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.
That pretty much sums it up, yep.
Argument : But! But but but! It’s important that we acknowledge that some pedophiles can’t help feeling that way, and…
Response : I don’t care.
Brain bleach!
Maru and Hana, mighty warriors.
http://youtu.be/8HHP3P_1bNM
I’d like to know why some people refer to pedophilia both as a sexual orientation and a disease. Pick one, for ffs. I mean, either is problematic, but at least let there be some consistency. Calling it both aids homophobes when they say homosexuality is dangerous, or that it “leads” to pedophilia. Calling it a disease stigmatizes mentally ill people, as well as creates unnecessary sympathy for child molesters. Calling it a sexual orientation gives it validity, where pedophiles cry that QUILTBAG people have rights, so why can’t they? I mean does anyone accept gerontophilia as a sexual orientation? How about necrophilia? Bestiality? Anyone?
Look, feelings are one thing – no one can help that – but you can choose not to dwell on problematic thoughts and you can definitely choose not to act on them. As others have said, writing about it and talking about why it’s not that bad, etc. is acting on problematic thoughts.
Tl;dr, adding to the chorus of not giving a shit where feeling attraction to children comes from, or the distinction between pubescent and prepubescent children. Just don’t fucking do it. If you think about doing it, keep those thoughts to yourself and don’t fucking do it.
@ StarStorm- That makes them kinda terrifying and sad at the same time. They’re so… dissapointifing? I *hope* their family members/ relevant partners are dissapointed in them. Gods know I am.
@KittehSerf- Brain bleach served with Creme de Kitty! Most refreshing. Thank you!
My pleasure, Greebo! 😀
Alex, ditto. I’ve seen pedophilia called a fetish, too, but like everyone says, it doesn’t matter what the hell it is; what matters is not acting on it, because if you do, then whatever else you are, you’re a child rapist.
Got into impassioned drunk-debate with boyfriend last weekend about how to treat/view pedophiles. I think the high point of that discussion was when I declared that I would enact murder upon them with my own two hands, wringing my hands to illustrate this point.
We were at a party.
I have no idea what other people thought of this display.
Instead of tragicomic they’re tragishitheads. And yeah, the attempt to frame pedophilia as just another sexual orientation is a pretty transparent first step towards legitimizing child abuse, and I’m not buying it. Lots of people have intrusive thoughts that they’d rather not have, but if you embrace thoughts about molesting children and try to legitimize them to yourself and/or others then your moral compass is broken.
Sometimes when my partner leaves his laptop to get a drink or something, when he returns there are multiple tabs open of maru and hana. I have no idea how this happens. It is truly baffling. *cough*
Adding some more thoughts about the important “feelings you can’t help but having”/”actions you control”-distinction…
I was having a conversation some time ago with a friend who’s also bisexual, about the problem we have with the “born this way” argument for HBT-rights. I grant that the argument has had lots of positive effects, but at the end of the day I still think it’s a bad argument as arguments go, and she feels likewise.
I do feel like I was “born this way”. For various reasons I tried super-hard to suppress that I was attracted to women, until I couldn’t deny it any longer. But, as my friend said (and that goes for me as well) – that doesn’t mean that the actual having sex with women happened because of some uncontrollable urge that drove me to sex whether I wanted to or not. No, the actual having sex with women is totally a choice. It’s still not morally wrong, though. There are lots of choices that aren’t morally wrong to make, and having consensual sex with other adults where no one gets hurt is one of them. And even if it were the case that being bi itself were a choice that some people made, it would still be perfectly alright.
And on the contrary, even if pedophiles really are “born that way”, that does nothing to justify having sex with kids.
I remember a case that Professor Stephen Morse (law and psychology) told us about at a workshop I attended at London University a few years ago (I might have told this story before, so bear with me in that case.)
(Also, TRIGGER WARNING for child molestation.)
So, there was this man with no previous record of sex offenses. According to his own story, he just suddenly, out of the blue, started having sexual thoughts about children. Started surfing child pornography, and also molesting his step daughter. Eventually he was found out. He did get a medical examination, and it turned out that the had a cyst in his brain. It was deemed likely that the cyst was connected to his change in thoughts and behaviour. Since he had no previous criminal record, the judge sentenced him to attend some kind of sex offender therapy. If he didn’t successfully complete therapy, he was still going to jail, but otherwise that would be all (I may not remember each and every detail precisely, possibly he was also going to pay some money, idk, but at least he would be able to stay out of jail through attending therapy). He also had the cyst removed.
It was some time lag before the therapy actually started, and after a little time in therapy, he seemed to lose all self control. He’d just jump at the nurse who was leading the therapy sessions, grabbing her boobs and try to tear her clothes off, and when he felt that he needed to go to the bathroom he didn’t bother actually going there, but just did his stuff on the floor. He was sent to a doctor, and they found out that his cyst had grown back even bigger than before.
Eventually they did manage to get the cyst under control, and he returned to normal.
Morse said that lots of people believe about this case that the man wasn’t responsible for his behaviour, since it seems to have been caused by a cyst in his brain. But the point that Morse wanted to make was that having a cyst in your brain doesn’t prove that you have no self control at all. He also said that he was suspicious about the man’s claim of having had zero sexual interest in kids before the cyst, but even if we accept this for the sake of the argument, the cyst suddenly turned him pedophile, it still doesn’t prove that he had zero control over his actions. On the contrary, what we know about the case suggests that he had control over his behaviour the first time around, but lost it later on in therapy.
