MRW I creep on the reddit account of a guy I've been seeing and discover he's a pedophile.

Transsexuality has absolutely nothing to do with sexual orientation. Nowadays it is called Transgender because that more accurately involves what it's actually about.

Homosexuality was once considered a paraphilia but no longer because people came to the conclusion that an adult male was capable of consenting to having sex and a loving relationship with another consenting adult male.

A paraphilia is seen as harmful to one or more parties involved in the sexual relations. Paraphilias are defined as a recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors generally involving non-human objects, the suffering or humiliation of oneself or one's partner, children, or non-consenting persons. Children is listed in there because it falls to the next category of being unable to consent.

Is it really possible for a pedophile to be romantically attracted to a child? Does a pedophile want to be romantically fulfilled with a child as their life partner? When that child grows up, will that pedophile still be 'in love' with them? I don't know many pedophiles but my money is on the 'no', because they 'can't help who they are attracted to.'

This is why it's utterly ridiculous to suggest that LGBT and pedophilia are one and the same. They aren't. LGBT people are doing things in the pursuit of happiness and fulfillment of their romantic lives, or in the case of trans people, doing things to their own bodies for their own personal sake, knowing fully what it entails for their own personal fulfillment.

It's true, people with fetishes also cannot help what they are attracted to. There is a well known case study involving a poor man who could only be sexually aroused with white noise, and could not help it either way. That man knew that it was a fetish and worked his way around it, and went into therapy to learn how to redirect his desires. People with fetishes and specifically paraphilia can either simply live with the fact that they can't get off without involving something potentially harmful, or they can go into therapy to learn how to rope in their desires and possibly redirect their sexual inclinations to something healthier for all parties involved.

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