Re: What age do you think children can consent?

Yes, I used to have it myself. I am still very cautious about putting the idea into practice, because I'm a reasonable person, too, and I don't want to see kids hurt and abused. However, I've gotten over my emotional reaction to the idea. And doing so puts me in a better position to see what's really going on, and understand when kids are being hurt and when they're not. If you see monsters everywhere, you're bound to lash out at your friends.

I understand this. I feel largely the same way. The only real difference between me and the other Epstein-model pro-choicers here is that I believe that a cautious approach is best and that we need to consider all the angles carefully. I know I come across as overly pessimistic, but it's because I perceive most everyone else as being far too optimistic, to the point that they tend to ignore the problematic areas, which comes across as idealistic at best and somewhat sinister if you try to look at it from the p.o.v. of a non-MAP parent first encountering this board, which we should always keep in mind.

Thank you very much, dude, for negating my humanity as a member of this society, just because I don't have kids. Moreover, you don't have to be a parent to care (genuinely!) about kids. Even further, not all parents care about kids (including their own).

You're missing the point. I wasn't negating anyone's humanity, nor excluding non-parents from being considered part of society. But you cannot ignore the fact that the vast number of people are parents AND non-MAPs, and it is this majority which sets the tone of the discussion of this issue. By and large they are extremely opposed to the idea of anyone fucking around with their kids, much less giving them absolute rights and autonomy.

Didn't you just say in a different post, to Dissident, that he shouldn't speculate about what goes on in your head? Likewise, you shouldn't profess to know what goes on in mine. I get irritated at the suggestion that MAPs do not always have pure motives, not because there is some truth in it (I agree that some MAPs have impure motives), but because it sounds to me an accusation that I don't have pure motives, and that's extremely offensive because it's the same thing the antis shout at me - "you want to hurt kids" - which I know is not true, but hearing it makes it really hard for me to have confidence in myself as a good person who really does care about children, and doesn't just want to use them for my own selfish reasons.

You're right. I overstated the case, and I'm sorry if I implied anything that isn't true about anyone here. That said, my point was based on averages and what I know about people in general. I've seen too many manipulative assholes amongst teleios, and if we are representative of the rest of the population in every way but our sexuality (as I suspect we are), then there's a good chance that there are manipulative assholes amongst us.

But see, I constantly hear how we are just like everyone else when that serves our position, and other times how we're better than the average teleios when that serves our position. I wish it were true that we were better than the average teleios, and maybe GC is composed largely of good people who wouldn't manipulate a child into sex. I don't know; I'm just guessing, but it seems like a fair assumption to me that there are at least a few here who don't really give a damn about children or, more likely, have convinced themselves that certain manipulative behaviors are not really manipulative in order to avoid cognitive dissonance. I think the latter is a trap we could all easily fall into if we're not careful and don't guard against it. My general point here is that we can't have it both ways. We can't just happen to be like everyone else where that serves our interests and better than everyone else where that serves our interests. Sorry, but it just doesn't ring true.

I can't know, so I won't say for certain, but I would suggest that you haven't completely gotten over your reaction to the anti bullshit that being attracted to kids is inherently dangerous to kids, instead of helpful to them, and your own self-loathing. I'm sorry about that, and I understand how difficult it is to get to the point that I currently stand at. But I am not going to stand here and let you persuade me to feel bad about myself. I respect myself too much to let that happen.

You're right. It's something I struggle with. I don't think I've ever denied that. I know I have lashed out at people in the past who didn't deserve it for saying a lot of the same stuff I'm saying here now (namely a guy who posted under the nick 'itinerant giggles' who was clearly a very sensitive and very troubled soul. I feel quite guilty about that because I feel like I kicked him when he was down. I know that feels to be on the receiving end of that; I've experienced it here at GC. There are CLers who will claim they're your friend as long as you agree with them on the youth lib/pro-contact issue, but they turn on you viciously if you change your mind. I would argue such people were never really your friends to begin with, and that experience did a lot to shake up my faith in CLers. I keep trying to get past it, and it's clear that certain posters here simply do not understand my motives at all. If they did they would understand the damage they are doing to their own cause (at least as I see it)--but I think they are blind to everything but their own goals. Tunnel vision is a huuuuge problem amongst CLers. I can understand why that is; what I don't understand is the stubborn resistance to fixing it once it's pointed out.

I've thought about it. And there's more than one conclusion. Yeah, there are shitheads out there. There are freaks who want to kidnap, rape, torture, and murder children. There are also people that are not as bad as that, but who would still manipulate kids to have sex with them. But that is not my responsibility. I am not responsible for anyone else's crimes. Locking kids up in their bedrooms without internet access doesn't prevent them from being raped on occasion. Your concern that letting them out into the street will result in so many more of them being raped is entirely irrelevant, if not untrue.

