# FTR: Ephebophilia != pedophilia **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [August 29, 2014, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ftr-ephebophilia-pedophilia/696914 "2014-08-29T23:02:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![The\_Sheikh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c67d28/32.png) [@The\_Sheikh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Sheikh)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2014, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ftr-ephebophilia-pedophilia/696914/61 "2014-09-01T16:58:55Z")
> [@running\_coach](#): > > NYTimes-[Struggling to Keep Afghan Girl Safe After a Mullah Is Accused of Rape](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/20/world/asia/struggling-to-keep-afghan-girl-safe-after-a-mullah-is-accused-of-rape.html?_r=1) You are not discussing what I have written. Forget that I mentioned Islam and just imagine that this is a new law someone is suggesting to replace the age of consent. This would help you think. ---
**Author:** ![gracer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/8e7dd6/32.png) [@gracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gracer)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2014, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ftr-ephebophilia-pedophilia/696914/62 "2014-09-01T20:00:15Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > But there are some important non-arbitrary ways in which 15-year olds are very different from 19-year olds. For one thing, 15-year olds are at greater risk from pregnancy than 19-year olds, and thus aren’t really sexually ‘mature’ for some definitions of ‘mature’. For another, there’s a study I remember seeing (maybe from Guttmacher, not sure) that 16 is about the threshold age at which relationships with substantially older people are no longer associated with an elevated risk of some negative indicators like depression, poor school performance, etc… So I think there’s decent reason not to put ‘attraction to 15-year olds’ and ‘attraction to 19-year olds’ in the same box. I don’t disagree that it’s different, but that’s just not what the word is trying to say. The word has a meaning, and it doesn’t care that 15 year old are different from 19 year olds. Even if the difference is “non-arbitrary” that has no bearing on the word ephebophile. And, just to reiterate: it refers to attraction, not to the social implications of that attraction. People who are ephebophiles are attracted to kids/people in that age range. It’s a word that describes different people, and there can be different outcomes. If you want to say “someone who wants to have sex with someone who is so young that it is sorta inappropriate for various reasons”, then, well… you’re just going to have to say that. Or we could make up new words. How about “inappropriatophile”…? 😉 ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2014, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ftr-ephebophilia-pedophilia/696914/63 "2014-09-01T20:39:51Z")
But it also doesn’t mean what the op describes, which is having a superficial physical attraction to a woman who is physically impossible to differentiate from an older woman, and who is being presented as such. For ephebophile to mean anything, it must mean being attracted to individuals because of their age, not despite it. And when describing orientation, we generally assume a level of preferential attraction stronger than visual appreciation . . .we generally mean “strongly preferred sexual and romantic partner” Getting off to Traci Lords movies doesn’t make you anything. No one has to defend 40 year olds trolling chat rooms for high school sophomores in order to defend their own arousal at the sight of an old porn film… ---
**Author:** ![TBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c89c15/32.png) [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2014, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ftr-ephebophilia-pedophilia/696914/64 "2014-09-01T22:50:55Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > For thousands of years of human history in cultures across continents it was the normal age for a woman/girl to bear her first child. Mitochondrial Eve probably did that. Yeah, and the father probably clubbed her in the head and dragged her away first. Want to go back to that, too? ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2014, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ftr-ephebophilia-pedophilia/696914/65 "2014-09-01T23:46:04Z")
> [@gracer](#): > > . . . Or we could make up new words. How about “inappropriatophile”…? 😉 I’ve been one of those for decades! ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2014, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ftr-ephebophilia-pedophilia/696914/66 "2014-09-02T00:49:25Z")
> [@The\_Sheikh](#): > > I feel good about the way Islamic law deals with this dilemma. Firstly, age is irrelevant in this issue, because it is biologically irrelevant. Different girls mature at different ages. So, the first condition of having sex is biological maturity which is an obvious natural indication of readiness. The second condition is “parent’s consent”. It is important because it is not only biological readiness that matters. Emotional maturity is also important and who can better assess that than a parent. This condition prevents strangers from exploiting young girls who might unwisely agree at the moment but regret it the rest of their lives. Finally, of course the consent of the girl is the last condition. The problem is the second part. Most parents are pretty decent and have the best interests of the child at heart. However there are some who really don’t care at best and are actively abusive at worst. There has to be some protection for kids (boys as well as girls) in cases like that. An admittedly arbitrary and imperfect AOC law is probably the best we can do. (There should be Romeo and Juliet laws though. No 19 year old should go to jail or be a sex offender for having sex with a 16 year old.) ---
