To all who may be interested:

It would seem that, at least for now, we have our term for younger people--both underage and of legal age--who have a preferential, or strong attraction to, significantly older people who are not necessarily, and most often not, elderly. That term is pheophile, which will also have the following related terms connected to it: pheophilia and pheosexual. It was successfully coined by our own Baldur, and Griff, our resident expert on languages, had no opposition to it. So it would appear to be a done deal. Now, I have a few things to say about this.

First off, thank you to those who worked hard on helping me come up with the term, and who did not give me a hard time about it. I listened to the arguments of the naysayers and dissenters, but they did not convince me, and I explained in detail why, and I will explain a bit more in this post. As I predicted when I first proposed this project, there would be a number of people who would embrace the term and use it when warranted, and those who would dissent against doing so, some vehemently. That was easy to predict, and that is how it turned out.

I would like to address a reasonable concern of one of the supporters-turned-dissenter. I fully acknowledge that childhood sexuality, and to a lesser extent early pubescent sexuality, are oftentimes not fully developed sexualities. However, exactly when a full sexual awareness of one's orientation first becomes obvious and/or acknowledged varies from young person to young person, and is nowhere near universal. Hence, there may be young people whose sexuality hasn't yet fully developed, and who are not yet certain of what their preferences will be at a certain young age, and who may become attracted to a certain adult in a genuine romantic manner. This does not necessarily mean that youth, especially if they are quite young, should be labeled a pheophile. Hence, I do agree with the concern that we should be cautious of being too quick to apply such a designation to young people who happen to show an more-than-platonic interest in an older person, especially if they are pre-pubescent.

It's only if that younger person, at whatever age, becomes aware of a pervasive preference for, or attraction to, significantly older adults, and for a long enough period of time so that it's clear that it isn't simply a "phase," that we can reasonably apply the term to those individuals. This will happen at different ages for different young people; some may be aware of this attraction base as early as age 8, whereas others may take as long as age 16 to be fully aware. And let's not forget that denial due to societal pressure may be part and parcel of the dynamic in regards to some younger people. It's quite clear to us and (to a growing extent) the psychological profession that such a preference or attraction base among a possibly significant minority of younger people legitimately exists, but there has been even less research conducted on it than pedophilia and hebephilia, let alone objective research by individuals using proper methodology and who are more interested in getting at the truth than advocating a certain moral or political agenda. So, let's be very mindful of all of this even as we do acknowledge the word.

Markie (and others), I hope you will acknowledge that I addressed your concerns, and that it's clear I do listen to opposing viewpoints, and even if I do not agree with them entirely I may well see some degree of merit in them, and I will then modify my own stance to a certain degree to accommodate the concerns. I hope this means we can reach an understanding without frequent and hostile altercations on the matter. I understand that I need to show respect in order to get respect, and I am genuinely attempting to do that here.

Now, regarding other concerns from the naysayers, I ask some of my fellow long-timers on GC to look back to the early days of the board, circa 2000-2003. Do you all remember some of the very bitter and protracted arguments that would ensue over the use of the term "hebephile" due to a very vocal camp in the GL community who were extremely infuriated with the use of that word? Remember how they argued that it would inevitably marginalize the GL community on the basis of what age group we were attracted to, resulting in a split between the child-preferring and adolescent-preferring segments of our community? Remember how they argued what a bad idea it was from a political standpoint, and how they all insisted we should junk that word entirely, that we should all but ostracize anyone who used it regularly, and how they insisted because it was so rarely used at the time it was destined to never catch on in the first place, and how we should insist that we not acknowledge the differences in preference to certain age groups amongst us and refer to all in the community as "pedophiles"?

Those of us who disagreed remained resolute, and continued to deal with periodic attacks, flame wars, and animosity from people of that camp for the next few years...until it became increasingly obvious over time that the term not only was catching on at the board here, and elsewhere in the community (though not with everyone, of course), and it also began being increasingly used (more, not less) by the mental health profession and journalists (and not always in a negative manner), so that now the difference is more or less fully acknowledged in many quarters (though not too often in the media yet). Note they were also wrong in their insistence that the GL community would become marginalized on the basis of what age group we preferred (instead, we became largely marginalized on the basis of ideology at certain points, which I also predicted, but not along age-based attractions to any great extent).

Now, I ask my fellow old-timers to recall something else, but similar. Remember when we first began using "MAA" as our inclusive political term for all GLers in place of simply "pedophile"? Remember the dissension and disagreements over the very need for that term that also erupted during that same era, and all the reasons the dissenters argued we should never use that word, or at least they never would personally? Among the arguments of those dissenters were: It sounded "too PC" to them; it would never catch on anyway; it would ultimately make things "worse" for us in varying ways (depending upon which dissenter was making the argument); it was coined by Heather Peterson, whom the particularly radical pro-choicers in the community disliked, hence we were "disrespecting" ourselves by adopting a term developed by her in their eyes; etc., et al?

Now, what has happened since regarding that word? Yes, some people still refuse to use it for various reasons, but it has not only caught on amongst the board and elsewhere to varying degrees, but it has since morphed into a more inclusive variation by B4U-ACT, "MAP" (Minor Attracted People, since not all pedophiles are adults, as some are adolescents), and that term is starting to become increasingly used by the many professionals in various fields who associate with the org on a friendly basis. It's still not a household word (neither is "hebephile" at this point), but it has grown in usage to a far greater extent than the dissenters said it would, which was not at all according to them.

The dissenting veterans of the "hebephile" and "MAA" wars of GC's early days now no longer attack people who use the terms, and no longer incite lengthy bitter threads where they argue how "bad" it is to use those terms, and they can no longer argue they will destroy the community or will "never" catch on to any extent beyond just a few people. However, these individuals still utterly refuse to use either term, and instead always refer to each and every one of us collectively as "pedophiles" or "CLers" when not calling us "GLers," and though I wont name any names, you can spot these people if you look carefully enough and notice what I just described.

Hence, based on this history, I believe I can make two educated predictions about the use of the new term "pheophile," with history backing me up:

1) I predict that regardless of how much it does or doesn't ever catch on, use of the term won't hurt the youth community, or any members of the youth community who have that attraction base, on the basis of its use;

2) There is obviously no guarantee that I will be right in terms of the word one day catching on to a wider spectrum, and I acknowledge this. However, I can say with real confidence that those who insist it will never catch on most certainly have no guarantee of being right either, and history to date is not on their side.

So, as before, some of us will use the term, some of us will not, and a percentage of the dissenters will choose to attack those of us who do use the word, arguing about what a "bad" idea it is, possibly ad nauseum at times. If I turn out to be correct, then as time passes, the incidences of that will diminish, and more newbies to the community will end up using it, as well as more people outside the community. If I am wrong, the word will one day vanish into oblivion entirely, with future generations none the wiser or poorer. That is all I have to say about that.

One more thing regarding the few individuals who seem to insist that the suffix "philia" is so associated with "pedophilia" in the minds of the general public that they will hate the word "pheophile" for that reason alone: I already mentioned in two posts, and Baldur in one much better post (where he provided numerous examples) that the "philia" suffix is commonly used in many fields and areas of interest to apply to many different things, so there is no evidence to back up the assertions of the 'philia-haters', and a good amount of evidence suggesting they are very incorrect.

Thank you again to all who participated, either to support me or to express reasonable concerns.