This is not a surface level discussion, this is a deep dive into the science of disgust where I go far beyond the simple stuff Robert Sapolsky and I always say. But if you want a super simple summary of everything I am writing I will paraphrase it in a few sentences below so you don't have to read all this.
Simple summary of everything
1) The emotion of disgust first evolved 100s of millions of years ago so animals could avoid pathogen infested foods, the part of the brain that does this is the insular cortex.
2) Pathogen infested foods are primarily meats and Rozin thinks this is why cultures are far more likely to have taboos about meats and animals then vegetables and plants
3) Rozin and Sapolsky point out humans are the only animals that have moral disgust where bad taste and moral violation detection use the same parts of the brain, animals are not complex enough for morality. The insular cortex does this job too. So its doing food disgust and moral disgust.
4) Rozin points out contagion effect of disgust is also only present in humans, animals don't care if they see a roach crawl on food , where as we do and won't want to eat it. The contagion effect evolved unique to humans to deal with spread of disease.
5) Due to 3) and 4) I argue the contagion effect applies to sex offenders, that is why no one wants to association with registered sex offenders, they're labeled contagious by the brain. all the moral hysteria on sex offenders is an evolutionary mismatch
6) Rozin said anything that reminds us we are animals (body fluids, sex, feces, urine) triggers disgust and Val Curtis says this is universal.
7) Borg & De Jong's research suggest the sexual parts of the brain when inactive have a "disgust firewall" set to go off on any stimuli that isn't welcome, but if sexual stimuli is welcome the disgust barriers go down and even things such as insects and feces unrelated to sex become less disgusting, sex arousal and disgust are countering forces.
8) The same thing appears to happen with foods that are culturally acceptable, eating pig pork muscle or cow beef muscle is fine in the West but its taboo and "disgusting" to eat pig or cow organs or cat and dog meat. The parts of the brain that deal with taste hunger and food desire have a default disgust firewall. And olfactory taste shares an overlap with the part of the brain that detects disgusting foods.
9) Tyler and Debra's research on disgust and the incest avoidance effect (also known as westermarck effect) is what I was heavily discussing on this forum, with their 3 categories of disgust, 1 disgusting food, 2 sexual avoidance 3 policing moral behavior. I made a mistake in previous threads and attributed all of this to Rozin. Though to be fair Rozin has acknowledged/borrowed from them.
10) Sapolsky talks on how humans are hardwired for us vs them thinking and how disgust is weaponized to genocide against outgroups, an example is the nazis using propaganda to label jews disgusting.
The biggest implication zarkle concludes from this is that the "disgust firewall" explains why gays, trans and MAPs are labeled disgusting. We have to reason normies out of their own visceral emotions to show them we are human beings not rotting meat. Below is the technical details that dive deep.
Deep dive into the science of disgust
sources:
https://www.alieward.com/ologies/disgustology
https://freakonomics.com/podcast/the-do ... st-update/
https://whyy.org/episodes/why-we-feel-disgust/
https://www.socialsciencespace.com/2013 ... f-disgust/
Paul Rozin, Val Curtis, and Peter de Jong are scientist who research the emotion of disgust and its evolutionary origin. All strongly agree disgust first evolved in animals to avoid rotten pathogen infested meats and later adapted in humans to deal with moral violations. Which I added includes "child sex crimes".
As we MAPs know antis call us disgusting non stop. I am making the case that deep diving into the scientific research on disgust can make it much easier to liberate us. My hope is that future debates on the topic of disgust can nullify that word's punch, that way antis will lose the forceful blow that the words "disgusting" "vile" "repulsive" and "creepy" have on us. If we take disgust away from antis and force them to explain why we are a threat - we can open doors to unthinkable debates and a portal to liberation. They can no longer use disgust as a weapon and weigh on it alone, if disgust is dissected under the light of science the antis lose. Prosecutors District Attorneys, Attorney Generals and Judges will be hesitant to use the word "disgusting" on Child sex crimes because once the science is out the word loses its punch.
Many people on MAP Union believe the path to MAP Liberation is radqueer left wing politics inspired by Michael Focault, Harry Hay, John Money, Gayle Rubin and David Thorstad's ideas, mostly intersectionality research, deconstructing and analyzing language and challenging Western social norms and borrowing from Marx and Critical Theory. Examples include the failed BeyondThePlus organization and historical queer theorist and Marxist gays from the 70s-90s that explicitly saw things as a binary between heteronormative society oppressing queers. Though they are not all the same and some are much smarter and nuanced then others, in my classifying all fit under the same larger umbrella of left wing strategies to normalize pedophilia. I largely disagree with that umbrella of approaches while still tolerating subscribers to it. I think MAP liberation requires studying and educating masses on science on disgust and moral outrage, and without it we will get nowhere and that can open portals to unthinkable debates, as our story for freedom will not overlap much with LGBTQIA that took the former path. Our path for child love is cold logic against antis to tear their bad ideas apart.
Let's begin by starting with the things I've said a million times in previous threads
zarkle: Moral Disgust evolved from the parts of the brain that detect rancid food, so animals could avoid consuming pathogens, that same part of the brain in early human evolution repurposed itself to detect moral violations and reject unwanted sexual advances
As Robert Sapolsky put it, the brain is conflating a bad taste with a bad act
source:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.10 ... 25-00405-9
https://bigthink.com/life/robert-sapols ... evolution/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HELYABFjtJs
This is true but over simplified. Now we are adding a ton of more detail to that to show how complex it really is.
Peter de Jong and Mark van Overveld, and Charmaine Borg are suggesting disgust is the default state of the sexual brain when it isn't active. Arousal is the exception for the right moment and disgust is the rule when the sexual brain isn't activated .
This is starting to make a lot more sense, because Paul Rozin is saying Americans are disgusted by eating bugs, cats, dogs, and anything that isn't cooked fish, pork, cow, chicken or turkey muscle. This suggest the default state of the taste food/enjoyment appetite hunger system in our brains may also be disgusted at everything but normative foods we are use to..
The answer the research found: arousal overrides disgust. When aroused, the disgust threshold drops sharply. When not aroused — or when arousal is unwanted or absent — the disgust system remains fully active and fires at the same sexual stimuli. This is the mechanism behind why unwanted sexual advances trigger disgust: the arousal that would suppress the response isn't there, so the default disgust fires unimpeded.
With full nuance it is safe to say that disgust is the default response of the sexual brain when it isn't active or gets undesired sexual stimuli wrong person or wrong place. Sexual Arousal is the exception for the right moment and at times with a norm bound sexual partner, arousal is when the firewall is bypassed. And it gets more complicated because both arousal networks and disgust networks can do a competition with each other to see what mental state wins our conscious attention and wins over our behavior. That's why people are disgusted by porn while still enjoying it, (networks are competing) this claim doesn't come from either Rozin or Curtis but Peter de Jong, Mark van Overveld, and Charmaine Borg in their 2013 paper "Giving In to Arousal or Staying Stuck in Disgust? and other works in neuroscience such as the idea that the brain is many competing networks fighting for conscious attention and no unified self exist.
