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Why do people get offended when you refer to pedophilia as a sexual preference?
Posted: Mon Aug 31, 2026 8:31 am
by pedo233
I notice that people get offended when you refer to pedophilia or any MAP attraction as a sexual preference. I mentioned on reddit that my uncle has a sexual preference for 12-13 year old girls, some guy in the comments said that's not a sexual preference, its a paraphilia. I responded with "What do you mean? He prefers girls that age" and another user called me a retard. People also get upset when you call pedophilia a sexuality or a sexual orientation. Why is this?
Re: Why do people get offended when you refer to pedophilia as a sexual preference?
Posted: Mon Aug 31, 2026 10:14 am
by PurpleHouse
Line between sexuality/orientation/preference and paraphilia feels arbitrary. In everyday talk people dont like using the critical thinking to see that.
Part of it is idea that the paraphilias could cause harm. But whatever the view on that, and i see a mix of views here, that doesnt invalidate the underlying feeling being a natural variation of sexuality.
And if the concern is risk of harm, surely accepting the person for their sexuality is a useful step, even if it is a sexuality "we" dont "like". If someone feels accepted they may find it easier to draw lines of where their actions go. That applies to all sorts of things. And that is before we open up discussion of which actions are genuinely harmful.
Re: Why do people get offended when you refer to pedophilia as a sexual preference?
Posted: Mon Aug 31, 2026 10:18 am
by weird.organisms
pedo233 wrote: Mon Aug 31, 2026 8:31 am
I notice that people get offended when you refer to pedophilia or any MAP attraction as a sexual preference. I mentioned on reddit that my uncle has a sexual preference for 12-13 year old girls, some guy in the comments said that's not a sexual preference, its a paraphilia. I responded with "What do you mean? He prefers girls that age" and another user called me a retard. People also get upset when you call pedophilia a sexuality or a sexual orientation. Why is this?
It isn't seen as a sexual preference but a pathology. People associate pedophilia with horrible crimes and offenses by nonMAPs, usually ending with the child being killed or severely harmed. That and it's not seen as a sexual preference in mainstream media, news, etc.
Simply put the general public doesn't have enough exposure to healthy attraction by real MAPs, that and many of these also hate children and cannot stand the mere thought of anyone granting them the permissions of an adult when it comes to ownership and love of their bodies and minds. So what do they do to prevent us from being accepted? Pathologize the attraction.
Re: Why do people get offended when you refer to pedophilia as a sexual preference?
Posted: Mon Aug 31, 2026 12:46 pm
by Jim Burton
pedo233 wrote: Mon Aug 31, 2026 8:31 am
I notice that people get offended when you refer to pedophilia or any MAP attraction as a sexual preference. I mentioned on reddit that my uncle has a sexual preference for 12-13 year old girls, some guy in the comments said that's not a sexual preference, its a paraphilia. I responded with "What do you mean? He prefers girls that age" and another user called me a retard. People also get upset when you call pedophilia a sexuality or a sexual orientation. Why is this?
Strictly speaking, if it causes distress or was acted upon, the DSM considers 12-13 cause for a paraphilia diagnosis (pedophilic disorder) as adolescents of that age are
wrongly assumed to be prepubescent.
This is one thing that demonstrates the hubris of science - that psychiatry is divorced from physiology, and therefore we have an excuse to maintain an outdated distinction that would have been more appropriate during Victorian times.
It's appalling that the major branches of medicine dealing with disorders of the mind (psychology, psychiatry) all diagnose disorders on the basis of a physiological claim that is known to be false, and proven so in studies.
Reddit users tend to be pro-psychiatry liberals - they will think you are autistic or some kind of hippie if you don't repeat the hogwash, or use language in ways that are not adequately modernistic.
Re: Why do people get offended when you refer to pedophilia as a sexual preference?
Posted: Mon Aug 31, 2026 10:13 pm
by Kierkegaard
Some people are literal minded and tend to use language in straightforward, precise, literal ways. Like many autistic people, for example. To people like this, the accuracy or correctness of a term is all that really matters, and it's confusing when others use language in ways which seems blatantly incorrect, or when others take issue with correct language. It seems like those people are just being stupid and irrational.
