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NYT On The Internet And Child Molestation
prostoalex writes "In a long and disturbing story on child molesters, the New York Times Magazine among other issues researches the impact of the Internet on the child molesters. While officially the number of child molestations did not change significantly, Dr. Fred Berlin, associate professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, considers the Internet to be a new vehicle for child molestation: 'There are three areas of concern. First, the illusion of anonymity -- an illusion because Internet use can be easily tracked -- leads to disinhibition. Second, there's a blurring of fantasy and reality. There's someone at the other end of the Internet conversation, but it's not quite a real person; there's a feeling of playing a game that can lead to actually doing what one otherwise wouldn't. Third, the easy accessibility can facilitate moving over boundaries.'"
More demonisation of the Internet. More FUD. More people scared of new stuff.
Nothing new, it happens time and again, wanting to blame something apart from the criminal who perpetrates an act.
"oh the internet made me do it"
bah.
Certified 100% Karma whore free!
The Making of a Molester
January 23, 2005
By DANIEL BERGNER
Not long ago, Roy became a type of monster. The transformation took a year and a half, and now, one morning each week, he sits in a room of similar cases. The windowless room is plain, with a blue industrial carpet, a circle of brown cushioned office chairs, a blackboard, a pair of unused conference tables pushed to the rear wall and a faint hum from the air ducts. To reach it from the waiting area -- on the second floor of a probation building in Connecticut -- Roy and the other men walk down a series of corridors and around a series of turns that feel like a path through a maze. The room is wedged in a back corner. "No one," a probation officer said, "likes to think about what's back there."
Roy wonders constantly how he wound up in this place, in the circle of 10 or 12 chairs, a circle of child molesters. His story begins on the beach and ends on the Internet. It seems to him that he was, only recently, a normal man, about 40, running a crew of technicians, repairing elaborate, computerized telecommunications equipment for Wall Street trading firms and in his off hours leading a wedding band, singing Frank Sinatra and Barry White at the Plaza. For a hobby, he flew kites -- kites bigger than most living rooms, brilliantly striped, with rippling streamers and "space socks" trailing more than a hundred feet behind, kites that could perform ballets when he held the lines. He recalls no history of longing for young girls. He had no criminal record of any kind. But then one summer, on vacation, his second wife pointed out her 11-year-old daughter's body. Roy and his wife were standing on the sand; his stepdaughter and her best friend played several yards in front of them at the edge of the surf. "Look at those girls," Roy remembers his wife saying. "They're changing already. You can see their bodies changing."
Roy has a soft, smooth face and an easy, engaging smile. (At his request, I've shielded his identity by using a nickname some of his former band members gave him.) Now in his mid-40's, he's round in the middle and broad in the shoulders; there's something bearish about him, but in a way that's more pandalike and cheerful than threatening. Nearby along the circle sits an elderly man with a graceful wave of white hair combed back from his forehead. There's a well-scrubbed blue-eyed man in his mid-30's, wearing a button-down shirt with a pleasant check of pale blue. Like the rest, they're here by court mandate for group counseling as part of their probation. Most, including Roy, have served time in jail or prison, from a few weeks to several years. The man with the wave of white hair touched the vagina of his grandniece; he kissed her chest and had her hold his penis. This happened repeatedly when the girl was between 7 and 9 years old. As an adult, the man in the checked shirt performed oral sex on his 11-year-old brother and later took his 6-year-old daughter to a motel room along with his brother, who was by then 16. Living out a fantasy he'd had for months, he persuaded them both to undress and urged his brother to have sex with his daughter, only desisting, only waking from the trance of his desire -- "seconds away from something really, really bad happening," he has told me -- when his brother began to cry.
"What possessed me?" Roy asks in one form or another in the group sessions that I've been observing for close to a year, in conversation with me and, it is clear, alone with himself. It's a question that seems to churn through the thinking of most of the men. The one who longed to watch his brother and daughter, and who is a published poet, has talked to me about feeling like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In group one morning, another convict made reference to "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Heinz."
How does a man enter the realm of the monstrous? How broad or thin is the border between the normal and that realm? "Could anybody end up getting into this
Child pron was legal in Japan, in fact it was only very recently that they brought down the hammer on it (1999 ood): Child pron @ wikipedia
... the data shows no increase, but we should be worried because some doctor wants some press by scarring the masses?!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
While officially the number of child molestations did not change significantly
Then what's the problem? It made what they do easier? It makes much of what the rest of society does easier too. Stop criticizing the Internet for society's problems.
First, the illusion of anonymity -- an illusion because Internet use can be easily tracked -- leads to disinhibition.
This is known.
The coolest voice ever.
>> First, the illusion of anonymity -- an illusion because Internet use can be easily tracked
"Easily tracked" comes most often in conjunction with peer to peer and movie/audio sharing. The solution for this is encryption, and it's quite a popular Slashdot topic when it comes to peer to peer and sharing files. If the traffic would be encrypted, then there would be no more RIAA law-suits and debates because they couldn't figure out what does the traffic represent.
Sadly, the technology allowing anonymous traffic would also allow this kind of activities. If you ask me, the right to anonymity should be above all, but it kinda makes you sad when you think how encryption could be used by these molesters in order to avoid police, FBI and such.
Doesn't the "virtualization" scenario he's describing apply as accurately to news reporting and bad events? We've got a lot more data about the increase in bad events than the apparent nonincrease in child molestation, now that so much oversight it virtual, through the media, rather than in-person with direct accountability. Now that the NYT has top-of-the-line media products specializing in "self examination" every few months, they should try this model on their own problems first.
--
make install -not war
"In a long and disturbing story on child molesters, the New York Times Magazine among other issues researches the impact of the horseless carriage on child molesters. While officially the number of child molestations did not change significantly, Dr. Bob Hamburger, associate shaman at Ye Olde Schoole Of Medickal Arts and Alckemy, considers the automobile to be a new horse for child molestation: 'There are three areas of concern. First, the molesters can use these 'cars' to travel to children, getting to them much faster than they could using just a horse or even a team of horses. Second, the automobile's interior can be used as an area for molestation. Third, the easy accessibility can facilitate moving over boundaries.'"
The Internet can potentially allow a person to move from simply having a desire, to acting upon that desire.
However, it can also allow someone to satisfy that desire through sheer fantasy (written stories, role-playing, artwork, etc.), removing the need to act upon the desire in real life.
I think this applies to every aspect of human behavior, from the benign (sports, hobbies, etc.) to the harmful (murder, child abuse, etc.). The question becomes: is the 'net any worse than allowing the average person access to a public library, the phone system, and so forth? Any of these can either encourage behavior or provide a controlled (and harmless) outlet... it's all a matter of what the individual chooses to do.
And I think that's what many people miss in discussions like this. It all comes down to self-control and individual responsibility. One argument is that the 'net, through its anonymity, encourages people to deny responsibility and lose their self-control. The other argument is that anyone who does so was simply looking for an excuse to avoid responsibility anyway.
It's like people who claim that an AC/DC song 'encouraged' them to kill their girlfriend, or that comic books 'made' them think they can fly. The 'net cannot influence a person unless they choose to act upon their desires anyway.
The real problem is that children don't understand leet speak, and so will often get drawn into encounters with child molesters and have no clue what is going on.
Before it takes root in society!
Ooops, too late!
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
The point being that the media and bottomdwellers who live in it like to take a slow news day and turn it into yet another story about how the internet is going to murder you, your children, your way of life.
The internet is no more a haven for child molesters than your average group setting with children and the adults we willingly give proxy power to. Strangely though no one seems to want to do away with Christian youth camps, only some of the bad people who work in them. So maybe the issue is really about the fact that most people don't know the difference between a browser and the 'internets' and they basically fear what they don't understand so gory stories about lesbian communist heroin addicted al Qaeda child rapists is just the thing to play to their ignorant fears.
Hello and welcome to 1995.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Now go and treat them like ill people!
Get them as fast out of the public as you can, but DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT simply put them in jail without any kind of therapy (as most countries - especially western "developed" countries do).
Without any kind of therapy you're just producing timebombs that are gonna blow of when someone decides to kick them out of jail (someday).
Everyone knows that these are ill people (the simple disgust most readers here would develop by reading what child molesters do should prove that).
And DO NOT let them out too early.
Any YES the death penalty is no option. It's simply archaic and in-humane.
Anonymity is unaccountability. Unaccountability is the essense of power. Power corrupts.
If we can suspend our kneejerk reactions for the moment and simply acknowledge the fact that most/all of us would be much less moral if we realized there were no consequences(earthly, spiritually, etc..) then we can understand the point of view of this researcher.
It seems that half the community has the assumption that these poeple are just "made" this way and influences)such as child pronography on the internet) do not exacerbate the situation at all. I think that perhaps a more realistic approach is to look at the situation more holistically.
Yes, the internet probably did not cause their cravings, but can we truly say it doesn't feed them, fuel them, or take it to the next level of actually perpetrating a crime?
Of course, anyone can get a child of their own without any vetting at all by the state - assuming they can find a willing partner. I wonder if we will see articles worried that this provide an easy way for a paedophile to gain access to a child? NYT to call for licensing of parents?
Mind you, "internet enables child abuse" makes for a good scare story. I don't suppose the headline "Families enable child abuse" is going to sell so many newspapers.
"I was sentenced," Roy continued with his introduction, "to 20 years suspended after 30 days, with 35 years probation"
Anybody else have a problem with the fact that this guy did not do any significant jail time for what he did?
Where oh where has my Underdog gone?
