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Several weeks ago, I was browsing BoyChat and found a thread from that day (an earlier version of it is archived here). I made a Tumblr post discussing the problematic content involved, but I have decided to also reproduce my post here.
The BoyChat post is by the user “Edmund,” titled “New memoir by an active boy-lover.” It says,
I was absolutely furious upon seeing this; I said:
However, there is reference to abuse of children from the Global South elsewhere in the book. The book has been placed in the category “Multicultural & Interracial Romance,” and the back cover of the book (seen in the Amazon preview) says, “The cover painting, ‘Stephen in a samlor with a boy,’ is by the author’s friend Tancred Marlowe.” The front cover depicts a white man sitting next to a brown-skinned boy, and a brown-skinned man driving the vehicle. The implications are obvious but disturbing (Thailand has historically been a hotspot for white men sexually exploiting local children).
Furthermore, there is the sample of the book provided by Amazon, which includes an editor’s note by Marlowe. He says on page x,
(Here we all know how racial patriarchy works already so I won’t spend too much time rehashing my analysis; my explanations were more for the benefit of white audience members less familiar with the content of my blogs/accounts/online presence who might be less familiar with these theories.)
However, I do take major issue with this above Twitter user’s use of the term “pedophilia.” She seems to view CSA as a product of pedophilia and views pedophilia as some sort of illness, disease, or difficult-to-control urge which can however be slightly mitigated by some sort of psychological or psychiatric “help,” and thus a pedophile would be more virtuous (courageous, even) if they chose this “help” because it is a difficult, brave thing to “resist” one’s pedophilia and try to carcerally contain or even reduce it. She recommends Nicholson to “register himself into a f*cking program.” But who would be administering such a program? White adults, being paid by white capitalists to operate an institution (psychiatry) fundamentally built on white supremacy, adultism, and structural hierarchies, which has historically (and is presently) a key contributor in upholding abuse culture, and with close ties to the prison-industrial complex. The idea of pedophilia “causing” CSA, with psychiatric “help” or medicalized reprogramming being the way to “prevent” it, is a myth promoted first by abusers/abuse apologists who wanted to decrease the perceived agency of abusers in abusing and to divert attention from the patriarchal mechanisms which produce CSA on a mass scale.
This kind of recommendation would sound more ludicrous if it were about, say, telling a white supremacist they’d be doing the right thing if they went to a program to deprogram their white supremacy and avoid perpetrating colonialist violence or hatecriming people of color, or telling a misogynistic cis man to go to therapy so he doesn’t assault his female partner, etc. The point is that the very thing which puts them at risk of perpetrating such abuse is what is also what makes them not want to take it away. It’s not something that happened to them against their will—not the state of having any particular set of attractions, fantasies, or psychological patterns—but specific ideologies legitimizing authority and control. The struggle against oppression is political, not medical, and allowing it to slip into the latter is a result of extensive efforts at co-optation which are, to a degree, exactly what the oppressors themselves want.
I have also seen what happens even when you just tell an adult in a psych program you support pedophiles without yet believing or saying you’re a pedophile yourself (not fun! and definitely the opposite of helpful to anyone), I have been in therapy where the therapist knew I was a pedophile (she was bigoted and extremely misinformed about it and did CSA apologia to me, tried to stop me from reporting past CSA I experienced, and sexually harassed me (somewhat or mostly in a separate context?)); while these aren’t exactly the same as programs specifically geared toward “helping” or “treating” pedophiles, preventing “potential CSA’ers” from committing CSA, or both, I have also researched about what such “programs” are actually like, and while some might be a bit beneficial I can think of a dozen alternatives that would accomplish these effects in a much more reasonable manner and I have little faith that psychiatry can be a revolutionary apparatus for any of us in any degree. (This is a very unpopular opinion among most people, including my own community, as well as antis—but yeah.)
Unfortunately, adultism is so severely pervasive throughout society, often or usually even more so than other forms of bigotry, that medicalist apologia about violence against youth is much more accepted than apologia for abuses of adults (for example, many feminists have come around to the understanding that rape of adults is fully the choice of the rapist and the problem won’t be solved by ~more therapy for rapists (or “potential rapists”)~ but by overthrowing patriarchy and other hierarchical systems, but when it comes to youth, all the old rape myths (e.g. uncontrollable urges) come flooding right back in).
//
I did not even expect that my Tumblr post or celebritykid’s Twitter thread would gain much attention soon. I’d even hoped that they might remain contained in their own initial spheres. However, it turns out that Rae, the admin of childlove.space (allegedly resigned one week before its downfall), who recklessly permitted posters to post CSEM and has posted CSEM herself before, permitted Nazis to disseminate genocidal rhetoric and targeted bigoted harassment on her platform, who has befriended and defended Nazis as well as many other types of reactionaries, who has some sort of special grudge against me and has knowingly misgendered me multiple times and joined in on harassment campaigns against me, has been stalking me off-platform, and possibly stalking my associates on Twitter as well. She indicated that she has been extensively combing through and reading my Tumblr blog for a long time. (She is also memorable, with regards to her current fedi account, for recently lamenting that NNIA users don’t want to interact with her and trying to coerce people into interacting with her, not finding any of this behavior questionable or creepy at all.)
Rae started a thread writing long paragraphs defending adults patronizing underage sex workers and sexualizing Stephen Nicholson’s victims. Many other pro-c fediverse users joined in to mock the victim mentioned in the BoyChat excerpt in a manner which would certainly constitute sexual consent/boundary violations and sexual harassment of a stranger even if there were no other considerations in play, but it was especially violent and disgusting here because of the added context of trivializing rape. (I refuse to link the thread here; it was nauseating and would probably cause a great deal of despair for anyone with the slightest amount of care about the hellish rape culture we live in but you can probably find it yourself if you look hard enough.) This wasn’t really surprising, to be honest; given the pro-c ideology which devalues consent in one way, it doesn’t seem too far of a stretch that their milieus often devalue consent in other ways, and it’s also a familiar tradition for everyone to casually sexually harass everyone else in such spaces (along with “ironic” bigotry, other abuse apologia/crossing the boundaries of abuse survivors, and the like). (In the thread, Rae also posted a screenshot from a Tumblr post I’d made over a year ago. In the post, I was criticizing someone with sexually repressive/puritanical views intersecting with adultism. Rae randomly decided to comment on the screenshot too, and also referred to me as “her” in her post. She’s known me for over a year, there is zero excuse for getting my pronouns wrong for the nth time, again.)
Other users made various angry posts about me, accusing me of being puritanical/an anti/a fascist/evil, accusing other Nicholson critics of being puritanical/antis/fascists/evil, etc. Several individuals sent death wishes. A few liberal anti-c’s jumped in and decided to argue that the book should stay because censorship is bad, or it’s “a book about the MAP experience” and thus deplatforming it would be mapmisic, and other such nonsense. Pro-c’s also used the opportunity to get angry at Lecter, who had made several posts arguing against platforming the book.
Once I saw that it was no use trying to deflect off-platform-related targeting and harassment of me over my criticisms, I decided it would be alright (or at least, not detrimental) to link my Tumblr post in the fedi discussion. A replier expressed a quite accurate sentiment: “Jesus Christ, he writes about boys like they are disposable objects.”
I have responded to some of the anti-anti-Dangerous Love arguments and complaints on my NNIA account: x, x [thread], x, x, x [thread].
On the matter, Lecter has said:
https://nnia.space/@comrade_lecter/111394321102502875
https://nnia.space/@comrade_lecter/111395412401102799
https://nnia.space/@comrade_lecter/111399526482078588
and x, x, x, x, x, x, x, and x.
Additionally, someone seemed to be stalking me on Reddit. Half a day after I posted about the situation on Reddit, the individual u/UnusualTry4687 (now suspended) sent me the following comment (I posted screenshots of it here):
[3] “Feature” is rather vague. I am, obviously, aware that various other Amazon books “feature” man-boy CSA—fictional depictions, condemnatory depictions, memoirs about abuse, scientific research discussing it, and so on. I am also aware that there are plenty of other apologist books on Amazon, including historical discussion, “research” interpreting it in a positive light, past celebrity memoirs about perpetrating CSA, and so on. This context collapse is unhelpful. I am also not a defeatist; just because something is already there does not mean that it would be a good idea to add more of it. I do not believe that permitting vicious epistemic violence is acceptable just because of some whataboutist complaints.
Furthermore, as Lecter noted: “but also, it’s not a unique piece that needs to be preserved at all cost. If it just disappears, it won’t be a loss for anyone or anything, except that dead rapist’s supporters.” Stephen Nicholson is not a prominent historical figure whose memoirs would be necessary as receipts for discourse, debunking myths, or reconstructing the past. Child molesters are a dime a dozen; if you want something to “learn from,” you can just go read from the many published and widely-circulated memoirs which already exist. Nicholson was not a significant figure in public discourse, he seemed on the track to dying in obscurity except for a few mentions on Marlowe’s site, and it would be a net positive for society to keep him that way.
Many people would understand why someone would, for example, want to report a blog by an abuser detailing and glorifying their past abuses, exploiting their victims. Those considerations don’t go away just because the exploitation is now published as a book. Deplatforming is not equivalent to mass violent state censorship; it’s just common courtesy. Additionally, it is problematic to distribute such content for other purposes when the abusive events it details have not yet been resolved, and the abusers and abuse networks it discusses may still be unknown or even at large. The information contained in the book should not be used for narrative consumption or propaganda or “preservation for the sake of” or learning, in my opinion; it needs to be seized for criminal investigation. (e.g.) (Arguably, enabling the writing of such a memoir could constitute a failure to report crimes and enabling harm to youth.)
[4] I noted that I most certainly do not have POCD or schizophrenia at all.
[5] The words “a website” contained a hyperlink. I did not save the link, and the comment has since been completely removed by Reddit’s admins, so I do not know what exactly it was.
[6] As my friend Rondomi noted, this was misgendering and hardly applied (I am nonbinary and not a woman): “You’re a female (you’re not), and you falsely claim to be a MAP (you are), and female MAPs are rare (they’re not), therefore, they shouldn’t be listened to (they should) because when something’s an aberration (it isn’t), that deprives it of its value (it doesn’t).”
This was the only comment he had on his profile at the time, but he had several hundred more karma points than one would expect from a nearly-blank account (i.e., had decided to delete all his other comments and/or posts, likely even for the purpose of having a relatively anonymous account to harass from). I have little to no information on who he was, but I did get to see his “active in these communities” (among these were r/MensRights and r/AllPillDebate, how predictable). After I blocked him and removed his comment, he decided to troll again by specifically looking for another subreddit I mod (one for survivors of child abuse, no less) and posted a link to an essay titled “The Child Pornography Myth.” Some people just can’t leave well enough alone. (Both his initial comment and his post have since been fully removed by Reddit.) (This harasser was relatively anonymous, though I do have some guesses on who might’ve been behind that screen.)
//
It is worth noting that this is the third time (in a few months) that a pro-c has sent me anonymous, graphic, violent hate messages—and all three times so far have been as retaliation/punishment for me speaking out against a now-dead adult who had raped/sexually exploited youths. These posts from me have provoked even more ire than my callouts of alive rapists/abusers. I think this is, unintentionally or not, revealing a very important value among them: if they are persecuted in life, they hold on to the possibility of having at least a great legacy to preserve their power to some degree, with gullible bigots willing to give them a chance: worship of Great (adult) historical figures forms an important pillar of their justifications for their ideology. Attacking posthumously means starving them of their last potential vestiges of glory. I think some of these men instinctively know that if even after death their idols are not safe, then neither are they now.
The first iteration of this was after I posted my essay on Newgon’s apologia for Marion Zimmer Bradley. A day later, someone with oddly similar diction, typing patterns, professed beliefs, and preferred sources as Newgon’s Strategist created a sock account to comment a long text block of child abuse apologia. I was uninterested in platforming such myths, so I deleted the comment and blocked the account. A few hours later, that individual created yet another Dreamwidth account and started spamming the same comment over and over under my posts as well as in DMs. He went through my blog and spammed hate messages under every single post I have, including a great deal of ableism, misgendering, and trying to discredit my other work (ironically using mapmisic rhetoric for some of it). His final account was identified and banned by Dreamwidth mods while I was offline, before I had a chance to delete that round of comments; this is why you can see several “reply from suspended user”’s under each of my posts now. The relentless hatemail (totaling to over a hundred notifications) only stopped after I turned off anonymous commenting. I posted some screenshots on NNIA. One of the messages said,
The second series of anonymous hate messages was through Reddit. A (now-suspended) newly-created sock account going by the handle u/HyperboreanMale[7] sent this as a modmail to one of the subreddits I moderate:[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperborea#Hyperborea_in_radical_Russian_nationalist_and_neo-Nazi_imagery
[8] In reference to this post I had made.
