Learning Good, Predation Bad.
Irradiated by LabRat
I swear I sometimes post about things that aren’t reactions to Peter. He’s just good at getting reactions out of me that don’t fit in a blogger comment box character limit and/or arguably ought to be posts of their own anyway.
Today’s- or really, yesterday’s, I wanted to do this then but there was no time- is the problem of pedophilia, a discussion of both the issues in general and specifically of a group whose mission is to re-examine the DSMV with respect to pedophilia- with input from pedophiles themselves. I’ll quote from the group’s description of their immediate goals:
This day-long symposium will facilitate the exchange of ideas among researchers, scholars, mental health practitioners, and minor-attracted persons who have an interest in critical issues surrounding the entry for pedophilia in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association. The symposium will address critical issues in the following areas:
Scientific and philosophical issues related to the DSM entry on pedophilia and/or hebephilia
Effects of the DSM entry on stigma, availability of mental health services, and research
Ways in which minor-attracted persons can be involved in the DSM 5 revision process
I’d recommend reading Peter’s whole post, as I usually do with these things as well as sampling at least some of the other linked articles and reactions, because most of mine are based in the context therein and I’d like to get through this without having to recap all of it. I’ll try to provide what I can, though.
Point one I wanted to address has already been made in the comments, which is that pedophiles and child molesters aren’t necessarily the same thing. Peter says:
My huge problem with the way B4U-ACT talks about this problem is that they appear to deliberately adopt a neutral, non-judgmental approach to those with pedophilic tendencies. For example, their second principle states:
2. INDIVIDUALITY. We realize that other than their sexual and emotional feelings toward minors, minor-attracted people do not have any particular characteristics in common. They vary as do all people, and it is inaccurate to claim that all or most minor-attracted people have certain beliefs or personalities, exhibit psychopathology or specific personality disorders, or engage in particular behaviors. We do not assume that they abuse children, that they are prone to deception or violence, or that their sexual feelings are more compulsive or uncontrollable than other people’s. We see clients as individuals, not as a category.
If someone has never committed an offense against children, that’s not an inappropriate attitude. If such individuals can be helped to control their wrong attractions, that’s a good and healthy thing for society. My problem is that I don’t see B4U-ACT actually coming out and saying, bluntly, that such attractions are wrong.
And while my visceral response is to entirely agree with him, I can’t really nod my head and agree that the state of being attracted to children is, without action, either inherently wrong or morally the same as acting on the attraction. Most of my principles- the ones that have been actively examined, anyway- are based around the idea that what makes your actions right or wrong is what you DO, not what you think. We may commit murder in our minds a thousand times in a day, but until you actually raise your hand to your fellow man, you haven’t done anything wrong- something maybe for you to be concerned about with regards to your mental health, or serve as a warning sign that problems are going unaddressed, maybe, but nothing that would even remotely give, say, the state the right to restrain you.
Part of the problem as I see it with this is we really have no clue at the moment how many people who are attracted to children actually molest children, if that number is “all of them”, “almost all”, “some”, or “a minority”. We know what the recidivism rates are for people who go to prison for child molestation, but if you presented me with any other psychological issue, or even a generic unnamed issue, and told me that our sole source of data on people with the issue was collected from prisoners, I’d say we had a massive sampling problem and truly understood very little on whatever the issue was.
Realistically speaking, we’re not going to get a lot of data or understanding either if we insist that part of the mandated protocol for a patient admitting attraction to children is to immediately get to work reinforcing that they are worthless evil people. Call me a liberal, but I think the “child molestors are the worst kind of monster there is” meme is well-established in our culture, to the point that the easiest way for a prosecutor to get just about every kind of judicial protection for suspects overlooked is for a child to be involved and the allegations to be sexual. I think it speaks to the degree of our cultural hatred for people who molest children that I’m seriously worried typing this paragraph that someone is going to derail the discussion by either accusing me of being a pedophile myself or that I think we’re too hard on actual child molestors.
One very troubling trend I’ve noticed in the people speaking out against this group is comparing them and their goals to earlier movements to destigmatize other things that used to be viewed as sexual deviancy disorders- like homosexuality. The argument seems to be that first the psychiatrists were willing to reconsider the idea that being gay wasn’t a horrible disease, and then the next thing you know we have gay marriage and now we’re going to have accepted pedophiles too!
For a given value of “correct”, they’re right; actual child molestors would very much like this outcome and have done a fair bit of comparing their own plight to that of homosexuals, which I would link you to if I wanted to open that particular portal to Hell. The process from electroshock therapy for having bad thoughts about the same sex to two old women getting married in New York did indeed begin with depathologizing first, and then to a process of greater acceptance through exposure. Pedophiles who want to be free to act on their desires and people who fear that very scenario can easily see the parallels.
The problem with basing any kind of argument on that is that it’s a self-weakening one; if you argue that it’s bad for us to not react with total hatred and revulsion and immediate criminalization to pedophilia because we stopped reacting with total hatred and revulsion and criminalization to homosexuality and then homosexuality became OK, that immediately begs the question of why that’s such a terrible thing if the only obstacle is our collective energy to maintain visceral disgust.
The difference between molesting children and homosexual sex isn’t “we only still disapprove of one of them”, it’s that one of them is sexual activity that one party is incapable of consenting to, and one is almost always completely consensual sexual activity between two adults. (And when it’s not, it’s rape, which amazingly enough is still illegal and disapproved of.) Sex with a child and sex with an adult of your own gender isn’t just two flavors of “deviant sex”, it’s one flavor of sex versus rape. This is not a distinction that should be left between the lines or taken as given. Actual child molestors would love it if we did that more often, because it leaves them all the more room to paint themselves as merely misunderstood people facing visceral and unfair societal revulsion.
I agree with Peter that some things are wrong-just-wrong and moral relativism is a hazard, but I think it’s extremely important to retain our moral compasses to be capable at all points of articulating WHY something is wrong. And if all you CAN articulate for why both homosexuality and pedophilia are wrong and we should never have stopped violently hating the former is “because God thinks so”- you are welcome to your opinion and may even be right, but this is a secular society when it comes to policy, as well as psychiatry, and the argument will quickly wither.
All that said, Peter is entirely right to see the danger in pedophiles who want to freely act out their desires using the same social structure to advance that goal, because they absolutely will and if you know where on the internet to look*, you’ll find them doing just that. He’s right to use the Catholic church as an example of an institution that lost sight of the scope of the wrong done by people who molest children, and who acted to shelter them and thus opened thousands more children to predation. Those are real threats; we as a society, and maybe as a species, have a huge problem separating understanding from empathy from sympathy, and psychologists are not immune.
I don’t know whether B4U-ACT is going to be a group that opens inroads into a corner of psychology where we have very little- I would say dangerously little- understanding or not. In order to do that successfully a group that wanted to try would have to have and maintain perfect credibility, and reading some of the linked articles I’m not at all sure that’s going to be them. If not the only thing they’ll achieve is making people more vigilant to the threat of being lulled by predatory pedophiles.
