I think pedophiles should be treated with compassion, as being a pedophile doesn’t make someone a sexual predator.

IMO the stigma against pedophiles worsens their mental state and could push them to become sexual predators. This is just a guess though.

However, I do think “treatment” of pedophilia with generated CP should only be tried after conducting proper research into the actual effectiveness of it (maybe with general sex offenders and regular porn). In the end I think the top priority should be to minimize the amount of pedophiles who are also predators.

Not that I think they should be included in LGBTQ+ but as someone who is bisexual I feel they're not as far from us as you seemingly believe. Why wouldn't we compare them? Both are sexual attractions that deviate from the norm. A pedophile didn't choose to be a pedophile anymore than I chose to be bi.

Growing up in a conservative household and town was a miserable experience for me. I hated myself, didn't want to accept it, and felt utterly alone. Now think about how much worse it must be to realize you're attracted to children. You have zero allies, you have zero people you can talk to, and a lot of people hate you merely for existing and/or want you dead. From where I stand their experience echoes my experience being LBGTQ+ quite heavily. Except over my lifetime LBGTQ+ acceptance grew quite rapidly and my husband was the light at the end of the tunnel. But pedophiles will never get that, probably ever. I feel nothing but sympathy for their situation.

And what "serious psychiatric care" do you even think there is for it? Unless you also believe in gay conversion camps, we have nothing. We don't even really know how sexuality actually works in the brain, we definitely aren't anywhere close to being able to treat it.

I'm trying to be better by not treating all pedophiles as child-abusers-in-waiting. Humans are capable of not acting on base immoral instincts.

Off the bat, I wholly disagree with the idea that this should have been legal. That filth, even if AI generated, should be illegal for a multitude of reasons, one of them being that it allows those… urges to be practiced. I’m not one for the slippery slope fallacy but in situations where it could escalate to real child abuse, there should be zero tolerance and indulgence. If it’s a mental illness, they don’t need to fulfill that urge.

That said, I think the people suggesting otherwise here are just looking at it from a perspective of numbers and nothing else, with little consideration of the significant downsides. The stance also ignores that offenders are likely in it for the taboo more than actual interest in kids— it sure seems like Epstein’s friends were mostly doing it because they could, and it was a new level of depravity to try. If you ignore all of these, AI generated filth could indeed reduce actual child abuse. That’s a good thing and theoretically comes with no additional suffering, right?

I see this as naivety. Rude to imply about others here but better than CSAM apologism. It’s about the best I can think of, and I try to assume the best in people these days.

Also to make clear why I think the slippery slope is valid here, making some form of that awful “interest” legal dramatically lowers the bar of entry. And unlike violent films that are accused of increasing violence, that filth will never have wider societal acceptance, so a legal but taboo on-ramp is more likely to lead to illegal and taboo viewing, then perhaps onto the real thing. Society should never be willing to risk that by indulging in their mental illness.

The psychologists have tried to normalize everything and sympathy for the devil is the greatest signal of one's virtuous compassion. There is no evil anymore, all characters are grey, just ask the game of thrones fans about all the sadistic psychopaths in that story, none are truly bad.
One day soon someone will build a robot version of their own child to rape and abuse and people will hail it as the perfect solution. And when that child finds out they will be told to take a chill pill because there is no harm done.
Paepophiles are not sick, they are part of the natural variation of the species. Sometimes those variations are harmful and that needs to be addressed. If someone died and made me god i would murder suicide everyone who isnt a card carrying vegan pacifist. Yes, im a monster too. Failing that, i vote we name, shame and imprison the bad people. Yes, i beleive in good and bad. No im not religious.
The left will never get anywhere with this moral nihilism.