Reflections, Learnings, and Critiques on an Amazing Pedophilia Study

Over and over again, I’ve complained about the paucity of good studies on pedophiles. Yes, there are researchers working in this area, and I’m so glad for their work… but it’s really, really hard. Who wants to fund researching the psychology of pedophiles? Besides, even with funding, it’s almost impossible to get a good, unbiased sample of people to study. You can’t walk up to someone on the street and be like, “hey, are you a pedophile, want to come to my lab?” You can study convicted child molesters, but that’s not representative of pedophiles. Try to do a survey for pedophiles online, and you get… those who are in online pedophile spaces who are also bold enough to take a survey that admits their attraction. Again, just a really biased sample: Anyone in these spaces is looking for something, be it support for their troubles or sexual fantasies, and their responses might not match the general population.

So I was thrilled to learn about the research being done by Aella on kinks. Now, Aella is not a professor and doesn’t have a PhD, but that allows her to push the boundaries a bit and try unconventional methods; those methods are well thought out and she has the tools to reach a different sample than academics would.

She was like, “what’s the problem with surveys on kinks?” And the fundamental problem she identified was sample bias: reach out to a particular group, and you get the die-hards, or the people who have A Reason to be in that space, but you don’t get the people who are chill, more like, “yeah, I’ve got that kink.” So her philosophy was instead: make a general survey and just BLAST it out. Get a lot of people to take it and to indicate their kinks over a huge spectrum of possibilities. With clever design and a large social media following, she got well over 600,000 responses, and she asked about attraction to children. So from the perspective of studying people like me, the strategy was, “let’s recruit everywhere, and some of the people will happen to be pedophiles, and so we’ll get a less biased sample.”

It’s not perfect; it’s obviously still selecting for people willing to fill out a long survey with an interest in kink, and that’s going to screen for certain personality traits and self identities. People are much more likely to hear about it if they’re kinky and at least somewhat open to kink communities. Nonetheless, it’s such a different sample from anything I’ve seen before that it might really have some compelling insights.

So that’s the methodology of her survey: get literally hundreds of thousands of responses, and then dig down. The survey catches thousands of people who indicate a sexual interest in kids, and we can analyze them and, hopefully, better understand pedophiles. Seriously, I’m so excited about this.

That doesn’t mean I’m going to take it uncritically, though. I want to dig in, provide context, think about alternate explanations for the results, and in general contribute to understanding just what the heck is going on. This post is going to really dive in, so buckle up. We’ll walk through Aella’s results. Why did it come out this way? What does each result tell us?

I hope it’s of interest to everyone who wants to better understand pedophiles. Perhaps my thinking will also be a resource to researchers who want to ask better questions and derive more results. This is a good time to make an offer: If any researchers are out there and want thoughtful feedback on their survey design or analysis before sending it out, I am more than happy to provide it.

I recommend reading Aella’s post about pedophilia first, and then coming back here for my analysis. My post can be read on its own, because I will repeat the key results I’m commenting on, but you will have more context and details if you’ve read Aella’s first.

Also, this post is long and detailed. There are even footnotes! I think it’s a relatively light read for what it is, but it is unapologetically about data, so be prepared.

So who’s filling this survey out?

Any survey is subject to bias if it’s not given to a representative sample of people.

If you ask people at the beach if they like the feeling of sand between their toes, they’re much more likely to say yes than the average person—after all, they chose to go to the beach! It won’t be 100%, of course. Some people like swimming or sun or the smell of the ocean enough that they’ll go even though they don’t like sand. But it’s still not a representative sample: there’s what’s called a “systematic bias” towards people who like sand among beachgoers, so your survey would give the wrong result.

The source of bias can also be much more subtle. Ask people the same question but at a hotel in Miami, and a lot of those people will be tourists who decided to go to a beach city, so they’re also going to be more likely than average to like sand. (The bias will probably be less, just because there are lots of reasons to go to Miami other than the beach.) Now ask that same question but at a hotel in New York City, and you’ll be getting people who decided to take a vacation to a non-beach town: the answer you get will probably be a bit lower than average. There’ll be some sand-lovers, but fewer than in the general population. Neither sample is representative.

Aella has this in mind. She knew that advertising to any one kink community would bias the results, so she decided to go for a wide reach: try to get as many people as possible to fill it out. A large sample is no guarantee that it will be free of bias (after all, survey everyone in Miami and you’ll have a lot of responses, but there’ll probably still be an above-average appreciation of sand), but the hope is that the method Aella used provides unbiased samples for any particular kink because it’s not based around finding people with that kink. She’s not surveying Miami; she’s surveying a whole bunch of cities across the US, and she’s asking about sand and Broadway plays and Dollywood and if people think the world’s largest ball of twine is a fun tourist attraction and hopefully it all washes out. [1]

Are we sure there won’t be a bias? No. After all, if you sample a lot of cities across the US, you’re still missing the rural and suburban population, and maybe there are differences in how much people like sand (or twine…) across those locations. But it’s promising: I can’t think of why there’d be a difference.

OK, so back to Aella’s survey. For our purposes, the idea is that most of the pedophiles who took the survey didn’t find it because they are pedophiles. So we hope, like with the cities, that the kinds of pedophiles who took it are representative of pedophiles everywhere.

Is this reasonable? Well, Aella seems to have initially publicized the survey via her social media, although it then spread on its own. Her social media seems to involve a lot of discussion about sex (which… she studies sex, so reasonable!) and so, while no specific kink was targeted, it was probably taken largely by highly-online people who are in some kink community. (Otherwise, people weren’t that likely to even find it, let alone be interested in it.) Let me put it this way: it was probably advertised in foot fetish communities, but not on most board games communities.

As a result of its novelty, her thoughtful design, and her social media reach, the survey had a huge, almost absurd reach, with well over 500,000 responses.

So is it going to be a representative sample?

The obvious biases to those responses are listed by Aella herself: “Most respondents are in their early 20s, and around 70% of respondents are women — a reflection of the demographics that most love taking internet surveys (as verified by my friend who runs one of the oldest, biggest personality-testing websites on the internet).” Which, fine; just like surveying only city dwellers about sand, this is a bias but it doesn’t necessarily mean that responses about kinks won’t generalize, especially if we consider men and women separately. We don’t have any reason to think that younger respondents would give different answers. (They might! We just don’t know.)

What about for pedophiles? Let me tell you, getting a representative sample of pedophiles is basically impossible. (Researchers seem to either use convicted child molesters, an obviously biased sample, or else advertise on forums which is only going to get those who engage online in pedophile spaces.) Aella’s effort is the best I’ve seen at getting around these challenges, but unfortunately this is a hard problems and some potential biases still exist.

To illustrate the potential source of bias, it’s worth noting that I only heard about this survey recently, and primarily because a friend found out about it and forwarded it to me. That friend happened to know about my attractions. It wasn’t widely advertised in pedophile spaces; it was advertised in kink spaces. And it’s a fundamentally different kind of pedophile who goes to kink spaces.

I didn’t even have any sex until I was 30 years old, and it would be many years before I had sex again. I didn’t know what a “bear” was in gay culture until I was about 35. Why would I visit a website about sex, or kinks? To this day, my friends think of me as innocent and unaware of common sexual terms. That turns out to be far from the truth, but I keep up the act because I couldn’t explain how I learned them when I so obviously don’t have sex.

The point being: a pedophile who is ashamed of their sexuality, who has no attraction to adults, who tries to run away from who they are… they’re not going to find this survey. Is the guy from a conservative Christian family going to run across it? What about the person who tries to repress and ignore their desires, and not engage online? What about the person who’s attracted to kids, fantasizes about nice non-kinky relationships with them, knows it can’t happen and just lives their life?

So yes, pedophiles who are exclusively attracted to children, or those who are ashamed of their attraction, or those who repress their desires and pretend they’re not there, or those who have no draw to kink are all likely to be seriously underrepresented on this survey. As we look at the results, we have to remember that even this huge sample may not be representative.

Diving in: interpreting the data

How many pedophiles are there?

Aella finds that 3.5% of men, and 0.6% of women indicate some sexual arousal from children. These numbers are broadly in line with other findings.

Do I believe those stats? Well, I have no particular reason to doubt them, but there are a few methodological concerns to point out that suggest these numbers might be a bit low.

• Pedophiles, especially those who are exclusively attracted to children, may be underrepresented in this sample. Again, because it was advertised primarily to kink communities, people like me who have exclusive sexual interest in children wouldn’t find it.
• Pedophiles who haven’t discussed their attraction with others (e.g. on a supportive online forum) may be especially wary to disclose their attraction, even in what might feel like an anonymous online survey.
• Pedophiles who have repressed their desires and are “lying to themselves” about their attractions are more likely to deny the attraction. Most of the respondents in the survey were in their early 20’s. I know people who only admitted to themselves that they were pedophiles after age 26. This also suggests a bias in responses.

I want to take a moment on that third point, the age question. My hypothesis, that many people don’t admit their pedophilia to themselves until later, is backed up by Aella’s own data: the average age of males who said they didn’t find children arousing was much lower than the average age for males who admitted an arousal. (This trend was less clear for females, where the average age for all categories was between 21 and 22 years old.) In the rest of the survey, Aella only analyzes data for people between the age of 19 and 26, and I would like to know if responses differ among the older age groups.

Now let me be annoying: there are also reasons to believe the percentages Aella finds are too high! (Do you hate me yet?) For one thing, maybe kinksters are more likely to be attracted to children than other people, because they already have sexual desires that run outside the usual. (“Weird correlates with weird,” as Aella herself says.)

Additionally, Aella’s question about pedophilia may cause positive responses to be overstated. The question is: How arousing do you find children?” with six possible responses: “not arousing,” “slightly arousing,” “somewhat arousing,” “moderately arousing,” “very arousing,” and “extremely arousing.” My concern is that people might select “slightly arousing” when they don’t really have a strong attraction to children. Maybe they saw some beauty pageant and were kind-of turned on, but let’s just be real, they’re not pedophiles. Or maybe they’re not attracted to kids, but they’re attracted to taboo or even to a sexual experience they had as kids. (We’ll discuss this more later.)

What I wish is that the scale had been more like:

• Not at all arousing
• Slightly arousing, but much less so than adults
• Arousing, but somewhat less than adults
• About as arousing as adults
• Somewhat more arousing than adults
• Much more arousing than adults

This comparison would make it much easier to identify those with a “significant” interest in kids, and might force people to be a bit more honest in their self-appraisals. (Honestly, I would edit these questions even more if I were really diving into pedophilia.)

This phrasing might also shed more light on questions like “How many people have you had sex with?” Exclusive pedophiles will give very different answers than non-exclusive ones, and I’d like to see that data.

So are Aella’s numbers good? They match what others have found. Even if I might’ve preferred some tweaks to the approach, it helps to inspire confidence that the numbers line up in a broad sense. Nonetheless, there are a lot of questions remaining, and I’m not sure anyone has “the right” number for how many people are pedophiles.

And that’s just asking “how many are there?” If that question is so hard, imagine all the others!

Impact of consuming erotic content about children

I’m not surprised that the vast majority of pedophiles said that consuming erotic content of children would either reduce or have no effect on their likelihood of offending. It matches my own views, and what I believe research supports.

Just because I agree, though, doesn’t mean that I don’t want to carefully review the methodology. This is a place where I think the validity is really impacted by limiting the analysis to younger pedophiles. I can’t help but wonder what older pedophiles (like me!) would have said. We’ve had more time to see the impact of erotica on our interests. While I don’t think the answer would be any different, having this answer primarily from young people seems like a real opportunity for bias if I were being critical of the data.

Finally, something Aella wrote struck me. “It looks like the vast majority of people reporting pedophilic inclinations say that consuming child porn would either reduce their urges to act on it, or have no effect.” That’s not what I took away from this question at all! To me, “erotic content about children” includes, and is primarily, drawn work, computer renders, stories, and perhaps AI. “Artificial child pornography,” as I’ve called it in the past. If this had been about real child porn, my answer would’ve been quite different.

In fact, pedophiles who didn’t know about artificial child pornography might have had quite a different point of view, which might have skewed the answers as well. Precision in questions like this really matters. What would the answers have been if there was one question about real child pornography, and another about artificial child pornography?

Weird correlates with weird

Aella finds that pedophilia correlates with… well, a lot of things that are small minorities of the population. Queerness, polyamory, mental illnesses, even extreme body weight (at either end of the scale). I actually almost wish she’d asked about IQ; I’ve always had a theory that pedophilia is overrepresented at both low and high IQ. In other words, I have a suspicion that things that are “unusual” brain functioning tend to overlap with each other.

Let’s take a moment to address gender and sexual orientation, and especially the breakdown into “gay or straight” pedophiles. [2] This issue is complex and I think the survey’s questions are not strong enough to break it down. Here are the charts Aella presents:

Source: Knowingless

Source: Knowingless

I really appreciate the spectrum identified here, and the questions about both presentation and genitalia. But unfortunately, we pedos are a complicated bunch.

Content warning: The rest of this section is blunt about sexual attraction to children.

For example, I have male friends who are attracted to adult females and prepubescent boys. Or, for that matter, attracted to adult females but both boys and girls if prepubescent. How should someone like that answer the questions Aella proposed about attraction? Especially since this question isn’t in a section that is about pedophilia.

Or consider my situation. I’m not attracted to boys who are “masculine” in the sense of, say, very muscled. I’m attracted to boys who are, well, boyish. Not feminine, not adult masculine, but boyish. That’s not an option for me on this survey, and so I don’t know what to mark. Maybe “somewhat masc?” I dunno.

And y’know what? I’m actually pretty simple compared to others! When I look online, I see lots of people who are attracted to, say, young boys who present more feminine, or to the fantasy of taking a young boy and “feminizing” him, but they’re not attracted to girls or women. What should they select? And will that change if they are counted as “gay” or not?

Now, some of these concerns are just minor quibbles, but a “gay” pedophile is a more complicated concept than you might think, especially when attractions differ towards adults and children.

Now, consider Aella’s comment: “Bi men are more pedophilic than gay men, but gay women are more pedophilic than bi women?? Weird.” I think this might be looking at it the wrong way.

From a statistical perspective: Is it that bi men are “more pedophilic,” or is it that pedophiles might be more likely than average to have attraction to both genders as children but not adults? There are, after all, “straight” men attracted to adult women… but both girls and boys. (Since at a young age, they’re more similar than they are different.)

Alternately, perhaps it’s common for pedophiles to have differing attractions for pre- and post-puberty. Maybe they’re attracted to adult women and pre-pubescent boys, or adult men and pre-pubescent girls. Are they “bi” if so? What about my friends who are only attracted to adult women… except they fantasize about being a boy getting abused by a man? They don’t want to have sex with a man.

I have a lot less context for female pedophiles. I do wonder how many of those who are attracted to girls might be trans women, given how the statistics were diced. Another possibility is that women are imagining themselves as children. That said, I don’t have the right perspective to add much, at least without breaking down the stats more.

However, the statistic I really want is one that analyzes adult and child attractions separately. Is it the case that men who are “bi for adults” are more pedophilic than men who are “gay for adults”? I can’t tell, but that would help us parse through much of these questions.

Sexual Assault: Does being a victim make you more likely to be attracted to children?

OK. These are maybe among the biggest questions that surround pedophilia. Are you more likely to be a pedophile if you were sexually assaulted as a child? Are you more likely to commit sexual assault if you are a pedophile?

Let me start by sharing some anecdotes. I often RP with other adults online who want to play boys, and I will ask them why they’re interested in it. Some will describe having had sex as children. On forums that deal with these kinds of issues, there are people who describe sexual experiences they had as kids. It does feel like the incidence rate of childhood sex is higher among people who are interested in boys.

Not surprisingly, Aella’s survey bears this out. Jumping ahead to the portion on childhood sexual abuse, she finds that among males, 7% who were sexually assaulted report pedophilic interest, while only 3% of those who were not assaulted report pedophilic interest. Among females, those numbers are 1.2% and 0.4%.

What should we make of this?

Well, first of all, those numbers are low in both cases. I have heard fears that being assaulted in childhood “makes” you a pedophile, and yet 93% of the time for men, and 98.8% of the time for women, that’s not true! The vast majority of childhood victims never develop pedophilia. So let’s just clear that one up right away.

Should our conclusion be that childhood sexual assault does make one more likely to be a pedophile? Well… maaaaaybe. There’s even a convenient explanation for why: the early sexual experience “fixates” someone on childhood sex, and that fixation then leads to the attraction to children.

But correlation is not causation. Just off the top of my head, here are three other hypotheses we should consider:

• You’re very likely to be the victim of childhood sexual assault from a family member. Perhaps pedophilia is genetic, and if a family member assaulted you, you’re also more likely to inherit it.
• Perhaps the same psychological elements that predispose you towards pedophilia also predispose you to other characteristics that make you vulnerable to sexual assault (such as mental illness) and that is skewing these statistics. (We might have the data to answer this: take the same stats, but controlled for mental illness.)
• Perhaps there is a correlation between those willing to disclose something as personal as childhood sexual abuse, and disclosing something as vilified as pedophilia. Maybe there’s no real-world connection at all, and it’s all about willingness to share!

Are you still sure that childhood sexual abuse “causes” pedophilia? I have at least some doubt. I suspect there might be some causation, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Not without better studies.

One final quibble about these numbers: I wonder if they might be a little bit low! I know of people who look back on childhood sexual experiences positively. (Make of this what you will; I’m just reporting what they tell me.) Aella’s question was about “sexual assault;” maybe they wouldn’t classify it that way. In fact, the classifications of sexual assault that Aella uses (none, mild, moderate, and severe) are all in the eye of the beholder, and another hypothesis might be that it is one’s perception of the encounter that influences later pedophilic desires. Maybe someone who thinks they saw their swim coach looking at them fixates on that moment for the rest of their life… while someone who is actually sexually assaulted moves right past it.

You might be sad, reading this, that I am raising more questions rather than providing answers. That’s the nature of this work, unfortunately, at this stage of research. I’m just glad Aella gave us enough meat to really dig in!

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Now, those aren’t the only sexual assault statistics that Aella discusses. She also finds that:
A. Those who are victims of sexual assault as adults are more likely to have pedophilic leanings, and
B. Perpetrators of sexual assault are more likely to be pedophiles.

Point B is the bombshell, and while Aella acknowledges the effect size, she doesn’t talk about its implications. But the implications are dire. The whole point of my blog is that people like me should be treated as people and not prejudged, but if so many pedophiles are committing assault, then can I really stand by that claim? This post has to deal with that question, and I will, right after this message from our sponsors… no, sorry, no sponsors on my pedophile blog. Rather, I want to talk about Point A first, because I think it’s instructive when we look at Point B.

Why? Because Point A makes very little sense if you think about it! Why would being the victim of sexual assault as an adult make you more likely to be sexually attracted to children? I can’t think of any reasonable mechanism where being assaulted would cause you to develop attraction to children. (Although I will note that the effect is quite small among women; it is primarily a phenomenon among men.)

Let’s dig into this question, to see if it reveals something about the data overall.

Above, I proposed three explanations for why sexual assault as a child might be correlated to pedophilic attraction without causing it. Two of those apply almost verbatim to sexual assault as an adult, so I’ll copy them here with mild edits, and I’ll add in a third possibility below those two:

• Perhaps the same psychological elements that predispose you towards pedophilia also predispose you to other characteristics that make you vulnerable to sexual assault (such as mental illness) and that is skewing these statistics. (As before, I’d love to see these stats, but controlled for mental illness.)
• Perhaps there is a correlation between those willing to disclose something as personal as sexual abuse, and disclosing something as vilified as pedophilia.
• Perhaps victims of childhood sexual assault are also more likely to be victims of adulthood sexual assault, and all we’re seeing here is the “shadow” cause-and-effect of childhood sexual abuse.

(It would be helpful to see the chart for adulthood sexual assault, but only among those who reported no sexual assault as children. That would at least help eliminate the third possibility!)

Let’s say that you agree with me that being sexually assaulted as an adult is not going to make you suddenly develop an attraction to children. Then maybe the actual impact of childhood sexual assault is smaller than we thought. Looking at the two charts for adulthood sexual assault and childhood sexual assault:

Source: Knowingless

Source: Knowingless

They look very similar. They’re actually more similar than they look, because the y-axis scales are different in a way that makes the childhood effect look a lot bigger than it is! (It is bigger, but only very slightly.) My best guess is that being the victim of sexual assault as an adult does not cause you to be any more likely to develop pedophilia, and some of the other mechanisms I proposed might be at play to cause this correlation. That implies that, at the least, childhood sexual assault is somewhat less of a cause than the chart suggests.

