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I can't believe I just saw someone argue that it doesn't matter how you define something, but it's a good idea to lock up everyone in that category for life regardless of their circumstances.
I have not said we should punish a class of people. I have said we should punish certain acts severely. Huge difference.
What you seem to ignore is that our legal system, and human beings, tend to care about the motivation for the act.
The legal system almost never takes motivation into account. Motive is not an element of any crime in the US. There are crimes that hinge on intent, but intent to engage in an act is different from the motivation to do so. The closest thing we have to motive in the legal system would be affirmative defenses like insanity, manslaughter mitigation (I.e., catching a cheating spouse in the act of cheating), and self defense. The first is rarely invoked successfully, and the second is extremely controversial. Are you proposing that we create an affirmative defense of "pedophilia" against charges of molestation of children?
This is a digression, but wouldn't hate crimes legislation deal with motivations.
Also, given that you are talking about determining the level of punishment, isn't motivation a major factor in sentencing?
I can't believe I just saw someone argue that it doesn't matter how you define something, but it's a good idea to lock up everyone in that category for life regardless of their circumstances.
I have not said we should punish a class of people. I have said we should punish certain acts severely. Huge difference.
What you seem to ignore is that our legal system, and human beings, tend to care about the motivation for the act.
The legal system almost never takes motivation into account. Motive is not an element of any crime in the US. There are crimes that hinge on intent, but intent to engage in an act is different from the motivation to do so. The closest thing we have to motive in the legal system would be affirmative defenses like insanity, manslaughter mitigation (I.e., catching a cheating spouse in the act of cheating), and self defense. The first is rarely invoked successfully, and the second is extremely controversial. Are you proposing that we create an affirmative defense of "pedophilia" against charges of molestation of children?
It seems like you mixed the concepts of motivation and the motive. In so far as I can tell about the US legal system 'The Motive' is not only an element in the process, it's one of the three fundamental parts needed to even prosecute anyone of any crime.
I don't know if it was an error in logic or just poorly chosen wording but please put a little more thought into it. These kinds of mistakes can lead to absurd and pointless arguments.
Cynicism is a great help when trying to be sarcastic.
I can't believe I just saw someone argue that it doesn't matter how you define something, but it's a good idea to lock up everyone in that category for life regardless of their circumstances.
I have not said we should punish a class of people. I have said we should punish certain acts severely. Huge difference.
What you seem to ignore is that our legal system, and human beings, tend to care about the motivation for the act.
The legal system almost never takes motivation into account. Motive is not an element of any crime in the US. There are crimes that hinge on intent, but intent to engage in an act is different from the motivation to do so. The closest thing we have to motive in the legal system would be affirmative defenses like insanity, manslaughter mitigation (I.e., catching a cheating spouse in the act of cheating), and self defense. The first is rarely invoked successfully, and the second is extremely controversial. Are you proposing that we create an affirmative defense of "pedophilia" against charges of molestation of children?
This is a digression, but wouldn't hate crimes legislation deal with motivations.
Also, given that you are talking about determining the level of punishment, isn't motivation a major factor in sentencing?
I don't know a lot about hate crime statutes, but I think they are crimes which include a mental state element of hatred (much like conspiracy includes a mental state element of intending to actually commit the from) but that is still different than motive.
No they don't, they just require the crime to be motivated by specific prejudices. Killing a black guy because he's black is a hate crime, killing him because you hate him because he slept with your wife isn't.
Judges often have discretion in sentencing and can look at whatever they want, but I am proposing a mandatory life sentence here. Incidentally, juries usually want motive to be demonstrated even though it is not an element of any crime.
Surely if the judge agrees that a particular case needs a harsh sentence, he can do so? Why are you overriding the judges ability to sentence as the case demands it?
This story doesn't offer a lot of new information, but is a current example of the earlier discussion of fictional representations as a jailable offense.
A man has been jailed for watching cartoon videos of elves, pixies and other fantasy creatures having sex.
Ronald Clark downloaded the Japanese anime cartoons three years ago, setting in train events that would see him in court in Auckland and jailed for three months for possessing objectionable material, and sparking debate as to what harm is caused by digitally created pornography.
Clark has previous convictions for indecently assaulting a teenage boy and has been through rehabilitation programmes, but the video nasties he was watching in this case were all cartoons and drawings.
He says the videos came from an established tradition of Japanese manga and hentai (cartoon pornography), a massive, mainstream industry in that country.
They weren't even depictions of people - Clark's lawyer Roger Bowden described them as "pixies and trolls" that "you knew at a glance weren't human".
Bowden said the conviction for possessing objectionable material was "the law gone mad".
However, while the cartoon characters were elves and pixies, they were also clearly young elves and pixies, which led to concerns the images were linked to child sexual abuse.
Anti-child pornography group ECPAT Child Alert director Alan Bell said the images were illegal because they encouraged people "to migrate from there to the real thing".
"The distribution of it is damaging. You have to ask what impact does it have even if it's not harming [an individual child]."
Bell said it had to be conceded that no child was harmed in the images' production but "it's all part of that spectrum". Cartoon images of child abuse were a "huge" problem in Japan and the practice had started finding its way into computer games, he said
Lincoln University philosophy lecturer Grant Tavinor, who writes on the aesthetics of video games, said the case raised two key questions: Did producing the pictures harm anyone, and could their viewing and distribution be injurious to the public good?
"The worry is that viewing or distributing such images could support the sexual exploitation of children even if the production of the images did not actually involve the exploitation of any children," Tavinor said. It's not enough that no one was harmed in the making of the videos, the law takes a protective role and says there are some things we just don't want circulating in society, he said.
Auckland University associate philosophy professor Tim Dare said "the justifications for punishment are likely to be worries about the tendency of the images to promote harm to real people in the future, or a concern for what the interest in the images tells you about their ‘character' ".
Clark himself argued that the law led to the absurdity that he could, in theory, be convicted of possessing objectionable images of stick figures.
Clark admitted he was interested in the images but he said it was for their artistic merit and as "a bit of a laugh". He did not find them sexually arousing, he said.
Tavinor said there were ethical issues that complicated the case.
"The ways a person entertains themself is not morally negligible. This is probably an additional factor in the current case because as well as worrying about the effects these activities might have on children, we also naturally make moral judgments about the character of the person in question.
"But for the purposes of law it is probably important to distinguish between these because convicting someone for their moral views is very dangerous."
The article clearly includes the guy's full name, so if anyone (mods or otherwise) feels that to be inappropriate I'll de-link and trim the article.
Yeah, I have a serious problem with something being illegal because people view it as "immoral" or because it shows someone has "immoral character" and because it might, possibly, MAYBE have a chance of making them a bit more likely to do something illegal. Laws against fictional porn like that always seem to me to be really weak, and justifications for it draw on every flimsy argument they can so those advocating it can avoid just saying "It's illegal because I think it's icky, and really for no better reason than that."
Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. - Lincoln
I can't believe I just saw someone argue that it doesn't matter how you define something, but it's a good idea to lock up everyone in that category for life regardless of their circumstances.
I have not said we should punish a class of people. I have said we should punish certain acts severely. Huge difference.
What you seem to ignore is that our legal system, and human beings, tend to care about the motivation for the act.
The legal system almost never takes motivation into account. Motive is not an element of any crime in the US. There are crimes that hinge on intent, but intent to engage in an act is different from the motivation to do so. The closest thing we have to motive in the legal system would be affirmative defenses like insanity, manslaughter mitigation (I.e., catching a cheating spouse in the act of cheating), and self defense. The first is rarely invoked successfully, and the second is extremely controversial. Are you proposing that we create an affirmative defense of "pedophilia" against charges of molestation of children?
It seems like you mixed the concepts of motivation and the motive. In so far as I can tell about the US legal system 'The Motive' is not only an element in the process, it's one of the three fundamental parts needed to even prosecute anyone of any crime.
I don't know if it was an error in logic or just poorly chosen wording but please put a little more thought into it. These kinds of mistakes can lead to absurd and pointless arguments.
I don't know what you are trying to say here, but you are categorically wrong about the US legal system. There is no legal construct of "motive." All it means (colloquially) is the motivation to commit a crime.
The one place the concept is actually relevant from a legal basis is in affirmative defenses like self defense, which requires that you demonstrate the reason for your act (I.e., the risk you were defending against). Outside of these defenses, the "why" of the crime is not part of our judicial system, technically speaking.
I have to admit that I don't know enough about the subject to say for sure wether it is my ignorance of the subject that is preventing me from making sense this, is the argument somehow flawed, or is it just about abstract semantics. Regardless I feel that it has very very little to do with the topic at hand and would like to inform you that I am not interested in pursuing this any further in this thread. If you feel that there is a reasonable chance for a mutually rewarding conversation, please make a new thread for it and I will join you there.
Cynicism is a great help when trying to be sarcastic.
