Paedophilia is not progressive

[ChristinaXYZ]

Interesting article in Unheard

unherd.com/2021/11/paedophilia-is-not-progressive/

...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 “suffering” that paedophiles face....

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: “I 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.” In other words: let’s not hurt the paedophiles’ feelings.

Throughout the interview, Walker deploys terms taken straight from the social justice playbook — as if paedophilia were just another sexual preference in need of its own Pride. Activists talk of “lowering stigma”; of a minority that is “at-risk” and “universally maligned”. As far back as 2017, in a PhD thesis titled Understanding Resilience Strategies among Minor-Attracted Individuals, Walker notes how “child pornography as a harm reduction technique has previously been theorised to be a potential strategy for MAPs to maintain abstinence from sexual contact with children”.....

And how do they think this child pornography comes about, if not by abusing children?

In any case, I don't think it will reduce offending. If anything, I'd say it would likely make it worse.

Isn't it pretty much established (through studying individuals who use pornography) that the brain builds tolerance to pornographic imagery quickly, and then needs higher and higher "doses", more extreme forms of porn, and this escalation can lead to behaviours outside the mere viewing aspect?

@DuckDuckNo

And how do they think this child pornography comes about, if not by abusing children?

In any case, I don't think it will reduce offending. If anything, I'd say it would likely make it worse.

Isn't it pretty much established (through studying individuals who use pornography) that the brain builds tolerance to pornographic imagery quickly, and then needs higher and higher "doses", more extreme forms of porn, and this escalation can lead to behaviours outside the mere viewing aspect?

Exactly, and what then?

Currently viewing child pornography is illegal. If it's legalised, where is the new line, and does that mean child abuse becomes a little bit more normalised and acceptable?

Personally I think yes, it's a direct move away from keeping our children safe and I would never be comfortable with it.

Is there not presently an issue with men having bizarre expectations in sex due to certain things being normalised ij pornography? I know I've read a few articles along these lines.
They want to ABUSE children, to make it legal to watch these abuse children? Will sexually abusing children be okay if we have a camera there to record it? Who the fuck would think 'Yeah let's normalise sexually abusing children'.
Clearly if people will come out with stuff like this, paedophilia is not stigmatised enough.

Disgusting. This came up under recent posts, not sure what this is doing in feminism sex and discussion. Not at all related.

I'm sort of torn on this. I've seen cases where people harm and abuse children and have received very light or even non-existent sentences. I would like tougher sentencing for people who commit any crime and I include looking at images within that.

However I've often wondered about people who have these urges and do everything in their power to ensure they don't act on them. I would like to see some level of understanding for these people just so they feel able to ask for support and have more people working with them to ensure they don't harm anybody. Basically clear pathways for people to go and see a doctor or whatever and ask for help. I've seen documentaries about communities in Scandinavian countries for these people and it seemed to work well.

I don’t care about the feelings of pedophiles! I don’t care that they are stigmatized!

And this nonsense about de stigmatization so they get help us a bunch of bull. If they wanted help they would and they can get it.

Therapists are available to help them. The truth is they don’t want help. Otherwise they would get it.

Claiming to be too ashamed to seek therapy for fear of being judged.. well what sort of judgment will you get if you actually abuse a child?

I’ll have to give pedophiles and pedophile apologists my ass to kiss. You do not need sex to live, and no one owes you sex.

And promoting sexual abuse images of children to help these perverts is abhorrent. I hope these people are ran over by buses that then back over them multiple times.

ohfook Anyone in that position should be able to approach their doctor or a therapist in the first instance, with an expectation of being listened to, treated professionally and signposted on where appropriate.

I’m sorry, I simply don’t believe in the existence of a huge cohort of non-offending paedophiles who would all come forward for treatment / therapy / support if only there were less stigma attached. If they’re non-offending because they know it’s so wrong then the stigma is doing its job. Reducing that stigma risks normalisation of the urges which increases the chance of the non-offending becoming the offending. And TBH if they really want help they can find it.

@MarshmallowSwede

I don’t care about the feelings of pedophiles! I don’t care that they are stigmatized!

And this nonsense about de stigmatization so they get help us a bunch of bull. If they wanted help they would and they can get it.

Therapists are available to help them. The truth is they don’t want help. Otherwise they would get it.

Claiming to be too ashamed to seek therapy for fear of being judged.. well what sort of judgment will you get if you actually abuse a child?

I’ll have to give pedophiles and pedophile apologists my ass to kiss. You do not need sex to live, and no one owes you sex.

And promoting sexual abuse images of children to help these perverts is abhorrent. I hope these people are ran over by buses that then back over them multiple times.

I agree with all you said

Many people feel shame when seeking therapy, its often part of the reason people need therapy.

I also think these are the natural patients for the Lupron and puberty blockers rhat do so much harm to the natural development of other patients. No sex drive and atrophied sex organs would be a positive for them

@OnlyTheTitosaurusOfTheIceberg

ohfook Anyone in that position should be able to approach their doctor or a therapist in the first instance, with an expectation of being listened to, treated professionally and signposted on where appropriate.

I’m sorry, I simply don’t believe in the existence of a huge cohort of non-offending paedophiles who would all come forward for treatment / therapy / support if only there were less stigma attached. If they’re non-offending because they know it’s so wrong then the stigma is doing its job. Reducing that stigma risks normalisation of the urges which increases the chance of the non-offending becoming the offending. And TBH if they really want help they can find it.

This.

