chronic_ally

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,

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
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):

Hey Idiot,

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.

[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.

[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

• Actions you take, including:
  
  • Sharing text, photos, videos, or links
  • Marking a review as “helpful”
• Interactions with other community members and Amazon

The guidelines don’t apply to content in products or services sold on Amazon (for example, content of a book).

The content guidelines for books can be found here:

Earlier this year, I was keeping an eye on a certain individual in the MAP community who had also joined Mastodon in mid-2022 with a long history of questionable behavior, who was carrying out ongoing harm. I felt distressed and stifled seeing him gaining clout and seeing community members have friendly, casual interactions with him, as if they had no idea who he was or what harm was being enabled by allowing him a platform. I mostly confined my venting to DMs with friends, and also passed on the information about him to various other people in private if they were newer to the community and seemed to be unaware but might appreciate or at least consider changing their behavior upon knowing. I also occasionally screenshotted bigoted or abuse-apologist posts by him and complained about or dissected them, and referenced his past with relative indirectness. On February 17, I was casually discussing some new posts in DMs with a person whom I was friends with at the time. I wasn’t exactly venting or suffering; we rolled our eyes, and I thought that would be that. I mentioned being unable to talk like this in public. The person said that I should actually try doing that. After some time considering the idea and deliberating with myself, I decided to actually do it, and posted a thread.

In response to drama surrounding the thread, Liminal made a statement on February 18. After reading Liminal’s post, I realized that I had remembered some of my referenced pre-2021 timeline (mostly things I had heard other people talking about a long time ago) inaccurately. The following summarizes the history of and explains the problems with the individual’s behavior fairly well:

Here’s the timeline of events surrounding Valiumboy/Wayne/OffenderX and my involvement.

- 2017-2018 Valium has been around the Twitter MAP community since like the Enderphile days, I never liked him because I had seen screenshots of him saying gross shit about sexually assaulting his daughter on Amos Yee’s community, pretty much bragging about it, he has a long history of doing this, what he did on F.U Ask isn’t new.

- 2018-2019 All old-school people from Virpeds keep repeatedly giving him a chance and he was allowed to walk freely around the community, I thought this dude was a lost cause but ok “second chances” and all so I never said anything

- 2019 Gets called out by a minor for sexually harassing them and as result gets banned from all MAP communities at the time

- 2020 Minor ally reaches out to me in DM’s and tells me Valium is sexually harassing them and I made a call out post about it to expose him. During all of this one of his dedicated hunters reaches out to me in DMs and tell me this dude has an even darker history and shared a news article about him which I shared with everyone else so we could get rid of him and we did for some time. (Of course he’s not saying anything about how all the shitshow only started because he was being a fucking creep to minor allies and only wants to paint it as me working with antis or something, I never had any interaction with his hunters besides saying “thanks” for the new article)

- 2021 He keeps showing up around Twitter, since I know he has a long history of being a creep to minors in the community I keep calling him out.

- 2022 I see him getting a F.U account and I decided to say nothing about it, I decided to let him be because he has proven to be a roach very hard to kill and I didn’t have the mental stamina to deal with any of it again, if he behaves that’s good, if he misbehaves well it’s the problem of F.U’s admins not mine.

- 2023 See your timeline

(Note: Liminal is also a violent adultist and has been (non-sexually) abusive to minors; he should not be cited as an unproblematic source for anything either.)

I had made my thread in relative haste; after looking over it again afterward, I saw a few mild errors (I was unable to edit posts at the time), and I was also receiving significant backlash for a link I had included in it, which I have now removed. I deleted my thread, but I am reproducing it here (with some minor corrections and updated information so it is more convenient to read):

[screenshot of an ask on FUA by OffenderX: Why are lots of people blocking me on mastadon [sic]?

answer by Katie: I dunno. People are weird.]

[screenshot of a post by @OffenderX@freak.university on February 16, 2023: It’s weird I’m blocked by people I’ve never even talked with.]

It’s “weird” (as in relatively rare, and also socially stigmatized/counter-hegemonic) to set boundaries with abusive, bigoted, oppressive people who harm you, will harm you, or use their platforms to harm others. Normative society shames people for choosing to not go through uncomfortable or dangerous interactions. Normative society pressures people into excusing harm and picking perps over survivors because Not That Bad, well what about The Community^TM.

It’s normal, sure, and it’s weird right now to break away from that. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong, or unreasonable, or impossible to understand the motivations for.

Sometimes people block other people just because they’re annoyed by seeing certain types of content on their social media feed, or dislike someone else’s aesthetics, or have an OCD trigger around some username/words, or have trauma from parental abuse and can’t emotionally safely interact with any parents even if non-bigoted/abusive so they just preemptively block any parents they see, or any other case in which someone decides to not be around someone else while not judging the other person as unethical. And that’s fine, actually—coercive neurotypical social norms (“must interact with people even if you don’t want to”) are bad, even when there is no victimization occurring.

Though that’s not really what we’re talking about here, is it—ethics have been explicitly added in as part of the discussion throughout. (Note: One person I had contacted with information about his past in private beforehand said that they would like to be able to block him, but they felt significant pressure from their surroundings to keep themself open to him and not block anyone, and were afraid of social censure and moral condemnation from their friends if they tried. This person self-identified as a feminist.)

Valiumboy/OffenderX/Wayne is a transphobe. A few months back, he made a post sneering at “pronouns” and made transphobic commentary at people who argued with him. (He also frequently sneers at other paraphiles on fedi whom he views as excessively microlabeling/weird, fakeclaims their identities, the usual anti-“SJW” cringe-culture -type bigotry.)

Now, it should be obvious why a trans person, for example, might block Wayne preemptively instead of sitting around waiting for him to invalidate their identity and mock the way they choose to present themself/exist. That sucks to experience and a lot of people like to practice this thing called “self-care.” Or even just self-defense.

And, also, a cis person who cares about trans people might look on and go, oh, that’s shitty. And feel that even if they wouldn’t have their pronouns/gender mocked in an interaction with him, it’s unfair that they’d be safe around him while others are not safe, so they choose to not cash in on their privilege, they don’t want those cancerous practices around them either, they want to show solidarity with their trans friends/comrades and want to work towards social norms where transphobia is not platformed so they block him too.

As most people around here probably know by now, Wayne is also someone who sexually assaulted his daughter when she was a young child for years; he’s spent several more recent years putting up an image of repentance/reform/regret and presenting himself as a sort of “voice for ex-offenders”; he was removed from a MAP space a few years ago for making fetishizing commentary about the sexual abuse he perpetrated; his Twitter feed (@Valiumboy2) is full of misogynistic content feeding into the rightwing moral panic that there is somehow an epidemic of “false accusations” and “false reporting” of assault and abuse among children regarding their fathers, or among women regarding cis men, and tweets and retweets and replies advocating for policies to further trap age- and gender-oppressed victims of domestic violence with their abusers (i.e. “father’s rights” family-court lobbying).

