On Topic Discussion Pedophilia, Bisexuality, and Celibacy: Some Hard Questions

[dpnice]

..............................

.................................. I don't know why all these topics are popping up lately to try to lessen the blow of paedophilia, ...........................

I do disagree with this opinion as in all my years on JUB I have never seen any support for this and in fact have often been horrified by the intensity of hatred shown towards them. There have been many threads trying to dissect them and understand their actions; plus frequent notifications of news stories about paedophilia. But never have I seen a single statement condoning it.

 

[peeonme]

From what I have read most pedophiles have preferences, age and gender are amongst these. Also from my reading in various books on phycology the main thought on people who use children for sexual pleasure was that they were immature, that they had never "grown" to a place in their psyche where there felt comfortable acting in an intimate way with a fellow adult.

I am sure that some of them will take either sex, some will have an age range, the bottom line though is that they want children because that's where they feel that they are in charge, this is no orientation, it is an adult with a sex drive meeting his needs in his "comfort" zone in a most selfish way.

This to most adults be they gay, straight or bi is a subject that is difficult to address, it would be nice to pretend that it is not there, for years that is what happened, for years there were victims who lived with secrets. Victims who blamed themselves and self medicated to ease the pain.

It is good to turn over some rocks in the garden of humankind and see what is crawling under them, it will ruffle feathers and make us angry... better than to sweep it under the rug, ask Penn State.

 

[palbert]

^Well put.

I think it brings the question of what orientation is. For years on this forum we have endlessly posted about whether homosexual attraction is innate or acquired, whether gays and lesbians have a similar or shared causation, whether transgendered people are psychologically impaired because they are born in the wrong gender bodies, and whether bisexuals are truly bi or falsely claiming a second orientation.

At some point, it behooves us to have a definition of orientation that stands up to reality, not just politics, bias, or somehow is derived as rebuttal to those who disparage gays.

In this particular case, we seem hellbent on trying to restrict the definition so that those with criminal behaviors do not "qualify" as having an innate orientation that could be classified distinctly. I think it is a holdover from the (faulty) syllogism that was prevalent a decade and two ago, that homosexuality cannot be wrong if inborn. Therefore, by extension, anything inborn cannot be immoral as it is somehow beyond one's control, or more to the point, should not be controlled.

The whole line of reasoning was always bad from the beginning. Homosexuality is male-to-male sexual attraction. It doesn't need biological origin to be legitimate. It doesn't need rainbow flags, gay bars, Leftist politics, exaltation of feminized males, drag queens, leather bars, promotion of gay porn, queer politics, fashion sense, urban elitism, or anything else to be legitimate.

It is legitimate inherently because it exists as an equal expression of free will in an open (or closed) society and does not harm, damage, or intrude upon another's rights to pursue and enjoy the same personal sexual freedom of self-fulfillment. Everything else after that becomes footnotes, not primary.

Pedophilia doesn't pass that criterion, so is legitimately illegitimate, regardless of being an orientation or not.

I feel you overstate the "feel good" reasons for acceptance of homosexuality and gay marriage. It is a simple cost/benefit analysis. When homosexuals became too potent an economic force some accommodation had to be made. That accommodation is gay marriage. The Arizona "religious freedom" bill was not vetoed for humanitarian reasons; it was vetoed for economic ones.

May be there is no similar cost/benefit situation for pedophilia. Or, may be the costs of dealing (by ignoring) with its aftermath are less than the benefit to be gained by accepting or eradicating it.

 

[JohnnyAnger]

http://gawker.com/5941037/born-this...for-those-who--want-to-have-sex-with-children

This article is a really good overview of pretty much what I have come to believe and anyone with some interest in it should give it a go (ignore that it's gawker, it's of a high standard!).

t is a fact that real pedophiles account for only 20 percent of sexual abusers. If we know that pedophiles are not simply people who commit a small offence from time to time but rather are grappling with what is equivalent to a sexual orientation just like another individual may be grappling with heterosexuality or even homosexuality, and if we agree on the fact that true pedophiles have an exclusive preference for children, which is the same as having a sexual orientation, everyone knows that there is no such thing as real therapy. You cannot change this person's sexual orientation.

