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

If we must group it then it can go with the personality disorders that tend to be associated with a high probability of causing harm to others.

That was responding to tyro but works for kittens post too.

Are we allowed to draw out the underlying pattern there, Kittens?

What I realised, through the past seventeen years of being told "you're very clever and very stubborn, now go and process your trauma so you can be normal," is that "normal" is determined in the nest, and the children learn to recreate the dynamics of their nest all around them.

And in the nest, the dominant other runs rampant, and controls the words, and tells us the intellect is truth and the emotion is lesser.

And we believe it.

We believe it so strongly that we make it happen in the world, and people get hurt.

We believe it so strongly that, when the philosophers tell us that "knowledge = true justified belief" we all just nod along (I didn't).

The scientists tell us the brain takes in sense-data, and projects out everything we see and hear onto the underlying string.

Everyone tells us that the sense-data coming in is real, and the sense data coming from within is false.

And everyone forgets - it's all sense-data, to the brain. It's all projected by the brain. It's all created by the organism. Either all of it's real, or none of it's real. The entirety of the experienced mind is felt. It's all feeling, that we're trained to differentiate and reframe.

And then we believe the men who control the words when they tell us "it's inexplicable, we're digging into it, you just don't understand it."

Goose's problem is the same one I've had for years.

The brain-function that god-stories fit into might not have got this religion or that religion installed into it in the nest. But the function's still there - it's supposed to be, so we can make a story-picture in our heads and step into it - and so the brain fills that function-capacity with stories of Man instead.

Most of trauma-therapy is actually a sneaky attempt to nudge the patient into stripping Man out of that brain-function and installing something fitter, from a Darwinian perspective.

Here's a scary fact:
Our prisons are at absolute bursting point right now. This is partly due to the thousands and thousands of males currently inside for viewing images of child abuse. Digital crimes are quite easy to catch, and the Police have been making a concerted effort to do so.
Now, a particular person in the police told me that, in her opinion, most of these men, the ones getting off on viewing abuse of children, were NOT actually what you would class as paedophiles, they are just going down depraved rabbit holes which the Internet allows them to do.
So, not a class of men with a disorder nessecarily, or even a compulsion. Just sickened by porn and jaded and uncaring.

I came home and cried on DH. I asked him WHY even if you really were a paedophile, how could you ever justify hurting another human being for the sake of an orgasm and he thought for a while and said "because they feel entitled".

I think that's true. I think it's actually a fairly small minority who are wired wrong in the sense of only being attracted to children.
I think the rest are just the end result of thousands of years of male entitlement over everyone else PLUS the means to connect with, and be validated by, other twisted people.

Anyone who hurts children doesnt deserve understanding though. They have chosen (because it is a choice) to abandon their humanity and they can rot in jail as far as I'm concerned.

Also I think perhaps James Cantor should be on some kind of list.

Yes, ultimately this is a male entitlement issue. Raise boys in a society that tells them that their orgasm is vitally important and something that ought to be facilitated and you will produce at least a certain percentage of men who think that any means is justified in achieving that end. Porn really isn't helping, given the dopamine hit and diminishing returns on such process going on there.

Have you got a plan for ensuring paedophiles are adequately punished, Nonny?

Hi Tyro, sorry only just catching up with all the latest posts in this thread.

Wanted to reply to your question so you didn't think I was ignoring you.

My own plan (or rather, desire) for punishing pedophiles would involve the death penalty or chemical castration with being sent to live in a separate community away from society - I think there's a town in America like that, but that might be considered by others in political power as unreasonable and inhumane and unlikely to be enforced. So I'm open to hearing from the professionals involved in studying and researching such people what would be ways to prevent offending in the first place, if such traits could be caught in the younger years of life etc. Because right now, there's not enough being done about child sexual abuse anyway.

Off to read the rest.

Studies have shown that when the death penalty is the penalty for child abuse or rape, the perpetrator is more likely to kill their victim so as not to leave a witness.
There is also the risk of wrongful conviction, which is not as rare as you might think, even with so called cut and dried cases.

deathpenaltyinfo.org/stories/use-of-the-death-penalty-for-killing-a-child-victim

I think the death penalty is too far for reasons stated by previous poster. I’m all for a community they can live in amongst others like themselves though. I wouldn’t say it’s inhumane, if you’re already convicted for either viewing images of child sexual assault etc then clearly you’re already slipping and a child is being harmed because of your actions (my opinion is even viewing images of children being abused, is taking part in that abuse or opening up other children for more abuse because people are looking at these images) so being kept away makes sense. We already have pedo hostels etc so why not just move them away from any children or other people really. I don’t think they will be missed.

So, not a class of men with a disorder nessecarily, or even a compulsion.

The thing with disorders is, they're often not baked in at the start. They emerge over time.

An obsessive-compulsive disorder centred on porn and the male orgasm is a pretty widespread and worsening social problem at the moment.

At what point does watching bodies performing sex acts for your own internal mental gratification stop being normal and start being "disordered"?

