Yes, but that’s different than someone saying they want to meet a 12-yr old to have sex: The motorist committed an act when he hit and killed someone; the intent bears on the question of how criminal his act was. That’s very different than arresting and jailing someone who agrees to do something criminal, but (for whatever reason) never does. “Freeze! You are under arrest for thinking about not paying your taxes this year!”
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What if the pedestrian was shooting a gun at him? If the motorist’s intent was to defend himself, not necessarily kill the pedestrian, does it matter?
Badtz Maru: I think you are dabbling in territory best left to professionals and people who understand the psychological reasons and implications of pedophilia. When you say that you will teach your daughter about “these kind of people,” you prove that you are light years away from understanding what pedophilia is about. Pedophiles pray on little boys just as much as little girls. Know the facts before you possibly do some damage.
As for Jeremy’s Evil Twin, I think you need some serious counseling or education regarding pedophilia if these are your true feelings. Yes, it is unfortunate that people are afflicted with a mental illness that causes them to be sexually attracted to children . . . however, they need help, not sympathy and acceptance. And anyone who would presume that children enjoyed being molested, whether it be you or someone masquerading as a scientist, is a sick, sick person who needs help before they harm another child. You are perpetuating terrible, terrible lies JET, and I ask that you stop before you give someone the wrong idea that what they are doing is acceptable. I find it deeply insulting that you would compare someone who printed false, hurtful lies about pedophilia and molestation to a scientific mind such as Galileo’s.
Badtz Maru
I believe what you are doing to be really stupid. You encourge pedophiles. You my be messing up an investigation. You are not in a position of authority do do anything about somebody you are talking to.
Leave this to the professionals, and if you need to do something, teach the children. Adults need to teach childern that are pedifiles out there in the world. Any adult that allows their childern to acess the web, needs to explain all the things not to do. You truely do need to monitor what your child does. Just going in every fifteen minutes to see what they’re looking at is good. Setting the computer up in the family room is good also. You can watch television, and look every so often at what they are doing online.
I know quite about pedophilia, and I also admit that I have been using inaccurate terminology as I’m not exactly pretending to be pre-pubescent, just young and dumb. But whether it is considered pedophilia or hebephilia, I think it is extremely wrong for an adult to seek out 12 year old girls and try to initiate sexual conversations with them. I have the utmost respect for people who have sexual desires that would be harmful to act upon and therefore keep them to themselves. I’d say about 50% of the IMs I get from random conversations turn sexual in nature less than 10 lines in, check this example…
His Handle: asl?
My Handle: 12/f/tx
His Handle: hello
My Handle: hi
His Handle: whazzup?
My Handle: nada
His Handle: k
His Handle: have a bf?
My Handle: no
His Handle: masturbate?
My Handle: not often
His Handle: in the mood now?
My Handle: asl?
His Handle: 23/m/wv
Then the guy started trying to get my phone number (after making sure I was home alone). These guys who seek young girls out like this are the ones who are actually taking advantage of children to satisfy their urges, and this is illegal. Just attempting to solicit sex from a minor can be a 5 year sentence.
My Handle: hey you are in ny right
My Handle: you know where sunbury is?
Other Pervert’s Handle: no
Other Pervert’s Handle: where is it?
My Handle: its near NYC. my mom lives there
Other Pervert’s Handle: i live on the other end of the state
Other Pervert’s Handle: do you visit her much?
My Handle: sometimes
My Handle: around the holidays
Other Pervert’s Handle: maybe we could hook up if you are up in NYC for a few days
My Handle: Sunbury is in PA
Other Pervert’s Handle: okay
My Handle: but its real close its on the susquahana river
Other Pervert’s Handle: its a 6 hour drive for me
My Handle: oh
Other Pervert’s Handle: thats doable
My Handle:
Other Pervert’s Handle: as long as i know ahead of time
And later…
My Handle: what business r u in?
