It’s been going downhill for a while but I feel it’s gotten exponentially worse. Someone made a post under “insane facebook people” which had a picture of a sign on a hospital patient’s door that said “please knock before entering I wear a veil”. I said “you have to cover your face or Mohammed will smite you!” (which is literally the reason they do it) and the mod perma-banned me for violating a “rule”. I called them a power hungry loser and said it was clearly a sarcastic comment…and they responded by calling me a Republican (which confuses the hell out of me) and blocked me from responding to them for 3 days.
Someone else posted in the New York City thread saying “inflation is out of control, this place wants $15 for a bacon, egg and cheese!” and everyone there was supporting the place that charged $15. Any comment OP made was immediately downvoted to hell, regardless of the content.
People were calling someone from a story posted a “pedophile” in another sub because they found an adult (18 years old) attractive. When someone else was like “umm a pedophile is someone that’s attracted to pre-pubescent children…” everyone was just like “shut up pedo! You just want to fuck kids!”.
Everyone seems to have a hair trigger, is insane, or loves to rage-bait/troll just for the fun of it.
It’s not a way to defend themselves…it’s literally the definition of pedophilia. People that are convicted of being pedophiles aren’t people that are attracted to teenagers/young adults, they’re attracted to literal children (those that are 10 years old or younger).
Calling a 17 year old “a child” has a much different connotation compared to calling a 7 year old “a child”. It’s like calling someone that just turned 65 a “senior citizen” even though they are as active as a 50 year old, vs calling a 90 year old a “senior citizen”.
If you’re 22 and you say you find a 17 year old attractive there are screams of “pedophile!” even though there’s only a 5 year age difference. If she was 22 and you were 27 people wouldn’t bat an eye. Don’t even attempt to use the argument of “17 year olds aren’t emotionally mature!” because (at least in the US) we hand them guns and tell them to fight in wars, and give them licenses to drive cars.
I have explained what the word means very clearly. and nobody is convicted of Paedophilia, it’s not against the law to have an attraction in your head, it’s the acts that are against the law.
The rest of your comment just seems to be justifying paedophilia.