My Childhood Trauma is Not Your Moral Platform
I’ve opted to throw this follow-up on Medium due to the controversy over my article, entitled The Complexities of Problematic Kinks. In it, we researched and covered a lot of reasons for why people enjoy kinks of problematic abuse situations — both from a victim’s perspective of healing (e.g., BDSM submissives healing trauma through dominants) as well as explaining the utility of these kinks for potential abusers of all kinds.
In this article in particular, we’re going to focus on one thing, and one thing only: depictions of sexual acts with minors. To warn any victims of child sexual abuse — shortened to CSA — we’re going to talk about things that could be potentially harmful and triggering to prior events of abuse in one’s life. Namely, I’d like to talk about grooming children with things such as shotacon and lolicon, as well as how it’s known in the furry community, cub porn. Just like the first article, however, we need to acknowledge the abused. And in this case, I need to acknowledge a CSA survivor I hurt due to the outrage I felt from projections placed upon me for what I wrote, which ironically caused me to similarly project the ignorant arguments onto someone who wasn’t actually making them.
This person, to my surprise as I came out of my extremely triggered psychological state, shared similar experiences to me with regards to cub porn. They, too, were groomed by abusers by that content. But while my outrage ignored the possibility of them being a survivor and ally — which in the wake of my fury, we both discovered we both were in fact allies — it still wasn’t fair of me to reach out, grab their shoulders, and essentially demand an explanation for what I wrongly felt was a dismissal of my attempts to be fair to victims. Psychological triggering from post-traumatic stress disorder is one helluva ride. So to that survivor, whose experiences I accidentally belittled, whose brilliance and intellect I disrespected despite how much I truly appreciate the fighting spirit for truth that they offer to the world, I am deeply sorry.
The reason I’m sorry is the fact that I quite obviously didn’t make myself clear, and this resulted in them feeling like they were not included in the lengthy breakdown — effectively it appeared like I was endorsing a key aspect of their abuse. Thus, a victim got swept up in the storm of controversy and attacked due to personal proximity, which was frankly never warranted and never justified on my part.
However, alongside this undercurrent of survivors accidentally attacking their fellow survivors, there’s yet another undercurrent that’s ultimately driving this whole problem to begin with: emotional sadism.
Emotional sadism is a twist on an outdated psychological term (as of DSM-IV) called emotional masochism. Neither go by these names in a clinical sense as of the newest edition of the manual. (I don’t even think “emotional sadism” ever showed up in the DSM, frankly.) However, it speaks to the same problem of a different direction. The people I’m referring to who are emotional sadists are the crowd of individuals who objectify CSA survivors as a weapon to inflict pain on people they perceive as pedophiles, either because they don’t understand the abuse dynamic of pedophilia or, at worst, simply because they enjoy bringing harm to anyone who looks like low-hanging social fruit — of which pedophiles are arguably the lowest. After all, who would defend a pedophile but another pedophile?
This is absolutely not to say that, in some way, there is not a social justification for conveying that emotion toward actual pedophiles. If there’s one thing that defines social injustice in the world, it’s an adult taking advantage — in any way, shape or form, be it through physical abuse, emotional abuse, or sexual abuse — of a child. After all, the child cannot successfully defend themselves, either through psychological means and most certainly not through physical means either.
The problem, though, is the low-hanging fruit problem. Due to how pedophiles lurk in our society in the shadows, being sneaky so as to not let normies — or children they prey on — know how they operate, not a lot of people actually know what pedophiles look like, what pedophiles do, or even how pedophiles tend to sneak and slither through the crowds they prey within. To see how pedophiles are in various ways, the ever-infamous series To Catch A Predator — while mostly catering to this crowd of sadists in particular — is a great example, and in fact was a key pillar to help me recover from my own trauma.
That particular trauma, however, was primarily induced by the sadists we’re talking about, thanks to me absorbing the kink-shaming of safe adult-oriented outlets induced by the Internet’s collective misunderstanding of what pedophiles look like. So thank you, Chris Hansen and the Perverted Justice project, for showing the world what real pedophiles look like, and helping me understand that because of how I was recovering from my childhood abuse, that I was not the pedophile the Internet was telling me I was by proxy.
In the realm of CSA, there is a particular class of individual who will use the label of pedophilia as a bludgeon to harm a potential target despite whether or not they are a pedophile. They will label anything that looks vaguely like one may be interested in sex with children as pedophilia, despite not being anywhere near the actual abuse inflicted with literal child abuse. Where calling things like loli, shota and cub porn pedophilic is simply an excusable lack of understanding of detail (we will explain why in a moment), accusing people who are into things such as the ever-infamous Adult Baby/Diaper Lover realm of kink — also known as “babyfurs” in the furry community — is outright kink-shaming, and potentially significantly emotionally damaging to victims of CSA who use infantilism as an outlet to process their abuse.
