Is Bob McCoskrie a righteous moral crusader? Deeply full of shit? Both? 

You may have missed the ongoing dust-up about a Victoria University study concerning paedophilia. The study explores “stigma and attitudes towards people with a sexual attraction to children”, according to a poster seeking participants, and aims to “understand societal views on paedophilia and was approved by its ethic processes,” deputy vice-chancellor Professor Margaret Hyland told The Post. The study requires participants to complete two surveys and four educational modules.

After being alerted to the poster, Family First chief executive Bob McCoskrie wrote a post on Substack criticising the study, then enrolled himself in it and exposed its contents on his video blog. He argued that the study “rebrands paedophiles as victims” and “normalises sexual attraction to children” through a process of “indoctrination”, “manipulation” and “linguistic gymnastics”. 

To support this claim, he singles out the following passages from the study’s education modules, among others: “Having a sexual attraction to children is not something that is chosen or controlled” and “Having a sexual attraction to children doesn’t mean anything other than just that – they have a sexual attraction to children.” (His full beef is set out here.) 

“The university stands behind [the study] and the researchers involved,” Hyland said.

In the spirit of our brand-new format, here are the complex and competing truths within the Victoria Uni paedophilia study saga:

Truth #1: Globally and in New Zealand, rates of child sex abuse are stubbornly high. More than one in four females (26%) and one in nine males (11%) said they experienced sexual abuse before age 15 in the 2019 New Zealand Family Violence Survey.

Truth #2: Our current approach to dealing with the problem of child sex abuse, centred on punishment rather than prevention and shrouded in shame, secrecy and denial, is not working. Any academic inquiry aimed at alleviating or solving the problem is an unalloyed good. 

Truth #3: In some corners of academia, including within the Victoria University study, there is a concerted effort to reduce the stigma associated with paedophilic desire, and to make it clearer that there is a difference between having a sexual attraction to children and acting on a sexual attraction to children. To do this, academics like US sociologist Allyn Walker propose we replace “paedophile” with language like “person with a sexual attraction to children” and “minor-attracted person (MAP)”. 

Truth #4: Critics like Bob McCoskrie argue that these terms sanitise and normalise paedophilia and child sex abuse. McCoskrie points out that some academics have argued that paedophilia is a sexual “orientation” or “preference” like homosexuality; that paedophilia is not a disorder and should be removed from the DSM5; that adults who have sexual contact with children and teenagers are not necessarily harming or abusing those children/teenagers; and that any harm resulting from adult-child sexual contact is because of the stigma surrounding the act, not the act itself.

Some of these academics are very fringe, others are not: Alfred Kinsey, one of the founders of the field of sexology, argued that children have a sexuality which is not harmed when it is used for adult gratification; Gayle Rubin, a pioneering feminist and queer theorist, claimed that “boy-lovers”, ie “men who love underaged youth”, are unfairly persecuted; and Michel Foucault, the influential philosopher, called the idea that a child cannot consent to sex with an adult “intolerable”. 

In other words, some academics want to not only reduce stigma against paedophilic sexual desire, but also against child sex offending. 

Truth #5: Many of the above cases are historic, and today child sex abuse apologists are likely a tiny minority of academics – the small number of galaxy-brained deviants and cranks you’ll reliably find in any large body of people – and do not represent a widespread conspiracy within academia, “elite circles” or elsewhere to normalise or promote the sexual abuse of children. These days, anyone making these arguments is often immediately fired, rejected and (sorry) “cancelled”. 

Truth #6: In the introduction to the first module, the Victoria University study says, “Some people with this attraction will sexually abuse a child, but not all will – however, bringing attention to this fact does not mean that this attraction should be normalised or that it doesn’t cause harm, nor that sexual abuse isn’t a serious and damaging experience. The researchers reject any attempt to normalise sexual attraction to children and any sexually abusive behaviours that have resulted from this attraction and intend only to educate our community about the attraction and encourage more open and frank discussions on the topic, in order to support help-seeking behaviours and ultimately reduce sexual abuse towards children in our society.”

Truth #7: It’s possible to draw a bright line between non-offending paedophiles and child sex offenders. 

Truth #8: Binaries – victim/offender, desire/action – are tricky and slippery. 

Truth #9: As a conservative estimate, 3-5% of the adult male population in New Zealand have experienced feelings of sexual attraction to a minor, clinical psychologist Sarah Christofferson told the Guardian. 

Truth #10: There is some evidence that shame and stigma prevent paedophiles from admitting to their desires and seeking help, driving them to online hinterlands to discuss their paedophilic desire only with people who share it, and experts who have studied this phenomenon claim it can make children less safe. 

Truth #11: Shame and stigma are amorphous, complex forces driving social behaviour in complicated, unclear ways. They are clearly strong forces preventing child sex offenders from acting in the open, and therefore prevent an untold and unmeasurable amount of abuse. How do you remove the stigma from paedophilic desire without softening the stigma attached to paedophilic action? It might not be possible. 

Truth #12: When academics talk about removing the stigma associated with paedophilic desire, I think of Chesterton’s Fence: the idea that, before you remove a fence (ie do away with a tradition, norm or taboo), you need to be sure you understand why it was built in the first place. Are we absolutely certain this is a fence we want to get rid of?

Truth #13: Child sex abuse causes real, serious, lasting harm for victims. 

Truth #14: There should be absolutely no stigma associated with being a victim of child sex abuse. Yet, victims often suffer from such stigma, both external and internal – it seems to bleed over from the stigma associated with the act itself, and can make healing for victims very difficult. 

Truth #15: Even among people who think about sexuality for a living, there are many competing theories about sexual desire, how it is formed, and how malleable and mimetic it might be – and the same is true for other murky epistemological terrains like shame, morality and free will. Therefore, we should consider claims that a sexual attraction to children “is not controllable”, as the Victoria University study states, and that “there is no morality or immorality attached to attraction to anyone, because no one can control who they’re attracted to at all”, as sociologist Allyn Walker said about paedophiles in 2021, as contestable.

Truth #16: It is difficult to solve a problem if you can’t talk about it. 

Truth #17: Some slopes really are slippery, and in this one woman’s opinion, certain debates we should just close the lid on forever. Do racial IQ gaps exist, were there upsides to fascism, is it ever OK to fuck kids: a lot of those galaxy-brained deviants I mentioned earlier are waiting with bated breath to argue the affirmative case, with chilling logic. They’re hard to spot in the wild, for obvious reasons, but you can glimpse them in “MAP” forums or in this video (from 12:07 on). They’ll prattle until the cows come home about “rights infringement”, pederasty in ancient Greece and boys from the Sambia tribe. That’s the Pandora’s box that opens when academics start “just asking questions” about paedophilia. 

Truth #18: No arguments of this nature appear in the Victoria University study materials presented by McCoskrie, or sighted by me (I am midway through participating in the study at the time of writing, to check the wording for myself.) 

Truth #19: The existence of child sex abuse apologists shouldn’t preclude open discussion on how to reduce child sex offending, including in academia. The creepy little tail doesn’t wag the dog.

Truth #20: Despite occasional media dust-ups on this topic, there is a robust consensus today, spanning the farthest reaches of the culture-war divide, that child sex abuse is always wrong; that any sexual contact between an adult and a child constitutes child sex abuse; that it causes real, serious, lasting harm for victims; and that paedophiles should be supported to ensure that their sexual desire towards children never manifests in sexual abuse.

Truth #21: I feel sick and vexed thinking about this, but also a little hopeful. The vast, vast majority of us seem to be on the same page.