Pedophilia, hebephilia, ephebophilia, MAP, and child predator - what is the difference?
[ID: Pedophilia, hebephilia, ephebophilia, MAP, and child predator - what is the difference? /End ID.]
To start, pedophilia does not refer to attraction/arousal towards people under age 18. Thats just a popular misuse of the term.
Pedophilia refers to adults or older minors who are attracted to/aroused by prepubescent children. This usually refers to children who are under the age of 12-13 (though may range, as some children hit puberty sooner or later than this.) Infantophilia is a subset of pedophilia describing attraction/arousal towards infants/toddlers.
Hebephilia refers to adults or older minors who are attracted to/aroused by to early pubescent kids, usually ranging in the ages of 12-15. Pedophebephilia refers to a combination of pedophilia and hebephilia.
Ephebophilia refers to adults (usually in their older 20s+) who are attracted to/aroused by late pubescent minors (or very early adults), usually ranging in the ages of 15-19.
MAP (minor attracted/aroused people) is an umbrella term for anyone who falls under the pedophile, hebephile, or ephebophile umbrellas.
In most places, you will see these terms referring to sexual attraction or sexual arousal. But the reality is that any intimate attraction - romantic, queerplatonic, alterous, etc - can also apply.
Pedophilia, hebephilia, and ephebophilia are mental disorders falling under the paraphilic disorder umbrella.
Child predators, on the other hand, are people who groom, exploit, or assault minors for gratification or gain (usually of the sexual nature.)
What differentiates these disorders from child predators?
[ID: What differentiates these disorders from child predators? /End ID.]
Simply put, disordered thoughts and feelings =/= harmful action. Minor attracted/aroused people often cope with their attraction/arousal through other means, such as thought training to redirect their train of thoughts, roleplaying with a consenting adult partner, creating personal vent art, and a whole other range of activities that do not inflict harm upon others.
Think of it this way - if you have an intrusive thought about breaking someone's neck, does that mean you're going to do it? No, because its an intrusive thought. It doesn't indicate that you're an actually dangerous person.
In fact, minor attracted/aroused people are most likely to harm themselves out of guilt than to harm other people.
Additionally, most child predators are not minor attracted/aroused people. They are usually taking advantage of children out of opportunity, not ongoing attraction/arousal. Its the same way that most men who rape men identify as straight - they are acting on opportunity, not desire.
Even so, if a minor attracted/aroused person becomes a sexual predator, it doesn't mean the disorder made them that way. Blaming bad behavior on a disorder (ie; "narcissists are bound to become abusers", "people with ASPD are bound to become serial killers", etc) not only stigmatizes innocent people with the disorder, but it also absolves the blame on the person, and redirects it to their disorder instead. (Similar to how saying that "boys will be boys" takes away personal blame from misogynistic men, redirecting it to "the nature of their gender" that is "destined to occur", and applies blame to kind innocent men.)
This also applies to other paraphilic disorders, such as zoophiles (people attracted to/aroused by animals), necrophiles (people attracted to/aroused by corpses), biastophiles (people attracted to/aroused by rape), and so forth.
"Thought crimes" are not real. The thoughts and feelings in your mind shouldn't be illegal. They do not incriminate you as a dangerous person. Expecting someone with a para disorder to rid of their thoughts and feelings is the same as expecting the person to die, as most para disorders are unlikely to ever truly go away.
The reason why diagnosis for paraphilic disorders is so skewed towards criminals is because the general population rarely seeks out a diagnosis, and psychologists tend to only test these conditions on criminals. Think of it like this - if autism was mainly only tested in criminals, then autism would be known as a "crime condition", and assumed to be more common in criminals than in the general public.
This lack of diagnosis in the general public is due to stigma. If diagnosed, many people with para disorders get ostracized from their communities, locked in mental hospitals, heavily drugged, pushed into conversion therapy (which does not work), and/or put onto anti-androgens to kill their sex drive (which is both stripping them of autonomy and also isn't guaranteed to work, because some of them experience attraction rather than arousal, and killing libido would only kill arousal, not attraction.)
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