Glen Lamb, Science Director of B4U-ACT, sets out in this guest blog for Heretic TOC the difficult challenge of encouraging better research on minor attracted people. He describes his organization’s developing work in this field and how it relates to differing elements of the MAP community.
Because of previous discussions about B4U-ACT on this blog, I wanted to clarify B4U-ACT’s approach and explain some differences between our approach and VirPed’s (Virtuous Pedophiles). Because I am B4U-ACT’s Science Director, I will do this by focusing on the political difficulties in promoting better research on minor attracted people (MAPs), how we are working to overcome them, and how people can get involved.
Most existing research on minor-attracted persons has relied on people in the criminal justice system (forensic samples) or people seeing clinicians about their attraction to minors (clinical samples), sometimes voluntarily but often not. Both of these are unrepresentative of MAPs more generally, and in both settings people often feel that it is not safe to be honest, thus leading to unreliable information. Since becoming B4U-ACT’s Science Director last fall, my primary goal has been and continues to be to get more researchers to study community samples of MAPs (i.e., non-clinical, non-forensic samples). Realistically, the main means of doing this will be online surveys promoted on various MAP message boards, forums, blogs, and listservs. This kind of sampling is far from perfect but would still be a major improvement over the status quo.
For researchers to do this with decent sample sizes, they must develop collaborative relationships with MAP communities or with people well-respected by MAP communities. They need to convince MAPs they are trustworthy and that they will treat them ethically. Basically, researchers will have to follow the same ethical guidelines they are expected to follow for virtually any other population.
Ideally, such researchers would over time develop relationships with the MAP community and come to understand its concerns and dynamics, but very few have attempted to do this, while those who do face grave skepticism (one researcher’s recent efforts to bridge the gap with MAPs online merely resulted in a flame war). If we just wait for researchers to successfully develop good relations with MAPs, we’ll be waiting a long time, so I am trying to establish B4U-ACT as an effective middle-man. This is no easy task.
For reasons that many have speculated about, the proportion of views on certain issues seems to be very different among MAPs than in the general population, and these are often extremely strongly held opinions. I will not speculate here on the reasons for this, but simply state that it merits serious research. It is also the most politically vexing challenge for my job as B4U-ACT’s Science Director, because it makes it difficult to simultaneously maintain good relations with MAPs and with mainstream mental health professionals (MHPs), scientists, and journalists. The huge difficulties in doing this can be seen by contrasting VirPed with some of the larger MAP sites.
VirPed is as palatable to the general public as any group of pedophiles could possibly be, but they are reviled in most MAP communities where they are discussed. By contrast, many researchers seem wary of establishing collaborative relationships with larger MAP sites like BoyChat or
GirlChat. I suspect this is because a great many MAPs on those sites openly express disagreement with many existing laws and moral positions, and to get along in those communities, MAPs who largely agree with these laws must be willing to agree to disagree. This differs greatly from how things are in society at large, so these sites gain a reputation among outsiders for supporting the abolition of AoC laws. A common mistake made by newcomers to these sites is that they fail to remember that disagreeing with a law is an entirely different thing from violating it. Based on these public perceptions, researchers do not want to be seen as being closely associated with these sites.
B4U-ACT’s mission is to promote the availability of quality mental health services for MAPs who want them and to promote the collection and dissemination of more accurate information about MAPs. People with a wide range of views on deeply divisive issues can all agree on the need for improvement in these areas, but the great difficulty is uniting such diversely opinionated individuals to work together on these critical areas of common interest. B4U-ACT’s commitment to promoting better research on MAPs requires that we work with researchers and that we develop and maintain amicable relations with the MAP community, ties we can definitely afford to strengthen, especially with members of various BL boards.
I have been in communication with a few researchers who want to work with B4U-ACT to research community samples of MAPs. If these go well, we will likely be getting more requests from researchers.
However, in much of the research, there are various constructs that many MAPs find deeply offensive and may even regard as pseudoscience. Some of the researchers with whom I have communicated have wanted to extend research with these constructs on forensic samples of MAPs to non-forensic samples.
