Paedophilia: The Radical Case

Summary

The book is partly autobiographical, and the first part is devoted to O'Carroll's life history. The second is about the concept of paedophilia and the the third concerns the activities of the Paedophile Information Exchange. "I am not interested in why I am a paedophile," he writes "any more than others are interested in why they are 'normal'".

O'Carroll advocates the normalization of adult-child sexual relationships. He states his belief that each stage of the sexual relationship between an adult and child can be 'negotiated', with "hints and signals, verbal and nonverbal, by which each indicates to the other what is acceptable and what is not... the man might start by saying what pretty knickers the girl was wearing, and he would be far more likely to proceed to the next stage of negotiation if she seemed pleased by the remark".

Mainstream media

Paedophilia: The Radical Case was reviewed by journalist Mary-Kay Wilmers in the London Review of Books, psychoanalyst Charles Rycroft in The Times Literary Supplement, John Rae in the Times Educational Supplement, Maurice Yaffé in New Statesman, and Eric Taylor in New Society. Reviewers were sharply divided. Wilmers, Rycroft and Rae were scathingly dismissive, while Yaffé and Taylor were strongly supportive of the author, if not entirely of the "radical case" he had set out.

Gay media

Paedophilia: The Radical Case was reviewed by Ken Plummer in Gay News, Hubert Kennedy Books in The Advocate, and Wallace Hamilton in Christopher Street. These reviews were broadly sympathetic. Jim Monk reviewed the book in The Body Politic, writing that while O'Carroll "takes great care in researching and documenting his arguments", O'Carroll's personal interest in having sex with children meant that he was not "disinterested" and his work was not academic. While Monk granted that many of O'Carroll's arguments had been made before, he credited O'Carroll with being the first to bring those arguments together into a comprehensive work, and with making a compelling case. Nevertheless, he had reservations, pointing to the possibility of heterosexual men sexually abusing young girls. Monk accepted O'Carroll's view that consensual sex does not interfere with a child's emotional or sexual maturation. Monk criticized O'Carroll's treatment of incest, writing that while O'Carroll stated he would not deal with the topic, he nevertheless implied that "sex play between parents and their children" was desirable. Monk argued in response that "father-daughter affairs" were not "healthy". Monk concluded that the book was the solution to problems facing the gay rights movement in Canada, which according to him was suffering from a feeling that its strategies were lacking.

Scientific and academic journals

Gerald Jones reviewed Paedophilia: The Radical Case in the Journal of Homosexuality.

Evaluations in books

Sociologist Jeffrey Weeks called Paedophilia: The Radical Case "the most sustained advocacy of the subject", but nevertheless believed that there were two powerful arguments against O'Carroll's views about the possibility of children consenting to sex. These were the feminist argument that "young people, especially young girls, do need protection from adult men in an exploitative and patriarchal society", and the argument that while adults are fully aware of the sexual connotations of their actions, young people are not, and that there is thus "an inherent and inevitable structural imbalance in awareness of the situation."

Views of criminologists

Criminology lecturer Kieran Mccartan uses Paedophilia: The Radical Case as an example of "how sex offenders justify themselves".

Criminologist Richard Green included the book as recommended reading for his students at Cambridge University.