Nonny I spent a very long time trying to find a way to believe the professionals who say that severe punishment is inhumane. It almost broke me. I'm back to where you are now. I wouldn't necessarily execute a man for viewing an image - but the man who made and distributed it? If we're not willing to execute then permanent quarantine is the only option.

And, from the perspective of an adult whose life has been so severely affected by paedophilic abuse and male entitlement to my body and mind - there needs to be reparation.

Because as it stands, the fact that they get away with a slap on the wrists has such a severe psychological impact on victims that some of us never even get as far as the "survivor" identity, let alone truly putting it behind us.

Because if what happened was bad, and they're not punished, then where does the "bad" come from? (I know it comes from social dynamics, but no one's telling victims that, are they?) And our bodies show the strain of trying to resolve the conundrum in a way that makes us feel we're not the source of the bad.

(my opinion is even viewing images of children being abused, is taking part in that abuse or opening up other children for more abuse because people are looking at these images)

It absolutely is taking part in abuse, and yes, creating the demand as well.

tyro I see your point about disordered desires. I think that (to sort of contradict myself) some moral centre has to be missing for even the most hardened porn hound to step over that line in the first place.
But then, from young teenagerhood boys are exposed to terrible things. Something is very sick in what is being allowed in order to satisfy men's orgasms. I mean, hardcore porn used to be illegal in the UK. It was actually quite hard to get and you had to go to a sex shop in a seedy area to find it. Now the most extreme sexual acts are all over the Internet in the UK for literally anyone to access with a click.

If we as a society are saying that a girl being gang banged or strangled is "sex" and "entertainment" and is legal to show then the wheels have pretty much come off haven't they?
I'm not making sense. I just know child abuse is about more than paedophilia.

some moral centre has to be missing

Agreed - the moral conditioning stories they were given clearly weren't adequate.

for even the most hardened porn hound to step over that line in the first place.

But listen to what men say about their porn use. It's not a single giant leap from normal to abnormal behaviour. It's a slippery slope, and justifying one step justifies the next.

They divide it up into hebephilia, ephebephilia, and paedophilia, dependent on the age of the child, so that they can say "oh, forty year old men lusting after fifteen year olds is normal because of basic reproductive instincts," and down the slippery slope they go.

I'm actually not convinced that anyone is ever destined to be attracted solely to small children. It's a disorder that emerges. If it's a type of inborn sexual orientation then the implications for the LGB & H are awkward, to say the least.

I think we just call someone a "true" paedophile when they display no indication of also being attracted to adults of whichever sex they're orientated towards.

Personal experience angle: there were plenty of small children available to the one who abused me, he had equal access to children of both sexes - but it was only girls he abused. And he was excused on the grounds of, effectively, claiming a developmental disorder meant he did not understand basic morality. So they let him live in the community, and restricted his access to his own grandchildren, but not to anyone else's children.

You are making perfect sense blakes. A very depressing but informative post. I agree that it's a rabbit hole to depravity, the harm of which we are only just discovering. It's not just a tiny minority with some sort of genetically hardwired paedophilia but being inculcated in many others by what they are viewing online. There is research into the addictive nature of pornography and how people can end up viewing increasingly extreme stuff to get the same strong dopamine hit they got in the beginning. It's like heroin addiction.

yes tyro there is something deeply traumatising about experiencing something awful but having your suffering ignored, downplayed or invalidated by others. The injustice is another harm in and of itself. Researchers and others need to be very careful not to act as apologists for paedophilia, even unwittingly.

I feel society current completely invalidates my concerns about pornography. We are being gaslit en masse about how it's all fine and dandy. This serves the vested interests of those who want to continue to access and use it. The removal of shame around hardcore pornography and child sex abuse images is enabling all sorts of horrors for women and children.

But what the hell do we do when the main demand for porn is from those in power and with a massive sense of entitlement to the stuff - men? I feel despairing that as a society we will ever put these worms back in the can when it involves denying men porn. They'll never give it up voluntarily and never legislate against what they themselves want to maintain access to.

It all comes back to men 'needing' sex doesn't it? The gigantic dick-pandering that our society revolves around.

We have already seen that the rise and increasing normalisation of 'hardcore' porn has spilled over into the sex lives of heterosexual women - young women being coerced into accepting anal sex as standard, their pain being considered normal, killing women by strangling and assaulting and stabbing women as 'sex gone wrong'.

It is no stretch to surmise that the increasing tendency of men to access child rape porn will have a direct impact on children's safety.

So no, I don't think positioning paedophiles as worthy of sympathy ('Is it virtuous to exercise self control over a lifetime when you don't really see any hope of ever having relief? I'd say so.' NO. FUCK OFF) is going to help anyone other than paedophiles. They want people to think that they couldn't help it. Just like the men who murder their girlfriends and claim she asked them to, these men will say the children asked them.

And that's why the push to encourage children to explore touch that feels nice, that talks about abuse as painful is opening up a massive window of opportunity to paedophiles.

And that's why the push to encourage children to explore touch that feels nice, that talks about abuse as painful is opening up a massive window of opportunity to paedophiles.

It's a desperate attempt to mitigate the symptom without treating the cause.

