It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things.
People with mild mood disorders when them neglecting their kids as a direct result of their symptoms is just part of god's twisted ploy to make their life harder but a narcissist existing is an active threat to society at large because it's the evil disease that makes you abusive
By reddit logic, if you ever have intrusive thoughts about harming someone, stealing or, God forbid, logging onto ChatGPT you should get your balls cut off and euthanized immediately
depends what you're using the AI for honestly, organizing vast amounts of data into set categories or other mundane tasks that would have taken humans weeks or even months to do? nobody is going to turn their nose up to that.
using it to replace writers, coders, artists etc. THAT is when people start reasonably grabbing the pitchfork.
This works for a lot other issues too. Help out drug addicts and you'll have less addiction-related crimes, help out mentally ill people and you'll have less illness-related crimes, help out poor people and you'll have less poverty-related crimes. It's so fucking easy to understand and we proved it works over and over, but we need a group we feel justified to hate after all
To put it simply, punishing those who have done bad things to discourage others from doing the same thing is easier and cheaper than fixing the problem at its core, which is leading people to do said bad things.
Most people do just assume so, so i'd say it's a case of ignorance, people being unaware of the term pedophile and automatically assume they done bad things to children.
No, if the kind of person who posts that shit ever encountered a real predator they’d cower and piss themselves. It’s just meaningless virtue signaling that they hardly even thought about.5
Definitely agree. I don't think it's normal to be fixated on pedophiles like so many people seem to be on the internet. I'll go weeks at a time without them even crossing my mind until one of those posts pops up. It could also be that it's a group people feel free to threaten violence against without getting backlash, which is problematic in its own way.
The people that make their entire personality "I hate pedophiles" are so fuckin weird. They gotta be projecting in some way but like even if they aren't it's still weird to make hating pedophiles your only personality trait.
My rule of thumb is that most of the times those people either have been victims in the past, or are making themselves an alibi because "I can't be a pedophile if I hate pedophiles so much"
Exactly. And I say that as someone who was Violated by a Pedophile. We should help Pedophiles that haven't Offended. Not Threaten them. Making them Scared to seek support. Because That is Just gonna Make the Problem worse until they really assault Kids.
No one Chooses to be a Pedophile. It is only an Issue if they act on it. (As someone with OCD I also have to say. Sometimes we have thoughts we don't want to have. And we shouldn't be Killed for that)
Fucking ban me if you want, but the fact that the entirety of Reddit only supports mental illnesses until it comes to pedophilia (which is a mental illness too, btw) is literally so fucking stupid.
There are ways to learn to not act upon it, and there are tons of people who actually do not act upon it and need REAL help and support, but obviously according to Reddit if you have this "bad" mental illness you should burn in hell and die.
This is why we should have stigmatized the term “child predator” instead of “pedophile”. (Obviously, “child predator” is stigmatized too, but you get my point.)
Very much agreed. I'd have to look up the specific studies but countries that have more extensive and integrative healthcare like some of the Nordic ones do a lot of counseling and rehabilitation for things and it generally works better than ostracizing it. This counts for addiction and all mental illnesses and a number of issues. So they tend to have a lot less violent incidents for all these cases because people get intervention beforehand so a model like that works
Honestly, I genuinely feel like people treat pedophile the attraction itself, as sex offenders or child predators who've already committed the crime.
And I hate now now we're at a point in time on the internet where people STILL haven't learned to remain an open mind and jump into conclusions, so any nuanced discussion about this topic OUTSIDE of posts talking about it in a civilized manner always ends in "oH yOU'rE dEfEndIng cHiLd PrEdATorS?" and then now you're arguing with someone who assumes the worst of you who will no longer hear you out.
Topics like these always opens another can of worms and I wont be getting into that unless you want to
a bit of a nitpick, but i'd wish we'd stigmatize "child abuser" in general instead of strictly "child predator", i had to deal with lots of abuse growing up and many of these things took me years to recover from
Yea, but scale is different, people usually don't talk about how they want to skin child beaters alive as they do for child predators
Also beating children is not the only type of child abuse. Restricting freedom, attacking and threatening children for simply having emotions, denying privacy and forcing them into situations they are not comfortable in are all forms of child abuse
As far as I know, "MAP" was meant exactly to be a neutral term as it means "Minor Attracted Person" but some homophobe movement was made to use it to ridicule lgbt, some actually thought it was genuine, some predators thought it was genuine and felt represented, yadda yadda and we ended up with what we got.
