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My pedophilia essay outraged the right. My attempt to humanize a real problem brought out their nastiest rage My article "I'm A Pedophile, But Not a Monster" was published last week and it has been a whirlwind since. I've spent days doing radio interviews, even an appearance on TV (HLN's Dr. Drew on Call), but mainly just answering the hundreds of emails that have poured in. Yes, the vast majority of them have been supportive.
While there has been a visible backlash, predominantly from the political right, in private it has been a different story. This piece has generated debate and controversy all over the world, well beyond my wildest imaginings. When I first approached Salon with the idea, my editor was receptive, but throughout the process of refining the piece, she asked me if I really understood what I was getting into. Her concern was palpable. I assured her I did, which was mostly true; I had no idea it would blow up as quickly as it did, and the bigger it got, the more of a tempest it became. Even so, I have no regrets. I knew when I wrote it that it was going to be an important piece, something unique and necessary. And so it was.
First, the positives. Of the hundreds of emails I've received, somewhere on the order of 95 percent of them have been thoughtful and respectful. Interestingly, perhaps 70 percent of these have been from women, many of them survivors of abuse themselves, who have pointed out that my article has helped them understand the issue better and even to make some peace with their past. Here's an example (and yes, I have her permission to reprint this):
"Having survived sex trafficking, molestation and rape all at the hands of people I knew and trusted starting at age six, I am a very aggressive defender. I was drugged and trafficked by my biological crackhead father as a young child. Yet I am compelled to thank you. For your honesty and bravery and not going the other extreme creating more victims. It took a lot of courage for me to come out with my pain, and as you have never made anyone else suffer at your hands, I respect your honesty and struggle."
Most notes were from people thanking me for my willingness to shed light on a little-understood issue that few scholars or experts want to approach. A few people admitted to me their own secret attractions for children, how they felt alone and uncertain how to process their feelings. I directed them toward VirPed; membership growth, which has been fairly steady since I joined over a year ago, has swelled over the last few days. What really surprised me was how many women confessed pedophilic desires, which is often thought to be an exclusively male predisposition. Others have contacted me to work with them on anti-child abuse and pedophilia-related projects. All necessary steps toward what I set out to achieve: a bridge between the celibate pedophile community and the non-pedophile population, setting an example for pedophiles who may not realize they aren't doomed to molest kids, and creating an environment where we can all work together to end child sexual abuse.
What I want to focus on now is the continuing misconceptions, prevailing fears and willful ignorance I've encountered because of this, both about pedophilia itself and about Virtuous Pedophiles as an organization. My experiences doing the Niall Boylan Show (Irish talk radio) and the Dr. Drew on Call TV show taught me that pedophilia is still largely a gut-level issue for a lot of people. One caller to the radio show said that she didn't want to know what pedophiles think and lambasted the show itself for even giving me a platform. I told her that no problem was ever solved by refusing to understand the issue. We've been in that mode for a few decades now—has it fixed the tragedies of child abuse and child porn? Nope. If anything, this attitude has only increased the problem, since pedophiles at risk of offending are unlikely to seek help in this severely hostile environment. This caller fancied herself a reasonable person, but she decided this issue was beyond any reason. Unfortunately, this viewpoint is all too common.
Another point that arose on Dr. Drew was that pedophiles are by nature compulsive. This opinion comes from the extant data, almost all of which is based on people who've been arrested, since non-offending pedophiles tend not to self-identify or participate in studies. What do you think that data is going to show? Yes, criminals are often compulsive, but this data says little about people like me, who haven't offended. This point should be obvious, but these kinds of statements demonstrate the dearth of levelheadedness when it comes to this issue. Logic gets chucked out the window. Dr. Drew himself even suggested that, because I was using hydrocodone, I might've abused kids without knowing it. First off, I never took more than two or three pills a day, well within what is generally prescribed, even though they weren't being prescribed to me. I never blacked out or even came close to being out of touch with reality. I'm neither stupid nor a massive risk taker. And being a doctor, he should've known that opiates pretty much obliterate your libido anyway.
Nearly all of the callers suggested I seek professional help myself, as did Dr. Drew. Well, I already tried that... more than once. My counselors were nice guys, but there was little they could do for me. They knew they couldn't "cure" me of my sexuality—that doesn't workon anyone and it won't work for us. All they could do was lend a sympathetic ear. Another caller said I should do whatever it takes until I'm rid of this. For those of you who feel this way, question: are you going to foot the bill for that? In case you missed it from the first article, I am quite poor. I can't afford that, and my state, Tennessee, is one of those that turned down the new Medicaid funding, leaving me without medical insurance. I am far from the only pedophile in this situation. And again, even if I could afford it, what could they do for me? As well, a lot of pedophiles are afraid to seek medical help because of the mandatory reporting laws, fearing that they could be reported even if they've done nothing wrong.