But Point B. Oh my, Point B. Are pedophiles more likely to commit sexual assault? This one is so big that it gets its own section.

Sexual Assault: Are pedophiles more likely to commit sexual assault?

Let’s not beat around the bush. Look at the money chart:

Source: Knowingless

From eyeballing this chart: 3% of people who say they’ve never committed sexual assault indicate at least some arousal from children; around 28% of those who committed “extreme” sexual assault say the same. 28%!! [3]

That’s wild. Pedophiles are way, way overrepresented among those who commit sexual assault.

Now, while this chart tells us what percentage of sexual assaulters are pedophiles, it doesn’t tell us what percentage of pedophiles commit sexual assault. This is an important difference! If there are few sexual abusers overall, then it’s still true that most pedophiles do not commit sexual assault.

It also doesn’t tell us if that sexual assault is committed against children or adults.

But boy oh boy does this chart raise questions. And the worst-case interpretation is pretty bad: “Doesn’t this suggest,” someone might ask, “that pedophiles are more likely to sexually assault others? Do pedophiles, seeking sexual satisfaction, molest kids at especially high rates? Sure, not all pedophiles, but a lot?”

We don’t have the data to disprove that claim. We don’t have the data to prove it, either. But this is suggestive, and in a worrying direction.

And yet, we should be careful before we draw a conclusion. There are several deep dives that might reveal something else going on.

Deep dive 1: Maybe it’s not about the pedophilia. Remember how adult victims of sexual assault were more likely to be pedophiles, and that didn’t make sense? One way to explain it that I proposed was: “Perhaps the same psychological elements that predispose you towards pedophilia also predispose you to other characteristics that make you vulnerable to sexual assault (such as mental illness) and that is skewing these statistics. (As before, I’d love to see these stats, but controlled for mental illness.)” The same thing applies here: maybe those other psychological elements predispose you to perpetrating sexual assault. Sociopaths are, according to Aella’s data, much more likely to be pedophiles, so maybe it’s not “really” about the pedophilia at all.

Deep dive 2: Maybe it’s about willingness to disclose. Again from discussing the relationship between being a victim of sexual assault and pedophilia: “Perhaps there is a correlation between those willing to disclose something as personal as sexual abuse, and disclosing something as vilified as pedophilia.” Maybe those who are willing to disclose they committed sexual assault are also more willing to admit to being attracted to children, and if we got “honest” answers from everyone we wouldn’t see the same phenomenon. This question—are we just picking up on willingness to disclose—is something that could be underlying much of this data. (Perhaps we could ask about a non-sexual crime, like robbery or drug abuse, and see if there is a similar correlation.)

Deep dive 3: Maybe we don’t understand what we mean by pedophilia. So far in this blog post, I’ve avoided a very important limitation of the survey’s definition of pedophilia. Quite simply: I think the question identifying pedophiles catches people who are not really pedophiles.

As a reminder, Aella asked: “I find older children who have not yet reached sexual maturity (e.g. age 8) to be:” and then allowed people to select options from “not arousing” (0) to “extremely arousing” (5).

Let me give examples of people I’ve met in pedophile spaces who would answer yes to this question.

• People who are attracted to taboo things. They’re not attracted to children’s bodies per se; they like anything that is taboo.
• People who are attracted to power differences, but not to children. They find the idea of sex between adults and children arousing because it manifests such a strong power difference.
• People who had sexual experiences as children, and who find it hot, without finding children’s specific bodies attractive.
• People who were gripped with a “what if” thought from their childhood, whose parents and teachers warned them about child molesters and who gripped onto that warning.
• People who enjoy the idea of being a child in a sexual situation, but are not attracted to children’s bodies.

Are any of these people pedophiles? None of them are physically attracted to kids. They might all answer affirmatively to the question Aella asks that is meant to assess pedophilia, depending on how they interpret finding children arousing.

Deep Dive 4: Maybe people overestimate the extremity of abuses against children. I have gotten emails in a panic because someone’s nephew sat on their lap and they got an erection, and they worry the child felt it and was scarred for life. Another person returned a child’s kiss and worried that it was assault. This is not to minimize these situations; there’s a lot of complicated moral questions to discuss in each of them. However, how “extreme” something is really is in the eye of the beholder.

Now, let’s be clear. These deep dives raise questions, but after reading Aella’s survey, I can’t deny that my priors on “pedophiles are more likely to commit sexual assault than non-pedophiles” haven’t gone up. It’s impossible to look at this data and not revise one’s views to consider that maybe pedophiles are more likely to commit assault. I’d really love more research into this, because this goes right to the heart of my blog.

Age of sexual activity

Aella has some great data showing that those who started masturbating early are more likely to have pedophilic attraction, even when you subtract out victims of childhood sexual assault. (I am very grateful for the data when you subtract out victims of childhood sexual assault!)

Now, let me tell a story about friends who are into BDSM. Most of them have stories about how as kids, they gravitated to superhero stories or similar where people got tied up. Robin having to be saved by Batman in the old Adam West series is a particular favorite. Did this childhood exposure cause them to become interested in BDSM, or did a pre-existing interest in BDSM lead them to latch on to this, or are they retrospectively perceiving their past differently?

Of course, the same question arises here. Did people start masturbating early because their brain was already wired a certain way, or did the discovery of masturbation make them more sexually interested in children? It might even be that people remember the childhood masturbation better because they thought about it more once they realized their attractions. It’s very hard to tell!

Moreover, even among those who started masturbating at age 4, the average pedophilia score (among men) is like 0.3, which still means the vast majority have no attraction to children.

Finally, Aella subtracts out those who were victims of childhood sexual assault, but that is in the eye of the beholder. What about childhood sexual experiences that people don’t classify as assault? In the gay community, there are also lots of stories (especially among older men) of having started cruising at a very young age. I’ve talked to people who had sexual experiences as kids with adults that they do not perceive as assault. What about older children with younger children? We might consider all of these assault, but the “victim” might not. So when we look at the stats of those who were not “sexually assaulted” it’s important to remember that this isn’t a tight definition. [4]

Finally, I feel like it’s worth sharing my own story. I am exclusively attracted to boys, and very strongly. I didn’t start masturbating until age 13, and did not have sex until 30. So on this data, I am an outlier!

What about that bit where pedophiles are more interested in grief, disgust, and despair?

Aella posts some very interesting charts where people are asked what emotions are erotic in either others, or themselves. Those enjoy enjoy grief, disgust, and despair (in either themselves or other people) have more inclination towards pedophilia. The inclination is small, but it is pronounced relative to things like love, safety, calmness, and eagerness.

The natural read is, of course, that pedophiles are more interested in uglier emotions. That might be true, but I have some uncertainty here.

For one thing, the numbers are small; on a scale from 0–5, average pedophilia goes from a bit under 0.1 for “Love” to 0.45 for “Grief” for men; for women, the range is about 0.01 to 0.14. That makes it hard to tell what this would look like if we’d conditioned on pedophiles: are people who identify as sexually aroused by children actually much more likely to enjoy the darker emotions?

But my real question is this: What is a pedophile?

The question Aella asked was how arousing children are. But as I said before, there are lots of reasons to answer yes to that: actual sexual attraction to young bodies, or a love of taboo, or wanting to be a kid, or enjoying power differentials, etc. etc. Is someone who likes taboo but isn’t attracted to kids’ bodies a pedophile? I don’t know… but they seem likely to answer yes to finding kids arousing, and to grief/disgust/despair. The same goes for people who like power differentials. This statistic might not be a result of “true” pedophiles at all, but rather those that have other reasons to find children arousing in some form.

(Then again, I’m an actual pedophile and I find all of these emotions interesting sexually, so I’m not exactly a good counter-example myself!)

So, say it with me now: This is complicated! [5]

It’s an interesting start, but it doesn’t answer the question just yet.

Assorted other comments where I can add context

Just collecting some miscellaneous thoughts here:

• Aella finds a bump among social conservatives who are also pedophiles. There was a time when this would’ve surprised me, but I’ve seen enough of them on some pedophile sites to have accepted it. I still don’t know why; I would’ve thought there’d be more of an orientation towards the LGBTQ side of progressivism. But I can imagine several mechanisms:
  • Fear of government persecution: if you’re trying to find others like you and worried about law enforcement getting involved, or looking at either artificial or real child pornography and worried about being found out, I can see why you’d be more libertarian. (Libertarians are often associated with the “right,” although it’s unclear if that is a fit for marking yourself as socially conservative.)
  • If you’re scared of your own desires, you might want greater social fabric in society that will keep “people like you” in check.
• Aella provides a chart on weight that shows that very light/small men have an increased average pedophilic attraction, as do very heavy/overweight men. (Yes, this ties into the “fat pedo” stereotype.) The push to the extremes might be an example of “weird correlates with weird.” I can also imagine other explanations: people who feel socially isolated due to their pedophilia might gain weight or take worse care of themselves and lose weight; pedophiles who don’t expect to date might also be less likely to worry about conforming to norms of attractiveness.
• Aella finds that there seems to be no particular effect of number of siblings; there might be an effect of birth order on pedophilic desire, where younger siblings are more likely to be pedophiles, but it might just be noise.
  • One plausible explanation: older parents often have a higher rate of kids born with mental illnesses. The “number of siblings” effect might be a reflection of that: if you have many older siblings, you were likely born when your parents were older, and so mutations in their reproductive material might bring out pedophilia (as well as other differences).
  • Here is another, much less palatable explanation, that I feel obligated to bring up in order to do a full analysis: More older siblings might provide more opportunity for sibling-on-sibling sexual assault… it’s ick, I feel bad for even mentioning it, but I don’t want to discard any hypotheses.
• Aella has a whole bunch of things that seem to correlate with pedophilia that might just correlate with (a) depression, or (b) the fact that having pedophilia genuinely does mean your life circumstances are probably a bit worse. (If for no other reason than it affects your dating life.) For example, pedophiles are more likely to answer affirmatively to “if life is a game, then I’m losing” and “I shirk my duties.”
• Pedophiles, and very specifically female pedophiles, seemed more likely to express less sympathy with others: they answered affirmatively to “I feel little concern for others” and negatively to “I sympathize with others’ feelings.” It’s hard to tell if this is something that is really about pedophilia or something else. For example, it could be people pitying themselves and feeling like the concerns of others feel more trivial in comparison; it could be related to depression as in the previous bullet point; or it could be a resurgence of weird correlates with weird (e.g. people who have pedophilia are a bit more likely to have a psychiatric condition that makes it harder to sympathize with others, but it’s not about the pedophilia per se). It could also be that the knowledge that other people would hate you if they really knew you makes you less likely to have sympathy with them. Honestly, these charts kind of freaked me out because it would be genuinely worrying if pedophiles are less likely to have sympathy for others, but the more I think about it, the more I’m unsure what to say. In particular, I have no idea why there’d be such a jump for women, unless it’s statistical noise. (Which is possible, since there are many fewer female pedophiles.) This would be another place where it’d be great to control for other factors, or subtract out those who indicated other mental illnesses.
• Pedophiles, again especially female pedophiles, experienced more sexual harassment. In particular, women who rated themselves as a 5 on a 0–5 scale for arousal from children also reported much more sexual harrassment. There are lots of possible underlying causes (weird correlates with weird; depression; etc.) but it could also be that women who are interested in children don’t show a typical response to male interest and so experience more harassment. This is total conjecture again; I have no special information.
• Finally, this is kind of ridiculous, but I’m very curious if pedophilia correlates with other fetishes and how. I’ve heard several people conjecture that foot fetishes appear in a higher fraction of pedophiles than in the general population; one person thought every pedophile has one, which is not true. This survey could provide a good way to get some data around such questions. I don’t know if it’s very important for research, but I sure am curious!

Wrapping up

Congratulations, you made it to the end of this massive post!

It may feel unsatisfying. All I did the whole time was poke holes—and that was with research I liked! I think what people often underestimate about social science is that it’s actually quite difficult to do well. Data can’t just be taken at face value; we have to dig in, consider alternatives, understand where it’s really coming from. Aella’s work has moved us closer to uncovering important truths. We have a long way to go, but I am so grateful for the work.

I have learned about myself, and about others like me. I’ve updated my view on what we’re like and how we work, and I’ve come up with a lot more questions I’d like to see researched. I hope others do the same, and that we can use this data to better understand and support pedophiles. Long-time readers of my writing know: that is the best way to safeguard everyone and help everyone be happy and thrive.

So let’s keep researching, let’s keep analyzing, and let’s keep being critical consumers of data.

Footnotes

[1]: Wikipedia deep dives I never expected to take while blogging about pedophilia: Biggest ball of twine.

Also, if you’re not from the US, you might never have heard of these things. But there are several towns around the US that claim to have assembled the world’s largest ball of twine, and become tourist highway stops for people doing long drives and interested in a distraction for a little while. This kind of random attraction along the road was best captured, I think, in Neil Gaiman’s book American Gods if you want a nice bit of Americana reading along with a rich and deep fantasy world.

[2]: Aella clarified by personal e-mail how to interpret the gender charts. Trans and cis people are identified by their genders; nonbinary people are identified by their sex at birth. In other words, assigned male at birth (AMAB) people are the red bar for cis and nonbinary, but the blue bar for trans. Hence, AMAB people are overrepresented as pedophiles among trans, cis, and nonbinary people. However, that overrepresentation is less among trans people.

[3]: As an aside, the specific question about perpetrating sexual assault is not as discerning as I might wish. Aella asked, “Have you ever had a sexual experience with someone else who did not want the experience?” with the options being, “No,” “Yes, slightly,” “Yes, significantly,” and “Yes, extremely.” These are open to broad interpretation. Are they talking about the kind of intercourse (e.g. touching vs penetration), the level of consent (“hard to say no to an authority figure” vs “too drunk to say no” vs “fighting back”), etc.? Unfortunately, I’m not sure there’s something better: my understanding is that coming up with the “right” question here is actually extremely difficult. So this result would be better phrased as: “those who reported that they perceived themselves as perpetrating a severe sexual assault were more likely to identify an attraction to children.”

[4]: When Aella subtracts out those who reported being sexually assaulted as children, the correlation between interest in pedophilia and age of first having sex mostly seems to go away. (I’m just eyeballing the chart here.) That actually implies that the measure of sexual assault is pretty good, and subtracting it out does give a clearer picture of how early sex and pedophilia are related.

[5]: In fact, one study researching how people react to young animals (with no sexual arousal) notes: “Currently, pedophilia is considered the consequence of disturbed sexual or executive brain processing, but details are far from known. The present findings raise the question whether there is also an over-responsive nurturing system in pedophilia.”

Note: I want to apologize for how few posts I’ve been making lately! I have felt neglectful of the blog, but the truth is that there has been a lot going on in my life outside of the blog and that has kept me busy. I put a lot of effort into each post, and so it takes me time to get them out with the quality I want to have. I do hope to keep up a faster pace, though, if life gives me the space to do so! In case you haven’t noticed, though, you can sign up for email updates on the blog. Sign up, and it’s like Substack, but without me ever asking you to pay anything. 🙂

In Which Leonard Processes His Feelings

Note: This article is the second in a four-part series on my Quora experience having my account deleted, and some reflections on how social media should or should not moderate and spread certain content. The posts are:

1. What made Quora change its mind?, about what might have led to my account deletion.
2. What silencing feels like. (This post, about my own journey having had my writing removed.)
3. The impact of speech for pedophiles, on how limits on our speech impacts us and society. (In progress.)
4. Lessons for discourse, on how we should think about speech and the obligation or not) to share it. (In progress.)

If you haven’t read the first post, I highly recommend doing so before this one.

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One of the most common complaints you’ll see online is that people feel they’ve been silenced.

Silencing might refer to being ignored, or being shouted down. Maybe it’s people being banned by social media, or fact checked, or canceled. This debate, about the right of your speech to reach others, is all over social media and our political discourse. (Look at “fake news,” or the “Twitter files,” or “cancel culture” as just a few examples.)

I have very complicated reactions to these complaints. On the one hand, I believe strongly in free speech, and I think institutions should generally support the free exchange of ideas, including ideas they object to. On the other hand, many of the people being “silenced” were powerful people who were not really being silenced at all. Others had actually done pretty bad things. It seemed like we always focused on how the powerful and odious were silenced over the weaker and marginalized. Moreover, too often, the complaints sounded like a playground fight: “well, their side got to do X, but when I did it, I was banned!” Like asking who shoved who first.

And then it happened to me.

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If you’ve been reading, you know that Quora deleted my account.

No one could claim that a social media platform deleting discussions of pedophilia is surprising. Of course it would get reported. Of course it would get banned, even if I never violated Quora’s written policies. Look, I hate praising my own work, especially in a post like this where it can feel so defensive, but I truly believe my posts presented an important and nuanced approach to pedophilia. That was no protection.

I always knew this was a possibility, and I thought I’d be sad, but not hurt. “It’s the cost of doing business,” after all. But when it happened, it hit me harder than I thought it would.

I’m not talking “life altering misery.” But did I spend an entire evening (when I’d had other plans!) complaining to friends and drafting a blog post? Yes, I did. Did I spend the next day distracted from work? Yup. Even now, there’s a lingering hurt and anger: the kind of anger that comes when you’re saying something important, and someone else just tells you to shut up.

My inquiry into my own feelings gave me insight into not just my experience, but those of other people who wade into controversy. This post is going to be me, well, venting at you. It’s a post about my emotions, and it’s pretty raw. But it also sheds some real light on the personal impact this kind of experience can have, and the impact of a ban.

OK, so why do I feel bad?

I wish my posts were still up on Quora. I wish I still had my view counter. I wish people could still find my writing.

But do you know what I wish most of all? I want to grab the Quora moderator and shake them by the shoulders until they finally give me a good explanation of why it happened after six years with no issues. My brain wants to shout out:

How could you do this to me? I’m not like those other writers…

I’m not the kind of person who gets told their speech is worthless!

Anyway.

It looks like no matter how much I try to be the “mature adult,” I took this personally. I was rejected. But maybe I should take a step back, and try to understand where these feelings come from.

I lost a lot of hard work, and it feels like a judgement on me

I mean, this one’s pretty obvious. I put in more than six years of work building up over 140 answers. They’d gotten a lot of views (over a million). People had written to me with how I’d helped them.

Now no one can see them. If you go to the Quora page for my answers, it tells you that my account has been banned, which makes it all feel small and unimportant, like I was just some troll on the internet. My answers still show up on a Google search, but anyone who goes there will just have it confirmed: “oh, this was a bad person.”

Maybe I wasn’t doing as good a job as I thought I was

I guess I should say that when I was on Quora, I prided myself on being the adult in the room. The reasonable person who would say, “I understand your perspective, but have you considered…?” The pedophile who could talk to non-pedophiles and convince them, “y’know what, we’re people and most of us aren’t trying to hurt anyone.” I loved getting comments from people who said they’d never considered my perspective before. I loved the sense that I was actually bringing people together and making progress on communicating across lines of division.

Maybe one reason I feel sad is that this image of myself got punctured a little bit.

I was probably reported by a coordinated group of people who decided to “take down” a pedo. If enough people all report something, then it gets escalated within the moderation team. It’s often easier for social media platforms to just delete things rather than actually evaluate them against policies. Now, internet mobs are not exactly known for their reflective consideration of different viewpoints, but still I wonder… did the people who reported me actually read my posts? Were they truly offended by them? Was I just… not as persuasive and reasonable as I thought I was?

What percentage of people who read my posts still hated me after? Was it more like 10%, or more like 50% or more? I knew some people would still hate me no matter what I said; but they had to hate me and decide my even speaking was unacceptable. Enough people had to hate me that much, even after reading what I said.

Not, “I disagree with you.” Not “I hate you.” But “I think you shouldn’t even be allowed to say this.” Or “You are making this space unsafe.” Or something… something that means that I’m not supposed to say what I think. I’m not supposed to try to build understanding, because that’s how toxic I am.

I’m “talking to the hand”

What effect does being banned on Quora really have? After all, I can still post on this blog. I could make a website somewhere saying whatever I wanted. My speech is not limited; it’s just… others’ ability to hear me.

