Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls. – Joseph Campbell
The renowned expert on mythology, Joseph Campbell, often advised lecture attendees to “follow your bliss”, in other words to pursue the life-path that results in the greatest happiness and fulfillment. Campbell argued that it’s impossible to know whether one is really doing the “right” or proper thing in a cosmic sense, but one does always know what makes him feel right. I think that’s good advice for healthy, self-aware people, but perhaps not so much so for deeply disturbed or sexually unbalanced individuals. But even they often seem to “follow their bliss” into careers which let them immerse themselves in their passions, and when those passions involve socially forbidden subjects reaction formation often takes a hand in their career choices.
Most of you probably recall that reaction formation is a psychological defense mechanism by which the human mind shields itself from uncomfortable feelings or desires by forming an obsession with the exact opposite of that thing; for example, a preacher who is obsessed by porn might frequently speak out against it from the pulpit, and a man who is obsessed with child porn in particular might champion legislation against it, or even seek a position investigating allegations of pedophilia:
A Catholic Church child safety co-ordinator who was in charge of investigating sexual abuse allegations was jailed for 12 months today for internet peadophile [sic] offences. Christopher Jarvis…investigated historic claims of child abuse, interviewing the victims when they were adults. He was responsible for child protection at 120 churches and parish community groups for nine years…and…had access to police and social services information about victims of child abuse. As a result of the conviction and sentencing, the Roman Catholic Church has ordered a review of child protection across the South West of England.
…Jarvis…was arrested after uploading images of pre-pubescent boys on to the Ning social networking website…police officers who traced him to his home…found more than 4,000 child porn images, mainly of boys aged 10 to 12, on his church-supplied computer and a memory stick…The majority, 3,721, were at Level One…but there were 120 at Level Four, which includes scenes of child rape, and 12 at Level Five, which can include scenes of torture and sadism…he had [also] viewed erotic content about a relationship between a nine-year-old boy and an adult man.
…Judge Paul Darlow dismissed attempts by the defence to have sentence deferred to examine whether Jarvis [who claims to have been abused as a child] would benefit more from psychiatric help than prison…”You, of all people, were more aware than others of the massive theft of innocence and long-term damage exacted on the children whose images you downloaded for your own sexual gratification…In the circumstances, your behaviour was more elective and cynical than might otherwise have been the case…It had a deep impact upon the church. In the eyes of the public you had a respectable position in the church…”
A judge is not a psychologist, but it shouldn’t take more than a passing understanding of the subject to recognize that Jarvis did not download child porn in spite of his job as the judge seems to presume, but rather sought the position in the first place due to his fascination with the subject of pederasty. Obviously there is no way to prove it, but I strongly suspect that the great majority of men who take jobs which require them to deal with child porn do so because they are aroused by it. Similarly, if you’re a journalist who is turned on by fantasies of very young girls held in sexual slavery, you might (theoretically, of course) get a job at a major newspaper (such as, for example, The New York Times) writing column after column about young girls held in sexual slavery, expressing your great disgust and deep indignation for the awful monsters who enslave them yet describing their situations in lurid (some might even say loving) detail:
…Srey Pov’s family sold her to a brothel when she was 6 years old. She was unaware of sex but soon found out: A Western pedophile purchased her virginity, she said, and the brothel tied her naked and spread-eagled on a bed so that he could rape her…After that, the girl was in huge demand because she was so young. Some 20 customers raped her nightly, she remembers. And the brothel twice stitched her vagina closed so that she could be resold as a virgin. This agonizingly painful practice is common in Asian brothels, where customers sometimes pay hundreds of dollars to rape a virgin…Repeatedly, she tried to escape the brothel but she said that each time she was caught and brutally punished with beatings and electric shocks. The brothel, like many in Cambodia, also had a punishment cell to break the will of rebellious girls…each time she rebelled she was locked naked in the darkness in a barrel half-full of sewage, replete with vermin and scorpions that stung her regularly. I asked how long she was punished this way…“The longest?” she remembered. “It was a week”…
Yes, I’m talking about “Creepy” Kristof again. I’ve mentioned him before, most recently in yesterday’s column, but I can never get over the fact that this man apparently has legions of credulous female readers swooning over his “courage” (because obviously it takes a real man to go along with a moral panic). These silly women are apparently far too naive to pick up on the fact that all of Kristof’s columns on the subject (and there are many, going back at least six years) read as though they were typed one-handed. Call me cynical if you like, and there’s absolutely no way that I can prove it, but I’ll bet I know what Old Nick is thinking about when he dates Mrs. Palm and her five daughters. I’m certainly not the only one who thinks so; I’ve seen other whores allude to it in comments, and I imagine it must at least cross the mind of most of his male readers. In fact, I’m amazed that Kristof has as many male readers as he does…but of course, denial is a powerful defense mechanism as well.
