Quick: What’s the worst word you can think to call someone? Ask the majority of folks this question and aside from racial and ethnic slurs, they’ll say ‘pedophile’.
And sadly, that’s one of the slurs most commonly used against the LGBTQ+ community.
Below, we dive into why LGBTQ+ folks are so often the target of the insult—plus, how it hurts so many of us.
First, a definition
The word ‘pedophile’ elicits a strong emotional reaction from most of the population, but most people don’t actually know what it means. So, before we can talk about why calling certain populations ‘pedophiles’ is so damn harmful, let’s start with a definition.
A pedophile, as defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, is a person who has intense and recurring sexual interest in and/or fantasies about prepubescent children.
Sometimes, you’ll hear the term ‘minor-attracted person’ (MAP) used instead of pedophile. MAP is an umbrella-term that encompasses anyone attracted to children under the age of 18, meaning it includes pedophiles, hebephile (people attracted to pubescent children) and ephebophiles (people attracted to teens).
Some people think that MAP is used because it carries less stigma than the word ‘pedophile’, but this is not true. MAP is used to speak to the wider age-range of children.
Why are LGBTQ+ people often called ‘pedophiles’?
Yes, LGBTQ+ folks are often called ‘pedophiles’. But it isn’t because LGBTQ+ people are more likely to be pedophiles than, heterosexual folks—they aren’t (research proves it).
So, why are LGBTQ+ often called ‘pedophiles’? A few main reasons explained below.
1. Generalized homophobia
Due to the stigma the word ‘pedophile’ carries, it is often used as an insult to harm and disenfranchise people, like the LGBTQ+ community.
Kevin Salazar, Psychotherapist at The Gender & Sexuality Therapy Center in NYC suspects this is due to the total misunderstanding of queerness. “Homophobes have perpetuated a narrative that being LGBTQ+ is sexually “abnormal,” “hidden,” or “deviant”,” he says. “These homophobes see the deviance of queerness as being parallel or linked with the attraction to minors—which it is not.”
Additionally, because LGBTQ+ experience is seen in some communities as something ‘unnatural’, “it is a common myth that queerness must have been imposed on an unsuspecting minor by a predatory, older person,” says Salazar. In other words, there’s a belief that someone could not be born queer or choose to be queer, only be abused into being queer. This is not true.
2. Fake news
Pedophiles never have and never will be a group recognized as part of the LBGTQ+ community.
Unfortunately, in the Summer of 2020 a meme claiming that the LGBTQ+ community was rebranding as LGBTP community, to include pedophiles, went viral.
As Rich Ferraro, the chief communications officer at GLAAD, told USA Today, “No LGBTQ organization has […] advocated for a ‘P’ to be added to the acronym.”
3. Child molestation by leaders
If you get cable or the morning paper, odds are you’ve heard about the (known) instances of adult male on young male abuse within the Catholic church and Boy Scouts of America.
Some conservative, anti-gay organizations have used these instances to claim that gay adults are more likely to be minor attracted. But, that rhetoric actually doesn’t hold up.
For starters, it relies on the false assumption that male-on-male abusers are homosexual. This is not necessarily the case! First of all, sexual acts do not dictate sexual orientation, only people can dictate their sexual orientation. We cannot know the sexual orientations of the adult male abusers if they tell us.
Second, sex acts that aren’t consensual are not sex—they’re assault. Focusing on the genitals and gender similarities between the abusers and perpetrators distracts from the very fact that what took place was sexual abuse on a minor.
Using ‘pedophile’ as an insult against LGBTQ+ people hurts everyone
Far from a quippy dig, slinging ‘pedo’ around may sound like no big deal. But it not only harms minor-attracted people and the LGBTQ+ community, it harms children, too.
1. Children
Those who call LGBTQ+ folks pedophiles are usually doing it to show that just as children need to be protected from harm by pedophiles, they need to be protected from harm by LGBTQ+ people, says counselor Maggie McCleary, LGPC, who specializes in queer-inclusive services.
For the record, there is no reason to believe that LGBTQ+ folks or exposure to LGBTQ+ love poses any danger to kids. On the contrary, research found no differences in between a children’s general health, emotional difficulties, coping behavior, and learning behavior in house holds with same-sex parents, as those with different-sex parents.
Beyond being factually inaccurate, “calling LGBTQ+ people ‘pedophiles’ is under the disguise of protecting children actually does kids a disservice,” they say.
How? Well, “it allows lip-service to function in-place of actually doing anything that protects children,” says McCleary. Such as, for instance, making sure all children have access to nutrient-dense food and a roof to sleep under, which not all children do have.
2. LGBTQ+ community
Again, people use ‘pedophile’ as an insult because it is viewed as the worst thing you could call someone.
