Mad Kally

As long as they don't act on their fantasies or use young children for creating or viewing porn, I doubt they would be arrested or ostracised. They wouldn't be doing anything illegal would they?

Mad Kally

In the most common form of pedophilia, the pedophile exploits a child already known to him, the action is not impulsive, and it often begins with a form of courtship in which the pedophile befriends the child with stories, games, and disarming companionship. In about 15% of cases the victim is a relative, and the sexual contact is a form of incest. This type of pedophile generally treats his victims very well, as he must gain their confidence and ensure they do not tell others. Many pedophiles have a great many victims before they are caught. One study found a ratio of only one arrest per 30 acts of child molestation.

We had a poster recently who liked to describe child/adult sex scenarios in great detail. Like many pedophiles he preferred prepubescent girls. It contained all the classic earmarks of a practicing pedophile including, but not limited to, justification, rationalization, minimization, and what the pros call "the seductive child syndrome," in which the putative offender actually believes that a pre-pubescent child is conscious of her sexuality and knowingly invites adults to engage in sexual activity with her.

Friar Bellows

True, but I think it's wishful thinking to believe that they wouldn't be ostracised by their community. What community would treat these people the same as any other people? I know I wouldn't feel comfortable knowing that a pedophile lives next door, while my daughter or son plays in our backyard. Who knows what some members of the community would do, or how the law might be manipulated by this community (and their eager-to-please lawmakers), to make life hell for these people? I wonder how many citizens of the land of the free would be happy to turn these kinds of thoughts into crimes? Perhaps freedom stops when your own flesh and blood is perceived to be threatened. Which reminds me of the current political climate ... but that's another story.

Mad Kally

No argument there. How many of this pedophile get-together group would eventually act out their fantasies? If I had a child I wouldn't take that risk..

Danya

I don't think group therapy is going to help pedophiles since it is something that, from what I have heard, is difficult or imposible to cure. I think they should continue doing medical studies to get to the root of the problem. Combined with jail senteneces that actually fit the crimes I think it is all society can do.

Friar Bellows

And may we continue to suffer from it!

10gic r001z d00d!

repoman

What I meant about suffering from strict logic was maybe more about strict moralism. I mean that a rationalizer can run in reverse and use logic to lie to himself.

The original idea would be that all porn is bad, then the initial observation would be that "playboy and penthouse don't make me into a sexual deviant." But gradually as the porn viewing ramps up and gets more intense and bizarre the viewer will be in the position of having to deal with this fact.
One thing he can do is to go back and point out that the early porn he watched wasn't immoral, and besides he isn't deeply affected by it. This is the point of overestimating his autonomy and throwing out red herrings of switching the effects of normal straight-ahead porn and degrading abnormal porn which caters not just to sexual desire but also to sadism and control issues.
But, if you're told "listen, most porn isn't gonna twist you, but you better be careful about how far it will take you" then you have a better chance of limiting it. This way the focus is not a wasteful argument about the degree of immorality, but rather how far down the road you have gone. If going into porn, you say you will only go so far and have noticed that you've gone well past that point it's time to put the brakes on.


By the way, for pedophiles the rationalizing would probably work much the same (but of course they have to explain away for actions against a child too), I just didn't want to make drawn out examples of this. Ewww!


Also, where is the golden rule in all this? Why look at or consider doing something that would inflict pain and distress on someone else. It can't lead to anything good. Sure it might feel cool to see someone in pain or to know that you have nearly godlike power over someone (remember Michael Jackson's interview when he said that kids saw him as godlike?)

The desolation that this causes the watcher or offender (I'm NOT minimizing the victim here!) is definitely enough to cause a downward spiral. He feels shitty so he does or watches something degrading to victim, then feels shittier and has to have it again but more extreme. Hell, in the case of the molester he makes the kid accept that the degradation is kindness and love. The ethical atrophy and subversion is just totally astounding, isn't it?

Dr Rick

Probably the latter: while studies have been confined almost exclusively to convicted offenders, these studies have included those convicted only of child pornography possession.

There is no evidence to suggest that pictures of a sexual nature alter sexual predilections, and all the available evidence suggests otherwise. Attempts to alter sexual orientation with pornography have been uniformly unsuccessful, and while there are multiple factors at work in pedophilia that go beyond hetero/homo sexuality issues, there is no good evidence that pornography turns normal men into pedophiles, rapists, sadists, or anything else.

Your personal anecdote nicely illustrates my point.

[ March 25, 2002: Message edited by: rbochnermd ]</p>

Dr Rick

Offering lighter sentences and/or parole to those offenders that consent to castration and continued supervison would probably be more effective and much less expensive.

Boro Nut

That could be because they found it so disgusting they blocked it out be thinking about naked women.

Boro Nut