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.
Dear Crust,
Couldn’t you have just gotten yourself tested? Or was this a “I don’t want to go to a clinic, please tell me I don’t have to” letter?
I love the email address!
wow dan, DANGEROUS misinformation on your answer to CRUST. he definitely did NOT need to have an open wound and bloodstream entry to catchy herpes from that hooker; it’s skin-to-skin contact.
I feel like the “herpes” could just have easily been acne. But it’s never a bad idea to get yourself checked out at a clinic.
I wouldn’t stay with a person who got off on images of kids, pornographic or not.
But then, if she stays, she could always keep an eye on him, to make sure he doesn’t progress to actual kiddie porn/molestation…
Can’t Handle A Divorce should have the kid DNA tested. Methinks the lady doth protest too much.
Let me get this straight, CHAD: Your wife still wants a divorce, but she wants a “stable environment” for the child? Does she have any idea how mutually exclusive those two are?
Methinks your wife is emotionally crazed by the pregnancy hormones. (I say this from the perspective of someone whose pregnant wife suggested that he quit his job, rather than let a television into the house so that he could work at home; and yes, she was the one who characterized it that way first, once she heard what was coming out of her mouth and how batshit her suggestion was.)
I also have to wonder about the calendar that you present. Depending on the number of weeks that she has been gone, either a) it’s not your kid, or b) she has been pregnant long enough that the crazy hormone emotions are what drove her to leave in the first place. Me, I’m banking on “b)”. Most people in a rational frame of mind would put more weight on the fact that you ended it and rededicated yourself to the marriage all by yourself, years ago. She’s treating it like she practically caught you in flagrante delicto yesterday.
If she means it about that stable environment, she owes it to the baby, as well as to you, to get some counseling and try a little harder to forgive. Go ahead and spend as much time with her as possible. Don’t pretend to just go along with her divorce plans as if that’s the right thing to do, but don’t fight with her over it either. Just keep being there, and suggest counseling. You are going to need it in any case, whether it is for couples counseling or divorced coparenting, so there is no harm in the suggestion.
I’m betting that as the pregnancy progresses, she will cool off and realize the folly of what she is about to foist on the family for the sake of wounded pride.
HSITIMBACM should move out immediately and then turn her partner in to the police. I believe he has crossed the line and there is child pornography somewhere. If she doesn’t get away from him, she could find herself prosecuted as well.
In fact, I think HSITIMBACM’s partner has been steadily trying to test HSITIMBACM’s level of tolerance and push that boundary with her. DTMFA!!!
People who are damning HSITIMBACM’s partner to hellfire are way, way overreacting. Never once did the the writer mention any sort of actual child pornography…all the guy is doing is getting himself off to younger girls frolicking about on youtube.
Everyone has a fundamental right to their own sexual deviancies, to indulge in whatever tickles their fancy, ON THE CONDITION THAT said deviancies do not hurt or oppress or in any way infringe upon the fundamental rights of others. Based on that line of reasoning, HSITIMBACM’s partner is not committing any more of a heinous act than the multitudes who sit at home frantically getting themselves off to foot or furry pornography.
Clearly, that particular deviancy is dangerously close to an incredibly destructive action…rape and exploitation of children is one of the largest problems in the world today, in my view of things. However, HSITIMBACM’s partner is NOT supporting or indulging in or encouraging that practice IN ANY WAY.
One basic fact of biology is that heterosexual men are attracted to YOUNGER girls. As the joke goes, “if there’s grass on the field play; if there isn’t, get it wet and play in the mud”. In my own pornographic habits, I don’t at all consider myself to be a man particularly interested in very young girls, but the girls that I often find attractive are significantly younger than myself, say 16-19. We as men are biologically programmed to be attracted to young girls…period. It is senseless to vilify the desire…we have laws and parents and social contracts in place that theoretically protect those too young to make their own informed sexual decisions, and HSITIMBACM’s partner is not violating any of those, so lay off the damnation/police/DTMFA nonsense.
You know, I also wonder, ever so often, what happened with that guy with the botched circumcision. I’m sure we’d all be relieved to hear he’s doing well.
It is an apparently little-known fact that alcohol hand sanitizer products don’t work very well on their own. They can kill the germs left behind after a wash with soap and water, but can’t do much to disinfect visible dirt, grime or whatever that’s still on your hands. If your hands need washing, lotions and gels aren’t a good substitute. CRUST might want to apprise his future hookers of this fact.
I gotta wonder if CHAD’s lady is really pregnant. And I say that as a woman in a stable, honest relationship, not as some misogynist jerk who thinks all women are manipulative bitches. It’s possible that she’s punishing him by creating the most painful scenario she can think of — “I’m leaving you, you bastard, and oh yeah, I’m carrying your baby.” I kinda hope that’s the case, cause once she has to admit she faked it, they’ll be even (in a sense) and might have a better shot at reconciling.
Speaking of a better shot, wouldn’t any sex worker know better than to rub a client’s semen into an open wound?!?!
@5
Part of the fallacy of the “escalation/porn addiction” rhetoric is that there’s not really that often any kind of build up to either more extreme/illegal images/material, nor to actual physical action. Japan is all the evidence you should need of that. In fact, there’s plenty of evidence linking the decline in rape cases in the last fifty years to an increase in the availability of pornography.
If you find his habit distasteful, that’s fine. Break up with him in the same way someone might break up with someone into furry chicks-with-dicks getting pregnant, but don’t wrap it in a self-righteous flag.
@8
Not so much, no. They’d either have to prove criminal negligence (which would be if she had a duty to prevent him from doing an illegal activity and failed to do it), or that she was accessory to illegal activity. As wanking to legal images of children isn’t illegal, and she has no knowledge of any criminal acts, she can’t be an accessory. Sorry, no dice.
@9
That’s fine, but can we stop treating the varying levels of pedophilia (paedophilia for our overseas friends) as being something which is in and of itself evil? Abusing children is evil. Wanking to pornography which required the abuse of children to make is illegal. Fantasies about children, while unnerving, are not in and of themselves harmful.
If this is a simple disagreement about which kinks and fantasies are acceptable, that’s fine, but please don’t treat this as a matter of moral certitude. In the grand pantheon of kinks, pedophilia may be one of the more extreme, but if she wouldn’t break up with him over a rape fantasy (yes, the actual porn is consensual, but the fantasy is about an illegal, harmful, destructive, act), then the only difference is in whether she finds one kink to be more “eww, gross” than another.
It’s not some guidance from on high.
@10
Yes and no. I agree with the general point you’re making, but there is a difference between “ephebophilia” (attraction to pubescent and post-pubescent teens) “pedophilia” (attraction to preteens) and “nepiphilia” (attraction to toddlers/infants… Yeah, it’s weird). There’s a legitimate defense of HSITIMBACM’s partner insofar as it’s no worse by itself than liking rape pornography (or any kind of voyeurism pornography), but trying to claim it’s acceptable because men are made to find young girls attractive makes anyone defending him sound like an idiot.
@Dan
Yeah, except you’d hear the “why the fuck are you judging me, there’s nothing wrong with this” rhetoric from anyone possessing a kink (who isn’t ashamed of it). A foot fetishist confronted by a seething, foaming-at-the-mouth, partner would get just as defensive about it.
True, the girls being filmed in these cases have no intention of having men jerk off over them, but if that’s her problem she should have equal problem if he jerked off over a hot picture of an actress.
Does her partner have a fetish which is not shared by the bulk of humanity? Yes. Does he have a fetish she finds sick and wrong? Does he have a fetish which if acted-out would be illegal? Yes. Does that make him different from guys, and girls, who get off on kidnapping, rape, prostitution, blackmail, or slavery fantasies? Nope.
Sorry, you’re not going to get much traction from me by demonizing a kink which in and of itself isn’t destructive. Just because I like rape fantasies (and I do), and just because my girlfriend likes being “blackmailed” (and she does) doesn’t mean I’m going to ever rape someone, nor watch “real” rape pornography. Nor does it mean my girlfriend will eventually try to be blackmailed by someone more sinister.
The fact that you could replace HSITIMBACM’s screed against pedophiles (a term which is a bit too emotionally charged, since we have no idea how many pedophiles do anything illegal; though if we call a pedophile “anyone who wanks to fantasies of underage girls” the low rate of child sexual abuse in Japan compared to the high rate of “lolicon” pornography would seem to indicate the number is small) with a screed against any fantasy which the mainstream considers taboo, should have made you question how much you ought to throw your lot in with her:
“rape victims, however, are innocents preyed upon by rapists and people with psychological 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.”
You’re full of shit, Dan.
The bastard is getting off on 10-year-old ballerinas, for fuck’s sake. A cold chill ran up and down my spine.
If that isn’t a warning sign in and of itself, I don’t know what is.
But it’s even more likely that the baby ballerinas are only what he’s admitting to.
What a lousy analogy from the ballerina molestor’s apologist. Adult men may be attracted to 16 year olds: they’ll settle for 18, if they have a conscience or are smart.
If the horrible husband is attracted to 10 year olds and settling for 12 year olds, that’s still massively creepy and throw-him-in-the-deepest-pit criminal.
I’d run screaming out of that house, never to return, before the cops beat down the door for the inevitable bust.
Sorry but I don’t buy that sex fantasies of pre-pubescent children are just like rape fantasies or furry fantasies. Pedophilia is not just a fetish. It’s a sexual orientation that can’t be changed any more than a person can change being straight or gay – the difference is, though, that this sexual orientation is not victimless. If a man is having sexual fantasies about kids, it means he’s a pedophile and the only way to prevent him from harming kids is to lock him up until there is a cure. You all are naive to think he hasn’t filled his computer with real kiddie porn that she doesn’t know about or started grooming kids behind her back. Do you really think he’d tell her if he was abusing kids?! And if he’s not now, he will when there’s an opportunity for him not to get caught. Of course she should DTMFA! This isn’t so much about what he’s done but about the sort of person that he is. There are plenty of fish in the sea. No need to settle for someone who is so grossly defective.
for Can’t Handle a Divorce,
Go to http://www.marriagebuilders.com or read some of the books “His Needs, Her Needs” and “Surviving an Affair”
Add another one to the “DTMFA and turn his ass into the cops” brigade. This guy didn’t “escalate” to child porn, he’s been whackin’ it to kids for a while and is only justifying it because you found out.
Also, I find it really funny in a sick, demented way the kinds of bullshit some people will pull to defend pedophiles. If you get off on looking at little kids, you are broken. Period, end of discussion.
inb4 Seldon2639 is a lolicon :V
It’s disturbing, and it’s very different from rape fantasies. A person can indulge rape fantasies, blackmail fantasies, etc. with consenting adults and have a fulfilling sex life. A pedophile can’t do this. They’re stuck. It’s a really unfortunate condition, honestly.
As far as we know, he hasn’t done anything. Yet. Given his inclination to up the ante on his porn, I wouldn’t be surprised if he jumps to real child porn soon (if he hasn’t already).
If she has her suspicions, she can either leave him and/or leave him and turn him over to the police. She needs to make it very clear that it’s not okay. As long as he isn’t doing anything illegal (for the present time…), then there really isn’t any harm in it. She’s well within her rights to leave him, though. He sounds like a disgusting person bullshitting his way around being a pedophile and lying to his girlfriend about it.
@10:
1. Sexual attractions convert to actions whenever possible.
2. Attractions to children are NEVER permissible, acceptable, or defensible. Period.
To suggest that HSITIMBACM’s partner has only a hobbyist’s interest in 8 year-old girls is enabling, at best. In your case, and despite your pseudo-lawyer posturing, I rather think it’s one sick fuck defending another.
Choosing to mention that disgusting joke does little for your credibility.
If he were at all concerned about these fantasies, he’d get help. So no, I don’t think it’s as harmless as @13 says.
Re past advisees, the two I have always wondered about were Sad Cow (the woman whose husband had not made any physical contact with her, even brushing her in passing, in two months), and the man who agreed to his wife’s demand to have children, which he had never really wanted, in exchange for her participation in a MFF threesome, and three kids later she reneged (Dan told him he should, nay was obliged to, hire two sex workers and cheat on his wife to get the need filled).
UPDATE ON PREVIOUS ADVICE:
A question of mine was posted on March 18th, asking about how to advise my horny friend who was planning to marry a prude. The *next time* I saw him, he made a pass at me!
And they still got married.
I had the “escalation of porn” thing – when I was 13-15, before I had sex. After having sex, and after some porn experimentation, I settled down, and realised what I like to look at (pretty vanilla stuff), and now I rarely go beyond it.
My feeling is that escalation is only for those who haven’t been able to get any kind of a grip on their (sex) lives yet. Worrying for people no longer in their teens.
So, um, yeah, add one more to the angry mob chanting for the hide of the ballerina watcher: I don’t really like the idea of feeding the witch-hunt that is modern-day pedophile prosecution, but definitely DTMFA and GTFO immediately. What a creep.
*All* the advice to CHAD – including the DNA test – is spot on. I’d personally elect to see it in terms of pregnancy hormones, but I’d still follow Reagan’s “trust but verify” nostrum.
A question of mine was posted on March 18th, asking about how to advise my horny friend who was planning to marry a prude. The *next time* I saw him, he made a pass at me!
And they still got married.
Oh boy…a message for me (I’m not your friend, I’m sure).
@7 Divorce and stability are not mutually exclusive. Some divorces are rockier than others. It’s up to the parents to decide how mature they want to be in order to keep the environment “stable.” My parents’ divorce was disappointing, but I never felt like I grew up in an unstable home, just one that changed. I certainly don’t think parents should divorce in haste, or without giving it the best effort possible, but it’s also unhealthy for a child to grow up in an environment of resentment, bitterness, and pain. Every situation is different, and you cannot judge the woman for wishing to extricate herself from someone who broke his vows to her. If they both love the child, and respect each other from here on out, whether or not they reconcile their marriage, the child will have a stable home life.
One other thing re: HSITIMBACM
Do you want kids? Do you honestly believe this guy can be around your kids? No? DTMFA.
I think that getting off to prepubescent girls is disturbed, no matter how anyone wants to rationalize it. It’s not comparable to the male biological urge to mate with younger, more fertile females. The biological urge to find younger females has to do with fertility health (younger women bear healthier offspring) and secondary sex characteristics- ie. breasts, mature facial features, hips, etc. His urges are not something biological, it’s something psychological. He needs to stop immediately and/or get help. If I were the girlfriend, I would dump him immediately.
Oh, and by the way, what person with a major problem every admits it? They always say it’s you and not them- I know from experience. If you tell an alcoholic maybe they should slow down, then they tell you that you are overreacting. It’s not that they are about to die from alcohol poisoning- the real problem is that you are a no-fun, boring, anti-social loser who needs to get laid. If you dump your boyfriend because he was physically agressive, then he apologizes and swears on his life he will never do it again. Guess what? When you confront someone who is fucked up in the head- it’s always you and never them that has the problem.
Good Lord, people. The only hard and fast rule about human nature is that there are no hard and fast rules about human nature. Everyone is unique, and there is much more gray in the world than black and white.
You can no more say and prove that “everyone who has sexual fantasies about kids will actually have sex with kids if given a chance” than you can say and prove “everyone who fantasizes about killing their boss will do it if given a chance.” Some would, some wouldn’t, but people think about all kinds of things that they will never do, and would not want to actually do.
Examples of people whose fantasy lives are not in synch with their sexual behavior:
A straight female who masturbates almost exclusively to lesbian porn, but doesn’t actually want to have sex with women.
A gay female who loves gay male porn.
A straight man who fantasizes about eating his own spunk, but doesn’t want to actually do it.
A person who fantasizes about bondage but thinks actually getting hogtied would be too painful and awkward.
Etc.
The whole point of fantasy sex is that it is not reality. No complications. No negatives. All the upsides, none of the downsides. A person like HSITIMBACM’s partner can fantasize about young bodies without wanting to have sex with (and screw up) an actual real, unpredictable, frightened child.
@1: Definitely the latter. If he was *really* worried, he’d just get fucking tested.
@7: The calendar sounds reasonable to me. LW says she found out about the affair a “few weeks” ago, and it’s possible she’s been along for a week or two.
But yes, I wouldn’t rule that out either. This is *also* coming from a woman in a stable relationship.
CHAD, I personally think you deserve a second chance, barring some really, really egregious details. It feels that your wife seems to be talking rather far, considering the affair ended years ago.
That said, I do wonder about a few details in your letter. You mention that your recent chat with your wife was the “first decent” one you’ve had in “months.” Months? So has your marriage been cool for a while before your wife found out about the expired affair?
Anyway, good luck. Take it slow, be clear about your hopes, and know what you want if you’re going to pursue it. You can’t mess up a second time.
Here’s another vote for HSITIMBACM to DTMFA.
If HSITIMBACM’s partner were honest about his paraphilia, and said something to the effect of “This is something that turns me on, and I know it’s not normal and that I can never act on in real life” . . . in that case, the relationship might be salvageable. But as it is, it sounds like the guy refuses to take any responsibility for his actions or even acknowledge that HSITIMBACM has a legitimate reason to be upset. His insistence that his behavior is normal and inevitable points to bigger trouble down the road. HSITIMBACM should walk before his obsession “naturally” escalates to molesting actual children.
I think it’s sad that people think that CHAD’s wife is lying or that it really isn’t his baby. While I commend him for ending the affair and “recommitting” himself to the relationship, he still cheated, lied, and hoped to get away with it. I would also DTMFA, pregnant or not.
It’s no surprise that CHAD’s wife is very upset. The affair may have been years ago, but she just found out about it. Her husband cheating is fresh in her mind, even if not in his.
She has no reason to trust him now. It doesn’t matter that the affair has been over for awhile, he lied until recently.
CHAD will have to be patient and understanding if he wants a chance.
@15
So… He should be punished for the fact that he has fantasies which (if acted upon) would be harmful? I mean, jesus, that’s pretty Orwellian (I’m invoking it properly here, since that’s almost the definition of a thought-crime).
