See here:
WHAT?!? No one should ever have any legal right to defend paedophilia. It’s arguably the second worst thing any human being could ever commit because it leaves victims permanently scarred for life and can occasionally intice them to do the same or similar things once they approach adulthood.
We need to work on definitions here…
That’s words in general. Nowadays, idiots use sociopath and psychopath interchangeably. They also use massacre and genocide interchangeably.
I don’t defend pedophilia, but to play devil’s advocate, it isn’t in the DSM-V and not recognized as a mental disorder. They may need help, but it’s a personal choice considering the rational fear that they’ll be reported and interrogated, possibly put on a list of people to watch. The next time the cops decide to mess with somebody who just wanted help, it’ll be there. As long as a person doesn’t hurt another child, aka pedophilic disorder, it’s not my place to say what they should do. Last time I checked, you can’t be charged with a crime because of your thoughts, that’s some orwellian shit there, but you can be involuntary committed and 5150’d for some of them. Just thinking about suicide and being honest about wanting help is more than enough to buy yourself 3 days in a cold hospital. I’ve been there, it’s not fun.
Again, this is only if you tell someone. It’s counterproductive, to say the least, that people want help but find themselves punished.
Ugh the “harming a child” aspect of the definition of pedophilic disorder always bugs me. Rape isn’t a disorder and pretending it is just gives abusers a way to evade accountability. Hopefully they fix that in the next DSM edition.
Feeling an attraction is akin to walking into a market and liking the smell of baking bread. One can walk into a market, smell baking bread and pay it no mind. No one chooses whether he likes the smell of baking bread. Liking the smell of baking bread is an unconditioned response to an unconditioned stimulus. An attraction is no more of an action than liking the smell of baking bread.
What matters is the agency to moderate and the extent one feels protective of others.
The main issue I have with this is that it simplifies the multitude of complex factors that can lead to someone abusing a child to a simple “because they are a pedophile of course”.
It’s attractive because it’s a simple answer to a complex question that also puts the responsibilities for child sexual abuse far away to some distant group of people that seemingly have nothing in common with oneself.
However, we know that most pedophiles do not abuse children. So obviously pedophilia is not a complete explanation to why some people act this way. Yet that is what the DSM and ICD definitions imply.
After all, no one talks about “heterosexual disorder” when a man rapes a woman for instance.