Do Not Vote for Democrat Josh Derke

While researching the current status of pedophilia as it relates to anti-discrimination law as a favor to a businessperson looking to improve his company's own policies and not be on the wrong side of history, I ran across an article by Democratic candidate Josh Derke.

http://joshderke2014.wordpress.com/2014/09/20/candidate-survey-public-advocate-of-the-united-states/

In short, an anti-gay hate group emailed a number of candidates with biased surveys conflating pedophilia with homosexuality in an effort to torpedo support for gay marriage.  Josh Derke sent them a scathing response letter telling the hate group where to shove it.  So far, so good, and were that all there was to it, I'd be fully endorsing the man. 

Unfortunately, as part of his letter, he felt the need to bash pedophiles, treat us as though we were criminals, and generally demonstrate his antipathy towards us.  If I hear about any candidate for public office expressing anti-pedophile sentiment, I won't vote for him or her.  I recognize that such sentiments are common and likely unavoidable in elected candidates, but that doesn't mean I need to give my support to people who EXPLICITLY identify themselves as my enemies, regardless of what other positions they hold that I otherwise agree with. 

I have posted the following response to his campaign website where he posted the survey and letter, though at the time of this post's writing, the comment is lingering in moderation.

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I’m sorry to say that you’ve just lost my vote, Josh.

I share your outrage at the discrimination LGBT individuals suffer, and I share your desire to see them get the rightful protections due to them in a free and fair society.

But as you say in your letter, “Pro-family is not demonizing and dehumanzing people because they’re different than you are. It is not labeling a group of people immoral because you don’t understand human sexuality.”

And unfortunately, that’s precisely what you’re doing to pedophiles, demonizing and dehumanizing them because they’re different than you are, and labeling them immoral because you don’t understand human sexuality.

Pedophiles are not the same thing as child molesters, and treating them as though they are the same is utterly unacceptable for a person holding a position of power. The overwhelming majority of pedophiles do not molest children, and this is something you should be aware of before speaking on the subject and certainly before hoping to make law.

To reiterate, I have no interest in defending the bastards who wrote that survey, since they’re obviously not actually concerned about minor attracted persons, and are just using them as a bludgeon against another sexual minority they want to hurt by the association.

I would have been 100% with you on the letter telling them off were it not for this issue, but you’ve crossed a line here, and until your position changes, I will no longer be voting a straight democratic ticket.


UPDATE:
He lost.

My Psychic Powers

Apparently I have a plethora of psychic powers that I've just been too lazy to develop my whole life.  Funny world, isn't it? 

I apparently have the power to molest children with my thoughts through a photograph.  It's strange, but apparently all pedophiles have this power.  It's why the government thinks it's so important that pictures of children should never be in the hands of pedophiles.   At first, I thought this was only supposed to work if the kid was being molested in the photo, but apparently it works just fine whether the kid has ever been molested or not, and the effect isn't blocked by clothing.  Pity it only works on pictures of children, but at least it works long after those children have grown up. 

I've also apparently got laser vision.  If I look at someone long enough, I'll bore a hole right in their bodies like Superman.  Only good explanation I have for the fact that folks work so hard to control which direction I point my eyes.  Weirdly, this one apparently has nothing to do with the powers I get from being a pedophile.  Apparently all men have this ability. 


I hear women get mind reading powers.  I think I'd have more use for that in my everyday life than the heat vision. 

I do at least get the power to unconsciously and undetectably mind control women and children.  It's apparently impossible for either group to refuse to do anything I ask of them.  In fact, apparently I don't need to say a word for it to be me controlling their actions. 

So, any suggestions on a costume for my new career as a Superhero? 

Spree Killers

This is obviously in response to a recent event, but unfortunately, what I'm going to say is pretty timeless, so I won't bother linking to the specific stories that inspired this post, since it's almost certainly going to apply equally well to whatever recent mass murder has captivated the public eye at the time a reader finds this. 

I have something of a history of empathizing with the manifestos of spree killers more than most folks are willing to admit.  I look at their arguments and say, "that all sounds reasonable up until the point of the random mass murder".  Over and over again.  Makes a person a bit paranoid when no one else around you seems to think there's anything but crazy and evil in there. 

I have never gone on a killing spree.  I have fantasized about doing so.  I've been tempted numerous times.  The world isn't a just place, and it's easy to just say "fuck it, let's burn the whole thing to the ground" rather than commit to the impossible Sisyphean task of fixing everything that's wrong with the world. 