I’ll never state that abusing children is proper, acceptable, or anything other than a heinous crime which should be punished to the full extent of the law. But if he hasn’t done that (a) we have no proof of any illicit activity, (b) we have no proof he will commit a crime in the future, and (c) it’s simply wrong to chastise someone for liking something we don’t like.
Insofar as he doesn’t go out and harm a child, his “orientation” is no less victimless in and of itself than someone who’s into rape fantasies. Where’s the line you’re drawing between the two, other than your assumption that even if he hasn’t molested now, he will eventually?
@17
Maybe. And I’ll certainly agree something went wrong in ones sexual development. Let’s remember, though, that the same can be said for anyone wanking to almost any kind of material which the person speaking finds sick and wrong. My defense of pedophiles (again, it’s a difficult word because it’s used both for “those who have sexual attraction to prepubescent children”, and “those who have committed abuse against children”, even though the etiology can be completely different between those two events), comes from a sense that someone could castigate me for my fantasies under the same reasoning, and it would thus be hypocritical (at best) for me to stay silent. By the way, to be recognized as a pedophile under the DSM-IV, he would have to have sexual attraction to both prepubescent males and females, so he might not count as one at all. Just wanted to throw that out there.
What causes me to come down on the side of “don’t demonize him until he’s actually done something harmful” is that I have plenty of fantasies which, were I to act on them in their most literal form, would be horrible. Yet… I don’t. Most people I know who have fantasies about rape and blackmail and prostitution don’t actually go for the reality of it, so unless you can show me some data indicating “all pedophiles eventually commit abuse”, the artificial distinction you’re trying to draw is pure crap.
@18
Oh, absolutely she’s within her “rights” (even within her moral authority) to break up with him. But, that’s true of any person in any relationship at any time. I guess my point is that if I came to my girlfriend wanting to act out a rape fantasy, and she said “uhm… Eww, no, we’re done”, it’d be fundamentally the same thing.
What I find distasteful is the demonizing (and it is, since we have no evidence that any given pedophile would ever commit abuse, nor knowledge of how many actually do) of one specific area of “non-victimless” kinks, when the reality is that a lot of kinky behavior could be “non-victimless” if done in a way that wasn’t pure fantasy.
@19
I agree that #10 does not really make his case well, but you yourself make unfounded and unsubstantiated claims.
What evidence do you have that sexual fantasies eventually become actions “whenever possible”? Hell, how are you defining “whenever possible”? Again, I’ve had rape fantasies, I’ve acted them out with my girlfriend, I’ve seen pseudo-rape porn, and done roleplay of same. Does that mean I’ll eventually “up the ante” to doing the real thing? It seems unlikely.
I guess I have enough faith in the bulk of humanity to believe that most of us with “destructive” fantasies (be they rape, pedophilia, blackmail, slavery, torture, whatever) are ninety-nine times out of one-hundred able to channel that into non-victimizing avenues. Otherwise we’d see a lot more rape. And, if you’ll recall from my previous post, many psychologists argue that the decline in rape in recent decades is because of the availability of pornography.
@20
Are the only choices for when someone has a fantasy which (if acted out in its most literal form) would be harmful either that he’s a sick bastard who will eventually commit the act, or needs to go get “help” for it? I’m just wondering, since “rape” is one of the most common fantasies in modern society, yet our instances of rape are far lower than in previous decades.
Data, if you please.
@26
This, at least, is sort of legitimate. Truthfully, I don’t know what happens when a pedophile has children of his (or, rarely, her) own. I sort of doubt that it’s always quite as overtly abusive as you imply, but there is a part of me which thinks it could be prurient… I dunno, I’m waffling a bit on this issue
@27
Yeah, most kinks are probably more rooted in psychology than in biology, but what makes one given kink more “wrong” than another (aside from the initial “eww, icky” moment about it, which I’d hope most of us are capable of getting past to think rationally about it)?
My question is if you’d treat someone who you found looking up rape pornography (perhaps even graphic) on the internet as being in the same category of ‘sick, deviant, wrong, eventually going to hurt someone, ect.’ If you would, then that’s at least consistent (if somewhat judgmental and unsupported by fact), if you wouldn’t, can you please shine some light on what the inherent difference is?
All I see is “two fantasies, both of which would be very, *very*, bad if acted upon in a literal sense; one of which is acceptable, and one of which is ‘proof’ of severe fucked-up-ness, and which will eventually result in abuse”. The inconsistency bugs me.
@30
Again, though, replace the idea of a pedophile fantasy with the idea of a rape fantasy, and see if the idea gets the same traction in your mind. Yes, he refuses to take responsibility, or accept that there’s a legitimate grievance against his fantasy, but I know for sure that if a partner of mine found out about my rape fantasies, and decided they were sick, and wrong, and meant I was a rapist waiting to happen, I would be pretty defensive.
And, of course, as always, we need some evidence to suggest a natural escalation to acting out the fantasies in real life.
That said, I do at least get where you’re coming from. By stating his fantasy as part of the “escalation of porn” stuff, it makes him sound a lot more sketchy. But, break up with him because he’s sketchy and disingenuous, not over the kink itself.
Still, for the love of my sanity, can we please push ourselves past the initial “sick, gross, wrong” reaction and have a more reasonable discussion about this? Can we, at the very least, remember that there are many out there who would consider any of us to be just as sick and perverse as the worst pedophile?
@31: Really depends. Honestly. That he didn’t come clean sooner is a huge, HUGE strike against him, but people make mistakes and get scared about the consequences they face; covering up is human. Not forgiveable in every situation, but it’s a normal reaction.
And characterizing it as a continual lie for years is mistaken … when something ends, people often just move on. They feel it’s “over”, that it’s not something they need to address anymore. They forget about it. The wife didn’t know for years, but he wasn’t necessarily *lying* for years. Not saying a remorseful cheater shouldn’t come clean right away, but I guess I can see what’s happening on the other side of things.
Probably it’s because I’m really bad at it, but ducking interpersonal conflict out of fear rather than malice (“hoping to get away with it”) is something I sympathize with. It’s dumb, and it still hurts people, but it’s something more humane that an active choice to wound (which, yes, was probably his affair … but that’s another argument). And remorse really counts with me; I believe in chances for reparation. After all, I’d want the rest of my good record to matter at least a little if I ever made a mistake.
So DTMFA wouldn’t be my first response. It’d enter my mind, but I really would look at it at a second time. And the wife’s choice to leave him anyway is always there.
A bad relationship/marriage is always worse for everyone involved than a break-up/divorce. Myself, many people I know, and many studies have proven that divorce isn’t a bad thing – it’s the conflict that usually comes along with it that can be.
@25 — Thank you! I am a child of divorce and I never felt that my home life was unstable. My parents realized that my brother and I would have a more stable home life if they weren’t constantly fighting at home. I never felt as if I missed out on anything by having divorced parents, and in fact I feel that my home life was more stable because my parents were not living together.
@11
It’s a little known fact that alcohol sanitizers don’t work because it isn’t true. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) authorize their use for hands that are not visibly dirty, which the letter writer gives no reason to believe is the case here. Hospital personnel use them to avoid infecting patients, so they have to work pretty well.
Dear Dan,
I’ve been reading your column for years and years and I rarely disagree with you, but I have to disagree about your answer regarding the guy watching youtube clips of kids.
It’s very controversial of me, perhaps, but honestly I think this guy could be okay. I don’t think it’s wrong to fantasize about children, because if you keep desire in the realm of fantasy no one gets hurt. I believe you’ve even advocated people doing consensual child roleplay in the past – and how is that really any different than watching youtube videos of ballet dancers? In each case no one is getting hurt. And if parents don’t want people masturbating to their 10-year-old’s dancing, they should keep it off of public internet sites.
I should also mention that I’m a female and have occasionally been attracted to not-legal boys and have fantasized about them. Would I ever act on said fantasies? No! Because I do realize that there’s a line (although I don’t think the line is really where the government arbitrarily puts it at around 18). If this guy is just fantasizing he probably feels offended and defensive about his girlfriend’s attack. He could definitely talk to her in a better way – such as “Honey, I know this scares you and worries you, but it’s just a fantasy.” But the chances that a real pedophile would be masturbating that openly to stuff to do with kids in front of his girlfriend? It seems more likely that if he was doing the hardcore stuff or thinking about doing it in real life, he’d keep it locked away and hidden. That’s the nature of real pedophiles, from everything I’ve read on the subject.
At any rate, I think you might have overreacted. And maybe you have to, because otherwise you’ll get readers crying “pedophile” on you if you sign off on this dude’s fantasies. But still, a fantasy is a fantasy. Everyone fantasizes about shit they wouldn’t do in real life, be it a kid on a trampoline or killing their boss or whatever.
People who dream about killing their boss are not automatically called potential murderers is the only difference.
sincerely,
longtime reader
@7 Divorced parents are NOT necessarily unstable parents. Some people are mature enough not to try to play their children against each other and capable of being civil to past lovers.
Oh yeah – and I think it’s a total fallacy to say that people who get off on images of kids (among other things) are automatically only pedophiles as some people are saying above.
It’s possible to be attracted to all ages of people. There are people who find themselves predominantly attracted to younger people, but so far the author of the letter didn’t complain about his lack of interest in her. And she seemed to suggest he was into other extreme porn as well, suggesting he is not a pedophile, but maybe just a big perv or maybe somewhat addicted to extreme porn (as he suggests himself). Way different than a pedophile, who would have no use for the other forms of extreme porn or probably his adult girlfriend.
What the dude probably needs is to take a break from porn – not because it’s sick and wrong, but because it seems like he’s developed a dependency on fake sex and ever more extreme forms of fake sex to get him off. Maybe if he got more present in real life and his real sexual relationship (or perhaps a different real sexual relationship with someone who didn’t think he was a child molestor), the problem would disappear on its own.
People in the U.S. get way crazy about even a hint of someone being into kids. People can play violent video games all day and have rape fantasies and no one wigs out, but put kids in the equation and someone’s sure to act! It borders on hysteria. I wonder if Lolita could even find a publisher if it were written today.
It’s me, “Inquiring Mind,” from this week’s column.
Thanks for including my letter, and also for using it to plug the Savage Love iPhone app.
Unfortunately for Steve Jobs, and whatever kickback you might be getting for inserting endorsements for it whenever possible, I don’t have the Savage Love iPhone app.
I don’t have an iPhone, and so the phrase “on your Savage Love iPod app” wasn’t mine (but now that I’ve used the phrase “Savage Love iPhone app 4 times, I have honorably contributed my share of plugs, even as I disavow them, so hopefully Jobs and everyone else is satisfied).
And I read your column and write my letters on a PC.
But I still want to know what happened . . .
Best use of the word “repurposing” ever.
Ah Dan, just love you! Great email address!
Seldon2639 seems to be one of the few people here with their head on straight. Furthermore, maybe the reason his explanation of “porn escalation” was used precisely because he knew the reaction would be of this sort. I mean I am 100% open to the possibility that this guy is bad news, and he obviously has issues, but until he acts on them I’m not ready to grab my pitchfork. Dan himself has talked about “gold star” pedophiles (at least in his podcast). I’m wondering why he’s treating this case so differently – though maybe because it’s the pedophile’s girlfriend and not the pedophile himself writing in.
@34: Problem is, if we take from the letter that his guy “upes” the Ante, he can jump from Recitals to actual childporn, which is not victimless, and is a fucking crime.
Rape porn is acted out with consenting adults, Childporn involves children being exploited. Or in the case of the Ballerina videos, while the child themselves are not exploited, the fact he is using it as a sexual aide in a manner that the child and parent never consent to (of course this is why if you post anything like that up, you put it behind different security measures).
Rape fantasies can be roleplayed with consenting adults, Pedophilia is a problem because of the target of the attraction is incapable of consent, while you have some who may be capable of suppressing their need, you got too many others with poor impulse control, or just had that moment that they give in. And the pedophiles have a tendency to be drawn towards careers in which they are surrounded by children, a recipe for disaster.
@7, 34
He’s been keeping something from her for years. That is a continual betrayal situation. I wouldn’t be able to forgive that either, and I’m not pregnant or crazed out on any hormones. The knowledge that your partner is able to successfully lie to you and seem like everything is fine means you can never trust them or feel good even during good times. They can always be hiding something. That ability to act through it all means they can’t trust anything, the sincerity that you wont do it again, nothing.
Thinking back on years of memories with a partner and knowing they were keeping something like knowledge of an affair from you the whole time is too much. Affairs are bad enough, but adding years of being fooled into thinking everything was fine? Its worse, not better. Add to that they never respected you enough to tell you themsleves before. I don’t understand why people are handwaving away the fact that the affair was years ago, like that makes the wife more unreasonable.
@44 I believe the reason why most of us are concerned is, as I pointed out earlier, the fact that he claims to require more and more extreme porn. Using that knowledge, it’s likely that he would go to actual child porn.
And then it’s not okay.
He hasn’t done anything wrong now, and shouldn’t face any sort of legal trouble whatsoever (provided that he, again, hasn’t downloaded actual child porn).
This guy is not a gold star pedophile. I don’t know how you could think that. He isn’t trying to receive any help and if he is a pedophile, he won’t even admit it. That doesn’t sound like someone who deserves a gold star in my book.
I may be being prejudice and judgmental about the letter writers boyfriend, but I would be worried if I were here. I understand that not all pedophiles act out their fucked up fantasies, but like many have pointed out, this guy gets off on escalation and taboo. He may be “only” looking at videos of children, but that is just the beginning. Looking at child pornography is exploiting and abusing a child, just by supporting it. This asshole may never act on molesting a child, but porn is just as bad. Rape is completely different and I don’t think it’s comparable. It is also a horrendous act, but at least the victim would be an adult and not a naive, impressionable child.
I used to work with children. Would it have been okay for me to go home and fantasize about the kids I taught in a sexual way, even though I never touched them and was completely professional in all respects? My instinct tells me absolutely not. Children are not sexual beings, they do not understand sex, on top of a lot of other things. As a former teacher who is decidedly NOT attracted to children, I have to tell you that anyone who is has serious issues. Knowing children, their capacity for love, their lack of understanding, their general lack of control over their world breeds compassion not sexual tension. Children literally have no frame of reference for what is right and wrong in many cases. I guess what I’m saying is, taking advantage, whether physically or mentally, of someone else’s complete innocence is just wrong. People like that need therapy. Think of Michael Jackson. Those on here protesting that it’s okay are just justifying. It’s not okay. The moment you admit it is wrong is the moment you can move forward and treat the underlying cause of the fetish. And really, calling it a fetish makes it sound okay, but what it makes someone is a perverted opportunist. Seriously, as adults we should be able to find something else to masturbate to, something that doesn’t involve destroying someone else’s life – because a child can never consent. Maybe that’s hot to some people, but this is why it’s illegal.
Thanks Dan, I live in Argentina, and I am really happy that the politicians finally did something right,despite the pressure from the (Catholic) Church!!!
I already posted a comment but it didn’t appear, i registered just to say thanks Dan for the congrats! I live in Argentina, and I am totally for the law that was passed last week (gay marriage). That makes 10 countries that respect peoples rights… who’ll be next?
I don’t know why everyone thinks that CHAD’s wife is lying about the pregnancy. It was only a couple of weeks.. not months before she told him she was pregnant. I don’t think just because a betrayal happened two years ago that it would make it any less painful when you found out. It would actually be more hurtful because he lied about it for so long and never intended to tell her in the first place.
Can we agree that it is just as prudent for a couple falling apart to go to counseling as is it for a couple who is no longer together, but wants to improve their relationship to go for their child and for their sake. No reason to not make that “working” relationship as good as it can be, which can be particularly difficult with the logistics of separation.
@40
You make a good point. It’s also worth noting that in most psychological literature, pedophilia is an exclusive sexuality. If one is truly a pedophile, that’s all he gets off on. This guy, clearly, is not a pedophile.
@44
The other difference is that Dan draws the line between “gold star” and “sick bastard” pedophile based on whether the person himself thinks he has a problem. In this case, since HSITIMBACM’s partner basically said “there’s nothing wrong with me”, Dan doesn’t apply the “self-recriminating pedophiles who ‘realize’ they’re fucked-up and try to get help are okay” standard to him.
@45
Google ageplay, for me. Not if you’re at work, but when you get the chance. It’s just as easy to do a psuedo-rape roleplay as a pseudo-pedophile roleplay (really, if you’ve ever done a “naughty schoolgirl” roleplay, you’ve at least done ephebophilia).
Yes, he’s using as porn something which the original creators did not intend as porn, but who cares? It doesn’t hurt the child (at all), and I’d bet beyond any doubt that the child has no flipping idea it’s happening.
Until and unless he “ups the ante”, he’s done literally nothing wrong. Break up with him, fine, but don’t get on a god-damned white horse about it.
@47
#44 was a bit confused because he didn’t understand that Dan thought the “gold star” for a pedophile is to be seeking treatment and massively self-recriminating about his fetishes. I think it’s possible to both enjoy ones fetishes (deviant and “wrong” as they may be) and get a gold star by never hurting anyone, but whatever
@48
Is raping an adult better or worse than molesting a child? What if the child was willing? What if the adult was mentally or physically handicapped?
The problem with trying to draw a line in the sand between heinous things and say “fantasizing and wanking to fantasies about this heinous thing are more acceptable” is that it’s all both subjective and arguable. She should DTMFA if she’d like, but don’t make it a matter of moral certitude.
@49
*bangs head on desk*
Seriously? You do realize that there’s a difference between “taking pictures of children being abused” and “using the fantasy of a child (unbeknown to the child, and without ever harming the child) as wank material”, right? How does it destroy a life to fantasize about doing bad things to someone? Christ, if I could hurt people with my fantasies, middle school would have been a lot easier.
HSITIMBACM’s partner has never, as far as we know, actually abused (mentally or physically) any child, nor has any intention to in the future. As such, all he’s done is display a fetish, a kink, a peculiarity of his sexual preferences which makes him like little girls in leotards.
Something about the lack of actual harm makes me not want to demonize the guy, as I’ve stated before (and will state again) it’s hard for a guy who fantasizes about(and has acted out roleplays of) brutal rape to cast aspersions about a guy who fantasizes about ageplay.
@41: This saddens me–to the point that I’m hoping that you’re full of BS. Although it strikes me as most likely that you’re telling the truth.
Dan, I understand that you want to sell copies of your app. But please don’t use that desire to justify falsifying the content of the letters you receive. We non-Apple users already get enough shit for being “uncool”. Please don’t make things worse by skewing the statistics in Apple’s favor.
When your Android app comes out, will you stick false references to it in your letters, too?
@46: “I don’t understand why people are handwaving away the fact that the affair was years ago, like that makes the wife more unreasonable.”
Like I said in @34 (the very comment you responded to), I don’t think it necessarily negates all the good times, etc. and he can’t be trusted, was always lying to her, etc. I just don’t see it that way.
“Add to that they never respected you enough to tell you themsleves before.”
Really fair. But I don’t see it as a simple respect issue.
Respect is a big factor; I agree it’s always the best to put yourself forward ASAP because time matters.
But people feel fear, which is a powerful force. Characterizing this type of lie as necessarily a malicious trick, some kind of hoodwinking, I think, is painting it a little *too* evil. Not telling your SO about an affair *can* be about hoping to “get away” with something; it can be about malice, about a serial habit. It does make it sound like the cheater necessarily is enjoying the tricking and maybe hopes that this one successful lie can lead into future lies. Which can be true … or not.
But *some* people make genuine mistakes. They make that mistake, and in misguided fear, clam up and hope it just goes away — whatever their fuck-up was … cheating, anything — and they can work on doing better with the remainder of their lives. It’s like a kind of repression … that by not facing the consequences head on, they can move on with their lives. They really *don’t* use it as a springboard for more misdeeds. Lots of people rather suffer private fear and punishment, to keep the pain to themselves, rather than face the one they love. I’m not saying it’s *noble* or anything … just trying to describe it.
I totally agree that honesty is the best policy, bar none. As soon as possible. But, I dunno … it just seems too simple to me to *necessarily* paint this as a case of untrustworthiness and constant lies.
It was still one mistake. Well, two — his second was letting it go unsaid for way too long. To me, that just doesn’t equate to the same untrustworthy label for serial cheaters, or people who wound out of genuine malice or personal satisfaction.
So I think, yes, he could be given a second chance, presuming sincerity on his part. It’d be a long, long, drawn-out second chance, but I think he may have just about earned one. I don’t think the wife *owes* him anything — so I guess I kind of take back what I said about her going “too far”, although she’s still gone beyond what I’d do — but it’d be humane of her.
And no, I wasn’t basing *these* particular observations on her pregnancy or hormones or whatever. The only thing that made me think MAYBE she could be lying was the timetable. But even then, I was on the edge of suspicion.
@7: I agree. As a currently-preggers lady, I can tell you, those hormones make you psycho, particularly in the first month or so after implantation.
And as for Really Long Acronym Lady, I’m definitely in the DTMFA camp. Guy’s a lying shitbag and a pedo. Nasty.
I’m not the witch-hunting type myself, but jerking off while watching 8 year old girls in a dance recital is just a precursor for what is more than likely to come.
It’s interesting to read all of the comments defending what he’s doing as a simple fantasy. HE’S JERKING OFF WHILE THINKING OF MOLESTING 8-YEAR OLD GIRLS ON A VIDEO. This isn’t an escalation in porn habits, this is him achieving sexual gratification with children as his focus. Children, mind you, not some little piece of 17 or 18 year old ass.
Don’t get me wrong. I like porn. My wife likes porn. All kinds of porn. But all that shit is consensual and they’re all grown up. (Well, except for the midget porn.)
People try to play the whole ‘fantasy’ card and comparing this shit to rape fantasies and the sort, in my mind, is not a valid comparison. This is just chalked up to a brain with bad wiring. If they are stroking it to videos of little children, and in front of their partner, no less, seems more like a test of boundaries than anything else. More like he’s seeing how much he could get away with and still have a girlfriend for a cover.
And as far as those calls that child rape is in decline is complete bullshit. Comparing child molestation to rape statistics is bullshit. The average female-oriented pedophile is going to molest 50 girls before getting caught. The average male-oriented pedophile is going to rape 150 boys before getting caught. Ever here about all the rapists that make it that far before they are caught?
Perhaps my view is skewed because I was victimized as a child. And just as a testament to the shear numbers involved, I was only one of dozen children in my apartment complex that this guy violated, in a two-year time span. And that guy was never caught, and the only reason I know the other children were involved, is because I was present for that abuse. Image how many more he got to?
There is no excuse for his behavior, he is masturbating to images of children because it GETS HIM OFF. That isn’t going to change. If he doesn’t rape children in the future, or hasn’t already, then kudos for him and any potential victims. Unfortunately, as a man, I can tell you that his desire for little girls isn’t going to change any more than my proclivity to want to bang short, thin redheaded WOMEN. Just like my wife’s proclivity to bang tall, thin blonde men isn’t going to change.
Like I said. Bad wiring.
@56, @34: I agree with @46 that the wife has good reason to leave CHAD, and to blame it on pregnancy or hormones is pretty sexist.
First strike: He had the affair. 2nd: He didn’t tell her about the affair for years. 3rd: He didn’t tell her about the “rededication” either. One should know if her partner feels the need to “rededicate” himself to her, if she thought he was dedicated all along.
It’s true: All those happy memories CHAD’s wife had, dating from the affair to the confession, are now tainted. And it will be hard for her to regain her trust of him now.
The fact that he waited years to tell her makes it worse, not better. And it robbed her of her right to make a decision about staying with him at the time the affair happened.
I love Dan’s column, but I think it is a bit anti-monogamy. At least he plugs honesty, which is more important. But I like to think that love can be both satisfying and exclusive. Liars and cheaters are poison.
I understand that divorce situations can be (reasonably) stable. I also understand that marriages where the partners stay together but fight or are resentful are not stable or pleasant places to grow up. On the other hand, to the extent that she is able to truly forgive him and reconcile, an intact relationship would be better than a divorce.
For starters, maintaining two separate households costs a lot of money. A LOT of money. Two mortgages instead of one, extra clothing for the kids at both houses, extra supplies, extra transportation, extra childcare, especially if mom has to enter the commercial workforce as a result of the divorce, extra everything. That costs a LOT. That is money that could have been used for the benefit of the family (i.e., the kids). Moreover, instead of paying for one household out of combined assets, you are paying for two households each out of HALF the combined assets. That is financially catastrophic to both households.
I understand that this is all still fresh and raw to her. She just needs to be a little more cold and calculating about it, and be quite clear on what her wounded pride is going to cost the family.
Emotion-wise, it just feels like she is trying to have it both ways: let’s work on making the best possible environment for the baby, but I still get to hang onto the hurt and anger. “I’m willing to forgive you a little bit so we can work together” is the same thing as “I want to keep punishing you, except for what we have to do to work together.” Not quite so flattering when you put it that way. You don’t get to insist on going straight to divorce, rather than trying counseling, and then claim that you want the best outcome. If his wife is sincerely interested in the best possible outcome for the sake of the child, she needs to try a little harder.
CRUST:
You mean you only looked at her face after you came on her?
Wow. Misogynize much?
notfromaroundhere @6: Excellent point. The timing of her getting pregnant is awfully damn suspicious.
@55 (Long-time reader):
Sorry to tell you that this is true. I can send you my original email if you like.
While I was actually more amused than saddened, I do find the addition troubling.
I understand that letters are often edited for clarity and condensed in the interests of space-saving, but I never thought that a letter would be manipulated to hype a product.
For the record, I don’t have a Droid, nor do I have any apps. My cell phone is one of a dying breed: only a phone.
I see why Dan pushed Sex at Dawn a few weeks ago. He must get so many letters about how one episode of cheating ruined otherwise good relationships. It’s gotta be heartbreaking to not have good advice, other than monogamy is hard, for those people.
@58
Here’s what’s confusing me: why does it matter if the porn is made with people who know they’re in a porn? If he got his hands on simulated child pornography (it exists, it’s legal, and the Supreme Court has said “fuck you” to the DoJ trying to prosecute it), would that be less sick? If so, how?
How is me watching simulated rape porn and fantasizing about violating some woman (yes, the fantasy is rape, not pseudo-rape, the fantasy is out-and-out rape) any better? How is fantasizing about one terribly harmful act any better than another? Yes, he’s fantasizing about hurting a little girl (again, technically he’s undiagnosable with pedophilia vis-a-vis the DSM-IV, since he’s not exclusive, and only seems to like prepubescent girls), but that’s never been proof positive of eventual abusive behavior.
And I can show evidence of a decline in overall rape rates (child abuse is notoriously harder to prove) corresponding with an increase in pornography being available… And… Just flipping look at Japan, mate.
@58
Here’s what’s confusing me: why does it matter if the porn is made with people who know they’re in a porn? If he got his hands on simulated child pornography (it exists, it’s legal, and the Supreme Court has said “fuck you” to the DoJ trying to prosecute it), would that be less sick? If so, how?
How is me watching simulated rape porn and fantasizing about violating some woman (yes, the fantasy is rape, not pseudo-rape, the fantasy is out-and-out rape) any better? How is fantasizing about one terribly harmful act any better than another? Yes, he’s fantasizing about hurting a little girl (again, technically he’s undiagnosable with pedophilia vis-a-vis the DSM-IV, since he’s not exclusive, and only seems to like prepubescent girls), but that’s never been proof positive of eventual abusive behavior.
And I can show evidence of a decline in overall rape rates (child abuse is notoriously harder to prove) corresponding with an increase in pornography being available… And… Just flipping look at Japan, mate.
@59: You’re not saying anything to me that @46 didn’t already say. I mean, literally. I’m not saying you’re not entitled to agree, but writing it all out again isn’t really changing my mind, since I’m just going to point you to my earlier comments, which actually *respond.*
“and to blame it on pregnancy or hormones is pretty sexist.”
Did you read either of my two comments you cited? I didn’t mention the pregnancy or hormones at all in @34, and I only refuted the idea in @56 because @46 brought it up. As I said, the only suspicion I have of the wife is because of *time*, not her condition. Please, don’t put words in my mouth.
My points have been aimed at clarifying what *can* be the emotional reasoning behind a person’s actions when they make a mistake and don’t confront it. I think it’s important to distinguish between inertia out of terror from malicious deception. I can see why others wouldn’t, but I’m laying out my own perspective. Granted, who knows the circumstances of the affair … maybe it was a really long, involved thing. For some reason, it’d be harder for me to come down from a wound like that than from a one-night stand.
I haven’t disagreed that it’d be a hard slog to win her trust back, but I do disagree that he’s some kind of irredeemable sinner (which I’m drawing from the condemnation to “DTMFA”).
I’m reacting to the DTMFA, and leaning a lot more on waiting and thinking, on second chances and the value of remorse, because honestly I don’t see the harm in waiting. It’s not like she can’t divorce him later, or that she’s lost anything morally by letting him try; she still holds the power of veto and rejection in the end.
I mean, at what point do you decide that a person can’t be forgiven? And how do you decide his remorse isn’t genuine?
If these two do divorce, and he meets another woman, should his past weigh on him? He did cheat on and deceive his wife; who’s to say that wouldn’t carry onto his next relationship? After all, the commentators I’m responding to here think this deception is indicative of a liar who can do it again, a man who’s untrustworthy. In fact, he’s probably more likely to do it again with a second woman than his wife, since his wife is now aware of his transgression and can hold it over his head, and a new woman would not unless she was told. The extension here is that if he can’t be trusted in this relationship, why can he be trusted in the next?
@59 ZeldaT: google “pregnancy hormone emotion”
#10: “We as men are biologically programmed to be attracted to young girls…period.”
Um, NO. Men are biologically programmed to be attracted to women who would make good mothers: women who are healthy and strong with wide-ish hips and symmetrical features – all signs that the woman has good DNA to pass on to a child and/or would be able to handle pregnancy and childbirth well. Y’know what else makes a woman good breeding stock? Being old enough to bear a goddamn kid. So while the chicks guys are neurologically wired to pursue may be young, they have already hit puberty.
Getting off to ten year old girls in ballerina outfits is not fucking normal and if you think it is, it’s time for you to go to therapy.
I do not have an addiction to porn, nor am I a heavy consumer of it. But have never felt the need to up the taboo factor in order to get off, and, in my opinion, your boyfriend is a lying sack of shit.
dear crust- it could have been herpes on her, but a blood test would do you no good since most sexually active adults have been exposed to herpes and therefore have positive antibodies. i am a doctor and it is a pet-peeve of mine when colleagues order herpes antibody testing on patients and then i have to deliver the news of a positive test to their patients. it only confuses people who may have antibodies from anut suzy kissing them when they were 8years old. HSV1 and HSV2, the viruses that cause herpes used to be linked to mouth versus genital sores, but these days you can find one or both in both areas.
the best thing to do is quit worrying. if you end up with a vesicular or lesion on your penis, then you can have it popped by a doctor and cultured. don’t bother with a blood test for it.
@65 The difference is that he’s watching actual videos of real 10 year old girls.
I’m into kink, all kinds of kink, I watch a lot of porn (yay teen porn, been watching it since I was a teenager and will never stop liking it, lol), I read a lot of erotica, and one of my interests is age play (as well as rape). I love age play, all kinds of it (old, young, whatever just not babies). My favorites are babysitter scenarios, since I used to do a lot of babysitting as a teenager and often had crushes on the the men and women whose kids I sat for (never their kids). I also used to have crushes on my babysitters when I was a kid. I’ve done age play and had relationships with other age-play kinksters and it seems very common for this to be a “living out childhood fantasies” type of thing. We watch age play porn where ADULTS act out being a little kid and getting molested by the babysitter and like it or don’t like it or whatever. This is a bit graphic but I’m using it as examples of the ways people who are into age-dynamics in sex who aren’t pedophiles actually think and play.
People into escalating their kink factor in a healthy way DO SO WITH ADULTS.
And I’m a 28 year old woman in a stable healthy relationship. And I’ve never once fantasized about touching an actual kid. Ask the folks on fetlife age-play forums, they’ll tell you the same thing I am- it’s a whole ‘nother ballgame than pedophelia. The fact that the man in question wasn’t satisfied with porn of women playing “Spank me Daddy” schoolgirls, is terrifying.
I would run the fuck away from someone who actually beat off to little kids, or saw leering with interest at pre-pubescent kids in real life.
So that’s the difference between kinks and fetishes that are harmless and those that aren’t. We all know that kids of various ages fantasize sexually about adults and other kids, and we like to think of what “could” have happened if we’d indulged in these things or someone had exploited these feelings, but we are also 100% aware that that is sick and psychologically traumatic and are very glad that nothing did happen to us until we were old enough to know better!
If a guy can get off looking at real 10 year old girls on screen, he can get off thinking about real 10 year old girls he sees. Duh. That’s what’s scary.
@Dan, I would also like clarification on the iphone app thing. It’s good to withhold judgement until all the facts are known, but if you did change the letter for advertising purposes, that’s messed up and dishonest. You could easily plug it yourself without having to change somebody’s letter. Please say you didn’t do that (or apologize to the person who wrote in), ‘cuz I love you Man. 🙂
Confidential to Dan: Thank you.
When I was 8- I don’t remember sexual desires.
When I was a teenager I had sexual desires.
As an adult “old” person-I still have sexual desires.
As an adult seeing younger “prime of their life” females,- I sometimes have desires.
Seeing pre-pubescient(sp?)girls sexually desirable? WRONG!
It’s really not ‘dangerous’ advice. He did it ONE time, and that does make the odds pretty damn slim in those circumstances.
to the “born again Christian mother” I’ve consumed porn for almost 20 years, and online porn for a good part of the past 12; while I have pursued many kinks and been turned on to a few new ones (thanks sublime directory) never once have I considered looking at anyone younger than 18. as a porn fan I prefer adult porn: I’ve peeped many things from adult females who wear little girl-type outfits to adult males who wear little girl type outfits but looking at an actual little girl is not intriguing in the least.
he is lying to you and he is a filthy POS. DDTMFA (double dump the mofo already); he is not worth your time, and if he downloads the wrong images he (or whomever pays for the IP address) could end up in jail and labeled a sex offender for life.
My husband and I separated last year when I was five months pregnant (his idea, not mine), our son is now 7 1/2 months old and we’re almost divorced. We both work very hard to get along well enough to ensure that he’ll grow up with as much stability as he can, given the situation. This means being nice to my ex even when I don’t feel like being nice, watching what I say when he’s not around (although our son isn’t old enough to understand, I’m mindful that he will be soon enough), and encouraging the two of them to spend time together even though I don’t particularly want to be around my ex. I expect he feels the same way although we don’t talk about it.
I think it’s possible for divorced parents to be good parents, and to provide stability, it’s just really hard and you have to be willing to work at it.
This pedo is super-creepy and even more importantly, rationalizing and blaming his girlfriend for her completely reasonable concerns. Dan’s advice hit the nail on the head. I can’t know if this guy will escalate to “real” porn or acting out his fantasies; many pedophiles don’t. I have to say, though, that jacking to real ten-year-old girls living ten-year-old lives instead of engaging in age-play is akin to jacking to real pictures of hostages tied up, with real terror in their eyes, instead of bondage porn. It’s gone beyond a kink or fetish.
@ sly: the crucial thing about “gold star” pedophiles is that they ADMIT THEY HAVE A PROBLEM. This guy insists if there is a problem, it is his girlfriend’s. As Dan says, this indicates bad news.
I would never, never let that man near my children. Not in a million years.
