Hi!

[aeterna91]

Hi!

First of all, sorry if I make any grammatical mistakes. English is not my native language.

As a brief introduction: I am a man in his 30s. I am not a pedophile. I am mainly atractted to teenagers.

I became interested in these issues as a result of the prevailing discourse today, that any relationship between teenagers and adults is an abuse with terrible psychological consequences. I know of relationships between teenagers and adults that have been completely normal and have not caused any harm to the teenager. So where do these ideas come from that every relationship between an adult and a teenager is harmful and should be forbidden and punished?

Trying to understand more about this led me to read Rind, Sandfort, Malón, Foucault, Oudekerk... led me to Newgon, Tom O'Carroll's blog and this forum. The funny thing is that, with these readings, I not only confirmed what I thought, but I realized that things went further. Just a little over a year ago I didn't believe it was possible for a person who had not already been through puberty for a few years to enjoy any sexual activity with someone a few years older, and now I know of multiple evidence that it is possible.

Furthermore, everything seems to indicate that, although there are real cases of abuse that must be fought (and this is very important), a significant part of the damage that is attributed to this type of relationships is actually damage caused by current social perception, by current laws and by intervention of authorities; by a whole series of mechanisms (self-fulfilling prophecies, iatrogenic damage, nocebo effect...) that generate suffering where there should be none, both in adults and in the minors they are supposedly protecting.

I think it's ironic and many of you will find it funny: If I had lived in a country where the age of consent was set at 13 and relationships between teenagers over 13 and adults were socially acceptable, I would probably have spent my whole life thinking that a person under 13 could never enjoy an encounter with an adult and that any adult who wanted to get involved in something like that was a monster who should be punished. So it has been precisely the tendency to demonize all relationships between adults and minors, or even between older and younger adult people, which has led me to defend more radical positions that I would never have defended otherwise.

Now I can't forget what I've learned. I've always believed that we must fight to make the world a better place. If current social perceptions and current laws designed to protect minors from sex are doing far more harm than they prevent and are creating huge amounts of unnecessary suffering, I think we should change them.

[FairBlueLove]

Hi aeterna91! This is a great introduction!

Welcome!

[Phossu]

Welcome!!

Very well written introduction, and I appreciate your perspective.

As a pedophile myself, I feel that I am attracted to people that are much more susceptible to the harms you outline in your post, more so than adolescents.

I'm curious, do you believe that there is a lower age limit where the inherent harm (if it exists) that may come from adult-minor sexual contact eclipses iatrogenic and other harms? Or do you find your beliefs about adolescent sexual contact apply equally to prepubescents?

[aeterna91]

Thank you!

I'm curious, do you believe that there is a lower age limit where the inherent harm (if it exists) that may come from adult-minor sexual contact eclipses iatrogenic and other harms? Or do you find your beliefs about adolescent sexual contact apply equally to prepubescents?

Well, there are definitely some positive testimonies. Some of them are anonymous and harder to verify, but in others there are names (Beth Kelly, Ingmar Bergman, Allen Gingsberg...). At first, I was very shocked by them. But, thinking about it coldly, I see no reason why they could be lying or why there is any harm that they are not aware of themselves.

Now, it's a matter with many nuances. For example, it seems likely that there is an age at which penetrative sex will always be harmful, but perhaps other types of sex will not. It could also be possible that there is a limit beyond which, although there is no intrinsic harm, the risk is too high to be acceptable.

I think it's difficult to reach a definitive conclusion because there is very little reliable and objective information. Even Rind's most interesting studies are still very incomplete, and in any case, it is very difficult to know whether the damage is intrinsic or due to social causes, because there is no society without this taboo that you can compare with and say "oh, they seem to be doing well here" or "no, this is definitely very harmful".

I wish that more complete studies could be done to learn more about this... and that laws and social attitudes would adjust to scientific evidence, of course.