Understanding the Pedophiles Among Us

Serviam6 wrote:

theleftyinvestor wrote:

(not to mention the issues with mandatory minimum sentencing which can turn a teenage boy who receives a "sext" into a registered sex offender, but that is for another thread)

I was calling for minimum sentencing in another thread. Could you explain what a sext is and how it gets someone a minimum sentence and sex offender status?

The link posted after my post explains it pretty well. The link is Australian but it's happening in the USA too. If your totally age-appropriate teenage girlfriend/boyfriend (e.g. someone who is 15-17 and you are 15-20, and sex with them is legal) sends you a nude photo or video, you now possess child pornography. A mandatory minimum sentence could place you on a sex offender registry and require you to do hard time. If you send that photo to someone else (granted this is never something you should do, but within the realm of bad decisions teenagers typically make that should not be punished disproportionately) you could also be charged with distributing child pornography. And nowadays every teenager has a camera than can instantly send photos to friends or online sites. If forget your phone is configured to upload every photo to Dropbox or Google+ and your gf/bf says "Here, let me pose naked for a photo" then you could become a sex offender in 15 seconds. So the issue with mandatory minimums is drawing a reasonable distinction between young people doing stupid things with technology and sex offenders. There are also jurisdictions where erotic stories and illustrations are treated just as harshly.

As for child porn, I fully acknowledge that it's absolutely revolting. When I was 13, and trying to figure out my sexuality, I sought out photos of teenage guys (because, of course, the guys I desired were age-appropriate...) and only realized a few days later the ethical implications of what I'd found, and never did it again. Is that innocent enough to forgive? And like most of the population my desires aged with me... heck, at 30 I can't even deal with 20 y/o's hitting on me anymore.

Despite valiant efforts to eradicate child porn it's still all over the Internet. I would imagine if it was that easy for me to find it at 13 when the Internet was in its fledgling years, one wouldn't have to look very hard to find it today. It's probably much easier to find child porn online than to find good legitimate support resources for struggling with attraction. Yes, child porn is a depiction of others' abuses. But if a successful intervention can happen at the viewing-only stage, with long-term follow-up, I don't believe that should be treated as harshly as direct abusers.

jas wrote:

Thing is, I'm not sure there is a standard anymore for "healthy" sexual attractions in humans. In no way do I want to excuse abuse, exploitation or violence of any kind, but I think we tend to conform to what we agree is normal, and that's a social thing. Human sexual expression has proven to be far more diverse than we acknowledge. That's why I'm curious to what degree certain sexual expressions that we "healthy" folks find abhorrent have a biological basis and/or to what extent they are groomed and acculturated (if that's a word). We can certainly agree what's legal and what's socially acceptable, but how much can we really say to someone else "that's fucked up and you need help"? It would help us greatly if we could get to the bottom of some of these questions.

What ever happened to the standard of "degree of mutual consent"? Sex is supposed to be a pleasurable way of expressing and sharing love between two consenting adults.  It about people giving something mutually for the pleasure and benefit of the other person.  The degree of appropriateness would then be measured by the degree to which both parties are mutually benefitting from the encounter through giving and sharing.

The problem arises when we teach our children at an early age that girls are to be passive, obedient, and not to enjoy sex and to not talk back.  Boys are taught to be tough, rough, emotionless, and to use women as a commodity for their own selfish sexual desires.  Women are to give of themselves whenever and wherever, and boys are to receive whatever they want, whenever they want.  It is about one gender giving, and the other one taking.  It is also about culturally teaching men that it is socially ok, if not appropriate, to show no remorse for the consequenses of their actions. Globally, men are trained at a very young age to be only heterosexual, and to be sexually narcissistic, and to use heterosexual sex as a statement of power and control over women. (I am not saying that all men are sexual narcissists, and that all men are bad)  Sexual violence then becomes natural and normal to some men.

