Saint

You're absolutely right.

It's AMA, so I'll answer anything honestly (as long as it's in good faith). I like a pretty broad range of art. Some of it is more cartoonish (I've found comics of Bart before that worked for me) some of them are more on the realistic end. I'm also kind of an outlier amongst my pedophile peers because I like hyper features on child characters. Oversized genitals are a turn-on for me. But I do also like "normal" sized genitals. Some of the characters I've really liked are Naruto, Hiro Hamada, Aang (and the other Avatar boys), and Tyler Nguyen-Baker from Turning Red.

not OP, but also a pedophile. How would you want society to treat you? I want to be seen as a person like any other. I've worked hard to love myself with a very difficult sexuality that society would prefer I kill myself over. I've never harmed a kid. I never will. I want society to see that people like me exist.

Hi! I'm not OP, but I am also a pedophile.

What you're describing is called SOCE "Sexual Orientation Change Efforts" AKA conversion therapy. It doesn't work for gay people to try to gradually change the gender of the people they're attracted to, and it doesn't work for us to try to age up the people we're attracted to.

Personally, I've tried conversion therapy for my being gay (three months at down in the the American South). That went about as well as you'd expect. Maybe a little better in that I'm not horribly mentally and emotionally scarred, I suppose.

For myself, I do seek out other adults, but I do not engage in age-play. It's not something I need to do to make sex work for me. I don't even fantasize about children or anything, I just focus on what I'm doing and what my body is feeling and enjoy sex with my partner.

I'm also not an exclusive pedophile. Exclusive pedophiles have a more difficult time with things, though I know of a few that ended up dating other exclusive pedophiles and they make things work with ageplay and mutual fantasy. There are other exclusives that don't date at all. It can be very lonely being a pedophile.

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.

Hey again, not OP, but also a pedophile. Those are great questions!

For myself, innocently interacting with kids is usually fine, but I am constantly aware of myself. If it ever feels like too much or it's not fine, I excuse myself and have actually gotten irritable with children if they won't leave me alone. Teaching kids boundaries with their own bodies sometimes looks like enforcing boundaries with your own body. If Saint says, "That's enough for me, I'm done tickling/wrestling/playing/whatever" and a kid doesn't resect that I mean it, they're going to hear me raise my voice and walk away to enforce my boundary. This is good for me as well as the kid, so that they learn they can and should set redline boundaries for how people interact with them if they ever get uncomfortable.

As to age ranges... there is great variety. Pedophiles are one slice of what are called "chronophilias," that is, people who are attracted to certain age ranges or Tanner Stages. In ascending order we have infantophilia (infants and babies), nepiophilia (2-4), pedophilia (prepubescent children), hebephilia (pubescent children), ephebophilia (teens, also this one is where attraction spots being a paraphilia as most of the population typically has some sexual interest in teens), teleiophilia (this is the "typical" age that people are attracted to each other something like 18-35), mesophilia (like 35-55?), and gerontophilia (people in their 70s+). There's another one that I missed in between meso and geronto, I think.

I am a pedophile, but I'm other things too. If we were to look at the ages that I'm attracted to, the bell of the curve would be 6-16, but it doesn't cut off sharply on either end of the curve, particularly as we get older. I'm attracted to some people in their 20s or even early 30s, and I've been attracted to kids in the nepiophile range. Age of attention is a little fuzzy for me also, because I'm at least halfway a cartoonophile. Cartoons are drawn with cutesy proportions and it can be difficult to tell the "age" of a character depicted.

Many people use the term "Minor Attracted Person" or "MAP" because it more broadly encompasses everyone with an attraction to children, not just people attracted to pre-pubescent children.

There are other community labels that we use for those of us that like boys, girls, both, or neither, as well as those of us that exclusively like children, or those of us that like adults too. There are other things, too, but this post has gone on long enough. 😅

I'm aware that some of that probably sounds super gross. It's not anything that any of us chose to have. This is something that we experience. Imagine if you woke up tomorrow and were suddenly one of these things. It would be pretty difficult. Almost none of us have had an easy experience.

Yeah! It's similar, though not quite the same. We aren't sick, pedophilia isn't a mental illness. You can treat and cure drug addiction, but we aren't addicted to anything. We have a sexual attraction. Often, therapy looks like helping us to accept our attractions and ourselves for who we are. There may be other elements too, like victim empathy and things like that for pedophiles who struggle with impulse control, but on the whole it's acceptance. Many of us start out pretty revolted with our attractions just like an everyday teleiophile would if they suddenly woke up and found themselves attracted to children.

Thanks so much, and I'm not offended. A lot of people think it's a mental illness. Two friends were totally shocked when I said I didn't need therapy for it. "WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON'T NEED THERAPY? MAYBE THERE'S SOME WAY TO REATTACH YOUR ATTRACTIONS TO SOMETHING NORMAL!" Conversion therapy doesn't work for gay people or for pedophiles.

Anyway, I really appreciate you. You stay strong too!

Hey! I'm not OP, but I am also a pedophile. Thank you so much! I do want to just point out that while we may be mentally ill in some ways (chronic depression for me), pedophilia isn't one. It's simply our sexuality. The DSM does list pedophilic disorder, which is if our attractions cause us distress, but that's not the case for me anymore.

I really appreciate your input, though! Thanks! I wish you the best!

Sure thing!

Hi there! I'm not OP, but I am also a pedophile.

I'm going to "yes, and" you on your first point there: the primary focus should be on protecting children, and one of the best ways to do that is by providing support to pedophiles. Many pedophiles discover their attractions between the ages of 12 and 17. Most of them never talk about it with anyone (I certainly didn't). According to research, this puts them at increased risk of commiting a contact offense against a child. It also I creases the risk of suicide. Many teen pedophiles kill themselves when they realize what they're attracted to. Getting support, either from a therapist or from anti-contact peers, diminishes those risks significantly.

You are correct that the way society is currently designed, a lot of the ways we "protect children" has nothing to do with protecting children and everything to do with persecuting pedophiles. Society would much rather have us incarcerated, or better yet dead. It would solve the problem of our existence pretty cleanly. But that's not realistic, and people only want that for the unknown boogeyman idea of a pedophile. Not for their son or daughter or cousin or parent or friend.

Your comparison to veganism is apt. Anti-contact MAPs are content with using ethical, non-harmful outlets that don't hurt anyone.

Thank you for your sympathy (you said to OP, put presumably to all pedophiles), but I'm not sad about what I am anymore. It's been a very painful journey, but it's shaped me into a very kind, empathetic, caring person. I am happy with who I am.

lol, thank you. People tend to think of us as morally bankrupt with out of control sexual impulses and urges. The truth is that... we're people just like you in many ways. Different in some, but fundamentally the same. We need help and support and acceptance the same as anyone else.