Anti-c MAPs are part of the problem

[Curson]

Why is it that adults/parents are so horrified or shocked to learn kids have ever expressed any sort of sexual desires, anyway?

[John_Doe]

Its not irrelevant, it perfectly ties into my point that sexual relations with prepubescent children has previously been legally and socially acceptable

I meant it was irrelevant in that even if you are wrong about the average age of menarche once being being 15 +, if it was legally permissible for 7-year-olds to have sex with adults then adults having sexual contact with prepubescent children hasn't always been frowned on (or at least illegal. It might be a big mistake to assume that because 7-year-olds were legally permitted to have sex with adults it wasn't taboo. It's very taboo for 40-year-olds to have sex with 16-year-olds even though that's legal in most places). Either way, there are some cultures where it's normal for 7-year-olds to have some kind of sexual contact with adults.

It doesnt justify new norms either. But it proves my point that it being against AMSC is not hardwired in us and wont bring about the mass destruction of society if it is legal/socially acceptable like many antis claim.

I agree that we're not just biologically hardwired to view AMSC as inherently bad (even if we are dispositioned toward certain moral attitudes, we're rational agents and can desensitize ourselves to some of those instincts to a significant degree. It used to be normal for men to roam around in bands, killing the men from other tribes, raping their women or enslaving the women and children. The world is still a very violent place but overall much less so, I think, and I would assume that most human beings descend from people who lived in much more violent societies). I don't think it will bring about the mass destruction of society either but the 'mass destruction of society' and harm to individuals are two different things. I want to be open to the possibility of harm to children even though I'm not convinced that there would be a reason to assume serious harm, especially not for age-related reasons, in a society without the anti-child sexuality or AMSC specifically stigma. What I really want people to accept is that opposing AMSC because it can be circumstantially harmful, out of risk aversion, doesn't capture the conventional intuition that it is inherently bad. Why should you not want children to be sexual on principle?

Ok but the entire point of pro C is that it ISNT harmful. Do you think a boy getting his balls played with is comparable to getting beaten? Or comparable to getting his genitals mutilated? First you have to prove that a kid getting head is a form of “harm” in the first place, and explain the mechanisms behind that harm without relying on arbitrary social and legal norms like the magical age of 18, which as a I proved in my earlier example, has historically, not been a magical age.

This is where both sides can lose me (categorical statements about it being harmful or not harmful). It seems obvious to me that whether or not it will be harmful is circumstantial. It can be harmful, but anything can be. In practice, being beaten or mutilated will almost always cause harm (rare exceptions might be with congenital analgesics who don't feel physical pain but I'm sure the gesture of physical violence would psychologically harm them if nothing else, and injury can still be a problem even if it isn't itself viscerally painful). I don't think performing oral sex on a child is just intrinsically harmful (or even practically necessarily harmful in near 100% of cases as beating someone or mutilating them will be). Harm is suffering and sex may or may not cause that.

They do though? Maybe you have gotten lucky enough not to see it in action, but I have seen plenty, PLENTY of antis justfying pedophiles not deserving human rights because “pedos are monsters and human rights only belong to humans” or justfying things like capital punishment or torture or not having a fair trial or living conditions because “only humans deserve that, they arent humans they are monsters”

Some people might but I don't think that's what everyone means. You're right that people will often say callous behavior is 'inhuman' as though it's not part of our 'nature' but I don't really read too much into the wording (it means something but I assume they're speaking rhetorically and no one really thinks that deeply disagreeable or sociopathic people are literally not members of homo sapiens sapiens).

Thats true, but the average anti/anti C claims that the so called “ intresnic harm” from AMSC not only exists, but is so strong and unbearable and unavoidable and unignorable that kids will not only suffer, but be permantly mentally crippled due to the drastic and intense severity of said “trauma” and be incapable of living even remotely functional lives. But here we have historical proof that despite kids who have AMSC having this supposed “permanently mentally crippling drastic and intensely severe trauma” that is apperantly a fate worse than death to many antis, they were still able to lead functioning lives, at least as functioning as every other member of that time period, and this “severe trauma” was apparently so mild that people didnt even know it existed and didnt feel the need to talk about it(maybe because it doesn't exist and negative experiences outside of actual force is due to social shame and social guilt?)

I'm not particularly skeptical of the idea that most of them weren't 'traumatized' or even seriously bothered by having had some kind of sexual contact with adults as children but just because they could live objectively functional lives doesn't mean they weren't privately harmed by childhood sexual experiences and we don't know what their individual stories are. I'm just considering the possibilities. There are many routine childhood experiences that don't necessarily even traumatize people today that they were seriously bothered by at the time, maybe even well into adulthood, and many people who struggled or struggle with those issues can still form relationships, work, marry and have families of their own and generally 'function' in whatever ways that are expected of them.