More contributes to this school of thought:
Pete De Jong's, Clinical Model of disgust as a inhibitor of sexual arousal and desire
Pete De Jong believes disgust interrupts the first stages of sexual response - sexual arousal and desire. this makes later stage sexual behaviors like orgasm virtually impossible outside of rape. Showing Disgust doesn't just always compete with arousal, many times it totally wins out.
We can tie this all back to what Val Curtis has said about sexual disgust being meant to avoid sexual diseases, as Rozin has said meat based disgust is meant to avoid food based diseases. We can see why natural selection favored such strong sexual norms.
So here are the new concepts to add to my popular claim at the start of the tread.
1) Peter de Jong, Mark van Overveld, and Charmaine Borg suggest disgust could be default state of the sexual brain when it isn't active, hinting at the idea that disgust and arousal are two sides of the same coin. But its more complex then that as I wrote above. They also did a study that showed sexual arousal lowers disgust levels, for even popular disgusting task like interacting with large insects, this main study is cited here.
source: https://mindwise-groningen.nl/disgust-a ... ng-forces/
To test the idea that sexual arousal might reduce disgust, a group of women without known sexual problems were presented with 16 disgusting tasks in the absence or presence of experimentally induced sexual arousal. Some tasks were sex-related, for example the women were asked to lubricate a vibrator. Other tasks were not sex-related, for example the women were asked to take a sip of juice with a large insect in the cup. To one subgroup of the women we showed a female-friendly erotic film (‘de Gast’ by Christine le Duc) to induce sexual arousal. To another subgroup we showed a video of people rafting, skydiving, and mountain climbing (experiencing a sports high or adrenaline rush). To a third subgroup we showed a neutral film consisting of a train ride going through different sceneries. By including all three subgroups we could compare the effects of sexual arousal (from seeing the erotic film), non-sexual arousal (from seeing the extreme sports film), and no arousal (from seeing the train ride film) on disgust. Supporting the view that people may be less disgusted when sexually aroused, the sexual arousal group found the sex-related stimuli less disgusting compared to the other groups. They also tended to find the non-sex-related stimuli less disgusting. Further, the sexual arousal group was less likely to avoid doing the sex-related and the non-sex-related “disgusting” behavioral tasks. These findings provide direct support for the view that sexual arousal can reduce feelings of disgust and disgust-induced avoidance behavior. Better said, these findings can help explain how we manage to engage in pleasurable sexual activity when we’re at it, even though we find aspects of it disgusting when we’re not.
First let's explain the timeline on how this was known
2009-2011
Ariely & Loewenstein, Richard Stevenson, Trevol Case and Megan Oaten's research
source: https://link.springer.com/article/10.10 ... 009-9529-z
Saying that when humans are aroused, things that use to be sexually disgusting may not be disgusting anymore.So disgust and arousal in certain cases are antagonizing forces competing with one another.
Male undergraduates were randomly
assigned to one of four viewing groups. One group viewed erotic female images, a second
clad female images, a third pleasantly arousing images (e.g., skydiving), and a fourth
unpleasantly arousing images (e.g., an aimed gun). After the viewing phase, all
participants were exposed to pairs of real disgust elicitors (sex versus non-sex related)
drawn from various sensory modalities. Participants in the erotic images group, who rated
being more sexually aroused than those in the other three groups, also reported being
significantly less disgusted by sex-related elicitors. While the mechanism for this effect is
not currently known, our findings suggest one plausible explanation for risky sexual
behavior as well as having implications for the role of disgust in sexual dysfunction.
Then in 2012 came Borg & de Jong's study and in 2013 the synthesis that "disgust is the default state of the sexual brain is when it is isn't active"
2) Val Curtis's claim that bodily fluids when out of proper social context trigger disgust universally, and obviously sex involves bodily fluids. Therefore child sex crimes loosely activate that universal violation.
3) Val Curtis's other claim that promiscuous sex can lead to STD's so it triggers disgust as well, showing that sexual disgust is tied to sexual disease avoidance, I think this loosely ties into why we are called disgusting
4) Paul Rozin's claim that meat centered taboos are common, very little taboos and rituals from early historic societies have to do with plants/vegetables and mushroom based foods. Most food based taboos are around meat. He also made it clear that violating a taboo triggers disgust and feelings of degrading social orders in these cultures.
5) Paul Rozin showed data that mouths and vaginas (females only) are the biggest areas people want to keep non contaminated. Showing how sexual disgust can threaten these areas, as well as other things. This ties back to Val Curtis's claim of STD's and since the vagina is a sex organ this is another clue for us.
In quotes
Rozin theorizes that keen responses to animal meat has deep evolutionary roots: as hungry early humans scavenged scraps of flesh and fat from carcasses on the African Savannah, we needed the ability to differentiate the fresh from the rancid. Animal foods were nutrient-rich and energy-dense, but risky to procure. Our disgust response evolved to help us consume these foods without succumbing to pathogenic infection.
Paul Rozin's contributions
___________________________________
Paul Rozin with over 40 years researching Disgust has established some really useful things
such as
1)
- Only humans have a contagion effect on disgust.
zarkle note: this is huge and explains why sex offenders are viewed as contagious
Rozin makes it clear. Non human animals are only disgusted when rotting food is in their mouth or a very bad smell which activates the olfactory system. He labels this distaste Unlike humans they do not have contagion based disgust. Distaste for pathogens is the core.
If a cockroach goes on food no one wants to eat it, the same behavior is not true for animals, they don't view food as corrupted if something deemed offensive was once on it. Only if it smells horrible sometimes. We go by a previous memory of contagion that tells us to stay away. A drop of sewage in wine makes it permanently undrinakble for humans, that's the contagion effect. And this also applies to social contagion, If someone is socially contagious we want nothing to do with them like sex offenders . Rozin believes this evolved as an advance pathogen avoidance system unique to our early human ancestors. Making it clear that moral disgust and contagion disgust are unique to humans. So we know that disgust towards assumed contagious spreading disease or corrupted food exist unique to humans, but there are more implications to this.
zarkle note: The implications is that sex offender registries are using the same principle as contagion based disgust, Sex offenders are labeled as a contagion that needs to be isolated from society, all the far right political demonization of sex offenders regardless of severity is the DIRECT RESULT of the same area of the brain that deals with moral violations overlapping with contagious disease and detecting rotten food
That's why sex offenders are viewed as contagious, our brains fire the same way for food that was tainted by roaches as it does sex offenders. The contagion effect.
2)
- Food taboos are largely based around meats because disgust evolved as a way to deal with rotten meat, as meat is far more likely to contain pathogens and disease then for example rotten vegetables.
He ties it back to Haidt's moral foundations theory MFT on purity and degradation These taboos can also apply to living animals. We have far more animal taboos then plant taboos. Still one can argue living animal taboos are more popular because living animals are more interesting then plants.
He also made claims that this could be why animals are sacred in certain religions and world views but is cautious and ties to Jonathan Haidt's Purity/Degradation Moral Foundations model.
3)
- Humans are not disgusted by their own saliva actively in their mouth but most people's disgust level goes way up when they are told to spit in a cup of water and reingest their own saliva they just spit out. That is something that Rozin said is not yet explained. Humans tolerate saliva their mouth just fine but not willing to redrink the saliva they just spit out, Why does that trigger disgust? Why does lab grown meat trigger disgust? We don't know.
