Dr James Cantor - anti-transing children, pro-paedophilia as valid sexuality

[OrchidInTheSun]

Cantor is a psychologist who specialises in paraphilias. He is fiercely against transing children and has co- authored with Blanchard. So far so good.

However, he also believes that paedophilia is caused by a neurological developmental disorder and that it is unethical if we don't add the P to the LGBT as a valid sexuality.

I think this is a deeply dodgy strategy for dealing with paedophiles as a society because any attempt to frame it within the bounds of normal sexual development legitimises it. It will be leveraged by queer theorists who want to teach children that sex between children and adults is fine and dandy.

This is his tweet from earlier today

It's not really considered normal here to approach that in the way you did, no. Most people tend to approach child abuse victims with a bit of extra sensitivity. Tyro can of course decide if she wants to answer or not for herself. Others can observe that they found your quizzing her combined with your other comments about pedophilia disturbing.

For what it's worth, I didn't find anything about Goosefoot's question disturbing. I tend to be fairly factual and straightforward when I engage in discussions as that's how my brain works, and it's the sort of question I myself might ask someone as I like to understand different perspectives, especially if they are very different from my own.

No one is obliged to answer anyone on a public forum and if a question feels too personal or upsetting, a poster can either say I don't wish to answer that, or ignore responding to the question entirely.

The discussion on this thread is based around a professional making a public statement so folk are sharing their thoughts and opinions from that angle.

I can't easily think of a way to be less judgemental or leading when asking about someone's comment than asking way they feel that, as it's different from my own experience.

As far as my comments, you know, just because someone doesn't think the same way you do, does not make it disturbing. I was molested as a kid, I'm still interested in the biology and psychology behind what causes people to do those things, and I'm not interested in pretending it's something other than is actually the case because I'd rather it was something else. I have some thoughts of my own but reality is that they may be entirely wrong and research may show that to be the case.

And I'm still capable of feeling empathy for people who struggle about their sexual desires, about self-control, about maybe having been abused themselves. That's not unique to me either, I know other abuse victims who feel the same way. I've known of a few who became involved in programs working with offenders - I don't know that I could do that, but it's not disturbing or wrong or creepy because it doesn't fir your narrative.

I think, now, that the man who abused me may not have been a paedophile, he was an alcoholic which may have been the real issue, and he managed to believe, at least some of the time, that he wasn't really hurting anyone. It's been useful, for me, to understand that none of that really reflects on me, his reasons, what he thought was going on. That's not a burden I can or need to share. My interest in the psychology then comes from a place of having an experience that I have been able to distance myself from. I appreciate not everyone has done that, but again - it's not therefore weird.

NO WAY should they add the P - can’t believe we even have to say this!?!

LBTQ orgs need to come out strongly rejecting this imo.

When you set this It is thought there are a significant number of paedophiles who never act on their sexual interest in children.
next to the fact that the average pedophile offends 200 times before being apprehended, I think you have to go with the facts rather than the speculation.

I have talked about interviews with pedophiles here before, that they describe being seduced by a child or a toddler. It seems to me that pedophilia is a world view rather like the world view of the other types of abusers.
Would those of you who have read "Why Does He DO That" tell me if they see the similarities?

Oh, I see them. The thing I think a lot of people here are failing to take into account is that as a group pedophiles aren't always very honest when talking about their behaviors or motivations. Much like other groups of abusers. It's interesting how similar the pattern is across all kinds of different groups of abusers.

I also continue to raise my eyebrows at people who think other people aren't allowed to find something disturbing unless they do too.

It's a feminist forum, Goosefoot. If you don't want to be challenged when you are intrusive and creepy about another woman's trauma, I would suggest you spend more time researching women's sector principles and theory than you do the tales self-pitying abusive men tell themselves.

It's about boundaries and respecting them.

Why do you feel that would make it impossible to process trauma? I wouldn't say that resonates much with my own experience.

Because compound trauma courtesy of multiple adult males from multiple directions since infancy is an absolute fucker to get over, Goose. Speaking from experience.

Unsupported victims of unacknowledged sexual traumas have a habit of internalising the "fault". Legitimising a sexual response to children as perfectly normal compounds the problem further. It causes major issues down the line. Speaking from experience.

When all the adult male abusers can blame each other for the child's problems, no one listens to the child. When all the adult male abusers can excuse each other as natural and born that way the child folds in on herself, and deteriorates, and the body begins to fall apart. Speaking from experience.

I mentioned my own experience, Goose, because everyone is always running around fretting over how best to manage men and their unfortunate "natural" instincts. Every step taken to protect and manage men leads to more little girls being hurt. This is a feminism board. Girls matter here. They come first.

(Now to catch up on rest of thread.)

