Holy . . . wow

Amazing essay. I hope Dissident puts this one up at Newgon. It's a definite keeper. Now this is what I wish GC had more of, this kind of thoughtful examination of media. There is no bias against society here, but you clearly lay out why society is wrong about this in a way that I can relate to and understand.

In fact, I have thought something similar very often and have tried to come up with what I would consider the most purely loving type of relationship. Every loving relationship--whether it be romantic, parent & child, etc.--has a selfish motive behind it somewhere. This is why I think MAPs who do not have sex with children but maintain that relationship for years may be the closest thing to such a pure relationship, and I think many teleios understand this about us and hate us for it. They are jealous because they see sex as cheapening any romantic relationship (to me that's a stupid view of sex, but I do agree that sex is essentially a selfish need) and so they automatically think sex is behind everything we do.

They don't understand that we experience love for children on top of the sexual attraction. But think about it: how often does a teleio stay friends with another adult they are trying to get it on with if the other person isn't willing or is otherwise unable to "put out"? Not very long in most cases. But we can maintain our friendships with children for years without any manifest sexual component. That puts us above most teleios in terms of our discipline, patience and selflessness, and teleios, who are not used to that, often cannot fathom that we would be better people than they are. So they either hate us for it or they simply refuse to accept it and hate us because they think we're just lusting after their kids. Either way, the bottom line is that they fail to come to grips with and accept non-offending MAPs and cannot distinguish between us and the truly abusive monsters out there.

But more than that, I think the main thing that has hurt our cause is incestuous abuse cases. This, I think, is because a) these are often the worst cases of abuse, and b) we do tend to have an innate disgust reaction to incest (an extension of the Westermarck Effect) and society conflates incest with pedophilia because those cases are so frequent. This is also why I think live-in relationships between MAPs and children would ultimately be doomed. Children below puberty tend to see all adults that care about them as family or quasi-family. I've experienced this a number of times with my girl, K. No matter how many times I set her straight that I'm not related to her, she always winds up calling me her uncle. It was a little irritating at first, but that's how it is and I'm used to it now.

Anyway, children who grow up with someone are not likely to find them attractive when they hit adulthood, thanks to Westermarck Effect, so a child (who doesn't really have strong innate sexual feelings either way) isn't likely to make the connection between incest and pedophilia while they are prepubertal and could fully sexually engage with an adult, whether related or not, without much problem. But when that child hits puberty and their full-on sexual feelings surface, they might feel quite a bit differently about those experiences even without society's negative influence, especially if they lived with the adult for a significant period of time. See, I just don't believe that revulsion to pedophilia is entirely socially conditioned. I think it's intricately tied up with our more or less innate disgust of incest. That's a Gordian Knot that we are going to have a helluva time untangling.

But I'm getting sidetracked here. Once again, great post and more like this, please!