Refer to the website

The truth about Canadian Peacekeepers 

Quote:

"In 1993 in Bosnia, Canadian military personnel who took over the Bakovici mental hospital shot at, raped, and battered patients; others engaged in countrywide black marketeering and fraud."

 

This is called "Canadian Peacekeeping".

After Japan invaded Hong Kong during the second world war, Japanese Troups mass raped Chinese women. Serbian Forces used mass rape as a weapon of war to terrorize their opponents. There was the horrific Ethnic Cleansing in Kosovo. Forty-eight women are raped every hour in the Congo, Study finds. The 1994 genocide in Rwanda and the mass rape of women and children.

In 1969, there was the infamous My Lai Massacre where American troups mass murdered and raped and pillaged an entire community. If you read the article, the only soldier charged got a reduced sentence, and the three soldiers who tried to stop the pillaging and helped the people were harassed and condemned by US politicians.

A really good article on Rape in the Canadian Military gives a poignant account of how unsafe our Canadian female military personnel are and how horrifically our military system treats the women who do speak out about their experiences.

Far too many men, in far too many cultures, and throughout time, have found sexual gratification with extreme violence, and have felt the divine entitlement to use sex for the direct purpose of causing extreme harm to women and children.  In all these cases, these men have a proud sense of satisfaction in what they have done, and show no remorse for their actions.  The organizations they represent defend and cover up these crimes.

Therefore, when we read articles of some men getting sexually aroused with the very young and vulnerable, why do we act surprised? It is the very same power dynamics at play, the very same sexual narcissism, the very same lack of regard for the other person, the sexual rush of having power and control at the expense of another person's welfare.  It is a universally and culturally ingrained sexual selfishness.

While I agree with you, Goggles, I think you're conflating pedophilia with child sexual abuse and with sexual violence against women, which may be different things. One of the premises of this thread was that pedophiles are not necessarily child abusers - meaning, I assume, that pedophiles do not necessarily act on their urges. I am still wondering whether child sexual abusers are necessarily pedophiles. I think it's an important subject to try and understand.

The quote of mine you've used here surprises me because it seems so much in opposition to my position in this thread, where I definitely argue that personal consumption of violent porn must indicate an emotional or psychological problem, and mass consumption of this kind of porn must indicate a social problem. Which I think it does. And I think pedophilia is also a social problem.

jas wrote:

While I agree with you, Goggles, I think you're conflating pedophilia with child sexual abuse and with sexual violence against women, which may be different things. 

...

The quote of mine you've used here surprises me because it seems so much in opposition to my position in this thread, where I definitely argue that personal consumption of violent porn must indicate an emotional or psychological problem, and mass consumption of this kind of porn must indicate a social problem. Which I think it does. And I think pedophilia is also a social problem.

I'm not saying that you are supporting child molestation, and I agree with you that child sexual inclinations is a social problem.

I really really really really hate the term paedophilia. First of all, it is a medicalized and contrived term that is of little value.  If you get a dictionary out it benignly refers to adult sexual attraction to underage children. 

However, it is also more commonly used in association with adult males feeling sexually attracted to little boys like "some" Catholic priests and their feelings towards altar boys, and boys in orphanages, etc., just to use as an example.  The general misconception then is that so called "paedophiles" are so called "homosexuals" and in a homophobic society, that means that they are to be hated and reviled because when they act out on their so called "paedophilic urges" they are targeting little boys, who are more valueable than little girls. No one really seems to care if little girls get abused because that would be heterosexual sexual abuse, which simply does not happen. They call this "False Memory Syndrome".

Jas, you have to read between the lines and you are playing into their little name games and the power dynamics of child sexual abuse.

Theo Fleury was even hailed as a hero in this thread.  When Sheldon Kennedy came out that he was sexually abused, Sheldon Kennedy suffered a lot of wrath by speaking out.  He went to Theo for support, and Theo denied that he had been abused.  He had no support to give to Sheldon to make his journey more bearable.  OK, he wasn't ready to face his abuse.  However, after his entire $50 million dollar hockey earnings was spent, and he had no money left, then, he decided to write a book, and now Theo is a hero and a champion to so many.