I think what we need to be honest about is why it would cause emotional distress. The likeliness that it will is an assumption ultimately rooted in projection. That and typical self-reporting is the only real guideline we have. I think the shame can be reduced to the societal stigma, and after that it's mostly about the emotion of disgust (being physically intimate with someone you find repelling, or might normally find somewhat repelling), but anti-pedo. people will almost never, if ever, just state things in those terms (i.e. 'I was fondled by a man when I was younger and it was gross because I'm not attracted to men,' as opposed to, 'I was fondled by someone I was highly attracted to and I thought that I wanted it at the time but it was deeply damaging because I wasn't ready or I didn't realize what sex meant, I was exploited, etc.'). Sex itself is just physical contact, when you remove the emotions of disgust or sexual pleasure. Without factoring various emotional consequences into consideration, groping someone's breast is nothing fundamentally different than patting them on the back or shaking their hand.

I've said this a million times but people often attach other values to the value of suffering (i.e. if you can show that x causes suffering consistently you prove that x itself bad, so a compassionate person has to oppose x as an end-in-itself even though x itself and suffering are two different things. What's wrong with x in a scenario when it doesn't cause suffering, a choice can be immoral despite not actually causing pain or depriving anyone of happiness but adults who have sexual contact with children don't have to be de-valuing or maliciously working in favor of/against child suffering or happiness in every possible scenario. The only 'thing' that necessarily primes a negative emotional response in every possible mind would be the realized 'frustration' of one's desire, and the perception of ambiguity is related to that, but there is nothing that every logically possible person would have to want; aside from having to instinctively want to avoid pain/experience happiness). I genuinely don't understand why people who love children wouldn't want them to experience sexual pleasure (not just weighing their possible sexual happiness against costs and risks, opposing their just being sexual on principle). From a pro-happiness point of the view the ideal is to permit AMSC, I think that should be the 'default' unless we have reason to assume overly high cost or risk.

[JGHeaven]

I do agree with this. As long as maps are apologising for being maps and buying into the ridiculous idea that adult minor relationships are automatically harmful and should be avoided at all cost then maps and children will suffer.

I don't think maps or children should be breaking the law but there's a difference between breaking the law and believing the law is right. In this case it is wrong, it can be demonstrated as wrong and at least on some level it knows it is wrong.

When I was young girl I was very sexually active. I have masturbated for as long as I remember and when I had my first sexual experiences with an adult it felt good and I enjoyed it. I'm not traumatized or full of regret, I'm an ordinary woman living an ordinary life. Should we have done the things we did? No, I don't think so because they were illegal, but that's the only reason we shouldn't have. I should have been frustrated and should have missed out on those experiences, but I don't hate him for those moments, I think we had something good and I don't regret it. In this case, he had been widowed a year earlier so I just knew him as a friend and neighbour who was alone. I think my visiting him so often just brought us closer and we formed a relationship that became physical, something for us both.

Discourse on the subject is usually shut down quickly and positive cases are almost always excluded from debate. The reason is that it demonstrates the flaws in the arguments. There's only ever one reason to shut down discourse or excluded cases, it's lack of confidence that the case being argued can withstand challenge.

[FairBlueLove]

I don't think maps or children should be breaking the law but there's a difference between breaking the law and believing the law is right. In this case it is wrong, it can be demonstrated as wrong and at least on some level it knows it is wrong.

Nicely said. And thanks for your testimony: Cases like yours are so precious. One thing is stopping abuse, but being OK with the fact the law has the power to ruin lives of peoples involved in stories like yours is not acceptable.

[JGHeaven]

I don't think maps or children should be breaking the law but there's a difference between breaking the law and believing the law is right. In this case it is wrong, it can be demonstrated as wrong and at least on some level it knows it is wrong.

Nicely said. And thanks for your testimony: Cases like yours are so precious. One thing is stopping abuse, but being OK with the fact the law has the power to ruin lives of peoples involved in stories like yours is not acceptable.

The power of the law to cause harm as great as what it sets out to stop isn't always recognised. Abuse is terrible for anyone, but traumatising people including children who are just living their own lives and having fun is no less terrible. I was fortunate to not have to endure such a thing but I expect if things had worked out differently and we were taken through the modern legal system then I wouldn't be the person I am today, I'm sure I would be carrying the scars of trauma from going through the legal system. It has always seemed strange to me that so many children can be taken through the system and impacted so deeply and it's never questioned.