Subconscious Acceptance

[Bookshelf]

What is everyone's thoughts on the idea that there's a large portion of the population that actually accepts MAPs on a subconscious level, and some that there are likely a lot of people that subconsciously accept that minors can actually consent? I think many of us here agree that much of the adverse reactions towards AMSC and CP is performative. For a lot of people, I'm sure they don't care and have to go over the top to make other think they care; then for some there's a sort of dissonance on what they actually care about, in terms of claiming to care about child welfare when in actuality what they really care about is trying to snuff out what they deem abnormal.

I was reading a conversation on two people discussing fetishes earlier. One person was making the argument that fetishes are a result of a poorly developed brain, and the opposing commenter was just calling them silly for even caring about it. At some point, the opposing commenter said:

As long as no one is being hurt and they're all consenting adults, why do you even care?

This stuck with me for a moment. It made me think about other comments I've read that essentially say the same thing, especially in regards to LGBT conversations. As long as it's between two consenting adults and no one's being hurt, who cares?

It made me question — if these people genuinely believe deep down that AMSC is inherently harmful, why do they so often have to separate it when making these kinds of comments? Sometimes you'll see the same thing parroted and there won't be a distinction, however the separation is noted often enough that it paints a picture of a wider scale cognitive dissonance. How many people don't truly believe that AMSC is inherently harmful?

[John_Doe]

I suspect that much of it is performative, and some people are probably apathetic but won't put up much resistance (as in, they won't stick their neck out to criticize the dominant socially acceptable narrative, because they don't want to endure the blowback or they might just not care much about the issue). I also think that many people are deeply sensitive about the issue but on some level have to understand that their points don't work or at least don't capture why they think AMSC or age-gap relationships between legal adults are bad. I saw a reddit thread yesterday where the op apparently claimed that 16-year-olds can't consent to sex with someone twice their age. I say 'apparently' because I wasn't in the mood to read it. I know that sounds cowardly but it wasn't the time for me and if I can't reply to something especially (I can't properly post on reddit, I can't even remember my log-in information), this kind of anti-age gap relationship/minor-attraction when felt by legal adults rhetoric is incredibly frustrating for me. How can anyone possibly think that 16-year-olds can't consent to sex (and if they can, what difference does the age of their partner make? The logic seems to imply the denial of bad choices, so if age gap relationships are bad, therefore the people who are supposedly victimized by them literally can't consent to them. A similar thing is done with certain hard drugs, I think, we can't outright admit that there are values that take precedence over freedom in some scenarios so we conclude that, because of emotional desperation, no legitimate choice has been made to begin with as if freedom doesn't include the freedom to make legitimate mistakes or behave imprudently)?

I don't agree that prepubescent children can't consent (I'm more than willing to concede that infants can't 'rationally' consent because they can't explicitly and consciously imagine alternative courses of action and select one to the exclusion of others upon reflection) but it's especially bizarre when you consider that most 16-year-olds have bodies that are adapted for sexual intercourse (here I go again with the repetitive biology angle but it's true, the overwhelming majority of them will have sexual instincts so you can't possibly claim that they don't understand the emotional meaning of sex, for the other person and for their future self if they were at the moment asexual. Even when it comes to prepubescent children, whom I don't believe are completely asexual even if they lack a fully developed cyclical libido, what would sway me is if disgust, or sexual repulsion specifically, is something that required puberty although even then it would be on the basis of wanting to minimize regret rather than an idea that they couldn't meaningfully consent to something that they'll feel differently about in future), the average 15-year-old girl in a developed country where malnutrition is less of an issue has actually finished puberty- HOW CAN THEY NOT BE ABLE TO CONSENT TO SOMETHING THAT THEIR BODIES ARE BIOLOGICALLY WIRED TO ENGAGE IN, it's so absurd to me. I could go on but this is rushed and I'm sorry to go off-topic. It's just that the conventional prejudice against minor-adult intimacy, never mind age-gap relationships between legal adults, is objectively backwards and the logic used to support it is so stupid (so full of internal contradictions or at odds with all available evidence), it's difficult to just focus on why it would be good, bad or morally permissible even though that would be simpler because the ideas that support it are so flawed and it's frustrating that people can't understand that or pretend that they don't (the reddit thread itself is irrelevant because you know that people out there will claim sincerely that 16-year-olds can't consent to sex. I remember this episode of Boston Public where they were having this ridiculous, 'deeply sophisticated intellectual' debate about whether or not there might be some rare cases when a 15-year-old could in fact consent to sex with a high school senior because exceptions for statutory rape could apparently be made under the law under some circumstances and it's hard not to feel self-righteous when there are people who would contest 15-year-olds being able to consent or treat the question of whether or not they can like some seriously complicated 'philosophical issue.' Do these people not remember being 15, honestly?).

if these people genuinely believe deep down that AMSC is inherently harmful, why do they so often have to separate it when making these kinds of comments? Sometimes you'll see the same thing parroted and there won't be a distinction, however the separation is noted often enough that it paints a picture of a wider scale cognitive dissonance.