Since at least a few months ago he’s made posts about how his interactions with his daughter were actually “consensual” / that she had “falsely accused” him to “ruin his life” and that she had been “brainwashed” “into believing he abused her.” He has continued making sexualizing and trivializing commentary about her and what he did to her. He made a post romanticizing their relationship, posted her IRL (first) name, and reminisced about “loving” her and naming her as a child. Many of us here are survivors of parental abuse, survivors of sexual violence as children, or experiencing ongoing abuse and violence right now and it’s not only triggering to see all this bullshit, and see people joining in on his disgusting threads and agreeing with him and carrying water for him; we also can spot immediately how that—his actions, his casual treatment of what we know was years of oppressive control and traumatic violence, his unapologetic attitude and stances, his refusal to respect clear boundaries that any truly “reformed” abuser would have the ethical awareness to not break—were/are obvious disrespect and consent violations which further the harm he has already done, trying to keep a hold on his power and all the fucked-up shit that has wrought.

On top of comments mocking other sexual violence survivors and a history of allegedly harassing other CSA survivors and minors (note: I now remember that I had gotten this allegation, of “harassing CSA survivors and minors,” from the bio of a Twitter account dedicated to calling him out. I am unsure whether this was MAP-community-related or not, and I cannot verify which particular incidents the Twitter user was referring to) and abusing other children/young teenagers from online platforms (note: I had gotten this accusation from intracommunity discussions I had heard before about his sexual harassment of minor MAPs/allies, as well as from a Tumblr thread alleging that “ex offender map” “darkmap9/valium” had “just got caught flirting with a 12 year old” and that “When it came out that he did that, the entire [MAP] community rejected him”) and comments he has made on his Freak University account admitting to perpetrating other abuse/sexual assaults that have not yet surfaced in public or in the criminal justice system (note: this was posted on January 2, 2023: “Back in the eighties I dated a 14 year old I was in my twentys [sic]. I took her in my local pub no one batredyan eye lid [sic]. Some even said your [sic] a lucky bugger”), he’s just fucking unpleasant to be around in general, even when the person interacting with him is one of his apologists who are fine with his past and ongoing actions—he’s made numerous replies here and there even to his friends that test boundaries/outright disrespect boundaries/consent—he doesn’t see anything wrong with any of this, clearly. (Note: As this whole drama went down, a trans girl who defended me from Wayne’s apologists also stated that there had been an incident where he’d made unsolicited sexualized commentary about her, and that it was indicative of his objectifying worldview which “saw the women and girls in his life as fuckmeat.” I think this is a relevant example of the way he was casually disrespectful, entitled, and toxic in social interactions.)

Additional note: Some of this could be chalked up to the general atmosphere of the pro-c pediverse, which is overwhelmingly dominated by rightwingers who hold and practice social norms such as denigration of perceived “cringiness” or “weakness,” not valuing consent or boundaries, believing that saying “no” to requests regarding social interaction or expressing discomfort/pain/distress is indicative of weakness/inferior character, and regularly crossing the boundaries/comfort zones of or behaving in casually toxic ways with their friends around them, as well as (and especially) opponents, including with sexual harassment, and which tends to foster such practices among its members and people in proximity. (Lecter has covered the issues with this in some recent blog posts.) However, Wayne certainly did have patterns of questionable behavior in casual contexts before he ever joined fedi. For example, in 2021, we interacted in Twitter DMs. Several times during that conversation, he out of the blue made bizarre and inappropriate comments at me with what he assumed about my sexuality.)

A lot of us know personally how fucking terrifying and devastating it is to experience that kind of prolonged control, theft of autonomy, attacks on our bodies/persons, and total powerlessness and lack of consideration. A lot of us have also thought through this stuff a lot (you kind of have to, when you’re on the receiving end of abuse/oppression), and we can recognize the dynamics of authoritarianism/interpersonal control that follow from and are enabled by “lesser” violations and apologist sentiments like his adult supremacist comments, or his support for police/policing, or any of the other bigotry he’s espoused. And we also know from experience and from extensive studying that abusers and oppressors heavily rely on platforms and social connections to carry out their violence without being able to be stopped. We all know how this shit works. Abusers control the flow of information and discourse. They keep up social and material and ideological support for years because they are believed and cared about and victims are not. A lot of people on this corner of fedi are leftists and fucking angry at this miserable fucking status quo and we’re tired of the bullshit, we’re tired of the privileged interpreting the lives and experiences and conditions of the marginalized, we’re ready to fuck shit up and put social capital and moral comfort on the line to break down institutions of power (both formalized and informal) and these injustices upon injustices and the lack of awareness of and care for people like us and that means not tolerating bullshit like this and taking back the narrative.

Wayne and his circle of apologists make complaints day in and day out about how he’s being “unfairly ostracized,” “unreasonably silenced,” “ignored,” “censored,” “cancelled” as much as the average far-right pundit complains day in day out about how they’re being silenced/censored/cancelled by the Woke Mob and their Cancel Culture^TM—and his complaints hold as little water, people choosing to not be around you (without even much social pressuring, by the way, because even now adult supremacy and misogyny still are socially incentivized a lot) because you are genuinely toxic (along with harmful) to be near is not you being Censored^TM. Sure you can talk. And people are going to talk back and tell you you’re wrong or tell you to shut up because your talk is harmful and also bullshit. People will curate their own online experiences, including not giving a mic to every toxic mf around the area who wants to preach abuse apologia.

You fucked around. Now you’re finding out.

I hadn’t thought much of this thread at the time of writing. I didn’t think it was particularly different from any other thread I had made dunking on him before. I thought enough people already knew what the context was. I was not looking for any particular positive responses; I expected no results, and expected that things would go on as normal afterward. I mentioned his past in more detail than usual only because I felt that for this particular occasion, it would be easier to understand my thread if it was contextualized with that information. I went offline for the rest of the day and mostly forgot about it.

I woke up the next morning to a surprising (and very heartwarming) flood of agreement and support—but also, as I soon observed, a massive barrage of hate.

Among other things, the following thread was made:

@OffenderX@freak.university: [screenshot showing that Lecter blocked him on FUA]

Let’s all block the bad sex offenders because we are so righteous and non [sic] of us would ever ever offend we don’t even think about fucking kids in fact we are whiter than white and only dream about cute bunny wabbits

 

@Sp@ghetti.monster: Don’t care about Lecter, his group is the worst

 

@OffenderX@freak.university: I’ve known him for years he is not even a paedophile or map but people think he us [sic] king if [sic] the paedophiles he has not even got the balls to tell me why he blocked me like most on here.

 

@Dean@freak.university: It’s the boosting sexualised and/or borderline pornographic images of minors that’s led many to block you or instances to de-federate you. Some may just not like you of course but that’s their right and they don’t have to explain their reasons.

 

@OffenderX@freak.university: Paedophiles attracted to children’s body’s [sic] block another paedophile for boosting images they find a turn on sounds about right. Don’t lecture me on anything when this instance is prepared to doxx me and plaster pictures of my daughter as a teen all over a paedophile forum. I’m the honest one here you lot are most liars [sic] hiding behind a nomap screen.

 

@Dean@freak.university: Not trying to lecture you, just attempting to clarify why you may have been de-federated and blocked by some. Some just don’t want to see that, we have all sorts here including those with PD who might be distressed by seeing those kinds of images; instances want to be careful about who they federate with to avoid trouble which might take them offline.

 

I’ve been doxxed before (as you may well know, we were mutuals on Twitter back then) and I know very well it sucks. I had no part in it nor do I intend to ever have any part in doxxing anyone MAP or otherwise, offending or not, I didn’t see it nor would I look at it if I ever did, if you see a doxx on here report it/let me know and it’ll be deleted. Revealing someone’s personal information without their consent for any reason is not acceptable.