The context of this violence is about male coaches abusing boys wanting to get into professional hockey or any other professional sport. Yet, female athletes face the very same problems with some of their male coaches, but there is no media coverage of this.  For some reason, it doesn't boil our blood to the same degree.

For many years, womens' organizations had to fight and lobby for funding for sexual assault centres and abuse shelters.  They receive very little recognition for the work they do, and then along comes a hockey player, and he is a hero, and is now an expert.

It seems to me that there is something deeply homophobic and convoluted in our anger choices.

Goggles Pissano wrote:

I really really really really hate the term paedophilia. First of all, it is a medicalized and contrived term that is of little value.  If you get a dictionary out it benignly refers to adult sexual attraction to underage children. 

However, it is also more commonly used in association with adult males feeling sexually attracted to little boys like "some" Catholic priests and their feelings towards altar boys, and boys in orphanages, etc., just to use as an example.  

I'm not sure this is true. I think pedophilia is thought of in terms of abuse of both boys and girls. Pederasty is the attraction of older men to younger men and boys.

Quote:

The general misconception then is that so called "paedophiles" are so called "homosexuals" and in a homophobic society, that means that they are to be hated and reviled because when they act out on their so called "paedophilic urges" they are targeting little boys, who are more valueable than little girls.

Yes, I think there is some validity to this point, at least with regard to sexual abuse of boys.

Quote:

No one really  seems to care if little girls get abused because that would be heterosexual sexual abuse, which simply does not happen.  

I don't think this is true at all. I would think in fact it was primarily the women's movement that brought to light the extent of the social problem of child sexual abuse, and the famous statistic for women of 1 in 3 (I believe). If anything, sexual abuse of girls has traditionally received more attention than that of boys, probably in part because of the male reluctance to speak of it.

Quote:

They call this "False Memory Syndrome".

This doesn't follow for me at all. False Memory Syndrome is the alleged manipulation of a person's memory by a therapist to recall acts of abuse. (And while we're talking about it...) While it's certainly feasible that memory can be suggestible, to relegate all recovered memory to "False Memory Syndrome" is bogus, pseudoscientific crap. It is also extremely dangerous and, at times, hostile to contemporary therapeutic approaches to child sexual abuse. I mean, if you're going to cast doubt on all memory processes in this fashion, who's to say anything happened to anybody, ever? It's stupid, pseudoscientific garbage. And there are people here on Babble who will argue in its defence. You can probably guess who.

Quote:

Jas, you have to read between the lines and you are playing into their little name games and the power dynamics of child sexual abuse.

I don't agree with your analysis of the use of the term pedophilia. And if I accept there's a distinction between pedophilia and child sexual abuse, what other term would I use to describe a pedophile? 

Quote:

....For many years, womens' organizations had to fight and lobby for funding for sexual assault centres and abuse shelters.  They receive very little recognition for the work they do, and then along comes a hockey player, and he is a hero, and is now an expert.

It seems to me that there is something deeply homophobic and convoluted in our anger choices.

Yes, I think this observation, made by others as well, is accurate.

jas wrote:

Goggles Pissano wrote:

jas wrote:

See my above post. I would like to know if there is a difference between pedophiles and child sexual abusers.

Jas, what is the medical label for a male university student who admits that he would forcibly rape a woman if he knew that he could get away with it?

Not "pedophile".

Quote:

If they showed these young adult males a snuff movie, would they get sexually aroused? 

I don't know. This is one extreme of a continuum of sexual violence. It is presumably not pedophilia.

There is no medical term, and that is the point.  I also do not agree that this is an extreme of a continuum.  If 35% is accurate, this is mainstream, and it is the norm.

jas wrote:

Quote:

No one really  seems to care if little girls get abused because that would be heterosexual sexual abuse, which simply does not happen.  

