Getting Past 'Gross'

[BLueRibbon]

An upcoming essay, co-written by Fragment and I, will contemplate the many issues surrounding AoC reform. In the essay, we will discuss the logic of reducing the AoC to 12 while offering additional protections to those aged 12-15 years.

Unfortunately, getting past the idea of AMSC being 'gross' is a major hurdle. Most people are absolutely repulsed by the idea of an adult having sex with a minor, and probably use the alleged 'harmfulness' as an excuse. How can we deal with this issue? How did homosexuals overcome the obstacle?

[WandersGlade]

I know it doesn't solve the problem, but it reminds of this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Nu ... m_Humanity

Hiding from Humanity extends Nussbaum's work in moral psychology to probe the arguments for including two emotions—shame and disgust—as legitimate bases for legal judgments. Nussbaum argues that individuals tend to repudiate their bodily imperfection or animality through the projection of fears about contamination. This cognitive response is in itself irrational, because we cannot transcend the animality of our bodies. Noting how projective disgust has wrongly justified group subordination (mainly of women, Jews, and homosexuals), Nussbaum ultimately discards disgust as a reliable basis of judgment.

Generally I think probing moral psychology (Augustine, Rousseau, Kierkegaard, Freud, etc.) is the way forward, because I'm not sure most people are even comfortable with teleiophilic sex. However, the positive thing is that this is almost certainly a problem intensified by culture. I see a lot of our issues as coming from global culture becoming more Americanized, since Americans still have a deeply embedded uneasiness with sex and even the naked body, originating from Puritanism I think.
Even with respect to American sexual liberalism, the style of argument is "why does it matter what consenting adults do in the privacy of their own homes" not sex is a positive good that's highly important to society (as you might find in Wilhelm Reich). The justification of sexual liberalism in this context depends on further devaluing sex (it's not just that it's evil, it's also boring and unimportant, so why talk about it); thereby strengthening the mores on sex. For example, a person might ask why there needs to be a sex scene in a movie since there's porn readily available.

TL;DR Sexual liberalism doesn't necessarily depend on the view sex is a positive good, it can quite easily come from the view that sex has no value.

[Fragment]

How did homosexuals overcome the obstacle?

When most people think of LGBTQI+ they don't think of poop. They used to a lot more. Even in my teens before I realized my sexuality "gay" essentially meant "unhygienic anal sex". Now, when people think "gay" they think "two men happily married with a cute little daughter adopted from China". Queer Eye, Modern Family, Will and Grace, etc. Reality TV and sitcoms helped a lot. But so did the branding done by the gay community itself.

We are still primarily represented in the media by child rapists in the news headlines. Although there has been some progress in progressive and moderate media outlets to show "non-offending pedophiles", that's still not the first image that comes to mind.

Mu, and other organizations, need to change that. We need a bigger presence than the "child rape" stories. When someone hears "gay" they don't think of John Wayne Gacy. When they hear "pedophile" or "minor attracted" they should not think of Marc Dutroux.

[BLueRibbon]

How did homosexuals overcome the obstacle?

When most people think of LGBTQI+ they don't think of poop. They used to a lot more. Even in my teens before I realized my sexuality "gay" essentially meant "unhygienic anal sex". Now, when people think "gay" they think "two men happily married with a cute little daughter adopted from China". Queer Eye, Modern Family, Will and Grace, etc. Reality TV and sitcoms helped a lot. But so did the branding done by the gay community itself.

We are still primarily represented in the media by child rapists in the news headlines. Although there has been some progress in progressive and moderate media outlets to show "non-offending pedophiles", that's still not the first image that comes to mind.

Mu, and other organizations, need to change that. We need a bigger presence than the "child rape" stories. When someone hears "gay" they don't think of John Wayne Gacy. When they hear "pedophile" or "minor attracted" they should not think of Marc Dutroux.

Good points.

How are we going to achieve this?

[Fragment]

How are we going to achieve this?

Mu's first principle- "Visibility".

We need more sites, more communities, more news articles about us, more MAPs calling into radio shows, more MAPs being interviewed, etc. We need the courage to do more. To exist as humans in the view of other humans. Once we're recognized as humans we can't also be simultaneously seen as monsters.

But if we consider ourselves at the same point the gay movement was exactly 100 years ago with the Society for Human Rights:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_Human_Rights

Acceptance and legal reform really only started to pick up pace in the 1970s. Following a similar trajectory means we're 50 years away. Less if we work more efficiently, more if we are less productive.