 

@Liminal@youjo.love: Just ban him already please

 

@Sp@ghetti.monster: For what

 

@Himorasikata@lolison.top: rule 3 under technicality

 

@Liminal@youjo.love: also several violations of rule 4

 

@OffenderX@freak.university: What’s rule 4 King nomap no dick.

 

@Liminal@youjo.love: “Being transphobic, homophobic, paraphile-phobic, racist, ableist, fascist, or supporting any oppressions in general” being transphobic is one of the main reason [sic] why Kay and others had a problem with you even before you started saying gross shit about your daughter.

 

@Himorasikata@lolison.top: on the topic of banning why did i get banned for locking someone’s account but liminal isn’t banned for associating with antis

 

two faced [racial slur] fuck @Administrator@youjo.love

 

@OffenderX@freak.university: Liminal is a fragile nomap who gets mad at reality.

 

@Liminal@youjo.love: If you think I have wronged you so badly why were you trying to befriend me for the past 2 months or so? I had nothing to do with you getting exposed this time but you want to make me the central piece of this for some reason.

 

@OffenderX@freak.university: Because I was trying to be nice and I saw you were in distress. I agree you did not start this this time but you were the origin of the original doxx and you never saw it as wrong. I have done nothing wrong on freak except for some minor incursion that happened because I am not well l up on freaks [sic] rules. I am not trans phobic… you know my account on twitter because I follow u. I’m sick of my past being dragged up by paedophile hunters and now maps. Either accept me warts and all or block me any of you who think I’m a monster that’s your own preducices [sic] seeping through. Stop being exoffenderphobic and leave me in peace and ill [sic] stop attacking back.

 

@Liminal@youjo.love: You were being a sex creep to minors in the community, why aren’t you open about it and keep avoiding it? Why don’t you come clean about why you got banned from MSC?

 

@OffenderX@freak.university: Wrong I fell for some bait account like loads of other (nomaps) did at the time it was because of the influx of so called aams into the community which you embraced. 99% of aamsyare [sic] bait accounts and the only reason any of you want them in the community it [sic] to be lewd with themyadmit [sic] that truth iris.

 

@Liminal@youjo.love: What a sneaky piece of trash you are, none of those people were baits and none of them ever behaved inappropriately with anyone, this is why posting the link to get rid of you was a good thing and under the same circumstance I would do it again a billion times.

 

I didn’t do it this time though so stop getting me involved in this bullshit.

I was disappointed by the almost quasi-bureaucratic procedures I encountered when I had tried to bring up the issue more formally. It took a full four weeks after I reported the issue to a server before the moderators were done “discussing” it internally and willing to defederate Wayne’s account. I initially had no hope that a process against Wayne from FU (Freak University) itself would be successful, but the positive response from some to my thread made me feel like it was possible; nevertheless, there was a lot of controversy and infighting, and in the end we only succeeded in getting the admin to ban his FUA (Freak University Ask) account and freeze his FU account, rather than fully suspending it. His abusive posts have not been deleted. The admin said that it was over his transphobia, with no mention of the CSEM, his revictimizing commentary/behavior regarding his survivor, his doxxing of her, or his CSA apologia (as another pedi user pointed out, almost certainly an excuse to ban him, as she knew he should be, while stirring up less controversy/taking a less politically risky route). In the end, our efforts were moderately successful in effect; we did get him to shut up on FU, and while he was invited by a reactionary admin of a different pro-c instance to move there, few people have followed his new account, even fewer have interacted with him, and he hasn’t posted on it since March.

Many pro-c’s observing the incident defended Wayne on various grounds. Some claimed that it was unreasonable to attack him because he had served his time and so his CSA of his daughter shouldn’t be held against him or brought up anymore. Some claimed that actually he hadn’t done anything wrong at all in the first place because he said it was consensual and she’d said she hadn’t known it was wrong until she grew older so it wasn’t abuse at all. (Nevermind that Wayne himself had spent years saying he had perpetrated abuse, that he knew it was wrong now, he was redeemed, etc.) One or two anti-c’s also argued that although his actions were wrong, so was sharing the article, because it violated his right to privacy / would cause inevitable blowback on MAPs/civil liberties in general / was unreasonable/unnecessary/harmful, and isn’t Iris always going on overkill against predators anyway?

(It was fascinating to observe the rapid about-face made by numerous pediverse pro-c’s the moment a sexually abusive father came up. Many who just a second ago were claiming to be the most radical of all the radical youth liberationists, total nuclear family abolitionists, Very Anarchic Anarchists (unlike those sex-hating, prudish, repressive Fake Anarchists), the only ones who Truly Care about the violence of hegemonic parental power and normalized parental abuse and exploitation, the best and only defenders of children and children’s rights, suddenly decided that they had to go to bat for an accused father and erase his survivor’s voice, to cast her as too powerful or even reverse-abusive, to claim that any youth liberationists trying to put constraints on a parent’s free exercise of power was Going Too Far and Extremist and Looking Too Much Into Innocuous Behavior and part of some modern (feminist, SJW) trend of terrible moral degeneration and just taking any children claiming abuse at their word instead of worrying about false accusations like they should.) (I believe this is part of the same phenomenon which I described here, in which some pro-c’s, especially more modern ones post-’80s feminist anti-CSA activism, try to claim that they are distinct from Real Child Molestation advocates and Adultist CSA supporters because they advocate for liberating children from the chains of the nuclear family through transgressive adult-child sex, presumably with an adult who is not a family member and who is opposed to the child’s parents. However, as we see in practice, “child liberationist” pro-contactism and nuclear family values are rarely as far from each other as they initially claim.)

(There is an additional dimension to this with how some pro-c’s focus on man-boy [CSA] exclusively, claiming to only support contact with boys while opposing contact with girls because “studies show” that “girls are harmed while boys are not.” They follow in the tradition of, e.g., Rind et al., and similar and adjacent intellectual and activist milieus, arguing that feminist claims about the universal abusiveness/harmfulness of CSA are biased and unreliable, especially because they rely exclusively on the “feminist incest model” of CSA, which describes adult male relatives/familial authority figures sexually abusing young girls. They claim that their [CSA] is so much more enlightened and superior because it only involves boys and/or non-relatives, and thus would not be inherently nonconsensual in the way men sexually abusing girls and/or their own children more “obviously” is. Yet if you trace back the roots of their activism, you will find many of the same people who were significant players in advocacy for CSA of girls as well, and the same rhetorical strategies which were used to defend fathers abusing daughters are now being re-applied to extrafamilial “mentors”/“friends” and the like abusing boys after feminist successes delegitimized the former. Likewise, many pediverse pro-c’s who claimed to support only “actually consensual” adult-child sexual relationships which did not exploit structural power differentials and/or emphasized boys-aren’t-harmed-though-so-your-studies-are-invalid abandoned such stances for the situation with Wayne.) (One would do well to remember that Rind himself has defended parent-child incest too, as well as nonsexual parental consent violations/coercion.) (This mirrors a general trend of misogynists/adultists assuming that feminists are never youth liberationists in general, only care about girls, only care about some subsets of issues, have or have generally had no idea how to analyze issues outside of a singular model e.g. extrafamilial CSA, and have no idea how to address abuse of boys, when that is entirely untrue; many feminists did develop and utilize models for other forms of CSA as well and are the strongest supporters of abused boys; antifeminists are the ones who tend to be more adultist and pro-child abuse including toward boys; their disingenuous claims of being champions of boys are more reflective of a masculinist idealization and coercive sentiments than any genuine care.) (Many such pro-c’s draw inspiration from ancient Greek models of pederasty. They would do well to remember their roots more properly—in Greece, the institution of pederasty existed side-by-side with paternal authority, the institution of marriage, and sexual exploitation of girls, and in fact reinforced heterosexism and the family.)

