>>15369There's different kinds of pedophiles.
The common one you see in media is this seedy freak who gathers CP and frequently trues to lure children into their home/van, but in reality, most pedophiles are just people. Sexual predators exist for sure, but they're a minority of pedos.
It's kind of like a homosexual, it's a person, but their sexuality is different, they have an attraction to pre-pubescent children. Now, this isn't a strictly healthy kind of attraction, but most understand this, they think children are sexy, they have a romantic interest in children (people tend to think only about the sexual side, not the romantic interest), but they're also not typically insane (because most people aren't), so they see why this is a problem, and they chose to not act on their sexuality, not on real people anyway, either with the rationale of "Oh no, I couldn't do something horrible like that to a child!", "It wouldn't be right for me if I love someone to subject them to something really awful!"
Of course, there's also those who try to rationalize their conflicting feelings about it, citing studies and genuinely trying to argue "But it's really not that bad or hurtful if it's not rape", which can arguably be true (based on some research), but it still foregoes the fact that children don't really have a fundamental understanding of sex or consent.
