From: Hermit (hidden@lucifer.com)
Date: Fri Jul 26 2002 - 19:09:16 MDT
[Hermit 1] ..."Pedophilia means a loving attraction towards feet" and has nothing to do with either children or sex.
[Joe Dees 2] I'm sure that the 'a' was dropped somewhere in the intervening two millennia.
[Hermit 3] Only in the US. Only in the last century. Probably due to ignorance. A bit like some American's belief that buggery included fellatio and bestiality. Still, even if you argue that it does not matter
whether we are talking about feet or children, it does not add sex into the mixture.[hr]
[Joe Dees 4] In fact, the Greeks recognized three kinds of love; filias, or brotherly love, was the least of these, eros, or the love between a man and a woman, was considered greater, and agape, the love between a man and a boy, was considered the highest (the xtians then borrowed this term to refer to the love of the pious for their god). Perhaps the term Paedagapia would have been more historically correct, but as he is a US writer, I have no objection to his using the local spelling of the accepted term.
[Hermit 5] I have half a recollection of two more "love" related Greek words, but not the time to seek them out.
[Hermit 1] When an author can't even define their subject correctly, I don't expect their writings to be particularly insightful. And this was certainly the case here. In my opinion, this was not so much a researched and reasoned article as a case of tossing together a salad of generally held public misapprehensions, prejudices and biases with
an unhealthy topping of whipped emotion.
[Joe Dees 2] Examples, please. Unsupported ad hominems mean about as much as an appeal to authority, in which I would be engaging if I mentioned that the author of the article, Dr. Thomas Szasz, is a libertarian icon of psychological criticism, best known for his work "The Myth of Mental Illness" ;~)
[Hermit 3] Accurate reporting and statement of opinion of the lack of worth of an article is now "Ad Hominem"?
[Hermit 3] The author, irrespective of his credentials, didn't define the subject properly, and I didn't find his writings worthwhile. The archives of the CoV are replete with threads on this and related topics. To save you the bother, try this.
Q: Who is going to argue that, magically, all children in the USA form the capability to provide informed consent
at 18 and do not possess it before then?
A: Proponents of child protection legislation perhaps?
Q: Who is going to argue against action to prevent child abuse?
A: Nobody. Society's prejudice is too wide-spread.
Q: Does this suggest that those who wish to pass bills which would probably otherwise be rejected as too intrusive, might choose to push this demagogic button - allowing them, however invalidly, to portray those opposing them as being "members of Nambla" or "anti-children" or "soft on child pornography" etc.?
A: Look at the increasingly strident public hysteria and stringent legislation passed "to protect children" since the late 1970s.
Q: Does this help children or society?
A: http://www.tc.umn.edu/~under006/Library/Antisexuality.html[hr]
[Hermit 1] The author(s?) of this report demonstrate exactly this bias by condemning unread (or deliberately misreporting) the only modern peer-reviewed work on the impact on the victims of sexual predation of children.
[Joe Dees 4] Technically, those men sexually attracted to adolescent boys are not paedophiles, but ephebophiles. Paedophilia is technically reserved for those sexually attracted to pre-pubescent children, whom in the overwhelming predominance of cases cannot, I believe, give informed consent to seduction by a smarmily 'friendly' adult willing to
abuse his rellative position as a trusted authority figure (and adults are almost automatically considered authority figures by prepubescent children, and a child's default position is all too often to prima facie trust adults). They certainly cannot marry, sign legal documents or purchase real estate in the US.
[Hermit 5] I think that you may be over stereotyping the situation and am fairly sure you didn't read the link above. I personally would suggest that the circumstances, and as importantly, the people involved, should determine the ability to form an effective contract. Certainly many states have tried, or attempted to try, what I would call children (aged 9 to 12) as adults, while simultaneously trying what I would call young adults (13-19) for statuatory sexual offences.
[Hermit 5] BTW, in the US, a child may marry, with parental permission, and legally becomes an adult at that point - able to do all the above. It remains true that perhaps they could not take photographs of their partners without placing themselves in danger of life imprisonment or whatever is the punishment of the day.... and possibly will have difficulty buying alcohol or tobacco... Meanwhile a quarter of US girls are going to have a child while still in their teens and a quarter are going to be infected by an STD. Are we really concentrating on the right problems?
[Joe Dees 2] And that would be....?
[Hermit 3] It was (mis)reported in the article.
[Joe Dees 4] I note: here Hermit is quoting the Szasz paper]
"In July 1998 Temple University psychologist Bruce Rind and two colleagues published their research on pedophilia in the Psychological Bulletin, a journal of the American Psychological Association. The authors concluded that the deleterious effects on a child of sexual relations with an adult "were neither pervasive nor typically intense." They recommended that a child™s "willing encounter with positive reactions" be called "adult-child sex" instead of "abuse."