Other Pervert’s Handle: physical therapy
My Handle: whre do u work? a hospital?
Other Pervert’s Handle: no preschool
This last one is the one that bothered me the most, and I think after him I’ve decided to retire the handle.
We simulposted, as you can see I have decided to stop baiting them.
I’m definitely going to make sure that my stepdaughter (and my daughter if I have one) are aware of and not allowed to come into contact with these people - and they would if they made their username available for random chat, I have had 5 separate guys IM me within a minute of logging on before. One wonders how much the police can do about it, though, this is a very common crime considering how often it happens in my experience.
Oh, great. Every time I post here, somebody says I need counseling. Mail fraud? I need counseling. Downloading from Napster? I need counseling. Praising school shooters as heroes? I need counseling. (Ok, I’ll give on that last one…)
Don’t make the mistake of assuming that EVERY pedophilic relationship is equivalent to rape. I could make the same argument for adult heterosexuals. There was a case out here, some years ago, where a male photographer kidnapped a female (adult) model, drove her to the mountains, slit her throat and raped her corpse. Terrible, terrible crime. But is this indicative of EVERY heterosexual male who is attracted to adult women? NOT A CHANCE! If I were to make such an assertion, I’d be laughed right out of town.
Yet, everyone automatically assumes that any child who has sex with an adult has been raped. Remember the Polly Klaas rape/murder? Yet another terrible crime, but an even bigger crime was perpetuated by the media/prosecution lawyers/Klaas family who all presumed that this is how every single pedophile operates!
I can tell you that is NOT true, as I have associated with pedophiles on the Internet and in real life. I’ll admit that my original presumtions were the same as the public at large, that they are all rapists and murderers and enjoy hurting little kiddies. Nothing can be further from the truth. Sure, there are some sickos out there, like the ones Badtz Maru encountered, but believe me, they are the exception and NOT the norm.
Maybe you should hang out on some pedophile channels and chat boards and actually get to know the people there. It may just change your mind on the subject.
But after coming back to read this thread I feel as if I’m covered in slime.
Can I just say to SINsApple, I think you might want to look closer at What Jeremy’s etc said. I read it more as attempting to tease out the intricacies of the interactions, and acknowledging that not everything is black and white.
I know this to be so because of two friends of mine - both very close to me and people I respect highly.
“Abe” started to become sexually active at age 11. He actively cruised men’s rooms after school, linking with older men. He DID enjoy it. Didn’t have a horrible family life, just active hormones. He did the seeking. He’s now a middle-aged consultant in health education, a happy calm gay man, active in his religion, and the best advertisement for his religion I’ve ever met.
“George” was sent to live with a priest at the age of ten. From that day on he was repeatedly raped, until he ran away a year later and became a street kid. The priest used to feed him whiskey first, and after he’d come, would whisper to him (and this I think was the worst molestation) that George had tempted him, that he was the devil and he needed to be punished. George has had mental health problems all his life, has had great difficulty coming to terms with his homosexuality, and has only recently, as a middle-aged man, been able to form lasting loving relationships.
It’s not black and white, and that’s not an invitation to tolerance of evil, just reflects the complexity of human beings.
Enough of this stuff.
[sideline]AKAmame You’re on! A Cascade, in early May probably. Let’s post about it endlessly beforehand (“Sydney Dopefest”) and then put cute messages about each other in our sigs afterwards. Or we could just have the beers…**[sideline]
What is your motivation for defending some of the most useless excuses for humans that roam this great land?
I saw one of these message boards once. I know the trash talk and the self-pity that these guys spout. They lie to each other and to themselves in order to convince each other that what they are doing is not all that bad. The typical excuse is the old “I love to look at the human body” line. A close second is the “the art of nude youth” scam. These people mask their evil deed in speech so fake and obtuse that you can smell it for miles. They pat each other on the back, they stick together, they spread the lies… All in a constant effort to convince themselves that they are not the perverts we all know they are.
