The demonization of pedophiles.

[grumbler]

You know, if someone were take a random sampling of your posts and mine they would have a difficult time figuring out who was the lunatic and who was the respected teacher.

Says the lunatic...

[Viking]

IIRC sodomy and bestiality laws were removed in 1944 in Sweden.

Thats about the same time Sweden stopped sending ball bearing to German. You gotta do something to placate Swedish Nazis when you stop giving Hitler his preciouss ball bearings.

[Razgovory]

You know, if someone were take a random sampling of your posts and mine they would have a difficult time figuring out who was the lunatic and who was the respected teacher.

Says the lunatic...

Indeed.  I know crazy.

[crazy canuck]

I wonder if Marti thinks eating meat is worse?

[Habsburg]

I'm not trolling.

Then fucking thank you. 

[Razgovory]

I'm not trolling.

Then fucking thank you. 

Sorry, you don't like it.  I simply find it out that if two people act on a natural inclination one goes to jail and one does not.  If gays can say "It's not our fault.  We were born this way.  You should simply accept that and let us be", surely pedophiles could claim the same.  You can talk about consent, but that seems an arbitrary legal concept.  You could write consent laws that say no man can consent to sex with another man.  Or that no man can consent to sex with another man five years his senior.

[Ideologue]

[Eddie Teach]

Raz is doing an excellent job trolling in this thread.

[Razgovory]

Just an inconsistency I see in how we view one form of abnormal sexuality and another.

[Razgovory]

To make myself clear, I'm not really anti-gay or pro-pedophile.  It just seems odd that such a bright line is drawn between them, when the line isn't as bright as some would have us believe.  If people are really born gay or a pedophile or whatever then it may be just a roll of the dice to decide if your sexual preference is legal or not.  People who would scoff at the idea of "curing" a gay person, will sometimes seriously consider the idea of "curing" a pedophile.

It's also interesting that the gay communities views pedophiles the same way the civil rights era black community (and still much of the modern black community) viewed gays.

Honestly, I'm not sure what to think.  I'm working this all out in my head.  Really it's Tim's fault.  His revulsion in the Penn State thread has made me think a bit about this.

[Camerus]

Raz does have a point in that being attracted to kids probably isn't a choice.  First of all, for virtually everyone else the idea is just plain "ick."  But also, it's so socially/morally abhorrent and so difficult and fraught with hazard to engage in that who would honestly choose such a life-style? 

Of course, where they do ultimately have a choice is to supress their sexuality and abstain from having sex.  That is the most morally upright route, but I am sure it wouldn't be easy.  And even if you do succeed, you're still stuck with your urges and self-loathing all the time.  How many would have the balls (hyuk, hyuk) to go through with chemical castration?  Probably not a lot. 

In short, it's an aberration that is just a shitty deal for all around.

[Sheilbh]

First of all I don't think anyone gives serious thought to curing paedos.  There's a general acknowledgement that their behaviour's compulsive and they are pretty likely to offend again.  That's why they're required to register and there's quite a lot of support for policies like chemical castration.

Secondly you talk about 'born this way' as the great justification of homosexuality, but I think you're putting the horse before the cart.  The reasoning behind the decriminalisation of homosexuality, certainly, in this country wasn't because 'the gays are okay, they're just born like this', it was more of a negative liberty.  The Wolfenden Report, which recommended the legalisation of gay about 10 years before it happened, basically said this behaviour is sad and depraved, but if it isn't exploitative and corrupting then it shouldn't be illegal.  I think it's very difficult to argue that paedophilia isn't exploitative and corrupting.  I'd argue that those are probably its defining features.

The 'born this way' idea comes later.  I think that was far more a part of the struggle of legalised gays to get general acceptance.  That idea and the AIDS epidemic were, I think, hugely important in increasing general sympathy and tolerance for the homos.  Personally I've always thought it's a blind alley and there's something a little cringing about it.  Sexuality isn't a choice, but even if it were I don't think that should matter.  My view is that tolerance should generally sort of branch out from a 'well it's not hurting anyone' view.

Thirdly I think you dismiss 'consent' way too easily.  It is only a legal concept and you're entirely right that it could be shifted as you describe.  But then almost everything is ultimately an arbitrary legal concept.  Having a problem with that is like having a problem with 'murder' as an idea.  I'd argue that the legal acceptance of honour killings (which springs to mind due to G's thread) is ultimately due to a culture's moral position on, among other things, the importance of the individual.  Our moral philosophy gives a great deal of importance to the autonomy of the individual, if they're viewed as less important than a family or group identity then it's easy to see how you can get to a position in which honour killings are culturally and legally acceptable.

