Aha someone noticed

A shaved adult's genitals look nothing like a prepubescent child's. Society needs to move away from this inference that people who shave (or want their partners to) are hankering to fulfil some kind of paedophilic tendencies.

Shaved or nearly trimmed work for me. I'm not a fan of natural length pubic hair. Personally, I shave, and have been doing so for over 15 years. For the record, I have absolutely no sexual interest in children or pretending to be one. The only time I was ever sexually interested in 14 year olds was when I was 14 years old myself.

@SKDeitch Fair enough, and I respect your honesty. Truth is you're as much a victim of the false association as the rest of us.

@NicoleCadmium my response, and yours, have been pinging around in my head. It's less that a shaved individual is reminiscent of an adolescent, or that anyone might aim for that. It's more about cues that say definitely an adult, no questions asked.

Your responses is fodder for a lot of consideration. Not least of which because there are so many sides to this conversation and all of them are able to readily spark emotions.

Heh, that last response is still, by reflection, a statement of concern over finding myself with someone too young, isn't it?

Has our society got us twisted up in knots or what?

@Gnarloc Society reacts to some of its less desirable base urges by trying to put them as far out of bounds as possible. Ever noticed how child molestation is treated as worse than murder these days? Yet objectively, the child gets a chance to recover and lead a full life that the murder victim ends up having curtailed. The kids may have emotional and sexual issues for the remainder of their lives, but they recover in the broadest sense and lead full lives. That's speaking as someone with no personal experience, but whose mother and a close friend both suffered at the hands of sexual abusers as children.

The fear of paedophilia (a tendency which exists in a statistically significant percentage of the adult population) leads to a witch hunt mentality. People looking for tell-tale indicators of sexual interest in children in others. And what more obvious assumption than that removal of public hair is an attempt to indulge paedophilic interests in a partner? And hey, maybe at an instinctive level, that's what it's doing. Ultimately, I don't care what adults fantasise about, as long as they roleplay it with other consenting adults. The 'dressing up as a schoolgirl' and even 'adult baby' things have never bothered me.

As I've said on another part of the thread, we don't baulk at the idea of women shaving their legs or armpits. But don't those things also create the illusion of a pre-pubescent body state? It's like we have some magical 'at least so many inches from the vagina' rule, at which point it becomes acceptable to remove body hair to make yourself look younger and more desirable.

None of it makes any logical sense. Whereas not wanting natural length pubic hair shedding into your mouth while performing oral sex, does. Perhaps this is the last vestiges of the taboo over oral sex that was still in place 30 or 40 years ago.

Spot on, @NicoleCadmium and I will add that if we keep treating them as paedophiles, doesn't that sort of push them into that box, not allowing them to escape?

Further, if they are roleplaying their fantasies and thus are curtailing that desire... is that a bad thing? I mean, as you've said, if it's play between adults, who really cares what kind of play it is so long as both adults are comfortable, happy and fulfilled. If it also explores and curtails bad behavior, so much the better.

And, yeah, I was nodding at America has being the worst bunch for having their undies in so tight a bunch that we cause problems, rather than curtail them. I became aware of this when stationed in Germany. I learned about German culture and compared it to ours and ours did not fair well in said comparison.

Alcohol being the first one. By the time you graduate high school in Germany, you know if you have a problem with drink and you know how to manage said problem as you and your family have figured it out. Here? We go out of our way to kill anyone who hits 21 by way of alcohol poisoning, celebrating becoming an adult and the ability to partake in the taboo fire water!

Sex is the same way. I saw women at a topless beach and did the American thing: stare and get excited. I saw a woman suntanning in a nearby hotel rooms balcony, naked. Stared too much, got excited again but pondered why I was doing what I was doing, was it ok, or not. She'd placed towels on the rails, obviously looking for some privacy... and it dawned on me that in America, every one of the balcony's would be full of young males looking for my peak. In Europe (this was actually Spain) I was the only one there peaking. It dawned on me that by hiding our bodies, we create another taboo and cause people to get excited not about being with that special someone but by being around someone naked... and that ain't right. It should be the situation, the participation and the activity, not the lack of clothing.

There was a big debate over here as to whether paedophiles should be allowed access to child sex dolls, with a few recent cases of these dolls being confiscated by customs when paedophiles try to order them from abroad. Of course the idea was massively shouted down, on the pretext that the dolls were going to be a gateway to rather than a substitute for real children (appeal to probability fallacy, much?) Of course the real objection is that "Paedophiles are subhuman scum. Why should they be allowed any pleasures in life, when they really ought to be executed in the most barbaric way possible?"

