From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Fri Jul 26 2002 - 20:24:21 MDT
On 26 Jul 2002 at 19:09, Hermit wrote:
>
> [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.
>
I am in favor of sentencing intentionally murderous minors to prison until at least their
mid-twenties, with their juvie records remaining unsealed into adulthood, so that any
subsequent murder should count as a second offence. They should not, however, be
incarcerated with an adult prison population, where they would most likely end up traded
around for packs of cigarettes.
A 13 year old boy was found to have been serially anally raping his 3 year old brother.
he should definitely be removed from the home, for he should not have the opportunity
to further abuse his little brother, and his little brother, being the victim, should not have
to pay the further penalty of being taken from his home so the perpetrator could
continue to live there.
>
> [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?
>
Many of those young girls are impregnated, and infected, by predatory adult males
where the age difference is 10 years or more - in fact, more than are impregnated or
infected by their male chronological peers. Shouldn't these sleazy guys be picking up
people their own age instead of chasing jailbait? Or is it a convince-and-control issue
with those too insecure to endure a more equal playing field.
>
> [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.
>
I read it, and I agree that 18 is too high to set the bar. But could you support as
definitional of consensual adult-child sex a fellow who takes advance of an infant's
sucking reflex to obtain a penis-tip blow job? There HAS to be such a thing as 'too
young to consent.'
> [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?
>
You would discount the testimony of those seeking legal redress for their suffering
sexual abuse at pristly hands as children, simply because they are seeking such
redress?
>
> [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.
>
Have you been missing all the guilty pleas? Then such admitted abuse ceases to be
merely allegation. Several of the abused altar boys attempted suicide in their teens or
withdrew and developed aberrant behavior patterns as a result; many of the adult
survivors remail in psychotherapy.
>
> [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.
>
My list includes use of drugs in the absence of addiction, voluntary abortion, assisted
suicide/voluntary euthanasia, adult pornography, adult gambling, consenting-adult
homosexuality, consenting-adult s/m, b/d, d/s, pre-, extra- and nonmarital sex between
consenting adults. While 18 is indeed an unrealistic cutoff age, I do not believe that
those who cannot count their age in double digits should be engaging in sexual
encounters with adults.
> <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, 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.
>
In Pensacola, a Svengalic pedophile convinced a 12 year old boy that his father was
abusing him by withholding permission on some requests and occasionally looking at
him disapprovingly; the boy and his thirteen-year-old brother then beat their father's
skull in with an aluminum baseball bat as he slept, killing him. The young and naïve can
more easily be talked into actions that are not in either their interest or the interest of
innocent others.
One of the unofficial slogans of true male homoerotic pedophiles is "Sex before eight ot
it's too late!" A male heterosexual version of the same, "If she's old enough to bleed,
she's old enough to breed!", would seem to now be approaching the same chronology.
That doesn't make either rule acceptable.
In fact, the average marriage age and the average age at which married couples have
their first child has been steadily rising, as has the average age at when young adults
leave their parents' home and/or financial assistance; this is thought to be due to the
greater time it takes to become viably self-supporting in a more complex world.
> ----
> 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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