Would you mind clarifying what you meant by this? It's probably just that I'm slow but I don't understand.

[Bookshelf]

if these people genuinely believe deep down that AMSC is inherently harmful, why do they so often have to separate it when making these kinds of comments? Sometimes you'll see the same thing parroted and there won't be a distinction, however the separation is noted often enough that it paints a picture of a wider scale cognitive dissonance.

Would you mind clarifying what you meant by this? It's probably just that I'm slow but I don't understand.

The separation makes me think it's possible that there's a separation in their mind that they are suppressing. Many people who say something like this will say "as long as it's not harmful and it's between adults". The core anti argument is that if it's not between two adults, it's harmful inherently. Therefore, "as long as it's not harmful" should assume it's between adults. When someone separates them in dialogue by complete accident, I think it could mean that they haven't fully internalized that there's inherent harm, and it's a front they're putting up.

It's common enough that I feel there's a greater number of people who don't truly believe to their core that AMSC is harmful, and that makes it much more likely that a lot of hate towards MAPs is performative or bigoted for more mundane reasons ("ew icky").

[John_Doe]

if these people genuinely believe deep down that AMSC is inherently harmful, why do they so often have to separate it when making these kinds of comments? Sometimes you'll see the same thing parroted and there won't be a distinction, however the separation is noted often enough that it paints a picture of a wider scale cognitive dissonance.

Would you mind clarifying what you meant by this? It's probably just that I'm slow but I don't understand.

The separation makes me think it's possible that there's a separation in their mind that they are suppressing. Many people who say something like this will say "as long as it's not harmful and it's between adults". The core anti argument is that if it's not between two adults, it's harmful inherently. Therefore, "as long as it's not harmful" should assume it's between adults. When someone separates them in dialogue by complete accident, I think it could mean that they haven't fully internalized that there's inherent harm, and it's a front they're putting up.

It's common enough that I feel there's a greater number of people who don't truly believe to their core that AMSC is harmful, and that makes it much more likely that a lot of hate towards MAPs is performative or bigoted for more mundane reasons ("ew icky").

I think I understand but, to be fair, people are sometimes redundant in their wording (I might say something like 'felt emotional well-being' or 'emotional harm,' for example, which I see as redundant) or they might want to clarify that they think it's necessarily harmful if it's not between adults or harm might not be the only thing that they're concerned with (not only do we have different ideas about what constitutes harm but not all ethics revolve around harm reduction alone. In fact, most people seem to think that harm is morally more or less significant under conditions that have nothing to do with the nature of harm). I could see how what you're saying might be true at least circumstantially though.

One thing I didn't mention yesterday is that some people might concede that AMSC isn't necessarily harmful but see it as high-risk for age-related reasons so even if a minor here or there comes out unscathed, they might feel as though it's like playing Russian roulette. I will never be the one to try and assure anyone that consensual sex can't ultimately be harmful for a wide variety of reasons (as in it can't lead to harm even if it's beneficial or neutral in the moment, I don't think it's 'ultimately' harmful in the sense that the physical act is itself 'harmful' regardless of whether or not it cause emotional distress); although traveling in any moving vehicle is not without serious risk, but I don't understand why it would be especially risky for fundamentally age-related reasons, for the reasons I mentioned (I'm not convinced that some form of erotic contact would be especially risky for prepubescent children in a society with no anti-pedophilia stigma for them to internalize but with adolescents who have a menstrual cycle or produce sperm, their bodies are physiologically wired to be sexual- to 'need' it, and while it might sound brutal I don't think there's a greater imperative to spare adolescents sexual regret than there is to do the same for legal adults). If many people are brutally honest, I think they'd have to concede that their preoccupation with 'exploitation' has nothing to do with harm; certainly not felt emotional distress which is what I think is harmful, but even a lot of what other people think is sexually inappropriate might not have anything to do with what they would normally accept as 'harmful.'

We're generally not out in the open about the fact that, aside from shame (which can primarily be traced to internalizing sex-negative attitudes), the primary cause of sexual regret; if we're talking about people you're on friendly terms with or who treat you with respect, is probably disgust but framing the injustice ('sexual exploitation' in the form of 'statutory rape,' age-gap relationships, porn and sex work, being a 'womanizer,' etc.) around disgust completely changes the nature of the grievance. It's the same thing with sex work. The people who advocate against it or 'promiscuity' don't seem to appreciate that their judgement is rooted in a completely subjective concept of dignity, as in it degrades someone to engage in such degenerate behavior regardless of how they're emotionally affected by it ('undignified' behavior is the kind of behavior you ought to be ashamed of regardless of whether or not you are). They think it has nothing to do with their own personal attitudes about sex and what it means, it's just this obvious thing to everyone that you couldn't respect a woman who is sexually open or engages in sex work or she couldn't respect herself etc.