Mind Boggled -- Satanist US Army Mind Control et al.

Good lord. One hardly knows where to begin engaging with the sophistry displayed in this post. It reads as one long apologia for paedophilia. A few points:

First of all, Michael – I’m unpleasantly surprised and disappointed by your highly emotional, yet baseless response. It’s probably the first furious rant I’ve ever read from you; knowing you, I was waiting for a calm tone and valid argumentation, not repeating of pretty popular, yet entirely factually wrong, misconceptions.

Well, you’re not the only clever person who loses his or her reasoning abilities at the moment child and intergenerational sexualities are positively mentioned: these topics (especially the latter one, concerning sex between adults and children/adolescents) have a tendency to simply overwhelm people emotionally. It’s understandable, since they touch the earliest (and, therefore, the strongest) aspects of social conditioning to which all of us were, to some extent, subjected; falsehoods and cruelties which were pushed into our minds by nearly everyone around, and the best of intentions from them. Yet good intentions do not erase the fact that sexually repressive indoctrination that kids routinely undergo in the modern Western societies is based on sheer mythology – mythology that is percieved as sacred by many (and, as I described, it indeed has its roots in “religions of salvation” like Christianity), but in my evidence-supported opinion, just stupid.

1. Children begin to sexually mature at puberty, usually in their teens. This coincides roughly with an increase in intellectual and emotional maturity that doesn't, however, peak straight away. In fact, Id say that intellectual and emotional maturity are rather rare even in adults. This means that children are only prohibited from having sex (in England at any rate) for 2-3 years after puberty. About the length of an apprenticeship. Hardly a huge imposition on their human rights. Let's face it: kids tend to be somewhat foolish, even more so than adults.

What?!! It is known, at least, since Alfred Kinsey’s famous reports on sexuality (or, more precisely, RECALLED since Kinsey’s reports, while it was known for everyone for millennia) that active sexuality begins in early childhood, if not babyhood, and not with puberty. What begins in puberty is a reproductive capability, not sexual response; the latter is entirely natural even in young children, and easily reach the level of having full-blown orgasms – that, to general society’s horror and rage, was found by Kinsey. Later, similar observations were made by many researchers and child (mental) health practitioners - such as, for example, sociologist Floyd Martinson, child psychiatrist Alayne Yates, or child psychologist Larry Constantine. Martinson’s “Sexual Life of Children” and “Infant and Child Sexuality”, as well as Yates’ “Sex without Shame”, may be found as free PDFs on the Web.

As for the absence of observable harm – studies that does not take the harmfulness of child-adult sex as an axiomatic assumption usually do not find any harm in most cases. It is shown both by detailed interviews with children themselves. There are meta-analyses beyond the most (in)famous one by Rind et al, such as earlier one by Larry Constantine – or successful replication of Rind’s and his colleagues’ work by Heather Ulrich, Mickey Randolph and Shawn Acheson. There are sets of detailed interviews with people who experienced sex as children – beyond Sandfort’s work (did you read it at all – haven’t I provided a link?), there are others like Terry Leahy’s “Negotiating Stigma”, which cover female as well as male cases and may be found as a free PDF as well.

2. Speaking of adults, they are generally able to recognise this and would spurn any "advances" made by children, in the latter's own interests. If they couldn't, it wouldn't say much for their intellectual and emotional maturity.

Since, as I said above, children are sexually active and responsive from the earliest age, and are not harmed by sex with adults (as long as no coercion on adult’s part is involved), it is NOT in their interest to be sexually repressed, to be deprived from learning about sexuality by their own experience, to be fed adults’ intimidating misconceptions about “bad touches”, “sex predators” and so on, or to be damaged by an enforced breakdown of a positive sex-involving relationship with an adult because of adults’ misguided fears.

3. Prepubescent children, especially babies and infants, should be nurtured and protected from adult sexual advances, which can and do harm them physically, intellectually and emotionally. If anyone feels any differently, ask them how they'd react to an adult molesting their own children, or to having been molested themselves as children.

For those adult paedophiles who do molest their own children, ask if they themselves were molested as kids. They often were, and hence have lost their moral compass and become unable to judge properly the effect of their actions (which alone speaks volumes about the harm that paedophilia causes). Other adults necessarily have to intervene to protect the child and give it the best chance of developing normally, even if the child is precocious. Most kids aren't precocious, however.

Yet another common misconception – most paedophiles didn’t have sexual contact with adults as children. They just found, usually in their early adolescence, that their sexual drive is as directed at children as when they were children themselves. Such realisation of paedosexuality was a heavy burden for many of them, since they faced either a prospect of a life-long secrecy and celibate, or total dehumanisation and cruel persecution by society if they will ever enact (or simply disclose) their sexual preferences – no matter how consensual and harmless such enactment would be. It’s not surprising that many of these juvenile paedophiles chose the third option – suicide… This horrible choice is very similar to the one which tormented young homosexuals before Gay Liberation and positive social reevaluation of their sexuality which it brought. Such similarity was noticed by many scholars, such as criminologists Allyson Walker and Vanessa Panfil, who compared modern society’s treatment of paedosexuality with its earlier attitudes to homosexuality – and found them very close to each other, if not largely identical.

And, while it may seem unthinkable nowadays, in 1970s Netherlands some parents knew about their children’s relationships with paedophiles, and was entirely content with them. Some of them actually walked alongside their children and their adult lovers in public marshes! And it was not because they were “molested” by anyone while they were children; they just were intellectually, socially and spiritually liberated people who saw nothing terrible in their children’s consensual, harmless and pleasant relationships. The horrified and disgusted attitude to such sexually expressed intergenerational friendships are simply a result of a massive, persistent sex-negative crypto-religious indoctrination to which most of us were subjected. Yet, people from other cultures, or indoctrination-resistant types from own one, do not share our artificial, societally enforced anti-sexual vicissitudes.

4. Childhood is the one time in life when we get to experience innocence. Having experienced it myself, I can attest to its worth later in life in helping evaluate my spiritual growth. Had I lost that innocence prematurely, I wouldn't be who I currently am. I thank God for my precious period of innocence and can't imagine what life would have been without it. Children don't know this yet, and so it's up to every adult to protect them from its early demise.

Here our life histories are in direct opposition, since I, as many kids of 1990s Russia, never was subjected to compulsory “innocence” by adults.

