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

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. ::

About the author: I have been writing and talking about the experience of being a pedophile since 2017. Once on twitter until my account was banned in 2020, I co-led Virtuous Pedophiles from 2021 to 2025. I now continue to look for ways to improve the lives of pedophiles, but never at the expense of harming children. I have never viewed illegal material, and never sought or engaged in sexual activity with any child. The rest of my life is countryside walking, friends, Radio 3 and feeling doleful about ageing.

This content was removed from Twitter in 2020 because the author's account was suspended.

the p word is a collection of 321 articles, blogs, podcasts and threads in the voices of pedophiles and others who oppose adult child sexual contact and sexual exploitation of children. Despite our mainstream views, this content is frequently removed from social media or blog sites because openly discussing pedophile attractions or avowing them are not tolerated. Our side of the conversation continues here.

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what we tried to say on bluesky and twitter

the pluses of denial of pedophilia

is pedophilia an orientation or a disorder?

bly

VirPed's accounts have been banned (twice) from Twitter and once from BlueSky. We had one main thing to say...

ethan edwards

There is a fairly large class of pedophiles who might do well to not even come out to themselves

bly

The key question that public and experts are debating to understand the nature of attraction to children.

VirPed's accounts have been banned (twice) from Twitter and once from BlueSky. We had one main thing to say...

There is a fairly large class of pedophiles who might do well to not even come out to themselves

The key question that public and experts are debating to understand the nature of attraction to children.