Heretic TOC was going to write about the latest craziness in Britain: last week’s “sexual exploitation” report from the Office of the Children’s Commissioner for England – a portentous sounding outfit that ought to be helping the young but which in practice contributes to their oppression, or at least suppression.
I must come back to that – prod me if I don’t – but it would be a shame to let the agenda here be dictated utterly by the latest mainstream news, much of which is so repetitious: more stats, more reports, more cases of “offending”.
All this should not be allowed to obscure deeper currents of perhaps more lasting significance that are not necessarily featured by the media.
That is why I am going to be talking about a forum called Sexnet, both now and in future. It’s getting a bit late as I write, so I’ll just do a brief introduction for now.
I finally joined Sexnet a little over two years ago after being invited to do so at a conference in Paris way back in 2000. I’ve been kicking myself over prevaricating for an entire decade because it turns out to be an amazing scene.
It’s a private membership affair, which makes it sound as though we go in for orgies. Well, there’s none of that, sadly, but what it lacks in sexual excitement it makes up for in the intellectual kind. There are over 400 members, nearly all of whom have a PhD. I have never counted, but I’d say a couple of hundred are professors, including a few famous ones, such as neuroscientist Simon LeVay, who made his name by identifying what the press dubbed (wrongly) “the gay brain”, and Ray Blanchard, who has become a sort of pantomime villain among minor-attracted persons mainly on account of his extensively cited “peter meter” studies with sex offenders and his efforts to get “hebephilia” included as a disorder in DSM, the psychiatrists’ bible.
More about them in due course. Meanwhile, I should add that membership is heavily weighted towards psychologists, neuroscientists, and various aspects of biology: human reproduction, as you would expect, plus endocrinology and much more. There are specialists studying aspects of sexual behaviour in animals, anthropologists and sociologists with sexual research interests, criminologists, researchers in sex offender treatment and epidemiology, etc. There are even a couple of journalists, including Debbie Nathan, joint author of Satan’s Silence with Michael Snedeker, which “debunked” the satanic ritual abuse allegations of the 1980s.
Where do I fit in? Partly as author of a couple of paedophilia-related books, but initially I think I was invited mainly as a specimen paedophile: I was there for inspection by the experts, along with a few other sexual minority people, including transsexuals.
Sexnet was set up by Prof. J. Michael Bailey, a big name in psychology at Northwestern University, Illinois, and is run very simply as an email listserve. Mike is still the moderator.
As may be imagined from the stellar nature of the membership (apart from my humble self, of course), debates often include good exchanges of information, and sharp – but usually courteous – clashes of opinion. I’ll get into some of the more interesting specifics in later reports.
a new study on MAPs seeking support in MAP fora:
[…] rumble broke out in a seedy speak-easy called Sexnet, where clients claim to “exchange information and ideas” about so-called “sex research”. […]
[…] the name of the newest big-time word coiner on the block, Michael Seto. I know Dr Seto from the Sexnet forum. He absolutely does not agree with my radical views but he once very nobly expressed his […]
[…] who knows what he is talking about. This is Darren, a mid-thirties guy who introduced himself on Sexnet last year as a former rent boy from the UK, sexually active from 11 and a prostitute by 14 in the […]
Does Sexnet have an age limit.
No, although I don’t think the issue has ever arisen before except perhaps in the case of the moderator’s son, who is now a young research academic with a PhD. Send me an anonymized CV ( tomocarr66@yahoo.co.uk ) and I’ll consider putting you forward for membership. You could do so independently but I think you’d have a better chance through me. Obviously, you have no career experience to put on a CV but there is plenty you can set out in terms of knowledge and potential research interests. I believe Sexnet would benefit from greater trans input, so your personal experience would need to figure. You’d need to bear in mind, though, that ALL new members, whether they’re 16 or 66, are advised not to post AT ALL for the first three months or so, and then only moderately.
“Send me an anonymized CV”
What would I put on the CV? Could you show me yours as an example?
“I believe Sexnet would benefit from greater trans input”
The moderator is Michael Bailey, author of ‘The Man Who Would Be Queen’, right? If so, this shouldn’t be all that surprising since the organised trans community hates him with the heat of a thousand suns. In fact, if we were a bit more organised, I’d probably be shot as a defector.
