Lolicon/Headscratchers

Why do some people use the word lolicon to mean ANYONE who likes little girls? Even if they just think little girls are cute. This includes most fathers.
- Is a joke.
Also, why do some people refer to most underage female characters (that aren't even sexualized, at all) as "loli"?
- Tis just what is done.
- I blame Rule 34. Then again, I sometimes refer to a character in one of my stories as a "loli" even though she's not meant as a Token Loli, and she's only a couple of years younger than the other characters in the Five-Man Band (who are around the age of 11 or 12, while she is between the ages of 8 and 10).
- Because some people are stupid.
- I think a lot of the problems could be solved by strictly defining lolicon as a subset of Hentai. If it's not porn, it's not lolicon, no matter how many panty shots there are.
- Some people says "loli" when addresing a lolicon (as in: "That guy likes little girls, he's such a loli") a serious case of Did Not Do the Research
- I think that this is due to the evolution of language and internet slang. Lolicon became associated with little girls, loli became an abbreviation to refer to sexualized little girls, and from there it just became a catch-all term referring to young girls. It's simply a shift in meaning, like "dumb" being used to refer to something uncool instead of muteness.
- It's probably also mixed in with the fact that the term "Lolita" has been popularly applied to them since at least 1958.
- This Troper submits that it is because those familiar with the term associate it not with an AGE but with a Body Type. i.e. short, slender, and petannko with nice legs.
Why is this trope called lolicon, not lolicom?
- I believe due to Japanese mispronunciation
- The Japanese don't differentiate between the two letters, but the usual transliteration is an "n"
- The Japanese do differentiate between "m" and "n" but "n" before "p" or "b" becomes "m", when it's pronounced, just like in Finnish and Spanish.