I am relieved and delighted by the overwhelmingly supportive response to Why I am talking to the terrorists. Many thanks to everyone for submitting such thoughtful comments.
Your remarks included quite a few requests for further information. You asked for a link to the ATSA article itself, and happily I can now give one because the ATSA Forum editor has kindly indicated he has no objections. So here goes: What to do with the entrenched client.
You asked to be told about any feedback from the article, and follow-up developments. ATSA Forum does not run a comments/letters section, but the editor, Dr Robin Wilson, commented very positively on the piece in his own Editorial Note, which can be accessed from the URL above. Also, he forwarded to me an email he had received from a reader who is a practising clinical psychologist. I’d better not give his name without permission, but he wrote:
… I thought it was great that you included the O’Carroll piece. I found it very interesting as we seldom get the opportunity to hear such a detailed overview of the client’s experience. The first PO [probation officer] clearly was on the more productive path and reminds us how much more important it is to understand who the person is who has the ‘disorder’ rather than the other way around.
I take it that by “the other way around”, he means a narrow focus on diagnosing and treating what “disorder” the person has, assuming there is one – and his quote marks suggest a welcome degree of open-mindedness on that score. The “first PO” in question is the probation officer I was initially assigned to when released on licence.
Otto asked:
One would like to think that there are some therapists currently within the system with whom deep and meaningful discussion can be had, but I rather doubt that that is the case (did you ever come across one?).
Yes, I did: this “first PO” was the perfect case in point, although undoubtedly she was very exceptional. A highly intellectual type, she had simultaneously gained first class honours degrees in both psychology and sociology. Even better, she engaged me in lengthy discussions about Foucault rather than imposing a course of CBT, although she was well versed in the latter.
Otto also asked how the opportunity arose to have a piece published in ATSA Forum. I believe the answer to this question reveals a great deal about the difficulties of getting a word in edgeways once you have a conviction, or indeed if you try to write from a MAP perspective at all. So I do think it will be worthwhile to answer Otto here in some detail. It is quite a saga, though, and will not interest everyone. If your time is limited you might want to skip the rest of this blog and just read the ATSA Forum piece. Either way, it’s a long read, though, so if you’d rather go for a beer or head for the beach that’s fine by me!
My article, or rather its precursor, was initially submitted to Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment (SAJRT). This academic journal had announced a Call for Papers, as they were planning a Special Issue on “Change among High-Risk Sex Offenders”. This announcement landed unbidden in my email inbox, which is the sort of thing that happens when you are known to have academic interests. As I was, and remain, officially classified as just such an offender, I saw this as an opportunity, especially in view of the fact that I was already on surprisingly good terms with Michael Seto, who was to be one of the two joint editors of the Special Issue, with Kevin Nunes. Dr Seto, as many here will be aware, is a leading expert on paedophilia – and there is no need for sceptical quote marks around “expert”: his knowledge and understanding of the scientific literature in the field are second to none.
I was already known to Seto because we are both members of Northwestern University’s online Sexnet forum, which is an email list-serve discussion group for an invited membership. It is a multi-disciplinary forum focused not on arranging orgies, as the name might suggest, but on all academic sexual matters, especially research into the psychology of sex, and including genetics, neurophysiology, endocrinology, etc. I was invited to apply for membership some years ago by psychiatrist Richard Green, founder president of the International Academy of Sex Research.
By the time the Special Issue came up, Seto had been exposed to my (numerous!) posts on Sexnet for about a couple of years. Not everyone liked my radically outspoken views on paedophilia, as may be imagined, but Seto very kindly praised my contributions in one of his own posts to the forum. Being armed with the knowledge that I had made a good impression, I was emboldened to email him, asking whether an article from me would be in order. I knew he could not make the ultimate decision as SAJRT is peer-reviewed. Any article would need to be approved on a doubly anonymous basis: the reviewers would not know my name nor I theirs. Seto emailed back saying he had consulted with Nunes, and also with James Cantor, Editor-in-Chief of SAJRT. All three, I was told, agreed a submission would be welcome and would go through the usual review process.
So, I set about the tough task of researching and writing my first truly academic article. It took much longer than I imagined, and much midnight oil was expended as the final submission date loomed: 1 September 2012. I managed to get a thoroughly-researched and tolerably well-written piece done and submitted by the deadline, albeit I had run out of time to edit it down to something more crisp and concise: the draft weighed in at a monstrous 35,000 words! Far too much! I just prayed the reviewers would give me a chance to cut to a more practical length.
But then disaster struck. I was told too few articles had been submitted to justify a Special Issue. Cantor offered me the opportunity to submit the MS to the regular journal instead. It seemed a good alternative, so I accepted. The paper was then duly sent for review. This was all very well but the absence of the Special Issue meant that Seto and Nunes would play no further part as editors. This was to prove a fateful development.
The review itself was fine. There was only one reviewer, which may be unusual but should not have been a problem. This reviewer – he or she – made a number of criticisms, especially as regards the length of the paper, as expected, but the decision was encouraging. Here is the key first paragraph of the comments received:
This was a very interesting article to review. In places I agreed strongly with the author and in places I disagreed. I found some of it uncomfortable but probably true but at other points some of the conclusions drawn had a self interested flavour (hard to avoid, I accept). On balance I believe the article could be published albeit in a different form. I think that it makes several important points that the journal readership, particularly those in clinical practice but also researchers, would benefit from thinking about.
In line with the reviewer’s recommendation, I expected the editor-in-chief to offer me the chance to shorten and improve the paper, then be judged again on the revised version. But no. Cantor said he had read the manuscript thoroughly himself but had concluded “I am afraid the manuscript is not suitable for publication in SAJRT.”
This looked to me like an irregular and possibly improper decision. The whole point of anonymous peer review, I thought, was that the anonymity is meant to ensure impartial judgment of the work, without any possibility of personal prejudice against the author. I have no reason to disbelieve Cantor when
he said he had read the paper thoroughly, but he certainly had been aware of who I was.
More to the point, there was a very good reason to suppose he might have been prejudiced against me. Like Michael Seto, he was a Sexnet member and familiar with my input there. Unlike Seto, though, he had not liked what he had seen. As quite a few heretics here will know, Cantor has been a very prominent public supporter of the Virtuous Pedophiles and is impatient – to put it mildly – with radical MAPs like me. What appears to have got up his nose even more is that I had used Sexnet to publicly cast doubt on the meaning and significance of his research findings, especially as regards a supposed deficiency of white matter he claims to have detected in the brains of paedophiles.
His responses are best characterised as throwing hissy fits, hurling sarcastic abuse while refusing to address the scientific issues I raised. He could not possibly deny this. These exchanges were not in private email: they were on Sexnet, visible to its 400 or so members. For a blow-by-blow account of our verbal fisticuffs see my blog: Scientific egos as fragile as eggs and The dubious analogy of the ‘extra arm’.
In view of this personal history between us, it crossed my mind to complain to the editorial board of SARJT: they would surely see that his rejection of my paper may not have been impartial.
I chose not to pick another fight with him though. Why not? Well, although I had good evidence to suggest he had some animosity against me, I also had to take into account that he was notorious for his sarcastic, bullying, arrogant attitude towards almost anyone who disagreed with him! He was not necessarily prejudiced against me personally, or as a MAP; he could be seen as just horrible all round, in a fairly distributed way! I’m glad I didn’t take up the cudgels, actually, because he has since done me a considerable favour. But that’s another story.
