I was recently told that I am being puritanical and self-righteous because I can’t get over the fact that my partner spends a good deal of time seeking out pictures of very young girls to masturbate to. Nothing illegal, he says, but still…
He admits to having a 20-year-plus addiction to porn, and with that particular addiction, he says, comes the need to continue upping the taboo factor in order to get off. I can understand the natural escalation from traditional porn to something more risqué, and I’m fine with him watching chicks with dicks defecate in each other’s mouths until his eyes bleed, because those she-males are consenting adults.
Eight-year-old girls, however, are innocents preyed upon by pedophiles and people with child-lust disorders, in my opinion, and I think a rational adult, even in the throes of sexual whimsy, should recognize that boundary and not cross it. My question is this: Is it considered typical sexual behavior for a guy who’s really into porn to seek out YouTube videos of 10-year-old ballerinas without having any kind of pathological inclination toward pedophilia?
He Says I’ve Turned Into My Born-Again-Christian Mother
“Whimsy” is not a word I would associate with your boyfriend’s actions.
Your partner is chock full o’ shit, HSITIMBACM, as my own experiences with porn demonstrate: I’ve been consuming gay porn for 20-plus years now, and I have yet to “escalate” to YouTube videos of 10-year-old boys doing whatever it is 10-year-old boys do in the videos they upload to YouTube. (Are they jumping on trampolines? Lighting their farts? Writing Sarah Palin’s Facebook status updates? I don’t know because I’ve never checked.)
Backing up: It’s usually duly closeted members of the religious right who run around claiming that porn consumers seeking new thrills quickly progress from softcore to hardcore to kink to kiddie to kids. I believe your partner—lying piece of shit that he is—has latched on to the rhetoric and reasoning of antiporn crusaders because (1) he doesn’t want to take responsibility for his actions (“Woe is me, the helpless porn addict…”), and (2) he has no intention of stopping.
Hopefully your partner hasn’t “escalated” to actual kiddie porn yet, HSITIMBACM, and is only repurposing the odd ballet-recital video. But his attempts to rationalize and shift blame—to say nothing of his efforts to convince you that you’re the one with the problem—are ominous warning signs. His is the kind of deeply fucked-up, sociopathic reasoning you hear from guys who are consuming actual child porn and/or raping actual children.
Your boyfriend has a problem, not you; he needs help, not YouTube.
Here’s what happened: I just had sex with a street hooker. After cleaning her hands with alcohol-based lotion, she jerked me off. When I came, she rubbed the head of my penis all over one of her cheeks. When we were cleaning up, I saw she had something on her face. She said she had been injured in a fight with a screwdriver some days ago, and although there was no blood on this “sore,” she had removed a crust from it before meeting me. This sore was not open, but it was somewhat raw. My question is, what risk of STIs is there? Herpes? Hepatitis? AIDS?
Can’t Relax Unsafe-Sex Tension
You had me at “fight with a screwdriver,” CRUST; there was really no need to include that detail about the crust.
The odds that you contracted a sexually transmitted infection from your sex worker are very small. Unless the head of your cock had been reduced to a raw and bloody pulp by that handjob, and unless there was blood seeping out of her sore, it’s unlikely that her blood got into your bloodstream and, therefore, highly unlikely that you contracted anything more serious than a desire to inspect future hires for puncture wounds. If anyone was at risk in the situation you described in such colorful detail, CRUST, it was her, the sex worker who foolishly rubbed your semen into an open sore.
My wife left me a few weeks ago because she discovered an affair that I had a few years ago, ended, and then kept from her. In the years since the affair, I recommitted myself to our marriage and became a more attentive husband. My wife is hurt and furious, and for weeks would only call me to talk about getting a divorce. Three nights ago, my wife told me she is pregnant. She still wants a divorce, but she also wants our child to grow up in a stable environment, so she says she will forgive me to an extent so we can have an amicable relationship for the sake of our child. Last night, I went over to her new apartment and we had the first decent conversation we’ve had in months. She promised me that I can be a very active part of our child’s life, which basically means I have an all-access pass into her life, too.
