2015-03-14, 07:37 PM
KhainiWest Wrote:How can you exactly help a pedophile? I mean to me personally, as long as you don't hurt anyone, I'm pretty open minded about a lot of things. When it comes to trans/gays, it's more about giving rights to adults to do what they want, when it comes to pedophilia you're talking about children who aren't exactly in a position to be independent.
Provide actual help groups, lessen social stigma against them, allow them to actually speak to psychiatrists about the issues they face so they don't have to bottle them up and destroy their selves over it; and the most controversial idea I had in mind would be the end with child pornography witch hunt. What I mean by this is of course to not legalize the creation and market of child pornography, rather not place harsh penalties on the possession of child pornography. In order to prevent a market of child pornography from flourishing, the creation of child pornography should still be prohibited, since the ones creating it are abusing children, and the purchase of such material should be outlawed as well since it encourages creation (though not as harsh a penalty as creating, and certainly not the penalty of being given a "sex offender" title and put on the sex offender registry when you haven't sexually offended anyone). Hell, by that point we may even just have very realistic virtual reality simulators that could create virtual partners for people. Maybe we'd even have sex bots fully functional with niche models for them. It wouldn't exactly "solve" the issue, but it would provide release and more of a feeling of being understood rather than hated. I'm sure for many pedophiles, just the feeling of not being so hated by society for what they're born as is a relief in itself. The social pressures are the ones that drive a lot of them into deep depression.
That aside, who's to say our views on sex in general will be the same by then? Another possibility to consider is, what if by then we're more open to sex and diverse relationships? What if by then we have such a huge control over birth control and STDs that the general views on sex differ drastically. The importance our culture places on sex has a huge psychological factor on us; it's possible that by that time we come to accept the idea of children being able to "give consent" since the value we place on sex would be so small that even if they looked back on it when they're older and feel they regretted the decision, it wouldn't really be that huge of a deal since sex is much less important to their culture. Just look at Bonobos, they're one of our closes relatives and have sex all the time. Young, old, same sex, doesn't matter, they're just having recreational sex as a form of bonding. They even essentially "teach" their young how to have sex by engaging in sexual relations with them, and encouraging them to be open about sex. In getting rid of the social importance we currently have on sex, it's very likely that we get rid of the idea of being scarred from having your "innocence" taken from you. Rape would still be rape, and children would just be educated that they can indeed say "no" to any unwanted sexual attention.
That sounds really weird, right? Like the whole scenario is jarring to you. It takes a little bit of culture shock to truly come to terms with what may possibly be a controversial issue, because the reason why there's usually such strong opposition to these kinds of changes is because of how different the new values are to the ones we grew up on. They feel so alien, so disjointed, and rub us in all the wrong areas emotionally. I'm trying to dig deep into the mindset of what makes a bigot old coot into the type of person that'd be so adamant on their stance to hold everyone back from change, and I'm pretty sure that's a major driving force behind it. I think it's hard for our generation to come up with a proper solution to the issue, but that's kind of the point. The ones to come up with the solution would be coming into the ring with a completely different mindset, with different ideals and values. By then, it'll be their world, not ours, and we may not fully agree with the decisions t hey make based on those different mindsets.
Edit: Another solution may possibly just be...gene therapy, but that's kinda cheating if we ever get to that point since it doesn't really "solve" the issue rather it just completely oversteps it. Though, now that I think about it, I'm sure gene therapy would be another hot topic for the next generations. There will be the group of people who find it unnatural, and create hateful labels like "frankebabies" and discriminate against them. There may be issues regarding the rich having access to gene therapy to keep a stronger hold on the poor; by injecting their children with "smart" genes and give them an advantage over others. Oh yea, the fight over genetically modified humans will be huge, I'd love to see that. I should try to find a scifi novel that deals with that topic, I just got myself really interested in it.