I am pleased to introduce a new young guest blogger. “Max Woolf” is an independent researcher, anarchist, and BL (AoA roughly 12-17) whose work has been used by individuals and organisations. He aims eventually to archive his developing thoughts on MAP issues, political philosophy, literary criticism, etc., in a forthcoming personal blog on which he is “busily procrastinating” (!). Today, Max deconstructs the concepts of “paedophile” and “victim”, and maintains that the increasing visibility of MAPs will expose CSA dogma for what it is. Like the biblical prophesy of the lion and lamb who will lie down together in peace, he presents an inspirational vision that challenges the language of predator and prey.
Living Under the Shadow of Victims
Discrimination against MAPs bears many similarities to that of other oppressed groups throughout history. However, the struggle for MAP rights and dignity is unique in that MAPs are forced to contend with a powerful cultural image of victimhood attributed directly to their sexuality. Although minority groups have been blamed for all sorts of hardships in society, from crime to war to disease, the marginalisation of MAPs is justified on the grounds that it is said to derive from the actual suffering of individual people (rather than abstractions such as “the nation” or “the race”). This has ensured that attempts made by MAPs to resist their dehumanisation will be automatically interpreted as the heartless taunting of the already traumatised.
Unsurprisingly, increasing the acceptance of MAPs in society has been a difficult challenge. Despite efforts to destigmatise them by focusing on their mental health needs rather than their dangerousness, these efforts have often been met with ridicule [1]. Supporters of MAPs have faced personal and political consequences as their work is seen as undermining efforts to prevent “child sexual abuse” (CSA)[2]. This antagonism is unique in that it not only consists of the generic bigotry applied to sexual minorities (disgusting, perverted, sinful), but has the added rationale of protecting the emotional health of victims [3].
It is necessary, therefore, to challenge the dominant narrative of the CSA victim and expose the ways it is weaponised for the purposes of keeping MAPs in a subordinated position within society. This does not require that the personal experiences of self-identified CSA victims must be held with doubt, disdain, or disregard. However, MAPs and MAP-allies cannot hope to make any meaningful change while leaving undisturbed the social construction of CSA as the only possible interpretation of adult-minor sex (AMS) – intervening merely to distinguish between those who commit such “atrocities,” and those who merely desire to.
Rather, what is needed is the examination of the socio-political processes through which all AMS came to be conceptualised as a profoundly harmful act, specifically via the framing of MAP sexuality as innately pathological and exploitative. In this way, one may trace the developing image of the CSA victim in society and culture as both informing, and being informed by, a vision of sinister sexual degeneracy.
In simpler terms: MAPs are inhuman monsters because they commit CSA, and CSA is a violating and destructive act because it’s committed by MAPs. Only by understanding the evolution of CSA and MAPs in relation to one another, can MAPs and MAP-allies counteract attempts to delegitimise them through the deployment of victim imagery, while remaining sympathetic to individuals’ unique experiences of pain.
To Make a Predator
CSA has no fixed definition. The World Health Organisation (1999, 2006) has gone so far as to state that CSA encompasses any involvement of a minor in a sexual activity that “violates the laws and social taboos of society” [4]. Studies have shown that the “effects” of CSA depend largely on the definition used [5], and that when recruiting participants from the general population and adjusting for minors’ personal perceptions of willingness (in addition to other factors), reactions to experiences labeled “child sexual abuse” are incredibly varied and very often positive [6]. It is generally acknowledged, even among researchers who work within the dominant, preventative framework, that CSA is a moral concept, inappropriately tacked on to social science methodologies which strive for clarity in cause and effect [7].
It does not seem clear, then, why AMS should be universally deplored in society, so much so that the United States Congress, in an unprecedented move, passed a resolution to condemn a peer-reviewed scientific paper on the sole basis that it challenged the view that AMS is “anything but abusive [and] destructive” [8]. Such a militant approach on this point appears even more odd when remembering that before the 1980s, there was no scientific consensus on the effects of AMS, and many clinicians believed that in most cases it had little impact on a young person’s later psychological outcomes [9].
