conuly | Question about pedophila, prompted by the furor over Cuties

So you know how people are all talking about this movie and the messages, marketing, and/or filming thereof.

Several people known to me have expressed the opinion that showing children, tweens, or teens doing things which adults know look "sexual" is clearly something "designed to appeal to pedophiles".

But what I want to know is - is it? Obviously everybody is different, even people who are sexually attracted to children, but is it the case that people with those desires are, in general, more interested in this sort of scene than pictures of kids acting less overtly "sexual"?

I don't even know how to find this out without ending up on some sort of watch list or, worse, seeing things I actually don't want to see.

Note: this is a separate question from "are those scenes appropriate in this, or any movie" and "whether or not they'd be appropriate in some movies, are they appropriate when acted out by actual children" and anything of that sort. Those are all good questions which people are arguing strenuously over everywhere.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

alexseanchai

I do not know the answer to this. I do however know that comparing teenage actresses on the red carpet today with teenage actresses on the red carpet a decade or two ago is a disturbingly enlightening experience. like. Millie Bobby Brown (born 2004) at the 2018 Golden Globes vs Ashley Tisdale (born 1985) at, in photo 5, the 2004 premiere of The Princess Diaries 2.

also it would help, in terms of answering the question, to define 'pedophile', both as you use the term and as the people you are quoting are using the term. I distinguish 'pedophile' from 'sexual abuser of children' because some people who are the former are not and plan never to be the latter, some people who are the latter are not the former, and it seems to me that treating all the former as though they either are or inevitably will be the latter is not a good way to prevent sexual abuse of children. (it is not as though "if I cannot be good, then I will embrace being bad" is an uncommon way to handle social/societal rejection for something about one that is outside of one's control.)

I suspect the people you are quoting are the sort who throw around that word for people who do such appalling things as "write fic shipping an 18-year-old and a 25-year-old" and "write erotic fic involving characters in their twenties, when the characters in canon are fourteen". so like, you get how having multiple definitions in play confuses the conversation.

Edited Date: 2020-09-13 11:26 pm (UTC)

From:

adrian_turtle

There are a lot of differences between the emotions of pedophilia and the actions of child sexual abuse. Emotion is always different from action. (See also the difference between wanting my neighbor's nifty computer and actually stealing it from her.)

It's complicated by the fact that child abusers have incredibly strong incentives to lie about having abused children. So they have an incentive to lie and say it's just emotional and they'd never act on it. The word "pedophile" seems to make it harder to distinguish them from people who just like to imagine it. And some of the people who are fascinated by all kinds of disturbing stories of abuse are abuse survivors themselves. They want to imagine disturbing stories like their own, identifying with the victim...possibly imagining comfort or justice or some kind of happy ending. It's different from predation, but how can an outsider tell?

From:

conuly

It's also complicated by the fact that people who really don't want to act on it have a hard time getting help because just admitting you have those feelings can get you in trouble (and, accordingly, we don't know much about how to best help them). Bit of a twofer there.

Plus, even somebody who doesn't act on it might emotionally harm kids - without necessarily intending to - by acting problematic in ways they've decided are "all right" but that actually aren't.

From:

james

I think there would be a difference in adults who are attracted to children as children, and adults who are attracted to children as "I got here first" i.e., the power over a teenager that takes the form of sex (and is also abusive, don't think I'm saying it isn't.)

But adult men who sexualise teenagers generally seem to be after the power, and control, and the whatever you'd call it - bragging rights - over being the one to "educate" a young girl into being a "real woman."

Which is not the same sort of abuse as you see in adults who are sexually aroused by actual children (younger than teens).

But I do not recommend doing any sort of research into it, because you can't unlearn shit you find out.

From:

heron61

Well said - I've recently read a bit about the deeply horrifying QAnon cult, and one thing that jumped out at me is their focus on abuse of small children, which is clearly done because it upsets almost everyone, in part because that sort of thing is exceedingly rare. From what little I've read, very few people are attracted to children. OTOH, way too many adults are attracted to teens, which is something that this cult (as far as I've seen) completely ignores.

From:

conuly

While it is true that only a small percentage of the population are pedophiles - that is, attracted to children, especially *small* children - and it's also true that strangers are about the least likely people to harm children, and it's certainly true that there are no conspiracies involving the harm of children... child molestation is not quite "exceedingly" rare, unfortunately. It's just that the people who harm small kids are mostly their own parents, stepparents, foster parents, or other relatives.