Don’t be taken in by the lies. They start small and move up – quickly. The fact that most of them only look at pictures is true, sure. Does that make it any less evil? Do you know what those children have to do for those pictures they so enjoy? Do you know the mental scars these children have to live with for the rest of their lives? It severely harms family relationships and any future adult sexual relationships.
The Rind Report is BS, plain and simple. Take a look at any rape/incest support group in the country – of which there are thousands. These people were molested as children. They did not like it. They were affected. I’m sure they were told they liked it at the time. I’m sure they were told they would be unaffected. I’m sure the mental damage was so severe to some that they are to this day still in denial and confusion about the true feelings they have. Get these people into therapy – true, honest therapy – and I guarantee you 90% will crack and admit to the life-long fear, loathing, and depression that those early abuses caused. The sad case is that people are willing to use one ill-conceived and badly developed report to justify the thoughts and actions they take. It’s the only way they can look at themselves in the mirror every morning. Instead, these people should be medicated or in serious therapy sessions.
Sure, they love children. And they’re willing to twist a child’s state of mind and reality around their little finger until they have convinced the child (and themselves) that they love them back. And then it’s all okay. And that they want it – like it even. Yeah, that’s it. It’s all okay. Now they feel better and they have done nothing wrong.
The net has caused an exposion of these perverts because they can mass together and do the whole ‘feel better about ourselves’ routine. They need that reassurance every few weeks, I suppose.
I have a very special loathing for these people. My sister had a good friend that was molested repeatedly by a family friend from 8 years old until she was 14 (a friend convinced her to turned him in).
But I’m sure she liked it, right. And will be unaffected. After all, he told her she wanted it. That it was all her idea. Right?
I think I know the board you are talking about…I’m tempted to post a link, except the mods would probably shit a brick if I did. (Not that it matters…I just checked and it turns out the board is gone. Oh well.)
Anyway…let me guess. You saw this board, was shocked and appalled by what you read, maybe posted a nasty flame saying the were all going to burn in hell and if you ever found out who they were you’d cut their balls off. And then you flushed your cache and never returned to even read the replies to your flame. In other words, you went on first impressions. You didn’t delve to find out what made these people really tick. You formed a judgement and quickly moved away. Nothing personal, but that’s hardly a way to create an informed opinion.
Yeah, some people at that board were real jerks. Others were downright scary. Most of them were definitely wallowing in self-pity (which I can’t really blame them for, hell if I were a black during the time of slavery, or a Jew during the Holocaust, my self-esteem would be shot to hell, too.) But hey, the Internet’s like that. I’ve been on many message boards that dealt with far less controversial topics, where the people were naturally clique-ish, hyper-defensive, and often downright ignorant.
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Depends on what type of pictures you are talking about. Do you mean hard-core kiddy porn? Yeah, what little I’ve seen of that is absolutely revolting. I’m not easily offended, but jeez, I’d rather jerk off to pictures of coprophilia than spend one second looking at that filth. That’s something I can’t find a defense for – maybe a real pedophile will come to this thread and give us his or her opinion…
But some of the pictures of plain nudity I found quite beautiful. Ever seen the work of Jock Sturges? Or Sally Mann? There’s a lot of controversy over whether this kind of photography is art or pornography. I don’t find it titillating, but I can see how pedophiles can get turned on by it. Hell, when I see a picture of a beautiful naked woman, I get a chubby. Ain’t nothin’ wrong with that. I can’t see the physical or psychological harm in jerking off to a picture where the subject obviously wasn’t coerced or abused in any way.
I’m assuming you’re talking about victims here, not the pedophiles themselves. In which case, you’re looking at a rather non-scientifically selected sample. Of COURSE people who were raped/abused will seek therapy. The people who eagerly welcomed sexual attention as kids AREN’T in therapy because…well, they have no need for it. Why go into therapy when you honestly believe there’s nothing wrong with what happened to you? (Take a look at the example given in Redboss’s post, for instance.)
