Oy

Seems like by "escalate", he means, "give no more fucks about my (probably illegal) kink".

Ditto that Mr. Savage. I have been helping myself with straight porn since before there was an internet, and to this day good old boring straight porn it is (which includes as many women-on-women as possible, naturally).

First off, yes, 8 and 10 year olds are firmly and unquestionably out-of-bounds.

There's some slight of hand here, however, in that LW never really says what her partner is looking at. She says he's looking at "younger and younger" girls, then goes on to say "Eight-year-old girls, however, are innocents preyed upon by pedophiles and people with child-lust disorders" without quite saying that it's what her partner is looking at, which I don't think anyone could rationally say is "nothing illegal". She doesn't even quite say that he's looking at ballerinas on youtube; it's written a little ambiguously; and given the dudes "nothing illegal" (i can guarantee that 8 or 10 year olds are straight up illegal anywhere at anytime under any conceivable circumstance).

If you aren't down with your boy's get-off methods, you should probably move on to someone whose methods you are OK with. I don't necessarily know if dudes who look at... prepubescent ballerinas are likely to offend, or if it matters that this was in the course of an age-appropriate relationship he was having. Basically, if the evidence is he's likely to offend, say something now. If the evidence goes the other way, just move on and forget.

Yeah, he's fucked in the head. For sure. And it's beyond reasonable that she would be disgusted and not want to be married to someone fucked in the head like he is. That said, it brings up an interesting (to me) philosophical question... assuming he isn't doing anyone any harm... (i.e. he never uses actual kiddie porn, and he never has inappropriate interactions of any kind with any kids), how much leeway should we give fucked in the head people who find non-exploitative ways to channel their fucked in the headedness?

gross. any chance of a follow up? like how long was it until she dumped this skeev?

Even if the material he jerked off to did not raise red flags, him attempting to shift blame onto you is a big enough one to DTMFA.
But the videos are an entirely different story. There are all kinds of erotica for people who have fantasies that cannot be realized in real life for practical or legal reasons (vore, centaurs, tentacles, characters in TV shows or media, snuff, rape, monster, alien, Rule 34 on and on forever), and there is a world of legal erotica and communities catering to those people (fetish porn, hentai or other erotic comic books, erotic stories, erotic audio, CG porn).
But those YouTube videos, that's fantasizing over actual children and it crosses a line. It's like the difference between liking incest porn vs. having a specific family member you want to fuck.
So DTMFA immediately and on your way out check and see if he has any browsers on his computer that are used for searching the dark web (data not indexed by services like Google). The most common one is TOR, so if you see something like that consider calling the police in six months, after he won't automatically associate a call with you.

@8: TOR is not a dark web site. It is a browser where IP address are anonymously referenced and has many worthy uses (such as for freedom fighters in oppressive regimes), despite being used for child porn trafficking. It is not by itself sufficient evidence to call the cops over.

@9: Good info, but what are the chances that the dude wanking to 8-year-old ballerinas is also a freedom fighter in a repressive regime?

@6: Yeah, ignoring for a moment this asshole and his rationalizations and bullshit; what is a "Gold Star pedophile" to do? Not have actual sex with actual minors, duh. Not consume unethically produced porn (which would be ANY that features minors).

There's some evidence that the availability of porn has reduced some types of sexual assaults. If someone scratches that itch while watching youtube videos of kiddie pool parties, say, then is anyone harmed? And if perfect digital representations could be produced or child-like sexbots manufactured, would that reduce sexual assaults on minors? The gut-level response is "don't entice more people into that lifestyle ", but that's a stupid argument when applied to gays, ministers, etc.

Sadly (I think Dan covered this in a podcast), pedophiles can't seek professional help in the US without risking a "mandatory reporter" turning them in, while in Canada, they can get support so they behave ethnically.

