Ephebophilia is not better, or more forgivable, or more understandable or less evil, it is just as bad. And before I go on, so that you don’t jump down my throat for having an opinion on something I have no experience with, let me say, I was a teenage girl who experienced sexual aggression from adult men, online and in real life, and I’m pisssed that I have to talk about my history of that and reveal myself in a way I find uncomfortable to talk about something I think is important.

I hate it when people assume that “Well if you say it’s not bad thing X, you must think it’s better than bad thing X” like when I tell people ISIS aren’t fascists, they often get all “You’re apologizing for ISIS” and I’m like “No, ISIS and fascism are BOTH VERY VERY BAD THINGS, but they are different bad things, not the same bad thing, they’re both murderous, evil, shitty and terrible, but fascism is a specific ideology and that’s not what ISIS is.”  A pit full of hungry alligators and a pit full of spikes are different things, but you don’t want to be dropped into either one.

And let me also tell you that ephebophilia is an important term to me, because of being targeted by adult men as a teenager.  Whenever adults called those men pedophiles, it felt like an adult misconception of the situation, the men were creepy and gross but the situation didn’t feel the same as it would have for a pre-adolescent child.  I was sexually active and sexually aware.  I experienced sexual desire, and definitely didn’t feel like a child in those situations.  Adolescents aren’t children, they’re in a different developmental stage, but that doesn’t make it even a little okay for adults to fuck them.   Only after I had a different terminology that allowed me to differentiate between people who prey on children and people who prey on adolescents could I express how fucked up it felt.  I wasn’t a child, but I didn’t have to be a child for what happened not to be ok.

I think that  A: victims of pedophilia and victims of ephebophilia will need different treatment because they were at different developmental stages when trauma occurred, B: pedophiles and ephebophiles operate differently, and so we should understand the differences to be able to detect and deal with them effectively C: children are too young to be having sex with ANYONE, teenagers are too young to be having sex with adults, most teenagers are sexual beings, adults are inherently in a position of power over them because of their greater knowledge and experience as well as their position in society. Like, we understand that having sex with your adult college students as their professor is rape and is wrong because of the position of power but they can have sex with each other, and we understand that NO ONE should be having sex with someone who is passed out drunk, because yeah, and that these situations are equally wrong but also differ in their circumstances in ways that mean their prevention requires different tactics D: The fact that we consider separating the two to diminish the wrongness of adults fucking adolescents is indicative of how deeply ingrained the idea that it’s ok for adults to fuck adolescents is E: I think putting adolescent victims in the same category as child victims actually insidiously implies that ‘if you weren’t a kid anymore, if you were experiencing sexual desires at that point, if you weren’t ‘pure’ then your victimization doesn’t count.’ F: Denying that teenagers are sexual beings, with sex drives just serves to reenforce the idea that someone having and/or expressing a sexuality of any kind whatsoever means it’s ok to take sexual advantage of them

I mean teenagers are VULNERABLE, they’re incredibly sensitive to other people’s opinion of them, their self preservation instinct is essentially closed for renovations, they often have incredibly powerful sex drives which can be used to manipulate them and aren’t used to adult manipulation tactics and thus don’t have defenses against them.  They are capable of being sexually attracted to adults, which makes them extremely vulnerable to the advances of predators. 

Ephebophilia is also socially sanctioned in a way that pedophilia is not, the 16 year old girl sexually desirable to adult men is an acceptable character in media, the 6 year old girl?  Not so much.  Pretending it’s all the same thing is dangerous and harms victims.