I belive art is and has always been subjective; it invariably provokes varying and conflicting ideas due to the diverse perceptions of humankind. Just as some may find Henson’s work creepy, art lovers can understand the aesthetic beauty and reasoning for the explicit imagery captured by Henson; art is often created to raise questions within society – just because some may not understand this, is not a justifiable reason to terminate Henson and his art.

Nudity is not obscenity. The law is very simple; if you display a child in a sexual context, it is classified as child pornography. These photographs did not do that. The law still provides a framework for the expression of ideas thus Bill Henson should be allowed to continue taking photos as he has done for the past 30 yrs.

To place restrictions of Henson’s expression through art is the puritanical repression of healthy and natural occurances within the lifespan. When did the naked body become a bad thing? As a teenager myself, I believe we should be accepting of external appearences, including the human figure, not deny the right to reveal such normalities.

Bill Henson: “I’m not interested in making art about art. For me it’s about the essential and important things that effect out lives; I’m interested in the sense of ageing, desire, attraction, beauty, love and death. These are at the centre of everyone’s lives and these are what drive the work.”

For those who do not have a creative mind or whose aesthetic nature doesn’t come naturally, often intentions, descriptions, objectives, details, explanations and metaphors regarding subject matters need to be outlined and elaborated. For Kevin Rudd to comment critically on Henson’s work without background research into the artists or his works, simply isn’t fair. The work is mild and justifiable by context and is not sexualised to any degree.

Each to their own, I say. ART is about diverse interpretations. That’s what makes it so powerful.

Given that Professor Rapoport is also the publisher of such naturist gems as ‘The Funny Side of Going Naked: The First Nudie Toons Collection’ by Ron Coleman and Jan Crimmings, ‘Au Naturel: The History of Nudism in Canada’ by Jim Woyke, ‘Theatre Au Natural: A Collection of Naturist Plays’, edited by Mark Storey, ‘Bodies and Soul’, and ‘The Spirit of Lady Godiva’ by Harvey (sic!), certainly his impartiality seems questionable.

Professor Rapoport pounced upon a simple typo as a sign of my “cluelessness” about paedophilia and distorted my meaning, substituting “increases” for the word “normalizes” so as to have something to refute and to depict me as a fear-monger “from the sexual disaster industry”. The observant reader may observe that I have not asserted nor implied anything remotely like “most Australians either are or are potentially paedophiles, that photos of nudity of minors increase crime against them, and that censoring such photos out of existence protects them”.

I was trying to make a point about normalization, that I regard it as being inherent in the gratuitous publication of child nude photography.

‘David’, who blogged on this site on May 24th, 2008 understood the concept of ‘normalization’, a term in the psychiatric and child protection literatures associated with the psychodynamics of child abuse. It refers to an idea, concept or behavior that is sought to be an accepted part of societal culture.

‘Normalization’ is probably more insidious than ‘grooming’ because it seeks broader social acceptance of adult/child sexual relations, often couched in pseudo-libertarian language. It refers to a category of strategic behaviours (intentional or otherwise) that seek to undermine social, psychological, generational, familial, ethical, and professional boundaries established to protect children from violations of their physical, sexual and psychological integrity and safety.

While ‘grooming’ is the thin edge of the wedge and full of predatory intent, ‘normalisation’ is a rationalizing, sectarian strategy seeking general acceptance after the fact.

My assessment of The Henson Case is that it amounts to little more than an elaborate attempt to normalise child sexual abuse. Marr re-exploited the child in the republication of her exhibition photographs (whether passed by the Classification Board or not) in service to Henson’s defense (who had somehow transmogrified into a hero of the libertarian left) among other liberties taken.

With no special credentials to qualify him for the task, Marr’s hastily compiled, sensationalist book was a provocative and contemptuous “two-fingered salute” to anyone whose primary concerns happened to be for a child.

Similarly, Professor Rapoport’s inclusion of the Cordelle images in his partisan review was in service to the normalization of Henson’s enterprise in a disingenuous and fallacious comparison with an ‘ethnographic’ naturist context. There is no escaping the fact that, whatever their motives, both The Henson Case and Professor Rapoport’s AMA review incorporated photos of child nudes in service to their own agendae. They certainly were not, by any stretch of the imagination, published in the interests of the child. As such, the publication of these photographs was ipso facto exploitive and normalising.