In 1990s, Russia was effectively a “failed state”, with the society being in economic collapse. The life was hard for many; yet it had a bright side as well – the fall of ideological system that kept Soviet mentality together brought a delightful cultural chaos of proportions comparable to 1960s and 1970s in the West. The sense of liberation was there, despite all hardships and disasters, and it was not limited to adults: kids were usually granted a remarkable degree of freedom, both by their family and a general society, and may do what they want. They accessed any information they wanted – watched any films and programmes, read any books and magazines. Due to the effective absence of age restrictions, their choice was almost unlimited, so their learning was unimpeded by adult interference. Erotica was an interesting for kids to watch, yet it was also exciting to enact playfully: explicitly sexual games of prepubescent children, with kids taking example from erotic activities of adults, were a common occurrence – and were tolerated by adults, who saw them as natural part of kid’s exploration of world and oneself. (The second in popularity among Russian kids of the 1990s were games concerning magick and mysticism, which were booming in Russia in the very same time; attempts to perform some simplistic imitations of magickal rituals and ceremonies were normal among children.) And kids’ freedom was not limited to informational and sexual spheres: it included freedom of movement as well. Many of children had played and walked in the streets after dark, since there were still no age-based curfews at all. Schools were a free-to-enter zones, which any adult may simply walk in and out without any surveillance or restriction. (Most of the non-parent, non-educator adults who were entering school grounds were visiting their former teachers, with whom they had friendly relationships – no, not sexual ones, just social ones; giving friendly visits to former teachers were a kind of tradition, left from Soviet times.) Older kids and adolescents were often drinking, smoking and using other psychoactive substances; such practices were usually met in unfriendly manner by parents and other adults, but still not with horror which would be expectable from a modern Western grown-ups; oftentimes, adults looked the other way, and occasionally initiated kids into drink-and-smoke themselves.

Oh, 1990s in Russia were an epoch of innocence-free growing for so many kids – including me!

But nowadays, things have greatly changed for the worse – “child protection” has reached Russia. Recent years in Russia were characterised by hysterical “paedophile panic” which lead to severe restrictions of children’s freedoms in nearly any areas. Now Russia has all the child-suppressive practices of Western states: schools turned into fortresses, with security checkpoints which no adult may pass without scrutiny; strict curfews for anyone “underage”; age-based limitations to information access; and so on. Child “innocence” is now heavily defended; yet kids do not seem to be happy about it!

Let’s be explicit – as child liberationist educator John Holt (whose book “Escape from Childhood”, a well-argued defense of children’s freedoms, is a highly recommended reading both for you and for anyone else here), said, children do not want to remain children; they want to grow up. The part that parents and other adults are playing in this growing-up process should be supportive, not preventive. All attempts to “defend” kids from their own exploration are based on nothing but an oversentimental, nostalgia-tripping reshape of childhood memories by adults indoctrinated into the “innocence” legend, which is a crypto-religion, presenting itself nowadays as a “social science”, yet containing nothing but ancient religious mythology.

The problem is, Michael, any case for “innocence” can’t be based on anything but a sheer religious devotion, an aversion to corporeal life and embodiment preached by Salvationist religions. It is no more valid or sensible that Christian Fundamentalists’ insistence that everything paranormal is “demonic”, their tendency to portrait researchers and experiencers of paranormal phenomena as “Devil’s dupes”.

I, personally, quite positive that non-physical spirit does exist, but our bodies and bodily-sensed world are not separated from it; body is a manifestation of spirit. The rejection and torment of one’s embodied form is simply a distorted projection of our own pain and fear, perpetuated by authoritarian societies and oppressive religions (and ideologies) that justify their existence.

5. I don't give a damn how many treatises from woolly-minded intellectuals seek to justify child molestation. They're wrong, wrong, wrong.

These treatises are not just empty words, Michael – they contain a lot of actual evidence and quite strong argumentation. So, as Alex likes to say, LOOK AT THE EVIDENCE!!!

And, to end all this… Michael, aren’t you the one who, in numerous anthropogenic global warming debates, always criticised devout environmentalists for their crypto-religious Salvationism? Aren’t you the one who always remained calm and kept analysing the data looking in the cases which emotionally overwhelm nearly everyone, such as HIV-AIDS skepticism? Aren’t you the one who always, in the midst of the polarising debates, insisted on scrutiny instead of furious dismissal or enthusiastic praise?

The one who, like me, maintained that separation between “mind” and “matter” is rather a conceptual trick than anything real, that physical is the form and manifestation of the spiritual?

And, damn it, why you cannot see that now you’re acting exactly as deeply passionate, messianic types who insist that they always know better and have the right and duty to enforce their worldview on anyone without consent, to suppress any alternative? That now it is YOU who wants to push forward a emotionally charged prejudice, without looking at the available data?

So, I said what I thought. It is for you decide whether to look at pro-intergenerational sex side of the story or not.
 
First of all, Michael – I’m unpleasantly surprised and disappointed by your highly emotional, yet baseless response. It’s probably the first furious rant I’ve ever read from you; knowing you, I was waiting for a calm tone and valid argumentation, not repeating of pretty popular, yet entirely factually wrong, misconceptions.

Well, you’re not the only clever person who loses his or her reasoning abilities at the moment child and intergenerational sexualities are positively mentioned: these topics (especially the latter one, concerning sex between adults and children/adolescents) have a tendency to simply overwhelm people emotionally. It’s understandable, since they touch the earliest (and, therefore, the strongest) aspects of social conditioning to which all of us were, to some extent, subjected; falsehoods and cruelties which were pushed into our minds by nearly everyone around, and the best of intentions from them. Yet good intentions do not erase the fact that sexually repressive indoctrination that kids routinely undergo in the modern Western societies is based on sheer mythology – mythology that is percieved as sacred by many (and, as I described, it indeed has its roots in “religions of salvation” like Christianity), but in my evidence-supported opinion, just stupid.



What?!! It is known, at least, since Alfred Kinsey’s famous reports on sexuality (or, more precisely, RECALLED since Kinsey’s reports, while it was known for everyone for millennia) that active sexuality begins in early childhood, if not babyhood, and not with puberty. What begins in puberty is a reproductive capability, not sexual response; the latter is entirely natural even in young children, and easily reach the level of having full-blown orgasms – that, to general society’s horror and rage, was found by Kinsey. Later, similar observations were made by many researchers and child (mental) health practitioners - such as, for example, sociologist Floyd Martinson, child psychiatrist Alayne Yates, or child psychologist Larry Constantine. Martinson’s “Sexual Life of Children” and “Infant and Child Sexuality”, as well as Yates’ “Sex without Shame”, may be found as free PDFs on the Web.

