Page use

I'm thinking that to avoid confusion, the pages should be used like this:

The Terminology section of the main project page should contain basic definitions of terms.
This Terminology subpage should contain expansions and examples of terms as needed, AND (at the bottom) labeled drafts of changes for review, but not discussion.
This Terminology subpage talkpage should be used for terminology discussion. Herostratus 09:06, 20 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Section One

I moved all the material from the Terminology page here, into Section One, (and with removal of some old material), to reserve that page for finished project. Section Two contains the original talk page. The two sections are chronologically intertwined. Herostratus 09:06, 20 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Pedophile/Paedophile

Pedophile is a hard word to use because it used idiomatically in ways beyond the formal medical/dictionary definition.

Pedophile: [one who has] "A sexual preference for children, boys or girls or both, of prepubertal or early pubertal age."^[1] With details fleshed out (see below) this is basically the proper medical and dictionary definition.
Pedophile: [one who has] "A sexual preference for or especial attraction to adolescents." This is not the medical/dictionary definition, but is a common usage in everyday idiom. Suggested to use instead: Ephebophile, or pederast in some cases.
Pedophile: A child sex criminal. This also is is not the medical/dictionary definition, but is a common usage in the media and probably to some extent as a common idiom. Some child sex criminals are pedophiles in the medical/dictionary sense but most are not. Also called "child molester" and other terms. Suggested to use instead: child sex offender.
Pedophile, also "girllover", "boylover", or "childlover". One who is or claims to be romantically (as opposed to merely sexually) attracted to children, and who claims this as a seperate category from the medical/dictionary definition. Suggested term: to be discussed.

Although on the one hand usually can't just wave off meanings that people use, 1) we are not obligated to give slang or idiomatic meanings equal weight with scholarly definitions and 2) given the difficult nature of the subject model precision is important. Therefore we suggest that "Pedophile" only be used for in sense #1 above (and possibly for sense #4) but not for #2 or #3.

^ The quoted section is definition F65.4 in the tenth edition of the the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD-10), published by the World Health Organization, an arm of the United Nations. (Note use of usually, which clouds the definition.) Dictionaries generally give a similear definition. The American Psychological Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders gives a basically similar but more detailed description and states "age 13 or younger")

This

"Childlove" has the intended use of denoting pedophilia and other feelings. While "pedophilia" is only a word to be applied on one's sexuality, 'childlove' is pedophilia as well as feelings of emotional or romantic attachment (crushes) some pedophiles often develop. Its use may be POV because some people refuse to believe pedophiles are capable of any human sensation other than arousal. // paroxysm (n) 01:19, 27 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, using a purely descriptive terminology (as we must), we have to go by what's used in the world. "Pedophilia" is a psychiatric, and therefore medical, term, and also a term used in psychology (e.g. the Amer. Psych. Assoc.) which is not, strictly speaking, medical. In addition, as I noted, its commonly used as shorthand for what I guess you'd call "child molester" or "child sex offender" -- which doesn't make much sense, calling a convicted child molester a "convicted pedophile" is like calling Jeffery Dahmer a "convicted homosexual" -- but that's what people do. It confuses the issue, but TV newcasters use it that way.

As for "childlover", my understanding is that the term doesn't exist, at least not in common usage. There is "boylover" and "girllover", and "childlover" would make sense as an umbrella term to cover both (although then how would one describe someone who is both a girllover and boylover?), but Wikipedia can't use neologisms just because they would be handy.

I dunno. I'm having trouble differentiating between Pedophile=sexual desire for pre-pubescents and Some-other-term=romantic desire for pre-pubescents. For instance, "hetorosexual" describes people who are loving and romantic AND people who are brutal and aggressive (same for "homosexual" of course). We don't have entirely seperate terms for the loving commited husband and the guy who just uses and discards women; they're both "heterosexuals". Herostratus 07:21, 7 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm thinking this is better than what's on the Nomeclature page now. I'm still just feeling my way.

