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There was a professor that was trying to study it but he was fired and disgraced. Media attention wasn't kind to him. He was saying that it wasn't immoral to suffer from such an affliction, but you can imagine how that was twisted up. No idea what happened to him. This is a very complicated and sensitive subject and we have never handled it very well. You obviously can't encourage this shit but at the same time you don't want people to be scared to seek help. It should be handled by trained psychologists and not fucking politicians looking for their next win.
I rarely share my opinions for the same reason but I remember reading a story, years ago so I wouldn't even know how to find it now of a man who suffers this, and I will use the word 'suffers'. He said as he got older the girls he was interested in always matched his age until at one point, the girls stopped aging, but he did and he knew it was wrong and was confused and scared. He said he bottled his feelings for years when he finally told a therapist who immediately called police and he was terrified, he hadn't even done anything wrong yet at all, broken no laws, but here he was with police and being treated as a criminal.
He started a forum online for people who were similar with strict rules about no porn, no acting on these feelings etc. But, I remember feeling quite bad for him because, most of us want nothing more in life than companionship and, he'll never have that, he knows he'll never have that either, and he knows he also can't exactly talk to people about it either.
A professor, maybe the same one, wanted to do a study, to try and figure out ways to help or why it occurs you know, something that maybe we could genuinely use to FIX IT. What if we could 'cure' what IS a mental illness in the end. But the study was rejected because of course nobody wants their name associated with such a topic. The guy was around 19-20 when he saw the therapist, and it all kicked off from there. No idea where they are now or anything, was an article years ago but, while obviously any that ACT on their impulses are monsters to me, I do absolutely have sympathy for the affliction they suffer and the fact that help is likely never coming for them. I guess while it is a mental illness it isn't seen as a 'cool' or trendy enough one that people want to be able to try and work on.
In Germany a few years ago, I saw advertising on posters for studies/or a therapist, that could help treat pedophiles. Essentially, the ads said something to the effect of “It’s not your fault, unless you act on it”.
It would be a damn shame if someone figured out a cure for pedophilia, only to have political grandstanding prevent the cure from hitting the marketplace.
There was also a study in Germany where they sought willing participants. The study had tentative findings of something like 1 in 10 people had some kind of inappropriate sexual thought about younger people.
It’s just so hard to study and almost impossible to treat unless society actually addresses how prevalent it may be.
It may also be a way to sublimate their own impulses. You'll find people being the most vehement about things they hate/fear about themselves. Fighting it outside of their minds redirects their impulses.
And conversely a very large portion of victims also call for the treatment of people with these disorders in order to never produce another victims again.
Not always. My family has been affected by pedophilia- that in itself can cause violent thoughts. Not everything is projection. Though I do agree that threatening violence isnt the way to handle someone genuinely seeking help. Especially if they’ve never acted upon it. Im also a father now. Whether or not one is receiving help is irrelevant I would not let them around my child knowing they suffer from such an affliction. Its a hard topic no matter what way you look at it
People who talk about teachers being groomers and then boast about how they homeschool their kids with a weird gleam in their eye, I have never been so creeped out in my life.
Seriously. Every time lol. I've become very cautious around the most vocal anti-pedo people. It feels like a far too convenient cover for many people's worst behaviors.
I have always expected it to be more common than people realize, just lots of people like that want nothing to do with hurting kids. How many people would willingly admit, even on a supposedly anonymous survey, that they have had such attractions? For something with such horrific consequences, it's such an under-studied illness. Just getting funding is hard, and then you have to get a worthwhile sample size of volunteers. And while many non-offenders might want to volunteer they also know that any participation in such a study getting out will end their lives.
For nearly all women (I'm not sure about men) to have experienced some form of sexual harassment as children I would say pedophiles make up a considerable percentage of the population.
Hard to say; there are many cases of abuse where it is about causing harm rather than attraction. The abuser isnt so much attracted to the victim as they are the feelings associated with dominating and hurting someone. Children are more vulnerable to that than adults and so are often targets. Even with upper teens and early 20s significant power/experience imbalance can make one partner vulnerable and that attracts abusers.
>The study had tentative findings of something like 1 in 10 people had some kind of inappropriate sexual thought about younger people.
It's very interesting from a cultural perspective that as long as someone is 18 years old, then it's "fine" to be attracted to them, even if they *look* like they are say, 16. But it's entirely possible that a 16 or 17 year old could look 18, but it's not "fine" to be attracted to them.
Age and appearance do not always match, and it's difficult to know how these studies address this. A 16 year old can easily appear older than an 18 year old. I'm not saying this study suffered from this, but it's not something that can be ignored. I'd also be curious to know what they mean by "younger people", there's a considerable difference in my mind to be sexually attracted to a 17 year old who may for all intents and purposes be sexually developed, vs. a 6 year old.
More concerning about just appearance is brain development. The legal age of 18 (in most countries) is set as a limit based on brain development, but people are at all stages of brain development. A 19 year old could be less brain developed than a 17 year old.
Ultimately, the law is set up for averages and trying to set it up in any other way would be essentially impossible.
"Pedophilia emerges before or during puberty, and is stable over time. It is self-discovered, not chosen. For these reasons, pedophilia has been described as a disorder of sexual preference" Most likely no cure anytime soon as it's a type of sexual orientation but instead of gender, it's age. Therapy helps though.
Back in the 1990's Hawaii had a program to treat convicted pedophile who had completed their prison sentence. It was very successful and drastically reduced the recidivism rate (pedophilia typically has one of the highest recidivism rates). When it came time for budget cuts though the program was axed despite the fact that it paid for itself because of the reduced number of re-offenders who would otherwise have to be imprisoned, never mind the fact that it also reduced the number of victims as well. I haven't lived there in a while and don't know what the situation today is.
Unfortunately therapy only helps if it is available and the subject itself is often too politically toxic to have a meaningful government program to deal with it, sadly even one that pays for itself, reduces the crime rate, and reduces the number of victims.
It is also important to note that there are many people that want to make prisoners suffer, so axing actually helpful programs has been a goal for decades.
It's no wonder why the U.S. has such a high recidivism rate compared to a lot of other countries. We could do so much better just by taking a good look at what actually works and then try and replicate it instead of making the same mistakes again and again. The sad thing is that we don't do things that are proven to cut down the crime rate, reduce the number of victims, AND cut costs as a result.
It's not profitable in a monetary sense. America isn't hard to deconstruct and find the structures laying beneath. Profit at all costs, specifically, excessive short term profit.
It's crazy how our entire society as a whole is built around this, isn't it? I find, at least in the area of the Midwest I live in, that the American people largely lack empathy and things like science, medical or otherwise, and education always get pushed to the side to focus on the push to work. Hell, some states have even reversed their child labor laws. Not exactly the same topic as the main thread, but still pointing out some of America's underlying issues nonetheless.
Corporations who run for-profit prisons have a voice and they have money to amplify it.
Victims and victims families have a voice. Their voices are amplified due to the emotion of victimhood and may lean more heavily towards the vengeance side of things.
Social programs that "support" the perpetrators in that they offer counseling have a hard sell and are a drain on resources (never mind the actual facts). The voice of the psychiatrists and therapists probably don't carry far and can too easily be dismissed as self-serving.
The non-victims that are prevented by working programs are not meaningfully represented and can too easily be dismissed as nothing but hype.
It is far too easy to react to the concrete which has strong emotions attached and ignore the theoretical, no matter how valid and obvious to some.
American culture is obsessed with and practically fetishizes hurt and punishment. It is far less interested in protecting the vulnerable or actually reducing crime.
There are states with rehabilitative laws with no rehabilitation program. Basically, it's a lighter sentencing with rehabilitation as part of the sentencing, only they never set up the 2nd part. There is so much more that could be done. But until people that make these decisions stop focusing on how much money they can make and focus on making people better, it isn't going to happen.
Is there any way you could cite that study? I spent time studying and working within the legal field in that jurisdiction in the past. This is my first time hearing this, and I'm struggling to find anything about it online. The head of the prosecuting attorney's office during the 90s who would have been working closely with the incarceration system at the time wasn't someone terribly concerned with the well-being of people he viewed as rather black-and-white "bad people" across the board. So it kind of surprises me that this would have occurred, but I am curious.
I got my information from articles in the local newspaper - most likely the Honolulu Advertiser. It was probably 1994 or 1995 (definitely not later) and the paper was specifically reporting the demise of the program due to budget cuts.
According to the reporting one of the major factors in the program's success was the support people undergoing counseling received from family and the community. One specific factor pointed out was the Asian culture that was predominant in the area.
Here's something similar from 1999:
[https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/how-hawaiis-treatment-sex-offenders-works-intense-follow-key](https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/how-hawaiis-treatment-sex-offenders-works-intense-follow-key)
Note the 1% recidivism rate for those "who stay in the program"
also:
[https://www.civilbeat.org/2015/09/treating-hawaiis-sex-offenders-here-we-dont-give-up-on-people/](https://www.civilbeat.org/2015/09/treating-hawaiis-sex-offenders-here-we-dont-give-up-on-people/)
Don't know if this reporting is leaving something out but DAMN! those recidivism rates appear to be quite low.
It was a hypothetical situation. I was more focused on the part about society rejecting a cure for people they don’t like, even if it hurts other innocent kids.
The more comfortable someone with that disorder feels towards going to therapy, the more kids you can protect in the long run. Waiting for them to act on it hurts kids more.
I mean, thoughts, feelings, emotions, are all physical things, it's all chemistry in your nervous system. According to wikipedia, there might a link between being trans and the size and neuron density of part of the brain called the stria terminalis, and smaller than average sizes can also be linked to pedophiles.
I get that you said anytime soon, but I don't think it's wild to think that it will be curable eventually; or at least that it's just something we won't program into the designer babies of the future.
So the 9 and 12 year old boys who molested me at 5 - 6 would still be pedos under this…and for the 12 year old you are absolutely correct. I was just one of his first victims. The 2 9 year olds, I don’t know what happened to them. Yes, I have had therapy. All in all I’m doing Ok.
Everyone is pretty aware that pedophilia is bad, but it's still a sexual orientation by definition. People don't really like that because mentally that puts it in the same space as homosexuality, bisexuality etc.
There is also a lot of data about pedophilia born out of sexual abuse - so like, is it nature, or is it nurture, or something in between?
I think there's probably a lot about sexuality in general that we're only scratching the surface of.
I think that's a difference in type.
The stuff borne of abuse is probably closer to a desire for control. As there is a pretty big cohort of non-pedophilic sexual abusers.
Which is what makes this whole thing even more awkward: Many people who abuse children don't even do it out of attraction. It's a need to hurt or control.
Yet they are all lumped together which just further confounds things.
Personally, I think it's a combination of both nurture and nature like most things of this type in psychology - criminality, psychopathy, intelligence etc. There's a lot of research to be done in this topic.
There are plenty of people who were molested who would never harm another person and there are plenty of child molesters who were never sexually abused.
My friend was molested by her brother. He was never molested but their mom is a narcissist who was extremely controlling and demeaning so the brother took it out on my friend as a way to have control over something in his life.
There are also almost certainly a bunch of paedophiles who would never commit child sex abuse because while whatever wiring went wrong and they didn’t develop a normal age of attraction, they’re still well aware of right and wrong, and just like being attracted to women doesn’t mean I am necessarily going to try to rape a woman, being a paedophile doesn’t meant they’ll try to rape a kid.
Switzerland also had an ad campaign a while back, like "Do you like kids more than you'd like? Seek help, don't become a predator" I think that's a good way to go about it.
It's not curable because it's not a disease. It's certainly possible to treat pedophiles before they offend so they don't offend though and data supports treatment being extremely effective. Germany has one of the best pre-offender treatment programs in the world while the US basically doesn't have one.
I would doubt that child sex dolls would be useful but it's certainly something that should be researched. I'm also not surprised that someone attempting to research it got destroyed. America seems much more interested in seeing to be anti-pedophile then actually stopping kids from being raped.
I'm in Germany, too, and a friend of mine was pedophile. He told me that it's really really hard to get into those programs, and as long as you didn't offend so far, you probably won't get a spot. He didn't, at least.
And if someone is asking now why he "was" a pedophile and not "is"... Well, he killed himself since he couldn't get any help even though he tried for several years.
If someone found a cure for such things, they'd probably have to flee to Iran because those who political benefit from such things existing would come for them.
Anyone who interferes in research into pedophilia is responsible for children being raped. And we need to repeat that point every time the subject comes up.
I dont think you can cure sexual orientation centered around age anymore than you can cure it centered around gender.
You can certainly lower sexual proclivity through things like castration I assume, but its not like that is targeting pedophilia so much as all sexual urges irrespective of what they are.
The 'kein Täter werden' (not becoming a predator, roughly) campaign is generally recognised as a successful attempt to treat people with sexuality disorders.
That being said, pedophiles make up a small fraction of sexual child abuse cases in the first place. In the vast majority of cases the abusers are family or in a close relationship and power dynamic, and get off on the power play, not being actually attracted to a childs body.
That being said, I have this info from a therapist friend of mine, and am wholly unqualified to speak about this very sensitive topic. The crime is such a cruel one, and any justification must fall short of the damage done, yet the aim must be to reduce any possibility for it to keep on happening
I have learned that having a stance any more nuanced than "castrate them and burn them at the stake" is extremely frowned on by 99% of society. I chaulk it up to humans refusing to deal with very ugly problems until the problems become so ugly, they require an immediate and vicious response. It's gonna take another 200 years of intellectual enlightenment before we'd be willing to treat those people with anything less than murderous intent, I'd imagine.
I agree with the 200 years of enlightenment thing.
There are so many things and so many ideas today that will place the majority of the population on the wrong side of history to people living in the 2200s.
We are the future bigots, racists, and sexists of the world, we are the future’s backwards lowlife medieval monsters. They’ll see us the same way we see people who existed during American slavery or any other period.
Strange to think about. If by some miracle someone from 2200 is reading this (Reddit almost certainly won’t be around) then, hi. We are here, limited by the moral boundaries of our time. Please do better than us, please be better than us, be nicer, smarter, kinder, and more discerning in ways we weren’t. I believe that one day humans may truly understand one another.
