No seduction, no harm

Public acceptance of pedophilia in Norway in the 1970s

Abstract

In 1975 a group of pedophile Norwegian men founded an organization to promote legalization of sex between adults and children: The Norwegian Working Group for Pedophilia (NAFP). They were part of an international pedophile movement launched in the Netherlands a few years earlier. Through the 1970s, the NAFP and their close ally, the psychologist and sexologist Thore Langfeldt, were able to promote pedophilia and sex between adults and children without any significant backlash. This article is an attempt to explain public acceptance for pedophilia in Norway in the 1970s. Previous attempts to explain acceptance of pedophilia in various European countries in the 1970s and 80s have primarily seen it as one aspect of the  ‘sexual revolution’: a period from the mid-1960s to the late 1970s, which saw a broad liberalization of sexual norms, including sexual emancipation of women and increased acceptance for non-normative sexual orientations. While this article does not reject the ‘sexual revolution’ explanation, it argues that other explanatory factors are equally or more important. These factors have more to do with the continuation of patriarchy and heteronormativity than with any revolt against them. The first is the contemporaneous state of psychological research and expert opinion. According to many psychologists and other experts, sex between children and adults could be consensual, in which case it was also harmless. However, this state of psychological research and expert opinion was not new in the 1970s and cannot explain why the 1970s saw an unprecedented level of acceptance for pedophilia. The second explanatory factor is the prevalence of a seduction theory of homosexuality. For a long time prior to the legalization of sex between men in 1972, debates about legalization had focused on whether adolescent same-sex sexual experiences could lead to permanent homosexuality. When, in 1972, members of the Norwegian parliament voted to legalize sex between men without introducing a heightened age of consent, they had become convinced that someone above that age, 16, could not be seduced into permanent homosexuality. It was widely believed, however, that seduction into homosexuality was possible for someone below the age of 16. This meant that the legalization of sex between men in 1972 opened a discursive window in which sex between adults and children could be defended by criticizing the seduction theory of homosexuality.