chronic_ally

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”:

Question 2: How has the love of men for adolescent boys been celebrated in art over human history?
Chat GPT:

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.
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.

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:

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.
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.

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 Civilization^TM 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 Radicals^TM 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 society^TM 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 Technology^TM, overall more reflective of fear of the new/unknown than meaningful concerns or accurate risk assessments. (Ironic.)

[trigger warning: sometimes-graphic descriptions and discussion of CSA and CSA apologia, racism, colonialism]

(this is a rough draft of an essay I am trying to write.)

Emil Ng, from China, shows the politeness and the preference for nuances of his country’s culture. Doing so, he gives a cross-cultural view on the phenomena, putting narrow Western views into a broader perspective. Chinese literature does not ascribe any mental or medical diagnosis of pedophilia or homosexuality to “romantic affairs” between children or between adults and children, although they are not difficult to find in that tradition. Since ages, people marry quite young in China.

His comments on the Western ways of thinking and acting are quite incisive. The Western discussion about consent and traumas is “hypocritical,” he says. Only in sexual matters western adults worry about consent and traumas, not in all other matters, from baptizing the child after birth until its education ends with a diploma.

- Ipce, “‘Is pedophilia a mental disorder?’: Discussion in Archives of Sexual Behavior: Report by Frans Gieles”[1]

June 9, 2023

Quite a number of research papers concerning child sexual abuse (CSA) come across our desk. This current focus on sex is disturbing because it simply puts aside horrendous physical abuse as well as mostly hidden and immensely potent emotional abuse and limits itself almost exclusively to sex. This particular paper found physical and emotional abuse universally unacceptable to various culture but not for neglect and sex. The research into CSA (and some does certainly occur as does all other sorts of human depravity) would not in itself disturb us if most of it was not demonstrably biased.

Before we present our brief analysis of the research linked below, see if you can spot it on your own.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S014521342300251X

You can probably ignore the jargon that gives this “research” an air of learned science and obfuscates its bias.

Right from the start, the authors label all the behaviors they are researching as “child maltreatment” (CM). They include in CM neglect and sex along with the horrendous ones we cited but found cultural acceptance in only the first two. The stench of cultural superiority could not be any stronger. In many cultures, especially where poverty exists, children early on learn to be self-reliant. They know their parents work hard to provide for them and thus exhibit their love. It is no surprise that such incorrectly labeled neglect in many cultures is culturally acceptable and even beneficial to self-reliance. Even in the United States, in years past, latchkey kids, the children of working parents, were left alone for a good part of the day. Today, such parents are often unfairly subject to criminal charges of child neglect.

Of course, unwanted sexual imposition of any human being on another is unacceptable under any circumstances. But again, cultural imperialism inserts its judgmental nose into those cultures who see sexual feelings and their caring expressions as normal and of immense emotional benefit at any age.

- NAMBLA, “Zeitgeist”

From Jamaica, Panama, Philippines, Ghana, Japan - Imperialism

Westernized Legislation

An imperialistic trend has been on the rise, with increased pressure on less hysterical countries (mostly in the global south) to enact more extreme legislation. A new bill in Jamaica would not only criminalize child pornography, but “anything that advocates using children for sexual activities,” including audio recordings.

Panama has recently come under criticism as well: “Only 50 percent of Panamanians will tell the authorities that a minor has been sexually exploited by an adult according to a joint study of the International Labor Organization (ILO) and the International Program for the Eradication of Children Labor. […] One of the most shocking findings is that the number of people denouncing criminals who commit sexual crimes against children has diminished over the last four years.”

Westernized Media

Countries in the global south are beginning to report events in a similar manner to the west:

[…]

[article: “The number of defilement cases in Ghana appears to be increasing, with a reported incident of forced sexual intercourse with a minor appearing almost daily in the media. […]”]

- Newgon, Uncommon Sense, Edition 2

quoted article: “Japan raises age of consent [from 13 to 16] and [legally] redefines rape [to include coercion]”

Newgon member, 2023, PCMA (Matrix): “The East has fallen”

- [screenshot]

[2021-2022 Newgon meme, now deleted after pressure (an extremely rare occurrence—they now claim they can’t/won’t take down any memes or graphics for being bigoted). The meme depicted a crying boy labeled “Indian rational thinkers” saying, “Science proves that adult-minor sexual relations are natural and exists [sic] among animals as well, our grandparents did it too. It is a White man’s taboo.” Another boy, drawn with a malicious/jeering expression and labeled “Indians with slave mentality,” points at him and says, “Are you trying to justify pedophilia ? Kids can’t legally consent, you are sick.” A much taller woman, wearing a dress, handbag, and heels labeled “white master race” is behind the second boy, with her tongue as a long leash extending all the way through his own mouth as well, implying that his words are actually hers speaking for him. It was claimed on the grapevine and by Newgon members on the pediverse that this meme was made by a PCMA member who is Indian themself.]

- NewgonWiki

“Is it tacky to say—you were my father?”

“Oh, look. I told you at the time it was perfectly natural. Besides, look it up. Use your brain. You’ll find it’s perfectly natural in nature. And some native cultures certainly encourage it.”

“Since when do we emulate animals and savages?”

- Louise Armstrong, Kiss Daddy Goodnight, 1979

Research: Nonwestern Intergenerational Relationships

Most societies which have not been influenced by the west have less, no or different sexual taboos. It is worth mentioning that absent modern western influence, anthropologists and historians have found far more societies where homosexuality is prohibited than societies in which pedosexuality suffers similar censure. Many encourage intergenerational sex for various reasons. Due to ongoing westernisation, much of what is listed here may already be consigned to history (see, for example, Nieto (2004), for an anthropological review).
Burger, G.C. (Date unknown). The Sexual Mistake of the West.

