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I was reading NAMBLA’s site today (bad habit, easier for me to do while procrastinating than working on school stuff/homework, sigh) and I think there are some things of note in its May staff report “Fun With ChatGPT”:
Several points:
- How does “immense cultural achievement” have anything to do with harm/trauma or lack thereof?
- When glorifying “immense cultural achievements,” NAMBLA completely skips over the discussion of Japan and only highlights Greece. This seems rather jarring (well not really, we know why—Greece = westerncivilization = white = good and developed and advanced according to race theorists from several centuries ago, Japan is not). This double standard is clear throughout a lot of pro-pederasty advocacy sites (one particularly egregious offender is greek-love.com, which labels all man-boy sexual relations as “Greek love” although most of those listed do not involve Greece at all; it does not ever do this in the reverse, of course). As we know, the glorification of Ancient Greek CivilizationTM as some sort of height of historical “achievement,” cultural superiority, enlightenment and so on (implying inferiority of “other” cultures and societies) was and is a cornerstone of white supremacist mythologies (the belief in an unbroken line of “Western civilization” in European heritage, necessarily producing cultural and academic and moral “Enlightenment” because of inherent features of genetics/biology of “white” people). If any non-European society is brought up, even if it made xyz scientific discovery or had so-and-so mode of social organization implemented or built some similar types of architecture or with similar degrees of technical expertise and effort, there will still always be an excuse found as to why “those” “other” cultures don’t “count” and should still be ranked below ancient Greece (or Rome-before-“its-degeneration” etc.), because the “West” is inherently viewed as paradigmatic and the ideal against which any others are compared and measured/judged no matter what.
It is important to understand that there are significant chunks of people who believe that among the things which make a “Western” civilization “superior” is institutionalized pederasty (= “education” “citizenship” etc.), and think the historical lack of it is why “other” cultures are less “advanced” or “developed” (but when another culture had its own practices of pederasty that is often still dismissed as an irrelevant, inferior, different (/bad), or “corrupted” form of purer/better Greek pederasty). (This is somewhat analogous to racial politics around patriarchy in general, with many colonizers having judged non-European cultures for not abusing children in general, or not abusing/oppressing women or queers. But even in cultures with preexisting patriarchies, their gender and age structures were also transformed with the introduction of white supremacist patriarchy. This is why e.g. many cishet men of color are still viewed as less masculine and not having the “ideal” family formations/ability to form them by white racists, which is why it’s self-defeating for them to try to validate their masculinity by being more authoritarian to their children/being misogynistic/hating queers etc. and trying to define themselves as relatively superior/normatively gendered.)
I recently observed some non-Western/-white Twitter trads/misogynists labeling opposition to child marriage of girls as “Western degeneracy.” Liberals responded with disbelief that something as terrible and evil as child marriage was not considered The Real Degeneracy, argued that the OPs should be insulted as such, were shocked that anyone anywhere could possibly support child marriage, or just assumed that it must be some mistake because their framework simply could not accommodate the possibility of someone genuinely believing that CSA is normatively necessary to them and part of their oppressive ideology/system. But it’s not a contradiction at all—in fact, it’s arguably the most “real” version of the intersection of those two ideas, with (fully) believing that CSA = degeneracy being the outlier. For another obvious example, U.S. Republicans think the same way, opposing bans on child marriage because of “parental rights” and because they fear the undermining of “family values.”
- I would rather live happily without an “advanced” culture or “cultural achievement” around me than live miserable, oppressed, and abused under an “advanced” “achieving” culture, many others feel the same, and I suspect far more would if they could unpack some of the indoctrination they’ve internalized.
- How are they so certain about whether the boys felt harmed or not, given that these accounts have been written almost entirely (entirely?) from the perspectives of men, and not the boys in question?
- Ancient Greece was violently misogynistic, xenophobic, and overall oppressive. How does the immense harm experienced by girls and women, and slaves, square with the above claim?
- “> Using its reasoning… one could also say…”—as if an anti-c would be scandalized by acknowledgment of the harms of parenting, as if we don’t already have this analysis in mind—as if we need to be told? How exactly is this a “gotcha”? This is also a basic 101-level comment and pretty obvious, why does it make any sense to say it here, why is it relevant?
