So the question I have it this: Does Reddit have some sort of powerful magnetic attraction to the pedophiles and pedophile defenders of the world, or is pedophilia and/or pedophile defense simply endemic amongst the young male tech geek demographic that’s so heavily overrepresented on Reddit?
This is a question that naturally sprung to my mind after reading a couple of recent posts in ShitRedditSays, documenting Reddit’s strange sympathy with the child porn enthusiasts of the world. A woman stands up on Reddit and declares herself a feminist? She’s a “bad person,” a “female supremacist,” an “utter piece of shit.” A man is jailed for possession of child porn? He’s being unjustly persecuted for a “victimless crime.”
Fxexular on ShitRedditSays has assembled a roundup of some the most disturbing comments in a thread devoted to the aforementioned man jailed for possession of CP. Amongst his finds:
Heavily upvoted comments comparing viewing of child porn to smoking weed and playing Grand Theft Auto.
A comment with 15 upvotes suggesting that the perp should only get “a stiff fine and a few weeks of community service … for a crime the judge himself probably committed half a dozen times on any given weekend.”
A comment with nearly two dozen upvotes lamenting that the child porn possessor is going to have his “life ruined over socially non-normative pictures. … this is a predictable outcome of a corrupt government which is obsessed with its own power.”
But these are just the tip of the pedo-defense iceberg. Take a look at the thread itself, where you will also find heavily upvoted comments from Redditors comparing the “persecution” of pedophiles to past persecution of gays and witches; an unintentionally ironic comment lamenting the cruel treatment of a perp who is “only 26” years old; and a comment making perhaps the strangest argument I think I may have ever seen anywhere about anything:
My core problem here, as a computer scientist, is that any photo he had is really a bunch of zeros and ones… which for anyone who is at all familiar with binary, is a number. Basically, by outlawing the storage of some form of data, we have said that it is illegal be in possession of certain numbers. Yes, these might be huge numbers that you don’t encounter in your daily life, but they are still simply numbers.
In a different thread on the same case, another Redditor gets 75 upvotes for comparing child-porn-possessing pedophiles with African-Americans in the era of the Civil Rights movement. Here’s the comment itself; here’s the ShitRedditSays thread discussing it. And here, for good measure, is the same commenter offering a Redditor who’s confessed to molesting his sister advice on how best to avoid prosecution.
Meanwhile, in an unrelated thread in Reddit’s Videos subreddit, pedophile (sorry, ephebophile) Redditors mount an all-out attack on a girl who had the temerity to complain about skeevy Redditors masturbating to pictures of herself she put in a private album on the internet when she was 14.
In ShitRedditSays, jamie11 collects together some of the creepiest comments, including these:
“Fuck yea she is developed AND judging by her smug smile, she is loving every second of this. Sure she says “OMG, so creepy herp derp” but in reality it is kind of a big EGO boost. EDIT: in b4 misogyny accusations!” [+7]
“She is an attention whore. She is really dumb. She will probably ultimately profit from this in the model/porn/coors girl industry.”[+10]
“Shes much hotter when shes quiet.” [+32]
The numbers in brackets indicate the numbers of upvotes.
Again, tip of the iceberg.
EDITED TO ADD: I hadn’t noticed before, but r/mensrights has its own discussion of the child porn case. It’s pretty much what you’d expect: Possessing child porn is just a “thought crime” that doesn’t hurt anyone.
The creepiest fellow of the lot is probably logrusmage, who offers this defense of the child porn possessors of the world:
consider that a majority of “kiddy porn” are pictures of sexually mature females taken by said females for boyfriends that got leaked on the internet or via text, where the female happens to be under the age of consent.
When someone points out that, um, the fact that these pictures are “leaked” means that the subjects of said pictures didn’t consent to them being put online (and, also, they are below the age of consent), logrusmage offers this rebuttal:
Consent is not needed for something that does not directly effect someone. Like looking at them. … Looking at a picture of someone does not require their consent.
Presumably he’d be fine if someone secretly filmed him picking his nose while taking a crap and put it up on r/creepydudespickingnosesonthecrapper.
Well, sec. If the argument is that below a certain age, people are not capable of consenting meaningfully to sex, I can understand the argument that it’s silly to say “Now you are old enough to consent to sex, as long as it’s not with somebody significantly older than you.”
But Whatever’s argument of “old enough to butcher is old enough to bleed” – you know, when you’re approvingly quoting from the Satyricon, you should probably realize you’re a moron.
The ‘harmless casual encounter’ thing is particularly silly because the no-pregnancy-or-disease standard retcons whether the encounter is wrongful. You have sex with somebody younger, and if you get lucky and nobody gets knocked up or catches the clap, then it’s A-OK, but otherwise you’re a sick child rapist – whahuh?
