Are ephebophiles welcome here

[Hiago]

25 year old cis woman here (so no, Hiago’s not my real name, LOL). Have a preference for 15-17 year old boys. Came out to some people as someone that has those preferences and have been ostracized just by that, because of who I am. So I hope this is my place. I’m also wondering if I could vent somewhere in this forum without leaving any identifiable information.

[BLueRibbon]

Hi. Of course you're welcome here.

Imagine getting upset about a person being attracted to sexually mature teens...

[DANAT4T]

Great to have you here.

[ReArm!]

Sure! I think even Teleiophiles are welcome if they're allies. We're not excluding anyone for their sexual preferences, are we?

[Hiago]

Hi. Of course you're welcome here.

Imagine getting upset about a person being attracted to sexually mature teens...

Thank you. It’s ironic how, despite majority’s opinion, it’s legal to be in a relationship with 15-17 year old teenagers (with their limitations) here and in some other places even when you’re an adult. I have even heard about the Catholic Church promulgating the permission of marrying a minor depending on the secular law (in which it was also before that way, 16-17 year olds in general), and here the majority is catholic, LMAO. But they still had vitriol towards me even though I didn’t sexually abuse him or was in a relationship with him, I kept my distance actually (and I have heard from a bird he liked seeing my butt, LOL). They just assumed I had feelings towards him according to how flustered I was every time I saw him, and I liked to talk to him. I used to work with him and it’s a super small town, so people just started to spread rumors. And they stopped talking to me, didn’t want to invite me anymore, talked trash about me/insulted me in my face... It made me even more anxious about these feelings and I just feel wrath in my heart towards this town and others that I could potentially meet anywhere else, because if they knew my preferences they would also be hateful too. I guess you guys have went through similar experiences of rejection. It hurts.

Great to have you here.

Sure! I think even Teleiophiles are welcome if they're allies. We're not excluding anyone for their sexual preferences, are we?

Thank you!! I guess you guys were excluded too in real life or in other spaces, I was too as well. I guess those experiences made us also more empathetic towards others.

[Kierkegaard]

I think everyone is welcome here whether they're a MAP at all or just an ally.

I've always thought ephebophile is one of those terms that almost seems silly to even have a word for at all given how incredibly common and normal it is, but we're living in such a repressive era that actually acknowledging you find 15-18 year olds attractive is somehow taboo. Despite probably the majority of the adult population sharing attraction towards post-pubescent teenagers.

Even as recently as a couple of decades ago I don't think it would've been taboo to simply acknowledge you think teens that age are sexy so long as you aren't really pursuing them. There are mainstream, PG, family movies from the 90's where scenes of grown women flirting with or ogling highschool boys are written as totally normal and harmless moments. It wasn't remotely controversial until very recently. Now even admitting to being a "non-offending" ephebophile(lmao) who experiences attraction to teens will get people telling you to go to therapy or calling you a freak. And every time on Reddit the subject comes up you get scores of people desperately virtue signalling about how disgusting and childish they think teens are and how they can't even stand to be in the same room as them because they're just so totally turned off by their presence. It's ridiculous.

Anyway, welcome to the forum. 15 is around the age where my attraction to boys starts to fade personally but I wholeheartedly support them in their efforts to have sex with their teachers, friend's moms, and other adult women.

[grey99]

It's kind of crazy, imo, that you even need to find a niche community to support finding 15-17 year olds sexually attractive.

The world is upside down.

I'm new here, but I imagine you are very very welcome.

[amorfati]

Welcome! (if I am even privileged enough to say as much - just joined this weekend).
As a male hebephile-ephebo hybrid - it is wild to me that the world is re-adjudicating this socially - I was a young in the 1990s and it was very different - its almost like social media and the erosion of third-places (where we as youth used to default to - dropped off at the mall, etc) has made us collectively more - I don't know neurotic about social fluidity.
Once upon a time, a high school person, a college aged person, a professional aged person, sitting in a coffee shop would all discuss openly about music, art, life, how lame politicians were (somethings never change ).
Now everyone seems more and more algo-brained into silos of hyper-specified cohorts that seem to reinforce in-group ick responses to the slightest bit of out-group stimulus - I don't know - computation has been great for some things but I am not sure socializing humans is one of them.
Can only imagine a weird end state where eventually people start caring about whether they only associated with people that are within a week, a day...of one another because Monday people be like: "those wednesday people are just...wrong and don't even get me started about how much Saturday people should go in a woodchipper"

[Hiago]

I've always thought ephebophile is one of those terms that almost seems silly to even have a word for at all given how incredibly common and normal it is, but we're living in such a repressive era that actually acknowledging you find 15-18 year olds attractive is somehow taboo. Despite probably the majority of the adult population sharing attraction towards post-pubescent teenagers.

