Re: Reply for Dissident

Did you read what I said carefully enough? If not, then please ask yourself these questions: Why won't the police let anyone outside of the law enforcement or higher court echelons, including several objective non-MAA journalists, view anything they claim is abusive CP? In the very rare cases this has been done to a limited extent, as with Judith Levine commenting in her book Harmful to Minors, she was largely "underwhelmed" by what she saw being considered CP by cops.

I can't read their minds or determine what their motives are for doing so but I perhaps can conjecture that they might not want to make the issue even bigger than it already is, perhaps advised by some professionals who might see a greater number of "possible" parties interested in such material. Perhaps they are simply overwhelmed by the scale and futility of trying to control this issue. The Internet has been a game-changer in this regard. Kincaid in Erotic Innocence dismissed this issue much the same as it seems some here do but his comments came before the Internet exploded into life and 2012 is rather different even than 2002.

Do we have any evidence that CP is pervasive when cops spread the definition so broadly, and we have a near-total absence of former child victims coming forth, or even parents of all the allegedly kidnapped kids coming forth? How about the evidence that the small amount of truly abusive CP is actually made by parents or stepparents?

We do hear from a few of the victims but I would think that shame surrounding the issue might cause many not to want to make themselves the subject of public scrutiny. You might ask yourself that question - would you make it public if you were such a victim?

How about the articles, including the one in the 1988 issue of Playboy, that the CP scare--and yes, it is a scare--is heavily overrated? When you continually broaden the definition of what constitutes CP, then yea, you can easily make it pervasive that way. It's clear from your response here that the police and the mainstream media that simply repeats the words of the police verbatim is the only place you get all of your info from, which is why you really need to stretch your research net wider.

Well Dissident, either you truly do not know the scale of the problem and are just repeating what you have been told or you do and are simply being evasive but there will undoubtedly be many on this forum who do know the truth but I would hardly expect them to put their hands up and say "yes, he's perfectly right on this issue." Please don't mention stuff prior to the Internet, as I've said it is a game-changer and has enabled world-wide disemmination of this material. When in the 1970's all pornography was made legal in those two Scandinavian countries there was a relatively minor explosion of child pornography, what has happened since the arrival of the Internet might be seen as a nuclear explosion in comparison.

And this is precisely what my point was--that the once common belief that children never lie has been proven untrue, meaning that such cases need to be objectively investigated, something the McMartin case proved is often not the case. It's not just a "few" incidents, such accusations were believed in literally thousands of cases during the 1980s and early '90s, which is why I told you to read Satan's Silence by Debbie Nathan and John Snedeker. And you see cases like this in the news constantly today, which you have obviously read, and where you obviously build your entire ideology upon, so where are you getting the figure of a mere "few" from? I never in any way said that children always lie, but that if they are given such leading questions when they insisted they were not abused, and castigated under oppressive interrogation conditions until they do, then all such scenarios where accusations were obtained such be held suspect. And this occurs almost every single time a case of statutory rape is mounted, as opposed to a child bringing an accusation forth themselves. Please cease reading more into my statements than I intended to say.

As I said children will not lie unless they have good reasons and leading questions are a huge problem which is tending to be recognised much more now.

Kids are well known for experimenting with each other, and in some cases, adults, which they describe in code as "playing doctor" or other euphemisms.

Your title was "3) Kids have no real sexual desire." so by trying to contradict this it was you who was implying that they did have sexual desire when as I have pointed out this is not so but rather exploration of the subject and often results in "sex-play", something entirly different from "sexual desire."

I haven't seen the book yet, but I will look at it if you tell where you posted a link to it--but I am willing to bet it was written by someone who did no objective studies on it whatsoever, otherwise you wouldn't be supporting it like you are. The point remains, as I said before, that kids often perform their sexual experimentation in secrecy, so adults who have control over them do not see them, as kids learn very quickly that such behavior is forbidden and punishable. I certainly had to "play doctor" in secret with peers as a child, as one of the first things I learned from adults was that I wasn't supposed to be thinking about or doing that stuff--which, ironically, made me all the more curious about it. Yet you seem to think that not doing this in public means they do not do it at all. The point further remains that even if only a few wanted to experiment with either peers or adults, and initiated it themselves, that justifies the legal allowance of that experimentation for all if they so choose. Nobody here has ever supported the "right" for adults (or even peers) to foist sexual activity upon a child. And I am not talking about toddlers here; you seem to push in that direction at every opportunity, as if using them as representatives for all underagers will make a better case for your overall ideology.

