#askbarks

The post I reblogged was in reference to isuggestforcefem/suggestrogen's post a few days ago. I'm going to put the screenshots here and then transcribe it for accessibility.

[Transcription: Four screenshots of a post by tumblr user suggestrogen. The post reads: "Hi! Below is a post a friend of mine wrote, but was too afraid, understandably to post. I've offered to use my platform to share it. (The remainder of the post is in a block quote.) Before I say anything, this post is for those of you who defend other trans women to your very last, women like kinky-robot-girl, Patricia Taxxon, isuggestforcefem, sailatina (sailor-crusader), all the ageplaying transfems on this site who get nuked multiple times a day, etc.. Despite all this support and rhetoric, which I love to see, I do not think many of you are really willing to fully acknowledge that thought-crimes are not real in the case of people attracted to children. For us all to be free, we can leave no one behind, and that includes pedophiles whether you like it or not. The word "pedophile" does not imply action of any kind, it is merely a descriptor. People will say "pedophile" and mean "child abuser". This is stupid and wrong, those terms are entirely separate. If you conflate those two terms to mean the same thing, you might as well say that 'trans woman' is synonymous with 'misogynistic rapist', which I don't think I have to explain to you the wrongness of. I ought to make something clear, I am a trans women, an ageplayer, a victim of real CSA, and I am attracted to adults. With this being told, I want it understood that I, happily, am friends with several pedophiles, and I know for certain they would never hurt an actual child. Now, sure, I imagine many of you would be willing to acknowledge such a thing in your own lives when pressed. However, just this acknowledgement is not the important part here. The important part is to not treat the pedophiles you love, and the pedophiles in his community, as disposable the moment they, or you, are accused of something heinous; be proud to be friends with a pedophile. Defend them. Be proud such a person trusts you with that knowledge. Something you need to be able to do is say a sentence like "no one is free until we all are, and that includes people attracted to children" without immediately quantifying it with "and that does not condone fucking literal children" that second part should be understood implicitly. When a trans woman says she has a rape/noncon kink, do you think she actually wants to rape something, or is inciting literal rape towards herself? No, I don't think you do. Why, then, do you not apply the same rational logic to pedophiles? I am fully willing to say that I have age regressed and subsequently engaged in play with a pedophile whom I love. This does not make me a victim of any kind. It does not make her a predator of any kind. It makes us two consenting adults, engaging in activity we consented to of our own free will. I am close friends with a particular trans woman. I am close friends with a particular pedophile. These statements are entirely separate things. And don't make me fucking say that I know not all trans women are pedophiles. If that was a thought you had while reading this, fuck you. Anyways, one of these statements does not necessitate the other, even remotely. I know all too well that as trans women, speaking up on a subject such as this is an extremely hard thing to do. Harassment fucking sucks, believe me, I know. But I refuse to bend to it, as should you. I refuse to shrink in the face of those who would isolate and kill a friend of mine for the attraction she experiences. Such a type of attraction is just a thing that happens. Are we gonna cast out and isolate the trans women we claim to unwaveringly support for their intrusive thoughts? I would never and neither should you. The moment we let bigots, terfs, tMRAs, transandrobros, and any other anti-transfem hate group isolate one type of trans woman from the rest of our community, we have already lost. Be a safe person for ALL transfems." The screenshots end there.]

I'll also link the post you're replying to that I reblogged, here.

So: If I'm understanding you right, you read a call for restorative justice in ISFF's post. That's a fair reading. I agree with it, namely that I think people who are labelled pedophiles deserve the same human rights to life, dignity, and fair trial that all human beings do. I believe in this for everyone no matter what their crime, even when my emotional responses want to overwhelm that, because that's what a restorative justice mindset requires. Sometimes that does mean grappling with really emotionally difficult disgust responses or desires for revenge, which are even stronger when the victim is a child. If the thrust of ISFF's post was about this, we would not be having this conversation. And yes, I don't think anyone is, as you say, "biologically hardwired to abuse children". That is neither supported by evidence nor consistent with scientific understanding of sexual abuse. There is no biological underpinning known to current psychological science that makes people abuse other people. There are purported brain differences in certain groups labelled with specific diagnoses (in the same way that, like, people with OCD tend to have different hippocampi than non-OCD controls); these cannot be politically neutral, for reasons that would take me the entire length of my bachelor's to explain, and for that reason I am confident in saying that your biology does not dictate choices that you make on whether or not to prey on other people.