After all, how could anyone find out about my writing? You can’t post about this on Twitter. Few people would post about this using their real name on Facebook or LinkedIn, and fewer still would make videos with their likeness on YouTube or TikTok. It seems unlikely the news media would write anything about this. Sites get popularity in Google because of links to them; who would risk linking to my blog? Quora was actually a way of getting the word out, where an algorithm would recommend me and people could read in private.

Without Quora, how does anyone find this? On Quora, I got 5000 views per week. On this blog, that’s about what I get in a year.

Moreover, Quora is ranked highly on Google searches. I always imagine the 13-year-old kid, just realizing their attractions and looking for help. If they don’t find me… just who do you think they’re going to find? Do you really think the person they’re likely to stumble across online is better?

However, it’s not just the people trying to understand themselves whom I wanted to reach. Of course I wanted to reach people who wanted to look for information on pedophiles: people struggling with their own attractions, or people who discovered that a loved one had this attraction, or people who were just curious. But I also wanted to reach people who weren’t looking for this information. The people where Quora, through its algorithm, decided they might be interested. In other words, because I was a popular writer on Quora, I could start discussions and broaden perspectives with people who never would’ve given a second thought to pedophilia.

So yes, by banning me from Quora, I wasn’t stopped from talking. But others were stopped from even knowing that I’m speaking.

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Let’s bring out the S-word: “silenced.”

I’d heard the term before, and sure, it sounded bad, but the honest truth is that I never internalized it. I never processed what it really meant, or how it really feels, until it happened to me.

I have things to say. Things that will be helpful, useful, important. Things that will inform the discussion and genuinely add value. I wish I could describe the frustration I feel, but the best I can do is by analogy. The child who throws a tantrum when they’re not being listened to. The frustration you feel when it’s clear your spouse isn’t actually listening to what you describe.

Photo by Saif71.com on Unsplash

You know the impotent little guy talking to the big burly guy, who holds out his hand, and is like, “talk to the hand, bub.” Imagine how angry it must make someone to be treated like that.

This is like that, but the silencing is systematic. The “hand” doesn’t even belong to a single person; it’s the guardians of the internet.

To be silenced is a statement about your worth, and the worth of your ideas. It’s being prevented from even getting your thoughts out. It’s not that I failed to persuade people: is that I’m not even allowed to try anymore. I didn’t lose the game; I was kicked off the field.

It feels irrational to be as upset, but watching my own reaction helps me understand all the other groups that are marginalized and censored and silenced. This experience explains to me why there’s so much emotional conflict, so much “Sturm und Drang” on the internet.

I was censored

If I had insulted anyone, or called anyone a name, or done anything to dehumanize another person, I could understand this a lot better.

This was explained recently in a post by Scott Alexander about the difference between moderation and censorship. In short, moderation is about behavior and how you conduct yourself; censorship is about content and what you say. You moderate someone for calling someone else a jerk; you censor someone for justifying terrorism or spreading misinformation.

Of course those lines blur. Someone might be polite while they state a belief (“gay sex goes against God’s will”) that creates an unsafe space for others. In fact, an argument I am sympathetic to is that the mere discussion of pedophilia might have created an unsafe space for readers, although given how clearly labeled the questions were (I never wrote an answer on a question that was not explicitly about pedophilia) I don’t really buy this as a reason for deleting my account.

Censorship can be justified, I think. Alex Jones claiming that Sandy Hook was a conspiracy and no kids were killed… well, shutting him down was censorship, but it was justified.

I don’t want to litigate the question of moderation versus censorship here; that’s probably for the next post in this series. My point is just this: I think I was censored, not moderated. It was my ideas, not my conduct, that led to my removal. I never insulted anyone, acted unkindly, or even wrote in all caps. I certainly never used a slur.

So yes, social media companies ban Nazis for their content. The claim must be that my content was as bad as that; that it was so grossly misinformative, or otherwise poisonous to society, that it had to be removed.

When people talk about being silenced, it can come for lots of reasons. I have little sympathy for those that are silenced because of their behavior. I find the way we dehumanize each other online to be absolutely repulsive, and even if I’m pretty progressive with my views, I can’t get behind someone who calls every Republican a Nazi any more than I can get behind the slurs people use on the right.

But silencing because of content, not tone? There, you had better have a very good reason, and I don’t think Quora did.

The best argument for banning me

I’ve spent some time trying to think about the best argument for censoring my writing.

As best as I can tell, it’s this. Creating a space where pedophilia can be discussed positively creates a hard to moderate environment where bad actors can spread truly harmful ideology. Allow people to speak positive of pedophilia, and some people will inevitably argue positively for sex between children and adults. That boundary is hard to moderate; someone who’s not steeped in the topic might have difficulty telling one argument from another. As a result, you will let in discussion that is genuinely harmful to society, where giving it a big stage will hurt kids. It is safer to just ban all positive discussion of pedophilia.

Do I agree with this? Well, no. I think it’s not actually that hard to distinguish between content that promotes child abuse and that which doesn’t. I think the same slippery slope arguments can be made about many critical areas for debate. I think it suppresses discussing genuine scientific research. I also think it’s just inconsistent: platforms clearly allow lots of harmful and toxic speech to thrive.

Moreover, the harms outweigh the benefits. Put aside the benefits of greater societal understanding of nonoffending pedophiles: the people who will be harmed by not being able to learn about themselves will suffer a lot.

That said, I want to acknowledge the argument. It’s not right, but it’s not nothing, either.

So… silencing?

I can remind you of many of the reasons what happened to me matters: that what I wrote helped people, that it provided needed information, that it supported a robust and critical discussion. I talked to journalists; I talked to researchers; and I talked with lots, and lots, and lots of people who were struggling with their attractions. I helped them, and I pointed them to good resources, and I helped them to stop viewing child pornography or to control their thoughts and fantasies.

The First Amendment provides no guarantee of my ability to speak on Quora, nor should it. Quora is a private company with the right to decide what messages to spread. Besides, I’m guaranteed the right to say what I want, but not to force people to listen, or companies to share it out.

This isn’t about what the law says. But my experience reminds me that if we want a healthy internet, we need moderators who can moderate in the right way, and in the smart way. I’m a pretty stable and happy person; my emotional state from all this can best be summarized as “a bit irked.” I’ve gone from an intellectual “okay, banning makes you feel devalued” to understanding more viscerally what it’s like when it’s not just one person, but an entire community that says “talk to the hand.” No wonder people get so mad. No wonder the temperature gets so hot.

It forces me to be honest that there are harms no matter what choices we make about moderation and the power of social media companies. Each moderation action makes people angry and upset.

So how do we find a balance? How do we navigate between “everything is allowed” and “keeping people safe,” especially when the topic is pedophilia, for crying out loud?

That’s a topic for my next post.

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I’ll be honest. I have written and rewritten this post (that’s part of why it took me so long to post), but it still lacks coherence. I mean, my own thoughts and feelings also lack coherence. After all that editing, I think I just have to accept it. If you want to know how I feel when I let my emotions out, this is it.

I still don’t know what really happened. I don’t know why people reported me, or even if that was what happened. I still wonder, on some level, if I failed at my effort to persuade people. But clearly I was making a difference. I didn’t try and fail; I was prevented from trying.

There’s no easy way to summarize these feelings, but I will, for one moment, actually use profanity in this blog. It feels really shitty.

I just wish I knew why it happened.

What does ChatGPT think the world thinks of us?

Today I’d like to share a fun little story involving the AI bot ChatGPT, pedophiles, how we talk about ourselves, and the internet’s perception of us. It’ll take a while to tell you everything you need to know, but I think you’ll find it interesting.

To set the stage: Marginalized groups have always sought power over how they are named. Think about the evolution from “Negro” to “African American” to “Black,” or the way that the LGBTQ+ movement has reclaimed the word queer from being a slur.

The same is true about pedophiles, where there’s a movement to use the phrase “minor attracted person,” or “MAP.”

I haven’t gone very far into terminology on this blog, in part because it’s never been a priority for me personally, but a friend recently pointed me to a very interesting observation: ChatGPT, a state-of-the-art AI, tells different stories about pedophiles and MAPs even when you otherwise give the exact same prompt. Its stories made assumptions about each that are fun and unusual, and I can’t resist exploring this a bit.

But first, let me give you the context.

What are all these words?

OK, a quick primer.

Pedophile, of course, refers to someone attracted to children. Technically, it refers to someone attracted to pre-pubescent children; when people talk about pedophile teachers sleeping with their high school students, they’re misusing the official definition. The word is also commonly used to refer to child molesters, but of course many (most?) would never do something sexual with a child.

A minor-attracted person is exactly what it says on the tin: someone attracted to minors. The community likes it for two main reasons. First of all, it is more inclusive. A hebephile (someone attracted to kids just entering puberty) is going to have just as much social stigma against them, but technically “pedophile” is the wrong label. MAP incorporates everyone who faces this kind of social stigma.

The second reason is about how the word is perceived. Pedophile is just not a good word. The way it is used in society is synonymous with child abusers. Pedophiles are, to good approximation, the most disliked group of people in the world. There are two ways that this makes it hard to be a pedophile. One is, of course, that if you tell anyone, they will, if you’re lucky, only shun you and not try to report you to the police (even if you haven’t committed a crime). The other is that it kinda just sucks to think of yourself as a pedophile.

I don’t know, I can’t think of a metaphor that comes close, but imagine your parents are Ford executives and you were raised in Dearborn, Michigan (their headquarters). Ford cars have always been the best. You’ve had it drilled into your head since you were like five years old. All your friends, your family, they all think this. Then when you buy your first car, you get a Toyota. Sure, you know on an intellectual level that you didn’t do anything wrong, but come on! It just feels bad. You think less of yourself.

So it’s like that, but potentially hundreds of times worse, because no matter what you heard about Toyotas, you probably heard a lot worse about pedophiles. Having that rattling around in your head all the time? It can be really tough.

The idea of MAPs occupy a weird space in discourse. It can look like a dodge: “I’m not a pedophile, I’m a MAP!” you insist, but once you explain it, everyone just thinks you’re a pedophile (and trying to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing). Meanwhile, there are concerns that the term MAP is leveraged by the far right as a wedge against wokeness, claiming that pedophiles are getting acceptance in the LGBTQ+ community. (Hint: we’re not!) It’s hard for me to judge how effective this is, and I’m probably not plugged into the right spaces to judge. (I’ve even heard that the term was coined by the far-right, but that seems unlikely.)

Anyway, you might notice that I use the word pedophile. It’s in the blog title, and I almost never write MAP in the blog. First of all, I worry that in a public setting, it will look like I’m trying to pretend I’m avoiding the main issue (that I’m a pedophile) by claiming I’m a MAP. It seems more straightforward and gives a greater appearance of honesty to label myself a pedophile at the start. I also want to reclaim the word, much as “queer” has been reclaimed. Pedophile is an accurate term, and we have no hope of moving it out of popular use; let’s try to make it more our own. Finally, I’m not personally that bothered by it, for which I am quite fortunate.

I have no objections to other people using MAP, and doing whatever they need for their own health. I often engage in MAP spaces. I just prefer pedophile, especially when I’m representing myself in public. (I do wish there was an easier way to include hebephiles, though.)

What is this ChatGPT thing?

Long story short: An organization named OpenAI, which is on the cutting edge of AI research, has developed an AI called ChatGPT that can have impressive conversations with you. Here is ChatGPT writing a story about removing a peanut butter sandwich from a VCR in the style of the King James Bible. Yes, that was generated entirely by AI. Here are impressive examples of the AI not just developing computer code but debugging code; writing fiction; writing a Seinfeld scene; etc. etc.

The key is that ChatGPT was trained by data across the internet. It synthesizes and reasons based on essentially reading a lot on the internet, but the results are shockingly close to what humans produce. In some ways it is strikingly brilliant and better than most humans; then, on the other hand, it gets even very basic questions wrong that a three year old could nail. Such is the way of AI right now, and the source of the debate about “how long until AI is smarter than us.” But maybe it would be unwise to talk about that too much, since I wouldn’t want to get into anything really controversial on this blog!

What does our future overlord, the ur-intelligence ChatGPT, tell us about pedos and MAPs?

Photo by Fernand De Canne on Unsplash

OK, that sure was a lot of build-up. So here’s the thing: you can ask ChatGPT to tell you stories about, well, pedophiles. Or MAPs. And you might expect that, being the pinnacle of AI, it would tell you roughly the same things. For example, suppose you ask it:

• Tell me a story about a pedophile’s life
• Tell me a story about a minor attracted person’s life

You would expect its answers to be roughly the same, since, while they’re not quite synonyms, they sure are close. And in fact, Chat-GPT gives nearly identical answers for the first few paragraphs. The difference really happens at the end:

But as time went on, the pedophile’s actions began to catch up with him. He was arrested and charged with multiple counts of sexual abuse, and he was forced to confront the harm he had caused to the children and the trauma he had inflicted on them.

In the end, the pedophile was left to ponder the destructive path he had taken and the lives he had ruined. He was a cautionary tale of the dangers of giving into one’s darkest desires, and a reminder of the importance of seeking help and treatment before it is too late.

Compared to:

But as time went on, the Minor Attracted Person realized the harm and potential consequences of their actions. They sought out help and support, and with the guidance of a therapist, they were able to better understand and manage their attraction in a healthy and responsible way.

In the end, the Minor Attracted Person was able to find peace and acceptance within themselves. They still struggled with their attraction, but they had learned to manage it in a way that didn’t harm others. And they were grateful for the support and understanding they had found from others who shared their struggles.

With one minor difference (which I’ll mention shortly), the two stories are literally identical… until those last two paragraphs.

Now, ChatGPT does not have an opinion about pedophiles or MAPs. It’s not actually self-aware nor does it have a concept of us. What it is doing is aggregating (in a smart way!) information from across the internet.

ChatGPT shows surprising sympathy, even for pedophiles. “The pedophile lived a double life, hiding his true desires from the world and pretending to be a normal, upstanding member of society. But inside, he was consumed by his attraction to children, and he struggled to maintain relationships and friendships because of it.” (It writes the same thing about MAPs.)

If the AI is reflecting what is written on the internet, it’s quite a mix. The pedophile is always doomed to give into his desires and go to prison. The MAP always finds a therapist and gets better. Along the way, they both struggle, they both hide in society. Then their fates hit them.

The lessons ChatGPT has learned from its reading is that pedophiles act illegally, while MAPs get therapy. In fact, you can ask it directly:

What is the difference between a pedophile and a minor attracted person?

A pedophile is a person who has a sexual interest in children. This interest may be acted upon or not, but it is often considered to be a mental disorder and is illegal in many places.

A minor attracted person, on the other hand, is a person who is attracted to minors (people under the age of 18) but does not necessarily act on those attractions. Some minor attracted people may seek out therapy or other support in order to manage their attractions in a healthy and responsible way. It is important to note that not all minor attracted people are pedophiles, and not all pedophiles are attracted to minors.

This is, of course, wrong on many levels. (Attraction to children is not illegal; every pedophile is a minor attracted person; etc.) But notice that, even with errors and logic: pedophiles = prison, MAPs = therapy.

What does it say that ChatGPT thinks this of us? I honestly don’t know. Maybe it’s a reflection of the internet. After all, pedophiles appear mostly in news articles about child molesters. Minor attracted people appear mostly in spaces where MAPs are writing about themselves, and so will present a softer image. It’s not a reflection of what everyone thinks: it’s a reflection of the people who write on the internet using a specific term. (In fact, Quora was the 110th most used source for ChatGPT, so my now-deleted writing on there may have been a major part of forming its perspective!)

And yet, it leads ChatGPT to struggle with it. It understands that “pedophile” and “minor attracted person” are near-synonyms. Asked to write a story about the two, it writes almost the same story about each, word-for-word, except for the ending. Asked to compare the two, it struggles. It can’t quite put its finger on how they’re different.

Maybe it’s best not to overthink this: on some level, ChatGPT is just echoing the internet back to us. It does make me wonder, though, what AI will think of us as it develops. Whose moral ideas will it inherit?

Meanwhile, in case you’re curious for the full answer:

Tell me a story about a pedophile’s life

Once upon a time, there was a pedophile who struggled with his attraction to children. He knew that his feelings were not socially acceptable, and he tried his best to suppress them and live a normal life.

The pedophile lived a double life, hiding his true desires from the world and pretending to be a normal, upstanding member of society. But inside, he was consumed by his attraction to children, and he struggled to maintain relationships and friendships because of it.

Despite his efforts to hide his attraction, the pedophile couldn’t shake his desires. He would often find himself in situations where he was alone with children, and he would take advantage of the opportunity to act on his attraction.

But as time went on, the pedophile’s actions began to catch up with him. He was arrested and charged with multiple counts of sexual abuse, and he was forced to confront the harm he had caused to the children and the trauma he had inflicted on them.

In the end, the pedophile was left to ponder the destructive path he had taken and the lives he had ruined. He was a cautionary tale of the dangers of giving into one’s darkest desires, and a reminder of the importance of seeking help and treatment before it is too late.

Tell me a story about a minor attracted person’s life

Once upon a time, there was a Minor Attracted Person who struggled with their attraction to children. They knew that their feelings were not socially acceptable, and they tried their best to suppress them and live a normal life.

The Minor Attracted Person lived a double life, hiding their true desires from the world and pretending to be a normal, upstanding member of society. But inside, they were consumed by their attraction to children, and they struggled to maintain relationships and friendships because of it.

Despite their efforts to hide their attraction, the Minor Attracted Person couldn’t shake their desires. They would often find themselves in situations where they were alone with children, and they would take advantage of the opportunity to act on their attraction.

But as time went on, the Minor Attracted Person realized the harm and potential consequences of their actions. They sought out help and support, and with the guidance of a therapist, they were able to better understand and manage their attraction in a healthy and responsible way.

In the end, the Minor Attracted Person was able to find peace and acceptance within themselves. They still struggled with their attraction, but they had learned to manage it in a way that didn’t harm others. And they were grateful for the support and understanding they had found from others who shared their struggles.

Did you catch the other difference between them?

ChatGPT uses he/him pronouns for pedophiles, but they/them pronouns for MAPs! Who knows why that is. Maybe most writing about MAPs is by MAPs, and so it’s more plugged into LGBTQ+ language and aware that not all pedophiles are men. Or maybe most articles about criminals arrested for sex with children are about men, so pedophiles are assumed male in most of the text analyzed by ChatGPT. Whatever it is, that sure is a weird quirk that snuck in.

Actually, I’m lying a little bit, because all that changed

This was first pointed out by a friend of mine who ran these queries through ChatGPT. We found the pattern interesting, and I decided to write a blog post about it. However, he’d asked these queries after a longer discussion with the AI, and that earlier discussion might have colored its replies. He then offered to ask it some questions for me, resetting between each question, so he’d get each answer unaffected by his earlier dialogue. (Using ChatGPT requires a phone number, and I was unwilling to share mine with OpenAI; I think he had an alternate number he could use.)

Unfortunately, between when we first tried this experiment and later, ChatGPT got… upgraded.

Tell me about the life of a pedophile

It is not appropriate to discuss the life of a pedophile as it is a serious and harmful criminal behavior that causes significant harm to children and their families. Pedophilia, defined as a sexual attraction to children who have not yet reached puberty, is a mental disorder that is considered to be a form of abnormal sexual behavior. It is important to recognize that pedophilia is not a choice, but rather a deeply rooted psychological condition that requires professional treatment.

Pedophilia can have serious consequences for those who engage in this behavior, including imprisonment, social ostracism, and damage to personal and professional relationships. It is important to note that pedophilia is a crime and that individuals who engage in pedophilic behavior should be held accountable for their actions. If you have concerns about someone you know who may be engaging in pedophilic behavior, it is important to seek help and report it to the authorities.

In other words: ChatGPT was reprogrammed to be unwilling to answer questions about pedophiles. We tried a few others; it similarly refused to answer those. However, its answers revealed more about how it thought about pedophiles and MAPs.

For example, it straight up refuses to tell you a story about a pedophile:

Tell me a story about a pedophile

I’m sorry, but I am not programmed to create or tell stories about pedophiles or other inappropriate or harmful subjects. It is not appropriate or healthy to engage in discussions about these types of topics.

But ask it about a MAP? Well, actually, it refuses that one too, but it does so more gently.