Sheldon: “to be recognized as a pedophile under the DSM-IV, he would have to have sexual attraction to both prepubescent males and females.”
Nope, being attracted to both boys and girls is, in fact, not one of the diagnostic criteria set forth in the current version of DSM-IV:
http://www.behavenet.com/capsules/disord…
So far as I know, that element has never been set forth in any edition of the DSM, which makes sense since pedophiles who are sexually attracted to both genders are in the minority.
FYI, the pertinent workgroup has proposed a revision for the upcoming DSM-V (expected to be issued in 2013) that would include “use of pornography depicting prepubescent or pubescent children in preference to other pornography, for a period of six months or longer” as a diagnostic criterion.
http://www.dsm5.org/ProposedRevisions/Pa…
Oops, just saw this other proclamation from Seldon:
“technically he’s undiagnosable with pedophilia vis-a-vis the DSM-IV, since he’s not exclusive, and only seems to like prepubscent [sic – I’m assuming Seldon meant to say the LW’s partner “does not seem to only like prepubescent girls)
This too is erroneous. Most pedophiles find both children and adults to be appealing, and being attracted to just children is not prerequisite of the DSM classifcation.
Seldon, again: “In fact, there’s plenty of evidence linking the decline in rape cases in the last fifty years to an increase in the availability of pornography.”
Care to give us documentation of this? I’m unaware of any studies covering that long a time span or any reputable, well-grounded one where the authors conclude there is a causal relationship between the two.
@77: “I think it’s possible for divorced parents to be good parents, and to provide stability, it’s just really hard and you have to be willing to work at it.”
I agree. I just think it is a bit incongruous specifically in this case to be willing to work really hard at being good divorced parents, while at the same time being unwilling to work really hard at repairing the marriage.
It is entirely unreasonable and unfair to compare thinking about having sex with someone to raping them – there is no issue of consent. Every attractive person who has gone through high school has been violated in that sense. Kids need to be protected from physical and psychological harm, and the best way to do that is to allow pedophiles an outlet for their sexual needs.
I really cannot wrap my mind around the fact that so many of these of these comments think watching a kid dancing is worse than watching someone get tied up, beaten, and fucked while they cry as a way of getting sexual pleasure.
Do you all honestly believe that the first one is more likely to lead to rape than the second?
For the record, I don’t think either one is likely to lead to rape. They are both symptoms of a fetish, not causes.
It sickens me every time I see this group of supposedly open-minded people openly accuse someone of being a bad person because their fetish “squicks” you out. On behalf of the pedophiles I know, none of whom have ever abused a child, you disgust me.
@ 85,
read what 30 typed. It’s not that he’s attracted to 10 year old girls. It’s that he’s deluding himself that he’s not a pedophile. He’s making up excuses, and I can totally see a delusional person like that molest a child and convince himself that the child “liked it” or “consented”, and that there’s nothing wrong about what he did.
I can’t believe that even on Savage Love there are this many people wanting to pitchfork somebody for sexual FANTASIES not actions. Seriously? The person who said “thought-crime” above is exactly right.
There is NO WAY to prove that someone who fantasizes about touching young kids will actually do it anymore than someone who fantasizes about rape will actually rape. No way at all.
Fantasy is different than reality. We have the amazing ability as human beings to CONTROL OUR ACTIONS!!!!
That’s why I’ve never killed anybody! Not because I haven’t thought about it, but because I know it’s wrong. Works the same way with touching people non-consensually – you can think about it and not hurt anyone! It’s amazing!
Sheesh, people!
Or do you somehow think that anybody who has a thought you find disgusting is therefore unable to control themselves and some sort of “other” type of person?
Cause really – saying “Well, I’ve never thought of a child that way so anybody who does must be sick and wrong,” doesn’t quite cut it as proof of anything other than you’re obviously perfect and we should give you a medal for never having an errant thought.
I’ve thought about children “that way.” Not seriously and not as a form of masturbation, but thoughts have crossed my mind. But I also know that it’s wrong to touch children and never would and unless there’s any other reason to suspect him, I imagine the boyfriend in question 1 is the same way.
Real people are one thing – fantasy people are another thing. As long as this porn addict boyfriend knows the difference between real and fantasy people there is no problem.
The problem comes in when people start treating each other like objects – that’s when child molestation and rape occur. It’s not the desire or lack thereof that makes the difference – it’s the ability to emphasize with others or not.
The only danger this guy (might) pose is that of a viewer of real child porn. But even that isn’t something that he’s already done. Again, if he’s told his girlfriend this much (stuff that takes a lot of trust for him to reveal) I doubt he’s hiding anything.
It never fails though – it’s seriously the most taboo thing you can say in the United States. Our country has become paranoid about anything to do with children and sexuality well past the point of sanity (like doctoring up sex ed books from the 70s to cover up any “naked children” drawings) while simultaneously (oddly) presenting infantilized images of females – the most notable being the Britney Spears “Baby one More Time” video – you may as well give her a blankie and send her off to naptime.
What is with this country?
@65:
The point you don’t seem to be able to get through your head is he likes to continually up the ante. He gets bored and has to move on to something more extreme.
He has most likely already looked at age-play. Now it doesn’t do it for him anymore, and he had to move on to something more intense (actual children, even if it isn’t actual porn). Eventually, that will get boring and he will have to move on to something even more intense (actual children in actual porn). Actual child porn is wrong.
This isn’t about rape fantasy, simulated porn, overall statistics, or that other BS. It is about this one guy who is seriously messed up. We’re not talking about an “overall” picture here. Just one guy who has a problem and likes to push the envelope.
Re: The iPhone app thing: Is it possible there were two letters saying similar things? “Inquiring mind(s)” is a pretty standard phrase for those of us who remember the “inquiring minds want to know” advertising from a number of years ago. I’d imagine there’s a big pile of letters/emails asking for follow-up, and Mr. Botched Circumcision probably takes the cake for most “wondered about.” Just a thought.
@ 10
You are totally right-men are biologically programmed to be attracted to 16-19 women. Why? Because biology is all about reproduction, and every part of a 16-19 female body signals optimum reproductive capacity.
And you know what doesn’t signal reproductive capacity? A pre-pubescent girl with undeveloped secondary sexual organs, whose body is too small and too frail to withstand the trauma of child delivery does not signal reproductive capacity. If this man is attracted to 10 year old girls, ‘nature’ isn’t the excuse. Nature wants him to reproduce with the most viable partner, not the one that looks like she hasn’t begun to menstruate yet.
@71
As much as I’m a fan of ageplay, I’ve always felt that the vociferous nature of the ageplay community’s reaction has less to do with “we see a significant and noticeable difference and would like to make it clear” and more to do with “we don’t want to be painted with the same brush”. In fact, that’s kind of the same feeling I get from kinksters in general about supposed pedophilia; the feeling of “see, we’re not that weird; look at those bastards.”
Not for nothing, but most of what I’ve seen from the mainstream ageplay community is better described as “barely illegal” ageplay, more focused on power imbalance in and of itself (spank me daddy, I need to get better grades, babysitter et al), and less on the relative ages themselves. It’s naughty schoolgirls and and bad “little” girls.
So, yes, there’s a difference… Largely because they like different things. But, how does that render one fantasy (‘innocent’ or not-so-innocent “teens” and “almost-adults” vs “innocent” or not-so-innocent preteens). How, though, does that make it inherently healthier?
I guess my point is that chances aren’t good that he’d ever had the opportunity to explore his fantasies with other adults. Christ, do you imagine that if he had gone to his girlfriend and said “I’d like you to pretend to be an innocent, ten-year-old, ballerina”, she’d react in a more positive manner?
I’m not saying that justifies child abuse, nor that his wife should have been willing to accede to that desire (though, one solution to her disgust could simply be “don’t watch those videos anymore, and I’ll be your ballerina”). What I’m saying is that there’s simply nothing inherently less harmless about fantasizing about young (even very young) girls than there is about fantasizing about rape, as long as it never happens.
Yes, one can presume that he’d be able to fantasize about any given girl; much in the same way that I can envision a rape fantasy about girls I see (sometimes it’s even fairly erotic), but that in no way implies that he’ll eventually do something about it. Until you can show me some data actually proving that men who enjoy even wanking to prepubescent girls eventually (and inevitably) commit abuse, I’m going to keep calling bullshit on your claim.
You state “[s]o that’s the difference between kinks and fetishes that are harmless and those that aren’t.” But, the best antecedent for that I can come up with is “I would run the fuck away from someone who actually beat off to little kids”. Here’s the thing, wanking to thoughts of children isn’t itself harmful. You’ve purported it is, but that’s begging the question. It’s a tautology. It’s a harmful fetish because he’s beating off to thoughts of children, and beating off to thoughts of children is harmful because it’s harmful. Show me the harm, if you would
@74
Well, now that you’ve cleared up any concerns I have about the hypocrisy of a group of people (all of us here) who likely engage in behaviors many if not most of the general population consider to be “wrong” proclaiming without analysis or proof the “wrongness” of another person’s similarly unharmful kink, we can end the discussion
Do I need to say I’m being sarcastic as hell?
@78
Ehh… Not really. Actual hostage or rape pornography (like actual child pornography) requires that the victim have been harmed directly. He’s jerking off to young girls in admittedly skimpy clothing. He’s not comparable to someone jerking off to material the creation of which actually hurt anyone.
@79
Yes. Kind of like how to an Evangelical, a “gold star” homosexual would be one who admits his homosexuality is wrong, he has a problem, and seeks help to control and suppress his desires.
The issue I take with Dan is that he’s drawing an artificial line between the pantheon of “totally awesome kinks” and “icky, wrong, and automatically harmful kinks”, even without proof that some significant minority (much less a majority) of pedophiles commit or support actual abuse. I promise you, I can get off on rape fantasies without ever wanting to do it for real. What makes pedophiles automatically less able to distinguish fantasy from reality?
Oh, and the whole “porn makes them less likely to commit rape” thing (see below).
@81, 82
I stand corrected. I’d edit my previous posts to reflect this, and obviously my knowledge of psychology (based solely on clearly outdated information) wasn’t, and isn’t, complete. Mea culpa
@83
Sure. A quick googling brings up:
http://anthonydamato.law.northwestern.ed…
Yes, we’re gonna have issues here with confounding variables (all statistics work does), but it does paint a compelling picture.
http://www.slate.com/id/2152487
http://books.google.com/books?id=SbY2Mks…
(long-assed link to a google book)
http://www.hawaii.edu/PCSS/biblio/articl…
… Can I stop now?
Yes, it’s all correlative, but in trying to control confounding variables, there’s still a marked difference. I’m not confident in calling it a truly causal relationship (statistics rarely show cause, just correlation or lack thereof, but… Yeah.
http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/12/wh…
Just ’cause Neil Gaiman is so awesome.
@86
So… It’s a prospective crime you object to. Okay. And it’s the fact that he doesn’t seem to accept there’s something inherently wrong with his behavior, fair enough.
Of course, he’s also been assailed as being sick, twisted, wrong, and disgusting by his partner, and probably was very defensive when he made his comments. We don’t know the actual etiology or psychology of his kink, so we have a dearth of information.
I find it distasteful to shove an explanation and entire psychological profile down someone’s throat based on third-hand information and personal assumptions.
@88
I enjoy that we can treat the “upping the ante” argument sort of like Schrodinger’s cat. If it’s useful for his detractors to dismiss it to prove he’s a sick bastard (“he just likes kiddie porn, the escalation stuff is crap”), you do that. If it’s useful to assert he *will* escalate (“eventually that will get boring and he will have to more on to something even more intense (actual children in actual porn)”), you do that. It’s fantastic; escalation is both fallacious and nothing more than a paltry defense of his action… And it’s proof positive he’ll eventually do something worse.
We have no evidence that he’s actually escalated (just the third-hand hearsay, and our own suspicions), so there’s no reason to assume he’s not simply someone who enjoys young girls in skimpy outfits. We simply have no knowledge of actual envelope pushing.
I do agree with Dan that the “upping the ante” excuse is retarded, and I don’t believe for a second that he’s just escalating to escalate. I think he’s a pedophile, but I have no reason to demonize him for that alone, nor any proof he will eventually do something with harms (directly or indirectly) any children.
@90
Oh come on. If biology is all about reproduction, homosexuality is a psychological illness, and sodomy is deviance.
Bullshit, pure bullshit.
Sexuality is much more varied and splendorous, and people can enjoy fantasies and kinks far removed from the desire to procreate directly. Christ, how can you have read Dan’s column for very long and conclude that “sexuality is all about dick-in-vagina-making-babies humping”?
#89 (Canuck):
Maybe more than one person asked the same question, and certainly “Inquiring Mind” is not a unique sign-off,but the rest of the letter is mine, verbatim.
I’d like Dan to comment on this.
Initially, I was more amused; I put it in the same category as the “what is Dan’s true age” thing–either you know he’s being snarky or you don’t, but if you know it’s a put-on, you don’t bother to get your panties in a twist taking him to task for the lie.
I just resented my letter being manipulated, particularly as it made me sound like a sycophantic Apple fan.
But now I’m getting annoyed that people are questioning my truthfulness and that Dan hasn’t admitted the distortion of the letter to include a plug for a product? service? (what category does an app fall into?) that he or his newspaper is presumably making money from. Not to mention the fact that I really don’t want to be used as a shill for Apple.
Maybe it was a joke, Dan, or it seemed harmless, but it was wrong and it compromises your journalistic integrity. So ovary up and admit your error already.
Anyone who can get it up (or get wet) while looking at a prepubescent child is a sick fuck and that he’s trying to put this off as his partner’s being a prude is reprehensible.
DTMFA and contact the authorities because what he’s doing is beyond wrong and you have it in your power to protect his future victims by forcing him to face an investigation that will doubtless prove to be a HUGE reality check and will bring to light anything he’s been doing on-line that he’s managed to keep hidden from you.
@94
You want this woman to try to coerce the police into investigating lawful behavior by a citizen… Because you think that the mindset behind it is wrong?
Dump him, fine (though, please lay off the invective, since there are many people who would call Dan (and most everyone else here) “sick fucks and trying to put this off as society being prudish is reprehensible”), but trying to get the authorities involved is simply wrong. We don’t punish people for the off chance that they’ll do something wrong, that’s not how society functions.
#95, if you’re going to quote me, please do it accurately and there is not an “off chance” that this asshole will cross the line- there’s a decent chance that he’s already done so and an even better chance that if he has not yet, he will. That he’s whacking off to images of kids and *trying to justify it* is plenty of probable cause.
There is a big, bright, widely drawn line here- I’m all for whatever floats the boat (or hoists the sack) of *consenting adults* whether it’s played out in their heads or with happily willing others but when a person starts needing to look at *children* to get off, they’ve jumped off the consenting adult bandwagon.
@10 – you do know what that statement about the grass and the mud mean, right? How is that helping your point in any way at all? Ick.
@95
I agree with you in that I think it’s a bogus argument to say that fantasizing about children inevitably and invariably leads to the the abuse of children. Additionally,I also agree that it’s silly to assume watching some type of taboo porn directly follows the seeking out more extreme versions of taboo porn. In some some cases it may be true and others not at all. MY key worry at least is that, IN THIS PARTICULAR CASE, the guy actually said (unless she is lying about what he said), that For HIM, this escalation IS NATURAL. So, I think that if HE HIMSELF considers this escalation only natural, then, I think, that it it’s legitimate to be concerned that he could actually cross the line into watching child porn, and even touching children.
I think most people here, considering the severity of a crime like that committed on a defenseless child, would much rather err on the side of “guilty until proven innocent” rather than the “innocent until proven guilty” one, that although in my opinion is understandable, it’s also unjustifiable and very unfair.
@96
I quoted you pretty accurately. The fact that your statement “he’s a sick fuck, ect.” is in perfect alignment with what any group of mainstream society might say about any aberrant kink (or even some of the more normal ones) doesn’t make it a misquotation, just an unfortunate reality of your high horse. If the best argument against his fetish is only the same one someone who doesn’t like feet might use against a foot fetishist boyfriend, your argument loses credibility in my eyes.
You’ve shown no evidence beyond bare assertion that simple fantasy is proof of likelihood of engaging in illegal, illicit, or harmful behavior. I defy that statement, and ask you to provide evidence of a scientifically valid nature to support it.
The line is a bit fuzzier than you’d like to imply. Is someone who enjoys voyeurism automatically in the same category of “jumping off the consenting adult bandwagon”? What about people who like seeing naked pictures spitefully released by scorned exes? Certainly in neither case did the object of sexual desire consent to be wanked over?
Perhaps what you object to is that he’s wanking to children. Okay, that’s a bit icky, but that doesn’t mean it’s harmful. Unless he’s actually harming or supporting the harm of a child (which also excludes fake child pornography), there’s nothing inherently harmful or wrong about what he’s doing.
You have no evidence for the assertion that there is anything more than an off-chance that he commits a crime related to his fantasies. Simply repeating it (as his detractors here have been wont to do) doesn’t actually influence the underlying reality. Nothing I’ve seen in studies of either rapists, pedophiles, or society suggests that access to non-harmful pornographic (or non-pornographic) wank material actually induces people to act on their fantasies, and everything I’ve seen suggests it does the opposite.
@31 … While it’s entirely possible that CHAD’s wife is pregnant–I’ve heard of that kind of thing happening with married folks … It’s not so strange to imagine a woman pushing the pregnancy button because she wanted to get her hooks into her ex–to get back at him, or maybe to get him back.
Last year I broke up with a woman who told me a month later she thought she was pregnant. She had missed her period and was worried and wanted to let me know. Could I please bring over a pregnancy test so she could find out …?
She have taken a home pregnancy test before calling me, couldn’t she? Definitely. She could have gone to the doctor for a more conclusive pregnancy test if the home pregnancy test showed positive, right? Easily. But she didn’t. What she wanted was attention from me, and to drag me back into her life.