The discourse followed from (and continued, and re-intensified) a longer debate which often occurred throughout the fediverse side of the community regarding appropriate responses to accused abusers and predators, the nature and ethical status of violence, and its relevance to marginalized status and anti-oppression politics. Especially strong throughout more normative sides of the MAP community, mirroring discourses occurring right now in other marginalized and anti-oppression communities, is a common thread of certain ideals which could be summed up as “liberalism”—various beliefs in pacifism, community cohesion above autonomy, civility/politeness above hard truths, always seeing the best in (more normal/respectable) people, and so on. In particular, there is an emphasis on not being perceived as “punitive” or “retributive” with regards to certain sets of circumstances perceived to indicate alignment with the carceral state. (That school of thought saying we need to focus on “rehabilitating” rapists and child molesters and abusers, and if you have different priorities then you are literally a cop.) I was especially annoyed with the constant accusations lobbed at me of being “carceral” because, as I have made clear throughout my online presence, I am a police and prison abolitionist myself; meanwhile, Wayne has argued in multiple fedi threads against people saying ACAB, thinks not all cops are bad (and actually most are great harmless people), thinks prisons should continue to exist and that incarceration is good and necessary for crimes (though he has been less consistent when arguing this; sometimes imprisoning abusers is fair and sometimes it’s literally oppression), makes racist commentary on Twitter, wants the state to curb immigration in the UK, etc. I don’t see him getting labeled “carceral,” though he literally fits the most basic definition of the term.

(Ironically, another thing which got me labeled problematic, carceral, and “vigilantist” was that instead of calling the police the moment I saw or thought I saw a child predator, I attempted smaller-scale, community-appropriate grassroots action, which apparently is categorically problematic to liberals. Another part of the argument was that if an adult is really bad/has really done CSA, I would have evidence and would report it, and my failure or disinclination to report thus indicated that my accusations must be false. This same claim has been (independently) replicated by different people to attack me as a “vigilante” during other dramas too.)

It is also contradictory to claim that he is somehow more pro-MAP than we are or that we are secretly or by adjacency mapmisic or assimilationist for being anti-c, for drawing hard lines regarding contact politics or abusers, for strongly opposing CSA, for supporting direct action against CSA, or for attacking him. He has consistently shown that he takes issue with radical MAP politics. He has made negative posts about fediverse MAP activists who use aggressive slogans regarding antis or call for action against/want to harm antis. He dismissed their rejection of liberalism/pacifism as a product of immaturity/childishness, although these younger MAPs are like this precisely because have generally experienced more mapmisic violence and abuse from antis, often intersecting with ageism/adultism, and are responding to their own trauma, advocating for necessarily self-defense which they had been denied in the past.

Regarding another point of complaint against me: for a long time, many people have also taken issue with me blocking people. I block a lot of people because it is important for me to be able to set boundaries against people or interactions I am uncomfortable with, something I was denied throughout childhood because of abusers and their entitlements. I am disabled and have limited physical, mental, and emotional energy. I do not want to sink any more time than I already have into relationships which are lost causes or wastes of time/energy for me. Furthermore, I am a marginalized person and tend to be disproportionately targeted for harassment, abuse, and hate. I have had multiple bad experiences on fedi where giving someone the benefit of the doubt instead of just blocking them and forgetting about them outright led to terrible consequences for me. I have learned over time that I need to always be on guard, because there are many bigots and abuse supporters online, and often they are not so 24/7 whenever they post, and it’s easier to get rid of them once than to have to keep track of everyone’s issues. I struggle with paranoia and trauma, including from these incidents, and I have various random triggers which mean I need to block certain keywords and types of accounts for my own peace of mind. But I don’t see anyone showing sympathy for my struggles. All the sympathy is on the poor blocked bigots/abuse apologists who were denied interaction with Iris (what a frigid bitch) as if they are somehow automatically entitled to controlling how I spend my time in the first place? As if authoritarian social norms which can force people into interactions they don’t want are not a literal fucking foundation of all abuse cultures? I remain astonished at the naivety of so many people on pedi who truly believe that Absolute Free Speech and No Restrictions At All Costs are somehow liberatory and more important than safety, self-defense, and genuinely anti-oppressive values, as if they can’t predict what will inevitably result from such a toxic and coercive environment. But certainly it’s easier to make fun of a demonized survivor, pathologize me, and cast my actions as unreasonable and “unhinged” (hysterical?) and deserving of disdain and envision a caricature of me rather than actually engage with what I might actually think.

(It seems that my instincts are good. So far I have yet to see a single person whom I blocked for political reasons who was actually redeemable. All of them inevitably escalate and engage in even worse rhetoric/behavior. Always retroactively vindicated. Lol.)

The discourse also followed from older accusations of me supposedly “doxxing” MAPs I supposedly mistakenly perceived as sexually predatory toward minors. These claims, which originated in 2021, although they had mostly died down throughout 2022 and early 2023 as I ignored the initial instigators and the instigators took hiatuses or decreased their activity on fedi, paved the way for pro-c’s to cast me as particularly malicious, evil, hysterical/overreaching, vindictive, punitive, antimap-like or an antimap myself, out to get any pro-c MAP unfortunate enough to cross my path, ready (and able) to doxx random bystanders willy-nilly, putting Everyone in the community At Risk. I have no interest in going over the specifics of these past events, which have already been re-hashed in threads ad nauseam; I mention them here to give context to a particular phenomenon relevant to the situation with Wayne. I was accused of “doxxing” him by linking a news article about his past CSA and conviction because it stated his first and last name and the names of his daughter and ex-wife. What he and the many other pro-c’s claiming I “doxxed” him like to conveniently ignore is that he was already going by Wayne and expecting people to call him that on fedi. He waved around his city in posts. He gave out the name of his daughter. I did a simple Google search with his first name + her first name + “sexual abuse” + “father” and got that article as the very first result. That’s “doxxing” now? Really?

