Contra Holly on Pedophilia

Pedophilia is not being normalized, but it would be good if it were, at least insofar as pedophilia merely denotes sexual attraction that one can't control.

Someone called Holly has a substack in which she writes about various topics. In a recent article titled “On the Push to De-Stigmatize Evil,” the subtitle is “why pedophilia must never be normalized.” I’ve previously lamented widespread failure among those opposed to destigmatization to provide convincing arguments. Note, obviously we should not destigmatize sex with children—that should be classified as child rape and should be a significant offense. My claim is merely that we should not regard people as irredeemable psychopaths for a sexual attraction that they cannot control if they have committed no immoral act.

The claims in Holly’s article are mostly two-fold. For one, pedophilia is being normalized at an alarming rate. For another, this is very bad. I disagree with both claims. Thus, I thought it would be worth addressing.

Note, in this essay, I will obviously talk about child sexual assault in some detail. With this being the case, if that makes you uncomfortable, I would recommend against reading.

The European Union is now using “Minor Attracted Persons” in place of “pedophiles” in some of its official work to combat child sexual exploitation.

There is no source for this—I assume this is about a small report by Scottish police. It’s very easy to find some people doing anything—showing that it was done by Scottish police before being rightly condemned repeatedly doesn’t show that there’s some grand sinister conspiracy afoot. In fact, the near univocal backlash to this—backlash which I regard as unjustified—is very good evidence against the claim that the term MAP is becoming ubiquitous.

Most importantly, sane people with a moral compass often tend to make the mistake of assuming that other people are sane and possess a moral compass. Thus, because no sane person with a moral compass would ever wish to have sexual contact with a child, people imagine that all pedophiles understand that they are predators and that their attraction to children is a predator’s attraction to prey. In fact, this simple, obvious truth that is as plain as the color of the sky escapes many, and perhaps most, pedophiles.

They honestly believe that they are not predators in search of prey. They see themselves as doing something much more like courting a partner. This delusional type of grooming is very easy to get away with because to naïve onlookers it can look so much like kindness, sensitivity, or just being “good with kids.”

This is plausible that some child rapists think that they’re not doing anything wrong. This is bad and not a justified assumption—anyone having sex with a child is doing something wrong. But pointing out this fact does not make the case for a greater stigma of pedophiles.

Holly is intending to argue for the following rather dramatic claim. “Our society is showing alarming warning signs of normalizing this evil, and at a speed that is almost impossible to comprehend.” This is a claim that I regard as false. The near univocal backlash to the idea of MAPs shows that pedophilia is not being destigmatized.

Holly correctly defines pedophilia as “sexual attraction, with or without the pursuit (realized or not) of sexual behavior towards people who are minors, and who look like it.” She also defines a child sex offender as a person who has sexually assaulted a child—fair enough. When contrasting the two, she gives an example of a father who rapes his daughter to punish her, not for sexual reasons. But notably, she doesn’t give an example of any person who is attracted to children but does not rape children.

This is a much more common case. While we don’t have exact numbers, it is plausible that the vast majority of MAPs do not assault children. There’s a big difference between being aroused by something and performing it or even actually wishing to perform it. Lots of men would be aroused by sex, even if it occurred in an unethical way—for example, between a powerful employer and an employee who would be fired if they didn’t perform a sex act—even though they don’t actually wish to do those things. There is a world of difference between finding something arousing and actually doing it.

The general public sees these two groups as one and the same due to the subject of the attraction and offenses. This makes sense as the public at large are not researchers or clinicians. The public has a vested interest in societal norms, laws, and safety. Clinicians and researchers do as well when acting in their capacity as citizens. When acting in their professional capacity, researchers and clinicians take care to make these distinctions as they may change the structure of research or clinical applications. (While these distinctions could obviously benefit from refinement, I am providing them because they are good enough for my purposes and do not run afoul of the clinical literature.)

The people who push for clinical language are asking the general public to think, act, respond, and speak like mental health clinicians. This is not just impossible—it is wrong, dangerous, and ridiculous. Mental health clinicians require years of graduate education in order to achieve a mindset that allows them, in the clinical laboratory or the protected space of the therapeutic relationship, to approach this issue differently. Many conversations are appropriate in a therapist’s office and nowhere else. Imposing the standards and norms of those relationships on general public conversations is both unreasonable and counter-productive.

