7 things I learned about being a man, from talking to child abusers

How we can fix the boom in downloading of child abuse material.

Five years of investigating & writing about child abuse, and the global market for this is booming, and abusers getting younger. The two guys running the abuse forum we wrote about last year were 25 and 26 years when arrested. They were 21 when they went on the dark net, searching for child abuse material. At SXSW, Julia Cordua from the organization Thorn said that he majority of people arrested for downloading child abuse material are under the age of 35.

And they are all men. Yes, there are female abusers and downloaders as well, but the vast majority are guys. So we need to address this as a male problem.

[Our last two documentaries have been made in English, if you crave more after reading the 7 points:]

My main question to myself for the last 4–5 years have been: What the hell???? What is wrong with us?? Are so many of us guys really _that_ emotionally stunted that they enjoy this? Is there something in all of us men that we share with the abusers and downloaders? I mean, since this is a male problem this must somehow be connected to being a man. Are there traits that men have more than women, that may be exaggerated among the abusers and downloaders?

It must be.

We need to address this. After having talked to dozens of people connected to this economy — downloaders, abusers, victims, investigators and therapists, here’s what I’ve learned:

1: Downloading abuse pics is about control. Health comes from feeling in control of your life. Many of these guys feel utterly powerless in their own lives. The reasons for their feelings of powerlessness are legion, but these men choose to regain their feeling of control by watching the abuse of a child: By choosing when to download the abuse material, choosing when to watch it (and in some instances: choosing what kind of abuse the child must suffer), they feel they have power & are in control.

[Side note: Do they really believe they have any power over a child whose abuse has already happened? Yes. It is weird, but in cases like these (as well with the case of televised ISIS behadings), the gaze turns time backwards: Downloading the video creates the recorded act.]

For these guys, abusing others come from a lack of control and power over themselves. If they are given another, more effective and long lasting way to gain this, they probably would stop downloading. How do we give these guys a feeling of control over their own lives?

2: People enjoy scary shit, and have always done so. We need to experience terrible and/or life altering things. Without it, we let others experience it on our behalf.

This is an important one, and a difficult one. We all need life altering experiences. They give meaning to our lives. Most life altering experiences are terrifying, terrible and involve some level of pain. Birth is the obvious one.

Guys need life altering experiences as well. Many of the men I’ve talked to say that looking at abuse material is only a part of their search for shitty things to watch. One called it “a kind of mental extreme sport”: What is the worst thing I can manage watching?

He was just as repulsed by watching child abuse as you and I. But he wanted these feelings, because they made him feel alive. Perhaps this is why people gathered to look at public executions in the middle ages (well, in any age up until.. our days).

This guy craved the feeling of having a life altering experience, and thought wrongly that any terrifying, terrible experience would give him that. This is a usual mixup.

It is a fact that our modern society has removed many of the life altering experiences people used to have (any social anthropologists reading this?). The world has gone the way Steven Pinker told us: Streets are less violent, public executions and torture is banned, superstition and its rituals are disappearing. This is all good. But humans need liminal experiences. Some manage to find these life altering events in football, spring break, psychedelics or other arenas that are more or less healthy and/or mostly harmless. Others turn to extremism or child abuse.

3: It is about feeling as a man. The most dangerous animal is a man who feels he is being denied the identity as a man. Closely connected to pt.1 & 2.

What is a man? Who knows. But I know this: People with a need to be accepted as being a man (or “a Man”), or a feeling that they’re being denied this, may go to great lengths to feel other sees them as a man (sorry, “Man”). Many of these guys may have a narrow view of what is male (keywords: top dog, alpha, power, strength/strongest, hierarchy), or live among people who has it.

Gender identity is closely connected to control over own life, and meaning.

4: It is about having scary creepy feelings that are being accepted — as feelings — by you and the ones around you.

None of the downloaders or abusers I’ve talked to, had ever told anyone else. The two guys behind the child abuse forum we wrote about last year (one from Canada, one from the U.S.), had never talked to anyone, either. The Canadian had tried talking to a psychologist, who told him he would “just have to deal with it for the rest of his life”, and that was it. The American hadn’t dared talk to anyone.

None questioned their urge and asked if their desire for child abuse might come from another need. No one tried to see if they could alleviate their perceived desire by regaining control of their life in another way. No one suggested other ways to experience real life altering, liminal experiences.

5: If the downloaders and abusers I’ve talked to could choose between abusing a child or being understood, i believe most of them would choose to be understood.

…so they went to abuse forums online, to people who could understand their urge for looking at child abuse as a normal one. As the American told me in his last letter:

“But in this community, the only place you can go to, there is all the illegal material waiting for you to view it. It is like being at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in a bar, when the beer is free and all around you, when all your friends are trying to shove it down your throat.”

People: This is where we send our young men. This is where they may end up going if they feel alone in losing their powers, masculinity, identity, meaning of life.

It is our responsibility to give them somewhere else to go.

6: The fact that so many men are searching for abuse material, is a failure of society to find a way for these guys to be men and use their terrifying strength for good. It is in the worst of us we find the seed to the best of us. Read Jordan B. Peterson and Slavoj Zizek.

7: By helping the guys looking for child abuse material, we minimize the market → fewer abuse victims. Hundreds of thousands of people — most of them young men — are every day harming children as well as themselves by downloading child abuse material. The police can’t arrest all of them. We can’t police away this massive problem. We need another way.

Thanks.

[I have asked people for other points that need to be added. There are obviously many.

My point no. 8 would be something to do with lack of empathy. Combine lack of empathy with curiosity/the wish for life altering experiences, and you will find acts that very well may be labelled ‘evil’.]