I bring this up now not because I have some sort of “vendetta” against him or think angry thoughts about him while he’s no longer relevant, or want to vindictively attach his name to malicious smears or Ruin His New Life and Disturb The Peace, or anything of the sort. As people know, I have major emotional and object impermanence, and I can hardly remember people if I’m not actively interacting with them. I barely think about past acquaintances at all. I had already planned on writing this post because I wanted a record of my NNIA thread to be available somewhere as I’ve deleted the original posts, and I would prefer for these events to be recorded for transparency and organization, to inform my readers, and to serve as a jumping off point for some broader political points I have to make. Especially since the topic was reopened about a month ago when Lecter mentioned it again (I’m not sure if it was in response to some other posts or spontaneous), saying it was absurd that people had panicked that they might be “next” in line to be “doxxed” as if there were no meaningful differences between themselves and actual sexual abusers. This kickstarted a whole new, very long thread in which various people argued furiously and tried to re-litigate the events of February. I was uninterested in getting too directly involved there because I didn’t really see the issue as posing an immediate threat or in need of immediate resolution anymore, trying to argue over it again would not accomplish anything concrete, and it would only end poorly for me to jump back into the fray (as I would only feel nervous and threatened/insecure throughout and my detractors would only find new reasons to attack me). There didn’t seem to be much point in people starting such a fight again (unless someone wanted to retroactively punish me for my role in the events). The same old points were made (doxxing, mean/bad, what about his rights, can’t set a precedent, he’s a MAP so he should get special treatment, etc.).

I addressed some of the points going around in a separate thread, noting, among other things, that:

• The claim that it was bad for his survivor to bring it up or share the article with her name literally originated with him. Do you think he is an accurate interpreter of her wishes? Do you think you are, working from a paternalistic pacifist blueprint? I think the article itself was pretty clear. She hates him, will hate him forever, will never forgive, wished for a harsher response, and literally waived her legal right to anonymity so that she could tell her story as herself.
• He functionally doxxed her by publicizing her name (and his) along with various other personal details. He wanted to be able to talk about her without her voice ever getting into the mix or him being at risk for any criticism. It is unfair, unreasonable, and oppressive to claim that his voice should be allowed out here (and even unconstrained) while hers is silenced, that he should be able to exploit his past but then complain that people are bringing it up again only when we do so negatively.
• “wEll tEchNiCaLLy” is the refrain of enlightened centrists. Are the oppressed Going Too Far in our violence? Or are patriarchs rushing to constrain any potential violence from us because you know that is what is necessary to uphold the status quo? Does it really matter what we do or don’t do here? You cannot just take events and analyze them in isolation, devoid of all surrounding history, nuances, or context. Might you consider that perhaps levelling these sanctions would be a net loss for liberation, even if we had technically violated some rule in the book?
• It does not matter if an abuser/rapist has X marginalization too. The personal is political; misogynists make great informants; they’re more bigoted/oppressive/harmful to our cause on average than nonabusers/nonrapists are; abuse is abuse, and caring about victims means caring about all victims.
• None of the feared IRL Consequences actually occurred. Regardless of Technicalities, he is, in actuality, totally fine right now. He dug his own grave, he lies in it, stop complaining as if you’re so much better, your objectivity and neutrality aren’t very objective or neutral.

Were our run-ins with Wayne particularly significant in the long run, with how we’re faring now? Not really; the pro-c’s are much more interested in pursuing different lines of criticism against us and are much, much angrier about those. Wayne isn’t really much of a political activist or especially talented at creating and navigating community connections and intracommunity politics; he utilized what was already there to bolster protection and social acceptance for his behavior. Still, I think his case is illustrative of these dynamics. In particular, how DARVO counter-accusations against me (especially of “doxxing” or being too extremist in opposing pro-contactism or secretly being a mapmisist myself/collaborating with antis) in response to me defending myself or other vulnerable people from abusive behavior increasingly escalated, become more and more wild and evidence-less and far-fetched, while the abusers/abuse enablers ran their PR until huge swathes of people were willing to believe that I was evil, monstrous, the worst of the worst, with vastly more power than I actually have, involved in secretive underhanded conspiracies, behind every misfortune they suffer, always out to get them personally, a danger which had to be contained else the good people's lives would be in danger, an enemy to be eradicated.

This year, the main instigator of the most prevalent “doxxing” accusations against me returned to pedi, her circle of supporters grew, and efforts against me escalated. I received an ask questioning me about whether I had actually ever doxxed anyone. I have actually done things which might be considered “doxxing” or “spreading doxxes” before, and I did not want to give a technically false answer which might be used against me later to paint me as deceptive/hiding things that wouldn’t make me look good or a liar, so I said yes. This was in reference to a few anti-MAPs and an anti-c non-MAP ally who were actively engaging in abuse of MAPs/allies, as an effort to help stop them from abusing and protect their victims. I have also done mundane everyday leftist things like retweeting/reblogging exposés of Nazis by antifascists on social media. I do not think this was very remarkable. The mob, however, eagerly jumped onto any shred of evidence that could be construed as indicating guilt, claimed this was some sort of “confession” on my part of having doxxed MAPs or doxxed pro-c’s, and took this as an excuse to triple their efforts and call for my total removal from all MAP spaces. It wasn’t just that one time; they misinterpret my words constantly, often in very far-fetched ways, to stack up more and more evidence that I am politically problematic, abusive, predatory, a villain, etc. It is especially hard when I’m autistic and tend to communicate in a direct and literal manner, and tend to assume others are doing so too, and have a tendency to take people at face value, and sometimes feel confused when people twist my words and seem completely impervious to any clarification. I do not believe their constant nitpicking and misinterpretations are an accident; I am far from the only person they do this to. (When I tried to fight back against the harassment and brought up the scenarios of doxxing antis/abusers/Nazis, I got many pro-c’s to spontaneously admit that yes, they do in fact find it wrong for people to doxx antimaps, abusive nonmaps, and Nazis too, also on moral grounds and for fear of it trickling down to harm MAPs/leftists somehow. So it’s not really about MAP rights/liberation here, is it?)

In all of this, it is quite evident that there are major double standards in play here. Who, exactly, is “punitive” culture hurting most? Consistently, pro-contactism is more socially elevated, valued, profitable, and protected, while survivors and our allies are treated with cruelty, harassed, and yes, punished. Both-sides’ing/relativizing contact discourse to favor giving more benefit of the doubt to pro-c’s is basically the status quo, while few think twice before making generalizations and condemnations of anti-c’s. It is widely believed that it is Very Important And Necessary to Stop perceiving pro-c’s as Bad Evil People because apparently Everyone overwhelmingly and irrationally holds negative and false beliefs about pro-c’s. But in practice, this is not even actually true (everyone just loves giving them extra chances). It feels much, much easier to claim that pro-c’s are being persecuted or oppressed than to claim that anti-c’s are being persecuted or oppressed without being cast as insane for thinking that. This benefit-of-the-doubt just leads to more of the Overton Window being ceded to pro-contactism, while the exasperatingly naive liberals/centrists are played for fools.

Whose past, exactly, is being dug up unnecessarily and/or lied about to malign them? I’m not allowed to be complain that people keep mentioning over and over again completely irrelevant moderate wrongs with little actual impact I had done years ago in ignorance and while under significant abusive pressure, which I have consistently disavowed for years and which I do not even have anywhere near the means to replicate now, to spin a fairytale of deliberate malice and villainy attached to them with numerous wildly false claims (which have expanded, as of now, into claims that I run a giant network of Discord servers dedicated to doxxing MAPs, that I’ve invited informants into NNIA to spy on other MAPs, that I control NNIA, that I run a cult and everyone listens to and automatically agrees with everything I say and if I write a Callout on someone I consider Problematic then they will immediately be Cancelled By Everyone With No Recourse and I have massive social influence over NNIA (absolutely not true! I’m one of the most unpopular and deliberately ignored people on the entire site), that I was a top informant for various antis I have never talked to in my entire life, that I (while being a minor, having little money, being disabled and very socially anxious and so busy all the time that I’m already constantly overwhelmed, and having no methods of independent travel) am capable of attacking remote people IRL, that I’m laundering funds/have secret dark money for our projects, that I have fed connections, that every time a pro-c instance goes down it must be my fault, and so on and so forth). But if I mention someone else’s past when they (all evidence considered) have never been publicly criticized or held accountable for their actions, do not particularly care that they did it and do not understand that it was wrong, pose a significant present threat, and intend to cause harm again/are harming again right now, even if they have done things orders of magnitude worse than anything I ever even considered attempting, even if they have frequently informed on MAPs to literal antis and been mapmisic/done antimap activism themselves, that’s problematically punitive and unforgiving and not-letting-their-pasts-just-be-forgotten-like-they-want and replicating prison-logic?

