I don’t think we want to try to decide in advance what will be OK and what won’t.
I can imagine “I’m 21 and I’m attracted to a 17 year old” would have a lot more chance of surviving as a thread than “I’m 54 and I’m attracted to 12 year olds.”
Also, please note, that often it’s not the thread OP that causes it to be shut and hidden, but people’s responses. We’ve talked about the risks of sympathetic responses being misinterpreted as encouragement, but there’s also the risk of responses being hate-filled and highly antagonistic.
This isn’t about “fighting ignorance,” this is about the extent to which these Message Boards can/should try to act as therapy group support sessions.
Surely the location of the OP would be useful in knowing their position? There is an automatic assumption by some posters that ‘attraction to pubescent children’=‘illegal’, but this isn’t necessarily the case. If the age of consent in that country is 12 (Chile,Mexico,Paraguay for example) then attraction to 12 or 13 yr olds can be accepted as if the person were to act on this, it would still be within the law.
It would not be legal in the U.S. (home of the Chicago Reader and the overwhelming majority of posters). We’re really not in a position to verify the true nationality of every single poster to match against their comments for the legal status of their opinions. (In the same way, the rules restricting recreational drug use endorsement on this MB are applied equally to Coldfire and gum, despite their residence in a nation with substantially more relaxed drug laws than the U.S. A separate thread on the puritanical or priggish nature of American society will fly, but we’re not changing the rules for these topics.)
In this case, likely short for “sock puppet”, a message board term describing a second user name created by an established member, usually created to support or back up the member’s position on issues. Derived from the toy of the same name, which is, as the name suggests, a puppet made from a sock, and used in ventriloquism. In both cases, the owner is actually speaking, pertending to be the puppet. Sock puppets are not allowed on most boards, including the SDMB.
I think I would be interested in an actual board discussion of pedophilia, from the perspective of someone that experienced the desire, and recognized the unacceptable nature of the behavior. I have had enough experience with the nature of such people to know that the one-dimensional horror show character of molester is not an entirely inclusive description of the psychological disorder. Even pedophiles are real people, who have lived real lives, some of them with characteristics of ordinary people. Learning about how someone ended up in that place could be useful, for me, and for society.
I don’t want to have that thread here, though.
My reasons are pragmatic, and based on the information I have so far, on the subject. People who are sexually oriented toward children are extremely motivated to find some satisfaction for that desire. Precisely because society will not allow overt sexual interest in children, the behavior is modified, and hidden, even in the most overt of Pedophiles. Pictures, conversations, observation of children in non sexual frames of reference are all elements of the continual desire to satisfy that desire. Making it real one step at a time is a process of successive approximation. And whether or not we, or our visiting pedophilicly oriented poster were serious in our attempt to truly try to fight ignorance, our audience would include pedophiles watching every word, and adding elements to their own successive approximation. It’s a one way street, with a victim at the other end.
The parole conditions for pedophiles will tell you something about how strong the recidivist impulse is. A paroled molester would probably be considered in violation just for reading my hypothetical thread. It puts your mind on the behavior. It is part of the process of actualizing the aberrant fantasy. I don’t want to invest a lot of emotional energy in hating the person, but I won’t spend any time at all as a bit character in his actualization fantasy.
Tris
“He who fights too long against dragons becomes a dragon himself; and if you gaze too long into the abyss, the abyss will gaze into you.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche ~