AWKWARD ZOMBIE

Posts like this are not appropriate for this thread. Taboo Topics is for people to discuss uncomfortable topics. If you do not like the topic at hand, then simply do not read it.

I think it's pretty obvious why pedophilia could be considered a mental illness. You take symptoms that are irregular or unnatural and diagnose it, the same as any other disorder.

You wash your hands until the skin cracks and bleed? You probably have OCD.
Seeing things that aren't there? Schizophrenia.
Attracted to undeveloped human beings? Pedophilia

I guess that depends on whether you mean morally guilty or legally guilty. I'm sure there are many pedophiles who feel guilt and shame for urges they can't explain and don't want to go through with-- but the fact is we can infer with relative safety from the statements and studies that have been made of pedophiles who sought help before acting, or convicted pedophiles caught after the fact, that it seems likely many will try or will want to try within their lives, and are prevented to a much greater degree by the illegality of the action than any guilt they may or may not feel for their predatory desires. But make no mistake, pedophilia and its distant cousins are predatory in nature.

I don't know if it's redundant since this is taboo topics but I'll trigger tag the next bits again here for rape.

However, consider this-- would you feel comfortable knowing someone habitually and with pleasure (even if guilty pleasure) imagines graphically torturing or harming other people or animals? Not the momentary "wouldn't I like to kick my boss in the face" sort of rage anyone can have; almost everyone at times indulges in quick bouts of wanting to punch someone in the face or imagining coming out on top of a violent situation to vent anger or excitement. I mean as a habit, devoid of anger or outside impulse, not to vent pent up emotion but as a regular fantasy. How about rape? As long as they don't actually become a serial rapist, how comfortable would it be to know an individual whose greatest sexual fantasy is the violent demeanment of another person for gratification? What if you knew or had powerful reason to suspect, as is implied by evidence, that the only reason it remained fantasy was because of the amount of effort it would take, and the legal repercussions, of acting on their fantasy? Guilt not for hurting another person irreparably, but for violating the law, or fear of shame for such an act? Shallow guilt?

And to what extent is thought not substitution for, but preparation for, the act itself? Of course we can't interview bodaciously every pedophile or assume we know who all of them are. But just as you can't assume that EVERY criminal or deviant will act in the same way as ones apprehended, you can't assume that there are enough individuals we haven't caught to reliably discredit the evidence we have. It isn't reasonable to assume that for every 10 pedophiles you catch in the act there are another 10, or 50, or 100 "innocently going about their business," as one might say. There's a very clear linear progression in the testimonies and studies of pedophiles available that indicate that many (if not all) go from thought, to fiction, to spying, to medium interference, to direct acts.

You can only argue to a certain extent that freedom is more... let's say prudent, than safety. What I mean by that is, you can reasonably argue that so many people own guns without hurting others, and guns have so many necessary uses, it's unreasonable to ban guns. I'm not fond of guns, but I'm also aware that gun suicides more than double gun homicides each year. That's very fine reasoning I think few would argue with. But guns are an object independent of their users; pedophilia is a mindset and a powerful urge. Few people with guns fantasize about using them on other things. Every pedophile fantasizes about the act of pedophilia; that's the nature of a fetish. It wouldn't be a fetish if you didn't think about it and get off to it, even if guiltily. Using "all" and "every" is a general no-no but I think that's an inherently reasonable statement to make. With that in mind, I guess I would then ask, which is more reasonable-- criminalizing an act that a few, but very few, let's say the single digit percentages and I feel even that is outrageously generous, are ready for, or failing to do so? Even if the occurrence itself is rare, if 90% of people involved are going to be harmed by it in a lasting and incredibly damaging, life-altering way, does it make any sense NOT to criminalize it?

The actual plain and un-embellished act of sexual intercourse is not itself physically or psychologically damaging for people who have reached sexual maturity, even if they are not legally in their majority. But the fact is that in practice, almost all minors forced or pressured into a relationship with someone older than them, even by a year, are going to be harmed by their interaction. It may not be rape, it may not be physically abusive or violent, but it's going to have a hard and heavy impact on them one way or another, and when it's a predatory adult looking to use someone who can't adequately defend themselves or withstand many ordinary pressures without some stress or harm, well.

Note that there is the rare occasion where it works out; but again, if it only doesn't end up harming someone 1 in 10 times, does it make any sense not to ban it? Even if the number said that 6 in 10 aren't hurt, isn't that still too many people being damaged so badly it stays with them the rest of their lives?

Would I feel comfortable with someone who imagines torturing animals and gets pleasure from it? No, I would not be. But I also wouldn't call them a monster just for imaginary acts. Just because I personally don't feel comfortable with it doesn't mean I can pass judgement on them for something they have never actually done.

I don't think that pedophiles being restricted only by the illegality of their potential act is a very good argument because it can be applied to just about every single criminal act. The vast majority of people don't commit crimes because they're afraid of being caught and afraid of the consequences. This is the basis of crimes of opportunity, where when someone thinks they have a good chance of avoiding punishment they will commit a crime, be it speeding on an open road or shoplifting from a Walmart.

Any why not? There is a difference between people who actually commit crimes and those who do not. If you're going to say that the evidence shows otherwise then I want to see that evidence. Again, you can only conduct studies that show what the thought process of the criminal type is like. There is no study for the ones who don't because they can control themselves, meaning no one knows who they are. I do say there can be many more in the shadows than in the light because there is always more hidden than revealed when it comes to people who want to hide something.

How would you criminalize a thought process? That is counter-productive to fixing the problem and impossible outside of actual thought policing, which should never be done for any reason. And why would you criminalize something that has no victims? There aren't any children being harmed to create cartoon porn so what right does anyone have to deny that freedom other than personally thinking it's wrong, which is never a good thing to form a legal basis from. Emotions and feelings are flawed, they should never come up when it comes to rights. That's why people demonize religion; the people following it proclaim what is right for no other reason than they say so. That doesn't work.

If there is no victim, if there is no harm, then there is no crime.

Speeding is a victimless crime-- it endangers others, but no one is directly hurt as a result of it, it only increases the chances for a mistake to be made. Shoplifting is not technically a victimless crime but because there is no particular person or individual harmed it is psychologically the same. People engage in those actions without guilt outside the letter of the law because there is no individual they can perceive themselves as harming and no (or reduced) emotional or moral guilt for it.

Abusing an animal or a person is different; you're forced to confront the pain or fear you're inflicting and either decide it's worth the result you want, or that it is the result you want. I don't hurt people not because I would go to jail but because hurting people is terrible to do; a child needs consequences to teach them not to do harmful things because they have no developed sense of empathy or sympathy. That's also different. But this is just to address that particular argument rather than the overarching subject at hand. No, it is not accurate to say that people only don't commit crimes, especially crimes involving a direct victim, because it's illegal. It's illegal in order to discourage deviants who wouldn't otherwise care about harming someone or actually seek to be gratified by inflicting harm; a prevention of a harmful abnormal behavior rather than a normal one.

It came up that "isn't it just a preference like other sexual orientations" so I'll also put this here:
I guess one argument in response to your statement is this; pedophilia is a highly specific urge to do a highly specific thing to a highly specific type a victim. It follows that the general human urge to express aggression can be satisfied by movies and games about nonspecific exciting or aggressive topics; I don't play GTA as a substitute for the actual urge to harm others, but as a substitute for loud and aggressive action aimed at no one in particular. Pedophiles use fictional child pornography as a specific substitute for the act they actually wish to perform.

OCD is a mental disorder because the sufferer gets thoughts or emotions for no apparent reason, most of which are negative, even morbid, in nature, where the only way to get rid of said thoughs or emotions is to to a trivial task, like knocking on a parking meter, or locking your door twice. Eventually, this trivial action has less of an effect, or the individual has more than one episode, requiring more and more actions. The thoughts are called obsessions, and the actions are called compulsions. The individual with the disorder is very often aware of the disorder, but because of the ourely internal nature of the disorder, can't stop. If they don't perform their compulsions, they have a panic that something VERY VERY BAD is going to happen. The only way to lessen the obsessions is to make it where they need the compulsions, but can't act on them. The mind eventually learns that the compulsions are not needed for everything to be perfectly fine.

There are two types of Schizophrenia, one with "negative" symptoms, and one with "possitive" symptoms. "Negative" implies the nature of the disorder being that the individual suffering from it has "less" than a "normal" individual. What's missing when you have "negative" Schizophrenia is your physical capacity to emote. You feel normal emotions, but you can't physically express them. You feel pop flyin', or sad, but will never quite look look pop flyin' or sad. This is disconcerting to everyone else, because looking at how everyone else is emoting is how we internally judge our own words and actions. "Positive" Schizophrenia is what everyone thinks it is. They see a meaningless stimuli and form incorrect judgments on them, like the news anchor sending them (specifically) a message in the way he rubs his hair after the end of each commercial break. They think everyone is out to get them and that everything everyone says is proof of that. The way you said "Hello" was suspicious. People with the disorder can have just negative, possitive, or symptoms from either end, and ranges between simple Schizotypal personality disorder, to full on detatches, "giggling in the corner like a school girl", Bruce Willis movie example type Schizophrenia.

For pedophilia......you're attracted to people who are either look physically immature, or are mentally immature...or both.

Something being a mental disorder is much MUCH more complicated than just a sentance worth of content. Pedophilia is no more a mental disorder than I am a meat popsicle.

EDIT: @Wry Bread
No one is really arguing that the physical act of pedophilia is wrong. The discussion is on whether or not the simple attraction is abnormal, or cause for concern.

Medically pedophilia is specifically sexual attraction to persons 11 years of age or younger, with some definitions going up to 13 but never higher. Attraction to younger teens in certain age brackets is classified differently.

And like I've mentioned, although it's hard to say with absolute certainly, as with anything, based on the pedophiles who have turned up for help or who have been caught in the actual act, it would appear that while many pedophiles may go a long time without actually acting on it, most of them seem to actively plan to do so sooner or later, despite the risk to themselves.

But you can't say most of them when you don't know how large or small of a percentage of the total "population" is that does get caught. How do you know that's most of them? Where's the evidence?

That's the key point your argument is hinging on, so you need to substantiate it.

The same goes for other key factors, like just how does pedophilia compare to other sexual preferences, whether it's as specific as a "foot fetish" or as general as homo/heterosexuality. Are they the same? Are they different? Are there more "upstanding" members of society who have the sexual preference, or is it just the class of people we see on dateline NBC? It may just be up for debate until studies like that exist, but right now we have just as much evidence to suggest it's a mental disorder as they had to classify homosexuality as such in the 60s/70s.

What can be inferred, though, is that the class of people who would actually act on it (like the ones we see on dateline NBC) are more likely doing so because they have the personality trait to do so. You could substitute the attraction for children with an attraction for long, blonde hair and they'd most likely turn out just as deviant to society. Thiscan be inferred because, despite society telling them no, they took it upon themselves to go for what they want, to hell with the consequences and to hell with whoever they hurt. In the example I gave in the previous sentence, they wouldn't be kidnapping kids, they'd be kidnapping college aged co-eds. The issue isn't that they're attracted to children, it's that they have no regard for the rules of society, and are willing to hurt those around them to get what they want. That's the behavior that's a cause for worry, not necessarily the "I'm attracted to little kids" angle.

Then again, I'm not sure how well studied the topic of "society's effect on the human psyche" is. While there are fetishes for feet, there are also fetishes for "taboo" where the thing that attracts them is the simple fact that it's taboo. There's also the opposite, what does the fact that something's taboo do for someone who encompasses it? There was the whole "gay rights" thing where that question was asked on a near gobal level...and is still be asked to a lesser extreme today, where homosexuals are still somewhat facing a society that is shifting from the act being a social taboo. The question isn't "Is pedohilia really wrong?" Of course it's wrong...for a variety of reasons...GOOD reasons...The question is how guilty or innocent the people who encompass this particular taboo are.