(What’s that they say—“every accusation is a confession”?)

It seems that people see violence as casually acceptable when done to me/my comrades and only problematic when hinted at from us to them, whenever it is resistance to abuse rather than furthering abuse. They can talk a big game about kindness and pacifism and not-wanting-to-hurt-anyone and can’t-we-all-just-be-friends but only, it seems, when the target is on their side or on the side of oppression. Not once have I seen any of that crowd giving any regard to what I might be feeling with what they do to/about me, but the potential feelings of violent misogynists, adultists, abusers, and sexual predators are automatically elevated to tantamount importance, treated like some sort of fragile glass that needs to maximum protection 24/7. Meanwhile, it seems like it’s perfectly fine, for them, if I’m hurting or experiencing bigotry or having my life ruined. (Sometimes it does seem like they just forget entirely that I am a real actual person with actual feelings and subjectivity who has their own point of view and internal experiences, who might be more than just a cardboard-cutout prop to project onto and objectify and enact their mob justice on.)

It is depressingly noticeable how easy it was to get me banned/defederated from multiple instances, but we had to move heaven and earth to even attain an inch of progress against an admitted serial child sexual abuser engaging in ongoing victimization, and even then the tiniest actions taken against him were widely questioned and disparaged, while there is nearly no break in the consensus at all that I deserve to be mass-ostracized from every part of the community and should be attacked and harassed. (When I brought this up several weeks ago, on a private post no less, a harasser who did not even follow me stole access to the post, screenshotted it, shared it publicly, and falsely claimed that I was actually referring to them and was therefore making a false predator accusation and therefore doing evil things, collaborating with antis, always wrong/mistaken about everything, maliciously targeting them, etc. etc. etc.)

During the Wayne drama in February, the admin of FU had also made a post linking to the article with his name in it. For that, she was viciously dogpiled and labeled a “doxxer” too. She deleted the post, recanted, apologized profusely, and has since consistently claimed regret for her actions and aggressively disavowed any such article-linking as “doxxing” too. She even capitulated to the mob recently, freezing my and Lecter’s FU accounts, limiting our NNIA accounts from FU, and banning Lecter’s FUA. (Lecter had been tainted with guilt-by-association when he had refused to ban me from NNIA for “doxxing” and had sanctioned the accuser for harassing me and having a long history of being a bad actor in 2021, prompting her to demand that the entire NNIA instance be defederated from everywhere else for justice. He was roped into personal “doxxing” accusations as well when he mentioned the individual’s past screen name in clarifying events and trying to hold her accountable several months ago.) This didn’t protect the FU admin, however; more recently, she herself was accused (again) of “doxxing” and running a “doxxing server” and putting MAPs at risk, just like I had been—because people dug up screenshots of private chats from months ago in which she had considered having people try to doxx a certain violent, transmisogynistic, serially abusive and life-ruining anti, and they misinterpreted an offhanded joke from her (again, from months ago) in an extremely exaggerated manner. Now they want her gone too.

Another pro-c MAP now ostracized from the community was accused of “doxxing” for some similar actions related to those events. My anti-c MAP friend was accused of “doxxing” in 2021 by the same person spearheading the accusations against me now, because of their shared involvement in the 2021 situation, and was successfully harassed/threatened and traumatized out of participating in the pediverse community (although pro-c’s continue to gloat about this cruelty and revictimize them even now).

Furthermore, an anti-CSA MAP ally has also been falsely accused of “doxxing” a MAP, but in a very different context: the claims about her actions were 100% fabricated out of thin air, not just wildly distorted from a relatively innocuous that did actually happen, and the aggrieved party is anti-c. This occurred as a part of a prolonged abusive situation which included community social sabotage, although those abuse enablers are not present in the same circles as the current pediverse. Nevertheless, it is significant that such disparate groups of abusers and social capitalists throughout the MAP community would happen upon the same DARVO tactic, with surprising success in demonizing and prolonging the victimization of abuse survivors and particularly marginalized community members. (If anything’s a “witch-hunt,” it’s this. “Look, they’re a DOXXER!!” “Look, she’s a WITCH!” Pitchfork them all.)

Here are some examples of the rhetoric flung at me which my harassers have felt comfortable saying out loud:

@Liminal@youjo.love: … being transphobic is one of the main reason [sic] why Kay and others had a problem with you even before you started saying gross shit about your daughter.

@Sp@ghetti.monster: Do you have any proof of him doing that

@Liminal@youjo.love: It should all be on Kay’s or Iris profiles [sic].

“iris” whoever iris hates is my best friend
welcome to the community valium, liminal suck an egg

@Liminal@youjo.love: Iris hates me more than anyone else here

iris tried doxxing me and getting me attacked by antis because i told them he was [old, irrelevant drama in which it had gotten me attacked by antis first]

the retarded fuck should either kill himself or get the fuck out of this community (i prefer the former)

(I certainly did not try to “doxx” this individual or get it “attacked by antis” in any way. But the truth doesn’t matter, does it? Propaganda and manufacturing consent for violence are rightwingers’ bread and butter.)

(My detractors from pro-c communities love misgendering me. I have been misgendered as “he” and “she” at various times by different people; I have also been gaslit for criticizing them or requesting correction. Nowadays it’s almost rarer to find someone who uses the correct pronouns for me than those who use binary ones. We might get called “punitive” for attacking transphobia and ableism, but at least none of us have ever used misgendering to punish someone else, or weaponized someone else’s disability or mental illness against them.)

So why is this coming up now??

We know you’re an offender

It’s in your name

@OffenderX@freak.university: Because the bastards have spoken to lecter or liminal who posted my offence on twitter and have now done it here.

@Sp@ghetti.monster: Another nnia L

Doxxers should get the rope

(Note: https://nnia.space/@comrade_lecter/109888833361684251; but also note: their critique wasn’t mainly of Lecter or Liminal, but of me, and my usage of NNIA, for reposting what Liminal had originally posted several years ago independently of NNIA.)

Did these individuals get “cancelled” or face any repercussions for publicly calling for my death/murder? (Predictably, nope.) If I ever said anything like this about a pro-c, you can be certain that I would immediately face vicious retribution. Only one person (who wasn’t even anti-c) in the entire Wayne drama had expressed any violent wishes toward him. But we still bore the brunt of the backlash.

