Destiny and Why the Definition of Pedophile Matters
Destiny probably sexted with a 17-year-old.
In 2020, the embattled livestreamer Destiny filmed a sex video with an inexperienced 20-year-old streamer named Pxie. In 2022, Destiny sent that video to a porn creator, Rose, which led to a public leak. Pxie is now suing Destiny for non-consensual distribution of pornographic images.
It was recently discovered by anonymous sleuths that Rose was likely 17 at the time of her sexting relationship with Destiny.
I learned of this through a Reddit post gleefully titled “ROSE WAS 17. DESTINY IS OFFICIALLY A PEDOPHILE.”
The sentiment, though nonsensical, is widely shared.
YouTuber WillyMacShow, one of Destiny’s few remaining defenders, dramatically severed ties by filming himself reporting Destiny to the police for possession of CSAM.
Ethan Klein similarly distanced himself with a statement acknowledging that he has closely followed Destiny’s entire abusive career, implying that sexting with a 17-year-old is the worst thing Destiny has ever done.
Well, it’s not. It’s not even the worst thing he did in this story. Destiny used his position of power to manipulate a sexually naive 20-year-old into filming porn with him and then leaked it. That is worse than accidentally sexting with 17-year-old prostitute with whom he had no other relationship.
While I have no doubt that the current wave of indignation is partially genuine, I’m saying it’s stupid, and indicative of our growing confusion between ethics, legality, and commercial viability.
As social media companies increasingly control all human interaction, their terms of service insidiously replace our moral codes. For years, Destiny has avoided accountability for psychological and sexual abuse, blackmail, harassment campaigns, doxxing, and defamation, all by using barely-coded language that Indian YouTube moderators can’t identify as rule-breaking.
But everyone knows what “child porn” means, so now he has done something really, truly, undeniably bad.
What is a pedophile?
Pedophile: An adult who is primarily sexually attracted to prepubescent children.
Pedophilia is a specific pattern of sexual attraction to little kids. It’s not a belief system or a behavior.
There is no evidence that Destiny is attracted to little kids.
Sexting with a 17-year-old is predatory, but it’s a moral failure, not sexual deviancy. 99% of adults are sexually attracted to 17-year-olds.
The other 1% are pedophiles.
Misusing “pedophile” is a bad idea.
The word “pedophile” is scary, and so is the way it’s used.
As American political tensions rise and violent rhetoric escalates, “pedophile” plays an important role.
Consider the following:
Pedophiles deserve to be thrown into wood chippers.
Pedophilia is a belief system.
If you’re friends with a pedophile, you’re a pedophile.
Trans people are pedophiles.
Democrats are pedophiles.
Donald Trump is a pedophile.
Republicans are pedophiles.
Pedophile defenders are pedophiles.
Anyone who talks about what “pedophile” means is a pedophile.
People who are attracted to 17-year-olds are pedophiles.
See why using “pedophile” as amorphous doublespeak is dangerous? With one word, you can rationalize killing not just your political opponents, but also anyone who questions you. The word now inherently forms mobs.
And now that the fear of public shaming and violence has taken hold, people will aggressively enforce the mob-forming definition, unknowingly joining a violent mob of stupid people in the process.
Jeffrey Epstein’s victims were around 15, not 5.
Jeffrey Epstein wasn’t a pedophile.
Scapegoating blinds us to systemic problems.
On Thursday, while X users dogpiled Destiny, Elon Musk (the world’s richest man who owns the site) posted a video of Grok’s built-in AI “companion,” Ani:
I don’t know how old she is supposed to be, but I am getting excited, which isn’t a good sign.
Musk deleted the post after receiving predictable backlash.
Yet, in all of the discussion of Destiny’s supposed pedophilia, I haven’t seen any mention of X’s role:
Destiny met Rose on X.
Rose was allegedly selling CSAM on X.
There is no proof of age required on X.
Destiny is a pedophile because he allegedly has 60 gigs of Rose’s CSAM on his hard drive. How many gigs of CSAM does X have stored on its servers? Thousands? Millions?
