Now that safe spaces and universal acceptance have become the norm, it is fashionable to tolerate all kinds of proclivities and inclinations in the name of diversity. But until recently, we respected the nebulous line that faintly dissects the parameters of what we consider to be good and evil. Not so today, where there is a growing campaign to destigmatise everything, even if doing so requires us to unpick the moral fabric of our society.
How else are we to explain the two most disturbing causes trumpeted by modern progressives: of paedophilia and of polygamy? To some extent, they canât be compared. Polygamy remains legal in a number of countries â from South Africa and Malaysia to Iran and Morocco. Paedophilia, on the other hand, has long been considered beyond the pale, and is effectively banned across the world. Most countries have an age of consent â and those that donât, such as Sudan and Afghanistan, require a couple to be married before sex is legally allowed.
And yet, in America of all places, activists are now campaigning for the destigmatisation of paedophilic desires. To remain horrified is bigoted; we need to feel empathy for the âsufferingâ that paedophiles face. What makes this movement even more disturbing is that its advocates are not confined to some progressive fringe: even those whose jobs it is to end child sexual abuse now support it.
Only last week, Elizabeth Letourneau, Director of the Moore Center for the Prevention of Child Sexual Abuse at John Hopkinsâs Bloomberg School of Public Health, tweeted: âMany adults with sexual attraction to children want help to control it, hate the feeling, donât want to act on it. Helping them prevents #childsexualabuse. Stigmatizing the conversation puts kids at risk. #prevention.â
She was responding to the debate sparked at Old Dominion University earlier this month, after word spread around campus that one of its professors, Allyn Walker, had released a book over the summer titled A Long, Dark Shadow: Minor-Attracted People and Their Pursuit of Dignity. The book, according to its blurb, “offers a crucial account of the lived experiences of this hidden population”. In reality, all it offers is a disconcerting defence of paedophilia.
Walker, whose preferred pronouns are they/them, is concerned for the well-being of ‘minor-attracted people’ or MAPs, the new preferred term for individuals attracted to children. When asked about the use of MAPs in a recent interview, Walker responded: âI think it is important to use terminology for groups that members of that group want others to use for them. It is less stigmatising than other words like paedophile.â In other words: letâs not hurt the paedophilesâ feelings.
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SubscribeI am in my mid sixties and as a person who was sexually abused as a child, both by a priest when I was 4, and later by a tutor when I was 11, am here to state that that abuse has led to a life sentence of mental health issues, and relationship failures.
Pedophiles, ruthlessly, without a shred of remorse ruin the lives.
There are no psychological interventions that take away their harm, there is no cure (although versions of CBT would have you belive otherwise).
If we fail to attend to the most vulnerable in society, our children, and to safeguard them we fail as a society.
I do not believe that advocating empathy and understanding of pedophiles will make a single child safer. On the contrary any acceptance of their behaviour will be utilised and manipulated by them to their advantage, a cost children will have to live with.
One thing we know paedophiles are good at, itâs grooming. This should be considered an attempt at societal wide grooming!
Absolutely. Most children suffer in silence and never speak of abuse. It does lead to life-long suffering and self-loathing that gets baked-in.
My deepest sympathies William.
I’m sure your opinion is informed by experiences that no one should ever have to endure.
If we know about them and treat them (how I’ve no idea) they are surely less likely to be able to act on their feelings? I’d rather that than they stay in the shadows, increasingly likely to act out their desires and hurt kids. If we DON’T seek to treat them and manage them what do we go? Let them run amok?? That’s not legitimising them it’s protecting kids from them isn’t it?
Everyone one has a choice on whether they do something. First we need strong laws against it. Then if they cannot control the urge they should be locked away from the temptation and given help if they want it. If we just put up with it then surely we are an evil generation.
It’s about to get a lot trickier, which may have been the idea in the first place – ‘Conversion Therapy’ looks likely to be banned in the near future. Attempting to treat paedos for their paraphilia would probably fall foul of that law.
You are so right – CT (the violent and abusive elements of which are already illegal) has such an emotive yet vague definition that prayer, pastoral care and the ordinary work of churches is getting caught in their deliberate net.
See my comment on the Lucy Faithfull Foundation. I do not know how effective their therapeutic work has been.
There is no evidence that pedophilia can be cured, only controlled. One of the best ways to help pedophiles to suppress their desires and refuse to act out is to continue to stigmatize pedophilia. The last thing we want to do is loosen their internal behavioral controls by making them think that wanting to rape children is “not so bad”.
I agree that it can and does wound a child mentally and emotionally, but I wouldn’t say there is no cure. I was abused as well and have found answers in forgiving the perpetrator and finding faith in Christ.
I hope forgiving the perpetrator helped you heal, but I also hope that “forgiveness” wasn’t used as an excuse not to seek justice and prevent your perpetrator from harming more children. My fear is that the concept of “forgiveness” is exploited by predators to protect them from accountability – which leads to more vulnerable people being harmed.
Brave post. Much respect is due to you sir.
There is nothing “brave” about forgiving sexual abuse. Try being a survivor who refuses to forgive.
Forgiveness is for the perpetrator and for people who don’t want to deal with the hassle of holding predators accountable.
It’s also for those who don’t want to deal with the uncomfortable feelings of rage that so many survivors suppress and turn against themselves.
Holding predators accountable and being honest about the intense rage caused by sexual violence (rather than turning it against oneself or others) is brave; forgiveness is neither brave nor cowardly, it is simply a neutral expression of what works for some survivors, but not for others.
You have my sympathies and I pray that you find peace. Abuse of any child by people in positions of power is abhorrent & should be prosecuted with every fibre of the (albeit presently puny) law – which I hope has happened for you – how much more abhorrent is the parental paedophile?
Please accept the sympathy of a fellow sufferer.
Cultural relativism has degraded public morality and helped pave the way for more of this. The toleration of child sexual abuse on US military bases in Afghanistan is one example. Closer to home, we have the abject failure to protect children in Rotherham. The prevalence of polygamy, pedophilia, and female genital mutilation within certain communities are concerning but we are denounced as racists for daring to mention.
Trans ideology also results in female genital mutilation.
Good point. And MGM too.
It’s like the government turn a blind eye to it. I am encouraged by the majority on here who are against it.
There has to be a distinction made between sympathy and accommodation.
Certain people deserve our sympathy because their situation is tragic. Paedophiles, for example, are lumbered with desires which society cannot possibly allow them to enact. Trans people are lumbered with a desire to be something they simply cannot be.
This situation is quite different to that of gay and lesbian people who can enact their desires consensually and without harm to others. Nor do they require us to believe something that is simply not true.
Sometimes we must be sympathetic, but clear that we will go this far but no further.
‘Are lumbered with desires’… But where might such desires have arisen from? With the rise of internet porn and social media, the numbers of those who’ve developed a taste for paedophilia, and for all manner of paraphilias, has surely risen enormously.
Similarly, regarding gender identity or ‘trans people’, a 5337% increase â an OVER FIVE THOUSAND PERCENT increase â has recently been reported in under-18 girls coming to believe they need gender ‘treatment’ (Tavistock GIDS, UK) over circa ten years, i.e. since the advent of social media. Teen girls and younger, now persuaded that they are not girls, led instead to desire wrong-sex hormones and disfiguring surgeries such as having their healthy breasts cut off.
That social contagion via the internet is integral to these developments is clear to all but those most in denial.
Sympathy is one thing, and yes about the importance of distinguishing between sympathy and acommodation, but there needs also to be clear-eyed, unwavering examination of causes and effects, and better acknowledgement of who the main victims are â children and young people â and the suffering which ‘desires’ fed instead of questioned can bring.
Ultimately this brainwashing by social media and âprogressivesâ over reach will lead to colossal misery and indirectly to low birth rates which greens and others seem to want. The end game for many and society is misery and destabilisation.
The low birth rates are here. The white birthrate in the UK is dropping fast against a background of an abortion rate of 9.5 Million since the 1967 abortion act.
In a nutshell evil communications corrupts good desires.
Some people want to torture and murder people but this is kept secret. In times of communism or Nazism we see these desires manifest openly. Our sympathy should be with the children. Presumably there is a choice on whether to molest a child or not. If they cannot help it they should be put away out of harms way.
If that were the case, I might agree with you, unfortunately they are now being given babies to be brought up in their relationship, with some terrible results. As ever there is also the possibility of STD infection especially in an “open” SS relationship.
Children are the key, Males are naturally promiscuous but natural children and the extended family is the braking system to the male mating urge.
Amen.
to some degree its already happening, Aimee Challenor, has been failing upwards through elite circles, Libdems , the green party, Reddit management. for those unaware:
http://www.uncancelled.co.uk/tie-world/gender/what-does-the-aimee-challenor-case-teach-us/
I followed the link and went into a rabbit hole of utter depravity. Not only do these people mingle with us, they are given positions of respectability and power. It beggars belief.
It turned my stomach.