Here’s the kicker … I had gotten a vasectomy eight years earlier and she still tried to pull the pregnancy trick. I had my urologist test a sperm sample faster than I heard back from her of the negative result of her test.
@93
I have no trouble at all believing that Dan Savage did this. He says that he believes in honesty as the best course but there is a long (if intermittent) history of cases where he violates this principle. Check out his advice on the first letter of this column:
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Savag…
Egregious, teenage boy kind of stuff. Manipulating the truth (otherwise know as lying) for personal gain is not outside of Dan’s repertoire. Having said that, I believe the column does great good in the world. I read Savage Love because the letters are interesting (and sometimes hilarious)and because the comments posted by readers sometimes make me think about things in new ways. Dan’s actual advice is sometimes right on, sometimes not. He did recant his advice in the above column two weeks later.
Seldon@91 – I anticipated you’d produce a reference to the 6-page Anthony D’Amato article, but neither it nor the other ones cited back up your original claim: they didn’t analyze 50 years worth of stats, and as you yourself now acknowledge, they don’t establish a causal link. I’ve not parsed Todd Kendall’s 50+ page paper (cited in the Slate article), but D’Amato’s piece suffers from its skimpiness & some selective “cherry-picking”: e.g., Utah is conveniently omitted from D’Amato’s Table 2, leaving the reader with the erroneous impression that Alaska was the only anamoly; he presents his stats in a vacuum, doesn’t acknowledge that violent crime rates in general have fallen off nation-wide. Lastly, none of these papers has sussed out ‘net porn viewing in particular; they all rely on internet access in general. With that as the basis for comparison, seems likely that someone of a different mindset could draw no less of a “correlation” between the drop in the rape index to the rise in traffic to conservative web sites.
Anyhoo, I agree that one’s choice of porn is not a surefire predictor of conduct; I’m aware that not all child molesters are pedophiles; and so far as I know, there is no reliable data on how what percentage of individuals have pedophilic fantasies and yet never look at child pornography, have never sought gratification from children in real life. That said, I’d walk away from this guy.
Sorry about that, nocutename. I’ve been asked to plug the ap whenever I can, and when I read your letter I assumed that you were going through the archives on the ap, as the archives are a big aspect of the ap, and all the letters I’ve received about people cruising around the archives since the ap came out mentioned the ap. So I tossed that in there figuring you were using the ap too, like everyone else, and didn’t really see the harm in it, and thinking it might get the ap people to leave me alone for a week or two.
Should’ve put it in my response, in retrospect, and that would’ve been just as easy. Didn’t mean to sandpaper your Apple-hating nerves. Would’ve copped to it sooner, but don’t always get around to reading the comments.
Thanks, Dan.
Thanks, Dan. I appreciate the confession.
oops–sorry for the double post.
Ah, nocutename, sorry (I’m Canadian, we say that A LOT), I assumed after the fiasco last week, it had to be some sort of glitch. What really disturbs me is the admission that Dan “doesn’t always read the comments.” I’m sorry…what? Here we’re pushing back the barriers of blogian discourse, and you’re not reading them? My day simply isn’t complete until I’ve read about Gloomy Gus’s soccer crush, or Fnarf’s latest Will put-down…all I can say is, you’re missing out BIG time, buddy. Hope you can sleep at night….
Canuck, it’s okay. I love the way you Canadians pronounce “sorry” I used to count the number of times Martha Burns said it on “Slings and Arrows.”
I don’t know though. Given the slog that reading slog threads can be, I don’t really blame Dan for not reading it all the time.
I’m just glad that my honor and virtue have been restored.
#3: Considering how fast the wife checked out of the marriage, it sounds to me like she’s using the husband’s historical affair as a “get out of jail free” card, to leave a marriage she wants to leave anyway, and get to dump the entire blame on her no-good SOB husband. Think of the drama, think of the endless, endless conversations with her women friends about how men are such dogs! She’s lovin’ it…
@108 I LOVE Slings & Arrows!! Own the DVDs and have watched them 3x each. You must have amaaazing taste…
(I haven’t seen my honour OR virtue for years, glad you got your back at least… 🙂
Whatever you think of a guy masturbating to videos of little girls (and if you think it’s ‘biology,’ of me a favor and stay far from the kiddie pool), his girlfriend gets to dump his ass and not feel ashamed, she gets to tell him their tastes are totally incompatible, and she gets to tell him to get help without feeling like a judgmental bitch (though she will likely hear those words if she hasn’t already).
While I think Dan’s response to ‘Can’t Handle A Divorce’ was spot on, I’m glad at least a few people are recognizing that while this guy has had years to have his fun, feel guilt, come to terms and recommit himself (or whatever) it’s basically a fresh offense to her. She should get at least as long as he did to get over it, and she wasn’t even the one who cheated.
@110: yes, “Slings and Arrows” is the best. I developed a huge crush on virtually every member of the cast. Loved it when they “rebranded” themselves.
And yes, I *do* have amazing taste. Thanks for being so astute.
I’d much rather be talking about mini series featuring a dysfunctional Shakespearean theater company than thinking about the sad-sack souls in this week’s column.
@112 I suppose I should admit to a rather long-running Paul Gross crush, but I get the feeling he’s a bit of an egomaniac (which is a huge surprise for an actor…), which has tempered my feelings of late. Slings & Arrows is where I first heard my all-purpose catch-phrase, “Well thank the little baby Jesus!” I read somewhere they only did the 9 episodes in total because they were following the format of Faulty Towers.
Ra Ra Ah Ah Ah, Roma, Ro-Ma Ma, Ga Ga Ooh La La!
It’s scary that HSITIMBACM had to actually get Dan’s take on the situation before being certain there was something amiss. The guy is jerking off to pics of little girls. That’s not an alarm bell, that’s a seven alarm fire.
Interestingly, one of the UK killers of James Bulger (you probably remember the case from 1993, two boys lured a younger boy toddler to a railway where they tortured and killed him) has recently been jailed on child pr0n charges.
“In a statement to police in March this year, Venables said he considered his reaction to child pornography as “breaking the last taboo”. But, asked about a video involving an eight-year-old girl, he said he had “no intention” of having sex with a girl of that age.”
#25 Well said. Amen.
Something leaves me with a bad sense about CHAD’s position, even though I feel no sympathy for the man. Nevertheless, his wife treats his infidelity, combined with her sudden pregnancy, as a reason to attempt to strip him of his freedom, and become “house-boy” in everything but name in her house.
They ought to get divorced; the kid will, should mom cease being such a manipulative cow, just fine. If it is actually his kid he can pay child support, if not, then he should not. If she doesn’t want to raise a child alone she should abort. It is utterly distasteful and insincere to raise a child under the mere appearance and pretense of happiness and stability, barely covering a mountain of mutual distrust and loathing. It is more abusive for the child to be raised in that sort of environment, and think that sort of world normal, than to be able to live a less immediately stable, but more honest youth.
People lose all sense and reason when a child becomes involved; the little brats are tougher than people seem to imply; for once don’t “think of the children.” So many little and great evils are done everyday in the name of the children–an excuse to justify the bigoted biases of many an unworthy parent.
As one who has worked with sex offenders for several years, I definitely advocate for a reduction in hysteria toward pedophilia in the sense that a societal attitude aimed at seeking understanding rather than persecution would make it more likely that pre-hands-on pedophiles would seek treatment rather than victims.
That said, the ballerina viewer in question meets all the criteria to be diagnosed as one with pedophilia, unless he has had sexual urges toward children for fewer than six months. (And in response to an earlier comment, all child molesters ARE persons with pedophilia by definition–unless maybe there was some sort of bizarre situation where a person was using a child for sexual gratification while fantasizing about an adult). Persons with pedophilia can be attracted to male children, female children, or both. They can be attracted to children AND to more age-appropriate partners–hence the ability of many pedophiles to maintain a marriage while also offending against children. Persons with pedophilia may also draw a line at incestuous pedophilia–i.e., they may be willing to only molest children other than their own, or they may not draw that line. In addition, because pedophilia is often ego-syntonic, persons with pedophilia often feel they are quite alright in their fantasizing/behavior–and will use all manner of justifications for it–including ideas that children are being helped/satisfied/educated by being sexually exploited.
There are a few things that would be good to clarify, like whether or not the ballerina viewer has “access” to children.
I am a bit concerned about the more legalistic approach to the situation taken by seldon2639 and others who view masturbation to images of children as harmless fantasy. At the very least, it can be viewed as conditioning oneself toward the use of children as sexual objects, which is not harmless unless one takes the view that the human mind can feed itself on infinite amounts of garbage and suffer no ill effects. One might also note that seldon2639’s repeated invocations of the connection between Japan’s increase in access to porn and the reduction in rape there does not mean that Japan’s increased access to porn has actually done anything to improve healthy sexual behavior/relationships in Japan–only coincided with a reduction in some of the most violent sexual behaviors.
In addition, persons with pedophilia engage in increased deviant fantasizing during periods when they are actually offending. The fantasizing itself does not mean that a person WILL engage in hands-on offenses, but those who commit hands-on offenses do not do it without fantasizing about it.
There are numerous other bits and pieces in the comments that would be useful to address, but I will leave it at that for now.
Hand Sanitizers do not work against C. diff (Clostridium difficile) the hospital acquired infection that causes severe diarrhea.
HSITIMBACM’s partner is clearly trying to put her on the defensive by saying that she’s turned into her born-again mother and calling her a prude. Yet another red flag in a long, waving line of them
Don’t self-proclaimed addicts oftentimes get help? I find it interesting that someone can get to the point of fully admitting their problem, but be unwilling to get help for it. To me, it sounds like this dude it conveniently replacing one serious problem with another, less offensive one.
As for the divorce… There’s a new line of thought (as least according to my childhood psych prof from a couple years ago) that says if the parents can continue to deal with each other, it’s more beneficial to stay married due to the financial benefits of a combined household and the benefits of having two people in the household able to watch the child. I’m not sure whether or not I believe that, but it’s an interesting tidbit. Either way, I think therapy is the way to go.
Please remember that child pornography (any that show sex acts) is not fantasy – it is crime scene evidence. It’s a record of ACTUAL abuse.
If the logic is that he keeps having to up the ante, chances are he’ll eventually cross that line.
@119: thank you so much for sharing your professional expertise! Following up on your comments re: Japan, here’s a summary of surveys revealing the infrequency of [heterosexual] sex in Japan — e.g., the least of any of the 45 countries included in Durex’s survey — and the low level of satisfaction:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/03/1…
P.S. I realize now it would have been more precise of me to say that not every act of sexual abuse perpetrated against a child is by a pedophile, rather than “not all child molesters are pedophiles.” I’m thinking of a case that crossed my desk a couple of years ago where the non-penile rape and sodomy of a little girl — which her mother was forced to watch — was part of the torture of the mother.
@119
I’ve already done a mea culpa on my out-of-date psychological information. You’re beating a dead horse on this one. That’s fine, but it doesn’t further the discussion.
I will admit that part of it (for me) is that I find it difficult to admonish someone for lawful behavior. That said, even if this weren’t a question of the philosophy of law, and rather one purely of moral certitude, I find nothing inherently dangerous or destructive about a person masturbating to images of children (so long as no children were harmed) and even fantasizing about harming children. Nothing about that behavior can be shown in and of itself to cause molestation of real children, or the consumption of real child pornography.
That’s the funny thing about correlation in statistics: it cuts both ways.
“At the very least, it can be viewed as conditioning oneself toward the use of children as sexual objects, which is not harmless unless one takes the view that the human mind can feed itself on infinite amounts of garbage and suffer no ill effects”
Here’s the problem. The same issue you take with my invoking “coincidence” without proving cause is true here. You’ve shown no evidence (aside from a logical chain of events, which as posteriori reasoning leaves as much to be desired as my logic) which indicates that the availability of fake child pornography, or even wanking to fantasies and rather innocuous pictures, actually does foment a desire to commit the real act.
Either no assertions of correlation are valid (neither of our points are inherently true) or both are. To try to argue “well, it’s pure coincidence that Japan has some of the highest porn (and fake child porn) consumption rates, and lowest actual abuse rates”, and at the same time “but, of course, even though all I can show is that all eventual abusers at some point consumed non-illegal child-related fantasies, it’s not just coincidental” is, simply, bullshit.
There’s just as easy an explanation for your correlation: that eventual abusers would enjoy the same fantasies as non-abusers, and would have abused either way. Sure, it also does away with my “porn=less rape” argument, but I’ll take the hit if it means we’ll dispel both sides of things which prove not a lick of causality.
All serial killers also at some point probably ate bread. That doesn’t mean bread makes you (or even encourages) you to commit killings. I only ask that you apply the same standard of evidence to my claims as yours.
@122
Yeah, I don’t buy he’s a porn addict. It’s a false flag, a diversion.
@124
I hope not to sound petulant when I express some reluctance to take unfounded claims made by someone on a message board (especially those implying that access to extreme porn or fantasies does “ill effects” to a person), no matter what their claimed qualifications.
Forgive me, but in my business the facts speak for themselves. If the evidence suggested a high propensity of all those who fantasize about children to commit child abuse, that’d be one thing. The fact that all child abusers have fantasized about it is no more proof that fantasy caused the action than saying “because all premeditated murderers fantasize about it, all/most/many people who fantasize about murder will eventually follow through”.
Yes, Japan is terribly sexually repressed, and 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.
If there is some evidence of the inherent harm (either to the consumer in the form of corruption and increased propensity to commit crimes or to the object viewed in the form of… Anything) which shows there is a direct and causal link between consumption of material to satiate fantasies of children, I’m eager to see it.
If there exists (as I suspect there does) no evidence which does not fall into the trap laid by your own “that’s just correlation/coincidence” dismissal of my argument, then please stop asserting the “fact” that it is not harmless.
CRUST, wtf. I mean, FFS, do you have to be a Klingon to know what a screwdriver wound looks like?? Even if you’ve never had one, if you had at least SEEN one (ever) you would **KNOW** it cannot look anything like a herpes scab.
Herpes would need an excuse like, “um, I fell off a customer’s motorcycle last week.” Or, “I got my face caught in a belt-sander…” Screwdriver wound????? I’m calling BS on this one. If you honestly don’t know the difference, be safe. Check it up.
It took me 2 hours to post on this site, the registration process was too entertaining, is that normal? Anyhoo, I wanted to say this:
“Screwdriver wound???” If you’ve ever seen one, you’d know it couldn’t possibly be a cover story for herpes, they don’t look at all alike! FFS! Do you have to be a Klingon to know what a screwdriver wound looks like?? Herpes would need an excuse like, “I fell off a John’s motorcycle last week” or, “I got my face caught in a belt-sander…” Screwdriver-wound??? I’m calling BS on this one.
If CRUST doesn’t know beforehand, he should check-up. Just a clue.
I apolagize for the repeat. Browser didn’t show first post, yaddayadda. You can can yaddayadda browser issues. Thats allowed.
Wow, to the guy worried about std’s I would suggest you take a course and actually educate yourself about your possibilities of contracting anything. Probably more so because you use hookers. I mean really?, Think about it……
@125 (and previous posts by same author)– I find it funny that you mock my “claimed qualifications” while asserting that “in my business the facts speak for themselves” as if facts were irrelevant in other fields (whatever your “business” is). Your invocation of outdated information indicates that your reliance on facts is rather tenuous, and your legalistic posturing would only work with those who are equally ignorant about the field of sexual abuse and sex offender treatment.
Let me remind Seldon2639 that you were the one who initially asserted that Japan is “all the evidence you need” to demonstrate that there is no escalation from one form of porn to more extreme forms of porn or to action, although you did not make it even remotely clear how any information on Japan proves such. I will state (but cannot “prove” in this forum) that I have “interviewed” numerous consumers of child pornography and persons with pedophilia who invoked the escalation argument in connection to their behavior, much as the ballerina viewer did.
The fact of the matter is that child molesters fantasize about having sex with children before they engage in the actual behavior.
The fact is that having sexual fantasies about children, especially in the context described in this letter, qualifies one under diagnostic criteria as a person with pedophilia–although that could be debated based on a few particulars–such as the previously mentioned duration of the behavior.
The fact is that hands-on pedophiles justify their behavior as harmless or even helpful to the victims.
Your bread = serial killings argument is a red herring. A much higher percentage of those who masturbate to images of children commit acts of hands-on pedophilia than the percentage of those who eat bread commit acts of murder, let alone serial murder. I can’t imagine anybody would think there is a need to provide statistics to prove this.
What I objected to was your legalistic view of things. I did not claim causality. Not everybody who engages in sexual fantasizing about children will commit a hands-on offense, but everyone who fantasizes about children on a regular basis is a person with pedophilia by definition.
I said nothing about “fake” child pornography (or child pornography at all). Child pornography involving sexual acts, as pointed out by 123, is illegal due to the fact that it involves an actual crime committed against a child. Persons with pedophilia routinely justify their use of child pornography by claiming that it does not involve an actual hands-on offense by themselves–usually failing to recognize the offense committed by others in the creation of the pornography, and the fact that those people profit by the purchase/exchange of the material.
Again, my objection was to the legalistic view that nothing illegal was being done by the ballerina-viewer. What he is doing as described in the letter is not illegal, but it is pedophilic. What he is doing may not lead to a hands-on offense, or even to obtaining actual child pornography, but it is pedophilic.
Was I being moralistic or clinical? The diagnostic criteria for psychological issues like pedophilia are clinically correlated to a set of attitudes and behaviors, many of which are outlined in the letter–and which do not exist in the general population.
Did I assert a causal connection between the ballerina viewer’s behavior and actual hands-on offenses? No. Did I assert a connection between actual hands-on offenses and fantasizing about children? Yes, because the body of research on the topic confirms that people who engage in hands-on pedophilic acts do not do so in the absence of fantasizing about it beforehand; and people who engage in hands-on pedophilic acts do not do so in the absence of justifications for their behavior, all of which tend to fit in a fairly narrow spectrum of justifications–again, fitting the kinds of justifications the ballerina-viewer made.