To understand this shift, it is necessary to return to the modern origins of the concept of CSA, beginning in the 1970s with the feminist movement’s war against incest. Combining psychoanalytical theories of latent sexual trauma [10], the new pediatric diagnosis of child battery [11], and feminist interpretations of rape [12], feminists opposed the view that small girls were in a position to refuse sex from older men who wielded power over them. Feminists’ claims as to the frequency of incest were especially scandalising as they amounted to a direct challenge to the nuclear family and the unquestioned access men had to the bodies of women and children who were considered their “property” [13].
Feminist readings of incest as a product, not of a rare sexual disorder, but of male privilege guaranteed to them by a patriarchal society, was (strangely enough) not taken very well by many male commentators, and caused an enormous backlash against what was perceived as an anti-male conspiracy [14]. However, by that point, too many women had come forward with their experiences of childhood molestation for the issue to just “go away.” So, in order to relegitimise the role of masculinity and family in society, the solution was to portray the perpetrators of CSA as a unique type of deviant existing outside of the natural social order [15].
It should come as no surprise that around this time, police orchestrated highly publicised raids against communities of boy-lovers [16], and the gay community began facing intense pressure to rescind its earlier support for consensual AMS [17]. Homosexualising the attraction to minors worked wonders in garnering public support for aggressive policing and profoundly harsher sentencing for age of consent violations, and this trend continued long after the dominant LGB organisations washed their hands of cross-generational love and said to MAPs “I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!” [18].
Eventually, between the late 80s to the early 00s, the cultural figure of the “paedophile” emerged. Through novels by Andrew Vachss, films such as Sleepers (1996), television series such as To Catch a Predator (2004-2007), and the work of celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey, a lurid and titillating image of the minor-attracted person was produced. Psychiatrists suddenly “discovered” that the attraction to minors is a psychological deformity, claiming that such people lack the ability to connect with adults and that they compensate by dominating the weak and vulnerable [19]. Professionals maintained that the thought processes of MAPs cannot be comprehended by ordinary humans, and that, while many MAPs have mastered the ability to present as normal individuals, this is only their attempt to deceive and manipulate the people around them while they violate the purity of innocents.
Victims Needed – Apply Within
While many feminists were still – at least ostensibly – attempting to keep the focus on the patriarchal family and related systems of power [20], it soon became clear that they couldn’t very well declare war on their fathers. And perhaps, at the end of the day, few of them even wanted to in the first place – incest or not. So feminists settled by joining the choir of other concerned citizens, demanding that the police protect their families from the “pedophile next door,” dropping their radical critiques almost entirely. While originally a Marxian-like interrogation of the “everyday” and its hidden injustices, the discourse of CSA soon became a validation of normal society, now tasked with hunting down and expelling the sexual “other.”
Once the issue of CSA no longer threatened the status quo, it was quickly professionalised and coopted by the state. By the time this transformation was complete, it was universally acknowledged as a global emergency. As Lancaster (2017) argues, entire “victim industries” sprung up in response [21]. This includes recovery movements, books on healing, advocacy groups, and new therapeutic techniques that promised a cure for all of the problems “associated” with CSA, from asthma to poor dental hygiene [22]. Law firms, mental health practitioners, law enforcement agencies, academics, activists, news outlets, TV writers, and moral entrepreneurs of all stripes capitalised on this new frontier of social problem claims-making.
The only thing needed now was victims, and lots of them. Numerous scholars have already covered the ways in which academic research on CSA has been designed to generate as many victims as possible and to portray their suffering in the bleakest ways. Such methods run the gamut from sample bias to failure to adjust for third factors to inconsistent definitions of CSA [23]. However, this does not explain how the public image of AMS, outside of the research community, became invariably conceptualised as a horrifically traumatising experience nearly without parallel.