I love my wife and miss her so much. I want to be a good father and do what’s right for my child. In part, I think that means staying married to my wife. Would it be wrong or immoral of me to use our child as an excuse to spend more time with her in the hopes that we can reconcile? For the next seven months, I can go with her to doctor appointments, Lamaze classes, baby stores—to say nothing of when our child arrives. Or would that be irresponsible?
Can’t Handle A Divorce
As reconciling with the wife would be in the best interests of your soon-to-be-born child, CHAD, spending more time with the wife in the hopes of reconciling would be the right and moral and responsible thing to do. Just don’t be sneaky about it, CHAD, as the wife clearly doesn’t appreciate your sneaking around. Tell her you still hope to reconcile, and ask if you can schedule some counseling sessions for after your Lamaze classes.
I’ve been spending my summer vacation reading through the Savage Love archives on your new Savage Love iPhone app. I was wondering if you ever heard from any of those people again, telling you how things resolved? I would like to think that people were able to work through their mismatched-interest issues with partners, or that the poor guy with the botched circumcision whose penis no longer had a head was able to get some sexual satisfaction.
Inquiring Mind
I’m taking a couple of weeks off later in August, and if anyone who’s taken my advice and lived—lived to tell the tale, lived happily ever after, lived to regret it—would like to write in, please do. Your letters would provide welcome updates for curious readers like IM here and a nice couple of easy-to-compile, easy-to-file vacation columns for me. So your updates don’t get lost in the swamp, please send ’em to youruinedmylifeyoubastard@savagelove.net.
CONFIDENTIAL TO ARGENTINA: Congratulations.
Find the Savage Lovecast (my weekly podcast) every Tuesday at thestranger.com/savage.
@150
Damn my entire reply was lost when the hotel internet expired. I can’t recreate the whole thing.
Rape scenarios with a consenting adult partner are on the same level as child molest scenarios with an adult consenting partner. They are play.
No rapist or child molester I’ve ever evaluated verbalized play scenarios with consenting adults. They fantasize about the real deal. What’s that?
Various types of rapists:
Forcing someone to have sex when they do not want to.
Getting aroused from controlling a woman to do sexual things they do not want to.
Making a woman do humiliating and degrading sexual things they do not want to.
Getting sexually aroused from hurting a women before and/or during a sexual assault.
Getting aroused from just physically beating the crap out of a woman–no sexual contact.
Various types of child molesters:
Ones who fantasize about children wanting to have sex with them.
Verbally coercing a child into being sexual when they do not want to.
Physically forcing a child to have intercourse when they do not want to.
Getting aroused from hurting a child before and/or during a sexual assault.
Getting aroused from beating the crap out of a child–no sexual contact.
There’s play and there’s sexual abuse.
Most rapists I’ve seen have out of control lives and they try to get control in a sexual area.
Many, not all, child molester’s I’ve seen have no/few social skills adequate to chat up an adult into having a consenting sexual relationship.
When I read about ballerina boy, a red flag dropped on the field for me. Nobody is going to put him into jail for what has been reported so far.
Would I let my child associate with him? Definitely not. When it comes down to it, I’ll err on the side of my child’s safety. Am I doing ballerina boy a disservice by suggesting parents keep their children away from him? Possibly.
It may be more likely that he will come to have child porn on his computer than he sexually abusing a child. As long as there is a market for child porn, kids are going to continue to be sexually abused on film. Many possessors of child porn that I evaluate come to have hundreds/thousands of pornographic images/movies in their possession. Many swap and trade it, like baseball cards. No one has ever admitted to me being sexually aroused by it, and plethysmograph stimuli are too tame to elicit arousal of these guys. They are calloused to hard core porn.
I have to sign off. I have to prepare for a personality course tomorrow. If have time, I’ll check in again soon.
Seldon@125 – you erred by referring to my post 124, which says nothing along the lines you ascribe to me.