Yes, it was a difficult read.
I did not get to the end
And of course, had anybody said some ten or twenty years ago that the underlying “liberationist” agenda of the left would lead to the acceptance of child abuse, that person would have been howled down as paranoid. And yet, it is coming to pass; just as migration is turning into replacement – undeniably, statistically, visibly.
I – and a few others – commented at the time that same sex marriage was a watershed. I suspected that polygamy would be next and so it has come to pass. Also, note that Stonewall, having achieved SSM, moved on to the next great social-structure destroying cause – transgender ideology.
This isn’t really about polygamy or transgender or any other edgy cause. It comes from hatred of social structure and the language describing it. That’s why so much effort is put into subverting language. Branding SSM as ‘equal marriage’ was clever but it was really a gateway to queering society, that is, a society without norms, therefore without the ‘normal’ and so without structure – just isolated individuals sunk in their personal fantasies and personal language. The enemy was at the gates and we threw them wide open.
I have no problem at all with same sex marriage between two consenting adults and I think it is VERY important that we keep a clear distinction between celebrating gay people’s rights and blaming this union for ‘queering’ society. I am also not anti trans people either, as long as there is a considered process involved and very importantly, as long as no-one else’s rights are affected.
Many LGB people and some trans people are actively fighting against the dangerous and extreme actions that are encroaching on and assaulting the rights of other people and groups.
Further, polygamy has been around forever.
Yes, polygamy has been around forever but not in western society. It’s a dreadful institution for women that pits one wife against another. It dilutes a wife’s power by making her one among several. It prevents the special, devoted relationship that can build between one man and one woman. Monogamy was a great step forward for western women because – in ideal at least – it bound men into a committed relationship.
Another drawback is that it leads to men who can never be married since other men have multiple wives
Usually the rich ones.
I think the Left is embracing polygamy because they’re falling over themselves to pander to Islam. I bet they wouldn’t be so keen if it were about Mormons or something.
If that is true there will be a kickback as homosexulas are thrown off roofs in the middle east.
In Tibetan society a woman can have multiple husbands.
That doesn’t make it right. So has paedophilia been around forever.
I didnât say it was right, just that it wasnât recently introduced during the queering of society.
Marriage should have been abolished for everyone as an equality measure. It was only ever intended to attach men to the care and upkeep of their children and creates legitimate and illegitimate children who have different legal rights. We can now attach children to their genetic father by DNA testing. Single people are also discriminated against. Itâs all about the pensions etc. Women no longer sacked or excluded from some occupations and most are in paid employment now. Why should one adult agree financial responsibility for another one except by separate choice. And itâs only recently it was ever seen as about love!! More about property!!
Can’t imagine what’s wrong now.
Property is the foundation of liberty. Anyone who fails to take it seriously opens the way to totalitarian control â a risk raised exponentially by the attack on the family implicit in your remarks.
Fathers should help in the care and upkeep of their children. If they do not we raise a feral, brutal, feckless generation â as can be demonstrated time and again from experience and statistics.
As for choice, marriage in the west has been free for a long, long time â but once made it has been and should have remained binding â for the sake of children, for the sake of society and for the sake of the married themselves.
If you really believe that children should only have a relationship with their fathers through an “attachment” of their DNA , as you imply, I feel very sorry for you.
Completely missed the point of a joyful union or rearing children.
For the vast majority without lots of wealth, bringing up kids is pretty draining. It takes two parents. I taught a few thousand teens for 40 years in different social contexts. There is little doubt in my experience that kids from single or multiple families struggle emotionally. Very many boys with a missing father are in turmoil and angrily take it out on others or withdraw into destructive internal worlds. Dismiss this as anecdote all you like then look around you at urban male violence and crime. Absolutely no doubt that this has hugely increased in the UK over the past 60 or so years.
gee whizz… and here i am a happily married man for 42 years through thick and thin, rough and smooth, to one lovely woman ( biologically from birth), 2 great kids, one of each, a girl and a boy and six grandchildren on my knee… lucky old normal me i say. Never felt the urge to write an essay about it ever…
only thing is one of the grandchildren is definitely a bit woke and gone vegan i told him we are off to Mount Taygetus if it carries on !
Great to read of your affirming approach to your grandchilds choices.
Most people in the West had no issues with two people being gay, and staying with or sleeping with each other.
The problem was that this was forcibly equated to marriage (otherwise you would be accused of being “homophobic”)
Even though the institution of marriage has little to do with the right to choose someone to sleep with and cohabit with.
Marriage was a relatively modern construct designed to ensure that if you had children (and therefore by definition heterosexual) you would be forced by society to be bound to your family and care for them.
Homosexual marriage was not about homosexuals, it was about marriage – or rather a first step, along with feminism of the 50s onwards, towards destroying this pillar of civilised society.
I am married and have no children. Many gay couples I know have children.
A small minority of gay couples have children – and if they do so, the concept of marriage requires that they get married first and accept the obligation of supporting them.
If those gay couples didn’t want children, they still have the right to live together, just like any heterosexual couple.
And yes, some married couples were unable or (in the modern era) choose not have them.
Just like some people with a driving license do not own cars or drive
They don’t have children in the same way that heterosexual couples do, nor can they.
Perhaps then the entire globe should all simply rely on what you believe to be moral or not? If not you, then who? Everyone wants to draw their own boundaries and be their own god. This has been the case since the Garden.
If absolutely anything goes, then anything will go, like so many times before. We had better brace ourselves for what is next. I pray that another revival brings us back towards the center.
I am conflicted about SSM. It certainly removed a taboo against sexual desires and activities other than adult heterosexual ones, opening a door to potential legitimisation of all sexual proclivities. On the other hand, same sex attraction exists and it is oppressive to ban same sex activities and marriage between consenting adults.
But if SSM between consenting adults is permissible, how do we resist the argument that anything goes between consenting adults? I suppose that Lesley van Reenen’s below argument is deployed, as to not affecting the rights of others, in the way that polygamy takes away the possibility of marriage from the men thus rendered partnerless. (I am not sure that “rights” is the correct word in this context: as soon as the hard line between heterosexual marriage and the rest is destroyed, it is hard to determine a rationale for its site of redrawing.)
It depends on what you mean by marriage. Christian marriage is between one man and one woman, to provide mutual comfort and support, for the avoidance of sin and should be open to the gift of children (not always possible of course). However, there are other, in some cases earlier, versions of marriage, which include polygamy and, now, SSM. There’s no logical reason why this non-Christian version should not in principle be extended to any imaginable combination of humans (and possibly non-humans). Personally I prefer the Christian version.
Agreed. Marrying your dog or cat will be next.
I’m about to go for my booster jab so just a quick response – I wasn’t suggesting for one minute the banning of same sex activities between consenting adults. I’ve always been appalled by the way gay people were treated when they were second class citizens. I believe there should be the same age of consent between gay and straight people. And I have no problem with civil partnerships. But I believe that marriage is the ‘standard’ and is between a man and a woman. That’s its definition. SSM undermines the definition and is subversive of language which, for a minority, was what it was designed to do.
The point is that marriage ensures certain legal rights. Certainly where I come from the legal spouse calls the shots in an ICU, funerals, rights to inherit, and the like. Why would heterosexual people want to prevent gay people from having this? This seems outrageous and truly far right wing.
Civil partnerships should provide all the legal protections of marriage.
They do not – certainly in most countries, civil partnerships do not confer the same weight as marriage. In order to approximate marriage, you have to jump through hoops – drawing up many contracts all of which are easily contestable in law (and all of the money that that entails). I was in a very lengthy civil partnership with a contract in place and lost all my money in middle age when I decided to leave the relationship.
Besides that, marriage confers a certain weight that ‘common law’ or civil partnerships do not and I take a very dim view of heterosexuals thinking that homosexuals should be denied equal rights – they are not impinging on your rights.
Why ‘should’ Civil Partnerships provide all the legal protections of marriage – but not be marriage?
In essence, marriage is not a religious but a civic institution. It exists, and has always done so since the dawn of most known civilizations, as a social contract between the partners, recognised and supported by both families and the wider community. In many countries, including ours, a ‘marriage’ conducted in a purely religious context is not recognised at all. By historical accident, the Anglican Church is licensed by the State to conduct legally binding marriages – but other denominations and religious institutions are not. Perhaps the confusion between the Christian and the legal concepts would be easier to distinguish if that historical accident were corrected by statute.
Why should anything not go between consenting adults? Ruling out criminality of course.
Personally I not support polygamy because I donât think the women are treated well and I donât think they truly âconsentââŠ.
Who decides what is criminal? Sodomy used to be a crime.
I think you are absolutely right. Evil will wax worse and worse at the end said a famous prophet.
sadly have to agree with both of you
I agree, except that the pass was sold much earlier when the link between sex and procreation was broken. As society becomes increasingly dysfunctional, the sad victims of sexual disorder will become more transparent and hopefully there will be a turning back.
