Re: Sex with girl, 10, was consensual, says accused ma

yeah, i think those are fair observations turtle, but i think it is less of a conspiracy than you suggest, and that authoritarianism and puritanism have supported one another in many societies over many millennia.

i also think there is a valid motive in many people to protect children from exploitation, and that laws that to us seem arbitrary and harsh may in fact be benefiting many children.

i'm frustrated that there are so many constraints around intimate friendship with children, partly because i have witnessed first hand the readiness of some children to engage with adults at this level. otoh, i love kids and i don't want to see them harmed, so i tend to see some of these attitudes as motivated by sentiments that i can agree with.

children need protection. that is a fact of life. whether all children need absolute protection from any kind of sexual contact with adults is debatable, but perhaps it is simply an area where the majority of people would prefer a simple rule to a complex set of negotiations.

maybe things will change. i would like to live in a world where children didn't need to be so obsessively protected, and where parents didn't have such a sense of omnipresent threat. given that propaganda exaggerates and uses people's anxieties for its own purposes, it is possible that a more thoughtful society would relax around some of these issues.

i think it requires a little patience and understanding on both sides of the fence. there are some signs that this is developing, at least wrt attitudes to paedophilia per se, such as the b4u-whatever workshops and Sarah Goode's research. i hope that process continues and i'm ready to support it if i can.