Is there a name for people who are sexualy attracted to metally retarded people?
No jokes please.
Do you mean to suggest there are people out there who have a sexual preference for the mentally challenged? I don’t believe I’ve ever heard of that.
Those with delayed mental development are at significant risk of sexual abuse. I don’t believe there is legal terminology that apply to people who only target the mentally challenged, but IANAL.
Sick.
Seriously, I’ve never heard of one. If you want to roll your own word, I’d assume it would end in “-phile”. Possible prefixes could include brady- (slow), hypo- (under, deficient), or proto- (primitive).
Who said it had to be a legal term?
I’ve definitely heard a “-philia” word used in this context, but I’ll be damned if I can remember it (or Google it)
Nobody said it had to be a legal term, GorillaMan, but I can’t imagine that a word like this existing and no one’s used it a criminal proceeding against, say, a caregiver with a pattern/history of sexual misconduct with his/her charges.
We are all assuming the person attracted to the individual who is mentally retarded is themselves not – correct?
Retarduphilia was my best guess, but it doesn’t seem to be a word.
EVERY fetish that one could conceive of likely exists. No doubt the OP’s fetish exists and no doubt there are sites devoted to it on the internet. Its just a matter of determining the correct word. As suggested, it likely ends in -philia. There was a link posted a while back with an extensive list of odd fetishes…maybe someone could check that?
Perhaps when I’m home and safe from work I’ll stick a few terms into google and see what comes up… :eek:
I’ve heard of a person like this; I think she prefers to simply be called “Laura Bush.”
[sub]I know you said no jokes; I’m very sorry.[/sub]
LOL!! Best. Cheap. Shot. EVER.
They’re called predators, and they’re despicable.
My niece was being approached by a (married) man at her office. Everyone in that office knows of her disability, so he wasn’t flying blind. She was flattered that someone was paying attention to her and probably had no idea what was on his mind. He started taking her to lunch and then arranged for a dinner date.
At that point, she mentioned to my sister (her guardian) about her new friend who buys her lunch. A few questions later, my sister was out the door and in the guy’s office to inform him of exactly what legal repercussions he could expect if he pursued this activity.
And it isn’t “sexual attraction to retarded people”, it’s “sexual predation”, pure and simple.
They’re two different things. One is simply targeting a vulnerable group because of their vulnerability, the other is a particular paraphilia. Yes, the two can go alongside one another. It doesn’t mean that the particular obsession doesn’t exist.
There was a Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode about a store owner who repeatedly molested his developmentally disabled employees. In that case, it seemed that he was targeting these young women because of their vulnerability, and in some cases, ignorance. I don’t recall that he was supposed to have a particular fetish for the mentally retarded, however.
And why is it “sick” to feel attraction to the developmentally disabled? There are significant reasons why it may be wrong to follow through on the attraction, but I don’t see anything inherently wrong with the attraction itself.
Again, this guy was probably a sexual predator. But he may well have felt a genuine attraction to your niece. Should he have pursued her? Of course not. That was clearly unacceptable, and if he had managed to get her to engage in sexual activities with him, it would be rape.
But just feeling an attraction to an inappropriate sexual partner doesn’t make you a sexual predator.
There are sexual predators who target those with diminished capacity, but there are also those who truly are attracted emotionally and sexually to people with diminished capacity. I suspect common traits for these individuals would be a lack of confidence for dealing with more emotionally and intellectually mature members of the gender they’re attracted to, along with a certain desire to care-take.
While certainly an undesirable character trait, it wouldn’t brand someone a predator automatically.
One could invent a name for them, such as cretinophile or morophile, but those words derive from some rather misused terms and wouldn’t fly very well. I’ve googled a dozen likely coined terms such as those above, without luck.
Maybe just call it “mental subnormophilia”?
Would you mean that you would forbid any relationship between a mentally retarded person and another who isn’t??? 
Why would it be necessarily rape??? Can’t these people have satisfying sexual or sentimental relationship with a normal person??? Should they be deprived of any choice in their sex-life???
You’re admiting yourself that he could have been genuinely attracted to her and not trying to take advantage of her. Why on earth would have it been wrong to sleep with her, in this case??? What if she was genuinely attracted to him too? Should they be denied the right of living on their attraction??? What the fuck is that??? What if they wanted to live together??? To marry???
The question as to whether or not a mentally challenged person (forgive the PC term) can enjoy a relationship depends on their ability to function independently of the other person, and be able to make decisions about the relationship. Granted, there are normal people who are completely dependant on the other, and can be coerced. But they also have the potential to think and act independently of the other person. Mentally challenged people are not always able to do so.
Sexual consent also would follow the same line: can a mentally challenged person adequately understand what they are being asked to do, and thus provide an informed consent. Again, there are a number of normal people who, having lived a naive life, may not be able to give a truly informed consent, either, and that could be considered rape. But again, they have the potential to give or refuse to give an informed consent.
It’s important to separate sexual predation from a paraphilia from an honest human sexual or emotional attraction, and realize that they are not always related, if at all. A person has who is emotionally or sexually attracted to such a person must be evaluated as a function of their intent or motivation, not solely on the fact of diminished mental capacity of the person they are pursuing.
Vlad/Igor
Revtim. You’re a longtime poster, so no need to beat you senseless here. 
Let’s try to keep politics and bad taste jokes out of GQ.
samclem GQ moderator
Time for a neologism, I think. I’m going to include these suggested new words in my neologism thread.
For the sake if this definition, we’ll assume an emotional/physical attraction that has nothing to do with sexually predatory behavior – admmittedly hard as that may be for many to grasp.
Let’s see… how about…
hypocognitophilia
(roughly translated, hypo is “below” + cognit is “think” + philia is “love”)
Or possibly:
paraparphilia
(… para is “almost” and “par” means “equal”)
Try prefix variations using “sub”, “hemi”, or possibly “ex” instead.
I am indeed sorry, I should have tried harder to resist…
“Hypocognitophilia” is pretty good. I don’t like “paraparphilia”. Too ambiguous, and too many p’s.
How about…
dysencephalophilia?
retromentophilia?