swanpinions

Yes, I do agree with those points!

I do agree very much that law does not make something immoral, and many immoral things (in my opinion) are not illegal. For example, you won’t see someone get prosecuted for bullying someone and making them commit suicide (immoral in my opinion). But you see people prosecuted all the time for choosing to take marijuana in the privacy of their home, that only affects their own self.

As well, I agree about having a community of supportive people. I feel that one of the big problems with really fringe/unaccepted experiences and beliefs is, regardless of if it’s wrong or right, everybody hates you for it.

Even if it’s wrong… sometimes you just need a shoulder to lean on. Sometimes you need someone who will treat you as a person and not a sickness. Sometimes you need someone… no, a community of people… who will respect that you have autonomy as an adult, not pressure you into acting a particular way, and believe that you can choose to do good.

Treating people as infants, acting as if they can’t make their own choices, or saying that everyone who has a particular feeling is bound to become a rapist, is taking away responsibility from both innocent people and rapists. Rapists choose to rape. It’s a choice, and treating it like a mental illness is not only demonising people who have an attraction, but making rapists seem like they “have no choice”.

Rapists always have a choice. But, accepting that, we have to accept that a person with an attraction has the choice and control to not be a rapist, and not treat them like an infant who has no self-control just because they express a feeling.

As well, a lot of medical “treatments” out there for people who express any kind of attraction to children are demonising and abusive. You can’t treat the medical community like magic saints who always know what they are doing. Just “sending someone to therapy” is not a magical cure, and I think as a society we use it too much to “other” our problems and avoid dealing with them, by saying “oh, if you feel this then you should just go to therapy” and not having to face that the person, right now, who has not been helped by therapy yet is still a person with feelings and needs, and can’t be pushed in a box and ignored until they are magically cured by therapy. It’s often an excuse to put off dealing with any kind of person until they “get help” and magically transform into the person you want them to be.

But there isn’t a magical cure machine like that. There are just people, existing, now. We can support them or we can hate them.