Kids being exposed to hardcore pornography is desensitising and conditioning them to expect and find pleasure in the sort of sex they're seeing on-screen.

The shit about encouraging self-touch is a misguided attempt to get in there and establish the self as an agent before burgeoning sexuality gets warped around porn exposure.

It's not going to be terribly successful, because it leaves children less able to identify stealthy abuse, and the safeguarding implications are grimmer than grim.

It wouldn't be necessary if porn access was removed and children were explicitly taught that sex is a lesser consideration and doesn't need exploring or prioritising until much later. Girls are already taught this - boys not so much - and the porn access issue only worsens.

But what the hell do we do when the main demand for porn is from those in power and with a massive sense of entitlement to the stuff - men?

On a societal level, it seems insurmountable. So be the change you want to see. Establish a prospective partner's view on porn before ever having sex. Make it known that porn use is a deal-breaker. And then stick to it. The more of us do this, the fewer options the porn-sick will have to shrug and move on. And teach your sons (as well as your daughters) that porn is bad for them and bad for girls and bad for society.

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.

I have no idea how you remotely came to that conclusion. You might consider that you are reading something - maybe even quite a lot - into what I've said.

On a societal level, it seems insurmountable. So be the change you want to see. Establish a prospective partner's view on porn before ever having sex. Make it known that porn use is a deal-breaker. And then stick to it. The more of us do this, the fewer options the porn-sick will have to shrug and move on. And teach your sons (as well as your daughters) that porn is bad for them and bad for girls and bad for society.

Yes, tyro. I think this is the way to do it. We have to make it socially unacceptable. In the same way that smacking children or drink driving or any of the other things that used to be commonplace and are now outlawed because we recognise they cause harm.

It is no stretch to surmise that the increasing tendency of men to access child rape porn will have a direct impact on children's safety.
Yes.
A man I trust was actually the one who made the connection between extreme porn and child abuse to me.
So even "regular" blokes, some of them, are starting to go-hang on..and I think that may be partly because they hear the things other men say in all male company and they are, rightly, scared by it.
I wish we could put it back in the box.
The more I think, the more convinced I am that extreme online porn is a stepping stone to actual abuse, of women and maybe children.
But how the Hell do you police the Internet, quite aside from the fact that nobody seems to want to. Free unfettered abuse of young flesh is, apparently, a civil liberty.

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.”

Not really. What I am not sure about is why Cantor seems to be saying that, or what he really means by it. Does he mean they should be supported by groups like Stonewall or included in Pride? Does he think that they should be protected from discrimination by law if they haven't committed a crime? Does he mean we should understand that people are stuck being born that way and so we should feel a social responsibility to try and help them deal with that, maybe by researching medical avenues or other ways to support such people in living in society in a safe way? Or maybe he just means it's a good idea to understand how people come to be that way rather than embracing myths around it?

I'd have quite different responses to all of those ideas, but I'm not really sure if he's saying any of them, or all of them.

"Our ethical principles mean we should group paedophiles with gays and lesbians" is what he's saying, Goose. It's in the tweet in the OP.

You can sit around wondering what benign meaning we could possibly all be missing here, or you could use your brain a bit.

He's saying that either a) homosexuality is deviant or b) sexual attraction to small children is not deviant.

He's grouping gays and paedophiles together and saying this is necessary for ethical reasons.

You can draw whatever conclusions you like about it. I'm of the opinion that this man has nailed his colours to the meninist flag and doesn't give a shit about enabling child molestation.

Re the above
Almost all child molesters are men and majority victims female
Straight men who like kids
How does that fit in lgb

The idea its a ' minority' sexuality has something a bit not chiming right tbh. Gay does not =pervert. Lots of perverts are straight...

Is lgb+ just having everyhing shoehorned into it, to legitimise?

Poster upthread said

'Our prisons are at absolute bursting point right now. This is partly due to the thousands and thousands of males currently inside for viewing images of child abuse. Digital crimes are quite easy to catch, and the Police have been making a concerted effort to do so.'

Is there a link or stats? My understanding was the police courts etc couldn't really be bothered as they feel it's low level and going after upstanding lovely men etc

@Goosefoot

I've looked at Cantor's timeline to clarify what he could have possibly meant by his tweet (sure you could have done the same but whatevs).

His tweets about it are either (paraphrasing):
If they're deviant then so am I because I'm gay so if I'm not, they're not either.
Rubbishing anyone who questions him with really childish comebacks (of the 'I know you are so what am I' ilk).

So, in conclusion, I think dr cantor is a fucking arsehole. Perhaps you'll come to a different conclusion?

What the hell?

I'm pretty sure increased acceptance of homosexuality was done on the basis that gay people are not perverts or a danger to children.

Is he actually trying to increase anti-gay sentiment amongst the general populace? Because this seems a bloody good way of going about it.

Esp as most peadophile are opposite sex oriented.

Possibilities here seems to be either a. pedos are feeling a lot bolder in terms of showing themselves online or b. this is a case of someone being taken in by sob stories in much the same way many people are with TRA stuff.