True, that child molesters and purveyors of child porn exist in probably the same percentages as ever. No more, no less. And they will do whatever it is they do, with or without the Internet.
But.
The net does provide a new vehicle for them. A presumed layer of anonymity (and for those that are not entirely stupid, encryption and proxies makes it much harder to track). And a way to dissminate their crap in far wider circles than before.
Exactly like con artists. 419ers, phishers, and the like have been around forever. Fast online communications just make it easier to suck in a wider range of people.
Just because it existed before the net doesn't mean that the net's influence shouldn't be looked into.
I think the thing they're missing here is that sure, anonymity and surrealism make people do things they normally wouldn't, but that doesn't mean it's necessarily a bad thing. Drinking alcohol literally makes one less inhibited, but everyone knows several people that are intelligent enough to drink responsibly. I'm relatively sure the ratio of responsible drinkers to irresponsible ones is much lower than the ratio of responsible internet users to irresponsible ones. This is just a look at the losers that give the whole medium a bad name.
This forum Sig is licensed under the LGPL.
The man with the wave of white hair touched the vagina of his grandniece; he kissed her chest and had her hold his penis. This happened repeatedly when the girl was between 7 and 9 years old. As an adult, the man in the checked shirt performed oral sex on his 11-year-old brother and later took his 6-year-old daughter to a motel room along with his brother, who was by then 16. Living out a fantasy he'd had for months, he persuaded them both to undress and urged his brother to have sex with his daughter, only desisting, only waking from the trance of his desire -- ''seconds away from something really, really bad happening,'' he has told me -- when his brother began to cry.
:/
It's like reading horrible erotica.
And did they absolutely have to give us the child molestation manual just in order to write a story on the subject?
During ''Chase,'' they would turn off most of the lights. Often they plugged in a strobe light from his band equipment or a lamp that cast the shapes of moons on the walls, in blues and yellows and greens. His marriage, at that point, was falling apart. Sometimes his wife was home, having shut herself in their bedroom for the evening. Sometimes she was out on her own. He raced after the girls through the house, through the colored beams. In ''Spider,'' each player had to sit motionless; if you moved at all you got pinched. The touching occurred during the games.
Did we really need to know that?
There is a certain leftist school of thought that holds that the school system was developed especially to churn out factory workers and consumers. And furthermore that the US Govt and corporate lobbies extended this idea to develop citizens that are subservient.
According to this theory, in general all this molding of youth is accomplished by propaganda, basically: Pledge of Allegiance, regimented classrooms, watered down curriculum, portrayal of American system of capitalism is positive, leftist forms of govt are portrayed negatively.
Well, it may sound farfetched to some, but I think this idea is more or less true. THe school system was not set up like this in some smoke filled room, but instead evolved to be like this and accomplish these goals through decades of top-down pressures by powerful interests who act to evolve a school system that operates to reinforce the status quo and to inculcate ideas in children that favor the powerful institutions that already exist in society. In that sense, the propaganda is built into the system.
So, you might wonder whether there are powerful forces acting upon the school systems that favor demonization of the Internet and favor scaring children away from the Internet, for a variety of reasons, principally because the Net is a disuptive force, one that challenges the status quo. In particular, the net offers easy access to historical materials and writing that are both accessible, and that portary America and its histor in a rather unfavorable light. That exposure of those ideas to children could threaten the powerful institutions and people in contol of them.
So, in line with that theory, the entire Internet is tainted in the minds of youth. As the children get older, these ideas in their heads will make it easier to control or cripple the internet through political means.
Also, in current time, associating the Net with pedophilia will make it easier right now to cripple the net or p2p through political means. Once people become parents, they will allow many bad things to be done by their government if it can be made to seem that it is in the name of protecting their children.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
One big circle jerk?
Karnal
For once I think it's fine not to RTFA. It starts out gross, who needs to read the rest?
This site provides unbiased, free discussion and support on the topic, including the ways that governments and police forces manipulate this very sensitive issue in order to further stifle our freedoms of speech:
http://www.madbadorsad.org/sadbbs/
My name is Austin and I am 14. this whole thing sort of freeks me out a bit. I was bored so i did some thinking on this, and this is the gereral direction my thoughts went. I'm 14, that means its normal for me to like girls around that age, find them atractive, ect. Now, we asume as people age, the mature mentaly as well, but this asumption can not always be entirely correct. As my 22 year old friend once said, "If at 16 I found a girl in my class hot, what has changed to make me NOT find a 16 year old hot?"
To break this down, simply, there was no major change in his atraction to girls between 16 and 22, but unlike when he was 16, it is no loger 'right' for him to find a 16 year old atractive, now, the youngest he 'should' find atractive is more like 20.
Im no shrink or anything, but i guess its sorta the same thing with the guy in the artical...
Sure, you can look up child porn on the internet, or you can read how to build bombs.
Or you can look up art, and read how to do first aid.
The internet is a medium, no different from the telephone, newspapers or television.
Sure, you can attack the internet, but i think the main problem with paedophilia is the witch hunt called my mainstream news, making it impossible to actually deal with the subject objectivly. Either your for burning anyone that looks at a kid at the stake, or your a child molester that needs burnt at the stake.
Im not trying to justify it in any way, but why does this thing get so much attention when rapists and murderers are considered to be more "socially acceptable" crimes?
Burn those anonymous cowards, they are nothing but scum anyway.
- These characters were randomly selected.
Whenever the NYTimes writes a piece bitching about how the Internet is such a horrible place, remember that they have been struggling like a lot of newspapers to grapple with their online competition. They don't want the Internet to look good, their business gets worse as the Internet looks better.
I'm not saying that they may not have some points, but always be skeptical about "old media" coming out with the latest horror story about the Internet. We've known about this problem for years now, but they keep beating this horse over and over. Ever notice how rarely they mention the sting operations that go down very successfully against online kiddie porn sites? Stings that get people in like 10 countries at once?
Well who'd want to hear the cops might actually be winning on something here? Certainly not the NYTimes and other publications because that might mean the Internet is still the "wild west" but the west ain't so wild anymore.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
I guess as you get older you realize that 16 year olds have very little to offer. Most models are 16-20, and we still find them hot - on paper. In real life, you tend to want someone who's a bit more traveled. A 16 year old coming onto you in real life seems a bit like watching an 80's movie and still finding the effects really cool. Young chicks do some pretty funny things with make-up, and they tend to over-act. Innocence is great for a while, but us jaded older guys crave real deviance, and that takes a while to develop.
I'd hate to get graphic on you here, but a 25 year old chick is going to know a lot more about how to turn you on than a 16 year old, and you're going to be bored of cheerleader outfits and backseats by then. Realistically, what a 16 year old is usually missing is how to turn HERSELF on, but we'll leave that for aminaked.com, won't we?
-dave
"child sexual molestation is committed against perhaps 20 percent of girls and 5 to 10 percent of boys under the age of consent in the United States."
...Angela drove around the country meeting other 'Angela Sheltons', only to discover that a majority had been raped, beaten or molested just like herself as a child. In the film she confronts her child-molesting father and eventually goes thru a massive emotional breakdown.
If that is news to you, or you find it hard to understand true society-burdening effects of child sexual molestation, check out this award-winning film and its website:
Searching for Angela Shelton
Her story is pretty amazing, and seeing her film and how it touches survivors really helps non-survivors understand sexual traumas.
Not until I had spent lots of time around Angela did I finally realize that as I child I had been abused by a baby sitter who thought it was OK to let a 11-yr-old suckle on her breats...
Abe
Newflash: The Internet is also used by pedophiles. Wow. Shocking. (/sarcasm)
The Internet, as a communications medium, is just another scenery for all kinds of human behavior, from charity to crime. We have to yet see any place on earth that isn't vulnerable to crimes of any kind.
Does that stat sound really disturbing to anyone else? No.
We (most of us anyway) are hardwired to protect kids. It violates our sensibilities at the very core.
Likewise, a psychologist friend of mine was pointing out recently that the Internet has made it easier than ever before to catch child molesters without making any significent increase in the numbers of them. In other words: the Internet is the single greatest anti-child-molestation system ever invented.
But that's not such an interesting story and needs a little tiny bit of lateral thought, so it's not going to be in the mainstream press any day soon.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Well, I guess I was an ugly kid. Nobody even attempted that on me. Now I'm an adult, and I can't get another adult to
So 5% masturbated after thinking about it... and 7% said they might do it if not caught? I'd think those numbers would be reversed. 7% masturbated, 5% would if caught.
Just sounds strangely wrong. Even the way it's explained.
Finally, something hope doesn't run Linux..
The New York Times has been attacking the Internet - including charges of fostering pornography and child molestation - for the last ten years.
All bullshit. Big politically controlled media scared of being replaced by true democracy in information.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
How many cases are unreported? How many molestors are not caught?
I think it's very possible that the internet actually reduces the number of child molestors out free in the world.
Law enforcement have set up sting opperations, where they impersonate children on IRC. They can also trace those who traffic in child porn. Those child molestors would have gone un-noticed by law enforcement pre-internet.
Oddly enough, you're not the first person to think of it..
At work we had some video come down on the satellite ( I work for a TV news company ), it was from some south american country, and the townspeople tied this guy to a telephone poll, stripped him half naked, doused him with gasoline and lit him up.. I guess it was his second or third offense at child molestation / rape.
I can't say he didn't deserve it, but dang.. If that doesn't serve as a warning to others, I don't know what is.
