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Why it must include their empowerment

Posted by Dissident on Friday, August 17 2018 at 11:59:18PM
In reply to my vision for bettering kids' lives posted by EthanEdwards on Friday, August 17 2018 at 9:13:00PM

You think that because you have one particular idea about what makes children's lives bad and what would improve them. I think you are incorrect about what would improve their lives. That's very different from my not caring about children.

No, I think we have very different goals. You simply use your claim that it's the well-being of kids first and foremost as a smokescreen for preserving a status quo you are used to and want to preserve, i.e., arguing they will thrive best under the system which exists now and which you seek to preserve in a form at least closely resembling this one for perpetuity. The fact that you ignore or downplay all the non-sexual and far more demonstrable threats to the lives of kids, or anything to do with their empowerment that may help them avoid some of the sexual risks you mention along with all of these other non-sexual and actual dangers, provides good evidence for that.

One thing nobody here mentions very often at all is climate change. The potential for misery to many millions of poor children in low-lying coastal areas is phenomenal. An effective climate change solution would save far more misery for children than any details of sexual choice that affect a tiny few.

Which is why I strongly oppose the practices of the system that lead to such an environmental problem. And why I argue that if we gave kids a voice in society, they would have the opportunity to add their strength to making these changes. At the present time, they are at the mercy of older adults who make all these decisions; most of whom want to preserve the system as it now exists since they are among its very few beneficiaries.

You mention the nuclear family. A great deal of abuse and neglect stems from poverty and stress. I would propose generous government childcare subsidies.

That's a good start, and I would support it. But it would still force kids to stay in situations where they would not be happy, and still leave them at the mercy of the values and opinions of their parents, even if the latter were lowlife bigots and religious fanatics.

I would propose a vastly expanded version of the earned income credit, combined with a modest guaranteed minimum income. That would help parents to be better parents. It would also provide children with a more hopeful path in life. If government subsidy can turn a minimum-wage job into a living-wage job, then life returns closer to its intended shape where people feel useful and are useful and contribute to society. I would also propose single-payer guaranteed health insurance. Does that sound like slavish kowtowing to the consensus view in society? That is a rather extreme liberal program.

The thing is, Ethan, the fact that all of the above is considered "extreme" among the liberals of today is part of my point. Adults are known to be more inimical to change, and more predisposed to support what they are used to rather than what may be best for the greater good. Everything you proposed above would be very good, but it would still leave the system as we know it intact, which is why the New Deal and Great Society policies of the past, as good as they were, eventually got reversed by the people in power who remained in power through successive generations. If kids had a vote and choice in how society was run, chances are we would get the changes we want much faster, and more thinking "outside of the box," since they were not as emotionally invested in the system they're familiar with as older adults are. It would also be more in harmony with democratic principles in general to allow kids to be treated as full human beings and full citizens based on their proven individual merits. I think parents would be the best parents if they had to be in order to have a relationship with their kids at all, and their kids weren't in a state of forced dependence on them, nor at the mercy of their values and opinions.


Caring for children can well mean lifting their condition in absolute terms. It doesn't require special interventions to improve their status as a class in relation to the class of adults.


But that is like arguing that it was okay to keep black people as chattel slaves as long as it was with plantation owners who didn't resort to whipping them, and chose to give them better amenities overall. Which was actually argued by many plantation owners in the past. Leaving under a dictator is still living under a dictator, however benevolent a dictator you get. And it still sets a very bad precedent for society overall.


I don't see that criticism as flying in light of what I've laid out above. That is also not my idea of the limit of what we can accomplish. If we got to that point, it would set the stage for thinking about the next rounds of improvement to the human condition.


Bingo. That's called progressive advancement, fam. And yes, I am going to call you "fam", since it seems like everyone I know is calling everyone else I know that these days.

And after all that is said, I do favor some of the changes you suggest, such as allowing kids to vote and greater sympathy to teens who want to be emancipated.

Which would invariably lead to more progressive advancements in their rights. History has not shown any group of people accepting limits on their advancements once they continued to prove their level of competency on an individual basis. That has always led to the demographic in question being judged on their individual merits, not arbitrarily as a group.

If you look at society at large, indeed you have to listen to a great deal of anti-legalization rhetoric.