People with the APA-designated paraphelia "pedophilism".
People who are "boylovers", "girllovers", and "childlovers" (to be defined in more detail, but basically per paroxysm above).
Child sex criminals (other terms used: child molester, child abuser, others). This may be broadly broken into:
1. People who are not necessarily pedophiles in either of the above sense but who have relations (perhaps extended) with children under their care or control (typically relatives or steprelatives, students, children sharing living quarters, etc.).
2. People who are not necessarily pedophiles in either of the above senses but who have relations with children who are not under their care or control or at ready access (e.g., child rapists, sexual predators)

Herostratus 19:37, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Pedophile def'n #2

Don't know if it's too late or the wrong place to mention this or if it even matters, but... Here's the existing definition #2: "A sexual preference for or especial attraction to adolescents." I may be wrong, but maybe what we actually mean to say is "A sexual preference for or especial attraction to adolescent or younger persons" or something to that effect. Joey Q. McCartney 04:10, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Note

I dug up this old note by user Hermitian from somewhere:

Pedophilia, the condition of having ones idealized image of a sexual partner be that of a pre- or peri-pubescent minor, is only considered a mental illness in need of treatment if 1) the person is uncomfortable with the feelings, or 2) the person is unable to conform their behavior to the requirements of the law.

Hmmmm, this is techically true. A theoretical law-abiding person who is perfectly happy with their feelings would not have the paraphilia of pedophilia, I guess. I think this is a disctinction without a diference, though - the person would still be a pedophile. When homosexuality was removed from the list of disorders, homosexuals were still homosexuals.

It's true that homosexuals mainly self-identify as gay, and by the same token our theoretical happy pedophile ought to be able to self-identify as a girllover/boylover/childlover. But I don't see how it would be very common to be comfortable if you could never have (satisfying) sex. Also, to be realistic: homosexuals can self-identify as gay because they fought and basically won a culture war to do that. Most groups don't get to self-identify in terms of names - only groups that are large and/or not-extremely-unpopular do. That's not totally unreasonable; I would not want to have to call fascists something like Human Development Advocates or whatever. (Not making any sort of analogy between the two). Herostratus 01:12, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

New definition

From a Dutch study group, in 1973 (details on talk page):

"Paedophilia is the human quality characterized by an attraction to children, also in the physical sense, which is experienced as being so important that it dominates the person's life."

A recasting of that:

"Paedophilia is the attraction to children which is experienced as being so important that it dominates the person's inner sexual or romantic life."

I (Herostratus) feel this is superior to the present definition and am going to replace it with this.

Notes

Some use the term "childlover" (a gender-neutral term covering both "girllover" and "boylover") instead of "Pedophile", at least for people who are attracted to children but who contend that they are not classic pedophiles in the medical/dictionary sense. The English word "Childlover" has the same literal meaning as the Greek-derived "Pedophile", but "Pedophile" has negative connotations, although this is not inherent in the term.

Any reasonable term may be used here talk space. I suggest that the use of "Childlove/Pedophilia" or "CL/P" on the talk pages in the project would show accommodation to all points of view.

Both of these terms are conveniences for this project. Neither creates any presupposition or precedent for terminology use in articles. However, since "Pedophile" doesn't carry any inherent meaning different from "childlover", and is far the more common term, this is the current default term in articles and will presumably remain so unless consensus changes. Contentions may be made on this page's talk page.

Even this is a simplification, as noted in Pedophilia, and the term "sexual relations" is also subject to argument, as well as the meaning of the term "chilc".

See also: Wikipedia:WikiProject Sexology and Sexuality/Terminology where much parsing of shades of meaning regarding sexuality is done, although not relating to CL/P.

Definition of "child"

Naturally all physiological definitions must either cover a broad range or represent an average, as children develop at widely varying rates, depending partly on diet. Only legal definitions have precise cutoffs.

According to the article Child, (which contained logical errors which I (Herostratus) refactored myself), "Toddlerhood", "middle childhood" and "preadolescence" covers the age range 1.5 through 12.
According to the Amer. Psych. Assoc., "pedophilia" covers (interest in) the period through age 13.
According to Tanner stages, in stage 1 the body is entirely childlike, while stage 2 (the body aquires a very small amount of pubic hair, and small breast buds/penis growth), averages around the 11th birthday in girls and a bit before age 12 in boys. Tanner stage 3, where girls develop a pronounced breast contour (and thus, I'm speculating, begin to be of less interest to a true pedophile) is at around the 12th birthday. Boys develop a bit later -- the voice breaks at age 13.5, for instance. Of course these are all averages of a wide range, also Tanner studied English children. There is some indication that African-American girls mature a bit faster, and also that maturation is coming earlier these days (hormones in food?).
The UN or WHO does not seem to have a clear definition.
Age of consent laws vary quite a bit, and are not particularly useful.

Taking all this into acount, and avering everything together, it seems to me that a good working definition of "child" for our purposes could be ages 2 through 12, with the understanding that this is an approximation. One convenience of this is clear break between "child" and "teen". This does drop a year from the Amer.Psych. Assoc. definition, but enh the APA isn't God, and we are not necessarly speaking only of a paraphilia. Obviously, any new data would be welcome.