I'm the sort of person who thinks the world ought to be reasonable, equitable, and just.  That belief crops up in almost every one of these spree killer manifestos that I see.  They look at the world, see that it isn't fair, and can't deal with that fact.  This isn't about entitlement, at least as far as their writings go.  They don't just think the world's unfair TO THEM, though that's usually what made it impossible to miss that the world was unfair.  They think the world's unfair to whole categories of people, and once those proverbial scales have been ripped from your eyes, it's a long journey of seeing all the ways the world is unfair and unreasonable. 

I was in elementary school when I got my first taste of this.  I noticed age based discrimination.  It was compulsory education I noticed first.  The problem, as I saw it, was not that I was being forced to attend school.  It was that people who lacked the knowledge base that I was supposed to be aquiring in school were not being likewise forced to attend simply because they had passed an arbitrary age line.  I considered violent revolution as a potential solution to this problem, since history classes had made it clear that was how you accomplished change on that scale.  I lacked both the martial skills and the personal charisma to organize such a revolution while in elementary school, so that plan didn't get anywhere. 

The problem I was looking at wasn't just childishy whining that I was being forced to go to school.  It was recognizing that an entire category of people, of whom I then happened to be a member, were being systematically discriminated against, and deciding that something needed to be done.  I was repeatedly told I'd change my mind as I got older, but the fact of the matter is, I'm still that young boy who saw a problem, and occasionally toys with the idea of violent revolution in order to fix it. 

The reason I never went on a shooting rampage is that I came to the conclusion it wouldn't be effective.  I've seen so many of these spree killers over the years, and each time it's the same thing.  People handwring over "what could have brought this on" and then people utterly ignore the efforts those killers made to explain exactly that, instead preferring to cynically exploit the killing spree as a means of advancing their own pet issues. 

I'm still looking for a way to fix the obvious injustices in the world.  I've eliminated random mass murder as a likely avenue.  Irrationally, I hold out hope that one of these days I'll find a tool that will work. 

My Nightmare

Here's a bit of worst case scenario planning.  What I fear would happen should my identity and sexual orientation become widely known in the same circles.

1) Loss of friends.
I'm an introvert who doesn't make friends easily.  I build my social relationships slowly over time, and invest deeply in every relationship I have.  If those friends reacted typically to the revelation that I am a pedophile, I can expect to have them all systematically reject me and cut me out of their lives.  Additionally, even the ones who might otherwise be sympathetic might cut me off for fear of how their continued association with me would make others see them. 

2) Loss of family support.
Being blood doesn't mean anything in the grand scheme of things.  Sure, they say you can't choose your family, but the fact of the matter is, family can disown you almost as easily as your friends can.  I've seen my family react to a child porn charge.  Admittedly, there were other negative feelings about that individual which pushed things over the edge, but I can't just pretend I didn't see what happened, and that I didn't hear the words they used when talking about the situation. 

3) Loss of employment.
Seriously, why would anyone willingly accept the public relations risk that comes with having a pedophile on staff, regardless of whether the job involves kids or not?  It doesn't even matter if the boss is personally prejudiced or not.  It's simple economics that unless what I can do is completely unique and indispensable, and the business will literally fold without me, I can't expect to have a job of any sort after this gets out. 

4) Loss of freedom.
It doesn't matter that I haven't molested a child.  Charges can be trumped up, and a jury will find it easy to believe any negative story told about me with my sexual orientation known.

5) Loss of life.
There are vigilantes who want me dead.  Some have openly expressed such a desire to me personally, with my safety being guaranteed by my anonymity and their incompetence at  finding me.  Others have simply expressed a desire to hurt or kill anyone like me they come across.  I am a socially acceptable target, and of course, any attempt I make to defend my own life will just lead back to worry number 4.

With these very real concerns, some of which I can see others living out in front of my eyes, it's a minor miracle that there have been three human beings in my life that I have deliberately trusted with this information, because I trust both their good intentions, and their competence. 

Staring

Okay, this one's been bugging me for a long time.  Staring is not a form of assault. 

The concept of assault rests on the basis that people have an inherent right to control what goes on with their own bodies, and that doing anything to another person's body without their consent is wrong.  Rights conflict in the real world, which is why we need to establish rules.  The classic example is "your right to swing your fist ends at my nose".  

I have a right to control my own body, and that includes what direction my eyes face.  Since my eyes are devices for detecting radiation rather than for emitting it, what direction my eyes face impacts no one.  In the conflict between my right to point my eyes where I please, and your right not to have someone point their eyes in your direction, the right to control one's own body trumps the right to force someone else to do something with their body you don't like. 

