Well, our current ridiculous legal definition of pedophilia (any person under 18) would make a lot of historical relationships pedophilic.
Mary, mother of Jesus, pregnant at age 14 or 15.
Romeo & Juliet at ages 15 & 14 respectively.
Many of the Royals of Europe & Britain, married off at ages 9-12.
If we had reasonable laws relating to age of consent (relevant to puberty), this could be discussed more sensibly. But under the current laws, probably most of us first had sex when it was not legal for us to do so.
Sex has *always *been talked about. As long as there are older brothers, sex will always be talked about. When it was only talked about in whispers, molestation was horrible because good boys and girls wouldn’t do that, and when it’s hysterically shouted about it’s horrible because it’s making the grown ups all crazy and hysterical. There’s your excluded middle, I guess. Rational and calm, yet open and honest, seems to be the only way to “win” a losing battle.
I think my POV is partly coloured, to be honest, by my dislike of certain people (not you) equating homoseuality and paedophilia as if they were the same thing - but not doing the same for heterosexuality.
However, I do think that being attracted to a person who is categorically not sexual is more like being attracted to, say, animals, dead people or inanimate objects than being attracted to a sexual being who could return your feelings. There’s no reciprocity there.
(For the sake of clarity, I’m thinking of paedophilia proper, not pederasty).
I don’t know…I keep picturing a scenario in my mind…medieval days where a girl gets raped and the father can’t marry her off because she’s used goods. The family is saddled with her for life, no one wants her, and she’s nothing but a burden for the rest of her days.
I actually work with a girl who went back to her abusive raping-bastard husband (they’re in India) because her father told her that divorce from that prick would result in her sisters being unable to marry. So a woman’s worth is based on her body in many places. I think this is where the seeds of rape shame were originally planted. It’s been around for a loooong time.
Really? Cite please? I ask because it’s interesting, not to have an argument. Of course, Mohammed also married a nine-year-old, though apparently didn’t consummate the marriage for some years.
Only purists and legal pedants would argue that that’s paedophilia.
Who? (Again, asking for info, not asking for an argument). I have heard of such marrage contracts, but they were usually contracts, with no sex involved.
I think most people, like me, are thinking of paedophilia as being about pre-pubescent children or children who have barely entered pubescence. At least, any discussion about paedophilia is best served by focusing on that rather than on children of an age where laws vary and ethics even moreso.
Fair enough. FTR, I’d list heterosexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality, pedophilia and asexuality as orientations. I’m not sure about zoophilia, because I don’t know enough about it to know if zoophiles are primarily or exclusively attracted to animals, or if animals are just one option in their repertoire. That is, I don’t know if it’s a paraphila or not.
I also don’t believe children are not sexual, having been one and parented two. But I will agree that, for at least some pedophiles, whether or not their target is sexually attracted to *them *isn’t a point of concern.
This part of your hypothesis is ignoring how historically people dealt with sexual abuse of children: by pretending it didn’t happen, by denying it. Uncle Ned couldn’t have hurt you, he was only being nice. (Along with raising children to never say “No” to adults, and force them to kiss Uncle Ned because he’s family, resulting in mostly femal children who, when grown up, were unable to say no when men wanted to take advantage of them.)
For decades, it was “impossible” due to cultural tabu, that boys could be abused by women, so whenever it happened, no drama was made about it. The victims repeatedly say how the failure of the other adults to even believe them that something wrong was going on was terribly harmful and hurting, along with the implications that they weren’t real men, otherwise they’d be enjoying this. (It’s fun, didn’t you know!)
Children don’t know what to feel - they are not tabula rasa. Unfortunately, they usually take their cues from the molester first. So they feel uncomfortable with what Uncle Ned is doing, because they can’t cope with what 's happening, but Uncle Ned tells them it’s okay, and you love Uncle Ned, don’t you? So you don’t want to disappoint him, and if you’re still feeling bad, it’s not because Uncle Ned is bad, it’s because you must be bad.
That’s the big gap between adults and Children who are abused (also abused in other ways): Children draw massivly wrong conclusions, blaming themselves first, and that’s what messes up their lives.
If you had simply argued that the overdramatisation, the whole Court process and media circus, does additional damage, most would’ve probably agreed with you. The “Wildwasser” (Wildwater*) scandal some years back showed how false accusations can cause severe damage, too.
That was a well-meaning but overzealous and badly-trained counseling group that let children play with “anatomically correct dolls”, which really had oversized penises and vaginas, and then interpreted pretty every reaction of the children as sexual abuse.
Or if you’d said that with help and therapy, a child can eventually overcome sexual abuse and grow up a happy adult, not ruin his complete life (as has been said before about female rape), then again, most people would probably agree with you.
Did you ever read the descriptions of victims, not of normal people having sex???
You might say “I’ve read about children fighting each other, or men having bar fights, so what’s so bad when parents beat their children, it’s just a bit of pain?” Only it’s not, and if you read any basic psychology book, or a victims account, you can see how deeply messed up the children become because of the violence penetrated against them.