EDIT: And when I say "encompass", I mean everyone from one extreme to the other, from the people who simply like the idea, to the people actively going for it (again, dateline NBC.) Obviously the later are guilty...but of what?

A lack of absolute knowledge doesn't indicate a lack of any trend at all, or any evidence at all. We don't know how many sociopaths are out there exactly, or how many would-be rapists are out there exactly-- it doesn't change what we do know about likely factors in the difference between thought and behavior and how likely evidence suggests the transition from fantasy to action to be. If you want to argue reasonable assumption can only be made by knowing, down to absolute or close-to-absolute numbers, how many of a demographic there are and their exact, fully truthful thoughts and impulses, you then can't really make any assumptions at all. Here, though, this seems to answer a lot of both of our points:



And Reyo, I posted something above about why it's not "just a sexual preference" like any other orientation. But this has also bolded information to help answer. Being gay, straight, or having a kink or attraction to a certain body type or aspect is not inherently harmful and is not an impulse. Pedophilia is inherently a victimizing behavior (or desire) that is an impulse, as in not just a casual desire occasionally thought of, or a detail that enhances pleasure or desire, but a hard if not always impossible urge to overcome that is consistently present.

Is that what the DSM-V says, or what a misc internet article says?

That article actually helps my own point Wry. I said that if someone only has urges, but has not acted on them and never does, then they are not guilty of anything. By the definition of that article, one can only be a pedophile if they physically perform the act. Meaning people with cartoon porn are not pedophiles and should not be referred to as such. Only people who commit the crime of sexually abusing a child are pedophiles, and they will not be defended.

Those definitions are the actual medical consensus. 11 or younger is the usual numerical range-- regardless, attraction to children undergoing puberty or who are not yet legal adults is considered different. Pedophilia the exclusively sexual attraction to children who have not yet begun puberty.

I mean no offense to either of you, but it does feel like I'm the only one attempting to put forward a serious scholarly foot on the topic and I'm slightly displeased with the sentiment that "because you cannot prove that the majority of pedophilias are non-acting, we have to assume they are, you can no longer provide evidence." I'm not entirely sure how much research either of you have looked up since the beginning of the conversation, either, since the answers to several of your points were both easy to find and then quoted by me and are still being used as points of contention. To be frank, I've been researching the questions you've been asking as well as my own and while I've adjusted a few aspects of my view on the subject I no longer feel I have the energy to continue unless something new is brought up. I really am not angry, only tired and seeing very little payoff for the discussion at this point that I couldn't get just as easily by simply reading more on it by myself.

http://link.springer.com/article/10.100 ... 008-9399-9
http://www.dsm5.org/Documents/Paraphili ... 0Sheet.pdf

And no, Madi-- pedophiles are people who are sexually attracted to children. Child sex offenders are the actual actors, but pedophile refers to both acting and non-acting parties.

That's the issue

That's not normal.

Then why did you bold that point in the article?

I didn't go looking for articles because you said that evidence showed a clear line of progression in pedophiles, which meant the burden of evidence was on you to prove that link, not me or Reyo, especially when you used the modifiers of "every" and "all." When you did not provide it I discounted the argument until such a time as the evidence was provided, because I did not see factual basis behind it, only moral feelings.

The topic has been shifted away from the original one brought up, which was whether or not people who are sexually attracted to children, but control themselves and only use cartoon pornography, are to be lumped in with the same definition as the ones who actually physically molest a child. Not whether pedophilia is a mental disorder, or the progression seen from criminals, or if it should be criminalized.

The only topic I have been arguing on, the only stance I've taken, is that people who feel the urges, but have not physically committed the act have done no wrong, as there is no victim, and should not be demonized no matter what they might do in the future, as it has not happened yet and cannot be proved that it will happen.