Absolutely true Judy and brave of you to say so, even amongst friends here.
I too saw Gay “marriage” as the Rubicon and so it has transpired, but I fervently hope that this abomination does not come to pass as that will signal the true end of civilisation.
In America 50% of same sex marriages and partnerships are “Open” relationships with each member having any number for sexual partners, adding to the horrific STD figures amongst homosexuals.
The networking which exists in same sex relationships has also resulted in huge overrepresentation in politics and media, leading to promotion of lifestyle as healthy and acceptable.
I can see the same tactics being adopted by the degenerates who are sexually attracted to children.
Interesting stat that 50 percent of same sex marriages and partnerships are open to multiple partners. Lesbians are notoriously monogamous (not all, but many).
Perhaps we need to winnow down the discussion to men in general and monogamy.
Surely you don’t think that heterosexual marriages in the US have a stellar rate of fidelity, do you? I wouldn’t be surprised that the straying rate is greater than 50 percent.
But, let’s go with 50 percent for both the men and women (for the sake of equanimity) in straight marriages.
How much *better* is it to discover that your partner is on the sly?
I will never forget the story that a General Practitioner Doctor friend of mine told me. He had to break the news to an older lady that her husband had given her AIDS by his seeing a prostitute.
In the best of all worlds there would be fidelity.
Surely you cannot say that straights were given the green light to cheat by taking their cue from gays.
They have been running through intersections of infidelity for time immemorial.
It’s not a matter of “straying” in hetero marriages Amy, most of which are reasonably stable mainly because of the family structure.
The open relationships which are common in homosexuality are agreed by both partners to allow as much sexual freedom as possible. it is simply licenced promiscuity with the resulting horrific STD rates. Around 80% of all new syphilis cases are within 1.5 of the population.
I take your point regarding Lesbians, but the divorce rate for “married” lesbians is much higher than the hetero divorce rate.
Alex, thank you for replying.
I am a bit curious as to where you glean your numbers.
I take it that you disapprove of *any* homosexual relationship, regardless of stability and commitment. I will venture a guess that is due to a religious conviction on your part. Fair enough.
But with the divorce rate in the US (we are talking US?) – heterosexual divorce rate having climbed to 50 percent in the not too distant past – I find it a bit disingenuous to complain about lack of stability in gay relationships.
Perhaps we could cite some statistics on promiscuity among heterosexuals to balance and compare these claims.
Again, I am going to assume that you are familiar with the all too common, nay, accepted practice of what was once called unwed mothers. Today they are called “single” mothers and society – at least US society – celebrates this phenomenon.
Surely this does not play into your argument for heterosexual stability.
I am in no way encouraging or condoning promiscuity for any couple – gay or straight.
But, sadly, I think there is far less fidelity in “traditional” marriages than we have been led to believe.
The news of HIV infection delivered to my doctor friend’s patient is probably more common than imagined.
Again, I am quite open to hearing statistics, but as we are taught in high school for term papers:. endnotes and footnotes, please. The paper is not worth a tinker’s dam without sources.
Thank you Amy, but you appear to have taken a little too much for granted. Just for clarification I am an atheist, I do not believe in the criminalisation of homosexuality, but neither do I support the promotion of what I see as a very dangerous and unhealthy lifestyle.
I believe that in common with other self harm like smoking or gambling, homosexuality is strongly associated to addiction, a state of mind which has not yet been properly understood by the medical profession.
Divorce rates for homos/heteros can be found in the Office of National Statistics and health statistics in Centre for Disease Control(US) and PHE in UK The demographic is MSM. Prepare to be shocked and do not confuse “percentages” with “real numbers”. For the last couple of years, the MSM demographic has been purposely omitted from the UK figures but can still be gleaned by carefully reading between the lines.
Alex, thank you for the civil discourse.
As an American I have found my Unherd membership to be interesting on a number of levels and not just Freddie’s fantastic interviews.
In reading some of the responses to essays, particularly when they involve sex, I can see that the attitudes would rival any Bible Belt fundamentalist gathering in “purity”.
This essay focused on polygamy and pedophilia, and yet it went far afield In the comments into everything from homosexuality, 50’s feminism, procreation, etc… Even veganism!
Quite a divergence – at least IMO.
This is as revealing to me as to how topics are processed as to the very topic itself – its innate merits.
But, oddly, you don’t want to address the failings of heterosexuality and its impact on culture.
And you are not defending on a religious basis.
It seems that this discussion on pedophilia and polygamy opens up a proverbial can of worms and yet only certain worms are deemed acceptable for inspection.
Okay. LOL.
I’m ready to call it a day, but I am genuinely appreciative of your civility. We Americans could certainly learn a lesson on that.
I love civil discussion Amy and I completely concur with your views on that. Of course heterosexuality has its failings, in the UK 200.000 babies are killed annually mainly on grounds of convenience, attack on family from politicians and media abound, but the main difference is that heterosexuality and the survival of the species is our natural raison d’etre.
Have a nice Christmas and it has been a pleasure to talk with you …A
Once polygamy becomes legal Pakistani heritagers will be able to bring 4 cousins over as spouses for each of their kids .
There will be a multi-cultural defence of polygamy . The great replacement will obviously be mainly by Muslims but with a burgeoning minority of old-Skool Mormons .
Even further back (In the days of ‘Dial-up) I can remember a certain female leading light of the PLP trying to get PIE affiliated to the Labour Party. There were ‘a few good people’ in the PLP at that time (As I suppose there is today) and the plan was scotched. The lady said later that she had not realised what PIE was truely about.
Unfortunately it is too often the enthusiastically ignorant that foist their ‘leading light’ prostitution on the rest of us.
its pretty shocking, the other aspect thats disturbing is the covert nature of it, both on Challenor part for concealing his fathers crimes, but also the organisations supressing any dissent. I don’t think its mentioned in the linked article but what happened at Reddit is fascinating. The reddit management completely closed ranks to defend Challenor in full knowledge of his past, they seemed to set up Challenor with some kind or super moderator privilege that flagged any reference to Challenor on the site so it could be banned if negative.
sorry i lost my thread of thought as i was typing, what i was trying to convey is I can see where there is a (uncomfortable) free speech argument, podophiles should be allowed to freely express their ideology (vomit) and there is a corresponding right of free speech to criticise the paedophile ideology however in practice that’s not what happened at Reddit, the Libdems or the Greens . Those with power to control what was allowed to be said used that power only to proactively support Challenor . so it wasnt a free speach issue for them its something else, is it a conflation with that trans / BLM mantra , “words are violence” so they are saving him from (verbal not actual) harm. But then none of these organisation applied that same principal of “words are violence” to the violent paedophilic fiction Challenors husband was writing.
i dont have any good answer, in a way its worse, as it only confirms to me my already biased position against Greens, Libdems , and lefty’s as weirdo pedo enablers. I dont want to hold hated towards lefties but when they do things so worthy of being hated…..
I suppose one should hate the sin but love the sinner. It is not loving to let them get away with it though as it will get worse with them not forgetting their victims.
*Challenor … in case anyone wants to Google him….
good catch, ive corrected now, all the previous posts ere written before the coffee had kicked in.
Wow!! Can reasonable people fight back by constantly using his ‘real’ name and referring to him as HE?
i dont put Challenor’s trans name in the post in any way to validate that identity , its only there as if people want to google him, that’s the name that will get hits to relevant information.
Poor America has her/him now. That’s not kind of Britain.
This link is a devastating expose of how the decency and morality of the western nations is being undermined and supported my so many organisations unsuspected by the general public. Just shocking!
Agreed!
Decency and morality used to have a name. Now, what counts as D&M is whatever the loudest voice wants to call it…truth, logic, reason and sanity having been sacrificed at the progressive post-modernity altar no one wants to stand in the way of for fear of being ‘cancelled’ or labelled ‘old-fashioned’, ‘bigot’, ‘homophobic’ etc
Buckle up and enjoy the ride as there is plenty more where PIE leaves off…
Google Prostasia and Noah Berlatsky. You will fall into a rabbithole. These organisations are stoutly defended by transactivists who also advocate puberty blockers for children. It is established medical practice to offer puberty blockers pretty much without question these days.
thanks will look into these
Thank-you for this link, a very interesting and prescient essay.
This may be progressive but certainly not new. Here’s a very public attempt at decriminalising sex with minors:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_petition_against_age_of_consent_laws
The signatories are an A-list roster of leftist luminaries including: Foucault, Derrida, even Beauvoir and Sartre. I think it’s too much of a coincidence that the list contains some of the most influential people in leftist and wokeist thinking.
Your list of names are absolutely Satan’s little helpers, given the societal evils and degeneracy their philosophies and arguments have wrought. Basically Post-Modernism and its nihilist and evil foundation. Naturally those names would be linked to anything truly destructive and degenerate, they have loosened more misery on the world than any other ideology in history, assuming the Capture of the West intellectuals by their twisted thinking continues..