4)
- Disgusting things in culture almost exclusively pertains to meat and bodily fluids and functions and anything that reminds us we are biological animas as Paul Rozin put it.
Urine, feces, blood, puss, vomit, even nail clippings of our own being ejected in the right social context don't trigger disgust but if it is someone else's they do. This is a clear evolutionary give away it has to do with pathogen and disease avoidance from natural selection
5) Many humans are disgusted by almost all meat except the few meat products we eat
Eating cats, dogs bunny rabbits and horses or animal organs and bugs is disgusting to many westerners. Outside of the exception of fish and occasional liver almost all animal products Westerners eat are animal muscle and bird eggs largely exclusive to cow pig turkey and chicken.
Anything that falls out of food norms is disgusting, just like anything that falls out of sex norms is disgusting. Thus disgust can activate by the norm violation taboo of eating exotic food.
--
Robert Sapolsky and Paul Rozin have discussed many times how the insular cortex in the brain over laps with both moral disgust and rotten food disgust.
https://bigthink.com/life/robert-sapols ... evolution/
and how sex offender registries cross over with cockroaches on food. Both are contagious
6)Paul Rozin uses the word distaste instead of disgust to describe animals rejecting rotten food
Paul Rozin and I have different terminology, according to him zero animals have feelings of disgust because he uses the term "distaste" to describe their rejection of bad food. So I hope that doesn't cause confusion if you listen to him talk. To clarify ...
Distaste = biting into an apple and tasting a worm
Core Disgust = Repulsion of seeing an apple in a worm or seeing/understanding rancid meat being ingested. Humans understanding consequences of rotten meat
Contagion disgust = Throwing away food because a roach was on it. Kids who think someone has cooties, or neighbors avoiding a sex offender. Moral Disgust
Moral Disgust = Contagious disgust but applied to bad acts
Those are his labels, But of course its more complicated then this as the "firewall" model for a inactive sexual brain, seems to explain more and he does not appear to talk about that.
Val Curtis's contributions
___________________________________
Val Curtis brings interesting things to the table as well
She said part of her research can be summed up as
Disgust is a framework which allows us then to learn the specifics of cultural taboo
and things like rotten meat, feces and bodily fluids appear to be universally disgusting, no surprise.
zarkle note: Keep in mind "sex' involves bodily fluids so that is another clue on why sex crimes are "disgusting"
She has her Parasite Avoidance Theory of Disgust based on her claim that "more than 50 percent of all deaths are due to infections in South Asia "
making a clear case that strong disgust emotions were favored by natural selection to counter this.
Her quote discussing prehistoric threats ranging from predatory animals to microbials
There’s a very high selection pressure from infectious disease, and that must have been true throughout all of our history. There’s far more danger from microbes on the planet, than there are from predators, for example, but people are perfectly happy with the idea that, for example, if the ancient world that we lived in was full of lions therefore we have evolved a sense of fear in our brains to keep us away from these big animals that are likely to eat us up from outside. Well, disgust is strictly parallel, except that it’s a sort of fear of little animals that want to eat us up from inside.
Val Curtis: Natural selection favored disgust to select against sexual behaviors that transmit disease. Promiscuity, high-risk practices, bodily fluid exposure. This ties into Joshua Tyber's hypothesis that disgust works as a "mate filtering system" zarkle note : Tyler was the one I zarkle have been citing without realizing it.
Using disgust in advertisement to promote hand washing campaign
Val Curtis has worked with several organizations that help people in developing countries in Africa avoid disease and infection and one of their strategies with her involvement was to use the emotion of disgust in advertisement as a deterrent.
Some of our programs, we’ve actually tried to elicit disgust, to get people to wash their hands, for example. So we had a very successful campaign in Ghana where a TV ad showed moms coming out of the toilet, and there was a obvious feces stain painted onto their hands, and then a progression of events of them cooking and getting feces in the food they cook and then unintentionally feeding the fecal stained food to their children, and you see the child about to eat a meal that’s got fecal finger marks on it, and every mother who saw that ad went ‘Ugh!’, and it was shocking and horrifying, and it increased hand-‐washing from about 12 to about 40 percent in Ghana nationally.
zarkle note: See how disgust elevates to shock and horror when preassumed harm occurs, this relates to us pedos triggering horror in antis
Val shows the power of disgust based advertising and compares it to anti tobacco and anti cigarette campaigns in the west.
The seven types of disgust according to Val Curtis
zarkle note: MAP's should focus on 3 and slightly 7 as we trigger that
1. Hygiene — displays or physical evidence of poor hygiene
2. Animals/Insects — disease-carrying "vermin" such as mice and mosquitoes
3. Sex — promiscuous sexual activities linked to spreading STDs
4. Atypical Appearance — infections, abnormal body shapes and deformities, as well as symptoms of sickness such as coughing
5. Lesions — signs of infected wounds such as blisters, boils, and pus
6. Food — edibles that show signs of spoilage such as mould and maggots
7. Bodily products (feces, spit, urine semen) Overlaps with 1. so its not as definite
-
Joshua Tyber and Debra Lieberman
_____________________________________________
source: https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... of_Disgust
Joshua and Debra have a 3 domain classification system for disgust
1. preventing infection;
2.optimizing mate choice;
3.and regulating others social behaviour through punishment and avoidance.
zarkle note: Remember all the previous post on MapUnion where I say natural selection selected against "incest, pedophilia, and necrophilia" These are the ones implying disgust evolved as a "mate filtering system" that idea came from them not Rozin. I made a mistake of citing Rozin.
Tybur and Debra were the one's who tackled incest and sexual norm violations.
So for Tybur, incest disgust wasn't just an item on a questionnaire — it was the paradigm case because it connected to a known evolved mechanism with a clear adaptive function: the Westermarck Effect produces the disgust, the disgust enforces the behavioral avoidance, the avoidance prevents inbreeding depression. The causal chain was cleanest there.
zarkle note: So if this incest disgust is real, its not a leap of faith to apply it further to pedophilia?
Robert Sapolsky
_____________________________
souce: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrzXE5XttOE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QX9K5SqZxxw
Sapolsky's Core Argument: Moral Disgust Is the Gateway to Genocide
Sapolsky discusses the serious consequences of labeling people disgusting. Comparing immigrants or ethnic groups to roaches or snakes as certain cultures do is the key to starting genocide. Propaganda spreading with disgust is to make the outgroup appear less human. Hitler did it with Jews, African gang groups weaponized disgust to groups they didn't like saying their enemies were all cockroaches and rapist. Sapolsky dives deep into "us vs them" thinking and tribal psychology to make the case that disgust is a political weapon, similar to Val Curtis's claim that disgust is useful in advertising to wash hands, but Robert Sapolsky shows it also applies to propaganda.
Nazi compared Jews to Rats and African Gang lords compared their enemies to roaches. To incite disgust at the very thought of an outgroup and as explained here, once you do that you have all the steps you need to genocide against an outgroup. This all ties back to tribal psychology and genocidal behavior in primates and how human brains need to make quick decisions by dividing the world into "ingroup vs outgroup" "us vs them" in prehistoric times, in the past deep cognitive thinking was a luxury most could not afford, our brains were too focused on survival, quick ingroup vs outgroup thinking isn't accurate at the truth but it is useful to survive in prehistoric times, natural selection favored "us vs them" thinking and disgust as a way to demonize the "them" out group.
