A pedophile is someone who is sexually attracted to children; that is, pre-pubescent boys or girls. Most references I've read define it as sexual attraction to children between the ages of 6-10. After all, after the age of puberty, an individual is biologically an adult and a normal, sexually mature adult will be attracted to that individual. If pedophilia is attraction to anyone under the age of 18, then every single man on this website is a pedophile, if you're honest with yourself. For that matter, the vast majority of marriages throughout history have been to women under the age of 18, making every man on this planet a pedophile. That's patently ridiculous.
Many years ago, I had a teenage girlfriend. A lot of people used to give me shit for that, calling me a pedophile, even though I never slept with her, and even though she had D-sized boobs and childbearing hips. A certain female lawyer I knew, who (ironically enough) disliked me intensely, had the intellectual honesty to get pissed off when people called me a pedophile, pointing out that the girl was fully sexually mature and therefore I could not possibly be a pedophile. Around this time, too, a 13-year-old girl tried her damndest to seduce me, but of course, if anything had happened, it would have been me labeled the pervert.
Actually, I agree with the growing number of psychiatrists who question whether pedophilia in fact exists as a psychological disorder, at least in the way it's portrayed in the media. As far as I know, there has never been a case observed of a person who was exclusively, or even primarily, sexually attracted to children. Almost every known or convicted "pedophile" has had normal sexual relationships with adult women, but has for one reason or another, like Humbert Humbert in
Lolita, found himself obsessed with a particular child or kind of child. The portrayal of pedophiles by the media and vote-gathering politicians as hopeless degenerates who cannot control their depraved urges and inevitably return to their perversions when released from prison is not only inaccurate, it's antithetical to the truth. Sexual offenders have one of the
lowest recidivism rates of any class of criminals, and most express extreme guilt and shame when describing their offenses. For these and other reasons, I actually read a quote from one psychiatrist who said, "Pedophilia does not exist."
All of our provisions to protect children are pointless anyway, since they're designed to guard against stranger rape and abduction, when the facts are that over 90% of all assaults against children are perpetrated by close associates: parents, siblings, friends, caretakers.
You know how many children are abducted by strangers in this country every year? Less than 110. More than that die every year from choking on their own toys, yet we're not panic-stricken about the menaces in our children's toyrooms.
The irony of the human psyche is that the less of a threat something is, the more likely we are to be afraid of it. It makes no sense.