You’ll note, too, that a major theme with me is using certain (safe) tools to process trauma related to CSA, of which fantastical depictions of children in drawings was one that sometimes survivors use. However, in an attempt to be as fair as possible to everyone involved, despite trying to explain such, it was not quite clear that I fall strongly on the side of “underage erotic depictions of children — even fantastical — should not be distributed.” Hidden under the nuance of “walled gardens are currently a step in the right direction,” I thought I had communicated that it’s an outright negative, because we do not have the perfect world we discussed, and this content will eventually, in some way or another — despite these walled gardens — be used to abuse children. And despite that some CSA survivors (again, not all) use cub porn to heal and put themselves in a state that was divergent from their abuse event, that fact alone is not enough to allow it to flourish freely, with or without a wall. So for that, to victims of CSA involving grooming with this content, I’m dreadfully sorry that this wasn’t clear and that you didn’t feel I was supporting you.
However, just like infantilism is falsely accused of being pedophilia, shota, loli and cub porn are absolutely not the same as child porn. Let’s explain why infantilism is not pedophilia first, though, since this is the easier one to understand.
Infantilism is simply a sometimes-eroticized concept called age regression, which can actually happen based on the sight of something as simple as a teddy bear.
While some acutely distressed individuals (eg, those in pain) can assume a fetal position and cry in response to their suffering (physical or emotional), others prefer to cuddle with a stuffed animal (eg, a teddy bear).
Infantilism is performed by adults, sometimes by themselves. In fact, as in this story in particular, sometimes it’s not even sexual. Sometimes people just want to be children. Sometimes people just want to pretend they’re toddlers. And what’s interesting is that sometimes they’re actually not interested in the sexual side of this, such as in the case of a man named Stanley Thornton.
Often infantalism is a sexual fetish, but that’s not the case for Stanley. “I like to play or be treated as a baby to get the love and affection and safeness,” Stanley tells National Geographic’s Taboo show. “For some people it’s a sexual thing but for most of us we’re doing it to relax. You come home from work and you change into baby mode. You put away your adult stuff and that life gets put on hold.”
At the core of infantilism is simply a want and need to be taken care of like a young child. Many people like the idea of being mothers for adult babies, such as Stanley’s partner in the article. It is downright vile to compare infantilism to pedophilia, as there are no children involved in this kink in any way, shape or form. Everything about infantilism is about the sometimes eroticized feeling of the self becoming so young and helpless that one must acquire an adult to take care of them.
This, perhaps to your shock, actually leads nicely into why things like shota, loli and cub porn are not on the same level as child porn. Which might be confusing — aren’t children somehow involved with that concept?
No. Not actual children. That’s frankly the key here — but sometimes they do get involved in the process, which is a unique problem in itself.
In the original article I didn’t mention things like some cub porn artists being banned and shunned from their cub art communities when it was revealed that they were in fact tracing actual child porn. That has in fact happened. (Well-trained artists will tell you this isn’t hard to spot, even if you’ve never looked at child porn before. Artists can tell when a picture has been traced, or even referenced, despite whatever content was directly copied.)
When an actual depiction of child abuse is used to create a drawing of shota, loli or cub porn, abuse has explicitly occurred in that moment, and thus should be dealt with via whatever means possible. For example, Zaush using the borderline-legal eroticized depiction of children as reference for a potential cub piece is, indeed, a form of child abuse. Despite the fact that the children were clothed in the references, their poses are eroticized — sometimes without the child knowing what they’re doing. The child, despite being clothed, is thusly being used for sexual purposes. While unfortunately not technically illegal due to (in my opinion, I am not a lawyer) limited interpretations of the Miller Test, this kind of photography is still absolutely morally reprehensible due to a lack of capability to consent by the minors involved. It sincerely doesn’t matter that they were clothed — children were being eroticized, possibly without their knowing and undoubtedly without their understanding of the situation. For a lot of reasons, this is morally wrong, and the fact that Zaush was willing to use these photos as reference was in fact a perpetuation of child abuse on the artist’s part.
When children are not involved in the production of these kinds of works, the murky aspects lie in whether or not the art lands in the hands of an actual child. The reason for this is because of how vastly different the cycle of abuse is within the works of these drawn depictions of what would be vile acts in the real world. When these depictions land in the hands of a child, abuse has occurred, period. Their fictional nature does not matter — the child should not be given the content by an adult in any way.
