Originally posted by Nightthief at Mauisun
As many of you know, I do volunteer work with a sex-offender and sex-victim treatment program.
I've done this as well, for several years. I understand the framework Nightthief is articulating. In various socially-responsible action groups, the standard social-science understanding of the relationship between nature and nurture, or biology and culture, is utterly dominant. But since my involvement in this domain, I have come to study human psychology and neuropsychology in much more detail, and I now take a much more evolutionary or ethological approach to human behavior - one in which the distinction between nature and nurture becomes much, much fuzzier.
Pedophillia is solely defined by whether or not a person has a primary sexual arousal to prepubescent individuals. If a person has a sexual arousal pattern that indicates a preference or exclusive preference for thoise who are prepubesscent, he or she is a pedophile. If that primary arousal pattern does not exist, then he or she is not a pedophile. Cultural norms, the era one lived or lives in, and whether the individual has actually acted on this arousal pattern are irrelevant.
Ephebopilia is defined by whether or not a person has a primary sexual arousal to pubescent or post-pubescent children. This defiition is more complex that that for pedophillia, due to the fact that different cultures and eras have a different understanding of what a child is. In the Uniteed states, for example, an ephebophile has a primary arousal for individuals who have gone through puberty, but not yet turned 18. Because different cultures define the childhood and adulthood differently, the definition applicable to where and when the individual lived or lives is relevant and must be considered. Understanding that definition, if a person has a primary sexual arousal for pubescent or post-pubescent children, then he or she is an epheobpile. As with pedophilia, ephibopilia is completely idnependant of whether individuals acts on their arousal or not.
Notice that in both of the cases above, I said a primary arousal pattern. It is completely possible for a person to have a primary arousal for age-appropriate peers, but still be able to become aroused by a prepubecent, pubecent, or post-pubescent child. If a secondary arousal pattern exists, then the individual is said to have pedophillic or ephebophillic tendencies.
Also notice that in both of the above definitions, it is irrelevant whether the individual has acted upon that arousal or not. Neither pedophilia nor ephebophilia are defined by the overt action of actually engaging in sexual contact with a child. A person can have be a pedophile or an ephebophile and never actually engage in child molestation.
Everything up to this point is good. However, at this point I would also stress that "closeting" dynamics can always come to play in any kind of sexuality, since all sexual behavior is regulated to some degree by shame. Thus, a person can be a pedophile or ephebophile, and nobody would ever know, and they could have normal adult sex with normal adult partners all of their lives, never acting on their primary arousal, or tendencies, respectively. He says this, but I stress it here, to underline it.
A child molester is an adult that has any sexual contact with a child. In some cases, a child molestor is also a pedophile or ephebophile - making him or her a pedphilic or ephebophillic child molestor. In other cases, the individual does not have a primary sexual preference for children, meaning that he or she is neither a pedophile nor an ephebophile. Such people are termed child molestors with pedophillic (or ephebopillic) tendencies.
Let's apply this information to one of the more recent (and long standing) debates in this forum: the claim that Mohammed was a pedophile.
We know from the Muslim histories that Mohammed did marry a six-year old girl and consumated his marriage with her when she was nine. (The ages are variously disputed, providing an alternative argument that she was nine and 13, respectively, for the two events.) We also know that this girl was one of many wives that Mohammed had - with all of the rest of them being considered to be adults.
Given these two pieces of information, it is clear that Mohammed did not have a primary sexual arousal for pre-pubescent children, pubescent children, or post-pubescent children. As demonstrated by his miltitude of adult wives, Mohammed's primary sexual arusal was to adult women, which precludes any possibility of him being defined as either a pedophile or an ephebophile.
I would dispute this point rather strenuously. Mohammed's adult wives are not conclusive evidence that his primary arousal objects were adults. Human male sexuality is not only about desire, but also about social dominance, and his accumulation of wives can be seen as a conspicuous display of his special perogatives as the supreme leader of his people. In other words, the adult wives could be involved in meeting his status needs, rather than his primary sexual needs.
Furthermore, there is an erotism of power and dominance that has nothing whatsoever to do with the erotism of sexuality. In prisons and on ships - two modern exclusively-male societies - males will use sex (and rape) to establish a dominance hierarchy. Dominant males in this setting, most of whom have heterosexual sexual preferences and are openly homophobic, have no trouble developing an erection in order to violate a lower-status male and thus put everybody "in their place". If having many wives and f.cking them all was part of Mohammed's sense of his own perogative as "top dog", that could have energized his sexual behavior with adults.
I am not saying that this is unquestionably what Mohammed was like, but it is consistent with other things we know about him, and at any rate, it shows how his accumulation of brides may have had motivators that produce sexual behavior but are more dominance-related than straightforwardly erotic. Add to this the psychohistorical observation that Mohammed was the pampered boy-toy of an older woman during his first marriage. His energetic conquest of women thereafter could easily have been to compensate for his subordinate position in his first marriage. Even his energetic conquest of political opponents may have been touched by frustrations from this period of his life.
