critique of stopitnow's anti-cp campaign

## critique of stopitnow's anti-cp campaign

#### 17 October 2015
from celibate pedophiles

### ethan edwards

| From the perspective of thinking clearly about complicated issues, there is a lot to criticize Ethan Edwards is the co-founder of Virtuous Pedophiles. Blog posts reflect his personal views, and are not statements from the organization. StopItNow's Anti-CP campaign is an online resource to help people take practical steps to stop using CP. As such, it is great. The fact that it is online and anonymous means people are more likely to access it, and avoid the shame and anxiety inherent in a telephone call of having to admit their attraction to a human being. Although tailored to the UK in terms of definitions of CP and consequences, the basic issues are applicable in any jurisdiction. I think it likely can provide help to people with a real problem. That said... from the perspective of thinking clearly about complicated issues, there is a lot to criticize in the material presented. In one section we are told just how extensive is the list of material the UK considers illegal. Assuming they are correct, it is a depressingly long list. "Access to any images of children is illegal if they are being accessed to satisfy sexual needs. This includes nude, semi-nude and clothed images of children, even if they arent depicting a sexual situation." This is about as close to defining a thought crime as it is possible to come. Of course ordinary parents are entitled to have multiple images of their clothed children. Yet if the courts determine that these same images are being "accessed to satisfy sexual needs", it is a crime. Perhaps this is restricted to looking at them while masturbating? Or perhaps not? How could that be proved in any case? UK law is not the responsibility of StopItNow, of course. But how it is presented is. We can wonder what the boundaries are of laws that are enforced and those that are not. In the US, speed limits are routinely ignored (so routinely ignored that to obey them often creates a slow-moving traffic safety hazard). Perhaps StopItNow casting a very wide net is helpful in convincing people to stop looking at material. Another possible effect is that they will throw their hands up and figure it is hopeless. They already have viewed pictures of kids on the beach in bathing suits, so they are on the police's list already. Might as well just look at the hardcore stuff. That would be very unfortunate. From what I have heard, the police have so many cases to handle that they restrict their attention to people who have downloaded hardcore, indisputable CP. They are detected by the digital signatures on a large library of known pictures of this type. Police are unlikely to start an investigation based on the downloading of a series of pictures of fully clothed children or those in bathing suits. I think there are vital distinctions to be made. A person is at far less legal risk from relatively innocent pictures than from the hardcore. When people stop smoking, intermediate steps are often called for — a nicotine patch, for instance. This step-by-step approach should be considered for CP viewing as well. And if a person never gives up nicotine patches, they have still spared themselves almost all the adverse health consequences of smoking. This is in a section with the title "No Grey Area": "Uncertainty about a childs age: As an adult, you will be able to clearly identify who is a child and who is an adult. There is no grey area here. If there is ANY DOUBT, do not access the images." I as an adult would have a great deal of trouble being certain that any person under 30 is more than a mature 17 years old. It is just flat-out false to say there is no gray area. If they mean to say, "Always Play It Safe", then that is a coherent message. But this implies that no one should look at pornography with the under-30 folks who are in the vast majority of adult pornography. Since clothed images are also cause for concern, large swaths of mainstream advertising should be assumed to be CP. Ordinary folks will be fine, presumably, but if there is any evidence you think of kids sexually, then to be safe, you should have no pictures of anyone without gray hair or visibly sagging flesh. It seems like vast segments of ordinary everyday material is illegal, but not to worry — we should trust the authorities to only prosecute the people who in their opinion deserve it — maybe the people they don't like. You can wonder if you live under the rule of law any more. This may be a criticism of the British legal system or how it is portrayed by the StopItNow program. In terms of clear thinking, it is worth distinguishing (1) what is illegal, (2) what is harmful, and (3) what is immoral. I will leave out consideration of what is immoral, as they are particular to individuals' own moral sense. An embedded video of "justifications people use when looking at CP" argues that looking at pictures of past child abuse is an abuse of the child. Now the focus has already shifted from legality to harm. Harm is a matter of scientific fact. . Even if it were valid, this harm only applies to pictures of children who are engaged in sexual activities — yet StopItNow has told us of a far larger set of images that are illegal — including innocent pictures of clothed children, pictures of scantily clad children that