3.2.2 Highlights from Rudiger Lautmann

Quotes, translated from Die Lust am Kind, Portrait des Pädofielen, Rüdiger Lautmann, Ingrid Klein Verlag, Hamburg 1994

Attracted to Children

Here, in the Newsletter, which also appears in a (paper) Word version, only some quotes are given. More quotes are here on Ipce's website.

[ 8] My question is: How do pedophiles see children? The present-day literature keeps silence about this not discussable or forbidden theme.  

[12] We have hold interviews with sixty men. Other  men have informed us in informal interviews or have sent us letters. [...] Our respondents were for two-third boylovers, for one-third girl-lovers, while some loved boys and girls. 

[13, 14 - summarized:] Our sample is not taken from a prison or clinic population, but is as broad as possible taken from the national German population. 

[...] The author disagrees with Finkelhor, who condemns sexual contacts between adults and children per se. 
[Quotes:] In my view, the moral exceeding does not lay in the pedosexual act itself, but in unwished contacts, in exploitation and use of another person, in influencing the personality development. Where the disrespect of the autonomy begins, can content-related and empirically be explained, but in a relationship between an adult and a child this limit cannot rationally be determined. For me it is is very clear that there do exist relationships that do not require any intervention. The children are attached to their lovers and can leave them any moment they want. 

Erotic attraction to a child

[15] If one in anticipation speaks about 'fixation' or 'psychiatric perversion', one has no access to the phenomenon at all. There do exist stable and adult pedophiles, as Kurt Freund already has said. [...] The question must be: what is the meaning of this preference for people with this orientation? 

[17] It is not a sexual contact that attracts, but a natural contact, a living in the neighborhood of the boy. [..] In my impression, pedophiles view children just as others do, but with more precision. 

[17, 18 - summarized] The boylovers in the sample are not so much attracted to the beauty  of the boy, as well by the pleasure of communicating with them; the girl-lovers mentioned more an esthetic motive. 

The childish body

[19, 20 - Summarized] A wide range of bodily characteristics was mentioned by the respondents. 

[21] None of these characteristics is specific for pedophiles. The same attractiveness can be seen in other kinds of sexuality, except the typical childish ones. The respondents have only seldom spoken about the genitalia of the child, although the interviews were in-depth. Penis and vagina ware only scarcely mentioned. 

The erotization of puberty

[23] Puberty is attractive. This is not as liking young green vegetables. It is not the situation, but the changing and it dynamics that attract. 

[25] To see someone's development, and to guide and care for it, this are fundamental motives in human relationships, and also in loving relationships. In the case of pedophilia, this characteristic is remarkable prominent and an important value.

The dimensions age and gender

[26-27 - summarized] The usual explanation is that pedophiles avoid contact with adults, especially those of the other gender because their heterosexuality is not developed. In this view, one cannot believe that children can be erotisized because of themselves, not because of a missed development. 

The several ages of childhood

[28-29] Important is not the age, but how boyish the child is. [...] Mostly, the beloved phase is the start and the development of puberty, at least for boylovers. They are fascinated by the changeover. [...] Before puberty, these men feel attraction and slight erotic feelings, but no sexual desires. 

The child has a gender

[31] What the pedophiles have told us, does not support the hypothesis that the child is seen as androgyny or gender-neutral. It is just the opposite. [...] The desired child has a gender, male or female. A pedophile is a girl-lover or a boylover. 
[32] Thus, the child is for a pedophile not without a gender. 

Sharing the bed with an adult? 

[40 ... - summarized] For ethical and legal reasons, sharing the bed with a child has to be avoided. [...]

[47] The question: 'is the pedophile orientation stable and real?' has for many man to be answered with 'Yes'.

[57] [They know that the child's] pleasure is not identical with the adult's sexuality. 
The child and the adult speak different 'languages' and they differ broadly. This leads to the fact that many, supposedly most of the pedophile friendships are idolized but not sexual. Explicit sexuality is avoided. 

Sexual scripts of children  [67 ev]

Sexual treaties between the generations?

[78] Our respondents are clearly conscious of the difference between childish and adult sexuality; this consciousness is the core of the pedo-erotic form of sexuality. Every pedophile searches for a kind of natural consent with the child [...]. This happens in different ways. 

[80] The pedophile approaches the child as a subject, not as an object of a sexual act. At least he wants this, and so can be seen in the cases told to us.  

[89-90-91] It is my impression that the antennas of pedophile men react with high sensitivity. [...and, summarized:] with quite narrow limits. Many respondents said that the body pleasure of the child is more important than their own body pleasure. They know and accept that the pleasure scarcely can be mutual.

[91] So, a specific kind of relationship comes into being, based on the exchange of different feelings. [...] Respondents said that the relationship is not of a sexual nature, but of an erotic nature.

[92] I see the pedophiles - note: the real ones we have spoken intensively - as credible in their taking in trouble to reach the consent of the child, as well in the seriousness with which they consider a "No".

Borderline cases

[95] There are men with limited capability of acting. But I might add: this kind of limitations can be find in all kinds of sexuality.

'Nothing happens unless we both agree'

[101] Many pedophiles are scarcely or not active in the genital area. 
[...]
The Swiss Beat Meier pleads in a text from 1990 for a clear distinction between 'loving children' and 'sexulality with children'. Sexual feelings did not always arise and did not always lead to sexual acts. 

The child's body

[114] In a pedophile relationship, the adult reaches satisfaction in a clearly different way, compared with adult-adult relationships.

[117] Gravitating oneself to the willingness of the child and accepting of the unwillingness to do such things is part of the know-how of the pedophile style of living.

[118] The analysis of the facts confirms the conclusions of the former chapter: The children meet in a pedophile a sexual reserved adult. If he does not abandon genital acts at all, he is far more reserved in comparison with other sexual subjects.

To conclude an analogy with the well-known gay and hetero sexuality is empirically false.

A greater mistake, nearly a heterosexist one, would be to view the difference between pedophile and adult sexuality as a failing or as a defect. It concerns not a defect, but another form of sexuality.

The historical-social construction of 'the pedophile'

[119] What is cases of incest and sexual exploitation of a child [...] must be seen as a derailment, is in the case of the [real] pedophile the structure and the center of his sexual personality. Just because that, he does not want - and may not - be included in the category child abusers. 

Pedophilia as 'belief' 

[122 - summarized:] My impression is that the self-acknowledged pedophiles I have met were thoughtful people with an open self-consciousness. This made me doubt the concept of a sex criminal, and opened the way for a not-prejudged research. 

[123-124] The quotes in this chapter come from boy lovers. This is not by chance: the girl lovers did not develop such an identity. More precisely, the sexual identity of the latter is more fragmentized. [...] Most of them have spoken of 'pedophile experiences', but not of a 'pedophile identity'. 

[125] The self-acknowledging pedophiles teach us that we may not mark or understand  loving children with words as vice, abuse or crime, but rather as a sexual self-definition. 

Ethics

[126] For some it might be strange, but it is true: being attracted to children as a specific kind of sexuality bond itself to ethics. We have not explicitly asked for it, but nearly every respondent has told us which considerations should taken into account concerning the wishes and feelings of the child, which affection, control and care has to be given, which kind of education would be given, and how sparing one should be with money and gifts. 

[...] The pedophiles factually perform - without any help - a kind of codex.