I'm in shock

On September 16 2019 22:13 Ryzel wrote:
All it really takes is some fucked up childhood experience that would cause the brain to create certain emotions of attachment or longing when being around children. Examples...

1) Being molested as a child by brothers/sisters/peers of around the same age, then not having any sexual experiences (normative or otherwise) until you’re an adult.

2) Developing intense crushes in elementary/middle school that are unrequited, then growing up and having relationships that don’t match those initial feelings of childhood intensity. (giving the impression that those are the ones who “got away”/wanting to recapture “true love”)

I wouldn’t fault a person for going through either of those experiences, they’re basically outside the control of the individual. And in either experience, it would make sense for the brain to develop in a fucked up way.

That being said, it’s up to the individual how they react to their situation, and they should clearly have learned growing up to undo these impulses and seek help if necessary. Giving in is unquestionably an evil act. And, of course, there are pedophiles that engage in the act for clearly evil reasons involving getting off on manipulation and control. Those are 100% sociopaths. But I don’t think every single pedophile is necessarily a sociopath.

On September 16 2019 23:32 Vivax wrote:


I rather believe it's a thing you are born with or not, like homosexuality. Maybe with a minimal environmental component.
At least I never saw a scientific argument for it being different than homosexuality, so you can scratch the "undo the impulses" part, unless you plan for them on swallowing libido inhibitors for the rest of their life, which nobody in his right mind would do voluntarily.

My opinion on the matter is, they should have a legal out like aforementioned cartoons. And that I don't understand why OP is so shocked. Charisma doesn't require integrity. Epstein was probably someone anyone would have wanted to meet before he got caught. Michael Jackson and these MIT guys the newspapers are mentioning in connection with Epstein. Successful people with a dark side. One doesn't exclude the other. And you don't have to feel guilty for supporting this guy.

It's also a topic everyone loves to chime in and pat himself on the back for feeling morally superior as there is only one politically correct opinion. Talking about this is like opening Pandoras box. In the middle ages, actually most of the time until the 19th or 20th century it wasn't uncommon to marry away daughters even while they were younger than 13, possibly to prevent them from falling in love with an illegitimate lover once puberty hit.

From an evolutionary perspective you could argue that humanity didn't have the mechanisms in place to favour non-pedophiles over pedophiles up to late 20th century. Therefore it wouldn't surprise me if there are more pedophiles than homosexuals around, as those were spurned throughout most of history before their roles got reversed.

On September 18 2019 16:12 GeckoXp wrote:


There are a lot of misconceptions on the topic apparently. In before: I'm not an apologist and myself anything but an expert, I read discussions about pedophilia mostly in the context of bias in the healthcare system during my social sciences studies, so I'm really not a psychologist. The phenomenon (and psychological issues) however makes for an interesting subject in terms of empirical research and the impact of bias in different social settings.

First, you got to see how much modern media influenced the perspective on psychological and bio-psychological issues, most notably with figures like Hannibal Lecter and nowadays the psychopaths displayed in Mind Hunter. Some of the problems of researching those abnormalities were described there pretty well. When it comes to pedophiles, as you stated correctly, emotions come into play, more than usual, because the group of victims per definition are children. Even if you leave out which buzzword effect that has in news titles, the anger and wrath towards the perpetrators is only understandable. Yet, in a surprising amount of cases it's mislead and the factual crime might have been different or done by a person who doesn't suffer from "mainstream media pedophilia" at all - which makes the crime so much harder to grasp and in a sense diabolical.

On a side note, to my knowledge, child marriage was done, yes, but not out of sexual interest, more in the lines of forging alliances between powerful families in order to increase or stabilize political and cultural regencies. This, in almost all cases, has nothing to do with the things you want to discuss. I wouldn't hold up that one as argument pro or anti anything, as it's apples vs. oranges, or phrased differently medial methods / diagnostics vs. human rights / moral debates.

