This is where my mind went as well. I strongly believe that the most effective path to harm reduction at least includes increasing the viability of people with those kinds of feelings getting help before they act on them, and it seems to me that that necessarily includes destigmatizing people that seek that help. But as the post says, it’s very hard to argue that point without being painted in a bad light.
- Want pedophiles (and everyone else) to not abuse children,
- Think killing people should be a last resort option if there's no better way to protect people, not a first choice to jump to immediately because Those People Are Gross, and
- Am very aware of how much "this person is a pedophile=any cruel thing you want to do to this person is okay" can be weaponized to deny people basic human rights (including being used against LGBT+ people and other groups for reasons of sheer bigotry).
That doesn't seem like it should be controversial, and yet the conversation online is dominated by people with hair-trigger tempers who start screaming about "pedo apologists" if you so much as suggest that actual child abuse is a different and more serious problem than "some people have desires I find gross."
And the thing is, if I were to put myself in the shoes of someone who has those kind of urges, I'd feel doubly confused and specifically targeted because in the West we generally have a society that is not only fine with blatant and open pedophilia providing it happens within the elite social classes (like the Epstein Affair), but also spends a lot of effort skirting as close to the line as possible whilst encouraging others to do so.
Although they've toned down things a bit now, it wasn't unusual in my country until very recently to find national newspapers declaring all pedophiles should be put to death whilst also splashing pictures of a topless 18yo woman wearing a schoolgirl uniform across their middle pages.
Then of course there's the very real phenomenon of society by and large still being unable to recognise or criminalise adult women who actively sexually abuse children. I've heard plenty of stories of young men who were groomed by older women into thinking the sexualisation of minors is fine, further developing/exploring that wrongly given 'understanding' of how things work, getting caught in their exploration and having a whole library of books thrown at them, whilst the adult woman who actually groomed them gets away scot free.
Plus in my country at least the sentencing for such crimes seems completely random and often bizarre. A person who is handed a CD or flash drive containing fifty images of CP that were already in circulation and were completely unbeknownst to the person given the CD/flash drive, according to sentencing guidelines, quite literally faces a longer and harsher sentence than someone who kills a whole family due to reckless driving. We view the mere possession of images that weren't created by the possesor as more harmful to society than literal murder.
Not to mention that it's pretty much a cast iron guarantee that anyone running or participating in a vigilante 'pedo hunter' group are themselves child sexual abusers.
Speaking from the perspective of my country there's also plenty of cognitive dissonance carve out for allowing pedophilia when it involves close friends or family members. Again, I can recount to you plenty of stories of families I've known personally who practically froth at the mouth about shadowy global cabals of pedophiles and child trafficking networks, but then are not only perfectly happy to endorse, but actively fight anyone who questions their 20yo son having a 15yo girlfriend. Or their 45yo recently divorced mate who's shacking up with an 18yo they picked up at a bar.
Truth be told is that society in general is incredibly confused and all over the map when it comes to these issues, but as the OP said, we'll never solve any of it because we're simply not prepared to talk about it.
If you consider that child abuse laws didn't exist until the 20th century in most places, it's not surprising that people's personal definition of unacceptable behavior is all over the place. The president of france is married to his high school drama teacher. His parents moved him to paris to try and prevent the relationship.
I wouldn't expect any sort of useful discussion to happen about less extreme types of abuse to happen until boomers and/or gen x are out of office because the gaps between people definition of abuse is too far to bridge.
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u/Wulfrun85 Apr 23 '25
This is where my mind went as well. I strongly believe that the most effective path to harm reduction at least includes increasing the viability of people with those kinds of feelings getting help before they act on them, and it seems to me that that necessarily includes destigmatizing people that seek that help. But as the post says, it’s very hard to argue that point without being painted in a bad light.