This puts me in a difficult situation. If I refuse to recruit for them because they use these constructs, this suggests that B4U-ACT is taking a position which it does not. If I try to recruit widely for them, I run the risk of alienating MAPs who find these constructs offensive and think that B4U-ACT is endorsing them. Recruiting participants for the wrong researchers risks jeopardizing B4U-ACT’s potential to act as a middle-man for researchers in the future. My personal commitment to promoting quality research on MAPs exceeds my commitment to making B4U-ACT the premier organization responsible for doing so, but we are in a better position than any other group to assist in such research. I fear that any harm we may suffer in our ability to recruit research participants will increase the likelihood that the research simply will not happen, and we’ll be back to relying on forensic and clinical samples.
To address this difficulty we developed our Research Ethos, a document indicating what it does and does not mean when B4U-ACT recruits participants on behalf of a researcher. This document also describes how to reduce the barriers to communication researchers face in conducting MAP-based studies. The only alternative to B4U-ACT’s research initiative is to limit recruitment of community samples of MAPs to VirPed’s listserv of about 70 people who are more ideologically homogeneous than MAPs in general, something we’d prefer to avoid.
There are a number of ways for people to help in this effort. B4U-ACT recently began recruiting for three new volunteer positions especially important for promoting research on MAPs. When posting links to surveys, B4U-ACT encourages people who meet the participation requirements to take the surveys, although please note that we do not maintain an email list of people interested in taking online surveys. If you are thinking about conducting a study on a community sample of MAPs or if you are interested in volunteering for B4U-ACT, please contact me at glamb@b4uact.org
Glen Lamb, Science Director
B4U-ACT, Inc.
P.O. Box 1754
Westminster, MD 21158
(443) 244-9920
www.b4uact.org
i lost my virginity at 21,not that virginity is a big deal to me,exclude all the minor things at boys boarding school,say no more.before i lost it i probably was none the wiser then a ten or eleven year old.all i know is i wanted it,and she did too,thats all that matters when you break it down to the totality of human experience.
This thread appears to have gone quiet, so an afterthought perhaps.
It may not be clear to others here yet that off-line I rarely if ever associate with English or Americans, but old-hand Australians. We all happen to speak an Australian form of English because our old languages were thrashed out of us.
The others we associate with and increasingly intermarry these days are Asians, and Indigenous peoples. My sons are mixed-race Chinese. That should be more than enough to indicate my orientation and loyalty.
Dealing with the Americans, because they are so absolutely right about every little thing all the time, it appears inconceivable to them that anyone at all might differ in their opinion, or point out flaws in their argument, or simply not have a clue what they are on about, or worse don’t care about them at all.
Their wholly and persistently dumbfounded response to our presence here is more than somewhat disconcerting. I doubt very much we will ever make any progress with them trying to sort out these issues.
It is very abundantly clear to me that our options here in this country are to distance ourselves even more completely than we have, and to Asianise as priority, and go back to raising our own children our own way.
Alternatively, guys, engage us in coherent discussion finally, that makes even the slightest sense to us.
Still no response. No worries, I’m patient – been doing this 30 years already.
So, OK, let’s say we take another tack here.
Rather than proceding from this given (for no given reason) model of illegal, pathological, predatory, sexually abusive paedophilic engagement between adults and children a priori, what about we try the empirically, existentially, infinitessimally more reliable model of healthy intimacy between adults and children?
I argue here from good solid research methodology with a substantial ethical component. The point of the exercise is to see what shakes out of the data, and what might emerge from our descriptives, multiple regression analysis, and ANOVA, for example.
I argue as a professional colleague, or potentially so, not as some perceived enemy, toward critical review of our procedures; which is all the now famous Rind et alia were doing.
Yes, I agree that scornful laughter is the best way to treat the enemy. Enemy? I mean of course, those in the militant Child Abuse Industry. Even some of our virtuous brethren might benefit from a gently doubting smile? M T-W.
Comparing drunk driving to pee-pee touching — Ethan’s cuter than Harry Styles riding a Shetland pony.
Now THIS comment, I find very very funny. We are getting somewhere finally.
The observant may have noticed by now that I regard this matter as very much part of the overall problem we face – along with the play, and the fun and games, and the bonding and attachment and happiness, our wit and humour is driven out to be replaced by dull seriousness, fear and guilt and shame.
