The people’s guide to the paedophile guide

2010-11-18 16:02 by Columnists The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure: A Child-Lover's Code of Conduct, by Phillip R Greaves, 2nd. Now doesn’t just reading that title make you want to immediately rush out and molest a whole bunch of children? No? Me neither.

But I’d love to get my grubby paws on a copy of that e-book. I’d print it out and leave it lying on my coffee table, next to the Bible, maybe, just to freak out my guests.

"What the hell is that?" they’d ask incredulously.

"Oh, nothing," I’d reply. "Just a self-help, help-self DIY thing. I’m very hands-on."

And I’d read it too – if only to see what all the ignorant hysteria is about.

Skip this paragraph if you haven’t been living under a rock for the last two weeks. The Pedo Guide, a Kindle e-book, was listed two weeks ago by Amazon for $4.79. Just add a few dozen watchful bloggers and hey presto – instant internet shitstorm. The cyber equivalent of a pitchfork wielding mob descended on Amazon, posting hundreds of one-star "reviews" and threatening to do things to the author that would make Joe Pesci’s Tommy DeVito in Goodfellas seem pretty well-adjusted by comparison.

Initially, Amazon went the capitalist route and defended their right to sell whatever they wanted. They deleted the not exactly child-friendly user reviews, no doubt expecting it would all blow over as soon as Miley Cyrus flashed her crotch again or Taylor Momsen announced that she’d bought a new dildo. But much like mindless zombies slow-storming a shopping mall (in fact, exactly like mindless zombies slow-storming a shopping mall), the outraged horde replaced the deleted reviews with even more deletable reviews, and Amazon finally relented, removing the cursed book from their list.

But the damage has been done, right? Child-abusers across the globe bought the book by the electronic equivalent of several truckloads and are now arming themselves with the information they need to get their rape on.

Well, no. Despite a media penetration that would give any publicist multiple orgasms, the e-book has (according to The Smoking Gun) sold exactly one copy. One. At least Greaves has a supportive mother.

So the book is anything but dangerous – but we journalists never let the facts get in the way of a good story, and we know that although paedophilia itself may not sell as well as Greaves would like, stories about paedophilia sell even better than Julius Malema, the inbred spawn of an irrelevant royalty getting hitched to some random lipless coat hanger, druggie sport stars who deserve nothing less than a damn good public flogging and that old favourite, white people getting themselves murdered.

And selling paedophilia to the masses is easy-peasy. It’s a simple matter of couching the most repulsive, explicit details of child abuse in moral outrage. Coming across as all disgusted by what you’re talking about, it seems, gives us free license to talk about the most disgusting things. Sound angry enough and readers will rush to buy an opportunity to feel morally above the perverse but strangely titillating slime that drips from the gutter into their upturned faces. It’s the societal equivalent of fruitfully farting in bed, then sticking your head under the duvet to have a good whiff. Or you know, farting in the bath and then biting at the bubbles. Apparently. I read that somewhere.

But perhaps the closest analogy is rape itself. Personally, if I was a victim and the media used my story to attract eyeballs, I’d feel molested all over again.

So I feel almost bound by that journalists’ code of ethics thingy (tl;dr) to include something about how fashionably disgusted I am by Greaves’ manual teaching paedos how to get their rocks off without ending up tossing some Nazi’s salad at shiv-point – so here goes:

Paedophilia is cool. Just kidding. Paedophilia is not cool. Do you think I’m joking? I’m not joking. This is serious. Paedophilia is a bad, bad thing. Don’t do it, kids!

And besides, I just don’t relate to paedophilia. I fucking hate kids. Have you heard the way they talk? It’s all "Me! Me! Me!" – they’re SO annoying. I can’t imagine how anyone can even get past the first date.

As for Greaves’ book, I wish I could pass judgement, but I can’t, because I haven’t read it and, for that matter, neither have you.

But I do know it’s just a whole bunch of words, like The Anarchist’s Cookbook, American Psycho, The Satanic Verses, Mein Kampf, and 120 Days of Sodom. And to bastardise a slogan from the National Rifle Association, words don’t molest children – paedophiles and the people who love reading about them molest children. Me? I’m disgusted.