Researchers say pedophilia may have biological roots

Skylar, you wrote:
‘“It’s not your fault, but you must be held responsible.” I think that’s what spaths say to us. Actually, they say that it is our fault, it’s never their fault even when it is. Either way, it doesn’t matter because WE must be held responsible, regardless of whose fault it is.

The fact is, we ARE all responsible for the existence of spaths. We HAVE enabled them. We DO participate in this spathy society with its spathy values (or lack of values). We imitate spaths, or the Jones, or whoever happens to be on reality TV this week. We pay attention to spaths, we allow ourselves to be scandalized by them, we watch them on Oprah, we FAIL to shun people who behave badly.

pass the bleu cheese dressing, please. I’m having a baby arugala salad.’

I think this is maybe the fifth post in which someone is speaking as if I said something that would imply I need to have what they are saying explained to me. Which I haven’t so far. But this just borders on non-sequitur (sorry, I don’t know the culinary equivalent). Nothing you wrote after my quote actually follows from what the quote says, and you even contradict your self right off. That’s what’s spaths say except they don’t, they say this instead. ???

I don’t see how holding a spath responsible for an act is enabling.

I also don’t know the culinary equivalent of deliberate context-shifting. Perhaps cherry picking comes close. You quoted something I said in discussing schizophrenia. If you are familiar with that disease, it can be like a true demon taking possession of a person. It can completely change that person’s general nature and daily, hourly behavior. It sometimes abates with medication, sometimes almost completely. Depending on the case, it can sometimes be very easily seen as something external to who that person *is*, and the illness is something that happened to them without their consent or embracing of it or even risking. It just happened to them. As I said earlier, in the throes of unmedicated hallucinations and delusion, a schizophrenic can do something terrible. There are certain circumstances in which ‘it’s not your fault, but you must be held responsible’ is an appropriate response. There are actually circumstances in which we decide that that is *excessive* rather than overly lienient or enabling, and we do not put the mentally ill person in prison, but confine them in a hospital, so it’s hard to say that that is “holding them responsible.” If this is word salad to you, then skip it. I am trying to explain what the quote meant and how I was applying it to the case of a schizophrenic.

If you want to focus on spaths, then the last paragraph in that whole post is the one you want. Again, I have trouble seeing holding someone responsible — i.e. convicting them, imprisoning them, or putting them on a registry — as enabling them. There are many people who believe in justice being served and carried out dispassionately. You can apply the same laws and the same punishments with or without drama, with or without demonization. One can even recognize that another individual is dangerous without demonizing him or her. If something must be truly demonized as evil it ought to be his or her choices, not him or her for the fact of being afflicted. Perhaps you and I could agree on the reasonableness of “It’s not your fault you have this compulsion, it IS your fault that you DID this.” (…and you must be held responsible, and experince consequences, etc.)

Truthspeak, I have the right to defend the reasonableness of my ideas, which i frankly consider less poisonous than some others that i have seen expressed in this thread.

Do not read the following unless and until you are prepared to deal with your own triggers. And if you don’t read it, move on and keep me on your shun list.

I have no idea what “other irons in the fire” is supposed to mean.

Please stop making your misreading of other people’s posts my problem. It’s yours. I was not defending disordered people who choose to harm. Unless you believe that failing to condemn those who avoid doing harm, despite having some risk factor or compulsion or defect associated with that harm, somehow implies defense of people who DO harm.

If you want to call this defending, yes: I am conflicted about judging someone who tried to do right and had a rare lapse (like the guy who got busted for porn but did not personally molest a child). WHY? Precisely because I do not have his affliction. There but for the grace of God go I, who have proven weak in other areas of my life, as alluded to before. Does that mean I give molesters a pass? You think I do, and I very much disagree.

Think about what you are insisting on. You or someone else don’t want to be triggered. My agreement with an article Donna posted with triggering content is triggering to you. My failure to condemn people who have resisted doing wrong, and my objection to talk of exterminating them along with actual criminals is triggering to you. I found Donna’s second post fascinating or at least illuminating — with a statistic I wasn’t familiar with. Perhaps that triggered you as well.

Don’t open this thread again if it’s triggering. Skip over my posts. Despite what you think, I’m not disseminating evil propaganda that should make you nervous. If you have solid evidence that condemning and demonizing even people like the man profiled in that article has a positive effect on children’s safety in society, then I’ll have to reevaluate my own notions. I have to say that I believe it’s precisely the demonization of afflictions that is dangerous. If certain things belong only to monsters then we fall prey because the person didn’t have “Monster” tattooed on his head, to paraphrase Susan Sontag. The alleged monster will not always recognize that he belongs to category X, precisely because he or she has a sense of his own humanity — or even decency in compartmentalized areas — and of course category X is monsters. And admission to one’s self and one other trusted person are necessary things if we want people to reach out for assistance in preventing their own doing of harm. I believe this is possible for a portion of the people described in that article. Or might be someday if some program comes up with the most effective methods. Donna’s second post sort of offers a Venn diagram in which one can spot the humans that can possibly be “saved” or prevented from or helped not to DO HARM (people who test positive as pedophiles and negative as sociopaths). Again, this is the whole point. Preventing more damage, whatever works best. I could be wrong and in fact demonization of that guy in the article being what’s best for society, but so far I have seen no information to back that idea up.

