Ephebophilia
Encyclopedia
Ephebophilia is the sexual preference of adults for mid-to-late adolescents
, generally ages 15 to 19. The term was originally used in the late 19th to mid 20th century, and has been more recently revisited by Ray Blanchard
. It is one of a number of sexual preferences across age groups subsumed under the technical term "chronophilia
". Ephebophilia strictly denotes the preference for mid-to-late adolescent sexual partners, not the mere presence of some level of sexual attraction. In sexual ethics
, it may be defined as a sexual preference for girls generally 14–16 years old, and boys generally 14–19 years old. Some authors define ephebophilia as a sexual preference for pubescent and adolescent boys.
In research environments, specific terms are used for chronophilias: for instance, ephebophilia to refer to the sexual preference for mid-to-late adolescents, hebephilia
to refer to the sexual preference for earlier pubescent
individuals, and pedophilia
to refer to the sexual preference for prepubescent child
ren. However, the term pedophilia is commonly, but incorrectly, used to refer to any sexual interest in minors
below the legal age of consent
, regardless of their level of physical, mental, or psychological development. Acting upon ephebophilic preference is illegal when the adolescent is below the legal age of consent (e.g. statutory rape
).
) variously defined as "one arrived at puberty", "a youth of eighteen who underwent his dokimasia
and was registered as a citizen (Athens)", and "arriving at man's estate;" and φιλία (-philia
) "love". It has been used by Dutch
psychologist Frits Bernard as far back as 1950, reprinted in 1960 in the gay support magazine Vriendschap under the pseudonym Victor Servatius, also crediting it to Hirschfeld though giving no exact date.
The term has been described by Frenchman
Félix Buffière in 1980 and Pakistan
i scholar Tariq Rahman, who argued that "ephebophilia" should be used in preference to "homosexuality
" when describing the aesthetic and erotic interest of adult men in adolescent boys
in classical Persian
, Turkish
or Urdu
literature.
near (or in some cases, identical) to that of full-grown adults, some level of sexual attraction to persons in the age group is common among adults. Ephebophilia is used only to describe the preference for mid-to-late adolescent sexual partners, not the mere presence of some level of sexual attraction. Generally, the preference is not regarded by psychologist
s as a pathology
when it does not interfere with other major areas of one's life, and is not listed by name as a mental disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision
(DSM-IV-TR), the ICD-10
, or as a paraphilia
. However, the preference can sometimes be diagnosed as a disorder if it results in dysfunction or exploitative behavior, under the DSM specification 309.2, "Paraphilia Not Otherwise Specified."
Researchers state that hebephilia
, erotic interest which centers on pubescents, has not come into widespread use, even among professionals who work with sex offenders, and may have been confused with the term ephebophilia, "which denotes men who prefer adolescents around 15–19 years of age." It is concluded that "few would want to label erotic interest in late — or even mid — adolescents as a psychopathology
, so the term hebephilia may have been ignored along with ephebophilia."
Adolescence
Adolescence is a transitional stage of physical and mental human development generally occurring between puberty and legal adulthood , but largely characterized as beginning and ending with the teenage stage...
, generally ages 15 to 19. The term was originally used in the late 19th to mid 20th century, and has been more recently revisited by Ray Blanchard
Ray Blanchard
Ray Milton Blanchard is an American-Canadian sexologist, best known for his research studies on pedophilia, gender dysphoria, and sexual orientation. He has also published research studies on phallometry and several paraphilias, including transvestism and autoerotic asphyxia.-Education and...
. It is one of a number of sexual preferences across age groups subsumed under the technical term "chronophilia
Chronophilia
The term chronophilia was used by John Money that he defined as a form of paraphilia in which an individual experiences sexual attraction limited to individuals of particular age ranges...
". Ephebophilia strictly denotes the preference for mid-to-late adolescent sexual partners, not the mere presence of some level of sexual attraction. In sexual ethics
Sexual ethics
Sexual ethics refers to those aspects of ethics that deal with issues arising from all aspects of sexuality and human sexual behavior...
, it may be defined as a sexual preference for girls generally 14–16 years old, and boys generally 14–19 years old. Some authors define ephebophilia as a sexual preference for pubescent and adolescent boys.
In research environments, specific terms are used for chronophilias: for instance, ephebophilia to refer to the sexual preference for mid-to-late adolescents, hebephilia
Hebephilia
Hebephilia refers to the sexual preference for individuals in the early years of puberty . Girls typically begin the process of puberty at age 10 or 11; boys at age 11 or 12...
to refer to the sexual preference for earlier pubescent
Puberty
Puberty is the process of physical changes by which a child's body matures into an adult body capable of reproduction, as initiated by hormonal signals from the brain to the gonads; the ovaries in a girl, the testes in a boy...
individuals, and pedophilia
Pedophilia
As a medical diagnosis, pedophilia is defined as a psychiatric disorder in adults or late adolescents typically characterized by a primary or exclusive sexual interest in prepubescent children...
to refer to the sexual preference for prepubescent child
Child
Biologically, a child is generally a human between the stages of birth and puberty. Some vernacular definitions of a child include the fetus, as being an unborn child. The legal definition of "child" generally refers to a minor, otherwise known as a person younger than the age of majority...
ren. However, the term pedophilia is commonly, but incorrectly, used to refer to any sexual interest in minors
Minor (law)
In law, a minor is a person under a certain age — the age of majority — which legally demarcates childhood from adulthood; the age depends upon jurisdiction and application, but is typically 18...
below the legal age of consent
Age of consent
While the phrase age of consent typically does not appear in legal statutes, when used in relation to sexual activity, the age of consent is the minimum age at which a person is considered to be legally competent to consent to sexual acts. The European Union calls it the legal age for sexual...
, regardless of their level of physical, mental, or psychological development. Acting upon ephebophilic preference is illegal when the adolescent is below the legal age of consent (e.g. statutory rape
Statutory rape
The phrase statutory rape is a term used in some legal jurisdictions to describe sexual activities where one participant is below the age required to legally consent to the behavior...
).
Etymology
The term comes from the (ephebosEphebos
Ephebos , also anglicised as ephebe or archaically ephebus , is a Greek word for an adolescent age group or a social status reserved for that age in Antiquity....
) variously defined as "one arrived at puberty", "a youth of eighteen who underwent his dokimasia
Dokimasia
In Ancient Greece, dokimasia was the name used at Athens to denote the process of ascertaining the capacity of the citizens for the exercise of public rights and duties....
and was registered as a citizen (Athens)", and "arriving at man's estate;" and φιλία (-philia
-phil-
Suffixes with the common part -phil- are used to specify some kind of attraction or affinity to something, in particular the love or obsession with something...
) "love". It has been used by Dutch
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
psychologist Frits Bernard as far back as 1950, reprinted in 1960 in the gay support magazine Vriendschap under the pseudonym Victor Servatius, also crediting it to Hirschfeld though giving no exact date.
The term has been described by Frenchman
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
Félix Buffière in 1980 and Pakistan
Pakistan
Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...
i scholar Tariq Rahman, who argued that "ephebophilia" should be used in preference to "homosexuality
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...
" when describing the aesthetic and erotic interest of adult men in adolescent boys
Pederasty
Pederasty or paederasty is an intimate relationship between an adult and an adolescent boy outside his immediate family. The word pederasty derives from Greek "love of boys", a compound derived from "child, boy" and "lover".Historically, pederasty has existed as a variety of customs and...
in classical Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
, Turkish
Turkish language
Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
or Urdu
Urdu
Urdu is a register of the Hindustani language that is identified with Muslims in South Asia. It belongs to the Indo-European family. Urdu is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan. It is also widely spoken in some regions of India, where it is one of the 22 scheduled languages and an...
literature.
