Differences

This shows you the differences between two versions of the page.

--- pedophilia [2026/03/23 11:23] – ultracomfy
+++ pedophilia [2026/03/28 00:22] (current) – ultracomfy
@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
+~~NOTOC~~
 <WRAP column 18% right>
 {{page>Templates:Secularization}}
@@ Line 9: / Line 10: @@
 In my personal understanding, //pedophilia// describes the sexual attraction of adults or adolescents to prepubescent children.
-There is no shortage of definitions for pedophilia. Medically, pedophilia is distinguished between purely the attraction itself (pedophilia, the attraction pattern) and pedophilic disorder (the diagnosable condition involving distress, impairment and behavior). The most recent editions of formal diagnostic coding systems (for example the [[DSM|DSM-5]] or [[ICD|ICD-11]]) make the distinction between someone who solely experiences a persistent pattern of attraction, and someone who either acts on that attraction or experiences significant internal or social dysfunction((In the same way that wanting to kill someone doesn't inherently mean that you have a disorder, but actually killing someone or obsessing over potentially killing someone does.)).
+There is no shortage of definitions for pedophilia. Medically, pedophilia is distinguished between purely the attraction itself (pedophilia, the attraction pattern, a persistent sexual interest in children ≤13 years of age, in general) and pedophilic disorder (the diagnosable condition involving distress, impairment and behavior). The most recent editions of formal diagnostic coding systems (for example the [[DSM|DSM-5]] or [[ICD|ICD-11]]) make the distinction between someone who solely experiences a persistent pattern of attraction, and someone who either acts on that attraction or experiences significant internal or social dysfunction((In the same way that wanting to kill someone doesn't inherently mean that you have a disorder, but actually killing someone or obsessing over potentially killing someone does.)).
-Society at large tends to use the terms //minors//, which also invokes the term //age of consent//, and is more careful to use the word to describe a sexual attraction between two minors (as opposed to adult to minor). However, during my more or less extensive research on the topic I have also found that, apparently, it is a real thing that people conflate pedophilia with child sexual abuse offenders. As the [[https://www.childsafety.gov.au/about-child-sexual-abuse/who-perpetrates-child-sexual-abuse|National Office for Child Safety Australia]] says: "The terms 'paedophile' and 'child sexual abuse perpetrator' are often used interchangeably". This implies that anyone with an attraction towards minors commits related offenses, which is wrong. In fact, an individual who sexually abuses a child is not necessarily pedophilic. And, as usual with all sexual abuse related topics, the most common perpetrators are people whomst the victim already knows, including //especially// parents/caregivers at home, followed by other known adults.
+Society at large tends to use the terms //minors// - which also invokes the term //age of consent// - and is more careful to use the word to describe a sexual attraction between two minors (as opposed to adult to minor). However, during my more or less extensive research on the topic I have also found that, apparently, it is a real thing that people conflate pedophilia with child sexual abuse offenders. As the [[https://www.childsafety.gov.au/about-child-sexual-abuse/who-perpetrates-child-sexual-abuse|National Office for Child Safety Australia]] says: "The terms 'paedophile' and 'child sexual abuse perpetrator' are often used interchangeably". This implies that anyone with an attraction towards minors commits related offenses, which is wrong. In fact, an individual who sexually abuses a child is not necessarily pedophilic. And, as usual with all sexual abuse related topics, the most common perpetrators are people whom the victim already knows, including //especially// parents/caregivers at home, followed by other known adults.
 ===== Introduction =====
-The exact causes of pedophilia (sexual attraction to prepubescent children) are not known. A variety of studies exist and the working hypothesis at the time is that pedophilia comes about as a result of primarily developmental and environmental factors, and maybe some genetic factors as well. Like other sexual "philias"((//Sexual// philias, because there is also stuff like "hemophilia", which is the tendency to bleed a lot because the blood doesn't clot properly.)), it is neither learned nor chosen and may or may not be immutable. Individuals affected by pedophilia typically self-discover this during puberty. Treatments for paraphilic disorders exis, but their efficacy is unclear. Currently it is presumed to be not curable and therapy is prescribed primarily to help the affected manage their symptoms.
