"Pedophile Rights" tangent

[Moontanman]

Ok Marat, how do you decide between sexual contact that is harmful and sexual contact that is not. It is obvious that some adult/child sexual contact is harmful, has to be if for no other reason than some adult/adult sexual contact is harmful. Where do you draw the line? A 3 year old girl who enjoyed cunnilingus, would that be allowed? If this slope is not slippery there has never been one for sure...

Edited September 29, 2010 by Moontanman

[padren]

The space ship example is not intended to be an exceptional empirical case, so it is not limited in significance by its rarity. Rather, it is just a thought experiment to exclude the influence of cultural disapproval in creating the psychiatric harm which is now associated with pederasty in modern western societies. To make the point that there is something about intimate, pleasurable, physical contact between older people and younger ones that inevitably traumatizes the younger person for life, driving them into instant insanity from the massive psychiatric devastation of this action, it has to be established that this act in itself is harmful. It seems difficult to understand why society would regard an intimate, physical pleasure such as a massage as totally harmless, while it would descend into a profound moral panic if this exact same action were to be turned a few degrees to the left or right to become a sexual pleasure. At what point on the continuum does traumatization for life inevitably set in in the child from a sufficiently sexualized massage, and at what point is the action absolutely trivial and harmless because it is just a mutually physically pleasurable massage? I really just cannot see how a pleasurable action, performed in a cultural vacuum, or in a culture which approved that action, could somehow necssitate lifelong psychiatric trauma. I wish someone could actually trace out for me the precise mechanism by which this instant and massive induction of insanity, unavoidable in any and every form of human culture imaginable, would be caused.

The problem is in your thought experiment you removed far more than just the cultural disapproval. You removed any way for the child to experience anything or grow up without an adult that is trying to have sex with them.

 

I honestly believe the longer a child grows up without being exposed to sexuality the better, outside of their own exploration in terms of playing doctor with kids their age and such. When you compare child "doctor" games to adult sexuality you are comparing the difference between pixie sticks and crack cocaine. The only act that an adult will focus on more intensely than a sexual act will be violence. As far as our hardwiring goes, we become most engrossed in acts associated with reproduction, and second is having to kill or be killed. A distant third is eating.

 

Once a child discovers an adult level intensity of sexuality it is going to have an impact on their development. When a dog "tastes blood" the animal is usually put down, because it won't manage that appetite once triggered. If a child has a bad adult sexual experience, it will be intensely bad. If they have a "good" one the intensity will still overshadow other things they should really be preoccupied with.

 

Consider:

 

The easiest way to separate a grown, mature intelligent successful man from his money is to use sex.

 

Not crack

 

Not fast cars.

 

Just sex.

 

People we trust to "press the button" and nuke the whole world over and elect as well accomplished leaders still can't always keep it in their pants when it is obvious they should.

 

 

Setting up a child to try to navigate those sorts of emotions in a world of adults is ludicrous - they'd have a better chance navigating class 5 rapids in a wet paper bag.

 

It seems to me that the presumption that sexual consent by children must be denied because sex is so massively risky simply reflects the cultural hatred and fear of sex rather than any risk so great that young people cannot consent to it. When I was 10 my figure skating teacher persuaded me, though she could see I was quite reluctant, to attempt a difficult jump, and when I landed I caught the pick of my skate on the ice and fell forward, being seriously injured. But despite this, no one in the society who knew about my taking such a significant risk of physical and psychiatric harm at the tender age of 10 for reasons more of interest to my parents and the skating teacher than to me felt that I was exploited, or that I should be stopped from ever taking that risk again, or that the police should be called, or that I must inevitably have been traumatized for life. Now why not?

Because your parents were either too dense, too preoccupied, too uncaring, or too dependent on conventional wisdom to realize the effects of the event on you.

Obviously, because the risk I took and the harm I experienced was not sexual! Yet taking a much smaller sexual risk at that age would have sent the entire neighborhood into a frenezy of hysterical outrage. The difference can only be that the one activity was sexual and the other would not have been.

So, because people fail to see the damage some conventional activities cause, the answer is to also fail to see the damage sexual activities cause?

 

That does not add up.

Conducting an inventory of my own memories, I would say that like Moontanman, I had a strong sexual interest at a very young age. But let us suppose for the sake of argument that he and I are exceptions and that most young people are not very interested in sex. But children are coerced by adults into all sorts of activities all the time which are either of much more interest to the adults than to the children, or of absolutely no interest to the children, or are even hated by the children, and yet society not only does not disapprove of these actions for that reason, but it even approves of them. Take for example religious education, which children find either boring or terrifying, depending on whether it consists in sitting on hard wooden benches listening to old people recite utterly meaningless rants about who begat whom and people being swallowed by whale, or whether it involves terrifying children with tales of eternal damnation, hellfire, sin, guilt, alienation from one's own natural biological drives, etc. Now all of this is clearly exploitative, since it uses children in support of the adults' interest in propagating the superstitions which imprison their own minds, and it has no interest whatsoever in whether the children are bored or terrified by the experience.

You can be sure they believe it was for your own good. Getting beat was considered an indispensable learning tool in child raising not long ago: "Spare the rod, spoil the child" pretty much says if you don't beat your kids they'll hate you for it later on.

 

The way I see it, it works like this:

 

1) We are slowly moving from an exceptionally violent culture to a less and less violent culture.

2) As we do so, we find not only do we not need to use violent and harmful techniques to "toughen" children up, but it ends up hurting in more civil societies than it helps.

3) Groups that have had traditions for thousands of years are going to continue believing in their techniques, until society says "oh I don't think so" and takes a stand against specific harms we see and intervene to stop.

-- This includes child labor, discipline involving physical abuse or neglect, pedophilia, and most recently whether religious parents can prevent life-saving care in hospitals for children facing life threatening conditions.

4) Some negative traditions persist out of ignorance to their harm, while others persist because we haven't solved the touchy issue between protecting a child and protecting the rights of a parent to raise their child.

 

Honestly I wonder if any kid should be playing competitive sports like soccer. I know people in their early 20s who hurt every day and have horrible joint problems from highschool sports.

So why, in a society where this happens all the time without complaint, do we go hysterical if we find that children are being exploited for adults' interests in pederasty? The latter case is especially strange, since in contrast to religion, children actually have a natural interest in sex, so the exploitation, if it exists at all, would be infinitely less than in religious education.

Because we have been able to determine that pederasty does cause harm, and thankfully pederasts don't have a massive stranglehold on our political system so we can actually protect kids from that. Religion is a lot trickier because it involves a lot of magical justifications but we do intervene far more now than ever before when a child is exposed to physical harm due to religious beliefs of their parents. Under the principle of self-determination you can't really stop a parent from educating their child with a fire/brimstone faith, but you can stop them from hitting their kids, denying their kids medical treatment, or marrying off their kids.

 

The fact that we still have problems with how much we do/don't protect children from their parents isn't really relevant to the question if we should protect kids from a specifically known type of harm. Humans aren't perfect and in 500 years we'll probably be horrified about what people in our age did and considered normal. But you can't just throw your hands up in the air because we haven't gotten it "all right" just yet. It's an incremental process.

[Mr Skeptic]

As far as our hardwiring goes, we become most engrossed in acts associated with reproduction, and second is having to kill or be killed. A distant third is eating.

 

Not so, it is just hidden because food is so abundant in our society. But hunger will nerf the sex drive like nothing else (no having kids during a famine), it just doesn't happen in our society. On the other hand, sex is hard to get.

[padren]

Not so, it is just hidden because food is so abundant in our society. But hunger will nerf the sex drive like nothing else (no having kids during a famine), it just doesn't happen in our society. On the other hand, sex is hard to get.

 

That's fair. Perhaps it boils down to the Maslow Hierarchy somewhat, but it is worth noting that sexuality in our society is the most powerful and judgment affecting drive that tends to come into play. Perhaps we use sex to sell in ads because if people are preoccupied with the more basic drives (like food) they probably don't have much money to spend. Of course, people do eat incredibly overpriced fish eggs and snails, so even when in excess food is a strong drive but I also supposed people that spend that sort of money on food have no shortage of money. When basic quality food is covered, people tend to financially suffer for sex more than other drives.

[Moontanman]

The problem is in your thought experiment you removed far more than just the cultural disapproval. You removed any way for the child to experience anything or grow up without an adult that is trying to have sex with them.

 

I honestly believe the longer a child grows up without being exposed to sexuality the better, outside of their own exploration in terms of playing doctor with kids their age and such. When you compare child "doctor" games to adult sexuality you are comparing the difference between pixie sticks and crack cocaine. The only act that an adult will focus on more intensely than a sexual act will be violence. As far as our hardwiring goes, we become most engrossed in acts associated with reproduction, and second is having to kill or be killed. A distant third is eating.