After I blocked, banned, and muted him, he repeated the message at a different subreddit I mod, and I had to ban and mute him again. I was rather surprised that someone most likely from the cunnyborea.space Nazimap pro-c clique was going after me (in a much more direct, personal, outraged manner than how its members have argued with/sexually harassed/made casual violent threats to others on the pediverse, almost as if this person actually felt threatened by me). NNIA had cb.s defederated from day one, and I hardly ever talked about them, much less had any interactions with them, unlike the many other people who were attacking them/vice versa (I vaguely remember being harassed by a clique of pro-c Nazimap Hyperborea enthusiasts that was most likely the same people on Twitter circa late 2022 when I was @MAPLiberation, for being trans/having the wrong (degenerate) kind of mapness, but that’s not really much to hold a latent grudge on). (It’s also interesting to note the overlap/adjacency with Newgon in this situation, because my initial post was dunking on a Newgon article. Them again, or at least on their behalf—perhaps they had something to do with this too, at least indirectly? Newgon currently disavows any connection to the “real Nazis,” of course, although during their cl.s run multiple members happily reblogged from and positively interacted with cb.s Nazis.)
These cowards are a different register of scumbag than the average casual emotional abuser present on pro-c pedi attacking me and people I care about, and most of the latter would rather think they’re nothing like the former, but still it seems like everyone happily finds common ground right when it comes to picking on me and trying to shut me up.
//
Five days ago, I came across an unexpected development: someone had posted a screenshot of the Amazon page for A Dangerous Love to r/awfuleverything, titling their post “Amazon sells a memoir written by a deceased pedophile that glorifies child rape. Please do your part to report this disgusting work and take it off of Amazon.” I watched the upvote count rise from 2K to 3K to 4.1K, before it was removed by the mods because “We no longer allow content involving minors. This includes content that depicts violence against or sexualization of minors.” (This wasn’t a new rule for the subreddit; I also saw it applied in posts before that one.) Afterward, Reddit admins themselves removed the post (I’m still not sure why).
I’m not sure if my Tumblr post, celebritykid’s Twitter thread, or some of my/my comrades’ discussions on fediverse were what alerted this individual to the book’s existence. Neither have gotten many reblogs/retweets/likes, and the screenshot looks different from any of the screenshots I or Twitter users had posted, but the call for reporting could indicate they were at least inspired by us and got to the page by following our links. I’m not sure. Either way, it was indeed distressing to see mapmisia being promoted, especially for a cause I do care about. Most of the Reddit comments also uncritically accepted the frame of problematizing “pedophilia,” conflating it with CSA or a propensity to commit CSA. People began posting negative reviews on the Amazon page. Nine out of the thirteen mentioned “pedophilia” negatively.
Ultimately, I can’t stop antimaps from demonizing us along with CSA perpetrators when they try to do anti-CSA activism. But I can continue to express my disagreement with such language and narratives, and I will continue to do my activism on my own terms, without acceding to the pressures from either pro-c MAPs or anti-c antimaps to abandon our stance because the other exists too.
Surprisingly (or not), a rather high number of commenters on that Reddit thread (many antimap) argued against the OP’s efforts, claiming that the book should actually be preserved on the grounds of free speech/anti-censorship/to understand the ~pedophile mindset~ (to ~save our children~)/because it’s technically legal/because other Bad books are allowed too. This was unfortunate, and I would point such individuals to the arguments I’ve made in this post above, as well as in my linked NNIA threads (we’ve gone over these extensively already, so it’s kind of funny seeing random Redditors just discovering these spontaneously). (It was also rather eerie how CSA apologists/aspiring enablers of such disparate dispositions somehow all managed to stumble across nearly the exact same arguments, all with hardly any cross-pollination. This is a familiar experience for those of us who have tried organizing against CSA/CSA culture in both antimap and pro-MAP communities (and pro-c vs. liberal anti-c communities, and so on).)
A few individuals in the thread said that they had reported the page to Amazon, and a customer service representative had contacted them and said they would do something about it. I’m not sure how well this has succeeded yet, as the book is still up right now. As someone there said, I think it might also be a good idea to consider putting public pressure on Amazon, starting something like some sort of campaign so they would be more inclined to take action. This does have precedent; the book A Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure by Philip Greaves, a detailed and disturbing CSA manual (isn’t it depressing that both antimaps and pro-c MAP supporters conflate pedophilia with CSA?), was pulled from Amazon in 2010 following massive backlash from the public. (See also x, x, x.) Since A Dangerous Love details abuses of real-life victims already abused, that arguably would run afoul of (implicit or explicit) rules even more.
I highly recommend that individuals share this information, either by reblogging, retweeting, linking to my Tumblr post/the Twitter thread/this Dreamwidth post, or sharing the information yourself on other platforms. However, I will not tolerate any bigotry being applied in the name of stopping CSA, and I do not endorse any scapegoating of marginalized groups or identity characteristics while trying to attack actual abusers. This includes mapmisia, as well as other forms of bigotry such as homophobia, etc. (I mention homophobia because, as we know, certain segments of conservatives like to be homophobic when they hear of CSA by perpetrators of the same gender, using this as fodder to fearmonger about LGBT people being a “threat to children.” Additionally, one of the men in the trafficking network mentioned the BoyChat excerpt is gay, and also has sexual experiences as an adult with other men. I have zero issue with homosexuality or any consensual sex, of course, and as queer anti-CSA activists when we are confronted with this dilemma we generally just highlight how most men who sexually abuse boys are still heterosexual themselves, sexually abusing someone does not require you to be sexually oriented toward their gender, and many conservatives do explicitly support CSA of boys by men and view it as congruent with heterosexist institutions.) Likewise, I won’t place the blame on any other attractions, per se, rather than the decisions abusers make, and the institutional enabling and abuse apologist beliefs which motivate and allow them to do so.
(And furthermore, it is also worth noting that Edmund Marlowe himself is very homophobic and mapmisic, at least in the bigotry-against-pedophilia sense (e.g. as exhibited in his 2012 novel and his website), even if he is willing to hang around more tolerant friends. So the two viewpoints (CSA apologia and mapmisia—and other bigotry against perceived deviances) are hardly so strictly opposed even in practice.)
Addendum: I now realize that I had made an error in my original Tumblr post. I mistook Amazon’s community guidelines for its seller content guidelines; the community guidelines actually only apply to
The BoyChat post is by the user “Edmund,” titled “New memoir by an active boy-lover.” It says,
A few years ago I had a close friend who was dying of cancer and had, in not quite so repressive days, been an active boy-lover. He was a brilliant raconteur and had no close family. I convinced him that he was in a perfect position to write a frank memoir for posthumous publication. It was published today.
To the best of my knowledge, it is the only memoir apart from Michael Davidson’s The World, the Flesh and Myself (1962) to give a candid account of a man’s liaisons with boys integrated into a full account of his life. It is also a priceless record of lost times.
Anyone interested can buy it as a paperback or kindle book from Amazon at the link below. Here follows first the book description on the back cover and then, to give an idea of his writing, one of his anecdotes.
Back Cover
What would you do if the one thing you truly loved and that you knew brought out the best in you made you a monster in the eyes of the society you grew up in? Would you avoid your love and lead a half-life without hope of fulfilment, despite knowing the hatred directed at the true you was irrational and founded on fake science foisted on the public by vested interests? Dangerous Love is a memoir which invites you to step into the shoes of a kind and courageous man struggling with this dilemma.
