Is he talking about pre or post puberty? The term pedophilia sometimes lumps both together. Pre seems quite unnatural, or at least there is no obvious natural mechanism that would make it normal or beneficial. Post is a cultural matter, since age of marriage has fluctuated a lot over time. Discussing post seems reasonably defensible, discussing pre immensely less so.
Personally I don't think the distinction matters (both are bad), but even then he also doesn't seem to make the distinction. Here is another quote [to be clear, I don't disagree with the first two lol]:
Prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia ... should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness
Both are bad? So it just so happens that the current threshold for post-pubescents (18 years old) happens to align with what you believe to be the only moral value? So all those other states, countries and provinces throughout history which have adopted slightly different cutoffs (and therefor state-sanctioned pedophilia by your definition) were just morally bankrupt and evil? So 17 is wrong? So 16 is wrong? 15 is wrong? Which would you say is wrong if you were born in a time or state when 17 was the legal limit? Would you have seen through the poor legislation and advocated for raising it to you magic number of 18?
Would you be advocating that anything other than 17 is wrong? It reminds me of people who are born into a random country with a random god, and insist that only that god is correct. What luck!
The "age rule" [1] about dating is that the younger person is at least half the age of the older person plus 7 years. This implies that it's okay for a 20 year old to date a 17 year old, but not a 21 year old (unless the 17 year old is 17 and a half).
It's a kind of silly rule, but has some purpose in terms of "ickyness" (edit: and equivalent maturity) when applied to people in the first decade after puberty.
This is a silly rule as a 40 year old marrying a 20 year old breaks the rule and there are many situations where this can be explained. And it’s legal everywhere. This rule isn’t a rule at all as a heuristic to use at dinner parties to be snooty about rich people and trophy wives (they are almost always rich old men with young women exchanging their youth and beauty for wealth. It’s icky, but I think everyone understands Anna Nicole Smith’s reasons).
A 40 year old coupling with a 20 year old is still icky to me due to the life experience as an adult divide. A 30 year old with a 50 year old much less so; I just think the 30 year old is setting themself up to spend a lot of time as a caretaker at some point.
I get it’s icky for you, but I think the world is trying to move into a “don’t kink shame consenting adults” phase where there’s less commenting in the vein of “sure sodomy is legal, but personally, I find it icky.” I’m not sure many people in the world are interested in what you and I find icky.
If the 30 year is mentally incompetent and unaware of their future as a caretaker then the issue isn’t age, but abuse of the mentally incompetent. And, again, I don’t think this applies to your intent but it reminds me of people complaining about how hard it is to live as a gay person or interracial marriage, etc etc. Where the various difficulties are noted when discussing if it should be allowed or not. Interracial marriage is a right as long as they are consenting adults.
There are kinks which deserved to be shamed, and these are the kinks in which grooming and ratcheted boundary violations exist. This includes relationships which weren't always seen as kinks, but have become so as society has evolved.
Age is a parameter which can sometimes be shamed because of possible differentials in experience. It can't be shamed all of the time, but there are valid reasons to use it as a first-line gate, even after age-of-consent laws are no longer in the picture.
Part of the pressure to move the world into a total '“don’t kink shame consenting adults” phase' is from people with abusive kinks who don't want to be checked on their abuse. Screw them. Every kink deserves nested evaluation as to whether it should be totally shamed, generally shamed (with exceptions), generally not-shamed (with exceptions), or seen as okay to do in private (but not public), or seen as okay in general.
> There are kinks which deserved to be shamed, and these are the kinks in which grooming and ratcheted boundary violations exist.
Oh yeah, and who decides? Stop acting as if there is an absolute universal moral. There's none. Everything apart "don't hurt people and living beings" are arbitrary rules we have agreed upon over time. And in any case, even that is just as arbitrary, but pretty much everyone is in favour of.
Sodomy between consenting adults doesn't hurt anyone, nor a weirdly horny 16 yo going at it with an older adult because they wanted to. Prepubescent paedophilia on the other hand is entirely traumatic because one is simply not sexually tuned at that age, so they cannot consent.
I don't know why people make a mountain out of a molehill. Are all involved parties consenting? Are they of sound mind and body? Then do whatever the hell you want.
