"Hang on love, I'll pull you out," shouted a man standing on the side of the quay about 5 metres above me.
"Leave me alone, I don't want to be rescued," I shouted back and prepared to push the float away.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
I jumped.
The brief fall from the side of the dock was a second of air rushing past before the severe shock through my whole body as I plunged into theStygian iciness of the water. I felt myself sinking slowly and I prepared to take the fatal lungful of water but then to my surprise I suddenly stopped plunging further and began to rapidly rise to the surface
My head broke through the water and my body involuntarily gasped for air. I floated easily in the dirty, cold water of the disused dock.
I looked around myself to try and work out how my suicide plan had been thwarted and noticed the pocket of air which had obviously got trapped in the the back of my jacket as I fell.
I started to take it off, quite a difficult challenge as the sodden sleeves clung tightly to my arms. After a couple of minutes struggling to pull them down I gave up and anyway my attempts had at least accomplished the primary objective of releasing the air even if I had failed to take my jacket off.
I was beginning to lose feeling in my feet as I finally stopped moving in the water and prepared to let myself sink to let the dark liquid wash away the constant pain. I hoped my sister would be satisfied with her efforts to humiliate me. I breathed out to try and reduce my buoyancy as much as possible. I felt my shoulders sink and prepared myself for oblivion.
The shout, "Catch this love!" was immediately followed by the painful impact of a public buoyancy aide hitting my head. Without thinking I took hold of the red and white ring that was now floating next to me.
"Hang on love, I'll pull you out," shouted a man standing on the side of the quay about 5 metres above me.
"Leave me alone, I don't want to be rescued," I shouted back and prepared to push the float away.
"Wait, there's nothing worth killing yourself, especially at your age," he shouted back.
"You don't know how bad things are, thanks for trying to help anyway, bye," I shouted in response.
"Don't let go! If you do I'll have to jump in to try and save you and I can't swim. Do you want to be responsible for someone else's death?"
"Please, I have to do this, life is too hard, everyone hates me," I responded.
"I can't believe that's true, an attractive girl like you," he pleaded.
I smiled for the first time, since holding Eddie's hand before catching the bus to school, at the man's mistake. Understandable really given that he could only see my head and my long hair, with the rest of my body submerged.
"That's the problem, I'm not a girl but thanks for the compliment. I'm letting go now."
"Listen let's do a deal!," he shouted.
"What deal?" I replied.
"Come on out of the water and tell me about your problems and let me see if I can help you. If you still want to kill yourself after. I'll help you," he shouted back in explanation.
"How?"
"I'll tie some weights to your legs, you'll go straight down then. Come on, just give it a go, what have you got to lose for waiting a few minutes?"
I thought for a few seconds and decided to accept his deal. I shouted my assent and he pulled me towards the metal ladder set in the wall of the concrete quay. I slowly climbed up towards the top, which took quite an effort wearing my completely sodden, heavy clothes. After a few minutes I neared the top. My attempted rescuer reached over and took my hand to help me up the final few feet.
"There you go, sit down here," said the well dressed middle aged man who had persuaded me to postpone my suicide attempt as he gently led me towards a bench a few metres away from the quay.
"Here, take my coat and wrap it around you, we don't want you to catch your death," he said as he offered me his expensive looking coat and helped to wrap it around me.
Suddenly the incongruity of what he had just said made me begin to snigger, which soon turned into laughter.
"What's so funny?" he asked, looking surprised at my reaction.
"Catch your death, you said," I explained between guffaws.
He looked at me and then suddenly he got the joke and joined me in the merriment.
"Sorry," he said, "after a few seconds of mutual tittering, "I didn't mean to make a joke of your situation."
"It's OK and anyway after I've explained the situation as you requested I fully intend to complete my intended actions," I replied, "so I hope you don't regret letting me ruin your expensive coat."
"Don't worry at all about that, it will be as good as new after a visit to the cleaners. I'm David by the way, can I have the honour of knowing the name of the pretty girl I've just rescued?" he asked politely.
There was something very engaging about David's manner and in response to his friendliness I smiled before replying,"I like to be called Jenny, but that's obviously not my real name, it's ......"
