Is 'liking children' wrong, if you don't harm kids?

It surprises me that anyone would feel a need to make a caricature of a position as extreme as mine. NO. I do not think acknowledging or reflecting has anything to do with approving or promoting. Where would you get such a silly idea? For the record; I hope any sicko reading this thread, who doesn't like my advice, likes yours. I further hope that you, or someone like you, will be able to help them. Alternately; my advise would be at least as effective.

The distance between us is identical as on the subject of Capital Punishment. Where you assess a positive value to every human life; I weigh their effects on other's lives, and sometimes assign a negative value on the doers of the worst deeds. For example; say everybody gets spotted 100 points, just for being human. In your mind; no quantity of misdeeds could ever quite reduce their points to zero. Some would say only a heinous murder could remove all 100 points. In my book; child molestation, rape and murder are all in that range.

Your rationale is as inexplicable to me as mine is to you.

Ps. Thanks Mame.

Bill wrote:


Genetics has absolutely nothing to do with pedophilia. This disorder, tendency, disease (whatever you want to call it), probably moreso than almost any other that manifests itself in damaging behavior toward others, is a direct result of behavioral conditioning or nurture (albeit twisted)- not nature.

I think that's why Chai's point is important.

Er.....well, that is good.


Where would I possibly get the idea that you would have an utterly primitive and unthinking stance?

Well, try the notion you promulgate that anyone who ever thinks of a child sexually ought to kill themself, and go on from there.

You have no idea of the carnage you promote. This is the thing with people with your sort of hairy chested brachiating reflexive and non refective response.....you have no idea how many people have such thoughts, even if only once. And you never will, because nobody would ever dare admit them to your sort of person.

As for your capital punishment rant...WE ARE SPEAKING OF PEOPLE WHO HAVE NOT ACTED ON THEIR IMPULSE...THAT IS THE ENTIRE PREMISE OF THE THREAD. Get it?


You are advocating that people who have not done anything should kill themselves.

On your own advice...that people with harmful thoughts should kill themselves....you ought to be the first to do so, as an example.

You are having deadly fantasies.

You have gone a further step, you are promoting your fantasies as a reasonable action on a public website....you have gone a step beyond mere fantasies.

Mostly I do not know tha answers to your questions.


I do not treat adults.


I am reacting, as I have said a hundred times, to the outrageous assertion that anyone who ever has a desire to abuse a child will act on it. This I know, from experience, to be wrong.



2. I know why some people are attracted to kids, and I have mentioned it.


Many people with such desires have been abused, or sexualised, as kids.


Such folk may become attracted to kids of the same age as they were when they were abused/sexualised...

Some of this is what is called "traumatic reenactment".

A form that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder can often take in kids is traumatic reenactment. This means that kids play out, or act out, the trauma again and again. If the trauma is unresolved, this can continue to occur in adulthood. For some people this takes the form of acting out abuse.

Also, kids' dangly bits work. They can feel sexual pleasure. If they are abused or sexualised, this can result in sexual pleasure, as well as a whole lot of other feelings. If we become habituated to gaining sexual pleasure from abuse, we tend to continue to associate sexual pleasure with those circumstances, and become fixated with that scenario (eg abuse of kids of a certain age).

As I said above, trauma, especially chronic trauma in kids, affects their developing neurology....especially the frontal area of the brain where behavioural control, impulse regulation, emotional regulation, empathy, reflective ability and a bunch of other nice and important things happen.


So....imagine a chronically sexually abused kid (and lots of kids who fall prey to chronic sexual abuse are often neglected or abused in other ways, too.....habitual paedophiles tell us that they can identify a soft target kid from a bunch of others, as though they are wearing a scarlet letter....these are kids who will easily form a relationship with an adult or older kid who offers them time, attention, affection, lollies, whatever), who experiences sexual pleasure and affection from an abuser, who has less positive socialisation than the norm, who has little empathy, little impulse control, litte reflective capacity, and gets turned on by little kids when they grow up.

We know that lots of these folk start their career as kids, which is why early intervention and prevention of abuse of kids is so crucial.


There's a bunch of kids who are not known to have been sexually abused who have problem sexual behaviours.


The factors that research tell us is involved here include:


1. Witnessing violence, especially DV.

(The research doesn't tell me this, or I haven't yet read it if it does, but I just bet you that more DV than we realise has a highly sexual component....from sexual epithets and insults used before attacks, to DV that culminates in rape {most of the really bashed up women I saw when I worked for a rape service were raped in the course of a protracted assault by intimate partners, and were so habituated to the sexual violence that they wondered why the hell the cops were focusing on that, not the serious injuries from the violence}, to sex occurring when an assault is over, as part of the hearts and flowers bit of the cycle.