“Enamored of travel, he went to a different country every year, and, that year, he visited the Philippines. Not wanting to stay in the capital, he had taken the bus in order to get closer to the population. He thus found himself next to a mother who had reserved only one seat for herself and her eight-year-old daughter. […] when he noticed that the mother began masturbating the child, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. You can imagine him blushing, asking himself what he should do, looking all around him to see how the other passengers would react, feeling that he would be accused of complicity in incest. But all the neighbors watched with big calm smiles, as if it were obvious, and worthy of the greatest discretion. […]”

- NewgonWiki

I only read up until the first chapter because it’s insufferable and there’s obviously a lot wrong with it but as someone who lives in the Philippines the bit where they say “oh adults masturbating young children in public transport is just their culture” is baffling

These specific types of “muh natural human nature” arguments always have something to say about the Strange Yet Enlightened^TM ways of us third-world countries ~divorced from Western modernism~ or however they wanna put it

- a comrade—NNIA, 2023

It is naïve to believe that the police, a violent, militaristic, and intrinsically patriarchal organ of the state, could be genuinely committed to eradicating violence against women. It is even more naïve to think that Israeli police, a law-enforcement tool for the occupation, would be determined to abolish violence against indigenous Palestinian women unless it is under immense pressure to do so. The stories of Palestinian women who complained to the Israeli police about threats by their family members—only to be turned down by the police and later killed by their family members—are too many to recount. For instance, few months ago in Rahat, the largest Palestinian city in the Naqab, A young woman approached the social service office and reportedly informed the police that she feared for her life. Police officers reportedly told her to go back home, assuring her that she would be safe. Almost 24 hours later, she was found dead.

The latest incident occurred on 21 May, 2013: Two girls, aged three and five, were strangled to death in their home in Fura’a, an unrecognised Palestinian village in the Naqab. The girls’ mother had approached the police station in the nearby Jewish colony of Arad and said that her husband threatened to kill the girls, but her plea was ignored. These horrific events demonstrate marriage between the state—a patriarchal, masculinist entity—and the conservative patriarchal elements in the community.

The Israeli police treat domestic violence among the Palestinian minority as a “private affair” that should be left for the clan and its leaders to solve. It is much more comfortable for the police to link domestic violence against Palestinian women to “family honour” and thus absolve themselves of the responsibility to intervene under the pretext of respecting “cultural sensitivity.” Using this pretext to justify lack of enforcement of women rights stems from Israel’s racist presumption that the abuse and oppression of women are intrinsically tied to Palestinian culture and tradition. It also stems from Israel’s double standards in respecting and protecting multiculturalism.

On the one hand, Israel claims to respect the principle of multiculturalism to buttress and sustain the oppression of women. On the other hand, Israel shows little respect to multiculturalism when it comes to the recognition of minority rights: The ostensible status of Arabic as an official language is solely ink on paper; Palestinian culture, history, narrative, and political literature are intentionally snuffed out of school curricula; and collective memory is targeted through constant attempts of Israelification. In addition, the same Israeli police that evades its duty to protect women from domestic violence because it is a “family” affair is, in the end, has no such concern for “Palestinian family affairs” when its forces demolish homes and displace entire families on a regular basis in the Naqab.

Not only is protection desperately scarce in all of this, but so is accountability. The majority of cases involving violence against women are closed either for lack of evidence or lack of public interest. Although Israel, unlike many Arab states, does not have a provision in its criminal law that mitigates punishment for so-called “honor crimes,” women’s rights organisations repeatedly accuse the police of not investing enough effort in the attempts to find the killers and hold them accountable. Some of the worst cases of violence against women occur in Lydd, Ramleh and the Naqab. Those places also happen to boast some of the highest poverty and unemployment rates; they are also subjected to a targeted Israeli policy of extreme discrimination, denial of basic rights and services, and constant threats of eviction and home demolitions. Add to that the inaccessibility of the Israeli justice system for Palestinian and under-privileged women, and the social retribution that women face for approaching the police and complaining about their family members, and it should be no surprise, then, that Palestinian women do not trust the state to protect them.

- Budour Hassan, “Palestinian women: Trapped between occupation and patriarchy”

Afary and Anderson go on to point out, again to the chagrin of some, that while the dualism in Foucault’s work centred around the modern and the pre-modern, his descriptions of “premodern” were often Eastern and a “counter-discourse that appropriated oriental lore in opposition to Western strategies of control.” Foucault’s counter-discourse, they allege, reifies the oriental (presented as the pre-modern), in stark opposition to the traditional orientalists who denigrated the barbarism and uncivilised “otherness” of Eastern thought. It is thus a final and complete reversion of its modern predecessor. Having laid the philosophical foundations of Foucault’s thought, Afary and Anderson transpose on the presented philosophical landscape, the historical event that is the subject of the treatise. Hence, the cataclysmic reaction between the anti-modern philosophy of Foucault and the anti-modern but unassailably theocratic movement precipitated by Ayatollah Khomeini is exculpated. On the one hand is a philosopher whose world view is a scathing and seething reaction against the modern world; on the other, a theocratic leader whose rallying cry managed to appropriate the unifying rhetoric of anti-imperialism to institute a draconian and repressive order in Iran.