I don't think this is true at all. I would think in fact it was primarily the women's movement that brought to light the extent of the social problem of child sexual abuse, and the famous statistic for women of 1 in 3 (I believe). If anything, sexual abuse of girls has traditionally received more attention than that of boys, probably in part because of the male reluctance to speak of it.

Yes, it took many many years of fighting by the womens' movement to get this issue acknowledged, and it was not an easy process.  I do recall on another thread that I posted the psychiatric textbook "scientific research" on this issue from the year 1975 which dismissed sexual abuse as a legitimate concern citing that the sexual abuse of little girls by their fathers occurred in 1 in 1,000,000 families.  I also posted on another thread the discovery that psychiatry curriculums devote 1-2 pages of their entire textbook readings to womens' issues.  Male doctors focus research on issues that they seem to find relevant.  Womens' issues and the sexual abuse of little girls does not register on their radar. Psychiatrists and medical doctors should be the leaders in this field of study, but they aren't.  It took women themselves to organize and force people to take notice, and it was never an easy course of action because people generally are indifferent.

The following case has been absorbing Saint Johners this year.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/story/2013/03/11/nb-donnie-snook-plea.html

jas wrote:

Goggles Pissano wrote:

That is right.  However, the general public on the street uses paedophilia to mean the attraction of older men to younger men and boys, and this is the context in which it is commonly used.

No, I still disagree with this. I think the general public uses the term, correctly, to mean a predator of both boys and girls. You may have a point that the term pedophile is now possibly the worst thing you can call anybody - worse than rapist, probably - and that this vilification is fueled in large part by homophobia (meaning it's bad and wrong to abuse girls, but utterly sick and vile to abuse boys). However, I do not see evidence that the term itself is used to denote exclusively homosexual predation.

I do not have evidence to back up what I am saying.  I simply have had many conversations with a lot of people about the topic, and I am sure that if someone conducted a poll and asked the general public on what they thought paedophilia was, a lot, ie. the majority of people would say that they believed it meant adult males being attracted to young boys, and that it is simply another word for homosexual male but with a young boy obsession.

Not to mention the act of cotemplating it (or acting on desires) shows no ability for empathy. NO empathy and you are a psychopath

theleftyinvestor wrote:

(Yes for most of us it's icky to think about adults roleplaying child abuse, but if nobody gets harmed, the nation has no business in that bedroom, right?)

As long as the role play stays private and is not reproduced for public consumption, yes.

Um the depiction of child abuse for public comsumption (IE porn) is actually illegal.

You cant portray under 18s nor can you pretend to portray under 18s, even if the actors involved are all over 18

You can however, write about it all you want.

I guess you could use dolls too, I dont know about that

jas wrote:

theleftyinvestor wrote:

(Yes for most of us it's icky to think about adults roleplaying child abuse, but if nobody gets harmed, the nation has no business in that bedroom, right?)

As long as the role play stays private and is not reproduced for public consumption, yes.

And that gets into a whole other discussion. E.g. if a scene of adults roleplaying child abuse is written as erotica, and the writing makes it clear they are adults... Nobody wants to be the one to test that case in court. (But on the other side of the coin, erotica depicting consensual adult rape role-play already exists and is out there. An example was included in a class reader for a sexualities course I took, and there were little hints throughout of the fact that it described a planned consensual scene.)

Bacchus wrote:

Um the depiction of child abuse for public comsumption (IE porn) is actually illegal.

You cant portray under 18s nor can you pretend to portray under 18s, even if the actors involved are all over 18

What if adult actors play the role of adults who present themselves as adults and then engage in age role play? Again I doubt anyone wants to be the one to test that case in court.

jas wrote:

Bacchus wrote:

You can however, write about it all you want.

I guess you could use dolls too, I dont know about that

Not according to the law.

That was overturned on an appeal for a convicted pedophile, the only success he had actually in any of his appeals.

Yes but regardless, they dont seem to prosecute the many many sites that have written erotica including that.