David interrupted me by putting his finger to my lips.
"That's OK Jenny, I don't need to know whatever other name you were given which doesn't reflect your true being. Now tell me what happened today to make you want to jump in."
Hesitantly I explained about the sadism of my sister and the ridicule of my fellow school pupils. David listened intently and put a comforting arm around my shoulder as I recounted the most painful parts.
"There, there Jenny, although you may feel that life is at rock bottom. Let me tell you, I've been there and I know that things always do get better eventually if you let others help and support you," David responded in a very friendly tone.
"I don't believe you," I said, "look at you, the very epitome of a happy contented man."
"Believe me," David said, "I've really been where you think you are at the moment."
"How could that be true?" I asked, "what problem could you have?"
There was a pause as he looked at me in a strange way. I looked at his face and saw what looked like tears forming in his eyes. He turned his face away from and then in a soft voice said, "I'm a paedophile."
Comments
...
... Certainly not what i thought he was going to say lol!
Me too
I thought he was going to say he was a member of Congress.
"You may be what you resolve to be."
T.J. Jackson
hrm
Not a bad turn... and quite nice of him to help her... but I dont know how the hell a Paedophile is supposed know how it feels for a trans person thats been treated unfairly and outcast... I'm afraid one is sick and illegal, the other is genetic/mental incongruitiy... I'd love to hear how this turns out though...
Just to be picky but ...
Technically he doesnt say he knows what it feels like for her. He says he knows what its like to feel at 'rock bottom'.
also picky
And he feels so bad because hes attracted to children because? I dont think its remotely relevant or suitable to have in a story... And any rock bottom is his fault in that case... not quite like hers...
Should mercy and compassion have limits?
The TG community is often villainized in exactly the way that other non-mainstream emotional sets are.
No one can be at fault for their feelings, only their actions. However much justice and equity may rightfully demand punishment for transgressive harm to another, it should be possible to empathize with the outcast, especially one who has not acted out their desires.
To say that this subject is not suitable to have in a story is to take a moral stand against the very purpose of fiction - the illumination of the human condition.
A famous science fiction writer once published a story about an alien race that, like our cousins the bonobos, practiced sexual relations as a means of community bonding -- between all members of the community down to infants and even between family members. An enraged humanity hunted down and exterminated the aliens whose culture had existed for millennia and had achieved great nobility and success in the arts and sciences. Many people who read the story did not get the point and it won no awards.
The most damnable thing one can say about a piece of writing is that it is inoffensive. Every writer who wishes to excel must be willing to offend, sometimes even seek out that offense that opens a window to a different way of looking at humanity.
I hope everyone understands what I mean by this post because it is the very reason I operate this website and why it's called BigCloset.
Hugs to all,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Caution, we are making asumptions on limited/incomplete data
He may be as some assume, a serious child molester OR he may be a pedophile by legal definition only.
The law sadly has been misapplied at times. Hypothetically, say a boy and girl are in the same class, he's a month older and sixteen, she's a month younger and fifteen. They have been sweethearts for years and have had sex a few times -- not uncommon at all – their consensual sex if reported to authorities is BY LAW, should the prosecutor wish to absolutely strict, sexual relations with a minor and makes him a pedophile.
I imagine a majority of people would not see it as such and would feel the law was misapplied in such a case but it has/can happen. Say, hypothetically they are just over a year apart in age, he is 17, almost 18 and she is just shy of 16. This is also not uncommon as girls mature physically earlier than boys. It still could be an innocent, consensual relationship but if caught he might get tried as an adult and that makes it statutory rape. Now if in our hypothetical case he was 35 and she fifteen, no matter how consensual, that would clearly be seen as wrong by a majority of the public and for good reasons. The problem is the law needs to be interpreted and applied by people and people don’t always act as they should.
As to this story, we don’t know the truth here. He may be a serious pervert or just a former teenager who was the victim of an over jealous prosecutor and/or over protective parents .So we do not know if our author is about to *bash* the hero/heroine or not. Has the boy just jumped from the frying pan and into the fire or is the man a minor or even just a technical violator and a kind of victim himself.
