Swedish Courts: Imaginary Children Aren't Real

[Captain Anon]

-faceplams then facedesks-

 

[ElPatron]

From the article, it does sound

Good. If anything, this can help pedophiles release their urges since society shuns them so much.
In case you don't know, pedophilia is not a choice. Having sex with a child is a choice.

I'm aware that most wants to do awful things to other people aren't choices, hence wants. On the other hand I'd need some proof that this helps them. It could be easily argued the other way. For example for angry people, 'releasing their anger' like people advise has been proven to often make them more angry people. Maybe we should be fighting our basic nature at all levels and this is a slippery slope

"Because letting homosexual people bum each other makes them even more homosexual! Burn the sinners!"

Wait, what...?

I wanted to bring you in again because I found research that suggests that exposure to child pornography actually does lead to an increase in child molesting. The research is not fully conclusive but I haven't found any studies that suggest it would decrease sexual urges

One of the studies was from 1965.

About the correlation between sexual assault of women and pornography: perhaps a more "hardcore" rapist will have an increased desire to search for that kind of violent imagery compared to the "average" rapist?

I mean, someone who is violent will not become more violent for playing videogames. Simply they will try to seek more violent games than the average gamer. Am I right? Because correlation does not imply causation.

 

[BrotherRool]

From the article, it does sound

Good. If anything, this can help pedophiles release their urges since society shuns them so much.
In case you don't know, pedophilia is not a choice. Having sex with a child is a choice.

I'm aware that most wants to do awful things to other people aren't choices, hence wants. On the other hand I'd need some proof that this helps them. It could be easily argued the other way. For example for angry people, 'releasing their anger' like people advise has been proven to often make them more angry people. Maybe we should be fighting our basic nature at all levels and this is a slippery slope

"Because letting homosexual people bum each other makes them even more homosexual! Burn the sinners!"

Wait, what...?

Yeah I think 'Wait, what...?' is pretty big there. We're talking about people who want to have sex with children. It's an unfortunate position to be in and crippling in life but also unallowable, why do you feel that I have a position on homosexuality? I'm sorry I've caused you offence, but I neither think nor believe that. My position was with activities that are wrong (ie being angry, having sex with children) and about whether relief actually helps cure those things. Scientists don't seem to have a clear conclusion either way and their have to be numerous studies in favour of both sides. I don't feel homosexuality is applicable because it's not wrong and so there would be no need to prevent yourself. If expressing your feelings makes you want to express them more, then whats the problem with that? If you have a problem with it, then I'm sorry, but I don't see any problem with people who have sex (potentially) wanting to have more sex

I wanted to bring you in again because I found research that suggests that exposure to child pornography actually does lead to an increase in child molesting. The research is not fully conclusive but I haven't found any studies that suggest it would decrease sexual urges

One of the studies was from 1965.

About the correlation between sexual assault of women and pornography: perhaps a more "hardcore" rapist will have an increased desire to search for that kind of violent imagery compared to the "average" rapist?

I mean, someone who is violent will not become more violent for playing videogames. Simply they will try to seek more violent games than the average gamer. Am I right? Because correlation does not imply causation.[/quote]

Yes but these studies weren't statistical studies but controlled experiments with forced exposure, although correlation doesn't imply causation here, it is stronger than statistical data internally and definitely stronger than no evidence altogether. The statistical studies we've found so far have been much more supportive of the counter-hypothesis, but those are a lot more open to problems with correlation.

It would be incorrect to take any position on this with adequate data and at the moment we've come to the conclusion that there just isn't any kind of scientific consensus either way, if you feel the allegations are false we would genuinely love for you to provide us with some kind of decisive study. One of the people has a lot of contact with peadophiles and many of the people she speaks to says they find pornography helps, so a conclusive study that shows this would be the case would help put her mind at rest a lot.

 

[ElPatron]

I don't feel homosexuality is applicable because it's not wrong

I was hoping you would see where I was getting at.

Homosexuality used to be considered "wrong" and even illegal in many countries. Just like pedophilia, it's something you can't control.

Yes but these studies weren't statistical studies but controlled experiments with forced exposure

I don't trust those kind of results. If I was forced to be exposed to "let the bodies hit the floor" and violent imagery I'd go nuts in no time.

Wait, what?

"exposure to child pornography actually does lead to an increase in child molesting."

Controlled environment? Child molesting? Forced exposure?

I really hope I am misunderstanding something, because if I got that right there are a few "scientists" that require an urgent lobotomy.

 

[BrotherRool]

I don't feel homosexuality is applicable because it's not wrong

I was hoping you would see where I was getting at.

Homosexuality used to be considered "wrong" and even illegal in many countries. Just like pedophilia, it's something you can't control.

Yes but the point I was making is this is something that's never going to change. It's never going to be okay to have sex with children and it's always going to be in societies best interests to prevent this from happening, which is completely different from homosexuality.

And this helps. Perhaps whats confusing me so much is why everyone seems to be taking a side here. This isn't a moral issue. Either giving in to partial cravings increases the desire to be satisifed overall, or relieving the tension through acceptable stimuli that aren't the unacceptable at relieves the tension. Where's the contention here? Okay I can see that some people would naturally assume the one way and all I was doing was challenging that assumption, which turned out to be a valid challenge. But then once we've realised we've got to rely on something better than just intuition why haven't we done that? There doesn't appear to be scientific consensus, no single study is going to prove this one way or the other, but a proper scientific study, conducted by people in the profession is still better than people saying 'yeah but that studies not conclusive'

Okay I agree, I'm actually of the opinion that the studies weren't conclusive. But that doesn't validate the opposite position one iota either, you can (and should) challenge them, but unless you've presented some evidence, you should be even less allowed to hold the other opinion because never mind being a chance of coincidence in correlation, thats a whole lot better than a completely unsubstantiated opinion.

I mean apart from some really iffy studies connecting the decline in rape for the last 20 years with the internet and thus availability of pornography (and ignoring the even steeper decline of murder, assault, mugging etc over exactly the same period) the only studies we've found supporting pornography alleviates molesting, have also been put forward by me. Why haven't other people done this?

 

[NiPah]

Snip

From http://www.who.int/gender/violence/who_multicountry_study/summary_report/chapter2/en/index2.html

Japan also had the lowest level of sexual violence at 6%, with the highest figure of 59% being reported in Ethiopia.

also

The proportion of women who had ever suffered physical violence by a male partner ranged from 13% in Japan to 61% in provincial Peru.

Thought those stats were interesting as far as the argument porn makes you violent. I wouldn't use these stats as a valid argument that porn does not make you violent, but to point out the futility of trying to study what makes people violent (sexual or not) in the first place.

Most of what is written out there, even the peer reviewed stuff, is extremely biased and grounded in little more then educated guess work by people who have very small reporting pools (self report on sexual deviance is next to 0% on the best of days).

 

[BrotherRool]

Snip

From http://www.who.int/gender/violence/who_multicountry_study/summary_report/chapter2/en/index2.html

Japan also had the lowest level of sexual violence at 6%, with the highest figure of 59% being reported in Ethiopia.

also

The proportion of women who had ever suffered physical violence by a male partner ranged from 13% in Japan to 61% in provincial Peru.

Thought those stats were interesting as far as the argument porn makes you violent. I wouldn't use these stats as a valid argument that porn does not make you violent, but to point out the futility of trying to study what makes people violent (sexual or not) in the first place.

Most of what is written out there, even the peer reviewed stuff, is extremely biased and grounded in little more then educated guess work by people who have very small reporting pools (self report on sexual deviance is next to 0% on the best of days).

The problem with snipping me is so many people have quoted me at so many points in the discussion, I can't place where the quote comes from

But thank you for the study, it is interesting and valuable. I think the position I'm at at the moment is that there's just no way for anyone to reasonably draw any conclusion either way. Which is really poor because it means the people making legislature the world over basically have a 50% chance of making laws that are actively making this situation worse. But what can you do about it? It's a scarring topic and it's tricky even to get accurate figures for the level of violence that occurred even this year in one country, how can people accurately identify very particular causes when we can't even monitor that precisely?

 

[Sozac]

The problem with snipping me is so many people have quoted me at so many points in the discussion, I can't place where the quote comes from

But thank you for the study, it is interesting and valuable. I think the position I'm at at the moment is that there's just no way for anyone to reasonably draw any conclusion either way. Which is really poor because it means the people making legislature the world over basically have a 50% chance of making laws that are actively making this situation worse. But what can you do about it? It's a scarring topic and it's tricky even to get accurate figures for the level of violence that occurred even this year in one country, how can people accurately identify very particular causes when we can't even monitor that precisely?

Just wanted to let you know BrotherRool, that following this thread you have done a good job of sticking to evidence and looking at this with impartiality. What's funny is this discussion got me interested with all the studies of pedophilia and how this is still an ambiguous topic in the scientific community. But the funny part is I went on youtube and watched a To catch a predator snip and decided to try and voice the minority opinion in the comments on there saying like "Wow, this is humiliating. They may be pedos, but they need psychiatric help, not this." I got so many raging replies with things like "Cut their balls off!" While this is a bit off topic from the whole "does pornography help argument" since these guys actually were going to commit a crime, the point is I am just glad the Escapist community is filled with much more intelligent, well thought out discussion on both sides.

 

[BrotherRool]

Just wanted to let you know BrotherRool, that following this thread you have done a good job of sticking to evidence and looking at this with impartiality. What's funny is this discussion got me interested with all the studies of pedophilia and how this is still an ambiguous topic in the scientific community. But the funny part is I went on youtube and watched a To catch a predator snip and decided to try and voice the minority opinion in the comments on there saying like "Wow, this is humiliating. They may be pedos, but they need psychiatric help, not this." I got so many raging replies with things like "Cut their balls off!" While this is a bit off topic from the whole "does pornography help argument", considering these guys actually were going to commit a crime, the point is I am just glad the Escapist community is filled with much more intelligent, well thought out discussion on either side.

Thanks I really do appreciate that, and it's kind of you, I'm afraid I was getting a bit raggedy at points. You're complete right about the community, the most impressive thing, which has been really amazing is how everyone wants this to work for everyone involved, instead of just condemning blindly and refusing to empathise.

 

[waj9876]

I went on youtube

First mistake right there. You went to youtube comments for a serious topic and presented a minority viewpoint. Everyone knows 50% of youtube comments are from little boys pretending to be old enough to use youtube. 40% are from boys pretending to be girls. And the final 10% are from the rational and intelligent people of both genders. Seriously, the fuck did you expect to happen?

 

[ElPatron]

I don't feel homosexuality is applicable because it's not wrong

I was hoping you would see where I was getting at.

Homosexuality used to be considered "wrong" and even illegal in many countries. Just like pedophilia, it's something you can't control.

Yes but the point I was making is this is something that's never going to change. It's never going to be okay to have sex with children and it's always going to be in societies best interests to prevent this from happening, which is completely different from homosexuality.

If I live until the year 3012 and pedophilia is legal in the western world by then can I show your tombstone my tongue and go "nhaa-nhaa-nhaaaaa"?

Although by then I don't know if I would be able to do anything besides that...

 

[Reptiloid]

I quite enjoy pancakes... savor the flavor!

 

[Belated]

Congratulations Sweden. You have won me over. If the US falls apart, I know where I'm moving.

 

[Enthuril]

Also, just to point out specifics, using the term Paedophiles to refer to sex offenders is horrifyingly incorrect. Paedophiles are people who have a sexual attraction to children, which is not a sex offence in itself. Paraphilias as they are known aren't chosen actions and are related to sexual attraction whereas sex offences are the actual abusing of a child or looking at child pornography, which I think we'll all agree is a choice. Strangely enough because of my time on the internet I've known several paedophiles and the regular consensus is that they're against having sexual intercourse or anything similar with children because it harms the child, and the majority that I've spoken to in fact dislike the fact that they're paedophiles.

FINALLY, someone sensible who doesn't just go with uninformed masses, screaming their heads off about how sick and wrong it is, making ridiculous claims with no grounding in reality that all pedophiles are somehow rapists and murderers...

+1 faith in humanity, thank you Sir!

I'm kind of getting sick of all the people who think that, and only on the internet can you actually stand up and say something about it without being accused of being one of them. Though, I'm not sure that sir was the right word for me.

 

[BrotherRool]

If I live until the year 3012 and pedophilia is legal in the western world by then can I show your tombstone my tongue and go "nhaa-nhaa-nhaaaaa"?

Although by then I don't know if I would be able to do anything besides that...

Yes you can
There have been periods of history where it was acceptable, ancient Greece most notably, but I don't think it can ever be good for society because it's never going to be possible to sure that the children are giving informed meaningful consent, and it's not right to have sex without the consent of the other person

 

[cefm]

The U.S. Supreme Court (back when it behaved somewhat rationally.....in 2001) ruled on the same issue the same way. Not sure why people here think the law is different in the U.S.

 

[melefnom]

There was a time when men would marry girls who had just reached puberty. Those men would be called pedophiles today.

Isn't that technically ephebophilia(sp?)? I thought the hallmark of pedophilia was pre-pubescence...

It is, however the general public rarely makes a distinction. Which is sad within itself, because one is something that could actually be considered quite natural and part of our instincts and the other isn't.