Sticking with the current yarn, then, about a year ago I raised the matter of the rejected article on Sexnet, asking if members knew any other journal that might be interested in publishing it. That was when David Wilson, editor of ATSA Forum, and also a Sexnet subscriber, stepped forward. Even that didn’t happen smoothly though: Wilson only responded after I had kicked up a fuss on Sexnet and been in a spat with one of his colleagues. After that it was “just” a matter of whittling down a 35,000-word article to 3,500 words and then dealing with criticism of the new draft!
In reality, of course, the restriction on length meant I had to focus on one key aspect of the original article rather than paraphrasing the whole thing. What that means, in turn, is that much of the original work remains unpublished. I believe there is potential in this unused material for an article of around 15,000 words. I will not resubmit to SAJRT but I am now on the lookout for a suitable alternative peer-reviewed journal. Suggestions?
This was a very timely piece I happened upon today: “THE FALSE ALLURE OF GROUP SELECTION” by Steven Pinker. He’s brilliant, as always and this piece helps to distinguish between the confusing jumble of entities and relationships which can easily cloud and obscure the principle, if not the sole, actor in the natural selection drama, the gene. I am now trying to further “evolve” my own thoughts of how man/boy love might fit within a ‘naturally selective’ framework as an adaptation worthy of replication. Hell, there has to be SOME reason for our existence apart from cussed maladaption, right? Many of us seem also to be “mission-seeking” beings in addition to being (or, alas, instead of) self-replicating creatures.
http://edge.org/conversation/the-false-allure-of-group-selection
Thanks: the Pinker article is a “must read” for anyone with an interest in this field.
Oi! What about girl-lovers? Or woman/boy-lovers?
It’s quite simple: I’m a boylover. While we have many common issues with man/girl lovers and woman/boy lovers (and indeed many among us do like both boys and girls, to varying extents), we are also distinct. As individual groups there are significant differences both in how we are perceived and in the challenges presented to us to overcome. I think it likely that there would be differences between us in terms of natural selection adaptation, too. If someone wished to explore non-gender-specific child and adolescent love within an evolutionary framework, I would be very delighted. But I think it unlikely that any conclusions reached would come to us undifferentiated as to gender preference. And I would be suspicious were they to not be distinct in that regard since I identify gender as an extremely relevant characteristic, despite the trend of decades of systematic gender conflation.
I reckon any attempt to ‘explain’ minor attraction in evolutionary terms is pretty much futile and ‘Just So Stories’. There’s no way you can test such a hypothesis. You might find it helpful to explain your own attractions to yourself, but no-one cares what cavemen might have done long ago, any more than conditions in the past can justify infanticide or cannibalism.
“Cussed maladaption” might as well apply to contraception or felching. When it comes down to it, our civilisation for the last few thousand years bears little relation to the conditions we are adapted to by evolution. You might as well ban opera or football as paedophile acts.
Well, if we are going to talk about “futility” then we may as well just hang it up altogether. As for evolution, I am confident that it continues today, distorted though its effects may be by a frequently ridiculous species riven with bad ideas that often translate into instances of regrettable and dangerously stupid humans.
And I don’t believe that a link between pedophilia (or man/boy love) and evolution is unattainable. One may not be able to convince many of it but that we exist speaks to an evolutionary adaptation that conferred some kind of advantage, even if it no longer does.
Evolution moves extremely slowly, of course. But the opportunity for survival can be captured in an instant of time.
If one peculiar behavior, i.e. a predisposition for loving unrelated juvenile males (and resulting from a random mutation), is manifested in a lone male, and saves his life to reproduce at a later time, then it IS a beneficial adaptation, if only in that moment and for the beneficial progeny (and genes) of that individual. And, who knows? If it worked for Pop, then maybe it will work for his kids, too. They may even add their own spin to the genetic mix. That’s evolution.
Have you considered whether what happened is that the boys evolved to be appealing, the way flowers try to appeal to bees? After all, the benefit to the boy being protected/sponsored/etc is obvious. It could be that it confers no fitness benefit to the older partner but is still worth pursuing from the younger partners perspective.
Yes, I have! Thank you for reminding me. In this instance, and taken to some kind of extreme, the boy may have an agenda much like that of the zombifying fungus who infects the brain of an ant who then sacrifices itself entirely upon the altar of serving the reproductive imperative of the fungus. Not so romantic though, is it? 🙂 Or, perhaps it is ultimately romantic. Still, there has to be a reason why the boy-loving adult keeps recurring, so I would be inclined to endow his fortunes in ways complementary (and fully sustainable) to those of the boy so that he might live another day and enhance his own likelihood of reproductive success.
Now you’ve got the idea.
“systematic gender conflation”
This part confused me. I don’t know of any instances where important research failed to examine effects on separate demographics (including genders) separately, if that’s what you mean. Maybe that isn’t what you mean? Would you care to explain/elaborate?
That’s because I’m not talking about academic research. I’m talking about popular culture as it has been informed by the feminist movement, especially that simplistic one which was overtaking society in the early ’70s and its insistence that gender – apart from the grievances which accrued to women on the one hand and the innate superiority of women which they saw as their birthright on the other – was completely irrelevant and that boys and girls were/should be interchangeable.
In other words, that feminism which actually took hold and which matters most.
Of course, they want it both ways: they want to maintain their position as the more virtuous and superior sex at the same time as they demand “equality” (but which they have long since achieved in the West). Their position on gender will be that which works to their advantage, depending upon the circumstance.
Exactly David! You seem to be making a habit of expressing my views better than I could myself. I would just add that talking of children, MAPs and paedophiles when one could be talking of boys, girls, boylovers/pederasts and girllovers is to engage the enemy on their own terms and concede half the battle by robbing the child of its sex.
Edmund, author of Alexander’s Choice, a boylove novel
Edmund,
Just a little bit ago I thought of you and David K when I saw this video recommended my Brooklyn Pal Sydney.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_vqE2hBWkg
The Beatles This Boy{Stereo Remaster}
Linca
Absolutely! I hope that I have not fallen into that pit of accepting others’ language for us and thus falling prey to our hijacking, as so many, said to be virtuous, are want to do (and to our continual annoyance).
Interesting. I’m not acquainted with these “feminists” or this “equality” which has been “long-since achieved”. Hmm….
Well, it’s a political question in that ones personal politics seem to inform ones view on the achievement, or non-achievement, of women’s equality. My experience has been that ones view on the topic has everything to do with ones regard for the scope and primacy of government (and the collective) on one hand and individual liberty and autonomy, on the other. Perhaps the metrics for “equality” are different? Or perhaps one falls prey to egalitarian shibboleths which survive long after their usefulness has ceased to exist?
But I will counter my own argument, somewhat, to suggest that there are those on the left for whom feminism (in the WEST) has become an intolerable and intolerant burden and for exactly the reasons that this classical liberal (libertarian) find so corrosive of individuals and culture.
Our shared view that the condition of women in western countries is so entirely distinct from that injustice which persists in much of the “Third World” should unite us in the dismantling of an edifice of intolerance whose expiration date has long since passed.
One way or the other, it must be done. Fortunately, there are many women who agree with us.