As for the absence of observable harm – studies that does not take the harmfulness of child-adult sex as an axiomatic assumption usually do not find any harm in most cases. It is shown both by detailed interviews with children themselves. There are meta-analyses beyond the most (in)famous one by Rind et al, such as earlier one by Larry Constantine – or successful replication of Rind’s and his colleagues’ work by Heather Ulrich, Mickey Randolph and Shawn Acheson. There are sets of detailed interviews with people who experienced sex as children – beyond Sandfort’s work (did you read it at all – haven’t I provided a link?), there are others like Terry Leahy’s “Negotiating Stigma”, which cover female as well as male cases and may be found as a free PDF as well.



Since, as I said above, children are sexually active and responsive from the earliest age, and are not harmed by sex with adults (as long as no coercion on adult’s part is involved), it is NOT in their interest to be sexually repressed, to be deprived from learning about sexuality by their own experience, to be fed adults’ intimidating misconceptions about “bad touches”, “sex predators” and so on, or to be damaged by an enforced breakdown of a positive sex-involving relationship with an adult because of adults’ misguided fears.



Yet another common misconception – most paedophiles didn’t have sexual contact with adults as children. They just found, usually in their early adolescence, that their sexual drive is as directed at children as when they were children themselves. Such realisation of paedosexuality was a heavy burden for many of them, since they faced either a prospect of a life-long secrecy and celibate, or total dehumanisation and cruel persecution by society if they will ever enact (or simply disclose) their sexual preferences – no matter how consensual and harmless such enactment would be. It’s not surprising that many of these juvenile paedophiles chose the third option – suicide… This horrible choice is very similar to the one which tormented young homosexuals before Gay Liberation and positive social reevaluation of their sexuality which it brought. Such similarity was noticed by many scholars, such as criminologists Allyson Walker and Vanessa Panfil, who compared modern society’s treatment of paedosexuality with its earlier attitudes to homosexuality – and found them very close to each other, if not largely identical.

And, while it may seem unthinkable nowadays, in 1970s Netherlands some parents knew about their children’s relationships with paedophiles, and was entirely content with them. Some of them actually walked alongside their children and their adult lovers in public marshes! And it was not because they were “molested” by anyone while they were children; they just were intellectually, socially and spiritually liberated people who saw nothing terrible in their children’s consensual, harmless and pleasant relationships. The horrified and disgusted attitude to such sexually expressed intergenerational friendships are simply a result of a massive, persistent sex-negative crypto-religious indoctrination to which most of us were subjected. Yet, people from other cultures, or indoctrination-resistant types from own one, do not share our artificial, societally enforced anti-sexual vicissitudes.



Here our life histories are in direct opposition, since I, as many kids of 1990s Russia, never was subjected to compulsory “innocence” by adults.

In 1990s, Russia was effectively a “failed state”, with the society being in economic collapse. The life was hard for many; yet it had a bright side as well – the fall of ideological system that kept Soviet mentality together brought a delightful cultural chaos of proportions comparable to 1960s and 1970s in the West. The sense of liberation was there, despite all hardships and disasters, and it was not limited to adults: kids were usually granted a remarkable degree of freedom, both by their family and a general society, and may do what they want. They accessed any information they wanted – watched any films and programmes, read any books and magazines. Due to the effective absence of age restrictions, their choice was almost unlimited, so their learning was unimpeded by adult interference. Erotica was an interesting for kids to watch, yet it was also exciting to enact playfully: explicitly sexual games of prepubescent children, with kids taking example from erotic activities of adults, were a common occurrence – and were tolerated by adults, who saw them as natural part of kid’s exploration of world and oneself. (The second in popularity among Russian kids of the 1990s were games concerning magick and mysticism, which were booming in Russia in the very same time; attempts to perform some simplistic imitations of magickal rituals and ceremonies were normal among children.) And kids’ freedom was not limited to informational and sexual spheres: it included freedom of movement as well. Many of children had played and walked in the streets after dark, since there were still no age-based curfews at all. Schools were a free-to-enter zones, which any adult may simply walk in and out without any surveillance or restriction. (Most of the non-parent, non-educator adults who were entering school grounds were visiting their former teachers, with whom they had friendly relationships – no, not sexual ones, just social ones; giving friendly visits to former teachers were a kind of tradition, left from Soviet times.) Older kids and adolescents were often drinking, smoking and using other psychoactive substances; such practices were usually met in unfriendly manner by parents and other adults, but still not with horror which would be expectable from a modern Western grown-ups; oftentimes, adults looked the other way, and occasionally initiated kids into drink-and-smoke themselves.

Oh, 1990s in Russia were an epoch of innocence-free growing for so many kids – including me!

But nowadays, things have greatly changed for the worse – “child protection” has reached Russia. Recent years in Russia were characterised by hysterical “paedophile panic” which lead to severe restrictions of children’s freedoms in nearly any areas. Now Russia has all the child-suppressive practices of Western states: schools turned into fortresses, with security checkpoints which no adult may pass without scrutiny; strict curfews for anyone “underage”; age-based limitations to information access; and so on. Child “innocence” is now heavily defended; yet kids do not seem to be happy about it!

Let’s be explicit – as child liberationist educator John Holt (whose book “Escape from Childhood”, a well-argued defense of children’s freedoms, is a highly recommended reading both for you and for anyone else here), said, children do not want to remain children; they want to grow up. The part that parents and other adults are playing in this growing-up process should be supportive, not preventive. All attempts to “defend” kids from their own exploration are based on nothing but an oversentimental, nostalgia-tripping reshape of childhood memories by adults indoctrinated into the “innocence” legend, which is a crypto-religion, presenting itself nowadays as a “social science”, yet containing nothing but ancient religious mythology.

The problem is, Michael, any case for “innocence” can’t be based on anything but a sheer religious devotion, an aversion to corporeal life and embodiment preached by Salvationist religions. It is no more valid or sensible that Christian Fundamentalists’ insistence that everything paranormal is “demonic”, their tendency to portrait researchers and experiencers of paranormal phenomena as “Devil’s dupes”.

I, personally, quite positive that non-physical spirit does exist, but our bodies and bodily-sensed world are not separated from it; body is a manifestation of spirit. The rejection and torment of one’s embodied form is simply a distorted projection of our own pain and fear, perpetuated by authoritarian societies and oppressive religions (and ideologies) that justify their existence.



These treatises are not just empty words, Michael – they contain a lot of actual evidence and quite strong argumentation. So, as Alex likes to say, LOOK AT THE EVIDENCE!!!