I do find it amusing that @125 you say
we could argue until our eyes bleed about whether the decrease in sexual abuse is caused by porn, correlates to porn, or was even hindered by porn, but that’s irrelevant [emphasis added]
given your posts @, e.g.,13, 64/65 — and even afterwards @134**
For those interested in a fairly comprehensive article that’s not too “dense”, here’s the link to A Profile of Pedophilia that appeared in the April 2007 edition of the Mayo Clinic’s journal, Mayo Clinic Proceedings. This isn’t my field, but it strikes me as a balanced and useful presentation.
http://www.mayoclinicproceedings.com/con…
** Don’t know what your unreserved claim @134 of no increase in Japanese child sex abuse despite the rise of pornography there — after, ahem, saying @64/65 it’s “notoriously harder” to prove such — rests on, but I doubt it’s compelling. Japan does not encourage the reporting of child abuse, e.g., there are no mandated reporter statutes there, parents can foreclose investigations of familial abuse. The Japanese government didn’t even begin to compile child abuse data until the late 1990’s and still does a pretty lousy job of maintaining & reporting statistics re: physical and sexual child abuse.
Hope to hear more from you, sortasexpolice — glad you found this!
Seldon: ” I’m a law student who did my undergrad in public policy (including plenty of statistics and logic), political science, and a minor in physics”
Of course you are. Tell me, ever spend much time outside of a lecture hall?
Here’s a Coles notes version of what’s wrong with someone who masturbates to images of children:
1. Masturbation fantasies typically reflect a type of sexual activity that a person finds sexually desirable or compelling.
2. Sexual activity has several functions including reproduction, physical pleasure, and the development of interpersonal intimacy.
3. Prepubescent children are not yet ready for those functions. For example, they are not capable of reproduction; they have bodies which have not yet developed to be capable of taking physical pleasure from sexual activity with an adult`(ideed, such activity could be physically injurious); they typically have not the emotional or intellectual maturity to develop intimacy through sexuality.
4. Therefore, someone who masturbates to images of children is compelled by or attracted to sexual activity with someone who does not have the physical, emotional, or mental capacity to take any pleasure in it, or benefit in any way from it. (Indeed, as noted in 3 above such activity could be physically harmful to them – and emotionally, and psychologically.)
5. Such sexual activity – which is incapable of fulfilling its functions in one of the participants – can be called by definition dysfunctional.
6. So, someone who masturbates to images of children is attracted to or compelled by a dysfunctional sexuality.
Not sure if that is long winded enough for you, but I`ve been out of the classroom long enough to have learned that a bullshit argument isn`t improved by its duration.
I`ve also learned that long-winded theoretical discourses about things may be fun in a bong-fuelled dorm-room sort of way, but they tend to lose sight of the real people in the picture. You can go on however long you like about how it might be possible to conceive of a non-pedophilic interest in jacking off to ten-year-old ballerinas. Real people, however, usually just go straight to “That’s fucking sick.”
@ Seldon
I so wish I’d pulled the trigger on the joke I was going to make several posts back about “your business” being law. Didn’t dream it had the double whammy of political science backing it up. Yup, two fields where facts are much more important than they are in psychology, and where cultural whim plays no role.
And, yeah, even an idiot in the field of psychology (oops, being redundant) like me knows what a null hypothesis is. But if you’re going to get so pissy, it would be nice if you would use terms like “locus of control” correctly.
Oops, I’m being pissy–but that tends to happen to people when their words are being twisted and/or ignored so that they can then be dismissed. Your “re-creation” of the conversation is perfect–it dismisses all factual information so that you can suggest psychologists do nothing but chase their tales in order to make people feel bad about their perfectly healthy sexual behaviors. How does that make you feel?
By the way, when you’re engaging in rape play with your girlfriend, do you get off on hurting and traumatizing her? Do you indulge in the fantasy to the point where you simply have no regard for her or what she wants?
And an argument about anti-evolution? Where the hell did that come from?