The enormous diversity of AMS had become simplified into the singular narrative of “child sexual abuse,” through the use of what I call “testimonial filters.” By testimonial filters, I mean how some specific stories (and specific ways of telling stories) are embraced, highlighted, and privileged over others, in order to develop a highly scripted narrative that nevertheless appears to have sprung up naturally without top-down guidance [24]. The recovered memory debacle alone contributed greatly to the skyrocketing number of people on TV “courageously” relaying their gut-wrenching ordeals to millions of viewers on the edge of their seats with mouth agape (experiences which in fact never occurred).
That aside, it is important to pay attention to some of the other mechanisms producing victim subjectivities. As has been argued, the status of the victim has become a stable source of political identity in a chaotic and fragmented world [25]. With such romanticised depictions of the CSA victim (now survivor) and the apparent solidarity amongst its communities’ members, it is controversial, though not out of bounds, to consider the reasons why people with even banal or mildly unpleasant sexual experiences as minors may later adopt the victim label, if only to gain some small reprieve in a world that demands constant fortitude of mind and soul [26].
What’s still more interesting than this, even, is the ways in which the voices of minors who self-identify as consenting subjects are structurally invalidated. As the definition of CSA expanded in the public mind to drastically inflate the number of people who fell into the victim category, professionals soon had to contend with the fact that these “victims” themselves so commonly departed from the script they were supposed to follow. The solution was to systematically discount all such testimonies as false consciousness, hiding deep and intensive trauma [27].
Therapists and police investigators have often described the slow and difficult (yet critically important) process of cajoling young people to accept the official view of themselves as victims [28]. Many professionals even consider the high rates of positive experiences as a problem in itself, on the grounds that (a), it reduces rates of disclosure [29], and (b) positive reactions indicate that minors are “learning from their abusers” that such experiences are healthy and enjoyable [30]. For reasons that should be clear, people with positive memories of AMS in their youth have few platforms to share their experiences, and even fewer incentives.
The Centre Cannot Hold
Originally, the MAP was needed to explain the presence of victims in society. Eventually, though, victims were needed to perpetuate the image of the MAP as a morally defective aberration, in need of constant surveillance, control, and cognitive restructuring. The entire typology of “cognitive distortions” of MAPs in sex offender treatment programs – such as the belief that minors can legitimately desire sex with an adult, and refuse sex when they don’t – demands the mass disqualification of youth subjectivities which might, inadvertently, make MAPs feel less ashamed of their sexuality.
Of course, there are many people who can legitimately recall negative sexual experiences with adults as minors. Often, this is the result of abusive behaviour on the part of the adult, or the leveraging of a close/familial relationship. On other occasions it might be due to societal condemnation, or simply to the inherent emotional pitfalls of intimate relationships at every age. In any case, people who have experienced abusive, coercive, or otherwise unpleasant sexual encounters should be heard and validated, obviously.
However, this does not prevent inquiry into broader mechanisms designed to allow only a few acceptable narratives of AMS to enter public view, while silencing or doctoring the rest. As already noted by numerous scholars, the way we think about pain cannot be disassociated from its political function in reinforcing certain hierarchies, sexual hierarchies included [31].
There is a reason why recent efforts by professionals to humanise MAPs in society – even while incessantly maintaining that their support for MAPs is largely for the purposes of helping them remain “offence free” – has been met with such hostility, with many MAP advocates told their activism constitutes a “slap in the face” to CSA victims. It is because the social construction of CSA as a heinous and violating act (irrespective of “small details” such as the minor’s consent) is fundamentally rooted in the conceptualisation of MAPs as nonpersons; to be represented only through TV crime drama, psychiatric textbooks, and mugshots.
The emergence of a MAP identity/movement, even one that is non-contact and committed to upholding the moral standards of society, is a transgressive and radical development. It is also one that the established discourse on CSA cannot tolerate, because the visibility of MAPs as living, breathing individuals rather than phantasmagoric abstractions of wickedness will inevitably demystify CSA and permit the excavation of the countless expressions of sexual diversity that have been stuffed within that single term used to silence all dissent.
[Further blog items continue below, after the notes.]
