Comment by Kristine1975 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Kristine1975 | Hacker News Reader

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>even if you never act on them, then you are contributing to the denigration and subjugation of people of color.

How so? I sometimes think racist (and sexist, and...) thoughts, but I know they are wrong, so I don't act on them. How am I contributing to the oppression of people of the ethnicity I have racist thoughts against?

(Incidentally I think "people of color" is a pretty racist term, since it lumps all non-white ethnicities together.)

>Paedophilia may be sexuality, and yes, it was wrong to demonize homosexuality, but unless you're arguing that one day we'll look at paedophilia the same way, then you can't put them in the same boat morally.

Well I do argue that. Just as homosexual rape is a crime (although often treated as a joke, c.f. prison rape), child rape is a crime. No matter the sexual orientation of the perpetrator.

>but a better one is to stop being a paedophile

Since when can sexual orientation be changed? According to Wikipedia:

There is no evidence that pedophilia can be cured. Instead, most therapies focus on helping the pedophile refrain from acting on their desires

> How so? I sometimes think racist (and sexist, and...) thoughts, but I know they are wrong, so I don't act on them. How am I contributing to the oppression of people of the ethnicity I have racist thoughts against?

So do I. Whenever I do, I work to try to understand where the thought came from, and how, if millions of people also had that same thought, what the consequences for minorities would be. I feel it's my obligation to understand the deeper psychological dynamics at play.

One's thoughts can't be controlled like one's hands can be, but that doesn't mean you can't work on them.

> (Incidentally I think "people of color" is a pretty racist term, since it lumps all non-white ethnicities together.)

More racist or less racist than the n-word? And why would lumping them together be racist? Terms by themselves are not racist, it's how you use them that matters.

> Well I do argue that. Just as homosexual rape is a crime (although often treated as a joke, c.f. prison rape), child rape is a crime. No matter the sexual orientation of the perpetrator.

Still waiting on the argument that we'll one day be as accepting of paedophilic sexuality as we are of homosexuality. Yes rape is a crime, but criminality is not the point of contention here, morals are. You and others seem to be arguing that morality is not useful as a social tool, that one should not feel bad about thoughts that one has that could exacerbate social problems. That we should draw the line at legal consequences for actions and treat the mind as sacrosanct. I very much disagree, racism has taught us that the law can itself be used to perpetuate evils.

> Since when can sexual orientation be changed? According to Wikipedia:

Thanks for the pointer to Wikipedia. (not being snide, I didn't do my research before opening up my mouth this time) It still looks like an active area of research and I'm hopeful that new therapies will emerge in the future.

I do think sexuality is at least somewhat malleable. I could never see myself becoming homosexual, but I can easily see how I could have been or could in the future become bisexual. I would be adding a new sexuality on top of my old one, figuring out a new way to have that experience.

I fail to believe paedophilia is the only mode of sexuality that's open to most or even a significant fraction of paedophiles.

>I do think sexuality is at least somewhat malleable. I could never see myself becoming homosexual, but I can easily see how I could have been or could in the future become bisexual. I would be adding a new sexuality on top of my old one, figuring out a new way to have that experience.

I won't go into a long story but TLDR: I thought of myself as gay from puberty until a couple of years ago, I am now entirely bisexual. I don't know if the side of me that is attracted to women (I'm a guy) didn't exist a decade ago and my sexuality changed, or if it did exist and I just didn't know how to access it. But it certainly was a definitive change, previously there just wasn't any sexual feeling towards women in my head, ever. Despite this personal experience of sexuality being malleable in at least some form, I am still entirely confident that homosexuality (including the gay side of bisexuality) cannot, at least with our current scientific knowledge [0] be purposefully changed, and while I'm lucky enough not to have a personal anecdote about paedophilia, everything I've read up on the subject makes me believe the same goes for that.

[0] I say current scientific knowledge because who knows, maybe in X years/decades/centuries we'll fully understand the human brain and be able to modify it as precisely as you can modify a computer program. Setting aside the fact that this advance in science/technology would probably do far more to scare me in terms of how it could be used negatively vs. benefits such as removing the attraction to children from paedophiles, since we are no where near being able to do this we might as well keep the debate within the frame of what we actually can achieve in the foreseeable future.

> I fail to believe paedophilia is the only mode of sexuality that's open to most or even a significant fraction of paedophiles.

It's known that there are paedophiles who no matter how hard they try, and get supported with therapy/etc., never find themselves attracted to adults. It's also known that there are paedophiles who find adults as attractive as children, or also attractive but more/less so than children. It's very hard for anyone to find out how many of each because paedophiles in general often prefer not to talk about their condition, even to medical professionals, and especially paedophiles who can be happy in adult relationships probably don't have much motivation to think about fixing their attraction to kids, since they can have a sexually-fulfilling life without them.

(Incidentally, my gay->bi sexuality is why I find the subject of paedophilia from a medical point of view fascinating, since it does seem that they are very similar things biologically, just not culturally. And no, I don't mean that because they are similar biologically that they should be similar culturally, I fully approve of saying homosexual relationships are good and adult/child sex relationships are bad.)

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