+The exact causes of pedophilia (sexual attraction to prepubescent children) are not known. A variety of studies exist and the working hypothesis at the time is that pedophilia comes about as a result of primarily developmental and environmental factors, and maybe some genetic factors as well. Like other sexual "philias"((//Sexual// philias, because there is also stuff like "hemophilia", which is the tendency to bleed a lot because the blood doesn't clot properly.)), it is neither learned nor chosen and may or may not be immutable. Individuals affected by pedophilia typically self-discover this during puberty. Treatments for paraphilic disorders exist, but their efficacy is unclear. Currently it is presumed to be not curable and therapy is prescribed primarily to help the affected manage their symptoms.
 Pedophilia is problematic because it gives the affected motivation to engage sexually with children, which is exceedingly harmful. Children are in a vulnerable stage of development and abusing them sexually causes trauma and lifelong suffering. The overwhelming distress, powerlessness and humiliation experienced by a child sexual abuse victim damages their social development and wires their sexual development completely wrongly, which will lead them to associating sex with that trauma (in the best case; sexual development can be messed up much much worse) for the rest of their life. Children, especially prepubescent children, are not able to consent, and the damage engaging them sexually would cause are the reasons why any sexual interaction is considered abuse (or more broadly speaking: rape).
@@ Line 48: / Line 49: @@
 People with pedophilia are generally, as a group, regarded to as suspicious and, in many cases, treated like sexual offenders regardless of whether they actually offend or not. They are seen with contempt and are fundamentally ostracized from society. Disparaging individuals with pedophilia or disparaging their sexual attraction is problematic because no amount of negative reinforcement will make pedophilia go away. Casting a group of people from society for something they aren't to blame for causes immense suffering. Worse yet, being a social outcast promotes developing antisocial personality traits. One of the, if not //the// principal indicator for whether a person engages in crime is whether they have antisocial personality traits such as impulsiveness and callousness. Evidence suggests that this is equally as true in pedophilia in the question about how likely individuals are to offend (see [[https://www.uottawa.ca/faculty-medicine/directory/dr-michael-seto|Dr. Michael Seto]] in [[https://psychwire.com/free-resources/q-and-a/nq86y2/the-psychology-of-pedophilia|Psychwire - The Psychology of Pedophilia]]).
-Almost all the worst criminals you've ever seen, serial killers, sexual abusers and the like, they all have in common the fact that they were socially isolated and had nothing but their own thoughts to live with. (Almost) Nobody who lives a regulated life with a job and friends and family just decides to go on a killing spree, and the same applies to individuals with pedophilia. The risk of someone offending is a thousand times higher if they have been rejected and shamed by society, have no support network and have nothing to lose. Telling people that they are the problem and that they are depraved causes suffering, makes their symptoms worse, breaks trust and makes them less likely to seek help. Seeking help requires trust in an individual and society at large. Broken trust makes it harder for an individual to seek therapy and open up to the therapist. And, broken trust makes it harder for the individual to trust society at large that, if they are able to control their pedophilia sufficiently, they will be accepted, allowed into society and treated well. As it stands, the stigma around pedophilia is so extreme that affected individuals have to expect to never be allowed into society.
