You may have run across an image macro going around the internet recently featuring a picture of YouTube ranter and sometime Men’s Rights ally The Amazing Atheist – aka Terroja or TJ Kinkaid – and an appalling quote, supposedly from him, arguing that MRAs should campaign to lower the age of consent, because “[n]ature already has an age of consent. That age is approximately 12-13, otherwise known as the onset of puberty.”
I didn’t post about the quote, appalling as it is, because I couldn’t find any proof that Mr. Kincaid actually wrote or said it; I even searched several of Mr. Kincaid’s books and a document entitled “The Somewhat Complete Ravings of TJ Kincaid” to no avail. Apparently no one else has been able to find the quote either.
If this quote was fabricated, I’m a little puzzled as to why, because Kincaid has actually said very similar things before. Given the confusion about the quote, I thought it might be worth noting what we know he has said on the topic.
In a 2006 posting on a Marilyn Manson fan site, linked to in RationalWiki’s profile of him, a self-identified “atheist libertarian” calling himself Terroja argued that
Having pedophilic attractions doesn’t mean you automatically go out and start molesting kids. From the time I was 14 to the time I was about 19, I used to have extreme pedophilic fantasies, and I somehow managed to never even come close to acting on them. I think with my brain, not my penis.
I do think, however, the pedophilia is unfairly persecuted in today’s society.
I think the difference in punishment between child rapists and child molestors should be more significant, with molestors perhaps simply attending mandatory therapy for their first offense. I also think that the age of sexual consent should be lowered to 12 or 13.
My stance is not designed to be controversial or to offend anyone. I only want human beings to understand that the law must work within the parameters of human nature, not in defiance of it.
In a recent posting on his blog, Kincaid admits that this indeed is something he once believed:
The age of consent thing is based on a post I made on an internet forum when I was like 20. And it was actually a pretty popular sentiment on the boards at that time. Hell, it was a popular sentiment on the internet in general at that time. It was also, I’m sad to say, an opinion that my father held.
After experiencing another decade on planet earth, I realize how horribly misguided that opinion was and is. I think that maybe it’s not so horrible for kids that age to begin sexual exploration with one another, but it’s definitely wrong for an adult to engage is sex with someone that young and inexperienced.
The “everyone else was a pedophile in 2006” argument is not exactly a convincing one, and it’s worth noting that Kincaid “confessed” his attraction towards underage girls in his self-published 2007 book “Scumbag: Musings of a Subhuman” as well, writing that
I think 14-year-old girls are hot. (Yeah, so does everyone else, but I actually admit it)
That’s what pedophiles would like to believe, but it’s not actually true.
Also, in “The Somewhat Complete Ravings of TJ Kincaid,” which seems to be a compilation of writings from several of his books, we find the following passage:
Teenage girls are annoying because they go out into public dressed like sluts and then if you look at their massive titties there is a segment of our society that will happily declare you a pedophile for “oggling those poor children.” Children, my ass. Children don’t have D cups. Children don’t have big, luscious round asses crammed into designer jeans.
For what it’s worth, the word is “ogling,” not “oggling.”
Even more troubling than these quotes is the fact that Kincaid also claimed at one point that he “dated” a 14-year-old when he was 23.
In his recent posting, he insists that he was only joking:
As for this nonsense about me dating a 14-year-old when I was 23, I was actually mocking a friend of mine who was over 30 and was macking on some 16-year-old girl. The sad fact is that when I was 23, I was single and pussyless. And I was too timid and frightened to even approach a girl sexually, let alone one who could wind me up in prison.
I have no trouble believing that he was lying about having an underage girlfriend, but his explanation doesn’t seem to jibe with what he – or someone claiming to be him – said in the very strange (and not altogether safe for work) video that seems to be the source for what Kincaid calls this “rumor” about him.
Roughly 30 minutes into the video, which shows a live BlogTV session between YouTube personality thefakesagan and some guests in an internet chatroom, we see someone identified as theamazingatheist declare flatly in the chat session that “as a 23-year-old I dated a 14-year-old briefly.”
When the expletive-spewing thefakesagan asks him what it was that led him to stop “dating” the 14-year-old so quickly, theamazingatheist replies “fear of her dad murdering me,” adding in a followup comment that “he was a Marine, actually.”
When the host, burping and fiddling with a bass guitar, asks theamazingatheist if he actually felt “an emotional bond with this 14-year-old bitch,” themazingatheist replies “I felt an emotional bond with her pussy.”
“Sorry,” he types a few moments later, “I’m a sociopath, useless in the ways of love.”
The host then spends a few moments fumbling with his instrument, trying ineptly to work out the bassline to Michael Jackson’s “Beat It.” “You better run, you better do what you’re told,” he sings, “TJ’s in the back room fucking a 14-year-old.”
The conversation moves on, and I think I will too.
But now that I’ve gotten hold of some of TJ’s masterworks, I think I’ll have to see what else is hiding within them. I suspect I’ll be posting about that shortly.
Nooooooooo not the pedophilia/ephebophilia distinction!