We have to remember that, though Mohammed had many wives, his child-bride was his favorite. That is an important point to emphasize. Also, he described an erotic interest in children that was not entirely genitally organized. He described a joy in playing with children that we all experience with kids, but for some reason he saw this as particularly delightful with kids one was married to, rather than the parent of... We have hadith to this effect:
Sahih Al-Bukhari Volume 7, Book 62, Number 17.
Narrated Jabir bin 'Abdullah: When I got married, Allah's Apostle said to me, "What type of lady have you married?" I replied, "I have married a matron' He said, "Why, don't you have a liking for the virgins and for fondling them?" Jabir also said: Allah's Apostle said, "Why didn't you marry a young girl so that you might play with her and she with you?'
Bukhari:V4B52N211 ?I participated in a Ghazwa [raid] with the Prophet. I said, ?Apostle, I am a bridegroom.? He asked me whether I had married a virgin or matron. I answered, ?A matron.? He said, ?Why not a virgin who would have played with you? Then you could have played with her.? ?Apostle! My father was martyred and I have some young sisters, so I felt it not proper that I should marry a young girl as young as them.??
Mohammed thought that marrying very young girls to "play with" them was an appropriate impulse for an adult male to have. This is very reminiscent of Michael Jackson's desires to be around young people. He also said he was just "playing with them", and that it was all innocent delight. Mohammed seems to have shared something like this urge, and he seems to have been surprised that his followers in general did not feel the same way. Other adult males of Mohammed's time (at least a few of them) do not seem to think that it was normal or "proper" to seek out such young brides in this manner.
Part of the sexual arousal process for a pedophile is to engage in play activities that increasingly compromise childrens' boundaries, leading to increasingly intimate physical contact - fondling. This is the process that Mohammed seems to be describing in these Hadith.
From "The Life of Muhammad" (Sirat Rasul Allah) by Ibn Ishaq:
Suhayli, ii. 79: In the riwaya of Yunus I. I. recorded that the apostle saw her (Ummu'lFadl) when she was a baby crawling before him and said, 'If she grows up and I am still alive I will marry her.' But he died before she grew up and Sufyan b. al-Aswad b. 'Abdu'l-Asad al-Makhzumi married her and she bore him Rizq and Lubab...
Mohammed sees a baby crawl, and he feels some kind of impulse which makes him dream of marriage to that baby.
We all feel delight in the antics of a young baby. Only pedophiles can translate this feeling of delight into a strong and actionable feeling of sexual arousal. Mohammed seems to be doing this here. He turned his delight in the antics of a child into a fantasy of erotic intimacy. Either that, or this child displayed attributes he wanted in his lovers, namely childishness.
Bukhari:V4B54N476-544 ?The Prophet said, ?In Paradise they will not urinate, relieve nature, spit, or have any nasal secretions. Everyone will have two virgins who will be so beautiful and transparent the bones of their legs will be seen through their flesh.??
Qur?an 56:33 "On couches or thrones raised high. Verily, We have created them (maidens) incomparable: We have formed their maidens as a special creation, and made them to grow a new growth. We made them virgins?pure and undefiled, lovers, matched in age.?
Qur?an 37:40 ?... And with them will be Qasirat-at-Tarf (virgin females), restraining their glances (desiring none but you), with big, beautiful eyes. As if they were (sheltered) eggs, preserved.?
Mohammed prefers children who have not yet had adult experiences. He finds their innocence erotically relevant - their innocence makes up part of his interest in them as erotically beautiful creatures. This is a feature of pedophilic attraction.
Age is included on his list of erotic attributes. It is clearly an erotic category for him.
The virgins whose skin is so pure and transparent their bones can be seen... that is a somewhat bizarre fetishization of children's skin.
Kids have very delicate and translucent skin. This brings out the parenting instinct in normal people. Their soft skin makes them look vulnerable and in need of protection. But for someone in whom these child-centered feelings have become sexualized, kids become a sexual fetish.
It is the nature for sexual fetishists to fantasize or create fetish objects that strongly emphasize and exaggerate the feature of their fetish object that arouses them. People who fetishize high-heeled shoes can come to desire shoes with heels that are so high that walking becomes impossible. Female models who cater to men who fetishize large breasts may often seek out surgery to enlarge their breasts to unhealthy and unnatural proportions. Exaggeration is a core feature of fetishism.
It seems that Mohammed thought that kids who were so soft, with skin so translucent and pure that they could be penetrated even by light itself, was the ultimate divine erotic epiphany - as good as it gets, or as good as can be imagined - the ultimate erotically attractive object.
The exaggerations of fetishism typically distort their objects into barely recognizable, 1-dimensional cartoon-like objects defined entirely by their sexual use. This seems to be what was going on here.
Even if Mohammed had never fudged a child, all of these sayings about him give us indications that Mohammed was a pedophile.
Add the pressing fact that his favorite wife was a child.
Whether Mohammed was a child molestor or not can only be determined by examining the cultural norms of his time. If we look back at that time period, it was commonplace that once a female reached puberty, she was considered to be an adult. As such, if Mohammed's bride had reached puberty, he could not be classified a child molestor. If she had not reached puberty when he consumated the relationship, the fact that he did not have a primary sexual arousal for prepubescent children would define him as a child molestor with pedophillic tendencies.
Topic: Mohammad, the Pedophile