Discussion on The Thinking Atheist

[simgiran]

http://www.thethinkingatheist.com/forum/Thread-Pedophilia

My original post:

Pedophilia
Pedophilia is often discussed topic. Atheists like to point out to "pedophiles in the church", theist like to claim, that if atheist don't think there are absolute moral standards, "pedophilia" must be ok for them.

First, what is pedophilia.

Pedophilia is lasting predominant erotic attraction to prepubescent children. What does that mean. Let's start with the word lasting. People with pedophilia usually starts to notice their signs at puberty (as the sexuality develops). They start to notice, that they are not attracted to peers, but to younger children. This doesn't change as the person with pedophilia gets older. The person cannot change it. Predominant means here, that the person is significantly more attracted to children than to adults. Not all pedophiles are exclusively attracted to children, actually some level of attraction to adults is quite common among pedophiles. Also people to attracted to adults can feel somewhat attracted to children, but that doesn't mean, that such people are pedophiles. (The question is how to call people attracted about the same to adults and to children.) I used the word erotic here to make a distinction from what we usually think about when we say sexual. By erotic attraction I mean here both sexual and romantic attraction. Pedophiles usually finds children beautiful, cute, they like to spend time among children, great majority of them experience falling in love with a child (which is one of the most specific signs of pedophilia), they can get sexually aroused when seeing a child, they often have sexual fantasies about children.

Pedophilia is a sexual orientation. It's often not considered a sexual orientation, but it's often being suggested by psychologists and psychiatrist today, that it should be. I think it makes sense to consider pedophilia a sexual orientation considering what signs we use to determine someone's sexual orientation. (Sexual arousal as a response to visual stimuli, falling in love, prevailing sexual fantasies etc.)

Pedophiles can be heterosexual, homosexual or bisexual, it seems that most of them prefer one sex, but some level of attraction to the other sex is not uncommon. Also quite a lot of pedophiles is somewhat attracted to adults. It seems a great majority of pedophiles are males. However, it was proposed, that a lot of female pedophiles can go unnoticed and they don't even have to realize that they are pedophiles. But still there is probably much more male pedophile than female pedophiles.

What pedophilia isn't.

Pedophilia is not sex with children. First, pedophilia is an attribute, not an act. Probably big majority of pedophiles don't engage in sexual activity with children (it's hard to tell, because we don't even know well how many pedophiles are there). Also a great part of people who have sex with children aren't pedophiles. (For example at http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/j...ires-light: "But not all paedophiles are child molesters, and vice versa: by no means every paedophile acts on his impulses, and many people who sexually abuse children are not exclusively or primarily sexually attracted to them. In fact, "true" paedophiles are estimated by some experts to account for only 20% of sexual abusers.") It's just like virgin homosexual is still homosexual and having sex with the person of the same sex doesn't make you homosexual.

Pedophilia is not a legal term. It's quite often used in that way, but it hardly ever has a basis in the law. For example I've seen the claim "the Sex Offenders Act 1997 defined paedophilia as a sexual relationship between an adult over 18 and a child below 16" many times. But when I took a look at the act http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1997/51/contents, I didn't found such definition anywhere in it. It's that people first identify pedophilia with sex with minors and then look up the part prohibiting sex with minors. Proper legal terms should be used, using the word pedophilia is the sign of non-professionality.

Pedophilia isn't something what determines the characted of the person with it. There is not a prototype of pedophiles. Pedophiles are different just like other people are different. Studies on non-criminal samples of pedophiles shows, that pedophiles are actually pretty normal people. (For example in the study by Okami and Goldberg authors write: "With the exception of the tautological diagnosis of "sexual deviate," little clinically significant pathology was found among either "pedophiles" or "sex offenders against minors." http://www.mhamic.org/sources/okami&goldberg.htm)

Pedophilia is not a choice. Pedophiles don't choose to be pedophiles.

