Pedophilia

Can I do anything about it? Don't I have this cursed thing inside me? This fire, this voice, this agony?

Pedophilia (a.k.a. paedophilia or pædophilia, if you're British) is the common term for when an adult is attracted to a significantly younger minor, especially one below the age of consent. In technical medical contexts, it has the narrower definition of the sexual attraction to prepubescents only. The counterpart technical terms for sexual attraction to older minors are "hebephilia" (1114) and "ephebophilia" (1519), although an insistence on their use in a discussion of pedophilia is generally a strong indicator that pedophilia apologetics and 'justifications' for statutory rape are inbound. There has been an increase in media reports covering pedophilic acts between female teachers and tween or young teen students, especially male pupils.

Medical diagnosis
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders calls it "pedophilic disorder" when it meets certain criteria, including that "The person has acted on these urges, or the sexual urges or fantasies cause marked distress or interpersonal difficulty". Pedophiles have to be at least 16 to be diagnosed with the disorder, but in the case of adolescent (16-17 year old) pedophiles the child has to be at least 5 years younger for the attraction to be termed pedophilia.

There is very little data about the proportion of pedophiles who commit sex offenses, and obviously, not everyone with pedophilic disorder acts on their desire. Some if not most pedophiles refrain from child abuse for the blatantly obvious ethical reasons, and thus might be offended by the implication that the only thing that has stopped them from molesting children is that they haven't had the opportunity. From their perspective, they are just trying to make the best of bad situation they were born into, and should face no more hatred than anyone else who keeps their desires in check. More than one-third of child sexual abuse offenders were phallometrically (measure of bloodflow to penis) identified as pedophiles compared to almost two-thirds of those convicted of the possession of child pornography. Phallometry is not exactly a robust indicator of sexual interest in general, although a phallometric response to images of children is an effective diagnostic. Whatever the case, a large portion of child sex abusers aren't inherently attracted to children. Pedophilic child sexual abusers are, in general, less neurologically impaired than non-pedophilic sexual abusers of children, and thus often have made a conscious decision to abuse a child, whereas a non-pedophilic sexual abuser might not have full control over their decision-making.

It's a new twist on the old philosophical question "which is the greater evil"; the person who does bad things because of an unstoppable urge within their nature, or the person who consciously does bad things by choice. Either way, it's almost universally agreed that both groups should be sequestered from society in some manner, though the details are a matter for debate.

Semantics
Whenever any discussion of child sexual abuse comes up and people denounce pedophiles, inevitably someone will proclaim the truism "Not all pedophiles are child abusers/molesters!" But the truth is, many child sexual abusers are in fact not prominently nor exclusively pedophilic; their main attraction may be to adults, but they molest children if it is easier to gain sexual access to children. Since children are often intellectually, physically, financially, and politically weaker than adults, they are more vulnerable to abuse. For example, an 18-year-old daughter may be able to get in a car and drive away from an abusive father to go live somewhere else, while a 6-year-old daughter whose stories of abuse are not believed may be stuck with him.

The legitimate problem is, there is no agreed-upon terminology to demarcate between "rapes children" and "has a sexual urge to rape children"; after all, "virgin" is not the same as "asexual". There is some attempt to adopt the terms "MAP" and "NOMAP" to allow for this demarcation, or "(Non-Offending) Minor Attracted Person", but this suffers from the problems of being a renaming of an already established word just because a few people don't like the current connotation, suspicion that those who use that word are just pro-pedophilia, and the simple fact that people who have a creepy but legal attraction to older teenagers are are being lumped into the same category as those attracted to pre-pubescents in order to somehow legitimize the latter.

A woman who is mainly attracted to underage girls is called a korephile or korophile.

Orientation
At least one study has suggested that pedophilia is probably a sexual orientation (a person's innate sexual desires, predominantly unmalleable, irrespective of whether or not acting on those urges would harm others). This type of suggestion tends to cause a firestorm of controversy, as some people figure that since homosexuality is an immutable sexual orientation, that means that if pedophilia were to be regarded as another sexual orientation, society would have to condone child sexual abuse in the same way as it accepts sexual intercourse between consenting adults of the same sex. However, this is a false equivalency, as homosexuality is functionally identical to heterosexuality when it comes to informed consent, whereas pedophilia can only be acted on non-consensually. As with heterosexuality or homosexuality, people tend to realize their pedophilia during adolescence, which can contribute to the confusing feelings of that period of life.

