How could people in a society live with pedophiles?

Great Debates
21

No, they don’t.

Well, for one thing, some people value their own biological children far more than anyone else.

Some societies don’t view what we call abuse as abuse - they might say well, sure, that kid has to provide sexual services but that kid isn’t starving on the street, has food and a soft bed and protection so what’s to complain about? Some societies don’t view a man marrying a 10 year old and having sex with her as abuse, they view that as being a good husband. Someone maims a kid and sets him or her to begging and justifies it by saying that enables the kid to make money.

In other words, some people have very different outlooks than we do. I will also note that acknowledging that in no way means you approve of any of that - I find all of the practices I mention disgusting and reprehensible.

^ This.

Yep, basically.

Such groups are led by a strong person - said person pretty much is the law in the group and if said person is, by our standards, depraved, yes, you can get all sorts of horrible things happening. Such groups have no police - law is by group consensus and enforced by the group. Notice how people on, say, the internet leap to conclusions on little evidence? Imagine if all the “law and order” in your world were made and dished out by people like that. If the headman wants to bugger children either he does so and no one says anything, or else the group is going to have to murder him because hunter-gatherers don’t have jails to contain such people. Lots of cultures have practiced marriage by abduction, which is basically kidnapping a woman and then having full sexul access to her, her consent or not being irrelevent. Small groups like that are vulnerable to other groups simply showing up and trying to take whatever they have (including women and children), so all men have to learn to fight, and probably will fight quite a bit to defend their group throughout their adult lives.

As bad as modern society can be, it’s still a heck of a lot better for women, children, and the vulnerable than most of the past.

22

I don’t see this as a General Question. Moved to Great Debates.
samclem, moderator.

23

First of all, it’s important to distinguish between pedophilia, sexual activity with children and sexual abuse towards children and how all of these terms are culturally situated.

Pedophilia is the sexual desire towards children. From what we’ve been able to gather, it appears to be an orientation that is fixed either at birth or at a very young age and incredibly hard to alter once it’s present. It’s important to understand that not all sexual abusers of children are pedophiles, “opportunistic abusers” abuse children in the same way that straight men turn to homosexual activities in prison, more out of a lack of other options than any real desire. At the same time, while reliable information about this is hard to gather due to how sensitive it is as a topic but there appears to be a sizable contingent of pedophiles who have no desire to practice sexual activity with children. As far as I can tell, although I’m far from an expert on this, pedophilia is reviled the world over, even in countries in which regular sexual contact with children occurs.

On the other end of the spectrum, it’s important to distinguish between sexual activity and sexual abuse. In the West, it’s taken as an article of faith that all sexual activity below a certain arbitrary age must in some way involve sexual abuse and that’s certainly how the legal system treats it but there’s also a degree of convenient fiction that we’ve adopted with this approach (I think we can all agree that two teens who are barely below the age cutoff, sending nude selfies to each other involve imperceptibly minimal levels of abuse).

For example, the Etoro tribe of Papua New Guinea believe that young boys must ingest the semen of their elders daily from the age of 7 until 17 to properly mature and grow strong. In the West, this is considered a sexual act but is this even considered a sexual act amongst the Etoro people? I’m not sure, having never met an Etoro but I would be willing to believe they regard it as non sexual behavior and, therefore cannot be sexual abuse. It would equally as absurd to them as suggesting to a westerner that they are sexually abusing a baby by breastfeeding it because adults suckling on a breast is considered a sexual act in the West.

For many cultures, the notions of both sexual acts and sexual abuse differ significantly from that in the west. While descriptions of Bacha bazi in Afghanistan certainly sounds abusive and I’m willing to grant that it’s an objectively deplorable practice, I’m not certain if can be framed as sexual abuse.

Children of every culture, in every age have been subjected to abuse for a myriad of reasons. Even in the west, is forcing a child to work in a restaurant so you can support your family abuse? Is a football coach forcing kids to run until they puke abuse? Is preventing a child from hanging out with a “bad kid” friend abuse? Is physically disciplining a child abuse? Is not providing a child with every available educational opportunity abuse?

Often, we conveniently define as “not abuse” all the practices that we happen to personally participate in. But under that same framework, it’s possible to see how Afghanis can justify Bacha Bazi for a plethora of reasons that make it ok for them, even if it’s objectively hurting the child.

On a completely separate note, there is a vast world of difference from sitting in an armchair and pondering what would be the best path for a child and being situated in the real world and having to choose between multiple objectively deplorable options and trying to figure out the least worst. I don’t think there’s any significant population of people who are happy that they have to maim children beg. But when the choice you perceive is having your child starve to death or be maimed so they can beg enough to eat, it’s hard to confidently declare that you would never maim your child in that circumstance unless you’ve personally had to make that choice. I think a lot of the deplorable circumstances that we see children under, including child prostitution and bacha bazi are made under these constraints and that the far more productive path of action is not to judge those actions but to work such that people never have to face those choices.