Gays in Saudi Arabia didn't wish for an illegal sexual attraction - one they (are told is immoral and) can't act on without great personal risk. I assume pedophiles would flip a switch if they could and get excited about Playboy centerfolds instead. Although, as Americans, we should hope to be attracted to increasingly overweight couch potatoes to improve our odds.

The rationalizing and blame-shifting is the most worrying part for sure.

On the original letter's comment thread I wonder whether budding lawyer Seldon (Asimov reference natch) ever grew out of his hall of super-logical mirrors. If he practiced law for real he probably had to...

Yeah watching kiddie porn or looking at photos of kids that are sexualized is a CRIME. Dump the motherfucker and report him to the police. What is wrong with people? you have to write to Dan Savage to figure out if your boyfriend getting off on 8 year olds means he is pedophile? Are you really that stupid?

Zapo @3: LMB at the idea that "as many women-on-women as possible" is being described as "straight porn." If it's so fucking boring then why don't you switch to ACTUAL straight porn!? Oh wait, I forgot, those women probably are straight, and not even enjoying themselves, so what can possibly be exciting about that!?

Re the letter, either this guy is a paedo and a bullshitter or he really is a porn addict, which means he needs to get help, not shame HER for being judgmental, cripes. Hope she DTMFA'd with extreme prejudice.

Yuk. This guy is sick in the head. Hope you left him LW.

I read this a couple of times. He looks at pornography to get off and he looks at you tube videos of young girls dancing (not porn) and is aroused and presumably getting off doing that. What part of that is illegal? Who is harmed?

This guy is a pedophile. He can't change that, and I hope and am willing to believe that he could never do anything that harms a child and will carry on as he is. Still, that bodes ill for a successful sexual relationship with an adult, and further his attacking the lw, while not surprising, is total grounds to dump this guy.

"He admits to having a 20-year-plus addiction to porn"

First, porn addiction isn't a thing.

He's probably a pedophile. But if he's a "gold star pedophile", Dan wrote at
https://www.thestranger.com/seattle/SavageLove?oid=12927907
that he's someone who has "successfully struggled against their attraction to children without any support or credit. (Yes, credit. Someone who is burdened with an attraction to children—no one chooses to be sexually attracted to children—and successfully battled that attraction all of his adult life deserves credit for his strength, self-control, and moral sense.) Sadly, in the United States, we've taken steps that make it harder for pedophiles to get the support they need to avoid offending."

I guess HSITIMBACM needed to ask themself if they could deal with that.

I think @10 DAVIDinKENAI is correct, "If someone scratches that itch while watching youtube videos of kiddie pool parties, say, then is anyone harmed?"

However, someone is horribly harmed if HSITIMBACM's pedophile husband is supporting the child porn industry, of acting upon their pedophilia. And I think HSITIMBACM had a responsibility to society to make sure the truth was determined. If he's NOT a "gold star pedophile", IIRC the only effective recourse is chemical castration.

oops in the last paragraph make that "OR acting upon"

@19 b07ias "that bodes ill for a successful sexual relationship with an adult"

Particularly if her pedophile husband is not attracted to adults (are some?)

I, for one, went for the weird when I was in my teens but have since become vanilla in my porn consumption. I very much enjoy X-Art style stuff between the gay and straight vids I watch as a bisexual dude and some basic gonzo shoots but I'm definitely no longer into yiff or hentai or chicks with dicks like I was when I was a kid.

Even the idea of young people has dissipated as I age. Sure, I still like the performers to be conventionally attractive, but I'd like them to be closer to my own age.

So, no, porn probably did the opposite for me.

Ugh, I hope she dumped/divorced the gas-lighting would-be pedophile before his "need to continue upping the taboo factor in order to get off" escalate to actual child-rape porn!

I’ve been viewing porn since I first drew a penis-cat in my second grade notebook. “Escalation” might happen, but in my opinion it depends on the person. I’m still totally happy watching beautiful, slightly nerdy looking girls fuck well-hung guys and feel no need to escalate to goat-fucking gladiators with polyester underpants and electric whips (which isn’t to say I’ve NEVER watched goat-fucking gladiators with polyester underpants, just that it didn’t trip my trigger the way a girl in glasses does.) But that’s just me.

