Okay, do the research. My guess is that a better approach would be doing almost anything that is the opposite of encouraging a fetish which leaves non-offending pedophiles to live a lonely life full of shame and disfunction. My guess is that a better approach would be to offer the non-offending pedophile tools to escape the grip of such a life limiting inclination.
My guess is that we’d have to rely on the notoriously unreliable self-report in order to discover non-offending pedophiles who may or may not need treatment, and that leaving simulated child porn unregulated, unpoliced, and encouraged as treatment will open the court system up to litigation for permitting free access to those materials. It just sounds like a bad idea. But sure: let’s do the research, especially now, while the “pedophiles are the last group it’s okay to discriminate against” theme is popular.
We don’t treat any other social disfunction with immersion in the disfuntional behavior which limits their existence. We don’t encourage agorophobes to stay home. We don’t encourage repetitive behaviors for sufferers of OCD. We don’t send sex addicts to brothels. If you can demonstrate why you feel that pedophiles should be allowed free access to simulated child porn as a means/method of treatment, I’ll change my mind.
That example isn’t measurable or repeatable, it’s nothing more than an anecdote, just like my experience with the foot fetishists. And really, that incident was a mild blip on a massively ugly decade as a social worker. Not that big of a deal, and not enough to color my perceptions of matters of sexuality. But I did get to witness, up close and personal, a reaction to a vivid, violent, and convincing rape scene that made me far more uncomfortable than the facts that inspired the movie. People are pretty suggestible. We’ve got to be pretty careful with what information we put out there, and consider our audience, too. I love our freedoms here, but in the wrong hands, permissiveness can have devastatingly negative effects.
Thanks for your vote of confidence, I always find your view far more compassionate and generous than mine usually is, and I trust your experience and insight. You’re a very cool guy.
Sorry, I erred in saying paedophilia. The poster I was responding to said it was child molestation, so I should have asked how young is it to qualify as child molestation if it is legal to marry an 8yo in Saudi, etc.
So is it OK to view anime which has childlike girls often dressed in erotic clothing, but not engaged in sex? Where is the line drawn?
Should Bilitis be banned?
Should David Hamilton be incarcerated for life?
Should Jeremy Irons be prosecuted?
A serious question I’ve wondered for a while: how did pedophiles (“before the Internet”) find each other to swap pictures and movies, as they apparently do? This is one of those things you only ever see on Criminal Minds and I have no idea how this would work in the real world. In the pre-Internet age, how did this happen? I can’t imagine a plausible scenario for how someone looking for child porn would end up getting their hands on it from someone else. It’s probably fair to say anyone who desperately wanted child porn knew it was a desire that had to be kept secret, so how did they find people to buy images and videos from, or find people to sell their own porn to? It’s hardly the kind of small talk topic that two people in the stands at a ballet recital are going to come up with and magically they’re both pedophiles. So how does it happen? Is it one of those things where if you are one, you can spot other ones?
A big part of what lets reprobates discuss their illegal interests with judiciously selected others without much fear of being reported is the simple fact that by and large, most people are really quite reluctant to rat out family members and those who they consider to be their good friends, especially for offenses committed against a victim who they’ve never met.
