A few days ago a Briton living in the US was sentenced to serve 27 years in prison before being deported back to the UK, after plotting to kidnap, rape, kill and eat children. Authorities last year found a dungeon, homemade child-sized coffin, a child-sized cage with exterior locks, butchering kit and torture tools at the Massachusetts home of Geoffrey Portway, who had engaged in online discussions with others about a mutual interest in abducting and murdering children.
Castration tools were among the equipment found. In view of that grisly detail, there are some who might feel castration would be poetically appropriate as a precondition of Portway being considered for parole. Personally, I would prefer he were never released. His plans went far beyond S/M fantasy: even surgical castration – as opposed to the reversible chemical sort – would leave the more grotesque aspects of his criminal motivation untouched.
There are many other cases, though, in which offenders who have sexually assaulted children in a coercive or forceful way, or even those who have not so offended but have good grounds for fearing they are in imminent danger of doing so, could be considered appropriate candidates for treatment aimed at eliminating or greatly reducing their sex drive. B4U-ACT was castigated by a commentator here at Heretic TOC recently for failing to distance itself from such treatment. This was Jeff, who asked how could it be right for such an organisation to promote a treatment that would inevitably be harmful to a MAP’s mental health when it had been set up to improve standards of mental health provision?
Decca Aitkenhead, writing in the Guardian, visited some of the relevant issues in an informative and thoughtful article last year which makes a useful starting point for me to take the matter a bit further. She introduced her piece through the story of “Barry” (not the Barry who was responding here to Jeff!), who was sentenced to life in prison in 1976 for murdering a random stranger who had refused him a light for his cigarette. He had never been convicted as a sex offender but was put on a sex offender treatment programme (SOTP) in prison. This was because he committed an offence of common assault after being let out on licence: he had lured a girl behind some bushes and the assault occurred following a sexual advance, when she tried to escape. During the course of the SOTP he admitted to being a serial voyeur in constant danger of attacking young females.
So when a prison doctor offered him a pill that might take away his sex drive, “I didn’t think twice,” he reportedly said. “I jumped at it. And I haven’t looked back.”
For patients with obsessive sexual fantasies, Aitkenhead continues, antidepressants from the family of SSRIs that includes Prozac, often prescribed to treat obsessive compulsive disorder, can help them control their sexual thoughts. The second and more radical approach is an anti-androgen drug, such as leuprorelin, which reduces testosterone levels and makes the patient impotent. Research from Scandinavia, she writes, has reported a drop in reoffending rates from 40% to between zero and 5%. Barry was among those who advanced beyond SSRIs to anti-androgen treatment – which one would have thought would stand him in good stead with the Parole Board in order to secure a further release from prison. Herein, though, lies a tale to which I will return.
For the moment, let’s just review Barry’s situation as reported so far. He wants to be free; he does not wish to harm anyone (unlike Geoffrey Portway); he professes to be happy with the treatment, which he feels is a success; I imagine his supervisors on the SOTP feel he has made progress, judging by his attitude as it comes across in what he reportedly told Aitkenhead. So, if he can go back into society with a good prospect of making a success of it, what’s not to like?
Let us now turn to a very specific objection raised by Jeff: how could something as drastic as chemically blasting a man’s sex drive away (with side effects including growing breasts that may need to be surgically removed) be considered a voluntary treatment, as is usually claimed? In prison, especially, if castration appears to be the only way of getting released, it is surely a totally coerced choice, isn’t it, and therefore ethically dubious?
This is where I am going to bring in Mike Bailey. As I said in a previous comment, Prof. J. Michael Bailey once wrote a paper in favour of castration but more recently declared that “persuasive evidence for the harmfulness of pedophilic relationships does not yet exist”. These two positions at first blush may seem poles apart, as though Bailey’s views must have changed very radically. But it is not necessarily so. Among several possible interpretations of his position, he may believe that non-coerced adult-child sexual contacts are intrinsically harmless, and that castration, whether castration “lite” (chemical/reversible) or the real thing (surgical removal of the testes) cannot be justified in such cases, and maybe not prison sentences either, or indeed any kind of punishment. My point here is not to pin down Bailey’s position exactly but just to show that even belief in such a drastic treatment as surgical castration does not necessarily make the holder of such a belief an ogre of anti-sexuality and illiberal dogma. Indeed, I think Bailey’s unusual combination of views indicates that he is a thoughtful guy who is not afraid to go where evidence and logic take him, even when that makes him look a complete bastard to conservatives and liberals of the more emotional, knee-jerk, type for totally opposite reasons.
What more specifically is of interest to us here is the fact that his paper on castration, co-written with fellow psychologist Aaron Greenberg, addresses Jeff’s point about coerced “consent” to castration in detail and, I would say, with considerable care in around 1,250 words which I have posted online here.
In a nutshell, their argument goes something like this. Everything we do in life involves weighing up alternatives, and we are often forced to choose between the lesser of two evils. Whether a particular choice offered in the penal system is coerced to an improper degree is something that might possibly be defined [TOC: constitutional or human rights grounds come to mind] but the criteria would probably be very hard to agree upon. Instead of puzzling over what is or is not voluntary, a more productive approach is instead to ask simply whether it is morally acceptable to put the offender in the position of being subjected to one of the alternatives offered. If the prison sentence is fair [TOC: but at Heretic-TOC many of us believe sentences in this field are often appallingly unfair], why would a less disagreeable alternative chosen by the prisoner not be fair? If the prison sentence is unfair, that is a different issue. Far from decreasing the offender’s freedom, all adding castration (or anything else) as an option does is increase his freedom. If he prefers the full prison sentence to castration, he will refuse castration and will be in exactly the same position as if it were never offered. His position with the castration alternative will be better than or the same as, but never worse than, his position without the alternative. In addition, it is by no means clear that castration is a morally unfair punishment for certain sex crimes, even if imposed without the offender’s consent: in the case of very serious crimes, a punishment that may greatly reduce the chance of recidivism seems particularly appropriate.
So far as it goes, I think the reasoning here is quite strong (please point out flaws I have missed) but rather limited in the scope of its moral vision. It seems to me that true castration, like capital punishment, is one of those extreme ways of dealing with offenders that not only violates fundamental human rights but which also endorses violence: these punishments make the state look as vicious as the offender, or worse, and underpin, rather than undermine, a social climate in which violence is seen as a solution rather than a problem.
The point about the effectiveness of surgical castration in stopping further offences, is worth dwelling upon. Elsewhere in their paper, Bailey and Greenberg quote a 1970s German study, by Wille and Beier, indicating a very impressive postoperative recidivism rate of only 3%, whereas a comparison group of uncastrated offenders reoffended at a rate of 46% over 11 years. However, the also extremely good results reported above from Swedish research in relation to chemical castration do not appear to find support in the latest major study of the effectiveness of all types of sex offender treatment (or possibly all types in the UK: surgical castration does not seem to have been covered) published as recently as last month in the British Medical Journal by Långström et al. Well over a thousand studies were considered in this systematic review of the literature.
Embarrassingly for science, none of them were deemed good enough to demonstrate that any particular treatment is truly effective, including chemical castration. The paper notes: “The lack of credible studies of antiandrogen drugs is particularly striking given the prominence of ‘chemical castration’ in public debates concerning the treatment of known perpetrators.”
In that case, we might think, the ethical arguments reviewed above become redundant. What possible justification can there be for B4U-ACT, or anyone else, to promote a treatment that could be held to violate human rights, and which certainly has the humiliating and degrading (for a man) side effect of breast enlargement, if it may well be utterly ineffective? Isn’t it all a bit of a sham?
In practice, it is often a sham in other ways, too. Prisoners sometimes undergo castration on the basis of false hopes, as Bailey and Greenberg’s paper shows in the case of an offender called Jeffrey Morse in America. A particularly egregious injustice occurred in that case because Morse ended up being surgically, and hence irreversibly, castrated but then found himself given an increase over the expected sentence (from 25 years to 26), not a reduction.
There are false hopes and pervasive bad faith in the British penal system too. As Aitkenhead reveals, prisoners are in effect being led up the garden path: they are encouraged to undergo chemical interventions in the belief that their cooperation with suggested treatments will help secure their release. What they are not told, it seems, is that under existing rules the Parole Board is not even allowed to know whether prisoners have been on a course of SSRIs or had chemical castration! It is thus impossible for treatment to help secure their release but they are left with totally the opposite impression. This strikes me as utterly unjust and even fraudulent.
So where does all this leave us? Conscious of the rather heated clash in Heretic-TOC’s comment space over B4U-ACT’s apparently pro-chemical castration (in certain circumstances) stance, I have tried to approach the issues in a balanced and reflective way. It was not always so. As a young man, back in the 1970s, I delivered a fiery speech against chemical castration at a conference of the National Council for Civil Liberties (now Liberty). It was later written up as an article in Gay Left after being attacked by Patricia Hewitt, who was later a cabinet minister in Tony Blair’s government. Reading that article again online, for the first time in over thirty years, I must ruefully note that it achieved nothing: chemical castration is still with us. Hewitt scoffed at my rather amateurish efforts – factual research by the unfunded non-professional was much tougher in the pre-internet era – and I now find my moral certainty at the time more than a touch simplistic.
The whole of the Gay Left issue in question is online as a PDF, and there is a Table of Contents. I might just mention in passing that the same issue includes a discussion of paedophilia by the Gay Left Collective, to which I replied in the following issue. Those who are interested in the changing attitude of the gay movement over time towards paedophilia might thus find these particular issues of Gay Left to be revealing. One of the leading lights of Gay Left was Jeff Weeks, then a radical young historian but sadly now – as I remarked in Tromovitch sets a poser on prevalence – a rather bland and boringly PC emeritus professor.
What has not changed much, though, after all this time, is my opinion of chemical castration. Jeff (not Jeff Weeks!) is basically right, I think: chemical castration is an extreme form of intervention which is very hard to justify, especially as its efficacy is still in doubt after so many years. But that does not mean B4U-ACT is in some sort of conspiracy with the authorities or is anti-sexual.
This story related by Barry is worth recalling:
…one young man … recently came to us seeking help. He had been on probation after he was released from prison for sexually assaulting boys, and during that time the state paid for him to receive anti-androgen medication. Now that probation was ending, he could not afford to continue the treatment and he was desperately asking for help to continue as he felt very strong urges to go out and assault another boy… What in actuality would be punitive is the 10- or 20- (or more) year sentence the MAP could receive if he were to act out on his urges. That would also certainly be more deleterious to the mental health of a MAP than a reversible course of medication…
These are strong points. It is not easy to know the right course to take when faced with responsibility for a case like this, which may be about self-coercion as a result of state brain-washing but is a very different situation to the hard choices faced by MAPs in prison or still under tight control during probation. If Jeff or anyone else can put forward a coherent and compelling policy for an organisation such as B4U-ACT in these circumstances, Heretic TOC would be pleased to hear it. Indeed, this blog would be interested to hear from B4U-ACT itself, in either its American or British manifestations.
MAIN REFERENCES
Aitkenhead, D., Chemical castration: the soft option? The Guardian, Friday 18 January 2013
Bailey, J.M. & Greenberg, A.S., “The science and ethics of castration: Lessons from the Morse case”, Northwestern University Law Review.?1998;92(4):1225-1245.
Långström, N. et al., Preventing sexual abusers of children from reoffending: systematic review of medical and psychological interventions, BMJ 2013;347:f4630 (9 August 2013)
Wille, R. & Beier, K.M., Castration in Germany, Annals of Sex Research 2, 105-9 (1989)
according to a new study, children are killed by parents and by someone they know as a result of abuse, neglect, “crime” and arguments:
Sex offenders are not mentioned as a cause of death.
a new review of criminological psychologist literature has been performed, and the “Results were inconsistent concerning general, cognitive and affective empathy.”
>ICSOs tend to display deficits toward victims of sexual violence, especially their own.
There is a reason for “especially their own”. Why would you empathise with a “victim” of sexual violence” (“violent” by definition, because they were underage) when you felt you had a consenting relationship with them. Why would you feel sorry for them if you didn’t think they were a victim?
a new text on child sexual killers: https://doi.org/10.1177/15248380221119511
Please excuse this effort to subvert this cat room to announce the publication of a work that will set contemporary theories (and treatments) of sexual disorders on their heads. Confessions of a Sin Eater (available at the Amazon link below is a first of its kind work describing the aspects on human sexuality and how they interact in sex crimes.
Sexual Offender Treatment and Risk Assessment groups-noreply@linkedin.com
http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Sin-Eater-Jack-McClintock/dp/1499664583?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creativeASIN=1467972274&linkCode=xm2&tag=nichlamasout-20
This book has some very positive readers reviews on Amazon. The blurb refers to “monsters” which doesn’t sound promising but the author appears to be taking a line quite different from standard “lock ’em up and throw away the key”. Anyway, I applaud Jack’s enterprise in coming to H-TOC, so I’ll paste the Amazon blurb:
John Henry Greaney is in maximum security, but he’s not an inmate; he’s a psychologist, there to provide care and comfort to the worst monsters society ever created. Eager to help his patients, he listens to their stories of rape and murder, plots of riots and bloody revenge, unaware that with every prisoner he treats, he’s damaging himself. Trying desperately to adapt, he gradually goes from a free-spirited healer to a self-destructive nihilist more frightening than most of his patients. Looking for redemption in his work, he reaches a stark conclusion: The American prison system is not only a catastrophic failure, but a factory that breeds monsters, almost all of whom end up back on city streets. Mailer’s In the Belly of the Beast and Bissonette’s When the Inmates Ran Walpole each gave society a disturbing look at life inside American prisons. Confessions of a Sin Eater shows, for the first time, prison through the eyes of the people who work there, living in the margin between civilization, and the violent wasteland know as maximum security. Greaney’s firsthand account challenges the wisdom of punishing criminals and questions the way society differentiate between them and the mentally ill. It illuminates the world behind the walls, and illustrates the effects prison has—not just on the inmates, but on everyone who works there, and on society as a whole.