[Jim Burton]

I would be inclined to find ways of attacking both sides of the equation (because with "children" involved, it's different to simple, identarian gay rights).

The way we could do this is by setting up grassroots adult-minor alliances to lobby for the rights of young people and use the bargaining power of adult lawmakers.

MAP identity can still take us some distance, if we find creative ways of passing it off in plain sight. Indeed, it will help to have high-profile media personalities who are de facto "out" as MAPs.

[Peace]

Some good observations in this thread. I agree, gay people became more accepted because they became more heterosexualized: marriage, domestic life, two adults who love each other "just like the straights do." And as Jim said, youth being involved means you can't map it one-to-one like gay people did. I think people have a hard time accepting MAPs in general because they're viewing it through the resources they already have - personal experience with CSA, horror stories, news reports where they only get a picture of predatory adults forcing themselves on traumatized children. So visibility is key in this area, to make it so that people have other readily accessible ways to view MAPs and intergenerational relationships.

Despite the gay movement's successes, I have reservations about any campaign which attempts to appeal to normality as its focal point (and for sure, there have been many different strategies tried by different gay groups - it's just that the marriage-focused and "respectable" gays won). I think there are areas where we can appeal to how minor attraction and intergen relationships are similar to telio attractions and relations - mutuality, consent, love, etc. At the same time, there are many ways that MAPs aren't just like the rest of society, and intergenerational relationships aren't just like relationships between legal adults, and I think any campaign needs to be self-aware of those facts.

[Fragment]

I came across this Ethan Edwards' blog on the topic.

A pedophile masturbating while thinking of a child causes gut-level revulsion in the public, even those whose beliefs should make them sympathetic. After years of contemplation, I think this is the fundamental problem we pedophiles face.

He doesn't really offer solutions, but his analysis of the problem is fairly sound. He seems to believe though, that "if we make our sexual desire even more harmless seeming then eventually we'll have them accepted". I actually don't believe this is really true.

We need the general public to be thinking of us as humans. To know us as humans. Not to think of us "sexually interested in minors". We are. But we need an identity in the public imagination beyond that.

Otherwise they'll continue thinking of us masturbating over the Disney Channel with disgust.

[Jim Burton]

Otherwise they'll continue thinking of us masturbating over the Disney Channel with disgust.

The pedophiles I know would certainly not be disgusted while masturbating over the Disney Channel

[PorcelainLark]

I came across this Ethan Edwards' blog on the topic.

But the public is enraged at far more than those cases. The public wants to ban sexualized cartoon drawings of children (notably the Japanese forms of lolicon and shotacon). They want to ban realistic-looking AI-generated images of children in sexual situations. They want to ban child-sized sex dolls. They want to ban text-only stories involving children in sexual situations.

The COPINE scale is used in the UK to classify images of child pornography from least to most serious. The description of the least serious is worth quoting in full: "Non-erotic and non-sexualized pictures showing children wearing either underwear or swimsuits from either commercial sources or family albums. Pictures of children playing in normal settings, in which the context or organization of pictures by the collector indicates inappropriateness." There is nothing wrong with the pictures themselves, but it is "inappropriate" when they are organized to indicate a pedophile might find them sexually interesting. They may not be illegal, but the authors of the COPINE scale want you to know they think it is inappropriate -- morally wrong. I doubt much of the public would disagree.

Of course there are other sources of hatred based on mistaken beliefs. Some believe all pedophiles are dangerous because they will molest a child sooner or later. Some who might not believe that will believe that all pedophiles will look at CSAM. A great many pedophiles do neither of those things. Some people will accept that reality. Organizations such as Virtuous Pedophiles (of which I am co-founder) believe that good pedophiles should restrain their behavior in that way.

I agree that pedophiles must control their actions to the extent of never molesting children. But I think (and feel!) that in general pedophiles should feel free to masturbate while thinking of children and feel no guilt about doing so. Past efforts to get men and boys to not masturbate were both cruel and largely ineffective. In the modern view it is instead viewed as a healthy part of sexuality. Deciding that an entire class of people with a condition they did not choose and cannot change cannot masturbate would only make sense if there was a very serious risk of harm to others.

This is a big part of the reason that I want to attach the MAP cause to fighting disinformation and pseudoscience. There isn't evidence for these beliefs, like child sex dolls will increase abuse. Objectivity is the solvent of anti-MAP prejudice. The general public need to be dragged kicking and screaming towards evidence-based policy. We're talking about restrictions on civil liberties justified on the basis of myths.