The discussion of Pedophilia VS Hebephilia [No one ever talks about this]

[MAPGL917]

I would go down rabbit holes of MAP information, including scientific studies. I can't remember the exact statistics, or the exact study, but there was one done where basically the majority of men had hebephilic attractions,and were more open to admit it when they didn't realize they were admitting it.

So the study would show men different body types and facial features, and sometimes use an imaging tool to merge photos, and say give an adult woman the mouth or eyes of 13 year old. What they found is that a majority of the men had the strongest attraction to features typically found on a 13-15 year old teen.

Also, they would show different groups the same image, but have a caption or tag with the picture showing age. Men were more likely to admit they found a 13 year old girl attractive if they were told she was above their countries AoC. So they'd show a 13 year, and say she was 13, men said they were unattracted. They'd show other men the same girl, and say she was 16+, and many of them men admitted she was attractive. This shows many of them were unwilling to admit the attraction due to social stigma.

There is a girl in my friend group, that is 21. She could easily pass off as a 12 year old girl. Short, skinny, barely budding breasts and youthful face. Plenty of guys say she's attractive and openly talk or make jokes about hooking up with her, despite her having practically the same physical features as a 12-13 year old. Heck, even her personality isn't that far off. But try and get any of those guys to admit to finding a girl they know is a preteen or young teen attractive, and they'll immediately get huffy and claim not to be a pedofile.

So, I think hebephilia is significantly more common than most people realize. Pedofilia not as much, but some studies theorize it's still probably around 20%.

That sounds very interesting. Almost validating, in a way. It is truly sad that people have to lie about who they're attracted to because even a "I would never act on it" disclaimer wouldn't satisfy people who are deeply antagonistc to minor-attraction when felt by adults/AMSC on principle.

What's also interesting is that there's apparently blood work you can have done to determine your biological age and people can be significantly younger, biologically, than their actual age. The youtuber Brett Cooper, I believe she's in her 20s, is apparently 13 in terms of her biological age (or was when she posted the short about it that I watched) so if it's acceptable for people to be attracted to people in their 20s, and possibly even 30s, who are 'biologically in their teens' then the lines drawn when it comes to acceptable and inappropriate attraction seem all the more forced, artificial and internally incoherent. People only seem to insist that 'attraction isn't a choice,' 'you can't help who you love' (which is somewhat strange to me because even though I can understand how it would apply to 'romantic love' under some conditions I can't see myself ever having a crush on someone I disliked. I can be involuntarily sexually attracted to people whose personalities I don't like but I could never be infatuated with someone I didn't like or admire and wanted to not be infatuated with for that reason. To be fair, not liking someone is only one reason why people would not want to be madly in love with them) etc. when they can deal with the implications, e.g. when it comes to LGBT acceptance which is more or less a milquetoast stance in modern Western countries and not, in my possibly flawed view, this deeply counter-culture revolutionary stance that some people make it out to be. That goes beyond MAP issues though (e.g. assuming that someone who's attracted to serial killers or abusers necessarily lacks sympathy for their victims).

I also remember a study suggesting that female sexual attractiveness peaks at 14 and it might have been around 1/4th of the male population who could be thought of as 'pedophilic,' I can't remember the details, I mentioned it on here a long time ago but I think someone came along, cited the exact study and put some things into context about it so I don't know how much I can put into it.

I was going to elaborate on not being able to understand the outrage over adults being attracted to developed minors (or younger adults) because even though I don't find the idea that prepubescent child-adult sex is inherently bad anymore 'understandable' the arguments against it apply less to developed minors who can reproduce but I'm tired of writing so I'll spare you another one of my lengthy posts.

It reminds me of a joke I used to say. "Dating a stripper is like eating a noisy bag of chips in church. Everyone looks at you in disgust, but deep down, they want some too" I think it's the same with being outed as a MAP. Everyone is quick to to judge and name call, while burying down having the same feelings, because they see how the one person is treated by the crowd.

And oh God, I feel that triggering me going down a rabbit hole researching that. I have spent hours reading studies on MAPS, what triggers it, and how many people are likely to have the same attractions. Nothing feels like validation of your problem quite like cold hard data saying you aren't as abnormal and perverted as you think you are.

The attraction isn't a choice thing has unfortunately played out in my life too much recently. I have an ex-gf I reconnected with, we were hanging out aalllll the time (despite her having a bf she lived with, and we hid everything from). We were even hooking up, having great sex, taking roadtrips every month, and just vibing. I tried to tell her we should just be an item again. And she basically broke down and cried and told me she can't. We get along, the sex is great, but she just doesn't feel that "attraction". And she said she's sorry, she wants it to be there but it's not. So, that sucked. We have slowly been growing apart again. But, she knows I'm a MAP after a drunken night, and she was accepting. She teases me for it a lot when there are cute young girls around. But, I was able to use her feelings as an example. Just how she couldn't force her attraction for me, I cant force my attraction to stop. When I explained it that way to her, I could see it click in her brain like she'd never thought of.