Sapolsky also heavily talked about how the insular cortex does moral disgust and spoiled food disgust so we already know that.
Well that's about it, now we have much better evidence to explain why MAPs gays and trans people are viewed as disgusting.
https://www.thepinknews.com/2017/07/11/ ... ing-flesh/
https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/cdf56beabd4a.png
https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/e718430e67f7.png
It all ties back to Robert Sapolsky's talks on disgust being triggered by both rotten food and norm violations but now you got to see the extended technical version that holds nothing back. Congrats on making it to the end. If you take the time to comprehend this you will have a much deeper understanding of what disgust is and not be bothered by the insult, as you know more about this topic then 99.9% of humans on the planet. Never let disgust inform your moral or political biases. Always stick to science and reason not knee jerk disgust reactions. As Sam Harris said disgust is a horrible moral guide, and I'll add we should mock ridicule and insult people who use disgust to justify things.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8pCCWKMnGU
and yes, the stuff about predatory animals from the ancient past triggering child protection instincts still connects to my theory in a huge way I just left it out here to focus on disgust. This was made in my own words not AI.
Science on disgust - insights on why we are labeled disgusting
Science on disgust - insights on why we are labeled disgusting
Last edited by zarkle on Thu May 28, 2026 2:02 am, edited 1 time in total.
Re: Science on disgust - insights on why we are labeled disgusting
The fact that people don't consistently base their morality on disgust (or respect a value, viewing the same thing as ultimately good, bad or neutral circumstantially) wouldn't necessarily mean that they never do but people generally don't view things that are disgusting to be immoral or unjust (e.g. eating the snot of strangers. I don't think many people want that to be illegal or think that it is a serious moral offense that implies a lack of concern for others). I think disgust is something we sometimes tie into things that we already find immoral for other reasons (e.g. 'murderers disgust me' but we don't oppose murder because it's physically disgusting. The 'disgust' there should maybe be thought of as metaphorical but I think the same can apply to physical disgust in some scenarios, in almost the same way that people will insult someone for things they don't care about, even if that still implies low respect for the innocent people it applies to, to 'supplement' an existing grievance that has nothing to do with that thing).
I don't really understand your connection between disgust and child protection instincts because they're not the same thing. People who would harm children are anti-social, they would harm innocents and so are unjust for that reason, licking toilets is just disgusting but not something that would warrant 'the woodchipper,' especially or at least if someone is licking their own toilet. I think you need to show that we are genetically wired to intuit that all forms of sexual contact between adults and children, or between 'adults' and minors, is harmful but even if anti-AMSC/MAP stigma and prejudice is rooted in that (the only way I could work an aversion to sex with at least relatively fertile adolescents into that is if we're responding to it in the same way that we would toward sex with prepubescent children, because they are culturally and socially children regardless of biology; I think you said something like this once), the mere fact that we have strong instincts that guide a certain taboo or stigma doesn't necessarily invalidate that taboo, so I don't know how successful your 'disgust theory' will be in changing the narrative. Most people will already concede that we need to try and impersonally work through hot button moral issues and they'll claim that their stance isn't rooted in emotional bias (which we all have and which, again, doesn't invalidate a position), or that how they feel about something is the result of reason (i.e. any reasonable person would conclude that x behavior is irrational or unethical and that's why it frustrates me, my frustration with it doesn't make me view it as irrational or unethical). Child protection instincts probably have something to do with how we approach the idea of beating, killing or legitimately raping children but that doesn't show that they somehow cloud our judgment in viewing these things as bad (it's also worth noting that traditional/ancient cultures don't seem to have been super-gentle with children as is the ideal today, in the modern West, despite child protection instincts from evolution that seem perfectly plausible on paper).
I have a hard time seeing the stigma of significant age gap relationships between legal adults as having anything to do with disgust (I should have said this earlier, I can't see even physical disgust having anything to do with an aversion to pubescent adolescents at least. I can see that being the drive behind homophobia but even with the most violent and hateful bigotry against gay people and the stigmatization of their sexuality, it doesn't seem as though there are a lot of people who think that gays are being unjust in not suppressing their attraction to same-sex people. If you want to maintain the pretense of being a compassionate, loving person you have to adopt the 'hate the sin, love the sinner' attitude toward homosexuality at the least because however perverse you think it is, I can't see many people viewing gay people as anti-social, exploitative or cruel in the way that they view pedophiles, MAPs or older adults who are interested in significantly younger adults. I could be wrong, in terms of what people claim, but the contempt for gays doesn't seem to have anything to do with complaining about someone's cruelty or 'playing the victim' even on behalf of someone else). This might sound obnoxious or sexist (it's not coming from sexism against women), and I could simply be wrong, but it seems that the primary critics of age-gap relationships between adults are women and left-leaning people of both genders (in many respects, leftists tend to think in stereotypically feminine ways. Men tend to be more conservative, although some people have argued that women aren't more likely to be left-leaning per se so much as socially conforming and modern Western society is very 'liberal' so women lean liberal for that reason). Not that it matters when it comes to my arguments and I don't presume to know what motivates other people but it seems like a 'female reproductive strategy' to me (in the evolutionary sense) for women to discourage men from taking an interest in younger women. Men, in modern Western culture, seem to be as opposed to men being with young teens, and even more so prepubescent girls, but I have the impression that they're less likely to oppose 40-something-year olds being with 20-something-year olds if they're not particularly left-leaning.
I've been wondering if there's a natural mismatch between masculine and feminine reproductive strategies. It's off-topic but think about the fact that if a woman spends most of her reproductive years pregnant, let's say she has a good 20-25 children; and it doesn't matter if that's unrealistic, a man could theoretically father that many children in a month (I think Akon said something like this to justify male polygyny but I don't agree with that, I'm for open relationships across the board; and I also think that sexual instincts are necessarily polygamous for both sexes, but I wonder if men are going to be more interested in having multiple partners in real life for this reason. It seems maladaptive for men to prefer one partner alone, it might be maladaptive for women to close themselves off to the possibility of other partners circumstantially but not to prefer that she have all of her children with one man or at least to not necessarily prefer multiple partners). It is really a significant thing that men are relatively fertile, if all goes according to plan, throughout their entire lives yet women eventually become as infertile as prepubescent children. I know that might sound obnoxious but the difference might play a huge role in how men and women tend to approach sexuality (on top of parental investment and the benefit of having a partner to help you through pregnancy and with child-rearing; I'm sure post-menopausal grandmothers and aunts and women in the tribe might also help if they can no longer have their own young children to monopolize their attention, and women being, for all intents and purposes, fertile for only around 6 days in a menstrual cycle whereas men are relatively fertile if they're not in their refractory period so most of the time, their bodies are always producing sperm whereas a woman's is only preparing for pregnancy from the end of menstruation up until the end of ovulation, etc. I remember having some disagreement with the parental investment theory but I don't want to try to remember what it was or elaborate on any of this right now).
