I've been bullied.
I know that there are those among you who will take the opportunity to use this fact against me, to use it to discount my arguments, and to attempt to perform the closest approximation of violence available through a text based exchange. I know that will be the result because that has been the result countless times I've brought this fact up. If you think any of that is going to silence me, I'll again direct you to reread the introductory post, and you ask yourself why you think you can hurt or intimidate me into silence after I opened with that.
Bullying is my top youth rights issue. More than voting, more than age of consent, more than property rights. So if I care so much about this one, why wait so long to post anything about it? Because the problems associated with this issue are so painfully obvious not one of them would need to be said out loud in a sane universe. And as such, this post requires I put into words basic human decency. And because the heartbreaking consequences of people so universally failing to act on this issue mean I tend to get omnicidal when I resume thinking about it, and that isn't conductive to careful, thoughtful analysis or persuasive writing.
Social rules are a series of lines we draw between ourselves and others. Boundaries need to be agreed upon, and thereafter respected. Much bullying is crossing one or two of those boundaries by just the tiniest degree. Once that's been done, the bully relies on the fact that the infraction was small to shield him/her from consequences, then does it again. And again. And again.
Bullying is not a single incident. It isn't one kid beating you up, or stealing from you. That isn't what it is at all. Bullying is a pattern of such incidents. Bullying is a prolonged campaign of physical, psychological, and social attacks, each individually below the threshold that the authorities would care about, but collectively adding up to be too much for the victim to handle. Bullying is slow torture, and needs to be treated as such.
So much advice we give kids fails to take this pattern into account. We tell them to "tell an adult", but when a kid comes to an adult authority figure with a minor complaint, the adult is frustrated at the kid's inability to deal with something so minor. So that adult says "just ignore it", not recognizing that this is a pattern, perpetrated by someone who will delight in the victim bottling up their obvious discomfort as they proceed to escalate the violence while the kid still has that "just ignore it" advice ringing in their ears.
Which brings us to the "fight back, bullies are cowards" advice. There's only one healthy response to a prolonged campaign of torture that's being actively ignored by the authorities. Whatever it takes to make it stop. And a victim can't simply match like for like. Repaying each small violation with a small violation of their own against their tormenter. The tormenter will simply delight in their ability to provoke this new response. So when we tell the victim to fight back, the only answer for them is to make it stop by any means necessary. If that means someone ends up hospitalized, so be it, if that means someone ends up dead because the authorites refused to intervene when the situation was minor. So. Be. It.
That's why everyone knows that it's the victims of bullying who get into trouble and the bullies themselves are left to roam free. Bullies know exactly where the line is between their victim being comfortable and not, and they also know exactly where the line is where their activity is too minor for any single incident to be responded to meaningfully by the authorities. When a victim fights back, they don't keep that line in mind, because they've learned that the authorities aren't an issue, because the authorities have been ignoring months, or years of torture right in front of their eyes.
Of course, it isn't always that way. Sometimes we have a real simple case for the authorities to handle. A good old fashioned beating incident where the victim is attacked and left bloody. And again the authorities fail. What happened here is called "assault and battery". It is a criminal offense. The appropriate response to it is a criminal trial and criminal penalties.
That is the social contract every citizen is included in, adult or child. Instead, authority figures in the school cover it up. They minimize the incident to the parents, using phrases like "boys will be boys". They pressure parents not to press charges. And they again teach the victim that their pain will be ignored, and that the bully can act with impunity. That the social contract does not protect them, and will only ever be used to hurt them.
Shootings aren't a cry for attention. The victims who snap and start shooting people don't want attention. They know attention won't fix anything. They've been taught that the social contract doesn't apply to them, and that the only way that anything will ever change for the better is if they, on their own, make it impossible for things to continue as they had.
What these people are doing is solving problems in a perfectly natural way. Without the social contract, this is the standard way human beings settle disputes. We created the social contract in order to prevent incidents like this. That is the only reason we have the social contract.
Given how utterly useless the social contract has been in protecting tormented minors who are forced, day in and day out, to spend the majority of their waking hours in close proximity to their tormentors while authority figures ignore and minimize the abuse they're suffering, you should all feel blessed that shootings are as unfathomably rare as they are.
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Circumcision
I am a man, and I was circumcised at birth. It was done for "hygiene" reasons as a default by the hospital. This was approved of my my parents. I have experienced no observable dysfunction, and am quite happy with the state of my genitals.