Persons under about 1.5 -- let's just say 2 for convenience, for now -- are infants, and are covered under Infantophilia rather than Pedophilia.

Interest in persons age 13 and above, then, would be covered, depending on the ages, motivations, etc. of the people involved, under Ephebophilia, Pederasty, or just nothing (there doesn't really need to be term for two rutting 15-year-olds, I guess).

Pedophile vs Pederast

There has been much editing recently by guys who feel the pedophilia is limited to pre-pubescents and pubescents and pederasty relates to older children. I'm not sure any of us have the right to be too dogmatic on this issue. There is no consensus between every learned dictionary, nor is there any consensus in the medical community or the legal situation - which varies between countries.

For instance:

The New Oxford Dictionary of English (the UK's No. 1 authority) defines paedophilia a ‘sexual feelings towards children' and a paedophile as ‘a person who is sexually attracted to children. A child is defined as ‘a young human being below the age of full physical development’. Pederasty is defined as ‘sexual activity involving a man and a boy’. There is no distinction made between feelings for or attraction to pre-pubescent, pubescent or adolescent children. The prime distinction is between the sexual feelings of a pedophile ( male or female) and the sexual activity of the pederast (male).

The American Heritage Dictionary defines pedophilia as ‘The act or fantasy on the part of an adult of engaging in sexual activity with a child or children.’ And pederasty as ‘A man who has sexual relations, especially anal intercourse, with a boy.' Merriam Webster defines a pederast as 'one that practices anal intercourse especially with a boy'. There is no age definition or exclusion.

The American Psychological Association and the US Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders strictly define a pedophile as 'a person who over at least a 6 month period has recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors involving sexual activity with a prepubescent child or children (age 13 years or younger).' The DSM manual adds that a person who fits this diagnosis would have to be at least 16 years old and five years older than the child to whom their sexual fantasies are directed.

Any thoughts? I would plan to add this text with your edits onto the pedophilia page.

Tony Sandel Apr 2006

Tony, here is a reponse to your post.
- Dictionary definitions aside, I'm not convinced that that is this is the actual scholarly understanding of what "pederasty" means, to the extent that there is a scholarly understanding. I know the word is used in both ways (teen-only and pre-teen) in the everyday world, and in fact often includes both sexes in common usage. The actual usage is what matters, and its probably a hard word to pin down, but my inclination without looking into it in more detail is that pederasty usually refers to relations between an adult male and a teen male.
- Politics:
  - User:Haiduc is an extraordinarily erudite, energetic, cogent, and relentless editor and debater. He's an excellent editor. He's on a mission - and by that I don't mean to accuse him of any POV or bias in his edits - but he's on a mission to ensure that Wikipedia reflects what he sees as the truth of pederasty: (1) it involves men and teen boys (2) it is far more common in societies than is commonly assumed (3) it is an integral part of homosexuality, homsexual history, homosexual culture, and what being a homosexual is (4) it is generally beneficial to society and the parties involved.
  - I do not want to tangle with him (and his supporters). You do not want to tangle with him, believe me. He knows far about this issue than you or I.
  - It's not just Haiduc. The group protecting the NAMBLA article, and others, will be all over us like a cheap suit if we try to define pederasty downward.
  - And for other reasons both political and scholarly, it's greatly preferable IMO to seperate teen sex and sexuality from pre-teen sex and sexuality, provided this is scholarly of course.
User:Haiduc provided me with the following cite, and he has many others I'm sure: "{Pederasty is] The erotic relationship between an adult male and a youth, generally one between the ages of twelve and seventeen, in which the older partner is attracted to the younger one who returns his affection" by Vern L. Bullough in [2].

Herostratus 17:01, 24 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

New here, so I apologise if the manner in which my note here was added is inappropriate but the last bullet entry notes that Haiduc provided the writer with a cite. Now the post cited may have been changed, I don't know, but it reads "... adult male and a boy, generally ..." not "... adult male and a youth, generally ..." Cites are cites, and quotation marks are quotation marks, but as I said, the post cited may have been changed by the original author. DustyR 16:17, 15 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Section Two

"Childlove" and "pedophilia"

I just thought I'd note the different shades of these terms:

"Pedophilia" is a medical term which describes the sexual attraction to children and nothing more; meanwhile,
"Childlove" has the intended use of denoting pedophilia and other feelings. While "pedophilia" is only a word to be applied on one's sexuality, 'childlove' is pedophilia as well as feelings of emotional or romantic attachment (crushes) some pedophiles often develop. Its use may be POV because some people refuse to believe pedophiles are capable of any human sensation other than arousal. // paroxysm (n) 01:19, 27 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, using a purely descriptive terminology (as we must), we have to go by what's used in the world. "Pedophilia" is a psychiatric, and therefore medical, term, and also a term used in psychology (e.g. the Amer. Psych. Assoc.) which is not, strictly speaking, medical. In addition, as I noted, its commonly used as shorthand for what I guess you'd call "child molester" or "child sex offender" -- which doesn't make much sense, calling a convicted child molester a "convicted pedophile" is like calling Jeffery Dahmer a "convicted homosexual" -- but that's what people do. It confuses the issue, but TV newcasters use it that way.

As for "childlover", my understanding is that the term doesn't exist, at least not in common usage. There is "boylover" and "girllover", and "childlover" would make sense as an umbrella term to cover both (although then how would one describe someone who is both a girllover and boylover?), but Wikipedia can't use neologisms just because they would be handy.

I dunno. I'm having trouble differentiating between Pedophile=sexual desire for pre-pubescents and Some-other-term=romantic desire for pre-pubescents. For instance, "hetorosexual" describes people who are loving and romantic AND people who are brutal and aggressive (same for "homosexual" of course). We don't have entirely seperate terms for the loving commited husband and the guy who just uses and discards women; they're both "heterosexuals". Herostratus 07:21, 7 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm thinking this is better than what's on the Nomeclature page now. I'm still just feeling my way.

People with the APA-designated paraphelia "pedophilism".
People who are "boylovers", "girllovers", and "childlovers" (to be defined in more detail, but basically per paroxysm above).
Child sex criminals (other terms used: child molester, child abuser, others). This may be broadly broken into:
1. People who are not necessarily pedophiles in either of the above sense but who have relations (perhaps extended) with children under their care or control (typically relatives or steprelatives, students, children sharing living quarters, etc.).
2. People who are not necessarily pedophiles in either of the above senses but who have relations with children who are not under their care or control or at ready access (e.g., child rapists, sexual predators)

Herostratus 19:37, 17 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Pedophile def'n #2

Don't know if it's too late or the wrong place to mention this or if it even matters, but... Here's the existing definition #2: "A sexual preference for or especial attraction to adolescents." I may be wrong, but maybe what we actually mean to say is "A sexual preference for or especial attraction to adolescent or younger persons" or something to that effect. Joey Q. McCartney 04:10, 28 February 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Note

I dug up this old note by user Hermitian from somewhere:

Pedophilia, the condition of having ones idealized image of a

sexual partner be that of a pre- or peri-pubescent minor, is

only considered a mental illness in need of treatment if

1) the person is uncomfortable with the feelings, or 2) the

person is unable to conform their behavior to the requirements

of the law.

Hmmmm, this is techically true. A theoretical law-abiding person who is perfectly happy would not have the paraphilia of pedophilia, I guess. I think this is a disctinction without a diference, though - the person would still be a pedophile. When homosexuality was removed from the list of disorders, homosexuals were still homosexuals.

It's true that homosexuals mainly self-identify as gay, and by the same token our theoretical happy pedophile ought to be able to self-identify as a girllover/boylover/childlover. But I don't see how it would be very common to be comfortable if you could never have (satisfying) sex. Also, to be realistic: homosexuals can self-identify as gay because they fought and basically won a culture war to do that. Most groups don't get to self-identify in terms of names - only groups that are large and/or not-extremely-unpopular do. That's not totally unreasonable; I would not want to have to call fascists something like Human Development Advocates or whatever. (Not making any sort of analogy between the two). Herostratus 01:12, 1 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

a better definition?

Here's a less-medical definition that I like. The following is excerpted from The Dutch Paedophile Emancipation Movement by Dr. Frits Bernardm in Paidika: The Journal of Paedophilia, volume 1 number 2 (Autumn 1987), p. 35-45. Copyright © 1987, Frits Bernard.

Under the auspices of the [Dutch] Nationaal Centrum voor Geestelijke Volksgezondheid (NCGV; National Center for Mental Health) a special workgroup was formed in 1973 to deal with the possibilities of assistance for paedophiles. This NCGV workgroup was made up of prominent authorities in various areas such as psychology, criminology, psychiatry, etc.17 This new group met for the first time on March 18, 1974, in Utrecht. The definitive report concerning the conclusions of the commission appeared in 1976, entitled Pedofilie en Samenleving (Paedophilia and Society). In the report the words "paedophilia" and "paedophile" are defined as follows:

Paedophilia is the human quality characterized by an attraction to children, also in the physical sense, which is experienced as being so important that it dominates the person's life. Every adult for whom this attraction is of fundamental importance is a paedophile as long as this attraction has importance for him or her.

