Freudian slip of the century: "Let's stop attacking pedophiles"

Senator Ted Cruz making an impassioned speech at a Senate hearing on Tuesday about reaching a “bipartisan agreement” on crime:

“How about we all come together and say, ‘let’s stop murders?’

“How about we all come together and say ‘let’s stop rape?’

“How about we all come together and say ‘let’s stop attacking pedophiles’.” 

(Independent [10/1/25]; videos here and here)

I think that Cruz may have wanted to say "pedophilia" to match "murders" and "rape", but that's a rare word that he didn't quite know what it meant or how to handle it, so he made the quick switcheroo with the parallelism of the other preceding two phrases.

Many psychologists recommend against using the term pedophilia to denote sexual activities with children, because not all people with a primary or exclusive sexual attraction to prepubescent children (i.e., pedophilia) commit such acts, and child molesters often lack a strong sexual interest in prepubescent children.^[1][2] Furthermore, psychological texts define pedophilia as a primary or exclusive attraction towards specifically prepubescent children;^[3] attraction towards pubescent children is known as hebephilia and towards post-pubescent adolescents as ephebophilia. See Wikipedia for more information.

(Wiktionary)

Lesson:  don't reach for a word you're not sure of.

 

Selected readings

• "Jingle bells, pedophile" (12/7/09)
• "Pedant" (3/17/20)

[h.t. François Lang]