What counts as "pro-contact"?

[TayFerret]

There are some nuances regarding what people might consider pro-contact. The way I think of it, there are at least two different possibilities for what it could mean:

One, the less radical definition, is that consensual AMSC (adult-minor sexual contact; I'm still getting used to that term) is inherently good/neutral, but should only be practiced in a society where it's culturally accepted so it won't cause indirect/iatrogenic harm.

Two, the more radical definition, is that consensual AMSC is okay even in current societies where it's considered immoral, and can be done secretly despite the risk of harm after being discovered, or harm from sexual taboos and social pressure.

I'm not sure which one I agree with. I wouldn't disagree with either too harshly. But I consider both to be pro-contact.

What do you think? Are there people who identify as NOMAPs/anti-contact, but are actually taking what I would call the less radical pro-contact stance?

[terminally_unique]

Contact ideology is more of a spectrum than a binary. Even if anti-contact MAPS do not openly advocate for lowering or abolishing the age of consent, they often have an opinion on what constitutes a "child" and what constitutes "contact" from an ethical perspective.

I consider myself anti-contact, but I recognize that certain forms of contact can be more harmful, less harmful, or even harmless depending on the age of the child in question. It's more of a grey area than I acknowledged when I first joined the community.

[Harlan]

I think that Instead of constant arguments about contact and attempts to reconcile oneself with the current puritanical morality MAP community should put the "Pro-choice" position first. This is something that can unite both camps, those who are "Pro-contact" and those who are "Anti-contact".

It is choice that makes us free and this is what all MAPs want, for minors to have the right to choose and be able to choose whether to give or not give consent. Currently, minors do not have this right and the age of consent law does not really work because it ignores or limits the right to choose.

[bravolima]

i believe minors should be able to choose wether to experiment in a sexual way. boys can feel horny from a early age and should be able to express themselves in a sexual way with a willing partner of either sex without any age limitations. i dont sit on the fence, i am on the pro contact side.

[propedpparents]

Definately Pro-c. They say life begins at the changing table. We agree. Can we please raise the next generation to be sex positive?

[John_Doe]

I guess I lean toward the first definition of pro-contact.

My position is that child-adult sex itself is inherently neutral; it's good insofar as it's pleasurable (for both or either party) and bad insofar as it causes felt emotional distress. The sexual happiness of both children and pedophiles/'pedo-curious' adults does or would have intrinsic value even if it should be weighed against risks and costs. Anti-pedo. adults who want to experience sexual pleasure themselves make a completely arbitrary distinction between the value of their sexual happiness and the value of the 'hypothetical' sexual pleasure of children in scenarios where they would enjoy sexual intimacy with adults (although, again, they should weigh the value of children's sexual happiness against risks and costs and doing that might justify being anti-contact in practical scenarios, but not on principle. It's also obvious to me that there's nothing inherent to child-adult sex that must cause, or even prime children to feel, emotional distress in all theoretically plausible scenarios, there are practical real-world scenarios where children could enjoy sexual intimacy with adults without long-term trauma even if risk aversion justifies discouraging it all just to be on the safe side. I'm not convinced that there would be an age-related reason to assume a high risk of harm to children being sexually intimate with adults in a world without the stigma/taboo to internalize but I am open to arguments to the contrary).

