pedophile
No_one
11mo ago
And? Everyone has people killed.
Pretty sure Americans have killed people with weird poisons too. Why do you think CIA had a 'heart attack' gun showed off during the Church Committee hearings?
I'm not disputing that Russia kills people in weird ways that include poison - I'm disputing that it makes sense in this concrete sense. Because it doesn't.
The other notorious case of Litvinenko - the guy was seen as a traitor, but one who run away and wasn't swapped. And who instead of being quiet in his exile or at least low profile published very incendiary and probably nonsensical information of the type "Putin is a pedophile" / Russia trained Al-Qaeda etc.
We're not dealing with a hypercompetent foreign ministry here.
They presented Putin with a choice:
-
watch Ukraine smash the separatists, greatly angering Russian opposition thus making Russian internal politics worse and humiliating Russia by painting it as inactive and weak. Ukraine
-
go to war and force Ukraine to see sense.
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
11mo ago
A pedophile is either a child molester or a literal incel.
Being an incel does increase the chance of committing rape, yes, but it's not as if most incels are rapists.
I'd remind you that it's very hard to get statistics on non-molestor paedophiles because, well, most of them don't admit to it. So you only have a very-loose upper bound on P(molestation|paedophile). I seem to recall P(paedophile|molestation) is about 0.5, though I forget the source.
I understand them well enough, now. You can just call me stupid and not be passive aggressive about it, I'm an adult.
I would have no problem with him being banned if the person that instigated the events were even just warned but they weren't in this case or in the others. The rules are different for each poster. Wildcard rule, whatever. I disagree that this is a good way to do things but I stand by the fact that it's simply unfair for seemingly no reason other than accumulation. In most situations the instigator is held to a higher standard than the responder. But not here. It's fair and right that there should be consequences and even if you had given steve a permanent ban but had given the original instigation a warning I would have thought it was a better response than just ignoring someone basically calling anyone who makes a certain argument a pedophile and not even getting an informal warning.
thrownaway24e89172
naïve paranoid outcast
11mo ago
A pedophile is either a child molester or a literal incel.
You do realize it is possible for a person who finds (some) children sexually attractive to also find (some) adults sexually attractive as well, right? Not to mention that it is possible for a person to choose to have sex with people they don't find sexually attractive.
thrownaway24e89172
naïve paranoid outcast
11mo ago
Yes and the implication that we're either lying about being pedophiles or are actually child rapists strikes me as both rather uncharitable and extremely inflammatory.
Throwaway05
11mo ago
Psychiatry has some terms that are great for this kind of problem: egosyntonic and egodystonic.
Example: OCD bothers you. You don't want the impulses and urges. OCPD (Personality Disorder) doesn't bother you as much. You like being meticulous and double checking things.
Lots of pedophiles have egodystonic fixation, they are attracted to children and don't want anything to do with that and then slip up or whatever (or don't).
This exercises is useful in a variety of contexts and is generally a good way to assess the importance of cause of behaviors and can be used in assessing prognosis and so on.
ChickenOverlord
11mo ago
"Not all forms of being attracted to minors are pedophilia. If you like preteens it's called hebephilia. If you like teens it's called ephebephilia. The reason you don't hear people make this sort of distinction very often is because it kinda makes you sound like a pedophile." - Some comedian paraphrased.
Personally I'm in the "why do you call your pedophile chipper a wood chipper?" camp on the matter (at least for a case involving a 12-year-old), but even for an older teen (and even one actively sneaking out to hook up with older men) I think we need to bring back shotgun weddings. Unfortunately that's a bit of a coup complete problem and requires some major societal shifts back to enforcing social norms by both shame and force.
Throwaway05
11mo ago
One of the joy's of medicine is that everyone gets sick and therefore if you work in enough practice environments and for long enough you'll interact with every slice of society. AKA I've talked to more pedophiles than the average bear, unfortunately.
The distinction between pedophilia and ephebophilia is constantly panned on the internet, because this topic breaks everyone's brains but the distinction exists for a reason. Impulsivity (including sexual impulsivity) often implies some level of overriding of legal and ethical concerns on the alter of biology. If you find a picture of the girl and she passes for 16 the guy is sexually impulsive, not a pedophile (perhaps legally a pedophile and ethically a pedophile, but when people think pedophile they think "sexually attracted to children" no, most people who commit statutory rape type crimes are saying things like "damn she had some nice titties." A 4 year old does not have secondary sex characteristics).
