Say there was a large adults-only community in the middle of Antarctica. No kids allowed, not even for short visits. If someone becomes pregnant, they are required to leave the community before giving birth. Otherwise, the community is a giant adult playground. You live there.
Cornelius the pedophile moves there. He wants to escape the temptation of being around kids.
Do you willingly associate with Cornelius?
Yes. He can’t help his attractions and is doing the responsible thing by ensuring that he isn’t in a position to act on them. I find that admirable. And he’s otherwise a regular person. I don’t don’t define myself solely by my sexual attractions, so why should he be?
I do wonder, though, what the long term effect on him would be (how he deals with unfulfilled sexual needs) but I doubt it will cause any negative behavior towards me. So, yes.
Question: Has he actually molested children or does he just have thoughts and wishes about it?
He speaks with regret about things he’s done, but you don’t know the extent of what those things are. You could ask him. I don’t know if he’d answer.
No. I am an extreme dork magnet, and dorks like to tell me all of their wise thoughts, so some child molester would undoubtedly feel that I would want to hear his thoughts in graphic detail.
The guy may be tempted to investigate the murky world of child pornography via the internet.
How about if he were a mass murderer, but not allowed access to his weapons of choice?
Or an embezzler, not allowed to handle large sums of money?
Or convicted of homophobic hate crimes, but not allowed to be around homosexuals?
No.
I agree. If he ever did anything to harm a child, I would never associate with him. It’s unforgiveable.
I don’t know.
I just found out that a man I used to like and respect - a man who had been kind to me and kind to my dad when he was dying - had also molested his step children, many years ago.
And I am having a hard time dealing with it. He is now far away and the chances of me bumping into him again are small, but if I did see him, I’m not sure how I would react.
It seems like such an evil thing to have done. I just can’t reconcile the man I know and the man that did that.
I guess one question we have to ask ourselves is: do we believe in redemption? Can a man change? I know I’m not the same man I was even 5 years ago, let alone 30.
It is a tough thing for me to wrap my head around. So the answer is: I don’t know.
For me all of these cases would turn on what the person did and what exactly was meant by “associate.” Think of:
a.) willing to interact professionally.
b.) willing to interact in a non-professional but work related social context.
c.) willing to interact in a purely social context.
d.) willing to invite over for dinner.
A mass murder, barring cases of justifiable homicide, I’d probably believe belonged in jail. If they somehow were working at a firm down the street they’d be out of luck as far as I was concerned. As for the rest…if they’d done their time then a & b; i’d do business with them and chat at the company christmas party. c would have to be very context dependent.
In the pedophile case it would really depend on whether they’d ever touched a kid or tried to. If they hadn’t, then i’d treat them like anyone else in a non-kid environment. If they had, then there would be a sharp cutoff at a or b (and that assumes they’d been punished via relevant criminal justice system).
Ok, given that he’s acted on his attraction in the past, I’d have to say I wouldn’t be comfortable associating with him, given what kind of person it shows him to be. (Considers his desires the be clearly more important than others’ physical and mental welfare.)
I think a lot of us have probably associated with them and all kinds of other odd people already, and not known it. And, associating with someone is a lot different than being close friends with them.
I would probably be polite, but not go out of my way to be friendly or make a connection.
It depends.
If he ever harmed a child, then no. In fact I’d see about extradition.
If it’s only fantasies, then sure. He’s never hurt anyone and he’s trying to do the right thing by staying away from kids. I’d ask him to keep his fantasies to himself though.
Not the same thing at all. People ***choose ***to be mass murderers, embezzlers or homophobes. Nobody chooses to be a pedophile. Pedophilia is not a moral issue, but a psychiatric one; it only becomes a moral issue if he acts on his feelings. We all have impulses that we choose not to act on, and if he has successfully removed himself from temptation, he is to be commended.
If he never acted on his impulses, but admitted to them anyway, I’d associate with him (if he’s otherwise somebody I’d want to associate with).
If he did act on those impulses and admitted he moved to Antarctica to escape criminal charges, I wouldn’t acknowledge him at all. I’d probably help if he were on fire, but short of that, nada.
If he did act on those impulses, was arrested, tried, convicted, and served whatever time that he was sentenced to serve, I would still associate with him. I think there’s a major moral difference between the second and third scenario, and I believe that once a person has served their time, they deserve a second chance, even if they don’t deserve forgiveness.
Before I weigh in let me give a little explanation of my perspective. This is one of the few forums I can imagine having this conversation without all logic flying out the window, even here though I’m sure that my comments will garner some kind of controversy, but let’s give it a whirl. I know this is going to be pretty lengthy and possibly long winded, but I hope I’ll be forgiven for that.