Stephen Nicholson realised he could only love boys when he was still a boy himself. After graduating from university, he began a career teaching music in an England where the moral panic about children and sex was only just taking off. As it grew, he realised there were many lands still uncontaminated by it and that if he was to lead a meaningful existence, he must go to them to find boys who were free to welcome his love. And so he did for more than two decades, until the anglosphere had distended its icy tentacles to snuff out the last refuges of dalliance between men and boys.
Suffused with the author’s warm wit and intellectual honesty, A Dangerous Love is an extremely rare true account of the life of an active lover of boys, told with a breathtaking candour only possible because it was written for posthumous publication by a dying man determined to bequeath the truth to anyone interested in it.
The post links to this Amazon page selling the book:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1914571150
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1914571150
Product details
Publisher: Arcadian Dreams (November 10, 2023)Language: EnglishPaperback: 302 pagesISBN-10: 1914571150ISBN-13: 978-1914571152Reading age: 12 - 18 yearsItem Weight: 1.15 poundsDimensions: 6 x 0.76 x 9 inchesBest Sellers Rank: #507,764 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
In my Tumblr post, I also screenshotted an excerpt of the book provided in the BoyChat post, in which the author describes a visit to Amsterdam in 1986, soliciting and buying CSEM in the back of a shop, and buying sex with a fifteen-year-old boy who was among a group of many other boys (some “as young as eleven”) who were being supervised by an adult man (over here we would call that a “pimp,” but such a reality has been obscured by the watered-down, euphemistic retelling among the pro-c’s).
I was absolutely furious upon seeing this; I said:
I’m sure everyone here realizes how incredibly fucked up this is. It is completely unacceptable for Amazon to host this exploitative content (and in general it is completely not okay for this publication to be out there glorifying a dead sexual predator while he likely has never been held to account, nor the other men involved in carrying out or facilitating these crimes here).
Also note that Edmund Marlowe, the OP/friend of the deceased abuser, has multiple other books on Amazon (along with a whole profile page containing a Gmail address); he also runs a pederasty propaganda site which has a “contact” page listing another Gmail address if you’d like to make your feelings known.
You can read about Amazon’s community guidelines and how to report violations of it here:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=GLHXEX85MENUE4XF
I would appreciate if more people reblogged to spread this information so it can reach a larger audience.
A Twitter user, @celebrikid, made a thread sharing this information. As several commenters on it have noted, it is additionally messed up that the book is being marketed toward adolescent readers.
However, I would like to address one of the replies made on Twitter. I was recently suspended from Twitter again, so I can’t do so directly. It said,
However, I would like to address one of the replies made on Twitter. I was recently suspended from Twitter again, so I can’t do so directly. It said,
Is he a wm and is his “love interest” a child from the Global South? That’s pedophilia × sex trafficking (I cant use the euphemism of “sex tourism”). The “courageous” thing to do, would have been to leave the child the f*ck alone and register himself into a f*cking program.Yes, Nicholson was a white man; however, it seems that the book describes abuses of many different boys over his lifetime, not just one. The one we see mentioned in the excerpt was white; however, there was definitely a white supremacist component to his thinking, actions, and writing regarding it too. He says, “On the way back to the hotel, I was cursing myself for my hesitancy. How often does a chance of sex with a Caucasian fifteen-year-old present itself so easily? I would certainly take the opportunity tomorrow if it hadn’t already slipped through my fingers.” The clear implication here being that to him, it was everyday and normal and expected to find non-white boys who were sexually available to men, while white boys were more like “forbidden fruit” under this objectifying mindset (in reality, the issue is more than non-white boys, and children/youth in general, are less valued and “protected” (in the social role of a prostitute, in terms of sexual politics), often left behind from progressive youth-protection efforts which mainly serve to aid white youth, while white boys, and children/youth in general, are more often viewed as the private sexual property of a white patriarch (father) rather than “public property,” and under his “protection” (meaning, generally, not-allowed-to-fuck-unless-granted-a-license-by-the-owner). (This is also why so many perpetrators of child sex trafficking are the child’s parents themselves.) This dynamic has been theorized far more with regards to (cis) girls than with boys, and there are some differences with how they manifest, but as both groups are oppressed by adultism under patriarchy, the dynamics in play are still fundamentally similar).
However, there is reference to abuse of children from the Global South elsewhere in the book. The book has been placed in the category “Multicultural & Interracial Romance,” and the back cover of the book (seen in the Amazon preview) says, “The cover painting, ‘Stephen in a samlor with a boy,’ is by the author’s friend Tancred Marlowe.” The front cover depicts a white man sitting next to a brown-skinned boy, and a brown-skinned man driving the vehicle. The implications are obvious but disturbing (Thailand has historically been a hotspot for white men sexually exploiting local children).
Furthermore, there is the sample of the book provided by Amazon, which includes an editor’s note by Marlowe. He says on page x,
To understand why Stephen acted as he did, it is critically important to consider the appalling circumstances in which boy-loving men of his generation found themselves living. Just as he finished his education, his native land began to be gripped by a moral panic about children and sex which made loving boys infinitely more dangerous than it had been before. Many at the time believed that reason would soon prevail. When Stephen realised this was not to be and that he must travel abroad if he was to hope for a fulfilled existence, it was still possible in many countries for men and boys safely to have love affairs, in South East Asia quite openly. However, no sooner had he begun to explore these lands and to consider moving to one of them, longing for a love life such as people with different sexual longings could take for granted, than the writing appeared on the wall: the English-speaking countries were not satisfied with Gestapo-like repression of boy-love in their own countries, but were set on using threats and financial inducements to cajole every other country into succumbing to their new sexual order.Which makes it pretty clear, I think.
(Here we all know how racial patriarchy works already so I won’t spend too much time rehashing my analysis; my explanations were more for the benefit of white audience members less familiar with the content of my blogs/accounts/online presence who might be less familiar with these theories.)
However, I do take major issue with this above Twitter user’s use of the term “pedophilia.” She seems to view CSA as a product of pedophilia and views pedophilia as some sort of illness, disease, or difficult-to-control urge which can however be slightly mitigated by some sort of psychological or psychiatric “help,” and thus a pedophile would be more virtuous (courageous, even) if they chose this “help” because it is a difficult, brave thing to “resist” one’s pedophilia and try to carcerally contain or even reduce it. She recommends Nicholson to “register himself into a f*cking program.” But who would be administering such a program? White adults, being paid by white capitalists to operate an institution (psychiatry) fundamentally built on white supremacy, adultism, and structural hierarchies, which has historically (and is presently) a key contributor in upholding abuse culture, and with close ties to the prison-industrial complex. The idea of pedophilia “causing” CSA, with psychiatric “help” or medicalized reprogramming being the way to “prevent” it, is a myth promoted first by abusers/abuse apologists who wanted to decrease the perceived agency of abusers in abusing and to divert attention from the patriarchal mechanisms which produce CSA on a mass scale.