I can't believe I just saw someone argue that it doesn't matter how you define something, but it's a good idea to lock up everyone in that category for life regardless of their circumstances.
I have not said we should punish a class of people. I have said we should punish certain acts severely. Huge difference.
What you seem to ignore is that our legal system, and human beings, tend to care about the motivation for the act.
The legal system almost never takes motivation into account. Motive is not an element of any crime in the US. There are crimes that hinge on intent, but intent to engage in an act is different from the motivation to do so. The closest thing we have to motive in the legal system would be affirmative defenses like insanity, manslaughter mitigation (I.e., catching a cheating spouse in the act of cheating), and self defense. The first is rarely invoked successfully, and the second is extremely controversial. Are you proposing that we create an affirmative defense of "pedophilia" against charges of molestation of children?
This is a digression, but wouldn't hate crimes legislation deal with motivations.
Also, given that you are talking about determining the level of punishment, isn't motivation a major factor in sentencing?
I don't know a lot about hate crime statutes, but I think they are crimes which include a mental state element of hatred (much like conspiracy includes a mental state element of intending to actually commit the from) but that is still different than motive.
No they don't, they just require the crime to be motivated by specific prejudices. Killing a black guy because he's black is a hate crime, killing him because you hate him because he slept with your wife isn't.
Judges often have discretion in sentencing and can look at whatever they want, but I am proposing a mandatory life sentence here. Incidentally, juries usually want motive to be demonstrated even though it is not an element of any crime.
Surely if the judge agrees that a particular case needs a harsh sentence, he can do so? Why are you overriding the judges ability to sentence as the case demands it?
It looks like you are right on hate crimes, but those are an aberration. We do not prosecute child molestors or child pornography in this unusual manner. We treat it like other crimes, and do not require motive.
Motive is taken into account in sentencing though. As well as how likely judge views the possibility of recidivism.
Now I can see the argument that since pedophilia may have a naturally higher chance of recidivism than other crimes it should be sentenced harsher. But to say that motive isn't taken into account at all in determining punishment is just wrong.
I can't believe I just saw someone argue that it doesn't matter how you define something, but it's a good idea to lock up everyone in that category for life regardless of their circumstances.
I have not said we should punish a class of people. I have said we should punish certain acts severely. Huge difference.
What you seem to ignore is that our legal system, and human beings, tend to care about the motivation for the act.
The legal system almost never takes motivation into account. Motive is not an element of any crime in the US. There are crimes that hinge on intent, but intent to engage in an act is different from the motivation to do so. The closest thing we have to motive in the legal system would be affirmative defenses like insanity, manslaughter mitigation (I.e., catching a cheating spouse in the act of cheating), and self defense. The first is rarely invoked successfully, and the second is extremely controversial. Are you proposing that we create an affirmative defense of "pedophilia" against charges of molestation of children?
This is a digression, but wouldn't hate crimes legislation deal with motivations.
Also, given that you are talking about determining the level of punishment, isn't motivation a major factor in sentencing?
I don't know a lot about hate crime statutes, but I think they are crimes which include a mental state element of hatred (much like conspiracy includes a mental state element of intending to actually commit the from) but that is still different than motive.
No they don't, they just require the crime to be motivated by specific prejudices. Killing a black guy because he's black is a hate crime, killing him because you hate him because he slept with your wife isn't.
Judges often have discretion in sentencing and can look at whatever they want, but I am proposing a mandatory life sentence here. Incidentally, juries usually want motive to be demonstrated even though it is not an element of any crime.
Surely if the judge agrees that a particular case needs a harsh sentence, he can do so? Why are you overriding the judges ability to sentence as the case demands it?
It looks like you are right on hate crimes, but those are an aberration. We do not prosecute child molestors or child pornography in this unusual manner. We treat it like other crimes, and do not require motive.
Motive is taken into account in sentencing though. As well as how likely judge views the possibility of recidivism.
Now I can see the argument that since pedophilia may have a naturally higher chance of recidivism than other crimes it should be sentenced harsher. But to say that motive isn't taken into account at all in determining punishment is just wrong.
The ambit of judicial discretion is broad. I never denied that. All I said was that motive is not an element of crimes in the US. This is a very common misconception.
the premeditation standard for first-degree murder specifically speaks to motivation/ motive.
I can't believe I just saw someone argue that it doesn't matter how you define something, but it's a good idea to lock up everyone in that category for life regardless of their circumstances.
I have not said we should punish a class of people. I have said we should punish certain acts severely. Huge difference.
What you seem to ignore is that our legal system, and human beings, tend to care about the motivation for the act.
The legal system almost never takes motivation into account. Motive is not an element of any crime in the US. There are crimes that hinge on intent, but intent to engage in an act is different from the motivation to do so. The closest thing we have to motive in the legal system would be affirmative defenses like insanity, manslaughter mitigation (I.e., catching a cheating spouse in the act of cheating), and self defense. The first is rarely invoked successfully, and the second is extremely controversial. Are you proposing that we create an affirmative defense of "pedophilia" against charges of molestation of children?
This is a digression, but wouldn't hate crimes legislation deal with motivations.
Also, given that you are talking about determining the level of punishment, isn't motivation a major factor in sentencing?
I don't know a lot about hate crime statutes, but I think they are crimes which include a mental state element of hatred (much like conspiracy includes a mental state element of intending to actually commit the from) but that is still different than motive.
No they don't, they just require the crime to be motivated by specific prejudices. Killing a black guy because he's black is a hate crime, killing him because you hate him because he slept with your wife isn't.
Judges often have discretion in sentencing and can look at whatever they want, but I am proposing a mandatory life sentence here. Incidentally, juries usually want motive to be demonstrated even though it is not an element of any crime.
Surely if the judge agrees that a particular case needs a harsh sentence, he can do so? Why are you overriding the judges ability to sentence as the case demands it?
It looks like you are right on hate crimes, but those are an aberration. We do not prosecute child molestors or child pornography in this unusual manner. We treat it like other crimes, and do not require motive.
Motive is taken into account in sentencing though. As well as how likely judge views the possibility of recidivism.
Now I can see the argument that since pedophilia may have a naturally higher chance of recidivism than other crimes it should be sentenced harsher. But to say that motive isn't taken into account at all in determining punishment is just wrong.
The ambit of judicial discretion is broad. I never denied that. All I said was that motive is not an element of crimes in the US. This is a very common misconception.
the premeditation standard for first-degree murder specifically speaks to motivation/ motive.
Premeditation isn't necessarily about motive so much as it is about the willfulness of the offender; however, motive can be an important and necessary element of the crime. The difference between second degree murder and voluntary manslaughter is essentially the state of mind of the offender at the moment he committed a homicide -- to what degree was the unpremeditated murder provoked? Likewise, motive is an important element of any hate crime, in which the offender must be shown to have perpetrated a crime against a victim motivated primarily because of the victim's membership within a specific social group or class, such as a race, ethnicity or sexual orientation.
I can't believe I just saw someone argue that it doesn't matter how you define something, but it's a good idea to lock up everyone in that category for life regardless of their circumstances.
I have not said we should punish a class of people. I have said we should punish certain acts severely. Huge difference.
What you seem to ignore is that our legal system, and human beings, tend to care about the motivation for the act.
The legal system almost never takes motivation into account. Motive is not an element of any crime in the US. There are crimes that hinge on intent, but intent to engage in an act is different from the motivation to do so. The closest thing we have to motive in the legal system would be affirmative defenses like insanity, manslaughter mitigation (I.e., catching a cheating spouse in the act of cheating), and self defense. The first is rarely invoked successfully, and the second is extremely controversial. Are you proposing that we create an affirmative defense of "pedophilia" against charges of molestation of children?
This is a digression, but wouldn't hate crimes legislation deal with motivations.
Also, given that you are talking about determining the level of punishment, isn't motivation a major factor in sentencing?
I don't know a lot about hate crime statutes, but I think they are crimes which include a mental state element of hatred (much like conspiracy includes a mental state element of intending to actually commit the from) but that is still different than motive.
No they don't, they just require the crime to be motivated by specific prejudices. Killing a black guy because he's black is a hate crime, killing him because you hate him because he slept with your wife isn't.
Judges often have discretion in sentencing and can look at whatever they want, but I am proposing a mandatory life sentence here. Incidentally, juries usually want motive to be demonstrated even though it is not an element of any crime.
Surely if the judge agrees that a particular case needs a harsh sentence, he can do so? Why are you overriding the judges ability to sentence as the case demands it?
It looks like you are right on hate crimes, but those are an aberration. We do not prosecute child molestors or child pornography in this unusual manner. We treat it like other crimes, and do not require motive.
I am saying that this is an instance where we should not allow discretion because we should not let them back in at all. I think that once someone has engaged in child molestation, it no longer matters whether they can be rehabilitated. Game over. You don't get a chance to molest more kids.