See, I think this position is a bit selfish. I think we're all responsible for each other to some extant. Listen to the little girl in the video I posted today; she gets it. We all share this planet--we do not live in our own little self-contained worlds. There are some areas where we should and can agree to let people be, and there are some areas where we have to control them. Anarchy can never work in a civilization as complex as ours--not for long anyway. The power vacuum would get filled pretty quickly. Democracy could never work if we didn't feel some obligation to our fellow man. So you may not be directly responsible for someone else's crimes, but if everyone simply ignored the bad stuff that could happen in favor of getting more freedoms for themselves and those in their circle, then there'd be a lot more crime. I agree that our society is currently going way too far in the opposite direction (oppression and repression), but I also am not a reactionary. I don't think swinging completely in the other direction is a good idea either--it'll just create more problems and result in another counter-reaction back in this direction, and so it would go, on and on, until society decides to look for balance and stability, which lies somewhere in the middle.

And yes, I think laws often protect kids from abuse (not always, but enough times to justify their being there in some form.) And I don't even think MAPs are the worst offenders, potential or otherwise. I think situational offenders are far more dangerous than we are on the whole (although MAPs who do abuse (and I mean genuine abuse here, not consensual sex) are statistically more likely to have a multitude of victims while sitch offenders usually just have a few, often their own kids or stepkids.)

Beyond that, I agree with the rest of what you said there. We need both positive and negative means to keep kids safe and happy and right now we are disproportionately (even dangerously) focused on the negative. I think in the end this stifling atmosphere will cause the current generation of kids to rebel in a big way, and we will get another cultural revolution similar to what we had in the 1960s. I expect it to hit within the next ten years, and I am actually quite eager to see it.

Your hatred of mankind is very unbecoming. I try to be optimistic, but I'm not naive. I know there's a lot of trash in the world, but you know what? It's not my responsibility to clean the streets. Shit goes down, that's life. If a kid gets raped across town, I'm not pushing to enact more laws to restrict kids' freedom and prevent them from living and interacting with people. Interacting with people is a crapshoot. You get the good from the bad. You want to protect kids from life, and you'll probably say that it's some sort of biological imperative or whatever, and that my opinion doesn't count because I'm not a parent, I don't have kids. What, you don't think you can kill a person with bad intentions? Have you ever heard of overprotection? Just because a person is supremely biased toward their own kid's survival does not mean they know what's best for them. And I'm not saying we should tear kids away from their parents and stop them from deciding how to raise their kids. But there are many different ways to go about that, and there are parents into youth lib and just because things are a certain way right now, doesn't mean that they have to be, nor that it's the best way it can be.

Sigh. I don't hate mankind, I really don't! But I know mankind enough not to entirely trust it. Maybe my viewpoint is skewed by too many negative experiences in my own life. I'm willing to concede that might be the case, but it does prove to me that childhood trauma is not something people generally get over easily. I've been dueling with that part of myself all my life, and sometimes it surfaces here in ways I don't intend it to. I wind up saying or doing something that I see as ultimately helpful to our cause only to be attacked bitterly for it and labeled a cynic.

I really don't think most people here get me at all. Dissident thinks he does but he isn't even close to the mark. Dissident is good at understanding abstracts (several people here are), but I don't think he understands people very well. Maybe the others too. They all have their own system of social engineering and utopia, some of them falling far to the right and a few (well, Dissident) falling far to the left. In the end none of these systems are viable because people are far too diverse and fickle. The best we can hope for are variations on a theme, so to speak, the theme being that which we already have. You can only push people against their own natures so far before they become reactionary and start pushing back.

And I will never say your position doesn't count because you're a parent. Indeed, if I believed that then I'd have to discount my own opinions since I'm not a parent either. I quite agree that people who are biased towards protecting their kids don't always have their kids' best interest at heart. And how! But that was not my point. My point was, you aren't going to get anywhere if you seek to remove parents from the equation altogether. It ain't gonna happen. There are too many of them, and they have too much invested in their kids--emotionally, monetarily and genetically--to ever agree with you on that in significant enough numbers to make it happen. So we are going to have to come up with something that includes parents and does not altogether remove them from the process. And even that won't be easy, but as far as I can see it's the best we can hope for.

You're welcome to keep yourself chained down in fear of how you might behave with children - or, more accurately, because of the knowledge you have that someone else might behave inappropriately with children, and because of that, it's only fair that you don't get an opportunity to interact with children, because better safe than sorry, right? But I'm not gonna live that way. Taking on the sins of all mankind, restricting my own lifestyle not because I'm a bad person but because there are bad seeds out there and I should be punished for it. Luckily, I'm not the only one that feels the way I do, but there are far too many people in the world that feel the way you do.

How did you make the leap from what I said to 'no MAPs should be allowed to interact with children'? I am not asking anyone here not to interact with children. If you're a good person and truly have children's interests in mind, then by all means, interact with them to your heart's content. What I was talking about was sex, and even there I'm not opposed to the idea (remember, I am in favor of the Epstein system, even if I see potential problems with it.) All I'm talking about is making sure what we're doing is a) motivated by the right things and b) done cautiously and responsibly. That's it. Please don't read more into what I'm saying than is there. Dissident has a black and white view of this and wants people to believe that if I'm not 100% for something than I am 100% against it, or pretty close. Like I said, he doesn't get my position at all, so don't let him set the agenda here. Try to understand my position as I'm presenting it, not filtered through Diss's tainted view of me.