That said: That's not what this post is actually saying. It doesn't discuss the fact that "pedophile" is not an ontologically distinct group. It doesn't talk about how that diagnosis is applied, the ways in which a clinical distinction is drawn between pedophilic OCD and paraphilic pedophilia, and it doesn't talk about how those diagnoses are unevenly applied along gender, class, and race lines. It also does not talk about the power + access + motivation model of child sexual abuse, which it sounds like you're referring to here re: "children are the most convenient people to groom and abuse". This post isn't talking about any of that.

What it is saying is that, when someone who self-identifies as a pedophile is accused of "something heinous", you should defend them as your first instinct. It is saying that "I know for certain they would never hurt an actual child". It is also drawing connections repeatedly between trans women as a class and pedophiles as a distinct group, likening support for the two categories to each other. You can see this in 1) the comparison of "trans woman" to "misogynistic rapist"; 2) the comparison of someone identifying as a pedophile to a trans women with a noncon kink; 3) the comparison of someone identifying as a pedophile to trans women with intrusive thoughts; and 4) the preemptive defense of "don't make me say not all trans women are pedophiles"; 5) her follow-up post comparing excluding people identifying as pedophiles from "the community" to the Drop The T movement. Do you see the common thread here, where OP is interweaving the reader's support for Trans Women As A Class with this argument? Do you see where OP is comparing this to "isolat[ing] and kill[ing] a friend of mine"? The implication is that if you don't want people identifying as pedophiles in your social circles then you are personally killing and unpersoning them and also that boundary is somehow transmisogynist, specifically. It conflates the two. (Yes, I know OP is talking about specific people. Most of the audience of this post does not, and you need to read it in the context of being a public blog post on tumblr dot com.) OP gets defensive about this, in fact, in the post itself! Repeatedly! The issue that is being circled around here is that some people do not want to talk to people who are comfortable publicly calling themselves pedophiles. Oh no. People have interpersonal boundaries? No, they should drop those or they're actually a bigot. It's actually so fucked up that they don't want to talk about this, and clearly if they don't, their own abuse wasn't real.

What this does for the reader is conflate the two concepts in their head, even with OP getting snippy about that hypothetical. That is, to my reading, a very blatant attempt to try and emotionally manipulate the audience by making them feel guilty. It implies that trans women and transfeminine nonbinary people need to inherently be in lockstep with this view or else they're betraying the entire community. It positions everyone who is not transfem as an inherent adversary. It also implies that if you disagree you're a transmisogynist. I'm pointing this out because you, anon, are doing the same thing here. Why do you assume I don't know trans women? Why do you assume I don't read posts by, and talk to, trans women? Why, specifically, do you assume that all trans women will be in sync on this topic? That's just not true. Like, I can't even give you sources—what am I gonna do, start citing every random personal post by my friends and loved ones? Trot out a list of trans women I know like I'm playing the I Have A Black Friend card?

I do not believe that "pedophiles" are a distinct group because that is not like… a neutral descriptor. It's not like calling yourself a furry. It's a specific diagnostic label that is almost exclusively applied, in practice, to people who have already abused children. The DSM criteria rely on either action (e.g. abusing a child or viewing child sexual abuse material) or intense, impairing, clinical distress. This is a really thorny and controversial diagnosis, as is the entire paraphilia section of the DSM. I know tumblr likes to handwave all criticism of diagnostic labels as applying equally across the DSM; that's not really accurate. The paraphilias section specifically is a constant working model that does not sufficiently draw a distinction between people with intense distress over their thoughts but have never offended, people who have such thoughts without distress but have never offended, people who have never abused a child but access child sexual abuse material, and people who have abused a child. The argument you're reading into this post about how pedophilia is an incredibly stigmatized label is real and legitimate. The stigma over this diagnosis causes many, many people to avoid seeking mental health resources for fear of judgement.