None of that makes what happened to me right.
I'm a big fan of the concept of informed consent. The idea that you don't do anything to another person's body without their informed consent is one of the most rock solid ideas in the whole of medical and sexual ethics.
But what to do when a decision has to be made and the person can't give informed consent? Maybe they're in a coma, maybe they're mentally unsound. That's when you have someone designated to make the decision on the behalf of the patient. For children, that decision often ends up in the hands of the parents in these circumstances.
Most of the time, however, the default when the person can't provide informed consent is that you do nothing and wait until they are able. The only time it's ethically justified to act without informed consent is when there is urgency and there is no expectation that the person will become able to provide informed consent until it's too late.
Circumcision has no urgency to it. It can be performed on an adult who can provide informed consent. It can be performed on a child who has demonstrated the full understanding of what he is consenting to. To perform this procedure on an unconsenting infant is thus completely unacceptable, for exactly the same reason it would be completely unacceptable for a parent to consent to have their infant molested.
I don't hate my parents for being misled into thinking this procedure was in my best interests, and I don't hate my body because of the nonconsensual cosmetic surgery that was performed on me as an infant.That doesn't make what happened right, and the fact that it happened to me with so few consequences is no justification for subjecting other children to it.
There's a genuine human impulse to say "I had it rough, so I'm not going to let you have it any easier." This impulse impedes progress and only perpetuates a cycle of injustice. Fortunately there is another genuine human impulse to see to it that our children have it better than we did.
None of that makes what happened to me right.
I'm a big fan of the concept of informed consent. The idea that you don't do anything to another person's body without their informed consent is one of the most rock solid ideas in the whole of medical and sexual ethics.
But what to do when a decision has to be made and the person can't give informed consent? Maybe they're in a coma, maybe they're mentally unsound. That's when you have someone designated to make the decision on the behalf of the patient. For children, that decision often ends up in the hands of the parents in these circumstances.
Most of the time, however, the default when the person can't provide informed consent is that you do nothing and wait until they are able. The only time it's ethically justified to act without informed consent is when there is urgency and there is no expectation that the person will become able to provide informed consent until it's too late.
Circumcision has no urgency to it. It can be performed on an adult who can provide informed consent. It can be performed on a child who has demonstrated the full understanding of what he is consenting to. To perform this procedure on an unconsenting infant is thus completely unacceptable, for exactly the same reason it would be completely unacceptable for a parent to consent to have their infant molested.
I don't hate my parents for being misled into thinking this procedure was in my best interests, and I don't hate my body because of the nonconsensual cosmetic surgery that was performed on me as an infant.That doesn't make what happened right, and the fact that it happened to me with so few consequences is no justification for subjecting other children to it.
There's a genuine human impulse to say "I had it rough, so I'm not going to let you have it any easier." This impulse impedes progress and only perpetuates a cycle of injustice. Fortunately there is another genuine human impulse to see to it that our children have it better than we did.
Saturday, December 15, 2012
Nice Guys, Bad Boys, and Rape Culture
Human beings are social creatures. We build our identities based on our relationships with the people around us. To the extent that our biology dictates anything, it dictates that we will care about what other people think.
Shunning and shaming have been used to enforce social and legal standards throughout human history and across cultural lines. Solitary confinement of prisoners has been rightly called torture, and permanent brain damage has been documented as a result of it.
It will come as news to no one that men and women get different social messages when it comes to sex. Men are told to have it, or else. Women are told not to have it, or else.
That "or else" is not a trivial thing. No one will beat you, imprison you, murder you, or otherwise do physical violence to you if you don't conform to these ideals (usually), but that doesn't translate into the ability to break from your assigned role without consequences. And as I noted, the consequences of social ostracism are very real for social creatures like human beings.
The more observant of you will have noted that the gendered expectations above are contradictory. Men are supposed to have sex with women, but women aren't supposed to have sex with men. It's impossible for both these outcomes to be happening simultaneously. No matter which way it comes down, someone will end up hurt and shunned.
In that context, I think I have an explanation for that old chestnut, "nice guys finish last" as it applies to dating.
Women want to have sex, but are told repeatedly that doing so will have negative social consequences. The term slut shaming has been used in feminist circles to describe this very real and not at all unreasonable concern women have. By consenting to sex, a woman opens herself up to shaming and ostracism.