Knowing that recidivism rates are less than 50% even over 20 years, as we discussed earlier in the thread, I don't think that we should lock them up and throw away the key. I am certain there is room for significant improvement in that number as well, since our current methods of "rehabilitation" are barely worthy of the name. Additionally, under your system I can't see how anyone would ever come forward for treatment since even the possibility of a false accusation and conviction would be life-ending.
Additionally, I have no idea how you think we are going to increase enforcement of child molestation. Every teacher and health care provider already has a duty to report any suspicions, and law enforcement has many task forces specifically devoted towards childhood sexual abuse. There are already a lot of resources going toward this area.
It looks like you are right on hate crimes, but those are an aberration. We do not prosecute child molestors or child pornography in this unusual manner. We treat it like other crimes, and do not require motive.
I am saying that this is an instance where we should not allow discretion because we should not let them back in at all. I think that once someone has engaged in child molestation, it no longer matters whether they can be rehabilitated. Game over. You don't get a chance to molest more kids.
Why?
Why is that an automatic life sentence but white collar crimes that destroy the lives of hundreds, if not thousands of people worthy only of a fine and maybe some light prison time in your eyes?
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
It looks like there are two arguments going on here.
1) Should pedophilia, in and of itself, in the absence of any act, be treated as a crime?
2) Should a person convicted of child molestation be automatically sentenced to life imprisonment?
I feel like we all agree that the response to #1 is "no". Obviously, there's quite a lot of room for discussion on we should do, and how society should treat pedophiles in general, but I'm pretty sure that no one wants to get a magic brain scanner and lock up all the people who have sexual thoughts about children but never actually act out on those thoughts.
#2 is just kind of a ridiculous argument. I'm sorry, but it doesn't pass the smell test. It's literally the same argument that can be leveled against any crime anywhere, as a subjective judgment on the severity of that crime and the nature of the criminal, applied to a whole class of people. (Read that three times fast.) You could say the same thing for murderers, right? If you have murdered someone, then you should just be locked up forever. Or better yet, you should be executed. That way you can't kill someone ever again. Or rapists. Anyone who rapes should be locked up forever. Or castrated and then locked up forever. Just do something to all of them and make sure it lasts forever so they can't do it again.
Look, skfm, I know where you're coming from, but that kind of opinion just plain doesn't take into account the way the world works. No criminal justice system is perfect. People are wrongly convicted all the time. People who are guilty go free. It is entirely heavy-handed to simply lock away everyone who is convicted of a particular crime forever. Furthermore, it doesn't take into account the human nature of crime itself. Not all crimes are the same, and not all criminals are the same. That's why judges exist in the first place - because the nature of justice for any given offense will vary depending upon the particular case in question. Otherwise, we would have no need for a sentencing portion, and all crimes will have the exact same punishment. Someone who steals food to feed his starving family is different from someone who steals food to sell it and pay for a gun to rape a woman. Someone who molests a child by forcing her to have sex with him is different from someone who molests a child by virtue of statutory rape (e.g., a 19 year-old having consensual intercourse with his 17 year-old girlfriend).
If you just refuse to consider these kinds of issues when making your opinion known, then I think it's clear to everyone that you're just holding onto a particular blind spot and refusing to let it go. Yes, child molestation is a horrendous crime. But many crimes are horrendous in nature, and that doesn't preclude them from being evaluated as part of a larger system, rather than simply knee-jerking into a "lock them up and throw away the key" response. The nature of law is inexact and imperfect, so it's important for us to take these things into account when having discussions, as a society, about how we want them to exist.
Well, the problem is that pretty much any neutral stimulus can become a conditioned stimulus or a second order conditioned stimulus. Everyone has heard of Pavlov's experiments on classical/respondent conditioning but what most people don't know is that he also used a vast variety of other stimuli as the neutral stimulus in other experiments. One stimulus of note was an electric shock. He would shock the dog and then present the food. At first, the shock was an aversive stimulus but after a number of weeks, the dog would react excitedly in response to the electric shock in much the same way as if a non-aversive neutral stimulus had been used.
And sexual arousal is susceptible to classical conditioning in much the same way as salivation.
"He would shock the dog and then present the food."
There is a very strong argument to be made here that, since the shock was not linked to what the dog was doing but rather only to the food appearing (which was a positive thing to the dog), the original averse stimulus could be said to be caution and confusion and after that has cleared the appearance of food would become a prize for enduring the shock. This would be a good indication that having an arbitrary and premature punishment linked to an action, that the subject views as positive, will not act as an effective discouragement.
Except that like the original experiment with the bell, after the response had been conditioned, the dog would salivate after the shock regardless of whether or not the food was presented.
Also, conditioning has been shown to work on things that organisms cannot possibly have conscious control over like immune responses. Conditioning experiments have also been shown to work on animals of vastly different intelligences including things like snails and octopi. It's even been shown to work on single celled organisms.
question: Is there a distinction made between incest and pedophilia or are they usually the same phenomenon?
It seems like cases of incest abuse tend to go on well past the sexual maturity of the victim and aren't necessarily (usually?) transferred to non family members.
Sexual orientations can probably be acquired through learning. However, it does not mean all sexual orientations are acquired through learning. There are still natural tendencies involved. In much the same way that a person does not need to learn to salivate to certain foods, there are certain stimuli that can cause sexual arousal without having to be learned.
Again, the amount of vagueness, generality, and confusion in these sorts of posts is problematic.
Is pedophilia a sexual orientation, in the same sense that heterosexuality and homosexuality are categorized as sexual orientations?* Which orientations are acquired through learning, and which are manifestations of natural tendencies? Are there natural tendencies? How would we separate learned tendencies from innate ones?
We likely do not know how many of these processes actually work.
*The answers to these sorts of questions are, likely, question begging.
It's entirely possible there are lots of different kinds of pedophilia and we know that there's a variance in how strong the compulsion to act is (and like others have suggested, I'd wager there are a lot of child molestors who are not pedophiles, who simply get off on the control and dominance aspects of it)
Step one is funding some study of this, but I don't think that's possible until pedophiles can admit their thoughts to a psychiatrist or researcher without fear of retaliation. Using convicts as your sample for studies which we do now is about as ludicrous as it would be for any crime and you could determine from it that all poor people are thieves or drug dealers
override367 on
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Magus`The fun has been DOUBLED!Registered Userregular
edited April 2013
I like to think there are greater and lesser sexual orientations -
Greater -
Male
Female
Both
Adult/child
Animals (?)
"Anything that moves. Or doesn't."
For example, you never hear someone go "Normally I only like women, but man that guy is just SO TALL." but you do hear "Normally I like brunettes but I don't mind dating blondes."
Mind you, 'lesser' orientations can sometimes be as strong as greater ones. A lot of people will refuse to date someone outside their religion, or someone who is 'too fat', and so on.
Additionally I think pedophilia is the only 'greater' orientation that (sometimes tenuously*) links with other 'greater' orientations.
* I imagine some pedophiles are only interested in one gender, some both and some 'just don't care'.
Edit - I realize there are more categories, this is just a short list to give a general idea.
It's entirely possible there are lots of different kinds of pedophilia and we know that there's a variance in how strong the compulsion to act is (and like others have suggested, I'd wager there are a lot of child molestors who are not pedophiles, who simply get off on the control and dominance aspects of it)
Step one is funding some study of this, but I don't think that's possible until pedophiles can admit their thoughts to a psychiatrist or researcher without fear of retaliation. Using convicts as your sample for studies which we do now is about as ludicrous as it would be for any crime and you could determine from it that all poor people are thieves or drug dealers
It's interesting that you make a distinction between
Child molesters: Enjoy control / dominance.
Pedophiles: attraction to children without a control / dominance component.
I wonder if that is actually how it works...or what to make of a child molester who claims to not be a pedophile.
Well, the problem is that pretty much any neutral stimulus can become a conditioned stimulus or a second order conditioned stimulus. Everyone has heard of Pavlov's experiments on classical/respondent conditioning but what most people don't know is that he also used a vast variety of other stimuli as the neutral stimulus in other experiments. One stimulus of note was an electric shock. He would shock the dog and then present the food. At first, the shock was an aversive stimulus but after a number of weeks, the dog would react excitedly in response to the electric shock in much the same way as if a non-aversive neutral stimulus had been used.
And sexual arousal is susceptible to classical conditioning in much the same way as salivation.
"He would shock the dog and then present the food."
There is a very strong argument to be made here that, since the shock was not linked to what the dog was doing but rather only to the food appearing (which was a positive thing to the dog), the original averse stimulus could be said to be caution and confusion and after that has cleared the appearance of food would become a prize for enduring the shock. This would be a good indication that having an arbitrary and premature punishment linked to an action, that the subject views as positive, will not act as an effective discouragement.
Except that like the original experiment with the bell, after the response had been conditioned, the dog would salivate after the shock regardless of whether or not the food was presented.
Also, conditioning has been shown to work on things that organisms cannot possibly have conscious control over like immune responses. Conditioning experiments have also been shown to work on animals of vastly different intelligences including things like snails and octopi. It's even been shown to work on single celled organisms.
I mistook the point you were trying to get to with your original comment. I thought it was about the conversation of the harshness punishments. However it being about lolicon->arousal, lolicon=children ->arousal dynamic makes a lot more sense.
There is little question wether or not conditioning works. It works. It's been proven to work and even the whole 'certain cause leading to certain effect' is pretty much the basis of how we view logic. And it is certainly possible that, among other things, lolicon can be used to condition someone towards pedophilia.
However there is somewhat large question mark over the statement: Lolicon causes people to turn to pedophilia. I am aware that you didn't actually make that statement, it was what I inferred to be the point you were trying to make, albeit not as concisely. First of which being that conditioning requires conscious effort towards the change to be effective.
Second one (and in my mind more important) is the fact that exposing someone to lolicon only leads to arousal, if that is what the subject already feels about lolicon. To those of us that don't get aroused, a conditioning to get aroused by it is required first. From this point on a lengthy artictle could be written about wether it's more fair to say that more already feeling aroused lolicon would start to see real life children as targets or would people who get aroused by real life children transfer their affections to drawn figures.
Either way I don't personally see lolicon(or any other type of "art" that attempts to depict children as sexual objects) having enough provable merits to suggest it as the way for pedophiles to unwind. Its only justification comes from the freedom of expression of the artist and from the logic that if drawing it isn't harmful for anyone then seeing it should not be either.
hardluck on
Cynicism is a great help when trying to be sarcastic.
It's entirely possible there are lots of different kinds of pedophilia and we know that there's a variance in how strong the compulsion to act is (and like others have suggested, I'd wager there are a lot of child molestors who are not pedophiles, who simply get off on the control and dominance aspects of it)
Step one is funding some study of this, but I don't think that's possible until pedophiles can admit their thoughts to a psychiatrist or researcher without fear of retaliation. Using convicts as your sample for studies which we do now is about as ludicrous as it would be for any crime and you could determine from it that all poor people are thieves or drug dealers
It's interesting that you make a distinction between
Child molesters: Enjoy control / dominance.
Pedophiles: attraction to children without a control / dominance component.
I wonder if that is actually how it works...or what to make of a child molester who claims to not be a pedophile.
Oh no I wasn't making a hard distinction there, I was just saying I suspect not all child molesters are pedophiles. Certainly most of them are, but given what we know about rape, a lot of the cases of violent sexual assault on children probably have nothing to do with pedophilia (just like aggravated rape has nothing to do with sexual preference)
Certainly someone can be a child rapist and a pedophile at the same time, obviously, and I don't mean to suggest otherwise
I wonder if there's a significant split between people who are interested in children for their appearance (and thus would also be interested in adults that look young) and people interested for the innate power differential (who would thus be interested in children even if they looked mature for their age)? Could have two very different groups under one title.
edit: More than two, since it's been established repeatedly that there's a split between exclusive and non-exclusive pedophiles. This just gets more complicated the more I think about it.
Retributive justice systems have zero effect on recidivism and the "deterrence argument" is a myth. The punishments that exist for child molesters in the United States is already pretty uniquely intrusive and lasting (court-ordered "chemical castration", sex offender registries) in a way that is particular to that sort of offence and not generally found in other kinds of crimes, even other sex crimes. This appears to have no effect as a deterrent and sex offender registries have no effect on recidivism and there's evidence to support they actually do anything except make sex offenders' lives harder in a way that discourages them from having a normalized relationship with society and a crushing any desire they have to see themselves as more than just their illness, which is the opposite of making sure they don't offend again.
Libido-extinguishing drugs (so-called "chemical castration") have shown to be pretty effective in reducing recidivism, but is only applicable so long as the person is a participant in the process (court-ordered or not, it ain't difficult to fake taking meds that you aren't actually). But, as Muse Among Men pointed out, this also nullifies the person's capacity for normal, healthy sexual relationships with adults which in and of itself is a pretty severe penalty again unique to this sort of crime.
Tackling the root issues that cause crime and trying to reduce recidivism by directly going at the underlying causative factors in the offense occurring and addressing the impact the crime has had on the victim and the community (the restorative model of criminal justice versus the retributive one) is important especially in a case like this.
Also: sexual offenders have lower recidivism rates than other felony offenders. When recidivism does occur, it often involves non-sexual crimes, which IMO is partially caused by how disenfranchisement turn sex offenders into socioeconomic pariahs.
There's a folk myth that sex offenders are refractory to treatment and the stats just don't bear that out, especially for nonviolent sex offenders. A lot of nonviolent sex offenders know they have a problem and should be treated more like addicts - people who succumb to compulsions they wish they didn't have.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
It's entirely possible there are lots of different kinds of pedophilia and we know that there's a variance in how strong the compulsion to act is (and like others have suggested, I'd wager there are a lot of child molestors who are not pedophiles, who simply get off on the control and dominance aspects of it)
Step one is funding some study of this, but I don't think that's possible until pedophiles can admit their thoughts to a psychiatrist or researcher without fear of retaliation. Using convicts as your sample for studies which we do now is about as ludicrous as it would be for any crime and you could determine from it that all poor people are thieves or drug dealers
It's interesting that you make a distinction between
Child molesters: Enjoy control / dominance.
Pedophiles: attraction to children without a control / dominance component.
I wonder if that is actually how it works...or what to make of a child molester who claims to not be a pedophile.
Oh no I wasn't making a hard distinction there, I was just saying I suspect not all child molesters are pedophiles. Certainly most of them are, but given what we know about rape, a lot of the cases of violent sexual assault on children probably have nothing to do with pedophilia (just like aggravated rape has nothing to do with sexual preference)
Certainly someone can be a child rapist and a pedophile at the same time, obviously, and I don't mean to suggest otherwise
I'm stuck on the notion that not all child molesters are pedophiles. Prior to reading your post my inclination was:
1) Not all pedophiles are child molesters.
2) All child molesters are pedophiles.
I don't know what it would mean to say that Player A is a child molester, but Player A is not a pedophile. To your rape example, persons generally rape the same class of persons they sexually prefer. Heterosexual men rape women, for example. If we make a distinction between child molesters, or sexual assault in general, and one's preferences for non-violent sexual relations...that seems strange.
I'm not saying you are incorrect. It's just...a strange distinction I had not considered before.
The condition disappeared after it was removed. That is genuinely freaky to me - how could any sort of neurological mishap cause that kind of change to sexual attraction?
Because it's a book full of incredible, frightening, fascinating stories just like the title of people who have the oddest neurological quirks occur for various reasons. The mind is a complex place, and a lot of it is still uncharted territory.
I adore Oliver Sacks. He's probably my favorite author. Everything he's written is gold. Even his older stuff, like Migraine, where the science has been superceded, he's still has a unique talent for gently merging scientific knowledge with human experience.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
The deterrence literature has always confused me, because there are many things that I don't do in my own life, like speeding far above the limit, just because I fear being caught and punished. It just seems like such a common sense notion that punishments keep people from engaging in at least some crimes that I have always thought something must be missing.
The basic thought is that people don't expect to get caught when they commit crimes so the severity of the punishment doesn't affect behavior.
So increase the former. . .
Increasing the perceived chance of getting caught? How would one do that?[/quote]
This isn't necessarily a bad idea, in the abstract.
When we're talking jail time, speed and likelihood of punishment are more important than severity. How could we increase the perceived chance of getting caught... and the speed at which justice is meted out? Well, refocusing our criminal justice system on the crimes we find most important is a good way.
So from my perspective, this means ending the drug war and decriminalizing prostitution. But that's a topic for a different thread.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
I wonder if it is possible to separate issues of pedophilia from issues of child abuse and molestation.
For example, some persons argue that lolicon, japanese animation that sexualizes underage / prepubescent girls, is problematic. Others argue that since no children are harmed in the making of lolicon images the images, themselves, are not harmful.
It seems that these arguments tend to slippery slope from images / fantasies to "but this will encourage persons to fuck children", and then we're back at a conversation about child abuse and molestation. It's akin to the question of whether violent video games cause actual crime.
So, what about pedophilia understood as, "looks at lolicon imagery and is sexually aroused"? Is that, in itself, a problem before we slippery slope to actual instances of child molestation?
Well, the problem is that pretty much any neutral stimulus can become a conditioned stimulus or a second order conditioned stimulus. Everyone has heard of Pavlov's experiments on classical/respondent conditioning but what most people don't know is that he also used a vast variety of other stimuli as the neutral stimulus in other experiments. One stimulus of note was an electric shock. He would shock the dog and then present the food. At first, the shock was an aversive stimulus but after a number of weeks, the dog would react excitedly in response to the electric shock in much the same way as if a non-aversive neutral stimulus had been used.
And sexual arousal is susceptible to classical conditioning in much the same way as salivation.
The question I always had about these experiments is if the conditioning translates into the real world.
As in, are people watching lolicon getting conditioned to find underage girls attractive or are they just getting conditioned to find lolicon attractive?
Did you guys read my posts on that subject?
Specifically, the summary article I linked previously in the thread?
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
Well, the problem is that pretty much any neutral stimulus can become a conditioned stimulus or a second order conditioned stimulus. Everyone has heard of Pavlov's experiments on classical/respondent conditioning but what most people don't know is that he also used a vast variety of other stimuli as the neutral stimulus in other experiments. One stimulus of note was an electric shock. He would shock the dog and then present the food. At first, the shock was an aversive stimulus but after a number of weeks, the dog would react excitedly in response to the electric shock in much the same way as if a non-aversive neutral stimulus had been used.
And sexual arousal is susceptible to classical conditioning in much the same way as salivation.
"He would shock the dog and then present the food."
There is a very strong argument to be made here that, since the shock was not linked to what the dog was doing but rather only to the food appearing (which was a positive thing to the dog), the original averse stimulus could be said to be caution and confusion and after that has cleared the appearance of food would become a prize for enduring the shock. This would be a good indication that having an arbitrary and premature punishment linked to an action, that the subject views as positive, will not act as an effective discouragement.
Except that like the original experiment with the bell, after the response had been conditioned, the dog would salivate after the shock regardless of whether or not the food was presented.
Also, conditioning has been shown to work on things that organisms cannot possibly have conscious control over like immune responses. Conditioning experiments have also been shown to work on animals of vastly different intelligences including things like snails and octopi. It's even been shown to work on single celled organisms.
I mistook the point you were trying to get to with your original comment. I thought it was about the conversation of the harshness punishments. However it being about lolicon->arousal, lolicon=children ->arousal dynamic makes a lot more sense.
There is little question wether or not conditioning works. It works. It's been proven to work and even the whole 'certain cause leading to certain effect' is pretty much the basis of how we view logic. And it is certainly possible that, among other things, lolicon can be used to condition someone towards pedophilia.
However there is somewhat large question mark over the statement: Lolicon causes people to turn to pedophilia. I am aware that you didn't actually make that statement, it was what I inferred to be the point you were trying to make, albeit not as concisely. First of which being that conditioning requires conscious effort towards the change to be effective.
Second one (and in my mind more important) is the fact that exposing someone to lolicon only leads to arousal, if that is what the subject already feels about lolicon. To those of us that don't get aroused, a conditioning to get aroused by it is required first. From this point on a lengthy artictle could be written about wether it's more fair to say that more already feeling aroused lolicon would start to see real life children as targets or would people who get aroused by real life children transfer their affections to drawn figures.
Either way I don't personally see lolicon(or any other type of "art" that attempts to depict children as sexual objects) having enough provable merits to suggest it as the way for pedophiles to unwind. Its only justification comes from the freedom of expression of the artist and from the logic that if drawing it isn't harmful for anyone then seeing it should not be either.
Simple version: The Reflex Arc is a model for stimulus-response relationships. A child sees the flame, reaches for the flame, burns its finger, pulls its finger back. Dewey's critique is that this picture of stimulus-response is too simplistic and reductive. There are numerous other factors involved that influence the situation.
This conversation about the stimulus-response relationship between lolicon and pedophilia seems to use the overly reductive imagery Dewey criticized. We present someone with pictures of lolis, they get aroused, we repeat this process, and yey we made a pedophile.
The end of your post gets to a more helpful, and perhaps more genuine, story where we recognize the individual starts with some predilections when the first lolicon image is presented. The reaction to the image results from a wealth of components not all of which can be quantified.
While we do not know what these (sexual) inclinations are, I would guess they are more complicated than a dog salivating.
I wonder if there's a significant split between people who are interested in children for their appearance (and thus would also be interested in adults that look young) and people interested for the innate power differential (who would thus be interested in children even if they looked mature for their age)? Could have two very different groups under one title.
edit: More than two, since it's been established repeatedly that there's a split between exclusive and non-exclusive pedophiles. This just gets more complicated the more I think about it.
Presumably the power differential could also be manifest by adults who are easily dominated, or lack self-sufficiency in some way.
I agree that it's complicated. I mean, try to explain your own sexual preferences.
I like breasts.
Why?
I like how they look and feel.
Why?
They are soft and comforting.
Why do you like that?
It's entirely possible there are lots of different kinds of pedophilia and we know that there's a variance in how strong the compulsion to act is (and like others have suggested, I'd wager there are a lot of child molestors who are not pedophiles, who simply get off on the control and dominance aspects of it)
Step one is funding some study of this, but I don't think that's possible until pedophiles can admit their thoughts to a psychiatrist or researcher without fear of retaliation. Using convicts as your sample for studies which we do now is about as ludicrous as it would be for any crime and you could determine from it that all poor people are thieves or drug dealers
It's interesting that you make a distinction between
Child molesters: Enjoy control / dominance.
Pedophiles: attraction to children without a control / dominance component.
I wonder if that is actually how it works...or what to make of a child molester who claims to not be a pedophile.
Oh no I wasn't making a hard distinction there, I was just saying I suspect not all child molesters are pedophiles. Certainly most of them are, but given what we know about rape, a lot of the cases of violent sexual assault on children probably have nothing to do with pedophilia (just like aggravated rape has nothing to do with sexual preference)
Certainly someone can be a child rapist and a pedophile at the same time, obviously, and I don't mean to suggest otherwise
I'm stuck on the notion that not all child molesters are pedophiles. Prior to reading your post my inclination was:
1) Not all pedophiles are child molesters.
2) All child molesters are pedophiles.
I don't know what it would mean to say that Player A is a child molester, but Player A is not a pedophile. To your rape example, persons generally rape the same class of persons they sexually prefer. Heterosexual men rape women, for example. If we make a distinction between child molesters, or sexual assault in general, and one's preferences for non-violent sexual relations...that seems strange.
I'm not saying you are incorrect. It's just...a strange distinction I had not considered before.
Pedophile would mean that someone is sexually aroused by children, so if a child molestation occured that was not done for sexual reasons the person committing the molestation wouldn't be a pedophile.
The most believable scenario I see this happening would be in some child abuse cases that have elements of child molestation
Cynicism is a great help when trying to be sarcastic.
question: Is there a distinction made between incest and pedophilia or are they usually the same phenomenon?
It seems like cases of incest abuse tend to go on well past the sexual maturity of the victim and aren't necessarily (usually?) transferred to non family members.
There's a huge overlap, but no they're not the same phenomenon.
Child molestation typically involves an adult and a child who already know each other, where the child has a reason to trust the adult, and where other adults don't think twice about leaving their kids alone with the molester.
So a parent, stepparent, an older sibling, an uncle, etc. So in these cases, incest is simply pedophilia + convenience.
However, there are cases of incest which aren't about pedophilia (as defined as sexual attraction towards a prepubescent or early pubescent child) but are motivated more by a desire of dominance on control.
And more to @_J_'s question: are some child molesters not pedophiles? Yes. Some forms of child sexual abuse do not involve a sexual attraction between the child and the adult, but rather a desire by the adult to debase, humiliate, or control the child. I have no idea what the stats are like for that, though. I've just read of a few cases that have come through court systems, and the adult testimonies of survivors of such abuse.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
It's entirely possible there are lots of different kinds of pedophilia and we know that there's a variance in how strong the compulsion to act is (and like others have suggested, I'd wager there are a lot of child molestors who are not pedophiles, who simply get off on the control and dominance aspects of it)
Step one is funding some study of this, but I don't think that's possible until pedophiles can admit their thoughts to a psychiatrist or researcher without fear of retaliation. Using convicts as your sample for studies which we do now is about as ludicrous as it would be for any crime and you could determine from it that all poor people are thieves or drug dealers
It's interesting that you make a distinction between
Child molesters: Enjoy control / dominance.
Pedophiles: attraction to children without a control / dominance component.
I wonder if that is actually how it works...or what to make of a child molester who claims to not be a pedophile.
Oh no I wasn't making a hard distinction there, I was just saying I suspect not all child molesters are pedophiles. Certainly most of them are, but given what we know about rape, a lot of the cases of violent sexual assault on children probably have nothing to do with pedophilia (just like aggravated rape has nothing to do with sexual preference)
Certainly someone can be a child rapist and a pedophile at the same time, obviously, and I don't mean to suggest otherwise
I'm stuck on the notion that not all child molesters are pedophiles. Prior to reading your post my inclination was:
1) Not all pedophiles are child molesters.
2) All child molesters are pedophiles.
I don't know what it would mean to say that Player A is a child molester, but Player A is not a pedophile. To your rape example, persons generally rape the same class of persons they sexually prefer. Heterosexual men rape women, for example. If we make a distinction between child molesters, or sexual assault in general, and one's preferences for non-violent sexual relations...that seems strange.
I'm not saying you are incorrect. It's just...a strange distinction I had not considered before.
Pedophile would mean that someone is sexually aroused by children, so if a child molestation occured that was not done for sexual reasons the person committing the molestation wouldn't be a pedophile.
The most believable scenario I see this happening would be in some child abuse cases that have elements of child molestation
If that is what pedophilia is, then sure. But we still do not know what pedophilia is.
You're also overlooking the vagueness and complexity of "sexual arousal" and "sexual reasons". We, likely, cannot segment our experience in the way you propose. I mean, with your significant others can you clearly identify the line where your sexual inclinations begin and end, with respect to the other person?
And more to @_J_'s question: are some child molesters not pedophiles? Yes. Some forms of child sexual abuse do not involve a sexual attraction between the child and the adult, but rather a desire by the adult to debase, humiliate, or control the child. I have no idea what the stats are like for that, though. I've just read of a few cases that have come through court systems, and the adult testimonies of survivors of such abuse.
This narrative may be overly simplifying the situation. I'm pretty sure most people's experiences are not divided up into a [debase] box, a [humiliate] box, a [sexual inclination] box, etc. There is, likely, some overlap.
We also may be confusing the language we use to talk about reality with reality, itself. The word "control" is very simple and discrete. The phenomena to which it refers is, likely, not as clear-cut.
That sort of problem runs throughout these sorts of threads. For example, the distinction between "pedophile" and "I like people who look young for their age".
Also the issue of the definition of pedophile being related to the notion of what constitutes a child, and that line is an arbitrary social construct such that different cultures have different lines for when childhood ends and non-childhood begins.
It seems, from the evidence, that it's far easier to reinforce (or extinguish) existing sexual attraction than it is create new forms of attraction. In fact, the latter may be impossible.
It is highly unlikely that somebody who is disgusted by pederasty could be converted into a pedophile.
It is more likely that somebody who already has a sexual interest in children could have that sexual interest reinforced, to a point where they are no longer inhibited to act on it.
It is also possible that somebody might be "taught" to engage in child sexual abuse out of motivations of power and control, not out of direct sexual attraction towards children.
It is also possible to extinguish sexual behaviors and reduce sexual drives.
A note on conversion therapy: when conversion therapy "works," it typically creates a person who is celibate, or who engages in procreative sex only. It effectively reduces the strength of their attraction, or reinforces their feelings of disgust at their own sexual drives. If you want a melodramatic, science fiction metaphor - remember when Alex in A Clockwork Orange would get nauseated at thoughts of sex? Kinda like that.
What it does not do is replace one functional sexuality with another functional sexuality. The converted alumnus typically does not have strong feelings of attraction towards the opposite sex, or do they typically get much pleasure from heterosexual sex. There are some people who claim that they do, but there are also other gay men who have 'come clean' after leaving a church and admitted that when they said that they liked having sex with their wives, they were lying and were fantasizing about men the whole time.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
And more to @_J_'s question: are some child molesters not pedophiles? Yes. Some forms of child sexual abuse do not involve a sexual attraction between the child and the adult, but rather a desire by the adult to debase, humiliate, or control the child. I have no idea what the stats are like for that, though. I've just read of a few cases that have come through court systems, and the adult testimonies of survivors of such abuse.
This narrative may be overly simplifying the situation. I'm pretty sure most people's experiences are not divided up into a [debase] box, a [humiliate] box, a [sexual inclination] box, etc. There is, likely, some overlap.
We also may be confusing the language we use to talk about reality with reality, itself. The word "control" is very simple and discrete. The phenomena to which it refers is, likely, not as clear-cut.
That sort of problem runs throughout these sorts of threads. For example, the distinction between "pedophile" and "I like people who look young for their age".
Also the issue of the definition of pedophile being related to the notion of what constitutes a child, and that line is an arbitrary social construct such that different cultures have different lines for when childhood ends and non-childhood begins.
It's complicated.
Oh, yes, there is absolutely overlap, and these issues are very messy.
There is a difference between getting sexual and emotional pleasure directly from the body of a child, versus getting sexual and emotional pleasure from the dominance and humiliation of a human being who happens to be a child.
It's hard to tell the difference in real life, and some molesters may experience both to varying degrees, but I don't think it's folly to recognize that there is a difference.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
It's entirely possible there are lots of different kinds of pedophilia and we know that there's a variance in how strong the compulsion to act is (and like others have suggested, I'd wager there are a lot of child molestors who are not pedophiles, who simply get off on the control and dominance aspects of it)
Step one is funding some study of this, but I don't think that's possible until pedophiles can admit their thoughts to a psychiatrist or researcher without fear of retaliation. Using convicts as your sample for studies which we do now is about as ludicrous as it would be for any crime and you could determine from it that all poor people are thieves or drug dealers
It's interesting that you make a distinction between
Child molesters: Enjoy control / dominance.
Pedophiles: attraction to children without a control / dominance component.
I wonder if that is actually how it works...or what to make of a child molester who claims to not be a pedophile.
Oh no I wasn't making a hard distinction there, I was just saying I suspect not all child molesters are pedophiles. Certainly most of them are, but given what we know about rape, a lot of the cases of violent sexual assault on children probably have nothing to do with pedophilia (just like aggravated rape has nothing to do with sexual preference)
Certainly someone can be a child rapist and a pedophile at the same time, obviously, and I don't mean to suggest otherwise
I'm stuck on the notion that not all child molesters are pedophiles. Prior to reading your post my inclination was:
1) Not all pedophiles are child molesters.
2) All child molesters are pedophiles.
I don't know what it would mean to say that Player A is a child molester, but Player A is not a pedophile. To your rape example, persons generally rape the same class of persons they sexually prefer. Heterosexual men rape women, for example. If we make a distinction between child molesters, or sexual assault in general, and one's preferences for non-violent sexual relations...that seems strange.
I'm not saying you are incorrect. It's just...a strange distinction I had not considered before.
I'm thinking now of a specific person who was named in the recent celebrity child abuse investigations in the UK, I wont be specific because its not really relevent.
Now, the rumors about said person (well before they were named for child abuse) were that they were into what could broadly be called Nasty Shit. Humiliation, scat play, farming himself out as a rent boy while still ostensibly identifying as straight ect.
Now whether thats true or not I know there do exist people who are like that, people for whom the appeal isn't so much children per se, but taboo breaking in any form.
And more to @_J_'s question: are some child molesters not pedophiles? Yes. Some forms of child sexual abuse do not involve a sexual attraction between the child and the adult, but rather a desire by the adult to debase, humiliate, or control the child. I have no idea what the stats are like for that, though. I've just read of a few cases that have come through court systems, and the adult testimonies of survivors of such abuse.
This narrative may be overly simplifying the situation. I'm pretty sure most people's experiences are not divided up into a [debase] box, a [humiliate] box, a [sexual inclination] box, etc. There is, likely, some overlap.
We also may be confusing the language we use to talk about reality with reality, itself. The word "control" is very simple and discrete. The phenomena to which it refers is, likely, not as clear-cut.
That sort of problem runs throughout these sorts of threads. For example, the distinction between "pedophile" and "I like people who look young for their age".
Also the issue of the definition of pedophile being related to the notion of what constitutes a child, and that line is an arbitrary social construct such that different cultures have different lines for when childhood ends and non-childhood begins.
It's complicated.
Oh, yes, there is absolutely overlap, and these issues are very messy.
There is a difference between getting sexual and emotional pleasure directly from the body of a child, versus getting sexual and emotional pleasure from the dominance and humiliation of a human being who happens to be a child.
It's hard to tell the difference in real life, and some molesters may experience both to varying degrees, but I don't think it's folly to recognize that there is a difference.
The notion of their being different is beholden to a notion of similarity. We build up categories by appeals to similarity.
I agree that it is not folly to recognize a difference. I am more inclined to say it is folly to posit a similarity. Part of saying that the inclinations to molest differ from the inclinations of pedophiles is to presume some similarities between all those instances we categorize as molestation as opposed to instances of pedophilia.
That may not make sense.
I'm trying to caution against the notion that we can say:
Set of molestation contains [P, Q, R]
Set of pedophilia contains [X, Y, Z]
Set of overlap between molestation and pedophilia [L, M, N]
We can likely say that X is different from P.
The problem is articulating how one discerns a similarity between P, Q, and R.
Edit: All this is just another way of saying, "We have not clearly defined what pedophilia is."
All this is just another way of saying, "We have not clearly defined what pedophilia is."
Well, that's a funny thing about the social sciences. Sometimes the definitions have to come after years or decades of investigation and information-gathering.
Psychologists and sociologists have to work with what they've got. If you try to conclusively define X before you have enough data about X to adequately explain it, you just come across looking like Plato defining a man as "a bipedal featherless animal" and looking stupid when Diogenes shows up at your Academy with a plucked chicken.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
Posts
This is a digression, but wouldn't hate crimes legislation deal with motivations.
Also, given that you are talking about determining the level of punishment, isn't motivation a major factor in sentencing?
It seems like you mixed the concepts of motivation and the motive. In so far as I can tell about the US legal system 'The Motive' is not only an element in the process, it's one of the three fundamental parts needed to even prosecute anyone of any crime.
I don't know if it was an error in logic or just poorly chosen wording but please put a little more thought into it. These kinds of mistakes can lead to absurd and pointless arguments.
No they don't, they just require the crime to be motivated by specific prejudices. Killing a black guy because he's black is a hate crime, killing him because you hate him because he slept with your wife isn't.
Surely if the judge agrees that a particular case needs a harsh sentence, he can do so? Why are you overriding the judges ability to sentence as the case demands it?
Yeah, I have a serious problem with something being illegal because people view it as "immoral" or because it shows someone has "immoral character" and because it might, possibly, MAYBE have a chance of making them a bit more likely to do something illegal. Laws against fictional porn like that always seem to me to be really weak, and justifications for it draw on every flimsy argument they can so those advocating it can avoid just saying "It's illegal because I think it's icky, and really for no better reason than that."
I have to admit that I don't know enough about the subject to say for sure wether it is my ignorance of the subject that is preventing me from making sense this, is the argument somehow flawed, or is it just about abstract semantics. Regardless I feel that it has very very little to do with the topic at hand and would like to inform you that I am not interested in pursuing this any further in this thread. If you feel that there is a reasonable chance for a mutually rewarding conversation, please make a new thread for it and I will join you there.
Motive is taken into account in sentencing though. As well as how likely judge views the possibility of recidivism.
Now I can see the argument that since pedophilia may have a naturally higher chance of recidivism than other crimes it should be sentenced harsher. But to say that motive isn't taken into account at all in determining punishment is just wrong.
the premeditation standard for first-degree murder specifically speaks to motivation/ motive.
Premeditation isn't necessarily about motive so much as it is about the willfulness of the offender; however, motive can be an important and necessary element of the crime. The difference between second degree murder and voluntary manslaughter is essentially the state of mind of the offender at the moment he committed a homicide -- to what degree was the unpremeditated murder provoked? Likewise, motive is an important element of any hate crime, in which the offender must be shown to have perpetrated a crime against a victim motivated primarily because of the victim's membership within a specific social group or class, such as a race, ethnicity or sexual orientation.
Knowing that recidivism rates are less than 50% even over 20 years, as we discussed earlier in the thread, I don't think that we should lock them up and throw away the key. I am certain there is room for significant improvement in that number as well, since our current methods of "rehabilitation" are barely worthy of the name. Additionally, under your system I can't see how anyone would ever come forward for treatment since even the possibility of a false accusation and conviction would be life-ending.
Additionally, I have no idea how you think we are going to increase enforcement of child molestation. Every teacher and health care provider already has a duty to report any suspicions, and law enforcement has many task forces specifically devoted towards childhood sexual abuse. There are already a lot of resources going toward this area.
Why?
Why is that an automatic life sentence but white collar crimes that destroy the lives of hundreds, if not thousands of people worthy only of a fine and maybe some light prison time in your eyes?
1) Should pedophilia, in and of itself, in the absence of any act, be treated as a crime?
2) Should a person convicted of child molestation be automatically sentenced to life imprisonment?
I feel like we all agree that the response to #1 is "no". Obviously, there's quite a lot of room for discussion on we should do, and how society should treat pedophiles in general, but I'm pretty sure that no one wants to get a magic brain scanner and lock up all the people who have sexual thoughts about children but never actually act out on those thoughts.
#2 is just kind of a ridiculous argument. I'm sorry, but it doesn't pass the smell test. It's literally the same argument that can be leveled against any crime anywhere, as a subjective judgment on the severity of that crime and the nature of the criminal, applied to a whole class of people. (Read that three times fast.) You could say the same thing for murderers, right? If you have murdered someone, then you should just be locked up forever. Or better yet, you should be executed. That way you can't kill someone ever again. Or rapists. Anyone who rapes should be locked up forever. Or castrated and then locked up forever. Just do something to all of them and make sure it lasts forever so they can't do it again.
Look, skfm, I know where you're coming from, but that kind of opinion just plain doesn't take into account the way the world works. No criminal justice system is perfect. People are wrongly convicted all the time. People who are guilty go free. It is entirely heavy-handed to simply lock away everyone who is convicted of a particular crime forever. Furthermore, it doesn't take into account the human nature of crime itself. Not all crimes are the same, and not all criminals are the same. That's why judges exist in the first place - because the nature of justice for any given offense will vary depending upon the particular case in question. Otherwise, we would have no need for a sentencing portion, and all crimes will have the exact same punishment. Someone who steals food to feed his starving family is different from someone who steals food to sell it and pay for a gun to rape a woman. Someone who molests a child by forcing her to have sex with him is different from someone who molests a child by virtue of statutory rape (e.g., a 19 year-old having consensual intercourse with his 17 year-old girlfriend).
If you just refuse to consider these kinds of issues when making your opinion known, then I think it's clear to everyone that you're just holding onto a particular blind spot and refusing to let it go. Yes, child molestation is a horrendous crime. But many crimes are horrendous in nature, and that doesn't preclude them from being evaluated as part of a larger system, rather than simply knee-jerking into a "lock them up and throw away the key" response. The nature of law is inexact and imperfect, so it's important for us to take these things into account when having discussions, as a society, about how we want them to exist.
Except that like the original experiment with the bell, after the response had been conditioned, the dog would salivate after the shock regardless of whether or not the food was presented.
Also, conditioning has been shown to work on things that organisms cannot possibly have conscious control over like immune responses. Conditioning experiments have also been shown to work on animals of vastly different intelligences including things like snails and octopi. It's even been shown to work on single celled organisms.
question: Is there a distinction made between incest and pedophilia or are they usually the same phenomenon?
It seems like cases of incest abuse tend to go on well past the sexual maturity of the victim and aren't necessarily (usually?) transferred to non family members.
Again, the amount of vagueness, generality, and confusion in these sorts of posts is problematic.
Is pedophilia a sexual orientation, in the same sense that heterosexuality and homosexuality are categorized as sexual orientations?* Which orientations are acquired through learning, and which are manifestations of natural tendencies? Are there natural tendencies? How would we separate learned tendencies from innate ones?
We likely do not know how many of these processes actually work.
*The answers to these sorts of questions are, likely, question begging.
Step one is funding some study of this, but I don't think that's possible until pedophiles can admit their thoughts to a psychiatrist or researcher without fear of retaliation. Using convicts as your sample for studies which we do now is about as ludicrous as it would be for any crime and you could determine from it that all poor people are thieves or drug dealers
Greater -
Male
Female
Both
Adult/child
Animals (?)
"Anything that moves. Or doesn't."
Lesser -
Weight
Height
Hair/Eye/Skin colour
(Within legal range) Age
Religion
For example, you never hear someone go "Normally I only like women, but man that guy is just SO TALL." but you do hear "Normally I like brunettes but I don't mind dating blondes."
Mind you, 'lesser' orientations can sometimes be as strong as greater ones. A lot of people will refuse to date someone outside their religion, or someone who is 'too fat', and so on.
Additionally I think pedophilia is the only 'greater' orientation that (sometimes tenuously*) links with other 'greater' orientations.
* I imagine some pedophiles are only interested in one gender, some both and some 'just don't care'.
Edit - I realize there are more categories, this is just a short list to give a general idea.
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It's interesting that you make a distinction between
Child molesters: Enjoy control / dominance.
Pedophiles: attraction to children without a control / dominance component.
I wonder if that is actually how it works...or what to make of a child molester who claims to not be a pedophile.
I mistook the point you were trying to get to with your original comment. I thought it was about the conversation of the harshness punishments. However it being about lolicon->arousal, lolicon=children ->arousal dynamic makes a lot more sense.
There is little question wether or not conditioning works. It works. It's been proven to work and even the whole 'certain cause leading to certain effect' is pretty much the basis of how we view logic. And it is certainly possible that, among other things, lolicon can be used to condition someone towards pedophilia.
However there is somewhat large question mark over the statement: Lolicon causes people to turn to pedophilia. I am aware that you didn't actually make that statement, it was what I inferred to be the point you were trying to make, albeit not as concisely. First of which being that conditioning requires conscious effort towards the change to be effective.
Second one (and in my mind more important) is the fact that exposing someone to lolicon only leads to arousal, if that is what the subject already feels about lolicon. To those of us that don't get aroused, a conditioning to get aroused by it is required first. From this point on a lengthy artictle could be written about wether it's more fair to say that more already feeling aroused lolicon would start to see real life children as targets or would people who get aroused by real life children transfer their affections to drawn figures.
