Am I a Pedophile?

Based on data given, no. By framing the question in that way though, you did a good job of hanging one of the better “kick me” signs possible in this day and age. I suspect you realize that now. People are twitchy near the subject, and understandably so.

Now, you do seem a little odd (I’m trying to picture finding the personality of the usual teenage girl interesting, and my brain is refusing to cooperate with me), but “a little odd” and “pedophile” are neither in the same ballpark nor the same league.

As a proactive measure against riled reactions, I’ll point out now that teenage girls who’re part of the SDMB are, by definition, not usual. :slight_smile:

The only thing that is wierd to me, is the fact that we imediately assume pedophile, when speaking to teenage girls. The guy has found people who interest him. we should all be so lucky. My girlfriend is 8 yrs. my junior. i’ve known her since she was 16. Our romance didn’t start untill she turned 18, but we both knew a relationship was budding. she is my friend…my best friend. the age difference made me question myself as well. even though there was no romantic link between us, while she was under the age of 18, I felt as if i was doing something wrong. we have scared ourselves into believing that contact with a teenage girl is dirty or creepy. If I hadn’t befriended a 16 year old girl, i would never have watched her grow into the woman i love so much today.

I’ll stand by my original response, too. Of course there’s nothing wrong with chatting with teenage girls, or anyone out of your specific peer group. I have friends of both sexes who range from 23 to over 60, gay & straight, coupled & single, parents or childless. When my neighbor’s son was younger (16 & 17), he worked for me for two summers. He didn’t drive, so he’d ride with me to the job sites. I enjoyed talking to him, found it interesting to get a different slant on all sorts of things, & liked him immensely, very nice young guy. He was a black teenage boy, I’m a white ahem older woman. It never crossed my mind that I was a “pedophile” just because I enjoyed his company. I’d have worried about myself if I had.

What creeped me out about the OP was the overabundance of rasta’s disclaimers about not finding it sexually stimulating (Doth he protest too much?). His original question & how it was framed (twice…am I a pedophile, am a deve). The fact he finds grownups boring, yet enjoys talking to teenage girls about “mundane” things. The fact that his wife apparently finds this acceptable. Now, since it concerns him enough to post the question, & since he “LOVES” talking to teenage girls, I am assuming he spends quite a bit of time at his computer doing so.

All these things I find weird. I & others are not immediately assuming he is a pedophile (actually, I never personally even said he was),just because he enjoys chatting with teenage girls, though I stand by my original assessment of the OP. Pedophiles are generally inadequate adults who are attracted to kids because they are easier & less challenging to deal with. Now, maybe rasta has plenty of healthy adult relationships & activities in his life, and enjoys chatting occasionally with kids online. If that’s the case, I’ll change my assessment. However, that is not the impression I get from my OP.

Wonder where he is? Hey rasta, come talk to us grownups! :stuck_out_tongue:

That should be…that’s not the impression I get from the OP.

Inasmuch as we’re fighting ignorance at the same time we’re dissecting rasta’s inclinations, benign or otherwise… “Pedophilia” is the condition, in an adult, of having prepubescent children comprise ones idealized idiosyncratic image of a sexual partner. It is not correct to use the word to describe an attraction to sexually mature or maturing teenagers.

  • Rick

It might be interesting to have rasta reproduce as best he can one of these chats. In the OP he says he talks to them about life in general. If he’s just sharing stories about school or work or their friends and families, then that’s no difference than chatting with an adult about similar topics. I can see that adults (as he mentions) gripe too much about mortgages, raising kids (which he can’t relate to) and things he’d prefer not to talk about when he’s relaxing at the computer. Getting a kid’s perspective about things can be very refreshing.

He also says he has found one or two with common interests to his (Star Wars was a big one). Sorry to say it, but the adults I have met who are really into Star Wars are mostly insufferable geeks that I wouldn’t want to talk to anyway. But a teenager might have a different perspective on it and be more interesting to chat with.

As far as people thinking rasta protested too much, and that his own concern belies a grain of pedophilia, I don’t buy it. Your logic is faulty (“Well, if he wasn’t a deve he wouldn’t be scared he was a deve, so he must be a deve”). His reaction comes from the severe social taboo that our society has built around grown men interacting with underage children, females especially.

I think it’s unusual that a grown man would prefer conversations with teenagers, although there are more than a few teenagers out there who are more conversant than many adults. But I don’t think it’s wrong. I believe rasta when he says it’s purely social and holds no sexual charge for him at all. He’s not preying on these people, he’s enjoying their company.

Why is it that when an adult works with a child toward a specific end, that adult is called a mentor, but when an adult just enjoys a child’s company, that adult is suspected of being a molestor? Maybe what rasta is doing is social mentoring.

