Paedophiles & ‘stigma’, ‘orientation’, ‘victim’ – Where did it come from?

Paedophiles & ‘stigma’, ‘orientation’, ‘victim’ – Where it came from 

Don’t allow the culture to play linguistic gymnastics with the term “paedophile”.

As you’ll be aware from previous episodes of McBLOG, Victoria University in Wellington appears to be rebranding paedophiles as ‘victims’ of ‘stigma’ whose only guilt is having a sexual ‘preference’ or ‘orientation’.

But this is what is called the separability – and manipulability – of the verbal label.

Language matters, and as campaigners admitted in the book “After the Ball” by Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen – a book from 1990 that explained how the whole LGBTQ++ movement could be normalised. And they have done an amazing job. But they say…

“We can change what people actually think and feel by breaking their current negative associations with our cause and replacing them with positive associations.”

It’s not just in the LGBT space that this technique has been used.

• “Pro abortion” is now “pro choice” (but not for the child, of course). Or now – “reproductive health”. (Actually, the ability to get pregnant was your reproductive health – not killing the consequence of that.)
• Euthanasia or assisted suicide is now “death with dignity” or “end of life choice”.
• Prostitution is called “sex work”
• Gambling is called “gaming”.
• Chemicalising and castrating young people who are confused about their gender is called “gender affirmation”.
• Exposing and grooming very young children with sexually explicit material and telling them myths such as “you can change your sex” is labelled Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE). We could call it “a perverting of the young mind”.

The list goes on….

But you get the picture eh.

Most disturbingly, in our hedonistic and narcissistic sexualised culture, there is an disturbing effort to normalise sexual attraction to children, which actually dates its way back to Alfred Kinsey.

As you can imagine, this is a recipe for disaster. The movement is even going so far as to claim that paedophilia should be understood as a sexual “orientation”. Their goal is to remove the stigma from “non-offending” paedophiles.

The danger is that trying to destigmatise morally eroded behaviour generally ends up normalising it.

Now just to note some definitions. According to PsychologyToday.com

Hebephilia is a sexual preference for children in early adolescence, between ages 11 and 14. The concept is distinct from paedophilia, which is marked by a sexual preference for prepubescent children, rather than those who have finished puberty and entered adolescence. Ephebophilia refers to an attraction for older adolescents around 15 to 18 years old.

According to Wikipedia – not exactly the source of moral conservatism – it says:

Pedophilia (alternatively spelled paedophilia) is a psychiatric disorder in which an adult or older adolescent experiences a primary or exclusive sexual attraction to prepubescent children… People with the disorder are often referred to as pedophiles (or paedophiles).

But it’s still sexual abuse of children. That’s all you need to know.

One of the leaders of this movement is an organization called Prostasia Foundation that advocates for replacing the word “paedophile” with “minor attracted person,” or “MAP.” Prostasia, – based in San Francisco – no surprises there – who label themselves as “a new kind of child protection organization,” state that they aim to reduce child sexual abuse by taking away the shame of being attracted to a minor, thereby reducing the likelihood of someone acting out on their desires.

But in this tweet from 2019, they say

We are a new child protection organization that is inclusive of LGBTQ people, kinky people, and sex workers, and includes them in leadership.

They also support the use and sale of sex dolls that look like children, porn that simulates sex with a minor, and funding research into “fantasy sexual outlets” for paedophiles.

The argument that normalising it reduces the crime? – it just doesn’t quite ring true does it.

An assistant professor at a Virginia university recently caused a storm by suggesting that it isn’t necessarily immoral for adults to be sexually attracted to children. Allyn Walker, who taught sociology and criminal justice at Old Dominion University, made the controversial comment while discussing “minor-attracted persons” and paedophiles during a November interview with… the Prostasia Foundation. Walker who identifies as they / them (obviously doesn’t walk alone – just like Green MP Darleen Tana) was discussing her book, “A Long Dark Shadow: Minor-Attracted People and Their Pursuit of Dignity,” when she insisted it’s important to use that terminology instead of “paedophile” because it’s less stigmatizing. And you’ll hear the mention of the radical group B4U-ACT which I’ll come back to.

Have a watch.

She correctly identifies B4U-ACT as the originator of this sanitized term for paedophiles. Founded in 2003, this is an organization of psychiatrists and other mental health professionals, many of whom teach at prestigious universities, dedicated to the proposition that MAPs (who are almost all men) are seriously misunderstood and suffer from being stigmatized by the rest of us. B4U-ACT believes that paedophilia is not a sexual disorder; rather it is sexual orientation, much like homosexuality. Its members take umbrage at the notion that MAPs are mentally disturbed, and some argue that it is nonsense to say that children are unable to consent to sex with adults. As one of their sages put it, “An adult’s desire to have sex with children is ‘normative.'”

In 2011, according to a report by the Daily Caller, a small group of psychiatrists and other mental health professionals wanted to remove paedophilia from the American Psychiatric Association’s bible of mental illnesses — the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), which was set to undergo a significant revision by 2013. The August 2011 Baltimore conference was sponsored by B4U-ACT.

Paedophilia is still a mental disorder and is still in the DSM – thankfully.

Child advocate Dr. Judith Reisman, and author of “Sexual Sabotage,” which takes a critical look at the work of biologist Alfred Kinsey. said the conference was part of a strategy to condition people into accepting pedophiles.

“The first thing they do is to get the public to divest from thinking of what the offender does criminally, to thinking of the offender’s emotional state, to think of him as thinking of his emotional state, [and] to empathize and sympathize. You don’t change the nation in one fell swoop; you have to change it by conditioning. The aim is to get them [pedophiles] out of prison.”