This is why women have to hold the line for the age of consent; there are so many people trying to erase it. Their motives are not our problem, we don't need to analyse whether they are bad or stupid.

We know that what they want - no sexual boundaries for men and compliant women - is a men sexual rights movement, it has no place in feminism as the effects on children and adults are well documented.

The fact is that if more research is done, and we come to find that it is in fact analogous to other forms of sexuality, abuse victims will still have to try and heal from their abuse - the developmental paths won't change to make things harder or easier for victims.

And when you've proved that sexual behaviour is conditioned through social interaction with other people's genitals, and established that this is just normal and how humans are, the unacknowledged-abused who are still in denial that their sexual response behaviour-conditioning is fucked up, they become the abusers of the next generation of little girls.

Trying to fix paedophiles means more little girls get broken, and never see justice, and more importantly, never see any reparation. It breaks us. Speaking from experience.

Creepster yes, it is a worldview. It hinges on poor theory of mind and an inability to empathise rather than sympathise.

Goose I don't mind you asking and I'd happily discuss more privately, but if you follow this path then more little girls get raped and more lesbians face corrective rape and more mothers are left in anguish trying to understand how something so terrible could be reframed as just how humans develop in certain circumstances. More and more women and girls suffer as we try to pick apart the reasons men have 'deviant' sexualities instead of giving our collective heads a wobble and looking at why the current narratives are necessary.

Thank you Kittens for having my back.

Excellent points, Tyro.

Agree with kittens. Shame has value when it comes to things like this.

To address the tweet itself, If Cantor thinks it's a disorder of sexual desire neurology then logic demands a disorder isn't included in a list of normal healthy sexual orientations. Or does he think the others are all disorders too?

If he's actually trying to normalise it as just a different kind of neurological wiring, well this is irrelevant: it is the consequences of that wiring that lead us to class paedophilia as morally abhorrent, because of the harm to children.

Focusing on neurology also completely misses the section of child abusers who do it simply because they are opportunistic, exploitative bastards and children are conveniently vulnerable.

The numbers are so frightening. Remember the Dutch charity who set up the fake child 'Sweetie' to catch chiild abusers?
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24818769

"Terre des Hommes carried out a 10-week sting near Amsterdam, posing on video chat rooms as "Sweetie", a 10-year-old Filipina girl.

Some 20,000 men contacted her, with 1,000 found to have offered her money.

When I visited the charity's operations room - in a warehouse on the outskirts of Amsterdam - I watched as a researcher logged on to a chat room as Sweetie - incredibly life-like but created by a computer.

Within seconds, like sharks, men were circling."

"Why is he like this" has consistently been the first step in excusing and minimizing men's predatory behavior. The feminist response is that it doesn't matter why, there are certain things that a person should not do, and if they do those things then they deserve condemnation and punishment rather than responses that center them at the expense of the people they've harmed.

L

I never comment on these threads as I don’t feel I know enough about these issues but what strikes me is that if this would ever be approved ( as if it would ) then is this man saying that paedophiles would get protected status for example or there would be a tick box on job interviews LGBT or paedo. It’s beyond comprehensible that any educated person would even think this, let alone say it.

Autism is regarded as a neurological condition. It has sod all to do with sexuality.
I often wonder why this is all happening now? When I was younger it was unheard of. Maybe I’m just naive, I’m not explaining myself well at all but it baffles me!

When I say “it” was unheard of I mean LBT etc. I wonder why the trans element is suddenly rife.

Also why should gay people as a group be saddled with a connection with pedophiles? That logic only works if you think homosexuality is a deviant sexuality (in which case you're homophobic) or if you think pedophilia is just a natural variation that can potentially be taken pride in and advocated for (in which case either you're a very dodgy person or you're not too bright).

"Why is he like this" has consistently been the first step in excusing and minimizing men's predatory behavior.

Yep.

And the corollary is "Why am I like this?"

You dig further and further into it until you find a way to resolve it that lets you go forward feeling better. Or you are told how to resolve it in a way that makes you feel like the source of everyone else's pain.

And then you break even more.

Eventually they tell you to resolve it by letting the doctors cut you up and find the problem in your genes. Either you trust the doctors, and try to find a way to keep going, and withdraw and break down even further every time your new narrative brushes up against someone else's and causes you and your loved ones pain. Or you develop a god-complex, and push the pain outwards onto everyone else.

Again, speaking from experience.

The patriarchs of my family survive by reframing their wives' and children's unacknowledged complex sex-based trauma issues as genetic and handing responsibility for the problem over to the brain-doctors. The wives die young and the children break under the strain, and turn themselves over to the brain-doctors too. The patriarchs go on, shrugging at their rotten luck and starting new families they will eventually break.