Apparently, the people involved in the Westermark effect study later admitted to some attraction to similarly aged peers they were raised with. For what it's worth, other animals don't seem to have a personal incest aversion. If there's any truth to it in humans I think it's more a question of desensitization (i.e. when your first introduction to someone is at the point in your life when you are the least sexual, maybe you come to think of them as non-sexual for that reason).
I don't really understand your connection between disgust and child protection instincts because they're not the same thing. People who would harm children are anti-social, they would harm innocents and so are unjust for that reason, licking toilets is just disgusting but not something that would warrant 'the woodchipper,' especially or at least if someone is licking their own toilet. I think you need to show that we are genetically wired to intuit that all forms of sexual contact between adults and children, or between 'adults' and minors, is harmful but even if anti-AMSC/MAP stigma and prejudice is rooted in that (the only way I could work an aversion to sex with at least relatively fertile adolescents into that is if we're responding to it in the same way that we would toward sex with prepubescent children, because they are culturally and socially children regardless of biology; I think you said something like this once), the mere fact that we have strong instincts that guide a certain taboo or stigma doesn't necessarily invalidate that taboo, so I don't know how successful your 'disgust theory' will be in changing the narrative. Most people will already concede that we need to try and impersonally work through hot button moral issues and they'll claim that their stance isn't rooted in emotional bias (which we all have and which, again, doesn't invalidate a position), or that how they feel about something is the result of reason (i.e. any reasonable person would conclude that x behavior is irrational or unethical and that's why it frustrates me, my frustration with it doesn't make me view it as irrational or unethical). Child protection instincts probably have something to do with how we approach the idea of beating, killing or legitimately raping children but that doesn't show that they somehow cloud our judgment in viewing these things as bad (it's also worth noting that traditional/ancient cultures don't seem to have been super-gentle with children as is the ideal today, in the modern West, despite child protection instincts from evolution that seem perfectly plausible on paper).
I have a hard time seeing the stigma of significant age gap relationships between legal adults as having anything to do with disgust (I should have said this earlier, I can't see even physical disgust having anything to do with an aversion to pubescent adolescents at least. I can see that being the drive behind homophobia but even with the most violent and hateful bigotry against gay people and the stigmatization of their sexuality, it doesn't seem as though there are a lot of people who think that gays are being unjust in not suppressing their attraction to same-sex people. If you want to maintain the pretense of being a compassionate, loving person you have to adopt the 'hate the sin, love the sinner' attitude toward homosexuality at the least because however perverse you think it is, I can't see many people viewing gay people as anti-social, exploitative or cruel in the way that they view pedophiles, MAPs or older adults who are interested in significantly younger adults. I could be wrong, in terms of what people claim, but the contempt for gays doesn't seem to have anything to do with complaining about someone's cruelty or 'playing the victim' even on behalf of someone else). This might sound obnoxious or sexist (it's not coming from sexism against women), and I could simply be wrong, but it seems that the primary critics of age-gap relationships between adults are women and left-leaning people of both genders (in many respects, leftists tend to think in stereotypically feminine ways. Men tend to be more conservative, although some people have argued that women aren't more likely to be left-leaning per se so much as socially conforming and modern Western society is very 'liberal' so women lean liberal for that reason). Not that it matters when it comes to my arguments and I don't presume to know what motivates other people but it seems like a 'female reproductive strategy' to me (in the evolutionary sense) for women to discourage men from taking an interest in younger women. Men, in modern Western culture, seem to be as opposed to men being with young teens, and even more so prepubescent girls, but I have the impression that they're less likely to oppose 40-something-year olds being with 20-something-year olds if they're not particularly left-leaning.
I've been wondering if there's a natural mismatch between masculine and feminine reproductive strategies. It's off-topic but think about the fact that if a woman spends most of her reproductive years pregnant, let's say she has a good 20-25 children; and it doesn't matter if that's unrealistic, a man could theoretically father that many children in a month (I think Akon said something like this to justify male polygyny but I don't agree with that, I'm for open relationships across the board; and I also think that sexual instincts are necessarily polygamous for both sexes, but I wonder if men are going to be more interested in having multiple partners in real life for this reason. It seems maladaptive for men to prefer one partner alone, it might be maladaptive for women to close themselves off to the possibility of other partners circumstantially but not to prefer that she have all of her children with one man or at least to not necessarily prefer multiple partners). It is really a significant thing that men are relatively fertile, if all goes according to plan, throughout their entire lives yet women eventually become as infertile as prepubescent children. I know that might sound obnoxious but the difference might play a huge role in how men and women tend to approach sexuality (on top of parental investment and the benefit of having a partner to help you through pregnancy and with child-rearing; I'm sure post-menopausal grandmothers and aunts and women in the tribe might also help if they can no longer have their own young children to monopolize their attention, and women being, for all intents and purposes, fertile for only around 6 days in a menstrual cycle whereas men are relatively fertile if they're not in their refractory period so most of the time, their bodies are always producing sperm whereas a woman's is only preparing for pregnancy from the end of menstruation up until the end of ovulation, etc. I remember having some disagreement with the parental investment theory but I don't want to try to remember what it was or elaborate on any of this right now).
Apparently, the people involved in the Westermark effect study later admitted to some attraction to similarly aged peers they were raised with. For what it's worth, other animals don't seem to have a personal incest aversion. If there's any truth to it in humans I think it's more a question of desensitization (i.e. when your first introduction to someone is at the point in your life when you are the least sexual, maybe you come to think of them as non-sexual for that reason).
Re: Science on disgust - insights on why we are labeled disgusting
Eating boogers is not illegal because it isn't presumed to threaten kids or anyoneJohn_Doe wrote: Sun May 24, 2026 8:21 pm The fact that people don't consistently base their morality on disgust (or respect a value, viewing the same thing as ultimately good, bad or neutral circumstantially) wouldn't necessarily mean that they never do but people generally don't view things that are disgusting to be immoral or unjust (e.g. eating the snot of strangers. I don't think many people want that to be illegal or think that it is a serious moral offense that implies a lack of concern for others). I think disgust is something we sometimes tie into things that we already find immoral for other reasons (e.g. 'murderers disgust me' but we don't oppose murder because it's physically disgusting. The 'disgust' there should maybe be thought of as metaphorical but I think the same can apply to physical disgust in some scenarios, in almost the same way that people will insult someone for things they don't care about, even if that still implies low respect for the innocent people it applies to, to 'supplement' an existing grievance that has nothing to do with that thing).