Or are we blaming the internet for its misuse? Do we assume that he’s a predator simply because these are cyber-relationships? If so, this message board should be shut down. Well, no, it’s not that, it’s the chatrooms and IMs. Nobody but perverts use chatrooms and they’re just gateways for IMs, which are ultimately more dangerous.

The sky is falling, folks.

Seriously, though, I’d like to see some kind of reproduction of one of these conversations.

hey there.
kinda new to this, but seeing as we are quite close in age, here’s my two cents:

while I wouldn’t consider it pedaphilic (that tends to conjure up 4 year olds in my mind),it does seem a bit odd that its ONLY teenage girls.

before I could give a better answer, I would have to ask:

What is it exactly that you talk about? It can’t ALL be star wars.

more importantly,
what amount of time are we talking about?

I enjoy talking to people of all ages/ethnicities/sexes, so that particular aspect is not a problem to me. I think it’s great to get a new perspective on things.

but to soley chat with teenage girls…
well, I must admit. it does noid me out.

I don’t think Rasta’s disclaimers should be taken as some deep seeded meanings. I think he was trying to put the question in context. “I enjoy talking to teenage girls” does not get the point across like “I am a 30 year old male and I enjoy talking to teenage girls …” . In this medium you have to be this detailed.

Pedophiles are mostly just lookers. Pederasts are the dangerous ones.

In my opinion, it’s better to use “rastahomie” rather than ‘rasta’, which has another cool meaning if you look it up in the dictionary :slight_smile:

Not that I know exactly what Rasta talks about in his convos, I do know that I like talking to adults, and alwasy have. (Its gotten easier recently because I’m approching respected age. Excuse me while I weep for kids with brains.)

I’m not into Brittney Spears, so if he’s chatting about teeny bopper stuff, I can’t help. However, kids have free time and energy for interesting lives. I take classes in pottery, weaving, voice, and piano depending on time of year as well as school projects on topics ranging from alternative fuels to a group project on terrorism and negotiation. And that’s just their ‘job’. As opposed to adults who have one job. “So, Bill, what’d you do today?” “oh, same old, same old…” The same question to a teenager can have thousands of answers, varying by the minute.

These are the people who ‘know everything’ and to whom everything cool is pretty much new. Just getting a handle on powers of thought, reason, logic…

Some adults maintain interesting things in their lives. but if a teen can put words together and share thoughts, don’t dismiss them as invaluble. I remember lying about my age constantly to find decent chat partners online, because no one would discuss policies of gifted education with a 14 yr old.

Birthdays don’t make people magically intellegent. They certainly have done nothing to improve my spelling. If he finds himself finding friends in a certain group, so what? I generally like guys in their late 20s to early 40s. That perference of mine was found when I was in middle school.

There’s nothing at all wrong with it. Up until the last 20 years, many older men used to enjoy talking with teens, both boys and girls, even having them as friends. Platonic ones, by the way. When I was in my teens, older men used to sit in the shade at the local park, playing checkers, talking, smoking aromatic pipes and stinky cigars and getting great enjoyment out of watching the kids. Often you’d see small groups of teens talking with an older man and think nothing of it.

You, my friend, have a case of ‘American Molestitis’ also known as ‘Dirty Old Man Syndrome,’ which reared it’s head back in the late 80s and spread like wildfire, with the carrier being the media, which affects people of all ages.

The disease is insidious in it’s affects for it attacks the minds of normal heterosexuals and homosexuals alike in all walks of life, has even caused psychiatrists to misdiagnose and average, intelligent parents to become slavering maniacs riddled with paranoia and quick to accuse.

It also has caused multitudes of happy, well adjusted males to feel that they are probably molesters if they so much as get any pleasure from watching children play and teens interact. Thanks to societies insanity of the late 80s, any male above the age of 19 who pays attention to children of any age is automatically suspect of being a potential child molester, needs to be watched for any signs deviational activity and promptly reported to the also over suspicious police.

Understand?

It’s absolutely normal for an older man or woman to take pleasure in interacting with children or to just watch them because they are young, pretty, so full of energy and hope and surprises. Teens are exploring pre-adulthood, trying to act grown up but still had the mental set, imagination, and exuberance of being in the prime of their lives and feeling both immortal, rebellious, loyal and curious. They make hilarious mistakes. They are fun to listen to.

Interaction with them brings out dreams of our past youth, the* paternal, maternal instincts,* and, with members of the opposite sex, a touch of sexual lure. (Don’t you dare sneer! It’s biology because kids are at their most sexually powerful between 14 and 25. History shows that most children were married from ages 12 to 20. Usually as soon as the girl had her period, she was considered marriage material!! Women reaching 22 without being wed were considered old maids!!) Teens can give off sexual cues without meaning to because of biology.

Teens also have not had the crap kicked out of them by normal life, so they are more open when they talk, figure they can probably solve the problems of the world, have not yet learned to control their emotions like mature people so they don’t wear the ‘society mask’ designed to show a cool, often impassive face to others.