2. Poor attachment (which means that a kid has a hard job learning emotional regulation, empathy, reflective capacity and all the nice things I mentioned earlier.)

3. Poor boundaries in the family around everything from privacy to nudity to kids witnessing adult sexual activity, with mebbe multiple partners thrown in...you know, a new "uncle" every couple of weeks...where kids are both introduced to sexual matters before they are developmentally ready and do not have a sense of their own or anyone else's boundaries.

4. Witnessing sexual stuff on media that kids aren't ready for......especially sexual violence...and witnessing stuff like that in the neighbourhood or at home...like kids who see their mothers raped, or get to hear way too much about such awful events if they did not see/hear them.

5. Other trauma.

I can discuss how kids get sexualised more, if you like, but it ain't pretty.


There's a whole lot about the families of sexualised kids I could bore you with, but I am sure you are wishing you never asked!!!!



3. There are women who abuse kids for sure. I don't know the ratio. It looks like we women are more likely to grow up to be continually abused if we have a rough time, than to sexually abuse....but the thing is, the stats are based on people who have spoken up about abuse, and we can't know who hasn't spoken up. A bunch of people abused by women may not have said anything yet. I used to believe that there was a flood of complaints about sexual abuse by women about to hit, but I have been waiting for 20 years now, and it hasn't happened.

I can't say it won't, but I do think, at least for now, that men are more likely to be abusers sexually.

5. I can't comment on the escalation in general...it will be damned hard to get real stats to answer your question, because we have no way of knowing how many people successfully manage their impulses....especially given the kind of reception it seems they would get from a lot of people they tried to discuss them with, as evidenced here...but, when we look at abusers, their fantasiies and their feeding of them sure as hell often increase before they abuse.

I don't think this is necessarily so, as there are folk who abuse pretty much in a disscciated state, since they are unable to acknowledge their fantasies in their conscious mind and repress them....but I really am not knowledgeable re adult offenders.


My experience is that this group contain some folk who are so shocked by their actions that they may make Bill happy and kill themselves, or they sometimes confess in therapy, (knowing the therapist will have to take the action of informing authorities) or take themselves off to the police and confess. I have been the recipient of a few such confessions in my time.

After their prison time, or whatever, I have known some of them to return to their families closely monitored, if the child protection authorities allowed.......as far as anyone knows they did not reoffend.....that always scared the bejesus out of me, though.


You see, you can't lump people all together....there are certainly patterns in habitual offenders, but people be people.....these folk are as varied as any other group....and there are decent people who do awful things, and are as horrified by them as you and I would be. We are born to trouble as the sparks fly upwards, we human beans. Reading Craven's great post ought to help people understand that....whole groups of well intentioned folk can be brainwashed into thinking abuse is ok....see The Children of God as just one example.



Treatment of sexual behaviour problems in kids can be very successful, though some of the families of such kids are so incapable of supporting change, that nothing can be done.


The adolescent treatment folk seem to do pretty well, too.


I was at a presentation by one of the local team a while back...their team leader has published a heap of stuff on his particular method.....but the fella presenting was saying that, as long as the kids are supported to really acknowledge and understand their behaviour and its impact on others, that seems to be the key...which is hardly rocket science!!!


With kids and adolescents, the treatment pretty much takes the form of cognitive behavioural therapy; the addressing of trauma and environmental and family factors that contribute to the behaviour; educating the child about acceptable behaviour; assessing risk to others across all environments the kids are in, and taking steps to protect (eg a young person may have to leave home if there are young kids there who cannot be protected), and shaping the environment so that the problem behaviour is well monitored and acceptable behaviour is encouraged.

The reasons for the behaviour are explored and the kid, school, family etc are assisted to change them (eg sometimes kids act out sexually because there is a bunch of bigger kids doing stuff to them in the loos...clearly a whole school response is indicated, as well as a formal child protection investigation, and intervention with all the kids involved, as well as supervision and safety steps needing to be taken, and education for all the kids about appropriate behaviour and protective strategies).

The kid is also assisted with their individual emotional problems in whatever ways are most appropriate.

Of course, the younger the kid, the less cognitive work can be done, and family and environmental factors are more addressed.


I assume working with adults would include the above...I really don't know very much about those programs.


I know telling them to kill themselves, and that they are monsters, doesn't work, though.



I doubt there is any treatment for the really hard core paedophile, who has convinced himself that what he does is a favour to kids. I think there is a good argument for life imprisonment for these guys....not with the disgusting tortures and or slaughter advocated by some....but simply permanent containment to protect kids.