The various accusations of “doxxing” have become especially potent and inflammatory as Newgon came into play in later 2021 and started targeting me in particular this year, picking up existing attacks on me (and other NNIA members) as well as pushing forward various attacks of their own and powering harassers whenever they come up. As Lecter has noted, they in particular are mobilizing these accusations and smear campaigns to take down their political opponents (and keep roping in previously-unrelated people to join in on the smear campaign, e.g. with this guest post hosted on Tom O’Carroll’s blog, written by Newgon’s Strategist a few days ago, in which he repeats slanderous claims about me and tries to make a case for why rape fetishists are worse than Nazis). It is notable that all the victims of false “doxxing” accusations by pro-c’s so far have been politically inconvenient to the pro-c project in some way, either by being anti-c and too loud about it, by sympathizing with anti-c’s and disagreeing with pro-c’s with more social capital, or by running afoul of the reactionary norms of the space. In common with the accusation by anti-c’s not particularly affiliated with the pediverse, all victims of false doxxing accusations within the MAP community in these past few years were being punished for rejecting authority and resisting abuse or abusive norms in spaces, with moral panic incited as a tool to keep them in line and prevent social change. This has been especially applied for minors and youth liberationist allies calling out adultism.

It might seem surprising that such a hyper-specific, arguably random accusation would have such consistent, immediate, destructive impact. It would be almost comical if it weren’t so devastating and cruel. But the absurd and seemingly arbitrary are precisely where abusers and oppressors often prefer to stake their territory. Regardless of how niche the issue is, the fact remains that here is where key points of conflict lie; reactionaries are leveraging it to build their power base in the community, and we would do well to analyze the phenomenon.

The pro-c’s speak of “doxxing” in a way similar to how we would speak of abuse or sexual violence: almost as a sort of informal statutory offense, and moreover a deadly assault, threatening the integrity of our communities, one which requires immediate mass mobilization to guard against. What I have noticed is that their “doxxing” accusations almost mirror the form of accusations of abuse, sexual violence, bigotry, or oppressive behavior which we would use. One could say that if abuse or oppressive violence were to us the “archetypal” wrong or offense, then “doxxing" to them approaches their view of the “archetypal” crime. I believe this is analogous to how other rightwing communities conceptualize a quasi-judicial “crime” of “false accusation,” “false reporting,” “defamation,” “reputational damage,” “gold-digging,” etc., deemed more offensive and threatening than abuse or sexual assault itself.

What is interesting here is that the MAP community is relatively insulated from the outside, much more so than many other communities. Thus, there are some rather unique opportunities both for bad actors within the community to create and exploit internal power dynamics, and for us to observe an arena in which abuser-vs.-survivor political conflicts and cultural norms are being produced in real time, in an especially “isolated” or “contained” strain, and thus in a clearer form to extract social analyses from. What we see here now is a very particular, literal manifestation of anti-survivor retaliation and patriarchal retrenchment. Our small subcultural space is certainly niche, but we do reflect and to some degree filter over into the dynamics of the outside political battles as well. In this current era of explosive new opportunities for anti-sexual-violence activism, increasingly radical youth liberationist and feminist consciousness, as well as anti-#MeToo backlash and the threat of encroaching fascism, capitalism-in-crisis brings hostilities, internal and external contradictions to a head; micro-scale political dynamics become part of larger systems and movements, and right now we down here have unique opportunities to either lose a lot or gain a lot as well.

Why, exactly, did the reactionaries of this community choose “doxxing” as their point of fixation? I believe it is because this particular crime (or “crime”) suits the MAP community atmosphere especially well. MAPs are marginalized and face significant risk from being found out IRL as MAPs; anonymity is strongly emphasized and prized in online MAP communities, while doxxing oneself/going public as a MAP activist is seen as a sort of “point of no return,” the ultimate gamble putting your life on the line, reserved only for activist-heroes or the unfortunate. Many are almost paranoid about OPSEC. Some even chide others for perceived security/info-protection failures. Doxxing a MAP, especially by/to one’s IRL abusers, is a major threat wielded by antis against their targets, and mapmisic MAPs who have collaborated with/snitched to antis have tended to focus on giving out IRL-identifying information. However, at the same time, fear of doxxing for some people might align with a fear of being found out for past abusive or predatory behavior that they are trying to run from so that they can continue to avoid accountability, leave their survivors in the dust, and deceptively accumulate power to abuse again. Anonymity is both a last protection for the oppressed and a deadly weapon oppressors’ arsenal, and this ambiguity in usage makes it easy to confuse and exploit. As such, “doxxing,” which sits at an unusual intersection of both these associations, becomes a particularly contentious and volatile weapon, and thus a prime item for reactionaries to manipulate and utilize to produce effective moral panics.

But look at what is actually going on behind the smokescreens: who, for example, is actually behind the pushes from each side? We just want to be left the fuck alone (and to defend others’ right to be left the fuck alone); they want to needle and harass unwilling participants they know are powerless and struggling to defend themselves. We don’t seem to have many (or any?) rightwingers, perpetrators of bigoted harassment, serial abusers, etc. Meanwhile, the lineup of the attackers reveals numerous Nazis and other violent bigots, rape apologists, CSA apologists, abuse apologists and enablers, chronic harassers and consent-violators, reactionaries, people I remember even if they’d rather we forget that they have (or so rumor says) long strings of victims behind them, people I’ve spoken to in private who are still triggered by the sounds of some of those people’s names or mention of certain years or events in which awful trauma took place and/or are afraid to speak about their experiences because of the quiet social threats in place and their own lack of power, or people who have been accused over the grapevine of very alarming crimes which somehow disappear from public discussion and it doesn’t really look so good now, does it? It may have been buried and it may be impolite and disruptive and risky to speak of it now and certainly it’s easier to keep up that good ol’ policy of open secrets, missing stairs, going unacknowledged, used to being unquestioned and unquestionable, used to enforcing reactionary norms and casual abuse culture as a requirement/bar/precondition to participating in this community—like I’ve experienced from the liberal anti-c MAP community—like I’ve experienced from antis—like I’ve experienced from oppressive communities everywhere, overall—but times are changing, aren’t they? We’ve scored some pretty decent wins in this year alone—the ice is broken; the uncriticizable are now up for critique; older members of the community panic that our radical strategy is hindering their long-accepted unimaginative uninformed strategies; the momentum builds.

Whispers remain whispers now, but—do you think you can hold on to everything forever?

(I’m not sure what particular kinds of “fantasies” were being referenced in #7, but since Gieles says “the reactions confirm each other on many essential points,” “these points support again what one can find in the [‘sexual abuse’] literature,” and that “the encounters were viewed differently [(i.e., negatively), unlike the positive experiences they were viewed as before],” I’ll assume they are talking about a trauma response which they find pretty distressing/difficult.)

I find it interesting to note how this was framed, in contrast to how much of other pro-c rhetoric is framed: often pro-c’s like to claim that anti-c’s are malicious adultists suppressing the voices of young people by not letting them say their relationships were positive; that people who experienced such relationships all secretly believe that their experiences were good and harmless, and would be saying so en masse if only anti-c’s stopped being so overbearing and moralistic. Yet here, he is giving the young people a place to speak for themselves on their feelings. He certainly couldn’t be accused of “leading them on,” “stacking the deck to include samples more likely to have experienced it negatively,” or something else of the sort; he’s starting from a prediction that they experienced no inherent harm or trauma, and did not specifically advertise for any particular populations, nor does it seem likely he’d be the type to interact with negative-reinterpreters more often than average. And yet? When they get to speak, this is what they say. (This reminds me of a thread I made a while ago about a different pro-c text which had also struggled with victims reporting their experiences negatively, contrary to expectations.)

