Since tumblr introduced the new rules regarding sexually explicit content, we have seen a huge influx of self-identified paedophiles on twitter, and arguments are now being made in favour of child sex doll industry and including P into LGBT+.

So this comes down (as always) to men believing that another man’s enforced celibacy, or inability to orgasm in whatever way he wants, is so tragic, something has to be done about it. So far as a society, we have put this belief into practice by providing something akin to “cum dumpsters” for orgasms of such men (prostitutes, porn, sex dolls, wives before marital rape was an offence) and to hell with the fact that none of those decreased the risk of sexual assault in the wider community, in any appreciable way.

If twitter conversations are any indication, a man will now waltz in and demand a “citation”, while refusing to do his own research into this topic, or to employ his brain and notice that prostitution and porn existed for thousands of years (where prostitutes and pornographic images played a part of flesh and blood or 2D equivalents of sex dolls) and it did nothing to eradicate sexual assault, which remains at endemic levels when we look at the numbers of victims. Bonus points are awarded every time this man makes arrogant appeals to authority (usually his own) and claims that “most therapists agree with him” (as if that’s true) or that the therapists themselves are entirely free of bias and the only authority that should be consulted in conversations about dangerousness of paedophiles.

Meanwhile, the idea of providing paedophiles with child sex dolls isn’t a revolutionary act or a new hope for a cure. It’s just a creation of another cum dumpster, that might be slightly less dangerous on the surface because it doesn’t require actual rape to make it, but it serves the same purpose human cum dumpsters have served for a very long time and there is no reason to believe it won’t have the same effect on those who use it – helping them to escalate into sexual violence.

There is an argument for scientific curiosity, and while I might think that allowing paedophiles to use child sex dolls for practice runs of their molestation fantasies is a supremely stupid and dangerous idea, there is a way to interrogate that hypothesis more safely than to encourage production and free sale of child sex dolls in the community. For example, by doing a study on incarcerated paedophiles whereby these dolls would be manufactured by medical prosthetic companies and conclusions could be drawn without endangering children in the community. Of course the Geneva Convention forbids experimentation on prisoners for all kinds of ethical reasons, but the the alternative is even more unethical, considering potential harms.

Two things should be mentioned. Sexual Offender Treatment Program had to be stopped and it was found that “Group treatment may ‘normalise’ individuals’ behaviour. When stories are shared, their behaviour may not be seen as wrong or different; or at worst, contacts and sources associated with sexual offending may be shared.”

This is direct evidence that encouraging paedophiles to organise into online clubs and support groups (something many paedophile activist groups and individuals are currently doing) where they could feasibly share their fantasies and roleplay victim and offender, would actually increase chance of offending.

There is also evidence of benefit for therapies that aim to redirect sexual attention of paedophiles to more appropriate targets, such as adult women. So again, this is empirical evidence against encouraging paedophiles to direct their sexual urges toward extremely realistic looking yet completely passive and compliant child sex dolls, if our aim is to reduce harm to children and help paedophiles to both not offend and to get relief from their obsession with child molestation.

In that sense, advocating for child sex dolls in treatment of paedophiles is no different to selling guns in supermarkets, refusing to implement meaningful gun control laws, scratching one’s head about all the school shootings and gun crime, while insisting that constitutional right to buy guns trumps the constitutional right to not be shot.

Extraordinary claims have to be supported by extraordinary evidence, and yet men who advocate for child sex doll industry have provided no such thing, but they have been awfully quick to accuse women who object to it, of “moral panic”, “ideological rants” and “ideological profiteering”. This last accusation, notably, comes perilously close to gaslighting, considering that the only people who will actually profit are the billion dollar industry that makes the dolls and men who get sexual pleasure out of using them, not women and children who are disproportionately victims of sexual violence.

Which brings me to another extraordinary claim – that men who declare sexual interest in molesting children can be trusted when they say they are “no contact paedophiles”, and that P should be included into LGBT+.

Paedophiles lie a lot, especially about their level of dangerousness. They’ve historically forced children to marry them (and still do in some countries) so they can abuse them with impunity. When they’re caught grooming, molesting, or using child abuse images* (see note at the end of the article), they protest their innocence despite all evidence to the contrary, and their passive aggressive rage usually takes the form of claiming to be falsely accused and the real victims, while describing their victims as perpetrators (child seduced them, didn’t you know?). More significantly, paedophiles groom therapists, just like they groom children, parents and society, and grooming has one goal – to gaslight others into ignoring red flags, which enables paedophiles to abuse more easily.

Also, paedophiles typically don’t disclose their fantasies about molesting children or their history of using child abuse images (or history of offending unless they’ve been caught) when they apply for jobs in which they’ll get to work with children, not because they “fear discrimination” but because they fear being denied access to potential victims.

If they disclosed that history they would, under current laws, be denied such employment and quite possibly reported to the police, but it’s also about insight. Any paedophile who has insight into potential dangerousness of his fantasies and compulsion to translate them into real life acts, won’t want to apply for the jobs that bring them into close contact with children in the first place. But we know we can’t rely on insight, or a paedophile empathising with his victim, which is why we have safeguarding frameworks.