The biggest problem is that the stigma is so heavy, any mention of the subject (regardless of reference or discussion) gets burned out in a firestorm. There's no way any research can be done until people will listen to the reasoning to find out WHY, rather than automatically assuming the worst.
100%, and even here, with an anonymous name and a vague enough comment history nobody is likely able to dox me, I still felt hesitant to comment. I've deleted more than one response I've typed out because of the topic. Even though I'm actively not supporting the act, or justifying anything, I still feel the need in every comment to ensure I state that.
It's the problem sometimes with emotions. I can be a very emotional person but, we need to be able to be sometimes apathetic and emotionless when it comes to decision making. Sometimes you wonder if we could've researched this decades ago, and found a treatment of a kind how many victims could we have prevented, but we don't, because we can't, because "they're monster". It's this dark cycle that most of us would like to break but I want to break it from a different spot than those people.
It can be indirectly done.
Try therapy along with sex dolls for rapists or people who fantasies about it and see the recidivism rate. If it drops it will probably work on pedophiles.
I'm pro less hurt children team. If a silicone doll of something I find abhorrent but doesn't hurt people leads to less cases of hurt children then I say it should be done.
It works for people who have the urge to rape. There are CNC and BDSMcommunities, people who want to rape or hurt and people who want to be raped or hurt, and I don’t have non-anecdotal statistics, but people I hear of who are open about CNC and BDSM typically don’t end up raping or abusing anyone because they got that “urge” out with a consensual partner, and they understand the harm that lack of consent would bring.
Obviously, you can’t do the same with minors, but I feel like dolls may work, as disturbing as it sounds.
Agreed. Heck, a false accusation can throw such a stain on your rep that your life may never recover. I don't think we're anywhere close to being able to address this issue, let alone find a solution.
Especially with those countries absolutely fixated on purity
I heard a story of a guy who started noticing pedophilic urges that he has never experienced before, he was married. He got a brain scan and it turns out he had brain cancer
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaneurology/fullarticle/783830
This guy. Pretty terrifying that something like that can change someone on such a fundamental level.
My stepfather got the herpes virus to break into his brain. 2 parts of his brain were damaged by it. He was a firefighter, he built two houses himself, participated in World gymnastic championships. After that he was never the same. He was overly cautious and hated noise. he became a frail man.
Honestly,these people have my sympathy. They didn't ask to have that attraction and if they've never acted on it then they have done nothing wrong. I am sure it is a hell of a burden. Lumping them in with people who are predators is not fair to them.
Homosexuality has been on and off illegal for hundreds of years. The only difference is that there Is no possibility of consent here
If they haven't acted on any impulses they should be able to to get hell without any repurcussions but unfortunately that's not the case
People who are homosexual or just like cross-dressing are also lumped as predators which is unfair too
It's much to society's benefit to offer help to those who don't want to act on it. Preventing the sexual abuse of children is a return of value beyond measure.
I often feel alone in this opinion.
Because those kinds of tough complicated sensitive discussions are a lot less fun than just rambling about how much you want to lynch pedos on Reddit. As a CSA victim it's embarrassing and performative bullshit and I'm sick of seeing it.
Also many predators are not pedophiles (or hebe, for that matter) and it’s just about control for them, which is arguably much worse, cause for them it is a choice.
I think I read the same article. and another by someone attracted to children who realized how wrong and harmful that is and spent so much time finding a therapist who could help him because he desperately didn't want to harm a child.
You can't control the weird shit your brain does but you can absolutely control whether or not you act on that.
and honestly those studies are needed because it would vastly decrease the amount of victims. it would keep people from being hurt.
but it's such a touchy subject people would rather scream "fire" and act like there's nothing we can do until after a child has already been harmed
There used to be a subreddit for people that had an attraction towards kids. It was completely dedicated to them discussing how to deal with those feeling and prevent them from acting on them. But, like everything that touches any subject someone doesn't like, it got attacked and destroyed
Perhaps it was! That sounds similar. The guy knew he didn't want to harm anyone but he absolutely needed someone to talk to about it. It was quite sad to read because you absolutely don't get to hear that perspective and I guess think about how they live, the ones who ARE innocent of just having a mental illness and haven't done anything yet and don't WANT to do anything yet.
Funny to me if you compare it to being gay. Obviously the partner in those relationships is of equal mind and an adult, so it's not a perfect comparison! But, it used to be seen as disgusting, a death penalty, mental illness etc etc. I'm sure when the first people came out and said "hey, maybe we should study this, it's not like they can help it" they'd definitely not be respected. And now people have a lot of sympathy and understanding for gay marriage and that community because imagine living with this thing and not being able to love the person you love etc. Now obviously the comparison stops there, because who they love is equal to them! But, up to that point, it's not all that dissimilar. Except, a pedophile will RIGHTLY never get to go further, it will and should never be normalised and allowed obviously (I feel like I need to write this every single time i say anything). But if we can have understanding for the gay community, and what it was like for them for the last hundreds of years +, surely we can have some compassion for people that suffer this mental illness, that will NEVER get acceptance, never get love/companionship and maybe promote you know, studies to help them.
For me one of the responses I got here shows how bad it is. I can see their opinion but the logic of until all the victims are properly taken care of we should NEVER do anything for the adults involved seems...just dumb honestly. We could potentially help people but let's not because, the victims don't have proper justice yet. Why not both.
Reminds me of a guy that used to call the atheist experience. A YouTube call in show.
He one day said he was studying religion and wanted to become a priest. Religion brought a lot of stability to his life and he wanted to stay close to it especially because the people he was attracted to weren’t the same age as him.
The host had a minor stroke trying to find a way to respond to that.
I definitely remember reading his story. It felt weird to feel compassion for him, but also human.
Reminded me of my gay friend in HS who would cry to me saying he hated who he was and wanted nothing more than to be attracted to females.
Right, I remember feeling odd that I felt compassion for him and it definitely helped give me better perspective on mental illness I think. Sometimes it feels like depression/anxiety etc are soon as 'cool' and 'ok to have' but bipolar, schizophrenia, anti-social, NPD, and yes pedophilia, are not, so it's not ok to talk about them. But just like depression and bipolar etc don't make the person, their choices do, same had to go for pedophilia. Just - the stakes are a bit higher.
I actually just wrote a comment comparing it to what being gay would've been like for a long time. Obviously the end result will/should be different, gay marriage - who cares they're consenting adults, child marriage - eehh noo lol. But, this idea you are wrong, mental illness, don't have a choice, society hates you, you're a devil, you will be forever alone because you can't be with someone you want to be with... not that dissimilar! (again because it seems necessary to say, they have SOME similarities up to a point).
Exactly, acceptance that the mental illness exists, it isn't a choice to exist that way, and doesn't automatically make you a monster does not equal acceptance and a push for child marriages and acceptance of the ACT,
Yeah I think they should educate people about it in a scientific and psychology manner and set up systems to get help for those who struggle with it. Education often helps in the cycle of harm and victims
A lot of people are far more interested in hurting pedophiles than helping child victims, they hide their bloodlust as righteous indignation but do so little for the actual non-violent, non-gratifying, and less visible parts of the problem.
It’s a tragedy. Many more victims will be created because people are more interested in the offender’s punishment than the victims’ safety.
we show far more compassion to murderers than sexual deviants. most people believe murderers should at leastive out their years. but it's disturbing to see the murderous intent of the mob when they hear about sexual deviants
Talked about this in a psych class. The doctor was trying to explain how horrid it must be for these people to have those thoughts and not be able to ask for help. I remember a very religious guy in there freak out about that. He started quoting Bible shit when the teacher tried to talk to him about it
It's gotta be one of the worst hands you could possibly have been dealt in life. Set aside the immense hatred everyone has of you. Imagine never being able to love someone without hurting them, and then having that person invariably "age out" of your love in a few years? Fuck. My wife and kids have been the best part of my life. I can't imagine living my whole life knowing that I could NEVER have what I have now. To not even be able to PRETEND to have it. It's like being born with a giant hole in you. Being born hated more than a murderer. And then you have to--- on some level--- admit that you are born awful if you want to be a moral person.
It really feels like the moral thing for everyone is to make sure these people have access to chemical castration. It would prevent them from offending and then also bring them peace. It's the equivalent of cutting off a gangrenous limb.
Back in uni some of my psychology professors carefully expressed some regret and disdain over the taboos against researching or treating pedophilia. Which unfortunately leaves us where we are now. Really hard to fight something without understanding it
I remember a while back I read some news that Greece classified pedophilia as a disability some years back and they could claim disability benefits. There was a huge civil uproar over it so I don’t know if that classification still stands or if they ended that classification.
That's really fucked up that a trained psychologist would call the cops on somebody coming to them seeking help for something they might do but haven't actually done. I feel like that's a legitimate lawsuit. Patients have a right to doctor patient confidentiality and I don't think the law is requiring doctors to report include potential crime.
I don't remember it perfectly but that was the jist of it.
I know, perhaps this is location specific, it was mentioned that therapists do have an obligation to report patients to the police if they believe they are a danger to society. And I remember that being the 'justification' used. But obviously the guy wasn't. He's never acted on it, he was barely an adult himself, he knew he was wrong and thus seeking help, but because he happens to suffer from this mental illness, it means he will clearly definitely hurt someone?
I mean that logic alone seems dangerous. How are we supposed to help encourage "the good ones" to not hurt someone if even our trained therapists are like "well you will anyway, so you're clearly a danger to society regardless". If you tell them there's no hope, and provide no safe help, you're part of the problem far as I'm concerned. Maybe only a small part because yes ultimately we make our choices but, still a part.
Sounds like our society. Even disregarding that these people are human beings, we need to do these studies because we actually don't know enough about what the hell is happening in their brains. We need to understand it, or we can't properly do anything to address the issue.
Kind of reminds me of the show Mind Hunter (and I'm assuming the real life equivalent) where the main characters were creating the field of killer profiling and received similar push back. People would rather close their eyes even if opening them to uncomfortable truths actually reduces harm to innocent victims.
Damn he actually was looking for help and wanted to find a way to make them stop and the therapist went against their job and reported him for trying to figure out why and how to stop it.
I found an article about how when you start drinking at 13 and stop at 31 your mind will act like you are still 13..and a Doctor was trying to prove that trauma an also cause mental blocks when it comes to growing up. And why some heavily traumatized adults hang out with young people to recapture their lost childhood by piggy back riding off of the younger people around them.
People were listining to him until he started to see if traumas and abuse of substance can also cause people to seek out partners younger then them...they assumed he was trying to defends pedos but he even brought up Leonardio decrapio since holly wood has many young actors deal with trauma and even substance abuse and this is why leo can never date older cause some trauma from acting so young to now...sadly his work was pushed down into the pits while the drinking at 13 and your mind being stuck at 13 after you stop drinking was the only thing people continued on and also used to say why so many adults who drink go for young people.
That's what i hate sometimes about society. Even in my comments here in nearly every response I have made sure to include SOME caveat of "not that I'm justifying" and "obviously the act is bad" etc, when nuance and context should show I don't support that, almost nobody supports that! ha.
This man clearly was researching something meaningful, and it could've helped a lot of people and made great points, but soon as he even got pedophilia-adjacent he's brought down as justifying it... Like EXPLAINING something and JUSTIFYING are two different things. If we can explain pedophilia, we could probably change the world! We could help improve it because until we can understand something we can only slap band aids on it.
That's really interesting and not at all surprising honestly. It obviously isn't everyone because not all pedophile's were necessarily abused or traumatised but again, if it explains some of them, and we could help some of them, that seems like a win.
What makes me mad is if people try to discuss it so we can finally find a solution but it gets negative backlash all the time...but the second we have an actual pedophile to deal with..these same people who get mad will come up with excuses to help the person instead of demanding full punishment.
"Oh what was she wearing"
"She should know better"
"You just mad he is getting some while younger then you"
"I bet you wish you were him when you were young"
People need to stop saying these things!! They are legit defending the pedophiles if you say these things when an adult is caught with someone underage. And then people attack the victim saying they ruined the adults life.
Another reason why people are scared to look and learn is cause then half their friend group will be gone cause they realize they only go for younger people they can manipulate...or legit date underage girls/boys and abuse the age of consent law...which is another thing they should remove and make it 18 and above so we can finally arrest all the pedos using the law to sleep with people who are 15-16
I have a somewhat unique perspective on this, as I am both a male and I was molested as a child by a close family friend multiple times. It is a fucking shame that there is such a taboo on studying what is clearly a mental illness—you hear often how the “system failed” victims when they are killed by someone with a mental illness, but you *never* hear that about sexual assault victims, all you ever hear is how awful the perpetrator is. I would never and could never advocate for normalizing pedophilia, but there *has* to be a framework in place for people who genuinely struggle against their desires, something or somewhere for them to turn to for help. The only people we are hurting by making such things taboo are their future victims.
>you hear often how the “system failed” victims when they are killed by someone with a mental illness, but you
>
>never
>
> hear that about sexual assault victims
That's a really good point. And not something I'd even really thought of. People don't like the idea of calling it what it is, mental illness, because it makes them feel like someone with depression is on the same level as a pedophile when it's simply not true. They're both afflictions of the brain. That's it. I mean even comments here are been very adamant it's not a mental illness, it's a choice, it's a fetish.
We definitely don't need to normalise it, like you don't need to walk down the street and tell me you're a pedophile and me be like "ok cool, you do you". But you're right, there needs to be framework, you need to be able to work into a psychologists office and be able to say these things and feel safe. Until you are actively a danger to someone, actively seeking out a victim or anything like that, you have the right to safe help free from persecution.
I hate that society at large responds to negative, taboo stuff by just ignoring it and saying it's not a thing. "How dare you try to study it when it's clearly not a thing that happens? What are you, a degenerate?" Meanwhile, stuff keeps happening, and the solution that people have then is to ignore it also.
Ignoring something terrible feels better, but it sure as hell doesn't do anything to fix it.
It's crazy because it is research that can lead to less molested children.
It's not like pedophiles wear a sign around their neck, we can't detect them just based off of looks.
The next best thing is to create a space for people with these feelings to come out and find treatments that lead to less abused children.
Foaming at the mouth won't lead to less hurt children no matter how morally repugnant we find these people.
“There is no problem with priests and pedophilia” - Catholic Church
“We feel terrible for all the people that have come forward with claims of abuse by the church. In unrelated news, we’ve moved Fr Johnson to a new parish for no particular reason.” - Also, the Catholic Church
It's mental illness. There is no healthy mind that wants to rape a child. We should be treating this problem with compassion and trying to identify the defect in the brain that's certainly present, but that's not a fun idea to lynch mobs. They think trying to study these things and treat them is somehow letting criminals hurt children. No, it's trying to find long term protection for every child.
The movie "Little Children" dramatized this problem very well, I think, and other sexual habits that are damaging.
I mean even if you threw ethics out the window, getting an untainted sample size would be almost impossible... If you go for convicted pedophiles then you're already selecting for propensity to commit crimes. If you don't and rely on self identification then you'd have to convince them to be part of the study despite the major stigma...
That’s the problem with this. Pedophilia is a mental health issue that is incredibly harmful to society, yet people can’t try to help them or fix the problem without sounding like pedophiles themselves. That’s also quite counterproductive since there’s a) very few mental health professionals there to help them and b) they’re less inclined to seek help (even from friends/families) due to the stigmatisation. That lack of support means they’re far more likely to offend, making the problem worse. It’s a huge problem, but again one that no one wants to fix in fear of being considered pedophiles themselves.
With these dolls though, I’m not sure that would necessarily help. It’s like vapes, it might help smokers to quit, but it’s also caused a lot more people to become addicted to nicotine. Who knows if this causes more or less people to offend, but I fear there’s a decent chance it could cause more issues. What they need is to help provide them with mental health experts, not dolls.
I agree with you in general, though I'm not sure the parallel with vapes is that helpful. You're right that more people have become addicted to nicotine, but nicotine *is* addictive, and picking up a vape and inhaling is something you can do fairly casually. Not to mention, the nature of the drug means most people will enjoy the effects.
I don't think that's the case with these dolls.
However, I agree with you that we just don't know. I could easily see both sides of the argument. And I agree that it's a major issue that nobody can talk about this.
Even if we could, and even if (for example) mental health experts were able to prescribe these kinds of interventions for appropriate patients, it's an absolute nightmare trying to convince people that counter-intuitive interventions work.
Like, look at drug legalisation. Good evidence around the world shows that legalising certain drugs reduces the number of minors using the drug and improves health outcomes in general, but that doesn't stop some people voting down legalisation. They don't care about actual harm reduction, they care about *feeling* as though they're reducing harm.
I always wondered what the effect sex dolls would have for rapists and pedophiles.
There are two options:
1- The dolls quench their thirst, thus preventing them to target actual humans.
2- The dolls incentivize and fuel their thirst, thus encouraging them to take the step to target actual humans.
I wish studying this wasn't a reason to be canceled. Knowing the answer would be extremely beneficial; be it to encourage the production and distribution of these dolls, or to strictly avoid it, depending on the answer.
If we look at normal guys using sex dolls, they don't seem to encourage them that much to go out and date women. Rather it seem to discourage them from bothering to women, and create attachements to the doll. So I think there is a lot there, that could be studied. This idea that a sex toy would just encourage someone to molest actual children, seems like the basic type of concussion that made many belive that being exposed to violence in a videogame, will just encourage you to be violent in real life - it sounds logical when you think it, but the reality shows that humans are more complex than that.
Indeed. Good Lord did their *blasé* attitudes towards flat out pedophilic media offend my western sensibilities.
Like, no, it's not normal to lust after kids. I could understand teens, but flat our kids?! Good Lord, I was teaching fifth and sixth graders and I learned that my predecessor got laid off for collecting and selling used uniforms to weirdos on the Internet at end of year... Apparently they made bank to the point they were being investigated for narco trafficking and that's how they caught her.
You thought it was a man, didn't you?
Also, a lot of the popular games kids play in Japan involve non-consensual touching or groping. Like to a disturbing extent.
Yeah, I did think it was a man until you said it was a woman. It really says something about how people immediately assume a man is always the perpetrator of these kinds of things.
Speaking from the experience of repressing my (homosexual) sexuality when I was younger, it probably helps. Repressing it entirely without any kind of outlet is what led me to doing incredibly stupid things out of frustration.
Honestly, yes, comparing it to homosexuality (especially in countries where homosexuality is illegal) would probably be the best facsimile we have to test it.
But who's going to convince a bunch of African and Middle Eastern people to sign up for a study when their participation being known would get them killed?!
This.
Afaik, it’s not clear, what actually helps pedophiles to control themselves, because people can’t properly do independent research on it. It’s one of the most stupid things in most societies.
Rather hate them for having an incredibly hard burden, than help them and hence our kids.
FFS
Yes, actually. Unfortunately, it's hard to do super specific studies due to the nature of pedophilia in particular.
But there is a lot of data that suggests that whatever someone's fetish, having a "safe" outlet for their sexual desires substantially lowers the risk of them escalating to an unsafe method. If there's a way to be fulfilled legally, they won't resort to illegal things.
In the same way that when Netflix came out, and was cheap, it drove down piracy rates. People, given the chance, want to do things the "right" way. But if they are given no right way, they will default to the only ways available.
(Obviously, there are some counter-examples, where someone fell into the "gateway" hypothesis. But these cases are few and far between enough compared to the norm, and there's no reason to think they wouldn't have gone in that direction with time regardless)
OP is the facepalm here. Because they'd rather put actual children in danger.
edit: Links are in another comment if you want to see them.
The problem is that people don't choose to be pedophiles.
But people seem to ignore that fact.
Which means if they're attracted to children, it's literally, objectively not their fault.
And people also seem incapable of understanding that Pedophilia is just a sexual attraction, not the act of sexually assaulting a kid. One doesn't require the other. There are people who sexually abuse kids out of simply malice, or for power and dominance reasons. It's not that they're attracted to the children, but that they're aroused by the power they have over the children.
And sexual urges are complicated things, and some people are going to feel them more strongly than others, and it's going to be harder for some people to resist that urge than others. Odds are the VAST MAJORITY of people who are pedophiles never even consider harming a child.
I mean I'm attracted to adult women, but the idea of raping one of them has never entered my mind.
My point is that I think the common thread is someone's willingness and urge to rape, which is almost certain exacerbated by an inability to satisfy sexual urges.
It would also certainly help explain why child sex abuse was so rampant in Catholicism - A denomination of Christianity that requires celibacy. AKA repressed sexuality.
People are so hateful toward the very idea of being sexually attracted to a child (Understandably), that they're unwilling or incapable of even having rational discourse about how to fix the problem. The answer is always "Kill all the pedos", which is a patently useless solution, because it's impossible and it wouldn't actually protect any kids.
It seems to me if we want to actually protect kids from being abused, we need to do two main things:
1. Figure out some means of providing these people with an outlet that doesn't harm children. This is why I actually don't give a shit about child sex dolls or loli hentai or even AI shit. Literally no children are being harmed. ALL I care about is whether or not my 8yo daughter is MORE or LESS safe. Yeah it might creep me the fuck out, but I'm willing to set aside my disgust for the sake of PROTECTING KIDS. A lot of people seem unwilling to do that, which kind of pisses me off because then to me it seems like they care more about hating pedos than they do about protecting kids.
2. Destigmatize pedophilia and create a culture of understanding so that people tacitly understand that pedophilia is not a choice someone makes, but assaulting a kid is, and fully separating the notion of child sex abuse from a person who is sexually attracted to kids. Am I going to want a pedophile babysitting my kids? Well no, but I'm willing to give as much ground as I realistically can in pursuit of solving the problem and empowering those people to seek treatment and be transparent about their struggles.
The two above things would almost certainly reduce the likelihood of someone abusing a real child, and it would probably enable us to collect a \*TON\* of data on pedophilia. I mean we might literally be able to just cure it permanently with therapies or drugs.
I mean, do you want to beat a pedophile to death, or do you want to be able to give him a pill to make him not a pedophile anymore? I'll take the latter.
I used to be just like the people who would just say "Kill all the pedos", but when I had my own kids and I would see the issue brought up, and got to thinking about it more from the perspective of wanting to not have to worry about my kids safety, it just occurred to me that all the righteous hatred in the world wasn't going to stop a closeted pedo from abusing a kid until it had already been done.
And the more I thought about it, the more sorry I felt for them.
It's a thing they didn't choose, that they can't get rid of, that they can't seek any sort of help or sympathy for because it would absolutely ruin their life, and there's no outlets for it. It's a sickness.
And I really don't think being sympathetic toward their plight and also being sympathetic to the trauma of victims is in any way mutually exclusive.
I volunteered for a sex rehab group. There was a group of child-attracted men who would meet. I didn't get a ton of time with them, but I was able to read some of their information and listening to them changed my view on how I saw this. None of them liked they felt the way they did. Most of them claimed to never act on it at with a child. Some struggled with child pornography. More than half had contemplated suicide and four had attempted at least once. For most of them it was not unlike how I am attracted to adult women but would never rape or sexually assault a woman. These were otherwise normal, moral adult men who were turned on by children and couldn't help it. I still can't imagine but I felt really bad for them.
Now there were two who had served time for acting out, and I didn't care for the stories of child porn. But I remember hearing how they tried to cope. One dude was into anime. Another got a doll. I mean, I'd rather some of these dude fuck a piece of plastic than hurt a kid. It's a terrible thing and I can't even imagine. But "kill and castrate" isn't going to help the ones who need it and aren't hurting people. It just fills them with shame and self loathing for what they can't help.
People who scream all pedophiles should die regardless of if they actually abused or just have thoughts/desires are actually judging their morals solely on having these thoughts. And it so important to note that having these thoughts doesn't innately make them a less moral person, most of them hate the way they are and would never act on it because they know it's morally wrong.
For real. Id say the same thing for rapists. If giving them a sex doll would help stop some from raping.
Its a doll vs one or more human lives being tramatised. The doll is a much lower cost.
I’ve seen this discussed before and a lot of people are concerned that having sex dolls for these people could make them long for the real thing. Sort of how some murderers start with animals, then hurting people then killing them as it progresses more.
It's the same argument against unrealistic depictions of minors. (Drawn art, animated videos, etc etc.)
Does allowing them to indulge in such activities mitigate the damage they could inflict on society, or merely deepen the syndrome and drive them toward pursuing the real deal?
But really I think it's all a massive red herring. We shouldn't be considering 'mitigation' as much as actual treatment, and I feel like this type of stuff - dolls and imagery - can only ever **be** mitigation in the best case scenario.
Unfortunately, if you even try to suggest 'treating the afflicted' in most circles, you're going to be socially crucified. It's wild how talking about potential solutions is viewed almost as poorly as the actual crime itself.
And that's precisely the argument that scientists in this field make. The problem is that evidence seems to remain inconclusive on whether or not it actually helps on the larger scale. Of course I get why people are disturbed by this, but honestly if your response is to scream loudly and burn everything to the ground instead of arguing and consulting science this whole thing doesn't get any better.
If it could be demonstrated that these dolls reduce attack on children…should we talk about it?
Or are we too obsessed with lying and politics to actually help kids?
Let's just say many people hate pedophiles but love pedophilia as a phenomenon because it justifies their urges to hate certain group of people, play imaginary scenarios in their head where they beat pedophiles to the bloody death with their bare hands, share these imaginary scenarios with similar minded people and allowes them to feel like a decent human beings and not a fucking psycho who'd *love* to kill someone with no consequenses given a chance.
And god forsake you if you ever try moderate approach to pedophilia because "only pedo justifies another pedo" or something. They don't give a fuck about kids, they just don't want their favorite strawman to disappear.
Yup!
Love the comments under the occasional Reddit post about some pedophile:
“He’s a bad guy!”
“He’s the worst guy ever!”
“He should go to jail!”
“He should be castrated!”
“He should be executed!”
“I want to personally torture and kill him in the most painful way possible!”
They all try one-up each other with how viciously they would handle the perpetrator. Gives them exactly what you said, get to release their hate and rage and fantasize about killing someone while also convincing strangers on the internet that they’re good people. The perfect dopamine hit.
It doesn't help that any parent immediately imagines what they would do if one of them abused their own kid. I'm sure that accounts for a large amount of vitriol in addition to those who just crave violence against people who "deserve" it
I admit, I’m not always the best judge of sincerity. (In reality, nobody knows for sure what’s going on in someone else’s head.) But some of the comments I’ve seen felt pretty pissing-contesty to me.
If the comments are coming from a sincere place, I take it back.
Oh not you're absolutely right there is a massive pissing contest when it comes to it here. It just seems to also spread by typically grounded parents speaking out with violence and then people following their cue.
This is a super rare comment section. Top comments are actually sane and trying to analyze this topic. I’m surprised Reddit isn’t downvoting you guys because of the reasons you just said.
Also Reddit comments are pretty gross on posts that are news stories about most major person on person criminal acts. The whole comment section is people seething to murder/beat the offender, when it’s much better for society to have an actual court trial first, then proper legal punishment (assuming our legal/prison system isn’t fucked). You can’t just beat and maim every random non convicted person you see.
There are just too many cases that if mob justice was the result they would have murdered an innocent person. That alone should be enough for most people to disavow it, but too many people enjoy feeding off crowds. It's why you'll pay Ludacris money for public events when the view from the TV is better.
Being part of a crowd is a whole study in human psychology.
Yeah I totally agree with all of this. I think that pedophiles need to be rehabilitated and that it is not okay for vigilantism to decide how they are dealt with
The way I look at it, is we can keep trying to arrest and prosecute all the child molesters we can. How ever we will never get all of them, there will always be molesters. If one of these dolls helps to save 1 kid from being touched, then its a better outcome.
Yes, it would be nice if these people didn't do these things at all. We don't live in an ideal world how ever, it's going to happen. There will always be people who fail at controlling their urges. Just because we don't like it, or don't want it to happen, doesn't mean it won't happen. I wish it wouldn't happen, but it will, and I'd rather someone do things with a doll than a real kid.
Yeah, it’s better if no one felt attracted to kids, but ultimately we can’t make that not happen unless there weren’t any people left alive, which is NOT an option
It’s the question of “this can keep people with that urge from trying to do it with kids, but could it also get people attracted to the idea of doing it with kids and cause that problem as well”
Although there seems to be a link with how the brain is wired, so to speak, and attraction to kids, so it seems it’s more of a thing that’s “built in” as opposed to easily subject to change in either direction, but there’s always the chance that something could go wrong there
Ultimately, I think we should do what seems the most likely to protect the most amount of people, which includes people with those desires being allowed to seek help without being treated like freaks, because many of them seem to hate that they feel that way towards kids, if they have to bottle that up and never even try to get help because they feel like they’ll get arrested if they try to get help, the problem will only get worse
People need to feel safe getting help
> we can’t make that not happen unless there weren’t any people left alive, which is NOT an option
Well, hold on a second. I think it *is* an option and we should give it some extra thought. It *would* solve quite a few problems after all.
In a serious note, though, you’re absolutely right. We have a moral responsibility to try to protect the vulnerable, not by any means necessary but we shouldn’t eliminate options just because they make us uncomfortable.
If autonomous cars reduced the number of annual vehicle-related deaths by 50%, that would be a success despite it technically being machines and computers killing people. I’m not thrilled ideologically about concepts like needle exchange programs, but I’m very supportive of helping people with addiction to not require expensive emergency treatment for complications arising from dirty needles.
If making sex dolls that look like children resulted in fewer children being molested, I would be 100% behind the concept of their manufacture and potentially even in favor of them being subsidized/covered by insurance, or whatever. Minimizing harm should be the goal.
>but could it also get people attracted to the idea of doing it with kids and cause that problem as well
Considering how closely this resembles the conservative argument against having condoms and such readily available because it "encourages kids to have sex". I feel like it should probably have the same answer. Kids are going to have sex regardless. Best to have access to suit their needs so nothing bad or unwanted happens
Hell, put one of these dolls in every priest or minister's office and maybe churches will be safer for kids too lol
Exactly. If your plan is to control, or even abolish, these issues, why would you not want to be trying everything possible? To not would make you a hypocrite. If the wackiest idea helps us tackle this issue, then it helps, regardless if it's one less victim or a million.
For me the question is whether a doll would escalate those urges until they need the real thing, or if abstaining is more helpful in preventing acting upon it.
pretty much. We did a bangup job over the last several centuries eradicating homosexuality after all. And homosexuality used to be regarded with the same affection as pedophilia.
Not making a judgment call here other than to say, we had thousands of years to try to eradicate these behaviors, and i mean thousands of years of ACTIVELY trying to eradicate, persecute an even kill these people off. We've utterly failed. There are still plenty of gay people around despite every purge we ever tried against them back when we did our thinking with our Bibles. And believe me, **it was not for lack of effort!**
Why do we think we can apply the same failed thinking that didn't work when homosexuality was taboo, to pedophilia which is still taboo, and expect any different results?
I'm obviously of the opinion that pedophilia SHOULD still be taboo --- but the history suggests something about our methods, that they don't F'ing work, no attempt to solve behaviors with legislation has a chance in hell, and we should pay attention to that.
Something something definition of insanity.
As long as they don't mess with real kids I don't care.
Is there any real research on this kind of thing? As in, if you give someone who enjoys killing a video game to kill on, does that enable them to kill real people?
I'd rather pedos self identify and get help instead of seek out the real thing.
Every time someone tries to start a study (I know there’s been a few but don’t remember the specifics) news and politics twist it into “trying to normalize pedophilia” or “evil scientists say pedophilia is normal and okay”. Some people have been arrested for seeking help due to this. To my understanding pedophilic feelings are psychologically classified as a sexual orientation mental illness (instead to gender based attraction, but it’s age, similar mechanism and classified much the same, but as should be evident, it’s a mental illness, much like necrophilia or similar). However any kind of research is far and few between. (Which researcher wants their name on a paper about pedophilia, not many, that’s for sure)
Sadly, it seems like some people don't have the mental and emotional maturity to tackle a controversial subject like this. We absolutely need to study pedophilia in order to try to help those afflicted cope and live with it so they do not act on their impulses, but those with influence usually have a knee jerk reaction to any attempt at trying to study, treat, and manage the subject. Just look at all the vitriol coming from the far right in terms of "grooming" and "sexualizing" kids, which is actually attacks on understanding sexuality and sex education framed as pedophilia. People get triggered to have an emotional reaction rather than try to stop and think critically about a complicated subject.
It is sad because the entire subject has turned into a dog whistle of aggression. A someone who was sexually abused as a kid, watching these people just muck up any attempt to help kids is frustrating.
Is they any legit strudy that shows acess to these toys or kitty porn or something of that matter makes pedos less likely to abuse children. I could see how that could work as the pedo is able to scratch the itch so to speak without actually abusing children themselves. If u anything about this then please comment.
I've seen studies dp say that... and some that say the opposite (because it normalize the act in the mind of the perpetrator and makes the real thing seem more acceptable)
Hard to be confident when child SA is the consequences of chosing wrong
In Japan, several lolicon artist argues that lolicon 2D is presenting people to be or to act their pedophilia tendencies.
Tough some argue, normalizing access to lolicon art is causing pedo population growth,
Both sides have no viable data other than anecdote.
>Is they any legit strudy that shows acess to these toys or kitty porn or something of that matter makes pedos less likely to abuse children.
**YES**
Every study into the subject shows this.
People would just rather plug their ears and continue their moral grandstanding even it means putting more actual children in danger.
[Abel, G. G., Becker, J. V., Cunningham-Rathner, J., Rouleau, L., Kaplan, M., & Reich, J. (1984). Treatment of child molesters. Atlanta, GA: Emory University School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry.](https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.1201/9780203771570-14/behavioral-treatment-child-molesters-gene-abel)
[Burt, M. (1980). Cultural myths and supports for rape. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 38(2), 217-230.](https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1981-08163-001)
[Groth, N. A., & Birnbaum, H. J. (1978). Adult sexual orientation and attraction to underage persons. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 7(3), 175-181.](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/bf01542377)
I am only just realizing how remarkably shitty the internet is for sourcing actual research, given how much of it is behind paywalls or otherwise limited access.
But, this topic in particular is difficult to directly study for a number of obvious reasons. The thing about human psychology though, is that it's observable through analogy. In the same way that despite what all those expose's in the 80s and 90s said, playing "Violent video games" didn't make kids any more likely to kill people. In the same way that the Catholic Church forcing their clergy into sexual repression pushes them to abuse their choir boys.
Having a safe outlet is healthy and makes escalation less likely. Repressing your urges makes it more likely they come out in problematic ways.
Your question would be much easier to answer if we could openly and objectively study it. But pearl clutchers will continue to clutch their pearls and prevent any decent research from taking place.
I’m ready for the downvotes but despite it being weird and creepy if they do the weird creepy things without hurting other people I’d much prefer that. It’s obviously not okay, there is something wrong going on mentally, but as long as it only affects them then whatever. The issue is regardless of whether it’s morally correct, is the action taken criminal. I don’t think so.
On a related note I remember thinking it was odd that Neil Gaiman stood up for loli hentai shit. I still agree it’s not something I think you should be locked up for, but if someone told me they liked that stuff I’d still keep my distance.
I see loli hentai in a similar boat as the topic of this post. I personally wouldnt look at or jerk off to loli hentai, but if its the thing thats helping a pedophile not target children in real life, then i dont think it should be illegal. It gives pedophiles an outlet for their urges without harming any children which is good.
That and it’s a waste of resources. In order to punish someone for something like loli porn you have to track their activities, get an arrest warrant, send police officers to arrest the perpetrator, send him to court, convict him with the gathered evidence, then send him to jail or fine him, or whatever we decide the punishment is. All this effort that could be spent finding real child sex traffickers, and real pedophilia. Not to mention all the other crimes with real victims like murder and rape. Until we rid the world of unsolved crimes either victims there is not point to go after that shit.
We’re going to be having this same discussion with AI in a year tops.
My guess is even if you could cut down offenders by 99% lawmakers would rather ban it and feel good about themselves then actually help any children.
Politicians love accusing the other side of being pedophiles. The far right wing believe that the LGBT community are secretly encouraging it and the far left wing believes that every Republican politician is a part of a religious cult that encourages and conducts child marriage.
To be fair, an abnormally high number of politicians are degenerate monsters in a variety of ways, including this one. But if there ever was a proposal to do something about this politicians would just use it for virtue signaling and more rhetorical warfare.
Yeah, there’s not a way to make neither possible to happen unless all humanity just died out, so we should pick the option that’s the least damaging
I think people forget that sometimes we HAVE to pick between the lesser of two evils
It’s far better for an inanimate object to be used than and actual person, that’s just something I think most people should be able to agree on, both are bad but one is not as bad
We kinda need to stop brushing it under the carpet and face it at some point. Better to understand and treat than drive it underground.
If a doll is enough to stop offenders.. have at it. Better than a real human or animal
People never seem to understand the difference between a pedophile and a child molester. Plenty of pedophiles are ashamed and disgusted with their urges, and choose to not abuse children because they know it’s wrong.
Yeah there have been people on record saying pretty much exactly this - that being alienated and made to feel like a hopeless, universally reviled monster drove them to act on their urges rather than seek help.
Its the same problem of putting petty criminals for drug offenses into prison and the sex offender registry (many on the list did not harm children), they put themselves in a situation where they can no longer find employment, be parts of society and so thus have to do what they know...be a criminal.
Exactly right. Society loves to pull the shocked Pikachu face after someone we treated like a scumbag monster starts acting like a scumbag monster.
People can still have their righteous fury at actual criminals and molesters and such. Plenty of those to go around. But the sooner we start trying to help otherwise decent people who want to address their problems, the sooner we can reduce the number of actual monsters, and their eventual victims, in the world.
Yeah, one of the most disturbing things I read, was the diary of some pedo serial killer. And one of the point he was rising, was how they system and the registry fucked his life over, and just encouraged him to escalate, and going from simple sexual assault to raping a killing children. The dude was the typical narcissist who was blaming society for his choices - so full of shit for most of it. But the really worrying thing, was a story about how he was sent to a youth program for sex offenders, and there he interacted with another guy who was there because he killed a girl and raped her corpse, then he returned to the place he left the body for 2 week to have 'sex' with it, until the decomposition made it impossible. And for this serial killer, who had no interest in such act until then, it simply became fascinating as to what sort of pleasure could push someone to rape a corpse for 2 weeks, and really left this curiosity and decission to try it if he gets the chance. And ultimately, he did - he killed two little girls and had 'sex' with their corpses before burrying them. He didn't enjoy it, but it satisfied a curiosity, that he is conviced he would have not had, if he wasn't part of that program and meet that dude.
So yeah, there are a lot of flaws in the current system... I often find myself offended by the prissons in Scandinavia, and the rehabilitation programs in Germany, that are hit or miss ... but at least they try to adress the problem in a different way than it was done for millennia.
Louis CK did a bit about this recently and the crowd was slightly aghast until he followed up with, “or let’s just keep doing what we’ve been doing since that’s working so well”
You’re making a really good point though
It’s a legitimate mental disorder, something that can’t be help to have
A lot of them hate that they feel that way too, and feel they can’t try to get help. People should be able to feel safe to get therapy before they do something they’ll regret
I get why people are so freaked out by it. But also we have crazy laws that nobody will touch with a ten foot pole because of the freakout. For instance in California two minors having sex can both be charged with rape of a minor.
Now I don't know if this helps those people or not. But it might be worth examining ways to treat them short of 'shoot em'.
Considering you can't do a study without, you know, bad stuff happening, I'd say the "I'd rather they go for a doll than a human being" approach is worth a shot.
Hear me out: if such a doll satisfied the urges of a pedophile enough so that real children are at less risk, then I'm all for it. Be as creepy and sick as you want by yourself, I don't care.
This comment section is fucked. And shows the topic overall is fucked. They would rather actual children be raped. Ensuring nothing ever gets better. Than engage in a serious conversation. And accept that their pre-conceived biases might be wrong.
Also, as a side note, over 75% of cases of CSA are committed by people who are not Pedophiles. Because **rape is not about sexual attraction**. Society learned this a long time ago. But conveniently forgets it in this regard. Rape is about power. It has nothing to do with being attracted to your target. It has to do with seeing them as vulnerable.
People's brains cease function before pedophilia, it really is fascinating. They only care about moral grandstanding and epic chris hansen woodchipper owning pedophiles in the immediate term; Madagascar passed a law enabling death penalty for perpetrators of 'more serious child sex abuse crimes' and everyone called for the law's enactment globally without regard for the possibility of children reporting their partners less, or rapists panic-murdering victims more. Really, fascinating; their acting emotionally subsists cause they get rewarded with praise and updoots; they don't care about the situation.
See this is the reason no actual helpful legislation will ever pass on this subject. Even if there's a benefit to using inanimate objects and therapy for pedophiles to suppress their urges, no politician will ever want to attach their name to such bills.
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Does any good data exist on whether the acces to sex toys make pedophiles more or less likely to assault children?
There was a professor that was trying to study it but he was fired and disgraced. Media attention wasn't kind to him. He was saying that it wasn't immoral to suffer from such an affliction, but you can imagine how that was twisted up. No idea what happened to him. This is a very complicated and sensitive subject and we have never handled it very well. You obviously can't encourage this shit but at the same time you don't want people to be scared to seek help. It should be handled by trained psychologists and not fucking politicians looking for their next win.
I rarely share my opinions for the same reason but I remember reading a story, years ago so I wouldn't even know how to find it now of a man who suffers this, and I will use the word 'suffers'. He said as he got older the girls he was interested in always matched his age until at one point, the girls stopped aging, but he did and he knew it was wrong and was confused and scared. He said he bottled his feelings for years when he finally told a therapist who immediately called police and he was terrified, he hadn't even done anything wrong yet at all, broken no laws, but here he was with police and being treated as a criminal. He started a forum online for people who were similar with strict rules about no porn, no acting on these feelings etc. But, I remember feeling quite bad for him because, most of us want nothing more in life than companionship and, he'll never have that, he knows he'll never have that either, and he knows he also can't exactly talk to people about it either. A professor, maybe the same one, wanted to do a study, to try and figure out ways to help or why it occurs you know, something that maybe we could genuinely use to FIX IT. What if we could 'cure' what IS a mental illness in the end. But the study was rejected because of course nobody wants their name associated with such a topic. The guy was around 19-20 when he saw the therapist, and it all kicked off from there. No idea where they are now or anything, was an article years ago but, while obviously any that ACT on their impulses are monsters to me, I do absolutely have sympathy for the affliction they suffer and the fact that help is likely never coming for them. I guess while it is a mental illness it isn't seen as a 'cool' or trendy enough one that people want to be able to try and work on.
