What are your biggest pet peves in the youth Liberation movement?

[Theendoftheline]

What do you all agree with and disagree with? Short op post but I'd like to hear various takes on this subject in terms of age cut offs, what in your opinion is acceptable and what's unacceptable.

[weird.organisms]

I don't like how people view it as youth supremacy. We're not trying to make a real life version of Children of The Corn or Emperor Tomato ketchup here.

[Meiwaku_Mailing_Girl]

Most are MAPmisiatic. remember there used to be a mod on the youth lib subreddit who said pedophiles should be executed—mind you this person was educated enough to know what pedophiles actually are.

[Theendoftheline]

Most are MAPmisiatic. remember there used to be a mod on the youth lib subreddit who said pedophiles should be executed—mind you this person was educated enough to know what pedophiles actually are.

OH so you just mean he wasn't one of the countless idiots who think that being into any teenager under 18 makes you a pedo?

[John_Doe]

I don't really have pet peeves about it that really bother me but if you're talking about the 'MAP' movement, some of the things I disagree with (I'm not putting a lot into this right now):

- the 'moralization' of an attraction to children, i.e. the idea that child-attracted adults have this unique deep compassion for children that antis can't relate to because they're sexually attracted to them.

-related to the previous point, some of the over-the-top bad faith presumptuous characterizations of antis and what drives them (off the top of my head, I've seen this mostly from weird.organisms). It's clear to me that the anti-AMSC on principle stance isn't rooted in sympathy or altruistic concern for children (or at the very least, it's not rooted in a concern for their emotional distress or happiness which is what actually harms and benefits people. Islamic terrorists might believe they're doing good in seeking to genocide Jews or non-believers but they aren't actually doing good, more to the point they're not trying to do what is actually good, so they deserve no commendation for their intentions. Likewise, it doesn't mean anything to me if someone believes that children are intrinsically harmed by sexual contact, with adults or other children, and wants to spare them that out of concern for what they see as their welfare. What actually wins my approval is valuing children's happiness and wanting them to be free from emotional distress. The anti-AMSC dogma is irrational even under a perspective that rejects hedonism as a theory of welfare, though. If hedonism is true then only suffering is inherently harmful, AMSC might cause suffering circumstantially but AMSC and emotional distress are two different things, opposing AMSC to minimize child suffering is not the same as opposing AMSC for its own sake. Under the desire-fulfillment theory of welfare the dogma is irrational because we can imagine scenarios where children want the physical contact itself even if you just insist that they don't understand the 'meaning' behind it; in fact, the d_f point of view rejects the idea that anything has intrinsic value or meaning, the whole point of the concept is that it's up to us to decide what's good/bad or beneficial/harmful, so adults can't just decide for children what sex is supposed to mean for them and then assert that they can't understand that universal truth. As I've said a million times, even a genuine inability to meaningfully consent wouldn't mean that someone has a desire to avoid it and wanting to minimize future regret felt by someone who doesn't currently want to avoid something is a hedonistic concern. Lastly, if sexual contact itself is inherently harmful, as an object list theory of value that has nothing to do with what people subjectively want or how they feel emotionally, it is harmful for all people, not just children. It can't be fine for adults but inherently harmful to children alone. I am sorry for the extremely long run-off point), but I don't think they're necessarily these narcissistic control freaks who want power and want to be see as the heroes in the story etc. etc.

-some of the conspiracy theories (e.g. pedophobia is pushed by the government to keep the masses in check or for some self-interested reason).

-the idea that eliminating the AMSC taboo will fix the world on some deep level and human society will become a paradise on Earth (no one has actually said this but I've sometimes interpreted this basic attitude, like there will be less school shootings if children and teens could just be shown love through sexual intimacy from adults etc.).

-some co-opting of leftist cultural Marxism in terms of pedophiles and 'MAP's being the new marginalized group (although, to be fair, unlike gays, blacks/p.o.c and women in the West, discrimination against pedophiles really does seem to be the norm, and there is arguably some systemic discrimination against them).

-the idea of pedophiles as generally morally pure, this continues from my first point but it goes beyond benevolence toward children.