Moreover, the question is: Why does Uncle Ed touch little Susies vagina? To help her feel good about herself and know what sex feels like, as in adult relationship? Because it’s necessary for growing up, such when mommy makes them eat their veggies, or go to school? Because Susie enjoys it, such as when Daddy is tickling her, or Mummy petting her (in a non-sexual caress)? NO. The people who do this to children have deep-seated problems. To a normal adult, children are simply not attractive as sex partners (they might be charming and nice to look at from an aesthetic point of view, but not longer than one minute). They want to feel superior because they have own self-esteem issues with adults (which is why they often have been abused themselves before). They want power, and want fun for themselves, not what’s good for the child.
Exclusivity doesn’t come into it, I don’t think. Plenty of paedophiles also have functioning adult relationships.
I was a kid once too, obviously, and also have a kid, and also teach children; I’d say that pre-pubescent children are curious about sexuality, but are not actually sexual themselves, any more than their role-playing of cops and robbers makes them policemen or criminals.
In the last instance, most, if not all, weren’t consummated until the age of puberty. It was more of a betrothal, which was considered to be as good as marriage. scifisam2009, Mary, Queen of Scots was betrothed to the Dauphin of France, at the age of 5. Francois was about 3 years old. They were raised together and formally married when Mary was 17 and Francois was 15.
Or Richard, the Duke of York, one of the famous “Princes in the Tower”, and younger brother of King Edward V. He was married age the age of 4 to the 5 year old , Anne de Mowbray, 8th Countess of Norfolk.. Anne died when she was 8 years old, two years before the disappearance of her husband.
Like I said, most of the time the marriage wasn’t consummated until later-but “later” would have been when they were young teens. However, that was mostly due to the fact that people did not live as long as they do today.
Okay, enough of that-back to the OP.
Thanks for sating my curiosity. Like I thought, they were contracts, not necessarily about sex. Of course, not that long ago, that’s mainly what marriages were.
They were contracts-but they were considered as good as marriage-the only difference is that they were not yet consummated.
(In Mary’s and Francois’s case, though, they truly did love one another-even if it was only young, teenage-type love, as they had been raised together.)
As for the OP-do you have a cite for someone being traumatized, or an instance of someone BEING coddled and told, “There there, what an AWFUL thing, but you’ll be okay, you’ll be okay!” Any instance, or anything?
Wrong. That relationship is age appropriate by any standard. A lot of people wouldn’t approve of them being sexually involved, but that’s different. By no means is a relationship between a 15-year-old and a 14-year-old pedophilia unless the speaker has no idea what the term means.
Similarly few people in the U.S. would think this is healthy, but it’s no pedophilia either.
While age of consent laws are problematic, you’re incorrect. Many states have written their laws of consent so that there are exemptions made for people who are close in age.
My GF is a professional with academic training in this area. These issues come up a lot in our social circles when with her colleagues. I think she would recommend starting at http://www.atsa.com/ and following as deeply into the academic (and correspondingly non-emotional) literature as needed.
I remember some sort of report in the UK reference counselling which said that counselling actually made things worse for the victim(This was for, I believe survivors of serious train crashes and the like not sexual abuse)something which i’ve always had a gut feeling about.
But that said I think childmolesters are scum and if sane should be executed,if insane euthanised.
Anyone who harms children isn’t fit to walk on this earth.
The molester isn’t the victim the child is.
And if the kiddy fiddler cant help himself or is trying to find a substitute for the lack of motherlove in his childhood then knowing that ,he should do the decent thing and top himself so as not to be a further danger to children.
If he does that I applaud him.
So what you’re saying is that you would be cool with it if some random man you have no attraction to decided to anally rape you tonight as long as he used a lot of lube so it didn’t hurt? And you would really prefer that your family reacted to your anal rape with “Oh well, these things happen” rather than getting too upset about it?
My point is, there are many ways that child sexual abuse can be traumatic, even if nobody else finds out and even if the sexual assault is not painful in itself.
Even as an adult with a fully developed sex drive, there are plenty of times when I don’t feel like having sex, not even with my loving boyfriend (and certainly not with anyone else!). If he tried to force himself on me anyway, hell yeah, that would be traumatic even if he didn’t physically hurt me in the process.
When ADULTS find it traumatic to be coerced into sex even with someone they might be sexually attracted to, why would we ever expect a child to want to be coerced into sex with someone they have no sexual interest in to begin with?
(Consider also that most cases of abuse occur within the family or close friends of the family - do YOU want to have sex with your uncle?)
Another aspect of the issue is that sometimes abusers do cause physical injury to the child. There was a case in the Detroit area a while back in which an infant died because of the internal organ trauma that was caused by being sexually assaulted. Children sometimes catch STDs from their abusers. Adding to the emotional trauma is that children are frightened into secrecy by the abusers threatening that bad things will happen if anyone finds out.
There are many families where kids never do get the “You poor thing!” treatment because their family is in denial that any abuse is occurring. There are plenty of cases where Mommy looks the other way while the kid’s stepfather mistreats her daughter. Those kids still suffer from it.