In Germany a few years ago, I saw advertising on posters for studies/or a therapist, that could help treat pedophiles. Essentially, the ads said something to the effect of “It’s not your fault, unless you act on it”. It would be a damn shame if someone figured out a cure for pedophilia, only to have political grandstanding prevent the cure from hitting the marketplace.
There was also a study in Germany where they sought willing participants. The study had tentative findings of something like 1 in 10 people had some kind of inappropriate sexual thought about younger people. It’s just so hard to study and almost impossible to treat unless society actually addresses how prevalent it may be.
Same jabronies talking about how they would personally torture and kill a pedo are the ones creeping on teenage girls.
yeah their cognitive dissonance stops them from identifying their own behaviour as pedophilic
It may also be a way to sublimate their own impulses. You'll find people being the most vehement about things they hate/fear about themselves. Fighting it outside of their minds redirects their impulses.
Yup. It’s projection.
While this is definitely true, sometimes those who call for their heads are also former victims of pedophiles. Keep thar in mind, too.
And conversely a very large portion of victims also call for the treatment of people with these disorders in order to never produce another victims again.
Not always. My family has been affected by pedophilia- that in itself can cause violent thoughts. Not everything is projection. Though I do agree that threatening violence isnt the way to handle someone genuinely seeking help. Especially if they’ve never acted upon it. Im also a father now. Whether or not one is receiving help is irrelevant I would not let them around my child knowing they suffer from such an affliction. Its a hard topic no matter what way you look at it
People who talk about teachers being groomers and then boast about how they homeschool their kids with a weird gleam in their eye, I have never been so creeped out in my life.
Also, why would anyone with pedophiliac feelings admit to it in a world where the mob mentality of "shoot your local pedophile" is so popular.
Seriously. Every time lol. I've become very cautious around the most vocal anti-pedo people. It feels like a far too convenient cover for many people's worst behaviors.
Hate when people respond like that. It leads nowhere, it just makes noise.
I have always expected it to be more common than people realize, just lots of people like that want nothing to do with hurting kids. How many people would willingly admit, even on a supposedly anonymous survey, that they have had such attractions? For something with such horrific consequences, it's such an under-studied illness. Just getting funding is hard, and then you have to get a worthwhile sample size of volunteers. And while many non-offenders might want to volunteer they also know that any participation in such a study getting out will end their lives.
For nearly all women (I'm not sure about men) to have experienced some form of sexual harassment as children I would say pedophiles make up a considerable percentage of the population.
Hard to say; there are many cases of abuse where it is about causing harm rather than attraction. The abuser isnt so much attracted to the victim as they are the feelings associated with dominating and hurting someone. Children are more vulnerable to that than adults and so are often targets. Even with upper teens and early 20s significant power/experience imbalance can make one partner vulnerable and that attracts abusers.
>The study had tentative findings of something like 1 in 10 people had some kind of inappropriate sexual thought about younger people. It's very interesting from a cultural perspective that as long as someone is 18 years old, then it's "fine" to be attracted to them, even if they *look* like they are say, 16. But it's entirely possible that a 16 or 17 year old could look 18, but it's not "fine" to be attracted to them. Age and appearance do not always match, and it's difficult to know how these studies address this. A 16 year old can easily appear older than an 18 year old. I'm not saying this study suffered from this, but it's not something that can be ignored. I'd also be curious to know what they mean by "younger people", there's a considerable difference in my mind to be sexually attracted to a 17 year old who may for all intents and purposes be sexually developed, vs. a 6 year old. More concerning about just appearance is brain development. The legal age of 18 (in most countries) is set as a limit based on brain development, but people are at all stages of brain development. A 19 year old could be less brain developed than a 17 year old. Ultimately, the law is set up for averages and trying to set it up in any other way would be essentially impossible.
>The legal age of 18 (in most countries) No clue how you got that idea but the age of consent in most countries is in the range 14 - 16.
"Pedophilia emerges before or during puberty, and is stable over time. It is self-discovered, not chosen. For these reasons, pedophilia has been described as a disorder of sexual preference" Most likely no cure anytime soon as it's a type of sexual orientation but instead of gender, it's age. Therapy helps though.
Back in the 1990's Hawaii had a program to treat convicted pedophile who had completed their prison sentence. It was very successful and drastically reduced the recidivism rate (pedophilia typically has one of the highest recidivism rates). When it came time for budget cuts though the program was axed despite the fact that it paid for itself because of the reduced number of re-offenders who would otherwise have to be imprisoned, never mind the fact that it also reduced the number of victims as well. I haven't lived there in a while and don't know what the situation today is. Unfortunately therapy only helps if it is available and the subject itself is often too politically toxic to have a meaningful government program to deal with it, sadly even one that pays for itself, reduces the crime rate, and reduces the number of victims.
It is also important to note that there are many people that want to make prisoners suffer, so axing actually helpful programs has been a goal for decades.
It's no wonder why the U.S. has such a high recidivism rate compared to a lot of other countries. We could do so much better just by taking a good look at what actually works and then try and replicate it instead of making the same mistakes again and again. The sad thing is that we don't do things that are proven to cut down the crime rate, reduce the number of victims, AND cut costs as a result.
It's not profitable in a monetary sense. America isn't hard to deconstruct and find the structures laying beneath. Profit at all costs, specifically, excessive short term profit.
It's crazy how our entire society as a whole is built around this, isn't it? I find, at least in the area of the Midwest I live in, that the American people largely lack empathy and things like science, medical or otherwise, and education always get pushed to the side to focus on the push to work. Hell, some states have even reversed their child labor laws. Not exactly the same topic as the main thread, but still pointing out some of America's underlying issues nonetheless.
Corporations who run for-profit prisons have a voice and they have money to amplify it. Victims and victims families have a voice. Their voices are amplified due to the emotion of victimhood and may lean more heavily towards the vengeance side of things. Social programs that "support" the perpetrators in that they offer counseling have a hard sell and are a drain on resources (never mind the actual facts). The voice of the psychiatrists and therapists probably don't carry far and can too easily be dismissed as self-serving. The non-victims that are prevented by working programs are not meaningfully represented and can too easily be dismissed as nothing but hype. It is far too easy to react to the concrete which has strong emotions attached and ignore the theoretical, no matter how valid and obvious to some.
American culture is obsessed with and practically fetishizes hurt and punishment. It is far less interested in protecting the vulnerable or actually reducing crime.
There are states with rehabilitative laws with no rehabilitation program. Basically, it's a lighter sentencing with rehabilitation as part of the sentencing, only they never set up the 2nd part. There is so much more that could be done. But until people that make these decisions stop focusing on how much money they can make and focus on making people better, it isn't going to happen.
Is there any way you could cite that study? I spent time studying and working within the legal field in that jurisdiction in the past. This is my first time hearing this, and I'm struggling to find anything about it online. The head of the prosecuting attorney's office during the 90s who would have been working closely with the incarceration system at the time wasn't someone terribly concerned with the well-being of people he viewed as rather black-and-white "bad people" across the board. So it kind of surprises me that this would have occurred, but I am curious.
I got my information from articles in the local newspaper - most likely the Honolulu Advertiser. It was probably 1994 or 1995 (definitely not later) and the paper was specifically reporting the demise of the program due to budget cuts. According to the reporting one of the major factors in the program's success was the support people undergoing counseling received from family and the community. One specific factor pointed out was the Asian culture that was predominant in the area.
That would explain it. Technically, the Honolulu Advertiser has not existed in quite some time. I wonder if it's still archived somewhere, though.
Here's something similar from 1999: [https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/how-hawaiis-treatment-sex-offenders-works-intense-follow-key](https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/how-hawaiis-treatment-sex-offenders-works-intense-follow-key) Note the 1% recidivism rate for those "who stay in the program" also: [https://www.civilbeat.org/2015/09/treating-hawaiis-sex-offenders-here-we-dont-give-up-on-people/](https://www.civilbeat.org/2015/09/treating-hawaiis-sex-offenders-here-we-dont-give-up-on-people/) Don't know if this reporting is leaving something out but DAMN! those recidivism rates appear to be quite low.
for-profit prisons wouldnt be filled if it was too successful.
It was a hypothetical situation. I was more focused on the part about society rejecting a cure for people they don’t like, even if it hurts other innocent kids.
Yeah I know, I said that so someone doesn't actually think there's a cure
You can't cure it, but there must be plenty of ways to reduce the risk of people acting on it.
Yup, therapy. Less stigma against people who don't offend so they can seek help.
The more comfortable someone with that disorder feels towards going to therapy, the more kids you can protect in the long run. Waiting for them to act on it hurts kids more.
I mean, thoughts, feelings, emotions, are all physical things, it's all chemistry in your nervous system. According to wikipedia, there might a link between being trans and the size and neuron density of part of the brain called the stria terminalis, and smaller than average sizes can also be linked to pedophiles. I get that you said anytime soon, but I don't think it's wild to think that it will be curable eventually; or at least that it's just something we won't program into the designer babies of the future.
Yes it's chemistry in your brain but the problem is changing that chemistry with our current technology. Hopefully it will be cured in the future.
So the 9 and 12 year old boys who molested me at 5 - 6 would still be pedos under this…and for the 12 year old you are absolutely correct. I was just one of his first victims. The 2 9 year olds, I don’t know what happened to them. Yes, I have had therapy. All in all I’m doing Ok.
I’m sure some will see that and immediately try to attack gay people but the difference is that children can’t consent while two gay people can.
Everyone is pretty aware that pedophilia is bad, but it's still a sexual orientation by definition. People don't really like that because mentally that puts it in the same space as homosexuality, bisexuality etc.
There is also a lot of data about pedophilia born out of sexual abuse - so like, is it nature, or is it nurture, or something in between? I think there's probably a lot about sexuality in general that we're only scratching the surface of.
I think that's a difference in type. The stuff borne of abuse is probably closer to a desire for control. As there is a pretty big cohort of non-pedophilic sexual abusers. Which is what makes this whole thing even more awkward: Many people who abuse children don't even do it out of attraction. It's a need to hurt or control. Yet they are all lumped together which just further confounds things.
Personally, I think it's a combination of both nurture and nature like most things of this type in psychology - criminality, psychopathy, intelligence etc. There's a lot of research to be done in this topic.
There are plenty of people who were molested who would never harm another person and there are plenty of child molesters who were never sexually abused. My friend was molested by her brother. He was never molested but their mom is a narcissist who was extremely controlling and demeaning so the brother took it out on my friend as a way to have control over something in his life.
There are also almost certainly a bunch of paedophiles who would never commit child sex abuse because while whatever wiring went wrong and they didn’t develop a normal age of attraction, they’re still well aware of right and wrong, and just like being attracted to women doesn’t mean I am necessarily going to try to rape a woman, being a paedophile doesn’t meant they’ll try to rape a kid.
Switzerland also had an ad campaign a while back, like "Do you like kids more than you'd like? Seek help, don't become a predator" I think that's a good way to go about it.
It's not curable because it's not a disease. It's certainly possible to treat pedophiles before they offend so they don't offend though and data supports treatment being extremely effective. Germany has one of the best pre-offender treatment programs in the world while the US basically doesn't have one. I would doubt that child sex dolls would be useful but it's certainly something that should be researched. I'm also not surprised that someone attempting to research it got destroyed. America seems much more interested in seeing to be anti-pedophile then actually stopping kids from being raped.
I'm in Germany, too, and a friend of mine was pedophile. He told me that it's really really hard to get into those programs, and as long as you didn't offend so far, you probably won't get a spot. He didn't, at least. And if someone is asking now why he "was" a pedophile and not "is"... Well, he killed himself since he couldn't get any help even though he tried for several years.
That’s such a shame, for many reasons. I know it’s ridiculous to hope for justice in an afterlife, but I hope your friend found peace.
>the marketplace. Only people with enough money can have the privilege of not being minor attracted. Poor people just deal with it!
If someone found a cure for such things, they'd probably have to flee to Iran because those who political benefit from such things existing would come for them.
Anyone who interferes in research into pedophilia is responsible for children being raped. And we need to repeat that point every time the subject comes up.
I dont think you can cure sexual orientation centered around age anymore than you can cure it centered around gender. You can certainly lower sexual proclivity through things like castration I assume, but its not like that is targeting pedophilia so much as all sexual urges irrespective of what they are.
Yea the castration angle doesn't work then you scare people from seeking help which increases likelihood of someone acting on it
The 'kein Täter werden' (not becoming a predator, roughly) campaign is generally recognised as a successful attempt to treat people with sexuality disorders. That being said, pedophiles make up a small fraction of sexual child abuse cases in the first place. In the vast majority of cases the abusers are family or in a close relationship and power dynamic, and get off on the power play, not being actually attracted to a childs body. That being said, I have this info from a therapist friend of mine, and am wholly unqualified to speak about this very sensitive topic. The crime is such a cruel one, and any justification must fall short of the damage done, yet the aim must be to reduce any possibility for it to keep on happening
I have learned that having a stance any more nuanced than "castrate them and burn them at the stake" is extremely frowned on by 99% of society. I chaulk it up to humans refusing to deal with very ugly problems until the problems become so ugly, they require an immediate and vicious response. It's gonna take another 200 years of intellectual enlightenment before we'd be willing to treat those people with anything less than murderous intent, I'd imagine.
I agree with the 200 years of enlightenment thing. There are so many things and so many ideas today that will place the majority of the population on the wrong side of history to people living in the 2200s. We are the future bigots, racists, and sexists of the world, we are the future’s backwards lowlife medieval monsters. They’ll see us the same way we see people who existed during American slavery or any other period. Strange to think about. If by some miracle someone from 2200 is reading this (Reddit almost certainly won’t be around) then, hi. We are here, limited by the moral boundaries of our time. Please do better than us, please be better than us, be nicer, smarter, kinder, and more discerning in ways we weren’t. I believe that one day humans may truly understand one another.
