A digression from this thread about child pornography.
What do we, as a society, do about the issue of adults being sexually attracted to children?
I hear lots of people suggesting that they’re less than human, that they should be killed. As much as some might like to do this, we obviously can’t. (I also feel that many people need to have someone to feel better than, and pedophiles fit this role for them, hence the chest thumping and calls for them to be castrated/killed/tortured/prison-raped.) I don’t know why so many people seem to get off on the idea of other people, even pedophiles, being brutalized - but I guess that’s a topic for another thread.
I can’t even imagine how tormenting it must be to be born with a sexual attraction to children and know that you can’t ever do anything about it legally, and that if you do have sex with children illegally, you will traumatize the child and if anyone finds out about it, you will be imprisoned and possibly killed.
How can we make it easier for these individuals to live with themselves, and at the same time, ensure that no children are harmed by them?
Is the solution some kind of therapy or psychological technique to change their sexual orientation? Is this even possible? I don’t know much about this topic but have gathered that similar attempts were made to turn homosexuals heterosexual back in the 50s and it didn’t work. (Didn’t Alan Turing take part in this attempt and commit suicide because of it?)
Is the solution to create some kind of simulated child-porn and distribute it to these people to satisfy their urges? Or would they eventually need the real thing? I imagine that they would.
IF simulated CP could work, I would think it could be part of a solution. However, pretty much anyone who looks at regular porn also has an interest in the real thing.
What do you do about NAMBLA? They actively advocate for total access to all ages under the pretext that they(the kids) want it.
People look at images of people doing unethical/dangerous/physically impossible things all the time without actually trying to make them real. Cartoon/simulated CP would at least let people with urges that way take the edge off. That wouldn’t stop the unethical or compulsive of course, but the problem there is their unwillingness or inability to control themselves.
However, given the hard line society takes on pedophilia and the obvious harm involved*, my guess is that the vast majority of people who are willing and able to control themselves already are doing so. Simulated CP would in my view be ethical ( after all, we watch simulated murder in movies all the time), and probably make the non-indulging pedophiles feel better, but I have my doubts it would stop anyone who hasn’t already stopped themselves.
Short of some medical breakthrough, about all I can think of that might help a little is a greater willingness to accept and comfortably house/imprison pedophiles who admit they can’t control themselves and ask to be kept from hurting anyone. Instead of waiting for them to molest some kid and only then arresting them.
*Which makes the harm far, far harder to rationalize away. As opposed to, say, cheating on your wife where she isn’t even there and any actual harm is a future hypothetical. It’s always easier to rationalize away harm when it isn’t right in front of you.
You may imagine that, but a 2006 study drew an opposite conclusion: porn access reduces rape. The logic probably applies no matter what kind of porn you’re into.
I was just reading a bit about this yesterday (for a biopsychology course I’m taking). I imagine that certain brain lesions could eradicate someone’s sex drive, but such surgery would carry a risk of collateral damage to other brain functions; they’d also be irreversible, and I shudder to think of the possibility of inflicting them on a falsely-convicted innocent man. I don’t think that enough research has been done yet that we could reliably discern the correct lesions to destroy a human’s sex drive. We know that in rats, males and females have have different neural pathways for libido, and primates are much less well understood.
My biopsychology textbook also mentioned that hormone treatments apparently can’t change someone’s sexual orientation. If a man, straight or gay, is castrated and loses his sex drive, testosterone therapy can restore it, and it will be of the same orientation that he had before he was castrated. I imagine that the same principle could apply to pedophiles. In fact, we can’t rule out the possibility of a castrated pedophile secretly acquiring black-market hormones that restore his pedophile sex drive.
The text also mentioned a Norwegian study of over 150 castrated men. About two thirds of them were rapists who had volunteered for the procedure in exchange for reduced sentences. Castration didn’t 100% eliminate the sex drive of every subject; some were even able to have sex. Among the rapists, “only” 3% of them re-offended, but that’s still pretty high if you’re looking for a way to remove a sex offender’s sex drive.
I would say that these people must be broken down into categories of how likely they are to actually rape a child. If it is for instance completely or mostly under control than at worst they should be subject to occasional sessions with the psychologist. If it is severe castration-physical or chemical-may be necessary as a presumptive measure hopefully voluntarily.
I find myself agreeing with Der Trihs on this, specially in the allowability of access to simulations and in how those seeking “more” would do their thing with or without sims.