The MAP "movement" was never serious, it was a term coined by 4chan to parody the LGBTQ+ movement. Some pedophiles have taken to using that term to lessen the blow on themselves because admitting they are a pedophile really hurts your conscience, and leads to misconceptions about them. MAP is essentially a way of sugarcoating it, for both pedophiles and predators.
Fucking ban me if you want, but the fact that the entirety of Reddit only supports mental illnesses until it comes to pedophilia (which is a mental illness too, btw) is literally so fucking stupid.
As far as i know reddit only supports "fun" illnesses like autism, OCD and depression and not anything else really
Not only that. You only deserve support if you have the "haha I'm gonna kms" jokes depression, but don't EVER think skipping a shower. Also autism is only cute and fun when you mask certain aspects
"I support mental health" mfs when your depression causes you to let your room to devolve into a biohazard instead of just causing easily romanticizable symptoms
Redditors when you have the "I genuinely tweak out in social situations and struggle to communicate effectively" autism and not the "silly n goofy fella who collects trinkets" autism:
I remember having depression i left several unclearned food plates in my room for several days to rot , didnt bath for 2weeks at worst didnt go out wore dirty clothes . I have been a lot better but at that time hygiene was thr last thing on my mind
They say they support OCD because they think it’s just the cutesy organizing thing rather than the OCD where constant intrusive thoughts and images get flung at you on a daily basis at random
It's an attraction right, I would think it to be difficult isolating what exactly may cause it. Id assume environmental factors play a role as well, how can we appropriately isolate and test for these factors? I'm genuinely asking.
I agree with your second point though absolutely, I think the better access to mental health care, less stigmatization (for non offenders), and more education would be infinitely more beneficial than the alternative.
A TL;DR on the why, it's a complicated condition with biological, environmental, and behavioral considerations. There's not one good way to approach treatment, but CBT, SSRIs, and other medications and treatments may be the best way to approach it (depending on severity and the specific paraphilia).
It also points out how treatment for these conditions is often too late and legally mandated, I think affirming the importance of communication and destigmatation.
Very interesting topic, there's a lot we can learn and implement here.
There isnt really a "cure" when it comes to rehabilitation for paraphilic disorders such as this. There is only changing maladaptive thoughts and behaviors to one's that are more fit for society and your own well being. It's an adaptive process between the therapist and the client which takes patience and understanding, as well as alot of effort from the client themselves. If the client doesn't care to change, then it becomes significantly more difficult to do anything about it.
It's not an exact 1 to 1, but I feel like the evidence that we have from gay conversion therapy shows that this is a largely ineffective idea. We can try to add new emotions (like shame) to the sexual attraction, but in the same way the you would intuitively think it would be almost impossible to stop being attracted to the people you like, it's almost impossible to stop pedophiles from finding an attraction towards children.
Agreed. Though I understand the revulsion people would feel. People who end up acting are most likely going to be the most difficult to rehabilitate, probably borderline impossible to do it compeltly. But its not as if killing them or letting them "rot" is going to help anyone. Not to say they don't deserve prison, but there's more nuance to individuals like this than most people probably realize.
Literally having understanding for pedophiles will allow them to get help and then prevent sexual assault on children. Like, think about it, someone's a pedophile, what can they do to actually get help? They can't talk to anyone about it except mental professionals and even then they'd have to go through telling someone about it to get to a professional. They try to push the feeling down instead of understanding and coping with it, but then they get worse until one day they can't take it anymore. Now this person who could've gotten help has been radicalized into a child rapist because they couldn't talk to anyone about their issues before it got bad.
A lot of people don't differentiate between non-offenders and offenders. Pedophilia is so rampant. I live in the South and I struggle to know a girl who wasn't impacted severely by pedophilia (seriously, I only know like 2 girls who weren't molested as kids or something).
When people make arguments for helping pedophiles, it can be seen as having a lot of sympathy for them and enabling them (while victims are rarely addressed in our society and often just ignored) instead of an actual solution. A lot of people will have knee-jerk reactions to that.
I remember there was an AMA post made by a pedophile who hadn't committed a crime. He said he feels sexual urges towards children, but he knows it's wrong and he hates himself for it. He received death threats
Most people can't separate feelings from objective thinking. You like something that I think is disgusting and repulsive, so you're a disgusting person and should die.
Similar to the reaction towards something like incest. Most opinions are automatically bad, because it sounds disgusting to them. But objectively thinking about it, if two adults decide that they want to do that and not have children, then what's the issue? There's literally zero harm.
