andros:
Must be nice to set yourself up so that anyone who who disagrees with you, or challenges your “logic” (which is not surprisingly entirely lacking) is just automatically a selfish idiot.
But tl;dr. Are you actually arguing that fucking kids is beneficial to society?
My argument is that sexual activity between children and adults is illegal for very insufficient reasons. Sexual activity is in fact beneficial for bonding purposes. Do you deny that? All you’ve done is express contempt and incredulity. Try again.
You sure about that?
What if the infant is instead 5 years old?
You didn’t answer my questions. Whether or not there were such societies isn’t the point.
I already acknowledged that I understand your contention. But you didn’t answer my last question either.
Yet, you admit that it causes harm to children later in life because of the way it’s viewed and treated by society.
Henry_Miller:
But of course, almost no one is going to consider the logic of any of this. Most anyone would just dig in and refuse to think intelligently. They’ll continue to hurt little kids so that they can avoid being vilified by everyone around them. They care more about themselves and their own safety than they do about the trauma of little children.
Please demonstrate how bonding between parent and child, or any adult and child has suffered or hurt social bonds in general because modern society frowns upon adults diddling children.
It is its own category and you aren’t going to understand social attitudes towards sexuality by reference to a larger category that it fits into.
We as a culture have reached the conclusion that sexuality is something that is particularly destructive when coerced, and therefore although coercion in general is not viewed without a sense that it’s undesirable and unfortunate when it occurs, SEXUAL coercion is designated as an unmitigated wrong. Similarly, there are other forms of injuries that people risk or even intentionally dole out to others, and we tend to regret the occurrence of them in a general way but the specific damages done to people by coercive sex are regarded as inexcusable, there are NO OK SITUATIONS where we perceive sexual coercion and say “well in that circumstance it’s something we tolerate”.
And in my opinion that’s as it should be.
While I do believe that much, if not most of the harm between a child and adult comes from a disapproving society (see: societies that have normalized adult/child sex relationships), I also don’t think the US is there yet, or that the Powers That Be will ever allow us to get there, so there is a harm in the here and now, and laws should remain in place to separate the two. But make them less agonizingly stupid. Two minors of different ages having a sexual relationship, and one of them ages to 18, should not make their relationship now an offense. And neither should two people within an age range where one is an adult and one is a minor be automatically assumed to be wrong. Some of these laws are already in place, which is good, but they need to be universal.
andros
January 29, 2016, 7:58pm
66
So yes, you are arguing that fucking children benefits society?
Yes.
All you’ve done is express broken reasoning, poor logic, bald assertion as fact, and contempt for anyone who would disagree with you for any reason. Kindly don’t bother trying again.
OP has not logged on since the 3 posts he made here in 2011.
Ajunta
January 29, 2016, 10:06pm
68
The reason adult-child sexual relations are so reviled probably has more to do with the fact that we as a culture view children as precious, sacred, innocent little snowflakes than it does with any notion of consent. A society that forces pre-adult kids to waste tens of thousands of hours of their lives trapped in a school building doesn’t give a rats ass about their ‘consent.’
j666
January 29, 2016, 10:51pm
70
Yes, in fact, there is. For example, there is time, time to acquire the information and experience to become well informed. Just providing information, even if we could do without propagandizing, is not enough.
(Also, something about brain development, but I can’t remember the details, so I’ll go look for it, but it’s an old study, so it might take me awhile.)
