Emotions can be confused - we don't 'think' emotions, we feel them, and so we have to describe them subsequently in relation to other emotions and thoughts. Basic emotions are relatively easy to describe - happiness, sadness, etc. but this is not so easy for other more complex emotions. Perhaps when we feel this attraction to babies - and perhaps by extension to the young in general we misinterpret our emotions and attraction to them as being sexual. Research has shown that arousal can be misinterpreted so...

Your "Emotions can be confused" argument is confused. I explained in previous post. As for your genesis of pedophilia:

Pedophilia is not a misinterpretation of nonsexual emotions and attraction as sexual. However, I do believe John Money suggested that pedophilia might be caused by an extreme overabundance of love for children. In doing so he suggests that the pedophile literally loves children "too much."

This is also notable, since it is completely different from his theories concerning the paraphilias, with which I am slightly familiar. This work, which does not include pedophilia, does hypothesize processes like the "misinterpretation" phenomenon you suggest. However, in this case, it is simply a matter of internalizing environmental stimuli incident to erotic stimulation, which are not erotic to most people, as erotic triggers. In THIS way, there ARE people who have "pedophilic" triggers, or homoerotic triggers, or ortho-hetero-erotic triggers (e.g., a gay man that gets turned on by very specific fantasies involving women), just like any other fetish trigger. This is probably the origin of the misconceptions that since SOME people have a homoerotic fetish, but are really straight, that all gays are fetishists, likewise that pedophiles have a "child fetish." Some people aroused by some children DO have a child fetish (or an "innocence" fetish, or "age play" fetish or whatnot), but that is not a sexual orientation, or what is generally considered pedophilia.

So, the characteristics of the paraphile phenomenon you're talking about are erotic arousal from very specific fantasies and/or environmental triggers. In the realm of, let's call it pseudo-pedophilia, a man can be aroused by blond-haired blue-eyed girls in pig tails around 48" in height, particularly if they're wearing a knee-length white dress with a blue satin sash, etc. Such a man is generally more aroused by fantasizing about such a girl, then the company of a real-live brown-haired brown-eyed 42" girl with her hair down in jeans and a T-shirt. Likewise, abstract ideas, instead of physical characteristics, can be critical so that, for example, he can't get aroused unless he pretends she's a virgin, or pretends she is unwilling, even if she is willing, or vice versa, or that she's his younger sister or niece, or daughter, or an orphan, or a fairy (the characteristics required can be so complex and unlikely that he may find himself unable to be aroused by any real child he is likely to ever meet, he may also not be consciously aware of just what the characteristics are, and he may be confused as to why, say, children arouse him in playgrounds, but not at the pool). A real pedophile (or pedosexual might be a good term to use here) may have a certain "type," but only to the extent that an average orthosexual man has a "type" of woman. As another example, to kind of wrap things up here, there are men who, otherwise hetero, enjoy immensely to receive anal sex, but only when commanded to do so by a dominatrix. They are not homosexual, and while there may be a scene in their childhood to account for this behavior, it has nothing to do with what makes homosexual men homosexual.

Student