On the other hand, if you’re talking about pedophiles, here’s a clue for you…not ALL pedophiles had sex with adults when they were kids. That’s a myth.
And I’d like to hear some specific examples on why you totally discount the Rind Report. Just calling it “BS, plain and simple” don’t cut it 'round here.
Oh, I got you beat there. I have an even more specific reason for loathing these kind of people, and it ain’t something that happened to a friend or a relative, it happened to me personally. But I’m not the type to wear the mark of sexual abuse like a badge of honor, and frankly, it offends me when other people do.
Well, the obvious answer is that I always lean towards the most controversial side of an argument – not that there’s anything wrong with that – but seriously, I see a lot of ignorance here that needs fighting. Which is what this board’s all about, after all. (It is, isn’t it?)
I was not shocked at all. I’ve seen this stuff before, but the net makes it all the more real. And all the more active. I did not even bother to post… Those guys need doctors and therapy, not my flames. I think they know they have a problem and refuse to even attempt to treat it. I can’t help there… I have no PHD. But I can only hope they get smart before they hurt some innocent kid.
I’ll be honest… I don’t know what makes them tick. I don’t know what makes a racist tick. But I know they both have deep problems. Again, I hope they find someone that knows what makes them tick before they hurt someone.
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I hope you are not comparing the self-pity of these twisted individuals to that of a slave or a Holocaust survivor. Those people were forced into their situation… Pedophiles are there by choice (or lack of choice to control it, if you want to get Freudian).
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I just hope you were not talking about children in that last statement. There is a big difference between pictures of adults and those of children – namely that the child is not intellectually developed enough to know exactly what is going on, and is thus easily coerced into something like this. Sure, they go right along with it because they have been convinced it is okay. The adult involved has abused the child by taking advantage of his/her youth and trust. Don’t you see the abuse in that? Children trust adults… Give me 10 minutes in a first grade classroom and I could convince a child that I was his grandfather. You seem to be implying that children have a complete sense of right and wrong from the beginning and that adults are right to take advantage of that. That puts the childs future in danger and their mental and sexual development.
Just curious to get to know your position better… Do you disagree with the age of consent laws? It seems like you lean that way. I know that’s another topic entirely, but it helps me to understand where you are coming from.
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I know the myth and was not talking about pedophiles but victims. You don’t seem to understand what I was getting at. Many victims are ‘brainwashed’ to a point as children. They think it was okay, that nothing was wrong. Sometimes they get into adulthood believing this. Each victim has a breaking point… Some take it out on family, some have intimacy problems with their partners, some turn to substance abuse. All because they do not confront the problem that is obviously there. The fact is, we will never know how damaging this really is because so many do not come forward or simply repress it. But we do know of the damage by the history of the ones that do tell their story. But the fact that we know of so many who were damaged should at least lead us to believe that these kind of relationships have a VERY high degree of psychological risk to the child. I concede there may be a few victims that feel like nothing was wrong, but there are countless thousands who had their lives ruined by it. Why take the chance with something so precious as the future of a child’s life? The damage risk is simply too high.
The fact is there are countless reports and sites/services/groups that deal with the damaging effects and completely discount the Rind Report. It’s the same with alchoholics, however… All the reports of the cons of drinking can be a mile high. But if one report surfaces that speaks of a benefit of booze, they latch on to that like it’s the Holy Grail itself. They finally found something – anything – that can justify their damaging lifestyle. There is really no difference there.
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I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a therapist or what your life has been like, so I will not tell you what to do or judge you based on that. But typical response of victims is self-pity followed by complete repression. In whatever way you came to terms with it – good or bad – I hope it helped you lead a happier life. Most do not.
