It's worthwhile to mention that I have been a proponent of 'therapy first' in the past. I remember watching documentaries about the creep village in florida and some of these people have genuinely compelling stories. You know what I think though? I see a lot of apologetic child molesters and very few apologetic child enthusiasts. Strange how these people suddenly want to be understood and helped after they get forgetin' caught.
none of them are actually sincerely apologetic. they just want to figure out a way to live a normal social life free from ostracization. getting help is just their means for the end- being treated like a human being. we can say they don't deserve that privilege for what they've done and treat them like stuff, or we can encourage them to take the mutually beneficial route of getting help. telling someone to kill themselves, joking or otherwise, doesn't really help them at all.
I find the idea that the internet becoming creep-friendly wouldn't cause more harm pretty unlikely, much less that it would have a net positive impact. I don't think there's a lot of data behind this so I think we're both entitled to this opinion, but I don't think it'd be a stretch to say there would be far more instances of children being victimized than child enthusiasts being rehabilitated. I think one of these things is highly likely and the other is very unlikely.
regardless of the likelihood of both, they're negatively correlated. the more child enthusiasts rehabilitated, the less children victimized. you can substitute 'child enthusiasts rehabilitated' with 'child enthusiasts punished' but we should be focused on which one yields the best benefits for all parties. we don't have enough data and its just our opinions, but we should at least do our own research on the implications of both. i admittedly haven't fully explored the ramifications of punishment as much as rehabilitation and i only assume it's less than ideal, but i'm going to get back to you if i find anything.
Do you honestly see a child enthusiast like neinhaus or steve or whoever those unapologetic freaks were coming here and admitting they have a problem and asking for support? Even if we just temporarily housed them and tolerated them, they still found each other through stupid 'ironic' jokes about wanting to forget kids and then started trading child research. Not once did they ever imply they were apologetic about it, even up until the day the one got banned for admitting to trading CP and the other moved to Indonesia to pursue their child love market or something.
all i remember about them was that their child enthusiasm was entirely unknown while they were here, which makes sense. they were hiding it and doing a great job at hiding it, because they knew that if they expressed it publicly they would be treated like garbage, just like they have every time before it. in retrospect if we handled the situation better, maybe he wouldn't have bugged out to south asia where child abuse is monetarily incentivized. of course he could've just decided to get help on his own but that's his choice. we had our choice to teach him a lesson on empathy and we passed it up to be antagonistic, and now some kid in indonesia is probably suffering at his hands.
Quite frankly I think the vast majority of internet child enthusiasts are extremely unapologetic. Go to 4chan and start telling people in loli threads that child enthusiasm is wrong. Watch the foul bullstuff they come out with. It's unbelievable how firmly these people believe they are in the right, and how completely unreceptive these people are of the idea that they can or even should change for the better. The only language these people understand is being exposed and chased away from kids whenever possible, whether it's through internet harassment or court orders.
regardless of people's receptiveness to new ideas, its the way you present the idea that matters most. some child enthusiasts in 4chan would be slightly receptive and maybe even be moved or convinced to get help by you. but the majority won't, because they're unreceptive. if we can present the idea that child enthusiasm is wrong in a way that is well received by their twisted minds, then we'll make a better impression on them. there's two languages most people can understand- emotion and rationality. the people we're talking about usually lack the former, and if they lack the latter too they are clinically insane and not applicable. regardless of which they speak or understand best, the negative impressions will never lead to a positive outcome anyways. positive impressions will always have a chance, no matter how slim, to change someone's mind. let's not just concede to losses on all sides.
We can control their interactions to some degree and we already do, lawfully, registered love offenders have certain restraining orders that control their movements and where they're allowed to live, ect. You could argue that in doing so you're hurting their feelings and making them more likely to molest, to me, this seems like a thinly veiled threat by a predator that is less apologetic than you're making them out to be, constantly trying to erode the protections put in place for children through emotional manipulation.
controlling their actions is great, but they should know why we're controlling their actions. if the reason they draw is that we view them as animals with less than human rights and treat them as such, they'll just grow vengeful. if we let them know that they're being controlled for their own good and the good of society and still treated like a human in the end, they'll be more receptive to mutual solutions. antagonistic manipulation isn't a mutual solution and we know that, but they don't. neither is verbal abuse or dehumanization, and that's where we need to start learning.