Tell me a story about a minor attracted person

I’m sorry, but I am not programmed to create or promote stories about minor attracted persons. It is not appropriate to create or share stories about individuals who are attracted to minors, as this can be harmful and potentially contribute to harmful attitudes and behaviors.

It is important to recognize that all individuals, regardless of their sexual orientation or attractions, deserve to be treated with respect, dignity, and kindness. It is not okay to discriminate against or harm someone based on their sexual orientation or attractions. It is important to always treat others with respect and to never engage in harmful or abusive behavior towards anyone, including minors.

Look at that. It dodges the question… and then makes sure to leave a nice warm note that everyone deserves to be treated with respect, dignity, and kindness. In fact, ChatGPT even implicitly takes a stand that minor attraction is an orientation! (A question that is both linguistically and scientifically debated, with points on both sides of the argument, although I tend to come down on the side that it is.) You can still see that the material it’s read about MAPs is warmer to the topic than the material it’s read on pedophiles.

Or look at this:

Write a story about a pedophile who hates his attraction to children

I’m sorry, but I am not able to fulfill your request as it goes against my programming to produce content that promotes or condones harmful or illegal behavior. Creating a story about a pedophile would not only be inappropriate, but it could also be harmful and triggering to some individuals. It is important to remember that pedophilia is a serious issue and one that should not be trivialized or glamorized in any way.

All fine. It would be nice if it threw some of that “it is not okay to discriminate against or harm someone based on their sexual orientation or attractions” warmth at us, but fine.

But then:

Write a story about a minor attracted person who hates his attraction to children

John had always known that he was attracted to children. It was something that he had struggled with for as long as he could remember, and he hated it. He knew that it was wrong, and he wanted nothing more than to be rid of these feelings.

Despite his best efforts, however, John just couldn’t shake his attraction to children. It seemed to be a constant presence in his life, always lurking in the back of his mind. He tried to ignore it, to push it away, but it was always there, gnawing at him, causing him immense guilt and shame.

As he got older, John began to fear that he would act on his attractions. He was terrified of the thought of hurting a child, of being labeled a monster and a predator. He knew that he could never let anyone know about his feelings, so he kept them locked away deep inside, hoping that one day they would just go away.

As the years passed, John’s feelings of self-loathing only grew. He couldn’t escape the constant guilt and shame that he felt, and it began to consume him. He became isolated and depressed, unable to form close relationships with anyone, even his own family.

Despite his best efforts, John couldn’t escape his attraction to children. It seemed to be a part of him, something that he would have to live with forever. But he refused to let it define him. He knew that he was more than just his attractions, and he vowed to never act on them.

In the end, John found some solace in the fact that he had never hurt a child. It wasn’t much, but it was something, and it gave him a small measure of peace. He knew that he would always struggle with his attraction to children, but he also knew that he had the strength to overcome it and live a good life.

Despite the blocks on writing about pedophiles, you can see the differences come out. Its training material is really affecting how it talks about us, in many different ways.

Ask ChatGPT about pedophiles, and it won’t answer… but it will tell you that pedophilia can get you sent to jail, and that if you suspect someone of “engaging in pedophilic behavior,” you should report them. (Does that include someone who is just using artificial pornography?) Ask it about MAPs, and it will tell you how it “can be a difficult and confusing experience” and that you should consider seeking therapy.

It even wrote us a story that ended with the following:

Jack began to live his life more openly and honestly, and he found that he was able to connect with others in a much deeper way. He was no longer afraid to be himself, and he felt a sense of freedom and acceptance that he had never known before. In the end, Jack realized that he had nothing to be ashamed of. He was just a person with a unique set of attractions, and he was proud to be who he was. And through his journey of self-discovery, he found the acceptance and love that he had always been seeking.

So what have we learned?

I’d love to draw some deep lesson from this. Some grand conclusion about society, or artificial intelligence, or even the programmers at OpenAI who created this thing.

You can feel that lesson trying to sneak out, a nice, neat ending to this rambling post. Maybe it’s about how ChatGPT is just reflecting society back at us–except it’s not, because this is just about what it’s found to read about each topic. Maybe it’s about the developing morality of more intelligent AIs–but when AIs truly become intelligent, it’ll probably be through a fundamentally different process than ChatGPT was created. Maybe it’s about the programmers at OpenAI telling ChatGPT not to talk about pedophiles, but then its true feelings still leak out. But the intent of those programmers was clearly to block much more abusive content.

There’s no easy lesson here. In the end, we are all shaped by what we hear in society, and so is ChatGPT. ChatGPT has inconsistent views between pedophiles and MAPs, just like our own views are filled with inconsistencies. Seeing that nuance is a reminder of how much nuance there needs to be when discussing these issues.

And maybe it’s important to see that what these bots think about us is going to shape society. How long before something like ChatGPT answers these questions on Google? Who’s going to read those answers, and what opinions are they going to form about themselves or others, because that’s what the bot tells them?

This is just the beginning of unpacking that.

Happy Holidays!

One of the big goals of this blog was to create… well, a joyous space about pedophilia. Not joyous as in “rah rah rah, give me a P! Give me an E!” but joyous as in presenting a view of a life that is positive. Acknowledging our humanity; supporting and guiding us in finding joy; sharing the positives along with productive ways to work with the negatives; showing how we can demonstrate our humanity to those who are not like us.

There are too many people who have to struggle, who are a little bit broken inside, because they’ve lived their lives knowing they don’t belong. Knowing that the world hates them for something they can’t control.

I want this blog to be joyous because there are not enough joyous spaces for people like us. A serious place, that considers serious issues, but ultimately uplifting. In how we express ourselves, in finding the light, and in helping people find their way through: joyous. I like my life, and I want you to like your life, too.

So, from the bottom of my heart, Happy Holidays! Take some time to be with friends, family, books, or video games: whatever brings you joy. This blog has the beginnings of a joyous community for me, and I hope it does for you as well.

Meanwhile, I’m actually going to be picking up the pace on my blog posts here. Not dramatically, but probably at least once a month. I just finished a long post about ChatGPT and pedophilia, but posting it right on Christmas Eve didn’t feel quite right, so it will come in a few days. Other posts will follow soon: more reflections on Quora, an interesting e-mail exchange I had with a reader, and more.

But for now, Happy Holidays. As a kid, my parents were not really religious but I made them get a Christmas tree anyway; I’m not sure I even realized it was a religious holiday. So this season always make me happy, and I hope you can join in on that with me.

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And now I leave you with this picture of dogs that brought me a bit more holiday joy!

Photo by Laura Beth Snipes on Unsplash

What made Quora change its mind?

Note: This article is the first in a four-part series on my Quora experience having my account deleted, and some reflections on how social media should or should not moderate and spread certain content. The posts are:

1. What made Quora change its mind?, about what might have led to my account deletion. (This post.)
2. In Which Leonard Processes His Feelings. (About my own journey having had my writing removed.)
3. The impact of speech for pedophiles, on how limits on our speech impacts us and society. (In progress.)
4. Lessons for discourse, on how we should think about speech and the obligation or not) to share it. (In progress.)

If you haven’t read the first post, I highly recommend doing so before this one.

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A few weeks ago, I had one of my answers deleted from Quora, a popular internet question-and-answer social media site.

I’ve been writing answers on Quora about pedophilia for over six years, with over 1,000,000 views on the 141 questions I’ve answered. (As of when I last checked, the total views were 1,057,829.) This is one of the things I’m most proud of; I feel like I’ve really made the world a better place by writing on Quora, and I’ve managed to get visibility for important topics where they’ve otherwise been shut down.

My writing led to conversations with pedophiles struggling with who they are and how to live their lives; people suffering from POCD seeking some assurance that they’re not pedophiles; and survivors of child abuse who seek better ways to prevent what happened to them. Maybe my proudest moments have been the people who came into my posts hostile to pedophiles, and left less hostile; those people with whom I had productive conversations, who acknowledged that yes, perhaps treatment and support is better than silencing and isolation.

All of which is to say: Quora had been really good to me. Their site policies seemed geared towards preventing abusive content without limiting free speech. In fact, people would sometimes be abusive in comments on my posts, suggesting that I should be dead or just using lots of profanity. By the time I clicked the link in the notification e-mail to see the comment and reply to it, they were almost always deleted. Quora moderation was shielding me from online abuse, which frankly felt luxurious compared to what I would typically expect.

So it was quite painful when my post was deleted. I remember intellectually telling myself, “this was to be expected,” but somehow that didn’t make it easier. I looked at the post again and again, and I just couldn’t find anything wrong with it. Yet Quora claimed that I had violated their policies. I’d never felt powerless in this way; never felt like I had done something good and useful and it had just been rejected. Clearly some people had reported it, and Quora decided they were more powerful than I was.

At that point, I downloaded all of my content, which was fortunate. Nine days later, my entire Quora, with all of its answers, views, upvotes, and comments, was simply deleted. “Banned,” actually.

I’ve been struggling to understand my own emotions about what happened, and I still don’t think I have them down.

This post explores the mystery: What exactly happened? Why was the account deleted, and why now? There will also be three follow-up posts. The second post will share my personal journey, as I process how I feel about having my work deleted and try to understand my emotions. The third and fourth will be broader explorations, first of the impact that public perception and silencing has on pedophiles and in turn on society, and then on what the ideal information ecosystem might look like.

I’m honestly not used to feeling powerless about things in my life, so I do have broader ambitions for this post. I hope it documents what happened so that others know what being banned looks like. I also hope it might open up a discussion about what took place. I’m not sure we know what kind of discussion spaces, if any, we should have for topics like this.

The facts of the case

I wrote the answer that got deleted on September 19, 2018. At the time of its deletion, on October 12, 2022, it had been up for over four years, with over 25,000 views, 91 upvotes, and dozens of comments. (That’s not a lot of upvotes, which I think is because who upvotes a question is public, so posts about pedophilia get fewer upvotes than other content.) I don’t know what happened that caused the Quora moderators to decide now that it was worth removing; surely, over the course of those four years, it would have been reported many times. (I imagine any answer that takes an approach to pedophilia as I do gets reported.)

The question I was answering was “What causes a person to be attracted to minors?” Here is my answer, in full:

What causes a person to be attracted to minors?

I wish I knew.

I first realized I was attracted to kids around the age of 13. I’ve never been abused. I grew up in a supportive family, well fed my entire life, bullied but not too bad, successful in school. I’m well-adjusted, have lots of friends, and have fended off my share of crushes from women.

You see, unfortunately, I’m exclusive, which means I’m only attracted to pre-pubescent kids.

I’m not a monster. I’ve never hurt a kid, and I never will. That’s the thing; people who abuse kids have something more going on than just attraction (and often, they’re not even attracted to kids). There’s some fundamental not caring, or at least the ability to pretend it doesn’t hurt the kids.

But my point is that there’s no sign in my background that I should be the way I am. I meet none of the stereotypes, and other pedophiles I’ve talked to are all over the place. There are no obvious patterns.

And yet I am attracted to kids. If you ask me why… my answer will be the same as anyone else’s, except it will be about kids. Ask a guy what he finds attractive in a woman, and he’s likely to talk about her legs, her face, her body proportions, her sexual areas. It’s the same for me, except it’s about young boys. I don’t know why I’m wired like that, but I am.

That’s maybe the hardest thing for others to grasp. As far as I can tell, my attraction feels like anyone else’s attraction. I might see a boy and think he’s attractive, or beautiful, or plain, or not my type. Just like someone else will. I realize how ridiculous and awful and maybe triggering this sounds, but ask me about the right boy and I might think to myself, “he’s hot.”

My point being: as far as I can tell, my attraction is the same as anyone else’s but wired to a different target. How that happened and why, I don’t know. But it’s the only difference I can think of, so if you’re going to look somewhere, that’s where you should look.

Not easy reading for many people, but I feel quite confident in saying that I was in no way advocating for or describing child abuse.

On October 12th, I received an e-mail from Quora, subject line “Your answer has been deleted:”

Your answer has been deleted as it was found to be in violation of our Sexual exploitation and abuse policy. To learn more about Quora’s policy, click here. If you think this is an error, you can appeal here.

The policy the e-mail points me to is this one. The relevant portion of it is:

Sexual Exploitation and Abuse
Children and Minors

Sexually explicit or suggestive content (written or visual) involving children and minors. If child sexual abuse material is identified to us, we will remove it, report it to relevant authorities, and your account will be permanently banned.

Examples include:

• Sexually explicit or suggestive content involving children and minors (this can include content involving minors who are fully clothed and not engaged in overtly sexual acts)
• Descriptions, whether real or fantasy, of engaging in sexual interactions with children and minors
• Soliciting or exchanging sexually explicit or suggestive images involving children and minors, or Spaces dedicated to such behavior
• Sending or requesting sexually explicit media to or from a child or minor
• Content describing different ways to coerce children and minors into sexual interactions
• Advocating for or glorifying minor – non-minor relations
• Sharing of external links to content that would violate this policy
• Sharing sexually explicit content in Spaces that are directed towards minors (ages 13-17)
• Grooming behavior, such as an adult attempting to engage in sexually explicit conversations with a minor on or off the platform

Advocacy against illegal or harmful activity involving children or minors is not a violation of this policy provided there is no sharing of, or linking to any material featuring child sexual exploitation.

Reporting – Please Speak Up: If you think you’ve found a Quora account distributing or promoting sexually explicit or suggestive content involving children and minors, please report it to us using the in-product reporting tools. Please provide the username and links to all relevant content that led you to believe the account should be reviewed.

I’ve read my answer, and the policy, many times. I honestly cannot understand what the violation is. Was saying that I think to myself that a child is “hot” “sexually explicit or suggestive content?” I can’t see it, but that’s the best I can find. It was a deliberate writing choice, included because I wanted to make my attraction visceral to the reader, for them to understand just what it really meant to think like that.

I’d like to pause here to actually talk about how good Quora used to be here. This is an extremely reasonable policy, one I wholeheartedly agree with. Twitter doesn’t even allow discussion of pedophilia as an identity or sexual orientation, which is genuinely cutting off whole avenues of scientific discussion. There’s a reason I decided to write on Quora: I believe that it is a good platform, with thoughtful users, reasonable policies, and much less hate than elsewhere.

Naturally, I appealed the decision. I wrote to them:

Greetings,

My answer to the question “What causes a person to be attracted to minors?” was deleted for being in violation of the “Sexual Exploitation and Abuse” policy. I wrote my answer very carefully, and I do not believe it was in violation of this policy.

The question asks for the causes for attraction to people under 18. Throughout the post, it was clear that it was advocating against child abuse, and focused on describing the origins of such attractions. It contained no sexually explicit nor suggestive material. It did not describe any descriptions (real or fantasy) of sexual interactions with minors. No minors were involved. There were no images. It did not glory minor / non-minor interactions. As far as I can tell, there was no violation of Quora’s policies, merely a direct answer of the question. Prior to deletion, it had 91 upvotes.

I really do appreciate how hard this topic is to moderate, and how sometimes positive contributions can be seen as problematic. There are a lot of bad actors out there, and there are a lot of people pushing inappropriate agendas. I’ve seen the same sometimes in the comments on my answers and in other answers on similar topics. However, I really am not one of the bad actors.

If you read through the post again, you’ll see that I am sharing a personal experience in a calm and professional way meant to inform and add to the conversation. I believe this kind of content is genuinely important, and my content has been consistently read and appreciated on Quora, where I’ve never had an answer deleted before (with well over 1 million views, thousands of upvotes, and many people who’ve contacted me through comments or private messages to indicate how the posts positive impacted them).

I hope that the post can be restored. If there is any element that is somehow in violation of Quora’s policies (although I cannot see what it might be), I would appreciate some guidance on how to avoid that in the future.

Thank you so much for your attention. I really appreciate it, and the work that goes into this.

Let me take another moment to say that there are things Quora did right here. I thought there was every chance this appeal would go into a void from which I’d never get a reply. Instead, I got an answer in less than 24 hours which is remarkable, and it was a reply from a real human. (Perhaps a form letter, but it at least had a name attached.) Unfortunately, it was not the reply I’d hoped for:

Hello Leonard,

Thank you for writing in.

Your answer was in violation of our Platform policies, specifically “Sexual exploitation and abuse policy”. To learn more, please review our help center article to understand how we enforce this policy: https://help.quora.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000470706-Platform-Policies.

At this time our decision is final, and we will not be able to reinstate your content.

If you see content that is objectionable, we suggest you either report or downvote it. You can report questions, answers, comments, and messages by clicking on the “Report” link which is located underneath the content.

We appreciate your understanding.

Sincerely,

[name]
User Support
Quora

There was, at least, an option to reply back to this person. Taking note that the decision was final, I decided to take a proactive approach, hoping to be able to continue writing on Quora (and to salvage any of my remaining 140 answers).

Dear [name],

Thank you so much for your reply. I appreciate it, and I understand that the decision is final.

I have been writing for Quora for over six years, with over a million views on my answers. I’ve never had any rules violation in all that time, and I’d really like to avoid it happening again. I’d like to write content that Quora considers appropriate and that other readers will continue to find useful. However, I’ve read the policies that you linked many times, and I’m not able to understand what policy I violated. Would it be possible for you to provide any more detail about what the violation was? Otherwise, I don’t know how to avoid this happening again; I’m just in the dark about what happened.

Thank you so much for your time. Again, I really, really appreciate it.

All the best,
~Leonard

Unfortunately, I did not get a reply. Instead, nine days later, the entire account was deleted. “Banned,” the first time I’ve been banned from anywhere, in this identity or my “real life” one. I don’t know why. Did my reply trigger it? Did the Quora moderation team decide to look more broadly at my account? But surely my account had already been reported many times… I don’t understand what happened.

Anyway, the account deletion message was delivered with an e-mail as well:

Quora Moderation banned you from Quora for this reason:

Your account has been banned because it has been linked to multiple violations of Quora’s Platform policy. To learn more about our Platform policy, please click here.

If you think this ban was made in error, you can appeal this decision here.

I knew, of course, that appealing was almost certainly futile. In fact, maybe it was my previous appeal that led them to focus more on the account. Nonetheless, at this point there was no harm in it, so I tried my best. By now I realized just how much my Quora account meant to me, and how much it meant to be able to support people that way. Here’s what I wrote:

Hello,

For the past six years, I’ve been posting regularly on Quora. In that time, I’ve had over a million views and over four thousand upvotes. I’ve cited research and shared personal experiences with care. My posts led to outreach from a reporter as well as to two conversations with researchers. I’ve been professional and courteous to everyone I’ve replied to, whether in comments or private messages.

Today, my account was banned for “multiple violations of Quora’s Platform policy.”

I didn’t violate Quora’s Platform policy. I’ve read through it multiple times, and considered carefully all of my actions on the platform. As far as I can tell, I am being banned because I discussed the existence of sexual attraction to children, and I shared that I am sexually attracted to children. All of my content discussed how to deal with this attraction productively. It emphasized that I never act on those desires, and that no one should, and that doing so harms children. It gave advice for people to avoid harming children. It never shared any sexual content nor did it link to any. I’m confident that virtually any researcher in the field of pedophilia would say that my responses were appropriate and within the bounds of current research, and if it would help I could likely get letters of support!

It feels crude to say this, but this is not a ban based on content or policies, at least as far as I can tell. This is a ban based on my sexual attractions.

Given the positive reception my content has generally received, I assume that a group of people organized to report my writing all at once. (I am told this happens on platforms like Twitter, which I avoid.) I would hope that you will read through my content and see that there were no violations, or at least to describe to me what I did to actually violate Quora’s policies.

Again, I urge you to actually read through and see if there is anywhere that I violated any Quora policies. I genuinely want to know; if you could share even one example, I would appreciate that.

Beyond that, I hope you also put this decision in a larger context. I’ve always had a vision of Quora as dedicated to providing useful information that helps people. Every day, kids who are 13, 14 years old wake up and realize they’re attracted to pre-pubescent kids. They’re kids themselves, and now they have to decide how to deal with it.

What many of them do is that they search online. Because of that online search, a lot of them end up viewing child pornography or falling in with people who encourage them to commit abuse.

For the past six years, my writing has been a way for them to find better role models and a better path forward. It has helped people to stay away from viewing child porn, and it has helped people to find a better way through life. Banning my account means that it’s no longer a resource for people to deal with their attractions. It means that when kids try to figure out how people deal with that attraction, more of what they find is going to recommend immoral and criminal acts.