I remain privileged to have been allowed the opportunity to raise my own boys, the way I knew they needed to be raised, and quite a few other boys beside, before it was too late. My youngest turned 18 while I was in prison.
Anyone wants empirical evidence, come and meet them any time – all thriving and prosperous and happy.
[Plug here – read my new novel when it comes out soon – full monty – thanks enormously to Edmund for the inspiration and the confidence to write. There is a funny scene in it along RQD’s lines, several actually.]
This is in response to Dave Riegel’s request that B4U-ACT post reports of its surveys on its website. That has been done (actually back in 2011), but perhaps the links to them on B4U-ACT’s front page are not prominent enough. See
http://www.b4uact.org/science/survey/01.htm
http://www.b4uact.org/science/survey/02.htm
I don’t find that much difference between the members of B4U-ACT and VirPed. They are both trying to help pedophiles live a law-abiding life
“Help pedophiles [sic] live a law-abiding life”?
Um, sorry, but this is far too glaringly off target to be let through even the most course of primary filters.
The cognitive dissonance shrieks. More and more laws do not make anyone ‘law-abiding’, all they do is make everyone’s lives miserable.
Change the law, and ‘paedophiles’ live a law-abiding life already – assuming there is such a person.
Heal the delusional fundamentalist obsession with satanic cults raping and sodomising innocent children, cannibalising their bodies; the violence and neglect and abuse; the alienation and self-obsession, and instead raise healthy happy children, probably 90% of the laws currently in place can be dispensed with.
Acknowledge that there is love and intimacy between adults and children; the foundation of all positive human relationships, the paedophile disappears off the radar.
If there is still a problem, go sort it out with those who have the problem and leave the rest of us out of it – leave ‘society’ out of it.
Maybe, better, the Americans just go home; all of them.
But Gil, can you IMAGINE a future world without the hatred, rage and fear that they heap upon us? Dream on! I’m 75 and this won’t happen in my life time.
M T-W.
Well, yes I can, Michael, and I dare argue that’s the point of reference.
Firslty, I am a public figure; I do not seek to hide, or alter my appearance, and accordingly I (here locally) I have been the focus of much of “the hatred, rage and fear”. I do it deliberately so I can track where it is coming from, and profile the haters and ragers – have a good look at them.
I tell you, empirically, they are inevitably the deadshits around the place, the slo-lerners, bogans and what I call the developmentally anxious. The intelligent and thoughtful don’t bother, or more generally because they know me come out in support.
It places the question in an entirely different perspective, leading to rreal solutions rather than even more paranoia.
Michael, though you might find the emirical evidence difficult to accept – that’s what fear does to people – for your own peace of mind at least it helps to see all these haters and ragers is more disturbed than disturbing.
Sorry, Gil. I did leave my rather wild statement about “hatred, rage and fear” rather open to interpretation! I did NOT mean that the H, R & T was mine. I meant that it was THEIRS. Very early, I realized that if I allowed THEIR emotions get to me it would be highly corrosive to my emotional, and probably physical health, as well. I put aside all anger and decided that they could chew themselves to bits with — well, their own hatred, rage and fear…
M T-W.
Again from this far away, and responding to concerns for more research to be done in this area, and since it was exported to Western Australia and the issues raised here; as Peter also points out in the process of creating an industry and employment for themselves ‘protecting children’, and having worked professionally in this discipline for well over 25 years now, I yet find myself in a quandary.
To keep it short, from my observations over such a very long period, involved with children being born and growing up and now young adults, for my part I cannot see the issue here. Of course people love one another. Of course there is intimacy between them. There has been plenty of research already done, across the board, attesting to the fact.
That’s given; part of the human condition. I have no issue with that at all, fine with me, especially noting the struggle people have trying to live a life in which bonding and intimacy with other people is denied them, especially violently.
It follows, of course, that the problem for contemporary Western society is not loving attachment and intimacy, but poor language skills, fear and ignorance, alienation, and violence. They are unable to discuss anything sensibly; it is not just issues concerned with children and adults, but anything at all.
Update: the Virtuous Pedophiles group has grown noticeably lately and now has 90 members.
