A Saltshaker is a Big Mood

I'm actually like 1000 percent at my limit with anti-intellectual moral panic pearl clutching on social media

From a genuine place of educating you, putting aside my rage at having these kinds of accusations thrown at me in the current political environment:

Paraphilias do not mean pedophile or zoophile. Pedophilia and zoophilia ARE paraphilias, but paraphilia refers to very specifically the clinical terms for various "deviant" sexual interests, including exhibitionism. They are diagnoses you get when a kink/fetish begins to:

It covers a range of things that are essentially, medically, fetishes that are interfering with the clients' wellbeing/safety to themselves or others.

Plenty of paraphilias also come in regular, non-harmful fetish form, like consensual exhibitionism, crossdressing (drag, for example), regular old BDSM, and WANTING TO FUCK FICTIONAL CHARACTERS.

You notice any overlaps there? Panic about fictional attraction? Panic about crossdressing? Panic about BDSM? WOW IT'S ALMOST LIKE IT'S CLASSIC ANTI-KINK/ANTI-FETISH FASCIST BULLSHIT. It's all just repackaged typical sex negativity under the guise of, AS ALWAYS, conflating sex with sexually abusing children and animals. What did they say about gay marriage? That it would lead to child marriage or bestiality next? What do SWERFs say about BDSM? That it upholds the patriarchy?

Equating something with pedophilia when it isn't?

IT'S. FASCISM. KAREN.

Also. Also the fkin nerve. I am aiming to get a therapist's license to practice forensic psych. Which does indeed mean working w sex offenders or people worried abt becoming sex offenders. No I am not going to scream for their death online, I am trying to be a fcking professional.

"he seems pro-pedo" because I talk about the medical and scientific research surrounding the topic? Because I don't get vitriolic enough? please study the fundamental tenets of psychotherapy and come back to me when you've read about non-judgmental environments. Go see what Carl Rogers had to say about unconditional positive regard and accurate empathic understanding. Do you want me to link you? Do you want a rundown of counseling 101? I can do that. I am happy to do that.

I'm so fucking tired.

Semi-related to my previous talk about how people see others' (and their own) adolescent years, and how infantilised young adults are in America especially! TW for a mention of what the actual definition of pedophilia is, and a mention of predatory behaviour towards teenagers.

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I hate when minors use "oh well I'm 16/17 so I'm an actual child" as an excuse to act badly. 18 is the legal age of adulthood based on averages of maturity, there is no official point your brain becomes an adult brain and not a child's brain. Late teens are a transitional phase. Some arrive at a point of maturity acceptable enough to accept adult responsibilities earlier than others. Some never really do and will struggle their whole lives. Plus, culture makes a huge difference on how quickly you mature.

Viewing 18 as the be-all-end-all is how we got this "Schrödinger's minor" type bs and infantilisation of young adults. And how pedophilia gets thrown around if you're attracted to young-acting or young-looking adults. And how actual minors give excuses to never mature.

Pedophilia is the attraction to the real life, living breathing, physical form of a pre-pubescent child. Not an adult that looks like a child. Not a childish adult. If you prey on someone's childishness to manipulate them, you are an abuser, but not a pedophile.

You can already commit heinous crimes in adolescence. It's not guaranteed innocence. Everyone needs to be judged on an INDIVIDUAL level, not based on only their age. Many factors contribute.

Don't infantilise older minors. But don't treat them like they're in their 30's either.

Idk maybe I have this perspective because I was one of those outlier minors who matured very early, and my parents recognised this and therefore slowly introduced more and more serious topics and responsibilities to me early on. I wasn't a full grown adult in their eyes (or society's, obvs), but they treated me with respect to me being an autonomous, intelligent being, and didn't infantilise me by discounting my opinions, my ability to process things, or my potential to do great good or harm.

As a result, I was more aware of the effect my actions had on others, of their actions on me, and how to interact with, think about, and discuss serious issues. And by 18, I was goofy and young, sure, but I knew how to integrate with adults as a fellow adult for the first time.

TW discussion of sexual offenses, different types of exploitative relationships, defining chronophilias and their implications

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I really wish we could have the discussion about how adult/teen relationships are dangerous because of the power imbalance, but they're not pedophilia because teenagers are not pre-pubescent children without people screaming pedo every five seconds.

