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6 of 6: My personal reflections on what I learned in this series. This item is part of a special series of posts. A six-part series on child pornography and artificial child pornography, aka drawings, stories, etc. This series covers:
1. The morality of child pornography (this post).
2. The morality of artificial child pornography.
3. To the best of our data, what effect do both of those have on offending?
4. A story from someone recently arrested for possession of child pornography: how he got into it, how it affected his life, what happened next.
5. Two former users of child pornography talk about how they stopped viewing it, and their feelings now that they're off of it.
6. My own experiences with artificial child pornography and the role it's played in my life. This article is the final in the series.
Please read the other posts before reading this one. These are personal reflections. They're more raw than my other writing, and I don't know how you'll interpret them if you haven't read what comes before. Up until now, I've tried hard to explore different opinions on these issues fairly; this post is really just me, and my thoughts. It's not the place to start. I first came across shota (drawn sexual images of boys) when I was about fourteen years old, back when the internet was much younger than it is now. I remember the feeling of it. How arousing it was, especially for a teenager with hormones. How it was also weirdly isolating: my own new big secret. I had to be careful that no one could see me viewing it and that I couldn't be traced. I'd never had a secret like this. Nothing that made me jump in fright if I heard footsteps in the hallway.
I wonder, a little bit, if that's what looking at porn is like for "normal" teenagers. Of course, the consequences of being caught were much greater for me.
I remember wondering if the artwork was illegal, and if I'd get in trouble for looking at it. I remember limiting how often I looked or masturbated, as proof of my willpower. And when I did let myself dive in, I remember the hours spent browsing poorly organized forums, seeing the same images again and again, hoping for something new and different and better, something that might be a bit more of a rush, like I knew must be out there.
I'm really lucky I never went over to real child pornography. Some of it leaked over to forums that weren't supposed to have it, so I did occasionally see some, but it was rare. From those leaks, I know how much I would've liked it, though.
How much of this feels familiar to any teenager? How much of it is just my story? It's so hard for me to tell.
Anything that is even a little bit adjacent to child abuse drives an intense emotional reaction from people. It makes sense, of course. But this "proximity alarm" means that we equate drawings and computer renders with photos that depict the real abuse of children. (In fact, in many countries, the laws treat both the same way.) It means that therapists [feel like](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/349992064_Mandatory_Reporting_and_Clinician_Decision-Making_when_a_Client_Discloses_Sexual_Interest_in_Children) they have to report people with pedophilic desires even if those people pose no danger to children. It means that we can't do research on pedophiles, and how to prevent child abuse, because that's not where the money is.
Of course, it also makes it hard to talk about pedophilia. It drives people like me to more distant corners of the internet, because [even Twitter won't have us](https://livingwithpedophilia.wordpress.com/2020/12/13/twitters-take-on-pedophiles-is-complicated-and-i-think-wrong/). I worry about everything I say, because I know different people will read each word so differently.
As a kid, viewing those images and unable to talk to anyone about it, that proximity alarm really got in my head.
I was getting those images from online forums. Like on any forum, those with artificial cp have lurkers, and the people who contribute often don't like the lurkers who get the content without contributing to the discussion. So not just did I feel guilty for looking at the stuff, but I also felt guilty for not contributing to the community. I was caught between two opposing sources of strange guilt.
It took over a decade for me to get to a point where I could say, "you know what, it's ok for me to find release with this material," and for me to realize that finding release didn't make me weak-willed. Slowly, I got to thinking it was OK, and eventually, I decided I wanted to contribute. I'm not artistic but I can write, and so I started to write stories and share them, and those stories have been pretty successful.
Writing and sharing those stories, and getting feedback on them, made me feel a part of the community in new and important ways. I started to talk to people, to have "fans" and others with whom I'd exchange short messages. It made me feel like I was giving back.
It was through the stories that I met my first real pedophile friend. For all this time online, I'd avoided talking in depth to people. I felt shy; I felt worried it would draw attention to me; it still felt somehow wrong. I didn't know who was on the other end of the computer screen. But I remember being especially taken by a story about an alternate world. The care in the story was obvious. The writer had really thought about that world, down to the gritty details of population size, genetics, and more. I recognized a kindred spirit in the writer: a methodical thinker with a scientific mindset. And so... I wrote to him.
