My cousin got a HUGE rack at about age 16 or so. A glorious rack, if I may say so.
I couldn’t help but notice (and appreciate it)
Still, she was “family” - so it was never hard to ignore that as “off limits”
I once spotted a gorgeous man across the room and made some lascivious remark about him to my sister, only to discover that he was a first cousin I hadn’t seen in years. It grossed me out for a moment but I didn’t feel particularly guilty for finding him attractive (because damn he’s fine), but any romantic interest evaporated on the spot. He’s family!
Wow, was I ever in the wrong thread.
The above comment bears no relation to anything I’m saying. An adult has the right to put himself/herself into and/or extract themselves out of sexual situations of their choosing because they have the agency and experience to do that. When it becomes truly abusive, we do protect our rights with laws against things like rape and assault. Children don’t have the ability to deal with any of those situations to their own benefit, hence they are excused from those responsibilities as well as those consequences (just like we don’t let them operate cars or sign onto mortgages).
Here’s another question. We have evidence that a child’s brain is different than an adult’s brain. We have evidence that everything from video games to traumatic experiences affect children different than they affect adults. We have entire schools of psychology and education devoted to researching and understanding the way in which children are differently than adults.
In what way do you understand sexuality to be different for children than for adults?
Regarding the “was attracted until I found out we were relatives” posts: Has anyone here had sexual attraction to someone physically reminiscent of a family member?
supergoose, sorry no disrespect intended.
That private messege was as follows-
I would love to let you know why I asked the OP.
I was sent to live with my mother’s sis when I was 12 and one day she came to get me out of bed. She jumped onto me and pinned my shoulders with her knees. She was wearing just a t-shirt and it was then that I was shocked to see for the first time ever a grown woman’s stuff. she was just wanting me to get up and out of bed and I don’t think she was teasing me but just being the tomboy she is. 30 years in and I can’t bring myself to ask her about that morning.
I wasn’t fishing for a child fucking pro/con debate as this has turned out.
For one example:
http://www.kslegislature.org/legsrv-statutes/index.do
A I said, these laws aren’t constructed in a sane manner. They rely on prosecutorial “discression” (also known as selective enforcement) to reign in their excesses, but the fact of the matter is that you are guilty of a severity level 3 personal felony by the standards of the state of Kansas.
I’d look up your local laws, but I neither know, nor wish to know where you are physically located.
I don’t deny that’s likely, but you claiming it doesn’t exactly meet a legal standard, and in any case, your enjoyment isn’t actually relevent to the law in question. You sumbitted to it in the sense that you did not stop it before it happened, and it is quite clear the intent was at the very least the arrousal of the child, so you are guilty.
I’m not trying to accuse you of anything, as I see nothing really wrong with your response in this situation. I’m just using your case as an example to show how fucked up these laws can and have gotten.
Prove all adults have that agency and experience. How do you gain experience by living in a featureless white box for eighteen years, which meets the current standard?
Seems to me those are sufficient for children too.
You are aware that this reasoning is equally satisfied by granting parents the authority to rape their own kids (as was actually the case in California until just recently), right?
Again, implicitly assuming I support those limitations as well. (hint: I don’t.)
Children are generally less screwed up about it since they haven’t had as much of the cultural shaming driven into their heads. Unfortunately, that changes when they actually participate in some sex act, since once that happens, the shaming is stepped up to a truly epic level and no effort is spared to ensure that if the child wasn’t traumatized and broken by the experience itself, they soon will be.
That’s my basic understanding anyway. As for the real answer to your question, I look to the experts, and have found these sources to be informative:
http://ssw.unc.edu/fcrp/cspn/vol7_no2/normal.htm
http://www.ejhs.org/volume3/Haroian/body.htm
I don’t think there’s anything particularly unusual about that. I don’t think there’s really any harm bringing it up to her. After all, we’ve all got embarrassing, self-dispariging things we tell people about our youths. At worst, you’ll have a laugh over it and you’ll move on.
We probably could’ve avoided it degenerating into that if we hadn’t had Lumpy ridiculed for honestly answering the thread’s question.
I’m not going to bother with quoting, if that’s alright.
I want to say first off that I don’t have a problem with teenagers being sexually active. I personally think 13 and 14 is a little young, but that’s just me and my experiences. When I use the term child, I’m referring to preadolescent children. I realize that that is not standard usage and I apologize for not making that clear earlier.
I don’t know enough about children to really go farther in the debate, and none of us can really accurately predict what would turn out to work well or not if our culture/society was different, which also limits any debate.
