I think it’s actually more complicated. Things like sexual orientation, absolutely, some parts of desire are clearly hardwired in. But also there’s plenty that’s able to be induced or changed for any number of reasons.
My primary example is that when I was younger I found tattoos to be a hard turn off, piercings too. Anti tattoo sentiments were part of my family’s form of classism, but over the years I got more positive experiences with people who have them and wound up sleeping with people despite them and eventually through exposure and changing of biases got to the point that I now rarely find one to take away from someone’s beauty and often find them to add to it.
In general it’s rude as hell to assume some aspect of someone else’s tastes can (or should) change, we can’t know them particularly well. But we can challenge our own biases and be open to changes in our tastes coming from those challenges.
Now, as for pedophilia, it’s worth trying to change it if possible, and regardless building safety systems to ensure that it’s difficult for these people to offend. But also, I do suspect that the rise of the rich and powerful engaging in pedophilia is something that at least some of them are inducing. They begin by fetishizing youth as a display of power and creep towards the hard line our culture places at 18, and eventually they cross it. I simply cannot believe, until given evidence to the contrary, that such a large portion of the rich and powerful engaging in sexual abuse of minors is unrelated to the fetishization of youth, the trend of the rich and powerful chasing young adults, and the fact that they can get away with anything they want.
I think it’s actually more complicated. Things like sexual orientation, absolutely, some parts of desire are clearly hardwired in. But also there’s plenty that’s able to be induced or changed for any number of reasons.
My primary example is that when I was younger I found tattoos to be a hard turn off, piercings too. Anti tattoo sentiments were part of my family’s form of classism, but over the years I got more positive experiences with people who have them and wound up sleeping with people despite them and eventually through exposure and changing of biases got to the point that I now rarely find one to take away from someone’s beauty and often find them to add to it.
In general it’s rude as hell to assume some aspect of someone else’s tastes can (or should) change, we can’t know them particularly well. But we can challenge our own biases and be open to changes in our tastes coming from those challenges.
Now, as for pedophilia, it’s worth trying to change it if possible, and regardless building safety systems to ensure that it’s difficult for these people to offend. But also, I do suspect that the rise of the rich and powerful engaging in pedophilia is something that at least some of them are inducing. They begin by fetishizing youth as a display of power and creep towards the hard line our culture places at 18, and eventually they cross it. I simply cannot believe, until given evidence to the contrary, that such a large portion of the rich and powerful engaging in sexual abuse of minors is unrelated to the fetishization of youth, the trend of the rich and powerful chasing young adults, and the fact that they can get away with anything they want.