We get a lot of emails from worried people who think they are pedophiles but aren’t. We also get some from people who are looking to find reasons they may not be pedophiles, even though they are.
The word ‘pedophile’ is thrown around these days to mean all kinds of things and behaviors, which means many people fear they are pedophiles when they aren’t.
It’s important to understand that ‘pedophile’ has a specific meaning. If it applies to you, then, OK, it applies to you. There’s nothing to fear in acknowledging it to yourself. Hopefully the rest of our site can help you work out what to do about it next. If it doesn’t apply to you, then, OK, you’re something other than a pedophile.
If you have a specific reason for wondering, check out the headings below to investigate further:
You are a pedophile if:
- you often experience sexual and/or romantic attraction to prepubescent children
- you are well into or past puberty yourself
You are a hebephile if:
- you often experience sexual and/or romantic attraction to children in the early stages of puberty
- you are past puberty yourself
You can’t be counted as a pedophile or hebephile if:
- you haven’t yet reached the age of puberty
The following things don’t reveal whether you’re a pedophile or not:
The “official” definition of pedophilia (in the DSM-5) says that you have to be at least 16 to count as a pedophile. However, a lot of us do discover our pedophilia when we are still teens.
Pedophilia is an attraction to pre-pubescent children. If you are, say, 15 and experiencing attraction to 14 or even 13 year olds, then this does not make you a pedophile. If you are attracted to children under 11, it is a possibility but not a certainty.
When you are young, it can be difficult to be certain about your feelings. You and your sexual interests will continue to develop and clarify. If you are not sure whether or not you fit the label ‘pedophile’, then there is no need and no hurry to identify with it.
If you are already certain you are a pedophile because your feelings are so clear and strong, don’t panic. There is support.
Although under-18s are minors in most places, whether you are an actual pedophile or not depends on whether you’re attracted to people who have not started puberty.
If you are attracted to some people in their mid-teens, that is fairly normal. It’s even pretty typical for heterosexual men. It doesn’t make you a pedophile. It might make you an ephebophile.
However, saying that the attraction is common is not the same as saying that sexual interaction with any minor is OK. We’re just saying it doesn’t count as pedophilia.
Virtuous Pedophiles is mainly for those attracted to children (up to early puberty). However, a lot of the advice we would give people attracted to older teens would be the same as we would give to pedophiles. In both cases, a person feels an attraction that they cannot act on and that society views very negatively.
If you’re still a young teenager yourself, this definitely doesn’t make you a pedophile.
It is not typical for people above their mid-teens to feel strong or frequent sexual attractions to people under 14, and even less typical for them to act on these attractions.
However, if your attractions are only to those in the early stages of puberty, that makes you a hebephile rather than a pedophile. The exact ages this applies to can be different for boys and girls, as girls tend to start puberty earlier than boys.
Hebephilia is probably a little more common than pedophilia, but carries the same stigma and is often called pedophilia. If you’re a hebephile who would like peer-support around the challenges it creates, then Virtuous Pedophiles is open to you — and the same advice applies to you as we would give to pedophiles.
Unless you are a pre-teen yourself, then yes, this is pedophilia. We can say this with extra confidence if you are 16 or over and if the attractions are strong and frequent.
The effect of pedophilia on your life will depend on other factors such as whether you are attracted to people around your own age, and whether you experience distress or self-hatred about your attraction to children.
You can find out more about being a pedophile in our I am an adult pedophile
section. You can also learn about virtuous pedophiles
—those of us who are committed to never offending against a child.
If you experience frequent sexual and/or romantic attractions to under 4s you are definitely a pedophile. In fact you’re a particular kind of pedophile, known as a nepiophile.
Although we don’t use the word nepiophile much around this site, all the advice we give to pedophiles applies to nepiophiles too. While the taboos against hebephilia and pedophilia are very strong, unfortunately people can be even more judgemental or fearful of nepiophiles — even though nobody chooses who they’re attracted to.
The effect of nepiophilia on your life will depend on other factors such as whether you are attracted to people around your age, and whether you experience distress or self-hatred about your attraction to children.
You can find out more about being a pedophile in our I am an adult pedophile
section. You can also learn about virtuous pedophiles
—those of us who are committed to never offending against a child.
We get a lot of emails from people who don’t think they are pedophiles, but constantly worry that they might be. When we ask them whether they’re attracted sexually or romantically to children, they reply something like “No, but sometimes I worry that I’m just in denial.”