That's really interesting. I'd like to take the Abel Assessment test to see what it shows about me (afaik I am not going to be a sex offender, nor am I one now, but I'd sure like too see what they'd say.) A website says that you look at a series of pictures twice, once to measure the time spent looking at the images ance once again to rate them in terms of attraction/revulsion. Seems to me it would be easy enough to implement something like this as a webpage with a little javascript, if only you had their data.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I can speak with some authority on this, obviously I can't name names publically but I've knows some of the top people in this area and quite a few victims too. So this isn't my opinion I'm quoting, it's genuine expert practitioner fact.
Paedophilia means literally "Love of children"
Looking at a young woman with a womans body, eg hips, breasts, developed vagina, and seeing something sexually attractive does NOT make you sick, no matter how young she is or how old you are.
If you are a 70 year old man looking at a 16 year old bikini clad babe and thinking "phwooooargh" to yourself does not make you a paedophile.
pre-requisite #1 is the "target" of your lust must be pre-pubescent, eg sexually immature.
Paedophiles feel "threatened" for want of a better word, by things like developed breasts and pubic hair. (possibly its a power thing, you can have more power over a child, and sexual maturity is a sign of approaching adulthood, and much less power over them)
OK?, now lets move on.
You know that really pretty 10 year old girl neighbour / cousin / sister / daughter, you know the one who people say things like "she's gonna be a real heartbreaker when she grown up"
That's the ones you think the paedophile will be after, so that's the ones you try to protect, you couldn't be more wrong.
Paedophiles like androgynous kids (neither especially male or female to look at) and shy kids and quiet kids and lonely kids and neglected kids and overlooked kids, but most of all androgynous kids.
So, if you find pre-pubescent androgynous kids sexually attractive, you are a __potential__ paedophile. Do something about it and you are a paedophile.
If you see a sexually mature pretty and feminine 14 year old and think "phew, never like that when I was at school" then you're not a paedophile, and if you end up doing something about it and having consentual sex with her then you are a sick fuck and a pervert, but you're still not a paedophile.
HTH etc
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
Didn't the article say that there was ony a 17% repeat offender rate (article used the word
"recidivism")?
Would you like to kill those 83 people out of 100 who would otherwise go on to live normal productive lives?
well said that man >;^)
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
If death penalty was a deterrence, there would be no more killers would it?
Hetereosexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality, S&M, watersports, pedophilia etc are all the same, a sexual orientation you are born with.
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
and if you end up doing something about it and having consentual sex with her then you are a sick fuck and a pervert, but you're still not a paedophile.
So, your great-great-grandparents were sick fucks when they got married at 14 and had kids a year later?
(This post is so far off you might see the topic on a clear day, but anyway: ) In the article, Dr. Kafka speaks of transformation of normal person into a monster. Creeepy imho.
It is a bit heavy on the unnecessary dirty details, but even the author of the article acknowledges that "Roy" uses the disinhibition as an excuse.
Of course there's a slant to the writing. If newspapers only reported listed facts no one would read them. The problem is not the article. The problem is in the spin.
If various people could stop being paranoid nerds (or trigger-happy lawmakers), they might see the article as it seems to me the author intended. A story about a (mostly) normal guy whose life has spun out of control, partly because his technical knowledge and background got him in way over his head.
Attackers such as RIAA/MPAA could still saturate the network with corrupted nodes that record IP's and requests. Even if the communication is encrypted, presumably they have the keys since they are participating in the network. Sure, it would make it harder, but what would realy stop them? The real solution is what the warez dudes have been doing for 15 years, knowing personally all of the people they trade with. Of course, the warez groups still get infiltrated by FBI agents every now and then.
My other first post is car post.
Honestly I didn't catch where the FUD was at. The article did not demonize the internet in any way. It seemed to be more about the current treatment and common characteristics of people who have committed these acts.
Bah.. I was a bit interested in the article, but then I realized how long it was and decided it wasn't worth my time. So here I am having only half read the article. I find the comments more entertaining anyway!
What is your penile percentile?
"Evil lurks in the datalinks as it lurked in the streets of yesteryear.
But it was never the streets that were evil"
(spoken by Sister Miriam as an introduction to her character in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri)
I was thinking along similar lines, but kind of backwards.
... and if that's what's creeping you out, I just don't think it's true.
If I was 13 years old, and somebody offered to show me a copy of Playboy magazine, I'd probably say hell yes. On the other hand, if somebody's 45 year old mom were to "accidentally" wander into the room stark naked, I'd probably go "Yuuuucccchh" and tell all my friends what happened, and we'd all laugh at what a wrinkled, saggy old lady she was. (Maybe some of you were more advanced than I was at that age, but that's the simple fact for me.)
Nowadays I'm 32, and I've dated at least one woman in her 40s. Moreover, this particular woman I'm thinking of seemed cute to me -- not "attractive" in a sort of "she's a warm body and she's basically good-looking enough" way, but actually in an "I'd rather date her than anybody else in this room" kind of way. And when I talked to her and went out to do things with her, she didn't seem like an old lady at all. So something about my mind has changed there, as I've gotten older.
On the other hand, I doubt I'll ever date a 19 year old again. Those chicks are nuts!! Give 'em some time to sort their brains out, I say.
So something's definitely changed. When I was in high school, I was definitely attracted to 16 year old girls. Nowadays I just see them as little girls. When I see them dressing sexy, or making sexual comments or performing sexualized behaviors, body language etc., I think it looks like they're posing, imitating things they learned in the movies or something. To my mind, they're just not very good at it, and as a result it's not particularly flattering on them.
That's just me. I have other friends who see a young girl and go, "Hey hey heyy!" But part of the way this article was written seemed to have an undercurrent of, "any one of us could be a child molester, we're only steps away"
If you showed me a sexy photograph of a 16 year old girl, could I be turned on by that? It's possible -- but that's a posed photograph, designed by a photographer who knows how to manipulate an image to get the desired result. Am I attracted to real-life, living and moving 16 year old girls? No sir, I believe I am telling you the god's honest truth when I say that I am just not. I somehow doubt you or your friend are two steps away from being child molesters either.
Breakfast served all day!
, he said that he was engaged to be married again -- to a bookkeeper at the company, a colleague since before his offense. How does he have a wife and he's a child molester? Girls seem to be more repulsed with Linux users than child molsters and serial killers.
The article refers to these people as monsters.
I can see how someone who hurts children is a monster.
But, I wonder. What about those that are in the initial phase of this "monstrosity". Does that are feeling sexually attracted to children, who have thoughts about acting on those feelings, but haven't harmed anyone yet.
What can they do?
The thoughts they have makes them monster to 99% of people. They're not gonna get help, they're gonna repress those feelings, let these frustrated impulses fester, until it overruns their reason and they finally go ahead and find themselves a small defenseless child to make their victim.
I think that making this a thought crime to be hidden is making the real crime, the one with victims, more common. The article mentions judgement, and a treatment to learn to controll their evil impulses. Wouldn't it be better if they learned to controll themselves before they did things that they can't take back?
I wonder how many people we know have these feelings... just waiting to find themselves in a situation where it'll come out... scary.
You can't take the sky from me...
From what I learned at 4chan, Pr0n in general was banned in Japan until the '80's or so, until a judge ruled softcore pr0n legal. Japan didn't need a law against child pr0n(no pr0n was legal), so the ruling accidently made child pr0n legal. Child pr0n was banned slowing throught Japanese cities until Japan is a nation banned it in 1999.
So it wasn't simply that Japan lived with child pr0n since the beginning of time, it's more of an effect of a slow legal process.
~~~
Click here, you know you wanna!
I think the solution is pretty simple: make sure kids understand the issues (ie that people can pretend to be anyone etc) and really understand them not just 'yes dad' understand. Until they do, they're just too young to use the internet (or at least chat rooms) on their own. We don't need any more laws, just competent parents and kids who understand good logic. Letting kids loose on the internet is basically like giving them a phone and letting them call random numbers and talk to anyone, there's a certain level of maturity where they can do that and not get hurt. Oh and if you're scared of them seeing the f-word then just don't give them internet approved access. Also filtering software needs to be put the other way around, instead of blocking certain sites it needs to only allow a specific list of sites that have been pre-, yes that means the beauty of the net is destroyed for your kids, but that's the only way that's going to work. In the long run, the sooner you teach your kids basic maturity and common sense the sooner you can let them use the net freely and let them judge for themselves what to see.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
I read the article before seeing the link, and never in its many pages did being "anti-internet" seem like a salient point of the story. It was a fascinating exploration of a sexual predator who doesn't fit the common dehumanized stereotype, who wasn't himself abused as a child, who gets along very well with his coworkers (who still hang out with him), who suddenly awakens to this destructive fetish well into his 40's.
The author reports on a number of perspectives: the offender, the leaders of support groups (discussing their design decisions), the offender's coworkers, and his wife's. I found two points particularly interesting from a policy perspective. One was that recidivism rates for child abuse are actually lower than 20% (still pretty high, but not as high as other crimes, and not as high as made seem in popular depictions). Second, a few very gossamer layers of denial are all it takes to seed the fields for future transgressions, and how that denial can be so hard to catch, even under the seemingly very close scrutiny of a wife and support group.
What I DIDN'T take away from the story was how dangerous the internet in general is, and how everybody needs to worry about scary relatives over the internet any more than in person. I especially didn't take the article, as some post patronizingly suggested, as a befuddled and clumsy strike by Old Media against New Media. Seriously guys, can't you get your heads out of the Slashdot talking-point framework for an issue as important and undiscussed as the sexual ause of children?
