Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex Book

Harmful to Minors is a unique book advocating a different approach to sex education and children's sexuality. The work is well-researched and I agree with many of the author's theses, though it doesn't attempt or pretend to be unbiased. Levine braves some very controversial waters by asserting that children should be, for the most part, left alone to explore their sexualities and that traumatizing children about sex and intruding on their privacy is ultimately harmful. She makes a convincing case that many of the fears associated with children are misplaced and disproportionate.

The book isn't without its problems: for example, I read with disbelief the author's assertion that child pornography consists of a few grainy images of children in bathing suits from decades ago that federal agents plant to arrest consumers. That may be what the police allowed Levine to see, but it isn't the whole story and it seemed as though she were dismissing the existence of anything harder-core. Similarly, she refers repeatedly to "consensual" statutory rape, and while her arguments that criminalization of sex between minors should be more nuanced carries weight, this still strikes me as an obvious contradiction by definition. Changing the law is one thing, changing the definition of terms on the fly is quite another. Finally, Levine admits that a lot of the issues she discusses aren't well researched, which is understandable, but relies quite often on constructions like "my instinct is," "I can imagine that," and other invitations to anecdotal expertise. Since I get frustrated and criticize more sexually conservative writers for this, I have to do it here too.

In any case, the book is incredibly thought-provoking and interesting; it served as a good contrast to certain elements in Robert Jenkins's Getting Off.