Generally speaking, this is a matter of priorities: A crux perceived may be a crux, but a stake perceived gets priority. That is to say, the psychological mindset, such as it is, can itself be a stake.
Most men will say no, or else duck the question, because they either do not understand it or cannot comprehend even their own answer.
If I ask, for instance, if it is a blonde joke or a cop joke—or, what, a breathalyzer joke? drunk driving? gorilla? senate candidate? judge? Alabama? &c.—or a rape joke, someone has usually just said something about never having heard a rape joke. How about a nerd joke? I raise this issue as a question of rape culture, because to hear some men tell it, I apparently grew up in a rare generational-regional cohort in which ... er ... ah ... okay, I admit, I don't know how to finish that bit of sarcasm. I don't actually believe people my age when they say they've never heard a rape joke.
I saw a political cartoon the other day, in which Roy Moore was reassuring everyone there was nothing amiss as he prepared to rape a girl. To the one, I get the joke, and can remember why it is supposed to be funny. Still, though, if I asked the artist, "Dude, just how did throwing down a rape joke help anyone?"—because somebody had to draw that, and there really is no empathy in it, the girl is merely an object, and her terror only adds to our humor—how do I expect he would respond? And, y'know, I can't make any promises on behalf of women, but I do always wonder what happens if he shrugs and says, "Yeah, I thought getting all macho and smacking Republicans and Yellowhammer conservatives in the teeth like that would make a point, but having spent the time drawing and publishing it—well, I'm not sure yet what the underlying point is I'm supposed to get, but it's easy enough to see I should have drawn something else." Because who ever says that? The standard we might expect is to challenge the pretense of a rape joke: Look, it's a Roy Moore joke! It's about Alabamians! Southerners! Incest! Since this is an allegedly enlightened cartoonist, though, we might actually hope for better; then again, "Yeah, that probably wasn't as funny as I thought", which is about the best people ever get, leaves an open question whether or not the man saying so has any real clue why it isnt funny.
Similarly, at least in effect, the question you're asking about common identification or sympathy will generally find either distressed and accusing denial, or breathtakingly pretentious ignorance. Functional elements include the danger and despicability of the conduct, ignorance regarding the issues involved, fear for self-interest, and a derivative distrust of women; there comes a point where they are no longer stubbornly refusing to address the question but utterly incapable of comprehending what it means.
My cohort learned the framework and methods of sexual harassment pretty much from the outset; we learned to sexually harass at a time when an adult looking upon us with such interest would in fact be pedophilic. It's been with us virtually from the beginning; train up a child in the way they should go, and they will not depart from it.
Part of what happens, then, is that we develop a presexual sexuality, and there are a number of ways to express this condition or circumstance according to diverse schools of psychology and behavior. But peeking in on the bathroom, spying their underwear, &c.; much arises in two contexts generally defying children, namely considerations of right and wrong during periods in which children's development generally describes a testing of boundaries, and an abstract sense of specifically forbidden territory; the latter, for my generation, ran into really weird conflicts, such as the question of whether you don't talk to or about people that way, or if there is a right time and place to treat a woman that way.
That presexual sexuality also constructs or lends heavily toward the construction of an aesthetic. It is, obviously, a childish aesthetic, but one toward which many young men carry enduring romantic or otherwise favorable sentiment. The question nearly sounds, then, like whether or not one outgrows a childish aesthetic, and, quite frankly, it very nearly is.
For instance, I try to not recall that idiot who wrote the "harmless pedophile" confessional article; there are moments that seem like people are rushing to test a bad thesis about moral relativism and proverbial floodgates, but I really, really, really don't want to try to psychoanalyze that hideously awful notion. Nonetheless, if he is determined to make that effed-up argument about having a thing for kids yet being harmless, then what he needs to do is get hold of his psyche and unwind the aesthetics and fears wrapped up in his identification. Meanwhile, nobody ought to pretend this one is harmless; the fact of the article itself raises serious doubts about his sense of discretion.
Indeed, a striking notion might be suggestions that (ahem!) most men are smarter than that. Let us be low and cold about it: Most men are smarter about self-preservation.
I actually know a guy who, by legend, would seem to have reconciled some aspect of his aesthetics. It always was creepy, and of course the word was that he liked adult women. Indeed, he married one. Four-nine, stick-skinny, actually likes wearing the clothes that she can fit into, and prefers a life of drinking beer, smoking pot, playing video games, and watching football. Somehow or other the guy with a known lolita fascination found what (ahem!) most men would describe as some manner of (cough!) perfect match. They're hippie suburban backyard farmers, seemingly well-adjusted, and that's how we will continue to view our friends until they turn up in some godawful, scandalous investigation, or some such.
So there is our appearance of exception; it's entirely possible that guy managed to get his head together about enough of this, but more to the point is the idea that this range could be common enough to be familiar. Was he ever a lolicon proper? I don't actually know, so the one thing I can never tell you for certain is that this one time, there was this guy who ....
I can tell you we all saw this. It would, however, be irresponsible to try to tell you what it means.
Still, that's one, and nothing more than a reference point; I don't have enough on it to make a proper contrast.
Because this childish aesthetic is a weird thing; I can tell you about how many other "positive" experiences in a boy's life, but riding a bike, or our first home run, or other easily romanticized memories are not quite the same as this range of protosexual and inchoate sexual experience, memory, and emotionalism. It's one thing to wallow in the good feeling of some youthful memories, and hitting home runs is generally a good thing.
But at some point, we need to outgrow these childish aesthetics, and unlike recollections of late-inning glory, what adult man ever wants to confess to or be caught amid wallowing in pleasant memories of watching little girls pee, or counting the balloons or hearts or teddy bears on their underwear?
It seems, at the very least, as if the best spin we could possibly put on the would-be "harmless" pedophile is ... honestly, I can't do it. This one is one of the biggest challenges I can imagine, and I honestly tremble not at the magnitude of the task, but its purpose; I simply cannot see the value in trying to define that one under circumstances when I absolutely will ultimately fail, and, really, without understanding why, what is my priority for such resource allocation? Nonetheless, from that extreme case to aspects more mundane, neither can I promise there is not a connection at least, or even continuum.
Your question is asking men who consider themselves largely normal and normalized to consider something they believe, according to pretense of normalcy, is repugnant. Most quite literally have no means of addressing the question because they are simply incapable of comprehending it; this is a psychological result that, in my postfreudian context, is described as neurotic. Blocking out, as such, is straightforward ego defense.
The idea that one can recognize common ground with pedophilia is, functionally, almost entirely verboten; hebephilia is often subsumed under pedophilia, but there also comes a point at which many men will make excuses because they really want, for diverse but exploitative reasons, "underage" to be "old enough". Facing that directly is stressful enough for these men in the context of social propriety; trying to answer as if one has a clue might well seem a fate worse than death to some of them.
And it's because they don't know how to deal with this stuff. So the bees haven't evolved in how long? Why not? Because they didn't need to. "Men" as a social construct, haven't evolved their address of society because they have not needed to. They don't want to think about it, so if they do, well, then it's some woman's fault. Or some little girl.
They need to break the continuum in order to pretend that, with a place for everything and everything in its place, or a season, turn, turn, turn, for all things, there must necessarily be a right time and place and method for harassment and exploitation. They won't concede this point without exhausting every possibility, and since the scale of that defies any one human being, it means they will never actually stop. That's what they're afraid to say, enough that they are incapable of saying it.