—Answer: they operate on a simplistic binary view of politics where there are only ever two “sides,” and certainly two different things cannot be bad at the same time. Either you support parental abuse or you support CSA, no in-between, no nuance. This is derived from a certain conception of politics that could also be summed up as “vibes-based”—i.e. parental abuse seems hegemonic and “repressive” of youth (in a similar register as “prudish,” “puritanical,” unpermissive/restrictive (equated to “saying no,” /general)) while CSA seems counter-hegemonic, revolutionary, suppressed, liberatory, sexually free, fun, what all youth love and want, therefore it MUST be that anyone who supports parental abuse is of a certain (hysterical, prudish, antisexual) disposition while Really Radical RadicalsTM support the latter. This also goes with how pro-c’s often claim adult-youth sexual/romantic relations [with a non-relative] = liberating from the bonds of the nuclear family, but many also do remarkably poorly on actually opposing parental hegemony.
I’m reminded of the old blog we discussed here. Specifically this post from it: “An underage girl who refused to testify against her lover [she was fifteen years old, and the man was more than twice her age] because ‘she still had strong feelings for him’ was jailed for 20 hours recently. Child welfare organisations for some reason attacked her jailing (despite it helping to enforce their victim ideology) but were more than happy to see the innocent man jailed for a barbaric 7 years, as is standard under UK sentencing guidelines for (provably consensual) sex with minors.” “For some reason.” You see this over and over from pro-c’s—just absolute bewilderment when an anti-c is also anti-adultism. Like, really? Does it really surprise you so much that pro-child-welfare people might conceivably not be entirely terribly monstrously authoritarian? Is that so far out of your imagination that it’s not even possible to you? (Some pro-c’s are at least more intellectually honest and will acknowledge that pro-youthlib anti-c’s exist, even if they disagree with us.) Like, come on now. Occam’s Razor, anyone?
- “The social services that will jump into action at the least indication of benign sexual experiences by minors are totally inadequate in dealing with the current epidemic of physical and emotional violence in the home”—I’ll be charitable and assume they are excluding incestuous “sexual experiences” (though that could be implied in the use of the term “social services” in conjunction with domestic violence, which implies the protective services dealing with parents/guardians and not necessarily legal child protection in general). For the sake of brevity I’ll also exclude sexual experiences with minors with a small or no age gap from my analysis here, because that’s a rather different field of consideration. This statement is total nonsense. The state doesn’t give a shit about CSA, just like it doesn’t give a shit about nonsexual abuse. This is a view entirely divorced from reality.
I think another telling example of NAMBLA’s thinking regarding the relationship between parental abuse and anti-CSA activism is here:
“Even more devastating” is just hierarchy-of-trauma BS. Neither physical, emotional, nor sexual abuse is inherently “worse” than any other abuse.
And yes, there are some unironic antinatalists, or situational antinatalists, who believe it is inherently unethical to choose to create new children under an adultist oppressive society like we have now. (There tends to be differing viewpoints among them regarding the ethicality of adoption, choosing paid childcare professions, informally housing children, and so on.) I’m not exactly of this tendency personally, but I can definitely sympathize with them, and I don’t think the ubiquity of parenthood is an excuse for sanctifying its validity/conditions of being and putting them entirely outside the realm of potential challenge. (“Abolish parenting” is a youthlib slogan among some; it definitely doesn’t mean “no adult should ever raise a child ever under any circumstances in any timeline” as adultists like to accuse it of; there are also people who’ve had serious discussions about which widely normalized aspects of parenting are actually very unethical choices, etc.) Also it’s important to note, this is a different level of consideration (to be in a position of power) vs. to use that power in an inappropriate and exploitative manner which produces specifically coercive dynamics, or to obtain exploitative relations which would not be present otherwise. e.g. some people might not say it’s inherently unethical to be a boss under capitalism, but they can still recognize why it’s inherently unethical for a boss to have a sexual or romantic relationship with their employee. (There are some other situations where the relationship is less necessarily structured by class oppression (e.g. teaching/mentoring, doctors/therapists/psychologists/psychiatrists) and it can be neutral or even beneficial by itself but the addition of crossing appropriate boundaries of intimacy does equal abuse/exploitation; that argument doesn’t stand alone.)
