I can't reply to all your posts at this level, but I'll do what I can with putting my answers in italics. Your judgments and guesses are so often wrong (oops, I mean so different from mine) that I think we rapidly get to the point of diminishing returns. --Ethan

First of all, I appreciate the vigour. It doesn't make you more convincing, but it does give me something to work with other than... well, "the usual".

And how many hundreds of stories are there?

More than hundreds, but you missed the point entirely. We weren't comparing numbers.

For one, we're working with the unnecessary qualifier of an age disparate relationship (implied by "molested"). The presumption that a child's sexual exploration with another child is fundamentally different from a child's sexual exploration with an adult - from the child's point of view - has no basis in reality. If you think it does, you can try reasoning that way, but I doubt you'll get very far.

The legal status of child-child sex doesn't matter here - we're exploring why there is an (in my view) arbitrary restriction on intergen sex.

The poll we'd really want to look at would be:

A) "among people under the age of consent who consented (illegitimately) to a sexual encounter, how many incurred psychological damage at the time of the encounter or shortly thereafter".

From there we'd look at:

B) "how many of those (illegitimately) consensual sexual encounters were with significantly older persons".

That would give us the correct data with which to make a cost/benefit judgment about the worthiness of criminalizing intergen sexuality.

We would take into account 721740 (sociological outcome of criminalization) and evaluate against the numbers from B) to determine what is really being accomplished here.

In lack of suitable B)-type data, we must make an educated guess. My educated guess (influenced by my personal experiences, the experiences of many others I have spoken with, and of course numerous studies a la "Rind" which I'm sure you're quite aware of) tells me that the numbers we're looking for are very, very small. Much smaller than the numbers would be for a poll asking for how many (illegitimately) consented to sex with someone significantly older and did not feel harmed at the time. Inference suggests that specific situational factors in the B) cases were what lead to the psychological damage.

If you want to say that consensual sexuality between youth and pedos is inherently damaging, you are using nothing other than your imagination to assess how and why.

That was my conclusion based on reading the stories, not thinking about the subject. So what follows comes from you, not me.

No Ethan. You read the stories, thought about it, then came to a conclusion. And in the course of your thinking you decided that the sexuality could be considered separately.

What follows comes from your thought error.

the "average" pedo doesn't enter into it. Some are like that, some aren't. Sex offenders' stories often read like that.

We both know that the category "sex offender" and "pedophile" have very little overlap. Not only does your perception of the average pedo "enter into it", it's actually at the root of our disagreement.

You are absolutely basing that perception off of a stereotype - one that YOU HELPED MAKE OBSOLETE (although IMO the new one isn't really better, but slightly worse overall).

I've told you (more than once) that I don't support most of that program of moral hysteria. I refuse to accept this idea that a person must be either pro-hysteria or pro-legalization.

You refuse to accept...?

No one's actually calling you pro-hysteria; they're calling you deeply confused.

And - as an aside - very agitating when you fail to connect concepts because of that.

But can you really not see that the moral panic is inextricably tied to the criminalization of the thing?

The end result of following the anti-contact trajectory is the continued moral condemnation of pedophilia and ultimately pedo-genocide, supported by the anti-contact movement, whatever you want to call that.

Can you really not see?

My argument is based on cost/benefit analysis, so individual cases have no bearing.

The correct "cost/benefit analysis" you would be arguing with is the one I outlined. Meanwhile, you're trying to do a cost/benefit analysis of other people's choices.

It's not up to you to decide what the costs or benefits were for other people's relationships. That's up to those directly involved - no one else.

But, if you're trying to go that route, you better at least be evaluating the entire thing rather than that (typically, as you tend to point out) relatively minor component which can be considered sexuality.

Evaluating the sexuality as separate from the rest of it is a thought error. It's misleading if anything, and certainly not useful to the broader discourse.

This is troublesome. If you think that an average well-meaning pedophile can tell in advance that a girl has budding sexual interest in him that will in time come to fruition -- it's dangerous for him to set up his expectations that way, even in an imaginary world where such relationships were accepted. And you say the whole thing is ruined if it can't actually become explicit sexual activity? It's a travesty of society gets in the way of that outcome, but of course to be accepted with perfect generosity of spirit of the girl decides that outcome? Seems unlikely.

I think that the average individual can tell when someone has a sexual interest in them.

It's absolutely a travesty if society's moralistic rampage destroys even one loving relationship in the name of upholding its demand that everyone over the age of 16 pretends that everyone under the age of 16's private parts don't exist.

Most of that paragraph is not recognizable as an argument to anything I've ever written.

It "seems unlikely" because you came up with all of it yourself in a fit of, I suppose, hostility.

