Debate Guide: Self-loathing hatred

Projection, guilt, exteriorisation and self-loathing are all important parts of the violently anti-pedophile psyche.

One example of the need to draw lines and attack a minority comes from Media Psychology, by D. Giles:

"Part of the problem is that heterosexual male desire often sits on a knife between a preference for neonate facial features in women (clear skin, large eyes, high cheekbones) and an intense revulsion toward paedophilia. It could be argued that the ferocity of assaults on convicted (child) sex offenders and the mob violence often enacted against rehabilitating child abusers are driven partly by the need for heterosexual men to have clear boundaries between what is acceptable sexual desire (i.e., the youngest, healthiest, fertile female) and what is not (legally protected children). If a subgroup of men can be clearly identified and labelled, it reduces the uncertainty surrounding their own borderline desire for young-looking women."

And Bluher (1953).

"In prosecuting pedophiles, a man struggles against the suspicion that he could be one himself and, seeking reassurance, he exteriorises his own inner battlefield"

It would appear that a strong instinctual attraction to cute, appealing children - preferably in their naked, unblemished form, whilst not typified by throbbing, orgasmic high eroticism, is part of most people's aesthetic ideal. If the history of art is to be believed, this is most certainly the case. Yet in battling the guilt that this causes in today's society, we exteriorise our desire to distance ourselves from such attractions by attacking others who have acted (or have been painted as acting) as brutally as the stereotype suggests.