goth_is_not_emo

I keep seeing the same argument over and over and OVER again in which antis equate use of the "Underage" tag in AO3 with the author of the fic being a pedophile and/or the fic itself being child pornography or "glorifying pedophilia." So let's unpack exactly what pedophilia is, and what the "Underage" tag is used for. CSA survivors, this will be uncomfortable for you. It might even be triggering. Please don't read this unless you're in a good emotional space to deal with this sort of discussion, because I don't want you to get hurt.

I am typing about this because calling something pedophilia, or "glorifying pedophilia," when it is neither, makes it harder to protect young people from actual pedophiles. You need to be able to separate "this makes me, personally, uncomfortable but there's nothing wrong with it;" "this is creepy and would be morally-wrong in real life, thank goodness it's just fiction;" and "this thing, itself, is criminally wrong." Those are three different things, and if you cannot learn to recognize the difference, more people will get hurt. I don't want young people to get hurt. I want child molesters to be caught quickly so that their victims can begin the healing process, and so that they don't get the chance to molest MORE kids.

However, when every single thing that makes you uncomfortable because Age Difference is immediately classified as "pedophilia," it makes it easier for actual pedos to hide. When (hypothetical examples here) ConcernedTeen calls a fic about 2 adults with an age difference "pedophilia," and then later finds out about an actual pedophile and tries to warn people, a lot of folks will be like, "oh please, ConcernedTeen thinks that 2 adults in a relationship together is pedophilia, it's probably nothing."

Pedophilia is a mental illness in which an adult person is sexually attracted to children or underage teenagers. While not all pedophiles have actually committed CSA, they should never be left alone around children of the age they find attractive and should DEFINITELY not be talking directly to underage folks on the Internet. That's it. That's the definition.

The following real-life acts might be creepy or Problematic, and every relationship has the potential for one partner to abuse the other, but they do not fit the definition of pedophilia and thus are not pedophilia:

A 16-year-old dating a 17-year-old, regardless of whether or not they start experimenting with sex. This is 2 people who are about the same age, at the same level of physical, emotional, and social development. It is totally normal for teenagers to be interested in each other. They may not be ready to have sex yet, but if they're not ace, they've felt horny before. I haven't been interested in kids that age since I was a kid that age, and all I want to know about my future kids' sex life is, "Are you using protection? Is anyone trying to pressure you into anything you aren't ready for?"
Two adults in a romantic relationship where there is an age gap. That age gap might be uncomfortably large, like a 55-year-old dating a 22-year-old, but the younger person is an ADULT, and pedophilia involves underage kids and teens. By definition, if everyone's an adult, it's not pedophilia. (Note: This does not include situations where someone in their mid-20s or older started grooming a 16-year-old and then began officially "dating" them when they turned 18. That's shady AF and should not be considered acceptable. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if the law agrees with me on this.)
Two people who knew each other when one or both of them was underage, who meet up later as adults, and end up dating. Is it kinda weird? Yeah, I guess. But as long as no grooming of an underage-at-the-time person was going on, this isn't pedophilia.
An arranged marriage between people who are adults now, but were children when the arrangement was originally made. Being betrothed as a little kid doesn't mean you were having sex as a little kid. The wedding itself only happens when the people getting married are both adults. This also includes betrothals back in the Middle Ages where you had a 5-year-old being promised to some lord or other; there was no question that actual consummation of the marriage absolutely must no take place until the younger person was of an appropriate age, because even back then, parents didn't want their kids molested by Lord Old-Enough-To-Be-Her-Dad.
A sexual relationship between a college professor and their legally-an-adult student. Yes, it is still abusive, because of a clear imbalance of power. But the student is an adult, so it is not pedophilia. All pedophilic relationships are abusive, but not all abusive relationships are pedophilia.

There's another separate argument, too. While you and I may not like it, laws against child pornography specifically deal with images of real, live children, because they prove that an actual person has been a victim of CSA. This means that while CP of fictional children is super creepy and can indicate that a person is probably a pedophile, legally there's nothing that can be done about it because the law doesn't consider those things to be CP. This doesn't make this art morally OK; it only makes it legal. There is a difference. I'm creeped the fuck out by this kind of art too, eww.

Bearing this in mind, let's look at all the ways the "Underage" tag is used on sites like AO3, and some other fics and fanart types that I've seen called "glorifying pedophilia," so we can see what we're looking at here:

A character mentions having been molested as a child as a reason for their problems with intimacy. There are no flashbacks; we may find out who the molester was, or whether the character was molested more than once, but that's as much detail as the author gives. Because the fic is clearly not describing molestation in detail, it's not meant to get the sickos all excited. Because the fic mentions that CSA survivors have to live with the trauma caused by the incident, it is the exact opposite of glorifying pedophilia.
A character is dealing with the trauma of having been molested as a child, as above. There are flashbacks; said flashbacks are meant to create sympathy for the survivor and clearly show how terrifying the experience was. This also doesn't glorify pedophilia; it shows that CSA is traumatic and as such can cause PTSD in survivors.
Two teenagers who are underage enter a romantic relationship. They may or may not experiment with sex; if they do, there's a tasteful "fade-to-black" instead of an explicit sex scene. The characters are about the same age and are thus not in a pedophilic relationship. Care is taken to avoid voyeurism. It's not glorifying pedophilia.
Two teenagers who are underage enter a romantic relationship and there are explicit sex scenes, solely in text form. If the author was also underage at the time the fic was written, there is literally NO harm being done here. I don't want to read them, because I don't like to think of underage kids having sex, but you can't be a pedophile for being attracted to people your own goddamn age. Things get kinda hinky if someone writes this sort of fic as an adult, but it doesn't mean they're attracted to IRL kids and teens, and also two people who are the same age having a romantic/sexual relationship is not pedophilia.
A fic set in characters' future, when they are adults. Any hanky-panky is happening between characters who, in the fic, are adults. This may be uncomfortable for you to read, especially if you're the same age as the characters are in canon, but it's not pedophilia because the people having sex are adults. Whether this sort of fic is creepy or not generally tends to depend on whether the author seems to have a Thing for underage teens; it isn't automatically a sign of an author being a Creep. Furthermore, because the characters are adults in the fic, this doesn't even warrant the "Underage" tag. It is totally okay and normal to be uncomfortable with aged-up fics (again, I totally get why they might make you feel really, really gross), but they are not pedophilic. Actually, yeah, it's okay to be uncomfortable with literally anything that makes you uncomfortable. If anyone says you don't have the right to feel uncomfortable about something, then that person is someone you should probably cut out of your life.
An adult is in a romantic relationship with a child or underage teen, and other characters are rightly Concerned about this. While such fics definitely contain a pedophilic relationship, whether they glorify pedophilia depends on which characters are portrayed as being in the right or wrong by the narration.
An adult is clearly grooming/molesting a child, the narrative tone is extremely negative towards this behavior, and the victim is rescued by another character. This is clearly a case of a fic containing CSA or attempted CSA, but it doesn't glorify pedophilia any more than an episode of Law & Order: SVU.
An adult is or has been in a pedophilic relationship with a child, and the kid remembers it fondly. The abuse is portrayed in a positive light, and things like grooming are implied to Not Even Exist. Somehow nobody has a problem with an adult taking advantage of a child in this way. While this clearly counts as "glorifying pedophilia," I have never seen this particular form of fiction in any fanfiction community, only in published fiction. I won't go into more detail here except to say that CSA only started being taken seriously as a Thing That Hurts Children And Should Be Stopped in the 1970s, and books written before that can be...Uncomfortable.
Character A used to be Character B's mentor, and they end up entering into a romantic relationship after Character B becomes an adult, long after the mentorship ended. This is not pedophilia. The only way it ever could be pedophilia is if Character A is described as having had the hots for Character B when they were mentoring an underage B. Thus, the fic doesn't necessarily glorify pedophilia.
What TV Tropes calls "Wife Husbandry," in which a character plans to marry that kid over there after they've grown up. Said character may take an active mentorship role, to ensure that the kid grows into an adult with the skills that the older character wants in a spouse. This is kinda gross, but has a very long history in literature. The Tale of Hikaru Genji, the first novel ever written, had this exact plotline. It's creepy. What it says about the author's feelings towards children, however, is debatable. I, personally, have not seen this in fanfiction, but it doubtless exists.
Something kinda like "Wife Husbandry," but this time the kid has hero worship and/or a crush on the adult, and the adult has no romantic feelings for the child. Then suddenly, years later, they meet the kid, who's now an adult as well, and are like "oh shit, they got hot." This is a plotline in Anne McCaffrey's novel Damia, and it's kind of uncomfortable because of the nasty idea that CSA victims are deliberately tempting their abusers and "were totally asking for it." It's not pedophilia, but it's so, so creepy to read.
An artist creates art of what a character might look like as an adult, and it's sexy art. This is not pedophilia, because the subject of the art is an adult in the artwork.
An artist creates lewd art of a fictional character who is underage. This is pedophilic, but unfortunately legal. You can report this activity to the hosting site, especially since it's usually against their ToS, but not to the police, because they can't do anything about it. The laws against child pornography specifically refer only to pictures or videos of real-life children. That said, if the artist is deliberately sharing explicit sexual material to a minor, it is illegal. In the United States and a lot of other countries, giving pornography to a minor is a felony, whether that porn is of underage persons or not. This is because, while there's nothing wrong with the existence of porn, an adult knowingly showing porn to a minor is generally doing so in order to groom them for CSA. (This isn't the same thing as a kid happening to stumble on Dad's old dirty magazines, or deliberately searching the Internet for and finding porn by using Google or pretending to be 18. An adult has to know the person is underage and give them the pornography anyway.)
An artist creates lewd art of actual underage fans. This is illegal, and for good reason. It's obviously art created by someone who finds the kid sexually attractive, and is probably grooming them for CSA. It is another example of the felony offense "distribution of pornography to minors," in which case law enforcement tends to use the fact that the drawings are also of minors as corroborating evidence.

By the way, since I know some of the younger folks are going to be curious: I am in my mid-30s as of the writing of this post. I am attracted to people about age 25 and older. I don't want to ever have more than a platonic friendship or mentor/student relationship with ANY teenager at my age, because they are literally half my age or younger.

The way I look at a 16-year-old is about the way a 16-year-old looks at an 8-year-old: "I remember what it was like to be your age. I'm happy to be your friend and help you grow and learn, but I'd rather date literally anybody else than you because you are Just Too Young." The closest I come to acknowledging attractiveness in teens is "Man, when I was a teenager I would have found that really hot." Because yeah, I know what teen me was into, and I'm not into that age group anymore. For me, an underage teen is about as "sexy" as a potato. Are they well-groomed? Do they have nice hair? Do they have a pleasant appearance? Sure. Are they something that I personally find sexy? No, I find that teenager to be a Child, and children aren't sexy.