Kudos to Ms. Wangnet for a
very intelligent piece, and thank you for including it in Nabokov-L.
Here in the United States, where the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that
"cartoon sex," unlike images of real children, cannot be denied First
Amendment protection as child pornography, the "contradictions
embedded in Western cultures between paedophile hysteria and marketing
sex to children" are stark. In recent months, "tween thong site"
photographer Jeffrey Libman was sentenced to 87 months in federal
prison, and his former employer Marc Lynn Greenberg (WeBe Web
Corporation owner) faces a similar fate in August, despite nary a
single image of a nude child nor a child engaged in a sexual act having
been alleged by the government. Meanwhile, ABC featured
8-to-10-year-olds in lingerie doing Beyonce's "Single Ladies Dance" on
a recent Good Morning America broadcast. Male Nabokovians, to
paraphrase Dr. Edward Allen, a former professor of mine, frequently
meet mothers who feel a need to "keep an eye on their daughters" in
their presence, making research in this area uncomfortable for some. Son
of a Solipsist, a novel I started writing several years ago, is
designed on one level as a "sequel" to Lolita, and one may find
more information about it at http://independent.academia.edu/SteveNorquist
--
Norky