I have been watching some Peter Hitchens videos, and they have a despair about them. A great thinker and conscience – and he declares he has ‘Given Up’. That thinking and morality have lost, and there is no force in the background he can identify which could bring society back to thinking and ethics. “Peter Hitchens | âI Have Given Upâ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSgK_DHPBfU
Maybe not interesting unless you know Hitchens, but sad if you do, there is such a weary dispair in him; brought on the world by those 4, and their ilk.
I wonder if we’re not seeing the apex of the pendulum swing. We went from perhaps a rather too austere and rigid society, like the Victorian era, then 2 terrible wars, to a time of plenty and liberalism and now we’re seeing what happens when liberalism goes too far. My hope is that the pendulum will start to swing back again and we hit another sweet spot between the 2 extremes like we had between the 50s and the 00s.
The stuff we have to watch now is bleak. Amazing visually but very bleak mostly. There will come a time when the era of the Victorians will seem like the good old days in spite of their problems. So much of their great truths are consigned to the dustbin by the Left.
We need to overcome no matter what. The shield of faith will cause us to have the victory. It is sad about Peter. He has been battling for a long time. I hope that he can renew his strength.
Lines 113-148 from my heroic couplet satire The Wokeiad alludes to the notorious proclivities of one of the signatories. The Wokeiad is my current project – 930 lines so far, planned total of 1600:-
She tarries not, but spreads again her wings,
Spangling the welkin with brown stinking things.
This time the demonâs course is Eastward set,
Faster than snail but not as quick as jet,
Oâer snow-capped mount, oâer desert vast and numb,
Oâer palace, project, piggery and slum:
Terra incognita between the coasts
His ignorance of which the wokist boasts.
Wokeness now glides over Miami Beach
Where wellness gurus pseudoscience preach
To geriatric dentists and their wives,
Those wan asthmatic martyrs to the hives.
As whale road supercedes the prairie fields,
The nimbus builds and vanquished Helios yields.
Aeolus loosens now his knotted bag,
And the Anemoi from their prison drags.
Mild Zephyr cedes to Boreas the stage,
And Auster vies with Eurus in his rage.
Zeus flings his bolts and furiously raves,
And Lord Poseidonâs trident moils the waves.
Wokeness remorselessly through wind and rain
Grinds oâer first Lusitania then Spain,
Where Helios in triumph late restored
Is by his sky-clad acolytes adored,
Then left at Benidorm and up the coast,
Where basting nudists on the playas roast.
Over the Pyrrenees to soaked Camargue,
The hinterland of Franceâs nouvelle vague.
Next Paris, pantheon of po-mo spells,
A shrine to Foucault and to Foucault else:
The Tunis Gary Glitter, Humbert of
Bedouin boy, the freshmanâs Nabokov,
White polo-neck, bald head, perverted grin:
Glans peenniss peeping from its peeled foreskin,
Wokenessâs Baptist John or SalomĂ©
Traducer of epistemologé.
Ha! Love it. ‘basting nudists’ LOL
Haha, thanks!
Don’t forget another ludicrous and embarrassing relic from the glorious summer of ’68 – our old friend Danny Cohn-Bendit, who was obviously fond of little children.
https://www.dw.com/en/pedophilia-accusations-haunt-green-politician/a-16791213
Looking at the background of various Nazis, Greens, Communists, Socialists, religious zealots, etc, I get the impression that their ideologies are just a function of their pelvic urges, whatever pompous verbiage comes out of their faces.
There is probably some truth in that. We are sexual creatures and if we cannot keep it in marriage it will influence some of our decisions in other areas to it’s detriment.
That says it all doesn’t it.
âpaedophilia should not be considered a sexual preferenceâ
Unfortunately thatâs exactly what it is. I very much doubt the nonces choose to be attracted to children, but thereâs obviously something in their brain that makes them that way, the same as homosexuals are attracted to those of the same sex.
Now this isnât to equate the two in the slightest, two gay consenting adults hurts nobody, whereas child abuse destroys lives which is why we donât allow it.
However I think those that do find themselves being drawn to kids should be able to ask for help, be it therapy or drugs that stop them from acting on those impulses. Those that do abuse children should be dealt with much more severely than they currently are
Good post.
The only thing I would add, is that some paedophiles are simple opportunists. They target children, not because they are specifically drawn to them, but because they make easy victims. I suspect Saville fell into this category.
While I can find some sympathy in my heart for those struggling in silence with desires they cannot and do not act on, I can find none for opportunist predators, to whom the word evil is appropriately applied.
I agree completely, Iâm sure for some itâs almost a power dynamic as much as anything else. As I say those that harm children deserve to be severely punished. I also think people that ask for help before they do something evil should receive it
The internet changes everything in this regard. Let us say pictures of red fire engines are legal and yellow one aren’t. Internet pornographers will note a repeated search for pictures of red fire engines and will encourage this habit. Then, exploiting the brains propensity to explore the new, may slip an occasional yellow fire engine picture into the image search. Sooner or later the yellow fire engine is clicked on and low and behold yellow fire engines become part of the habit.
Whether this escalates to actually going out to drive a yellow fire engine is contentious, but the evidence is suggestive that it does.
My point is paedophillia, at least web based paedophillia can be learnt.
Learnt? I cannot imagine watching any porn that would make me fancy kids. The very idea makes me want to puke.
But it does happen. Mostly be men but not exclusively.
Iâm not sure so much that it is learnt, I think there must be something there originally for it to manifest itself, but I agree the internet can make it a whole lot worse. Something that starts off as knowingly immoral can become almost normalised (if thatâs a word) in the head of abusers
Anyone who harms a child in a sexual way should be banged up forever!
Zero tolerance. No ifs, no buts, no parole, no name changes, no well meaning vicars.
Off our streets, GONE!!
Sorry, no, don’t agree. Nobody chooses a child over a sexually mature “adult”, unless they prefer the child.
Paedophilia is at least more understandable from an evolutionary point of view than its opposite, gerontophilia. I’m looking at you, M. Macron.
What, not even when sexually mature adults are not available to them, not attracted to them, forbidden to them or over whom they have less coercive power etc. Iâm thinking priests, sports coaches, teachers, parents and relatives here.
Is pedophilia a preference?
Or is it a fairly fixed orientation like the three mainstream orientations; opposite sex attraction, same sex attraction, or bisexual?
Perhaps both Billy Bob and Milos are sexually orientated towards, women, so you are opposite-sex attracted, or you may be same-sex attracted, or bisexual. These are the mainstream orientations. If one of you is attracted to blondes with large b_ _ bs, then this is a preference, but not an orientation.
Sexual orientations are generally defined as fairly stable.
Homosexuality is not as you suggest a preference but larley a sexual orientation that is fairly stable over time.
Note that I’m qualifying my definitions with words like “generally,” or “fairly.”
I’m not an expert, but I thought I’d just put this out, hence my opening question.
Perhaps pedophilia can be both a preference and an orientation, – and one of the eight paraphilia. or in plain English a sexually deviant perversion that most people find abhorrent – especially pedophilia
(exhibitionism, fetishism, frotteurism, pedophilia, sexual masochism, sexual sadism, voyeurism, and transvestic fetishism,
If anyone can add anything, feel free.
That response struck me as being rather pedantic for the sake of it, presumably to allow yourself a sense of smugness.
I think it was reasonably clear that preference/orientation was more or less the same thing in my post, to most people the words are interchangeable despite the exact meanings in the dictionary.
Why not respond to my general argument rather than nitpicking the sentence structure?
Do you believe paedos choose to be attracted to children, or is it something that theyâre born with (to use an unfortunate phrase). If so should those who ask for help before theyâve committed a crime be helped?
Do you think the content I posted was to allow myself a sense of smugness?
I certainly was not “nitpicking your sentence structure, I was simply trying to understand your meaning, and add a few points of my own.
Pardon me for missing your point that “preference/orientation was more or less the same thing,” but on a very topical current issue, I think a lot of people especially the women, mostly lesbians who are being labeled TERFs because of their ‘genital preferences in refusing to want to have sex with ‘women with ï»żp _ _ _ _ _ s’ are understandably upset when their same- sex orientation ( not preference) towards other women gets them labeled transphobic TERFs because they prefer vag _ _ _s to p _ _ _ _ _ s .
The flaw in the argument used by trans women / women with p _ _ _ _ _ s ( biological males / autogynophiles is precisely that they are conflating sexual preferences with sexual orientation. Whether this is deliberate because they understand the difference hoping no one will call them out on it, or they simply haven’t thought it through, is not clear.
The results can be seen here.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-57853385
If however, you subscribe to the belief that Trans women are women and lesbians who find Trans women’s male bodies, genitalia etc. repulsive are vile transphobic TERFs who deserve all the threats as set out in the following.
https://terfisaslur.com
and
https://lesbian-rights-nz.org/shame-receipts/
then, you are entitled to your opinion, although I would vehemently disagree.