And, to end all this… Michael, aren’t you the one who, in numerous anthropogenic global warming debates, always criticised devout environmentalists for their crypto-religious Salvationism? Aren’t you the one who always remained calm and kept analysing the data looking in the cases which emotionally overwhelm nearly everyone, such as HIV-AIDS skepticism? Aren’t you the one who always, in the midst of the polarising debates, insisted on scrutiny instead of furious dismissal or enthusiastic praise?

The one who, like me, maintained that separation between “mind” and “matter” is rather a conceptual trick than anything real, that physical is the form and manifestation of the spiritual?

And, damn it, why you cannot see that now you’re acting exactly as deeply passionate, messianic types who insist that they always know better and have the right and duty to enforce their worldview on anyone without consent, to suppress any alternative? That now it is YOU who wants to push forward a emotionally charged prejudice, without looking at the available data?

So, I said what I thought. It is for you decide whether to look at pro-intergenerational sex side of the story or not.

Tell you what, I've had a great idea. Let's free kids from ruthless control by adults and let them smoke, let them drink, let them drive, let them bunk off school. Yay! Hip hip hurray for an enlightened, liberal society that recognises no difference between adults and children. Let's ignore the fact that they are little and, until a certain stage of their development, aren't capable of really knowing what they want or what harm can befall them if they manage to get it. Let's stop feeding them and nurturing them and let the buggers fend for themselves, because in reality they're devious eegits who are out for sex along with all sorts of other enjoyments that we adults allow ourselves.

And please, don't give me any nonsense about my views on childhood innocence being those of a religious salvationist. That's complete bollocks, and you know it. I have to ask you -- since you seem to evince support for the freedom to have "intergenerational sex" -- is that because you have paedophilic desires? If so, our conversation must end there because I'm talking to a brick wall. On the other hand, if it's not because of that, whatever is it that has made you get this particular bee in your bonnet? Do you have children yourself, and if so, would you be happy to allow them to have sex with an adult?
 
Well, long, long ago I promised you a big and complex reply detailing my child liberationist views… And then I moved to another topics. Why? Well, because I found trying to push a whole social teaching into one forum post to be a painfully difficult endeavor. Yet I have not forgotten my intention to provide you with a good summary of my views. And then all hell broke loose at my job, and for some time I became simply devoid of spare time. And, then it ended, I went to my relatives for a prolonged visit and thus was far from my PC for may days. Then, I was busy translating some of my English-language stuff into Russian for a friend of mine who was highly interested in my opinions. So, I was able to start writing this post only recently. And, after some reflection, I understood that I cannot describe all areas in which children are denied freedom, and present arguments against such limitation of their agency. So, I decided to concentrate on, probably, the most controversial and explosive topic of all – which is also the most researched: children’s sexual rights and liberties, their freedom to pursue sexual contacts and relationships – not only with other children, but also with adults. Paradoxically, this area – intergenerational sexuality – is, if we access it in objective manner, the safest one for kids; if most people were thinking rationally, rather than passionately (unfortunately, they do not), it will be accepted and approved by society long ago. But deep fears and anxieties, lasing from the beginning of the modern epoch, prevent us from analyzing child sexuality in general, and child-adult sex in particular, in calm and critical manner.


Before we start, let’s look at one interesting chart, presented in Robert Epstein’s article “The Myth of the Teen Brain” (p. 4 in the document). Named “Rebels with a Cause”, it demonstrated how greatly the freedom of “minors” – that is, children and adolescents, the persons under arbitrary “age of majority” – has diminished for the past 200 years. Before 19th century, it was hardly any laws enforcing age restrictions; yet since the beginning of the 19th century, such laws began to appear – initially one by one; than they were created faster, and became more multiple; and since post-World-War-2 era, legal initiatives designed to take away virtually any freedom from “minors” turned into a true avalanche, which lead us to a current situation of a fundamentally separated society, where adults are allowed to enjoy the liberties of modern democratic countries, yet kids are locked into a virtually totalitarian world, where they are forbidden not only to act on their own will and desires, but even to access information about these desires – since even information is presumed to be “harmful for minors” and therefore “adults only”. As Epstein puts it,





Just try to think about it – TWICE AS MANY RESTRICTIONS FOR KIDS AS FOR INCARCERATED ADULT FELONS. It is no joke; an adult prisoner have more liberties under law than a child. (And what about child convicts put into “juvenile detention centers”, BTW? They lose even the last miniscule drops of freedom left for kids and are simply treated like slaves.) Yet it wasn’t always this way: the modern notion of “childhood”, with its centering on “innocence” and “protection” of this “innocence” from everything around, including even knowledge. (In fact, especially knowledge; according to modern ideas, even sheer theory on some subjects should not be allowed to kids, let alone “carnal” – read, experiential – knowledge… God forbid!!!) Before modernity, no one cared much about “protecting” children from anything; according to some good data, the very concept of childhood was largely unknown. And it is understandable, since the idea of childhood has been arising, steadily, in a very specific cultural milieu – the sex-negative, body-hating, life-rejecting ideals of Christianity; the ideals which, while ferociously castigating “lust” as the source of evil, was obsessed by it, fixated on it; the ideals from which the concept of “childhood innocence” was born. But let’s start from the beginning of this long and painful road…


Before the advent of the religions of salvation (primarily Christianity and Abrahamic religions in general, but not only them – some other faiths, such as Zoroastrianism, also qualify like that), as well as transcendental, Platonic-style ascetic philosophies, it was agreed that spirit is immanent; it is in-worldly, not out-worldly; it is life, not death; it can be directly experienced. The apparent chasm between flesh and soul, the seeming rupture between body and mind, was not yet proposed – our bodies was manifestations of our spirit, not shells in which our souls are contained. And, therefore, bodily desires were good and acceptable – not only in adults, but also in children; for why we, wishing good to our kids, should deprive them of sexual gratification which they evidently seek from birth? Why should we try to “shield” them from something which is their natural need and drive? So, in pre-Salvationist world, child – and, importantly, intergenerational – sexuality was usually accepted. Sexual relations between adults and children commonly were as normal as between children themselves, since all, kids and grown-ups alike, shared the same life, same society, same culture; there was no reason why they should be strictly separated in sexual matters. Of course, not all cultures were equally sex-positive; some were more restricted than others, in some matters, in some areas. But these restrictions usually were related to the order of mating and forming familial units; idea of sex as something fundamentally evil and thus deserving repression as and in itself, is invention of Salvationist religions and transcendentalist philosophies.


