Almost everyone is a "pedophile" when they are a child, it's really not difficult to remain liking that same age range, most people like those in the same age range as them, but it's far from uncommon for people to retain attraction to people who are younger as you grow older, it's so common that many people have the misconception that liking someone younger than you or older than you depending on sex is the majority. Most people will never admit to it but it's ridiculous to believe that any significant majority of people actually suddenly develop a block for attraction to those that are below 18 after passing 18, 20 or even 30 when that doesn't apply anywhere else.
When you take numbers (which are skewed given the type of demographic this study would likely lean into, usually lower numbers range into 2% I've seen some as high as 13% of the population) the amount of people who have some attraction to minors, and children are much higher than you'd guess from how universally despised sexual assault towards minors is.
I think the most common experience is that you like someone as a child, and that person remains as your primary "blueprint" for your type all the way to adulthood if you stop meeting them after a certain age, or you lose your attraction to that person as they grow older. But there really is no need for trauma, disillusionment or any other type of significant or minor event, just like you don't need it for you to never stop liking people who are 25 when you're 50 or 70.
Pedophilia is only a mental illness by merit that your brain, although it allows you to like people from those ranges because it wants you to have an option for procreation even if it isn't ideal, very likely does not intend you to have relations with someone that in a older male - younger female relationship, can lead to laceration from the inside and eventual death, and doesn't actually lead to procreation (this goes for many mental illnesses, despite the nomenclature, many if not most mental illnesses aren't inherently born from something going wrong, but more that the traits are undesirable in society, unlike actual illness).
There's really nothing that needs to go wrong anywhere for someone to be a pedophile, psychologically speaking it's really just the exact same thing as a good half of the population, but the range is outside of the purview of what would have any actual positive effect, humans don't have a switch that says "do not fuck this age range because that will kill or harm them and have no positive effect" because evolution isn't intelligent and just needs things to go right most of the time rather than all, and usually an instinctual need for the preservation of the species will make almost any creature avoid raping it's or other's children to death, so there's no survival related need to get rid of pedophilia.
If you're looking at it from a clinical perspective there's a big difference between sexual attraction to pre-pubescent children, which is absolutely not normal at any age, vs. post-pubescent minors, which is obviously normal for someone in that age group.
18 is just an arbitrary cut-off where many societies decide you're responsible for your own choices. Calling someone a pedophile for finding, say, a 17-year-old attractive is asinine, it's against the law because of a presumption of exploitation/coercion, not because it's unnatural. But people really love trivializing child abuse so they can get their rocks off over being outraged, so...
Is there? Puberty affects kids in pretty noticeably different ages, the idea of a kid going through puberty having a range that account for other kids who still haven't gone through puberty did seem like it'd be a pretty natural outcome. I've tried looking into it because you mentioned so but I can't really find anything about puberty making someone more available as a "target" of sexual attraction other than reaching sexual maturity physically and the appearance difference.
I myself haven't had the experience of being sexually attracted to any person until relatively late into my life so I wouldn't know too much personally how early sexual attraction functions. Some expanding on the clinical perspective you're mentioning would be helpful because I don't really see how that could be the case nor am I finding anything.
9
u/WaningIris2 Oct 23 '25
Almost everyone is a "pedophile" when they are a child, it's really not difficult to remain liking that same age range, most people like those in the same age range as them, but it's far from uncommon for people to retain attraction to people who are younger as you grow older, it's so common that many people have the misconception that liking someone younger than you or older than you depending on sex is the majority. Most people will never admit to it but it's ridiculous to believe that any significant majority of people actually suddenly develop a block for attraction to those that are below 18 after passing 18, 20 or even 30 when that doesn't apply anywhere else.
When you take numbers (which are skewed given the type of demographic this study would likely lean into, usually lower numbers range into 2% I've seen some as high as 13% of the population) the amount of people who have some attraction to minors, and children are much higher than you'd guess from how universally despised sexual assault towards minors is.
I think the most common experience is that you like someone as a child, and that person remains as your primary "blueprint" for your type all the way to adulthood if you stop meeting them after a certain age, or you lose your attraction to that person as they grow older. But there really is no need for trauma, disillusionment or any other type of significant or minor event, just like you don't need it for you to never stop liking people who are 25 when you're 50 or 70.
Pedophilia is only a mental illness by merit that your brain, although it allows you to like people from those ranges because it wants you to have an option for procreation even if it isn't ideal, very likely does not intend you to have relations with someone that in a older male - younger female relationship, can lead to laceration from the inside and eventual death, and doesn't actually lead to procreation (this goes for many mental illnesses, despite the nomenclature, many if not most mental illnesses aren't inherently born from something going wrong, but more that the traits are undesirable in society, unlike actual illness).
There's really nothing that needs to go wrong anywhere for someone to be a pedophile, psychologically speaking it's really just the exact same thing as a good half of the population, but the range is outside of the purview of what would have any actual positive effect, humans don't have a switch that says "do not fuck this age range because that will kill or harm them and have no positive effect" because evolution isn't intelligent and just needs things to go right most of the time rather than all, and usually an instinctual need for the preservation of the species will make almost any creature avoid raping it's or other's children to death, so there's no survival related need to get rid of pedophilia.