As for VirPed, one of the panelists on the Dr. Drew show suggested that our forum was dangerous because we lacked oversight. I didn't get a chance to respond to this (nor to several other accusations leveled at me, since everyone pretty much just talked over each other and I politely stayed quiet until addressed directly by Dr. Drew himself), so I want to answer that point here. First off, it isn't like we are operating in secret. Membership is open to anyone, including non-pedophiles, providing they follow our rules and aren't just there to make problems for us. We've also worked with notable experts in the field, most prominently Dr. James Cantor, who holds a membership on our forum. And there's nothing stopping the authorities from joining our forum either; I have little doubt that they are there, looking over our shoulders. So we do have some oversight. Besides, all those pro-contacter forums we're competing against have no oversight either. Should we shut our digital doors while those forums continue to operate, until we get an official stamp of approval? Remember: when it comes to anti-contact pedo forums, we're the only game in town. That being said, I am officially extending an invitation to any experts, scholars, counselors or authority figures who wish to learn from us, or even keep a watchful eye on us. We have never closed our doors to anyone who didn't mean us harm.
With regard to angry respondents to my article, the greatest amount of flak has come from the far right, who smeared Salon for daring to allow me to speak, as if silencing pedophiles somehow equates to fighting sexual abuse. I want to state for the record that the members of our forum come from all political, religious and philosophical stripes. We are a pretty diverse group, but we really don't fight about God or politics internally—our mission is too important to get caught up in that. But according to Breitbart and company, since Salon was willing to publish my piece, it must mean they have some secret agenda to "normalize pedophilia." The constant refrain of these folks is the old slippery slope argument, where they resort to appealing to people's fear of a future where anyone can marry anyone, or anything. These ultra-conservatives reject the notion of pedophilia being a sexual orientation not on scientific grounds but on purely political ones. They resist the word that best fits our sexuality (which many experts are now using themselves); in so doing, they are assuming that people are too dumb to understand that a term does not justify an activity. It is merely recognition of a state of being.
John Sexton's article for Breitbart attempted to paint me as a terrible person, since the author apparently had no good arguments against my actual position and never bothered to ask me to clarify the points he was confused about. First off, Sexton attacks me for not narking out the people at the pro-contacter forum who were supposedly doing illegal things. This is purely a straw man attack, since I never observed anyone there doing anything illegal or admitting to illegal activity (which is actually forbidden by that forum's rules). Before I respond, I want to say that I considered naming the forum here. I didn't want to, but since I'm being forced to defend myself on the grounds that I haven't really been vigilant about my anti-contact position, with the implication that I was likely involved in immoral activities myself, I almost felt I had no choice. But ultimately, I decided it was worth weathering the accusations not to give that forum the publicity they so desperately seek. At the risk of embarrassing myself for some stupid things in the past, you can seek out my old Wikisposure page if you like; it's still out there, doing its mischief, so it's not hard to find the name of that site if you are truly interested.
The point is, the site is not in the darknet. It has been operating openly for years. With respect to Sexton's accusations, VirPed founder Ethan Edwards said it best:
"Law enforcement and vigilantes have both known about that board for the fifteen years or so it has been operating. They have apparently not had any legal grounds for shutting it down. There is no way to stop infiltrators who are on a mission. But somehow, the moral obligation falls to each and every depressed and confused pedophile to be an infiltrator and mole? Give me a break."
As I said earlier, I never witnessed any illegal goings-on at the forum, nor heard anyone confess to molesting kids or using child porn. What exactly does Sexton expect me to have done? I should point out here that politically, most of the forum's membership, including its moderators, actually fall into Breitbart and Sexton's camp: they're raging anti-government libertarian / minarchist types who believe their oppression is largely down to a feminist conspiracy. If you don't believe me, go ask them yourself. Anyone can sign up and post there.
Another accusation of Sexton's is that, because I pointed out in my article that I was still posting at that place ("still caught up in the same nonsense at the pro-contacter forum" as I put it) just over a year ago, before I joined VirPed, that must mean I was still repeating the pro-contacter BS. All I meant by that was that I was still there, butting heads with them over those issues, trying to belong but also arguing with them—sometimes for days on end—over the contact issue. Trust me, they have all of their debate points well thought out. It was incredibly frustrating to argue with them, but I held out hope that I could convince some of them to see the light. I couldn't. I used every argument at my disposal to try to win them over. When that failed, I begged them, cajoled them, even attacked them for making these ridiculous claims from behind their anonymous nicks. Nothing worked. They behaved more like a cult than a supportive community. If you didn't tow the pro-contacter line, they harangued you constantly. They embraced anyone who endorsed their position, including a self-confessed Nazi sympathizer, until even they could no longer tolerate his drivel. And they only continued to countenance me because I'd been there for so long and had once been in their camp. They knew I had nowhere else to go, and they figured if they badgered me long enough I would eventually break. Luckily, Ethan came along and offered me an alternative, and the rest is history.