What Van Gijseghem meant by "real pedophiles" is the definition most of the scientists I spoke to use and the definition we'll use throughout this article. That is, people—the overwhelming majority of whom are men—who have an unwavering sexual attraction to prepubescent children. When you start to read a lot about pedophilia, you realize that the dialogue gets muddied because so many laymen use the term "pedophile" to mean anyone who sexualizes a child. But a 21-year-old who has intercourse with a 16-year-old, while not a good decision maker, is probably not a pedophile. Nor is someone who, say, exposes himself to a 5-year-old boy necessarily a pedophile. They may have committed a pedophilic act, but unless they have a clear preference for undeveloped children the way heterosexual men have for women, they are not pedophiles.

 

[JohnnyAnger]

From what I have read most pedophiles have preferences, age and gender are amongst these. Also from my reading in various books on phycology the main thought on people who use children for sexual pleasure was that they were immature, that they had never "grown" to a place in their psyche where there felt comfortable acting in an intimate way with a fellow adult.

This is pretty true, there was a study done on the IQ of known paedophiles and they scored about 10 points less than average, with a correlation between the IQ levels and the age of the children they were attracted to i.e. the lower the IQ, the lower the age preference.

- - - Updated - - -

The article is interesting, but there are too many cases of married men being pedophiles. They may not be the "norm," but they exist in significant numbers. They must be adequately addressed in any meaningful data set. They are too prevalent to be mere outliers.

Hiding in plain sight maybe? How many gay men were and are married to women.

 

[dpnice]

http://gawker.com/5941037/born-this...for-those-who--want-to-have-sex-with-children

This article is a really good overview of pretty much what I have come to believe and anyone with some interest in it should give it a go (ignore that it's gawker, it's of a high standard!).

Thanks for the article link. It was worthwhile reading and gave many subjects on which further in depth thought would be a good idea.

The problem was the comments section. I have just spent the rest of my afternoon wading through them, worthwhile but now I must try to catch up with the work I haven't done.

 

[eastofeden]

Sex describes coitus and various forms of sexual contact, not just between humans, but between animals.

If one adds anything to that, one isn't really stopping with just the definition of sex.

As has been stated ad nauseum on JUB, sex can be just for sexual gratification, and often has no consideration whatsoever for the sexual partner.

In your definition of sex, you seem to have elevated it beyond a physical act to some sort of consenting behavior between interested adults.

Rape absolutely is sex. It isn't moral, but is certainly is sex.

As I was reading through the Mirriam Webster definitions of sex....there is a lot of gray area and a lot of room to redefine and evolve the definition of sex.

For instance...

physical activity in which people touch each other's bodies, kiss each other, etc.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sex

I hug people I like all the time and I kiss people all the time...it is not sex nor is it a sexual act in any way....

sexually motivated phenomena or behavior

In the case of pedophilia and rape...I think power and control are the motivations....

Definitions evolve as we do. Bottom line...there is no way I would ever characterize either of those acts as sex ...it does not matter what the dictionary says. I can agree that it is a sexual act in the mind of the perpetrator but in order to have sex it requires two or more consenting partners.

 

[dpnice]

My afternoon spent reading peoples' comments on paedophilia brought me to the following conclusions.

Many, perhaps most, people think the following:

Shoot them!
Castrate them!
Imprison them for life!
Ship them off to a penal colony!

Unfortunately these 'solutions' seem only possible after a child has been abused and the irreparable damage already done.

Yet there are some hopeful signs of humanity where acceptance of their compulsions/orientation, though I would prefer to use the term deviation, could result in some form of understanding of the processes that lead to child abuse and enable us to aide such people in order to prevent them putting into action their sexual desires.

As far as I have understood none of the so far solutions applied to the problem have succeeded in eradicating or even controlling paedophiliac acts.

Surely it is time to look at other means to control their desires before they put them into action and in this way prevent the abuse rather than punishing the person after the child has been abused?

 

[Kulindahr]

Paedophilia is NOT about sexuality, it is purely a controlling mechanism

Paedophilia has no connection with sexuality. It is not about attraction. It is about control. The vast majority of paedophiles do not target a child due to its gender

Are you maintaining that there's no sexual arousal? That they just decide they need to "control" someone?

