By now, you are tired of me defending every single man accused of sex crimes across the land.
So far, we’ve defended:
Harry Sisson, accused of “fucking raw after wine tasting”
WBE, the guy who cheated on his girlfriend and has hookups with his readers
Glenn Greenwald, the guy who gets off on findom and licks cum off the floor
Prince Andrew, accused of sex with a 17 year old where the age of consent is 16
P Diddy, who pays people to have sex with him
and Ghislaine Maxwell, accused of entrapping Democrats on behalf of Mossad
Please DeepLeft, stop defending creeps and weirdos!
No.
I want to say first off, right off the bat, first and foremost, first of all,
There are millions of women who experience sexual violence all across the globe. Harassment, assault, rape, and even the mere experience of being made to feel uncomfortable is harmful. In an ideal world, none of these things would occur. To the extent that the state has the power to reduce these crimes, it should.
But the response to crimes should also be proportionate. That is, a consensual *sexting* relationship between a 17 year old and a 35 year old (or however old Destiny is)1 should not be treated with the same level of seriousness as the brutal and violent abuse of a child. Calling it pedophilia is an insult to the real harm done to children, and it creates a moral panic: the war on young adult agency.
For the sake of clarity, a child is not someone we would trust to operate a 2,000 pound killing machine at speeds of 60 miles per hour. Someone who can legally drive is not a “child.”
That doesn’t mean that what Destiny did is ethical, moral, or ok. It’s fine to call Destiny a creep, because he is definitely a creep. If private companies want to distance themselves by pulling their sponsorships, or cease cooperation with him, they’d be well within their rights to do so. Maybe corporations have a duty to economically sanction people who engage in creepy behavior.
(Except Substack, Substack should definitely not deplatform me for writing this controversial essay)
The creepiness of Destiny’s actions aren’t a result of the power imbalance between himself and his 17 year old “victim.” Destiny is creepy because he is short, weak, and he looks weird. He also has an autistic son who (apparently) is the leaker behind these chat logs (???).
The fact that Destiny’s son is a Nazi is understandable. If my dad was a creepy person, and made a name for himself as a liberal, I would attempt to distance myself from him as much as possible by adopting the polar opposite worldview.
If Destiny looked like David Hasselhoff, and he was handsome, tall, strong, and kind, and he had a great relationship with his son, any 17 year old girl would be lucky to be sexted by such a celebrity. If David Hasselhoff were accused of such things, we could all wave our hands at him in the gayest way possible, saying “oh David,” and leave supportive comments under his apology video. Maybe he could do 100 hours of community service as restitution.
Unfortunately, the celebrities we are pumping out these days are all weird nerds and goofballs. That’s the nature of the beast. The cream of the crop is going to be diseased when the crop itself is diseased. The most popular streamers aren’t idealized versions of the human form, they are extreme cartoonish mascots of internet culture, reflected back upon itself. Extremely online people watch Destiny’s streams because these people are weird creeps with no taste or sense of aesthetics.
The fact that Destiny has any wealth or power at all on the basis of his “personality” is a credit to the poor taste of the American public, for which we should all be ashamed. In a just world, Destiny would be a union worker on I-95, and all e-celebs would be sexy handsome men.
Destiny has never had an independent thought in his life. He is an LLM. His chat feeds him Wikipedia articles, which he consumes and regurgitates at Ben Shapiro speed. Did I mention that he is physically unattractive? As a closeted homosexual, I demand that we raise our standards for who we consider a “talking head.”
Remember, I’m defending Destiny here. My point is that, yes, of course, Destiny is a naturally revolting figure, but he isn’t revolting because he sexted a 17 year old girl. Had he castrated himself and purged himself of all sexual impulses, he would still be naturally revolting. The sexting of the 17 year old is entirely besides the point.
I understand that Destiny is revolting, and I understand why people hate him, and why they wish to use this incident to burn him at the stake. But establishing the precedent and playing along with the lie that “Destiny is a pedophile” because of this incident is a dangerous game.
If we as a culture collectively delude ourselves into claiming that a 17 year old is a “child” in order to own an ugly e-celeb, the unfortunate side effect is that we will only further create a dangerous nexus of safetyism which will throttle the next generation.