Im guessing they leave it alone on free speech/literature grounds (you know, the argument that goes if you pull this guys story and prosecute, then 'Lolita has to go off the shelves)

The few investigators I have talked to have all said they would never prosecute a written version ever and were warned not to by a proscutor unless accompanied by photos or other offenses first.

Too great a chance for a total dismissal based on freedom of speech, expression etc

There are a few of those sites in canada and many have canadian contributors on the american ones, which could still be prosecuted

More than one, as well as CAS and other officials. Helping an investigation, having a friend who is pals with a lot of cops and dealing with officials at various hospitals when my kid (now almost 4) was an infant.

It was very lumminating to talk to them all, especially CAS

I'm now officially confused about what this thread is about.

The report you cited discusses a link between poverty and sexual violence, of which child sexual abuse is one aspect. It makes a good argument for the vulnerability of children in financially unstable upbringings. As I've stated before, I think that it's dangerous to assume that child sexual abuse occurs mainly in poor families. It doesn't. It occurs across socio-economic categories, and may even be under reported in higher income social circumstances.

And I still have no idea what any of this has to do with pedophilia.

From the report you cite:

The most common offender relationships to child victims in substantiated reports of sexual abuse were: 18% father, 18% babysitter, 12% paramour of parent, 12% other household member, and 11% sibling. 

Fidel wrote:

We're talking about understanding pedophiles and the way they roll.  

Why not set up a thread which discusses understanding men biologically and psychologically who like say "plus sized" women?  We can even discuss the filters that go off in men's brains that would discourage this kind of "socially inappropriate" attraction.  We can even hypothesize the superior vs inferior genetic attraction rationale throughout evolution to support our ideas while we are at it, assuming that non-plus sized women are, in fact, genetically superior, because we have a multi-billion dollar fashion industry telling us daily that this is how we are to view women based on their size. 

Why not examine paedophilia from the viewpoint that children are simply an expedient channel for male penetration?  They are easy to penetrate, they are available in large numbers, and it is hard for children to fight or to talk back.

Men get urges, and there are men who like the sense of power and control they have over another person while they are getting themselves off.

Fidel wrote:

I don't understand what it is you're saying. Are you suggesting that none of them are pedophiles?

No, but they are likely not all, are they?

I think I may understand a bit more what GP was getting at. At the very least, here's how I see it: pedophilia becomes the scapegoat for all child sexual abuse when in fact there are child sexual abusers who are not pedophiles. Child sexual abuse occurs both within and outside of pedophilia, but pedophilia becomes the whipping horse partly because of its associations with man-boy predation, and cultural indignation around that. And this scapegoating actually serves to mask the problem (perhaps greater problem?) of child sexual abuse occurring outside of pedophilia, and which is part of a larger problem of misogyny and sexual assault in general.

But for this reason, I see it as all the more important that we separate the issues of child sexual abuse and pedophilia, and try to understand how much, or how little, pedophilia factors into overall incidence of child sexual abuse.

theleftyinvestor wrote:

Are you suggesting that any man who likes a sense of sexual power would naturally be attracted to children?

No, I'm not saying that at all.  It depends on what you mean by sexual power, and in what context.  Two adult people who engage in role playing are doing so as adults and in a consensual manner.  No one hopefully is getting harmed.  I am saying hopefully because I cannot speak in absolute black and white terms and I don't want to get into trouble by people who object to say S & M or other arrangements because of the power dynamics involved.  Having said that, the idea of consent is implicit in the framework you alluded to in your post, and I believe it to be consent.

I think for SOME men, it is more like robbing a convenience store. Some people who steal get a rush from the threat of getting caught. They know that what they are doing is wrong, but they love the thrill and excitement, and the exhileration can become addicting.

theleftyinvestor wrote:

Sure, there are some men out there who would penetrate a tree stump if it were warm, but to me it just seems that there's something biologically or psychologically miswired if an adult is turned on by young children.

It could be that some of them are turned on by young children.  I believe that they are tuned in only to themselves.  It all boils down to using other people for their own selfish purposes.  Children are young. That makes them fresh, easy, and accessible.