I don't know if I would go as far as to say that our relationships with boys are always sexual at some level. Maybe they are, maybe they are not. But as I ponder that question I keep asking myself why I should care. There don't seem to be any moral implications that result from reaching either conclusion. Neither does there seem to be any practical value to concluding that all of our relationships are or are not sexual at some level. So, I guess I'm left wondering...so what?

Now as for the "evil pedophile" concept, I agree that it is improper to call a loving adult/child sexual relationship* evil. Certainly, there is a huge gap between that scenario and one where a man is taking advantage of a child.

What I find more interesting is how much of our relationships with boys would be consider grooming if people knew we were pedophiles. All of a sudden, every gift you've ever given him, every hug, every piece of advice, every time you listened to him, every time you helped him with his school work, every game you played with him, it all becomes grooming behaviour in the eyes of the world. If someone were to write a story about your relationship with your YF, all of the good times you had together and the things you did because you loved him and liked making him happy would be twisted around to make you seem like a cold calculating predator who was manipulating him with the hopes of getting him in bed. Given this fact, one is left to wonder how many of the stories about "evil pedophiles" are true at all. The more you think about that, the more it appears that the stereotypical pedophile who grooms children for sex is little more than a myth, a misunderstanding of the motivations of preferential pedophiles. The situations that do wind up resembling real abuse almost invariably wind up being situational pedophile cases or cases dealing with psychopaths. So, does the stereotypical predator actually exist at all?

Take the above one step further and the conclusion is even closer to home. If the stereotypical evil pedophile does not exist or is so rare that most cases of "child molestation" you ever hear of do not feature such a person as the perpetrator, then the real difference between most of the so called "evil pedophiles" and us was the decision to allow sexual contact* to occur.



*I know you prefer the term "coital". But since the rest of the world doesn't, you're just going to have to live with it. :P