Well, as a Third Worlder, my knowledge of how serious sexism is in The West is primarily dependent on statistics. I’m not just talking about things like the wage gap, I mean completely indefensible things like the fact that an identical resume with a female name attached is more likely to be rejected than a male one. Especially given the fact that this particular phenomenon is almost non-existent in Eastern Europe so we know it isn’t fixed.
On a side note: You said “shibboleths”! OMG, I thought only people in my (highly selected) set of acquaintances used that word! I mean, I knew it was in the dictionary and all, but I thought it was super idiosyncratic. Kind of like how normal people never say “trope” or “funge” or “Nash Equilibrium”.
All I can say in response to the “resume” anecdote is: prove it! We know that (in the West) feminists actively lie, distort and utterly fabricate their grievances with the “male-dominated culture”. We have recently seen evidence of the extent to which they go to drum-up fake statistics. In one case, it was the “1-in-5” are victims of sexual assault which turns out to be total bullshit. Their tactics, at least as far back as the early ’80s when they made wildly unsupported (but widely and thoroughly believed) claims of child sexual abuse and abduction which had NO basis in reality, are to simply MAKE THINGS UP! These are not forgivable “errors” or “misinterpretations”. They are lies from start-to-finish with the sole aim of fundamentally altering society and government and accruing power to themselves, which they have done.
THAT is not an opinion, it is demonstrable FACT!
David,
Where can we look to get those demonstrable facts? I want to quote them at every possible moment.
Linca
Linca, one might start with Christine Hoff Sommers takedown of top feminist myths here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TR_YuDFIFI Going much further back to the putative beginning of our current witch hunt, one can look at statistics on both child sexual abuse and (adult) porn claims, and often made by the same people (feminists) in which assertions such as one hundred thousand children are abducted in the U.S. annually for sexual purposes or the supposedly burgeoning industry of “snuff” films in which women were said to have been murdered in the interest of a lucrative porn industry or, of course, the extravagantly fabulist allegations of satanic ritual abuse which saw dozens of wrongfully convicted defendants serving decades in prison.
David,
Thanx! In the court room when a witness is caught out in one lie everything else the witness says is either discounted or not believed at all. It seems the Feminists have put themselves in the same position as a “liar in court”.
Summary of Top 5 Feminist Myths by Christina Hoff Sommers
https://www.dropbox.com/s/39tgls2hjy3zld4/Summary%20of%20Top%205%20Feminist%20Myths.docx?dl=0
Wonder how accurate Sommers is? Somehow I don’t think Sommers has nailed it. Did James have something to add?
Linca
I’m having a hard time locating the study I was referring to (yes, an actual scientific study) so I’ll substitute a similar resume-related study.
I’m not enamored with the SJ movement’s general looseness with the truth. My all-time favourite blogger spends a hell of a lot of time debunking these claims. However, this doesn’t stop him from coming out in favour of the aims of equality. He (like me) just wants them to tell fewer damn lies!
What has happened Tom? Nothing in days from here. Fingers crossed nothing dreadful.
No, all’s well right now, thanks.
Very good and well-thought out essay/analysis, as per usual, Tom 🙂 Thank you again for your efforts on behalf of the MAP community, despite all it has cost you in the past.
There was an interesting documentary on tonight…the gypsy matchmaker
where the custom Is to marry off their siblings,several years into puberty.
And the obvious clashes with the authorities.
Two clashing ideologies,roma gypsy tradition or feminist victimology (UK)
Personally I agree with neither,I don’t see marriage as essential,especially
If your a man! regarding family law,those bloody feminists again,though regarding kids,they got huge families,If she did knock one out,surely a family
member could babysit,while she learned english? then later she could study further,unlike many unhappy women,who chose a career rather then breeding
when nature intended.
I applaud your attempt to engage with ‘the enemy’, but I wonder what the point of it all is. With the exception of what you call ‘The Troubled’ (drug addicts, alcoholics, depressives), I don’t see how anyone can benefit from any kind of ‘therapy’ as it is likely to be envisioned. It’s not going to change offenders’ sexual attractions and it’s certainly not going to change society’s opinions of deviants.
With regard to ‘relapse prevention’ I would have thought that only the threat of future conviction will have any effect.
The only beneficial ‘treatment’ is helping the individual to live a relatively normal life, such as housing and employment.
You will, perhaps, force some of ‘the enemy’ to give the matter a little thought, even if you are just wasting their time and the public’s money.
(Some years ago, having received a £20 book token I toyed with the idea of buying Kincaid’s 1993 ‘Child-loving’ book in hardcover – but then I thought, I already know children are erotic – better leave it to those who don’t.)
I think my ideas would save them a lot of money.
Very true. A vast amount of time and money wasted in useless and even counterproductive CBT could fruitfully be diverted to focusing on these practical matters.
I think the idea behind this is harm reduction – with the harm that’s reduced being the amount of shitty therapy. Whether TOC’s suggestions are better than no therapy is a moot point since it isn’t This vs No Therapy – It’s This vs Awful Therapy. Going from bad to less-bad is an improvement.
Hi, Clovernews. I agree that no one in ‘offender rehabilitation therapy’ can be expected to actually change their attractions, but I think one of the benefits of reform that Tom may be working towards would be to simply use therapy to help ‘offenders’ manage their attractions within the context of the law, rather than engaging in abusive and futile efforts to change their feelings, or to try to convince them that the expression thereof is inherently immoral. This would ultimately lead to support-based therapy for the group he termed Dissidents (love that name! mwah-hah-hah!), rather than bombarding them with bullying moral lectures that are manipulative attempts at thought control.
Yes, you correctly sum up an important part of the intention. Thanks, BTW, for your other kind comment.
Tom,
I support you there also: 100%. The Bastard Bullies must be out maneuvered. What bastards they are. They need to be sued until there is no tomorrow. They are violating our right to “Due Process” by not incorporating Rind’s findings in the therapy they practice. They are ignoring our right to science.
Linca
No, that’s not quite what I mean. That is, not to convey to them that you, the writer are angry (although you damned well should be) but rather that the issue of the – not only entrenched “client” – but the ANGRY entrenched client is something they so obviously fail to come to terms with. Even if one accepts that there is some value in the therapy on offer then their approach to we obdurate and pissed-off paedophiles will go nowhere as a result of their failure to acknowledge our anger as legitimate and to attempt to address it.
My experience with those people was that they could not countenance nor appreciate our anger in any way. They demanded total contrition and continuous and pathetic displays of self-hatred and anyone who wouldn’t given them that was locked in a vortex of “thinking errors” for which they only had themselves to blame.
I like your piece and am sorry that it was so vigorously trimmed. I’d like to read more. I don’t have any suggestions for any other academic journals. Now if you wanted to publish it on NAMBLA, I think that could be easily arranged 🙂
OK, point taken.
There are probably many institutions where a drastic culture change is needed such as can only be achieved over a period of years through fresh recruitment policies.
This can actually happen, even in prisons. I know because I was in prison in Britain in 1980-1 and then again in 2006-7. The difference, in the same physical institution (Her Majesty’s Prison, Wandsworth, London) over that period was very marked. In the later period the staff treated inmates (including paedophiles) with far more courtesy and respect than in the days old days. This is because a lead had been given from the top to respect “diversity”, which was once a code word for ethnic minorities, and then gays were included too. Part of the policy was to recruit black and female prison staff: it showed very plainly that this “diversity” thing had to be taken seriously.