[…]

In tracing the transformation of traditionally significant epithets of Shia Islam, Afary and Anderson bring attention to the question of whether the “pre-modern” East truly exists outside the philosophic imagination of the Western Left represented here by Foucault.

[…]

Anderson and Afary’s endeavour casts critical light on these very questions. In the quest for understanding, is the post-modern glorification of the “other” a valuable corrective to the repressive orientalist discourses that preceded it? Does either do justice to the reality of engaging the “other” devoid of predeterminations? Foucault’s Iranian escapade seems particularly to raise these questions. As Anderson and Afary illustrate, the very notion of pre-modernity itself is a glorified fiction motivated possibly by the post-modern dissatisfaction with their own world, a world that takes for granted the advances of modernity in terms of individual freedom. Their thesis exposes the limits of cultural relativism in its inability to give credence to real desires for freedom and liberation that may be stymied by culture traditions reified for their apparent pre-modernity or “otherness” in relation to modernity. In essence, Afary and Anderson expose the “other” orientalism, a phenomenon perhaps as dangerous and disconcerting in its passive encouragement of fictive and retrogressive notions; their value is coined not in the cultures where they exist but in that of a West that nostalgically laments their loss.

- Rafia Zakaria, “The ‘other’ Orientalism” (book review)

The Enlightenment had its critics, of course, and given the centrality of childhood to European thought many of these critics sought to reconceptualizing the figure of the child. While it appears on the surface that a sense of dignity was being associated with childhood itself, the figure of the child was not removed from its conceptualization as the tragic antithesis of the emerging modern condition. In general, childhood animality became the object of nostalgia and fetishization rather than overt disdain: “Children’s essential animality has sometimes been viewed as problematic; at other times the animal nature of children has been idealized. The equation of child with animal remains.” Resisting what they considered a stifling culture of rationalism and a political fixation on a utopian political future based on reason, Romantic writers valorized the child’s free, spontaneous and creative way of being as indicative of humanity’s paradise lost. The inherent superiority of mature modes of modern freedom and agency were not fundamentally challenged. Modernity is characterized by the loss of childhood innocence, natural freedom, and connection to nature, but the loss is inevitable and indeed necessary for moral progress towards the political freedom realized in the constitution of civil and political society. The romanticized child is thus the centre of a tragic story of lost human authenticity and our alienation from the world.

These themes were most famously explored in the work of J.J. Rousseau. In Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, for example, Rousseau claims that children and parents would, in the state of nature, have no relationship of mutual responsibility. Accordingly, we learn in The Social Contract that despite its flaws, modern society is essential for moral improvement and the highest forms of human freedom and sociality. Likewise, Rousseau’s celebrated work on children, Emile, was not intended to be an education manual but rather a lament on the impossibility of raising children to be both free and functional within modern society. In civilizational terms, Man’s original freedom—his childhood—must be sacrificed in order to pursue education. The child’s courageous and impulsive state of playful being is simply incongruent with what bourgeois artists and intellectuals saw as constraining yet inevitable strictures of modern civilization. If a child somehow goes without education they are left in a feral or natural state of being that is identical in many ways to that of the “Indian.” Sankar Muthu observes that Rousseau at times “manages to equate savages (understood as the earliest purely natural individuals of his conjectural history), the ‘Savage Nations’ of the New World, and feral children (such as the ‘little savage of Hanover’) as ‘natural creatures.’”

- Toby Rollo, “Feral children: settler-colonialism, progress, and the figure of the child”

—

As a survivor who comes from one of those “non-Western backgrounds with Different Cultural Values” which get thrown around in discourse for tokenizing points, the dominant discourses on CSA are very frustrating to me. Anti-CSA activism of the mainstream is mostly led by white people, who have the greatest amount of power in influencing the direction of discourse and having their voices heard and respected. Although even white children are still severely oppressed for being children and white survivors are still not believed or respected much, they do have an advantage over children and survivors of color. Likewise, cishet men of color have advantages over us (both wrt domestic authoritarianism and in antifeminist/adultist public discourses). This trap is familiar—much more has been written about the intersection of racism and misogyny/queerphobia and its particular impacts on women and queers of color, and the difficulties set by the seeming dichotomy between “liberated white Western feminist women/queers” and “repressive misogynistic queerphobic nonwestern cishet men.” But the effects of pervasive gaslighting and erasure are even more severe when it comes to children, and children and child abuse survivors have far less theorizing wrt coloniality written on their issues. This is a major problem considering how a crucial component of CSA apologist politics involves white anthropology, sexology, biologists and evolutionary psychologists and so on claiming that CSA is an inherent feature of “Other cultures” and only modernizing colonialism/imperialism stopped some CSA, thus being anti-CSA is a “white” thing and indicative of sexual repression/Western sensibilities and culturally imperialist. I haven’t seen a lot of anti-c’s willing to tackle this in theory, and most of those who’ve written about it go from an angle which is also racist (e.g. the Armstrong quote above).

