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It's interesting to notice how potent the stigma is around the topic. Like, I feel that I should be creating an alt account just to ask a question on here to avoid association with the topic...
A few things come to mind:
Is this something that you experience urges around? If so, what outlet do you provide them? Are there certain mediums like written stories or hentai that you find acceptable?
I notice that for all the disgust expressed around pedophilia, there is also rather rampant sexualization of children and teens. Not just in hentai but in, say, beauty pageants — and now, apparently, via AI imagery — occurring across many nations/cultures. Curious what you make of this.
What is the endgame of pedophilia? Like, even if it were permissible, what would you be seeking? How do you reconcile with the reality that a kid will age out of the zone to which you are attracted? I guess: is it something that is more about the fantasy? Is there a sexual component, or is it a sort of a Michael Jackson thing, where you prefer their company?
Finally, just want to mention that there are often low fee options for therapy. They might be with a pre-licensed person, but the quality of treatment is dependent on the match with the therapist anyhow. No idea how you'd find someone willing to work with you but, given you don't report having acted on any urges, your information remains confidential and you can shop around until you find someone who is willing to do so.
not OP, but also a pedophile. I don't know that we experience "urges" per se. We have a sexuality, just like anyone else. If you would say that urges are a part of any (non-asexual) sexuality, then yes we experience urges in the same way. FSM (shota/loli) is legal in my country, and I do use that as a harmless outlet. (Harmless in the sense that no real person is harmed in the production of the material I use).
People have always sexualized children. Personally, I'm not a fan of sexualizing real children (I'm something of a cartoonophile, so I almost prefer cartoons anyway?) But, I will say that private thoughts and fantasies can't hurt anyone, and as long as a person keeps those things between their own ears, there's nothing wrong with it. I do think that commenting in spaces that a child may see what is said is harmful. I don't think a child should ever know that a pedophile is attracted to them. I also don't like people using AI to generate pictures of real children. AI as a whole is a big mess that I don't like. I think that if it's trained using actual CSEM images it's pretty unethical, but if it's extrapolating virtual CSAM based on what it knows porn looks like and what it knows kids look like maybe it's okay? I think it's gray, but dark.
What's our endgame? Well, that's a great question that we need society's help untangling. When you say "if it were permissable" I'm assuming you mean adult-child sex? That's not what I want, nor is it what any anti-contact pedophile wants. We believe the risk of harm to a child is too great, and we stand against it even in places where adult-child sex is legal or permissable. But back to our endgame: let's say that everyone who is or will grow up to be a pedophile is killed or ceases to exist right now. In 13 to 20 years you will have a whole new crop of pedophiles. We are an unfortunate, but natural and kind of normal quirk of sexuality. I guarantee that you know at least 1 or 2 pedophiles who are not out to you or maybe even themselves. So what are we going to do with us if we aren't going anywhere? Well. We need resources. We need therapy and mental healthcare. And we need it regardless of our income. If society wants to help us not offend we need to be able to be open about who we are, we need to be able to seek help, and we need to have access to sexual outlets that don't cause harm (even if they're "gross" to the rest of society). I believe the fictional sexual outlets cause no harm, adult-in-adult ageplay causes no harm, child dolls cause no harm, etc. Are those things unpalatable to society at large? Yes, probably. But better that we have access to ethical things that are kind of icky than have sexual frustration and tension build inside us.
How do we reconcile that kids will age out? Is it a Michael Jackson thing? Well... realizing that kids will age out isn't a thing for me. I don't pine after real kids so much. Cartoon children can be children forever. As far as just preferring children's company... some of us are like that. Some of us mentally and/or emotionally feel much younger than we are chronologically. Some people may refer to themselves as trans-age or age regressors. But many of us are not like that. For myself, I wouldn't mind having a 10-year-old body with my current adult brain. Not even for sexual reasons, I just find having a body that age appealing and true to how I want to exist in the world.