I don't think that unless it is all in the open then it does't exist as I am well aware of what I hid from my parents during my childhood Diss, but from what I have seen and from my own experiences these cases are not necessarily that common before puberty. To see our own experiences as the norm would be decribed as egocentrism and I know it is difficult to place oneself in the greater perspective but from what I have seen that is what predominantly occurs in childhood and is how I see children of that age. I think it quite likely that earlier than normal sexual experiences is one of the factors producing a sexual attraction to children either then or later in life.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Girls-Boys-Junior-Sexualities-Exploring/dp/0415314976/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1340795135&sr=1-4

Girls, Boys and Junior Sexualities: Exploring Childrens' Gender and Sexual Relations in the Primary School - Emma Renold (2005)

and

http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/journals/3411802.html - Friendships and Early Relationships: Links to Sexual Initiation Among American Adolescents Born to Young Mothers - 2002

The vast majority (92%) of 11-12-year-olds indicated that they had never or rarely dated. Those who had dated mostly did so sporadically: Overall, 6% dated less than once per week, and 2% dated more frequently. Females were significantly more likely than males to report never or rarely dating (94% vs. 89%), and were less likely to report dating less than once a week (4% vs. 9%). Preteenage males with dating experience were more likely than their female peers to report going steady (67% vs. 49%).

As expected, only a very small proportion of 11-12-year-olds indicated that they had had sex (3%); males were more likely than females (5% vs. fewer than 1%), and blacks were more likely than nonblacks (5% vs. 2%), to report being sexually experienced. These reports are consistent with national figures on sexual intercourse at young ages.

Because our sample consisted of adolescents born to younger mothers, it may not be representative of all American youth. Although children of young mothers are likely to be at the forefront of transitions to heterosexual relationships and sexual activity, the vast majority of 11-12-year-olds were indeed still behaving as children: They had predominantly same-sex friends, had little interaction with older youth, dated infrequently and were, for the most part, sexually inexperienced. Nationally representative data for a fuller cross section are likely to show even fewer opposite-sex friendships and less dating and sexual activity.

you also seem to imply the common, but completely unsupported by evidence belief, that the vast majority of what is referred to as CP by the police--a definition that increasingly broadens year after year--is all full of children forced into sexual acts on camera against their will, always by adults, probably always by adults who are not parents or other older relatives, and that the kids are all tied up, crying on camera, burned with cigarettes, etc. This emotionally charged image causes many people to cry for the end of democracy itself if a single child can be spared the suffering from this "epidemic"--which the police and courts conveniently do not allow anyone to verify, but which they know pushing the right emotional triggers in people will generate outrage and belief without any questions about veracity.

Of course I do. NOT. Exploitation is the name of the game and there is plenty of that occurring. I have no exact idea as to the spectrum of images and videos available since I do not want to search for such material and do not need it. I do, however, know how to find it if I so desired and I do know to some extent what is available, how much and what much of it entails - descriptions of which will not be allowed by the rules.

Next, you will likely tell me that you routinely stumble on abusive CP while just casually surfing the Net, which would be ridiculous, because if it was that easy to find, then images of it could not be kept so readily from the public eye, because the vast majority of people would be stumbling upon it every day while shopping for housing appliances online, or surfing for adult porn.

Well you can safely sleep at night Diss since I will not be telling you this but I will be telling you that it doesn't take too much knowledge to locate the sources of much of the material and they are not about to suddenly vanish in a puff of smoke. That is one aspect that the Internet does mostly ensure - the survivability of data.

Okay, this may explain why you have such a strong, societally-encouraged bias against this subject. I greatly sympathize with you if you were a genuine abuse victim, and I would want to see your abuser brought to justice, but why do you not argue against genuine abuse or the conditions that foster opportunities for adults to abuse kids--like the current hierarchical nature of the nuclear family unit and the legal status of kids that often place them at the mercy of adults--instead of focusing your ire on intergenerational sexual/romantic interactions per se? Why do you connect that very general topic to abuse? I know that the law does this, and Western culture at large does this, but that doesn't make it true in essence. You would have this community as full allies if you were against abuse of children proper, but that will require you to question various aspects of the status quo, which is a much more demanding and difficult task than simplistically putting all the blame on "pedophilia" or adult attraction to minors in a general sense. It will also require you to look at much more common forms of abuse against children, rather than focusing entirely on any activity that has a sexual element to it.