I do not know what you mean by the "lowest form"...do you mean the nastiest?


Hellifino, if that is the question......I suppose abuse involving violence and physical injury is the pits, but screwing with kids' minds can be just as bad.....



I don't know if I have even tried to address all your questions.......pity nobody who actually works with adults has come here.

That's a bit rich, Deb. I've little doubt that only the designated monster would take my advice after reading yours, so try not to lose any more sleep than I will (none).

I know you didn't ask me but since when did that stop me? ;-)



Under 8 isn't really the distinguishing line, it's more like under 4. And yes, nepiophilia (the term for what you are describing) is very distinguishable from general pedophilia and is a rare subset of pedophilia.

Some good reference points are found in works by Chief of Psychiatry at the Texas Children's Hospital Dr. Bruce Perry.



There is no clear consensus on what causes the attraction. It's likely a mixture of nature and nurture (dlowan has expounded on the nurture portion extensively).



It's hard to quantify because females more traditionally have day-to-day roles with children which make incidences of abuse by females reported less often than by males (Groth, 1979; Justice & Justice, 1979; Plummer, 1981) but the studies I am aware of put sexual abuse by females at between 1% (Groth, 1979) to 24% (Finkelhor & Russell, 1984).

A good reference if you'd like to know more is:

Gender role socialization and male-on-male vs. female-on-male child sexual abuse - Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, Nov, 1998 by Lauren E. Duncan, Linda M. Williams



This is a much larger question in regard to what free will people really have. There are many who question what free will humans really have in general, not just in this subject.

But that's really just getting into definitions of control, ultimately nearly all sexual urges are controllable if you define it (control) the right way.

By that I mean that there's a clear ability to control whether or not one takes certain actions. There is less control over the urges themselves.

My personal take is that most people with these urges do control themselves at least to the extent to avoid acting out of them.



Studies show that a great deal of the abuse is committed in youth and tapers off with age (similar in later years to the decline of sexual activity outside of paraphilia). The overwhelming majority of the abuse will occur before the abuser is 45.



To simply things there are 3 main categories ranging from pedophiles whose sexual attraction to children is a lifelong sexual orientation and surrogate abuse (when the child is a surrogate for a different sexual orientation) to sadistic pedophilia, which is probably the type you are looking for.



Freud held it to be intractable sexual orientation, unresponsive to treatment but in modern times behavioural modification techniques similar to treatments for addictions (e.g. alcoholism) are used.

What people don't realize is just how common it is (some studies I've read go as high as 25% of the adult male population) and that the majority of people with a sexual orientation that involves pre-pubescent children to some degree are never treated by others and usually repress it themselves.

Third-party treatment is still very rare and is really only prevalent in situations involving incarceration of some sort (prison or psychiatric hospitals) and thusly the success rates are hard to quantify given the incarceration.

If what you are getting at is how many pedophiles are able to control their urges it would depend on what prevalence of their sexual orientation you accept among the population. My take is that the overwhelming majority are able to successfully suppress their urges.

I disagree with the notion that nature can be this easily be written off. There are large amounts of correlation studies with nurture but given the prevalence of abuse (up to 30% of people reportedly being abused in some studies) it can't always be firmly classified as causative.

I am interested that you take your dangerous impulses less seriously and punitively than you do the dangerous impulses of others.

Just one more thing on treatment: Pharmacological treatments (known colloquially as "chemical castration") that inhibit sex drive by reducing testosterone (with injections of stuff like triptorelin) are still not widely used but have shown promising results with recidivism rates in the single digits. The side effects of some of the treatments are, however, severe and this is still in experimental stages.

I'm with Craven.

As I said, people have all sorts of fairly awful impulses......I find it quite hard to empathise with people who seem unaware of that. Not as hard as some of you find empathising with people who acknowledge theirs, though.

I suspect bad nurture makes them more likely to be acted on, and good nurture makes them less so.

Enough with that idiotic line of babble already. My printed words are on par with the worst humanity has to offer's deeds now? You're way too smart to say such incredibly stupid things. Get a hold of yourself.

You said that peope who have ever experienced sexual feeelings for kids should kill themselves.

You are saying people should die for their thoughts.


You think people should kill themselves for their thoughts.


Your thoughts are ugly and murderous, however you appear to believe that your thoughts are harmless...even though you have repeatedly espoused them publicly.


You are applying a different rule to people whose thoughts you happen to react to than you do to yourself.


You don't happen to react strongly to thoughts that others should kill themselves.

