Is pedophilia a sexual orientation?

Mustelidae wrote:If we relax the laws then not only could boys who think they are ready for such a relationship be hurt, but manipulation and child sexual abuse could increase.

Fight for a more intelligent law doesn't mean "relax the law".

You are wrong: with the law I have in my mind, people who treat children in a bad way would be severely punished.
Child sexual abusers, who treat children as objects, would be punished.

The exclusive difference with the actual law, would be that consensual relationships wouldn't be inappropriately treated like the cases of REAL child molestation.

The keywords of your post...

manipulation

child sexual abuse

Which part of "consensual relationship" you don't understand? You are speaking of child abuse.
The law could create a clear distinction between "consensual relationship" and "child molestation": each case of pedophilia could be evaluated according to defined criterias to understand if it was an abuse or not.
I don't see the problem. If it's true that pedophiles abuse children, then 100% of cases of pedophilia will be punished.
I'm afraid that someone might not like my idea, because a case of pedophilia which is not an abuse wouldn't be punished. It would be a ROSIK for pedo haters.
And if someone doesn't like the law I have in my mind, it means that he admits that pedophilia is not necessarily abuse.

Piranha wrote:

Mustelidae wrote:If we relax the laws then not only could boys who think they are ready for such a relationship be hurt, but manipulation and child sexual abuse could increase.

Fight for a more intelligent law doesn't mean "relax the law".

You are wrong: with the law I have in my mind, people who treat children in a bad way would be severely punished.
Child sexual abusers, who treat children as objects, would be punished.

The exclusive difference with the actual law, would be that consensual relationships wouldn't be inappropriately treated like the cases of REAL child molestation.

The keywords of your post...

manipulation

child sexual abuse

Which part of "consensual relationship" you don't understand? You are speaking of child abuse.
The law could create a clear distinction between "consensual relationship" and "child molestation": each case of pedophilia could be evaluated according to defined criterias to understand if it was an abuse or not.
I don't see the problem. If it's true that pedophiles abuse children, then 100% of cases of pedophilia will be punished.
I'm afraid that someone might not like my idea, because a case of pedophilia which is not an abuse wouldn't be punished. It would be a ROSIK for pedo haters.
And if someone doesn't like the law I have in my mind, it means that he admits that pedophilia is not necessarily abuse.

You misunderstand. I want to have a sexual relationship with a boy around 12-14. I believe there are boys that could handle a sexual relationship with an adult. There are however many young children who could not handle the consequences of engaging in a sexual relationship, let alone one with an adult and even with a more intelligent law, there would still be people who wouldn't take the time to get to know a child, determine whether they are emotionally equipped to handle such a thing and would end up potentially doing long term damage to the child. There would also be manipulation and abuse. Even if you heavily punished child molesters the allowing of consensual relationships (even though I'd love one) would cause manipulation and abuse from people trying to cheat the system with this new found courage thinking the law is on their side.

I do know what a consensual relationship is. Just because a 12 year old boy wants to do sexual things with me and I want to do sexual things with him, doesn't mean that I should just because a law protects such a consensual relationship. It wouldn't be fair on him if he wasn't emotionally equipped to handle such a relationship and I didn't try to find out if he was.

Of course it's a social construct. Words are social construct, too. I'm aware of that. They're just the tool. It's how you use them and what are you actualy saying with them. In this very case I was pointing to you weren't actualy asking if pedophilia is a sexual orientation. You are worried what other will think of you, that's what you worry about and you're looking for a confirmation by rationalizing it.

You can use words to either express the truth you feel and come closer to what you actualy feel, or you can choose the option of defending yourself with rationalizations as you do.

How is it you can't measure it? Act in itself is enough of a measurment, isn't it? Also, fantasining it. And also repressed pedofilia exist (it may be I have some of this). But this is not to judge. It's just to point out it does exist and it's not what other think about this to defend because of this. You should primary worry about the reasons why this kind of thing develops (unresolved conflicts from childhood).

