There’s a fairly large area between “morally questionable” and “morally reprehensible”, too.
Pduol, in your fantasies, do you find yourself focusing more on the body or on the asymmetric power balance that her age implies?
I’m with most people here, supportive that you have acknowledged your desires without being overly judgemental. It was not that long ago that gays would be universally detested for the same thing, and sexuality being immutable, I cannot see myself condemning you without telling myself that I would have been a homophobe if born a century earlier.
I think most people choose to focus too much on the child victims in this issue instead of the person whose sexuality forces him to have these thoughts (Personally, I hate children so I have no problems ignoring their side :D). I think a little less self hate would be ok, just accept the fact that you can’t act out your desires. I mean there are a bunch of people who I would love to beat up in my past, but I know I’m not going to track them down and do what I want to do. I don’t apologize for it though, and I don’t hate myself for thinking they need a good asskicking. You shouldn’t either. It’s just something that happened to you. Don’t act on it and you’ll be fine
I’m certainly not denying those two facts. I would only assert these three things, the third being the most important:
- the chances of literal physical damage as a result of sex with a teenage woman are not much higher than the risk of such damage with an adult woman.
- the physical impulse to have sex with teenage girls arises from the same basic attraction that draws a man to have sex with adult women.
- if one is physically attracted to children, one has a much more ingrained and basic moral problem than one has if one has sex with a sixteen-year-old (past a certain age). Sexual attraction to children is more of a this-man’s-brain-has-something-obviously-wrong-with-it problem, a more basic, uncontrollable issue of drive and desire. By contrast, a man who willingly has sex with a sixteen-year-old girl has more of a problem with his moral conscience and awareness. He still has issues, but those issues are more intellectual and therefore more understandable, less tragic, and also probably more easy to deal with. The difference between the two would be like the difference between somebody who has an uncontrollable physical impulse to eat dirt and somebody who eats junk food all the time.
I imagine that we don’t have much to dispute here. Of course, my perspective may be different from yours, since I’m twenty years old. I don’t really think that I’d want to go out with a woman who wasn’t yet in college, however.
Today’s Oprah features interviews with several convicted child molesters, if anyone’s interested. The ads emphasize that at least 90 percent of victims know their attackers and that ‘stranger danger’ is overemphasized.
This is true with rape, generally. I heard somewhere that 95% of rapes are convicted by people the victims know. I don’t know if this figure was exactly accurate or whether it pertained only to the United States, but I think it’s safe to say that the “woman walks down dark alley…” kind of rape is not as common as people think.
I’ve wondered why this misconception is so common. Do women not want to think that the men they consider their friends and acquaintances could rape them? An understandable desire, no doubt, but one which could put them in danger.
I think someone could probably become a monster by dwelling upon, fantasising about and deliberately developing their desires - and that person is then a risk, but until they act on the desires, it’s all moot anyway, because we can’t read minds. (I suppose someone merely talking luridly about their thoughts might provide encouragement for another person to cross the threshold from desire to action, which would be bad).
But generally, yeah, if monstrous thoughts made people into monsters, all the decent authors in horror, detective and probably several other genres would belong behind bars (which clearly makes no sense)
Is Gavin de Becker (author of The Gift of Fear) a guest on the show? de Becker has been a guest on Oprah previously, and those two points are common themes of his book.
There are many types of community work that don’t involve children.
That’s committed, not convicted, sorry.
Not sure, I just tuned in. I think most of the episode is devoted to a group interview with the molesters themselves. Scary, fascinating stuff. Apparently they’d all convinced themselves that they weren’t causing their victims any harm, at the time.
As with rapists, I think it is easier for people to believe that molesters are another species living on the fringes of society bearing scarlet Ms, rather than trusted friends and family members. Glad to see Oprah dispelling this myth.
That’s good, because the only way that made sense was if most people who were raped were attorneys.
Wait, wait. Desiring a 16-year old that looks sexually mature is nothing wrong. They are built to cause desire. We, as a society, have decided that although 16 is sexually mature, it is not mentally mature and thus created laws to protect a person who although being ready for sex, might not be ready for the consequences.
This is certainly not the case of the OP (who prefers about 11yo) or Cesario (I don’t know his preferences but I think they tend towards much younger). In both cases, their target are not sexually mature. They don’t have secondary sexual characters and their bodies are not prepared to engage in sexual intercourse. That they are not built to be sexually attractive is what makes their desires deviant and that they could be seriously hurt is why the laws are needed and in place.
Defending pedophilia by admitting to having looked at a 17-year old hottie is exploiting a border case that is not truly related to the issue at hand.