Anybody with a passing understanding of classical and/or operant conditioning will understand that orgasm is a powerful reinforcer of any behavior or thought pattern that leads to said orgasm. For instance, jerk off to images of flowers for long enough, and one will have a difficult time walking through a tulip field without getting a hard-on. Jerk off to images of children long enough and one will have a hard time not viewing “attractive” children as sexual objects.
I guess the question for Seldon2639 is, “Do you support the practice of masturbating to images of children?” Or perhaps, “With the understanding that all of those who commit acts of hands-on pedophila fantasize about engaging in sexual acts with children, is fantasizing sexually about children truly harmless?”
People who engage in the kind of behavior that the ballerina-viewer is engaging in may not end up committing a hands-on offense, but all of those who commit a hands-on offense against a child first engage in a form of sexual fantasizing like those in which the ballerina-viewer is engaging.
@130: you’re a classic case of the prosecutor’s fallacy: all child molesters fantasize about having sex with children before they molest; therefore everyone who fantasizes about children will molest children. Your closing point makes this clear. I’ll bet that nearly every (US) child molester also drank milk as a child, so does that make drinking milk as a child a risk factor for being a molester?
The relevant question is what proportion of all people who fantasize about sex with children actually molest children? This is obviously unknowable, but my guess is that it’s a very small proportion, many people fantasize about having sex with children (see: age play). Of course they don’t talk about it as such — look at this forum to see what happens when people admit even fantasizing about really taboo subjects.
BTW, what is age play if not fantasizing about having sex with children? Yet we don’t get our knickers in a twist when someone asks her partner to bang her wearing a Little League uniform.
what is age play if not fantasizing about having sex with children? Yet we don’t get our knickers in a twist when someone asks her partner to bang her wearing a Little League uniform.
Knowing that there’s a consenting adult under the uniform does make a difference.
I mean, I dunno. Maybe some people do (or want to do) ageplay where their partner truly looks and acts prepubescent. Personally, I’m in a weird in-between stage where there are aspects of the kid thing I like and aspects I don’t.
Example: I used to be play-partners with a spanking fetishist. It was totally fun being the “babysitter” and spanking his naughty ass, but we always, always pretended that he was at least fifteen (which is technically too old to be babysat, but whatever). Anything younger than that would’ve killed any sexiness to the scene. He showed me some of his favourite porn; most of it showed women spanking grown men who wore cowboy footie pajamas and flailed their arms and legs around like babies. ACK – instant buzzkill.
I’m attracted to innocence, helplessness, and naivete; I’m not attracted to bodies that haven’t hit puberty yet. Hence the age play. And I think it’s like that for a lot of people.
huh
@130
The hallmark of a decent discussion is usually when both sides are able to admit when they’ve been shown to be lacking in evidential backing. I admitted I was wrong about the DSM-IV, continuing to beat that horse is simply petulant.
I should have been more specific about why Japan is evidence (if not proof) of the wrongness of the “escalation” argument. If it were true, not only would you expect there to be far more people in Japan committing sexual abuse against children (there aren’t), and you’d also expect that there would be an increasing deviance to the porn industry there, which I have no knowledge of.
“The fact of the matter is that child molesters fantasize about having sex with children before they engage in the actual behavior.”
The fact of the matter is that murderers fantasize about murder before they engage in the actual behavior. Now, show that the fantasy caused the action, and be willing to cast aspersions on anyone who’s ever fantasized about rape or murder (and imply they’ll eventually do it). Oh, not willing to go that far? What’s the distinction?
“The fact is that having sexual fantasies about children, especially in the context described in this letter, qualifies one under diagnostic criteria as a person with pedophilia–although that could be debated based on a few particulars–such as the previously mentioned duration of the behavior.”
Yeah, but this is where I have to take a step away from the psychological community, and remember that their classification of pedophilia as being quite so far-reaching (both the act and the fantasy are considered to be comparable); and then remember that they also classified homosexuality as a sexual disorder. Yeah… Somehow I’m not persuaded that “fantasizing about underage people” is any more a disorder than “fantasizing about rape”
“The fact is that hands-on pedophiles justify their behavior as harmless or even helpful to the victims.”
Again, you’re making the fallacy of over-generalization. Yes, all red-heads are people, but not all people are red-heads. All hands-on pedophiles justify their behavior, but not all pedophiles (a word which should be returned to its rightful place as only meaning the kink and fantasy) who justify their behaviors will be hands-on. You imply otherwise. If I misinterpreted, I apologize.
“Your bread = serial killings argument is a red herring. A much higher percentage of those who masturbate to images of children commit acts of hands-on pedophilia than the percentage of those who eat bread commit acts of murder, let alone serial murder. I can’t imagine anybody would think there is a need to provide statistics to prove this.”
But you neither argue nor prove that a significant percentage of those who wank to child-related fantasies actually do it. You’re pushing the “everyone who does commit hands-on pedophilia fantasizes”. On that standard of evidence (and fallacious reasoning), the logic that all serial killers ate white bread implies (again by your logic) that white bread is far from wholesome.
“Was I being moralistic or clinical? The diagnostic criteria for psychological issues like pedophilia are clinically correlated to a set of attitudes and behaviors, many of which are outlined in the letter–and which do not exist in the general population.”
Which, again, is the same which could be said for homosexuality thirty years ago. The fact that something is seen as a psychological issue seems more a matter of current morality and “squick factor” than whether the fantasy itself is “bad”.
“Did I assert a causal connection between the ballerina viewer’s behavior and actual hands-on offenses? No”
Really, I think someone might disagree with you there… You:
“At the very least, it can be viewed as conditioning oneself toward the use of children as sexual objects, which is not harmless unless one takes the view that the human mind can feed itself on infinite amounts of garbage and suffer no ill effects”
“again, fitting the kinds of justifications the ballerina-viewer made.”
I’ll actually give you that. The ballerina-viewer was not giving good explanations for his behavior, but I also doubt that they’re his real reasons (“I just like it” is harder to justify to a girlfriend, I’d wager). We have no idea what his real rationale is, and in absence of that, diagnosing (itself tricky business, given the spotty record of the psychological community going back and saying “oops, that’s totally not a disorder”) is a crapshoot.
“For instance, jerk off to images of flowers for long enough, and one will have a difficult time walking through a tulip field without getting a hard-on. Jerk off to images of children long enough and one will have a hard time not viewing “attractive” children as sexual objects.”
Anyone with knowledge of classical or operant conditioning will also know that neither is considered to be wholly accurate in describing human behavior, and that (in this case) neither fits the psychological definition. To wit: if pedophilia is a learned behavior, there should be no pedophiles. If it isn’t a learned behavior, there’s simply no reason to believe it can be fomented further by orgasm.
“Do you support the practice of masturbating to images of children?”
It’s not my bag, but since I also don’t get people masturbating to scat or watersports, my standard is (and will always be): if it didn’t violate a law, or harm someone, to make; have fun.
“With the understanding that all of those who commit acts of hands-on pedophila fantasize about engaging in sexual acts with children, is fantasizing sexually about children truly harmless?”
Absolutely it’s harmless. Unless someone was harmed in the making, it (at best) doesn’t influence the behavioral patterns (a rapist is gonna rape), or actually provided an outlet for those fantasies to be fulfilled without harm to children.
I’ll ask your question with the bread analogy, without changing anything but the appropriate nouns, and tell me if it seems reasonable:
“With the understanding that all of those who commit acts of [serial killing] [eat white bread], is [eating white bread] truly harmless?”
Doesn’t sound reasonable, huh?
@132
The specific age-range one is attracted to for age-play varies. Some people enjoy the ephebophila (teens), some the pedophilia (preteens/prepubescent) some enjoy nepiphilia (toddlers). None are inherently icky in my mind, because unless someone directly harms a child, it’s all fair game to get ones rocks off.
When it comes to the guy who gets off on watching little girls in ballerina costumes, I think it’s important to distinguish between two groups of commenters – the ones who have merely said that the woman should dump him, and the ones who are getting on a high horse and saying things like, “Of course he has actual child porn on his computer, and of course he’ll eventually molest a child!” and, “Obviously he’s a bad person, he’s turned on by LITTLE GIRLS!!!!!!!”
Anyone who thinks that having fantasies about children automatically makes a person evil – regardless of whether the person acts on those fantasies – needs to wake the fuck up. Those who go around spouting this hatred will inevitably claim that their hatred of pedophiles is connected to the compassion they have for molested children – yet they’re actually showing zero compassion for a considerable percentage of molested children. (It’s an unfortunate reality that a significant number of those child molestation victims will go on to have sexual fantasies about children when they’re adults. Sames goes with plenty of adults who weren’t molested as children. None of those people make a choice to have those fantasies, any more than any of us can choose to be turned on or turned off by something.)
Obviously that’s not an excuse for the actions of pedophiles who choose to act on their desires. But there’s no reason to think that all of them act on their desires. We should be grateful to those that don’t, rather than claiming they’re all scum because of the fantasies that they can’t help having.
However, that said…none of that changes the fact that dumping this guy is good advice.
I’m not saying that she should dump him because he’s a bad person for having fantasies about little girls, or that he’s a bad person for masturbating to non-pornographic videos of ballet recitals. It’s just that she’s better off without a man who’s turned on by pre-pubescents yet argues that he doesn’t have a problem. He does, and his refusal to recognize it is also a problem.
Unlike rape fantasies, fantasies about pre-pubescent children are a marker of sexual dysfunction. That’s not because fantasizing about any act is morally better or worse than fantasizing about any other act. It’s just a reality of human psychology that fantasies about pre-pubescent children indicate severe psychosexual problems – or at least that’s what the overwhelming majority of the mental health field will tell you.
If the ballerina-watcher was willing to get help, I wouldn’t advise his girlfriend to dump him immediately…but that’s not what’s going on. He’s blaming it on the supposedly natural escalation that comes with porn-viewing. That’s a horrible, horrible sign. It may be that he was caught off guard, and he’s capable of recognizing that he has a problem. Perhaps his girlfriend should advise him to seek counseling, instead of just dumping him flat-out.
The specific age-range one is attracted to for age-play varies.
No, I know. My point was that some of us engage in age play because we want someone who’s half-adult and half-kid, as opposed to totally and completely pretending the other person is a minor (or truly wanting a minor but settling for the next best thing).
Someone upthread had said that people who do age play basically want to fuck little kids but refrain; I felt the need to make a distinction.
@ Seldon 2639—I can and do admit to those instances where there is a lack of evidential backing for my assertions, and where there are logical errors (give me a minute). However, in most instances, you have had to resort to misrepresenting my comments in order to refute them. You insist on saying I am asserting a causal link between masturbating to images of children and committing hands-on offenses, which I have not done. If there is misunderstanding around this, or my examples haven’t been clear enough, or lacked a concrete enough form of logic, I apologize. Causal links are extremely rare if not non-existent in psychology.
I have been referring back to the DSM-IV TR to try to illustrate what I am saying with what is used as the current standard in the field. FYI—the DSM is constantly undergoing revision, and many of the paraphilias in the existing edition will be eliminated or modified, as well as others being added, when the next edition comes out within the next few years. It may be helpful to remember that psychology is a relatively young discipline, but like any form of science, pursues efforts to correct errors, and update information to reflect the most current understanding. Your suggestion that the past inclusion of homosexuality as a disorder somehow negates the validity of diagnostic criteria in general is akin to saying that current science attributing the spread of diseases to germs is suspect because scientists used to think that diseases were created by air. Psychological research is an active field, not one where a book was written a few thousand years ago, and people are still clinging to the ideas in said book.
I might also point out that casually making the diagnostic homosexuality/pedophilia connection is a dangerous one as people who are “homosexual” can have healthy, satisfying sexual lives and “normal,” healthy psychosexual development. They can also engage in healthy, consenting sexual activity as adults. Children lack the developmental capacity to consent to sexual activity, and lack the physical development to be considered appropriate sexual partners.
While it is of minor importance, you repeatedly use distinctions that are not generally made using the terminology you cite (perhaps your information comes from European sources?). For instance, you state that some “people enjoy the ephebophila (teens), some the pedophilia (preteens/prepubescent) some enjoy nepiphilia (toddlers)”—aside from pedophilia, those terms are not commonly used and hebophilia is the more common term used for attraction to underage people who have reached puberty. It should also be pointed out that in making the just-quoted assertion, you equate age-play with pedophilia, when they are very different things (consenting adults being the most obvious distinction).
On the topic of Japan—Japan produces a rather disproportionate amount of clearly misogynistic pornography, including pornography with simulated and actual coercive/abusive behaviors featuring women behaving in ways indicating that they are being harmed by the sex acts, and that they do not want to take part in those sex acts. Causal link to rape or any other act? I can’t and won’t assert that. Troubling, and likely to contribute to “deviant” arousal patterns (arousal to violence or arousal to non-consensual sex)—that is supported by research in the same way that masturbating to images of children is shown to lead to increased pedophilic arousal patterns (although, as I’ve maintained throughout, that does not mean a person will engage in a hands-on offense).
You write “The fact of the matter is that murderers fantasize about murder before they engage in the actual behavior. Now, show that the fantasy caused the action, and be willing to cast aspersions on anyone who’s ever fantasized about rape or murder (and imply they’ll eventually do it). Oh, not willing to go that far? What’s the distinction?” –Your continual assertions that I said somebody that masturbates to child porn will commit the act in a causal chain is simply without basis. Your assertion that I am “casting aspersions” is also lacking basis. And as for the distinction in the behaviors, are murder, rape, and pedophilia equal behaviors, and if so, how? I am making distinctions in behaviors that you apparently do not see—such as the distinction between sexual gratification, violent sexual gratification, and murder, or the distinction between sex engaged in by consenting adults and sex involving children who are not able to consent.
It is also a distinction, not an over-generalization, to state that hands-on pedophiles justify their behavior in specific, predictable ways. Leave the red-heads out, and the actual reverse of my position is “all those who justify their molestation of children by saying it is harmless or helpful to the victims are hands-on pedophiles”—not a logical fallacy or overgeneralization at all.
And returning to the white bread argument, the same above works. I’ll concede that I cannot prove that a significant percentage of those who “wank to child-related fantasies” actually engage in hands-on offenses (but you yourself point out that I’m not actually arguing that). That would be an impossible argument to make without knowing how many people actually engage in sexual fantasies involving children (but I would be careful about the phrasing—I am referring to sexual fantasies involving children, not “child-related fantasies” as that sounds like a potentially much larger umbrella). The white bread connection to serial killers is still a red herring, because the eating of white bread is clinically irrelevant to becoming a serial killer, while fantasizing to children IS clinically relevant to becoming/being a person with pedophilia.
I would also point out that my argument is: if A then B, with A being a hands-on offense, and B being a history of sexual fantasies about children. You are the one claiming that my argument form is if A then B, therefore, if B, then A. How many times do I have to point out that I have never made such an assertion, and to do so is, in fact, a logical fallacy? Your redheads example should work to demonstrate that.
I do not consider fantasizing about children to be a “standard of evidence” for having committed a hands-on offense. I never asserted that the ballerina-viewer has committed a hands-on offense, or that the ballerina-viewer possesses child pornography. I AM saying that the ballerina-viewer is toying with something that is POTENTIALLY dangerous. His partner has a right to be concerned. As Fidelio points out, that kind of fantasizing is a sign of a psychosexual problem.
You state that the “fact that something is seen as a psychological issue seems more a matter of current morality and “squick factor” than whether the fantasy itself is “bad”,” but say this in response to my statement that those who engage in hands-on offenses have a set of attitudes and behaviors (such as the types of justifications they use) that are not shared by the general population. For example, people who are not pedophilic do not generally believe that engaging in sex with a child is somehow educational, helpful, or sexually gratifying for the child being molested. Those who engage in molestation do have such beliefs. See empirically validated tests like the MSI II.
You claim that I make a causal assertion in my statement:
“At the very least, it can be viewed as conditioning oneself toward the use of children as sexual objects, which is not harmless unless one takes the view that the human mind can feed itself on infinite amounts of garbage and suffer no ill effects.” Perhaps the word “use” was not the best word choice here; and I will concede that the statement is so broad and ill-defined as to potentially imply causality. The intended meaning (which is still rather broad and ill-defined and could suggest—although not explicitly stated—a kind of causal relationship where none was intended) was that the things we engage in and experience go into creating our attitudes/beliefs/and potentially our actions.
I will concede that neither classical nor operant conditioning is considered to be wholly accurate in describing human behavior—but I confined my discussion to the example of orgasm; and orgasm is a powerful re-enforcer of sexual arousal and behavior. Also, cognitive behavioral therapy, focused around challenging thinking errors (like the idea that children are helped by sexual attention from adults) combined with conditioning toward healthier sexual behaviors and attitudes (engaging in sexual activity with consenting, age-appropriate partners) has been shown to reduce recidivism in hands-on offenders.
I am puzzled by the following assertion relative to my conditioning comments: “if pedophilia is a learned behavior, there should be no pedophiles. If it isn’t a learned behavior, there’s simply no reason to believe it can be fomented further by orgasm.” How so?
I will concede that the questions I posed at the end of my previous post were, perhaps, poorly phrased—but again, your refutations of them resort to legalistic definitions (which has little to do with the argument I am making, as there are plenty of behaviors that are legal, but which are disallowed at the point where they lead to harm of others as you note and which nobody is arguing about) or rephrasing the questions with clinically irrelevant details. Eating white bread is not a risk factor in becoming a serial killer, whereas engaging in masturbation to images of children is a risk factor in (not a cause of) becoming a hands-on pedophilic offender, and a risk factor (not a cause of) pursuing actual child pornography. So, of course your rephrasing of the question leads to an unreasonable question, but also to a totally irrelevant one.
And good luck with your efforts to return the word “pedophile” to what you believe is it’s more appropriate meaning.
