re: #158 austin_blue

The problem is that some people love little boys.

Of all the sexual preferences in the vast array of human sexuality, I have always found pedophiles the most pitiful. I truly believe that pretty much everyone is hard-wired at birth. Some folks are asexual. Some are pansexual and thus can conform to societal norms by choosing acceptable partners. Some are male straight, female straight, male gay, female gay, or bisexual.

But the adult, male or female, whose erotic ideal is a child of either sex, fall into the category of Monster in our society, and rightly so.

And I have no idea what to do with these people who are no more guilty of being hard-wired that way than any straight man or woman walking the streets today. Their desires are heinous, but how does one deal with them?

Discuss!

We’ve talked about this here before, and like everyone, I got no answers, except to say that I have a suspicion that not all child abusers are hardwired pedophiles, and not all hardwired pedophiles are child abusers. There’s two things at work here, and one of them is the willingness to hurt a child.

I do think that for people who are at risk for becoming abusers, there should be a network of treatment and support available. I fear that now, the subject is so highly taboo (for obvious and good reason) that a nonoffender seeking help is essentially unthinkable.

And then we get into the whole shaky fine line between exploiting a child and exploiting a young and vulnerable near-adult, which was so ably exploited by assholes who argued that the Catholic scandals were about ephebophilia, rather than pedophilia, which was supposed to somehow make this both less awful, and also the gays fault.