 

The whole playing doctor thing is how kids seduce each other it is not the end it is the means to the end which can be sexuality just as intense as the sex between adults, i was there i did that.

 

Once a child discovers an adult level intensity of sexuality it is going to have an impact on their development. When a dog "tastes blood" the animal is usually put down, because it won't manage that appetite once triggered. If a child has a bad adult sexual experience, it will be intensely bad. If they have a "good" one the intensity will still overshadow other things they should really be preoccupied with.

 

That is not true, dogs that taste blood are not ruined, nor do they seek out blood there after, this analogy simply does not hold up. But I agree that a child is not equipped to handle a bad adult/child sexual experience.

 

 

 

 

Consider:

 

The easiest way to separate a grown, mature intelligent successful man from his money is to use sex.

 

Not crack

 

Not fast cars.

 

Just sex.

 

People we trust to "press the button" and nuke the whole world over and elect as well accomplished leaders still can't always keep it in their pants when it is obvious they should.

 

I don't see how any of this has anything to do with what we are discussing.

 

 

Setting up a child to try to navigate those sorts of emotions in a world of adults is ludicrous - they'd have a better chance navigating class 5 rapids in a wet paper bag.

 

This i agree with totally.

 

I'm not sure how you would go about allowing sexual contact between a child and an adult, i am a Dad, i tried to make sure my children did not fall victim to sexual predators. I know for sure that any adult i had found having sex with my children would have come to a bad end. It's really a crazy situation, i sought out sex as a child but not all children have sexual feelings, i would think that most do not, but who would have sex with children if they were allowed to have sex? Does some adult man ask my 6 year old out on a date? The entire thing is crazy from six different directions. I feel like i was lucky i didn't fall victim to a "bad adult" when I was a child. i see no reason to react like a crazy person if a child has sex with another child but the idea of trusting an adult to have sex with my child and not harm them in some way is just not acceptable.... not acceptable....

[padren]

The whole playing doctor thing is how kids seduce each other it is not the end it is the means to the end which can be sexuality just as intense as the sex between adults, i was there i did that.

It's how they test the waters and I think a lot of the time kids back out before it gets that intense. An interesting question I think is when one kid becomes uncomfortable and the other is pressuring, it could end up causing harm. At the same time they are both kids and we don't expect them to understand other people's feelings that well. It's a tricky topic to explore.

 

That is not true, dogs that taste blood are not ruined, nor do they seek out blood there after, this analogy simply does not hold up. But I agree that a child is not equipped to handle a bad adult/child sexual experience.

I agree they aren't "ruined" but if they do get a taste for it (not the blood, the rush), it can lead to very intractable behavioral problems.

 

I don't see how any of this has anything to do with what we are discussing.

Basically providing what I consider empirical evidence that suggests that even adults have a lot of difficultly making wise decisions in face of sexual drives. That difficulty is ubiquitously exploited/leveraged in our society and it's adults who try to navigate it, quite often with pretty poor results.

 

I'm not sure how you would go about allowing sexual contact between a child and an adult, i am a Dad, i tried to make sure my children did not fall victim to sexual predators. I know for sure that any adult i had found having sex with my children would have come to a bad end. It's really a crazy situation, i sought out sex as a child but not all children have sexual feelings, i would think that most do not, but who would have sex with children if they were allowed to have sex? Does some adult man ask my 6 year old out on a date? The entire thing is crazy from six different directions. I feel like i was lucky i didn't fall victim to a "bad adult" when I was a child. i see no reason to react like a crazy person if a child has sex with another child but the idea of trusting an adult to have sex with my child and not harm them in some way is just not acceptable.... not acceptable....

I agree. I think it would require an almost saintlike disposition for an adult not end up with compromised judgment. Certainly requires more than a priest-like disposition if current events are any indication.

 

 

 

It seems to me to be safe to say that children are too impressionable, malleable, and vulnerable to be expected to cope with any degree of sexual leveraging from an adult... and the only thing that has ever seemed to keep an adult in check is a sharp, equally experienced partner. Imagine if every argument you ever had with a sexual partner could be trumped with "You're too young to understand" and you got to win every single one? I hate to think how my life would have turned out if I always won those arguments - thank goodness I've always been interested in challenging partners.

Edited September 29, 2010 by padren

[Marat]

As I child, I played sex games with other children, but I was never hurt either physically or emotionally by those. The 'risks' involved, if any, seem to have been quite minor in objective terms. But if my parents or the neighbors had discovered us playing those games, they would have been convinced that we had all been damaged for life. This could only be because of an objectively unsupportable value judgment that sex is of no benefit and that sex is a terrible risk.

 

It was well known to my parents, to other parents, to figure skating teachers, and to figure skating students that figure skating lessons, with their many and varied dangerous jumps, were extremely risky and likely to cause physical injury. The high-pressure atmosphere of the childhood figure skating world was also extremely emotionally dangerous to children, since many were severely traumatized on their imaginary route to the Olympics if they lost some competition or were criticized by the judges for making mistakes on compulsory figures. But both of these severe injuries -- physical as well as psychological -- were dismissed as unimportant on a cultural risk-benefit analysis, since skating was regarded as quite good, for utterly arbitrary cultural reasons, and its associated harms, even though they were inflicted on children as young as six or seven, who often hated their skating lessons, as I did, were dismissed on cultural grounds again as an insignificant part of the necessary 'toughening up' process of socialization, in which children are supposed to learn to get over physical injuries and endure psychological pressures.

 

But why are the comparable risks -- or even objectively less serious risks -- of sexuality in children of the same age regarded as the most horrendous, society-destroying, insanity-inducting terrors of the universe? The only possible explanation must be what we already know to be the case -- society is profoundly neurotic in its attitudes towards human sexuality, and instead of regarding it as a natural pleasure no different in principle from getting or giving a massage, eating a meal, or having a warm bath, it artificially renders it sacred, mysterious, and terrifying, so that it can't think rationally about it. This is why adulteresses are stoned to death in Iran, or children used to be fitted with anti-masturbation belts in 19th century America, or Dr. Kellogg around the same time developed food so anti-nutritious that it was marketed for children as an anti-sex nutrient, or modern society goes into a collective convulsion of hysteria every time a 10-year-old boy touches the underwear of a 7-year-old girl.

 

One route to seeing the issue more objectively and neutrally is to remove the frightening word 'sex' and just classify the activity under the more neutral, generic term of 'physical pleasure.' Now if an adult male and a 10-year-old boy mutually give and receive from each other the physical pleasure of a back massage, we might think that a little strange, but no one would be in a panic about it. But how does that sensation of mutual pleasuring differ qualitatively from that involved in sexuality? Many adults regard massage as a part of sex, so it cannot be very easily divorced from sex, yet in law and morals the difference is enormous in the case of pederasty. If we admit that both massage and sex are forms of mutual physical pleasure which differ not in quality but only in degree, then why does a greater degree of mutual pleasuring necessarily induce instant and lifelong psychologic traumatization in a child, while the lesser degree of mutual pleasuring does not? Is there some point where a massage gradually becomes more sexual and less purely massage-like where the permanent psychological damage to the child suddenly appears? Is this point determined by objective physical and psychological factors, or just by cultural agreement? If cultural agreement is the only way to determine the critical point where we shift from a harmless massage to a mind-destroying sexual act, then we agree that culture is causing the problem, not anything necessarily rooted in the body or in the nature of the mind.

 

While adults may have much more intense feelings about sex than children do, is this difference in the intensity of feelings about some shared activity recognized as a general problem in society? As a child I was forced to come into intimate contact with adults who were total religious fanatics, consumed by hatred of some invisible thing they called the 'Devil,' terrified by some odd abstraction they called 'sin,' obsessed with various rituals they called 'sacred,' but I was totally bewildered by all of this, and I shared none of the intensity the adults were forcing me to participate in along with them. The fact that society knew about this and did not care much about it, while it goes berserk at the idea of children forced into experiences with aduls which are much less intense for them than for the adults, and which are outside of their scope of experience, and which they cannot understand, shows again that all of this concern is in fact culturally, not objectively motivated.

[padren]

As I child, I played sex games with other children, but I was never hurt either physically or emotionally by those. The 'risks' involved, if any, seem to have been quite minor in objective terms. But if my parents or the neighbors had discovered us playing those games, they would have been convinced that we had all been damaged for life. This could only be because of an objectively unsupportable value judgment that sex is of no benefit and that sex is a terrible risk.

Firstly: No no no no no, that is not what objective means. You are using your life experience to draw your conclusions, meaning it is a subjective analysis, not an objective one.

