“They want to exert their power”
26 May 2007“Professionals”, “Practitioners” and “Pigs” are well known in these circles, for their habit of trying to “cram” various secondary characteristics into a broad sweeping “cognitive profile” or “game plan” of pedophiles (or even minor attracted persons in general).
What we are seeing is a vast body of junk science and over-complicating criminological literature that attempts to derive authority and respect from its own bloatedness and sense of grandeur. New ideas are incestuously built upon the existing faulty observations and far-out hypotheses, leaving us with something akin to an Oprah Winfrey lecture on sexology. And in this climate, the burden of proof is either tiny or nonexistent, being better characterised as a burden of hysteria or profit.
Among the generalising excesses and indulgences of power driven “scientists”, “the.rapists” and charity co-ordinators, the anti-sexual, ‘pro-child’ appeal to emotional pity is now commonplace, being almost inevitably invoked upon the mere utterance of the word ‘pedophile’. Even for pedophiles (or non’s) who have not raised a finger, intent is invariably characterised as either ravaging or devious, but always as an abuse of power. So lets look at a few typical quotes relating to, or concerning power exertion in particular:
“Pedophilia is not a sexual orientation, it is a disorder of lust”
(General consensus in the medical community)
This is probably the simplest and mildest misconception that I will cover today. Since a sexual orientation relates to the emotional condition itself, we should not be making subjective moral judgements about what we arrogantly assume to be the consequences of such emotions, and lumbering the emotional state with such judgements. This is typical of the all-too-common stream of ‘abnormal psychology’ that attempts to create problem upon problem, supposedly in an attempt to release dollar upon dollar.
What we end up with are ‘disorders’ which have socially - imposed deleterious effects on some, and absolutely no (avoidable) negative effects on others, as proven by various ‘out’ pedophiles such as Lindasy Ashford and Norbert de Jonge, who manage to maintain activist campaigns, sources of income and even studies. Psychologists create social diseases which (unintentionally) put sociologists to work.
Another problem with the quote is that it deliberately uses a type of emotion that is commonly assumed to be less desirable, or even violent (lust), as opposed to ‘romance’ or ’sexual attraction’, which are used to describe the ‘fashionable’ sexualities. However many times the “professional”, “pig” or whatever repeats this, the inescapable fact is that some adults do have exactly the same kind of feelings for small prepubescents that others would have for age peers. But even if the scientist defending the ‘disorder’ hypothesis accepts such a timeless truth, they are still conflating pedophiles of the Ashford / de Jonge mould with others who may have less controllable or less affective desires. That these less restrained people do exist (as they do in the homosexual population, etc) is beside the point. That scientists continue to classify such people alongside those with true sexual orientations is the problem.
“Pedophilia is a condition whereby the beholder enjoys exerting their power over the powerless”
Again, we’re dealing with similar problems to those listed above. Such a condition will always be better described as psychopathy. Still, if we were to use “pedophilia” to describe this condition, the Ashford / de Jonge types wouldn’t magically disappear, thus excusing “childlove” and the like as more than plain synonyms. As with the above, the writer is re-categorising states of mind based on their society’s moral outlook, as opposed to the much longer lasting phenomenon of human nature itself.
Another problem with this explanation is that if pedophilia is a power lust, why doesn’t the beholder enjoy exerting that power over the disabled or economically disadvantaged for example? Why would the pedophile’s destructive behaviour be exacerbated by a standard sexual inclination towards children, when naturally, these feelings would deter such undesirable, antisocial and unproductive behaviour towards a target which the perpetrator aesthetically prefers?
“Pedophiles actually hate children. Their soft talk is just a facade”
I’ve been hearing this one quite a lot lately. Basically, what we have here is an exaggerated version of the previous two statements, bound up with a possible conspiracy theory. One really has to consider the possibility of such a large conspiracy to deceive. This conspiracy would, of course involve almost every member of the minor-attracted communities, including those who are just entering it for the first time. Impossible. Think ‘Satanic Abuse’. It quickly becomes obvious that the only possible conspiracy going on is a personal discourse between the pedophile’s self concept and actual personality. Given that all pedophiles are of course child haters, this personal conspiracy must also be innate to pedophilia. As well as being amazingly broad sweeping, this theory raises multiple problems, not least the simple inquiry as to why pedophiles continue to act this way among their own kind, in situations where an honest disclosure of their hateful intent would benefit the sharing of information.
