Finding Elara Podcast

Transcript

We're joined by perhaps our first controversial author.

Perhaps the title of his book is going to help out.

We're talking to Robin Murarka, who is a Canadian-born author, meticulously and unapologetically unveils the inner paradoxes that we all possess.

Disruptive, unfiltered and human.

And here's something, his book title straight away is going to make you go, it almost has that ick factor about it.

It's going to be fascinating to find out what lies behind it.

File it. That is correct. What made you pick a book like that? Of all the things you could have written about, it's a really icky subject that generally for most people makes their skin crawl.

I agree. Interestingly though, like a lot of things make people's skin crawl, but people still love crime shows, don't they? So they do. They do. So it's, it's, it's kind of an extension of that where it's, it's empathizing or experiencing kind of perhaps characters that are on the fringes of society that we may not necessarily normally encounter.

However. But would we want to encounter them? That's the theme. That's a good question. So the answer lies in the theme of the book, actually, because the book is actually about an individual who has the proclivity, which is a mental disorder, but is conscientious. So the individual doesn't want to act on it and doesn't act on it. So the novel kind of explores what kind of a life that person might try to lead if they try to be happy, but not actually act on whatever that urge might be. So in this case, the urge to be a pedophile.

Pedophile, they choose not to be because they understand that it's obviously something that you don't want to be. Right. So even though he has the urge to be one, he isn't one because he knows that it's morally and every other way wrong. So he makes a conscious choice not to be a pedophile. Well, interestingly, a pedophile actually, by definition, is just someone who has the inclination. So that's why I titled it the pedophile, because it differentiates between that and a sex offender. So somebody could be a pedophile without being a sex offender, because they never act on the urge.

Absolutely. And then that's just a mental disorder, just like any mental disorder someone would have. And so for me, it was it was an interesting concept and very kind of important to kind of empathize with an individual that is never really talked about and probably never receives empathy, which might be an important thing, because if you're conscientious.

But this is an individual who would never reveal that, isn't it? I mean, if, for example, you had a sexual attraction to children, but you never acted on it. That is not something you're going to tell anyone, including your best mate, is it?

No, you wouldn't. And that in and of itself is also kind of a problem because that's presented in the novel. Because if you have a mental disorder that is, like human sexuality is an integral aspect of who we are. And so if yours is directed in a way that you can never quite act on, it would probably be better if they were in an environment where you were able to kind of talk about it without the unbelievable stigma of ick that comes along with that, you know?

It's interesting, isn't it? Because when you look at people, people have all sorts of sexual fantasies. I mean, for example, people who like to be spanked and all that sort of thing, which we might think is kinky and a bit weird, but we don't necessarily see it in the same level that we would see something like pedophilia. For the overwhelming majority of people, pedophilia is repugnant, it's abhorrent, and certainly anyone who practices it, we believe they should be locked up and the key thrown away forever.

The word itself is something that is repugnant, I think. That people, no matter what the context is, even when we started talking about it, your immediate question was, why would I even write about it? Because it's such a conceptually distasteful thing to even think or talk about it, right?

You have to think, well, okay, if I'm writing books, I want people to read it. You almost imagine somebody would go, oh, I'm not going to read that, you know?

Yeah, but it's so interesting because even when I published it, I was actually kind of stigmatized by the idea where I didn't know what quarter responses I would get. And weirdly, I'm getting almost unanimously positive responses from people who I talk to who read the book. It's really interesting. So what happens is the negative feedback would probably come from people who've never read the book. Possibly, yeah. Just receive the title and be like, why would you write about it? But as soon as they know that it's not in any way glorifying any form of abuse at all and is completely not supportive of it, and it's just a practice in realistic empathy, people tend to surprisingly be quite open to it a lot of the time.

Do people, and are you able to walk past people who might have what you might call inclination? That you yourself would find abhorrent like an example of something I don't know I mean there's I don't know I mean there's all kinds of kinks that I don't actually find interesting like if someone people like being you know defecated on how do we deal with this because I suppose one of the problems that we have is not people who might have some sort of fantasy or fetish towards children which they control yeah the problem is when they don't seek to control it when they seek to act on it absolutely how do we deal with does the book seek to address that issue no because that's a criminal issue more more or less and the issue isn't even pedophilia because rape is in the same category if you're it's a sexual if you're non-consensually pursuing anybody and in my opinion children cannot consent to something like that no then it is someone who has an antisocial problem where they're willing to harm someone else for their own personal gain and that's something that is a that's an antisocial problem that you can assess is that a next level problem that is perhaps it may play out in that way, but it's actually linked back to another problem. Say, for example, the fact that somebody doesn't have any sort of inbuilt moral code that would logically say to them, no.

I agree with that. But I also think, and this is one of the reasons why I think the novel is actually helpful, is that the more you kind of isolate people and close them off, say someone has the mental disorder, it disallows them to kind of coalesce with community. And the more you coalesce with community, the more you're able to empathize with everybody in your community. And that makes it less likely that you're willing to harm someone in your community whereas if you're completely isolated and it makes it less likely you're going to empathize so I think even empathizing with people who have a positive intent towards the people around them probably lessens the idea that they might offend in some way you know what I mean it's also one of the greater dangers say for example things like the internet yeah where people can seek like-minded people yeah who by the very nature of the fact that you're only associating with those people almost normalize what we know is not normal.

Absolutely. And that's the thing. That's why I think isolating it as them versus us is not a healthy process, not necessarily even for them, but even the people who might be victimized by such individuals. Robin, thank you so much for taking the time to have a chat to us. Not a problem at all.
Robin Murarka and a controversial book. It's simply called The Pedophile.

Courtesy of Chris Ilsley & the Finding Elara Podcast