Ps.
all the P_ _ _ _ _ about with inserting dashes, is because when using what I thought were straightforward word, my posts were modded out.
At least I think this is why my posts were modded out.
Who knows?
Comment is no longer free at the Guardian and it also appears to be ‘Unfree’ and as a result ‘Unseen,’ or ‘Unread,’ at Unherd too, or as is sometimes the case, ‘Unheard.’
Or is an automated feature that deletes any comments with four letter words, biological terms for certain body parts etc.?
Who knows?
They’re probably using off the shelf software for the comments section that will have pre-moderation mechanisms integrated into it. This is a problem that a lot of sites have who don’t wish to implement their own software for comments sections or forums.
defintely automation that deletes posts that contain certain words. Also posting links can get you moderated, though which links and why those and not others is still a mystery to me.
Probably using other 3rd party software that collates lists of sites that should be blocked. Initially these lists would be fairly obvious in terms of what they blacklist, like p__nography* or security threats but have slowly expanded in remit. It wouldn’t surprise me if they now include sites deemed to be “misinformation” by “fact-checkers.” Quotes for cynicism.
*I’m assuming that’s a potentially blocked word, as though the word’s very existence is something to censor.
Andy – thanks for the clarification.
As I understand it, paedophilia can be both. Some people are exclusively attracted to children, some are preferentially attracted to them and some only prey on children because they are easy victims.
Of course, within fetishism too, there are those who can only be aroused via the fetish, those who prefer it, and those for whom it is just an exciting option.
Good point made David.
Thanks
Homosexuality is strictly not about sex, because it can never result in procreation.
> I very much doubt the nonces choose to be attracted to children,
Would you use the “n” word in a racial context? This other n word is also dehumanising hate speech. Not helpful.
I have some sympathy for paedophiles and transpeople who find difficulties living their lives… but I have much more sympathy for children who cannot give consent to sex or people (mostly women) who desire safe changing rooms, bathrooms, and sports events.
The Woke methodology appears to be prioritising the wants of the individual over the expectations of the general population – and although this shtick has worked for them in securing their power to control others the Woke are running out of victims to support. Hence their more and more desperate flailings. I guess they will eventually have to stomp off into the garden and eat worms. Soy based meatless worms, of course.
Don’t be so sure. Evil knows no bounds. That’s why we need laws.
The decaying of western civilisation and the constant pushing against the Christian morals that defined it. The attempted cancellation of reason,and the attempted destruction of sexual boundaries. Just depressing and abhorrent.I really fear for the future of my grandchildren. It isnât âprogressiveâ but corrupt.
It’s only happening because we are allowing it. We’ve been cowed by these people into accepting their narrative, their language and their validation. We all self censor, and qualify everything we say, to ensure were not called a racist or a transphobic – as if calling someone a ‘bad’ with is the worst thing that could ever happen. Personally I’d rather be called an islamophobe than accept the gang rape of kids, or a racist than get rid of the police or stop and search.
It’s like the modern day version of medieval priests, heresies and torches avd pitchforks mobs.
How do we not allow it? Where is our power when even government flirt with it.
As usual, right on the money!
I fear for mine as well but I can influence them to a certain extent, but the choice is theirs. Unfortunately the parents are not fully aware of what is happening and I have been shocked a few times.
I fear for mine as well, as it is impossible to predict how things may develop . I do live in hope of reason and sanity.
Authors like Aayan Hirsi Ali keep us from losing all hope. Very grateful for their work!
I agree with the general tenor of this article, but people seeking treatment for these filthy urges so that they don’t act on them deserve consideration.
However, to say that watching child porn stops them from acting upon their desires ignores the harm done to the children used to make it! (The professorâs answer to the problem).
Personally the only treatment I think they should be receiving is chemical castration!
If that worked then why not?
What works? Child porn? What about the children abused to make it? Driving the demand for more of it to be made and leading to more children to be abused to make more of it! Or the chemical castration? Please say the chemical castration!
The chemical castration of course!!!!! If it works, and it stops the abuse of kids we should do it!!! I think most people think the only cure is to put them down but unfortunately we don’t have that as an option so the question is what DO we do with these people? I am sure some of them don’t want to feel those feelings and would welcome attempts to ‘cure’ them.
Damn straight!
I’m off to watch Robocop.
Watching pornography only feeds the desire to act upon it in reality. That is the nature of porn. It is a stupid suggestion to suggest otherwise.
Well said – I meant to say something similar but hadn’t found a good way to put it.
Whatever works but as a last resort they must be locked away until it is known that they are healed.
I’m not sure you can compare polygamy and paedophilia.
Paedophilia is a sexual preference but it’s one that society rightly has issue with. Children cant give consent. In my view we need to get to a place where these unfortunate men, and is usually men, are able to access treatment for their “condition” I really don’t think giving them child pornography is the way to go. Thats like showing a serial killer snuff movies.
If that ever happens, I can guarantee, there will be a many thousand-fold increase in people who think they are attracted to children, just as with people who believe they are transgender.
‘At risk’ of or from what? Surely the only risk to them is if they’re caught acting on their nasty desires.
There was a great scene at the end of the South Park episode “Cartman Joins NAMBLA” that I think says all that needs to be said.
FBI Agent: [to NAMBLA leader] We’ve been after you for a long time, buddy! Do you know your rights?
NAMBLA Leader: Rights? Does anybody know their rights? You see, I’ve learned something today. Our forefathers came to this country because…they believed in an idea. An idea called “freedom.” They wanted to live in a place where a group couldn’t be prosecuted for their beliefs. Where a person can live the way he chooses to live. You see us as being perverted because we’re different from you. People are afraid of us, because they don’t understand. And sometimes it’s easier to persecute than to understand.
Kyle: Dude, you have sex with children!
NAMBLA Leader: We are human. Most of us didn’t even choose to be attracted to young boys. We were born that way. We can’t help the way we are, and if you all can’t understand that, well, then, I guess you’ll just have to put us away.
Kyle: [slowly, for emphasis] Dude. You have sex with children!
Stan: Yeah. You know, we believe in equality for everybody, and tolerance, and all that gay stuff, but dude, f*** you.
Kyle: Seriously.
“Born that way” has a lot to answer for. An effective claim, much-copied.
Yeah we have heard that a lot. It obviates the need to change or have a conscience.
I never cease to love South Park.
How does Professor Walker suggest the harm reduction porn is manufactured without harming the subjects?
They / Them – one of these professors is too many.
This view may provoke violent disagreement I know, but I do think there is something in the position taken by the social justice side of this argument. Not, I hasten to add, everything described above: paedophilia is NOT merely another sexual preference and it is emphatically NOT something for which child pornography should be prescribed as a harm reduction strategy or indeed tolerated for any reason at all.
Paedophile tendencies are quite certainly a form of mental illness, and I take this view in part from a story related in one of Matt Ridley’s articles in which a man started to develop a sexual attraction to his nieces, went to the doctor in huge distress about it (understandably, I should imagine), and after an array of tests was discovered to have a brain tumour. This was operable, removed in due course, at which point the paedophilia attraction vanished. It was then possible to use that symptom as an early warning sign, because when the unwanted attraction returned, the man was able to go straight back to hospital for another scan and sure enough, the tumour was growing again, and was again operated upon, this time with permanent effect, happily for all concerned.
The point here is that paedophiles are not evil by merely possessing such tendencies, they only become evil when they act upon them, and not all of them do this. They suffer from a neurological defect which alters the normal operation of the part of the brain that governs sexual attraction. We do not, in other circumstances, regard sick people as automatically evil, nor do we seek to punish, condemn and outlaw them, as is the present default social attitude which paedophiles experience. This is something, I suspect, which makes the social problem of paedopilia worse, because there is such stigma attached to the illness that paedophiles have little option but to hide their sickness and that inevitably means they’ll end up part of the dark web/underground network in which their sick tendencies are gratified and fed, instead of medicalised and treated.
Yes, I know that there is presently no cure for paedophilia, but there are systems by which we can socially manage the problem at least, if only society would regard it as a medical problem instead of a moral problem. Our collective unwillingness to recognise this means, I suspect, that more children become victims of this horrifying reality than would otherwise be the case, and that, surely, has to be the most important moral consideration here?
To be very clear, I do not propose that paedophilia is legitimised in any way beyond medicalising it. I absolutely do not support any measure that would use children for the purposes of gratification in any way at all, as suggested by some of the people referred to in the article above, including indirectly in the form of using pornographic images of them. All I’m saying is that we are collectively not operating the most effective system for keeping children safe from this danger: as a society we are invoking condemnation, judgementalism and moralising as a placeholder for alternative forms of action that would be far more effective and reduce more harm than the present course we have chosen to adopt.
That is absolutely correct.
Thanks for sticking your neck out. I know it takes a bit of courage.
I think the concern is that paedophilia should become normalised. Many things were considered a sign of mental illness in the past – masturbation, female promiscuity, homosexuality etc – and these are now considered normal. Gender fluidity is undergoing a similar process, and some fear that paedophilia is following a similar trajectory.