Notes
[1] Naudé, A. (2022). A Case Study via Sociolinguistic Analysis of Covert Pro-Paedophilia Organisation Registered as a Child Protection Charity and its links to Paedophilia Enablers in Academia and Academic Propaganda. British Journal of Philosophy, Sociology and History, 2(1), 35-59; Farmer, C., Salter, M., & Woodlock, D. (2024). A Review of Academic Use of the Term “Minor Attracted Persons”. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 0(0).
[2] Some notable examples of professionals facing severe secondary stigma for their support for MAPs include Allyn Walker, Jacob Breslow, and Miranda Galbreath.
[3] Nematy, A., Flynn, S., & McCarthy-Jones, S. (2024). YouTube Commenters’ Discourse of Paedophilia: A Qualitative Social Media Analysis. Sexuality & Culture, 28(1), 71-95. p. 82. See also https://www.pennlive.com/news/2022/08/prison-sex-therapist-defends-pedophiles-as-minor-attracted-persons-outraging-victim-advocates.html; and https://www.adamhorowitzlaw.com/blog/2022/05/minor-attracted-persons-a-troubling-phrase/
[4] Cited in Mathews, B., & Collin-Vézina, D. (2019). Child sexual abuse: Toward a conceptual model and definition. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 20(2), 131-148. p. 136.
[5] Haugaard, J., & Emory, R. (1989). Methodological issues in child sexual abuse research. Child Abuse and Neglect, 13, 89-100.
[6] Kilpatrick, A. C. (1992). Long-range effects of child and adolescent sexual experiences: Myths, mores, and menaces. Routledge; Rind, B., Tromovitch, P., & Bauserman, R. (1998). A meta-analytic examination of assumed properties of child sexual abuse using college samples. Psychological bulletin, 124(1), 22; Okami, P. (1991). Self-reports of “positive” childhood and adolescent sexual contacts with older persons: An exploratory study. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 20, 437-457.
[7] Seto, M. (2008). Pedophilia and Sexual Offending Against Children. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. pp. vii-viii, footnote; Jahnke, S., Schmidt, A. F., & Hoyer, J. (2023). Pedohebephilia and perceived non-coercive childhood sexual experiences: Two non-matched case-control studies. Sexual Abuse, 35(3), 340-374.
[8] Mirkin, H. (2000). Sex, science, and sin: The Rind report, sexual politics, and American scholarship. Sexuality & Culture, 4(2), 82-82.
[9] Finkelhor, D. (1979). Sexually victimized children. The Free Press; Malón, A. (2011). The “participating victim” in the study of erotic experiences between children and adults: An historical analysis. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 40, 169-188; Clancy, S. (2009). The trauma myth: The truth about the sexual abuse of children – And its aftermath. Basic Books.
[10] Bates, V. (2012). ‘Misery Loves Company’: Sexual Trauma, Psychoanalysis and the Market for Misery. Journal of Medical Humanities, 33, 61-81.
[11] Hacking, I. (1999). The social construction of what? Harvard University Review. pp. 138-39.
[12] Jenkins, P. (1998). Moral panic: Changing concepts of the child molester in modern America. Yale University Press.
[13] Worrell, M. L. (2001). The discursive construction of child sexual abuse. Open University (United Kingdom).
[14] Angelides, S. (2005). The emergence of the paedophile in the late twentieth century. Historical Studies, 36(126), 272-295.
[15] ibid; Chenier, E. (2012). The natural order of disorder: Pedophilia, stranger danger and the normalising family. Sexuality & Culture, 16, 172-186.
[16] Angelides, S. (2009). The homosexualization of pedophilia. In Homophobias: Lust and Loathing Across Time and Space, 63-82; De Orio, S. (2017). Punishing Queer Sexuality in the Age of LGBT Rights (Doctoral dissertation).
[17] Gamson, J. (1997). Messages of exclusion: Gender, movements, and symbolic boundaries. Gender & Society, 11(2), 178-199; Paternotte, D. (2014). The International (Lesbian and) Gay Association and the question of pedophilia: Tracking the demise of gay liberation ideals. Sexualities, 17(1-2), 121-138.