Here’s the thing: it’s common, yet today no one acknowledges it openly, or can’t. It’s extremely common, yet you cannot say “I find him hot” if he’s 15, and we all know why. And the majority find 15-17 year old teengers attractive, yet it’s illegal (unless you have the parents approval in some cases) or supposedly immoral to be in a relationship with them, have sex with them, pursue them romantically. Hell, if you have the opinion that maybe feeling something towards a, say, 16 years old, is not that bad, everyone’s gonna assume you’re the scum of the earth for the audacity of that opinion. And so when I see that, I think to myself “Yeah, for them, pedophiles who like them younger must be worse than scum”, even when the majority is... ephebophilic. Yeah, silly word, but it’s no surprise we have a word for it seeing how things are.

Anyway, welcome to the forum. 15 is around the age where my attraction to boys starts to fade personally but I wholeheartedly support them in their efforts to have sex with their teachers, friend's moms, and other adult women.

What is your AoA for boys? That you support it is heartwarming. I think it should be legal if the boy wants it. Also, interesting nickname. I find philosophy interesting. I wanted to read Kierkegaard.

It's kind of crazy, imo, that you even need to find a niche community to support finding 15-17 year olds sexually attractive.

The world is upside down.

I'm new here, but I imagine you are very very welcome.

Well, if we’re hated (or more like the attraction itself or those that are outed since almost half of the population is ephebophilic, LMAO), I can’t imagine how hated and unloved MAPs with a lower AoA must feel. Also, thanks.

Welcome! (if I am even privileged enough to say as much - just joined this weekend).
As a male hebephile-ephebo hybrid - it is wild to me that the world is re-adjudicating this socially - I was a young in the 1990s and it was very different - its almost like social media and the erosion of third-places (where we as youth used to default to - dropped off at the mall, etc) has made us collectively more - I don't know neurotic about social fluidity.
Once upon a time, a high school person, a college aged person, a professional aged person, sitting in a coffee shop would all discuss openly about music, art, life, how lame politicians were (somethings never change ).
Now everyone seems more and more algo-brained into silos of hyper-specified cohorts that seem to reinforce in-group ick responses to the slightest bit of out-group stimulus - I don't know - computation has been great for some things but I am not sure socializing humans is one of them.
Can only imagine a weird end state where eventually people start caring about whether they only associated with people that are within a week, a day...of one another because Monday people be like: "those wednesday people are just...wrong and don't even get me started about how much Saturday people should go in a woodchipper"

No worries. Welcome also. Well, I think hive mentality always existed (just look at religion), and we’re a social species. But it’s definitively worse with social media. And I hate it. I wish I wasn’t a human being. When we’re humans, we crave connection and that means a sense of belonging, which is related to belonging to a group. I find it absurd, because a group, any group, even MAPs groups, eventually will try to force you to think this or that way for the sake of the group or collective. I prefer to be a loner, which sonds crazy since I’m a woman and when I acknowledge that, in a negative way, I don’t feel like a woman at all.

[John_Doe]

I think everyone is welcome here whether they're a MAP at all or just an ally.

I've always thought ephebophile is one of those terms that almost seems silly to even have a word for at all given how incredibly common and normal it is, but we're living in such a repressive era that actually acknowledging you find 15-18 year olds attractive is somehow taboo. Despite probably the majority of the adult population sharing attraction towards post-pubescent teenagers.

Even as recently as a couple of decades ago I don't think it would've been taboo to simply acknowledge you think teens that age are sexy so long as you aren't really pursuing them. There are mainstream, PG, family movies from the 90's where scenes of grown women flirting with or ogling highschool boys are written as totally normal and harmless moments. It wasn't remotely controversial until very recently. Now even admitting to being a "non-offending" ephebophile(lmao) who experiences attraction to teens will get people telling you to go to therapy or calling you a freak. And every time on Reddit the subject comes up you get scores of people desperately virtue signalling about how disgusting and childish they think teens are and how they can't even stand to be in the same room as them because they're just so totally turned off by their presence. It's ridiculous.

Anyway, welcome to the forum. 15 is around the age where my attraction to boys starts to fade personally but I wholeheartedly support them in their efforts to have sex with their teachers, friend's moms, and other adult women.

It's kind of crazy, imo, that you even need to find a niche community to support finding 15-17 year olds sexually attractive.

The world is upside down.

I'm new here, but I imagine you are very very welcome.

(grey99)

I agree, except I feel similarly about 'hebephile,' 'MAP' and 'AAM' as well. I could maybe understand 'hebephile' if it identifies people who strongly prefer pubescent-looking pre-teens or young teens, at least on paper, because at Tanner stages 2, 3 and even 4 they're not fully sexually mature but I don't understand the distinction between post-pubescent teens and legal adults (for girls, the average healthy 15-year-old would be fully sexually mature and Tanner stage 5 would probably be considered delayed if it hasn't been reached by 17. For boys it might be 18). Even with younger teens, they're often indistinguishable from legal adults and many 30-year-olds wouldn't look out of place in a high school classroom.