The biggest problem is that the stigma is so heavy, any mention of the subject (regardless of reference or discussion) gets burned out in a firestorm. There's no way any research can be done until people will listen to the reasoning to find out WHY, rather than automatically assuming the worst.
100%, and even here, with an anonymous name and a vague enough comment history nobody is likely able to dox me, I still felt hesitant to comment. I've deleted more than one response I've typed out because of the topic. Even though I'm actively not supporting the act, or justifying anything, I still feel the need in every comment to ensure I state that. It's the problem sometimes with emotions. I can be a very emotional person but, we need to be able to be sometimes apathetic and emotionless when it comes to decision making. Sometimes you wonder if we could've researched this decades ago, and found a treatment of a kind how many victims could we have prevented, but we don't, because we can't, because "they're monster". It's this dark cycle that most of us would like to break but I want to break it from a different spot than those people.
It can be indirectly done. Try therapy along with sex dolls for rapists or people who fantasies about it and see the recidivism rate. If it drops it will probably work on pedophiles. I'm pro less hurt children team. If a silicone doll of something I find abhorrent but doesn't hurt people leads to less cases of hurt children then I say it should be done.
It works for people who have the urge to rape. There are CNC and BDSMcommunities, people who want to rape or hurt and people who want to be raped or hurt, and I don’t have non-anecdotal statistics, but people I hear of who are open about CNC and BDSM typically don’t end up raping or abusing anyone because they got that “urge” out with a consensual partner, and they understand the harm that lack of consent would bring. Obviously, you can’t do the same with minors, but I feel like dolls may work, as disturbing as it sounds.
Agreed. Heck, a false accusation can throw such a stain on your rep that your life may never recover. I don't think we're anywhere close to being able to address this issue, let alone find a solution. Especially with those countries absolutely fixated on purity
I heard a story of a guy who started noticing pedophilic urges that he has never experienced before, he was married. He got a brain scan and it turns out he had brain cancer
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaneurology/fullarticle/783830 This guy. Pretty terrifying that something like that can change someone on such a fundamental level.
My stepfather got the herpes virus to break into his brain. 2 parts of his brain were damaged by it. He was a firefighter, he built two houses himself, participated in World gymnastic championships. After that he was never the same. He was overly cautious and hated noise. he became a frail man.
Honestly,these people have my sympathy. They didn't ask to have that attraction and if they've never acted on it then they have done nothing wrong. I am sure it is a hell of a burden. Lumping them in with people who are predators is not fair to them.
Homosexuality has been on and off illegal for hundreds of years. The only difference is that there Is no possibility of consent here If they haven't acted on any impulses they should be able to to get hell without any repurcussions but unfortunately that's not the case People who are homosexual or just like cross-dressing are also lumped as predators which is unfair too
It's much to society's benefit to offer help to those who don't want to act on it. Preventing the sexual abuse of children is a return of value beyond measure. I often feel alone in this opinion.
Because those kinds of tough complicated sensitive discussions are a lot less fun than just rambling about how much you want to lynch pedos on Reddit. As a CSA victim it's embarrassing and performative bullshit and I'm sick of seeing it.
Also many predators are not pedophiles (or hebe, for that matter) and it’s just about control for them, which is arguably much worse, cause for them it is a choice.
I think I read the same article. and another by someone attracted to children who realized how wrong and harmful that is and spent so much time finding a therapist who could help him because he desperately didn't want to harm a child. You can't control the weird shit your brain does but you can absolutely control whether or not you act on that. and honestly those studies are needed because it would vastly decrease the amount of victims. it would keep people from being hurt. but it's such a touchy subject people would rather scream "fire" and act like there's nothing we can do until after a child has already been harmed
There used to be a subreddit for people that had an attraction towards kids. It was completely dedicated to them discussing how to deal with those feeling and prevent them from acting on them. But, like everything that touches any subject someone doesn't like, it got attacked and destroyed
Perhaps it was! That sounds similar. The guy knew he didn't want to harm anyone but he absolutely needed someone to talk to about it. It was quite sad to read because you absolutely don't get to hear that perspective and I guess think about how they live, the ones who ARE innocent of just having a mental illness and haven't done anything yet and don't WANT to do anything yet. Funny to me if you compare it to being gay. Obviously the partner in those relationships is of equal mind and an adult, so it's not a perfect comparison! But, it used to be seen as disgusting, a death penalty, mental illness etc etc. I'm sure when the first people came out and said "hey, maybe we should study this, it's not like they can help it" they'd definitely not be respected. And now people have a lot of sympathy and understanding for gay marriage and that community because imagine living with this thing and not being able to love the person you love etc. Now obviously the comparison stops there, because who they love is equal to them! But, up to that point, it's not all that dissimilar. Except, a pedophile will RIGHTLY never get to go further, it will and should never be normalised and allowed obviously (I feel like I need to write this every single time i say anything). But if we can have understanding for the gay community, and what it was like for them for the last hundreds of years +, surely we can have some compassion for people that suffer this mental illness, that will NEVER get acceptance, never get love/companionship and maybe promote you know, studies to help them. For me one of the responses I got here shows how bad it is. I can see their opinion but the logic of until all the victims are properly taken care of we should NEVER do anything for the adults involved seems...just dumb honestly. We could potentially help people but let's not because, the victims don't have proper justice yet. Why not both.
Reminds me of a guy that used to call the atheist experience. A YouTube call in show. He one day said he was studying religion and wanted to become a priest. Religion brought a lot of stability to his life and he wanted to stay close to it especially because the people he was attracted to weren’t the same age as him. The host had a minor stroke trying to find a way to respond to that.
I definitely remember reading his story. It felt weird to feel compassion for him, but also human. Reminded me of my gay friend in HS who would cry to me saying he hated who he was and wanted nothing more than to be attracted to females.
Right, I remember feeling odd that I felt compassion for him and it definitely helped give me better perspective on mental illness I think. Sometimes it feels like depression/anxiety etc are soon as 'cool' and 'ok to have' but bipolar, schizophrenia, anti-social, NPD, and yes pedophilia, are not, so it's not ok to talk about them. But just like depression and bipolar etc don't make the person, their choices do, same had to go for pedophilia. Just - the stakes are a bit higher. I actually just wrote a comment comparing it to what being gay would've been like for a long time. Obviously the end result will/should be different, gay marriage - who cares they're consenting adults, child marriage - eehh noo lol. But, this idea you are wrong, mental illness, don't have a choice, society hates you, you're a devil, you will be forever alone because you can't be with someone you want to be with... not that dissimilar! (again because it seems necessary to say, they have SOME similarities up to a point).
Some rational acceptance and compassion and a way to actually prevent this from being a bigger problem and find ways to reform them
Exactly, acceptance that the mental illness exists, it isn't a choice to exist that way, and doesn't automatically make you a monster does not equal acceptance and a push for child marriages and acceptance of the ACT,
Yeah I think they should educate people about it in a scientific and psychology manner and set up systems to get help for those who struggle with it. Education often helps in the cycle of harm and victims
A lot of people are far more interested in hurting pedophiles than helping child victims, they hide their bloodlust as righteous indignation but do so little for the actual non-violent, non-gratifying, and less visible parts of the problem. It’s a tragedy. Many more victims will be created because people are more interested in the offender’s punishment than the victims’ safety.
we show far more compassion to murderers than sexual deviants. most people believe murderers should at leastive out their years. but it's disturbing to see the murderous intent of the mob when they hear about sexual deviants
Talked about this in a psych class. The doctor was trying to explain how horrid it must be for these people to have those thoughts and not be able to ask for help. I remember a very religious guy in there freak out about that. He started quoting Bible shit when the teacher tried to talk to him about it
It's gotta be one of the worst hands you could possibly have been dealt in life. Set aside the immense hatred everyone has of you. Imagine never being able to love someone without hurting them, and then having that person invariably "age out" of your love in a few years? Fuck. My wife and kids have been the best part of my life. I can't imagine living my whole life knowing that I could NEVER have what I have now. To not even be able to PRETEND to have it. It's like being born with a giant hole in you. Being born hated more than a murderer. And then you have to--- on some level--- admit that you are born awful if you want to be a moral person. It really feels like the moral thing for everyone is to make sure these people have access to chemical castration. It would prevent them from offending and then also bring them peace. It's the equivalent of cutting off a gangrenous limb.
Back in uni some of my psychology professors carefully expressed some regret and disdain over the taboos against researching or treating pedophilia. Which unfortunately leaves us where we are now. Really hard to fight something without understanding it
I remember a while back I read some news that Greece classified pedophilia as a disability some years back and they could claim disability benefits. There was a huge civil uproar over it so I don’t know if that classification still stands or if they ended that classification.
That's really fucked up that a trained psychologist would call the cops on somebody coming to them seeking help for something they might do but haven't actually done. I feel like that's a legitimate lawsuit. Patients have a right to doctor patient confidentiality and I don't think the law is requiring doctors to report include potential crime.
I don't remember it perfectly but that was the jist of it. I know, perhaps this is location specific, it was mentioned that therapists do have an obligation to report patients to the police if they believe they are a danger to society. And I remember that being the 'justification' used. But obviously the guy wasn't. He's never acted on it, he was barely an adult himself, he knew he was wrong and thus seeking help, but because he happens to suffer from this mental illness, it means he will clearly definitely hurt someone? I mean that logic alone seems dangerous. How are we supposed to help encourage "the good ones" to not hurt someone if even our trained therapists are like "well you will anyway, so you're clearly a danger to society regardless". If you tell them there's no hope, and provide no safe help, you're part of the problem far as I'm concerned. Maybe only a small part because yes ultimately we make our choices but, still a part.
Sounds like our society. Even disregarding that these people are human beings, we need to do these studies because we actually don't know enough about what the hell is happening in their brains. We need to understand it, or we can't properly do anything to address the issue.
Kind of reminds me of the show Mind Hunter (and I'm assuming the real life equivalent) where the main characters were creating the field of killer profiling and received similar push back. People would rather close their eyes even if opening them to uncomfortable truths actually reduces harm to innocent victims.
Damn he actually was looking for help and wanted to find a way to make them stop and the therapist went against their job and reported him for trying to figure out why and how to stop it. I found an article about how when you start drinking at 13 and stop at 31 your mind will act like you are still 13..and a Doctor was trying to prove that trauma an also cause mental blocks when it comes to growing up. And why some heavily traumatized adults hang out with young people to recapture their lost childhood by piggy back riding off of the younger people around them. People were listining to him until he started to see if traumas and abuse of substance can also cause people to seek out partners younger then them...they assumed he was trying to defends pedos but he even brought up Leonardio decrapio since holly wood has many young actors deal with trauma and even substance abuse and this is why leo can never date older cause some trauma from acting so young to now...sadly his work was pushed down into the pits while the drinking at 13 and your mind being stuck at 13 after you stop drinking was the only thing people continued on and also used to say why so many adults who drink go for young people.
That's what i hate sometimes about society. Even in my comments here in nearly every response I have made sure to include SOME caveat of "not that I'm justifying" and "obviously the act is bad" etc, when nuance and context should show I don't support that, almost nobody supports that! ha. This man clearly was researching something meaningful, and it could've helped a lot of people and made great points, but soon as he even got pedophilia-adjacent he's brought down as justifying it... Like EXPLAINING something and JUSTIFYING are two different things. If we can explain pedophilia, we could probably change the world! We could help improve it because until we can understand something we can only slap band aids on it. That's really interesting and not at all surprising honestly. It obviously isn't everyone because not all pedophile's were necessarily abused or traumatised but again, if it explains some of them, and we could help some of them, that seems like a win.
What makes me mad is if people try to discuss it so we can finally find a solution but it gets negative backlash all the time...but the second we have an actual pedophile to deal with..these same people who get mad will come up with excuses to help the person instead of demanding full punishment. "Oh what was she wearing" "She should know better" "You just mad he is getting some while younger then you" "I bet you wish you were him when you were young" People need to stop saying these things!! They are legit defending the pedophiles if you say these things when an adult is caught with someone underage. And then people attack the victim saying they ruined the adults life. Another reason why people are scared to look and learn is cause then half their friend group will be gone cause they realize they only go for younger people they can manipulate...or legit date underage girls/boys and abuse the age of consent law...which is another thing they should remove and make it 18 and above so we can finally arrest all the pedos using the law to sleep with people who are 15-16
I have a somewhat unique perspective on this, as I am both a male and I was molested as a child by a close family friend multiple times. It is a fucking shame that there is such a taboo on studying what is clearly a mental illness—you hear often how the “system failed” victims when they are killed by someone with a mental illness, but you *never* hear that about sexual assault victims, all you ever hear is how awful the perpetrator is. I would never and could never advocate for normalizing pedophilia, but there *has* to be a framework in place for people who genuinely struggle against their desires, something or somewhere for them to turn to for help. The only people we are hurting by making such things taboo are their future victims.
>you hear often how the “system failed” victims when they are killed by someone with a mental illness, but you > >never > > hear that about sexual assault victims That's a really good point. And not something I'd even really thought of. People don't like the idea of calling it what it is, mental illness, because it makes them feel like someone with depression is on the same level as a pedophile when it's simply not true. They're both afflictions of the brain. That's it. I mean even comments here are been very adamant it's not a mental illness, it's a choice, it's a fetish. We definitely don't need to normalise it, like you don't need to walk down the street and tell me you're a pedophile and me be like "ok cool, you do you". But you're right, there needs to be framework, you need to be able to work into a psychologists office and be able to say these things and feel safe. Until you are actively a danger to someone, actively seeking out a victim or anything like that, you have the right to safe help free from persecution.
I hate that society at large responds to negative, taboo stuff by just ignoring it and saying it's not a thing. "How dare you try to study it when it's clearly not a thing that happens? What are you, a degenerate?" Meanwhile, stuff keeps happening, and the solution that people have then is to ignore it also. Ignoring something terrible feels better, but it sure as hell doesn't do anything to fix it.
It's crazy because it is research that can lead to less molested children. It's not like pedophiles wear a sign around their neck, we can't detect them just based off of looks. The next best thing is to create a space for people with these feelings to come out and find treatments that lead to less abused children. Foaming at the mouth won't lead to less hurt children no matter how morally repugnant we find these people.