The arbitrary legal nature is really, I think, an imperfect map of the moral.  I'd suggest the importance of consent as the defining characteristic of allowed sexual activity is a reflection of the weakening of the patriarchy.  The position of the parties and their relationship are of less importance than their consent, which should protect the weaker party.  I think this is what's behind the criminalisation of marital rape, for example, and an end (at least in theory) to the idea that a prostitute can't be raped.

Finally I think we always instinctively reach for the Greeks when discussing paedophilia, which I don't think is helpful.  We're very distant from Greek culture and we can't even go and speak to them to realise what's going on as is the case with, say, the sperm ingesting tribe in Indonesia.

What matters is that we've had a huge change in our view of children.  Boswell's diary mentions a few times him sleeping with a prostitute.  What's really striking is that he has almost no sympathy for them, they're a service that exists like any other, and there's pretty strong hints that they're effectively children, I believe other diarists from the same period have similar unremarkable experiences.  So this was standard in the late 18th century and viewed as something not worth commenting on.  If you look in rural England and America I imagine you're pretty heavily into the 19th century before what we'd consider child brides become unacceptable, far less illegal.

I think there's a shift in how children are viewed.  We move from Boswell's unpleasant acts under Waterloo bridge to Little Nell in less than a century.  The 19th century I think starts the sentimentalisation of childhood and the emphasis on its innocence.  This is far more important in how paedophilia's viewed than any comparison with a 'born this way' attitude to homosexuality.

[Viking]

gotta agree with Sheilbh, you can't get an "ought" from an "is" to quote Johnsons scottish contemporary. Just because a paedophile or homosexual "just is that way" that doesn't mean that it is ok to act on those impulses. The act itself has to be judged apart from the actor. Only then can the actors nature be taken for mitigation.

I don't think there can ever be mutual consent between adults and children or between relatives.

However, today we do know more about the effects of paedophilia and exploitation than we did in 400 BC or 1700 AD. So what Johnson or Socrates though about girl and boy fucking is beside the point; what matters is what we, in the light of better knowledge than Johnson and Socrates, think about girl and boy fucking.

[Ideologue]

Another thing Raz doesn't get is that no one has criminalized, nor could likely criminalize in this country, "being a pedophile."  Status is not criminalized, conduct is criminalized.

Homosexual conduct between adults is not criminalized because, like heterosexual conduct, it hurts no one in a legally cognizable manner, if it even hurts anyone at all.  Indeed, utility arguably tends to increase if consenting adults are permitted to partner as they wish.

Pedophilic conduct is criminalized because it hurts someone in a legally cognizable manner, and generates negative utility for its victims in all cases of which I am aware, certainly in our society, and some research (which I don't have on hand right now, but it's not essential to the argument) indicates it causes psychological/neurological harm from an objective standpoint.

In any event, this isn't rocket science here.  I can't imagine anyone is actually confused by this.

Finally, to head off the criticism, while the harm is legally cognizable because of our consent regime, consent is not an arbitrary construction.  Or, rather, you cannot say that it is "arbitrary" or "not arbitrary" in binary fashion.  Ages of consent are rules of administrative convenience, to be sure, and thus, like all such rules, have an element of arbitrariness to them by necessity.  However, the alternative is to demand an inquiry as to whether each alleged individual victim at issue was capable of forming legal consent to sexual activities; and perhaps it would be better, but the decision that, given the burden of proof, it is not better, is not an arbitrary decision.  The laws are based on some rational basis, even when they are wrong (states with an AoC above 16 being "flabbergastingly wrong.").

I think this is what's behind the criminalisation of marital rape, for example, and an end (at least in theory) to the idea that a prostitute can't be raped.

Nah.  That's just a contract dispute.

[grumbler]

Another thing Raz doesn't get is that no one has criminalized, nor could likely criminalize in this country, "being a pedophile."  Status is not criminalized, conduct is criminalized.

Even if he got this, he would have to ignore it for the sake of his troll.  It's a point I made above, and he ignored.

In any event, this isn't rocket science here.  I can't imagine anyone is actually confused by this.

I don't think anyone is.  Force-fitted analogies are the hallmarks of the troll.