Why does X have no culpability here? Because of Section 230? Have we incorporated that law into our moral codes as well?
The purpose of scapegoating is to resolve cognitive dissonance by blaming a systemic problem (social media facilitating sexual encounters between adult men and teenagers) on one component of the system (the sexual interest in teenagers).
Sanctimoniously calling Destiny a pedophile lets us feel like we’re fighting against predatory behavior while actually enabling it.
And because of the spring-loaded terror around “pedophilia,” the scapegoating, and thus the status quo it protects, is difficult to question. In fact, questioning this very narrative has gotten me banned from most large social media sites.
Child Sexual Abuse Is a Nuanced Problem
This is the great irony of the popular saying that bullets cure pedophilia.
There is no clean definition of child sexual abuse. It can be hard to spot, even when it’s right in front of you.
And often it is right in front of you—most CSA victims are abused by someone they know. The American fantasy of stumbling upon a “pedophile ring” inside of a pizza parlor does not come true very often. Usually it’s your piano teacher, or your dad.
Confusion, shame, guilt by association, and fear of a bloodthirsty mob make it hard to even recognize child sexual abuse, let alone confront or report it.
Child sexual abuse is a relational, systemic problem that can’t be solved with violence. Once you give adult men private access to minors with smartphones, you have facilitated child sexual abuse, period. Posting memes about killing those men (or killing random trans people) does not stop it.
All you are doing is ensuring the abuse of more children.
I think the “pedophilia” fear mongering and witch hunting conversation goes nowhere so long as people refuse to get to the heart of the issue. Which you have avoided here as well. Which is the hatred and fear of specifically male sexuality. This is a witch hunt against men. All of the controversy around porn and porn bans, is a fear/disgust/hate response to male sexuality.
You have often stated that the reason why the pedophile narrative is captivating to you is because it’s the last group of people that you are openly allowed to hate and justify killing. But this is false. It’s men. Men are the last group you are openly allowed to hate and justify killing. Male pedos. Male transsexuals. It’s not just a subsection of men. It’s all men. And the proof is that if you were hiring a baby sitter, you would be afraid to and highly unlikely to hire a male. It’s why men have increasingly vanished from teaching roles. Every man is feared to have the potential to sexually scar children, women, and other men.
The penis is a weapon of psychological mass destruction. Hell, not just the penis, but the male eyes. The male gaze terrorizes the women and children caught in it. The porn consumed by the eyes of men is destructive. It’s why we don’t want trans women in women’s locker rooms, but nobody cares about trans men in men’s locker rooms. The hatred and fear of trans people is the hatred and fear of men.
If you have anything to say about the pedophile narrative that does not speak to the center of this issue, that being the demonization of men, then you aren’t saying anything of much importance at all.
The sharp taboo against pedophilia exists for two reasons.
One reason is the sensible pragmatic aspect - that grown adults having sex with teenagers and children can very easily be abusive and damaging for the young person. If it were freely allowed it would likely be a net negative, so it's fair to say that it's correct that we don't tolerate it, at least in a modern world with long life expectancies.
The other reason is that it makes people deeply uncomfortable. We're scared of the truths about it - such as the truth that to most red blooded men, a post puberty girl is going to be physically attractive. Our instincts don't care about age of consent, they only care about the appearance of good breeding stock.
Sex in general is a very interesting taboo. It makes us want to do all kinds of things that as a culture we find shameful and shocking. I know I've stuck my dick in some pretty questionable places (all legal I might add!).
Personally I've shed any shame about it - I don't see why I should feel any more ashamed of my sexual tastes than I should feel about my preferences in food - but as a culture we're not there yet. And maybe we'll never be - it's a lot to ask of the majority to look at their own reflection candidly.
Which probably means we have to accept the lesser of two evils - people going on unfair witch hunts about pedophilia is probably the lesser of two evils compared to the alternative of tolerating pedophilia.