Some subset of the sexually impulsive people are likely antisocial, but the majority of these cases by volume are like this one, honestly kinda close in age range but just outside the realm of propriety for modern audiences (appropriately so!) but the motivation is fundamentally "I want to have sex with someone who in their messed up brain triggers normal sexual impulses due to a lack of impulse control." I doubt we have data on this, but I do wonder if modern earlier sexualization and earlier development of secondary sex characteristics has increased the frequency of these encounters. Again these people aren't "truly deviant" they are just horny and impulsive (which is a different form of deviancy). A sufficiently advanced sex-bot that looks like such and such popular model would keep them out of trouble. They are not necessarily otherwise bad people (but can be). Satisfaction can be achieved with normal, healthy human behavior they just impulsively choose to make poor decisions.
A different group of people is the true anti-socials who are not obligate pedophiles and but engage in pedophilic behavior because they are "evil" and either enjoy power differentials or just don't care what they stick their dick in. These people aren't pedophiles, they are monsters. They are also super rare.
I think it's important to break group 1 into those two components because it can have a strong impact on things like recidivism rates and moral judgement, especially in cases that are a little more debatable than this (classic would be the 16 and 18 year old couple, which in the past resulted in a lot of jail time).
Agree with your characterization of the second group though, without more details we can't figure out which group this guy is but statistically it's more likely to be the first group, he likely just wanted to have sex and she probably looked adult enough to him. He's probably an idiot not someone obligately attracted to children.
Also, don't fall into the feminist "rape is about power" trap. Rape is sometimes about power but mostly it's about sex. Group 1 people just have a high enough sex drive and access problems, group 2 have a fundamental distortion in the way their attraction works. They generally feel super guilty about their attraction and decisions. Group 1 people typically have a much more egosyntonic relationship with their urges.
FtttG
11mo ago
A pedophile is sexually attracted to children, but might not consciously want to fuck them.
Seems like a distinction without a difference. What does it mean to be "sexually attracted" to someone if you don't wan't to have sex with them?
My rough mental model is that most men are essentially addicted to sex. It happens naturally when they enter puberty, and it doesn't really ever go away for most. There are roughly two classes of pedophiles:
- Men who are very indiscriminate in their sexual attraction. They aren't especially sexually interested in young children, but they're just sociopathic and opportunistic. If they have power over young children, they will use them for sex much like they would almost anyone else. These men are pedophiles, but almost incidentally. They're just really bad people with a often indiscriminate and sadistic sexuality. Children are sometimes their victims.
- Men who are especially or exclusively sexually attracted to young children, particularly prepubescent or early pubescent children. The existence of such men is somewhat of an evolutionary puzzle similar to male homosexuality, and it does seem mostly inherent. These men are usually not sociopathic, but the sex drive is powerful and treacherous.
All the interesting questions mostly revolve around class number 2. I generally model class number 2 like I would an alcoholic. They're basically addicts even if they have never actually partaken in their addiction. Sometimes they fall off the wagon, and other times they get back on again. Like an addict, they shouldn't be trusted with the object of their addiction. If they're otherwise good people, then they will avoid it themselves. They may try to satisfy their addiction in what seem to them relatively indirect and harmless ways, though they may also inadvertantly cultivate and strengthen the addiction. Suspicion is warranted, because people are weak and will give in to sexual desire, but many such people are not fundamentally evil and do live ordinary lives.
My impression is that this athlete may fall into this second class.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
11mo ago
Compare with a heterosexual man who has a crush on his neighbor, but he knows she is married, and since he considers having sex with married women beyond the pale, he won't pursue her. Does he want to fuck her? On some theoretical level yes, but on a more practical level no. What if instead of being married she is underage, and he ignores her for that reason? Same thing, as far as I'm concerned.
Sure, most of us meet people we find sexually attractive but would never act on that attraction, for various reasons. But most people aren't doomed to be lifelong incels if they can't fuck any particular person. A pedophile is either a child molester or a literal incel. I can feel sympathy for someone who has desires he presumably did not want or ask for, but I can't say I'd trust him.