Not everyone thinks that paedophilia is a sickness in need of a cure. Indeed, following Foucault, that sort of thinking is seen by some as a hallmark of oppression.
Good points, but this is where I revert back to agreement with Ayaan Hirsi Ali above: there is an in principle difference between paedophila and everything else on the list of things whose moral status has been emancipated in recent years: the principle of informed adult consent. Children simply cannot satisfy this condition, there is no way I can foresee that any politician would get away with enacting law that says they can, and paedophilia therefore cannot attain legitimacy by the ongoing process of social change you otherwise accurately describe.
Good and evil are still facts though. Not all of them have a brain tumour.
You’ve missed the point I’m afraid. Paedophilia in ALL cases is the result of defective brain chemistry, and it is never the fault of someone afflicted in such a way to possess that defective brain chemistry. It might not be discernable on a brain scan, but it’s there whether it can be diagnosed neurologically or not.
Good and evil is relevant to the question of how a person with this affliction chooses to act. If children become a victim of their behaviour, that is a good vs evil question (and yes, it’s evil).
For a therapeutic approach, perhaps the Lucy Faithfull Foundation would be one valuable resource. As I noted in another comment above, they ran their own treatment centre in Surrey from 1996 to 2003. But it treated only a small number at any one time and it was very expensive, especially for a small charity. Each patient stayed for an average of nine months secure residential care.
And there was no pretence of a “cure”, just a reduction in the strength of the illegal impulse. I do not know if any independent researchers evaluated the effectiveness of their work.
https://ecsa.lucyfaithfull.org/ratings
Why is it not possible to help people with paedophilic tendencies whilst still keeping the stigma? It is stigmatised because it is morally wrong (and illegal) and if a people want help then they need to accept that it is wrong, desigmatising tends to say “hey, it’s not so bad” – how does that help them resist these terrible impulses?
Exactly.
The earlier sex offender treatment programmes in prisons, and for those on probation, took exactly the approach you suggest: they “helped” offenders by shaming and humiliating them. It turned out to be counter-productive.
Better results are obtained when a “therapeutic alliance” (to use the professional jargon) has been built between the offender and the therapist. For this to succeed the offender certainly has to agree that a crime has been committed, harm has been done and it must not happen again. Beyond that, though, there needs to be more emphasis on the individual’s potential for a better life, and how achieving it will actually help them as well as society.
The danger with the shaming approach is that people come to believe they are intrinsically bad, or that they will always be branded as such. In that case, there is a tendency to give up, and not even try to do better.
“The danger with the shaming approach is that people come to believe they are intrinsically bad…”
Exactly, and to be honest how can we be surprised that this would be the effect? We’re talking about sexual attraction here, which none of us control, so if a certain type of attraction is deemed morally reprehensible, that moral judgement must apply to the person intrinsically.
Because the stigma ought to be carefully and selectively applied only to paedophiles who have acted out on their impulses. That may be most of them for all I know, but I have read elsewhere that there are many people in possession of these impulses who do not gratify them – and by that I mean nothing, not even the aberrant use of innocent images of children.
What is morally wrong here is strictly related to the potential harm of children – or at least it should be. No moral judgement should be relevant to the possession of impulses which are not under the control of those who have them, only the practical question of how to ensure such individuals do not harm others.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali absolutely nails it. She is spot on. The latest bit of Wokery is MAPs.. minor attracted people. Theyâre paedophiles. Thatâs the name for adults who want to interfere with and molest children. Itâs illegal to do so in the West and majority of countries in the world. It needs to stay that way, as well.
…I assume we are all familiar with the link between PIE and the NCCL (now Liberty)…at a time when Harriet Harman was their Legal Officer? These horrors have very deep roots in the left in the UK, and strong connexions with the Labour Party…
I remember Harriet Harman advocating paedophilia where there is consent, but where people have authority over you it is very difficult to withold your consent. It happened to me by a homosexual housefather. I had no recourse to anyone else who would listen without possibly opening the way to make my life hell with no obvious way out. He kept telling me I was a monster if I didn’t enjoy it. That is very powerful when you are young. Yes I think these things reside in the left including Labour but especially amongst the Lib/Dems.
I do hope that you have had recourse to justice for this vile person’s crimes?
From Michel Foucault’s entry on the progressive site that is now Wikipedia @ 12.26 UK time on 25th November 2021:
Views on underage sex and pedophilia
ï»żFoucault was a proponent of adult-child underage sex and of pedophilia, considering them a form of liberation for both actors;[185][186][187] he argued young children could give sexual consent.[188] In 1977, along with Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Derrida, and other intellectuals, Foucault signed a petition to the French parliament calling for the decriminalization of all “consensual” sexual relations between adults and minors below the age of fifteen, the age of consent in France.[189][190]
Words fail me. Only “Thank you Ayaan” is left.
Hannibal Lecter: “As a cannibal, I merely want the same tolerance and respect shown to me that I extend to others who don’t share my murderous taste for long pig.” NO! NO! NO! Our politicians are rolling over and accepting this crap.
Not only that. They would tell us that we are reactionary bigots and that cannibalism, like veganism, is just a dietary choice.
The left do most of the screaming. Ask Kyle Rittenhouse.
Nobody is “screaming” about the Left, though frankly I’m surprised it doesn’t happen a lot more often.
Paedophilia needs to be studied and understood, with the aim of preventing it being acted upon, but it certainly does not need to be de-stigmatised or accepted. Child porn is images of children being abused by someone, if not the person watching.
Polygamy and paedophilia go together. Men in polygamous societies often marry very young women when they are bored with the first, older one.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali writes:
‘As far back as 2017, in a PhD thesis titled Understanding Resilience Strategies among Minor-Attracted Individuals, Walker argued that paedophiles should be permitted to view child pornography as a âharm reduction techniqueâ. Providing âeasy access to a wide variety of engrossing and high-quality child pornographyâ could, Walker wrote, âserve as a substitute for involvement with actual victimsâ.’
I followed the link in the article to Walker’s PhD thesis and had a look. Nowhere in the thesis does he say that paedophiles should be permitted to view child pornography as a harm reduction technique. He also didn’t write the quote that Ayaan Hirsi Ali attributes to him.
Here is the relevant paragraph from his PhD thesis, from the section entitled “Existing Research on Minor Attracted Persons”:
‘Child pornography as a harm reduction technique has previously been theorized to be a potential strategy for MAPs to maintain abstinence from sexual contact with children. Taylor and Quayle (2003, p. 90) have suggested that individuals who view child pornography may partly choose to do so as a form of therapy, âas a way of controlling their interests,â âas a form of personal survival,â or as âa way of dealing with emotions such as anger that had no other outlet.â Similarly, Wolak, Finkelhor, Mitchell, and Ybarra (2008, p. 120) have theorized that âamong some groups of predisposed individuals, easy access to a wide variety of engrossing and high quality child pornography could serve as a substitute for involvement with actual victims.â’
Walker isn’t saying that paedophiles SHOULD be permitted to use child pornography. He’s saying that OTHER PEOPLE have suggested, NOT that paedophiles SHOULD be permitted to use child pornography, but that people who DO view child pornography might do so “as a way of controlling their interests” or that for these individuals it “could serve as a substitute for involvement with actual victims”. As far as I can see, NO-ONE is saying that paedophiles SHOULD be permitted to view child pornography.
The PhD thesis does have a section entitled “Recommendations for Research, Policy and Practice”. That paedophiles should be permitted to view child pornography is NOT one of the recommendations.
The quote that Ayaan Hirsi Ali attributes to Allyn Walker is actually from the paper by Wolak, Finkelhor, Mitchell, and Ybarra.
It’s not right that Ayaan Hirsi Ali should attribute to Allyn Walker a controversial view, that he doesn’t hold, and that is likely to negatively affect his reputation and his career. I have all of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s books, and frankly, I am shocked that she would do this.
EDIT: I also emailed [email protected] about this, and they have now re-written that paragraph. Good for them.
10 + upticks for bothering to follow the breadcrumbs so tenaciously.
I just wish more people on UnHerd would take the time and energy to expend this sort of effort.
Excellent article.
There used to be an organization known as NAMBLA–North American Man Boy Love Association. They made similar arguments. Turns out they were not a lobbying organization for an oppressed minority, but an organized group of paedos. FBI ultimately took them down.
Perhaps FGM should have been added to the list–this is practiced in America and the West, and the West facilitates this with a wink and a nod when young girls are shipped back to their countries of origin for this procedure.
If all cultures are equal, what’s the problem?
I’ve never understood why we tolerate such disgusting practices being imported into this country. How many of us had heard of FGM, honour killing, halal slaughter, beheadings, stonings, voodoo sacrifice etc etc etc 30 years ago???
When a “Swede” wearing jeans from Somalia falls off a balcony in the presence of her brother, it’s because the balconies are very slippery, NOT because he pushed her to uphold family honor!