And see, I think I read the same study!! Basically, the features that men were finding attractive were from females around that 14 year old range. Like they would just show a mouth, an ear, eyes etc. and it was around 14 that got the highest ratings.

I struggle with my feelings towards contact. I do believe in a lower AoC becoming normalized. But unfortunately, I feel there are limits to it. I can 100% see sex with a 12 year old ok (I lost my virginity to a 12 year old when I was 15). Any lower just seems wrong. And granted, I'd still probably have sex with a 9 or even 8 year old... Even though I feel it isn't quite right. Hypocritical much? Most definitely.

Anyways, I enjoyed our banter and look forward to your reply. Thanks.

[Curson]

In all honesty, pedophilia is a term that is used more as a smear label and incorrectly at that. Pubescent and post-pubescents should not be considered any different from adults, the framework for consent just labels them as underage. Even centuries back teenagers were doing amazing things, and now they are being held back from their potential in this ruinous society.

[John_Doe]

It reminds me of a joke I used to say. "Dating a stripper is like eating a noisy bag of chips in church. Everyone looks at you in disgust, but deep down, they want some too" I think it's the same with being outed as a MAP. Everyone is quick to to judge and name call, while burying down having the same feelings, because they see how the one person is treated by the crowd.

And oh God, I feel that triggering me going down a rabbit hole researching that. I have spent hours reading studies on MAPS, what triggers it, and how many people are likely to have the same attractions. Nothing feels like validation of your problem quite like cold hard data saying you aren't as abnormal and perverted as you think you are.

The attraction isn't a choice thing has unfortunately played out in my life too much recently. I have an ex-gf I reconnected with, we were hanging out aalllll the time (despite her having a bf she lived with, and we hid everything from). We were even hooking up, having great sex, taking roadtrips every month, and just vibing. I tried to tell her we should just be an item again. And she basically broke down and cried and told me she can't. We get along, the sex is great, but she just doesn't feel that "attraction". And she said she's sorry, she wants it to be there but it's not. So, that sucked. We have slowly been growing apart again. But, she knows I'm a MAP after a drunken night, and she was accepting. She teases me for it a lot when there are cute young girls around. But, I was able to use her feelings as an example. Just how she couldn't force her attraction for me, I cant force my attraction to stop. When I explained it that way to her, I could see it click in her brain like she'd never thought of.

And see, I think I read the same study!! Basically, the features that men were finding attractive were from females around that 14 year old range. Like they would just show a mouth, an ear, eyes etc. and it was around 14 that got the highest ratings.

I struggle with my feelings towards contact. I do believe in a lower AoC becoming normalized. But unfortunately, I feel there are limits to it. I can 100% see sex with a 12 year old ok (I lost my virginity to a 12 year old when I was 15). Any lower just seems wrong. And granted, I'd still probably have sex with a 9 or even 8 year old... Even though I feel it isn't quite right. Hypocritical much? Most definitely.

Anyways, I enjoyed our banter and look forward to your reply. Thanks.

I don't really have anything else to say.

As a general point, the question for me is at what age would we have a reason to think that children or minors would be harmed by sex or could enjoy it (as in because of sexual desire and not because they see it as a game or appreciate the emotional intimacy that comes with it; non-sexual contact could serve those functions). It would be simpler to focus on the morality of AMSC (only suffering bad, sexual pleasure qua happiness=good) but the idea that adolescents whose bodies are wired to reproduce are 'asexual' beings and an older adult attraction to them is 'abnormal' or 'deviant'/outside of normal human sexuality is frustrating for me (not because truly maladaptive preferences are or would be bad but because the stigma depends partly on the idea that it's deviant or that the natural development of a 'healthy' person would be to lose attraction to people in the age groups they were attracted to when they were younger. I am a moral realist, I believe in objective moral truths, but I acknowledge that I can't inter-subjectively demonstrate these truths for other people; as dishonest or misguided as I might think they are to deny that we experience happiness as inherently good or to insist that something other than our experience of happiness/emotional distress can be a source of knowledge about the nature/value of happiness and suffering. That sperm cells/male bodies are adapted to fertilize egg cells/be intimate with females of reproductive age is something that we can inter-subjectively demonstrate, so it's especially frustrating for me that people will deny this because the idea of adolescents being sexual or sexually intimate with significantly older people bothers them for reasons that I can't really understand), so I guess I'm trying tie my pro-happiness approach to the value-neutral facts about human biology/the nature of sexuality angle. It's clear to me that vaginal intercourse is medically risky for prepubescent girls (or even, I think, pubescent girls prior to 6-12 months before they have their first period). So we could make menarche the rule, for girls at least, but 1) that will only correlate with age; it wouldn't allow us to draw hard fast lines between age groups in predicting what behavior might be harmful, 2) I have no idea whether or not artificial lubrication could make that safer or less physically painful and if the girl might feel the payoff could be worth it, 3) anal sex for adults is always medically risky since anuses aren't designed for penetration (mouths are more versatile and self-lubricate like vaginas), and apparently vaginal sex can be painful for post-pubescent girls when they lose their virginity, so while I'd rather exploring that not be the hill that I'm willing to die on (as in I'm not going to be publicly defending adults having vaginal intercourse with prepubescent girls, even in an ideal society where sociogenic harm wouldn't be an issue), that's something to consider. There are also forms of erotic intimacy that have nothing to do with vaginal intercourse.

