When the Mob Comes...
Why I'm taking a step back from Twitter.
I finally did it — I’ve deleted the Twitter app from my phone, and I’m making a (fairly public) step back from the platform.
I’ve done this before, where I’ve said that I’m going ‘broadcast-only’ for a while, only to be drawn back into debates about the areas in which I work after a few weeks. But this time it feels different.
For context, a lot of the research that I’m involved with spans several areas, and studying attitudes towards atypical or marginalized sexual identities, including pedophilia and other forms of sexual attraction to children. This context is particularly important, as you’ll see below. If you really would rather not think about this topic, this isn’t the post for you.
The straw that broke the camel’s back this time is the (international) coverage of an interview conducted with Dr. Allyn Walker by Prostasia Foundation. As things stand, I’m involved with Prostasia in a couple of ways, perhaps most prominently as a member of their advisory board. The organization has been controversial since its inception, and takes an evidence-led approach to advocating for policies that are designed to reduce the incidence of child sexual abuse, and other forms of harm associated with atypical sexual identities.
Do I agree with everything that Prostasia stands for and does? No. But I’ve gotten to know the leadership structure and some of the other advisors fairly well over the past few years, and they have the best of intentions in what they do.
The interview with Dr. Walker was designed — at least at face value — to promote their new book. This is a text that is based on the author’s interviews with minor-attracted people (i.e., those who have dominant sexual attractions to children), how these individuals use various coping strategies, and how they remain offense-free living in the community. It was a fairly wide-ranging interview that covered topics such as:
What does ‘minor-attracted person’ actually mean?
Do these individuals always offend?
How do people with sexual attractions to children cope with such feelings?
As somebody who also studies such issues, these questions are commonly raised, but have relatively straightforward answers that centre around the distinction between attraction and action, with attractions being innately occurring and unchosen, and actions being a matter for personal control.
The full interview is freely available on Prostasia’s YouTube channel.
What followed this interview was truly breathtaking.
Dr. Walker — a ‘queer criminologist’ who identifies as transgender — was targeted by large groups of predominantly right-wing individuals online, with Twitter activity being a key driver of this. I’m always keen not to make these things about political identity, but there is a growing ideological undercurrent to lots of the conversations about research in this area. My own research was targeted just two weeks ago, when I shared a paper on stigma reduction that was met with many dozens (close to 100 at the time of writing) replies, many of which included memes and gifs involving woodchippers, and accusations that I, as an author of such research, am some kind of agent of the far-left, and have been captured by ‘woke’ ideology.
This is an allegation that even a cursory browse of my feed would absolve me of, given my fairly vocal opposition to campus crackdowns on free expression, my comments on ideologically-driven changes to the university curriculum, and my occasional forays into discussions about gender ideology.
You can see the replies for yourself below.
Back to Dr. Walker’s case, the interview has been reported in mainstream media outlets such as the Daily Mail, Australia’s ABC News, and both Fox News and Breitbart in the USA. All of these outlets, with a slight exception in Australia, have been overwhelmingly negative, suggesting that Dr. Walker (and several of their colleagues in this field of research) in some way ‘normalize’ pedophilia, or excuses child abuse.
Both of these claims that are evidentially false, and the ignorance needed to actually interpret the interview and associated professional commentary in that way is astounding.
A Twitter pile-on instigated by the large account named ‘Libs of TikTok’ has also led to clips of the interview being viewed millions of times, with the expected backlash from several thousands of people who either have not watched the interview, cannot comprehend the message being conveyed within it, or are ideologically resistant to Dr. Walker’s work.
There have also been protests on their campus at Old Dominion University, which has led to the president releasing a strangely worded statement, before placing Dr. Walker on administrative leave in order to reduce the level of interference with the “institution’s mission of teaching and learning.”
Having to deal with this kind of hounding is something that is simply unsustainable for researchers, who are only focused on this work for one key reason: to work with minor-attracted people in such a way so as to assist them in living healthy and, by extension, offense-free lives.
I am yet to meet anybody in this field who does not have child abuse prevention as one of the primary goals in their work.
But enough is enough.
The treatment of Dr. Walker — by her students, colleagues, bosses, the media, and the ‘public’ (as much as online communities can be considered as such) — is disgraceful.
Those who have been most vocal in ‘defending academic freedom’ in the social media space have, at best, been silent in this case, and some have even joined the pile-on. This suggests, once again, that claims of these kinds are often driven by ideological appearance rather than a commitment to the principle of the pursuit of truth in controversial areas.
Those commenting in the media have little interest in actually understanding and grappling with the issues at hand.
In essence, the people who we (as scholars in difficult fields) need to be on our side and to fight side-by-side with us have simply abandoned their responsibilities, and have joined those slandering researchers trying to make a positive difference.
As early career researchers and academics, people like me simply cannot afford to engage too much with Twitter. Families to feed, mortgages to pay, and jobs to keep are simply too important to risk such reputational damage as that sadly experienced by Dr. Walker — irrespective of the accuracy of the arguments being made.
We will likely see fewer public discussions on YouTube channels, fewer discussions on Twitter, and increasing levels of emphasis placed on smaller networks of researchers and clinicians communicating at academic conferences and on private email listservs going forward. Our engagement with those we seek to understand and work with will become confined to closed online communities and peer support forums.
This research will continue, and changes will be made to how we treat people with unchosen sexual attractions in an effort to help them seek support when it is needed, and subsequently to protect children from harm. But communicating about this this will not take place in such hostile online environments.
My own shift in communication will be to this page, where I can be more free than on Twitter. The character limit there is stifling to nuance, which is precisely what is needed in many difficult discussions — not least on this topic. But it is still important to have some form of public voice, and to be engaged in the broader communication of scientific work, irrespective of the difficulty of the topic. So please do subscribe and engage here if you’re interested in this work.
This whole debacle is another, albeit painful, reminder of the persistent criticism, hostility, abuse, and threats that academics in this field endure. I've changed degrees and even universities to pursue this area, it's isolating, it's unpopular, it's challenging, and highly confronting at times. But it's incredibly damn important, which is why I'm never backing down and why I'm never going away. I'm so thankful for people such as yourself, who have the courage and dedication to keep on going, despite the seemingly relentless uphill battle.
On a more humorous note, I got serious hate just from commenting on your post, I don't use Twitter often but all of a sudden I had a lot of notifications and was really surprised, I thought "Who do all of these idiots belong to? I don't recognise any of them and I don't have enough Twitter followers to have accrued this many idiots... I've caught them from someone else, an infestation of hatelice from someone far more accomplished than me" 🤓
Keep up your amazing work Craig, and thank you so much for making a positive difference in society, despite swimming against the tide in an ocean of twits.