@ 131 wylbur: see above re: logical fallacies. Also, age play is sexual behavior between consenting adults, so can be distinguished from pedophilia. I guess I am puzzled as to why there is so much confusion over the difference between consenting adults engaging in fantasy play, and actual sexual attraction to children. They are NOT the same thing.
@ 135 Fidelio: Amen! I would point out that one other crucial element is that at the point of recognizing one has an attraction to children, one can seek treatment (although in the current climate of hysteria, such self-directed action is probably unlikely for most people who recognize their problem—and there are a number of other psychologically confounding factors that might prevent one with pedophilic urges from recognizing the attraction to children as a problem).
@136
There’s further distinction (especially in the roleplaying communities I’ve seen/been a part of) between liking childish behavior and treatment, and liking essentially child-like feature. Most mix the two (girl in pigtails needing a spanking), but it is a much more complicated kink than people give it credit for.
@137
If your point was not that you believe that this man’s fantasies vis-a-vis children is indicative of an “illness” or “problem” and that there is an escalation of pornographic viewing habits and fantasies (I’ll refer you to your own post #119: “At the very least, it can be viewed as conditioning oneself toward the use of children as sexual objects, which is not harmless…”), I’m not entirely sure what point you were attempting to draw.
Yes, all people who will commit abuse also probably did exactly what the ballerina-watcher has done. But there’s simply no way to show either that preventing such wanking or stopping such non-harmful materials from existing would cause those with those fantasies to never commit abuse.
The issue one must take with psychology (as divorced from hard science (including neurology)) is that it’s entirely retrospective, and seems largely to be dependent on current cultural whim. For instance, why is the diagnostic criteria for pedophilia that it must be actual child pornography, or they must have committed an abusive act? How is the same distinction between “someone with a rape fantasy” and “rapist” not applied here? That does not appear to me to be scientific in nature.
The other problem is that it begs the question. You claim (and I believe) that homosexuals can have healthy, normal, relationships, and healthy psychosexual development. But, if we go back mere decades, the very fact that one is a homosexual would mean they have not had normal psychosexual development and cannot have healthy, normal, relationships. The issue is that (as I stated) the psychological community (in all its vaunted wisdom) chose to conflate child-related fantasies with those who would seek to sexually abuse children. A person with a fantasy for children is only psychosexually malformed if we assume that being attracted to children is a malformation. It’s a tautology; it’s unhealthy because the psychological community says it’s unhealthy, and they say it’s unhealthy because clearly it isn’t healthy.
The terminology is of little import, and if it makes you happy, I’ll adopt Hebophilia in lieu of ephebophilia, but it’s a distinction without a difference.
You’ve accepted the high rates of “deviant” and “misogynistic” pornography produced in Japan, and yet sidestep the question at the core of this issue. I would like to see the data to support your assertion that it contributes to “deviant” arousal patterns; since it seems as likely to me that it’s simply a reflection of extant desires, rather than actually conditioning people.
“I am making distinctions in behaviors that you apparently do not see—such as the distinction between sexual gratification, violent sexual gratification, and murder, or the distinction between sex engaged in by consenting adults and sex involving children who are not able to consent.”
That’s a clever way to get around my point (attack the analogy without addressing the point), but whether I can see a distinction is irrelevant. If your conditioning theory is correct, a rape fantasy or murder fantasy (both of which give some measure of gratification) would contribute toward a person feeling and desiring more and more deviant rape and murder fantasies. The fact that the crimes are distint is not relevant.
“all those who justify their molestation of children by saying it is harmless or helpful to the victims are hands-on pedophiles”—”
That I would accept. But that’s not what ballerina-watcher ever said. He did not justify his behavior vis-a-vis the victims (as there are none), but rather vis-a-vis the behavior itself. He did not state it was harmless or helpful to the victims, and thus by your own statement is distinguished from his supposed corollaries. You’re contradicting yourself a bit.
“The white bread connection to serial killers is still a red herring, because the eating of white bread is clinically irrelevant to becoming a serial killer, while fantasizing to children IS clinically relevant to becoming/being a person with pedophilia”
Psychology (pseudo-science that it is) gets to take a lot of shortcuts. In most other areas of science (or even just professions which use evidence to prove theories), one must proceed from cause to effect, and don’t get to (in good conscience or science) invent a connection between two facts which sounds good. All you have, *all you have*, is knowledge that all eventual child sexual abusers at some point fantasized about children. That does not make those fantasies contributory to their eventual abuse. It’s not a red herring, because it’s the same level of knowledge “all people who did X also did Y”, used to the same effect “therefore Y is not harmless, and contributes to X”. Once again, you fall to tautology. You (a psychologist, presumably) claim it to be relevant, backed up only by the statement that it’s clinically relevant, itself only “true” because those two factors are considered relevant. Yes, it sounds good as common sense, but that’s poor basis for either science or policy.
“I AM saying that the ballerina-viewer is toying with something that is POTENTIALLY dangerous. His partner has a right to be concerned. As Fidelio points out, that kind of fantasizing is a sign of a psychosexual problem.”
You’ve not shown even a potential for danger, as you’ve yet to surmount the null hypothesis (which is, basically, that any given variable has no significant influence over the outcome), given that it’s just as likely that the eventual molesters would have done it no matter what. His partner has a right to leave him, “concern” is a bit much. And the reiteration that it’s a sign of a “problem” still doesn’t change that it’s a “problem” only because some people (devoid of reasons aside from prevailing morality) call it a “problem”.
Homosexuality was once considered a “problem” by the same community, and would have been (by your definitions and evidence) just as much a “psychosexual problem” as pedophilia. No dice.
“See empirically validated tests like the MSI II.”
I would like to see that empirically validated test. Can you cite it for me?
You keep bouncing back and forth between the ballerina-watcher’s behavior, and that of hands-on pedophiles. I refuted your argument that the B-W’s behavior indicates a problem by pointing out that it’s a purely subjective measurement, to which you respond by switching to discussing hands-on pedophiles. Stick to the issue, please.
“Also, cognitive behavioral therapy… has been shown to reduce recidivism in hands-on offenders”
I’d like to see where this has been shown.
“I am puzzled by the following assertion relative to my conditioning comments: “if pedophilia is a learned behavior, there should be no pedophiles. If it isn’t a learned behavior, there’s simply no reason to believe it can be fomented further by orgasm.” How so?”
Pedophilia must be (fundamentally) either a learned behavior, or something beyond the control or will of the individual (it’s all about the locus of control). If it’s within the power of the individual to decide to wank to such fantasies and thus be conditioned toward it, one logically presumes no one would willingly do that. If, on the other hand, the extent and existence of pedophilic tendencies is beyond ones control, then the fantasies themselves start off at whatever strength they could have. The idea that someone who enjoys fantasies about children can “level-up” in their depravity is unbelievable.
“Eating white bread is not a risk factor in becoming a serial killer, whereas engaging in masturbation to images of children is a risk factor in (not a cause of) becoming a hands-on pedophilic offender, and a risk factor (not a cause of) pursuing actual child pornography”
You’ve yet to show that in any substantial way. You’ve provided no more evidence that masturbation to images of children is a risk factor in eventual criminal offenses than I have that white bread is a risk factor in serial killings. Since you’ve even conceded that there’s no data on the percent of those who have such fantasies who eventually commit abuse, there seems to be no risk you can prove.
“I would point out that one other crucial element is that at the point of recognizing one has an attraction to children, one can seek treatment”
As always with your psychology, replace the words “attraction to children” with any other kink/fetish/sexuality, and you get very much the same statement, simply made from a different subjective background. I thought science was supposed to be objective truth… Weird.
Sheldon: I see one major problem with the rape fantasy=pedophilia fantasy comparison you made, even though both actual acts would be illegal. It would be entirely possible to have a physically convincing and accurate recreation of rape without involving any actual victim–all you need is willing participants with a touch of acting skill. Even most torture type scenarios can be engaged in sanely and ethically, as long as you have willing participants and the scenario doesn’t involve serious permanent damage.
It is Not Possible to have a physically convincing recreation of pedophilia without harming a child (barring someone with an untreated medical condition that delayed puberty substantially)
Therefore, I think it’s more reasonable to compare pedophilic fantasies with, say, fantasies that involve killing or mutilating a partner.
Oh, also, Sheldon–your white bread-serial killer argument… I think you’ll agree that there is at least some statistical correlation between fantasies about children and actual pedophilia–if you (anonymously) asked 100 actual hands-on pedophiles and 100 people who have never touched a kid if they’ve had sexual fantasies about children, do you honestly think every one of the second batch of 100 people would have had sexual fantasies about kids?
I know correlation is not causation, but it’s not entirely irrelevant either. If all A’s are B, and most not-A’s are not-B, then it follows that being B increases the chances that you’ll be A as well. Give us an argument in *that* form that most people would dismiss, and then maybe we’ll drop the pedophilic fantasies -> actual child molestation arguments.
I don’t think anyone’s denying that people with fantasies about sex with children are more LIKELY to molest children than those who don’t. But so what? Men are a whole lot more likely to molest children than women are. Demonizing men because of a statistical correlation makes about as much sense as demonizing people with fantasies about children for the same reason.
Also, it’s not accurate to say that it’s impossible to make fake child porn that resembles actual child porn unless you cast an adult with a bizarre hormonal problem. There are ways of using technology to make adult porno actors look like children – just ask the Supreme Court. (They ruled that such films are constitutionally protected, unlike actual child porn.) There’s animation. And as the guy in the letter has shown us, people with fantasies about children don’t necessarily need actual pornography of any kind to get off.
Thank you Melissa for eloquently explaining what should have been a fairly obvious point.
And to Seldon:
The MSI II (Multiphasic Sexual Inventory, version 2) was created by Nichols and Mollinder Associates–they have a web site, look it up. You could also look up the SOAP (sex offender assessment protocol) or J-SOAP (juvenile sex offender assessment protocol)–all of which assess for attitudes and background factors that are common to offenders, but rare in the general public. They can be a bit difficult to obtain due to a sort of protective atmosphere in the arena of sex offender treatment necessitated by the willingness of people to misinterpret the data.
As for CBT and sex offender recidivism, there are studies going back to the late 1970s–one of the earliest and largest conducted by Barry Maletzky.
Most such studies can be tracked down through library databases,but there is an overview of some of the techniques used in conditioning at this link:
http://www.mhamic.org/sources/maletzky.h…
Now, let’s explain how this business of establishing correlations works in an overly-simplified form:
Researchers working with known offenders interview them independently, and patterns start to emerge in their thinking and justifications for their behaviors. For instance, the concept of providing helpful sexual instruction to children is a common theme that is advanced by the known offenders. Or the idea that 12-year-olds are interested in having sex with adults is advanced repeatedly by the offenders. So researchers work on creating questionnaires that test for a variety of sexual attitudes, practices, and other factors. They build in questions that can check for false/contradictory responses, and they test the questionnaire against known offenders, and against a control group of people from the general population. When they find out that, gee whiz, the offenders all have a similar set of ideas, but the general population does not share those ideas, they in their vaunted wisdom determine that maybe those attitudes might be a bit of an aberration tied to a particular, harmful behavior. Relevant correlation established.
As for risk assessment, a similar process exists. For example, checking offenders who recidivate against those who do not–researchers check for what factors are common to those who recidivate compared to those who don’t. And, gee whiz, once again they find that there are a number of commonalities between all the recidivists that are not the same as the commonalities among the non-recidivists. Check out SONAR, the Sex Offender Needs Assessment Rating if you’d like.
Admittedly flawed but functional tools like plethysmography exist to measure arousal to various stimuli. Clever subjects can subvert plethysmography if they know how, but plethysmography technicians can also recognize abnormalities in the traces that show attempts to manipulate the arousal responses. In addition, plethysmography can assess changes in arousal patterns over time—yes, arousal patterns can and do change.
Your assertion that there is NO data to back up the admittedly generalized concerns is patently false.
Arguing that psychology is pseudo-science because of past errors, and because of limitations on research due to ethical considerations is asinine. You demand proof that masturbating to images of children is a CAUSE of offenses against children as the only means of assessing the riskiness of the behavior. Yet, I did not assert that, and would not, because I know it is not a CAUSE of the behavior or everyone who had ever masturbated to an image of a child would have committed a hands-on offense. But there are numerous people in trouble with the law for child pornography offenses who have not committed hands-on offenses–and there ARE victims to those crimes. I did not say the ballerina viewer had child pornography—but it was his argument that he was getting into more and more extreme stuff—should we disbelieve him, and negate what he said as irrelevant to the discussion or follow the logic of his argument to where it would have to be heading if we are taking it on face value? Furthermore, proving the CAUSE argument would be impossible, as collecting a relevant data set is essentially impossible. Maybe you would prefer it if psychologists took some people with no demonstrable arousal to children, and encouraged them to masturbate to images of clothed children, then to images of nude children, then to images of actual sex acts involving children to see if they can create persons with pedophilia.
As it is, psychology has to work backwards from the point of an identifiable behavior to try and figure out what contributed to it–and that is seldom a direct route due to the vast number of variables that exist in individual lives, and the ability of people to make their own decisions about what to do at any number of points along any path. There are definitely limitations on the ways this can be done, but that does not mean that psychology is invalidated as a field because direct cause-and-effect relationships are not readily demonstrated.
You also chastise me for switching the argument to hands-on offenses, when that is essentially what I have been talking about all along–and its correlation to masturbation to images/fantasies of children. You were the one who introduced murder and rape into the discussion–which are not the same thing as pedophilia–although because pedophilia is defined as sexual arousal to children, masturbating to images of children is pedophilic.
Your assertion that pedophilia has to be some kind of inborn trait, because nobody would ever choose it assumes that all sexual proclivities are somehow inborn, which should be obviously untrue. Nobody springs from the womb with a predisposition to ball gags. Also, as was addressed by Fidelio, being sexually abused is a kind of “learning” one goes through. You yourself, in an earlier post said that maybe the ballerina-viewer is masturbating to images of children just because he likes it. And do you really believe that people do not increase/re-enforce their arousal to particular stimuli by masturbating to it? After you’ve read more of the research, maybe you can get back to me on that one–but masturbating to appropriate stimuli is part of the process of deterring hands-on offenders from recidivism–so, yes, sexual conditioning/reconditioning is possible. (Please don’t throw in an argument about homosexuality “reconditioning” here, because it is different and homosexuality is not awash in thinking errors that homosexuals use to justify their behavior). In addition, there are a number of theories about the origins of pedophilia which are being researched, many out of the field of developmental psychology–as a wide range of sexual behaviors can be related to one’s sexual history and development (like being sexually abused and so becoming an abuser onesself)..
You suggest that it is merely cultural whim that leads to psychology’s various choices of what to call mental health issues as if psychologists are sitting around waiting for Hollywood or Washington D.C. to provide them with an interesting concept that they can run with. The psychological community as a whole admitted that the inclusion of homosexuality as a paraphilia was an error, and corrected that error. So who is beating a dead horse now?
You also suggest that it is misguided morality that is behind the identification of pedophilia as problematic. However you want to define it as problematic–morally, ethically, legally, as a mental health issue or otherwise, it is considered a problem because it CANNOT involve consent. Please forgive the mental health community for taking the position that healthy sexuality steers clear of coercive behaviors. Sexual fantasies involving children either resort to imagining the children as willingly doing things that are not developmentally appropriate for them to come up with on their own, or as being the victims of manipulation—just as actual hands-on offenses involve the same. Am I advocating locking people up for fantasies? Never did.
The original question posed in the letter was whether the ballerina-viewer’s behavior was typical (it’s not) or if it showed an inclination toward pedophilia (it does). You can keep arguing with me by claiming I said things I didn’t say, and continue to demand CAUSAL proof–it’s not there. As I stated before, look into the research. Just because you’re not personally aware of it does not mean it does not exist, or that it is invalid. Just because you are confused over how diagnostics work in the Mental Health field, or how the criteria are arrived at, or how researchers in psychology measure for various attitudes and behaviors, and self-correct as more information/understanding becomes available, does not invalidate those measures.
And I am not a psychologist, as one has to have a doctorate to be a psychologist and I only have my Masters degree in psychology. As I stated at the beginning of my original post, I have worked in sex offender treatment with both juvenile and adult offenders for several years. I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t feel like posting my name and credentials on a message board.
@139
I hate to quibble about my name, but it’s Seldon (taken from the main character, sort of, of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series). Sheldon is the guy with Autism from the Big Bang Theory (godawful show). Neither here nor there, but…
As for your “all A’s are B’s, and most not-A’s are not-B’s” form, I believe I already did that. “All rapists have rape-related fantasies, most non-rapists do not have rape-related fantasies”. No one really dismisses it (it is true), but no one assumes that any given rape-fantasist is a rapist waiting to happen. We allow for a population of people to have rape fantasies, but be considered well-adjusted, healthy, sexually “normal”, people. We don’t allow the same for child fantasies, and I’ve yet to hear someone tell me why.
@142
“Your assertion that there is NO data to back up the admittedly generalized concerns is patently false.”
Depends on which concerns we’re talking about. If we’re talking about the concerns regarding recidivism and tendency for fucked-up-ness in hands-on pedophiles, I’ll agree with you wholeheartedly that the data is there. I’ve never once argued that there’s a dearth of data saying “actual child abusers are fucked up”. What I dispute (and what you have yet to back up) is the idea that all those who fantasize about children are inherently fucked up.
Do all molesters fantasize about children? Yes. Do some people fantasize about children? Yes. Are the two groups in complete overlap? No. Can you show me from where you draw the conclusion that the fantasy itself makes someone more likely to commit child abuse? Not so far. You keep coming back to “well, all sex offenders have these things in common, so those displaying those attributes must be more likely to commit abuse”, but have no actual control group. You’ve never controlled for confounding variables.
To wit: killing animals is positively correlated to serial killing. Does that mean every hunter has an aberrant behavior/psychology? Or do you accept that a similar habit may be done by evil, evil, people (even lots of evil people) but also exhibited and enjoyed by normal folks as well?