One Year Ago Today
“As Young As Possible” was my first column on the “studies” produced by the Schapiro Group, which are so laden with bias, spurious methodology and unsupported conclusions they aren’t even good enough to qualify as junk science.
Not sure I really believe too much in this … “reaction formation”.
I can think of a LOT of things I’m passionate about – almost obsessive about, but it’s not because I have a fascination with those things. I’m not “fascinated” with terrorists but I damn sure want to wipe them off the planet. And you can count me in when it comes to eliminating child porn and punishing offenders, though I have nothing but revulsion for it. I also favor the death penalty for men who violently rape women – though I would never rape a woman and don’t even fantasize about that. I had a girlfriend once who had that fantasy though – and asked me to fulfill it for her. I was clueless and just stood there. Fortunately she had another “fantasy” on standby and said “Okay, if I was a slave would you buy me?” … that was something I could work with. 😉
I think sometimes the “reaction formation” argument is thrown out there to silence debate.
Totally agree that unbalanced individuals seek out occupations where they can capitalize on their obsessions – like the Priest you mention, Maggie. I also had a few druggie friends from my school days who wanted to be pharmacists. LOL – don’t know if they actually became pharmacists though – and I don’t think I want to!
I’m obsessed with doing dangerous things – and I gravitate towards those jobs. Unfortunately, I feel most “alive” when I’ve just come out of a situation where I should have been killed. I had a “desk job” for two years – and I got fat and depressed. I took … LOL … a $20,000 pay cut just to get this job where I can do stupid, physical things. Looking for another job is out of the question for me – unless it’s more physically tough and dangerous. There aren’t many jobs like this.
Now – Kristof IS CREEPY but, I give him the benefit of the doubt that he’s not interested, on a personally obsessive level, in child rape or trafficking women.
Are we really sure Kristoff is even interested in females of any age? Just asking.
I don’t think he really believes the bullshit he writes. He’s a mediocre writer though and he has to find a “niche” if he’s going to advance in his profession. He does it – because it satisfies his professional goals (these are columns that get read – which means he gains professionally from that). He also does it so that he becomes some kind of “Liberal Hero” and that spreads his reputation globally to people he knows will adore him.
And yeah – IF he’s a heterosexual (just stipulating here) … but if he is, what he’s doing is a GREAT WAY to get laid. I think feminazi women just love it when members of the “oppressive class” join their side – and I think they tend to make “Superheros” of those men when they do – even though those men are mediocre – like Kristoff. This is what is partially behind the “Herman Cain” phenomenon in the Republican Party – a man from a race that typically shuns the party, yet this guy embraces it and goes far within it even though he doesn’t know China has nuclear weapons.
Whoa, now; just because reaction formation exists doesn’t mean every single person who opposes whatever must secretly desire the thing he fights. But you must admit that news of crusaders against sex caught with kiddie porn or prostitutes is never surprising.
Yep – you are right about that. I was not surprised one bit when Elliot Spitzer was busted for seeing a prostitute even though he had fought so hard against prostitution!
Spot on there!
Offtopic but – I have to share this for a laugh (I can’t tell it anywhere else) but … I am going to Japan next year and I was just surfing a Japanese Escort Agency site. It seems the Japanese want you to know everything about their escorts and have information on their profiles such as …
“BLOOD: Type O”
LOL!
Blood type is a very big deal in Japan. There is a lot of popular superstition tying blood type to personality. It’s often combined with astrological signs (both Chinese and Western). So you always see blood types listed in personal ads, profiles of teen idols, and such. I would’ve been very surprised if escort agencies didn’t include it.
I remember when Sailor Moon sites listed each Senshi’s blood type, and the creator, Takeuchi Naoko, had hers listed as well.
The death penalty for rape – when a high percentage of rape accuastions are suspected of being false??? That sounds like a reaction formation to cover up homicidal tendencies!
The neofeminist Robert Jensen sounds to me like another male manifesting reaction formation.
He apparently goes out of his way to watch the most extreme pornography he can find, and then describes it in detail during public lectures.
Yeah, Old Nick is no saint. He’s a fucking fool with a particularly stinking shit-eating grin.
And, yes, you best believe that Maggie is right about all the manly, manly men who affect to have such “rage” as a result of living in the same world as a single CP image — like so many liars they come to believe their own moralizing blather, but that doesn’t stop their cocks from getting hard.
If only they had no power.–
Where did you get that picture of Kristof and the two blond honeys, Maggie? Inquiring minds want to know.
Hmm, I’m not sure; I think I just did a Google image search on his name and it was a few pages in. Now that I’m thinking of it, it was the personal website of one of the girls or else that of an organization they belonged to, something like that.
