pedophile
legally, what is the difference between this and my web browser, which doesn’t restrict me from typing “Nintendo, Disney, and Coca Cola are run by pedophiles”?
A recurring policy trope in technology policy discourse is calling for bans on emergent capabilities on the grounds that new technologies, by lowing skill floors, allow ordinary people to break unwritten on which the social order depends. From iron swords in the late bronze age to generative AI, elites presented with new technology say "we must ban $NEW_THING to preserve the social order!". When this agitation succeeds, it leads to technological stasis, and technological stasis reduces the area under the curve of human welfare over time.
Smart policymakers should deal with these negative "skill externalities" of new technology by writing down these previously unwritten rules and enforcing them directly, not by attempting to limit the new technology itself.
For example, we dealt with the ability for the general public to operate heavy machinery at 55MPH by creating regulatory and liability systems for automobiles, not by banning automobile disruption of railroads.
If "AI safety" advocates had applied their reactionary policies to automobiles, cars would have been allowed to go no faster than a horse and, in the name of "ethics", been barred from driving trips already serviced by trains.
zataomm
3mo ago
Viscerallly I kind of get it, but legally, what is the difference between this and my web browser, which doesn’t restrict me from typing “Nintendo, Disney, and Coca Cola are run by pedophiles”? I try not to be too much of a libertarian autist, but I have a hard time not seeing this as a tool which can be misused like any other.
The more moral ATF that at least pretends they don't want to bang your kids (not the government one--the pedophile forum)
Yep. You see this in all the sexology pedophilia discussion: the goal of "destigmatization" is to make pedophiles into a dependent ally accomplice class.
"Come out of the closet, it's fine! Oh, but if you ever stop supporting us you'll be thrown in a woodchipper by the other side, so you'd better stay a valuable party member ;)"
It's possibly the ultimate form of bioleninism.
I've checked the various pedophile forums, and there's active debate over whether it's possible for them to use the leftist destigmatism campaign without being used themselves.
They are a refreshingly paranoid and cynical group of people for the most part, much more fun to hang out with than normies.
First, it is possible to offer things other than the opportunity for sex, particularly in the case of pedophilia where the social stigma is extreme. For instance, I would very likely lose my job were I to be doxxed and my employer made aware of my being attracted to kids despite my work not involving any interactions with children. I would not particularly like to lose my job, so making it illegal to fire me just because of that attraction is a nice carrot. Various other forms of de-stigmatization are similarly effective.
Second, some of the methods they currently use to exploit straight male sexuality are very compatible with pedophiles, perhaps even more effectively than with straight men generally. Back on reddit /u/FPHthrowawayB noted
3. This is just my theory, but in addition to pedos being sexually attracted to children, I do think their sexuality is also more child-like. I'm sure you can remember a time when you would have been more interested in seeing up a girl's skirt than seeing her have sex, if you even knew what that was. I think many pedos are still partially stuck in that developmental phase sexually.
I base this on the notion that pedos' interest in NN content is still more than you'd expect even given the complications in acquiring the alternative. Compare it to, for example, zoophiles, who also face similar complications but almost always still share exclusively sexually explicit content as opposed to simply softcore (since animals are rarely pictured "non-nude" of course).
Why crack down on sexualized imagery in media, but not on women and girls behaving that way IRL? Because the former serves men and the latter exploits them.
EDIT: Grammar.
ThisIsSin
The boob tube emits harmful XXX-rays
3mo ago
Their desire is to exploit it to coerce pedophiles into supporting them in various ways.
They have nothing to offer [straight] pedophiles, though, because the method they currently use to exploit straight male sexuality is incompatible with offering them the chance to have sex with women so desirable that the entire history of feminism has been angry old women trying to prohibit it out of misandrist jealousy.
That said, if you're using 'exploit' in the 'legally establishing that our favored groups get to fuck [native] tweenage girls as a treat', then yes, I agree this is how it's going to be used because this is already de facto law in the UK and other countries.
[Non-straight] pedophiles are probably a different story, but they're really scraping the bottom of the barrel for that one (and gay men are a favored group anyway so the above exception already applies in sufficiently progressive areas).
thrownaway24e89172
naïve paranoid outcast
3mo ago
As with straight male sexuality more generally, they have no wish to destroy pedophilia. Their desire is to exploit it to coerce pedophiles into supporting them in various ways.
Let me know if you want my info dump on pedophile activism in sexology departments, which is the bleeding edge of leftist activism.
