| sapphi_snake said: @shuraiya: Pedophiles can very much control themselves, otherwise all instances of their... violations would not, and in fact, could not be a crime. Yeah, see, the thing is that this argument is based more on wishfull thinking, and the the desire to neglect the real problem. Paedophiles are insane, they cannot control themselves, and their violations should not be considered a crime. They're dellusional (they have twisted ideeas, like "people reach full sexual maturity at the age of 5"), and they require psychiatric help. Sending them to prison will do as much help as sending someone who hears voices telling him to kill people to prison. Prison only really works with sane people who think rationally. Most people ignore this because it's much simpler to pain paedophiles as diabolical monsters who should rot in jail, rather than what they really are: mentally ill people who need help. Another thing: animated child pornography feeds the paedophiles dellusions. Because it's animated, and it involves fantasy characters, the children will be shown actually enjoying the sexual acts, thus the paedophile will recieve confirmation of his/her dellusions from such material. |
This is the very distinction I was trying to make; you are viewing all pedophiles in a worst-case senario. Everyone may agree that pedophilia is disgusting, depraved, or even sinful, but what we must not forget is that it isn't a crime. Pedophiles choose whether of not to act on their desires. Those that do end up justifying their crime in the manner you described above: people reach full sexual maturity at the age of 5. This extreme view is not characteristic of all pedophiles, but merely of those make the decision to act on their desires and then attempt to avoid punishment through desperate rationalization.
On the point of animated child pornography, we will have to agree to disagree. There are two sides to the arguement. The other side is of the belief that it can provide a means of satisfying most of the pedophiles urges--urges that would be directed at real children--thus reducing the chances of criminal behavior. It could even be further argued that outlawing such material outright could lead to an increase in cases of child molestation by pedophiles.