“The ‘harmless casual encounter’ thing is particularly silly because the no-pregnancy-or-disease standard retcons whether the encounter is wrongful. You have sex with somebody younger, and if you get lucky and nobody gets knocked up or catches the clap, then it’s A-OK, but otherwise you’re a sick child rapist – whahuh?”
They would be harmful,but not to the level of rape. People who have sex with other people, knowing they have STD and the other party doesn’t know, should be penalized, no matter the age of the other party; having to pay for the medical treatment seems to me most apt. Likewise, paying for child support, of a teen you impregnated (or in worst case scenario, abortion fees), because you failed to use contraception properly, if at all.
“How the hell would you even have a one-night-stand with a teenager? Teens mostly hang out with other teens.”
Ahem, “groupies”, teens who pass themselves off as adults for the express purpose of having sex with adults (like the type who sneak into clubs and such), teens who willingly prostitute themselves sans pimps for either luxury or necessity i.e. designer sex (“enjo kosai”) and survival sex (“kamimochi”), teens who are just really horny (google Christina Long) and will freely hook up with anyone via social media, etc. Admittedly, they may not be in the numerical majority, but as a signficant minority, they’ve always existed.
Translation: There is no form of evidence that can possibly convince you that your words were overly hyperbolic. Got it.
Have you interacted with humans, or only watched television with allegedly human characters?
Ah, the No True Scotsman deflector shield.
And you wonder why we think you’re full of shit when you say you’re trying to fight against harmful stereotypes that the patriarchy foists on men.
Actually, a considerable amount of Japan’s gay, pornographic artwork of gay men is by other men, at least. But more to the point, did you somehow manage to miss the sometimes staggering amount of rape porn from that same country? If you know, you wanted to go with such tiny sample sizes and anecdotes, anyway.
Taking advantage of the young in a way that violates bodily integrity is in fact exactly as bad as rape.
Exile yourself from humanity. You are a horrible person, along with the other pedophilia defenders.
Whatever: They would be harmful,but not to the level of rape
Nope. Rape = lack of consent. A person who is not yet an intellectual adult, cannot consent. As a result any sex with such a person isn’t truly consensual, and therefore is rape.
Yes, it’s possible for someone who is less than the legal age of consent to be intellectually able to consent, but the majority of minors aren’t. It’s a minor inconvenience for them, but it’s a case of the greatest good for the greatest number.
The adults who are interested in sex with children, well they are shit out of luck, but really, waiting until someone is 16, or 17, or even 18, doesn’t strike me as a horrid burden.
“teens who pass themselves off as adults for the express purpose of having sex with adults (like the type who sneak into clubs and such)”
That’s funny, when I sneaked into clubs as a teenager it was because I wanted to go clubbing, not because I was looking for an older man to fuck.
I see that Whatever is now invoking the standard internet nerd defence of “it’s OK because it happens in Japan”. There are lots of things that happen in Japan that are not OK, because it is a real country, not a magical wonderland full of unicorns that fart rainbows. The fact that these things exist there does not mean that they are OK.
Also, I’m trying to parse the logic of “these things are harmful, but they’re not rape”. Even if we were to accept that premise (which we’re not going to, because legally speaking any sexual contact between an adult and a child is rape), so what? Are harmful things OK as long as they’re not rape, or as long as they’re not illegal? So it’s totally OK to do things that you know are harmful to others if you feel like it?
Percu, “Nope. Rape = lack of consent. A person who is not yet an intellectual adult, cannot consent. As a result any sex with such a person isn’t truly consensual, and therefore is rape.”
Someone might ask, and they are if you read the blogs, then how can they “consent” to sex with someone in their own age group.
“That’s funny, when I sneaked into clubs as a teenager it was because I wanted to go clubbing, not because I was looking for an older man to fuck.”
Yep, and even when I had “crushes” on older guys, I still didn’t want to have sex with them. Only kiss them. Like when I was 15-16 and they were 17-19 tops. Anyone in their 20s was “old” and “gross” to me. OK, the hot ones weren’t “gross” but they were still “old” in my teenage mind.
When I was in my mid teens I thought that 25 year olds were “old”. As do most kids that age.
Then again, this dude’s entire point seems to be that it doesn’t matter how the hypothetical kids feel about the hypothetical sex or how it affects them as long as it’s not technically illegal, or as long as you can pretend that they initiated it by going clubbing.
NC4OM: (Pecu is not my name. You are not my intimate. You are not my entitled to use a diminutive)
Someone might ask, and they are if you read the blogs, then how can they “consent” to sex with someone in their own age group.
Maybe they can’t. But in that case, neither of them is actually consenting. One might argue that one who can’t consent can’t rape. I wouldn’t.
I would, instead, argue that people in the grey area, between intellectual adulthood, and childhood, are going to experiment with things they aren’t quite ready for (from sex, to drugs, to romance, to non-romantic relatinships, to being responsible for other people) and that such things are part of growing up.