According to Reisman, empirical data show that pedophiles typically molest many children before finally being caught. She said

“The data on paroled pedophiles confirms these predators repeat their crimes against children and are known to have escalated them even to murder.”

In 2018 Mirjam Heine, a German medical student at the University of Würzburg in Germany, made some deeply disturbing assertions in her TEDxTalk, “Why perception of paedophilia has to change.”

She claimed that, according to current research, “paedophilia is an unchangeable sexual orientation just like, for example, heterosexuality. No one chooses to be a paedophile, no one can cease being one.”

Then in January of this year, USA Today, one of the nation’s most widely circulated newspapers ran an article that presented paedophilia as “among the most misunderstood” conditions in American society, diminishing paedophilia as “inappropriate,” while it promoted “destigmatizing the attraction.”

“Paedophilia is viewed as among the most horrifying social ills. But scientists who study the sexual disorder say it is also among the most misunderstood. Researchers who study paedophilia say the term describes an attraction, not an action, and using it interchangeably with ‘abuse’ fuels misperceptions” about paedophiles.

In yet another recent example, videos emerged of a State University of New York professor defending paedophilia and insisting it wasn’t “obvious” to him why it was wrong. A number of videos – in different settings. Video clips from the end of 2020 are disturbing, featuring Professor Stephen Kershnar of the State University of New York at Fredonia and a podcaster.” The two professors are laughing about the subject of adult-child sex

Have a watch

And this atrocious bit – comparing paedophilia and child sexual abuse with going to church.

They also say:

“Imagine that an adult male wants to have sex with a 12-year-old girl. Imagine that she’s a willing participant. It’s a very standard, very widely held view that there’s something deeply wrong about this, and it’s wrong independent of it being criminalized. It’s not obvious to me that it is in fact wrong. I think this is a mistake.”

In an interview in June this year (yes – three months ago), The “Godmother of Queer Theory” Judith Butler said that her work “makes it easier” for pedophiles and the indoctrination of minors into gender and sex ideologies. She was promoting her new book, “Who’s Afraid of Gender?”

Within the first five minutes Butler addresses attacks made against her work and against the natural family and against male/ female as God created us, and she admits that it “make[s] it easier” for people with all sorts of alternative desires, including pedophilia, to live out their desires publicly.

Two years ago, according to a report in the DailyCaller

Indiana University erected a sculpture of a sex researcher who is accused of defending pedophilia and child sex abuse, according to a statement from the university. Alfred C. Kinsey studied the sexual behaviors of adults and minors and founded a leading sexuality research institute, “The Kinsey Institute,” in 1947. The university announced on Sept. 9 that a sculpture memorializing Kinsey and his “enduring contributions” was installed at the institute’s original site. Justin Garcia, the executive director of the Kinsey Institute, said in the announcement that the statue demonstrates the school’s “ongoing commitment to equity regarding sexual diversity.” Kinsey joined Indiana University’s faculty in 1920 wherein he gathered the sex histories of individuals for research, according to the university. He published two books on the sexual behavior of males and females and appears to have had a perverse view of child sexuality. Kinsey argued in his work that children who are used for “adult gratification” are not being abused. He appeared to believe that adults who manipulate children to orgasm are only helping the child find his or her “own authentic and autonomous sexuality,” according to British sociologist Sarah Goode. He did not believe that “sex offenders” or pedophiles existed, and reportedly did not believe that sex offenders should be held criminally liable.

And lastly – in March last year (2023), Historian Rachel Hope Cleves described pedophilia as “intergenerational sex,” adding that she wouldn’t describe the abuse of children with words such as “survivors or necessarily abuse.” Cleves wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post earlier in March that argued against Republicans wanted to ban drag shows to reinforce “traditional hierarchies of race, class, sex and gender.”

Cleves wrote a biography of British author Norman Douglas in 2020, who was charged multiple times with rape and sexual assault of underage boys and girls, including two cousins aged 10 and 12. professor Rachel Hope Cleves described pederasty (aka pedophilia) as “intergenerational sex” and says she won’t use the discourse of “survivors or necessarily abuse.”

In conclusion….

As Focus on the Family rightly points out;

Keep in mind that paedophiles and perpetrators of sexual abuse share several distinct personality traits:

• They’re usually seductive, manipulative, and highly controlling
• They’re also nice, friendly, helpful, and extremely good at charming their way into other people’s good graces, That way they can persuade those same people to do what they want them to do.

Exodus Cry – an organisation that opposes sex trafficking and sexual exploitation sums it up well –

“While we absolutely believe that there should be appropriate and improved avenues for paedophiles to seek help and therapy, the approach of normalising and destigmatising sexual attraction to children is severely misguided. In what world does normalising the idea of a criminal act prevent that act from happening?”

Associate Professor of Criminology at the UNSW, Michael Salter, recently took to Twitter to address the issue, tweeting,

“Sometimes stigma is good. Some things should be stigmatised…          ,      – ..   .”

The good news is that paedophilia can be treated with hormone medication therapies, cognitive behaviour therapy, and psychosocial methods such as group therapy. Testosterone-lowering drugs have also shown positive results in reducing sexual interests and behaviours. We should definitely increase support for men who want help.

Don’t allow the culture to play linguistic gymnastics with the term “paedophile”.

Academics overseas and even here at Victoria University and also Auckland and Massey Universities are guilty of reducing and even minimising the horrific harm and damage to the child, and giving elevated and a dangerous status of “victimhood” to the paedophile.

The stigma is there for a good reason.

It’s a very healthy stigma which hopefully redirects the offender.

But more importantly, the stigma is there to try and protect the victim. The child.

That’s where our focus should be.

In our next episode, we’ll continue our journey with Victoria University as they try to indoctrinate me to think the way they do. Stay tuned…