I’m currently not seeing a therapist even though I’d like to - it’s nearly impossible to find a competent specialist in my area, and it’s getting harder as time goes on.

Therapy available online is completely unaffordable, with some specialist charging upwards to $200 for a session. That’s, like, half my monthly income (I live in not-so-rich country).

I’m not OP, but I am a pedophile. I’m not seeing a therapist, and I haven’t seen a therapist for this exactly. I did try conversion therapy at one point because I didn’t want to be gay anymore. What I will say is I have done an immense amount of work on myself, I’ve read things and talked to friends… I have done the work of therapy essentially without a therapist. Once I got peer support for being a pedophile, everything else clicked into place, and I’ve been able to apply everything I learned and gained. It’s been amazing. I’m not afraid of myself anymore. I’m not afraid that one day I’ll slip up, I know that that won’t happen. I don’t think I have to kill myself or cut this part out of myself. I’m just okay. Right now a lot of my time and energy is put into supporting other people with their struggles. I find that very rewarding.

I also detailed in another response why it’s difficult and risky to seek therapy for this particular issue. It’s not all about the money. Therapists can out you or call the police on you even if you haven’t done anything and don’t plan to do anything. All they have to do is suspect that you might be a danger to kids.

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.

Sure thing - protecting children is the highest priority.

And currently, protecting children and helping us combat stigma go hand in hand. At the very least, in a part where we could open up about our issues without fear and get professional help if needed.

I, too, like the veganism analogy. As per “brain wired wrong” - previously I would refer to my situation just the same way, but when you live with it long enough, it becomes normal, and the curiosity sparks not on “why am I like this”, but rather “why others are different”. Regular people find children cute, beautiful, lovely. But then, when it comes to actually feeling something for them, people just don’t. This always made me feel weird. But yes, your case is the norm, and ours is exception - probably for the better :)

Hi! Not OP, but also a pedophile. I used to get really angry at God/the universe, in fact it’s one of the reasons I left my religion (how could a loving God make me or anyone else this way?) but today I accept it about myself and I’m not mad anymore. I’m out to several friends who all know me well, and so far all but two people have accepted me.

I’m going to turn your original question back on you a little bit. If you see someone in your day-to-day life that you’re attracted to, but you don’t have consent to do anything with, how difficult do you find it now to act on your feelings? It’s the same for me. In the words of Penn and Teller, I do rape and murder all I want. And that amount is zero.

At first, there was a lot of frustration involved in this for me, but currently I’m simply mentally incapable of crossing the line. I just get instant aversion on the thought of making this a reality - similar, in some ways, to violent thoughts someone normal might have. (you might imagine yourself killing someone that made you super angry, but you’re not gonna actually do this, are you?)

As per being angry at the world, I certainly get that sometimes. Having such attractions, even when you have “normal” ones too, is certainly living on hard mode. But then, there are many others with their own issues and their own struggles we know nothing about. Plenty of people were treated poorly by the merciless reality.

I was out to my long-term partners, and the effect was, as you would expect, always negative, although always on a softer side, like partners getting more irritable and bitter with anything regarding children when I’m around. Sure enough, parenting question was off the table.

I had different approaches to “the talk”, from straight up saying “I’m a pedophile” and managing reactions to going carefully and mentioning I like children in a special way, but never had the active intent to do something due to it. The latter works better, but doesn’t solve everything.

I’m exclusive for boys (pedo range) and non-exclusive for girls (pedo to teleio range, although less hebe, those moody brats are freaking me out :D).

Pedophilia in itself doesn’t have much impact on me besides being a great help when someone needs me to take kids out of adult table for evening talks (I much prefer children company anyways). The societal attitudes, however, added a lot of mental strain indeed. I’m still very much unsure if I’ll ever be able to pull off such thing as a family due to how my partner might react (and I feel very uncomfortable and threatened keeping it inside from a person who would rightfully be extremely angry should they find out the father of their kids is a pedophile), and family is the most valuable thing and the highest priority I have in life. I also hate that I have to be generally reserved and not participate in a lot of things (like, idk, assisting in a child summer camps or educational groups for children or whatnot), because this can also be seen very negatively by my future partner (as seen by past partners being uncomfortable with the idea).

Aside from that, I hate keeping it behind closed doors and it hurts a lot when people say something like “all those pedophiles deserve to die” or comparing pedophiles to child molesters without me being able to say much against it or at least direct them to the goddamn Wikipedia. And it happens A LOT.

Luckily, I have never been outed, and can’t speak for that experience.

Not OP, but also a pedophile. Well, because of my religion I ended up marrying a woman. That was a mistake. I was never out to her, and I’m not now. We broke up, and my current boyfriend does know. I don’t think I’ll ever be in a relationship with someone who doesn’t know and can’t be at least somewhat comfortable with it again.

