It’s actually the other way around; the DSM classifications of pedophiles includes modifiers of “exclusive” for pedophiles only attracted to children and “nonexclusive” for pedophiles attracted to both children and adults. Studies typically show that nonexclusive pedophiles outnumber exclusive pedophiles, one study of almost 2500 pedophiles showed the number of exclusive pedopiles to be around 7%. Most law enforcement professionals and others who work with sex offenders with child victims will tell you that this is their personal experience as well, that nonexclusive offenders outnumber exclusive offenders by a good margin.
This is correct. Offenders who molest males have higher rates of recidivism than those who offend against females, by some measures as much as twice as high. Offenders who offend against familial victims are also less likely to recidivate than those who offend against acquaintances, who are in turn less likely than those who offend against stranger victims. However, it’s crucial to point out that that doesn’t equal “gays are more likely to offend against children than straights,” as it’s not the characteristics of the offender’s consensual adult preferences that correlate with higher recidivism rates but rather the characteristics of the offender’s child victims. In other words, having consensual adult male partners isn’t associated with recidivism, having male child victims is.
ETA: I should add that I kind of grimace at the use of the terms “homosexual pedophile” and “heterosexual pedophile” as confusing, it sounds like it’s equating the pedophile’s adult and child preferences when that may not be the case at all. The DSM uses “attracted to males/females/both” referring to their child preference.
That’s not an example of labels separating people, that’s an example of prejudice separating people. You got to know those guys not simply by refusing to use a label, but also by going to some distance (however short) to hide aspects of your life from them. You didn’t just not call yourself “gay,” I’m betting you also avoided discussing current or past relationships, didn’t bring your boyfriend to company functions, etc. It wasn’t the label that made those guys think that gay people couldn’t have the sort of interests you have - it was their preconceptions about what people who are gay are like that made them think that.
Sort of. It’s basically means “not heterosexual,” but different people put different shades of meaning on it. It’s often used as an informal catch-all for everyone who’s some variant of non-traditional sexuality, as a simpler and more breezy expression that the LGBTTGIFWTFBBQLMNOP soup. But a lot of gay people (particularly in older generations) strongly dislike the term, due to its history as a slur. And some people who identify as “queer” use it because they don’t feel they fit in any of the other letters of the acronym. There’s also an aspect of gender politics mixed in - some people don’t like hetero/homo/bisexual as a label, because they reject the traditional gender concepts, and don’t like the way those terms implicitly supports the dual-gender paradigm.
I’ve had five people reveal their sexual orientations to me. I lost two friends because my response wasn’t what they wanted. When it’s happened, without fail, I’ve been incredibly apathetic. I’ve never cared. One of my long time friends told me and I said, ‘That’s nice. We’re going to be late. You ready to go?’
He wasn’t very happy with me and I had to explain myself. When I was very young, I eavesdropped on my grandmother recounting her experiences in a concentration camp. Ever since, I’ve had a very strange dichotomy towards discrimination. I’m overly hostile to those that discriminate and I’m incredibly apathetic about people’s differences. Even if I disagree with you on a personal opinion of some kind (e.g. Obummer vs Ruiney) I’ll make my point and argue it, but I don’t actually feel malice or superiority towards someone else’s views. Even if they can be directly proven wrong.
I think that the problem isn’t labels - we need labels. It’s endemic to our human psyche. We label EVERYTHING. What’s that thing you hold clothes in? Oh, right, a dresser. Look around you, everything has a label in your brain that tells you what it is. Mirror? Door? etc etc. We can’t get away from this.
The problem, I posit, is actually expectations. If you have no experience with a homosexual, you expect the flaming guys on Queer Eye to be what homosexual men are like. Into fashion, flamboyant, and all that other hog wash. While there are certainly homosexual men like this, I have my doubts that they are somehow the dominant sub-culture in the LGBT community.
Similarly, when I lost those two friends of mine (and nearly the third I gave an explanation to), it was because my reaction wasn’t within their expectations. They expected one of the two extremes - “OH MY GAW THAT’S SO AWESOME!” or “GET OUT OF MY LIFE YOU FREAK” and not “Why does that matter? You’re still you, right? This wasn’t brought on by head trauma that will change the person I know, right?”
