angelides also analyses how adults and authorities avoid difficult conversations about child sexual agency by turning all issues around child sexuality to a pantomime stand-off between the innocent child and the wily pedophile. In a remarkable anecdote about a little-known Australian Pedophile Support Group (PSG) that was raided by Australian police, Angelides recounts how charges of "conspiracy to corrupt public morals” were brought against nine homosexual members of the group merely for talking about issues relating to pedophilia. When a police infiltrator of the group repeatedly attempted to entrap its members, one retorted in frustration, "let's get this quite straight. This organization, the PSG, does not supply boys." All charges against PSG members were dismissed before trial due to lack of evidence.

Angelides argues that erasing children’s agency has led authorities, educators, and parents to frame all expressions of youth sexuality in terms of child abuse. This, Angelides says, “is not always in young people's best interests, be it in terms of their protection, development, or capacity building.” Children need to be protected not just from sexual abuse, but from sexual trauma more broadly, Angelides contends. That means we need to address how young people can be traumatized by the “embarrassment, shame, hostility, and contempt for some manifestations of child and teenage sexuality.”

Angelides traces back our unwillingness to recognize the agentive sexual child to the feminist movement's reframing of adult-child sexual relations as inherently abusive during the 1970s and 1980s. Angelides acknowledges that feminism provided a welcome critique of dubious tropes such as the "lucky bastard” (referring to a male child abused by a woman), and the temptress nymphette. But he also believes feminism's analysis of power relations between adults and minors (specifically where it concerns sex) was too simplistic. "Far from protecting and empowering children,” he argues, "the feminist evasion of child sexuality may have disempowered some children and made some abused children more vulnerable to psychological trauma.”

To be clear, the feminist framing that Angelides criticises is Prostasia's starting point. We do rely on the legal delineation between childhood and adulthood to define the category of "child sexual abuse” for the purposes of our advocacy. Angelides, though, questions this neat division, pointing to the fact that survivors of child sexual abuse (as so defined in law) who express their subjective experiences in neutral or positive terms are dismissed as suffering from "cognitive distortions.” "Notwithstanding the fact that wrongfulness is attributed solely to the adult offender,” Angelides writes, "the young participant, adamant about his agency and consent, is forced to bear some of the burden of this shame.” 

Angelides examines the case of a sexually experienced 16-year-old boy's purportedly consensual relationship with a teacher at some length. The teacher was sentenced as a sexual offender. Prostasia, like most other child advocacy organizations, would agree that the boy here was abused, and that the teacher was responsible for a moral and criminal abuse of power. Angelides insists he is not trying to legitimize this interaction. But he seems to come perilously close to doing just that when he says, "Not all sexual interactions between young people and adults are harmful or abusive, even if they challenge prevailing social and moral views of acceptable behavior." He goes on to argue that the subjectivities of offender and victim “ought to be important considerations in judicial proceedings and sentencing,” and that doing so "does not have to undermine our efforts at protecting children from abuse.” 

Angelides' analysis here left reviewer Dr. Ruth Beecher uncertain as to whether he was actually advancing a theory of “children’s rights to choose sexual relations with adults in some circumstances.” Beecher correctly argues that this is unacceptable. As that reviewer added, “Adults do not have sex with children to meet the child’s developmental or sexual needs; they do it to meet their own. It is an abuse of trust, a physical violation, and an act of monumental selfishness.” While Angelides does not (I think) lose sight of this, the capacities that children don't have are certainly backgrounded in his focus on those that they (or some of them) do.

My first reaction while reading The Fear of Child Sexuality was surprise at how much freedom the author had to cover such contentious issues in a well-reviewed book from a major academic press. But then I reached the Acknowledgements section at the end, in which the author describes the "vicious online harassment and abuse” that was the cost of this freedom: "Merely writing on these topics has been enough for some people unwilling to properly read my work to presume falsely that I am an apologist for pedophilia.”

Many people do believe that those who try to write about child sexuality and abuse prevention are immoral and should be stigmatized. The Fear of Child Sexuality is obviously not a book for them. Nor is it a book for those put off by the arcane language of academic sociology and philosophy (the phrase “in the Foucauldian sense” appears five times within the book's first 25 pages alone). But for those who are willing to take on these challenges, the book is a valuable and eye-opening read that exposes how our society's wilful blindness towards child and teenage sexuality has worked against our stated objective to shield them from sexual trauma.

Everyone wants to end child sexual abuse—but almost nobody is questioning why mass incarceration, surveillance and censorship are failing to solve the problem. Nobody except for Prostasia Foundation, that is. Our unique and challenging mission is to stand up to the politics of fear and hate that harm minorities and infringe human rights, while promoting evidence-based, sex-positive solutions that are both more effective and more humane.

Equip us to win the war against child sexual abuse, bigotry, and unchecked government surveillance by donating generously. We need to raise $10,000 between now and November 30—and thanks to a generous supporter, your donations will be doubled!

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