Pickup artists figured this out a long time ago, and they've picked up on how women manage to have sex while attempting to shield themselves from the worst consequences of slut shaming. They never unambiguously consent to sex. Pickup artists council giving a woman plausible deniability, so that she'll be able to say "it just happened" when all is said and done, so she won't have to deal with the social consequences, many of them internalized, that come when she chooses to consent to sex.
Now, that's a problem for nice guys. Nice guys care about sexual consent. They care whether the other person is uncomfortable, and will always seek explicit, unambiguous consent at every stage of a relationship. And as a result, they're unintentionally denying women the ability to pretend that "it just happened."
Bad boys, of course, provide all the plausible deniability a woman could ask for. They demonstrate at every stage of the relationship that they do not respect other people's boundaries, so a woman with one never has to consent to anything.
It's a tidy arrangement, but for one simple fact. Sex without consent is rape, and women employing this strategy are never having explicitly consensual sex, by design. I can think of no clearer an example of rape culture than the fact that our standard relationship model involves women putting up boundaries explicitly so that men will push through them.
Meanwhile, nice guys are being told they're defective.
Remember those messages men get that tell them just as strongly and just as often that they are supposed to be having sex? So they start asking questions about why they are failing to get sex, often aggressively, because they are being shunned and shamed. Men aren't inherently sexually aggressive beasts any more than women are asexual ice queens. We're both trying to conform to social expectations because there are very real consequences to us when we don't.
So what answers do nice guys get? They get told about confidence, that jerks are confident, so they're more attractive than a nice guy who's feeling like a failure. But that's wrong. It isn't a lie. It's just wrong.
You look at a nice guy and try to see what's wrong with him, and you don't see any flaws. He's decent, caring, sensitive, and has his shit together. But you have to tell him something because what he's doing obviously isn't working, and you are a decent person and don't want to see him continue to be hurt by his romantic failures.
You look at what possible positive traits he could be lacking, and the only thing you can find is that maybe he's lacking in confidence. So you tell him to work on himself, try to be happy alone so that confidence can build up and then he'll naturally be attractive because that was the only thing you could perceive that might be even slightly wrong with him.
But that perception that nice guys lack confidence is rooted in two errors. First is that lack of confidence is an effect, not a cause. He lacks confidence because he's being subjected to shaming and ostracism for failing to conform to his gender role. He's experiencing exactly the same social pressure that you try to avoid when you worry over being called a slut. That's what is eating away at his self esteem, and the only way out of that trap is to either conform to his gender role and succeed at having sex, or to recognize the gender role for what it is and reject it outright.
The second error is mistaking a willingness to push through boundaries as "confidence". Being unwilling to push past boundaries and make someone else uncomfortable isn't lack of confidence. That's respecting the other person as a human being, and accepting the words and signals telling you that your advances aren't wanted.
So, with all that mess, what is a nice guy to do?
First off, you're a decent human being. Don't change that fact. Yes, pushing past women's boundaries in order to let them avoid slut shaming is what they want, but letting them play that game only makes it harder for them to come to own their sexual choices and desires.
Second, you're a decent human being. Decent human beings don't slut shame. When a woman agrees to have sex and owns that decision, never make her feel like she did something wrong. When someone else makes a woman feel like she did something wrong by agreeing to sex, that person is part of the problem, and needs to be called out not just because he's being an asshole and hurting that woman, but also because he's perpetuating the system that makes women think they need to be able to say "it just happened".
Third, and this is going to be the hardest part for decent human beings. Don't let a woman say "it just happened." When a woman uses those words, I recommend (and have used) the following script:
W: It just happened.
M: Were you raped?
W: No...
M: Then it didn't "just happen." You made a choice, and there's nothing wrong with that.
I realize that this is hard to say, but the truth is, you're doing a woman no favors by letting her hold on to her deniability with you. Because whenever you're told "it just happened," it's because she's afraid that if she told you she chose to have sex, you would slut shame her. This script tells her that you are not going to slut shame her, and that she doesn't need to pretend.
This won't get you sex.
That isn't what the goal is. You're a decent human being. You will feel like shit if you start pushing past boundaries and having sex without explicit consent. If you were willing to do that, you wouldn't be a nice guy having this problem in the first place.
This is about confronting the underlying problem that leads to all those boundaries being put up in the first place. The goal is to get to the point where women have the confidence to say they want sex when they do.
