"Child Porn" Panics and Political Agendas

Last summer, an investigative reporter named Debbie Nathan wrote a story about "child porn" for Salon that was yanked off the site in less than 24 hours. What did she say that got her in so much trouble?

It infuriates me that the government prohibits reporters and other legitimate investigators from doing front-line research into child pornography. I'm not talking about obsessive coverage of John Mark Karr and JonBenet Ramsey—

The reporting I'm talking about involves testing government claims about how prevalent child porn really is, and what makes an image pornographic in the first place. To get answers, investigators must look at illegal material - lots of it. Those investigators must also be independent of the government. Otherwise the government can use our fear and loathing of kiddie porn to make false political claims. And to terrorize people like me.

I've been wanting to interview Debbie ever since I read her essay. I decided to kick off my New York City Audible interview series this week with the first of a two-part interview:

Listen to the whole interview: Link

Get a month of my audio show for free: LINK

Nathan is an expert on sex panics and is perhaps best known for her book, Satan's Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt about some of the widely covered sex panic cases that rocked the U.S. twenty years ago, such as the McMartin daycare case in California.

We recently connected over a shared distrust about former New York Times journalist Kurt Eichenwald's much-talked about articles on Internet child pornography.

In our "Part 1,"  I asked Debbie why anyone needs examine child porn on the Internet, and why that group might need to include more people than Alberto Gonzales. Her arguments are riveting.

Next week, Nathan talks to me about sex addiction, and where she gets her moxie from in the first place!

Finally, in my Try This at Home mailbag, a woman listener wants to know the nitty-gritty about herpes before she gets goes hog wild with a new crush.

Don't forget, you can send your confidential questions, feedback about the show, and requests for girly cards to share with your friends to susie@audible.com. (Episo
de 295, June 8, 2007)

"The Salem Martyr," oil painting by Thomas Slatterwhite Noble, 1869.

Comments

[NG]

Great interview Susie!

[Bill Brent]

Dabbie Nathan rawks. I still have my copy of Women and Other Aliens, her 1991 collection of essays. It has served me as a series of examples of the importance of discerning between image and substance.

"Anything that can lead to buying will be colonized." Yep.

Thank you for your interview.

--Bill

[Bob King]

I knew there was a damn good reason for putting your feed on Erotic Truth. You are the Media Matters of sexuality. I'll be following this with great interest, likely with a quick post today. Although my "quick little posts" sometimes turn out to take a couple days...

[C.S. Lewiston]

If this were Mao's China, Ms. Nathan would have been arrested, charged with "counter-revolutionary agitation" and sent off to some remote outpost for "re-education". In the Soviet bloc, she would have been shipped off to a Siberian gulag for her active disputation of the official party line.

Of course things like this couldn't occur here in the land of the free, right?

[Carrie]

Susie, I listened to both of the In Bed episodes featuring Debbie Nathan yesterday while weeding the garden and was amazed about these sex panics. I nearly shit myself this morning when I snapped on the radio and Mr. Kurt "Hated by The Pedophiles" Eichenwald was blathering on my local npr affiliate about the scores of pedophiles lurking behind every bush and computer monitor.

Good God, the man's self-important tone is enough to make me gag. The entire show was filled with parents calling in about the possible dangers of Myspace...jesus! Hello! Sex abuse happens in the home, with or without a computer. I was expected Eichenwald to start claiming that pedophiles will start clawing their way through the monitor screen if we're not careful.

Thank all possible gods for people like you and Debbie Nathan!