Yet, in the initial stages of its development, sex-negative, ascetic ideals of Christianity has little to do with age restrictions and separation between kids and adults. Children were not yet seen as different from adults; they were inexperienced, of course, in need of some teaching; but pedagogy as specific specialty, and child-rearing as a discrete, identifiable area of life had not yet arisen.


Things changed in the modern epoch. This change is well described by highly controversial, yet very interesting historian Philippe Aries in his book “Centuries of Childhood”. The Christian ideal, that formed the Western culture, is purity – the separation of man from the “dirty”, tainted earthly reality, the achievement of perfect, unearthly clarity of heaven. For such transcendence of the simple liveliness, seekers of the celestial need community and reason, which will provide them with moral discipline and development, with refinement of manner and performance. So, the earthy talks and acts – especially sexual talks and acts – were forbidden in a polite adult society. Yet – which may sound shockingly to most modern people – such talks and acts were allowed in dealing with children. As Philippe Aries describes,





I highly recommend you to read the Chapter V of Aries’ book, “From Immodesty to Innocence”, but prepare to be shocked: some casual interactions with children described in the Heroard’s diary – for example, an adult woman demonstrating the child her “private parts” – would, if performed nowadays, easily qualify as “child molestation” and would cost the performer a long prison term and a life on a “Sex Offender Registry”. However, in era described by Heroard and reconstructed by Aries, it was an everyday norm, since it was considered that children, who have not yet achieved adult moral refinement and religious elevation, would not be harmed or offended by such demonstrations. Kids, unlike adults, were still creatures of natural simplicity; only later, with severe acts of discipline, might they became divinely touched, cleansed from the earthly dirtiness of sin and allowed to enter heaven.


In the epoch of modernity, with the giving up of belief in fundamental vileness of human nature and the rise of humanism, the Christian idea of earthly life as dirty and sinful was not given up; but was paradoxically inverted. Now it was assumed that all children are born innocent, devoid of any sinfulness – especially, of any sexuality; yet later they are tainted by the sinful world, depraved and corrupted by it, and have to cleanse themselves and to return to their original innocence to deserve salvation.


This idea of asexual pure child was good to think about; but it was smashed by reality of child sexuality, in its most visible form – masturbation. The view of a presumably sexually pure child committing such sinful act was a prime horror for the people of 18th and 19th centuries – horror strong enough to turn off their reasoning abilities, giving way to an unrestrained hysteria. This hysteria took a social form that mixed therapeutic practice, scientific school, moralistic movement and punitive institution – the infamous “masturbation insanity”. According to nearly all scientific, medical and social authorities of 18th and – especially – 19th centuries, child masturbation was a cause of nearly all physical and mental maladies possible, from bodily frailty to dementia; so, it has to be fought without restraint and mercy. And it was fought – by methods which they sound insanely cruel to 21st century people, such as putting pain-inflicting anti-masturbation devices on children’s genitalia – or even burning these genitalia with hot iron, permanently damaging them and thus eradicating sexual pleasure and masturbatory habits. Yet no cruelty was excessive for anti-masturbation crusaders, who were defending children from the mortal perils of “self-abuse”.


Here we must stop to reflect a bit on this usage of “abuse” term, which probably reminds of current “child sexual abuse”. Its genealogy leads us to the Latin word “abusus”, that means “to damage” and “to destroy”. Nowadays, people use such expression to interpret sexual acts between adults and children – which are, in majority’s view, invariably harmful. Yet, the masturbating child of 19th century was performing an act of SELF-destruction; he was, simultaneously, a sexual offender and offender’s victim. He didn’t need a “paedophile” adult to be molested; his own “auto-molesting” efforts were enough. The torture which was inflicted on a masturbation kid by concerned adults were, in this sense, both “therapeutic” prevention of assumed damage and a penance for wilful transgression. The absurdity of the situation – that was invisible to the anti-masturbation crusaders – was exactly in this contradictory coexistence of offence and victimhood in a single child person: if a child was intrinsically asexual, then why he had an urge to masturbate in the first place? Nobody had any consistent answer; and nobody cared to find one. A moral panic – and the “masturbation insanity” was the one of many such panics in history – feeds on its own irrationality and perpetuate itself by passionate and emotionally appealing, yet incoherent, slogans. (As I will show later, modern “child sexual abuse” panics is as devoid of rational foundation as “masturbation insanity” ever had been.)


During the panic of masturbation, other panics arose: for example, the fear of children being “molested” by immoral, world-tainted adults (as if their cherished “innocence” hadn’t already been threatened by their own “self-abuse” impulses!). The fear of kids losing their outworldly purity lead to creation of the “age of consent” laws, which, proclaimed as the means to “defend” children from adults, in fact, defended adult prejudices and fears group around assumed children’s purity – at the expense of kid’s sexual freedom and welfare of adults who were caught “molesting” them. Initially, such “ages of consent” were pretty low by modern standards – around 10 or 11 years old. But later, feeding from the recurrent waves of adults’ moralistic hysteria, it was raised higher and higher, and by 20th century it was usually around 16. (The central – but not only – theme of these hysterias usually was “underage” prostitution and pornography; some topics raised by them were more-or-less separated from age-centered ideas and turned into fear of sex work as such. In the early 20th century, it lead to a “white slavery” moral panic, which provided an archetypical basis for later sex work-related panics, such as modern “human trafficking” one.)


The old – 19th century and first half of 20th one – ideas about “molestation”, however, had a crucial difference from their current forms: “molested” child wasn’t always a passive victim; he or she might as well be PARTICIPATORY victim – that is, a paradoxical combination of victim and accomplice. The acceptance of such combination was based on the understanding – which was lost in later redactions of the hysteria – that children quite often do consent to the sexual actions of adults, and enjoy them; even more, sometimes – which is utterly unthinkable to modern “child protectors” – children actually INITIATE sex with adults. Sadly, even such initiatory behavior was not accepted as justification of intergenerational sex by most people; they still insisted, contrary to factual evidence, that children are asexually innocent and therefore, such sensual seeking must be pathological and transgressive for them. Yet, it is still telling that child entering an intergenerational sexual relationship was as pathologised and criminalised as adult; only later children were turned into passive “groomed” victims hypnotised by the vile charms of the devilish “paedophile” and thus devoid of any responsibility.


