If men involved with boys who had serious reservations about any romantic/sexual aspects of the relationship, then it would not have truly been a genuine romantic relationship in the first place.

That's a very high standard for a romantic relationship, if you're defining "serious" as strong enough that it might get mentioned in a conversation.

Clearly, these boys had no reservation about the relationships, otherwise they would not have been volunteers for the study.

It would have been an "arrangement" of some sort, with each partner sacrificing something to acquire what they wanted from the other. Sandfort was clearly asking for serious romantic relationships, with all the ups and downs of relationships between people of comparable age.

Well, in that case you're assuming the conclusion. You might as well put out a call for lottery winners, and based on your study conclude that most people win the lottery.

That statement is based on your assumption that minors who have a genuine romantic interest in adults as a significant or preferential part of their attraction base are actually more rare than people who win the lottery per year.

But even in those cases, I read most of the boys as expressing faint praise for the sexual aspects -- despite finding one or two where there is more enthusiasm.

Of course, because your agenda and ideology demands that you read their statements in such a way. That's what happens when someone makes up their mind about something before they even look at a single word of data.

The policy question is whether it's OK for men to engage in sexual activity with boys. The costs and benefits have to be calculated over all such instances, not ones that worked out pretty much OK.

And I've told you many times before how the pro-choice and youth lib stance feels about the cost and benefits of freedom vs. prohibition, and liberation vs. protectionism, and why we take the stance that we do. And I'm referring here to the cost and benefits for all of society, including the rampant degree of censorship, witch hunts, stereotyping, extortion, hate legislation, and surveillance that are consequences of strong prohibition-based laws. Again, the liberationists have done the cost and benefit analysis on all of society and made their decision accordingly, just as the protectionists have. Let the best ideology win in the end.

Relationships that simply work out "OK" are not exactly negative, and certainly do not call for excessive prohibition. And as I said before, I do not believe the evidence suggests that gerontophilia in underagers is extremely rare, or that it only first manifests at the moment of a youth's 18th birthday.

There are plenty of adult men that boys could find to be a platonic mentor or friend if one of these things were all they wanted;

Oh? Boys who need platonic mentors and friends have to turn away the applicants?

No, boys who only want and need platonic mentors and friends need not seek out BLer's for this purpose, if they do not swing a certain way romantically. There are plenty of adults who would fill these positions for them with no romantic feelings. On the other hand, boys who seek out BLer's are clearly very often looking for a specific thing that non-BLer adults cannot provide for them. Common sense, Ethan.

Last I knew, programs like Big Brother/Big Sister were quite short on good big brothers. And if the interest was motivated strongly by the sex, you would not expect such boys to come from disproportionately troubled home situations.

Boys (and girls) who come from disproportionately troubled home situations will naturally seek the influences from other adults of all stripes. This often frees them from the familiar and controlling confines of the hierarchical nuclear family structure, and encourages them to seek out both social and sexual experiences that the family would prohibit them from seeking were they closely embedded within it.

Hence, there are probably direct reasons why younger people from dysfunctional families more often end up in romantic relationships with adults: Those who are not gerontophiles will bond with adults who have no direct power or control over them, and these types of bonds will take different forms than the ones they typically develop with family members or "authorized" adults in professional situations, both of whom have full legally sanctioned power and control over them. This often allows them to see the alternative, non-controlling adult influence in a different light than they did those with great control over them, and feelings and relationships both individuals didn't expect can form as a result. Remember, you don't have to be a MAP or an AAM (Adult Attracted Minor, i.e., underage gerontophile) in order to fall in love with someone outside your generational bounds. It's the heavy legal and cultural enforcement of age segregation of our society that prevents this from happening nearly as often than it probably would otherwise, especially when you consider those that do happen have to occur in secrecy if they are going to happen at all.

When the common age-centric boundaries of our culture are broken, often unexpected feelings and relationships will develop between youths and adults who do not have the same type of relationship as does those that occur within the typical legal and cultural authority structure.

In the case of genuine AAMs, their unpopular feelings will naturally cause them to end up in dysfunctional relationships with their families in many cases, much as is often the case with conventionally LGBT youths. They will naturally seek out adults to have romantic relationships with, and many will try to find ways to circumvent the legal and cultural barriers that keep them "out of bounds" with "unauthorized" adults. This naturally leads to many conflicts with families, creating dysfunctional situations in the family dynamics.

