Pedophilia

When people say "pedophilia", i don't think they really understand what they mean. I've seen people refer to sex with 16 year olds as pedophilia.

Pedophilia is defined as sex with children (from neonate to pre-pubescence). Pedophilia doesn't make a great deal of sense from a biological perspective, because pre-pubescent humans are incapable of causing pregnancy or becoming pregnant, so adult humans exclusively seeking sexual relations with pre-pubescent humans are probably doing something wrong. "Evolution gone wrong" you could say, although it's not as simple as that.

Ephebophilia is defined as sex with adolescents (stage between puberty and adulthood). From a biological perspective, there is nothing wrong with ephebophilia, because adolescents are able to cause pregnancy or become pregnant. In fact the difference between adolescence and adulthood is pretty much arbitrary and meaningless and academic from a biological perspective.

Biologically we have not changed a great deal from those who lived even 1000 years ago, so to say that people were normal in the past for reproducing when young but abnormal now for doing the same is nonsense. In ages past, life expectancy at birth was no higher than 30 years, and life-expectancy at adolescence was probably around 40 or so (most women would have had a very large number of children). It is then straightforward that if our ancestors weren't ephebophiles, homo sapiens would have had the same fate as the mammoths.

Another thing to keep in mind is that these philias are only really relevant in the case of those people who seek only sexual relations with the respective population. It is much less relevant to speak of a person being an ephebophile if he or she wants to have a normal long-term relationship with the target individual. For example, if there is a 30 year old male who likes an adolescent girl who is 15 years old and wants to marry her with the intention of having a monogamous relationship with her and with the intention of having children, etc., then it's quite misleading to speak of such a person as being a ephebophile. It is merely done for shock-effect or sensationalism. On the other hand, if this 30-year old male wants nothing more than to have sex with one 15-year old after another with no intention of having any long-term relationship with any of them, then it makes more sense to call this person an ephebophile, because such people are sexual deviants and dangerous; they should be dealt with accordingly. 9