Jeffrey Weeks, who you mention in this post, is indeed a sad case of a former radical gone soft. I heard that he walked out of an Against Equality presentation, which makes me think that he might be a huge douchebag (I can be a bit loopy, so maybe I’m misrecalling and it was someone else who walked out. Example of my loopiness in a previous comment: saying Gary Oldman was in the Seventh Seal, when I actually meant to say the Fifth Element.) He joins Pat Califia and many others.
[TOC adds: Please note, RQD, that this thread was closed after comment no. 85. It was getting overheated and repetitive. Your comment takes a different tack, however, so I’ll make an exception.]
I would like to post something before this thread gets bumped down the main page.
Firstly, I have a feeling that this blog is a little too grown up for me. I am still not that insane to be discussing things here :). Having said that I might learn a thing or two before leaving to a more sane place.
Peter,
I prefer to be discussing things that have to do with attraction to boys. This discussion of the mentally handicapped and the terminally ill is too broad. I simply do not have enough experience to talk about these two categories so I will focus on the love of boys (which I thought was the whole purpose of this blog).
When it comes to sharing intimate moments with boys, I don’t see where it is wrong? As I said love and physical intimacy go hand in hand. You can’t have one without the other. Therefore I don’t think that one can segregate the two and try to deal with one while thinking that the other won’t be affected.
Why would anyone want to reduce the sex drive. It is a really natural thing to have and it gives one pleasure. I was on a medication (for a separate ailment) which reduced my libido. I felt so horrible because I didn’t feel anything wrong with my sexual aspects. In addition I was attracted to boys exactly the same way as before taking the meds. That didn’t change. My libido was lowered and it was annoying but then it came back up again. Again my thoughts, temptations, desires were not altered. Sex drive is there for a reason and I don’t think that there is any drug that can suppress that. If there is I would like to see data.
In the 5 scenarios that you have presented I found them to be quite disappointing. None of them expressed a scenario that represents me. Where does love come in here? There was no mention of it at all. Don’t you think that relationships should be based on love? The outcome I would like for myself, and hopefully people will share the same outcome, is to love the child this is first and foremost. I don’t start calculating if I am a rapist or if and when I will be caught by authorities. So with this premise I don’t think that I would opt for any of the outcomes.
This takes us back to the original question of consent and whether it is ethical to put a person in a position to either take the drug or stay in prison. Do you think this decision it taken based on free will. What evidence do authorities have that a person would have a relationship, which gets us back to the question of whether the relationship with a child is wrong. You veered off the question altogether to simply giving a couple of words of your opinion than really discussing the ethics of it.
As Gil said in one of his posts, suppressing a person further by giving them anti-androgens does not improve their mental health. If I am anxious about being a pedophile and I am prescribed a something that reinfoces this anxiety, how will this make me feel? Again I have asked for data about how chemical castration influences mental health and I doubt that you will be able to provide me with any: because it doesn’t exist.
These coercive methods of dealing with one’s attraction are not ethical nor moral. I would let B4UACT respond to the mental health question as I have seen extremely little about it in your post.
PS 1: I saw your Twitter account Peter and it says the following: “White. Benefited from apartheid. Lost business under ANC because I refuse to pay bribes. Material apartheid benefits lost in process. Only education remains.” YIKES! Who cares that you are white?
PS 2: Tom, thank you for writing this blog. It must be really difficult to moderate it when there are a few mentally ill people posting here. I would imagine that it can get quite overwhelming. However I would imagine that if you are ok with publishing something as extreme as Peter’s post, you would accept Gil’s posts without censorship. I feel that the discussion is not complete if there is such heavy monitoring allowing one way traffic. This is my humble opinion anyways.
Thanks for the discussion. I might visit here later when I become more senile.
Jeff
Four comments:
1. Love comes into all the scenarios except the fifth. The other 4 are motivated by love (both being in the relationship and wanting to stick to particular boundaries). To get to a comprehensive discussion of Boy Love, there is a vast body of literature which cannot be incorporated into every comment. If you want to back-channel on that aspect, use my Twitter account. I have no problem swapping email addresses there.
2. My using other examples of the use of anti-androgens was meant to show their application in a non prison non coerced context. I am sorry that those examples failed to be of use to you.
3. I have no data on the improvement of mental health, but I have observed it happen. It goes more or less like this: A man falls in love with a boy and it is reciprocated. The man does not want to break the law with the boy so he avoids the boy and becomes miserable about it. He takes the anti-androgen and loses most of the ability to offend (sure, he can still put his hands where they will be breaking the law, etc. but the scope is much reduced) but regains the confidence. He then goes on to resume interacting with the boy and his misery becomes less. (His mental health improves.)
I definitely do not say this is ideal. I say the opposite. The decision should be between the boy and the man. But in the non prison open world where his choice is between avoiding the boy completely or enjoying all that he legally can with the boy, anti-androgens (where he doubts his own restraint) are one option that improve his position. His other option is to sit out time and hope the law eventually changes in his favour. He may work towards that change.
4. As to my Twitter bio, in South Africa, every time you tweet on an issue of politics, government or governance, you are challenged on the basis of what race you are, what you did to end apartheid and what wealth you continue to deprive the (black) majority of. Rather than argue it out every time I post something in a series of tweets, I put it in the bio. Answered?
Peter,
This is not the point. The point is whether it is ETHICAL to suppress an “assumed” body part (the penis for males) because you have thoughts? One is guilty until they are proven innocent? I say “assumed” body part because you are saying that all your sexual thoughts come from your penis. If that thing is “taken care” of then a person becomes free of “temptation”. I really don’t know any wonder drug can do that.
Physical intimacy is crucial for a relationship. It can’t be separated from the emotional and sentimental aspect of a relationship. Why would anyone want to create a rift between the two?
So if the person who has the fantasies of cheating on his terminally ill wife takes the pill he would stop having these fantasies? Is cheating simply the physical act? The person is cheating in his mind and I doubt that he is emotionally available for his terminally ill wife.
Nowhere does B4UACT give specifics on how chemical castration can influence the mental health of a person? This remains a huge mystery and it is unfathomable how an organization continues the legal practices of an unjust legislative process (release on conditions) to pretend that this is a mental health issue.
[TOC adds: Now this is the sort of debate that is worth having!]
Millions and millions of years / Hundreds and Hundreds of thousands of years have put our sexual thoughts in us. Using a chemical is like turning the hands on a clock thinking we changed the time.
Our sexual thoughts must be valuable to man or we would not have them. There must be something wrong with thinking our sexual thoughts are not. Something wrong with doing anything to suppress them.
Those who cross boundaries are necessary no matter how much pain results. We have to pursue on through until the true problem gets corrected …. The true problem is the suppression of pedophilia. That said I will continue repressing my pedophilia to stay out of prison, to keep from causing problems to any young person caused by the helping professions, to keep them out of the hands of those dastardly people, those people who proceed from the wrong base. Psychology as it is practiced today is not science no matter how it shrouds itself and makes claims for itself and we defend it.
We must look to Evolutionary Psychology if we want to find science in psychology. Thousands and thousands and thousands of years made us who we are. And, we are pretty darn good.
Love,
Linca
“That said I will continue repressing my pedophilia to stay out of prison, to keep from causing problems to any young person caused by the helping professions, to keep them out of the hands of those dastardly people, those people who proceed from the wrong base.”
… and for those MAPs who would like to do precisely the same, but are not sure they can maintain the repression (or know that they cannot, no matter how much they want to), medication is one option that can help.
As long as they join us in the fight to save the world from the sanctimonious & pious where the real fun is. One of these days humans will get to be humans.
Linca
I have checked on all this, Peter, done the rounds.
If any of you tried these experiments on children here in Western Australia, on your own children or anybody else’s, you would be actively prevented from doing so for very good reason.
[SNIPPED: SEE BELOW]
I know of a GP in the southern Perth suburb of Karawara a few years ago who was heavily oversubscribing antidepressants to women, and Ritalin to boys, who was made to leave the community while the AMA pursued him. AMA is the statutory Australian Medical Association.
I know of another GP in a country town who wrongly prescribed antidepressant and hypertension medication to me too, around the time my house was raided, nearly killing me before I woke up and complained. I found out she was already banned from admitting patients to the district hospital, and her patients referred to a senior GP acting on behalf of the AMA.
One so-called security guard at said hospital was also sacked on my complaint, and a roundup of parents supplying medication and drugs to their children who were then taken into care.
The list goes on. Whatever people are allowed to get away with in backward, undeveloped, post-fascist regimes like South Africa, and some US states, are NOT permitted here in Australia. The science is well understood, as are the ethics of both professional and research practice.
[SNIPPED]
[TOC ADDS: The need to moderate comments here on such grounds as personal abuse is mercifully not great, so that when the occasion does arise I am able to explain my policy to the correspondents concerned. Usually they accept it with good grace and even apologies.
Gil, however, has presented a unique challenge, thanks to the prolific quantity of his offerings and the multiple ways in which he manages to be offensive, destructive, rambling, repetitive, obnoxiously self-centred and self-aggrandising. He tells us he was violently abused in childhood which perhaps explains a lot and certainly gives grounds for a measure of empathy. I have also cut him a lot of slack on the basis that amidst all the bullshit that pours from him like a bovine with diarrhoea there are occasional gems to be retrieved, as though our ruminant has been grazed in a meadow randomly scattered with diamonds and one must wait to retrieve them when disgorged from its back passage.
The WordPress software gives me stats, one of which is that H-TOC has published 234 posts by Gil in 11 months; rejected posts probably take his submissions above 250, which makes more than one a day on average, or about 3 for every H-TOC blog. I find it flattering that any individual should devote such attention to my humble blog but beyond a certain point the persistent contributor is in danger of becoming a “dominant narrative” in his own right.
I hope it will help if from now on I rein Gil in rather more tightly, with more snipping, but also with a brief explanatory code, so that Gil (if he chooses to continue writing) and other readers will have a pretty good idea of why I am doing it. The code, which may later need additions, but I hope not, is as follows:
Snips made on these grounds:
ANN = Angry, nothing new
AB = Abusive
SAG = Self-aggrandising or boringly self-centred
RAMBO = Rambling, boring or incoherent
The snips in the current post are both on ANN grounds.]
You assume I have done what you refer to as experiments. You are wrong. We have a very good private healthcare system in South Africa as good as or better than any in the developed world and, as part of that, there is no way I would even be able to get my hands on any of the drugs in question without working with the professions, which I did and do.
You go on to refer to unrelated incidents of malpractice of which you are aware. Good for you, we have them here too.
Nothing added to the main discussion. On to the next post.
On this good point you make Jeff, “Physical intimacy is crucial for a relationship. It can’t be separated from the emotional and sentimental aspect of a relationship. Why would anyone want to create a rift between the two?”
This is precisely where I came in professionally, all those years ago. On the one hand, we have chronic and widespread domestic violence and relationship breakdown that we were unequivocally able to trace back to ingrained guilt and shame about the body and sexuality.
There is no accident that there is so very much work being done right now on the body, body sensation and perception, intimacy and attachment, gender and sexuality, and a huge amount of new literature being published.
On the other hand, quite aside from the hundreds of thousands of boys and young men sent out to the colonies, to places like South Africa and Canada and Australia, there is no doubt whatsoever that detachment and alienation within such dysfunctional families are what drives children to seek intimacy outside.
How on earth does chemical intervention influence the “mental health” of anyone already struggling to thrive in such environments, or oblige a person to refrain from intimacy and attachment with another during his previous partner’s terminal illness?
Lars von Trier BTW directed a film on this theme, ‘Breaking the Waves’ 1996, starring Emily Watson and Stellan Skarsgård.
The good reason I argue for conviviality in place of incarceration, chemical or physical castration, proscription and with all that even deeper sense of guilt and shame, is well founded.
And TOM, if in fact this is the sort of debate you consider worth having, for goodness sakes, let’s have it finally.
That really would be good.
Jeff
Again, to respond to your questions, I must share personal experience.
A doctor, for whom I have the greatest respect, told me many years ago that he does not prescribe a drug for his patients until he has experienced the effects of it on himself, wherever that is possible. I have taken the same approach with my kids. Accordingly, I have spent a month on each of two different drugs for ADHD and on one drug used to chemically castrate. The latter drug, on the package insert, says that it takes “7 days to extinguish the sex drive” or words to that effect. The takeaway is that for another 23 days, mine was extinguished.
The difference it made was not exclusively about whether or not an erection was possible. It was in fact far more subtle and I have thought for some time for examples to illustrate this. Finding examples is difficult because I do not believe that any two individuals seduce the same way, are seduced the same way or cross the line into the realm of a sexual encounter in the same way. However, take these two:
1. When you are enjoying physical intimacy with the person you love, there is a point at which that intimacy changes from affection and warmth to an erotically charged situation which is leading to sexual intercourse. On the drugs, the change to an erotically charged situation does not happen. Everything else leading up to it does.
2. When you are alone and filling time, you may be browsing the internet randomly or even in a directed way, but then reach a point at which you switch from your particular interests to looking at erotica. This may move on to illegal child pornography and possibly to masturbation. On the drugs, that change in direction towards erotica does not manifest, although you may find yourself looking at pictures of people who are attractive to you doing interesting things. (This may be a weak example because I do not look at very much erotica anyway.)
