TW: CSA, Pedophilia, Suicide

Just so there's some context on my page:

My father is a clinically diagnosed pedophile, and I got to know pretty well what that entailed as a child. But for those of you who may not know what it means to be a pedophile, allow me to clarify:

My father struggles mentally to separate out the fact that he logically knows that children under the age of 13 should not be engaged sexually, with his mind telling him that he is in fact attracted to children not adults.

This does not mean he WANTS to harm children, however.

After years and years of my abuse, and his dulling his mind with weed in an attempt to shut off his sex drive and his urges, he took the hunting rifle from our home and went out back to shoot himself. To protect me from him. To protect ALL children from him.

He was shaking too badly to load the gun, and my mother intervened before he could shoot himself.

I have never, at any point, wished he succeeded. Despite all of my abuse, and trauma, and the things I find out, I have never looked back on that moment and gone: I wish he did it.

Looking at art of cartoon children? Wasn't of interest to him, except in the context of bonding with me. I know this because years and years later I asked him if he was getting off on those cartoons we'd watched together that I thought was just harmless fun. He was very specific.

I had been afraid that EVERYTHING in my childhood would be tainted by his mental illness. I had been afraid that my coping mechanisms had been tainted by it, too. His interest in Powerpuff Girls and Dragonball Z was wholly just an enjoyment of seeing me, as his daughter, happy.

So this father's day, here it is. This is what I get to think about every time people on this site scream that cartoon characters with arbitrarily assigned ages having sex is pedophilia, or pedo fodder. My life, my trauma, my family becomes somehow equal to an entity that will

never suffer my hardships, will never wake up crying wondering if their father ever really loved them or if every time he saw them thought about them naked, will never feel any of that grief and remorse over a lost childhood. Cartoon characters - FICTIONAL characters - do not

compare to the lifetime of nightmares, the instability of an entire family structure, the dissolution of trust towards ANY blood relations, or the fear of not knowing who you can turn to, and who is going to believe you, and who is going to tell you to get over it. And fiction

is not going to make you suddenly want to fuck your sibling, your underaged friend, or anything else. Pedophilia is a mental disorder. Pedophiles need therapy, not death. If you want to protect kids, stop obscuring the actions of REAL predators under false allegations stemming

from the enjoyment of fictional content. All that does is tell me you have no fucking clue what pedophilia actually is.

You're causing harm, and helping no one. You're creating a culture in which predators can hide and their wrongs can be missed under a slew of allegations about

CARTOONS.

Please, PLEASE educate yourself. Read studies. Learn about healthy coping mechanisms, including transforming your trauma through reimagining things in ways that put you in control. Stop devaluing what 'pedophile' means!

And just so we're clear? There are predators who do assault children who are NOT pedophiles. They do it for the same reason most rapes occur: power. A child is easy to overpower and control. This is not the same as a pedophile, despite the act being an act of pedophilia.

Pedophilia is a paraphilia. It's a mental disorder. And when I learned what my father was it honestly made things simultaneously easier and harder. Accepting that my father is mental ill was much easier than stressing over what would have caused a man to do something like that to

a child. His own child, no less. So for the love of fuck, stop calling people pedophiles when you don't know what the word actually means!