My neutral stance

[Learning to undeny]

I feel my posts have been getting increasingly confrontational but I haven't stated my views, and so clarifying my ideas on contact seems right.

First, I have little doubt that AMSC could do more benefit than harm once the minor approaches puberty (say 9 or 10, but to avoid risks as much as possible, 12 seems like a good minimal age for AMSC). These cases have occurred among cultures, and are often not harmful even in a society like ours.

One caveat is that normalisation of this type of contact could exacerbate gender differences, and of course there is risk of abuse, but we can strive for decriminalisation rather than normalisation. Simply put, stop assuming the worst.

Second, I don't think I will ever advocate for AMSC with pre-pubescent children (say 8 or less). When I see one in real life, it makes me sad that they could have sex with an adult. The arguments are, for me, disconnected from the reality I percieve (which I admit is quite small).

Furthermore, if AMSC with early teens stopped being considered intrinsically harmful, this would imply a pushback against the current victimological narrative. Consent should replace this narrative, with younger children being considered capable of consent even in cases where AMSC is criminalised on the grounds of unlikelihood and harm reduction. Thus, the sentences would be proportional to the damage and not overblown.

That would be my stance in theory. I don't want pedophilic relations to be normalised, so I consider my stance neutral. It is similar to pro-reform views, but again this is only the theory.

In practice, if this were accomplished, it would have to come from the youth, not from MAPs. For this reason, I think our efforts should go elsewhere. We should point out unscientific claims from victimology and defend the possibility of positive AMSC, but not advocate against current law of consent laws, which would be egoistic coming from us and face stronger opposition. If we put our focus on MAP rights, then anti-c and pro-c MAPs can collaborate and reap fruits.

I know from experience that MAPs can be tolerated and understood even if AMSC is considered harmful. I don't know how likely it is in places where antis are out of control, but it is certainly possible.

And as I have said in other occasions, supporting those who are outed is also of utermost importance, and online actions are secondary in my opinion.

If you think contact-specific activism is more important, I would like to hear your arguments, but I don't want to escalate more.

[Condemned]

With my AoA, AMSC will never be possible (regardless if age of consent was lowered). I can see there being a lower age, but it must be the younger person who seeks it out without any influence from the older person. It has to be something the younger person want to experience and enjoy rather than something they feel the older person wants and will enjoy.

[Learning to undeny]

With my AoA, AMSC will never be possible (regardless if age of consent was lowered). I can see there being a lower age, but it must be the younger person who seeks it out without any influence from the older person. It has to be something the younger person want to experience and enjoy rather than something they feel the older person wants and will enjoy.

That's the clearest scenario, but if consent is the main principle to uphold, then who initiates is secondary. If it's the adult, though, there is a higher risk of lies, coercion and intimidation (even if unwanted). It is good to be wary.

[Not Forever]

If it's the adult, though, there is a higher risk of lies, coercion and intimidation (even if unwanted). It is good to be wary.

On what basis would this risk be greater if the one asking is an adult?
I remember once hearing someone talk about the issue concerning young males and the problem they have regarding girls’ sexual satisfaction, in that after fulfilling their own needs they tend to ignore the girl and fail to satisfy her sexually as well. He was denouncing a selfish way of behaving, a way of behaving that gradually fades as one grows up.

I like to think of individuals primarily as individuals, but if I absolutely had to consider which age group is potentially more selfish and manipulative, I would think of minors. Adults on average might have more ‘capability’ (physical and otherwise), but not necessarily more willingness. I wouldn’t want to promote the idea of a ‘noble savage’ myth, but applied to minors.

[Learning to undeny]

On what basis would this risk be greater if the one asking is an adult?

For example, the minor might feel physically overpowered and comply with the adult. Certainly, deception can come from both, but the adult can escape. Coercion and intimidation are more likely to come from the adult, simply because of physical and social power. And in the case of younger children, they are more likely to believe any lies, say, about the outcomes of the act.

I'm not saying this should be assumed to be the norm, and as I said consent is what really matters. The initiative matters less.

I remember once hearing someone talk about the issue concerning young males and the problem they have regarding girls’ sexual satisfaction, in that after fulfilling their own needs they tend to ignore the girl and fail to satisfy her sexually as well. He was denouncing a selfish way of behaving, a way of behaving that gradually fades as one grows up.

I like to think of individuals primarily as individuals, but if I absolutely had to consider which age group is potentially more selfish and manipulative, I would think of minors. Adults on average might have more ‘capability’ (physical and otherwise), but not necessarily more willingness. I wouldn’t want to promote the idea of a ‘noble savage’ myth, but applied to minors.

Yeah, as a rule, people do lose selfishness as they grow.

[John_Doe]

Yeah, as a rule, people do lose selfishness as they grow.