One more point I wanted to make, though it doesn’t flow all that cleanly with the rest: working to maintain the attitude that pedophiles are HORRIFIC MONSTERS may not actually protect children as much as we think it will. It may serve as a clumsy bulwark against moral relativism, but one of the most commonly cited reasons given by victims of abuse, perhaps especially sexual abuse, for why they didn’t report earlier (or at all) was because they didn’t recognize it as abuse, because their abuser was someone known to them and maybe loved and they couldn’t be an abuser because they weren’t a monster. This is also how real predators manage to get actual protection from their neighbors and friends even after their victim reports- good old so-and-so couldn’t have diddled that little girl, he’s our friend and neighbor and he’s not a monster, we’d know if he was a monster. She’s probably lying, maybe someone encouraged her to lie, someone bad. We don’t want to believe we could have harbored, related to, bonded with a monster, and the lengths of psychological protection we’ll go to in order to avoid facing that can sometimes only be shattered by staggering evidence.
I don’t think I can see a way where we will cleanly thread the needle going forward- there are too many hazards, both in ourselves and in the way our society works- but I don’t think the position we’re in now is a healthy or harmless one either.
*I have a very bad habit of turning over digital rocks.
August 19th, 2011 at 7:36 pm
A very good point, LabRat. Thoughtcrime is a terrible thing. Once you can criminalize thoughts and not deeds, you’ve opened a tremendous can of worms. And if you make having bad thoughts as bad as having bad deeds, might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.
August 19th, 2011 at 9:18 pm
Agree. That was the first thing that popped into my head reading his post.
Equating statutory rape with homosexuality in terms of evil was a victorian mental perversion, and not what should be the norm.
The only thing a secular society should be concerned with is “is there a victim?”.
In the case of pedophilia, the answer is yes.
August 19th, 2011 at 9:25 pm
“Sex with a child and sex with an adult of your own gender isn’t just two flavors of “deviant sex”, it’s one flavor of sex versus rape.”
Ridiculous. Sex with a child is sex with a child. “Consent” is a trap, because its a legal term: no one signs a contract before making love.
Rape is rape: is when someone does not want to have sex and is forced to do so. But sex with a child can be consensual the same way any other sex can be consensual.
Consensual sex means two people that want to experience pleasure together, be it two adults, an adult and a child, two children… Saying that sex with a child is always “rape” is completely absurd because it ignores the desires and the longings of the child.
Depriving children from their sexual rights are what child molesters and society at large do: the former force their sexuality with the child, the latter deprive kids from their sexual impulses. Child sexual abuse is also saying that children cannot have sex: you are taken their sexual rights away.
August 19th, 2011 at 9:36 pm
@Kristopher:
“In the case of pedophilia, the answer is yes.”
The case of pedophilia is exactly the same as homosexuality: it can be consensual or not.
Of course, many cases of adult-child sex are rape. But some others not. Saying that sex with someone is rape because the law says it so, its absurd.
Let me ask you this: If a child and an adult wants to have sex, where do you see the victim?
Where do you see the harm from having sex?
Whats the intrinsic harm that comes from having sex? Can you tell me that? Whats intrinsically bad about having sex, even as a child? Is sex a bad thing?
http://www.just-well.dk/CrimeWithoutVictims/crime_without_victims.html
August 19th, 2011 at 9:37 pm
Klein, you couldn’t possibly be more wrong. A child has no ‘sexual rights’ whatsoever, just as its rights in law are exercised on its behalf by its parent(s) and/or guardian(s). A child does not have the intellectual or emotional maturity to understand what sex is, and therefore cannot give informed consent to it.
If your comment isn’t just a trollish attempt to stir things up, and really represents what you think, then I have no hesitation in regarding you as at least a potential danger to children.
August 19th, 2011 at 9:45 pm
Klein, you couldn’t possibly be more wrong. A child has no ‘sexual rights’ whatsoever, just as its rights in law are exercised on its behalf by its parent(s) and/or guardian(s).
No, they dont have it, thats whats wrong about society: Children dont have sexual rights.
” A child does not have the intellectual or emotional maturity to understand what sex is, and therefore cannot give informed consent to it.”
So according to your logic, its wrong to take them to the doctor, because they dont understand what a doctor is and therefore cannot give informed consent to it. Or practicing a sport.
Your logic: “child does not have the intellectual or emotional maturity to understand what “X” is, and therefore cannot give informed consent to it.” —> X is wrong
Well, children does not have the intellectual or emotional maturity to understand what going to the doctor is, and therefore cannot give informed consent to it, therefore children going to the doctor is wrong.
The question here is if “X” is harmful or not. I dont think that sex or going to the doctor are harmful in any way.
August 19th, 2011 at 10:45 pm
Ooookay, I was expecting “YOU AREN’T THINKING OF THE CHILRUN, BET YOUR A PEDO”. Got the other kind, I see.
I’m not going to do a point-by-point breakdown, because you only have a single point: the assertion that a) children have “sexual rights” society at large is currently busily violating, presumably to both their detriment and that of the poor dewy-eyed adults who would otherwise be making sweet innocent love to them, and b) sex with children doesn’t harm them how dare you that is ridiculous.
For one, children don’t have sexual rights. Rights are an adult concept. Most of the legal rights children do have- and you seem quite hung up on the concept of legal versus other kind- are centered around protecting their future powers of decision once they become adults. Their other rights relate limitations on the powers their adult guardians have over them. Their adult guardians do have the power to override their opinions on doctors, which for the first years of their life tend to distill to NONONONOO OWWWWW WHY. They do not extend to hurting them for no reason and to no point, or having sex with them. I find it profoundly disturbing that you would compare taking a kid to the doctor to having sex with them precisely BECAUSE the former is something they can’t possibly understand, often painful and very frightening for them, and yet essential for them, whereas having sex with them is… something they can’t possibly understand, also painful and frightening if a sufficiently young child, and something that is essential only for the gratification of the molesting adult.
Children DON’T have adult responsibilities, because they are incapable of fully understanding and upholding them, and likewise they do not have an adult’s version of rights for the same reason. This is why they cannot enter contracts except under byzantine constructs designed to protect them until they DO have both the legal and emotional decision-making power. This is also why they cannot consent- we call cases in which an adult that is mentally impaired and facing a massive power differential with their “partner’ rape, for exactly the same reasons we call adult-child sex rape. A caregiver who has sex with a developmentally disabled or demented patient is a rapist, as is someone who has sex with someone who is too drunk, high, or otherwise chemically addled to consent.
As for “call sex harmful how dare you”- well yeah, it can be. It can lead to pregnancy, which can damn well kill a child too young to bear their own child to term, it can cause disease ranging from annoying to fatal, and it can cause emotional fallout even in adults theoretically old enough to know exactly what they’re doing. Pretending there ISN’T any minefield there isn’t anti-sex, it’s living in this dimension on the same planet as the rest of us.
Please read the commenting policy here, linked in the “nuts and bolts” section above. I am generally more inclined to counter arguments I find loathsome with counter-speech, but this is not a free soapbox or a democracy- if you adopt the “I have more time to comment than you have time to respond, therefore I win” battle plan, you WILL be shut down. I am quite sure this will not come as a first-time shock to you.