I don't really understand your connection between disgust and child protection instincts because they're not the same thing. People who would harm children are anti-social, they would harm innocents and so are unjust for that reason, licking toilets is just disgusting but not something that would warrant 'the woodchipper,' especially or at least if someone is licking their own toilet. I think you need to show that we are genetically wired to intuit that all forms of sexual contact between adults and children, or between 'adults' and minors, is harmful but even if anti-AMSC/MAP stigma and prejudice is rooted in that (the only way I could work an aversion to sex with at least relatively fertile adolescents into that is if we're responding to it in the same way that we would toward sex with prepubescent children, because they are culturally and socially children regardless of biology; I think you said something like this once), the mere fact that we have strong instincts that guide a certain taboo or stigma doesn't necessarily invalidate that taboo, so I don't know how successful your 'disgust theory' will be in changing the narrative. Most people will already concede that we need to try and impersonally work through hot button moral issues and they'll claim that their stance isn't rooted in emotional bias (which we all have and which, again, doesn't invalidate a position), or that how they feel about something is the result of reason (i.e. any reasonable person would conclude that x behavior is irrational or unethical and that's why it frustrates me, my frustration with it doesn't make me view it as irrational or unethical). Child protection instincts probably have something to do with how we approach the idea of beating, killing or legitimately raping children but that doesn't show that they somehow cloud our judgment in viewing these things as bad (it's also worth noting that traditional/ancient cultures don't seem to have been super-gentle with children as is the ideal today, in the modern West, despite child protection instincts from evolution that seem perfectly plausible on paper).
You are not acknowledging the confirmed difference between disease based disgust "from chewing boogers/licking toilets" from moral based disgust. And blatantly ignoring the empirical contributions of Haidt , Tyber and Debra that established "Disgust evolved in humans to enforce social norms. Sapolsky's comment "mixing a bad taste with a bad act" applies here.
So to simplify things the extreme moral disgust can't just involve licking toilets or gross out humor. It needs potential harm to ingroup members; such as a societies children.
They are not the same thing but they compliment each other in a feed back loop, the child protection instinct is triggered by peaceful MAPS due to cultural norms labeling them a threat. This activates moral disgust when children are perceived to be harmed by an outgroup.I don't really understand your connection between disgust and child protection instincts because they're not the same thing
I think you need to show that we are genetically wired to intuit that all forms of sexual contact between adults and children,
I don't have to because I no longer believe its innate. that was a long time ago, as in snakes humans are not born afraid of Snakes they are born with hardwiring to make them more alert to Snakes. Humans are more alert to all behavior around prepubescent children and this increases the likelihood of anti pedophilia. So yes, anti pedophilia is innate in a way but its more like a guard against a all behaviors that might not be tolerated around kids.
What's really happening is the Western concept of childhood innocence is directly tapping into child protection instincts.
Disgust Theory can put a huge dent in irrational behavior like the qanon type conspiracy theories that keep emerging, sex doll bans, non hardcore cp legalization and peaceful MAPs not being treated as contagious We can show antis are not rational and don't even care about the facts, like how John Rich completely misinterpreted NCMEC stats to promote a qanon worldview or how so many American's believe Epstein ate babies. We can make people who appeal to visceral disgust and moral outrage alone appear as superstitious religious people did during the Enlightenment. We can show the deepest morals they are hold are just child protection instincts maladapting in modern society.I think you said something like this once), the mere fact that we have strong instincts that guide a certain taboo or stigma doesn't necessarily invalidate that taboo
They are disgusted by us because we are advocating sexually unacceptable behavior towards minors. The social norm violation around sex triggers the severe disgust.I can't see even physical disgust having anything to do with an aversion to pubescent adolescents at least
In the 70s there were people who hated gays and viewed them as anti social hyper sexual deviants and compared them to pedos who wanted to corrupt children, one example is the 1890s with Oscar Wilde's trial and how concerned society was that Wilde would "corrupt the youth".I can't see many people viewing gay people as anti-social, exploitative or cruel in the way that they view pedophiles
I didn't read your post beyond there, but I might finish later. Let me just point out that it isn't pathogen/bacteria infested disgusting things alone that get banned, its when an outgroup's behavior gets labeled associated with moral disgust.
Ok, I read this
modern Western society is very 'liberal' so women lean liberal for that reason).
yes, human brains evolved to replicate popular ideas and personally based on irl noticing it seems more so with women. But I don't have data to back that up.
Re: Science on disgust - insights on why we are labeled disgusting
zarkle,
Furthermore, I don't think that AMSC is driven by a genuine desire to protect children or at least not that alone. It's anecdotal but you tell people a story about 9-year-olds bullying a classmate and you might hear "if I was the parent of the bullied child, or if I was the bullied kid's parents, I'd beat the stuffing out of that kid etc. etc." People have said that sex with young teens is worse than murder. I'm using select anecdotes (not even specific examples but there are people like this) but even the people who are more consistently 'sympathetic' to children are generally not outraged by corporal punishment or circumcising male infants for non-medical reasons, even when they're opposed these things are not anywhere near as taboo generally. The aversion to AMSC often remains even when you bend over backward to clarify that the scenarios in which it could be acceptable are ones in which the child or minor would not suffer as a result or that one would never act, beyond fantasy, on their attraction to children or minors (or younger adults) and I personally suspect that, when it comes to children, people have a deep need to preserve an image of childhood that accommodates parental feelings and perceived asexuality, for some people, is required for them. When it comes to age-gap relationships between adults I think it's basically rooted in the leftist concept of exploitation and maybe there is an element of sexual competition in there for some people.
Sure, they're 'disgusted' in the metaphorical sense after having decided that AMSC is inherently harmful to minors but what makes that behavior unacceptable to begin with? We're not even talking about promiscuity or public displays of lewd acts or acts that people are bothered by but a prohibition on sex with certain people based on their 'identity' (age), so if person a having sex with person b is disgusting on an identity basis I have to think it's because the person making this judgment finds person b disgusting (even with homosexuality, men aren't just 'disgusting' generally but straight men might find the prospect of sexual intimacy with other men disgusting so they're 'projecting' that on to gay men, i.e. I find it disgusting so you should too, I can't separate the value of how something makes me feel from the thing itself and I need to feel as though there's a reason for me to feel the way that I do etc. To be fair, some straight women claim to be disgusted by gay men as well, straight men are generally not going to be grossed out by lesbians and bi-sexual women though). People might dislike promiscuity but it's not seen as outrageous or unjust in the same way (unless maybe we're talking about sex work or they take it as an indicator that someone would be unfaithful in a contractually monogamous relationship because they're sexually insatiable), but even 'sex positive' people are opposed to AMSC. Again, I have a hard time seeing how this applies to fertile adolescents at the very least and even the most homophobic people don't carry on as though gays are acting unjustly in behaving in a way that they find disgusting or triggers their personal insecurities.
But hedonism is the strongest argument for accepting AMSC, even just in terms of consistency when it comes to our intuitions (this is much longer than I thought it would be so I'm really rushing now). Libertarianism can possibly do a better job at permitting AMSC, since hedonism could justify discouraging it in some theoretical scenarios (for reasons that have nothing to do with viewing it as inherently bad which is realistically the conventional view). In Canada and in most U.S states, I'm sure throughout the world, it's perfectly legal for most middle-aged people to date 16/17-year-olds but the stigma in the West especially or at least is so strong that even when teens find much older adults attractive or are open to serious long-term relationships with them, it would be enough to deter a lot of would-be couples (I wouldn't want to deal with it, personally. It would be such a headache to constantly be on the defensive about a relationship you have with someone you love). No one is consistently 'sex positive,' no one thinks that the mere physical act of sex is intrinsically good. If they did, there could be no conditions placed on that (e.g. consent), unless sex in some scenarios ironically led to less sex overall or later on but that doesn't capture our intuitions about unethical sexual behavior (hedonism might not entirely either but 'rape' is still bad if it causes suffering even if hedonists don't care about autonomy per se).