This is a good start: https://wiki.yesmap.net/wiki/B4U-ACT
They've got people embedded at Johns Hopkins now, pushing it into the therapy sphere.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
3mo ago
I guess I view the explicit exemption for pedophilia as unnecessary. The definition of sexual orientation already precludes it. So it was removed for that reason. Rather than because the MN legislature wanted to prohibit discrimination against pedophiles.
wraelk
3mo ago
That seems like what the original wording that was removed in the redefinition Walz signed, "Sexual orientation does not include a physical or sexual attachment to children by an adult" would imply?
If someone was a bisexual pedophile, I would expect discrimination against them based on their bisexuality to be prohibited, but discrimination against them based on their pedophilia to not be prohibited. So I'd want to clarify in law that pedophilia is not a sexual orientation for the purpose of discrimination law. That seems like exactly what the pre-revision wording does.
Gillitrut
Reading from the golden book under bright red stars
3mo ago
Such a person's sexual orientation would be "bisexual" since they are attracted to people of either sex. Whether someone is a pedophile seems to me orthogonal to the question of their sexual orientation under the statute. The age part isn't relevant to the analysis. "pedophile" is not a distinct sexual orientation because it's not about the target of attractions sex.
No_one
3mo ago
And? Everyone has people killed.
Pretty sure Americans have killed people with weird poisons too. Why do you think CIA had a 'heart attack' gun showed off during the Church Committee hearings?
I'm not disputing that Russia kills people in weird ways that include poison - I'm disputing that it makes sense in this concrete sense. Because it doesn't.
The other notorious case of Litvinenko - the guy was seen as a traitor, but one who run away and wasn't swapped. And who instead of being quiet in his exile or at least low profile published very incendiary and probably nonsensical information of the type "Putin is a pedophile" / Russia trained Al-Qaeda etc.
We're not dealing with a hypercompetent foreign ministry here.
They presented Putin with a choice:
-
watch Ukraine smash the separatists, greatly angering Russian opposition thus making Russian internal politics worse and humiliating Russia by painting it as inactive and weak. Ukraine
-
go to war and force Ukraine to see sense.
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
3mo ago
A pedophile is either a child molester or a literal incel.
Being an incel does increase the chance of committing rape, yes, but it's not as if most incels are rapists.
I'd remind you that it's very hard to get statistics on non-molestor paedophiles because, well, most of them don't admit to it. So you only have a very-loose upper bound on P(molestation|paedophile). I seem to recall P(paedophile|molestation) is about 0.5, though I forget the source.
I understand them well enough, now. You can just call me stupid and not be passive aggressive about it, I'm an adult.
I would have no problem with him being banned if the person that instigated the events were even just warned but they weren't in this case or in the others. The rules are different for each poster. Wildcard rule, whatever. I disagree that this is a good way to do things but I stand by the fact that it's simply unfair for seemingly no reason other than accumulation. In most situations the instigator is held to a higher standard than the responder. But not here. It's fair and right that there should be consequences and even if you had given steve a permanent ban but had given the original instigation a warning I would have thought it was a better response than just ignoring someone basically calling anyone who makes a certain argument a pedophile and not even getting an informal warning.
thrownaway24e89172
naïve paranoid outcast
3mo ago
A pedophile is either a child molester or a literal incel.
You do realize it is possible for a person who finds (some) children sexually attractive to also find (some) adults sexually attractive as well, right? Not to mention that it is possible for a person to choose to have sex with people they don't find sexually attractive.
thrownaway24e89172
naïve paranoid outcast
3mo ago
Yes and the implication that we're either lying about being pedophiles or are actually child rapists strikes me as both rather uncharitable and extremely inflammatory.
Throwaway05
3mo ago
Psychiatry has some terms that are great for this kind of problem: egosyntonic and egodystonic.
Example: OCD bothers you. You don't want the impulses and urges. OCPD (Personality Disorder) doesn't bother you as much. You like being meticulous and double checking things.
Lots of pedophiles have egodystonic fixation, they are attracted to children and don't want anything to do with that and then slip up or whatever (or don't).
This exercises is useful in a variety of contexts and is generally a good way to assess the importance of cause of behaviors and can be used in assessing prognosis and so on.
ChickenOverlord
3mo ago
"Not all forms of being attracted to minors are pedophilia. If you like preteens it's called hebephilia. If you like teens it's called ephebephilia. The reason you don't hear people make this sort of distinction very often is because it kinda makes you sound like a pedophile." - Some comedian paraphrased.
Personally I'm in the "why do you call your pedophile chipper a wood chipper?" camp on the matter (at least for a case involving a 12-year-old), but even for an older teen (and even one actively sneaking out to hook up with older men) I think we need to bring back shotgun weddings. Unfortunately that's a bit of a coup complete problem and requires some major societal shifts back to enforcing social norms by both shame and force.