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You are correct. I do bend on a lot of issues, controversial or not… But when it comes to a topic like this, with children especially, I simply cannot see some of your points and probably never will. If there is a significant risk that activity or promotion of activity will adversely effect the life of a child, I don’t bend. I’m sure you are the same. We just differ on the ‘significant risk’ part of it, eh?
That’s what I thought. How long did you read their posts? An hour? Two? Less? And yet you were able to come to a scientific and medical conclusion despite the fact that you admit you have no credentials whatsoever. Don’t feel bad, your attitude is no different from the typical American regarding this issue.
I’ll be honest, too. I spent MONTHS with these people, and I never figured out what makes them tick, either. Yes, some of them…most, actually…had some visibly serious issues. But many seemed perfectly normal and reasonable to me. Who knows, maybe they were the ones getting laid on a regular basis. Or maybe they were cops…
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I dunno, last I checked, the prevaling wisdom on pedophilia is similar to homosexuality…you’re either born with it, or it develops very early on from environmental factors. I do know that it’s notoriously difficult to “cure”, maybe impossible. And considering the downright vicious social attitude held towards pedophiles, do you really think somebody would CHOOSE to get turned on by little kids?? The only choice available to these people is what they are going to do about it.
In some ways, pedos have it easier than blacks & Jews, because nobody can look at them and instantly tell what they are. But in some ways they have it worse, because if you’re black, you can instantly identify other blacks and commisserate with them. Pedos can’t do that, which drives them further into isolation, and increases the possibility of them snapping and doing something horrific to a child. The Internet is changing that, however.
I was talking about both, actually, but I think you misunderstood what I meant. Let’s say, I pick up a Victoria Secrets catalog, which features women who have consented to be photographed in their underwear. I fantasize having hot monkey love with these women, and flog my donkey until I spew all over the page. Was any harm done? Well, maybe to the paper…but NOT to the women. Sure, they didn’t give me consent to jerk off to their photos, but is that even germane to the argument? I don’t think so…IANAL, but it’s probably a “fair use” kind of thing.
Now, replace me with a pedophile, and replace the catalog with a Coppertone ad, or a Jock Sturges photo book. How is this any different??
Not a bit of it. Of course children are trusting, that’s how they learn about the world. But eventually, they reach the point of knowing what’s what, and can make informed consent about what they do with their minds and their bodies. The exact age when this happens is different for everyone. Some children never reach it – adults take advantage of other adults all the time. Yet children, overall, are smarter than you seem to give them credit for.
Unless it’s changed recently, the law in Holland is that ANYONE is allowed to have sex by age 16. Between 12 and 16, sex is allowed unless one of the people involved complains to the authorities (either the child or the adult, or one of the children if they’re both under 16.) That seems perfectly reasonable to me. Under 12, it shouldn’t be allowed at all. A few children that young can handle it, but MOST cannot. Too risky, and the potential for long-term trauma is far, far greater.
Sounds like basic parenting to me.
All you’ll ever hear on the news and in the printed media is the testimonials of children who were CLEARLY abused. The testimonials of children and adults who had a genuinely POSITIVE experience get hushed up, because that would undermine the Sex Abuse Industry’s agenda. A lot of money is made by therapists, doctors, and journalists from case studies, and not all of them have the children’s best interests at heart. Sometimes, a positive experience can be made to seem like a negative one, because the therapist tells the child so. The “brainwashing” you mention can work both ways, you know.
I’ll have to dig up some interesting cites on this…a lot of my old bookmarks got lost during an ill-advised browser upgrade (grr…)
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Well, the Rind Report suggests that the number of positive instances outnumber the negative ones by a ratio of 2:1 – but you still have a point. Child molestation is a terrible crime, even worse than murder. I would never, ever, ever encourage a pedophile to have sex with a child, even if I was convinced it was consentual on both sides. Because, you can never be 100% sure, especially in today’s witch-hunting climate.
…on reviewing this part, I realized you are stating that ALL children who have sex with adults are “victims” and should be treated as such. That is wrong, wrong, wrong. In my opinion, anyway.