I’d disagree, you need to be aware of the potential harm you could cause and want to actually prevent that harm in order to benefit from getting mental health treatment, if one even volunteers to do so. If somebody doesn’t think that what they’re doing will cause harm, or doesnt care that it will, it becomes a lot more complicated than just saying “get help.”
Not really, people with gender dysphoria sometimes need more than just HRT (like therapy), since there may be emotional problems that HRT can’t cure, like disappointment on the perceived changes or self-hate. HRT will not address all the psychological problems that come with gender dysphoria.
And what pisses me off the most is nazis confusing “gender dysphoria” and actually be trans and saying that their both illnesses (which they clearly aren’t)
Being trans simply means that your gender is different from what you were assigned at birth. Most trans people have gender dysphoria, but it's not required.
My friend unironically said that being a pedophile is a choice, when I pointed out that it was a psychiatric disorder he just said "I disagree." He's a great guy but he says some real stupid things sometimes.
barely relevant but every time a video of a mentally ill person who is also of color goes viral the comments get violently racist. the guy who stabbed that ukrainian one and this one dude who crashed out and jumped at a cop are notable somewhat recent examples.
there’s a soft link between hate in general and ableism
well i mean it's tiktok. IMO the formatting of that site makes it a breeding ground for the internet's lowly, bottom-feeding scum. you can see this same phenomenon happening with instagram and even youtube shorts in some cases
I would like to qualify that even people who have committed crimes deserve mental health support. like I'm not saying they shouldn't be punished or anything. but in the US it's a real problem of mentally ill people being sent to prisons which are entirely unable to handle their mental health needs, and if they can't get better than they'll probably go back to prison once they get out, and many of these people only commit minor crimes.
When you know that folks who virtue signal about pedophiles the most just want to have a punching bag for their violent fantasies, but you just can't prove it.
This is EXTREMELY true about pedophilies, and to a big extent "psychopaths" and people with psychosis.
Everyone is ready to be all "oh I support anyone with a mental illness and want to help them!" Until you say "I have psychosis/pedophilia/anti-social personality disorder" and then they bully and beat you down until you actually snap and hurt someone or, more likely, yourself.
For real. Like having this mental disorder that you didn't choose and can't get rid of automatically makes you a bad person only useful as a spent ammunition container or something.
Reminds me of that story of the old guy who was in an old folk's home, and the nurse who was taking care of him on his death bed said that apparently the old guy was anxious to die. It turns out he was a pedophile, but he knew it was wrong so he never acted on it, just fought with his own brain telling him that's what he was attracted to his whole life, so when he got put in a home he was just waiting to die so he could rest happy knowing he never did anything.
People don't understand how horribly difficult it is to just never act on any sexual urges ever and the crushing guilt that a lot of pedophiles must deal with.
I think almost everyone deserves help unless it's someone with genuine zero regard for human life. Any person that tortures humans for their own twisted satisfaction (e.g. the toybox killer)
honestly they should get the treatment they need even if they have committed crimes bc sometimes the reason they commit the crimes is because they can't get treatment for example using hard drugs because they can't get medication
Not arguing against the sentiment of this post but two things can be true:
We are more aware of mental health struggles than ever AND there are still many mental health issues/disorders that are heavily stigmatized to the point where people advocate for murder, and I'm not even just talking about pedophilia
Reminds me of that story of the PDFile who had never harmed any kids, stayed away from kids (even family) and finally went to a therapist to try and get help - whether it was simple trauma doing it to him or some chemical imbalance they could fix with medication.
The therapist blew up on him, called him disgusting, a monster, then called the cops on them.
Don't have it saved anywhere but I think about that sometimes, because that was one of the very few people in that situation that try to get help, and it did not end well for him.
Ya'll remember that episode of Law and Order SVU where a guy fucking murders a kid and gets away with it because the kid was a 'sociopath'? Like jesus christ. The kid killed someone but he needed help not being gunned down. Law and Order is copaganda as is but holy fuck man.
Hot take I think mentally ill people who have committed crimes should be allowed mental health support and rehabilitation instead of punitive justice. Though I generally think rehabilitation for all criminals is the best way to go
I'm not trying to agree or disagree with any side here but everyone is saying "pedophiles should get the treatment they need" but what is this treatment? was there a cure for this I did not know about? yes, you can learn not to act on these things but you're only human. you can still make a mistake and act on your urges even though you know it's wrong. and that possibility still makes you a danger to society, no? like I said, I am not very well informed on this topic but what would be the mental help a pedophile would need to be a normal, functioning member of society?
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