Kajeesus posted:

The admittedly few self-admitted pedophiles I've encountered online have all been creepy goonlords that I wouldn't trust around children regardless of their attraction. If pedophilia were destigmatized and I knew a non-rapey pedophile, I'd probably trust them around children the same way I trust people to not commit rape in any other situation.

JFairfax posted:

unlimited shrimp posted:

But anyway, cases like this are where Social Justice logic starts to hit a brick wall for me. Every argument for queer rights could be deployed in this guy's favor -- the attraction (if not acted upon) is harmless to society, his attraction isn't a choice, persecuting this guy based on his benign attraction codifies bigotry, appeals to what is "natural" are a fallacy, this guy wouldn't necessarily be a bad parent or a danger to children, etc. Even if you want to remove the stigma of the attraction as PT6A said, how do you treat someone as an equal when their sexual orientation, if acted upon, is abhorrent? How do you check your microaggressions against someone you can't trust your children with? Should such an attraction be normalized, and if not, where is the red line for acceptable intolerance?

ImpAtom posted:

I'm pretty sure there are extremely few Social Justice Warriors who think that pedophilia should be legitimized and protected. By and large the attitude is not "this is normal and healthy" but "the stigma against pedophilia is so extreme that it prevents people from seeking treatment." The fact that nothing exists between 'burn the witch' and 'this is perfectly normal and healthy' is a problem with a lot of things, not just this particular one. I'm sure there are extreme examples but extreme examples are not a usual mindset. (or at least shouldn't be.)

That said, 'every argument for queer rights' doesn't work here. A major issue here is that a gay person who is in a relationship with another gay person has entered into a consensual relationship with another adult. This is not a minor issue and it is where the "well, if we let gays marry we'll have to marry dogs and men too" argument falls too. Mature adults choosing to enter into a consensual relationship with one another is a very different matter from abuse of someone incapable of or unable to consent.

Trying to tie the two together is kind of gross because it ignores that very important fact. No comparison can or should get past the brick wall of "gay people have consensual adult relationships." You can't compare it to pedophilia or bestiality or whatever for that very important reason.

Caros posted:

It is sexual preference in partners over which one has no control. The fact that there is a practical outlet for homosexuality doesn't make the comparison invalid. Hell if anything the comparison is just as strong because until just recently social views held that homosexuality was nearly as immoral as pedophillia in that you could go to jail for butt stuff.

If you go back a couple of centuries it was totally unacceptable to be homosexual but pretty openly accepted to be banging a twelve old.

Pedophiles should be shut the gently caress down for the exact issue you bring up, consent, but to say that we can't compare one inborn sexual preference to another simply because we as a society consider the other immoral seems like it's the same sort of argument that could have been made against gays in the first place.

ImpAtom posted:

I'm pretty sure there are extremely few Social Justice Warriors who think that pedophilia should be legitimized and protected. By and large the attitude is not "this is normal and healthy" but "the stigma against pedophilia is so extreme that it prevents people from seeking treatment." The fact that nothing exists between 'burn the witch' and 'this is perfectly normal and healthy' is a problem with a lot of things, not just this particular one. I'm sure there are extreme examples but extreme examples are not a usual mindset. (or at least shouldn't be.)

That said, 'every argument for queer rights' doesn't work here. A major issue here is that a gay person who is in a relationship with another gay person has entered into a consensual relationship with another adult. This is not a minor issue and it is where the "well, if we let gays marry we'll have to marry dogs and men too" argument falls too. Mature adults choosing to enter into a consensual relationship with one another is a very different matter from abuse of someone incapable of or unable to consent.

Trying to tie the two together is kind of gross because it ignores that very important fact. No comparison can or should get past the brick wall of "gay people have consensual adult relationships." You can't compare it to pedophilia or bestiality or whatever for that very important reason.

Tatum Girlparts posted:

It's almost like there's an inherent difference between a sexual attraction to other consenting adults and one to children regardless of past social paradigms.