Well, sort of; bonobo chimpanzees for example engage in sexual acts with the young. But what if anything counts as “pedophilia” is hard to define when you start trying to involve other species with different psychologies and physiologies than we have. Just because something is traumatic for us doesn’t mean it won’t be harmless or even beneficial for some other species; we normally get away with treating “sexual acts with children is bad” as if it was a universal because under normal circumstances we are only speaking of human children. Who to a certain extent are all the same, being of the same species.
I guess I should have said “pedophiles” instead of “pedophilia.” Animals that have a clear preference for attempting to have sex with immature individuals, outside the normal behavioural standards of their own species.
On the other hand, I could have sworn that I read there are a lot of comorbid conditions. In other words pedophillia as a stand alone dx is very rare. I do think that preventing child molestion is one of the best ways of preventing pedophillia.
I know that the child molestion= later pedophile myth has been “debunked”
BUT, I also think that in a lot of cases, the victim may think they can “heal” by reinacting the abuse. Exactly like the way rape victims think they can “heal” by sleeping around with people.
I also thought that exclusive pedophillia is really rare.
Yes, it’s fairly common in animals for sexual activity to occur (usually with older animals) as soon as the young animal reaches sexual maturity.
In humans, that would be at puberty, typically from age 10-13 now. But we have set the legal age for ‘consenting adults’ at 5-8 years older than that. And we consider sexual attraction/activity before that as pedophilia, without regard for our biology.
So a lot of animal sexual activity would indeed be classified as pedophilia, if human laws were applied to animal ages.
Non-offending pedophiles should be pitied and offered assistance to deal with what is surely a hellish situation.
There are probably good reasons for not exiling every member of Nambla to a desert island with no animal life but plenty of steak knives, but I don’t know what it is.
A pedophile is a person who is sexually attracted to pre-pubescent children. A twenty-five-year-old man with a seventeen-year-old girlfriend is not a pedophile, no matter what Eliot Stabler says.
And I don’t give a good goddamn what non-human animals do anyway. Male polar bears sometime engage in cannibalism of cubs, but that’s not behavior I’d like to see emulated.
This is part of the ‘natural’ argument about pedophelia. In this theory, if animals do it, then it’s natural, and even if disallowed by society, pedophilia is not a mental disorder. I disagree, and agree with your conclusion regarding this argument when used for any behavior.
Hell, if we’re using that particular argument, most of the trappings of modern society would be considered a mental disorder.
I think that there’s two different aspects of the problem.
there are people who are attracted to children (defined here as any person who does not yet have ANY markers of sexual maturity) and that is, at least in modern society, considered a very bad thing.
Societal “adulthood” does not take the age of sexual maturity into account, so the legal definition of “child” doesn’t match the biological one. Therefore you end up with “children” who have sexual urges, and we as a society don’t really know what do do about that.
I think that a lot of the angst and worry about the second problem gets wrapped up into the first one, so that the punishments and societal fear about that condition is made worse.
It’s pretty firmly established that we can’t change people’s sexual preferences, regardless of what they are.
However, I do wonder if we could work on some sort of therapy or substance that would *weaken *that preference to the point that a sufferer would be able to gain satisfaction from other sources in addition? That would be something that could help.
To substitute another sexual odditity: A true shoe fetish person would be unable to get satisfaction unless his/her necessary shoe type were involved. Once medicated/therapied, he/she would still LIKE shoes, but would not NEED shoes to be sexually excited.
Pedophilia is attraction to pre-pubescent children
Hebephilia is attraction to children in the early years of puberty.
Ephebophilia is attraction to late teen kids (already done with puberty or mostly so).
We often call anyone who has sex with someone under 18 a pedophile but that is wrong. I have seen plenty of 17 year old females these days who have all the girl parts in the right place. Likewise with the males. It would be illegal to have sex with them (for an adult) but as far as sexual attraction goes kind of makes sense since all their primary sex characteristics are in place (and youth is a near universally agreed aspect of beauty…“youth” as in young and healthy and sexually mature). I would not put that person in the same boat as someone who has sex with pre-pubescent/early puberty kids.
My impression is basically the goal should be to find a way to let those with pedophilic urges get help in a dignified, private fashion so they can control their urges and/or make accomodations so that they aren’t able to act on them, and do it before they do act on them. A mixture of therapy, medications, etc. to make sure things do not spiral out of control.
The problem is with such a hysteria about sex crimes going on right now, that is impossible. Anyone who goes to therapy is going to have to worry that sooner or later a law will be passed making their info public, and with the internet now there is no privacy and always a trail.
So really, I have no idea. In your personal life I’d recommend learning the signs that someone is being abused, and making sure you and people who are important (teachers, medical professionals, those in law enforcement and gov. jobs, etc) know them.