 

Secondly: Whether your parents would have overreacted does not tell us anything other than how your parents would have reacted to that situation. I believe you yourself established that your parents (for all intensive purposes) were basically stark raving mad and entirely unreliable at risk assessment. It is quite likely that many parents would react severally but many would actually try not to traumatize their kids by making it worse.

 

Thirdly: You have absolutely no reflection on the risks - to you because you weren't hurt you assess the risks are minimal. You may as well say "Math teachers have an objectively unsupportable value judgment against buying lotto tickets" because you bought one and just happened to win a million dollars. I am not saying the odds of your successful navigation of the risks were on par with winning the lotto, but they are far closer to that than the "minimal risk" you keep repeating.

 

Just because your parents would overreact due to their beliefs that there was a 100% chance you would be harmed does not mean all parents are like that nor does it mean that the concerns of most parents are unfounded. Your parents apparently had no sense of reality. Other parents could react in a lesser-but-still-upset manner for completely legitimate reasons due to completely reasonable risk assessments.

 

I have outlined a great many risks that you haven't acknowledged, all you have done is repeat that "you were fine" so it wasn't risky, which is not logically conclusive.

 

It was well known to my parents, to other parents, to figure skating teachers, and to figure skating students that figure skating lessons, with their many and varied dangerous jumps, were extremely risky and likely to cause physical injury. The high-pressure atmosphere of the childhood figure skating world was also extremely emotionally dangerous to children, since many were severely traumatized on their imaginary route to the Olympics if they lost some competition or were criticized by the judges for making mistakes on compulsory figures. But both of these severe injuries -- physical as well as psychological -- were dismissed as unimportant on a cultural risk-benefit analysis, since skating was regarded as quite good, for utterly arbitrary cultural reasons, and its associated harms, even though they were inflicted on children as young as six or seven, who often hated their skating lessons, as I did, were dismissed on cultural grounds again as an insignificant part of the necessary 'toughening up' process of socialization, in which children are supposed to learn to get over physical injuries and endure psychological pressures.

Welcome to our sick, brutal and barbaric culture. You mentioned all this before and I took the time to reply and explain how it is not relevant to the issue of pederasty. All it says is that many parents put their children in harms way without realizing it due to cultural traditions they haven't stopped to question. That does not mean they should stop realizing that pederasty is high risk and can cause serious harm and suddenly condone it.

 

Do you see how these are separate issues?

 

But why are the comparable risks -- or even objectively less serious risks -- of sexuality in children of the same age regarded as the most horrendous, society-destroying, insanity-inducting terrors of the universe? The only possible explanation must be what we already know to be the case -- society is profoundly neurotic in its attitudes towards human sexuality, and instead of regarding it as a natural pleasure no different in principle from getting or giving a massage, eating a meal, or having a warm bath, it artificially renders it sacred, mysterious, and terrifying, so that it can't think rationally about it.

No. I can't grant you the risks are objectively less, for reasons already covered. Yes, the risks are blown out of proportion by many parents, but that does not mean a proportional response would be to condone the activity as actively as they would condone competitive ice skating.

This is why adulteresses are stoned to death in Iran, or children used to be fitted with anti-masturbation belts in 19th century America, or Dr. Kellogg around the same time developed food so anti-nutritious that it was marketed for children as an anti-sex nutrient, or modern society goes into a collective convulsion of hysteria every time a 10-year-old boy touches the underwear of a 7-year-old girl.

Many people in our culture have a lot of baggage and hangups about sex that don't need to be there. I agree with that. That does not mean that getting rid of all the baggage will demonstrate that there is no serious risks of harm.

One route to seeing the issue more objectively and neutrally is to remove the frightening word 'sex' and just classify the activity under the more neutral, generic term of 'physical pleasure.'

Except that 'physical pleasure' can apply to anything as mundane as a back rub or as intense as sex, which has massive emotional, perceptual and psychological liabilities. To bundle the words together would be like saying "A duck and a hippo are both animals, so lets call them animals, and when you find a duck and weigh that animal, it is light, therefore animals and by proxy hippos are light."

Now if an adult male and a 10-year-old boy mutually give and receive from each other the physical pleasure of a back massage, we might think that a little strange, but no one would be in a panic about it. But how does that sensation of mutual pleasuring differ qualitatively from that involved in sexuality?

Different behaviors that release different chemicals in the brain in different intensities carry different implications.

Many adults regard massage as a part of sex, so it cannot be very easily divorced from sex, yet in law and morals the difference is enormous in the case of pederasty.

Only adults that go to shady parlors for happy endings. Many adults also regard a good cigarette part of sex, but that does not mean cigarette smoking is sexual. It means it can be. When it is, then it is. When it's not, then it's not. This is on a case by case basis. It is clear and very easy to separate a non-sexual massage from a sexual massage. For instance, a non-sexual massage does not carry the majority of the risks associated with a sexual massage. To call them both "massage" when you are clearly trying to refer to very different types of massages with very different activities and implications only serves to obscure and blur the meanings of what you are describing - language is designed to make things more understandable and unambiguous, not less.

 

 

 

If we admit that both massage and sex are forms of mutual physical pleasure which differ not in quality but only in degree, then why does a greater degree of mutual pleasuring necessarily induce instant and lifelong psychologic traumatization in a child, while the lesser degree of mutual pleasuring does not? Is there some point where a massage gradually becomes more sexual and less purely massage-like where the permanent psychological damage to the child suddenly appears? Is this point determined by objective physical and psychological factors, or just by cultural agreement? If cultural agreement is the only way to determine the critical point where we shift from a harmless massage to a mind-destroying sexual act, then we agree that culture is causing the problem, not anything necessarily rooted in the body or in the nature of the mind.

They differ in quality, and any MRI would show that. There would be dramatic differences in brain activity, and there would be an entirely distinct set of chemicals flooding the bloodstream in a sexual act. The "line" is when it crosses over from general contact to focused sexual stimulation.

 

While adults may have much more intense feelings about sex than children do, is this difference in the intensity of feelings about some shared activity recognized as a general problem in society? As a child I was forced to come into intimate contact with adults who were total religious fanatics, consumed by hatred of some invisible thing they called the 'Devil,' terrified by some odd abstraction they called 'sin,' obsessed with various rituals they called 'sacred,' but I was totally bewildered by all of this, and I shared none of the intensity the adults were forcing me to participate in along with them. The fact that society knew about this and did not care much about it, while it goes berserk at the idea of children forced into experiences with aduls which are much less intense for them than for the adults, and which are outside of their scope of experience, and which they cannot understand, shows again that all of this concern is in fact culturally, not objectively motivated.

 

It means your parents are totally nuts, and even people bothered by religious nut parents terrorizing their kids couldn't do anything about it because the issue of religious freedoms and child raising rights and responsibilities are a very difficult gray area we are still working through. Just because the crazy religious aspects of your parents aren't objective, and just because their behavior is tolerated by a mix of people (some who directly condone it, others who don't but can't find a practical solution that would allow any form of intervention) does not mean that the concerns over pederasty are not objectively motivated.

 

I am open to your arguments but the contrast to your religious upbringing and competitive sports activities vs. sexuality cannot in any way tell us a single thing about proper reactions to sexuality. All it tells us is that your parents had no issue putting you in harms way with regards to some activities, while did take great issue with exposing you to others. You can isolate what they did condone and say they condoned it out of hypocrisy or out of ignorance or whatever you like - none of those factors support or condemn their views on pederasty. It infers they may have had a predilection to overreact to the harms of pederasty, but it doesn't even infer that the harms of pederasty are non-existent and solely borne of social taboos.

[Marat]

I think a key concept here is that of risk. All activities anyone ever performs, other than alone in a locked bunker, create some risk for other people. The risks which are unacceptable, objectively harmful, or such as to cause alarm and disapproval are just those which go beyond the social norm of the basic mutual risk pool we all tolerate. Thus we all accept that driving together on the same road with the same posted speed limits creates a risk, but the risk is not viewed as criminal or harmful because it does not exceed the socially and conventionally determine threshold for the risk we all share in common.

 

It is to highlight this distinction that I gave the example of children participating in dangerous figure skating lessons. True, one could argue as you do, that we should eliminate all dangers -- whether those of religion, sport, or sex -- from the environment of children as abusive and as marks of a previous and less civilized era. But the risks which we accept because we regard them, by convention, are those below the threshold of the common risk pool. Now since young children taking moderately physically dangerous skating lessons, or taking moderately psychiatrically harmful relgious instruction, has always been regarded as below the threshold of 'excessive risk' which the society is willing to endure without complaint, then if we see that risks of physical and psychiatric harm which are intrinsically less than those of skating lessons or religious instruction are forbidden as unacceptable 'risks' by society, we can see that this determination is arbitrary and arises more from society's neurosis about sex than from any objectively neutral assessment of whether the risk of harm is within the ambit of generally tolerated social risk for children.

