![[CW pedophilia] It's been five years and the Norwegian government is still showing constant ads for its pedo therapy chat service](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/9996e1f2-2e8e-47f0-8e97-b342014b7c56.jpeg){kind=link}
Although the ads apparently started in or about mid-2020, I myself only first noticed them in late 2023, when I saw an ad for the chat service on a bus stop while out of town. The ad was similar to the one pictured here, but I don’t think it was the exact same. Photo credit goes to Fredrik Refvem for Stavanger Aftenblad.
Translation of the bus stop ad pictured
The upper right of the ad is the logo of the government agency responsible for the service, the Norwegian Directorate for Health (Helsedirektoratet); the quote next to the person’s face reads, “It feels right, but it should feel wrong.” — and the text near the bottom of the poster reads, “Get help managing your sexual thoughts about children. There are adults with sexual thoughts about children. If they get help, we can prevent abuse. You can find information and a manned chat service on detfinneshjelp.no; treatment will be offered to those who desire it. DETFINNESHJELP.NO”
The website’s name, “Det Finnes Hjelp”, is a bit difficult to translate, but is somewhere between “help is available”, “help is possible”, “help exists” or just “there is help”. And I’m pretty sure I said out loud when I first saw this ad, “Whaddafuckiziss?! lmao” — because up to that point the only other time I’d seen those sorts of big ads claiming to be able to “help you deal with sexual thoughts about children” were like giant highwayside billboards in the middle of the Evangelical boondocks of Seppoland, right next to the ads about fetal heartbeats.
Norway’s public broadcaster NRK reported in 2020 that one month after the “Det Finnes Hjelp” campaign began, that it had led 20 pedophiles to seek treatment. Assuming that this has stayed constant since then — which it almost certainly hasn’t — then we can estimate that around 750 pedophiles would’ve sought treatment thanks to this campaign by now. Which is no small number, but is still of course only a small fraction of the actual estimated total number of pedophiles in Norway, which is “around 110,000” according to the ad campaign itself.
Nevertheless, although the efficacy of this program seems dubious, it has only continued to grow more and more prominent since I first became aware of it. I’ve seen untargeted ads for Det Finnes Hjelp on YouTube regularly (yes, yes, I know, I should use an adblocker) since last year, and these ads have taken two forms:
The first series of YouTube ads looked something like this: a series of dark and somber-looking shots zooming in on people whose faces have been replaced with a broken glass effect. The only audio is ambience and each glass-faced character’s line. There’s text in the upper right saying that the characters are only actors. It’s all a bit creepy and uncomfortable.
Translated transcript and description of that specific ad
Man 1: Is it so dangerous to just watch a film?
Man 2: I haven’t done anything… yet.
Woman: It feels right, but…
Man 3: I always hope that he won’t sit on my lap.
Man 4: Why can’t I be like everyone else?
Text on screen: Get help dealing with your sexual thoughts about children. DETFINNESHJELP.NO — the Norwegian Directorate for Health
Video description: We do not know if this video is relevant for you. If you have seen this video as an ad, then this is because you are 18~35 years old and probably a man. Aside from that, we don’t know anything about who you are and have not used any data about you to show this video. There are approximately 110,000 people in Norway who have sexual thoughts about children; we do not know who they are and are therefore showing this video to as many people as possible, such that those for whom it is relevant can choose to visit detfinneshjelp.no and ask for help. There are adults who have sexual thoughts about children. If they get help, we can prevent abuse.
The second series of YouTube ads looks something like this: a view of a chatbox on a screen, again the lighting is a bit dim and creepy, and you hear a man panting as he types on a keyboard. This video doesn’t have a description.
Translated transcript
[text in chatbox]
I have sexual thoughts about ch [backspace to “thoughts”]
I have sexual thoughts I don’t want to have [backspace to beginning]
Sometimes [backspace to beginning]
I have sexual thoughts about [typing slowly→] children
[automated reply] Thank you for contacting us; you’ve come to the right place! You can be anonymous here
[TL note: “thank you for contacting us” is phrased in a way that to me reads more as “contacting us was a good thing for you to do for our sake”, or more plainly and literally just, “so nice of you to contact us”]
[end message] Talk to practitioners who want to help you. DETFINNESHJELP.NO
There’s also an ad from the start of the campaign in 2020 that I found in NRK’s article about the campaign, but which I never saw myself. It reportedly aired during prime time on TV in mid-to-late 2020.
You may need a VPN to see the video, but I will provide a translated transcript.
Transcript
[Two men are talking to one another near what appear to be apartments. The one man is holding a bike and the other is wearing a jacket.]
Man 1: And you? You’re good?
Man 2: Yeah, it’s… yeah.
Man 1: You went grocery shopping in the weekend, huh?
Man 2: Yeah, yeah, you gotta, you gotta have dinner.
Man 1: Yeah.
Man 2: But, yeah, how are you doing?
Man 1: Yeah, it’s… I’m sexually attracted to children.
[Man 2 laughs]
Man 2: Yeah, uh…
[uncomfortably long pause]
Man 2: S— you’re telling me—
Man 1: Yeah…
Man 2: …Like what are you even saying right now?
[Man 1 clicks tongue, sighs in a manner that suggests he was about to say something but decided not to]
Text on screen: The things you can’t talk about, you can talk to us about. DETFINNESHJELP.NO for persons with a sexual interest in children.
So yeah, I dunno. Like it’s a bit of a bummer whenever I get these ads, and I can’t shake the feeling that there’s something “disingenuous” about them when the government responsible for them doesn’t really stand to gain anything from actually “defeating” pedophilia… Yet at the same time it is obviously very important to combat child abuse in whatever ways we can, so maybe I shouldn’t be so cynical about it, right? Yet it is very difficult to actually concretely measure the efficacy of this sort of program, which makes it the perfect thing to do to “look busy” and rouse National Spirit at the same time.
Do any of you have similar campaigns in your own countries? How do you feel about them?
Not just family but gender as well needs to be revolutionized to put an end to child sexual abuse. I recently shared A. Mark Liddle’s 1993 article “Gender, Desire and Child Sexual Abuse: Accounting for the Male Majority”, which might be of interest to you. I have also pointed out on a previous occasion that our mode of production pretty much necessarily views children as objects to exploit — see pushes to abolish child labor laws, which I must mention is also an aim to some extent of Norway’s far-right Progress Party, who came second place in the recent election. So I have for a while now seen pedophilia as being at least to some extent a sort of sexual manifestation of this capitalist attitude towards children: objects to exploit for work, objects to exploit for sex, right? So this is why I say “pedophilia is a system”.
No, the original phrasing is just "så fint at du tar kontakt!"
A lot of how we view children often feels to me like… the patriarchy still grants men a lot of power over women, despite progress made to end the legal and social view of women as literally chattel property, but the arguments that we understand now were ridiculous and wrong for viewing and treating women as property, are still being used to justify considering teenagers and children to be property. So yeah, we need to eliminate gender power dynamics as well as restructure how families work and the legal status of children and their available options for addressing abuse.