The point is that the impetus to shift from any other state towards a state that is “sexually active” is radically reduced. In the case of my kids, they continued to interact with their friends and girlfriends, continued to hug and show affection, but their interest was in the other person (s) more than the possibility of a sexual experience. The end result was that we dealt with deepened friendships (upon which we were able to build real relationships which endure to this day) rather than on disciplinary instances of inappropriate behaviour (as defined in the behaviour code of the school over which I have no control).
For the man with the terminally ill wife, perhaps my example needed more detail, but I was thinking particularly of the man who has not been able to have sex for some time and feels likely to do so with the first obliging nurse, stranger or prostitute simply because it is one need amongst many that is not being met in his circumstances. The person he wants to have sex with is his wife. That is impossible. He does not want to cheat to satisfy an urge. (There are, of course, people who commence new relationships before the terminally ill partner has died, and the terminally ill partner is aware of and supportive of the new relationship.)
I think I have clarified above that I do not think thoughts arise from the penis. I do, however, assert that there are drugs that can reduce temptation and make the residual urge manageable and I assert this based on personal experience. I agree that physical intimacy is crucial for most of the relationship types that might be discussed on this forum. (I am not physically intimate with my clients in the computer industry.) The drug does not end intimacy or make it less important. It makes sex practically impossible, and fantasies about sex far less likely.
Before exploring the ethics of chemical castration, let us look at the outcome you want for yourself, or for a hypothetical third party, and say what is and is not appropriate (based on the categories I previously listed, plus one I have added, the rapist, who coercively forces sex on others, including minors):
1. Definitely going all the way – drug won’t help, but trouble looms for BOTH.
2. Plan to go so far and no further and are able to maintain that – no need for drug.
3. Plan to go so far and no further but are not able to maintain that – drug will definitely help.
4. Avoid boys (and girls) at all costs out of fear – drug will definitely help.
5. Rapists – drug or prison if counselling fails, or while counselling is implemented.
(Please do not see rape and statutory rape as the same thing above.)
In the cases where I have said the drug can help (3 and 4), the person’s psychological state improves simply because he can enjoy the company of the people he is attracted to and maintain the boundaries he has set for himself. The improvement in mental health comes from that, and is really that simple at this level of detail.
In the case of the rapist, I am more interested in the safety of his victims than in the state of his psyche.
To the ethics of this.
– Giving the drug in cases of 3 and 4 at the request of the person is an ethical step, in my view.
– Forcing the drug on any person as a precautionary measure (i.e. with no offence and no request) is unethical.
– Classifying a person as a rapist on the basis of age of consent laws and then using 5 is unethical.
Having age of consent laws at all? I think the system needs a major overhaul, but I do not have the absolute formulation that would resolve all issues.
As I have said elsewhere, I believe it is prudent to avoid imprisonment or legal entanglement and ethical to avoid exposing a boy to “help”. However, those are my preferences and I do not expect anyone else to adopt them.
At the end of the day, the problem is that consensual sexual relationships arise across the age of consent and come to the attention of the law. Until the age of consent changes or a more enlightened model replaces it, the attention of the law is never going to be a good thing for either party.
Drugs can help significantly to avoid the act that breaks the law.
That is my response. The comment which follows is a spurious thought.
Regarding B4U-ACT, are you quite certain that they are effectively a chemical castration vending machine? Perhaps one of those experiments should be done where 20 non-MAPs present themselves, declare an interest in minors, and see what they are offered.
[TOC adds: Just one small point on this important contribution. Peter, you wrote: “The comment which follows is a spurious thought.” Spurious or curious? Spurious: “Lacking authenticity or validity in essence or origin; not genuine; false.”]
Frankly Peter, and TOM, I don’t even believe I’m reading this stuff, or that anyone could possibly be thinking it much less writing it, but then, we live and learn.
[SNIPPED]
My older son the swimmer, while nonetheless angry with me 10 years ago and more because he thought I thought he was gay when I had actually said I don’t mind it’s your body and your life to live, and what he meant was he’ll make up his own mind, has been like most of his peers sexually active since 12-13.
At that time I’d heard about a paedo sexuality clinic in The Netherlands, since closed down, to which I would have been happy to send him if he showed less than full vigour for his age and it worried him. All went well, however, plenty of nice people around.
He now has a beautiful girlfriend, both in their early 20s graduate geologists on $1/4 million a year between them, and recognised as bright young achievers able to find professional employment anywhere in the world.
Had I allowed him to be chemically straight-jacketed, castrated, inhibited, destroyed as a person, he would have been in care by now, or in prison
[SNIPPED]
Gil, I will reply where relevant in the order in which these posts reached me by email. Frankly, though, I see very little being added by you to the actual discussion.
You don’t believe people would think or write … Since the evidence exists that you are wrong (you are reading precisely what you don’t believe you would), I can only assume that you are using a rhetorical statement that anticipates no response and so you will get none.
Your son would be … in care or prison. You have evidence of this in the sense that it is deterministic? If you do, please share it. It would be of passing interest to know how ethical clearance was obtained for the experiment that gathered the data and proved the assertion.
On to the next post.
What? I “don’t believe people would think or write?”
Very precisely, explicitly, I do want you to think seriously about what you are doing in these chemical experiments on yourself and on children, expressly, your two sons.
Nowhere have you made any mention of seriously criminal serial sex offenders being treated, but boys who (from what you tell us) have never committed any crime or been arrested or convicted, but who you fear might have certain thoughts and must be treated before they act on them, and who without the chemicals might get an erection and masturbate.
Yes, I do want you to write, and explain all this. Please do. I don’t want to know about some remote case of someone else having a life-threatening terminal cancer with a 5% prospect of survival, and shouldn’t they be on medication too? Even they need to be properly diagnosed by qualified specialists.
Please, what evidence exists that I am wrong about your experimenting with chemicals on boys? Explain that to me. I have said and I repeat, if you tried such experiments here in Australia there would be prompt action taken against you, to prevent you from proceeding.
Whatever else you are on about is entirely beyond me. I do not and never have required ethical clearance from my university to raise my own family. Nobody on earth does. There is and was no experiment, but real life being lived. There was no experiment with chemicals being carried out on them, only a father acting to prevent unwarranted intervention, to stop pre-emptive medication from being administered which in the event proved to be correct.
Sorry, you’ve lost me. I do not know about South Africa, but here in Australia we do not require ethical clearance to NOT carry out experiments on children, only to experiment. We do not require ethical clearance to NOT medicate healthy children, and have in place strict guidelines on medication and treatment of those properly diagnosed with whatever illness.
There is no negligence, only demonstrable and proper duty of care.
I mean, what else?
The way we would handle this difference between us here in Australia is in open forum, before a medical registrar or registration tribunal, or in court.
Bring it on. Don’t question me, prepare your case and present it.
I am not carrying out chemical experiments on anyone. That is your characterisation. (In case you failed to read it or to recall it, I will repeat that anything done was and is done by suitably qualified professionals and for reasons that pass ethical muster.)
I have shared certain personal information here that is relevant to the discussion at hand. Every other person on this forum has treated that with respect.
You have chosen to escalate your perception of it to equate my conduct (of which you have scant knowledge) to something approaching the behaviour of Josef Mengele. I never offered a case study on myself or my kids, so the information I have put forward is what you get. Period.
Since, by your own statement, I have lost you or gone over your head on everything else, there is no need to address any of the remaining commentary.
Peter, you have offered nothing, no data, no information on the participants, no registrar, no diagnosis and who made it, nothing beyond your own public statements on using chemical means to prevent boys getting erections.
Then you jump around among entirely unrelated illness and disease as if to justify your views and your activities, from comparing boys having an erection with a headache, then with life-threatening cancer.
As I suggest firstly that, from the information you did provide, if you practiced here in Australia you would be arrested, and whoever is supplying you with the drugs deregistered, you started attacking me.
I merely stated the facts of the matter, yet as you persisted and I continued trying to warn you, you STILL refuse to provide the information we have a right to access.
Why don’t you just come out and tell us?
That’s simple. It’s standard procedure, standard practice.
If what you are doing is above board you would not hesitate to establish your credentials, and if you didn’t want to actually name the doctor who diagnosed your children and prescribed the medication, at least which hospital or university has cleared it.
Believe me, I am going to start raising very large questions on all this, and on your reasons for your continuing to fudge the matter and refusal to disclose.
[TOC adds: In my view this is completely ridiculous from beginning to end. It merely repeats questions that have already been answered by Peter before working up to a baselessly accusatory finale. There are multiple reasons (at this stage of the correspondence) for spiking this post, which appears to have been written as part of an attritional strategy: keep writing until the other guy gives up. The last one standing thus “wins”. Well, Gil, on that puerile basis you can have your victory because I am now closing the correspondence on this thread. Readers will be able to judge for themselves whether you have been convincing.]
Ah, clearly that English I was taught at school was not perfect!
The meaning I had in mind when I used the word was that the thought was not descended from the reasoning that preceded it. It might have been better to just call it “random”.
From two of my dictionaries, the following meanings would apply:
of illegitimate birth; bastard.
(of radiation) produced at an undesired frequency by a transmitter, causing interference, etc.
From your dictionary, the thought is lacking in validity in origin (if one supposes it to have originated in the text that preceded it).
When I used it I had in mind the interference that people who have built crystal sets would know well (so the radiation definition applies) and I used it because it is difficult to try and navigate around questions about B4U-ACT when I am trying to put my own thoughts down.
Peter,
I have read about chemical castration and how it involves pedophiles. I have not been on these meds and unless injected by them I would not take them.
I am not thinking of physical castration. It is enough to try to manipulate the body to think that it is ok to reduce one’s sex drive for an act of love. Love is not a disorder or a something against humanity. It is an argument that doesn’t support the idea that a pedophile could just have love in their mind. Why is it so predatory to want to initiate physical intimacy with a boy? It is great that you bring up the topic of “rape”. So if a person comes into a B4U-ACT office and asks to be chemically castrated, does that convict him of “rape”? On what basis is B4U-ACT advocating for this person to chemically castrate themselves? Because of a wild notion that they might act on their fantasies? Where does mental health come in here? Doesn’t B4U-ACT encourage a compassionate therapy for this person to check if this person may be paranoid for instance and that is why he is afraid that he will get into contact with a boy? Is there even advocacy for a full mental assessment to rule out any psychiatric problems? All I hear from B4U-ACT is that if a person goes in voluntarily and asks to be castrated because he is afraid that he will offend, they will be “compassionate” and give him the pill. Isn’t this some sort of malpractice? Where in the ethics of medicine is it that you are giving a medication for “thinking” that you might have something?
It is good to read this paper from the University of Oxford entitled: “Pedophilia, Preemptive Imprisonment, and the Ethics of Predisposition” (http://blog.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/2013/01/pedophilia-preemptive-imprisonment-and-the-ethics-of-predisposition/). It raises so many questions that I don’t think that B4U-ACT has thought about.
As for your last question, on what basis does this gynophilic male ask for chemical castration? Am I missing something here? I am not sure how this is related to my stance before.
Jeff
I have watched it done to my own sons and then reversed (for reasons related to intellectual handicaps, not paedophilia). Apart from limited development of breast tissue over three years, which was worked off / brought into proportion in the gym over another year, there were no adverse side-effects. Their bodies were kept in step more with their stage of maturity than with their chronological age. As stated elsewhere, I have ONLY introduced this information to illustrate a non-destructive and non-oppressive use of the medication.
I do not advocate it as a blanket “treatment” for paedophilia. In fact, let me clear that up. I do not consider paedophilia to be something in need of treatment. It is a naturally occurring orientation with a pretty consistent distribution across time and place.
I am going to address the rape question next, before moving on to loving a boy. I only referred to rape to illustrate that people do not differentiate between rape and statutory rape, and raise the possibility that people may also not differentiate between castration and chemical castration.
That’s where the rape reference starts and stops. You convict yourself of rape only if you commit rape (have coercive intercourse without consent) and of statutory rape if you have sex with someone under the age of consent. That’s it.
As to loving a boy and doing every possible thing with him other than having sexual intercourse (or that growing catalogue of “sexual acts” by which the definition is being expanded), I see no problem at all. Physical intimacy, sharing a bed, whatever else is part of the repertoire that is agreeable to both.
People walking this line probably divide into many groups, but I will simplify it here.
– There are those who intend to go all the way. So be it. They risk their own liberty which is their right, but they also risk exposing the boy they love to all the “help” that will be showered on him if the relationship is discovered. Recovery is difficult for him after such an experience. (The damage is in the help.)
– There are those who believe they can go that far and no further. If they consistently prove themselves correct, no issue.
– There are those who deeply want to go that far and no further, but in the heat of the moment, many lack the necessary restraint. These people may benefit from something that “taketh both the desire and the ability” and leaves only the spiritual and emotional dimensions. This is, after all, what they want. Are you going to stop loving a bright boy of your acquaintance simply because you no longer get an erection in his presence? I doubt it. Your posts reveal a greater depth.
– Then there are those who avoid boys at all costs for fear of losing control and transgressing. They may also benefit from assistance in exercising restraint.
Please see that, in the above scenarios, I am not excluding the love of boys, I am not excluding the right to take the chances you choose to take and I am not saying that “because you are a paedophile you must … anything”. I am saying you have some choices and you could call on medication for help in sticking to the choices you make.
I personally believe it is prudent to avoid imprisonment or legal entanglement and ethical to avoid exposing a boy to “help”. However, those are my preferences and I do not expect anyone else to adopt them.