I cannot speak to the experience of being raised on CSA-apologist values argued from cultural relativism (on our side) specifically; my experience and analysis of my life history is mainly with regards to nonsexual child abuse; all of us (survivors here) know that our abusers like to tell us it is uniquely ok to [abuse] us because “lax”/“gentle” parenting or pedagogy is a “Western thing” (USAmerican, in my case specifically), a problem of modernity, cultural hysteria, and Our traditional values^TM are better than that. Common tropes for various different non-white cultures are different but have key similarities throughout, and this is what I will focus on addressing here. It’s an overwhelming trend for people to assume that white adults are less abusive to their children on average and non-white adults are overwhelmingly abusive (“because of the culture”) and survivors will often say “well yeah I was abused my parents were of [X] culture and it’s kind of, part of that culture”—an explanation is not an excuse, of course, but this concerns me all the same because we do not see white survivors saying “I was abused because they were white and white people/white culture is fundamentally abusive” (although that’s pretty true). As usual, whiteness is permitted more variation/diversity w/in people’s opinions, perceptions, etc., more individuality and nuance because of their privilege. Even when it comes to violence/abuse/ethical wrongs. Survivor memoirs, interviews/discussion, etc. also tend to implicitly naturalize abuse as a feature of ~their culture~ and far less of those survivors are militant/radical/leftist/anarchist—many of us are, but not a lot in mainstream outlets.

This pervasive gaslighting really does a number to your head when you’re going through trauma and trying to think against the grain but there doesn’t seem to be anyone irl near you who’s willing to interrogate the common assumptions and they repeat them, those abuse myths, again and again and again, casual conversation and discussion, even in venting—nowhere is safe—just retreat and ignore and hide away from everyone because if you expressed disagreement you’d be called a killjoy. Nobody ever said to you, out loud irl in words that your perceptions and feelings are valid and right and they’re wrong to do this and wrong to claim it’s culture. and even radical, feminist white survivors/activists will throw you under the bus (“savage” children are children too, Louise. They wouldn’t deserve it either). And I have very few friends, even now, even online, with similar experiences I can relate to and discuss with. This is one of those topics I still feel very, very nervous to touch, especially out loud and especially in public. Oppression/abuse has you internalizing the view and the gaze of the oppressor/abuser because you need to, to survive, and to understand/predict; we split our perceptions between ourselves and how we think they might be seeing us; I feel this following me around even when it is not immediately relevant/necessary to deflect a particular danger and i still feel a looming sense that if I speak about the abuse especially in this context some terrible retribution will befall me / I will be doing something immoral (violation of family privacy or cultural autonomy) and will be hurt for that. I also did not feel comfortable writing the following about CSA for a long while, and only starting saying my thoughts out loud in private later this year and otherwise in scattered mastodon posts and threads. It helps a lot that we’ve successfully begun to wrest back the contact discourse arena this year and challenged Newgon and other pro-c’s to free up the ability to be anti-c openly and more fully.

This confluence of counterinsurgent forces function to prevent us from forming class consciousness and organizing towards the destruction of the systems which oppress us; they constrain our pain and anger and our ability to express them and act on them in productive ways; we need to fight them as much as possible, whenever and wherever possible.

Here I will try to outline my general theory of the CSA–race intersection; these are just sketches and I’ve written a lot more of my thoughts in private (e.g. my server, and DMs with some others) but I hope I will be able to transfer those insights to a more neat and readable format here later. This will focus on CSA mostly but it applies to child abuse in general too.

- The white supremacist theory of the biodetermined developmental telos is wrong; humans are neither “programmed” to be patriarchal nor to be non-patriarchal based on biology, nor is either more of a “developed,” “advanced,” etc. form of social organization than the other, or necessarily correlating to other biological features. Patriarchy and egalitarianism are neither evolutionarily adaptive nor maladaptive characteristics. Patriarchal nonwestern societies are not so because they lack Western-style “enlightenment”/capitalist development/liberal modernity.

- Both “more Civilized = no CSA = good because CSA is bad” and “more Civilized = no CSA = bad because CSA is good” rely on the equation of civilizedness with no CSA, which is colonialist regardless of how you interpret your conclusion.

- Sexual liberation requires maximizing autonomy. This means eliminating constraints on harmless and private or consensual sexual expression, but also eliminating sexual violence and oppression.

- White European societies were highly patriarchal, violent, oppressive, child-abusing, CSA-enabling, and CSA-accepting at the time of beginning their colonial projects, and they are now too. Pro-CSA ideology is also built into liberal democracy and capitalism.

- Many nonwestern societies were patriarchal pre-colonization, and many were not. Egalitarian societies were not necessarily so because of a lack of awareness of the possibility of oppression as a thing; some had already experienced oppression, either internally or externally, or actively guarded against the arising of oppression through various leveling mechanisms. (My view of the mechanisms through which any patriarchy arises generally align with the hypotheses of materialist feminism.)

- The center of feminist and youth liberationist revolution should be the third world, not the West. This includes struggle against both internal and externally imposed adultist and misogynistic oppressions. Contrary to liberal arguments that because white people have more power or more formal connection to e.g. NGOs, then they can use that more and therefore the rest of us don’t matter/should wait for them first.

- It is okay and right to be angry at and/or fight back against your abuser even if they are also from a marginalized culture, or any other marginalized background. You are not hindering anti-racist solidarity. This does not mean you think non-white abusers are worse or more powerful than white abusers/adultists.

- The primary victim of any genuine attempts to resolve a CSA culture or abusive situation among nonwesterners by appealing to white people in power / attempting to leverage imperialist resources will always ultimately be the victimized nonwestern children themselves. Adult privilege applies universally. (Likewise when it’s about misogyny instead.)

- If adult-child sexual or romantic involvement is wrong and abusive now because of universal features of human childhood then it is wrong and abusive in all cultures, time periods, and geographical contexts which have human children and adults. Trauma will happen regardless of what you’re taught to think about it. Holding inaccurate/internalized abuse-apologist beliefs only make the trauma more difficult to identify, process, and protect and heal from.