I love talking with teens on the web, watching them around town, listening to them chat in groups in stores, admire their grace and awkwardness as they go through that leggy, big footed state where their limbs seem to grow faster than the rest of them. The girls are cute as heck, much more concerned with dress and attitude than the boys are, who are usually more aggressive and tend to do stupid things like skateboarding down a steel bannister, slipping, landing on their nuts, impacting the ground and breaking bones and then going out and doing it again. (Observation here; radical skate boarders probably are not good prospects for being Dads, because medical technology has shown that repeated impacts on the testicles and the area between testicles and ‘bung’ crimp and damage the vital spermatic duct running through there. Less of the ‘boys’ get through. The kids falling off of skate boards onto things with spread legs are busily giving themselves partial vasectomies. :smiley: )

Because I’m a guy, I like talking to women, even teens and little girls. It’s nature. I’ve worked as a school monitor for a time, at a whole 2 hours a day, and just enjoyed watching the kids pour out to meet their folks or to go into class.

You know, first graders are so tiny!! So full of energy that they can hardly keep themselves from dancing or running every place, with smooth faces, universal pleasant looks, wearing these tiny but huge sneakers and they giggle so wonderfully! Around fifth grade, they start noting the opposite sex, though don’t know why, start forming into boy and girl clusters, making and breaking alliances, looking eager and fresh, doing a lot of laughing, tons of running and looking at the world with almost absolute confidence that Mom and Dad will keep them eternally safe, teachers look 20 feet tall, bugs are interesting, fashion sense hits the girls, the boys are interested in rough housing, and candy, potato chips, Oreo Cookies, gummy worms, soda pop, and chocolate milk not only are delicious but energy foods. They know adult actions and often exaggerate them, love to gossip, and can’t keep secrets.

They smell of soap, bubble gum, tooth paste and clean clothing. They careen through halls and rooms just barely missing running into things, and often do because not only are they invincible, but they are still learning motor skills.

They pop up with the damnedest statements, questions and observations.

The best thing is their simple beauty, their unlined faces and most do not have that awful ‘look’ adults get over race, religion, job conflicts, accumulated emotional injuries, money problems, and all of the beatings a ‘grown up’ gets trying to live.

Teens are the same way, only smarter, working on maturity, with a different value system from ‘little kids’ and ‘old folks’, swooning over rock stars, getting steamed up over ‘cute’ members of the opposite sex, chowing down hamburgers and pop and not gaining an ounce, worried about zits, ‘geekiness’, when the latest teen oriented movies is going to hit the theaters, getting infatuated by their ‘gorgeous’ younger male and female teachers and all stirred up by emerging hormones, along with emerging hair in places where hair never was before.

Chatting with them from time to time makes me, in my 40’s feel young and you got to be somewhat sharp when talking to them because they have quick minds. It is pleasant to see the world, second handedly, through their eyes for a time and to share your own accumulation of ‘worldly wisdom’ because, inside our older heads and bodies, our minds still seem to feel like we should be 21 or 22.

Getting along with kids does not mean you must have some insidious and devious urge to grope and screw them. I have never understood what a true pedophile sees in grade schoolers between 6 and 11 because most, especially the girls, are built like sticks!! They don’t give off an overt sexuality. They don’t look sexual.

Thanks to today’s view of men verses any kid under 19, the old fellows don’t sit by the park anymore because too many suspicious parents glared at them, too many cops parked nearby and watched, some street trained kids avoided them like they had measles, and if little kids or teens talked with them, multiple adult eyes could be heard snapping around to fix them in their radar sights, but the almost perceptible mental radiation of ‘dirty old man’ and potential child molester that filled the sidewalks was the worst.

There are not nearly as many child abusers/molesters as the news would have you believe, but, because of the inexplicable increase of them, parents and normal adults do need to be wary. Here, racism lapses because old Black men are more accepted in sitting around parks watching kids play than younger Black men or any male who is White and is above 18.

You’ve caught the ‘social disease’ containing the fear of being seen as a potential molester because the news has assured everyone that you just might be one. They no longer consider the potential of paternal attraction towards kids by adults.

Well, don’t let it get to you.

Several years back, I dug up the standard profile of child molesters and read it to find out what one needs to look for and, surprise, surprise! I technically fit the stereotype!!

Talk about an ego blow! That made me paranoid as hell for some time and, I must say, even today because of the public perception of molesters, I’m real careful when around kids.

Even when I play with the kids of my brothers and sisters and take them for walks in my local woods, I feel ‘dirty’ and wonder what the neighbors are thinking as I stride into the pines, thickets and Oak groves with a 10 or 11 year old kid so they can climb trees, feast on wild berry patches I know of, watch the wild life and escape the summer heat.

