Why is pedophilia such an awful thing in western cultures?

I would wager it’s b/c the children aren’t capable of intellectually forming a decision about their sexual behavior yet. The pedophile either deludes the child, or forces himself upon them. Either way, society views it as a more heinous form of rape.

“just as other non standard sexualities”
Not the same thing. It is not a sexuality. Geeeezzz!

“do you see a day in the future when pedophilia is accepted”
Yes, when robbery and taking advantage of people is accepted.

It has nothing to do with ‘culture.’

It has everything to do with healthy maturation mentally, emotionally and, DUH..physically.

Child brides are a product of some cultures, but that is not based on true pedophilia.

True pedophilia is akin to the issues behind rape and other sexual crimes.

Domination and control of a weaker person due to severe developmental and mental deficits.

It’s victimization, its rape.

Sexual activities should only be between consenting adults. Children are incapable of fully understanding all the ramifications of sexual activity.

Predatory behaviour towards innocents being accepted? No.

I don’t know, but I can’t stand how pedophilia seems to be considered worse than murder or other violent crimes.

Because children are innocent and non-sexual.

For an adult to sexualize their encounters with children is predatory behavior.

No, it will not become acceptable.

@cockswain What if the child creates the child pornography themselves? Why are people still charged?

@ChazMaz How is it different?

@Coloma It has everything to do with culture. Cultures in the past have celebrated sexual relationships between children and adults

@boots All you said was that they “should” be between adults.

@marinelife Sexual urges start at puburty, before becoming a legal adult.

@Deejai

Pedophilia IS murder!

It is the psychic murder of a childs right to innocence and safety.

Murdering another soul is far worse than murdering their body.

But pedophiles are often attracted to children younger than puberty, say five years old. What of them?

Also, maturity and making good decisions doesn’t start at puberty.

My mind is so boggled that this had to be asked that I can’t answer…

@Coloma

Some people dont believe in souls

@jackm Is it not true that only children who have been abused become sexualized in that way, and then might make pornography or whatever? So, what you see is already the result of severe damage.

It’s an awful thing in any culture!

@jackm If the child creates the pornography and an adult views it, that adult is seen as a threat to society’s morals and has a greater potential to harm a child in some way. That adult is punished less severely for possession of the pornography than if he were to actually assault a child.

Is this what you mean?

@marinelife

What about the adults who dont make mature decisions?

@skfinkel I was more speaking to the girls or guys who text naked pictures of themselves to their friends.

@thriftymaid Again, that is not true. I realize that many people confuse current society norms for universal, but that is simply not the case.

@cockswain Threat to societies morals? Is that a valid charge?

@MacBean Open your mind a little more. Lifes more fun that way.

@jackm I edited my response b/c I didn’t like that sentence. I more mean society views that offender as more likely to harm a child as they are interested in child pornography. Left unchecked, they may commit a crime.

@cockswain Makes more sense. Thanks

@jackm – How is it different?
Because it is victimization, having nothing to do with sexuality.

Are you trying to connect the dot between pedophilia and homosexuality?
That is what I am getting from your statement of, “other non standard sexualities”.

You are confused.

A Second Question:

Do you think molesting a child inherently scars the child psychologically, or does societies reaction to a molested child cause this?

@ChazMaz Yes, homosexuality is a non standard sexuality.

“Do you think molesting a child…”

That is pedophilia. So not a second question. Still the same question.

@jackm Uh-oh, you’re losing serious credibility for what could be a reasonable discussion. Obviously molestation harms a child. Why on earth would you consider homosexuality non-standard? I assumed you were referring to freakish shit like beastiality.

Because children are innocent, and a paedophile is robbing a child of that innocence.

@cockswain Standard sexuality is between a man and a women. I am not saying homosexuality is wrong in any way, I am simply saying sex between a man and a women is what makes sense evolutionarily. I would include bestiality in non standard sexualities aswell.

@ChazMaz I am aware.

@jackm Sure, I’ll make that concession, and apologize if I offend any homosexuals for accepting that definition for the purposes of this discussion. But why wouldn’t you think a child is scarred by molestation? Haven’t you met anyone that has?

An adult “loving” a child (with sexual intent) and two adults loving one another are not the same thing.

@cockswain I am not asking if the child is scarred, I am asking about the cause of the scarring.

@ChazMaz I never said they were…

”@ChazMaz I never said they were…”

Yes you did, by saying… “just as other non standard sexualities are becoming more accepted today?”

It is not a non standard. It is a NON. Defining it as a sexuality is trying to legitimize perversion and abuse.

@ChazMaz I am arguing that they are both non-standard sexualities. Loving a horse and loving someone of the same sex are not the same thing, but they are both non standard sexualities as well. Please provide me evidence that pedophilia would not fall under the category of “non standard sexualities” as is your apparent claim.

@Deejai

Fine. But trauma effects everyone on a deep level, period.

@jackm

I am wondering if you have a pedophiliac attraction and so, are perhaps looking for some sort of justification for the unjustifiable?

Just because something is of a cultural birth does not mean it is okay.

Burning ‘witches’ happened, does not mean it was right.

Sick people can always find a supportive argument…seek and ye shall find, for better or for worse.

Children have a much harder time defending themselves than an adult. First of all, there is size. An adult is much bigger than a child and the child could not stop the adult if he/she wanted to. Also, there is the whole issue with authority. A child will have a harder time saying no because children are conditioned in many cultures, not just Western cultures to do what an adult says. Also, no matter how smart a young child is, he/she is not mature enough to make an informed decision about what to do with his/her body. Also, it is physically painful. Children are small and underdeveloped and so engaging in any kind of sexual intercourse is painful.

I do agree that a part of a victim’s shame comes from society. Victims of child molestation are treated as victims, even if they don’t remember the abuse. However, this does not mean that these children are not hurt psychologically. Even if you take out the sexual aspect, the child is being physically hurt, forced to do something and intimidated by an adult. This is never good, no matter why the adult is doing those things.

Edit to add: I think there are also varying degrees of pedophilia. It is very different to molest a five year old than it is to molest a twelve year old which is different than molesting a fifteen year old.

@Coloma Please don’t assume I am a pedophile because I am asking these questions. It makes you look ignorant.

Using your same logic, just because something is looked down on by society doesn’t make it wrong. Homosexuality is one example.

Pseudo intellectual bullshit.I mean black & white non issue here. Sick twisted fuckers who need their grotesque little nobs hacked off with a rusty saw. No further dialogue necessary.

@jackm Pedophilia IS awful anywhere it occurs—not just in western cultures.

“Please provide me evidence that pedophilia would not fall under the category of “non standard sexualities” ”

Using your example. You love your horse. But you don’t want to fuck it. Pedophilia is about having sex with a child.

This is not a conversation about love. But sexual abuse of a child.

This question is nuts. Children can not defend themselves to an adult man.

And yes, it screws them up forever. The victims of catholic priests….are scarred for life.

We have no rights to have sex with innocent children.

Now teachers and 16 yr old boys is a totally different issue. they are both willing. Not that it is “right.” but 16 yr old boys want to do teacher anyway.

a 4 yr old child has no idea.

@jackm it’s call puberty. get an education. quit watchin porn.

There is a big difference between homosexuality and pedophilia.

@jazmina88 – LOL

“Now teachers and 16 yr old boys is a totally different issue. they are both willing.”

Same difference. It is about trust and respect. Your teacher is there to teach you. Not fuck you.

lol @ pedophile hysteria. Keep up the idiocy, guys. :)

@ucme Good argument, glad to have your input.

@ChazMaz I was using the word love because you were using it. I meant sexual intent. Sorry for the confusion.

@Coloma I never said it was not wrong. I just want everyones reasons for thinking it is wrong. As I am learning, most people just hate the idea, and then try to rationalize it later. People can’t tell the difference.

@jazmina88 I think you do not get the point of this question. Please don’t participate if you have no idea what you are talking about.

@DominicX What are you saying?

Why on earth is this even a discussion?

@ChazMaz ok….you caught me in a brief moment of lust. But I restrained myself, because I know the difference between self-control and being disgusting.

@jackm

I am saying that people are having their typical hysterical reaction to a mention of pedophilia. A person who questions societal views on pedophilia is automatically assumed to be a demonic child-rapist. People are making outrageous assumptions because their hysteria clouds their judgment.

People aren’t even allowing you to discuss it and that is fucking stupid.

@jackm why do you consider yourself a pedophile expert? cops would not even poise this insane question.

pedophilia will never be accepted. move to an eastern culture and check it out.

Kiss my legal age ass.

@silverfly If you have to ask you don’t belong here.

@jazmina88 I just like to make people think about the views they hold. Doesn’t seem to be working with you.

@DominicX Yeah, people are afraid of things they don’t understand. Glad you understand the point of this question.

Before I vomit, or weep, after reading this revolting question, I will type my short answer:

Too late, here come the tears.

Because it f***ing hurts.

@jackm

You say you do not believe in morality.

True, there are many gray areas within such a wide parameter as such emcompasses ‘morality.’

BUT….sorry….there ARE basic guidelines of morality…namely not harming others via acts of gross selfishness.

Sexual exploitation of a child is an act of great harm and selfishness.

I’d bet my life savings you have closeted pedophiliac tendancies…lets hope they stay in the closet.

I am a pacifist in many ways, but, I can promise you this….pedophiles are the ONE exception to my non-violent stance.

@jackm

I will provide my reasons for seeing it as wrong. I promise I will not go hysterical on you like 90% of the people who responded to this question. Pedophilia? OMG RAGE MODE ALL RATIONALITY IS OUT THE DOOR. DEMON BABY-RAPIST!

It is wrong for the same reasons several people here have already stated. Children not of a sexual mature age cannot consent to such a thing. They do not fully understand and have not fully developed their sexual nature. As @cockswain said, this kind of sexual activity is being forced upon the child and can cause psychological damage to the child. This is evidenced by the fact that many pedophiles were molested as children themselves. It is a violation of a person’s childhood.

Like any other sexual attraction, pedophilia is not a choice. The attraction, that is. Of course molestation and child pornography are choices. But since action on a pedophilic attraction results in the violation of another person and can cause psychological harm to a person, a pedophile should not act on his or her attraction.

@Blondesjon

I guess that makes me a sociopath for approaching this question in a rational manner.

I guess sociopaths try to understand things instead of reacting in a knee-jerk hysterical manner.

In before being called a pedophile even though I’ve had this same view on it and same approach to it since I was 15.

In before accusation of molestation.

@Coloma I never said I do not believe in morality, or even that I think pedophilia is OK, I was simply asking for peoples reasons for hating it so much.

“BUT….sorry….there ARE basic guidelines of morality…namely not harming others via acts of gross selfishness.”
You can’t just say things like this without backing them up with reasons. Many cultures have allowed harming others, or even killing, and not called it immoral. Slavery and human sacrifices come to mind. (See what I did there, stated my opinion and backed it up.

Also, I’ll take that bet.

I will no longer respond to you, as its now obvious to me you have no idea what you are talking about.

@DominicX Thanks.

@Blondesjon So you hope I get raped and murdered because I asked a question that offended you? You are making this too easy for me.

Morals and personal integrity are two different matters. It takes decades of life to come up with your personal integrity. at 20, you havent figured it out yet. It is not hysteria we are bringing, but protection to the innocent, not willing children. It is so much worse than rape.
Maybe you have not had a personal experience with that at your tender young age.\

But it totally changes you and children should not have to go through it.

THERE IS NOTHING RATIONAL about SEXUALLY ABUSING CHILDREN

@jazmina88 Your argument is that I am too young to understand? I say you are too old to understand.

@jackm do some research…where is it accepted for pedophiles to do their nastiness??

I’ve been around. I’m open….single…...done my whoring…...I have more life experience, than you, my friend.

@jazmina88

It is hysteria you are bringing. I believe pedophilia is wrong as I explained in my reply. But like all beliefs I hold, I can explain them and will explain them when asked to.

@jazmina88 I did some research. Read my posts I’ve already answered that.

Where in the world is it legal to do children??
Let’s send all the creeps there, export the kids and bring in dolls.

@jazmina88 Why am I an ass? Because I make you think about the views you hold? Because I am able to point out when you are being ignorant? Please elaborate.

@jackm

Yes, well..thanks for taking me out of your sick loop, of course…kill the messenger. lololol

Go forth and find your utopian culture that will allow you carte blanche to act on your whims regardless.

You seriously wish to defend some of the most monsterous of human behaviors as subjective?

Eeek…you are one scary guy!

Children are not capable of making their own decisions. A great deal of young adults are left with severe personal issues and conflicts due to being coerced into sexual acts when they were too young to really understand.

If you asked a child at the age of nine whether or not they wanted to go to war, they would not be able to fully understand the decision they were having to make, and would be very likely to regret it later.

This situation is no different at all; children are too young to understand sexual acts and how partaking in them will affect them in later life.

@jackm Some things just aren’t worth discussing. If I’m being closed-minded about this one, so be it. Maybe I don’t belong.

Let me just say this, I was molested at a young age (7). My innocence was taken away from me and it messed with my head. It has taken me years to work through it. And, I truly believe what happened to me when I was younger changed me as a person.

I had to work through trust issues (it was someone in the family), abandonment issues, I was always leery of men. I went on to have sex at a young age thinking that it was A-O-K. It truly fucked with my head.

It’s wrong…

@silverfly

Everything is worth discussing.

I’m out…..you attacked me because of my opinions….“you dont understand the question, you’re too old…..

I questioned my beliefs long ago. They are tried and true. whats your damn opinion.

It’s a free world except for pedophiles. TOTALLY WRONG. I’m not hysterical. I’m PASSIONATE, dominic. doesnt just mean I’m good in bed. I protect the innocent.

Cut off their wankers, put them on an island.

look what life has done to jimah…...and maybe me.

and practice compassion. and not harm. and self servingness

@richardhenry That makes sense. Why do you think the act of sex is the most harmful part though? Isn’t physical abuse just as harmful? What about parents who get a divorce?

@jjmah I am sorry to hear that.

rape and pedophilia ruins your whole entire sexual being. your trust with people.
so does physical and emotional abuse, if you arent strong enough to fight it.

divorce….buck up. i had 3 dads and dont trust men. divorce is much better than listening to crap every day.

Stripping all social stigma and emotion from the issue, pedophilia is defined as sexual attraction to pre pubescent children.

Pre pubescent children are undeveloped physically as well as emotionally for sexual activity and childbearing. There is the neverending debate about whether or not prepubescent children are developed enough emotionally to consent to and handle sex, I believe the “undeveloped emotionally” side, so I am stripping it down further to point out that they are undeveloped physically.

In ancient Rome, pedophilia was fine with the emperors. I forgot which one had the “little fishies,” which were prepubescent boys who were sexual toys, but that does not change the facts that prepubescent children are physically sexually immature.

@jackm Your statement ’Using your same logic, just because something is looked down on by society doesn’t make it wrong. Homosexuality is one example.’, is really offensive. Homosexuality can never be compared to pedophilia, despite the fact that homosexuality is not the norm for the majority of adults and some people. sadly, see it as unnatural. The key here is ADULT vs CHILD. Children cannot consent to sex, mentally, physically and legally. Pedophilia is ALWAYS about the abuse of power by the adult, and therefore ALWAYS wrong.

@jazmina88
Divorce is far preferable than kids being subjected to constant negativity and discord between parents, you’ve got my vote on that one!

I have 3 words, and 3 words only for pedophiles.

GET A ROPE!

I’ve got some majestic hanging trees on my property AND plenty of horses to choose just the right one for the big bolt! lolol

A tall tree, a short rope and a fast outta the gate horse…problem solved.

Bring out the pedophiles…party after the hanging! lololol

Kinda like asking if someone with homocidal ideation would be accepted if they killed a person. The majority would say no always. There will always be fringe who will accept these people.

@Deejai They are not entitled to nor do they deserve protection by society.

Look, I understand you’re not equating homosexuality with bestiality and pedophilia but this is how these discussions always end up going and it doesn’t matter what makes sense evolutionary but it does matter that queer relationships between consenting adults aren’t discussed anywhere near child or animal abuse.

To answer your question people dislike pedophilia because those who have attractions to children (which, to me, a sociologist isn’t the most horrendous thing I’ve ever heard and really points more to the psyche of the person with pedophilia rather than how wrong it is to be attracted to children) sometimes act on their urges and desires harming individuals who could not legally or generally concent – they are adults who should be in control of themselves but aren’t and need help. In our Western society we value children more than ‘another person to bring in money to the household’ and consider youth to be important in an ideological sense. We do not like when children are taken advantage of because many of us are parents and are angry that anyone would hurt our own offspring. Do I foresee a day when pedophilia will be accepted? I do know some people who advocate for pedophilia (not child sexual abuse) to be accepted as a sexuality and I can see accepting it myself – in that I can understand that some people are attracted to children and instead of ostrasizing them (which can lead to them acting on their attractions) we should have frank discussions and offer help so that they can figure out why there are these feelings and what to do to control them. However, I do not see a time when people will be okay with pedophiles responding with action towards children – that’s not acceptable.

I was afraid other answers would influence my answer, so I will wait until I am finished before I review them.

I’m not disagreeing with you that absolute morality exists. What I can say is that morality isn’t as clear to most, as it is to a small minority. There exists a small section of society for whom right and wrong is certainly black and white in nearly every scenario you can offer up for debate. Within that small segment lies a smaller segment that carries the mindset that dictates the actions of others that do not hurt other people or one’s self are disregarded as worthy of any judgement. We judge our own actions, however.

I am also in agreement with you that it definitely IS a cultural thing. Currently, western cultures are dead set against having sex with someone who cannot fight you off because they don’‘t want to have sex. There have been countless cultures who regarded sex with minors a normal part of life, and many cultures still exist today who think nothing of it.

I happen to be in favor of NOT engaging sexually with a minor, regardless of what my culture says is okay or not. I have a brain, and am capable of making my own decisions. The ins and outs of a problem do not confuse me whatsoever.

If an adult wants to have sex with a child, the elderly, or an animal, it’s wrong. Period. THe reason for it is not at all convoluted. It is simply because those who fall into any of those three categories cannot fight off an attacker, nor do they have a voice. Often, there is no one to protect or speak up for those three categories. My reponse to your question is not emotional. It is based on logic and personal ethics – morals, if you will.

@jackm Physical abuse may be just as harmful; it depends a lot on the person. Parents getting divorced? No way. If anything because there’s plenty of people around you who’ve been through the same thing.

If anything one of the most harmful things about being sexually abused as a child would be how lonely it would make you feel; there’s not a great deal of other people in day-to-day life who would be able to relate to your situation.

The thing that scares me about the people who say “there’s nothing wrong with viewing naked or sexual pictures of children if they took them themselves” is that they don’t realize that they’re only helping to create and encourage a market for it; a market which adults will exploit.

@Lve I was not comparing homosexuality to pedophilia, I was merely reversing your logic.

@phillis @Simone_De_Beauvoir Thankyou for thought out, logical answers.

@richardhenry I do agree with you on that. That is why I asked the question whether its society or the act that cause it to be so “evil”

i once got an erection around a 10 year old girl, does that make me a pedophile? also i have met a very beautiful girl recently who is similar age with amazing sexual energy, does that qualify?

@mammal Well, you can say you’ve had pedophilic tendencies – I wouldn’t call you a pedophile because you’re not primarily attracted to children (unless things have changed since you and I last spoke). I am of the opinion that children do have sexual energy but it’s more us, the adults, who respond to their energy and they may not even realize they have such energy around them and also I think we project that energy onto them without it necessarily being there.

@jackm You are the one who brought up homosexuality as ‘another’ non-standard sexual behavior, which means you are making that comparison.

I’m fairly sure that societies attitude causes far more damage to be done to victims than would be done if sex with children was accepted. But I doubt very much that acceptance would prevent ANY damage from being done. So if it became the norm we would have a far larger proportion of people that are quite messed up rather than a very small minority that get very messed up.