I have a hard time believing that, based on my own anecdotal observations.

Many children (not all of them of the time) seem to have a sweetness and innocence that you rarely ever find in adults, and it's even less likely to be relatively consistent when you do (find it in adults). Especially if we're talking about children under 6 and not the older ones. I don't think I have ever in my life come across a child under 6 who was as malicious, mean-spirited or unkind as adults in general are circumstantially. I'm just telling it as I see it, this isn't ageism or misanthropy or venting. You could be right. There are some unusually sweet, good-natured and almost angelic adults but, as a general rule, even 'nice' adults generally are not really reliably kind people.

I have no idea how to put this into words. With adults, it's as if they're not compassionate in the 'idealistic' way that children can be- they have love for individual people, they have compassion for specific people, but so much of what they present as compassion seems to be about ritualistic politeness or following social rules. I'm not one of those people who thinks that politeness is 'phony' but adults will explicitly present themselves as compassionate or altruistic in some way while letting you know that they don't actually believe in the ideals that they're promoting or mean what they say (so it's not me assuming that they're being privately insincere because they want people to think highly of them, no, they will indirectly let you know that they're being insincere but they seem to feel compelled to go on with the explicit presentation of 'niceness,' I guess they think that's what truly 'counts' in terms of what they're communicating). Adults seem to have this thing about following formal social rules for the sake of rule adherence. I am generalizing.

Children, or at least younger children, seem to be 'easygoing' in this way that adults almost never are for long. They are unguarded, open, morally unjudgmental, their kind of more or less indiscriminate lovingness seems to require a simple-mindedness that adults don't have. Again, I have no idea how to put this but I think children are generally kinder, have less of a need to socially dominate others and are less vindictive in terms of long-term premeditated vengeance or aggression. Adults aren't really 'moral' or 'evil,' they just have their own needs, agendas, insecurities etc. and are just working toward what they see as their own interests (I know I said children seem to be less morally judgmental but I meant that they don't really seem to have the more complicated abstract ideas about morality that adults have. I don't want to romanticize them by projecting my hedonism on to them, I'm sure if you ask many of them it will go beyond this, but it seems to me that their morality revolves around don't be mean to people. Don't make them feel bad. Be nice. Share your toys, play with them. After that, if you are actually 'nice' to them, I don't think they really care about abstract ideological differences that adults will end each other's lives over. Maybe because they're prefrontalcortexes are less developed they are less critical of people, pain feels inherently bad for all of us but adults might be more likely to judge things as bad without any relation to that and children might care less about those abstract moral rules when breaking them wouldn't hurt anyone, or those negative value judgments, which might be why a child who has had some non-coercive sexual experience with an adult will have to learn that it was bad even though the adult was nice to them and they didn't feel bad as a result of it. A lot of this might apply to young children if not the older ones).

I'm not a 'child person' either, if you think that I'm romanticizing them. When it comes to teens (or even some preteens), I don't see a difference one way or the other. I did kind of have this subtle impression at one point that girls in high school start to get a little meaner in the 11th grade. Before then they seemed, on average, more flirtatious, more forgiving. In my early 20s when I used to take the bus/work in public I think I had a similar subtle impression that, on average, the meanest/rudest people tended to be middle-aged women but that is a massive generalization, some were/are extremely nice and most of the rudest people were probably not middle-aged women.

I know that's all over the place, and I'm probably reading way into some things, but I'm speaking intuitively.

I think I was a pretty compassionate child. As a teen I probably lacked empathy in ways that I couldn't appreciate as well as I do now, even though I'm sure I saw myself as basically innocent and kind in regards to those who deserved it. At one point, as a child, I remember being wary of teenagers.

I don't understand some of the OP but I'm not in the mood to analyze it.

[Not Forever]

Many children (not all of them of the time) seem to have a sweetness and innocence that you rarely ever find in adults, [...]

Speaking from my personal experience, I remember quite well how vindictive and selfish I was as a child. Not wanting to spend time with someone for personal gain, self-punishing reactions every time I was scolded (promising myself I would never do certain things again, but with the idea that not doing them—even for years—would make my parents regret having scolded me), and things like that. I also remember that when I thought one of my parents might be ill, my only concern was whether it somehow affected me, and then I started thinking about what it would be like to be an orphan.

Now… I don’t know if what I’m describing is actually a sign of a sociopathic child, but it seems pretty consistent with what I usually read around.

And, despite all this, I wasn’t considered a bad child. I remember moments when I made a relative cry with joy because I remembered some details about various things. They saw me as polite and so on… but I think I can recognize my manipulative behavior. At the time I didn’t judge, didn’t criticize, nothing like that—I was still forming my own ideas, which were basically watered-down versions of my father’s.