So then, if your view of history holds up, kids will eventually begin to demand their rights. At which point I'll be happy as a pig in slop. That's what I want to see. I want you to do something for me, Diss: think about Iraq and Afghanistan for a minute and America's need to "liberate" them from their "backward" culture. Now apply that to kids. Do kids really want the liberation we envision for them, or are we just projecting what we want onto them?

No youth libber is talking about forcing kids to take rights they do not want, and you know this because we have covered it in discussion numerous times before. The point is, in nations that have offered freedom to some, those who did not have it have indeed eventually risen up. And there are factions of oppressed people rising up in Middle Eastern dictatorships. We both know that there is no comparison to what youth libbers are doing for kids and what America did in Iraq and Afghanistan. I think, in all honesty, Markie, that you are the one who is projecting here--that is, your own fears and insecurities about what would happen if kids were allowed to make their own decisions. You do not seem to mind, at least not by comparison, what kids all too often suffer behind the closed doors of their own home by parents and other older family members. Why not offer the prospect of freedom to those who want it, and let those who do want it take it, and those who do not, go back behind that door?

You misunderstand the point, not to mention (here it comes . . .) contradict your point above about how willful and defiant kids are. This picture of kids completely and absolutely cowed by the law is quite a different picture from the mighty rabble-rousing lot you describe above, isn't it? Funny how that works. It's not like it's convenient for your argument or anything. Oh wait, yes it is.

No, you are wrong here. Kids continuously find ways around these situations, such as feigning their actual ages to get into socnet sites. They often find ways to acquire things like fake I.D.'s to get into clubs they are too young to get into otherwise, or to purchase alcoholic beverages. And they continue to have sex despite the fact that it's forbidden for them to do so, but they usually make a point to do it on the sneak. Few people foolishly defy the laws in ways that are so blatant it will bring the police down on them in seconds, and that goes for adults too. However, there have been recent examples of kids taking such risks, such as refusing to leave their school for 24 hours to protest the Republicans stealing the vote in 2004, which is one of two such incidents over the past decade that encouraged Michael Moore to start embracing youth lib (I guess he just wants to have sex with kids too, right?). These are hardly signs that kids are happy to be oppressed under these laws, and a-okay with the fact that they have no civil rights. But you ignore all of these things because it's convenient with your argument to insist that youths will turn out to be the one minority group in history who will ultimately turn out to be happy and content with the oppression that is foisted upon them. That way, they will be forever "protected" from the demons that you fear lie within you and everyone in your community, and in the tender arms of the status quo you can't get over your indoctrinated defense of (i.e., the "support the devil you know" attitude). If you truly cared about children over and above the integrity of the status quo you are loyal to, you would at least consider offering them a choice in the matter.

Put aside your trusty copy of Dissident's Complete Question and Answer Guide for All Things Minor-Attracted for a second and really think about it carefully before you answer. Do kids really want what we're offering them? How can we be sure? Is it our place to impose that on them, or should they make it known in a big way before we rewrite the rule book? These are questions that do not have simple and decisive answers, as much as some here would like that to be the case.

Have you ever noticed, Markie, that you make the same complaints and assumptions over and over and over again no matter how many times I have seen many of us, particularly myself, address them for you with a complete and straight answer? Does ignoring them and making us repeat them ad nauseaum actually bolster your case in some way, or just make you look willfully thick-headed and grossly selective in what you read?

You have been told numerous times before, and even Epstein has said this in his books, that youth libbers have no intention of literally forcing youths to take on an emancipated status if they do not want it. We talk about offering them the opportunity and choice. Nothing more, nothing less. If it's true, as you seem to think, that massive numbers of kids are happy with their oppression, then I'm sure orgs like NYRA and ASFAR would not exist, and the many young people who make up a large portion of these orgs would not be there, nor would those taking advantage of the opportunity Michael Moore has recently given them to be heard. And likewise if your concern is true, then the vast majority of kids will choose not to take the offer of emancipation, and will gladly choose to live under the "traditional" rules they grew up with. Every platform I would ever support, including this one, honors the freedom of choice first and foremost, and the same is true for many others here. Please read this and let it sink in for once, because I know that I--and others--have said it often enough that it's been read many times by many people--including you.