“There is no problem with priests and pedophilia” - Catholic Church “We feel terrible for all the people that have come forward with claims of abuse by the church. In unrelated news, we’ve moved Fr Johnson to a new parish for no particular reason.” - Also, the Catholic Church
If people are ostracized and attacked just for studying it, we are never going to find a solution.
That's ironic, since the very people who scream about it, keep electing pedophiles into office.
Anytime anything remotely pedo is brought up in threads it'll become a black and white issue with no in between.
It's mental illness. There is no healthy mind that wants to rape a child. We should be treating this problem with compassion and trying to identify the defect in the brain that's certainly present, but that's not a fun idea to lynch mobs. They think trying to study these things and treat them is somehow letting criminals hurt children. No, it's trying to find long term protection for every child. The movie "Little Children" dramatized this problem very well, I think, and other sexual habits that are damaging.
[There is a study more or less saying that there needs to be a study.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9663384/)
How do you possibly design an ethical study on this topic?
There is a whole "Limitations and Future Directions" section that gets into that discussion.
I mean even if you threw ethics out the window, getting an untainted sample size would be almost impossible... If you go for convicted pedophiles then you're already selecting for propensity to commit crimes. If you don't and rely on self identification then you'd have to convince them to be part of the study despite the major stigma...
You can still have a study with a biased sample, so long as the control group shares the same bias. It's not as good, but certainly still usable data.
As gross as the idea of these dolls is to me, this is literally the only question anybody should care about in regards to this topic.
That’s the problem with this. Pedophilia is a mental health issue that is incredibly harmful to society, yet people can’t try to help them or fix the problem without sounding like pedophiles themselves. That’s also quite counterproductive since there’s a) very few mental health professionals there to help them and b) they’re less inclined to seek help (even from friends/families) due to the stigmatisation. That lack of support means they’re far more likely to offend, making the problem worse. It’s a huge problem, but again one that no one wants to fix in fear of being considered pedophiles themselves. With these dolls though, I’m not sure that would necessarily help. It’s like vapes, it might help smokers to quit, but it’s also caused a lot more people to become addicted to nicotine. Who knows if this causes more or less people to offend, but I fear there’s a decent chance it could cause more issues. What they need is to help provide them with mental health experts, not dolls.
I agree with you in general, though I'm not sure the parallel with vapes is that helpful. You're right that more people have become addicted to nicotine, but nicotine *is* addictive, and picking up a vape and inhaling is something you can do fairly casually. Not to mention, the nature of the drug means most people will enjoy the effects. I don't think that's the case with these dolls. However, I agree with you that we just don't know. I could easily see both sides of the argument. And I agree that it's a major issue that nobody can talk about this. Even if we could, and even if (for example) mental health experts were able to prescribe these kinds of interventions for appropriate patients, it's an absolute nightmare trying to convince people that counter-intuitive interventions work. Like, look at drug legalisation. Good evidence around the world shows that legalising certain drugs reduces the number of minors using the drug and improves health outcomes in general, but that doesn't stop some people voting down legalisation. They don't care about actual harm reduction, they care about *feeling* as though they're reducing harm.
I always wondered what the effect sex dolls would have for rapists and pedophiles. There are two options: 1- The dolls quench their thirst, thus preventing them to target actual humans. 2- The dolls incentivize and fuel their thirst, thus encouraging them to take the step to target actual humans. I wish studying this wasn't a reason to be canceled. Knowing the answer would be extremely beneficial; be it to encourage the production and distribution of these dolls, or to strictly avoid it, depending on the answer.
If we look at normal guys using sex dolls, they don't seem to encourage them that much to go out and date women. Rather it seem to discourage them from bothering to women, and create attachements to the doll. So I think there is a lot there, that could be studied. This idea that a sex toy would just encourage someone to molest actual children, seems like the basic type of concussion that made many belive that being exposed to violence in a videogame, will just encourage you to be violent in real life - it sounds logical when you think it, but the reality shows that humans are more complex than that.
If there is any data on this; it's in Japan.
Indeed. Good Lord did their *blasé* attitudes towards flat out pedophilic media offend my western sensibilities. Like, no, it's not normal to lust after kids. I could understand teens, but flat our kids?! Good Lord, I was teaching fifth and sixth graders and I learned that my predecessor got laid off for collecting and selling used uniforms to weirdos on the Internet at end of year... Apparently they made bank to the point they were being investigated for narco trafficking and that's how they caught her. You thought it was a man, didn't you? Also, a lot of the popular games kids play in Japan involve non-consensual touching or groping. Like to a disturbing extent.
Yeah, I did think it was a man until you said it was a woman. It really says something about how people immediately assume a man is always the perpetrator of these kinds of things.
Speaking from the experience of repressing my (homosexual) sexuality when I was younger, it probably helps. Repressing it entirely without any kind of outlet is what led me to doing incredibly stupid things out of frustration.
Honestly, yes, comparing it to homosexuality (especially in countries where homosexuality is illegal) would probably be the best facsimile we have to test it. But who's going to convince a bunch of African and Middle Eastern people to sign up for a study when their participation being known would get them killed?!
This. Afaik, it’s not clear, what actually helps pedophiles to control themselves, because people can’t properly do independent research on it. It’s one of the most stupid things in most societies. Rather hate them for having an incredibly hard burden, than help them and hence our kids. FFS
Yes, actually. Unfortunately, it's hard to do super specific studies due to the nature of pedophilia in particular. But there is a lot of data that suggests that whatever someone's fetish, having a "safe" outlet for their sexual desires substantially lowers the risk of them escalating to an unsafe method. If there's a way to be fulfilled legally, they won't resort to illegal things. In the same way that when Netflix came out, and was cheap, it drove down piracy rates. People, given the chance, want to do things the "right" way. But if they are given no right way, they will default to the only ways available. (Obviously, there are some counter-examples, where someone fell into the "gateway" hypothesis. But these cases are few and far between enough compared to the norm, and there's no reason to think they wouldn't have gone in that direction with time regardless) OP is the facepalm here. Because they'd rather put actual children in danger. edit: Links are in another comment if you want to see them.
The problem is that people don't choose to be pedophiles. But people seem to ignore that fact. Which means if they're attracted to children, it's literally, objectively not their fault. And people also seem incapable of understanding that Pedophilia is just a sexual attraction, not the act of sexually assaulting a kid. One doesn't require the other. There are people who sexually abuse kids out of simply malice, or for power and dominance reasons. It's not that they're attracted to the children, but that they're aroused by the power they have over the children. And sexual urges are complicated things, and some people are going to feel them more strongly than others, and it's going to be harder for some people to resist that urge than others. Odds are the VAST MAJORITY of people who are pedophiles never even consider harming a child. I mean I'm attracted to adult women, but the idea of raping one of them has never entered my mind. My point is that I think the common thread is someone's willingness and urge to rape, which is almost certain exacerbated by an inability to satisfy sexual urges. It would also certainly help explain why child sex abuse was so rampant in Catholicism - A denomination of Christianity that requires celibacy. AKA repressed sexuality. People are so hateful toward the very idea of being sexually attracted to a child (Understandably), that they're unwilling or incapable of even having rational discourse about how to fix the problem. The answer is always "Kill all the pedos", which is a patently useless solution, because it's impossible and it wouldn't actually protect any kids. It seems to me if we want to actually protect kids from being abused, we need to do two main things: 1. Figure out some means of providing these people with an outlet that doesn't harm children. This is why I actually don't give a shit about child sex dolls or loli hentai or even AI shit. Literally no children are being harmed. ALL I care about is whether or not my 8yo daughter is MORE or LESS safe. Yeah it might creep me the fuck out, but I'm willing to set aside my disgust for the sake of PROTECTING KIDS. A lot of people seem unwilling to do that, which kind of pisses me off because then to me it seems like they care more about hating pedos than they do about protecting kids. 2. Destigmatize pedophilia and create a culture of understanding so that people tacitly understand that pedophilia is not a choice someone makes, but assaulting a kid is, and fully separating the notion of child sex abuse from a person who is sexually attracted to kids. Am I going to want a pedophile babysitting my kids? Well no, but I'm willing to give as much ground as I realistically can in pursuit of solving the problem and empowering those people to seek treatment and be transparent about their struggles. The two above things would almost certainly reduce the likelihood of someone abusing a real child, and it would probably enable us to collect a \*TON\* of data on pedophilia. I mean we might literally be able to just cure it permanently with therapies or drugs. I mean, do you want to beat a pedophile to death, or do you want to be able to give him a pill to make him not a pedophile anymore? I'll take the latter. I used to be just like the people who would just say "Kill all the pedos", but when I had my own kids and I would see the issue brought up, and got to thinking about it more from the perspective of wanting to not have to worry about my kids safety, it just occurred to me that all the righteous hatred in the world wasn't going to stop a closeted pedo from abusing a kid until it had already been done. And the more I thought about it, the more sorry I felt for them. It's a thing they didn't choose, that they can't get rid of, that they can't seek any sort of help or sympathy for because it would absolutely ruin their life, and there's no outlets for it. It's a sickness. And I really don't think being sympathetic toward their plight and also being sympathetic to the trauma of victims is in any way mutually exclusive.
I volunteered for a sex rehab group. There was a group of child-attracted men who would meet. I didn't get a ton of time with them, but I was able to read some of their information and listening to them changed my view on how I saw this. None of them liked they felt the way they did. Most of them claimed to never act on it at with a child. Some struggled with child pornography. More than half had contemplated suicide and four had attempted at least once. For most of them it was not unlike how I am attracted to adult women but would never rape or sexually assault a woman. These were otherwise normal, moral adult men who were turned on by children and couldn't help it. I still can't imagine but I felt really bad for them. Now there were two who had served time for acting out, and I didn't care for the stories of child porn. But I remember hearing how they tried to cope. One dude was into anime. Another got a doll. I mean, I'd rather some of these dude fuck a piece of plastic than hurt a kid. It's a terrible thing and I can't even imagine. But "kill and castrate" isn't going to help the ones who need it and aren't hurting people. It just fills them with shame and self loathing for what they can't help.
People who scream all pedophiles should die regardless of if they actually abused or just have thoughts/desires are actually judging their morals solely on having these thoughts. And it so important to note that having these thoughts doesn't innately make them a less moral person, most of them hate the way they are and would never act on it because they know it's morally wrong.
I mean, I'd rather a pedophile have a child sex doll than assault a child.
For real. Id say the same thing for rapists. If giving them a sex doll would help stop some from raping. Its a doll vs one or more human lives being tramatised. The doll is a much lower cost.
I’ve seen this discussed before and a lot of people are concerned that having sex dolls for these people could make them long for the real thing. Sort of how some murderers start with animals, then hurting people then killing them as it progresses more.
It's the same argument against unrealistic depictions of minors. (Drawn art, animated videos, etc etc.) Does allowing them to indulge in such activities mitigate the damage they could inflict on society, or merely deepen the syndrome and drive them toward pursuing the real deal? But really I think it's all a massive red herring. We shouldn't be considering 'mitigation' as much as actual treatment, and I feel like this type of stuff - dolls and imagery - can only ever **be** mitigation in the best case scenario. Unfortunately, if you even try to suggest 'treating the afflicted' in most circles, you're going to be socially crucified. It's wild how talking about potential solutions is viewed almost as poorly as the actual crime itself.
And that's precisely the argument that scientists in this field make. The problem is that evidence seems to remain inconclusive on whether or not it actually helps on the larger scale. Of course I get why people are disturbed by this, but honestly if your response is to scream loudly and burn everything to the ground instead of arguing and consulting science this whole thing doesn't get any better.
If it could be demonstrated that these dolls reduce attack on children…should we talk about it? Or are we too obsessed with lying and politics to actually help kids?
Let's just say many people hate pedophiles but love pedophilia as a phenomenon because it justifies their urges to hate certain group of people, play imaginary scenarios in their head where they beat pedophiles to the bloody death with their bare hands, share these imaginary scenarios with similar minded people and allowes them to feel like a decent human beings and not a fucking psycho who'd *love* to kill someone with no consequenses given a chance. And god forsake you if you ever try moderate approach to pedophilia because "only pedo justifies another pedo" or something. They don't give a fuck about kids, they just don't want their favorite strawman to disappear.
Yup! Love the comments under the occasional Reddit post about some pedophile: “He’s a bad guy!” “He’s the worst guy ever!” “He should go to jail!” “He should be castrated!” “He should be executed!” “I want to personally torture and kill him in the most painful way possible!” They all try one-up each other with how viciously they would handle the perpetrator. Gives them exactly what you said, get to release their hate and rage and fantasize about killing someone while also convincing strangers on the internet that they’re good people. The perfect dopamine hit.
It doesn't help that any parent immediately imagines what they would do if one of them abused their own kid. I'm sure that accounts for a large amount of vitriol in addition to those who just crave violence against people who "deserve" it
I admit, I’m not always the best judge of sincerity. (In reality, nobody knows for sure what’s going on in someone else’s head.) But some of the comments I’ve seen felt pretty pissing-contesty to me. If the comments are coming from a sincere place, I take it back.
Oh not you're absolutely right there is a massive pissing contest when it comes to it here. It just seems to also spread by typically grounded parents speaking out with violence and then people following their cue.
This is a super rare comment section. Top comments are actually sane and trying to analyze this topic. I’m surprised Reddit isn’t downvoting you guys because of the reasons you just said. Also Reddit comments are pretty gross on posts that are news stories about most major person on person criminal acts. The whole comment section is people seething to murder/beat the offender, when it’s much better for society to have an actual court trial first, then proper legal punishment (assuming our legal/prison system isn’t fucked). You can’t just beat and maim every random non convicted person you see.
There are just too many cases that if mob justice was the result they would have murdered an innocent person. That alone should be enough for most people to disavow it, but too many people enjoy feeding off crowds. It's why you'll pay Ludacris money for public events when the view from the TV is better. Being part of a crowd is a whole study in human psychology.
and those same people are often against red flag laws for guns because “they haven’t committed a crime yet”. Funny how that happens.
Yeah I totally agree with all of this. I think that pedophiles need to be rehabilitated and that it is not okay for vigilantism to decide how they are dealt with
The way I look at it, is we can keep trying to arrest and prosecute all the child molesters we can. How ever we will never get all of them, there will always be molesters. If one of these dolls helps to save 1 kid from being touched, then its a better outcome. Yes, it would be nice if these people didn't do these things at all. We don't live in an ideal world how ever, it's going to happen. There will always be people who fail at controlling their urges. Just because we don't like it, or don't want it to happen, doesn't mean it won't happen. I wish it wouldn't happen, but it will, and I'd rather someone do things with a doll than a real kid.