What I have seen repeatedly online, with over fourteen years in the furry fandom specifically, is that people who are comfortable self-identifying with this term are intentionally making it a significant part of their identity. That's what the self-identification does. It reifies the DSM diagnosis, the stigmatization, and the supposed universal experience, and it gives people an identity to coalesce around and defend. Do you see the insistence that pedophiles are marginalized in these posts? Do you see the comparisons to dropping the T? ISFF, in that post up there, says "I know [my friend] would never hurt an actual child". How? How do you know that? Because your friend says so? Because I've had friends tell me that they totally respect my consent and then try to assault me. People who sexually abuse others—including children!—very often cultivate friends and defenders around them who vouch for their moral integrity. People who sexually abuse children, in particular, groom the people around the child as much as they groom the child. No, my child/partner/whatever couldn't have raped you, they're an honour roll student, it just doesn't sound like them. Your father would never do that, don't mention that ever again. Do you see how this language is meant to prime you to disbelieve any potential reaching out on the part of a victim? Do you see how it's meant to shame people for coming forwards because they're "killing" their abuser? Anyone can abuse someone. Anyone can choose to abuse a child. The group of people self-identifying as pedophiles is not magically immune from that. When abuse happens in your communities, because it will happen, in any and every community, how do you honour that? Do you see, for example, the "a victim of real CSA" in that post, and do you wonder, like I did, what the fuck that means? Are the readers', or a hypothetical critic's, experiences of CSA not actually real? What is the purpose of including that word?

It is legitimate and worth understanding how online stalking is disproportionately targeted at trans women. It is important to remember and familiarize yourself with the ways in which, for example, KF will try to ruin people's lives. It is important, in all cases of purported abuse, to treat the evidence with the same thought and consideration that you would give to any other important topic, and taking transmisogynistic bias into account is part of that. Nobody is debating that. I specifically, in fact, did not talk about this post directly before now, because I have a significant enough following I didn't want to potentially direct more shit in the direction of a trans woman for absolutely no reason and with no personal investment, even though I disagree with her. I am outlining all of this now because you are engaging in a lot of thought-stopping rhetoric and I want you to actually think about this with me. Why, when you saw a post that I reblogged telling white people specifically to think about our insistence that we're immune to social consequences, was your first assumption that I was engaging in a hate campaign?

I don't give a shit about the age regression thing, it's a non-sequitur. I don't care if someone has thoughts. I literally don't. Thoughts don't mean shit. I have severe, life-ruining OCD that is aggressively controlled with medication enough to even let me engage with this. Thoughts just happen. Making the post up there? Writing it down and defending it with your whole chest? That is an action. Abusing children is an action. Pedophilic intrusives are one of the most common kinds that people get; many of those people never go on to abuse a child. Many people with those thoughts in positions of power over children do not abuse those children. There is conscious choice at all stages of child sexual abuse on the part of the perpetrator, and that perpetrator could be anyone, because there is no one kind of person who is A Pedophile. That is what it means to challenge the myth of the Ontologically Evil Pedophile, not… this.

We have no control over our thoughts, only our actions and how we choose to treat others. When you take those thoughts and you start treating them as part of your identity, many people are going to not want to talk to you, because they don't enjoy talking about fucking children, whether or not you have. People removing themselves from your social circle is sometimes a thing that will happen based on the identities that you proclaim, and them doing so is not an attempt to kill you. Forgive me for not being fond of that rhetoric when it has been used against me personally to keep me in abusive relationships. It is not more legitimate when targeted at a wide audience, it's just manipulative.