That sounds so good Tom. I need to talk to some recently released sex offender inmates from my state’s prison.
Wonder if prison might be becoming the safest less harassed place for us. Hope I don’t find out.
I remain convinced if we do not know our long history, I mean hundreds of thousands of years of history and can quote it easily which is point A we will never be able to get to point B which is a society that positively includes us in every way.
Linca
Yes, it is very important deep psychological background. We need to know ourselves as thoroughly as possible in order to head for a sensible way forward. Actually, I took up your suggestion to read Spencer Wells’s Pandora’s Seed, which was a worthwhile exercise (so thanks) and his earlier book, which starts earlier in our prehistory, is no doubt just as relevant. It makes a lot of sense that we have become more violent along with the advent of agriculture and the end of nomadic hunter-gathering, for reasons Well explains well, especially intense competition for diminishing land resources as population grows.
As one time when human groups got too big for the resources they were able to split up and go their separate ways without killing each other. That does not address our innate capacity for violence though. We obviously have that capacity or we would never have wars and murder even now; and we must also have had it in pre-history as hunters, in order to hunt. We have to take sometimes violent competition for mates into account too: nothing new about sexual rivalry I’d have thought. Our primate predecessors were not immune to it and neither were we.
Anyway, you might like to know I’m getting deeper into this reading right now. One thing to realise: the more we agree with Wells, the further it takes us from agreeing with Rind’s theory.
“One thing to realise: the more we agree with Wells, the further it takes us from agreeing with Rind’s theory.” I would like to know more of this. Might you provide this in a “nutshell”, please?
Ah, yes, I do mean Rind’s theory not his findings in the famous meta-analysis, which are not in doubt.
No, I mean his theory that pederasty (i.e. specifically man-boy sex) evolved in early human prehistory because it gave a survival advantage to cultures that practised it: man-boy bonding gave opportunities for good training in warfare to the younger party. But the theory relies on there having been a pattern of more or less continuous warfare in the hunter-gatherer stage of our evolution over the lengthy time period which would have been necessary for the adaptation to become established. Wells argues against this postulated background.
For whatever it’s worth, my own instinct tells me that protection of boys during a particularly vulnerable period for them (from other males, both adult and juvenile) is facilitated by man/boy love and allows boys to mature with less stress (well, murder or maiming) until they can survive unassisted. If the boy is becoming sexually active, it could also greatly help him to survive jealous rages from other males by inserting an assistive adult male between himself and the enraged adult male. It may be wishful thinking but it just seems so eminently logical and intuitive to me. I know Richard Dawkins and some other evolutionary biologists reject group selection as a contributor to evolution. Even so, it still seems logical, even when viewed at the DNA level if there is some significant kinship. On the other hand, perhaps its as a result of a defective but altruistic (and predictably recurrent) mutation that benefits youngsters but not the adult male? The answer must lie somewhere within the realm of group bonding and affection which happens throughout mammals, regardless.
Perhaps BLs are themselves protected from annihilation by taking them, temporarily, out of the firing line of reproductive competition? And the boys, too?
Or, for that matter, perhaps it confers a survival advantage to the BL by securing his value within the community by giving him greater status (through his protection of others’ offspring) than he might otherwise have.
Is it me or are the evolutionaries appearing a bit obtuse on the topic?
The problem with (amateur) Evolutionary Psychology is that a clever just-so story can prove anything and, by Bayes Theorem and the Law of Conservation of Evidence, that which proves everything proves nothing.
Also, Dawkins is suspicious of Group Selection for good reasons.
Oh, I think he’s probably right about group selection. I neglected to mention that.
However, I don’t think that “just-so” hypothesis, in this case, is so easily dismissed. You will see that, by the end of my post, I had arrived at a plausible explanation (although quite possibly incomplete) for man/boy love which appears to be fully congruent with evolutionary pressures. And, I might add, WHO ELSE would have thought of this possible explanation but a BOY LOVER or, at the least, someone unencumbered by social prejudices?
We make a mistake when we assume that personal experience, especially from those most keenly attuned, cannot inform science. Evolution, while counter-intuitive (arguably) is ultimately quite elegantly simple. As such, reasonable hypothesis can be inserted into it for “a quick spin around the block” without them being dismissed out-of-hand for lack of a degree in evolutionary biology.
Similarly, real world experience in man/boy relationships offer insights which (quite obviously) elude most academics or even other men or boys without actual experience.
It is abundantly clear that our relationships are poorly understood by those whose knowledge is limited entirely to that which has emerged from academia.
This is a real problem, especially with generations for whom such real world experience is now quite impossible. I wish it were not so but I can conclude nothing else. I do think it is an aspect of our subcultural consciousness which most of us failed to fully predict, in the earliest years of our systematic destruction.
What an excellent reply! If only boylovers explained this so clearly every time they are accused of arguing from self-interest. I agree whole-heartedly with every word.
Edmund, author of Alexander’s Choice
David,
What I have thought of saying to academics and other men and boys who haven’t experienced what we have experienced is, “You just don’t get it.”
The academics and therapists would get it if they were slapped with “Due Process Suites” for not incorporating Rind in their teaching and therapy practices. Take their comfort zone and stuff it.
Linca
I hadn’t thought to tackle that issue with lawsuits before. I do have a disdain for the explosion of litigation which is responsible for much society-warping. Also, I’m not sure how that could be successfully waged. But we certainly should be applying pressure on all relevant parties to incorporate actual but inconvenient science into any discussion of this contentious issue. In the case of academia, it is clearly an abrogation of educational responsibility to disregard findings which, while demonstrably valid, go untaught and are actively concealed from view for reasons of culture and ideology.
Your other point is likely to raise hackles WITHIN the BL community, of course. But, like you, I see it as unavoidable. I referred earlier to my, and others’, failure to fully predict the effects of decades of escalating witch hunting. I hadn’t quite imagined those effects becoming ever-worse, over time and certainly not so severe as they have now proven to be. I knew that boys would be affected as well as the men who love them. But that it would become so terrible I did not foresee and must now see that as a failure of imagination.
David,
I got the idea of the Due Process Violations we are experiencing from my Evolutionary Psychologist friend who was a practicing trial lawyer. It was an ‘awe ha’ experience. We were having coffee and exploring ideas on how to move ahead.
I totally respect his thoughts on his two areas of study and practice. He and I are meeting for coffee again in October.
Linca
To your other comment lower down:
“I do have a disdain for the explosion of litigation which is responsible for much society-warping”
So do I, but do you intend to disarm unilaterally?
“I did not foresee and must now see that as a failure of imagination.”
Rationalists refer to this as ‘failure of pessimism’. The idea is to re-calibrate yourself to be sufficiently pessimistic that reality pleasantly surprises you about as frequently as it horrifies you.
You don’t need hundreds of thousands of years for a beneficial adaptation to become widespread. For example: lactose tolerance is extremely widespread among human populations and only became beneficial after the domestication of large/medium mammals. Most primates cannot tolerate the milk of other species because it has never been advantageous for them to acquire such a trait.
A more interesting question is why sexual relationships would be the vehicle for such training. Then again, evolution is quite fond of weird-ass adaptations once they get the job done.
Excellent point about lactose tolerance. But the rate of an adaptation’s spread would presumably depend on the degree of advantage conferred. I’d have thought lactose tolerance must have conferred a huge survival advantage on those populations that began to domesticate animals and drink their milk. As animal domestication itself spread quickly to large areas of the world and to a large proportion of the total world human population, the adaptation was bound to become widespread very quickly.