This kind of recommendation would sound more ludicrous if it were about, say, telling a white supremacist they’d be doing the right thing if they went to a program to deprogram their white supremacy and avoid perpetrating colonialist violence or hatecriming people of color, or telling a misogynistic cis man to go to therapy so he doesn’t assault his female partner, etc. The point is that the very thing which puts them at risk of perpetrating such abuse is what is also what makes them not want to take it away. It’s not something that happened to them against their will—not the state of having any particular set of attractions, fantasies, or psychological patterns—but specific ideologies legitimizing authority and control. The struggle against oppression is political, not medical, and allowing it to slip into the latter is a result of extensive efforts at co-optation which are, to a degree, exactly what the oppressors themselves want.
I have also seen what happens even when you just tell an adult in a psych program you support pedophiles without yet believing or saying you’re a pedophile yourself (not fun! and definitely the opposite of helpful to anyone), I have been in therapy where the therapist knew I was a pedophile (she was bigoted and extremely misinformed about it and did CSA apologia to me, tried to stop me from reporting past CSA I experienced, and sexually harassed me (somewhat or mostly in a separate context?)); while these aren’t exactly the same as programs specifically geared toward “helping” or “treating” pedophiles, preventing “potential CSA’ers” from committing CSA, or both, I have also researched about what such “programs” are actually like, and while some might be a bit beneficial I can think of a dozen alternatives that would accomplish these effects in a much more reasonable manner and I have little faith that psychiatry can be a revolutionary apparatus for any of us in any degree. (This is a very unpopular opinion among most people, including my own community, as well as antis—but yeah.)
Unfortunately, adultism is so severely pervasive throughout society, often or usually even more so than other forms of bigotry, that medicalist apologia about violence against youth is much more accepted than apologia for abuses of adults (for example, many feminists have come around to the understanding that rape of adults is fully the choice of the rapist and the problem won’t be solved by ~more therapy for rapists (or “potential rapists”)~ but by overthrowing patriarchy and other hierarchical systems, but when it comes to youth, all the old rape myths (e.g. uncontrollable urges) come flooding right back in).
//
I did not even expect that my Tumblr post or celebritykid’s Twitter thread would gain much attention soon. I’d even hoped that they might remain contained in their own initial spheres. However, it turns out that Rae, the admin of childlove.space (allegedly resigned one week before its downfall), who recklessly permitted posters to post CSEM and has posted CSEM herself before, permitted Nazis to disseminate genocidal rhetoric and targeted bigoted harassment on her platform, who has befriended and defended Nazis as well as many other types of reactionaries, who has some sort of special grudge against me and has knowingly misgendered me multiple times and joined in on harassment campaigns against me, has been stalking me off-platform, and possibly stalking my associates on Twitter as well. She indicated that she has been extensively combing through and reading my Tumblr blog for a long time. (She is also memorable, with regards to her current fedi account, for recently lamenting that NNIA users don’t want to interact with her and trying to coerce people into interacting with her, not finding any of this behavior questionable or creepy at all.)
Rae started a thread writing long paragraphs defending adults patronizing underage sex workers and sexualizing Stephen Nicholson’s victims. Many other pro-c fediverse users joined in to mock the victim mentioned in the BoyChat excerpt in a manner which would certainly constitute sexual consent/boundary violations and sexual harassment of a stranger even if there were no other considerations in play, but it was especially violent and disgusting here because of the added context of trivializing rape. (I refuse to link the thread here; it was nauseating and would probably cause a great deal of despair for anyone with the slightest amount of care about the hellish rape culture we live in but you can probably find it yourself if you look hard enough.) This wasn’t really surprising, to be honest; given the pro-c ideology which devalues consent in one way, it doesn’t seem too far of a stretch that their milieus often devalue consent in other ways, and it’s also a familiar tradition for everyone to casually sexually harass everyone else in such spaces (along with “ironic” bigotry, other abuse apologia/crossing the boundaries of abuse survivors, and the like). (In the thread, Rae also posted a screenshot from a Tumblr post I’d made over a year ago. In the post, I was criticizing someone with sexually repressive/puritanical views intersecting with adultism. Rae randomly decided to comment on the screenshot too, and also referred to me as “her” in her post. She’s known me for over a year, there is zero excuse for getting my pronouns wrong for the nth time, again.)
Other users made various angry posts about me, accusing me of being puritanical/an anti/a fascist/evil, accusing other Nicholson critics of being puritanical/antis/fascists/evil, etc. Several individuals sent death wishes. A few liberal anti-c’s jumped in and decided to argue that the book should stay because censorship is bad, or it’s “a book about the MAP experience” and thus deplatforming it would be mapmisic, and other such nonsense. Pro-c’s also used the opportunity to get angry at Lecter, who had made several posts arguing against platforming the book.
Once I saw that it was no use trying to deflect off-platform-related targeting and harassment of me over my criticisms, I decided it would be alright (or at least, not detrimental) to link my Tumblr post in the fedi discussion. A replier expressed a quite accurate sentiment: “Jesus Christ, he writes about boys like they are disposable objects.”
I have responded to some of the anti-anti-Dangerous Love arguments and complaints on my NNIA account: x, x [thread], x, x, x [thread].
On the matter, Lecter has said:
https://nnia.space/@comrade_lecter/111394321102502875
So since conversations about A Dangerous Love by Stephen Nicholson are reaching fedi,[1] I need to tell you that this is an auto biographical book by a guy who justifies child and teenage sex work and himself had sex for money with teenage boys.[1] In reference to threads by Rae, several cannibal.cafe users, and other pro-c’s who’d found out about our off-platform callouts before we had decided to mention it on fedi.
All child and teen sex workers are victims of sexual abuse/exploitation. In this particular case they were also directly monitored and supervised by an adult.
This book’s editors are profiting from CSA and CSA apologism. And those who want to prevent this profiting from happening are doing the right thing.
https://nnia.space/@comrade_lecter/111395412401102799
If someone commits CSA and writes a book about it, whoever the money goes to is profiting from CSA. And that’s bad. The least that can be done in this situation is immediate revoking of all intellectual property rights and using profits for CSA survivor organizations.
We had a whole long conversation about Gabriel Matzneff several months ago, and the lengths his victims had to go to in order to make him stop profiting from them. This is the same exact thing.