I'm not sure which other psychology you think will explain this things better then the very book of "Psychoanalytic Theory Of Neurosis"? Who, if not psycoanalitical theories, attachment theories, etc. As I said, you are on psychological forum and this is how psychology explain this. No CBT or DBT or EFT or whatever else may be able to explain it because it deals with thoughts and body feeling and not the structure of the psyche.

The same is true for the word sexual orientation. In reality to discuss if pedophilia is a sexual orientation is only a mental masturbation.

Well, it is discuessed because their is need for it to be discussed, because people like you worry about it, and then psychology had to explain to people like you what happens "behind the scene".

But, again, this is basicly not what you are saying. You are saying "I can't stop worrying what others would think about it". So rather than dealing with THIS worries of your mental construct, you are trying to change how (percieved) OTHERS may feel about it.

The essence of my question is: can the age preference be considered a primary discrimination in human sexuality?

I think it's not that much imporant, if there is 30 vs. 15 yo. case, or 18 vs. 14 yo. case, or 38 vs. 20 yo. case. In all of these cases, it is obvious preference for younger is the one.

It will always be called pedofilia and it will always be part of sexual orientation, of course. You may have 2 diferent orientations, too. In fact 3,4. So you can be homo-pedo-milf-hunter. Doesn't matther. It does in what context you take it. In psychology it is used as tool to help get to the deeper issues, because as you can see in my quatation, it is known that for example homosexuality and pedophilia have similarity in unressolved infancy conflicts ...

Psychoanalisis is abstract.

People scared of truth says that.

This theory might apply to homosexual pedophiles, not to heterosexual pedophiles: it is only an half explanation.

The other part:

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The same mechanism occurs in heterosexual individuals as well. Narcissistic men who during childhood or puberty liked to think of themselves as girls later may fall in love with (more or less boyish) “little girls” in whom they see the reincarnation of themselves, and then treat these girls as they would have liked to be treated by their mothers (416). These men do not love their feminine partners as individual entities but rather they love in them the feminine parts of their own ego (1565).

By the way, if I like to see my pictures of childhood, is probably because I am a pedophile and I like children, and therefore myself in boy version.
It's not that I like children because I like myself as boy.
Are we possibly confusing causes with consequences?

It may be. And I appoligize for that. The main thing I'm trying to point out is you are rationalizing who you are. If you wouldn't care about it, you wouldn't even talk about it. And here lies the reason. But you won't get there with changing other, because you will always find others because you want to find other (who dissagree) and that's why you will kind of "attrack" (search) for other that don't agree and fight with them.

So, maybe cause & effect IS a good concept to grasp after all, don't you think?

Also. You know very well if the person you want wants you in a true way or not. This means if he really is emotionaly capable of comperhanding what is going on and it is not too confusing for him. I believe it is, because quite a few factors: he's still developing ... i mean half of them can't even come when they're 12 yet, not mentioning unability to process emotions - they're only yet to become stubborn with puberty so basicly there's a phase of like 4 years in front of them, he's afraid to talk about sex yet to manage feelings of shame that arises when he must hide it (so another problem is he still lives at home), etc. etc. And if you really are trying to play fair "game", you can't overlook this factors ... I would say it may come across that someone is trough all of these factors, but I definitily think this boy can't be older then around 16.3 years old. That's just from the mixing intuition and right view at this subject, that's why this funny number.

Of course, if the law makes no distinctions then there is less incentive to ascertain the extent of a child's willingness, emotional maturity, etc., because no matter how benign, enjoyable, mutual and salubrious the activity, the act will be regarded in the same light as the acts of a cavalier and coercive rapist. The existing framework discourages a discerningly curious mindset towards children's wishes, painting them (and therefore encouraging us to think of them) as vapid, pliant objects incapable of an intelligible will of their own.

dissordered27 wrote:You are not asking if pedophilia is a sexual orientantion. You are in denial of your perversion. Of course same things happen in nature, too, but we're still on the psychological forum and the fact is with any kind of perversion, we're trying to "treat" something we're missing in life and we'd be way better with it, then without it.

