# How could people in a society live with pedophiles? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 24, 2016, 5:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-people-in-a-society-live-with-pedophiles/744068 "2016-01-24T05:53:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2016, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-people-in-a-society-live-with-pedophiles/744068/41 "2016-01-24T22:53:27Z")
Also, these man-boy relationships are technically not pedophilia because the boy are generally not pre-pubescent. It’s more accurately described as [pederasty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pederasty). We in the West are used to “age of consent” laws around 16 -18, but that’s a pretty [recent phenomenon.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_consent#Traditional_attitudes) ---
**Author:** ![Hail\_Ants](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/dc4da7/32.png) [@Hail\_Ants](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hail_Ants)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2016, 10:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-people-in-a-society-live-with-pedophiles/744068/42 "2016-01-24T22:55:06Z")
> [@ZPG\_Zealot](#): > > The main reason children are (over) valuable in our current society is there is simply less of them. In societies that don’t practice birth control, children frequently become a cheap commodity because there are so damn many. At times they are liabilities when agricultural people shift to urban living or there simply isn’t enough arable land for everybody to have sustainable farms. And children are not innocent. They are ignorant of ethical mores. They are more capable than adults of heinous acts of cruelty and not because they have been abused, but because they simply have not developed enough empathy to understand that other people have rights and emotions. We in the West have forgotten that the whole _‘children are immeasurably sacred’_ idea is a fairly recent one. It came about with the progressive movement around the beginning of the 20th century. Before that, along with life being cheaper in general, children were simply viewed as ‘little adults’. Incapable of handling certain physical responsibilities (though much more back then than today) but emotionally, they were not viewed as being especially fragile. Young boys particularly not. As recently as the American Civil War young boys were often used, not as actual soldiers, but still in roles that actually took place in battle. The film _Master and Commander_ very accurately portrays their use in naval ships during war. How often they also got used as ‘cabin boys’ varied, but more or less this was simply accepted in the not too distant past. I’m not condoning it nor do I pretend to not find the idea repulsive, but like everyone else I’m a creature of my current culture and society. And in societies that are not as advanced and developed as the modern West these older views are still sometimes acceptable. But at the same time I do not blame US citizens or soldiers for treating such behavior as abhorrent when they come across it in foreign lands. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2016, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-people-in-a-society-live-with-pedophiles/744068/43 "2016-01-24T23:42:11Z")
Sheesh, guys, it’s only been ~150 years since _slavery_ was outlawed in the US. Do you really think every country develops at exactly the same pace? To much of the world, the US appears barbaric because we still have the death penalty. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-people-in-a-society-live-with-pedophiles/744068/44 "2016-01-25T00:23:27Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Sheesh, guys, it’s only been ~150 years since slavery was outlawed in the US. Do you really think every country develops at exactly the same pace? To much of the world, the US appears barbaric because we still have the death penalty. Heck, [marital rape](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marital_rape_%28United_States_law%29) was not outlawed in all 50 US states until **1993**. ---
**Author:** ![Emiliana](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f0a364/32.png) [@Emiliana](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Emiliana)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-people-in-a-society-live-with-pedophiles/744068/45 "2016-01-25T00:36:19Z")
It is quite common for the more powerful to claim that many kinds of human rights abuses are widely accepted cultural practices. The fact that many, less powerful Afghans object rather strongly to the sexual abuse of their children suggests that power is at play rather than culture. Some Afghan (and other) men sexually abused children because they can. This abuse of cultural relativism is distinct from Shalmanese’s argument that cultures differ, often in significant ways, with what is considered sexual (or abusive). I’ve encountered this argument many times, generally from anthropologists, and I’ve seldom found it compelling. But I agree in principle that such differences _could_ exist. Even under such conditions, I’m not sure I’d consider such practices as morally acceptable. For example, many indigenous cultures in the Amazon river basin consider corporal punishment to be crucial in punishing wrong doers and reintegrating them back into the community. Practices that might be considered cruel and unusual punishment, the argument goes, are not experienced this way by the punished because pain is understood so differently. Yet sometimes these punishments rise to the level of torture. What then? ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-people-in-a-society-live-with-pedophiles/744068/46 "2016-01-25T01:05:39Z")