What bearing does that have on whether they should be allowed to participate in the Olympics?
There's been a lot of debate in this thread about whether there is any line that would be too far to allow participation, with arguments that if someone has "done their time" and has valuable contributions to make, they should be allowed. I'm generally sympathetic to the argument that people who have done their time and been released should be allowed to make a living. I don't think they are necessarily entitled to make a living doing whatever they want, particularly something that uniquely bestows glory and fame.
I don't have very strong feelings about Steven van de Velde in particular, but for me there is a line, and 12 is pretty damn close to it. If he got caught banging a 16-year-old, I'd think he's kind of sleazy but eh, lots of athletes probably bang jailbait and don't get caught. If he got caught banging a 5-year-old, I'd definitely be okay with saying "No Olympics for you." Apparently some people would disagree with the latter, but there are also people who've been pretty explicit that they are defending van de Velde's "right" to participate in the Olympics just because he's making their enemies mad.
MartianNight
11mo ago
It's not a perfect analogy, but it's useful because it separates the innate sexual attraction from acting on that attraction.
A pedophile is someone who wants to have sex with children.
I think the word “want” is being used in a very vague way here. A pedophile is sexually attracted to children, but might not consciously want to fuck them.
Compare with a heterosexual man who has a crush on his neighbor, but he knows she is married, and since he considers having sex with married women beyond the pale, he won't pursue her. Does he want to fuck her? On some theoretical level yes, but on a more practical level no. What if instead of being married she is underage, and he ignores her for that reason? Same thing, as far as I'm concerned.
In the real world, there is a lot of difference between cravings and conscious desires. A recovering alcoholic might crave a drink, but simultaneously want to avoid drinking. It's not helpful to simplify that to “alcoholics want to drink” — it's much more complicated than that.
They seem more similar to sociopaths and narcissists, in that you really can't counsel them or medicate them into being something else.
I don't think pedophilia can be cured, but it can be managed, just like alcoholism can be managed.
But even if it were true that alcoholics, pedophiles, philanderers, sociopaths and narcissists are utterly untreatable. What bearing does that have on whether they should be allowed to participate in the Olympics?
hydroacetylene
11mo ago
So your theoretical ethical pedophile who never acts on his desires (I assume such exist, though I admit I'd be skeptical of any individual's claims that they never ever have or will)
Haven't we had a few motteizeans claiming to be in this category?
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
11mo ago
Pedophile is to child molester as heterosexual male is to rapist of women.
I agree with your distinction between pedophile and child molester, but not with this equivalence. A pedophile is someone who wants to have sex with children. A heterosexual male is someone who wants to have sex with women. Having sex with children is by definition child molestation. Having sex with women is not by definition rape, unless you are Andrea Dworkin. So your theoretical ethical pedophile who never acts on his desires (I assume such exist, though I admit I'd be skeptical of any individual's claims that they never ever have or will) is still someone who fundamentally wants to molest a child.
Whether you can "rehabilitate" them depends on whether you believe that sexual attraction to children is something inherent in their sexuality (which would make it equivalent to a sexual orientation) or a dysfunction that will respond to psychological treatment. From what little I know of the literature, most psychologists are not optimistic about the potential to "cure" pedophiles. They seem more similar to sociopaths and narcissists, in that you really can't counsel them or medicate them into being something else.
MartianNight
11mo ago
just think it's a bit rich that commenters here are waving the flag for this dude without even the barest pretence of having any motivation other than owning the libs
For the record, I'm not “waving the flag [..] to own the libs”. I just want the discussion about eligibility of Olympic athletes to be more principled than the current “this guy's past behavior was appalling so obviously he shouldn't be allowed to compete now!”.
You can make an argument around how serious criminals should be barred from the Olympics, but then you should flesh it out in an objective way. Part of justice is applying rules equally and fairly, and not in an ad-hoc manner as seems to happen here. Insisting on that is not the same as blanket support for pedophiles to participate in the Olympics.
By the way, I really don't think it's only liberals who are upset about Van de Velde's participation. It's just that the liberals are more vocal now that the perpetrator is a straight white male, rather than if it had been a black or trans person or a drag queen or something.
if they were to interact with this guy in person, if it was their kid at risk of being interfered with [..], their revealed preferences for how they think he should be treated would be functionally indistinguishable from those of the Guardian journalist who wrote this article.