I’m not just a pedophile. Minor Attracted Person “MAP” or Youth Attracted Person “YAP” are more applicable. I’m a pedophile, a hebephile, an ephebophile and in some cases a teleiophile and a nepiophile. I don’t consider myself truly exclusive, though I am more exclusive than I want to be.

I’ve never been outed, but I have come out to just over a dozen friends. That’s gone well except in one case where two friends who are a couple chose to cut me off.

I’m honestly impressed by the latter too, but I guess that’s the magic of Lemmy. I knew one person who tried to spin the conversation on Reddit, and it didn’t go so well.

I know pedophilia is something many people think exists somewhere in the dark, but that’s more the reason to put it out in the light, as meaningful conversations on the topic are crucial - not only for the acceptance of many of those who did nothing wrong, but also for the safety of children, as stigma around the issue is one of the reasons many of us can’t get help that would be very handy, especially for those (still) on the verge.

I appreciate any feedback, including your one. Hit me up with any questions later should you come up with any!

Thanks for the link! I was gonna add it later, as VirPed answers limited amount of questions. But it’s an invaluable resource allowing to see one question from the perspectives of different pedophiles and minor attracted people.

not OP, but also a pedophile. I don’t know that we experience “urges” per se. We have a sexuality, just like anyone else. If you would say that urges are a part of any (non-asexual) sexuality, then yes we experience urges in the same way. FSM (shota/loli) is legal in my country, and I do use that as a harmless outlet. (Harmless in the sense that no real person is harmed in the production of the material I use).

People have always sexualized children. Personally, I’m not a fan of sexualizing real children (I’m something of a cartoonophile, so I almost prefer cartoons anyway?) But, I will say that private thoughts and fantasies can’t hurt anyone, and as long as a person keeps those things between their own ears, there’s nothing wrong with it. I do think that commenting in spaces that a child may see what is said is harmful. I don’t think a child should ever know that a pedophile is attracted to them. I also don’t like people using AI to generate pictures of real children. AI as a whole is a big mess that I don’t like. I think that if it’s trained using actual CSEM images it’s pretty unethical, but if it’s extrapolating virtual CSAM based on what it knows porn looks like and what it knows kids look like maybe it’s okay? I think it’s gray, but dark.

What’s our endgame? Well, that’s a great question that we need society’s help untangling. When you say “if it were permissable” I’m assuming you mean adult-child sex? That’s not what I want, nor is it what any anti-contact pedophile wants. We believe the risk of harm to a child is too great, and we stand against it even in places where adult-child sex is legal or permissable. But back to our endgame: let’s say that everyone who is or will grow up to be a pedophile is killed or ceases to exist right now. In 13 to 20 years you will have a whole new crop of pedophiles. We are an unfortunate, but natural and kind of normal quirk of sexuality. I guarantee that you know at least 1 or 2 pedophiles who are not out to you or maybe even themselves. So what are we going to do with us if we aren’t going anywhere? Well. We need resources. We need therapy and mental healthcare. And we need it regardless of our income. If society wants to help us not offend we need to be able to be open about who we are, we need to be able to seek help, and we need to have access to sexual outlets that don’t cause harm (even if they’re “gross” to the rest of society). I believe the fictional sexual outlets cause no harm, adult-in-adult ageplay causes no harm, child dolls cause no harm, etc. Are those things unpalatable to society at large? Yes, probably. But better that we have access to ethical things that are kind of icky than have sexual frustration and tension build inside us.

How do we reconcile that kids will age out? Is it a Michael Jackson thing? Well… realizing that kids will age out isn’t a thing for me. I don’t pine after real kids so much. Cartoon children can be children forever. As far as just preferring children’s company… some of us are like that. Some of us mentally and/or emotionally feel much younger than we are chronologically. Some people may refer to themselves as trans-age or age regressors. But many of us are not like that. For myself, I wouldn’t mind having a 10-year-old body with my current adult brain. Not even for sexual reasons, I just find having a body that age appealing and true to how I want to exist in the world.

To your last point: getting therapy is a very tricky undertaking. Mandatory reporting laws make it a requirement that therapists report us if they even believe we are a danger, and for some therapists merely having this attraction makes us potentially dangerous and therefore reportable. I know some people who have had the police called on them from a doctor or therapist’s office when they asked for help. I know some people who have been outed to family members by a therapist. It’s not always safe for us to seek therapy even if it is affordable. As there is more research about us, I’m hopeful that that will change, and there are resources out there for us to seek safe therapists, but these therapists may not be in our network, further complicating things.

