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Joined 8 months ago
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Cake day: March 11th, 2024

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  • A disorder is something that interferes with your enjoyment of life. While I’m proudly autistic and don’t have any issues saying that, I also recognize how it makes my life more difficult.

    My sensory issues, stims, and social problems do interfere with my life and did even more when I was a child. I’ve been discriminated against for being autistic by a boss who tried to say that not making eye contact meant I was bad at my job. I’ve had to seek accommodations at work, which I wouldn’t be able to do if it wasn’t a disability

    I appreciate your optimism but your perception is wrong. It very much is a disability and those of us living with it know that.





  • Dan Savage coined the term “gold star pedophile” in a column years ago, referring to people who acknowledge their attraction to children but never act on it by harming a child or accessing CSAM. I do feel bad for these people because there are no resources to help them. The only way they can access actual therapeutic resources for their condition is by offending and going to jail. If the pedophile goes to a therapist and confesses attraction to children, therapists are mandated reporters and will assume they’re going to act on it. An article I read a few years back interviewed members of an online community of non-offending pedophiles who essentially made their own support group since no one else will help them, and nearly all research on them is from a forensic (criminal) context.

    There’s a pretty good article by James Cantor talking about dealing with pedophiles in a therapeutic context here.

    Don’t get me wrong - I think offenders need to be punished for what they do. I unfortunately have a former best friend who has offended. He’s no longer in my life and never will be again. But I think we could prevent offenders from reaching that point and hurting someone if we did more research and found ways to stop them before it happened.