If there are any pedophile communities who would like to discuss our positions, I am happy to participate, as long as the dialog stays civil and productive. One can belong to our group and be proud to be a pedophile, and many of us do not believe adult-child sexual contact is inherently harmful (though it’s always a bad idea). I am puzzled as to how our position is seen as narrower. To the extent BL and GL communities truly believe adult-child sexual activity is wrong under today’s social conditions, I don’t see that as much broader than saying it’s wrong under all foreseeable social conditions, though it is different.
Ethan, a Catholic theologian called Karl Rahner put forward a position in the past which he called ‘Anonymous Christianity’. In this thinking he wanted to be more inclusive, so he decided to define religious experience so that he could say a non-Christian could see themselves as some how included inside the religious concerns of the Christian community. I am sure he had the noblest of intentions; the response from some was straight-out anger. Jews and Buddhist do not necessarliy see it as positive to be placed inside Rahner’s class of an anonymous Christian. To offer up the phrase “it’s wrong under all foreseeable social conditions” as your to frame yourself more positively – VirPed is really more broad/open. Like Rahner you may be entirely well intentioned; some will respond to your efforts with anger.
I am not talking about the future here, there are people inside the culture I live in (Western culture) who do not believe sexually expressed friendships are always wrong; there are still others in cultures not my own, who also think such contacts are neutral or even positive. Put simply, Ethan you don’t discriminate at all, sex with a child or youth (allowing for different laws in different social spaces) is always (“under all forseeable social conditions) wrong; there are people who disagree with you, and understand what you are saying – “I will disagree with you and your notions of consent and positive sexual relations between the young and the old … under all foreseeable social conditions”.
I thought this response of yours is good, Peter; at least it gives me a leg-in to what you say from time to time.
The point does need to be made, that here around this side of the planet – in this region and I dare suggest many others – there are whole cultures and societies, entire language families, in which the idea ‘friend’ does not even exist, nor does the idea ‘sex’, and accordingly there are no linguistic means for expressing such an notion as a “sexually expressed friendship”.
It becomes virtually impossible at times, in seeking to address the Western universal subject (so they like to presume), to point out to them that to very many people their words carry no meaning; there is no way to translate them into an entirely different meaning system.
That is the reason I continually point to the contrived Anglophone monolingual system as being at fault, especially among those who conjure up new phrases and invoke new ideas, almost daily it seems, that they haven’t bothered to confirm or validate empirically, yet determinedly reify their constructed position against perceived adversaries.
Now, I do point out to you all that in societies and cultures relations between adults and children are as various and variable as they are anywhere; it is not words that are universal but children. Children are quintessential, definitive of humanity.
How is it that the contemporary monolingual Anglophone West is having so many problems coming to terms with the simple fact, while for others millenia have gone by with little or no comment?
I am interested in your statement, Ethan, that “many of us do not believe adult-child sexual contact is inherently harmful. . .” Does this also mean that many of you believe the laws criminalizing such contact are intrinsically wrong? Should not, then, such faulty laws be opposed by all affected parties through all legitimate means, including the research which is the subject of this thread?
However, I do agree with you that to counsel anyone in today’s hysterical social environment to accept an offer from a boy of a sexually expressed relationship is “always a bad idea.” Still, Rind’s 1998 meta-analysis came up with a figure of 17% of males who reported boyhood sexual contacts with an older person. Applying that percentage to US census figures results in an estimate of fifteen million of what Finkelhorians call “victims,” and using a one to three ratio of “pedophiles” to boys produces a ballpark figure of some five million pedophiles who cooperated with sexually androphilic boys ( http://www.boyandro.info ). So do these five million, then, constitute “non- virtuous” or shameful pedophiles? That inference could be seen as an “ego trip” on the part of “Virtuous Pedophiles,” and is not likely to win friends or garner support from the greater boylove community.
Like “B4U-ACT,” “Virtuous Pedophiles” is a designation subject to negative interpretations. Perhaps “Celibate Pedophiles” or “Sexually Abstinent Pedophiles” would be a better descriptor?
An “off topic” aside to TOC – which he may delete before approving this response: It sure would be nice if there were a “Preview” feature for responses. . .
“I am interested in your statement, Ethan, that “many of us do not believe adult-child sexual contact is inherently harmful. . .” Does this also mean that many of you believe the laws criminalizing such contact are intrinsically wrong?”