It has nothing particularly to do with my abuse that I have formed my views but with regards to the overall picture. Of course abuse should be countered wherever it happens but my views with regards to paedophilia comes from my thinking as much as my experiences. The people here might have one particular view with regards to sexually interacting with pre-pubescents and I have a different perspective. As pointed out we can argue or just get on with life. Yours/theirs views will not likely change and probably neither will mine - that is life.

Even in the absence of any available evidence? And when it has been proven by memory experts and psychologists who study this phenomenon that people who suffer trauma do not typically repress the memory, but rather develop conditions like post-traumatic stress syndrome where they cannot avoid replaying it in their mind?

I truly do not know enough about the subject of repressed memories and I am willing to believe that a large amount can be induced by therapy but I do not know to what extent. As I've said my memories have mostly been clear and reliable.

The problem, lee, is that you are so caught up in the emotions connected to this topic that you always bias your position in favor of things that may bolster sympathy for abuse victims and in favor of the conception of children as inherently weak and in need of protection, even if they have been disproven by science, or where no scientific evidence exists to support it.

I think "vulnerable" might be more appropriate and you must know I always refer to pre-pubescents when meaning children so I doubt vulnerable is objectionable.

This is what happens when emotion replaces reason.

Stop trying to be dismissive, Diss, I may not be the sharpest cookie around here but I know when I am using my emotions and when I am using my head. I have done sufficient reading over the years to form what I consider a balanced opinion on many topics - some not so I will admit - but on this one I am reasonably sure, perhaps just as you are.

And if you were abused yourself, society will encourage you to bias yourself against this subject, and to show a disproportionate amount of sympathy to anyone who is purported to be a victim over that of anyone who is accused; or any type of science that may refute some type of victim testimony; or anything that has to do with adult attraction to minors, which you have been conditioned to conflate with abuse.

You may think this kind of reasoning works on some Diss but not on me. I am well aware as to where my sympathies should lie and try to be compassionate towards all who deserve it. I hold no animosity towards any on this forum because of their beliefs or attractions and it is not about sympathy but what I believe is best for children. Perhaps some adult/child sexual interactions will never be harmful, perhaps most will. I tend to side with the latter for the reasons quoted from Sarah Goode's book, with which I am mostly in total agreement.

You say you are looking for objective information about adult attraction to minors, but like many abuse victims before you who have claimed the same when interacting with us, in actuality you seem to have your mind focused disproportionately on the matter of sexual abuse, which you again connect to pedophilia and hebephilia specifically, rather than to specific factors under which it is most likely to occur. Further, when we refute certain types of biases that lead to false accusations of abuse, your bias and fixation on abuse causes you to interpret this as claims on our part that abuse doesn't actually occur, which is something we have never claimed. This also explains why you have a strong need to believe that everything that is said by police and the media about CP is absolutely true, and why you downplay the many past lies and gross exaggerations the police and media were involved in regarding the sex abuse hysteria that have since been totally disproven, like the Satanic ritual abuse nonsense. This is not an attempt to downplay your pain or the injustice you suffered, but entirely aimed at your bias. Will you please consider all of this, particularly the possibility that you may be "too close" to this topic from a personal standpoint to view any aspect of it objectively?

Perhaps we are all "too close" to this to see much truth. I think having had certain experiences does help one to empathise with others and as I've commented I do find it difficult to do so for some but probably you will do likewise.

Sometimes more than slight. But it's considered CP and an actionable offense by the law nonetheless, which underscores my previous point that the police and the courts very broadly define what constitutes CP, and increasingly broaden its parameters all the time, so that now the rubric of CP includes pics where no minors were involved at all, including cartoon imagery; drawings; and pics of legal adults dressed like minors--in other words, anything that may possibly cause an MAA to become sexually aroused upon viewing, or in the case of the teen-to-teen sexting, anything that may facilitate the expression of underage sexuality in general. This is why I told you up above that we need to be very cautious in blindly believing that the bulk of what cops consider CP is filled with kids who were suffering from forced sexual activity; or that all the kids appearing in such material were very young rather than at least approaching adolescence; that the material was even recently produced; or that it was automatically produced by adults. Do you see my point here?