Regarding the gynophilic male (thank you for allowing me the use of your phrase), there can be many reasons. Some that I am aware of that have been accommodated are cases where the man has a terminally ill, bedridden, barely lucid wife and wants to exclude the distress of being tempted to be unfaithful in her last days. I think (but don’t know) that some HIV positive people are being assisted in restraining themselves to avoid infecting their own wives. (We have the highest infection rate in the world and it is a heterosexual problem.) If the need for another example becomes pressing, I can find out.
Regarding B4U-ACT, I cannot speak for them. I am simply not involved. I live in South Africa and earn my living in the field of Computer Science. I was first exposed to paedophilia at the age of 10 when our class teacher took half the class as lovers. I have watched the hysteria unfold since then. When our South African political dispensation changed, I lost a large business because I would not pay bribes. At that point I returned to studies and am now busy on a third degree in Psychology. My research areas are entirely within the scope of sexual relationships between men and boys. I will never practice psychology because I do not want to accept the constraints that registration imposes (like you MUST assign a DSM code to render a bill) and I do not buy into most of the current theory. I will, however, help (not counsel) any person I can in this domain, as a friend. The name I use here is my own and you will find me under that name on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. I hope in due course that my research can contribute to the incremental integration of minor attraction into mainstream society. I firmly believe that most men who are good at breeding boys are significantly lacking in growing them up. That is why Minor Attraction exists.
So there you have my response and know a bit more about me.
[TOC adds: I find it a delight to read such clear, calm and informative exposition. Thanks, Peter.]
Peter, here on this point, I have two sons myself yet at NO time did I or would I stand idly by and watch either of them be treated chemically by anyone, on any pretext.
When he was 5 I even threw my older son’s asthma puffer into the bin and made him go outside and run around, and swim, and learn to breath properly. My wife and I had a huge argument about it, far bigger than this argument here with you.
At age 15, from an asthmatic, hyperactive childhood he came 4th in the WA state school swimming championships.
That you allowed your sons, both of them it seems from what you tell us, to be treated chemically arises from your lack of confidence as a parent and as a professional, or the oppressive regime in which you live, or a combination of both.
It does not make one iota of difference what body function is being ‘treated’, NOTHING beats plenty of good food and conviviality and healthy exercise.
Of course their nipples bud through puberty, and other interesting things happen, but that’s normal :-).
Their treble voices are beautiful at that age, and they smell nice too.
I rest my case.
Thank you, Gil, for diagnosing my “lack of confidence as a parent and as a professional”. How omniscient of you. I will go away and meditate on ways to improve my confidence generally.
I am certainly glad you had the good fortune to see your two sons grow to adulthood and sporting prowess with no need of medical intervention (even when their other parent thought differently). What I would like to know is, say one of them had been diagnosed with a life-threatening disease – Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, say. If left, it would kill them. If treated, they would have a 95% survival rate with a slightly shortened life expectancy and a possibility of being infertile.
Would you have tossed out the puffer and prevailed on their behalf based on your confidence alone?
If not, why not?
But they were not diagnosed with a life-threatening disease, Peter, whatever Hodgkin’s Lymphoma which is a form of cancer has to do with mental illness, or sex with children, or by your own criteria a boy masturbating.
You seem to pull all these unrelated illnesses out of a hat on whim, as some sort of support for your experiments in chemical castration. But none of your argument follows.
OK, whatever. Assuming one of them was so diagnosed, it would be by properly qualified and registered medical practitioner, and referred to a specialist. He would certainly not be diagnosed a third year psych student and ex IT guy with a penchant for unsupervised chemical experiments.
As for my wife, at the time she was not qualified at all, having not long since come out of Mao and then Deng’s China. She has since earned a degree in Economics and Finance, and as it turned out the prescribing GP once I explained the situation agreed with me.
Which is but further warning on sending barely literate people (in the new language and culture) into town, to see them return with piles of unwanted and unwarranted medical paraphernalia.
All I was doing in this question was establishing your buying style as it relates to medical treatment. Since you have interests in IT, I will use Geoffrey Moore’s model to place you – you’re a late adopter at best. You wait and see how the new drug or treatment works out for everyone else and then make up your mind. Until then you stick rigidly with the tried and tested (but ironically want the world to follow you headlong and blindly into your notions of how society should be, something definitely not tried and tested).
As for the rest of your post, I will simply say that your speculations about my career and qualifications are still wrong.
Now Gil, I want you to go away and do some thinking, because I have an important question for you. Many people come to this blog with questions, uncertainties and inputs. All of them are different. Some of them are quite timid and need a safe space within which to articulate ideas or ask questions.
Every time somebody opens their mouth here, the one thing they are assured of is that they are going to get a broadside from Gil Hardwick. You say to me “You seem to pull all these unrelated illnesses out of a hat on whim…” but go back to your posts. You not only seem to pull unrelated attacks out of a hat, you in fact do that, consistently. I can find very few posts where you do anything other than that.
My question to you then is what does your contribution do to help? Anyone? There are people with ideas different to yours and mine who simply do not post here because the “Gil Tax” is too high, so they are silenced in order that we may instead hear your insults, criticisms, suspicions and paranoias served up in a different order.
I’d like two things from you. Firstly, keep up with the discussion. Don’t get to the first line of a random post you are reading and use it to launch yourself into some sort of tirade. Had you been doing that (keeping up), you would see that the thread of my discussion has shifted in interaction with Jeff and you would not need to keep confusing yourself by trying to relate my every comment back to the first thing I said.
Secondly, before posting, ask how the content of your post adds to the subject being discussed. There are many facts of which you prove yourself blindingly ignorant, yet you steam on as if you know all. At least keep it on point, and, very specifically, if you don’t like or agree with an idea, take issue with the idea, not the person.
I try to respond thoughtfully to any post that is directed towards me. When someone asks how does chemical castration work and I answer that, having voluntarily experienced it, I can say that it did a, b and c to me. I DO NOT see what is added by having to deal with the resulting flood of posts from you that attacks and belittles me, my education, the country I live in, America, Tom and anything else that comes to your mind.
I am giving you notice now that, unless something you say to me is both substantive and relevant, I will ignore it and you will not receive the courtesy of a reply.
[TOC adds: It will surprise no one that I agree with Peter’s view of Gil’s style and approach. However, now that the personal aspect has been thoroughly aired — with both Peter and I feeling forced to go quite strongly ad hominem although both of us would prefer to avoid that if at all possible — I think it is time to move on. Only substantive new points from now on, please, and I would draw the attention of all parties to the latest blog, which I hope will not be overlooked in favour of this very long thread.]
Why would Tom want to write a paper? He has done and continues to do a superb job with this his own blog allowing all of us access to on-topic thought-provoking material and to comment if we so wish. However, I imagine more people, including myself, would contribute to this blog if we did not have to run a bullying gauntlet of personal abuse in attempting to do so.
[TOC adds: Many thanks! I like to encourage “lively” exchanges, but not at the expense of excluding measured, sensible, polite contributions. I will aim to be a bit firmer from now on.]
On further reflection, I find it remarkable that roughly 40% of this 13,000 word thread originates from a single individual … some of it I feel is highly reminiscent of Uncle Albert’s “During the war …” in ‘Only Fools And Horses’.
I agree with you, atropos. This is such a complex space within which to move. It is necessary to have calm and objective explanations of ideas, aspirations, thoughts, doubts, frustrations and, ultimately, ideas on integration into mainstream culture as good, decent, ordinary people.
The helping professions, the media, the legal systems and a host of other entities all exist as very real parts of the landscape right now, and no amount of defiance or denial will make them go away or change their minds.
My view is that this has to be debated in the legislatures, courts and the gallery of public opinion, not by an all out frontal assault. My main reservation about a frontal assault is that minors are going to bear the brunt of that – they will be in the vanguard of any defiance campaign simply because defiance cannot be achieved in the absence of minors. The “help” they will get as a result is really destructive. So this is a tougher struggle than, perhaps, the struggle for gay rights.
In this regard, it is also, to me, an entirely acceptable goal to work towards a situation where MAPs make the inputs boys are so obviously deprived of but stop short of sexual expression. It’s an improvement on the current status with no losers, and more goals to work towards.
If every time an idea such as the few set out above is immediately the target of abuse and ridicule, and so am I, it becomes a simple economic equation – my energies are best expended elsewhere.
When I put forward an idea, I want to know what people think of it and why. I don’t really want to know what people think of me, or how my idea changed that.
I have in several ways on this particular blog entry tried to make a simple statement: Chemical castration is not so bad, I have watched it happen and seen it reversed because it has been in the best interests of my two intellectually handicapped sons to suppress their sexual arousal until they have established meaningful relationships with others of their choice, with whom they will go on to enjoy intimacy.
The reason I have put this information out there is simply to give those who might consider it for their own reasons some reassurance that it is not the end of the world.
The reactions have generally been in a spirit that is quite the opposite of what I have offered.
To TOC: Lively exchanges around the issue are great. Lively ad hominem attacks reveal a deficiency in the capabilities of reasoning and argumentation.]
TOM, there is no ‘quality’ to this forum, only your warped sense of journalistic humour that typically allows no presentation of facts or evidence.
Please, any time, join me in writing a paper on the issues raised here, on the social invention of reality and its construction around an idea of adults having sex with children. No problem with me.
I can see the problem. It’s not about resolving issues in public discourse but perpetuating them, because it’s ‘news’, and news sell because its sexy. No matter whose lives are ruined by it, eh?
I have archived all this stuff, blog after blog since it’s inception. Perhaps I’ll just write a paper of my own and be done with it.
[TOC adds: Gil, you wrote:
“…only your warped sense of journalistic humour that typically allows no presentation of facts or evidence.”
My warped sense of humour? No evidence? I wonder how many heretics here will agree with that!]
Gil,
You are really full of it. Your way is not the only way forward in our community. If you decide that banging your head against a way is a productive way forward, then by all means bang away.
You are playing the victim, although you would never admit it, by blaming the media for all our troubles. You have such a negative perspective of the media that you decide to discount them all together. I am not siding with the media but it shows that you are too afraid to actually feel comfortable with them.
You say that you are not here to give grade school lessons, well what the hell are you doing here? Grade school lessons gets you access to kids. Are you all about that?
What? If you want to throw crap at me, ‘Jeff’ whoever you are, at least have the courtesy to come out and identify yourself, and be honest for a change.
Until that unlikely event, have a good hard look at the difference between the real world and what is reported as real.
An image of something is not the thing itself.
That’s the most basic Linguistics and Semiotics.
People thinking about doing something, or talking about doing something, is not doing that thing.
Media reporting of something, supposedly (as against inventing it), is at an even further remove.
For my part I am here openly and honestly by invitation, fully identifying myself. I have no obligation whatsoever to anonymous lurkers and posters, under the rule they themselves invoke, or the unfounded drivel they post.
For your part, what ‘community’ is it, that you claim to be ‘ours’? Who are its members, and on what basis?
I can only begin to guess that you like a number of others choosing to post anonymously here reside in the US, or Europe perhaps. I live here in Perth, Western Australia, around the other side of the planet. What and where is ‘our community’?
In the context of this thread, the clear desire expressed by castration proponents is to come here from other countries to Australia, to this community, this society and jurisdiction, and among other things lobby on the basis of mental illness for castration of our boys and men.
How else would anyone interpret their argument?
I oppose the idea. Given that those presuming to diagnose their targets as mentally ill are not qualified here or registered here to make such diagnosis and thus practicing here illegally, I would have them arrested.
But instead of explaining themselves, clarifying their position and providing clear evidence to support it, lo and behold, no surprise, instead they starting bitching and abusing anyone arguing against their position.
And they want respect?
Not going to happen. They have my disgust and contempt.
[TOC adds: Gil, you wrote:
“I am here openly and honestly by invitation”
It is an invitation you repeatedly strain to breaking point thanks to your bombastic manner and inclination towards personal abuse. There have been calls upon me to revoke the invitation. How much longer I will be inclined to resist those calls depends on whether you can control yourself. I have to tell you my patience is not endless. I need to consider other people and the overall quality of the forum.]
[TOC PS: Come to think of it, the word “invitation” makes it sound as though I initiated your involvement in this forum by asking you to participate. That is absolutely not the case.]
Activism – being out and involved is the best therapy. Look at what you do Tom. It is wonderful.
Let’s all be proud of who we are/what we bring to the world. I heard a wonderful line in the trailer to the new movie coming out in the USA on October 18 ‘Kill Your Darlings’: “Another lover hit the universe. The circle is broken.” Well, maybe bent a little, i.e., T. E. Lawrence or Michael Jackson huh?
Love,
Linca
[TOC adds: Appreciated! And can’t wait to see a film about Allen Ginsberg et al.!]
Gil,
I apologize for getting snippy with you earlier. I realize that we need to band together rather than be divisive and I was divisive.
I simply didn’t understand, and still don’t understand, what you were alluding to. If that makes me grade school material so be it.
You said: “…have a good hard look at the difference between the real world and what is reported as real.”. This may be obvious to me and you who are in the inside but this is not clear to people who are not invested in our interests. It is true that sometimes I am also mislead by the media.
What I mean by community is the people who identify with being a pedophile. It is easier for me to communicate with a pedophile than with a gynophilic male who is into older women. I think that is what makes us a community. Of course we are in different geographic locations which makes it difficult but that is why the internet is good as you and I are able to communicate. I don’t think that it is ideal that our communication is exclusively in cyberspace but I believe that it is good what we are able to discuss. You are out and use your real identity which makes your presence more important. I don’t know your life circumstances but for now it is good that I can be anonymous.