August 20th, 2011 at 12:24 am
Trying to salvage some content here: It seems to me that there are two (related) components to the “can kids consent” issue, whether they “consent” to sex or anything else. One is developmental: at what point does any particular child have the capacity to understand the consequences of an action well enough to evaluate and assent to them? I suspect the most charitable reading of Klein’s posts is “sooner than you think”, which I doubt anyone else will be willing to accept without some well-respected citations.
The second component is, as LabRat alludes to, power differential. If I’m a cop and I solicit sex from someone I’ve arrested, that sex can hardly be called consensual. The threat of “I can wreck your life if you don’t do what I want” is always there, even if it goes unvoiced, even if the person with the power explicitly renounces it. As far as I’m aware, damn near every human society puts children explicitly under the authority of adults — creating an enormous and pervasive power differential. The implied threat always exists.
August 20th, 2011 at 4:59 am
Great post LabRat, to me the key point is ‘knowledgeable’ consent. Adults have that (in most cases), where children do not (in most cases). The other point I wonder about is the power/control aspect of the pedophile ‘mentality’… Controlling anyone in any fashion is a power trip for some people, and I’ve never seen that really addressed in this context. My personal belief is the pedophile is acting out their power/control fantasies in addition to sexual gratification.
August 20th, 2011 at 5:37 am
“whereas having sex with them is…
something they can’t possibly understand”,
0) That depends on the age of the child.
plus there are various levels of understanding. Its not black and white, i know “nothing” or i know “everything” (I think that not even adults know everything about sex)
A child might know that
a- he/she likes playing a sport,
b-they know how to play it,
c-they know they want to play it and that is safe
but they might not fully know the “official” rules.
“also painful ”
1) How sex can be painful? OK, intercourse might be painful, but any other kind of relationship i think it is pleasurable. Thats why they call it sex…
” and frightening if a sufficiently young child,”
2) Frightening? yes, it can be, but it depends in a lot of things, the age and the consent of the child. How can be frightening something you want to do?
” and something that is essential only for the gratification of the molesting adult.”
3) You are already assuming that is a molestation instead of proving it… How can something that is desired by both partners can be “only for the gratification of one”…?
“Children DON’T have adult responsibilities, because they are incapable of fully understanding and upholding them…”
Yes, I never said that they had them… As for the developmentally disabled, having a mental problem doesnt mean they cant possibly want to have sex.
…And about the harmfulness, yes it CAN lead to problems, perhaps I was reckless in saying that it couldnt. But most of them are not essential to sex and might, in the future, as science progresses, be avoided, like diseases and pregnancy. As for the “emotional fallout”s in a consensual relationship… I dont think that is caused by sex in itself, but rather by society’s pressure about sex. “I did it wrong”, “I wasnt good”, “what will my parents said”, etc. Things that are strange to sex in itself and that are caused by society.
August 20th, 2011 at 5:41 am
>If I’m a cop and I solicit sex from someone I’ve arrested, that sex can hardly be called consensual.
I agree. But what if the cop meets the arrested person after he/she went out of jail, they go to the bar, chat and fall in love together? Its an entirely different situation.
August 20th, 2011 at 7:11 am
If I’m understanding this correctly, the sex (hetero/homo/pedo) issue is offered as an extreme example of the more general (I would argue universal) expression of rights such as those enshrined in the US Constitution. Wherein, it has to be said, it is explicitly acknowledged that “rights” are an inherant condition to which all humans are born.
That said, and as you already noted Labrat, individual expression of one’s rights are regulated by the society we are born into. The justification for this is the protection of the society at large as well as the individual. We can argue over what makes for a better mechanism to regulate the enactment of a given individual’s rights, but one of the common arguments used is to assert a religious stipulation as justification for a legal restriction. My point is that law in the US ought to be confined to strictly secular justification and explicitly religious constraints confined to strictly religious application. Sorry Peter.
The age of legal consent in the US has changed frequently over the past couple centuries, whether nationally or at the state or local level of government. I’m not arguing for a change to the law regarding sex (or drinking for that matter - this isn’t the forum for that), just that proponents argue their position legitimately.
Religious commands have no place in secular legal discussions. Human rights are inherant to the human from birth, but we adults wrote the law and you kids don’t get to make choices for yourselves because we said so - change the rules when you become adults yourself if you wish. All human societies are subject to abuse and manipulation; they’re only as bad as they ocasionally are for as long as we are willing to accept the bad behavior instead of spending whatever form of capital required to correct the condition.
I find it profoundly disturbing that you would compare taking a kid to the doctor to having sex with them precisely BECAUSE the former is something they can’t possibly understand, often painful and very frightening for them, and yet essential for them, whereas having sex with them is… something they can’t possibly understand, also painful and frightening if a sufficiently young child, and something that is essential only for the gratification of the molesting adult.
Nice retort to the maniplative logic offered, Labrat.
August 20th, 2011 at 7:25 am
Klein: If a person is living entirely off the proceeds of another, that person is not an adult, and cannot consent to anything without the permission of the person providing said support.
Any consequences of sex will have to be carried by the adult who is providing support. Have sex with that non-adult, and I will support the adult’s right to hang your sorry ass from a lamp post.
August 20th, 2011 at 7:33 am
William The Coroner,
“A very good point, LabRat. Thoughtcrime is a terrible thing. Once you can criminalize thoughts and not deeds, you’ve opened a tremendous can of worms.”
This.
If someone who imagines having sex with a minor is the same as a child molester, than think about how many robbers, murderers, and rapists we have running loose.
I mean, hell, I killed seventeen people in traffic yesterday and I was hardly out of the house for thirty minutes…
August 20th, 2011 at 7:35 am
Societies that work recognize that young children make bad decisions continuously. They do not allow kids to trade sex for candybars, since kids have no clue that sex has long term consequences that far outweigh the value of that candybar.
Working societies also remove parental rights for failing to make good decisions for kids … just because it is your kid odes not give you the right to allow that kid to have sex with adults, whore the kid out, or sell one of the kid’s kidneys to pay for that widescreen TV set.
When that kid is an adult, fully supports him or herself, and is expected to live with the consequences of bad decisions, said adult can trade sex for a snickers bar if that seems like a good idea to that dumbass.
August 20th, 2011 at 11:53 am
One one hand, as an adult, I find the idea of a child (truly a child, pre-pubescent) “consenting to sex” somewhat atrocious. On the other hand, when I was a child, “playing doctor” with the girl next door, we both went into it willingly. I can’t necessarily say we “consented”, if one considers a child to be incapable of consent, but there wasn’t any arm twisting involved either. I’m pretty confident it wouldn’t have done either of us any good if the government had gotten involved, and tossed us in juvie.
Likewise, I don’t see much logic in throwing kids in jail or making them register as sex offenders when we give them telephones with cameras built in and they use those cameras to send each other naked pictures of themselves.
On the gripping hand, even if there was some 12 year old mentally and emotionally mature enough to be capable of consenting to sex with a 36 year old, no 36 year old should consent back. If nothing else, I’m willing to declare that as a moral issue, if not a legal one. (Sorry, anarchist. Knee-jerk reaction against laws.)
August 20th, 2011 at 12:06 pm
Perl: even in an anarchist society, an old person having sex with a youngster is doing something damned dangerous.