The other issue if pedophilia is genetic or psycho-socially induced is the more interesting one. It's also found in countless topics across the social sciences, e.g. when it comes to gender discussions (which was the context of my final thesis, so I'm quite familiar with the empirical problems there).
There are various psychological diseases that for sure have a hard genetic component to them: For instance clinical depression or schizophrenia. Regardless of the upbringing, anyone can suffer from those if it runs in the family. Hence diagnostics screen for genetics there. In the case of pedophilia there is no reliable data to my knowledge (again, I'm not a professional), mostly because outing yourself as afflicted person comes with tremendous problems obviously.
Then there is the issue with empathic troubles within a person. As was mentioned by various posters in this topic, there are groups of persons with severe emotional problems. Those struggle with detecting emotions in strangers or even familiar people. This can be seen in the autistic spectrum, narcissists, or those who are categorized as either socio- or psychopaths, with a broad variety in symptoms. Some of these probably do have a genetic component, but again, to find a causality in the data is hard, as upbringing and socio-economic environments do have a huge impact as well. As far as I know the consensus is that genetics are either a confounding variable or a moderator: If you do encounter trauma in early childhood the destiny for genetics to cause pathological consequences will be settled (as explained in full length in Mind Hunter for instance).

Pedophilia itself is a condition in which the afflicted person struggles with emotions and feels a primal sexual attraction towards children - if my memory serves correctly. This attraction might be interpreted as love, even if the person afflicted does know it's wrong, it's nothing you can switch off. Ironically, there is a vast number of people feeling like this and seeking help - only to be stigmatized by the health care system due to bias. Those people either live with that for the rest of their lives or commit suicide, notably, the huge majority of them never engage in any kind of sexual misconduct.
Now it gets complicated, because pedophilia can also be triggered by trauma in early stages of childhood as well: Usually children who were molested develop a sexual urge, sometimes in combination with emotional problems as in empathic weaknesses. This is a recipe to create the mainstream media pedophile, who seeks to abuse his power over weaker groups of people. Be it distortion, rape or sexual abuse of minors. It's not motivated by sexual interest per se, more motivated by feeling powerful.
      Pedophilia might also have nothing to do with sexual interest or power, but a false sense of intimacy in traumatized people. Those do not seek sexual contacts, but like to snuggle and whatnot. Again this is probably, if I remember correctly, related to a form of power over a minor, yet in a way that's more confusing than traumatizing for children. Those people usually do not realize that they might hurt and confuse minors and feel terrible once they see the consequences of their actions.
Please note, those are examples of what might be the reasons and does not display the full range of the issue. The point is, however, that the sexual component of pedophiles usually isn't the trigger that leads towards criminal or otherwise wrong interactions with children. The actual trigger, the co-fouding factor so to speak, is - as far as I know - an emotional deviance: a lack of empathy, that's either induced by physical or emotional abuse in the offender somewhen long before he commits to psychologial or physical violence.

Regardless of how you approach the topic, it's a lose-lose situation for everyone involved, as criminals and afflicted persons (victims and people "born with it") are caught in an endless cycle of hurt, often with one person in the cycle causing another person's misery in the process. Hence the "legal out" is often brought up by officials of the justice and health care system to help break the cycle and scanning for the real monsters before they can cause any harm (mind you, the same mechanics work for psycho- or sociopaths). Sadly, this issue is too emotional and you can not potentially gain anything from working towards better prevention systems in terms of popularity.

If you're interested in easily understandable sources, I can only offer Lydia and Mark Benecke. The latter is a world renowned criminal biologist; the former is his wife, a quite popular German psychologist who wrote a lot about prevention systems. Both published several books on criminals and forensics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lydia_Benecke
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Benecke

On September 21 2019 07:39 Vivax wrote:

[...]
- theres this weird definition that pedos are exclusively attracted to kids which seems wrong to me. is someone not a pedo if he also likes grown ups? what?

- a rapist is first and foremost a rapist and should be locked away. his sexual preference is largely irrelevant.
- pedos should be seen as deviants that had no choice first, and as criminal only if they follow up on the urge.

- the forced marriage thing wasnt to illustrate that pedophilia was considered ok, but rather that it wasnt a problem that concerned people at a time when women were little more than objects of barter.