parents routinely take, and manga and other "virtual" CP where no children are involved at all. The video also says, "Viewing sexual images of children creates demand for more to be made." Clear-minded investigators know this to be almost totally false. In the modern era, there is no money trail from consumer to producer — most viewers aren't paying anything anyway. According to the highly respected researcher Michael Seto, only 1/4 of CP producers distribute the content they produce. Whatever minute effect an extra tick to a "hit" counter can possibly have, it can have absolutely no effect on 3/4 of CP producers. This video then shifts from these highly questionable points of fact to the entirely sensible idea that there IS help available — and they are to be commended for providing that help. The presentation then goes to s. No major issues there. It is not the fault of StopItNow if the legal consequences in the UK (as in most other countries) are far out of proportion to any harm from the crime (simple possession). Then it proceeds to "Consequences For Me". This section is fine, because it is inviting people to decide for themselves whether those consequences apply to their particular case. For some people there might be none. There are pedophiles with no relationship partner who are morally and emotionally untroubled by what they are doing and whose CP access does not interfere with other life priorities. I would likely be in violation of UK law interpreted as including a sweeping prohibition on looking at ANY pictures for sexual interest. Fortunately I am in the US. If I were in the UK, I still might be highly motivated to stop because of the legal risk. I might not, however, if I thought the law would not be enforced on such borderline cases. I also might not if I thought there was no point — since I have the past history, I can't escape criminal responsibility. I have heard no evidence that someone having stopped viewing illegal images on their own before police investigation begins entitles them to more lenient treatment. The next major section of the StopItNow course is . It deals for instance with people using the internet too much. This is fine, though I note that changes in this behavior could be useful to some people entirely separate from CP. People may suffer consequences in their lives for too much internet activity with entirely legal subjects. The following subjects seem to be mostly about how to change, and are entirely a good thing. I have no problem with them. Setting aside all my objections, I think the StopItNow resource can be of real practical benefit. An awful lot of men do look at hardcore CP, it does put them at serious legal risk and it does influence their lives negatively in other ways. StopItNow's online resource seems like a great resource to help them stop. An even clearer benefit will accrue to those who can manage never to start looking at CP in the first place. 10/21/2015 Pedophilic Attraction For Squeamish Dummies The first step in sympathy and acceptance of pedophilia is the idea that a large proportion of pedophiles do not molest children and never will molest children. A large subset of us pose no a danger. Even once that point is past, lots of people have reactions like, "Ewwww!", "Yuck!", "How can you be attracted to raping kids?" Some pedophiles do have a crudely felt and expressed attraction to kids. The equivalent for ordinary guys are the ones who mutter to each other, "Wow, what a nice piece of ass! I'd sure like to f*** her!" I think such men are rarely rapists, partly for fear of getting caught and punished. But the vast majority also wouldn't rape a woman because however gruff their talk, they know it's wrong and wouldn't hurt a woman that way. Most pedophiles with crudely felt attractions are the same. There are exceptions in both cases, and both are enormously distressing — sexual abuse of either children or adult women. My main concern in this post are attractions that are felt more finely. And I'd like to concentrate first on the teenage years, when sexual attraction is felt most strongly and perhaps most purely, and where almost all of us start out having no previous sexual experience. I believe it is quite common for a girl to reach an age where boys are just amazingly interesting, where they make her heart beat faster and make her tongue-tied, where nonetheless the idea of such a boy sticking his penis into her vagina is gross and disgusting. My intuition is that boys are less likely to feel such a mismatch or to admit it, but I suspect it happens too. It is rare today in the west for teenagers to be ignorant of the mechanics of sex, but it has certainly happened with greater frequency in other times and places. Girls and boys alike in such situations nonetheless feel those same feelings of fascination with the other sex — of strong crushes that really are sexual — with no idea how it would be consummated. Though I have less knowledge on the point, lesbian and gay teens (who know the basics of heterosexual sex) will also feel this fascination or crush for someone of the same sex, but it will often coexist with a feeling of ickiness at just how same-sex sex is done. Giving oral sex? For boys, giving or receiving anal sex? The attraction to the person can coexist with uneasiness about how sex would actually work. And finally, sensitive men and women of all ages will often look at