Why is pedophilia so threatening to the system?

[SavannahApe]

What is so threatening about pedophilia and child sexuality that Governments,NGOs, law enforcement, Child protection groups, and special interest groups lobby for and create laws that criminalize and suppress any expression of pedophilic and child/youth sexuality?

[aeterna91]

In my opinion, it's not that it's threatening in and of itself; rather, controlling human sexuality, imposing arbitrary rules, and punishing those who don't follow them is extremely useful to those in power. Sexuality is such an important part of the human psyche that, if you control it and manage to create submissive people who obey rules about sexuality, you will also have submissive people who are more likely to obey other rules and submit to authority.

Suppressing any expression or pedophilic or youth sexuality is just the current way of doing this. But other authoritarian societies that did not enforce these rules enforced others instead, and they focused on persecuting homosexuality, sex outside of marriage, etc. In fact, it seems that in the Western world over the past few decades, the age-gap hysteria has grown in direct proportion to the decline in the persecution of homosexuality and sex outside of marriage.

[Theendoftheline]

I also might add as well that giving minors actual rights imposes a threat in and of itself. The power structure prefers those under 18 to be dependent on a guardian for everything using agiest views and practices otherwise you just have another class of citizen to worry about that could push back against bullshit which is why I feel often times minors are made to feel as stupid and helpless as possible as in many ways they are the most likely to question fucking retarded rules. So we out people of an arbitrarily higher age in charge of them to "keep em" in check so to speak, sex is just one small aspect of this and it's working GREAT right now to make especially older kids and teenagers feel like they are little babies that cannot handle anything "adult"....

[Curson]

Because it can be used to blackmail people into submission and compliance. Especially with politicians, holding beef on them makes them subservient to foreign influence and one's will.

[ReArm!]

What is so threatening about pedophilia and child sexuality that Governments,NGOs, law enforcement, Child protection groups, and special interest groups lobby for and create laws that criminalize and suppress any expression of pedophilic and child/youth sexuality?

I don't think it is. It is just as threatening as homosexuality was in the past. It's not because a government conspiracy or something that it's penalized, but because sadly humans tend to be puritan when they have an excuse. And European society has a wide history of sex puritanism that now has manifested against us. It is not something rational or utilitarian, in fact, it's mostly the opposite, an irrational reaction to taboo sexuality.

[John_Doe]

What is so threatening about pedophilia and child sexuality that Governments,NGOs, law enforcement, Child protection groups, and special interest groups lobby for and create laws that criminalize and suppress any expression of pedophilic and child/youth sexuality?

I don't think it is. It is just as threatening as homosexuality was in the past. It's not because a government conspiracy or something that it's penalized, but because sadly humans tend to be puritan when they have an excuse. And European society has a wide history of sex puritanism that now has manifested against us. It is not something rational or utilitarian, in fact, it's mostly the opposite, an irrational reaction to taboo sexuality.

I wanted to say something similar. I don't think there's a calculated attempt by those in power to encourage the taboo because it serves some hyper-authoritarian agenda in whatever complicated indirect ways. I think the laws and legal policies related to child porn and statutory rape are reflections of cultural norms embodied by average, normal people.

I'm always wary when people start talking about 'those in power' as this vague, mysterious, hidden-from-view class of people with a monolithic agenda and cartoon villain sociopathy who somehow benefit from keeping the average man down so everything, when you look beyond the surface, is really some hidden attempt at controlling the masses. In a democracy, those with real political power are elected by average people whom they have to cater to in order to acquire and maintain power. Even if they tend to be wealthier and more educated they are normal people who probably care about the policies they try to implement and at least some of the people they represent even if there may or may not be some egoism mixed in there (wanting to be powerful or influential people), they are as diverse as the general population, and I don't think wealthy people who don't hold any office have the kind of power that some people think, even if they are in some meaningful ways more powerful than the general population (I'm sure they have less power than they would in a country with high corruption). Like systemic white supremacy or patriarchy there are almost never, if ever, any concrete specific examples of 'the powerful holding the poor and disenfranchised down' or if people provide some they're highly interpretive and selectively taken to indicate a trend beyond the example itself. I doubt that even the most selfish people generally care about holding the masses down, even if they're willing to step on others to succeed.

I think specificity is central to an evidence based worldview, because people often have this view of society that is hyper-'abstract' and removed from anything tangible. When people talk about the agenda of the rich and powerful, they're making claims about the actual intentions of specific individual people but they'll treat it as though it's this 'thing' out in the world or this this amorphous 'fabric of society' that's beyond individual people and their felt intentions and personal goals (I'm not articulating myself well today).

Curson,

Because it can be used to blackmail people into submission and compliance. Especially with politicians, holding beef on them makes them subservient to foreign influence and one's will

How many politicians are under someone's thumb under the threat of blackmail; threatening to expose an interest in child porn or having had an age-inappropriate relationship or whatever? Do you think that's the norm? If the people in power are the one's being blackmailed, wouldn't they have an interest in de-stigmatizing the taboo in case their skeletons are ever revealed? Are the people in power the ones doing the blackmailing? Not only does it seem implausible to me, that this a common widespread trend, but I don't think it helps explain why AMSC or an adult sexual interest in minors or minor sexuality is taboo to begin with.

