Ramblings

When researching pedophilia and stigmatization I inevitably found this article by the City Journal called “Terrifying Nonsense on Pedophilia - Professor Allyn Walker’s advocacy for “destigmatizing” pedophilia is simply crazy”. I didn't know the “City Journal” at the time but it looked professional enough and seemed well written, so I gave it a read. And even though I disagree with its main point, I really liked what I read. The way it approaches Pedophilia Stigmatization and lays out its points is - albeit wrong in my opinion - still done very openly and very well. City Journal describes itself as a policy-first outlet, describing topics from a systemic viewpoint and analyzing solutions systemically as well.

This approach is great because even though they may be using some words that are chosenly strong and emotive, everything they say is still grounded in a systemic solution that can be analyzed and criticized regardless of the words used to describe it. Yes, City Journal comes from the Manhattan Institute, which is a conservative “Think Tank”, and City Journal itself is well known for favoring conservative causes, but none of that matters if they actually bring substance to the table that can be properly analyzed and evaluated - and they sure did. I think we'd be a lot further if everyone did it like that.

Introduction

So, the article talks about a professor - the aforementioned Professor Allyn Walker - who got placed on leave from his university. Professor Allyn Walker does research in the field of pedophilia and appeared in a podcast about that topic, in which he said that pedophilia should be destigmatized, as people have no control over their sexual attractions and that some people have these attractions without acting on them (the word “some” here is taken from the article, I actually do not know what share of people with pedophilia actually offend, there aren't any good numbers out there).

The article says that Walker's previous work on the topic, including a book he released “A Long, Dark Shadow: Minor-Attracted People and Their Pursuit of Dignity”, reflects similar views but did not attract a virality quite like the interview. The interview did go viral and, as the article says, “led to Walker's firing”. I am not sure whether this is intentional or not, but for me - personally - this wording made me think that the interview itself was the problem; that the university kicked Walker out because of his claim that pedophilia should be destigmatized.

However, it turns out that the university did not have a problem with that claim itself. City Journal's article itself links to a page from fire.org which describes his firing with a bit more detail: The interview led to a national outrage which prompted many to send antagonistic mail, including some threats of violence and the such. As the article says, “Old Dominion placed Walker on leave last week, citing 'threats and other unacceptable disruption' due to '[r]eactions' to Walker’s research”. That Walker was placed on leave because of public outrage - rather than formal mistake on Walker's part - is also the primary concern of an open letter, written and signed by some of the leading academics in the field of sexual abuse prevention. As they say, “we can appreciate the need for ODU to respond to concerns from the public and campus community. At the same time, the public backlash reflects a misunderstanding and mischaracterization of Walker’s research”.

Whether this omission was intended or not, the City Journal is still honest enough to address the topic properly. Hell, it is even honest enough to say “in some sense, pedophilia is a sexual orientation” which would be an unacceptable and patently wrong statement, according to some, but is nonetheless a useful way to think about pedophilia. It is also honest enough to make three very important concessions - (1) “So long as a pedophile doesn’t act on his desires, no grounds exist for imprisoning him”. No thing such as thought crime. (2) Non-offending pedophiles “have every right to speak with one another, and indeed online communities can provide substantial benefit if they help their members refrain from abusing children”. (3) “If a pedophile who doesn’t abuse children seeks therapy, our nation’s mental-health apparatus should do everything possible to help that individual.”

This third “should help” indicates that the City Journal has indeed taken to heart the understanding that individuals with pedophilia did not choose that destiny and deserve to live a good life. Also, the fact that City Journal accepts online communities as a potential way to prevent harm shows tells me that it really is a policy-first outlet (or at least this particular article is), as such an opinion only comes about from someone who can think through and see the benefits of it, even if it extremely uncomfortable to think through.

