Seeing more and more articles like this about paedophiles.

[Miffer]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41213657

This is the first mainstream UK one I have come across but there have been a few US ones.

I am not okay with it. If you fancy kids it's not okay, it should not be accepted, it should be shunned, you shouldn't be able to talk about it, your friends should disown you, you shouldn't be able to Google this without ramifications.

From a utilitarian POV I think it's bullshit anyway. The few paedophiles that would commit less harm from support and a more accepting society will be vastly outnumbered by the harm caused by a more permissive attitude towards this.

Know of...

I just hope these people understand that children and teens can not consent. Not in a way that adults understand when they consent.

So, if we are going to normalise this as a 'preference', could the same thing happens for rapists? That is a sexual preference, after all.

No, and whatever goes on in someones head the practice will never be normalised or legal, for the same simple and non-negotiable reason. Consent.

This was of course something that was tried years ago amongst the gay rights movement. The lesbians in my student LGB group put their feet down pretty firmly when someone suggested a speaker from some man-boy association.

just on victoria derbyshire

Gentleman John, they are mostly/all? on the dark web hosted all over the world. No they cannot close them down. They move and reopen and you can't just close down sites hosted in other countries.

My point relating to the OP was that there are hundreds of thousands of unique users of child abuse images in the UK. We are talking about users posting on this individual thread...their husbands, fathers, sons, brothers. I'm sorry but you just don't realise these criminals you are all talking about are your family members. It might make you think about this problem differently to realise that.

Yes you are right. I was just thinking to get married you would need attraction but that's a very idealistic view

Plenty gay men marry women, so, yeah, I am not surprised pedophiles want a wifey, too. (Also, if he can get himself to fuck the woman, she might give birth to a child he has complete access to at all times. Pedophiles have even more motivation to marry women than gay men.)

Now I don't know if people are born paedophiles or not; but I would say our culture sends out a clear message to young people that children are legitimate objects of sexual desire.

Indeed. The normalisation of pedophilia on that front is much worse than the possible consequences of a "Poor pedophiles can't help it" narrative.
If we treat pedophiles like the good characters in fantasy treat werewolves - lock them up preventively or give them medication - then that doesn't have to imply we approve of them.

But this porn thing is as if a fantasy society advertised for cannibalism.

This is one worrying consequence of the 'born this way' narrative that worked for lesbian and gay rights. I always preferred the even if it was a choice, there is nothing wrong with it line. Which of course does not apply in these cases

The "born this way" narrative probably was useful to protect some lesbians and gays from conversion therapy, but now that parents can say "Okay, you are born this way, not possible to change it, let's surgically turn you into a bad imitation of the other sex, then", it has outlived its usefulness.

It shouldn't be judged as homophobic to raise concerns about the extent to which 'boy love' is part of homosexual culture. I remember years ago being shocked reading Joe Orton's (1960's gay playwright) diaries in which he recounted travelling with his boyfriend to Morocco to have sex with with as many boys as they could. See also Alan Ginsberg, who I think was an actual paedophile but this doesn't seem to affect his counter-cultural icon status.

Absolutely disgusting view.

As for:
5. That he was terrified that without help he would one day offend. The self imposed sanctions he put on himslef were severe (never walking past schools etc)

this is completely pathetic, and a poorly thought out attempt to put the blame on someone else if he does offend.
As a pp said, it's the same as a rapist excuse - your average man on the street who is attracted to women wouldn't get away with saying he needs help or else he's going to rape someone. WTAF!?! If he can't control his sexual urges, maybe we're all better off if he is helped asap - with chemical castration (same goes for rapists).

So, if we are going to normalise this as a 'preference', could the same thing happens for rapists? That is a sexual preference, after all.

did you actually read any of the thread before you posted?

As a society we accept that some people are rapists. We act to contain them and where necessary treat them/punish them.
But at the moment as a society we are not acknowledging the existance of these people who are attracted to children.

By acknowledging their existance, we can plan how to contain them/treat them. If we pretend they don't exist and are them surprised and shocked everytime a case comes to light, then we aren't taking preventative action.

Paedophiles who haven't committed any crimes are potential rapists. In general we don't attempt to identify potential rapists - we don't expect men to come forward and say 'I want to rape women' so they can be treated. So what's different about paedophiles?

Windy as the person who posted and who actually saw the documentary -

no, he was not putting blame on anyone but himself. He was frightened, and in a place where there was zero help for him.

He had tried to get help and none was available, and, I should point out, he was told that help was only available to paedophiles after they had offended and therefore 'proved' they were genuine

I am not making excuses for him, that was how he felt, terrified to be around children in case he did something.

Now, I agree, the rest of us manage to control oursleves, whatever our sexual orientation. But the point is that at the moment we don't want to see these people as existing. But they do, you can't change that, and so what do we do? Maybe this young man would have been HAPPY to be offered chemical castration as a means of control. But at the time of filming he was not offered ANYTHING. No therapy, no medication, nothing, and he wanted help. What about those who don't want help.

I am not trying to take away his personal responsibility and choice to offend or not offend, but rather ask the questions about how we can improve the situation we have.

Sparrow - except if a they are coming forward and asking for help?

No, and whatever goes on in someones head the practice will never be normalised or legal, for the same simple and non-negotiable reason. Consent

But consent isn't somehow natural or immutable. It is a human construct and we can change how we view it and whether we agree to it. Not saying we should - just pointing out that it isn't fixed in stone.

I understand your point steppemum, but I'm not sure what sort of help that man could get? I presume he knows right from wrong in which case, beyond telling him not to attack children what can be done? I doubt he'd be allowed to have chemical castration considering how hard it is to get sterilised.