Like, yea, at one time gays were called as bad as pedophiles, poo poo we still are a lot, that doesn't magically make us brothers in arms. At one time a black dude whistling at a white woman could get lynched, but if some dude wolf whistles my little cousin I'm pretty ok with him walking out of that with a busted jaw. Past bigotries being hosed up and wrong doesn't change basic poo poo like 'wanting to gently caress a child is probably objectively a wrong thing'.

Venom Snake posted:

Is there any state in the West/Developed world that does actually offer non-offending Pedophiles the chance to come forward and seek treatment/counseling without punishing/jailing the individual? Like I feel as if the high concentration of Pedophiles on line comes more from them having severe mental issues from abuse or social ostracization than just a tendency of "nerds" to be Pedo's.

Tatum Girlparts posted:

It's almost like there's an inherent difference between a sexual attraction to other consenting adults and one to children regardless of past social paradigms.

Like, yea, at one time gays were called as bad as pedophiles, poo poo we still are a lot, that doesn't magically make us brothers in arms. At one time a black dude whistling at a white woman could get lynched, but if some dude wolf whistles my little cousin I'm pretty ok with him walking out of that with a busted jaw. Past bigotries being hosed up and wrong doesn't change basic poo poo like 'wanting to gently caress a child is probably objectively a wrong thing'.

Caros posted:

Actually it is subjectively a wrong thing, which is sort of my point. Absent belief in god (at which point you might still be in the wrong on child marriage judging by the old testament) any claim that something is objectively wrong is throwing darts blindfolded. Murder might be objectively wrong, but it's also possible that the objective morality of the universe is that murder is a good thing because the goal of all life is death or some crazy poo poo.

Don't get me wrong, having sex with a child is absolutely wrong from where I'm sitting morally, but differentiating between "Guy who wants to bang guys" and "Guy who wants to bang kids" as if there is some universal difference because our society currently approves of one or the other is wrongheaded. Pedophillia is a sexual proclivity that is almost certainly hardwired in the same was as homosexuality, and sectioning it off into its own hosed up little corner is part of the problem. Drop the hammer of god on someone if he molested a kid, but it doesn't do anyone any good to shame them if they publicly admit it, nor does it help to pretend that somehow their hardwired sexual impulse is somehow different from every other hardwired sexual impulse.

Tatum Girlparts posted:

I think Germany has/had something where if you go to a shrink and say 'I'm sexually attracted to kids, I've never acted on it and it's causing me problems' you get help and all, but really then if people want to do the 'well the gays...' thing we've pretty well shown you can't repress someone's sexuality and that ends well for them, so I'm really not sure on what the data and poo poo around programs like that shows.

Venom Snake posted:

A lot of Pedophiles were victims of abuse when they were children so it feels like it's probably a mental health issue rather than one of pure sexuality. I mean it just feels wrong someone could get sexually abused as a child then be doomed to a life of social ostracization from the result of that abuse.

Caros posted:

The main thing that leads to the idea of pedophiles as a biological trait is that there is tons of data for it. Studies on pedophiles have found, for example, that they have less white matter in their brains and are statistically four times more likely to be left handed. The last one is important because the chance of that happening incidentally if there wasn't some biological factor us vanishingly small.

A Buttery Pastry posted:

So what you're saying is that we need to imprison all left handed people?

Caros posted:

The main thing that leads to the idea of pedophiles as a biological trait is that there is tons of data for it. Studies on pedophiles have found, for example, that they have less white matter in their brains and are statistically four times more likely to be left handed. The last one is important because the chance of that happening incidentally if there wasn't some biological factor us vanishingly small.

A Buttery Pastry posted:

So what you're saying is that we need to imprison all left handed people?

Caros posted:

As I understand it the correlation with being abused is largely incidental. There was a focus on people who turned out to molest children having been molested themselves As children and people inferred causation that data doesn't back up.

That said there is some data to support the idea that people who were abused as children will sexually abuse others, whether children or adult. So it does contribute to the acting out on the impulse that was already there.

