Thinking Through Dilemmas by Lawrence H. Williams

Author:Lawrence H. Williams [Williams, Lawrence H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Business & Economics, Decision-Making & Problem Solving, Philosophy, History & Surveys, General, Social Science, Sociology
ISBN: 9781000178685
Google: MoXxDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2020-09-13T01:00:24+00:00

Pedophilia: enduring disposition or deviant intuition?

In the 1990s, cases of adults sexually abusing children began to spread like wildfire in North American newspapers and television programs (Clark 2006). In these case reports, the adult sexual offenders were typically described as “pedophiles” that prey on defenseless child victims. Despite pedophilia’s medical definition as being the sexual attraction to prepubescent children (typically age 12 and under), it tends to be lumped in and conflated with hebephilia, the sexual attraction to pubescent children (typically age 13–15) (see Blanchard et al. 2009; Hall and Hall 2007). Television shows such as The Oprah Winfrey Show and Dateline’s To Catch a Predator made clear both the toxicity and dangerousness of the adult offenders and the purity and innocence of the child victims. The message consistently made was that violent, reckless predators were “out there” waiting to get “our” children, and that we must put a stop to this growing social problem.

As argued by many scholars in the area of sexual offending, this kind of reporting can be traced back to the construction of the “pedophile monster” beginning in the 1980s (Clark 2006; Goode 2010; Leon 2011). This concept positions adult sexual attraction to individuals below the age of consent as a sexual pathology that poses a threat to children and adolescents. Individuals experiencing this form of attraction are seen as either possessing a sexual orientation toward young individuals, or as suffering from an affliction that predisposes them to experience attraction toward these kinds of individuals (Leon 2011). In either view, individuals experiencing this attraction are termed “pedophiles” in the majority of media and even academic reports on this topic, despite actual variations in this term in regard to the ideal age of partner and exclusivity of attraction (Jewkes and Wykes 2012:934).

Recent scholarship on the topic of pedophilia and the construction of the “pedophile monster” has paid a great deal of attention to the ways in which the condemnation of this kind of behavior has led to the creation of a cast of “outsiders within” (Goode 2010; Leon 2011). For example, Goode (2010:9) conducted a series of interviews with individuals who are sexually attracted to minors of various ages and found that these individuals feel they are being ostracized from wider society. Due to the heavy negative sanctioning of this kind of activity, individuals who feel this sort of attraction often find themselves experiencing intense feelings of depression and self-loathing. Because the dominant public narrative of sexual attraction to minors is that of the “pedophile monster,” Goode (2010:7–8) argues that individuals dealing with this form of attraction have few tools to both manage this desire and to construct an identity other than that of a dangerous monster. While her study was based on a community of individuals experiencing this attraction, she found that even this “community” was fragmented due to its members’ intense struggles with their own belief in the idea that they may indeed be the monsters the “society” is claiming they are.

The condemnation of pedophiles

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