In therapy, he really had strong incentives to behave. The fact that he still sexually assaulted a nurse in front of loads of witnesses, peed on the floor and so on suggests that at that point, he really had lost control of himself and was no longer responsible for what he was doing. But earlier, when he watched child pornography and molested his step daughter, he went to great lengths to keep the whole thing secret, and that included not molesting the step daughter or watching child porn when he thought there was any chance of being found out. You really can’t keep things secret unless you do have some control over what you’re doing.
The main point being: Even if you do have evidence that there’s something “in the brain” of a pedophile or other sex offender, that does nothing to prove that they can’t control their behaviour. If you wonder whether someone can or not, we must actually look at their behaviour.
And, to add on to Dvarg’s point, if someone really, genuinely can’t control their desire to molest children (or commit any other kind of sex crime)? Then they really do need to be incarcerated, whether they like it or not, because they’re going to hurt someone.
I’ve found that pointing this out, although it causes a lot of sulking, also tends to shut down the “but they/I can’t help it!” arguments rather effectively.
But yeah, some of the demonization of pedophiles might actually be problematic. There are people who seek therapy for sexual thoughts that they realize are about morally wrong actions that they don’t want to act out, or people who actually are sex offenders but nowadays accept that they did something horrible and want to change – and there are also people who criticize therapists who take such cases for “giving support to monsters”. I’ve read some articles about therapists working with such cases at a hospital not terribly far from where I live, and the criticism they get from people who think that you can’t both be concerned about the victims and try to treat abusers and potential abusers. The therapists were like “we do think these are horrible crimes and feel for the victims, and that’s the main reason we’re doing what we’re doing!”.
Also, I think the whole “pedophiles are complete monsters who are nothing like normal people” may lead to similar problems as the “rapists are complete monsters who are nothing like normal people” do – i.e., that people disbelieve all accusations made against non-monstery acquaintances of theirs.
THIS. SO. MUCH.
Not wanting psychiatrists to even try to change the behavior of sex offenders is just stupid. Do you want the behavior to happen again? If not, our options are keep that person locked up forever (which we already know we don’t do) or try to figure out how to change their behavior.
Btw, the “can’t help it line” is often used in discussion of cheating, and it freaks me out, because although the context of cheating is different from the context of discussing sex offenses, talking about how people sometimes can’t help themselves when it comes to sex really helps to support rape culture and all that goes with it.
Really, I’ve said in discussions on cheating that I know that I’m not gonna cheat on Husband, because I’ve decided not to, and as an adult human being with no serious brain damage etc. I’m capable of controlling my behaviour in light of my decisions. Lots of people have been pissed off on hearing that, and gone “Oh, so you think you’re so perfect? But no one can actually say for sure that they’re not gonna cheat on their partner, because you never know what might happen!”. So messed up.
If someone makes a “can’t help it” argument about sex that’s a huge blinking red flag, imo. As in, if I hear someone say something like that I will avoid them as much as possible and make sure that I’m never, ever alone with them again.
QFT
There are no mitigating circumstances, no excuses, no “degrees of wrongness”, no “but zir was always a good person!” or “but zir is an artist / did a lot of good in the past / had a hard life / couldn’t help it” or “but zir’s life will be ruined! / it happened in a different time / everybody was okay with it” or anything else that would make being a child rapist or acting on desire to abuse children in any way understandable.
Much less acceptable.
Whats creepier, ‘can’t help it’ cheating or ‘rational ayn rand’ style cheating?
I appreciate you going after that guy, but I believe him when he says that he was joking about dating a 14-year old. Although I’m not sure, because some of his statements were obviously sincere, like when he admitted to being sociopath…
AA’s line that ‘[normalisation of adult/child sex] was a popular sentiment on the internet in general at that time’ is actually hilarious. It may be the least self-aware sentence I’ve seen all month and that’s quite an achievement.
English translation: ‘I live in such a self-contained echo chamber that I am entirely removed from reality.’
This whole conversation keeps reminding me of an anecdote about Andrea Dworkin and Alan Ginsberg.
Yeah, I’d feel that way too if I saw someone hitting on my friend’s 12 year old kid. Attempts to argue me out of this position because wibble wibble, being a pedophile is so hard, you just don’t understand, are doomed to failure.
And just wanted to say thanks to Dvärghundspossen for some really interesting contributions to this discussion.
::thinks::
Saphy gets to more interesting parties than I did!
It’s one of those Eternal Mysteries, daintydougal. ::nods::
Dvarg, yes about the cheating. I really wonder about the people who do the “But you don’t know!” twaddle when it comes to this sort of stuff. Skeletons, closets, etc.
I love this. Didn’t know Ginsberg was a predator, not that I know much about him anyway (never had the slightest interest in the Beats).
I once had a girlfriend seventeen years older than me. But I was 25.
In fact, I think that’s a near-perfect combo: I had the youthful stamina, she had the experience, physical self-knowledge and keenness to experiment with an all too willing partner.
But if she’d been 32 and I’d been 15 it would have been incalculably different, and not just for obvious legal reasons.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100261734/allen-ginsberg-camille-paglia-and-the-literary-champions-of-paedophilia/
Ginsberg, NAMBLA, and why I have a hard time believing that Camille Paglia is actually a feminist.
This is even worse than the whole banana thing.