Characteristics
Because mid-to-late adolescents may have physical characteristicsSex differences in humans
A sex difference is a distinction of biological and/or physiological characteristics associated with either males or females of a species. These can be of several types, including direct and indirect. Direct being the direct result of differences prescribed by the Y-chromosome, and indirect being...
near (or in some cases, identical) to that of full-grown adults, some level of sexual attraction to persons in the age group is common among adults. Ephebophilia is used only to describe the preference for mid-to-late adolescent sexual partners, not the mere presence of some level of sexual attraction. Generally, the preference is not regarded by psychologist
Psychologist
Psychologist is a professional or academic title used by individuals who are either:* Clinical professionals who work with patients in a variety of therapeutic contexts .* Scientists conducting psychological research or teaching psychology in a college...
s as a pathology
Pathology
Pathology is the precise study and diagnosis of disease. The word pathology is from Ancient Greek , pathos, "feeling, suffering"; and , -logia, "the study of". Pathologization, to pathologize, refers to the process of defining a condition or behavior as pathological, e.g. pathological gambling....
when it does not interfere with other major areas of one's life, and is not listed by name as a mental disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is published by the American Psychiatric Association and provides a common language and standard criteria for the classification of mental disorders...
(DSM-IV-TR), the ICD-10
ICD-10
The International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, 10th Revision is a medical classification list for the coding of diseases, signs and symptoms, abnormal findings, complaints, social circumstances, and external causes of injury or diseases, as maintained by the...
, or as a paraphilia
Paraphilia
Paraphilia is a biomedical term used to describe sexual arousal to objects, situations, or individuals that are not part of normative stimulation and that may cause distress or serious problems for the paraphiliac or persons associated with him or her...
. However, the preference can sometimes be diagnosed as a disorder if it results in dysfunction or exploitative behavior, under the DSM specification 309.2, "Paraphilia Not Otherwise Specified."
Researchers state that hebephilia
Hebephilia
Hebephilia refers to the sexual preference for individuals in the early years of puberty . Girls typically begin the process of puberty at age 10 or 11; boys at age 11 or 12...
, erotic interest which centers on pubescents, has not come into widespread use, even among professionals who work with sex offenders, and may have been confused with the term ephebophilia, "which denotes men who prefer adolescents around 15–19 years of age." It is concluded that "few would want to label erotic interest in late — or even mid — adolescents as a psychopathology
Psychopathology
Psychopathology is the study of mental illness, mental distress, and abnormal/maladaptive behavior. The term is most commonly used within psychiatry where pathology refers to disease processes...
, so the term hebephilia may have been ignored along with ephebophilia."
See also
- Age disparity in sexual relationshipsAge disparity in sexual relationshipsAge disparity in sexual relationships refers to sexual relations between people with a significant difference in age. Whether these relationships are accepted and the question of what counts as a significant difference in age has varied over time; and varies over cultures, different legal systems,...
- AgeplayAgeplayAgeplay or age play is a form of roleplaying in which an individual acts or treats another as if they were a different age. The practice can be regressive, in which the goal is to re-experience childhood, or sexual, recreating a sexual relationship with people of the pretend and/or true ages...
- Fear of youth
- Lolita, as a term (from Vladimir Nabokov'sVladimir NabokovVladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist...
novel Lolita), is used for young-looking females seen as the object of desire of older men. Being slang, the term can broadly refer to cases ranging from prepubescent to post-adolescent though, unlike ephebophilia which is more specific in its use.- The Japanese adaptation, loliconLolicon, also romanised as lolikon or rorikon, is a Japanese portmanteau of the phrase "Lolita complex". In Japan, the term describes an attraction to underage girls or an individual with such an attraction...
(drawn from Lolita complex), refers more broadly to depictions of neotenic femininity regardless of who desires them. Appreciators are also called lolicons, whereas the subject girl characters are abbreviated as loliLoliLoli may refer to:*LOLI Database , an international chemical regulatory database*Lolita fashion**Loli-Goth, or Gothic Lolita*Lolita, a novel by Vladimir Nabokov...
.
- The Japanese adaptation, lolicon
- PederastyPederastyPederasty or paederasty is an intimate relationship between an adult and an adolescent boy outside his immediate family. The word pederasty derives from Greek "love of boys", a compound derived from "child, boy" and "lover".Historically, pederasty has existed as a variety of customs and...