Would any survival advantage conferred by man-boy bonding have been quite so compellingly advantageous as milk drinking? I suppose it is possible, but those who argue that there would have been an advantage do not appear to have come up with persuasive calculations as to the strength of that advantage.
There is actually a lovely equation that predicts the likelihood and speed of the spread of an adaptation through a population of n size that I can no longer locate. It would have been a wonderful thing to whip out at a time like this but, alas, we can’t all have Nice Things.
After much searching, I’ve finally found it!
The formula is: Generations to fixation = 2ln(N)/s
The article explains exactly what that means.
James,
We are already set as kind, gentle, egalitarian, sexual. Let’s hope violence doesn’t become what ensures our survival. Then we would be fu*ked for sure. We would then be what many think we already are: Violent Predators. Not a world we want, is it?
Yesterday I got another fascinating book: “Primates In The Classroom”
http://www.amazon.com/Primates-Classroom-Evolutionary-Perspective-Childrens-ebook/dp/B00BS3SSAC/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1409752006&sr=1-2&keywords=primates+in+the+classroom
It goes along with the idea that we must adapt society to us humans not the other way around like what we are doing: Adapting Humans to Society. The book was recommended to me but I must tell you I leapt to buy it just because of that great title.
Linca
…I wasn’t actually making any suggestions about anything. I was simply pointing out that evolutionary changes can happen on relatively small timescales.
I know what you were trying to do. However you are mostly wrong. The lactose situation is an exception not the general rule. At least that is what my reading has told me.
Linca
This is sort of what I was trying to get at with earlier comments in which I suggested that, if one can imagine a situation in which an individual’s genes can be successfully propagated then, to the extent that it is propagated, that DOES constitute a demonstrable evolutionary advantage. Of course, there may be greater, countervailing influences, which come to overwhelm it and to negate its effects but, as a first approximation, that such a possibility, no matter how minor, is plausible does indeed make such a selection likely, if not inevitable.
It may not be enough to “win” in the cut-throat realm in which the advantage goes to the fittest, but it will confer some advantage to the genes which benefit from that behavioral trait. And, to clarify, in this case I refer to the final scenario in my earlier piece (since the others seemed to rely upon either group selection (which is probably not real) or to simple altruism (which is decidedly counter-evolutionary). The scenario would be one in which the members of the tribe would exist within a typically fierce hierarchy where alpha males get most of the mates but in which an evolutionary “niche” might be carved-out, not only for boylovers, but for those boys who are attracted to them.
The process might be one in which the BL adopts, at strategic times (and quite possibly while still immature himself), a kind of temporary “non-compete” agreement with the dominant and threatening males by foregoing relations with females in the group in favor of boys (or other men, for that matter). He might then better ensure his survival to compete in the more perilous heterosexual arena at a later time.
He might also, through his relations with young males, be getting huge points for benevolently helping to protect the offspring of those same dominant males (thus conferring another evolutionary advantage to his own genes) as well as potentiating the genes of those young males which, while seemingly a non-evolutionary contribution, may well contribute to his own survival through sure joy and a sense of well-being.
Plus, not to leave out the females from this complex dynamic: potential female suitors may well find the demonstrated and praiseworthy nurturance by the “boy lover” to be very attractive, indeed. She may, herself, be something of an anomaly amongst females (who knows?) but she certainly could credibly be a viable (i.e. “reproducing”) part of a diverse community, just like the boylover, who we know constitute primate societies.
So, I say, in that such a scenario is logical and entirely plausible (and absolutely congruent with the experiences of many man/boy relationships), it almost certainly constitutes an evolutionary advantage. Dare I say, it must?
I would assert that, in itself, it may well explain why we exist in some significant, if minority, numbers. We have, in this conception, carved-out an evolutionary niche which might only be destroyed given wholesale, counter-Darwinian, distortions effectuated by human society. In other words, the society within which we now seem to inhabit.
Now, please tell me which evolutionists are likely to embrace such a theory, to give it a fair hearing and to subject it to their viability formulae? 🙂
Those scientists also exist within our society, do they not? So we can only expect such a fair and impartial analysis from evolutionary theorists most daring outliers.
The Gold Standard for seeing who we are is “War, Peace, and Human Nature: The Convergence of Evolutionary and Cultural Views” Hardcover – April 12, 2013
http://www.amazon.com/War-Peace-Human-Nature-Evolutionary/dp/0199858993/ref=sr_sp-atf_title_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1409711385&sr=1-1&keywords=%22War%2C+Peace%2C+and+Human+Nature%22
Rind has been given a copy. Maybe he will see the error he has made.
Linca
Aren’t you exaggerating the dependence of Rind’s theory on warfare? Big game hunting was also very dangerous and required skills best learned by boys from men.
Edmund, author of Alexander’s Choice, a novel
@David Kennerly: moving my response to your comment on evolutionary psychology here.
My complaint was not about your qualifications or experiences. It is neither personal nor pedo-specific. My issue is with the fact that any sufficiently intelligent and knowledgeable person can devise an evolutionary explanation of any phenomenon that is equally credible. It’s not that your explanation is bad, but that evolutionary psychology proves too much! The Bayesian definition of evidence is ‘that which is true more frequently when the hypothesis in question is true than when the hypothesis is false’. One can use Bayes Theorem to derive the strength of a piece of evidence based on how closely it corresponds to reality. One could easily use similar EvoPsych to prove that which is false. Therefor, it fails as evidence.
The only time EvoPsych is sufficient constrained by reality as to be credible evidence is when raw data is pursued and the theory is subjected to hard-core statistical and anthropological analysis. In the absence of that, my prior probability for a given EvoPsych explanation being true abysmally low. It’s not you, it’s the diseased nature of the discipline. I’m far more comfortable accepting that I don’t know why something exists than allowing evolution to become my God Of The Gaps
I’m going to respond to your most recent evolution-based comment here since thin-threads are harder to read.
Firstly, altruism must be adaptive (in one form or another) or it wouldn’t be a human universal (which it is).
Secondly, are you suggesting it might partially be a status seeking mechanism?
Thirdly, there seems to be a lot of conjunction going on here. The conjunction of independent claims into a single thesis lowers the probability of the thesis. This is the insight behind Occam’s Razor.
Fourthly, you seem to be saying that any adaptation that confers a fitness advantage will necessarily increase in frequency. This forgets that evolution is stupid. The progression of natural consequences increases the likelihood of beneficial adaptations spreading but it is nowhere near a guarantee. The likelihood that a beneficial adaptation will spread is = (fitness advantage)*2. That means, if an adaptation confers a 4% advantage (huge by historical standards) it has only an 8% chance of surviving. Which is to say, it is overwhelmingly likely that it will disappear! This doesn’t affect your main thesis but I thought it was worth pointing out.
As it stands, my best guesses as to the origin of BL (in no particular order) are:
1) It only benefits the boy’s alleles. It’s effect on their lovers is non-adaptive.
2) It is an out-growth of alloparenting and it’s origin’s are tied to those of alloparenting.
3) It’s similar to bonobo social grooming practices. This doesn’t explain exclusive orientations, though.
