I already know I disagree with it morally, that has nothing at all to do with my interest in it.
To me the discussion has nothing to do with whether or not it’s moral, it’s not. It has to do with understanding the mindset of someone who thinks this is ok.
I take it you subscribe to NAMBLA literature then to read their endless defenses for their perversion? Pedophiles have little of value to say about their pedophilia. It takes trained psychiatrists to get past the lies and excuses and discover what makes these people tick, and that only happens when they’re caught.
The mindset is “I want to do this, therefore I think it’s okay.” The rest of it is window dressing and excuses made after the fact. People don’t reason themselves into being pedophiles, they find they are pedophiles and then find reasons to say it’s okay.
Hearing what he has to say to consider whether he has a valid argument and hearing what he has to say to have a glimpse into the inner workings of the mind of a pedophile I see as two different things. I was referring to the first and should have been more clear. If you know anything about children then you know his argument can’t be valid. (as well as the morality of it but this point was about being familiar with a child’s mind)
We’re talking past each other then. AHunter3 said he had to spend a lot of time thinking about why raping children is wrong. I don’t understand why that particular question requires even a microsecond of contemplation.
I agree with this too, especially when we’re talking about a pedophile who is psycologically comfortable with his own pathology, and has no interest in trying to understand it himself, much less explain it to others.
I don’t believe in this whole, “Only experts can understand things.”, angle.
Yeah, gross oversimplification. I can’t really respond to it and add anything further than what I have already said.
Bullies have low self-esteem, what’s there to understand right?
I know his argument isn’t valid, that’s not the point.
The point is that we should constantly be contemplating our moral assumptions, always refreshing what we believe rationally.
Do you think you can accept Cesario’s posts at face value? Have you read any of them.
Would you like to explain how, or would you rather try to avoid supporting your argument? Like I said, if you think you are going to learn how to identify pedophiles from reading Cesario’s posts, you are being a fool and wasting your own time. Pedophiles generally don’t identify themselves upfront, you know. Most of the time they only do that when they feel anonymous.
I’m sure this is supposed to relate to something I said somehow.
Then your limitations are so noted.
Nope. I know what I believe and why I believe it and it’s refreshed frequently.
Yes, I’ve read some of them. I don’t know what I can accept at face value, but I certainly won’t learn more through stifling debate.
I’ve supported my argument. I’m not going to support the argument that your recreational outrage is bolstered against. I am making an argument about the open dialogue of shared information and communication of principles and defending that as having a value in and of itself. And I have a pretty good track record of insight into the human mind that has served me well.
But I have always been fascinated by villains. Friday I will be doing professional consulting as an ‘evil consultant’ on a new Sci Fi media franchise that’s being developed.
There’s a thread about bullies having low self-esteem, and how the ‘everyone knows’ argument is invalid. You’re just making another one of those.
I am not a professional expert, if this has just been elucidated for you I am sorry if I somehow mischaracterized my views before now. If we relegated all topics to ‘professional experts’ then this forum would have almost no posts at all.
Well as long as you don’t self-apply the word skeptic as a personal descriptor then your limitations are so noted.
I’m multi-tasking here and may have gotten lost. I thought you were referring to my references to psychiatric, psychological and child development literature. If not, then my apologies. If so, the literature explains much more about pedophilia than Cesario will ever have the insight to know.
And I haven’t said debate should be stifled. If you’re fascinated by him, fine. Cesario would not be the first open pedophile to post at the Straight Dope. People are always fascinated by them. But like I said, you’re not going to learn much that was not already obvious, and you’re not going to learn how to identify pedophiles. Cesario outed himself as a pedophile in his first postings here. How often do you think that happens in real life? What ways are you going to learn to identify pedophiles based on his posts? ‘People who weasel out of arguments are sometimes pedophiles?’ That wouldn’t be very helpful. ‘People who obsessively defend the rights of child molesters might be pedophiles?’ Not exactly a grand deduction.
Not really.
This isn’t outrage, much less recreational outrage. I’m pointing out that you are not likely to gain some deep insight into pedophiles based on Cesario’s posts.
Agreed.
This is a more realistic explanation of your interest in Cesario’s posts.
I didn’t appeal to ‘everyone knows.’ I stated something very, very obvious: people don’t usually reason themselves into their actions. They choose what to do and then rationalize it later.
I would at the least be interested in hearing what sort of reasoning might lie behind that course of action. I mean, it’s not every day you meet somebody with a think for toddler-eyeball-ashtrays.
It’s logical to assume that Cesario currently has access to young children – heck, he’s already publicly admitted that he’s in the process of grooming a four-year-old girl. Now, it’s unclear whether or not this potential victim is a family member, or the child of a neighbor, or just someone he met randomly on the street, but if he’s willing to confess that he’s actively seeking contact with that particular child, there are probably dozens that he hasn’t told us about.
Indeed, it’s scary to realize just how invisible pedophiles are to the rest of society. Frankly, I find it disgraceful when pundits like Nancy Grace paint a portrait of sex offenders as skeevy, creepy monsters lurking in the shadows waiting for the opportunity to pounce on your helpless children…those creatures do exist, but they’re rare. But I do think there’s value in understanding how the average pedophile’s mind works – in the words of Sun Tzu, “Know Your Enemy.”
The post was incredibly creepy, but no, he didn’t admit to being in the process of grooming anyone. He said he recently spent an hour with a four-year-old in the presence of the child’s mother and brother. It didn’t sound like he was a stranger to those people, but I don’t plan to ask.
There’s value in knowing how pedophiles behave. That’s not what you get from talking to one on a message board, generally speaking. What you’re getting here is how a pedophile might rationalize his desires. Potentially interesting, maybe, but rather useless.
Well yes, but that literature is all academic if the whole idea of a pedophile is entirely abstract to you. Knowing that these people theoretically exist, or knowing people that have been hurt by them is one thing. Actually getting to talk to one is another.
To me it’s sort of like being able to talk to an alien. I’d feel the same way if I met a terrorist. I’ve had conversations with people who had terrorist sympathies. This (Muslim) guy I used to hang out with when he was drunk and high on cocaine was telling me about how his friend was arrested with a cache full of arms. He told me how it’s stupid to do, but he also kind of feels sympathy for it. Once at a festival around a campfire at night this guy dropped a bomb that he was a member of Al Qaeda and then melted into night and disappeared. I was interested in speaking to them too.
I feel it would be fair to hear his reasoning. I apply this as an absolute blanket rule to all viewpoints, no matter how crazy they seem.
I am as sure about my position here as I am about my position on anything else, at least off the top of my head. But so far as I’m concerned he’s still free to try and convince me otherwise. Of course I should hear a little more.
Now, if there were other things I were doing with my time I wouldn’t be wasting time on this sort of thing (one has priorities!). But when I am in a position to of course I shall listen to his arguments.
Well, first off there is making a pedophile into a person rather than a thing. That’s always a valuable lesson. I’ve noted that people are singularly incapable of understanding others who are things and not people. I see this most dramatically played out in the puerile passion play of the left/right dichotomy. The more passionately someone is partisan the more likely they are to regard their counterparts as things rather than people. I see it all the time.
Only because you are assuming some a priori value. You have already judged Cesario’s worth to you and are claiming this as some kind of objective fact.
Deep insight, no, but a nugget of insight possibly.
Well then, that’s the crux of the argument I am making. I am saying I don’t know what insights I will learn from Cesario until I learn them. You are expecting me to be able to present an argument about what I might learn from reading his posts. I don’t know, I haven’t read them all yet. I haven’t conversed with him. This thread made me aware of his existence.
Sure.
For me the rationalizations of motivations are just as interesting as the actual motivations. Like with Michael Jackson we saw a severe distrust of adults at work, at least it was reported to be such. This leads me to believe that pedophiles have the intellect and sexuality of adults, but are possibly more immature emotionally. Childlike people can be very dynamic, and we often tend to like them as long as they aren’t sticking their dicks in toddlers.
Ok, fair enough.
^^This, a thousand times this.
If you feel you have nothing to learn about a viewpoint then don’t read that person’s posts.
However, I’ll make a gross generalization, something that I believe to be true based on my anecdotal experience. People who have nothing to learn about a topic generally respond to that topic with boredom, or germanely explain that topic to them. Visceral disgust is not the sort of reaction you get from someone who already knows everything there is to know about a topic. I see it all the time, conservatives thing they know everything they need to know about liberals and vice versa, and then their arguments are these incredibly base and vulgar stereotypes, incredibly unsophisticated. Knowing everything that needs to be known leads to the kind of arguments where Hitler conveniently belongs to the political spectrum opposite to the person making the argument.
A pedophile is a human being, as much as we hate it, they are human beings, and I think that a human being intrinsically deserves respect as a human being, human life has an inherent value.