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I don't think the consensus is always right - I am quite liberal with my thinking - but on this issue I do not see much change occurring. Can't really add anything to that.

But contemporary liberals are not generally open-minded on this subject today, just as they weren't open-minded on the issue of homosexuality in the 1950s. I'm sure no one saw that situation changing when those PSA videos I linked to a few weeks ago that demonized homosexuality were made back then either. But change is the major rule of history.

I am quite willing to believe I might be wrong but I doubt I will see the day when I am proved wrong.

I'll agree that there might be more focus on sexual abuse than for many other abuses - Childline in the UK I think reports sexual abuse issues as 10% of all their calls - but perhaps that is because it has been a relatively new topic of interest and it suits the media to run with it.

Yes, because it carries with it far more emotional impact and potential sensationalism than stories of forms of abuse, however severe, that do not involve a sexual element. This is also because people are both appalled and intrigued by youth sexuality in general (regardless of whether it's consensual or not, as call cases are lumped under the rubric of "abuse"), just as they are about all taboo subjects, and the subject of underage sex in general simultaneously terrifies, titillates, and fascinates the public far more than more serious and pervasive issues like child poverty or neglect.

I tend to agree with you here and only time will tell whether we might see some changes in perspective.

If we can leave out the adolescents then for pre-pubescents it will be an isuue of their maturity and understanding of the issues and I don't expect the authorities have it entirely right at the moment.

Which is why I have often said, just like youth lib orgs like ASFAR, that the fair thing to do for both the child and the adult participant alike is to take every such situation on a case-by-case basis, and take how the child feels or felt about it into consideration, rather than just how the majority's personal sensibilities feel about. Any law that is absolute cannot be truly just.

I am no authority on what is just or fair but it seems to me that we have laws to protect the vulnerable and to frame them for every case is simply not possible and the alternative (no laws) is even worse.

This is true, but as far as I can see the trend appears to be going in the opposite direction than those here on GC would like to see.

But there are also many signs that this trend is beginning to overreach, and it's at the point where people outside the MAA community who are simply concerned with either civil rights in general--e.g., Lancaster--or youth rights--e.g., Epstein--are starting to rise up in opposition, and we are beginning to see a number of books questioning the extent of sex offender laws and laws that restrict younger people on an entirely arbitrary basis. This is because the sex abuse hysteria has inevitably gotten to the point where people outside the MAA community are starting to realize that a genuine democracy based on civil rights cannot endure under such an hysteria, which is pushing the West towards a group of police and surveillance states. You didn't see anything like this opposition ten years ago, at the height of the hysteria, when Levine and Kincaid were practically alone in their protests; now, you see more and more books popping up that question the sex offender laws and continued attacks on youth rights that were spawned from the hysteria.

You also didn't see organizations like B4U-ACT and others beginning to follow in its wake ten years ago, and few people in the community believed they would live to see such developments. All social crises--including hysterias--have to get worse and greatly overreach before things can get better, but as with all previous such hysterias, it will result in a backlash, which has been starting for the past few years.

I agree that attitudes are changing to some extent but not towards the core beliefs of many here at GC, and mostly being about understanding the issues involved surrounding those attracted to children and less condemnation.

I will grant we in the West have "infantilised" the childhoods of many of our children by being over-protective. I have travelled quite widely and have seen how very young children do have much more responsiblities than we in the West. However, children are much the same all around the world and tend to react much the same. Children can often be transposed from one environment to an entirely different one and even not speaking the languge will fit in and adapt readily - and appear much like other children.

That says nothing of the potential that children have in different environments. It's not only about how much responsibilities they have imposed upon them, but how much freedom they are allowed in choosing the nature of their responsibilities depending on their individual talents; the degree of freedom they are given in choosing their forms of education; and the degree of autonomy they are given in defining their sense of identity, as opposed to being expected to adhere to a specific cultural paradigm that is assigned to them without their ability to freely choose not to adhere to it. A society where responsibilities are imposed without freedoms is only different from our culture here in terms of the degree of those imposed responsibilities, and shouldn't be expected to produce greatly differing outcomes.

Also, children are not the same all around the world, they are the same in cultures that are similar to ours, and their behavior can be quite distinct in cultures much different from our own, such as aboriginal cultures. Children were well known to act and react differently to various situations in early times of history, and this is made clear in Phillipe Aries' must-read book Centuries of Childhood.

I have read Aries, some time ago, but I would still maintain that children are essentially the same all around the world so that what is observed in many tends to apply to all, although obviously their environment plays a huge part.

