I think, for the reasons I mentioned in my other response to you, that Margaux would have been better off in a youth liberated society, where she would have been empowered to make certain choices and insist they be honored,

I would support many changes in society to be more responsive to youth's needs. You would support more. But maybe you all should first achieve your goal of youth rights and empowerment, and once that's all set, THEN talk about legalizing adult-child sex. "Come the revolution, all will be well" is a very dangerous bit of hand-waving. As you know, I'm an incrementalist. Achievable changes, one small step at a time, can change society to allow other changes.


...it proved that girls can give as good as they get, and be just as devious and demanding as some adults are...

But Peter's the one who made her that way. Saying Margaux could "give as good as she got" is morally outrageous. He screwed up big time. She did the best she could as a child to adapt.

Psychological abuse is only so permanently damaging in a system that encourages it as part of a lucrative business to entrap victims as permanent patients, and as tools towards a political agenda to control others. Susan Clancy made this very clear in The Trauma Myth, and she was no friend of MAPs, let alone pro-choice!

Susan Clancy would vehemently disagree with your interpretation of her results, as do I. There is an abuse industry, but it's not at the heart of the problem. The fact that kids did not feel harmed at the time but came to feel harmed later does not mean it's due to societal messages. It could also be due to gaining more information about other people's motives, or their own developing personal morality. I've raised before the case of the young child who gets talked into exchanging his $20 bill for a shiny quarter. Freely done at the time, regretted later, the adult condemned later -- and nothing to do with internalizing inappropriate societal expectations.


compare it to your evaluation of my leg-remover man.

Ugh!

"Ugh" is not an argument.

Your lack of trust for us betrays a deep dislike for our attraction base, and a strong willingness to demonize everything about us, from our inherent competency and common sense, to our very intentions. If you do not actually dislike us, then you seriously dislike our attraction base and want to believe the worst of every person who has it, believing we need to be shackled for the good of kids, and kids need to likewise be shacked for their own good. Adhering to such a cynical world view does not lead to good, nuanced policies but frightful absolutism that always presumes the worst.

I hear violins playing in the background... GirlChat and VisionsOfAlice may be filled with pedophiles who are as virtuous in deeds as they are in words, but the world is a much bigger place. I'm not demonizing you all, I'm recognizing that there are bad guys in the world, and guys who mean to be good but end up doing harm, and the laws need to be fashioned with them in mind. I've tentatively allowed for the occasional good result under the heading of "prosecutorial discretion".

But when it comes down to it, legalization would allow a great many harmful and exploitative relationships between adult men and girls. The number of potential truly beneficial sexual relationships it would allow is tiny, and far tinier if we restrict our attention to prepubescents. That is fundamentally why I am anti-legalization. Huge cost, tiny benefit.

Neither of us can prove our case.

I suppose approval of the idea that the IRS audits tax returns now and then is an outrageous and cynical condemnation of all my fellow citizens. Surely almost everyone will file honestly, right? Even if they knew there were no chance of being caught cheating? How cynical of me not to believe that.