I imagine that this will be one of the next big awkward social issues that U.S. society has to deal with, as was the Kinsey Report fallout (e.g. widespread infidelity), domestic abuse, drug abuse, etc were in decades past. A possible artifact of this starting trend of reckoning (if it is one) is that recent Kevin Bacon movie which got pretty good reviews; I plan on seeing it.
BOOGABOOGABOOGA *pulls a scary face*
Or, in english:
"The internet hasn't changed the behavior of child molesters, but we're scared to think that one day - maybe, possibly - it will. So let's all be scared of this, despite a complete lack of evidence." *scary face*
Yeah, if you grew up in typical suburban white neighborhood in a family for whom welfare was not a primary means of income, this number does seem a bit high.
And the number furthermore reminds you of how non-typical your "neighborhood" has been (neighborhood can function as a way to generalize people and to keep yoiurself from interacting with people outside your circle). People all tend to grow up thinking their situation is average and normal in every way, and realizing that there are so many people living differently helps us to act in ways that help all people and not just ourselves.
This guy is in deep denial, in my opinion he is trying to snow his way out of doing his probation. He will tell you anything you want to hear. If it was not Instant messenger it would have been listening in on her phone calls or reading her diary.
I bet when she was in second grade and he was doing that same "spider game" he didn't have the internet to prod him on. "And then I discovered, in a statement his stepdaughter made to the police, that some of the troubling touches, through clothes, began when she was in second grade."
Sadly some right wing dingbat will ignore that and blame the internet for all his ills and try to save us all from his fate.
Hell yes. But $DIEITY Bless Them anyway, or we wouldn't be having this argument/discusion, would we? :D
You can't take the sky from me...
I don't think the Internet increases the incidence of child molestation. A molester is going to molest whether or not he or she has the net at his disposal. They're driven by an extremely strong, sick urge and they're going to find a way to fulfill it no matter what.
"The advanced societies of the future will be driven by competing systems of psychopathology." -JG Ballard
So, your great-great-grandparents were sick fucks when they got married at 14 and had kids a year later?
My grandfather was Jerry Lee Lewis, you insensitive clod!
P.S. Crap, I just made a joke in a pedophelia thread, I'm going to hell! Oh no!
You can't take the sky from me...
By our "great-great-grandparents" standards, it was probably normal for a man in his 20s or 30s to marry a girl of 14. Back then women were less educated than men, so the mental ellement in the relationship that the grandparent post mentions was almost nonexistent. From a physical point of view as well, people lived shorter lives, so a girl of 14 would be equivalent to a girl of 17-18 today. Add to those factors the fact that society itself, with its moral standards, quality of life, and all its over aspects, was very different from today.
Society changed quite a bit (at least in the civilized world) since then. So while 100 or more years ago marying a girl of 14 was normal (although just barely), today it is unacceptable.
jokes aside, what does this have to do with 'news for nerds?' this story just doesn't belong on slashdot...
dunno why i bother; this site has been in the shitter for years now...
if i'm a grammar nazi, you're an illiteracy nazi.
Reading some of the comments got me wondering just what the age of consent is in different states currently.
I found this site http://www.ageofconsent.com/ageofconsent.htm to be quite informative.
"Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup."
We would think differently if the roles were reversed, i.e., if it were a 11 year old girl sucking on the dick of a male babysitter.
Double standard? Yep. That's just the way it is.
My other first post is car post.
Certain there are paedophiles do cultivate sexual contact with children. But they're rare, very rare.
The media keeps portraying molesters as shadowy predators, playing on people's fear of the unknown.
But the overwhelming majority of abuse of children is committed by parents and close family members.
Do not forget this.
No, that stat sounds really false. Is it reproducible? Find out: Put together a representative sample of women and simply ask them if they had ever been molested as a child. Do it in an anonymous fashion. (Get a ballot box and give one questionnaire per lady) I guarantee you 1 in 5 were not molested as a child. It sounds like the NYT is afraid of the internet again. Their article is sensationalist garbage. Most mainstream news is these days. I would say that is the real issue here. How do we address the prevalent yellow journalism in mainstream American media?
Thank you.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
It would seem to me that a working definition of
Pedophilia is sexual desire of small children to the exclusion of nearly everything else.
Looked at in that light, there are very few pedophiles.
I think everyone can admit to have been aroused by jailbait before, but I really don't think that constitutes pedophilia. So can we separate child molestation from pedophilia now? The two aren't necessarily the same.
Within the context of child molestation, one fact is always ignored: children are sexual beings. Three year olds masturbate, teens do god knows what (badly), and no one really likes to think about the possibility that a child initiated sexual contact. That children might be sexual curious.
If that is the case, what are we really calling child molestation? Is it possible for a child to molest another child? If a 14 year old and a 13 year old have sex, does society call them pedophiles or molesters? By what rational does a 30 year old having sex with a 16 year old suddenly become a crime?
If it is unwanted. Simple basic rape. But to say sex with a minor is by necessity rape, well, that seems to be more a manifestation of a societies neurosis than any particular harm (not to say that harm doesn't happen).
And when a society sexually represses its children, is it any wonder why so many kids freak out?
I'm not trying to downplay the seriousness of child abuse or molestation, but to include every sexual action towards children as molestation trivializes acts where children were forced into sex acts against their will.
And bravo to the NY Times for exploiting the issue of child exploitation to rape the kids even more (the titilatting passages weren't accidental).
Those are some very important sentiments. Some people are pedophiles, just like some people are gay and (more often) straight. It's not a choice, and it's not decidedly a result of childhood traumas (some who have traumas turn out pedophile, some who have traumas turn out "normal", some who were not traumatized turn out pedophile).
So these people simply exist. They are not inherently evil or monstrous, they simply are, like some people simply are gay. What they (and everyone else) can choose, is how they act. Resisting your primary sexual urges for the duration of your life takes some (often considerable) effort. Such an effort needs support from those near you, from people you believe in. As you can imagine, if nobody nowhere believes in you, it takes considerable character to believe in yourself. A pedophile will meet universal condemnation and rejection, from everywhere he can turn -- newspapers and TV, but also his closest family and most dear friends will call him the most gruesome things, without knowing it's him they speak of. In case you lack in empathy, let me help you: That's harsh, that wounds.
That is the birth of the child molester. A uniform society which tells you day after day, every day, that you are a monster, that you are one of the last things on earth society allows to be universally hated. As far as height goes, you're the lowest. Oh, you may not have "done anything" yet, since you're only 17 (and hey, we hate you), but you can't hold out forever. Just you wait, you will molest. And we'll be here to spit in your face 'till you do.
Unfortunately for society's expectations, the internet has done wonders for pedophiles everywhere. We suddenly have support fora -- I can tell you most of us really did think we were the only one of our kind (feeling love for children but appalled at the thought of molestation). Now we are united, and we are many. And weekly, places like boychat.org sees new, amazed users who are just finding out they're not alone. Here, we can speak openly without the usual fear that haunts us everywhere else. We can share joys and regrets, frustration and philosophies. Thanks to the internet, I have learnt to live with what I am and not hate myself, and not be afraid of what I am. And most importantly, I was able to start from a confused teenager and build a firm set of ethics which I believe in strongly, and which guide my decicions for what I do.
And my hope remains, that we may one day be judged for our actions, not our attractions.
(Posted anonymously, for obvious reasons)
Errr....what protocol, exactly, does one use to employ the internet as a "vehicle for child molestation"?
Verbal abuse.
"Suck my dick, Vicky", and so on and so forth. Showing them porn pictures, spying on them like that guy in the article, etc.
You can't take the sky from me...
Hetereosexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality, S&M, watersports, pedophilia etc are all the same, a sexual orientation you are born with.
People aren't born with an interest in urine, or in giving and recieving pain. All that stuff is learned behaviours.
The "I was born that way" argument is just an attempt to legitimise it, to put it on the same level as races, so that they can recieve the same "protection" as for racial discrimination.
You can't take the sky from me...
Although it's tempting to say that some things haven't changed, I wouldn't.
I am assuming that you do not have any children -
These people in general - and this animal Roy in particular have no business walking the street.
Animal?
RTFA: He came on to her and touched her hips, all the way down to the elastic band of her underware.
He did a little prison, he's on probation for 35 years. Part of his probation is to never be anywhere with young girls.
Aside from a sadistic desire to see him suffer as much as possible, how could his punishment be more effective if he were in prison?
You can't take the sky from me...
Because what you're leading up to is a discussion regarding the age of consent. In fact, some recent cases in the United States where 20-30yo teachers have seduced early-teen boys have thrown this discussion into high relief.
Early teen boys are more than physically equipped for sex... in fact, they think of little else. They are hormonally-charged and physically able, yet in one of nature's greatest ironies, they're sorely lacking the mental/emotional tools necessary to process that experience. Herein lies the issue with consent. A young man at that age may not (likely has not) developed far enough mentally to be truly capable of abstract thought, and often lacks the abilty to appreciate long-term consequence.
Such a young man would probably enthusiastically assent to sex with an attractive woman... without the slightest regard for what the long-term physical/economic/emotional/social consequences might be. He might not be able to deal appropriately (or deal at all) with the emotional dimension. Like it or not, sexual intercourse is a powerful emotional experience for women and men... and an experience that the average young adolescent is woefully unprepared to assimilate.
This is why the age of consent in many western cultures is mid-to-late teens, and why organizations like NAMBLA are so vile. Younger children quite literally cannot appreciate the full ramifications of their assent.