This is the problem with one-size-fit-all legislation. Three strikes and your out, the drug kingpin laws sound great on their surface but have been abused many times by prosecutors needing a boost for election time People and institutions are flawed and innocents or minor criminals get punishments intended for serious criminals..
I will withhold judgment until we have more to go on.
One thing we do know, sis and her friends are sick, perverted, cruel people. I lookk forward to more by the writer.
John in Wauwatosa
John in Wauwatosa
Agreed
The term "pedophile" has several meanings and many more uses. A quick search online points out that while police officers use the term to refer to somebody who is/has molested a child, medically the term can apply to somebody who has professed a sexual attraction to children, even if they have never acted on that attraction.
I was molested as a child, and as John will tell anybody who asks, I am not a forgive and forget kind a' gal. But we don't have a clue what the man meant when he said that, and until we find out it might be best for everybody to hold on a bit.
Karen J.
"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin
>> "pedophile" has several meanings
And all of them inappropriate euphemisms for what ought to be termed a "mania," "dissociopathy," "psychopahy," or other more appropriate term.
From the roots, a paedophile is someone who loves children, as a bibliophile loves books, or an anglophile loves the English language. We all of us love children; it's in our genes, unless we are defective. A so-called "Paedophile" does not, in fact, love children but seeks to exploit them, often cruelly, and sometimes abuses them to the point of serious injury or death. None of these are the acts of people who love children.
Puddin'
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Technically...
Paedophila refers only to an erotic preference for prepubescent children.
The term hebephilia has been proposed to denote the erotic preference for pubescent children (roughly, ages 11 or 12–14), but it has not been widely used thus far.
Likewise, the term ephebophilia, which refers to the erotic interest in children in mid to late adolescence, but confusion reigns everywhere.
Teleiophilia refers to someone who is erotically interested in adults, but it doesn't seem to be classified in DSM-IV.
In rough and ready statistical terms, paedophiles tend to be shorter, stupider, more scatter-brained, and worse students then "normal" adults. As intelligence and other desirable qualities increase, so does the preference for increasingly mature erotic interests, until we come to normal adults who normally prefer adults.
In short, the popular conception of paedophiles as "losers" is surprisingly accurate for a non-scientific observation.
Puddin'
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Transgender "Losers".
I mean no offense here; I've been called a loser too.
So, assuming a P-file has a right to live, is there an acceptable way to have their needs met? Well, certainly not in main stream human society, But I wonder if they and those who seek to be seen as children could interact thrillingly. I don't think I want any child I know traumatized by one.
Most Adult T folk I know have had extremely successful lives while living in drab, and when we finally muster up the chutzpah to live true to ourselves, we seem to become cast out, or at least our credibility is greatly eroded. I was at a GBLT conference not that long ago and the subject was some rather heated debate about the fact that T folk had been removed from national rights for GBLT in the national Congress. Of interest is the fact that the GBL people there seemed to have a very compassionate view of the plight of T folk, saying that,"T folk are usually the poorest and least able to advocate for themselves, and we need to help them". I thought that statement was extremely laudable.
There are those of us who want to be babies,fully chained SLAVES, normal women, and all sorts of other expressions. It'll be interesting to see where there can be compassion without enablement for a P-file.
Gwendolyn
Hard to deny the term "Loser" when my own family barely tolerate
Hi Gwen,
I have found that my greatest acceptance came from a group of wiccan ladies. I'm somewhere along thw TG continuum and though it took many years to accept myself finding acceptance among my friends and especially relatives has been difficult. Family has been mostly intolerant, oh they give 'lip-service' to 'support' of my difference, but my sister, who has lived together with another woman for some 35 yers now, doesn't understand my need to express my feminine side. It's like 'I should quit all this foolishness and get on with my life'. Small wonder that the TG community is still struggling for recognition, let alone acceptance and this despite the decades of exposure in comedy skits from Milton Berle, Flip wilson, Dustin Hoffman, Eddie Murphy, etc. Where in the world does the negative impression of TG folk come from? Oh, I'm sure that men, especially, fear the niggling little feeling they get from their enjoyment of something feminine, lingerie or the curves of a woman's body, wondering if they might like something a little too much. ("Does this make me gay" or "Will I start wearing women's clothing too?") They are too afraid that being less than a "He-man" will cause others to see them as something less than a MAN, as if somehow women are "less" than men.