And I sure as hell don’t fantasize or even want to look at really young girls, not even out of curiosity. I’m totally supportive of kinks and think to each his/her own as long as it doesn’t affect others, but this is a line I don’t cross. As a father of girls, I can’t imagine sexualizing that innocence, and have no problem labeling those that do as abnormal at best, dangerous at worst.

Keep an eye on this guy from a safe distance and don’t hesitate to call the authorities if you suspect he’s acting on his “attraction”.

Wow! What a bunch of weird comments on this subject. I fully support the partner leaving the relationship if that's what they want. I draw the line at acting upon the fantasies not the fantasy or kink itself. Children can be protected and people who have these kinks are human-beings and should be treated with respect and support. It's not all about you people going 'icky ou'. You're not much farther up the food chain bible thumpers and homophobes.

@22, Gaydor, jacking off to pictures or videos of little girls is being aroused by children. That is the issue here and this creep of a man won’t even acknowledge he has a problem. To his mind, nothing to see here. This man is a pedophile not a kinkster. Know the difference.

Children can’t be protected from the minds of adults who look at them and want to pull their dicks out and rub it. It’s a violation of children’s sexual innocence. I’m all for helping people who acknowledge they have a problem. Those like you Gaydor who think if you call this a kink it’ll past muster, well. Think again.

@22 Gaydor "I draw the line at acting upon the fantasies not the fantasy or kink itself...You're not much farther up the food chain bible thumpers and homophobes."

Yes. Unlike religious fundamentalism, a fundamental principle of modern society is that while actions can be crimes, thoughts can not.

(And if thoughts WERE made crimes, the psychological effects of that would produce extremely counterproductive results. [For example, US law even lets Nazi's march, and doing so could be be safer than making them bottle up their pressurized hatred. If we tried to make pedophiles eliminate their thoughts from their consciousness, we would regret what those thoughts would lead to in their subsconscious all invisibly bottled up.])

@22 and @25

Please, seek help.

@22~ “...Children can be protected...” 1) No they can’t, at least not 100% of the time. It’s a big world, and pedophiles are masters of disguise. This guy is showing his true colors and don’t give me that shit about the difference between fantasy and reality. Fantasizing sexually about children is NOT the same thing as fantasizing about fucking the mailman. It is NOT just an acceptable permutation of a kinky lifestyle and I would NEVER trust this boundaryless idiot to confine it to his imagination only. 2) I am as far from a bible thumper as you can get, and I find your apologist attitude equally as disturbing as this acknowledged human being, who I will grant limited understanding, but not respect.

@25~ This is not a “thought crime” it’s an indication of a person with a broken, possibly toxic moral compass. People who think four year old children are sexy masturbation fodder are the same people who think they are doing the child “a favor” by introducing them to their latent sexuality. I’m not advocating arrest, just buyer-beware to anyone having any interaction with him and a hope that can steer him toward a good therapist. If HSITIMBACM can’t see that she’s part of the problem. As are you.

@27 DonnyKlicious

Christ on a cracker your thinking is muddy; I'm part of no bloody problem at all. My @25 was simply a tanget (coincidentally about people with muddy thinking!).

If you'd read my @17 addressing the general issue, you'd see that I quoted Dan to make the point that your comment here:

"People who think four year old children are sexy masturbation fodder are the same people who think they are doing the child “a favor” by introducing them to their latent sexuality."

is simply false when it comes to the ""gold star pedophile".

The reason I saw fit @25 to elaborate upon part of @22 Gaydor is that, as Gaydor said, some like you appear unable to keep the all of our disgust around this issue get in the way of being able to think properly.