What Professor Rapoport conveniently failed to mention in his review was thatThe Henson Case was commissioned from David Marr by Michael Heyward (a buddy of Henson) – while Henson was still under Police investigation – as part of a larger, normalizing public-relations enterprise (catocounsel.com.au). Marr and Heywood’s re-publication of the child’s photographs was thus part of a larger overall strategy integral to an elaborate defense of Henson’s child art and constituted, by logical extension, endorsement and normalisation of the abusive conditions of their initial production, exhibition and dissemination.

Ergo the collapse of just about every ethical and protective boundary you can name.

Sadly, I am not clueless about paedophilia. People I love were sexually abused as children by adults entrusted with their care and education. Priests, judges, parents…ingratiated themselves into these vulnerable children’s lives, violating their trust and devastating their fragile, fledgling selves. The traumatic impact was so ruinous to their lives and those closest to them that, decades later, it remains incalculable and ongoing. As a psychologist specializing in the treatment of adult survivors of child sexual abuse, I am familiar with their stories from the inside, stories that emerged through the reliving of the terrors, fury and overwhelming pain of their destabilized and isolated childhoods. I have worked in the prison system and have encountered the murderous rage felt by criminals towards their abusers. I am therefore only too familiar with the trail of broken hearts and broken minds these ‘lovers’ of children leave in their wake.

But out of all their painful experiences the most devastating cause of intractable despair was the failure of families and communities to protect them – the parent that turned a blind eye and the community that failed to intervene. Although nothing at all felt okay, those they depended upon to keep them safe insisted that they were.

It was this final abandonment that broke their spirit.

Apart from the spelling, Skankymac seems clueless about paedophilia. There isn’t any reputable research in the past 40 years to substantiate such claims. There certainly is some to suggest that the opposite results.

Skankymac is implying that most Australians either are or are potentially pedophiles, that photos of nudity of minors increase crime against them, and that censoring such photos out of existence protects them.

Experience in other western countries not afflicted with so much of his baseless fear-mongering proves all that to be nonsense. His rant, to quote a well-known writer in this field, is just so much “propaganda from the sexual disaster industry.”

Australia’s erroneous and dangerous dalliances with censorship as in the Henson case of 2008 exceed those of even the deeply fearful and censorious officialdom of the USA.

According to O’Riordan’s somewhat cynical editorial, Rapoport generously paid for the submission of the images to the Classification Board to facilitate their publication in his magazine, which he states (tongue-in-cheek) also conforms to new Arts Council protocols.

Apart from the article comprising little more than pseudo-libertarian naturist apologetics posing as arts journalism, it is disappointing that images of vulnerable young children are still being disseminated by individuals in service to their own interests and agendae – whether it be to flog naturism, or photo-anthologies, or art magazines, or to fulminate upon some imaginary new era of art censorship. Gratuitous publication of juvenile nudity merely normalizes fetishistic, voyeuristic or paedaphilic appetites that seek to erode amenable social boundaries and structures in place to protect vulnerable children.

What adults get up to together is one thing and what children get up to together is another, but (harmless and eccentric naturism aside) when an arts community sanctions the ghoulish exploitation and abuse of children (which is in turn sanctioned by the wider community), then what faith can these kids have in the adults they rely upon to protect them?

What has been so often conveniently forgotten in this debate are the predatory conditions surrounding the making of these images that require the co-operation of parents and adults: the perverse grooming of children and that of their families over time, the incestuous character of art world and school networks, the frankly irresistible character of glamour and celebrity, and the distorted notions of adult freedoms and rights invoked to justify carte blanche access to kids.

Are children not entitled to be free from adult invasions of their psychological integrity?

Child experts are now identifying a trend they call “the grooming of the community”.

As a gay artist friend commented during the Henson affair last year: ‘Apart from the usual cant that “he is one of Australia’s greatest artists, blah blah”, I think the arterarti held back in defence of Henson’.

‘So he can take a good photo? Patrick White could write, but if he took young boys back to his house in the name of research for his next novel, are we then supposed to say “but just look at the prose and he does have a Nobel prize, so get back in there boys and be thankful he chose you!?”.