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What country do you reside in? I reside in Mexico, though I grew up in the United States. Do you consider yourself as being a pedophile? Yep. Do you believe pedophilia to be a mental disorder and that it should appear in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder)? Nope. If you consider yourself to be a pedophile: Do you think you have rights as a pedophile? This should be an easy question, I suppose. Do you mean "have" rights as in, some sort of inalienable innate possession? Of course not. Rights can be taken; we're seeing more and more of that. "Have" as in, actually enjoy at the moment? Less and less every day. Or do you mean "have" as in "should have"? Well, it certainly couldn't hurt. The question of "right" (and its corresponding obligations) isn't a simple one with me; consider that a personal idiosyncrisy. I've spent too much time with H.L.A. Hart and John Rawls to handily separate right from duty and ought from can. As far as I can go is to say this: the current state of formal (that is, bestowed) rights with respect to pedophiles is inconsistent and does not represent a status quo I am prepared to accept. If the pedophile has the following rights: Do you think your right for freedom of beliefs is being violated? No, I still believe whatever I want to. Do you think your right for freedom of speech is being violated? Mine really hasn't been, although I have been involved in a few cases in which other people have clearly suffered an inconsistent application of the relevant formal rights that amounted to a violation of the law, so I know it happens. The problem is that too many people don't understand the nature of the free speech/private property interface. Someone gets their blog yanked from some commercial site and immediately cries, "Violation of my free speech!" Well, actually, no, it isn't. It's private property. If they only want bloggers who say the sky is pink on their site, that's their choice. Often these places are vulnerable to the accusation of being hypocrites, but not rights violators. Do you think any other rights are being violated towards you as a pedophile? The violations of my rights aren't anywhere near as interesting as the violation of the rights of the children involved. I'm being told I can't express my desires. Children are being told they don't want to, which is a much more disturbing mindfuck. Do you think that the government should respect you as a pedophile? I'm not sure "respect" is an appropriate word here. I think the government should respect its own laws, using "respect" as a synonym for "comply with." As far as respecting me, well, that seems to be a strictly individual construction. If so, why should it? Again, I think "respect" isn't the right idea here. If you think the government doesn't respect you as a pedophile, please tell exactly what and how you feel, what are the direct consequences in your life related to this non-respect: Non-respect? Disrespect? See, this is what happens when the word isn't carefully chosen to begin with. Again, if we mean "respect" as in "obey," we've got two different problems: what happens when the government specifically doesn't respect its own laws in the persecution of pedophiles, versus what happens when the government respects its own laws but those laws reflect a disrespect of the individual on the part of the legislators? There is no universal list of human rights written in the stars. Contrary to what certain great men have written, there are no such thing as god-given, inalienable rights. You think you have an inalienable right to life? Well, what happens if I kill you? I've just alienated you from your inalienable right. I'm more powerful than god? Nope. There was no such natural right to begin with. The rights and obligations we have as citizens of any given lawzone and usually they are a result of millenia of experiments, philosophy, legislation, jurisprudence, criticism and mistakes. Over time (measured in centuries, usually), we hope the system of rights in our area slowly evolves towards situations in which we as individuals have an increasingly greater chance of living to our own satisfaction. Even bad laws contribute to this process, although that's not much comfort to the individuals who get skewered upon them. At the present, I think laws are ill-constructed with respect to pedophiles and the consequence is that many people are facing unjustly applied sanctions on issues which previous experiments have already shown us to be bad legislation. I also worry that the blind run is making it increasingly inevitable that the ultimate correction to this problem is going to be destructive and violent. I think we're going to have to look for another way to phrase the issue. Speaking in terms of "respect" isn't sustainable. What changes do you think the government should apply towards pedophiles? Personally, I don't think sexuality is an issue on which the government legitimatly has a voice. Do you believe what is generally being reported about pedophilia in the medias to be true? "Media" is already plural. The purpose of the media is to sell units (whether those units be newspapers, advertising slots or whatever supports the industry). They fulfill this purpose by delivering a product. The two competing trends are that, when the product is "news," there is a generally-held ideal that true news is a superior product to false news and should therefore be the goal for that product. But there's a competing market force which dictates that sensational news sells better than boring news, so all other things equal, our news system should be evolving slowly towards "generally true but biased toward the sensational." I don't think the credible news media intentionally lie, but by focusing on the sensational, they create a biased image that ends up being patently untrue. This is the nature of the beast and I don't see a solution. What would you sue the government for regarding anything that has to do with pedophilia? I personally don't have any grounds for a lawsuit against the government that I'm aware of at the moment, so suing them isn't really on my agenda yet. I'd like to see more children suing their local governments, though. Do you have any other comments/questions you would like to add to this questionnaire? A point would be nice. A don't have any problem with what you're doing; I'm just clueless as to why you're doing it. Where do you think this letter should be sent? Um... this is what I mean. Isn't that something you should know before you start formulating the questions? Much Love, Dylan Thomas dylan@freespirits.org |