[18] Matthew 7:23. New International Version.
[19] ATSA. (2005). Facts About Adult Sex Offenders. https://ccoso.org/sites/default/files/import/ATSAfacts.htm; Sonenschein, D. (1998). Pedophiles on parade; Hunter, J. (2008). The political use and abuse of the “pedophile”. Journal of homosexuality, 55(3), 350-387.
[20] Gordon, L. (1988). The politics of child sexual abuse: Notes from American history. Feminist Review, 28(1), 56-64.
[21] Lancaster, R. N. (2017). The new pariahs: Sex, crime, and punishment in America. In The war on sex, 65-125.
[22] Levine, J. (2002). Harmful to minors: The perils of protecting children from sex. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. p. 27.
[23] Okami, P. (1990). Sociopolitical biases in the contemporary scientific literature on adult human sexual behavior with children and adolescents. In Pedophilia: Biosocial dimensions (pp. 91-121). New York, NY: Springer; Kilpatrick, A. C. (1987). Childhood sexual experiences: Problems and issues in studying long‐range effects. Journal of Sex Research, 23(2), 173-196.
[24] I am drawing here from the “propaganda model” of communication developed by Herman and Chomsky (1988) in Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. Pantheon Books.
[25] See, for example, Best, J. (1997). Victimization and the victim industry. Society, 34(4), 9-17; Brown, W. (1995). States of injury: Power and freedom in late modernity. Princeton University Press; Bumiller, K. (1992). The civil rights society: The social construction of victims. JHU Press.
[26] Davis, O., & Dean, T. (2022). Hatred of sex. U of Nebraska Press. pp. 95, 120.
[27] Angelides, S. (2019). The fear of child sexuality: Young people, sex, and agency. University of Chicago Press; Yuill, R. A. (2004). Male age-discrepant intergenerational sexualities and relationships (Doctoral dissertation, University of Glasgow); Grondin, A. M. (2011). Thinking outside specious boxes: Constructionist and post-structuralist readings of ‘child sexual abuse’. Sex Education, 11(3), 243-254.
[28] For numerous statements to this effect, see the Newgon page: List of conflicting statements by victimologists.
[29] Lahtinen, H. M., Laitila, A., Korkman, J., & Ellonen, N. (2018). Children’s disclosures of sexual abuse in a population-based sample. Child abuse & neglect, 76, 84-94.
[30] Haaken, J., & Lamb, S. (2000). The politics of child sexual abuse research. Society Vol. 37 No. 4; p. 7-14. http://www.just-well.dk/abusepol2.pdf
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Your host resumes:
FREE PLUG FOR KARL’S “CUTE BOYS” BOOK
Being featured in a sex-negative, transphobic, feminist attack-bitch online magazine may not be the ideal free plug for a MAP’s new book, but a lengthy recent article (well over 1100 words, with four photos, no less) in Reduxx is a tribute of sorts to Karl Andersson’s Impossibly Cute Boys: The Healing Power of Shota Comics in Japan.
Such an extensive, detailed, treatment inevitably conveys the message that this is an important work, even though the Reduxx writer’s obvious intention is a scandal-mongering take-down. Not that obvious, though: the style is quite restrained, with a faux sophistication that could come from a credible review, including a few actual passages and quotes of which the author himself might almost approve.
Shota, for instance, is helpfully explained as “a shortened version of shōtarō complex”, which “refers to comics, cartoons, and other forms of visual media which focus on young boys in erotic and sexualised situations.” So far, so good. We might argue with “sexualised” rather than “sexual”, but the next bit goes more carelessly wonky: “The boys are primarily depicted as prepubescent, often having hairless bodies and very small features.”
Small features? Really? One of the most distinctive aspects of “cute” depictions is that they exaggerate, not reduce, the size of the child’s eyes and head, making them look babylike – as may be seen on the cover illustration of Karl’s book. I suppose the writer might have button noses in mind but not little cocks. I doubt the book shows any of the latter (it wouldn’t be available through Amazon in that case), and any stiff boy dicks shown in illicit shota are surely never going to be depicted smaller than life-size.
