check up on your boyfriend.....

if you're worried he might be a paedophile..........

the British Government is considering allowing single mothers to ask for information about the criminal record of new boyfriends to find out whether he is a sex offender if they are worried.

The Guardian make it clear that "Mothers would have to have grounds for suspicion and would face tough penalties if they abused the information, including by making it public. Establishing a relationship with a single mother is a common strategy used by predatory paedophiles to gain access to children. Such men represent about a fifth of child sex offenders; the rest are relatives or otherwise known to the victim."

This seems to me like such a terrible indictment of the state of our community - we cannot trust men with our children. Why is this? Why are men attracted to children as sexual playthings? Is the only way to deal with this issue to give responsiblity to women check up on men we have doubts about? There must be another way of reducing the chances of child sex abuse.

Along with violence against women, abuse of children is a symptom of the patriarchy - men need to feel powerful and to express their feelings as agression or sex. If they need to feel close to a person sexually some of them seem to need that person to be non-threatening - e.g. a child. 80% of child sex offenders are relatives or otherwise known to the child.

What leads to men needing to express themselves like this? The expectations on men to be "masculine" seem to damage men as much and in different ways to the expectations on women to be "feminine". And the impact of the damage is felt by all of us......we have got to the point where we need laws so that people feel they can keep their children safe.

We have to address the issue by educating men about their responsibilities towards the rest of society and supporting them to have non-sexual close relationships with children.