The issue I have with this line of thinking is that it discourages non contact offenders from seeking help with their problems. Even though I hate pedophiles, I don’t want them harmed or killed, I want them to manage their risk level and ultimately, to be cured one day. On twitter, often I find a pedo discussing treatment and some random person would post a comment that they should be killed. This is helpful exactly how? I want solutions, this isn’t the solution. Treatment and ultimately a state mandated cure is the solution.
1 Like
Exactly, the way pedophiles are stigmatized makes them hide out of fear of being “reported” if they seek medical help. This scenario disrupts not only children’s safety, but also scientific research in this area. In addition, the fear of finding a result that could be considered “pro-pedophile” in their research discourages scientists from studying the topic. As you can see the stigmatization of pedophilia gets in the way of any advances in this area.
I know all too well the kind of attitude you’re talking about as I’m frequently on the receiving end of it and you’re right that it’s not at all helpful. Reduction of stigma towards paedophiles is the starting point for a lot of abuse prevention measures.
Note that roughly 60-80% of child sexual abusers aren’t actually paedophiles and the vast majority of paedophiles never offend, so measures aimed at preventing paedophiles offending are but a very small part of abuse prevention.
I want to touch on this:
No. I’m all for improved access to treatment, and if a way to change paedophilia were to be found I’m all for it being made available to people who want it. However making that mandatory is not something that should ever happen.
1 Like
The aggressive hysteria about killing deviants existed long before pedophiles were a prominent item of public concern and targeted gays and lesbians, and before that, interracial and inter-religious couples. The underlying issue is somewhat complex to explain in full, since it combines the basic bullying/bigotry desire to presume yourself superior to someone else with two deeper psychological factors. One is the dread of schism, heterodoxy or frowardness, which is a revulsion toward people who seem to have voluntarily turned away from being people who identify with other members of their society - they seem to have become deliberately weird as a sort of rejection of society, and that’s both scary and eerie. The other is a dread of insidious internal weakness, where people who have experienced some temptations to go in odd directions themselves, or are troubled by internal sexual urges they disapprove of, OR are just terribly afraid of some internal tendencies they perceive as ‘weak’ taking them over, become violently assertive about regaining toughness and control. Put it all together, and it becomes a strong urge to make a scapegoat as an antiplacebo (a placebo representing something unwanted) and to destroy that placebo – thus symbolically eliminating weakness and social schism from the environment. The tottering ego no longer needs to be tempted or threatened when its symbolic enemies have been killed.
This pathology, which is a deep flaw in the human race that has been directed at indefinite numbers of different targets, has absolutely nothing to do with attempts to prevent sexual abuse or misconduct. If there were no non-crime-committing pedophiles to focus on, these fantasy killers would simply turn to someone else.
1 Like
I agree, except that I don’t hate pedophiles. I hate people who abuse and use children specifically. This problem goes well outside the bounds of pedophilia, or any kind of -ilia, for that matter.
1 Like