+It is important not to shame or stigmatize people solely for having pedophilia. There is the argument that stigma is useful in discouraging offending, and that's why individuals with pedophilia should be stigmatized whether they offend or not. This is not correct, as stigmatizing everyone by default means that a potential offender will be stigmatized no matter what, which renders the stigmatization useless for deterrence. How will stigmatization deter a potential offender if they receive the stigmatization anyway? At this point they might as well not care.\\
+Read more about this: [[Pedophilia#Addendum: A response to City Journal  - Pedophilia Destigmatization|A response to City Journal  - Pedophilia Destigmatization]]
+Almost all the worst criminals you've ever seen, serial killers, sexual abusers and the like, they all have in common the fact that they were socially isolated and had nothing but their own thoughts to live with. (Almost) Nobody who lives a regulated life with a job and friends and family just decides to go on a killing spree, and the same applies to individuals with pedophilia. The risk of someone offending is a thousand times higher if they have been rejected and shamed by society, have no support network and have nothing to lose. Telling people that they are the problem and that they are depraved causes suffering, makes their symptoms worse, breaks trust and makes them less likely to seek help. Seeking help requires trust in an individual and society at large. Broken trust makes it harder for an individual to seek therapy and open up to the therapist. And, broken trust makes it harder for the individual to trust society at large that, if they are able to control their pedophilia sufficiently, they will be accepted, allowed into society and treated well. As it stands, the stigma around pedophilia is so extreme that affected individuals have to expect total social annihilation.
 ===== Child Pornography =====
@@ Line 57: / Line 61: @@
 Of course the question remains of whether it is worth the tradeoff. In my mind this is an easy question - if fictional child pornography prevents more offenses than it creates then it is worthwhile and should be legal.
-==== Addendum: Trying to find a legal definition of pedophilia ====
+----
+<WRAP box 100%>
+===== Addendum: A response to City Journal  - Pedophilia Destigmatization =====
+Continuation of [[Pedophilia#Shame & Stigma]]
+++++ A response to City Journal - Pedophilia Destigmatization |
+When researching pedophilia and stigmatization I inevitably found [[https://www.city-journal.org/article/terrifying-nonsense|this]] article by the City Journal called "Terrifying Nonsense on Pedophilia - Professor Allyn Walker’s advocacy for “destigmatizing” pedophilia is simply crazy". I didn't know the "City Journal" at the time but it looked professional enough and seemed well written, so I gave it a read. And even though I disagree with its main point, I really liked what I read. The way it approaches Pedophilia Stigmatization and lays out its points is - albeit wrong in my opinion - still done very openly and very well. City Journal describes itself as a policy-first outlet, describing topics from a systemic viewpoint and analyzing solutions systemically as well.
+This approach is great because even though they may be using some words that are chosenly strong and emotive, everything they say is still grounded in a systemic solution that can be analyzed and criticized regardless of the words used to describe it. Yes, City Journal comes from the Manhattan Institute, which is a conservative "Think Tank", and City Journal itself is well known for favoring conservative causes, but none of that matters if they actually bring substance to the table that can be properly analyzed and evaluated - and they sure did. I think we'd be a lot further if everyone did it like that.
+==== Introduction ====
+So, the article talks about a professor - the aforementioned Professor Allyn Walker - who got placed on leave from his university. Professor Allyn Walker does research in the field of pedophilia and appeared in a podcast about that topic, in which he said that pedophilia should be destigmatized, as people have no control over their sexual attractions and that some people have these attractions without acting on them (the word "some" here is taken from the article, I actually do not know what share of people with pedophilia actually offend, there aren't any good numbers out there).
+The article says that Walker's previous work on the topic, including a book he released "A Long, Dark Shadow: Minor-Attracted People and Their Pursuit of Dignity", reflects similar views but did not attract a virality quite like the interview. The interview did go viral and, as the article says, "led to Walker's firing". I am not sure whether this is intentional or not, but for me - personally - this wording made me think that the interview itself was the problem; that the university kicked Walker out because of his claim that pedophilia should be destigmatized.