I don't live in a society where we worship god-kings who can demand I downcast my gaze when they grace my presence.  I will not live in such a society. 

The last time someone tried to treat my gaze as an assault, I was quite ready to meet their explicitly threatened violence with violence of my own.  I have no regrets about my actions in that incident.  

The History of the Age of Consent

I see it over and over again.  The idea that the age of consent must be there for a reason.  That whoever put those laws in place must have known what they were doing. 

The law is not a divine commandment.  The people who write laws are not unknowable wise men with inscrutable wisdom far divorced from the ability of the common man to understand.  The entire point of studying history is so that we can follow the progression, the whys and wherefores that lead us to the world we live in today. 

The age of consent came into being in the days of women as property.  Marriage was a business transaction between the groom and the bride's father, with the groom paying a bride-price to her father.  A virgin bride commanded a high price, and thus anyone who had sex with a man's daughter was literally diminishing the value of his property.  The age of consent was a way of protecting the investment, not protecting the person. 

Come the turn of the 20th century, a group of religious conservatives, terrified of the idea of women in the workplace, lobbied hard for the age of consent to be raised to its current level.  Their writings are still around explaining their concerns.  To summarize, they were afraid that women working outside the home might meet men and want to have sex without getting married.  They used the age of consent to push their social agenda.  That's why to this day there are still states which have exemptions in their ages of consent if the parents consent, or if the couple are married. 

After that, the age of consent was fiddled around with to discriminate against homosexuals.  Ages of consent were made different for different depending on the genders of the partners and the acts performed.  It was a way of hurting gays where legislation couldn't be passed to ban such activities entirely.  The famous Stonewall riots were partially a response to this kind of discrimination. 

The age of consent has never been the well-reasoned compromise between the twin noble ideals of individual sexual liberty and the protection of the vulnerable that its supporters claim it to be.  The age of consent is a historical accident built on a foundation of social mores our culture rejected long ago, and discrimination that even the bigots of our day at least pretend to be ashamed of. 

It's long past time we wrote a law that reflects what informed consent actually means.  Long past time we actually had the reasoned discourse that everyone who blindly accepts the age of consent as it stands assumed happened at some unspecified point in the past. 

The Origin of Pedophiles

Let's start by defining our terms. A pedophile is an adult who is sexually attracted to prepubescent children. For those of you just joining us at this blog, I am a pedophile.

People have been putting forward ideas about why we exist for ages. Usually with the idea that if they know our origin, they can get to the business of snuffing us out of existence once and for all. Still, we can't just halt the advancement of human knowledge because genocidal monsters would attempt to make use of it. Better to just recognize that's going to be their intent and press forward with science aware of that risk, in my opinion.

The reason we know as little as we do about pedophilia's origin ties into the fact that there is a vocal minority intent on murdering us in the streets. It's the same reason that the interesting theories on the origin of homosexuality have come about only very recently. Because it's only very recently that homosexuals could participate in such research without putting their lives in danger.

All the current science relating to the origin and nature of pedophilia is hindered by the fact that the samples are heavily biased. Even when researchers take care to utilize phalometric devices in an attempt to confirm that the child molesters they've got in their prison sample are actually attracted to children, they're still dealing with individuals with complicating differences from the general population, and unknown sample biases that will differentiate them from the general prison population outside their sexual response. Of course, that's when the researchers bother to notice that pedophiles and child molesters aren't the same thing, which is not as common as you'd expect for people explicitly conducting research in this area.

Lay psychology using terms like "cycle of abuse" is a particular bad offender in terms of conflating pedophiles with child molesters. One can make an argument for or against "cycle of abuse" as an explanation for some child molesters, but acting as though it has anything to do with the origin of pedophilia is misguided at best. For those of you fond of anecdotes, I'm a pedophile, and was never molested.

Identifying a genetic connection is difficult with current sampling techniques, given all the noise involved with trying to tease out closeted sexual orientations and using prison samples. One of my family members is in prison on child pornography charges (though given what counts as child pornography, no guarantee that has anything to do with pedophilia). Might be coincidence, which is why anecdotes aren't data, but it is enough to make me lean in that direction in the absence of good evidence.

But really, the bottom line is, we'll likely never have good answers as to why pedophiles exist until it's safe enough for us to come out en-mass. At that point, science can get to work doing the research and answering the interesting questions.