Books like these belong in CSA related conversations, available for free analysis to those who want to study motivations of abusers. Not for sale earning money for abusers’ friends.
https://nnia.space/@comrade_lecter/111409429651440982Rae: Notice how they are avoiding condemning Mein Kamf [sic]. It’s because the Nazis also banned books and they don’t want to condemn the manual for their hateful ideology.1. Wow, that’s fucking rich from an admin of a nazi enabling instance. Need I remind you that you allowed cl.s users to make propaganda against mixed ethnicity relationships and didn’t ban them till they became transphobic?
2. If Mein Kampf gets reprinted with praise, if whoever spreads it is genuinely supportive of Hitler, that’s still a fucking problem, actually. I don’t support Mein Kampf being removed from the context of genocide and other atrocities. To make the case of Stephen Nicholson’s book comparable to Mein Kampf, he needs to be explicitly condemned as a rapist, his friends need to lose intellectual property rights, and the book itself needs to be studied as an example of CSA.
But I know y’all don’t want this, y’all want to praise your rapist role models.
A Dangerous Love by Stephen Nicholson is an autobiography of a rapist that praises the rape he committed.
This is not a book of some abstract opinions and not a historical record. It’s just a continuing commercial exploitation of his victims.
When I said that it would be appropriate for this book to be used by those who research CSA, I did not mean it as “this is a valuable text that needs to be saved by our collective efforts from the evil sjws who try to cancel it.” I am the evil sjw that tries to cancel it.
Additionally, someone seemed to be stalking me on Reddit. Half a day after I posted about the situation on Reddit, the individual u/UnusualTry4687 (now suspended) sent me the following comment (I posted screenshots of it here):
Hey Idiot,[2] It may surprise you, but I have, in fact, read some “books on the subject,” including apologist ones as well as anti-CSA readings. It hardly makes sense to claim I am “obsessed” with the subject but also that I don’t study it at all.
If you actually read books on the subject you have an unhealthy and malicious obsession with,[2] you’d know that Amazon has always carried books that feature sex between men and boys.[3] In a lot of cases, the sex happened at a time when the age of consent was lower than it is today and when there was less hysteria about CSA. God bless the soul of Edmund’s deceased friend.
You’re not a MAP, Iris. You’re just mentally ill.
Go see a doctor for your POCD, schizophrenia,[4] and autistic retardation. And if you’re so fucked in the head that doctors can’t help you, please kill yourself. Here’s a website[5] with information about humane suicide methods. The world would be much better off without mentally deranged imbeciles like you.
Women[6] are teleiophiles at heart and can’t be MAPs except in rare cases. A female MAP is like a two-headed sheep; a true freak of nature. They’re so rare, they might just as well not exist.
99.9% of women who claim to be MAPs either have POCD or psychotic delusions about being pedophilic. They’re not genuinely attracted to minors at all. Women are viscerally disgusted at the thought of sleeping with someone who lacks physical and psychological traits associated with maturity. For women, nothing screams “sexual turn-off” as much as immaturity. Women expect their male partners to be more mature than they are themselves.
Even in the rare case where a female teacher gets caught for having sex with an underage student, it’s always the most mature and socially dominant boy in her class that she developed a relationship with. And even then, those women are unicorns. 99.9% of women have zero interest in minors, even if they’re mature for their age.
Straight women prefer manly men. Lesbian women prefer mature women and lack men’s sexual preferences for neoteny. It’s incredibly rare to find a lesbian who likes barely legal girls; finding one who likes minors is pretty much impossible.
Men are the only ones who can truly love boys. Women are completely incapable of it. Teenage girls can love boys their own age who look and act mature for their age, but they can’t love younger boys, and once they become women, they have eyes only for mature men and couldn’t care less about boys.
[3] “Feature” is rather vague. I am, obviously, aware that various other Amazon books “feature” man-boy CSA—fictional depictions, condemnatory depictions, memoirs about abuse, scientific research discussing it, and so on. I am also aware that there are plenty of other apologist books on Amazon, including historical discussion, “research” interpreting it in a positive light, past celebrity memoirs about perpetrating CSA, and so on. This context collapse is unhelpful. I am also not a defeatist; just because something is already there does not mean that it would be a good idea to add more of it. I do not believe that permitting vicious epistemic violence is acceptable just because of some whataboutist complaints.
Furthermore, as Lecter noted: “but also, it’s not a unique piece that needs to be preserved at all cost. If it just disappears, it won’t be a loss for anyone or anything, except that dead rapist’s supporters.” Stephen Nicholson is not a prominent historical figure whose memoirs would be necessary as receipts for discourse, debunking myths, or reconstructing the past. Child molesters are a dime a dozen; if you want something to “learn from,” you can just go read from the many published and widely-circulated memoirs which already exist. Nicholson was not a significant figure in public discourse, he seemed on the track to dying in obscurity except for a few mentions on Marlowe’s site, and it would be a net positive for society to keep him that way.
Many people would understand why someone would, for example, want to report a blog by an abuser detailing and glorifying their past abuses, exploiting their victims. Those considerations don’t go away just because the exploitation is now published as a book. Deplatforming is not equivalent to mass violent state censorship; it’s just common courtesy. Additionally, it is problematic to distribute such content for other purposes when the abusive events it details have not yet been resolved, and the abusers and abuse networks it discusses may still be unknown or even at large. The information contained in the book should not be used for narrative consumption or propaganda or “preservation for the sake of” or learning, in my opinion; it needs to be seized for criminal investigation. (e.g.) (Arguably, enabling the writing of such a memoir could constitute a failure to report crimes and enabling harm to youth.)
[4] I noted that I most certainly do not have POCD or schizophrenia at all.
[5] The words “a website” contained a hyperlink. I did not save the link, and the comment has since been completely removed by Reddit’s admins, so I do not know what exactly it was.
[6] As my friend Rondomi noted, this was misgendering and hardly applied (I am nonbinary and not a woman): “You’re a female (you’re not), and you falsely claim to be a MAP (you are), and female MAPs are rare (they’re not), therefore, they shouldn’t be listened to (they should) because when something’s an aberration (it isn’t), that deprives it of its value (it doesn’t).”
This was the only comment he had on his profile at the time, but he had several hundred more karma points than one would expect from a nearly-blank account (i.e., had decided to delete all his other comments and/or posts, likely even for the purpose of having a relatively anonymous account to harass from). I have little to no information on who he was, but I did get to see his “active in these communities” (among these were r/MensRights and r/AllPillDebate, how predictable). After I blocked him and removed his comment, he decided to troll again by specifically looking for another subreddit I mod (one for survivors of child abuse, no less) and posted a link to an essay titled “The Child Pornography Myth.” Some people just can’t leave well enough alone. (Both his initial comment and his post have since been fully removed by Reddit.) (This harasser was relatively anonymous, though I do have some guesses on who might’ve been behind that screen.)