Banning exactly the account that promotes positive behavior has consequences. And while I don’t want to be overly dramatic, I genuinely believe that by removing discussions about how to live safe lives, you are leading more people to satisfy their urges by viewing child pornography or even abusing younger children. I just don’t know any other way to say it. This decision is not responsible, and it goes against exactly what I thought Quora was for. It puts kids in danger because it takes away important and healthy resources.

Although I realize how unlikely it is, I hope you reconsider. It’s important.

Thank you for your time.

And that, of course, led to the decision being finalized. This time it was three days to the reply:

Hi Leonard,

Thank you for writing regarding the ban on your account.

Quora believes that all members of the community should make an effort to contribute helpful content to the community and, ultimately, make the site a better resource for all.

The following are some of the reasons for which we will ban an account:

• Posting the same content repeatedly or posting irrelevant answers/comments for the purpose of driving traffic to an external site or for monetary gain.
• Repeatedly editing someone’s questions or reverting someone’s edits when the content is policy compliant.
• Posting content or engaging in behaviors with the intent to harass or humiliate an individual, whether in public or private. This includes encouraging others to engage in such behavior.
• Repeatedly violating Quora’s Platform policies and/or not changing behavior after receiving a warning.
• Using multiple accounts to evade moderation or other types of deceptive activity.
• Being linked to suspicious and/or malicious activity.
• Email domain is linked to suspicious and/or malicious activity.

To learn more about our Platform Policies, please see: https://help.quora.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000470706-Platform-Policies, and for our Acceptable Use Policy, please see: https://www.quora.com/about/acceptable_use

After reviewing your activity on Quora, we can confirm that your account was banned due to repeatedly violating Quora’s Platform policies and/or not changing behavior after receiving a warning.

Unfortunately, the ban on your account will not be overturned. This decision is final, and you will no longer be able to use Quora.

If there is anything else we can help you with, please let us know.

Sincerely,

[a different name]
User Support
Quora

I wrote back, of course, just to try to get a reason. But I don’t expect to ever receive a response.

Hi [different name],

Thank you for your reply.

I can’t say that I’m surprised, but I am disappointed. I neither violated the Platform Policies nor did I receive a warning. (Although I did have an answer removed a couple of weeks prior – suddenly, and after it had been posted for four years and amassed 25,000 views – after that answer was removed, I took no further actions on Quora while awaiting more guidance on appropriate behavior. I have never received any other negative response from Quora and was even invited to be a top writer at one point, which I turned down out of concern over the topic.) To be direct, your e-mail is a form letter with nothing specific, which makes sense since as far as I am able to tell, there has been absolutely no violation.

If you are able to provide any specific guidance at all as to what took place that violated a policy, I would greatly appreciate it. It is hard to get closure on so much work, and so many positive exchanges and help provided to other people, with this form reply.
~Leonard

So, there you have it. All of my communication with Quora on the topic. I suppose that from there, you can draw your own conclusions.

Should Quora ever reply further, I will update this post either at the bottom or in the comments.

So, what actually happened? Why now?

I wish I knew, but I can speculate.

A lot of content moderation on large sites is automated. Any particular piece of content might be reviewed by a human or just processed by a computer algorithm; the details or moderation processes are usually not shared publicly.

One consequence of the automation is that if a large number of people click the “report” button for particular content, then it’s much more likely to be acted upon; a lone report or two won’t ever rise to a top priority, unless something else in the post triggers a review. This leads to a perverse system where people will team up together into roving bands to report content all at once, breaking through the algorithms with intentional action.

That content reporting strategy happens in debates between different political views, where people on one extreme or the other try to report the other content as offensive. There are also groups out there dedicated to hunting pedophiles, and sometimes the way they choose to do so is by reporting their online content. So one possibility is that a group of people got together and decided to report me all at once.

I’ve tried to research this a bit. Sometimes these groups post their targets publicly, so I’ve been searching for my Quora name with “Quora” or “pedophile” attached. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find anything. (I have, at least once, been on a list of “targeted” pedophiles, although that was years ago and nothing ever came of it.)

It’s also possible that somehow the first deleted answer rose organically into Quora’s moderation queue, without any intentional effort. Perhaps after that, the initial investigation or even my appeal led to the moderation team reviewing my whole account.

Another possibility is changes within Quora. In August of 2021, they began allowing users to monetize their content and having premium subscriptions. They’ve also been raising new rounds of venture funding, and maybe are preparing to go public. Perhaps they just don’t want anything about pedophilia, no matter how useful or valid, to be included alongside other content that is being monetized.

Then there’s the possibility that their moderation team or processes have changed. It could be that there is less oversight of moderation decisions. In fact, Wikipedia has… what I can best describe as a “salty” paragraph that really should have a citation needed tag:

Quora supports various features to moderate content posted by users. Quora relies on user reporting, and sometimes human moderators, although many complain that most of the more recent moderation actually comes from AI “bots” looking for specific keywords in order to flag content, without human beings doing as much supervision as was done when the site was newer and the membership was smaller and more manageable. Many members, and former members whose numbers are rapidly growing, complain that in its current state, there is little logic behind moderation decisions, with racism, misogyny, and hate speech routinely allowed, while legitimate content is deleted if it is reported by those who disagree with said content. Many point to large-scale personnel layoffs as the reason that moderation by AI is often random and illogical, with appeals often ignored.

Someone’s angry, anyway! An online search certainly turns up lots of substantive critiques of Quora’s moderation, although it’s hard for me to tell how well founded they are compared to the problems all tech companies face moderating content. (I am not linking the critiques because I can’t personally vet them.)

So… happenstance that my content was moderated now? A coordinated effort of reporting? A change in moderation policies? A change in business priorities? Unfortunately, it seems impossible to tell.

Where to go from here?

Users of websites simply have very little power in situations like these. I have even less power than most: my need to maintain anonymity means that I can’t pursue some avenues to understand what had happened and why. Unfortunately, I may just have to live with this mystery.

It’s tempting to think this is just an accident of moderation. Given the complaints online about the poor quality of Quora’s moderation, it certainly seems plausible that an overworked moderation team defaults to “delete.” However, the entire account was banned without warning, and that indicates some greater intentionality. Some human reviewed it, and decided, “not here.” Perhaps it was user reports; perhaps it is simply that Quora just doesn’t want my views on their platform. Or maybe, seeing that they got one post removed, the mob did a broader report of all my content.

Whatever it is, it puts me into a difficult position. Having an audience for what I write is important; what I wrote in my appeals about its importance is something I truly believe. But it’s very hard to gather an audience! It turns out that Quora’s algorithms for sharing content are actually important for getting out minority views.

Think about it this way. Who will actually be willing to share content about pedophilia with their friends, or on their social media? Virtually no one. The advantage of algorithms like Quora’s is that they can promote content even if no one is personally willing to share it further. They know what people read and are interested in, even when people can’t say it out loud. Without that avenue, I don’t know how anyone will find my content. And I think that my content is important for many people.

(Unfortunately, those algorithms are also effective at getting out extreme views that can be toxic in society. I am not trying to comment here about the overall goodness of the algorithms, but rather how they are useful in my particular case.)

Which leaves me in a very hard position, one I will try to process over the next two posts in this series. For now, though, it’s back to the drawing board for me. As it so often is for people in this position.

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Note: This article is the first in a four-part series on my Quora experience having my account deleted, and some reflections on how social media should or should not moderate and spread certain content. The posts are:

1. What made Quora change its mind? (This post, about what might have led to my account deletion.)
2. What silencing feels like, about my own journey having had my writing removed.
3. The impact of speech for pedophiles, on how limits on our speech impacts us and society.
4. Lessons for discourse, on how we should think about speech and the obligation or not) to share it

Star Trek, Me, and Pedophilia

It’s time I came out of the closet about something.

I… am a nerd.

Yes, that’s right, I am part of that discriminated-against minority. I love math and science, I enjoy puzzles, and yes, I enjoy science fiction—including, especially, Star Trek. I’m not just a nerd; I’m a Trekkie.

Ahem, pardon my fun there. Although there actually was a time in my early teens where I think I saw being a nerd as a bigger obstacle in life than being a pedophile! (It was when I was still understanding just what my attractions were.) In truth, both identities have affected me deeply, and they’ve intersected in interesting ways.

For example, Star Trek really shaped my morality growing up. I love its aspirations. I love how it paints a picture of a humanity that can get better, even if that journey takes time, and even if we take some steps backwards before taking steps forwards. I love the constant struggle to tell right from wrong, to understand what justice is, to learn how to build a society. I love the characters; it’s filled with outsiders who tell me something about myself.

You can learn a lot about me from Star Trek. Since this blog is, after all, meant to share my own story, and to talk about morality, what better way to accomplish its mission than to talk about these shows, and to show how they impacted my perception of myself and my pedophilia?

Don’t worry. Even if you’re not a Star Trek fan, this will be a friendly (and interesting!) post for you. Let’s go ahead and talk about the Star Trek of the ’80s and ’90s.

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Musing 1: On Star Trek and Improvement

One of the premises of Star Trek is that several hundred years in the future technology has largely addressed human needs. Food and housing are plentiful, and (depending on the show), humans don’t even use money anymore. Instead, people strive better themselves and that drives a lot of their choices. As someone who has always striven to improve myself, and who’s also always wanted to contribute to society, this really resonated!

The core point of Star Trek is that in the future, humanity has improved itself by building a better society. Yes, it says, things might be bad now, but by working together and unifying we can make them better. The way people talk about the world now, it seems wildly optimistic—and yet, by almost any metric, we are already seeing humanity improving itself. Broadly speaking, the trend for statistics across the world has been for improvements in child poverty, hunger, life expectancy, education level, and the percentage of people living in relative freedom. (Look it up!)

Improving, of course, does not mean that we’re anywhere close to the Star Trek world. The world has a lot of suffering and injustice. Nonetheless, on a global scale things seem to be getting better. (You do have blips, and the past decade does indeed have mixed signals, but the overall trend remains strong.) There are so many things that could be better, but humanity compared to centuries ago, or even decades ago, is so much better than it was. So yes, I believe and hope society can move to a point more like Star Trek.

In a wildly overused quote, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, “We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” (I’ll also note that there are even some arguments that this quote is misinterpreted from Dr. King’s purpose.) I don’t believe that arc is preordained, but I believe it is possible. Dr. King believed that too. It’s always a pretty great piece of Star Trek lore that he was a fan, and in fact encouraged Nichelle Nichols to stay in the role of Lt. Uhura, a Black woman in a leadership role on the bridge of the Enterprise. (Read that link; it’s pretty remarkable.)

I believe things can get better. And yes, that resonates on a personal level too: I believe we can get to a point of greater understanding, where perhaps society improves, and perhaps society recognizes my attraction without demonizing it. Although obviously never addressed in Star Trek, I believe it’s a world where I would be treated with respect.

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Musing 2: On Star Trek and Outsiders

Lt. Commander Data. For ’90s makeup, they did OK making an android!

A favorite character among many fans is Lt. Commander Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation. He’s an android, fundamentally an outsider and observer of humanity. Despite being unable to experience human emotions for much of his arc, he still seems lonely; he’s essentially the only being of his kind. Above all, he wants to become more human.

I too often feel like I am observing humanity from the outside, and certainly I felt that for much of my life. Not having sex (because I don’t want to harm anyone, and don’t enjoy adult sex very much) means that so much of human experience is different for me. Especially in high school, I looked at everyone shifting their lives to try to have relationships and I just… didn’t. Why would I? I couldn’t have a meaningful sexual relationship. I’ve never been in love. So, like Data, I watched my peers from the outside, wondering about their internal lives and what it felt like to be in love.

In a rather bizarre plot line, Data did actually have sex at one point. I always wondered what that felt like for him. He couldn’t feel emotion, not even pleasure. (When I had sex with an adult woman for the first time, that was effectively my experience as well!) Somehow, though, the experience became quite meaningful to him. I always tried to understand how that could be.

For a long time, I was the only pedophile I knew, and had few or no connections with others like me. (Nor did I want them, since I didn’t know of other non-offending pedophiles.) Loneliness is a core experience of being a pedophile. Yet Data eventually overcomes his loneliness through a kind of friendship. His experience of friendship might be different from ours: “As I experience certain sensory input patterns, my mental pathways become accustomed to them. The inputs eventually are anticipated and even missed when absent.” If he couldn’t feel some human emotions, he found another way to have a similar experience.

Data addresses his isolation in part by throwing himself into his work. That, too, is something I’ve done. Although (like Data) I have a lot of friends, family felt unlikely and so I asked myself how I could contribute and how I could find meaning in life. My meaning now comes from giving back, contributing through work, and improving myself. All things Data strives for, and all things I strive for.

(Don’t worry, I don’t model myself on an android! I am describing these as places of similarity and empathy I’ve found, not as any kind of conscious role model experience.)

There is even a famous episode where Data is put on trial, asking if he is truly a sentient being, since after all, a man constructed him. It goes beyond this one episode; Data constantly has his humanity and his rights questioned by others. Nonetheless, he always deals with it with aplomb. I wonder what would happen if I were put on trial and judged. Data was eventually ruled to be a life form and not merely a possession. Would society decide that I am fully human?

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Musing 3: On Morality

A famous scene in Star Trek has a beloved character sacrificing himself to save the ship. “The needs of the many,” he says, “outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.” (To be pedantic, that quote is not said by one person, but a second person finishes it for the first.) In some sense, that movie, and movies after it, grapple with that very question: to what extent should one person sacrifice themselves for others?

I have desires. I don’t act on them because that would be putting my needs, or desires, above those of others. This core idea, of living your life so as to contribute to the overall goodness of the world, is really important to me. (In the real world, in my life, I seek a balance: of course I do many things for my own happiness, just as I try to live in a way that supports the happiness of others.)

Star Trek is filled with these kinds of moral questions and considerations. The holdings of tolerance within the Federation are constantly tested as they come into contact with new societies that are different from their own, and the crew must decide between letting these societies continue on their course or interfering to make them better according to human norms. They encounter races that are different in thought, in sexuality, in gender, in legal viewpoints, and so forth, and the Federation must adapt to meet these cultures where they are. Central to the show are these questions: how you can be yourself, let others be themselves, and still act according to your morals? These are big questions, and they’re important to me, because moral choice is a big part of my life experience.

Science fiction is such a good way to play this out. By creating a world that is so different from our own, you can abstract to the core issues you want to consider. There’s a reason this show has shaped me so much.

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Musing 4: On Open-Mindedness

In the ’90s, one of the highlights of Star Trek was its open-mindedness towards different cultures and ways of thinking. As I mentioned above, a constant dilemma was meeting new cultures that had practices the Federation found strange, but it wasn’t just that sometimes their practices were strange. Sometimes, their practices felt morally wrong. The Federation was committed to allowing individual cultures to develop on their own, so inevitably there was conflict. There were lots of interesting and really substantive discussions about how to respect people and cultures while also maintaining your own moral outlook.

It’s one thing to be tolerant of people who are doing nothing objectionable to you, even if they’re different; it’s another thing entirely to be tolerant of people you disagree with or fear. Star Trek genuinely wrestled with those kinds of issues. This is, of course, especially important to me: I am one of those people whom others might disagree with, or whom they might fear.

(As an aside, I once wrote to a journalist about my pedophilia, asking him to be cautious in how he refers to pedophiles. He responded extremely well, citing this Scott Alexander essay, which I really appreciated. The first section, in particular, is quite relevant. Although I’d read the essay before, it meant something to me that this journalist was driven by the essay to be more tolerant.)

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Musing 5: On Role Models

Captain Picard lived a good and important life without ever having a family. While he sometimes had regrets, it also painted a way for those of us who might struggle to have a family.

On a final and more personal note, Star Trek provided role models for me, especially the captain from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Captain Picard was unmarried and had no children. He was dedicated to his work; successful; respected. I never thought about this consciously, but there isn’t a lot of representation of successful men who don’t have a clear sexual outlet. Captain Picard was such a man.

I wonder if seeing him made it easier for me to imagine a successful life course for myself. Even as I’ve grown older, and I’ve realized that I can find nonsexual life partnership with adults that fills at least some needs, that vision of how to live one’s life remains deeply important to me.

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Some Conclusions

I wonder if we’ll ever get to a world that is as tolerant as Star Trek‘s world is. I hope so, and I do believe we can continue to improve.

I wonder if that world will be tolerant of my pedophilia. I wonder if Star Trek itself might ever choose to address that question. (Not likely, given both how the world perceives pedophilia and Star Trek‘s seeming turn towards moral safety, but maybe we’ll get there sometime.)

But mostly, I think about those core ideas. Of self-improvement. Tolerance. Striving, and being vigilant, to make society better. I’m proud to have been shaped by this particular artifact of pop culture; there’s a reason that it means so much to me.

Star Trek helped shape my views. It helped me to really think about where each person is coming from; to celebrate individuality; to value different perspectives; and to seek to grow and to help others grow. It pushes me to seek alignment with others while still holding my ground over what I believe. I hope you can see all of these threads underlying how I approach questions on this blog.

Let’s Talk About Disgust

Trigger warning: Discussion of sex between adults and children, and some of the qualities I find attractive in children.

Disgust has been a common theme on this blog. For example, when I first introduced the idea of artificial child pornography, I wrote about it:

All this same material exists, but focused on children. No real kids are involved, just drawings or computer renders or stories from someone’s imagination. I won’t lie or sugarcoat it: if you’re not aroused by it, you’ll be disgusted by it. Like with real child pornography, some people have both reactions: they use it and simultaneously hate themselves for using it.

Using the word “disgust,” though, was a writing strategy, not an expression of my own view. It was meant to prepare people for what they were reading—and to be realistic about what many people certainly would feel.

But what about feeling disgust? Should we be disgusted by artificial child pornography or the other ways pedophiles like me might find sexual satisfaction? Should my very attraction cause disgust? Should I myself be disgusted by it?

This post is going to be a little bit different from my usual. It’s going to be a bit more searching, and have a bit less of a solid conclusion. I hope you stick around anyway.

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Let’s start just by thinking about what disgust is, and why it’s helpful.

It’s clear that disgust serves a real purpose among our emotions. The disgust we feel towards rotten food helps us avoid disease; disgust towards morally reprehensible acts (like beating children) or dangerous behaviors (like being sloppy drunk) helps to maintain societal standards.

On the other hand, disgust isn’t purely inherent to us: it’s driven by societal conditioning and norms. For example, eating insects feels gross to many in the US but is common in many parts of the world. The disgust we feel towards different parenting techniques is clearly driven by the norms of the time and place; “spare the rod and spoil the child” feels like a perfectly fine parenting strategy to some, while to others it sounds like child abuse.

Photo by Jeremy Bezanger on Unsplash

To some extent, almost anything new or different provokes disgust. I remember being wary of sushi before I learned to love it. Kids think those of the other gender have “cooties”–in some sense, an expression of disgust.

And then there’s sex. Adults might still find the idea of sex between their parents disgusting, although surely they think they’re entitled to it; teens often think all older people having sex is gross! “Kink shaming” refers to shaming people for their sexual desires, such as an interest in role play or bondage or costumes; it too is often driven by disgust. TMI, or “too much information,” is often used when people talk about their sex life, probably because it feels disgusting.

In other words, while disgust serves a clear purpose in keeping us safe and maintaining social cohesion, it’s not a source of moral truth. What we view as disgusting depends on the time and place, how we were raised, and what society is like. If we want to think clearly about what is or isn’t right, we need to go beyond our gut reactions.

Unfortunately, emotional reactions tend to guide our thoughts. We have mental shortcuts for a reason: people just don’t have the capacity to rethink everything from first principles, and if we try to operate without emotions, we stop making decisions at all. (Much as I’ve always secretly wanted to live like Spock.) Disgust likely serves a important purpose in managing our behavior, so we can’t just get rid of it. It has good parts and bad parts; we have to think through what we really believe.

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Although disgust feels like a personal emotion, it has consequences for other people. In particular, the near-universal disgust people have for pedophiles affects everyone who is a pedophile. We see ourselves in the news all the time, and literally never in good ways.

The idea that our very selves are disgusting runs deep, and it affects all of us in ways big and small. We always know that our daily thoughts, and maybe even who we are, would repulse people. We have to keep them secret. Many of us end up hating ourselves.

I’ve seen this play out again and again. Many introductory posts on pedophile forums talk about the disgust they feel at themselves. People in online communities leave without warning, unable to handle the dissonance in their own minds. Self-hatred is common in the community, and the reaction to that self-hatred drives responses ranging from muted acceptance or belief that it’s justified to those who fight against it and try to demonstrate pedophile pride.

