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The "Ignore the shitbag mom pimping them out..." part of my comment was not intended to be a reflection of your views, but was me blowing steam on (my view of) the general status quo. I apologize for not making that clear.
I have no idea where you got this from my comment. The best match I can come up with is
but even that's a very big stretch. If that is what you were referring to, then yes, let's not pursue this any further because I will very likely not be able to be civil to someone who that egregiously equates "pedophile" and "child molester" while claiming to differentiate them.
What positive expression of those desires would you not see censored?
You don't even need to make that promise. As I said above, I didn't intend to accuse you of believing that and I'm sorry I didn't distinguish my "ranting at the sky" clearly enough.
The best I can promise here is that I will try to be charitable and assume good faith. I cannot guarantee I will succeed or avoid misunderstandings however. Even putting aside the strong emotional response to the topic, there is a large inferential distance to cover.
I'm happy to go into more detail about my thoughts and experiences if people are honestly interested and don't just want a freak show. I struggle a lot in gathering my thoughts for broad expositions after a serious concussion a few years ago though, so more specific prompting would be helpful.
Well that is pretty much what I felt you were saying about pedophiles when you said
and
It seemed to me that you do not recognize the possibility for sexual activity with a child to not be victimization even in a fantasy setting rather than the real world nor that someone could desire it without eventually trying to act it out. I reject a framing of my fantasies as a desire to victimize children, even if I acknowledge that would be the actual result were they to play out in the real world.
I would broadly model child molestation as three largely separate categories: 1) the molester is viewing the child as a fetish, 2) the molester is attempting to have a sexual relationship with the child, and 3) the molester is asserting dominance (not necessarily sadistically) over the child.
An example of the first category would be something like this where the relationship between the molester and the child is largely irrelevant to the act. An example of the second category would be the relationship between Asia Argento and Jimmy Bennett. As you said, this usually involves some level of delusion or motivated reasoning on the part of the molester as to the nature of the situation. I think this category largely corresponds to how you model child molesters? The third category covers things like sexual hazing and other forms of bullying.
Ways pedophiles can actively seek enjoyment in them without sanction. So tolerating their use of virtual CP would be an example, but probably not explaining it to a therapist.
I think that's reasonable so long as it is actually accessible to pedophiles and not merely theoretically "accessible" in the way say CCL permits are to residents of NYC.
I agree that the reason for their disgust with people who consume virtual CP is both reasonable and understandable. What I'm asserting is that even if it were conclusively shown that consumption of virtual CP significantly reduced the likelihood of a person to molest a child, most people would still be against the consumption of virtual CP because their disgust is more motivating than their desire to reduce the incidence of child abuse. I think this extends well beyond CP as well. For example, I have a decently well-paying job that doesn't involve any interaction with children. I expect that were it to become known that I'm a pedophile, I would be forced out of that job because people don't believe pedophiles deserve such a job--a disgust reaction based not on any actual risk. Do you think I'm wrong in that assessment?
Confident is definitely not the right word. It'd be better to say I hope it is the case because it lets me believe in the possibility of a better future and not fall even deeper into nihilistic despair. Also, we're not completely unsure of the denominator--eg, there is some research that estimates it at 1-2% of the population depending on how strictly you define pedophilia.
No, in this case I think it is probably my own paranoia getting in the way. I have a lot of hang-ups around sex even beyond attraction to kids (eg, see this old chain), so it is difficult not to be overly defensive here.
I think we're still talking past each other here. Let me try rephrasing my assertion in a less disdainful way and maybe that will help. The comment which I was replying to was making a utilitarian argument that the sexualization of kids in video games could not be immoral because the characters in games are not sapient and thus actions toward them have no moral dimension. I think it is more accurate to model people's response in terms of virtue ethics rather than utilitarian ethics, in which case the harm or lack thereof of the specific situation has little to no moral bearing. I used much cruder terminology because I don't have a very high opinion of that view for probably obvious reasons, but I think this is effectively the same thing you were getting at with
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