You want to have sex with women who want to have sex with you and aren't afraid to say so. Pushing past boundaries, no matter why they were put up won't get you that. Breaking down the cultural expectations that are telling women they're wrong to want sex with you might.
Shunning and shaming have been used to enforce social and legal standards throughout human history and across cultural lines. Solitary confinement of prisoners has been rightly called torture, and permanent brain damage has been documented as a result of it.
It will come as news to no one that men and women get different social messages when it comes to sex. Men are told to have it, or else. Women are told not to have it, or else.
That "or else" is not a trivial thing. No one will beat you, imprison you, murder you, or otherwise do physical violence to you if you don't conform to these ideals (usually), but that doesn't translate into the ability to break from your assigned role without consequences. And as I noted, the consequences of social ostracism are very real for social creatures like human beings.
The more observant of you will have noted that the gendered expectations above are contradictory. Men are supposed to have sex with women, but women aren't supposed to have sex with men. It's impossible for both these outcomes to be happening simultaneously. No matter which way it comes down, someone will end up hurt and shunned.
In that context, I think I have an explanation for that old chestnut, "nice guys finish last" as it applies to dating.
Women want to have sex, but are told repeatedly that doing so will have negative social consequences. The term slut shaming has been used in feminist circles to describe this very real and not at all unreasonable concern women have. By consenting to sex, a woman opens herself up to shaming and ostracism.
Pickup artists figured this out a long time ago, and they've picked up on how women manage to have sex while attempting to shield themselves from the worst consequences of slut shaming. They never unambiguously consent to sex. Pickup artists council giving a woman plausible deniability, so that she'll be able to say "it just happened" when all is said and done, so she won't have to deal with the social consequences, many of them internalized, that come when she chooses to consent to sex.
Now, that's a problem for nice guys. Nice guys care about sexual consent. They care whether the other person is uncomfortable, and will always seek explicit, unambiguous consent at every stage of a relationship. And as a result, they're unintentionally denying women the ability to pretend that "it just happened."
Bad boys, of course, provide all the plausible deniability a woman could ask for. They demonstrate at every stage of the relationship that they do not respect other people's boundaries, so a woman with one never has to consent to anything.
It's a tidy arrangement, but for one simple fact. Sex without consent is rape, and women employing this strategy are never having explicitly consensual sex, by design. I can think of no clearer an example of rape culture than the fact that our standard relationship model involves women putting up boundaries explicitly so that men will push through them.
Meanwhile, nice guys are being told they're defective.
Remember those messages men get that tell them just as strongly and just as often that they are supposed to be having sex? So they start asking questions about why they are failing to get sex, often aggressively, because they are being shunned and shamed. Men aren't inherently sexually aggressive beasts any more than women are asexual ice queens. We're both trying to conform to social expectations because there are very real consequences to us when we don't.
So what answers do nice guys get? They get told about confidence, that jerks are confident, so they're more attractive than a nice guy who's feeling like a failure. But that's wrong. It isn't a lie. It's just wrong.
You look at a nice guy and try to see what's wrong with him, and you don't see any flaws. He's decent, caring, sensitive, and has his shit together. But you have to tell him something because what he's doing obviously isn't working, and you are a decent person and don't want to see him continue to be hurt by his romantic failures.
You look at what possible positive traits he could be lacking, and the only thing you can find is that maybe he's lacking in confidence. So you tell him to work on himself, try to be happy alone so that confidence can build up and then he'll naturally be attractive because that was the only thing you could perceive that might be even slightly wrong with him.
But that perception that nice guys lack confidence is rooted in two errors. First is that lack of confidence is an effect, not a cause. He lacks confidence because he's being subjected to shaming and ostracism for failing to conform to his gender role. He's experiencing exactly the same social pressure that you try to avoid when you worry over being called a slut. That's what is eating away at his self esteem, and the only way out of that trap is to either conform to his gender role and succeed at having sex, or to recognize the gender role for what it is and reject it outright.
The second error is mistaking a willingness to push through boundaries as "confidence". Being unwilling to push past boundaries and make someone else uncomfortable isn't lack of confidence. That's respecting the other person as a human being, and accepting the words and signals telling you that your advances aren't wanted.
So, with all that mess, what is a nice guy to do?
