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The difference between hebephiles or ephebophiles and typical heterosexual men?

As has frequently been mentioned before here in old talk page discussions, typical heterosexual men appear to have an intense sexual attraction to (and also sexual interest in) teenagers – possibly even more intense than to fully adult women at age 20 and older. See also Bruch and Newman 2018, which points in the same direction. One could extrapolate the curve and conclude that the peak age of attraction might actually be even younger – 13/14 has been suggested. Wouldn't this make most heterosexual men ephebophiles or even hebephiles?

It seems to me that this is not necessarily the case, probably not the case at all, and there could still be a distinctive difference: interest in older women wanes quickly for ephebophiles and especially hebephiles, and they are rather put off by signs of maturity such as thick thighs (as mentioned in the discussion before), while the decline – as seemingly indicated by the moderate steepness of the curve in Fig. 2 (see top left) in the linked study – is much less pronounced in typical heterosexual men, who still find typical women in their 20s highly attractive. In contrast, ephebophiles and even more so hebephiles – as my understanding goes – find most women in their 20s completely uninteresting and too mature, even far too mature. I find this quite plausible. It's also difficult to imagine that most heterosexual men just settle with fully adult women because teenagers are not available to them, and in reality are practically not sexually interested in these women at all. (After all, prostitutes sought out by heterosexual men are typically in their 20s and not teenagers, even if they're legal age. If most heterosexual men were ephebophiles, let alone hebephiles, prostitutes at 18 and 19 would be in even more intense demand and prostitutes in their 20s would find it considerably harder to find clients. The same is true for other sex work, and for porn, which isn't overwhelmingly teenie porn. And even if many/most men do seek out teenage-themed content more than anything else online, that might be because it is more exciting and harder to get elsewhere, not necessarily because they are practically only attracted to teenagers.) Rather, a true ephebophile would presumably find it difficult to even settle for an older woman, and would prefer to stay single. Is my reasoning here correct? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 15:46, 23 October 2021 (UTC)

Well, I'm not sure, some psychologists have argued that attraction to younger fertile women is due to evolutionary biology (need to reproduce), but I think the point is that society today expects older men to have a life partner around their age, because of their similar level of shared life experiences; there was even a 2012 documentary made on the subject of attraction to younger females by a Dutch filmmaker, Jan-Willem Breure that caused lots of public debate. Of course, most average middle-aged men, for example, might have some level of biological or instinctual attraction to a much younger woman around the age of 18 or 19 walking past them on the streets, that much might be true enough, but that does NOT mean they would make ideal partners, or that it is best or healthy to usually act on such desires. Even if an older man has a series of physical affairs with an 18-year-old girl, for example, if they do not share similar levels of life experiences, then their relationship is not very likely to last, and is likely to remain only physical, not anything emotionally deeper, necessarily. TiffanyMeyers243 (talk) 14:58, 21 March 2022 (UTC)

There is no real evidence

A few proposals to improve the Ephebophilia page:

1. instead of citing Blanchard, whose text just cites Kraft-Ebing, we should cite Kraft-Ebing directly. Readers should also know that Kraft-Ebing was a German physician writing 100 years ago.

2. one very important fact is that since Kraft-Ebing wrote about ephebophilia in 1924 no research has ever shown his ideas to be correct. Uncritically repeating a vague assertion from 100 years ago, when no other scientist has ever confirmed his ideas is a disservice to Misplaced Pages users.

3. almost everyone who writes about ephebophilia cites Dr Michael Seto, but everyone omits the fact that Seto has no evidence for its existence. Seto's work is much more recent. He assumes that ephebophilia is real, and says it's age of attraction is 15-17 (not 15-19 as the 100 year old work of Kraft-Ebing states). Seto does not claim to have any evidence to show ephebophilia really exists.

4. it is misleading to publish information about ephebophilia as if it is established scientific fact. There's more evidence for the existence of the Yeti than for ephebophilia. The total lack of science behind this concept should be made clear to Misplaced Pages users.

HughGardner (talk) 13:14, 16 April 2022 (UTC)

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