Paedosadist – The Binding Chaos Lexicon

There is no such thing as a sexual orientation called paedophilia. A sexual orientation, or sex, requires consenting partners. It is not sex if some of those involved are called victims, that is rape. Someone attracted to rape has sexual sadism disorder or paraphilic coercive disorder. Someone attracted to the rape of children is a paedosadist. A paedosadist who acts on their impulses is a criminal paedosadist and one who does not is a non-offending paedosadist. This definition is for those relying on the DSM as authority. A more appropriate term is the legal one, child rapist.

Expanded explanation

The definition is an argument about naming, and each step matters. A sexual orientation is a category of sexual attraction between consenting partners, so an attraction that can only be enacted through rape does not belong in it. Naming it as an orientation classifies it alongside attractions that harm nobody and lends it the language of identity, which is what Marsh objects to. Her reclassification puts the attraction where the harm is. Someone attracted to rape has sexual sadism disorder or paraphilic coercive disorder, and someone attracted to the rape of children is a paedosadist, so what the person is drawn to is the coercion rather than the age of the target incidentally. The offending and non-offending distinction is retained because it is real, and she wrote that the whole framing is supplied for those relying on the DSM as authority, since her own preference is stated plainly at the end. A more appropriate term is the legal one, child rapist. Within the wider framework the category sits alongside the death eaters entry, where the agony of others is the goal rather than a side effect, and alongside her general account of secondary anima obtained through the stress response of another, which is why vulnerability attracts predation. Endoselves are extremely attracted to vulnerability, and even less predatory people may become predatory in its presence.

In Heather Marsh’s words

Marsh disputes the naming rather than the phenomenon, holding that orientation is the wrong category for an attraction to coercion.

“A more appropriate term is the legal one, child rapist”
Abstracting Divinity

Examples

Why orientation is the wrong word: An attraction enactable only through rape does not belong in a category defined by attraction between consenting partners.
The attraction is to coercion: Placing the term with sexual sadism locates what the person is drawn to rather than treating the target as the defining feature.
The preferred term: Marsh supplies the clinical reframing for those who need it and states that the legal word is the better one.

How others use it

The DSM classifies paedophilic disorder as a paraphilic disorder rather than a sexual orientation, and the American Psychiatric Association issued a correction after a 2013 edition used the word orientation in the text. The distinction between attraction and offending is standard in clinical and forensic work, and prevention programmes such as Germany's Dunkelfeld are built on it. Sexual sadism disorder is a separate diagnosis and paraphilic coercive disorder was considered and not adopted. Marsh's position aligns with the professional consensus on the orientation question and departs from clinical practice in preferring the legal term, since her interest is in what the naming does socially rather than in what a diagnostic manual needs it to do.