ACTUAL CAPTION: “Grown women are allowed to do all sorts of things to small boys without anybody as much as raising an eyebrow."
  • ACTUAL CAPTION: “Grown women are allowed to do all sorts of things to small boys without anybody as much as raising an eyebrow.”

Yesterday, while doing legitimate research in the sex section of a used bookstore and hoping that the booksellers wouldn’t confuse me with one of those lingering creeps who hang out in the sex sections of bookstores, I discovered a horrifying and amazing book called An ABZ of Love. It was written by Inge and Sten Hegeler, originally published in Denmark in 1963, and translated for the Medical Press of New York’s English edition.

A precursor to 1972’s much more popular and widely published The Joy of Sex, ABZ is similarly organized (alphabetically), with many benign topics like “Fantasies, sexual” and “Orgasm, simultaneous.”

Then there’s this:

Crime, sexual: Sexual behaviour forbidden by law. Incest, for example is forbidden; so are certain instances of seduction, procuring, prostitution without having some lawful occupation at the same time, the spreading of venereal diseases, rape, abortus provocatus, certain forms of exhibitionism when it is not permitted, and other crimes against public decency.

By sexual crimes we think particularly, however, about sexual acts and attacks against children. As a rule it is a case of the person in question showing his genital organs. It is not uncommon for the person to fondle the child, fondle the child’s genital organs, or encourage the child to touch his. In very rare cases there is a question of actual attempts at intercourse with the child. In such cases it is obvious that there may be a question of physical harm, i.e. of the child’s body suffering damage.

The mental harm produced by these sexual acts towards children depends to a certain extent on the sexual upbringing the child has had (see Enlightenment, sexual; and Education, sexual) and the enlightenment the child has been given.

A child that has been scared beforehand, and whose relationships with sex are full of prohibitions and anxieties, will naturally be particularly prone to suffer mental harm too.

The child who has a calmer, more natural, less fearful attitude to sex can experience quite a lot without this necessarily causing mental damage. Quite a large number of women can remember having had sexual approaches made to them by men when they were children—in about half the cases by friends or relations in their own homes.

Little girls are so often spoken of as being innocent little things. But innocent little things can also have a desire for physical contact and for being fondled.

Whether we choose to call such desires sexual desires, or call sexual desires desires to be fondled, is immaterial.

Added to which, children are warned and told so much about bad men and naughty men that the very thought easily becomes exciting.

Very small boys are not so often subjected to sexual approaches—or at any rate they seldom experience them as such.

There are things that are punished severely as sexual crimes in one country but not at all in another. In South Africa, blacks and whites are not allowed to have sexual intercourse with one another (see also Bestiality). In certain states in the USA, seduction to masturbation is forbidden by law. Kinsey showed in his report how one American in three has thus broken the law with another person.

There are countries where sexual crimes against children are unknown, and there are societies whose population can hardly get married at all because their rules for incest are so complicated and comprehensive they are all much too closely related to one another.

The. Horror.

16 replies on “Speaking of Incestuous Child Rape…”

  1. Holy mackerel, that’s squicky.

    Wiki say that in “Taxi Driver”, the movie Robert De Niro’s character creeps out Cybil Shepherd by taking her to was one actually written by those authors, a film picketed by 30,000 Londoners when a cinema there tried to show it, a film that had three sequels and a remake.

    This would make an interesting series at Northwest Film Forum, no?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_of…

  3. I was just going to say that same thing, @2. That, to me, is just as bad as the other stuff.

    Just…ick…all the way around.

  5. See also Bestiality?

    Between that and saying lots of little girls want to be fondled, it’s hard to call out the biggest WTF in this article. It brings to mind the more insane passages of Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Sex But Were Afraid To Ask.

  6. @5 sorry, never read that.

    Is that the one that Woody Allen made into a movie, where he was one of the sperm?

  7. My jaw has been hanging open in horror for so long, I’m sure my coworker is worried.

    *shudders* Holy crap! Normally Dan is the one posting comments that shouldn’t be read during lunchtime. Appetite ruined!

  8. @6 – that’s the movie. Don’t forget the giant boob that chases him around the park, or Gene Wilder’s love affair with a sheep.

    The book it was based on was popular in early 70’s, but presented some insanely stupid information. My mom had a copy hidden in her nightstand. I filled my head with some ridiculous notions, especially about homosexuality. It was a really bad book.

  10. Woody Allen’s movie was based on “Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex,” not “The Joy of Sex.”

    Jesse, if you want a chilling sex book, check out “Show Me!” by Will McBride. You can read about it on wikipedia. Hey, it looks like it’s on the Seattle Library’s list of banned books.

  12. The placing of “see also Bestiality” caught me too. Here’s the part of the Bestiality section they are referring to:

    Jewish law originally decreed the death penalty for bestiality. This law was adopted by Christianity and extended. Intercourse between a Christian and a Jew was thus regarded as bestiality because a non-Christian was comparable to an animal. (In South Africa today it is the negroes who are the “animals” with whom it is regarded as bestiality to have intercourse.) Both parties were therefore executed in the same way that both the man and the animal were executed in the Middle Ages.

  15. Is the caption to the attached picture really trying to insinuate that breastfeeding is somehow equivalent to child-rape? Or is it just me?

    o.0

  16. I know I’m weird, but I really don’t see the problem with this. It seems right to me: risk of physical harm, possible risk of mental harm depending on the circumstances, different rules and ages of consent for different cultures. Can someone explain what’s so horrible about this?

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