Thread by @EstherOfReilly

So, I actually bought and started reading the pedophile book, the one the lady...man...lady-man just got fired over. Yeah. Um. Many thoughts, but I'll just make one note because it ties together with other threads about "creating subculture" around disordered desires. /1

One of Walker's case studies is a female seminary student, "Harper," who discovers VirPed, a virtual "community" of fellow "minor-attracted" people. She introduces herself and begins to find a sense of a camaraderie with the group. /2

Harper finds a measure of relief in having found a space where pedophilia is discussed openly and non-judgmentally and even joked about (!) E.g., "What kind of shoes do pedophiles wear? White Vans." /3

Walker: "She found a place where people could let their guards down enough to make bad jokes—those that people who are not attracted to minors may find distasteful or offensive, but that allowed her and others to find shared humor about stereotypes." /4

Harper says she "didn't agree with" everything on the site (um), but also said it meant a lot to her. She then channels this into a little disquisition on the importance of community. For her, the VirPed community has eased her transition towards "not being in denial." /5

Harper continues that we all need community in order to "be connected to something greater than ourselves." Which "connection" she apparently found in message-boards full of pedophile jokes. /6

This is twisted, obviously, but it must be said that the applications extend beyond pedophilia. The unhealthiness of VirPed is similar in kind to the unhealthiness of subculture revolving around various other "orientations." /7

Ostensibly Christian projects like the "Side B" project have increasingly revealed themselves to be just another variant on this same unhealthy trend: creating "pockets" where people exchange cultural code-speak based on the "commonality" of their disordered desires. /8

Of course, Side B types would come back and say "Well, if church communities would just integrate us like it was no big deal, we wouldn't be forced to create these sub-pockets." Of course, it's not no big deal, even if there's room for improvement there. /9

It seems to me Harper is making a similar move, implying that if her church/seminary would welcome and integrate people like her into their community, she wouldn't have been driven to VirPed. /10

I would really be interested to see how Side B types engage with Harper's reasoning here. Because if they balk at the sort of "integration" she's proposing, then they've at minimum conceded a reductio for the "no choice, no stigma" line. /11

Meanwhile, I'll be brutally honest and say I don't have pat answers for the problem of how the church can properly and prudently minister to the pedophile. I don't know what that should look like in practice. These are dark, dark waters. /12

But one thing is for certain: Voices like Harper's are dangerous. Voices like Walker's are dangerous. There is an unmistakable normalizing push behind this research, and it must be resisted in all caps. /End