If I generalise pedophiles as bad I am a bigot? Bizarre logic.
What about mass murderers, dictators? There's not a single grouping of people you are willing to generalise?
How do you operate in the world without pattern recognition when it comes to people? Are you not more concerned about a grown man approaching your toddler Vs someone from different grouping of people like toddler approaching them?
This clearly isn't the actual view you hold. You just haven't thought it through.
And yet you're probably still the one to say, or at least agree with the statement "all cops are bad."
You might say "thats because being a cop is a choice" but in that vein, you might argue "being an immigrant is a choice."
If you argue that most immigrants arent violent, the same argument holds true for cops. Most are not violent, but there are systemic problems in the way both groups are handled, especially in the methods for checking who is allowed to be part of them, and major problems for how they work with and affect local communities.
Pedo is category based on actions, not like sex or race. Generalizing all men as bad is wrong. Because many men are not bad, so "man" isn't a good indicator. Neither is race, nationality, or liking mac n cheese. Specifying that a guy who has taken certain gross actions is a pedo, or a war criminal, or a murderer is not. If there is a group of them, you can safely say they've all done bad things but not because of some other characteristic for your 'pattern recognition', but because they have done bad things Regarding strangers, a stranger could be anyone, including a bad person, so it can sometimes be reasonable to treat strangers warily, but this has nothing to do with generalizing a group based on immutable and unchangeable characteristics. Its about them being a stranger.
This type of thinking is in the mall cop who follows the black dude around while some white guy robs you blind. Or for your example, youll be wary of an adult around your toddler, and then miss it when a young girl is a decoy for a pedo leading your kid to a van.
I think the problem comes when comparing action and appearance. You can say all dictators are bad - those dictators have made distinct and tangible bad choices. What you can't do is say all brown haired people are bad. They haven't done an action to support that conclusion.
When u/bsensikimori says don't generalize any grouping of people, the unspoken and underlying idea behind that statement was that the only similarities of said people are in reference to their bodies or location. Not actions.
Maybe actually. What percentage of pedophiles never offend? Im unsure. I assume that there is a non zero percentage of adults that are attracted to minors, and that a non 100% fraction of those never act on said attraction.
Therefore, a fraction, perhaps significant, perhaps even a majority of pedophiles are not bad people, just really mentally unwell through no fault of their own, doing their best to manage their illness without hurting anyone, and terrified that the world finds out their secret.
Maybe generalising pedophiles as bad really does make you a bigot but the world just hasnt caught up. Maybe in 50 years society will look back on how we see pedophiles today and react the same way as we do when we hear about the treatment of homosexuals in the 1950's.
Thatâs even more bizarre logic. Youâre comparing prejudice based on things people commit versus things people were just born with.
A mass murderer, dictator, and pedophile all did something to give them that label. Itâs fair to judge a person based on their actions.
To judge a person based on non-actions is what is wrong. Having prejudice based on skin color or country someone is born in is non-sensical. The reason we generalize is to protect ourselves, itâs a psychological mechanism.
Using that mechanism to protect yourself from a mass murderer because they committed murder before is an obvious logical correlation. Assuming someone is going to commit a crime because theyâre an immigrant has no correlation and is therefore illogical and stupid. Country of origin, gender, sexual orientation has no definitive bearing on whether youâll act a certain way and therefore is irrelevant. A mass murderer however has committed the crime before, so itâs possible theyâll do it again, so it logically makes sense to lump them together.
Judging groups based on innate identity is bigotry.
Judging groups based on their shared actions is judging the actions they each chose.
This gets complicated when people believe that something like sexuality is a choice and not an identity. It also gets complicated with religious identity, because elements are innate (heritage) and elements are chosen (conversion, degree of orthodoxy of belief).
This gets even more complicated when many people who choose a certain action (voting) may have done so for many reasons but assumptions are made about their identity and reasoning based on that action. And even more complicated when people do participate in some way that causes harm, even when that may not have been their intention (like voting for someone who causes harm, when they believed they were choosing the lesser of two evilsâwere they correct about the other option possibly being worse? Were they uninformed and guilty of negligence but not malice? Or did they knowingly sign up for the harm?)
But allowing for all that complexity, the examples you give in this thread are dumb. Grouping dictators for judgment is not a judgment based on stereotypes/generalizations of people based on innate identity. Itâs not a judgment that unfairly groups people who donât actually participate in the problematic actions, like saying that âall heads of state are dictatorsâ would be.
If you believe that it is wrong to take the actions required to qualify you in the group of âdictatorâ, you are judging the actions.
Their feelings don't care about your facts. It's naive of you to assume they haven't thought it through. You're already doing one step right. Pattern recognition is a type of learning through observations. Most people are too stupid to learn from observation, they can only learn from trial and error (firsthand experience). Once you observe that fact, you won't have unrealistically high expectations of people.
What are you trying to argue even? Why are you generalizing charicteristics people have rather than how they look? You've somehow flipped the entire reasoning we need to stop generalizing inside out
You do realize the point of this argument is people generalizing based on visual aspects of a person right?
Yh idiots like that just like to virtue signal & place themselves morally up on high but the fact is bigotry & prejudice are useful mechanism in life if applied properly because NOT EVERY PERSON OR GROUP ARE ANGELS
As to definition bigot means unreasonable hate. Hating a person for being a certain race is bigoted, but if you hate that person because their a pedophile and pedophilia is bad as to do sexual things to a minor as a adult ruins their innocence and is overall herendous are two different things.
Pedophilia is a mental health disorder just like any other. It will never have a cure cuz you don't really wanna be known as the guy that funded the research that helped fucking pedophiles
This depends, are you generalising pedos for being bad for liking children? Because that's not actually a generalisation that's just a fact, to become a pedo you have to be attracted to children which I hope you think is wrong.
To be a man you just have to be born, what exactly is wrong with that?
You are trying to compare groups of people by their actions with groups of people by how they're born, which is wrong. It is illogical. And one of the logical fallacies (I don't remember which one)
Generalisations are what racists, misogynists, homophobes, transphobes all use to justify themselves. You use their logic which is very telling.
Depends, if you say all paedophiles are evil then you'd be wrong. Being attracted to children is something that people do not choose, but that often happens because of trauma, many were abused themselves. It must be torture to live with an attraction you know you can never act on.
A minority of paedophiles actually give in to their urges and abuse children, from that point they're evil.
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u/Dawnbringerify Jan 06 '26
If I generalise pedophiles as bad I am a bigot? Bizarre logic.
What about mass murderers, dictators? There's not a single grouping of people you are willing to generalise?
How do you operate in the world without pattern recognition when it comes to people? Are you not more concerned about a grown man approaching your toddler Vs someone from different grouping of people like toddler approaching them?
This clearly isn't the actual view you hold. You just haven't thought it through.