+However, it turns out that the university did not have a problem with that claim itself. City Journal's article itself links to a page from [[https://www.fire.org/news/joint-statement-old-dominion-and-professor-allyn-walker-signal-end-campus-controversy-walker|fire.org]] which describes his firing with a bit more detail: The interview led to a national outrage which prompted many to send antagonistic mail, including some threats of violence and the such. As the article says, "Old Dominion placed Walker on leave last week, citing 'threats and other unacceptable disruption' due to '[r]eactions' to Walker’s research". That Walker was placed on leave because of public outrage - rather than formal mistake on Walker's part - is also the primary concern of an [[https://documentcloud.adobe.com/link/track?uri=urn%3Aaaid%3Ascds%3AUS%3Abbfcc969-5f0b-4fc4-8c70-677570b0b230#pageNum=1|open letter]], written and signed by some of the leading academics in the field of sexual abuse prevention. As they say, "we can appreciate the need for ODU to respond to concerns from the public and campus community. At the same time, the public backlash reflects a misunderstanding and mischaracterization of Walker’s research".
+\\
+\\
+Whether this omission was intended or not, the City Journal is still honest enough to address the topic properly. Hell, it is even honest enough to say "in some sense, pedophilia is a sexual orientation" which would be an unacceptable and patently wrong statement, according to some, but is nonetheless a useful way to think about pedophilia. It is also honest enough to make three very important concessions - (1) "So long as a pedophile doesn’t act on his desires, no grounds exist for imprisoning him". No thing such as thought crime. (2) Non-offending pedophiles "have every right to speak with one another, and indeed online communities can provide substantial benefit if they help their members refrain from abusing children". (3) "If a pedophile who doesn’t abuse children seeks therapy, our nation’s mental-health apparatus should do everything possible to help that individual."
+This third "should help" indicates that the City Journal has indeed taken to heart the understanding that individuals with pedophilia did not choose that destiny and deserve to live a good life. Also, the fact that City Journal accepts online communities as a potential way to prevent harm shows tells me that it really is a policy-first outlet (or at least this particular article is), as such an opinion only comes about from someone who can think through and see the benefits of it, even if it extremely uncomfortable to think through.
+==== About Allyn Walker ====
+City Journal has a very interesting perspective on Walker and his work. They're very honest with him, they preface their response with pointing out that Walker's position is very unlikely to find traction in the mainstream. And they also pick up another point by Walker: In his effort to destigmatize, Walker prefers to use the term "minor-attracted person", or MAP. Walker included feedback on that term from one of his study subjects in his book. That subject called "minor-attracted person" a "euphemism", which the City Journal comments "is a more forthright way of putting it". Pragmatic but honest so far, but the City Journal then goes on to say that Walker's guess on how destigmatization would work out is difficult to trust because... he is a police abolitionist and a prison abolitionist. This is also what they are referring to when they state earlier in the article that Walker is a "fringe figure spouting dangerous nonsense". Destigmatization, even of pedophilia, is not at all fringe in academia and the City Journal is referring to Walker's opinions on the police and prison system when framing him as "fringe".
+Now, I agree with City Journal on the last part, I do not believe in a police- and prisonless world. Yes, police and prisons serve important functions (the article mentions "deterrence, retribution, and incapacitation", conveniently leaving out - among others - rehabilitation; a very American omission) that cannot be replaced by humanitarian and other support programs. But whether Walker really believed in the **full** abolition of police and prisons is another matter, much like pedophilia and stigma. They have nothing, but not a single atom anything to do with pedophilia destigmatization. By bringing up police and prison destigmatization, City Journal is quite literally picking up a bunch of piss and throwing it at Walker. I've never seen someone so blatantly just go "you shouldn't believe this guy on topic X because of his views on Y and Z".
+Literally, they verbatim just say "If you’re curious how much you should trust Walker’s guess as to how a radical social experiment like this [destigmatizing pedophilia] might unfold, you will want to know that, as laid out in the book’s preface, Walker is also a police and prison abolitionist".
