When I started this blog, I thought I would write a lot about “pedophilia” and/or intergenerational sex, but as time creeps on, it occurs to me that I’ve barely addressed it. I’ve continuously shied away from it, pretending that I didn’t know how many definitions of pedophilia were out there, deliberately trying to ignore statistics that Levine and other authors insist on establishing in every chapter. And I just can’t deal with stats for a few reasons:
I don’t think they represent enough information. Numbers are someone else’s area, not for this women’s studies student. I can’t hop on board with quantitative research and without feeling like something is missing; I want to learn and question the definitions given, not plot them on a graph. That’s just not a part of what I think women’s studies is.
Whose statistics can I (we?) trust? Unless we have universal terms and understandings of each category, no one’s math is going to match. If we rely on math to tell the story of human behaviour, we need to decide on the “right equation” before we present the findings as some sort of fact. But we’re far from there, and that’s ok. It’s alright to have fluid, changing and interacting definitions of categories and identities.
I don’t like math.
The constant use of statistics when debating a social issue seems cowardly and childish. Everyone knows there are numbers; our society values math and science more than they ever will the humanities and arts, but would it kill people to come up with an argument that didn’t rely solely on statistics, demographics, graphs and numbers? Do they fear the real world? Do they fear that when they creep out from underneath their calculators and computer screens, there will be this shocking real 3-Dimensial universe? One filled with inequalities, social problems and things that can’t be solved with a mathematical formula? When it comes to the issue of child abuse, molestation and pedophilia, what will the statistics do for anyone? Telling a parent, or anyone, that there’s really not as high of a percentage of child molesters as they might have thought isn’t that comforting. In fact, it kind of makes you look like a jerk. Presenting stat after stat in a book in an attempt to convince people we’re being too hyperbolic about protecting kids from sex fails to make the impact the author wanted to make. Levine, I’m looking at you.
When they present the “facts and stats” as some kind of reassurance for parents, it’s most likely ineffective. Are you trying to make us less afraid of the “pedophile”, “the abuser” or other monstrous characters we have constructed? Numbers don’t do that, fool.
“I’m hesitant to give my kids more freedom, even though they’re responsible and we’ve known this area for years” says parent.
“Yeah, and statistically speaking, your kids are much more likely to be abused by your partner, or your parents. 7405 out of 210593 sexual assaults of children take place by someone the child knows[1]” says the not so helpful statistician to the concerned parent and public.
I’m not saying there’s no use for math in social debates, but using it as your primary source is weak. Numbers prove very little, if anything at all within certain contexts. The answer to “how has contemporary society constructed, both legally and socially, the pedophile?” is not 7.
This wasn’t supposed to turn into a rant, and I fear I broke that promise about 3 paragraphs back. This was supposed to be a logical argument, but somehow my mind ran out of steam and basically decided to yell at Judith Levine for making her awesome-sounding book boring and better fit for a person who cares more about numbers. I just wanted to tell her that numbers are great, but they do nothing for someone who is trying to deconstruct the profile we have given to pedophiles in contemporary North America. Stats even hinder the process by creating panic, because number's seem to be something people can hang onto, that they will believe. Math doesn't lie, but if we don't know the equations, we have to question the answers statistics provides for us.
[1] Note: This is not a “factual” statistic.
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