Gingedu,
I'm personally not a pedophile. I believe if there must be an age of consent, it should be puberty. Puberty is when the law can make a reasonable assumption that a person of that age may have a natural desire to seek out sex with other people. It's the only age that makes sense. But realistically there shouldn't be an age of consent. The concept itself is archaic and problematic.
I agree. I don't support statutory rape laws (even if minor/child-adult sex should be discouraged, using government coercion to guide interactions and relationships that might be harmful should be a last resort given the harm that coercion itself; especially or at least if we're talking about actual prison and not just a fine, community service or even the threat of prison, causes) but centering the age of consent around puberty seems to be, for all intents and purposes, the least arbitrary standard. It's still a problem because people start and finish puberty at different ages (it's one thing to set up a law or policy with statistical averages in mind when we don't have information about faceless crowds that will be affected but in individual cases there's no reason to enforce general rules that don't apply when we know that they don't apply and it seems strange to start imprisoning people based on whether or not we can demonstrate that their victim has started or completed puberty). People can also consent to sex without primal sexual desire (I appreciated Julia's post on page 2). I've said multiple times on this site that I'm skeptical about children under 6/7 experiencing sexual desire but both testosterone and estrogen are present in low levels from birth, apparently, so I would take the possibility seriously (I won't tell anyone who claims to have felt sexual desire at 4 that they haven't but I wonder if that could be due to early andrenarche). Sexual desire increases with puberty but it exists to some degree before then.
OnionPetal,
There is so much focus on consent to 'sex.' You know what I'd like to see? Relationships. Romance. A 9 year old and a 24 year old, holding hands in the park... Going on playdates. Giving piggybacks at the beach. Some mutual cuddling, and a kiss. And not giving a damn what other people think. What I've just described is legal in most places. But to the masses, perhaps the notion of such romance is just as shocking as the most 'obscene' sex acts. But can you tell me, is there anything really wrong with the romance I've just described?
Personally, I would not push the 'sex' reform stuff too hard, until society can see that healthy relationships can exist between age gaps. That is what society needs to see right now. The 'physical contact' stuff will make more sense later, once more people start understanding/accepting the romantic components of adult-minor relationships.
This seems to push the idea that sex is by default inappropriate unless it can be justified by romance or something wholesome/positive. I think there's some dishonesty about the 'love is love' approach because it's kind of denying the reality of primal sexual attraction. For me, affection results from sexual attraction and sexual intimacy without emotional intimacy and affection would be boring; I think most people feel similarly, but you can have one without the other. Sexual desire isn't 'love' exactly. I think hate lowers sexual desire but that doesn't necessarily contradict my point, stress lowers sexual desire and if you 'hate' a thing it causes you stress, but people can be instinctively attracted to people they dislike; people they would rather not be attracted to for that reason (even when it comes to attractions one would rather not have for reasons that have nothing to do with disliking that person, I don't think 'love' is ever involuntary in the same way. I know people will say things like, "I can't help that I'm madly in love with so and so" but I can't see myself preferring to not feel affection for someone in a completely non-sexual context or trying unsuccessfully to get rid of that feeling), so it might help ultimately if we're honest about sexual desire not being love (even though I might use the term 'sexual love,' it will probably be to contrast it with compassionate love that friendship and other platonic relationships better allow for that is rooted in relating and wanting what's best for the other person, not just seeking intimacy with them because it's pleasurable for you. 'Sexual love' can fall apart when someone's appearance starts to change or you become desensitized to them even when they're still the exact same person, compassionate love is potentially unconditional). It seems to me that the element of sexual attraction is what differentiates 'romantic' relationships from platonic ones (I know asexual romantics might take issue with that but when most people talk about 'romance,' as nebulous as the term is, I think that sexuality or physical attraction is part of what they have in mind with that word, which is probably why most people have a gendered romantic preference) so we're ultimately coming back to sex. If you abstract the sexual element from a 'romantic' relationship between an adult and a child or minor (or even just between an older adult and a younger one), most people don't have a problem with that, it's the sexual element that's controversial.
The truth is that pedophiles as pedophiles don't have to 'love' children (as in they don't necessarily, they should have sympathetic love for children but they should have sympathy/compassion for all people, I don't think a lack of sympathy + sexual attraction is especially evil), pedophilia isn't about 'loving' children. I can imagine that many pedophiles are especially primed to care about children because, again, most people want an emotional connection with their partners and physical intimacy breeds emotional intimacy and affection whether that's the goal of it or not but pedophilia is about being attracted to children. This all goes back to a point I've made in other threads about diluting a message for social acceptance to the point where you lose the core premise/principle of that message.
Bookshelf,
Yes. For the same reason five year olds can "consent" to getting in a car, which is objectively the most dangerous place for them to be at any given time in most of Europe and America given that car accidents are the #1 cause of death in children everywhere in the west except the USA, where it's #2 below guns.
It's a display of sexceptionalism to imply that sex is something that needs a vaguely defined special state of mind to be able to agree to do — especially when this same state of mind isn't needed for things that kill or physically harm children on a regular basis, like cars and fast food.
I can't find a post objecting to MAP activism that's rooted in self-interest but as long as it's coupled with a genuine egalitarian concern for the welfare of children (or others, depending on what we're talking about) I don't see a problem with self-interest. The slave was self-interested in supporting the abolition of slavery. I'm rushing now, I think I skimmed through many of the posts.
Gingedu,
But to say that a person intrinsically does not have the capcacity to give consent - that they cannot express even a basic level of control over their own body - is to reduce them to an object
I don't agree with this, to be honest. I think that children can consent but denying that, even if it actually harms them, isn't fundamentally anti-social in my view (I don't want to elaborate, no time). To really 'dehumanize' someone in a way that I find deeply objectionable is to deny their emotionality, to treat them as though they don't have feelings or to simply not care about their internal emotional world (assuming you don't actively want them to suffer). Something G@yWad69 said in another thread really stuck out to me-how if anything it's actually 'objectifying' to deny the sexuality of children, however she put it that is a problem for me because it not only denies 'a part of who they are' (it might be a little fuzzy to get into what makes us 'who we are' - our beliefs, desires, what causes us stress or happiness, etc.) but involves de-valuing children's happiness if you insist on their being asexual because it's what you want.