As for B4U-ACT, I definitely oppose chemical castration. I actually think that it is criminal. I believe that they are coming from it from an angle that pedophilia is an illness, so like gender identity disorder (which is not classified as a disorder anymore in the DSM) it can be treated. I am not sure how advocating the mutilation of a person’s body could be considered an issue of mental health. Their argument that a person can voluntarily opt for such an option is absurd.
Jeff, I am interested in your very strong stance against chemical castration. How much experience do you have of it, either personal or observed, and what aspect of that experience makes you so anti?
The word “castration” conjures up an image of mutilation which comes primarily from the notion that significant components of the offending member are cut off (and presumably incinerated). Chemical castration definitely does not involve anything being cut off (nor being caused to wither and fall off of its own accord). (This is not to say that there are no side-effects, but the side-effects are being reduced as research progresses.)
The way that this image is conjured is possibly similar to the way that the word “rape” works. The word connotes a violent and coercive act and people are repulsed. When the act is actually statutory rape, the average listener only hears “rape” and so responds to an act of consensual sex between adolescents in the same way as to the rape of an infant by an old man (a common event here in Africa where the act is believed by some to cure AIDS).
Is your stance based on your reaction to “castration” or on your reaction to the use of chemicals to reduce sexual arousal? Bear in mind here that you can affect your arousal levels by changing diet and exercise.
Taking it further, what would your reaction be to the request of “a gynophilic male who is into older women” for medication to reduce his sexual arousal or to the doctor who acceded to that request?
And TOM, only because there is no REPLY button beneath your rejoinder above, first let me say I don’t mind robust engagement, not at all. I’m not so polite as some would have me be, though by the same token others are not so robust as I would have them. Quid pro quo.
Second, in the question of authority in a democracy. I do make a clear distinction between those who face charges against them, who face their accusers in court and wear the outcome, those who return to university to study, to argue and put their case, who gain recognition on that basis and who speak to public debate on the basis of evidence and logic and reason, and those who lurk anonymously on the Internet, who run from country to country evading their accusers, who refuse to face legitimate courts or try to defend themselves, but who then chastise others on their conduct, and their views and opinions.
The one seeks legitimate recourse in open debate on public policy issues, and the other is a criminal on the run whose repudiation of due process in law, in the institutions of democracy, disqualifies them from engagement in those processes.
In short, there are rules to the game. If they want to cheat, they have no complaint when their fellows respond by arguing that they have no place on the team.
Thanks Linca,
I am not on the registry so I have voluntarily told some people around me about my attraction. I think the more I embrace the issue the easier it gets for me. For instance I used to refuse to call myself a pedophile but now that it is less stigmatized by the DSM I have no issues with it.
I will try to continue telling my story when I feel that I can do that. So far the people I have told have not reacted badly. My mom was upset for a week and wouldn’t talk to me. But my dad forget all about it the next day. I am tired of them telling me to find a boyfriend or a girlfriend. Now they have to accept me as I am. I am hearing less and less about this boyfriend/girlfriend business from them, although my mom sometimes still brings it up. It is weird it is like she has forgotten what I told her. When I feel more confident about it I will bring it up with her again explaining that this boyfriend business is not going to work unless it is really a BOYfriend :).
Gil,
Fear is a big factor. I prefer not to be imprisoned. So they are doing something about it: locking us up.
For some reason I am not seeing what you are getting at. They are playing the game well and it seems to me that they are winning. Otherwise we wouldn’t have seen such stigma towards us. It is no wonder too that there is a common statistic among us that 95% of pedophiles don’t “offend”, so isn’t what they are doing working? Can you explain more your point of view?
Thank you
No, Jeff, they only appear to be winning, on the basis of endless media hysteria designed to induce fear and doubt but in doing so grossly distorting the reality.
Believe me, it happened to me, and while I would prefer it didn’t happen it did happen, and in the event there was nothing I could do about it beyond using my wits. The moment you admit defeat, that’s when it really affects you.
What you have to fear is not prison but losing your wits, or allowing them to destroy your wits, which is what happens to a lot of the guys. Boys are especially vulnerable, and I argue the reason we of all people need to be protecting them, counseling, advising and mentoring them.
Police and prosecution will go out of their way to break you down, reduce you to a blubbering wreck so no matter what you did or didn’t do it looks to a jury as if you did. Then they get some psychologist in to assess the risk you pose. That’s how they work. That’s how they build their case.
But they have to maintain a video record throughout. My defense was merely to demand that the court admit the whole video, from start to finish, and not just the bits the prosecution edited to suit their case. My other protest was loudly and vehemently over their withholding then destroying my defense evidence. The court rightly determined finally that I was not acting criminally but politically.
My point of view, based on over 30 years of disciplined and ongoing field observation dating back to well before I actually entered university to study the technique (which means I’m still doing it on an ongoing basis), is that on the one hand there is what appears to be happening, and on the other what is actually happening.
It’s something of a Platonic ‘myth of the cave’ game. Appearances are deceptive. All the stats and data and reports and media coverage and tabloid hysteria are nothing more than abstractions, representations, shadows of reality cast up on the cave wall. They have nothing to do with you. They cannot be admitted in any case against you, which must be judged singularly on its merits.
Back on the street among real live people the story is quite different. Out here they dance around the fire, occasionally casting shadows on the wall but not always, or even mostly.
The onus is on prosecution to prove their case against you beyond reasonable doubt, that you had in fact dealt indecently or had sex with a minor. It is a criminal matter, not civil where the reasonable likelihood standard is used.
You cannot be prosecuted for your thoughts or feelings. If they are not a problem to you, and especially if you are open about them, prosecution has no case.
If you are doing something and nobody complains, they neither have a case. Until the court proves it beyond reasonable doubt, it didn’t happen.
The point is, don’t be afraid be smart. It helps a lot when the court likes you, and don’t see you as a particular problem. They are far more worried about the real nasties out there.
Gil,
Sorry 🙂 I am still not getting it. I think what you are talking about is a fight that I prefer to fight another day.
I can see things working when the media starts to represent us the right way (or not at all because there is nothing special about us).
I’d like to see some progress. I have taken the personal route in informing as many people around me. Maybe this could be a way.
Jeff, please attend to what I am saying rather than what you think I am saying, or what you are led to think ‘society’ is saying, especially through the media, or better attend to the reality itself.
The situation as it stands is almost entirely illusory. It is beaten up as a means not to ‘protect children’ but to compromise and blackmail certain people who somebody doesn’t happen to like for some reason. It’s not a fight for another day, they do it all the time.
The media will by definition NEVER represent ANYTHING the “right way”. It is not me advocating a fight, only that so long as they persist in playing the same crud game of hurting people and thinking its fun, OK, we’ll respond. We’ll hold the mirror up to them, and see how much fun they think it is then.
There is no protection of children. Too often children are themselves caught up in this sordid business and hurt by it, on the pretext that somebody touched somebody’s pee-pee, or pussy, or has some “feelings” about such things that most people do anyway every day, or some such rot.
On the other hand, if you want to remain a recluse, a perpetual victim, that’s your choice. I won’t support you in that because it’s part of the problem.
We have human rights, and rights as citizens. Anyone willing to relinquish their rights will always get caught up in the consequences.
If you don’t want to live as a free citizen in a democracy, if you don’t believe that’s anything worth striving after, mate, don’t complain that you find yourself compromised and oppressed.
And, again, READ THE BOOK FIRST, ‘The Art of War’ is not about war it is on tactics and strategy; about winning without fighting. The title in English is misleading, since the emphasis is on art, technique.
And don’t take offense but I am not here to give grade school lessons. In that, I dare suggest that the US education system producing dull conformity based on fear, emotion and ignorance is long overdue for revision.
Or better, if you do want to find something to do about all this in the meantime, educate yourself.
Dumbed down education – Dumbed down people. Yesterday I saw it in action at a Senate Committee Meeting on Drugs in Prison. Actually it turned out to be a meeting where Department of Corrections People, Faith Based Drug Counselors, Drug Court Professionals, Mental Health Professionals could stand up and give slick power point presentations on what they were doing. Put me to sleep except when they pissed me off every time I heard the words ‘frontal lobe’ spoken, i.e., mental health professionals trying to pretend they are scientists.
Then a lady who was not on the agenda got up as the Chairman was trying to close the meeting. She forcefully spoke right up. She is in touch with parents of prisoners and prisoners. She said, “This meeting was not about anything the title of it said it was about; “Drug Use In Prison”. Then she said, “They (meaning the prisoners) come out of prison more addicted than when they went in, drug use is rampant.” I was astounded. She smoked everyone who had come before for 2 hours.
If what she says is true then what she means is our state prisons are third world prisons where low paid corrections officers take bribes and the prisoners are running the prisons.
Nothing is ever like we are told by officials or mental health professionals is it? Nothing. Nothing is ever like what we are told in school or the media either … is it Gil?
Linca
Ah, yes, well, I’ve been marched out of ‘seminars’ on policy direction firstly for interrupting to say that the stink coming up from the cellar from generations of conveniently sweeping difficult issues under the carpet, down through the trap door where they accumulate and fester, is overwhelming.
Secondly from Local Drug Action Group state conferences where I have said the same thing; you’re driving these kids onto drugs, to suicide, herding them into ‘therapy’, because the protection racket is where your party hacks and power brokers make all their money.
In prison, ‘education centres’ are old mine-site demountables, ‘dongas’ in the local parlance, while almost next door, behind the nice trees, sits a rarely used multi-million dollar architectural ‘visitors centre’ where family and dignitaries alike come occasionally to see how well their charges are being treated.
Don’t talk to me about the US, Prison Nation, with 4.5% of the world population holding 25% of the world’s prisoners.
Everybody here does need to familiarise themself with the legislative process, with rules of engagement and policy formation, with meeting procedures and principles of democracy, and with due process in law.
I know from long experience, of years of sitting patiently and I hope wisely on boards and committees, spending millions of dollars of public money and in the process copping all sorts of abuse, being set up and compromised, all that stuff, done well with good outcomes brings the highest honour and respect among the best people.
It is that which was and has been my saving grace when deciding to take on this bullshit child sexuality and predatory paedophile issue against some very nasty people.
That’s where all this MUST head if there is to be any progress.
The individual case at the end of the day doesn’t really matter.
Don’t we know that we Paedo’s are essential to the survival and prospering of man? Those that cannot stop from crossing the line and acting out are doing what we are supposed to do. We are going to have to go the direction of “Out and Proud” and fight like hell the Sex Fascists every way we can, i.e., fighting sex offender law which is what I do. Around my city I am the “Out and Proud Paedo” at city council meetings. Around my State Capitol I am the “Out and Proud Paedo”. We are essential to the survival and prospering of man.
B4UACT takes the opposite strategy of helping us be co-opted. It won’t work. There are millions and millions of years in who we are: Evolution.
Linca
PS: In my family I keep my mouth shut. L
Linca,
That is pretty interesting. I don’t think that I am in the category of being unable to stop and cross the line but I am out myself to a few people in my life.
I don’t quite get it when you say that “in my family I keep my mouth shut”? Does that mean that they don’t know about your attraction? Don’t they hear about you in city council meetings? The latter is actually a really brave thing to do.
I am out to my parents and a professional and two of my friends. They are all accepting to varying degrees and of course I have the most difficult relationship with this professional. But she is coming around to understanding where I am coming from.
How do these meetings go? If you don’t mind me asking, have you “crossed” the line or did you voluntarily talk to people around you about your attraction?
I don’t share the philosophy of B4UACT even though I strongly believe in providing mental health services to pedophiles. I don’t think that B4UACT is quite clear about what they want from a pedophile and they are trying to get way too cozy with the establishment of mental health professionals who still think pedophilia is a disorder.
Jeff,
I simply get involved in issues like street bond issues and design, developer requests for new zoning at the city. I simply do not hide who I am, a pedo, sex offender who by the way just this week got off the registry because of the brave work of a lawyer who fought for all of us Registered Sex Offenders who were caught in ex post facto laws passed to punish us. It took Judges appointed by past Democratic Governors to make the decision.
At the state capitol I fight sex offender law and tell each legislator I deal with every time they see me in the halls of the capitol think: Sex Offender. They see me smiling, caring and serious.
My family knows … I simply do not rub it in their face. I do not talk about what I do at the Capitol. I do not even talk about what I am doing to bring about monetary reform. I admire my grandchildren, give them gifts and tell them when I will return. Maybe one of these days one of them will walk into a gay bar and have his friend ask who is that old man who winked at you? He will say, “Oh that is my grandpa. Looks like he is busy.”
We need to be out and about Jeff. The best therapy. Now I must get ready for a trip to the State Capitol tomorrow and a visit with a young man now 45 who was a boy prostitute when he was 13-years-old. The best therapy is being out and about.
Linca
There is no “line”, Jeff, only your own fear. That’s what the challenged prey on, and play on. What they want is for people to be afraid of them; it’s a rule of fear, a control game played by freaks and paranoids.
For some of us it made no difference. Media hysteria will target you anyway, especially if you are already a prominent and well-known person. All that does is give them something to bitch and gossip about, which is their standard of conduct not yours.
The rational response is, and can only ever be, ‘OK, that’s the way you want to play the game, so be it. We’ll play by your rules, no problem. We’ll see who still comes out on top.’
So, what are they going to do? Nothing. They’ve been called out. All that does is expose their own fear, and the tables are turned.
No surprise that thoughtful courage earns enormous respect.
Rise above it.
Read Sun-tzu, ‘The Art of War’.