That's pure bullshit. I worked for a while with a sex offender who was attracted to kids -- a very narrow range of kids, in fact: boys from age nine to eleven, slender with narrow faces and light-colored hair. Just the sight of one would get him aroused. But parade younger boys, chubby boys, dark-haired boys in front of him, and his response was no different than if they had been tree stumps or shopping carts. If it was about "power", his immediate response wouldn't have been sexual, but something else.

And from what he said, all the offenders who reported to his parole officer had a definite gender attraction.

(And I get the creeps just typing about this stuff.)

I'm probably going to catch a lot of fire for this, but I think pedophilia is an orientation (as well as a sickness). We all have a choice on who we will have sex with, but the predisposition of attraction towards a particular subject (or object) is innate, IMO. Pedophiles "can't help", for a lack of better phrasing, feeling attracted to minors and some don't act upon it because society shuns it (as it should). I am not condoning the actions of pedophiles; I am just thinking about this topic as a sexual minority and knowing that the basis of attraction very often is not just a matter of choice.

The problem is that people want to have just one definition for a thing. But it isn't that easy -- biologically speaking, it may well be an orientation. But that has no bearing on the social definition, which is an entirely different matter, or the ethical definition, which is yet another.

It's easy to take refuge in holding to just one definition, but that's just intellectual laziness. In order to deal with a problem, we have to look at it as it is, and that means not just allowing but insisting on the various definitions.

Almost all offenders, show little remorse for the pain inflicted on the victim or victims, and show no guilt.Sounds evil to me.

Statistics? Because that doesn't fit with the books I've read on the matter. Yes, there's a significant portion who are like that, but there's a significant portion of all humans who lack empathy, so it may be just an overlap.

In fact that's an interesting pointer to possible research: if lack of empathy and pedophilia are both genetic, do important genes for both those characteristics lie close by on a chromosome? If lack of empathy is indeed higher in pedophiles, can that somehow be used to find those genetic defects?

We can screen embryos for such things as Tay-Sachs disease. If we could screen for pedophilia, we could save a lot of people from suffering.

 

[Kulindahr]

From what I have read most pedophiles have preferences, age and gender are amongst these. Also from my reading in various books on phycology the main thought on people who use children for sexual pleasure was that they were immature, that they had never "grown" to a place in their psyche where there felt comfortable acting in an intimate way with a fellow adult.

I am sure that some of them will take either sex, some will have an age range, the bottom line though is that they want children because that's where they feel that they are in charge, this is no orientation, it is an adult with a sex drive meeting his needs in his "comfort" zone in a most selfish way.

This to most adults be they gay, straight or bi is a subject that is difficult to address, it would be nice to pretend that it is not there, for years that is what happened, for years there were victims who lived with secrets. Victims who blamed themselves and self medicated to ease the pain.

It is good to turn over some rocks in the garden of humankind and see what is crawling under them, it will ruffle feathers and make us angry... better than to sweep it under the rug, ask Penn State.

One book I read, by a guy who'd dealt with hundreds of pedophiles, drew a distinction between those whose age-attraction could be changed and some for whom it couldn't. He also distinguished between feeling in charge and feeling safe -- and in those who wanted sexual "partners" with whom they felt safe, almost invariably they'd been abused themselves, and thus had the issue of being terrified of anyone else having power over them in a sexual setting. Having been abused myself, I can understand that last part quite easily!

 

[Kulindahr]

In this particular case, we seem hellbent on trying to restrict the definition so that those with criminal behaviors do not "qualify" as having an innate orientation that could be classified distinctly. I think it is a holdover from the (faulty) syllogism that was prevalent a decade and two ago, that homosexuality cannot be wrong if inborn. Therefore, by extension, anything inborn cannot be immoral as it is somehow beyond one's control, or more to the point, should not be controlled.

The whole line of reasoning was always bad from the beginning. Homosexuality is male-to-male sexual attraction. It doesn't need biological origin to be legitimate. It doesn't need rainbow flags, gay bars, Leftist politics, exaltation of feminized males, drag queens, leather bars, promotion of gay porn, queer politics, fashion sense, urban elitism, or anything else to be legitimate.

It is legitimate inherently because it exists as an equal expression of free will in an open (or closed) society and does not harm, damage, or intrude upon another's rights to pursue and enjoy the same personal sexual freedom of self-fulfillment. Everything else after that becomes footnotes, not primary.

