Untangling Trauma

If you teach a 13 year old that sexual contact isn’t evil inherently, but can be shared as a mutual expression of trust with their peers then explain to them how to have that experience safely, then shockingly, if some shit goes horribly wrong, not only do they now have the information necessary to know it went horribly wrong, but they have the language necessary to tell someone else that it went horribly wrong.

Like, yes, that makes sense. 26 year old men can absolutely be the object of pedophilic attraction, and sex with 26 year old adults is completely interchangeable with child molestation.

This essay was written in response to a personal friend of mine asking, “but doesn’t fictional character shipping that involves two or more underage characters normalize the idea of seeing children as sexual beings, and lead to an increase of child predation?”

My friend’s identity is not going to be mentioned here.

The following is the raw text of my response to that person.

Okay, so, the first thing regarding the misapplication of “normalization” topedophilies, is that it willfully refuses two things.

First, it refuses to acknowledge the actual social status of people with pedophilic impulses. It’s horrendous. I don’t like looking at little kids, hell, all my Questionable Ships are post pubescent anyway, with kids ranging from 15 and up, and I have literally had police reports filed against me. For reblogging homestuck art on the internet.

That’s what happens to people six levels removed from pedophiles.

Actual pedophiles spend most of their lives waiting to die, because their social standing is unbelievably negative- even if they have never done a damn thing in their life. Even if their pedophilia is readily classed as not one but two different severe psych illnesses in every diagnostic manual since the 40s. Even if study after study have shown that getting pedophiles psych help makes the world safer by reducing victimization rates and teaching people how to control themselves safely.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/oct/16/how-germany-treats-paedophiles-before-they-offend

Literally, normalization of pedophilia instead of demonization, would make a safer world, because people could get help.

IDK if you have any experience with intrusive thoughts, but that’s the defining feature of POCD, the less common of the two pedophilia disorders. Sufferers of POCD have both the lowest rates of child abuse, several times lower than the general population, and some of the lowest quality of life. Because they are pedophiles, because their brains are wired wrong and they literally cannot seek help because the act of seeking help is literally illegal in most countries. Basically the only place where there’s psych laws in place to protect nonoffending pedophiles and let them get help is Germany.

http://louisvilleocdclinic.com/pocd.php

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/culturally-speaking/201212/could-i-be-pedophile-the-worst-kind-ocd

http://www.ocdspecialists.com/pedophile-ocd/

For sufferers of PD, pedophilia disorder, the more common of the two, there are basically two ways that people deal with nonoffenders. The first is sexual therapy that gets them to associate children and subsequent arousal with extreme pain, nausea, etc, through the use of various aversives. This has been shown to work, but at the cost of quality of life. It doesn’t actually teach pedophiles how to deal with their dangerous urges or improve their quality of life, it just makes them “safer” by making them experience trauma reactions any time they are near children.

Imagine giving yourself PTSD specifically so that being in a room with a child makes you suffer a severe flashback or panic attack. That’s the goal of aversive therapy for nonoffending pedophiles. It’s really pretty fucked up. 

Unsurprisingly, rates of self harm and suicide are sky high. (In fact, these are the exact same techniques used in Conversion Therapy, because of course, non-straight orientations used to be classes as paraphilias too, and unsurprisingly, it has the same kinds of violent, traumatic outcomes).

http://www.livescience.com/17519-treating-pedophiles-therapy-challenge.html

http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/291419-treatment#d9

And the alternative style of therapy is to practice risk reduction, impulse control, and safe outlets. It’s a group therapy system primarily practiced  in Germany. And it is wildly successful. By giving people supportive environments, psych tools to resist impulses, the safety to freely discuss their lives, and the comfort to associate genuinely harmless articles such as lines on a piece of paper which have never in any way been related to an actual child- a situation in which there is no victim- safe outlets are provided that improve overall quality of life, and make it possible for those impulse control and risk reduction strategies to work.

https://www.dont-offend.org/story/85/3885.html

https://www.dont-offend.org/story/84/3884.html

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25471337

Now, of course, this entire thing focuses intensely on the people who do an actually nonmajority of CSA offenses. The majority of offenses are opportunists (people who see that children make ideal victims because they have no power to fight back, rather than because of an attraction), and other children/teens. The kinds of people who actually would consume artistic depictions of fictional characters in underage sexual positions make up well under half of offenders.

http://time.com/3486493/preventing-child-sex-abuse-stephen-collins/

http://www.themamabeareffect.org/understanding-abusers.html

http://www.smart.gov/SOMAPI/sec1/ch3_typology.html (Note: Do not confuse high likelihood of recidivism, that is to say “doing it again”, with likelihood of doing it at all, which is significantly lower).