It’s really hard to know what is going on for these people but recently the condition of POCD is becoming better known, and it’s a possible explanation for their feelings.
Loli and shota are fictional versions of children in cartoon form and can appear in sexualized situations. They have many of the features of real children but in an exaggerated form.
Fiction is different to reality, and many things are possible in fiction that are impossible in real life — for example, characters with children’s bodies and adult minds and motivations.
In some places on the internet, fictional versions of children can appear in sexualized situations. The sexualized material is legal in some countries but illegal in others. If you are someone who seeks out such material, then make sure you know what is legal where you live.
Alternatively you might just imagine fictional children in your head, which isn’t illegal anywhere.
Some people who are sexually aroused by fantasies involving fictional children are not particularly interested in real children. We’re not sure why this is, because human brains and perceptions are very complex.
We think that if you have an attraction to human faces and bodies that seem prepubescent, then it probably is a form of pedophilia, but this is just an opinion based on our experience.
Lots of people have written to us explaining that they only like fictional fantasies about children and aren’t attracted to real children. We’ve heard the word ‘fictosexual’ for this.
We are happy to offer support and membership of our forum to people over 18 whose sexual fantasies involve people with strongly childlike physical characteristics. Make sure your activities are all legal in the place where you live before you talk about them. Read more about what we have to say about fictional material about children
.
A lot of people believe that only men can be pedophiles. The emails in our inbox suggest otherwise. Yes, women can be pedophiles, and most describe their feelings of pedophilia in an identical way to male pedophiles.
Female pedophiles seem to be much rarer than male ones and, unfortunately, the spaces online for virtuous pedophiles tend to be male-dominated, which can feel ostracizing to women. Female pedophiles may feel isolated.
However, all of the content on our website is based on the assumption that the person reading it could be of any gender. We welcome female pedophiles (and pedophiles of any gender) as members.
Here’s an article by a female pedophile that explains this situation (external link)
.
Are your feelings towards children only sexual in nature, without loving feelings?
If so then you might be aromantically attracted to children. Being aromantic means there is a lack of romantic interest. However, you may still feel romantic interest for other people.
Fantasy is not reality. Being aromantically attracted to children does not mean that you care about children less or that you want to harm them in real life.
You didn’t choose it, and no matter what your sexual fantasies entail, it does not have to affect your behavior toward children.
Are your feelings towards children non-sexual in nature? This is where your attraction is about falling in love romantically with children, and the thought of sex is not part of that. That could mean that you are asexually attracted to children.
Asexual attraction means a lack of sexual attraction or interest in sexual activity with the person you’re attracted to. It doesn’t mean you have no sexual attractions at all.
The fact these attractions are non-sexual attractions makes it harder to be sure you are a pedophile. However, some people who identify as pedophiles report they do have nonsexual attractions, which they still think are pedophilic in nature. They’re not just the protective or “cute” feelings most adults have about children.
This is a complicated one, but it can be involved in pedophilia. Sometimes we hear people who identify as pedophiles explain that their fantasies about children:
- do not involve having sexual activity with a child
- might involve children in a particular type of scenario (e.g. related to a kink) which is not a sexual situation
- are still highly sexually arousing to the pedophile
Sometimes this sort of fantasy helps a pedophile to reconcile their sex-repulsion and their sexual interest in children.
Sometimes it reflects the fact that, for them, their kink is more sexually interesting to them than what most people think of as sexual activity.
If it involves strong attraction to children’s faces/bodies alongside sexual desire, then we would say this is still pedophilia.
Some people assume ‘autopedophilia’ means feeling sexually attracted to images of yourself when you were a child, but this is just a specific expression of pedophilia.
Autopedophilia is when you get sexually aroused by imagining you are a child. Because it is a sexuality of the imagination, autopedophilia can take a lot of forms. You can imagine you’re any kind of child.
Although the thought of physically being a child (and perhaps wearing childlike clothes and doing childlike activities) can be very arousing to an autopedophile, it doesn’t necessarily mean you are attracted to the idea of having a child as a sexual or romantic partner.
Autopedophilia is very close to pedophilia in that it mixes the concept of childhood and sexual ideas, but you’re only a pedophile if you experience sexual attraction to pre-pubescent children. It is true that many pedophiles report some level of autopedophilia, but we have also heard of people whose autopedophilia only ever involves fantasies about having an adult ‘partner’.