These social phenomena are natural and to be expected in both cases. They in no way indicate that minors almost never have a natural attraction to adults, regardless of where their natural preferences tend to be. Those with a specific agenda simply insist on interpreting such situations in this manner for obvious reasons.

Speaking of my own situation and much personal experience, one of the reasons I avoid platonic friendships with young adolescent girls is because due to my hebephilia, I have a natural tendency to relate to them well both socially and emotionally, and to treat them as equals and with a degree of respect that adults of a typical orientation and degree of ageist indoctrination do not. This has caused some of them - who showed no indication of being gerontophiles - to see me differently than they did the adults who had authority over them. In these cases, they would begin to shed the typical ageist indoctrination and to perceive me as more of a peer than some type of "out of bounds" authority figure, and certainly not in the capacity of a mentor or "father figure" type of deal. When this happened, these particular girls would suddenly find themselves attracted to me in a way they never expected to with an adult; having to reject them to stay within the bounds of the law wasn't a pleasant experience, either for me or for them. And since I am by no means whatsoever the MAP equivalent of a "stud," I can imagine how often this can happen with MAPs who are more conventionally attractive than I am.

Contrary to that popular narrative you adhere to, it's extraordinary difficult for adults to get minors to do anything the latter truly does not want to do if they lack direct power and authority over them, and even then it's an uphill battle in many cases.

You could define "truly does not want to do" to require a self-awareness and confidence that is unrealistic for most children.

And your assumption that most children lack self-awareness and confidence as a matter of course is just that... an assumption, and a politically-motivated ageist one at that. It sounds highly reminiscent of the "hormone" and "defective underdeveloped brain" attributed to adolescents in the very recent past to justify their oppression, but which are now being effectively debunked scientifically despite their continued popularity for political reasons.

Sorry, Ethan, but using the claim that it's justified to prohibit people from making decisions on the basis that they only think they enjoy or desire something when they actually lack the ability to understand that they "don't" is one of the oldest rationalizations for tyranny in the proverbial Fascist 101 manual. As has often been the case before, you again require full scale, comic book style telepathy to be able to determine this; but you lack that ability, so instead you simply assume that the real desires of most youths are conveniently in alignment with status quo cultural demands. That is dirty pool all the way.

Otherwise, this is just wrong. Most of the abuse survivor tales tell of feeling powerless. And while a few rebellious and independent youth stand out in our minds, most are pretty cowed by grown-ups.

These are typically grown-ups who have direct power and control over them, both legally and economically, and in other cases, academically. These "survivors" were typically not involved with adults who were genuine MAPs, but subject to genuine abuse, often of an incestuous nature (more often girls than boys in this scenario). You are conflating these instances together with consensual relationships that occurred outside of the conventional age-centric power structure, which is the cause of so many cases of genuine abuse rather than its solution.

(Reminder: Mike Bailey and I are still waiting for the citation of his work suggesting frequent prepubescent interest in sexual activity with adults.)

Clearly, you misinterpreted what I said regarding Mike Bailey's studies. He has never conducted any work that suggest prepubescent sexual interest in adults is either low or high, but has acknowledged that the available scientific data does not suggest that intergenerational relationships are in any way typically harmful when consent is involved, which he admits goes against his cultural instincts. This I quoted from his review of O'Carroll's Michael Jackson's Dangerous Liaisons. There is no evidence beyond assumptions that prepubescents are only attracted to adults in extraordinarily rare situations, and much evidence that this varies greatly between individuals in all age groups. The fact that such relationships are not typically damaging outside the realm of iatrogenic and sociogenic harm when mutual consent is a factor makes it clear that such attractions are not unusual.

You are the one who typically puts a politically motivated spin on the matter by insisting that such relationships are only entered into by younger people without any strong desire for the sexual aspects.

In fact, Ethan, I must say you are well known for misinterpreting the words of others to fit your agenda, and I have no doubt anyone who works closely with you who is in any way objective about the subject at hand would noticed this, as it's glaring. Bailey is an objective scientist, and he certainly does not come to the conclusions that you do in many cases. He is friendly to all law-abiding MAPs, as well he should be, but some of the outrageous things you say would not escape his notice if he read them regularly.

Moreover, you frankly have a lot of nerve making a strong request for citations from anyone here, considering how often you make off the wall assumptions and sweeping declarations about what younger people must actually want with no citations provided; and also how often you have been provided with citations and ignored them or interpreted them in a very spurious manner. The Sandfort study comes to mind with this. No objective scientific mind would overlook this tendency of yours, so again... nice try, Ethan. Telling you this is becoming a necessary habit around here.