Taboo Topics (Heavily moderated)

[Kamak]

The thing is, unlike sexuality, I think things like pedophilia and fetishes, to some extent, are conditioned experiences. Your brain is introduced to the concept, and it either rejects it or finds pleasure from it. If it begins to find pleasure from it, it kinda becomes hooked on it and finds it desirable. It's kind of the reason people get addicted to certain types of porn or sexual stimuli.

This level of desire for the object varies, but it has the potential to always go further. Someone with a foot fetish might be content just looking at pictures, but what if someone asks for a foot massage? Suddenly they're put in the position to have a physical moment with their fetish and their mind is able to derive greater pleasure from that.

Now for many fetishes, going farther isn't necessarily bad (unless you're following your fetishes without regards to the rights of other human beings), but going farther for pedophilia of course is molestation or taking advantage of children, which is pretty unacceptable in society if you follow the majority belief that minors are largely incapable of being able to consent (not understanding the scope of what they're doing and whatnot). And unlike many other fetishes, the opportunity to go further with pedophilia is greater. Your neighbor might have young kids that they might leave behind in your care for a night. Maybe you could get a job at a store that caters to children, or you could work at a school or daycare. Maybe you'll even be forced into this position because there's no other option.

In this case, pedophilia has to be retaught in the brain to not be desirable. In all likelihood, the process is probably very much akin to reconditioning people have done for homosexuals and other behavioral issues in the past, forcing them to find their natural behavior undesirable and repressing and rejecting it, but the alternative is letting them go to a self-destructive trend or feel like their behavior is acceptable in society, that they can take the next step to satisfy their desires witout thinking of how it affects the other person.

I frankly wouldn't mind the pedophiles that stick to images, stories, and stuff like that for their fetish (though videos and pictures skeeve me out because people are exploiting this for cheddar, exacerbating the problem, and potentially harming children in the process, which usually is (and should) be very illegal), but I still wouldn't want to put my child in the position of that being a possibility or tease the pedophile into giving in to the urge.

I think I'd rather live in a world without people who fetishize kids than in one where I'd have to worry about the safety of my children because of them. Ideally, we wouldn't have problems like this with people who could healthily act out their fetish with a proxy such as porn, but we can never be sure that it won't expand from that.

[TheStranger]

Another serious problem is that, while porn can be used to temporarily sate yourself, it is ultimatly not a substitute for the real thing, and you are going to find a LOT of pedo's who are not going to be up for going their whole lives without the real deal

[Madican]

Is there some evidence you can cite for that Stranger or is it your own personal opinion without factual basis?

[Mr. Mander]

It's kind of a hard thing to have a factual discussion because you can't really get a solid of how many people possess CP but don't molest kids, thanks to child pornography being, y'know, totally illegal. You cant exactly do a survey on it.

There could be thousands of people living their whole lives while possessing child pornography but not molesting kids. Then again, there could be almost none. We don't know, so it's not really a good basis for an argument.

[Kamak]

Then you could argue that most people who play violent video games won't be satisfied just sticking to virtual killing because it's not the real thing.

There are undoubtedly people who watch child porn and move onto harming children themselves. The same could likely be said for video games.

But, I really doubt that everyone who watches child porn will make the leap, just as it's foolish to think that gamers will jump to going out and shooting people just because they really enjoy their FPS games.

Some can be satisfied living it out by proxy.

But in both cases, you will not know for certain when or if someone will cross the line. That's the scary thing about it.

I do agree with the notion that child porn is much more harmful to society than violent video games, but mainly on the basis that a lot of child porn is actual sexual abuse of children, whereas video games are created without victims of violence being a part of the process.

A square is always a rectangle, but not all rectangles are squares.

[Madican]

That was my point Mander; it's impossible to take Stranger's statement as fact when there are no studies on it because there can be no studies on it. People don't exactly volunteer that they watch that sort of stuff outside of the Internet.

Malum's post is also an example of the correlation/causation fallacy. Sure, most convicted pedophiles have child pornography. But that doesn't take into account the ones who aren't convicted. I could substitute a number of things into that sort of argument. How about guns? Most violent criminals had a gun. Doesn't mean everyone who owns a gun is going to be convicted for a crime.

[Madican]

So the people who stick to things like cartoon porn are messed up in the head then, even though they don't act on their urges in real life? They're automatically guilty of a crime when there's no victim?

You keep making absolutist statements that you can't back up.

[TheStranger]

I also didnt say that every pedophile will inevitably go for the real thing, but if we assume that pedophiles have the same desire for the real thing as normal people do, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone with a normal sexuality that will be content to just watch porn for the rest of their life. The fact that they will go to jail and be shunned as the lowest scum of humanity if they do give into their urges probably does make a few force themselves to repress it, but I very much doubt most of them can hold out their whole life. This is just assumption, but I just doubt that child porn is a "solution".

[Madican]

Didn't say it was. This discussion started when I questioned in the Text Screencaps thread whether pedophiles who restrict themselves to cartoons and other non-real methods are harming innocents compared to the ones who do not. As in questioning whether just having those urges makes one "guilty" without actually needing to act on it.

My stance is that it does not. If someone is attracted to children but does not actually act on that urge then they are guilty of nothing. They are not inherently bad people because of it either.

[TheStranger]

Sure, but in my view they are so high risk that its basically the difference between planning a shooting spree and actually doing it. The ONLY way I could see a pedophile being innocent is if they go on medication to remove any kind of sexual urges.

[Madican]

Alright, let me ask you a question. Have you ever felt the urge to hurt someone? To inflict harm on somebody else for no real reason other than you wanted to? And did you act on it or repress it because you knew better?

[TheStranger]

Have I ever wanted to randomly hurt someone for the sake of hurting them? No

[Barabba]

For fictional little girls, does it still count as pedophilia if she's like a great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandmother?

[Madican]

Not randomly, but because you wanted to. Because you felt it would feel good to do so, whether in response to a perceived slight or otherwise.

I have. Not often, but sometimes I get odd notions of what it would be like to use one of my swords, or a hammer, or some other weapon, just for the experience. That thought gets stamped out in short order by the rational part of me that recognizes what a bad idea that would be. I'll stick to chopping at cardboard boxes and styrofoam.

I get the feeling urges are something like that. They'll come unbidden and someone with that rationality will stomp them out. They're the ones who you don't see because it never gets past a mere thought. Then there's those who have that thought, don't think about rationality, and act on it. Those are the ones seen on television having massacred a crowd of people because of a perceived wrong.

[Numberplay]

@Barabba It's like watching a 50 year old playboy and then think : "I can't believe these girls are older than my grandmother"