That kid may be lying about being independent, and said kid’s parents might just shoot your ass … and no one will do a damned thing about it.
Or someone else may be offended enough to shoot you, and try for jury/peer-group nullification afterward.
August 20th, 2011 at 12:39 pm
K,lei:
Agreed: remove the power differential and it’s a different situation. If I’m following the same analogy you are, that corresponds to the kid becoming an adult.
August 20th, 2011 at 2:04 pm
To me it’s the power differential that it really comes down to. If two 8 year olds (or 14, or whatever age) want to ‘play doctor’ or whatever, that’s a completely and fundamentally different thing from an adult and a child doing the exact same things together.
There’s a reason most age of consent laws have ‘close in age’ clauses (although they aren’t absolute), and similarly there’s a reason why even being close in age is not enough when one person has some kind of actual or implied authority or superiority over the other.
Consenting to medical treatment is a completely absurd comparison, because not getting medical treatment when needed will make you physically ill or sometimes kill you. Also because we DON’T accept children’s right to consent to medical treatment — children are routinely given medical treatment they don’t want, and in some cases the question has even gone to court (e.g. older children whose parents agree with their decision to refuse treatment for life-threatening conditions). We accept that children CAN’T give or withhold consent to medical treatment, and we decide for them to get medical treatment because it’s necessary to their health and life.
August 20th, 2011 at 2:08 pm
kristopher,
Of course, in Anarchotopia, some people would be adults at 15 and others would still be wards of somebody at 55.
August 20th, 2011 at 4:30 pm
Klein:
You make the following assumptions:
1)Sex is almost never frightening or painful. Nope, it’s very possible to hurt a child doing something other than outright penetration. I’d say ask someone who works in an emergency room of the multifarious sexual injuries they’ve seen done to young children in varying ways, but I have the feeling you’d explain them away or insist these were “odd” cases. As for frightening, having an adult do something intimate to you that you don’t understand can be fucking terrifying.
I am seriously having a major disconnect in having to explain that an adult having sex with a child is not usually a beautiful flowers and sunshine experience for the child. It’s like having to raise awareness about the existence of the moon. The terrible outcomes for the children should speak for themselves- hell, the survivors of sexual abuse do try to speak for themselves, all the time. The psychological outcomes in rates of personality disorder and substance abuse and later perpetuated abuse are similar to other traumas, BECAUSE IT IS TRAUMATIC.
You are already assuming that is a molestation instead of proving it… How can something that is desired by both partners can be “only for the gratification of one”…?
BECAUSE KIDS CAN’T CONSENT, because they’re relatively undeveloped- there are honest to god major neurological differences in capacity to understand- because of the MASSIVE POWER DIFFERENTIAL. ALL sex with a child is molestation because KIDS CAN’T CONSENT!
As for the developmentally disabled, having a mental problem doesnt mean they cant possibly want to have sex.
No, but it still means that SOMEONE IN A POSITION OF SIGNIFICANT POWER OVER THEM is committing rape if they have sex with them. They can’t understand, they can’t effectively say no, and there are huge consequences for them if they do.
I dont think that is caused by sex in itself, but rather by society’s pressure about sex. “I did it wrong”, “I wasnt good”, “what will my parents said”, etc. Things that are strange to sex in itself and that are caused by society.
Ahhh, now we are on truly classic molestation-justification script. I didn’t fuck my victim up, society fucked her up! The sex was all flowers and rainbows, then all these other people came along and made her feel ashamed and violated!
Victims feel violated BECAUSE SOME ASSHOLE CAME ALONG AND VIOLATED THEM.
At the end of the day age-of-consent laws aren’t really a clear bright line, some teenagers are really not ready at (age of law) and some are before it, but they exist because they’re more functional in stopping predators than they are restrictive to the kids. That’s what really frightens me about you: you are putting the sexual gratification of adults at an equal or greater priority than the protection of children. There aren’t any laws about kids doing sexual things by themselves or with others of their own age, as long as an adult isn’t involved- you know, the creepy mouthbreather directing the action, arranging the buy, or filming.
The sexual rights of children to their own bodies are in fine shape, maybe a little shabbier for the most draconian and zero-tolerance laws that treat kids like adults. The sexual rights of adults to access to childrens’ bodies does not and should never exist.
All this “what if they fall in love, huh?” stuff is such pure horsewash. If it’s all about your pure giving gentle love and not about preying on someone you have power over, you can fucking well wait.
August 20th, 2011 at 7:22 pm
Tam: exactly.
Too bad too many people are idiots for it to work well.
This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things.
August 20th, 2011 at 7:43 pm
Correction. The first set of statistics I linked is for all abuse. Outcomes for sexual abuse specifically are worse.
August 21st, 2011 at 9:23 am
LabRat:
1)About the painfulness: Can you explain how can it be painful to have non-penetrative sex?
Can it be frightening? I already said that it depends. Yes, if the child is raped or molested of course he/she will be probably terrified. But if it is consensual I cant see why would it be.
As for the national child abuse statics, you said it: Its statics about CHILD ABUSE. Not consensual sex. The statics you are providing regard children being _MOLESTED_, not children having consensual sex. So they are completely irrelevant for this discussion. It’s obvious that sexual molestation is something terrible.
“BECAUSE KIDS CAN’T CONSENT, because they’re relatively undeveloped-”
You didnt answer my question but OK… “Kids cant consent” depends on your definition of 1) Kid 2) “Consent”.
In Spain age of consent is 13 and in the 90s was 12. In some parts of Mexico still is 12.
Still, if children cant consent, then why do we take them to the doctor, to school, to practice sports… If they cant consent, then all those actions would be as bad as rape, after all, they didnt “consent”.
“No, but it still means that SOMEONE IN A POSITION OF SIGNIFICANT POWER OVER THEM is committing rape if they have sex with them. They can’t understand, they can’t effectively say no, and there are huge consequences for them if they do.”
You are assuming a certain scenario on your imagination, particularly, the scenario of incest. You are not thinking in relationships of friendship that latter develop to romantic love. Also, you are assuming that all children of all ages “can’t understand”, when I already said that there are various shadows of understanding. Its not the same a 3 year old than a 9 or 10 yo. Plus, you are assuming that a “deep” and complete understanding of sex is required to have it, when not even most adults have that.
“Victims feel violated BECAUSE SOME ASSHOLE CAME ALONG AND VIOLATED THEM.”
Yes, I agree. You are talking of victims who are raped. Rape is bad. But Im talking about consensual relationships in which both partners agree. An asshole violating someone is atrocious, but you are twisting my words to make me said that I defending rape or rapists.
“you are putting the sexual gratification of adults at an equal or greater priority than the protection of children”
No, Im putting the sexual gratification of children at the same level (not above) than the protection of children. I agree that children need to be protected.
But protected from what? From rape, molestation? Yes.
From romantic relationships with someone they like? Well, thats a more difficult question.
“you know, the creepy mouthbreather directing the action, arranging the buy, or filming. ”
Oh yes, boogieman, I have heard of him on fairy tales and fox news.