It's still rare, just....

From:

moon_custafer

I wonder how many of those abusers aren’t pedophiles so much as opportunistic predators, i.e. they’d prefer adults, but kids are easier targets.

From:

mindstalk

IIRC the first article I linked, that is indeed a good chunk of abusers.

People will have sex with inanimate objects; it's not surprising that unethical people could regard other people as a more appealing sex toy.

From:

ioplokon

I think this is a good point. As a former Catholic schoolgirl, I got a lot of weird sexual energy directed my way and looking back, I think it was more or less exclusively of the 'getting there first' variety. Still creepy and, honestly, harmful but I don't know that I would call those dudes pedophiles. IDK maybe that's to not uh, deal with it or what? But yeah idk. To me it's in the same bucket as the 'lesbians are hawt' dudes but perhaps that's because, of course, I realized I was gay in jr high/high school.

Basically, not making an objective statement about how these things should be categorized, more sharing my individual, subjective impressions as someone who had a lot of weird sexual attention thrown at me as a child but who was not a victim of child sexual abuse.

From:

mindstalk

> I think there would be a difference in adults who are attracted to children as children, and adults who are attracted to children as "I got here first" i.e., the power over a teenager that takes the form of sex (and is also abusive, don't think I'm saying it isn't.)

There also seem to be adults who abuse children not because of a specific attraction (pedophile) nor the power trip you talk about (bragging rights) but simply because the child is a vulnerable warm body to exploit.

From:

nicki

No, I don't think it's designed to appeal to pedophiles, but I personally still find it creepy. I think people who are attracted to children are as likely to be attracted to a kid swinging as a kid dancing with adult moves.

I wouldn't recommend research. The research in the US is entirely based on people who got caught, so probably the most extreme cases (a person admitting to an attraction to kids is a mandated report in the US, so nobody who had that attraction seeks treatment). Germany is/was doing some work with theoretically non-offenders who have self-reported in hopes of treatment, but I don't know that they have anything definitive published yet.

Edited Date: 2020-09-14 12:12 am (UTC)

From:

elf

Welcome to the newest round of fannish drama, aka "The Discourse."

Right now, the hot-button topic is "pedophilia," which has been defined as:
1) Adults who are (sexually) interested in prepubescent children,
2) Adults who are interested in teenage minors,
3) Adults who are interested in non-minors substantially younger* than themselves, e.g. 40-year-old men who date college students,
4) Teenagers who are interested in other teenagers,
5) Anyone who is interested in someone more than 3 years younger than themselves.

...I wish I were exaggerating.

Among the issues involved, are the claims that:
1) Any child appearing an an adult-ish context is "pedo-bait" (which especially applies to "sexy" clothes or settings, but is not limited to those);
2) Any adult appearing in a child-ish context is likewise designed to appeal to pedophiles;
3) Any fictional character who is "child-coded" and shown in a romantic or sexual relationship is pedophilic.

There is, in all of this, no comprehension that Hollywood & related beauty cultures have a vested interest in aging up kids ASAP so they can sell the various products and services designed to keep people, mostly women and girls, stuck in the "you must be pretty at all times" trap. I don't think child beauty pageants are designed to appeal to pedophiles.

Somewhere in this tangled mess, there is the notion that it really is damned creepy for adults to lust after children, and very illegal to act on those lusts, and that people who encourage either should be stopped. But that message is very much drowned under the wave of insisting that an adult writing a story about two teenagers who kiss, is somehow promoting pedophilia.

Again. I wish I were exaggerating.

* Substantially younger = more than 10 years, or more than 5, or more than 2, depending on who's playing the definition game at the moment.

From:

conuly

Sorry, wrong tangent - in this case these are homeschoolers and few, if any of them, appear to be any more involved in any sort of fandom other than vaguely knowing that it exists.

From:

kengr

There are actually defined terms that distinguish between "attracted to pre-pubescent" and "attracted to pubescent" but only professionals make the distinction and reporting on their work tends conflate them again.

And I hear you about "teens with teens" is pedophilia. I got involved in a *nasty* argument years back when I mentioned I'd written something involving teens and sex.

Never mind that it was based on fantasies I'd had when I was that age. Nope. I had to be a sick person who wanted to have sex with teens....