It has come in like a wave. Even some of their their children groom and rape the white girls in Rotherham and in a lot of the big cities. Why are we so passive about these things? It went on for years whilst the police did nothing.
I’m surprised it is even under discussion. There is already an answer to arsonists, kleptomaniacs, serial killers etc to remove or “treat” their tendencies. Is wife beating or vice versa to be destigmatised? It must be natural, it happens. Unfortunately no cure yet for the disease of woke.
Personally, I am all for pedophiles getting help so that they don’t act on their feelings and hurt a kid. That kind of discussion doesn’t legitimise it at all IMHO. It’s if there are attempts to make it a natural normal sexual preference or ok or consensual then No No No.
There is an organisation, the Lucy Faithfull Foundation, which looks at ways of treating pedophilia. From 1996 to 2003 it ran its own specialist treatment facility in Surrey. I suspect it is not generously funded.
https://ecsa.lucyfaithfull.org/ratings
As opposed to screaming what? ‘Tory scum, Nazi, fascist, racist, sexist, not my Prime Minister’?
Maybe just not screaming! We all have political preferences but to scream about those with different preferences is simply adding to intolerance; we are all entitiled to our political views.
The celebration of paedophilia advances almost daily amongst the self-proclaimed social justice warriors.
Their latest hero-victim is the serial child-molester Rosenbaum, who in spite of several convictions for sodomising boys under 12, now has his name chanted at BLM marches.
And why? Because he is their useful martyr in the campaign to demonise the now acquitted Rittenhouse as a “white-supremacist murderer” for defending himself against attack by Rosenbaum – the white BLM supporter who screamed “Kill the n-word (sic)” as he assaulted the minor Rittenhouse.
The only morality respected by such people is the advancement of their nihilistic cause.
that’s a great point Douglas. i think from their perspective its actually more virtuous to have a paedophile as a martyr, than an innocent man. its a greater affront to dignity and reason for them to do so and so the team loyalty signal is even stronger for doing so.. the principal is something like “Look how noble we are we even up hold the dignity of dead paedophiles” but in realty they have compromised their personal morality a bit further in their desire to stay within their team. the truth of it is something closer to “i reject reality because my team tells me too”
some will be ignorant of the facts of Rosenbaums history or dismiss it as Fake Fox news, so they don’t all have the same motivation.
That’s not all. Back in the 1970s senior Labour Party figures fell in to the trap of supporting and giving a platform to PIE in order to burnish their left wing credentials. We should not forget who they are.
A lot of the arguments for tolerance of minority and disadvantaged groups seem to be based on an analogy with race. Any less tolerant attitude is assumed to be analogous to a blind prejudice based on something akin to skin colour.
Iâm not sure this argument has ever been a good one. It is not even clear, for example, that the idea that there are significant average differences between men and women is a blind prejudice.
i think itâs clear that if we use this analogy too easily it will lead us to places we simply do not want to go.
âI think it is important to use terminology for groups that members of that group want others to use for them. It is less stigmatising than other words like paedophile.â
Suppose for a minute we accept this bizarre idea – the vaguely Foucauldian notion that language is often manipulated to maintain traditional power structures and increase stigma – and allow this to become a guiding principle. Weâll now call people by what least offends them.
Whatâs more, letâs suppose that this goal is good – that we should be reducing stigma around minority groups in such ways.
If we accept both of these things, the quote starts to look a bit silly, doesnât it? How does swapping the terms for the minority group do anything but continue to compartmentalize people? How do we achieve this all important goal of self-defining by breaking through constructed categories if all weâre doing is redefining our categories along the lines of âoppressor vs oppressedâ?
Even if you agree with the aim, itâs hardly coherent.
Foucault was himself a pedophile. He didn’t go to Tunisia for the tagine!
I am not sure Foucault knew what he was or indeed what anything was. But even he recognised freedom had limits. He said as much after a particularly hedonistic and ultimately, I presume, unsatisfying binge in either Switzerland or Sweden, I can’t remember which.
Can we make murder less stigmatising? We must remember there are victims here.
Polygamy is a driving force behind war and slavery. By marrying more than one wife, the wealthy force the poor to find a wife through warfare and enslavement.
I think you are under re-acting Ayaan. The attack on marriage as between one woman and a man continues. As for the paedophilia, it is just horrific that anyone can defend it. I was subject to a homosexual paedophile for about a year or so who was supposed to be our housefather in an orphanage. Some housefather. He should be strung up in my view. The orphanage vicar was also into it to a certain extent. The damage done to children and their sexuality by these selfish people is inestimable. A spade should be called a spade. The action is evil in the greatest degree. As for watching child pornography done to children against their will is obviously very wrong. In a way the west has had more light than some other nations but their judgement will be much worse because of that. People using their authority for evil to young children is unforgivable although the children might have to forgive them to get healed. But for society to forgive them would be adding insult to injury. There needs to be serious repercussions so that justice is achieved.
That is awful – I think most people donât understand how much children suffer through such incidents – it warps your mind. Iâm sure people will suggest making animated porn videos – but what of those producing such videos, thinking up concepts, editing, distributing. What is wrong with society? Some terribly wrong turn has been taken at a critical juncture and ignored ..
The real problem is that there is an entire rights industry – think how many professors and administrators at universities have built careers on activist causes. As they actually win the culture wars they need to find new causes. That is why trans activism is conducted with such fervour. I doubt pedophelia will be adopted – but polygamy for sure.
It wouldn’t take much to persude me to vote for the execution of those who abuse children sexually.
Yep, fine with that! Guess I must be some kind of barbarian. Oh well.
Honestly, Iâve come to the conclusion that Americans (and modern culture by extension – as the US is a powerful cultural driver) are utterly obsessed with sex or sexual things so much that any endless number of subjects relating to sexual relations of any sort are seen as critical and serious matters of the highest order. I mean everyone in the world is somewhat obsessed with it, but here its at another level seeming to be *extremely* important from a very early age.
I suppose I can expect this from some backward culture organizing child marriages and concocting oppressive customs to keep the less powerful folk under dominion. My grandmother was married off at 14, a few months after my mid-forties grandfatherâs second wife – her own older sister – died. My uncle was born before she turned 16. When she was married, my grandfather already had teenage and adult children from his first wife, who had also died in some childbirth event, most likely (no one remembers). My grandfather was viewed as a ânice manâ but absolutely my grandmother was a disposable and exchangeable commodity. Itâs clear why itâs done .. your 14-year old wife will look upon you as a superstar or be utterly dependent on you and your whims. Simple mantra – Man requires sex and power and woman requires child and protection.
New age mantra – everyone *requires* sex and power and protection. Cannot have children? It is required that you should be able to somehow have one. Whatever idea you conjure in your head – it a requirement that you should be able to act on it with full support of the entire planet or else you may get depressed and god forbid that should happen. To do without is a ridiculous notion.
I donât know .. just step back with a âMartian viewâ .. itâs absurd.
Walker and his like need to understand that the creation of child pornography is, in itself, an abuse of children. Who, would he suggest, is on the end of a camera instigating this kind of debasement of a child? It could only occur to someone so self-obsessed, perverse and morally corrupt to think that a child would not suffer by being made to perform any acts which could be considered ‘pornography’.
How this guy ever became a university professor is beyond comprehension, he should be in prison and chemically castrated so that he stops thinking this is “OK”. Who’s children does he honestly think we should be using to satiate is perverted desires? The University needs new management at the very least and a root and branch assessment of staff to ensure this view is stamped out and sanity returns!
There should be zero tolerance of people who harm others and the greater the harm the more absolute that zero tolerance must be. Woke acceptance is not what is needed, but if we do not recognise that some people have such desires and don’t want them and want help to tackle them, we may be drawing a clear moral line but the price may be preventable tragedies if only we knew who who the paedophiles were before they offended.
And the idea of providing them with child pornography so that won’t offend seems totally off as well. Computer generated images I presume. But whatever, since when has pornography prevented violence to women? So why should it help children?
We have been here before. The Paedophile Information Exchange was affiliated to the Labour party and vigorously defended by Patricia Hewitt and Harriet Harman at the National Council for Civil Liberties when it hitched a ride on progressive gay campaigns. The NCCL became âLibertyâ and dropped its support in 1983. It was bound to return.
Whether, or not, child pornography reduces other paedophile acts is irrelevant: child pornography requires the abuse of the child appearing in the pornography!
While we’re on with it, let’s stop dissing sadists. Is that next?
âThe two most disturbing causes trumpeted by modern progressives: paedophilia and polygamy⊠To some extent, they canât be comparedâ
No, they really canât. So why did you compare them throughout the article?
This discussion keeps coming up like the bad penny. Here is Mary Eberstadt in 1996 (she wrote another article in 2009 as a sequel).
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/weekly-standard/pedophilia-chic-2623
There was the Paedophile Information Exchange in
England in the 1970s. And, as another comment below notes, there were some over liberated French intellectuals in the 1960s and 70s who wanted to abolish the age of consent.