Unfortunately, I have yet to see a response from B4U-ACT about how chemical castration influences mental health. B4U-ACT is a mental health organization so at least they would be able to tackle this question.
So called ‘High Risk’ castratee Peds a small minority, true numbers unknown? Yet still far too many naive sad Peds like lemmings voluntarily destroy their own humanity just to appease, not leave small minority of humanity SeX Fascist phoney Anglophonia UK/US/CA/OZ/NZ/SA/IE.
Yes, I do agree, that’s the saddest part of all this.
Oh, and this thread from the ‘Paraphilias’ section of Psychforums is very interesting, worth reading thoroughly: http://www.psychforums.com/paraphilias/topic90745.html
I agree very strongly with Tom’s point that “…true castration, like capital punishment, is one of those extreme ways of dealing with offenders that not only violates fundamental human rights but which also endorses violence: these punishments make the state look as vicious as the offender, or worse, and underpin, rather than undermine, a social climate in which violence is seen as a solution rather than a problem.” On the other hand, stephen6000 also make good points: if someone truly volunteers for it, if it would relieve suffering, why stop it?
I have a copy of ‘Stalkers and their Victims’, a level-headed overview of the subject written by Paul E. Mullen, Michele Pathé and Rosemary Purcell, who run the Community Forensic Mental Health Service in Brisbane. In their chapter on ‘predatory stalkers’ we read of Mr B, who stalked two women, made dozens of obscene phone calls to various women, stole women’s underwear, once exposed himself to two teenage girls and once grabbed and bruised a woman’s breasts: he “will be considered for anti-androgen therapy should nonpharmacological measures prove insufficient.” However, one Mr U, who stalked a woman with whom he had fallen in love from afar, “had on occasions planned in detail how he could either drown someone or kill a woman and place her body in the water”, and frankly admits that he still has sexual fantasies about drowning women, is merely being closely supervised by outreach services. I guess this is because he seems overall to present less of a risk, even given his fantasies, than does Mr B.
Then there is this guy:
“Mr H was in his mid twenties when he presented. He had attended his local emergency room stating that he was afraid he was going to kill someone. … Mr H had decided to seek help at the point when he was about to abduct a young woman whom he had been stalking for over six months. He had chosen a deserted house in an isolated location, acquired ties and ether, as well has having devised a plan of abduction based on a detailed knowledge of the victim’s routine. It was when he realized that he was rapidly approaching the point of no return that he decided to seek help rather than proceed.” In fact, he had “resolved to kill himself rather than abandon himself to his murderous project.”
Mr H, we learn, “was a pleasant looking young man with a diffident manner and a minor speech impediment, which became more pronounced when he was stressed.” Although apparently intelligent, he had left school with no qualifications and worked a series of unskilled jobs. His home life when he was a child had been pretty bad for various reasons, though nobody had directly mistreated him, and he had been socially isolated all his life. He “had an established pattern of sexual fantasy centring on bondage, rape and the penetration of a woman with a knife. … it emerged that sexualised fantasies of abduction and killing had probably been present from early adolescence.” The authors come up with psychodynamic explanations for why he is this way. Are they right? I don’t know. In recent years it has become fairly acceptable for people to engage in ‘light BDSM’ of various forms, and it seems clear that a lot of people enjoy it at least to some degree, and that some otherwise well-adjusted people who had happy childhoods are very into heavy-duty BDSM. But the authors must surely be right when they say that “taking out of the equation even the social isolation made the resort to actual sexual violence less probable.”
Unlike Mr H, Geoffrey Portway was not determined to avoid acting on his fantasies: quite the opposite. Mr H probably does not represent a danger to women; Geoffrey Portway clearly represents a danger to children. But what about the paedophile and hebephile equivalents of Mr H, who have sadistic sexual feelings towards children but desperately want to resist them? We can’t help them the way the clinic helped Mr H. The current notion is that people attracted to children must be kept away from kids at all costs, so while it might help them to become constructively and chastely involved with children, under supervision — say by volunteering at an after-school club — that’s out. Pornography is also out, including very mild, obviously harmless stuff that hardly deserves the name, such as snaps of naked kids running around having fun, or animated porn or drawings with which no real child has had anything to do. It’s even risky to get in touch with other people in the same boat, either online or in person, or both — PAEDOPHILE RING EXPOSED, and all that. It’s a pressure-cooker. It’s the exact opposite of everything that it makes sense to do in the situation. I can see why someone in those (red-hot iron) shoes might seek castration, and it seems only the merciful thing to give it to him, at least if it’s reversible; but in a more humane society fewer people would be driven to such extreme measures.
[TOC adds: This has taken me into previously uncharted territory. Many thanks.]
What B4UACT-Peds & VirPeds might simply need – GOOD mentors to guide them.
Practical posi-Peds like Gil The Great, and others.
Posi-peds with vast and practical experience of surving and thriving in SeX-Fascist phoney-Anglophonia, among the harshest SeX-Fascist regims in supposed Democratic modern history; yet ruled by an unelected bent-mainstream media.
Vile SeX-Fascist so called ‘Modern’ Anglos, not far short of Nofun-da-MENTAL Muslims still beheading Gays while worshipping their own Holy GODhead Great Ped Muhammed, 52, courted/groomed by good Adultophile Aisha aged 6; finally wed at 9 (another late starter).
Vile SeX-Fascist so called ‘Modern’ Anglos who still revere their own Holy Anglican Bible author great Gay/Ped King James1/V1 of Scotland, yet post-WW2 they chemically castrated and persecuted to death their own war-hero Gay Alan Turing, and then half-a-century too late grovellingly apologized. While STILL ignoring MILLIONS more good Gays persecuted (and many hounded to death) post-WW2.
The current populist bent-Anglo BLOCKBUSTA, provocative pro-Ped film now needed is a remake of one of theirs that helped finally change SeX-Fascist UK Law in ’67 – “VICTIM”.
Meanwhile quote great Anglo-Oirish Gay/Ephebe VICTIM, Oscar Wilde, 1895, “We are dominated by journalism.”
Well, this is where the psychobabble comes in. It has nothing to do with making the “intellectually handicapped” free, or removing the “limits” to their “social freedom” and making them ‘functional’, it’s only ever about making sure, like children, they don’t drop their daks and masterbate in public.
The ‘intellectual handicap’ is nothing more than a simple inability to discern the distinction between ‘public’ and ‘private’, and to observe rules imposed by the humourless and convivially challenged.
Gil, you have made numerous responses to my posts. I am not going to react point by point.
First, how much exposure do you have to intellectually handicapped people? Are you familiar with conditions like Fragile-X Syndrome, Downs Syndrome and other conditions that place a very harsh limit on what that person will ever come to understand? You end up with a child-like mind in an adult body, and the child-like mind cannot manage all the capabilities of that adult body.
As an illustration, some people with conditions of this kind will take their very small social welfare grant and, forgetting to pay rent, will try and buy an expensive motor vehicle. Left to their own devices, they end up on the street.
When it comes to the sexuality of a person who cannot manage the capabilities of his adult body, we must, in the end, resort to moral philosophy for guidance. The first person can enjoy his rights so long as they do not intrude on the legitimate rights of another, AND vice versa. Where the sexuality of the intellectually handicapped person, if expressed, would lead to the forced rape (for example) of another person, you have a situation which needs to be prevented. You are surely not going to suggest that it is within the rights of a slow maturing 25 year old intellectually handicapped person to express his sexuality by raping a 12 year old girl.
In such cases, the humane and moral thing to do is to help the intellectually handicapped person control the sexual functioning of his body, and one option is SSRIs and anti-androgens. (Another is to hire a lady of the night, but that does not help for what passes in the time between encounters.)
As to the horrors of entailed by being classified as a MAP (paedophile), I am speaking of the horrors for the intellectually handicapped (retarded) person. A slow maturing intellectually handicapped person drawn to a person half his age is usually not a MAP, he is acting his mental age, not his chronological age. Some of the horrors would include being placed on the sex-offenders register and being left homeless as a result. I am sure you are familiar with the plight of people on the register in the USA whose designated home is the courthouse steps. One would also not want to subject a ten year old in an adult body to the typical reactions and retributions of the authorities when they have a MAP in their hands and no cameras rolling. A thorough beating, repeated several times, is not helpful.
Those are the horrors to which I refer.
As to where I get the standing to take these decisions? I have two retarded sons and a schizophrenic cousin and my comments are based on inputs I have repeatedly been called upon to make in their lives over decades. Frequently my role has been to navigate the best route between the authorities and contrived definitions of what is acceptable, on the one hand, and the free expression of their wonderful humanities and personalities on the other.
To both Barry Caspar and Peter Louden, what you are talking about here is not “mental illness” but the strictures placed on people considered ‘abnormal’ by institutionalised mainstream Western society.
Yes, I have had a very great deal to do with the whole range of anomalies, including Downe’s Syndrome and their carers, but within contemporary Western society and without; in short, historically and from a broad cross-cultural perspective.
We do a great deal of work in labeling, diagnostics and the production of Otherness, and the reasons if any for them. No, we have not had 100s or 1,000s of people through Johns Hopkins Hospital, that’s over in the US somewhere.
Yes, we too have had large numbers of people put through psychiatric institutions, following the early modern invention of madness and with it growth of state sponsored asylumdom, especially during the early 20th century when some of the most bizarre experiments were carried out on them.
In particular we had to put up with very large numbers of people at risk who were denied care in their home country but sent out here to the colonies, to the colonial frontier where conditions were and remain enough to try the most stout and resilient of minds. The history of psychiatric hospitals, concentration camps and experiments here in Western Australia alone is one of profound horror.
Still today, the condition of people being diagnosed with something or other is not merely complicated by the nature of their condition itself, nor even their environment, but the often vicious intellectual, academic and legal battles still raging among practitioners as to how to proceed.
The protracted bickering over DSM V is a classic example, producing a work that, to put it mildly, “has displayed the most unhappy combination of soaring ambition and weak methodology.”
By whose criteria, then, is ‘moral philosophy’ to be the arbiter in all this?
It has to be legal first, and in that one can only mean not merely compliant with some state legislation or other, none of which is in any event remotely uniform or consistent, but lawful, and reasonable and fair. It must observe the person’s human rights. It must comply with policy on social justice. Treatment must be prompt, timely and effective, and most of all it must not do more harm than good.
Moral philosophy falls tragically short on all counts.
My argument here is only that on such highly dubious grounds there is actually debate on castrating people as a ‘cure’ for their purported sexual misconduct.
I fail to see anybody here near highly enough qualified, or practicing reputably, to be in any position whatsoever to arbitrate on this matter.
Do what you like in the US, where people do anything they feel like it seems then run around blaming everybody else for the consequences, but if you did it here I would thoroughly investigate and as likely have you arrested.
We have networks of retired police and some active police, as well as judiciary and many others looking closely at all this on an ongoing basis.
At the very least you would not be registered to practice here, and likely subject to restraining orders while we considered your position on castrating people, or pointed ‘lack of position’ as the case may be.
Gil, I will correct you on only one point. Moral philosophy drives law, not the other way around, as you have it. The fact that law is also subject to the influences of politics, money and popular public opinion, and so is not a perfect reflection of moral philosophy, is unfortunate, but does not invalidate moral philosophy.
No, Peter, sorry, humanity drives law, not abstraction.
The merits of any given matter supported by factual evidence and interpreted fairly and reasonably on a case by case basis are primary, not some moral treatise which is always and can only ever be composed and written by some natural person or persons granted no more right to intervene than any other.
None of which in any way supports your contention that even chemically castrating people is akin somehow to treating a headache.
Sorry, mate, but a full erection in public or otherwise is no illness but the height of vitality. In moral philosophy, Li-er, the imperial librarian at Loyang known today as Lao-tze, wrote that of new-born infants and adults alike nigh on 2,500 years ago.
To me it’s the height of bliss, the most human and socially significant fun to be had, like taking a piss or breast-feeding or any other such bodily function. I’ll be 64 in a couple of weeks, and happy to say I am on no medication and as fit and healthy as ever.
That doesn’t make me promiscuous, or inclined to imposing on others, or lacking in education, or good manners or discernment or finesse. It merely underwrites my compassion for those targeted by the morally superior, or so they wish to have us believe, and hurt by them.
It’s simply not warranted to behave like a savage, then justify it by having read some book on the matter and presuming to know better.
Huh?
Aren’t ‘intellectually handicapped’ people to be allowed the pleasure of sex, and not just with other (equally) ‘intellectually handicapped’ people?
I know in practice it’s discouraged, but only because these fully functional adults are conveniently assumed to be equivalent to children who (we all know) are assumed/expected to be asexual.
It’s a tricky balance with intellectually handicapped people.
A person who regularly and spontaneously masturbates in public places with no ability to control that impulse is going to be kept out of public places if he does not stop. Sometimes the only options available are suppression or institutionalisation.
It is more difficult when they do not have, and cannot learn, the skills to negotiate mutual consent. Rape becomes the issue, even if it was consensual but not understood.
I have been involved in cases where the person lacking the control has asked for medical help to gain the control, with insight to the fact that it will cause impotence and basically remove sexual interest from his experience of life.
The optimum is to give them as much as they can handle, in every respect, and manage what they can’t handle.
I believe that the correct approach is to get them into a relationship first and then withdraw the suppression.
Yes, Peter, this question of what happens to be considered ‘appropriate’ from time to time and place to place is what is central to the discussion, everything else being entirely peripheral.
The reason I invoke the now old and well-established Centre-Periphery model here is because it describes precisely what is going on at the margins of power, here very much in the Weberian configuration, and anyone at all considered peripheral, Other,
It applies quite as much to foreigners, indigenous peoples, children, the mentally ill, these days ‘paedophiles’, the different and exceptional anywhere you look.