Attitudes might be changing and I don't particularly have a problem with sexting -

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-07-sexting-dating-internet.html

Because pre-pubescents are rarely given access to cell phones these days.

That is not true as pre-pubescents do have access to cell phones - can't lay my hands on the data but it is a significant proportion - in the UK at least.

http://www.gfkmri.com/PDF/MRIPR_010410_KidsAndCellPhones.pdf - I think it is at least 50% in the older categories by now.

But increasingly younger kids are creating YouTube channels, and their videos are becoming increasingly expressive, which strongly suggests that pre-pubescents can be exhibitionists as much as any adolescents or adults. It's easy to say otherwise when they largely lack access to the technology in question at the present time, just as it was once easy to say that blacks couldn't learn to read when they were largely denied access to books on the plantations.

No doubt and we all know what happened with Jessie Slaughter. Kids will use whatever technology is available - no surprises there.

What I do not see changing is how we treat pre-pubescents as they are developmentally different and deserving of more protections.

The same is said for adolescents now against good available scientific evidence, and the same was said for blacks and women in the past. This is why in order to be fair, children must be allowed to prove themselves so they can be treated on their individual merits, just as they were in the past when they used to routinely take apprenticeships at young ages.

Perhaps, I'm not that clairvoyant to be honest.

The fact is that although we might have invented the concept of "childhood" we have much evidence from all the related sciences that children below puberty are fundamentally different in many ways than adults or even adolescents and we need to treat them differently.

Where is this scientific evidence? The same statements are made abotu adolescents, with scientific evidence to the contrary ignored. Secondly, treating them differently does not mean taking away their rights to make decisions that they can be readily taught to make competently. The "solution" of taking away their rights actually causes them to be treated as property, and denies those who are truly able to accomplish great things from having the opportunities to do so for either entirely arbitrary reasons connected to their age, or because it may go against the ideological or religious beliefs of their parents.

Too big an issue to discuss I'm afraid and I am definitely not a scientist or psychologist or have any qualifications in child-related areas.

Secondly, evidence collected from people who had consensual relations with adults as children do not report trauma or negative symptoms developing of their own accord afterwards. Harm can still occur afterwards due to iatrogenic or sociogenic factors, which is one reason why the majority of MAAs (including hebephiles) refrain from engaging in such activity with minors of all age groups, but such harm is not due to anything intrinsic with the sexual activity itself, but based on the reactions of others to it from a moralistic point of view. Levine is well aware of this from her studies, but this is not something that your personal ideology will currently allow you to accept, hence you ignore or scoff at objective scientific studies that made these conclusions.

One problem I see is that although I will admit societal attitudes to such matters can indeed influence the perceptions of apparent abuse there is also the consideration that the very processes involved in forming such relationships might have an equal affect towards conditioning one to not see such relationships as abuse. If you can see this as equally likely then we might make some progress.

Sound scientific methodology, full peer review of all methods used, and the fact that it was fully replicated a few years later give strong points in its favor. And how could those who didn't have the experiences be a better authority on how children may feel after such consensual interactions than those who did have them? Those who didn't have them would be judging on the basis of a vantage point they didn't possess, i.e., entirely on personal ideology or sensibility as opposed to actual feelings based on experience.

See previous comment.

Mmmmhmmmm. And in the absence of any corroborating evidence, you think it's totally justified to make this broad assumption, which is based on the belief that any adults who have an attraction to minors are inherently selfish individuals who are only capable of caring about their sexual lusts if they should become involved in such an interaction, and that if children or adults who had these experiences as children say otherwise, we should assume they are either lying or incapable of understanding what they "actually" wanted for not playing into the stereotypes we have of both adults and children who may interact thusly. Now let's see you tell us that you have no bias on this subject, and that we are the ones who are making the projections and forming self-serving biases. Please understand that it's very difficult at this point to believe that you have any desire of objective learning, and that you cannot separate the complex spectra of adult attraction to minors from the specific subject of sexual abuse. How can you learn anything with your mind willfully closed, and only listening to the sources that bolster the mainstream view?