This isn’t to say being of xyz role has to be criminalized as the solution to abuse; the legal system is not always the best option for things (often is clunky, especially when it comes to things like this). But yes, the extreme power imbalances of present parenting under structural adultism need to be leveled, and adultism abolished. This does include some necessary legal changes like getting rid of parental privilege/“parental rights,” parent-child tort immunity, legalized “discipline,” anti-“runaway” laws and other such legislation.
- How does NAMBLA explain the fact that in ancient Greece physical abuse of children/youth (boys included) by adults was also widely practiced? Either historical ignorance, or they just selectively abandon the “great civilization = no trauma” logic for certain types of abuse that are inconvenient for their frame, or they relativize and think battering in Greece didn’t really count as “abuse” proper because it was in the past, different time, different from how modern parents do it, doesn’t count unless we can directly see it with our own eyes with “obvious” personal records from someone opposed to it, etc. Either way, doesn’t look good.
- Why moralize about supposed hypocrisy among anti-c’s when ancient Greece was a bastion of patriarchal parental power over children? If ancient Greece = liberation for you, then do you mean you want to go back to children being viewed as property of their parents in the way Greece did it?
* Questions here are rhetorical.
Another part of that post:
Have any of them actually proposed a possible study which by their standards would adequately test whether iatrogenic harm has an effect or not? Do they even believe it’s possible? If not, then why keep up this pretense?
I recently saw a pro-c arguing with an anti-c, the anti-c tried to show evidence when asked, the pro-c said the evidence (which did fit their request) was not sufficient because although it did seem the relationships were “consensual” well you couldn’t be sure because how do you know they weren’t retroactively gaslit into feeling bad? (I did predict this exact reaction a while ago, so not entirely unexpected.)
Peak wishful thinking.
They accuse us of foreclosing the possibility of empirical invalidation of our claims but engage in quite similar intellectual dishonesty themselves.
Afterward it says,
If a student “cheats” (in a way which isn’t leveraging oppression or exploitation of others), I blame the system which pressures them to do things beyond their capability if they are to attain basic resources, respect, and not-being-abused. It is a blatant sign of an unhealthy society when people feel a need to do things they don’t want (re: education) or lie or steal or pretend to be something they’re not instead of being treated well and reasonably even if they are known to not be able to do [X] or to not know [Y]. I don’t care if wage laborers take “shortcuts” or steal from their workplaces and likewise I don’t care if students use technological tools to help themselves (especially those who are struggling to just survive in a school environment). (For a set of others’ arguments in favor of students using ChatGPT, or at least against condemning them, see x, x, x, x, x, x.)
I don’t use ChatGPT to write my assignments, personally (I don’t think in my case it could be useful/would work well for me in the first place either?), but as a disabled high school student who is nonetheless struggling significantly with school for various reasons, I am strongly sympathetic with anyone who does (especially with how in the popular culture it’s almost entirely inconceivable to be sympathetic and to not completely agree with the status quo idea that it’s just unilaterally wrong and evil and all “cheaters” the literal devil himself). Youth liberation requires school abolition. (Though it’s not too surprising to see someone supporting educational coercion/hierarchy when they also support another notorious form of abuse in pedagogy that had massive influence in structuring the academia that we see today.)
(I know it might seem like I’m going a bit too hard on a relatively short and light-hearted paragraph, but I do think unintentionally these kinds of things can reveal what someone really believes and prioritizes even if it’s meant as a joke or aside. And I do think someone needs to stick up for cheaters because very few do.)
(Another thing is, I’m not sure if this is an extremely widespread trend or not but I feel that there’s significantly more sympathy in popular culture for adult wage laborers who would use ChatGPT to write reports or presentations and the like. Yet another double standard.)
Additionally, it’s nonsensical for NAMBLA to be fomenting moral panic over ChatGPT’s dangers to societyTM here when all of this would be easily replicated in numerous other ways such as anti-c books, blogs, human-made social media posts, and everything else of the sort. These are just bland regressive talking points fearmongering about the Evils Of TechnologyTM, overall more reflective of fear of the new/unknown than meaningful concerns or accurate risk assessments. (Ironic.)