I don’t see that ever being accepted, no… a line has to be drawn somewhere.

@DominicX . . . That was directed at jackm.

@Lve Yes, I do say they are both non standard sexualities.The other person was claiming that just because society accepts something, doesn’t make it right. I was merely pointing out that the reverse is also true. Just because society does not accept something, doesn’t make it wrong.

@Blondesjon I am sure he is aware. Dominic was merely pointing out the stupidity of your remark.

@jackm . . . If being stupid means I don’t treat pedophilia as a light hearted tea party topic then I am more than happy to be an idiot.

I’m still sitting on my deck looking at the big heritage oaks in my pasture and Dusty, the 18 hand, 2200 lb. belgian draft horse.

Oh yeah!

@Blondesjon I don’t think we’re treating it like that, at all.

@Blondesjon Fair enough. As long as you admit when you are being an idiot I have no problem.

@Blondesjon

Yeah, because trying to understand things and explaining beliefs makes it a “tea party topic”.

I am sick of this “you shouldn’t discuss it because it’s just too bad”. That is nothing short of hysteria. Hysteria is an uncontrollable outburst of emotion, which is what most people display when 10 feet away from the word pedophilia.

Anything and everything should be discussed.

I wasn’t going to respond to this – in fact I half expected it to be pulled, but it wasn’t so I will throw an oar into the water.

And finally, do you see a day in the future when pedophilia is accepted, j

Sure, that will be the day after the day when forcible rape of any attractive woman is accepted as a normal sexual outlet.

It is rape, a child cannot consent. End of story.

As for the question itself, you say the question was intended to encourage discussion. Of what? What is to discuss? Would you want to talk about whether five year old children will ever be allowed driver’s licenses? Do you intend to post a question regarding the likelihood of eight year old kids performing brain surgery?

Then why ask about children engaging in any other patently “adult only” activity?

You say that you are not a paedophile but add that you have always wondered about “this”. Who but a paedophile would always wonder about such a thing? How many people wonder about things that repel them?

There are a great many unpleasant things that I am aware of, vomit, faeces, putrefaction, paedophiles, and I don’t spend any time wondering about any one of them.

But I am wondering about you now.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir . . . You like to throw around the term, “willfully ignorant”. I find it willfully ignorant to discuss the relative merits of pedophilia in relationship to sexuality.

What in God’s name is there to understand about pedophilia? This is simply a lot of pseudo-intellectual drivel disguised as discussion so you can flaunt how “enlightened” you are. Disgusting.

@DarkScribe

5-year-olds have never been allowed to drive. 8-year-olds have never performed brain surgery.

But, as some people have already indicated, certain cultures have had a less-hostile view toward pedophilia and even condoned it in part. See: Ancient Greece/Rome.

@DarkScribe I have wondered about this and many others topics and agree with @DominicX – discussing these topics that make everyone uncomfortable is an important step towards solving some of the issues and crimes associated with grey areas and boundaries. @Blondesjon – I never said I think child sexual abuse is right – that was never up for discussion, for me. However, I do think there is merit in trying to understand why people have urges towards children and what makes them act on those urges – how else would we ever address the problem?

@Blondesjon

How can a desire to understand be ignorant? That makes absolutely no sense.

Again, knee-jerk hysteria. Emotion-clouded judgment. It’s the same shit over and over and over again.

As a person who was molested by her father on several occasions, I will say this question does not offend me in any way. I agree with @Simone_De_Beauvoir in that these things should be discussed. I believe we are able to heal with communication. I won’t repeat the actual logical answers that have been given. I mostly agree with a mixture of @Simone_De_Beauvoir‘s and @DominicX‘s comments.

Those of you jumping down @jackm‘s throat for this question and thinking violence is the answer to such things make my truly sad, more than the horrible things that happened to me do.

@DominicX And 5-year-olds have never been able to have sex. What has been allowed is the rape of a child.

@DarkScribe Calling me a pedophile really helps your argument. And I guess the fact that this thread received nearly a hundred responses in an hour means there is nothing to discuss.

You should have listened to your first instinct and never posted in this thread if it offends you so much.

I find it amazing that no one has brought up the legal lack of distinction between Pedophilia and Ephebophilia (attraction to adolescents – or in the popular vernacular “Jail bait”) – That the age of consent varies by area makes that an even rougher area to consider.
Where I live someone could marry a 16 year old with parental consent but if the 16 year old sent a nude picture to their SO it might result in a permanent record of sex offense.
I no longer have as strong an opinion on this as I used to (my ‘datable’ range has moved to safe territory years ago), but it has affected people I know

@jackm . . . It means you asked a flame bait question that you knew would incite this type of reaction. I am more than willing to admit that it jerked my knee because below all the bullshit it is a question about having sex with children.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir
discussing these topics that make everyone uncomfortable is an important step towards solving some of the issues and crimes associated with grey areas and boundaries.

Uncomfortable? Repelled is better terminology. There is need to discuss law and control, prevention and reducing risk, ways to rid our society of paedophiles – these things yes – but there is NO NEED to discuss the possibility of this sort of sickness being accepted by society. It won’t and people who want to discuss the possibility are definitely suspect.

@Blondesjon Yes, I knew it would incite this reaction, and that is why I have been careful and logical with my responses. I don’t want this thread to end up in a flame war. I would actually like to discus it with people who are mature enough to handle the topic.

If you can not handle the topic, simply hit the back button on your browser and forget you ever read this.

@Blondesjon Yet the questions about farts and “regular” sexuality are okay with you? How dare we attempt to discuss such a touchy subject? I’ve seen questions about rape on here as well; should we not discuss that either? Where is your line?

@jackm

Not to mention there were plenty of people who didn’t react that way. Personally, if I were you, I would’ve just ignored all the hysterical comments and focused on the ones that actually did answer the question (not trying to criticize, just saying). Not one person who answered the question said pedophilia was “okay”. They all said it was wrong. But they explained why. That is the difference between a real answer to the question and a knee-jerk non-answer.

@DarkScribe Yes, uncomfortable, repelled, embarrassed, ashamed – all of these emotions should be discussed if you want. surely, if you don’t want to discuss them, by all means you should remove yourself from the discussion so as to not be any more disgusted And we are discussing all of those things (or were hoping to anyway) that you mention but it is a valid question as to the acceptance (not because any of us want it to be accepted) but because other people have asked ‘where do we draw the line?’ and have used that line and pedophilia against queer people – so it’s not a new topic, to me but not because it has anything to do with whether or not I find it objectionable.

@jackm . . . You knew it would be a flame war when you asked it. I, 99.9% of the time, don’t give two shits about what other people are discussing. I do use the back button.

This is completely different. Like @DarkScribe said, you are discussing the acceptance of individuals who have sex with children. I’m not talking about some 17 year old and her 19 year old boyfriend and what is disgusting is neither are you. You are talking about accepting that it is ok to want to fuck a child.

I won’t just ignore something that needs to be removed from this site.

@jackm DarkScribe Calling me a pedophile really helps your argument. And I guess the fact that this thread received nearly a hundred responses in an hour means there is nothing to discuss.
You should have listened to your first instinct and never posted in this thread if it offends you so much.

I have no argument – the question needs no argument – I am describing a reaction. If you are interested in paedophilia to the extent of wondering about it one day being legal, then it is YOU who is classifying yourself. I am simply looking in the direction that you indicated.

@free_fallin . . . I draw the line at discussions involving having sex with children. How can I be any clearer?

So, if you even allow your mind to enter the realm of asking if it may one day be legal that implies that you are twisted?

“Will it ever be legal?” doesn’t mean “I see it being legal some day” or “I think it should be legal”.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir
but it is a valid question as to the acceptance

It will never be a valid question. It would be less offensive to ask whether slavery will one day be re-introduced.

@Blondesjon I understand you feel strongly about the issue and that’s a good thing, because child abuse should never be tolerated. However, asking whether or not pedophilia (as a sexuality, NOT the act of child abuse) would ever be accepted by society has nothing to do with tolerating child abuse. Many people have pedophilic thoughts and urges and never act on them and some do- in fact you don’t know one way or another and you, as a parent, do the best you can to educate your children to be aware of dangers but the dangers, I think, are more pronounced than any of us would like to admit. This is why I think it’s important to discuss this issue but pedophilia and child sexual abuse are not the same thing. Some people who abuse children sexually are not attracted to them sexually so the reasons are convoluted.

@DarkScribe No, I mean it is valid to ask whether or not something will ever be accepted – again, that doesn’t mean the OP is saying it should be accepted. And again, pedophilia doesn’t equal child sexual abuse and acceptance doesn’t mean promotion of child sexual abuse.

@Coloma

People are discussing it. They are doing it right now. Denying that is absurd. The very fact that there is a disagreement about questions that should never be asked and never thought about shows that there is grounds for discussion and that is what people are doing.

@Coloma We are engaged in a ‘discussion’ with a 20 yr. old ‘child.’

I hadn’t checked his profile until now – nonetheless – immaturity and inexperience doesn’t excuse the inherent offensiveness of the question.

@Coloma That comment is uncalled for. This is a discussion among adults and calling someone who’s 20 a child is no better than me calling you senile
@DarkScribe – if you are offended, you have stated your case – this question doesn’t have to hurt you any longer.

@DominicX People are discussing it. They are doing it right now.

I see people reacting to it, being offended by it, lots of posts. That does not equate to discussion.

@DarkScribe Your digging yourself into a hole

@Blondesjon Asking whether or not it will be accepted does not mean 1) I want it accepted, 2) I am a pedophile or 3) I think children should be raped.

In the future we may have virtual reality programs. What if there was one that simulated sex with a child? It isn’t hurting a child, so should it be illegal?

If you think it should be, please explain, if you think it shouldn’t be, please explain.

@DarkScribe

I was not offended by it. Neither were @KatawaGrey, @richardhenry, @cockswain, @Simone_De_Beauvoir, @phillis, the list goes on…

@DarkScribe Some of us are trying to have a discussion and some of are making it difficult – which camp are you in?

@DominicX

Of course…just a reminder to those of us that might exceed the age of 20 by the same amount or more.

In other words…an question by an immature poster that is ruffling feathers.

Best case scenario immaturity and a desire to toss out some shock chum, at worst a timb bomb of depravity.

Thats all.

@jackm DarkScribe Your digging yourself into a hole

I don’t think so. Have you anything sensible to say?

@EVERYONE

Can we please get back on topic? I will no longer respond to those who don’t think this is a valid discussion, and I suggest people who want to talk do the same.

This was just meant as a logical, mature conversation. It in no way implies any of us are okay with this abuse. I ponder the world on many levels, always wondering what might happen next. This is the same thing, to me. It’s a shame that such a discussion would go in this direction. Maybe those of us who want to discuss it should begin to ignore those that only wish to react.

simulating sex with a child…is still horrible and has the same psychological effects.
whether clothed or not.

it crosses BOUNDARIES

@jackm In the future we may have virtual reality programs. What if there was one that simulated sex with a child? It isn’t hurting a child, so should it be illegal?

You really have been giving it a lot of thought – haven’t you?

What was that about a hole?

@jackm I don’t like the idea of this video game being legal because it makes it seem as if having sex with a child is okay when it isn’t. Making it illegal would only make things worse so I don’t think it should even be made to begin with. Not that I think it hasn’t already been done out there by someone.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir

Well..if the childish shoe fits..wear it!

I am quite open to learning from those of any age, but the FACT is, in this case, clearly, a level of immaturity is at play.

Wonder why people weren’t more up in arms about how inappropriate the dead baby jokes were on that dead baby joke question – that was infinitely more offensive than attemtping to tease out a complex issue like this one

@jackm Can we please get back on topic?

We are on topic – paedophllia. Remember – you raised it.

@Coloma

So people who want to discuss something are immature? A mature approach is to avoid any understanding of it, completely ignore it, and forbid people from ever discussing or even thinking about it?

I think it is just the opposite. I think it is immature to react hysterically to this topic.

Pedophilia is wrong because:

A child’s body is not developed enough to handle sexual activity. Raping a child can result in A) severe scarring B) inability for a female to have children in the future C) severe infection.

A child’s mind is not mature enough to analyze and handle sexual activity. Brains do not fully mature until a human being is over 18. Children are not capable of analytical thought processes and so do not have the ability to even critically think about sex, let alone sex with an adult.

Children who are not even capable of having children, should not be having “sex” (raped).

Adults are around to raise and take care of children, because children aren’t capable of surviving on their own. This ALONE indicates that a child is much more vulnerable than any adult – both physically and mentally.

Molestation and rape of a child generally causes severe psychological issues for the remainder of the person’s life. Did you ever stop to wonder, @jackm, if society looks down on it so much because some people went through it and know what it did to them both mentally and physically? Societies hatred for child rape and general molestation DOES NOT cause more harm than the perverted acts themselves. Even if that was the case, does it really matter? Rape hurts, period. It is physically painful and scarring – which itself leads to mental anguish.

Now think about the EXTREME PAIN a child would be in, even more so than a grown woman, because their bodies are literally not even developed enough. If rape is physically damaging and scarring to a fully grown woman, it can actually KILL a child.

If you still need to argue the validity of why most people think it’s wrong after plenty of PERFECT points have been made, then you either simply did post this just to piss people off, or it’s some other reason. I sincerely hope it’s not “some other reason”.

@Coloma You said Best case scenario immaturity and a desire to toss out some shock chum, at worst a timb bomb of depravity. – that was yet another assumption and judgment you made from your opinion.
@DrasticDreamer – pedophilia is NOT sexual child abuse in that pedophilic thoughts do not necessarily lead (though they may) to action.

This is an offensive question because you already know the answer and if you don’t then you should. It’s not hard to find out why it is so aweful. These types of questions only confuse people. Other people have answered this question in a way I would have answered it.

@DarkScribe
Please stop calling me a pedophile. I do not appreciate it, and it will get you nowhere.

Before you respond, sit and ask yourself why you are being so aggressive about this. Hopefully you can calm down and realize that some people are mature enough to handle these kind of topics.

I don’t like the idea of simulated sex with a child either, as @Simone_De_Beauvoir mentioned. But then where is the line? Are there games/anime that include simulated rape? Isn’t there a form of anime that is focused on child pornography?

@free_fallin If it’s been thought of, someone’s made it. The line isn’t clear – all the more reason to have this discussion.

@DrasticDreamer I have sat down and wondered why society looks down on it so much, and that is why I posted this question.

@jackm Well, you got your answer now, didn’t you?

@jackm We’ve established that. If you still wonder why people look down on it, that’s what needs to be addressed now. If you still can’t figure it out, I suggest you get help. And I am not saying that in a mean way.

@free_fallin some video games and anime is not meant for children are geared towards adults. If it has child rape simulation than it is sickening

@Simone_De_Beauvoir
@DominicX

—I think you two get what I am trying to say. The average 20 yr. old is trying on all sorts of idealistic hats, not so much an opinion as a fact. Notwithstanding the seriousness of the subject. Sorry, but 20 is still a very immature age, can’t be any other way.

@jackm ask yourself why you are being so aggressive about this. Hopefully you can calm down

Aggressive? In what way am I being aggressive? I am clear in how I feel about the issue – is being aggressive not agreeing with you perhaps? I find the question offensive, the idea that social acceptance of paedophilia might one day be possible absurd. Discussion about things that can never happen are pointless.

@Coloma You are too old to be discussing this. I am sorry, but 50 years old is just too old.

See what I did there? picked an arbitrary age and made a sweeping generalizations about it, then called it a fact.

i think you’ll find sexuality transcends gender, species and to some degree age.

One thing I’ve discovered in my 18 years on this planet is that age and maturity do not necessarily go hand in hand. I have found evidence for that time and time again.

@DarkScribe

The problem is that you and several others came on here trying to tell people not to discuss something. How do you expect people to react? I will discuss something whether or not someone tells me I can’t.

“I have sat down and wondered why society looks down on it so much, ”

Well now you know why.

@jackm I do say they are both non standard sexualities OK, so you are treating the topic of homosexuality the same as the topic of pedophilia. Even if you were just trying to make a point, I find this very offensive. It falls into the same category as those anti-gay marriage people who claim that allowing gays to marry is a slippery slope and soon people will be able to marry their horse. It has no place in this ‘discussion’ or whatever it is supposed to be.

@mammal Maturity does not transcend age when we are talking about prepubescent children. If you think so, look up how bodies and brains develop. If you still think so, get help.

@DarkScribe You are being aggressive in the sense that in every response to me you call me a pedophile. Maybe it in your head you can’t fathom someone with an open mind, so you need there to be something mentally wrong with me.

Either way your ignorance is showing for anyone with intelligence to see, so I would suggest you take some more time off before your next answer.

@jackm Ignoring the posts that have bothered you, and taking a look at the posts where people tried to genuinely answer the question for you: How do you feel now? What is your opinion on the matter, now that you have seen multiple perspectives?

People are getting off topic here.

Again, @jackm I think that your question has been answered..

One big problem is the use of the word “sexualities”.

Pedophilia has nothing to do with sexuality. It is about abuse.

@DominicX The problem is that you and several others came on here trying to tell people not to discuss something.

No I didn’t. I pointed out a number of thing related to the question, I gave my reaction to it, but I didn’t tell you not to discuss it, I simply said that while I have no problem discussing paedophilia ot paedophiles and related laws in any number of ways, discussing the possibility of it ever being legal and socially acceptable is ludicrous and it makes me wonder about those who engage in it. You have an opinion, so do I.

At one point it was recently suggested by a Jelly that we NOT point offending answers that include digs at people, not even if those people who submit such comments are our friends. I am reintroducing that Jelly idea here, simply as a reminder not to reward behavior like that.

@DrasticDreamer @jjmah Yes, people have answered my question, and I have acknowledged those people.

My opinions on the matter are still the same. Namely that pedophilia is wrong and harmful to children.

@silverfly If this thread bores you so much, then why bother posting?

@jackm But why do you think it’s wrong? We all gave our reasons, so share with us, now. Do you have points or reasons that other people didn’t mention?

@jackm You are being aggressive in the sense that in every response to me you call me a pedophile.

Do I. I don’t know that you are – I suspect that you might have some leanings in that direction – but I do not know. You jumped from social acceptance of child rape to depicting it in a video game – which in most Western countries is already illegal BTW. That makes me realise that you have given it far more thought that would be regarded as normal. You draw your own conclusions – as to what conclusions others might draw.

@jackm

Sorry Jack, but you are wrong.
Just because a child can fit behind the wheel and reach the pedals doesn’t mean they are mature enough to drive the car.

There are opinions and there are FACTS!

FACT: 20 year olds are not mature, psychologically, emotionally or in life experience.
FACT: Pedophilia is ABUSE, dress it up as you will, a severed head wrapped in gold paper and encrusted with jewels is still a severed head!

I really think people are having a hard time grasping that pedophilia (attraction to children) is NOT child sexual abuse but that the former can lead to the latter. Unless this is clear, we will continue to have a fruitless discussion.

@DarkScribe Constantly accusing others of a view they claim not to hold. Sounds like Ted Haggard syndrome to me. You can admit to it. We will get you help.

@jackm You wanted to have a serious discussion, and some people are trying to have one with you now. Are you going to engage, or has this thread become utterly pointless?

@Simone_De_Beauvoir pedophilia (attraction to children) is NOT child sexual abuse but that the former can lead to the latter.

The question was regarding social acceptance of paedophilia. The would indicate acting on tendencies – otherwise society would know nothing about it and not need to accept

Pedophilia (or paedophilia) is a psychological disorder in which an adult or older adolescent experiences a sexual preference for prepubescent children.

Sexual preference will only lead to one thing.

SO as long as it is a preference but nothing happens, they should have the right to prefer?

That is just a so wrong way to think.

@ChazMaz . . . Thank You! It is a psychological disorder not another form of sexuality.