I’m using ‘inherently’ to mean a high standard — which I suspect most of society believes, that any such relationship is by its very existence harmful. But by analogy, drunk driving very often does not result in any harm, but it is illegal because of the risk of harm. We believe there is a serious risk of harm. But we don’t try to invalidate the experience of grown men (especially) who look back on their experiences as teens with older men as positive.
I’m also a believer in prosecutorial discretion, having to do with issues of rape. I’ll use females as my example. A grown woman has a very hard time proving an accusation of rape, because she cannot prove she did not consent. Age of consent laws provide a girl with protection, since if sex took place and she said it was rape, then it was. But if a girl can convince a prosecutor that she really did consent enthusiastically, then he should drop the case. What the man did was wrong and illegal, but he’s off the hook.
““Virtuous Pedophiles” is a designation subject to negative interpretations. Perhaps “Celibate Pedophiles” or “Sexually Abstinent Pedophiles” would be a better descriptor?”
Yeah, where we definitely were not virtuous was in picking a perfect name. My first choice was ‘Celibate Pedophiles’. Another slant on the name might be ‘Clearly Virtuous Pedophiles’. I think most of us agree that there are some very non-virtuous pedophiles, for instance those who use force and intimidation to get sex from obviously frightened children. Much of society thinks all pedophiles are like that and are evil. When they hear ‘virtuous pedophiles’ those are the people of those we are excluding that they are focusing on. There are of course lots of people in the middle, and questions about whether others are morally OK or not can be left as a matter of debate depending on myriad details. Many pedophiles communities will come down differently on some of the cases than I will. But it doesn’t mean I think they warrant the hatred that much of society feels. I’ve said before that I think those who obey the law, however grudgingly, can fit under my definition of virtuous pedophiles.
“So do these five million, then, constitute “non- virtuous” or shameful pedophiles”
I consider them lawbreakers, and think it’s important that the public at large know there are lots of pedophiles who don’t break the law. Drunk drivers who do not get into accidents are still nonvirtuous drivers.
Dave, I am not sure what negative interpretation you may give to the “B4U-ACT” name, but I suppose it can be subject to negative interpretations if one chooses to remain ignorant about its origins and/or refuses to read our website. Care to let us in on your inner workings?
So here is the relevant text link, and the link to it:
“B4U-ACT’s name refers to the fact that it is crucially important for minor-attracted people, therapists, researchers, and citizens to think before they act in ways that could harm children, society, or minor-attracted people. Obviously, minor-attracted people should abide by the law because of the potential risk to children and themselves of doing otherwise.”
http://www.b4uact.org/misinfo.htm
Ethan my text put up yesterday had at least one sentence taking a grammatical form that challenges even me, and I wrote it! I must apologise for this.
In your text you used the phrase ” it’s wrong under all foreseeable social conditions”. Please, consider how a reader views such a statement. I was very unhappy with what you were saying because it attempts to sound liberal and yet it is anything but.
In 1992 Francis Fukuyama wrote his book, “The End of History and the Last Man”. He wrote as if we had all been travelling on this train and it had reached the end of the line. Allowing for minor adjustments, we as a planet, as well as a culture (the west) had got it right. Many of us read this and screamed – what arrogance!
The moral outlook that says I have it right, not just for now but for all time (your phrase “all foreseeable social conditions”), is like a red rag to a bull – it seems just plain arrogant. I ask you, for the sake of open dialogue, try to stay away from that positioning, it makes talk very difficult.
I do believe I am much more liberal than most of society, but recognize I was suggesting a more conservative point of view than you. I did carefully choose “foreseeable” instead of “possible”. I recognize the world may change in many unforeseen ways. As an extreme example, if aliens conquered us and decreed that all kids have to have sex with grown-ups starting at age 6 or else be killed, then it would become the moral thing to do. But I cannot foresee society unfolding towards that conclusion. For instance, I do not think arguments for greater sexual autonomy and freedom for children lead to that as a moral conclusion. I do not think attraction to children is immoral or wrong, I just think that acting on it is. I realize others have honest differences of opinion, which I respect.
@The Duke “Ethan Edwards”, the best I can think of your operation is not that you are ‘virtuous paedophiles’ only that you like to think of yourselves as virtuous vigilantes.