Not surprisingly, this conclusion created a furor, which led to a retraction and apology. Raymond Fowler, chief executive officer of the American Psychological Association, acknowledged that the journal™s editors should have evaluated "the article based on its potential for misinforming the public policy process, but failed to do so."
[Hermit 3] The July 1998 issue of Psychological Bulletin, a peer-reviewed publication of the APA, included an article, "A meta-analytic examination of assumed properties of child sexual abuse using
college samples," (Bruce Rind, Philip Tromovitch, Robert Bauserman). This article reported their hypothesis, methodology, data collected
and results, and concluded that the harm done to the victims of sexual abuse was much less widespread and less significant than generally believed, and that much actual harm identified was caused by
the representatives of the protection systems.
[Joe Dees 4] But children, as I have noted before, are unable to give informed and responsible consent.
[Hermit 5] Really? Or is it the case that they cannot give legal consent. Is there perhaps a difference here? Again I recommend http://www.tc.umn.edu/~under006/Library/Antisexuality.html.
[Joe Dees 4] Many of the priest-seduced (talk about a trusted authority figure for a Catholic child!) boys-n-girls have been haunted by the experience throughout their adolescent and adult years, and that organization is now reaping the financial, legal and public opinion whirlwind for their pooh-poohing, nodwinkandsmile approach to such priestly abuse. If the protection systems need reform, then let's reform them, but their ham-handedness is no excuse for the sexual abuse they are attempting to forfend.
[Hermit 5] Where is the research evidence? Not the testimony of those vested in the system, or seeking damages, but actual research?
[Hermit 3] As you can imagine, congress went ape-shit when they heard about it - and everyone backpedaled to try to avoid being caught in the shitstream.
[Hermit 3] The result is that no further research has been performed in this area, despite the fact that this might help child-victims recover faster.
[Joe Dees 4] I'm always in favor of studying things.
[Hermit 5] /me nods.
[Hermit 3] I read the report. It seems that Dr. Thomas Szasz did not, or chose to mischaracterize it. In any case, I find the idea he appears to promote, that research should be "adjusted" or even suppressed to support public preconceptions and opinion, deeply distasteful.
[Joe Dees 4] Actually, he quoted the article's conclusions in the quote you supplied. He did not mention that the article found great distress in protective services action, but he did mention that the effects of the abuse did not seem to be as deleterious as people had previously supposed. However, I would maintain that it is indeed a soul-shattering violation for a significant percentage of abusees, as recent events have shown.
[Hermit 5] What events? The fact that a wealthy and deeply dishonest body can be made to pay vast damages if damage is alleged might be seen by some to be a distorting factor.
[Hermit 3] It would, perhaps, not have been totally unexpected, had I known that he is a "libertarian". After all, it seems that most libertarians only object to restrictions of their own beliefs and actions,
but still believe that others behavior and thoughts should be regulated in order to better protect society. Actually, that is not entirely fair to
libertarians. It seems to apply to most of society.
[Joe Dees 4] Funny; they are known for just the opposite; for instance, they are in favor of abolishing antidrug and other victimless crime laws and most government regulations and departments, although they can be as adamantine in their extremism as the most vociferous communist, fascist, theist or atheist.
[Hermit 5] Rather than "known for", I'd have suggested "known for saying", and I'd also suggest that the determination of what compromises a "victimless crime" is a deeply subjective issue.
<snip>
[Joe Dees 4] Our main difference is perhaps in the restriction of pedophilia to sexual abuse of prepubescents (the technical meaning of the term), which I do not believe that you do; you, like the laws, apply it to all under-eighteens, but psychology does not. Given the technical definition of the term, would you still maintain that a prepubescent child could give informed consent to sexual seduction by an adult?
[Hermit 5] I am sure that all assaults are wrong. The age of the participants should be irrelevant (other, perhaps, as a mitigating or aggravating factor)- it is the assault itself which is wrong. When no assault is involved, the situation is more difficult to analyze - and naturally varies according to culture. What I am sure of is that there should be no age-based statuatory determination of ability to form intent or contracts (including sexual contracts), but that such decisions need depend completely on the individual. This is because it is invalid to deny anyone, children included, the rights which we grant adults with no means of appeal, even though society appears able to class them as adults when it suits us. Having said all that, while I doubt that the scenario you draw could involve informed consent (and certainly is not advisable from an health perspective), I couldn't say without knowing the people and situation involved a lot better. Finally, it is perhaps it is worth noting that the average age
of puberty has been declining by 3 months per decade since 1840* - and that in the same period, in the US, the acceptable age of consent has been rising fairly continuously too.
*and that in consequence many girls begin menstruating between 8 and 9 these days.
---- This message was posted by Hermit to the Virus 2002 board on Church of Virus BBS. <http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=51;action=display;threadid=25803>
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