And, like, keep in mind some cultures don't infantilise their teens as much as America does, hence why the age of consent laws vary (even within the US itself). There's no nuance to pedophilia, however. There is no world where child sexual abuse isn't harmful.

Basically I wish people wouldn't equate all potentially predatory or exploitative relationships to pedophilia. Pedophilia is predatory and exploitative, but not everything predatory and exploitative is pedophilia. It's important not to trivialise the seriousness of the condition.

Some of us are trying to study causes, prevalence, types of offenders, etc for actual pedophilia and don't want the waters muddied/our results skewed by separate data. Also, fearmongering. Attraction to teens is WAY more common than pedophilia. Equating the two inflates the ratio.

Honestly it doesn't help that nobody understands chronophilias in general anymore. Pedophilia is pre-pubescent children. Hebephilia is pubescent children. Ephebophilia is attraction to primarily post-pubescent teenagers. They're different conditions.

Ephebophilia is the primary attraction to teenagers, not secondary. Some teenagers look like adults, and therefore adults will be attracted to them. But they're not attracted to them BECAUSE they are minors. That is a key difference. Feeling attracted to someone because they are a minor is obviously far more likely to result in a predatory, exploitative adult/minor relationship. More likely than, say, a college student and a high schooler dating.

Also, ephebophilia is therefore not a psychiatric diagnosis, because so many adults are incidentally attracted to teenagers and it can be hard to differentiate primary vs secondary attraction. Attraction to exclusively 18-19yos is ephebophilia, and that isn't actually illegal.

Essentially the waters are already VERY MUDDY, chronophilias are a difficult field of study to wade through as they are, the more people try and fuck w/ the definitions of each attraction the more pain you put us forensic psychologists through.

Why are we here, just to suffer?

Not in a major way, not really. Obviously in more subtle ways, but just like CBT is offered for depression, anxiety, OCD, and many other illnesses, disorders involving dangerous sexual compulsions are mainly treated using similar tactics. These are mainly geared towards giving you proper coping skills so you don't lash out and hurt a child (or animal), working on any cognitive distortions you may have that would justify acting on the desire in any way (consuming actual real recordings of the abuse counts among these), etc. Some people opt for chemical castration as well, but that's quite drastic.

The importance of the distinctions mainly gets brought up by researchers who are studying the cause of paraphilias.

In other news on twitter, Genshin Impact character Paimon's English VA said some anti shit. When questioned on it, they did more victim blaming:

They also previously have said this.

LMAO,,,

THIS IS TWITTER, FOLKS. IT'S A FREE WEBSITE.

Nope, you're entirely correct. Exactly! Nobody chooses to be a pedophile. Nobody chooses to have any mental illness. And the symptoms can be managed, yes, but not eradicated.

I admit, as someone who's studying to rehabilitate serial offenders, including serial sex offenders, you're probably not bringing up this topic to the unbiased eye here.

Truthfully, I'm not very sure how to word this. Bear with me if it sounds pretentious, but I have the easiest time describing things using terms from the field.

In my line of study, it's generally accepted that we put aside any and all disgust and focus instead on objective, measurable harm. In someone's personal life, especially in their escapist hobbies, I can understand why this would be an unpleasant thing to see people asking for. You don't have to stop finding things disgusting. Child abuse in any form is indeed revolting to consider for most people. However, yep, pro ship talking point #1 here, blacklists exist for a reason. While you personally are free (and pretty normal) to find it horrifying, you're capable of blacklisting it.

When pro shippers bring up talking point #2, thought crimes, they're talking about why blacklisting is actually all it takes to mitigate the negative emotions associated with seeing art/fic that delves into child abuse. Unlike real child abuse, the harm of which is immutable. You can't blacklist reality.

So, ultimately, while those thoughts are disgusting to you, they don't cause immutable harm. Hence why they shouldn't be policed or made illegal. You can't convict someone of a crime which has not taken place. That's why the law establishes both mens rea and actus reus as essential elements of a crime. And because of the rule of corpus delicti, even the most graphic and detailed description of a crime is not something you can prosecute without evidence the crime has taken place.

Meanwhile in the HxH fandom,,,,

Antis: you all normalise, excuse, and apologise for pedophilia. Fictional depictions are just as bad!

Us: Hisoka is a pedophile.

Them: no he isn't he just gets turned on by fighting.... kids...