“The sexual rights of children to their own bodies are in fine shape, maybe a little shabbier for the most draconian and zero-tolerance laws that treat kids like adults. The sexual rights of adults to access to childrens’ bodies does not and should never exist.”
You are funny. You dont see that the rights of children to their own bodies INCLUDE their rights to be in love with someone older. Im not saying that everything should always be allowed. Im saying that if children rights were so respected:
1st) There wouldnt be more rape or sexual violence against them.
2nd) Their sexual desires would be _listened_ and considered, including when they are directed towards someone older. I remark the word “listened” and “considered”, not necessarily allowed.
Whats the difference, for a child, between wanting to have sex with someone of their age, and wanting to have with someone older? Not allowing the sexual expression of children is, sometimes,a violation of their rights, and does not protect him/her.
“If it’s all about your pure giving gentle love and not about preying on someone you have power over”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dichotomy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question
August 21st, 2011 at 9:25 am
>Agreed: remove the power differential and it’s a different situation. If I’m following the same analogy you are, that corresponds to the kid becoming an adult.
No, more like a child and adult who know each other, hang together and fall in love without any coercion.
August 21st, 2011 at 10:59 am
K,lei:
You’re ducking an awfully big question: how do you remove the power differential between a child and an adult? As far as I can tell, you’re just assuming a happy situation where it doesn’t exist.
August 21st, 2011 at 11:53 am
>You’re ducking an awfully big question: how do you remove the power differential between a child and an adult?
It cant be removed, but that doesnt mean a romantic relationship is impossible. I mean, we interact with children everyday, the “power imbalance” doesnt mean those relationships are impossible.
>you’re just assuming a happy situation where it doesn’t exist.
No, Im assuming a happy situation where it doesnt _matter_.
August 21st, 2011 at 12:21 pm
So, let me condense, then, because going line by line would just create another word forest.
1. You’re persistently denying that the presence of an extreme power differential between the participants makes consent invalid. The power differential between an adult and a child- or for that matter between someone mentally disabled and their caregiver- is massive, even moreso than the police/prisoner example you acknowledged as situation that would be rape if it happened while the cop still had authority/custody of the prisoner. Your counter-argument is only “it doesn’t matter”, and the rest of us are pointing out yes it fucking well does, it matters tremendously.
Even a prisoner in police custody has less of a psychological power differential with his captor than a child has with an adult, because he hasn’t been trained from birth that adults know better than him and will do what’s in his or her best interests. A child is ALWAYS in the custody of any given adult, you can’t remove that fact by giving them flowers and candy, you can only be using your power to manipulate them. The adult’s responsibility is to do whatever is in the child’s best interest and absolutely does not include sex with the child. They’re CHILDREN, they need to develop sexually on their own, not have an adult projecting their sexuality, and all its adult contexts they have no conception of or experience with, onto them.
A kid’s brain isn’t just like a little adult’s, especially the frontal lobe where executive ordering and understanding occurs, especially before the late teens. This isn’t a matter of degree of “doesn’t understand sex”, especially sex with someone who has a tremendous amount of power over them just by being an adult, it’s a difference in capability.
It’s not some big secret the rest of society is denying that children have sexual impulses and a developing sexuality. That has no bearing on the moral stance against adults having sex with kids. They quite literally cannot interpret and contextualize either the impulses or the experience the way an adult can, and adults imposing their own on the child is inherently exploitative. AND FOR THE LAST FUCKING TIME IT’S NOT JUST LIKE A BASEBALL GAME.
2. Your second argument seems to be that either power differentials make everything okay or everything bad and we have to pick because sex is just like everything else. No it isn’t. Kids don’t consent to going to the doctor or going to a baseball game. Again, kids have no power of consent of any kind when it comes to adults BECAUSE OF THE POWER DIFFERENTIAL. They remain in the care of adults until they are adults themselves, and we place limits culturally and legally on what adults may do to or with children to protect them.
3. We now have an exciting new flavorful blend of “children love sex with adults as long as it’s not really molesting!” and the aforementioned “pedophiles don’t screw up their victims, only bad pedophiles do!”. Funny thing about that is we have very little data about what these theoretical good pedophiles having awesome mutual sex with children is, because there seems to be an interesting complete lack of people who some adult had sex with them as children that grows up to describe it as an awesome early love affair rather than flatly as abuse, confusing and frightening and alienating at the VERY best, usually something much worse. Hell, I’ve got an e-mail in my in-box from a survivor saying how very much you sound like her abuser. Not lover, abuser. Same logic, same style of manipulation.
We have your theory a, there’s a giant underground of kids having awesome sexual experiences with adults who never ever ever speak up later, or b, you’re deluded and it is VERY MUCH ABUSE. Given your flat denial that a power differential could make sex into rape, or that any sort of power differential would therefore be as bad as rape, I’m going with B.
Oh yes, boogieman, I have heard of him on fairy tales and fox news.
I’m talking to one right now.
This little exercise is at an end, as you’re starting to repeat yourself and rest on re-insisting things over and over. The purpose of it was to let you speak in your own words and show people with no experience of what it’s like what pedophiles who’ve convinced themselves, and are trying to convince others, that acting on their desires can be done ethically, and I think that’s been accomplished.
This is not your soapbox, and you are disinvited from mine. We are done here and any further response here, or in the future, will be deleted.
August 21st, 2011 at 12:33 pm
Quite the septic tank you’ve stepped in there, Lab.
I’m surprised these morons would expose themselves in public, and leave an IP and MAC address behind.
They must want positive re-enforcement badly.
August 21st, 2011 at 12:46 pm
“Whats the difference, for a child, between wanting to have sex with someone of their age, and wanting to have sex with someone older?”
Easy. The first is age-appropriate expression with a peer. The second is abuse because of the age, power, and experiences of an adult. Those gaps are so great that there is not and can be no meaningful consent.
Look-Even with adult relationships, a doctor cannot maintain a peer romantic relationship with a patient. A psychiatrist can NEVER date a patient, even when the therapeutic relationship is over. NEVER. At all. No matter how much both adults want it, the prior power differential taints the relationship from that time forward.
(so does a coroner, but that’s another matter entirely, going back to consent).
LabRat-Thanks for letting Klein speak, you accomplished your mission, and creeped even ME out. That takes some doing.
August 21st, 2011 at 2:57 pm
@Kristopher: “I’m surprised these morons would expose themselves in public, and leave an IP and MAC address behind.”
Fortunately, they’re stupid enough to do so. They may use an anonymizer or disguise their true location, but to someone who knows his way around networks, that’s not a major obstacle. (I used to be a Systems Engineer with IBM. Hehehe . . . ) I’m also retired from the Department of Justice, so I’ve already forwarded the relevant information to those who know what to do with it.
Thanks for letting this dumbass rant on, Labrat. I’m going to link my readers to this Comments thread tonight, so they can see for themselves what a pedophile looks like when he’s:
(a) deluded himself to the point of mental myopia;
(b) trying to delude others to let him get away with his crimes.
August 21st, 2011 at 3:57 pm
So where does an organization like the one we started off talking about fit in here?
Do they need to appear that neutral to get people like THAT to look further, discuss, and possibly eventually change their views enough to not act on their impulses, or to get help?