I do not compare you with B4U-ACT but with the similar ‘perverted justice’ and ‘corrupted justice’ operations, merely shifting your phrasing to make it appear that you are in fact paedophiles seeking to help other paedophiles not “break the law”.
Mate, grab hold of the other one, eh?
I mean, go run for sheriff . . .
Actually, the problem of research into at least one subset of “MAP” people, i.e. “Boy-Attracted Pedosexual Males,” (BPM) is not of access to respondents. The problem is that few, if any, researchers are willing to publish anything non-negative in this area; it is widely considered that to do so would be career suicide. I have had collaborators in the past decade, but to a man they declined to be listed as coauthors, or even mentioned as contributors: ” . . . noting that he did not wish to “jeopardize my family and professional position.” ( http://www.boyandro.info )
At the risk of being seen as blatantly “self-promoting,” I would note Effects on Boy-Attracted Pedosexual Males of Viewing Boy Erotica ( http://www.shfri.net/effects/effects.cgi ), which was researched a decade ago in 2003. References in that document to Cronk, Duffy, Krantz, Petit, Rhodes, and Stanton explain and validate the use of Internet-based behavioral research, and a huge repository of non-forensic, non-clinical, “free range” BPM are accessible by simply submitting a listing to Free Spirits Boy Links (http://www.boylinks.net ).
Other published works based on Internet research include:
“Abused to Abuser” (2005) http://www.shfri.net/ata/ata.cgi
Boyhood Sexual Experiences with Older Males (2008) http://www.sebrom.info/
Additional unpublished works include:
Motivational and Behavioral Characteristics of BPM (2007) http://www.shfri.net/mbcinfo/mbcbpm.cgi
Heritability of Older Male Sexual Attraction to Boys (2008) http://www.shfri.net/herit/herit.cgi
These projects attracted from 200 to 500 self-identified BPM respondents, which would seem to be more than sufficient for statistical significance and validity. This large number of respondents may have had to do with the establishment of a modicum of trust in the researcher that was built up over time by openly publishing the unembellished results of the various surveys, but any researcher who presents himself as competent and non-antagonistic to the issues of sexually expressed boy/older male relationships is likely to get a good number of responses to a listing on Boy Links. There would therefore not seem to be a need for any other intermediary for research and respondents, the problem is the lack of researchers willing to publish. And for this problem I have no ready solution; I have been pleading for others to take up this torch for over a decade now.
As part of our attempt to promote better research on MAPs, I have compiled a document with information about all cases I can find in which someone outside of criminology has attempted to recruit MAPs online for research. I have been able to find six people/groups who have tried to do so (Yuill, Morris, Goode, Mannion, Riegel, B4U-ACT). Researchers within academia have never gotten a larger sample than 50-70 people. By contrast, both you and B4U-ACT have done multiple surveys of MAPs (or some subset of MAPs) each with n>190 responses, but because of constraints on academic publishing, probably none of the surveys will ever result in a peer-reviewed article.
I agree that this shows that the lack of recruiting participants online is not because of lack of access to potential participants. But I think it also shows that generating research on community samples of MAPs (or on some subset of MAPs) that has the potential to serve as the basis for peer-reviewed articles requires collaboration between MAPs and researchers who are willing to put their names on things.
Glen, I have written of this before, specifically concerned with the perpetual conflict between normative and empirical research.
The issue with your approach, and to my mind the fatal flaw – the reason for your own stated difficulty in carrying it out – is that the construct from which you draw your vocabulary and methodology is already heavily loaded with presumption and worse pre-emptive risk to your field informants.
Coming at it from the other direction, from an entirely naive, open-ended stance (there is no such thing as a MAP, or a paedophile, there are only imperfect people), the issue ostensibly being addressed appears as nothing more than a vague and insignificantly small cloud looming on the far horizon.
The paranoia, and the danger, lies in the presumption within the cloud that among all the other people out here simply living their lives, there is some ‘dark figure’ of ‘crime’ that needs to be ‘understood’. I find that objectionable, unconscionable.
It is a serious and fundamental ethical issue in the social sciences that I do not see being addressed at all.