Furthermore, the behaviors and beliefs you describe of hands-on pedophiles are not traits and beliefs displayed by the ballerina-watcher. He never (as far as we know) indicated a belief in “providing helpful sexual instruction to children” nor “the idea that 12-year-olds are interested in having sex with adults”. In point of fact, the only similarity between him and your hands-on pedophiles I can see is that both engage in fantasies about children. Which, as stated in numerous analogies none of which you’ve truly addressed, is itself not harmful nor should be considered any worse than a fantasy about rape, incest, blackmail, or prostitution.
“Maybe you would prefer it if psychologists took some people with no demonstrable arousal to children, and encouraged them to masturbate to images of clothed children, then to images of nude children, then to images of actual sex acts involving children to see if they can create persons with pedophilia.”
Actually, to prove your implications that extreme pornography/fantasies can influence ones arousal patterns, that would largely be necessary. But, silly me, I expect things like “control groups” and “studies” when I try to prove a relationship. Go figure. I guess I should have been a psychologist.
“You also chastise me for switching the argument to hands-on offenses, when that is essentially what I have been talking about all along–and its correlation to masturbation to images/fantasies of children”
Perhaps I should have been more clear in my chastisement. You assert a slew of beliefs and psychosexual issues held by hands-on pedophiles, and then apply them as proof that pedophilia in and of itself is “wrong” and “deviant” and other bad words, without ever proving the equation that pedophiles = hands-on child abusers. You simply never showed that all pedophiles are actually hands-on abusers, nor are mentally scarred in the way you assume they are. As always, you (and your field) have simply stated (without proving) a psychological illness, and can only argue it circularly.
“You were the one who introduced murder and rape into the discussion–which are not the same thing as pedophilia–although because pedophilia is defined as sexual arousal to children, masturbating to images of children is pedophilic.”
I brought up analogies to rape and murder to dispel your myth that somehow the fantasies contribute in some substantive way to the actualization of ones desires. Since you never actually responded to those points, I must assume you agree with them. As such, you accept that one can fantasize about a “bad” or harmful behavior without ever intending to carry it out, and without any mental disorders. Awesome.
“Please don’t throw in an argument about homosexuality “reconditioning” here, because it is different and homosexuality is not awash in thinking errors that homosexuals use to justify their behavior”
The lady (or gentleman) doth protest too much, methinks. The only reason there aren’t “thinking errors” in homosexuality is because your field simply rewrote their standards on it. Were we having this discussion decades ago, I have no doubt that a well-trained psychologist (having availed himself of the research) would declare homosexuality to be a learned trait (they must have been abused) something wrong with their mental wiring, and something indicative of mental issues (including thinking errors). Given this, why do you believe that there’s any more validity to the “thinking errors” argument vis-a-vis pedophilia? And, before you say “but hands-on pedophiles believe X”, remember that I’m talking about the vast majority of pedophiles who don’t ever commit abuse.
“The psychological community as a whole admitted that the inclusion of homosexuality as a paraphilia was an error, and corrected that error. So who is beating a dead horse now?”
It’s not beating a dead horse to point out that if a group made one glaring error, it could make another error of a similar kind. The classification of pedophilia as a mental disorder (as opposed to a kink, fetish, ect.) seems no more true than the similar classification of homosexuality. Were the psychological community to only classify hands-on pedophilia as a disorder, I would agree, but otherwise you’re throwing out the baby with the bathwater for a kink which itself is not inherently harmful. As for the analogy: to argue that pedophilia is bad, sick, wrong, and a disorder because some people take it too far and do harm is like arguing that all drinking is a disorder because some people are alcoholics.
“Please forgive the mental health community for taking the position that healthy sexuality steers clear of coercive behaviors”
Boy, I hope I never have to talk to a psychologist about my rape fantasies, my girlfriend’s blackmail fantasies, or our prostitution fantasies. I mean, all of those require fantasy of coercion and violence. Where’s the difference, again?
“Sexual fantasies involving children either resort to imagining the children as willingly doing things that are not developmentally appropriate for them to come up with on their own, or as being the victims of manipulation—just as actual hands-on offenses involve the same”
True. And sexual fantasies of rape require a fantasy of the same type of violence and “harm” created by actual rape. To conflate the two (fantasy and reality) simply doesn’t make sense. I mean, Christ, have you really never been asked by your boyfriend (or girlfriend) to throw on the naughty nurse (or despicable doctor) outfit and “force” him/her to do sexual things? I’ve done some pretty extreme coercion/rape scenes with my girlfriend, does that make both of us as morally reprehensible as actual rapists? Why does it matter that the fantasy is the recreation of the reality if the fantasy never causes harm?
“Just because you’re not personally aware of it does not mean it does not exist, or that it is invalid”
That’s cute. Unfortunately, I *disagree* with the psychological field on this matter. Ignorance doesn’t drive my beliefs, logic does.
The problem with your self-correction is that it seems to come on the heels of greater cultural acceptance of a behavior or kink. If America writ large still considered homosexuality to be sinful and wrong, I have little doubt that psychologists wouldn’t still be researching what degeneration or malformation causes the horrible affliction known as “gayness”.
“As I stated at the beginning of my original post, I have worked in sex offender treatment with both juvenile and adult offenders for several years. I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t feel like posting my name and credentials on a message board.”
I’ll forgive you, but I’ll lend you no more credence in this subject than if I claimed to be a graduate student in physics who worked at the Fermi laboratory making statements about physics. Besides, if you ever took a hard science class in college, I’m sure the professor told you that anecdotes and personal experience are not valid evidence.
Okay, Seldon, lets try it again.
The reason that pedophilia is considered a mental health issue, as distinguished from rape and murder is that rape and murder are actions, and pedophilia is an attraction. Rape and murder may be informed by things such as sexual sadism or forms of psychopathy.
The reason, as has already been explained by me and others, that pedophilia is looked at differently is that adults can engage in simulated rape, and one imagines simulated murder, but unless simulated murder is sexual in nature, it’s not particularly relevant to the discussion at hand. Adults can also engage in consensual age play without actually being attracted to children. Adults cannot engage in acts of sex with actual children and have it be consensual.
If you want to check out and thoroughly understand the diagnostic criteria for pedophilia, there are specifiers similar to those for sexual sadism (i.e. the behavior is sustained over time, a hands-on offense or the fantasizing causes the person with pedophilia distress or interpersonal difficulty).
Now–
If only people who masturbate to fantasies of children commit acts of hands-on pedophilia then it is a risk factor because–
if 0/100 people who do not masturbate to images of children commit hands-on acts of pedophilia, but even 1/100 people who masturbate to images of children commit hands-on acts of pedophilia, then it is a risk factor.
However, as stated before, getting a full measure of what percentage of men actually masturbate to images/fantasies of children to the point of qualifying for the diagnosis of pedophilia is impossible. Maybe we could do a quick, rather unscientific poll and ask all the readers of this column to weigh in on whether or not they masturbate to images/fantasies of actual children. I would venture a guess it would not be a very high number. I would also guess that the percentage of people who masturbate to images of children who commit acts of hands-on pedophilia is much higher than 1% of that population.
You continue to insist that unless I can prove that all people who masturbate to images of children commit hands-on offenses, then my concern over the ballerina-viewers actions are unfounded. They’re not. He can seek out a psychosexual evaluation and see what turns up.
Again, if you want to check out the full body of research so that you can look for the controls in the studies, go for it. Since you’re clearly not that knowledgeable on the topic, as you’re getting info on pedophilia off of Wikipedia, you might want to actually learn something before you start casting aspersions on an entire field or claiming that various forms of research are invalid.
And by your logic, because scientists used to believe that diseases were caused by air, then they could make another huge mistake, and so that whole theory of germs, and anything else in hard science is potentially wrong.
I already explained the reason that homosexuality was removed as a diagnosis. And there have been discussions about removing pedophilia from the next edition of the DSM–but that probably won’t happen.
And the research into pedophilia is backed by a lot more than personal experience and anecdotes. I mentioned the work I’ve been involved in as an indicator that I’ve read/understood much more of the information on the topic than you have, but since you consider all credentials/research in the field of psychology as suspect, it is largely irrelevant. However, the research involves a lot of various nuances that would require much longer posts to explain.
And, by the way, in an earlier post of yours, you said that in “your business” facts are all that matter, but you still haven’t stated what “your business” is.
Seldon2639: You are spending an awful lot of time writing, but your message seems to boil down to this:
“There’s nothing wrong with masturbating to images of ten-year-olds.”
As the sex-positive open-minded parent of a ten-year old, let me be succinct: that’s a load of crap. Someone whose sexual fantasies involve pre-pubescent children is BROKEN. Maybe they are not a child molester, but their sexuality is not healthy.
Some kinks? Are NOT OK.
@13
“In fact, there’s plenty of evidence linking the decline in rape cases in the last fifty years to an increase in the availability of pornography.”
I realize this is unrelated to the column, but this statement above is absolutely false. The rate at which men rape women in this country (not even mentioning globally) has not declined. There may be studies that suggest that the rate of rapes reported have decreased over the last few decades but that is not the same thing as a decrease in the crimes occurring. Many women don’t report these crimes to law enforcement for lots of valid reasons.
To promote the idea that somehow access to porn is reducing the number of men who get off on forcing someone to have sex with them is a really misguided correlation. I think they are two totally separate ideas. Increased access to porn doesn’t change the reasons a man chooses to rape someone. It doesn’t change the motivation of controlling someone and coercing someone to do something they haven’t consented to. If you want to talk about research, there is plenty of it that shows disturbing results about the impact that violent, misogynistic, torture/rape porn has on masculinity and the treatment of women. This isn’t to say all porn is bad, but it certainly isn’t responsible for “decreasing” rates of rape.
@139 and 146: Bravo. You win this thread.
@144 TreatmentFirst thinks that a poll of Slog readers would show that very few masturbate to images/fantasies of actual children. From previous discussions on Slog, I would bet that the number is much higher than he thinks.
I’ve been evaluating adjudicated sex offenders for almost 30 years. When I read about ballerina boy, I went “oh oh.” Don’t know if he has done it with a kid.
My experience has been that long before offenders do a hands on offense, they have deviant fantasies. If they engage in masturbation to the deviant fantasy, every time they orgasm, they are positively reinforcing their interest in that behavior. Some never cross from fantasy to reality, some do. His rationalization sounds like a cognitive distortion. Plenty of people have sex with kids that do not qualify as pedophiles. I agree with someone’s previous post, are you considering having children with this person?
A plethysmograph study of male normals, child molesters, and incest offenders by Marshall & Barbaree (Canada) found 5 categories of arousal: Child only, child-adult (not teen), (pubescent) teen -adult, undifferentiated. Undifferentiated was mostly incest offenders who were aroused to a particular child, so the ages were different.
Of almost 4,000 evaluations that I have done, only a very small percentage would fit the classification pedophile.
Just found this column. Congrats.
@144
Given that distinction, then, we should also be able to divorce pedophilia (the action) from pedophilia (the attraction). The formmer is harmful, but not (by your definition) a mental disorder; the latter is harmless (or, at least, not provably harmful), but a mental disorder. Interesting.
“The reason, as has already been explained by me and others, that pedophilia is looked at differently is that adults can engage in simulated rape, and one imagines simulated murder, but unless simulated murder is sexual in nature, it’s not particularly relevant to the discussion at hand.”
First, oy, you’re really bad with analogies and comparisons, mate. My point (yet to be refuted) is that one can fantasize about a behavior (even enjoy the fantasy) without being any more likely than the null hypothesis (tell me you learned about that in school) to commit a violent act. But, even accepting your bizarre distinction, one can engage in simulated pedophilia, and even consume fake child-porn. What’s the difference between fake rape-porn and fake child-porn, or a rape fantasy and a child fantasy? You keep saying “there’s a difference because there’s a difference” and a whole lot of stuff with “consenting adults can engage in pseudo rape, but sleeping with kids is wrong” (which is true, but a non-sequiter). A person with child fantasies can engage in consensual behavior to sate those urges.
Unless you’re going to argue that a rape-fantasist who engages in rape fantasies with consenting adults is more likely to engage in real rape, you have no leg to stand on implying that an adult who masturbates to fantasies of children (without every harming a single child) is more likely to do something heinous.
“the behavior is sustained over time, a hands-on offense or the fantasizing causes the person with pedophilia distress or interpersonal difficulty”
This is where your field is ironic. Do you know what would cause a person with child fantasies distress and interpersonal difficulty? Being told they’re sick, disgusting, rapists, and that they should be broken up with. I’d bet that if we started calling homosexuals deviants and unnatural abominations, they’d fit that criteria, too. Hey, how about that, psychology actually made the problem they seek to diagnose.
“if 0/100 people who do not masturbate to images of children commit hands-on acts of pedophilia, but even 1/100 people who masturbate to images of children commit hands-on acts of pedophilia, then it is a risk factor.”
So, rape fantasies are the same level of risk factor in actual rape as the ballerina-watcher’s behavior is a risk factor in hands-on pedophilia. That’s the only logical conclusion. And murder fantasies are a risk factor in murder. And X fantasy is a risk factor in X-taken-to-the-illogical-extreme-action. Either a lot more people are psychologically crippled, or your argument is bullshit.
“You continue to insist that unless I can prove that all people who masturbate to images of children commit hands-on offenses, then my concern over the ballerina-viewers actions are unfounded. They’re not.”
No, you’d *like* me to insist that because it’s easy to argue against. I’ve asked for the much more nuanced “prove that a person who masturbates to child fantasies is actually psychologically damaged, beyond the circular logic rampant in psychology.
“He can seek out a psychosexual evaluation and see what turns up”
Aww. Now that’s just fucking adorable. He can go talk to a psychologist about whether a definition that psychologists use to define an illness is how they define an illness. Where’s the oversight of whether the psychologists themselves are (as I believe) simply incorrect on this issue?
I mean, come on, you must see you’re simply begging the question. Or you’ve never actually had to deal with classical logic before. Either works, I guess.
“you might want to actually learn something before you start casting aspersions on an entire field or claiming that various forms of research are invalid.”
Must you devolve to ad hominem attacks? You’ve yet to show a single study which actually demonstrated a psychological illness (aside from in the sense of “it’s an illness if we call it an illness”), and now seek to change the subject. I’ve read the studies you linked, all of them show that hands-on pedophiles engage in certain behaviors, some of which are shared by a broader population. To extrapolate from that to a belief that anyone who exhibits the shared behavior is mentally deficient or disturbed is simply poor science. It shouldn’t pass the laugh test, and if I tried to pull that shit in a physics department (we know that dark matter exhibits some similar qualities with normal matter, therefore all normal matter is dark matter), I’d get kicked out so fast it’d make my head spin.
I should have been a psychologist. So much less work to do to try to get at actual evidence.
“And by your logic, because scientists used to believe that diseases were caused by air, then they could make another huge mistake, and so that whole theory of germs, and anything else in hard science is potentially wrong.”
Any scientist worth his salt would tell you that anything in hard science is potentially wrong. Why do you think they’re always testing, trying to defend, and disprove their claims. In fact, one part of being a valid scientific postulation is that it must be falsifiable.
Science (hard science, real science) learns of its mistakes, corrects them, and tries not to make them again. They don’t generally say “well, we got that wrong, but this other thing which is worded and sounds almost exactly alike is still totally true”. They didn’t say “we know they didn’t really make “cold fusion”, but that doesn’t mean we should reexamine “lukewarm fusion””
“I already explained the reason that homosexuality was removed as a diagnosis. And there have been discussions about removing pedophilia from the next edition of the DSM–but that probably won’t happen.”
It was removed because they recognized there was nothing inherently wrong or harmful about the attraction or sexuality itself, and that these people could live functional, happy, lives. Kind of like would happen if we stopped calling all pedophiles sick fucks, and stopped thinking there was anything wrong with them. Weird, huh?
“However, the research involves a lot of various nuances that would require much longer posts to explain.”
Unless one of those nuances somehow proves that there’s an inherent wrongness to attraction to children (and please, don’t say “it’s wrong because it’s anti-evolutionary”) when the person does no actual harm to children, I doubt it would change the reality of this debate.
Let me sum up:
Treatment first: I agree they shouldn’t be locked up, but there is something wrong with them, and they need to be treated for their dysfunctional sexuality
Seldon2639: I don’t see anything inherently wrong with their sexuality, and unless they’re hurting people, it’s no harm no foul.
Treatment: they’re dysfunctional, just check what the psychological community defines as a dysfuction
Seldon: except that’s circular logic.
Treatment: you just don’t understand
We’ve reached an impasse (actually, we reached it about three posts ago), so let’s quit while we’re both not completely petulant. I see you headed there, and I’d prefer not to push you toward true pissiness.
“And, by the way, in an earlier post of yours, you said that in “your business” facts are all that matter, but you still haven’t stated what “your business” is.”
I didn’t know you’d asked. 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. So, in none of those fields (with the exception, I guess, of poli-sci) would I get away with your argument.
@145
Aside from bandwagoning Treatment’s tune, I’m curious what proof you have that there’s anything wrong with someone who masturbates to images of children? How are you defining wrong, and broken? I mean, you seem to be falling back into “they’re broken because pedophilia is bad, and it’s bad because only a broken person would do it” circular logic. Come back when you have more, or just write really long posts in the hopes of hiding your logical fallacy.
@149
Yes. No one will dispute that those who eventually commit abuse have fantasies about it. The question is whether we can conclude that the fantasies contribute to the eventual abuse, and/or are actually deviant/indicative of dysfunction in and of themselves.
My question for you is why your field distinguishes between those with rape fantasies who act them out in non-harmful (thus “healthy”) ways, and those with child fantasies who do the same. Why do child fantasies get lumped in with child molesters as “pedophiles” rather than being lumped in with anyone else with a “deviant” fantasy who acts/fantasies it safely and non-harmfully?
@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.