4) It is latent in all humans and is triggered by early (possibly prenatal) environmental influences. This depends on how strongly hereditary pedophilia is. Has anyone studied it’s hereditary variation?
Anyway, I get why you might want to understand origins, but there is no reason to look to evolution to justify anything. Evolution is a blind idiot god who wants you to kill your step-children. Fuck evolution! Human values include such things as health and happiness – not inclusive fitness. Not one should ever decide whether something is good based on whether it’s adaptive. Self-sacrifice is not adaptive! To appeal to evolution is to commit the naturalistic fallacy on a grand scale.
Oops! Where I said “naturalistic fallacy” I meant “appeal to nature”. Sorry.
Agreed. However, it would be harder to dismiss paedophilia as a sickness in need of a cure if its evolutionary origins were shown to be adaptive. The medical profession implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) relies on the assumption that there is something developmentally amiss with paedophiles. Having said that, a wide range of sexual diversity (LGBTQAI) has widely managed to gain a non-pathologised status without appealing (much) to evolution.
I confess I had not realised this, or (more likely) I had forgotten. How so? This is kinship mathematics, right, not an empirical finding?
Deciding whether a given trait is pathological based on whether it’s adaptive is ridiculous. Racism and step-child-murder are both adaptive traits. Non-kin non-reciprocal altruism is quite maladaptive. The determinant for whether something is pathological should be based on the likelihood of causing harm. I know this is a Utilitarian assumption but any other assumption would be crazy. Humans aren’t supposed to consciously maximise their fitness. I don’t care a whit for my inclusive fitness; I care about my happiness. If my priorities were different, I wouldn’t be planning to remove my testes, would I?
This equation (along with the generations to fixation equation) was originally derived from kinship math but was confirmed empirically by the observation of bacterial colonies. Bacteria was used because it evolves quickly (antibiotic resistance is a big problem in medicine) but the mechanisms of natural selection should transfer across all organisms at the macro (mathematical) level.
Oh joy! You’re really educating us here, James! [PS: Or me at least: I shouldn’t speak for everyone.]
Thank you! I’ve been learning quite a lot here too. Particularly from you, David and Linca.
I am reminded of something I heard Arlo Guthrie say a few weeks ago about contemporary folk singers liking the sound of their own music. He did temper that by saying he fell victim also.
Linca
Maybe I’m just not smart enough to figure out the connection but I’m confused. Could you please explain 🙂
“Firstly, altruism must be adaptive (in one form or another) or it wouldn’t be a human universal (which it is).”
I don’t see where I am in contradiction. Unless you’re saying that the adaptation must evolve into a trait shared amongst all members and cannot exist within independent genetic lines.
“Secondly, are you suggesting it might partially be a status seeking mechanism?”
Remember, the organism’s long-term interests (at least within the range of reproductive age) potentiate the viability of the genes contained within that organism. So, yes, the genes benefit by such an enhancement in status. Exactly the same is demonstrated by other status acquisition mechanisms which result in such things as greater fecundity, more sexually attractive features, etc.
“Thirdly, there seems to be a lot of conjunction going on here. The conjunction of independent claims into a single thesis lowers the probability of the thesis. This is the insight behind Occam’s Razor.”
I’m not sure that it should be a single thesis. I think that each adaptation not entirely dependent upon another can, and should, be examined separately, just as we represent myriad individual adaptations (and maladaptions, since few of us are absolutely perfect) which are separate, one from the other. Their viability does not hinge upon their interaction. Certainly the advantages to the boy and those of the man exist entirely separately but that doesn’t preclude them from benefiting mutually. So, I would contend that Occam’s Razor has nothing to say on the matter.
“Fourthly, you seem to be saying that any adaptation that confers a fitness advantage will necessarily increase in frequency.”
No, I’m not. It may even be a one-off. My point was that if an organism survives to reproduce then his genes benefit. They may well find themselves at a dead-end in terms of future replication. So it’s a matter of micro- vs. macro-evolution, if you will. Evolution over time relies upon the myriad incremental enhancements which are comprised of off-chance advantages. So you could say that my hypothesis consists of an off-chance advantage, just as all are, but one which could plausibly be sustained forward through many generations.
” This forgets that evolution is stupid. The progression of natural consequences increases the likelihood of beneficial adaptations spreading but it is nowhere near a guarantee. The likelihood that a beneficial adaptation will spread is = (fitness advantage)*2. That means, if an adaptation confers a 4% advantage (huge by historical standards) it has only an 8% chance of surviving. Which is to say, it is overwhelmingly likely that it will disappear! This doesn’t affect your main thesis but I thought it was worth pointing out.”
I of course realize that. And you’re right that my thesis remains consistent with it.
“As it stands, my best guesses as to the origin of BL (in no particular order) are:
1) It only benefits the boy’s alleles. It’s effect on their lovers is non-adaptive.
2) It is an out-growth of alloparenting and it’s origin’s are tied to those of alloparenting.
3) It’s similar to bonobo social grooming practices. This doesn’t explain exclusive orientations, though.
4) It is latent in all humans and is triggered by early (possibly prenatal) environmental influences. This depends on how strongly hereditary pedophilia is. Has anyone studied it’s hereditary variation?”
I’m not terribly convinced that exclusive orientations are all that common. An entirely homosexual orientation would be a genetic dead-end. They still happen, of course, but my theory says nothing about these dead-ends except, perhaps, that the genes coding for it took things a bit too far for their own good. 🙂
“Anyway, I get why you might want to understand origins, but there is no reason to look to evolution to justify anything. Evolution is a blind idiot god who wants you to kill your step-children. Fuck evolution! Human values include such things as health and happiness – not inclusive fitness. Not one should ever decide whether something is good based on whether it’s adaptive. Self-sacrifice is not adaptive! To appeal to evolution is to commit the naturalistic fallacy on a grand scale.”
Well, now you kind of piss me off. I don’t need evolution to justify anything. My own orientation will remain what it is and well-accepted by me regardless of the their viability within an evolutionary context.
And an idea is only a naturalistic fallacy if it is a fallacy.
I’m hardly an expert on evolution but I did read The Selfish Gene more than thirty years ago (and re-read it, along with Dawkins The Extended Phenotype, more recently. So I’m certainly aware of the moral indifference of the gene.
That’s not what I’m talking about or doing. I’m talking about why man/boy love exists and positing several theories which are demonstrably viable as one-off replications, even if they might be too infrequent to constitute enduring genetic success. But I suspect that they do.
In your ardor to identify a naturalistic fallacy and attack it with Occam’s Razor, you seem to have developed a bit of an idée fixe in which refutation is its own goal and in which the motivations of the theory’s postulator are assumed suspect. Correct me if I’m wrong.
You said “simple altruism (which is decidedly counter-evolutionary)”. Does that mean you were only referring to it as ‘counter-evolutionary’ in that context and not the general case?
“No, I’m not. It may even be a one-off.”
…But didn’t you say “a possibility, no matter how minor, is plausible does indeed make such a selection likely, if not inevitable.” To me ‘likely’ and ‘inevitable’ imply P>0.5. I was pointing out that in pretty much all cases P<<0.5.
“An entirely homosexual orientation would be a genetic dead-end. They still happen, of course, but my theory says nothing about these dead-ends except, perhaps, that the genes coding for it took things a bit too far for their own good. “
Given that homosexuality is ~35% hereditary (by variance) I find it unlikely that there are genes specifically coding for it. It’s probably an early environmental trigger.