//
It is worth noting that this is the third time (in a few months) that a pro-c has sent me anonymous, graphic, violent hate messages—and all three times so far have been as retaliation/punishment for me speaking out against a now-dead adult who had raped/sexually exploited youths. These posts from me have provoked even more ire than my callouts of alive rapists/abusers. I think this is, unintentionally or not, revealing a very important value among them: if they are persecuted in life, they hold on to the possibility of having at least a great legacy to preserve their power to some degree, with gullible bigots willing to give them a chance: worship of Great (adult) historical figures forms an important pillar of their justifications for their ideology. Attacking posthumously means starving them of their last potential vestiges of glory. I think some of these men instinctively know that if even after death their idols are not safe, then neither are they now.
The first iteration of this was after I posted my essay on Newgon’s apologia for Marion Zimmer Bradley. A day later, someone with oddly similar diction, typing patterns, professed beliefs, and preferred sources as Newgon’s Strategist created a sock account to comment a long text block of child abuse apologia. I was uninterested in platforming such myths, so I deleted the comment and blocked the account. A few hours later, that individual created yet another Dreamwidth account and started spamming the same comment over and over under my posts as well as in DMs. He went through my blog and spammed hate messages under every single post I have, including a great deal of ableism, misgendering, and trying to discredit my other work (ironically using mapmisic rhetoric for some of it). His final account was identified and banned by Dreamwidth mods while I was offline, before I had a chance to delete that round of comments; this is why you can see several “reply from suspended user”’s under each of my posts now. The relentless hatemail (totaling to over a hundred notifications) only stopped after I turned off anonymous commenting. I posted some screenshots on NNIA. One of the messages said,
Your post slandering Marion Zimmer Bradley is a fucking disgrace. I couldn’t care less about the rest of your shitty blog, but if you don’t delete that post, I won’t leave you alone. You will be dealing with me every single day from now, here and elsewhere.Wow, that worked out well for you, didn’t it? /s
Moira Greyland waited over a decade to accuse both her mother and her homosexual MAP father of molesting her and of being sadistic predators, with zero evidence, in a book she stood to profit from. No one else has ever corroborated any of her accusations.
So delete that post now. Don’t wait.
The second series of anonymous hate messages was through Reddit. A (now-suspended) newly-created sock account going by the handle u/HyperboreanMale[7] sent this as a modmail to one of the subreddits I moderate:
lol I’m glad he died, nobody should be feeling sorry for proud Nazis & abusers & rapists[8]Someone who writes stuff like this doesn’t deserve to be spared after being raped. No one in our patriarchal brotherhood of rapists will ever forgive you for gloating over St. Nathan Larson’s death. The dust on his bones is infinitely more valuable than your life will ever be, Iris. We no longer consider you to be an Aryan woman, even though you technically may still be.
I love stabbing feminists, animals, and numales, but there is no being on this earth that I'd love to stab as much as you, Iris. You're the lowest female life form on the planet.
I’d go about it slowly to maximize your suffering, but when I’m done there will be little left of you; just a collection of organs, a severed head, pools of blood, and skin tissue. I’ll take your decapitated head home and hang it up in my bathroom to use as a sex toy.
We will eventually doxx you. Don’t think you can stay anonymous forever. And once you have been identified, it’s only a question of time before we break into your home and stab you to death, after first using you for sex and torturing you. I look forward to hearing you cry and beg for your doomed life while I slowly cut off your clitoris and remind you of the cowardly things you’ve said about Nathan Larson, a man who died for his principles and who faced extreme hardship in the pursuit of lofty ideals.
You didn’t get abused often enough when were a child, Iris. Maybe if your male relatives had used you for sex every day since you were a sexy little baby girl until you reached adulthood, the seed of feminine virtue would have eventually sprouted within you; maybe you would have become a submissive and obedient maiden who worships her male superiors. But there is no changing the past. The evil subversive feminist snake that you are today needs to be snuffed out at the earliest opportunity.
[8] In reference to this post I had made.
After I blocked, banned, and muted him, he repeated the message at a different subreddit I mod, and I had to ban and mute him again. I was rather surprised that someone most likely from the cunnyborea.space Nazimap pro-c clique was going after me (in a much more direct, personal, outraged manner than how its members have argued with/sexually harassed/made casual violent threats to others on the pediverse, almost as if this person actually felt threatened by me). NNIA had cb.s defederated from day one, and I hardly ever talked about them, much less had any interactions with them, unlike the many other people who were attacking them/vice versa (I vaguely remember being harassed by a clique of pro-c Nazimap Hyperborea enthusiasts that was most likely the same people on Twitter circa late 2022 when I was @MAPLiberation, for being trans/having the wrong (degenerate) kind of mapness, but that’s not really much to hold a latent grudge on). (It’s also interesting to note the overlap/adjacency with Newgon in this situation, because my initial post was dunking on a Newgon article. Them again, or at least on their behalf—perhaps they had something to do with this too, at least indirectly? Newgon currently disavows any connection to the “real Nazis,” of course, although during their cl.s run multiple members happily reblogged from and positively interacted with cb.s Nazis.)
These cowards are a different register of scumbag than the average casual emotional abuser present on pro-c pedi attacking me and people I care about, and most of the latter would rather think they’re nothing like the former, but still it seems like everyone happily finds common ground right when it comes to picking on me and trying to shut me up.
//
Five days ago, I came across an unexpected development: someone had posted a screenshot of the Amazon page for A Dangerous Love to r/awfuleverything, titling their post “Amazon sells a memoir written by a deceased pedophile that glorifies child rape. Please do your part to report this disgusting work and take it off of Amazon.” I watched the upvote count rise from 2K to 3K to 4.1K, before it was removed by the mods because “We no longer allow content involving minors. This includes content that depicts violence against or sexualization of minors.” (This wasn’t a new rule for the subreddit; I also saw it applied in posts before that one.) Afterward, Reddit admins themselves removed the post (I’m still not sure why).
I’m not sure if my Tumblr post, celebritykid’s Twitter thread, or some of my/my comrades’ discussions on fediverse were what alerted this individual to the book’s existence. Neither have gotten many reblogs/retweets/likes, and the screenshot looks different from any of the screenshots I or Twitter users had posted, but the call for reporting could indicate they were at least inspired by us and got to the page by following our links. I’m not sure. Either way, it was indeed distressing to see mapmisia being promoted, especially for a cause I do care about. Most of the Reddit comments also uncritically accepted the frame of problematizing “pedophilia,” conflating it with CSA or a propensity to commit CSA. People began posting negative reviews on the Amazon page. Nine out of the thirteen mentioned “pedophilia” negatively.
