Originally Posted by Spartiate
Any deep attraction to fictional characters can't be healthy.
Healthier than none? :V
Some attractions (namely between consenting adult humans) can lead to a healthy relationship while others cannot. A gay person's love life is not dysfunctional because he's gay, whereas a pedophile's condition is not only harmful to others but also to himself. Same goes for people that like goats and people that fuck bicycles.
That doesn't really change the fact that they are all just different sexualities. It's just that some sexualities are more or less difficult than others : /
No harm? What about the pedophiles social life and the countless psychological issues that can arise from living a life of repressed desires? Assuming you're a heterosexual male, imagine if you were attracted to normal girls your whole life but would never act on your desires, does that sound healthy?
Man, you're many steps too far ahead. I was expecting the usual "homosexuality has consent so therefor it is sexuality, pedophilia is harmful so therefore, disease", and I argued accordingly. But yeah, it harms the pedophile. But I know a bunch who claim to live happy lives, after they learned to accept themselves. And not only that, but they live happy lives, often even with children of their own, without doing illegal or inappropriate things...
And then again, homosexuality does something like that, too. It definitely causes a lot of distress in people who are homosexuals. From the moment a person finds out that he is a homosexual, it is bound to cause a bunch of problems that you have to deal with both right at that moment and many years on. The same goes for pedophilia, though it is getting better for homosexuals...
Originally Posted by Jakro
Well this is getting very situation-specific. I don't think being attracted to children/whatever excludes you from having attraction towards consenting adults.
Actually, not really. There are exclusive pedophiles, and there are non-exclusive pedophiles.
I'd estimate that there are at least just as many exclusives as there is non-exclusives. Exclusive pedophiles are people that have absolutely no attraction whatsoever towards adults, and I'd imagine such a person would find it hard to even want to have anything to do with a person their own age...
Besides, relationships are much more than just sex. You can have otherwise fulfilling relationships even if you supress your fantasies towards children.
And as the hordes of angry pedophiles will claim, pedophilia is not all about sex. They have a clear emotional attraction as well. (As for my personal opinion... Not so much. Not sure, though.) Trying to have an "otherwise fulfilling relationship", would be much like trying to have a relationship with a woman as a gay man, for an exclusive pedophile.
EDIT: Quote from that link
"There is no known way of turning a pedophile into a nonpedophile," says Cantor. "The best we can do is help a person maximize their self-control and to help them build an otherwise happy and productive life."
Yeah, right. You know, I've actually had a few psychologists try doing this to me, and it left me more depressed than I was before it.
Although it's otherwise very sensible.
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