I REALLY hope you are refering to PEDOPHILIA. But anyway, what makes you think that one "could actually be considered quite natural and part of our instincts and the other isn't."? I love how people try to define "natural" and part of OUR (whose?) instincts in base of what THEY like. I think they are natural, normal and part of our instincts.

Both pedophilia and ephebophilia are natural and part of OUR instincts. Our=we human race.

Do people like you actually believe that what YOU like is the rule to measure all? When you say "part of OUR instincs", who are you refering to? Who is the "US"? "Normal" people? Straight people? What is normal? What is straight?


Really, cant you see anything wrong in your words? Dont you see that you are implying that there exist something that is "normal" and "natural"?

I hate this defenders of the status quo, normality and "natural instincts". Your kind of people divide the world between "normals" (ephebophiles, heterosexuals) and "abnormals" (pedophiles, queers).

 

[melefnom]

It's more like... People need to realise that paedophiles aren't what they are out of choice, but are instead born and develop that way. People who actually go out of their way to have sex and such with children are deserving of such harsh punishments, but I feel it depends on the severity of it. For example, if someone were to have sex with someone who has already gone through puberty then it is a more natural sexual attraction and unless the person was not consenting they are less in the wrong than someone who has had sex with a prepubescent child.

"if someone were to have sex with someone who has already gone through puberty then it is a more natural sexual attraction "

I remark this words: "it is a more NATURAL sexual attraction". Great way of judging you have there. Lets punish the "unnatural", and celebrate the "natural", doesnt matter if they are just artificial constructs made by some people.

God your words make me cringe.

You speak like a catholic conservative. You use the same words they use. You use the same ideas they use. You talk of "natural", of "normal" of "natural sexual attractions". Of normality versus abnormality. What is a "natural sexual attraction"? What is a "normal" sexual orientation? Some people would say that homosexuality is abnormal, other ephebophilia, other pedophilia, other heterosexuality and so on... Who defines what is a "natural sexual attraction"? You?

 

[Enthuril]

I REALLY hope you are refering to PEDOPHILIA. But anyway, what makes you think that one "could actually be considered quite natural and part of our instincts and the other isn't."? I love how people try to define "natural" and part of OUR (whose?) instincts in base of what THEY like. I think they are natural, normal and part of our instincts.

Both pedophilia and ephebophilia are natural and part of OUR instincts. Our=we human race.

Do people like you actually believe that what YOU like is the rule to measure all? When you say "part of OUR instincs", who are you refering to? Who is the "US"? "Normal" people? Straight people? What is normal? What is straight?


Really, cant you see anything wrong in your words? Dont you see that you are implying that there exist something that is "normal" and "natural"?

I hate this defenders of the status quo, normality and "natural instincts". Your kind of people divide the world between "normals" (ephebophiles, heterosexuals) and "abnormals" (pedophiles, queers).

"if someone were to have sex with someone who has already gone through puberty then it is a more natural sexual attraction "

I remark this words: "it is a more NATURAL sexual attraction". Great way of judging you have there. Lets punish the "unnatural", and celebrate the "natural", doesnt matter if they are just artificial constructs made by some people.

God your words make me cringe.

You speak like a catholic conservative. You use the same words they use. You use the same ideas they use. You talk of "natural", of "normal" of "natural sexual attractions". Of normality versus abnormality. What is a "natural sexual attraction"? What is a "normal" sexual orientation? Some people would say that homosexuality is abnormal, other ephebophilia, other pedophilia, other heterosexuality and so on... Who defines what is a "natural sexual attraction"? You?

You miss the point that I was making. I never said something unnatural is wrong in itself, that's quite foolish to say as most of the things we do right now are unnatural. You're saying this using a computer, that's unnatural and should totally be banned. See what I mean? A ridiculous thing to say in itself. However, when talking about sexual acts that actually harm someone a line should be drawn between what's natural and what isn't - a measure of what a 'normal' person would do. Now, I'm totally in favour of bringing the legal age down to an age where the majority can be said to be sexually mature enough, which to my knowledge is around 13 or 14, but anything below that is wrong on the basis that it actually harms a child. Also, a normal sexual attraction would be something that can be observed to happen commonly within nature in this case. For example, homosexuality is somewhat abnormal in itself. However, this doesn't make it wrong, I think I'm one of the least qualified people to judge that. And anyone who would happily defend the actual sexual abusing of a child is definitely not normal, or I'd wager not entirely sane as we have enough proof of how much it can harm the child.