Though I am tempted to argue about some of the other "definitions" you mention. The "more than 3 years age difference" is a part of the criteria for statutory rape in some places for example.

But being different *legally* isn't something that these sorts of idiots will pay attention to.

From:

elf

The "more than three years" in this case, includes adults.

As in, there are actually people saying a 30-year-old dating a 26-year-old is pedophilia. (Including: a 30-year-old fictional character dating a 26-year-old fictional character, indicates that the author is a pedophile.)

And while I see this in fandom because that's where I hang out, I suspect these ideas have spread through a lot of the general population. I don't know if they started in fandom or not; that's just where I see all the worst examples.

From:

kengr

[censored][censored][censored]

That is simply *nuts*. Even *if* you accept the idea the idea that too large an age gap (between adults) is wrong, it needs to be *relative*, not absolute.

Three years difference is 16% with an 18-year-old and a 21-year-old. But between 40 and 43 it's only 7.5 percent.

Plus, they are *adults*. If both people are legal adults there *can't* be any "pedo" about it.

Wouldn't work well in fandom, but in groups like those homeschoolers, you can put the cat among the pigeons by pointing out the ages of various old Testament men and their wives.

Come to think of it, in fandom you could have fun with Sarek & Amanda's ages.

And besides the "they're adults" bit, I think that if you need to check ID to see if one of them is too old/young, then you are really reaching.

If one of them might be a minor, yeah then you gotta check ID. But if they are both adults? Gimme a break.

And it couldn't hurt to point out that the "three years" rule was added so that "normal" teen dating behavior wouldn't be classified as statutory rape.

From:

conuly

Sheesh.

Very large age differences between adults can be problematic*, but we generally expect that adults are competent enough to make their own choices, even if they're bad ones.

And 4 years isn't a very large age difference when the younger person is 20 or older.

* Or, rather, they often occur when the whole relationship is shit, and that's part of it but not the reason for it.

From:

elf

Yeah. There's a huge, bizarre wave of complaints about depictions of minors in adult-ish situations, and declarations about how that is or isn't indicative of some kind of abuse or perversion. And almost none of those complaints are focused on real-life people involved in those situations: it's about art depicting them.

There's no wave of complaints demanding that high schools prevent freshmen/sophomores from dating juniors/seniors. But there are complaints that fiction should not show a 15-year-old and a 17-year-old dating. (Or worse, an 18-year-old because that is an ADULT taking advantage of a CHILD.) And complaints that adult authors should not write stories about fictional teens in sexual situations.

Regarding Cuties in particular: the discussion is not coming from a place of good-faith assumptions. Yelling about "this movie appeals to pedophiles" entirely ignores that this movie is about an existing industry with these standards.

Are they insisting on dismantling the 10-13 year old dancing/acting/modeling industries? Are they saying pre-teens should not have access to mainstream social media accounts? If not, they can STFU. The movie is not the problem. The movie is highlighting (some of) the problems, and people are yelling because they're uncomfortable knowing these trends exist.

It's worth discussion how media portrays kids; whether our culture pushes kids into adulthood, or some aspects of adulthood, too quickly; how best to deal with adolescent sexuality. But I've found that people complaining about how movies depict those things are rarely interested in those discussions; they mostly want to avoid the subjects entirely.

Side note: they rarely complain about exposing kids to adult levels of violence; it's only sexuality that kids are supposed to avoid/be protected from.

From:

mindstalk

> whether our culture pushes kids into adulthood, or some aspects of adulthood, too quickly

While our culture ('our' meaning US/UK, bleeding into Australia) aggressively infantilizes children with regard to being able to go for a walk or play in the park. And that's a fairly recent development.

From:

conuly

The two things are interlinked - we HAVE to protect the kiddies AT ALL TIMES because PREDATORS LURK IN EVERY BUSH.

From:

alexseanchai

xkcd "Dating Pools" seems like a way better guideline

From:

mindstalk

> There are actually defined terms that distinguish between "attracted to pre-pubescent" and "attracted to pubescent" but only professionals make the distinction and reporting on their work tends conflate them again.

I know a progressive site where someone got an instant permaban, contrary to the usual escalation policies, simply for using the word ephebephilia.

From:

moon_custafer

That sounds like another facet of the “it’s hard to discuss the topic without being suspected of defending it” problem; likely worsened by there being just enough people who *do* try to defend ephebephilia that a lot of people have a “this guy knows the exact legal age of consent in each state” red flag.