- Western imperialism imported patriarchal values into some previously egalitarian cultures and incentivized the reshuffling of the form of patriarchy in others. This did not occur through mere introduction/informational exchange or persuasion but through material violence, imposition of different structures and altered incentives. This also includes CSA.

- A key feature of Western imperialism has also been CSA itself. Racists from all sides like to forget about the scenario of white adults abusing children of color because that really tends to throw off their arguments with very limited premises. This was used as a weapon of colonizing and control itself but also as part of the aforementioned reorganization of age/gender structures.

- Pro-c’s claiming that “other cultures” do CSA therefore CSA is okay are being racist and promoting the interests of Western imperialism. When they accuse opponents of being “the real racists” they are wrong and they are also being racist.

- Hegemonic interests collude as much as possible to make it seem like if we resist child abuse then we must necessarily be leveraging the power or authority of white people/whiteness. This appearance is not natural, inherent to youthlib struggles, or accurate to what we actually think or experience or do. It also won’t matter whether we point this out or not because they’re not coming to this conversation in good faith in the first place; they’re doing it on purpose.

- Pro-c’s of this variety are generally more likely to be racist in other aspects too apart from this. It’s why it’s incorrect to claim that, Newgon for example, is “anti-white” just because it on the surface decries white imperialism sometimes. Newgon is a particularly clear example, blatantly and unashamedly white supremacist in its behavior elsewhere, but this dynamic is replicated among other relativists too.

- Likewise, it is hegemonically incentivized for nonwesterners to represent their societies/cultural values in ways which conform to the dominant racist, “otherizing” assumptions and align with the values of patriarchy and patriarchal interests. Thus the loudest voices are adults, or cis men in particular, who argue in favor of CSA and even claim that it is in fact a part of their culture to do CSA and if someone disagrees with their CSA they’re being racist. This does not make those claims unbiased or inaccurate.

- Racists (of the demonizing variety) already disproportionately and inaccurately believe that “other” cultures are far more prone to CSA and uncontrolled/uncontrollable and ontologically evil. These views have filtered into many people’s perceptions, both pro-c and anti-c, and should be interrogated, not uncritically accepted. Even nonwestern CSA cultures (and CSA culture is always wrong, of course) =/= the demonizing racist portrayal of inexplicable and extreme violent excess as a function of biological deviance (even when they’re bad, they’re often not as bad as the West thinks, or at least are much more mundane in how it plays out). At the very least, one should recognize that when a racist feigns concern for women/children to advocate white imperialist paternalism, he is not anti-patriarchal or anti-abuse in any actual, coherent, meaningful way. Their problems are with deviance and perceived theft of authority/right-to-rule from white patriarchs, not with the fates of women/children themselves or with genuinely liberatory values.

- On the other hand, there are also some paternalistic impulses to claim that a given culture does not have any problems with CSA at all even when there are, to make it seem better. This is not good either and should also be resisted; as always, the children/youth themselves should have the primary voice on portrayals of their conditions.

- The treatment of gender, age, and race have many similarities, even analogous ones with regards to CSA. Both “noble savage” tropes and the ideal of pure, innocent, unfettered, carefree Childhood mirror each other and draw on similar frames. Misogyny is analogous and draws on a lot of similar tropes i.e. the young girl being “innocent” and “carefree,” not burdened by the cares of the world, work, bitterness/cynicism, an understanding of the brutality of the world, or domestic responsibilities, and not tending to refuse or say no, while adult women, especially older women, are portrayed as “dried-up” “hags,” “frigid,” have their innocence and thus appeal gone, etc. Like how abusers/predators often say that they would pick teenage girls/children instead of women to target because women are more likely to avoid them or resist their control (i.e. have developed a better understanding of red flags and more life experience, often from having been abused themselves). The age trajectory of “development” is mapped onto a trajectory of “innocence” and of lack of CSA trauma—seeing that older youth, or adults, will retroactively “regret a positive experience” is often explained by the fact that children apparently have fewer thoughts, ability to feel/experience/independently interpret so they wouldn’t be hurt initially, but “development” ruins/spoils the previous innocence. Likewise racist pro-c’s argue that indigenous peoples had no trauma from CSA before Western interference introduced x ideas for the first time, “interfered” with a secluded, more “innocent” state analogous to romantic notions of naive childhood; i would argue that today’s common discourses of “iatrogenic harm” were likely developed with overtly colonialist origin points. Likewise with how some liberal feminists argue about why some previously gender-egalitarian indigenous societies began to have problems with misogyny and domestic abuse after colonization.

- The nature essentialism/“should return to Wild Natural Human Nature With No Constraints” (and its biologized and racialized form) are also especially relevant because of the association of childhood and indigeneity and lack of civilizational, educated, industrialized, modernized, biologically sophisticated Development with animality (thus “savagery”) and how this has played out with the trend of pro-c’s arguing from primatological examples for their stance; nonhuman animal relatives are viewed as an earlier “origin point” wrt biological development (likewise for children with chronology and indigenous peoples who are dehumanized by colonialist biological assumptions); more about this should be studied with specific thought into how speciesism functions.

- Both “innocence” views are wrong because children and colonized peoples are structurally oppressed and experience worse lives, more hardships and traumatization, not less, than adults/white people. In tandem with the “innocence” construct exists also stereotypes of non-innocent, malicious children / nonwesterners who wish to ruin/corrupt the innocence of the morally righteous adult world / the West, and “innocent” children in practice are mainly those who are white and bourgeois, like “innocent,” idealized women in practice are mainly cis, while underclassed children and trans people are sacrificed and both denied autonomy and un“protected.”