It’s true that the general public does not have a clever, well-refined understanding of the topic. But they could at least understand the difference between someone who rapes children and someone who merely finds the idea of sex with children arousing. Just as there’s a world of difference between one who likes another’s car and one who violently murdered another for their car, there’s a world of difference between one who is aroused by children and one who would commit the unimaginably evil act of having sex with a child. This distinction is not too complex for the general public to understand—it’s really quite simple.

And there’s a super strong pragmatic case for teaching the distinction. The failure to consider this distinction in detail leads to more child rape and causes suicidal depression for lots of non-offending pedophiles—people who have done no immoral acts. When a more thorough understanding of a topic would prevent lots of child rape—as well as dramatically improve the lives of lots of innocent people, we have a duty to understand it more thoroughly. In this case, it is a pretty simple linguistic distinction, one that doesn’t require “years of graduate education.”

The Theme I Will Repeatedly Return To

Many pedophiles and child sex offenders—perhaps most—do not understand that they are predators seeking prey. They are fully enmeshed in a delusion that they are courting a partner, not grooming a victim. This is a hard reality for someone who has not experienced it personally to understand, so I will revisit it many times. It is foundational.

This may be true of most child sex offenders—it very plausibly is. But it’s probable that most pedophiles don’t assault children at all—thus, they can’t believe that they’re engaging in a justified act of courtship with a child if they’re not doing anything with a child. Given that 1-5% of the general population is comprised of pedophiles, it is unlikely that most of them are assaulting children.

This is an example of irresponsible conflation in the article. Pedophiles are treated as a subset of child sex offenders, when really, they are non-overlapping pedophiles. One can be an offending non-pedophile or a non-offending pedophile.

Next, Holly moves on to the claim that “We are normalizing pedophilia at warp sped.”

A noticeable number of people—large, and growing—have accepted a narrative that there is such a thing as a pedophile who is a victim of a terrible injustice. He is born with a sexual orientation that cannot be legally acted upon, and so must suffer all his life from loneliness and societal stigma.

These people are right. Now, of course, we should not change the law to allow him to act out his sexual fantasies—just as we shouldn’t allow men aroused by rape to rape people. But it is rather sad that a significant portion of the population has strong sexual urges that they have no way of getting rid of—and it’s a bad thing that most people regard them as monsters merely for this fact; this fact that is totally outside of their control.

Holly then tells a story of someone writing to her advocating abolishing age of consent laws. This is obviously wrong—however, one person writing to her is not good evidence that this is a ubiquitous phenomena.

Some advocates for normalization are honest about what they are doing in adopting the tactics of the movement that won gays and lesbians the right to marry.

Among the tactics they are using is pushing the use of the “sexual orientation” construct, and this language is starting to turn up even among people who should know better. They’ve started referring to themselves as MAPs (for Minor-Attracted Person) and Twitter protects them, ironically through a policy that claims to disallow discussion that “glorifies or promotes” child sexual exploitation.

Now, there are of course significant differences between gay people and pedophiles. Gay people should be allowed to do what they find arousing—sleep with people of the same sex. Pedophiles shouldn’t—they shouldn’t be allowed to sleep with children. Child rape is bad, consensual gay sex is not. But they are similar in a respect which is that they are both uncontrollable features that one cannot control and is not indicative of malevolence. A pedophile cannot control being attracted to children any more than a gay person can control being attracted to others of the same sex.

MAP is not an accurate term. Sexual contact between an adult and a child is rape 100% of the time. Thus, the correct term would be MRAP: Minor rape attracted person.

This would, I think, be a worse term. For one, as I’ve argued before, there’s a strong normative case for destigmatizing MAPs—this would be hampered by that term. But also, it misidentifies what they find arousing. What pedophiles are attracted to is the body of children. MAPs would be similarly aroused by people that look like children but are really adults. Thus, there are a non-zero number of cases where MAPs can act out their sexual fantasies in non-immoral ways. These would never involve having sex with children—just those that look like children.