The rebirth of “child sexual abuse” hysteria in its most intense and absurd form – the modern form which we are now witnessing – happened only in late 1970s; and mid-to-late 1960s and early-to-mid 1970s (in Continental Europe, even late 1970s and early 1980s) were a truly exceptional period in modern history: the period of child liberationism, when many highly intelligent and intelligent adults suddenly rediscovered children’s agency and defended providing children with all rights and liberties adults have – including sexual rights and liberties. It was a time when a proposals to legalise and normalise paedophilia were vocalised by researchers of high standing and activists of high eminence. For example, a 1977 French petition to abolish “age of consent” was signed by the very leading French intellectuals, such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault (the latter was an especially staunch advocate of intergenerational sexuality). Child-adult sex was approved by leading feminist thinker Camille Paglia; by famous poet Allen Ginsberg; by legendary mystical anarchist Hakim Bey (Peter Lamborn Wilson). And, most importantly, it became a topic for a non-hostile, non-condemnatory research by scientists like Larry Constantine, Gayle Rubin, Steven Angelides, Harris Mirkin, Vern Bullough, Paul Okami, Terry Leahy, Agustin Malon, Bruce Rind, Daniel Tsang, Floyd Martinson, Horst Vogt, Glenn Wilson, Frits Bernard, Richard Yuill, Theo Sandfort and many others. In this delightfully liberated epoch, even some Christian organisations openly endorsed intergenerational sex (and not, not only Catholic ones, as you might think because of the recent infamous scandals; protestant ones, too).


Well, this blissful freedom did not last for long. After a few years of public advocacy of child and intergenerational sexuality, general public was horrified enough by prospects of liberated childhood to experience a total meltdown – which, in turn, ignited a punitive fury. In 1977, a “kiddie porn” hysteria started in the USA, which lead to the first laws specifically targeting and forbidding “child pornography”. In 1978, this wave of fervour and persecution hit British shores; around 1984, it reached Continental Europe, even the highly liberated Netherlands, accompanied by Anglophones’ accusations of producing “child porn”; by the early 1990s, even Japan was affected, and erotic anime cartoons featuring “underage” characters turned into target of repression.


But the center of this reborn anti-sexual witch-hunt was not on “pornography”, but on children themselves. The old moralistic clichés were mixed with the new ideological invention, which were produced by the counter-culture period and now became its undoing: victimology. The new, victimological edition of the old moral hunt was even more blind and unthinking than the old ones, since, according to the new dogma, children were absolute victims, completely passive and unresponsive, who never consented to the adults’ sexual acts, let alone initiated them. And if children themselves actively disagreed with their victim-status, and insisted that the sexual relations were voluntary (that, in fact, happened quite often), they were at best simply dismissed, or, at worst, assumed to be “brainwashed” by paedophile’s “grooming”. The cruel humour of situation was this: while victimologists were crying about “sexual objectification” of children, they actually “objectified” kids themselves, and in the most extreme form possible: in their models, a child was completely deprived of any agency – sexual, social or even intellectual; he or she had no desires, thoughts or acts of his or her own, but just a passive object of evil adult schemes, totally devoid of any initiative or responsibility… as long as some “paedophile” adult was nearby to put a blame on.


Yet, the problem arose: what should one do when no adult “sex offender” is present around, and children are just having sex between themselves? The answer: invent “juvenile sex offenders” – children, who, like in the “masturbating insanity” and “participatory victim” epochs, were victims and criminals in the same time. And, as well as in these older times, their criminality evidently outweighed their victimhood, since they are subjected to treatment as atrocious as adult “sex offenders” are: draconian punishments which make no difference whether participants consented or not (since, according to dogma, children are unable to consent even then children themselves think they do!), sadistic, inhuman “treatments” and “therapies” which mentally devastate “patients” in order to eradicate their “deviant” desires and thoughts; and, most cruelly, an indelible stigmatisation of being put on “sex offender registry”, which leads to a life-long ostracism in all social areas. So, child sexual games nowadays are lethally dangerous to their participants: they may lead kids to death – not a physical one, but a social one, a modern version of medieval anathema, a virtual banishment from community: a “sex offender” status.


So, this the situation which we are facing here and now – a barrage of baseless repressions of children and children-loving adults based on hidden fears and anxieties of majority of modern Western (and westernised) adult population. Since this is what “child sexual abuse”, “child porn” etc. panics are: manifestations of irrational rejection of child sexuality – and child agency. While, in fact, a lot of high-quality research: look again at the works authors I mentioned, and search for other authors – Google Scholar options which allow to find another papers quoting the original one and papers similar by their content are especially useful. These works demonstrate quite equivocally that most children are not harmed by sexual experiences that were perceived by them as consensual.


Now you will probably ask: “But what about all other works that claim that children are harmed?”. Well, like the most pre-gay liberation works that evaluated homosexuality as pathology and mental disorder, they suffer from persistent, recurrent and debilitating flaws.


The first flaw is automatic rejection of any dissimilarities between consensual and non-consensual relationships. All child-adult sexual contacts are assumed to be “sexual abuse” by definition, and analysed as a single pool of data. And, since non-consensual sex is indeed hurtful and usually traumatic, for kids as well as for adults, it is no surprise that children who had sex with adults would be, in general, more mentally disturbed than the ones who had not. Yet, if we do separate consensual encounters from non-consensual ones, we will see an entirely different picture: most kids who participated in sexual acts voluntarily are not more disturbed than children in general. Yet, the very idea that child-adult sex might be consensual is the ultimate thought-crime nowadays; so, only a few researchers dared to conduct studies which accept and analyse such differentiations.


The second flaw is overreliance on clinical and forensic samples. Most inquiries into child-adult sex are based on psychiatric and legal cases; and people who found themselves in mental asylums and criminal courts tend to have more problems than general population. But working with people engaged in child-adult sexual contacts who are not under trial or therapy (or both) has produced much more positive results – and there are a lot such people around.


The third flaw is underestimation of iatrogenic effects of “child abuse” therapies and prosecutions. There are a lot of cases when children felt themselves free and happy in their sexual relationships with adults (and other children) – until these relationships were discovered by society. Then, all hell broke loose: kids were forcefully separated from their adult lovers and put under constant severe pressure by family, therapists, prosecutors, social workers etc., all of whom treated them as “abused” and “damaged” and insist that their disagreement is a sign of “brainwashing”. Under such constant mental assault, many kids broke emotionally and experienced trauma – not by initial relationships, but by furious condemnation and enforced victimisation by “child-helping” adults. After a long period of such intense pressure, some children even start believing that they were “abused” and “brainwashed” – such as many kids forcefully interrogated by overzealous therapists during “Satanic panic” started believing that they were kidnapped, raped and tortured by Satanic cabals (while initially they had never complained about it, and had denied therapists’ suggestions – and were right, since “Satanic ritual abuse” accusations were later refuted).


