Not Forever wrote: Fri Oct 24, 2025 6:31 pm
Well, honestly, I don’t agree — in fact, following that line of reasoning, we’d have to conclude that people’s reaction to that experience was basically indifferent, if not irrelevant, since with those percentages this forum should be buried under layers of comments from people talking about their traumatic experiences.
Instead, what we actually see is low activity — which simply means the causes lie elsewhere.
Even if someone had a “good experience”, that doesn’t mean they have the strength or the desire to waste their time ruining their own reputation, career, social relationships, etc., just to go against the current — just to present what would be seen as an exception.
It seems much more reasonable to me that the people who take the biggest risks and invest the most are those who have a concrete, even self-interested, stake in change — which, of course, are the MAPs and adolescents.
Seriously, why would someone spend time on this topic just because they weren’t traumatized by it? We’re talking about activism, right? How many people are animal rights activists? (And very few people actually dislike animals — that’s an exception — and socially, loving animals is seen as a good thing, even as a necessary trait to be considered a “good person.” Yet despite the huge number of people who love animals, activism in that area is still extremely rare. And that’s even though there’s zero risk in doing it.)
I agree. There is some stigma around 'radical' vegan activism, and I think the idea that non-human animal suffering and happiness is fundamentally
as valuable as human suffering/happiness is controversial, but most people don't have a problem with 'diplomatic' vegan or animal welfare activism or the basic idea that we should care about animal suffering to some degree. Most people prefer that non-human animals not suffer. The radical vegans just 'go too far' but activism oriented around de-stigmatizing pedophilia or even child-adult sex on principle is on another level entirely, regardless of whether or not pro-MAP activists take a diplomatic or confrontational or self-righteous approach or how inflammatory their rhetoric is, etc.
There are plenty of common positive and negative experiences that average people have had that hasn't pushed them toward some kind of activism or to devote their life to some cause.
For example, in this article here, the author states: "if you were sexually abused, you were likely damaged by the experience, even if you don’t recognize the damage"
The article goes on to say: "You may have admitted to yourself that you were abused but at the same time convinced yourself that “it wasn’t all that bad.” You may have even convinced yourself that you enjoyed it. [...] It is important for you to get past your denial and confusion about whether you were sexually abused or not and come to a place where you can tell yourself the truth about it"
This is unbelievable to me. If someone does x intending to cause someone else pain or not caring whether or not it does then I would respect critiquing that person even if it happily turned out that no one was harmed by x; the intended or possible victim may even have benefited from it, because we want to discourage people from making choices that are likely to harm others, but to try and convince someone that they have been damaged by something that they insist they don't feel bad about or because of (and you have to consider the mere possibility that they're being honest or are simply correct), they may even have enjoyed it, is something else. It's as though you want them to feel bad about it. Unlike responding to pain that people actually/already feel or critiquing someone for not caring whether or not they harm others trying to persuade people that pleasurable sexual intimacy they engaged in when they were younger was inherently bad isn't rooted in 'empathy' or at least not a concern for their emotional well-being. I would rather people agree with me that suffering is inherently bad, and by extension that the things that cause it are instrumentally bad for that reason, but we experience suffering as inherently bad even if we rationalize otherwise upon reflection (in arguing that child-adult sex is inherently bad you're priming people to feel bad about it, even if it doesn't cause actual emotional pain at any given moment, and that might be appropriate relative to your values but I believe suffering is what actually harms children).
Edit-This is rushed but I have a hard time believing that anywhere near 31% of girls and 17% of boys have had sexual contact with adults as legal children (a part of me suspects that teenage boy-woman relationships would be more common since there's less of a stigma and the boys would be more open to it; less likely to see themselves as victims of exploitation and males in general are more promiscuous, on average). I have heard some people online, including on this site, say that they looked back fondly on childhood sexual experiences with adults, I don't know what number exactly you would accept as legitimate evidence (and I'm not sure for what exactly. I've never understood the idea on both sides that research is needed in order to determine whether or not child/minor-adult sex is
intrinsically harmful because a single anecdote can disprove it being inherently damaging or benign. Research might help in terms of making predictions about statistically average children but even then, even if children are rarely not harmed- is it the sociogenic harm that people on this board often mention or is normal human psychology just structured in a way that sexual contact with adults, but not necessarily with other children or young adolescents, as a child or young adolescent is likely to damage someone for 'organic' reasons not related to socialization?).
