Ipce Newsletter # 30

I p c e

N E W S L E T T E R

Number E 30, August 2011 - Last issue

Statement: Important ethical criteria

Ipce's Newsletters and Meetings - Overview
In this overview, you will see the content all Ipce's Newsletters, especially the reports about the 23 Ipce Meetings. By following the blue bold fonts, you will have an overview of the history of Ipce.

Mission Statement

Ipce is a forum for people who are engaged in scholarly discussion about the understanding and emancipation of mutual relationships between children or adolescents and adults.

In this context, these relationships are intended to be viewed from an unbiased, non-judgmental perspective and in relation to the human rights of both the young and adult partners.

Ipce meets once every one or two years in a different country, publishes a newsletter and a web site, co-ordinates the (electronic) exchange of texts, and keeps an archive of specific written publications.

Introduction

Once upon a time...,

in 1987, Ipce started as a meeting, then without minutes. From the third meeting in 1989, a small Newsletter presented the report. Gradually, the Newsletter grew to a kind of magazine, giving the reports before and after the annual meetings, with gradually more articles.

In those days, once upon a time before the Internet, paper newsletters were the way of communication. From # 06, spring 1992, I have edited the Ipce Newsletters until now: the seven paper Newsletters thereafter, followed by the 30 electronic Newsletters.

I remember in the early nineties having had a great pile of about 80 thick paper Newsletters, copied, in envelopes, with written addresses and with post stamps - quite expensive and time-consuming.

Ipce changed

In 1997, the first electronic Newsletter was made.

During the Meeting of October 1998 in Athens, "IPCE" - abbreviation - changed itself into "Ipce" - name - and from an organization of delegates from organizations into a forum of individuals, each with a vote. Here, our Mission Statement was born. Ipce also decided to open a public website and to make the Newsletters, with the annual reports before and after the annual Meetings, public.

In 1999 the website started. Ipce entered the Internet era. Paper Newsletters were still made and sent to those who had no internet connection, including this last issue, be it to only a very few addresses. From now on, all Ipce information is on the Internet, with now even four libraries, all integrated in a new website. A Newsletter is no longer needed now. A renewed website, integrating the 'old' three libraries and a new Library 4, is made and tested in 2010, and made public in 2011.

For this last issue,

I have made an overview of all Newsletters, especially mentioning the reports of the 23 Meetings Ipce has had since 1987. These reports tell the history of Ipce.

In Memoriam

Excuse me to take a pause now for an In Memoriam. On June 26, 2011, our member Roy Radow is gone, silently and quietly leaving us out of a coma, the end of an illness that came suddenly, heavily and quite quickly on him.
Since many years, Roy managed a service to send news items all over the world, among many others to Ipce's webmaster - about a mean of five each day, year after year, many hundreds of texts.
We owe much to him. About 90% of all Ipce's texts came from him; only a selection of a selection of a severe selection has been placed. May he rest in peace.

Ethics

A part of the time during all those meetings was reserved for the internal matters, organization, finances, structure, procedures. Another part is spoken about society-related topics. Overseeing all meetings, quite frequently, long and intensively is spoken about ethics, actually the most discussed item within Ipce.

By doing so, Ipce has gradually developed ethical criteria, principles or guidelines for consensual and free relationships between adults and children - relationships in which sexuality was not the great secret or taboo. In most cultures and societies, this taboo still exists in full.

This results in sexuality related problems in society and in adult-adult relationships. One of those problems is child sexual abuse, a term, for us, only referring to real abuse - it does exist - not to every consensual, free and harmless relationship in which sexuality is not the great secret or taboo. These relationships do also exist.

Be not surprised that this last Newsletter opens with a Statement about ... ethics. This is followed by a next collection of Absurdities in the Western culture and societies that demonize every kind of sexuality, even of any bodily or intimate contact, and even any picture of the body of a child. It are this kind of absurdities that Ipce tries to combat by presenting rational ideas and research on a scientific level, or "scholastic level", as our Mission Statement says.

Goodbye

Nearly twenty years, I have been and have signed as "Your secretary". Now ... 'Gone are the days when my heart was young and gay' ... and my body was healthy and vital - my mind still is, not so my eyes. Now, there is a new secretary, and I am the co-secretary (for internal communication) as long as still needed. I am seventy now, and I may greet you,

Frans