- Patterns of gender- and age-based social organization are not stagnant or shifting along a linear trajectory anywhere. In some places and contexts, abuse is getting worse/more prevalent, and in some it’s decreasing. But we can always fight for a better world.

[1] I agree that pedophilia is not a mental disorder, obviously. (Nor is CSA.) But my reasoning is very different from the reasonings of most of the academics arguing for this stance in that 2002 ASB discussion (i.e., their whole “CSA is/was normal and/or ethical therefore it’s not pathological behavior therefore pedophilia is not a pathological orientation”). My view on the matter instead concurs with that expressed by Moser’s commentary there.

I was going through the references of a pro-c book today and looking for things I found of note. One was this article: https://www.ipce.info/ipceweb/Library/i_did_not_know.htm. Coming across it was a bit jarring, because the book advertised it as containing ethical principles for a (supposedly) ethical/non-abusive adult-child sexual relationship, but its title was “‘I did not know how to deal with it’: Young people speak out about their sexual contacts with adults.” Usually such a title would indicate to me that a text was about incidences the pro-c’s would consider actual CSA and were condemning. It seemed pretty unambiguous to me—“I did not know how to deal with it” is an expression of confusion and distress, and in such a context about someone describing feeling overwhelmed, having things taken out of their control, being unable to cope, etc. Obviously contact which would produce such reactions should be condemned. That was what the article’s author meant—right?

Not so.

I was confused about their intentions, so I decided to read more. It is

By Frans Gieles.

Translated from the Dutch NVSH lwg JORis Newsletter, for Ipce Newsletter.

He begins:

Young people have their say

In the past two years, nine times I came across disclosures from young people about sexual contacts that they had accepted. These contacts had taken place 3 to 20 years previously.

In all cases I know the involved adult to be principled and trustworthy, who would not force his will onto a child. In all cases I am convinced about the consensuality of the encounter and I am also mostly assured that the immediate aftermath was at least a partly positive experience.

But still, later and in retrospect, the encounters were viewed differently.

The experience in retrospect

The reactions confirm each other on many essential points. These points support again what one can find in the literature. Here is, in their own words, what the young people related to me:
I felt drawn in two ways: It was nice, but somewhere it also didn’t feel good. I had the feeling that something bad was happening that I couldn’t stop.
It went all too fast. It was too early. It was too much at once. I rather had discovered all this slowly, at my own pace.
I couldn’t talk with anyone about it, not at home or with boy or girl friends. No, it was not a happy secret, for it weighed too heavy on my conscience. It was a barrier between me and my parents and friends.
My spontaneity disappeared.
I was ashamed and felt guilty that I nevertheless had agreed to do it. Did you say that I took the initiative…? I thought that YOU did…! But you should not have agreed with that.
Now I don’t know what I am sexually. I can’t make any contacts. I have lost my self-confidence.
And at night I have those fantasies…
At home things are difficult. I can’t concentrate at school. As a result of all that I started to use drugs.
I am pissed off with you. Haven’t you noticed that for quite some time I have been avoiding you?
Note: Experiences like these are commonly expressed in the “sexual abuse literature,” but I encountered the same in my reading and in personal contacts about encounters that were mostly consensual with principled adults.

(I’m not sure what particular kinds of “fantasies” were being referenced in #7, but since Gieles says “the reactions confirm each other on many essential points,” “these points support again what one can find in the [‘sexual abuse’] literature,” and that “the encounters were viewed differently [(i.e., negatively), unlike the positive experiences they were viewed as before],” I’ll assume they are talking about a trauma response which they find pretty distressing/difficult.)

I find it interesting to note how this was framed, in contrast to how much of other pro-c rhetoric is framed: often pro-c’s like to claim that anti-c’s are malicious adultists suppressing the voices of young people by not letting them say their relationships were positive; that people who experienced such relationships all secretly believe that their experiences were good and harmless, and would be saying so en masse if only anti-c’s stopped being so overbearing and moralistic. Yet here, he is giving the young people a place to speak for themselves on their feelings. He certainly couldn’t be accused of “leading them on,” “stacking the deck to include samples more likely to have experienced it negatively,” or something else of the sort; he’s starting from a prediction that they experienced no inherent harm or trauma, and did not specifically advertise for any particular populations, nor does it seem likely he’d be the type to interact with negative-reinterpreters more often than average. And yet? When they get to speak, this is what they say. (This reminds me of a thread I made a while ago about a different pro-c text which had also struggled with victims reporting their experiences negatively, contrary to expectations.)

Note that Gieles explicitly states that these were contacts he himself would consider consensual. He trusts all these adults. These nine were the only young people in the past two years who had told him of personal sexual experiences with adults. And every single one reported that they saw it negatively and was experiencing distress.

If the pro-c premise really were true, and anti-c’s have no idea what we’re talking about when we say “overwhelmingly high risk of harm”… what are the odds of something like this happening?

Even he can’t deny this… and yet, with an astounding lack of self-awareness, he still somehow finds ways to reconcile these damning results with his own wish-fulfillment ideology.

The origins of the experience

It is understood that the source of the discomfort is not necessarily caused by the encounter. In retrospect the experience is re-interpreted.

(Why would “believing something different about an experience” automatically equal “feeling corresponding/expected emotions”? Survivors of sexual violence in adulthood and survivors of nonsexual abuse have said for a long time that finally understanding something was abusive doesn’t manufacture feelings of trauma wholesale; those were already there, but not really able to be understood accurately or acknowledged in a healthy manner. Belief isn’t magic; brains don’t just uncritically absorb every suggestion presented to them with zero realistic filter.)

