Wikipedia:WikiProject Pedophilia Article Watch/Terminology
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[edit] Project name
This project is named "Pedophilia Article Watch" per discussion and consensus of members.
[edit] Child
"The term "child" does not have a single generally agreed-upon scientific or scholarly definition and might be used in different contexts to cover different age ranges. Therefore its use in articles is deprecated, and where possible the following terms should be used:
- A minor is person under the age of legal adulthood, and the term may be taken to mean a person under the age of 18, unless specified otherwise, since 18 is the age of legal adulthood the overwhelming majority of jurisdictions.
- A pre-adolescent child is a child who has not entered adolescence. Since there is no single point at which this occurs, and since the onset of adolescence varies among persons, the term is generally taken as more-or-less congruent with "pre-teen", that is to describe a person who has not yet achieved his or her 13th birthday.
- When the term "child" alone is used for convenience (as in article titles) or to avoid stylistic awkwardness, editors should make an effort to clarify which age range they are speaking about, at least on the first use, unless this is clearly obvious from the context.
[edit] Pedophile/paedophile and related terms
Paedophile is the spelling used by the World Health Organization and is thus slightly preferred, although either spelling is acceptable in articles.
- Paedophilia - One suggested working definition: "Paedophilia is the attraction to children which is experienced as being so important that it dominates the person's inner sexual or romantic life." See the article Pedophile for a similar, but more medical and more detailed, definition.
- Paedophile: One who has paedophilia.
- Childlover (or "girlover" or "boylover"): terms preferred by some paedophiles for self-identification.
- Pedosexual: term used to imply that pedophilia is a sexual orientation, like bisexual or heterosexual.
- Persons commonly called paedophiles who are not paedophiles for scholarly encyclopedic purposes:
- Ephebophile, or pederast: [One who has] "A sexual or romantic preference for, or especial attraction to, adolescents/teens/youth." It is idiomatically common, but not scholarly, to call such persons paedophiles.
- Child sex criminal, also called "child sex offender", "child sex abuser", or "child molester" (the latter term being deprecated for scholarly use). Some child sex criminals are also paedophiles, but not necessarily. It is idiomatically common, but not scholarly, to call all such persons paedophiles.
[edit] Adolescent
- The term adolescent may be used to refer to adolescents, that is, roughly and approximately persons aged 13-18.
[edit] Person under the age of consent
- When referring to age-of-consent laws, the term person under the age of consent should be used ("child under the age of consent" or "minor under the age of consent" are also acceptable). The term "minor" alone should not be used to refer to persons under the age of consent, unless the longer term would be awkward to use in all references.
