Beyond Tolerance: Child Pornography on the Internet

FOUR A Society of Deviants

F O U R A Society of Deviants I think that everyone here, with the exception of trolls and LEA, are friends and family of a sort. I know that there aren’t many people I personally know that I would let know of my tastes for the younger things in life. Here, I know it’s safe (within reason, of course) for people to talk about lolis. —P_Horse, Maestro board, February 26, 2000 Over the last half century, sociologists and criminologists have devoted much attention to studying forms of organized deviance, subcultures or gangs, in order to understand their values, ethics, and structures; but few of these studies present an example of deviant organization close to the world of Net child pornography. What should we even call this underworld , this milieu? I have been speaking of those who use Internet child porn as members of a subculture, and I believe that is the most appropriate word, but this particular subculture differs substantially from others that have been recorded through the years. Generally, the term implies a group who “build a body of shared knowledge through their contacts. This knowledge is called a subculture because it exists as specialized knowledge within the larger culture.”1 The network or community studied here certainly possesses a huge corpus of specialized knowledge, but this is built and transmitted entirely without direct, face-to-face contact. Individuals remain unknown to one another, to the extent of not knowing or caring whether a fellow deviant lives in the next street or on the other side of the globe. The whole phenomenon raises fascinating ques-| 88 | tions about that old sociological chestnut “What is community?” Community is, incidentally, the term favored by participants. We are reminded that most of the technical terms and concepts devised by sociologists to categorize human relations were devised before the massive changes wrought in social interactions by electronic technology and urgently need revision. Organized Deviance? The yawning gap between older categories and the present reality can be seen from the standard work of organized deviance by Joel Best and David Luckenbill. Their study divides deviants into classes, based on the nature and degree of their relationships: These organizational forms are defined in terms of four variables: whether the deviants associate with one another; whether they participate in deviance together; whether their deviance requires an elaborate division of labor; and whether their organization’s activities extend over time and space.2 The spectrum ranges all the way from Loners through Colleagues, Peers, Teams, and ultimately to Formal Organizations, and the model works well for most types of deviance, from pickpockets and confidence men to robbery gangs and drug syndicates. But what is the relationship of participants in e-networks like the Maestro boards? Clearly they are highly deviant individuals, who in most cases operate strictly as loners, never having direct personal contact with another deviant. On the boards, people identify themselves solely through fictitious names or handles, and real names or locations are never known unless in the event of an arrest, which necessarily ends that person’s participation in the child porn world. Not only do participants never meet, but the mere suggestion that they ever could (outside a police cell) is greeted with derision. On one occasion, a naive poster asked, “How can I meet any one of you in person. I sure would like to hang out with you and talk about A Society of Deviants| 89 | everything I seen and heard!!!” Responses were numerous and uniformly mocking: * gremlyn > thanx ocifer [officer], I’d love to go to the pedo picnic. FBI welcome!! * Stupid > what the hell . . . sure why not. We could start a club, maybe next door to the Girl Scouts? Nice neon sign in the window: ‘Pedo Trade Meeting Every Friday at 5pm—bring the kids, we have on-site child care’??!! Why would you want to meet anyone? Enjoy the anonymous camaraderie . . . don’t push your luck. * Half man half Lager > Nah . . . seriously guys, just think, we could all post our home addresses, phone numbers etc. . . . then Hey Presto!! Pretty soon we would all have the same address wouldn’t we, no more expensive phone bills logging onto Boards like this, no more worrying about the Feds etc., three free meals a day . . . a new fucking “husband ”!!! . . . Heaven!! * Omega68 > What about a great pedo-convention on the south pole? I think this...