Looks Like We've Reached The 'It's Not Like Epstein F*cked Toddlers, OK?' Part Of This Journey
The American Academy of Pedantics has some thoughts.
There was a time, a few years back, when the American Right was absolutely obsessed with pedophilia, child sex trafficking and Jeffrey Epstein. They had endless conspiracy theories about it, each one more ridiculous than the last. There were mole children running around the tunnels of Washington DC, Wayfair cabinets filled with said mole children, shoes made of baby leather — it was just endless.
Of course, now that we’re getting so much more information about Epstein, specifically in regards to his relationship with Donald Trump, we are learning that not only Trump could go and shoot and kill someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue without losing a single voter, he apparently could also just as easily go out there and molest a child without losing a single voter.
So there’s been some prevaricating. There’s been quite a bit of the “Actually, pedophiles are just those who are attracted to children who haven’t gone through puberty yet! Hebephiles are attracted to those going through puberty and ephebophiles are attracted to teenagers who are under the legal age but who have gone through or mostly gone through puberty” thing that terrible people seem to do whenever they’re very clearly trying to push the idea that someone they like who sexually abused a teenager isn’t quite as bad as someone who sexually abuses an eight-year-old child.
Generally speaking, people usually only get super pedantic about things when they have a dog in the fight. No one is going to start deliberately chastising people for calling a king crab a king crab when it’s not technically a crab, because “Who the fuck cares, it’s delicious, let’s just eat it!” Not anyone with any friends, anyway, and not unless it really matters to them for some strange reason how exactly it’s classified.
Kicking things off last week was Megyn Kelly, who wanted everyone to know that she heard from a friend who was close to Epstein that he wasn’t actually a pedophile, but rather that he was more into 15-year-old girls.
Oh.
Now, because I’m a fair person, I will point out that she did say it was also bad to be into 15-year-old girls, and that this was largely in reference to the fact that there were reportedly child sexual abuse materials on his computer and that, to her, this would then mean he was a pedophile. But she did still seem intent on making it very clear (for some reason!) that being into 15-year-olds is different from being into eight-year-olds.
“He was into the barely-legal type,” Kelly explained on her show. “Like, he liked 15-year-old girls. And I realize this is disgusting. I’m definitely not trying to make an excuse for this. I’m just giving you facts, that he wasn’t into, like, eight-year-olds.”
Fifteen, to be clear, is not “barely legal.” Fifteen is illegal. Eighteen and one day? Or one day older than whatever the age of consent is in the state one is in. That’s barely legal. So if we’re going to get all “words have meanings!” about things, that might be a better place to start.
Following that, we heard from Alan Dershowitz, which is, of course, always a pleasure. (Dershowitz of course would like everyone to know that though he did once go to Jeffrey Epstein’s house for a massage, he kept all his underpants on.) Speaking to Chris Cuomo on Friday, Dersh took a moment to correct a previous guest who had referred to Epstein as a “convicted pedophile.”
“The predecessor on your show described Epstein as a convicted pedophile,” he said. “He pleaded guilty to one count of having sex for money with a 17-year-and-10-month-old person. That’s not a pedophile.”
Does Alan Dershowitz legitimately believe that this is the only teenager that Jeffrey Epstein ever paid for sex, sex trafficked or otherwise sexually abused? He really shouldn’t, because, as Miami Herald journalist Julie K. Brown was helpful enough to explain:
Dershowitz, who helped Jeffrey Epstein get this sweetheart deal, knows full well that there were almost three dozen dozen girls, ages 13 to 17, who were named in a list that accompanied this plea deal. The final plea PAPERWORK was manipulated to pick just one victim -- and his lawyers made sure they chose the oldest one so that it didn’t look so bad. But the girl who came forward first to police was 14 -- and the list of other victims attached to that deal included many young girls.
Now, I hate to lawsplain to Alan Dershowitz, but there’s also actually no such thing as a “convicted pedophile,” to begin with. People are not convicted of “pedophilia,” they are convicted of the sexual abuse or rape of a minor, or of possessing child sexual abuse materials.
You see, because when someone rapes or otherwise sexually abuses a child, their preferences, their hopes, their dreams, don’t really matter. What matters is that a child was sexually abused. In fact, studies show that only about half of those who are convicted of child sexual abuse are actual, literal, pedophiles, which tracks, given that rape and sexual abuse are crimes of power, not necessarily uncontrollable sexual urges. This is also part of why the majority of men who sexually abuse boys are actually heterosexual.
