| Popis: |
This book is about paedophiles; that is, it is about adults who are sexually attracted to children or minors below the legal age of sexual consent. This sexual attraction may be to children who are moving through the changes of puberty, or who have just emerged from puberty, or it may involve much younger children, in some cases even toddlers or babies. The sexual attraction to children may be the only sexual interest experienced or it may be part of a much wider sexual desire, including for people in other age-ranges as well, so that a ‘paedophile’ may also be sexually attracted to adults and may be married, but nevertheless still maintain a sexual interest in children. Paedophiles may be sexually attracted to girls, to boys or to both sexes. While the great majority of adults who self-define as ‘paedophile’ are men, some women also may be paedophiles. The identification or diagnosis of paedophilia is dependent on the social context, on the definition of ‘adult’, of ‘minor’ and of ‘sex’. In this book, the state of ‘being a paedophile’ is taken not as a medical, clinical or forensic condition but primarily as a social fact, a sexual attraction which the individual experiences and which — whether it is acted on or not, whether it is shouted from the rooftops or kept entirely hidden — will profoundly shape the sense of self, relations with others, and place in the world. |