…Unless swedes are just very odd.
“Well, now you kind of piss me off. I don’t need evolution to justify anything. “
I’m very sorry! It’s just that I spend so much time around people who try to justify every one of their quirks by coming up with reasons why it’s adaptive. I’m afraid I must have just pattern-matched you onto their group. (It doesn’t help that most of them are anti-feminists.) I had no idea I’d offend you. Can I take it back?
James,
Why would you say altruism, i.e., kindness, cooperation, égalité, fraternity are counter evolutionary? Are you thinking only competition is evolutionary?
If you are you are going to have to say yes to former Drill Sergeant Linca. See you after “Basic”.
Linca
I could have sworn I was the one who just said: “altruism must be adaptive (in one form or another) or it wouldn’t be a human universal (which it is).”
This is the exact perfect opposite of claiming that it’s “counter-evolutionary”. I feel like this thread has dissolved into perpetual misunderstandings on all sides.
That’s a bit sweeping. It could be cultural.
I’ll accept that something may be cultural when it has quantitative variance between cultures. Altruism is universal among humans so I have to assume it’s hard coded. Of course, a random mutation might put it out of commission and cause psychopathy or pathological narcissism, but the underlying biological machinery must be there. Altruism being strictly cultural is about as likely as bilateral symmetry being caused by a careful upbringing.
“Anyway, you might like to know I’m getting deeper into this reading right now. One thing to realise: the more we agree with Wells, the further it takes us from agreeing with Rind’s theory.”
For the benefit of those of us struggling to keep up :), could you expand on this?
See my reply to David Kennerly, who also asked. I expect to be blogging about this before long, if I get my own thoughts a bit clearer. I would also refer you back to my piece in January, The pre-WEIRD world according to Rind. http://tomocarroll.wordpress.com/2014/01/10/the-pre-weird-world-according-to-rind/
Incidentally, Rind disputed my interpretation of Jared Diamond’s view of all this (see Jan. blog), claiming Diamond stands on his side in the “massive early warfare” camp. However, I notice that on the cover of Wells’s book is a warm endorsement from none other than Jared Diamond!
“I would also refer you back to my piece in January, The pre-WEIRD world according to Rind. http://tomocarroll.wordpress.com/2014/01/10/the-pre-weird-world-according-to-rind/”
Ah right got it.. Some input there from A, her earthy commentary riveting reading as always. A bit of a cliché but isn’t that what women are for, to keep us blokes from flying off into orbit with our various theories? I particularly enjoyed reading that she would often wank off 6 or 8 times a day in her mid-teens. She really needs to come back here.
The main point you make in the article is well argued and ought to convince any reasonable person. However, there is one thing bothering me slightly. Your piece is about the treatment of ‘dissidents’ like yourself. What about those who don’t come into this category, who lack either the ability or the inclination to challenge the received view? These people surely also deserve humane treatment in their ‘therapy’ or (as I would prefer to call it), counselling. There is a danger that only the dissidents, simply because of their ‘awkward’ attitudes and behaviour, will be treated as equals, entitled to challenge the system, while the others, who are more amenable, will just have to accept any impositions and bullying that are inflicted on them. Shouldn’t the humane approach in fact be applied to all the clients, not just to the awkward squad? In particular, shouldn’t every client have the right to engage in free and open discussion with the counsellor/therapist about their offending and the issues surrounding it, as far as their own abilities and inclinations permit them to. I’m sure you didn’t intend an elitist interpretation; it’s just that it might be read that way. I guess the concentration on dissidents is tactical–it’s the dissidents who are causing the therapists the most headaches and for whom the standard therapy doesn’t appear to work, so it’s in their case that ATSA can most easily be persuaded (if ‘easily’ is the right word!) to drop this approach. But it just needs pointing out, I think, that ALL the clients are entitled to humane treatment.
Incidentally, I notice that yours was not the only enlightened piece in that particular edition of the ATSA Forum. There’s also one Alejandro Leguizamo arguing against the use of the label ‘deviant’ to describe sex offenders. I Hope this sort of thing will become a habit at ATSA!
As for what to do with the original longer piece, have you considered a short book?
Yes, indeed. Not all clients may want or need to “thrash things out”, but all need to have their evaluation of the therapy taken seriously. Incidentally, I have a friend who is not at all well educated or intellectual but he makes a very stubborn Dissident! Also see next point.
>Incidentally, I notice that yours was not the only enlightened piece in that particular edition of the ATSA Forum. There’s also one Alejandro Leguizamo arguing against the use of the label ‘deviant’ to describe sex offenders. I Hope this sort of thing will become a habit at ATSA!
Glad to receive confirmation that you were able to access the whole edition and that you noticed Leguizamo’s contribution. Taking the academic literature, I was surprised and pleased when doing my research to come across several papers seeking to apply human rights law and principles to SO therapy. These papers acknowledged current shortcomings, offering a strong critique of coercive methods.
But is this all just tokenism? Big corporations, after all, have fancy ethics departments these days giving lip service to environmental concerns, etc, without company behaviour necessarily getting any better. But I don’t think it is mere tokenism in the case of SO therapy. One of the biggest names in the business these days is Tony Ward: his humane/human rights-oriented approach has definitely been gaining traction. I think there is some hope for real ethical advances in Canada, the UK, and elsewhere but in the US things have been getting worse not better, especially as regards the growth in post-sentence civil commitment, where inmates often have “treatment” but with no real hope of release.
Who would read it? Books are too easily ignored. The one good thing about an article in the peer-reviewed literature is that is has official status. Articles can be ignored too, of course, especially when they are expensive, and locked away behind a publisher’s pay wall. But they have stature when cited elsewhere — including by the author in his own books!
‘Books are too easily ignored.’ That depends on the publisher, but, as it’s not my field, I’ve got no specific suggestions.
“There’s also one Alejandro Leguizamo arguing against the use of the label ‘deviant’ to describe sex offenders.”
I noticed that too. You may be interested in reading my tongue-in-cheek blog post about that article at http://fightback385.wordpress.com/2014/09/02/atsa-welcome-to-the-20th-century/
Fascinating! Still, better you than me. Clearly, I don’t have the tolerance you have. In my own court-mandated “therapy” I was, quite obviously, an “entrenched client” in spades. Undoubtedly, I took a certain amount of pride in “contaminating” the group therapeutic environment, so much so that I was very quickly given the old heave-ho like an old incontinent dog or cat no longer fit for life indoors.
Some of my short-lived fellows were delighted with my jaw-dropping proclamations in group while others were horrified and went to our overseers immediately afterwards to insist that my participation be terminated. Obviously, their horror ruled the day. After that, I was compelled to sit, once a week, in a private office in a one-on-one “therapy” session with a dull and unimaginative (and artlessly unsuccessful) reprogrammer of the mind and spirit who was, himself, miserably entrenched. There was absolutely nothing in it for either one of us. Well, that’s not quite true: he was paid handsomely, I’m sure. We just sat, hour-after-hour, facing one another, exchanging barely audible and caustically sarcastic insults, all in an effort to alleviate the deadly boredom and sheer waste of both our time. The waste is what is so memorable. Like the prison before it, just an absurd and cruel WASTE of human life. And for no reason at all, except other people’s cruelty and ignorance.