“ALL new members, whether they’re 16 or 66, are advised not to post AT ALL for the first three months or so”
That should be OK. I’m accustomed to lurking almost everywhere I go.
Do they have a web-forum or is it all a mailing-list?
>What would I put on the CV? Could you show me yours as an example?
The CV would be for my benefit. Just bung down everything that’s interesting and wonderful about yourself (but not at biblical length 🙂 ) along the lines already suggested without getting inhibited and hung up on the “right” way of doing it. I’ll be happy to advise on which bits would most interest Mike.
>Michael Bailey… the organised trans community hates him with the heat of a thousand suns.
Nevertheless, there have been trans members of Sexnet. One of them, who unfortunately died a couple of years ago, was not in the least against Mike.
>Do they have a web-forum or is it all a mailing-list?
Just email list-serv.
“The CV would be for my benefit.”
So it’s not something official? You just want to say “we should add this person because X”?
I think I can come up with something.
“Nevertheless, there have been trans members of Sexnet.”
How many agree with his views? (And, of those, how many identify as “homosexual-transsexual” and how many as “autogynephiliac”?) I know there must be a few, but I don’t understand them. I’ve always gotten the impression that Mike’s views are what you’d end up with if you observed from the outside without the internal experience of gender-dysphoria. Of course, anyone can end up with any set of believes. There are Jews on VDARE, gay baptists and atheist Republicans (US party).
“Just email list-serv”
OK then. I may need to create a new decoy email-address since I suspect there is a problem with the current one. (Besides, I should look more professional.)
>So it’s not something official?
Correct. It would help if you could map out your present intellectual interests and competencies including points at which they connect to each other e.g. I know you are interested in philosophy and science; what would help is some detail on which particular areas you have explored most and any skills acquired along the way, especially those with research applications, such as statistics. I know you are an enthusiast for consequentialism: how did this start off and what reading do you feel has been most important?
Also, I don’t know anything about your schooling, except that it does not appear to have been the source of your enthusiasm for learning. So I’d like to know about any private tuition or inspirational encounters at philosophy, maths, etc. websites.
Also, I assume you have a particular interest in psychology that has its origins in your gender dysphoria and what you call your autism. (Sorry to sound sceptical but I suspect your problem is not medical but social: anyone much brighter than his peers is going to have a problem fitting in: you’re a beautiful swan, not an ugly duckling!) It’s important to set out something about that.
You mentioned your wish to do a PhD. No one would want to hold you to any ideas you might presently have as to the research topic, but it would be very interesting to know if you have any themes in mind and how you might set about one of them.
As for present trans members of Sexnet, there is only one individual whose name springs to mind:
Anne Lawrence ( http://www.annelawrence.com/ ). She doesn’t post often but if I remember rightly she is autogynephilic and has worked closely with Mike Bailey.
The late Kiira Triea ( http://www.alicedreger.com/kiira_triea.html ) was a very regular poster on Sexnet.
It will also help you to be aware that Alice Dreger is a Sexnetter.
( http://www.alicedreger.com/about.html ). As you will see (though you may well already know) she wrote a major New York Times piece about the Bailey book controversy:
( http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/21/health/psychology/21gender.html?_r=0 )
>I may need to create a new decoy email-address since I suspect there is a problem with the current one.
I trashed a short post from you yesterday because it asked questions that I judged might have compromised the anonymity, or at least the location, of someone else here. Not that you could have been expected to know this. I sent you an email of explanation but it was returned as not deliverable. This could well be an aspect of the problem you mention.
Anyway, I trust the above helps.
“present intellectual interests and competencies … skills acquired along the way, especially those with research applications”
Oh dare. I didn’t think they’d expect me to know things! I’m probably pretty dull by tenured-professor standards. I was hoping I’d just be a specimen of a transsexual/adultophile. I’m a typical teen when it comes to having no idea what I’m doing with my life beyond the obvious educational goals.
Anyway, I’ll try; but if anyone seriously expects me to be competent in a particular field, they’ll be quite disappointed. My education has been largely self-directed so, although I’ve acquired lots of information, my knowledge base has more holes than Swiss cheese. Or, as one of my teachers once put it, “how’d you teach yourself differentiation when you don’t know what ‘transpose’ means?”