Orion, I don’t give a flying fuck how much one wants to split hairs about the age of the people these men want to abuse. They’re still children, pubescent or not.
Oh, ew, ick.
re Orion’s bullshit: When the fuck did 14 become “not a child?”
Ew. So much wrongness. Brain bleach.
Aww those kids!
Whenever anyone gets into the “ephebophiles are not pedos and it’s very important to recognize this!” argument I always want to ask why it’s so important to them that people who’re attracted to tweens and kids in their early teens not be made to feel bad about it. Granted that the occasional random “oh, that person is pretty” thought is something people can’t control, but you know what you can control? Whether or not it’s something you consciously give space in your brain and make excuses for. If you choose to do that then honestly, you should feel guilty, and that discomfort you’re feeling is your conscience trying to tell you not to be a predator. Maybe you should listen to it instead of trying to make excuses.
The self justification of “everyone feels/thinks/believes these things, but pretends otherwise – but I am bold and honest enough to admit it” is quite loathsome. Of course, if they didn’t employ this tactic, they’d have to admit to themselves that certain feelings, thoughts and beliefs of theirs are bad or wrong. Since they know that they’re not bad people, that can’t be true. It’s related to the doublethink of “sure, I’ve had sex with women who hadn’t consented, but it wasn’t rape, because only bad men rape and I’m not bad!”
Grown men who want to have sex at (not with) fourteen year old girls (or boys) should know not to do that, because doing it is wrong. I’m not convinced that wanting to do it makes you a bad person, but I am certain that actually doing it does.
@ Robert
I’d add that consciously choosing to ignore the inner voice that’s saying “hey, maybe I shouldn’t be thinking about this” is already step one to being a terrible person, and when you go beyond that into trying to convince the world at large that adults wanting to fuck kids is OK then you’ve gone from “bad person” to “person who’s helping to create a climate in which more children will be raped”. So, again, maybe people should sit with that thought for a while before they word vomit rationalizations for why wanting to rape 14 year olds is totally different from wanting to rape 10 year olds.
So much wrong, but focussing on this:
There’s no clear cut evidence that it is biologically (I assume they meant neurobiologically) based. Doing MRI scans to prove biological causes of conditions is de rigeur these days, and is flawed on a number of reasons:
– there is no counterfactual, so that non-pedophiles people who have the same areas of the brain active in response to the same stimuli aren’t included in the research
– it assumes a non-plasticity of brain functioning that is not commonly accepted these days
– it assumes that brain function differences cause pedophilia and not vice versa (which is an acceptable alternative hypothesis – we don’t know the direction of causality)
– MRI scans are subjected to image cleaning ahead of interpretation and there is no information about how the images are cleaned up prior to assessment in research
– that last point, taken in conjunction with the fact that studies don’t mention whether the MRI scan assessors are blinded to which subjects are which means that the imaging process may be biased
– how large do brain differences have to be to become clinically (as opposed to statistically) significant? This is glossed over a lot.
– the studies have very small subject numbers (how were the subjects selected? there is likely to be subject selection bias) and only studies showing correlations (that’s all the results are, correlations) between brain activity differences and pedophilia are published. How many other studies which don’t find differences, and therefore aren’t published, are there? This is called publication bias.
Finally, I may strongly desire to do a particular illegal act, however my moral beliefs prevent me from doing so. Pedophiles are capable of knowing that a particular act is illegal, therefore they have mens rea, and so it doesn’t fucking matter if some parts of their brains may or may not have somewhat different activity patterns.
So, Orion, I don’t give a shit what you think on this topic.
I was shocked when Hemant Mehta, “The Friendly Atheist,” posted a video by TAA. He claimed not to have known about TAA’s rape threats etc. I asked, “How could you not know this? It’s been all over feminist and lots of atheist blogs.” No answer. Of course lots of douches in the comments saying things like, “You don’t have to agree with everything someone says to admit that in this case TAA makes a valid point.” Sorry, no one like TAA would ever get any kind of exposure on my blog.
What’s really disturbing about Orion’s nonsense, is that when I was a15 year old girl, it would have seemed reasonable. 15 year olds don’t see themselves as children but they all kinds of are! So if an older man (or woman) comes spouting that stuff, they might wind up saying yes to things that can’t really understand and give an informed yes to. Gross. Wrong. Ick.
I’m pretty sure that confusing teenagers and taking advantage of their inability to correctly identify their own social position in relation to adults is actually the goal of that kind of argument, tbh.
NonServiam, exactly. So many of us are “but I’m an adult!” aka “you think I’m just a kid!” at that age. I suspect I’d have had a bit of he-sees-me-as-an-adult thinking going on, if a man I’d liked had been after me, little knowing it wouldn’t have been any such thing.
On a completely different note as that post was just icky, has anyone got this cookbook? I would love a review: http://www.amishcooksfamilyfavorites.com/amishcooksfamilyfavorites/index
Although one of Orion’s points seems to be that there’s an important distinction between a) being attracted to kids but suppressing these urges, and b) being attracted to kids and bragging about it and justifying it.