My view comes from an overall perspective and if I see other evidence to the contrary then my views might change but how sure are you that you are seeing the full picture and not just one that fits your views?

This last aspect can often be seen in those involved in child prostitution who will defiantly emphasise that their relationships are more akin to "lovers" or that their clients are just "boyfriends."

So you will read the mainstream, very non-scientific rationalizations of a writer who is known to have a powerful personal bias with the MAA community, and to have come to us under false pretenses to get our info, as gospel over those of other non-MAA writers who cite actual scientific studies rather than simply spew out mainstream rhetoric, like Levine and likely all the others I mentioned up above if you were to actually read them? No wonder you react so blindly to this subject.

Anything that contradicts your views is rubbish and anything that confirms them is truth eh?

I didn't expect her work to have gone down well here and the book is not exactly perfect and probably quite selective but that particular piece didn't come from her but from another book specifically about child prostitution (which was quite honest if condemnatory of the clients) and verified by another I have recently read and also by my own personal experiences. It may not be typical but sexual intercourse with a 6-year-old even one paid for it is hardly going to win friends anywhere.

Yes, the common view in society is that kids will go out of their way to please adults whom they love and look up to and do everything that adult asks without question--but strangely, only if unwanted sexual activity is involved. We routinely witness children arguing with adults they love and have at least a modicum of respect and even fear for about things like going to school; doing their homework; eating certain foods they dislike; going to bed at a certain hour; not hanging around with certain friends their parents dislike; avoiding TV shows or websites their parents forbid them to watch; etc. But when it comes to unwanted sexual activity, this is the one thing you can accept that they will comply with no matter how much they actually hate it, out of a desire not to lose the affection of an adult they care about. Politicians and parents often bemoan how defiant children are with adult authority, yet they simultaneously express fears that children always go along with what adults say when it comes to supposedly unwanted sexual activities.

I don't think it is always the case but the fact that there exists on the hidden side of the Internet a "guide" as to how to get involved with children sexually which points out those most likely to respond to such advances - those who are in need of affection when lacking it from others - might make one suspicious. Basically pre-pubescents do try to please those whom they love whilst at the same time also trying to push boundaries and get whatever it is that they want at that moment. Of course their behaviour will vary considerably.

t's interesting to know that you read Sarah Goode, but have yet to read Judith Levine, Richard Farson, and John Taylor Gatto, all of whom were not MAAs nor pro-pedophile, but are/were entirely pro-youth. If you deny that you are biased, then read the books of these individuals, particularly Gatto's books and Farson's Birthrights.

If I recall I have read Levine - it is online I think? but not the others so I will look out for them.

And enjoying mutually consensual sexual activities of a certain sort within reasonable parameters is comparable to an addiction or a compulsion for youths exactly how? Should those who dislike homosexual interactions label them as "addictions" or "compulsions" to denounce their validity? What if such interactions do not impact in any demonstrably negative way upon a child's life? Then you have to admit your problem with the interactions are based on moralism, not safety concerns.

I have browsed many forums that deal with issues of abuse and perhaps the most striking comments I have come across are those below from a young woman who suffered sexual abuse as a child but who has trained as a clinician and who came across as quite sympathetic towards paedophiles -

What you believe to be a consensual and acceptable sexual or romantic relationship between a young child and adult is the very part of the abuse that is most likely to make them want to kill themselves later in life and I do not believe it is possible to truly love someone and yet be so selfish with them that you could take such a big risk about ruining their life.

{...}

You want to think a 10-year-old can consent to sex? I have been that 10-year-old; one time I even initiated my molestation. Maybe he had convinced himself that my consent made it ok and positive ... and it was the fact that I had been so disgusting as to invite him to use me that caused me so much shame and self-hatred, the fact that I was so untrustworthy to myself, and worst of all the fact that my body betrayed me by feeling involuntary pleasure ...

I would find it difficult to place myself in the mind and body of a child experiencing such events - would you?

Again, Sarah Goode is known to have a strong personal bias against intergenerational activities, and she came to this community under false pretenses, with the last two chapters of her book being about abuse, thus proving how she conflates abuse with all types of intergenerational activities. Now I know I was correct before to strongly suggest that you need to broaden your research horizons and not limit yourself to individuals who simply speak mainstream views. Which is all that Sarah Goode did. Her second book was more blatantly anti-MAA, so if you throw around her name as your chief authority on this subject, then you are not going to escape the accusation of bias, which will be entirely justified.

