This is one of those takes that’s so controversial I’m afraid to post it, which is exactly why I have to.
I neither endorse nor disavow this, and no, I’m not in the picture.
This is one of those takes that’s so controversial I’m afraid to post it, which is exactly why I have to.
I neither endorse nor disavow this, and no, I’m not in the picture.
Pedophiles although superproblematic, are surprisingly not the group of people that do the most child molesting. In most cases, the offenders are sexual predators attracted mainly to adults that focus on children because they’re an easier target, not because they are optimally attractive to them. Very often they are people from the child’s family.
Yeah, they actually mention that in the article. And also that the most likely age for a person to abuse a child is 14, basically because they’re new to not being a child themselves.
That kind of brings up another question: should we gas people that target kids just because they can, then? Not that there’s really an effective way to filter out the actual pedophiles from the “pedos of convenience”.
I think there are methods to filter them out - that’s how we know most child molesters are not actual pedos. Personally, I’m against gassing anyone and I’m for the approach suggested in the article.
I’m assuming some kind of anonymity was involved in gathering the statistics. In court the incentives to lie are pretty different.
I think there are ways to psychologically assess an individual, so there’s no need to rely on self reporting.
There are not. Not that I’ve ever heard of, anyway.
There’s genital arousal monitors that have been used historically, but it turns out they’re as good as random chance in practice.
Oh, then I guess the only possibility is detabuisation. Those people need to know they will be treated, not persecuted in a super harsh way. Then they won’t be afraid to selfreport and we will know, whether we work with a pedo or a predator, and we can addjust the way we work with them accordingly.
Molesting a kid is molesting a kid, your motives don’t really change what happened. It is just as wrong regardless if it was out of convenience or premeditated. If you’re willing to molest a child, you are a pedophile.
Definitionally no, which we actually covered in some detail already here.
If you want to judge just by actions, that’s fair, and that’s the current approach. You do leave some prevention on the table, though, and you still have the “what to do with them now” problem.
I think both denfitionally and opportunistic child molesters should be treated the same, probably with some kind of sentencing and therapy/rehabilitation. Regardless if it is fetish or not, just the fact they’d touch a kid makes their actions wrong. I also fear if we seperate them too much, normal pedophiles might be able to avoid sentencing/treatment by arguing they were oppourtunistic and vice versa, depending which group is set to face harsher punishments.
Plus, the opportunistic ones may still have some kind of rape/molestation fantasies, which could be treated through similar processes as treating pedophiles.
I just don’t see the value in making hard lines between the two groups when the actions they do are the same and carry the same harm, just the motives are different.
You continue to use “pedophile” as a synonym for “child molester,” which is an ableist slur. It is akin to using “schizophrenic” as a synonym for “axe murderer.” “Normal pedophiles” don’t have to avoid sentencing because they have done nothing wrong, nothing to harm anyone. You protest a hard line difference. The hard line difference is, pedophiles are not typically child molesters, and, at the risk of being tautological, opportunists who molest children are child molesters. If you would stop stigmatizing a psychological term, you would not run into situations where you get into arguments on the internet with people who fundamentally agree with you.
“It would be ideologically incompatible for me to acknowledge that words have meaning and nuance. I must hate as hard as I can to prove that I don’t diddle children.”