Most people won't even make the distinction between a paedophile and a child sex offender. The difference is massive. A true paedophile has a psychosexual disorder that leaves them sexually interested in children, to the exclusion of adults. Most of them know that it's wrong. Many go to great lengths to avoid criminal acts against children. They need help (counselling, perhaps libido suppressing drugs, or even voluntary castration in severe cases) yet they're driven underground and can't seek it. Child sex offenders, on the other hand, are often just seeking to delve the depths of depravity for their own amusement. They're not exclusively interested in children, and you may find other extreme taboos such as bestiality and necrophilia being indulged too. I don't know if he became infamous on your side of the water, but Jimmy Savile was a prime example of this, here. Yet everyone insists on branding him a paedophile. Some paedophiles are child sex offenders and vice-versa, of course. It's just that the two aren't synonyms.

I believe a statistically significant segment of the adult male population would have sex with a 14 year old girl if they knew they'd get away with it. And that's why society bigs this up into something worse than murder, in my opinion. It's the fear not only of legal reprisals, but being branded the worst kind of monster that act as the deterrent. The idea is to make the consequences so unthinkable that it isn't even worth the slightest risk of being caught.

As for nudity: most of Europe has a fairly relaxed attitude to it. Paris even has some clothing optional recreational areas now. But while the UK isn't as bad as the US, it's still prudish by European standards. And yes, I suspect most British men would react as you did if they saw a woman nude or topless sunbathing here. There's a proven correlation between prudishness and teen pregnancy. Basically, in the countries where it's no great mystery to kids what an opposite sex naked body looks like, there's less incentive to play 'show and tell', with the risk that it goes too far.

@NicoleCadmium You might appreciate this:

[npr.org]

Stigma doesn't have the effect many thinks it does, or thinks it should. In fact, it can have the opposite effect of what is intended. As I wrote above, making it 'taboo' and thus having some form of illicit adventure feel, or just thumbing your nose at society (or your parents), acting out, rebelling, that sort of thing.

Oh there are definitely sexual thrill seekers who expressly seek out taboo activities, and a lot of child sex offenders fall very much into that category. I know of one guy who was arrested after being seen viewing child pornography on his computer in work. Yes, sitting in his office, with people milling around him, and stuff on his monitor that could and ultimately did end up with him on the sex offenders register.

Why on earth would someone do that? You need to backtrack a little. People like these are sexual thrill seekers. They get off on 'wrongness' and risk. A bit of Googling found him, using his real name, soliciting random unprotected sex in men's toilets. Clearly his addiction was to finding that buzz that he only got from pushing boundaries. And these people can only push a boundary so many times before it loses its edge. Then they have to up the ante. And that's how people like him get from collecting 'naturist' pictures, to collecting 'naturist' pictures of children, to collecting sexual pictures of naked children, to collecting extreme pornography involving children, to viewing it on their computer in work, while people are around them.

I think many of us like sex to be exciting and to push boundaries, but these people reach a point where they can only get off on pushing those boundaries to illegal extremes. Some of the taboos about sex can be perfectly legal, but still a big thrill to break. Bi-curious men getting off on the 'wrongness' of being with another man or putting on women's clothing. People getting off on the 'wrongness' of watersports, scat, exhibitionism and voyeruism, humiliation, 'the headmaster and the naughty schoolgirl' roleplay and so on. None of it illegal or harmful. Some of it, at worst, less than hygienic.

That particular slippery slope goes as far as and in whichever direction you're willing to take it. I can be kinky, but pretty much all of my kinks revolve around handing over control to a dominant adult. As I said earlier, the only time I was ever sexually interested in 14 year olds, I was 14 myself.

I don't think it's the same for actual paedophiles, though. They have a genuine sexual orientation that is just their nature. It's an abhorrent one, that they can't be allowed to put into practise, but it's inherent nonetheless. They aren't chasing taboos for the thrill of breaking them, they're just burdened with wanting something they can never legitimately have. I actually have a lot of respect for non-offending paedophiles. It must be very difficult to control the temptation, and well done to those who never offend. I still wouldn't ask one to babysit, though, and I fully support harsh sentencing of those who sexually abuse children or who support child exploitation by collecting child pornography.

@Ampho Lol. Correct! ?

So don't put it in your mouth, wtf.

@DZhukovin So then what's the point of taking your clothes off if those tasty bits don't go in your mouth?

@Highway-Starr

Very funny, but seriously, just move the hair out of the way, it's a very simple thing. That hair is there because it helps project pheromones, and causes a stronger sexual response. It's freaking fantastic. The problem with men these days is that they don't understand what loving women is.

Lol apparently it's a pretty open topic. I'm rather impressed by the honesty I've seen. (You should notice I never answered myself)