Informed consent must be exactly that... there can be no consent with an individual who lacks the mental capacity to make an informed decision
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
However, it can also allow someone to satisfy that desire through sheer fantasy (written stories, role-playing, artwork, etc.), removing the need to act upon the desire in real life.
Tell me -- does looking at lots of porn make you overall *less* horny during your normal day, or *more*?
When I first stumbled onto large amounts of free porn, in college, I overdosed -- and I had a few weeks of thinking of nothing but sex 24/7, and searching for more and more hardcore images and videos online. Then I realized I couldn't even have normal conversations with women anymore (hard to talk with those kind of images flooding your mind!) so I cut myself off completely, and managed to get back to a normal life after awhile.
It's easy to imagine someone with less self-control getting into real trouble in that kind of state. The more you get, the more you want... until the next best thing can only be real-life.
I'm not arguing for more censorship online, but we should acknowledge that this is a negative side-effect of the net, and educate people about it.
Note - I wasn't searching for child porn, but I could easily see the search for "more and more" being a search for "younger and younger". Anyone who's been a camp counselor or spent a lot of time with kids knows they're sexual beings. I remember 6-7 year-old girls in my group who liked a game where one would sit on each of my shoes, facing backwards, and I'd walk around taking huge steps making monster noises. Technically not much different from the game where one would cling to each of my hands and I'd do the same thing (lifting them up with each step)... but the sit-on-my-shoes one started seeming wrong to me, so I stopped that one. Of course they complained because that was one of their favorite games (and think of how many girls fall in love with riding horses), but it was creeping me out, partly *because* I was at an age where -- even before much of any exposure to porn -- the very word "sex" could set my hormones jumping, and I was just realizing that there were *women*, with *actual* *genitalia*, all around me.
So - it never sparked a response in me that would gotten me in trouble, but it was fascinating when I started noticing it, since we pretend kids are asexual. If someone's obsession fell this way, it's not that huge a leap from games the kids are begging for, to "games" that will scar them for life and put you in jail.
This is part of the article's point -- these are (mostly) not freaks, not monsters. They're just a step away from *us*.
I would think that with the recent scandals of NYT reporters bending, molding and completely making up the "truth", that people on /. would not actually use them as a source anymore. I know they are a lot less credible then CBS. At least CBS fired and reprimanded the people responsible for memogate. When's the last time the NYT fired someone for making up a story?
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
"...pedophilia etc are all the same, a sexual orientation you are born with."
Pedophilia is not a "sexual orientation". It's a crime, a horribly immoral and destructive act, and maybe even a disease, but it's not a sexual preference. In sex, it takes at least two to tango (or on Slashdot, one and an Adultcheck password and a towel), but in pediophila, one of those two are unwilling or innocent victims, with little or no say over the activity. So if you're going to dignify pedophiles with the "It's natural 'cause i was born with it" thing, then just go ahead and say that rape is just a "sexual preference" too; yet another situation where one of the "participants" is a victim. If a rapist says that he's wanted to rape all of his life, does that make it a sexual orientation? You have to draw the line somewhere and declare some behaviors deviant or even psychotic.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
I can't stand articles that sympathize with the most repulsive people in our societies. Is someone forgetting how he messed up two little girls lives? ugh
Math
I would have to say that the punishment for rape/child molestation should be very, very simple: Castration. Without anesthetic.
(NYT on the Internet) and (Child Molestation)
and couldn't imagine what sort of bizarre connection was being implied....
Personally I believe many of these "deviant" behaviors aren't "learned" so much as attempts by the participant to experience a sexual "high".
Some people become bored with what we would call "normal" sex, and do something different in order to get more of a sexual rush. Like a drug user becomes more tolerant of drug dosages, a sexual "deviant" needs to do things differently in order to enhance the experience and make it more intense.
Well, if it means that they can be easily tracked and show their true faces this way, than this is good, or? We can catch them more easily than when they were, say, mostly hanging around playgrounds and public swimming pools and schools.
Boy, I wonder what this professor would have thought about Gutenberg. Anybody else old enough to remember when the NYT was a real newspaper that printed real news?
If I wasn't so damned addicted to the internet I might have finished all my projects by now.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
that link you gave is wackier than Hades....what kind of lawyer has to sell tshirts and stuff on ebay?!
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Wow, was that ever an unexpected counterpoint to the majority of the posts here. Made me think for a while. Thanks for taking the time to post your thoughts.
Best of luck with that (and I mean that seriously, not sarcastically..)
This space intentionally left blank.
I scrolled through the comments reading most of them, they are either knee jerk reactions rushing to defend the precious intarweb, or armchair historians waxing philosophic on the fact that a few hundred years ago fourteen year olds got married and fucked all the time.
We are talking about little kids being fucked against their will, not statutory rape. Noone is going to take away your free consenting adult pr0n, mp3's or pointless news blurbs and websites about fat kids trying to make a starwars movie.
The fact of the matter is this is a serious issue that noone seems to be willing to say. This is wrong and I will do everything within my power to help stop it. Where the hell is our ethical hackers against pedophilia now?
Oh and best of all is the plus five post about how horrible it is to be a child molestor and how mean everyone in the whole world is to him. How he can't help it its like being gay or straight a genetic quirk from birth and how glad he is that there are now support groups.
Two of you schmucks actually patted that asshole on the back. You are as bad as him. I assure you there is NOTHING to think about on this issue its one of the only black and white ones left in this tired old world.
Fact number one. Fucking a little kid has nothing to do with being gay, gay people are two consenting adults of the same gender. A child is a mentally sexually and physically immature human being who does NOT want you to stick your dick in them.
Two the fact that you have places where you can talk to each other and make each other feel better about wanting to fuck little kids makes me want to literally vomit.
Three. The only solution that I find acceptable for your kind is chemical castration or death.
I personally have never been molested but I do have a son. People like you are the reason I sometimes have a hard time getting to sleep worrying about what the world may do to him.Go ahead mod me down as flamebait or troll or whatever the hell you want to call this.
The fact of the matter is some shit is just NOT ok. This is one of those things. We do not have to be nice, considerate empathetic or understanding of these people.
I work for one of the largest hosting providers in the world and I make every possible effort to kick scum like this out of my network. If every single geek on slashdot barring mr +5 anonymous child molesting coward. would do the same we probably would have one hell of a lot less of this shit on OUR internet. /end rant/
Panel F, Relay #70
Apologies to non-UK folk who don't get the reference, BTW. If you're in the US, mod-me up as funny and insightful ;)
Or just read the transcript of the TV show I'm referring to
http://www.glgarden.org/foreverman/brasseye.html
First, the illusion of anonymity -- an illusion because Internet use can be easily tracked
That means more of them get caught and that is supposed to be good, right?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I read in a forensic psychology book somewhere that most of the damage that happens to children who become sexually involved with adults has to do more with the shame of the secrecy that is induced by the adult to prevent the child from telling. There are also the wierd feelings that a child has after the relationship is discovered - typically they are treated as "damaged freight" - the grownups talk about them in a very concerned way outside of their presence which causes them to feel like they are fucked-up in some deep way.
Foucault describes a curious scene in his book "The History of Sexuality", in which the first pedaphile (a village idiot) is arrested in England perhaps two centurys ago. Before then, childhood sexuality was part of everyone's experience and was not regarded as abnormal.
So we have here a situation similar to drug addiction, in which the use of stigmatization makes matters arguably worse for those we are claiming to protect.
The stigma also discourages those from seeking treatment early - no adult wants to create a medical record labeling them as a pedaphile - particularly since the moral panic is intense enough they can imagine themselves being arrested and held in prison forever "as a hygenic measure".
So can we turn down the stigma, at least for the children who get caught up in this?
1. First of all, seems to me like you didn't have much self-control to start with, if you ended up with a case of "hard to talk with those kind of images flooding your mind!" Not meant as an offense, just as a statement.
E.g., I'll go on record to say that I do look at porn, albeit in moderation. If nothing else, video games are still my first priority, so to speak. Can't say I've had anything even remotely similar to the experience you describe. If anything, I used to fantasize about my female schoolmates a lot more back in high school, _before_ I had any access to porn at all.
The fact is, some people just have a tendency to get obsessive-compulsive about something. In your case it happened to be about porn, but the phenomenon is more generic. It existed long before the Internet, and will exist if tomorrow the Internet disappeared. And it can be about anything else: e.g., workaholics can be a case of the same thing.
So to generalize that as either (A) a general effect of porn, or (B) as representative of 100% of the population's reaction to something, is just bull.
2. Again, because people can go obsessive-compulsive about _anything_, you can look at what happens when they do about anything else: not much other than the obssession itself, and its obvious effects. The "next best thing can only be real life" just doesn't happen almost at all.
E.g., video games are probably the most quoted example of stuff people going obsessive-compulsive about, some to the point of dropping out of school or work, getting divorced, etc.
By your logic "The more you get, the more you want... until the next best thing can only be real-life." We should see hordes of people running around with rifles shooting each other, to get the next best thing up from FPS games. Not to mention every 5th teenager would steal their parents' car and race it, because they've played Gran Turismo.
And, contrary to media bullshit, it just doesn't happen like that.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Get your facts straight moron. The BBC didn't sex up the report, it was sexed up by the government in order to justify the war in iraq.
When I was 23 I dated a girl who was 15. Her parents hat a fit at first, I'll tell you.. My friends called me a pervert and cradle-robber.
That same girl is my wife now. We got married when she was 18 and that was more than 15 years ago.
I didn't see anything wrong with dating her back then, and I still don't. Maybe that's because we're a bit more liberal in The Netherlands that some other places..
