I have upvoted this for courage to discuss a topic which bears strong social stigma, and for formulating hypotheses which can be empirically tested.
On the other hand, few objections:
As others have said, the post is a bit too long relative to its content.
The defensive tone, e.g. in “[t]hough the following words will most likely be met with harsh criticism”, has no purpose here.
It is probably not a good strategy to write a first post here about such a sensitive topic (if it is your first post).
The explanation of the emergence of overreactions to pedophilia seems incomplete. There are lots of parents who overreact to common situations and then tell others how traumatic experience it was (“Yesterday I found my son playing with a lizard! Oh God!”). You have to explain why the overreacting meme spreads in the pedophilia case and not in the lizard case. Also, you have to explain why the stigmatisation of pedophilia is more intensive in recent years while overall demonising of sex has weakened. It seems that fifty years ago, pedophilia was much less an issue and the general attitude to it was comparable to or even less disapproving than the attitude to homosexuality. (I am not an expert on history of social norms and can be mistaken in this.)
Even if you improve your explanation as requested in point 4, it may still be a just-so story. Evidence for, or a proposal of a test of this explanation is needed.
4. The explanation of the emergence of overreactions to pedophilia seems incomplete. … You have to explain why the overreacting meme spreads in the pedophilia case and not in the lizard case.
The original example says that it’s occurring in a society where sex in general is considered very bad in some sense (“demonized”), which seem to imply that the second parent is nearly guaranteed to over-react similarly. Lizards are unpopular, but not to that degree. Also, the original example specifies that the society has no particular attitude towards pedophiles, which I take to mean that pedophilia is simply unknown there, and the first person to encounter it doesn’t have a cached response of any kind to draw on. This is a significant difference from the lizard situation, where most people do have a cached response to draw on that says that even if lizards are ‘icky’ it’s not that big of a deal if a kid plays with one.
That still doesn’t add up to more than plausibility, of course. Point 5 is still important.
Maybe a fair point, but “demonised” is still a bit vague and does not explain what exactly is so special about sex. The overreactions to pedophilia seem to be a recent phenomenon, gaining intensity when demonising of sex is not so strong as it used to be. I would even not use the word “demonise” to describe the present attitude to sex. Racism is certainly more demonised than sex today, but we do not see parents going mad when their children come into contact with a racist.
See e.g. this discussion about a TV show from the seventies or early eighties, where the entertainer interacts with little girls in a way which may suggest that he is a pedophile. From the discussion it appears that the show was perceived as normal in its time, but today most commenters declared it abhorrent.
I have upvoted this for courage to discuss a topic which bears strong social stigma, and for formulating hypotheses which can be empirically tested.
On the other hand, few objections:
As others have said, the post is a bit too long relative to its content.
The defensive tone, e.g. in “[t]hough the following words will most likely be met with harsh criticism”, has no purpose here.
It is probably not a good strategy to write a first post here about such a sensitive topic (if it is your first post).
The explanation of the emergence of overreactions to pedophilia seems incomplete. There are lots of parents who overreact to common situations and then tell others how traumatic experience it was (“Yesterday I found my son playing with a lizard! Oh God!”). You have to explain why the overreacting meme spreads in the pedophilia case and not in the lizard case. Also, you have to explain why the stigmatisation of pedophilia is more intensive in recent years while overall demonising of sex has weakened. It seems that fifty years ago, pedophilia was much less an issue and the general attitude to it was comparable to or even less disapproving than the attitude to homosexuality. (I am not an expert on history of social norms and can be mistaken in this.)
Even if you improve your explanation as requested in point 4, it may still be a just-so story. Evidence for, or a proposal of a test of this explanation is needed.
The original example says that it’s occurring in a society where sex in general is considered very bad in some sense (“demonized”), which seem to imply that the second parent is nearly guaranteed to over-react similarly. Lizards are unpopular, but not to that degree. Also, the original example specifies that the society has no particular attitude towards pedophiles, which I take to mean that pedophilia is simply unknown there, and the first person to encounter it doesn’t have a cached response of any kind to draw on. This is a significant difference from the lizard situation, where most people do have a cached response to draw on that says that even if lizards are ‘icky’ it’s not that big of a deal if a kid plays with one.
That still doesn’t add up to more than plausibility, of course. Point 5 is still important.
Maybe a fair point, but “demonised” is still a bit vague and does not explain what exactly is so special about sex. The overreactions to pedophilia seem to be a recent phenomenon, gaining intensity when demonising of sex is not so strong as it used to be. I would even not use the word “demonise” to describe the present attitude to sex. Racism is certainly more demonised than sex today, but we do not see parents going mad when their children come into contact with a racist.
See e.g. this discussion about a TV show from the seventies or early eighties, where the entertainer interacts with little girls in a way which may suggest that he is a pedophile. From the discussion it appears that the show was perceived as normal in its time, but today most commenters declared it abhorrent.