(Who says “new” automatically means “less correct”?)

This is an essential process that doesn’t take place in a vacuum: This happens in a search for an explanation that one can come across or is offered.

(If the adult was so great and considerate and respectful and harmless, though, why would a child need an explanation for their experience? Wouldn’t they understand and accept it already, because that’s the default reaction?)

I can see three sources of the re-interpreting in retrospect of the experiences.

1. One’s own psyche developed in the upbringing of the young people. It doesn’t matter how tolerant a[n]d enlightened the family background is. Society itself is still deeply and firmly rooted in sex-negative paradigms (i.e. sex = dirty etc.).

(How much societal tolerance would finally be tolerant enough for him, I wonder? These types are rarely satisfied just by some concessions, especially if reality continues to misalign with their idealistic predictions.)

2. The broader cultural society, which includes the family, youth culture, and society as a whole. Look, for instances, the medium of television influences young people.

Young men discover how “society” thinks—read: how one is forced to think—about sex, childhood and youth, sexual orientations and pedophilia.

(Why bring the discussion to “sexual orientations” or “pedophilia”? We were talking about abuse.)

Everywhere the present “moral order” is forcefully presented to the young people who aren’t able yet of reaching a critical judgement that makes them resist such indoctrination. (Where can one learn to make such judgements?)

This culture is very powerful and has the capability to wipe away the original positive experience and turn the meaning and value of that experience by 180 degrees.

(c.f. “social contagion”)

Such ideas fall on fertile soil, as many boys have a great fear of becoming homosexual, so much so that their own trust totally disappears and turns into homophobia.

(Boys who had consensual sexual interactions with other boys similar in age who later develop internalized homophobia regarding the experiences generally do not speak the way these aforementioned young people did. They may feel shame or guilt, but they do not show trauma symptoms identical to those experienced by abuse or sexual violence victims in general.)

While one thinks about these things the next source becomes quite clear.

3. The “counselors”.... One can hear the words of the RIAGG (Dutch Mental Care Institutions) when the young people talk about their own experiences. “I have a split personality.” “I am a victim of sexual abuse.”

(Compare to modern moral panic about young people self-diagnosing with mental disorders.)

The value of the original experience has now totally disappeared. The now offered interpretation is accepted as one’s own true experience.

It is now the norm that “Counselors” ask for the sexual experiences. When, in one’s youth, these experiences have been shared with an adult, there will be an automatic conclusion that all problems stem from that incident only.

(Really? Much more likely that they are finally starting to ask at all, and a (newfound) reasonable degree of analysis is being exaggerated as “too much” already.)

This “solution” is readily accepted, for one does not have to look at oneself, be critical of one’s parents or schools. One does not even have to be critical about society as a whole that offers sex violence and drugs in massive proportions.

The problem is now clearly simplified: A scapegoat has been found. The standard “solution” to this predicament is to go to the police and start proceedings.

Because of course, the problem must be anything and everything—evil therapists, DID/OSDD diagnoses, “homophobia,” family indoctrination, school indoctrination, cultural indoctrination, cultural excess/degeneracy, oversexualization, undersexualization, moralism, immorality, having too little access to ideas, having too much access to ideas, “television,” violent media, “drugs”—anything! but the adults themselves, the fact that they committed ethical violations. Even the children can be blamed (“… for one does not have to look at oneself”)! But never the adults—they are all blameless and innocent. Children are blank slates who cannot think for themselves or disagree with what adults around them say, they cannot possibly believe that adults having sex with (sexually abusing) them is wrong unless they’ve been brainwashed by external sources.

It is nearly also the norm that one then can claim for damages.

(“Greedy false accusers lying/making things up/exaggerating benign encounters for money”—what a tired, patriarchal trope.)

The four principles

Several years ago, we discussed at one of the Ipce Meetings in Copenhagen a paper about ethics, written by (one of the) Danish people. In one of the meetings in Amsterdam, we spoke about a next version of this paper. In NVSH lwg JORis, these ethical principles are discussed several times. Gradually, we reached consensus about four ethical principles and a P.S. Here they are in the last generally accepted version.
Self-determination
Children must always have it in his or her own power to regulate their own sexuality, their relationships with others and their own lives.
Initiative
Even in a later stage of the relationship, it is always the children who make the choice to have sex.
Freedom
At any moment within the relationship with an adult, children must have the freedom to withdraw from the relationship. (Dependency in sexual relationships limits their freedom). Love and dedication must be unconditional. Sex is never allowed to be a bargaining tool.
Openness
The child should not have to carry unreasonable secrets. One has to take into consideration how the child lives with its own sexuality. This openness depends a great deal on the quality of the relationship, and the support from the adult(s).
P.S.

The local mores and customs also play a role, as openness about children’s sex lives is not always appreciated. Children often have to be sexual in secret. Homosexuality is for many youngsters a big taboo. This can bring many problems and insecurity. If the sub-culture in which they live is relaxed and strong enough, then children can find support in that environment.

Toward conclusions

I notice that as an adult one can realize the first three principles, Self-determination, Initiative and Freedom[.] However, I have to come to the conclusion that the fourth principle of Openness can as the result of the present moral pressures not be realized any longer. Nowhere is discussion possible. Support is only available, from infants onwards, for heterosexuals; sometimes a very, very little bit of support is given to the homosexuals but only when they are in their late teens or their early twenties.