Causes
A study of 1,312 Finnish male twins found that childhood sexual interactions with other children are associated with lower preferred age of sexual partners including sexual interest in children in adulthood. This suggests a role of conditioning in the development of sexual age preferences.

A common misconception related to pedophilia is the idea that victims of pedophiles become pedophiles themselves, but this has been disputed. Evidence on the matter is inconclusive. A study by the US Government Accountability Office, Research Inconclusive About Whether Child Victims Become Adult Abusers, found that:

(1) there was no consensus among the 23 retrospective and 2 prospective studies reviewed that childhood sexual abuse led directly to the victim becoming an adult sexual abuser; (2) the retrospective studies, which sought to determine whether a sample of known sex offenders had been sexually abused as children, differed considerably in the types of offenders studied, use of control or comparison groups, and definition and reporting of childhood sexual abuse; (3) although some of the retrospective studies concluded that childhood sexual abuse may increase the risk that victims will commit sexual abuse later, most of the studies noted that the majority of sex offenders had not been sexually abused as children; (4) the prospective studies, which tracked sexually abused children into adulthood to determine how many became sex offenders, studied sample populations that may not be representative of the entire population of childhood sexual abuse victims; and (5) the prospective studies found that victims of childhood sexual abuse were not more likely than nonvictims to be arrested for sex offenses.

The 2011 Australian Institute of Criminology study Misperceptions about child sex offenders lists as a misperception, "All child sex offenders were victims of sexual abuse themselves," arguing that evidence is inconclusive. The Darkness2Light Foundation mentions proclivity of sexual abuse survivors to engage in criminal activities of all sorts as a statistical fact, but clarifies that they are not the majority of survivors nor should this be used to stigmatize survivors.

The origin of the myth might come from the fact that some rapists, serial killers and other criminals claim after capture to have abusive backgrounds as a way to invoke sympathy among the jury, authorities and the general public (sometimes called "the Menendez Defense") but most of these claims have not been confirmed, and correlation does not imply causation. That said, there are scholars who do consider this to be true and that the propensity to act upon it by engaging in child sexual abuse is increased by being the victim of a pedophile.

Sexual abuse survivors’ advocate groups often mention this myth as one factor helping the culture of silence behind sexual abuse, as abuse survivors may feel that speaking about their abuse may make them suspects of being potential abusers.

Statistics
There have been a number of studies which have come up with wildly varying percentages for the proportion of society aroused by children. There is also a noticeable lack of studies regarding females who are sexually aroused by children, which may be because suspicions of female child abusers are frequently not taken seriously since investigators expect abusers to be male. A 1980s US study cited by the BBC suggested women did 20% of offences against boys and 5% against girls. In the UK, it is estimated that women commit between 5% and 10% of offenses to prepubescent children.

In a sample of nearly 200 university males, 21% reported some sexual attraction to small children, 9% described sexual fantasies involving children, 5% admitted to having masturbated to sexual fantasies of children, and 7% indicated they might have sex with a child if not caught. In another sample with 100 male and 180 female undergraduate students, 22% of males and 3% of females reported sexual attraction to a child.

In a sample of 80 volunteers, about 25% self-reported some pedophilic interest or in the plethysmographic phase exhibited penile arousal to a child that equaled or exceeded arousal to an adult. In a control group of 66 males recruited from hospital staff and the community, 17% showed a penile response that was pedophilic.

An estimated 1% of the male population has pedophilic disorder, and it is estimated that a similar proportion of the female population has it.

Cultural influences
In Erotic Innocence, James Russell Kincaid traces the evolution of popular Western conceptions of sexuality and children over the past two or three centuries. Kincaid argues that the notion that children are pure, chaste and innocent was first formulated in England during the Victorian era. Historians such as Phillipe Aries have argued that before the seventeenth century children were essentially viewed as miniature adults, and were therefore given the freedom to fight, steal, study, have sex, travel, find homes and work, with little protection or interference from adults. The idea of childhood as a state of innocence, according to Aries, was a creation of Victorian British society in the nineteenth century. At the same time, the Victorians concocted a new ideal of the sexually desirable object. Unfortunately, the "new" child and the sexually desirable object had identical characteristics, including "softness, cuteness, docility, and passivity". According to Kincaid, "[w]e've been living, not so happily, with the results of [the Victorians'] bungling ever since."