I don’t really experience urges nowadays - at first, it does get into this territory, but urges require at least considering intent, which I don’t have as of now. Generally, it might be more useful to think of it in the framework of “normal” attraction - we don’t get attracted to every child, and we go through the same set of experiences one has for people their age when they fall in love or lust after the other. And same as with “normal” attraction, we can keep that to ourselves. As per outlets - for me it’s mostly just imagination, but I see no issue with fictional materials - they just don’t work well for me personally.

My attitude to beauty pageants including children is very strongly negative. Not even due to potential for sexualization of children (which can, however, be the case in some instances), but rather because those are incredibly harmful in themselves, being psychologically (hard work, burden of expectations) and physically (unhealthy diets, tons of makeup at early age with sensitive skin, and a ton of terrible practices) taxing for a child. Sending a child to those is ripping out their childhood and forcing them through things in life they’re not ready for.

I don’t fully grasp the “endgame of pedophilia” concept, but if you mean “what will you do if society will accept you no matter what you do”, then the endgame is to be able to be treated like non-pedophilic individuals, being, well, socially accepted. We do not want the society to allow people to abuse children, and even if it were legal and acceptable, we would not do this, because the reason is not laws or societal attitudes, but actual harm. If any of such restrictions would be lifted, we’d be the first to raise awareness of such madness. We’d feel safer, though, hanging out around kids, being amazing parents, teachers, and friends. We love children in all ways, and it warms our hearts helping them explore our amazing world, navigating the issues they might have, caring about them, and just spending time around.

Unfortunately, confidentiality is breached more often than we’d like, for no apparent reason. There are many instances of pedophiles being outed by therapists, as well as anecdotal cases of therapists reporting to the police who were like “uhm, yes, so what?”. So, it is more dangerous than one would imagine.

I’m not OP, but I’m also a pedophile. I am out to friends with kids and they trust me around them. My friends know me deeply and believe that I am a good person and that I am trustworthy.

I understand the why of your question, but it still stings. This is like asking straight friends do people let you around women (or men, depending on which gender they’re attracted to). I’m not a danger to anyone, just like you aren’t in danger of sexually assaulting any attractive adult you might see or be alone with. I recognize that this answer may have you brand my friends as naive for trusting me. Maybe you think that all pedophiles will always eventually touch a kid, or that merely having an attraction I didn’t choose makes me a risk and a danger. I hope that you’ll examine that belief, maybe even take the time to get to know some of us. It’s not true that we all hurt kids, but thst societal belief does make us think it’s true. Before I found Virped and MAP Support Club I thought I was the only one, and I thought it would just be a matter of time.

This article talks about all the pedophiles you may know who aren’t out and who you’ll never find out about because we don’t do anything:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KpMNqA5BiCRozCwM3/social-dark-matter

In my case, I am not out, since it adds a lot of risks for me, and I’m generally careful on who I’m out to - there’s always a chance a person can use that against me, or just freak out and out me knowing I’m attracted to children.

But I do sometimes babysit children, and I’m considered to be an excellent person to trust children to among friends and family - someone who will entertain kids, properly care about them, follow all the requests parents may have. Children love and trust me too - I pay a lot of attention to their needs and always listen up on anything that’s on their mind; I also mediated several conflicts between kids and parents, and earned a reputation of a person who can solve things in a way that makes both sides happy. At the end of the day, both parents and kids see me as a close and trusted friend.

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!

Thank you! I wish you all the best with whatever is happening with your own mind. You can always share, too, if you’ll ever want to, and I’ll be happy to help you with what I can.

The change of pedophilia to pedophilic disorder Saint talks about happened long ago in the US (since the DSM-V update in 2013), but only recently came to other countries in WHO’s ICD-11, so for most of the world, it’s actually a very recent change - no wonder most people don’t know that yet :)

However, my country decided to straight up reject entire ICD-11 and stick with outdated ICD-10 because of that change (and also because of delisting trans individuals). They just literally ignored entire medical progress of the past 30 years because hurr durr pedophiles no longer sick. So, the reception of the changes is still…complicated.

Not OP, but also a pedophile. I never experienced any sexual anything in my childhood, not even porn. I started masturbating a few weeks shy of 17 and realized I liked to think about boys while I did it. I thought I was “just” gay, and that was already really bad because I was religious. As time went on, I realized it was so much worse. At least that’s how I thought at the time. I’m pretty sure I was genetically predisposed to develop this way. It’s a sexuality just like other sexualities. It’s just one that can’t ethically be acted on the same as other sexualities.

I was not sexually abused as a child, although I had some early near-sexual experiences (around 7yo) with peers. But I don’t know what to make of it. Generally, I think I was just born this way.