Not sure they had any "civil rights" to begin with and even in countries where children do work they might not be seen as having any particular "rights." I'm not against children working at young ages but this mostly limits their education so would perhaps be seen more as limiting their freedom than many things might.

First of all, yes they did once have what we now consider civil rights--at least male children did in Western society. They were not only often able to choose their apprenticeships based upon their individual talents and interests, but able to make many more decisions for themselves than they currently do as a result of having an income, and thus both contributing to their household financially, and having a large degree of economic independence. Due to their ability to prove their talent in many areas they are currently almost never allowed to do, and the important services they performed to their societies in addition to the adults they worked beside, they were given much more respect and autonomy as individuals than they are today.

The idea of their education and work life being entirely separate--and thus conflicting interests--is a modern myth based upon the way our current institutions strongly differentiate between education and work, forcing children to choose only one (the former) in most cases, and often making adults who want higher education either choose one or the other, or be forced to juggle work and education completely separately (but the solution for adults, who often need continuing education throughout their lives, is connected to this subject but still a whole other topic unto itself). In a youth liberated society, younger people wouldn't necessarily be stuck in the type of classroom setting they have today for almost the entirety of their education. They would have many different options for early apprenticeships that would simultaneously serve as part of their education and as employment, earning both academic credits/certificates of achievement and a paycheck at the same time (this, of course, is assuming a youth liberated society established within the context of a capitalist system, of course).

For instance, a child interested in learning about animals, could be given an apprenticeship to a zoologist who works in a zoo, and learn in a hands on manner how to care for animals for two-three hours out of the day, and earning money for the service they provide at the same time. Or a child showing an early talent and interest in writing or journalism could seek an apprenticeship at a newsroom or magazine company, where they learn the trade and perform tasks that earn them money at the same time. This would not add hours to their work/school day, but combine them, and in a way that would make education meaningful, enjoyable, and interesting to them. By earning this income, that would increase their freedom by giving them a degree of economic independence from their parents, and they could seek classes that taught them how to manage money and related matters such as building and retaining credit.

I think there is much truth in what you say here and I certainly do not see the West as what the rest of the world should emulate in any manner but that education - in the broader sense of awareness and understanding - generally gives more choices in people's lives and greater freedom.

I could probably find as many who would say that their early sexual experiences damaged them. You might see it as our culture trying to convince them of the "damage" whilst others might see it as seeing more clearly what the dynamics were at the time.

Yet most of the objective research conducted has shown that the vast majority of children who had consensual experiences of that nature who were not "found out" and forced into therapy; or who did not receive condemnation and shame imposed upon them by others whom they shared the experience with--did not display a feeling of being "damaged." You will also notice, especially after reading Scotty Bowers' account in his book Free Service, that children did not start widely reporting consensual experiences of this nature with adults as being "damaging" until the sex abuse narrative became entrenched in our society; note that Bowers was 89 years old when he published that book in 2011, so he had these childhood and adolescent experiences with adults long before that narrative first appeared and became entrenched. Yet you will notice how this changes with accounts from people who were children or adolescents when they had these experiences mostly from the 1980s onwards, like actor Corey Feldman, at a time when the narrative was extremely pervasive throughout the media. I highly doubt the above two factors are mere coincidences, or that the dearth of adults reporting consensual experiences with much older partners while children as being inherently abusive or "damaging" back then is all due to a near-universal coincidence of the older generation collectively feeling too much shame to admit it.

I strongly believe the above is the case because the rationale behind some inherent "dynamic" of the relationship causing "damage" due to extreme shame and feelings of betrayal that are inherent rather than culturally derived defy common sense, because consensual exploration with either a peer or an adult do not make any hugely intrinsic difference to a child if they happen to initiate and enjoy the experience, until they encounter a narrative-cum-cultural-imperative that tells them otherwise. The giving and receiving of pleasure and the closeness that can develop between two human beings who share such mutually desired intimacy has no logical reason to cause inherent "damage" to the younger person who engaged in such relations with a much older person than, for example, a white woman who engaged in such mutually desired relations with a black man, or a man who engaged in mutually desired relations with another man--contrary to society once believing otherwise in the latter two cases. Further, pedophilia occurs in several intelligent animal species, including our closest genetic relatives, the bonobos, and amongst other intelligent species like dolphins, so it's hardly an aberration of nature, but obviously has a place within the culture of intelligent animals much as homosexual behavior does.

I'll await the evidence to convince we, Diss.

