We get it. You hear the term pedophile all the time to mean someone who sexually abused a child or someone who viewed, produced, or distributed harmful sexual imagery (commonly called child pornography).

We are not usually them. Many of us realize that to do those things harms a child, and we are against those harms because of the damage they cause victim/survivors, their family, their community, and of course the person who perpetrated that harm. This site uses the understanding that a pedophile is simply someone with a sexual attraction to children.

Pedophilia is the sexual attraction to children. We could nitpick and say it’s the sexual attraction to prepubescent children, but we don’t expect you to pay attention to that much nuance. Pedophilia is typically felt by a pedophile the same way anyone feels an attraction for anyone else. Not all children are attractive to a pedophile – some like boys of certain ages, some like girls, some like both, some are also attracted to people their own age. We are just as mixed and diverse as any other human population.

And like the rest of the human population, the first thing we think when we see an attractive child is roughly, “Oh my gosh that kid is cute and positively beautiful!” We feel protective. We want to get to know them. We want to be friends – yes, just friends. We know that to be sexual with a child is wrong and harmful, so we don’t do that and most of us have no desire to.

Yes, we did. Of course we have fantasies of kids – and most of us know that we can never act on those fantasies, and that they’re very different from reality. You could imagine a person could fly and shoot lasers out of their eyes, and we can imagine a fantasy world where children aren’t harmed. We know that’s not reality, just as you know people can’t fly and shoot lasers out of their eyes.

The same way you know giving a long tirade to your boss is a really bad idea. The same way you know that if you make a police officer angry, they could ticket or arrest you just because. The same way you know that you can’t eat cake every day for every meal. We’re human just like you, and have empathy for others just like you.

Because for us, even simply having a face-to-face conversation is dangerous. We could be harassed, we could be fired, lose our jobs, our housing, or our relationships. People would falsely assume we’ve harmed kids when most of us haven’t. For most of us, the only way to get people to understand that we’re just as human as you are is to write stories behind a fake name for our protection. That isn’t cowardice – our friends and family didn’t sign up for being harassed and having their name, phone, and address posted on the internet because some conspiracy theory lunatics can’t read.

There are many places you can find support. If you are an adult, you can start at B4U-Act or Virtuous Pedophiles. If you are a minor, look up MAP Support Club. For safety reasons, we’re not willing to link that here, but we’re sure someone who wants support badly enough can find resources based on that information.

Sure! But our communities are based on trust, and that doesn’t happen write away, so you’ll need to talk to people and get to know people – and let us get to know you first.