Why pedophilia is evil and why its supporters must be called what they are
Yesterday I came across this cringing TEDx video in which a woman makes a case for pedophilia and argues that being sexually attracted to kids is a sexual orientation or a state of being just like being gay or homosexual. So, the premise is, just as the society accepts gays and homosexuals, it should also accept pedophiles.
She quickly adds as an afterthought that having sex with kids is different from sexually abusing kids.
This video and its content are wrong at many levels and, wrong is a very simple word.
Within a few minutes, this person brings homosexuality at par with pedophilia. Just as societies all over the world are gradually opening to homosexuality, she pulls it back to the dark ages where it was considered abominable.
Some acts are criminal, and some are outright evil and as a society we must be able to distinguish between criminal acts, evil acts, and natural acts.
Just as homosexuals can’t help being homosexuals, she says pedophiles can’t help being pedophiles. She projects these people as victims of society who must live under the shroud of shame and concealment all their lives.
What about psychopaths then? OK, forget about psychopaths, what about serial killers or serial rapists? What about homophobic people? What about terrorists? These people also cannot control who they are and what they think and what is their orientation.
She argues that if pedophiles are considered as normal human beings with a different sexual preference, there will be less sex abuse of kids. Small mercies, no?
Basically, she is deriving logical arguments from multiple sections of the society in order to validate the act of pedophilia.
She tries to play the homosexuality sentiment upon the audience. The audience must think that there was a time when homosexuality was considered a crime and a mental sickness but as our society changed, we began to accept it as just another manifestation of sexual orientation.
It is also often argued that if prostitution is legalized, fewer women will fall prey to sex offenders. Even drugs and alcohol, when legalized, result in reduced smuggling.
In themselves these arguments are quite valid, but can these arguments be used as a template to make a case for pedophilia?
Every species, culture and society nurture kids with great care. Even timid animals, when nurturing babies, turn ferocious. The survival of the race and the species depends on kids. Today’s kids are going to be tomorrow’s citizens.
This is why, although, various sexual orientations have existed among our societies since the time immemorial, having sex with kids has always been a taboo. Biggest names in philosophy, literature, sciences, politics and religion have had some or another experience with homosexuality. But, none of these names have ever been known to indulge in pedophilia.
Similarly, prostitution is often touted as the world’s oldest profession, which it can easily be. In older times, for adult men, visiting brothels was as natural an activity as going to the neighbourhood mall these days.
I’m not saying that having sex with children has been unthinkable in our societies. Many societies have different yardsticks. For example, among Orthodox Muslims, it is kosher to have sex with even 9–10-year-olds. Small kids are often married to very old men in many societies especially in underdeveloped and developing countries. In countries like Thailand tourism thrives on sex with kids.
But in most of the civilised world, having sex with kids is considered not just a heinous crime, but also a mental sickness and consequently, has a dedicated terminology called pedophilia, just like you would have necrophilia for having sex with a dead person and bestiality for having sex with an animal.
Children’s world is black and white. There are very strict definitions of right and wrong. There are rarely grey areas because children don’t have enough information to process those grey areas. They cannot understand context because to be able to understand context, you need to have lots of background information whether this information is directly related or remotely. Although the liberal system constantly advises parents to treat kids as adults, if we could treat kids as adults, they would be running businesses, governments, hospitals and healthcare centres and administrative offices. They would be joining the forces and controlling weapons of mass destruction.
I’m not saying kids are not intelligent. They are highly intelligent beings and in fact, their brains accept and adapt new changes faster than adult minds, but as I have mentioned above, what is lacking is context. Consequently, they are so focused in whatever they do. They’re not burdened by the information and experiences that people acquire as they grow.
Sex is a highly contextual activity. This is why forced sex is considered abuse or rape even when there is no injury to the aggrieved party. Get someone drunk or mentally disoriented and have sex and you will get arrested. Julian Assange is accused of raping a woman because his condom tore, and the woman asked him to stop and he didn’t stop. When you are in an authoritative position and you wield power (in terms of career or education or even psychological) and use that power to influence someone to have sex, it is considered abuse. This, is the level of intricacy when it comes to sex being sex and sex being abuse.
A person needs to be aware of not just having sex, but also why he or she is having sex and what are the implications. If not intellectual, at least there needs to be some mental and physical parity when two people indulge in sex. Even sex workers know why they are having sex and why the other person is having sex.
This context and understanding are missing among kids.
Kids are kids for a reason. Their minds are still developing. Their bodies are still developing. They are vulnerable. It is this position of vulnerability that attracts pedophiles to children. They know that children can be completely controlled physically and mentally. As an adult, they have full control over the child. The child cannot defend himself or herself in case he or she needs to resist. The child doesn’t even know what is going on and hence, he or she can be misled to any conclusion. Children can be subjected to the worst sort of sexual abuse without much resistance. The kid’s entire future can be destroyed with a single stroke.
It is this sense of control and subjugation that attracts a pedophile.
It has got nothing to do with sexual preference. It is a power game played upon totally helpless victims who in many cases don’t even realize that they are victims.
So, why is this particular section trying to legitimize pedophilia? This is not an isolated video. There are some dedicated websites that want to “educate” people about pedophilia and why and how people become pedophiles.
One reason is the typical liberal-intellectual attempt at blurring every line that distinguishes right from wrong. Create so much confusion that after a while, people cannot decide what is good and what is bad and then, have a free run at whatever sick activities one wants to indulge in. The more “open” the society becomes, the more accepting we become of “radical” thinking.
No matter how liberal you are, killing a person (unless you are mortally threatened) is bad even if you don’t look at the act from the criminal side. You may be against death penalty, but you certainly want something to be done to the person who kills another person.
The same goes for rape. You want the person punished, especially when you are ideologically opposed to the person (in left-liberal way of thinking).
Financial fraud is bad.
Infidelity is bad unless the couple has voluntarily decided to live a multi-partner lifestyle.
Similarly, pedophilia is bad. To deter are such people, it is criminal to have sex with kids.
Another reason might be the civilizational one. I won’t go into this dark realm because it may get my post deleted from Medium. The only thing I can say is that the ground is being prepared to “normalize” many unacceptable activities of a particular community, pedophilia being one of them.