Ultimately, I can’t stop antimaps from demonizing us along with CSA perpetrators when they try to do anti-CSA activism. But I can continue to express my disagreement with such language and narratives, and I will continue to do my activism on my own terms, without acceding to the pressures from either pro-c MAPs or anti-c antimaps to abandon our stance because the other exists too.
Surprisingly (or not), a rather high number of commenters on that Reddit thread (many antimap) argued against the OP’s efforts, claiming that the book should actually be preserved on the grounds of free speech/anti-censorship/to understand the ~pedophile mindset~ (to ~save our children~)/because it’s technically legal/because other Bad books are allowed too. This was unfortunate, and I would point such individuals to the arguments I’ve made in this post above, as well as in my linked NNIA threads (we’ve gone over these extensively already, so it’s kind of funny seeing random Redditors just discovering these spontaneously). (It was also rather eerie how CSA apologists/aspiring enablers of such disparate dispositions somehow all managed to stumble across nearly the exact same arguments, all with hardly any cross-pollination. This is a familiar experience for those of us who have tried organizing against CSA/CSA culture in both antimap and pro-MAP communities (and pro-c vs. liberal anti-c communities, and so on).)
A few individuals in the thread said that they had reported the page to Amazon, and a customer service representative had contacted them and said they would do something about it. I’m not sure how well this has succeeded yet, as the book is still up right now. As someone there said, I think it might also be a good idea to consider putting public pressure on Amazon, starting something like some sort of campaign so they would be more inclined to take action. This does have precedent; the book A Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure by Philip Greaves, a detailed and disturbing CSA manual (isn’t it depressing that both antimaps and pro-c MAP supporters conflate pedophilia with CSA?), was pulled from Amazon in 2010 following massive backlash from the public. (See also x, x, x.) Since A Dangerous Love details abuses of real-life victims already abused, that arguably would run afoul of (implicit or explicit) rules even more.
I highly recommend that individuals share this information, either by reblogging, retweeting, linking to my Tumblr post/the Twitter thread/this Dreamwidth post, or sharing the information yourself on other platforms. However, I will not tolerate any bigotry being applied in the name of stopping CSA, and I do not endorse any scapegoating of marginalized groups or identity characteristics while trying to attack actual abusers. This includes mapmisia, as well as other forms of bigotry such as homophobia, etc. (I mention homophobia because, as we know, certain segments of conservatives like to be homophobic when they hear of CSA by perpetrators of the same gender, using this as fodder to fearmonger about LGBT people being a “threat to children.” Additionally, one of the men in the trafficking network mentioned the BoyChat excerpt is gay, and also has sexual experiences as an adult with other men. I have zero issue with homosexuality or any consensual sex, of course, and as queer anti-CSA activists when we are confronted with this dilemma we generally just highlight how most men who sexually abuse boys are still heterosexual themselves, sexually abusing someone does not require you to be sexually oriented toward their gender, and many conservatives do explicitly support CSA of boys by men and view it as congruent with heterosexist institutions.) Likewise, I won’t place the blame on any other attractions, per se, rather than the decisions abusers make, and the institutional enabling and abuse apologist beliefs which motivate and allow them to do so.
(And furthermore, it is also worth noting that Edmund Marlowe himself is very homophobic and mapmisic, at least in the bigotry-against-pedophilia sense (e.g. as exhibited in his 2012 novel and his website), even if he is willing to hang around more tolerant friends. So the two viewpoints (CSA apologia and mapmisia—and other bigotry against perceived deviances) are hardly so strictly opposed even in practice.)
Addendum: I now realize that I had made an error in my original Tumblr post. I mistook Amazon’s community guidelines for its seller content guidelines; the community guidelines actually only apply to
The content guidelines for books can be found here:The guidelines don’t apply to content in products or services sold on Amazon (for example, content of a book).
- Actions you take, including:
- Sharing text, photos, videos, or links
- Marking a review as “helpful”
- Interactions with other community members and Amazon
Author Publisher & Vendor Guides ›
Content Guidelines for Books
These guidelines apply to book content, including title, cover art, and product description.
As a bookseller, we believe that providing access to the written word is important, including content that may be considered objectionable. We carefully consider the types of content we make available in our stores and review our approach regularly, listening to feedback and investigating concerns from our customers. We reserve the right to remove content from sale if we determine it creates a poor customer experience.
Authors, publishers, and selling partners are responsible for adhering to our content guidelines. We invest significant time and resources to enforce these guidelines, using a combination of machine learning, automation, and dedicated teams of human reviewers. We’ll remove content that does not adhere to these guidelines and promptly investigate any book when notified of potential noncompliance. If we remove a title, we let the author, publisher, or selling partner know and they can appeal our decision.
Illegal or Infringing Content
…
Offensive Content
We don’t sell certain content including content that we determine is hate speech, promotes the abuse or sexual exploitation of children, contains pornography, glorifies rape or pedophilia, advocates terrorism, or other material we deem inappropriate or offensive.
Poor Customer Experience
Books for sale on Amazon should provide a positive customer experience. We do not allow descriptive content meant to mislead customers or that doesn’t accurately represent the content of the book. We also do not allow content that’s typically disappointing to customers, including the examples provided in the Guide to Kindle Content Quality.
Public Domain Content
…
I find it ironic that Amazon prohibits “glorifying pedophilia” (as if pedophilia, an attraction which is in no way equivalent to the act of CSA, is a bad thing and on the same level as rape??) but is doing so poorly on its content moderation (deliberately? or just by negligence?) that it is right now platforming hate speech against youth and CSA survivors, promotion of child abuse/CSE, and overall content which is extremely inappropriate and offensive by any reasonable standard.
However, the latter half of the advice given in the Community Guidelines page still seem to apply well for this:
However, the latter half of the advice given in the Community Guidelines page still seem to apply well for this:
How to report violations
…
After we receive your report, we’ll investigate and take appropriate action.
To find more information about the Amazon Community and how to contact us, follow these steps:
- Visit Customer Service.
- Select Help with something else (if this button is displayed).
- Select Something else.
- Select Amazon Community.
- Select the most appropriate option from the list of Amazon Community features.
The book certainly seems to violate the Amazon content guidelines, so I would still recommend reporting and putting pressure on them if you can.
Additional note: Edmund Marlowe’s Amazon page lists three nonfiction books which he contributed to, with “Michael Davidson” listed as the first author. These also seem to run afoul of the promoting-CSE guideline, if you’d be willing to put in some extra effort. I would say that x, x, x, x, x, x, and x also seem like reasonable targets.
Additional note: Edmund Marlowe’s Amazon page lists three nonfiction books which he contributed to, with “Michael Davidson” listed as the first author. These also seem to run afoul of the promoting-CSE guideline, if you’d be willing to put in some extra effort. I would say that x, x, x, x, x, x, and x also seem like reasonable targets.
