VirPed Panel: 14 July 2024

“Scaling Enthusiast” asks:

Are pedophiles’ sexual desires really as uncontrollable as media and stereotypes depict? How intense is your sexuality really? How would you rate it on a scale of 1-10?

I am not a very sexual person, especially for a young cis man. I’d rate myself a 4 out of 10 on the sex-o-meter. My romantic side is a bit stronger, so I deal more with heartache than with lust. Either way, I’m very much in control of my life, because I have alternative ethical outlets for my attractions.

For me personally, I’d rate my sexual interest at around 8, but since I’m highly nonexclusive I expressed my desire with adult women when I was younger, and I’ve had a high and happy tolerance for solo masturbation, which keeps things easier (now around age 70, it’s still once or twice a day, pretty much).
But to the bigger issue…The assumption we should start with is that pedophiles cover the same range as ordinary people on just about any dimension you can think of, except who they are attracted to. If it looks like there are differences, the first thing to look at is whether different circumstances can explain how things look different.
The basis for people thinking pedophilic desires are uncontrollable comes from cases where the pedophiles did not control them, it was discovered, and a news story resulted.

Consider for comparison earlier times when (say) Protestant subjects of a new Catholic monarch would be burned at the stake if they did not convert. Some didn’t – how powerful must be the devotion of Protestants to their religion! But if 90% or 99% of the Protestants quietly did convert, we never heard about any of them.

Returning to pedophilia, a great many men have a sexual desire for children, but do not act on it, because they don’t want to hurt a child and/or don’t want to get caught. And the vast majority never reveal those desires publicly. They are hidden, even from professionals and law enforcement.

Let’s consider for comparison ordinary straight men. We all know such men, and know that the large majority never blatantly force themselves on women. We use that to gauge the strength of their sexual desire, as covering a considerable range. But some ordinary straight men do have a very strong sexual desire. Many of them are able to fulfill that desire with willing women. Others may feel frustrated but (ultimately) do not want to hurt any women, so they don’t. And yet a significant number of men do act out their strong sexual desire by raping women. Tragically, this is common enough that it just does not make national news. Even men killing women as part of a sexual crime is common enough that it rarely makes the news – some portion of the 1,500 to 2,000 cases per year in the USA of men murdering women.

So the circumstances surrounding men sexually abusing children and men raping adult women are dramatically different, and likely account for far more media reports on the former while the latter is far more common. It would not be surprising to discover that the sexual desires of ordinary straight men are less controllable than the sexual desires of pedophiles.

Of course, no such statistical analysis can justify the sexual abuse of even one child.

Pedophilia is the sexual and/or romantic attraction to prepubescent children. We have as much of a “desire” for children as teleiophiles (people attracted to adults) do for other adults, and by the way, do you refer to your attraction to adults as a “desire” or “urge”? Why should our orientation be framed as an uncontrollable desire? The truth is that we are as capable of controlling ourselves as non-pedophiles, and issues with self-control are as prevalent amongst pedophiles as they are amongst non-pedophiles. There may be a minority of us who genuinely struggle with self-control issues, but that’s not correlated with pedophilia.

The media is notoriously bad at depicting us, using phrases like “convicted pedophile” which gives the sense that pedophilia is a crime, as well as popular stereotypes of us waiting in bushes or white vans for kids. These stereotypes are simply not accurate, and the majority of us are more than capable of controlling ourselves and living non-offending lives. Most of us simply want to get on with our lives, and it’s actually pretty easy for us to be in the same room as a child and not molest them. If you were in the same room as an adult you found attractive, would you have an uncontrollable desire to rape them? I certainly hope not! The same applies to us.

Personally, I’m sex-repulsed, which places me somewhere on the asexual spectrum. I still have fantasies about children, but they never involve penetration, only “softer” stuff. Perhaps I’d give myself a 4 or 5 out of 10 on the scale? I really don’t know, there’s no way to read minds so I have no real way of knowing how “intense” my sexuality is compared to others. What’s important is that the average intensity for pedophiles is not noticably different to the average intensity for non-pedophiles.

If i had to rate it on a scale? I’d say a strong 8 out of 10 in terms of intensity. Growing up, my sexuality has always played a big part of my life, and was always an interest to me. I’m what would probably be described as hypersexual, even though i’ve only ever romantically been with one person all my life, sex has always been close to the front of my mind over the years. That said, my sexual desires and interests have never really felt uncontrollable like many cop shows or news outlets have always portrayed.

I’ve always had a handle on my attractions, to the young and old alike, and they have never caused much of a hinderance in my life outside of the initial reconciling of my feelings towards minors. Shows like Law and Order have always made it seem like there’s some “urges” behind those feelings but i’ve never experienced such urges. I’ve never had an urge to do anything inappropriate with a minor in all my years dealing with these affections.

I tend not to pay a lot of attention to what is portrayed in the media. I find it near impossible to interpret the way news articles describe legal cases. Often the language is geared toward making the minor attracted sound as evil and depraved as they possibly can. But what are they alleged to have done, exactly? That is rarely revealed. The word rape gets used a lot. Was there a violent attack or an ill advised touch?

The image is often portrayed as someone with uncontrollable urges who is largely a ticking time bomb and evil fiend. If there is a general rule, it’s that people can control their actions. All people and all actions!

Will I rate myself on some undefined scale based on strength of sexual attraction? I will not. I have the ability to control it and nothing more needs to be said.

Media portrayals of our personalities are based on child abusers, not on direct observation of a representative sample of pedophiles.