Someone said on another thread that it's helpful to think about paedophile desires as simply, 'I want to hurt children'. If we do that then we can see that, 'some people who want to hurt children say they won't actually hurt children so we should remove the stigma from hurting children so that people who want to hurt children can get the help they deserve' is utterly ridiculous.

@Fadette

What I'd transgressive sex?

In general it's sex that breaks some kind of cultural taboo. Whether that is something like anal sex, sex with a much younger or older person, sex in a semi-public place, wherever.

For many people a significant part of the thrill is the transgression which creates a bit of a problem when you are pushing to have it normalized.

@OnlyTheTitosaurusOfTheIceberg

ohfook Anyone in that position should be able to approach their doctor or a therapist in the first instance, with an expectation of being listened to, treated professionally and signposted on where appropriate.

I’m sorry, I simply don’t believe in the existence of a huge cohort of non-offending paedophiles who would all come forward for treatment / therapy / support if only there were less stigma attached. If they’re non-offending because they know it’s so wrong then the stigma is doing its job. Reducing that stigma risks normalisation of the urges which increases the chance of the non-offending becoming the offending. And TBH if they really want help they can find it.

I think that talking about this in terms of reducing stigma makes it an impossible conversation to have.

The goal shouldn't be to reduce stigma. It should be that people who are having sexual thoughts that would be damaging to enact can bring themselves to get help managing it.

There is a tendency for people here, and more generally in our culture, to take one of two views, both of which are incomplete. One is that people can't learn to control their sexual urges, it's probably not even healthy, and so for people with immoral desires it's useless to try. The other is that people with immoral desires should just not do them, and that not offending is simple and that should be that.

Both of these things are untrue. It is possible and perfectly healthy to not enact sexual desires. But it's not always easy and can require social scaffolding and also teaching people how to deal with these things.

I have wondered if part of the reason many people think that it's always easy is because it's so rare now for people to try to not have any kind of sex. Which is what is being asked of someone whose primary sexual interest is wrong. Not thinking about it, not masturbating thinking about it, not watching it, not doing it. Lots of people, if they tried to so this in their lives, would slip up from time to time, but in this case the consequences of slipping up are very bad.

Our society not only offers no real encouragement or direction with regard to celibacy, it tends to mock it. And sexual self-control in general. So we produce a population with little understanding of making it work. That includes people with normal sexual desire, or abnormal sexual desire. Any society that wants to give sexual licence to people to do what they want sexually is going to have a population that is bad at self-control, and some of them will be anti-social.

I think a lot of the issue @LobsterNapkin is because sex is being framed as a human right. Like the disabled man who tried to argue that his carers procure prostitutes for him.

Many men believe that they need sex, that something will happen to them them if they don't regularly orgasm. It's a bullshit line they use a lot on reluctant partners from what I can see on MN

@Clymene

I think a lot of the issue *@LobsterNapkin* is because sex is being framed as a human right. Like the disabled man who tried to argue that his carers procure prostitutes for him.

Many men believe that they need sex, that something will happen to them them if they don't regularly orgasm. It's a bullshit line they use a lot on reluctant partners from what I can see on MN

I think there are two different things going on there.

One is that people often feel like they can't go without sex. Men maybe more than women, and younger men more than older ones. But it's kind of across the board to some extent, all categories have people who feel this way. Which makes sense, it's one of the most primary survival drives we have. Of course it's going to be very powerful. And I don't know that it's really possible to change it - that's the situation we have to work with, whatever we teach people about sex will be built on top of that.

But the rights thing seems to me to be newer. People compare it to the older idea that sex within marriage was a "right," but that comes in some ways from a different underlying set of ideas. It existed together with an expectation that there wasn't supposed to be sex outside of marriage and a society that had significant numbers of people who were celibate, and that was almost an idealized state. It was also pretty common for married people to abstain during fasting periods or later in life, especially as it was about the only good option to prevent pregnancy. No one would say that if a couple had to give up sex, say due to illness, that the marriage wasn't really a marriage any more.

Not to say people were always especially good at not having sex, clearly they were often quite bad at it, but there was a clear sense that abstinence was possible and good and sometimes required.

That's quite different than a scenario which believes it has removed natural consequences of sex, where it is seen as actually unhealthy to avoid it altogether, where many people say there is no point teaching kids to abstain because that's obviously impossible, or that the culture is not to see celibacy as a high calling but basically ridiculous. And where yes, people think of sex as something that human beings are incomplete without, not living a real full life.

Add to that the idea that it's inconsequential, physically or emotionally, and of course such a powerful biologically based behaviour is going to be difficult to control.

So we have child rape and torture apologists , proposing that we should allow child rapists or viewers of child rape to be called MAPS so they are less stigmatised. Words are very important this is why only woman are women not cis women or uterus havers and why paedophiles are child rapists or view or distribute images of child rape and abuse it is not a 'porn' as that implies a certain level of capacity to consent

There’s a whole movement celebrating asexuality right now - the Girl Guides even tweeted about it recently - and while there is now apparently some subsection of “ace” people who have lots of sex, there is a proportion who are celibate. So there’s a whole new shiny “progressive” movement that our poor hard-done-by non-offending paedophiles can get on board with, if they need support in not having sex.

It is also worth pointing out that a significant percentage of paedophiles actually are having sex; when I worked in the CJS it was notable how many of those in the system were married/in LTRs. So in many cases it’s not that the primal urge for sex is necessarily going unfulfilled; it’s that they’re not getting to do it with someone of the age they’d prefer. Diddums, quite frankly (if that’s not too crass given the subject matter).

And most paedophiles will often have a history of abuse to adult women. They arent the sad men in glasses who are paedophiles because they have been rejected by women, they are abusers of women and children