As for Paedophiles, I believe there is a little of that feeling in each one of us. Who can deny that youth is attractive? Virginallity is erotic, right? Is there a woman alive, over the age of twenty-five who doesn't try to look younger than her actual chronological age? Why in the world does "Greecian Formula" sell so well, if men are not caught up in the whole search for "the Fountain of Youth" too? All human conditions are subject to variations, we KNOW sexuality and gender are, why would we think the desire for someone young would be any other way. As has been suggested by others here I do not believe it is the desire, which I think we ALL have, but our actions, that determine right or wrong. In my opinion "wrong" is something that hurts someone else or oneself, "right" is positive to ALL involved.
Oh, I've been ranting again, sorry.
with love,
Hope
with love,
Hope
Once in a while I bare my soul, more often my soles bear me.
>> Transgender "Losers" ???
I'm not exactly sure where this came from?
Are you saying that transgendered individuals are more likely to be paedophiles?
My understanding of current evidence is that, in general, GLBT people tend to be somewhat (not enormously) more intelligent than the average person on the street, which is pretty much the opposite of what I said, and certainly represents a cohort with minimal overlap.
The only exception to this general rule is that prisoners, who may be situationally "homosexual" but strictly heterosexual "on the outside," approximate the (duller) heterosexual population. As far as I know, there are no situational transsexuals, but the world is very large, perhaps they exist somewhere.
Whilst I'm sure there are exceptions (that's what statistical correlations are all about), it would also seem probable that GLBT persons would be *less* likely to be paedophiles.
Most paedophiles, even men who target boys, tend to be heterosexual, or celibate heterosexuals, and quite likely not terribly clever, doing (or having done) badly in school, have difficulty remembering events or fact (poor short and long-term memory formation), and possess other qualities that argue for poor genetic heritage or brain damage at some point in their pasts. Some forms of autism appear to be related to paedophilia, specifically impairments in social interaction and communication, and poor to absent ability to empathise.
That last would seem to me a necessary precursor, but I haven't seen any studies that address the issue directly.
As such, and forgive me if I'm not understanding exactly what you said, I'd be very leery of suggesting dissociopathic dullards with poor social skills and no empathy as romantic partners, unless one was a masochist with suicidal tendencies. I'd hazard a guess as well that an active suspension of disbelief and a fertile imagination would tend to be beyond the intellectual capacity of most paedophiles as well, although I freely admit that this has not a shred of research on my part behind it.
Here's one example sampling many studies:
>> Most studies found the more homosexual subject groups' scores to be higher than those of the more heterosexual controls, and all exceptions to this trend are concentrated in one subgroup: prisoners. Moreover, the more representative the sample studied, and the less subject to challenge the methodology used, the clearer and more statistically significant was the superiority in intelligence of the more homosexual over the more heterosexual group.
-- Nonreproduction, homosexuality, transsexualism, and intelligence: A systematic literature search. -- Weinrich JD.
Puddin'
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Oh My Goddess, NO!!!
Hi Puddin,
I certainly had no such thought about any association between Transgenderisn and paedophilia. Two COMPLETELY difference traits in my opinion, just as one's own gender perception has nothing to do with the sex of the person to whom one is attracted or the colour of one's hair to the length of one's femur.
What I did say is that the attraction to youth is almost universal in human beings. I would like to separate the act of taking criminal advantage of someone who isn't in a position to prevent such action, from the natural tendency to be attracted to youthful beauty, innocence and virginity. I also would like to be both more and less inclusive in the description of the victims of abuse. Not all young people are innocent victims, maybe they SHOULD be at their age, but in the real world that isn't always true. The other case is that there are many others in the world who for various reasons are JUST as innocent and in need of protection as the young, whether that be for financial reasons or diminished capacity or reasons I can't even think of at this time.