One is basically left to hypothesize that all pedophiles are convincing themselves of their loving interests, an idea so speculative and far removed from our original basis of sexual orientation, that it’s frankly laughable. To fully appreciate the idiocy of this hypothesis, we also have to ask ourselves why a child-hater or moreover any psychopath would even need to convince themselves otherwise. If a “rape-averse” child hater revels in tricking and hurting youngsters, whilst under no illusion as to their self-serving intent, why shouldn’t this be the case with “rape-happy” child haters? After all, we’re led to believe the “fact” that all “sexual” activity with those who have not yet started puberty is as emergently harmful as any other “injustice”. So on the other hand, if the “pedophile” is self-deluding, I ask why our “rape-averse” character shouldn’t also be fooling himself? Maybe the fact that adults quite clearly enjoy sexual contact (albeit not rape) provides these “pedophiles” with an excuse? If so, a quick check of the conviction rates among self-identifying pedophiles shows that most of them wouldn’t even need to uphold such a delusion.
Still, all of this philosophising is really nothing but a game, as the only methodologically sound investigations into psychopathy among pedophiles have told us what we already know. Guess what, “child lovers” are basically… child lovers. Hopefully, some time in the near future, society can get past the demonisation of “paraphilic” intent and begin to address the more pressing issue of whether behaviours that follow through on the interests in question are to be tolerated on an ethical level.
And getting beyond that ignorance is what we’re all about.
3 Responses to ““They want to exert their power””
May 26th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
“Pedophilia is a condition whereby the beholder enjoys exerting their power over the powerless”
This is a quote which I’ve always found rather annoying, partly because I often fantasise about being tied up by boys; I do not fantasise about “control” at all…. I fantasise about being controlled by boys.
Control may be a significant motivation for non-paedophilic child molestors, but I don’t personally feel that’s relevant to this article.
“Pedophiles actually hate children”
I think that is a statement frequently made by people who consider “paedophilia” to be synonymous with “child molestation.”
I’ve seen others make such a statement though, which I feel is based on the assumption that people “allow” or “choose” a paedophilic orientation…. they think that paedophiles want to be attracted to children, in order to persuade themselves to abuse children. Pure Stupidity.
“Hopefully, some time in the near future, society can get past the demonisation of “paraphilic” intent and begin to address the more pressing issue of whether behaviours that follow through on the interests in question are to be tolerated on an ethical level.”
Heh, you know that we disagree on this. I don’t agree with the decriminalisation of acting out on paedosexual fantasies, but I hope that society can begin to consider tolerating the attraction, which of cause does not cause harm if not acted upon.
IMO, that was an interesting post on an issue which needs to be investigated further by our community.
May 26th, 2007 at 3:56 pm
Heh, you know that we disagree on this. I don’t agree with the decriminalisation of acting out on paedosexual fantasies, but I hope that society can begin to consider tolerating the attraction, which of cause does not cause harm if not acted upon.
Since the debate which I am referring to is only worth commenting on by pedophiles after the current boneheaded nonsense about “predators” and “power lust” has been cleared up, I assume that you (and our other authors) would prefer to be discussing the contact issue.
At that point I’d be interested to hear your opinions on introducing a law such as the one that was used in the Netherlands for some time. In the meantime, I believe that it can only be politically correct for pedophiles to denounce contact, or clarify that it is not an issue of theirs (unless he/she is a particularly good writer or has personal experiences to talk of, e.g. Steve D, Dylan Thomas, Abraxas). It’s a bummer, but that’s the way I think it should be played.
May 29th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
Some responses on BoyChat…
…here.