People instinctively value sex on the intuition that it will be pleasurable, to feel sexual attraction is to find the prospect of sexual intimacy with someone pleasurable. No one viscerally finds sex or romance with a desirable partner stressful or neutral but, upon reflection, decides that a sexual/romantic relationship with that person would be valuable (or at least that's not why the vast majority of people who have a personal stake in the issue oppose the stigmatization of gay relationships, the stigmatization of interracial relationships, the stigma of age-gap relationships, critiques about their wanting to be with any given person, etc.). A preference utilitarian view would require that you consider the wants of minor- attracted adults and adult-attracted minors but it's an internally self-contradicting position because it also requires that we consider the desires of people who oppose AMSC on principle, it involves weighing fundamentally incommensurable desires against each other because preference utilitarians as preference utilitarians do not value any given thing because of its actual nature but because it is subjectively valued by others (I won't expand on this but it is an incoherent view. Promoting it has some advantages over promoting hedonism but overall, again, trying to take it to its logical conclusion would be very undesirable).
Hedonism alone coherently captures what could make age gap relationships or adult-minor sex/romance (positively) valuable. Hedonism establishes that AMSC, under some conditions, would be valuable for the same reason that opposing AMSC on principle (as opposed to just risk aversion/suffering reduction) and stigmatizing minor-attraction in adults is immoral (because it devalues the happiness adults and minors could experience in intimate relationships with one another). Hedonism establishes that AMSC/age gap relationships are bad (when they are instrumentally bad) for the same reason that the stigmatization of AMSC and age gap relationships is bad (emotional harm caused). Beyond the logical inconsistencies and the factual errors about child cognition or social power imbalances etc., why does AMSC or the opposition to it matter? Where's the injustice in the 'anti' position, because the prejudice against MAPs and toward minor attraction itself is immoral, isn't it, not just a philosophical error? Again, libertarianism can cover the restriction of sexual freedom in terms of government coercion but not the social prejudice.
I think you have to show that their instincts are 'maladapting' in modern society without just pointing out that such instincts might be genetically coded. You can't just say, "your emotions are blinding you to this truth," you have to justify your position. It seems as though you're largely making an 'appeal to bias' (i.e. you're wrong because you have some emotional stake in this or strong feelings about it).
I cannot believe that I wasted two episodes of Xena on this, not that I don't appreciate the conversation it's just that I get so carried on. I've stayed online over 40 minutes than I should have.
Which seems to imply that our sense of ethics is driven not just by disgust but by perceived harm reduction (it could be more complicated than that, conventional ethics aren't consistent and different things play against each other but that was the gist of my point). Not everything that is disgusting is perceived as threatening to others, not everything that is threatening is 'disgusting.'Eating boogers is not illegal because it isn't presumed to threaten kids or anyone
What does disgust that stemmed from disease avoidance (or we could call it raw sensory disgust) have to do with the moral 'disgust' that seems to be metaphorical, what do they share in common that makes both 'disgusting' (I want to rush this so I won't get into a point about what differentiates different emotional states generally). By your logic, you could just argue that all morality is disgust-driven because we're 'disgusted' by immoral behavior. Social norms and disease avoidance are not the same thing, and I think you're at risk of defining 'disgust' in such a broad way that you basically just mean 'an emotional aversion to something.' What determines a bad act before it's mixed with 'bad taste?'You are not acknowledging the confirmed difference between disease based disgust "from chewing boogers/licking toilets" from moral based disgust. And blatantly ignoring the empirical contributions of Haidt , Tyber and Debra that established "Disgust evolved in humans to enforce social norms. Sapolsky's comment "mixing a bad taste with a bad act" applies here.
Again, disgust-driven ethics is not the same thing as perceived harm reduction. If you're adding conditions under which disgusting things become immoral, you are concerned with something other than disgust (or rather, something other than what 'disgusts' you).So to simplify things the extreme moral disgust can't just involve licking toilets or gross out humor. It needs potential harm to ingroup members; such as a societies children.
I don't think you've given me any specific reason to think that the aversion to AMSC has to do with 'disgust.' I could see your point about vaginal intercourse being harmful to prepubescent girls and modern society over-extends childhood to include people who are biologically adults or at least are at the crossroads between childhood and adulthood despite leaning toward the latter but not that the anti-AMSC position stems from disgust. I absolutely do not believe that most adults are 'disgusted' by the idea of being sexually intimate with pubescent/post-pubescent adolescents who are relatively fertile. We say that things are 'disgusting' to be disparaging or express condemnation of things that we oppose for reasons that have nothing to do with the kind of disgust invoked by things that typically signal some kind of disease threat.They are not the same thing but they compliment each other in a feed back loop, the child protection instinct is triggered by peaceful MAPS due to cultural norms labeling them a threat. This activates moral disgust when children are perceived to be harmed by an outgroup.
Furthermore, I don't think that AMSC is driven by a genuine desire to protect children or at least not that alone. It's anecdotal but you tell people a story about 9-year-olds bullying a classmate and you might hear "if I was the parent of the bullied child, or if I was the bullied kid's parents, I'd beat the stuffing out of that kid etc. etc." People have said that sex with young teens is worse than murder. I'm using select anecdotes (not even specific examples but there are people like this) but even the people who are more consistently 'sympathetic' to children are generally not outraged by corporal punishment or circumcising male infants for non-medical reasons, even when they're opposed these things are not anywhere near as taboo generally. The aversion to AMSC often remains even when you bend over backward to clarify that the scenarios in which it could be acceptable are ones in which the child or minor would not suffer as a result or that one would never act, beyond fantasy, on their attraction to children or minors (or younger adults) and I personally suspect that, when it comes to children, people have a deep need to preserve an image of childhood that accommodates parental feelings and perceived asexuality, for some people, is required for them. When it comes to age-gap relationships between adults I think it's basically rooted in the leftist concept of exploitation and maybe there is an element of sexual competition in there for some people.
Ok (I don't think it's genuine child protection alone but I don't care to argue against this), but child protection instincts aren't necessarily related to disgust.What's really happening is the Western concept of childhood innocence is directly tapping into child protection instincts.
They are disgusted by us because we are advocating sexually unacceptable behavior towards minors. The social norm violation around sex triggers the severe disgust
Sure, they're 'disgusted' in the metaphorical sense after having decided that AMSC is inherently harmful to minors but what makes that behavior unacceptable to begin with? We're not even talking about promiscuity or public displays of lewd acts or acts that people are bothered by but a prohibition on sex with certain people based on their 'identity' (age), so if person a having sex with person b is disgusting on an identity basis I have to think it's because the person making this judgment finds person b disgusting (even with homosexuality, men aren't just 'disgusting' generally but straight men might find the prospect of sexual intimacy with other men disgusting so they're 'projecting' that on to gay men, i.e. I find it disgusting so you should too, I can't separate the value of how something makes me feel from the thing itself and I need to feel as though there's a reason for me to feel the way that I do etc. To be fair, some straight women claim to be disgusted by gay men as well, straight men are generally not going to be grossed out by lesbians and bi-sexual women though). People might dislike promiscuity but it's not seen as outrageous or unjust in the same way (unless maybe we're talking about sex work or they take it as an indicator that someone would be unfaithful in a contractually monogamous relationship because they're sexually insatiable), but even 'sex positive' people are opposed to AMSC. Again, I have a hard time seeing how this applies to fertile adolescents at the very least and even the most homophobic people don't carry on as though gays are acting unjustly in behaving in a way that they find disgusting or triggers their personal insecurities.