“If you’re a queer person and someone is calling you the worst insult than can think of (‘pedophile’) because of your queerness, that can cause feelings of shame, guilt, and self-hatred,” says McClearly.
And if internalized, those feelings can affect the mental health of the insultee. There are long-term mental health implications of being insulted, they say, including depression and anxiety.
3. Minor Attracted People
There’s a widespread misconception that all pedophiles are sex offenders—this is not true. A pedophile is only classified as a sex offender if/when they have acted (or attempted to act) on their urges for under-age children, explains Candice Christiansen, Founder of The Global Prevention Project® and Meg Martinez-Dettamanti, Co-Author of Giving Voice To The Voiceless: A Minor Attracted Person Wellness Curriculum. Some pedophiles have no interest in actually harming children and are interested in getting help. (These folks are sometimes known as ‘non-offended pedophiles’ or ‘no contact pedophiles’).
Using ‘pedophiles’ or ‘pedo’ as an insult for anyone you find unsavory, ultimately increases the stigma against people who identify as minor attracted but have not acted on those urges, say Christiansen and Martinez-Dettamanti. This, they say, could ultimately keep minor-attracted people who want help from getting that help.
Minor-attracted people deserve support so that they can have the same quality of life that we are all seeking. “When we allow any human being a safe space where they can feel humanized, seen, heard, and supported while addressing issues related to mental health, the natural byproduct is always prevention on many levels,” they say.
But for that to happen, minor-attracted people need to feel like they can seek out help without further stigmatization. And that starts, in no small part, by removing ‘pedo’ and ‘pedophile’ from the insult-bank.
The bottom line
Using ‘pedo’ and ‘pedophile’ as insults against anyone is “hugely detrimental and often comes from an uneducated place,” say Christiansen and Martinez-Dettamanti.
It keeps minor-attracted people from accessing the help they need, negatively affects the mental health of the target—most commonly, LGBTQ+ people—and it ultimately hurts under-aged individuals, too.
“When young people receive slurs like this it often results in a lot of internalized self-hatred, which makes it more difficult for them to live a healthy, non-offending life,” says Meagan Ingerman, Program Director for Prostasia Foundation.
A slur is a slur. If you’re using them, pull over and think seriously about who and how this helps. Children are not protected when slurs are thrown around carelessly. This kind of messaging also puts LGBTQ+ individuals in danger because people begin to believe the stigmatizing rhetoric that anything different must not be trusted.
So, if you’re reading this, stop using ‘pedophile’ as an insult and ask the same of those around you.
If you or someone you know struggles with attractions to minors, you can find support and resources here.
No, I will refuse to stop using pedophile as an insult. Their thoughts disgust me to no end.
It’s possible to keep pedos stigmatized without having that branch over to LGBT people. The left thought by increasing acceptance for LGBT people would mean pedos would eventually be accepted. Such fucking idiots I swear. As a neo-reactionary, I have come to accept LGBT, but I still refuse to accept pedos.
Best definition of “pedophile” thus far. You could also read it literally.
paed means child.
phile is lover.
phile doesn’t actually refer to pure “sexual”.
Fitting.
If we go past random Greek / Latin geeking:
A pedophile, as defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, is a person who has intense and recurring sexual interest in and/or fantasies about prepubescent children.Yeah. Pretty much. But, this is the sort of definition, which can lead to normies getting pathologized. Pedophilia, also known colloquially as “pedophillic disorder” is when an individual has an attraction to children, which is stronger than their attraction to adults.
Attraction intensity fluctuates over time, but it’s usually strongest on the onset, and weakens over time as you get used to it. If you reject it, it will usually become stronger and more intrusive, although accepting it is easier said than done, if a backwards country and very primitive country, threatens to imprison for something as simple as viewing pornography, even if they reduce it to an absolute minimum, or try to dilute it with competing sources.
Oops, I’m ranting. I do that. A lot.
I see a lot of pedophiles. I saw more in the past. Fewer now. And more law abiding ones. From interactions with ones who like lolis, a few are really nervous, and frankly, ridiculously paranoid about “molesting people”, but they quickly discover they would never do that. I don’t even know who or what put that ridiculous notion in their heads.
Pedophiles are usually fairly gregarious, friendly, and happy. Sometimes, they do things they shouldn’t, like breaking some law. But, they usually try to reduce that to a minimum, whenever possible. I could tell them off. But really, that would just be infantilizing them, someone can make their own decisions about their own lives.
Being a pedophile naturally means someone can invent new laws at any given moment to screw you over. And they will this for no reason, other than that they can, and they feel sadistic. They don’t actually care about children. They defund and dismantle safeguards to prevent children from being abused all the time. They just want to shit on the “other”. In Asia, drug dealers are the other who get executed. Not that long ago, homosexuals were the boogeymen in the West. Before that, Communists. Those filthy
commies. Remember that?