Encyclopedic definition of pedophilia from dictonary.com:

psychosexual disorder in which an adult’s arousal and sexual gratification occur primarily through sexual contact with prepubescent children. The typical pedophile is unable to find satisfaction in an adult sexual relationship and may have low self-esteem, seeing sexual activity with a child as less threatening than that with an adult. Most pedophiles are men; the condition is extremely rare in women.

So what are the statistics of those who do NOT act on their sexual urges? I think most people in general will at some point act on their own sexual urges, regardless of who they feel attracted to, after a period of time. We can not talk about the idea of people being attracted to children WITHOUT acknowledging the ramifications of them acting on their sexual urges, because yes, the two go hand in hand.

@DrasticDreamer Yes, sorry I can only take so much of being called a pedophile.

Anyways, I would like peoples views on pedophilic actions that do not harm children.

@DarkScribe There are people who are open pedophiles, and they do not not engage in sexual acts with children. Look up NAMBLA.

@DarkScribe What the question was about is something I am more than aware of, thank you – my comment has to do with the recent comments generated on this question. And you are right, acceptance does have to do with acknowledging that tendencies such as these do exist and simply saying something is abnormal will not do much to end it. Either you face the fact that these urges and behaviours and actions are around us or you don’t.

@jackm You’re going to have to clarify a little more for me. Like what your definition of “harm” is, for instance. Mentally harm, physically harm?

@jackm . . . I’m starting to see what @DarkScribe means. You seem awfully well versed in this.

@tragiclikebowie So what are the statistics of those who do NOT act on their sexual urges?
Most people don’t – if they are illegal. A heterosexual man doesn’t rape every woman who he finds to be attractive.

“Look up NAMBLA.”

NAMBLA people are are open pedophiles to other NAMBLA people. Don’t make it sound like it is common place.

“and they do not not engage in sexual acts with children”
You need to do more studying. NAMBLA is about all of that.

@DrasticDreamer Any type. If you can be 100% positive no child was harmed, or even inconvenienced, would you have a problem?

OH GOD!

NAMBLA….that’s it for me!

I was waiting for that ugly card to be slipped into the deck…

Uh huh..and I belong to the jockey club but I don’t ride horses! ROFLMAO!!!!

@jackm Look up NAMBLA.

No thank you – I have just had breakfast. I’d like to hang onto it for a while longer.

I was responding to @DarkScribe who said we would never know if someone was a pedophile unless he acted on it. I was simply saying some people do not hide the fact they are pedophiles. NAMBLA is an example of people who do not hide this fact.

@DarkScribe A heterosexual man doesn’t rape every woman who he finds to be attractive. – I sure hope you don’t think this is so because rape is illegal. Men don’t rape women because they know it’s wrong not because they ‘might get caught’.

There is no reason to ignore NAMBLA. Many people are aware of this organization, so to speak. I find it fascinating, like I do most fray communities – their existence points to some kind of truth (whether people accept it or pretend it’s not there) for these people and provides another perspective – another angle we can discuss when trying to solve the problem of sexual child abuse.

For the record: I am not offended by this question.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir I sure hope you don’t think this is so because rape is illegal. Men don’t rape women because they know it’s wrong not because they ‘might get caught’.

Unfortunately there is probably a bit of both in effect there.

@DarkScribe And that’s not an offensive opinion to hold of much of the population? You can speak for yourself only but men around me and those I am raising do not and will not agree with you

@jackm Well, that’s the thing. You can never be 100% sure that a child wasn’t physically or mentally harmed. Chances are, you can’t avoid hurting a child physically simply because their bodies are literally not equipped to handle such things. Mentally, there is going to be damage because children rely on adults to take care of them. Sexuality requires maturity for the simple reason that one has to think about whether or not they want something. When we are talking about a child/adult sexual relationship, the power is completely off-balance, which automatically leads to an unhealthy relationship. I do not mean offense to anyone when I say this, but: Having sex with a child is pretty much the equivalent of having sex with a severely brain-damaged person. And it wouldn’t be okay for a fully aware adult to take advantage of someone like that, either @jackm.

What about you? What’s your take on this specific question?

What about you? What’s your take on this specific question?

Yes, @jackm let’s hear from you.

Well people – now that NAMBLA has been mentioned, I am out of here – this thread at least. Maybe being the father of five children makes me a little more disgusted by a question mooting the possibility of child rape one day being legal than some others. NAMBLA agitates for law changes that are not too dissimilar to the questions in this thread. I saw an interview with some of their leading lights a few years ago. (How I longed for a hand grenade…)

[Mod Says:] This question meets current Fluther guidelines. Please remain on topic Please do not flame.

Please, if you have nothing beneficial to add to the discussion resist the temptation to post and move on to the next question.

Off topic, bored, flaming or personal quips will be removed.

Thanks!

@DrasticDreamer @jackm This is an interesting tangent – I think you, @jackm are talking about something that wouldn’t involve any children, if I am correct whereas you, @DrasticDreamer are thinking that the situation does involve children.
@DarkScribe I am a parent too and am able to have this discussion without deteriorating into a raving violent person. I don’t know why I have to (again) explain to you that NOBODY was talking about making child rape legal.

“I don’t know why I have to (again) explain to you that NOBODY was talking about making child rape legal.”
It was stated in the post…
“And finally, do you see a day in the future when pedophilia is accepted”

Accepted = legal

And you @Simone_De_Beauvoir advocate it also.
.
“I do know some people who advocate for pedophilia (not child sexual abuse) to be accepted as a sexuality and I can see accepting it myself ”

Pedophilia if not child sexual abuse, WILL LEAD TO IT.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir But he said, “Anyways, I would like peoples views on pedophilic actions that do not harm children.”

How can it be a pedophilic action if it doesn’t involve children? Did I misinterpret what you meant, @jackm?

Again, I was not arguing for NAMBLA, I was simply saying some people are open pedophiles.

I said you are 100% positive that it does not harm a child. My videogame example, where someone engages in these acts virtually would not harm a child.

I think this is a totally acceptable thing. We have video games where we murder people, steal cars, etc and they aren’t banned. How is this different?

@Simone_De_Beauvoir And that’s not an offensive opinion to hold of much of the population? You can speak for yourself only but men around me and those I am raising do not and will not agree with you

One last comment before I go.

Do you seriously suggest that if tomorrow they lifted all penalties for rape, that the number of rapes would not increase? It has nothing to do with my attitudes, nor of the people I associate with, it has to do with reality.

NOBODY was talking about making child rape legal.

Of course they are, what do you regard social acceptance of paedophilia as being? If it isn’t acted on, it doesn’t need acceptance. The mention of NAMBLA confirms it – at least in my mind. They are agitating for changes in laws to make sex with children legal, not for approval of sexual attraction to children.

@DarkScribe Are you seriously not listening to me? Do you understand the words coming out of my mouth. Learn not to panic when you hear words you are uncomfortable with. Now please, discus the topic.

@jackm I think people don’t view games like that as acceptable, because despite the fact that people are stealing cars, murdering other characters, etc. they’re all still adults – doing those things to adult characters. It’s an innate instinct in most people to protect children, no matter what. So, even though they might be characters in a video game – most people will never be okay with or condone a game in which the exact opposite of that is the goal, reality or not.

@DarkScribe I was not talking about NAMBLA, I was (again) talking about this fluther question and the people involved in it. I will not comment as to your claims about what they’re advocating for because I have not read up on them as of late and haven’ t done so today and will not take your word for it until I do. As for the rape comment, it is a sad reality that you speak of and I do think some men would rape women if it wasn’t illegal but I don’t think this is representative of men.

My videogame example, where someone engages in these acts virtually would not harm a child.
I think this is a totally acceptable thing.

Yeah, you lost me there. I’m out..

@ChazMaz I was not under impression that acceptance means legality. I can accept as I said that such urges do exist but that has nothing to do with making child abuse legal.

@jackm . . . Do you have any children of your own?

@Blondesjon No

@jackm This video game wouldn’t harm children directly but it would contribute to someone’s thinking that it’s okay to do or how to do it and that would harm a child.
@Blondesjon…relevance? plenty of child abusers have children and are those children’s parents.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir Does GTA make people think its ok to steal cars and kill hookers?

And even if it does, is that enough to make it illegal?

@jackm I agree with @Simone_De_Beauvoir – the goal should be to eradicate the problem, not to condone it, or put it to the side so it doesn’t have to be dealt with at all.

As for GTA, @jackm, keep this is mind: There are consequences for every law you break in GTA. If you do something wrong, the cops come after you and you go to jail if you’re caught. Are you suggesting that a similar game that involves child rape have similar consequences?

@jackm You bring up an excellent point, which is where I was going in an above comment. Where do we draw the line? It seems to be alright for people to kill people, abuse them and steal things in video games; all of these things are illegal. Sure, there is a label of M for Mature so that children aren’t able to play them, but we all know it happens. I wonder where the line should be drawn…

@DrasticDreamer As with any game, there are cheats which allow you to hide and run away from the police. Eventually the police even give up. Plus you can get yourself a tank and not worry about any consequences.

@DrasticDreamer Yeah, but the point is to avoid the cops, or kill them if they catch you. You can’t really argue that GTA is designed to teach us the consequences of our actions.

My point is that, no matter how disgusting you may find a certain action, you can’t make it illegal if it harms noone.

@jackm I don’t know what GTA is and am late to yoga – will come back to this later.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir . . . You still hate to see an arsonist with a can of gasoline.

I think the biggest problem with this and other taboos in Western Culture is that we have a culture that attempts to put everything in terms of absolutes. As if something happens on your 18th birthday that makes you mature enough to vote, have sex (unless your state says it’s OK earlier), smoke, pump gas, go to war, and in some states but not others to gamble, or something that happens on your 17th birthday that magically makes you mature enough to see an R rated movie by yourself, whereas at 16 years and 364 days you’d need a parent or guardian to take you in, or on your 16th birthday that makes it suddenly possible for you to drive or to get a job, and on your 21st birthday, you can drink, at 25 you can rent a car or a hotel room, and so on. It leads to laws where a person could on their 18th birthday have sex with their partner who is going to turn 18 tomorrow, and still be arrested for statutory rape, which is essentially labeled as pedophilia.

Sex in particular also is regarded in a very Puritanical sense in western culture, you can be registered as a sex offender for taking a leak in public, for saying the wrong thing (no matter how innocently it was intended) to a minor (no matter how mature that minor might be). We have laws that make it illegal to engage in certain sexual acts between two consenting adults, and ones that make it impossible for people to have the same civil rights as anyone else if they choose a same sex partner. We are afraid of sex in our culture, or at least the powers that be (or have been for a long time) seem to be. We live in a culture where as recently as 20 years ago, simply alluding to a dildo on TV could get you boycotted, where 7 years ago a breast shown on live TV resulted in a firestorm of controversy, and yet our cultural values are so out of line with our laws that while we have a zero tolerance policy for frontal nudity on television, giant cable conglomerates make 80 to 90% of their revenues selling porn on pay per view, a multi billion dollar business.

Furthermore, we have sort of a double standard for men and women as well, like if a 30 year old male teacher had sex with a 16 year old female student, a lot of people would have a problem with that. And if a 30 year old female teacher had sex with a 16 year old boy, sure still a lot of people would have a problem with that, but not nearly as many. And there are a lot of people who would have a real hard time with their scout leader or priest being openly homosexual, because they don’t make the distinction between homosexuality and pedophilia. In fact, a lot of people who have argued against “re-defining” marriage as being anything other than between one man and one woman will readily wonder, “what’s next, marrying animals, children, more than one person?” As if all these things are qualitatively the same in any way shape or form.

So, having said all that, I think Western Culture has a hard time with nuance. You see it not only in sex, but in any political issue….we can’t simply agree to disagree about things, everything becomes polarized and people dig in. Suddenly if you want to help regular people, even the regular people you’re trying to help think you’re a communist or socialist. Middle ground is getting harder to find in the US, not easier. At the same time, our cultural mores are relaxing a bit because of our culture of spectacle. Just think back to how relatively tame some of the things that resulted in boycotts of certain TV programs were in the late 80s by today’s South Park/Family Guy standards. Last week alone on The Cleveland Show, when Cleveland’s ex-wife Loretta died and Quagmire delivered her body from Quahog, RI to Stoolbend, WV, Cleveland asked why she was dressed in a French Maid costume, and Quagmire commented that he’d always wanted to nail a dead French Maid. I remember in my lifetime when you couldn’t even say the word ass on TV. So, it’s all very confusing. And in an idealistic world, laws would reflect common sense, but we don’t live in a world of common sense laws, we live in a world where laws are made by those who are best able to influence public opinion, even if it is done by using misinformation and fear tactics. Unless and until we can get around that, attitudes will be driven not so much by laws, but by politicians who seek to be lawmakers. Our rules are dictated more by emotion than by common sense, as anything that can be exploited for emotional potency is going to be used to win elections. And really, who’s going to come out “in favor” of pedophilia…certainly not anyone who wants to win an election.

So, where does that leave us? Well, first, let’s examine what common sense tells me, and I think most, even those arguing back and forth would agree with these general principals. Basically pedophilia is wrong (not just regarded as such, but just plain IS wrong) when you define pedophilia in the sense that it is a cousin to rape. That is, pedophilia where one person wields some sort of undue power or influence over the other in part due to the divergent ages. If we look at it as a line, some 15 year olds may be able to have sex responsibly and safely and understand what they are doing and enter into it willingly, while there are some 20 year olds who might be of diminished capacity. To my way of thinking, if one person had the mental capacity of a 10 year old but was living in the body of a 25 year old, and a 25 year old, KNOWING that this other person had the mental capacity of a 10 year old were to convince this other person to have sex, well even though they’re the same age, that to me is pedophilia. Whereas a 30 year old could well have a relationship with a 15 year old, if that 15 year old were really clearly of a mind to understand and be able to agree to what was going on. In other words, age is arbitrary. What is not arbitrary is intent, and the ability to understand. Coercion is coercion regardless. I believe that each case to be fair would be evaluated on the circumstances. If a 16 year old really believes he’s in love with his 30 year old teacher, and is fully willing to participate, that’s different than if the teacher in some way coerced him to feel this way, used her superior intellectual skills to short circuit the boy’s not fully developed capacity for critical thinking.

I recently heard that something like 90% of rapes on college campuses go unreported, because attitudes are as such that a lot of what really IS rape, even the rape victim comes to think of as her (most often a her) own bad judgment. For example, a college girl may dress up sexy, and be open to possibly hooking up with someone if they have chemistry and what not, but what she’s not aware of is that this guy just simply goes to parties, looks for the provocatively dressed girl who’s had a few too many, and he knows exactly how to approach her and what to say to get those panties off. Next morning, she may think she got stupid and made a mistake, but how would she feel if she realized that all that “chemistry” she thought she felt was just her being manipulated by what is essentially a serial rapist. It’s the same thing with kids.

Basically, until a child has reached physical sexual maturity (gone through puberty), there is no such thing as consensual sex. After that, it’s a gray area, and to me if what transpires meets the definition of “consensual”, regardless of the ages of the participants, that’s all well and good, but if it meets the definition in any way of coercion, then it’s rape. Our society will continue to look to age however, rather than physical and mental capacity, because it makes it easier to put everything in black and white. I can only hope that our society will evolve to the point where intention becomes the most important thing. But in today’s world, it rarely is…even with something like drunk driving, someone who gets in a car while knowing full well he is drunk off his ass, even if he harms no one is regarded as less of a criminal than someone who made an honest mistake, thought they were not impaired, yet met the legal definition, and ended up killing someone. We punish an honest mistake more than we do a malevolent act, because our justice system and our moral compass in Western society is not based on intent but on results. So a 16 year old girl sends nude pics of herself to her 16 year old boyfriend with whom she’s had consensual sex many times, they could both be labeled as pedophiles, sex offenders and criminals, and have that hang around their necks the rest of their lives. There are definitely people trying to smooth out the inequities, but honestly, I don’t expect our society will in my lifetime open its arms to nuance.

@Blondesjon Yet it is not illegal and should’t be.

@jackm But you can’t say definitively that such a video game wouldn’t harm children. Do you know for sure it wouldn’t urge pedophiles to act on their actions? Do you know for sure it wouldn’t increase this behavior? And the fact still remains: Video games deal with adult characters, not children. I don’t think any normal person would want to harm a child – even in a video game.

Pedophilia is commonly adults with a sexual attraction to pre pubescent children, they get aroused and turned on by kids rather than adults. If they act on these urges then they become molesters and are inexcusable. Adults being turned on to adolescents is nothing new, we all remember being attracted to one another when young but it is the agreed on adult collective that’s made laws to give the young the most chance of finding themselves and developing sexually among their own until “legal age”. It’s the adult stepping into that never to be seen again growing time in a youngster’s life that is repellent to most people. After 18yrs old, we’re all on the same page with the same responsibilities.

@DrasticDreamer No, I can not. But we can not make something illegal because it might cause someone to do something illegal. Alcohol causes people to do illegal things all the time, yet alcohol itself it not illegal.

@dalepetrie Thank you for your long thought out answer. I have one problem though, you say that we need to make laws based on intent and not results, but how would that be possible without reading minds? I think we are doing the best we can with judges and juries who are able to interpret laws, and make their best guesses as to what someones intent was, but while we don’t have 100% accurate brain reading devices we still need guidelines like ages to define laws.

@jackm So you would rather a video game like that be made… For what, then? What is your personal opinion? Do you believe that it would halt pedophiles from acting out their desires? If not, what would be the point in making a game like that at all?

@DrasticDreamer That’s an interesting idea.

If the person had a means to act out their feelings in a virtual world do we think that could potentially keep them from acting them out in the real world?

For example, many people view pornography they would never attempt to act out. In a way they view the porn in order to keep themselves from cheating or doing those acts.

@DrasticDreamer I am not saying the game should be made. I am simply saying it should not be illegal to make the game. There is a big difference there.

The idea that it would harm or help pedophilia did not enter my mind. I am simply arguing from a freedom of expression standpoint.

@jackm Okay, I understand what you’re saying a little better now. But, don’t you think something like that should be taken into account before we allow games like that to be made? We already established that we can’t definitively know whether or not games like that would halt or encourage pedophilia, but here’s my next question that I’d genuinely like you to take the time to answer:

Not knowing the possible outcomes and risks, do you still think a game like that shouldn’t be outlawed? Is the risk of increasing pedophilia worth it, just for “freedom of expression”?

@DrasticDreamer Unequivocally, yes.

@DrasticDreamer – FWIW, that sounds like the same argument against porn, that allowing people access to porn would give a potential rapist ideas. I really don’t think it works that way. If anything, I think having an “outlet” for one’s perversions as it were allows a person “relief”, particularly in a situation where one can not act on his or her urges. I would call for the death penalty for people creating child porn, but with the voluminous amounts that already exist, I’d be more comfortable with a pedophile having access to that visual stimulus than if he did not. If one can understand and accept that his or her sexual urges would require the victimization of another in order to be fulfilled, then one must seek to override those urges in some manner. Fantasy is perhaps the best way one can accomplish this.

It also seems a fallacy to me to say that life imitates art and not the other way around. Depicting something that happens in real life, even if depicted in a very graphic and realistic manner is simply a reflection of society, not something that creates social mores. So, depicting rape, murder, pedophilia or anything in a movie, a videogame, etc., if no one was directly harmed in the production does not seem to be a “bad” thing to me…I think for the most part, these acts truly are horrific, and if one portrays them in an adult manner, sane people are going to regard that depiction as repulsive and will perhaps empathize more and turn less of a blind eye to the offenses of society. I imagine the “insane” who were turned on by this material would be able to use this as a release rather than acting on their urges, which were not put in their head BY culture, but which existed irrespective of culture. And perhaps there could be a small number of people who used to be able to bottle that away who might have never acted on it, except some game or movie got them thinking about it, but I really don’t think that’s a common enough occurrence to accept the negative results of censorship which would come as a result of banning such depictions.

