Political Strategy
What is becoming clear to me is that those of us that support some form of intimate sexual relationships with boys are not in alignment with the values and identity constructs furthered by the VirPed model. However, I would ask you to consider whether it might be better to evaluate VirPed in terms of its stratigic usefulness rather than whether it's ideology agrees with our personal value system and identity. My strategic purpose is to change society so as to make it easier to pursue intimate relationships with boys, and to enjoy the fellowship and solidarity of other self-respecting boy lovers. If you share this purpose, or something like it, then this essay is for you.
Purpleflower and others have raised some good points recently about why VirPed seems to be misaligned with our strategic goals. VirPed's vision of who and what we are lowers us, sullies our dignity, amputates our hope for a better future. However, despite all this, I think that VirPed has a critical role to play as an initial phase of a larger strategy.
The greatest barrier right now to CLs having any positive impact on social mores is the fact that we cannot speak about the basic human truth of our position and be taken seriously. We are not regarded as men, but as monsters who are less than fully human. This is an old story of human hatred. Over and over again we see a pattern in which the hated group is denied the right even to be heard as fellows, and this right is almost always denied on the basis of sub-human status. Therefore, the first phase of our struggle is to find ways of attaining the status of “human being deserving of basic respect.” Now that fact infuriates us, and rightly so. We want to scream and fight and lash out against this fucking society that forces us to choose between our right to be heard and our right to express the fullness of our love. We are repulsed at the Atlantic article because the author must present himself a pathetic yes man just to be heard.
Yet, if we ever want to create change, we need to hold our noses and do whatever needs to be done, even if it is distasteful. Before blacks were marching in the street demanding integration and civil rights, Jackie Robinson was holding his nose and being a “true gentleman” in the face of vitriolic hatred. He focused on the game, he let people call him nigger, he let hotels turn him away, but he didn't let them drive him off the Dodgers. Twenty years before the Stonewall Riots, the conservative Mattachine Society set far more modest goals that sound in many ways surprisingly like VirPed's (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mattachine_Society#Goals). The idea that a spontaneous revolution to overturn the current sexual regime will come into being out of nowhere is a fantasy that won't get us anywhere.
All struggles for human rights have been hard fought, and they always start with the fight for a basic recognition of the lived experience of the oppressed by their oppressors. A world where VirPed is successful at convincing people that most pedophiles choose to be law abiding productive citizens is a world where people will start listening to and sympathizing with our suffering. This still isn't the world most of us should want to live in permanently. We must do what needs to be done without forgetting who we really are and what we really want. This isn't easy. Anytime one plays a role long enough, one risks becoming that which one pretends to be.
Hence, the greatest danger that going along with VirPed poses to our cause is that too many CLs will actually drink the VirPed KoolAid and not just use it as a strategic asset. The danger is greatest for younger CLs who have never known a social reality other than the one produced by the Great Hysteria of the late 70s and 80s. For many of these CLs, the gut-level felt sense that having sex with a child is equivalent to the most horrific child abuse is so deeply conditioned that a great deal of emotional healing work in a CL-positive space will be necessary to establish a self-image free from shame and self-disgust. So that is part of the role, I see this board as having to play. Continuing to be a space that provides the emotional detox necessary to stay true to the bigger strategy.
Chemical “treatments” for sex-drive also pose a major danger in this regard. If they are ever refined to the point where they work successfully with few side-effects then we can kiss our hope for change goodbye, unless we work to spread seeds of doubt in the minds of those CLs who in desperation think about choosing chemical castration. With the rapid advancement of bio-technology, it is inevitable that a “cure” for sexual desire will eventually be developed (see X-Men III). When this happens we need to have already put in place a strong bulwark of pride and belief in the goodness of CL desire or else our cause may be lost forever.
There are many other issues that need to be addressed by those who believe in full acceptance of CL, and we can and should work to address these issues at the same time that VirPed does it's work to win the first tentative strands of social acceptance.
