Precisely.

Well, I will wear that. How that compares to the inherent absurdity of the rest of human life is the next question.

Also, did you ever expereince something that felt so perfectly true to your nature that for a breif moment, life didn’t seem like an absurd comedy?

I have. I’ve felt that way at sea and climbing mountains. Also, significantly, I’ve felt just as real sitting under a tree doing a puzzle with a little girl friend.

You claimed earlier that you hadn’t engaged in hate speech, but I think this comment of yours is a kind of hate speech, because it is denying the validity of my humanity. It is really the worst kind of hate speech.

This’ll be my last comment for a day or two, but hey…

The stereotype that every paedophile is a walking erection looking for ‘release’ is frankly idiotic and barely warrants a response. It’s also deeply offensive to me personally.

How about an alternative view: that most paedophiles manage to live with severe constraints on any sexual expression of their most powerful erotic impulses. Even masturbation, even speech for God’s sake, is deemed suspect.

To me, they often seem more saint than satyr.

I accept that there is a body of sexological research using self-identified, non-offending paedophiles. I’m all for publishing and discussing the results.

One of the motivations behind demonising paedophiles is the ordinary adult fear of their own sexual attraction to children.

Court proceedings rarely consider whether people accused of child molestation are paedophilic or ‘situational’ offenders. If that question is ever addressed it is typically post sentencing. Also, data showing that true paedophiles typically engage in the kind of behaviour I mentioned does exist and is relatively uncontroversial. I’m sorry, I simply don’t have time right now to research it, but I’ll try and post something next week.

I don’t know how anyone can say ‘most’ paedophiles when it is still such a taboo subject.

Well, the dominant child protection discourse seems to have no problem drawing its own conclusions about paedophilia by studying inmates, and the public clearly has no problem drawing conclusions about paedophilia from salacious media reports and cop shows, so I feel justified in drawing some modest conclusions from decades of personal communication with self defined (and mostly non-offending) paedophiles, professional sexologists and sex therapists and a host of other interested and qualified individuals who, unlike you, have the benefit of direct engagement with the population.

The fact that it is sex ‘play’ and not a fully mature, multi-layered and changing sexual relationship indicates to me that it is problematic. It suggests that the particular individual is stuck at an immature level of sexual development.

Paedophilia does reflect an immature level of sexual development. Why that is so problematic is not so clear. Are all adult sexual relationships models of maturity? Actually, sexual aggression and dominance are universal features of mature mammalian male sexual behaviour. Are those the kind of thing you’d prefer to see in a relationship?