First off, you're a decent human being. Don't change that fact. Yes, pushing past women's boundaries in order to let them avoid slut shaming is what they want, but letting them play that game only makes it harder for them to come to own their sexual choices and desires.
Second, you're a decent human being. Decent human beings don't slut shame. When a woman agrees to have sex and owns that decision, never make her feel like she did something wrong. When someone else makes a woman feel like she did something wrong by agreeing to sex, that person is part of the problem, and needs to be called out not just because he's being an asshole and hurting that woman, but also because he's perpetuating the system that makes women think they need to be able to say "it just happened".
Third, and this is going to be the hardest part for decent human beings. Don't let a woman say "it just happened." When a woman uses those words, I recommend (and have used) the following script:
W: It just happened.
M: Were you raped?
W: No...
M: Then it didn't "just happen." You made a choice, and there's nothing wrong with that.
I realize that this is hard to say, but the truth is, you're doing a woman no favors by letting her hold on to her deniability with you. Because whenever you're told "it just happened," it's because she's afraid that if she told you she chose to have sex, you would slut shame her. This script tells her that you are not going to slut shame her, and that she doesn't need to pretend.
This won't get you sex.
That isn't what the goal is. You're a decent human being. You will feel like shit if you start pushing past boundaries and having sex without explicit consent. If you were willing to do that, you wouldn't be a nice guy having this problem in the first place.
This is about confronting the underlying problem that leads to all those boundaries being put up in the first place. The goal is to get to the point where women have the confidence to say they want sex when they do.
You want to have sex with women who want to have sex with you and aren't afraid to say so. Pushing past boundaries, no matter why they were put up won't get you that. Breaking down the cultural expectations that are telling women they're wrong to want sex with you might.
Friday, December 14, 2012
Attraction to Virgins
I see people who are interested in having a virgin sex partner being mistreated a lot. There are a few different camps of these people.
The first, of course, are those who automatically assume anyone who expresses such a preference is a religious fanatic who will attack the speaker for not conforming to the tenets of their religion. They mistreat those who express a preference for virgin partners as a kind of preemptive attack. Doing unto others before they get the chance to do unto you.
For those who don't automatically assume a religious motivation (or who have already had such a motivation explicitly denied), there are those who still treat it as an attack. They've received so many messages judging them for sexually open behavior, they're certain anyone who expresses such a preference intends to look down on them or attack them for holding a different view.
Next we have the group who treats such an interest as a sign of immaturity. Much like the previous group, they've seen the social messages, but they treat it as a point of pride that they've rejected them. These people view anyone who would express a preference in line with what the mainstream message tells them is "correct" as someone who's too stupid or immature to make their own choices.
After them, we have those who assume anyone interested in a virgin is abusive. They assume that the attraction is all about finding someone vulnerable who will put up with physical and emotional abuse or just plain bad sex without complaint because they don't know any better.
Then we have the people who just plain don't get the appeal, and so attack others because it's human nature to hate what we don't understand. "Why would you want to be virgins on your wedding night? The sex will be lousy because neither of you know what you're doing yet."
For the sake of those genuinely interested in understanding the point of view instead of looking for an excuse to attack, I'm going to try to explain the appeal.
People care about firsts. A baby's first word is important to those who care about that child, even though that's the least articulate that child will ever be, even if all the words that come after will be clearer and convey more meaning. That fist word means something. It's a dividing point where what comes after will be different from everything that has come before. Likewise the first steps are things parents want to catch on film, memories they cherish, even if they're the clumsiest steps that child will ever take.
The first day of school is painful for a lot of parents because that's the first first that the parent can't be there for, can't share with the child.
By the time we're in the process of selecting lovers, partners, spouses, most of those firsts have already passed for both of you. Saving one first to share with a lover is giving them a chance to be there for an important moment, where what comes after won't be the same as what came before.
For those interested in a life partner, someone who you will care about above all others, and who will care about you in the same way, being able to share a first is a means of being a part of their history from that point forward. You may not be able to be there for their other firsts, but wanting to be a part of as many as possible is something a lot of us value, no matter what religion or lack thereof.
The first, of course, are those who automatically assume anyone who expresses such a preference is a religious fanatic who will attack the speaker for not conforming to the tenets of their religion. They mistreat those who express a preference for virgin partners as a kind of preemptive attack. Doing unto others before they get the chance to do unto you.
