Talk:Pedophilia/Archive 5

I seem to remember reading somewhere that hebephilia is the name for an adult sexually attracted to people early pubescent children (like age 10-14 or so, I guess). Anybody ever heard of that? Tokerboy 06:40 Oct 19, 2002 (UTC)

I think your are thinking of ephebephilia (spelling?), which derives from ancient Greek ephebe, for youth (an ephebe was a male aged roughly 12-20 in ancient Greek socierty)...

"Someone Else" has introduced serious confusion into the prior version of the article:

sexual attraction or acts with post-pubsecents under the age of consent is not pedophilia, irregardless of those acts illegality -- pedophilia only refers to sexual attraction to prepubescent children
they mutilated the family dynamics explanation for incest -- the withdrawal of the mother is not according to that theory not merely sexual, but more importantly emotional, psychological and social
they deleted the primary and original definition of the term, which is the medical one -- popular usages of the term pedophilia are secondary, just like popular uses of the term "quantum physics"
they mistakenly think pedophilia is a legal term -- it is not

Someone Else disagrees with you. Call this disagreement confusion if you like. The definition of pedophilia is Sexual attraction felt by an adult toward a child or children. Nothing medical about it. The 'medical' prism is but one through which the phenomenon can be viewed. I understand perfectly that you want to emphasize that desire is not illegal and I would point out that I haven't said otherwise. But it's also clear that there are laws designed to deal with crimes motivated by pedophilia, and that such crimes are treated differently (in terms of punishment, probation, and requirements for reporting) than are others. The 'medical diagnosis' of pedophilia is rarely made outside of a legal context. Someone else

The word 'pedophilia' was invented by the medical profession, and hence that is the definitive meaning, whatever its vague and contradictory adoption by the wider community. Pedophilia (irregardless of incorrect popular usage) only refers to sexual attraction to prepubescent children, not pubescent children (if they are to be called 'children' at all, and not, as would be more correct, adolescents). Furthermore, pedophilia implies long term sexual attraction to children--just as heterosexuality implies long term attraction to members of the opposite sex. Momentary feelings of sexual attraction to a child are not pedophilia, any more than a momentary attraction to a member of the opposite sex by someone who has been homosexual their whole life makes them heterosexual. The DSM-IV definition accurately describes these aspects -- your attempts do not....

And pedophilia is not a legal concept -- there are no laws relating to pedophilia. There are laws relating to sexual offences against children, but not all pedophiles sexually molest children, and not all people who sexually molest children are pedophiles. (Even under the DSM-IV definition -- for example, there have been cases of individuals who have molested children under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs -- assuming that they have not in the past had sexual feelings towards children, which is admittedly impossible to prove one way or the other, these people are not pedophiles, but they are still sex offenders.) Hence, as I said, pedophilia is not a legal concept -- sexual offences are. The two concepts may overlap, but they are quite distinct.

The word 'pedophilia' was first used in 1906, but the condition it describes existed before the word. And though it was used by medical practitioners, there's nothing particularly 'medical' about it. In any case, the medical definition is but ONE definition, and it is not the preferred definition in either dictionary I have readily to hand. In short, the meaning of words change, and their definitions are determined by how people understand them and not by their etymology. You can also stop knocking down the straw-man that I think pedophilia is a legal term. I don't. But I do recognize that many laws are explicitly meant to deal with child sexual abuse, specifically the repeated child sexual abuse which can be inspired by pedophilia.

You, apparently, have one point of view, and the general population has another, of what pedophilia means. Both these views should be attributed and explained in the article without preferring one as 'right'. Someone else

Of course the condition existed before the word -- 'atoms' have been around since the beginning of the universe, although they were not called that until Democritus. But so what? The word pedophilia was invented by the medical profession, as part of medical jargon--and hence the primary meaning attributed to it should be that given it by the psychiatric profession.