@jackm – you are correct, you can not read minds, however a lot of cases it would become clear cut if we simply asked the questions. Trained psychologists should be able to help us put together a picture of what really happened. Like take the example of the serial rapist on a child campus that I offered earlier. Is there a pattern of behavior? Did this person portray himself as something he was not? There are certain phrases, certain techniques that people can and do employ in order to victimize others. I don’t think it would always be easy, there would be judgment calls, but that is my very point, each case does require a judgment call, just because it’s harder to get to the truth when you have to rely on people who may or may not be dishonest about their actions and intentions, doesn’t mean it’s impossible to get at the actual intent, and just because it’s hard to do doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t do it wherever possible, rather than relying on artificial measurements such as age.

Consider this…1500 years ago, it was standard to be a parent by age 13, because in those days, 13 was middle aged. This would of course explain how Europe and other cultures have historically been more comfortable with emergent sexuality, whereas western culture was created out of whole cloth by people seeking freedom from religious repression (so they could start their own religions) about 400 some years ago. A lot of the people who founded the Americas had attitudes about sex which had been crafted less by history and more by the church. As our society became one of the first to achieve widespread affluence, most of our history is based in a tradition of families, raising children to a certain age before letting them strike off on their own…a more affluent culture can better afford to protect its children, where a less affluent one may have to regard children much differently because they can’t afford the luxury of fully supporting every human being to age 18 and beyond. Part of the reason pedophilia is defined so widely in western culture compared to other cultures is because our society has redefined childhood from it’s historical definition of a time before which a person is of much real productive use, to its current definition of a time at which all signs of physical and emotional growth has been substantially completed. Our culture doesn’t expect our kids to “grow up” as quickly, and we are all socialized in this manner, so it’s hard to take a child raised in that type of culture and expect that child to be as emotionally mature as someone raised in a make it or break it society.

@dalepetrie @jackm I’m not personally stating one way or another whether or not such video games would lower abuse or increase it – because none of us can know for sure. We can’t use Japanese games as an example, although they have video games like these, because that is an entirely different culture. Predicting American behavior overall, based on statistics of Japanese behavior, based on the same issue, is completely impossible.

That said, I do not think the risks outweigh the possible benefits. The benefit being: to lower the number of sexual abuse against children. Maybe you two are okay with thinking that it might help, but I’m not okay with it, knowing that it might make it worse.

@DrasticDreamer Like I said before, I am not arguing from the standpoint of lowering or raising sexual abuse against children. I am saying that censoring the game would have harmful effects on our society, and we should never resort to censorship.

@dalepetrie I wish I could give more GAs to that. You make many many good points, I can not find a flaw in your reasoning.

Ok, I have been thinking about the actual question. My first quip was biological reasons why pedophilia is wrong. I stand by that answer. Now I try to answer the question. For the record, I am of the “nothing is beyond being debated and discussed” crowd. I consider this to be a reasonable question and topic of discussion. The asker is not condoning pedophilia; he is asking about why it is less accepted here than other places.

There are a couple of aspects that make this question extremely difficult to answer. The question asks why pedophilia is so strongly frowned upon in western cultures and is an extremely complex question..

In many cultures, to this day, child brides are accepted. Many Middle Eastern nations are examples. Back in the old days, such as ancient Rome and Greece amongst the aristocracy, actual classic pedophilia was practiced (sex with pre pubescent children). I do not understand the mentality that went into the Greek and Roman practices being considered acceptable.

In this answer I am not going into whether or not it is right or wrong, simply answering the question.

I thought at first… the Church is why pedophilia is so frowned upon in western nations. That led me back to both the origins of the Church and the age of the Founding Fathers of this nation.

Back in their day, the average lifespan was about 40 years old, if you were lucky. Infant mortality was terrifying. The ages we consider children were adult back then. People were learning their trades, taking their trades, marrying and bearing children… when they barely hit adolescense.

I have been trying to review my history in my mind in order to come up with a comprehensive answer and I cannot. Here is my guesstimate:

The following factor into why pedophilia is less acceptable in Western cultures. I am loosening the definition here to encompass early adolescence which is, actually, not textbook pedophilia:
1) the average lifespan drastically increased
2) the Church, in western nations, reflected this change. The Church, as it came over to this nation, was traditionally strict, frowning upon anything even vaguely risque, making rules against it. I would think that, over the years, age of acceptable childbearing would rise as people’s lifespans increased.
3) Children have more luxury to be children. Reference #1. As a result of that an #2, childhood was redefined.

Well, that is my best shot at answering the question. I wish I could do better.

As for the last bit of your question, unless catastrophe occurs, dropping the population and reducing lifespan, no, I do not think pedophilia is going to be more accepted in Western culture.

Everybody is saying that paedophilia is the act of seducing or stealing or raping children. Nobody said it was physical. Is it wrong for people to fantasise about children, without actually doing things? Just kinda putting it out there :P

no, i am not a pedophile. i am 15 years old.

@jackm Okay. Well. We’re back at the beginning, then. No, pedophilia will never be accepted into culture, for the many reasons that so many Flutherers brought up, including myself. Your original question was asking, flat out, if pedophilia (hence, the actions that come along with the desires, not only the desires themselves) will ever be accepted. So, the fact that we moved onto video games is pointless.

If pedophilia was ever accepted into society, I would become my own brand of superhero, gladly walking around with an arsenal of weapons so I could blow every pedophile that I came across to itty little pieces. That’s my extreme take on the matter, you might not have such a strong feeling.

But, in the end, it is good to know that you yourself agreed that pedophilia is wrong and harms children.

@Arp That it the root of my question. People associate pedophilia with rape, but it does not necessarily lead there.

@jackm Well, it seems like everyone so far has been talking about the physical act of raping children. That isn’t paedophilia, that is child rape.

To answer just the question, as written, using my opinion and beliefs:

In western cultures, children seem to be growing up fast. In reality, it is not true, because they are not forced to be responsible at a young age, nor marry at 13 or 14. Because adults see children as growing so fast, they desire to protect them from life. I say life from the perspective of one that learned to ride a two-wheeler bicycle wearing shorts, barefoot, on a gravel road, without training wheels. Nowadays kids have to have shoes, socks, jeans,long shirts, knee pads, elbow pads, helmets, training wheels, and a parent there to support them.

This protection is being taken farther and farther to the extreme. The western world is becoming so paranoid about what others think, that they are bending over backwards to not insult anyone. Spank a child and get protective services called on you. Take a picture of your child on a ride in a mall, and be arrested as a child molester. Take your child to a park, and be told you cannot accompany them, there are trained and trusted monitors, watching over the little darlings. That parents might be monsters in disguise, out to hurt them and rob them of their precious childhood.

The western culture is more under the magnifying glass than any other. We have always been open, with what we do, and so invited others to judge and condemn. Because of this, whenever anything happens to a child, the entire world sees and hears of it. And judges. We hear the judgment and enact new safeguards to protect. It has reached the point where things the eastern cultures (or whatever) accept as a norm, we have to decry because it is seen as evil by overprotective guardians of truth, rights, freedom, and justice.

We have protected our children from themselves. Now those children protect their children from themselves, adding to the layers. When someone does not wrap their child in insulation from any harm, they are attacked by overprotective parents and other guardians of right. The Christian church has a lot to do with it, but not all.

@jackm and @Arp Ah, but here’s the thing: Just as @DarkScribe mentioned earlier, the day that pedophilia is accepted into society – thought of as okay and acceptable, etc. that is the same day that the actions that go along with the desire (child rape) are also accepted. Accepting something means to accept it, as is, no judgment or problems with it. Thus, child rape. It is not so simple, and you need to think about it on a deeper level.

@Arp Yes, and I think that is why people are having such negative reactions. That is why i posed the video game question, to force people to really see what they hate so much about pedophilia. The people, or the harm it causes a child. It seems most people can not separate the two.

Why are you even discussing this? Have you no conscience? Sexual abuse = Wrong.

Wow did I come late to this party…

Skimming over this there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot left to say. I’ll try to add a little something though. I apologize in advance if this is simply restating others arguments.

1. Why is it so awful? Because, right or wrong, pedophilia is associated with child molestation. For the record, under current definitions, to my knowledge, not all pedophile’s are child molesters and not all child molestations are committed by pedophiles therefore it can not accurately be said that all pedophiles are child molesters. Child molestation is considered wrong for the same reason rape is. The difference here is the child is always assumed to have said no because they are not considered capable of the analytic thinking necessary to understand the consequences of their answer. (Personally, I would hold that many adults are riding in the same boat, but that’s for a different argument.) If you need an argument as to the ethics of inflicting harm on another, there are quite literally thousands available, from people who have put much more critical thought into it than I have time for here.

2. I can only see a day where pedophilia is considered “accepted” (and I use that term very loosely) when the link between pedophiles and child molesters can be broken by some verifiable means.

3. I believe both the act and societies reaction to it are significant contributors to the psychological scars associated with child molestation. I have not conducted research to back this up, but I believe it can be logically argued well enough for the purposes of this discussion.

4. Calling child molestation evil necessitates a definition of evil and debating such a definition is not the purpose of your question. Suffice it to say in most current, generally accepted, and argued definitions of evil, to my knowledge, would include child molestation.

5. Virtual reality. This is really a different argument but I believe you are using it to distinguish the thoughts from the act. Good for you. As open to argument as this brief statement is here it goes. Inherently no one is being hurt. It’s difficult to justify making it illegal. Reprehensibility by itself is not enough to justify illegality. For it to be illegal there has to be some evidence supporting a link or at least a strong logical argument clearly linking it to social detriment. Unfortunately your “game example” opens up a whole can of worms on everything from thought to action, intentions, influence, responsibility, censorship, free speech, blah, blah-blah, blah-blah.

6. For everyone who says this isn’t worth debating, asking, or discussing. Everything is worth consideration. If you can’t argue logically about the merits of a position then how can you justify it? When someone asks why something is the way it is, you need to be able to explain why, not berate them for asking in the first place.

@DrasticDreamer What, are we going to start censoring peoples thoughts now? If people can fantasise about being tied up and covered in faeces, why can’t they fantasise about doing something illegal, as long as they don’t do it?

Do you think it would be wrong for me to imagine what it would be like to rob a store? As long as I don’t do it, nobody got hurt, and I have no further want to rob a store. I suppose it would be the same with paedophilia. As long as people that think that way never act on their fantasy, who is it hurting?

Ok, I just realised I am defending paedophilia. I will stop now :P

@jackm . . . Why do you insist on talking favorably about a psychological disorder that, whether acted upon or not, needs to be eradicated in the same way polio and smallpox were?

@Arp . . . quick boy. . .run! stranger danger! stranger danger!

@Arp We are not talking about mere fantasies. We are talking about video games, that are made, marketed and sold, with the intention to depict child rape – which is already against the law. And is INHERENTLY not the same as depicting violence or anything else, against another ADULT character. People can think whatever the hell they want to.

@DrasticDreamer What about videogames? I never saw anything about videogames… Are we talking about the same question?

0_o

It’s child abuse, plain and simple. It’s taking advantage of someone who cannot fully understand, emotionally and physically, what is actually taking place. Yes, there are histrorical examples of pedophilia and pederastry in eastern and western cultures. What benefit is there to pedophilia?

@Blondesjon Wouldn’t it be considered a fetish, and not a psychological disorder?

@Arp No.

Double post removed.

@Arisztid Great answer. I think you hit the nail on the head

@Blondesjon There you go again, making statements that make no sense.

@Arp dont be afraid to represent your ideals. People like @Blondesjon will try to make you feel like a pedophile for saying it, just like there are always people trying to make you think their way. Say and do what you know is right.

@DrasticDreamer Ok, I didn’t know. Sorry.

@jackm Uh, what? I wouldn’t exactly call paedophilia an ideal 0_o

And no, I already said I am not a pedo. Sorry.

@jackm Arp is 15, he’s still forming his own opinions. That said, @Arp: Don’t apologize to me, no worries. I want you to believe what you do – but yes, video games were brought up, in which child rape would be depicted. Argue for what you think is right, absolutely.

@jackm Thankyou much. It was an entertaining mental exercise which requires digging into history to answer. I think that others here have mentioned things that are contributing factors, such as @Keysha and @wonderingwhy . This is an immensely complex topic.

I am a tad OCD and, when I see definitions being mixed, have an urge to point them out. I am seeing the term pedophilia being used broadly enough to not be accurate. Because I am lazy, I am going to cite Wiki but I have done enough looking to know that it is correct.

Two different things are being discussed: pedophilia and hebephilia.

Hebephilia is the sexual preference for pubescent individuals.

Pedophilia is when an adult or older adolescent experiences a sexual preference for prepubescent children (before the maturing of the body to the point of being able to bear offspring),

There are further definitions, breaking it down.

@DrasticDreamer – my thoughts would be, show me anything persuasive to say that viewing a make believe act makes a person more likely to engage in that act in real life. No one has really been able to do anything even approaching this as far as I know. Yet, I know first hand that many documentaries have been made about bad things that have happened in the world, and only when the heartstrings of the viewers were tugged on in this manner did people stand up and do something about it. I think ultimately there’s more scientific based evidence to suggest that depictions of something will either not affect the problem at all or will lessen the impact overall, moreso than prohibition of said depictions. It’s akin to any sort of prohibition really, we prohibited alcohol use, and not only did it not curb alcohol consumption, it created a host of other problems. It’s simple supply and demand as I see it, you can’t legislate vices, you can only seek to make it possible for people to enjoy them without harming anyone else. That is the goal we all have. I can’t stop someone from fantasizing about a kid, we could make it hard for him to even get visual stimulus to which he could masturbate, but that’s just going to make his desires more and more pent up. It is when desires are repressed that people go off the deep end. People go postal when the frustration gets to be too much. I’d suggest raping a kid would be the same thing, as long as you’re in your rational mind the desire to kill/to rape will be tempered by your innate sense of right and wrong, and the potential consequences of acting on your desires. But when those desires are allowed to build to the point where they overwhelm your rational mind, that’s when you go postal or rape someone or whatever your particular forbidden desire might be.

We’ve seen the effects of prohibiting many, many things, and invariably, prohibition of ideas, desires, and vices has turned out to have unintended consequences that were far worse than the problems one was trying to fix. My point is not that I know I’m right about this, I honestly couldn’t say that you are not right….maybe there are certain things like pedophilia where the fallout of prohibiting all depictions, no matter how based in fantasy they may be would outweigh the potential benefits plus the societal costs of prohibition, my point is, we should look into it and go with what makes sense. If someone actually programs Child Raper 3000 for PS3, rather than just saying, no way this can be released, I’d investigate to consider all factors, not just how many repressed pedophiles would it push over the edge, but also, how many would be pedophiles would it give an outlet to, and how much funding and other real live help would people who are outraged by it be moved to give to the cause of ending pedophilia, and how sickened would the people who have a morbid curiosity about these things be when they actually started playing the game, ensuring that they would never act on their currently unfleshed out fascination with the topic? I’m saying, we can’t be one sided about it, though too often it seems we are, and yeah, I would hope no one is sick enough to make that game and if it were made I’d hope no one was sick enough to buy it, but if it got made, and the preponderance of the evidence said it would do more good than harm to society, I would not ban it…I would only consider censoring something if it could clearly be shown as being detrimental to the well being of others (more so than not prohibiting it). Which is why I believe in free speech, but have no problem with “hate speech” legislation, because there’s a difference between expressing one’s opinion (no matter how wrong it might be), and acting or inciting one to act in an illegal manner.

@Arp I was talking about the ideal of freedom of expression.

@dalepetrie Exactly. Who is to say that video games (in this specific instance) will remain enough for the people who play them? On one hand, they have society saying, “Here, indulge in raping what looks exactly like a real child, there’s nothing wrong with it!”, but on the other hand, society would be saying, “But don’t do this to a real child, because then you’ll go to jail!”. The encouragement is the problem.

These are not mere fantasies that people have. This isn’t sadistic, masochistic, consenting behavior between adults. This isn’t having the desire to be pissed or shit on, this is not liking to be choked or any other sexual fetish that can be thought of. It is a dysfunction, a mental disorder, a fucking detrimental flaw that can affect entire societies!

Rather than encouraging the behavior through video games, why not try to actually FIX THESE PEOPLE?! Letting them indulge in these fantasies is not the same as any other kind of fetish – period.

Edit: Now officially done with this thread.

I agree that you take a multi-faceted approach, you try to fix what’s wrong with the people who have this particular mental illness, and eliminate those from society who can not stop themselves from acting on it (by any means necessary). But just because one’s perversion is distasteful and abnormal to the vast majority of people doesn’t mean that I personally would advocate for making an exception that says, no, no way, no how, not even if it keeps kids safer are we going to allow you to fantasize about this subject matter. It can’t be done and it’s probably going to be more harmful to try than to leave well enough alone. I simply say we have to look at the world realistically, no matter what you do, there will be pedophiles, our goal as a society would be to minimize their impact on children, but we have to realize that it would be impossible to stop it. And yes, I’d love to encourage people to spend their efforts on trying to slow it as much as humanly possible as opposed to encouraging them to create a fantasy outlet, but I’d also like to urge corporations to look out for the interests of US citizens instead of the interests of their shareholders….not gonna happen, and if someone wants to program a video game about pedophilia, we can’t stop them. We CAN stop the distribution of it, but if no one was harmed in the making of it, we’d better be damn sure that we can prove that more harm will come to society by releasing it than by not releasing it. That’s just logic.

I have never seen a question get so many answers so fast!

I understand what you are asking, and I will tell you pedophillia is a crime against God, Children, and society. No culture with any morality will embrace it.
Some cultures encourage men to beat their wives. This is also foreign to me, and I abhor the thought of it, but I understand it has its place in some cultures, as repulsive as it is.
Pedophillia does not.

@jackm You have been doing alot of attacking, but not giving your views, except thinking maybe it would not harm a child. Maybe you have learned that the majority of people it very offended by the very idea, or a video game as well.

As a NORMAL 20 yr old in college, I would spend more time studying engineering, drinking, chasing adult women or men and gettin something else on your mind.

As for too old, I think we all have sewn our wild oats and our Integrity and morals alarms go off before we do something stupid.

Do not play these games or feed the lusts….drown it out.

Okay, I read like…half the posts skimming.

I think I’ll just add that I know way too many people who were molested as children, or raped. Yes, it harms them psychologically; without society being the thing to have that affect on them. They almost always come to tears if talking about even generally what happened. If doing something that affects people in such a negative way isn’t considered wrong by some people, then I must be fucking insane! I’m not saying you accept it but I mean I’ve tried to rationalize this in a project I did on pedophilia in forensics class. I came up with NOTHING. There is nothing “attractive” about a child… ugh I just can’t grasp it. Sorry if I’m coming off bitchy here, but this is a sensitive subject for me.

It’s disgusting. We (kids) do not like to have people forcing themselves on us. Luckily I’ve always been a fighter so I don’t know the pain @MrsDufresne and others in this post felt. I wish we could find a way to ensure no child would ever have to go through those things again :(

This came up in discussion in a philosophy class. Psychologically children are sexual just like anyone else at any other age – except for very early stages. They will rehearse sexual acts or play among themselves naturally – and it’s best parents don’t intervene so long everything is generally safe – that actually aids in normal sexual development (just like other species).

It’s not the sexuality part that’s the problem. The issue comes with the abuse of that – let’s assume for a moment that the victim is any age. (By-passing the age-based consent). Taking away the choice of consent to experiment, commit different sexual acts with another. That too is a continuum because it can scale from outright rape, to—I just wanted to kiss no X or Y further advancements. As per above, parents should intervene when a child tries to force another along, instead of connecting and listening – in favor of shaping a better behavior.