You either think thoughts are worthy of people killing themselves over or you don't.


You should, if that is your position and you have a consistent bone in your body, now kill yourself, since people with dangerous thoughts should do so, or give up your ridiculous position.


I would suggest the latter is the more intelligent option.


I don't think you shoud kill yourself, btw, I find your thoughts repellent and disgusting, but I do not think peopple should die for their thoughts.

Deb, I've been abundantly clear that yes, I think suicide would be a better idea than molesting children. No amount of twisting and turning that is going to make this line of idiocy any less idiotic. Were I debating committing the act for them; you'd have a point. As it is; your desire to protect the feelings of the depraved are causing you to make idiotic comparisons.

Bill,

Some studies report that up to 60% of male adults have had pedophilic fantasies I think what you don't understand is that I (and most likely most others here) have no problem with a pedophile's life being taken if that's what it will take to prevent a child's sexual abuse. But as in just about every hawkish "kill or x-consequence" scenarios I've been thrown in a debate it's just not that simplistic. I personally can't think of a situation where death is the only way to prevent a pedophilic act so the position is, at the very least, grossly overstated and has more to do with the "ick factor".

When you support this position you generally appeal to the reasonableness of the "ick factor", which is misleading because nobody is begrudging you the "ick factor" (hell, join the club) but rather the moral implications of such viewpoints calling for death when it's just not necessary in real life.

A good way to couch my point of view is that I have no disagreement with the notion that if someone knows they can't control a dangerous pedophilic impulse and will abuse a child unless they commit suicide killing themselves is a service to society. What I'm disagreeing with is the relationship between that scenario and reality. In reality that is not the case. Most pedophilic impulses are successfully controlled and any of them can be controlled.

So from a self-treatment perspective suicide isn't really an option that needs to be put on the table insofar as preventative measures go. As to societal measures to prevent abuse there are many other solutions that can work very well. There are things like incarceration (either in prison or in psychiatric hospitals) and treatments (behavior modification and "chemical castration).

Now what you may have a hard time with is the notion that in todays societies incarceration is likely only going to happen after a smoking gun, and you feel that is one victim too late. I have no qualm with that, but for goodness sake let's be rational about the solutions. For example, I don't think that you can reasonably disagree that changing societies laws to incarcerate pedophiles in psychiatric hospitals when their impulses are deemed by society to be dangerous is not preferable to killing them.

And if preventing abuse is your goal then you should be able to acknowledge that if there are other ways to prevent it then death is an unnecessary component to this discussion. For example, a leading expert on this subject once quipped (I don't remember either the expert's name or the exact quote) "it's not like we have Betty Ford clinics for deviant sexual impulses". Maybe we should. And just maybe, such lines of discussion are more productive than the one you are pursuing.

However, and I think this is the case, if you really don't care to understand this societal problem and talk about ways to reduce it and just want to express your "ick factor" then you shouldn't bother defending it. We all know it's icky dude and I don't think anyone would fault you for having strong visceral feelings on the matter. Hell I have them myself but just try to separate the emotions from reasoned discourse on the subject.

So let me put it to you this way. If a pedophile knows he can control his urges through behavior modification treatment, repression, lifestyle change (e.g. avoid all contact with children) or pharmacological treatment would you not find those options preferable to suicide? If so the real question is whether that is the case or not, and since you've already established an unwillingness to find out enough about the subject to know whether this is the case then it's really moot as the death talk is just ick factor venting. It's off-putting mainly in that you defend it so vigorously as if it were reasonable whereas if you simply said that's what the ick factor makes you feel nobody would have reacted this way.

A good example is that I personally don't believe in the death penalty for reasons I won't go into right now. I do however want some crimes to be punishable by death because they revolt me so. I can reconcile my vengeful urge in regard to such crimes with my desire to keep such vengefulness out of our legal systems and don't feel bad about having such feelings. However if I were to start to advocate those feelings and defend them as if they were anything more than strong repulsion that has no bearing on how a reasonable legal system should be run I would have a problem with my viewpoint.

dlowan has made a good point that I hope you don't let the heat of the moment cause you to miss. You are expressing an unreasonably negative impulse about pedophiles. I don't think you need to rationalize them Bill. I think most of the opposition you've encountered is coming from attempts to rationalize them instead of just recognize that they are just an understandable visceral reaction.

And if you do think they deserve rationalization then I think your fault lies in your admitted unwillingness to even attempt to understand the subject matter because you can hardly claim they are reasonable positions while at the same time acknowledging lacking understanding of the issue itself.