Question 2: How has the love of men for adolescent boys been celebrated in art over human history?Chat GPT:The designation [sic] is used to indicate that a text was written as originally given and is not necessarily incorrect. In the case of the word “pedarasty,” it is definitely incorrect in terms of accepted usage. That should indicate to us that the Internet, on which ChatGPT bases its answers contains innumerable errors. Note that in the next question, when we correctly spelled the word, so did ChatGPT.
It is important to note that the love of men for adolescent boys, often referred to as pedarasty [sic], has been a controversial and taboo subject throughout human history. While it has been celebrated in some cultures, it has also been condemned and punished in others.
In ancient Greece, pedarasty [sic] was an accepted and even celebrated form of love between men and adolescent boys. It was often depicted in art, literature, and drama, with famous examples including the writings of Plato and the sculptures of Praxiteles. These depictions often portrayed the relationship as a noble and educational one, where the older man acted as a mentor and guide to the younger boy.
In Japan, a similar tradition of love between older men and young boys, known as shudo, existed during the Edo period (1603-1867). This practice was often depicted in art, particularly in ukiyo-e woodblock prints, which showed scenes of older men and young boys engaged in various activities, including poetry, music, and calligraphy. However, it is important to note that while these forms of love may have been celebrated in certain cultures, they were often restricted to certain classes or groups of individuals and were not universally accepted. In many other cultures and time periods, the love between men and adolescent boys was considered taboo, and those who engaged in such relationships could face severe punishment.
It is also important to note that the modern understanding of pedarasty [sic] is very different from the historical understanding. In modern times, pedarasty [sic] is considered a form of child sexual abuse and is illegal in most countries around the world. It is important to recognize the historical context of these practices while also acknowledging the harm that they can cause.
Note the contradiction between the second paragraph and the last. Given the immense cultural achievements of Ancient Greece, how does one square the alleged stated harm? That the factual reporting of positive historical accounts is bracketed with negative comments is a clear indication of the controls earlier alluded to.
* * *
Question 3: What is the scientific basis for the alleged harm of pederasty?ChatGPT:Instead of citing experimental studies, ChatGPT gives generalities. We addressed this in our next question. Note that at least ChatGPT does not use absolutes and uses the words “can” and “may.” Using its “reasoning” (The app does not reason but bases its writing on algorithms and language models.) and in view of the many psychological abuses and even murders and maiming done by a not insignificant number of parents, one could also say “In consequence of bad parenting, children may experience a range of psychological and emotional problems, including depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and problems with self-esteem.” The social services that will jump into action at the least indication of benign sexual experiences by minors are totally inadequate in dealing with the current epidemic of physical and emotional violence in the home.
There is a scientific consensus that sexual contact between adults and children or adolescents is harmful. The American Psychological Association, the World Health Organization, and other organizations have found that such relationships can lead to a range of negative outcomes for the child or adolescent involved.
Some of the potential harms of pederasty, or sexual contact between an adult man and an adolescent boy, can include:
1. Physical harm: Sexual contact can result in physical injury, including trauma to the genitals or anus.
2. Psychological harm: Children and adolescents who experience sexual contact with adults may experience a range of psychological and emotional problems, including depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and problems with self-esteem.
3. Social harm: Children and adolescents who are victims of pederasty may experience difficulties in their relationships with family members, peers, and romantic partners. They may also be at risk of social stigma and discrimination.
4. Legal harm: Pederasty is a crime in most countries, and those who engage in such relationships can face legal consequences, including imprisonment and registration as a sex offender.
It is important to note that the harms associated with pederasty are not limited to the physical and psychological effects on the child or adolescent involved. These relationships can also have broader societal impacts, such as perpetuating harmful gender and power dynamics and contributing to the normalization of sexual violence.
Overall, the scientific consensus is clear: sexual contact between adults and children or adolescents is harmful and can have long-lasting negative effects on the individuals involved.
- How does “immense cultural achievement” have anything to do with harm/trauma or lack thereof?
