I find it interesting that Wikipedia classifies [1] pedophilia as a "psychiatric disorder". Would this make homosexuality or other sexual orientations a disorder? Otherwise, what's the difference?
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Clinicians / their governments decided that gay sex was not wrong / illegal. From this perspective, sexual attraction to the same sex is as much a disorder as attraction to the opposite sex.
Sex with a child is illegal (broadly speaking). Being sexually attracted to a child could be a source of distress for a person or lead to damaging behaviors (e.g. sex with a child).
People could have a good handle on their attraction, like the person in the article purports, but from the perspective of people writing the DSM, sexual attraction to a child may be a disorder when it leads to undue distress or disorderly behavior. When what is seen as disorderly changes, the diagnosis might change, but I see this one as sticking around.
Homosexuality was classified as a psychiatric disorder for a long time. It was only removed from the DSM in 1973:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_and_psychology#T...
Being attracted to healty adult humans, female or male is obviously part of human nature as a whole, DNA, normality whatever you want to call it.
You might say that homosexuality is when these ingredients get flipped, or mixed in some ratio (bisexuality).
There is quite a difference to being sexually attracted to, let's say ceiling fans, children or whatever. I think it's unfair when people put homosexuality in the same bucket as these.
I'm not a doctor, but I think paedophiles have difficulties in controlling their sex drive, and the actions resulting from it.
Plus, there's the question of consent. Do children give consent? Can they even?
Why would pedophiles have any more difficulty controlling sex drive than anyone else? That, to me, is precisely the kind of irrational BS the author is trying to counteract.
How many straight or gay adults have raped, cheated, had one night stands, to satisfy a sexual need? Countless. The sex drive is enormously powerful.
Now imagine you could never ethically satisfy that drive. Ever. While meanwhile being constantly wracked by shame and guilt every time it asserts itself.
This isn't an excuse to abuse, obviously. But its absurd to assume pedophiles have a stronger or weaker sex drive than anyone else, or that they're uniquely incapable of restraining themselves from abusing others to satisfy it.
> Now imagine you could never ethically satisfy that drive. Ever.
Would it be ethical to have sex with a virtual reality child?
ethics and morals aside, there are some laws that prohibit fictional depictions of CP combine that with the ambiguity of ages of characters in fiction and you could have something like this http://cbldf.org/2011/06/cbldf-forms-coalition-to-defend-ame...