I don't understand the issue that people have with legal adults being with older teens (I don't mean that I disagree with it, I mean I don't understand it). I don't think it's generally about their not being cognitively developed enough to properly consent since most people don't protest 16-year-olds being tried as adults when they commit brutal murders (if I'm not mistaken, some researchers claim that basic cognition more or less peaks at 18 or 19 and declines thereafter so although they lack 'life experience,' 18-year-olds are cognitively sharper than middle-aged people, all other variables considered. I've also read that 'adult cognition' develops by 16, according to some sources) and that's not to suggest that I think AMSC would be inherently wrong or bad even if children couldn't truly 'consent' to it (I care whether or not children have an active desire to avoid sexual intimacy with someone because the experienced frustration of desire is inherently painful; at least in the sense that realizing a desire has gone unfulfilled necessarily primes a negative emotional response, but a desire to avoid sexual intimacy wouldn't necessarily be implied by the absence of true consent. Regret is also a different concern than sexual autonomy, regret can go in either direction). I don't think it's about power imbalances if people are honest, you could help reduce power imbalance between minors and adults by giving them the right to vote, allowing for more minor autonomy, etc. (people might genuinely care about a thing inconsistently but I think that all ethical double standards imply some value other than the thing they claim to care about that they only support or oppose as an end in itself circumstantially. Something other than the nature of x would have to justify being pro-x as an end in itself in this scenario but not another since x is the same in both).

I don't see why it would bother people if a 30-year-old admits to being attracted to or interested in 15-year-olds, I think it would generally be received badly even if they clarified that they would never act on their attraction, pointed out that it was involuntary, etc. I can't imagine being the kind of person who is bothered by legal adults wanting to be with teenagers. I'm curious but I wouldn't put too much into trying to understand where this comes from because I try to accept that people are different than I am and I'm not going to change the world.

I've never really understood the concept of 'exploitation.' People will sometimes argue that women of color shouldn't date white men because of the perceived racial/gender power imbalance between them but it's as though they never consider the possible benefit to the person they're trying to protect. If those woc are attracted to certain white men (or in some way interested in them and believe a relationship with them could bring value into their lives) and their relationship could be a source of happiness for them, why would you not at least factor that into consideration as a cost to discouraging those relationships? It never seems as though the argument is that in the long run they'll suffer or they are being deprived of something valuable but the risk is too high and they wish that things were different and those relationships didn't need to be discouraged. It's the same thing with minors, why do they never consider that they might actually be attracted to adults and find intimacy with them pleasurable, they act as though just preventing the relationship itself is a favor. Depending on how dangerous their working conditions might be, you're only helping third world factory workers who are being exploited by some company if you successfully pressure the company into increasing their wages, improving work conditions, giving them adequate time off and sick leave and various benefits, etc. Just preventing the 'exploited' from access to the only employment available to them does nothing to improve their situation (again, unless the working conditions are really dangerous and they're oblivious to this or imprudent but that's not what I have in mind). People will complain about someone paying a sex worker in exchange for intimacy but they'll never criticize the client (who could also be viewed as the 'exploited,' depending on your point of view) for just not giving them that same money as charity (again, you could make the lack of prudence/unrealized serious long-term harm argument but they realistically don't oppose sex work because of its consequences alone, they opposite it on principle).

To go back to what I was trying to say with my second paragraph, there's really no 'making sense' of arbitrary values. What it comes down to is that there's no reason to oppose amsc or age-gap relationships on principle (if there's an age-related reason to assume that minors will actually suffer as a result of relationships with older people, even in a society with no stigma for them to internalize, I want to hear about it because that would be a reason to oppose them in practice if not on principle). You can point out different logical and ethical inconsistencies or double standards but ultimately the anti-age-gap taboo is arbitrary in the context of their being a non-arbitrary alternative (I say this because most of our beliefs are unavoidably arbitrary). An explanation only really helps if I have a personal reference for the intuitions that ultimately play a role. If I ask you why you've randomly attacked someone and you say, "he raped my sister, he killed my dog, he used to bully me in school," I can understand that if I have at some point craved vengeance, had a need to show loyalty or just cared less about the suffering of unjust people whom I perceived as having wronged me etc. (I can understand even if I'm still intuitively repelled by the behavior but can relate to some of the instincts that are ultimately behind it), if you say, "he was wearing a blue hat on a Sunday. ON A SUNDAY!!!!" and there's no further context, that might fit perfectly with your intuitions but it means nothing to me. Suffering matters and we can know that through experience, which is to say that it's self-evidently bad. There's just nothing wrong with ANY age-gap relationship if no one suffers as a result of it, it should be celebrated insofar as it can be a source of happiness for people (and unlike sadistic pleasure, it's not a source of happiness that directly results from, ironically, not valuing the happiness of all beings which is immoral in the hedonistic view). That's not just 'one perspective among many,' 'one possible interpretation' etc., no, everyone can 'see' that suffering/happiness is what matters but most people just don't care to sacrifice their intuitions for a truly non-arbitrary position.