-the demonization of 'antis' although, to be fair, when people talk about them they probably mean the ones who are violent, sadistic or hateful and not just those misguided but relatively compassionate people who see pedophilia as a 'mental illness' and pedophiles as being in need of love and help, and then there might be some who are tolerant toward pedophilia as a physical attraction in itself but oppose contact in practice on principle, or maybe even circumstantially (which would actually include me, children internalizing the idea that they were exploited in retrospect and suffering for that reason is something to consider. I admit, I'm not sure where I would draw the line since legal adults later come to regret sexual encounters largely due to feminist and leftist thinking).

-the 'pretense' of over-emphasizing youth liberation as opposed to the interests of minor-attracted adults (to be fair, I do think that children and adolescents could benefit from eliminating the taboo, and from a libertarian standpoint it would be unjust to prevent them from sleeping with who they want to, but exclusively framing it as a youth liberation issue is somewhat dishonest to me, maybe I'm wrongly projecting the idea of it being a youth liberation issue ALONE on to people. Children/adolescents and the legal adults who are attracted to them are not entirely in the same boat, the stigma more or less condemns the adults, not the minors, and while both are deprived of relationships that they could benefit from only the adults will suffer the legal consequences if they pursue those relationships and are caught).

-I can't really relate to some of the group mindset but I won't say it's entirely wrong. I've heard 'our people' in reference to people who are just attracted to minors (and I think the user, or at least one user, who said it had an age of attraction that started at 12 which seems completely normal to me, even if it's taboo for men to admit to being attracted to pubescent-looking 12-year-olds). I think values trump attraction in terms of relating to people.

This might not be very constructive but I hope it will be understandable if I say that I would be excited by a pro-MAP movement based on pan-hedonism, rather than libertarianism, vague 'sex positivity,' vague 'youth liberation,' etc. Then again, I don't think I could stomach the hypocrisies of people who share my basic worldview (only one example being the hedonists who oppose de-stigmatizing pedophilia/minor-attraction and I wouldn't be surprised if most of them would bend over backward to try to mesh hedonism with conventional attitudes on the topic. Even if some of them oppose AMSC in practice what all ideologically consistent hedonists must agree on is that a) AMSC should be valued insofar as it can be a source of happiness for people, and unlike sadistic pleasure, that happiness doesn't necessarily stem from not valuing the happiness of others so unlike devaluing the sexual pleasure of minors there's nothing inherently immoral about wanting to have sex with them in fantasy scenarios where the intimacy would be mutually pleasurable and lead to no long-term trauma and b) AMSC is bad only insofar as it causes suffering or deprives people of happiness, which is to say that it's not inherently bad). I couldn't have sex with minors anyway given my erectile dysfunction, being conventionally unattractive etc. but it would still mean something to me if I could connect that movement to my unbearable body dysphoria, sexual frustration, mid-life despair or general suffering in life. What I'm trying to say is, just a preoccupation with the physical act of 'sex' or the freedom to engage in it or even the de-stigmatization of age-gap sex in a vacuum is shallow to me unless I can attach it to a broader principle that applies to other concerns I have (so what if I could have sex with a 15-year-old or even not be harshly critiqued for it if I have some chronically painful medical condition to deal with or don't know where my next meal is coming from or I'm facing eviction or I can't sleep/know a moment of peace because of tinnitus or I'm dealing with the death of a loved or or I live in a war zone or I have no privacy or a million other issues, never mind their not being any 15-year-olds I'm attracted to who would want to have sex with me).

[Kierkegaard]

How about its non-existence? The youth liberation movement isn't really a thing anymore. It was, briefly, in the mid-to-late 20th century in some places, but there's no such movement which still exists today as far as I'm aware. I don't consider a handful of extremely obscure tumblr blogs to constitute a "movement". No disrespect to the people operating those blogs, posting about stuff online is better than nothing I guess, but let's be real here. Impactful social movements require real world organizing and public visibility. If you're passionate about youth liberation your goal right now should be thinking about what steps are required for an actual movement to take shape in the first place, not deluding yourself into thinking that a movement already exists.