Well there is a difference between "normal" behaviour and "repression" and if one did not miss out on early sexuality then it would hardly be called repression. The few who do have early sexual experiences might not be considered abnormal but those with whom they interact who might not be ready for such experiences might see it differently later.

Yes, they will likely see it differently later if the activity was either discovered or shared with others, and a highly condemnatory attitude was expressed towards it, thus instilling shame, self-hatred, and guilt upon them for enjoying it. Much the same happens with girls or women who reveal having enjoyed a sexual experience with male peers, when they are castigated as being "sluts," which again is a variant of the same dynamic described above. Only the participants themselves can consider themselves "ready," not society in general, and society imposes a universal censure on anyone under 18 being truly "ready" for it. And we cannot in accurate estimation say that it's only a "few," because we do not currently know how much sexual behavior amongst children--either with peers or intergenerational--occurs under the radar, because currently it must occur under the radar if one or both participants do not want to get into serious trouble, as well as being bombarded with socially inflicted "shame," something people learn from a very early age will be the case. The research conducted thus far certainly seems to suggest it happens much more often than society is willing to admit or acknowledge.

I'll agree that there might be a lack of information with regard to this issue but my guess, looking at how kids behave, is that there is more "abuse" than "consensuality" when talking about this issue.

There is a large issue with sibling abuse because older siblings just do not have the controls in place and sexually interact with those younger simply because they can and the younger child does not have the capacity to resist in many cases.

Yes, the same being the case with parents, stepparents, grandparents, and all other older relatives, because children are expected to bow to the authority of these people, and this often leads to abuse of many kinds--but only sexual abuse is usually considered a major problem, not the many other types of often worse abuse kids are subjected to by older relatives. Older siblings respond to the hierarchical nature of the current normative family structure and engage in the same types of abuse towards younger siblings that parents and other adult relatives all too often do to them or other kids they associate with.

How can you deal with a structural issue of maturity when those older inherently will normally have more power (knowledge, experience, maturity) over those younger?

I can't prove this no, but from my recollections of primary school, sexuality was not an issue apart from the "dirty jokes" and occasional girl chasing by a small number of boys.

"Dirty" jokes and "girl chasing" (i.e., trying to get each other to expose themselves to each other in private) are good examples of what I am talking about here, because they are ways for kids to express themselves sexually in secrecy, by way of displaying an interest in the subject that enables them to "get over" on adults who do not expect them to know about this information. That is a way of covertly empowering themselves amongst each other and "sticking it to" adults for repressing their ability to express these interests openly, in a manner much the same as a woman who cries to high hell when she is publicly accused of being a "slut," yet in privacy tells her boyfriend to call her a "slut" when they are in the throes of sexual passion.

I don't see it this way. I see it as simply being interested in a major aspect of their lives - gender and sex - for which they mainly do not have a framework in place in which to place what they experience. And this can be quite disconcerting for those who do have such early sexual experiences.

The degree to which kids choose to experiment in response to these interests likely varies greatly, and partly due to opportunities that happen to arise or not arise depending on many different factors. We used to have an adult female pheophile (a younger person with a physical and emotional preference for much older people who are not necessarily elderly) who posted under the name littleblondegirl (where has she been lately?!), and she reported having such fantasies with adult men before reaching adolescence, and that the reason she never experimented along those lines is that she never came across an actual opportunity despite having the desire. We used to have another adult female pheophile here years ago who posted under the nick YesVirginia, and she reported much the same thing. Ditto the reports of another popular adult female pheophile that used to post here under the nick Sweet. I have dated more than a few pheophiles of legal age who reported having relationships with adult men since they were children, some of which the initiated, and none of which they seemed to feel were damaging to them despite having grown up during the height of the sex abuse narrative (which may possibly suggest that pheophiles have a perspective that often renders them immune or resistant to the cultural conditioning which may be more likely to effect a non-pheophile underager who has consensual relations with an adult). Hence, we have no idea how common these experiences may or may not be in a society that makes open discussion of these matters utterly taboo for fear of legal imprisonment and/or forced therapy, or at the very least complete social condemnation.

Anecdotal evidence might prove anything to those so inclined but it is the wider picture that matters. If we get that right then everything else falls into place.

It seems from the literature that I have seen that I was probably an early starter into puberty as many do not do so until 12 or 13 so those having even earlier experiences than me would be much less in number.

Note the key words "literature that [you] have seen," and remember my advice to expand your research horizons. If your attractions are non-exclusive, you may also try to date some pheophile chicks of legal age, and get their perspective on things.

Can you provide any evidence that puberty starts at age 10 for most children?