Hebephilia

Hebephilia is an attraction towards people who appear to be young, pubescent adolescents. Typically, this word applies to the attraction of adults or fully postpubescent adolescents, but prepubescent children with an attraction to the signs of puberty can also be called hebephiles, even though it is not abnormal. In literature the age range of the people hebephiles find attractive is defined as 11-14, but in practice it can be as high as 13-16 for people that go through male puberty. Hebephilia is much more widespread than younger map-spectrum attractions.

History
For the first time the term was used in 1955 in a work Psychodynamic Patterns In The Sex Offender: Fear Of The Adult Female Sex Object And Feelings Of Genital Inadequacy by researchers Hammer and Glueck, who sought to differentiate it from ephebophilia. Hebephilia and its validity as an age preference separate from pedophilia or ephebophilia is still a heated debate topic among scientists. However, there are multiple people whose reported life experiences fit this term, and hebephilia is accepted as an independent identity in the map community.

Probably, the most known hebephile is a fictional character Humbert Humbert from “Lolita” by Vladimir Nabokov. Even though he is often characterized as a pedophile in literary analyses, he described his own attractions as attractions to girls “between the age limits of nine and fourteen”

Prevalence
As with all map spectrum attractions, numbers greatly vary, and it is impossible to establish the exact percentage of hebephiles, but it is possible to estimate. According to data, presented by Tozdan S, Dekker A, Neutze J, et al. in Sexual Interest in Children Among Women in Two Nonclinical and Nonrepresentative Online Samples, 9.5% women have sexual fantasies about pubescents. And Dr. Seto states that hebephilia is more common among men than attraction to middle aged people. It is possible to say that at least 10-15% of the human population is naturally hebephiliac.