The Case for Pedophilia

Posted September 19th, 2005 by Sean Williams

So, I remarked last week that people who regurgitate opinions they read without any analysis, particularly people who ingest information from one source and then vomit it back as if it were their own opinions, are the worst kinds of people there are. People commented on this, and many disagreed with me. Ironically, some people only barely read what I wrote and when I insisted that helping New Orleans fell under the purview of the federal government, I was taken to task using tangential and regurgitated information, only making my point clearer.

(Not to be a dick, but the people dying in Iraq under Saddam are the responsibility of our federal government, but the people drowning in New Orleans under Katrina aren’t? That seems dumb to me. I’m sure it makes sense, but on a gut level, that seems wrong.)

However, one rejoinder said that pedophiles were in fact worse people than those who refuse to think. I disagree, and I’d like to explain why.

Sexuality has to be the most hotly debated aspect of western culture. There isn’t a single thing we spend more time thinking about, talking about and arguing over than sex. If America had nothing to discuss when it comes to sex, if there was nothing sexy about it, then there would be no abortion debate, no gay-rights debate, no gender equality debate, our advertisements would certainly look different, and pedophiles would be, simply, criminals.

But it isn’t that easy. We celebrate youth culture. We celebrate the youthful body. All of our models look pre-pubescent, or just post-pubescent. The perfect male body is hairless, thin, the perfect male face is smooth, youthful. All of our attitudes, the “what do I care” blase way that teenagers make their way in the world is, when put on or embraced by men in their dating years, enormously attractive.

The astounding inclination for our culture to try to be younger, hipper, thinner and, frankly, dumber is, in its own way, a kind of pedophilia, a sexual love of children.

I had sex starting really young, and I never really stopped. Lots of partners early on, not so many now. Down to one, if you must know the truth. And I’ve seen a change in my mind, a way that my brain has shifted so I look at young women now as, honestly, foolish. I look at young boys, and youth obsessed men, and I have no respect for them. There are young people that I love, but sexuality does not come within a country mile for me. I know very beautiful women in their late teens and early twenties and, my hand to God, I think of them as daughters.

But the discussion is important. Why are we so obsessed, and where is the line? I had sex when I was thirteen, with a fourteen year old. I had a lot of sex between 14 and 17, and some of it was with people over the age of 18. I had a lot of sex because it was the 80s, and everyone thought that they had to, AIDS and Reagan’s Political world hadn’t yet sunk in the way it did with the youth of today.

Why do men find 15 year old women attractive? I know why I did when I was fifteen, but why do older men? And why do adult men and women find themselves sexually drawn to children who are not yet sexually viable, who are not yet capable of even having sex?

Do you think these people are just lazy? Do you think the rest of us, all of us, are attracted to children, and we just have the fortitude and maturity to turn our backs on these pecadillos? I shouldn’t get too much credit for *not* being a pedophile, I find the whole thing distasteful, but the existence of pedophilia is an aspect of our culture that merits discussion because it is an illness that goes beyond simple brain imbalances. We are a nation that obsessed over Britney’s pre-adult virginity, we’re a nation that bemoans the way teenagers dress but which gawks as much as we mock.

You can say its wrong, you can say that pedophiles are the worst people there are, but I think that’s an easy answer. People who aren’t willing to ask, “Why? Why a child? Why sex?” people who stop, shrieking from the horrible honesty of human sexuality, people who stop LONG before even getting to anything that uncomfortable, the people who stop listening the moment someone even asks a question about the person they voted for or the person who went to their college or played on their team, the person who yearns for their life to be free of questions, free of answers, free of the responsibility to make a decision and then to find out that it’s wrong, the person who wants the slippery slope of life to carry them to a warm comfortable death with their illusions and fables intact… I think this is the worst sort of person there is.

Of course, pedophiles might be a close second. Or maybe they’re worse, I’m willing to hear you out.

Pedophiles who tell old jokes and don’t have an original thought in their heads (besides having sex with children) are the absolute worst.