Now, having drawn a parallel between the OP and Cesario, I fell obligated to also make the distinction. The OP seems to be fully aware of the wrongness of his desires and making an effort not to act on it. Kudos to him for that. It must be hard going through life wanting something you cannot have. I think of a couple of diabetic friends who had a real sweet tooth before contracting diabetes. They are constantly craving what they know would destroy them. It is not fun. Top that with the fact that what the OP wants is not only out of his reach but also stigmatized by society. That you can’t not just indulge your desire but neither can you even admit to your desire. That nobody has any sympathy for your plight. It must be hell.
Seeing as that violates everything HIPAA actually says (at least how my psychologist has explained it) I’m gonna have to ask you to cite. The last thing I’m gonna let someone do is try to motivate a pedophile not to get help out of fear. In my mind, anyone who does so shares responsibility for any crime committed.
Specifically, I’m challenging the idea that internal policy can somehow override federal law. I know there’s that paper you have to sign which might give them a bit of wiggle room, but if you’re stupid enough to sign something you haven’t read all the way through, then you deserve whatever happens to you.
As far as I know, the crap about required reporting must involve “reasonable suspicion that harm has or is likely to come to patient or others.” If there’s some jurisdiction where this is not true, then I suggest that nobody go to therapy there, as it has made HIPAA a joke.
Of course the OP should have due diligence in doing research, but that should go without saying. I’m just trying to let him know it’s not as bad as most people make it seem. The last thing I want is for this guy to self harm because he doesn’t think there’s a way out.
Isn’t there an imminent danger exception to confidentiality? An exception that compels disclosure? state and federal law clearly override office policies and I believe the standard of knowledge/imminence is fairly high, but you could have different conceptions in mind.
I believe in times past the preisthood was a defacto refuge for such people. Those with awareness of the wrong of it. I think a lot of men tried to withdraw from society and pray away the evil. Which would go a long way to explaining why there is such a high incidence of child abuse with the legions of priests.
Why wouldn’t you experiment with chemical castration? Surely the dosage has some variations to it, perhaps it could be scaled to become acceptable. Perhaps an asexual existence would be a relief to someone surely tortured by such demons? Shouldn’t he at least be willing to try it?
It’s the “reasonable suspicion” part that can be a problem. In the current hysteria about the predatory nature of child molesters, there are definitely a number of mental health “professionals” who will interpret the mere voicing of such desires as imminent danger to those around him. It sounds like the OP has already run into such an individual. There are plenty of crappy therapists out there.*
On the other hand, there are any number of skilled therapists out there who understand the difference between fantasy and reality, and who are sympathetic to those (all of us, really) struggling with destructive thoughts. My own destructive thoughts are much more mundane, but my therapist is of extraordinary caliber, and I am confident that I could speak to him about pedophiliac urges if that were my problem.
It would be something to bring up cautiously, certainly, and after some level of trust had already been established. But I’m sure it can be done.
*A friend of mine had this total dingbat of a therapist who was so freaked out that he had been a prostitute as a tweener/teenager that she COULDN’T LET IT GO. Obviously, that experience contributed to his current mental state, but it had been a decade since he had been a boy whore, and he had more urgent problems to face. She had trouble talking about anything else.
I’m way too lazy to look up the real facts, but I know that on The Soprano’s, Dr. Malfi cautioned Tony not to divulge anything that would force her to call the authorities.
Take that with the proverbial grain of salt.
Oh, I see the confusion. I meant “acceptable pedophile” as in “known pedophile whom society considers acceptable,” not “person who’s accepted by society but is secretly a non-offending pedophile.”
I would imagine the first category is vanishingly small. How many people can name one, other than the OP? Society has a tendency to conflate “pedophile” and “child molester,” and while that conflation exists, people like the OP are probably going to keep silent.
I have found the reactions to these two people utterly fascinating. I’ve been a little gobsmacked by the bruhaha that’s exploded here over the last few days, and now this thread. It’s a little surreal.
This is the thread I imagined when I clicked “yes, a thread should be allowed” in the poll-- it was a philosophical yes ‘in theory’ (without the Caesario personality factor), as I think a lot can be learned here, or at least poses some serious shit in terms of questions about individual experience and the limits of relativism. I had read the Dan Savage column just a bit before and thought it was an interesting question. We’ve (or social liberals have, anyway) accepted that some people are born with/develop paraphillias of various sorts, but this is one which is just off the list (like rape-fantasy rightfully so, as it involves those unable to consent). So I’ve wondered. . . this would be a suck situation to find oneself in, with no agency. Sad and really alienating-- imagine having a involuntary secret interior thought that divulging to anyone-- closest sibling, spouse-- would lead to instant pariah-ship.