As previously mentioned, we all probably encounter people of such an orientation daily. I’d be willing to wager that we come in contact with and know many more pedophiles than we could imagine, there are probably even some on this very message board. This may not seem a truth to us of course because the only pedophiles we ever hear about are the ones who get caught committing an immoral and illegal act, or who are otherwise really seedy. How would we know if there were any functional and ethical pedophiles out there?
We wouldn’t know, because what person in their right mind would advertise such a thing? The only logical sort of person who would advertise such feelings is someone who does not have any interest in the benefits of being a valued member of society, this would be extremely rare. I believe there are loads of good, decent, and successful people who fall into this category, people who have friends and family, who give to charity, and whos moral code assures them that they would never act on their sexual fantasies, just as many of us would not act on some of ours (less socially offensive granted) .In fact I believe that such people vastly outnumber the criminal variety.
How do I reach this conclusion? Well obviously I can’t test it because once again, who’s going to feel out that questionnaire? But when I think about it, I don’t see any real relation between the kind of bodies a person is attracted to and anything about their character. Human sexuality is a crazy thing and a lot more varied than people are willing to believe.
In regards to actual crime, all of my comments assume a distance from said crime, proximity to the situation assures that I wouldn’t see it so clearly and nor would I expect anyone else to. That said, society has agreed that sex with children is wrong, I feel it and I know this to be true just as much as anybody. But society has deemed many things wrong, some (like murder) I find to be even more disturbing and unethical than child molestation. So why can I have perfectly logical conversations about murder is all its moral grayness with so many intelligent people and yet hit a roadblock when I simply claim that the vast majority of pedophiles are probably decent people who keep that part of their thoughts private? This is because of the ick factor.
People tend to be extremely disgusted at the thought of this particular crime. Maybe this aversion is biologically hard wired and similar to other kinds of sexual disgust (the aversion to viewing our own family sexually). Maybe it is culturally learned, or maybe it is simply socially expected and so we react accordingly. Whatever the reason, it just grosses us out.
I have no such aversion; this may be why I see the issue very differently than most. This is the part where people have a cow, so let me clarify. If I were forced to view an adult having sex with a child I would be deeply disturbed, just as I would be if I saw a similarly horrible crime, say somebody being violently beaten and left for dead. In both cases I would feel disdain for the criminal and empathy for the victim, and in both cases I would feel compelled to help bring the criminal to justice. My mind doesn’t freeze up though; I don’t think it’s gross in of itself. I can picture the act in my head just fine because the actors in my mind aren’t real and nobody is getting hurt. I’m not gagging. If I were to watch a morbidly obese couple performing unthinkable sex acts on each other however, that’s gross. I have no moral qualms, but I probably would gag if I imagined that one in detail.
I recognize that my absence of ick factor on this particular issue may be out of the norm, but I think it may just give me a clearer view of the matter. I don’t begrudge the ick factor, I’m not complaining, in fact I see a certain need for it. The pedophilia taboo is understandable and probably inescapable. Even if there was no taboo, most people would not trust their children around such a person, that is risk assessment and it’s smart. So I simply don’t comment usually because most people just aren’t going to understand where I’m coming from, or even accuse me of being a pedophile for making these (to me) intuitive points. That’s how deeply rooted this aversion is. But for the sake of a hypothetical question such as this OP, I’m more than happy to put my thinking cap on.
So, if the question is how I would associate with someone who has committed child molestation in the past, but is truly incapable of doing it again as in the described scenario….I wouldn’t be rushing to lock them up, but the fact that they have committed such a horrible crime will probably mean that we don’t share the same value system and so I probably would not like him. So it’s just a question of how I treat people I don’t like. This depends on my mood. I could be anything from courteous to snarky or even outright hostile depending on the situation, so it is best to avoid being around them at all.
If the question is how I would associate with someone with this orientation who could never dream of acting on it, the answer is I would treat them the same as anyone else. Maybe I’d like them and maybe I wouldn’t, but I’d like to think that their sexual fantasies have nothing to do with it.
So that’s my two cents, who’s first in line to crucify me?
If by associating with him you mean "beating his head in"then yes I would associate with him.
applause Good answer!
Yes, fantastic answer. Let’s beat their heads in for having those uncontrollable desires.
My answer mirrors pepperlandgirl’s in every way.
No. If he went around talking about how “it’s society’s fault” and “I didn’t do nothing wrong,” I would bash his head in.