My reply to pedophile defender Michael Vogel on Quora

Michael Vogel’s profile description:
“Sex postive, kinky, polyamorous feminist
Intersectional, sex positive feminist who writes about technology, feminism, sexuality, sexual assault, and various other topics.”

He claims his credentials for answering the question are that he is a “victim/survivor.” Of course, I reported his answer and true to form, he deleted my comment per his assumption (stated on his profile) that “If your only activity on Quora is to comment on an answer of mine and tell me I’m wrong with no evidence, I will delete the comment and block you.” So, the guy has major cognitive dissonance since he cannot accept the evidence in my counter-argument.

Here is my reply:

I would NEVER trust children with an admitted pedophile. Even a supposedly “non-offending” one likely has child pornography. THAT is grounds to investigate him based on reasonable cause.

Oh, and ephebophilia and hebephilia are just other versions of pedophilia. With children going through puberty as young as 9 years old, the argument of an age range goes out the window.

You cannot have it both ways and claim that it’s not wrong to be a pedophile but wrong to act on those urges. Many of them start off with the “fantasy” of raping children and end up enacting it in real life. It is a PARAPHILIA and not a valid sexual preference or orientation. Going through puberty doesn’t make a child an adult. Statutory rape is not only a crime, but traumatizing for the victim. It is also known as corruption of a minor. People who pursue adolescents are EXPLOITATIVE of them and are definitely sexual offenders. When you start saying that children of whatever age range can consent to sex with adults, you are putting the onus on THEM instead of the sexual predator. That is victim-blaming.

“In 1997, George Hamelin was charged with sexual exploitation of a child and possession of child pornography. “ This man was a hebephile, and hebephilia is included in the DSM-5. All paraphilias that result in exploitative behavior are classified under the DSM specification 309.2, “Paraphilia Not Otherwise Specified.” Many pedophiles of whatever age range are also diagnosed psychopaths and narcissists.

Plus, thanks to porn, many pedophiles are opportunists and didn’t start off as being attracted to minors of any age range. The opportunism goes for Catholic priests molesting altar boys as well. Their typical defense is that they themselves were sexually abused as children, when in fact abuse is a choice. Victims/survivors who defend fantasizing about molesting and raping children have been successfully groomed by pedophiles to continue the cycle of abuse.

“I think chronophilias are the result of errors in age detection, where heterosexual male preferences for youth cues like big eyes and smooth skin are not offset by sexual maturity cues like full breasts and curvy hips. For pedophilia, hebephilia and ephebophilia, the youthfulness cues dominate; for mesophilia and gerontophilia, the preference for youth cues is actually reversed.

I refer only to men here because that’s whom almost all the research on chronophilias has focused on. And men are much more likely to show variations in their sexual age interests than women. For example, one study found men were more than twice as likely as women to report ever having sexual fantasies about a child under age 12.” What are chronophilias? 

The evopsych argument is pseudoscience. Men who are bad at being able to tell what age a female is are NOT at an advantage; in that case, either evolution is overrated or they’re actually devolving. I think many are fully aware of the differences in mentality and physicality of children vs. adults and are just using it as a shitty excuse (they could just ask for ID, anyway). People live a long time now and women can reproduce up until age 35; plus, DNA testing, birth defect screening and abortion exist to ensure children aren’t born with birth defects.

The “pedophilia is natural, and natural means good” argument is also fallacious. We know that not everything in nature is good and not to base our ethics on the worst behaviors of non-human animals, because we have cognitive and critical thinking skills. By that logic, rape and murder is natural. Theft is also natural, because children steal things and will continue to steal unless their parents teach them that it’s wrong. And by that logic, BESIDES the ethical support for capital punishment after a successful prosecution (removing an unreformable threat from society, which I support), there’s no problem in killing pedophiles for vigilante justice, so pedophilia apologists are shooting themselves in the foot.

And no, if I were molested at age 13 (when I went through puberty) instead of age 9 by an adult man who was a husband and father, it would NOT have made it any better.

Regardless of whether or not you see pedophilia and ephebophilia/hebephilia as mental illnesses in and of themselves, the difference between a pedophile of any age range and any other sexual offender is that the pedo specifically fantasizes about raping children. Because when a man sexually objectifies a female (who are the ones degraded in porn and make up many victims, while men are the majority of perpetrators) they strip them of their humanity and don’t care about who they’re sexually objectifying, even if they’re a child. Furthermore, a child rapist or molester who didn’t start off as a pedophile is still committing sexual assault. Pedophilia should not be tolerated. 

Stop defending these creeps! You are only enabling them.

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There are so many of these dudes online hiding behind the label of “ephebophilia” and”hebephilia” as a false distinction and many of them have either queer theory or MGTOW/PUA philosophy to start by promoting as a lifestyle and normalizing dirty old men dating much younger women, young enough to be their daughters. Most of the time (unless they’re someone like TJ, the self-proclaimed “Amazing Atheist”), they sneakily won’t outright admit to raping minors but will gladly defend the concept of doing so, with the claim that girls reach full maturity at age 16 and that 13-17 is their “prime.” They’ll also defend pedophilia by saying that not all pedophiles offend and it’s okay to fantasize about raping children under incest, breeding, schoolgirl/teen porn and DDLG fetishes. Chances are these men have child porn on their computers.

The only difference between pedophilia and ephebophilia/hebephilia that the kid-diddling happens later than earlier. Child rape and molestation isn’t less psychologically traumatizing just because of going through puberty. One could try to argue that it has a greater impact on child cognitive development when it occurs before puberty, but then again, having it occur during or after puberty as a minor is still pretty damn significant.

Milo Yiannopoulos, a gay man, has talked about in at least 2 podcasts how he thought there was nothing wrong with a priest sexually preying on him when he was 14, and credits his blow job skills to him. He is precisely part of the problem of pedophiles (or MAPS, minor-attracted persons — I make no distinction between pedophiles and hebephiles/ephebophiles) attempting to normalize themselves using Queer Theory (infiltrating the LGBT community) and MGTOW/PUA philosophy. Plus, many of these sexual predators are attracted to both pre-pubescent and pubescent children, hence their self-proclaimed term MAPS which, although sanitizing, shows that they themselves know deep down that both age ranges are still minors who are unable to give consent to sex with adults.

Pedo apologists always bring up countries where the age of consent is really low, like 13, but not the countries where they RAISED it. It’s said that male brains finish developing at age 25 and female brains at 21, so that’s actually an argument for raising the age of consent rather than decreasing it.
And in those countries with a really low age of consent, they tend to have legalized prostitution, bestiality and child porn, or some combination thereof. That’s not a coincidence, because those are all sexually violating behaviors.

“To anyone asking why ‘merely’ fantasizing about children in a sexual way is wrong if the person doesn’t act on it, please realize that that mentality could actively dissuade pedophiles from seeking treatment. After all, if sexualizing children in your head isn’t wrong, then why on earth would you see a professional to help you with it?
Obviously we can’t jail people for what they think, but unhealthy mental patterns DO exist, and anyone suffering from them should seek counseling. Having those thoughts takes a mental, emotional, and physical toll on yourself, plus they do affect your likelihood of hurting the people in your life. Get help, for your sake and everyone else’s.”
— Lauren Chen on RT America,”LGBTP: Pedophiles in the LGBT Movement?”