And the fourth flaw is exceptionally widespread and powerful prejudice itself, which may easily distort perception of people supporting it: if something is utterly unthinkable to someone, it may become entirely unperceivable as well. We here, with parapsychology and psychic research as major forum topic, know it, don’t we? Just recall attempts to reproduce parapsychological experiments by extreme skeptics – they tend to get much more negative results than proponents and neutral researchers, and if they got positive ones (which did happen for numerous times), they used all their rhetorical skills to “explain them away”; while neutral researchers usually got as positive results as proponents do. And, in case of child-adult sex, even calm neutrality is a rarity; most people who study such sex are completely and unshakably certain that it is always harmful and never consensual, which put them at risk of severely biased assessment.


As for consent go, the insistence that children cannot consent is actually based on confusions and inconsistencies. First and foremost, all neutral-to-positive researchers agreed that child’s consent is usually a SIMPLE one, not an informed one; that is, children may have no previous detailed knowledge of sexual acts, but they were eager and willing to learn; they liked what was done with them, and wanted to proceed further. And simple consent to sex – child’s desire and willingness to participate in it – is, I think, enough to allow them to happen; if we insist on demanding an informed consent, we must ask ourselves why we’re doing so. After all, children, especially young ones, cannot give an informed consent virtually to anything – say, to swimming in a lake. But does it mean that they should not be allowed to swim in it, with an able adult being nearby to prevent emergency? Or will we demand that children should be allowed near water only after they have undertaken an extensive theoretical “Lake Swimming: Dangers and Possibilities” course, and passed an exam? No, we won’t; children would simply learn swimming themselves, in the process of actual experience, with help of adults (and other children). What is important for the adults accompanying children during lake swimming is not to push kids forcefully into water; such coercion may frighten and emotionally hurt kids, so they should learn to swim by themselves, with adults and other kids being their supporters and companions in this process, not their commanders. The same works in the case of sex: children can and should learn sexual side of life by direct experience of sexual plays and acts with adults and with other children; and adults who participate in intergenerational sex should understand and accept their ethical responsibility for the mental and physical well-being of their younger lovers; they should not do anything to them that is against their will, and do not try anything that is harmful and dangerous. As long as these principles are followed, I can’t see anything unethical in a sexual relationship between a child and an adult.


What is most important here is to understand that sex as such does not harm kids, since they are fully sexual beings from birth. The presumption of child’s asexuality is nothing but a persistent myth, a hangover of Salvationist theological theories of decisive separation between flesh and spirit, which, in turn, gave birth of the notions of children as innocent, nearly celestial beings not yet tainted by earthly sins; a beings that have to be constantly shielded from adult dirtiness, especially a sexual one.


When we will, at last, accept both sexuality and agency in children, we will, at least, see through the veil of the centuries-old recurrent moral panic. And I sincerely hope that the day of such acceptance will come.


P.S. And, meanwhile, if you want to learn kids’ own original opinions about sex with adults, read Theo Sandfort’s famous research “Boys on their Contacts with Men”. It contains a lot of actual interviews with boys who did had sex with adult men, but are not upset about it at all (there are similar studies concerning girls, BTW).

I am not averse to re-evaluating my preconceived notions, but in this case, I can find ample reason to stick with them.

Sexuality creates extremely strong bonds - oxytocin and dopamine creating a sort of addiction to one's partner. Some consider this bond to go beyond the physical and be a spiritual or energetic bond. Bonds that are lightly entered into and lightly broken result in progressively weaker bonds. These bonds are some of the strongest we experience. As such they form the nuclear structure of the family and society. Structure is both protective and constructive. Yes structures can grow to be stressful and cumbersome, but not all structure is bad.

Absolute freedom means absence of structure. A young child has natural desires and emotions, but very little mental structure. Building a mental structure is a life-long process of learning and discipline. The lack of these things results in insanity and a lack of ability to create and build something.

Parents provide a form to guide and mold young minds and teach them to control and channel their impulses and energy into something balanced and useful and constructive.

Social Structure is composed of boundaries and these are taboos surrounded by shame. Shame is an unfortunate substitute for reason used until one is capable of appreciating the benefits and reasons behind boundaries.

So young children should not be absolutely free. I do agree that we should quit babying older teens and that the education system is basically prison camp slave training.

Sexual desires are among the most powerful and that often leads to violence in people who are not empathetic and have not learned to channel their desires in a constructive way. This leads to predatory behavior. So even if you thought that it was okay to allow children to be sexual with adults, you'd still be putting them at greater risk of harm.

Finally I think there is such a thing as an age of innocence. Sexuality without discipline can become a consuming addiction. Keeping children from other addictive substances and activities makes sense. We want to expand their minds intellectually and creatively before the distraction of sex drive takes over the mind.

There's probably many more reasons I don't have time to put down right now.
 
Tell you what, I've had a great idea. Let's free kids from ruthless control by adults and let them smoke, let them drink, let them drive, let them bunk off school. Yay! Hip hip hurray for an enlightened, liberal society that recognises no difference between adults and children. Let's ignore the fact that they are little and, until a certain stage of their development, aren't capable of really knowing what they want or what harm can befall them if they manage to get it. Let's stop feeding them and nurturing them and let the buggers fend for themselves, because in reality they're devious eegits who are out for sex along with all sorts of other enjoyments that we adults allow ourselves.

And please, don't give me any nonsense about my views on childhood innocence being those of a religious salvationist. That's complete bollocks, and you know it. I have to ask you -- since you seem to evince support for the freedom to have "intergenerational sex" -- is that because you have paedophilic desires? If so, our conversation must end there because I'm talking to a brick wall. On the other hand, if it's not because of that, whatever is it that has made you get this particular bee in your bonnet? Do you have children yourself, and if so, would you be happy to allow them to have sex with an adult?

Some short replies:

No, I'm not a paedophile - I'm pretty common teleiophilic (e. g., adult-attracted) heterosexual.

No, I have no children of my own.

I have a strong drive for freedom, and against opression in any forms. I had this will to freedom as long as I can remember myself - so I, probably, was just born this way. This intrinsic liberatory intent lead me to child liberation movement, which arguments I found strong and valid - including the ones for legalisation and normalisation of child and intergenrational sexuality.