Consider the following analogy: suppose that gay sex was deeply wrong. A demon would torture a far away villager every time two gay people had sex. In this case, it would be wrong to describe gay people as ‘demon torture attracted persons.’ The immorality would just be a necessary byproduct of what they find attractive. Similarly, in the case of MAPs, they’re not aroused by the idea of child rape—child rape is just a necessary corollary of that which they find arousing.

Groups like Prostasia, a pedophile advocacy group that claims to want to protect kids, and spokesmen for normalization like Dr. Cantor, slip back and forth between clinical and societal language. Prostasia admits, by their actions, that their aim is not therapeutic, because they permit children as young as 13 (the minimum required age under US law for registering on websites…gosh, I wonder how thoroughly they enforce this?) into some of their discussion groups.

I would agree that people under 13—and even people slightly over 13—should be excluded from message boards with pedophiles talking about their issues.

There is no justification to put 13 year olds in contact with pedophiles under any circumstances of basic sanity, and certainly not for “therapy.” Further, if the discussions in this group are therapeutic or positive in their aims, in any way, where is the parental consent requirement?

Agreed!

Groups like Prostasia and advocates for normalization like Cantor are allowed to discuss their work openly on Twitter under the claim that they aim to protect kids, when there is ample evidence that their real goal is simply to fully normalize pedophilia.

I’m not an expert on Prostasia, so they may turn out to be terrible, but several points are worth noting. For one, Prostasia is a very small and very unpopular organization. You know an organization way more popular that Prostasia—Jehova’s witnesses. They’re everywhere. And yet, I wouldn’t claim that JW’s are growing at “warp speed.” Pointing to one organization that is widely rebuked is not evidence that pedophilia is being normalized at warp speed.

The evidence for the claim that they want to normalize pedophilia doesn’t withstand scrutiny. The basic idea claimed by the article seems to be that Prostasia is in favor of sex with minors. This seems false, based on the evidence provided.

Prostasia sees the threat pedophiles pose to children as a bogeyman dreamed up by the alt-right,

This first claim is inaccurate. The link is to this article titled “FOSTA and the alt-right are censoring speech about child protection.” The worry in the article is that a particular law, FOSTA, is going to allow the prosecution of pedophiles who post online on message boards. I don’t know anything about the details of the law, but worrying that a law will make it harder for non-offending pedophiles to have shared support groups—something that decreases child sexual assault—is not the same thing as thinking that child rape is an alt-right conspiracy. You can read the article if you’d like—is is sufficiently clear that the author’s description is innacurate that the author is almost certainly lying. (Note, this author is not Holly—it’s one of her linked sources—there isn’t evidence yet that Holly is dishonest).

while condemning anti-pedophile sentiment as harmful “Nazi-like” rhetoric which requires mass censorship across social media.

This is also wrong. The author quotes the term “Nazi-like” which is bizarre, because the original linked article doesn’t use the term Nazi-like. The worry in the article is that Tumblr blogs by MAPs who wrote about their experience were being taken down. Prostasia thinks that this is bad, because it makes it so that when people find out that they’re MAPs, they don’t have helpful sights on the internet from others who struggle with a similar problem. It is, in this way, like banning all people talking about drug addiction—not helpful at all. Think what you want about the claim, but it is not the one alleged by the author.

The organization’s efforts have dedicated themselves to crusades against child pornography bans,

This is very dishonest. If you read the quoted article, they say

These Guidelines included a radical reinterpretation of the international legal definition of “child pornography,” that would expand it to include not only photographs and movies, but also “drawings and cartoons; audio representations; any digital media representation; live performances; written materials in print or online; and physical objects such as sculptures, toys, or ornaments.” In other words, criminalizing art and fiction.

Their worry is with banning the drawing of nude children, for example. Now, think what you want about the issue, but this is quite different from being in favor of child pornography. Fwiw, if you want a compelling argument for legalization of digital child porn—the type that doesn’t actually harm children, that’s made entirely by computers—I’d recommend this paper.

letter-writing campaigns to state representatives demanding child-likeness sex dolls be kept legal

This is accurate—however, it doesn’t seem unreasonable. The paper I just linked does seem to provide a good general case for why child-like sex dolls shouldn’t be illegal—evidence is solid that they reduce rates of child sexual assault. Prostasia’s explanation of their opposition to this is the following.

First, it is unconstitutional: the last time when a state law banned a sex toy, a Federal Circuit court decided that government interference with the personal and private use of sex toys violates the Constitution.

Second, according to the world’s leading scientific experts on pedophilia, who are advisors to the child protection organization Prostasia Foundation, banning sex dolls won’t help children.

These experts are saying that rather than reducing child sexual abuse, a ban could actually increase it by removing a victimless outlet for some people who might otherwise target a real child. Research into whether a sex doll ban would help or hinder the protection of children is currently underway. Lawmakers should await the outcomes of this research before banning these devices.

Next, the author says

and funding research into “fantasy sexual outlets” for pedophiles.

This one is accurate—my early comments apply.

Prostasia hosts a forum in which members are invited to start conversations on anything they wish without stigmatization. In many cases, the subject returns to the “liberation” of MAPs – or, Minor Attracted People – a more socially acceptable way to refer to pedophiles. Most of the pro-pedophilia discussion happens in the forum’s dedicated Sex Positivity section.

Liberation of MAPs is not the same as legalizing child sexual assault.

Recently, Prostasia began collaborating with an organization it calls the MAP Support Club, an unregistered group which claims to provide “peer support” for pedophiles, and invites “minor attracted people” aged 13 years old and up to participate in online chats about “minor attraction.”

Now, I think 13 is probably too young for this—15 should probably be the number. But the basic idea is that there are lots of people who discover that they’re pedophiles while going through puberty. These people should have support and be able to talk with others struggling with similar things. The idea is not that it’s therapeutic for children to talk with pedophiles, merely that MAPs going through puberty should have support from others like them. Think what you will about the claim, but it’s inaccurate to claim that the aim is “to put 13 year olds in contact with pedophiles … for “therapy.”” The aim is to help young MAPs—not to allow old MAPs to have contact with kids. Notably, the requirements of the MAP support group are

1. You must be committed to never engaging in sexual activity with a child.

2. You must be at least 13 years old to join this chat.

3. No admissions of unadjudicated illegal activities are allowed.

4. No talk about lowering Age of Consent (AoC), whatever it is where you live.

There are a few more pieces of evidence that Prostasia is pro-child rape—none of them hold water. They all fall apart under basic scrutiny if you just follow the link.

Returning to Holly’s article, she claims that “This evidence includes a disturbing number of people who were once on their staff being arrested for sex crimes against children.” The number provided in the article is 2. 2 is obviously too many, but it’s not as though, as “a disturbing number” would suggest, this was happening with hundreds.

One of Prostasia’s blue-check Twitter spokesmen, Noah Berlatsky, writes for the mainstream publication, The Atlantic. Six years ago, in a piece published in The New Republic, another entirely mainstream outlet, he argued that the real threat to “child sex workers” (his term for trafficked children that men who are pedophiles and/or CSOs pay to rape) is the police. The piece never mentions that the children are being raped, with only the phrase “survival sex” indicating anything close to understanding of the reality of the situation.

The article that’s linked is talking about the threat that police pose to child sex workers—often raping them, for example, arresting them, and being violent. Holly suggests that the term child sex workers is intended to downplay the gravity of the situation. It’s not clear how they should be referred to. These people are being paid for sex and are children—of course, sex with children is rape, but it would be misleading to just call them child rape victims, because Berlasky was talking about a particular subset of child rape victims. The term could have been “children who were forced to be raped repeatedly in the sex trade,” but that would be clunky.

This movement is having societal consequences, including authoritative voices, like the gay researcher whose tweet is posted above (and who has supported Prostasia) saying quite openly that pedophiles should be included in the LGBT community. (I refer to Dr. Cantor’s sexual orientation because it is strongly in the interest of gay people not to be associated with pedophilia, and thus it is a powerful example of how far the normalization has progressed.)

Cantor is a leading expert on the topic—the fact that he’s on board with Prostasia’s goals is pretty good evidence that they’re not sinister. But none of this shows that the movement is successful. The fact that Prostasia is the only org doing anything like this, and is orders of magnitude smaller than Jehova’s witnesses, and that nearly everyone is opposed to sex with children, shows that normalization of child rape is not a realistic threat.