And even with your emotion-impaired thinking, all you manage to suggest is the LW send him to a bloody therapist? I did a damn sight better in my @17 which I concluded that "HSITIMBACM had a responsibility to society to make sure the truth was determined. If he's NOT a "gold star pedophile", IIRC the only effective recourse is chemical castration."

(Who should determine the truth? In the likely event that HSITIMBACM can't, I think my statement implied the police.)

But go ahead, Donnyboy you just send the next pedophile you find to a good therapist and rest easy pretending that curious2 is the problem.

Oh wait, @26 Bloated Jesus is Bloated, I see everything I just wrote appears to apply to you too. Congratulations.

I do please want to acknowledge that plenty of what I DID NOT quote in @22 Gaydor was tragically wrong. Just for example,

@23 LavaGirl is 1,000,000% right that "This man is a pedophile not a kinkster. Know the difference."
and
@27 DonnyKlicious was 1,000,000% right to reply to @22 Gaydor's "...Children can be protected..." with "No they can’t".

Clearly it was overly optimistic/lazy for me to think I could quote/comment upon something else entirely in @22 Gaydor without disavowing the terrible words of his I which I ignored.

There’s a warm cot waiting for him on McNeil Island.

Even AS a child...(and I mean...YOUNG), I was helplessly drawn to porn and STILL didn't look at anything remotely illegal. I think the REAL red flag, here, is that he is SEXUALIZING YOUNG, FEMALE CHILDREN by jerking off to videos that were made with NO intent towards sexualizing them--specifically, ballerinas.

If he needs to do this to "get off"... if adult, gender-barrier crossing scat play scenarios have gotten SO vanilla that he needs to watch NON-porn instead of porn, then it's not that he's "upping the ante" with more taboo scenarios, it's that he is already so sexually attracted to and fascinated with children that he can't help but VIEW them sexually. LW, I commend you for asking yourself the hard questions; too many people simply shrug it off and try to explain it away. While what HE'S doing, viewing dancing children in tutus, may not TECHNICALLY be illegal...it's a revolting loophole that a browser scrub MAY pass. I say "may", because you only have his word that he's viewed nothing but "innocent non-porn" while you are and aren't around. Don't trust it, and don't trust HIM. He MAY be a "gold star"...but is that really a risk you want to take? Your boyfriend is sexually aroused by little girls, LW, and he's suggesting YOU'RE the unenlightened prude with the problem?? DTMFA, like, yesterday.

...It's ALSO worth noting that this is nothing NEW with pedophiles and child rapists. They often have a VERY large library of child-centric material... pornographic and NON-pornographic material alike. Very minimal research into this matter will show this to often be the case. Speaking of cases, it's not in the least abnormal for them to view footage of and/or clandestinely film "innocent" video of children at play. If you KNOW he's masturbating to it, that's a problem right there. I think, if he's truly done nothing wrong, suggesting he seek help and tipping off the authorities could not go amiss.

TL; DR..... YOU CANNOT YOURSELF DETERMINE IF HE'S SAFE. DTMFA; REPORT HIS ASS.

Rereading my post @10 which included, "The gut-level response is "don't entice more people into that lifestyle ", but that's a stupid argument when applied to gays, ministers, etc." a few hours later, I realized spell-check had changed "k-i-n-k-s-t-e-r-s" to "ministers", making for an illogical argument. Ministers can and do entice people into all sorts of undesirable lifestyles. Kinksters, for the most part, don't.

To second what @9 has said, I refuse to accept that attempting to shield one's privacy online is prima facie evidence of guilt. To raise the presence of the Tor browser to something that needs to be reported is to buy into the whole "well, if you don't have anything to hide, then why are you so concerned about your privacy?" argument often deployed by authoritarians.

The only excuse I need to use a privacy-oriented browser like Tor is because I value my privacy. That is entirely legitimate.

Frankly, given what we know about NSA dragnets and the like, not shielding your privacy online is the irresponsible course of action.