For those who don't automatically assume a religious motivation (or who have already had such a motivation explicitly denied), there are those who still treat it as an attack. They've received so many messages judging them for sexually open behavior, they're certain anyone who expresses such a preference intends to look down on them or attack them for holding a different view.
Next we have the group who treats such an interest as a sign of immaturity. Much like the previous group, they've seen the social messages, but they treat it as a point of pride that they've rejected them. These people view anyone who would express a preference in line with what the mainstream message tells them is "correct" as someone who's too stupid or immature to make their own choices.
After them, we have those who assume anyone interested in a virgin is abusive. They assume that the attraction is all about finding someone vulnerable who will put up with physical and emotional abuse or just plain bad sex without complaint because they don't know any better.
Then we have the people who just plain don't get the appeal, and so attack others because it's human nature to hate what we don't understand. "Why would you want to be virgins on your wedding night? The sex will be lousy because neither of you know what you're doing yet."
For the sake of those genuinely interested in understanding the point of view instead of looking for an excuse to attack, I'm going to try to explain the appeal.
People care about firsts. A baby's first word is important to those who care about that child, even though that's the least articulate that child will ever be, even if all the words that come after will be clearer and convey more meaning. That fist word means something. It's a dividing point where what comes after will be different from everything that has come before. Likewise the first steps are things parents want to catch on film, memories they cherish, even if they're the clumsiest steps that child will ever take.
The first day of school is painful for a lot of parents because that's the first first that the parent can't be there for, can't share with the child.
By the time we're in the process of selecting lovers, partners, spouses, most of those firsts have already passed for both of you. Saving one first to share with a lover is giving them a chance to be there for an important moment, where what comes after won't be the same as what came before.
For those interested in a life partner, someone who you will care about above all others, and who will care about you in the same way, being able to share a first is a means of being a part of their history from that point forward. You may not be able to be there for their other firsts, but wanting to be a part of as many as possible is something a lot of us value, no matter what religion or lack thereof.
Sunday, December 9, 2012
The Oppression Olympics
The perfect is the enemy of the good.
We all see different injustices in the world. And we all have the right and responsibility to speak out against those injustices that we see, and that are important to us. I care a great deal about the social and political disenfranchisement of minor children in the western world.
There are other problems in the world. Wars, genocides, slavery, rape, starvation, epidemic diseases, as well as workplace sexual harassment, artistic censorship, and outdated traffic laws being enforced as a revenue instrument.
We are allowed to talk about what matters to us as individuals, even if what matters to us isn't "the worst problem in the world" by whatever standard you'd care to measure it. We're allowed to push for change on a "less important" issue even if we've never done anything to attend to a "more important" issue. And we should all feel absolutely zero shame in doing so.
Time spent figuring out what "the worst problem in the world" is, is time not spent fixing any problem. Fixing even the most trivial problem in the world is more important than wastefully arguing about who's problem is worse. Worse, by trying to draw people who are trying to fix a "minor problem" into that wasteful argument and force them to justify the time and resources they're spending on an issue, you're impeding someone who's trying to fix a problem, and making that problem harder to fix.
People can bring different levels of commitment and effort to different causes depending on how they feel about those causes and how those causes have impacted their lives. I can tirelessly advocate for youth rights even in the face of entrenched opposition, but my resolve gets drained quickly speaking out against a particular war.
That isn't to say we shouldn't try to convince one another that our causes matter, or that we shouldn't oppose those advocating causes we believe are harmful or evil. I just think it's high time we acknowledge that when we're trying to make the world a better place, following our passions and advocating for causes that matter to us personally gets more done than telling each other how unimportant the other person's cause is.
We all see different injustices in the world. And we all have the right and responsibility to speak out against those injustices that we see, and that are important to us. I care a great deal about the social and political disenfranchisement of minor children in the western world.
There are other problems in the world. Wars, genocides, slavery, rape, starvation, epidemic diseases, as well as workplace sexual harassment, artistic censorship, and outdated traffic laws being enforced as a revenue instrument.
We are allowed to talk about what matters to us as individuals, even if what matters to us isn't "the worst problem in the world" by whatever standard you'd care to measure it. We're allowed to push for change on a "less important" issue even if we've never done anything to attend to a "more important" issue. And we should all feel absolutely zero shame in doing so.