That is an important distinction. If someone has the attraction (nevermind whether it’s something biological or not) but realizes that it’s wrong and don’t act on it, not even in the sense of writing stuff on the internet about how kids are totally hot (that’s also an action, so that’s also a way of acting on that attraction), zie doesn’t do anything wrong. Merely feeling a certain kind of attraction can hardly be wrong in itself, since regardless of nature vs nurture and so on we’re not in direct control of our emotions. But as soon as you start to write your long internet rants about how kids are totally hot and yada yada, that’s when the wrongness starts (and that would, btw, be equally wrong even if you didn’t actually believe that kids are hot, but wrote what you wrote for mere shock value).
So okay, pedophilia/ebophilia distinction – uninteresting bullshit. Merely having certain emotions/acting on them – important distinction.
And the distinction with not acting on those impulses is that none of these manosphere dudes or TAA or any of them are saying “Those impulses/desires are wrong and acting on them would be criminal” – no, they’re whining endlessly about how wrong it is that they aren’t allowed to fuck children.
Which is why I do not give a single shit about whether it’s pedophilia or ephebophilia* or biological or not. This whole thing is about scumbags who want to rape children.
*Am I the only one who side-eyes that phrase? It sounds sooooo much like it exists only to blur lines.
I don’t know when it “started”, but I know this much: When I was in gymnasium (roughly, senior high school) in 1993-1996 I had a friend who coined the phrase “insikt istället för ursäkt”. Doesn’t sound as good translated to English, but it roughly means “insight instead of saying sorry”. She’d use that phrase to describe people who went around being terrible, fully realizing how terrible they were, but this realization would not prompt them to go “oh I’m sorry that I was so terrible, I’m gonna be better in the future” but rather “YEAH I’m terrible, I KNOW I’m terrible, I ADMIT to being terrible!” as if them knowing about it somehow made it alright.
So yeah, it’s not a new phenomenon, that’s for sure.
I apologize if I misscommunicated. I was trying to say that the pedophilia/ephebephilia distinction is uninteresting bullshit. The important distinction is between paraphilias (recognized medical/psychological disorders of attraction, such as pedophilia or ephebephilia) and neurotypical people being predatory assholes. When the misters try to defend or explain themselves by claiming to be “ephebephiles,” I think it’s important to remember that they are most likely not any kind of -phile. They’re just creeps.
A lot of convicted pedophiles don’t have a paraphilia either, they’re just opportunistic predators.
If we call them pedophiles when they aren’t, that opens to the door to them wasting everyone’s time by talking about pedo vs ephebephilia. It would be worth wading through that sophistry if we needed to talk about actual pedophiles, but we can avoid that conversation if we stop using “pedophile” as a slang word for “sex offender.”
They’re not convicted pedophiles. They’re convicted rapists.
If they were convicted of raping children then they’re convicted pedophiles. Again, why are you trying so hard to push the “pedophiles can’t help having that as their sexual orientation, boo hoo” idea?
Also, you’re aware that people who rape adults are sex offenders too, right? They don’t get referred to as pedophiles.
(I’m not the only one who’s creeped the hell out right now, right?)
No, you’re not.
Not least for the suggestion upthread that being a pedophile somehow excludes someone from having sex with adults. Given how many pedophiles rape their own children, that seems a very odd stance.
Orion, I suggest you drop this now.
I honestly don’t get 20/30-somethings and older men having a thing for adolescent girls. It’d make sense if they liked adolescent girls when they were adolescent themselves, but there’s no justification you can use to make it less creepy once you’ve gotten old enough to go to college.
Part of me can’t help but think, were there a situation where it was an adolescent boy and an older woman – MRAs would use that as “evidence” that women are bigger child abusers than men. I mean, they have a fake registry site condemning various women as child abusers. Though, unsurprisingly enough, the whole “child abuse” thing goes out the window when it comes to teenage girls. ‘Cause they supposedly dress like “sluts” that somehow causes uncontrollable lust in men. Even though, y’know, many men – every day – do not feel the same and think of acting on such…
As far as the whole “all guys like teenager girls and don’t want to admit it!” thing: Bull. Shit.
I’m currently 28. Most of the women I am attracted are also in their 20’s – however, I have a particular fondness of older women as well. Not sure why, I just do. I know plenty of guys who like Kate Upton but I prefer Christina Hendricks and Sofia Vergara.
We don’t call people “crazy” on this forum because we all acknowledge that it’s a bad idea to use language that confuses “people who have mental illnessses” with “people who do awful things.” This seems like a straightforward application of that principle. Child rapists aren’t always sick, they’re just evil. Maybe the usage of “pedophile” has evolved away from its origins in medicine, in which case that’s fine; I’m not a linguistic prescriptivist. But for me personally, “pedophile” still has psychomedical connotations. I hear “pedophile” and I imagine someone who ends up in involuntary inpatient care, taking strong antidepressants or antiandrogens, and spending a lot of time talking to counselors or psych researchers. That’s not really an appropriate or helpful way to approach folks like The Amazing Atheist. If he did rape a child, regular prison would be fine.