This whole debate about sexual attraction to children is so very complex because of difficulty in defining any terms and the fitting those terms to reflect common other usage of those terms. It is so basic that if the ‘truth’ about certain clear facts are stated in ordinary fora, then emotions run high and debate becomes impossible. Confusion of medical with criminal terms and the different models used to describe human behaviour allow so much opportunity for poor debate. Taking a careful and academic point of view is often interpreted as defending the actors involved- the use of neutral terminology is misunderstood or purposely misrepresented as an emotional lever for stupid argument.
Added to that is the atmosphere in the LGBT etc community where politics often outweigh science. Certain demonstrably false beliefs stated as absolutes are obviously errors, yet have become shibboleths as oppressed people seek to justify their emotions and drives.
And when you add in the mindset of all people who have ever been sexually attracted to children or sexually attracted to people of the same gender at various levels, whether confirmed adult sexual preferences or fleeting childhood and adolescent experience and the defensiveness that such positions create, debate becomes even less tenable.
In my opinion most discussion outside professional circles (and unfortunately also often inside those circles) is conducted in an incredibly defensive manner which seeks more comfort in labeling and devaluing than understanding.
Just my tuppence worth after working with pedophiles in clinical settings for a decade.
If the first offense gets life in prison without parole, why bother with a penalty for future convictions? Not many opportunities to molest children inside a prison, so far as I know.
It is a common anti-gay slur to associate them with pedophiles, so establishing that gays aren’t any more likely than straights to molest children is useful in fighting that slur, if for no other purpose.
Yes, but the problem with that is, what if gays were more likely to molest children?
It’s not relevant even if it’s true. You can’t judge individuals by what others in a group they are a member of do.
For instance, it’s true that blacks are proportionally more likely to commit crimes than whites. That doesn’t mean we should treat all black people as potential criminals.
I’m saying it doesn’t matter. I think just bringing up the correlation is a slur, even if there isn’t one.
On the other hand, I’m not above using statistics against haters when it’s going to blow up in their faces. To wit: some gay-haters will tell you it’s specifically anal sex that they oppose (ask them). When I hear that, I walk them through the math - exclude lesbians first. Then take the, say, 3% of the population left that are gay men. Even if you assume they all have anal sex (which isn’t true), that’s still alot smaller than the population of STRAIGHT couples who have anal sex! That’s a small proportion of straights, but because heteros are such a majority, it’s still larger. So I ask them why, if most anal sex is happening in hetero beds, they don’t go start a campaign against anal hetero sex first. They rarely have a rational answer, of course.
True enough, but when it’s not true, there’s value in pointing it out.
A useful example. Which argument would be more persuasive to, say, a store owner who always watches his black customers closely because he thinks they’re more likely to steal:
a) Black folks don’t actually steal at a higher rate (if it were true, for the sake of the example)
b) Black folks are more likely to steal, but that doesn’t make Jim here a thief.
I vote a) as being more persuasive, so if the desired goal is better treatment for gay folks, a) has value. Say the scenario is instead a mother pulling her son out of Boy Scouts when a gay scout leader joins, for fear of her son being molested. Demonstrating the lack of any factual basis for that fear is persuasive.
Brining it up is a slur? You’ll have to explain that one. The idea of gays doubling as child molestors has a long, nasty history, that’s the slur.
You do see the appeal of a factual debunking then, yes?
In theory, sure. But it seems like a lot of the time when you do that, people nitpick you to death over any difference they believe they’ve found, no matter how irrelevant it is. People don’t always let the facts get in the way of their convictions.
Sure. Just make sure it’s not true first. And make sure to say it wouldn’t matter anyway.
Sure, but the problem is that a) isn’t true! Blacks DO steal at a higher rate (or at least blacks are convicted of crimes in general at a higher rate). It’s a valid statistic. So b) is your only choice.