Your argument here takes it upon yourself to interfere and enforce what you see as centralist norms, specifically and precisely as you state, before “the authorities intervene”, solely because you consider it reckless to do otherwise.
But why is it your business to start with, and what makes it so? I am mindful here of the admonition against the abuse of power by those who perceive themselves to be powerless.
What happens when “the authorities” intervene? In these common law jurisdictions, those in authority are there precisely to protect the rights of those being interfered with, by anybody at all.
Increasingly today, and rightly so, it is ‘therapists’ being examined before courts of law for their abuses. Historically it was Psychology that had to face proceedings from the medical profession, forcing the discipline to establish a valid and reliable scientific basis for their practice.
Throughout this more recent paedophile hysteria, it was psychologists and therapists seeking to support ‘victims’ who generated the panic, making up all sorts of traumas ostensibly caused by sexual activity and in consequence destroying the lives of hundreds of thousands of boys and men.
The only distinction to be made here, since masturbating has long since disappeared from the legislative agenda, is the apparent inability of the person concerned to discern the difference between ‘public’ and ‘private’.
Yet again, the person might be doing it deliberately in public as protest, as a subversive act, in which case they are not mentally ill merely denied options for expressing their views.
This is very dangerous ground you traverse. I am both right and within my rights to register my protest at your envisaged ‘solution’ concerning anyone at all who digresses from what you perceive to be ‘normal’.
Sorry for taking two bites at the cherry and giving two replies here, but I want to affirm what you are saying. Intellectually handicapped people have the same needs as the rest of us, for intimacy, love, sex, acceptance and meaningful engagement in life. It is insulting to write them off as being childlike and asexual.
It is also a complete myth that they have a higher (or lower) sex drive than any other people.
Just sometimes they act inappropriately, and often that is associated with sex, because it is one of the more difficult aspects of being human to understand. Holding back the impulse until the control and understanding are there is, in my view, the most compassionate approach.
Warehousing them in a chemically castrated state until they die is abhorrent.
Turning them loose without support until the authorities intervene is reckless.
Also, for a slow maturing intellectually handicapped person, at 25 he may be interested in a 10 year old and, without suppression, he may become seen as a MAP as well, with all the horrors that entails.
Here, Peter, this idea you have and excuse for interfering that a person may otherwise be seen as a MAP, “with all the horrors that entails.”
Who are you to decide that, and interfere on that basis? Be seen as a MAP by whom, precisely?
I have myself come to be seen as a “MAP”, and worse a *GASP* SHOCK, HORROR, a (I can barely bring myself . . . ) a Convicted Paedophile!
My name has been bandied about across the Internet, in the press and on TV, but, guess what, aside from 6 months inside it made no real difference to my life whatsoever, beyond giving me access to people I had never dreamed of meeting, offered me research opportunities and access to material I never dreamed would be available to me, and advanced my higher education and academic recognition in ways for which I can only give thanks.
I dare suggest that you show the courtesy of ASKING those you presume to discuss before commenting, and far better allow them to speak for themselves.
Your further view that people should be repressed, repressed and controlled on grounds of “compassion” I find even more bizarre.
It seems timely to introduce an alternative approach to all this, in the Victorian Law Reform Commission’s 2012 report on sex offender registration, supported most prominently by the Law Council of Australia, which recommends sex offender registration only by court order rather than the automatic blanket registration currently in place.
Find it here, with links to all submissions received: http://www.lawreform.vic.gov.au/projects/sex-offenders-registration/sex-offenders-registration-final-report.
When in 2011 the then Western Australian Police Minister, ex-patriot Englishman Rob Johnson pushed through his online sex offenders register, I was pestered by the press on my response which was that I wasn’t bothered by it because police had to apply to the court showing good cause for making a person’s name public, and to give the person at least two weeks notice with opportunity to respond.
So long as my name did not appear, and highly unlikely to appear, why would I bother? As it currently reads, there is nobody in my neighbourhood of concern to police.
In the event, of the vastly disproportionate 2,500 names on the register here, only around 2% are considered of concern not because they pose a risk but their failing to report in on a regular basis. As it turned out significant numbers had already returned to their home countries and simply forgot about it, rightly I think putting the matter behind them.
The reason for posting this is to demonstrate that the far better, far more well informed and considered, far more effective model of intervention is freely available to any jurisdiction willing to implement a bit of common sense finally.
The use of anti-androgens is well accepted for the treatment of prostate cancer. It is also used to treat some forms of gender dysphoria. Much more controversial is its use to reduce the sex drives of some offenders and of some MAPs who have never broken the law.
B4U-ACT has never promoted the use of anti-androgens for reducing MAPs’ sex drives. Neither have we opposed its use. It is a matter of which we have no position, which is consistent with our general approach of striving to get people to work together despite differing opinions on a range of controversial matters.
[TOC adds: Glen Lamb is the Science Director of B4U-ACT. Thank you, Glen, for this prompt response.]
Now, here is the point to be emphasised above all else. For someone on ‘death row’, the simple fact is the state wants to kill that person. To proceed they must show good cause, and demonstrate unequivocally that by doing so further crime will be prevented.
In this case, the state wants to castrate a person. Regardless of my opinion, which is that nobody has a right to mutilate another on any pretext, the simple burden remains on the state to show good cause for doing so, and further to demonstrate unequivocally that doing so will prevent further crime.
It does not. The US is a common law jurisdiction as is Australia, NZ, UK and others. That this is even an argument over there is profoundly disturbing.
That B4U-ACT fails to register clear rejoinder to patent cruelty in physical and chemical mutilation of their fellow citizens, but rather spends its time admonishing people against fondling and pee-pee touching, I find quite as disturbing.
And further, that the Americans refuse to collaborate with known colleagues in other like jurisdictions, often more highly qualified and more directly experienced in these matters, I find even more so.
In the US the state routinely acts illegally, and gets away with it. They get away with it because nobody objects.
Else such issues simply would not arise, as they do not here in Australia.
And what I find disturbing is how we see here made-up numbers plucked out of thin air and bandied about as if accurate, and purposeful or unwitting disinformation lodged for reasons I cannot fathom.
If the number of people actually qualifying for treatment were really “less than 1:50 million,” there would be a grand total of six or seven people in the entire USA. The simple fact is that hundreds of such people, perhaps thousands, have passed through the clinic at Johns Hopkins Hospital alone, in addition to other places where clients seek such treatment, so Gil’s number is clearly absurd.
But we must thank Gil for making it absolutely clear that he has not even attempted to familiarize himself with our goals, policies, and/or mission at B4U-
ACT by stating that we spend “time admonishing people against fondling and pee-pee touching.”
Anyone who actually cared to know what we spend our time doing could simply read our website and would confirm that we are concerned with bringing about better understanding between MAPs and mental health professionals, as already alluded to above. I want to thank Science Director Glen Lamb for his response and Tom for giving the space to allow for this discussion.
What I find disturbing is how you equate pedophilia to cancer. Do you know how disturbing this sounds? This is indicative of how very little awareness B4U-ACT has of mental health.
If you never promote something and then you don’t oppose it, does this make you take a position? You can’t have it both ways. Again how does B4U-ACT think that a pedophile’s mental health is influenced by chemical castration?
I don’t think paedophilia is being equated to cancer. Glen has given examples of where anti-androgens are used and acknowledged the controversial nature of their use in treating sex-offenders and even non-offending MAPs.
The improvement to the psychological health of a paedophile comes if he or she finds the sex drive unwanted and disturbing. It possibly causes distress, anxiety and self-disgust all on its own. Such a person may elect to have that drive suppressed, and so be relieved of the stress, anxiety and self-disgust, gaining an overall improvement in psychological wellbeing.
A parallel is where the sex drives of intellectually handicapped people are suppressed in similar manner because, without it, they behave in ways that limit their social freedom. With the drive suppressed, they become far more functional.
[NOTE: I am NOT equating paedophilia to intellectual handicap, simply trying to draw a comparison of two instances where anti-androgens may be used to minimise what a particular individual finds disturbing.]
Peter, here we run into fundamental and serious taxonomic issues, in which I would argue the problem is created, not innate.
What on earth is some thing called “sex drive”? Are we not as humans gregarious and passionate, experience desire and arousal from time to time, among all other things that make us human?
Why would anyone at all find “the sex drive unwanted and disturbing”? One might as well find life itself disturbing. One might on good solid grounds argue that either way, these are outcomes of mental illness, not causes.
So, to cure mental illness, we opt for body mutilation, for castration? Worse, we encourage mental illness in the population clammering for such ‘solutions’ to such outcomes? Where does it stop, when all are castrated?
When at the same time we have successfully campaigned for and won laws to ban genital mutilation in both girls and boys, to the extent of leaving such a silly thing as snipping a bit of skin off the end of the penis solely to the person’s discretion?
No, sorry, a vibrant sexuality is one of the key measures of both mental and physical health, and its healthy expression a key indicator of civilisation.
What we have here is religious psychobabble gone berserk. What we have here is generations of ranting and abuse and repression of children, denying them their health and vibrancy as human beings, their human rights and their rights as children, reducing them to a mass of disturbed, sobbing, terrified and too often medicated souls distraught at the idea of even having a penis much less a healthy erection.
And now it has emerged as a very real social problem, suddenly we blame them and demand that they be castrated.
You’ve lost me entirely on this one.
Peter,
I think that it is going to be really difficult for us to see eye to eye on things as it seems that we are both using very different logic.
Of course we are seeing that you are comparing us to the “mentally handicapped” (whatever that means).
I am not sure how reducing sex drive changes the perception of a pedophile. Will this pedophile start mingling in society more. Can he say I am a proud pedophile when he is with people. How would his employer react to him knowing that he is a pedophile. None of that will change just because a person pops a pill. If the person is disturbed by the thoughts this is not going to change.
Taking the pill is like a guiltripping oneself. You say that the psychological improvement comes from feeling less annoyed by the “sex drive”, but where is the literature? Does B4U-ACT provide literature that supports that chemical castration improves the mental health of a pedophile?
Peter’s interpretation of my comment was correct. I was not comparing anything to cancer, but was simply stating that anti-androgens are used for the treatment of prostate cancer. When talking about controversial uses of anti-androgens, it is worth remembering that there are less controversial uses too.
Jeff, first of all, I am not comparing anyone to anyone, particularly not MAPs to the intellectually handicapped.
I drew a comparison between two groups of people with whom anti-androgens and SSRIs are used with good effect in some cases. I did this only to illustrate that this class and application of drugs can be beneficial.
It is a non-sequitur to suggest that a pill will make society feel better about him (the thrust of your third paragraph). If a person has fewer of the thoughts that disturb him, this will not change the reaction of society towards him.
However, the existence of VirPed and to an extent B4UACT establishes that there are those MAPs who, for whatever reason, including internalised phobias, would want not to be MAPs. For these people, becoming aroused or having sexual thoughts at the thought, sight or presence of a child is an unwelcome intrusion into their consciousness. It impacts their psychological wellbeing negatively.
I do not see why they cannot use SSRIs or anti-androgens to reduce the frequency and intensity of these thoughts and reactions, and so be free to proceed with other aspects of their lives with fewer reminders of their attraction to children.
It is like using pain killers for pain. Some choose to, and risk the side-effects. Others choose to tolerate the pain.
I’d be interested to know where our logic diverges (having clarified that by taking a pill, an individual cannot change the perception and reactions of society around him).
Glen and Peter,
Here is how your statement reads:
Since prostate cancer (an illness) and Gender Identity Disorder (an illness) can be treated with anti-androgens, therefore pedophilia (an illness) can be treated too with anti-androgens.
Is one of B4U-ACT’s strategies to “treat” a pedophile through chemical castration?
I speak for myself, not B4UACT, but will correct you from my perspective. My statement says the following:
Prostate cancer (an illness) is routinely treated by anti-androgens.
The effects of Gender Identity Disorder (an orientation) can be moderated by anti-androgens by making the physical body of the person conform to their gender identity. (For a girl in a boys body, the onset of puberty and the development of masculine traits are delayed by anti-androgens. The reverse is true for a boy in a girls body, where puberty is triggered by testosterone.)
The effects of Paedophilia (an orientation, the expression of which is illegal in most jurisdictions at this time and which is heavily socially stigmatised) can be moderated with anti-androgens. (For the paedophile who chooses this route, he is less frequently reminded of his attraction, or his temptation to act on it, and devotes his time and energies to fulfilling and productive alternative activities.)
I did also go on to make a similar example of the use of anti-androgens in the case of intellectually handicapped people who lack the insight to behave sexually in ways that do not intrude upon the rights of others.
I would support the use of anti-androgens in all four cases if I had the informed and voluntary consent of the person in question. For purposes of this discussion, assume you can get informed and voluntary consent from a paedophile who has never offended, never intends to and simply wants relief from the urge. He runs no risk of imprisonment, so you don’t have the proverbial gun at his head.
“Is one of B4U-ACT’s strategies to “treat” a paedophile through chemical castration?”
I cannot answer this question as I do not speak for B4U-ACT, although I would imagine that they would share a view similar to my own.
@peterlouden, mate, you reply to error with fallacy, which cannot be allowed to go unchallenged. You are simply not qualified in this field, yet you set yourself up here as an authority, speaking authoritatively.
Firstly, you argue, “The effects of Gender Identity Disorder (an orientation) can be moderated by anti-androgens by making the physical body of the person conform to their gender identity. (For a girl in a boys body . . .”
