Some people can be so talented with wildlife!

Hmkhaaikrkckzismr

I haven't studied serial killers. That is interesting the approach and rationalization are the same. I know it takes some pretty powerful cognitive distortions to victimize a human. I guess I'm not surprised the same distortions would apply to murder as well as other terrible things.

@abel_hazard I just saw your follow-ups. I definitely don't think anyone should be policing anyone's thoughts except the person thinking them. My hope is people will realize, before they get to a very dark place, that they are heading in to that dark place.
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Porn that simulates being with a child sexually or portraying a child sexually isn't healthy and is actually illegal in many jurisdictions around the world. The reason being exactly what we're talking about.

Once the rapist-in-accidental-training starts following girls home from school or driving by playgrounds, they are taking more tangible steps towards an offense while telling themselves that they're just blowing off steam and doing what they need to so they don't hurt anyone.
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Basically, if you are hiding your thoughts from friends, partners, loved ones, you need to understand you have found a "yellow flag." You aren't technically harming anyone, but you are focused on harming someone. It's not healthy.
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Again, you shouldn't be punished for having thoughts. But there should be more of a discussion of what thoughts lead to you to a dark place. No one is born a rapist. How come there's so many of them? I think it's because we don't have enough of these types of discussions.

@abel_hazard There is a big difference. A kink is something that's fun and maybe gets you off. It can be an expression of healthy sexuality. A paraphilia is something that will be more consuming. You won't be able to get off unless you're focusing on that one thing exclusively. My friend tells a hilarious story of a guy who could only get off by wrecking a car. He was always getting arrested for stealing cars and wrecking them to get off. It's a funny story, but the guy clearly needed help.
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@famousone I don't think people should be prosecuted for transient thoughts. But I do recognize that people will tend to make their thoughts in to reality. That's fine when it's someone healthy. But people can get in to an echo chamber of negativity and need help getting back out. When someone might get raped, deviant thoughts are a bigger problem. It's relatively easy to change them.

@alekazam Politics are very much alive in Oregon prisons: bad charges = rough ride. But it's true: first time offenders won't usually get a ton of jail time, but they do have to turn around and register as a sex offender. @famousone A sentence of <1yr is jail and >1yr is prison.
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@xvarnah I see. Yes. Child sex dolls would not be something supported by any healthy community. No sexually deviant thought is healthy. The only time someone should immerse themselves in deviant thoughts is if they're alone with their victim of choice (this thread has talked a lot about children, but there's clubs with drunk girls, or alleys where a victimizer might be alone with a potential victim, etc) and they feel out of control enough that no other coping mechanism is going to work. Then they need to excuse themselves and go masturbate.
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A doll like that isn't a last resort. It's sharpening someone into a rapist. I can see why they're banned.Anyone deep enough to want a doll is deep enough to need help

It's that the focus of the paraphilia has to be present or sexual arousal cannot be achieved. There's podophilia, which means a true foot fetish; there's macrophylla, which means a fetish for giants; there's autogynephilia which is a make who can ONLY get off thinking of himself but as a female.
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Here's a wiki on a huge number of them:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_paraphilias
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As you can see, there's dozens of them, and there's help available for people stuck in whatever paraphilia they've programmed themselves to "need". Most of them don't victimize another human, but some obviously do. That's why it's so sad the word isn't out there yet to equip people with yellow and red flags so they don't go down a rabbit hole and ruin their lives, or worse, victimize someone.

Actually Marilyn Callahan, from my first book recommendation above, designed the first female sex offender treatment.
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Women offend for different reasons than men and tend to rank higher in manipulativeness and be more strongly in denial about the negative effects their offenses have had on their victims (who are usually adolescent boys or girls.) The research shows women usually prey on adolescents to feed their ego and feel wanted when they are in loveless relationships.
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I've been in touch with Tim Buckley several times and, after COVID, I hope to be able to lead a treatment group of inmates at Oregon State Prison. We'll see!
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I'm almost afraid to ask about "child sex dolls." What is that?
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The -philia suffix means "a fondness for." So a felinophile is fond of cats and an atmosphere is fond of atomic explosions. In medical terms, a "-philia" is referred to as a paraphilia and it's something different. It's not fondness.

