Why do it seems that pedophilia is, nowadays, percieved as the most vicious crime, along with terrorism? Why not, for example, sexual assault?
I mean it as an actual question, but first I should clarify my intent :
-I’m not advocating for normalizing pedophilia
-I have been a victim of it myself. Luckily, I’ve mostly recovered from it and live a happy life.
-Because of my political commitments, which are totally unrelated to this question, I’ve met some old people from the 70s who advocated for the depenalization of consensual sex between minors and adults (if such a thing exist, which can legitimately be doubted).
-I’m friend with one of them but I could never understand how that idea came to their minds. She knows I oppose the very idea. But it got me curious.
What I want to ask is, what, in contemporary history, contributed to make pedophilia the #1 vicious crime, surpassing rape in most consciences (if I’m not mistaken), in your opinion?
Feel free to delete this if that’s not acceptable. Also, I didn’t include the word “pedophilia” in the title to avoid triggering people who may have such experiences.
To be pedantic, child sexual abuse is the vicious crime. Pedophilia per se is, I would say, a part of a person with it. They can’t help but get attracted to children. And under no circumstances that can be fulfilled legally, because to do so is committing statutory rape. Children can’t consent. This distinction is very important because (a) not all pedophiles sexually assault children and not all child sexual assault perpetrators are pedophiles; and (b) pedophiles who know that acting on it is wrong get little outside help.
Aren’t the vast majority of child sex abusers not pedophiles (or variant)? Isn’t it more of a vulnerability thing?
Based on what I see on the news, yes. Access to children who implicitly trust them appears to be the commonality.
Yeah its a predator thing not a pedo/ebo/ebiphelia thing
contributed to make pedophilia the #1 vicious crime, surpassing rape in most consciences
It is rape. Children are not able to consent.
What makes the rape of a child seen as worse as the rape of an adult, is that children are vulnerable in every sense of the word; physically, emotionally, financially, and sexually.
Everyone has been a child so they are able to empathize, and we are “programmed” to want to protect them.Edit: I am talking about people who act on their pedophilia by abusing children.
I think, additionally, that children, being still developing, suffer far more ill long term effects from emotional trauma than adults. That isn’t to say that any rape is okay - but the damage to a developing mind is much more deep.
Maybe that’s the reason. At least that’s what I tend to think. But at the same time, it the rise of pedophilia to the prime type of deviancy looks quite… recent, if I may say? So something is society may have changed in the last decades/century to make it so?
you mean the thing where people, often women, have spent decades trying to expose the abuse happening in private homes, and trying to get it addressed?
because that’s what happened. women’s voices, speaking about marital rape and domestic abuse. getting the political power to change laws, to make it illegal, and give domestic victims the means to escape. it also surfaced the child abuse, again. it’s just not been buried again yet.
Being sexually attracted to children is rape? Not in my world. You’re like one of those people saying an earring makes a man gay. Where I come from fucking a dude makes a man gay not an earring. And raping a child makes someone a child rapist not being attracted to a child.
From an objective standpoint, I think the turning point for these opinions was far more recent, and if I had to point to a specific year, I would say 2004 with the debut of Chris Hanson’s ‘To Catch a Predator’ on Dateline NBC.
Prior to this, I don’t even remember being exposed to the idea or concept of this. I never heard people talk about it, but in a way this show changed or I guess really even created opinions on this subject.
From a non objectivist perspective, just because I never heard of it prior, it seems to have been an epidemic and maybe I was lucky enough to not have thought about it.
I lost my virginity at 15 to someone many years older than me, but I didn’t have a second thought about it, it was like anything else - drinking, smoking, staying out late, this idea that maybe I was too young, but also that everyone else did it, and that’s as far as I ever considered it.
I grew up in a different time though, before the Internet, small town, and low income and people I came into contact with didn’t even put these things into ideas with words if that makes sense.
I think at best I understood that older men could be untoward with younger folks, but it was treated more as a joke, or something to keep in mind around older relatives and strangers, but not an imminent threat, more like an annoyance to be put up with.
I think it’s okay to talk about this, and I’m sorry for your trauma. Protecting children is super important, and so the increased talk of this subject I think helps and protects more, but there is an undeniable generational difference in how people even think about this.
I grew up thinking of this as not even an idea, so I wouldn’t have thought about it being worse than anything else. I would have been more scared of drug addicts, and the homeless.