Time spent figuring out what "the worst problem in the world" is, is time not spent fixing any problem. Fixing even the most trivial problem in the world is more important than wastefully arguing about who's problem is worse. Worse, by trying to draw people who are trying to fix a "minor problem" into that wasteful argument and force them to justify the time and resources they're spending on an issue, you're impeding someone who's trying to fix a problem, and making that problem harder to fix.
People can bring different levels of commitment and effort to different causes depending on how they feel about those causes and how those causes have impacted their lives. I can tirelessly advocate for youth rights even in the face of entrenched opposition, but my resolve gets drained quickly speaking out against a particular war.
That isn't to say we shouldn't try to convince one another that our causes matter, or that we shouldn't oppose those advocating causes we believe are harmful or evil. I just think it's high time we acknowledge that when we're trying to make the world a better place, following our passions and advocating for causes that matter to us personally gets more done than telling each other how unimportant the other person's cause is.
Friday, December 7, 2012
The Lies of Dr. Abel
"An estimated 88% of child molesters and 95% of molestations (one person, multiple acts) are committed by individuals who now or in the future will also meet criteria for pedophilia. Pedophilic child molesters on average commit 10 times more sexual acts against children than nonpedophilic child molesters."
The above statistics appear quite damning at first glance. Still, like many things in life, the first glance can be misleading. I decided to track down the source of these alarming statistics. At length, I found that they could all be traced back to a single study published in 2001 by one Gene G. Abel and one Nora Harlow.
http://www.childmolestationprevention.org/pdfs/study.pdf
Among its findings, as could be expected from the above statistics is, "Pedophilia is the most significant cause of child molestation."
This is in stark contrast to such statements as those of of FBI sex offender expert Kennith Lanning, which state that the exact inverse is true. Until I actually located Abel's study, I had no means of reconciling this apparent contradiction, but with it, locating the source of the discrepancy was easy.
The word "pedophile" when used as a psychiatric term, refers to an adult who is primarily sexually attracted to children. Dr. Abel, however, chose to redefine the term for the purposes of his study. Rather than refer to people who's primary sexual attraction is directed toward children, Dr. Abel took the term to refer to people who had engaged in sexual behaviors with children.
Because this obviously would have constituted 100% of his child molester population (by definition), Dr. Abel took the following corrective action, "To separate admitted child molesters who fit the pedophilic diagnostic criterion that behavior must have continued 'for more than six months,' we used length of time of the continuing behavior."
So in effect, what the 88% number Dr. Abel presented actually means (once one learns his unique definition for the word "pedophile") is that 88% of child molesters molest children over a period greater than six months. The 95% figure indicates that 95% of child molestations are committed by individuals who are molesting children over a period of greater than six months. The 10 times figure, thus tells us that child molesters who molest children over a time period greater than six months commit, on average, 10 times the number of sex acts as child molesters who's activities last a period shorter than six months.
In short, Dr. Abel's statistics have absolutely nothing to do with pedophilia. Rather Dr. Abel has demonstrated through his study that child molesters who molest for greater than six months tend to perform more molestations than child molesters who molest for less than six months, and that child molesters, in the vast majority do molest children for a period longer than six months.
The above statistics appear quite damning at first glance. Still, like many things in life, the first glance can be misleading. I decided to track down the source of these alarming statistics. At length, I found that they could all be traced back to a single study published in 2001 by one Gene G. Abel and one Nora Harlow.
http://www.childmolestationprevention.org/pdfs/study.pdf
Among its findings, as could be expected from the above statistics is, "Pedophilia is the most significant cause of child molestation."
This is in stark contrast to such statements as those of of FBI sex offender expert Kennith Lanning, which state that the exact inverse is true. Until I actually located Abel's study, I had no means of reconciling this apparent contradiction, but with it, locating the source of the discrepancy was easy.
The word "pedophile" when used as a psychiatric term, refers to an adult who is primarily sexually attracted to children. Dr. Abel, however, chose to redefine the term for the purposes of his study. Rather than refer to people who's primary sexual attraction is directed toward children, Dr. Abel took the term to refer to people who had engaged in sexual behaviors with children.
Because this obviously would have constituted 100% of his child molester population (by definition), Dr. Abel took the following corrective action, "To separate admitted child molesters who fit the pedophilic diagnostic criterion that behavior must have continued 'for more than six months,' we used length of time of the continuing behavior."