 

Now of course in our present society the psychiatric risk of sex between adults and children is enormous, but that seems to be just because society arbitrarily chooses to make a huge issue out of it, rather than because in some precultural sense it is intrinsically harmful. If we made that big an issue out of children and adults eating peanut butter together, I am sure that doing so would make children neurotic for life.

 

If we strip away the explosive term, sex, so as to improve our chances of getting at the neutral reality behind it, what we have in sexual relations between adults and children is a mutual sharing of physical pleasure which may be more of an indulgence in curiosity for the children and more of an intense pleasure for the adults. But what is it about the fact that the adults are older, experience a different kind of pleasure, or are more interested in the experience than the children which necessarily creates such a 'monstrous harm' for the younger partners? If an adult gastronom were sharing a cordon bleu meal with a child, no doubt the experience would be infinitely more intense for the adult, but why would that gulf in sophistication, interest, and motivation necessarily be harmful?

[losfomot]

True, one could argue as you do, that we should eliminate all dangers -- whether those of religion, sport, or sex -- from the environment of children as abusive and as marks of a previous and less civilized era.

 

I don't think that's what padron is saying. I think what padron is saying is that the fact that we may accept our children's exposure to some of these 'risky' environments is not an argument for allowing said children exposure to other risky 'environments'.

 

"Mommy, I found this mushroom in the back yard, can I eat it?"

 

"Well, it could be poisonous... but you did go figure skating today, and you could have easily cracked your head open... I think eating that mushroom is probably far less risky... besides, I remember eating mushrooms as a kid, and I turned out ok... sure go ahead, you'll probably be fine"

 

If you are really arguing in favor of pedophilia, how about you stop making these ridiculous comparisons to sports and religion and instead give some objective evidence that shows that an adult influencing a child to engage in sexual activities with them is not harmful.

 

If it wasn't harmful, I think that we would have far fewer psychologists, and counselors in the world... there just wouldn't be the same demand.

[padren]

I don't think that's what padron is saying. I think what padron is saying is that the fact that we may accept our children's exposure to some of these 'risky' environments is not an argument for allowing said children exposure to other risky 'environments'.

 

"Mommy, I found this mushroom in the back yard, can I eat it?"

 

"Well, it could be poisonous... but you did go figure skating today, and you could have easily cracked your head open... I think eating that mushroom is probably far less risky... besides, I remember eating mushrooms as a kid, and I turned out ok... sure go ahead, you'll probably be fine"

That is a correct assessment of my argument there, well said.

 

If you are really arguing in favor of pedophilia, how about you stop making these ridiculous comparisons to sports and religion and instead give some objective evidence that shows that an adult influencing a child to engage in sexual activities with them is not harmful.

 

If it wasn't harmful, I think that we would have far fewer psychologists, and counselors in the world... there just wouldn't be the same demand.

 

Technically it can't be proven as "not harmful" as proving a negative is exceptionally tricky. The core feature of his argument that I actually agree with is that the hysteria the taboo invokes by adults in a child's life can be a cause of psychological damage.

 

To rephrase what I believe he is saying, consider if we lived in a society where we all believed that taking a photograph stole a person's soul, and as such no one ever took photographs. If a child came running crying to their mom that a strange man in the street took their (fully clothed mind you) photograph, the resulting hysteria and reinforcement of the belief would certainly traumatize the child. The kid would be scared that some stranger had their soul, and every other kid that had experienced that was traumatized for life, so they can expect a long road to recovery. Our society could easily continue to blame such subsequent psychological trauma as evidence that photography can in fact steal a person's soul and naturally cause extreme psychological trauma.

 

I believe that's the core of his argument, and I agree that it is entirely self consistent and possibly emerges in some situations.

 

Where I disagree, is I do not believe pedophilia is as benign as taking someone's picture, I do believe it is quite capable of causing genuine harm all on it's own with no need for cultural reinforcement. Hysteria may amplify this harm, but the initial harm done would still be in there and is great enough that it justifies the laws against the practice regardless of cultural magnifiers.

 

 

To explain why I draw this conclusion I've detailed many ways in which a child would be likely to experience psychological harm in previous posts.

 

Marat, I never said I thought those practices such as competitive sports should be banned as too risky, I felt that your parents failed to properly protect you because they failed to identify the harm it was causing. I also said I have witnessed the damage caused by those practices and dislike them (I would not encourage my own child if I had one to engage in certain sports) but I think the solution in that case is to increase understanding, rather than to necessitate a ban.

 

As to the risk pool analysis I think it's a little over simplified. Traffic navigation is relatively risky but it is a necessary life skill. Competitive sports are risky and a parent should be aware if their child is being harmed or coerced but I can't say it's not a worthwhile risk. I can't it's a worthwhile one either - I don't really know and hence it's up to a parent to raise and safeguard their child. Other activities, like carving up shotgun shells to make bombs is really not going to accomplish or teach anything (baring a zombie apocalypse) that justifies the risk. I would rate pederasty as somewhere near carving shotgun shells, where all the risk is on the child and all the benefit is some adult's sexual gratification. If the risk was around the level of "might catch a cold" I would say you might have an argument, but unfortunately it's much higher.

 

If you want to contend that pederasty risks are not higher, I would recommend countering some of my arguments regarding why pederasty specifically (and not the hysteria around it) leads to great risk of psychological harm. I made many of them in previous posts that you haven't responded to.

[losfomot]

Technically it can't be proven as "not harmful" as proving a negative is exceptionally tricky.

 

I said evidence, not proof.

 

The core feature of his argument that I actually agree with is that the hysteria the taboo invokes by adults in a child's life can be a cause of psychological damage.

 

I tentatively agree also. But the thread isn't really about whether or not sex is blown out of proportion in society, that is just just part of his argument, as you said.

 

Two 8 year olds who are playing doctor and 'discover' the pleasures of sexual touching, etc. is likely not going to lead to psychological trauma. Of course an adults (over)reaction to seeing the two 8 year olds engaging in said actions could lead to that trauma. I am totally in agreement there. I do not agree that it can be generally assumed that the majority of adults would have that (over)reaction. But this issue should be discussed in another thread because this one is about pedophile rights.

 

Where I disagree, is I do not believe pedophilia is as benign as taking someone's picture, I do believe it is quite capable of causing genuine harm all on it's own with no need for cultural reinforcement. Hysteria may amplify this harm, but the initial harm done would still be in there and is great enough that it justifies the laws against the practice regardless of cultural magnifiers.

 

Absolutely.

[Marat]

While we might all agree that the ordinary risks which modern society deems children capable of accepting or enduring -- such as physically dangerous ice skating lessons or exposure to adult religious fanatics in a strictly disciplined educational setting -- are excessive, so the comparison of those risks with those involved in child-adult sexual relations accomplishes little, I believe that argument misses the point of what I was saying. My point was that our society generally finds the risks of children smashing their face on the ice in risky skating lessons or suffering psychological trauma from severe religious education to lie well within the normal range of acceptable risks which it is morally permissible to impose on children, or to deem children able to consent to. If risks of physical and psychiatric harm at this level are generally regarded as acceptable for children to bear -- so that psychologists and the police would not be called in to address the 'crises' they caused -- then society has no real reason -- other than an irrational hatred and fear of sex -- to react as hysterically as it does to child-adult sexual relations if their attendant risks are lower than those of acitivities like skating and severe religious education.

 

So we have to ask now whether the physical and psychological risks of child-adult sex -- apart from the trauma that results from the possibly unnecessary social panic over these relations -- are really less or greater than those of skating and severe relgious education.

 

It is hard to see how the physical risks of child-adult sex, if practised in the form of non-penetrative, interfemoral sex such as the Ancient Greeks used, could be anywhere near as harmful as the risks attendant on children playing football, baseball, jumping off diving boards, or attempting difficult jumps in figure skating lessons. I suppose you could get a rash from overly strenuous interfemoral intercourse, but that seems quite far from being as risky as being catapulted forward onto your face if the pick of your ice skate blade digs into the ice after you take of high jump at great speed.

 

In order to analyze the psychiatric risks of child-adult sex, we have to formalize the situation, since we are trying to separate our cultural panic at the idea of pederasty from the objective, culture-neutral effects of it. The objections people have made are that the adult partner in such relations would have much more motivation for the experience than the child, since the adult would be filled with passion while the child might just have mild curiosity. The adult would also be in a more domineering role. The sexual experience would lie outside the familiar field of the child's interests. The child might be a bit startled at the passion which the adult would experience.