The problem with trying to use a), even when there is no correlation, is that it implies that its okay to judge people when there is.
Again, yes, as long as you can do that.
But I think it’s much more productive to take the higher moral ground. Teaching a mother that gays actually don’t molest kids more often sends the message that her fears would be valid if the opposite were true - that it’s legitimate to judge one by the actions of many. I say teach the mother, and the kid, that you should judge each scout leader, or any human being, on his own merits alone. Brining it up is a slur? You’ll have to explain that one. The idea of gays doubling as child molestors has a long, nasty history, that’s the slur.
You do see the appeal of a factual debunking then, yes?
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I’m aware of that. My point is that by asking the question, you imply that if the answer were"yes" then it would be okay to judge all gays by it. It wouldn’t be, even if it’s true. Just by considering it, you allow for the legitimacy of the question.
And some people won’t be convinced and will insist it’s true and you’ll have a debate over conflicting studies and numbers and polls about something that’s really hard to know anyway, and it will go nowhere.
Better to simply say “it doesn’t matter - no individual should be judged by the actions of others.”
You should at least take the lawyer’s approach, which is to first say “it’s not true” and then say “and even if it were true, it doesn’t matter.”
Of course. Human Action changed my example to something more specific.
The point is that even if it were true, it wouldn’t matter. And sometimes those things are true, such as blacks having a higher crime rate in general. My point is that it’s not relevant - even if such a stat is true, it’s not a reason to judge all members of the group in question.
Exactly! There are many reasons why there are more black people in prison…
A- They commit more crimes.
B- They lack the resources to pay for a proper defense.
C- The legal system is racist.
D- numerous other reasons…fill in the blank
I’m veering off topic, but I made this thread so I don’t really care…
The welfare system is why there are more black people in prison. Many poor black women have illegitimate children (often by different fathers) to maximize the amount of government assistance they receive. They lack the knowledge and/or ability to provide all of their children with a loving, nurturing upbringing. As those children grow up with a single parent who doesn’t show them any love and teach them right from wrong, they simply follow human instinct to survive and take what they need without understanding or caring about the consequences. Their behavior eventually resultls in being incarcerated.
It’s a horrible cycle that I pray will be broken someday…
This is about incarceration rates, not raw numbers. And I’m not sure you’re actually responding to what Czarcasm and lance strongarm were talking about.
Again, they don’t.
The people who want to discuss the original topic with you might care since it’s hard to stick to a subject when the discussion goes over the place, but: you’re spouting a bunch of Reagan-era Welfare Queen stereotypes that don’t have much to do with how the welfare system works today, although I’m not sure it was ever anything close to truthful.
What if I had turned into one? As I mentioned in a previous posting, I was resolute that if I ever found myself sexually attracted to children, I fully intended to kill myself and even knew which gun I would use to do it. I allmost committed suicide as a teenager coming to terms with being homosexual.
Would I feel more sympathetic toward a pedophile/molestor who had been abused as a child? Not only would I feel sympathetic, but I could actually empathize with them as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse.
Would my smypathy or empathy change my feelings about how they should be punished? ** Not at all!** Once the damage is done and switch is flipped that turns them into a pedophile, they must be removed from society regardless of any other factors.
I recently read (in Psychology Today, if I’m not mistaken) that the average convicted pedophile has molested seven children before being caught and prosecuted! It literally horrifies me to think of the thousands (or millions) in the world that haven’t been caught…
And no scientific evidence exists that supports that they can be ‘cured’. Even though chemical (or even physical) castration removes the urge and/or ability to have sex. It doesn’t remove the feelings or thought patterns and doesn’t guarantee that pedophile won’t continue to molest children.
Chemical castration is also reversible in most cases by discontinuing the treatment. Numerous convicted pedophiles have skipped bail or parole to avoid chemical castration and continue the behavior somewhere else under a new name and identity…
The welfare and safety of the many (children) outweighs the liberty of one (the pedophile). Eliminating pedos from society is for the greater good.
Brining it up is a slur? You’ll have to explain that one. The idea of gays doubling as child molestors