IMO, many persons who call a pervert "sick" don't seem to realize that by using this term, they are letting true perverts "off the hook", instead of holding them responsible for whatever evil they chose to do.

To me, one reason this is not wise is because most (if not all) perverts likely start with "small" offenses, which get bigger and bigger if they "get away with" the small stuff.

Hence, it seems to me that choosing to do bad things is not "sick", but is instead making a choice to do something bad, and should be acknowledged as such. Calling such persons "sick" gets them off the hook, as if though they "couldn't really help" doing something evil.

What say you?

I truly don't understand the psyche of child molesters and those who engage in making, finding, or sharing child pornography. Even if you had proclivities in that direction, wouldn't a sense of responsibility or caring for young children put a check on those desires? It's like the natural urge to protect young ones is somehow turned off in these people. I would also hope that a desire to be generally law-abiding, at least in the major matters would win out.

Pervert is often a relative term which means 'Ugh, I think that's awful'
and calling them 'sick' is often the same thing

If you are talking about legal terms, then it's irrelevant what you think

If you are talking about personal terms, then nobody else cares

[just FYI, I am a furry, with an interest in Bondage and BDSM, I always wear womens underclothes when I go to work and have a consentual relationship with my female coworkers who allow me to sniff their bicycle seats...........But I'm not sick]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/26/2016 04:02PM by EssexExMo.

EssexExMo ( ) "just FYI, I am a furry, with an interest in Bondage and BDSM, I always wear womens underclothes when I go to work and have a consentual relationship with my female coworkers who allow me to sniff their bicycle seats...........But I'm not sick]"
EssexExMo, Thanks for letting us all know this (funny).

I appreciate all the wise comments. I almost always learn something good to know or consider.

P: (I hope I get wiser with age, 'cause that's what I do real well (get older).

I was feeling a bit snarky last night
sorry

just for the record, I don't sniff bicycle seats

My father was a police officer and spent a lot of years as a sex crime detective. He was always very adamant that people notice the difference between "sick" and deviant, and said the majority of the offenders he ran into were deviants. In other words, they knew what they were doing was wrong, and that part of their satisfaction in their criminal behavior came from the thrill of doing something wrong, the distress of their victim and the outrage of society. He said they generally tap danced on the edge of insanity but could also, outside of their fetish, function so well other people couldn't see their criminality.

Truly *sick* people, he said, had little satisfaction in breaking the rules and were only rather vaguely aware of the outrage of others--what they did had no logic or sense and was obviously driven by serious mental impairment, an inner world nobody else could fathom. They didn't function well or integrate properly, and other people often suspected them of being responsible for or capable of much worse than even what they were arrested for. Deviant people did what they did to connect with society, albeit in a negative way, whereas sick people did not factor society into what they were doing at all.

Dad may have had horrid parenting skills but was a highly decorated officer with an outstanding arrest/conviction record and taught a lot of behavioral science classes to new recruits, so I tend to accept what he said about this distinction between offenders. He tended to pity the sick ones (while doing his best to keep them hospitalized as long as necessary), and he absolutely hated deviants, privately suggesting we follow China's example and execute them for their organs.

I think 'air kisses' are sick and twisted. You know, the ones where two people get their cheeks close together (facial cheeks, Boner!) and make a smacking noise with their lips. Disgusting!

http://www.upworthy.com/this-19-year-old-pedophile-has-never-gone-near-a-child-and-he-needs-you-to-hear-his-story?c=slt1

The real question is what to do. Is treatment even possible? How does a society deal with such people in a fair and safe way?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/27/2016 12:27PM by anybody.

Last I heard, there was not yet a "cure" or successful rehabilitation for sex offenders, which is sad, because I believe that many such people are mentally ill, so are themselves a victim. Regardless, first and foremost we must protect society from such people. I think a secure mental facility would be more appropriate, rather than prison.

We knew a man for many years before we found out that he was a sex offender. The side of him WE knew was really a wonderful person, and he was very respected in his line of work too, so we were totally shocked when he was arrested.

He was convicted and imprisoned, and while in prison he told someone that he HOPED they kept him in prison the rest of his life because he knew he couldn't stop himself if he ever got out. He died in prison within two or three years.

I thought it was tragic in every which way, to the victims, to his friends and family, and to himself.

What if wanting to have ONLY missionary position sex, ONLY after you were married is just as much a fetish as wanting to have sex while riding a roller coaster?

Criminals have been shown in functional NMR studies that certain regions of their brain do not activate, and other regions are over active compared to supposed normal people. Some criminals start out having deviant behavior and in some cases it is a response to conditioning by the environment. So some perverts may be born and others made by their environment. Trying to help someone get beyond their problems is not letting somebody get off easy. I do know people who have abused children and were themselves abused as children, and this is not uncommon. What is just and fair treatment of a child who was abused as an adult. There is a popular sentiment that "perverts" can never be cured. I think we need to see substantial data about this instead of looking at one offs.

And then there is the issue that one's person's idea of a pervert is another's ideal idea of a prophet of God.