With the possible exception of 'asexuals' (who, 'logically,' should have a libido at least. If I'm completely invalidating their experiences the fact remains that they make up something like 1% of the population), pre-teens/teens who are relatively fertile/can reproduce should have fully developed libidos, given that testosterone and estrogen drive puberty to begin with this is much harder for people to deny (compared to prepubescent child sexuality, which I don't question), so this is notable because there's a possible benefit to compensate for the risks that come with sex for them (something that can't be covered by anything else. You can express affection/have emotional intimacy or play through non-sexual means but the desire for sexual intimacy per se is a very specific need), and I mean risks that never go disappear with age. My position is nothing near "trust me, no teen will ever regret having sex; with similarly aged peers or older adults" but rather that I don't think the idea that teens whose bodies are wired to reproduce might regret sexual intimacy for age-related reasons to be plausible and, as harsh as this might sound to most people, I don't think adolescent sexual regret is especially concerning. When they should be given special 'treatment' it's because they are especially vulnerable to pain in scenarios that require prioritization, I don't think child, teen or young adult suffering fundamentally matters more than the suffering of older people once you account for intensity and duration. On top of that, teens can suffer very severely as a result of activities that are socially acceptable, they can have physical injuries from skateboarding or whatever (as an aside, it makes me kind of sad that people are discouraged from engaging in certain 'aged-based' activities because even though I would probably not do it personally, I can see how skateboarding would be entertaining. I don't know how many old people would love to skateboard but might feel self-conscious doing so) or being bullied at school; which could be avoided through homeschooling.

I guess that would be my argument for hedonists who don't think that hedonism justifies a more relaxed attitude to AMSC in practice, so I had more to say after all.

Curson,

In all honesty, pedophilia is a term that is used more as a smear label and incorrectly at that. Pubescent and post-pubescents should not be considered any different from adults, the framework for consent just labels them as underage. Even centuries back teenagers were doing amazing things, and now they are being held back from their potential in this ruinous society.

People will sometimes just openly admit that it's a cultural term that has nothing to do with prepubescent children. It just means 'attraction to someone whose much younger and that's bad.' It's built on the complete erasure of puberty, as though we shouldn't expect PUBERTY to play a role in standard human sexual attraction (puberty isn't just some vague 'process by which a child becomes an adult,' it's the process through which they become sexually mature. I cannot wrap my mind around an age-related taboo of being sexually intimate with someone who's sexually mature).

I think there's a meaningful distinction to be made between pubescent children who don't yet menstruate (Tanner stage 4 for girls) or produce sperm/semen (apparently stage 3 for boys). Even though I think we can draw a sharper line between those who can reproduce and those who can't for immaturity-related reasons, I don't think differentiating a 12-year-old who has just started getting her periods from a 14-year-old at Tanner stage 5 is unreasonable (apparently, if a girl doesn't have another period after her first within the first year after menarche that's not even considered 'medically abnormal.' Around 80% of the average girl's periods within the first year after menarche are anovulatory, I think it's 50% within the first 2 years and 10% by the 6th year; although I doubt any woman consistently has ovulatory cycles), and 17 might be the when Tanner stage 5 would be considered delayed for girls (even though most 15-year-old girls in a developed country are at Tanner stage 5). I would be happy if we started treating people in their late teens (17-19) and early 20s as full-fledged adults, not with the semi-adult status they have now where governments can use the threat of violence to interfere with their sex lives (i.e. porn with a 17-year-old actress would be illegal, and in some places statutory rape laws might even apply to people that old) but they can be tried as adults if they kill someone (for all I know, they could possibly be given the death penalty in some states). Of course this semi-adult status under the law only applies to 17-year-olds (and in places where you can't drink or smoke until 19 or 21), but culturally people in their early 20s aren't always treated as 'real adults.'