Now coming back to the age difference. Whatever that may be, if too big or one of the parties too early in development (pre-12) their ability of judgment is low – easy to lure. Easy to coerce into a situation of abuse, that they can’t easily fight themselves out of – or otherwise psychologically give up/learned helplessness (which is a common recurring problem in adulthood of abused victims).

Although exposure to sexuality may not hurt a child, the risk of abuse is too high to leave this unchecked. I think the general disapproval of western society is precautionary mainly. And generally for a good reason. That said, the other end of the continuum of – being over-protective and rash with the decision making process of persecution is also deleterious and makes the recovery of the event harder for all involved but especially the abuse victim.

My position may sound a bit radical, but it may have its merits. I’d like to see a bigger focus on proper investigation by child psychologists working with the police or local authorities to see if there is foul-play in terms of authority/power abuse. But not all cases are without consent. There are many cases where the child is the initiator, and the guardian the acceptor. What do you do about that, is it the same degree and intent? Is there power-abuse there? It’s not all black and white here either. Which is why I find this discussion useful.

I have personal experience with this type of abuse at a young age. I did my crying, I did my raging – I did my learning, and in the end my forgiving of self and the person involved and finally moved on. But at the same time with an effort to take away from it as much as I could. Not everything was negative as it is automatically imagined. Without saying that this should be common or accepted/unchecked practice.

I fully understand the stage of rage and revenge having been there myself. Wishing to grow stronger, and outright take the person out. But really, there is no benefit in that. Making the person understand what they did wrong works best – but that would involve a discussion about the jail-system that generally doesn’t work. I took my own case in my own hands.

I’d like to see a world where children are attended to, almost like adults. Listened to, respected for their choices and given both options, power and ways to keep themselves out of trouble in their journey to adult hood. This journey too is a large continuum, you don’t get to adulthood at 18,1 years old (many don’t reach the ‘developmental stage’ of adulthood until much later, but some much earlier).

But to close, I don’t condone child abuse, or any form of abuse. But that shouldn’t lead us to unconsidered extremes and taboos.

@ children not capable of making own decisions. I disagree fully on that one. It’s hard for most people to remember their time as a child throughout their development. Myself as a child I was quite capable of making my own decisions (also supported by adults who knew me then), sure some were not the best decisions but who is to say that in our adult life we’re capable of much less fallible decisions?

Discounting children as sentient beings that are just capable on their own is not always best. Babies may not be, but children are.

A very famous psychologist recently reviewed a book arguing:

…many victims of childhood sexual abuse report that they did not initially experience the incidents as traumatic because, at the time, they knew and trusted their abuser and did not fully understand what was being done. They weren’t terrified, rather they were uncomfortable and confused. Any suffering they experienced came later, in the form of shame and guilt that they had somehow “consented” and that they did not experience the abuse as a horrifying trauma that the popular theory says they were supposed to have felt.

I am glad you asked this question. While I agree with the consensus that children are not capable of giving consent, the idea that children are non-sexual beings is simply a fiction. Many, many children start masturbating long before puberty.

So I think it is important to draw a distinction between children being interested in sex vs. children being able to engage in healthy sex acts with other people. The former seems clearly true to me; the latter does not.

@nikipedia Completely agree.

I am glad this discussion happened, that’s all I say – I was able to talk about it to others outside fluther and bring attention to a topic that should be approached in a more objective and frank way. My next question is to @Blondesjon – how do you propose we as a society begin to eradicate child sexual abuse?

Lets pray that a nutcase doesnt make that dang video game to feed the frenzy and make it an everyday “game.” The freaks will be on it like blue bonnet. It will be on the NAMBIA site. :)

There are so many things wrong in society, greed, selfcenteredness, it will take armageddon to rid ourselves of the scourge of abuse and violence.

@nikipedia good quote, and that’s true. It’s surprising how much damage the societal stigma puts on the victims later on. It’s bad enough going through it. This whole knee-jerk reaction is not helpful at all for the victims.

@jazmina88 How would armageddon help? Anyway, I had a question for you as well – somewhere above you spoke of crossing boundaries and so it got me thinking (in the middle of yoga, ;)) about boundaries and how in this society we sexualize our children in so many ways…there are very young girls now encouraged to wear bras and thongs and shave their legs (I hear more of this every day) and conversations abound about children’s sexuality and what of our gay children and making their innocent attractions to same sex kids into something about how they just must have been molested by a male adult (yeah, makes no sense to me either)...there is so much projection this society puts on their children – ‘look at my little man’ and ‘look at my little princess with a purse’ or ‘isn’t cute my son and your daughter are giving each other kisses?’ etc…yet we’re not supposed to see children as having any adult issues or sexual feelings..I think kids should be kids but the boundaries are changing as to what little girls (this has more to do with what girls are to like – miniature sex bombs – the toy aisle in Rite Aid has more than 2 different kits of manicure/pedicure kits and bright pink high heels with feathers on ‘em) should look like..(and don’t even get me started on Pageant parents! like those people on Toddlers & Tiaras!)...this does NOT help those who have urges or developing urges understand what’s going on…a lot of pedophiles have been abused themselves as children, children that were sexualized…but we as a society sexualize our children too much and there is no reason to think that we can just turn a blind eye to reality.

Armegeddon will wipe out everything….the only solution. rape and sex acts will always be here on this version of earth.

I agree with you completely. We all played dress up when we were kids to be like Mom, but never were we inspired to be tramps. Those pageant kids are so misguided on inner beauty. It doesnt help those urges at all. It’s a great venue for weirdos to find little girls to pray on who look entirely too much!!!! jon bonet??

Our society puts so much on perfect image, botox, weight, that it has ruined our inner self-esteem. Self-image will never be the same again.

Little boys are also victim. There was a 4 yr old boy killed here near Churchill Downs.
They dont have the same stigma. But boys are still threatened.

Yoou never know where or when someone may have a moment, either caused chemically or otherwise that make make them take advantage of someone unable to know what is truly going on sexually. We cant stamp out that without castration. And that would only prevent repeat offenders who get caught. think of all those who dont speak out of shame, or where the missing children are never found. It’s a losing battle to stamp out immorality until the end of times.

@jazmina88 Again, I don’t think castration is the answer – I think it’s much more about not being able to feel in control and sublimating one’s desires onto children but it’s not about the children, it’s about feeling attracted to someone defenseless and powerless and one that can not be considered your equal.

I truly think castration would never happen…...I think only women like myself, are into that solution, and mostly victims at that.

It all comes back to your family upbringing. Since our family system is near breakdown levels, it is harder to find LOVE. Not relationships with power trips and controls issues.
Is that where we learn some of that? Or is it genetic?

Pre-determination? Does our society moraes help keep down that level of inpropriety, to keep these people at bay, giving them safe escapes of counseling?

@jazmina88 I know that it sure feels like that would be justice.

if a penis is used as a weapon of emotional and physical destruction….....and that is the only way to destroy it…..maybe those strong impotency pills would work, if men would take them.

Women lose breasts and ovaries due to cancer all the time. Why is it so horrible to even think of a man losing his penis? if used as a weapon?

@jazmina88 Okay cancer is a natural process done to the body for a myriad or reasons – it’s not a punishment for an illegal act.

is there such a thing as penis cancer??

@Arp
Pedophilia is the sexual arousal of an adult to a prepubescent child, no physical action need be taken. Action turns the pedophile into a molester. Pedophiles are adults who would rather fantasize and masturbate to the thoughts and images of prepubescent children rathen than teens (adult shaped) or legal adults. Pedophiles have issues engaging in sex with other adults, their partners often think there’s something amiss.

@jackm Speaking as someone with experience, yes being molested does scar the child and I don’t believe it was society’s reaction that made me feel disgusted with myself because society didn’t know until I was in my 20’s. I felt frightened, disgusted, lonliness and confusion for years before society knew what had happend to me for 7 years of my life. In fact, what I did hear from society before I finally spoke about my experiences was mostly positive. We were encouraged to speak up and get help, we were told that it wasn’t our fault and so I don’t believe society is too blame for the way being molested made me and too many other children feel.

I’m not sure I should take part in this conversation as it’s a bit to close to home but I will say that, if I had absolutely no say and no control over what happened to me. I wasn’t physically or emotionally strong enough to stop it but I do know that, even before I understood that what was happening to me was wrong, I hated it. I found it painful and frightening and that is why I belief that acting on pedophilia is so, so wrong.

I didn’t read all of the answers above, so I apologise beforehand if I say something that has been said before.
I think that paedophilia is a case where misunderstanding leads to a vicious cycle.
People don’t hate paedophilia, people hate the paedophiles themselves, even though they have never met an actual paedophile in person. Their hate is based on their mind prototype of a paedophile, which usually is a hairy fat 50-year-old male rapist sitting naked behind his computer asking 9-year-old girls to undress in front of their webcam, while shouting ”Bueno!”. The prototype that people create is based on their experiences, or what they have heard of others. If someone grows up in a society where that particular prototype is assumed, and there is nothing else that influences it, that person will register that prototype as his/her own.
Because there is such a large amount of hate toward paedophiles, society is essentially locking up paedophiles making them unable to step out of the closet. That way, people’s view on paedophilia can never change, and it can even become a magnet that forms a bias in whatever they do.
And it wouldn’t be surprised if this mass rejection is actually the cause that a small amount of paedophiles may resort to rape and molestation, if they can’t find any kind of understanding.

My explanation above is not at all limited to paedophilia – this can be extrapolated to other things such as child sexuality in general.

As for the question whether paedophilia will ever be accepted by western culture, that may only happen if childlove activists are able to influence others in such a way that they don’t cling to their prototypes too much, and use their common sense before making assumptions about others.

Anyway, just my two cents.

@Aeliocoros . . . The picture I have in my mind is of an adult that fucks children. They come in all styles. That’s what makes them so dangerous.

By using your “closeted” analogy you are likening it to a choice of sexuality instead of what it actually is. It is a psychological disorder and a filthy, selfish repugnant one to boot.

@Blondesjon: You’re throwing a lot of statements at me… well, I have a few questions for you. Can you back any of your points with evidence?
Have you ever met one of “them”?
Would you call homosexuality a ‘filthy psychological disorder’, and if not, why?

The only point you proved in your post was the one from my post.

@Arp: __no, i am not a pedophile. i am 15 years old.__
You’re saying that as if those two things contradict. Don’t get me wrong – I believe that you’re not a pedophile (Heck, I support the points you’ve made), I’m just saying that this is a fine example of a presumption about paedophilia.

@Aeliocoros Have you ever met a pedophile? I’ve had the misfortune to meet more than one. Don’t assume that people who have made points here have never met one (or more) and so are pulling things out of their ass. You sure are quick to say others made assumptions, but, oh my… Look what you did.

You lose all credibility when you compare pedophilia with homosexuality, by the way.

@Aeliocoros A pedophile is a pedophile, not because of mass hatred and punishment, but because this was permanently set in their psychological make-up at a very, very early age. Mass hatred and long prison sentences do not create pedophiles. The fear of punishment is what keeps them in the closet. I might add that many of these children who are molested end up dead, just so they can never identify thier attacker.

The advantage for a pedophile is that they look just like everybody else. They play this to the absolute hilt. They hide in plain sight! They are someone’s uncle who toussel’s his niece’s and nephews hair, the priest who leads mass, the father who seems totally devoted to his daughters, the stranger who picks off children who are isolated from other children on the playground. There is absolutely nothing outstanding in thier appearance whatsoever. If punishment was what created pedophiles, these crimes would never have been commited in the first place.

Now that is just creepy.

@ezywho I can’t believe I didn’t expect that.

Damn. And people thought dead baby jokes were bad.

Phillis, some of the greatest movies involve dark humor. Go watch Fargo and lighten up a little.

Dark humor is my favorite, but I never find Pedobear funny.

@ezywho Don’t worry too much about it. You’re new here! There’s no way you could have known you were playing to a largely unappreciative crowd. We had a long thread a few weeks back about whether dead baby jokes were funny or not. It got kinda heated, but I was on the side of “Yep! They’re funny!”. So, yer preachin’ to the choir, here.

Been reading through this thread with interest. The originator of this question claims not to be a pedophile. Well, being evasive has never been my style, so I’ll just go ahead and lay it all out and say that I am one, and I feel it’s unfortunate that people like myself aren’t able to be more open and honest about the way we are. But I suspect those of you out there who’re convinced I’m sick and in need of help might actually agree with me on that point.

Where I think we’ll disagree is on the topic of underage sex. And I’m undoubtedly going to be accused of being self-interested here, but I’d like to think my thoughts on the matter are rational regardless. Basically, I don’t buy this idea that underage orgasms have some mystical power to cause mental harm to people. I don’t discount those who say they’ve been hurt by experiences they’ve had; there are too many unique factors to each situation for me to make a blanket judgment like that. Depending on what kind of threats, coercion, or manipulation might’ve been involved, and also depending on whatever attitudes someone might have had about sexuality or might have come to have, I can easily see how someone can experience harm. And for that reason, I don’t feel that sexual involvement with young people is a good idea.

But again, I don’t buy the idea that “person above a certain age” plus “person below a certain age” plus “sex” always equals harm. Surely most people here wouldn’t suggest that sexual contact between young people of the same age automatically causes harm; why does a difference in age automatically mean that there is harm? Just because there is a difference in power does not mean that that difference is abused; power imbalances exist in all sorts of relationships.

But to more precisely answer the question posed by the original poster, pedophiles are hated because they are a misunderstood minority with little power to change public perception of them.

Anyway, all that being said, I guess I’ll sit back for a moment now and wait to hear why I should die/be castrated/both. Either that, or for my post to be deemed too subversive by the powers that be and disappear into the ether..

@Matt_L

First of all, I think you need help. Not that you necessarily need to die. Unless you’ve raped a young child, and if that’s the case, yes, I would like to see you die.

Being attracted to a 15-year-old or 16-year-old girl is different that being attracted to say, a 5-year-old. Because often times, 15 to 16-year-old girls have gone through puberty and look like women. Attraction in that case is normal and hard to avoid. However, acting on that attraction is something completely different if you’re old enough, for instance, to be her parent. They aren’t in the same stages of life, they still rely on adults to guide them, and taking advantage of that vulnerability is completely fucked.

On the other hand, if you’re attracted to prepubescent children, who look and behave like children, and you wish to act on that attraction, you need therapy. If you don’t see the harm in raping a child, well… Yes, I hope hell exists for people like you. It probably doesn’t, which is unfortunate in that case, but that’s another thread.

As for being a “misunderstood minority” – there’s nothing about you that is misunderstood. You’re hated not because you have these thoughts necessarily – because I don’t always think that can be avoided – but you’re hated for trying to justify your desires, rather than trying to fix them. And it’s a fucking good thing you have little power.

How old are the kids you’re attracted to? 5? 6? Or 16? 17? There’s a big difference.

@DrasticDreamer
That you think I need to “get help” doesn’t surprise me too much; you seem to have suggested the same a few times already to different people in this thread. ;-)

I would take issue with your suggestion that an older person being involved sexually with a younger person automatically means that that person’s vulnerability is being taken advantage of. Two people might agree to become sexually involved for any number of reasons. Hell, they may feel romantic feelings for each other. If people were allowed to be more honest about such things and such relationships were more in the open, I feel there’d be less potential for abuse of power.

I feel a bit wary about speaking too much about my own attractions here, because I already feel I’m treading on thin ice and liable to be banished from this site at any moment. But yes, I am a pedophile in the true sense of the word in that I am attracted to prepubescent girls.

One final point: yes, pedophiles are completely misunderstood. We are defined in the public’s eyes by those of us who are exposed by breaking the law, often for doing admittedly inexcusable things. People like myself, who respect the law and are in control of their actions, who I have come to believe represent the majority of pedophiles, aren’t allowed to be open about a fundamental aspect of our personalities.

@Matt_L
I’m with @DrasticDreamer on this. You are not misunderstood. You are not hated because of what you are but because of the threat you pose to young children. If you never act out on your urges, great for you, you can live but if you cross the boundaries and touch a child then you are a parasite on society and yeah, you should go. It seems like such a small thing, to ask adults to refrain from engaging children until those children are at least what’s socially accepted on as a legal age of consent. You’ve got the rest of their lives to get at them but at least let them have a few years unmolested and left to sexually develop alongide their peers.

Good for you that you have control of yourself (whatever that means). The only sick thing is we all know you get your jollies jacking off to pictures/videos, etc of someone’s child. If you have children then hopefully you’ve not engaged them in inappropriate games of “rubbing tummies, sleeping with you in your bed and stuff, hopefully your own children will never be exploited to fuel the fantasies of others like you who regularly trade files and links across the internet, all over the world.

Pedophilia is a psychological disorder. Western cultures seem to follow the standard guidelines of what psychologists consider normal & disorderly. The truth is psychology and psychiatry is a Pseudoscience, which means there is no proof to anything said. Can you tell if someone is mentally unstable based on their blood test? I dare someone say yes. A preliminary thought. If ought cannot be derived from is – all norms and taboos related to sexuality are therefore cultural – the only rational objection to any sexual act is pragmatic. What are the effects of the practice or act? Consent cannot itself be an issue as children, animals, mentally handicapped are coerced into all sorts of behaviors the society holds up for admiration. It is the end result that seems to matter not whether or not consent is given. Though of course here the good of the entity is envisioned. It would seem to me that on a strictly rational perspective the emotional pain and anguish of the victim (being a psychological phenomenon) is meaningless. The only valid objection to deviant acts would be that they can create broken persons who cannot function appropriately in society. Evolutionary processes would it seems to me mitigate against child sexual abuse as groups who reared dysfunctional adults would fare worse overall in competition with groups that did not. This is perhaps the root of the (as far as I know) universal proscription against child sexual abuse. But what of other forms of abuse, in ancient Sparta kids started being molded into killers at the age of seven. Then it was a cultural norm, today it would clearly be abuse. Are we now “correct” and the Spartans “wrong” or as I wonder – is ought – a fiction? Of course for the record I do not find psychic pain meaningless and do not condone child abuse but by what reason can I ever see this as more than preferences, akin to preferring waffles to flapjacks?

@Matt_L A prepubescent child can not feel romantic feelings for someone old enough to be their parent. They can’t even feel those feelings for someone their own age! They aren’t developed enough mentally or physically to even have those desires.

Answer one thing for me, @Matt_L. You say that being a pedophile is a “fundamental aspect of your personality” – which would seem to indicate that you think your desires are completely normal, and not a psychological disorder. Are you perfectly content with these thoughts?

@Neizvestnaya
Tell me how many pedophiles you know personally who have willingly outed themselves to you, and then remind me again why you’re so sure you have pedophiles all figured out.

Why am I questioning this “socially accepted age of consent” you mention? Because it’s completely arbitrary. That you characterise certain kinds of sexuality with terms like “getting at them” and “molestation” shows that you’ve dismissed all sex below this arbitrary age as negative. I’m still waiting on the explanation as to how underage orgasms cause harm.

I’m not sure how you know so much about how I “get my jollies,” or why what I do privately and alone should even be of any concern to you. And I’m sorry that you do not share my sexuality and that it makes you feel icky, which seems to be what a lot of this comes down to.

DrastisDreamer where do you get off saying that Pedophilia is guaranteed to be a psychological disorder? Pseudoscience is not a science.

You’re sorry that @Neizvestnaya doesn’t share you sexuality? I’m sorry that you think you’re normal @Matt_L. Being attracted to prepubescent children is not normal and it never will be.

As happy as you are to fantasize about prepubescent children, and act like it’s okay and normal, and admit that you think nothing is wrong with it, just know that there are a lot of people in the world who are perfectly happy fantasizing about killing people like you. :)

I’m done, before I get banned.