The best article I have seen on this horrible subject was in Touchstone magazine. “Dare we get real about sex?” asked Carson Holloway. His conclusion was no, most of us dare not. Especially nice, respectable, conservative, Church going, middle class Americans. Given the moral assumptions of most of the citizens of Western countries, they have no coherent objection to paedophilia or any other perversion, inside or outside the dictionary.
They might have an almighty “yuck” reaction to the idea. But that is an unprincipled way of arguing. They accepted contraception decades ago. Then they accepted gay sex for their family members…. Er, er, maybe transgenderism isn’t so bad….
But children can’t “consent” to such a grave matter. Who says? What if nine year olds enjoy it, as Saint Peter Thatchell unwisely claimed, before backtracking….
Exactly. When a society holds up consent as the only bar to any kind of activity â except racial solidarity â the best strategy for those who chafe at the societyâs prohibitions is to keep pushing, keep attacking.
There are no consequences for those doing the pushing, the attacking. To the contrary, funding is available.
Plus, studies show â I love that prefix as much as âexperts sayâ â that once an individual starts to give in to the demands of others, each successive act of âconsentâ is given easier and easier.
The MAP-ers and their allies know what theyâre doing, because they know the weaklings and appeasers they are dealing with.
I followed the link in your comment. I generally agree with much of what they have to say, but I did run across this claim about to people involved:
“Bateman denied Caven’s most damning charges–that he had molested Caven from the age of 16, and that he had taken pornographic pictures of him as a legal minor.”
What does this mean exactly? When I was 16 I ran away from a completely dysfunctional home, which was in Louisiana, and went up north to another state, more than 2500km away. I was running away from the psychological abuse of my mother, and had quit high school. By the grace of god I found a family willing to take me in and I returned to high school in Massachussetts. Under NO circumstances could I have been “molested” at 16 for any length of time by anyone. At 16 I knew exactly what to do to repel unwanted touching. How can you be “molested” at 16 for any length of time – stretching into months and even years? At what age are you partly responsible for your own life? Is a 16 year old boy so bereft of agency that he can be “molested” as if he were merely a child?
I think that a distinction should be made between “child porn” and “underage porn” – and indeed the penalities for “child porn” – especially its production should be even MORE severe than it is now. But “underage porn” should be dealt with in a different way. If you put into the same category porn that involves a 15 year old as if it were porn with a 5 year old, you cannot have useful conversation because the terms of the conversation are not clearly spelled out.
Let me be clear. I believe the penalties for the production of genuine child porn should be MORE severe than they are now. But a conversation needs to be had for what constitutes genuine “child porn” as opposed to “underage porn”. Both should be illegal – but are they morally and legally equivalent?
What about polyandry, are there those who wish to pursue it, I never hear any interest in why this might be a positive option?
What about existing spouses who do not want to share the original husband? I have never heard of any women who have valued the experience of several competitors, Only from those who have escaped from it .
Destigmatising paedophilia or even changing its name removes the shock value and raises the disquietng prospect of it becoming completly acceptable for young children to be groomed and bullied, usually but not always by men for adult gratification. I have worked in criminal justice all my adult life and I was continually picking up those abused by adults whose lives were destroyed. There is no possibility of mutuality when the adult has the monopoly of both the power and the strength – and a position in society that a child cannot attain.
Has anyone queried the apparent increase in girls self identifying as men as a response to the vast increase pornography, in order not become victim fodder, and thereby gain a licence to behave as aggressors?
I am glad my children are adult and understand who they are.
Presumed pedophiles like me do NOT seek to “normalize” pedophilia, but we do wish at least to understand it from a scientific point of view. Let me explain.
I am writing from France, a country to which I was deported in 2018, after spending 5 years in an American prison. Though I had lived in the US for more than 50 years and had a green card, all that was revoked after my conviction. I had descended into drug addiction, alcoholism, and amphetamine abuse. My behavior became highly erratic. To this toxic brew was added chronic addiction to porn, and spiraled into despair.
Something had gone terribly wrong. But what? It’s a long complicated story, but at the heart of it was a failure. I had failed to complete my Ph.D. thesis in 2010 when I finally gave up in despair. From 2001 to 2010 I had lost 3 teaching jobs, even an online gig with Phoenix University. Amphetamines, alcohol, GHB, despair. My drug-addled brain could not keep up. I cracked. I gave up. And then came the porn. First the legal stuff. Then the barely legal porn. And eventually the underage porn. I needed help but did not know where to turn.
I had been locked in an addiction-relapse cycle, familiar to drug addicts, but not just drug addicts. In moments of some clarity, as if I had woken up, I recognized what I was doing. I erased everything. Deleted the Peer-to-Peer program that I used to download this stuff. And I seemed to be more or less âcuredâ. Or so I thought. But the underlying issues were not resolved, and I was on my own, with no professional counseling available. My psychiatrist saw me once a month for 15 minutes, just long enough to renew my medication. I could not speak of it to him, and he just kept prescribing me Adderall for my underlying ADHD. That made things worse to the extent that it further dysregulated my Dopamine system. I started abusing Adderall and even started writing my own prescriptions until I got caught by the pharmacy. I was in the process of losing my mind to drugs, and my soul to pornography.
The scope of the problem of underage pornography is enormous but linked, I believe, to the larger problem of pornography generally, and the consequences of porn addiction, a worldwide phenomenon. Last year, on his Making Sense podcast, philosopher Sam Harris interviewed Gabriel Dance on this epidemic of child pornography. Underage porn is consumed by tens of millions of people on a regular basis.
I tried to stop; and did; many times. But the underlying addiction to pornography was still there. The underlying issues just festered. I was leading an utterly meaningless life. And I started downloading again, more or less indiscriminately. Files by the hundreds. Impossible to know what you get until you open the file. That’s how many get caught. Some of those files have been through the FBI system and have a Trojan horse that can get in the system and track your ISP, or your IP, or whatever. The internet-savvy know how to avoid this. I am not particularly internet savvy. I got caught and went to prison for 5 years. An inmate next to me in jail got probation for exactly the same crime. Such is the legal system in the US. He had a lawyer and a better judge. I was too poor to afford a lawyer. And my judge was also a well-known (and Christian) elected official. I had no chance.
And then I got deported to a country I had not seen in 50 years. And my police profile is forever publicly available on google. I am unemployed and essentially unemployable at this stage, and that all seems rather draconian punishment. In my view, it is some sort of neurological and mental disorder and should be treated as such.
I was unaware of the Challenor case until this article, and it’s a horrific read. I don’t know the details, but there’s something very clearly wrong with this person.
There’s much more to say about all this, but this is meant to just be a comment section and not a space for an essay, so I stop here.
Again, I am NOT trying to normalize pedophilia, but a more nuanced discussion of what it all means might be in order so as to know what to do about it.
If anyone is interested:
https://pascal794.substack.com/p/reentry-work-death-space-
Why this âprogressionâ from legal to underage? Was your need to be more and more transgressive? And why were you not repulsed at some point, as I think most people would be? Perhaps even repulsed by your own arousal? Did you not feel self disgust? Or were you in such a place that you were almost seeking out self disgust?
I was repulsed … but also could not look away … once your mind is taken over by addiction, you lose your ability to reason yourself out of it. The problem is that plenty of stuff had 17-year-olds – and 16-year-olds – and 15-year-olds – and after a while you cease seeing those bright red lines you used to see. I was also alone and isolated – I had no peers to steer me back to sanity – and I was in free fall.
That was brave to write and I am interested to see the reaction here which could be intenseâŠ. but probably not to the same extent as someone who acted on a desire. That said, the horror many people feel at the thought that people watch child porn is palpable, as the watching of it obviously creates the industry.
Seconded
I should note that I did not pay for any of it – not a dime. It was all peer-to-peer file sharing. Insofar as an “industry”, I’m not sure what that really means. The vast majority of stuff I ever saw were mostly self-made – or so it seemed to me. There is very little reporting of its contents because reporters are absolutely NOT allowed to view any of it for obvious reasons. So they go with descriptions provided by the FBI. They understandably report the most horrific cases. It’s worth noting that by the FBI’s own estimate there are at least 5 or 10 million (or more) computers in the US that have material that – by law – can be classified as “child porn” – and could be grounds for prosecution. I highly recommend Sah Harris’s podcast THE WORST EPIDEMIC – about a year ago – interviewing the NYT reporter. There is a reason why pornhub massively deleted nearly 1/3 of its millions of videos recently.
Let me reiterate this fundamental fact. I met others like me in prison. But none of them paid for any of it. That’s the whole point of P2P sharing. Indeed I would never have paid for any of this. In my case, many of these videos were ancient videos that have been circulating for years. That was nearly 10 years ago in my case. But the internet has evolved while I was in prison. It seems that VPN is being used by everybody these days – why is that? Internet privacy? From what? What internet surfing habits are people trying to hide?