Moreover, letting adults prey on them, rather than they working things out with their intellectual peers, is unjust.
The short version of this is that the power dynamics between kids aren’t generally horrifically stacked. An intelligently written statutory rape law acknowledges this, and allows for similar ages to more or less be a defense.
There’s something really pathetic about an adult whining “why can’t I have sex with 14 year old girls like those 15 year boys can?”.
Because you are an adult, jackass. If you want to be treated in the same way as a child by the law, how about we take away your right to drink, vote, drive, and hold a job?
(Even if we did it would still be profoundly unethical of you to have sex with a child.)
There’s something particularly disgusting about the fact that Whatever invoked groupies as an example of acceptable scenarios in which adults can fuck children. That’s like taking the normal power disparity between an adult and a teenager and multiplying it by a thousand. Rock star/groupie is one of the most messed up, profoundly unequal sexual scenarios there is even if the groupie is an adult. If she’s a child…well, I work around the music industry, and I’ve seen that dynamic up close and personal. It’s horrible.
In fact, there’s one band who I’m honestly kind of meh about musically speaking who I became much more interested in working with after I ended up spending about 3 hours backstage after one of their shows and noted that there was not a single woman under 30 there other than the girlfriends of the guys in the (much younger) opening band (the headlining band are all in their early-mid 40s). It’s true that it’s depressingly common for bands to fuck teenage groupies, but the fact that it’s common does not in any way make it OK. It’s a profoundly abusive way to treat a bunch of kids who look up to you.
I hear what y’all are saying but here’s an argument I’ve also read:
An older guy has more self control and maturity than a desperate horny teenage boy and will thus be a more attentive, conscientious lover to a teenage girl, making sure her “first time” is as pleasant and pleasurable as possible.
Maybe kids shouldn’t be having sex at all, period – with older people OR with their peers?
If anyone actually buys that particular self-serving argument, I have a bridge that I would be interested in selling to you.
I know, its suspicious. However I’ll say that one of the best experiences I’ve ever had with a man was one who was quite a bit older than me. I was legal, of course, but still very young. He beat out my same age peers on almost every level. Now that I’m a bit older myself though, I only date younger guys.
What does that have to do with the issue of adults having sex with kids who are under the age of consent, exactly? If you were an adult at the time then it’s a whole different scenario.
Well, if its possible that a man more than 10 years older than me can be a more loving and caring partner to me when I’m of the age of consent, then its possible the same man could have been a more loving and caring partner to me when I was just one year younger.
I’m not promoting older person/below the age of consent person relationships. I’m just thinking out loud about the grey area from more than one perspective.
And what if it is the younger party who pursues the older party, because they find people their own age to be immature? And it’s not just girls, there are even boys too. There are famous cases (ex. Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson, who were twice married). And if the older party likes the younger party back, is it need unjust that the two of them can’t be together? They say “Love Waits”, but that was meant to apply to a situation where one party is prepared while the other is not yet, but when both parties are now single, of age, ready, willing, and able, why should a 3rd party come between them? To me, it smacks of the same repressiveness as akin to anti-miscegenation legislation.
That was actually “not unjust”, not “need unjust”.
If both parties are “of age” then there’s no problem, legally speaking. So that has absolutely nothing to do with this conversation, unless you are somehow using “of age” to mean “has hit puberty” rather than “is legally an adult” or “has reached the age of consent”.
Also, your anti-miscegantion argument is ridiculous. Race is permanent – people do not age out of their race. All children eventually become adults, unless they don’t live long enough. So a better analogy would be all the other laws that govern the ages at which certain things are allowed, such as driving a car, voting, or joining the army.
You are a creepy, creepy person, Whatever, and I am not buying the self-justifying bullshit that you are trying to sell.
In the end, we’ll just have to agree to disagree and leave it at that, as men and women have always done and always will. WE HAVE FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT PEROGATIVES.
That was actually “Prerogatives”, due to different evolutionary strategies.
Oh yay, evopsych just so stories. Tell me the one about how the leopard got its spots.
Did you seriously just say that an adult having survival sex with a homeless or at-risk minor (letting zir crash on the couch or eat some food in exchange for sex) is OK … because it’s not a real relationship? That’s way fucked up, man. SERIOUSLY disturbing.
That’s cool. As long as you realize that the law agrees with me, and sees the behavior that you’re arguing for as criminal. Don’t rape children, Whatever.
I’m a man, and I profoundly disagree with Whatever’s position on this.
As it happens, two good friends of mine are in a relationship despite a 33-year age gap, but I’m completely cool with that because the younger one is thirty and knows exactly what she’s doing. In fact, I introduced them.
But a similar age gap where the younger partner is still in their teens is hugely problematic for all sorts of legal, emotional and psychological reasons, and it’s very much the responsibility of the older person (regardless of gender) to take a sensible and measured lead.