Again, you are conflating two very different things. I wouldn't hire Van de Velde as my baby sitter, and I'm not saying anyone else should, but I might well hire him as my tax accountant, and I wouldn't mind playing volleyball with him. I don't think there is any hypocrisy there.
I wrote a four-part post here about exactly this a while ago, with a focus on the Grayson/Quinn conflict of interest, and some of my responses in the thread address the pro-GG response to harassment. For bonus points, I have also summarised cases of unethical conduct among the anti-GG side here, for example an instance where they rallied around a known pedophile in their ranks.
God fucking damnit, I got so much shit for writing these. Who's laughing now?
To be fair to woke people, this attitude is at least consonant with one of their other typical opinions: that gay people are "born this way", that sexuality and gender identity are congenital and hardwired. If this is true of gay people, why wouldn't it also be true of paedophiles?
This is conflating sexual preference with criminality. It's not a crime to have a sexual preference for children. It's a crime to molest children.
Pedophile is to child molester as heterosexual male is to rapist of women. While it might not be possible to change the sexual preference, that doesn't mean we cannot rehabilitate criminals. If rapists of adult victims can be rehabilitated, then why not rapists of children?
(This conflation is very common in discussions surrounding pedophilia, by the way. My theory for why that happens is that people have such an irrational, visceral hatred of pedophiles that they just do not want to consider the possibility of a non-offending pedophile. But the distinction is important nonetheless, if you want to maintain a justice system where people are convicted based on their actions, and not just their thoughts or inclinations.
Something similar happens with other hated groups like “incels”, where being involuntarily celibate is almost a crime in and of itself, regardless of whether you've actually harassed any women.)
For all of you people wishing him well and crowing about woke hypocrisy, I have to ask - how comfortable would you feel about leaving him alone with your twelve-year-old daughter or niece?
This is an irrelevant hypothetical. You can argue that because of his past crime and the possibility of recidivism, Van de Velde should not be alone with twelve-year-olds in the future, but what does that have to do with him playing volleyball in a team full of adults?
The people who oppose Van de Velde participating in the Olympics seem to do so on the basis of some poorly-articulated principle that someone who has committed a horrible crime should never be allowed a place in the spotlight, regardless of whether they are likely to reoffend or not.
faceh
11mo ago
These crimes indicate something much more severe
There's an extent to which I agree with this general point, but I also assume that the law was designed so the punishment fits with the alleged severity of the offense, so that really means your issue is with the law itself being too lenient?
It’s fair to note a pedophile long after the fact in a way that noting a tax cheat isn’t.
Hmmm. I think it is wise to keep your kids away from him as a general rule, and we should assume a certain propensity for bad behavior and not really give him the benefit of the doubt...
But it is not clear that this should impact his ability to compete in a sport he's actually very good at if he's maintained good behavior since.
sun_the_second
could survive a COD lobby and a gay furry discord server
11mo ago
From the comments on themotte.org (comment quoted in its entirety):
From the comments of "The wonderful clarity of white genocide":
The nation is the hand of the race, the family is the finger of the nation, the individual is the fingernail. If your vocation is to fight, tell your cow whatever it needs to hear while you avoid seeding its’ fallopian tubes and instead mine more minerals and prepare to fight. Otherwise, tell your cow whatever it needs to hear while spawning more overlords.
Don’t talk politics with your cow. At best, it confuses it, at worst, it makes it difficult for your cow to chew cud with the other cows, and cows need to be part of a herd.
The level of politics to talk with your cow is, America is good, we are an American family, nice things are good, criminals are bad because they ruin nice things, having nice things is the only valid virtue signal, tasteful religious displays on nice things are great, ugly religious and political displays on ugly things are stupid evil heresy, ignore any advice from the news and entertainment media because it’s a bunch of pedophiles raping each other.
I guess this would be a bad political hit ad because it's not even funny in the "look at the creep" way.
hydroacetylene
11mo ago
It seems like there’s a distinction to be made on the basis of crimes which indicate something broken about a person and crimes which have perfectly legible motivators.
