Q&A from a HereticTOC thread
There is a thread in Tom O'Carroll's blog criticizing Virtuous Pedophiles:
Several questions in the later comments were directed at me, but I no longer felt comfortable answering them in that blog. So I'm answering them here.
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@Ethan Confused Edwards You accept ‘close-in-age expectations’ I am only assuming, why? Please explain what makes it positively different from age disparient ones. I hear this seldom by anti individuals and they never offer any reason, so assess to me why.
In this post I set the stage with many things I suspect you'll agree with:
In this post I explain why age-discrepant relationships warrant different treatment. It's a matter of competing costs and benefits, not some grand moral absolute:
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Mr. Ethan Confused Edwards, How on earth is sexual activity even remotely related to smoking crystal meth? Like really? I have heard some dumb comparisons from antis and anti contacts, mostly from the former, but this is really taking the cake on being dumber than virtually all of comparisons made by dolts on the internet. (aka antis)
This question is in reply to a post I made on GirlChat: . You can search for "crystal meth".
I raised it in a particular context to make a particular point.
I was reacting to "Whether we should allow children the freedom of to choose where to invest their energies is the point of contention." This is a fairly strong children's rights view. I personally think adults rightly put limits on some children's behavior. My reply was, "I wonder if you'd feel any impulse to intervene when a child chooses crystal meth or heroin." I hoped to get the reader's support that a prohibition on children using crystal meth would make sense. It makes a person feel good and energetic. Lots of adults enjoy taking it for extended periods. I presume kids would react the same way. In those respects it is comparable to sex (though partner sex for kids is typically far less exciting). But it is addictive and has long-term negative effects. IF you accept that children having sex may have long-term negative effects (even if they are willing), then it seems to me that the situations are parallel. Arguing the long-term effects is a different part of the discussion.
So if you think it is a ridiculous comparison, I put the ball in your court to explain what is ridiculous about it.
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I once read an article about VPs, describing some of their recruits; the latter were basically people who had been addicted to CP and were struggling to overcome it. It reminded me of Alcoholics Anonymous. Often people who have emerged with efforts out of an addiction become more puritanical about drugs than those who did not fall into addiction in the first place.
This may be true, but I'm not sure what the point is. When I hear people anguished about CP consumption, it usually does contain a strong element of self-hatred. There are excellent legal reasons to abstain from looking at CP, which would apply whether a person is morally bothered by it or not.
I also noticed that some VP leaders said to be attracted to little girls aged around 4 or 6, a very young age at which consent cannot be informed.
I'm the prime example of this. I try to keep the older kids in mind too and think I mostly succeed. Yet some pro-legalization people think kids that young can consent. They know whether something feels good or not, so why not? That's the argument.
My ultimate fall-back position is, "Let the ordinary folks (teleiophiles) decide the appropriate age of consent." It's a matter of trade-offs and statistical patterns, not some absolute morality. It's easy to imagine they would say 12-year-olds can give valid consent while 4-year-olds cannot. I understand that.
I guess that there are not many “virtuous” hebephiles, since in reality a 11-year-old can normally understand basic sexual information.
There are a great many hebephiles in VP. They presumably disagree with you that understanding basic sexual information is the criterion for adult-child sex being OK.
(cf. the studies on mentally handicapped adults, those who succeed in validating their sexual education and are thus judged competent, have in average a mental age of 10.5).
This is an interesting comparison group. A big difference is that the adults typically will have a strong sex drive, and the question pertains to whether their life-long experience will include sex or not. I suspect I would support a more lax standards for such adults.
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If someone – say, VirPeds – still fails to comprehend that the war on (pro-contact) MAPs is actually the war on (sexually active) kids, there is some more info to consider.
There is a strong temptation in any argument for people to latch onto the most extreme views of their opponents. I hold a much more moderate view. I fully agree that there is a sex panic and would like to end it. Criminalizing selfies is terrible, as are making sex play between children of similar age illegal, or calling a kid under age 12 a sex offender as if he was an adult. Also terrible are sex offender registries, mandated reporting, residency restrictions, and civil commitment. As are criminal penalties that are far harsher than for other crimes that cause similar harm. But I'm against making adult-child sex legal. Good policy draws the line somewhere.
... authors who are smart enough to acknowledge the absurdity and atrocity of the CONSEQUENCES of the child and intergenrational sexuality supression, such as Satanic Panic or modern teen sexting panic, are still unable (or, maybe, unwilling? or just afraid?) to recognise this very supression as the CAUSE of these consequenses. Without accepting – and eliminating – the cause, fighting consequences is an endless and hopeless struggle.
You are implying some sort of inherent unity in this suppression -- all or nothing -- and I don't see any evidence for that.
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In the discussion about the VirPeds on the GirlChat, initiated by my post accusing them of defeatism, another post on the topic was made by me – yet too late, since the debate were ending already. So, it was left largely unnoticed – or, at least, not replied to.
It would be useful to provide a link to it here:
https://www.annabelleigh.net/messages/721992.htm
It is an attempt to describe the reasons why societal acceptance of consensual intergenerational sexuality will lead to decrease in real (not “statutory”) rape of children (as well as of adults).
What do you think about it?
My reaction in brief was that it was largely irrelevant. You address why actual pedophiles might be less likely to rape children. There are lots of details we could argue about. But the large majority of such rapes are done by non-MAPs, that is where I would expect to see the large increases due to a much wider "she changed her mind" defense, and nothing you say addresses that.
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