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;
The Dilemma of the Male Pedophile;
Archives of Sexual Behavior;
31(6), 473–477
The public and scientific debate on pedosexuality is heated one.We find urselves involved in a difficult balancing act that demands utmost care if we are to avoid,
on the one hand, playing down the gravity of adult–child sexual acts and, on the other hand, overdramatizing its catastrophic potential. However, the tendency to polarize and overgeneralize is strong. Both, those inclined to deemphasize
the severity of the problem and those bent upon blowing it out of all proportion, distort the reality of children who are drawn into sexual contact with adults, colonizing their experience, their memories, and their own assessments.
It seems to me that one of the prerequisites for a more reasonable discussion is to disentangle the confusion of moral and clinical discourses. This requires that we argue, from a moral standpoint, where morals are at issue and, from a clinical point of view, when it comes to traumatizing effects. Above all, we hould not clothe moral judgments in the garb of clinical “expertocratic” language.
The public and scientific debate on pedosexuality is heated one.We find urselves involved in a difficult balancing act that demands utmost care if we are to avoid,
on the one hand, playing down the gravity of adult–child sexual acts and, on the other hand, overdramatizing its catastrophic potential. However, the tendency to polarize and overgeneralize is strong. Both, those inclined to deemphasize
the severity of the problem and those bent upon blowing it out of all proportion, distort the reality of children who are drawn into sexual contact with adults, colonizing their experience, their memories, and their own assessments.
It seems to me that one of the prerequisites for a more reasonable discussion is to disentangle the confusion of moral and clinical discourses. This requires that we argue, from a moral standpoint, where morals are at issue and, from a clinical point of view, when it comes to traumatizing effects. Above all, we hould not clothe moral judgments in the garb of clinical “expertocratic” language.