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The latest incident in the American culture wars involves a gender-non-specific professor from Virginia’s Old Dominion University who wants to “destigmatize” pedophilia.
Allyn Walker, who according to “their” faculty page specializes in “Resilience to Offending, Mental Health, Court Systems [and] Queer Criminology,” told Prostasia he uses the term “minor-attracted person” (or MAP) in place of “pedophile” so as to lessen that stigma.
Walker’s book “A Long, Dark Shadow: Minor Attracted People and Their Pursuit Of Dignity” challenges “widespread assumptions” that MAPs are also “predators” and “sex offenders.”
The Federalist’s Spencer Lindquist reminds us of a four-year-old Vice article titled “I Spent a Year Living with ‘Non-Offending’ Pedophiles” which attempted to do what Walker is doing now. The MAPs in the Vice story refered to themselves as “Virtuous Paedophiles,” or “VirPeds” because “the vast majority of them claim to have never gone down the path of sexually engaging with a minor.”
These included a foster parent who, “to no one’s surprise but everyone’s horror, was accused by one of his foster children’s biological mothers of sexually abusing her daughter,” and a man who was “so non-offending that he felt comfortable testing himself by working at a job that ‘involved children directly.'”
Pedophiles are stigmatized because pedophilia is and deserves to be accurately seen as unspeakably reprehensible. Stigmas are a way we socially communicate this reprehensibility. Any word, framing, or action that chips away at this stigma inevitably breaks down the guardrails against such evil actions.
Yet again we witness an instance of the left siding with the oppressor while pretending to advocate for the victim, this time under the guise of academic inquiry. …
Framing this conversation as if it is a legitimate field of research that one delves into out of altruism doesn’t fool anybody when you come out and openly say that you’re trying to make pedophilia “less stigmatizing.” It becomes even more transparent when we discover who’s behind this movement and when all social and political indicators point towards a coordinated attempt to sacrifice children’s safety and innocence at the altar of limitless tolerance, the promotion of which has framed the unrelenting degradation of all moral standards as one of our society’s defining moral imperatives.
Lindquist also points to organizations such as B4U-ACT, cited by Walker in the interview, whose co-founder Michael Melsheimer, was a former YMCA director “who had served four years in a federal prison for aggravated sexual assault involving children.” Ironically, too, the FAQ page on B4U-ACT’s website says “We see minor-attracted people as whole human beings … not as criminals or ‘deviants’ who need to be controlled.” And the group for whom Walker did his interview (Prostasia) provides a “MAP Support Club: which it describes as a “safe, chat-based peer-support network for minor attracted people age 13 and older” (emphasis added).
After initially backing Walker in this continuing controversy, Old Dominion now has placed “them” on administrative leave, stating it is worried about Walker’s safety and “that of the campus.”
UPDATE: Walker has agreed to resign effective in May. They will remain on leave until then.
IMAGE: Dean Drobot / Shutterstock.com
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