[Interviewer Andrea Juno]: Is there child pornography in --

There is no commercial child pornography, period. That's been used as a hideous "pink herring" or something! Every despicable act that humankind has thought of is probably on videotape somewhere, now, and it doesn't have to involve a child for it to be ugly. Really sick things have happened and sick people have profited and gloated and god-know-knows-what- over them. But these things that really spark our sense of horror and evil are not really available on the commercial market -- you just can't walk in and get them anywhere. And that includes child pornography -- that's not something that has ever been readily available.

On the other hand, this country is so sex-negative that a book like Show Me was virtually run out of the country. The photos showed little children, young adults and adults in the nude; it showed genitals, bodies and differences between men and women; what men and women look like when they make love; what a pregnant woman looks like, etc. This was a children's book which was produced in Scandinavia --

[Interviewer:] I saw it; it was an incredibly humanistic, almost New Age presentation --

Very New Age, yet it was hounded out of this country. I know i started having sex when I was a teenageer; I know that sexual feeling among children and young people are very powerful and vital, and to say that they don't exist is appalling! It's just as appalling as an adult exploiting a kid's sexual inexperience and lack of power. It's sick to be ignorant -- people get taken advantage of because they're ignorant. So when people say "child porn" to me, it means nothing but political rhetoric -- because in practical terms it simply doesn't exist.

An individual's story about someone using or abusing a child -- that means something to me. But don't talk to me about "kiddie porn" because that's just been the battering ram of the right wing to close down 1) legitimate sex education of young people 2) the whole media of eroticism. When progressive-minded people (erotic artists whatever they call themselves) are trying to create new words, pictures and ideas and bring diversity, creativity and quality to this medium, it really hurts us to have critics and nay-sayers saying, "Well, we don't know if we can buy this; after all, you may be child pornographers!" That kind of instant condemnation terminates discussion; there's nothing more to say once that label has been dropped...