Are sexual offenders against children really divided neatly into 'pedophilic' and 'situational'?

Bly is a former co-director of Virtuous Pedophiles. Blog posts reflect his personal views, and are not statements from the organisation.

There's a bit of a worldview among online MAPs that is formed out of the finding by @MCSeto and crew that, among child sex contact offenders, fewer than half appear to be MAPs.

This leads to an idea (not proven) that there are OMAPs and "situational offenders". But are we >

> really sure these categories are quite so distinct?

Presumably, someone reporting or found to have sexual attraction to minors gets sorted by such studies to one side of the divide as a pedophile, while others default to the situational category.

I personally suspect that >

> we should be cautious with assuming from the headline that child abuse happens for one of two distinct reasons.

I don't see why some of the pedophilic offenders might not also have situational reasons for offending.

Also, attraction can be more contingent than the standard >

> MAP narratives allow. Yes, a lot of us know quickly that we find a particular child attractive or not, but sometimes something about them - their personality (or our feelings about a character they're playing in a film/show) or other contextual factors like a paraphilia >

> can make us view someone we were at first indifferent toward as a (for want of a better word) "prospect for fantasy".

There are limits to this. No amount of context would probably ever be sufficient for me to be attracted to a girl, for instance, or a cartoon animal.

All >

> the same, though, it does seem that situational factors are a thing that exist for MAPs too.

Minor attraction is for me seems a combination of two things:

(a) intuitive, instant desire for specific children who meet certain highly defined criteria of physiognomy and >

> bodily attractiveness.

Then there's (b) a more paraphilic, conceptual thing, where the *very fact* someone is a male child in a range of ages, while not necessarily immediately attractive, puts them in a category of enhanced interest for me. At the very least, I might be >

> be more interested in them and their life based on this criterion than I otherwise would, and through a (projected) feeling of connection with him, this can tip over into eroticisation.

I find this all a little foggy, and vaguely troubling, but I try to keep in mind that >

> what makes a 'virtuous pedophile' virtuous is that regardless of the mysteries of his motivation he does no harm to a child.

The critical distinction us between someone who is able to deliver the outcome of "no offences" and someone who persistently can't.

I say >

> 'persistently', since clearly there are those in between recurrent offending and never having offended at all, for instance with a single offence, whose virtue may rest on their degree of remorse and the efforts they make to improve things. ::

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thread: normalizing pedophilia?

thread: common misconceptions

a note on the costs of self-hatred

bly

The term "normalization" has come to mean "shut up" when used against us on social media.

bly

Many people believe many things about us, but most are wrong.

leonard johnston

Empathy is important, especially for those who are most hated - even by me.

The term "normalization" has come to mean "shut up" when used against us on social media.

Many people believe many things about us, but most are wrong.

Empathy is important, especially for those who are most hated - even by me.