- When glorifying “immense cultural achievements,” NAMBLA completely skips over the discussion of Japan and only highlights Greece. This seems rather jarring (well not really, we know why—Greece = westerncivilization = white = good and developed and advanced according to race theorists from several centuries ago, Japan is not). This double standard is clear throughout a lot of pro-pederasty advocacy sites (one particularly egregious offender is greek-love.com, which labels all man-boy sexual relations as “Greek love” although most of those listed do not involve Greece at all; it does not ever do this in the reverse, of course). As we know, the glorification of Ancient Greek CivilizationTM as some sort of height of historical “achievement,” cultural superiority, enlightenment and so on (implying inferiority of “other” cultures and societies) was and is a cornerstone of white supremacist mythologies (the belief in an unbroken line of “Western civilization” in European heritage, necessarily producing cultural and academic and moral “Enlightenment” because of inherent features of genetics/biology of “white” people). If any non-European society is brought up, even if it made xyz scientific discovery or had so-and-so mode of social organization implemented or built some similar types of architecture or with similar degrees of technical expertise and effort, there will still always be an excuse found as to why “those” “other” cultures don’t “count” and should still be ranked below ancient Greece (or Rome-before-“its-degeneration” etc.), because the “West” is inherently viewed as paradigmatic and the ideal against which any others are compared and measured/judged no matter what.
It is important to understand that there are significant chunks of people who believe that among the things which make a “Western” civilization “superior” is institutionalized pederasty (= “education” “citizenship” etc.), and think the historical lack of it is why “other” cultures are less “advanced” or “developed” (but when another culture had its own practices of pederasty that is often still dismissed as an irrelevant, inferior, different (/bad), or “corrupted” form of purer/better Greek pederasty). (This is somewhat analogous to racial politics around patriarchy in general, with many colonizers having judged non-European cultures for not abusing children in general, or not abusing/oppressing women or queers. But even in cultures with preexisting patriarchies, their gender and age structures were also transformed with the introduction of white supremacist patriarchy. This is why e.g. many cishet men of color are still viewed as less masculine and not having the “ideal” family formations/ability to form them by white racists, which is why it’s self-defeating for them to try to validate their masculinity by being more authoritarian to their children/being misogynistic/hating queers etc. and trying to define themselves as relatively superior/normatively gendered.)
I recently observed some non-Western/-white Twitter trads/misogynists labeling opposition to child marriage of girls as “Western degeneracy.” Liberals responded with disbelief that something as terrible and evil as child marriage was not considered The Real Degeneracy, argued that the OPs should be insulted as such, were shocked that anyone anywhere could possibly support child marriage, or just assumed that it must be some mistake because their framework simply could not accommodate the possibility of someone genuinely believing that CSA is normatively necessary to them and part of their oppressive ideology/system. But it’s not a contradiction at all—in fact, it’s arguably the most “real” version of the intersection of those two ideas, with (fully) believing that CSA = degeneracy being the outlier. For another obvious example, U.S. Republicans think the same way, opposing bans on child marriage because of “parental rights” and because they fear the undermining of “family values.”
- I would rather live happily without an “advanced” culture or “cultural achievement” around me than live miserable, oppressed, and abused under an “advanced” “achieving” culture, many others feel the same, and I suspect far more would if they could unpack some of the indoctrination they’ve internalized.
- How are they so certain about whether the boys felt harmed or not, given that these accounts have been written almost entirely (entirely?) from the perspectives of men, and not the boys in question?
- Ancient Greece was violently misogynistic, xenophobic, and overall oppressive. How does the immense harm experienced by girls and women, and slaves, square with the above claim?
- “> Using its reasoning… one could also say…”—as if an anti-c would be scandalized by acknowledgment of the harms of parenting, as if we don’t already have this analysis in mind—as if we need to be told? How exactly is this a “gotcha”? This is also a basic 101-level comment and pretty obvious, why does it make any sense to say it here, why is it relevant?
