How exactly do you justify child-adult sex (in scenarios where you believe it would be permissible)?

[Not Forever]

So what side is going to win this tug of war? Your desire not to be "labelled" an abuser, or your need to penetrate a "child"?

Well, that part of the comment you quoted could ideally also refer to a heterosexual relationship with a virgin, or a penetrative homosexual relationship, or even male (both heterosexual and homosexual) in cases where there are various problems with the foreskin.

There are sexual encounters where pain is present and more or less temporary, and it’s obvious that after trying, if the person cannot bear it, continuing the act would be rape. But wouldn’t it be unfair to consider it a kind of “tug of war” between sexual desire and rape? Any sexual encounter is potentially rape.

[John_Doe]

Sex is inevitable so the idea of MAPs “taking advantage” or “manipulating” a child is so dumb.

Why does the "inevitability" of sex mean that "children" are not being taken advantage of by adults? This sounds like a self-rationalizing excuse to abuse them.

If the child says yes I’d like to learn and try sex it all boils down to is if the child wants to continue after feeling pain from the first insert. Explain to them that it will hurt at first but it gets better.

So your philosophy is one of manipulating a "child" so you can engage in penetrative sex they might find to be painful? Either this, or you are self-deluding. These type of comments are exactly the reason feminist lawyers want to ban forums like this, and also why people like me will never ally with pro-c pedophiles.

If they can’t take the pain you try again another day. If they don’t want to try again ever then you stop. Trying to continue after that is where the problem occurs. They’ve made a clear decision and we must respect that. Our whole purpose as MAPs is to stray away from being labeled abusers.

So what side is going to win this tug of war? Your desire not to be "labelled" an abuser, or your need to penetrate a "child"?

I don't really follow the argument either (the idea might be that they're eventually going to explore their sexuality anyway and I can maybe see where she's coming from circumstantially but I don't think you should contribute to self-destructive behavior even if some people will always be inclined to that whatever you do so it's not really the angle I want to approach this from or a very solid point for me). I don't have a problem with 'taking advantage' of someone or even 'manipulating' them when doing so doesn't cause them actual pain or deprive them of happiness. I've never agreed with people when they just define child-adult sex as 'abuse' (I'm not in the mood to get into why I think this is incoherent) because then the question, in my mind, becomes why would 'abuse' necessarily be bad or immoral if we choose to define the word in a way that doesn't necessarily involve actually causing people pain or not caring whether or not you do?

To be fair, people routinely make decisions that they assume will cause them some stress or pain on the assumption that there will be a pay-off so it sounds so sinister but in the scenario she has in mind the child might overall benefit from something that initially causes them some pain or, if they wanted to stop it, wouldn't necessarily cause any long-term trauma just because they endured some degree of relatively brief physical pain that they were prepared for and open to and had the option to stop if they didn't feel the pay-off would be worth it. Penetrative sex isn't the only kind of erotic intimacy an adult can have with a child either (they can perform cunnilingus/fellatio, kiss, cuddle, etc. I have no idea when penetrative sex between a man and a girl might be an issue (I'm embarrassed to say that I don't know when women start producing vaginal lubrication, although there are artificial alternatives).

It seems to me as though she accepts that not wanting to be an abuser sometimes implies not acting on one's desire to be intimate with a child (I doubt most people would enjoy sex with someone who clearly and openly did not want it anyway).

I am really not committed to being pro-contact or anti-contact. All angles and possibilities should be considered. I just don't care if adults have some sexual intimacy with children in scenarios where the children don't suffer as a result. I have no vested interest in wanting to ignore any evidence that any given child in any given scenario will or that the risk is high enough, I'm just not convinced that there would be a reason to assume long-term harm in a society where child-adult sex was not stigmatized, so the children would not in turn internalize that stigma and view themselves as having been wronged in retrospect. Beyond that, I think children would regret sexual encounters for the same reasons adults do and I don't think there's a reason to *fundamentally* care more about children's sexual regret (or regrets adults have about childhood sexual experiences) than adult sexual regret (I also think that some adult sexual regret can be traced back to the idea of sex being inappropriate or dirty without proper context or the 'meaning' of sex that people project on to it). You could argue that children tend to be less resilient (so they might quantitatively suffer more from regretted experiences) but that leads to a 'slippery slope' when it comes to prohibiting their behavior that I don't really want to get into (they can be bullied at school, they can get into car accidents, they can be poisoned if they trick or treat, etc.). When you teach children that child-adult sex is inherently bad (as opposed to responding to stress that they already feel as a result of it by acknowledging how they feel; the at-least instrumental badness of what's caused them pain and, if the other party was abusive or negligent, then validating that as well) you are priming them to have a negative emotional response to it, that's true when it comes to telling them that cancer and poverty are bad as well but we should want them to care about the suffering that those things cause people.