 

But how is any of that any worse in quality or quantity than what our society finds perfectly acceptable for children to experience when they are given a strict religious upbringing? First, as to motivation, when children are introduced to religious education they would almost invariably prefer to be outside playing with their friends to being inside listening to some hysterical nun shrieking her lungs out about the pains suffered by the damned in Purgatory. Religious educators are typically filled with passion, since religion is something deeply moving for them, so the child is confronted by exposure to a violently intense passion in an adult who has control over him, and in relation to something that the child has no interest in. This contrast in levels of passion has to be startling.

 

Second, in religious education, the religious educator when drumming the terror of the Devil, sin, and eternal damnation into the mind of a panicked and bewildered five-year-old is certainly in the domineering role. This domination is probably very much greater than any domination that would go on in child-sex relations.

 

Third, in religious education, the experience which the child is compelled to take part in is entirely outside the range of experience of the child up to that point. Children at the age of first religious instruction can be only five or six years old, so while they are used to playing in the sand box and hearing scary but silly fairy tales that adults assure them are not true, suddenly they are confronted with enormous abstractions and tales of invisible entities which are not only fantastic and frightening, but which also have to be taken deadly seriously, since the health of the soul and eternal salvation depend on the child having the proper attitude toward these fantasmogoric abstractions.

 

So in all these cases, I simply can't see how there could be anything intrinsic to the nature of child-adult sexual relations, once the cultural panic and its attendant artificial trauma is removed, which necessitates it being harmful, or any more harmful than risks we all agree, in psychiatry, law, and society, are perfectly acceptable for children to consent to.

[losfomot]

So in all these cases, I simply can't see how there could be anything intrinsic to the nature of child-adult sexual relations, once the cultural panic and its attendant artificial trauma is removed, which necessitates it being harmful, or any more harmful than risks we all agree, in psychiatry, law, and society, are perfectly acceptable for children to consent to.

 

It is one person committing a selfish act (often repeatedly) at the expense of a child's well being. It is wrong. Even just the potential of harm to that child is enough to condemn that person's selfish act.

 

'risks we all agree..."? I don't think so.

 

As far as sports are concerned, every year changes are made to make them safer including laws requiring the use of safety equipment. I don't know if a child is allowed on the ice without a helmet today, but if they are, they shouldn't be, and I would bet it won't be much longer until they are not.

 

As far as religion is concerned, that is a huge, millennia long problem. Freedom of religion is a tough nut to crack. It is an understatement to say that the issue needs to be discussed in its own thread. If this thread were about that issue, I would probably be siding with you marat... but it is not. It is definitely safe to say that we do not 'all agree' contrary to what you state. The controversy of this issue easily nullifies any use you can make of it to defend pedophilia.

 

In a perfect world, a child would be taught all the religions. So that, when they are old enough to make a good, informed choice, they can decide for themselves what religion, if any, they would choose. In such a world, I think religion would quickly dissipate. But I digress, this is for another thread.

 

Once again, the fact that we allow our children to engage in activities that may be (certainly not in my eyes) more risky than adult/child sex, is not a defense for pedophilia.

[Marat]

You might complain that adult-child sexual relations manifest the selfishness of adults, since they use children for an activity which they enjoy more than the children do, but this of course happens all the time, such as when religiously-obsessed adults force children to share and reinforce the adults' obsession, even though the children neither understand nor care about what is going on.

 

To clarify my point, we could operationalize the notion that 'we would all agree that' physically dangerous ice skating lessons and psychiatrically dangerous religious instruction are below the level of risks which children can acceptably be exposed to by saying that no one would think of calling the police to address the risks or harm these activities normally produce. If anyone did call the police to complain, the society in all its official institutions -- law enforcement, the courts, the legislatures, the psychiatrists, the public health officers, etc. -- would implicitly agree that the risks of these activities are below the level of danger at which we should become concerned about children being exposed to them. This implicit agreement would be expressed in the fact that the police would not go to the skating rink to arrest the skating instructors or go to the church to arrest the nuns, the 11 PM news would not be ablaze with public hysteria over 'child abusers in our midst,' feminists would not be parading on the streets about young girls having their nose broken on the ice or having nightmares about Purgatory, etc.

 

And yet, from my analysis in the previous post, we can see that the physical and psychiatric risks of these activities -- and many others like them which are perfectly legal in society -- cannot really be rigorously distinguished in type or intensity from the risks of child-adult sexual relations. So the uncomfortable conclusion we are driven to is that the uniquely intense degree of legal, psychiatric, and social panic with which society reacts to child-adult sexuality lacks rational basis.

 

You seem to be recommending that we reform society from top to bottom so that the culturally acceptable level of physical and psychological risk to which children can be exposed is lowered, and I would not only agree with you, but I would add that the acceptable level of physical and psychological risk for adults as well should be lowered by the provision of a more generous social safety net. But my point was rather to show that, given the levels of physical and psychiatric risk to children that our present society already accepts, it simply makes no sense that child-adult sexual relations are treated as infinitely more risky than what is now accepted for other types of child-adult interactions.

[losfomot]

You might complain that adult-child sexual relations manifest the selfishness of adults, since they use children for an activity which they enjoy more than the children do, but this of course happens all the time, such as when religiously-obsessed adults force children to share and reinforce the adults' obsession, even though the children neither understand nor care about what is going on.

 

'Religiously-obsessed adults' (I am referring to parents, whether they personally teach or they send their kids to (bible school?) be taught by someone else) are merely trying to pass on a trusted belief system. They are acting (or at least they think they are) in their children's best interest. They are trying to help their children, by teaching them good values and a good belief system. Many would call it a misguided effort. The important thing here is the intention.

 

A pedophile is not thinking about the well-being of the child. They do not believe 'I should have sex with that 7 year old because it will make him/her a better person'. They are using the child's inexperience, curiosity and naivete to gain something for themselves.

 

You say "since they use children for an activity which they enjoy more than the children do", as if the distribution of physical pleasure during the act somehow determines the level of wrongness of that act. It does not. It is a 100% selfish act on the part of the adult and at the expense of the child.

 

Regardless of those 'religiously-obsessed adults', a child will eventually reach an age where they can legally make their own decisions about religion. They will have access to information, should they want it, and will be perfectly capable of renouncing their religion should they decide it is balderdash. It happens all the time. It even happened to you, marat, and (the way you tell it) you were one of the worse cases.

 

A child that was sexually taken advantage of at an early age (by an adult) will not have that choice... What was physically done cannot be undone when the child reaches an age in which they are capable of making good, informed decisions.

 

And so you have sucked me into defending the religious comparison that you continue to make even though...

 

The fact that we allow our children to engage in activities that may be (certainly not in my eyes) more risky than adult/child sex, is not a defense for pedophilia.

 

To clarify my point, we could operationalize the notion that 'we would all agree that' physically dangerous ice skating lessons and psychiatrically dangerous religious instruction are below the level of risks which children can acceptably be exposed to by saying that no one would think of calling the police to address the risks or harm these activities normally produce. If anyone did call the police to complain, the society in all its official institutions -- law enforcement, the courts, the legislatures, the psychiatrists, the public health officers, etc. -- would implicitly agree that the risks of these activities are below the level of danger at which we should become concerned about children being exposed to them. This implicit agreement would be expressed in the fact that the police would not go to the skating rink to arrest the skating instructors or go to the church to arrest the nuns, the 11 PM news would not be ablaze with public hysteria over 'child abusers in our midst,' feminists would not be parading on the streets about young girls having their nose broken on the ice or having nightmares about Purgatory, etc.

 

We do not all agree. The evidence is that safety laws are changing all the time. I don't know where you are, but here in Canada you can't even ride a bike anymore without a certified helmet.

 

The 11 pm news would not be ablaze about child abusers unless someone was intentionally acting to abuse that child. Skating instructors and nuns are both trying to help that child because that is their job, and they (hopefully) care about helping the child. Accidents happen, that's life, and you can bet that 95% of skating instructors feel bad when a child gets hurt and had no intention of pushing too hard.

 

And yet, from my analysis in the previous post, we can see that the physical and psychiatric risks of these activities -- and many others like them which are perfectly legal in society -- cannot really be rigorously distinguished in type or intensity from the risks of child-adult sexual relations. So the uncomfortable conclusion we are driven to is that the uniquely intense degree of legal, psychiatric, and social panic with which society reacts to child-adult sexuality lacks rational basis.

 

Very much distinguished in type. Apples and watermelons.

