It’s a ‘Me’ Game, Not a ‘We’ Game The problem isn’t women, really, it’s men, and how little we know about them. So it’s the case that we’re having this conversation about a specific group of women and not men in general — the women who have sexual relationships with young boys and who have been involved in pedophilia rings. That could be any group of women. But they don’t exist as distinct from one another or as distinct from all men. All men have some level of involvement with pedophilia. So do some women. A man’s sexual orientation isn’t necessarily what makes him a pedophile, but it is possible that being gay increases the likelihood that he will participate in a pedophile ring. The reason we can’t lump all men into the same box is because all women can’t be lumped into the same box either. And yet we seem determined to insist on doing so. The problem isn’t women, really, it’s men, and how little we know about them. Women tend to be less sexually violent than men, but all sexual violence is still, by its nature, abhorrent. This isn’t about female pedophiles. It’s about male pedophiles. The pedophile ring that we’re dealing with is a bunch of men having sex with boys. But the way it’s been described and presented to us in the media — particularly by feminists — is as a pedophile ring where women are having sex with boys. And that’s the part where the whole conversation about feminism and feminism’s ties to pedophilia breaks down. We think of the typical adult female as someone who has the same genitalia as a child, and it’s not hard to get into the mindset that all women are or have been sexually interested in children. But this is not the reality. Even the term “pedophile” itself is a term that originated from men with a very specific interest in children. It has nothing to do with how women are perceived to naturally behave. It has nothing to do with women’s behavior generally. It has everything to do with how men who are sexually attracted to children perceive the world. And, of course, it’s nothing to do with the children they victimize, either. The kids in the video were being fed cookies by their pedophile abusers. They were being manipulated. They were being made to trust them. They were being made to feel as if they were in a good place in their lives. But the whole thing hinges on the fact that men are always going to be more likely than women to molest children and to abuse children than women. That’s just a fact. When people talk about the abuse of women and girls, what they’re doing is comparing those cases to the average woman who’s sexually assaulted. That average woman is more likely to be raped by a man than a woman, but that doesn’t mean women are raping men — or that it’s wrong to say that men and women are doing the exact same thing. It means that what we are discussing is average behavior. The average person is more likely to assault an adult woman than an adult man. Does that mean women and men are having sex with each other’s children at equal rates? No. Does that mean men are molesting children on the regular at equal rates? No. The point is that it doesn’t matter what the average is, because men tend to do things. So we should talk about things as they are, not as we wish they were. But that’s what we do when we talk about women and female pedophilia. We need to start talking about female pedophiles and male pedophiles in the same manner we do male and female rapists and the way we talk about female predators and male predators. There is no distinction between pedophilia and other forms of sexual assault because they are all about power and abuse. There are not two sides to the story, as it were. There are not two sides to a problem. There is a problem. It’s about the men in our culture. We know that women who abuse children are not going to represent the entirety of the female population, just like we know that not every man who is sexually attracted to children is a pedophile or is sexually abusing children. We also know that men who molest children are not always gay, even though every pedophile that I’ve ever seen interviewed is white, and most of them are men. Men like these men do not feel like they’re doing something wrong. They don’t feel morally conflicted about their behavior. Most of them don’t even think of themselves as pedophiles. To them, these children are not victims — not victims of abuse. They are simply sex objects. But they are children, and this is a problem that’s bigger than them. We know that we have a problem in our culture when we have the people who want to talk about what is going on in the real world and discuss that sexual abuse of children is a problem. We know that those people are being marginalized. It’s being said to them, repeatedly, that they’re somehow the problem. That we’re going to say “Not all men!” until we’re blue in the face isn’t going to change anything. We know that the numbers are there to prove it. What the numbers can’t tell us is if there are other factors at play in making these crimes more likely or less likely for women than men. But it also doesn’t matter. The fact remains that some men are more likely than other men to be sexually attracted to children, and it’s not their fault. It’s nothing inherent to women, nor is it something about our way of being. It’s nothing we can’t overcome. We can’t cure all men. We can’t prevent all men from sexually objectifying children. But we can work to educate men, work to prevent all men from having access to children, and work to ensure that no child can access sex without his will. And that’s where we need to focus. A problem is a problem. And a pedophile is a pedophile, regardless of how many people think they’re just too sensitive for pedophilia to be talked about. Read More: Why I Fought In A War I Didn’t Believe In