+==== Other Arguments by the Article ====
+The cool thing about all of this is, though, that it doesn't matter how they characterize Walker, because they provide proper substance related to what they actually want to say. However, that is also where I begin to disagree with City Journal. Take this for example:
+<WRAP box>
+<WRAP centeralign group>
+<WRAP 5% rightalign column>
+<fs xx-large>//**"**//</fs>
+</WRAP>
+<WRAP 80% column>
+The distinction between attraction and behavior is, of course, key to any argument for destigmatizing pedophilia, and Walker tries to make that distinction as stark as possible. We can all understand the difference between temptation and sin, but Walker sometimes crosses the line into assertions that are obviously untrue, as when Walker contends that pedophiles and sex offenders are “entirely distinct groups.”
+</WRAP>
+<WRAP 5% leftalign column>
+<fs xx-large>//**"**//</fs>
+</WRAP>
+</WRAP>
+<WRAP centeralign>~Robert VerBruggen from City Journal</WRAP>
+</WRAP>
+Well, no, City Journal, by definition pedophiles and sex offenders //are// entirely distinct groups. That statement is not obviously untrue and it is more likely to be "obviously true". //People with pedophilia// and //child sexual abuse// are linked, but they are not the same. City Journal's argument here would be that, according to them, a lot of pedophiles offend which, at least to some degree, makes (some) pedophiles and child sex abusers the same. However, what this leaves out is that human behavior is more than an offending rate statistic. Thinking of individuals with pedophilia as such is too reductive and ignores that their behavior is malleable. The reason Walker says that these groups are different is because we, as a society, have all the necessary tools to shape the behavior of individuals with pedophilia, and pedophiles themselves have the agency to not offend if given proper support. The incentives are there, and I assume nobody would be more interested in not being a pedophile than pedophiles themselves. That makes these groups very distinct indeed.
+The article then says that individuals with pedophilia are disproportionately highly represented among child sex abusers. I won't deny that, but I will pull that into question. Are they? Last time I checked, the exact prevalence of pedophilia offending was uncertain. However, as usual it is parents and caregivers who top the charts on sexual abuse in any category, so with that and the other categories counted in I'm not sure how much room in % is left for pedophiles to fill the rest of the chart. Remember that sexual abuse is not typically committed with sexual gratification as the primary motive, as counterintuitive as that may seem((Keywords are: Power, control, anger and entitlement.)).
+Before the article gets to the point that is central to its argument, it takes a swing at pedophilia strategization. In therapy individuals with pedophilia will be taught to become very aware of their desires and the kinds of behaviors their desires might encourage. This awareness helps them retain control, make rational decisions and identify problematic situations to strategize around them in the future. City Journal says "People who have to strategize to avoid sexually abusing children should alarm us". Hmm okay? This kind of strategization around problematic areas in life is standard practice in therapy and helps individuals manage their emotions/behavior in all kinds of settings, be it [[Personality Disorder|Personality Disorders]], [[Alcohol Abuse]] or any other field you could think of. And yes, the fact that they have to do that in the first place is certainly "alarming". But now what? If they said that it's alarming "and that's why we should stigmatize them" then we'd have a meaningful (albeit wrong) argument. If this was used to say anything at all, like even just "that's why they should be locked up" or "that's why we should help them" then the statement would have weight. As it stands, the statement is purely semantic and serves no purpose other than fearmongering.
+==== Stigma as a Policy ====
+So why should we stigmatize people for pedophilia? Because they are alarming? No. Because Allyn Walker believes in police abolitionism? No.
+<WRAP box>
+<WRAP centeralign group>
+<WRAP 5% rightalign column>
+<fs xx-large>//**"**//</fs>
+</WRAP>
+<WRAP 80% column>
+Stigmatizing pedophiles’ desires, and not merely the behavior in and of itself, conveys a hard-line, zero-tolerance attitude toward child molestation — //not only is this wrong and to be punished severely, but we can’t even fathom why you’d want to do it//.
+Destigmatizing the desires would relax that attitude. Perhaps it is unfair that pedophiles face stigma even if they have no intention of acting on their desires and are not to blame for having the desires in the first place; yet this is a consequence we can live with if it even marginally reduces child sex abuse.