24

Not in the way that it’s commonly conceived of in the west. For example, infanticide “has been practiced on every continent and by people on every level of cultural complexity, from hunters and gatherers to high civilization, including our own ancestors. Rather than being an exception, then, it has been the rule.”

It’s only due to our collective cultural amnesia that we’re willing to place common narratives and tropes onto primitive people. But the reality has always been far more complex and nuanced than simplistic stories about primitive man living in harmony with nature.

25

Look at this adorable, doe-eyed young cow. Imagine you pet it, rub its fur, see how it looks at you with its innocent big eyes. Don’t you want to protect it? Keep it safe, let it stay with its mom, let it roam free untill it dies of old age?

Hindus in India do.

They wonder what kind of people can exploit cows for their own pleasure. Like you, when you eat a juicy burger or steak. Hindus are outraged at people who kill or eat cows. In india, a cow killer could be chased by an angry, outraged mob.

So, what Kimstu said. You are a product of your culture. You are taught to hate child abusers, so you do. Personally, I feel that’s a rather cheap and easy way to feel morally superior. It’s easy to hate them towelheads and them pedos, and joining the pile-on, the angry mob.

If your empathy for innocent and defenseless creatures went so far as to eat vegan, I would have a lot more respect for you.

And, if you’re so against child abuse, how are you on non-sexual child abuse? So, you hate it when a twelve year old boy would be locked up to eb sexually abused. How about if that twelve year old boy would be in forced labor to produce your garments, your cotton, your chocolate?Do you take extra precaution to choose only the brands that are child-slave free? I would hope so. But I’m afraid you’ve always looked the other way, because that is just …easier.

26

It’s important to find the fine line between absolute moral relativism and cultural imperialism. It’s very easy to push too far in either direction and get into trouble.

Actual, legitimate child abuse is deplorable and all people should be working to stop it wherever it is situated in the world. But, at the same time, it’s important to understand how our understanding of abuse is framed by cultural context and work to understand how the same objective series of facts can be placed under different frames in order to produce different interpretations.

27

I think what most of this boils down to is that a whole lot of what we think of as “natural” and “obvious” and “instinctive” - a whole lot more than we like to admit - is nothing of the kind. It is, instead, a product of culture and environment, and different cultures end up with very, very different ideas of what is natural and normal.

28

To address just the thread title, we as a society need to realize the pedophilia is not a choice, only acting on it is a choice. All this talk of “abomination” in not good for understanding the problem or solution. It tends to herd those with pedophilia tendencies into hiding the fact. And some are so devious as to go through seminary school for years and play the priest just to get the opportunity to use the power of the church to their advantage in manipulating boys into sex acts. If we get this Bible crap out of the debate–abomination etc–and have a culture where people can go to someone and be honest about their impulses, at the very least it could be explained that it’s not a curse but an aberration of nature where acting out is a crime. Hey, I love women, but that doesn’t entitle me to have sex with any of them. So there has to be some way to reach a person with these tendencies to say it’s your nature but it’s not everyone’s nature and you just have to lump it.

29

Hate it or not Paedophilia is natural but unacceptable that is why we have laws to protect children and anyone who breaks those laws and is a proven active paedophile should receive a whole of life sentence.
There is some confusion on what is an act of paedophilia. A paedophile is someone who wants to commit a sexual act upon a prepubescent child, as a rule of thumb 12 years of age, above that age we have varying cases of sexual assault with an underage young person. The reason I have gone into this at some depth is the media has a habit of misusing the word paedophile an example in the U.K. the age of consent is 16. A teacher in his twenties was accused of having an affair with a student and one of the national papers accused him of being a paedophile which is completely ridicules. To my mind it is reports such as this lesson the impact of the crime of paedophilia.

Paedophilia is a choice, the paedophile can control his urges so that children remain safe or he can choose to sexually abuse children between the ages of new born and aprox. 12. If they choose to abuse then they must receive a whole of life sentence

30

Just as a point of clarification: Pedophilia is not a choice, by most metrics. Sexual contact with children is a choice.

31

Er…why not? Per capita rates allow us to compare groups of different sizes.

If Detroit (pop 680k) had 1,000 murders in a year, and the nation of France (pop 66m) had 1,100 (all numbers fictional), would you say that France had the more severe murder problem?

32

I don’t think it actually is openly accepted. Just because something happens doesn’t mean it’s openly accepted.

I’ll admit I don’t know a whole lot about the subject, but in the NYT article linked upthread the Afghan villagers obviously do not approve of their children being sexually abused by local police and are angry that the American military isn’t doing more to prevent or punish such things.