On the contrary, the pedophiles who seem disordered and weird, are the ones who play weird abstinence games, even when they’re perfectly capable of doing something positive with their lives. They then whine and rant and appear in pointless little sob articles, which get twisted by conservatives and people with an agenda like Jeremy Malcolm, along with Rahm who appeared out of thin air a year ago, and gets funds from questionable sources, and whose entire platform is built on providing questionable sketchy wonder cures.
Good gracious, this field is fucking corrupt with all sorts of “organizations” making all sorts of impossible and ridiculous promises about recidivism reduction to get more funding. It’s just a game to them. Normies don’t give a shit.
And it all empowers the leftist pseudo-progressive bullshit machine which can’t remember what it was prattling about a few minutes prior. Probation is the best thing ever. Probation is now the worst thing ever, it’s just a revolving door to throw people back in prison. Pitiful. Pathetic. Vice can’t keep their story straight with whatever quack appeared last week, and wants to get their shot at five minutes of fame. Now, they can’t even decide if unverified content on Pornhub is a “bad thing” or not, when they were going on about it for years. Are they just doing this to be edgy and get more clicks by going against the mainstream? The left is cancer.
This is the sort of bullshit pedophiles have to deal with. Not only do people not really understand pedophiles, but every special interest group wants to use pedophiles as a tool to get ahead, and don’t care in the slightest beyond that.
Is it surprising then that pedophiles come off as strange and “disordered” to people who never tried to understand pedophiles and simply want to pretend pedophiles don’t exist? Perhaps, they should try living without ever looking at pornography (with some bullshit exaggerated excuse barely grounded in fact about how they have magic psychic powers which can mind rape someone), having a relationship, and being told they’re the son of Satan whenever it strikes the fancy of some third rate hack. Hah.
This isn’t the post you wanted to read, the one I wanted to write, but it gets a point across. Thoroughly. It is also why I fundamentally don’t think the whole “pedo friends” progressive thing will ever work out. But, thank you for writing an okay article without saying my friends need to be locked in a mental hospital, or brainwashed into thinking they’re evil. This is a good step forward. I look forward to more.
“…phile doesn’t actually refer to pure “sexual”.”
Absolutely, anymore than in “Bibliophile”, “Oenophile”, “Francophile” or “Technophile” to name but a few. Similarly, this should also apply to “Necrophile” (eg: a Taxidermist or enthusiastic Mortician), or “Zoophile” (eg: David Attenborough).
When the DSMMD included the term in 1952, it was no doubt assumed that as “pedophilia” was the generally accepted term, they had no reason to consult the text that has pretty much been universally ascribed as the source of it; Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s seminal (ironically) work “Psychopathia Sexualis”. If they had, then they should have discovered that he did not use this term for the sexual attraction to children (because he was a clever man who understood Greek and new that this is not what it meant) he actually led with the term “Paedophilia Erotica”. “Erotica” used in this way alters the meaning of the word “Paedophilia”; it is what linguists term as qualifying the noun.
Another clue can be gleaned from the word “Paraphilia”. This is a more scientific way of saying “perversions”. However, although etymologically the prefix “para-” can have many meanings (from “resembling” to “abnormal”), one thing it most certainly does not mean is “the same as”. Indeed, other than when it has been co-opted in recent times as the prefix in portmanteaux (paragliding, parasailing), regardless of whether it has a Greek or Latin root, it specifically infers a meaning that excludes the interpretation it would have without it. So “Paraphilia” means “anything but a philia”, ie: NOT a love or attraction of.
So when this article suggests that “Paedo-(or Pedo-)phile” is the worst word that someone can call you, technically it should be one of the nicest words that someone can call you.
Shame I can’t find a similar argument for the word “Nonce” (other than it sounds childish).
What’s to explain? Cantor is universally acknowledged as one of the world’s leading scientific experts on pedophilia. We are lucky to have him on our Advisory Council. But that doesn’t mean we agree with everything he says; he doesn’t speak for us and we don’t speak for him. His opinion on LGBTQ+P is a politial opinion, not a scientific one. It doesn’t represent Prostasia policy and we directly challenged him on it in our podcast interview with him.
I personally think that non-offending pedophiles and MAPs could become part of the LGBTQ community, providing that there’s an emphasis on not committing offenses against children and keeping desires and impulses relegated to fantasy.
This is also furthered by the fact that it was de-pathologized by the DSM-5 and distinguished from pedophilic disorder as “pedophilic sexual orientation/interest”.
But that’s just me, quite frankly.