Lumping all "antis" together is problematic.

Which is why I, for instance, allowed for the variety currently coming from the social conservative and alt-right side, and those coming from the mainstream Left. Despite coming to the conclusions they do for sometimes different reasons, they nevertheless all come to the same conclusions and support a very similar worldview.

Who are you reacting to?

A group of individuals representing the current mainstream worldview who all follow and find extreme sentimental appeal in the very same popular cultural narrative and set of beliefs/assumptions.

The most extreme and memorable quotes will have an outsize place. Some of them are probably Russian trolls.

Here comes the revived McCarthyism that the Left is now rightly ridiculed for. Which partly proves my point: Narratives based on popular appeal are more compelling than anything based on substantiated evidence.

Remember that antis are also reacting to a heterogeneous "pro" position too -- those who support child marriage,

That is not "pro" if it goes against freedom of choice.

who think girls have it coming to them if they wear sexy clothes,

Who are no better than those who think that girls must be deprived of choice to "protect" them.

"incel" people who think women and girls ought to put out more and deserve violence if they don't.

Which is supporting a twisted conception of the incel based on the loud minority of them who are consumed by hate much like the antis and SJWs are, albeit on the opposite side of the coin. Just like all Christians are often demonized for the behavior and beliefs of a loud minority who drown out all the other voices. In actuality, the non-hateful incels actually support the right of women to choose sex work of their own volition and to have the vocation safely subsidized and affordable by the government so that unattractive men have the opportunity to have a "girlfriend experience," however simulated, by willing women who do the work as a matter of choice and make a good living off of it. It's only the reactionary Left that pigeon holes all men as "oppressors" and women as "victims" if they make unpopular choices that may serve a demographic that is unpopular.

Maybe Russian trolls there too.

Maybe Saudi Arabian trolls too, since they openly influence the outcome of American elections far more than Russians do, and are far more misogynistic than any other nation in the world. However, the mainstream liberals cannot criticize them because the Saudis cooperate with U.S. business interests, and as long as the Clintons and other high-ranking Democrats like them, most people on the Left like them and give their behavior a free pass. But perhaps we should digress there.

You would surely like to shed all that and defend a reasonable, progressive pro-legalization view. Lots of "antis" would like to do that too.

From what I have seen, I highly doubt it. It too much conflicts with their worldview and the specific power structures they support, along with their secular worship of the concept of innocence. They also do not want to risk their social acceptance and professional standing.

It's also interesting whether "anti" means to you someone who makes passionate arguments, or someone who if polled "Should adult-child sex be legalized?" would answer "no".

It means, basically, someone who makes all the same arguments all the time, virtually none of which appeal to evidence but only to emotion and a narrative based on a system of beliefs & assumptions, and all support a status quo with a specific set of power hierarchies and system of social control.

I don't know if you saw this thread where I had some harsh words for one particular anti on GC: https://www.annabelleigh.net/messages/725466.htm

I sincerely commend you for that. He is not, however, someone you work with as a colleague on VP, though.

I suspect that if you took a classic "anti" and the classic GC pro-legalization person and had them look through my blog posts, the GC person would agree with 80% of it and the "anti" with maybe 20%.

I have had many long debates with you, and witnessed many you had with others, and what it comes down to is this: You support a worldview that is very similar to the one all the other anti-choicers do. The differences are only in how far the draconian legislation should go, not whether the system should be entirely bereft of it. The thing is, though, that as long as the major ones prohibiting freedom of choice and which continue to "protect" kids at the expense of their freedom of choice remain on the books, those specific limits on tyranny you want are always going to face, at best, a very uphill battle. As I have noted before and as history has often shown, draconian laws never tend to stay limited to just the few some people prefer. Once you justify one obstruction of democracy, you instantly set a precedent to justify another, and another, and so on and on, ad infinitum...

Virtuous Pedophiles has a twitter account. Someone recently decided to contact a great many of our followers and ask what they were doing following a pro-pedophile group. Occasionally they even suggested they would report them for just following us -- a fellow-traveler argument taken to extremes.

Yes, which makes another point many of us have often made clear: being anti-legalization and essentially anti-youth rights does not prevent you from being hated. Winning hearts and minds is ultimately accomplished by behavior towards others, not by the ideology one expresses fealty to.

I made a tweet in response: "VP despises child sex abuse. Saying we're pro-pedophile makes as much sense as saying the cancer society is pro-cancer. Pedophilia is an unchosen condition that cannot be changed. But behavior can be controlled -- more easily if people don't feel totally alone and ashamed. Ethan"

As I noted before, we may agree that behavior is more important than feelings and ideology, but we likely disagree on what type of behavior is most problematic or potentially destructive. Prohibition, for instance, comes with the threat of state violence and repression for making unpopular choices, and it inevitably railroads numerous innocent people. Nevertheless, I never say that the words you expressed on Twitter were without merit or wisdom. You are well aware, however, that while we both despise child abuse in essence, we may likewise disagree strongly on what constitutes such abuse. I think, for instance, that prohibition and suppression of one's natural sexual expression, along with the dehumanizing and emotionally harmful efforts to de-sexualize kids (to which Miley Cyrus has become the poster person for) routinely conducted by our society is a prominent example of abuse. But society approves of it and rationalizes it as being in the "best interests" of kids. In other words, the type of trauma and shaming it causes are fully socially approved and sanctioned.

Surely GCers will pounce on that and say that most adult-child sex is not child sex abuse, ignoring the rest of the message. Which is why pro-legalization people are getting nowhere.

We do not ignore the rest of the message at all, but in fact promote it quite loudly. We often discuss how alienation affects us, and how behavior should be considered more important than feelings or ideology. It's just ignored because it's not coming from the "correct" brand. And we appear to be getting "nowhere" because we are too unfriendly to sponsors that finance the corporate controlled media and thus prohibit most mainstream journals from acknowledging any opinions that too strongly oppose the status quo and present evidence that may serve to undermine the validity of its institutions in the eyes of the public. These sponsors want the readers coming back and supporting the publications so they will continue to see all the advertisements.