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I'm a pedophile. AMA

Disclaimer: like most pedophiles, I have never approached a child with anything sexual or otherwise inapporpriate, and I don't plan ever to do so. I recognize the harm in such actions, and I don't want to hurt the very people I love. If you expect AMA with a child molester, this ain't it.

The account is a throwaway, hope you'll understand this decision given the sensitivity of the topic.

Edit: Thank you for keeping civil and genuine in your questions. I did envision hostility, yet here you are, amazing as always. Lemmy is a wonderful place to be, thanks to you all!

Edit 2: Apparently we have another brave pedophile here in the comments, and he came with a good note I should include in the post: if you find yourself attracted to minors, that's okay. Acting on your desires is dangerous, but having them isn't. If you'd like to have some support and/or community that would help you get your bearings or just listen without any prejudice (we're all in the same boat), there are places that can help you. Visit VirPed (18+) or MAP Support Club (13+; scroll down for details), or refer to other resources through the MAP Resources website.

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  • Children, in my experience, have relatively few boundaries or concern for social space. How do you handle a situation where a child runs up to you, or hugs you, or crawls all over you, etc? Especially if the parents aren't aware of your preferences, and thus may not see the issue with "kids being kids".

    To draw parallels to my own experiences, I may not want to sexually assault random attractive women, but I don't typically have them lay on top of me and hang off me non-sexually. It would at least be more temptation, I would assume... Adult women tend to keep a formal distance, because they know that attraction is present and don't want to encourage it, if they can help it.

    Also, if I can add another question on here, what age range are we talking about? Does the pedophile community have identity labels for people who are interested in particular ages? Or is there instead some "golden age" that basically all pedophiles are attracted to, and virtually no one is attracted to kids younger than that, for example.

    • Then I don't see the issue too, unless they get too invasive and don't allow me to have some personal space for a prolonged period of time. I don't consider it a sexual or romantic experience on their part, and I love to share some warmth with them. They need that care and love and attention, and I'm there to do exactly that. I will allow them to hug, crawl, play with my hair, even kiss in the cheek if that's their vibe and if they behave this way with others.

      Normally this doesn't overload me, but if it does (like if my deep child crush does it repeatedly) or if the child starts going to inappropriate territory, I can always excuse myself and leave for a while, while processing it and planning ways to calm the child down.

      Well, pedophilia refers to attraction to pre-puberty children generally, and more exactly - to children between age of ~4 and puberty. For pedophiles, I've heard a saying "7 is heaven, 8 is great, 9 is fine", and it's about as golden rang-y as you'll get. Personal experiences differ a lot, some will prefer the younger range, some the older, I personally would call 9-10 my perfect one.

      There are other terms related to other age ranges in minors, like infantophilia/nepiophilia (up to about 4 years old; often considered as part of pedophilia, but has distinct features), hebephilia (attraction to children going through puberty), and ephebophilia (attraction to post-puberty minors, i.e. ~15-17).

      Ephebophilia is straight up super common, especially in males, and most ephebophiles don't consider this as something off - after all, 18 years old is a legal boundary, not natural one, and 17yo person barely differs from 18yo.

      In any way, should you academically define pedophilia, you already only look at the range from 0(4) to about 12.

      • Thank you for your honest and straightforward answer!

        I imagine you're more sensitive to it, as someone in the community, but do you ever hear someone talking about their attraction to a 4 year old (for example, as someone outside your range) and think "that's so weird, I just don't get it"? Basically, I'm asking if you ever feel towards them the way that most people would feel towards you? (at least in terms of confusion, ignoring the hate). Or is it closer to feeling more like a preference, where you're more like "I guess I could see it, but it's just not for me", the way some guys might not find some celebrity attractive that other guys do find attractive.

        Speaking of "deep child crush", I have a more direct question which could get into uncomfortable territory, so please feel free to not answer this one if it feels too invasive.

        People who are into adults tend to have sexual or sexualized characteristics that they focus on. The classics would be "boobs" or "butts" or "legs" for people attracted to women (though of course there can be others), and "hands" or "butts" again or "forearms / shoulders /muscles" or "voice" or "hair" or "height" for women (though of course there can be others).

        Many of those are post-pubescent features, probably not by accident. So, what features do pedophiles find attractive in kids? What separates some random kid from a crush?

    • Hey again, not OP, but also a pedophile. Those are great questions!

      For myself, innocently interacting with kids is usually fine, but I am constantly aware of myself. If it ever feels like too much or it's not fine, I excuse myself and have actually gotten irritable with children if they won't leave me alone. Teaching kids boundaries with their own bodies sometimes looks like enforcing boundaries with your own body. If Saint says, "That's enough for me, I'm done tickling/wrestling/playing/whatever" and a kid doesn't resect that I mean it, they're going to hear me raise my voice and walk away to enforce my boundary. This is good for me as well as the kid, so that they learn they can and should set redline boundaries for how people interact with them if they ever get uncomfortable.

      As to age ranges... there is great variety. Pedophiles are one slice of what are called "chronophilias," that is, people who are attracted to certain age ranges or Tanner Stages. In ascending order we have infantophilia (infants and babies), nepiophilia (2-4), pedophilia (prepubescent children), hebephilia (pubescent children), ephebophilia (teens, also this one is where attraction spots being a paraphilia as most of the population typically has some sexual interest in teens), teleiophilia (this is the "typical" age that people are attracted to each other something like 18-35), mesophilia (like 35-55?), and gerontophilia (people in their 70s+). There's another one that I missed in between meso and geronto, I think.

      I am a pedophile, but I'm other things too. If we were to look at the ages that I'm attracted to, the bell of the curve would be 6-16, but it doesn't cut off sharply on either end of the curve, particularly as we get older. I'm attracted to some people in their 20s or even early 30s, and I've been attracted to kids in the nepiophile range. Age of attention is a little fuzzy for me also, because I'm at least halfway a cartoonophile. Cartoons are drawn with cutesy proportions and it can be difficult to tell the "age" of a character depicted.

      Many people use the term "Minor Attracted Person" or "MAP" because it more broadly encompasses everyone with an attraction to children, not just people attracted to pre-pubescent children.

      There are other community labels that we use for those of us that like boys, girls, both, or neither, as well as those of us that exclusively like children, or those of us that like adults too. There are other things, too, but this post has gone on long enough. 😅

      I'm aware that some of that probably sounds super gross. It's not anything that any of us chose to have. This is something that we experience. Imagine if you woke up tomorrow and were suddenly one of these things. It would be pretty difficult. Almost none of us have had an easy experience.

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