Either way I don't personally see lolicon(or any other type of "art" that attempts to depict children as sexual objects) having enough provable merits to suggest it as the way for pedophiles to unwind. Its only justification comes from the freedom of expression of the artist and from the logic that if drawing it isn't harmful for anyone then seeing it should not be either.
Oh no I wasn't making a hard distinction there, I was just saying I suspect not all child molesters are pedophiles. Certainly most of them are, but given what we know about rape, a lot of the cases of violent sexual assault on children probably have nothing to do with pedophilia (just like aggravated rape has nothing to do with sexual preference)
Certainly someone can be a child rapist and a pedophile at the same time, obviously, and I don't mean to suggest otherwise
edit: More than two, since it's been established repeatedly that there's a split between exclusive and non-exclusive pedophiles. This just gets more complicated the more I think about it.
Also: sexual offenders have lower recidivism rates than other felony offenders. When recidivism does occur, it often involves non-sexual crimes, which IMO is partially caused by how disenfranchisement turn sex offenders into socioeconomic pariahs.
There's a folk myth that sex offenders are refractory to treatment and the stats just don't bear that out, especially for nonviolent sex offenders. A lot of nonviolent sex offenders know they have a problem and should be treated more like addicts - people who succumb to compulsions they wish they didn't have.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I'm stuck on the notion that not all child molesters are pedophiles. Prior to reading your post my inclination was:
1) Not all pedophiles are child molesters.
2) All child molesters are pedophiles.
I don't know what it would mean to say that Player A is a child molester, but Player A is not a pedophile. To your rape example, persons generally rape the same class of persons they sexually prefer. Heterosexual men rape women, for example. If we make a distinction between child molesters, or sexual assault in general, and one's preferences for non-violent sexual relations...that seems strange.
I'm not saying you are incorrect. It's just...a strange distinction I had not considered before.
I adore Oliver Sacks. He's probably my favorite author. Everything he's written is gold. Even his older stuff, like Migraine, where the science has been superceded, he's still has a unique talent for gently merging scientific knowledge with human experience.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
This isn't necessarily a bad idea, in the abstract.
When we're talking jail time, speed and likelihood of punishment are more important than severity. How could we increase the perceived chance of getting caught... and the speed at which justice is meted out? Well, refocusing our criminal justice system on the crimes we find most important is a good way.
So from my perspective, this means ending the drug war and decriminalizing prostitution. But that's a topic for a different thread.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Did you guys read my posts on that subject?
Specifically, the summary article I linked previously in the thread?
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Your post, and this conversation sequence, reminds me of Dewey's article on The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology.
Simple version: The Reflex Arc is a model for stimulus-response relationships. A child sees the flame, reaches for the flame, burns its finger, pulls its finger back. Dewey's critique is that this picture of stimulus-response is too simplistic and reductive. There are numerous other factors involved that influence the situation.
This conversation about the stimulus-response relationship between lolicon and pedophilia seems to use the overly reductive imagery Dewey criticized. We present someone with pictures of lolis, they get aroused, we repeat this process, and yey we made a pedophile.
The end of your post gets to a more helpful, and perhaps more genuine, story where we recognize the individual starts with some predilections when the first lolicon image is presented. The reaction to the image results from a wealth of components not all of which can be quantified.
While we do not know what these (sexual) inclinations are, I would guess they are more complicated than a dog salivating.
Presumably the power differential could also be manifest by adults who are easily dominated, or lack self-sufficiency in some way.
I agree that it's complicated. I mean, try to explain your own sexual preferences.
I like breasts.
Why?
I like how they look and feel.
Why?
They are soft and comforting.
Why do you like that?
At some point the story is just, "I like that."
Pedophile would mean that someone is sexually aroused by children, so if a child molestation occured that was not done for sexual reasons the person committing the molestation wouldn't be a pedophile.
The most believable scenario I see this happening would be in some child abuse cases that have elements of child molestation
There's a huge overlap, but no they're not the same phenomenon.
Child molestation typically involves an adult and a child who already know each other, where the child has a reason to trust the adult, and where other adults don't think twice about leaving their kids alone with the molester.
So a parent, stepparent, an older sibling, an uncle, etc. So in these cases, incest is simply pedophilia + convenience.
However, there are cases of incest which aren't about pedophilia (as defined as sexual attraction towards a prepubescent or early pubescent child) but are motivated more by a desire of dominance on control.
And more to @_J_'s question: are some child molesters not pedophiles? Yes. Some forms of child sexual abuse do not involve a sexual attraction between the child and the adult, but rather a desire by the adult to debase, humiliate, or control the child. I have no idea what the stats are like for that, though. I've just read of a few cases that have come through court systems, and the adult testimonies of survivors of such abuse.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
If that is what pedophilia is, then sure. But we still do not know what pedophilia is.
You're also overlooking the vagueness and complexity of "sexual arousal" and "sexual reasons". We, likely, cannot segment our experience in the way you propose. I mean, with your significant others can you clearly identify the line where your sexual inclinations begin and end, with respect to the other person?
This narrative may be overly simplifying the situation. I'm pretty sure most people's experiences are not divided up into a [debase] box, a [humiliate] box, a [sexual inclination] box, etc. There is, likely, some overlap.
We also may be confusing the language we use to talk about reality with reality, itself. The word "control" is very simple and discrete. The phenomena to which it refers is, likely, not as clear-cut.
That sort of problem runs throughout these sorts of threads. For example, the distinction between "pedophile" and "I like people who look young for their age".
Also the issue of the definition of pedophile being related to the notion of what constitutes a child, and that line is an arbitrary social construct such that different cultures have different lines for when childhood ends and non-childhood begins.
It's complicated.
regarding the mutability of sexual attraction
It seems, from the evidence, that it's far easier to reinforce (or extinguish) existing sexual attraction than it is create new forms of attraction. In fact, the latter may be impossible.
It is highly unlikely that somebody who is disgusted by pederasty could be converted into a pedophile.
It is more likely that somebody who already has a sexual interest in children could have that sexual interest reinforced, to a point where they are no longer inhibited to act on it.
It is also possible that somebody might be "taught" to engage in child sexual abuse out of motivations of power and control, not out of direct sexual attraction towards children.
It is also possible to extinguish sexual behaviors and reduce sexual drives.
A note on conversion therapy: when conversion therapy "works," it typically creates a person who is celibate, or who engages in procreative sex only. It effectively reduces the strength of their attraction, or reinforces their feelings of disgust at their own sexual drives. If you want a melodramatic, science fiction metaphor - remember when Alex in A Clockwork Orange would get nauseated at thoughts of sex? Kinda like that.
What it does not do is replace one functional sexuality with another functional sexuality. The converted alumnus typically does not have strong feelings of attraction towards the opposite sex, or do they typically get much pleasure from heterosexual sex. There are some people who claim that they do, but there are also other gay men who have 'come clean' after leaving a church and admitted that when they said that they liked having sex with their wives, they were lying and were fantasizing about men the whole time.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Oh, yes, there is absolutely overlap, and these issues are very messy.
There is a difference between getting sexual and emotional pleasure directly from the body of a child, versus getting sexual and emotional pleasure from the dominance and humiliation of a human being who happens to be a child.
It's hard to tell the difference in real life, and some molesters may experience both to varying degrees, but I don't think it's folly to recognize that there is a difference.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I'm thinking now of a specific person who was named in the recent celebrity child abuse investigations in the UK, I wont be specific because its not really relevent.
Now, the rumors about said person (well before they were named for child abuse) were that they were into what could broadly be called Nasty Shit. Humiliation, scat play, farming himself out as a rent boy while still ostensibly identifying as straight ect.
Now whether thats true or not I know there do exist people who are like that, people for whom the appeal isn't so much children per se, but taboo breaking in any form.
The notion of their being different is beholden to a notion of similarity. We build up categories by appeals to similarity.
I agree that it is not folly to recognize a difference. I am more inclined to say it is folly to posit a similarity. Part of saying that the inclinations to molest differ from the inclinations of pedophiles is to presume some similarities between all those instances we categorize as molestation as opposed to instances of pedophilia.
That may not make sense.
I'm trying to caution against the notion that we can say:
Set of molestation contains [P, Q, R]
Set of pedophilia contains [X, Y, Z]
Set of overlap between molestation and pedophilia [L, M, N]
We can likely say that X is different from P.
The problem is articulating how one discerns a similarity between P, Q, and R.
Edit: All this is just another way of saying, "We have not clearly defined what pedophilia is."
Well, that's a funny thing about the social sciences. Sometimes the definitions have to come after years or decades of investigation and information-gathering.
Psychologists and sociologists have to work with what they've got. If you try to conclusively define X before you have enough data about X to adequately explain it, you just come across looking like Plato defining a man as "a bipedal featherless animal" and looking stupid when Diogenes shows up at your Academy with a plucked chicken.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.