So in effect, what the 88% number Dr. Abel presented actually means (once one learns his unique definition for the word "pedophile") is that 88% of child molesters molest children over a period greater than six months. The 95% figure indicates that 95% of child molestations are committed by individuals who are molesting children over a period of greater than six months. The 10 times figure, thus tells us that child molesters who molest children over a time period greater than six months commit, on average, 10 times the number of sex acts as child molesters who's activities last a period shorter than six months.
In short, Dr. Abel's statistics have absolutely nothing to do with pedophilia. Rather Dr. Abel has demonstrated through his study that child molesters who molest for greater than six months tend to perform more molestations than child molesters who molest for less than six months, and that child molesters, in the vast majority do molest children for a period longer than six months.
Wednesday, December 5, 2012
A Simple Breakdown
Not only are pedophiles unlikely to rape children (in the same way heterosexual males are unlikely to rape women), but statistical evidence has shown that nonpedophiles are more than twice as likely to molest children than pedophiles are.
Don't believe me? I don't blame you. Here are the statistics.
FBI sex offender expert Kenneth Lanning stated in a 2001 interview that "About 90 percent [of child molesters] are so-called "situational child molesters" who capitalize on opportunities to molest children but don't necessarily prefer sex with children ... The 10 percent of child molesters who make up the second category are the bona fide "pedophiles," those who genuinely favor sex with children."
Here's the link to the interview:
http://web.archive.org/web/20030621002758/http://old.valleyadvocate.com/articles/pedophile.html
Lanning's figure is supported by various sources. Here is another source citing similar figures:
http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/nov2006/pedophile1.html#Occurrence_in_child_sex_offenders
Studies of adult arousability has shown that pedophiles make up as much as 20-33% of the adult male population. 20% is the lowest number I've seen, but I haven't seen the actual study purporting this number. I have seen, and can link to the study purporting the 33% figure.
http://www.ipce.info/ipceweb/Library/97-048_article.html
For those uninterested in reading the whole article, it was done using a number of volunteers, and measuring their arousal using a device attached to the penis as they were shown different materials. While 85% showed some arousal to pedophilic stimuli, in 33% of their test subjects, the arousal equaled or exceeded the arousal to adult stimuli.
Taking the conservative numbers together, the math works out as follows:
Pedophile molesters 10% < 90% Nonpedophile molesters
Pedophiles 20% < 80% Nonpedophiles
10/20 is then the proportion of pedophile molesters to pedophiles relative to the figure 90/80 that represents nonpedophile molesters to nonpedophiles
10/20 = .5 < 1.125 = 90/80
The proportion thus is 1 to 2.25, making a given nonpedophile more than twice as likely to molest a child as a given pedophile.
Don't believe me? I don't blame you. Here are the statistics.
FBI sex offender expert Kenneth Lanning stated in a 2001 interview that "About 90 percent [of child molesters] are so-called "situational child molesters" who capitalize on opportunities to molest children but don't necessarily prefer sex with children ... The 10 percent of child molesters who make up the second category are the bona fide "pedophiles," those who genuinely favor sex with children."
Here's the link to the interview:
http://web.archive.org/web/20030621002758/http://old.valleyadvocate.com/articles/pedophile.html
Lanning's figure is supported by various sources. Here is another source citing similar figures:
http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/nov2006/pedophile1.html#Occurrence_in_child_sex_offenders
Studies of adult arousability has shown that pedophiles make up as much as 20-33% of the adult male population. 20% is the lowest number I've seen, but I haven't seen the actual study purporting this number. I have seen, and can link to the study purporting the 33% figure.
http://www.ipce.info/ipceweb/Library/97-048_article.html
For those uninterested in reading the whole article, it was done using a number of volunteers, and measuring their arousal using a device attached to the penis as they were shown different materials. While 85% showed some arousal to pedophilic stimuli, in 33% of their test subjects, the arousal equaled or exceeded the arousal to adult stimuli.
Taking the conservative numbers together, the math works out as follows:
Pedophile molesters 10% < 90% Nonpedophile molesters
Pedophiles 20% < 80% Nonpedophiles
10/20 is then the proportion of pedophile molesters to pedophiles relative to the figure 90/80 that represents nonpedophile molesters to nonpedophiles
10/20 = .5 < 1.125 = 90/80
The proportion thus is 1 to 2.25, making a given nonpedophile more than twice as likely to molest a child as a given pedophile.
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