RE: the law

This is what I think of the law, in general and not specific to crimes related to child abuse.

The law is not a moral guideline. The law should not be used to impose morals, but to keep public order (how effectively it does this varies on what jurisdiction you're under, but it's luckily moving towards this). That said, you might not always agree with the law and when that happens you should look at the law as just another barrier to stop you from doing what you want.

Okay, that sounds like I'm advocating doing whatever the hell you want, but that's not how I mean it. If you want to do something, you have to decide if it's worth doing based on how it will benefit you and how it will hurt you. If it will be more beneficial to you than it will hurt you, it's worth doing.

I'm in no way specifically advocating sexual relationships with legal minors, but what if you need food and don't have money? Is it worth it to steal bread? Let's assume it's morally acceptable because that's a completely different discussion. If you believe it's significantly beneficial to you and you either feel confident you won't get caught or that if you are, it was worth the risk, I say go for it.

That's how I see the law.

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As for having a daughter of your own, I can tell you I share the fear. There is good news though, if you spend a significant amount of time with another person while either is younger than (about) two years old, you probably won't be sexually attracted to them (see the Westermarck effect: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westermark_effect#Westermarck_effect ). Of course, this comes with the caveat that with all psychological ideas, it predicts only how the average person in a large sample will act and not how any individual will act.

I'm starting to understand now the attitude that a lot of teleiophiles have that homosexually is okay as long as they don't hit on me. I'm starting to realize now that a girlwoman I should sayis hitting on me. And it's awkward because I have absolutely no interest in her sexually or romantically. "You're not my type" doesn't begin to describe why I'm not interested. (But of course the difference here is that you can't just say, "sorry, I'm not gay".)

Realizing that everybody hates (or would hate) you can be really distressing, so here are a few thoughts that have helped me deal with life;

You are NOT alone. Everyone who posts on this board either shares your attraction or can sympathize with you (or needs to find a better hobby than trolling Internet forums). There are a surprising number of people who are sexually attracted to kids. I'm not going to give any specific numbers because I don't know what to look for to find the specific studies, but using phalometric tests (they put a little rubber ring on your penis that measures how much of an erection you have) it has been found that around a fifth of men will have some phallic reaction to photos of sexy girls. Even if the attraction is so subtle or dormant that the person is not even aware of it, it's still there.

The second is the basic paradox of paedophilia. This is how it goes: as paedophilia is not evolutionarily advantageous, natural selection should have gotten rid of it, yet the existence of paedophilia today demonstrates that it hasn't. This is logically sound, if something is not evolutionarily advantageous, natural selection will tend to weed it out and that's why this looks like a paradox. But it isn't, and the solution is incredibly simple, but most people are unwilling to accept it: the premise is not true. Since the logic is true and the outcome is false, the premise must be false, paedophilia has to (at worst) be harmless in the gene pool.