This is disgusting

(mods...um, is it alright to post news articles on laws regarding paraphilias?)


http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/453145/arr ... ecrophilia

MANILA, Philippines—Former president and now Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo wants stiff penalties for persons who commit necrophilia, or deriving sexual gratification from copulating with corpses, an act that she describes as “grisly and heinous.”

Commit...what?

Their bill defines necrophilia as committing sexual intercourse or anal and/or oral sex with a corpse.

I may not be a necrophile, but I can feel the ignorance oozing out of this. This is why 3rd world countries like mine remain third world. Our lawmakers are idiots.

Thoughts?

It's like that everywhere. The States, Canada, UK, etc. I've found that even on talk shows, people refer to sex offenders as pedophiles. This is why people hate pedophiles, necrophiles, etc. They make it seem like you only have this paraphilia if you commit a crime, or that everyone with the paraphilia will commit a crime.

It's because the only people with a paraphilia that go public are sex offenders or activists who try to legalize it.

It's difficult to argue against really, no matter how much spite and ignorance is at play. It's perfectly understandable why people don't want the bodies of their lost loved ones to be used for someone's sexual gratification.

Myself, I don't like the thought of people callously helping themselves to the dead. I like to think that my intentions are more honourable than that, but I still understand why they're unacceptable to the majority of people.

I wonder what Ms Arroyo would make of a necrophile whose activities are limited to attending spiritualist churches and being an unpaid caretaker for several graves?

Graveyard76 wrote:It's difficult to argue against really, no matter how much spite and ignorance is at play. It's perfectly understandable why people don't want the bodies of their lost loved ones to be used for someone's sexual gratification.

Myself, I don't like the thought of people callously helping themselves to the dead. I like to think that my intentions are more honourable than that, but I still understand why they're unacceptable to the majority of people.

I wonder what Ms Arroyo would make of a necrophile whose activities are limited to attending spiritualist churches and being an unpaid caretaker for several graves?

I think he was arguing that they're referring to it as "necrophilia" rather than something else. Kind of like how people refer to child molestation as pedophilia. At least that's what I think he's trying to argue. Obviously sexual acts with a deceased person is wrong.

Ah, I see.

Yeah, that pisses me off, when people hear the word 'necrophile' used to label somebody, and automatically associate that person with something awful.

It's something that weighs quite heavily on me, and I'd imagine paedophiles feel similarly.

I'm fine with the label 'necrophile', so long as people understand who and what I am.

I'm not fine if it's taken to mean that I'm defined by someone's horrific mental image of what the word entails.

derpherpington wrote: Their bill defines necrophilia as committing sexual intercourse or anal and/or oral sex with a corpse.

What word would you guys suggest instead?

I understand your complaint, but to my mind the word used is the correct one. This is one of the meanings of necrophilia, if not the main meaning of necrophilia. I think it is a shame that our language does not currently include more words to differentiate between paraphilia as a sexual attraction and paraphilia as a sexual activity. In mainstream publications, I would assume paraphilias always refer to abnormal sexual activities - not to mere sexual attractions.

Maybe you could create a new word to identify yourselves with?

Platypus wrote:

derpherpington wrote: Their bill defines necrophilia as committing sexual intercourse or anal and/or oral sex with a corpse.

What word would you guys suggest instead?

I understand your complaint, but to my mind the word used is the correct one. This is one of the meanings of necrophilia, if not the main meaning of necrophilia. I think it is a shame that our language does not currently include more words to differentiate between paraphilia as a sexual attraction and paraphilia as a sexual activity. In mainstream publications, I would assume paraphilias always refer to abnormal sexual activities - not to mere sexual attractions.

Maybe you could create a new word to identify yourselves with?

Take pedophilia. It's the same thing as saying pedophile refers to being attracted to a child, as well as molesting one. Pretty much saying child molestors and people who have an attraction to children are one in the same. If necrophiles change what they want to be called, then the majority won't acknowledge it.

If anyone's got a decent suggestion, I'd love to hear it. This is something I've actually given a fair bit of thought to, but haven't managed to come up with anything that's better than 'necrophile'.

Ideally, I'd like to find a word that also encompasses the spiritual aspect of what I feel, as 'necrophile' by itself doesn't automatically imply anything further than attraction to corpses.

I know some female necrophiles who identify with the word 'necromancer' to signify that their attraction is also spiritual in nature, but I'm reluctant to use that word because of it's occult connotations, which include a lot of practices that neither I nor they are interested in.

I do like the sound of the word 'necromancer' though.

'Necromantic' has unfortunately already been hijacked by gore fetishists and sadists.

Yeah, it's the fact that she's instilling the conflation of the attraction with the act that's annoying. As a pedophile, I don't like it when the term is equated with child molester.

Regarding names, my friend had some things to say with regards to that when I showed him the article.

well since those terms are rather "damaged" now
i think people shouldn't call themselves pedophiles or necrophiles if they are not really acting on their urges
until so those are just tendencies
that's what my psych prof would tell us about mental disorders

those terms have belonged to the world long before organizations like the DSM were created
so it's really hard to change the popular meaning

Perhaps new names are really in order?

ReVamp wrote:If necrophiles change what they want to be called, then the majority won't acknowledge it.

Words evolve all the time to take on different meanings and new words enter our vocabulary.
Consider the word "troll" and how it has recently evolved. It used to be the creature under the bridge in Three Billy Goats Gruff or a monster in a Dungeons & Dragons games. For a while it described a person who wrote plausible but false comments in order to illicit emotional responses from others. Now a troll is someone who abuses or harasses others on the internet.

On news stories about a troll who has been criminally charged, there is nearly always a comment about the misuse of the word - someone arguing that "troll" doesn't mean what the article says it does. But that person is too late. The word has already changed meaning. To the average person "troll" does mean "online abuser." You can't push back the tide.

If I read an article about "homosexual men," I would assume the article is about men who have sex with men. I wouldn't immediately think to include men who may have homosexual desires but have never acted on them. We tend to define people by their actions, not by their thoughts (which I think is a good thing!)

If you self-identify as having a paraphilia, I think you have to accept what the word means to most people. Although there are multiple meanings, the word can refer to a type of sexual activity. This is reinforced by numerous dictionary entries. If you don’t accept the commonly understood meanings, you are setting yourself up to be frustrated and offended. If you don't want to be linked to that type of sexual activity, give yourself a new name (who knows, if the community adopts it and it proliferates around the internet, it may well enter our language as an official word), or stop identifying yourself by your sexual desires. It's just a word and you are only hurting yourselves.