About Allyn Walker

City Journal has a very interesting perspective on Walker and his work. They're very honest with him, they preface their response with pointing out that Walker's position is very unlikely to find traction in the mainstream. And they also pick up another point by Walker: In his effort to destigmatize, Walker prefers to use the term “minor-attracted person”, or MAP. Walker included feedback on that term from one of his study subjects in his book. That subject called “minor-attracted person” a “euphemism”, which the City Journal comments “is a more forthright way of putting it”. Pragmatic but honest so far, but the City Journal then goes on to say that Walker's guess on how destigmatization would work out is difficult to trust because… he is a police abolitionist and a prison abolitionist. This is also what they are referring to when they state earlier in the article that Walker is a “fringe figure spouting dangerous nonsense”. Destigmatization, even of pedophilia, is not at all fringe in academia and the City Journal is referring to Walker's opinions on the police and prison system when framing him as “fringe”.

Now, I agree with City Journal on the last part, I do not believe in a police- and prisonless world. Yes, police and prisons serve important functions (the article mentions “deterrence, retribution, and incapacitation”, conveniently leaving out - among others - rehabilitation; a very American omission) that cannot be replaced by humanitarian and other support programs. But whether Walker really believed in the full abolition of police and prisons is another matter, much like pedophilia and stigma. They have nothing, but not a single atom anything to do with pedophilia destigmatization. By bringing up police and prison destigmatization, City Journal is quite literally picking up a bunch of piss and throwing it at Walker. I've never seen someone so blatantly just go “you shouldn't believe this guy on topic X because of his views on Y and Z”.

Literally, they verbatim just say “If you’re curious how much you should trust Walker’s guess as to how a radical social experiment like this [destigmatizing pedophilia] might unfold, you will want to know that, as laid out in the book’s preface, Walker is also a police and prison abolitionist”.

Other Arguments by the Article

The cool thing about all of this is, though, that it doesn't matter how they characterize Walker, because they provide proper substance related to what they actually want to say. However, that is also where I begin to disagree with City Journal. Take this for example:

Well, no, City Journal, by definition pedophiles and sex offenders are entirely distinct groups. That statement is not obviously untrue and it is more likely to be “obviously true”. People with pedophilia and child sexual abuse are linked, but they are not the same. City Journal's argument here would be that, according to them, a lot of pedophiles offend which, at least to some degree, makes (some) pedophiles and child sex abusers the same. However, what this leaves out is that human behavior is more than an offending rate statistic. Thinking of individuals with pedophilia as such is too reductive and ignores that their behavior is malleable. The reason Walker says that these groups are different is because we, as a society, have all the necessary tools to shape the behavior of individuals with pedophilia, and pedophiles themselves have the agency to not offend if given proper support. The incentives are there, and I assume nobody would be more interested in not being a pedophile than pedophiles themselves. That makes these groups very distinct indeed.

The article then says that individuals with pedophilia are disproportionately highly represented among child sex abusers. I won't deny that, but I will pull that into question. Are they? Last time I checked, the exact prevalence of pedophilia offending was uncertain. However, as usual it is parents and caregivers who top the charts on sexual abuse in any category, so with that and the other categories counted in I'm not sure how much room in % is left for pedophiles to fill the rest of the chart. Remember that sexual abuse is not typically committed with sexual gratification as the primary motive, as counterintuitive as that may seem⁶⁾.

Before the article gets to the point that is central to its argument, it takes a swing at pedophilia strategization. In therapy individuals with pedophilia will be taught to become very aware of their desires and the kinds of behaviors their desires might encourage. This awareness helps them retain control, make rational decisions and identify problematic situations to strategize around them in the future. City Journal says “People who have to strategize to avoid sexually abusing children should alarm us”. Hmm okay? This kind of strategization around problematic areas in life is standard practice in therapy and helps individuals manage their emotions/behavior in all kinds of settings, be it Personality Disorders, Alcohol Abuse or any other field you could think of. And yes, the fact that they have to do that in the first place is certainly “alarming”. But now what? If they said that it's alarming “and that's why we should stigmatize them” then we'd have a meaningful (albeit wrong) argument. If this was used to say anything at all, like even just “that's why they should be locked up” or “that's why we should help them” then the statement would have weight. As it stands, the statement is purely semantic and serves no purpose other than fearmongering.