I would recast that somewhat, maybe, this:

Paedophilia is the attraction to children which is experienced as being so important that it dominates the person's inner sexual or romantic life. Every adult for whom this attraction is of fundamental importance is a paedophile as long as this attraction has importance for him or her.

I think an advantage of this is that the term sexual or romantic allows the term to cover classic pedophiles and also childlovers, to the extent that there is a difference. At the same time, "dominates the person's life" is awfully strong, and "sexual or romantic" dilutes that somewhat. I think some self-identifying pedophiles/childlovers would not necessarily agree that it dominates their entire life. I think that "inner" is important to add (if "sexual or romantic" is added) to clarify that we're not (usually) talking about actual activities, in most cases. The other changes are just for clarity and succinctness, I think.

I dunno. Maybe the 1973 version is better. Hmmm. Herostratus 23:53, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Adolescent.

Swell. As if things weren't confusing enough, the article Adolescence says that the World Health Organization defines "adolescence" as covering ages 10-20. Herostratus 10:03, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I know that this is the direction that the medical community and human rights people are moving. Off the top of my head, I can't tell you any specific source that support this. I'll make finding information about this at the top of my To do list. FloNight ^talk 10:51, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Really. I don't a problem with it, it's just -- grrr I like it when things are nailed down. I saw that the State of Missouri Dept. of Education has a term they use for people 10-14, someday I'll go back and retrieve it. Ten seems kind of young for "adolescent", to me, but what do I know? People do seem to be maturing faster these days... Herostratus 17:14, 29 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"Child" (moved here from main project talk page)

An editor recently wrote this comment on a talk page:

Mixing together 6-year-olds and 17-year-olds confuses the issue, and at Wikipedia:WikiProject Pedophilia Article Watch we are trying to encourage the word "child" to refer only to pre-adolescents (roughly, persons through age 12) and older persons, who may be styled teens, adolescents, or youth.

For many legal and cultural purposes, "child" is synonymous with "Minor". Where did the editors of this project decide on this strategy? -Will Beback 09:18, 23 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Will, I do not agree with that editors assertion. One of the reasons I joined PAW was to persuade fellow editors to expand the definition of child back to its real cultural and legal meaning in our articles. Since the project was launched we haven't discussed it to my knowledge. I'll make a statement about it today here. FloNight ^talk 09:57, 23 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Flow and Will. I wrote that, and I write a description of why on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Pedophilia Article Watch/Nomenclature page on March 8, maybe that page should be on your watchlists too. Anyway, I didn't receive any feedback about that until now.

Yeah, I thought about this a little bit. First of all, "child" is a pretty slippery term that doesn't seem to have a truly scientific or agreed-upon definition. Dictionaries just say basically "a young human". Leaving aside the meaning of "offspring" which has no age limit, child can certainly be taken to mean "minor" (especially in legal contexts) but it's also used to mean basically pre-adolescent. Try this simple test: ask your 17-year-old daughter how many children are in her class. Then stand back... =)

Second, from the standpoint of pedophilia... there is a huge difference between (say) a 17- or 16- or 15-year-old and and a 6-year-old, sexually. 16-year-olds do engage fully in sexual activity, some of them, and willingly too. While a 15-year-old and a 22-year-old engaged in a love affair is certainly very troublesome on many levels, an 8-year-old and a 22-year-old engaged in the same level of sexual activity is just a whole nother situation altogether. Anyway, I based the definition I proposed on the Amer. Psych. Assoc. definition of the paraphilia Pedophilia, which specifically says it covers only kids through 13 (I proposed 12, for reasons stated at Wikipedia:WikiProject Pedophilia Article Watch/Nomenclature.)

