Are you a paedo?

I'm annoyed to have to say that the media hysteria had me doubting myself about three years ago. I was going to stay with friends in the USA who have a daughter who was about 7 at the time, and I hadn't seen her since she was under 2. Could that be a problem? As a member of the male gender, did I have latent paedo tendencies? Would I turn in to a creep around her? Did I have to watch myself all the time for signs of paedophilia?

As it turned out, my fears were totally unfounded: I basically forgot all about them as soon as I arrived. We went swimming at the beach, and she'd sit on my lap in her pyjamas and watch YouTube videos with me ... and it was just nice. It was only when I got back home that I remembered what I'd been worried about, felt relieved ... than annoyed at what the media did to me. :mad:

DEFTLEFTHAND wrote: »

How would you even go about treating a person with such tendencies? Things like Conversion Therapy are pretty much proven not to work.

If someone comes to a doctor suffering from fainting, the doctor first seeks to establish the cause. The person might LACK something (an important vitamin or mineral for example) or HAVE something (a bacterial or viral infection) or it might be environmental (very hot weather, some chemical in their home or work place) etc etc.

I reckon the same will turn out to be true of pedophilia. I suspect pedophilia is not what needs to be treated, like fainting, but is in fact a symptom of something else that can be treated. And there will therefore likely be any number of causes and roots for each individual case which would need to be diagnosed before it can be treated.

So step 1 is to study as many such people as possible. Not just offenders, but every day pedophiles who never, and probably will never, do anything. Until we understand the foundations of each type and case, we have no way to diagnose a person let alone treat them.

Alas we do not live in a society where people feel they can come forward and say "Yes I have pedophilia, what can we do about it" given the existence of people who want to essentially punish them, curtail their freedoms, or even remove them from society entirely for what is essentially Thought Crime. To some, merely having that attraction makes you as bad as the violent criminals who follow through on it.

DEFTLEFTHAND wrote: »

I know that there is another school of thought that paedophilia is more nurture based over nature, as in there seems to be a correlation between abused children being more likely to become a predator themselves in adulthood.

There I think you make a similar error to others in that you are conflating offending against children with pedophilia as if they are one and the same. There are important differences however.

What I suspect would more likely be the case is that there are many pedophiles, and their being pedophiles is not related to their having been abused themselves.

However people who have been abused are probably more likely to themselves become abusers. And if such a person happens to also be a pedophile, then children are likely to be the focus of that abuse.

Which is a different thing to saying that their being abused as children made them abuse children. The abuse caused further abuse. WHO they then abuse is caused by something else.

Of course I am not saying I "know" any of this. That is just my strong suspicion and educated guess work really.

Persephone kindness wrote: »

I don't have any sympathy. And please excuse this I mean no disrespect you are very very naive.

How so? Why? I am always somewhat suspicious of people who shout words like "wrong" and "naive" but then do not move in any way to educate or clarify or expound upon it with the person they just shouted down.

Hector Bellend wrote: »

I thought to myself that I would totally bang her. However, as she moved closer it was clear that she was only about 14 or so.

I was disgusted by my initial reaction.

I suspect that is not an isolated incident and it probably does not limit itself to children either. I myself not too long ago was also approaching someone from a distance. And from the long hair and curves I was seeing I also though there was some potential there. Upon getting closer however it turned out to be a guy.

We all likely have sexual triggers....... shapes, forms, narratives and so forth that trigger sexual attraction in us. And these triggers can exist individually in people we otherwise would have no attraction to. So you can be "triggered" by some attribute in someone who upon closer inspection turns out not to be someone you would otherwise be attracted to or, in your example and mine, not even in a CATEGORY you would otherwise be attracted to.

So no, I do not think you need to be disgusted by your reaction there really. If that makes you feel any better

Lady is a tramp wrote: »

I'm a victim of child sexual abuse myself. I want to understand it, I'd love to understand it, but I can't. Maybe it's for the best.

Don't waste your time, there's no understanding it - it's a scummy act perpetrated by scummy people. That's all there is to it. Some people are just scum!

There's a huge difference between being attracted to someone and forcing yourself on them. The girl sitting opposite me right now is gorgeous, you're common or garden eastern european sex kitten! I can guarantee i'll make it through the day without grabbing hold of her, and without needing to subdue my libido with alcohol to do so.

The trick is to just not be a scumbag!

bnt wrote: »

It was only when I got back home that I remembered what I'd been worried about, felt relieved ... than annoyed at what the media did to me. :mad:

The media made you question whether you were sexually attracted to 7 year old girls or not?

Holy mother of jaysus.

The_Valeyard wrote: »

I'd like to hear from that guy who ran for election in Carlow with the poster 'Stop the Pedophiles'

Ah, Mr. Clifford T. Reid. He ran in the European Elections back in 2004 as an independent. He is from Athy, Co. Kildare, not Carlow, although he went to college in Carlow. The election he ran in was the old European constituency of Ireland East.

Not a very well thought out poster to be honest.