It became a great friendship. We were each the first other pedophile we'd really spoken to in depth. We exchanged letters for months, maybe a couple of years, and each letter would often run two or three or four pages. Our correspondence explored our stories, what it felt like to be a pedophile, and normal stuff like movies we liked. He had a fondness for bad pedophile jokes, and so I'd collect them and share them with him. Eventually, we moved to real-time chats once we found a secure way to do it. We even met in person and learned about one-another. He was older than me, and married, and calm and joyful. We got lunch together, took some walks. He remains a friend to this day.
A friend I made through stories. Through "artificial child pornography" of dubious legality that would get me hated by the vast majority of people. He's such a great guy.
The high emotions surrounding anything near child abuse lead to all kinds of strange contradictions and irrationality.
For example, they led to the [Satanic](https://www.vox.com/culture/22358153/satanic-panic-ritual-abuse-history-conspiracy-theories-explained) [Panic](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/31/us/satanic-panic.html) where not just did innocent people get convicted of horrendous child abuse, but kids were psychologically manipulated (sometimes by trained psychologists!) into accusing their own parents through supposedly recovered memories. (The podcast [Conviction: American Panic](https://gimletmedia.com/shows/conviction) has a terrifying description of this time, with interviews with some of the now-grown children who are still trying to sort through their beliefs and actions.) Fast-forward to today, and we've graduated to conspiracy theories like QAnon.
Meanwhile, we're so driven by fear that parents irrationally educate their kids about "stranger danger" when the vast majority of abuse comes from family members and other people that kids know. Family-based abuse is often hushed up.
Even kids' sexuality is complicated. Young kids are teased by adults about boyfriends and girlfriends, pushed into sexuality from a younger age. Young girls are often dressed in clothes that imply sexual maturity. People buy shirts with oddly suggestive text for their young boys.
Through all of this, admitting to the attraction means total ostracism. Teachers have to watch everything they say and do, lest people get the wrong idea. Mere discussions on the topic are blocked from Twitter and many subreddits and lots of other places. Pedophiles fear coming out to therapists lest they get reported. Academic careers are endangered by coming to the "wrong" conclusions about pedophilia. And if you try to have a discussion about the right way to work with pedophiles, you can't get very far before someone says to just kill them all.
It's really hard to deal with this attraction, and it's really hard for me here to talk about it. I hide behind veils of anonymity and internet proxies. I fret over every word, lest someone interpret it wrongly. Lest someone think that because I look at artificial child pornography, I'm a danger to kids.
Once I realized how much I got out of talking to others like me, I started to seek them out more. I wrote to other authors whose stories I liked, and engaged others in conversation. I felt like part of a community. There are other communities of non-offending pedophiles too, but they never had the same impact for me. Often, other communities are centered around emotional support, which means that currents of sadness run through them. There are currents of sadness in all communities of pedophiles, but I think there's more self-acceptance among those of us who have a release we're comfortable with. Going to the imageboards led to more real (and joyous) connections for me.
I have friends I met because of their art, or my stories, or their stories, or role playing. Some I know in person, some just online. A programmer. A psychologist. A doctor. A lawyer. A security guard. A paralegal. A history grad student. A writer. Many where I don't know what they do, because we're compelled by secrecy to protect ourselves. While my pedophilia is far from the most important thing in my life, it has become an important thing in my life, and part of that is because a community was created where I can find friends and we can talk openly about our fantasies.
To be sure, there's the part of this where I can get my sexual release, where I can get off to the things others would find horrifying. I would go back—I did go back—just for that. However, it takes on a different meaning when you also find others, like you, to talk with. I can't talk about artificial child pornography, and the effect it's had on me, without also talking about the community it's connected me to, and that's not captured in the relatively academic debate from my prior articles in this series. They talked abstractly about philosophy or statistics of abuse.
So, yes, my personal reflections are in part about the community that I've found, but it's not only that. It's also about how this is viewed by the justice system.
Because anything even vaguely associated with child abuse has this aura of evil, we end up treating all kinds of offenses almost equally. Viewing child pornography is seen as almost as bad as actually molesting a child. Both get you long prison terms and put on the registry. (Let alone the places where artificial child pornography is held to be just as bad.)