Online
The ideology that they pushed is very much still, alive, and is pretty much everywhere I've argued with these people [pro offending pedophiles] for twenty years. I've gotten to the point where I know I'm just beating my head against the wall."

In most online forums, confessing to being a pedophile is considered trolling because the implication is that the person may be a danger to any youngsters who use the site, and therefore could expose the site to legal risk. Despite this, there are many websites that have engaged in activism in favor of pedophilia, which included the abolition of the age of consent and argue that pedophilia is just another sexual orientation, such as homosexuality or heterosexuality. These groups have largely disappeared. Recent pro offending pedophiles groups post and may even make child porn of their own children. There are also discussions on how to sexually abuse children. Some pedophiles say that they are in a loving relationship with a child while others skip the lying and go straight to raping children.

Slang
Minor-attracted persons (MAPs): an alternative phrase for pedophiles, hebephiles, and ephebophiles; used by some pedophiles.

Non-Offending Minor-attracted persons (NOMAPs): The Paedophiles, Hebephiles, Ephebophiles, etc; who are strongly against the sexual harassment of children.

Anti-contact: a phrase referring to pedophiles who don't offend.

Pro-contact: a phrase referring to pedophiles who are pro-child rape.

Boylove (BL):

Girllove (GL): korephilia; referring to korerasts or korephiles who target female minors.

Hebo: an informal term for hebephiles or heborasts / heberasts.

Ephebo: an informal term for ephebophiles or epheborasts.

Treatment
Masturbatory reconditioning, social skills learning, and cognitive redirection are treatments for pedophilia, which pedophiles are sometimes encouraged to practice on their own if they are afraid to reveal their desires to a therapist. Some of the more cutting edge treatments would use virtual reality to teach control of pedophilic urges. Another possibility is a reduction or elimination of sex drive through hormone replacement therapy using antiandrogens, popularly known as "chemical castration" (which also some trans women and nonbinary people undergo as part of their hormonal transition). There is no known cure for pedophilia, though.

Public opinion
Pedophiles are one of the most hated and distrusted groups in society; even more so, in some respects, than psychopaths. A 2014 U.S. based survey found that, of those polled:
 * 44% believe pedophilia is something that one can choose
 * 49% believe that people with pedophilia have taken a deliberate decision to have these interests
 * 48% believe that people have the choice whether they have pedophilia or not
 * 94% believe pedophilia poses a danger for children
 * 83% believe pedophilia poses a danger for adolescents
 * 39% believe pedophilia poses a danger for adults
 * 59% feel afraid when they think of pedophiles
 * 40% feel pity when they think of pedophiles
 * 84% feel anger when they think of pedophiles

When asked, "How do you feel about interacting with people who are dominantly sexually interested in children, but have never committed a crime?":
 * 5% would have such a person as a friend
 * 6% would accept such a person in their neighborhood
 * 11% would accept such a person as a work colleague
 * 15% would talk to such a person
 * 49% would prefer such a person to be incarcerated
 * 27% would prefer such a person to be dead.

By comparison, only 21% favored incarceration of psychopaths who have never committed a crime, and only 8% favored death for psychopaths who have never committed a crime.

Conspiracy theories
Baselessly accusing people or groups of pedophilia has become an almost mainstream part of right-wing and far-right discourse. This goes back at least to the American civil rights struggle of the 1970s around the Equal Rights Amendment when gays were claimed to pose a threat to children, a slander which has repeatedly resurfaced. Other examples include:


 * QAnon, an insane, pro-Trump conspiracy theory claiming most of the political establishment is part of a vast Washington, DC based Satanic homicidal pedophile network
 * Graham Linehan, prominent English-based TERF who has accused several trans rights activists of trying to groom and abuse children.
 * Laurence Fox, British populist politician who falsely accused several of his opponents of being pedophiles.
 * Tommy Robinson, British far-right agitator has used reports of ethnically-Muslim pedophile gangs to stir up racist sentiment.
 * Slanders about the LGBT community persist, including a false 2020 story that they were to add "P" for "Pedosexual" to the acronym.
 * , a mentally-disturbed fantasist who claimed to have been sexually abused by a vast pedophile ring at the heart of the British establishment. Eventually after years of investigations he turned out to have made it all up, with allegations pushed by dodgy news agency Exaro and various journalists and politicians on the make such as Tom Watson (a rare instance of a centrist spurring a pedophile panic).
 * Satanic Panic