@ezywho
I don’t believe pedophilia is a psychological disorder. I believe there are a lack of professionals who are courageous enough to question the common assertion that it is and examine the issue objectively. For an example of some writing done by a respected sexologist who IS willing to challenge common assertions, see Richard Green’s article “Is Pedophilia a Mental Disorder?” ( http://www2.hu-berlin.de/sexology/BIB/pedophilia.htm ). I’d like to reflect on and respond to more of your post, but it’s becoming hard to keep up with the pace of this thread.

@DrasticDreamer
Prepubescent children can certainly have feelings of affection for others.

No, I do not believe my feelings represent a psychological disorder. I am only not content with my thoughts to the extent that they cause me to not quite fit in perfectly in modern society.

@Matt_L
There’s nothing wrong with underage orgasms experienced by children being children and not being engaged by adults. Most people don’t want their children being engaged by other adults and so there are laws to designate “ages of consent” and they do vary but are pretty much universal in being over “pre pubescent”. I am a human and so wouldn’t dare dismiss sexuality by underage kids as negative, I just think adult on child sex is negative. Like I say, I doubt you’d be for sharing one of your young children with another pedophile, whether or not they laid hands on them or not so what makes you think any of us is okay with what you want to do to our loved ones?

As for knowing pedophiles, yes I’ve known several and not all turned out to become molesters but they were really f**ked up mentally otherwise once you got to know them… and then didn’t want to know them anymore. Yes, your pedophilia makes me feel icky even though I don’t have children of my own. It makes me feel icky to know you’re okay with exploiting and maybe even taking advantage of your own kids and other people’s kids.

Do I care if pedophilia is a disorder of some sort? Nope, I only care that pedophiles not be able to touch children or contribute to the exploitation of children to fuel their urges. In my mind I feel pedophilia has no cure, no rehabilitation and so no children are really ever safe. I don’t believe castration works because pedophiles still use the rest of their bodies and their money to purchase materials created to cater to them without ever physically harming a child themselves. When it comes down to it though, someone’s child is being used for and I’m not okay with that.

@Matt_L, having “feelings of affection for others” is no where NEAR the same as having romantic feelings or sexual feelings.

@Matt_L I can only encourage you to get help, as I said before. I am officially removing myself before I get banned from Fluther. You have NO IDEA what the fuck people like you do to children, what kind of harm you cause.

I call troll.

Matt_L, I was directing my question to Drastic Dreamer, not to you. There is no proof to link pedophilia to being a psychological disorder. Invalid argument.

@DrasticDreamer
I’m sorry that Neizvestnaya doesn’t share my sexuality because she might understand me as well as she thinks she does if she did. Why are my attractions abnormal, and not just another variation of human sexuality?

I’m tempted to make a snide remark now about how fantasizing about killing people seems at least as bad as fantasizing about them sexually. But I understand that that’s the way much of society feels, and more needs to be done to change perceptions.

@Neizvestnaya
If sexuality experienced by “children being children” is okay, what is it about adults entering into the equation that suddenly makes it so harmful? Here’s a thought: could closeness and intimacy with an older person actually be experienced as a positive thing by a young person?

I’ll take your word that you’ve known pedophiles, although I don’t know how you would end up knowing many who didn’t “become molesters,” as you say, or who weren’t outed by some other kind of legal indescretion. Because it’s not something that too many people freely admit to in public. But it’s sad if these people are “f**ked up mentally.” I’d suggest that living with an attraction that makes you feel hated and that you can’t discuss with anyone does these sorts of things to some people.

@shrubbery
Okay, the kinds of romantic and sexual feelings people have change as they become older. But why is sexuality between people who feel affectionately for one another bad?

@Matt_L, what country are you from?

Okay. Im drunk so I am going to try and type slow.

I didn’t read most of the responses because well… tl;dr.

Pedophilia is wrong.

it’s wrong because when you are 3 years old and a man wakes you up in the middle of the night by raping you, you can’t stop it.
it’s wrong because when you are 3 years old and you get molested, nobody believes you because the “adult” in the situation explains that it was “just bath time”.
It’s wrong because having to get stitches at age 5 “down there” is embarrassing when you are told to make up excuses on how you “got hurt”.
When you are 4 years old and your father reading you a bedtime story turns into a 30something year old man performing oral sex on a 4 year old, despite you trying to kick him away… it’s still fucking wrong.

It scars you for life.
Sometimes physically and most always emotionally.
Most people can still picture everything that happened to them. VIVIDLY.
I don’t trust the male population anymore because of that. I don’t like getting too close to people. Even as friends. I find a way to push them out of my life because of it. I’m so fucked up and no, therapy did nothing for me. I can’t fall asleep without being paranoid that I am going to be woken up in the middle of the night.

Please, someone justify this, and tell me in what fucking country and state of mind would people have to be in to make this acceptable behavior some day.

@Matt_L, it isn’t necessarily, if they are “developed enough mentally or physically to even have those desires.” as DrasticDreamer put it. Those desires being romantic or sexual. Small children are not developed for their affections to be romantic or sexual. Simple as that.

@ezywho
Oh, okay, misunderstood your post; sorry. Have to agree with you then.

@Violet
Why do you ask?

@rangerr
For what it’s worth, I’m sorry for what happened to you, and hope you can find peace. That probably doesn’t mean much to you coming from someone like myself, or coming from any anonymous person on the Internet, for that matter. I can only say that I wouldn’t feel the way I do about things if I weren’t convinced that sexual experiences between adults and children can be positive, and if I hadn’t read accounts claiming they have been. Again, I sincerely feel sorry for you and for what you say you experienced.

@shrubbery
But children don’t necessarily have sexual or romantic desires when they experiment with each other. Again, why does an adult being involved make it bad? Yes, that an adult would be interested in that must seem strange and disgusting to many people, but why is it bad?

@Matt_L because the question is, Why is pedophilia such an awful thing in western cultures?, so I’m wondering if you are part of the western culture or not.

@Matt_L How the fuck can you tell me that you feel sorry for me and then turn around and say that there can ever be a positive “sexual experience” between an adult and a child?
Who the hell do you talk to that would ever tell you such a story? Do you live in a prison?

But children don’t necessarily have sexual or romantic desires when they experiment with each other.

Exactly. Children think of it as play when they are PLAYING with each other. It’s what kids do. But there is no such thing as a sexual relationship with a child and an adult. It just doesn’t happen. A child can’t consent to something when they have no idea what is going on. That’s why it’s bad. You show us some proof that a child is capable of making these decisions and understands everything about these “relationships” and I’ll stop wishing you were dead.

@Violet
Oh, yes then, I’m a part of western culture. And I can confirm that pedophilia is considered an awful thing where I am :)

@DrasticDreamer
Welcome back to the thread, missed ya. I’m not sure what you want me to say in regards to rangerr, and at any rate, I just decided to say what I actually felt. But it seems you’re convinced I should feel personally guilty for every instance of sexual abuse that’s ever occurred. Which I knew would happen.

@rangerr
“How the fuck can you tell me that you feel sorry for me and then turn around and say that there can ever be a positive “sexual experience” between an adult and a child?”

Because that’s what I believe? Your personal experience doesn’t represent what every intergenerational sexual experience is like any more than one instance of a man raping a woman represents every kind of hetero sexual experience. I’m sorry if I’m sounding cold, but anything I say to you is only going to make you angrier at this point, so I don’t really know what to say, other than what I actually believe. I’m sorry you had a bad experience.

Who the hell do you talk to that would ever tell you such a story? Do you live in a prison?

What do you mean by “such a story;” do you mean someone who would consider a sexual experience with an adult as a child to have been positive? Are you suggesting these sorts of people would be in prison?

Admitting that you experienced something as taboo as this as positive isn’t necessarily en vogue these days. You could start with the book For a Lost Soldier, written by a man who had an experience with an older man as a boy (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_a_lost_soldier ). I could direct you to other accounts if you’re interested.

That a child should understand everything about “relationships” before consenting to one is impossible; no one can understand everything about a relationship until they’ve experienced one, so by that standard, no one would ever be capable of consenting. But the way things generally happen is that young people are given support and guided though experiences by people who care for them (i.e. parents). What if a parent saw that a friendship between their child and an older person was developing into something beneficial for them?

Matt__L, what I was saying is that you can’t prove that you have any psychological disorder in your desire for prepubescent children, but that makes it worse for you. That means you are perfectly sane in your actions. Your motive is called X. Maybe pure evil? Whatever it may be, you know you are aware what you are doing is wrong. Here is the wrong you are doing. “Depending on the age and size of the child, and the degree of force used, child sexual abuse may cause internal lacerations and bleeding. In severe cases, damage to internal organs may occur, which, in some cases, may cause death. Herman-Giddens et al. found six certain and six probable cases of death due to child sexual abuse in North Carolina between 1985–1994. The victims ranged in age from 2 months to 10 years. Causes of death included trauma to the genitalia or rectum and sexual mutilation.Various studies have suggested that severe child sexual abuse may have a deleterious effect on brain development. Ito et al. (1998) found “reversed hemispheric asymmetry and greater left hemisphere coherence in abused subjects;“Teicher et al. (1993) found that an increased likelihood of “ictal temporal lobe epilepsy-like symptoms” in abused subjects; Anderson et al. (2002) recorded abnormal transverse relaxation time in the cerebellar vermis of adults sexually abused in childhood;] Teicher et al. (1993) found that child sexual abuse was associated with a reduced corpus callosum area; various studies have found an association of reduced volume of the left hippocampus with child sexual abuse;and Ito et al. (1993) found increased electrophysiological abnormalities in sexually abused children.Some studies indicate that sexual or physical abuse in children can lead to the overexcitation of an undeveloped limbic system.Teicher et al. (1993) used the “Limbic System Checklist-33” to measure ictal temporal lobe epilepsy-like symptoms in 253 adults. Reports of child sexual abuse were associated with a 49% increase to LSCL-33 scores, 11% higher than the associated increase of self-reported physical abuse. Reports of both physical and sexual abuse were associated with a 113% increase. Male and female victims were similarly affected.” This is all science, I can provide you with sources. That’s why these laws were set in place.

And with that, I’m going to have to leave this thread for now, as I don’t have anymore time to devote to it at the moment. I guess I’ll come back later to discover it either completely gone or filled with more replies than I could probably ever hope to respond to.

I hesitate to even jump back into this fold, but I can’t help myself, I see some validity to the various points being made and some fallacies as well, and I just have to do my damnedest to try to get everyone to understand each other as much as is humanly possible.

First off, let’s examine whether pedophilia really is “misunderstood”. In my opinion, yes and no. Yes, in that I think most people make the automatic knee jerk assumption that all pedophiles are predators. To me, this is akin to thinking all homosexuals are pedophiles…like people who don’t want a gay man to be their kids’ teacher. Again, see what I said earlier about nuance. It is possible to have these “feelings” without taking action on them. If I take @Matt_L at his word, and I have no reason not to do so, he is one such person who self identifies as a pedophile, but who does not consider himself to be a predator (though some of the things he’s said might lead me to question his self assessment in this area, more on that later). My point in this part is that perhaps our society does a disservice to people who have these desires by demonizing them as if they were rapists of the worst kind, when it would seem that the person who has these desires, knowing how strong human sexual desire is, who is able to suppress them is someone who should be commended rather than chastised.

However, @Matt_L chafes at the description of his desires as abnormal. Now what is normal for him is not what we consider to be normal, and having been a person who shuns “normality” in a number of ways, I can fully understand that being different doesn’t necessarily make you “abnormal”. But describing a sexual attraction to a non-sexual being can not realistically be called anything but abnormal, I’m sorry, it just can’t. It’s like preferring to eat the seeds instead of the fruit. You are ascribing a purpose to something for which the purpose was never intended. It’s like trying to boil an egg with a hammer or shoot a squirrel with a postcard. Some automatically say that nature didn’t intend for two people of the same sex to be together because they can’t pro-create and think that somehow that will be a valid comparison, but the difference is that it is different when you have two consenting adults vs. one consenting adult and one person who is not physically or emotionally equipped to give consent.

An attraction to pre-pubescent girls IS abnormal, because pre-pubescent in its very definition means “hasn’t gone through puberty,” or more directly, “hasn’t developed the capacity for performing or understanding sexual acts.” By saying that this is normal, one might as well say that anything that can occur in a person’s mind is normal, but then what the hell does the word mean? By that definition, a sexual attraction to an animal is “normal” because hey, some people can be sexually attracted to animals. Though what is normal to me is “how I am”, and I can only imagine how hard it would be to conceptualize that I personally was “abnormal” in some way when I was just being who I am, but @Matt_L, you have to understand that by saying you need help, people are honestly trying to say to you, we’re not judging you for being who you are, for thinking what you think, but just like if you truly believed you were Jesus Christ, your thought processes are abnormal, and people are saying that there is the possibility that you could be helped. It is not an insult, but what is insulting is when you continue to defend yourself on this issue by treating people who actually are trying to understand you like they just don’t get it. This is why you’re seeing hostility come forth, because you really are pushing some buttons here, you act as though you have sympathy for people who don’t agree with you, but then you justify it as just a thing. We’re telling you, you’re wrong about this. It is simply not any more “normal” to be sexually attracted to a child than it is to be sexually attracted to a rutabaga…if the object of your sexual desire is not a sexual being (and attempts to use games children play out of normal human curiosity, and physical anomalies associated with the earliest stages of sexual development is nothing more than weak justification…it is clear to any rational person that being sexually developed is not the same as being someone who is in the process of sexual development), then it is ABNORMAL to be sexually attracted to it, period. It’s a VERY simply concept.

Now, I’m not mad at you, @Matt_L, justification for our shortcomings is a human trait, and I understand no one wants to be labeled as “abnormal”, nor to feel as if something is “wrong” with them, and I get how you’ve come to terms with who you are by justifying to yourself why you are doing nothing wrong. And I am the last person who would demonize someone for their thoughts, there is no thought police, nor should there be, you have the “right” to be abnormal in my view, you just don’t have the right to act on it, and you say you haven’t and won’t, which is commendable.

But, then you start wondering why it would be wrong for an adult to derive sexual pleasure from an intimate relationship with a child. You ask what’s wrong with intimacy between adults and children, and on the surface, “intimacy” is not wrong, I have what I consider a very intimate relationship with my son, but it’s not sexual. Intimacy and sex should not be confused. And you try to confuse the issue, asking why sexuality between two people who share intimacy is wrong, and on the surface, nothing is wrong, but there is a HUGE difference between emotional intimacy and sexual intimacy. They simply are not the same thing. And essentially, not only are you confusing your diction here to make it seem as if they are, you are suggesting that you might confuse your actions as well. You ask why it would be wrong for an adult to play house as it were with a child where the child thinks he/she is playing a game and the adult is getting his/her jollies. What is wrong is that it’s a bait and switch…it is a betrayal of trust. The younger person who has NO FRAME OF REFERENCE for human sexuality is incapable of even comprehending the ulterior motive, and it is that ignorance which the pedophile would exploit for his own personal sexual satisfaction. While the child is experiencing what he or she believes to be a shared emotional intimacy, the adult has either placed another level of intimacy on top of this, or has replaced emotional intimacy with sexual intimacy.

Now, does this harm the child. Well, if it were possible to completely keep the sexual thoughts inside one’s own head, I could see making a point that no harm was done, and I can therefore understand to a degree the point about how this might creep out a non pedophile, but is not inherently an evil deed. But most sexual gratification requires or produces some sort of physical manifestation which is often quite hard to to keep as secret as one’s thoughts. It’s an easy step from thinking “what does it hurt if I imagine this 10 year old girl naked” to “what does it hurt if I SEE this 10 year old girl naked, as long as I don’t touch her.” And that’s not far from “how can I get this 10 year old girl to take off her clothes?” It’s also not far from, “it can’t really hurt her if I touch her breast.” But these kind of things DO leave permanent scars, because they are actions for which the child has not yet developed the capacity to posses a frame of reference. At some point when that child does gain the insight to realize what was really going on, that is when the damage is done.

What is wrong with this is that the adult is using knowledge that only he possesses to manipulate and coerce a child…just because he’s good enough at doing it that the child doesn’t realize he or she has been manipulated does not make it better, in fact, it makes it worse. It’s deceptive and deceitful, it is victimization…it is predatory behavior. So us “normal” people may well understand if you have malformed sexual desires, and we may understand how hard it might be to not act on them, just as hard as it is for us to repress our sexual needs if and when necessary. But we will NOT understand being predatory about it.

As for your most recent justification that no one can understand everything about relationships before entering into one is again, just another lame, weak justification for a predatory practice. I may not understand much about the stock market, but if I think I’m investing in a stock, and turns out I gave money to someone like Bernie Madoff who knew full well he was just sending me statements showing that I’d made money when really he’d just spent every penny I’d given him, well that is a bit different than me not understanding how the companies in which I invest exactly go about making their profits and paying their dividends. If I order a bottle of wine, I may like the way the wine tastes, but not being an expert wine taster, I don’t understand about hints and overtones and how the weather during the year of the vintage added to the complexity, but I know I’m drinking wine, as opposed to fruit juice spiked with anti-freeze. There’s a difference in not knowing what you’re getting into, and not having the capacity to even understand that something is fraudulent.

So my two cents, if you can get what you need by looking at pictures and masturbating, that’s one thing, but if you involve an actual living child who does not even yet possess the capacity to understand how you are using her for your own personal gratification, then you ARE CROSSING A LINE, you ARE DOING HARM, you are not just a pedophile, but a predator, and I would suggest that if you have not yet involved a real child in the pursuit of your sexual release, then please, seek psychological help. Please stop resisting the idea that you are sick….no, it’s not your fault any more than my diabetes is my fault, but I’m sick. I don’t like having something “wrong” with me, something about my body that is “not normal”, something which forces me to modify my behavior, but I accept it, I see a doctor about it, I do what I have to do, even if it makes me feel bad about myself for not being “normal” like my friends who eat whatever they want. You are sick, your sickness is in your mind, not your body, and it’s NOT YOUR FAULT. You can not be faulted for being who you are and thinking the things you think. You CAN be faulted for your actions. Just like I can’t be faulted for the fact that my muscles resist insulin, but I can be faulted if I drink a can of Coke. As they say, the first step to getting help is admitting you have a problem, you HAVE to admit this to yourself. If your ACTIONS have not yet involved a child, then there is still time for you to find ways to cope with your illness.

If however you HAVE coerced a child to get naked, or to play with your genitals or to allow you to touch them in a “loving” way, or have in some way exploited a child’s ignorance of the very nature of human sexuality in order to satisfy your own needs, then I would suggest suicide. And let me tell you, suicide would not be necessary for anyone who used my son in this way as they wouldn’t live to see their first court date.

Man, I’ve seen and even participated in some pretty fucked up discussions on Fluther, but this is the first time one has ever made me actually physically gag.

Okay, one more reply, since ezywho insists ;-)

@ezywho
I don’t know what standard you would apply to dismiss someone as being “pure evil,” but I don’t feel I would meet it. And I don’t know how I would feel what I’m doing is wrong, as I thought I had established earlier that I don’t feel sexual involevment with young people is presently a good idea (because of societal reaction, not because I think sex is bad).

And I never said anything about any kind of sexual contact this is obviously physically harmful for children. You can take all your detailed descriptions of that kind of physical harm elsewhere, because they’re as horrible and disgusting to me as to anyone else. As far as I’m concerned, anyone who does that kind of harm to a child is a sociopath first and foremost, regardless of whether they have a sexual attraction to children or not, and all of this is a huge red herring.

And unless you simply copied and pasted all of that information from a quick google search, you must be familiar with the Rind et al. paper, which is the primary analysis I’m aware of that has attempted to distinguish between consensual cases and cases of actual abuse instead of lumping them all together.

And no, the “science” you cite is not why these laws were set in place. These laws were set in place long before the scientific concept of “child sexual abuse” came into being. They were set in place because of the same kinds of moralistic reasons that society has generally sought to restrict sexuality.