—Answer: they operate on a simplistic binary view of politics where there are only ever two “sides,” and certainly two different things cannot be bad at the same time. Either you support parental abuse or you support CSA, no in-between, no nuance. This is derived from a certain conception of politics that could also be summed up as “vibes-based”—i.e. parental abuse seems hegemonic and “repressive” of youth (in a similar register as “prudish,” “puritanical,” unpermissive/restrictive (equated to “saying no,” /general)) while CSA seems counter-hegemonic, revolutionary, suppressed, liberatory, sexually free, fun, what all youth love and want, therefore it MUST be that anyone who supports parental abuse is of a certain (hysterical, prudish, antisexual) disposition while Really Radical RadicalsTM support the latter. This also goes with how pro-c’s often claim adult-youth sexual/romantic relations [with a non-relative] = liberating from the bonds of the nuclear family, but many also do remarkably poorly on actually opposing parental hegemony.
I’m reminded of the old blog we discussed here. Specifically this post from it: “An underage girl who refused to testify against her lover [she was fifteen years old, and the man was more than twice her age] because ‘she still had strong feelings for him’ was jailed for 20 hours recently. Child welfare organisations for some reason attacked her jailing (despite it helping to enforce their victim ideology) but were more than happy to see the innocent man jailed for a barbaric 7 years, as is standard under UK sentencing guidelines for (provably consensual) sex with minors.” “For some reason.” You see this over and over from pro-c’s—just absolute bewilderment when an anti-c is also anti-adultism. Like, really? Does it really surprise you so much that pro-child-welfare people might conceivably not be entirely terribly monstrously authoritarian? Is that so far out of your imagination that it’s not even possible to you? (Some pro-c’s are at least more intellectually honest and will acknowledge that pro-youthlib anti-c’s exist, even if they disagree with us.) Like, come on now. Occam’s Razor, anyone?
- “The social services that will jump into action at the least indication of benign sexual experiences by minors are totally inadequate in dealing with the current epidemic of physical and emotional violence in the home”—I’ll be charitable and assume they are excluding incestuous “sexual experiences” (though that could be implied in the use of the term “social services” in conjunction with domestic violence, which implies the protective services dealing with parents/guardians and not necessarily legal child protection in general). For the sake of brevity I’ll also exclude sexual experiences with minors with a small or no age gap from my analysis here, because that’s a rather different field of consideration. This statement is total nonsense. The state doesn’t give a shit about CSA, just like it doesn’t give a shit about nonsexual abuse. This is a view entirely divorced from reality.
I think another telling example of NAMBLA’s thinking regarding the relationship between parental abuse and anti-CSA activism is here:
Concerning “power dynamics,” can you cite even a few examples where they do not exist? The most common of these are parent-child relationships. In most of these, extreme abuse does not exist. However, if you follow news reports, many such intra-family abuses do occur. By this logic, parenthood, where no doubt extreme power imbalances exist, should be criminalized. In the mid-1960s emergency room doctors began to realize that battered children brought to their clinics were not victims of “accidents” but of actual parental physical abuse. Hidden from view, and seldom subject to protection is the additional emotional abuse experienced by children in dysfunctional families. As the 1960s came to an end, the physical battering of children by toxic parents failed to capture the public imagination, but the relatively rare instances of sexual abuse did. This is not to give actual sexual abuse and domination a pass. But when society mostly ignores physical and the even mor [sic] devastating emotional abuse of children, there is something very wrong.It is an interesting omission, I think, leaving out what exactly sparked much of the anti-CSA furor: bringing light to the widespread epidemic of sexual abuse by fathers of daughters. (There have also been rightwing reactionary movements fomenting panic and fixations over specters such as “Satanic abuse” and the like, but that is hardly the same phenomenon; one fought against Christian patriarchal hegemony, the other fought to strengthen it.) If you looked at many of the early anti-nonsexual-parental-child-abuse activists, researchers, academics etc. there was significant overlap with people who would later be anti-c(sa) as well. These aren’t two contradictory viewpoints, at all, and have not been historically either. (But many of the pro-c’s have been parental abuse advocates.) You know what’s also “hidden from view” along with battering? Child sexual abuse! “Pressured into secrecy about CSA” is literally a common trope now, where is this coming from? Hypervisibility of individual small cases during politically convenient times + invented panics could also be said about nonsexual physical violence against children, that doesn’t make the above points less correct.
“Even more devastating” is just hierarchy-of-trauma BS. Neither physical, emotional, nor sexual abuse is inherently “worse” than any other abuse.
