Ephebophilia

The Ephebophilia ( gr. Έφηβος ephebos "youth, young man," and philia ) refers to the homosexual inclination ( sexual preference ) to pubertal and postpubertal boys.

General

The term was coined by Magnus Hirschfeld , first appeared in his work Vom Wesen der Liebe , published in 1906, and describes the erotic-sexual interest of men in boys from puberty to the age of 20. There it is added to the term parthenophilia , which expresses the erotic-sexual interest in pubescent girls. In his work The Homosexuality of Man and Woman from 1914, he presented a whole system of terms and stated in particular: “The two main groups, each of which should account for about 45% of the total [male] homosexuals, are the ephebophiles, who People from the beginning to the end of maturity, ie in adolescence from around 14-21 years, love, and the androphils [...]. ”In 1990, the American authors Stephen Donaldson and Wayne Dynes established a current use of the term in an age range of now 17 to 21 years. The proportion of ephebophiles among all male homosexuals, estimated by Hirschfeld to be 45 percent, tended to be supported by later studies: In a study from the 1950s with 222 homosexual men, 24 percent gave the lower limit of the preferred partner age with a value between 13 and 16 or between 17 and 19 years of age; In a 1990s study of 48 homosexual men shown photos of men's faces estimated at 18, 23, 32, 44, and 58 years old, 81 percent found one of the two youngest categories most sexually attractive, with the youngest still being a little better. However, a similar assessment is also found among the interviewed heterosexual men, with the difference that the youngest category is hardly mentioned; the second youngest category, however, the most common.

The difference between ephebophilia (or neoterophilia ) on the one hand and pedophilia on the other is that ephebophiles have a sexual interest in boys or young men who have already reached puberty .

In Germany one speaks of sexual abuse of children when there is sexual contact with children under the age of 14 ( age of consent ). The age of consent is higher under special circumstances, for example for those under protection or when a predicament is exploited. In other countries the legal or cultural age limit is e.g. Sometimes higher or lower - in Switzerland, for example, the age of consent is 16 years.

Ephebophilia is not specifically described in the DSM-IV -TR and in the ICD-10 of the World Health Organization , but can be coded as ICD-10 diagnosis F65.9 " disorder of sexual preference , unspecified". The Berlin sex researchers Ahlers, Schaefer and Beier define ephebophilia as the sexual responsiveness of post-pubescent boys, which "is a reaction that can be expected from a sex-biological perspective and is therefore not categorized as a disorder of sexual preference."

Many ephebophiles are drawn to the naivety of young people and their enthusiasm for new experiences (including sexual and romantic entanglements) in contrast to the more skeptical attitudes of older adults.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Gerard van den Aardweg : Homosexual pedophilia, ephebophilia, androphilia and pederasty. Similarities, differences, overlaps . In: German Institute for Youth and Society . ( dijg.de [accessed January 26, 2020]).
2. ↑ Magnus Hirschfeld: On the essence of love. At the same time a contribution to solving the question of bisexuality. Max Spohr, Leipzig 1906.
3. ↑ Magnus Hirschfeld: The homosexuality of man and woman. Louis Marcus, Berlin 1914, p. 281.
4. ↑ Stephen Donaldson: Ephebophilia (PDF; 181 kB);
   Stephen Donaldson, Wayne R. Dynes: Typology (PDF; 322 kB).
   In: Wayne R. Dynes (Ed.): The Encyclopedia of Homosexuality (Garland Reference Library of Social Science). ( Memento of the original from January 8, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Taylor & Francis, March 1990, ISBN 0-8240-6544-1 . 
5. ↑ Kurt Freund : Homosexuality in men. S. Hirzel, Leipzig 1963, 2nd edition 1965, p. 40 (original Czech, Prague 1962).
6. ^ Zebulon A. Silverthorne, Vernon L. Quinsey: Sexual Partner Age Preferences of Homosexual and Heterosexual Men and Women. In: Archives of Sexual Behavior, 29 (2000), No. 1, ISSN  0004-0002 , pp. 67-76.
7. ↑ Sharon R. Foley, Ken Arthur, Brendan D. Kelly: Psychiatric sequelae of Parkinson disease: a case report. In: European Psychiatry. Vol. 21, No. 3, 2006, ISSN  0767-399X , pp. 211-213, doi : 10.1016 / j.eurpsy.2005.05.007 .
8. ↑ Christoph J. Ahlers, Gerard A. Schaefer, Klaus M. Beier: The spectrum of sexual disorders and their classifiability in the ICD-10 and DSM-IV. In: Sexology. Vol. 12, 2005, ISSN  0944-7105 , p. 146.
9. ↑ Stephen Donaldson: Ephebophilia (PDF; 181 kB). In: Wayne R. Dynes (Ed.): The Encyclopedia of Homosexuality (Garland Reference Library of Social Science). ( Memento of the original from January 8, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Taylor & Francis, March 1990, ISBN 0-8240-6544-1 , p. 362.