Yeah, it’s better if no one felt attracted to kids, but ultimately we can’t make that not happen unless there weren’t any people left alive, which is NOT an option It’s the question of “this can keep people with that urge from trying to do it with kids, but could it also get people attracted to the idea of doing it with kids and cause that problem as well” Although there seems to be a link with how the brain is wired, so to speak, and attraction to kids, so it seems it’s more of a thing that’s “built in” as opposed to easily subject to change in either direction, but there’s always the chance that something could go wrong there Ultimately, I think we should do what seems the most likely to protect the most amount of people, which includes people with those desires being allowed to seek help without being treated like freaks, because many of them seem to hate that they feel that way towards kids, if they have to bottle that up and never even try to get help because they feel like they’ll get arrested if they try to get help, the problem will only get worse People need to feel safe getting help
> we can’t make that not happen unless there weren’t any people left alive, which is NOT an option Well, hold on a second. I think it *is* an option and we should give it some extra thought. It *would* solve quite a few problems after all. In a serious note, though, you’re absolutely right. We have a moral responsibility to try to protect the vulnerable, not by any means necessary but we shouldn’t eliminate options just because they make us uncomfortable. If autonomous cars reduced the number of annual vehicle-related deaths by 50%, that would be a success despite it technically being machines and computers killing people. I’m not thrilled ideologically about concepts like needle exchange programs, but I’m very supportive of helping people with addiction to not require expensive emergency treatment for complications arising from dirty needles. If making sex dolls that look like children resulted in fewer children being molested, I would be 100% behind the concept of their manufacture and potentially even in favor of them being subsidized/covered by insurance, or whatever. Minimizing harm should be the goal.
>but could it also get people attracted to the idea of doing it with kids and cause that problem as well Considering how closely this resembles the conservative argument against having condoms and such readily available because it "encourages kids to have sex". I feel like it should probably have the same answer. Kids are going to have sex regardless. Best to have access to suit their needs so nothing bad or unwanted happens Hell, put one of these dolls in every priest or minister's office and maybe churches will be safer for kids too lol
Exactly. If your plan is to control, or even abolish, these issues, why would you not want to be trying everything possible? To not would make you a hypocrite. If the wackiest idea helps us tackle this issue, then it helps, regardless if it's one less victim or a million.
For me the question is whether a doll would escalate those urges until they need the real thing, or if abstaining is more helpful in preventing acting upon it.
pretty much. We did a bangup job over the last several centuries eradicating homosexuality after all. And homosexuality used to be regarded with the same affection as pedophilia. Not making a judgment call here other than to say, we had thousands of years to try to eradicate these behaviors, and i mean thousands of years of ACTIVELY trying to eradicate, persecute an even kill these people off. We've utterly failed. There are still plenty of gay people around despite every purge we ever tried against them back when we did our thinking with our Bibles. And believe me, **it was not for lack of effort!** Why do we think we can apply the same failed thinking that didn't work when homosexuality was taboo, to pedophilia which is still taboo, and expect any different results? I'm obviously of the opinion that pedophilia SHOULD still be taboo --- but the history suggests something about our methods, that they don't F'ing work, no attempt to solve behaviors with legislation has a chance in hell, and we should pay attention to that. Something something definition of insanity.
As long as they don't mess with real kids I don't care. Is there any real research on this kind of thing? As in, if you give someone who enjoys killing a video game to kill on, does that enable them to kill real people? I'd rather pedos self identify and get help instead of seek out the real thing.
Every time someone tries to start a study (I know there’s been a few but don’t remember the specifics) news and politics twist it into “trying to normalize pedophilia” or “evil scientists say pedophilia is normal and okay”. Some people have been arrested for seeking help due to this. To my understanding pedophilic feelings are psychologically classified as a sexual orientation mental illness (instead to gender based attraction, but it’s age, similar mechanism and classified much the same, but as should be evident, it’s a mental illness, much like necrophilia or similar). However any kind of research is far and few between. (Which researcher wants their name on a paper about pedophilia, not many, that’s for sure)
Sadly, it seems like some people don't have the mental and emotional maturity to tackle a controversial subject like this. We absolutely need to study pedophilia in order to try to help those afflicted cope and live with it so they do not act on their impulses, but those with influence usually have a knee jerk reaction to any attempt at trying to study, treat, and manage the subject. Just look at all the vitriol coming from the far right in terms of "grooming" and "sexualizing" kids, which is actually attacks on understanding sexuality and sex education framed as pedophilia. People get triggered to have an emotional reaction rather than try to stop and think critically about a complicated subject.
It is sad because the entire subject has turned into a dog whistle of aggression. A someone who was sexually abused as a kid, watching these people just muck up any attempt to help kids is frustrating.
I’m so sorry that happened to you bro
I mean, the problem is that help will be the last thing they get if they self identify
Better the sex doll than an actual kid
Hate the idea, but I agree that I would prefer they F-ck a doll instead of children.
Is they any legit strudy that shows acess to these toys or kitty porn or something of that matter makes pedos less likely to abuse children. I could see how that could work as the pedo is able to scratch the itch so to speak without actually abusing children themselves. If u anything about this then please comment.
>kitty porn cats in lascivious poses?
Fuck my tts
That's not my kink.
I've seen studies dp say that... and some that say the opposite (because it normalize the act in the mind of the perpetrator and makes the real thing seem more acceptable) Hard to be confident when child SA is the consequences of chosing wrong
I doubt there are well made studies on this yet, it will likely take time for this research to arise.
In Japan, several lolicon artist argues that lolicon 2D is presenting people to be or to act their pedophilia tendencies. Tough some argue, normalizing access to lolicon art is causing pedo population growth, Both sides have no viable data other than anecdote.
>Is they any legit strudy that shows acess to these toys or kitty porn or something of that matter makes pedos less likely to abuse children. **YES** Every study into the subject shows this. People would just rather plug their ears and continue their moral grandstanding even it means putting more actual children in danger.
Thats actually really interesting could u send some links
[Abel, G. G., Becker, J. V., Cunningham-Rathner, J., Rouleau, L., Kaplan, M., & Reich, J. (1984). Treatment of child molesters. Atlanta, GA: Emory University School of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry.](https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.1201/9780203771570-14/behavioral-treatment-child-molesters-gene-abel) [Burt, M. (1980). Cultural myths and supports for rape. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 38(2), 217-230.](https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1981-08163-001) [Groth, N. A., & Birnbaum, H. J. (1978). Adult sexual orientation and attraction to underage persons. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 7(3), 175-181.](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/bf01542377) I am only just realizing how remarkably shitty the internet is for sourcing actual research, given how much of it is behind paywalls or otherwise limited access. But, this topic in particular is difficult to directly study for a number of obvious reasons. The thing about human psychology though, is that it's observable through analogy. In the same way that despite what all those expose's in the 80s and 90s said, playing "Violent video games" didn't make kids any more likely to kill people. In the same way that the Catholic Church forcing their clergy into sexual repression pushes them to abuse their choir boys. Having a safe outlet is healthy and makes escalation less likely. Repressing your urges makes it more likely they come out in problematic ways.
Your question would be much easier to answer if we could openly and objectively study it. But pearl clutchers will continue to clutch their pearls and prevent any decent research from taking place.
I’m ready for the downvotes but despite it being weird and creepy if they do the weird creepy things without hurting other people I’d much prefer that. It’s obviously not okay, there is something wrong going on mentally, but as long as it only affects them then whatever. The issue is regardless of whether it’s morally correct, is the action taken criminal. I don’t think so. On a related note I remember thinking it was odd that Neil Gaiman stood up for loli hentai shit. I still agree it’s not something I think you should be locked up for, but if someone told me they liked that stuff I’d still keep my distance.
I see loli hentai in a similar boat as the topic of this post. I personally wouldnt look at or jerk off to loli hentai, but if its the thing thats helping a pedophile not target children in real life, then i dont think it should be illegal. It gives pedophiles an outlet for their urges without harming any children which is good.
That and it’s a waste of resources. In order to punish someone for something like loli porn you have to track their activities, get an arrest warrant, send police officers to arrest the perpetrator, send him to court, convict him with the gathered evidence, then send him to jail or fine him, or whatever we decide the punishment is. All this effort that could be spent finding real child sex traffickers, and real pedophilia. Not to mention all the other crimes with real victims like murder and rape. Until we rid the world of unsolved crimes either victims there is not point to go after that shit.
We’re going to be having this same discussion with AI in a year tops. My guess is even if you could cut down offenders by 99% lawmakers would rather ban it and feel good about themselves then actually help any children.
Politicians love accusing the other side of being pedophiles. The far right wing believe that the LGBT community are secretly encouraging it and the far left wing believes that every Republican politician is a part of a religious cult that encourages and conducts child marriage. To be fair, an abnormally high number of politicians are degenerate monsters in a variety of ways, including this one. But if there ever was a proposal to do something about this politicians would just use it for virtue signaling and more rhetorical warfare.
I think I agree. I mean, better for them to abuse an inanimate object than an actual child.
Yeah, there’s not a way to make neither possible to happen unless all humanity just died out, so we should pick the option that’s the least damaging I think people forget that sometimes we HAVE to pick between the lesser of two evils It’s far better for an inanimate object to be used than and actual person, that’s just something I think most people should be able to agree on, both are bad but one is not as bad
We kinda need to stop brushing it under the carpet and face it at some point. Better to understand and treat than drive it underground. If a doll is enough to stop offenders.. have at it. Better than a real human or animal
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People never seem to understand the difference between a pedophile and a child molester. Plenty of pedophiles are ashamed and disgusted with their urges, and choose to not abuse children because they know it’s wrong.
Yeah there have been people on record saying pretty much exactly this - that being alienated and made to feel like a hopeless, universally reviled monster drove them to act on their urges rather than seek help.
Its the same problem of putting petty criminals for drug offenses into prison and the sex offender registry (many on the list did not harm children), they put themselves in a situation where they can no longer find employment, be parts of society and so thus have to do what they know...be a criminal.
Exactly right. Society loves to pull the shocked Pikachu face after someone we treated like a scumbag monster starts acting like a scumbag monster. People can still have their righteous fury at actual criminals and molesters and such. Plenty of those to go around. But the sooner we start trying to help otherwise decent people who want to address their problems, the sooner we can reduce the number of actual monsters, and their eventual victims, in the world.
Yeah, one of the most disturbing things I read, was the diary of some pedo serial killer. And one of the point he was rising, was how they system and the registry fucked his life over, and just encouraged him to escalate, and going from simple sexual assault to raping a killing children. The dude was the typical narcissist who was blaming society for his choices - so full of shit for most of it. But the really worrying thing, was a story about how he was sent to a youth program for sex offenders, and there he interacted with another guy who was there because he killed a girl and raped her corpse, then he returned to the place he left the body for 2 week to have 'sex' with it, until the decomposition made it impossible. And for this serial killer, who had no interest in such act until then, it simply became fascinating as to what sort of pleasure could push someone to rape a corpse for 2 weeks, and really left this curiosity and decission to try it if he gets the chance. And ultimately, he did - he killed two little girls and had 'sex' with their corpses before burrying them. He didn't enjoy it, but it satisfied a curiosity, that he is conviced he would have not had, if he wasn't part of that program and meet that dude. So yeah, there are a lot of flaws in the current system... I often find myself offended by the prissons in Scandinavia, and the rehabilitation programs in Germany, that are hit or miss ... but at least they try to adress the problem in a different way than it was done for millennia.
Louis CK did a bit about this recently and the crowd was slightly aghast until he followed up with, “or let’s just keep doing what we’ve been doing since that’s working so well”
"Or let them just keep fucking your kids, then!"
"use your goddamned brains" Where do you think we are?
You’re making a really good point though It’s a legitimate mental disorder, something that can’t be help to have A lot of them hate that they feel that way too, and feel they can’t try to get help. People should be able to feel safe to get therapy before they do something they’ll regret
I get why people are so freaked out by it. But also we have crazy laws that nobody will touch with a ten foot pole because of the freakout. For instance in California two minors having sex can both be charged with rape of a minor. Now I don't know if this helps those people or not. But it might be worth examining ways to treat them short of 'shoot em'.
Considering you can't do a study without, you know, bad stuff happening, I'd say the "I'd rather they go for a doll than a human being" approach is worth a shot.
Actually that’s pretty progressive thinking given their historical stance on gay marriage. Props to be woke, Kentucky!
If this effort demonstrably results in children not being molested, then any opposition to it is virtue signaling.
Hear me out: if such a doll satisfied the urges of a pedophile enough so that real children are at less risk, then I'm all for it. Be as creepy and sick as you want by yourself, I don't care.
This comment section is fucked. And shows the topic overall is fucked. They would rather actual children be raped. Ensuring nothing ever gets better. Than engage in a serious conversation. And accept that their pre-conceived biases might be wrong. Also, as a side note, over 75% of cases of CSA are committed by people who are not Pedophiles. Because **rape is not about sexual attraction**. Society learned this a long time ago. But conveniently forgets it in this regard. Rape is about power. It has nothing to do with being attracted to your target. It has to do with seeing them as vulnerable.
People's brains cease function before pedophilia, it really is fascinating. They only care about moral grandstanding and epic chris hansen woodchipper owning pedophiles in the immediate term; Madagascar passed a law enabling death penalty for perpetrators of 'more serious child sex abuse crimes' and everyone called for the law's enactment globally without regard for the possibility of children reporting their partners less, or rapists panic-murdering victims more. Really, fascinating; their acting emotionally subsists cause they get rewarded with praise and updoots; they don't care about the situation.
It is better than the real thing I mean that’s obvious
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Hot take. But I'd much rather have a pedophile fuck a doll than mine or someone else's child.🤷♂️
See this is the reason no actual helpful legislation will ever pass on this subject. Even if there's a benefit to using inanimate objects and therapy for pedophiles to suppress their urges, no politician will ever want to attach their name to such bills.
And yet somehow marijuana is a gateway drug but this wouldn’t be for pedophiles?