You see, it’s not just a matter of being entrenched and KNOWING that one is right. It’s also a matter of being well and truly ANGRY. If I were to make a suggestion for any future written submission (to what I see as the enemy camp), it would be to reinforce that point. They have much to answer for, after all.
My original text was a lot more biting. The editor rejected it! He said — and I think he was right — that the aggressive, truculent, style would only get people’s backs up, so they wouldn’t even bother to get to the end of the article. It would definitely have been a waste of time, don’t you think, it they failed to reach the part where I discussed the Fragoso book? An alternative would have been to start with the Fragoso book but I don’t think that would have worked: first of all I needed to establish my credentials not just as “an offender” but also as someone who had taken the trouble to bother with their own literature and thought seriously about it.
Just insulting them wouldn’t work. They are humans too remember (though it is hard!). Monstering them is about as useful as them monstering us.
Persuasive writing has to pay some attention to what an audience is prepared to hear as well as what the writer wants to say, don’t you think?
From your ATSA article:
“Fragoso cannot be accused of propagandising in favour of a child’s ability to consent to sex with an adult because she plainly expresses the opinion that the relationship was harmful to her in many ways, and that such men need treatment. This being the case, I found that the book presented a more powerful challenge to my view that children can consent to sex with an adult than anything else I have encountered in the media or the victimological literature, or even from my face-to-face discussions with adult victims of CSA, of which I have had a number.”
James August 21:
“By way of the future post you’re worried about, my guess is that you’ve decided to qualify your position that consensual adult-child sexual contact is always fine.”
Looks like James was on top of things as usual… I’ve just ordered Tiger, Tiger it’s obviously a must-read! Where do you stand on the consent issue nowadays Tom?
I am certainly more cognisant these days that youngsters who are willing participants may look back years later and retrospectively withdraw their consent, so to speak. This would appear to invalidate their consent.
This re-writing of the past used not to happen. Retrospective surveys until quite recently tended to show a pattern in which people felt damaged by early coercive sex but not by sex they had agreed to. The newer pattern seems to have emerged as a response to a now utterly dominant discourse of victimology that simply wasn’t a factor even 20 years ago, or not the totally hegemonic one it is now.
So it begins to look as though the validity of consent is contingent on the wider culture. But we sort of knew that anyway. The Dutch organisation Ipce, for instance, has long adhered to a set of conditions, or guidelines, under which adult-child sexual activity would be theoretically acceptable, and these involved more than just the child’s consent. One consideration (albeit much debated) was that relationships could only be considered ethical if conducted openly, with the knowledge of parents, teachers etc. The idea was to guard against “guilty secrets” building up, leading (as we now see is possible) to retrospective trauma. Obviously these ethics would only apply if the law had already been changed to accommodate a child’s consent. We are a long way from that, though, so it is all a bit academic.
In general, I feel we are heading in the wrong direction with these ever more more stringent specifications about what constitutes a valid sexual encounter. There are signs that adults, too, are increasingly willing to declare themselves as vulnerable and unwilling to take responsibility for their actions e.g. giving consent after a few drinks (not when flat out drunk, I don’t mean that) and then wanting to refuse responsibility later, claiming they were raped. It’s as though, whenever you do something you regret, you get to change your mind later for free, even if it criminalises someone else. This infantilises women, never mind children.
All in all, I am still inclined to insist that children have a right to their sexual expression and that this should not be vetoed by adults trying (for a variety of reasons) to rewrite their own history. Children are capable of deciding what they like and want. There is no good reason to deny them intimacy and love with another person: sometimes they downright need it.
So, rather than focusing on the questionable validity of consent in the present hysterical circumstances (the law invalidates it anyway so further invalidation by me is somewhat redundant), I’d rather oblige society to look to the plank in its own eye and think about the damage caused by the hysteria.
Yes! Precisely!
John Money believed that sex is ethical between any two entities that reciprocate each other’s sexual interests.
It cannot be said in a more concise way – and at the same time more clearly – than that!
That’s a bit restrictive: what if one of the ‘entities’ is inanimate, or a picture?
What if a non-reciprocal partner is adequately recompensed, financially or emotionally? (That could include some marriages, &c.)
I agree–and yet in another way it’s too lax. since it is not ethical when, even though it reciprocates their sexual interests, it significantly harms one or the other of them in ways that could have been foreseen.
Better: it is not ethical when, even though it reciprocates their sexual interests, it significantly harms one or the other of them in ways that could have been foreseen but could not be compensated for.
“I am certainly more cognisant these days that youngsters who are willing participants may look back years later and retrospectively withdraw their consent, so to speak. This would appear to invalidate their consent.”
Yes, and as you go on to say this “invalidation” of previously given consent seems to be much more prevalent nowadays than before. There is so much hijacking going on that soon we’ll all be forced to wear nappies, perpetrators and victims alike.
I have been extremely fortunate these last few months to have had a dialogue with someone that I abused (I hesitate to use the word, but ok) a very, very long time ago. We have both struggled with the consent issue. I knew from the start that “informed consent” could not have been possible, but more to the point, I have to now concede that “willingness to participate” was given on very shaky grounds. Her memory is that although she liked “to be made to feel special”; the sexual part of this made her feel uncomfortable; but she knew it was a “necessary part of the special relationship”. Whether or not history has been rewritten here is perhaps of little consequence, her wellbeing comes first. But it is frustrating that external influences seem so ready to “help” in the bulk-reconceptualising that seems to be going on. In the end you have to wonder who is abusing who in our society.
Your blogpost deals mainly with therapy and treatment. I’d also like to say that I have been one of the bloody minded clients that regarded therapists as complete idiots, although my dealings with them were outside the judicial system. But having a dialogue with the person that I loved so utterly (to misquote Fragoso, “she was my religion”) has rendered me pretty defenseless. Perhaps worth bearing in mind, at least for some of us intransigents. But this kind of “therapy” would chip away at the perpetrator/victim divide. Conflict resolution always involves movement from both sides, and the prospect of this in child-abuse cases is a bit scary to society at large.
‘“necessary part of the special relationship”’
Reason #1382 why Western sexual norms are fucked up.
I think this touches on the fact that we live in a society where having sex in a romantic relationship is often seen as compulsory – or at least expected. After all, how can two people love each other if they don’t want to “make love”?
This is most obviously harmful to asexuals but it can be problematic for anyone. Some people love someone they aren’t sexually attracted to. Some people feel bad because they aren’t “in the mood” frequently enough.
What’s worse is that there is hardly ever sufficient communication for the other partner to even realise there is a problem. I once read about a couple who had sex once a week despite them both being asexual because they thought they were supposed to and neither wanted to admit to not liking it. This is completely ridiculous.
As I am want to remind everyone, we need to ask ourselves what “sex” really means. We now suffer under sex laws which identify even those behaviors which could easily be considered affectionate as “sexual” and therefore, felonious. This is an extremely important issue which affects childlovers that is not being discussed, even within our community. If we are failing to make distinctions between widely varying behaviors, even in discussions among ourselves, you can bet that society, at large, is coming to only the very darkest conclusions. The assumption that men arrested for sex with boys are certainly performing sodomy is clearly the prevailing view in society. They need to be disabused of this and this issue needs to be put on the table. And it must start with us.
“This infantilises women, never mind children.”
LOL. I find the idea of ‘infantilising’ children to be a bit funny since the verb to infantilising means literally: to treat like a child.