Theendoftheline,

I also might add as well that giving minors actual rights imposes a threat in and of itself. The power structure prefers those under 18 to be dependent on a guardian for everything using agiest views and practices otherwise you just have another class of citizen to worry about that could push back against bullshit which is why I feel often times minors are made to feel as stupid and helpless as possible as in many ways they are the most likely to question fucking retarded rules. So we out people of an arbitrarily higher age in charge of them to "keep em" in check so to speak, sex is just one small aspect of this and it's working GREAT right now to make especially older kids and teenagers feel like they are little babies that cannot handle anything "adult"....

I have to be honest, I'm a little less swayed by the arguments from or rooted in 'youth liberation' and the idea of paternalism toward minors as inherently malevolent and anti-social. I can appreciate that paternalism and the restriction of legal rights can actually harm minors or does in practice regardless of intent but I more or less don't really accept the idea of them as an oppressed class of people, or a lower class of perceived inferiors (people do often have a contemptible view of the young, I suspect that a lot of that has to do with envy or being intimidated by them sexually, and in traditional societies there does seem to be this 'children are to be seen and not heard' mindset, the attitude might be that they have a moral obligation to obey their parents for the sake of obedience and I do think that's ageist and problematic, children and adolescents should not have a lower social status and they have in many cultures historically but I think this applies somewhat less to the modern West or at least doesn't have much to do with the AMSC taboo) or that being the drive behind the taboo. Again, I'm not explaining myself very well. Depending on what age we're talking about (and there are exceptional children and adults who are more or less independent), children are less able to care for themselves and that's a morally neutral fact even if one finds the idea of being less intelligent, competent or whatever unflattering. If you leave 7-year-olds to their own devices many of them will surprise you, but many of them will suffer and die as a result so the youth liberation angle seems to be built on the idea that autonomy is inherently valuable but from a pro-emotional welfare standpoint I think some restriction and guidance can serve a greater good and the question for me is at what age does this kind of coercive guidance tend to do more harm than good?

The problem with traditional Western patriarchy is that women as women are as rational and intellectually competent as men are, but if it really were true that men necessarily made better leaders or had greater leadership potential and this was categorical and not just a statistical tendency (children/adults should also be treated as individuals but age-related cognitive immaturity explains much of childhood dependence) then you could somewhat respect 'benevolent sexism' (with non-human animals, for example, I think humans do have some obligation to play a benevolent steward role with them. The strong should protect the weak, the clever should guide or in some relevant way aid the less intelligent, those with privilege should use their advantages to help the less fortunate and so on). This is why, even though I'm sure traditional patriarchy harmed many women, to the extent that it was more or less built on misguided gendered chivalry (i.e. denying women legal rights that were coupled with burdensome responsibilities that they couldn't or shouldn't have to handle, as women, under the dominant view) I can't necessarily see it as an injustice in the same way that feminists do (although I can appreciate that the pretense for certain restrictions might not match with how benevolent in intention they actually are, and in some areas it was a matter of genuine misogyny or a fixation with gender roles for gender roles, not women's welfare) because your duties to other people are to consider their happiness and suffering, not interfering with their autonomy should be a means to that end, so a truly misogynistic society, in my mind, would be one in which women's emotional well-being was de-valued (or their suffering actively celebrated) and I don't think anyone can honestly claim that a disregard for women's suffering as women's suffering was ever a foundational aspect of traditional Western patriarchy.

The injustice to minors when it comes to AMSC or restrictions on their sexuality or autonomy in general is rooted in the disregard for their happiness and frustration and I don't care about minor autonomy per se. It's an advantage to not be tried as an adult if you commit a crime. At least some of the protective attitudes that people have toward you, when you're young, can serve your interests.

[Scorchingwilde]

What is so threatening about pedophilia and child sexuality that Governments,NGOs, law enforcement, Child protection groups, and special interest groups lobby for and create laws that criminalize and suppress any expression of pedophilic and child/youth sexuality?

I also might add as well that giving minors actual rights imposes a threat in and of itself. The power structure prefers those under 18 to be dependent on a guardian for everything using agiest views and practices otherwise you just have another class of citizen to worry about that could push back against bullshit which is why I feel often times minors are made to feel as stupid and helpless as possible as in many ways they are the most likely to question fucking retarded rules. So we out people of an arbitrarily higher age in charge of them to "keep em" in check so to speak, sex is just one small aspect of this and it's working GREAT right now to make especially older kids and teenagers feel like they are little babies that cannot handle anything "adult"....

I'm starting to think that it's at least in part because adult/minor connections outside of officially monitored power structures and hierarchies are threatening to systems that benefit from the construction of 'life stages' as they relate to work and extraction from people (in any economic system, though globally we are under various forms of capitalism at the moment, even China is state-capitalist). Beyond the anti-pedo hysteria, there has also been a slow destruction of extended family networks and platonic connections between adults and unrelated minors that prevents sharing ideas and perspectives and the growth of critical thinking among the old and young alike. Adult MAPs and AAMs are 'dangerous' in the same way artists are - they mingle among all classes - in this case, age groups, and it makes it harder for the current people in power to impose a specific, limited, propagandized vision of history and current events onto them.