Sexual research shows that the sexual arousal of a male from a teenage girl is entirely normal. Is normal also hebephilia (persistent and dominant sexual interest by adults in pubescent children), as indirectly indicated by evolutionary psychology, by stating that the sexual contact with reproductively mature woman - even when in pubertal age - is an evolutionary advantage as it can guarantee reproductive success.
What do you think about it?
How is a male's persistent and dominant sexual interest in female children an evolutionary advantage? First of all, "persistent and dominant" implies that somewhat older females are of lesser or even no interest, which limits opportunities for potential reproductive partners. Secondly, a restriction to partners of pubertal age has less chance for reproductive success because of a higher incidence of mortality for both mother and child at or shortly after a birth. Moreover, puberty does not coincide with full reproductive maturity: the females are not fully grown and intercourse can result in physical injury, and those females that do have "successful" pregnancies may produce less milk, their newborns may be underweight, less robust, etc.
Karl Pfeifer Thank you for the answer, I think the same. There is a big difference between sexual arousal, sexual preference, and sexual orientation. In my opinion, the preference of underage girls is not an evolutionary advantage. From the point of view of securing the offspring, the greatest evolutionary advantage in sexual behavior is monogamy (as long-term mating strategy), do not you think so?
“The maternal instinct leads a woman to prefer a tenth share in a first rate man to the exclusive possession of a third rate one.” – George Bernard Shaw
About "securing the offspring": a male's reproductive success may be enhanced by producing way more offspring than one partner alone can provide, if the number (which may be a small percentage) that itself survives to reproduce is greater than the number that would've survived to reproduce from one partner alone. So polygamy seems advantageous for men. However, institutionalized monogamy benefits undesirable men in ensuring that there are more or less enough women to go around so that they too might have one. Ultimately what secures the offspring of a population is a sustainable equilibrium between the various mating arrangements.
1) Being aroused by young women in their puberty doesnt necessarily implicate hebephilia for sexual arousal doesnt care about someones official age but their physical features. The current trend among teenagers to look adult and sexy as soon as possible in their lifes can cause a mans/womans psyche to react how he/she would act when engaging with an attractive and sexy adult woman/man.
2) Unlike pedophilia, hebephilia can give rise to offspring and is therefore in line with a Darwinian worldview. A man who starts to have sex with females as soon as they reach puberty and continues to have intercourse with them as long as theyre fertile will have the most offspring. It doesnt matter if a teenage mother isnt experienced enough to raise a child or might have no joy whilst having sex from an evolutionary point of view because these factors wont impact the fact that they conceived and gave birth. The infant mortality rate wouldnt be notably higher as well.
3) A common misconception about paraphilia is that they would be exclusive and couldnt coexist with normal sexual preferences. Someone with hebephilia as part of their sexuality will most likely be attracted to adult partners as well and will most certainly continue to be sexually attracted to a teenage person to which he/she was attracted to in the past.
Conclusion:
Hebephilia is probably more common among men than most people would guess but that doesnt mean that we should tolerate it. Engaging in sex with teenagers can harm them physically, mentally and emotionally. Although hebephilia has got its place as evolutionary mechanism in us, humanity grown to be civilised enough to get over it.
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