From this book.
Section III: How many paedophiles are there? Another form of evidence is to use data on brain structure and neuroendocrinology. This has some fascinating implications both for understanding how many paedophiles there may be in a population and also what the biochemical basis of paedophilia (or at least some aspects of it) might be. Studies have looked at how the male human brain is ‘masculinised’ and ‘defeminised’ by hormones circulating in the mother’s body while the baby is still in the womb.
At the embryo stage, all babies are ‘female’ in that, unless acted upon by specific hormones, babies develop the internal reproductive organs, external genitalia and forms of brain structure which are ‘feminine’ or ‘female-typical’. Only in the relative presence of certain hormones and the relative absence of others will embryos develop into males. In order to become male, therefore, an embryo needs both to be actively ‘masculinised’ and also actively ‘defeminised’.
The process of masculinisation occurs first, then defeminisation. According to biologists studying animal models (Feierman 1990; Hutchison and Hutchison 1990), the neurochemical process of masculinisation links sexuality with ‘social dominance’ behaviours, that is, competitive aggressiveness, active ‘courtship’ and ‘mounting’ or ‘insertion’ behaviours. This linking of sexuality with social dominance makes males sexually attracted to ‘small’, ‘weak’, ‘young’ and ‘helpless’ individuals (Feierman 1990: 46).
Feierman suggests that the brains of paedophiles are ‘extremely masculinised’ (1990: 46; later Feierman adjusts this to ‘slightly more masculinised than occurs in adult heterosexual males’, 1990: 53), making them more likely to find extremely submissive (that is, very small, weak, young and helpless) individuals the most sexually attractive.
The neurochemical process of defeminisation removes the ‘female-typical’ behaviour patterns (such as mammals sticking out their bottoms to encourage males to mate with them – think Marilyn Monroe, if you will) and at the same time increases the likelihood that males will find such ‘feminised’ behaviour sexually alluring (think of the typical heterosexual male response to Monroe).
Feierman claims that paedophiles are ‘slightly less defeminised’ than heterosexual men (1990: 53), thus they would be less likely to be aroused by typical ‘feminine’ behaviours.
Sociobiological explanations for human behaviour do have a rather conservative tendency to look at what is, and then search for explanations in unlikely places (mice, reptiles, birds and so forth) to explain and justify the social status quo; however, the two-dimensional model of embryonic brain masculinisation and brain defeminisation can both suggest why some men might find children sexually attractive and also predict, given a normal distribution curve for this biochemical process, what order of magnitude we might expect for paedophiles in a population.
Feierman (1990: 51), looking only at men, suggests that ‘the central tendency in evolution is to produce heterosexual males by producing an optimal amount of masculinisation and defeminisation of the male brain in utero.’ When the levels of masculinisation and defeminisation are slightly skewed, homosexuality, paedophilia (to either males or females) or transsexualism will result. From this model, Feierman predicts that, in any given population of men, paedophiles will be more common than homosexuals who will in turn be more common than transsexuals. He also predicts that:
If the distribution of the points in the model reflects differing degrees of masculinisation and defeminisation of the male brain, then there is every reason to believe that the distributions would actually be continuous across all males rather than being discontinuous around arbitrary and nonmutually exclusive categories such as ‘heterosexual’ and ‘androphilic ephebophile’ [a man attracted to adolescent boys]. (Feirerman 1990: 52)
Feierman later describes this rather technically but memorably in the following way:
[Paedophiles] are the ‘by-products’ of the inevitable biological variation around a selected central tendency. So that most males will ‘love’ children and adolescents just the right amount…some males will unfortunately love them too little and some too much. Such males, who love children and adolescents to a degree more than average or less than average, will be carried along in a population in the tails of frequency distributions. …It is most likely, therefore, that pedo- and ephebophilia are individual, facultative proclivities that are bent out of the tails of hormonal frequency distributions around the optimum brain masculinisation and brain feminisation of the ‘average male’. (Feierman 1990: 559, 563)
In other words, Feierman seems to be implicitly proposing four important hypotheses in this model: 1. Paedophilia is caused by brain chemistry arising before birth: that is, paedophiles are born, not made. 2. Paedophiles fall within a normal distribution curve for human males. 3. Paedophiles are more common than homosexuals. 4. Sexual attraction to individuals smaller and more ‘feminine’ than oneself (including boys and young adolescents) is part of a continuum occurring in all males, not just paedophiles, and thus there is no clear cut-off point between a ‘paedophile’ and a ‘non-paedophile’.
Feierman is also, of course, conflating ‘love’ with sexual attraction, but, leaving that on one side, these are still some pretty hefty claims and would clearly need a great deal of substantiating evidence. Hutchison and Hutchison, for example, working for the British Medical Research Council Neuroendocrine Development and Behaviour Group and writing on ‘Sexual development at the neurohormonal level: the role of androgens’, are more cautious, commenting that most work so far has been carried out on animal models such as rodents and birds, as well as in-vitro experiments and that postnatal social experience ‘appears to be more influential in human development than it is in the development of nonhuman species’ (1990: 538). Feierman would also need to explain why, if this is an evolutionary biological process, we do not find paedophile behaviour in animals, including in primates (for evidence that we do not, see chapters in Feierman’s own edited volume, 1990).
Following on from Feierman’s implication that sexual attraction to children may represent a continuum within human male sexuality, a further way to approach the question of the prevalence of paedophilia is to look at what ‘normal’ adults – who are not defined in any way as ‘paedophile’ – may reveal about their sexual attraction to children.
There are eight studies in total which have been conducted to date, which begin to help us answer the question of how many paedophiles there are, by looking at the responses of ‘normal’ men in the general adult male population (and one of the studies also included women in their study). The studies relied on three basic methods: direct self-report (what the research subjects themselves said about their sexual arousal to children); more general questionnaire responses (which included measurements such as ‘sexual impulsivity’ and self-esteem); and physical responses.
You might want to read this book. It has a lot of personal stories and anecdotes from pedophiles.
You might also want to check out virped.org, an organization of non-offending pedophiles, and inquire about joining their forums or having the admins post your contact info on the forum.
You could read this article on medium, although in the interest of full disclosure I was interviewed for that article, I was "Mike"
You can also PM me, I'm a non-offending pedophile myself and I'd be willing to answer questions or provide some insight if you'd like.
I don't think there are any novels that give an accurate sense of what its like to be a pedophile. If you're really curious about it, than I suggest checking out Understanding and Addressing Adult sexual Attraction to Children by Sarah Goode.
You might also want to check out this article about young, non-offending pedophiles.
I'm a non-offending pedophile myself so if you have any questions about it feel free to PM and I'll do my best to answer.