I’m going to repeat this for emphasis: when the shota, loli or cub porn lands in the hands of a child, abuse has occurred. Not while it’s being drawn (unless, as mentioned above, actual abused children are used). Not when it is in a sketchbook. Not when it is either in a collection folder or on the hard drive of an adult. But when it is distributed in one way or another and lands in the hands of a child.
Whether or not the adult who has acquired the underage fictional depictions of children is a pedophile is frankly a toss-up — maybe the adult hasn’t finished processing trauma, or maybe the adult (like in the cases of actual abusers who attempt to signal in shota/loli/cub communities that they’re into actual children, who then proceed to get banned) is slowly ramping up into actually abusing children eventually. The same could potentially be argued for the artist. Without knowing the context of why the person is aroused or interested in these depictions, it is absolutely understandable why people would be disgusted, or even scared. Pedophiles will lie to you about whether or not they’ll actually have sex with kids when confronted about this (naturally making an accurate judgment way more difficult), but some people aren’t actually into this stuff for the underage aspects, as mentioned in the previous article. So it’s hard to know for sure, when learning someone is into this kind of content, whether they’re actually going to harm kids. That’s frightening uncertainty. It should be acknowledged that people feel this way, and is why they have such a strong sense of disgust about the whole issue. The unknown is a scary place.
Where drawings and child porn diverge, however, is the cycle of abuse. As mentioned above, drawings only become abusive when actual depictions of eroticized children are used as reference (such as with Zaush and the cub artist I mentioned above) or when the fictional depictions land in the hands of a minor (such as with myself and the anonymous survivor I mentioned above). Child porn does not have any exceptions whatsoever.
Before a photo or video of child porn is even produced, in the ramp-up to production, abuse has occurred. That’s because the child is either being groomed or being trained to be okay with performing sexual acts because they’re being manipulated by an adult.
When a photo or video of child porn has been produced, abuse has occurred. This is an easy one.
When that photo or video of child porn has been consumed, again, abuse has occurred on the part of the consumer. (Yes, to those of you lurking who have an actual child porn problem, you are abusing children merely by consuming and creating demand for this abusive content. If you’re ashamed of this, or scared of the fact that you can’t stop, do your damndest to find a safer non-abusive outlet immediately.) When that photo or video of child porn lands in the hands of an actual child, you better believe that child was abused by a pedophile in some way or another in that moment.
This chasm in the specifics of how abuse occurs with all of this content is what makes it simultaneously ignorant and vicious to accuse and lambaste both consumers and creators of fictional depictions of minors as if they were producing child porn. They are not. By comparing the fictional depictions of children in sexual situations to actual child porn, you are simultaneously belittling and disrespecting the trauma of actual CSA victims involved in real-world content while feeding into this sadistic cycle of finding a random witch who very likely never even wanted to touch or harm a child in the first place.
And yet, in cases like Zaush’s, despite them actually committing some form of abuse… there was a sense of apathy amongst the crowd, a lack of wont to do much of anything about the abuse that had been exposed because the artist was popular, established and provided content the crowd enjoyed that wasn’t of a cub variety. So such as in the cases of the #MeToo movement, their popularity became their shield. It was upsetting to watch.
This lack of understanding about child sexual abuse is incredibly upsetting at best, or infuriating in a blind-rage sense at worst. And that blind-rage I felt induced by the emotional sadists of various online communities, with the simultaneous sense of apathy over an actual abuse event while these sadists continue to look for low-hanging fruit that never harmed a real-world child, is why I’m ending the article on the same inflammatory title I set in the article:
My childhood trauma is not your moral platform. My childhood trauma is not your sword. My childhood trauma is not something you can blindly use to bludgeon random people who look like they could be a pedophile. Because in doing this, you are objectifying my abuse in a different but similar way from how a pedophile would. Rather than getting off to it sexually, you’re getting off to it emotionally, because in this state of mind, you think you’re fighting for survivors like me — assuming you’re even thinking about survivors like me. You’re not. You’re not doing a thing to people who abuse people like me.
In the same sense that a pedophile is being controlled by their id to abuse, you are doing the same thing: jumping to knee-jerk, shallow conclusions to satisfy some myopic emotional need (and arguably social obligation, for fear of not looking like a pedophile) without care for how or who you harm. Your abuse victims just aren’t children.
So please, learn what your enemy actually looks like before attacking. I understand how hard it is to parse out these things sometimes, and how emotional these kinds of things can be — even if you’re only involved either as a family member or friend of someone who’s been abused. But by refusing to understand what you’re attacking — just as I did when accidentally attacking a fellow CSA survivor due to my severely triggered state from the sadists I mentioned — you’re harming survivors like me.
Please learn and understand what we’ve gone through as survivors of this kind of human abuse. Without that understanding, you hurt us without even realizing.