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Except that the positive effects of moderate alcohol consumption are widely known. Nearly everyone agrees that most people can drink alcohol safely. No such consensus exists for pedophilia – it is thoroughly vilified.
I agree that there is significant risk, but I don’t agree with where you say it comes from. It’s my position that most of the harm from pedophilia comes from the fact that society says it’s wrong. And it ain’t like drunk driving, or even killing someone. We’re talking about people getting released from prison and finding their picture & address in the paper (thank you, Megan’s Law :rolleyes: ) and having people throw rocks at them and burn their house down, all with the implicit approval of the media and law enforcement. We’re talking about people who aren’t even pedophiles going to jail because they downloaded some kiddy porn on a lark, or took a picture of their baby naked in the bathtub, or had some vindictive brat make up a story of abuse which was prosecuted despite the fact that the kid recanted later. The problem as I see it ain’t the law, it’s the hysterically unforgiving witch-hunt attitude that takes place on a daily basis. The women of Salem had it easy, by comparison!
Besides Cyberangels, you can also report incidences of child exploitation to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Website: http://www.missingkids.org
There’s a link on their homepage that says “Click Here…Cyber Tip Line” that takes you to a page where you can report what you’ve encountered.
Call me a cynic, but I doubt that mostly what the “Cyber Tip Line” acomplishes is spending government money. The fastest way to handle an online kid predator is to report it to the system operator and your own ISP, but they don’t tell you to do that. They say to report it to them (which wastes precious time), and all they can do is -eventually- relay it to local law enforcement, who will toss most of it out because (assuming they can find the person responsible, good luck) by itself it’s not enough to go on and they don’t have budgets or trained personnel to go after every bit of info they get, and they don’t have screaming parents sanding in the police station lobby so it’s not a priority.
Which land are you referring to? There’s a great deal of variation among different countries of the world towards children’s sexuality, and adult’s sexuality as far as children are concerned. It’s pretty easy to sit in the middle of your own favorite country and tsk tsk foreigners in foreign lands for what they’re willing to do for a few bucks -or let their children do. Being used for sex (even violently) is in itself hardly the worst thing that can befall a person, especially in many third world nations. - MC
Oh, Jesus. I should have moved this thing to Great Debates the second I saw this.
Hint: Not everything that is condemned is done so wrongly. You may also want to bone up on the particulars of Galileo and his problems with the Church before mis-using that particular example again.
Magnum,
There is no need to demonize pedophiles, as you’ve clearly been doing; it helps nothing. You’ve even asserted that pedophiles have a “mental illness.” Pedophilia is no more of a mental illness than is foot fetishism. Acting on that fetish (pedophilia), however, carries an unacceptably high risk of causing serious emotional harm, which is why the large majority of pedophiles do not act on it. In all likelihodd, this repression (and societal demonization) of one’s most basic sexual desires is, in large measure, the cause of the mental and emotional torment that is common among pedophiles.
I don’t think that J.E.T. has been arguing much more than the above. What about this do you disagree with, and why?
Never heard the term hebephilia. I like it; need to remember that one.
Badtz, glad you stopped the behavior. I think it would be pretty harmful to most parties involved, and perhaps eventually put yourself in danger. These guys weren’t just pedophiles, they were prowlers. Yuck.
FWIW, it was my understanding, on the basis of long-ago reading in psychopathology, that hebephilia referred to obsessive desire for teenage girls and ephebophilia, which came up here in a gay-rights thread last year, was the like desire for teenage boys.
hebephilia can refer to obsessive desire for teenaged girls in the same way that nostalgia originally meant a crippling degree of homesickness. Both words have now entered the language to also describe a non-pathological emotion, perhaps less securely for the former word than the latter.
– but seriously, I see a lot of ignorance here that needs fighting. Which is what this board’s all about, after all. (It is, isn’t it?)