We really, really need to stop giving them excuses to externalise the problem.

I'm in work so don't have the space to make the considered post this topic deserves but thank you kittens and tyro for articulating so clearly some of my concerns around this stance (beyond urgh this is not okay)

Unsupported victims of unacknowledged sexual traumas have a habit of internalising the "fault". Legitimising a sexual response to children as perfectly normal compounds the problem further.

I don't consider researching the causes of sexual attraction to children, nor even seeing it as similar to other neurological phenomena that aren't problematic, as normalising anything.

In fact I think that idea reveals a deeper problem in the way we've conceptualised how we differentiate moral and immoral behaviours. Humans are animals with bodies, the reasons they act and think in certain ways are always reflected in those bodies. To deal with the moral questions of actions, to deal with the medical question of actions, and also how we react, is to be able to integrate out ethical structures with our material reality.

As I said upthread, I'm not sure what this guy means by adding paedophiles to the LGB. He doesn't seem to have expanded on it, and it makes it difficult to comment in a very pointed way. I'm hesitant about the whole idea, even if it's a exact biologically analogous process. But I'd really like more explanation of what he's trying to say.

But I really resent this sense that anyone who doesn't agree with thread-police about something - sometimes it seems almost anything - are therefore ok with sexual abuse. As it happens, I think the approach some other people are suggesting is likely to lead to more abuse and trauma, as well as other negative outcomes, but I don't think that's their intent, at all, and I would never say or imply that it was their intent. In fact I'd be hesitant under normal circumstances to put it that way for fear of implying that is what I thought, what I'd say is that I didn't think that approach would be as effective as another, for such and such reasons.

Goose I see your point, and it interests me too, but you really do need to be mindful of how young victims interpret the information that goes mainstream. So does Cantor.

The survivors I know, who've pulled their lives together and moved on, are the ones who were told it wasn't your fault and were able to frame all of the badfeels as the abuser's fault.

The ones who are told they have to forgive, or have empathy, or feel pity, or celebrate their abusers, or simply aren't allowed to feel and express their pain and confusion - they're the ones who break.

I spent years assuming all badfeel attached to the memories was my fault. Then everyone told me it was all his fault, and I could see that this was far too simplistic to the point of being a lie - because, as you say, Goose, morality is a human social construct, and no one is born innately evil. Human behaviour protocols emerge and refine and evolve over the lifespan of the organism, and eventually settle into a fixed "identity."

Now, what do you plan to do to ensure that this knowledge isn't used by patriarchal dicks as an excuse to rape lesbians and children to condition them into meekly submitting to male sexuality? Answer me that, before you take this further, because if you don't, you are at high risk of causing a great deal of additional trauma to already-traumatised girls. You are enabling a new narrative that makes it harder for severely traumatised little girls to ever be healed.

Let's not talk about "thread-police," eh? All the police ever cared about was managing the behaviour of the men who hurt me. The pain I felt? They didn't care. When I expressed my pain? They threatened to arrest me. When others expressed pain on my behalf? They threatened to arrest me. The women who are speaking on my behalf here are not the ones being the police.

But I really resent this sense that anyone who doesn't agree with thread-police about something - sometimes it seems almost anything - are therefore ok with sexual abuse.

Nobody's saying that. You're being challenged because you're being intrusive and weird about women's trauma and dismissive of the feminist perspective on a feminist board.

If you don't want feminists to disagree with your framing, try a feminist framing instead? Or continue to get disagreed with.

Goose you seem to be saying “well, perhaps the P should be added to the LGB in some way - we need more info to say.”

?!?!?!?

The answer is no. The P does not belong.

I’m very uncomfortable with any comments to the contrary.

Why should the P be added to the LGB? What is it that the P has in common with the other groups that would make grouping them together make sense? I'm not asking why Cantor thinks it should, I'm asking the people here who're saying they think it should.

It really, really should not, imo.

The only similarity I can see between L, G, B, T, A, P, and all the others, is that each is an identity-label used to describe the observed sexual behaviour of an organism*.

All can be expressed in incredibly harmful ways.

Some can and indeed usually are expressed in healthy ways between psychologically-healthy and willing adults.

P cannot be expressed healthily. These behaviours can only be expressed in a "non-harmful" way if those who are harmed are conditioned and coerced into denying the harm.

Goose how do you propose we condition children to not feel remotely distressed about being molested by adult males? Because that's the logical next step here, and you're refusing to look at it.

*[Note: everyone else is welcome to have a comfortable fixed sexual orientation. I never have, so I've had to spend a lot of time watching bodies and words and interactions to work out what the hell everyone else is talking about. I thought I was struggling with compulsory heterosexuality; really I have been struggling with compulsory sexuality. No longer.]