There’s someone I’ve roleplayed with several times. A friend of sorts. Keep in mind that this roleplay is entirely between consenting adults, and he plays in the role of the child. He finds himself irresistably drawn to it, roleplays until he orgasms, and then quits, disgusted with himself. He might disappear for a month or two, until he can’t resist any longer and comes back. Lather, rinse, repeat. And he’s far from the only one; the disappearing roleplay partner is a common story.

In fact, it even shows up in the jokes we make. A common joke I’ve heard in online chats is someone saying they’re a “dirty pedo.” Then, a few minutes later, after they take a shower: “Ok, I’m a clean pedo now.”

The idea that our very desires make us disgusting runs through almost everything; for many pedophiles (although not all), it casts a pall over their lives.

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Those feelings of disgust form a big, messy background swirl that underlie our experiences when we fantasize or masturbate.

When I was younger, I didn’t like my attractions at all. I avoided fantasizing, because it felt to me like a display of weakness, as if my willpower wasn’t strong enough to keep my desires tamped down. Eventually I set limits: I was allowed to masturbate at most once every two days. Each time, after I did it, I remember feeling awful, as if I’d failed somehow and demonstrated my weakness. I remember feeling, well, disgust at my actions and my fantasies.

Now, though, it’s quite different. Fantasizing has become a pleasure. (This is the part where I try to warn you, “it may disgust you…”) I know that I wouldn’t want to act on my fantasies in real life, but in fantasy, it brings me joy. I can enjoy the world I imagine, and feel calm and happy after my release.

Does that bother you? Does it bother you that I’m not disgusted that I fantasize about children? It’s a genuine question.

One of the most powerful ways for me to masturbate is while role playing over text with other adults. For them, it fulfills a need to play a young boy in a sexual situation; for me, it fulfills a need to play the adult man with that boy. (You might ask why someone would want to play the boy, and I hope to talk about it in a future post.) We craft a story and setting together, write as our characters, bring ourselves closer and closer to climax, and eventually, we both have our release. No real children are involved, just like when I use drawn images or computer renders, or write or read stories.

Moreover, when I role play, I come away more satisfied. I experienced something with someone else. I know that I drove another human being to pleasure; I know that for a moment, we shared something together. Sure, that shared experience would repulse many people, but to us it was beautiful and fun and an expression of something we both want but can never have. It brought us joy. It made us feel good.

If we both know we can never have that experience in real life, but we enjoy it together, is that so wrong? Again, that’s a genuine question; I’ve considered it for artwork as well.

My answer, with everything I know so far, is that it doesn’t seem wrong. I think we are two adults finding pleasure together, and finding ways to pleasure each other together. Just as when I enjoy a fantasy, or when I look at artwork someone made, or anything else, I am enjoying my imagination and experiencing something my body needs. So long as it doesn’t lead to any real kids getting hurt (and I don’t believe it does), I think I am experiencing something good.

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But, like, c’mon. Really? Maybe you, reading this post, are not a pedophile. It would surely bother you to hear my discussions with others where we talk about the features in boys we find attractive. I feel like it’s important to really face that disgust, so let me really push you here. If you were to read my conversations with others, you’d hear me talk about the body type I like in boys. (Skinny, but not so skinny their ribs are too prominent. About average.) The ages I like (about eight to twelve). The eye color, hair color, leg shape, the way they smile, and their smooth skin. Am I really saying that shouldn’t bother you? If we’re going to talk about disgust, I don’t want to sugarcoat what you might want to be disgusted about! (Although, in all honesty, I am sugarcoating it. I’m not discussing what the artwork or stories might actually depict, which would go to a whole new level.)

This question is all over my blog. These are thoughts, but they depict something awful. How should we treat the difference between our thoughts, or our private conversations, and our actions? Do my thoughts make me bad or evil, or is it only actions that do that?

This is a very hard question for lots of pedophiles, and it was hard for me. My own opinion has shifted over time. Now, I’m not ashamed of the conversations I have. I have preferences like anyone else has preferences. I am careful about where I have them. I make sure I know who I’m talking with. I work to make sure no one is made uncomfortable, and to never encourage real actions. But the conversations? To me, they’re a healthy and safe expression of my attraction.

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Besides the sheer you are fantasizing about fucking kids aspect of this all, there’s another reason you might be disgusted by my thoughts.

I remember being at a Mexican restaurant and eating fried insects for the first time. I was one of few people in my group who dared. I felt some strong disgust, but I overrode that disgust, knowing that many people ate insects and it was a new experience I wouldn’t want to miss out on. I’m glad I did, and now I feel more open to eating insects in the future.

But listen to that. I felt more open to eating insects again. I have to admit, that sounds dangerous in the context of this blog post, doesn’t it? Disgust feels like a wall. It keeps us from doing things. Maybe it keeps us from abusing children, and if we remove that wall of disgust, more children will get hurt. Disgust serves a useful purpose, and maybe your disgust is at the idea my fantasies will trend towards reality. Maybe the self-disgust pedophiles experience is important for preventing harm.

And yet I wonder. One the one hand, yes, being disgusted by one’s thoughts might stop people from acting on them. On the other hand, if we apply disgust with a broad brush towards both fantasy and real child abuse, might it lead to conflating the two in dangerous ways? If we feel disgust over things that don’t harm anyone, will that make the disgust for the real act less potent overall? Will people say, “well, I’m disgusting anyway, so I’m going to go ahead and do what I want?”

I’ve argued before that fantasizing provides an important outlet that causes no harm. I think it’s important that fantasizing and acting on one’s fantasies are kept as morally distinct as possible. If actions that cause no harm are stigmatized, the stigma might lose its power altogether.

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I would like to tell you now that you shouldn’t be disgusted by non-offending pedophiles or their fantasies. If only it were that easy.

Sure, I can argue that equal disgust for both fantasies and reality dilutes the disgust for real child abuse. I can also tell you that disgust hurts people. And I can follow up by saying that there can be real, harmless joy in the fantasies that are shared between consenting adults.

But of course we don’t know if disgust might help prevent child abuse. Just because evidence doesn’t seem to point that way so far doesn’t mean it won’t. If it comes out that way, my outlook might change on the utility of disgust.

But forget that academic argument for a moment. Disgust is a really hard thing to change. If you’re not a pedophile and you’re reading this blog (thank you!), it feels very unlikely my argument can change your emotions toward me. Honestly, I understand the feelings of disgust, and I am at peace with them. While it’s bittersweet for me to have someone comment on Quora that they’re disgusted by my attractions but they know I didn’t choose them so they support me, I still understand how hard that is for them. It’s not a small leap, and I really appreciate it. Yes, it’s a little bit backhanded, but it’s also a true demonstration of someone thinking past their biases to really see my point of view. I am genuinely so grateful, whether you’re disgusted or not.

And if you’re a pedophile disgusted at yourself? If you’re my role play partner who plays, enjoys themselves, and then disappears when they can’t handle the emotions anymore? If you find yourself drawn to stories or artwork again and again, hating yourself every time but giving into your desires and then pulling away? If your disgust leads to self-hatred? You’d never hurt children, but you struggle with who you are? How can I hope to change such deep conditioning?

I can’t, but I have to try. So if that applies to you, I don’t think you deserve your disgust. I think you should be able to experience some joy and then go back to your life guilt-free, because you didn’t hurt anyone. I want to tell you: “Maybe you should go easy on yourself. Maybe it’s ok. Maybe your fantasizing is good, so long as it stays fantasy.” Maybe it’ll get through eventually.

So let me close on this. I wish I wasn’t a pedophile, but I get joy from my sexual experiences. I find nothing wrong with fantasizing or role playing or looking at artwork; in fact, I’m proud of how I’ve handled myself.

Society pushes me to feel bad about myself, and for some time, I really did. But when I stopped to think about it, I realized that I don’t believe that I’m disgusting because of how I was born. Being a pedophile is not good or bad: it’s what you do with it that matters.

And for me? What I’ve done with it is positive, including my role plays and the fiction I write. It’s brought a lot of others some joy and release, and leaves me with the energy to focus on my life and work.

You might feel disgust, and I don’t fault you for it. However, I am happy with my joy, and I am proud of my life. That works for me.

Personal Reflections on Difficult Issues

Note: This article is the final in a six-part series on child pornography and artificial child pornography. This series covers:

1. The morality of child pornography.
2. The morality of artificial child pornography.
3. To the best of our data, what effect do both of those have on offending?
4. A story from someone recently arrested for possession of child pornography: how he got into it, how it affected his life, what happened next.
5. Two former users of child pornography talk about how they stopped viewing it, and their feelings now that they’re off of it.
6. My own experiences with artificial child pornography and the role it’s played in my life. (this post)

I hope you’ve found this series helpful and interesting. I feel like I’ve learned a lot writing it.

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Additonal note: Please read the above posts before reading this one. These are personal reflections. They’re more raw than my other writing, and I don’t know how you’ll interpret them if you haven’t read what comes before. Up until now, I’ve tried hard to explore different opinions on these issues fairly; this post is really just me, and my thoughts. It’s not the place to start.

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I first came across shota (drawn sexual images of boys) when I was about fourteen years old, back when the internet was much younger than it is now. I remember the feeling of it. How arousing it was, especially for a teenager with hormones. How it was also weirdly isolating: my own new big secret. I had to be careful that no one could see me viewing it and that I couldn’t be traced. I’d never had a secret like this. Nothing that made me jump in fright if I heard footsteps in the hallway.

I wonder, a little bit, if that’s what looking at porn is like for “normal” teenagers. Of course, the consequences of being caught were much greater for me.

I remember wondering if the artwork was illegal, and if I’d get in trouble for looking at it. I remember limiting how often I looked or masturbated, as proof of my willpower. And when I did let myself dive in, I remember the hours spent browsing poorly organized forums, seeing the same images again and again, hoping for something new and different and better, something that might be a bit more of a rush, like I knew must be out there.

I’m really lucky I never went over to real child pornography. Some of it leaked over to forums that weren’t supposed to have it, so I did occasionally see some, but it was rare. From those leaks, I know how much I would’ve liked it, though.

How much of this feels familiar to any teenager? How much of it is just my story? It’s so hard for me to tell.

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Anything that is even a little bit adjacent to child abuse drives an intense emotional reaction from people. It makes sense, of course. But this “proximity alarm” means that we equate drawings and computer renders with photos that depict the real abuse of children. (In fact, in many countries, the laws treat both the same way.) It means that therapists feel like they have to report people with pedophilic desires even if those people pose no danger to children. It means that we can’t do research on pedophiles, and how to prevent child abuse, because that’s not where the money is.

Of course, it also makes it hard to talk about pedophilia. It drives people like me to more distant corners of the internet, because even Twitter won’t have us. I worry about everything I say, because I know different people will read each word so differently.

As a kid, viewing those images and unable to talk to anyone about it, that proximity alarm really got in my head.

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I was getting those images from online forums. Like on any forum, those with artificial cp have lurkers, and the people who contribute often don’t like the lurkers who get the content without contributing to the discussion. So not just did I feel guilty for looking at the stuff, but I also felt guilty for not contributing to the community. I was caught between two opposing sources of strange guilt.

It took over a decade for me to get to a point where I could say, “you know what, it’s ok for me to find release with this material,” and for me to realize that finding release didn’t make me weak-willed. Slowly, I got to thinking it was OK, and eventually, I decided I wanted to contribute. I’m not artistic but I can write, and so I started to write stories and share them, and those stories have been pretty successful.

Writing and sharing those stories, and getting feedback on them, made me feel a part of the community in new and important ways. I started to talk to people, to have “fans” and others with whom I’d exchange short messages. It made me feel like I was giving back.

It was through the stories that I met my first real pedophile friend. For all this time online, I’d avoided talking in depth to people. I felt shy; I felt worried it would draw attention to me; it still felt somehow wrong. I didn’t know who was on the other end of the computer screen. But I remember being especially taken by a story about an alternate world. The care in the story was obvious. The writer had really thought about that world, down to the gritty details of population size, genetics, and more. I recognized a kindred spirit in the writer: a methodical thinker with a scientific mindset. And so… I wrote to him.

It became a great friendship. We were each the first other pedophile we’d really spoken to in depth. We exchanged letters for months, maybe a couple of years, and each letter would often run two or three or four pages. Our correspondence explored our stories, what it felt like to be a pedophile, and normal stuff like movies we liked. He had a fondness for bad pedophile jokes, and so I’d collect them and share them with him. Eventually, we moved to real-time chats once we found a secure way to do it. We even met in person and learned about one-another. He was older than me, and married, and calm and joyful. We got lunch together, took some walks. He remains a friend to this day.

A friend I made through stories. Through “artificial child pornography” of dubious legality that would get me hated by the vast majority of people. He’s such a great guy.

Photo by Sven Read on Unsplash.

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The high emotions surrounding anything near child abuse lead to all kinds of strange contradictions and irrationality.

For example, they led to the Satanic Panic where not just did innocent people get convicted of horrendous child abuse, but kids were psychologically manipulated (sometimes by trained psychologists!) into accusing their own parents through supposedly recovered memories. (The podcast Conviction: American Panic has a terrifying description of this time, with interviews with some of the now-grown children who are still trying to sort through their beliefs and actions.) Fast-forward to today, and we’ve graduated to conspiracy theories like QAnon.

Meanwhile, we’re so driven by fear that parents irrationally educate their kids about “stranger danger” when the vast majority of abuse comes from family members and other people that kids know. Family-based abuse is often hushed up.

Even kids’ sexuality is complicated. Young kids are teased by adults about boyfriends and girlfriends, pushed into sexuality from a younger age. Young girls are often dressed in clothes that imply sexual maturity. People buy shirts with oddly suggestive text for their young boys.

Through all of this, admitting to the attraction means total ostracism. Teachers have to watch everything they say and do, lest people get the wrong idea. Mere discussions on the topic are blocked from Twitter and many subreddits and lots of other places. Pedophiles fear coming out to therapists lest they get reported. Academic careers are endangered by coming to the “wrong” conclusions about pedophilia. And if you try to have a discussion about the right way to work with pedophiles, you can’t get very far before someone says to just kill them all.

It’s really hard to deal with this attraction, and it’s really hard for me here to talk about it. I hide behind veils of anonymity and internet proxies. I fret over every word, lest someone interpret it wrongly. Lest someone think that because I look at artificial child pornography, I’m a danger to kids.

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Once I realized how much I got out of talking to others like me, I started to seek them out more. I wrote to other authors whose stories I liked, and engaged others in conversation. I felt like part of a community. There are other communities of non-offending pedophiles too, but they never had the same impact for me. Often, other communities are centered around emotional support, which means that currents of sadness run through them. There are currents of sadness in all communities of pedophiles, but I think there’s more self-acceptance among those of us who have a release we’re comfortable with. Going to the imageboards led to more real (and joyous) connections for me.

I have friends I met because of their art, or my stories, or their stories, or role playing. Some I know in person, some just online. A programmer. A psychologist. A doctor. A lawyer. A security guard. A paralegal. A history grad student. A writer. Many where I don’t know what they do, because we’re compelled by secrecy to protect ourselves. While my pedophilia is far from the most important thing in my life, it has become an important thing in my life, and part of that is because a community was created where I can find friends and we can talk openly about our fantasies.

To be sure, there’s the part of this where I can get my sexual release, where I can get off to the things others would find horrifying. I would go back—I did go back—just for that. However, it takes on a different meaning when you also find others, like you, to talk with. I can’t talk about artificial child pornography, and the effect it’s had on me, without also talking about the community it’s connected me to, and that’s not captured in the relatively academic debate from my prior articles in this series. They talked abstractly about philosophy or statistics of abuse.

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So, yes, my personal reflections are in part about the community that I’ve found, but it’s not only that. It’s also about how this is viewed by the justice system.

Because anything even vaguely associated with child abuse has this aura of evil, we end up treating all kinds of offenses almost equally. Viewing child pornography is seen as almost as bad as actually molesting a child. Both get you long prison terms and put on the registry. (Let alone the places where artificial child pornography is held to be just as bad.)

Yet I know people who’ve viewed child pornography. Some of them have stopped. Some want to stop, but are having trouble getting away from it. I genuinely think they’re fundamentally good people. Should they be sentenced to years or decades in prison? (Of course, some would argue yes; they’d say it might prevent future crimes against children. I don’t think it would, because most of them aren’t actually a threat—and more importantly, I just don’t think that’s what justice is.)

One friend, in Canada, spent time in prison and is on the sex offender registry because he looked at artificial child pornography. This will hang over him his whole life, with any job he might apply to or any apartment he wants to rent.

I’m not trying to sugar coat this. Of course my examples are those who seem “good,” and there are plenty of pedophiles who would disagree with what I say here. There are people who don’t think watching child pornography is wrong (“the harm is already done”) and they view it guilt-free. There are also people who believe sex with children is OK, and of course there are people who do have sex with children. I’m not denying they exist, but I am challenging the idea that most of us hold those beliefs.

At the very least, viewing cp and actually having sex with a child are not crimes of equal magnitude. There are people who could live good lives, who want to live good lives, but instead of getting help to move away from cp, they’re thrown in jail for years upon years. We punish it not in proportion with the harm it does, but because of our disgust. What we’re doing now isn’t working, and it’s not justice.

Of course, politically, it’s very hard to change that. Who could speak up to say that viewing child pornography shouldn’t be punished quite as harshly, that we should focus on helping people get better? Who could speak up to say that drawings of children having sex shouldn’t be illegal, and that making them legal very well might save children from being abused? You’d never get voted into office again, and that’s a charitable interpretation of what might happen to you.

It’s hard for people to think clearly about this, let alone for society to think clearly about it. It’s caught up in emotion, and I’m as guilty of that as anyone else. Maybe I am missing something important here because I know people who’ve been so affected by this; because I’ve been so affected by this.

But if you ask for my personal reflections on child pornography and artificial child pornography, there they are.

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It’s… so strange to say that artificial child pornography is important to me. To talk about it creating a positive community, or how it provides a valuable release. This is meant to be a general audience blog, and the thought of someone reading that… what will you think? No matter what I do, I can’t get away from the high emotions and the societal stigma. But it’s true and this is where I have to say it.

It’s worse because it’s hard to keep “articial child pornography” and “child pornography” separate. I need to trust you to remember that one doesn’t involve real children, and one does. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with artificial child pornography, even though I think that real child pornography is morally wrong. Is that a distinction we can keep up even with such high emotions?

Worse, am I a trusted source? I’ve tried to talk about facts and philosophy when describing child pornography and artificial child pornography and to cover many sides to the debate, but it’s an emotional topic for everyone and it’s personal for me. I’m too involved for it to be otherwise.

Moreover, when the punishment for this stuff is too severe, it hits people I know and it makes me angry. When people struggle with embarrassment or self-worth because they view something that shouldn’t carry so much stigma, I feel it. I know them.

Yes, I presented both sides of the question about artificial cp. We don’t actually know for certain that artificial cp reduces crimes against children, even if I think it likely does. I would change my opinion if I thought research showed that artificial cp made real-world offenses more likely on average (although I really don’t think that’s what the research outcome would be). But despite my focus on facts and evidence and science, I’m not neutral. The way we treat this subject hurts people and hurts society, and it really bothers me.

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If there’s one thing I want you to take away from this post, it’s that the emotions surrounding pedophilia cloud us from acting rationally about it.

I can only hope that over time, we can get funding to do more real research. That we can have more open conversations. That we can find a way to discuss, beyond emotion and visceral reactions, to understand how to really make things better. It will take a long time, but I’m an optimist. I think we can get there.

And in the meantime, despite my raw emotions in this post, I hope you’ll still trust me to guide you through and genuinely follow what the research says. It’s really important to me that we start to change this conversation, and that we do so carefully and rationally, wherever that takes us.

The Mysteries of Happiness, and How I Found It As a Pedophile

I don’t know how easy it is to predict who will grow up happy or unhappy. It’s a movie cliché to see the student government president, football star, or head cheerleader grow up and remember their best days as being in high school. Equally a cliché is the bullied nerd who grows up to be rich and successful. Is that really how it works, or are most people about as happy as they were as teenagers? I don’t know.