A thief, a man who commits statutory with a 16 year old(illegal in my state), a drug dealer, a serial red light runner- all of these indicate bad decision making skills, but normal people wanting to do them is not an indicator against normality. These people can be taught to behave in a civilized manner, at least potentially- it may not be something we as a society have the stomach for, but you can eventually beat or re-educate these categories of criminals.
On the other hand, normal adults don’t want to have sex with children- like actual children and not teenagers-, or do serial killing, or use hard drugs. These crimes indicate something much more severe. It’s fair to note a pedophile long after the fact in a way that noting a tax cheat isn’t.
From the comments of "The wonderful clarity of white genocide":
The nation is the hand of the race, the family is the finger of the nation, the individual is the fingernail. If your vocation is to fight, tell your cow whatever it needs to hear while you avoid seeding its’ fallopian tubes and instead mine more minerals and prepare to fight. Otherwise, tell your cow whatever it needs to hear while spawning more overlords.
Don’t talk politics with your cow. At best, it confuses it, at worst, it makes it difficult for your cow to chew cud with the other cows, and cows need to be part of a herd.
The level of politics to talk with your cow is, America is good, we are an American family, nice things are good, criminals are bad because they ruin nice things, having nice things is the only valid virtue signal, tasteful religious displays on nice things are great, ugly religious and political displays on ugly things are stupid evil heresy, ignore any advice from the news and entertainment media because it’s a bunch of pedophiles raping each other.
I started to feel better about the current state of political discourse when I realized that probably a large fraction of the online political discourse is created by astroturf campaigns, not by people arguing in good faith. This is probably part of the reason why one sees so many online accounts make stupid arguments that fall apart after just an instant of thinking. It is not just because there are many stupid people, it is also because, since there are many stupid people, astroturfers have an incentive to craft the kind of simple, catchy arguments that appeal strongly to emotions even if they do not hold up to rational analysis.
Besides astroturfing, another issue is that actual organic online political discourse on both sides is dominated by people who sit online for hours a day making political content. And people like that are not representative of the overall US population. I think that on average, they are less mentally stable and more prone to wild irrational theories. After all, you're probably more likely to spend hours a day writing about politics if you actually think* that Project 2025 will put gay people in concentration camps or if you think that the Democratic Party is a front for a cabal of pedophiles who communicate by talking about pizza than if you think that no matter who wins, it doesn't really matter that much. It also goes the other way. Being constantly exposed to other mentally unstable people's political arguments online can have a radicalizing effect, especially if one gets caught in an echo chamber.
*Or if you have LARPed yourself into almost-thinking it, into enjoying it as an exciting fantasy while perhaps not truly believing it in the depths of your mind. Which I think is probably true of many people.
Silverdawn
I wake up 🔄 There's another psyop
11mo ago
Thinking in terms of responsibility seems pointless to me. Ultimately, there are goals and actions that bring us closer to or farther from those goals. Saying "X is guilty, he chose to do something" doesn't get you closer to your goals. This type of thinking does make sense on a societal level, as a way to reduce independent actions that might hurt the tribe but it doesn't make sense for an individual. You punishing someone else can only help you indirectly, in a manipulative way. Like, if you "expose" a pedophile, your social status might increase slightly. But I don't like where this type of thinking leads to, so I don't do it.
So my solution is to simply think about guilt as little as possible and only under the context of "If other people think Y person is guilty, how will they behave?".
In your example, that means:
"The older generation worked under specific circumstances that made them act a certain way, it's too bad if their actions caused harm." and likewise for the younger generation.
greyenlightenment
investments: META/FBL, TSLA, TQQQ, TECL, MSFT ...
1yr ago
When the pendulum precesses , you don't know when you're on the receiving end until too late.
The more conventional the opinion, the more cartoonishly sadistic its enforcement. They love to talk about what ought to be done to pedophiles — not because they have unusually strong opinions about the well-being of children, but because pedophiles provide the broadest possible canvas on which to fantasize about social cruelty.
I think this has more to do with rallying support among a shelling point: pedos deserve to have violence inflicted on them, so as a way of making their other views palatable by first establishing a common ground..
Such a person's sexual orientation would be "bisexual" since they are attracted to people of either sex. Whether someone is a pedophile seems to me orthogonal to the question of their sexual orientation under the statute. The age part isn't relevant to the analysis. "pedophile" is not a distinct sexual orientation because it's not about the target of attractions sex.
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