That said, a peculiar feature of classical art (Greek and Roman) is that statues of naked young males, while they invariably look athletic and quite muscular when depicting teens or older figures, tend to be given tiny genitalia. How weird is that? The only males shown as well endowed (and with an erection) are the mythical satyrs, who were comically ugly and always horny as hell. But I digress.
Even where Reduxx insinuates that Karl is hiding something, they struggle to land a glove because he has always been strikingly (scandalously!) candid. Describing his promotional YouTube vid for the book, Reduxx claims he “neglects to mention” that Manchester University launched an inquiry into the circumstances of his PhD research. But this is fake news! Towards the end of the video he announces that his book includes an entire “bonus chapter” focused on the Manchester debacle.
More positively, Karl also tells us his is the first book on shota in English, which not only goes into the history of the art but also expands into a “theory of play”, a “philosophy of boy worship”, and even a “theory of how humans work”. Sounds fascinating.
The only reason I haven’t already read Impossibly Cute Boys myself is because I first want to clarify my own thoughts on “cuteness” independently, as far as I can, without being overly influenced by Karl’s undoubted expertise. I am working on it.
STRIPPING VICAR WAS A NIPPER
A child drag artist was featured on Heretic TOC a few years ago. Now I can report on a 10-year-old boy’s wildly risqué strip act. On ice, no less, which suggests frostbite might compete for the biggest risk involved, along with Mum and Dad being referred to Social Services.
But, hey, this was a while ago, when folks were more relaxed about the antics a sexy kid might get up to. This was back in the early 1990s, when the young ice-skate dancer in question came up with his imaginative “stripping vicar” act. He started the routine in a clerical cassock. When this came off, his “vicar” was wearing only black stockings and lacey underwear.
How many of these items were also whipped off and tossed into a whopping and hollering crowd was not laid bare, alas, when the act came to my attention last month thanks to straight-laced BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs.
By this time the little vicar had gone on to fame and fortune not as a raunchy performer but as a prolific playwright. For this was James Graham, who gave us a string of politically-themed plays and is more recently known for Dear England and the mega-hit Sherwood TV series.
As the celebrity guest on the venerable DID show, Graham refused to put a label on his sexuality, but did reveal his lovers had been both females and males. Had his vicar act given him a sexual buzz? Unsurprisingly, that question was kept firmly under wraps.
WHY ARE NIPPERS CALLED NIPPERS?
The word “nipper” in my previous cross-head has a nice ring in connection with “stripper”, which is why I used it. But I had my doubts. When we talk about nippers, don’t we usually mean toddlers rather than 10-year-olds? Isn’t it another word, like “rug rats” or “ankle biters”, best applied to ground-level little animals, who might gnaw or nip at below adult knee height?
Well, no. I checked it out, and the word turns out to have a historically revealing origin, one that reminds us of a bygone era when kids – not toddlers, but small kids nevertheless – were taken seriously enough to be given a responsible job.
It’s a seafaring term. It’s all to do with the surprisingly (for land-lubbers like me) complicated business of weighing anchor manually, using a capstan. Here’s the key bit of an online description.
The anchor cable was lashed to the messenger cable with bits of rope called nippers… As a nipper reached the cable hatch a small boy (called a Nipper) would untie the lashing and run up to the forward bulkhead to tie it onto the cable that was just coming through the hawse hole.
So the Nipper’s job was to “nip” a sailing ship’s anchor cable to the endless belt turned by the capstan when the anchor was being weighed. Now you know.
But the more interesting bit for most of us is that small boys (as young as eight or so) were taken on as sailors and entrusted with this crucially important task.
What’s more, in the Royal Navy in the 18th century, “young gentlemen” could even achieve the officer rank of midshipman as young as 13, as will be understood by the many BL fans who saw Max Pirkis play just such an early teenager in Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003), a film based on the nautically accurate novel by Patrick O’Brian – a role in which Pirkis was praised for making us believe he could lead sailors into battle despite his young age.