Re: Reply for Dissident

I mostly take issue with logical fallacies implied. Notice I am not directly questioning any of your opinions. I will leave that to Dissident himself.

5 million images, 100 GB websites (many others likely), 29 TB of related material and tens of thousands of websites (many commercial), numerous different means of obtaining these, vast numbers of images rating 6 on the COPINE scale and many busts of sharing networks - still rates only a "scare". What actually does rate as a serious problem?

No proof of any of that. Absolutely no proof. No, the word of people who have a vested interest doesn't constitute proof.

And yes, I would be open to consider it a serious problem if proof was ever presented of all the above, but I just don't think it ever will.

unless they are given leading questions or feel good reasons to do so and we recognise this to be a problem now.

Which is perfectly normal police procedure.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXkI4t7nuc

This does not indicate in any way their sexual desire but is mainly curiosity as is much of the sex-play frequently found in younger children.

You're just assigning a different name to the same thing depending on age. The actions to which you assign two different names are indistinguishable.

(And if they were distinguishable, you'd lose the argument against banning them, because a less restrictive law could be written)

their relevance to the overall topic of child sexual abuse is pretty limited

No, it isn't. If it wasn't for those cases, most of the apparatus devoted to finding and prosecuting child sexual abuse would never have been created or so vastly empowered.

there is a vast difference in the ages of what we mean by "minors."

And? As far as the law is concerned, the law is not concerned. A newborn is equal in law to a teen a day short of 18.

As to any pre-pubescents actually producing their own pornography I think we can discount this happening to any significant extent. Perhaps it does happen but these will be in a considerable minority.

Like with every statement on KP out there, this one is without proof. And by the way I think yours is a reasonable assumption at least because preteens have less cellphones and webcams per capita than teens (much the same as this explains why sexting should happen more in rich than poor countries). I just remark it because it shows how everything ever said about KP rests on no proof whatsoever.

We can't assess their psychological profile to look within to see if everything was ticketyboo such that they are merely playing out a role that will not admit to any harms that might have occurred.

And we don't know that George Bush is not a reptile alien.

But the default assumption is that people tell the truth and that they are who they say they are. You are the one assuming there is an unseen truth behind. Sure enough, there always may be unseen truths behind, but there is a reason why hypotheses that propose this are called "conspiracy" theories.

What I do think is that in the vast majority of these cases the relationships were initiated by the older person, for their own sexual gratification and thus was intrusive into the lives of those children.
(also, Goode)

Oh, the Dependency Theory!

Dissident will find heartwarming that a Marxist-inspired (though not outright Marxist) theory is still highly regarded in the mainstream!

Sexual pleasure and enjoyment are not enough to justify such interactions - the pleasure centres of the brain are geared to seek such experiences and for them to be reinforced otherwise we would not see so many addictions and compulsive behaviours. This is part of the problem, not any sort of justification.

Agency is a problem? Really?

But if pleasure and enjoyment are part of the problem, then why would it be a problem to outright rape, torture and otherwise cause pain?

"Agency is the problem, except when there is no agency, in which case lack of agency is the problem"?

You can't have it both ways, and if you try, you end up with an unfalsifiable claim.

As Sarah Goode pointed out children are not asexual neither are they sexual. Some can be either, but it seems that for the vast majority it is mostly sex-play and exploration if it occurs at all during pre-pubertal life and very, very few have what we as adults would consider to be fully sexual relationships with either another child or with an adult or adolescent.

Either this is a semantic line in the sand, and the assigning of "sexual" or "not sexual" depends on age alone and not on discernible factual differences; OR it would undermine the argument against intergenerational sex, not strengthen it, by the implied admission that some maybe-sexual-maybe-not acts are indeed appropriate for children. [Not unlike the Muslim position on penetration vs. mutual frottage]

We don't know what it is at the moment but my guess is that it is some kind of fault in development either structurally (biological, genetic, etc.) or by other mechanisms such that trying to justify it is pointless and a waste of effort unless one had specific self-interest to cause one to do so.

Cerebral palsy is a fault in development. Is trying to justify it pointless and a waste of effort unless one had specific self-interest to cause one to do so?
[Yes, Dante, of course I know what I did there. You and I are the only here who have read that. :P]