What are your thoughts on child sex dolls? These are designed to look and feel like young girls, are completely legal and are sold online to customers worldwide. Manufacturers of child sex dolls claim they "stop pedophiles from committing crimes".

I recently had a very long and heated discussion/argument about this on Facebook.

I've been called a pedophile, a pedophile lover, I've been told that I should keep children away from me because I might abuse them etc etc

Why?

Because I believe in treating people as human beings until they prove themselves otherwise. But because of that, I must automatically be a child abuser, because only an active pedophile believes in the power of free will over direct, unfounded judgement.

I fully support child sex dolls. I think they are a good idea.

They are no longer a "gateway to child rape" in the same way that smoking pot is smoking heroin.

One of the things I hear over and over again is that this is not enough. It gives an inoffensive pedophile a "taste" for children, and they will want to abuse a child.

My question to these people is, how the hell do you know? How do you know this will be a gateway? How do you know it's not enough? At what point does silicon automatically turn you from a very lonely and sexually unsatisfied person to a sex offender?

Would I go out and rape someone if I could never have sex with a woman and I bought myself a sex toy that simulated me having oral sex with a woman? Will virgin males who own female adult sex dolls continue to sexually abuse women? The overwhelming evidence is no.

Becoming attracted to children is a very sad and lonely place to be. The vast majority of pedophiles know that it is a sexual attraction that they will never be able to act on. It was no different than my attraction to other women. There was nothing I could do about it, but I was fortunate that I was able to act on it the way I wanted to.

So what happens when you're just a regular guy? People like you who are reading this answer. What if you find yourself attracted to underage children? Do you stop being a decent, moral member of society and automatically become a child abuser? Or do you exercise self-restraint and free will and find the idea of harming a child or viewing images of child abuse online completely abhorrent?

But what are you left with? You will never hurt a child, you will never view pornography that involves the rape and abuse of real children. You are completely alone in your desires, and even though you will never act on them, the whole world seems to scream that you are an evil monster who should be hanged, even though your only crime is the thoughts in your head and the natural instinctive desires of your thoughts.

By giving someone who is attractive to children, an outlet for sex, you are granting them the basic human right to a sexually satisfying experience.

A doll is not a real child. It's not modeled after a real child, but rather silicone. It is not even like the porn star sex dolls you can buy that are modeled after real people. You can buy a dragon penis dildo, but that doesn't mean you will have sex with a dragon (if such a thing exists). It is just a generic small sex doll that may give some people what they desperately desire, but know they can never have.

Being a pedophile does not automatically make you a sex offender. Neither does owning a piece of silicone.

It's a fantasy. And it has been.