Yes, I do know about priests, although I admit I know more about the Episcopal variety than the Catholic. The ones I’ve known have been upright, holy men who were trying to serve God as best they can. They’ve made some real differences to people’s lives. Yes, I think the Catholic Church completely mishandled things. On the other hand, the only priest I know personally who tried something which was sexually immoral was a Fundamentalist priest who was kicked out of the Baptist Church for having sex with grown women who weren’t his wife.
Further to this statement, and to clear up your confusion, a person who engages in sexual relations with a minor is not necessarily a paedophile. A paedophile, by definition, is somebody whose focus of sexual attraction is towards pre-pubescent children. I would imagine that, for members of the clergy especially, they were able to act out their need for sexual contact primarily with children because children were available especially in Catholic boarding communities. Whilst I am sure that some offenders fitted the paedophile ‘diagnosis’, I’m equally sure that many if not most of the perpetrators were opportunistic offenders who saw any physical contact with any human being (regardless of their age) as an outlet for their sensory and sexual deprivation.
Ah, fuck…I missed and screwed up some bits!!
See this?
Can we change that to: …if not most of the perpetrators were opportunistic offenders who saw any physical contact with any human being (regardless of their age AND GENDER) as an outlet for their TACTILE and sexual deprivation?
Maybe, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s currently the same proportion of men being attracted to young boys. Culture plays an important part, IMO. The proportion of men openly attracted to ephebes in ancient greece where such relationships were expected was probably much higher than the proportion of american men secretely attracted to young teens.
That’s a false dichotomy, though: that either more men are preying on young boys, if that’s what you mean by “this behaviour”, and/or that more men want to. Consider a third option: that such sexual predation - and let’s assume that the figures are historically constant for a moment - is less likely now to be condoned or ignored than in the past, and that recent highly publicised prosecutions have increased awareness of such crimes. You raised the spectre of priests preying on young boys earlier, but you must be aware that many legal actions which have resulted are historical ones, for offences often dating back decades, which would suggest that it’s not solely a recent phenomenon.
Someone once gave a link to a study (basically, they hooked men’s penis to some apparatus to mesure arousal, showed them pictures and read them erotica) that seemed to show that a very high percentage of men (high as in say, 15%, not high as, say 90% though I don’t remember at all the figures) were aroused by female teens, female children and even non-consensual sex with children.
Unfortunately, I can’t find a link.
In any case, I wouldn’t at all be surprised to learn that non acted-upon and/or non-exclusive pedophilia is way more widespread than it appears to be. As you mention, for x men caught there must y times x men not stupid enough to be caught, z times x times y men who won’t act at all upon their paraphilia and w times z times x times y men who have some form of limited sexual interest in children.
Also, statistically, more girls are molested by men than boys. Still it seems there’s a greater uproar about boys being molested. Perhaps (and this is only speculation) it has something to do with people’s distaste for homosexuality?
By the way, one of the priests who was accused of sexual misconduct in Boston was accused not of having sex with young boys, but with a married woman. Girls were also molested by priests, but that appears to be something the OP overlooked.
The penile plethysmograph is unreliable. Every man knows that you can get (full or partial) erections from nervousness, anxiety, and plenty of other factors. If they hooked my penis to a plethysmograph and showed me pictures of children being raped, I’d be nervous and anxious as hell. I can pretty much guarantee that I would test positive in that situation, especially since all I’d be thinking would be “Don’t get an erection, don’t get an erection”. The only safe way to get one.
Finally, being aroused by female teens is hardly deviant.
So, a high percentage of men are aroused by erotica, in that their penis gets bigger…regardless of the nature of that erotica. Wow. That is breaking news!! :rolleyes: Did they do a comparable study with women? Did they consider the notion that exhibitions of sexuality (regardless of age and/or gender) were inherently arousing to observers because they were sexual acts?
:dubious:
I’m fairly certain that if you hook a man’s penis up to a machine and tell him that you’re going to measure his reactions, what you’ve got is a “Whatever you do, don’t think of pink elephants” situation.
When I read that this method “reduces cholesterol and diabetes”, I was ->| |<- this close to buying a Utilikilt and a ticket to Vancouver, where I would study ceaselessly to become a master of Qi Dong.
I dunno…after reading the article on CNN’s site, I’ve come to the conclusion that this guy is so tortured and sick that he just wanted it to end. He did everything but hold a press conference regarding his attraction to young girls. There was nothing in the story to indicate he wanted to keep his obsession a secret. I think he just wants to get into treatment and end the charade.
I’m quite fond of the first three, but I’m not sure I’d like to try the fourth.
Well, we can have a discussion of the issue - it’s an important matter - but the question you posed was just sort of disjointed. You asked about sex with young boys, referencing a case involving a man hitting on a girl, and in discussing it brought up adult homosexuality (in varying degrees of consentuality.) I’m sure you didn’t mean to equate pedophilia with homosexuality, and so I won’t go into how grossly offensive your statements inadvertently were, but you don’t seem to have posed a question that makes any sense (to me, at least.)
I think this is an important issue in society right now, partially because we need to examine our society’s sudden obsession with it - but if you have a specific question, it needs to be framed in a way that we can understand it.
Arbitrary? I would say that the psychological damage inflicted on children by child molesters is a good enough reason to outlaw it - that doesn’t seem arbitrary at all to me. Granted, what is culturally defined as “aberrant” sexuality varies - but I’m not much of a cultural relativist, and I think that, in outlawing child-molestation, we’ve done the right thing as a society.
Of course, I do think the issue is considerably more complicated than most people seem to think.
The really sad part of this whole Catholic priest scandal is how the church handled it. Inevitably in any group there will be some screwups or even predators, but I hate to see the way the Catholic priesthood has been tainted in the public eye by this, when ultimately it was a matter of a few bad apples and a very bad system for dealing with them.
The trouble is that penile plethysmography is not exactly an uncontroversial technique to find out what men are secretly into. You’re a dude, if I recall correctly, so I’m sure you’ve experienced situations in which little clairobscur got all excited in inappropriate circumstances. I find (TMI WARNING) that I get erections when I’m nervous or stressed out about a deadline - does that mean I have some weird deadlineophilia? It seems far more likely to imagine that many men are aroused emotionally - angered or upset - than sexually when they see such pictures.
I guess I’m judging partially by my own reactions - I simply can’t wrap my head around the desire for sex with children at all. The thought of having sex with someone missing secondary sexual characteristics is absolutely repulsive to me, and I sort of imagine that that’s kind of how it’s supposed to be. Isn’t that what the outward manifestations of puberty are for? So to my mind, it seems absolutely bizarre to imagine someone being interested in children - which means I can’t imagine that any large portion of the population is.
On the other hand, I can more understand to the desire to have sex with teenagers, as they do have their secondary sexual characteristics in place and I don’t find the same sort of immediate visceral revulsion at the thought of it. It seems a lot more common for cultures to regularly condone sex with, say, thirteen or fourteen year olds than with prepubescent children. The thought still doesn’t appeal to me, but I could believe that that’s largely cultural programming and my own morals, rather than any inherent wiring.
Cite? I’m actually quite interested in what the figures are. I’ve never run into what appear to be accurate accountings for the gender predilections of child-molesters; I’d be curious to see if more complex patters can be drawn from them.
And now for something completely different: what the HECK is a full name and a full-color recognizable picture of this arrested man’s face doing in the local newspaper?
Don’t the media even await a decent trial anymore before they subject to public outrage both this man’s family and every elderly guy who slightly resembles him?
:eek: :rolleyes:
