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In today's "old man yelling at clouds" news, it appears that leftist memes (e.g. on imgur) have taken to calling Trump a pedophile due to his connection with Epstein.
As someone who does not give a damn about Trump, but who cares about the language we use to describe reality, I want to object.
A pedophile, in my book, is someone who is sexually attracted to pre-pubescent kids. Often, the term might imply exclusive pedophilia, e.g. someone who is only attracted to pre-pubescent kids. This seems like the worst sexual attraction card to be dealt, while being straight, gay, bisexual, into MILFs, or into BDSM, or most other kinks means you have a decent chance of getting laid, the lack of adults who could pass as pre-pubescent means that there are no sex partners who could consent. If used as an insult, the unfortunate implication is that people are morally responsible for their sexual inclinations.
Naturally, there is an overlap with people who end up molesting children, which is rightfully considered a serious crime. It bears saying that a significant fraction of child molesters are not exclusive pedophiles but just men (mostly) with broader sexualities who use the opportunity of the power discrepancy between kids and adults.
In general, I think that power discrepancy is why we have age of consent laws. Using the age is obviously a crude approximation, I can think of situations where a 15yo having sex with an 18yo would not be problematic from a power discrepancy point of view, and also of situations where two 18yo having sex would be problematic from a power discrepancy view without being criminal. But still, one has to draw the line somewhere, and age is at least something which can reasonably be verified, while "would a judge like the power dynamics in that relationship?" is much more diffuse.
If we tie consent to age, then it makes sense to dis-emphasize physical development. After all, a woman consents with her brain, not her boobs. It might certainly make a difference if the defendant claims he was mistaken about her age or that she was the one who initiated sex (not that either defense would help much, likely).
To get back to Trump, I think it is pretty clear that he is not an exclusive pedophile. That guy paid for sex with Stormy Daniels, hosted beauty pageants and boasted about grabbing post-pubescent participants "by the pussy". Based on the women he married, "small and flat-chested" does not really seem to be his type.
He is also a sex pest. I can not imagine him going "Dear Jeffrey, this is very flattering, but I do not think it is appropriate. Look at that poor girl. She is a minor who possibly did not have a clear idea that she would be expected to do sex work here and is effectively trapped alone on an island with some very powerful people. Besides her being below the age of consent, this whole setting is intrinsically coercive. If you want me to fuck someone, please get an experienced sex worker of legal age for my next visit." Instead, he probably went "great, I will take the one with the bigger tits" and committed a particularly vile act of statutory rape.
From a culture war point of view, I can see why the left is pushing the pedo angle. It basically comes from qanon, where "oh, did I mention they also rape kids" was used as a boo light to drive home the fact that these were Bad people. MAGA pattern-matched Epstein to this, which was fair enough. Now that it looks like Trump might have been a visitor to Epstein's Island, the likely factually accurate claim "Trump is a sex pest who has no conception of consent and will happily commit statutory rape" is not going to do much damage. The American people have known that he is a sex pest with no conception of consent since 2016, and in their heart of hearts they also know that someone who is generally loose on consent will also not be a stickler for the rules as far as age of consent is concerned. By contrast, going "that pedophile world-controlling elite you were always talking about? Trump is their chairman!", or more shortly "Trump is pedophile" is obviously superior as an attack in the CW.
Still, a lot of epistemic commons are burned in the process, and I really don't like that.
Unfortunately, I think this ship sailed decades ago. In the public imagination, "paedophile" scans as synonymous with "person who has sexually assaulted a person below the age of majority, without penetration" or "person who has committed statutory rape" or "person who has been accused of committing statutory rape" or "person who seems interested in committing statutory rape" or even in some cases "person who is significantly older than his or her romantic or sexual partner (even if said partner is of the age of majority)". (Hell, in at least one case it was seen as synonymous with "paediatrician" - this article is twenty-five years old.)
A person who is eager to draw a distinction between "paedophilia" and "ephebophilia" will be accused of pedantic hair-splitting at best and nefarious motives at worst (honestly, I don't even think the latter is unreasonable, unless the person drawing the distinction is a literal clinical psychologist or similar); likewise a person who is eager to draw a distinction between "paedophilia" (a disorder of sexual attraction which does not imply a particular pattern of behaviour) and "child molestation" (an actual behaviour).
Yeah, this might be the most egregious motte-and-bailey that is currently widely accepted.
Call someone a 'pedophile' because they express attraction towards someone just barely under the age of majority, and uninformed onlookers might very well imagine that they're a predator who stalks 10 year olds with designs on kidnapping and molesting them.
And since Pedophiles (the actual child-attracted kind) are virtually the LAST remaining 'identity group' which it is universally accepted are okay to hate, abuse, and maybe even murder, there's huge incentive to get an outgroup member classified as such.
And deeper than just your point:
Defending pedophiles AT BEST gets you marked as 'low status' and 'weird.' I don't think any person, in the history of EVER, has managed to increase their social standing by being the guy advocating for a nuanced view on child-diddling.
So anyone sensitive to social status just WON'T defend them, even if they do have nuanced beliefs on it.
No, the most egregious motte-and-bailey is "consent".
Note that this statement:
is a specific version of the more general form, which is:
and the popular definition of "pedophile" is fundamentally just the most defensible/best Think Of The Children extension of that core idea. (Because no, that definition only includes man on girl; we pretend it includes man on boy when it's politically convenient to do so, but we don't treat the two equally.)
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