First we claim that 17 year olds cannot consent to sexting… Then we claim that 17 year olds can’t drive… And what do you know, they stop drinking, they stop smoking, they stop hanging out, they stop having friends, they stop doing anything cool or risky at all, because we as a culture have collectively decided they are “children,” all just to own some ugly e-celeb. This does not seem like a proportionate response.
Women (and young boys) are frequently sexually abused prior to puberty. Many of these offenders, when released, re-offend. We could reduce the re-offending rate to 0 if we deported all pre-pubescent sex offenders to Haiti. There is no reason why Americans should tolerate the risk of recidivism from pre-pubescent offenders. Sex offenders are disproportionately poor and on welfare, so on average, nothing of value would be lost if we took a much more aggressive position on removing them from society permanently.
But the equivocation between 17 year old sexting and pre-pubescent offenses only muddies the waters and makes a stronger response more difficult. These days, when I hear a news story about a “pedophile,” I increasingly assume that this is going to be a story about someone sexting a 17 year old. If we want to take a stronger stance against pre-pubescent abuse, this kind of confusion is not helpful.
I jokingly supported raising the age of consent to 23, but now I am thinking about making that a serious position (at least as a thought experiment). The reason why is because no one could plausibly call sex with a 22 year old “pedophilia,” and so, if the age of consent were 23, then we could finally stop throwing around the term “child sex crime” in cases where that clearly is a lie.
If the age of consent were raised to 23, we could more clearly delineate between “statutory rape” and “pedophilia.” If a 55 year old has an affair with a 22 year old, is that creepy, and should he have to pay some fine or do some community service as a result?
Let’s compare this with assault. If I threw a sandwich at an ICE officer, should I be punished? Probably, since that is technically assault, and the law is the law. But should I be branded a “violent criminal” and be sentenced with the same harshness as someone who shoots an ICE officer?
It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if we handed out the equivalent of a “speeding ticket” to anyone who engages in creepy age-gap sex. You had sex with someone half your age? Pay this $200 fine, and your insurance premium goes up. Do it five times, and you might lose your license.
Sexting, as far as I am concerned, is a lesser offense, equivalent with a parking ticket. You sexted someone half your age? Here’s an $80 fine, pay this within 30 days or it becomes a $120 fine.
But just as there is a difference between throwing a delicious pastrami sandwich and shooting a bullet, there’s a huge difference between “creepy age gap” and “brutal violent sexual assault that will haunt the victim for the rest of their life.”
To my knowledge, there is no evidence to suggest that consensual sexting between 17 year olds and hairy dwarves results in lifelong psychological damage. There does seem to be evidence, however, of a strong correlation between pre-pubescent sexual contact and later substance abuse, suicide attempts, low income, depression, and the like.
It is possible that these correlations are not entirely causative. It might be the case that victims of pre-pubescent abuse also have a host of other comorbidities, like neglectful parents. What kind of parent would allow their child to be abused? Probably a mentally unstable one, with a litany of economic, emotional, and drug problems, all of which are heritable, either through genetic or environmental influence.
While it is possible that some of the harm is comorbidity rather than causal, when I have spoken to the victims of pre-pubescent sexual abuse, they express to me emotions ranging from rage, discomfort, guilt, and shame. One of the ways to test the causal hypothesis would be to compare siblings raised in the same household.
The reason why I am discussing this is not to cast doubt on the pain and suffering of pre-pubescent victims. Rather, I am stipulating that the state has a duty to assess the cost of crime, whether that crime is murder, theft, vandalism, or sexual assault. If a crime costs society $10 million, then the state should, at minimum, spend $10 million attempting to prevent that crime.
A disproportionate state response necessarily incurs an opportunity cost, because the state is currently at historical lows for murder clearance rates, meaning that many more murderers are getting away murders than previously did in prior decades. There is a deficit of competency in our criminal management strategy, and that will not be addressed properly through hysterics.
When discussing the age of consent, if we could develop statistical models of harm for given ages of victimhood, we could more appropriately devote resources to fighting those crimes. If victimhood at age X is twice as damaging as victimhood at age Y, we should devote twice as many resources to protecting age X as age Y. A flat model of victimhood and enforcement, where 12 is equated with 17, is not helpful to anyone.