Now it is true that words do change their meanings. But where technical jargon is accepted into popular usage, it is clear which meaning is the most correct -- the original technical jargon. This is especially since the popular usage is not a coherent usage by its own, but a broad collection of copies of the technical usage, some more correct than others. The medical profession has a more or less precise meaning for 'pedophilia' -- people at large don't. There is no clear, coherent, popular meaning of pedophilia -- rather there are a multitude of different usages, depending on how well people understand the technical term. But there can be no doubt that the technical usage is the correct one, and that popular usages are caused by people's lack of knowledge of psychiatry.

'Pedophilia' is like 'quantum physics', or 'operating system', or 'trigonometry', or 'habeas corpus' -- they are all technical jargon of different disciplines, of which the general public is more or less aware. And in all cases it is clear that the jargon meaning must be primary, especially in an encyclopedia, and the many public understandings (or more accurately misunderstandings) of these terms should take second place.

You err when you assert that a word has one 'most correct' meaning. A dictionary doesn't stop with one meaning, and an encyclopedia CERTAINLY shouldn't. And while a proscriptive dictionary might label one meaning as more correct than another, the Wikipedia is not proscriptive: it's neutral. It should describe the multiplicity of uses, not arbitrate among them. Inclusion in the DSM IV is pretty much irrelevant except when billing insurance companies for treatment...and the DSM IV certainly contains no explanation of how the condition might be considered to be 'medical'. The article is not about the word 'pedophilia' but rather about the condition the word describes. An article on the atom would hardly confine itself to Democritus's understanding thereof. The fact that a 1906 systematization of paraphilias based on a now discarded psychiatric theory which was based more on philosophy than science happend to contain the word pedophilia really has little bearing on a description of "sexual attraction felt by an adult toward a child or children" which is what one should expect in an article titled Pedophilia. -- Someone else

You err when you consider that an encyclopedia shouldn't label one meaning as more correct than another. All encyclopedias must make stylistic and editorial decisions, and such decisions are inherently prescriptive. Your insistence that they should not is just a cover for your prescription that populist uses should be given precedence. Following prescriptions is inevitable, so we better choose the right one -- the formal one. A bigger question is whether Wikipedia aims to be scholarly or merely popular. Although I make no claims to scholarship, scholarship must be our eventual aim. Giving preference to the medical (and other academic) meanings of terms furthers that aim.

An encyclopedia should label one meaning as more correct than another ONLY when it IS more correct. Most words don't have a single meaning that is more correct, and there is no reason to prefer the improbably precise medical definition over the usual dictionary definition here. It is clear that YOU prefer it, but it is not the most common definition. When the jargon definition you prefer differs from the usual definition, both should be explained, and without the judgemental notion that one is the 'understanding' and the other is the 'misunderstanding'. They are in this case just two ways of talking about the phenomenon in question. In any case, if the question is whether the Wikipedia is to be proscriptive or descriptive, my understanding is that that question has been decided, and it's descriptive - or aspires to be. It doesn't tell you how you SHOULD think, it tells you how people HAVE thought -- Someone else

They are not two ways of talking about the phenomena in question -- they are talking about different phenomena. The jargon term is a rather precisely defined idea, while the popular concept incorporates all sorts of other phenomena which don't belong to the jargon definition. A lot of things that are in the popular meaning of 'pedophilia' are not pedophilia in the technical sense, but rather belong under the headings of 'ephebophilia' or 'sexual offences' or 'sex offenders' or 'age of consent' or 'statutory rape' -- all of which, although they have greater or lesser degrees of connection to the phenomena of pedophilia or pedophiles (under the jargon definition), are separate phenomena.

The same word is used to describe very closely related phenomenon. That the one is more restricted and the other more inclusive does not make the former more correct. Both should be explained - even if explaining the broad concept 'confuses' the artificial precision of the narrow one. --- Someone else

But to discuss the broader phenomena in a page entitled 'pedophilia' is to endorse the broader popular meaning over the technical meaning -- so rather than being prescriptively neutral, you are implicitly prescribing the popular usage, by following it in the article.

Basically, the old version of the article was pretty good -- it discussed the original, technical usage, but also mentioned that popular usage can be broader -- can be, not is, because popular usage is very varied and diverse, while the technical usage is pretty uniform.