I am willing to say that I don’t know whether or not it would turn out to be harmful for children to start being sexually active at younger ages. I can only speak for myself, really.
And I feel I can say definitively that my sexuality was never hindered, that I was aware of. I’ve always been sexual, the mechanics were explained to me around age six, and further detail as well as possible consequences regarding pregnancy and diseases and how to prevent them (as well as emotional pitfalls) was taught yearly from around age 10 in health class and from my parents.
I think that that kind of impersonal, non-judgmental education (first from my parents and then at school and at home) was the best way to learn about all of that. No one implied anything about shame, which was crucial. As a smart kid with goals and role models and support, just knowing that information was enough to make me avoid the negative consequences I was taught of, no one had to say “doing this or that is wrong”. Of course, I’ve always had slight to severe social problems, so I can’t say if experimenting sexually with my peers at a younger age would have had a positive or negative impact. I also can’t say how much of an impact societal expectations had on me. I can at least say that I never felt hindered or held back.
I can say for absolute certain, however, that if I had been sexually active before age 12 or 13, I’d have probably done it for all the wrong reasons - attention, approval, manipulation. That’s primarily what I was concerned about as a child - getting what I wanted and being paid positive attention to. I was not driven to have sex with other people. Playing with myself felt good, but I didn’t really intuitively connect that with my interest in boys (started getting crushes around 9 or 10).
Maybe if our society was different and it was expected that young children be sexually active with others I’d handle it better, but I suspect that what it comes down to is emotional maturity and puberty (meaning, hormones). And yes, we all have different levels of maturity at various ages, but in general, as I understand it, you can roughly match up the progression of emotional maturity with physical maturity. Plus of course what others have brought up regarding the differences between the brains of adults and children and cognitive capabilities.
I think one of the reasons that we’re inclined not to rush our children sexually and even try to prolong that journey (not making a comment on whether that’s right or wrong - I personally feel one should strive for a balance between supporting children’s development in all areas and providing a safe environment for them to learn and experiment in, basically, both encouragement and protection in moderation and as the kid in question can handle it) is that we have no reason to do so. Pedophiles kind of do, and the percentage of the population who is sexually attracted to only prepubescent children is probably rather small. (I know you provided statistics earlier but I’m not inclined to hunt them up, sorry.)
I also think that that is part of why it is so looked down on for adults to have sexual relationships with children/adolescents in their mid-teenage years. Most people are fine having sexual relationships with people around their own age, so people who go after children and teenagers are viewed as being predatory. I think minors having sex with their peers is regarded as okay because people of the same age tend to in general have similar levels of maturity, knowledge and experience, and knowledge and experience aid greatly in manipulation and deception.
(Interestingly, it probably winds up being kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy - given that society frowns on adults having sexual relationships with children/teens, anyone capable of and willing to have relationships with their peers will tend to do so, leaving the people who can’t or won’t (and are therefore probably not great people) to go after minors which feeds society’s disapproval.)
I say all of this to explain myself and possibly enhance understanding, not necessarily to defend or condemn such view points. As I said earlier, I’m too ignorant to really do so. And like most people who have fair to good experiences in a particular area of their upbringing, I think the way I was brought up sexually (early comprehensive education without shame or scare tactics) works well and see no need to change it.
Note, this does not mean that I think our highly sexualized culture is ideal - I think our focus on sex and the way we react to it is a problem. We make it a bigger deal than it needs to be, and this is true of keep-it-hidden-and-shameful approaches too. Sex is natural and a normal part of life, and I think treating it otherwise leads to overreaction.
Oh, and thanks about the adrenaline thing. It’s really not so bad. Fingers-crossed I don’t wind up in a situation in which getting a boost from adrenaline is the difference between life and death.
Thank you also for clearing that up, Claude Remains.
One last thing - in case anyone was interested, I realized that another component of my initial overreaction was that that would be the standard that I would hold myself to, if I were sexually interested in small children. I tend to be very afraid of losing self-control which makes me highly, highly self-controlled, and also don’t particularly trust my perceptions, both of which I now know are biases I need to watch out for.
Couldn’t have said it better myself supergoose.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cesario
We probably could’ve avoided it degenerating into that if we hadn’t had Lumpy ridiculed for honestly answering the thread’s question.
The original thread title was edited, and I don’t recall ‘underage’ being in the original but I could be mistaken. Changing the title to underage certainly took this in a direction he did not intend. Claude Remains clarified before the edit that he was referring to an older aunt.