Speaking of which, Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, also had some things to say about this. You may be thinking, “Boy, he might want to sit this one out, because people will think he is in some way justifying the Catholic Church’s history of enabling predators! Surely he wouldn’t want that!”
Well … let’s just read what he wrote, shall we?
Megyn Kelly is being bashed for saying that Jeffrey Epstein was “not a pedophile.”
Her critics are plainly ignorant, and their gripe is not with her—it’s with the American Academy of Pediatrics. It defines puberty as beginning at age ten for whites and Hispanics and nine for African Americans. A pedophile is a person who has sex with a prepubescent male or female, meaning someone ten or younger.
First of all, my gripe is not with the American Academy of Pediatrics, it is with the American Academy of Pedantics. Second, that is not even remotely how the AAP “defines” puberty — not that there’s a specific glossary where such a definition would even be found. I certainly don’t think the AAP would go out of its way to suggest that someone who preys on Black children is somehow less of a pedophile than someone who preys on white children.
For too long, the media and the chattering class have said that the Catholic Church clergy abuse scandal was due to “pedophile priests.” Wrong. The data clearly show that the vast majority of priestly victims were male (81 percent) and that 78 percent were postpubescent. Why is this important? Because it means the molesters were homosexuals. When males have sex with males who are postpubsecent, that’s called homosexuality, not pedophilia.
But the media ignored the data, thus avoiding the role that homosexual priests played. This allowed them to tag the offenders as “pedophiles.” The fact is only 3.8 percent of clergy sexual abuse victims were boys ten or younger.
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The fuck?
OK, first of all, as previously mentioned, the vast majority of those who molest boys are heterosexual. Second, even if the priests were gay, that would still be sexual abuse, because we are talking about children. An adult, regardless of their sexual orientation, cannot have a sexual relationship with an 11-year-old.
Now, sure. There are certain distinctions within crime. We punish manslaughter differently than we punish murder, because manslaughter lacks intent. Thus, there’s a difference between someone who kills another person by mistake and someone who plots to kill someone and goes through with it.
Similarly, there’s obviously a difference between someone who is specifically attracted to and preying on those below the age of consent and someone who is attracted to someone they do not know and assume is older than that but isn’t. The “manslaughter” in this scenario is, say, meeting someone in a dark bar and assuming they’re over 21 because they are in a bar, but it turns out they had a fake ID. It’s not being specifically attracted to 15-year-olds and acting on that attraction by sexually assaulting one, and it’s certainly not sex trafficking 15-year-olds.
The reason there is a taxonomy of these pathologies is not because one is morally “better” than another, it’s because of the fact that those with them tend to be very extremely specific about their preferences, which could aid in treating or catching them. Drawing a moral distinction between someone who rapes an eight-year-old and someone who rapes a 15-year-old is like drawing a moral distinction between Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer and saying that Bundy was morally superior because at least he didn’t eat his victims.
There is not a moral distinction between these things because there is not a distinction when it comes to the impact on the victim, which is the only thing that actually matters here. There is not a single victim of sexual abuse going around saying “Well, gee, I’m glad I was raped or sex trafficked at 15 and not 13 or eight, because at least now I have breasts!”
This is perhaps something that does not occur to a whole lot of people in a society that is so male-centered, despite the agonizing and endless cries of every Republican man on earth. Many still consider it “just natural” for adult men to be attracted to teenage girls, which is likely why so many feel the need to leap to the defense of men who sexually abuse and exploit teenage girls, to so firmly differentiate between the pedophile, the hebephile and the ephebophile. To cry out into the night “Hey! It’s not like he was fucking a preschooler!”
But let’s be clear: there is absolutely no way to do that without making it look like you would not be all that bothered by someone raping a 15-year-old. Or with having a president who would.
The world is full of incredibly obnoxious things to be pedantic about, if one so wishes. Surely, those with such an itch can find something that doesn’t make it look like they might be a child molester
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
So…. a nice comforting Maple Old Fashioned for this week’s cocktail? Or the Evil Hemingway, a Malort cocktail that’s a twisted Bizzaro parody of the Hemingway daiquiri? Either way, after that article we surely need a drink.
King crabs are not kings. Many people don’t know that.