Anti-pedophile propaganda helps pedophiles?
I’m a member of a gay-friendly community on the internet, where it’s rather common to see people expressing their hate towards pedophiles. In this community you can write a presentation text about yourself and you can chat in open forums and start clubs with different names where other community users can become members. There are several “hate pedophiles” clubs, several threads in the forums where people state that “It’s enough! Down with the pedophiles!”, and “It’s enough! Down with the child pornography!”. Some claim that the child pornography is everywhere, and that pedophiles are everywhere too. These threads are usually open for anyone to read, and the clubs usually have public member lists for everyone to see. Then there are clubs with the purpose to say that all pedophiles aren’t evil themselves but the act that some of them do is; something I agree with, but that’s a whole other discussion than the one I’m about to adress here.Before I continue I must clarify that I of course admit there are pedophiles on this community, as much as there are pedophiles working for the church, the local food stores, the railroads, the schools, and so on. In other words, they are everywhere, as there are people of other sexual preferences everywhere. Some pedophiles act upon their sexuality, but many suffer from it and wouldn’t do anything to a child in real life. This post isn’t to argue that there are no pedophiles.
Then we have the curious fact that out of 100.000 registered community members, 230 members are registered as below the age of 15. If you’re 15 or above (in Sweden) it’s not pedophilia; it’s just morally wrong to some, which is not the same as pedophilia regardless of what people may think - some actually believe that the age difference is more important in deciding whether or not someone is a pedophile than the actual ages themselves and may very well pounce a 40 year old for being in love with someone who is 20. Well, 230 members out of 100.000. It’s an estimate, because there are no guarantees that members state their correct ages, though most do. Counting all children currently registered on the site, then aproximately 250 people might have been contacted the last year by someone on the community that per legal definition was an active pedophile looking for children. Others of other ages may have been contacted by someone somehow claiming to be a pedophile too; but it’s probably extremely rare since it’s probably nothing you’d say to anyone.
Another curious fact is that I don’t know anyone who has ever seen any member upload child porn on that community, and from the looks of it, so haven’t most others on the community either. How do I make that assumption? Well, there is a trend among these “pedophile haters” to put a little snippet of text in their presentations. It goes something like “Stop the child pornography! If you see any, report it immediately to http://www.rb.se/hotline”. Plenty of members have had this text on their presentations for years, but the thing is that if you click the link and take time to read what the page says, rb.se/hotline stopped taking reports since january 2005. That’s more than two and a half year ago. So probably safe to say, none of the many people who have this link on their sites have seen child porn on the community in the last two and a half year. Yet, the same people scream and shout that it HAS TO STOP NOW! …as if it was an actual problem. I think it’s more a case of people rallying eachother; someone says “it’s gotta stop” and immediately another bunch of people listen and think that it’s actually a real problem, they follow suit and scream “yeah it’s has GOT TO STOP” and more and more people join in some crusade against a foe that didn’t exist in the first place.
The philosophy of making these clubs and threads is good in general, I guess. People don’t want children to get abused sexually by adults. However - I wonder if these clubs and forum threads actually help anyone but the active pedophiles, those pedophiles that actually search out physical contact with children.
Why? Well, most clubs and threads (and those “stop child porn”-text snippets) serve no other purpose than to gather people of the same philosophy so they can, put frankly, pat eachother on the shoulders for thinking the right thing and standing up for the children. The purpose is mostly that - to shout out their hate against pedophiles. Nothing more. Some, but suprisingly few, actually take matters in their own hands and try to help the children that are or might become victims to rape. If someone takes it really seriously they should study to become an IT-police.
In other words, the clubs and threads are usually there for people to look good for others with the same point of view. Of course they would report pedophiles or child porn if they saw any, but as I’ve explained, most apparently never come in contact with it. So, who does these clubs help the rest of the time? The children? Hardly. The pedophiles? Probably a lot more than the children, because the active pedophiles may now easily see who they’re not supposed to contact more easily by looking in these anti-pedo clubs or threads. Those who shun the light stay out of the searchlight. Pedophiles need friends too (assumption) and adult contacts, and being able to clearly spot those that hate them is definately a great tool when looking for like-minded people.
I’d say that if you want to catch a potentially dangerous active pedophile, don’t paste “hate pedophiles” on your forehead (at least paste a working reporting site if you have to). You’ll never encounter a pedophile that way, and they will hardly dissappear only because you wish them to. It’s the same as if you were to hunt deer by running around in the woods screaming “come deer, I want you to come to me and die”. What you should do is to keep low and wait.
EDIT: Some think that this community does nothing to work against pedophiles, probably based on the simple fact that the community crew never mention it. The fact is that they do actively work against it by themselves and with the police when needed. The reason to why people seldomly hear of anything is that they probably don’t want their community to get “pedophile hangout place” stamped all over them. Sure, they could say things like “We’re fighting diligently to report all active pedophiles that reside here!”. Does that sound good? Well, imagine an adventure family bath stating the same. They’d probably lose a lot of customers - not so much the pedophiles as the families. Does it still sound that good? Being in any way connected to pedohilia in the press is always bad. To even state that you’re fighting pedophiles in your community indirectly also mean that there are pedophiles in your community - that you’re hosting pedophiles.
EDIT 2: In some ways, this sort of propaganda might not only help the active confident pedophiles in a way, but also make it more difficult for the insecure pedophiles that don’t want to have their sexual urges towards children to reach out and get official help. By shouting that the people with these urges are disgusting, evil and compare them to massmurdering demons, the probability of these people actually gathering courage to talk to a professional about getting help to resist the urges may diminish greatly. So not only might it help the active pedophiles that like what they do, but it may also cause those pedophiles that want help not to dare to get help. Far from all pedophiles are evil; they’re just cursed with a very unfortunate sexual preference. Some can resist the urges, some can’t, some don’t want to, and some once wanted to resist, couldn’t, and now it may be too late for them - and in extension the children getting raped by them.
So, will you continue shouting “hate all pedophiles”?
NOTE: No I have no numbers showing that this is true, but that’s only to be expected in a case where the “numbers” pretty much want to stay hidden. It’s just a theory, from someone looking at it from another angle.