It's interesting to note that from an anti-suffering point of view that doesn't recognize the inherent value of happiness (I think this position is incoherent because happiness and suffering are the same thing in reverse, a statement about one is a statement about the other), child-adult sex could be useful in minimizing sexual frustration but the ideal would be a lack of sexual desire that could be frustrated to begin with (I partly agree with the Buddhists, positive desires are a big part of why we suffer apart from poor health or certain sensory experiences that are aversive. Sexual frustration, grief, boredom, shame/humiliation, loneliness, etc. only exist because we desire happiness or some positive state of affairs. Physical pain, by contrast, isn't caused by valuing something that is absent). From a pro-happiness point of view, even one that appreciates real-world risk and practical realities, the ideal would be for children to be sexually active simply because sex is one of the most basic sources of pleasure that sentient animals have. If a child and an adult are attracted to each other, I by default want them to be free to act on their attraction until I have reason to think that freedom will cause unnecessary suffering. I think people can argue against child-adult sex in practice in a good faith way but I can't accept stigmatizing the sexual interest in children and minors itself (when felt by adults, or people who are children/minors themselves) or child/minor-adult sex on principle. I genuinely don't understand why fantasy child-adult sex where the child doesn't suffer as a result should bother anyone (assuming the adult values the child's happiness and isn't reducing them to an object of his or her sexual pleasure but valuing someone's happiness is perfectly compatible with being sexually attracted to them and the moral error in reducing someone to an object of your own feelings is in de-valuing their happiness/suffering, whether or not you are attracted to them is irrelevant to that).

Harlan,

I am not pro-choice on principle. I don't think we should allow a child to consent to something that we have reason to believe will cause them unnecessary pain. On principle, that applies to adults as well. We should consider the harm paternalism can cause (the frustration of a desire for autonomy, as well as a desire for the specific things that people want, is inherently painful, for one. We also shouldn't take for granted that we understand what's in someone else's long-term best interests better than they do). I would love to see more mainstream libertarians and anarchists speak out against age of consent laws and the idea of child-adult sex as 'statutory rape' (which I see as incoherent because, for the millionth time; not that I ever get tired of saying this, the absence of consent=/=against one's will. If you can't consent, because of cognitive underdevelopment and not even the inability to communicate one's preference, the choice has to be made on your behalf, one way or the other). I actually don't ultimately care whether or not children can meaningfully 'consent' to sex as long as one doesn't have an active desire to avoid sexual intimacy with an adult in any given scenario and it won't cause them long-term harm for whatever other reasons. I wish that libertarians, pan-hedonists like me and sex-positive people were all ideologically consistent in terms of what their worldview implies when it comes to the child-adult sex issue (there are probably other religious/philosophical views that allow for child-adult sex despite adherents not wanting to be brutally honest about this or not realizing it. I'm sure Islam allows for men to marry teens and even pre-teens and some Muslims realize this. Rebekah in the Bible was 14 when she married 26-year-old Isaac. Mary, the mother of Jesus himself, was likely 12-14 when she gave birth to him but I suspect that many Christians would try to rationalize this away or respond vaguely that 'the times were different' even though there's no evidence that the god of Abraham opposes men marrying young teens. Afrocentrics would probably do this as well, teenage brides were probably not an issue in most traditional African cultures, and I'm not saying that we should accept an ethical principle merely because it was the norm in the cultures/societies our ancestors lived in, but the point is that some ethno/cultural nationalists might romanticize African culture or whatever pre-colonial non-Western culture and argue for a return to it but pick and choose when to embrace modern Western ideals despite claiming to reject Western culture). I am not coming at this from a libertarian point of view though, or even a 'sex-positive' one since I don't think that sex has inherent value, I'm 'happiness-positive' and think that everyone deserves sexual pleasure.

[Cunny Defender]

I think that Instead of constant arguments about contact and attempts to reconcile oneself with the current puritanical morality MAP community should put the "Pro-choice" position first. This is something that can unite both camps, those who are "Pro-contact" and those who are "Anti-contact".

It is choice that makes us free and this is what all MAPs want, for minors to have the right to choose and be able to choose whether to give or not give consent. Currently, minors do not have this right and the age of consent law does not really work because it ignores or limits the right to choose.

The pro-contact stance is the pro-choice stance. Not sure what is confusing you, but neither i nor anyone else has been arguing in favor of anything non-consensual

[HikerBoy12]

I have thought about the less radical stance you mentioned but never seen it put into words before. It does seem that the harm that comes from consensual contact is imposed by societal taboos. I really feel like if society didn’t put this pressure on people that they were harmed or abused because of contact and it was just accepted then the minor wouldn’t actually have any harm as a result.