I hope this clears up some of the confusion.
with love,
Hope
with love,
Hope
Once in a while I bare my soul, more often my soles bear me.
>> Not all young people are innocent victims
Yes, they are, or were at one point.
It's just that it's often quite difficult to determine exactly how and when they became prematurely sexualised.
Sexual reactivity is a diagnostic symptom of some form of abuse, just as a cautious approach to touching a hot stove is a sign of experience with burned fingers.
If one encounters a child who is "not innocent," that child was exposed to and adversely affected by inappropriate sexual situations, almost always by someone older, although this sort of thing can spread from a single point of disturbance.
Puddin'
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
>> attraction to youth is almost universal in human beings
It depends on what you mean by the word "attraction". If you mean that almost all human beings are erotically aroused by prepubescent, pubescent, or adolescent children, I would strongly disagree.
One can find a painting by Renoir attractive, and yet have no desire for erotic or other physical intimacy with it. Normal adults have no such desire for children.
Child molesters do very poorly in prison, because even murderers, rapists, extortionists, thugs, and thieves have standards.
Puddin'
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
I should have better explained that.
I have been called a loser, yet was extremely successful in life. I was trying to illustrate the ignorance of the general populace.
Sorry
Gwen
This is something I say often
When I evaluate how successfully a script can be produced (I work in the theatre biz). If it doesn't offend someone, we aren't doing our jobs right. My thesis project in grad school had plenty of people hating it... and while my adviser wasn't convinced... I was pleased simply because they either loved it or hated it, and very few people were apathetic. I didn't follow convention or pick themes that were socially acceptable to a conservative region. It sparked discussions, debate, even a couple arguments. Which is the goal of art... to communicate ideas and emotion, and to engage the community in the dialogue. It may not have been a choice that I'd have made if I were trying to run a theatre as a business there... but as art, it was what needed to be done.
Sadly, the support for that sort of work is dwindling. Even though the need for it is as great as ever. With theatres having to rely purely on product they can sell (because government funding gone and private sector foundations and donors limited in what they can provide), to stay open at all; we have to be inoffensive and entertaining.
In more specific connection to this piece, you might take a look at a play named "Mr Bundy" by Jane Martin. It shares similar themes and in it, the pedophile (who is now old and served his prison sentence) is the victim. A situation that generally makes an audience very uncomfortable.
Erin, excellent post!
You have said what I think, and said it better than I could ever hope to say it.
Some days you're the pigeon, some days you're the statue
If the...
Various anti-gay/lesbian/transgender groups, particularly the religious based groups are to believed being gay/lesbian/transgender is a choice, and something that makes us 'ill/sick' because we choose to be what we are. Most of the people who have posted in this thread I'd guess believe that its not that simple and some if not all of the 'choice' is made for us in the womb by hormones and other developmental processes. In fact I know I would love to be the normal heterosexual adult that my parents would like me to be. I'm not and even though I have tried to fit into the hole that there is in society for me I don't.
There are undoubtedly men and women who lust after children and feel no remorse, they no doubt seek out situations where they can abuse the trust of the child for their own ends. However like the so called choice of attraction to members of the same sex the attraction to children (or other subjects seen as morally wrong) is not something that most people can help, people don't wake up one day after puberty and say "I know I'll lust after children just so I can be in trouble all the time." Its not something for most people that can be helped.
Having sex with children is wrong. I totally agree with that, I'd add all the associated stuff to that too, anything that makes a child a sexual object is wrong. But it is only a person who uses that stuff or does have sex with a child that is sick and depraved. Lusting after children in the privacy of your own head is no more wrong than planning mass murder.
JC
The Legendary Lost Ninja
>> planning mass murder...
...in these times might, if the targets are appropriately chosen from among our "ruling classes," be seen as something of a public service and be met with general approval, perhaps even gratitude, so I'd characterise paedophiles as much worse, all in all. When one leaves corpses behind, at least their suffering is over.
Puddin'
----------------
The first thing we do, let's
kill all the lawyers.
--- Dick the Butcher, King Henry VI, Part 2
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
The deed, not the doer
Well said JC.