 

You seem to be recommending that we reform society from top to bottom so that the culturally acceptable level of physical and psychological risk to which children can be exposed is lowered, and I would not only agree with you, but I would add that the acceptable level of physical and psychological risk for adults as well should be lowered by the provision of a more generous social safety net.

 

Well, 'reform society from top to bottom' sounds a little much. I don't see such a huge problem with sports and religion, in general. There are extremes everywhere though, and I agree that some of those extremes should not be tolerated.

 

I am all for child safety, and reform is happening all the time.

 

 

But my point was rather to show that, given the levels of physical and psychiatric risk to children that our present society already accepts, it simply makes no sense that child-adult sexual relations are treated as infinitely more risky than what is now accepted for other types of child-adult interactions.

 

'treated as infinitely more risky' would not be accurate.

 

'far less tolerated' would be closer to the truth. And I believe tolerance for such activity should be very low indeed. Anyone that is willing to take advantage of a child for their own, personal, selfish satisfaction should be punished.

 

I think that you see that, marat. And I don't understand why you continue to take the position you do. It is obvious that you have had issues in your past that you wish society to address, but why present them in the guise of supporting pedophiles?

[Marat]

The criminal law makes an important distinction when it decides to regard the motive with which any crime is committed as utterly irrelevant to the guilt. Thus even though Robin Hood may steal from the rich to give to the poor, he is still regarded by the criminal law as guilty of theft, regardless of his good motive in helping redistribute wealth more rationally. The intuition of law is correct because all we really experience of anyone else's actions towards us is the effect; since no one can read minds, we can never know what the real motives of another person are in injuring us. Even the person injuring us will have a hard time knowing what his real, ultimate motives are, since subconscious wishes are often directing actions while those wishes are hidden from conscious awareness. Thus I wouldn't be surprised if many people who consciously believe themselves to be earnestly beating children for their own good to make them into better people are in fact just sadists, just as many earnest religious educators may just be using children selfishly to inflate their own sense of self-importance as imparters of the divine truth to little idiots who don't know any better. Countless people in the 'helping professions,' including teachers, nurses, social workers, psychologists, and psychiatrists, are often acting in those roles out of selfish motives to support their own egos, their sense of self-righteousness, their social power, their income, and are thus actually 'using,' 'exploiting,' and 'abusing' the people that they control in their so-called 'caring' roles. But the reason that they cannot be criminally punished for this selfishness is that their actions are regarded by society as legally neutral or beneficial, and not as harmful to the autonomy rights of others.

 

In contrast, sexual interactions between adults and children are regarded as harmful to the children so the adults involved can be punished, and their motives are characterized as exploitative or selfish, because society regards what they are doing as harmful, yet the search in this thread for those harms has encountered difficulties in locating the supposed physical and psychiatric injuries above the level of those physical and psychiatric injuries which are regarded in other fields of human endeavor as being completely acceptable for adults to impose on children.

 

But since we are inferring the selfish motives of the adults from the supposed objective harm of what they do, since we can spot real physical and psychiatric harms in society but we cannot read minds to discern motives, the whole issue comes down to what we have already been discussing, which is whether adult-child sex is really objectively harmful or not.

 

Since society, largely as part of its cultural inheritance from St. Paul, who was obviously sexually sick in his terror and hatred for sex, regards sex with dislike and suspicion, any possible benefit from adult-child sexual interactions is invisible. The possibility that children may enjoy these interations with adults, since they just continue the sex games that children spontaneously play with each other, is ignored. That discovering something of the reality of sex might help in dispelling the metaphysical terrors of a hidden world of sex that society tries to impose on children is similarly dismissed out of hand, even though there is considerable evidence of young people coming into maturity with sexual neuroses arising from socially-induced sexual repression. The possibility that some emotional closeness between children and adults might develop from their sexual interaction is also denied, though there is evidence of this, both from the positive bonding that the Ancient Greeks felt developed in the mentoring relationships generated by culturally-approved pederasty, and in the emotional bonds formed between young boys and their female school teachers who have 'abused' them. So since the possibility of these positive effects is denied by the ideology of sexual fear which disapproves these relationships in the first place, the supposition that the adults involved can only possibly be acting out of selfishness follows from the initial assumptions.

 

At the conclusion of your post you seem to switch from disapproving of adult-child sexual relationships because they are objectively harmful to disapproving of them because they should not be 'tolerated,' but intolerance is just a response to what is rejected for cultural reasons, and is not itself a rational reason for rejecting something.

 

I agree that finding no objective reason for dispproving of adult-child sex relations is disturbing, since one of the greatest outrages of our society should certainly been supported by the very clearest proofs of its objective harmfulness. But I think we can at least agree that those necessarily extremely evident proofs of its objective harm going far beyond other risks to children which society is perfectly content to permit are turning out to be surprisingly elusive.

[losfomot]

The criminal law makes an important distinction when it decides to regard the motive with which any crime is committed as utterly irrelevant to the guilt. Thus even though Robin Hood may steal from the rich to give to the poor, he is still regarded by the criminal law as guilty of theft, regardless of his good motive in helping redistribute wealth more rationally. The intuition of law is correct because all we really experience of anyone else's actions towards us is the effect; since no one can read minds, we can never know what the real motives of another person are in injuring us. Even the person injuring us will have a hard time knowing what his real, ultimate motives are, since subconscious wishes are often directing actions while those wishes are hidden from conscious awareness. Thus I wouldn't be surprised if many people who consciously believe themselves to be earnestly beating children for their own good to make them into better people are in fact just sadists, just as many earnest religious educators may just be using children selfishly to inflate their own sense of self-importance as imparters of the divine truth to little idiots who don't know any better. Countless people in the 'helping professions,' including teachers, nurses, social workers, psychologists, and psychiatrists, are often acting in those roles out of selfish motives to support their own egos, their sense of self-righteousness, their social power, their income, and are thus actually 'using,' 'exploiting,' and 'abusing' the people that they control in their so-called 'caring' roles. But the reason that they cannot be criminally punished for this selfishness is that their actions are regarded by society as legally neutral or beneficial, and not as harmful to the autonomy rights of others.

 

In contrast, sexual interactions between adults and children are regarded as harmful to the children so the adults involved can be punished, and their motives are characterized as exploitative or selfish, because society regards what they are doing as harmful, yet the search in this thread for those harms has encountered difficulties in locating the supposed physical and psychiatric injuries above the level of those physical and psychiatric injuries which are regarded in other fields of human endeavor as being completely acceptable for adults to impose on children.

 

But since we are inferring the selfish motives of the adults from the supposed objective harm of what they do, since we can spot real physical and psychiatric harms in society but we cannot read minds to discern motives, the whole issue comes down to what we have already been discussing, which is whether adult-child sex is really objectively harmful or not.

 

Since society, largely as part of its cultural inheritance from St. Paul, who was obviously sexually sick in his terror and hatred for sex, regards sex with dislike and suspicion, any possible benefit from adult-child sexual interactions is invisible. The possibility that children may enjoy these interations with adults, since they just continue the sex games that children spontaneously play with each other, is ignored. That discovering something of the reality of sex might help in dispelling the metaphysical terrors of a hidden world of sex that society tries to impose on children is similarly dismissed out of hand, even though there is considerable evidence of young people coming into maturity with sexual neuroses arising from socially-induced sexual repression. The possibility that some emotional closeness between children and adults might develop from their sexual interaction is also denied, though there is evidence of this, both from the positive bonding that the Ancient Greeks felt developed in the mentoring relationships generated by culturally-approved pederasty, and in the emotional bonds formed between young boys and their female school teachers who have 'abused' them. So since the possibility of these positive effects is denied by the ideology of sexual fear which disapproves these relationships in the first place, the supposition that the adults involved can only possibly be acting out of selfishness follows from the initial assumptions.

 

At the conclusion of your post you seem to switch from disapproving of adult-child sexual relationships because they are objectively harmful to disapproving of them because they should not be 'tolerated,' but intolerance is just a response to what is rejected for cultural reasons, and is not itself a rational reason for rejecting something.

 

I agree that finding no objective reason for dispproving of adult-child sex relations is disturbing, since one of the greatest outrages of our society should certainly been supported by the very clearest proofs of its objective harmfulness. But I think we can at least agree that those necessarily extremely evident proofs of its objective harm going far beyond other risks to children which society is perfectly content to permit are turning out to be surprisingly elusive.

 

(sigh) It's like talking to a wall. I can only thank God (just an expression) for the knowledge that the law has this part right and people like you will never have the power to change that.

 

Good luck to anyone else that wants to have a go at marat's warped reasoning.

[Moontanman]

(sigh) It's like talking to a wall. I can only thank God (just an expression) for the knowledge that the law has this part right and people like you will never have the power to change that.