I don't mind that there's hostility (if that's what it was), but putting words in my mouth is a waste of my time....

I certainly think that any man contemplating explicit sexual activity with a child should not do it. He should also realize he risks legal trouble.

Yes. We know you advocate that. It's quite clear that I was referring to something else: your desire for state authority rules of respecting personally made decisions.

If you're so confident...

Oh, I'm confident. But not everyone has that luxury. If they did, we wouldn't be having a conversation about it.

then you face no legal harm, right?

I face virtually no risk of legal harm, now or in the future. That doesn't mean that all of 721740 hasn't affected my life and the lives of my loved ones in negative ways.

I'm sure such relationships are in fact quite common that are never discovered -- including some that are remembered fondly and others that are deeply regretted.

A point of agreement, although that doesn't help your position.

.... If the pedophile says, "I won't even become their friend because I know it can't lead to sexual activity", then I'd say that's a pretty shallow pedophile.

Another point of agreement, except... who said that?

The state doesn't ever find out about a case with all those factors checked off....

Risk of discovery is the biggest problem. It is greatly reduced by those factors but not eliminated. Obviously.

And I was articulating an idealistic relationship, not the standard.

The standard is that all parties consented and no parties were harmed.

The vast majority of society speculates my way.

Ugh. Did you really throw that in there?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum

Would you apply that to your own encounters with peers?

Yes.

What about all the people who had unpleasant and harmful encounters, who rewrote their memories to be that it never happened or that they consented?

I think that given 721740, the environment we are currently in is much more conducive to memories evolving in a more negative light.

No?

And what might that be?

Reread the parenthesized part of the paragraph you're responding to, under the context of the following one.

Not children, and especially not children who see an abuse dynamic going on with the adults around them regularly.

Sorry - did you just say that children aren't capable of discerning love from abuse?

Once again, the pedophile who turns away from friendship knowing that it can't get sexual. Shallow character.

Sorry - who said that the pedophile abandoned the relationship?

Well, they can, of course. No one is going to prosecute children for what they do with adults. I wonder if you'd feel any impulse to intervene when a child chooses crystal meth or heroin.

Sorry - did you just compare sexual activity and taking crystal meth?

This is a classic in what I might call pro-contact girl-lover BS. The mediating variable is whether the girl has to prove that she didn't consent. Indeed it's a rare rapist who will think about happy adult-child relationships -- why the heck would he? I think there are a lot more men who would take advantage of girls than men who would both want to have loving relationships with little girls and (critical limiting factor) the girls agree.

No, the mediating variable is the number of pedophiles who want to rape little girls, who would only decide to do so under the condition that a prosecutor had to convince the jury that the rape happened as opposed to the rape being presumed automatically.

And last I checked, "taking advantage of for a sexual purpose" is basically synonymous with "rape". So...?

.... Indeed it's a rare rapist who will think about happy adult-child relationships -- why the heck would he? I think there are a lot more men who would take advantage of girls...

You realize you just made the claim that "a lot more" pedophiles would like to rape children than love them?

Would you... like to redact that statement, or...?

[Ahem.] Regardless, we - um - were talking about a fractional subset of pedophiles who are rapists, and a fractional subset of rape cases which in theory would be open enough to contention so as to prevent justice from happening. Right?

So how relevant exactly was that point to begin with?

.... Check your own BS.

My jaw drops. What the heck are you thinking of?

The miserably Virtuous Pedophiles who would suddenly be free of the pent up sexual frustration, social isolation, and eventual dissociation which creates actual rapists.

I'd love to see an opinion poll. If you spin it in a remotely neutral way (not assuming the relationship is totally wonderful and not assuming it isn't) I think you'd lose badly.

Why are we "spinning it" in a neutral way if it was wonderful?

Did you miss the bit about having to be a real person first?

This is not a battle you can fight from behind a computer screen.

I've offered an answer more than once. On balance, adult-girl relationships are going to be far more often exploitative than all lovey and wonderful.

Claiming something is not the same as providing a convincing explanation. You make this claim a lot. I asked for you to reason it out for me.

I note the exclusive pedophile whose sexual satisfaction relies on deciding that the girl really wants to do sexual things with him, and how this is likely to cloud his judgment.

I'm an exclusive pedophile. My sexual satisfaction relies on masturbation. I have not once - in my entire life - felt that my sexual attraction to a girl was clouding my perception of whether or not she was attracted to me.

Sexuality does not cloud judgment enough to cause an otherwise gentle person to carry out a sexual attack on a child. Quit referring to the stereotype.

BS.

...

Pedophilia associated with mental illness is not better than pedophilia associated with moral failure.

From an active pedophile's point of view, it is worse.

And it is a BIG LEAP closer to genocide.

~ RBL