And yes, there are some unironic antinatalists, or situational antinatalists, who believe it is inherently unethical to choose to create new children under an adultist oppressive society like we have now. (There tends to be differing viewpoints among them regarding the ethicality of adoption, choosing paid childcare professions, informally housing children, and so on.) I’m not exactly of this tendency personally, but I can definitely sympathize with them, and I don’t think the ubiquity of parenthood is an excuse for sanctifying its validity/conditions of being and putting them entirely outside the realm of potential challenge. (“Abolish parenting” is a youthlib slogan among some; it definitely doesn’t mean “no adult should ever raise a child ever under any circumstances in any timeline” as adultists like to accuse it of; there are also people who’ve had serious discussions about which widely normalized aspects of parenting are actually very unethical choices, etc.) Also it’s important to note, this is a different level of consideration (to be in a position of power) vs. to use that power in an inappropriate and exploitative manner which produces specifically coercive dynamics, or to obtain exploitative relations which would not be present otherwise. e.g. some people might not say it’s inherently unethical to be a boss under capitalism, but they can still recognize why it’s inherently unethical for a boss to have a sexual or romantic relationship with their employee. (There are some other situations where the relationship is less necessarily structured by class oppression (e.g. teaching/mentoring, doctors/therapists/psychologists/psychiatrists) and it can be neutral or even beneficial by itself but the addition of crossing appropriate boundaries of intimacy does equal abuse/exploitation; that argument doesn’t stand alone.)
This isn’t to say being of xyz role has to be criminalized as the solution to abuse; the legal system is not always the best option for things (often is clunky, especially when it comes to things like this). But yes, the extreme power imbalances of present parenting under structural adultism need to be leveled, and adultism abolished. This does include some necessary legal changes like getting rid of parental privilege/“parental rights,” parent-child tort immunity, legalized “discipline,” anti-“runaway” laws and other such legislation.
- How does NAMBLA explain the fact that in ancient Greece physical abuse of children/youth (boys included) by adults was also widely practiced? Either historical ignorance, or they just selectively abandon the “great civilization = no trauma” logic for certain types of abuse that are inconvenient for their frame, or they relativize and think battering in Greece didn’t really count as “abuse” proper because it was in the past, different time, different from how modern parents do it, doesn’t count unless we can directly see it with our own eyes with “obvious” personal records from someone opposed to it, etc. Either way, doesn’t look good.
- Why moralize about supposed hypocrisy among anti-c’s when ancient Greece was a bastion of patriarchal parental power over children? If ancient Greece = liberation for you, then do you mean you want to go back to children being viewed as property of their parents in the way Greece did it?
* Questions here are rhetorical.
Another part of that post:
The other above cited studies suffered the same biases in ignoring iatrogenic factors as causes for harm and finding blame on factors that were actually benign. A prime example of an iatronic [sic] factor causing actual harm is the societal shamings of behaviors that in themselves are patently harmless.I doubt they’ve read all of the three aforementioned studies (doesn’t seem like they did). I think it’s interesting how they assume a priori that any anti-c study = automatically biased and ignoring iatrogenic factors etc. regardless of specific content. This goes with a theory I’ve had for a long time, that pro-c’s don’t go by consistent standards, no matter what they will call an anti-c’s evidence wrong and improper and insufficient and ignoring iatrogenic harm. Either they set an impossibly high bar by which it’s functionally impossible to adequately test for such “iatrogenic harm” (you have to have a 100% “pure” no-regulation no-regulations-even-thought-of society for that, which brings us back to temporal relativism or racism), or they’ll aggressively argue your evidence can’t be valid because secretly you have the iatrogenic harm overlooking bias and didn’t look for it enough, etc. This just forecloses the possibility of an adequate anti-c argument or study (which is the point tbh). It’s not that “your specific evidence/argument is of the wrong type that wouldn’t be good anti-c,” it’s that “anti-c” for them is fundamentally defined as equivalent to irrational, biased, overlooking iatrogenic factors, and necessarily wrong.
Have any of them actually proposed a possible study which by their standards would adequately test whether iatrogenic harm has an effect or not? Do they even believe it’s possible? If not, then why keep up this pretense?