 

Good luck to anyone else that wants to have a go at marat's warped reasoning.

 

 

I'm not so sure Marat's reasoning is warped, parents can insist on making their kids do some pretty shitty things, dangerous mind destroying things but sex is somehow worse than worse. Sex seems to have a special place in the hearts of most people, quite low on some even though they enjoy it themselves they cannot recommend it for anyone else. Sex has often been termed the "fate worse than death" for much of even the twentieth century the idea of sex as worse than death was the popular gestalt. Any woman who gave into sex outside of marriage was fatally flawed but men who managed to play around was a "real man" sex has never been realistically interpreted or portrayed, even masturbation is often condemned as harmful in some way. Sex occupies a special place in our society and the harm it does is blown far out of any reasonable proportion to any realistic harm it could do...

 

i am quite sure there are many things it is legal and even thought to be good for kids that are far more harmful than sex. if society says it's ok to work kids in the mines because they are small and can fit in the small holes then it becomes ok to do so but suggest sex and you will be automatically a pariah, you can do some wild stuff to kids and get by with it, from mental abuse to turning them into psychopaths, you can teach them to hate, to be racist, to despise anyone who believes different than you. You can program your kids to do almost anything but have sex, you can teach them that sex is a fate worse than death, you can teach them that homosexuals are worthless pieces of shit that deserve to be killed. you can teach them to be Nazi's but sex is out of the question. just try to teach your kids that masturbation is a good thing and let them tell their teacher and see what happens. if you are lucky you will not quite loose custody but count on visits from the child services...

Edited October 4, 2010 by Moontanman

[losfomot]

I'm not so sure Marat's reasoning is warped, parents can insist on making their kids do some pretty shitty things, dangerous mind destroying things but sex is somehow worse than worse. Sex seems to have a special place in the hearts of most people, quite low on some even though they enjoy it themselves they cannot recommend it for anyone else. Sex has often been termed the "fate worse than death" for much of even the twentieth century the idea of sex as worse than death was the popular gestalt. Any woman who gave into sex outside of marriage was fatally flawed but men who managed to play around was a "real man" sex has never been realistically interpreted or portrayed, even masturbation is often condemned as harmful in some way. Sex occupies a special place in our society and the harm it does is blown far out of any reasonable proportion to any realistic harm it could do...

 

i am quite sure there are many things it is legal and even thought to be good for kids that are far more harmful than sex. if society says it's ok to work kids in the mines because they are small and can fit in the small holes then it becomes ok to do so but suggest sex and you will be automatically a pariah, you can do some wild stuff to kids and get by with it, from mental abuse to turning them into psychopaths, you can teach them to hate, to be racist, to despise anyone who believes different than you. You can program your kids to do almost anything but have sex, you can teach them that sex is a fate worse than death, you can teach them that homosexuals are worthless pieces of shit that deserve to be killed. you can teach them to be Nazi's but sex is out of the question. just try to teach your kids that masturbation is a good thing and let them tell their teacher and see what happens. if you are lucky you will not quite loose custody but count on visits from the child services...

 

I never disagreed that sex was blown out of proportion in society. I have to say though, from my point of view, its not nearly as bad as you guys are making it out to be... of course, there are always extreme cases... for everything.

 

And if you think any of what you just said makes it ok for some 35 year old man to have sex with your 6 year old son or daughter, then you have a pretty warped reasoning too (in my personal opinion).

[Marat]

I started this whole line of discussion precisely because I agree with you that it does sound warped for a 35-year-old to be having sex with a 6-year-old. But if we are going to be a rational society, we have to be prepared to develop the logical reasons for everything we do, and I can't seem to locate why it is that sex between adults and children is regarded as infinitely more evil than just about anything else that could happen in society. If you abstract from the term 'sex,' which is a real panic button in our culture, and dig down to the more formally characterized experiences which constitute sex when it goes on between adults and children, then I have trouble finding the exact mechanism by which this normal biological pleasure necessarily produces such massive physical and psychiatric harm -- apart from cultural over-reactions to it -- such that it must be punished as the greatest crime imaginable.

 

If you look at it in terms of human evolution, then I have to assume that early forms of humans were promiscuously having sex with humans young and old, just as our closest simian relatives do today, with juveniles often being the objects of sex play by adults. I think we can agree that this sex in primitive humans, say 400,000 years ago, was not monstrously traumatizing to young humans, since if it had been, the human race would have died out, since psychiatrically damaged people have poor survival chances in primitive living circumstances.

 

But then at the latest with the beginning of settled life in cities, about 15,000 years ago, sexual partnering became restricted, with monogamy being the only accepted form of mating, except for tribal elders or wealthy men, who were probably able to be polygamous. (I am not counting nomadic, non-city dwelling peoples here, who have generally remained polygamous until recently.) So no doubt with monogamy the rules about sex became more strict, and even though women would be married at the age of puberty, the intensely strict atmosphere of control over sexual partnering, no doubt backed by religious superstitions, probably generated lots of equally strict ancillary rules, such as the old Hebrew rule that sex with women during their periods was 'unclean,' or that sex with children was unacceptable.

 

From this point on, it became difficult to tell whether the harm from sex between adults and children was produced by the social panic over the event and its attendant psychiatric damage to the participants, or whether it was somehow an inevitable consequence of the nature of physical intimacy (although for some reason it did not result from bathing, massage, wrestling, etc.) between children and adults. One modern anthropological clue as to whether this is truly interculturally harmful is the fact that in Margaret Mead's study of Polynesian culture, on modern Pitcairn Island, or among the Kalahari Bushmen, free sexual interaction among adults and children doesn't seem to have the negative effects it does in cultures which disapprove of such activity.

[Moontanman]

I never disagreed that sex was blown out of proportion in society. I have to say though, from my point of view, its not nearly as bad as you guys are making it out to be... of course, there are always extreme cases... for everything.

 

And if you think any of what you just said makes it ok for some 35 year old man to have sex with your 6 year old son or daughter, then you have a pretty warped reasoning too (in my personal opinion).

 

 

You of course are indeed welcome to your personal opinion but as i have said in earlier posts, i am a Dad if I had found an adult having sex with one of my children he would have come to a bad end for sure. But it doesn't explain why our society blows sex far out of proportion to any real life effects it might have and allows us to train our children in other ways that are very harmful, the children of the Westburro Baptist Church come immediately to mind...

[losfomot]

I started this whole line of discussion precisely because I agree with you that it does sound warped for a 35-year-old to be having sex with a 6-year-old. But if we are going to be a rational society, we have to be prepared to develop the logical reasons for everything we do, and I can't seem to locate why it is that sex between adults and children is regarded as infinitely more evil than just about anything else that could happen in society. If you abstract from the term 'sex,' which is a real panic button in our culture, and dig down to the more formally characterized experiences which constitute sex when it goes on between adults and children, then I have trouble finding the exact mechanism by which this normal biological pleasure necessarily produces such massive physical and psychiatric harm -- apart from cultural over-reactions to it -- such that it must be punished as the greatest crime imaginable.

Well, I'll give it another shot since at least we have a well defined topic of discussion now. I sincerely appreciate the clarification. I'll get back to this part.

 

If you look at it in terms of human evolution, then I have to assume that early forms of humans were promiscuously having sex with humans young and old, just as our closest simian relatives do today, with juveniles often being the objects of sex play by adults. I think we can agree that this sex in primitive humans, say 400,000 years ago, was not monstrously traumatizing to young humans, since if it had been, the human race would have died out, since psychiatrically damaged people have poor survival chances in primitive living circumstances.

That's a lot of assuming you're doing there. Let's pretend your first assumption was correct. Your second would not be. In terms of evolution, if this practice was traumatizing to the extent that humans were dying out, then it goes to reason that the groups that did not practice adult-child sex would be the ones that survived and flourished.

But then at the latest with the beginning of settled life in cities, about 15,000 years ago, sexual partnering became restricted, with monogamy being the only accepted form of mating, except for tribal elders or wealthy men, who were probably able to be polygamous. (I am not counting nomadic, non-city dwelling peoples here, who have generally remained polygamous until recently.) So no doubt with monogamy the rules about sex became more strict, and even though women would be married at the age of puberty, the intensely strict atmosphere of control over sexual partnering, no doubt backed by religious superstitions, probably generated lots of equally strict ancillary rules, such as the old Hebrew rule that sex with women during their periods was 'unclean,' or that sex with children was unacceptable.