+</WRAP>
+<WRAP 5% leftalign column>
+<fs xx-large>//**"**//</fs>
+</WRAP>
+</WRAP>
+<WRAP centeralign>~Robert VerBruggen in City Journal</WRAP>
+</WRAP>
+Here is the policy argument! Pedophilia stigmatizing is a worthwhile tradeoff because it reduces child sex abuse. The rest of the article goes through the motions of admitting that, obviously, you cannot really know, but then says that City Journal's guess is as good as Allyn Walker's guess and that, generally, by destigmatizing something you generally get more of it, much like we got "more" gay people when being gay became socially acceptable.
+So, let's get a few things out of the way first. We in fact //can// fathom why someone would want to do it. Why? Because 1% to 2% of our population just is that way. They're born or developed that way and that's just a fact. There is nothing hard to fathom about that. They're attracted to prepubescent children and if you can fathom how we are attracted to adults of the opposite sex (or whatever adult thing in particular you are attracted to) as the way you were born/developed then you can understand how someone else might be born/developed differently. Individuals with pedophilia aren't black boxes any more than any of us are. This might sound nitpicky, but it's an important distinction, as this kind of non-understanding attitude drives the argument laid out by City Journal.
+Secondly, there's reasonably strong support from prevention research that people with these attractions are more likely to seek therapy, peer support, and self-regulation strategies when they don't expect total social annihilation. The claim that broad stigma reduces offending is much more speculative and hard to isolate causally; if anything, stigma tends to correlate with secrecy, isolation, and avoidance of treatment, which are known risk factors in other domains. So, this really should sit with anyone arguing stigma has net protective effects rather than harm.
+Most importantly though, the premise isn't logically sound. If the goal is to use stigmatization to discourage offending, then you shouldn't just stigmatize everyone indiscriminately. If someone with pedophilia will be stigmatized no matter what, where is the discouraging effect?
+City Journal says that by being understanding (or worse, //compassionate//) towards people with pedophilia we would be //less discouraging// of child molestation. I disagree with this connection. Individuals with pedophilia know that child molestation is wrong and blanket ostracizing everyone from society purely because they have pedophilia does not communicate the wrongness of child molestation any more than a good therapist, integration into society and - if all else fails - years in prison, ever will. The only thing such indiscriminate pedophile ostracization will achieve is creating an isolated group of individuals who are miserable, feel wronged by society, disillusioned and - being ostracized from society - will develop antisocial traits, which is one of the best established predictors for crime of **all** sorts. You can't expell someone from society and then expect them to be reverent about playing by society's rules.
+While I'm sure that such aggressive, indiscriminate negative reinforcement may deter //some//, I am absolutely convinced that making life miserable for anyone is much more likely to cause them to do things we would rather they did //not//. So yeah, for some the stigma will marginally reduce child sex abuse, but for most it will probably make the odds worse; not because I or Allyn Walker are making a wild guess, but because we //know// from adjacent fields how people left behind by society act.
+++++
+</WRAP>
+<WRAP box 100%>
+===== Addendum: Trying to find a legal definition of pedophilia =====
 ++++ About trying to find a Legal Definition |
 While looking for a good legal definition for pedophilia I stumbled over the [[https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/pedophilia|Cornell's Law School's page on Pedophilia]]((Retrieved 20.03.2026)), which states "Pedophilia is a mental disorder where an individual seeks sexual gratification from children".
@@ Line 67: / Line 163: @@
 Now, that alone wouldn't be a big problem, but the more I read into this, the more a "legal" definition did not make sense for pedophilia in the first place. Lawmakers define //crimes//, and child sexual abuse of any kind is defined at length in all its shapes and sizes. Of course law people can only point to medical definitions for pedophilia itself. For them, pedophilia is mostly irrelevant as they are more concerned with the harmful behaviors that pedophilia can cause.
 ++++
+</WRAP>