The Turning Point

Recently, I realized from talks with other girl-lovers, that at least some of them seem to have a story comparable to my own. A few years ago now, I realized that I had sexual feelings towards little girls. I did not regard myself as a pedophile at that time, it was just one aspect of my sexual feelings, but it was there. It was only 1 to 1˝ years ago that I found that there was more. It was not only about lust, it was about love. I wasn't just sexually attracted to them, but emotionally too. And that was the time that I also came out to myself, and said 'Yes, I am a pedophile'. And the strange thing was - the sexual feelings did not get stronger because of that, rather, they got less. As if the emotional feelings had been hiding as sexual ones before that.

And now I have found that that is not a unique story. There are more pedophiles, or at least girl-lovers, that have a similar turning point. One friend told me that he had been a (big) child porn collector until one day he came to realize that that was contrary to what he felt and believed in. He threw it all away, and came to a completely different, in some sense purer, way of experiencing his own girl-love. Someone else told me that he was 'only months away from being a child molester' when he realized things went wrong. And changed himself.

It made me think - maybe this shows a deeper truth. Maybe the difference between girl-lovers and boy-lovers on the one side, and child molesters on the other is not as large as we believe (and hope) it to be, maybe it is not more than one time of choosing. Of allowing your emotional feelings for children in, and realizing that you might need to push away the sexual feelings to do so.

If that is true, then one of the best ways of saving children from being abused by pedophiles would be to help those pedophiles to make that choice, take that step. And who could do so better than those who have already taken that step? The pedophiles who have found that there are more ways than just the sexual ones to enjoy children - ways that are not just harmless, but even beneficial.

The present climate does not make this easy. Any method pedophiles will choose to come together, is actively repressed by a fearful society, which sees these not as a way of helping pedophiles to live within the law, but as an aid in breaking it. Also, the fear and paranoia that society has created around child-adult contacts, makes it harder and harder for pedophiles to enjoy their orientation in a harmless way. Which might force some of them to choose between abuse and depression – neither of which is a good choice to take, whether looked at from the perspective of the child or that from the pedophile himself. The media give daily examples of pedophiles who chose the wrong path, but rarely if ever show that there is a right path to follow too. This too makes it hard for a pedophile to make the right choice, or even to realize that it exists.

All in all, society acts towards the pedophile like a non-understanding parent. The pedophile is told repeatedly that certain things that he wants are forbidden, and threatened with ever more severe punishments if he still does them. But at the same time, he is not shown an alternative way. So for the pedophile, it seems that there are only two options - breaking the law and the codes of society, or denying his feelings. Neither choice is very attractive. Any third way is hidden, denied and/or forbidden by society. If they were purposely trying to change pedophiles into mental cases, they could not have chosen a better way to do so.

André