@ MollyMalone–Thanks much, a lot of the research on the topic is confined to academic journals that are not readily available online (at least not without going through a library portal or some other subscription service). I have a few objections to a few pieces of the info in the article, but appreciate it overall a great deal.
And on Japan–was only responding to the confused notion that Japan’s pornography hasn’t gotten more extreme–it has. Much of it now involves coercive situations, such as game-show scenarios where participants agree to play, and then are pushed into a variety of sexual situations with which they are uncomfortable. There is also the video game RapeLay, wherein you get to rape a woman and her daughters–how fun. Ongoing exposure to these kinds of things does have a desensitizing effect and can alter expectations of what is normal in a sexual relationship.
@sortasexpolice thanks for joining the fray. You’ve been at it much longer than me. (I do plethys assessments as well, using audio scenarios, mostly with adjudicated offenders also). And, will say I wish I couldn’t concur with you on the child porn thing–but, yeah.
Would like a bit of clarification on the offenders who don’t qualify as pedophiles piece, if you’d be so kind. Of course, I imagine your experience is irrelevant as you are in some kind of psychological field and we all just make shit up anyway.
There’s no such thing as ‘porn escalation’. Instead, to me there is a gradual admission of one’s true if ever so deep desires. It’s only a matter of time until our pornified minds find what we truly crave, HSITIMBACM. In that sense, I do believe that there is the possibility to ‘escalate’ towards the completion of the fantasy. For most people, things will remain in that terrain. However, for others, fantasy will cease to be enough and acting upon it becomes the quest. I think your husband has been gradually opening up and revealing more and more to you, but his preference for underage girls has always been there and now he’s willing to explore it in disguise. I would recommend him to stop walking that dangerous line and look for help.
I don’t exactly understand how turning the child-fantasy guy into the cops would help this woman’s life any.
Can someone get arrested because his girlfriend told the cops he was watching YouTube videos of ballerinas?
I hope she doesn’t have her own computer. If the cops take this seriously, her own crap is thrown wide open. If she doesn’t mind her own place being searched and her computer taken or fucked with, go ahead and open that can of worms.
Or she could look for real evidence on her own. Either way, I hope she doesn’t have any shit she doesn’t want the cops to see.
@Seldon — I’m usually more of a lurker, but you’ve said a lot of things I think simply ought not to go unaddressed. I’ll break down my responses to your point of view throughout this thread:
1. I can tell you are intelligent enough to know the difference between sadistic/ritualistic animal killing and food or even trophy hunting and how only the former is potentially indicative of the sociopathic tendencies present in some serial killers. I’m afraid it’s not at all similar to the connection between pedophilic fantasy and perpetration, and the potential progression from one to the other. Busted.
2. It seems like you really hate the lot of the psychological field. I take it you assumed this position long before the present debate. You may have your reasons for disdain seeded in personal experience (a lot can go wrong on the therapist’s couch) or you may just be uninformed of the modalities and aims of psychological evaluation, but either way, you need to educate yourself lad!!!
Law, political science, biological science, and psychology/psychiatry are all different fields with different inner workings and different solutions to the same problems the world faces. That’s how we fix the world’s problems, by bringing different perspectives to the table. It’s clear you have a handle on the legal perspective of the world. Time to branch out. Read the DSM IV TR, even just the the intro where it talks about how to go about diagnosing someone, what it means to be diagnosed, what it doesn’t mean, how psychological data is gathered and tested, and how historical perspectives have shaped today’s model. You’ll learn a lot and see that you are a partially right and partially wrong in the statements you’ve espoused here.