And maybe more than just "a lot." Let's not mince words here. That's like saying Quasimodo is unattractive instead of coming right out and calling him ugly.

Within the MAP community, the louder voices are the pro-legalization ones.

But only there. And we seem to disagree if that is a problem. MAPs have a good reason for being more likely to think "outside the box" on these issues than Non-MAPs of today's era. Much as I believe mesophiles do.

Take for example our friend Billi, who blithely says that pedophiles want to legalize sex with children. Even after I point out that the VP position exists and has a lot of support, she goes right back to talking about how pedophiles want to legalize adult-child sex.

That's not because our mutual friend doesn't hear your side of the fence, or because we drown you out, Ethan. She can, after all, hear your side of the fence by going to VP--which she is well aware of--where she will only hear the anti-legalization side of the issue. Or, she can simply go just about anywhere else in the mainstream media that allows MAPs to publish articles (until one or more of the sponsors insist they be taken down anyway, that is, even though they are also only seeing the anti-choice view). She keeps spouting the "pedophiles want to have sex with kids" and "pedophiles want to legalize sex with kids" lines because not because that is all she sees, but because that is all she wants to see. Believe me, it's impossible not to hear you and your side of the issue loud and clear--here and elsewhere, Ethan. But she is going to hear and believe only what she wants to hear and believe, because to her it's our feelings that are more important to her than our views.

Note she also continues to view pro-choicers's desires in the most puerile manner no matter how much we explain to her that we see kids as full human beings, do not see them as objects, and would not be ridiculously irresponsible in a physical sense if allowed to have full romantic relationships with them. She is obsessed with the media image of the "pedophile" and the sexual component of our attraction base, so she not only refuses to see any nuance on the matter, but she also refuses to even acknowledge dissenting views on the topic without our community. Even when either of us attempt to explain our respective stances to her over and over again. That is not on us, the pro-choicers; that is on the willful, emotionally-driven ignorance of much of the public and their one-track mind. They have a far more sex-obsessed mind than most pro-choice MAPs on any day of the year, and you know that.

By all means, please do your best to convince Billi to go over to the VP forum and talk to the MAPs there. See if hearing the non-legalization viewpoint and only that changes her mind in any way. If it doesn't, do not blame the pro-choicers. Blame her own obsessively contrived image of us as a whole. As long as she knows you have the feelings you do, that will always trump your ideology in her eyes, because she will refuse to see beyond the feelings to the multi-faceted human beings beneath them.

Be as it may, that is your only option, and I encourage you to consider it so you can see what I mean. Because the option to silence us, or keep our view entirely off the radar for consideration of the more open-minded members of the public, is not an option available to you, nor should it be. We need to learn to live with each other. There are many open-minded Non-MAPs out there who will befriend or accept either pro-choice or non-choice MAPs if we happen to be decent people in our overall conduct to others. And there are plenty of ignorant Non-MAPs who will dislike us both exclusively because of our feelings, without caring overly much about either our public conduct or what our ideological stance on the contact issue happens to be.


It is the main obstacle to making progress politically, as I see it. But of course I would also like to convince GCers of my position because I am convinced I am right.


Of course you do. But we are sincerely convinced that we are right based on a lot of historical precedent and on the basis of basic civil libertarian principles. You are not going to convince most of the pro-choicers who are not overwhelmed with guilt over their feelings or extremely desirous of public validation, because frankly, your arguments mostly depend too much on appeals to emotion and broad assumptions rather than evidence or logic. On the other hand, most pro-choicers do not expect to convince most anti-choicers of our stance. Nor do we think we are going to convince any of the more obstinate Non-MAPs out there, like our mutual friend Billi, since we know they hear only what they want to hear and think only what they want to think and are immune to logic and evidence by choice.

Who we hope to convince are the many fence-sitters among both the Non-MAP and MAP populace who lurk here, or anywhere else we're actually allowed to state our side of the issue in a fair manner along with the anti-legalization camp. In that case, then yes, let them read both of our cases objectively and we will just have to see which ideology ultimately proves more compelling to the greatest number of open-minded people, both within and outside our community. As long as it's done fairly, I have no problem with that.


My thinking on these issues has sharpened over the five-odd years I have been participating at GC and the arguments I have heard here.


Ditto on my end, fam. And has it really been only five years we have been engaging each other here? It feels like 50 :-)





Dissident






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