Interview with Barbara Gowdy

[Interviewer:] Are you suggesting that having sexual feelings for little girls is normal?
[Barbara Gowdy:] I'm suggesting it's probably more widespread than we know, and there's a lot of men who control themselves and have decided that, "I can't help what I feel but I can help how I behave." Most of us have that dilemma, in some spheres of our lives. I lust after other women or men but just because I have the feeling doesn't mean I have to have the action. So this dilemma is not uncommon, and I also think that the present culture encourages men to have sexual feelings for children. [...]

Yes, we believe it's almost the worst feeling you can have, as a man -- sexual interest in a child, girl or boy. It didn't used to be the case. I mean, when I was a girl in the '50s there were what we called funny men or gropers -- the milkman was one, there was a guy down the street who in exchange for a candy would grope you. And we took advantage of that because we wanted the candy. And we knew these men were creepy, icky, and lost in a way, but we weren't frightened by them. [...]

Nowadays, the minute a man touches a little girl he'd better kill her because his life is over. You know the man who killed that girl Holly Jones in Toronto, he said that he was watching porn and got so revved up he went out and grabbed the first girl he saw, got her inside and realized he was too overwrought to do anything with her, but that he knew he had to kill her. In my day she'd have been let go, and he would have known that that would have been all right. I'm not saying men should be able to grab children off the streets -- I mean, I'd be the first to want to shoot them -- but the fact is this guy felt he had no choice.

source: < Interview with Barbara Gowdy - Barbara Gowdy talks about the line between sexualizing children and pedophilia, and her new book, 'helpless' > by Kenneth Whyte; www.macleans.ca/homepage/magazine/article.jsp?content=20070305_103076_103076; Macleans.ca; 5 March 2007