That might be a fair point (and, editing this in before I hit submit, I don't have time to carefully go through some of my logic thus far) but I still think they have to attach something to being gay to make it 'unjust,' i.e. they want to influence others rather than just being privately gay and hooking up with people with similar preferences.In the 70s there were people who hated gays and viewed them as anti social hyper sexual deviants and compared them to pedos who wanted to corrupt children, one example is the 1890s with Oscar Wilde's trial and how concerned society was that Wilde would "corrupt the youth".
I wanted to save this for last. I shouldn't have replied, to be honest (no time, or rather I should have replied earlier). A part of me wants to focus on the holes and inconsistencies in the conventional arguments against AMSC that have nothing to do with why I think age gap relationships are permissible, even a valuable, under certain conditions (I almost feel as though I would be 'contaminating' an argument for accepting minor attraction and AMSC under at least some conditions with my hedonism in the sense that I wouldn't want people to think that you'd have to be a philosophical hedonist in order to accept age-gap relationships, which is definitely true); the idea that children can't meaningfully consent to sex, the idea that power accumulates with age in a vacuum, the selective preoccupation with children's 'consent,' the selective preoccupation with only some perceived power imbalances, the idea that there's something deviant or abnormal about an older adult attraction to at least relatively fertile people in their teens or twenties, or rather people who appear fertile, as if normal men naturally lose attraction to the kind of women they're actually capable of reproducing with as they age in the absence of a moral failing (this applies to women too, younger men are fertile and male conventional attractiveness declines with age alongside male fertility and health but it's especially absurd with men because, I'm sorry if this is harsh to say and I know it's repetitive for me and patronizing even just to say "I'm sorry if this is harsh to say" but given that sex is for reproduction, from an evolutionary standpoint, how do you expect average men in their 40s, 50s and beyond to prefer peri-menopausal or flat-out completely infertile menopausal women over average women in their 20s and 30s? Even if most men did, their bodies are adapted to fertilize egg cells and women are never more fertile than from Tanner stage 5 up until 25, SO HOW CAN YOU POSSIBLY BE 'SURPRISED' THAT OLD MEN WILL STILL FIND WOMEN IN THEIR EARLY 20S ATTRACTIVE? You're scolding them for being attracted to who most of them have to involuntarily prefer even as you wave rainbow flags until your wrist hurts insisting on 'love is love.' Again, I single out gynosexuals especially because male fertility, and certainly health generally, declines with age but, under normal circumstances, not to the point where they become completely infertile), the idea that sex is inherently harmful to relatively fertile adolescents whose bodies are 'designed' to engage in it (never mind that prepubescent children aren't completely asexual), etc.Disgust Theory can put a huge dent in irrational behavior like the qanon type conspiracy theories that keep emerging, sex doll bans, non hardcore cp legalization and peaceful MAPs not being treated as contagious We can show antis are not rational and don't even care about the facts, like how John Rich completely misinterpreted NCMEC stats to promote a qanon worldview or how so many American's believe Epstein ate babies. We can make people who appeal to visceral disgust and moral outrage alone appear as superstitious religious people did during the Enlightenment. We can show the deepest morals they are hold are just child protection instincts maladapting in modern society.
But hedonism is the strongest argument for accepting AMSC, even just in terms of consistency when it comes to our intuitions (this is much longer than I thought it would be so I'm really rushing now). Libertarianism can possibly do a better job at permitting AMSC, since hedonism could justify discouraging it in some theoretical scenarios (for reasons that have nothing to do with viewing it as inherently bad which is realistically the conventional view). In Canada and in most U.S states, I'm sure throughout the world, it's perfectly legal for most middle-aged people to date 16/17-year-olds but the stigma in the West especially or at least is so strong that even when teens find much older adults attractive or are open to serious long-term relationships with them, it would be enough to deter a lot of would-be couples (I wouldn't want to deal with it, personally. It would be such a headache to constantly be on the defensive about a relationship you have with someone you love). No one is consistently 'sex positive,' no one thinks that the mere physical act of sex is intrinsically good. If they did, there could be no conditions placed on that (e.g. consent), unless sex in some scenarios ironically led to less sex overall or later on but that doesn't capture our intuitions about unethical sexual behavior (hedonism might not entirely either but 'rape' is still bad if it causes suffering even if hedonists don't care about autonomy per se).
People instinctively value sex on the intuition that it will be pleasurable, to feel sexual attraction is to find the prospect of sexual intimacy with someone pleasurable. No one viscerally finds sex or romance with a desirable partner stressful or neutral but, upon reflection, decides that a sexual/romantic relationship with that person would be valuable (or at least that's not why the vast majority of people who have a personal stake in the issue oppose the stigmatization of gay relationships, the stigmatization of interracial relationships, the stigma of age-gap relationships, critiques about their wanting to be with any given person, etc.). A preference utilitarian view would require that you consider the wants of minor- attracted adults and adult-attracted minors but it's an internally self-contradicting position because it also requires that we consider the desires of people who oppose AMSC on principle, it involves weighing fundamentally incommensurable desires against each other because preference utilitarians as preference utilitarians do not value any given thing because of its actual nature but because it is subjectively valued by others (I won't expand on this but it is an incoherent view. Promoting it has some advantages over promoting hedonism but overall, again, trying to take it to its logical conclusion would be very undesirable).
Hedonism alone coherently captures what could make age gap relationships or adult-minor sex/romance (positively) valuable. Hedonism establishes that AMSC, under some conditions, would be valuable for the same reason that opposing AMSC on principle (as opposed to just risk aversion/suffering reduction) and stigmatizing minor-attraction in adults is immoral (because it devalues the happiness adults and minors could experience in intimate relationships with one another). Hedonism establishes that AMSC/age gap relationships are bad (when they are instrumentally bad) for the same reason that the stigmatization of AMSC and age gap relationships is bad (emotional harm caused). Beyond the logical inconsistencies and the factual errors about child cognition or social power imbalances etc., why does AMSC or the opposition to it matter? Where's the injustice in the 'anti' position, because the prejudice against MAPs and toward minor attraction itself is immoral, isn't it, not just a philosophical error? Again, libertarianism can cover the restriction of sexual freedom in terms of government coercion but not the social prejudice.
I think you have to show that their instincts are 'maladapting' in modern society without just pointing out that such instincts might be genetically coded. You can't just say, "your emotions are blinding you to this truth," you have to justify your position. It seems as though you're largely making an 'appeal to bias' (i.e. you're wrong because you have some emotional stake in this or strong feelings about it).
I cannot believe that I wasted two episodes of Xena on this, not that I don't appreciate the conversation it's just that I get so carried on. I've stayed online over 40 minutes than I should have.