In most societies, a group of people, scapegoats, are universally deemed non-persons. I don’t mean a group of people that get clumped into low status, like people without houses or people who have come to a country illegally. Most of us consider them whole people who face a lot of discrimination and isolation. They are still people. In Nazi Germany, there were non-people: Jewish People, Homosexuals, Romani, and Jehovah’s Witnesses, to name a few. Their non-personhood made their imprisonment and near-extermination possible.
Our society often treats criminals like non-people, although they still hold the possibility of redemption. However, there is a sub-group of criminals who are universally despised, dismissed, and treated as irredeemable pieces of filth. In the United States, a child molester is the most non-person in our midst. Terrorists, murderers, and even adult rapists are less reviled and, therefore, ‘redeemable.’ Only if you were treated as a god amongst men, like Michael Jackson, could you be exempt from losing your personhood altogether. You’ll never be a full member of society again, though.
With this in mind, I need to discuss a First Amendment issue that impedes my writing, both Peter’s Erotica and the Literary Fiction I write under my real name. Let me give you some background. I was molested so early in life it would be a crime to describe it under any circumstances. Writing is a form of therapy, and as a victim, I’m not allowed to share my thoughts or experiences with my readers. This was not a consensual act; it was a crime. Nonetheless, the molestation affected my future relationship with my body, my sexuality, and my desires. If I were to go into detail, describing what happened and/or how it still affects me, I would risk being reviled.
As is typical with early victims of abuse, it happened to me again when I was in grade school. My “Big Brother” (from a mentorship program for children of divorce) used to tickle-torture me. I hated it and resent him to this day. I begged him to stop, but he wouldn’t. The unspoken deal was that he would take me to the movies and buy me junk food in exchange for submitting to his cruel fetish. I fattened up on popcorn and Taco Bell until my mother found out and put an end to our sick relationship. I might get in trouble for telling you this because any victim describing their suffering might titillate a torturer.
I could never post any picture for this post; just an abstract illustration, something completely unrelated, a pattern. To post a picture of my younger self, the victim, would be an outrage and probably a crime.
Some forums allow the expression of sexuality from ages of questionable consent. Forum moderators will take those stories down in seconds if there is a complaint. And anything under an arbitrary age is strictly forbidden. Books that contain this topic are banned outright. The problem lies in the expression of desire. A young teenage boy might want sex with an older man, but as far as I know, it’s a crime to write about it because the criminal might enjoy reading about such children. And so those stories are treated like a narcotic. Possession of a story, or even a trace of it on your laptop, is a felony (I think). A dubious common sense dictates that describing a personal experience will influence the perpetrator to do bad things, especially if he sees any sign of consent from someone not legally permitted to give it. Victims must be silent. The shame of the abuse redoubles when it becomes a crime to describe it. At least, I think it’s a crime. I don’t dare search to find out. One public figure became a non-person for “researching” the subject.
When writing about the fictional persona Peter Schutes, I struggle to describe what it was like for him growing up with a sex organ so big that the act of writing about his young experience is definitely grounds for censorship and possibly a crime. His experience is a product of my imagination and, as such, is a reflection of me and my sexuality. I don’t have any desire to engage with a minor. I like guys in the “Daddy” category. But there are stories I can’t mention, describe, or tell.
I’m not a parent. I understand that parents want to protect their children. I also understand why there is a knee-jerk reaction to anything even remotely related to child molestation. I may be pilloried for writing this article if anyone were to read it. My readership on this blog is tiny. I’d hate to go viral and come under attack for discussing the specter of sexual abuse of a minor. But somebody has to say this.
This topic is so inflammatory that even the victims are forbidden from telling their stories. As a creative writer, it would be ten times worse were I to include any hint of underage desire in one of Peter Schutes’s erotic stories. If I want to sell a book, I must skip over childhood and start each love story during or after senior year in high school. Fiction, especially Erotic writing, is a field of landmines. I hope I didn’t just step on one.
Peter Schutes 