@31, my own comment, I stand by everything I've said but also want to add that the same thing would apply if he were watching little boys or coed child groups at play. It's his repeatedly sought-after sexual arousal and release through the medium of child-centric videos that is the indicator, not his specific preferences.

@32: DAVIDinKENAI, thanks for the laugh, but the real prize goes to DonnyKlicious @21, with "goat-fucking gladiators with polyester underpants and electric whips."
What kind of a sick fuck are you, to come up with that disgusting perversion: "polyester underpants?" You need help, dude.

Have a speedy recovery, Dan.

As far as anecdotal evidence goes, I know someone who saved innocuous photos of teenage actors and singers to their work computer (so I'm assuming they didn't literally have wanking opportunities, but God, it was creepy as hell, judgmental as that makes me). A couple of years later they were on Craigslist trying to find an adult to commit adultery with but succumbed to the charms of a cop pretending to be 14 years old. Which is unfortunate. But things escalate even if you didn't originally know you wanted them to.

@37 Kittymama "...succumbed to the charms of a cop pretending to be 14 years old. Which is unfortunate."

Unfortunate that they succumbed, fortunate that they succumbed TO A COP and not on a child.

Mr Kenai - Kinksters to ministers? Yikes.

Ms Cute - See? You give up "whom" and in hardly any time at all you're calling people "dude".

Seems like there's really only one thing left for this guy to do: run for public office as a G.O.P. "values voters" candidate.

NoCute@35 ~ Thank you!
Ctmc@40 ~ Ha!

@35 NoCute I hate to inform you, well actually no I don't since I am the sadistic type, polyester underwear is quite mainstream. Depending on whether you go with the marketing term or the chemists description of polyester tells whether you may have some. Nylon is a type of polyester even if a marketer says they aren't. If you have any nylon undies then you have polyester undies. The perversion is that men's undies are being made with polyesters. I'll stick with cotton when I'm wearing clothes thank you. Note: no children are around as my son lives with his wife. The disclaimer on children does not apply at nude beaches or resorts.

That said... Where the heck would you find videos of goat-fucking gladiators with electric whips (asking for a friend here)?

@42: All nylons contain nitrogen in each monomer (plus C, H and O); unlike polyesters which only have C, H, and O. The do behave differently, with resistance to gasoline and high temperatures (both to nylon's favor) coming up in my work.

And while nylon is my second favorite polymer (after HDPE), unless I'm swimming or in rain storm, I'm in cotton underwear.

The red flag here is that he isn't saying e.g. 'Yes, I'm indulging an attraction I should be repressing'. With the re-runs, there's less situationally specific and constructive to say, so let's just hope he hasn't offended.

@42: Romial, I'm sorry to see that you're suffering from an irony deficiency.

A friend years ago was turned on by young boys, but never attempted to act on that with real young boys, and kept his porn use legal - he lived in a country with an age of consent at 15, porn was well enough regulated that the porn actors were consenting, not trafficked men, and he watched porn of very young looking guys who were of legal age.

So you can be a pedophile without acting on it in ways that damage kids.

I know some people will probably claim that acting in porn, even if it's what you want to be doing, is damaging at 15 or 16, but that's an opinion, it's not based on actual facts. I've had friends who acted in porn at both young and older ages, and they valued the experiences and the freedom the money gave them. None of them regretted their porn careers after they moved on to other things.

A brief continuation of 46 - I've read interviews of men who acted in porn at young ages and who later felt that they had been abused and damaged by being in porn - not that they had been forced into anything, or physically harmed, but that they had suffered psychological damage just by being in porn.

In those interviews, they came to that conclusion with the "help" of either religious conversion or a sex-negative therapist. And it was clearly the religious and psychological professions which caused trauma by re-defining what had not originally been traumatic into something later remembered as traumatic.

Psychologists and religious assholes do a lot of damage to anyone vulnerable to their respective sciency bullshit or religious bullshit. From what I've seen, both professions do more harm than good.