“inspirational encounters at philosophy, maths, etc. websites.”
Would it be odd if I told you that a piece of fan-fiction changed my life?
“Sorry to sound sceptical but I suspect your problem is not medical but social”
I think the issue is that I’ve only ever mentioned my autism in connection to my introversion. However, introversion isn’t one of the main reasons I believe I’m autistic. In a variety of ways I display the behavior and psychology of a person with mild autism. Autism and similar traits are common on my mother’s side of my family. Among my bright, non-autistic family members, intelligence and extroversion go hand-in-hand and I expect that in the absence of autism I’d be just as social as they are. My primary issue with social interaction is the need to constantly simulate the people around me as if I were trying to deal with an alien mind. On a fundamental level, their brains don’t work like mine. It’s not just intelligence; neurotypicals are designed differently.
Also, I don’t consider myself any kind of “ugly duckling”. Autism is fundamentally a part of me. Without it, I wouldn’t be me. “Curing” it would change my brain so drastically that it’d be like overwriting me and replacing me with someone who happened to share my name.
Suffice to say that I’ve given this at least as much thought as my gender.
Also: I’ve heard of Anne Lawrence and Kiira Triea because they’ve both been criticized by other trans people and I tend to hear a lot about arguments. (We’re an un-alliable group, trans people. Almost as bad as atheists.)
Actually, I first found out about Alice Dreger from a recommendation of her book by John Green. (I’m even more nerdy than I am trans.)
“I trashed a short post from you yesterday because it asked questions that I judged might have compromised the anonymity, or at least the location, of someone else here.”
Oops! Sorry!
Glad you appear to have discovered the H-TOC blog on Sexnet, James, from a couple of years ago.
You wrote:
>I didn’t think they’d expect me to know things! I’m probably pretty dull by tenured-professor standards. I was hoping I’d just be a specimen of a transsexual/adultophile. I’m a typical teen when it comes to having no idea what I’m doing with my life beyond the obvious educational goals.
That’s all fine. While you’re just lurking it doesn’t matter what you know or don’t know. And when you do post most likely in the first instance it’ll be to introduce yourself briefly, in no more than a sentence or two, saying you are a young transsexual/adultophile with an interest in psychology and science/philosophy and you hope you’ll graduate and do post-grad research.
By this time on Sexnet you will have been following the info coming on-stream, and the various debates. It would be reasonable at this stage to ask a question or two – not too many and preferably kept brief. You won’t be expected to know much, or indeed anything, except about your personal perspective on gender and sexual matters. If you think you *do* know something, it’s best to suggest it tentatively as a thought, or a possibility, rather than to assert it as a fact – and if you do that, it’s best to have a citation or two to back up what you are saying.
These people aren’t ogres (mostly!) and they’re generally welcoming and courteous; but they won’t put up with waffle or bullshit or people pretending to know more than they do.
>Anyway, I’ll try; but if anyone seriously expects me to be competent in a particular field, they’ll be quite disappointed. My education has been largely self-directed so, although I’ve acquired lots of information, my knowledge base has more holes than Swiss cheese. Or, as one of my teachers once put it, “how’d you teach yourself differentiation when you don’t know what ‘transpose’ means?”
This honesty is very welcome. It augurs well.
>Would it be odd if I told you that a piece of fan-fiction changed my life?
Not in the slightest! Now you’ve said it, I’m intrigued.
>However, introversion isn’t one of the main reasons I believe I’m autistic… My primary issue with social interaction is the need to constantly simulate the people around me as if I were trying to deal with an alien mind. On a fundamental level, their brains don’t work like mine. It’s not just intelligence; neurotypicals are designed differently.
Ah, so!
>Also, I don’t consider myself any kind of “ugly duckling”. Autism is fundamentally a part of me. Without it, I wouldn’t be me. “Curing” it would change my brain so drastically that it’d be like overwriting me and replacing me with someone who happened to share my name.
Ah, light begins to dawn, I think. Maybe it’s a bit like me with paedophilia and why I don’t want to be “cured”. I don’t want to be cured of myself.
>I’ve heard of Anne Lawrence and Kiira Triea because they’ve both been criticized by other trans people and I tend to hear a lot about arguments. (We’re an un-alliable group, trans people. Almost as bad as atheists.)