Of course you can call one sexual orientation a perversion but word games bore me personally. I mean I wouldn't call being left-handed perversion either despite that right-handedness is the "norm". I would only be doing it to cram a pejorative term to my argument.

Even though ego-dystonic homosexuals and pedophiles exist, their distress may largely result from social factors, and this is especially the case in hostile and ignorant societies as regards these variations in sexuality. So what many pedophiles lack is not necessarily a "normal" sexuality (as their current one is already the most natural for them) but an environment that doesn't judge them for who they are. When these social obstacles are cleared, no issue or lack exist anymore. This is comparable with a black person fighting for equality in a racist country, or a woman seeking liberation in a patriarchal culture.

dissordered27 wrote:It is true that sometimes more superficial reasons may suffice for persons to be attracted by children. Children are weak and remain approachable when other objects are excluded through anxiety (Freud stated that pedophilia is the perversion of “weak and impotent” persons) (555). But usually a love for children is based on a narcissistic object choice. Unconsciously the patients are narcissistically in love with themselves as children; they treat their child objects either in the same way as they would have liked to be treated or in the completely opposite manner (950).

In a sublimated form, the same motives that produce pedophilia may produce a pedagogical interest. Love of children usually means: “Children ought to be better off than I was”; in a minority of cases, the opposite is true: “Children should not be better off than I was” (128).

I'm almost certain Freud (on whose semi-pseudo-scientific approach the text is based) didn't have access to modern studies that reveal that the majority of child molesters are not pedophiles but so-called "situational offenders", who indeed may be narcissistic, and they are commonly driven to offend by psychological issues acquired in childhood. For example, an adult victim of child molestation may victimize children, because he endured the same treatment as a kid, and this is what the bolded section in the quote obviously refers to.

However, this thread is not about mentally unstable individuals in the throes of psychological traumas acting in a vicious cycle, but about men and women sexually and romantically attracted to children as primary objects of their unchanging sex drive. They either suffer from a pedophilic disorder or don't, and in the latter case it is justified to call their sexuality an age-related sexual orientation. No modern medical list of mental disorders (DSM, for instance) regards sexual attraction to children a mental disorder per se:

http://therealosc.blogspot.fi/2013/07/d ... -f654.html

"A. Over a period of at least 6 months, recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sex­ual urges, or behaviors involving sexual activity with a prepubescent child or children (generally age 13 years or younger).

B. The individual has acted on these sexual urges, or the sexual urges or fantasies cause marked distress or interpersonal difficulty.

C. The individual is at least age 16 years and at least 5 years older than the child or chil­dren in Criterion A. Note: Do not include an individual in late adolescence involved in an ongoing sexual relationship with a 12- or 13-year-old.

However, if they report an absence of feelings of guilt, shame, or anxiety about these impulses and are not functionally limited by their paraphilic im­pulses (according to self-report, objective assessment, or both), and their self-reported and le­gally recorded histories indicate that they have never acted on their impulses, then these individuals have a pedophilic sexual orientation but not pedophilic disorder.

Even though, I find really interesting the question you, Piranha, raise about pedophilia being a sexual orientation, and all the research support you give. I think that your views on gender, and on sex, lack research and update. Sex, is not as rigid as some people may think it to be. And though, some people may use gender and sex interchangeable, the fact that one who understands the difference use it interchangeable... :!