In reality, the state already does this. Sex crimes at different ages are treated with different levels of severity. But unlike the case of assault, where we can easily distinguish between sandwich throwing and gun shooting, “statutory rape” is a relatively “flat” standard of harm, at least in the cultural Zeitgeist, where everything is now collapsed into the evil singularity of “pedophilia.”
The inability of society to judge crimes proportionately is connected with the rise of polarization. Polarized politics, whether in the form of mass deportations or Mamdani socialism, both think in terms of absolutes. Illegal immigrants are evil, and deserve no rights! Capitalism is evil, and there is no tax too high! Hysterical polarization imagines a world of absolutes, and refuses to ever account, reckon, judge, or apportion. This is the collapse of civilization into Marxoid-fascism.
If we started handing out traffic tickets to 22 year olds for having sex with crusty old men, this would start to deflate some of the terror and panic over “pedophilia.” People could once again begin thinking in terms of degrees of harm rather than absolutizing. But maybe I’m wrong — maybe people are so dumb and self-deluding that if we raised the age of consent to 23, they would actually start calling sex with 22 year olds “pedophilia.”
Nihilism is a tricky subject, because on the one hand, it supposedly means “apathy, lack of belief,” but in practice, moral nihilism and moral hysteria actually come hand in hand. Theoretically, it’s reasonable to imagine that if we spit on Jesus and trample the Bible, people would just give up on morality entirely, and chill out, and live according to reason and appetite. We would all just become rational hedonists. But this isn’t what has happened.
Instead, the removal of the moral core of Christianity from our civilization has given rise to a more hysterical moralism, a more vicious and self-righteous, self-deluding mob. Read the comments section, and you can find this horde demanding the ritual torture and human sacrifice of anyone who thinks 17 year olds are hot. I’d prefer to be forced to wear a belt buckle on my hat than bow to this insanity.
But on some level, it even seems charitable to call these people “insane.” An insane person lacks agency; they don’t choose to be insane. Insanity is a disease which afflicts them. I don’t think a schizophrenic has the moral capacity to choose not to be schizophrenic, for example. Insanity is a biological phenomenon, not a moral one.
Rather than being insane in the strictest sense of the word, I think these people are desperate. They are desperate for meaning in a world of nihilism. Since they lost the moral authority of the church, and even the government itself is being called into question (at least in moral terms), they are desperately seeking out a new moral core. Since pedophilia is one of the few moral stones left untouched by the death of the church and the loss of faith in government, they cling onto it desperately and fanatically.
I would even say that these people are pornographic. Consider the case of an incel who never talks to women, never touches women, never even makes eye contact with women! He is afraid of women. And yet, he goes home, turns on his computer, and watches women bent over and pounded in the most vicious, visceral, violent way possible! Because the incel is afraid of women, he overcompensates for this fear by indulging in the most extreme fantasies.
Moral pornography is the result of the same kind of fear. The people calling for the death of Destiny, not on the basis of his height or face or physique, but on the basis that he “GROOMED A CHILD,” they are doing so out of fear: the fear that we have lost our moral core, that there is nothing to believe in anymore, that church and state have fallen away, and we have been left neglected and alone. There is no one more afraid than a child who has lost his parents in the store. That is the psychology of the moral pornographer: lost, alone, afraid. Desperate.
In this way, moral nihilism (absence, void, neglect) leads to moral hysteria (absolutism, pornography, extremism). Nietzsche says that the only solution to this problem is to breed a higher form of man who can humiliate all these moral-porn-peddlers, and I agree. But until that man is bred, expect the situation to worsen.
In the meantime, I am offering my crisis management services, which you can access here:
How is calling yourself a closeted homosexual on substack being a closeted homosexual? Or am I two layers of understanding below getting it? Help me. I tried to take the course without one of the prerequisites.
There is a fight between genders for the ability to influence culture, since women prefer older men and men prefer younger women(on average excluding lgbt) and we all agree pedophilia is bad, any man who dates younger will be called a pedophile groomer by feminists regardless of the age of his mate. Incels also call women who date people richer than them gold diggers. Changing the age of consent or using rational arguments does nothing to fix any of this, the 2 groups are competing for status, and until you find a more efficient way they can do that you have no solution.