| sapphi_snake said: @Farmageddon: Also, you claim paedophiles are "insane" and, furthermore, that anyone being turned on by paedophilic material is a paedophile, but it's not that simple. Please don't take this as to mean I'm ok with it, but it's true that paedophilia is the big taboo of today's society. Paedophilia is considered a mental illness, and if you read the typical profile of a paedophile, it's pretty hard to not consider them insane. I mean, it's not any different than a schizophrenic, or someone who hears voices. Is a rapist not just as "insane" as a paedophile? Is anyone who watches rape-porn insane? Not really, unless the rapist has dellusional thoughts. The problem is that you're only thinking of the act itself, and not the motivation behind said act. For example two people can shoot someone. One of them shot his father because he wanted to inherit his money. The other shot an old lady on the street because a voice in his head told him she was the antichrist. Which one of them is the crazy one? I think it's obvious. The person watching rape-porn isn't really insane, unless they cannot distinguish reality from fiction. But, more importantly, take a 13 year old girl. If an adult has sex with her, it's paedophilia. Ok. But is it if he just has any sort of attraction to her? According to you, yes it is. Then again, there are plenty of girls around that age that most grown men would actually find attractive, even if most would never ever admit to it, because it's a such a huge taboo. Are all these men secretly insane then? There are lot's of pretty normal, even natural, reasons someone could like these things to different degrees. The problem with your example is that it really wouldn't be paedophilia in any case (not to mention that paedophilia is a quality of the paedophile, it's not an actual act; the act is called child molestation). Paedophilia means finding pre-pubescent children attractive. Most 13-year-old girls are already going through puberty, and a girl I went to school with at that age looked like she was in her late teens or early 20s. It really wouldn't be paedophilia, unless she were severly underdeveloped and loked like an infant. Replace "13-year-old girl" with "6 year-old-girl" and now we're talking. That's paedophilia. I doubt you can find any excuses for that! |
I'm quite tired right now so I don't really want to get too into this, but i think this is based on faulty logic.
First, your assumption is that paedophilia is a mental illness, which is not necessarily true. I do believe paedophilia is wrong, however for it to be considered a mental illness it has to be considered abnormal. I'm going to avoid the topic of abnormality because it extremely big, but amongst other things, being homosexual used to be classified as a mental illness under the DSM and the ICD. However, in most western societies, homosexuality is accepted and has since been removed from the classifications.There is a very thin line between eccentricity and abnormality, and due to the subjective difference of a social psychological explanation of abnormality, the only true abnormality can be considered biological. Anyway to cut to the chase, to define paedophilia as a mental disorder, there would have to be considerable evidence to suggest a biological/neurological basis for it over a psycholgical one, as is the case with schizophrenia to which you are comparing it. It may be of interest to you though that schizophrenia too may be considered perfectly fine in some societies, notably in amazonian tribes where schizophrenic symptoms are considered a blessing by god. What i'm trying to say is, is that mental disorders are largely a formulation of a culture's beliefs and the contextuality of the actions. I would suggest reading the cognitive model of schizophrenia or the labelling theory for schizophrenia, all of which suggest that apart from the physical basis for the hallucinations, all other symptoms are rationally created.
So for the debate on contextuality, I'll propose a situation. If a person were walking nude down the street or walked nude into a wedding etc, would they have a more unstable mind than a person walking nude down a nude beach? In terms of paedophilia, you are saying that looking at fictional underage girls (lolita) is somehow related in context to actual child molestation or the acquiring and distribution of actual child porn.
For your example of the guy shooting his father over money and the guy shooting him because of voices in his head, it is not clear which one is 'truly' mental. The important thing is to remove the cultural bias from your view, because in an individualistic culture where money and self-empowerment are idealised, then yes perhaps the first case scenario isn't 'mental'. However who is to say that that person wouldn't be considered mental in a society who did not emphasise the importance of money and the raising of one's own status.
Anyway, I don't condone paedophilia and i don't like lolita, but if someone chooses to look at lolita because they are attracted to it and does not pursue paedophillic activities, then they have every right to.
If you have a difference of opinion i'd like to hear it because there are no right or wrong answers, only replies that we can try our best to be objective in. However, i would like your arguement to have more basis than just saying that paedophiles are (don't know how to do italics) mental, and therefore by extension so too are people that enjoy lolita.
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