Ang

Piranha wrote:Infact, I was not speaking about child molestation, which I reject, but about consensual relationships.r

Yes but sex is so fundamental part of people's expression that their consent to it should be informed. When the child's innate willingness to please an authority and her lack of capacity for critical thinking are taken into account, it's questionable if we can consider such relationships as truly consensual.

dissordered27 wrote:Also. You know very well if the person you want wants you in a true way or not. This means if he really is emotionaly capable of comperhanding what is going on and it is not too confusing for him. I believe it is, because quite a few factors: he's still developing ... i mean half of them can't even come when they're 12 yet,

What the ###$ do physical developmental factors like this have to do with comprehension? Seriously, why the ###$ do people keep bringing up physical factors like this irrelevancy as though it bolsters their ageist presumption that all children are ######6 stupid? What is the appeal of this kind of argument for you people? Do you think anyone who doesn't already agree with your prejudiced view of childhood will be swayed by you doing nothing more than reinforcing the fact that they're young? Why must we continuously be subjected to such a crappy argument again and again? Do you people really have so thin a case that you actually can't come up with something meaningful that you have to pad out your argument with such utter irrelevancies? Every time I see one of these I want to scream. Seeing this nonargument presented again and again is getting physically painful.

dissordered27 wrote:not mentioning unability to process emotions

This is what you're trying to prove. You don't just get to declare it to be the case while you're trying to prove it. Learn how arguments work.

dissordered27 wrote: - they're only yet to become stubborn with puberty so basicly there's a phase of like 4 years in front of them, he's afraid to talk about sex yet to manage feelings of shame that arises when he must hide it (so another problem is he still lives at home), etc. etc.

You do realize, that shame is your fault, right? That you are the source of that shame.

dissordered27 wrote:And if you really are trying to play fair "game", you can't overlook this factors ... I would say it may come across that someone is trough all of these factors, but I definitily think this boy can't be older then around 16.3 years old. That's just from the mixing intuition and right view at this subject, that's why this funny number.

Translation, you pulled that number out of your ass because actually thinking about what those "factors" are and describing them would leave you vulnerable to people recognizing that those "factors" are not unique to people under your preferred arbitrary-age-line-based-on-nothing.

It's worth adding that ages of consent for sexual activity are not based on any science, so people's blinkered insistence on them being accurately representative of capacity to give informed consent is misguided. The only sustained research carried out on children's capacity to give informed consent was done by Alderson in the 1990s, and it suggested that children as young as 5 or 6 can have this capacity if informed. Whether we'd like to inform them (arm them with information that will both protect them and demonstrate confidence in them) or instead preserve their supposed pristine innocence (read: ignorance) to give us the comfort of a self-serving myth of 'prelapsarian' bliss from which we fell at puberty is another matter entirely.

Mustelidae wrote:You misunderstand. I want to have a sexual relationship with a boy around 12-14. I believe there are boys that could handle a sexual relationship with an adult. There are however many young children who could not handle the consequences of engaging in a sexual relationship, let alone one with an adult and even with a more intelligent law, there would still be people who wouldn't take the time to get to know a child, determine whether they are emotionally equipped to handle such a thing and would end up potentially doing long term damage to the child. There would also be manipulation and abuse. Even if you heavily punished child molesters the allowing of consensual relationships (even though I'd love one) would cause manipulation and abuse from people trying to cheat the system with this new found courage thinking the law is on their side.

If there was a law which punished sexual abuse of children but not consensual relationships between adult and children, pedophiles would have very good reasons to look for consenting children instead of abusing a random child.

With the actual law, there isn't any advantage for a pedophile to behave like a "gentleman": he will be punished and treaten like a rapist.

This is a perfect example of the kind of problems which is studied by criminology science: determine how much different crimes should be punished, so that someone who is stealing in a house has a good reason for not killing anyone, reaching his goal withouth hurting anyone.

Some abusers might cheat the system, but trying to cheat would be incovenient for them: the best thing for pedophiles in general would be to find a sane and honest relationship.

By the way it seems you are not considering the emotional damage of two consenting persons when their relationships is broken, insulted and offended.
This is exactly what happens when the consensual relationship between an adult and a child is discovered by close minded people: they call the police, the relationship is broken and the first one is sent prison.
It is an emotional damage not only for the pedophile, but for the child too.