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
The entry "Less hidden all the time" is written by a person who thinks its ok to be a pedohile. People think that the entry is insightful. The enemys of the internet only need to read the reactions to the NY post article to find evidence of the follwoing: 1. People of slashdot community care more about them not getting spam than their neighbours kids being molested. 2. People of the slashdot community think its ok to express and post sentiments which say its ok to be pedophile. 3. That very few people who frequent slashdot have a moral code which is similar to the rest of the world. People if You still wonder why Pres. Bush got reelected please read through the entries in this forum again. I am sure that Bush would have gotten more votes still if these posts ever got to the mainstream media. (if you wonder, i am not a republican nor a democrat, a am a swede whose value base lies far to the left from the democrates although i am considered to be a conservative in sweden.) I used to think slashdot was an ok community but this has just proven to me that this community is warped and tvisted. The value base of the people who write to the forum is warped. Liberal does not mean that one should condone deviant acts or people. To most of the readers of slashdot I can only say that I sincerilly hope that You do not have to wake up and face the consquences of your actions (to not to act is also an action). I also hope that one day You will aquire a sense of perspective of what is important. To the companies that advertise at slashdot i can only say one thing: shame on You.
[blush] I sure wish slashdot allowed editing of posts. I'll have to be more careful with the submit button!
/should/ murder or maim.
Well, slight distinction: Hitler and the SS were using ugly ends to justify other means, they (mostly) didn't just hurt people because it was fun. Pedophiles don't have sexual contact with kids in pursuit of another goal; they just do it. It's a different kind of problem.
Also, they're cheering each other on to abstinence, not to abuse.
And the claims that pedophiles can be cured, and aren't born that way but become that way by "failing to grow up", sound possible but unproven. Any evidence?
On another note, I'm sure boychat.org would have an easier time in the world if it was run by a mental health group. Having just read their FAQ, I'm not even sure the doctors would change it much; although I'm sure they'd suggest therapy as well as posting online, and they might prohibit contact between adult users anywhere but the forum.
I will say that no man is without sin, and I sympathize somewhat with attacks on any adult, whether it's the moralist or the Anonymous Coward boychat.org user. However, hurting children, even if with inappropriate love instead of malice, just doesn't appeal as much. So if AC wants sex with kids and the moralist wants to kill AC, I'd reluctantly be more sympathetic with the violent, illiterate one. I think Hannibal Lecter's damn cool too, although I certainly don't think people
Finally, I disagree with the moralist's low opinion of free speech; the fact that you replied instead of turning off the computer and walking away suggests a bit of a knee-jerk contradiction, I think.
First off, internet use by novices is easy to track to an ISP, general location, and IP address. Cops can turn that into a real human ID pretty easily. But in either case, I wouldn't call the anonymity an illusion; and experienced users, including the kiddie-porn monsters, use proxies.
/cultivate/ desire, in a way that shows shifts on the Abel test, even if they're ignorant that it actually uses time and not rating? This matters to "ex-gay" organizations as well.
I'd say the internet's partial anonymity, sense of playing a game, and willingness to grow beyond yourself and cross boundaries have been a net gain for the world as a whole, and the vast majority of individual users, and should be preserved. This thread has been more defensive on this point than I expected; but then, 10 years ago the newspapers were constantly running stories on how "THE INTARWEB WILL RAPE OUR BABIES". Apparently Slashdot's knee-jerk defensiveness can't just turn on a 5-year dime.
The Tiffany lamp thread is probably too cynical, but fascinating, and has a grain of truth. Maybe the internet does help cops more than criminals, and maybe downloading porn shouldn't be as harshly punished as soliciting. bhima's post in a different thread, about a jailed co-worker, makes the point pretty well. Do we run the justice system to serve the criminal? The victim? Society at large? Or just the demands of a God or a public sentiment that demands vengeance?
My personal best guess is that pornography doesn't really help anyone "get over" or "satisfy" an attraction; it's more like a borderland between fantasy and action. Some people turn back there, and some go right on through. Same goes for violence, really. But how do you test that guess? Find 1,000 12 year olds and start giving them anonymous surveys every year about fantasies, pornography, and sex acts they'd had? I don't even think it's legal to ask "Have you molested anyone?", hear "Yes", and not call the cops.
The article is horrifying in general, but particularly the lack of research: if the doctors and cops don't learn anything new, will the problem ever get any better? Even rough statistics on what percentage of children are abused and how many cases occur in a given year seem hamstrung by taboos on reporting these cases to agencies. Are 90% of perps male, or is reporting female perps much less common? Where in the given ranges do the stats on prevalence of molestation fall? How do these stats change based on technology, how close people live to extended family, ZIP code, population density, divorce rate, or simply the progress of time?
Also, when he was told to rate images based on arousal from 1 to 7, with a female doctor standing while he sat, and maintaining an expressionless face, isn't that situation in and of itself loaded with overtones of sex, power, and dominance? It reads like an S&M script, although no doubt the NYT's bombastic reporting is partly to blame. Do the therapists have any mechanism for including little details like "atmosphere" in their papers? Have they researched how a gulag, conference room, parlor, the subject's own house, outdoors, or various other settings affect the answers given? (It might also depend on how the subject rated his or her enthusiasm for and tension in those locations.)
The Abel Assessment sounds impressive, though-- useful and reasonable. To what extent can patients
The post title "Priests prefer face to face contact first." may be the best troll this week. Does he win a t-shirt?
The ACLU does NOT defend pedophiles! The ACLU defends Constitutional rights. There is no Constitutional right to have sex with kids or to view child porn. The ACLU would have NOTHING to do with that.
To verify it I did some searching on google. The only links I found were from anti-ACLU sites who repeated the same unsupported lie you did.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
. ({your age}/2)+7= min age to be with someone.
Damn straight. I remember when I was six, I wouldn't even *look* at a girl under 10.
Advocacy groups inflate the occurnce of their pet cause to obtain more attention and money. Its not just for this crime, but others, diseases, etc.
You are SUCH a moron. The ACLU is not defending anyone's right to have sex with children!!! Show me even ONE example where the ACLU defended someone's right to have sex with children. Just one!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Sometimes it comes down to that some people just can't be "fixed." People with criminal sexual disorders quite often fall into these categories. Other career criminals are often in and out of prison on a regular basis
The problem that I have with the death penalty is that quite often you're looking at individuals who have committed singular (though heinous) crimes. They're shoved in a cell long enough to reflect on themselves and repent, and then fried in the end anyhow.
However, then you get the repeat offenders. Rapists, molesters, quite often they'll leave behind a history and even after getting out of prison they're still likely to re-offend. Yes, you might mistakenly incarcerate somebody once on a given crime, but 3 times? Three strikes, your out. I think that at a certain point people are past redemption. Keeping them in prison then is a drain on society as a whole, and releasing them will inevitable lead to more victims and broken lives.
I read this one line,
And it occured to me, that this is a good thing in identifying current and future pedophiles.
By setting up something similar to "honeypots for hackers to track their movements why not do the same for traffickers of child pornography.
I mean afterall the article stated
Seems to me the best option is to identify and track them.
Or do governing bodies not give a rats ass about our children?
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
As mentioneded with the "assumed anonymity," how about the internet's influence on catching such individuals? Nail a pedophile site and suddenly you've got a collectin of CC #'s you can track down. Perhaps you don't need to arrest them just based on that, but you could certainly investigate them for real-life (as opposed to online) crimes along the same lines.
And how about the "FBI agents are little girls" lines from IRC? Yes, there are people that use MSN, IRC, etc to reel in young victimes. There are also authorities that use these same tools to nab criminals looking for victims. Seems to me it's easier to trace somebody's IP or lure him to an airport encounter than tracing down the guy that was trying to nab a kid using candy or a fuzzy animals, etc.
I'm 23 and I work in schools. The other day I was grabbing lunch in the caf (I usually either eat out or bring something in, but it was a rush day). Some of the girls in the school were giggling at a table when one approached me and told me how she "thought I was really cool and wanted to give me a hug." Now, obviously it was some sort of game for them but with the public opinion on such things nowadays it freaked the hell out of me. I managed to escape her and her giggling cohorts with just a pat on the back, but even that seemed inappropriate to me.
From my standpoint: I've been told from co-workers that I'm "not what one would expect" (looks-wise and attitude-wise) from a computer geek.
What I've also become aware of is that at 23, both my job and age make the girlies completely unviable on a non-professional basis, but that doesn't mean that it runs both ways. If you think back on the staff members that students had crushes on in High School... it's double-freaky to be one of those staff members.
Thankfully I don't have much in the way of a dress code at work. My hair stays uncombed, and I usually don't bother much on shaving, etc until the weekend is coming up. I can't imagine why anyone of a mature age would want to attract such females, for myself they freak the hell outta me and it costs me enough effort just to not attract them.
My children were molested by their own father, and the internet had nothing to do with it. Child molestation has been happening for hundreds, even thousands (probably) of years, far before the 'net came into existence. I'm tired of everyone blaming things on the internet. There are, and have been forever, sickos all around us. The 'net has given them an outlet and a place to gather, but the problem was there before it came along.
They are not inherently evil or monstrous
It is a widely held belief that all humans are inherently evil. See original sin.
And then, even if you weren't born evil, thinking evil thoughts is just as bad as doing them. (See The Gospel of Matthew, chapter 5, verses 27 and 28)
So yeah, you and others like you may be inherently evil monsters, but that does not make you any different from the rest of us.
