Back in Ancient Greece they practiced pederasty as they did in Ancient Rome. Their concepts of homosexuality and pedophilia were very different from what they are in modern times. So in your opinions is Pedophilia an inherently evil/wrong thing or is it just to do with modern perceptions and beliefs? Not to long ago things like homosexuality and premarital sex were considered pretty bad things to practice but they are now accepted for the most part? Do you consider 16 or 18 to be arbitrary numbers when it comes to sexual maturity or just practical ways of governing people in society?
Mmm, pea…d’oh!
Didn’t the Romans also set lions and such on people for entertainment?
I think if we go by the argument that something is OK as long as some civilization somewhere once thought it was OK then anything goes.
However, evaluating paedophilia ourselves, it doesn’t sit well with the rest of Western morality. This kind of act may be physically and mentally damaging, and minors may not have the experience or awareness to make the decision to consent to such acts.
Pederasty is wrong both religiously and rationally. This is one of the few points these systems agree upon. Do you propose to fuck that up also?
Some moral systems are better than others. Lots of moral systems in history supported slavery - that doesn’t mean that slavery was morally okay.
It raises an interesting question. I wonder how those kids felt back in ancient Rome. If it was so common back in those days, did the kid feel “weirded” out by it? Or did they just shrug their shoulders thinking adults are weird?
Anyway, I’m a bit of a nihilist when it comes to morality. I think that we decide what is moral and what is not.
Hmm. I wouldn’t call that ‘nihilistic’ so much as ‘blindingly obvious’. All morals come from the meeting of internal values and societal pressures. They vary wildly from culture to culture and era to era.
There are cultures around today where homosexual acts between adult men and boys from the ages of 12-17 - what we might call rape and sexual abuse - are considered not only normal but needed for a boy to become a man.
So nothing is cut and dried. There’s clearly evidence that the ‘wrongness’ of any act is filtered through societal expectations. How Spartan boys viewed their relations with older men? I couldn’t say.
But it is true that today’s children in the west have an expectation to not be sexually abused and that doing so causes untold problems for them. It’s not something I’d encourage or support and is punished severely.
Totally arbitrary as teens mature at what seems to them to vastly different rates even in there own peer groups. I knew girls in the 70’s who where sexually active at 14 and others that didn’t really have a clue at 17. We had a girl in my class get married at 16, she stayed in school and made straight A’s. What is screwed up is the how the laws are interpreted teens can’t be teens anymore in a lot of states due to arbitrary law. I read yesterday where a 20 year old was arrested for having sex with a 15 year old. Well lock me and a large number of the people I grew up with because that wasn’t considered abnormal when I was growing up.
A Wikipedia article that nuances the idea of the Classics as a free haven for paedophilia. For instance, Spartans demanded that the relationship be chaste; and many other cultures demanded the consent of the father.
The age of the boys is given as between 14 and 19; it is noteworthy that girls were married off at that same age.
I consider them semi-arbitrary, and frankly too high, especially in the absence of “Romeo and Juliet laws”. They break two important rules of lawmaking: don’t pass laws that people will ignore, and don’t pass laws that ignore human nature. Declaring someone “sexually mature” at 18 won’t repeal human biology.
There are, no doubt, 15yr olds with the maturity and dexterity to safely operate a motor vehicle. Doesn’t matter, laws can only be enforced when a definition or line, no matter how arbitrary, is drawn. 15? Too young to drive? As a society we got together and agreed on this arbitrary number. Recognizing that it will exclude the few who might indeed be capable at 15.
Same goes for age of consent. (Such a disingenuous argument, yet crops up in every one of these threads. It should be laid to rest, I believe.)
I don’t think those concepts existed at all. Sexual orientation - attraction and impulses as a component of your identity rather than just a behavior without a label - seems like a pretty modern idea to me.
I don’t like to say “evil,” but rather than argue over terminology- yes, it is. Our ideas and how we look at these things have changed, sure. That also goes for things like opposition to rape, revenge killing, slavery, rights for ethnic and religious minorities, and a lot of other stuff. In general we’ve become a lot more sympathetic to each other, and it makes a lot of sense for us to do so. It’s helped us advance and achieve more and reduced violence, so it’s not just fancy modern ideas.
They’re somewhat arbitrary, yes, but having an age of consent is better than not as far as I’m concerned. And since this distinction almost always gets lost in these threads, statutory rape and pedophilia aren’t the same thing. You can believe 16 or 18 are arbitrary numbers and still say that raping a child is horrible.
Note that the children in the age groups we’re talking about here are pubescent or adolescent, so the term “pedophilia” doesn’t really apply. The terms “hebephilia” and “ephebophilia” are used for attraction to individuals just at or after puberty and in later adolescence, respectively.
AFAIK nobody in the classical world thought it was at all okay for grown men to be using, say, 5- or 6-year olds for sexual gratification.
I’ve often suspected that the Greek writings about paedophilia were the product of a wealthy intellectual elite and not representative of their society as a whole. It would be as if people in the future based their view of mid-twentieth century America on the works of Andy Warhol.
When I was in college I took a course in Cultural Anthropology. In it, the prof described a culture in which it was customary for a man to have sex with his pubescent daughter. This was considered a very loving and nurturing way of introducing the girl to sex, rather than leaving it up to her future husband, who may not be very gentle with her.
I don’t remember whether the prof was describing an actual culture, or whether it was just a hypothetical example to facilitate discussion. Has anyone heard of this? And if so, was there a similar custom involving women and their sons?
Lots of things we have decided are unacceptable in current culture were common in most historical cultures.
Child abuse (physical, verbal, etc)
Domestic violence
Autocratic governments
The meshing of church and state
Torture of political prisoners and criminals
Overt bigotry
Having said that, I would assume a good deal of the emotional pain from being molested comes from the fact that molestation is considered culturally shameful. In a society where it is common, would people find it as traumatic? I really don’t know.
Ages of consent are arbitrary. A 16-year-old in Hoboken doesn’t suddenly become less mature on reaching Manhattan. But that doesn’t mean the entire concept of being mature enough for sex is invalid.
I’m more in favor of an age of consent for sex than I am of a minimum driving age. If a 15-year-old who can pass the road test cannot actually drive, that points to a problem with the test; emotional maturity and understanding the social and emotional context of sexual behavior is harder to measure.
Nihilist?? Um, ok.
Your IP number has been reported to the FBI
Fine. Poor choice of words. I meant that morality is a man made concept subject to change and is in no way a universal concept.
So you’re a moral nihilist.