Essay:Pedophilia is not a sexual orientation

At the moment, this essay is mostly written from an emotional perspective. There's a slim possibility that, at some future date, I will try to make this a little more objective, but to be completely honest i don't see that as particularly likely.

I deleted my Reddit account a couple of months ago after getting completely fed up with the number of users asserting that pedophilia is a legitimate sexual orientation and that consumption of child pornography is a victimless crime. Comparisons between pedophilia and homosexuality abounded. I've since decided that this issue could do with being addressed in essay form. So here it is, the top 11 reasons why pedophilia is not a legitimate sexual orientation a couple of observations on how insane pedopology really is.

Just to clarify what I mean by "sexual orientation" - I am in no way making any claims or judgments about whether or not being sexually attracted to children is a learned or inborn trait - rather that "pedophile" is not and should not be a "protected category" subject to special civil rights or legal protection.

Rationalist taboo note: By pedophilia, I am not referring to "statutory rape" or similar legal grey areas. For the purposes of this essay (and the dictionary), pedophilia means adult sexual desires and/or contact towards/with prepubescent children. I'm not going to deal with the morality of teenagers having sex with adults, or individuals under the legal age of consent having sex with each other, or any other permutation thereof that apologists like to cloud the waters with.

"It's inborn"
No it's not. Current consensus is that pedophilia is a paraphilia. Insisting that it is inborn doesn't make it so. Yes, it's true that homosexuality was once considered a paraphilia as well. No, that doesn't mean that this means that psychologists are wrong about pedophilia. This situation is different, for reasons enumerated below.

"It's just like homosexuality - inappropriately demonized by society"
Pedophilia is in NO WAY like homosexuality. Yes, both are traditionally looked down on, but for drastically different reasons. How are they different? Informed consent. Period. This is the bright line when it comes to sexual morality. Most of the apologists that I've come across who use this argument also hold bizarre ideas about rape - that definitions are inflated, women use rape accusations as a weapon, etc. etc. etc. and therefore seem to have an excessively loose definition of the "informed" par of informed consent. Regardless, it should be self-evident that there is a qualitative difference in the consenting-capability of adults versus children.

"It's a victimless crime"
This argument generally takes two forms. Both make it clear that the apologist is not and hasn't had any meaningful interactions with victims of pedophilia. Either they argue that consumption of child pornography is acceptable because it allows pedophiles to express their sexuality without actually harming children. This argument somehow fails to grasp that children are abused - in the production of child pornography. The response to that complaint is frequently "well, once it's created then the damage is done." Here's the problem with that: by legalizing the possession of "extant" child pornography, you create a market for child pornography, which provides economic incentives to continue to create child pornography, which entails child abuse. Hence, by consuming child pornography you are directly contributing to the sexual abuse of children.

Apologists like to complain about the harsh prison sentences for child pornography possession - this complaint represents a failure to understand the legal concept of denunciation.

The second form - which is as far as I'm concerned absolutely reprehensible - is that children aren't really harmed by sexual abuse.

Give me a fucking break.

I challenge you to look at the statistics. To meet with child abuse survivors. To understand that being sexually abused as a child causes life-long damage. There is a direct impact on both the physical and emotional development of the victim. Hold a family members hand when they start going through flashbacks, dissociative fugues, and all the other terrifying symptoms of PTSD. Then come back and make that claim again.

Caveats
I will grant that the situation is different when it comes to teenagers having sex with other teenagers when both are close to the age of consent but one is slightly over and one is slightly under. Some states have laws to prevent this sort of issue - it's too bad that they aren't more common.

The other situation that might might be different is that of animated/drawn/written pornography where no actual children were involved in the creation. I'm not going to address the morality of that aside from pointing out that it still sends the message that pedophilia is somehow "okay". As far as I'm concerned, it's not.