> Every kink deserves nested evaluation as to whether it should be totally shamed
Fuck no, keep your morality ideas for yourself. Who are you to judge?
I think there’s a game theory where whatever people think others think is bad are shameworthy.
It doesn’t seem principle based and instead works backwards from disliking someone and the working backwards to find something wrong. That seems like a bad way to set moral standards and social norms. And sets us up for a constant second guessing of what to do or say, etc etc.
I think having a clear rule set (is legal? Is consenting? Then none of my business) is more productive. The last thing I want is people believing they need to perform some “nested evaluation” to determine if my missionary sex kink is appropriate or not.
An example that I encountered recently is that a friend was asking me to comment on other friends’ open marriage and tried a “would I permit that” reasoning to determine if it was appropriate. Asking simple questions like “is it legal” and “are all parties willing” is possible. But trying to have every person apply their own preference onto other people is a nightmare.
> > Every kink deserves nested evaluation as to whether it should be totally shamed
> Fuck no, keep your morality ideas for yourself. Who are you to judge?
You're judging that no one should judge.
I'm not a Libertine. I have a right to be in this world too. I don't have to just go by your standards. I'll live and let live as long as you give me space for my preferences, but that is never where it ends. Because libertines don't like me asserting my boundaries when they are in my space.
If I don't know about it, I can't kink shame it. If I do know about it, then you pushed it into my space.
All right church lady. I’m not sure how you choose which kinks are shameworthy. I’ll stick to what’s illegal, thanks- pedo, necro, beast, etc. And then a simple heuristic like if it’s consenting adults and legal then that’s enough for me.
As our infographic shows, the youngest to marry since 2000 were three ten year olds. According to Frontline, the three girls married men aged 24, 25 and 31 in Tennessee in 2001.
> We learned that in 38 states, more than 167,000 children — almost all of them girls, some as young 12 — were married during that period, mostly to men 18 or older.
> Minors such as Siddiqui can easily be forced into marriage or forced to stay in a marriage. Adults being pressured in this way have options, including access to domestic-violence shelters. But a child who leaves home is considered a runaway; the police try to return her to her family and could even charge our organization criminally if we were to get involved. Most domestic-violence shelters do not accept minors, and youth shelters typically notify parents that their children are there. Child-protective services are usually not a solution, either: Caseworkers point out that preventing legal marriages is not in their mandate.
> Women who marry at 18 or younger face a 23 percent higher risk of heart attack, diabetes, cancer and stroke than do women who marry between ages 19 and 25, partly because early marriage can lead to added stress and forfeited education. Women who wed before 18 also are at increased risk of developing various psychiatric disorders, even when controlling for socio-demographic factors.
> Sherry Johnson of Florida, who said she was raped repeatedly as a child and was pregnant by 11, at which time her mother forced her to marry her 20-year-old rapist under Florida’s pregnancy exception in the 1970s.
In the US, Alaska, Hawaii and dozens of other states have the age of consent at 16 [0] and many countries [1] (Germany at 14, holy smokes. China at 15. And South Korea st 20, good on them).
So while you don’t think the distinction matters, billions of people do think it matters. If you have such beliefs in this matter then you hold the majority of the world as perverts who think “child sex” is appropriate and legal. That’s a rough way to go through the world thinking that you are superior to so many people who are egregiously wrong.
Thanks for the quote. I do agree both are bad, but in the way that severely beating someone and murdering someone are both bad. It sounds like he is pretty out there.
This isn't the place to have this discussion. As a writer who writes stories set in the past, you have to be really careful with this topic. It's not one you bring up in a general forum.
Thanks for the input. To be clear, I'm not advocating for any social changes here, and I generally agree with the current social approach given brain development stages and the fact that individuals choose their own partners these days. But one thing is, like, brain damaged levels of icky, and the other one is more of an eccentric and socially tone deaf opinion.
What's even worse is that it's quite normal for adults to be sexually attracted to post-pubescent teens, and the term for an exclusive sexual preference for such is 'ephebophilia'. Technically pedophilia is an exclusive sexual preference for pre-pubescent children, which is not normal at all.
I suspect a number of adults must be shocked at their own sexual attraction to post-pubescent teens and might have a rather adverse reaction to that....