I myself used to interact with someone on Tumblr who kept making posts about how she was triggered by any mention of punching or fighting nazis, because, she said, she’d been abused in the past and felt that if anyone approved of hitting nazis then their non-violence was conditional and she feared what they’d do if *she* ever crossed a line in their opinion. I kind of side-eyed this, because it really seemed to be taking pacifism to extremes; but didn’t want to argue with the particular triggers of a survivor. Then she complained one day about how people were prejudiced against “minor-attracted persons” and it all made a nasty kind of sense. I didn’t hit her (obviously) or even want to, but I sure as hell blocked her.

From:

conuly

Re: that anecdote

Given that people *are* prejudiced - and not without reason! - against, ahem, "minor attracted persons", you really do have to wonder about the sort of person who complains about this fact of life in a mixed group.

From:

adafrog

You might try looking for forensic psychiatry papers on google.scholar.

From:

siderea

Several people known to me

What an interesting descriptor. :)

But what I want to know is - is it?

No idea. But something I am increasingly suspecting is this: use of the word "pedophilia" as a topic of concern, and as opposed to "childhood sexual abuse" or even "child abusers" or "those who sexually abuse children", is an orange flag for someone being either a Fox-news following, QAnon-believing, right-wing culture warrior, or a faux-feminist WoLF/Rowling-style crypto-TERF/SWERF in cohoots with the former to bring back the 1980's Satanic Panic.

Those people are not on our side. They do not care about preventing child abuse. They're just looking for a population they can get away with persecuting, and by "get away with", I mean "which the left will let them", from which basis to launch a moral panic.

I suspect you don't need to worry too much about how actual pedophilia works. If you're interested, of course, go for it – far be it from me to try to rein in your curiosity! But just wanted to mention you can expect a lot of unknowable/unprovable/unanswerable garbage statements about pedophilia forthcoming, with which to whip people into a frenzy and which conveniently distract from what is going on.

But how American political moral-panic witch-hunts work has suddenly become super relevant. Alas.

From:

conuly

No worries here on arguments with them - I'm interested for the dispassionate sake of being interested. I think "Listen, whether or not these scenes are harmful to the kids who filmed them is entirely different from the question of whether or not somebody, somewhere got their jollies on watching it" is even less likely to lead to a productive conversation with them than "Just FYI, most child molesters aren't pedophiles and some unknown percentage of pedophiles never act on their desires, but wow, this sure is an understudied population!"

Though I'm tempted to throw both those comments into the water to see what happens. Sometimes you just gotta poke that anthill.

From:

spikethemuffin

It's a long story, how I found this out, available upon request, but the one pedophile I know well enough to speak authoritatively on, his jam was girls around the age of eight in bathing suits generally considered age-appropriate, and playing the silly games that girls play. His number one video was of some third- or fourth-graders pretending they were interviewing each other on a round table discussion talk show a la the View.

I gather that "sexualizing" little girls was a turn-off for him. I would say it felt too much like agency.

He was... not a gold-star pedophile. He will be out of prison in 2025, at the earliest, ifthe pandemic doesn't take him first.

Sorry if I overshared.

From:

conuly

I'm sorry he hurt people, but I'm glad he was caught and stopped.

From:

spikethemuffin

That's all there is to be said about it.

From:

oursin

There's a much longer tradition of children dressed up as/performing as adults being seen as 'cute'/'amusing' - I read somewhere a cringe-making account of 'child weddings' in ?Canada in the early C20th - rather than sexualised, but this does in places in contemporary context blur into the 'countdown 'til she's legal' thing.

There is also, presumably, a reason for the school uniform fetish (but maybe also about power play?)

From:

kengr

Uniform fetishes are usually about power play. A local guy who is well known in the kink community often gives talks/classes about uniform fetishes at kink events.

And he includes schoolgirl (and the occasional school *boy*) fetishes in them. Ditto for boy/girl scouts and related.

Given that we have a few folks in the local community who *look* like they are still in their teens in spite of being in their *late* twenties (or older!) this raises some "interesting" questions

I think part of the schoolgirl (especially "Catholic" schoolgirl) bit is that they have a reputation for *looking* innocent, but actually being anything but.

And most of the folks who go in for that sort of combo age-play/uniform fetish stuff play that up. Far more apt to be the aggressor than the "helpless" victim. Though you see that too.