There are many pedophiles who don’t have impusivity, who do have empathy, and who do have decent moral standards of behaviour. They don’t end up in the media.

I don’t find my sexual urges at all uncontrollable. I guess when I was a teen and in my 20s I would get preoccupied with sexual thoughts. But that manifested the same way it does for most males that age - a lot of masturbation. I still showed up for work and hobbies and social events and had a life separate from that. Nowadays, in my 40s, my desires are not even particularly strong.

Not sure how I’d rate it on a scale of 1-10 since the scale isn’t defined. I’ve had intense attractions to boys in the past but never really got to a stage where I couldn’t tell apart my desires and if-onlys from reality. I therefore never got to a stage where I needed to seriously think “oh no, how can I control this?” It never really threatened to go out of control.

I would say my sexual attractions are intense, but they are intense for adults and children. Im fairly hypersexual myself in general. I’m not to sure how to rate it, I suppose a 7 out of 10. For me, adults are more attractive, but often I will find myself very attracted to children. Its not hard for me to control my actions, but my feelings are another story. I suppose that should answer the question.

Speaking on a personal level, it was more difficult when I was in my teens/early 20s, but not to the point where I’ve acted upon it. There were situations that I were in where I was closer to the line than I should have been. Ideally, I would have felt comfortable enough talking to a competent therapist about all of this in order to help me discover my personal boundaries before they got to this point, but I’d wager that most pedophiles don’t feel comfortable seeking out help voluntarily due to the sky high stigma and shame attached to this attraction. It’s helpful, for those that are also attracted to adults, to focus on that attraction. If I do this and am in a great relationship, the feelings for children wane a fair amount.

As for how intense my sexuality is, I’d say it’s probably a 6-7, down from an 8-9 when I was young. Not all pedophiles have high sex drives though, in fact, there are even asexual pedophiles that are romantically but not at all sexually attracted to kids. I’d say there can be a pretty strong romantic component to my attractions as well at times.

I would say that our sexual desires are as controllable as anyone else’s. We represent a full spectrum of sexuality from asexual to allosexual, repressed to uninhibited, well-controlled to unregulated. This is the same as you’d find in the general population of teleiophiles. Some men and women will catcall adults they find attractive, will inappropriately hit in them, will sexually assault them… but it isn’t everyone. In fact, it’s a small portion of the population. Something similar is true of pedophiles. Many of us live our lives invisibly, never talking about or acting on our attractions. Such pedophiles don’t make the news. It’s the ones who have twisted boundaries or low-impulse control or poorly controlled sadistic desires.

There’s a great article about this called “Social Dark Matter” by Duncan Sabien.

As for the numeric scale… I really couldn’t say. I consider myself gray/demisexual, so probably somewhere medium-low.

Mine is not overwhelming but it is at times annoyingly persistent maybe 4 out of 10. It is easier in my 60s than it was in my 20s. The only time they felt uncontrollable was when I was drunk in front of a computer. I have been sober 13 years. That helps. I have never felt I was at risk of being a hands on offender. Thank God.

I would say that, generally, the portrayal of pedophiles in the media is about as realistic as that of dope-smokers, in other words, so far off the mark as to be risible.

I’ve controlled my desires for over 45 years, despite some temptations along the way, and I’ve found that it’s been fairly easy to do that. As for intensity, on a scale of 1-10, I’d say it goes up to eleven when I’m in full fantasy mode. Otherwise, it’s always simmering underneath on about 2 or 3.

Be skeptical of media portrayals of pedophilia. Largely, they aren’t informed by the perspective of a real pedophile. Most seek only to use it as a source of fear or shock for the audience, and even those that take a more sympathetic stance will often dramatize it and portray it as a source of constant danger or risk. They are stereotypes perpetuated by a very narrow and fear-driven view of pedophilia.
Although some of those portrayals are not entirely unfounded, they serve to generalize a minority of pedophiles and situations. The reality is that many of us, especially those who have found acceptance and support, are quite comfortable with our attractions, and pose no danger to anyone. We know our values and our limits, and we don’t live in fear of ourselves or constantly battle with urges to behave immorally. In fact, a sizable number of pedophiles frequently spend time around children, including children we are attracted to, without risk of harm.

As for rating of the “intensity” of my sexuality, I can only speculate what you mean by that. I believe that the feeling of adoration I have for attractive children is probably more intense than typical adult attractions. But my sex drive itself is probably not dissimilar to other young men, or maybe even lower; I might rate it something like 7/10.

I’m an asexual MAP so this question probably doesn’t apply directly to me, However I don’t think I’ve ever personally known any MAPs that really struggled with controlling their desires.

I’d rate the intensity of my sexuality at a 3/10

I can’t really rate my sexuality 1-10, because… well, I don’t know how it compares to other people. Comparing myself to others, I’m probably on the low end: I enjoy sexual stimulation whenever, but don’t feel too much of a pull to need to fulfill it, especially when my life is filled with other things. (I will give a concrete example: I haven’t had an orgasm for probably around four days, if that is not TMI, mostly because I’ve been busy and fulfilled in other places.)

In general, our urges are certainly not uncontrollable. For me, they almost never intrude into my daily life, instead coming out when I choose to indulge them. Sometimes I might explore my fantasies more frequently, sometimes less; it depends on my mood, what’s going on in my life, etc.

I’m almost certain that if you were able to survey a representative sample of pedophiles (which VirPed is not), you’d get a huge mix of responses similar to adult men in general. We’re all different and unique people. Some on the high end, some on the low end. But I, for one, have never had any trouble just getting my release at appropriate times through pure fantasy.