To your last point: getting therapy is a very tricky undertaking. Mandatory reporting laws make it a requirement that therapists report us if they even believe we are a danger, and for some therapists merely having this attraction makes us potentially dangerous and therefore reportable. I know some people who have had the police called on them from a doctor or therapist's office when they asked for help. I know some people who have been outed to family members by a therapist. It's not always safe for us to seek therapy even if it is affordable. As there is more research about us, I'm hopeful that that will change, and there are resources out there for us to seek safe therapists, but these therapists may not be in our network, further complicating things.
This is actually a pretty interesting point.
We've been gradually starting as a society to reconsider the lines between concepts historically grouped together, like recognizing that a MtF trans person attracted to men isn't homosexual but better seen as heterosexual with a different gender self-identification from the body they were born into.
The notion of age as attraction vs identity is an interesting one I've not considered before. That there's a difference between an adult who sees themselves as an adult and is attracted to children vs an adult whose self-identity is more like a child themselves and attracted to similar aged people to how they self-identify.
I would also imagine that nuance and designation might be quite relevant to the issue of therapy and management.
If you were creating a virtual representation of yourself, what would that representation be in terms of age, gender, and other identity characteristics? And how long has that self-identify been apparent to you? Since you were actually that age, only years later, or even before it was that seen as the age you desired to be?
Hmmm.... So, I agree with you to a point, but I want to be careful here. Regardless of how anyone with age dysphoria (yes, that's a term we use) identifies, I want to be clear that I don't think it's acceptable for them to have any sort of sexual or romantic contact with a child. It might be appropriate for them to seek out another adult who feels the same way about their own age, or is interested in age play.
Additionally, not all of us experience age dysphoria. I believe it's most common amongst those of us who are attracted to our own genders, but that's purely anecdotal, I haven't taken any survey, nor seen any research.
If I could inhabit a virtual representation of how I would want to look, it would be myself (male) around age 8 or 9 or 10. Or possibly some conglomerate of features that I liked about myself between between the ages of like... 4 and 16, but that sounds much more amorphous, doesn't it?
This has been apparent to me since I was in my late teens. After watching the movie The Butterfly Effect I would often fantasize about sending my brain back into my childhood body and living my life again but with all my present knowledge and experience, and also not physically aging after a certain point. I've also imagined what it would be like to live like that species of immortal jellyfish that goes back to being a polyp and then grows into an adult jellyfish again. I also really liked the book The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August because the main character keeps getting born and living through his childhood. Disappointingly, the author mostly skips over Harry's childhood and focuses on him being an adult in each life.
I can not imagine how it must feel to have fucking cops come at you because you seeked help...
I don't really experience urges nowadays - at first, it does get into this territory, but urges require at least considering intent, which I don't have as of now. Generally, it might be more useful to think of it in the framework of "normal" attraction - we don't get attracted to every child, and we go through the same set of experiences one has for people their age when they fall in love or lust after the other. And same as with "normal" attraction, we can keep that to ourselves. As per outlets - for me it's mostly just imagination, but I see no issue with fictional materials - they just don't work well for me personally.
My attitude to beauty pageants including children is very strongly negative. Not even due to potential for sexualization of children (which can, however, be the case in some instances), but rather because those are incredibly harmful in themselves, being psychologically (hard work, burden of expectations) and physically (unhealthy diets, tons of makeup at early age with sensitive skin, and a ton of terrible practices) taxing for a child. Sending a child to those is ripping out their childhood and forcing them through things in life they're not ready for.
I don't fully grasp the "endgame of pedophilia" concept, but if you mean "what will you do if society will accept you no matter what you do", then the endgame is to be able to be treated like non-pedophilic individuals, being, well, socially accepted. We do not want the society to allow people to abuse children, and even if it were legal and acceptable, we would not do this, because the reason is not laws or societal attitudes, but actual harm. If any of such restrictions would be lifted, we'd be the first to raise awareness of such madness. We'd feel safer, though, hanging out around kids, being amazing parents, teachers, and friends. We love children in all ways, and it warms our hearts helping them explore our amazing world, navigating the issues they might have, caring about them, and just spending time around.
Unfortunately, confidentiality is breached more often than we'd like, for no apparent reason. There are many instances of pedophiles being outed by therapists, as well as anecdotal cases of therapists reporting to the police who were like "uhm, yes, so what?". So, it is more dangerous than one would imagine.