shipping-isnt-morality:

Proposition:

Instead of applying “pedophilia” to all and sundry in order to make it seem bad, consider advocating for people to understand that things “statutory rape” and “teen sexual abuse” can also be equally horrifying crimes with lifelong trauma to the victims!

instead of suggesting that teens are exactly the same as prepubescent children, acknowledge that they are not and build your argument of how bad it is based on how teens actually are.

Because here’s the thing:

“Sex between a 15 year old and a 50 year old is pedophilia” is a false statement. You’re objectively, provably wrong. Words have meanings, and that’s not what pedophilia means. You do not want to be wrong about this. You do not help anybody by making an emotional but wrong argument about this.

“Sex between a 15 year old and a 50 year old is exploitative and morally wrong” is true! It’s an arguable position! It doesn’t bastardize the meaning of a very serious word for emphasis! Say what you mean, not what you feel. If you feel it’s on par with pedophilia, say that! It’s not literally pedophilia, because pedophilia is a word with a specific and important meaning.

It’s the same reason we don’t use “rape” to refer to anything bad happening (the way people very much used to). Rape is a specific thing, a specific crime, a specific trauma. Its meaning matters, legally, socially. The victims of it deserve to be able to talk about their experience with clarity, with words that are undiluted by people using them wrong for emphasis.

This conversation matters, and the words we use matter. Pedophilia is an extremely serious and dangerous thing. So is statutory rape. The fact that they are not the same does not make either less serious, but have enough respect for the damn topic to understand what the distinction is and why it exists, or get off the stage.

Tl;dr – it’s 2018, stop using medical/legal terminology of very serious problems as terms of emphasis for other things