VirPed Panel: 04 November 2024

Maisy Flowers asks;

“How much progress do you feel you’re making? Is the idea of a virtuous pedophile becoming more mainstream? Even just the idea that pedophilia is not the end-all, be-all of evils? Are there more spaces where your secret is safe/socially survivable?”

Sometimes, the process of accepting oneself and learning to feel comfortable in one’s own skin, is a long journey. But yes, it tends to be very frustrating to realize how little progress we’ve made with society and how little acceptance there is that an attraction is just that. It is never a choice and doesn’t lead to uncontrollable urges. Scapegoats and boogeymen are just so popular. They are politically expedient for any party seeking votes. We battle attitudes, but tend to get banned on social media for just bringing the subject up. A white supremacist can find a voice, but we can’t because we’re considered too dangerous to be heard from.

The progress question has many aspects. In terms of my risk of offending, I was never a risk. In terms of my anxieties about my risk of offending, they have gone entirely since their peak a few years ago. In terms of my happiness, I’ve been happier than ever for the past year. These days, my moment-to-moment day-to-day life really satisfies me, and I have hope for the future.

I don’t know if the idea of a virtuous paedophile is actively going more mainstream, but I feel we are closing in on a time when we will be the subject of mainstream discourse. I don’t know whether it will continue slowly, as it has been going, or if some grand event will bare the full breadth of this conversation to the wider world. If it’s the latter, I only hope it’s a good event, though I can imagine many ways that it would be bad.

Thank you for acknowledging that simply having this attraction is widely considered to be a grave evil, even though it isn’t evil at all. That this is the case is irksome to me. It really irks me. It’s a transparent truth, and yet it is an invisible truth. Thank you for acknowledging it.

As for other safe spaces, I’m a member of MAP Support Club. It’s rather different from VirPed, but still rather wonderful. I’ve heard of one or two forums that are either largely pro-contact, or they permit all views on the contact stance (that is, whether child-adult sexual contact is ever moral). I’m not in any of those. They make me uncomfortable. I am firmly anti-contact, and so VirPed and MSC suit me very well.

At the risk of sounding cynical, it’s not getting easier or better for us in the way of public acceptance. It’s gotten considerably worse in the 30 years that I’ve been dealing with this. Some of this has to do with social media algorithms having a tendency to serve up outrage, as anger is the best way to keep someone engaged. There’s been a big cultural shift from then until now.

It’s not all doom and gloom though. For those that want support in dealing with all of this but don’t think that it should ever become acceptable to act upon, there are now resources like Virped and MSC and some international organizations as well. This was something I desperately needed as a teenager, so I’m glad the world is in a better place in this regard.

Additionally, a lot more research is being done on us. Pretending like pedophilia doesn’t exist helps no one. Studying it is a step in the right direction when it comes to reducing child sexual abuse and helping improve the quality of life for people that have no intention of ever acting on their sexual desires.

I would say that there are two main ways to measure progress: public support/acceptance, and internal support/acceptance. Public support goes back and forth, and really depends on who you’re talking to. The discourse about non-offending pedophiles is not nearly as mainstream as other issues, and sadly there are still a lot of loud, angry voices who hate us. There have been efforts to raise awareness on social media platforms, but this has become increasingly more difficult as these platforms will ban us simply for talking about this topic. During my brief time of talking about this on Reddit, there were a few people who voiced support, including users who privately messaged me to show their support, but there were also a lot of people who hated us no matter what I said. So it’s difficult to say how much progress we’ve made on the public front, as even if there might be more people who understand and accept us, they may be afraid to express this because of the stigma.

In terms of internal progress, we are doing much better on that front. Any exposure that non-offending pedophiles get, even if it results in public backlash, will also result in more pedophiles, who weren’t aware of our support groups, learning about us and realizing that they aren’t alone. Places like VirPed have improved and even saved the lives of many of us, giving us a safe place to talk about this part of our lives. For me, I used to be an isolated teenager, scared of the monster I might become, and it was reading about the experiences of other non-offending, anti-contact pedophiles that made me realize that I wasn’t a monster, and I’m not destined to offend. Joining VirPed and meeting others who know what I’m going through has been been a massive boost to my mental health, and that sort of internal progress is just as important, if not more important, than society accepting us.

When I joined the anti-contact MAP community in 2017, I did it by getting an anonymous Twitter account rather than by joining forums. Initially I really didn’t know whether to trust VirPed or the other communities at all.

This route is now pretty much closed, and the brief period when you could talk openly about being a non-offending pedophile has pretty much ended. I think this has cut a lot of people off from support.

All in all, the world has been becoming an angrier place since that time. The rise of populism has gone hand in hand with less and less nuanced public discourse. People pick and choose what facts they care to hear, and also what lies they find comforting. This has been bad news for us, since the word “pedophile” has lost its actual factual meaning in most people’s minds.

So in terms of public understanding, I think things have gotten worse for us from a pretty bad start.

Still, our communities still exist and people are still making friends in them in a way that wasn’t really possible before the internet, so there is still a lot of discussion (more private than public) about us. Professionals are beginning to understand the experience of non-offending pedophiles too and while it’s still risky for them to express too close an interest in the topic, some do and they are still bravely publishing.

When I got into “all this”, I had already concluded that it was too late for me in terms of changes that would benefit my life or even for me to see glimmers of them before I die. It’s just where we are. We’re probably in a similar position to where gay men were in about 1920 or so. I do believe that things will be better for future pedophiles not yet born as I write this. Things may get worse before that, but they will get better.

I came to accept my attractions on my own before the Internet was a big thing. Joining MAP spaces was still tremendously helpful, as I suddenly had peers I could actually talk to about my experiences without the “ick” response.

As far as public acceptance, I managed to change a few minds during the days of MAP Twitter. I’ve also come out to my closest family and friends, and they’ve been accepting, if not completely understanding. The stigma is still around in a big way, and it affects even researchers. I think if the stigma were a little lower, more research could be done, which would lead to more understanding.

If every MAP came out publicly tomorrow, there would be panic and some murders, but also a faster path to acceptance. I don’t advocate for that, as it’s too dangerous. So we’re on a slower, safer path, that will take a long time. I don’t know how long.