this post was submitted on 08 Oct 2024
354 points (91.4% liked)
Technology
59534 readers
3143 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
The text are talking of branding attraction of <18 year olds as pedophilia, and didn't talk about doing anything more than experiencing the attraction EDIT more than giving examples of where they may accidently hook up with a 17 year old who snuck into a 18+ bar and then getting the pedophilia treatment by society
Ah. OK. Not a native speaker, thought that "hook up" means sex being involved, and getting said treatment from the judicial branch.
From the society - eh, some of us are so used to "the society" being in general their enemy, that we don't even think that's a problem.
Ah, and also a 16yo walking-kissing-whatever with a 19yo is more or less normal here.
I will admit that I don't understand the the hardline stance some people take about legal/non legal dating. There is only a years difference between a 17 year old and an 18 year old. (even less depending on date of birth. Both of them have had the same life experiences as the other. But some screech that is sexual assault of a minor.
The even weirder argument is an age difference between a "legal" 18 year old (or whatever the legal age is in your country) and someone older. I've seen people online try to cancel someone just because he is 5 years older.
I don't think people realize how quietly dangerous this is for women. It robs them of their agency to make their own informed decisions. This is just as insidious as people wanting to ban abortion, just a quieter argument.