Comment on What is the attraction to kids?
HelixDab2@lemm.ee 9 months ago
There are multiple parts to your question. I’m going to try to break it down.
First, there’s a difference between a pedophile and a child molester. Pedophilia is a sexual attraction to children, but it does not, by itself, require the person to take action. A child molester is a person that sexually assaults children. It’s the difference between being heterosexual, and being a rapist; you can be straight and still be entirely celibate.
Child molesters may not be sexually attracted to children at all; some might be, but people that commit rape aren’t usually doing it solely for sexual gratification, although sex is definitely part of it.
We don’t know how common pedophilia is because of how heavily stigmatized it is.
You don’t understand how a person could be sexually attracted to children; the simplest way to explain it is to ask if you can understand how a man can be sexually attracted to another man. IIRC, most research indicates that pedophilia probably is a sexual orientation, much like being straight, gay, or bisexual is (except that there is no moral or ethical way for a pedophile to have a sexual or romantic relationship with a child; that is always both predatory and criminal). Do pedophile child molesters believe that they’re having a relationship? Some of them, yes. They’re able to delude themselves into believing that the child wants the attention and sex (really sexual assault), when they’re–probably–the one that has groomed the child in the first place.
I cannot understand the attraction to kids. Even teens.
I can. When I was a child, I was sexually attracted to my peers. 14yo kids are having sex with each other, so clearly they’re attracted to each other. As an adult, I can see women in their 20s as being sexually attractive, while still having zero interest in them (y’all seem really young, and not in a good way, if y’know what I mean). Sexual maturity isn’t a magical thing that happens when you hit 18 (or whatever the age of consent is where you live); it’s a sliding scale.
Should AI generated CSAM and CP be treated the same as a real person since it promotes the same issues?
I don’t think that you can make a person into a pedophile, any more than you can make a person gay. A person either is, or isn’t, a pedophile, and CG CSAM isn’t going to change that. So the question is, does CG CSAM make it more likely that a pedophile will end up sexually abusing a child? My intuition says that it will not, in the same way that the proliferation of pornography has not made sexual assault of adults more common. (Some research indicates that the availability of pornography has decreased rates of sexual assault.) Child pornography is illegal–in part–because it cannot be produced without causing real harm to children. CG CSAM doesn’t cause real harm to any person though; unless there’s evidence that it increases the rates of child sexual abuse, I don’t think that the squick factor is a reasonable basis for banning it. OTOH, adult pornography has generally led to a relaxation of sexual mores and norms–which I believe is a generally positive thing–and it’s possible that CG CSAM would normalize child sexual abuse sufficiently that libertarians would be able to severely weaken age of consent and statutory rape laws. I don’t really know, TBH; I’d want to see more research rather than reflexively banning it.
I don’t think that you can make a person into a pedophile, any more than you can make a person gay.
If you really think about it, we’ve seen arguments like that before. That pornography creates rapists. That violent video games creates murderers. And that’s just strictly on the consumption of media.
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
Articulate and concise. I like it.
I don’t really have anything more to add, except that we as a society need to make up our collective minds on cg and AI csam/CP soon.
I definitely think that cg/AI content is less bad (still bad, but less so) because there’s no harm being done to real children from it; but those AI image engines needed to be trained on some form of content to be able to generate the images that they do, so I’m not sure how the training images factor in, or what would even be used for training that AI… I know rather little about how AI is trained at the moment, so I’m not sure if it can be done without source csam material or not… IMO, that factors into the morality of the output.
I definitely agree that sexual preference toward minors (aka paedophilia) is just that, a sexual preference; and that, in and of itself does not make someone a sex offender in the same way that being heterosexual doesn’t make you a rapist or other form of sexual “deviant” (or however you want to say that. It’s interesting to me to think that paedophiles may have a semi-legal way of getting porn for themselves (which causes no harm to children). I feel a bit bad for paedophiles in that they’re basically forced to have relationships with persons that they don’t find very sexually attractive, else they break the law. Not bad enough that I think that laws should change our anything, it’s just a crap situation. It would be like having a preference towards men, as a man, in a world of heteros. The men are there and you’re interested in them, but none of them are interested in you. Almost always that’s not the case, there’s other homosexual men that exist, no matter how rarely… in the case with pedos, there are exactly zero underage people who they can interact with at all sexually. I still don’t think that should change, but at least with the internet, a gay man can go and find porn that interests them. With pedos is literally a crime to even look at, possess, or make any porn that appeals to them.
