Elsewhere, there is a discussion regarding using karma to measure the value of individual comments or commentators themselves. I think this entire thread needs adjustment. It is confused and immoral.
Addressing The Confusion
There’s plenty of evidence that sexual relationships between adults and children is harmful. I think the best evidence is first person: painful, emotional, sincere. There is also plenty of scientific/objective/peer-reviewed evidence (see Wikipedia for references).
Reading through the comments in this thread, there appears to be significant confusion regarding why sexual abuse is harmful. Whether adult sex with children is harmful (and wrong) has nothing to do with whether children are interested in sex or not, or whether the behavior is consentual or not. It has to do with facts specific to children: they are completely dependent upon adults, have incompletely formed ideas about character differences among adults (they can naively give an abusive adult the same continued trust as a loving one), incompletely formed ideas about sexuality (they may not care what is done now, but they will develop an opinion later) and the fact that sexual autonomy becomes an important identity issue in their late teens and early twenties, and so it is painful if that has been usurped.
The American Psychiatric Association states that “children cannot consent to sexual activity with adults”, and condemns any such action by an adult: “An adult who engages in sexual activity with a child is performing a criminal and immoral act which never can be considered normal or socially acceptable behavior.” (Wikipedia again.)
It doesn’t matter if it is the experience of some abused children that the sexual abuse was not harmful. As victims, they themselves are allowed to feel however they like about it. Also, using the examples of the ancient Greeks is a common but untenable argument for moral relativism on this issue.
Child sexual abuse is outlawed in every developed country, generally with severe criminal penalties (Wikipedia).
Addressing Immorality
This entire thread is immoral, and some of you are using karma to bond over being assholes.
To defend the full strength of this moral position, it was not immoral to consider the original question. In fact, such questions and nearby questions do need to be considered. Why is the incidence of child sexual abuse so high, given society’s unanimous position on it? As someone who finds it quite possible to sympathize with a pedophile – they have strong biological, psychological and social reasons for their moral confusion – I actually do have constructive things to say in addition to just saying “adult sexual relations with a child is evil”.
The immorality of this thread results from considering a question, considering the evidence, and not arriving at and defending the truthful answer. This thread is immoral – specifically—because it almost exclusively considered evidence in favor of the immoral position, even though such evidence is much more rare and difficult to come by. Any evidence for the moral position was weak or irrelevant. (In particular, all comments about whether children are actually sexual or not.) There is a moral obligation to defend morality wherever you see evil (or evil ideas that would result in evil).
For example: you must consider the very real possibility of confused persons reading this post and perceiving permission from the community. Permission from this community would have some value. (The idea being, for example, that someone would interpret the thread as saying that rational people agree – or at least they don’t disagree – that adult sexual relationships with children might not be harmful to them.)
Not only as “rationalists” did you not use the full amount of available evidence to arrive at the correct moral position on the original question, the comments deviated into deeper and deeper immorality without correction.
I don’t understand how merely convincing a 10-year-old to let you stick something up her vagina (and then doing it) is going to do any more harm than, say, spanking her.
This statement would have been easy to correct with some real-world common sense about the meaning of sex in most people’s lives. Instead, + 3 karma points granted for this bit of inhumanity. And no outrage.
My theory is that, somehow, “most people” didn’t notice this thread. Or maybe they thought a “closet” survey is not the place to expect or uphold morality. (Yet whenever human beings have looked the other way it is because, somehow, they perceived morality to be “out of context”.) Perhaps this isn’t something they didn’t want to think about. Me neither. I would have rather ignored it. But to the extent to which LW is a community I occasionally or frequently post on, I can’t.
Elsewhere, there is a discussion regarding using karma to measure the value of individual comments or commentators themselves. I think this entire thread needs adjustment. It is confused and immoral.
Addressing The Confusion
There’s plenty of evidence that sexual relationships between adults and children is harmful. I think the best evidence is first person: painful, emotional, sincere. There is also plenty of scientific/objective/peer-reviewed evidence (see Wikipedia for references).
Reading through the comments in this thread, there appears to be significant confusion regarding why sexual abuse is harmful. Whether adult sex with children is harmful (and wrong) has nothing to do with whether children are interested in sex or not, or whether the behavior is consentual or not. It has to do with facts specific to children: they are completely dependent upon adults, have incompletely formed ideas about character differences among adults (they can naively give an abusive adult the same continued trust as a loving one), incompletely formed ideas about sexuality (they may not care what is done now, but they will develop an opinion later) and the fact that sexual autonomy becomes an important identity issue in their late teens and early twenties, and so it is painful if that has been usurped.
It doesn’t matter if it is the experience of some abused children that the sexual abuse was not harmful. As victims, they themselves are allowed to feel however they like about it. Also, using the examples of the ancient Greeks is a common but untenable argument for moral relativism on this issue.
Addressing Immorality
This entire thread is immoral, and some of you are using karma to bond over being assholes.
To defend the full strength of this moral position, it was not immoral to consider the original question. In fact, such questions and nearby questions do need to be considered. Why is the incidence of child sexual abuse so high, given society’s unanimous position on it? As someone who finds it quite possible to sympathize with a pedophile – they have strong biological, psychological and social reasons for their moral confusion – I actually do have constructive things to say in addition to just saying “adult sexual relations with a child is evil”.
The immorality of this thread results from considering a question, considering the evidence, and not arriving at and defending the truthful answer. This thread is immoral – specifically—because it almost exclusively considered evidence in favor of the immoral position, even though such evidence is much more rare and difficult to come by. Any evidence for the moral position was weak or irrelevant. (In particular, all comments about whether children are actually sexual or not.) There is a moral obligation to defend morality wherever you see evil (or evil ideas that would result in evil).
For example: you must consider the very real possibility of confused persons reading this post and perceiving permission from the community. Permission from this community would have some value. (The idea being, for example, that someone would interpret the thread as saying that rational people agree – or at least they don’t disagree – that adult sexual relationships with children might not be harmful to them.)
Not only as “rationalists” did you not use the full amount of available evidence to arrive at the correct moral position on the original question, the comments deviated into deeper and deeper immorality without correction.
This statement would have been easy to correct with some real-world common sense about the meaning of sex in most people’s lives. Instead, + 3 karma points granted for this bit of inhumanity. And no outrage.
My theory is that, somehow, “most people” didn’t notice this thread. Or maybe they thought a “closet” survey is not the place to expect or uphold morality. (Yet whenever human beings have looked the other way it is because, somehow, they perceived morality to be “out of context”.) Perhaps this isn’t something they didn’t want to think about. Me neither. I would have rather ignored it. But to the extent to which LW is a community I occasionally or frequently post on, I can’t.