Re: How do you deal with the social stigma?

if people knew who I really was, they would want to hurt me or never talk to me again and see me as some kind of insane, dangerous deviant, all because of an involuntary chemical reaction in my brain. Even though I've never done anything remotely sexual with children ... The worst part is that what exactly you have to hide is in its essence a feeling of intense love and affection for another human being.

There are indeed a lot of people who hate you just for that. I'll call them social conservatives.

There are social liberals whose disapproval is more nuanced.

They also assume that you believe it is fairly likely that a pedophile like you might find a girl (suppose she's 6 years old) who would be attracted to you, and that you could decide to engage in sexual activity with her without anyone else's knowledge, and that this would be just fine. Or at least it would be just fine if society wouldn't tell her upon discovery that something terrible had happened to her.

Some people can believe that about pedophiles and not be attracted to girls themselves. Judith Levine might be one (though I'm not sure how seriously she went into the prepubescent age range in her beliefs), and she got a lot of heat.

Some people can have those feelings of intense love and affection but disagree with the additional scenario. These would include us Virtuous Pedophiles (but not the merely virtuous pedophiles). We also may be viewed with suspicion, but we do get a hearing.

It's the combination of feeling the attraction and feeling that its expression is fundamentally OK that will continue to engender disapproval, anxiety and alarm (and some hate) in liberals.

I'm just noting that part of (liberal) society's hatred of you is not just due to an involuntary chemical reaction in your brain or a feeling of intense love and affection. You may or may not hold those additional beliefs, but society will assume you do.

In this post I'm trying to describe the world as it is, not engaging in debate about how it ought to be or whether the additional scenario is correct or not.