The bare minimum or core stance that I can't go wrong with (even if it's not necessarily very helpful when it comes to applied ethics) is that I don't want children to suffer (to any degree, and whether there's a pay-off/compensating greater good or not). Give me a suffering-centered reason to discourage child-adult sex in practice and I swear I would consider it (I do think that it should be discouraged in practice but in my ideal society there would be no reason to and what I have in mind in terms of sexual taboos is practically possible, I think). Children's sexual frustration is also something to consider (I don't think it's deluded to assume that most 7-year-olds have some sexual desire. If I'm not mistaken, this is the result of andrenarche which typically occurs at 6. If you don't think that's true for 7-year-olds, I'm sure you accept it for pubescent and post-pubescent children/adolescents), even if it's not likely to cause very deep long-term trauma or adulthood regret.

[wildly]

I take some issue with the idea of minimizing suffering.

Acute stress is beneficial to kids, as is some pain and likely even some suffering. They learn to handle strong emotions and through that build emotional resilience and coping skills. In the long term, this builds kids who are better able to handle stressful situations and less anxious about them. Kids who have every little bump in the road handled for them often develop anxiety and even depression as a result. They don't have the confidence that they can handle stressful situations alone and feel like they aren't in control of their own world as a result.

On the other hand, chronic stress and suffering are usually harmful and should generally be minimized. Child-adult sex is likely to lead to chronic suffering in modern times if the relationship is discovered by adults. And I think it's impossible for the adult involve to fully mitigate the risk of discovery (at least not without taking actions that are likely even more harmful).

My in favor argument boils down to autonomy. I believe it is beneficial to let kids (and people in general) make their own decisions and live with them. Even when those decisions are harmful, it helps the build decision making skills, confidence and feel in control of their own life. There's strong evidence that feeling in control of your own life reduces anxiety and depression. Outright banning child-adult sex is one of many ways society takes control away from children.

[John_Doe]

I take some issue with the idea of minimizing suffering.

Acute stress is beneficial to kids, as is some pain and likely even some suffering. They learn to handle strong emotions and through that build emotional resilience and coping skills. In the long term, this builds kids who are better able to handle stressful situations and less anxious about them. Kids who have every little bump in the road handled for them often develop anxiety and even depression as a result. They don't have the confidence that they can handle stressful situations alone and feel like they aren't in control of their own world as a result.

On the other hand, chronic stress and suffering are usually harmful and should generally be minimized. Child-adult sex is likely to lead to chronic suffering in modern times if the relationship is discovered by adults. And I think it's impossible for the adult involve to fully mitigate the risk of discovery (at least not without taking actions that are likely even more harmful).

My in favor argument boils down to autonomy. I believe it is beneficial to let kids (and people in general) make their own decisions and live with them. Even when those decisions are harmful, it helps the build decision making skills, confidence and feel in control of their own life. There's strong evidence that feeling in control of your own life reduces anxiety and depression. Outright banning child-adult sex is one of many ways society takes control away from children.

An agenda that's oriented around minimizing as much suffering as is possible would have to consider that stress can be instrumentally valuable (in helping to minimize greater stress or produce greater happiness), but that wouldn't negate all emotional distress being bad in and of itself. When or if it is possible to prevent greater stress without causing less intense or prolonged stress that is or would be preferable. My position is that emotional distress is inherently harmful and because the nature of emotional distress doesn't change when the quantity of it is increased, greater stress is only more harmful by degree.