But according to Sexton, I somehow supported the pro-contacters simply by hanging out there. Remember, I originally joined because there was nowhere else for me to get the support I longed for and talk to others who knew what it felt like to have this sexuality. That continued to be the case until VirPed came along, which I only became aware of because Ethan was scoping the place out just for people like me. Was Ethan also supporting the pro-contact stance by his mere presence? By this logic, Jesus must've been a sinner and criminal for deigning to hang out with sinners and criminals.
Sexton goes on to say that, with my article, I was "literally saying that not being a child rapist deserves special commendation." I was not literally saying that. If I was literally saying that, I would've said that. Exactly. (Mr. Sexton needs to brush up on his dictionary.) Nor did I imply it. I used my article to give people a better understanding of where I was coming from, and to ask them to try to be more tolerant and open-minded about pedophilia as a condition. That's it. Moreover, his point was based on the straw man argument that the community I belonged to was doing vile and illegal things in front of me and I simply looked the other way. Never happened. I feel I must stress this point again, but that discussion board has operated fully in the open for about fifteen years; anyone could join at any time and still can, including law enforcement folks. If there was any cause to swoop in and arrest its members, that would've happened long before now. No, I didn't refrain from naming the site because it was shady; I refrained from naming it because I didn't want to give them any publicity. Someone at the Breitbart site even suggested that I must've been seeking out child porn to even find such a site. Well, Perverted Justice found it easily enough. Were they also looking for child porn?
Then there's Alex Crowder's lunacy by way of Alex Jones: No, Salon.com, I Don't Need to 'Understand' the Plight of Pedophiles. Again, the implication in the very title is that somehow kids are protected by willful ignorance. What reality does Crowder live in where things are made better by refusing to understand them? Never mind that his solution to sex offenders is to shoot them in the head, which goes beyond even the Old Testament law of an eye for an eye and warrants a comparison to the Nazis (who did execute sex offenders—not to mention the disabled—alongside gays and Jews); his solution to even confessing the attraction is exile from society. As if I haven't already largely exiled myself. Seriously, ask my friends and family; I'm a notorious recluse who only ventures into public when absolutely necessary.
My takeaway from all of this right-wing bile is the same thing I realized about the vigilante groups who persecuted us: these people really don't care about protecting kids. They have a political investment in maintaining a hardline approach to anyone who defies their simplistic black-and-white worldview; if kids are harmed because some pedophiles weren't able to come forward and seek help in this apocalyptic environment, well then, they're just collateral damage. I received emails from some haters who insisted I had to be abusing kids, even though I would have to be a moron to out myself if I were. I almost think these guys hate me more for being a celibate pedophile than if I really had abused kids, because I defy their need to view all pedophiles through the baby rape filter, and thus they don't have to bother thinking about the issue with any kind of complexity or empathy at all. If they truly cared about kids, they would realize that society is better served by an atmosphere where pedophiles are not afraid to come out and identify themselves.
As one caller to the radio show pointed out, I am putting my name and face out there for your benefit as well as mine. You now know who I am and have the option to keep your kids away from me if you so choose. It makes little difference to me. For the record, my friends and family have long known my sexual orientation, and they haven't stopped me from hanging out with their kids. They know me, and they know that harming their children is the last thing I would ever do. But it doesn't hurt my feelings if you feel like you must shield them from me. Even so, the fact is, most child molesters aren't even pedophiles anyway. They are situational offenders, and many studies (one by Kesicky, Andre & Kesicka and another by Nationaal Rapporteur Mensenhandel en Seksueel Geweld tegen Kinderen, both published last year, being the most recent examples) show that perhaps as much as 60 to 85 percent of abusers fall into this category. These are people who abuse kids for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with attraction: substituting a child for an absent or sexually unavailable adult, lack of scruples plus curiosity or boredom (often combined with poor impulse control), or because they get off on exploiting their power over the child or violating the taboo itself, to name some of them. Many parental abusers fall into this category. There is often concern expressed about pedophiles having children, but the Westermarck effect tends to counteract any attraction we might have for children who are closely related to us, especially our own. Ergo, most incestuous abusers aren't abusing because of an attraction to their child and likely aren't even pedophiles. Persecuting self-identified pedophiles certainly isn't going to stop these people.
So, I again want to thank those of you whose outpouring of support, encouragement and love have been an amazing boon for me and my friends at VirPed. The article I wrote isn't going to solve our problems in and of itself, but it has made clear to me that many people—perhaps the majority—really do want to better understand this issue and to help celibate pedophiles like me lead better and more fulfilling lives. And, of course, we all have the mutual goal of keeping kids safe. For those still on the fence, I hope you come to see that I'm not your enemy. I am here to educate you and assist you in whatever capacity I can. | |
