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When people apply the ephebophilia sneer to situations less like "30 and 15" and more like "19 and 17", it devalues the sneer. Would you claim there is no difference to those two acts of fucking someone who's underage?
Destroying distinction between acts that might be disgusting and acts that are disgusting is how you make people wonder "wait, is it really that bad this time?"
To be fair, I do think there is a distinct difference between "30 year old wants to fuck 17 year old" and "30 year old wants to fuck 8/10/12 year old". Both are sketchy, but wanting to fuck someone young enough to be your own kid is a lot creepier and more abusive. If 30 year old guy can keep it in his pants for three years until 17 year old is 20, the age difference is not as bad. It's still pretty fucking awful if 30 year old waits three years until the kid is 12-15 years old.
But agreed, the people trying to draw such distinctions are well aware that they're too damn old to be trying to have relationships with someone of that age, and they want to avoid the stigma of being kiddie-diddlers. So in practice, it's a distinction that makes no difference. And if you're 30-40 years old and want to make the distinction that "well, 14-16 is pubescent so it's ephebophilia/hebephilia, not paedophilia which means prepubescent children", then you should be strung up by your thumbs alongside the 40 year old guy who wants to diddle 10 year olds.
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As far as I'm aware, the distinction is almost only ever trotted out in the former case, usually by the defendant, to argue that what they aren't doing isn't "actually" paedophilia. I've never seen it used in the latter way personally; and aren't there in any case carve-outs for that kind of scenario in many places? I certainly don't think that definition-arguing would be the cornerstone of any defense case.
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