Judith Levine, Harmful to Minors
A month before its publication, a provocative book about children's sexuality is being denounced by conservatives as evil and prompting angry calls for action against the University of Minnesota Press. In Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children From Sex, Judith Levine argues that young Americans, though bombarded with sexual images from the mass media, are often deprived of realistic advice about sex. Levine argues that abstinence-only sex education is misguided. She also suggests the threat of pedophilia and molestation by strangers is exaggerated by adults who want to deny young people the opportunity for positive sexual experiences. "Squeamish or ignorant about the facts, parents appear willing to accept the pundits' worst conjectures about their children's sexual motives. It's as if they cannot imagine that their kids seek sex for the same reasons they do."
Gainesville Sun
Kuro5hin has an excellent review of reactions to Judith Levine's Harmful to Minors, followed by a lengthy discussion thread.
Kuro5hin
The New York Times looks at the furor surrounding Judith Levine's Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children From Sex, slated for release in May. Conservative politicians, pundits and talk show hosts have blasted the book for supposedly endorsing pedophilia. University of Minnesota Press has responded to criticisms by setting up "an extraordinary two-month review of the way its press acquires and reviews books, to be conducted by people from other academic presses." Civil libertarians criticized the press's concession to ideological antagonists, saying it "invites future attempts at intellectual blackmail." This article lays out some of Levine's arguments.
The book does not, in fact, endorse pedophilia. What Ms. Levine does argue is that the fear of pedophilia is overblown and that the age of consent should be lowered in certain circumstances. Ms. Levine tries to separate what she sees as real risks — H.I.V. infection, unwanted pregnancies and sexual violence — from risks she calls exaggerated or even invented. She argues forcefully against abstinence-only education and what she sees as a pervasive tendency to view all manifestations of childhood sexuality as dangerous or disturbing. "The reaction to the book is an example of the kind of hysteria I'm writing about," Ms. Levine said. [....]
But by far the most explosive part of the book, one that is directly related to the current scandal, has to do with the age of consent. Ms. Levine argues that sex between teenagers and adults is not always wrong, and that many people are too quick to deny children and teenagers the right to make their own sexual decisions, often by labeling all such contact "abuse."
Not surprisingly, controversy has been good for business. "The first printing of 3,500 copies has already sold out, and a second printing of 10,000 is on the way."
New York Times
At Salon, Amy Benfer interviews Judith Levine, author of Harmful to Minors, who "talks about why American parents are afraid of their teenagers' sexuality, says kids know the difference between coercion and consent -- and blasts critics who say she advocates pedophilia."
Salon
ABC News has a lengthy excerpt from Harmful to Minors. Those of us not smart enough to order advance copies can start to read what Judith Levine actually wrote.
ABC News
Ellen Barry looks at the hysterical reaction to Harmful to Minors.
Boston Globe
Debbie Nathan looks at the uproar over Harmful to Minors. Nathan served on the review committee for the book for University of Minnesota Press. (Back in the 1980s and early 1990s, Nathan courageously investigated and questioned the "ritual/Satanic abuse at day care centers" hysteria, for which she received a lot of the same "apologist for pedophiles" slander that Judith Levine is getting today.)
Alternet
At City Pages (Minneapolis/St. Paul's alt-weekly), Paul Demko looks at the furor surrounding Judith Levine's Harmful to Minors. Demko provides a detailed account of the rigorous editorial and review process which the book went through at University of Minnesota Press.
City Pages
Liz Highleyman cuts through the hype and hysteria to describe what Judith Levine is really saying in Harmful to Minors. "Why does the proposition that youth deserves sexual autonomy, pleasure, and privacy seem so radical?"
Alternet
Pat Holt looks at the furor surrounding Harmful to Minors in her publishing industry newsletter. She also reprints a public letter in support of the University of Minnesota signed by several academic, publishing and civil liberties organizations.
Holt Uncensored
JoAnn Wypijewski discusses Judith Levine's Harmful to Minors and the hysteria surrounding it.
Levine spends a large portion of the book advocating for candid, comprehensive sex education in schools, something I and many of my generation never had. But the spirit that animates the book is a less programmatic, polymorphous appreciation of the sights and smells, the sounds and language and tactile delights that make a person--adult or child--feel alive in her skin. Levine's central preoccupation, running like a golden thread throughout the book, is the pursuit of happiness, the idea that kids have a right not just to safety and knowledge but to pleasure too. And "pleasure" here is more than the sweet shudder of a kiss, the happy exhaustion of climax; it is the panoply of large and small things that figure under the heading joie de vivre, including the satisfaction, quite apart from sex, of relating deeply with others in the world.
Link snagged from Pursed Lips.
The Nation