For most people though, language use is about a lot more than just whether a particular term is technically accurate. Language carries moral and political weight, it signals in-group/out-group affiliation, implicates what your values are, etc.
People who get offended about pedophilia being referred to as a sexual preference are getting offended because "sexual preference" carries a neutral or positive moral connotation, and using neutral language to describe something considered to be deeply morally wrong makes it sound like you are implicitly endorsing the thing being referred to, or at least aren't acknowledging the severity of the moral wrongness. In order to correctly signal that you are part of the in-group who consider pedophilia to be evil, you have to use the right kind of terminology to describe it. This is obvious to most neurotypical people.
This is why so many people reflexively oppose pedophilia being considered to be a sexual orientation. Because "sexual orientation" is not a purely descriptive, value-neutral, scientific term. It's a normative term. It carries moral and political weight.
Some scientists do try to use "sexual orientation" as a descriptive, value-neutral psychological concept, and some think it makes sense to consider pedophilia to be a sexual orientation because of the similarities between pedophilia and gender-based orientations(age of onset, stability, tie to romantic/emotional attraction, etc), but when normal people hear scientists state that pedophilia is or ought to be considered a sexual orientation, they don't hear the descriptive, technical claim(age based preferences are functionally and behaviorally similar to gender based preferences), they instead hear the normative, political claim (pedophiles are valid and deserve rights like LGBT people), even if that isn't the intention of the scientific making the claim.
Re: Why do people get offended when you refer to pedophilia as a sexual preference?
Posted: Tue Sep 01, 2026 12:16 am
by rpgvx
Kierkegaard wrote: Mon Aug 31, 2026 10:13 pm
Some people are literal minded and tend to use language in straightforward, precise, literal ways. Like many autistic people, for example. To people like this, the accuracy or correctness of a term is all that really matters, and it's confusing when others use language in ways which seems blatantly incorrect, or when others take issue with correct language. It seems like those people are just being stupid and irrational.
For most people though, language use is about a lot more than just whether a particular term is technically accurate. Language carries moral and political weight, it signals in-group/out-group affiliation, implicates what your values are, etc.
People who get offended about pedophilia being referred to as a sexual preference are getting offended because "sexual preference" carries a neutral or positive moral connotation, and using neutral language to describe something considered to be deeply morally wrong makes it sound like you are implicitly endorsing the thing being referred to, or at least aren't acknowledging the severity of the moral wrongness. In order to correctly signal that you are part of the in-group who consider pedophilia to be evil, you have to use the right kind of terminology to describe it. This is obvious to most neurotypical people.
This is why so many people reflexively oppose pedophilia being considered to be a sexual orientation. Because "sexual orientation" is not a purely descriptive, value-neutral, scientific term. It's a normative term. It carries moral and political weight.
Some scientists do try to use "sexual orientation" as a descriptive, value-neutral psychological concept, and some think it makes sense to consider pedophilia to be a sexual orientation because of the similarities between pedophilia and gender-based orientations(age of onset, stability, tie to romantic/emotional attraction, etc), but when normal people hear scientists state that pedophilia is or ought to be considered a sexual orientation, they don't hear the descriptive, technical claim(age based preferences are functionally and behaviorally similar to gender based preferences), they instead hear the normative, political claim (pedophiles are valid and deserve rights like LGBT people), even if that isn't the intention of the scientific making the claim.
Probably the best answer I'll ever read in my life.
And yeah, I just don't care about moral connotations to words, every word is value-neutral to me.
Re: Why do people get offended when you refer to pedophilia as a sexual preference?
Posted: Tue Sep 01, 2026 12:34 am
by Meiwaku_Mailing_Girl
because they think it nOrMaLiZes pedophilia!!1!!1 uwu
also a lot of people think rape is about pOwEr and CoNtRoL and they beLIEve pedophilia is rape thus they think "pedophiles" are not attracted to children but just get off on controlling kidz