mskym99,
@john_doe fooling around with an infant directly plays to Jim Burton’s argument to why we shouldn’t make sexual contact with children. Everything he’s saying to me, I’d make the same argument about infants.
I initially read this as you admitting that your argument was insincere and you were playing 'devil's advocate' to show how his logic could work against him (if he's anti-contact in regards to children of any age). Is that what you were doing?
I remember agreeing with you in that other thread, the one I started, something about 'trying again later if you're up to it' (my wording) if the sex was initially a little painful but something the child was interested in. I can't remember everything you said though and I don't want to go back and check, I can't believe it's as late as it is already.
Just because we encourage a child to try something does not mean it is harmful or selfish of us.
My instincts tell me that adults, in practice, should not proposition children for sex or initiate that kind of a relationship with them. Ironically, I think this applies less to infants for some of the reasons I mentioned in my last post. On principle there's nothing wrong with trying to get someone to have sex with you, or even just encouraging them to consider sex with someone, but it's not hard to imagine how that could go wrong and lead to exactly the kind of scenarios that antis are worried about. I think adults should care about not making children uncomfortable (obviously good parenting and 'leadership' can require pushing someone out of their comfort zone or regrettably causing them some stress but I can't see that justification practically applying to sex even if it works when it come to discipline, working on their confidence maybe, etc. I don't want to engage in sex exceptionalism, but I think we should consider the emotion of disgust, maybe even the awkwardness of some sexual encounters, or even something like genital stimulation when one's libido is low and their body has had enough, etc. If that's grasping at straws because the time needed to recover is temporary, some kind of 'disgust' is something to consider).
We aren’t telling them to drink bleach or put their hands in fire.
No, but unwanted sex (i.e. that someone, child or adult, might feel 'obligated' to engage in) can cause emotional distress. Even at-the-time desired sex can ultimately cause some long-term emotional distress. I never want to ignore possible risks or costs with child-adult sex (although in the absence of the current societal stigma I'm not convinced that children would suffer for age-related reasons), the hill that I'm dying on is that there's nothing inherently wrong with child-adult sex, children would benefit from sexual pleasure even if it should be weighed against risks and costs; they are harmed by nothing other than felt emotional distress and there are logically coherent scenarios in which a child would not suffer as a result of sexual intimacy with an adult.
I wanted to get to the absolute core of why people actually think this is wrong.
I think this (the absolute core) applies to what seems to be your position on infants though. There's the obvious difference of consent (I believe an 8-year-old consent, I accept that an infant can't) but I don't think consent is what it's about ultimately. Again, infants are not rational agents; they can't 'consent' to
anything, and there are many scenarios in which we actively de-value children's autonomy for their own benefit and even for selfish reasons. I think that what it ultimately come down to is sex negativity or the idea that sex is inappropriate by default without a justification. I can imagine some forms of infant-adult sexual contact that wouldn't necessarily cause pain (G@yWad reasonably outlined the difference between full-on penetration and gentle rubbing or fondling that will inevitably occur just with the normal contact between caregivers and infants; bathing them, changing diapers, etc.) so if it doesn't cause them pain, what's the problem? Even if you reject hedonism, you can't cover this from a desire-fulfillment point of view because the contact isn't necessarily unwanted and infants aren't rational agents so it's not a question of violating their autonomy. Is it just the physical contact itself that's bad even if it's not injurious and doesn't lead to health problems?
Things like this is what pushes the legal age to 16-18 in states.
I don't think dick size is the cause for this. I could be wrong, I'm no expert on female anatomy, but I don't think penetrative sex would be an issue for the average 13-year-old girl (apparently women's first time normally hurts regardless of age).
. Your writing style never fails to bring a smile on my face. Almost spilled my cup of tea all over my keyboard reading this.