Autopedophilia is only one expression of what we could call ‘childlike self-concepts’. Read more about other examples of childlike self-concepts (external link)
.
Ageplay is the term for roleplay or fantasy where one or more participants is imagining being a different age to their biological age. While any kind of ageplay is possible, most ageplay revolves around people roleplaying or behaving as if they are someone significantly younger. This includes ‘adult babies’ (roleplaying as babies or toddlers) but also ‘middles’(role playing, dressing or behaving like children around 4-16).
Many pedophiles or hebephiles are also attracted to adults. If you have an attraction to children alongside an attraction to adults, then you are known as a ‘non-exclusive’ pedophile. A lot of people who approach us for advice are non-exclusive.
We often hear from men who are attracted to women as well as boys, or women as well as girls. The same combinations are possible for female pedophiles.
There is some debate among experts over whether ‘pedophiles’ includes people whose attraction to adults is just as strong or stronger than to children.
Our common-sense view is that if you have frequent sexual and/or romantic attractions to children, then you will be dealing with many of the same issues as those who are ‘exclusive’ (i.e. only attracted to children). We would count you as a pedophile, and give you the same advice or offer you the same support as we would any other pedophile.
There is more about non-exclusivity in our I am an adult pedophile
section.
Many pedophiles or hebephiles are also attracted to adults. If you have an attraction to children alongside an attraction to adults, then you are known as a ‘non-exclusive’ pedophile. A lot of people who approach us for advice are non-exclusive.
We often hear from people who are attracted to men as well as boys. It is much less common for us to hear from someone who is attracted to both adult men and young girls - but it does still happen sometimes.
There is some debate among experts over whether ‘pedophiles’ includes people whose attraction to adults is just as strong or stronger than to children.
Our common-sense view is that if you have frequent sexual and/or romantic attractions to children, then you will be dealing with many of the same issues as those who are ‘exclusive’ (i.e. only attracted to children). We would count you as a pedophile, and give you the same advice or offer you the same support as we would any other pedophile.
There is more about non-exclusivity in our I am an adult pedophile
section.
First of all, if you have sought out CSAM, you may want help to stop. Help resources are here .
What pornography you have watched, even if it was more than once, doesn’t prove you have certain attractions.
There might be other reasons that you’ve fallen into watching illegal, or ‘barely’ legal, material. It could be the thrill of being on the edge. Quite a few people have told us that they found this sort of material despite a lack of attraction to children.
When it’s less certain to be pedophilia:
- You are turned on by more extreme porn like bestiality, sadism, and bondage along with pedophilia.
When it’s more likely to be pedophilia:
- Sexual activity with/among children is a strong focus of the ‘edgy’ material you like and you keep going back to this material specifically.
The definition of a pedophile is a persistent attraction to prepubescent children. If you have serious worries about being a pedophile, these sections might be for you:
A pedophile is a person who has a persistent attraction to prepubescent children. If you are unsure whether this fits you, but you are still worried that you might be a pedophile, consider these possibilities:
Firstly, maybe you are in denial about being a pedophile. The attraction is there, yet your mind interprets it as something else. Many adults think children are charming and wonderful. Perhaps you assume lots of other people have an intense emotional interest in children too, but they just don’t admit it. Something can trigger the awareness of pedophilia, or perhaps it just happens. Sometimes such a realization makes past feelings much clearer and gives a sense of relief.
Sometimes people judge people who are in denial, as if they are failing to face up to a fact, but denial is not a choice. Keeping awareness of pedophilia at arm’s length is not bad or good; it’s just a stage many of us go through.
Another possibility is that you might have pOCD or pedophile Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, which is the obsessive and compulsive worry that you might be a pedophile, usually triggered by seeing a child. pOCD does not usually resolve with a clear revelation about definitely being a pedophile. You can read more about pOCD here (link to pOCD).
A third possibility is that you are not a pedophile. You might have the occasional worry about being one, or you may have once or twice noticed that a child was pretty or handsome and that made you worried, but if the attraction is not recurring or persistent, you are not a pedophile.
If this is really stressing you out, remember one important thing:
There is no requirement to figure out whether your pedophilia is ‘real’ or not. The requirement is to never molest children and not break the law. Not acting on inappropriate attractions is part of being an adult, whether you are a pedophile or not.