Personally I’m inclined to be kind of skeptical of that, that you can’t really change a person’s mind, they can only change it themselves….
Because if you were really more about people who had certain impulses, but were not deluded about the harm that would come from acting on those impulses and wanted support and assistance in continuing not to act on them, I would think you would need to be a bit more clear and emphatic about that in your public statements.
Although, on the other hand, I’m not really sure of what they’re even saying, about the DSM — are they saying they DON’T think it should be classified as a mental illness? Or are they actually saying that it SHOULD be seen as one (as opposed to strictly an issue of criminal or ‘evil’). They talk about stigma, but reducing stigma can mean seeing people as ‘just different’, or on the other hand it can mean seeing people as ‘sick rather than necessarily evil’.
It’s true that we don’t really know how many people experience a sexual attraction to children… it’s true that it’s not the kind of thing a normal decent person would usually be willing or even feel safe admitting to, even to a doctor or psychiatrist - I can imagine someone like that feeling huge shame and horror and fear that people would find out. It’s those who convince themselves that it’s OK that would be most likely to talk about it, so who knows, maybe it’s much more common, and maybe there are a significant number of people who struggle with it successfully all their lives but don’t ask for help because they’re afraid of being seen as evil despite never having acted on it?
August 21st, 2011 at 5:31 pm
If I’m reading you correctly, you’re arguing either that (a) it’s possible to have legitimate, non-coercive romantic relationships in the presence of an extreme power differential, or (b) the power differential between children and adults is small enough that it doesn’t meaningfully impede honestly romantic relationships.
As you can tell, these are rather controversial statements. You’re going to have to do more than repeatedly assert their truth and insult your host with Wikipedia links if you want to convince anyone. Some peer-reviewed journal articles would be a good start; a meta-analysis would be even better.
At the very least you have to address comments like William’s about prior power differentials tainting relationships. Hell, you don’t even have to go as far as a doctor/patient relationship: I worked as a teaching assistant as an undergraduate, teaching labs for other undergrads; those very people who were otherwise in exactly my cohort kept treating me as an authority figure long after the class was over, and the only power I had was over 20% of their marks in one four-month class.
August 21st, 2011 at 5:35 pm
Sorry, LR; should’ve read your comment more thoroughly before throwing one more scrap to the troll. Go ahead and delete this comment and the above if you think they’re clutter.
August 21st, 2011 at 5:40 pm
I don’t. I’m just closing the door on more of him repeating himself, not continued picking apart from other commenters.
BH: Still thinking about your comment, or more to the point doing more research on B4U-ACT. Our little specialpants demonstrated exactly WHY such an organization can only be successful if it maintains perfect, perfect credibility and accountability, and exactly what stands to subvert its purposes.
August 22nd, 2011 at 12:15 am
Ewww! Coroner dating a patient? William, I’m ashamed of you for even mentioning that. At least you know that dead people are not competent to give consent. Snork.
August 22nd, 2011 at 2:16 am
An interesting and unexpected discussion. As LabRat points out, there is a critical difference between a pedophile/hebephile and a child molester (i.e. thoughts vs. actions).
My small contribution would be to point out that there is a further difference important difference between the scientific and legal definitions. In most states, the age of consent is 16 (in several states it is 17 or 18). Most people are physically mature by this age - hence, sexual attraction does not meet the scientific definition for a pedophilia/hebephilia.
The consequence is that any data from the legal system or prison system is even less useful, since it almost certainly includes the 18-year-old prosecuted for having sex with his 15-year-old girlfriend.
August 22nd, 2011 at 6:07 am
@a_random_guy-In my personal experience, modern statuatory rape/abuse laws to take into account the age and the developmental age of the participants. As I recall (and I;m doing this from memory, the age is four years). So, an eight year old doing things with an eight year old-OK, an eight year old doing things with a three year old-time to intervene. And then if the eight year old has some significant developmental delay, and is sort of a peer of the three year old, the consequences are different then if they’re not. People are aware that children develop at different rates, and probably these cases need to be dealt with on a case-by-case basis to fix what’s wrong.
Also, and even more creepy, is the tendency of adult males to have “relationships” with younger females. Even if the age of consent is 18-there’s something deeply, deeply creepy about an 18 year old in a relationship with a 40 year old. It says something very bad about the elder, either that person is really immature and wants a partner they can control; or no adult woman will put up with them (or both).
Most of the statuatory rape prosecutions I’m aware of-only the ones I am, and these are anecdotes, not evidence, are of adult men(25+) and girls 12-15.
August 22nd, 2011 at 8:14 am
I think the point about the difference between physical and developmental maturity is relevant, though. A 15 or even 14 year old sometimes is _physically_ adult-like enough that simply from a picture, or without talking with them, you might mistake them for someone older. I’ve even met 11 year olds that I would have guessed were 15 or 16 until I talked to them. All the things that make acting on the impulse wrong are still there i.e., the power differential, etc. And it’s also quite disturbing to consider an adult still wanting to have sex with someone of this age after speaking to them for even a few moments.
But I think to simply be physically attracted to the sight of an adolescent (in the sense of someone post-puberty) is different in some way from being physically attracted to a child.
In terms of the implications, in some ways it doesn’t matter so much — either way, feeling something isn’t a crime, doing something is and can cause immense harm. But on the other hand, being attracted to the sight of children seems to imply a problem with someone’s basic wiring in a way that being attracted to teenagers doesn’t necessarily, if that makes sense. The adult who’s attracted to teenagers needs to have or develop the maturity, interpersonal skills, and ethics to make healthy and ethical decisions about how to act, but it seems like a qualitatively different type of issue from someone who gets turned on by the sight of an eight year old.
August 22nd, 2011 at 8:15 am
Justthisguy: Coroners don’t have patients. They work with inanimate objects that are technically part of an estate. Heh.
As for the dating part … this opens up a can of worms concerning property rights, corpses, and a whole nasty topic that big L libertarians, if they are smart, will shy the hell away from.
August 22nd, 2011 at 1:42 pm
You know, I’d really, REALLY like to think he was talking about someone six-months over the legal age of consent getting it on with someone six-months under, but I can’t convince myself of it. I fear we’ve gazed into the abyss here, and it’s left me feeling extremely dirty. I feel like I want to puke.
I’m also glad we didn’t have this discussion in person, otherwise you probably wouldn’t have to worry about him coming around and commenting again, and I’d probably be in jail (unless I miss my guess, I probably wouldn’t be alone there).
August 22nd, 2011 at 1:51 pm
You know, I’d really, REALLY like to think he was talking about someone six-months over the legal age of consent getting it on with someone six-months under, but I can’t convince myself of it.
I’d say we lost that ability when he commented that we were talking about “ten, not three”.
August 22nd, 2011 at 2:35 pm
@Mark D: Alone? Hell, you’d have at least half the commenters on this thread with you, just for starters!
August 22nd, 2011 at 3:22 pm
Mark and Peter: Depends on the jurisdiction.
When I was in my mid twenties, a ten year old in our large wargamer club in Portland asked me to do something about Timur ( I wish I could remember his last name ), their D&D DM … said he was molesting all the boys in the under 12 D&D group he was leading.