Pedophilia doesn't pass that criterion, so is legitimately illegitimate, regardless of being an orientation or not.

 

[Kulindahr]

As far as I have understood none of the so far solutions applied to the problem have succeeded in eradicating or even controlling paedophiliac acts.

Surely it is time to look at other means to control their desires before they put them into action and in this way prevent the abuse rather than punishing the person after the child has been abused?

Or find the genetic link, and just keep new ones of that variety from being born. Even if it's, say, only a third of pedophiles who are that way because it's in their genetic makeup, it's worth the effort to find the gene(s) and put an end to it!

 

[whitedavo]

It's only now being considered an orientation to undermine the progress that the LGBT movement has made.

If we have to have a discussion, one of the only good points brought up so far is that sexual abuse doesn't make someone a pedophile. There's correlation but no causation. I say this as someone who was sexually abused as a child by a heterosexual family member.

 

[Kulindahr]

It's only now being considered an orientation to undermine the progress that the LGBT movement has made.

If we have to have a discussion, one of the only good points brought up so far is that sexual abuse doesn't make someone a pedophile. There's correlation but no causation. I say this as someone who was sexually abused as a child by a heterosexual family member.

You mean those scientists are just making shit up? There's really no study behind their statements?









Somehow, I don't think so.

 

[eastofeden]

There are no definitions of sex that I found that make any reference to consent.

...and that is why we should change that. No kid who has ever been molested or person who has ever been raped should have to refer to it as having had sex....

Time for an update

 

[Kulindahr]

In response to the argument that pedophiles cannot help how they feel, well neither can anybody when it comes to sexual identity. We all have our own unique identities, and it seems to me to play right into the hands of homophobes to broaden the subject of sexuality to something greater than the simplicity that it should be. Any comparisons between bisexuals and pedophiles are no more valid than between straights and pedophiles or gays and pedophiles, and crucially NONE of these comparisons are valid.

Some people have a real sexual thing about feet and sneakers.....i can't get my head around why on earth they do....but they do. But we can accept that fetish. We don't consider it a new orientation. I have to roll my eyes at the thought of considering pedophilia an orientation...it's just not.

Okay, let's go with "sexual identity" for the biological "set" of attractions. "Orientation" then becomes just asocial word without a rigorous meaning, but that's fine.

But no one uses "LGB" to identify the "other" orientations: they use "LGBT," including transgender, which is patently NOT an orientation, but an identity. Mind you, I'm NOT arguing for inclusion of pedophilia into the political caucus for civil rights, and that is all I believe the acronym LGBT is good for, political alliance.

Pedophiles do not need or deserve our political support, nor any rights per se, but we do have the obligation to honestly acknowledge the orientation, which is explicitly as identifiable and observable and describable as transgenderism. Identities and orientations are already confused in gay circles AND in the general public's mind.

Of course they do: they have the same inherent rights as anyone else, and they deserve our support for making a system where they can come forward without condemnation before they harm anyone, and a way to live with dignity far, far away from any children. And we owe it to each other to find if there's a genetic factor that can be screened for so we cut down on the number of future pedophiles.

 

[Kulindahr]

...and that is why we should change that. No kid who has ever been molested or person who has ever been raped should have to refer to it as having had sex....

Time for an update

I can go with this. Being raped was technically a sexual experience, but in no way was it "having sex" -- "suffering via sex" might work, but whatever phrase is used has to make clear that the victim is not participating, but being used.

 

[eastofeden]

Respectfully offered, I don't think they take offense to the term because they don't take it to mean anything to do with being in a relationship. If someone said they'd made love, THAT would be offensive.

To say that they had sex only refers to the nature of the physical contact, not any intent or mutual consent.

We agree to disagree.

THIS...along with so many other things...is why I love you

 

[blackbeltninja]

We can screen embryos for such things as Tay-Sachs disease. If we could screen for pedophilia, we could save a lot of people from suffering.

A nice idea, provided the correlation of the genetics and the intent is perfect.

Otherwise it's all very Minority Report.

-d-

 

[figjam]

... a revelation that came to me when I considered that most pedophiles are married straight men who are compulsively attracted to pre-sexual children...

You my fellow Jubber form part of that of the demographic (gay, straight, bi - it does not matter) that should be kept away from children in total....