# Are most pedophiles gay? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 10, 2005, 7:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-most-pedophiles-gay/298648 "2005-04-10T07:35:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Scott\_Plaid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/258eb7/32.png) [@Scott\_Plaid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scott_Plaid)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2005, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-most-pedophiles-gay/298648/61 "2005-04-13T22:34:02Z")
Jerevan Somerville, Mr2001 and DrDeth, ever since post 55, I have not seen too much to set me off, but I am enjoying following how this is going. The give and take I now see is very interesting. However, I just wanted to say thank you to Hamlet for pretty much writing my new sig line. I really like it! ---
**Author:** ![Sample\_the\_Dog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8797f3/32.png) [@Sample\_the\_Dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sample_the_Dog)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2005, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-most-pedophiles-gay/298648/62 "2005-04-13T22:50:07Z")
> [@KGS](#): > > there’s no girl-lover equivalent to NAMBLA, for instance. There was recently, and still may be. A group called “Butterfly Kisses” was operating semi-openly in recent years, but, like NAMBLA, was driven off of US-hosted Webspace. I don’t know if, like NAMBLA, they have managed to find a place to headquarter outside the US and/or maintain other mechanisms of communication. Pedophilia by women has been the subject of extremely little research, but that’s starting to change. We may well find that it is more prevalent than was once thought. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [April 13, 2005, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-most-pedophiles-gay/298648/63 "2005-04-13T23:49:48Z")
> [@Sample\_the\_Dog](#): > > Pedophilia by women has been the subject of extremely little research, but that’s starting to change. We may well find that it is more prevalent than was once thought. I think that women who have sex with _underaged teens_ would be much more common that most think. There are several reasons why it might not have been reported- males wouldn’t feel ashamed (in fact some might well be proud) of having been seduced by an older woman when they were 16 or so. I agree, and wouldn’t be suprised that some research could find this much more common that thought. But; the perversion of true pedophilia- having sex with _pre-pubescent children_- seems to be a male only perversion. Likely something having to do with the “mothering instinct” being hardwired into those with the XX chromosome? **Scott\_plaid** - _thanks_- I have been admiring your posts and way of thinking, myself. ---
**Author:** ![Sample\_the\_Dog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8797f3/32.png) [@Sample\_the\_Dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sample_the_Dog)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2005, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-most-pedophiles-gay/298648/64 "2005-04-14T00:41:44Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > But; the perversion of true pedophilia- having sex with _pre-pubescent children_ This is what I was talking about. It’s common for folks to believe that it doesn’t exist. But it does. I’m not saying it’s prevalent, but it exists. Butterfly Kisses, for instance, advocated sexual relationships between women and prepubescent girls. ---
**Author:** ![Sample\_the\_Dog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8797f3/32.png) [@Sample\_the\_Dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sample_the_Dog)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2005, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-most-pedophiles-gay/298648/65 "2005-04-14T00:55:33Z")
Btw, for obvious reasons I won’t post links here, but I just confirmed that there are “girl-love” communities out there – and this includes women who are sexually attracted to prepubescent girls as well as pubescent and young adolescent girls. These sites did not include any pornography (one had photos of very young girls, but they were not erotic) but I still don’t want to link them to a Chicago Reader board. You may do your own searching, if you are truly interested in the topic. ---
**Author:** ![kimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/f0a364/32.png) [@kimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kimera)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2005, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-most-pedophiles-gay/298648/66 "2005-04-14T01:05:45Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > But; the perversion of true pedophilia- having sex with _pre-pubescent children_- seems to be a male only perversion. Likely something having to do with the “mothering instinct” being hardwired into those with the XX chromosome? I doubt it has anything to do with “mothering instinct.” Paraphilias are mostly confined to men with a few notable exceptions. There are different types of pedophiles: exclusive, nonexclusive, fixated and regressed. Exclusive pedophiles are only attracted to children under the age of 12, while nonexclusive pedophiles are attracted to both children and adults. Fixated pedophiles view themselves as children and typically started sexually experimenting while they themselves were young. Regressed pedophiles are all (AFAWK) males attracted to underaged females. They view these girls as women and typically do not display their tendancies until they are in adulthood. As other posters have noted, most pedophiles are heterosexual males and the typical age of first arrest is 28. ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2005, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-most-pedophiles-gay/298648/67 "2005-04-14T01:07:13Z")
> [@Polycarp](#): > > **Guin** ’s observations line up with something valid. Back when the debases about gay sex were originally getting heavy over in GD, **matt\_mcl** spoke quite strikingly about his adolescent sexuality. And his first relationship was with an older partner, and in his considered opinion a beneficial rather than a trauma-inducing one. (I’d prefer that he speak to that beyond that, which is what little I remember about his post after four years.) His partner would definitely have been considered an ephebophile, given **matt** ’s age at the time. Well, I was 16, and therefore two years above the age of consent; I was also past puberty. Also, to my knowledge, he didn’t make a habit of having sex with 16-year-old guys (and “older” is a little dramatic – he was 21 at the time), nor do I think he was attracted to me because I was 16. I was also the “aggressor,” if you want to call it that, in the encounter. So I’m not sure if he really would be “definitely” considered an ephebophile. In that thread, I had brought it up because people were advocating a blanket rule that anyone who had sex with someone under 18 would be guilty of sexual abuse. I wanted to show that sex with someone under 18 is not automatically abuse or trauma and that 18 is rather high as a limit to when someone can truly consent to sex, and explain why I believe that Canada’s age-of-consent laws have it more or less correctly. ---
**Author:** ![Ms2001](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ms2001/32/18463_2.png) [@Ms2001](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ms2001)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2005, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-most-pedophiles-gay/298648/68 "2005-04-14T01:46:21Z")
> [@Jerevan Somerville](#): > > Yes, I do agree that a child can know whether he enjoys other forms of physical stimulation or intimacy (tickling, hugging, etc.). > > In my view, sexual stimulation is different. If a child is not yet sexually aware or developed, is it possible for him to be sexually stimulated – and therefore to know whether he does/does not enjoy the experience as sex per se? Bluntly, is it possible for a child “to have sex”? Well, IANAD, but just going by anecdotal reports (many I’ve read here on the SDMB), prepubescent children can indeed derive pleasure from sexual touching. Children masturbate, and IANAP either, but I suspect most parents have had to tell their kids things like “no, we don’t touch ourselves there at the dinner table”. Whether it can be compared to how teens and adults experience sexual stimulation, I don’t know, but I don’t think that matters - they experience _something_, and they know whether or not they like that experience. > [@](#): > > I’m talking about the child’s reaction/response to the experience in the moment, as it happens: do I like what is happening? how do I feel about this? do I want to keep doing it, or stop? All right, then we are talking about the same thing. > [@](#): > > Now, if I understand you, you would say the child can answer these questions about sex as meaningfully as he could about homework. I can see your point, but I don’t accept the equivalence of the two activities, for reasons I’ve tried to outline above. […] Which goes back to the issue of whether a child can “enjoy” stimulating or being stimulated in that particular way. Well, even supposing that prepubescent children cannot experience sexual stimulation in any way comparable to an adult, surely they can form an opinion on the act as any other form of touch, just as they could know whether they enjoy having their back rubbed or their ears cleaned. Speaking of ears, consider that some people report [“an ecstasy, a shimmering, shivering, delicious thrill”](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=35703&highlight=eargasm) from putting a Q-tip in their ear canal - if one adult does it to another adult who is incapable of experiencing that same pleasure, surely the second person can still form an opinion about whether he wants that Q-tip in his ear or not, even though what he’s experiencing is nothing like what the first person would experience. > [@](#): > > In the other words, the important thing we’re overlooking is that children in these situations are rarely, if ever, given the real opportunity to choose or consent. […] No matter what we might decide about the child’s capacity for choice/consent, we cannot assume that the would-be sexual “partner” will agree with us, or abide by the child’s wishes. Yet we wish to protect the child from “harmful” experiences. How, then, do we accomplish this, except by protecting the child from all (because they are unequal) sexual encounters? Well, without getting too far into it, I’ll just point out that we manage to protect adults from harmful sexual experiences without protecting them from all sexual experiences, by outlawing specific acts where consent is not or cannot be given, or where the different of power is so great that consent cannot be easily distinguished from coercion. Certainly, one could argue that the difference of power is always that great between an adult and a child, and I wouldn’t argue against it. I’m not interested in arguing whether adults should be having sexual encounters with prepubescent kids, or whether such encounters should be legal… merely pointing out that “wanted” vs. “unwanted” can be a meaningful distinction even when it doesn’t meet the legal standard for informed consent, and that there is some evidence that the distinction has a big effect on how the child will be affected by the experiences later in life. With that said, I don’t want to hijack **Muad’Dib** ’s thread any further (the GQ seems to have been answered), and if we are to continue this discussion, perhaps another thread would be best. > [@DrDeth](#): > > The pre-pubescent child has no way of knowing (at that point in time) that what the adult is doing is both legally and morally wrong. When the child finds out- there will be deep psychological trauma. The studies I cited earlier don’t seem to bear that out. (Of course, as **Hamlet** mentioned, their results are still controversial.) ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2005, 6:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-most-pedophiles-gay/298648/69 "2005-04-15T06:07:27Z")
