When you call them “pedos” or “pedophiles,” you give them an escape hatch.
They can simply deny it…
What you almost never hear are the words hebephilia and hebephile — the correct terms for attraction to early-pubescent adolescents, ages 11–14 — or ephebophilia and ephebophile for attraction to mid-to-late teens, 15–17. Those are the real clinical and legal terms. And if the media used them, they’d remove the ambiguity, eliminate the lawyerly shrug, and close the loophole that so often protects rich and powerful friends.
An attraction to Miss Teen USA contestants, for example, would make someone primarily an ephebophile, not a pedophile, by definition. That distinction clarifies the crime. It does not diminish it. A minor is still a minor.
But an ephebophile can truthfully deny being a pedophile, and who knows, maybe even sue you for calling him one.
The truth lives in the definition.
If you don’t think semantics matter, remember Bill Clinton “did not have sexual relations with that woman”.