We paedos are not overburdened with allies either, whether among ourselves or with others! However, I don’t think our squabbles are anything like as bad as between certain trans factions. It seems to be total war out there!
Anyway, don’t agonise too much about the CV but I would prefer to have something concrete from you. It doesn’t need to be either long or formal but in order to recommend you to Mike it will help if I can really know a few things rather than go on the impression I have formed so far – which is a very good one, but perhaps a bit vague here and there (consider, for instance, how wrong I was about your autism, right up until your post today).
I wanted to rush to James defence about autism but he defends himself admirably. I think it’s apparent from his comments that he takes pride in his diagnosis (for want of a better word) and is on top of it, and as you say if any group should know about this process it is paedophiles.
James: “My primary issue with social interaction is the need to constantly simulate the people around me as if I were trying to deal with an alien mind.”
This is a brilliant description of why I find small-talk so exhausting. There’s a tedious carrier wave behind all the “lovely weathers” and “good mornings” that’s intended, how to explain, to hmmm kind of make sure you belong, is how I’ve thought of it. But I find James’ description at least as valid (and far more evocative).
Thanks! I’ll just finish up a few essays for school and then I’ll get to writing. I’ll make sure to include which fanfic it was and how it changed me – mostly by making me look in new areas, which then cascaded into a real transformation.
PS: How frequently do people normally post after the waiting period – like, in a given month? 3 times? 5?
You know the Pareto principle ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle ): 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes?
I reckon about 20% of Sexnet subscribers account for 80% of the posts. I would think more than half of the 400 members post very rarely, perhaps once in a year, or never. There are probably about 20 people who post quite a lot. On any one day there might be anything from half a dozen posts (seldom less) to perhaps a couple of dozen when there’s a particularly lively thread.
One guy, Jack Drescher, must post around 200/300 times a year and personally I wish he would just fuck off and die! His “contribution” is mostly just repostings of news and opinion reports in the media, especially the New York Times, on matters of specifically gay concern. I’ve lost count of the number of posts he has sent on gay marriage. Very boring.
Don’t worry, though, pretty well all the other active posters have far more to offer, including many who post only occasionally.
In general, I’d say people don’t post for the sake of it: they post when they have specific news (from within their specialty, I mean, not from the mainstream media) or want to discuss a particular technical point, or ask for information.
But you’ll see for yourself quite soon, I hope.
“I reckon about 20% of Sexnet subscribers account for 80% of the posts.”
I’d expect so. In communication within a sufficiently large group, there’ll likely be a power-law distribution. Where do you fall along the curve?
“His “contribution” is mostly just repostings of news and opinion reports in the media, especially the New York Times, on matters of specifically gay concern. I’ve lost count of the number of posts he has sent on gay marriage. Very boring.”
Maybe you should politely suggest that he get a blog. I hear there’s a new trend where people set up blogs to comment on news related the their interests/causes. You might know of it? (I kid)
“they post when they have specific news (from within their specialty, I mean, not from the mainstream media) or want to discuss a particular technical point, or ask for information.”
So, more along the lines of notices/requests than debates/discussions?
“you’ll see for yourself quite soon, I hope.”
Hope so too! 🙂
>Where do you fall along the curve?
When I joined in 2010 I was definitely in the top 20 posters soon after the initial obligatory lurking phase. The atmosphere was distinctly chilly towards me for at least a year or so, not because I was an upstart newbie but because of my radical posts on paedophilia. I think some of them were frustrated by the fact that I invariably backed my points with evidence: it meant they were unable to respond in an openly hostile or dismissive way. Drescher, as a very political assimilationist gay guy was one of them. He’s a psychoanalyst in New York and was on the DSM revision working party dealing with paraphilias. He has spent decades aligned (albeit covertly and craftily on Sexnet) with the tendency to make gays look better by trashing paedos and putting as much distance as possible between these two minorities.
Anyway, I persisted and managed to gain a measure of personal acceptance, if not support for my ideas. Some of my posts have led to very intensive discussions, especially in the period 2010-12. I have been much less active since then but only because doing my own blog (started Nov. 2012) has left less free time. I am no longer in the top 20 posters but probably still in the top 50, a ranking which probably requires no more than 10 or a dozen posts per year.