Yeah, lmk when you read it. I was referring to the 19 out of 20 with that stat. Pedophilia takes a lot more supervision and treatment and a willingness on the part of the offender to change. They can, and do.
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So to clarify on my part: I don't know what recidivism rates are for people with a diagnosis of actual pedophilia and history of offending. I can assume they would be higher than 24%.

The way the laws are set up now are virtually guaranteeing they get an endless supply of victims and almost a 100% chance of no accountability :/

The more you entertain them, the more you normalize them. When it’s a sexual thought, you are reinforcing it in the most powerful way if you are getting off to it. Potential offenders think they’re “blowing off steam” by diverting their deviance to masturbation, but they aren’t. They are very much doing the opposite.
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Everyone knowing that would cut down offenses in a big way. Teaching men (and women, to a lesser extent) healthy ways to cope when they feel lonely or angry will massively decrease the rate of sexual assault.
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Fun fact (from rainn.org): 5 out of 1,000 sexual assaults lead to a conviction. *FIVE* I have plenty of advice for legislation that could bump that up, but just educating people about deviant thoughts and coping mechanisms could potentially influence 700 out of 1,000 of those offenses. Then the courts could start focusing on the real predators who are laughing in all our faces right now.

Also, to clear it up, very few people brag in prison about victimizing women or children. Those braggers will be beaten or killed pretty quickly if they don’t PC up. Even in protective custody, other sex offenders will happily beat the stuffing out of that type of inmate. The guards look the other way.
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Another random clarification: sex offenses have the second-lowest recidivism rate. @xvarnah, the rate is 8%, if the offender completes sex offender treatment. If they do not, it’s 24%. With most crimes, you’re looking at 60%-90%. The only crime that has a lower recidivism rate is murder.
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What do we do to protect ourselves and our communities? Here’s a couple easy thoughts:
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There are stages to someone programming themselves to commit a sex offense. The first is deviant thoughts. If all deviant fantasies when away today, all sex offending would stop today. Society is doing a piss poor job getting that word out: everyone knows what a deviant thought is.

Sadists will offend for an entirely different reason than a pedophile will offend.
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There are six root causes of offending. They are detailed in a book called “Treating Sex Offenders” by Stinson and Becker (another great read, but it reads more like a textbook than “Scarlett Letters.”) I don’t have the book in front of me right now, so I can’t remember the other four root causes off the top of my head.
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The main takeaway from the brain malfunction idea, though: 19 out of 20 offenders will be driven to victimize someone because that offender is lonely and doesn’t know how to handle it or that offender is angry and doesn’t know how to handle it. These account for 70% of sexual offenses.
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The other 1 out of 20 is the stereotypical sex offender that makes everyone’s blood run hot. They are the proud, bragging, sadistic, a**holes that should be exterminated, and that are rotting in prisons all over the world. This 5% of the population accounts for the other 30% of sex offenses.

Oh hai!
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Look at this! A somewhat coherent debate on something I have studied :D There's a crazy-good book my Marilyn Callahan and Tim Buckley entitled "S.O. The New Scarlett Letters" that I would highly recommend to anyone interested in what makes an offender and who they are and how to help keep our communities safe with them running around after they've been released. There's also a bunch of statistics on rainn.org about sexual assault and conviction rates, recidivism (reoffending), etc.
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Sex offending is a mental health issue. Healthy, well-adjusted people do not offend. It wouldn't occur to them. Unfortunately, lots of people don't know what to look for if they think of themselves are mentally healthy. Rates of offending are high because we, as a society, are kinda bungling things. We can fix it fairly easily though. I’ll get to that in a sec.
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@abel_hazard, you are correct: different styles of offending have different root psychoses or pshycopathies.

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