The damage that has been done to people in this forum is primarily that done by psychopaths. Psychopaths who are or were paedophiles, psychopaths who are or were not pedophiles. As I mentioned, Donna even drew a distinction between molesters who were paedophiles and molesters who actually were not. They were psychopaths. I’m all in agreement with everyone’s revulsion at what the abusers have actually done and familiar with some of the varieties of harm they have done. Some of these people are monsters. I certainly see psychopaths/sociopaths who willingly do harm to others as monsters, depending obviously on things like scale and frequency. But that is NOT what Donna’s posted article is about. I’m sorry we can’t all join with you in denouncing its contents. I don’t demand this of others when don’t like an article. Triggered or not, I try to respond to others’ posts with information or sound argument, or questions related to the argument. I in fact didn’t address the extermination question until I myself was accused of being deliberately inflammatory.

I do find it odd that even though what I have said has been in concert with the information presented as true in the article posted but not challenged by Donna, and in concert with several other people’s views on deeds as opposed to condition, I am singled out for rebukes for triggering. None of us hate disordered people precisely in the same way anyone else does.

You seem to be convinced that I am somebody’s alternate ID. I posted very briefly before as otter ballet. I registered because I thought a specific poster was putting herself at risk by the specifics of what she was posting — I initially even contacted Donna about it. Otter ballet was long ago, and raggedy ann is the only other ID I have had. So — oddly familiar? If you mean ME, yeah, I expressed some unpopular opinions once or twice before. Not getting specific, lest you get triggered. I spoke because *I* was triggered, maybe differently from how you would have been or were.

But I didn’t have things like “word-salad” lobbed at me, and I didn’t get accused of bad intentions or ill will or trolling. Oxy diagnosed me with “excess empathy” which may or may not be reasonable. So if that’s what’s familiar, I don’t know why you are speaking so vaguely. If you have started thinking I am someone from some handle other than this or water ballet, you are completely off. Whoever that person is, I have to say I feel for them at the moment. It sounds possible that I would find that person’s posts understandable or even reasonable. It’s also possible I would be appalled at what I was reading and that someone could associate me with it, and question your judgment even further. But I truly don’t have any idea what or whom you are talking about.

And don’t follow up with me on the last bit. You are supposed to be ignoring me. If this is a big issue, follow up with Donna. Hopefully Donna can see something in our IP addresses that would completely distinguish me from whoever this other ID is.

“It seems entirely inapproprite to me, that anyone would show up here, and attempt to instill pity for a pedophile using the, “but he can’t help it, he was born that way,” defense. And, as Truthspeak has pointed out, many of the survivors here are child-sexual abuse survivors. Rather than respecting our status as survivors, and even after you’ve been told that your comments are triggering, you persist.
Pedophilia as sexual orientation, indeed.
And when I USE THE TERM “WORD SALAD” it means what ever I MEAN by it. How arrogant.”

Kim Fredericks, you wrote the above. Word-salad has a specific meaning in the mental health and writing field. maybe you didn’t know that it is a common expression with an agreed upon meaning. The conventional meaning of word salad doesn’t really match my posts. I’ve had a number of expressions lobbed at me here that displayed some serious arrogance as well. But come to think of it, “what I say means whatever I think it means” is sort of moving in the direction of actual word salad.

The notions you are attributing to me specifically are implied in the article which Donna chose to post.

DON’T OPEN THIS THREAD if it is triggering to you. Or come up with evidence that what’s in it is false, or that people born with afflictions are evil, or that everyone around you is obligated to hate whom you hate.

If someone victimized you remorselessly or repeatedly, I hate him. But that’s because of my own moral compass, not because of some obligation to match the emotions of other people with victim status. Especially in the cases in which I share that same status. Which of course is not anyone’s business but mine. But surely you know of victims who forgave their abusers. I have known them. We just had a thread on forgiveness posted by Oxy in which people were extolling its benefits. If you want to check, I posted there some brief reservations about forgiveness. I don’t believe it is some blanket answer or one size fits all. And in this thread I have spoken over and over about condemning people for their choices.

I have barely strayed from anything implied by Donna’s posted article. I do not object to its contents. Would like to see Donna refute it if holding it up for condemnation was her purpose.

Contact Donna or a moderator and stop giving me your attention.