I can sympathize with the impossibility of their situation, that’s all. For the record, I’m just done cis male with no interest in anyone too young to date. I can recognise their attractive qualities without being attracted to them (speaking mostly about those that have reached their sexual maturity here, who are still not 18 or whatever)… I can understand it, I’m not so hateful to want anyone who feels attraction to young people to die or anything, but young people don’t have the experience to understand the situation they’re getting into, when they’re being mislead or gas lit, etc (though to be fair, a lot of "mature people seem to not know either, but that’s another discussion)… Fact is, they’re shit out of luck.
I’m sure many are forced into celibacy just to be lawful. I don’t think any grown adult wants to be forced to be celibate; so I can understand the plight. AI/cg porn, tailored to that specific preference may give pedos an outlet that they can utilize to temper their urges and keep them on the right side of the law here. Of course it won’t solve the problem entirely, the same way that rapists are still a thing, but it may severely reduce illegal activity and harm to children.
But I agree, it’s a slippery slope (so to speak) because it can easily evolve into lowering the age of consent, and bringing back child marriages and such. Which IMO, isn’t a desired outcome. I also don’t think that content should intermingle with either social networks or existing porn sites, since it’s so specific, it should be relegated to specific sites and not left flapping around the internet. It’s also a vast minority of people that are afflicted, so segregation may be a minimum measure to keep things somewhat clean. I know I don’t want AI generated CP content mixed in with my usual porn browsing… I’m sure there’s plenty of people in the same boat, so IMO that’s a minimum. But I’m only one voice in the society, so I don’t make the decision; I’m interested to see what decision is finally made and implemented, whenever we get there.
As a disclaimer: I’m not attracted to underage people. I’m also not a doctor or scientist, or psychologist or anything else. I’m not in favor of anything here, besides society making a decision, and I’m just positing that it could be beneficial to society as a whole. I welcome other opinions, except those by people whom are heavily religious. Good day.
HelixDab2@lemm.ee 8 months ago
I’ve seen a paper–which I unfortunately did not bookmark–that seemed to indicate that most pedophiles were not exclusively pedophiles; many are able to have romantic and sexual relationships with age-appropriate partners. They also tend to have a distinct gender preference for minors (e.g., a person that is a heterosexual and a pedophile will prefer minors that are in-line with their sexual orientation). The ones that are ‘pure’ pedophiles–not sexually attracted to any adults at all–do not seem to have a gender preference, which kinda makes sense when you consider secondary sex characteristics as markers of physical maturity, e.g., young boys and girls look physically very similar aside from the genitals themselves. Again - I don’t have the reference on this saved, so I might be misremembering, or misrepresenting it, but this is what I recall.
There’s a genetic disorder–I believe exclusively in women–where they don’t ‘grow up’; they don’t get very tall, they’re largely lacking in secondary sexual characteristics, and I believe that they’re infertile. I ran into a woman like that–who was with her partner–at a fetish event. It really gave me whiplash, because at first, second, and third glances she looked like she was 12, at an event that had explicit sexual activity in the open. It took a closer look at her face to realize that she was in her 30s. God bless her, she found someone that was attracted to her, and into the same shit she was into. So, y’know, there’s that.
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 8 months ago
I’ve heard of that genetic condition. It’s fascinating, and as far as I know, extremely rare.
I know that at least one has spoken publicly about her experience, and they touched on dating and the implication was that most of the people that are interested, are paedophiles, and that didn’t sit well for her, and I expect that wouldn’t sit well for most people, especially those with that condition.
Fascinating information all around. I don’t have a doubt that is accurate.
HelixDab2@lemm.ee 8 months ago
She’s got a catch-22 there; if she doesn’t want to date anyone that’s attracted to her because they’re likely a pedophile, then she’s not going to ever be able to have any romantic relationships (assuming that she wants them). I guess if that were me, I’d rather date a person that was sexually and romantically attracted to me–despite knowing that they were also sexually attracted to minors–than live life completely alone.