Tangent
January 29, 2016, 11:47pm
71
Henry_Miller:
I challenge anyone to give an example of even one single study that shows a connection between adults engaging in non-violent sexual activities with children and emotional trauma irrespective of cultural conditioning. The only thing that makes sex immoral is forcing someone into it against their will. There is no stage during human development when a child isn’t able to express willingness or unwillingness with whatever they’ve been brought to be involved in. There is no stage during human development when sexual feelings aren’t possible or cause distress. The issue of consent is often used to explain why children are not able to engage in sexual activity. It is such an unimaginative and obviously wrong belief. What would a scientific study even look like that investigated the claim that there was something about sex which required informed consent? The dumbest of wild beasts have sex. Do they need to provide informed consent? Saying that children can’t give informed consent to sex doesn’t mean they would be harmed unless they were informed. It doesn’t mean they couldn’t physically do it unless they were informed. It literally means that sexual activity has some kind of feature to it that requires those involved to be informed in order to give consent. What does that even mean? How would the scientific method be employed to investigate the truth value of such a statement? Sexual activity literally means the manner in which someone experiences or expresses sexual feelings. Informed consent isn’t a feature of sexual activity. In actuality, saying that a child can’t consent is a moral statement, and moral statements don’t produce testable predictions, which means they aren’t scientific. What makes you think that there is something about sexual activity which requires some deep level of understanding in order to be able to engage in it? Having an orgasm does not require understanding. Since when has a lack of understanding been a moral barrier to being educated about something? If a child doesn’t understand calculus, is it immoral to teach them math? If a child is not sophisticated enough to engage in the polemics of politics, should they be guarded from watching a political debate? If a child cannot understand complex theological arguments, should they not be permitted to partake in religious practices? After all, many religions believe that choosing the wrong faith will have permanently negative consequences lasting all of eternity. Can a child make an informed decision about that? The thing that’s so very perverse about the consent argument is that it purports to protect children from the physical harm and the unavoidable psychic harm that would befall them if they were subjected to the “horrors” of sexual activity. Children are taught from the earliest of ages that nakedness is wrong and that one’s own genitals and the genitals of others is absolutely not something to be explored. Any failure to obey the rule of no exploration is met with ever more severe punishment the longer the activity continues. There is nothing inherently harmful about the manipulation of one’s genitals or of another’s. The rule is a complete invention. And the result of its enforcement is learned trauma. Precisely the thing that is sought to be avoided by condemning and punishing pedophiles is exactly the thing that is brought about by doing so. If a child willingly engages in sexual activity, they will consequently experience the trauma that results from inevitably observing the social outrage wrought against pedophiles. Sadly, the result is not only deep psychic harm. Additionally, the impending threat of punishment for not expressing some deep sense of wrongness for involvement in the taboo becomes a manipulative force for causing the child to take up the misguided belief themselves that pedophilia is wrong. To not do so would result in becoming a pariah, the severity of which would become greater as they got older. It just is a true fact about the world that the attitudes and punishments in place for pedophilia causes real psychological harm for children that simply explore their sexuality because they want to. It especially causes them severe psychological distress if a parent or guardian is arrested for acts of pedophilia. The emotional manipulation that society enacts on children to force them to believe it’s wrong makes them hate that parent and then hate themselves for hating them who they feel a deep need to feel love towards and even more hate for themselves for having enjoyed the sexual feelings at the time. That psychological anguish is among the greatest a person can be capable of experiencing. It’s even greater than many examples of the anguish that comes from severe injury. I have to ask, who do people think they’re protecting in those cases by being an opponent of pedophilia? The children? Or themselves from the outrage they would receive from everyone around them for not thinking it was wrong? Everyone has been manipulated through threat of punishment and fear into believing pedophilia is wrong, not because they have considered the facts. I want to really drive home the message that fear and punishment is an overpowering force which so very many of us are slave to. It shapes our beliefs and rips from us control over them as surely as a candle flame burning the hand rips from us our control over mental composure. Anyone who has never listened to the personal account of someone who felt violated and traumatized by having sex as a child with an adult doesn’t know the power these emotional accounts have at invoking disgust and anger in those who hear them. Disgust and anger towards the person who did these things to this poor victim. These people talk about the pain of having to deal with the guilt and shame of it and with unbearable depression and anxiety and anger and how it has messed them up in the head and that they can no longer have a normal life. This sort of mental scarring and anguish can happen even when a child doesn’t object to sexual activity. It can happen just from sexual touching or even just from sexual propositions and nothing more. Here’s an example of just this very thing:
It’s a YouTube video reuploaded by LiveLeakStuff about a woman who records herself as she calls up her former female teacher and confronts her about being manipulated into a sexual relationship back when she was a grade-schooler. It’s pretty convincing isn’t it? How could anyone say that this teacher isn’t a monster who preys upon innocent children? If sex weren’t harmful to children as I’m arguing, then how could it be possible for this woman to suffer so much from it when she wasn’t even forced against her will into it? I’ll tell you how: public condemnation of sexual taboos. No one has gone through very many years of life and not witnessed virulent hatred of sexual “perversions” or sexual “immorality” followed invariably by public agreement for that hatred. Why doesn’t this victim blame society then for her problems if that’s who’s to blame as I am claiming? Is she stupid? No, she’s not stupid. She’s all too human. She’s a victim of something we all fall victim to: siding with those who protect us even if they also are abusive. In social groups, the ones with power almost invariably play the dual role of protector and abuser. And when it’s the case that everyone is dependent upon each other, then it is group mentality itself that can be the abuser. When our abusers are also our protectors, the result is a psychological phenomenon called Stockholm syndrome. The effect is that we feel loyalty towards those who abuse us so long as they give us rules to follow that let us avoid their abuse and so long as they reward us for what they consider to be “good” behavior. The result is that we honestly believe they are not abusers. The effect is very real and very strong. It’s easy for us as observers of the effects that are described by psychologists to think that the people they are describing are stupid or that people in general are stupid. We who read or hear about these kinds of psychological effects feel that we are now smarter for having learned about them. Now that we know about them, that means we can choose to avoid them. Right? This way of thinking is born out of the popular idea that if we know about the influences acting upon us, we can choose to listen to or not listen to those influences. Many of us are taught that “knowledge will set you free”. We believe that some people don’t have the knowledge of how these influences affect them and so they are “stupid”. The truth is: knowledge does not always set you free. If you know every biological reason for why a candle flame will cause you pain, that won’t set you free from the burn and the pain it will cause you. You don’t get to choose to not feel it. In like manner, if you know the psychology behind why it is someone will have positive feelings and loyalty towards their abuser, that won’t necessarily mean you have the choice to not have that psychological reaction if you were in that kind of situation. Fear is a powerful thing. During the hostage situation for which Stockholm syndrome got its name, it only took six days for the hostages to have those positive feelings for their captors. How much more impossible is it for someone to escape from this manipulation if their captivity started at birth? Punishment is used almost from the beginning of life as a way of teaching us how to act. It makes sense to use punishment to stop a toddler from being violent with other little kids, but sexual activity isn’t inherently harmful, so why punish that? If a caretaker allowed their children to perform sex acts, that caretaker would be severely, severely punished by other members in their social group. That’s the “real” reason why pedophilia is condemned. The reason why the woman in the video I cite feels like she was manipulated into doing something wrong is because society has acted as an abuser towards her. Threat of punishment by everyone around her for not expressing a deep sense of wrongness for involvement in a sexual taboo has had a Stockholm syndrome-like effect on her. By siding with her abusers, this woman has now become an abuser herself. She has brought violence upon her former teacher. One of the most important lessons to learn from Stockholm syndrome is that the feelings of loyalty that captives feel for their abusers are not false feelings. Their feelings of loyalty are the same as anyone else’s. There is nothing false in this woman’s conviction about the evils of pedophilia and of condemnation for her former teacher. People who come out and talk about their childhood sexual experiences, and condemn the adult they had them with, are often said to be brave. They are praised for this “good” behavior. But what exactly is brave about publicly condemning something that the public already condemns? To be sure, many of these people feel great fear for doing it, but how would anyone be treated if they didn’t show a deep sense of fear and regret towards breaking this sexual taboo? If a child, or an adult who was recounting events in their childhood, didn’t show shame and a deep sense of wrongness for having engaged in sexual activity but instead showed a willful defiance to those in authority over it, they would be severely punished. Children who engage in sexual activity with adults are very powerfully manipulated into being traumatized for it by society with the promise of the most intense hate if they don’t react with a deep sense of regret towards their involvement in this sexual taboo. It is absolutely because of societal views of pedophilia that children are traumatized for it. It really is just that simple. If a child is encouraged into sexual activity with an adult, the feelings they will have after learning of the severe punishment for pedophilia and of the profoundly intense hate everyone has for pedophiles will be like the same kinds of feelings as you are likely to have after hitting and killing a pedestrian from carelessly texting while driving. You would instantly have a trauma reaction and feel hysterical over the notion of what you’d done and the prospect of going to jail for manslaughter. The only real difference is: manslaughter causes harm while sexual activity does not. I don’t receive any joy from criticizing people like this woman who have already been traumatized, but it needs to be done. It’s not always pleasant or easy to do the right thing, but that shouldn’t stop us from doing it. It is people just like this woman who need to be opposed in order to make the world a better place.