> [@Hail\_Ants](#): > > We in the West have forgotten that the whole _‘children are immeasurably sacred’_ idea is a fairly recent one. It came about with the progressive movement around the beginning of the 20th century. Actually, it seems to have begun at least a half-century earlier with the emergence of [Victorian ideals of childhood](http://www.representingchildhood.pitt.edu/victorian.htm): > [@](#): > > […] as the century wore on, more and more people began to accept the idea that childhood should be a protected period of education and enjoyment. […] > > With its rollicking depiction of nursery life, Catherine Sinclair’s Holiday House (1839) is often regarded as a landmark text that shifted the focus of children’s fiction from instruction to delight. Classics like Edward Lear’s A Book of Nonsense (1846) and Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) carried on this tradition. […] > > Like Dickens, children’s authors often voiced their belief in the perfect purity of the young, as when Carroll enthused, “Their innocent unconsciousness is very beautiful, and gives one a feeling of reverence, as at the presence of something sacred” (Letters 381) Such sentiments became increasingly common in sermons, poetry, and periodicals from this period; the Victorians often quoted Wordsworth’s claim in the Immortality Ode that “Heaven lies about us in our infancy!” Artists like Charles West Cope and John Everett Millais produced dozens of domestic genre paintings with titles like The First Music Lesson (1863) and My First Sermon (1862-3), which portray the child as a bastion of simplicity, innocence, and playfulness. Women were also praised for embodying these qualities, and together with children they were urged to inhabit a separate sphere: to withdraw from the workforce, embrace their status as dependents, and provide the male breadwinner with a refuge from the dog-eat-dog capitalist world outside the family. The germs of these notions go back as far as the [17th century](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_childhood#Preindustrial_and_medieval) in Europe: > [@](#): > > During the 1600s, a shift in philosophical and social attitudes toward children and the notion of ‘childhood’ began in Europe. Adults increasingly saw children as separate beings, innocent and in need of protection and training by the adults around them. And I’m not convinced that human views on childhood were monolithic prior to developments in early modern Europe, either. There’s been a lot of recent scholarship on the treatment of children and childhood in classical antiquity, for example (such as [these](https://books.google.com/books?id=LvV0CQAAQBAJ) [two](https://books.google.com/books?id=iShnAQAAQBAJ) books). Similar work is being done on [ancient China](https://books.google.com/books?id=j0Lz0uAT_ygC). I think it’s probably way too simplistic to say that pre-modern societies in general just classified children as “little adults”. [QUOTE=Hail Ants] As recently as the American Civil War young boys were often used, not as actual soldiers, but still in roles that actually took place in battle. The film _Master and Commander_ very accurately portrays their use in naval ships during war. How often they also got used as ‘cabin boys’ varied, but more or less this was simply accepted in the not too distant past. [/quote] Whoa there. The term “cabin boy” was an official nautical designation with no overt sexual implications. It simply meant a junior servant on a ship, usually a boy in the mid-teens, who waited on the officers’ cabins as well as helping out with other menial tasks and basic sailor’s duties such as rigging and steering. You’re confusing the honorable (well, lowly and menial, but not dishonorable) rank of “cabin boy” with slang terms such as “bumboy” or “catamite” that specifically meant a boy kept by a man for purposes of sex. Yes, some cabin boys were used as bumboys by their officers, but the two terms are not synonymous. ---
**Author:** ![urban1a](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/e47c2d/32.png) [@urban1a](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/urban1a)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 2:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-people-in-a-society-live-with-pedophiles/744068/47 "2016-01-25T02:39:48Z")
> [@Robert163](#): > > [U.S. Soldiers Told to Ignore Sexual Abuse of Boys by Afghan Allies](http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/21/world/asia/us-soldiers-told-to-ignore-afghan-allies-abuse-of-boys.html) > Regardless of the title you give it, it is horrible, unforgivable and unacceptable. There is this excellent documentary, also, about [the dancing boys](https://vimeo.com/11352212) ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-people-in-a-society-live-with-pedophiles/744068/48 "2016-01-25T02:57:32Z")