The principle that consenting adults should be permitted to choose with whom to enter into sexual relationships does not need to be perverted into a means to de-stigmatize those who pursue relationships with people incapable of the level of understanding and maturity required in order to give consent.

But none of these people are advocating that—they’re advocating destigmatizing MAPs, not child rapists.

Did you know that there are places in this world where a man who feels sexual urges towards children can email a picture of a real little girl, pay a fee, and receive a sex doll that looks just like her? (While it is possible that it exists, I am unaware of male dolls being sold at this time.)

The merchants who sell this sort of thing helpfully provide instructions for how to get away with it, and they ship it in a diaper to help avoid authorities’ attention, by making it look like a regular baby doll.

They advertise their merchandise with imagery meant to be cutesy. (Note: “loli” is understood to refer to sexualized imagery of young girls.)

The fact that they have to provide instructions to avoid authorities instructions. As the linked article—which I’d recommend not clicking, for it is pretty nauseating—notes “these dolls are largely illegal in the European Union.” The worry is that there’s a loophole in the law—but loopholes in the law don’t signal broader precedent. Now, I think I would support legalizing child sex dolls, for the reasons previously described, but this is not legal. And it’s certainly not widely accepted. There’s virtually no-one who wouldn’t be horrified by finding out that a friend was having sex with a child-like sex doll.

Holly next notes that we can imagine cases where a pedophile would share a child sex doll with a child. This would obviously be immoral, just like masturbating in front of kids. This isn’t a gray area at all.

Here is my best attempt at fairly presenting the arguments in favor of de-stigmatizing and/or normalizing pedophilia.

Summarizing Their Position

The argument goes something like this: there is such a thing as a “virtuous pedophile.” They are victims of a genetic quirk that makes them attracted to children, but they are not monsters. They have an unchangeable sexual orientation exactly the same as anyone else’s, only theirs is stigmatized. They have a moral compass and would never, ever actually touch a child. They deserve empathy and support, because they haven’t actually done anything wrong, and that’s what will keep them from ever offending: being recognized as the good people that they are, able to control the terrible urges that they didn’t ask for and would trade in, if they could, without hesitation for the chance to be normal. De-stigmatizing these “virtuous pedophiles” is important for many reasons: fairness, decency, and kindness; but also that we must be able to study these “good pedophiles” in order to find some way to overcome whatever causes this problem. They lead tortured lives of terrible loneliness because nobody can ever really know them or sympathize with their plight.

The Story They Tell Is A Lie

I checked with three therapists, in three different states, to make sure I had a clear understanding of US law. They were all in agreement: there is no duty to report a client who discloses sexual urges toward children that they are not presently acting upon.  A therapy patient who is not presently abusing children and truly seeking to understand and repair the root of his disorder in order to prevent that, is not in danger of exposure. Those urges are not illegal—only acting on them is illegal. A therapist is not obligated to report a client unless they have a reasonable belief that an identifiable victim is in immediate danger.

What my Twitter interlocutor said was a lie. Help and counseling are available, and the pedophile patient’s right to confidentiality exists to the same extent that all other patients enjoy that right.

This is wrong. Now, the factual claim is not wrong, to the best of my knowledge, in general, therapists don’t have to report that someone is a non-offending pedophile. But this doesn’t mean that the story they tell is a lie. For one, they can, under some circumstances, be reported on. But more importantly, the threat isn’t just telling therapists or police.

Imagine being a gay person in the 1800s, such that you might be killed if anyone found out if you were gay. If a person complained about poor treatment, even if therapists didn’t have to report gay clients, that wouldn’t mean that there was no unjust stigma around gay people. The fact that someone can legally report something to a therapist without being carted off to Rikers doesn’t mean they face no unjust shame or stigma from it.

Three Reasons Why Pedophilia Should Not Be Called A Sexual Orientation

It Is Inaccurate

Sexual contact with an adult is always abuse, exploitation, and rape for a child. Using the term “sexual orientation” conflates a set of desires that are abuse 100% of the time when enacted in any way (including verbally or just by observation) with desires that, when acted upon, lead to normal, healthy sexual activity. (This is not happening by accident.)