**Author:** ![MandaJo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ac91a4/32.png) [@MandaJo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MandaJo)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2014, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ftr-ephebophilia-pedophilia/696914/67 "2014-09-02T00:58:33Z")
I also question whether “biological maturity” if that’s code for starting your period. The skinny sixteen year old who hasn’t had her period is not less ready for a sexual relationship than the ten year old who has. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2014, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ftr-ephebophilia-pedophilia/696914/68 "2014-09-02T02:01:07Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > It’s strange – we live in a culture that hypersexualizes pre-pubescents (in kiddie-pageants, etc.) while simultaneously infantilizing teenagers. Do we actually live in a culture where it’s common to “hypersexualize” pre-pubescents? How many people have you met in your entire life who put their small children in kiddie pageants? I’ve never met a single one. It’s a tiny fringe thing, something probably fewer than one percent of people are into, and which derives such fame as it has mostly from the fact that it’s held up as being a total freak show. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2014, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ftr-ephebophilia-pedophilia/696914/69 "2014-09-02T02:16:08Z")
> [@blindboyard](#): > > Alos, what about hebephilia? That also exists. An attraction to Jewish women? That’ll be me. (researching) Oh. It’s not that. Instead it’s creepy instead of just being the Impossible Dream. > [@Learjeff](#): > > Lusting after, by itself, isn’t bad. Acting on it is. You don’t get off THAT easily, Bucko: > [@Matthew 5:28](#): > > But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [September 2, 2014, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ftr-ephebophilia-pedophilia/696914/70 "2014-09-02T02:39:24Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > [QUOTE=AHunter3] > The problem with sex involving young people is ONLY, EXCLUSIVELY that they are in a position of such severely limited power compared to that of older people (especially adults but not limited to adults) that consent isn’t something that can be reasonably spoken of and ascertained. Nope. That is one very important reason. Probably the single most important reason. It is an act that they do not have the necessary power to resist and reject. It is predatory. But it isn’t the only, exclusive reason…young children aren’t physically and psychologically prepared for sexuality is also a reason it shouldn’t happen. To dismiss it as “not a problem” is wrong-headed. There can be more than one good reason for something. [/QUOTE] \*\* spends some time considering your response \*\* I think that when I tend to consider the possibility of young children and sexual experience, I’m envisioning the things they might do with each other. (As I said, I think older people getting sexually involved with children is an unfixably unworkable proposition; the older have too much power in the relationship to the point that consent is a meaningless construct; hence, having roped them out of the picture, I’m thinking of two children of equivalent age). a) “aren’t physically prepared for sexuality”. Usually when I encounter that phrase (or other versions thereof) it’s referring rather specifically to girl children’s physical capacity for penis-in-vagina sex and furthermore most of those discussions are about girl childrens’ lack of physical accommodation to a male ADULT’S penis for penis-in-vagina sex. Let’s clear the mindspace of adult males and their penises. Are young girls physically unprepared for penis-in-vagina sex with boys of the same age? Yeesh, is that likely anyhow? OK, maybe now I’m the one assuming children to have less of a specific sexual nature/appetite than (some of them) do… just because my sexual interests and nature and whatnot hadn’t gotten to that point until I was at least 15 doesn’t mean that’s true of all children, so… hypothetical pair of 5th graders, 11 years old, they want to “go all the way”. The question being whether either of them, or both of them, is physically incapable in such a way as to make them vulnerable to physical damage of some sort. ?? I’m not a doctor… honestly I can’t imagine the attempt physically hurting the guy, but if someone were to assert that the girl’s vaginal tissues, etc, would be hurt by the attempt, I admit I would not know otherwise… b) “aren’t…psychologically prepared for sexuality”. Meh. If two fifth graders want to touch and fool around and nudge each other’s sexually responsive regions as an expression of their sexual feelings, my gut reaction is that we, as older folk, do far more harm trying to intervene and keep them from doing so than they would to to each other as consenting 11 year olds. Again I admit I am drawing from my own memory of what I felt and was ready for and so on and it sure as hell wasn’t penis in vagina sex, not then, not yet. If I had known that I wasn’t some kind of pervert for liking girl shapes down there, how girls are different from boys, and had had the courage to tell a girl about those feelings? If I had had a girlfriend in 5th grade the way I had had in 3rd grade? If she had indicated that she had reciprocal feelings about boys and boy parts? I have no idea if that’s a very likely scenario, but just on the off-chance that some occasional young kids communicate and share openly enough to share that kind of secret, and end up in that situation, honestly I think they’d probably go at it in a healthier way than the average 17 year old, whose approach to sex is going to be far more polluted by standardized scripted stuff. I’m open to counterarguments but I just don’t see it as a worrisome harmful thing. Stepping back out to my original statement that the ONLY thing making sex that involves children wrong is power differential. Hmm, yeah on re-read I can see how that could read as a claim that the only thing making sex BETWEEN CHILDREN AND ADULTS wrong is the power differential, as if we could somehow wave that away (even in a hypothetical situation) and then be discussing sex between adults and children without a power differential to worry about. That’s not where I was going with that. I don’t think that’s ever, under any circumstance (hypothetical or otherwise) possible. Adults are more ADULT than children. You can’t fix that. It’s an inequality. Umm, so I wasn’t thinking in those terms as far as what makes it bad for children to be involved in sex. ---
**Author:** ![rsa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/839c29/32.png) [@rsa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rsa)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2014, 2:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ftr-ephebophilia-pedophilia/696914/71 "2014-09-04T02:36:14Z")
> [@zoid](#): > > I’ll agree with this as long as it’s clear we’re talking about teenagers who are fully sexually developed physically. [Like this One?](https://i.chzbgr.com/maxW500/8113810688/h624F4F04/) :eek: [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ftr-ephebophilia-pedophilia/696914.md?page=3)