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 physical attraction to cute, appealing children - preferably in their naked, unblemished form (although not so much a drive of throbbing, orgasmic high eroticism) is part of most people's mentality. If the history of art is to be used as a precedent, then this is definitely the case. Yet in battling with the resultant socially induced guilt, we exteriorise our desire to distance ourselves from this by attacking others who have acted (or been painted as acting) as brutally as the stereotype suggests.