or consider an attractive partner, attending to personality, voice, face, how they carry themselves as well as their body. They often feel what qualifies as a sexual attraction. That feeling is often going to exist independently of thinking of the other person's sex organs and how exciting it would be to have sex. We also have one older ideal of a man's romantic love — of adoring a woman, loving her so much that the idea of actual sex is not what they would want at all. Nonetheless, this is a manifestation of a sexual attraction. In all these cases, we can see an attraction to the partner as a whole person. Consideration of the sex act comes later, if it comes at all. Many pedophiles feel exactly the same way. For me, a 6-year-old girl can take my breath away. I felt that way about such girls until I was over 50 without ever realizing there was a sexual component to my attraction. But I still was a pedophile — I had a crush on the girl. Now I realize there is a sexual component, and later, when I am alone, I might have a satisfying sexual fantasy about her. When I am with her, I am aware that any sexual expression is completely out of the question and don't experience the attraction as arousal. Other pedophiles may feel the sexual attraction more directly, but it is still often a two-step process. Step one: Here's a child, he or she is sexually attractive as a person. That's a pedophilic attraction. Step two: How could this be consummated sexually? It can't be in any ethical way. End of story — no sexual abuse. Ordinary men may feel a sexual attraction to a great many women. The vast majority of them are unavailable. A sexual advance would be rejected. The men might fantasize about such women later while masturbating, but are they having fantasies of rape? Not at all. They simple imagine that the woman IS interested and consenting. Such a transformation in fantasy is just as easy for a pedophile. Hopefully you non-pedophile readers remember what it was like when you first looked at someone of your preferred sex and felt that excitement that was the first sign of your sexual orientation. You might be hard-pressed to explain, justify, or prove just why you find that sex of person attractive as opposed to the other one. Most people are not bisexual. Some like women. Some like men. They can't both be correct in an objective sense as to why that sex is attractive and the other is not. It's just how they're made. Pedophiles feel that way about children. And hopefully that's something you could consider without as much of a "yuck" reaction. About the author: Ethan Edwards is a pseudonym. I am a pedophile, always celibate, and I have never seen child pornography. My attraction is strongest to girls around 4 years old, but I am also attracted to girls and women up through their 30s or beyond. Now in my late 60s, I'm divorced and living alone. I was married for over 10 years and was heavily involved with raising my 3 daughters. For most of my career I was a successful software engineer. I am very unusual for a pedophile in that I didn't realize that I was one until I was in my 50s—but it was there all along. I am angry that we all must remain silent or risk losing everything. That was my mindset when I co-founded Virtuous Pedophiles in 2012. I soon learned of the the terror of the typical pedophile who realizes as a teenager that his attraction isn't going to go away, who has nowhere to turn for help. The injustice I am most passionate about is the harsh legal penalties imposed on pedophiles who passively view illegal images of children. I stepped down from my role as a director of Virtuous Pedophiles early in 2024 and am delighted to pass the mantle on to a younger generation. This content was taken from Ethan's longstanding blog, Celibate Pedophiles. Some of the titles and taglines have been edited for their inclusion at thepword. You can see an earlier version of the blog at the wayback machine. |

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other relevant items

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what if ordinary porn was illegal? |  | please think of the children |  | hysteria vs analysis regarding cp images online
ethan edwards Looking at CP is illegal and can incur stiff penalties, and I would urge everyone to not look at it, for that reason if nothing else. Setting that aside, I think looking at CP is morally questionable. It would certainly make me personally uncomfortable. (I have never seen any). |  | anonymous An Objective Look at Pedophilia and The Stigma Surrounding It |  | ethan edwards On Sunday, September 29, the lead article in the New York Times was titled The Internet Is Overrun With Images of Child Sexual Abuse. What Went Wrong? I have a critique.

what if ordinary porn was illegal? ethan edwards Looking at CP is illegal and can incur stiff penalties, and I would urge everyone to not look at it, for that reason if nothing else. Setting that aside, I think looking at CP is morally questionable. It would certainly make me personally uncomfortable. (I have never seen any).
please think of the children anonymous An Objective Look at Pedophilia and The Stigma Surrounding It
hysteria vs analysis regarding cp images online ethan edwards On Sunday, September 29, the lead article in the New York Times was titled The Internet Is Overrun With Images of Child Sexual Abuse. What Went Wrong? I have a critique.