Actually, yours is the idiotic thought, which I have less kindness in confronting than Craven has just shown


Suicide may well be better than molesting children, but that is not what you have been advocating...you have been advocating that someone who has such a thought shoud kill themselves whether they have any intent to abuse or not.

If your position had any reasonable base, it would be IF you could prove that anyone who ever has such a thought will go on to abuse.

You have no such evidence therefore you are advocating death for thoughts.

I am simply turning your silly argument back on you, and you don't like it, and refuse to confront the meaning of what I am doing.

I won't continue with this, since it is clearly fruitless, but, if you have a calm moment to reflect rationally, I suggest you revisit this discussion, since you may learn something.

P.S. - Starting to understand your viewpoint as possibly just a visceral emotional reaction took a lot of the hostility I felt about it away and it would be something I can discuss with you civilly.

However since I've long been determined not to get into the more argumentative debates I used to engage in, if that's not the case and you want to make a case for it being a reasonable solution then I'd like to just agree to disagree as I'm pretty firm about not getting into arguments online anymore.

I don't want to dig up the words but I do remember Bill adding a qualifier or two at some point to the effect that the position is contingent on not being able to control the impulse and if he missed it at other points it's a transgression that I think can be reasonably overlooked.

I understand the frustration with that kind of expression dlowan. Like I said, I entered this discussion pretty angry with his viewpoint as it doesn't pay any heed to the nuance that we both know this subject has and should be approached with. But with such a qualifier then the real issue is whether or not the scenario represents reality.

If he's just expressing his gut reaction to pedophilia it's not even a viewpoint to address and while I may have a bit of an "ick factor" for the hawishness it's not something I'd bludgeon Bill for.

And like I said eariler, if he really wants to make the case for it being a defensible viewpoint then he'll need to brush up on some details to make the case that it's a realistic dilemma.

Really?

I thought I had checked all his utterences on the subject, since I was a bit gobsmacked, and found them to refer to thoughts only. But you usually get this stuff right.


If he HAS qualified his position to apply only to someone not able to control impulse, I still think it barbaric, but not as indefensible, and it's good to see some movement.. I will have a look, and comment to Bill if I failed to notice some move to qualify on his part.

As I said earlier, I can understand the gut reaction, what irks me is people like Bill being proud of it and aggressive in its defence, as though it achieves something.

It's dumb, no doubt, to be so irked.....but, as I have said ad bloody neaseum, I think such attitudes, when held by many, do have a real cost in the real world when it comes to dealing with these problems.

I just came on the last page of this discussion. I would weigh in only long enough to say that Craven and dlowan are stating the position I am most comfortable with.

If you are talking about a "rest of his life" incarceration; you are wrong. I would support a candidate who wrote a bill including Capital Punishment for rape and child molestation. Obviously, the burden of proof would have to be staggering, but once met I see no purpose in warehousing perpetrators of these offenses for life any more than I do murderers (I know we disagree there, but it's essentially the same class of crime is my point). Call it ignorance, barbaric, or whatever; I don't care. Vengeance and the ick factor are certainly omnipresent in the case of the child abuser; but it is the perfect prevention of recidivism that drives my opinion. The prevalence you describe is incredible to me (not disputing it, mind you). My ideal society is maximum freedom with boundaries that simply cannot be crossed. The maximum amount of rope; but don't hang yourself with it. I strongly believe the prevalence of violent crime is very much increased by our collective tolerance of it. Whether a massive increase in CP would provide an increased deterrent (very probable IMO) or not; the result would still be a reduction in violent crime. Drugs, Prostitution, Gambling, and yes Euthanasia should all be legal; and the extra man power should be used to crack down on violent crimes both in and out of the home.

Of course. Absolutely. While some are desperately trying to broaden my position to absurdity (as if it didn't start there according to many), and I may well have been overbroad in my choice of words; the audience I hope to reach is precisely those who believe they cannot and/or will not control their urges. You've indicated that you essentially agree, and it is merely a matter of how narrow the respective group we're referencing is. I'm sure among the many places we part ways; is that he who self-diagnoses too harshly, is no concern of mine. On the off chance that some pedophile uses the perfect cure unnecessarily; I'd still prefer that to waiting for the "smoking gun" (you are amazing with words, btw).

As is the case in most every category involving women and children; I prefer errors on the side of protecting them, rather than the perpetrators (or even would be perpetrators in this case) of crimes against them. I can only assume that any pedophile that was sufficiently concerned with his own propensity towards monstrosity to take my words to heart; would be both pretty damned sure the measure was necessary and uniquely qualified to make that judgment… and I'll sleep well trusting his judgment.