Sparrow, I think he wanted counselling to help him work out why he had this attraction, and to see if he could change it.

That in itself raises a whole load sof questions about therapy and sexuality. None of which I have any answers for.

I don't see anyone suggesting that should be treated 'normally' as a kind of kink (apart from a few nutjobs/the perpetrators themselves).

Google "heart progress". They are an active lobby group lobbying for and normalising the rights of adults to have sexual contact with children. They are/were very active on Twitter and other social media platforms. They call themselves 'pedosexuals' rather than paedophiles, and absolutely argue that children can give consent to sexual relationships.

And that's just the stuff they're happy to put in the public domain.

Anyone can get counselling though?

He wasn't arguing for peadophilia to become mainstream or even acceptable. He was arguing that if men have thoughts towards children they should be able to get help. That's it. No one thinks it's ok to abuse children. Surely if therapy like that stops one child from being abused it's worth it.

I don't remember the details sparrow, but I think it was a problem due to funding - GP wouldn't do it, and also due to availability, no-one had any expertise, and he was sayign we need to do more research and work out what will help etc.

Ah I see. Yes, there is a lack of mental health support on the NHS, for everyone. When someone seeks MH support they're usually assessed for being a danger to themselves or others - I wonder if a paedophile is considered to be a danger to others?

I think there is an urgent need to stop sweeping this issue under the carpet so that it's possible for paedophiles to get help before they offend (also to actually fund treatment). It's not OK that these men are reliant on anti contact forums to prevent offending. It's just not safe. I'm happy to listen to the experts on this, like those quoted in the BBC article. If treatment can help paedophiles manage their condition without offending and thus help prevent child abuse then we absolutely should be doing that.

At the same time, like JWrecks, I am appalled at the growing efforts of some in the identity politics crowd to normalise paedophilia as just another sexual identity. We've been here before with PIE and must be very careful not to take any steps down that road again.

It's not helpful to conflate these two things. I don't think there is anything wrong with the BBC article, this is an issue that needs talking about sensibly so we can work out what works and then do it, thus reducing the number of children who are abused, which I assume is everybody's first priority. As long as we remain aware of where the paedophilia-as-sexual-identity crowd would like the discussion to lead and avoid that at all costs.

But Pencils, if the person knows it's wrong to have sexual contact with a child, but goes ahead and does it anyway, surely the problem isn't the paedophilia as such but a lack of impulse control?

So, if we are going to normalise this as a 'preference', could the same thing happens for rapists? That is a sexual preference, after all.

This has already happened. That's why we talk of "rape culture".

The drive to rape women has been considered men's natural sexual orientation for thousands of years.

Every time a rape apologist says "Oh, the poor man just couldn't resist the temptation", do they mean "could not resist the temptation to have consensual sex"? No, they don't, obviously, as consensual sex was never an option - they mean "could not resist the temptation to rape".

Heterosexuality=Men raping women. That's how a lot of people think, even though they don't ever say it that way, just imply it in thousands of other things they say. Because it is never outright stated, not all people are aware of how widespread that attitude is.

There is a subtle underlying narrative that male sexuality, no matter what form it takes, is somehow inevitable - that women have to stay out of the way of men, for example, to avoid being raped, as though rape is somehow and force of nature rather than a choice that is made by a man. I'm concerned that that narrative is extending to paedophilia.

We all want things we can't have. Paedophiles need to just not attack children. Frankly if they need help to do that then I think they should be locked up.

This is really complicated I think, because I partly agree with some posters in that you don't want to simply de-moralise this into a therapeutic issue. But at the same time, if someone like this does seek help, what should we do? Just turn him (or her, occasionally) away?

There are further complications concerning the way the modern world is impacting on childhood sexuality....and I'm sorry, disturbing as this might sound, there is such a thing as childhood sexuality. This is what was so scandalous about Freudianism. That does not mean children should be legitimated as objects of adults sexual desire, because that's clearly repugnant. It just means that they are sexual beings. And it means adult paedophiles were once children. And there are children who are on their way to becoming paedophiles.

The fact is that children are arguably sexually active in all sorts of way that they perhaps they were not in the past. Sexting is a key example. It is now almost normal for children to exchange sexualised photos and videos of themselves. This means children are BOTH becoming the increasing victims and perpetrators of child pornography.

www.theguardian.com/society/2015/nov/10/sexting-becoming-the-norm-for-teens-warn-child-protection-experts

Furthermore, child on child sexual assault is sky-rocketing. Allegations of sexual offences perpetrated by children against other children have increased by 78% over the past four years! 78%!!!! Are these children nascent paedophiles? Can a child be a paedophile? Or will it be more likely that such a child grow into a paedophile? What can we do to prevent that happening? Should it be therapy - or something more punative? I

This debate was once very simple in some ways. There were innocent children and evil adults who predated on them . End of. Now it has suddenly become very complicated. Not that adults who predate on children aren't still absolutely abhorrent (that bit is still very black and white)...but we also need to be aware that the increasing participation of children in sexual culture is going to cause big problems. Children have always had their own completely separate sexual culture in the form of 'Doctors and Nurses' etc, and that's fine - but when that becomes mixed up with the world of adult, public sexuality - as it does with the internet - then there is a danger of children becoming BOTH victims of sexual abuse and sexually deviant children/future adults. Furthermore, there is a danger of attraction to other children of their own age (which is of course normal) becoming fixed as they're lost in this cyber world.

I hope this hasn't been misunderstood. Just throwing some troubling questions out there without really knowing any of the answers myself.