Er. I think this comment would’ve benefitted from being more careful/less slapdash (at the time of my reply, my votes rescued it from negative territory).
I think you are making the following claims:
Given that someone is already transgressing society’s protections and boundaries and interacting sexually with a child (i.e. restricting the observation to the set of children who are already being touched), it’s more likely that the interaction will be less harmful if the adult involved is a pedophile motivated by affection than if the adult involved is someone motivated by power or desire-to-dominate or pure selfishness or whatever.
(This seems reasonably likely to me, but also people do in fact fuck each other up pretty badly acting out of love and pure intentions, so I wouldn’t be shocked to see that it proved empirically false, just surprised.)
There’s data about [child sexuality] and [the ability of minors to fulfill all of the necessary conditions for informed consent] and [cross-generational sexual interaction] that our society is censoring/ignoring/suppressing.
(This one is true, though I’m trying to stand ten feet away and am holding my pole. One notes that our understanding here, as a society, is exactly isomorphic to the understanding we would have of [sexuality in general] if we only drew our conclusions about sex from studying convicted rapists and their victims; it’s quite a large filter.)
There are children who engage sexually with an adult and are not traumatized until the society intervenes, at which point society’s intervention can cause genuine trauma where otherwise there would not have been any (or would have been less).
(This is straightforwardly true according to a) a conversation I once had with an on-the-ground expert with multiple decades treating both victims and offenders, and b) direct self-reports I have received from actual people reflecting on their childhood experiences.)
Children who have a) interacted sexually with adults, and b) are subsequently traumatized, are mostly, in practice, traumatized by society’s reaction, rather than by finding the interaction itself traumatic.
(Seems overconfident to me; again, just looking at the base rates of how people fuck each other up in sexual contexts period, it seems like there would indeed be a high rate of bruises or scars that don’t require society’s intervention, especially given power and maturity imbalances and the fact that adults acting contra to society’s taboos are likely to be less conscientious and less self-controlled even if motivated by positive feeling. It also seems worth noting that people do, in fact, sometimes regret, and are sometimes traumatized by, things they genuinely thought were okay in the moment, only after years have passed, and I do not think this is totally explained by memetic injection.)
In any event, this was a comment on a post about “conversations it’s hard to actually have” and I expect to find the actual conversation not possible to safely have, here, so this is my last contribution. I’ll note on my way out that rape is bad, gaslighting is bad, coercion is bad, manipulation is bad, violation of one’s sovereignty is bad, gambling with someone else’s health or happiness for your own local selfish satisfaction is bad, and that, even though I think society is screwing up royally here, to the detriment of vulnerable victims, it is correct in principle to try to layer in extra protections for those who are especially powerless or vulnerable. It’s not that the goal of the people trying to save children from being raped is wrongheaded; all good people should share that goal. It’s that they’re going about it extremely poorly.
Er. I think this comment would’ve benefitted from being more careful/less slapdash (at the time of my reply, my votes rescued it from negative territory).
I think you are making the following claims:
Given that someone is already transgressing society’s protections and boundaries and interacting sexually with a child (i.e. restricting the observation to the set of children who are already being touched), it’s more likely that the interaction will be less harmful if the adult involved is a pedophile motivated by affection than if the adult involved is someone motivated by power or desire-to-dominate or pure selfishness or whatever.
(This seems reasonably likely to me, but also people do in fact fuck each other up pretty badly acting out of love and pure intentions, so I wouldn’t be shocked to see that it proved empirically false, just surprised.)
There’s data about [child sexuality] and [the ability of minors to fulfill all of the necessary conditions for informed consent] and [cross-generational sexual interaction] that our society is censoring/ignoring/suppressing.
(This one is true, though I’m trying to stand ten feet away and am holding my pole. One notes that our understanding here, as a society, is exactly isomorphic to the understanding we would have of [sexuality in general] if we only drew our conclusions about sex from studying convicted rapists and their victims; it’s quite a large filter.)
There are children who engage sexually with an adult and are not traumatized until the society intervenes, at which point society’s intervention can cause genuine trauma where otherwise there would not have been any (or would have been less).
(This is straightforwardly true according to a) a conversation I once had with an on-the-ground expert with multiple decades treating both victims and offenders, and b) direct self-reports I have received from actual people reflecting on their childhood experiences.)
Children who have a) interacted sexually with adults, and b) are subsequently traumatized, are mostly, in practice, traumatized by society’s reaction, rather than by finding the interaction itself traumatic.
(Seems overconfident to me; again, just looking at the base rates of how people fuck each other up in sexual contexts period, it seems like there would indeed be a high rate of bruises or scars that don’t require society’s intervention, especially given power and maturity imbalances and the fact that adults acting contra to society’s taboos are likely to be less conscientious and less self-controlled even if motivated by positive feeling. It also seems worth noting that people do, in fact, sometimes regret, and are sometimes traumatized by, things they genuinely thought were okay in the moment, only after years have passed, and I do not think this is totally explained by memetic injection.)
In any event, this was a comment on a post about “conversations it’s hard to actually have” and I expect to find the actual conversation not possible to safely have, here, so this is my last contribution. I’ll note on my way out that rape is bad, gaslighting is bad, coercion is bad, manipulation is bad, violation of one’s sovereignty is bad, gambling with someone else’s health or happiness for your own local selfish satisfaction is bad, and that, even though I think society is screwing up royally here, to the detriment of vulnerable victims, it is correct in principle to try to layer in extra protections for those who are especially powerless or vulnerable. It’s not that the goal of the people trying to save children from being raped is wrongheaded; all good people should share that goal. It’s that they’re going about it extremely poorly.
I agree 100% with everything you said and think you stated my point far better than I did! Thank you!