For that matter, some 90% of pedophiles don’t engage with artistic content depicting underage sexual activity anyway:

http://www.fairplayforchildren.org/pdf/1299571820.pdf

The vast majority of such people are people dealing with trauma.

Which brings us to the “shipping to cope” argument. First of all, tagging on a disclaimer that says “oh, except you, you’re not disgusting” is a ridiculous abuse tactic, and I thank you for never pulling that shit where I can see it.

Secondly, this is a mechanism that has been both self prescribed and suggested by doctors for decades, to help explore trauma in a nonthreatening way, and come to terms with it, and it works. Taking those tools away from victims without very very strong evidence is just fucking spiteful. And there is no strong evidence.

http://www.hektoeninternational.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1896

http://www.amazon.com/forum/ptsd?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=Fx62GYT1V24VKV&cdThread=Tx33CSP68UPC9F0

http://eprints.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/334/6/Exploring%20taboo%20issues%20in%20professional%20sport%20through%20a%20fictional%20approach.pdf

Thirdly, by limiting content consumption and creation to only survivors, instead of majoritiatively survivors, as has always been the case, we end up in a situation where there is no supply and huge demand. In addition, we create the notion that the only people who engage with this kind of media are severely broken, which makes the beneficial aspects of it less fucking beneficial. Nonsurvivors and the normalization of “dangerous/bad ships” is one of the things that makes it such a powerful tool for recovery.

That’s not to say it shouldn’t be tagged, filtered and sequestered, but rather, that accessing these sequestered areas should be fucking free and easy, not heavily restricted by a bunch of people who want you to whip out your entire history of trauma so they can decide if you’re good enough.

Which is ANOTHER thing that happens, btw. And another thing that most survivors can’t actually fucking do, because for so many of us, a major component in that trauma is telling parents, teachers, pastors, whatever, and not being believed. Why would we ever tell some fucknut on the internet.

http://www.vachss.com/guest_dispatches/grooming.html

Now, there’s the grooming argument. The claim that people will use porn of fictional characters the child likes, to ensure that the child has sex with them. First of all, there has never been any evidence that this occurs with any frequency. When it comes to grooming, the two most common methodologies are leveraging your power as an adult (because I said so) and bribery (If you play with me, you will get a new toy after).

http://laurelhouse.org.au/?page_id=36

http://www.pandys.org/articles/sexualabusegrooming.html

https://victimsofcrime.org/media/reporting-on-child-sexual-abuse/grooming-dynamic-of-csa

http://www.vachss.com/guest_dispatches/grooming.html

Between those and the fact that the amount of stigma surrounding child molestation means that children are never fucking listened to when we tell “responsible adults” what is happening to us, there’s no need for child abusers to go around scouring deviantart and tumblr for pictures of IDK Steven and Connie fucking. It’s a ludicrous amount of effort for a near zero payoff that could be much more easily achieved by just saying “do what I tell you, I’m an adult.”

I have heard of one, one person for whom fanart porn was a factor in their grooming, and it was only barely a factor as compared to threats of punishment from the adult in the scenario.

By far a more efficient use of everyone’s time, rather than stealing tools away from people who need them to recover from trauma or prevent inflicting that trauma on children, would be to actually listen to children. To actually listen to survivors who need these communities to recover and live with themselves. To listen to doctors who are keeping their patients from destroying children’s lives by giving them safe outreach. By listening to children when they say that their babysitter is making them do weird shit.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/overcoming-child-abuse/201404/10-reasons-why-parents-dont-discuss-child-sexual-abuse

https://1in6.org/men/get-information/online-readings/others-who-were-involved-or-not/why-do-adults-fail-to-protect-children-from-sexual-abuse-or-exploitation/

But instead of doing things that actually reduce rates of harm, there is a strong focus on doing things that look helpful but aren’t.

Oh god I didn’t even get into the “hiding” argument either. Okay, just briefly.

A society that demonizes pedophilia as inherently evil instead of as a disease for which there are effective treatments, and which makes those treatments illegal instead of embracing them as valuable tools, creates a situation in which people who have this disease learn to hide.

They become immensely adept and secreting themselves away in the darkest corners of the internet and never letting anyone know in public.

And that means that when their control inevitably snaps under the severe pressure of the social stigma, the lack of assistance, the drain of their disease, they already know how to hide.

It’s literally making the problem worse, by equipping the people who should have the least access to secrecy and illegal tools, with the greatest imperative to get them.

Okay, I think that’s a brief explanation of everything that we need to get into.