Throwaway05
3mo ago
One of the joy's of medicine is that everyone gets sick and therefore if you work in enough practice environments and for long enough you'll interact with every slice of society. AKA I've talked to more pedophiles than the average bear, unfortunately.
The distinction between pedophilia and ephebophilia is constantly panned on the internet, because this topic breaks everyone's brains but the distinction exists for a reason. Impulsivity (including sexual impulsivity) often implies some level of overriding of legal and ethical concerns on the alter of biology. If you find a picture of the girl and she passes for 16 the guy is sexually impulsive, not a pedophile (perhaps legally a pedophile and ethically a pedophile, but when people think pedophile they think "sexually attracted to children" no, most people who commit statutory rape type crimes are saying things like "damn she had some nice titties." A 4 year old does not have secondary sex characteristics).
Some subset of the sexually impulsive people are likely antisocial, but the majority of these cases by volume are like this one, honestly kinda close in age range but just outside the realm of propriety for modern audiences (appropriately so!) but the motivation is fundamentally "I want to have sex with someone who in their messed up brain triggers normal sexual impulses due to a lack of impulse control." I doubt we have data on this, but I do wonder if modern earlier sexualization and earlier development of secondary sex characteristics has increased the frequency of these encounters. Again these people aren't "truly deviant" they are just horny and impulsive (which is a different form of deviancy). A sufficiently advanced sex-bot that looks like such and such popular model would keep them out of trouble. They are not necessarily otherwise bad people (but can be). Satisfaction can be achieved with normal, healthy human behavior they just impulsively choose to make poor decisions.
A different group of people is the true anti-socials who are not obligate pedophiles and but engage in pedophilic behavior because they are "evil" and either enjoy power differentials or just don't care what they stick their dick in. These people aren't pedophiles, they are monsters. They are also super rare.
I think it's important to break group 1 into those two components because it can have a strong impact on things like recidivism rates and moral judgement, especially in cases that are a little more debatable than this (classic would be the 16 and 18 year old couple, which in the past resulted in a lot of jail time).
Agree with your characterization of the second group though, without more details we can't figure out which group this guy is but statistically it's more likely to be the first group, he likely just wanted to have sex and she probably looked adult enough to him. He's probably an idiot not someone obligately attracted to children.
Also, don't fall into the feminist "rape is about power" trap. Rape is sometimes about power but mostly it's about sex. Group 1 people just have a high enough sex drive and access problems, group 2 have a fundamental distortion in the way their attraction works. They generally feel super guilty about their attraction and decisions. Group 1 people typically have a much more egosyntonic relationship with their urges.
Folamh3
3mo ago
A pedophile is sexually attracted to children, but might not consciously want to fuck them.
Seems like a distinction without a difference. What does it mean to be "sexually attracted" to someone if you don't wan't to have sex with them?
My rough mental model is that most men are essentially addicted to sex. It happens naturally when they enter puberty, and it doesn't really ever go away for most. There are roughly two classes of pedophiles:
- Men who are very indiscriminate in their sexual attraction. They aren't especially sexually interested in young children, but they're just sociopathic and opportunistic. If they have power over young children, they will use them for sex much like they would almost anyone else. These men are pedophiles, but almost incidentally. They're just really bad people with a often indiscriminate and sadistic sexuality. Children are sometimes their victims.
- Men who are especially or exclusively sexually attracted to young children, particularly prepubescent or early pubescent children. The existence of such men is somewhat of an evolutionary puzzle similar to male homosexuality, and it does seem mostly inherent. These men are usually not sociopathic, but the sex drive is powerful and treacherous.
All the interesting questions mostly revolve around class number 2. I generally model class number 2 like I would an alcoholic. They're basically addicts even if they have never actually partaken in their addiction. Sometimes they fall off the wagon, and other times they get back on again. Like an addict, they shouldn't be trusted with the object of their addiction. If they're otherwise good people, then they will avoid it themselves. They may try to satisfy their addiction in what seem to them relatively indirect and harmless ways, though they may also inadvertantly cultivate and strengthen the addiction. Suspicion is warranted, because people are weak and will give in to sexual desire, but many such people are not fundamentally evil and do live ordinary lives.
My impression is that this athlete may fall into this second class.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
3mo ago
Compare with a heterosexual man who has a crush on his neighbor, but he knows she is married, and since he considers having sex with married women beyond the pale, he won't pursue her. Does he want to fuck her? On some theoretical level yes, but on a more practical level no. What if instead of being married she is underage, and he ignores her for that reason? Same thing, as far as I'm concerned.