Note that Gieles explicitly states that these were contacts he himself would consider consensual. He trusts all these adults. These nine were the only young people in the past two years who had told him of personal sexual experiences with adults. And every single one reported that they saw it negatively and was experiencing distress.

If the pro-c premise really were true, and anti-c’s have no idea what we’re talking about when we say “overwhelmingly high risk of harm”… what are the odds of something like this happening?

Even he can’t deny this… and yet, with an astounding lack of self-awareness, he still somehow finds ways to reconcile these damning results with his own wish-fulfillment ideology.

The origins of the experience
 

It is understood that the source of the discomfort is not necessarily caused by the encounter. In retrospect the experience is re-interpreted.

(Why would “believing something different about an experience” automatically equal “feeling corresponding/expected emotions”? Survivors of sexual violence in adulthood and survivors of nonsexual abuse have said for a long time that finally understanding something was abusive doesn’t manufacture feelings of trauma wholesale; those were already there, but not really able to be understood accurately or acknowledged in a healthy manner. Belief isn’t magic; brains don’t just uncritically absorb every suggestion presented to them with zero realistic filter.)

This is an essential process that doesn’t take place in a vacuum: This happens in a search for an explanation that one can come across or is offered.

(If the adult was so great and considerate and respectful and harmless, though, why would a child need an explanation for their experience? Wouldn’t they understand and accept it already, because that’s the default reaction?)

I can see three sources of the re-interpreting in retrospect of the experiences.

1. One’s own psyche developed in the upbringing of the young people. It doesn’t matter how tolerant a[n]d enlightened the family background is. Society itself is still deeply and firmly rooted in sex-negative paradigms (i.e. sex = dirty etc.).

(How much societal tolerance would finally be tolerant enough for him, I wonder? These types are rarely satisfied just by some concessions, especially if reality continues to misalign with their idealistic predictions.)

2. The broader cultural society, which includes the family, youth culture, and society as a whole. Look, for instances, the medium of television influences young people.

Young men discover how “society” thinks—read: how one is forced to think—about sex, childhood and youth, sexual orientations and pedophilia. 

(Why bring the discussion to “sexual orientations” or “pedophilia”? We were talking about abuse.)

Everywhere the present “moral order” is forcefully presented to the young people who aren’t able yet of reaching a critical judgement that makes them resist such indoctrination. (Where can one learn to make such judgements?)

 

This culture is very powerful and has the capability to wipe away the original positive experience and turn the meaning and value of that experience by 180 degrees.

(c.f. “social contagion”)

Such ideas fall on fertile soil, as many boys have a great fear of becoming homosexual, so much so that their own trust totally disappears and turns into homophobia.

(Boys who had consensual sexual interactions with other boys similar in age who later develop internalized homophobia regarding the experiences generally do not speak the way these aforementioned young people did. They may feel shame or guilt, but they do not show trauma symptoms identical to those experienced by abuse or sexual violence victims in general.)

While one thinks about these things the next source becomes quite clear.

 

3. The “counselors”.... One can hear the words of the RIAGG (Dutch Mental Care Institutions) when the young people talk about their own experiences. “I have a split personality.” “I am a victim of sexual abuse.”

(Compare to modern moral panic about young people self-diagnosing with mental disorders.)

The value of the original experience has now totally disappeared. The now offered interpretation is accepted as one’s own true experience.

 

It is now the norm that “Counselors” ask for the sexual experiences. When, in one’s youth, these experiences have been shared with an adult, there will be an automatic conclusion that all problems stem from that incident only.

(Really? Much more likely that they are finally starting to ask at all, and a (newfound) reasonable degree of analysis is being exaggerated as “too much” already.)

This “solution” is readily accepted, for one does not have to look at oneself, be critical of one’s parents or schools. One does not even have to be critical about society as a whole that offers sex violence and drugs in massive proportions.

The problem is now clearly simplified: A scapegoat has been found. The standard “solution” to this predicament is to go to the police and start proceedings.

Because of course, the problem must be anything and everything—evil therapists, DID/OSDD diagnoses, “homophobia,” family indoctrination, school indoctrination, cultural indoctrination, cultural excess/degeneracy, oversexualization, undersexualization, moralism, immorality, having too little access to ideas, having too much access to ideas, “television,” violent media, “drugs”—anything! but the adults themselves, the fact that they committed ethical violations. Even the children can be blamed (“… for one does not have to look at oneself”)! But never the adults—they are all blameless and innocent. Children are blank slates who cannot think for themselves or disagree with what adults around them say, they cannot possibly believe that adults having sex with (sexually abusing) them is wrong unless they’ve been brainwashed by external sources.
Gieles is incredibly callous about these nine young people he interviewed. He presents this entire political arena as simply one for crude experimentation, in which he/other adults are here to pull levers and manipulate children, treating them like mechanical items/functions they just need to figure the right input-output formula for. So certain that his viewpoint is superior—refusing at all to consider that these young people might actually be objectively right about what they need, and the only real solution is to just stop doing these contacts entirely. No, to him, the real problem isn’t violence and exploitation, but the fact that young people react poorly (inconveniently, unfortunately) to it. Predatory adults’ goals don’t need to change, victims’ do. If only the victims weren’t making such a fuss over nothing, then everything would be better. He claims to care about their struggles, but only ever in a remote, condescending, paternalistic, uneven fashion. Their traumas and lifelong scars are just interesting meeting-agenda-fodder to poke and prod at and ponder and discourse over. (With none of their own input on how his project should go, of course. Their voices don’t matter.)

In this sense these pro-c’s bear a rather noticeable resemblance to, for example, incels—concocting elaborate conspiracy theories to explain why their wishes aren’t coming true, thinking marginalized groups who deny them sexual access are just confused/not knowing what’s best for themselves/are complex puzzles whose motives are impossible to easily understand, thinking they just need to adjust something about the external circumstances so that the people they were meant to and will inevitably be with will finally properly acquiesce instead of realizing that a lack of consent is a lack of consent and sometimes people just unconditionally don’t fucking want them here!

Where then are my boundaries?

In my relationships with youngsters I am really close with, I have two boundaries.

• At first, I refuse to keep such a long distance that real and good contact is no longer possible.

(Even if they would prefer that you stay away?)

(Long-distance relationships aren’t evil, you know. They can still offer opportunities for meaningful connection.)

• The other is that I don’t want any sexual involvement, which includes erotic intimacies that are meant to lead to a full sexual experience.

Within the boundaries of what is, for me, acceptable there are untold ways of connecting, which is enjoyed by one or both, in which there could be an erotic content but is not designed to lead to sex.

(So “erotic intimacies” leading to a “half” sexual experience are fine then? Wtf?)

P.S. 1

I wrote this article to tell what the youngsters with a negative experience have told me. I also have met youngsters who felt positively about sexual contacts they have had in a positive relationship with an adult.

If he has, I’d like to see him talk about them in more detail. So far I haven’t found any such text, but it’s possible I have overlooked some search method. If it exists, you are welcome to let me know.