 

From this point on, it became difficult to tell whether the harm from sex between adults and children was produced by the social panic over the event and its attendant psychiatric damage to the participants, or whether it was somehow an inevitable consequence of the nature of physical intimacy (although for some reason it did not result from bathing, massage, wrestling, etc.) between children and adults. One modern anthropological clue as to whether this is truly interculturally harmful is the fact that in Margaret Mead's study of Polynesian culture, on modern Pitcairn Island, or among the Kalahari Bushmen, free sexual interaction among adults and children doesn't seem to have the negative effects it does in cultures which disapprove of such activity.

The examples you give are not free from evidence of 'negative effects'. Also, there is a difference between sexual interaction with a child that has reached puberty, and sexual interaction with a 4, 6, or 8 year old. Correct me if I am wrong, but I don't believe there is evidence that any of your 3 examples practiced such activity with such prepubescent children. Virginity at marriage seems to have been pretty important to the polynesians. Pitcairn Islanders had a legal age of 12. I don't know much about the Kalahari Bushmen, but if you have a source, please point me to it.

 

I started this whole line of discussion precisely because I agree with you that it does sound warped for a 35-year-old to be having sex with a 6-year-old. But if we are going to be a rational society, we have to be prepared to develop the logical reasons for everything we do, and I can't seem to locate why it is that sex between adults and children is regarded as infinitely more evil than just about anything else that could happen in society. If you abstract from the term 'sex,' which is a real panic button in our culture, and dig down to the more formally characterized experiences which constitute sex when it goes on between adults and children, then I have trouble finding the exact mechanism by which this normal biological pleasure necessarily produces such massive physical and psychiatric harm -- apart from cultural over-reactions to it -- such that it must be punished as the greatest crime imaginable.

 

It doesn't have to be 'massive' harm. A small amount of harm or even just potential harm is enough. Children depend on their parents to protect and guide them, and (most) parents do that to the point of giving their life if they have to. Sex is an especially touchy subject... why? Here's my assumption for the day (i like to call it a theory, but that might be too big an assumption):

 

As a child, you don't really know any better, and you're curious so it wouldn't take much to coerce you into doing something. As a young adult, intimacy starts to become more and more important. As you get older, you want to settle down... share your life with someone. Humans seem to be naturally jealous creatures. The perfect mate is not one that many have mated with, it is one that has mated with few or none at all. This is evident in many cultures. In some, virginity is a prerequisite for marriage. In western society, some think of it as the ultimate gift to give to the one they love. "I'm saving my virginity for the man/woman I love". It is a social ideal, yes, but one that is almost inevitable because of our need for intimacy and our natural jealousy. The thing is, we don't realize any of this until we are older. So it becomes a part of our protection for our children that we do what we can to discourage sexual activity until the child is old enough to make an informed decision about what they want to give away and to whom. An adult coercing a child into sex is not just harming the child physically (very possible) and/or psychologically... they are taking something away from the child before they even know they have it. Parents are trying to protect their child's right to make that decision an informed one. It is so important, and yet so easy to take away, that we make laws to help us protect our children.

 

Man, I got to go to sleep now.

[Marat]

I would say that sex between adults and underage partners has to be 'massively' harmful if the uniquely intense, vehement outrage of society to these relationships is to be regarded as anything other than an hysterical response based on a mere offense to arational cultural values. If society were seeking to protect children against a potential risk or the mere possibility of some harm, the police, the criminal law, the media, the general public, and all the forces of order would not go berserk -- as they do -- over this issue.

 

I don't think there's any transcultural, objective way to demonstrate that intimacy has to be treated as a scarce commodity which we cannot allow children light-heartedly to distribute lest its value depreciate, as though underage beneficiaries of a trust fund were squandering their money. True, relative to the value system of our own culture, intimacy with other human beings is regarded as much more dangerous and much less positive than it is in less industrialized or pre-modern cultures, while human isolation is simply presumed to be safe and secure -- although all the psychiatric evidence shows that it is more likely to be harmful than intimacy with others.

 

However, since modern culture is now loosening up on its insistence that people treat their capacity to be sexual partners with other people as some sort of precious commodity which should not be 'expended' lightly, I don't think we can explain the public hysteria over child-adult sex on that basis. If a woman told her traditionalist husband that she had played 'doctor' with the neighborhood kids when she was 10, or if her uncle had 'abused' her when she was 12, I don't think that the traditionalist husband would be jealous, or certainly not as jealous as he would be if he found out his wife had had 30 adult boyfriends when she was an adult prior to him.

 

Wilhelm Reich once wrote that there is at all times and places in the world sufficient capacity for sexual partnership available that everyone could have their wildest sexual fantasies fulfilled every day, but our artificial social rules unnecessarily create a kind of 'potlach' in which that resource for happiness is destroyed, generation after generation. Sexual jealousy seems to stand in the way of the type of reform of society that Reich suggested, but is that really a transcultural necessity engrained in human nature? Swingers, Kalahari Bushmen, and certain subgroups of Hippies seem to have been able to free themselves of this, so it seems not to be essential to human psychology. Do we fear and hate child-adult sex because it is yet another avenue from which our society's desire to create an artificial shortage of sex partners can be undermined, especially because children take a long time to socialize so they tow the party line which prescribes fear of intimacy and the creation of an unnecessary 'sexual economy' by the transformation of sex into a scarce commodity, which can thus only be bought for a social price, such as flattery, elaborate rituals of courtship, romance, payment of a dowry, promises of a share in the partner's wealth and power, etc.? No doubt it is in the interest of those who can 'charge the highest social price' for their services as a partner in the scarce market that nothing alleviate this scarcity.

[Moontanman]

If we in our society allowed or encouraged sexual contact between adults and children it would not be the same society as we now see it. I am quite sure it would differ from ours in many ways, some would be very scary to us. Most scenarios of adult child sexual contact revolves around violence and the death or at least physical harm to the child. The idea of the child snatched away from it's parents for reasons of the destruction of the child are almost the only way we can think of it. I have sever doubts about the idea that somehow 18 is a magical age that allows children to be adults. Puberty would seem to be a more reasonable age if you take into account natural human sex drives of the post pubescent. Birth control, instead of being an evil thing as some religions make it to be would seem to be more of a way to return to a more natural mode of human sexual behavior.

 

Of course it hasn't resulted in that and since the idea of pregnancy is no longer a realistic reason to avoid sex we use almost any argument we can think of to warn children away from the sexual desires they naturally have. We us everything from saving it for your husband, as though it is a special commodity and males are told early on to look for that virgin bride and that girls who have sex are bad investments for our love and emotions, sluts, whores, loose, the number of terms we have to negatively describe a sexually active but unmarried woman goes on for quite a while Of course men need these loose women to gain sexual expertise for the virgin we will eventually marry. The idea that men need this virginity for love or even marriage to be real is a big if misdirected part of our society

 

The idea that the sexual inexperience of the child is some how something that should be saved for someone special in the distant future and not the child's choice is lacking in any real support anywhere but in the minds of people who want that innocence. The idea that a child's innocence is worth something is not a demonstrable reality, it is in fact the result of religion, female slavery, and males need to know for sure a child is his own. The male need to own a woman and control her is deeply rooted in our society, not all societies but ours for sure.

 

Children are allowed to do many dangerous things, i recently saw where a young girl was trying to sail around the world, outrageously dangerous, i was allowed to ride motorcycles at age 14, i saw one other child die in front of me while riding. Children die every day from dangerous recreational activities but the number of people going hysterically nuts at the though of this is very small compared to what happens when an adult has any sort of sexual contact with a child.

 

I know there are scenarios where sexual contact with a child is not harmful in any way close to the hysteria it often invokes. i think it should be looked at from the idea that if we we see the idea of protecting a child from anything that will impact them in the future we really need to look closely at what we allow to happen to a child. A child can be trained to do anything, as in adults some are easier to train than others and all react differently to what we as adults teach them.

 

If we really take the care of other peoples children seriously (we of course all treat our own the way they should be treated) then we need to take a hard look at things everyone seems to think are sacred cows as far as children are concerned, if teaching a child about sex by lets say demonstration is a horrible thing that can only have negative impact then how about teaching a child to hate? Teaching a child Nazism, or white supremacy or black supremacy, or any other negative social system doesn't seem to illicit similar hysteria, we all say "that's not right, poor child, someone should do something" but the fact remains as long as it's not sex we can train our children to do and be some pretty horrible things but add sex and it becomes a crime beyond any possible pale.... a weird thing if you really put your intellect to it....

 

From child soldiers to child workers our world revolves around the exploitation of children and other helpless people only when sex is added does it suddenly become a fate worse than death. While the idea of sex with a child illicits the same response from me it does from others i wonder how much of the perceived danger is real and how much is just our internal religious programing, if the idea of a child soldier doesn't bring the same level of hysteria then something is wrong...