Can we just settle something? Please?

[trinityvixen]

Without explicitly stating from whence my aggravation of these issues comes, I'd like to simply, accurately educate the world. Those of you on my f-list pretty much know this already, but humor me. It won't take long. I just have two common misconceptions that I would like to correct. Right. Now.

1) Do you think women are people, with all the inherent complexities, strengths, and failings thereof? CONGRATULATIONS, YOU ARE A FEMINIST.
Contrary to what you may have heard, women, you don't have to stop shaving any part of your body--legs, "down there," armpits, mustache--nor burn bras, nor hate pornography, nor change the spelling of words to either "feminize" them--WO-mandatory, for example--or "neuter" them--"hyr," "womyn," "semyn"--in order to be a feminist. You just have to think women are people. Men, you do not have to encourage your female friends and significant others to do any of those things nor is feeling emasculated a necessary prerequisite of being a feminist. You can be a feminist by thinking women are people! It's just that simple!

2) You know who likes to molest little boys and girls? PEDOPHILES.
Being sexually attracted to people under the age of 10 is a disease, currently an incurable one. It's a psychological pathology. Some times, that pathology manifests in way that might appear "gay" to you, and not in that Johnny Weir, "That's gay," locker-room-towel-fight gay way. We're talking male-on-under-age-male gay. So I understand it is confusing when I say it's not gay, it's PEDOPHILIA. It is not gay because it's not about having sex with someone who has the same genitals as you. It's about abusing someone who has the same genitals (or will, when they, you know, fully mature) as you. People who are sexually attracted to under age boys or girls are sick, sick people. They're not gay. Even if gayness is sickness to you (and if it is, I'm now 99% sure you're a self-hater), gay is a different sickness, a different pathology entirely from the one that makes you want to abuse kids. Please correct your thinking.

Comments

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Re: Pedophilia, you're absolutely right that it is about control. A large part of the thrill is, as I mentioned above, akin to that a serial killer experiences. It's about having power, absolute, terror-inducing power, over another being and getting away with abusing that power in the most egregious way.

I would caution against ascribing to the sexual frustration theory you mention, however. Sexual frustration is, partially, what leads the celibate clergy into trouble, I've no doubt. But that trouble and frustration do not, necessarily, have to be expressed in abusive ways. Priests/ministers can and do have affairs, adult, consensual affairs. But some don't. Some sexuall assault and rape children. Not because they're sexually frustrated but because they're pedophiles. To me, people get the sexual frustration thing backwards when assessing the Church's scandal. (I know the people blaming the gays do.) It's not that sexually frustrated clergymen abuse because they can't get sex and are desperate to keep the sex they get a secret. It's just that among the people who are likely to volunteer for celibacy are going to be a higher proportion of those who don't really have another option. If you're a pedophile, you have to be celibate or you get into a lot of trouble. Et voila, you have a method to recruit an unusually high concentration of pedophiles into your ranks.

That speaks to the problem I find in the "frustrated with other sex" pedophilia explanation. If it's an accredited assumption, I'm happy to read papers arguing the point. But to me it feels like a cart-before-the-horse proposition, supposing that, as in the case I made about clergy, sexual frustration creates pedophilia. It's the other way around. Pedophilia exists, nascent, in a pedophile. I do believe it can be trained into a person (I believe people sexually assaulted as children are more likely to become abusers, but I can't back that up with more than common wisdom appeal), but for the most part, if you're a pedophile, you're a pedophile long before you're anything else, including sexually frustrated or longing for revenge against emasculating women/domineering men. I think this theory steers dangerously close to assigning normal sexuality to pedophiles--as I argued against doing--when they are, in fact, aberrant in every way.

[jendaby.livejournal.com]

You make a good point about the way people view sexual frustration. I didn't actually say or mean sexual frustration, though. I was referring to people who felt persecuted or abused by someone of a particular gender and wanting to torment someone weaker so they could feel strong.