Well, we _do_ in fact live in a society that contains pedophiles. And while I understand the immediate gut-level response of “quick, round them up and kill them” or equivalent, the necessarily invasive police-state tactics that would be required to pull that off are an undesirable social condition as well. The first step in protecting children from bad things happening is to empower children. You can never adequately protect children from being mistreated by passing laws against doing this or doing that to children, because relevant adults won’t always be there observing and therefore able to step in and prevent it. What you can do is make it so that children get to be heard, get to make complaints that do get investigated, get to testify. You can make it so that children get consulted in decisions that affect them. You can make it so that children have the authority to say “no” to arrangement that they do not want to be a part of. It doesn’t fix everything (there may still be no one there to observe if someone oversteps a child’s legally declared limits) but it’s probably the best first start. Bad things happen to children not because they are innocent but because they lack power. What makes them bad in the first place is not that the children are innocent but that coercion is taking place. It is not possible to change laws in such a way as to make children of all ages the real and genuine equals of adults in power and self-determination. But it is possible to drastically improve on the current situation. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-people-in-a-society-live-with-pedophiles/744068/49 "2016-01-25T03:10:53Z")
> [@Robert163](#): > > … But is not one of the strongest human drives is to “protect the group”? It makes perfect sense to me to throw a juicy tender baby out to a pack of wolves so they don’t come at the rest of my village. Or maybe some gristly old guy who can’t hunt any more. “Protecting the group” translates very easily to “dump the weak.” ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-people-in-a-society-live-with-pedophiles/744068/50 "2016-01-25T14:51:09Z")
> [@Boyo\_Jim](#): > > It makes perfect sense to me to throw a juicy tender baby out to a pack of wolves so they don’t come at the rest of my village. Or maybe some gristly old guy who can’t hunt any more. “Protecting the group” translates very easily to “dump the weak.” Cost-benefit analysis also results from “protect the group”. If the dangerous guy in the group is also the guy who is the best hunter, maybe the group decides they are better off letting him get away with shit. ---
**Author:** ![davida03801](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b5e925/32.png) [@davida03801](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davida03801)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-people-in-a-society-live-with-pedophiles/744068/51 "2016-01-25T15:25:11Z")
With all due respect your taking western values and applying them to non western people. Certain non western peoples grew up in much different cultures, have different attitudes on many subjects and are not particularly concerned about your concerns. In fact they would think some of them are rather silly. ---
**Author:** ![Anarcho\_Liberalist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/df705f/32.png) [@Anarcho\_Liberalist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anarcho_Liberalist)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-people-in-a-society-live-with-pedophiles/744068/52 "2016-01-25T15:45:15Z")
Horrible things happen in countries that don’t share the (western, post-Industrial, humanist) views you and I were brought up with. Where I live, after every ‘incident’ people ask aloud ‘why do these stupid Americans allow everyone to go out and buy an automatic gun if they feel like it?’ In France people wonder why authorities in the Netherlands allow people to legally buy weed, knowing it’s bad for them? And as for your (rhetorical?) question > [@Urbanredneck](#): > > Dont all humans have a basic instinct to protect the innocent? The answer is, alas, no ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-people-in-a-society-live-with-pedophiles/744068/53 "2016-01-25T18:22:06Z")
It was very late in the day when the West adopted the age of consent laws we think of as “normal” now. At common law, a marriage was generally considered valid if the child was over the age of 12 (and were commonly upheld involving children as young as 10). > [@Kimstu](#): > > Actually, it seems to have begun at least a half-century earlier with the emergence of [Victorian ideals of childhood](http://www.representingchildhood.pitt.edu/victorian.htm)… Well, sort of. Victorians seem to have had the idea that in earlier periods of history people didn’t get attached to their children because they kept dying, but there’s no real evidence that this is true (other than the dying part). ETA: it’s actually very difficult to buy an automatic weapon in the US. All our mass shootings are done with semi-automatic weapons. ---
**Author:** ![Fuzzy\_wuzzy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a8b319/32.png) [@Fuzzy\_wuzzy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fuzzy_wuzzy)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-people-in-a-society-live-with-pedophiles/744068/54 "2016-01-25T19:25:45Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > It was very late in the day when the West adopted the age of consent laws we think of as “normal” now. At common law, a marriage was generally considered valid if the child was over the age of 12 (and were commonly upheld involving children as young as 10). > > Well, sort of. Victorians seem to have had the idea that in earlier periods of history people didn’t get attached to their children because they kept dying, but there’s no real evidence that this is true (other than the dying part). > > ETA: it’s actually very difficult to buy an automatic weapon in the US. All our mass shootings are done with semi-automatic weapons. I feel icky even talking about this(and im totally ignoring same sex relationships) but consent at child bearing age is kinda acceptable to me as it was acceptable in much of our human past. I don’t see why consenting age has to be so different today in countries with greater death rates than ours. This is where the Victorians were correct to an extent, not in that children were unloved in the past, but that they were encouraged to be adults as soon as possible. Children were an expensive mouth to feed for much of our history. Encouraging them to work, or take a husband(preferably rich) was accepted. Perhaps this encouragement to work and marry was mistaken by the Victorians as children being unloved. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-people-in-a-society-live-with-pedophiles/744068/55 "2016-01-25T19:30:26Z")
The Victorians didn’t have much to say about the work thing. Child labor legislation wasn’t enacted in the US until 1904, and from 1901 to 1963 UK children could be put to work at 12 (from 1856 to 1901 it was 9). ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-people-in-a-society-live-with-pedophiles/744068/56 "2016-01-25T21:12:21Z")
> [@Fuzzy\_wuzzy](#): > > I feel icky even talking about this(and im totally ignoring same sex relationships) but consent at child bearing age is kinda acceptable to me as it was acceptable in much of our human past The thing is, there is evidence that “age of maturity” in the physical sense is occurring 5 (or even more) years earlier than it has for much of human history. An 18 or 15 year old getting married and having children means a parent at or nearly mentally adult. A 13 or 10 year old doing the same, not so much because while our physical bodies (likely due to better nutrition and environment) are maturing earlier our brains are not. ---
**Author:** ![monstro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@monstro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/monstro)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2016, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-people-in-a-society-live-with-pedophiles/744068/57 "2016-01-25T21:17:07Z")
Some girls become “child-bearing” at eight or nine. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2016, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-people-in-a-society-live-with-pedophiles/744068/58 "2016-01-26T01:08:12Z")
Yes, but that is more common now than 100 or more years ago. A lot of societies had rules that a girl/woman had to have menstruated prior to marriage, or at least marriage consummation. When that was more commonly at 15-18 you had a different situation than when the average age of first menstruation is 10-12. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2016, 6:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-people-in-a-society-live-with-pedophiles/744068/59 "2016-01-26T06:29:56Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > The thing is, there is evidence that “age of maturity” in the physical sense is occurring 5 (or even more) years earlier than it has for much of human history. So how does that jibe with the data that **RNATB** cited about legal age of consent up until the past century or so generally being [more like 12 or even 10 years of age](https://chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/case-studies/230?section=primarysources&source=24)? (And as low as **seven** years old in Delaware as late as 1880. :eek: ) ISTM that if age at puberty used to be significantly higher than it is now, and traditional rules about marriageable/consent age assumed that girls should reach puberty before sex or marriage, then we wouldn’t be seeing such low numbers for legal age of consent in earlier eras. In fact, [most pre-modern sources seem to assume that 12 years or thereabouts is a typical age for puberty.](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/10ecpi/what_was_the_average_age_girls_started_puberty_at/) So I’d like to see a cite for the claim that 15-18 years was more typical in those times. ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2016, 10:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-people-in-a-society-live-with-pedophiles/744068/60 "2016-01-26T10:15:09Z")
In that foreign country “the US and England in the past” people formed societies to prevent cruelty to children only at the end of the 19th century, inspired by and a decade after the formation of society to prevent cruelty to animals. > **[New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Society_for_the_Prevention_of_Cruelty_to_Children)** > > The New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children was founded in 1874 (and incorporated in 1875). It is the world's first child protective agency. It is sometimes called the Gerry Society after one of its co-founders, Elbridge Thomas Gerry. It is commonly seen as having played a key role in the development of children's rights and child protective services in the English-speaking world. Today it offers support and advocacy for high-risk and abused children, parental skills clas In 18... When the world is full of horrors, many of them raining upon you, other people’s problems don’t always make your list of things to care about, and actually doing something about them only happens if they’re very important to you. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-people-in-a-society-live-with-pedophiles/744068.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-could-people-in-a-society-live-with-pedophiles/744068.md?page=4)