There’s no reason that the fact that some act would be immoral if done means that it’s not a sexual orientation. To see this, go back to the earlier analogy. Imagine that every time a gay person had sex, a demon tortured someone. Even though gay people having sex would then be immoral, it wouldn’t stop being a sexual orientation. It would just be one that would be bad if acted upon.

It Is Dangerous for Society

There are many risks that people who want to be kind—to people they see as victims, in at least some cases, of sexual urges that they didn’t ask to experience—are creating, and may not be considering. Here are just a few.

1)    Sexual orientation has a very special legal meaning. It is a protected class. If pedophilia is recognized as an orientation, then there is no legal recourse to deny housing, employment, or other functions of society to people who claim the orientation of pedophilia. Do you want a world where your child’s daycare center is legally not allowed to refuse to hire people who are openly pedophilic?

No. I think that if one is a pedophile, they probably shouldn’t constantly be around children. However, the fact that something is a protected class doesn’t mean that they must be hired the same way as others. Disability is a protected class, but you still don’t have to hire people who can’t move to do physical construction work.

The basic standard, if I understand it correctly, is that you can discriminate against people for being members of protected classes only insofar as that directly hampers their ability to do the job. You could very well argue that being a pedophile hampers the job of being a preschool teacher. I basically think the legal standard should be that one should only be allowed to refuse to hire pedophiles for jobs that have something to do with kids. I think this would be allowed if we treat pedophilia as a sexual orientation, but if not, then it shouldn’t be legally recognized as a sexual orientation.

2)    Children can often access mental health counseling without parental knowledge or consent in schools starting at middle school age. A normalization of pedophilia, especially in the modern therapeutic norms where only affirmation therapy is acceptable and in many states, any attempt to change sexual orientation is against the law, risks situations where a 14 year old boy could be told by his mental health counselor that sexual urges towards his younger sibling, neighbor, or other young children in his life are normal, just as that child would be told that sexual feelings towards girls or boys his own age about which he felt distress was normal, as just one example.

I think it should be treated as normal in the sense that it’s not indicative of being terrible, but not normal in the sense that it’s worth acting upon. This isn’t a bizarre notion—it’s just the way we treat attraction towards those who aren’t attracted to you. It’s wrong to have sex with people absent consent, but it’s not wrong to be aroused by those who wouldn’t want to have sex with you.

3)    I repeat: in many states, any type of therapy that aims to change sexual orientation is against the law. If pedophilia is accepted as a sexual orientation, therapists will, in many states, be legally disallowed from trying to help pedophiles change—unless laws are changed.

I don’t think that there’s good evidence that there are effective ways to get people to stop being pedophiles, but if there is, then pedophile conversion therapy—heavily regulated, of course, to prevent abuse—seems fine.

4)    A kid who grows up in a world where pedophilia is an “orientation” under the LGBT umbrella, as Dr. Cantor supports, is already having their natural defense against being victimized broken down.

I’ve already addressed this point—we should destigmatize merely being a pedophile, while stigmatizing sex with children.

Holly next claims that it interferes with clear communication, because calling something a sexual orientation generally implies that the associated acts are okay. This doesn’t seem like a necessary component in any of the relevant definitions—plus, this is easily solved by just specifying what all decent people accept; child rape is wrong.

With psychology setting such an extremely high bar for psychological study that poses even the remote possibility of any kind of danger of harm to human beings, it seems like a no-brainer that pedophiles being studied prove that they lead lives without ready access to children. Further, this commitment to non-offending could be solidified in any one of several ways. State agencies run background checks to clear individuals to work with children, as anyone who’s ever volunteered to coach Little League or work with Big Brothers/Big Sisters has experienced.  Pedophiles submitting to study could agree to be put on a permanent blacklist such that they can never be cleared to volunteer with kids. They could also be expected to participate in learning how sexual contact with adults damages children, humanizing their potential victims to the fullest extent possible.

If these pedophiles are truly in possession of a moral compass, with no interest in ever harming a child, this is an incredibly low bar to prove it.