I keep waiting for the cops to show up one day, but I love my nephews and nieces and their parents and I played in those same woods as kids and the kids just love the places, so I keep taking them there.

Just as I keep chatting with kids on the Internet, knowing that not only will I probably never meet them, but that the FBI has that active program running, waiting for me to use enough key words to draw their attention to me to see if I am a suspect. Still, I enjoy the conversations. They make me feel young again, useful, often wise, and teach me about what kids go through today.

Next year, I just might sign up to be a monitor again and screw those who might consider me a potential molester. I know I’m not and part of my job as a monitor is to keep the little 'uns safe. I do that quite well.

Enjoy your chats and e-mails with the young. You know you’re not a molester and any shrink with a good education will tell you that any sexual feelings you might get from communication with teen girls is normal. Feeling them and then getting all confused, guilty feeling and paranoid or starting self doubt is not.

You know you’re not going to go and seduce some kid, so don’t worry. Besides, you might be surprised at the amount of kids who try to seduce their young, good looking teachers in high school, especially by girls. Feel sorry for those male teachers in their twenties when some pretty young thing of 15, oozing sexuality from all pores, just busting with nubility thanks to nature telling her it’s time to reproduce, turns on the heat.

They don’t pay teachers enough to face those pressures!!

Anyone happen to have been old enough in the 60s to recall how it was the ‘in’ thing for girls in high school to get the hots for college guys? Going to the prom with one was considered great status! The girls wanted ‘mature’ men, which royally pissed off a lot of high school guys. Disney put out a lot of movies with that same plot in them.

Check out the ages of consent in other nations. America has about the highest.

You continue your chatting and I’ll continue taking my nieces and nephews on walks in the woods and screw everyone else. :mad: :smiley:

Just picked this one at random, since there are so many posts here that I agree with.

No one is one-sided. Having been a teenage girl, I can attest that there are times when a 16YO female says “OMIGOD he was so cute omg I’m gonna die did he ask about me!!!” and times when she says, “I think Lucas has sacrificed too much of his art for commercialism. I like his early work, but I’m looking forward now, and I predict that Peter Jackson, with the LOTR series, will be the artiste of the 2Ks.” When these girls interact with rastahomie, they are presumably in that persona.

[hijack]Twice, I found myself offended by adult males who automatically assumed that I and my companions were in the first persona. Once, in high school, I was in the publications office. The yearbook staff was looking over some AP wire photos, deciding which ones to include in the retrospective spread: the Challenger explosion, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Father Jenco on his release (he was from our town!) Live Aid, and so on. We were earnestly discussing which ones of these were the images for the ages, and a teacher (not the publications advisor) who was in the office turned to us and said, “Don’t you girls ever do anything but gossip?!” He was kidding, but I still didn’t think it was funny.

Another time, I was visiting a friend. We had both just turned 18, and were eligible to vote in the 1988 Illinois primary. Again, we were taking this responsibility very seriously, debating whether we would vote for Paul Simon since he was our senator, or the VP, or that guy from Massachusetts. Her dad came into the kitchen, got a coffee or something, then said ominously, “You know, I know some of the people you’re talking about.”

“You know the senator?” I asked, thinking anything was possible.

“Oh…uh…”

He’d said that automatically! Jeez![/hijack]

And as others have pointed out, there are teenagers here on the SD who are perfectly ane.

Thank you to all of you who have defended me. It’s good to know that my fears were unfounded. You are all too kind.

To those of you who have said, “You’re giving me a creepy vibe here,” we will have to agree to disagree. However, your opinions are noted and respected.

Again, thank you.

Doreain

Nice post and welcome to the Straight Dope.
Rastahomie

Have you ever considered being a HS guidence councellor? (boy that’s not spelled right, need coffee) They get to talk to teens all day and get paid for it.

“HS guidence councellor?”

Better yet, perhaps working in the church with the youngsters?

I wouldn’t worry too much.

I’m 28 and like talking to teenage girls too. (I’m a woman). It reminds me of my youth.

As long as you’re not neglecting your wife, your duties, your personal grooming in order to chat longer, I think this is just fine.

Al.

Just wanted to say to Doreain: Bravo.

:slight_smile:

I went with my mom and my sister the other day to the park and i had a blast with all the kids on the playground. It was like playing Quake but without guns. I work at a restaurant and i love it when the highschool or college people come in cause they have good stuff to talk about. On the other had i think yoru missing out bud cause the best talkers are the old ladies and old men. Theyve been B.S.ing for like 1000 years and they know how to make a conversation work. I think conversing with anyone is great and i wish everyone that says something about perversion should shut up until you really do start doing something perverted man. It’s cool you like to talk to them. I think the one thing that most people are lacking are interpersonal skills. It’s hard to develop. So talk to more old people, they need company too i heard.

BrIan with a capiol i.