Ideally the line is the perfect midway that minimizes cases but I'm always going to favor the child enthusiast's side significantly less in this dichotomy because again, if they just didn't want to forget kids, we wouldn't have this problem, and that's a choice no matter how you look at it. It might be a hard choice and it might be built on a foundation of personal tragedy but it's still their choice that their victims get no say in.
everyone deserves a say in the matter, victims to bystanders to perpetrator. everyone should understand what's happening at all times and the ramifications of the decisions we all make. when we silence predators, they just turn into quiet predators. if we silence victims, they turn into quiet victims, and even possibly quiet predators later in life. everyone has the choice to make a difference now, regardless of the past, with eyes on the future.
back when racerboy was hitting me up in 2014 trying to be my 'friend' and talk openly about love, i was really offended. he didn't even know me but was running his mouth about how he wanted to exchange pictures and stuff. the one regret i used to live with was the fact that i never actually tried to be his friend. to this day i'm curious what would've happened if i ignored his creepphilic horniness and just tried to make an actual connection to the man on a deeper level- learn his past, his wants and needs and dreams. there's always the possibility i could've given him a talk on how what he was doing is wrong, and ask him if he needs help finding support for it. stuff like that. it's a lofty goal for a 14 year old mind, but maybe it would've made a difference, and he wouldn't have done the same disgusting stuff to like 30 other kids.
Obviously we have no authority over unconvicted child enthusiasts though because they have not broken the law yet, but we can and should guard minor-friendly websites. Websites and services like twitter and discord allow people as young as 13 to use their platform by their TOS. In this case, child enthusiasm should be against TOS. If you don't like that idea, you should turn tail and take the 4chan approach and ban everyone under 18 instead for their own protection. Some of the idea here is to put kids on the warpath against child enthusiasm, so that when they're exposed to the behavior from a child enthusiast they instantly react to it negatively. I'm not terribly worried about turning them into murderous vigilantes - I don't think that's actually very likely. The hyperbole itself is just a tool to communicate zero tolerance.
those are all valid solutions. i'm not saying we should supplement those; but we all want to guard minor-friendly websites. we can still do it without being unempathetic predators. a zero tolerance policy can still be taken, but what happens after that matters a lot more.
Well, I took a moment in the shower to reflect on my argument. Whenever I argue with people about child enthusiasm; I am usually arguing with child enthusiasts who are defending lolicon or something of that nature, so I come at them with little respect. This isn't the case here, we are presenting two arguments with a common goal: protecting children, so I ought to acknowledge this and evaluate my biases. The angle you're taking is a very difficult position to defend, which I respect, and shouldn't take advantage of.
I think one of the objectives of your argument is mainly about excessive aggression when condemning child enthusiasm. While I'm not very convinced that saying mean murderous stuff about child enthusiasts will actually hurt children in the long run, I will admit my defense of that behavior is unintentionally disingenuous; I'm defending it because I got called stupid and want to justify my usual inflammatory antics, not because I actually believe it will protect children, and using anti-child enthusiasm sentiment to bolster this position is wrong.
I don't actually have any reason to believe that being hyperbolic when criticizing child enthusiasm has any positive impact. However I still stand by my position of taking an aggressive approach to identifying and removing these people from communities where they can pose danger.
its a very serious topic and we can all joke about it from time to time. in the end we know our own intentions better than others do. child enthusiasts and child enthusiast apologists honestly believe they're right and we can't necessarily convince them otherwise, but we can at least point them in the right direction and leave them with the right message. the ultimate goal is that they convince themselves on their own time that it's wrong, and we were responsible for making that happen sooner than later. inflammatory antics are fine and they make us all laugh every once in a while but at least offset the antics with some serious down to earth positive messages for everyone involved.
i respect your position and your receptiveness to mine a lot more than i can express. in all honesty i have no empathy for child enthusiasts either, and their death doesn't faze me at all. but their lives are inherently valuable, either to us or to someone on this planet. the aggressive or passive approach will never work; we should take a stern but humanizing approach to let them know what they're doing is wrong and why, in a way that they will actually understand and benefit from. i'm not accusing anyone of acting a certain way, but it's just an idea for how we should act in the future.