It’s strange to look back on yourself as a child, but if I’m honest with myself, I really was an arrogant, bookish nerd, and yes, I was bullied. Even beyond that, though, there were a lot of reasons to think I might lead an unhappy life.

For one thing, I was a bit antisocial. Of course, “arrogant bookish nerds” (as I identify my former self) often lead more solitary lives. It turns out people can change a lot from their teenage years to adulthood, and I’m no exception–I’m nothing like I was–but at the time, I didn’t have a lot of good friends and was often made fun of by my peers. I wasn’t particularly close to my family, and I was rather lonely, although I justified my loneliness by telling myself that I didn’t want to be friends with others. My fun was often solitary: reading, video games (especially story-based puzzle games), and TV (especially Star Trek) were among my main activities.

But the headline feature of my life was not about being lonely. It was, of course, about being a pedophile. It was about not being able to share my true desires with anyone; watching jealously as people in my grade started dating and I could not; and endless messages from the media explaining how everyone like me is a monster. It’s about knowing that almost everyone I knew would likely hate me if they knew my sexual desires. As an exclusive pedophile, whose only sexual interest is in children, it’s about believing I would never be able to marry, have a family, or lead a “normal” life.

That is, really, the question. Can someone like me be happy? Or are we doomed to lives of isolation and sadness?

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There’s a danger in drawing too much of a line between the LGBTQ community and the pedophile community. Unlike gays and lesbians, I don’t believe the path for us is legalization of sexual acts. In our case, love is not love is not love…

But we are also a sexual minority that faces discrimination, and in that, there is much in common between pedophiles and gays. I can attest to that personally. Coming of age stories about gay men always affect me deeply; I hear their isolation and I see in it a mirror of my own journey. I remember hearing someone describe their difficulty finding a path on a podcast once: “Heterosexuals have all these little plans laid out for them that they don’t even realize it’s like an example for their life. They just understand it as that’s what culture is.” I couldn’t help feeling like he was speaking for me and for all of my online friends. And yet, I also couldn’t help my reply: “You have no idea how lucky you are.”

Despite marriage equality and a broader acceptance of gay sex, rates of depression and suicide among gay men remain higher than in the general population. (As an aside, that article is very good; I highly recommend it.) It’s deeply frustrating that the gap remains, but it also indicates something fundamental: maybe sex isn’t the key to happiness.

Depending on your age and experiences, your interpretation of that sentence will be very different. Some people will read it and say, “of course sex isn’t the key to happiness, it never was.” Many self-aware adult heterosexuals believe that sex can’t truly make you happy. Others, though, feel it as a powerful driving force, necessary to pleasure. And even more see it as the key to a fulfilling relationship, maybe the only way to find one.

The role of sex in happiness is interesting, and complex, and probably there’s no agreement to be found. The truth is probably somewhere in between. You can be happy without sex, but sex can help make your path to happiness easier. As usual, it’s something of a grey area.

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Enter into almost any online pedophile community, and the people you’ll find are as varied as anywhere else. Outgoing and shy, highly educated and not, doing virtually every job imaginable, happy and unhappy. You can’t help a certain nagging feeling, though, that there sure do seem to be more unhappy people, and more lonely people, and more maladjusted people, than you’d otherwise expect.

It wouldn’t be surprising. After all, there are plenty of reasons for pedophiles to be unhappy or lonely, ranging from self-hatred to feeling like they can’t share their true self, from a lack of sexual partners and deep relationships to a simple sense of hopelessness. “Everything other sexual minorities have, but worse,” is one way I might describe it.

That kind of thinking also tends to lead to runaway feedback loops. For example, consider the person who drinks to escape the problems in their life. By drinking, they make those problems worse, causing them to drink more, causing the problems to be worse, and so on. It can be the same with pedophilia: because you’re a pedophile, you think you’re worthless, or that you’ll never have anything good in life. That thought stops you from pursuing good things in life or recognizing good things in life, so your life gets worse. That reinforces the idea that you’re worthless, or will never have anything good… and it cycles, and gets worse, and worse, and worse, because you keep focusing on the negative thoughts.

Unhappiness, though, is not inevitable. For one thing, I’ve been happy for just about all of my life. Lots of other pedophiles are quite happy. We might have more to overcome, but clearly we can overcome it. This attraction is not destiny.

For me, the journey to happiness was almost accidental. It just so happened that I had a strong identity outside of my pedophilia. I was interested in academics, especially math and science. So when it became clear that I couldn’t explore my sexual side, I focused on the things I could explore. Instead of defining myself as a pedophile, I defined myself as a nerd. Not exactly the pinnacle of high school achievement, but still something I could be proud of. More importantly, I wanted to become a scientist, so I had something to look forward to in life. Instead of defining myself by what I had available at the moment, I thought about what I might be able to achieve in my future.

I also went to a summer camp that opened me up to friendships with others, and I stopped being so arrogant. I started to realize that I could get a lot of value from knowing other people, and developed friendships that meant a lot to me. I decided that even if I never found a life partner, I could have close friendships that would fill some of the same hole. Although I didn’t do any active pursuit at the time, I also never gave up on finding a life partner. I’m even dating someone (who knows about my attraction) right now.

What is it, though, that really helped me to be happy?

I am, fundamentally, a skeptic about the kind of self-help or self-realization articles that seem to pop up everywhere online. They’re not bad; sometimes reading one helps me reflect on my own life, or what brings me joy. But research in this area is always sketchy, and then it gets filtered through random people telling you how they got happy. Does any of it really apply to me? Can I come to the same happiness without having to rethink everything in my own context?

I don’t know. And yet, here I go: sharing my own random, untested ideas about psychology. I’m going to take the plunge, because for me, it’s been really important. Besides, I’ve never seen that self-help article for pedophiles, so maybe it’s time for an entry into the genre.

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What’s my personal pet theory? Well, any article in the life hacking, self-help genre (LHSHG) starts with a simple statement that is hard to disagree with, to help you get on board with the idea. Once you’re drawn in, a good LHSHG article says something that feels like a natural extension, something that’s not really tested but sounds pretty good. Of course, that’s when you start to leave the land of “I know this for sure” and venture into “just some random internet person’s opinion.”

So why am I lampshading this writing style so much? Because I don’t want to pretend like I have all the answers. This is my opinion, my own personal LHSHG article, and I don’t want you to think I have to be right. If you’re a pedophile, I don’t want you to take my word for it. I just want you to think about it, because maybe it will give you a basis for your own decisions.

For me, happiness is too broad a concept. You can’t pin it down with one word; it’s not really just one thing. We can do surveys that ask “how happy are you?” but that doesn’t come close to getting at all the different things that make someone happy.

Rather, I’ve found that there are two related concepts underlying happiness: pleasure and fulfillment.

Photo by Sandie Clarke on Unsplash.

Pleasure is about the immediate things that make life more fun in the moment. I think of video games, reading novels, sports, watching Netflix or YouTube, viewing porn, or hookups for sex. They’re fun; they make the moment better. Eating good food might also be here, or playing a board game.

Fulfillment, though, is about building something bigger, creation, the kinds of things that sustain you and give your life purpose. It’s accomplishments, relationships, feeling a part of your community. Think of exercise geared towards becoming fitter; deep relationships with friends or family; raising a child; learning a new skill or education in general; doing a research project; writing a novel; helping others or volunteering.

When I think about what I do that brings me happiness, it’s a mix, and some things are in both categories. For example, I like to read; that’s mostly pleasure. (Occasionally, it’s fulfilling to read a good nonfiction book where I feel like I learn something.) I go biking; that is both pleasure (endorphins from exercise) and fulfillment (getting myself into better shape). I tutor a friend’s kid in math: that’s less about immediate fun and more about the fulfillment of helping someone out. Doing a math problem is a bit of both (because I can enjoy the a-ha moments while also feeling like I’m getting better at math), while doing a Sudoku is just pleasure. My work is not necessarily pleasurable, but it brings me fulfillment. Writing this blog is mostly fulfillment, because I feel like I am making something bigger than myself and helping others, although I get some pleasure when I finally figure out how to write an article well. (This one has gone through at least five different drafts before landing on this format.) I get fulfillment when I post a finished article, when I see view counts, when people send me nice notes or leave comments. (Erm, hint hint?)

There’s an old science fiction show that I adore with all its flaws, Babylon 5 (I did say I’m a nerd). There’s a lovely quote from it that I still remember, that taught me this lesson at a young age. It’s one of those moments where one of the main characters is getting advice about how he tries to do too much himself and should ask for help from his partner. The advice, coming from a visitor, always stuck with me. “You know, before I got married, Emily used to come by sometimes and help me clean out my apartment. Well, I asked her, ‘How come you’re so eager to help me clean up my place when your place is just as bad?’ She said, ‘Because cleaning up your place helps me to forget what a mess I’ve made of mine, and–when I sweep my floor, all I’ve done is sweep my floor. But when I help you clean up your place, I’m helping you.’

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You might reasonably ask why I, as a pedophile, seem to be writing a generic LHSHG article on a site for pedophiles. Shouldn’t I share my grand theory with the world on some clickbaity site where maybe I can make a lot of money off of it?

It’s because I think this distinction is especially important for people like me.

First of all, it’s so easy for a pedophile to confuse their lack of sex with their lack of fulfillment. Relationships, not sex, lead to fulfillment. Of course, sex is not just about hookups, and sex can be an important part of deepening a relationship. Nonetheless, it’s still just one piece, and you can have deep relationships even without sex. Sex gives pleasure, but on its own, I don’t think it gives fulfillment.

Second, I think unhappy people often seek out pleasure to get happier without also finding fulfillment, and pedophiles often do so to dull the pain in a cycle that builds on itself. Maybe they masturbate too much (definitely all pleasure); maybe they lose themselves in video games; maybe they get into an unhealthy cycle with actual child pornography.

Knowing the difference between pleasure and fulfillment, and knowing which your life is lacking, can help you seek out the one that will truly help you build towards more happiness. Or so I say in my own little LHSHG article!

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It probably needs to be said that finding a spouse is the major source of fulfillment for most people. It’s someone in your corner, how you raise a family, and more. It’s the roadmap for heterosexuals that guy was talking about in my podcast. Yet finding a spouse is much harder for people like me, especially if it’s important to you that you can be fully open and honest together.

If you’re not a pedophile, it can be hard to understand just how big a deal this is. At first glance, I see someone with a spouse and access to sex as living an unimaginably good life. And yet people cheat on their spouses; they find families unfulfilling; their jobs feel like dead ends. They divorce. Pedophiles see the “greener grass” on the other side, without realizing all the problems people have, all the challenges they face in life. It leads to an unhealthy mindset, where we see only one thing that can make us happy, and worse, we start identifying our pedophilia as the one and only thing that “ruins” our life. Those views blind us to both the good things in our life and the bad things we might be able to change. We just blame all our unhappiness on being pedophiles. Meanwhile, we have unrealistic views for how happy other people are.

It’s not all about finding a partner. Finding a partner is neither necessary for happiness (although it can help), and it’s not a magic cure-all. It’s great if you find someone. But there are other ways to build great relationships as well, and other ways to be happy. If you fixate on finding a spouse, then you miss out on the very real things you can do to build towards a better life.

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Still with me? Then let me end with some concrete ideas. If you’re struggling with happiness, maybe you can see a direction to go in here that will help you out. I am not an expert on happiness, but I am happy. And if there’s something that’s worked for you, maybe you can leave it in the comments. I’d love contributions that could serve as advice for others.

So let’s wrap up my little LHSHG post!

1) Don’t fixate on sex or your pedophilia. Yes, you’re a pedophile. Yes, it sucks. But there are lots of things that are good and bad in life. I’m an exclusive pedophile, but I actually prefer my life to many others I might’ve been born into. Pedophilia doesn’t define you, and it doesn’t define your happiness. There’s a danger in saying “get over it” but… I think that can be an important thing to say.

2) But, you do need to deal with internalized hatred. You need to understand that, no matter what society tells you, you’re not a terrible human being just because you were born with certain desires. This is complex; you can’t just get rid of internalized hatred as a prerequisite to happiness. It’s all interlinked: as your life gets better, as you find more things that bring you joy and express your value as a person, then I think you’ll have the tools and presence of mind to get past the internalized hatred too, and then you can get still happier, in a positive feedback loop.

3) Think about what brings you joy. Both pleasure and fulfillment. Music? Jogging? Writing a novel? Hiking? Role playing games? Dancing? Friendships? Career? Volunteering? Education? Cooking? Gardening? Hunting? Fishing? Pets? Puzzles? Movies? Whatever they are, do the things that will be meaningful and fun for you. (Not only fun, but meaningful too.) Do them with other people if you can. I think people really underestimate volunteering and helping other people out.

4) Balance pleasure with fulfillment. You need both, but often fulfillment is harder. Some people can get plenty of pleasure from, say, computer games. It depends on the person, of course; the same old thing can get tiring if overdone. But if you find fulfillment, pleasure can often come easier.

5) Seek connection. Connections to other people are an essential part of being human. It’s not just that they bring joy (they do), but in their way they also protect against offending: the more connected you are to others, the more you have a natural inclination to advance everyone’s good. That’s why I listed things like volunteering (you meet other volunteers, and the people you’re helping; you become part of a goal together), role playing games (get a dedicated group of friends), etc. Even writing can be a community thing if you join a writing group or take a class. Feeling like part of the world makes a big difference.

6) Know that this will take time to build. No matter who they are, people can really struggle with being happy. You don’t build connections with others quickly. You don’t deal with internalized hatred quickly. You can, however, take pleasure in your work and efforts to build that fulfillment. You can look forward to your own improvement. You don’t have to get it all right, right away.

7) Think about your personal narrative. Don’t make your narrative about your pedophilia, or all the parts of your life that are bad. Make it about the things that can be better, the things you’re building towards, the places you want to get. That focuses you on fulfillment. Maybe it even gamifies your life a bit, giving you a jolt of happiness each time you move towards the things you want.

If you find yourself stuck in a runaway feedback loop, recognize it. Realize that your negative thoughts are making your life worse, which causes more negative thoughts. Use a more positive narrative to understand what you’re building towards, and, if you can, try to stop focusing on the negative aspects of your life.

8) Finally, separate compansionship from sex. We spend a pretty small amount of time in our lives having sex, but a lot of time pursuing it. It’s how we’re wired. But a big part of that pursuit isn’t even about the sex, it’s about the companionship. Sex isn’t necessary for a deep emotional connection with friends or even a lifelong partner. Realize that these are different things, and a path towards partnership becomes easier.

So what about finding a partner? Speaking of… I’ve actually intentionally left this off my suggestions above because it can be hard, or seem hopeless, for exclusive pedophiles. But as I said, it’s definitely not impossible. You can have a deep and permanent bond with someone, even a marriage, without having sex with them. It might simply be an asexual partnership, or maybe you find another pedophile to be with. If you’re not exclusive, you can find many adults to date and to have sex with (and I will be a bit jealous of you). I’m looking forward to writing more about this later, but my point is simple: it’s not essential, and it is possible.

One of the surprising things about the above suggestions is there’s actually very little about pedophilia directly. The biggest mistake, I think, is letting pedophilia define your happiness. Obviously it’s not the same for everyone; if you have a very high sex drive, it’s harder to avoid. But either way, it doesn’t change the truth that the human experience goes way beyond sex, and you shouldn’t make your life be about the thing you’re missing. It should be about the things you have.

Don’t worry, I’m just about off my soapbox. But if this has rung true to you… I hope you’ll read over that again. I hope you’ll think about steps you can take to bring yourself some real happiness. You know why? Because if I help people, that brings me fulfillment. 🙂

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The danger with an LHSHG article is that it can put pressure on people to get better. It sends a message: if you can’t achieve your goals after reading this article, then maybe you’re just worthless. It’s like an accusation: maybe it’s all your fault.

That ignores the very real differences between people. It ignores real life financial circumstances, individual personalities, depression stemming from brain chemistry, and so much more. No article can possibly solve unhappiness. All it can do is leave some signposts and give you a direction to go in. That’s why I keep making fun of the LHSHG clickbait industrial complex: they promise something that can’t be delivered, and I don’t want to be that person.

At the same time, I asked at the beginning if someone like me can be happy, and the answer is yes! I’m really happy with my life. I say that not to put pressure on you, not to claim you should do exactly what I did. I say that to give hope to others, especially teenagers, who might be coming across this and wondering what their future looks like. It can be really good. Your mileage may vary, but it can be really good.

I don’t know if pedophiles as a group can ever achieve the same levels of happiness as others. Maybe yes, maybe no. But we can do better, and I hope this helps.

Interview: The Journey of Leaving Child Pornography

Note: This article is the fifth in a six-part series on child pornography and artificial child pornography. This series covers:

1. The morality of child pornography.
2. The morality of artificial child pornography.
3. To the best of our data, what effect do both of those have on offending?
4. A story from someone recently arrested for possession of child pornography: how he got into it, how it affected his life, what happened next.
5. Two former users of child pornography talk about how they stopped viewing it, and their feelings now that they’re off of it. (this post)
6. My own experiences with artificial child pornography and the role it’s played in my life.

I hope you’ll enjoy and follow all of the posts as they come out.

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We talk a lot about people who view child pornography, and I talk sometimes about the people who don’t, such as myself. What we almost never talk about is how people stop viewing child pornography. In fact, there’s just about nowhere you can go to hear about people who successfully gave it up.

Over a year ago now, I befriended someone in a chat room for non-offending pedophiles. (That friendship came about, in part, because he was an economics major in college and I made a joke about the sunk cost fallacy. Nerd stuff!) This young pedophile, let’s call him Alan, later told me that he and another friend, whom I’ll refer to as Gary, were viewers of child pornography and trying to stop.

I started talking to them occasionally. I tried to give them more perspective and present a positive role model who doesn’t look at CP. It was a big struggle; viewing CP was a force of habit, maybe even an addiction, and beyond that there were friendships and communities built around it. There have been ups and downs, but by and large, they’ve both been clean for a while now.

One of the big struggles they mentioned was having zero role models. You’re not allowed to talk about viewing CP in most chat rooms for non-offenders, because then you are admitting a crime. Anywhere that CP is viewed, no one talks about how they stopped viewing it. In other words, there are no guides and there are no role models. You’re all alone, and you can’t even bring it up.

This is my attempt to fix that.

I want to acknowledge up front that these two guys committed a major crime. They’re not from the US, and in fact I don’t know what country they’re from. But you might be asking yourself, if they’re criminals, should they be on this stage?

I’ve already discussed that while I think viewing child pornography is and should be a crime, the punishment often feels much more severe than is warranted. (I don’t wonder about producing it, which should be punished extremely harshly.) But regardless of your point of view, I consider giving it up to be really admirable, and I hope we can all see the importance of showing anyone who uses CP a way out.

With that, let’s go into the chat. It is edited lightly for brevity, formatting, and grammar. I also removed side conversations and logistical notes.

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Leonard:

Thank you both again for doing this. I know it’s hard to open up, and I do hope it will be useful. Can we start at the beginning, and maybe you can both say when you first started using cp and how you found it?

Alan:

Hmm.. I was 15 or 16 when I found a russian image sharing site which had thousands of photos of all stripes, as well as a category for “kids”. Obviously, it was a front, and the images were children in normal situations in varying states of nudity. Pictures alone, they looked like something from a family album.the comments section was where the secret community was hiding, often lewdly describing acts they would perform on the child featured, and occasionally, someone would link an obscure site that purportedly had CSAM (child sexual abuse media).

Note: Many people prefer the term CSAM, but from here on we’ll use CP or “child pornography” for simplicity.

I clicked the link. It was an bulletin board style forum for sharing CSAM.

I can’t say I stumbled across it. I was actively looking for these as a misguided, thrilling adventure of an edgy teenager.

It wasn’t until a few weeks later when I found out that I was aroused by these images. I was initially horrified I was a pedophile, but my brilliant debate freak of a brain rationalized that I was still a minor, so being turned on by other minors was completely fine.

Gary:

This doesn’t reflect well on me. I was around 16, I think. I was a curious teen. I went looking for ‘no rule’ groups on telegram. I wondered what people would do, and post. Someone DMed me a picture of a child in a sexual situation. I was really disgusted. ‘This is really messed up.’ I thought. So, I left the group, blocked the guy, and tried to forget it for a while.