Oh, and would you like to see a hint (already linked on this board, but you seem to have missed it) that many British girls, at least, do not support specifically the age of consent laws as they are now written there (i.e., 16) when someone from the adult world with influence actually bothers to ask large numbers of them? Take a gander at this article posted online in 2000: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1376140/Girls-say-teenage-sex-campaign-is-out-of-touch.html

Hmmmm, out of 42,000 girls in the age range of 12-16 who participated in this poll, a whopping 9 out of 10 felt the AoA should be lowered? Funny what underagers say when these questions are actually presented to them. And I'm pretty sure that the great majority of those girls who participated in the survey were not gerontophiles, but took the position they did due to their support of freedom of choice, along with a firm belief that they were competent enough to make that choice. See, the evidence that many (not just a few) youths do not like their oppressed status is out there, but you are too much in love with the paradigm of youths as incompetents in need of protection, and too inured to the contemporary societal paradigm of MAPs as dangerous boogeymen, to acknowledge any of it.

Ah, arsenic-spiked well water. My favorite! Yummy! Whatever personal reservations I may have (and I don't I have them) have no bearing on the questions I posed above. These are big issues that cannot be encompassed by pat and simplistic replies. Sorry, Charlie. And, au contraire, I DO seem to realize that the emancipation movement takes time. That is kind of my point, or at least an aspect of it. It takes time because it is something that has to occur organically. It cannot be forced.

And agitating for it legally and within the system, as does NYRA and ASFAR, is somehow "forcing" it? I guess Epstein had best stop writing those books and essays of his on the subjects and let it "just happen" at its own pace, right, mate?

Kids will stand up for their rights when they are ready to, when they desire to and have sufficiently educated themselves.

No duh. Which is why the movement is working to help educate them in regards to their status, the same thing that occurred with all other minority groups who were oppressed in the past. When we start rolling out a group of purloined armored tanks towards the city hall of every big city in America demanding that all youths be freed from legal oppression whether they like it or not, then you can accuse us of trying to force the issue.

We serve both them and ourselves better by not monkeying in their affairs and focusing instead on making the world a better place for us in the short term, and we do that best not through political means but through cultural ones. This is how it's always been done. All viable human rights movements took root first in a cultural understanding and embrace of the oppressed group. You can trace them all back to that in some form or other.

Then in retrospect, I guess you curse all the white abolitionists for meddling in the affairs of the black slaves two centuries ago, as well as all of those busybody white heterosexuals who supported and fought for the gay movement prior to the 1970s. And you accuse us, of all people, of not embracing and understanding the youth community? I'm glad I don't live on your planet, Hoss (and yea, if you can call me Charlie, then I can call you Hoss!).

First off, that doesn't address my point at all. Secondly, in order to fight with any chance of victory, you have to do so from a point of strategic equality or damn near it. You can't do it from where we are right now. It's suicide, as the fact that we are not gaining legal ground but losing it proves.

Um, haven't I agreed with you on this numerous times before? And haven't you even responded to those points of mine (no, not my nipples, these other points) with props and agreement? Have I not said numerous times that we are nowhere near the time for our equivalent of Stonewall yet? Do I really need to be repeating something that you should already know?

And no, despite the continued cascade of laws against us, we are gaining ground incrementally, not nothing but losing it. Ten years ago, an org like B4U-ACT could not exist, and MHPs of great influence like Mike Bailey, Richard Green, and Fred Berlin would not be working with us and/or appearing at public symposiums featuring presentations garnered towards improving the understanding of MAPs. You would not see bloggers outside of the MAP community defending us, as a prominent activist in the asexual community has done repeatedly over the past two years. We are not losing ground, but slowly and surely making certain gains with these baby steps, which can also be seen in incremental fashion by a few examples in the entertainment media of intergenerational relationships being presented in a positive way, such as one of the ongoing plots on the popular TV series Pretty Little Liars.

We are like one naked man facing an army of angry, irrational, beefy, well-armed (and well-armored) adversaries. All we have in our defense is a book of logic, and we're holding it up and screaming, "By the authority of this book, I demand you back down!" It's laughably absurd, to the point of being Fellini-esque. We're not helping our situation at all; we're just making it worse on us. And then, on top of that, our naked man ropes a child into the battlefield (who may or may not want to be there--who can say for sure?) and then says, "I am fighting for this child, dammit, and see? She is fighting with me! Now, lay down your arms, you ignorant goons!" And the soldiers--who might once have cared about that child--are willing to sacrifice her now . . . for a principle, an idea. Now, those soldiers might have eventually slaughtered her anyway, but as for me, I will not be the one that puts her in harm's way over an abstract principle. Moreover, I'm not going to put me (me in this case meaning the MAP community) in harm's way over an abstract principle. I'm just not gonna do it. People are more important than principles to me.