Right now, Wal-Mart is the largest non-government employer in the US. That also means that it almost certainly employs more pedophiles than any other employer. But it would be utterly unfair to attack Wal-Mart because it is the largest employer of pedophiles in the US!
It is irrelevant that the group at issue just happened to be pedophiles. The relevant issue was that the group had its constitutional rights violated. In the US everyone has constitutional rights, convicted criminals, Nazis, and even pedophiles.
To say that the ACLU defends pedophiles makes it sounds like the ACLU is in support of pedophilia. That is clearly NOT true. You know it's not true and you're lying every time you write it.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Fine, you're right. The ACLU defends pedophiles. Wal-Mart is the largest employer of pedophiles. The government in the US actually allows pedophiles to decide national policy (through voting). It should also be noted that the US sends pedophiles over to Iraq to murder citizens.
We have to take action. The next time I see someone I think may be a pedophile I'll take your advice and assume he has no constitutional rights and I'll kill him on sight! I won't stop until every pedophile is dead!
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Excuse me? Did the submitter actually read the story he or she submitted? From the story: "Over the past decade, with the surge in Internet use, there has been no spike in the overall number of cases of sexual abuse against children. (There has been, it appears, a significant decrease...)"
I believe we were talking about pedophiles... we were talking about sex with a minor; someone below the age of consent. I've based my argument on law, well-supported child-development theory, and my own experience as a professional in a related field.
I'm sorry, but I think your assertion that sex is mindless and simple, and that all this age-of-consent talk is nonsense is the thesis that needs supporting evidence, and you have presented none.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
I never said it was! Heck, the group never said it was. As far as I know, NOBODY has ever said it was.
If I remember the case, parents tried to sue the group because their kid was sexually molested. The parents' attorney argued that because the group WROTE about pedophilia it CAUSED pedophilia.
Now let's imagine that someone writes a murder mystery. Someone reads that book and kills someone. The estate of the decedent sues the author of the book alleging that the author CAUSED the murder.
Whether you like it or not, that author would be protected by the US constitution. In the real world the publisher would defend the author, but if it wouldn't, the ACLU would.
All the ACLU is saying that writing about murder is no different than writing about having sex with children. The Godfather is equally protected in the US as is the Tin Drum. Both of those are protected under the law. And I'll say it once again, even pedophiles have constitutional rights.
You may disagree with what the ACLU did. That's your choice. I happen to disagree with the ACLU for its refusal to support the 2nd amendment. I'm not pro-guns, but I think the ACLU is showing its bias in its refusal to protect only some of our constitutional rights.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Honestly, I'm with the ACLU on this one.. not due to being anti-gun (I'm favorable on the 2nd amendment), but because the ACLU has a pretty limited amount of resources, so they have to pick what fights to take. Without their help, the second amendment is by far most protected of all of our constitutional rights (though it's also the one under the most visible assault). The NRA does a good job of protecting gun owners' rights. There are many other rights that are not nearly as well defended (or defended at all). So while I disagree with the ACLU stance on the second amendment, I wouldn't want them wasting their money on something the NRA can do better.
You do realize that overturning social mores, decades of jurisprudence, and common sense requires some evidence? Anecdote doesn't cut it. The burden of proof is on you, my friend. I also reject the premise of this question:
What exactly is so complicated about safe non-abusive plain vanilla sex with a non-coersive, friendly and considerate partner
What is so complicated? There has probably been more written about love/sex/relationships than any other single topic in the history of mankind. I'm beginning to believe that you are a troll taking a devil's advocate position. Don't base your argument on some idealized best-case scenario... deal instead with reality.
We are still discussing adult-on-child sex, are we not? Nothing you've presented invalidates the informed consent argument, and you have yet to prove that adult-on-child sex is anything like what you've just described. "Non-coersive" (sic) implies a voluntary relationship... such volition is not possible with someone too young to understand the full ramifications of their assent. I don't know how many times I have to repeat that. Again, if you want to overturn decades of child development theory and legal rulings, you'll have to come up with something besides your opinion.
I am a professional, and one of the dictums in my field is not to base your practice on a single study. Even if that study is deemed "powerful," "shocking," or "authoritative," it's often wise to wait for the findings to be replicated before making a radical change in practice. This goes doubly for an issue where so much is at stake if the initial study is wrong, fraudulent, or unable to be replicated. The study you reference was widely debated at the time of its publication by the APA. It's a small study, a meta-analysis, and contained confounding familial variables that many dissenting authors felt clouded its conclusions. If you're using that study to justify pedophilia, I'm afraid that's not good enough.
I view the fact that some children recovered from their abuse without obvious damage as a testament to the resiliency of the human spirit. You, however, take those findings as a green light for predatory behavior. The argument that little apparent harm was done rings hollow. By this measure, we should allow intercourse with newborns, since they would never remember the experience and thus it couldn't negatively impact them... Would you support a surgeon having sex with his unconscious patients, as long as it was safe, plain vanilla, friendly, and considerate? (if they never understood what had happened to them, no harm could possibly be done, right?).
just give one good example, that's all
Very well... show me any pre-teen who can intelligently discuss the advantages/disadvantages of group sex versus monogomous sex. How about discussing the supervisor/coworker conflicts implicit in a workplace sexual relationship? Can a 13yo understand the subtle power shifts that take place as a result of a sexual relationship with the boss? How about adapting to partner(s) satisfaction considerations by gender? How about a 13yo who understands the appropriate application of foreplay? How about a 13yo who can take into account ethnic differences/preferences (inluding religious concerns about contraception and sodomy) among his lovers? How about one who can expound upon the challenges that come from the clash between homosexual and heterosexual mores with his bisexual lover? How about a single pre-teen who has a clue what to do when his lover breaks down crying in the middle of sex and won't tell him why. Show me a pre-teen with the patience, insight, and sensitivity to work with his partner through frigidity, dyspareuria, or the embarassment of not being able to achieve orgasm after hysterectomy.
I can't see any agreement forthcoming on this issue. Good day.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
I agree that the NRA is MUCH better funded. But that's not the reason the ACLU ignores the 2nd amendment. The ACLU position is that the 2nd amendment is actually a state right, not an individual right, i.e., it pertains solely to state militias and provides no right to bear arms to individuals.
I guess it's the ACLU's right to believe that, but there are no Supreme Court cases that hold a similar view. It's like the ACLU is giving up on one of our rights before the fight has even begun. But I know that's not true. What is true is that if the ACLU supported gun rights, liberals would not contribute, and the group would lose funding. Thus, the ACLU's view on the 2nd amendment has more to do with their self-preservation than with the preservation of our constitutional rights.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
So, if you find pre-pubescent androgynous kids sexually attractive, you are a __potential__ paedophile. Do something about it and you are a paedophile.
This is precisely, offensively, and dangerously wrong.
Mr. Fawkes has fallen for the confusion between what a pedophile is and what a molester is.
A well-accepted clinical definition of pedophilia states the symptoms as "Over a period of at least 6 months, recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors involving sexual activity with a prepubescent child or children (generally age 13 years or younger). The fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning."
Note specifically that it describes "fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors". So if you "find pre-pubescent androgynous kids" recurrently, intensely arousing, yup, odds are good that you're a pedophile. But this has nothing to do with whether you act on it.
If you "do something" sexual with a pre-pubescent kid, (assuming that you are over 16 and at least 5 years older than the child, not counting a person in late adolescence having a relationship with a 12 or 13 year old child), you are a molester. But this has no necessary correlation to whether you are a pedophile: most molestation happens within families or close friends of families, usually involving people who act out on particular children but are not generally attracted to them.
To believe otherwise is to confuse the terms dangerously. Yes, there are lots of pedophiles out there, but the huge majority have never acted out with a child. Still, the stigma remains, and someone outed as a pedophile is liable to be attacked as a threat.
(And, BTW, the idea that pedophiles "feel 'threatened' for want of a better word, by things like developed breasts and pubic hair" is as incredibly erroneous as the idea that, say, heterosexual males are attracted to grown women because they feel 'threatened' by other men's penises or chest hair!)
Saying that a pedophile is the same as a molestor is precisely the same as saying, say, that a heterosexual male is the same as a rapist. The logical conclusion from that is that as soon as a man realizes that he is attracted to grown women, he should be feared because his desires would inevitably lead to rape. If you see the error in that thinking, and can think outside of moral panic, you can see why it is essential to distinguish between pedophiles and molesters.
Unfortunately, there are many who deny this difference between desire and action, and in doing so pervert the language into dangerous forms. I can't tell whether Mr. Fawkes has been led astray by self-professed "experts" who have been propagating the dangerous lie, or whether he himself has merely misunderstood accurate information, but we have a moral obligation to correct this slander.
Lives are in the balance on this issue. I'd be willing to bet that at least one relatively young person (in his teens or twenties) is nervously reading this thread, knowing that he has realized within himself that he is sexually attracted to children. Odds are very good that this person, knowing that he is facing a lifetime of stigma, has considered suicide in view of the common belief that he will inevitably molest someone.
To this person I would say:
What I wonder about things like this is, where are the victim's rights? Sure I can understand why you'd hate someone who would do something like this, but he didn't do it to you, nor to me, nor to parents everywhere. He did it to the girl, where is her say in this? If she is the one affected by his actions, then shouldn't her opinions be the ones we give weight to?
Secondly, how much will the suffering these girls may endure as a result of these incidents be the result of the incidents themselves, and how much of the suffering will be induced by people who spread nothing but vile hatred of the people who committed the acts?