I have listed above three published works based on Internet surveys related to the understanding and acceptance of consensual sexually expressed boy/older male relationships. So it is not true that “none of the surveys will ever result in a peer-reviewed article.”
In the interest of scientific cooperation, would you be so kind as to tell us all, to the extent possible, what areas were addressed, questions asked, and answers found by “Yuill, Morris, Goode, Mannion, B4U-ACT.” You speak of a “document,” perhaps this already answers the preceding inquiry, and you could post it on your website and provide us with a link.
Although you feel that you cannot get past peer reviews – and I will concur that it is maddeningly frustrating – you could compose reports on your “multiple surveys of MAPs” and post them on your website for the benefit of all, as I have done.
BTW, let me correct myself: As noted in the report, the respondents in Boyhood Sexual Experiences with Older Males were not recruited through BoyLinks, and n=103.
@Gil, I’m not sure I understand your point. Are you rejecting any sort of research besides ethnography as unethical? Internet surveys are a common way of doing research on stigmatized groups, and because of security concerns, surveys are anonymous and we have stated in our Research Ethos that we will not help recruit participants for any research that asks about unadjudicated illegal behaviors.
@Dave, I have read a number of your articles, but hadn’t realized that “Abused to Abuser” was a peer-reviewed article. B4U-ACT has posted some results from our two surveys on our website.
Spring 2011 Survey Results
Summer 2011 Survey Results>
A longer discussion of results from the second survey can be found in Richard Kramer’s paper in the proceedings for our symposium Pedophilia, Minor-Attracted Persons, and the DSM: Issues and Controversies.
The document that I had mentioned is a work in progress. If you would like a copy, feel free to email me.
@Glen, no, I am not “rejecting any sort of research besides ethnography as unethical”. I find it unjust that you should think that of me, or throw such a question back at me.
My comment on your approach was, in common with my critique of normative research generally, that the core ethical issues are rarely if ever addressed.
Yes, the technique of online surveys is common; to me a somewhat lazy way to carry out low budget research, but that does not validate the results and it does not allow properly qualify diagnosis.
My well-grounded fear is that it serves not to test the hypothesis but to reify it before the fact, wherein lies the very real danger.
In that I confess, still to this day, to having no idea what a paedophile is, or a ‘minor-attracted person’, beyond some politically constructed monster.
There are people who are disturbed, mentally ill; there is a difference, but I have also written on that problem in the past. They are not paedophiles they are mentally ill, usually on either prescription or self-medication.
Especially given the feminist campaign with ongoing neo-colonisation, I argue there is no such thing as a paedophile; only a rule of fear seeking to get rid of any who question the imported ideology and turn instead to support boys coming-of-age instead of joining in their condemnation.
I have filled various roles in my work career, one of which was as a Family Therapist. I did a post-graduate course at the Family Therapy Institute in the late 1980s, just as the sex abuse topic began to influence how therapy was being done. I began a private practice in Wellington, New Zealand in the early 1990s; I do not have a practice now.
I found neutrality in this work was an important professional issue and during my training in Australia it was discussed. My views include an observation that may be of value in this discussion about research in MAPs. Neutrality is not about non-involvement – that is an illusion. What is at stake is entry – how far one enters a given position. Wanting to be seen as neutral requires a person to enter each position equally. In therapy it meant things like making sure the speaking time for each point of view was the same, and that my response was as significant and carefully considered for each side being offered during a therapy session.
The sex abuse industry(SAI) is far from neutral, that I think is very clear. For this group it is about advocacy to victims of sexual abuse, and one notes they tell victims they are victims (an interesting situation in itself). That lack of neutrality for the abuse industry is a contributing factor to why, as a subculture and a social movement (they are ideologically driven in my view and sociologically resemble how a religious movement functions). This feature for the SAI generates negative outcomes for both adults and children. I think the VirPed group need to take this into consideration.
I don’t see VirPed as being advocates for anyone outside their group (the above item by Glen lamb puts their membership at about 70) – they want their lives to be less stress-driven and less socially difficult. While I understand their concerns, and the social privilege they are offered because their views as easier to ‘digest’ than the wider MAP population (with its diversity of opinion), it is my belief at this point the group will be assessed as lacking in credibility, and at this time that is a significant short-fall for any emerging social group.