Here you make the far too common mistake of conflating sex with gender, in a classic case of conflating nature with culture. Naturally, a male is male and a female is female. A girl is a girl and a boy is a boy. That’s sex.
Behaviourally, a boy can be effeminate in his daily life, traditionally staying in the house with the women, dressing in girls’ clothes, doing work ordinarily considered ‘women’s work’, as a girl can be a tomboy and work outside with the men.
To deal with these common behaviours in our various jurisdictions we do not medicate them to make the boy’s body fit women’s work, or a girl’s body to fit men’s work, HELLO, we brought in antidiscriminatory legislation. It is the work that alters the body configuration, not some medication.
Accordingly, we do not have more people on medication, we have more males than ever doing traditional women’s jobs, and more females than ever out driving trucks, labouring, making a living for themselves and having the time of their life!
Second, by false corollary, you argue further that, “The effects of paedophilia (an orientation, the expression of which is illegal in most jurisdictions at this time and which is heavily socially stigmatised) can be moderated with anti-androgens.”
Which jurisdictions? Stigmatised by whom, precisely?
Sorry, it’s not paedophilia which is either illegal or stigmatised anywhere, but adults having unwanted sex with children. Through media hysteria and psychologists wanting to make a killing, having sex with children has in very recent times simply been labelled paedophilia.
Not long ago, within a generation or so, the activity was more correctly known as paederasty, until Michael Davidson came along and said he’d rather be remembered as someone who loves children, as a paedophile, not merely as someone looking for sex with children.
Here again, you conflate two different things. Nowhere is it illegal, or considered criminal, to express love for children. By God, the entire planet would be arrested!
Loving children is not and never has been illegal, anywhere on the planet, yet in the wake of all this Freudian psychobabble, media hysteria, propaganda and brainwashing, suddenly a person is committing a crime by merely admitting (if they didn’t admit it you wouldn’t know) to certain thoughts and desires, for which you argue they need to be at least medicated.
Lastly, by even worse corollary, you state that, “I did also go on to make a similar example of the use of anti-androgens in the case of intellectually handicapped people who lack the insight to behave sexually in ways that do not intrude upon the rights of others.”
What makes it your prerogative to protect my rights? How does some guy with his dong out intrude upon my rights? Were he seeking to impede my passage, that’s intruding upon my rights. The mere fact of his having an erection in public is not. Old deros on park benches, hanging their cock out to piss likewise.
These sorts of public misconduct may well be in breach of the Police Act, and rarely more than that, but they are certainly no intrusion upon my rights. I am as well within my rights to intervene, and suggest to police it’s OK, he’s a bit simple, I’ll take him home.
Which is exactly what I have done on many occasions, and with kids playing up; in the event winning the regard of police not further action against me too. Until of course this hysteria blew up, which has since settled.
Once more, I repeat, if you tried pulling these stunts here in Western Australia it is you I’d have arrested and charged on all these counts of deprivation of liberty, denial of human rights, unregistered diagnostic practice, incompetence, misfeasance and malfeasance, not them.
[TOC adds: There are some riotously provocative and interesting points here, even if — or perhaps because — they will perhaps strike some people as barking mad, including the over-excited finale. For that reason I have decided to run it in full even though the tone is distinctly insulting in places. Gil may of course think it is insulting of me to use the expression “barking mad”, but I don’t think those who insult other people can reasonably complain when the response is robust. As for the specifics of insult, it is seldom helpful or persuasive to argue from authority: “You are not qualified”, “You don’t know what you’re talking about” etc. Ironically, such tactics are very often the resort of people whose self-made claims to their own authority are at best dubious.]
@Gil
1. I do not set myself up as any kind of authority. I comment on this blog using the English I was taught at school. As to what I am or am not qualified in, you have speculated and I see no reason to correct you.
2. Regarding Gender Identity Disorder, try your arguments on the many transgender people who are going through sex changes. You will emerge mauled by them, particularly when you suggest they simply assume the work, household chores or social roles of another gender.
3. Regarding paedophilia, maybe I should have said “the SEXUAL expression of which …”. That additional word answers your other questions. I am well acquainted with the historical matters you refer to.
4. Regarding intellectually handicapped people, frequently it is their rights that it is necessary to protect. If you read ALL of what I wrote, you would see that I have moved on from public displays of genitalia to rape. I have also disclosed that I am the father of two intellectually handicapped people, which answers the question about where my prerogative to protect rights comes from.
Since all I have done is comment on a blog and attend to the upbringing of my children with the input of suitably and relevantly qualified professionals, I doubt that your threats of arrest or prosecution would amount to anything, anywhere.
Lastly, please spell my name correctly. Firstly it is a matter of personal etiquette and secondly, it will persuade me that you read to the end of this post before composing your next diatribe.
The spelling is Peter Loudon – the letter “e” does not occur in Loudon.
Peter, you do err fundamentally in conflating sex and gender; there is simply no debate on that point. To keep things in perspective, we haven’t begun to discuss sexuality yet, which is concerned with choice of intimate partner and at the end of the day what paederasty is all about.
People who go through the radical surgery required for, I can only guess from your lack of detail, “sex changes”, are transexual. Yes?
They are not transgendered, they are transexual. They go through radical, surgical, castration and genital modification, with hormones to promote growth of tits usually, or silicon implants, not behavioural modification. Some chicks have their tits removed, and a “penis” constructed.
[TOC:SNIPPED 2 PARAS: ABUSIVE]
Back down to earth. Feminine gender is caring, nurturing social behaviour. Masculine gender is aggressive, assertive behaviour. For the most part human behaviour toward one another is gender neutral, while the rest is fairly well balanced.
Men are quite as capable as women in caring and nurturing, and raising children, as females are quite as capable as females in getting hard physical work done, or fighting wars.
Transgendering is about reskilling, changing your job from nursing in, say, a field hospital, to joining the infantry or driving a tank.
The modernist, miltary mass industrial gendering of society is only ever concerned with the artificially imposed masculising of boys making them do all the fighting and dying, and feminising of girls so they sewed socks and sent off Red Cross parcels instead, causing very real problems for all of us. That’s what the argument was, what liberation was all about, and we long ago prevailed.
[TOC: SNIPPED: ABUSIVE & INSUBSTANTIAL, APPROX 6 PARAS]
One thing to keep in mind here is that the vast, vast majority of consensual sexually expressed boy/older male relationships are known only to the two principals, so the issues of mental health counseling and castration for so-called “pedophiles,” in any form and under any auspices, are relevant only to a minuscule (albeit media excoriated) minority.
Much more relevant to the situation today are the issues of the sexual emancipation of boys (and girls) so that those older males who accommodate these seekers are recognized as the mentally sound and beneficent people that most are.
‘Where rather is the nuancing, the finesse, that readily and unproblematically differentiates simple pee-pee touching and curiosity with such well-equipped dungeons, which one might anticipate of a mature and well-informed civil society?’
Magnificent, Gil. A recent foray I had into the Facebook page of ‘Letzgo Hunting’ the vigilante group (it’s what they are, as far as I’m concerned) who traumatized a would-be molester of a 14yo girl to death (Gary Cleary, his name deserved re-iterating), made me utterly despair of a ‘well-informed civil society’. Castration was of course mentioned in spades by the gentle followers of LGH, plus worse things, I’m sure you can imagine. Who is to say how Cleary would have treated his phantom 14yo, but I wager he fits well into the profile Gil mentions in another thread: “a life of brutal celebacy”, and the bottom line is he was a guy who needed intimacy, compassion and help, but sought it in the wrong way. He certainly did not deserve to run into those ignorant bully-boys and have the trauma of being ‘stung’.
I don’t wish to digress too much from Tom’s excellently informed topic, but Portway also featured highly in said Facebook page, particularly as a candidate for castration: pointless. exactly as Tom points out, since Portway’s pathology obviously goes way beyond mere sexual/snuff urges. The topic of castration embodies well all the sheer ignorances towards the many shades of paedophilia of ephebephila, and how great swathes of society can’t or won’t differentiate them from criminality.
I do think the problem here has nothing really to do with physical or chemical castration or any of that stuff, but with the fact that anyone properly qualifying for such treatment is so extremely rare as to be virtually non-existent.
One might argue that they do exist, though the risk is less than 1:50 million. At those odds its not an issue, though that’s still neither really the issue.
The issue is that these few most extreme cases are inevitably complicated by so many other conditions that we might as well assert the far more civilised Governor’s Pleasure and simply restrain the person indefinitely.
My view is that democracy extends only so far, that these are matters for the governor’s pleasure; the reason we have governors, and not for public access or debate.
The issue of concern to us, of course, is that in the public mind or more correctly in the media, everyone else gets tarred with the same brush.
Where rather is the nuancing, the finesse, that readily and unproblematically differentiates simple pee-pee touching and curiosity with such well-equipped dungeons, which one might anticipate of a mature and well-informed civil society?
Thank Tom for this article and the multiple references.
What I would like to know is how does B4UACT think that chemical castration can contribute to the mental well-being of a pedophile?
Para: “In a nutshell” line-8 needs an “of”. Sub-tit Tina’s radical approach. SeXtreme aBusers not aMusers on release need perhaps to be made temporarily/reversibly blind ? With c.90% visual sex-stimuli, not many coercive ‘white-stick,’ nappy burglars, knicker knockers, or boys’ bum bandits.
________________________________
Thanks, Tina, correction made.
Very interesting point! Even as a reversible measure I imagine most people would feel this is extremely drastic, even more so than surgical castration, but I have little doubt it would be highly effective!
When you try to consider every angle it looks like a tangled web, but I think Young Tom cut through it very well. The insouciant wisdom of youth! Patricia Hewitt’s scoffing can be safely disregarded. She was never more than a fifth columnist in NCCL. In about 1981 her authoritarian feminist faction staged a successful coup, and since then the UK has not had any civil rights lobby along the lines of the US’s ACLU. And to be fair, NCCL since the 80s has barely even pretended to be much more than a career outpost for self-serving politicians like Hewitt, even going so far as to rename itself after a department store.
Another strand that seems to tangle the ethical web even further is that young (minor age) transexuals often want the same kind of hormone therapy that we are calling chemical castration, to hold back the ravages of puberty, and have often had difficulty getting it (difficulty leading to delay, which in the circumstances is as good as denial). Others have wished for smaller doses, just for the aesthetic reason of remaining a little more androgenous, How can one support them and still argue it is an inhumane treatment for sex offenders? Of course, actively wanting something is a long way from reluctantly accepting it. However, it does raise the point that some people might, for whatever reasons of their own, actually want to suppress their sexuality or some part of it. Who are we to say they are victims of false consciousness?
But where chemical castration becomes convincingly barbaric is in the context of the criminal justice system. Even where there is apparent consent, there is an implicit blackmail involved which means the consent lacks freedom. I take the point about the horror stories such as that fellow in the news recently, but these extreme cases need to be recognised for the black swans they are — exceptions that prove (test) the rule. For each psychopath there are hundreds of perfectly reasonable MAPs facing this impossible choice.
Couple of final brief points. I wouldn’t give Bailey too much credit. Harm ‘not found yet’ is harm assumed to exist and moreover, assumed expressly with no justification. And recidivism figures are often extremely dubious, and I wouldn’t place much credence in those quoted here. What is their basis? How comparable really are the control groups? I am glad to see the BMJ seems to have recognised these issues.
Thought-provoking blog. Thanks, Tom.
Thanks, Mr Philadelphia, for an interesting debut here.
Good point, although Bailey is careful not to make that assumption and there are other reasons why I give him credit: (1) He has gone out of his way, in the face of significant criticism, to promote MAP voices on Sexnet, which he moderates. (2) He also stuck his neck out in giving a strikingly positive review of my book Michael Jackson’s Dangerous Liaisons. The point here is not that it was my book. Obviously, I am going to be biased in favour of those who like my work! The point is that, regardless of the author, he went out of his way to praise a book with a strongly pro-BL message.
Fair enough, and sorry to Prof. Bailey! I was reading too much into a single quote, shorn of context, from 15 years ago, whereas you have a broader and more recent view.
I don’t know much about the issue of chemical castration, but I want to take issue with your statements here:
“It seems to me that true castration, like capital punishment, is one of those extreme ways of dealing with offenders that not only violates fundamental human rights but which also endorses violence: these punishments make the state look as vicious as the offender, or worse, and underpin, rather than undermine, a social climate in which violence is seen as a solution rather than a problem.”
Assuming that we are talking about ‘voluntary’ castration (which, as you have just persuasively argued, may be defensible in the case of an offender who is offered it as an alternative to prison, as it increases the offender’s freedom), why would this be an endorsement of violence, any more than a drastic, but medically justified, surgical operation undertaken with the consent of the patient such as, say, a hysterectomy?
Good point. I think it is a matter of tone. A lot of people like the idea of hanging because this punishment is viscerally satisfying to those who want to see retribution. Castration, even if voluntary, appeals to a similar constituency. The salient thing here, I suggest, is that it is never really going to look voluntary. The question then becomes one of whether we think retributive justice is valid and whether we wish to encourage vengeful sentiment.
One problem with the idea of “give the prisoner more choices” is the unintended consequences on the people offering the choices. Consider the idea of letting offenders (of various sorts) out of prison given that they will wear a bracelet tracking their movements. Sounds fine by itself, but it also creates the possibility for more people to be charged (for less serious crimes) when it is known there is a less onerous and less expensive way of controlling them.
I think there is a role for chemical castration for people who are under no coercion, who think it might help them feel better (imagine that as a criterion!) as well as issues of offending. As for using it in a criminal justice setting, I don’t know what I think.