Third, purely from a strategic point of view, I personally am not ready at this time to tangle with the pro-pederasty set, for a number of reasons. Herostratus 20:42, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I've made some changes to the nomenclature which I hope clear things up; explaining a rationale for the narrow definition of child, and auggesting that where an article uses a different definition of child for commonsense reasons there is no intention to be dogmatic about 13-year-olds not being children. Hope this is ok. The Land 21:17, 25 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The Land, I appreciate your very reasonable attempt to settle this quickyly. Unfortunately, I'm not satisfied. It makes no sense to me for us to use the most restrictive pedophilia definition. It forces us to modify our child sexual abuse and child sexuality articles away from real world legal, medical, developmental psychology, children's rights. --FloNight ^talk 04:47, 26 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Er, OK, I don't want to fight about it, Flo. I mean I really really don't agree but I wanna save my ammo for other uses. It's not necessary to have or use a single definition - it would be good, but if we can't, we can't. I'm not gonna back down. For one thing, I can't, given the defintion used in Child. But if readers don't understand the term in a single way, probably we shouldn't use it in a single way anyway. The only solution I can think of is to simply note that this project has no agreed-upon definition, to give the two disputed usages, and request editors to use the terms "minor" and "pre-adolescent child" and/or specify an age range if they use just the term "child", where this is helfpul and appropriate. How about this:

"The term "child" does not have a single generally agreed-upon scientific or scholarly definition and may be used in different contexts to cover different age ranges. Therefore its use in articles is deprecated, and where possible the following terms should be used:

A minor is person under the age of legal adulthood, and the term may be taken to mean a person under the age of 18, unless specified otherwise, since 18 is the age of legal adulthood the the overwhelming majority of jurisdictions.
A pre-adolescent child is a child who has not entered adolescence. Since there is no single point at which this occurs, and since the onset of adolescent varies among persons, the term may generally may be taken to as more-or-less congruent with "pre-teen", that is to describe a person who is has not yet achieved his or her 13th birthday.

When the term "child" alone is used for convenience (as in article titles), editors should make an effort to clarify which age range they are speaking about.

OK? Again, I think it's a shame. It would be a lot easier to say "There are some child blah blah blah...", since the Child article specifies child=pre-adolescent, and say "A teen such-and-such". At any rate, if you're using "child" to mean "minor", you don't want to link the term. Herostratus 02:44, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

OK, also a couple of points:

I belatedly apologize for invoking the project improperly in the edit at shown the top of this section ("...at Wikipedia:WikiProject Pedophilia Article Watch we are trying..."). However, in my defence, I did post the (proposed) definition on the /Nomenclature subpage, which members can watch, and didn't get any objection after a reasonable wait, so I don't think I was totally out of line. But I apologize, I only did it that one time, I won't do it again (without clear consensus), and I'll strike out that one edit.
I dunno, maybe you are right Flo and Will, I just don't know.
Now this is interesting: coincidentally, Corax just yesterday went through Child sexual abuse and replaced all "child"s with "minor"s (and some other minor changes). I don't know Corax bue he seems to be a good editor, and this dif gives a nice snapshot of how an article looks before and after. I don't have a problem with the change, I feel pretty neutral, I can see the pros and cons. Herostratus 20:20, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Herostratus, I saw the changes and like them. Minor seems like the perfect word. I'm sorry if I seem stubborn and like I'm overreacting. Talk posts like this aren't the best method to explain complex ideas. FloNight ^talk 21:03, 27 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

(moved here from main page)

Wouldn't we want the def of pedophilia to mention that it is a mental illness per the DSM and ICD-9? DPeterson^talk 18:01, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe, but not necessarily. We are not a medical encyclopedia and while medicine, being a science, is certainly an important source for us, it is not necessarily the sole or even prime source. Psychology is also important here. Herostratus 19:05, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]
A general note. The DSM -is- used in psychological diagnosis. Thus, both medical and psych fields are invested here. It is classified as a mental illness. Just as we mention that sociopathy is, obsessive compulsive disorder, etc. Likely a good idea to use the -exact- terminology and criteria used in those articles, which this one meets: "psychiatric disorder".
A mention, rather than corroboration, of DSM, ICD and related definitions will better serve to protect Wikipedia's neutrality on this subject. Something along the lines of: "DSM-IV defines pedophilia as a paraphilia occuring when...". It is important that Wikipedia not adopt as objective fact common-practice de facto standards that are highly subjected to interpretation and liable to immediate change (i.e. up until DSM-III homosexuality was listed as a "mental disorder" and DSM-V may quite literally no longer contain a section for "paraphilias" [3]). To reconcile both points above, as DPeterson noted, its definition as per DSM, ICD and related major entities on the subject should be included, but as Herostratus mentions, especially in the psychology of human sexuality, diagnostic criteria only serve to represent current modes of thought; if Wikipedia is to maintain timelessly neutral, it should avoid assuming these as objective fact. 74.12.74.247 07:02, 22 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]