About

Paraphilia Research provides news and commentary on the scientific and historical study of anomalous sexual preferences, particularly pedophilia and hebephilia. I am sympathetic to all sexual minorities, but oppose sexual contact with children.

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I can provide the full text of any paper on request. Alternatively, you can submit a request on the /r/scholar subreddit or e-mail the author.

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12 thoughts on “About”

  2. Hi, one more request. Do you know of any papers about the health and nutrition of prehistoric people and its effect on the age of menarche?

    I’m doing some research into what was the likely age of menarche for girls in prehistory during our recent evolution. In many modern foraging societies menarche occurs at 16+ but these people may not be the best models for our prehistoric ancestors because they live in marginal habitats like semi-deserts or poor woodland. I’ve found quite a lot of evidence that the age of menarche in healthy, properly nourished societies is about 13 and that this probably represents the “natural” age for it to be.

    Have you seen any papers relevant to this issue? Thanks.

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  3. Hello, I am just curious as to why you oppose sexual contact with children? Is it because of the social atmosphere we currently live in or because you feel there is innate harm done? If the former, then I completely agree. If the latter I must say there is no evidence supporting said view and is often logically inconsistent. I myself am a non-paedophile sympathetic towards these sexual minorities and I largely agree with the pro-contact stances but oppose such contact in our modern society without social change (pro-sexuality and pro-youth rights) first. Then again even with social change I support a guardian/child combination consent where the consent of both parties is needed.

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  4. Do you know of any papers on the validity of phallometry?

    I have some doubts about it for several reasons. For instance, we know that people change their behaviour when they’re being observed and the stigmatisation of attraction to minors is likely to skew the results.

    Here’s a comparison of 4 studies that support my doubts:

    Translation of the graphic:
    Title: Sexual Arousal of men by nude-images of different kinds of people (values from 4 studies in percent)
    x-Axis: Neutral image of a landscape | prepubescent boys | pubescent boys | men | prepubescent girls | pubescent girls | women

    In the study done in 1970 (when sexual attitudes were more liberal) men showed basically the same level of arousal to pictures of naked pubescent girls about 12 as they did to adult women. In the studies done later as attraction to minors become more and more taboo men showed less response to minors. This is exactly what we’d expect to see if the results are being skewed by social norms.

    Another problem is that most men are used to seeing naked women in porn etc, but not used to seeing naked minors. Men who go to nudist clubs would be used to seeing naked minors and may show different responses. Have there been any studies into this?

    Thanks.

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    • There are many studies showing that men can fake their responses. In summary: “Findings from those studies revealed that men can suppress physiological and self-reported sexual arousal to preferred stimuli but are unable to enhance arousal to non-preferred stimuli. Average suppression rates range from 26% to 38% maximum erection, with some men able to entirely suppress their sexual arousal and others unable to suppress whatsoever” (Winters et al., 2009) Despite this flaw, I still consider phallometry the best available method of measuring sexual preference. (Also note that these are studies of faking by normal men, not sex offenders; as Winters states, sex offenders are probably less able to suppress their response due to their higher sex drive and criminally demonstrated failure in self-regulation.)

      There aren’t any studies addressing the specific limitations you mentioned. Lykins et al. (2010) attempted to test whether phallometric arousal to children in normal men had decreased since the 70s due to the increasing availability of nudity (they concluded it hadn’t), but their results don’t apply to either of your suggestions.

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      • OK, thanks.

        One other problem with these tests is that attraction is also emotional not just physical, especially so for men’s attraction to minors. When a man is attracted to a young girl he doesn’t want to just have a one night stand with her, he falls in love with her and wants to keep her.

        Here’s some pictures showing these kinds of desires:

        http://a.pomf.se/biyvjs.jpg
        http://a.pomf.se/jxyxef.jpg
        http://a.pomf.se/udrkom.jpg

        What we’re seeing here are males following a long term mating strategy. Acquire a female, hold on to her and try and get as many offspring from her as possible. The best females to acquire with this strategy are young immature virgins since they have all of their fertile years ahead of them. In ancestral times, men who fell in love with young virgin girls would have generally left behind more offspring than men who fell in love with older females since they had fewer fertile years left. Over time, men who are susceptible to falling in love with young girls would have become more common than those susceptible to falling in love with older women.

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      • “Despite this flaw, I still consider phallometry the best available method of measuring sexual preference. ” Maybe you are right, but I am not so sure about this. According to several phallometric studies about 20 % of men from the community are “pedophilic” or “hebephilic” (https://www.ipce.info/sites/ipce.info/files/biblio_attachments/every_fifth.pdf ). But there is no proof for the reliability of the phallometric method. There is little research about the reliability and the results of these few studies are rather bad. There is not one study that proofs the reliability of this method. If you do know such a study please let us know here. It would be interesting to see a study where 100 “normal” men are tested phallometrically three times. Then we could see if the same persons would get a “pedophilia”-“hebephilia”-diagnosis in round 1 and round 2 and round 3 – or if there are lots of false diagnosis. Before we don´t have such studies – I hope they come soon – we just don´t know if this method is good or not. I have published a German paper at Ipce about the lots of aspects that could have influenced the results of these phallometric studies with normal men (https://www.ipce.info/sites/ipce.info/files/biblio_attachments/warum_20_prozent.pdf). My personal conclusion is: Without new studies we will not know what the truth is in this issue.

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  5. Have many people in the literature argued that some heterosexual paedophilic attraction (not a preference just some attraction) would have been adaptive for men in ancestral times? I posted a thread in /r/evopsych arguing that it would have been which was received quite well and upvoted.

    Instead of asking:

    “What would have been the adaptive value in men mating with females before puberty?”

    What should be asked is:

    “What would have been the adaptive value in men being attracted to females before puberty?”

    Then the answer’s simple. Girls before puberty have a high future fertility and being attracted to them would have motivated men to acquire them as wives. The idea is pretty simple and I can’t have been the first to have thought of it.

    http://www.reddit.com/r/evopsych/comments/33co5z/adaptive_value_of_some_paedophilic_attraction/

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