My reaction to Lumpy’s post was based on my understanding of the word ‘wanton’ as a motivated, purposeful act, which I now find not to always be included in dictionary definitions. I found the notion that he saw toddler masturbation as a purposeful display for his enjoyment disturbing. I still find his enjoyment disturbing, but that’s just me… based on cultural norms and boundaries. I would hazard a guess that most of our culture would ridicule, challenge, or address behaviors outside the norm, especially involving children. This is where standards are at this point and new information refuting those standards may take decades, if not centuries to change. As a product of cultural conditioning and a mama bear, my adrenaline rushed against a predator.
It’s because of this, our society’s views on sexuality, that we protect them from those experiences and punish those who take advantage of their naivete. There’s no argument that children are sexual to a degree, but I would argue that their sexuality is physiological and the psychological capacity to deal with early sex acts with adults does not exist, and is compromised when they are capable of internalizing the shame, the loss of trust, and all of the ramifications of having behaved, unknowingly, outside the cultural box… or in older children, somewhat knowingly. Which, by the way is explained in your own expert source below under ‘Sexual Rights of Children’:
as well as the acknowledgement that the argument for a continuum of permissiveness-encouragement is akin to the rhetoric of pedophiles who have a vested interest in the relaxation of laws protecting children. The section also briefly addresses the inherent harm to children, as viewed by child experts, and includes advocating protection from the liability of sexual contracts, in the same manner they are not held accountable for business or labor contracts, because they are not consenting adults in sexual matters.
It’s fine by me.
That’s nice, but I’m not sure why your prefered arbitrary line based on nothing is, in any way, better than any other arbitrary line based on nothing.
That’s the usage I generally employ too, so there shouldn’t be too much trouble resulting from this one.
This gets us back to the “better safe than sorry” cop out. The idea that any current policy must be stuck with, no matter how horrible, because “we can’t know” what will happen if we change to a saner system. We touched on cowardice briefly during our last exchange, and that’s what this is (assuming, of course, that’s where you were going with this).
What “emotional pitfalls” were those, exactly?
You’ve mentioned being taught the pitfalls and the mechanics. Something is conspicous by its omission. Did anyone ever bother to explain to your prepubescent self why people would ever do this stupid, dangerous thing in the first place?
How did you not connect this if you had all this explained to you? I guess that answers my question above. Sure, they didn’t go the deliberate shaming route, but the information they selectively provided for you was manipulative enough to do the job. Keep them from doing it until hormonal imperatives make it impossible for us to stop them. Different method, same goal.
No. You’d have been just as fucked up as under the current system, just in the oposite direction. There is no meaningful ethical difference between pressuring and manipulating someone not to have sex and pressuring and manipulating them to have sex. In the end, it all comes down to the same thing, ignoring what they want, and instead imposing on them what you want for them.
To draw from a litterary example, the promiscuity described in Huxley’s Brave New World seemed to be a bright spot in the otherwise horrific childhood experiences described in that book until we see the boy crying that he doesn’t want to engage in sex-play and the adults prompty ignore his desires just as they would have under the current regime.
Something we can measure directly (or alternately, depending on your definition, something we can’t ever measure at all in any way, and thus shouldn’t be using as a pre-requisite for anything). No good reason whatsoever to have an arbitrary age line.
And what exactly do breasts and pubic hair have to do with one’s ability to meaningfully consent and “deal with” these horrific emotional consequences everyone loves attributing to sex.
And why the hell should we use this rough estimation instead of directly measuring this mythical undefined term “maturity” that we somehow know syncs up roughly with physical development?
Which, so far, I’ve seen amount to nothing.
Where the HELL did I suggest we should rush anyone? Show me where I said anything even remotely resembling a suggestion that we should rush them.
I really dislike people attributing goals, motivations, and statements to me falsely. I should think that my openly stated goals and motivations should be plenty for people to hate me over without any need to make things up.
As you’ll note in one of the above section in this post, I consider pushing them either way to be immoral for precisely the same reason. In a society where kids are pushed, manipulated, etc. into having sex as early as possible, I’d be just as outraged as I am in the current one. My goal is about choices and freedom, not about exchanging one set of shackles for another.
I will comment. It’s wrong.
A famous quote comes to mind regarding this need for balance.
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
-Benjamin Franklin
Slavers have no reason to free their human chattel. I recognize that people who have power are loathe to give it up. It’s not like it’s news to me. Treating children as though they had some sort of right to control their own bodies means that the people we currently have “holding in trust” that right lose some of their power.
That’s not to say they don’t honestly believe they’re doing good. After all, even in the black slavery system, there was ample evidence that blacks weren’t capable of surviving on their own or of making good decisions, so it was the burdon of the white man to protect and sheperd these people, and if they got some chores done around the house in exchange, well, that’s just them earning their keep.
“Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” - C.S. Lewis
My statistics were about primary attraction, not exclusive attraction. I should note that I myself am not exclusively attracted to children, so it might be a good idea to reconsider why you felt the need to bring up that demographic in the first place. Am I not motivated enough?
Yes, being a minority is generally a good enough reason for people to look down on you. Human nature isn’t always pretty, but there you have it.
On what basis do you make this claim? Can you provide evidence that “most people” don’t experience problems from equal aged relationships?
I’m not sure I follow. They’re viewed as predatory because they deviate from the presumed norm? Dispite the fact that adults have sexual relationships with just as large of age gaps and no one even thinks to call that predatory. Clearly that isn’t the reason.
And I can probably beat up and force any woman I chose to have sex with me. (For the slower dopers, this is a hypothetical. I am not claiming to be the biggest badass on the planet.) Does that mean any sex I have must, by definition, be rape, because I could? Even if I don’t, does the fact that I have this ability mean I should be treated as though I have used it in every instance?
No. People who manipulate and decieve in order to obtain sex are rapists and should be treated as such. People who don’t are not rapists and should be treated as such. If whether or not you have sex with someone comes down to your ability to see through their deliberate deceptions, overcome their manipulations, etc. this sex was not consensual in the first place, and it bothers me a great deal that you seem to think that these abilities matter with regards to consensual sex.
It should be noted that I included a requirement for the ability to recognize manipulation and deception in the RMSC. That is included as a binary ability. It was recognized that people ought to be able to recognize nonconsensual behavior if they are going to be said to have meaningfully consented. That doesn’t change the fact that the person employing these tactics is a rapist regardless of whether the person was capable of meaningful consent, and it bothers me a great deal that there seems some level of consensus that these are acceptable behaviors.
Of course, the above rant applies only if you were reffering to deliberate deception and/or manipulation. If you’re talking about some passive behavior too subtle for the would-be rapist to even notice, I have a whole other rant for you. So, let me know.
As I’ve said previously, part of my goal is to ensure that rape stops being the only sex that’s happening.
People often see their particular upbringing as ideal (or at least close to it) without any real consideration of alternatives. After all, “I turned out all right, so no reason to screw up a winning formula”. It’s those of us who haven’t had the best outcomes that tend to push for changes.
Me, I was rather painfully aware of my legal status as a piece of subhuman chattel during my childhood. I love my parents and think they did well by me, but that lack of freedom that is inherent in our culture’s model of child-rearing left me with a lot of residual resentment that I have a strong desire to see no one has to experience that again.
Oh please. Our culture is as shame-based and puritain as it’s always been. Sex is still a dirty word and we still hide it away behind closed doors. No matter how often it’s mentioned on TV, it’s still a joke. The only reason they even bother putting it on TV or in movies is precisely because the taboo is still so omnipresent that people get a thrill out of breaking it. While it may be that our culture has been sexualized, it hasn’t been able to shed one iota of the body same and anti-sex hysteria that so characterizes our puritain roots. That guilt coexists alongside the media pushing it down everyone’s throats, leaving us with a culture filled with neurotics trying to deal with conflicting signals and constant self-hatrid.
Every time you declare that it’s something children shouldn’t see or be allowed to participate in, you’re treating it as something other than a natural, normal part of life. I hope that much is clear.
Let’s hope.
I’m still not clear on what you’re so afraid you would do.
I’m aware. I’ve been reading the thread.
Doesn’t make it any more acceptable behavior if hundreds of thousands of other people are doing it. And I’m not going to go easy on you just because your reaction is common.
And it won’t get anywhere without people willing to challenge this sort of prejudice and ignorance wherever it rears it’s ugly head.
You (collective “you” reffering to society) would torture and abuse a child if you found out he/she had been sexually active, so you get to claim you’re protecting them by punishing their sexual partners too, because without said (fully consensual) sexual partners you would not have been motivated to torture and abuse that child. You’ll understand if I consider this two-faced and wrongheaded.
As oposed to that of adults, which has no physical component at all… oh wait…
But magically, they can deal just fine with the exact same sex act comitted at the exact same time, in exactly the same way, if their partner’s birthday came just a little bit later.
Can you define “early” in the context that you are using here, and can you provide some evidence that it is absolutely impossible for any child to posess this “pyschological capacity to deal” with it (something you should also define while you’re at it)? I can wait.
So we’re in agreement that the only reason they’re suffering is because of the prejudice that pervades this abusive society. Now, seems to me that getting rid of the source of that suffering would be a damn sight better than just trying to avoid triggering it.
The old “doctor, it hurts when I do this” “so don’t do that” routine is a joke for a reason.
Every paper that is published on this subject has a section specifically for denouncing pedophiles. Can’t really get something like this published in this political climate otherwise. Hell, even Rind et. al, so often derided as a piece of pedophile propoganda, and explicitly condemned as such by an act of Congress has such a section in there.
Well, if you want to cover that particular subject, you might want to read over the arguments (on both sides of the issue) presented here, since it’s a wonderful overview:
http://www.takingchildrenseriously.com/childrens_rights_and_the_law
I was waiting for you to say those people dressed as clowns were all paedophiles or something…
Thank you.
Cesario:
My arbitrary line is based on my experience being a child and teenager (and young adult) and interacting with children and teenagers. I acknowledge the limitations of that, but I can’t help feeling one way or another any more than you can.
I am not using “better safe than sorry” as a cop out. I’m acknowledging the limits of my and our collective knowledge. Would you prefer I debate on, assuming that I know everything or even that I know enough to have an informed opinion when I know I don’t?
Emotional pitfalls: sometimes sex is emotionally meaningful, sometimes it isn’t. Depends on the person and the situation. Having sex feeling deeply for someone when they just want to get laid and don’t care very much about you is going to end up with you getting hurt. Having sex with someone just to get laid when they care deeply about you is getting yourself into an emotionally sticky situation and going to end up with them getting hurt. Having sex with someone because you feel you should/they are pressuring you rather than because you actually feel comfortable doing so and want to do so will likely make you upset and regretful after.
I didn’t feel the need to mention being taught that people have sex because it feels really good because I thought that was obvious. I’ve always known that. The first thing a kid asks you when you explain what sex is is “why do people do that?” That’s part of the mechanics/additional detail I mentioned.
Knowledge doesn’t always translate into feeling. I liked these boys I had crushes on, wanted to be near them and for them to pay attention to me and maybe hold hands and kiss briefly without tongue, but I did not want to have sexual intercourse with them. I did not want to have sexual intercourse with anyone. I felt no need or desire to. At that age, crushes and masturbation were fine. I felt no urge to go further.
As I understand it, hormones make you want to have sex and interact sexually with members of the gender you are attracted to.
You said you’re attracted to age 0-10. I assumed you were being entirely honest and not withholding information regarding your sexual attractions. All I have to go on is the information you give me. How can you expect me to assume that it isn’t complete?
It makes me angry that you read what I say and assume that I can only feel and think so because I continue to be blindly manipulated and suppressed, that I haven’t done “any real consideration of alternatives.” Why can’t I simply have had a different experience than you and as a result have reached a different conclusion than you?
Why do you assume that your experience is what everyone must have experienced/be experiencing and if they don’t agree, they must just not be able to see it? Why can’t your experience and feelings have been an anomaly rather than the norm? I acknowledge that it is possible for my experience to have been so. Can you?
My fear of losing control is irrational, which is why it had no place in this discussion. I’m not afraid of losing control and hurting someone or embarrassing myself or anything. I’m not afraid of what it will make me do. There is no “I’m afraid of losing control and as a result doing _______”. I’m just afraid of losing control. Full stop.
As for everything else you wrote in response, I’m not going to argue with you. We see the world differently. I feel I’ve explained myself thoroughly and clearly and I also think you are reading everything I wrote and viewing human sexuality in general through a huge bias and you clearly think the same of me/everyone else. I feel you misunderstand a lot of what I write and leap to conclusions that just aren’t there in my words. I can’t do anything about that, and I’ve run out of patience and willingness to try.
I wish you well, and I fear that your need to prove your view point is causing you to skew reality to a kind of scary degree (You feel slavery and talk of human chattel to be analogous to current treatment of children’s sexuality? Are you kidding me??), but I’m very possibly misunderstanding you as well and there’s nothing I can do in any case.
This is not the Pit, nor Great Debates. My humble opinion is that pedophilia is pathological. I, once again, would refer all readers to the bodies of knowledge on which both psychiatrists and psychologists base their practices to understand the complexities and dynamics of pedophilia, as well demonstrated in this thread.
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And on that, I think this thread has run its course.
If you wish to discuss pedophila, please open a new thread in Great Debates or the Pit, where it truly belongs.
Thank you for keeping it relatively cool-headed in here. I appreciate that - and I have been watching.
Closed.
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