Well, this just got darker.

  • Todd Bonzalez@lemm.ee
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    1 month ago

    This isn’t surprising, it’s inevitable.

    If you folks knew how common pedophilic fantasies are amongst the general public, you would be shocked. Just look to cultures like Japan and Russia that don’t strongly condemn such things, and you’ll find it’s about 15% of the population. It’s only less in the West because of the near homicidal stigma attached to it that makes people vigorously hide that part of themselves.

    Fortunately, this also shows that the vast majority of those people don’t offend.

    We also tend to define pedophilia as “anything sexual involving a minor”, while reacting to it as if it means “violent rape of a toddler”, so no shit, we sexualize youth all the time, the 18 year mark is a legal and social formality, not a hard limit on human attraction. Adults will find themselves attracted to teens, and they won’t reveal that because who the fuck ever would?

    If anything, the issue isn’t that people have these attractions and fantasies, it is that some portion of those people can’t separate fantasy from reality and are willing to hurt a child to get what they want, or they are sociopaths that consume child porn without feeling disgust for witnessing horrific child abuse.

    • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      to cultures like Japan and Russia that don’t strongly condemn such things

      As someone from Russia - what?

      Unless you mean being attracted to post-puberty, but pre-legal girls. That, ahem, makes sense biologically.

      Girls of that age are sometimes kinda cruel to boys, though, so my personal teenage years trauma prevents me from dreaming of them. But if not for it, I think I would.

      Toddlers are a completely different issue.

      • evranch@lemmy.ca
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        1 month ago

        There is this thing that I feel is most prevalent in the USA, to call any attraction to a girl under the age of 18 pedophilia. Because that’s the age to star in porn. The term should truly be used for attraction to children. I think it’s an extension of the “pedo panic” where every man is assumed for some reason to be a child rapist now.

        As such almost every young man could at some point be caught as a “pedophile”- 17 year olds sneak into clubs all the time, for example. 20 year old hooked up with one? Now he is considered a pedophile even if the actual age of consent is lower.

        Meanwhile the porn industry glorifies “barely 18” girls as something highly desirable. It’s a little messed up to say the least.

        Actual pedos who are into kids should be put in mental institutions. But I would strongly suspect that 15% stated just includes honest young men and creepy old men, none of which are truly pedophiles. That number is way too high.

        • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          As such almost every young man could at some point

          Something is wrong with your stats. “Almost every” would be above 97%. Or if by “could” you mean it happening in a perfectly normal situation - yes.

          OK, I don’t really like talking about that age and that subject. Just batch-commenting everything.

          • Droechai@lemm.ee
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            1 month ago

            Id say that 97% of all 18 year olds has had attraction to 17 year olds is not a weird number, unless asexuality is more common than I thought

            • rottingleaf@lemmy.world
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              1 month ago

              Attraction yeah, I understood it as the act requiring consent from that text.

              Attraction - it’d be virtually everyone I guess in one way or another. Asexuality is not the same as complete lack of romantic interest or even inability to enjoy physical parts.

      • azuth@sh.itjust.works
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        1 month ago

        It’s racism, due to his political alignment he can’t go after black people but Russians are fair game.