If you want to get people to volunteer for studies on non-offending pedophiles, a good way NOT to do this is to require that people who do watch lots of government footage about the badness of child rape, before being blacklisted—put on a downscaled version of the sex offender registry.

One Basis for the “Quirk of Nature” Argument

Some studies, including one conducted by Dr. Cantor (the researcher whose tweet arguing that pedophilies should be included as part of the same community that includes gay men and lesbians is shown earlier) that was said to have included brain scans of 65 self-reported non-offending pedophiles, comparing them to brain scans of 62 offenders with no known sexual element to their crimes. This study seems to show structural differences in the brains of pedophiles. The people who want to normalize it use to argue for a “they were born this way and can’t help it” approach.

This is nonsense. First, neuroplasticity is a powerful force. We don’t know that they were truly non-offenders, unless they were under 24/7 surveillance (they weren’t). So we don’t know to what extent actual sexual behavior against children may have affected their brains. “What fires together, wires together” is one of the profound truths of how brains develop function, and we don’t know how many rapes of children affected their brains.

The idea that a lot of the people who signed up for a study, to register as non-offending pedophiles, weren’t pedophiles before raping children, but raped a children and became pedophiles—and then decided to be held up as token non-offending pedophiles is a little ridiculous. The idea that people don’t choose to be pedophiles is pretty obvious. I’m not a pedophile—I certainly couldn’t choose to be a pedophile any more than I could choose to be gay.

But suppose all 65 of them were telling the truth, and there is very good reason to believe that they have biological differences that are the cause of their pedophilic urges.

So what?

If we could prove that a biological brain difference made men have powerful urges to rape adult women, would we suddenly be comfortable with rape porn? Would we encourage them to meet in groups and talk about rape? Would we allow groups analogous to the groups Prostasia runs, with members as young as 13, to have these adult would-be rapists talk to 13 year olds about their urges to rape?

As for the question about rape porn, I think that rape porn should be legal—assuming, of course, that it does not involve actual rapes being filmed. There’s good evidence that porn reduces rates of sexual assault. If there are lots of people with persistent uncontrollable rape fantasies, then yes, I think that something like Prostasia would be fine. Now, I’d be opposed—just like I am with Prostasia—to it including 13-year-olds.

If we could prove that a biological brain difference made men have powerful urges to throw acid in the faces of other men, would we normalize that? Would we argue that they should be allowed access to dangerous chemicals and that it was therapeutic or “harm reducing” to have them set up chem labs in their homes, to enable them to make the acid and toss it at dolls of their boss, their neighbor, whatever man has offended them?

If there was credible evidence that this reduced rates of real-world acid throwing, then yes. But this is separate from the stigma around pedophiles. A large percentage of people think pedophiles should die, just for being pedophiles. It would be bad if a lot of people thought those who got mad at their boss and briefly fantasized about their death should be killed.

Somehow, if the powerful urge in question results in an erection, we put it in a different moral category and consider steps we would never take for the satisfaction of any other powerful urge. This is understandable on the level of sex being an integral part of human connection for most healthy adults, but that is not a good enough reason to sacrifice the present and future well-being of children. Period.

But it doesn’t sacrifice either the present or future well-being of children. As I’ve shown, more stigma for pedophiles makes them more likely to offend. Next, Holly goes on to argue that this push for destigmatization harms pedophiles. She starts by (rightly) claiming that if it makes them more attracted to kids, and more likely to assault them, it’s bad for them. Fair enough. But the relevant question is whether it does that

The danger of these items causing acting out is real, and has empirical evidence. A 2018 study in Australia found that the preference for more extreme material increases as the medium moves from photographic to video. In what way is it reasonable to take the risk that moving to a 3D experience of using a child sex abuse doll will come with a brake – that it won’t lead to the next progression beyond a doll or robot, a real child?

I could not find this study, but this study doesn’t—by itself—indicate anything about the effect on the risk of sexual assault.

The next part of Holly’s article is a deeply personal story about her abuse at the hands of a groomer. I have nothing to add, though it’s worth reading. But none of it straightforwardly makes the case for greater stigma.

All in all, I think Holly makes the best case against destigmatizing pedophilia. However, the best case is nonetheless quite unpersuasive, and is a rather weak one.