Very young children are not capable of understanding the consequences of sexual behavior. Nor do they need to in order to safely engage in it. Parents and caretakers are well-suited to guiding the actions of the children in their care so that they do not come to harm. Children are included in all kinds of potentially dangerous activities with their caretakers. For example: hiking and camping in the wilderness, handling firearms for sport, whitewater river rafting, rock climbing, skydiving (yes there are children who skydive, YouTube it), crossing the street, learning to ride a bicycle, riding in a car, going on amusement park rides, lighting firecrackers, playing the game of darts, swimming, walking through giant crowds of unfamiliar people in busy cities… etc. If you believed that the reason it was wrong for children to engage in sexual activities was because of potential dangers, well, you’d need to explain why you are okay with the very many other dangerous things kids do. What’s more dangerous: masturbation or swimming? In everything that people do, there is the risk of things going badly. That isn’t a good reason to avoid doing dangerous things like swimming and riding in cars. There is the opportunity for a richer and more fulfilling life by doing enjoyable things, even if very many of those things carry some amount of inherent risk. But some things carry far less risk than others. Viewing pornography and masturbation are among the least dangerous things in the world. You don’t have a problem with adults doing those two things with children, do you? Why would you? It’s not harmful. There isn’t anything about sexual activity that blinds a caretaker to its potential dangers anymore than any of the other normal human activities that people do everyday. Parents and caretakers are just as able to safeguard their children from STD’s and unwanted pregnancies and violent rapists as surely as they can safeguard their children from drowning and automobile accidents and getting lost in the wilderness and shooting themselves at firing ranges and getting kidnapped in giant crowds. It is not wrong to include children into a sexual culture and to encourage them to explore in their sexuality with family and friends. There is no stage during human development when sexual feelings aren’t possible or cause distress. Even masturbating an infant isn’t wrong. There is no age for which sexual activity is inappropriate. Radically liberal sexual freedom does not include any feature to it that would result in forcing a child against their will.
But of course, almost no one is going to consider the logic of any of this. Most anyone would just dig in and refuse to think intelligently. They’ll continue to hurt little kids so that they can avoid being vilified by everyone around them. They care more about themselves and their own safety than they do about the trauma of little children.
This guy really wants to fuck some kids.
andros
January 29, 2016, 11:58pm
72
Ajunta:
The reason adult-child sexual relations are so reviled probably has more to do with the fact that we as a culture view children as precious, sacred, innocent little snowflakes than it does with any notion of consent.
Unless you are willing to argue that “we as a culture” have held a “precious snowflake” view of children for hundreds of years, this is nonsense. Even when it was standard practice to put the lil’uns to work in the fields at six or seven, it was not socially acceptable to fuck them.
octopus
January 30, 2016, 12:02am
73
andros:
Must be nice to set yourself up so that anyone who who disagrees with you, or challenges your “logic” (which is not surprisingly entirely lacking) is just automatically a selfish idiot.
But tl;dr. Are you actually arguing that fucking kids is beneficial to society?
Judging others is so archaic.
octopus
January 30, 2016, 12:21am
75
andros:
Care to expand?
It’s interesting that behavior that would have gotten one incarcerated a couple of decades ago is celebrated as cultural norms change. People who are opposed to homosexuality for example are now villains when a few decades ago public opposition to the gays was common and almost expected. Now judging someone for living that lifestyle can lead to sanctions. Be careful about the pedophiliaphobia. That may be labeled hate if they reach critical mass!
In seriousness though, addressing the concept of consent is interesting and probably more educational than attacking the poster. I have children and I’m worried that our laws haven’t kept pace with technology. I don’t want my children labeled sex offenders if they send or receive a tit pic.
Furthermore, I also consider most sexual desires to be part of your brain circuitry. I’d like that those who have harmful sexual impulses receive medical treatment to curb asocial behavior.
HeXen
January 30, 2016, 12:44am
76
The fact this thread even exists is…wow. Then there’s bestiality/zoophilia which apparently is legal in some states, so you sick ***'s might as well toss in pedophelia into the legalities too while your at it, I mean wtf?? To me it just seems almost hypocritical, that sex with your 1 yr old dog could be legal or ok to some/ignored by everyone else but not with kids when obviously both are just plain mental development issue and neither should be ignored.
If you want to bond with kids, play with them, tutor them, be a hero to them. It doesn’t require exchanging fluids to bond. If that was the case then everyone would have to screw their dogs and cats before they could love them.