Pedophilia is not an uncontrollable urge to have sex with children. Similarly as people attracted to adults usually can control their urges. Most people, if they found a teacher at elementary school or a leader at child camp is a pedophile, would demand him to leave. However, there are already lots of pedophiles working with children. (One survey's shown 20 % of pedophiles worked with children in the past and 30 % of pedophiles worked with pedophiles at the time the survey was made.) Not every pedophile should work with children or be around children, small part of pedophiles have severe problems with self-control. Also pedophilia doesn't mean one has predispositions and skills to work with children. Pedophiles also tend to idealize working with children and they can be disappointed when confronted with the reality.

Some pedophiles report that they feel frustrated when they aren't in contact with children for a long time and that their urges get more obtrusive. It might not be the best idea to try to isolate pedophiles from children.

What are the effects of prejudices about pedophilia?

First it's the needless suffering of people for something, they didn't choose, they can't change a by which they harm no one. Needless suffering mostly of young people. People, who start noticing, that they are attracted to children, usually have the same prejudice about pedophiles as other people. When they find they are attracted to children, they feel guilty, ashamed, they hate themselves, sometimes they commit a suicide. Even if they don't have this prejudices, they feel the social pressure, they feel they would get condemned by society if anyone knew. They often don't see any meaning in their life. I think that people that feels frustrated, who don't see a meaning of their life and who feel condemned by society regardless of their do are more likely to sexually abuse a child than people living a quite happy life, than people who have something to lose.

Also pedophiles can needlessly suffer from the reaction of other people, if the people find they are pedophiles. I've heard about a 16 years old boy who nearly committed a suicide because of the reaction of his parents when he told them he is a homosexual pedophile.

Some people that are attracted to children can't admit to themselves, that they are pedophiles. If they realized it, they might think about the possible consequences, if they sexually abuse a child, also they might think about which situations might lead them to abusing a child and what they should do if they get to such situations. They can end in the situation that is tempting for them totally unprepared for it. Also they can try to avoid supress sexual fantasies about children and other non-harmful ways of satisfying pedophilic sexual needs, which can lead to frustration

[Kasz]

Nice post! You had summarized all main things about pedophilia in one post.

[Tabitha]

People who don't believe in God are uglier than child rapists. In my view.

[simgiran]

It seems that the thread got deleted today. I have 15 pages saved, but not the remaining 25 ones. Too bad, there were some interesting points. There are two admins on TTA forum, one thought the discussion is ok, even had some good points in the discussion and agreed with some of my posts, definitely not with everything, but I consider him open-minded. The other one thought the thread is bad, because it disturbs some people, especially the victims of sexual abuse, however he told me he wasn't going to ban me or to delete the discussion. However, the head admin of the website decided to delete all the discussion about pedophilia (there were 2 more treads probably, I knew for sure about one) and to change the rules to explicitly ban the discussions about this topic. I ask everyone here to respect it and not to post there anything about pedophilia.

There got about 20 people involved in the discussion I think, 4 or 5 were pretty open-minded, supported the right to discuss about the topic and even defended me or Ethan from VirPed or some other people, who's show agreement with some of our claims or said that we shouldn't hate pedophiles just for being attracted to children. It was great to see that someone is not afraid to defend something, that is not popular, if he thinks it's right to do that. It doesn't mean that they agreed with all our claims, often they were against or were skeptical, however we should realize, that based on the information these people probably have, being skeptical about the claims by pedophiles is the rational think to do. Some other people, who were mainly against us, has shown some sympathy or agreed with some claim. There were a group of about 6 people who were strongly against pedophiles and the discussion.

There is the discussion about the decision on http://www.thethinkingatheist.com/forum/Thread-A-message-from-Seth, again, please don't post there.

BTW, I found another guy who is attracted to women and boys at VirPed. http://www.virped.org/index.php/who-we-are

[Kasz]

It can be interesting to create there after some time (months or year) new thread as a 15 year old boy, who is scared, that he is pedophile, because he has found, that the most beautiful persons for him are girls (or boys) from 4 to 12 years of age. We will see, if they ban this person.