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Talking trash
Talk magazine peddles hardcore porn from the mouths of babes.
By Amy Benfer
[01/25/00]

Out with the old and out with the new
Feminism of every stripe has failed. It's time for a gender equality movement.
By Cathy Young
[01/26/00]

Going for the perfect high
Choosing a high school was a lot easier when you didn't get to choose.
By Merle Kessler
[01/27/00]

Melissa, David and me
Why does lesbian motherhood need the blessing of a "father"?
By Laurie Essig
[01/28/00]

"Beat the Biological Clock"
I've seen the future and it is a televised reproductive hootenanny.
By Dorothy Nixon
[01/28/00]

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The law provides no answers. In fact, we have made the key terms in operative legal statutes so vague that we can hardly be certain that any photo is clearly pornographic or, more to the point, not pornographic.

In 1982 (N.Y. vs. Ferber), child pornography, as yet undefined, was declared to have no artistic significance and to be indefensible on those grounds.

In 1984, child pornography was, for the first time, distinguished from adult pornography in federal law and defined as the "lascivious exhibition of genitals" in an underage subject.

By 1989 (Mass. vs. Oakes), "nudity with lascivious intent" was added to the definition. (All of this, I should add, is a part of federal law, which comes into play only in cases of interstate activity. Otherwise it functions as no more than a set of suggestions for state laws, which vary widely and wildly.)

The inclusion of "intent" shifted attention from the photo itself to the motives of the photographer and even the receiver of the photo. As a result, more laws were needed to list the elements that might provide clues to the photographer's intentions. Now such things as a "visually suggestive setting or pose," "inappropriate attire considering the child's age," a suggestion of "sexual coyness," an intent "to elicit sexual response in viewer" or the use of a photo, regardless of the photographer's intent, are specified "factors" in making the determination as to whether or not a picture of a child can be considered pornographic.

And that's not all. The subject need not be naked for a photograph to qualify as child pornography. In 1994, Janet Reno decreed: "Neither nudity or [sic] discernability of genitals through clothing is a required element of the offense." It is also not clear whether child pornography needs to involve actual children. If the photo conveys the impression that a child is involved in lascivious photos, that may be good enough. So morphed and simulated photos may still be judged to have a devastating "secondary effect" by stimulating the public appetite for such photos.

The law leaves us in a fog surrounded by murk enveloped in blackness. Sometimes adults who look like kids are photographed lasciviously. Other times, what are clearly kids are pictured in what some regard as lascivious attire. New York Mayor Rudy Guiliani and many others were deeply shocked by a proposed Times Square billboard showing small boys in expensive underpants bouncing on a suitably expensive couch. He thought it might encourage lascivious thoughts -- not in him but in pedophiles. Calvin Klein backed down and allowed the furor to give him the publicity the billboards were aimed at.

Makes one wonder. What would it take to produce a picture of a child that was indubitably not pornographic? Put another way, why do we declare some things innocent and some criminal, some cute and others disgusting?

Consider this: Within the same cultural climate that sees sausages, showerheads and sofas as erotic props, "Naked Babies," a book of photographs of the same by Nick Kelsh with text by Anna Quindlen, is not just acceptable -- it's in its second printing. Quindlen's prose -- full of treacle and truism, bathos and balderdash -- provides a sentimental counterpoint that negates any suspicions aroused by Kelsh's rain of naked bodies: "Adults in the presence of a naked baby reach out their hands," she oozes, "as though to warm themselves at the fire of perfection."

But how exactly is it that nakedness is divine at one point and the desire to touch it an act of flat-out reverence when, a few years later on in the child's life, nakedness becomes shameful and any adults reaching out hands to warm themselves at the fire of perfection will find themselves in manacles? According to Quindlen, a naked baby is "androgynous," "sensual as anything but not sexual at all," while "a boy, a girl -- well, they are something else."

I agree that children are at risk -- but not from cameras. Children are put at risk by neglect, emotional and physical abuse, bad health care, lousy education, lack of hope. Even sexual abuse, which ranks low among their torments, is not a problem of stranger abductions, child pornographers, priests or scout masters; it's a family problem. And we all know that. It's so well-known it can, it seems, be ignored.

Even sexual abuse, though it commands our attention, is not, statistically, a highly significant form of child abuse. The National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse reports that 11 percent of reports to child protective agencies involve sexual abuse (a little higher than "other"), far below physical abuse (30 percent) and neglect (47 percent).

One almost wishes that what we call "abuse" were the only nightmare kids have to face. For instance, 500,000 kids a year are classified as "throwaways" by the FBI. They are not foster children nor runaways (there are even more of those), but kids who really are set adrift, kids who would like to stay somewhere if someone would let them. But nobody will.

And yet we hurl our outrage and our resources and our art-critic police headlong into solving the non-problem of improper snapshots. It's a little like starting a campaign for flossing in the midst of the Black Death.

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