I recently saw a pro-c arguing with an anti-c, the anti-c tried to show evidence when asked, the pro-c said the evidence (which did fit their request) was not sufficient because although it did seem the relationships were “consensual” well you couldn’t be sure because how do you know they weren’t retroactively gaslit into feeling bad? (I did predict this exact reaction a while ago, so not entirely unexpected.)
Peak wishful thinking.
They accuse us of foreclosing the possibility of empirical invalidation of our claims but engage in quite similar intellectual dishonesty themselves.
Afterward it says,
When students present their assignments done with even partial help from ChatGPT, let’s hope that teachers and professors know their own subject well enough to detect the misinformation that this supposedly intelligent software will dig up. Its intelligence is in crafting English text that sounds coherent but not in evaluating the truth of what it presents. As such, it is very much dependent on the vagaries of popular opinion. That AI systems such as ChatGPT can not only control facts but also subvert them affects not only us but the whole of society. We are just the canary in the mine.This is ageist/adultist, capitalist, classist, ableist nonsense. You can’t claim to be “socialist” or leftist or progressive or pro youth rights while arguing that academic cheating is inherently immoral (just like you can’t be anti-capitalist if you argue workers morally owe bosses their labor instead of conceptualizing them as an oppressed and coerced class who should not have to do this work—just like students). One who browses social media may have already seen some teachers and professors responding to students using ChatGPT to write essays (or being presumed to have done so). Many of these responses have included harshly punitive results (which are traumatizing), widespread mockery, violation of privacy, cruelty, public humiliation, and demonization vastly disproportionate to what even someone who believes cheating is wrong might reasonably consider “deserved.” There has also been widespread, increasing moral panic and wild accusations of students supposedly having written something with ChatGPT even when they did not. Moral panic over AI has also extended to artists being accused of using AI to create art when they did not. It has become a witch-hunt. I don’t believe allowing this to happen is worth catching a few “cheaters.”
If a student “cheats” (in a way which isn’t leveraging oppression or exploitation of others), I blame the system which pressures them to do things beyond their capability if they are to attain basic resources, respect, and not-being-abused. It is a blatant sign of an unhealthy society when people feel a need to do things they don’t want (re: education) or lie or steal or pretend to be something they’re not instead of being treated well and reasonably even if they are known to not be able to do [X] or to not know [Y]. I don’t care if wage laborers take “shortcuts” or steal from their workplaces and likewise I don’t care if students use technological tools to help themselves (especially those who are struggling to just survive in a school environment). (For a set of others’ arguments in favor of students using ChatGPT, or at least against condemning them, see x, x, x, x, x, x.)
I don’t use ChatGPT to write my assignments, personally (I don’t think in my case it could be useful/would work well for me in the first place either?), but as a disabled high school student who is nonetheless struggling significantly with school for various reasons, I am strongly sympathetic with anyone who does (especially with how in the popular culture it’s almost entirely inconceivable to be sympathetic and to not completely agree with the status quo idea that it’s just unilaterally wrong and evil and all “cheaters” the literal devil himself). Youth liberation requires school abolition. (Though it’s not too surprising to see someone supporting educational coercion/hierarchy when they also support another notorious form of abuse in pedagogy that had massive influence in structuring the academia that we see today.)
(I know it might seem like I’m going a bit too hard on a relatively short and light-hearted paragraph, but I do think unintentionally these kinds of things can reveal what someone really believes and prioritizes even if it’s meant as a joke or aside. And I do think someone needs to stick up for cheaters because very few do.)
(Another thing is, I’m not sure if this is an extremely widespread trend or not but I feel that there’s significantly more sympathy in popular culture for adult wage laborers who would use ChatGPT to write reports or presentations and the like. Yet another double standard.)
Additionally, it’s nonsensical for NAMBLA to be fomenting moral panic over ChatGPT’s dangers to societyTM here when all of this would be easily replicated in numerous other ways such as anti-c books, blogs, human-made social media posts, and everything else of the sort. These are just bland regressive talking points fearmongering about the Evils Of TechnologyTM, overall more reflective of fear of the new/unknown than meaningful concerns or accurate risk assessments. (Ironic.)