The main thing that leads to the idea of pedophiles as a biological trait is that there is tons of data for it. Studies on pedophiles have found, for example, that they have less white matter in their brains and are statistically four times more likely to be left handed. The last one is important because the chance of that happening incidentally if there wasn't some biological factor us vanishingly small.

Stanos posted:

The problem is mainly there's no political drive for it. Ideally yeah if someone was a pedophile they'd be able to get some form of help but just go ahead and try to advocate for them. It's not like they can indulge in it in an acceptable manner to society and do you really want to be the person who gets stuck holding the bag when whoever you're treating acts on their urges? It'd be like being an abortion provider in the reddest most jesus-y state in the US.

Paradoxish posted:

Is there any actual treatment for pedophilia? I imagine that you can't "cure" someone of it any more than you can cure someone of their attraction to a particular sex, so the social stigma that's been created around it is actually pretty troubling.

Vagon posted:

This bullshit about "Oh, I was fondled by someone" making it okay or alright to be a the very loving disgusting creature that did that to you is vile. No, it isn't fair or will that pain ever go away, but it does not flip a switch in you to make you want to hurt children in the future. I actually was raped when I was still a young boy. It has hosed me up to no end, but I have never been attracted to a child. If these disgusting subhumans want to "come out and be honest" then they need to stop trying to hide behind shields of "b-b-but it happened to me!". I wouldn't be surprised if the tale was bullshit anyway.

What I'm saying is, burn all pedophiles.

Kegluneq posted:

y Increased left handedness has also been associated with schizophrenia, epilepsy, homosexuality (more tenuously), asexuality and being really awesome at music. The paedophilia correlation is there, but it's not very helpful by itself.

Caros posted:

Oh I wasn't trying to say "gently caress up left handed people because they are pedophiles" or anything. Its just that if it were environmental then that correlation would be almost impossible. There is clearly a significant biological factor in pedophilliac tendencies was all I was getting across.

Effectronica posted:

What? There are all kinds of environmental factors that correlate with biological ones. Self-identifying as a homosexual or bisexual is associated with your socioeconomic environment and where you grew up. The color of your skin, if you're an American, affects your propensity for various diseases, and not because of genetics.

Kegluneq posted:

y Increased left handedness has also been associated with schizophrenia, epilepsy, homosexuality (more tenuously), asexuality and being really awesome at music. The paedophilia correlation is there, but it's not very helpful by itself.

Vagon posted:

This bullshit about "Oh, I was fondled by someone" making it okay or alright to be a the very loving disgusting creature that did that to you is vile. No, it isn't fair or will that pain ever go away, but it does not flip a switch in you to make you want to hurt children in the future. I actually was raped when I was still a young boy. It has hosed me up to no end, but I have never been attracted to a child. If these disgusting subhumans want to "come out and be honest" then they need to stop trying to hide behind shields of "b-b-but it happened to me!". I wouldn't be surprised if the tale was bullshit anyway.

What I'm saying is, burn all pedophiles.

VideoTapir posted:

Did any of you guys actually read the whole article?

unlimited shrimp posted:

Again, my point is that there are no healthy, consenting ways for a pedophile to explore their pedophilia (except fantasizing I guess).

Paradoxish posted:

Is there any actual treatment for pedophilia? I imagine that you can't "cure" someone of it any more than you can cure someone of their attraction to a particular sex, so the social stigma that's been created around it is actually pretty troubling.

eSports Chaebol posted:

Probably the first step in changing laws to actually be about protecting children instead of moral outrage would be to stop charging children for child porn and to stop charging child prostitutes for being raped.

Venom Snake posted:

Generally laws dealing with this kind of stuff are more based on moral outrage and punishment of the vague notion of sin rather than any kind of actual desire to help people in bad situations. There is also some kind of weird mentality that fetishes zero tolerance policies instead of looking at the context of what and why something happened.

For instance; an 19 year old sleeping with a 16 year old is by and far removed from a 40 year old raping a 12 year old.