I did at earlier stages, but yeah, it doesn’t really work, especially since my attraction to girls which is still my main already goes well into my comfortable adult range, so essentially my only way is to convince myself I’m not interested in younger girls (which is, well, not really working; I can tell myself “yay it works”…until I meet a younger child again)

I do seek relationships with peers of my own age, but I don’t enjoy ageplay; it just doesn’t bring up much the same feelings, and I doubt I can experience this attraction to adults, no matter how much trickery is involved. Some, though, do find some relief in that. There is no single opinion on ageplay among pedophiles.

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.

As far as I know, ageplay usually isn’t a pedophile activity. You are atracted to an adult, but you and/or your partner (sexual or a relationship) act childish during sex or just as an independant activity.

I had special interest in younger children since I was about 9 - but back then I wouldn’t call it attraction, I just felt very comfortable being around kids aged 3-7 (I developed normally and was perfectly alright around peers, there was just something warm about being with younger ones)

But if we talk straight up attraction, it sparked when I was about 13, was initially to the boys on the countryside and was predominantly sexual (and remained predominantly sexual for boys ever since). But then girls qickly caught my eye too, and I felt all sort of attraction to them - sexual, romantic, platonic…you name it. It was not porn that started this, although in my early years of pedophilia I did find some of the CSAM (not illegal in my country even for adults to watch, although since about 15-16 I do not do it out of moral side of things)

Not OP, but also a pedophile. For me it was probably when I started masturbating a few weeks before I turned 17. I thought about boys, but I suppressed it and told myself I was just gay (which was bad enough because I was religious). I did later start to use hentai (shota, specifically).

Pedophilia is the feeling. Abuse of a minor is the action. It’s important to keep them separate.

It absolutely should!

We absolutely need more therapy programs for minor-attracted people, more of the competent therapists, less social stigma (and please, stop calling child molesters pedophiles and child abuse pedophilia, that’s not helpful and not true!), and probably softer reporting laws, too.

For example, reporting past offences may bring more harm than good, scaring off those who want to change. Similar with the consumption of CSAM - it is bad, but reporting it leads to people not being able to talk about it directly, which hurts prevention efforts, exacerbating the issue. Etc.

Hi there, I’m also a pedophile. What does “committing pedophilia” look like? Pedophilia is an unchosen attraction to children. Child molestation/abuse is something that some pedophiles (and also non-pedophiles) do. I’m assuming you are talking about committing abuse. Many of us don’t struggle with not abusing children, but we do struggle with internalized societal hatred. Imagine if you woke up tomorrow and realized you were a pedophile. You’d feel like the world was ending, I imagine. We need more free resources like Germany’s Project Dunkelfeld. If pedophiles can feel free to reach out for help they are at reduced risk of harming themselves or others.

The post is genuine, this is not a joke.

Yes, I regularly participate in studies related to attractions one may have for minors, and I participate in communitites that, among other things, share research opportunities. I call every pedophile or generally minor-attracted person to do the same - you can start with something like VirPed or MAP Support Chat, both of which list those, and then find a place for you (I won’t list other, smaller communities I love in fear of brigading; I know those two manage the issue well)

Then I don’t see the issue too, unless they get too invasive and don’t allow me to have some personal space for a prolonged period of time. I don’t consider it a sexual or romantic experience on their part, and I love to share some warmth with them. They need that care and love and attention, and I’m there to do exactly that. I will allow them to hug, crawl, play with my hair, even kiss in the cheek if that’s their vibe and if they behave this way with others.

Normally this doesn’t overload me, but if it does (like if my deep child crush does it repeatedly) or if the child starts going to inappropriate territory, I can always excuse myself and leave for a while, while processing it and planning ways to calm the child down.

Well, pedophilia refers to attraction to pre-puberty children generally, and more exactly - to children between age of ~4 and puberty. For pedophiles, I’ve heard a saying “7 is heaven, 8 is great, 9 is fine”, and it’s about as golden rang-y as you’ll get. Personal experiences differ a lot, some will prefer the younger range, some the older, I personally would call 9-10 my perfect one.

There are other terms related to other age ranges in minors, like infantophilia/nepiophilia (up to about 4 years old; often considered as part of pedophilia, but has distinct features), hebephilia (attraction to children going through puberty), and ephebophilia (attraction to post-puberty minors, i.e. ~15-17).

Ephebophilia is straight up super common, especially in males, and most ephebophiles don’t consider this as something off - after all, 18 years old is a legal boundary, not natural one, and 17yo person barely differs from 18yo.

In any way, should you academically define pedophilia, you already only look at the range from 0(4) to about 12.

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.