There are a few too many people scraping their knuckles and tying nooses around here for my taste.
Looking forward to the next instalment of the story. Whooo what a cliffhanger!
XX
AD
outcast
The feeling of being an outcast would be the same in both cases.
For that matter, humiliation is humiliation.
Fran
Hugs, Fran
Hrm
I think we may have to agree to disagree....
Either way I think After reading all of these counter arguments I may well be removing my material from this site... I don't know if i want anything to do with it now.
Your choice
And that's another thing about BC that is designed in -- authors do not have to ask anyone else to remove their works. But please think about it, if I'm here to offer a place to post stories that would offend mainstream readers -- I'm here to offer a place to post stories that would offend.
And rest assured that much of TG fiction would offend an awful lot of people.
If the mere mention of one particular aspect of realistic human experience puts a story beyond redemption then there is no place for fiction at all. Gender and sexuality are always subjects that can and do offend.
There are people in the world and in high places in governments, churches and educational institutions that believe that no one can or should change their sex. They are just as offended by that idea as you seem to be at the mere mention that someone may have a certain sexual perversity in their makeup. If they made the rules as to what was allowed in fiction, there would be no BigCloset.
Having feelings about what is right is one thing. Everyone has their own set of judgements and pre-judgements.
I hope you do not misunderstand my point. But do as you wish, you don't owe me any explanations.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
well Erin....
I dont know about that. Plenty of main streem novels have some very steamy sex scenes in them. Try reading some of the historical romance novels in them. I admit few would touch pedephilia with a ten foot pole but there have been a few that dared and are hailed and a few of those are renoun and considered'great novels'
I mean, wasnt there a novel by a russian writer that did that. I think a older man was desperatly inlove with a younger girl, married her mother to get at her. I cant remember his name or the novel. I think the pedophiles name was hubert.
Sorry I didnt mean to send this as a Private Mesage. I hit the wrong button.
My point, exactly
Irony aside, books like Lolita examine what it means to be human. That is the purpose of fiction, in my view.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
wow !!!!
talk about unexpected !
great story thank you Heulwen.
keep em all gasping in shock :-)
hugs from who
BookWorm
My guess is he is ...
... we'll find he's a legal paedophile for something like having sex with an underage (which he did not know) consenting girl. Once the brand is there, you are on the list forever and it is almost impossible to get off it even if the girl or the one who filed charges admits the truth. (That is, in the USA)
"All the world really is a stage, darlings, so strut your stuff, have fun, and give the public a good show!" Miss Jezzi Belle at the end of each show
BE a lady!
"The quality of mercy is not
"The quality of mercy is not strained..." (as William Shakespeare has Portia say to the Venician Court in Merchant of Venice). People who become sexually fixated on small children, who are currently called paedophiles - a very bad misuse of the Greek, for philos as intellectual love, IMHO - I am certain did not deliberately decide to be that way inclined, any more than people who feel that they are in a body of the wrong sex, or people who get pleasure from dressing in the apparel of the other sex from their own. Agreed that the word "paedophile" ( paed-erotic ?) is used to cover a whole spectrum of aberrant behaviours, the vast majority of them succumb only after failing to fight off their desires.
Mercy should have NO limits, IMHO. Such people are ill, not wicked. Where they are so abnormal that they desire to inflict pain even death upon babies, to get sexual release, they need to be kept locked safely away for their own and everyone else's safety, but not as punishment - they need to be studied, to find out what went wrong, what are the earliest signs, how can they be cured if possible, eventually. Only then can we guarantee that in future all small children will be safe. Killing them or just locking them up does not do anything for making the world safer for future children, as a new generation of them soon replaces the ones taken out of circulation, and still we do not know why it happens.
It is normal for all adult humans of all sexes to love children - in the tiny perfection of an innocent small child we see our better selves, it is in our instinct to be moved to protect, to feel soft and kind towards a small person. It is sad indeed that in a very very tiny number of people, males, females, and inbetweens possibly even, this healthy and natural instinct becomes corrupted into something nasty.
I'm told that, in Canada, some very brave and merciful parents of children who had been molested have involved them selves in the rehabilitation of former child molesters. I salute these brave people, and admire them for their courage and humankindness.