I also have an Afghan-American friend who mentioned that when one of her other American-born relatives came out as gay, this led to huge drama in the family. This wasn’t so much because of religious objections to same-sex relationships (although I assume this was also a factor), but because to her relatives who grew up in Afghanistan or refugee camps “homosexual” meant “evil man who kidnaps little boys and rapes them”. Such people were to them like an all-too-real version of the Boogeyman.

33

Your confusion stems from your assumption that there is a universally shared set of axiomatic values. Even in so called Western nations we still have had systematic murder of children in events such as the holocaust.

34

It’s hard to get reliable information about it in the west due to how sensationalist a topic it is. The PBS documentary Dancing Boys is probably the best primary source and this FP piece is pretty good as well. According to SF Gate, “Some research suggests that half the Pashtun tribal members in Kandahar and other southern towns are bacha baz, the term for an older man with a boy lover.” but who knows how reliable that research is.

But Bacha Bazi actually follows a structure that we’ve seen in a number of historical cultures before. That is, exclusively boys are taken by adult men for sexual pleasure who are expected to be married to women. the act is not considered homosexual for the penetrator but is considered homosexual for the penetratee if they derive pleasure from it.

Although reliable information is hard to get on the motives, it appears that Bacha Bazi is used as a mechanism so that men won’t be tempted by their wives by using young boys as an outlet. The young boys are treated essentially as mastubatory aids (as well as status symbols) and there’s not a conception of abuse in the way we typically conceive of it in the west because there’s also not the association with pedophilia.

35

Agreed thank you

36

The main reason children are (over) valuable in our current society is there is simply less of them. In societies that don’t practice birth control, children frequently become a cheap commodity because there are so damn many. At times they are liabilities when agricultural people shift to urban living or there simply isn’t enough arable land for everybody to have sustainable farms. And children are not innocent. They are ignorant of ethical mores. They are more capable than adults of heinous acts of cruelty and not because they have been abused, but because they simply have not developed enough empathy to understand that other people have rights and emotions.

37

The motives of the men who abuse these boys isn’t really the question here, it’s why others supposedly accept it. According to my Afghan-American friend members of her extended family had grown up being warned to watch out for the bad men who’d try to rape them. So they apparently didn’t consider the sexual abuse of children to be acceptable, they just didn’t feel they could do much to prevent it other than teaching their kids to be careful. You can’t go to the police if they’re the ones committing the sexual abuse, as in the NYT article.

FWIW my friend isn’t Pashtun so I don’t have even anecdotal information about how the Pashtun feel about men who sexually abuse boys, but even if all Pashtun are fine with this (which seems unlikely to me) not everyone in Afghanistan is Pashtun.

38

People don’t “stand back and watch a child raped”. Only a psychopath could watch a child get rape and not try to help. If child abuse was always that blatant and graphic, it simply wouldn’t happen.

What actually happens is that in public, you’ve got a well-respected man of the community, doing all the things that a well-respected man of the community does. Including being extra friendly towards certain boys. People will of course have their suspicions, but they will downplay the severity of the situation to justify why they shouldn’t get involved. They will imagine that he is just a “mild” pedo–the kind that just fondles his victims. Maybe there isn’t even any nudity involved, just heavy petting over the clothes. That’s creepy, but it’s not rape rape. People convince themselves that boys do worse things to themselves. And if intercourse does comes to mind, it’s kind of easy to assure oneself that it is consensual. Maybe the boy likes it. Who doesn’t like an orgasm? Then they tell themselves that it would be one thing if the kid was a “good kid”, like their own son. But this kid is kind of trashy anyway. At least he has someone paying attention to him.

In other words, people tell themselves all kinds of stories when the full picture is hidden from view. Unlike you, I don’t think people have a natural instinct to protect anyone, let alone children. Instead, I think they have a tendency to avoid danger and hardship, and they will rationalize all kinds of behavior to maintain their own safety and security. It’s easy to call the cops on the pedo when he’s the bum who lives under the bridge. In that situation, you are the hero. But if he’s a normal, everyday guy who has lots of friends and defenders, folks will stay mum. No one wants to be the one who has to accuse the “good guy” of a heinous crime, only for it to come back and haunt them.

39

I’m astonished that this thread has made it so far without anyone mentioning Kitty Genovese.

I’d also be remiss to mention that various societies, such as the ancient Greeks, had similar man-boy relationships. And even in Greece, there were some that approved of it and many that it did not. I suspect that the incidence of pedophilia is similar, whether in the US or Afghanistan or Ancient Greece. The difference being the presence or absence of powerful central authorities that can take action.

Also, all pedophiles deserve to be shot in the head. Just thought I’d throw that out there.

40

Well, this is the Straight Dope, and we tend to be reasonably up-to-date on our discredited urban myths.

So in fact, the 1964 murder of Genovese, appalling and tragic as it was, is not a particularly good illustration of the human tendency towards willful callous indifference to another person’s suffering and peril on the part of uninvolved bystanders.