In the long time it took to establish myself, by the way, I was very lucky to have the support of the moderator, Mike. Not that he is a pushover: quite a few people join and he will quite ruthlessly kick them out if they get a bit arrogant or obsessive.
Do they have an archive of old posts?
How many pedophiles do they have in total? What about FtMs and non-binary people?
Can I switch over to using a feminine pseudonym? I only ended up with a masculine one because I picked it out of a novel back when I was lurking and only intended to post once. I could go with ‘Jasmine’, which is similar to ‘James’, to establish continuity.
>Do they have an archive of old posts?
I would think the Listserv itself would have the full sequence but I have no idea whether it is accessible. Most people have a hard time keeping up with the new posts, never mind rooting through the old ones. If I want to refer to old posts while I have been a member, I just search them on my own email inbox.
>How many pedophiles do they have in total? What about FtMs and non-binary people?
I think there are about four “MAPs” (paedo + hebe) who currently have posting rights (two are very “virtuous”, one is sort of virtuous and I am the only downright “vicious” one i.e. the only one who does not make a virtue of abstinence and would like to see AOC reform). Unless they have left, there are also several who are now just lurkers, having been deprived of posting rights following various infractions.
I don’t know any FtMs, but I think there would probably be at least a couple.
As for “non binaries”, I can only guess what you mean. I think there are quite a few who would say they are bisexual but I have not heard anyone identify as bi-gender or pan-gender or spectrum-gender or whatever. We do, however, have a quite well known asexual.
>Can I switch over to using a feminine pseudonym?
I would think so. I don’t think you’ll be able to use the Sexnet ladies’ virtual restroom, though, until you have fully transitioned. 🙁 🙂
I could go with ‘Jasmine’, which is similar to ‘James’, to establish continuity.
Fine. You could change to Jasmine here, if you like. I like the sound of it, for what that’s worth.
“As for “non binaries”, I can only guess what you mean.”
People who consider themselves neither male nor female. There are a whole range of other things they might identify as, but you can generally sum up the group as ‘non-binary’ or ‘genderqueer’.
“You could change to Jasmine here, if you like.”
I’d probably confuse the other commenters with the sudden change of name. I don’t really mind that much. However, if I’m starting from scratch, I want to do it right.
There is a full SexNet archive and I have accessed it.
[TOC adds: Peter tells me he is unfortunately too busy at the moment to engage either with this forum or with Sexnet. I should also correct my statement about Sexnet’s MAP contributors by adding Peter as another committedly non-practising one, but he opposes the militantly “it is always wrong and will be forever” stance taken by the Virtuous Pedophiles.]
People who consider themselves neither male nor female. There are a whole range of other things they might identify as, but you can generally sum up the group as ‘non-binary’ or ‘genderqueer’.
Excuse me for barging in James, did you see my garbled replies to you at Loap? Found this just now While some queer theorists specifically disallow pedophilia, it is an open question whether the theory has the resources to support such a distinction. here http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/homosexuality/(chapter 4)
Pedophilia from a queer perspective. Or queer theory from a pedophile’s perspective. Might be worth looking into?
I sent a response at LoaP a few days ago. Must be caught in moderation purgatory. Shit.
PS: How’d you and Peter find this conversation? Is there a ‘recent comments’ page or something?
Email updates!
>How’d you and Peter find this conversation?
I get email copies of all posts to this blog and have been intermittently watching what unfolds. I’d love to join in (thanks Tom for adding my current “busy” status), but would have to choose between participation and starvation.
I will probably go through this properly in a couple of months and add some thoughts / ask some questions. Hopefully you will be around to respond!
Same with Loap, I get email updates from there too. But it’s been terribly quiet there a while. I had a look just now and no response from you there yet. It was a struggle when I last posted, had to submit about 6 or 7 times before it all got through. If I were paranoid I’d wonder what was up… So anyway I’d be interested to see your response if you manage to post it again. Otherwise, you are still very welcome to email.
Tom: Sorry for dumbing down your invaluable blog with chatter of this kind.
Thanks for your concern. It looks like being a passing thing, so I’m relaxed about it, especially as these comments appear in connection with an old blog, not the current one. If it gets too much I’ll let you know. In the meantime, I appreciate your sensitivity.