Alas, that *does* play into the "she wanted it" script that many molesters use. :-(

Hmm. I wonder how many of these folks heads would explode if they saw one of the more recent St. Trinians movies.

From:

kaffy_r

But what I want to know is - is it?

Others have spoken more articulately and at greater length, so I'll simply say that, from my perspective, it isn't.

Sexual abusers of pre-pubescent children are, I think after reading some articles about and by* them over the years, appear to want and be turned on by visuals of children acting as children and not aged and/or sexed up.

Abusers of young people between the ages of 11 and whatever-your-particular-age-of-consent is where the abuse is happening seem to be doing the power trip thing. That can be simply the desire to hold power over a young person, where the sexual abuse is primarily a tool to keep the young person tied to and afraid of the abuser. Or it can be becoming sexually aroused by that power. In neither case does the age of the abused seem to play a primary part, although it can play a secondary part. (Of course the power/sexual arousal thing can collide in ways that muddy the water.)

*I specifically recall a column in, I believe, the Guardian. The anonymous writer showed a staggering level of self-loathing as they spoke about what they do to avoid children and materials that might arouse them. Pedophiles who make the decision not to act on their urges to exist, and I feel for them.

Edited Date: 2020-09-14 10:35 pm (UTC)

From:

mindstalk

Some article I picked up over the years:

https://web.archive.org/web/20110721232939/http://www.macleans.ca/article.jsp?content=20050530_106573_106573

https://slate.com/technology/2012/09/stop-childhood-sexual-abuse-how-to-treat-pedophilia.html

https://www.cnn.com/2012/06/21/opinion/cantor-pedophila-sandusky/

From:

conuly

Thanks.

From:

moon_custafer

I remember years ago hearing about an art exhibit by a CSA survivor of drawings based on his own experiences. Even though these were drawings (i.e. no actual children harmed, except the artist himself, years before), the depictions were plainly not meant to titillate, and I think there were warnings at the entrance, the result was a legal case over whether or not they constituted child pornography. I think it was agreed early on that the artist was not being charged, but that the drawings themselves were on trial, the argument being that no matter how clear it was that they had not been intended as pornography, a pedophile who saw them might still be aroused or encouraged.

I don’t recall the court’s decision, but I remember thinking at the time “wouldn’t that be true of any image of a child?” and that surely pedophiles would find it less trouble to retire to their room with, say, the Sears catalogue, than to walk into an art gallery and try to hide their arousal from others.

Around the same time you started to get a lot of memoirs by abuse survivors, and I don’t recall there being the same kind of furor— I suppose because they were text-based rather than visual? Pictures are more likely to be third-person PoV and it’s easier to argue that the audience might identify with the wrong individual in the scenario depicted.

From:

silveradept

Best as I can tell, although I don't have any solid data to back this assertion, is that a movie like Cuties is meant to push hard on the idea of making young people appear and act as adult as possible once they've gone over the line between innocence and knowledge. Which, at least in a US context, happens at a much faster rate for non-dominant youth and especially quickly for children of color, who are treated and punished in more adult ways right from the get go.

I don't know how that maps to people who are attracted to children or who commit child sexual abuse, but this sort of thing seems much more likely to want to appeal to a culture that is willing to think of them as more adult for doing this, rather than being concerned about what kinds of cultural values are being reinforced.

From:

wendelah1

Have you read this? I directed ‘Cuties.’ This is what you need to know about modern girlhood.

From:

conuly

Thanks.

From:

wendelah1

I'm still thinking about your questions. This was a thoughtful review in my hometown paper.

Column: 'Cuties' isn’t what I expected. It's a powerful portrait of female rage

From:

mme-n-b.livejournal.com

As we know from the example of XIXth century France, in a society that sexualizes children a majority of males will, given the opportunity, rape children. It's therefore a good idea not to.

From:

conuly

Not the question I'm asking, though.

From:

elenbarathi.livejournal.com

Well, there's this: https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/psychopathology-and-personality-traits-pedophiles

... so, the answer to your question would be that people with those desires are, in general, more diverse in their interests and motivations than the catch-all label pedophile would seem to suggest. Technically, a pedophile is someone who's sexually attracted to prepubescent children; that doesn't necessarily mean they're only attracted to prepubescent children. So, some of them may get off on seeing pre-teens all tarted up, while others prefer children who look more child-like and innocent.