Briar
Briar
Pedophilia as a topic.
RAMI
In these serials, the good author holds our attention, by creating conflict at the end of a chapter. Those reading the Princess and the Plague are now debating whether Eric/a was about to be raped (also a highly charged topic) by Julian. Anastasia, left us in suspense. That is what Heulwen created here. The number of comments attests to the fact that people are reading this story and are concerned where it is headed.
In this story, we are left to debate what David is. Perhaps he is a still a pedophile, the real thing and a danger to John/Jenny. Perhaps, he was an active pedophile, saw the error of his ways, tried to commit suicide and was helped by an innocent bystander, who got him the help he needed. Perhaps, he just knows that he is a pedophile but is able to control himself.
I think we need to hold judgment until we see where the story will take us. There are several paths it can go in. Some paths will make most of the readers happy, and some many will find horrifying. I will wait and see and then determine if I will continue reading or not.
While we see the debate about David, an unknown character, what about the sister? She is known quantity and a truly horrible person. She hates her sibling for no reason and does things that could get him hurt. Her actions are such that those who befriended John/Jenny are in danger themselves. Why are there not more protests about her character and similar characters to her in TG fiction.
I truly hope Belladonna does not withdraw from this site. Her writing is quite enjoyable and will be missed. I hope that if she does leave, she will let us know where she will be posting in the future. Based on her reasons for leaving, which I do not question, it is her decision, I can only ask where will she go? BCTS, while having it share of stories that might be on the darker side, is probably the least objectionable (if that is the right word) of the major TG fiction sites. Sapphire's is just now recovering from almost a year's downtime, and future new postings will seem limited. Crystal's Storysite which is now once again up and running is becoming the home for many XXX and XXXI stories. So moving there would not solve the her qualms. Fiction Mania, may or may not return and if it does the stories posted there are not all sweetness and light, quite the contrary. To me most of the current stories on Nifty are flavored by the general theme of the site and so reader or writer beware.
I think the perceived problem, which is also the greatness of this site, is the ease in posting a comment to a story, and the accessibility of reading that comment. On the other sites that is not the case. While some stories garner few comments, others garner many, and lead to interesting debates. Debates on what is happening to our hero/ine. Are they he, she or whatever. Debates on femdom as a topic. Debates on parental abuse. And as here debates on what topics may or may not be appropriate. Of course the stories and the authors are most important but those debates, make this site the best.
RAMI
RAMI
Just to lighten things up a touch.....
I saw the post above about being attracted to youth and remembered an old joke. Do you know why all babies, of all species are so cute? Puppies, kitties, lions, bears...all babies. Its a survival thing. They are cute so the parents don't kill them right off hand.
David Could Very Wel Be Misslabled
Due to an ex-wife causing trouble, or nosy neighbor causing trouble. I have a neighbor [daddy] who was tending to his daughter's diaper rash, because a neighbor saw him putting ointment on her groin, and the judge believing the report, he was labled child molester-pedophile. My neighbor sued the judge and neighbor and won, but the label remains.
May Your Light Forever Shine
May Your Light Forever Shine
Umm
I don't know what to say. To tell the truth, I don't really like the theme, but I find that I want to read more of this. It is a pretty weird feeling, I can tell you that.
I do love where the story is going though. It's rare to find fictions that deal with pedophilia and tg at the same time. I can recall one story, entitled 'Jenny' but the story was completely different.
So is this the end or will there be more to come?
And You Decided to Leave it at That?
A bit cruel to leave the poor kid in that situation. Out of the river and into the cellar, or something like that?
On the other hand, perhaps we would all rather not know what cmae next....
A good surprise ending, really.
Briar
Briar
Surely not!
Some of the replies seem to suggest a person who has done nothing wrong is none-the-less guilty (damnable) for harboring a completely involuntary sickness. We, all of us, harbor a sickness (capacity of unlawfulness or unholiness) not of our own doing. Beyond that statment I am not going to preach. It is an hypocrisy to hold someone else unlawful for no infraction when we all have some capacity of evil.