many people see “pedophiles” as a type of villain to wish infinite angry death upon, as opposed to recognizing CSA as a preventable form of abuse. the former buys into moral panic and punitive justice; the latter is actionable, helpful, and much needed
when i went to conservative christian hell school, all we heard about was the evil scary men who wanted to snatch us up on the street. we learned about csa through strange, coded language. we were not taught how to talk about our bodies, and we were not taught what sex was. eventually, i was groomed and assaulted. so were an alarming number of my peers, often by teachers and religious leaders
then, as an adult, i got the opportunity to work at a summer camp. we developed an actionable plan to prevent campers from being alone with adult volunteers; we advocated for all of our campers to learn appropriate body part language; we led discussions about boundaries and consent; we answered questions about sex with honesty, care, and age-appropriate detail. and it was safe! the one time we identified shady behavior, there were so many safety nets and protocols in place that it never became a real issue.
so, having been in both situations, it’s frustrating to see 46387 threads a day of people angrily, viciously tearing apart the mere idea of a pedophile without ever stopping to ask “hey, what can we do about this? in real life? like, what are the advocates advocating for right now?”
i hate to break it to you, but 18+ daddy kink genshin yaoi (sorry idk i’m out of touch) isn’t the issue here, and it’s kind of silly and terminally online to pretend that it is. i would argue that adult-only erotica servers that block minors aren’t as big of a threat as, you know, “minor safe!! we are very safe for minors :) and we HATE the mean nasty scary people” communities that have a piss poor accountability system and no real mechanism for preventing abuse. there’s a huge difference between “weird gross thing that grosses me out” and “unsafe situation,” and the latter is far more worth emphasizing