Bias/Truth, Bias/reality, who knows who has the true picture? I can tell you that how she described what happens between adult and children in such sexual situations as I quoted from her book is how I perceive them. It may not be what happens in some cases but I am willing to believe it happens in far too many and although many of these cases will be put down purely to child-molesters much the same will be happening with those paedophiles who refuse to look at what is actually occurring because their sexual desire interferes with their thinking.

Okay, now here is another problem you seem to have, which makes me strongly wonder if you are actually an MAA, because discussions on the above point are conducted here often. I am not entirely sure if you ever said you were an MAA, but I was under that impression from reading some of the first posts of yours that I perused. Please clarify this point one way or another. In the meantime, I will tell you why I have my doubts.

Do I really have to show how desirable I find pre-pubescents aged between 9-11? I think no adult or adolescent comes near to what I feel towards them but my attraction will stay at that and not go any further. I do not think I have to describe how I see such children or of the experiences that I have had so take it or leave it.

One of the main mistakes/assumptions made about the pedophilic attraction base from Nons (including the not-very-knowledgable-Dr. Goode, whom you consider an authority on these matters)

I don't and never have said so - please Diss do not ascribe views I do not have - something you seem to constantly accuse me of doing. I agree with her interpretation of what occurs between adult and children in such sexual situations.

is the strange belief that pedophiles typically have an adult-like level of attraction to pre-pubescents, and that they believe most pre-pubescents have desires for actual full blown sexual intercourse and adult-like relationships. This is far from the truth.

Nope. I am willing to believe there is a considerable spectrum of behaviours and attractions within what might be defined as paedophilia.

The typical pedophile (not counting child fetishists, who are not quite pedophiles in the sense we define them here) has sexual and emotional desires on the level of a child, and the social aspects of their attraction include a strong interest in and appeal for the social world of a child. The emotional and social aspects of their attraction base are generally greater than those of the sexual aspects, and they tend to limit such sexual interactions--when they have occurred at all--to the same type of sex play that children routinely engage in with peers. Genuine pedophiles do not typically want adult-level romantic relationships with children, nor expect or seek full anal or vaginal intercourse with them, let alone any of the usual "kinky" activities that adults often engage in with each other. MAAs who speak in this community tend to inadvertently cause confusion over this issue at times by referring to intergenerational "sex" rather than "sexual activity" simply due to lazy typing, even though pedophiles are generally referring to sex play, not full intercourse, as the term "sex" can mis-imply in the minds of Nons who read or hear that word.

If this is true then as I commented in another thread the "baggage" surrounding paedophilia will not help towards any progress that many want to see so either they ditch it completely or accept that what you describe as a "typical paedophile" is not true and the larger picture will remain and ipso facto the status quo.

If these are the only sources you have read to build your view on the entire fulcrum of this subject, then again, you need to immensely broaden your research horizons, and to deliberately try reading the literature from those who have provided strong, well-researched info from scientifically objective methodology. We have read all the literature you have a thousand times over, and have since learned that none of it came from actual research, but rather simple assumptions that were based on solely using forensic or clinical samples of adult sex offenders (a large percentage of whom were likely not genuine MAAs, or confined for mutually consensual interactions with underagers), or children who specifically had non-consensual interactions with adults that involved incest, violence, and obvious coercion to build opinions and data on intergenerational interactions in general. After looking at that data, the only way I could possibly understand why you would consider it remotely objective or based on research involving non-forensically obtained samples of kids or MAAs is if you never spoke to actual MAAs before, or read any of the contrary literature involved. You now have the opportunity for both, so please partake of it fairly if you want us to be fair to you in response--and we have certainly sought given you all due courtesies, because we believed you when you said you are here to learn.

Just a few recent indicative ones - not sure why I added them really. I'm loathe to quote material perhaps as the next person since it just gets into a war of links and there is a finite amount of time and a very large body of work to peruse and, not being an academic, to which I have no access - or am not willing to pay for. I will buy books though and have done so over the years, many relating to issues surrounding paedophilia so no they were hardly the source for my views.