Sure, most of us meet people we find sexually attractive but would never act on that attraction, for various reasons. But most people aren't doomed to be lifelong incels if they can't fuck any particular person. A pedophile is either a child molester or a literal incel. I can feel sympathy for someone who has desires he presumably did not want or ask for, but I can't say I'd trust him.
What bearing does that have on whether they should be allowed to participate in the Olympics?
There's been a lot of debate in this thread about whether there is any line that would be too far to allow participation, with arguments that if someone has "done their time" and has valuable contributions to make, they should be allowed. I'm generally sympathetic to the argument that people who have done their time and been released should be allowed to make a living. I don't think they are necessarily entitled to make a living doing whatever they want, particularly something that uniquely bestows glory and fame.
I don't have very strong feelings about Steven van de Velde in particular, but for me there is a line, and 12 is pretty damn close to it. If he got caught banging a 16-year-old, I'd think he's kind of sleazy but eh, lots of athletes probably bang jailbait and don't get caught. If he got caught banging a 5-year-old, I'd definitely be okay with saying "No Olympics for you." Apparently some people would disagree with the latter, but there are also people who've been pretty explicit that they are defending van de Velde's "right" to participate in the Olympics just because he's making their enemies mad.
MartianNight
3mo ago
It's not a perfect analogy, but it's useful because it separates the innate sexual attraction from acting on that attraction.
A pedophile is someone who wants to have sex with children.
I think the word “want” is being used in a very vague way here. A pedophile is sexually attracted to children, but might not consciously want to fuck them.
Compare with a heterosexual man who has a crush on his neighbor, but he knows she is married, and since he considers having sex with married women beyond the pale, he won't pursue her. Does he want to fuck her? On some theoretical level yes, but on a more practical level no. What if instead of being married she is underage, and he ignores her for that reason? Same thing, as far as I'm concerned.
In the real world, there is a lot of difference between cravings and conscious desires. A recovering alcoholic might crave a drink, but simultaneously want to avoid drinking. It's not helpful to simplify that to “alcoholics want to drink” — it's much more complicated than that.
They seem more similar to sociopaths and narcissists, in that you really can't counsel them or medicate them into being something else.
I don't think pedophilia can be cured, but it can be managed, just like alcoholism can be managed.
But even if it were true that alcoholics, pedophiles, philanderers, sociopaths and narcissists are utterly untreatable. What bearing does that have on whether they should be allowed to participate in the Olympics?
hydroacetylene
3mo ago
So your theoretical ethical pedophile who never acts on his desires (I assume such exist, though I admit I'd be skeptical of any individual's claims that they never ever have or will)
Haven't we had a few motteizeans claiming to be in this category?
An appeal to the dissident right from the Russian opposition about the arrest of Pavel Durov
The founder of Telegram was arrested in France and faces 20 years in prison. The charges ostensibly surround the use of Telegram for criminal activity, but the Guardian notes:
At the height of Twitter censorship, probably 95% of the Dissident Right was banned from Twitter and all went to Telegram. The only contingent of the DR left on Twitter were the Bronze Age Pervert-types who extoled "The West" and race realism but otherwise promoted a philosemitic undercurrent among the right-wing. This all changed with Musk's acquisition of Twitter/X and now nearly all of the banned are back on that platform.
Yesterday Elon Musk also gave exposure to the Telegram founder's claim that the FBI tried to recruit one of his engineers to introduce vulnerabilities into the application through open-source dependencies.
It's hard to overstate the fragility of "freedom of speech", although admittedly I mostly care about expression and information-sharing related to the topics that I consider true and important. And those are the political topics which are only actually threatened at this point. The political persecution of Durov not only threatens Telegram, basically what became the last "internet Ghetto" of the Dissident Right, but it puts pressure on all platforms to conform to EU censorship standards, which are becoming more stringent year after year. TikTok is likewise being banned for not sufficiently curtailing speech according to the interests of the Jewish lobby.
You have the EU censorship regime, the international NGO apparatus like ADL and Hope not Hate which put enormous political and financial pressure on platforms and governments to censor this speech. The current state of Internet discourse is also proof positive of Elite Theory. Only someone like Elon Musk could do what he did with X and (for now) get away with it. Musk himself has related growing scrutiny and lawsuits by the federal bureaucracy against his businesses as retaliation for his "free speech" policy in governing X, and I think he's almost certainly correct.
It really is, at this point, one man standing against the impending total-internet censorship of the Dissident Right. People were making fun of Musk for overpaying for X, but it's an important lesson, a lesson already known by many, that you can't put a price on memetic control over the collective consciousness.
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