It's not hard to imagine how inhibiting someone's autonomy can be harmful (even above and beyond the fact that the frustration of one's desire for autonomy is inherently painful, because the experienced frustration of desire in general is inherently painful in the sense that we are necessarily primed to have a negative emotional response to the realized non-fulfillment of our desires) but circumstantially arguing in favor of autonomy as part of an anti-suffering agenda and arguing in favor of autonomy on principle are two different positions. I don't doubt that feeling in control of one's life can be hugely beneficial but there are cost-benefit trade-offs that can justify inhibiting autonomy in at least some scenarios (I don't think children or adults should be allowed to do fentanyl or really hard drugs, as one example; although I don't want drug users to be jailed for using dangerous substances, but I generally try to avoid taking absolute stances that you can't possibly change my mind on when it comes to what will minimize the most harm in practice. That's not to pretend that I think all policies are equally likely to have the best overall consequences, and I might think that the justification for any given policy or choice that's presented by someone who is a hedonistic consequentialist is insincere, rooted in an anti-hedonistic/universal sympathy bias or incoherent).

[wildly]

I take some issue with the idea of minimizing suffering.

Acute stress is beneficial to kids, as is some pain and likely even some suffering. They learn to handle strong emotions and through that build emotional resilience and coping skills. In the long term, this builds kids who are better able to handle stressful situations and less anxious about them. Kids who have every little bump in the road handled for them often develop anxiety and even depression as a result. They don't have the confidence that they can handle stressful situations alone and feel like they aren't in control of their own world as a result.

On the other hand, chronic stress and suffering are usually harmful and should generally be minimized. Child-adult sex is likely to lead to chronic suffering in modern times if the relationship is discovered by adults. And I think it's impossible for the adult involve to fully mitigate the risk of discovery (at least not without taking actions that are likely even more harmful).

My in favor argument boils down to autonomy. I believe it is beneficial to let kids (and people in general) make their own decisions and live with them. Even when those decisions are harmful, it helps the build decision making skills, confidence and feel in control of their own life. There's strong evidence that feeling in control of your own life reduces anxiety and depression. Outright banning child-adult sex is one of many ways society takes control away from children.

An agenda that's oriented around minimizing as much suffering as is possible would have to consider that stress can be instrumentally valuable (in helping to minimize greater stress or produce greater happiness), but that wouldn't negate all emotional distress being bad in and of itself. When or if it is possible to prevent greater stress without causing less intense or prolonged stress that is or would be preferable. My position is that emotional distress is inherently harmful and because the nature of emotional distress doesn't change when the quantity of it is increased, greater stress is only more harmful by degree.

It's not hard to imagine how inhibiting someone's autonomy can be harmful (even above and beyond the fact that the frustration of one's desire for autonomy is inherently painful, because the experienced frustration of desire in general is inherently painful in the sense that we are necessarily primed to have a negative emotional response to the realized non-fulfillment of our desires) but circumstantially arguing in favor of autonomy as part of an anti-suffering agenda and arguing in favor of autonomy on principle are two different positions. I don't doubt that feeling in control of one's life can be hugely beneficial but there are cost-benefit trade-offs that can justify inhibiting autonomy in at least some scenarios (I don't think children or adults should be allowed to do fentanyl or really hard drugs, as one example; although I don't want drug users to be jailed for using dangerous substances, but I generally try to avoid taking absolute stances that you can't possibly change my mind on when it comes to what will minimize the most harm in practice. That's not to pretend that I think all policies are equally likely to have the best overall consequences, and I might think that the justification for any given policy or choice that's presented by someone who is a hedonistic consequentialist is insincere, rooted in an anti-hedonistic/universal sympathy bias or incoherent).

I do not like the wording on your position. I don't think emotional distress should be viewed as bad or good and certainly not as inherently harmful. While your opinion gives room for nuance, saying it's always harmful just gives too much power to a helicopter society that is already causing immense harm to kids by protecting them from emotional distress. There is compelling evidence that emotional distress is essential to development. The brain learns to deal with emotional distress through experience, without that experience it is more prone to being overwhelmed when stress does occur. There is a limit (that varies by kid) for how much distress is too much, but no emotional distress at all is in my opinion likely as harmful as way too much. Imagine a child who lived their life without any emotional distress: do you think they would grow into an adult who is equipped to deal with difficult situations? Or do you think they would meltdown at even small stressors?

I'm a fairly hard core libertarian, so I have no issue with hard drugs. I think that a more autonomy based society would help build kids and adults who are less prone to use drugs as an escape. Despite that, I do agree that absolute autonomy is impossible (at least in the modern world, where things dangers - like cars - are not as clear and obvious to a child as they may have been in the distant past). My position would be to maximize autonomy unless there is a compelling reason not to (something likely to cause long-term or irreversible harm). With regard to child-adult sex, that leads back to the same issue as most others lead to: the question of if the harm is intrinsic or caused by society.