Stigma as a Policy

So why should we stigmatize people for pedophilia? Because they are alarming? No. Because Allyn Walker believes in police abolitionism? No.

Here is the policy argument! Pedophilia stigmatizing is a worthwhile tradeoff because it reduces child sex abuse. The rest of the article goes through the motions of admitting that, obviously, you cannot really know, but then says that City Journal's guess is as good as Allyn Walker's guess and that, generally, by destigmatizing something you generally get more of it, much like we got “more” gay people when being gay became socially acceptable.

So, let's get a few things out of the way first. We in fact can fathom why someone would want to do it. Why? Because 1% to 2% of our population just is that way. They're born or developed that way and that's just a fact. There is nothing hard to fathom about that. They're attracted to prepubescent children and if you can fathom how we are attracted to adults of the opposite sex (or whatever adult thing in particular you are attracted to) as the way you were born/developed then you can understand how someone else might be born/developed differently. Individuals with pedophilia aren't black boxes any more than any of us are. This might sound nitpicky, but it's an important distinction, as this kind of non-understanding attitude drives the argument laid out by City Journal.

Secondly, there's reasonably strong support from prevention research that people with these attractions are more likely to seek therapy, peer support, and self-regulation strategies when they don't expect total social annihilation. The claim that broad stigma reduces offending is much more speculative and hard to isolate causally; if anything, stigma tends to correlate with secrecy, isolation, and avoidance of treatment, which are known risk factors in other domains. So, this really should sit with anyone arguing stigma has net protective effects rather than harm.

City Journal says that by being understanding (or worse, compassionate) towards people with pedophilia we would be less discouraging of child molestation. I disagree with this connection. Individuals with pedophilia know that child molestation is wrong and blanket ostracizing everyone from society purely because they have pedophilia does not communicate the wrongness of child molestation any more than a good therapist, integration into society and - if all else fails - years in prison, ever will. The only thing such indiscriminate pedophile ostracization will achieve is creating an isolated group of individuals who are miserable, feel wronged by society, disillusioned and - being ostracized from society - will develop antisocial traits, which is one of the best established predictors for crime of all sorts. You can't expell someone from society and then expect them to be reverent about playing by society's rules.

While I'm sure that such aggressive, indiscriminate negative reinforcement may deter some, I am absolutely convinced that making life miserable for anyone is much more likely to cause them to do things we would rather they did not. So yeah, for some the stigma will marginally reduce child sex abuse, but for most it will probably make the odds worse, not because I or Allyn Walker are making a wild guess, but because we know from adjacent fields how people left behind by society act.

While looking for a good legal definition for pedophilia I stumbled over the Cornell's Law School's page on Pedophilia⁷⁾, which states “Pedophilia is a mental disorder where an individual seeks sexual gratification from children”.

I was happy with that definition at first because even though it leaves out individuals who experience attraction but do not act on it, only individuals who act on it are legally relevant for pedophilia-related crimes. I was also happy with the definition even though it uses the term “mental disorder”. Invoking the term disorder really just points towards the DSM/ICD for clinical diagnostics, but that is fine for me since a medical screening would be done on offenders like that anyway.

The problem is twofold: For one, the page itself: Further down, the page notes “While pedophilia itself does not give rise to criminal liability, acting on it does”. This is factually incorrect, as acting on it does not necessarily mean child sexual abuse, possession or consumption of pornographic material involving minors, or stalking and other threatening behaviors.

Now, that alone wouldn't be a big problem, but the more I read into this, the more a “legal” definition did not make sense for pedophilia in the first place. Lawmakers define crimes, and child sexual abuse of any kind is defined at length in all its shapes and sizes. Of course law people can only point to medical definitions for pedophilia itself. For them, pedophilia is mostly irrelevant as they are more concerned with the harmful behaviors that pedophilia can cause.