For pedosexual relationships there is no support at all for the younger partner: not in the family, not at school, not in the play-ground, not in public and not from the mental care agencies[.]

And now let us talk about secrets. The essence of a nice secret is that you can tell all about it, but that it pleasures you to keep it to yourself. If you are not allowed to talk about it, it is not a nice secret any longer. I am aware that at least one of the four principles can in this day and age not be realized any more. What conclusions do I make out of that and what is your conclusion?

So the adults in Gieles’ sample did all three of these, by his standards: “allowed the children self-determination,” “always let the children make the choice to have sex,” “never involved inability to leave/dependency/conditional care/sexual bargaining.” I don’t think any other pro-c would have higher standards than that. But the children were still traumatized. (And no, it’s pretty obvious that it’s not just “secondary harm” they’re reporting. None of them are expressing anger at secondary traumatizers or saying they would’ve gone differently if not for social mores. They do, however, mention issues with the relationships themselves, like feeling they were being pulled into something they were not ready for or falling out of control, significantly linked with the age differences.)

What does that say about the premises of pro-c’s who think they are “the good pro-c’s” who don’t support “actual coercion/exploitation/consent violations,” thinking all the problems people find are attributable to just the other pro-c’s somewhere else?

Conclusion 1

To soften the effect of Source No 1, the children have to be brought up quite differently in regards to their sexuality. Social patterns of upbringing do change from one generation to the next, but fundamental changes could need several generations.

To address Source No 2, I recommend that the real experience of the self be given more value. That all people, young and old, will be given more freedom and responsibility especially in sexual matters. This would fundamentally change the culture and the order of society.

To change Source No 3 we have to change the “sexual abuse” paradigm of the sexual abuse industry. In turn such a new paradigm demands another type of scientific knowledge and research. As long as the psychology is focu[s]ed on the fragmented behavior-science rather than the more holistic science of human action, this will never happen. Sexual-sciences will have to work with other basic understandings, definitions, methods and goals.

(Occam’s Razor, anyone?)

If we will work at these points, our agenda is filled for the next half a century!

Conclusion 2

I don’t have another half century to live, therefore I will have to pass on some of the points I want to make. I want to accept what these nine young people have said about themselves and their lives. I will take care that I can not be one of the causes for the “problem-list” 1 to 9 (see above). I regard the chance of a “negative reaction in retrospect” so big and predictable, that I anticipate such problems and I don’t want to run the risk. This means that I don’t allow myself to have sexual contacts with youngsters.

Gieles is incredibly callous about these nine young people he interviewed. He presents this entire political arena as simply one for crude experimentation, in which he/other adults are here to pull levers and manipulate children, treating them like mechanical items/functions they just need to figure the right input-output formula for. So certain that his viewpoint is superior—refusing at all to consider that these young people might actually be objectively right about what they need, and the only real solution is to just stop doing these contacts entirely. No, to him, the real problem isn’t violence and exploitation, but the fact that young people react poorly (inconveniently, unfortunately) to it. Predatory adults’ goals don’t need to change, victims’ do. If only the victims weren’t making such a fuss over nothing, then everything would be better. He claims to care about their struggles, but only ever in a remote, condescending, paternalistic, uneven fashion. Their traumas and lifelong scars are just interesting meeting-agenda-fodder to poke and prod at and ponder and discourse over. (With none of their own input on how his project should go, of course. Their voices don’t matter.)

In this sense these pro-c’s bear a rather noticeable resemblance to, for example, incels—concocting elaborate conspiracy theories to explain why their wishes aren’t coming true, thinking marginalized groups who deny them sexual access are just confused/not knowing what’s best for themselves/are complex puzzles whose motives are impossible to easily understand, thinking they just need to adjust something about the external circumstances so that the people they were meant to and will inevitably be with will finally properly acquiesce instead of realizing that a lack of consent is a lack of consent and sometimes people just unconditionally don’t fucking want them here!

Where then are my boundaries?

In my relationships with youngsters I am really close with, I have two boundaries.
At first, I refuse to keep such a long distance that real and good contact is no longer possible.

(Even if they would prefer that you stay away?)

(Long-distance relationships aren’t evil, you know. They can still offer opportunities for meaningful connection.)

The other is that I don’t want any sexual involvement, which includes erotic intimacies that are meant to lead to a full sexual experience.
Within the boundaries of what is, for me, acceptable there are untold ways of connecting, which is enjoyed by one or both, in which there could be an erotic content but is not designed to lead to sex.

(So “erotic intimacies” leading to a “half” sexual experience are fine then? Wtf?)

But please understand:

I don’t reject sexual contacts in principle, but only for myself in this time. I don’t want to take the risk to be the cause of the list of nine points (that only contains the risks for the younger partner), I suspect that most members of lwg JORis live accordingly to similar principles.

(“It’s risky enough to be problematic/unethical/destructive right now, but I don’t reject others doing this unethical thing right now, that should just be a personal choice”)

P.S. 1

I wrote this article to tell what the youngsters with a negative experience have told me. I also have met youngsters who felt positively about sexual contacts they have had in a positive relationship with an adult.

If he has, I’d like to see him talk about them in more detail. So far I haven’t found any such text, but it’s possible I have overlooked some search method. If it exists, you are welcome to let me know.

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notes on NAMBLA & pederasty
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Entries tagged with contact discourse

notes on NAMBLA & pederasty

the relativism question

Surprisingly strong evidence for the anti-c position? (you’d never guess the source)