And you needed to remind of this? Note again how often I have said the same thing as you...except that I did not, nor would I, ever argue that principles are less important than people, but rather there are ways of adhering to those principles will not put people at undue risk. Principles are among the few things that can truly make people aspire to be great and to move beyond what we currently are (even if that would threaten the framework of your cynical world view), and as such, they are not nearly as trivial as you think, nor do they necessarily make us prone to foolhardiness. Without principles, humanity would not be capable of any sort of true greatness, and they are what largely define is as humans in a more than purely biological sense.

Who is this 'they'? Apparently all 'cynics' are alike, then. And that's not what I meant at all. (Die, ye scarecrow! Die, die, ye lanky straw bastard!)

Oh, but you are a straw man, because you frequently grasp at numerous straws to make your points. And since when do scarecrows need to be lanky? Have you not seem some scarecrows overly stuffed to the point that they looked fat? You need to get out to more cornfields, dude!

I know humanity is capable of great things, but I also know that, left to their own devices, people tend to revert to their innate animal tendencies, which are neither good nor bad in themselves (since morality is not innate to the universe) but generally bad for humanity, or at least certain factions of it. Nothing we do is ever entirely motivated by selflessness, but our selfish natures (which can be beneficial to humanity in certain contexts and are almost always beneficial to us) tend to become exaggerated in times of change and uncertainty. We all fear getting bumped down the ladder of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.

So this is your justification for us to consider willfully not moving forward with social progress?

Couple that with the fact that a suddenly liberated group will now be accessible to the group that most has an interest in their liberation (aside from kids themselves) . . . it'll be like a dehydrated man crawling through the desert for two days without liquids suddenly coming upon an oasis: gulp gulp gulp! And you know that if we are the group fighting hardest for their liberation, no small number of MAPs will be there saying, "Aw, come on, I helped you get liberated. You owe me, girlie . . ." Yeah. We should expect that, and be prepared for it.

Yup, because there are just multitudes of pedophiles and hebephiles out there who are such loathsome and selfish creeps, right? Believing that is just being realistic, right? How about we be prepared for it by reminding the emancipated kids that they have the right to say "no" to any advances they do not want, and that their newly empowered status gives them more power than ever to resist it? I shudder at the thought of having the type of negative attitudes towards both your community and the youth community that you do. There are many ways to prepare for the problems that may arise without going overboard with overcompensation and worst case scenario assumptions.

Like I told Gatekeeper, been there, done that, got the bumper sticker, and um . . . well, let's just say it didn't work out so well. And hey, my dad has been trumpeting the positive attitude schtick for years now and claims it will help him win a million dollars because that's how the universe works, you know.

Guess what keeping a positive attitude about my own capabilities has enabled me to accomplish lately? E-mail me and I will tell you.

Guess what I accomplished during the decades I spent with a negative and cynical attitudes towards both myself and the world? Yup, you guessed it.

("Nothing we do will ever work, so let's just give up on the whole idea." and "This is bound to go wrong every time, nothing you can do about it but accept it.") versus being realistic ("There are some things that will work and some things that probably won't--let's focus on the things that are most likely to work." and "There's a distinct possibility this could go wrong in a big way, so maybe we'd better prepare ourselves for the worst case scenario--that way we'll know what to do if it does happen.") Educate yourself, m'boy!

The thing is, believing that freedom is better than the alternative is not tantamount to thinking that everything will go right, but simply that it's the better choice. You don't simply acknowledge the possibility that things can go wrong like a true realist, you seem to almost count on it with the degree of harping and overemphasis you spew forth, which falls well within the kingdom of cynicism and pessimism. And your contention that it's so likely that things will go wrong in "a big way" suggests you think this situation is very unique in human history, when in the past the choice of freedom always resulted in a better situation for society in general, and for the group seeking that freedom, despite any problems that arose with it, and despite many people issuing the exact same misgivings then that you are now. Confidence that these problems can be worked out as they appear--in in a fully democratic fashion--is not the same thing as believing there will be no problems.

I told you before--numerous times--there are going to be problems, some of them unforeseen, that will occur when youth liberation is on the verge of being accomplished, just as this was the case when previous emancipation movements bore fruit. We should indeed prepare for the problems that we can indeed anticipate, but none of these preparations should constitute not moving forward, or questioning the basic principles we stand behind, or embracing any tenet that borders on totalitarianism. If we want to emancipate both MAPs and youths, then it's hypocritical of us not to trust either of them to handle any problems that may arise, or to think that the majority of both groups are not capable of living up to high standards of ethical conduct and competency. That's what comes with truly believing in the people that you fight for, and not allowing doubts to overcome this even as you prepare for problems to arise.