3. One thing it’s really important to remember even if you choose not to read up on all of this is that a psych eval is intended for use in treatment, not labeling, as is commonly misconstrued among the lesser read masses. Just like a general med eval, which you may be more comfortable with. The desire for said treatment by the patient (in most cases, unless the disorder has already predicated dangerous behavior in society) predicates the diagnosis. Therefore, should our Constitutional right to self-determination remain intact, those overall good folks who have the odd sexual attraction to a child or even masturbate to a YouTube video of a child, and aren’t bothered enough by this to seek some sort of professional help or confide in a loved one for advice or attempt, as the ballerina-viewer evidently did, to justify their behavior to someone else in order to alleviate their discomfort… well, these “hidden pedophiles” are perfectly safe from the judgment of anyone but themselves. Let’s face it, Seldon, you can easily find a web board where anyone will bash anything that anyone else does. That’s the internet. It’s not psychology’s fault. And for goodness sakes, a field being particularly comtemporary in its development as compared to mathematical or physical fields of study that have been in said development for much longer does not make this new field a “pseudoscience.” That’s just snobbery. Numbers and calculations can be carved into stone. Brain scans, antipsychotics, and empirically-based cognitive therapies take a little longer to cook.
4. You also, as the thread deepens, are sounding more and more to me like you’re a feeling a bit defensive about your own violent rape fantasies, which you keep stating are about “real” situations and yet totally harmless. Maybe it’s just the pscyhologist in me, but do you really fantasize about inflicting true terror and physical harm on her, and exercising the power over another that rape is truly about? No you don’t. You guys have a loving, trusting relationship where you play sex games that you both find enjoyable. If she didn’t like it and and she wasn’t up for it you wouldn’t like it, and, well, that’s what would make it rape. Which would not be fantastic. Care to consider the possible scenarios as that relates to pedophilic fantasy? I agree the ballerina-veiwer’s habits are relatively harmless at this point in time, but what about other areas of this fantasy zone, let’s say, the article referenced upthread regarding that poor 2 year old boy who was sadistically sexually abused and murdered by two other little boys who fantasized about doing something JUST LIKE WHAT THEY DID and then did it. That’s different than watching a 10 year old’s ballet recital video and liking it maybe a bit too much. He’s not thinking about actually hurting someone. YET. Those that do are the ones at risk for the crossover treatmentfirst is concerned about. IMHO. Yet, under your very legalistic argument, even if one of those boys would have blabbed to mom and said, “Wouldn’t it be great if…” they still should have been regarded as just fantasizing and not liable to expand upon said fantasy. It’s worth some caution at least.
5. And yes, as you scoffed at above, chances are there are CRAPLOADS more psychologically disordered people out in the world than seek treatment or have access to the treatment they need, silently living in a state of diminished happiness that could be remedied by identification and therapy under a qualified psychologist, psychiatrist, or social worker. And I’m afraid invective-filled attitudes toward entire fields of study, like yours, go a long way towards tying the hands of what could potentially be a very helpful resource to many.
Teyo- herpes does not require skin to skin contact it is open sore to open sore- HPV or genital warts however is skin- skin
Umm … although probably not, CRUST, I’d get checked out for syphilis – it causes raw but not bleeding sores (usually on the genitalia but not always). Fortunately, it’s been curable with antibiotics since the 1940s!
And, Dan, I love your e-mail address.
woww! Awesome display of intellect, knowledge and use of logic, Seldom. You have successfully taken on the entire Savage board and came out, IMO, on top. Hopefully, in the process, opening some minds and making people think…. I’d hire you as my lawyer anyday….
Not sure if anyone’s still reading this, but:
I don’t know that every rapist *does* have rape fantasies. To my knowledge, a lot of rapes fall into one of the following categories:
1. Opportunism. Think of, for example, a fraternity party where guys are taking advantage of someone too drunk to either say no or meaningfully consent. That is, sometimes a rapist would actually prefer consensual sex to nonconsensual sex, but they care more about getting sex than about getting consent.
2. Punishment/power. The rapist is not so much engaging in a sexual act because they desire/enjoy it as they are using sex to punish, harm, or abuse their victim. For example, in a lot of cases, prisoners of war are raped. Rapes in this category may or may not involve a rapist who enjoys and fantasizes about rape per se. The rapist may not even be getting turned on by the act itself, and has to use pornography or fantasies to get into the act, or rape with hands, mouth, or inanimate objects.
