The abusers are in charge of safeguarding our kids...

TMAP is the Teenage Magazine Arbitration
Panel. It proclaims: "TMAP is the magazine industry's self-regulatory body which ensures that the sexual content of teenage magazines is presented in a responsible and appropriate manner."

Which may sound reasonable (though the idea of self-regulation is perhaps a little alarming, not least in the light of the banks' self-regulation and its consequences; and for me the whole sentence is something of an oxymoron; and 'appropriate' is one of those words...).

But it is when you dig a little deeper into their website that you discover the philosophy of this panel. Under research, for example: "Is early sexual activity a bad thing?"

"Much is made of the notion of `readiness' as if there were a fixed time to have sex. There is no absolute logic about sex at any one age. Biologically, a young person is ready for sexual experience at the point at which they become physically mature but the age deemed socially appropriate varies through time and across societies. In the Middle Ages the legal age for marriage of girls in England was 12 and for men 14. In the Trobriand Islands adults do not mind if children engage in sexual play and attempt precociously to perform the sexual act, and adolescents may sleep with one another provided only that they are not in love with one another."

You get the drift.

Go and have a look, and then see if you think, like me, that such attitudes are abusive of developing kids.