You can call me intellectually lazy if you want, although my colleagues in the Learning Center at my local community college would disagree. (I'm the go-to person for the math that no one else wants to deal with. The really nerdy stuff.)
Its just that the different forms of atypical chronophilia* are not my concern. My concerns are that young people should be safe, that teens should have ready access to science-based sex education and contraceptives, and that adults should understand that teens are off-limits because their brains are not yet fully developed.
When I hear someone expressing concerns about sexual abuse and someone else wants to correct them on their terminology it sounds to me like they're defending taking advantage of teenagers.
I am a survivor. I was raised in a church where young people had to submit to adults, females had to submit to males, and a male's word was law. I was not taught boundaries, only obedience. Sex education was limited to periods and "don't be alone with a boy, he will want to do something that you're not supposed to do till you're married." They never told me what that "something" was but I was often touched inappropriately while growing up, and molested as a young teen. I didn't even know what a penis looked like until someone exposed himself to me while I was riding my bike. Lacking education and boundaries, I was easy pickings for rapists in my teens and early twenties. It was only then I found out what that "something" was.
"It's not pedophilia, it's ephibophelia" sounds like a sorry excuse that my assailants and their defenders would use. And I am not an anomaly -- I am one of millions of survivors who were raised in churches and cultures where females have no say.
The OP's confession may be likened to someone who says "I was friends with a murderer" and then it turns out that the friend had committed negligent homicide. Granted, there is a difference in degree, but the fact remains that the friend unjustly ended someone else's life. The grief and shame over having been associated with a killer is the point, not the degree of the offense. So it's cold consolation to tell them, "but it wasn't murder, it was negligent homicide." The victim is still dead, the friend of the killer is still grieved and shamed, and that's what matters here. We are not in a court of law; we are in an essay-sharing social media site.
If you were a defense attorney for someone accused of atypical chronophilia* you would be more concerned about the distinctions than about the victim. But most of us are not defense attorneys and most of us are more concerned about young people getting hurt than about legal terminology.
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronophilia#:~:text=The%20term%20chronophilia%20(chrono%20(time,individuals%20of%20particular%20age%20ranges.