My first take on Kristof was that he was motivated to go on his crusade because of some twisted notion of it helping him get laid, in some way or the other. After all, that is usually the safe bet.
Then I read this post. A light went on in my deep memory bank and I remembered where I had read this type of turgid prose before. The Marquis de Sade. Kristof has channeled his voice from “Justine” and even worse screeds. There is the same obsession with the complete helplessness and innocence of the victims and the enjoyment their tormenters find in the defilement of those things.
With de Sade, he told the world straight out that that is what really got him off and the French made sure he died in prison.
Well, Maggie, I do find it interesting that he has his arms around two young women, unless they are his relatives or something. Anyhoo, I’ll do an image search myself.
Maggie, I hate this kind of logic. Attributing motives is a dangerous game, first because there is no way to tell if you are right, second because it cannot be rebutted with evidence (how can you demonstrate what you are thinking?), and third because it opens the door to attacks coming back at you:
“Oh, that Maggie, she’s always writing about anti-prostitution fanatics and decrying their latest attempt to drum up moral panics. But I bet she secretly hates whores – just look at some of her past columns where she criticizes former colleagues! I know she claims she’s all for legalization, but I bet she’d be over the moon if every whore was raped repeatedly: you can just feel it oozing from every sentence she writes.”
Or how about
“Maggie sure likes those Marines. That’s how I know she has killing fantasies. She writes a blog with lots of sex and occasionally talks about soldiers, so I bet she gets off on thoughts of corpses lying on a battlefield.”
Note that these arguments about you or Nick Kristof MIGHT WELL BE TRUE, but even if they are they cheapen discourse and make it harder to actually find the truth.
You have a good, solid point to make (several, actually) and don’t need to stoop to such intellectual lows. You do a great job convincing people (me, for instance) that prostitutes are misunderstood and persecuted with facts and evidence. I hope to see you keep that up, and not indulge in unwarranted if enjoyable speculation about your ideological opponents.
Reaction formation doesn’t work that way; those who suffer from it always advocate in favor of repression. If porn is outlawed, they won’t be able to get at it; if every last prostitute is arrested and imprisoned or brainwashed, their sick little minds will have their revenge against the “temptresses”. If there are people who, due to reaction formation, advocate for greater personal rights and the government getting out of people’s bedrooms, I say blessings upon them because they’re turning a psychological problem into a good thing rather than acting out their twisted psychodrama on the whole human race.
As for Kristof, if he doesn’t want others speculating on his motives he can stop it by ceasing to lie, spread propaganda and advocate for military raids against individuals and writing properly instead of in his usual turgid prose. I laugh at speculation about my supposed “hidden motives” because independent research by readers will support everything I state as fact; can Kristof say the same?
Now Susan, for an old man, to have his picture taken with twentysomethings is a perfectly respectable hobby.
Maggie this seems like a stretch.
“””
the great majority of men who take jobs which require them to deal with child porn do so because they are aroused by it
“””
What would be hard to deny is that a man who is interested in &whatever is more likely than other men to take a job dealing in &whatever than other men, and that this rule applies to child porn.
But most guys who work in child porn probably got those jobs due to bad career advice, all other avenues to promotion filled with people who would never retire, or a lateral transfer over to child porn as a form of torture to avoid paying termination pay.
It’s possible, and I’d even believe it of guys who are transferred there, work quietly and keep trying to get out of that department. But those who seek to work in that field, stay there happily for decades and continually trumpet about what “heroes” they are? Sorry, but I’m going to assume they’re following their bliss. If they don’t want me or others to assume that, my advice is the same as it is to cops who don’t want to be judged by the bad ones: find another job.
Also remember cops just aren’t very smart. There is a pretty strict censoring process that limits the intelligence of cops to about 1 standard deviation above the mean. Anybody smarter than that just isn’t going to be a cop. Certainly, there is not a single cop smart enough to run an escort agency. So take an idiot with a useless job, add a billion dollar propaganda campaign and the natural human desire to believe that your job is important, and you have a believer.
Thanks to your blog I’ve been doing my Nanowrimo on sex workers and I’ve included a Kristof-esque character addressing an evangelic rally.
Not yet got around to the neo-fems yet. 😀
I’m glad I could help, but…what’s a Nanowrimo?
http://www.nanowrimo.org/
National Novel Writing Month
I formulated a very similar thought in the bar of the City University in 1970. Noticing that all 7 of the group I was chatting to were from the School of Opticianship, I asked if all their students wore glasses. Apparently some wore contact lenses. I extrapolated this wider. Have you ever met a social worker who can run their own life, a totally sane psychologist, etc. So too with your examples of essentially the same syndrome.