You just contradicted yourself. You write that you don’t condone the sexual abuse of the science I listed yet towards the end of your comments you put science in quotation indicating that you don’t believe in the science. That tells me you do condone the sexual abuse and you act on those urges. Now you say these laws were set long before science? Long in history people were not moral. Laws were not set in place. Where do you get this from? How long ago are we talking? Could you be anymore vague in your comments? You are causing your own downfall sir.

@Matt_L I’m struggling to believe that you are actually trying to justify your beliefs. It’s one thing feeling an attraction to children (as I’m sure you can’t help that anymore than I can help feeling the way I do about my boyfriend for example) but to sit here and tell us that you think that sexual engagement with children can be a positive makes me feel sick. What @rangerr described in one of her posts is very, very similar to what I experienced from the ages of 3 until 11 years old. So similar in fact that it frightened me when I read her post. I knew even as a young child that what was happening to me wasn’t right but because someone like you tried to justify his actions by telling me that it made me special I didn’t know where to turn or who to believe. What scared me the most when reading your posts is that my abuser told me some very similar things to what you said. He was “misunderstood” as was our “relationship” and because of that, I had to keep it a secret otherwise I, the victim, would be in lots of trouble.

What kind of sexual activity do you consider to be ok with a child? From what you have said it doesn’t sound like you condone rape but if a 7 year old girl claimed to be ok with you being sexual with her, would that be one of these “positive” situations you speak of? If the answer is yes then let me ask you this, do you know anything about the way a childs mind works? When I was 7 years old I was very curious about sex as were most of the kids I knew. We were having sex education lessons at school and of course, a lot of us wanted to be “grown ups”. Do you really think that we actually wanted sex though, even if we may have claimed to? Can you ever be sure that what a 7 year old says and what a 7 year old actually feels is the same? Because of my experiences I went along with what the other kids said (about wanting to be a grown up and sex being “cool) as I didn’t want them to suspect anything and “tell on me” for what I was going through and I even told my abuser that I was ok with what he was doing because I was scared of what he would do to me if I fought against it. It scares me now that my abuser justified his actions because I said it was ok and this isn’t much different to what you are doing now. You are justifiying your beliefs by saying that if the child consents to it, it could be positive.

One more reply, dalepetrie, because I appreciate the time you’ve devoted to thinking about all this.

I also appreciate that you see a difference between pedophiles and “predators.” The problem is, not enough people seem willing to take this argument from online message boards into real life, and it is practically impossible for pedophiles to live with any kind of openness about who they are. Also, the media frequently reinforces the kinds of stereotypes that make this impossible.

Here is why I believe pedophilia is not abnormal: it creates the kind of closeness and the kinds of bonds that benefit humans as a species, as sexuality in general does. It is physically pleasurable for both partners and there is a caring and nurturing aspect to it. Husbands and wives care for each other, as do gay partners, and so are pedophiles inclined to do for children. That children do not experience sexuality in the same way that adults do (and that they don’t carry the baggage about it adults do, for that matter) doesn’t make it harmful and doesn’t make it invalid as a form of consensual sexual expression, as long as both parties and consenting to the experience and benefiting from it. If a young person simply enjoys the physical pleasure of the experience without the component of sexual desire that adults feel, you still haven’t explained why the experience is harmful and should be punished without exception. Some young people might look back and feel confidence from the experience. Some boys who have had youthful experiences with women have said as much.

(And FYI, the seeds of many fruits are often considered to be as useful as the fruit itself; in the case of oranges, the skin even has a culinary use ;-) Can’t say much about boiling eggs with hammers or shooting squirrels with postcards, though; good metaphors dude, I guess)

That not having reached puberty means not having developed the capacity for performing sexual acts is clearly untrue, as children not only experiment among themselves but also often masturbate well before puberty. So there is a capacity and often a desire to experience sexual pleasure.

I’m not sure if there’s any time in history when thinking I’m Jesus Christ would not be abnormal, inless it were around 0 A.D. and I were actually Jesus Christ, I guess. On the other hand, there are various points throughout history where intergenerational sexuality has been accepted and celebrated, and where people would not consider me to be abnormal; that you’re not imaginative enough to consider them, or that you’re unaware of them doesn’t change that fact. And the fact that society has chosen to deem pedophilia to be among the worst of all abnormalities in the last few decades doesn’t change that fact.

And no, people aren’t saying I “need help” in a non-judgmental way (well, maybe you are), it’s obviously been said in a very snide and condescending way. I believe it was suggested that the person who originated this question needed help at one point for even bringing the topic up. But regardless of how it’s being said, I hope you understand why I don’t take it seriously. And I think hostility would’ve come forth regardless of whatever approach I took (unless I just came in grovelling or whatever, which just wouldn’t have been an accurate reflection of what I feel). So, whatever, I’m sorry if people feel it’s insulting that I’m defending my stance here.

And I’m not “acting as if I feel sympathy” for anyone; I do feel sympathy for people who are harmed by bad experiences, if you’re referring to a previous poster again.

it is clear to any rational person that being sexually developed is not the same as being someone who is in the process of sexual development

Never said it was.

I’m beginning to think I prefer the approach of being wished dead to yours; it’s clear you think I’m so hopelessly deluded about intergenerational sexuality that you’re not going to give much credence to anything I say on that matter. But you’re at least taking the time to thoughtfully respond to what I write, as I am to you, so I guess this is progress?

Now, I’m not mad at you, @Matt_L

Thanks; that means a lot coming from a faceless screename on an internet message board.

And I totally get how you’ve come to terms with dismissing everything I’ve said or could hope to say by convincing yourself you’re not doing anything wrong.

Intimacy and sex should not be confused.

Precisely; people have a lot more hang-ups about one.

The younger person who has NO FRAME OF REFERENCE for human sexuality is incapable of even comprehending the ulterior motive

If you’re going to take issue with my use of language, I’m going to take issue with this, because no one speaks of “ulterior motives” when they’re talking about any other kind of sexuality. It’s a demonization of pedophillic attraction. I don’t suggest anything should be hidden, and I don’t feel that sexuality is such a hard thing to comprehend as you suggest that it would remain an “ulterior motive” (I’m talking about with preteens here, if we’ve got to establish some frame of reference, which we probably should). On the contrary, I’m quite sure plenty of preteen girls understand the gist of sexual desire.

I think I’ve addressed the rest of what you say elsewhere, except for this:

As for your most recent justification that no one can understand everything about relationships before entering into one is again, just another lame, weak justification for a predatory practice.

Clear distortion of my argument; if you’d reread what I wrote right after that, you’d see my point was that young people, or people with less knowledge of any given experience, are guided into things by those who are looking out for them, and thus if pedophile relationships were openly allowed, the child would have many people (such as parents) looking out for their wellbeing, and the risk of harm would be minimized.

no, it’s not your fault any more than my diabetes is my fault

Could be your fault; I’m not aware of what kind of diabetes you have. I’ve beared my soul on here already; why not offer us some background? With the proper psychological help, you might be able to be cured of your delusion that your diabetes didn’t arise from eating donuts and hamburgers all time.

Or maybe you have Type I and I’m being a dick. At any rate, I’m tired, and I think I’ve shown that sarcasm isn’t a trait pedophiles necessarily lack, so I’m done. And I might feel bad for making fun of your diabetes, but you just spoke of committing suicide or killing me yourself, so I don’t really give a shit. Huh, turns out your post wasn’t so unlike the others on here after all; just took you longer to get around to the mention of bodily harm.

@ezywho
You write that you don’t condone the sexual abuse of the science I listed yet towards the end of your comments you put science in quotation indicating that you don’t believe in the science.

I think it’s flawed. As I suggested, the kinds of studies you cite tend to lump the worst kinds of abuse in with consensual acts, whereas a distinction was drawn in the Rind report.

That tells me you do condone the sexual abuse and you act on those urges.

Keep grasping at straws…

Now you say these laws were set long before science?

No, jesus. These laws were developed before the modern science surrounding what is referred to as child sexual abuse and, indeed, before that term had even been coined. Back then, adult-child sex was just improper, or maybe sinful. Now they’re convinced it’s pathological and harmful. It can be all of these things I suppose, but it doesn’t have to be.

Sorry if I’m seeming vague, but I’m trying to respond to, like, five different people at once relatively quickly.

@Leanne1986
The main problem I see with sexual contact between kids and adults as it exists now is that it is necessarily kept secret, meaning that the adult has much power to manipulate the younger partner to get what they want. That’s why it’s not a good idea. In an ideal world, such experiences could happen openly, with more informed consent from the child and the knowledge of people who care for the child, and young people would not be made to feel like they were being manipulated. I’m sorry you were exploited.

@Matt_L But what I am saying is, whether it is “out in the open” and consentual or not, so many (possibly not all) children under a certain age do not know what they want even if they believe they do. For example, to appear grown up as a young child, I wanted my parents to be able to leave me at home on my own when they had to go out. Of course, they didn’t because, just because I thought I was able to look after myself and I claimed it was what I wanted, I wasn’t old enough to do so safely. That is why these laws are in place and it is not accepted to be sexual with a child because just because a child claims to want something doesn’t mean that they actually do or even understand what they are consenting to.

@Matt_L

”Here is why I believe pedophilia is not abnormal: it creates the kind of closeness and the kinds of bonds that benefit humans as a species, as sexuality in general does. It is physically pleasurable for both partners and there is a caring and nurturing aspect to it. Husbands and wives care for each other, as do gay partners, and so are pedophiles inclined to do for children.”

Dude. Listen. I love my nieces and nephews, and my friends’ kids. Kisses and hugs and cuddling and all that good stuff. It’s awesome and, yes, it creates beneficial bonds and is physically (and emotionally!) pleasurable. But they don’t get me all hot and bothered, and I don’t want to have sex with them. The love I have for them is not at all like the love I feel for sexual partners and if I found that it was I’d go get some help because it shouldn’t be.

I don’t wish you’d die. I wish you’d get well. Because you’re not. Sorry. You can believe you’re normal and healthy all you like. You can also believe the sun orbits the Earth. But you’d be wrong.
.
.
.
Also:

”I’m going to take issue with this, because no one speaks of “ulterior motives” when they’re talking about any other kind of sexuality.”

Really? Because I’m pretty sure I’ve heard ulterior motives discussed in reference to every form of sexuality I’ve ever encountered. And the trans community in particular gets it a lot, no matter what the person’s actual sexuality happens to be.

The Rind report results were scientifically invalid. Proof in here “2001 book Misinformation concerning child sexual abuse and adult survivors.” There is more evidence of fallacy but I think I gave you plenty. You obviously looking for a way out to make your actions legal but I am showing you to much scientific facts that you can’t find a way out. Which takes me right back to my point, all this desperate attempts to find a way out of the science is showing your pedephilia raging and transforming to a predator for a way out to act upon those urges.

@Matt_L, I haven’t read your last 5 responses but I’m just going to respond to the last time you responded to me.

But children don’t necessarily have sexual or romantic desires when they experiment with each other. Again, why does an adult being involved make it bad? Yes, that an adult would be interested in that must seem strange and disgusting to many people, but why is it bad?

No they DO NOT have sexual or romantic desires when they experiment with each other. It is never romantic or sexual with children. What the hell do you think is the point of puberty? If not to develop sexual and romantic desires? Before that they do not exist in a child. An adult involved makes it bad because they are developed enough to have the sexual desires but the child is not.

Two catch phrases

‘You can’t argue with a sick imnd’

and

’ Don’t expect healthy behavior from unhealthy people.’

@Matt_L: I think this is possibly the most interesting thread I have read on Fluther, and I commend you for coming forward and being honest, knowing exactly how people were going to respond.

While there have been a lot of insane knee-jerk replies to this thread, I believe that the well-reasoned and well-argued responses all came to the conclusion that the primary problem with pedophilia is the issue of consent. We (i.e., the members of western society) agree that children are not capable of giving consent, therefore we agree that adults should not have sex with them.

I am hesitant to say this next part: I agree with your basic premise that it is possible for a child to have a sexual experience with an adult that is positive. The problem is that it is also possible (and, it seems the data suggest, far more likely) for this experience to be negative. And because the child is incapable of giving consent, it is impossible to distinguish between a potential positive (consensual) and potential negative (nonconsensual) situation.

I have read through your replies carefully and I don’t see that you have addressed the issue of consent—and I again, I think it is on this issue that the entire argument hinges. Do you reject the premise that children are incapable of giving consent? If so, on what basis?

Thank you Matt for opening up and allowing this discussion. I do not hate you or wish you any ill will. And fwiw, I think that those that wish death on others have an abnormality all their own.

Does consent really even need to be addressed?

Kinda a no brainer IMO.

Adults ‘should’ the protectors of children not exploiters of.

The bottom line is regardless of whether any pedophiliac tendancies ever manifest in action….thoughts alone would be enough to keep me and my child 100 miles away from such.

If someone told me they thoguht about going on a shooting rampage but, of course, would never do it…well…while perhaps a small acknowledgement of ‘honesty’ might be in order, I certainly wouldn’t be inviting this person to a party.

Great…how courageous of you to come forward and admit to your deviant attractions….that makes you such an AWESOME individual…gimme a break.

Uh uh…an AWESOME individual does not entertain harmful thoughts and expect others to rally round with kudos of how forthcoming and honest they are.

Yeah, and rattlesnakes are awesome too, as long as you don’t try ti kiss them on the lips. lol

I’ve had my chain jerked too many times on social websites to even bother engaging in conversation. I’ve met fake doctors (3 of them), a fake wealthy woman and so on. But this one might actually be fore real. A pedophile loves hiding, and the internet is soooo easy to hide behind.

Oops! POS!

Come on out and play, dude! Let’s meet irl. I won’t hurt ya :)

What I am taking away with me today as I head out into this most amazing spring morning is this.

Because of this thread, I am going to notice children wherever I am today and hold the highest thoughts that they will never experience the worst of violations to their precious little minds and bodies.

@Coloma I do that every day.

Well at least we know the pope would forgive @Matt_L

@Leanne1986

Of course…but nothing like a reminder! :-)

@shrubbery When I was a child I did have sexual desires as early as age 5 so saying that children do not have sexual desires before puberty is not true in all cases.

I agree with @tinyfaery and @nikipedia in that I commend @Matt_L for coming forward. I also wish @Blondesjon‘s comment with the shotgun audio would be removed. The last thing anyone needs is more violence in this fucked up world.

@free_fallin Children do have sexual desires but do you think that they understand them enough to be able to give an adult consent to act on them? It’s all very well commending @Matt_L for his honesty but if everyone thought the way he does then the world would be even more fucked up (and apparently you don’t want the world to be anymore fucked up). I don’t agree with those that say @Matt_L should die, I’m assuming that he can’t help the way he feels about young children but I don’t blame a single one of the people who have disagreed with him and told him so regardless of how honest he has been on this thread.

This is so ridiculous. How “honest” can you be, admitting you’re a pedophile, or anything else, on the internet? That isn’t honesty at all! All it is, is hiding in plain site…...typical pedophile behavior. I hardly see the need to commend somebody for doing nothing.

Why do we hand out condoms to “children” if they’re not yet “sexual”? Why do we have sexual education classes in school as early as fifth or sixth grade? Children need to be protected from sexual predators of any age. Turning 18 does not make a person an adult. It’s merely an arbitrary number agreed upon by our elected government officials. We also protect “adults” who for whatever reason do not have the capacity to reason for themselves, as we should. “Children” as young as 14 have been legally emancipated by the courts in recent years.

@free_fallin . . . You mean violence like raping children?

I agree with @phillis. The one’s commending him are just handing out positive reinforcement for his thoughts and behavior. By thanking him for his honesty, you’re essentially telling him that you approve. Now before anyone jumps down my throat, I’m not saying that you actually do approve of pedophilia, but by commending him, that is how it comes off to someone as irrational as a pedophile. To him, you’ve given him that acceptance and support.
Of all the things someone can come forth with and be honest about, in my opinion, pedophilia is far from something someone can admit that deserves a pat on the back, especially when they don’t think there’s anything wrong with being a pedophile. There is absolutely nothing to pat him on the back for. Nothing.
On the other hand, no one should be threatening him and telling him that he should die either.
There’s my 2 cents. I’m not interested in arguing with anyone about how I feel and I don’t think badly of anyone who decided to commend him, but it’s just something I felt needed to be said. Please understand how you come off to a pedophile before you thank one.

@Blondesjon I don’t see where in his comments he said he was raping children. Innocent until proven guilty. I’m not defending the act I am simply stating being against violence. I’ve flagged several responses that are obviously against the rules. I am tried of seeing your violent responses. I was pleased your pathetic attempt at a question mocking this one was removed the other day.

@Leanne1986 I understood my sexual desires enough later on so I feel it may be possible but I do not see it as probably or likely for an average child to be able to give consent regarding sex with an adult.

This makes me sick. Do not commend him, do not thank him. He believes there is nothing wrong with his desires for little girls. All he is doing is justifying his desires. I have yet to meet a real person who has had a “positive” sexual experience as a child with an adult. I can’t even fathom why we are even venturing into the area of this being an acceptable behavior. It’s sick. Plain and simple.

And I have no problem with people expressing their desires for violent acts against this or any other pedophiles.

Yeah, this is venturing into pathetic territory. If he was a pedophile who admitted to being one, one who thought he needs help, commending him for admitting it might be a good thing then. But in this case? No, it’s not. He doesn’t feel badly about his thoughts, and he never will. He feels justified wanting to rape children – keep in mind he himself said “prepubescent children” are who he is sexually attracted to. He wants to out himself publicly not because he’s brave and wants help – but because he wants everyone else to think like him, and believe that there’s nothing wrong with him.

I almost put this clarification in my initial comment, but I was hoping it went without saying—

I was in no way attempting to condone this person’s behavior or to commend him for being a pedophile. But I think that his honesty and ability to be forthcoming in light of a thread filled with death threats added a lot to the discussion.

I genuinely hope Fluther cooperates fully with the FBI when they learn of this thread and seek to put @Matt_L under surveillance. Unless he ends up on To Catch A Predator first.

I’d also like to add something since my drunk post was removed:

I never issued him a death threat. I merely stated my opinions… Vehemently.

@nikipedia I don’t think anyone really thinks you condone pedophilia, or that you were commending him for being one.

I was doing the same as @nikipedia. I certainly do hope he seeks help and refrains from acting on his desires.

Another (non-offending) pedophile jumping in here…

@nikipedia
The issue of consent as I see it is this: People’s intellectual development occurs on different schedules. Age doesn’t say anything about the individual, it is only somewhat meaningful when we are talking about statistics. What shouldn’t be the case is at some arbitrary age everyone can suddenly consent to all forms of sex. Rather it should be when you can show that you are competent enough to do so, you can consent. This also applies equally well to other, more important rights such as voting or giving medical consent. I should also mention that even if you would maintain that an age barrier based on the average person is the only practical means of assessing competence, then the age barriers that are in place today do not match what biological facts say – the average person is as competent at 14 (ie. shortly after puberty, the natural beginning of adulthood) as they are at 35. For a more thorough discussion on this particular point I would point here as a good starting reference: http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200703/trashing-teens . Anyways, my point is that it should be competence, not age, that determines if someone can exercise any given right.

With regards to sexual consent, the question is what constitutes valid consent. Saying yes is an obvious prerequisiute, and actual interest in engaging in sexual activity is an obvious extension of that. There needs to be an absence of any form of coercion or manipulation. There should also be a basic understanding of the risks involved, if any. This will vary, as there are different forms of sexuality that have different kinds of risk. I think that some, like mutual touching, only carry risks where there are negative social reactions to it. So I’d just ask you to consider if there is any good reason for the negative social reactions to sexual encounters – provided, of course, that there is no manipulation of any kind, everyone says ‘yes,’ and if there are risks everyone involved has a basic understanding of them. And if you insist that an age is the only practical way of assessing this, then there should be more than one so that they more accurately reflect the different degrees of risk involved.