Yet I know people who've viewed child pornography. Some of them [have stopped](https://livingwithpedophilia.wordpress.com/2021/04/27/interview-the-journey-of-leaving-child-pornography/). Some want to stop, but are having trouble getting away from it. I genuinely think they're fundamentally good people. Should they be sentenced to years or decades in prison? (Of course, some would argue yes; they'd say it might prevent future crimes against children. I don't think it would, because most of them aren't actually a threat—and more importantly, I just don't think that's what justice is.)
One friend, in Canada, spent time in prison and is on the sex offender registry because he looked at artificial child pornography. This will hang over him his whole life, with any job he might apply to or any apartment he wants to rent.
I'm not trying to sugar coat this. Of course my examples are those who seem "good," and there are plenty of pedophiles who would disagree with what I say here. There are people who don't think watching child pornography is wrong ("the harm is already done") and they view it guilt-free. There are also people who believe sex with children is OK, and of course there are people who do have sex with children. I'm not denying they exist, but I am challenging the idea that most of us hold those beliefs.
At the very least, viewing cp and actually having sex with a child are not crimes of equal magnitude. There are people who could live good lives, who want to live good lives, but instead of getting help to move away from cp, they're thrown in jail for years upon years. We punish it not in proportion with the harm it does, but because of our disgust. What we're doing now isn't working, and it's not justice.
Of course, politically, it's very hard to change that. Who could speak up to say that viewing child pornography shouldn't be punished quite as harshly, that we should focus on helping people get better? Who could speak up to say that drawings of children having sex shouldn't be illegal, and that making them legal [very well might save children from being abused](https://livingwithpedophilia.wordpress.com/2020/11/08/the-data-what-impact-do-sexual-images-of-children-have-on-offending/)? You'd never get voted into office again, and that's a charitable interpretation of what might happen to you.
It's hard for people to think clearly about this, let alone for society to think clearly about it. It's caught up in emotion, and I'm as guilty of that as anyone else. Maybe I am missing something important here because I know people who've been so affected by this; because _I've_ been so affected by this.
But if you ask for my personal reflections on child pornography and artificial child pornography, there they are.
It's... so strange to say that artificial child pornography is important to me. To talk about it creating a positive community, or how it provides a valuable release. This is meant to be a general audience blog, and the thought of someone reading that... what will you think? No matter what I do, I can't get away from the high emotions and the societal stigma. But it's true and this is where I have to say it.
It's worse because it's hard to keep "articial child pornography" and "child pornography" separate. I need to trust you to remember that one doesn't involve real children, and one does. I don't think there's anything wrong with artificial child pornography, even though I think that real child pornography is morally wrong. Is that a distinction we can keep up even with such high emotions?
Worse, am I a trusted source? I've tried to talk about facts and philosophy when describing child pornography and artificial child pornography and to cover many sides to the debate, but it's an emotional topic for everyone and it's personal for me. I'm too involved for it to be otherwise.
Moreover, when the punishment for this stuff is too severe, it hits people I know and it makes me angry. When people struggle with embarrassment or self-worth because they view something that shouldn't carry so much stigma, I feel it. I know them.
Yes, I presented both sides of the question about artificial cp. We don't actually know for certain that artificial cp reduces crimes against children, even if I think it likely does. I would change my opinion if I thought research showed that artificial cp made real-world offenses more likely on average (although I really don't think that's what the research outcome would be). But despite my focus on facts and evidence and science, I'm not neutral. The way we treat this subject hurts people and hurts society, and it really bothers me.
If there's one thing I want you to take away from this post, it's that the emotions surrounding pedophilia cloud us from acting rationally about it.
I can only hope that over time, we can get funding to do more real research. That we can have more open conversations. That we can find a way to discuss, beyond emotion and visceral reactions, to understand how to really make things better. It will take a long time, but I'm an optimist. I think we can get there.
And in the meantime, despite my raw emotions in this post, I hope you'll still trust me to guide you through and genuinely follow what the research says. It's really important to me that we start to change this conversation, and that we do so carefully and rationally, wherever that takes us.
You can find the original article, along with reader comments (and the opportunity to leave your own) at Leonard's blog. | |