I barged in and spent about five minutes loudly telling him what I thought of him … until he tried to use force to shut me up. He didn’t like his beatdown, and drew a knife on me. I drew a Walther P-38 on him. I got one round in his arm before he fled.
The police caught up with him in a Boise hospital the next day, and shipped his ass back to Oregon for trial.
August 22nd, 2011 at 4:09 pm
“Also, and even more creepy, is the tendency of adult males to have “relationships” with younger females. Even if the age of consent is 18–there’s something deeply, deeply creepy about an 18 year old in a relationship with a 40 year old. It says something very bad about the elder, either that person is really immature and wants a partner they can control; or no adult woman will put up with them (or both).”
Heck, once you hit 25 or so 18 year olds should become like Lone Watie’s piece of hard rock candy.
August 22nd, 2011 at 4:16 pm
Interesting discussion indeed, huh…
While I do agree with the majority in that sex with children - and with others incapable of giving informed and uncoerced consent - is equivalent to rape, there are a few problematic details in handling that that haven’t so far been addressed.
Especially the thing about a power differential “always” making even a later relationship unacceptable. I am of the opinion that while this is so most of the time, there can be exceptions, more so than is usually admitted.
Taking an example, one of my wife’s aunts was a child (age 12 or so, of the Finnish-speaking minority in Soviet Russia) underfoot at the siege lines of Leningrad in WWII. There was a Finnish liaison officer around who was giving piano lessons to local kids when he got dumped out from the Germans’ more-secret command conferences or whatever, and she REALLY liked him but he didn’t reciprocate at the time. However thereafter, she spent DECADES chasing after him. He eventually did agree to marry her, too - at which point I understand she was working as a civilian interpreter for the Finnish Air Force, and he was a medically retired partial invalid Army veteran.
So, is that bad, and which way does the power differential go?
After all, it started as a 12-year-old girl being attracted to an adult man… who was with the foreign military occupation force controlling her home town, too. And ended with her being the one with fully working feet and most of the income in their household.
Other thing, given how things work now, is that because of the societal knee-jerk overreaction to even unsubstantiated allegations of pedophilia, too often the children ARE placed in positions of power over adults in this. After all, they just have to say that such-and-such did what to them.
Oh well. It sure isn’t easy being a parent. My oldest is getting near the age where he’ll need to be told about certain things… now how, and when, do I bring this up?
August 22nd, 2011 at 4:58 pm
You know what Klein, as the victim of someone just like you, who claimed to be “in love” with me and that it was my fault (at 2, at 3, at 4, at 5, at 6, at 7, at 8,and at aged 9) that he was sexually attracted to me, because I was such a vamp… I would quite happily shoot you in the testes and watch whilst you died in agony and then burned in hell. Children cannot consent to something that they do not understand and telling them that it is their fault, that the acquiesed or behaved in such a manner to provoke a sexual response in the adult - well thats a load of bulldoody.
I didn’t acquiesce, I was told if I was a good girl, Jesus would love me and come for me on the day of judgement, so I was a good girl and did what I was told. Then I was told it was my fault and my parents wouldn’t love me anymore if they knew.
That’s not consent, that’s emotional blackmail and one that has fallout the entire life of that child. And you are a dangerous, nasty piece of work.
August 22nd, 2011 at 5:05 pm
Ah, yes, Mikko. The owners of Aspies For Freedom, Gareth and Amy, famously have a huge age difference in their marriage. I believe he was 16 or so, and she thirty-something when they married. On that forum, and also on Wrong Planet, people of all ages “from eight to eighty” interact comfortably with each other.
Further, I see nothing wrong with a man of any age seeking a wife when she is at her most fertile age, typically between 18-22 years old. With any luck she gets her child-bearing done and out of the way when it’s easiest, then inherits while she’s still young enough to enjoy the legacy, and have a little cougar fun.
August 22nd, 2011 at 5:33 pm
LabRat, for the most part you’re preaching to the choir.
“Klein”, I’m the survivor of molestation by my godmother {for those unfamiliar with Roman Catholicism, godparents are expected to be moral/spiritual exemplars} - from the age of 9 until ~ 14 {around the onset of my menses}, my {bipolar} mother would send me off on weekends with G. {who was the same age as my Dad, BTW}, who started it very subtly, engaging in the “play” she had engaged in as a child - it became more & more psychologically as well as physically uncomfortable for me, so eventually, I just refused to go with her, or if I HAD to, I would protect myself physically as much as possible. I didn’t tell my mother until I was 22, at which time my mother first, refused to believe it, and second, accused ME of seducing G. When I had my own daughter & G. would visit my parents, I would NEVER leave her alone with G. Today, as 54 year old woman, you can ask my husband what effect those experiences had on me - so please, find a slime coated rock to crawl under, sit there in the dark with your disgusting, depraved fantasies and play with yourself - if *I* ever met you, you would probably leave without that of which you seem so inordinately fond …………………………. and it WILL go in either a blender or garbage disposal for liquefying ………………………….
Semper Fi’ to those who believe in PROTECTING children
DM
August 22nd, 2011 at 5:34 pm
Oh, and there are famously also Will and Ariel Durant. Generally though, I go with the old y=x/2+7, where y=bride’s age, and x=groom’s age. Hmm, better get to work, Jtg, prospective brides are pushing menopause, not to mention possibility of GFA kids, what with my quirks, likely quirks of any women who might deign to get nekkid with me, and stale gametes.
August 23rd, 2011 at 12:51 am
Ok, I’ll admit it. I was rather pervy when I was a little kid, and polymorphously so, with no help from anybody else.
When I had just skipped a grade, back in 1960, my fourth-grade teacher was Mrs. Cooper, who sang next to me in the Soprano section in the choir on Sundays. She didn’t care what I did in class as long as I continued to get straight As, so I spent my time reading SF.
I recall being quite emotionally exercised by the space-battle scene in “Earthlight”, by Arthur C. Clarke.
I do wonder these days, what I would have done if Mr. Clarke had shown up then with help with my math homework in exchange for his having his way with me.
I imagine I would have done as Shirley Temple did in a suchlike situation, and laugh at the absurdity of the nekkid grownup.
I have seen pictures of Arthur C. Clarke as he looked in 1960. Well, it’s a good thing for him that he made his living by his wits, and not his looks.
Shirley Temple Black carries a revolver in her purse to this day. I do suspect that that episode is what planted the idea in her head.
The ancient Greeks discussed this business of old guys having their way with young guys, and decided it was bad, and contrary to Natural Law. This was before we had Christians, even.
August 23rd, 2011 at 12:11 pm
P. s. Clarke’s knighthood was held up for a while, because of concerns about his ephebephilia.
August 24th, 2011 at 2:04 pm
“Also, and even more creepy, is the tendency of adult males to have “relationships” with younger females. Even if the age of consent is 18–there’s something deeply, deeply creepy about an 18 year old in a relationship with a 40 year old. It says something very bad about the elder, either that person is really immature and wants a partner they can control; or no adult woman will put up with them (or both).”
