It's true that a lot of people go literally insane when they think about pedofilia. Hate to break it to you guys but just like there exist plebty of straight males who aren't rapists, many of the people with attraction to minors never act on them.
While many of these youtube comments are toxic and/or also constitute harrasment (which I don't condone and nor does the law), there are plenty of examples of legitimatly harmless expression (fanfiction, forum discussions and articles about attraction to minors and how to deal with it, etc), that are the subject of unimaginable amounts of hate and censorship online, where said hate and censorship is being conducted essentially on the basis of sexual orientation. Some companies (notably medium and reddit) are protective of this speech, while others (notably youtube/google) are not.
> Some companies (notably medium and reddit) are protective of this speech
Not Reddit anymore, if the recent permaban+unban of /u/holofan4life for a drawing of a fictional teenager in a swimsuit [0] is any indication. Granted it's a drawing and not text, but still.
See your reaction is exactly my point. In your mind the closest most analgous thing to a pedofile is a sadist. All a pedofile is definition-wise is a minor attracted individual (MAP). The rapey connotation is societally bound. Just like straight males as a group don't like to be thought of as rapists or rape fetishivists, MAPS don't like to be thought of as rapists or even as people who fantasize about rape.
The confusion where you are technically right comes in because legally there is no such thing as a consenual sexual relationship with a minor, so someone who fantasizes about a sexual relationship with a minor is technically fantasizing about something that is legally rape, however what many of them fantasize about is absent of many of the trappings of what we would typically call rape. I've worked with some via some psych studies in college, and many fantasize about what they think of as a legitimate consensual relationship. That's a far cry from what society would have you believe, and that's what I'm trying to highlight.
> See your reaction is exactly my point. In your mind the closest most analgous thing to a pedofile is a sadist. All a pedofile is definition-wise is a minor attracted individual (MAP)
And all a sexual sadist is is someone who derives sexual pleasure from he suffering of others. And a rape fetishist derives sexual pleasure from thoughts about rape. You're the one who seems to think that has anything at all to do with how they act as opposed to merely what excites them.
Edit: I think I see now your point. Your argument is that just because straight males are attracted to females does not mean that they are going to act on those impulses in an illegal or immoral way.
I still think it is a flawed comparison because one could argue that being attracted to women doesn't mean being aroused by non-consent. That is of course also true of being aroused by children, however as you have pointed out the issue is that there isn't a legal (or for most definitions moral) path to fulfillment of that desire.
The comparisons I mentioned fit better because they too cannot be legally or morally fulfilled. Instead, as is the case with pedophiles, they explore the fantasy via various fictional media, imagination, and role-play. Yet these two groups do not provoke this irrational equivalating with people who do fulfill their desires in illegal and immoral ways.
Yes you are getting me now. The additional info I would give you is that many MAPS dont even think about the sexual component explicitly, focusing their fantasies more on a romantic relationship, and those that do think of sex would vehemently argue that the relationship or encounter they are imagining is consensual, even if that is legally impossible. Violent, forced rape fantasies among this population are much more rare than society would have you believe. Unfortunately even in academia much of the research that would show this likewise gets suppressed due to our moral biases against anything related to this category.
So in other words, there are plenty of pedophiles who are disgusted by the act of raping children, which largely contradicts society's preconceived notions about pedophiles. There are also many otherwise normal people with varying pedophillic inclinations. It's clearly a spectrum, just like the Kinsey scale, but more complicated and multivariate. Some people can only form attractions to people their age, some people can form attractions to adults and minors, some people can ONLY form attractions to minors, and the age and gender requirements vary widely from person to person. I wouldn't be surprised at all if it turned out that a double digit percent of the general population has at least a slight inclination towards this stuff, but the research that needs to be done to figure all of that out will never get done with the current social climate.
People in general don't realize that many pedophiles know they are pedophiles as early as age 11 (let that sink in, and imagine growing up like that), and we know almost nothing about their early experiences and inclinations during childhood and teen years largely because they are too terrified to reveal themselves. Do pedophiles like even younger children when they are age 11? Do they like a particular age their entire life? All of these are open questions that academia and our society are frankly too scared to address.
ctrl+f "pedo" no hits
ctrl+f "minor" no hits (that are relevant in this context)
ctrl+f "child" same as minor, however this:
> There is no substantive evidence to support the suggestion that early childhood experiences, parenting, sexual abuse, or other adverse life events influence sexual orientation.
We know that sexual abuse as a child is a factor in being pedophile, no? So that also fits.
And not addressed at you, how come just basically "playing dictionary" and stating what should be obvious earns downvotes? What is going on here? This isn't the first time I'm getting a quite pungent vibe around this subject, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19168928
(oh nice, I got throttled so even though I wrote this reply 2 minutes after that question, so instead of replying to it I had to make it this edit instead)
If I was a betting man I would say that in 50-100 years it will be recognized as one (obviously it will still be illegal to act on it, but it will at least be scientifically regognized). So far scientists have found it just as hard to categorize neurologically and genetically as sexual orientation. There are some themes, but nothing obvious enough to justify its current DSM categorization. Prejudice is what keeps this from happening and will likely delay things for a long, long time.
One implication would be that it should be LGBTQP instead of LGBTQ, (or M for MAP, maybe). There would definitely be implications.
But to the general point. Pedophile literally means people that are sexually attracted to minors. Full stop. It doesn't mean child rapist, and there are minors who are pedophiles and know they are as early as 11 and have to deal with society's bullshit eating away at their conscience their whole lives even if they never do anything wrong. The reason for the negative perception is that you only end up hearing about the rapists because the other ones are too busy not doing anything wrong and keeping their orientation a secret due to stigma.
The current DSM criteria is a result of this bias. Not long ago homosexuality and bisexuality had the same treatment in the DSM (listed as disorders), and transgenders are still classified as having a gender identity disorder. So being labeled a certain way in the DSM means nothing when it comes to sex, because it's basically political at this point, and tons of researchers and psychologists realize this but say nothing. Those that do often can't publish their studies because bias is so ingrained in every facet of society and academia.
Also I upvoted you, because it's a good (albeit annoying and ultimately wrong in my opinion) argument. On HN generalizations in the form of short comments always get downvoted. It's dumb but that's the way it is.
Actually the prevailing research shows that there is also no statistically significant influence of early childhood abuse either. There are plenty, plenty of pedos who weren't abused. This is another common mistake. All scientific attempts to classify pedophilia have had about as much success as those trying to classify homosexuality.
While many of these youtube comments are toxic and/or also constitute harrasment (which I don't condone and nor does the law), there are plenty of examples of legitimatly harmless expression (fanfiction, forum discussions and articles about attraction to minors and how to deal with it, etc), that are the subject of unimaginable amounts of hate and censorship online, where said hate and censorship is being conducted essentially on the basis of sexual orientation. Some companies (notably medium and reddit) are protective of this speech, while others (notably youtube/google) are not.