And a couple addendums to the issue of adult-child sexuality: If something is inherently harmful for the vast majority of kids due to their level of development, then it should be restricted. This would definitely apply to penetrative sex before puberty, which would be physically harmful for most and probably painful as well. I don’t think that this is true for something like mutual touching though. I also feel that it is very unethical for there to be any kind of secret relationship. And finally, on a personal level, the primary reason I will never be sexual with a child is because I fear that harm would eventually come to her in the society I live in. I would not want her to get hurt in any way.

Now, all that said, sex isn’t the only thing in the world. It seems that everyone likes to get fixated on the sex aspects when they discuss pedophilia, but that isn’t all there is to it. Most pedophiles also feel a strong emotional and social attraction towards children as well. We can and do fall in love with children (and that love isn’t destroyed by inevitable and natural biological changes). Romantic relationships with any child are out of the question today, and that may not change in any of our lifetimes. But platonic friendships are a possibility. So here is a question that people might consider: Would you be able to accept a pedophile who is open about his or her feelings having platonic friendships with kids?

@JasonSmith If someone admitted to being a pedophile then no, I wouldn’t be comfortable with that person having a platonic friendship with kids (especially if they were my own kids) because I would be constantly worried that it wouldn’t stay platonic. In order for me to accept someone I have to know I can trust them not to cross the line (in many aspects of life not just the one discussed on this thread) and that my child would be safe in their care (in this case). It doesn’t matter how honest you are and how much you promise me that you wouldn’t touch my child there would always be that doubt in my mind.

Anybody else feel like grabbing a can of Raid?

@JasonSmith Tell ya what, precious. You keep your pants zipped up around my little girls, and we wont have any problems at all. I don’t care what your particular bent is, but I know exactly who the child molesters are in my area and what they look like because their pictures are posted on the internet along with the crime they commited, date of conviction, time served, and their physical address.

There are 7 of them in a two mile radius, and those are only the ones who have been convicted. So, you won’t be hurting for company. I haven’t met them yet because they haven’t come sniffing around for juicy tidbits like my little girls. But hey, I appreciate a good fight as well as the next person, so whenever you guys feel froggy…....jump.

@JasonSmith Would you please say more about this: ”(and that love isn’t destroyed by inevitable and natural biological changes)” ... I am not sure I understand.

@JasonSmith aka @Matt_L :

Regarding your last question: Not a chance. You think your ideas are fine, you think sexual encounters with prepubescent children are perfectly acceptable. You are an adult – you are capable of manipulation, coercion, and taking advantage of a child who literally can not think the way you do, because they literally do not have the ability to do so. Where they would look to you for guidance, support, and stability, you would see that as an opportunity to be “in love with” a child and act on certain sexual urges.

No prepubescent child can or ever will be in love with you. It is not possible.

How do you even function? How do you think it’s possible to have romantic feelings for someone so young that they can’t even survive on their own? Someone so young that they can’t even form opinions about anything, because they have yet to experience enough to even form an opinion?!

Answer this one question, and ignore my other ones: I suppose you see nothing wrong with a father or mother having some kind of sexual connection with their young child, right?

I hate to say it but this thread has made me even more scared of the world than I already was. Are there any more pedophiles on this site that want to try and justify their feelings that sex with children is ok? Maybe Fluther isn’t so much of an escape from the real world as I once thought :(.

@Matt_L – You think by being level headed that you will find justification to your actions.

You are wrong.

“I feel it’s unfortunate that people like myself aren’t able to be more open and honest about the way we are.”

I can be open and honest If have the flue. But there would be no reason for me to cough in every ones face.

“pedophiles are hated because they are a misunderstood minority”

Not because of who they are (we all have issues) but because of what they do.
Trying to find acceptance all the way.

@Leanne1986 They’re everywhere, hon. That’s what is so scary. The better you suss it out in your mind, the easier it will be to handle it. The internet has done a hell of a lot of good, but so did Oppenheimer.

And right on @phillis , Some here are getting their heads lost in their pacifistic butts.

@Matt_L – Yes admirable to be open. If you you want to find how to get help. You got my attention.

Want to debate that it is a western society issue that we do not approve.
You are just fishing for soft suckers. It appears you found a few.

@Matt_L – prepubescent means not yet having developed the capacity to comprehend human sexuality. Period. If you don’t think that’s wrong, and are so hell bent on trying to use whatever fallacious argument you can find to justify your predatory actions, then there is no hope for you, and I really think you should consider suicide. You are a sexual predator, because you are OK with exploiting a child’s lack of understanding and their trust in adult figures to get what you want because you think you can make them feel pleasure by doing it rather than pain. You are ignoring the fallout when the person realizes what a sick, twisted fuck you are and that what you were doing was not a “game” but rape.

And FWIW, I’ve shared PLENTY about myself and my disease on here and, yes, I do have type II diabetes, but so do my father, my grandmother, my uncle and a number of other people. I don’t eat the best foods, I have a sweet tooth, I can contribute to my disease, but it is still a disease, and friends and family who eat a lot worse than I ever have remain fit and not diabetic. So, good effort trying to turn this around on me, but it ain’t gonna work. You are a child rapist, deal with it.

@JasonSmith I am biased to believe that ethical romantic relationships involve competency of consent. Pedophilia is when an adult or older adolescent is erotically attracted to prepubescent children and it is almost impossible to convince me that pedophilia is anything more than a fetishizing of the prepubescent form “sexual acts involving fetishes are characteristically depersonalized and objectified, even when they involve a partner (wikipedia).”

Unlike with other fetishes, where adults consent to include them in the activity of erotic relationships, a prepubescent does not have the psychological or intellectual ability to understand what it means to objectify something and depersonalize it, let alone understand what it means to willingly engage in such behavior as an expression of erotic relationship. They have no way of understanding what it means to have someone drawn to them for erotic or romantic reasons. Yes a child can understand that certain touches are sensually pleasing and even pursue them, yet that is decidedly different than being able to understand what it means to consent to the intricacies and delicacies of relational mutuality and equality.

@phillis
I have no desire to get to know child abusers like you imply.

@liminal
What I mean is that some people would presume that I would stop caring about a girl when she hits puberty, which isn’t true. Think of it like this, if you fell in love with a woman, would you stop caring about her as she reaches elderly status? No, because physical changes aren’t going to change the love you feel for her. The same is true for me.

I am biased to believe that ethical romantic relationships involve competency of consent.

Yes and I agree. My point is that there are different levels of that and that there are much better ways of determining it then referring to someone’s age. It is best to avoid generalizations and consider the competency of someone to do something on an individual basis.

I wouldn’t call pedophilia a fetish. That would imply that sex is the only thing that matters – but that is not the case.

@DrasticDreamer
Sorry, but I’m not @Matt_L. To answer your question, no, it is not OK for a parent to have a sexual relationship with their child. Parents have legitimate authority over them, and sexual relationships where one person is an authority figure over the other tend to involve coercion. Consent can not exist where coercion or manipulation does.

@JasonSmith

”[...] the average person is as competent at 14 (ie. shortly after puberty, the natural beginning of adulthood) as they are at 35.”

Wrong. 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

And we’re talking about prepubescent kids, anyway.

@JasonSmith and I would say that a prepubescent child does not have the developmental competency to enter into relational equality with an adult.

@liminal
If someone didn’t have the competency to consent, they wouldn’t be. But if someone does, why should they be denied the ability to do so based on a number? Conversely if someone isn’t able to, why should they be trusted with that ability based on the same number?

@MacBean
Yes, we are talking about actual kids. But a person does not instantly develop adult-level competence over night in any area, and the development of adult level competence does not (for most people) extend until 18.
Anyways, more references that go beyond referencing the same flawed study:

Waber, D.P., et al. (2007). “The NIH MRI Study of Normal Brain Development” Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society
For most tasks, proficiency increased dramatically from 6–10 before leveling off. For a few measures, scores increased linearly throughout the age range. These were tasks that assessed basic information processing, such as Coding, Digit Span, and Spatial Span.

Weithorn, L. A. & Campbell, S. B. (1982). “The competency of children and adolescents to make informed treatment decisions,” Child Development, 53(6), 1589–1598.
Minors aged fourteen were found to demonstrate a level of competence equivalent to that of adults. The nine year old group performed worse (which is expected), though a few did make the best choice with good reasoning behind it.

Offer, D. (1987). “In defense of adolescents,” Journal of the American Medical Association, 257, 3407–3408.
He and his colleagues found 85% to 90% of teens held attitudes and risk perceptions similar to that of their parents, were not alienated, did think about the future, were coping well with their lives, and did not display psychological disturbances.

Offer, D., and Schonert Reichl, K.A. (1992). “Debunking the myths of adolescence: Findings from recent research,” Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 31, 1003 1014.
he effects of pubertal hormones are neither potent nor pervasive (Brooks-Gunn and Reiter, 1990). [...] Adolescence does not occur in a vacuum and is significantly affected by the sociocultural context in which it occurs.

Quadrel, M. J., Fischhoff, B., & Davis, W. (1993). “Adolescent (in)vulnerability,” American Psychologist, 48, 102–116.
The perception of relative invulnerability is no more pronounced for adolescents than for adults.

Piaget’s theory on cognitive development

Kohlberg’s stages of moral development

The Myth of The Teen Brain

Adolescent Development: Junk Science run amok

@JasonSmith You’re trying to intellectually justify actions that our society as a whole condemns. You have monstrously sick thoughts in your head, and no argument will justify them. It reminds me of Hannibal Lecter. Get help, never ever harm a child, and if you think you can’t control yourself, there would be nothing immoral about removing yourself from the population.

@JasonSmith My offer to you extends to other children as well, but naturally, I am very protective when it comes to my own. I will know when my daughters have reached the emotional capacity to judge character. It will be when they are old enough to spot the real person behind intellectual facade, such as the one you have tried to project.

When a person is in heat, they do not intellectualize. It’s an intrinsic basal instinct pushed by an animal drive to take what is in front of you. It does not think. It does not emote. It does not evaluate. It does not discern. It does not judge. So, unless your superior intellect convince people that you masturbate to Tolstoy, you’re done here.

The sex drive is pure instinct. It does not equal to mental dexterity. It doesn’t matter what comes out of your mouth. Let’s see how you respond to an unwatched child. Does your mouth water? Do you get rock hard erections that beg for release? Do you fantasize what you could do with that child, if you could just get them alone for a little while? Do you connive how to get closer to that child…how to separate the child from those pesky people who love them for real?

Sure, you do! You’re as animal as the rest of us when you’re sexually aroused! And THAT, sir, is why you are dangerous. Enough with your intellectual bullshit.

@phillis Fuckin’ A

@phillis Absolutely phenomenal response. GA!

@phillis Point match to phillis!

@phillis Goddamn. I felt that bitch slap myself. Phenomenal job, Phil.

“This is so ridiculous. How “honest” can you be, admitting you’re a pedophile, or anything else, on the internet? That isn’t honesty at all! All it is, is hiding in plain site…...typical pedophile behavior. I hardly see the need to commend somebody for doing nothing.”

I agree with you here, Phillis. And your last post.

This whole thread makes me sick.

Defenseless kids here, people.

That’s all that I have to say.

One thing I’d like to point out real quick: there seem to be a lot of people who are dismissing much of what I say, and what @JasonSmith has said, simply because we admit to being pedophiles. It’s argued we’re simply trying to “justify” our attractions.

But rational discussion is only made more difficult when we dismiss each other out of hand like this. I also feel tempted to dismiss a lot of peoples’ arguments here out of hand, because I feel that some people are simply trying to justify the hatred they’re convinced they should have for people like myself, without fully considering these issues. But again, if I treat people that way, I’m only making thinks more difficult.

So if others can consider my responses based on the merits of what I have to say, rather than dismissing what I write as “justification,” I can attempt to look past the skepticism I have towards others and we can perhaps achieve something worthwhile here.

Trying to catch up on a few things others have said…

@Leanne1986
What happened to you was clearly wrong; it’s selfish to insist a child should suffer the pressure of having to keep something secret so that an adult can derive pleasure. It’s hard on the child and confusing for them, and it shouldn’t happen. But this kind of harm isn’t something that’s inherent in the act; it’s something that’s created by societal forces.

What kind of sexual activity do you consider to be ok with a child?

Activity that is not inherently physically harmful, and that the younger person agrees to.

if a 7 year old girl claimed to be ok with you being sexual with her, would that be one of these “positive” situations you speak of?

It could be. But again, I don’t think having these sorts of things kept secret is healthy, so I would not be involved in something like this.

That is why these laws are in place and it is not accepted to be sexual with a child because just because a child claims to want something doesn’t mean that they actually do or even understand what they are consenting to.

I don’t think basic physical affection—yes, even if it’s sexual—is that hard to understand. “This is something that two people who like each other do sometimes.”

@MacBean
I love my nieces and nephews, and my friends’ kids…But they don’t get me all hot and bothered, and I don’t want to have sex with them.

I can appreciate that not everyone feels exactly the way I do. But I think it’s a bit disingenuous to suggest that preteen girls, for example, who are not far from puberty, should have no sexual appeal whatsoever to a “normal” person. There are a lot of things that contribute to what people find attractive, and to what men find attractive about females, and it’s not all just boobs and hips.

Really? Because I’m pretty sure I’ve heard ulterior motives discussed in reference to every form of sexuality I’ve ever encountered.

Well, that pedophiles have sexual feelings for young people shouldn’t be seen as an “ulterior motive,” in relation to the young person or anyone else. I reject the notion that kids are so dense that they can’t understand the concept of someone having the hots for them.

@ezywho
Yes, there are groups that have disputed the Rind report. Some of these groups were formed specifically in order to refute it. But it’s scientific validity has never been questioned by the APA, who published the peer reviewed study in their Pschological Bulletin. In fact, Ray Fowler of the APA even insisted that the study’s methodology be analyzed again, and it was again found to be valid.

@shrubbery
No they DO NOT have sexual or romantic desires when they experiment with each other.

Some might; depends on age and individual factors.

What the hell do you think is the point of puberty?

To signal when reproduction is possible. There’s no natural indication that sexuality before a certain developmental point is unnatural or harmful; I could point out various animals that engage in pedophillic behavior (bonobo chimps, for one, which are genetically very similar to humans. Dolphins are another).

@nikipedia
I think this is possibly the most interesting thread I have read on Fluther, and I commend you for coming forward and being honest, knowing exactly how people were going to respond.

Thank you.

The problem is that it is also possible (and, it seems the data suggest, far more likely) for this experience to be negative.

Only in an environment, I believe, where it is insisted it must be negative.

Do you reject the premise that children are incapable of giving consent?

Yes; I don’t think sexual contact is so difficult a concept to understand as people suggest.

@tinyfaery
Thank you.

@Coloma
If someone told me they thoguht about going on a shooting rampage but, of course, would never do it…well…while perhaps a small acknowledgement of ‘honesty’ might be in order, I certainly wouldn’t be inviting this person to a party.

Depends on one’s views of sexuality in regards to young people, I guess, and whether it’s akin to something like “going on a shooting rampage.”

an AWESOME individual does not entertain harmful thoughts and expect others to rally round with kudos of how forthcoming and honest they are.

I don’t expect that, and I’ve never suggested I feel I’m entitled to that. I am, after all, only airing my thoughts anonymously on the Internet.

@phillis
Come on out and play, dude! Let’s meet irl. I won’t hurt ya :)

Why shouldn’t pedophiles be able to be “out” in real life? Is it preferable for us to be hidden?

@cockswain
Well at least we know the pope would forgive @Matt_L

Lol. In all seriousness, though, I think the Catholic abuse scandal is horrible, and is an example of what people who are considered to be almost infallible can get away with in secret.

@Vunessuh
Now before anyone jumps down my throat, I’m not saying that you actually do approve of pedophilia, but by commending him, that is how it comes off to someone as irrational as a pedophile.

Hi, thanks.

@ChazMaz
_“pedophiles are hated because they are a misunderstood minority”

Not because of who they are (we all have issues) but because of what they do. _

Not all pedophiles break the law. But peoples’ image of pedophiles is defined by those who do because those are the only ones that people know about.

@dalepetrie
prepubescent means not yet having developed the capacity to comprehend human sexuality. Period.

I don’t think that’s the accepted definition of “prepubescent.”

If you don’t think that’s wrong, and are so hell bent on trying to use whatever fallacious argument you can find to justify your predatory actions

I don’t have sex with young people.

@dalepetrie
So, good effort trying to turn this around on me, but it ain’t gonna work

I’m not trying to turn anything around on you, and ad hominems generally aren’t my style; I just got annoyed when it was suggested I’m deluded on the level of someone who thinks they’re Jesus. What’s the point in even continuing the discussion, then?

OMFG… this thread is… too much.

I’ll just say that all rapes are wrong and unjustifiable, and all rapists should be put to death.

@Matt_L ”...I can attempt to look past the skepticism I have towards others and we can perhaps achieve something worthwhile here.”
And what, exactly, would that be?

@phillis
All your last response is is a string of crude stereotypes about how pedophiles think and behave. Speak for yourself; I’m no animal.

Matt_L wrote “But it’s scientific validity has never been questioned by the APA, who published the peer reviewed study in their Pschological Bulletin. In fact, Ray Fowler of the APA even insisted that the study’s methodology be analyzed again, and it was again found to be valid.”

Matt_L, I’ll repeat once again, Psychology is a pseudoscience. APA has no credibility or backing to those claims, sorry. Rind report remains disproved.

@bob_ Just say what you mean. Stop pussyfooting :)

@Matt_L If you have to hide, there’s a reason for it, and it ain’t good. You hide, I reveal you. It is my job to reveal your type to other parents so that they can understand a child predator, and fully recognize the behavior of a predator when they see one. Your type is part of my reality. And people like me are part of yours. I’m happy to leave it as a stalemate, but that is entirely up to you. So far, I have treated you with basic respect and human dignity.

Stay away from kids. Period. If you or your buddies won’t engage your self control, I won’t bother engaging mine. The police are not the worst of your problems, and they won’t make it in time to save you if you touch any child, especially my little girls. There are people who look forward to your crossing the line who will lay your ass out for touching a child. We’re everywhere, too. We don’t hide.

@phillis I did. I’m just concise like that :)

@ezywho
Rind report remains disproved.

I don’t think you’ve established that; you’ve merely cited one book that took issue with the study, whereas the APA upheld its methods. But if psychology as a whole is invalid, I don’t know how you can say a psychological study can be proven or disproven. Kind of like saying mathematics is invalid, but then pointing to a mathematic proof of why a theorem is wrong.

@phillis
If you have to hide, there’s a reason for it, and it ain’t good. You hide, I reveal you.

What if I just chose to live openly, and you could accept that just because I possess a certain sexual attraction doesn’t mean I want to rape your kid?

Stay away from kids.

Aww, but my young friends are going to be so disappointed..

and they won’t make it in time to save you if you touch any child, especially my little girls.

I’ve seen your kids, and frankly I don’t fancy them ;-P

There are people who look forward to your crossing the line who will lay your ass out for touching a child.

Lemme get this straight: you think adult-child sex is so horrible, yet you “look forward” to it happening so you can beat up a pedophile?

The APA used SOME scientific backing to the case. The Journal of Child Sexual Abuse was showing how those points are invalid. As for the rest of the other points the APA makes, that goes back to the psychology realm, which makes the points without backings.

I didn’t really want to answer this question, because these types of questions get so heated. However, I read one of the very early responses by @ChazMaz , and felt I needed to say something here. Pedophilia is NOT the same as child molestation. Despite the apparently popular opinion, child molestation victims are not always the end result here. Same as heterosexuality…rape is not always the end result. Amazing, isn’t it?

”Aww, but my young friends are going to be so disappointed..”

Now I’m reminded of Hannibal Lecter. I feel like I just heard the “I’m having an old friend for dinner” line.