In fact paedophiles typically gravitate towards positions that would give them access to victims. There are paedophiles who are paediatricians, child talent agents, babysitters, school teachers, sports coaches, priests, police officers, social workers, child charity employees, psychologists, judges, the list goes on, and all these (mostly) men have one thing in common – they’ve gone to extraordinary lengths to channel their careers into having access to children and they lied along the way about being non-dangerous.

Yes some paedophiles are low IQ individuals who suffer from sexual immaturity and poor impulse control due to brain damage, but many are intelligent and have made their life’s work out of finding ways to translate their obsession with child molestation into reality, and to get away with it without being caught.

So when someone claims that P belongs in LGB+ and should be given the same rights and protections as gay people, what they are actually advocating is marriage equality (which in paedophile’s case would be manipulating a child into marrying them), anti-discrimination at work (which would make refusing to employ a paedophile in a kindergarten a case of “employment discrimination”) and making anyone opposed to the above guilty of “paedophobia”** (see note at the end of the article). By saying paedophilia is sexual orientation just like homosexuality, they are equating same sex attraction between consenting adults to attraction to child molestation, while demanding “citations” as to why this would be dangerous to children. And when the evidence is provided, they either refuse to believe it, dismiss the source or they shift goalposts, while never answering difficult questions that would make every normal person stop and think about the pitfalls of what they’re advocating.

This mirrors exactly the bad faith arguments transactivists use to justify attaching T to LGB, which has lead to abuse of anti discrimination laws meant for homosexuals and allowed men with sexual fetishes to identify as women and force their way into female prisons (where they’ve already raped women), rape crisis shelters (where they’ve already raped women and near bankrupted some shelters by suing them for “employment discrimination”), women’s sports (where they already dominate and are allowed to have testosterone levels and bodily changes that would see women kicked out for doping) and women’s bathrooms and locker rooms (where they already commit offences of exhibitionism, voyeurism and even assault).

Many of us have been fighting the trend in law, ethics and logic of bending over backwards to prioritise male needs for sexual gratification and validation over the safety of women and children – and now we have another contender in the fight, paedophiles and their enablers and apologists.

Worst of all is the practical misogyny involved in dismissing women’s concerns in conversations about sexual violence, and bad faith arguments which are asserted with impunity. For example, just because there are some paedophiles who haven’t, allegedly, molested a child yet, doesn’t mean that they haven’t abused children by proxy, by using child abuse images. And if there is a single therapist that can prove, beyond any reasonable doubt (keeping in mind the grooming, and the lies and the DARVO) that there is a group of paedophiles that have most certainly never molested or groomed or viewed images of child abuse, I’d like to see that evidence. Because without being psychic, the only thing that can be proven is absence of conviction/getting caught, not the other way around.

I’d also like to compare the numbers of that hypothetical group of proven non-offending paedophiles with numbers of actual sex offenders and their victims, and then I’d like to have a conversation about what ushering marriage equality, prevention of employment discrimination, laws against “paedophobia” and encouraging paedophiles to march in Pride marches, would do for safeguarding frameworks and indeed for treatment that aims to reduce offending.

My position is that it would do nothing for either, in fact it would increase harm to children by normalising fantasies about child molestation and by putting state power behind paedophile grooming tactics. It would dismantle safeguarding frameworks in a similar way that transactivism is already doing, and it would make it near impossible for victims to discuss what was being done to them without them being accused of “paedophobia”.

We need to circle right back to the existing laws that prevent paedophiles from marrying children, that allow employers to refuse to employ paedophiles in jobs that bring them in close contact with children and that allow us all to be concerned about paedophiles manipulating their way into easier access to victims without making us guilty of a ”hate crime”, in the same way that we are circling back to the sex exemptions under the Equality Act that prevent men from entering women-only spaces.

The laws that safeguard children from paedophiles, and allow LGBT+ community to exclude paedophiles, are here because the danger of not having these safeguards has been clearly established in our society, and yes with studies and “empirical evidence”. So why are certain people ignoring the reasons these laws already exist? Why are they focusing discussion on portraying (potential) perpetrators of sexual crimes as “victims”? Why are they calling for empathy toward paedophiles while accusing people who focus on protecting their victims of “moral panic”? We have plenty of historical evidence that paedophile rights activism has always done this, and it has been repelled each time because it was proven to be dangerous, so what makes this iteration any different?

NOTES:

* I decided to replace the well known term “child porn” with “child abuse images”. Thanks Mumsnetters for pointing out that we shouldn’t go along with any terminology that obscures the reality of this practice.

** I used the erroneous term “paedophobia” (deliberately in quotation marks) because it’s also part of the vernacular and is being bandied about a lot, however the correct term is “paedophiliphobia”,

FURTHER READING (click on the links)

Exploring the implications of child sex dolls

Dr EM analyses Pedophile Manifesto

PIE Paedophile Manifesto

How did the pro-paedophile group PIE exist openly for 10 years?

The three dimensions of online child pornography offending

Pessimism about pedophilia

The hidden offenders

Child sex dolls help catch previously unknown suspected paedophiles