3. Delusion. Some rapists think that their victims actually *want* to have sex with them, they’re just protesting because of societal pressures or whatever. Or that, under certain circumstances, they are “owed” sex, whether their partner intends to cooperate or not. This may be because they’re actually mentally ill, or simply because they’re misogynistic morons with bad upbringings. Either way, they don’t think they’re *really* committing rape. A lot of date rape probably falls under this category.
4. Enslavement. Probably a variation of 2, really. If a pimp, slaver, or the like obtains a woman who does not wish to be a prostitute/sex slave, he is likely to rape her in order to break or train her. He, again, doesn’t necessarily desire the sexual act itself, he’s just trying to get her into salable condition. (and most of the subsequent clients of someone like that fall under 1)
Any of these types of rapist is at least a lot less likely to be someone who fetishizes consensual rape scenarios. Which are, in any case, common enough that it would be a bit like finding a statistical correlation between bread-eating and rape, whereas I suspect there is a much, much smaller pool of people with sexual fantasies of prepubescent children.
Which, by the way, what I said earlier about realistic enactions? Still holds true for real life/in person.
It is possible to, yourself, personally, engage in a completely physically realistic “rape” scenario with no true victim.
It is not possible to, yourself, personally, engage in a completely physically realistic recreation of a child molestation scenario without a victim, barring medical conditions that delay puberty past the legal age of consent.
That was a very weak and disingenous explanation Dan gave for shilling his app. Just wanted to say…it’s amazing what people will let him get away this…blaming blacks for the failure of Prop 8, using ‘pussy’ as a perjorative over and over again, denigrating lesbian…all forgiven ’cause the guy gives out semi-helpful sex advice…hello Dr. Ruth.
Lady’s, can we PLEASE try to get over the melodrama so painfully and exquisitely articulated in this thread.
News Flash: People can lie. ANYBODY CAN LIE. Yep even men! Could you possibly believe that women even lie! And they can compartmentalize, and justify, and justify some more. THE FACT HE COULD COMPARTMENTALIZE SUGGESTS HE DID NOT LOVE THIS OTHER WOMAN.
News Flash: Men can have sex and feel no emotional bond with the other person. What affair was there to tell the wife about- she was just a spittoon bucket.
I am sorry that ‘tarnishes’ all of those years of memories but I guess it is all about growing up. You could lie the same way princess. Sometimes shit just happens and you need to let it be. In other words, stop being a fucking bitch, put aside your hate and your anger and your embarrassment and get into counseling. If the cheating POS is willing to put up with an entire pregnancy (assuming it is even his kid) and be supportive,and be a real husband she should get over it already.
And to the cries of sexism to pregnancy hormones being a consideration in this case: Nuts!
Finally, on the kiddie porn, it is fascinating how violent the reaction- not natural to get off on real or fake pics of unripe and prepubescent kids because NORMAL men do not want to fuck before adolescence since men are attracted only to females who can conceive.
But perfectly natural for a man to fuck another man, suck his dick, and lick his asshole. Got it. Thanks for clarifying. I wasn’t sure.
@49 – very well said! You’ve described “why” it is wrong perfectly. There is something extremely pitiful about those who defend the acts of grown adults lusting after children. Maybe, one day, we will live in a world where people just enjoy sex because they like how it feels to have sex with another human being and not because of an attempt to fill some psychological void in their lives.
Another person posted about how they looked at different types of porn for many years but came full circle back to just plain ol’ folks having sex. I’d say that is a wise person.
When we allow ourselves to grow, so-called “taboos” and “fetishes” somehow dissolve on their own because there is no need for such things when one learns to love themselves. If you don’t “get” this statement then it is time for YOU to look at what you want in your life and how you see yourself.
@165 – Bitter much? Geesh. Go meditate and get more fibre in your diet. Anger, anger and more anger.
If you don’t end up with heart disease or some sort of cancer in a few years then I’ll eat my socks! Sort yourself out.