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The problem is we focus too much on hatred specifically of pedophilia rather than of child molestation. There are a number of problems with this approach beyond the one @Sunshine mentioned. Most relevant to your argument is the assumption that only pedophiles molest children, and the corollary that if you aren't a pedophile then your behavior must be "okay". The majority of child molesters are not pedophiles and they will often justify their behavior based on this fact.
On a more personal note, I think taking a harder line on troublesome behaviors would make my life as a pedophile much easier. Almost all of my sessions with my therapist boil down to some variation of "What is the appropriate behavior in this situation?" (eg, "A child comes up to me while I'm walking my dog and asks to pet her. Do I let the child pet my dog or not?"). It is extremely confusing how many behaviors are considered problematic based on whether the actor is attracted to someone rather than judging the intentions of the actor and the actual impact on others.
The idea that a child molester is not also a pedo just seems like trying to find a distinction. Are you honestly of the belief that a person raped a child has zero attraction to side child? That beggars belief. We are already talking about monsters, but that is beyond.
To choose an extremely common case, someone who molests a young person who is physically a young adult (because of early puberty, or because society keeps defining the age of adulthood upwards) still socially and legally a child is a child molester by definition, but is almost certainly not a paedophile. I would like to insist on this distinction, but even I struggle to when the child molester in question is a prominent politician on the wrong side of the aisle.
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So some "duh" factors(obviously pedophiles are more likely to sexually offend against children than the general population and obviously the factors that make recidivism more likely for all crime apply here) and characteristics strongly associated with transgenderism/LGBT?
Listen, at some point society is going to have to confront that heteronormativity is a good thing. That doesn't mean any individual non-heteronormative person is a pedophile. But it does seem that "having LGBT-typical sexual interests is a risk factor for sex offender recidivism but not for recidivism more generally" is a pretty major argument against queer theory.
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This sounds unsurprising so I'm willing to assume it's broadly correct, but if you're going to cite specific statistics like “5 years after conviction, 14% of offenders have been charged with or convicted of a new sexual offense” could you please explicitly cite the sources behind your claims?
Numbers that are so specific must come from one specific source. There is no way that there are multiple independent sources that investigated this and they all agreed the number was exactly 14%, not 13% or 15%.
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We tried that; it's already been twisted into "man interacting with his own children in public is obviously a pedophile". Of course, this conversely gives women freer reign to perpetrate molestation, and if the [overwhelmingly-female] education system's obsession with sex/gender stuff is any indication they're taking full advantage of that privilege.
[At the population level]
Why? Out of sociobiological necessity, the adult gets the benefit of the doubt by default because they are the adult. Children are subordinate property that usually turn out good enough no matter what we visit upon them- besides, there are plenty of times when parents will place their own wants and well-being above that of their child, so why would "I enjoy my charming family member's company, and it's just a hug or two they insist on, right? Can't my kid just deal with it, follow my orders, and stop being weird?" be any different?
Besides, they only touch my ass once or twice a visit, and I can tolerate that- and they're not taking that further with me because they know I'll hurt them if they go further. Clearly, the same calculus is in play when they're interacting with my kids, and surely won't be tempted to take it any further despite their complete lack of similar defenses.
In the same way (and for exactly the same reasons) women complain about men trivializing their safety concerns, that goes double for children. "Must be exaggerating or mischaracterizing the interaction", "saying this just to get a reaction from the adults", and "doesn't even have the vocabulary/grammar to explain what's even happening clearly enough to take action" (or a combination of the 3 at the same time) is not actually a bad heuristic when dealing with children in the first place (especially because a good chunk of the time it's true).
Other than that, this isn't a tractable problem for any kid whose parents don't think it's a big deal. The only way around that is to destroy the family structure entirely, and now instead of the family molesting your kids you have standardized State-mandated molestation for everyone; whether that's an improvement or not is an exercise for the reader.
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Maybe there's a gendered difference? When I reported being fondled and groped the response was always that it was okay and I shouldn't be bothered by it because it wasn't sexual despite people literally grabbing my penis. A few times I was punished for trying to pull their hands away, and one particular person chasing me as I tried to avoid her at get-togethers became a running family joke. Those experiences make me feel like that belief isn't that uncommon.
Yes, such behavior is not acceptable. I feel like a lot of the hatred of pedophilia comes down to people wanting an easy way to show they are against child molestation without having to actually put in any real effort in preventing it, like confronting someone actually molesting a child.
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