Not to stray too far away, but I disagree. Oh, those might be the reasons, but I’ve known a lot of young women who were attracted to much older men precisely because they had outgrown boyhood. And some men like to be mentors. But the real issue is the ability to consent, and we allow 18 y.o.s to do so.
August 24th, 2011 at 8:57 pm
While I greatly appreciate the internet and all the knowledge and communication that it provides, it also evokes a deep regret. In the pre-internet days, a pervert would be isolated to his/her own local region and might know at most a handful of other individuals with similar attractions. Today, I doubt there is any perversion that any of us can imagine that isn’t shared by hundreds of people on the web. Talk about reinforcing bad behaviors.
August 25th, 2011 at 7:07 am
I experienced some mild molestation as a child, there was an adult male relative who was a bit too fond of touching. Very mild, mostly, there were only a couple of instances where he went far enough over the line that I could recognize the thing for what it was when I thought back to it as an adult. When it was happening I only knew that I didn’t like what he did, it made me uncomfortable, but that was also one reason why I never talked about the whole thing to the other adults, the man was a charming and well liked individual which, back then, made me feel that whatever was wrong couldn’t be his fault, that it somehow had to be mine, and I felt ashamed of the whole thing.
But mild or not, even now, decades later, I still dislike being touched. In any way. I can enjoy sex, but that requires work and a very long warming up before getting to any actual action, and I may get cold feet at any point of the process. Has hampered my relationships more than a little.
I have no sympathy for people like Klein.
Yet I do agree that people should not be punished for inclinations or thoughts, just actions. Fantasize all you want, just don’t do anything which involves actual children.
And as for Mikko’s example, if a child starts to pursue you, you’d damn well better wait until said child is all grown up. If there still, at that time, is mutual attraction, and both are free to pursue it, well, go for it - even if the age difference is big. But not until then.
August 25th, 2011 at 7:15 pm
Grownup to child: I intend to have a good physical time with your body. I would like you to have a good time, but even if you don’t, I intend to have a good time with your body.
Child to grownup: I might like to have a good time with you, but not in _that_ way, which really creeps me out, and even if it didn’t creep me out, you are being an overbearing bully about it, not caring what I think or feel.
Child abuse is the worst kind of bullying, arguably worse than what is done daily by people with badges.
Exploiting the power delta to get a monkey-dominance charge out of it, with some sexual gratification, too!
Now just imagine a twofer, a child molester with a badge! Did y’all know that there is a searchable database of visual kiddy porn on a police server in Sweden? From what I’ve read, if one is a policeman (nobody else has access to it) he can specify just what kind of thing he wants to see, in terms of set, setting, and behavior.
Firemen are famously repressed pyromaniacs, and the good ones admit to it. Policemen are famously repressed criminals, and the good ones admit to it. People who prosecute the kiddy-pornsters and the child molesters have yet to admit to it.
August 26th, 2011 at 9:54 am
After scanning the comments, I’m a bit surprised to not see any written from the point of view of a parent (hey though, maybe I missed it).
As the father of 4, I take it as one of my primary duties to protect them from the likes of sexual predators / pedophiles. Frankly, I could care less what some outfit like the APA or whatever subgroup or advocacy group is responsible for even considering toning down anything about pedophilia in the DSM. You touch my child in that way, I’ll kill you or make you wish you were dead. Period. End of story. I don’t care what laws I break, how long it takes me, what price I personally would pay.
As long as they are legally minors, getting their consent requires getting my consent. And you won’t get it. I don’t care how you rationalize your sickness, but that is the fundamental rule of the game.
As far as I’m concerned, think what you like. If I could read your thoughts and they indicated sexual interest in my children, you’d be hit with a TRO faster than you can blink. But take any action, and your life is forfeit. That is the law you have to worry about, not some criminal statute. It will never get to a LEO or a judge if I have any say in the matter. They’ll never find your body.
Now just keep moving along, and I won’t have to expend any ammunition.
August 26th, 2011 at 6:41 pm
Methinks ruralcounsel doth protest too much. See my comment just above his.
Not being a parent, I’ll grant that parents think differently than those who are not parents, but what he wrote does seem a bit overheated to me, who thinks of children as annoying small creatures to avoid, the same opinion I have had since I was one of them, half a century ago.
August 27th, 2011 at 9:34 am
How can the APA legitimately investigate treatments for pedophilia while denouncing attempts to do the same for homosexuality?
Both conditions, whether driven by nature or nurture, are predicated upon sexual preferences. The difference being that homosexuality is gaining social acceptance while hopefully pedophilia never will.
But from a scientific standpoint, public acceptance has not no bearing. If pedophilia can be successfully treated as a psychological or physiological condition subject to modification, then so can homosexuality (or heterosexuality, for that matter).
August 27th, 2011 at 10:44 am
How can the APA legitimately investigate treatments for pedophilia while denouncing attempts to do the same for homosexuality?
Because the idea is to do what creates the best outcome for the patient, within acceptable bounds for others. A great deal of what constitutes a diagnosis of something as an illness or a disorder is the degree to which it screws up the patient’s life; something that doesn’t is basically then defined as not a problem.
You talk as if there isn’t several decades of history there in between taking homosexuality out as an in-and-of-itself pathology and advising against turn-em-straight therapies. In the first revision they merely redefined it as a pathology if it was causing major life disruption for the patient, acknowledging that it was possible to be gay and perfectly well-adjusted that way. Therapy to try and change orientation for those who wanted it was available and not stigmatized, the problem was over decades of long-term studies of eventual outcomes, it almost never worked. Eventually the APA advised against such therapies because they seemed to cause more misery for the patients, without desired outcomes, than counseling them to accept themselves as they were and go on to have normal relationships with their own sex did.
For what it’s worth therapies to change orientation for pedophiles don’t seem to work either. What actual treatment would constitute would be working to build on relationships with adults for those whose attraction to children wasn’t exclusive (and it seems for the majority, it’s not), and work on self-control and avoiding temptation for those who it is.
Do I seriously have to point out again that the difference between homosexuality and pedophilia isn’t that they’re both “deviant” but one became more acceptable, it’s that one of them is an attraction to adults who can share the orientation and consent and one of them is an attraction to people who cannot possibly? It does change what a therapist sees as acceptable goals, and it’s not hypocrisy that there’s a difference in those acceptable outcomes.
August 27th, 2011 at 4:00 pm
Justthisguy, clearly you have no conception of the degree of difficulty in safely raising children in this day and age. And your general opinion about children is grounds enough for me to disqualify your POV on the entire topic, though perhaps you were trying to be cute and humorous. Suffice to say that pedophilia/child molestation triggers most parental defense instincts … and if downplayed by society would create an immense amount of self-help homicide by outraged parents.
I have a lot more information than the typical parent given my profession and the people I interact with from my state’s Department of Corrections, including people responsible for maintaining the sex offender registry and sex offender programs in prisons. You have no idea how truly dangerous some of those offenders are. And unrepentant and resistent to mandatory treatment. The one debatably bright spot is that child molesters usually hurt someone from within their own extended family - the random assualt by a stranger is rarer than most parents believe. The flip side of this kind of offense is that it often ends in the child being murdered; child molesters hate witnesses. I haven’t seen anyone mention that little gem here.