As an example, ask people who were raised in extremely fundamentalist Christian homes how they feel about sex? Are they even able to discuss the subject comfortably? The ones I know can't, and it isn't because there is something wrong with sex, it's because they've been told all their lives by those around them that sex is dirty or disgusting or evil. The damage done in this example isn't commited by a child molester, it's perpetrated by the society they were brought up in by telling them these things.
So again I wonder, just how psychologically damaging to these girls are the actions taken by Roy in and of themselves (he never actually so much as touched their private parts) without society telling the victim that the people who did these things (in this case, her step-father, and in the case of her friend, her friend's step-father) are nothing but disgusting, repugnant monsters, less than human, worth less than nothing, worthy only of being tortured by the most violent, hardened criminals for as long as they can survive such treatment? These aren't monsters to these children, they are their parents. The only adults they're supposed to be able to trust implicitly no matter what. Do you honestly believe you're not doing more damage to the children who've been unfortunate enough to have suffered these crimes than the criminals who commited them in the first place?
If you have any familiarity with people who've actually been victims of these crimes, what you'll often find is that they themselves feel responsible for what took place. They feel that they themselves are somehow less than human, that there is something fundamentally wrong with them to have caused the molestation to take place. This leads them to grow up with little or no self-esteem, unable to feel a part of greater society, separated and different in some way that they can't put their finger on. And yet we wonder why such a high percentage of child molesters were victims of child molestation themselves? Can we truly be that stupid?
Perhaps it's just these sorts of reactions which perpetuate the problem of child molestation beyond what would otherwise occur "naturally". Perhaps it's views such as these held by society at large which cause these victims to recluse from that same society because of the fear of being associated with such "monsters" or being thought of as monsters themselves which leads a victim of child abuse into a life of detachment or social reclusion/ineptitude and eventually lead a person to become a child molester themselves.
Personally, I believe the reactions of some people to these subjects are easily just as wrong as, and certainly as damaging as the very act of molesting a child; and that if we as a society really do care about our children, we ought to deal with these subjects rationally and intelligently, and not allow our own personal fears and hatred to pollute the young minds of our children anymore than may already be done by some child molester. After all, once they've already suffered, don't we in society owe them the fairest chance still possible at a normal life?
And finally, have you ever considered that it's your view which is new, that your view is the abberation in human nature, in history? As pointed out in the article, the legal age of sexual consent in the UK was 10 until the late 19th century. Considering anyone under the age of 18 as a child
Keith D.
My instinct tells me that you are completely full of it, so I shall now call you on it: Where do you find these "16 year old sluts", as you say?
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
Someone who merely THINKS about having sex with a child is not a paedophile any more than someone who merely THINKS about fucking that unconcious drunk girl is a rapist.
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
Thank you for this very insightful comment. I wish I had some mod points...
Please excuse my clumsy English, but I just have to add my 2 cents to this topic.
I am a paedophile too (a boylover), and until now I have never *ever* told anyone about it, or sent a message to one of the groups. So this is kind of a coming-out for me (even if I have to post anonymously for obvious reasons).
Much of what you said echoes my thoughts exactly, and the last paragraphs were very comforting. I am sexually attracted to boys, and have been so since I can remember. I have had a happy childhood, kind and loving parents, and lots of good friends; I've never been abused or raped in any way - so much for that theory. I have no idea why I am wired this way, I guess some people are just born like that.
Thank you for making the distinction clear between child lovers and child molesters. This is a very important point. Pedophilia is a sexual orientation (or aberration if you want), but if people act on it, they are little other than rapists. What do normal men do when they find a woman sexually attractive, but she doesn't return their feelings? They do nothing, and control themselves; the attraction remains a fantasy. Those few who can't control themselves will go ahead anyway and rape her. It's the same thing with paedophiles - if you don't fall into the rapist / child molester category (a minority), you're not doing any harm.
Paedophilia in itself is not a crime; I'm not even sure if it can properly be called a mental illness. It's certainly not normal, but if it's an illness, the same reasoning would be valid for gay people. The possession of child porn is forbidden by law, but it is a victim-less thought crime. As long as you don't support those creeps who produce it, by paying for it, no harm is done to anybody. But still, if they catch me, my life will be ruined, and sooner or later I would probably have to end it. There's not a day when I don't think about what would happen if I got arrested for possession of child porn. I see suicide as a very likely outcome in that case (flames on).
Originally I wanted to respond to Fawkes' posting, because he got just about everything wrong. Then I read your comment, and now I feel it is more important to show that there *are* other paedophiles who would never harm a child, or even touch them except out of friendship. If anybody is still reading this: it's not hard at all for me to abstain from sexual activity with children, and I have no doubt at all that I can keep it this way until I'm old and grey.
The hard part is being an outcast. You can't talk about your desires and problems with anyone, or they will always see the pedo instead of you. The hard part is keeping a huge thing like your love life all to yourself, while you pretend to be like everyone else. The hard thing is to know that you can never have what you want most. That you will never have a family, and will never have children.
Paedophilia is the last real taboo we have. I have never harmed anybody, least of all a child, but still most people would rather be friends with a mass murderer than with a pedo. If I told my friends, they would go to great lengths to avoid having their kids ever see me again, and I know of at least one boy who would regret that as much as I would. I adore boys, their presence is a delight for me, and coming out would take all that away. Sometimes I feel a bit like Cyrano de Bergerac... can't get the one(s) I love, but at least I'm near them.
Regarding GuyFawkes' "genuine expert practitioner facts":
No, I do not feel threatened by breasts or pubic hair. Why should I? And the "power thing", that's a very common misconception. It's not about power, or domination, or authority at all. Maybe some child molesters are into that, but when I see somebody molesting a child, I'll react the same way you would: call the police or beat them up on the spot. When I was 12, I felt the same way about boys as I do now, I just didn't think it would stay that
You say, "boychat.org would have an easier time in the world if it was run by a mental health group." I find myself wondering... would Slashdot have an easier time in the world if it were run by a mental health group? Or any other group of freely associating people: should we put mental health professionals in charge of communities?
The dissonance in that argument stems from the assumption that boylovers must, by definition, be suffering from a mental disorder. Of course Slashdot shouldn't be run by mental health professionals, because there's no assumption that Slashdot posters are suffering from psychological disorders. Well, the idea of BoyChat being run by a mental health group sounds just as ridiculous to me. I have no mental disorder, and I have neither need for nor interest in "treatment." Now, I am aware that some BoyChat posters do seem to have some issues that need professional attention. For example, clinical depression is not as uncommon as I wish it were on our board. However, those problems are problems which exist just as much in the "ordinary" world as among boylovers, and those are the disorders which should be treated. Being a boylover is not a disorder. Neither is being homosexual. Neither is being heterosexual.
Are there pedophiles who rape and otherwise harm children? Yes. Are there heterosexuals who rape and otherwise harm women? Yes. And the conclusion that all pedophiles are child molesters is as fallacious as the conclusion that all heterosexuals are rapists. Even Catherine MacKinnon bristles at the fact that the quote "All sex is rape" was erroneously attributed to her because not only do such ludicrous universals undermine their own credibility, but the consequence of such an idea is darker still: when everything is rape, nothing is.
A claim that "pedophiles can be cured" is equally based on the fallacy that pedophilia is a disease. No, pedophilia cannot be cured, any more than heterosexuality can. And anyone who recalls the great amount of harm done by quasi-cult efforts to "cure" or "reprogram" homosexuals during the seventies and eighties should be suitably horrified at such a concept. I do not question your right to be heterosexual (if indeed you are) and I wonder why people in what appears to be a technology-based forum would find it suddenly appropriate to question my right to be a boylover. Of course, I reserve the right to condemn you if you rape or harm a woman, just as I respect your right to condemn me if I rape or harm a boy.
So, as long as I'm webmaster of BoyChat, the idea of turning over control to a mental health group is simply silly. Mental health professionals are more needed where there are people with actual mental problems. Suggesting therapy? I don't need therapy because I prefer swing to grunge, or because I think the Brian Setzer Orchestra is better than Eminem. Those are my preferences, and anyone who tries to "therapize" me over them is taking a very unwelcome step into something that does not concern him. Prohibit contact between adult users? I'll make a deal: as soon as Slashdot prohibits contact between its posters off the forum, BoyChat will consider doing the same (that's not a challenge, by the way; it's simply to point out that aside from the fact that the idea is plainly ridiculous, it's also patently unenforceable.)
I realize I may seem to be coming off rather dogmatic; you'll have to forgive me for that, as this is a discussion I've had altogether too many times and I know how most of the lines go by now. Really, I'm happy to debate these issues on a philosophical, moral or just plain technical level with anyone who desires, but somehow, this seems like a very strange forum for this question to be arising in. BoyChat, at any rate, is open to the public; registration is normally not required (except when we come unde
What he wants is more important that what I want. What he wants is also more important that what you want.
You're absolutely right. Which makes me wonder why no one is happy when the government enforces speed limits. After all, it reduces fatalities, right? Heck, we ought to have a little governor built into the engine to ensure people don't go too fast.
That said, I'm against capital punishment too. I'm a strong believer that anyone can eventually reform or at least see the error of their ways. (Ok, treatment of actual psychopaths is pretty useless after age 5 or so...) Death is just so... final. I think what needs to be done is to simply enforce life incarcerations and reduce amenities for people who misbehave. Can't get along with your cellmates? Oops... there goes visiting priveleges. Abusing the Internet system? Sorry, no computer. Throwing away food? Well, we can supply exactly enough caloric content for you to keep going on and no more. Why waste tasteful food on you at this point?
This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.