> [@Jerevan Somerville](#): > > In my view, sexual stimulation is different. If a child is not yet sexually aware or developed, is it possible for him to be **sexually** stimulated – and therefore to know whether he does/does not enjoy the experience as sex _per se_? Bluntly, is it possible for a child “to have sex”? > > In my view the answer to all three questions is “no”. My answer to the first question depends on the definition (or my assumption) about what it means to be “pre-pubescent”…? I don’t know what you’re talking about; I started to masturbate and had my first orgasm when I was six. ---
**Author:** ![Faith\_is\_Good](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e99b99/32.png) [@Faith\_is\_Good](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Faith_is_Good)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2005, 6:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-most-pedophiles-gay/298648/70 "2005-04-15T06:34:56Z")
> [@ivylass](#): > > It’s not about sexual attraction. It’s about power. So I think your question is moot. Where is the proof that it is about power and not sexual attraction? Doesn’t all of the child porn often found in connection with these cases suggest that sexual desire has a great deal to do with motivations since one cannot exert power over an image? ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2005, 7:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-most-pedophiles-gay/298648/71 "2005-04-15T07:06:13Z")
> [@matt\_mcl](#): > > I don’t know what you’re talking about; I started to masturbate and had my first orgasm when I was six. Then you are in a very small minority: 0.1% of boys have their first ejaculation as young as 8 years of age; only 8% of boys have their first ejaculation before the age of 12. ---
**Author:** ![Ms2001](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ms2001/32/18463_2.png) [@Ms2001](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ms2001)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2005, 7:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-most-pedophiles-gay/298648/72 "2005-04-15T07:32:40Z")
> [@Walloon](#): > > Then you are in a very small minority: 0.1% of boys have their first ejaculation as young as 8 years of age; only 8% of boys have their first ejaculation before the age of 12. Let’s not forget that ejaculation isn’t necessary for orgasm, and neither ejaculation nor orgasm is necessary for sexual stimulation to be pleasurable. ---
**Author:** ![Muad\_Dib](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/35a633/32.png) [@Muad\_Dib](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muad_Dib)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2005, 10:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-most-pedophiles-gay/298648/73 "2005-04-15T10:04:33Z")
Well this thread took an unexpected turn. If I had it to do over I would rewrite the OP as: Are children primarily molested by people of the same sex. Is this attraction to children of the same sex in any way related to adult homosexuality. _goes back to reading_ ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2005, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-most-pedophiles-gay/298648/74 "2005-04-15T14:31:23Z")
> [@Walloon](#): > > Then you are in a very small minority: 0.1% of boys have their first ejaculation as young as 8 years of age; only 8% of boys have their first ejaculation before the age of 12. I didn’t ejaculate; I ejaculated for the first time when I was 13. But I did have orgasms. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2005, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-most-pedophiles-gay/298648/75 "2005-04-15T18:58:02Z")
> [@Muad'Dib](#): > > Are children primarily molested by people of the same sex. > > Is this attraction to children of the same sex in any way related to adult homosexuality. 1. In nearly every case of molestation of a pre-pubescent child, the molester has been male- it does not seem to have any difference whther the victim is male or female- all the molesters are male. Both sexes of children are molested commonly. Some molesters attack children of both sexes. Thus- no. 2. No. In fact, most of the molesters/men who do have some sort of “normal adult relaionship” have a heterosexual one- married, sometimes even kids and everything. Again- those two hold when we are talking about pre-pubescent children only. When we get into the area of hebephilia- then it changes to: the adult is generally attracted to those of his sexual orientation- gay males are attracted to boys, hetero men to girls, hetero women to girls, and so forth. ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2005, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-most-pedophiles-gay/298648/76 "2005-04-17T21:11:34Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > hetero women to girls 😕 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/are-most-pedophiles-gay/298648.md?page=3)