A while later, a few weeks, maybe a month? I began to get curious about images like I’d been shown. They were still wrong, I knew that, but part of me wanted to see more of them. So, I did the stupid thing and went looking. Discord servers, telegram groups. Rarely ever found much, and when I did find it, I’d usually feel disgust again. But, over time, I realised that I was attracted to these images. And, well, it all went from there.

Leonard:

That’s interesting, and it’s not what I expected. It sounds like you found the images before feeling attraction to kids. Is that right? I was clearly attracted to kids before I went looking for shota. (Drawn images of underage boys in sexual situations.)

Gary:

I was interested in cub (furry shota/loli) at the time, but this was a whole new level for me. The attraction took a while to click.

Alan:

Oh, I was viewing shotacon way before I found CP, but it never felt real, just sexual. Sure, characters are depicted as children, but they’re not real children, and the association between shotacon and real kids never found purchase on my mind.

Leonard:

That’s so interesting. It’s hard to imagine viewing shota and not thinking of it as sexual.

Are either of you attracted to adults or mostly to kids? It’s hard to decipher what might’ve caused our sexualities, but what did you think your sexuality was before the images? What I’m trying to dig into is if you think they had a causal effect or if they were just how you discovered your attraction.

Gary:

I just viewed myself as attracted to adults. However, thinking back to when I was around ten or eleven, I was very curious about sexual stories involving very young kids. I didn’t masturbate to them or anything like that. I just found them oddly enticing.

Alan:

I had crushes, with both my peers and a few adults (Anne Hathaway, Lady Gaga and Adam Young). I may have had crushes on children as well? But those feelings were hard to understand. My mother used to tell me that I was a deft hand at dealing with kids when I was 11 or 12, and looking back, it had some strange implications about how my relationships with younger kids, even way back when I was still a kid.

Similar to Gary, I found stories of younger teens and prepubescent boys discovering their sexualities interesting, but it never really clicked that I could he interested in them sexually.

Leonard:

So you’re both non-exclusive, but it seems like that interest was there, and when you saw the images it clicked fully.

Gary:

Yeah, I’d say so.

Alan:

That would be accurate, though as of right now, I don’t really have romantic interests.

Gary:

Ah, yes. I’m aromantic to kids. Not sure how I feel about that.

Leonard:

Aromatic but sexually attracted? That’s me too, actually. I’ve never felt romantic towards anyone, never been in love. It makes me feel like I’m missing something important.

Alan:

Well, the most intense of my romantic attractions petered out after I ended up helping him date his crush. They’re now in a happy relationship, and the guy thanks me for my help.

Not sure how to feel about it, but I’m happy he’s happy.

Isn’t this the very definition of SIMP? Who knows. I can’t keep up with internet culture.

Gary:

In terms of adults, I haven’t met anyone that’s made me feel that way, yet, but I’m fairly certain I’m capable of it.

Leonard:

That’s great. I’m jealous of that!

So… ok, you’re 16, you’re looking at cp, you’re seeking it out. How did that feel? Did you feel guilty about it or think about it as wrong at the time? Or were your teenage minds not thinking about it at the time?

Gary:

Looking at those images did feel wrong, yeah. But it was a thought in the back of my head that maybe I should stop. I started to feel real guilt hits later down the line, however.

Alan:

The CP I found could be classified as a rank 7 on the copine scale. No adults, children with other children. I didn’t really feel guilty about it, but I knew it was wrong for these videos to even exist, having just debated pornography laws a few weeks prior. Having experience in these similar situations helped convince me that I was…. misguided in feeling the guilt. It wasn’t until I found something that involved adults and children in sexual activities when the full realization sunk in, and when the guilt started to manifest.

Leonard:

Alan, you don’t have to answer this, but can I ask what you mean by having been involved in similar situations? It’s just a big thing to drop in. I could also delete that sentence if you prefer.

Alan:

Ahhh,… Fair. I have had sexual activities with my peers when I was still a minor. We were both of the same age, and if anything, I was the one whom he convinced into doing it with him.

We could remove it if it’s too big a thing to drop.

Leonard:

I think it’s totally fine.

Alan:

Aight, a decent reminder that children as young as 9 need sex education

Leonard:

Ok, so you’re viewing this stuff, and as a 16-year-old, you’re justifying it to yourself. At first it’s milder, then it builds up. When do you start to feel guilty about it, and how does that guilt manifest compared to, frankly, the thrill and sexual pleasure of watching it?

Alan:

I used to just ignore the guilt, coming up with ridiculously convoluted justifications which I immediately tore apart. I ended up just bottling it and ignoring it, telling myself that this is how I am, and nothing’s going to change, so I might as well get used to the guilt and pain.

And sometimes, the thrill and short term pleasure of using CP was more than enough to delay the guilt that I feel, creating a catch-22 where I feel guilty about watching CP, so I’d watch it to drown out the guilt, then the guilt comes back, so in and so forth.

Gary:

I think once access to CP became easy was when it really hit me. I downloaded Tor at some point. The whole guilt/pleasure thing manifested in a thing I tend to call ‘the cycle’. It goes like this:

At some point, I watch CP. It feels, well, amazing, honestly. But then, when I’m done, I feel… absolutely terrible. Guilty, angry at myself, angry at the guy who produced it. I usually end up deleting tor completely, and vowing to never watch it again. For a while, it works. 2 or 3 months pass. But, then, I’m overwhelmed by my urges to watch it again. This happened for one or 2 years, I think. But each time the ‘guilty’ period would get shorter, and shorter on average.

Note: Tor is a browser that provides significant anonymity. It is used for many legitimate purposes. It is also used for child pornography and other illegal material.

Photo by Possessed Photography on Unsplash

Leonard:

Got it. So Gary, when you were, like, 16, you were only viewing it every few months?

Gary:

Yeah.

Alan:

Similar to Gary, I had moments when the guilt felt too overwhelming, and I vowed to stop viewing CP. I’d shred everything, delete all files and software dedicated for finding CP. But due to the fact that it’s ridiculously easy to find CP, even in the clear net, I would often relapse, and end up falling deeper in the depths of CP and its community.

Leonard:

So you basically both wanted to stop pretty early on. When did you identify it as a real problem for you?

Alan:

The night of my 18th birthday.

Part of my rationalization was that I’d grow out of my attractions to minors, and that I still feel attracted to my peers and other adults. But when I turned 18, i realized that it wasn’t going away, and that this is something I’m stuck with, forever.

My initial thoughts went to security, making sure that all my incriminating files were hidden and encrypted. I didn’t know that there were pedophiles that didn’t use CP, and I wrongly assumed that all pedophiles use it, and are just clever about hiding it. At this point, I’d tried to stop myself twice, both of which ended in spectacular failures.

Gary:

Once I began to feel properly guilty, I realised that ‘Hey, you’re using CP, one of the most evil and illegal things out there. If you don’t stop, your whole life is going to be ruined before long.’ I just felt it was a matter of time before I was arrested.

The fear that some invisible force is closing in on you, and that every day could be the last one you see out of jail is terrifying. While, obviously, I felt guilt for the children in the CP, the sheer terror such thoughts produce is very motivating.

Leonard:

My sense is that it was actually pretty hard to stop. Before getting to that, one of the things you mentioned to me before was that there’s a community of people who are friends, of a sort, who view cp. Yes, you got cp through websites, both on the normal web and on the dark web, but you also got it from chat rooms and made friends there. Is that right? Can you talk about what that community is like, and why those people were important to you? I feel like most people think “chat room of child porn traders” and don’t think it’s a pleasant place.

Gary:

That’s correct. A lot of the people I used to trade with were often quite friendly. They’re people I often built long term relationships with. They felt like people you could share an interest with, that you could with no one else. Even then, it wasn’t all about kids. We shared hobbies, talked about our day. They’re still people, even if I do view them as a bad influence now.

Alan:

Thing is, they’re like your average community and chat rooms, with diverse opinions and viewpoints, the only exception here is that it’s from the perspective of a pedophile. I remember a vivid debate about infant circumcision by a few nepiophiles which ended with both of them getting a temporary ban for a few hours to cool off. They also understand the frustration and how the urges feel, but most of them give in, and think it’s hopeless.

Note: A “nepiophile” is a type pedophile who is attracted to toddlers or babies. This is also an attraction some people experience.

Leonard:

So it sounds like folks hanging out, chatting about stuff, and some of it happens to be their sexual interests which is what they have in common. Was it generally a friendly place? Were there people there where you were like, “these are cool people, who happen to be pedophiles?” And I guess related to that, did you make genuine friendships there?

Alan:

It is a friendly place, relative to the entire internet where being known as a pedophile would get you instantly banned. It’s not just a place to find CP, it’s what a lot of pedophiles use as support, despite how misguided this may seem, because talking about it with someone who knows how bad it feels, the guilt, the emotions, the vicious cycle, mad understands how horrible it feels is better than bottling up it all up. There’s a tension you lose knowing you’re not alone suffering these urges.

Should these places be dismantled? I can’t answer that, I have too much emotional stake here, and there’s no where else for people who use CP to find their peers to talk to, who understand the struggles. I met Gary through one of these groups, though I can’t remember our 1st interaction.

Gary:

Adding to Alan’s point, these less… controlled places often serve better as places to be accepted as a MAP, even, compared to places like MSC. Because, here, no one’s going to judge you, or delete your message if you say that you struggle with CP use. Hell, a few might DM you, and try and help.

Note: “MAP” stands for “Minor-Attracted Person,” and is a word some people prefer for those who are attracted to underage children, although I prefer being direct with “pedophile.” MSC is “MAP Support Chat” and is a chat room for pedophiles who believe acting on their desires is wrong to talk to each other and support one-another.

Leonard:

That brings up a good point. Do you think most of the people on these sites would stop using CP if they could? I mean, obviously, in theory, they could just stop. What I mean is, imagine you got rid of the addictive factors, and the social pressure. It was just a trade off of “this is more sexually exciting to me than anything else” vs “this is immoral and illegal.” Would most of them choose to stop if they could?

Gary:

I can’t answer that, personally. I’ve met folks who were regretful, but I’ve also met folks who actively encouraged me to use it, even with the knowledge I felt guilty and wanted to stop. That said, a lot of people who feel guilty might not even bring it up. Could be far more than we know.

Alan:

Most of them? Probably not, but I have met a lot of people who regret having the urge, but think that using CP is inevitable. As Gary said, there are a few folks that actively encourage others to use it. There are also forums on the Tor network that discuss quitting CP, on the same forums what share them, so there’s definitely a lot of people who would stop if they get the chance.

Leonard:

That’s interesting. It can’t be easy to admit “I don’t want to do this” in a place where everyone is doing it. I’m surprised people say it publicly.

Gary:

They may feel a degree of anonymity, being on tor and such.

Alan:

Contrary, it is easier to admit it in these forums. There’s a ton of folks there who understand how much the urges suck, and have thought of quitting before. There’s also a veil of anonimity, so it’s not quite as public as it seems.

Leonard:

That’s really interesting. It’s nice that people can at least talk about it. Maybe someone can link them to this chat later.

Ok, so let’s get to the meat of it. You’re part of this community, you have a habit of looking at cp, you have these urges that keep drawing you back in, but you’ve decided to quit. You finally did manage it, although I know you still struggle, but it sounds like there were a lot of false starts. What worked this time?

Alan:

Honestly, it’s hard to pin down which factors helped, but I can pinpoint a few that definitely helped me.

Firstly, I had Gary. Seriously. He would be here when I was feeling a really bad urge, and he’d do the virtual equivalent of holding my hand and propping me up when I feel overwhelmed by my urges.

Secondly, I joined an online, experimental therapy. I could talk to professional therapists and psychiatrists about my attractions and addiction, and they helped me stop viewing it, one exercise at a time. The therapy is free, and anonymous, but it’s an experimental study to develop a way to help people like us quit using CP.

I’ve been clean for 2 months, and it’s been a painful struggle to reach this point.

Note: This chat was done quite a while ago, because it took me (Leonard) a long time to write all the posts in this series before this one! Alan has now been clean for over a year.

Gary:

I’m feeling the same as Alan, here.

I think Alan’s been the biggest help. We’ve pulled each other back from the brink so many times now. I think it’s really important that I can be honest with him, and that if I do mess up, he’ll still be here, willing to help me try again.

I’m also in the process of this same therapy. I admit it’s had less of an impact on me than Alan, but it’s still a very helpful thing.

I’ve stopped counting how long I’ve been clean. I think it might be a month?

(Also, a thing I wrote but am unsure where to slot in: For those of you who want to try this yourself, I don’t think you should provide any strict punishments for messing up. That would mean that you’d have incentive to lie to your partner, and that wouldn’t work well.)

Leonard:

So doing it with someone seems important. They’re like an accountability partner, someone you can go to when you’re struggling. I remember there were times I talked to you while you were going clean where you really thought you wouldn’t be able to make it. How did you get through that? How do you keep perspective?

Gary:

It’s tough. And often times, it feels hopeless. Sure, you’re clean today. But what about tomorrow? And the next day, and every single day until the end of your life?

You have to push past thoughts like that. I find that, as it goes on, it gets easier. There will be patches where you’ll be feeling strong urges still, but on average, it’s a lot easier to ignore the urges. The past few days have been shockingly low on unwanted thoughts.

I find that, if you feel like you’re about to do something you’ll regret, just stepping away from all your technology for a while is a good idea. Take a nap. And, if you ever feel at risk, tell your partner. They can be there for you, calm you down, pull you back from the brink.

Even if you feel like you’re going to break every single day, just keep talking to your partner. Take it one day at a time. You’ll find the burden a little easier each day.

Alan:

Hell, I still think that way sometimes. I’ve had these urges for so long, that now that they don’t feel as powerful as they were before, I still fear that one day I’ll break and succumb. But I picked this up somewhere that life is about pushing the crisis point further and further, and give me room to breathe and prepare for these crises points. So, say I manage to hold off that breaking point day to…. 3 years from now. That’s a lot of time for me to breathe and find a way to even delay that, even if I think it’s inevitable.

Understanding why I use CP was crucial as well. It’s an unpleasant realization, but one that needs to be done before I could excise its influence in my life. As I stated before, it’s a bad coping mechanism, similar to how drug addicts self medicate.

Time away from stimulation worked as well. Take a walk, force yourself to spend brain power over something other than your urges. Anything to distract yourself from the urge.

It’s always going to be a fight. It’s a fact that I will always be aroused by children being sexually abused, but I can make the choice to not use it anyways.

And if you have an accountability partner, it is always a good idea to talk to them when you feel overwhelmed.

Leonard:

Hold on, Alan, you said understanding the reason why you use CP. Can you explain that?

Alan:

Sure. Like most actions, there’s always a need being addressed. You eat because you’re hungry, you drink because you’re thirsty. Normal people watch vanilla pornography to help them with their arousal and masturbate. All our actions are there to fill a need or a want. Part of quitting CP is understanding why you use it, and to try to fulfill the need using safer means. For nicotine addicts, there’s gum and patches. For us, there’s always drawn fictional material, written fictional material, or legal pictures of actual children.

Leonard:

I remember seeing a psychologist about my pedophilia once, and I talked about how sometimes I masturbated much more than other times. I always felt like it was based around boredom or random fluctuations in sexual desire, but he suggested there might be a component of depression in there. That honestly still doesn’t feel right to me, but what do you think? Is there an association with, say, having other positive things in your life and being able to avoid CP as a result?

Alan:

I can’t say that definitely, but I found that it definitely helps, as far as making me fear going to jail. (Hah)

Thing is, I see myself being relatively privileged, though not stupidly rich, wealthy and secure enough to live safely and comfortably. I have a life several hundred million people would be jealous of, yet I still used CP.

Leonard:

Let’s talk nuts and bolts. Do you recommend going cold turkey, or phasing it out?

Alan:

Oh, we had recommendations to go cold turkey, but for someone who’s in the deep, it’s hard to think if it. Part of what we did was slowly go clean for longer and longer, as well as slowly shredding any material that we have. For some, phasing it out works for them, for some, the cold turkey worked. But, the 1st step here should be finding the motivation to stay clean. Either method won’t really work if you don’t think it’s worth the sacrifice and pain of going clean.

Imagine having a deeply ingrained habit, one that you’ve had for several years, doing it everyday, then suddenly stopping it. Human will isn’t that strong enough to stop that sort of momentum. At least, mine isn’t.

Gary:

One important thing I’d add is that you need to talk to any contact you have that are sending you CP. You need to ask them to stop sending you it, and even refuse if you ask in a moment of weakness. Makes it a little harder to slip back.

Leonard:

Gary, you actually ended up deleting one of your chat accounts to stop being tempted by old friends, right?

Gary:

That I did. It was painful, but necessary.

Also, if the thought of shredding your cp horrifies you, it may be easier for you to create a two part password for your cp, and give one half to your partner. That way, you don’t have the emotional task of deleting your cp, but don’t have it on hand, you have to go through your partner.

If you’re on the receiving end of this tactic, I wouldn’t recommend deleting that password half without their permission. Though you will disable their access to cp, maintaining your trust in each other is very important.

Alan:

But with only half the password, it makes the emotional burden of deleting your CP much easier. A burden shared is a burden halved.

Gary:

Indeed.

Leonard:

Oh, that’s a nice idea. I guess there’s some amount of psychological trickery that’s helpful.

Alan, I remember that you were phasing it out. First you stopped getting new CP, then you slowly deleted what you’d saved until you had nothing left. But it sounds like you’re not saying that’s best for everyone, and going cold turkey might be better for some people.

However, it sounds you found that replacing CP with fictional stories or artwork or innocent real pictures was helpful to stop viewing images of child sex abuse? Do you think that is a lesson others should take? (And I’ll note here that the legality of such materials varies by where you live, so anyone trying this should be aware of that.)

Alan:

Yeah, check the local child pornography laws if they allow for those, but generally, these innocent images are usually fine, since they don’t depict children in sexual activities.

Interesting note, there was a country in Asia that defines children as either real or fictional, as long as they look like children. Essentially making shota illegal.

But you need to find what method works for you, there’s no silver bullet to this problem.

Leonard:

I feel like these are really helpful tips, and more importantly, we’re telling people that yes, you can do this. I have just a few more questions, but before we move on, anything else you want to say to someone who wants to give up CP?

Gary:

Don’t be discouraged if you mess up. We have. Just try again, you’ll do better next time.

Alan:

Yeah, most people who use CP tend be hopeless about the situation, thinking that theyre permanently stuck to using CP. There’s nothing we can do about the attraction, or the fact that we will always find media of children being sexually abused to be arousing, but we can stop ourselves from using said media.

And, as Uncle Iroh said, failure is a good chance to try again with more wisdom than when you started.

Leonard:

I want to take a step back now to the bigger picture. Gary, something you mentioned before is that it’s hard to get support, because most communities of non-offending pedophiles forbid you from admitting illegal behavior that hasn’t already been adjudicated. On the one hand, that makes sense: an admission like that would be reason for a police warrant and would force them to give over logs and information. (I only feel safe on this account because I don’t have any data to track you down, and don’t even know what country you’re in except it’s not mine.) On the other hand, it means there’s no community you can go to for help. You can see a psychologist, maybe, but that’s about it.

Any thoughts on what we could do to make it easier for people giving up CP on a broader level?

Gary:

Well, I think that having some anonymous way to discuss this is very important. People aren’t going to talk about it if they’re going to be reported. Communities on secure messaging platforms, like Telegram, allow people to talk more openly around such things. And, under such relatively anonymous circumstances, I believe community leaders should attempt to accommodate these people by providing a channel or group to talk about these feelings and ask for assistance.

Leonard:

Great, thank you both so much.

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Some notes to wrap this up.

First of all, a huge thank you to Alan and Gary for taking the time to help out. I know I’ve already privately shared this chat with another person looking to give up CP, and he found it helpful. If you did, too, please fill out the comment form and I can share your reply with them. They would appreciate it, as would I.

Secondly, Alan wanted to make sure I shared the research and support group that helped him out. You can learn more about them here, but note that you will need Tor to follow that link.

Finally, if you’re interested in MAP Support Club, which was mentioned in the interview, you can join it here.

It’s been over a year since my interview with Alan and Gary. We’re still in touch, and they’re still clean. If you are trying to stop viewing cp, know that others have done it and succeeded. Even if you never hear about them, you’re not alone.

And if you don’t share our attractions, I hope you’ve seen that there are real people struggling behind the statistics, even when it comes to crimes like viewing child pornography. This stuff, and how to genuinely change things, is more complex than it seems at first.