Here, I think I should end debating this topic with you - your opinion here is stong enough, and I'm definitely unable to change it. Thanks for replying, anyway!
 
I am not averse to re-evaluating my preconceived notions, but in this case, I can find ample reason to stick with them.

Sexuality creates extremely strong bonds - oxytocin and dopamine creating a sort of addiction to one's partner. Some consider this bond to go beyond the physical and be a spiritual or energetic bond. Bonds that are lightly entered into and lightly broken result in progressively weaker bonds. These bonds are some of the strongest we experience. As such they form the nuclear structure of the family and society. Structure is both protective and constructive. Yes structures can grow to be stressful and cumbersome, but not all structure is bad.

Absolute freedom means absence of structure. A young child has natural desires and emotions, but very little mental structure. Building a mental structure is a life-long process of learning and discipline. The lack of these things results in insanity and a lack of ability to create and build something.

Parents provide a form to guide and mold young minds and teach them to control and channel their impulses and energy into something balanced and useful and constructive.

Social Structure is composed of boundaries and these are taboos surrounded by shame. Shame is an unfortunate substitute for reason used until one is capable of appreciating the benefits and reasons behind boundaries.

So young children should not be absolutely free. I do agree that we should quit babying older teens and that the education system is basically prison camp slave training.

Sexual desires are among the most powerful and that often leads to violence in people who are not empathetic and have not learned to channel their desires in a constructive way. This leads to predatory behavior. So even if you thought that it was okay to allow children to be sexual with adults, you'd still be putting them at greater risk of harm.

Finally I think there is such a thing as an age of innocence. Sexuality without discipline can become a consuming addiction. Keeping children from other addictive substances and activities makes sense. We want to expand their minds intellectually and creatively before the distraction of sex drive takes over the mind.

There's probably many more reasons I don't have time to put down right now.

Thanks for a polite and non-hostile reply, Hurm! :) I'll answer in detail some days later.
 
Some short replies:

No, I'm not a paedophile - I'm pretty common teleiophilic (e. g., adult-attracted) heterosexual.

No, I have no children of my own.
No nephews or nieces? No children at all in your family? Because you didn't answer the question about whether or not you would be happy about them having sex with an adult.
I have a strong drive for freedom, and against opression in any forms. I had this will to freedom as long as I can remember myself - so I, probably, was just born this way. This intrinsic liberatory intent lead me to child liberation movement, which arguments I found strong and valid - including the ones for legalisation and normalisation of child and intergenrational sexuality.

Being "against oppression" is a double-edged sword. You are projecting your own thoughts onto children and thereby being, in your own way, oppressive, assuming you know what's in their best interests. But is it in their best interests? And do parents not have any right to bring up children as they best see fit? If you were to get your way, wouldn't you be oppressing that right for them? I'm afraid it's sometimes rather difficult to extend freedoms to one set of people without endangering those of another set.
Here, I think I should end debating this topic with you - your opinion here is stong enough, and I'm definitely unable to change it. Thanks for replying, anyway!
People have many arguments here, and don't always manage to persuade others of the merits of their case. I'm glad to hear you don't have paedophilic leanings, but imo, your views are dangerous and I'm choosing to speak my piece to counter them.
 
No nephews or nieces? No children at all in your family? Because you didn't answer the question about whether or not you would be happy about them having sex with an adult.

I have a younger cousin with whom I was raised together, and who effectively was my younger brother; now he is a young adult. If I had learned about his secret sexual relationship with an adult (which never actually happened), I would have questioned him to be certain about consensuality of his sex/love affair. And, if hadn't found anything to doubt the consensuality, I would have kept his and his adult lover's secret. As long as no one is forced, it is nothing to worry about, since harm of any kind is extremely unlikely to come from a voluntary sexual friendship; and disclosure, to the contrary, is bound to have devastative social and mental consequences for everyone involved: child lover, adult lover, family, friends, EVERYONE.

Being "against oppression" is a double-edged sword. You are projecting your own thoughts onto children and thereby being, in your own way, oppressive, assuming you know what's in their best interests. But is it in their best interests?

Unlike you, projecting your mythic "innocence" narrative and imagery on unwilling kids, I do not put my words and wishes in their mouths and heads - I want to provide them with a voice and a choice of their own. It is for them to decide whether they desire sexual contacts or not - neither you nor me have a right to make decisions instead of them.

And do parents not have any right to bring up children as they best see fit? If you were to get your way, wouldn't you be oppressing that right for them? I'm afraid it's sometimes rather difficult to extend freedoms to one set of people without endangering those of another set.

No, parents do NOT have the right "to bring up children as they see fit" - children are human beings, not their parents' private property. Neither are they public property - "social servants" and "state agents" of all kinds have no right to treat kids like objects as well. Children have agency and liberty of their own. Of course, it does not mean that their family and community have no rights at all in relation to them - they do have some rights as well. My position on reaching agreement between liberties and interests of children, parents / families and communities / external society is a topic for my next detailed post here, which I'll write in response to Hurmanetar. It will be ready some days later.

People have many arguments here, and don't always manage to persuade others of the merits of their case. I'm glad to hear you don't have paedophilic leanings, but imo, your views are dangerous and I'm choosing to speak my piece to counter them.

And you have the right to speak sincerely, and express your opinion on the matter. As I said already, I do appreciate your willingness to respond, despite our radical and irreconcilable disagreement on this issue.
 
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I have a younger cousin with whom I was raised together, and who effectively was my younger brother; now he is a young adult. If I had learned about his secret sexual relationship with an adult (which never actually happened), I would have questioned him to be certain about consensuality of his sex/love affair. And, if hadn't found anything to doubt the consensuality, I would have kept his and his adult lover's secret. As long as no one is forced, it is nothing to worry about, since harm of any kind is extremely unlikely to come from a voluntary sexual friendship; and disclosure, to the contrary, is bound to have devastative social and mental consequences for everyone involved: child lover, adult lover, family, friends, EVERYONE.

I asked you this before, and you did not answer -- what age are we talking about here? When is a child able to consent to sex with an adult? What does "voluntary sexual friendship" even mean?

Unlike you, projecting your mythic "innocence" narrative and imagery on unwilling kids, I do not put my words and wishes in their mouths and heads - I want to provide them with a voice and a choice of their own. It is for them to decide whether they desire sexual contacts or not - neither you nor me have a right to make decisions instead of them.

Yes, there is an age of innocence with children. For example, I have a six-year-old. We live in a diverse city, so it wasn't until he went to school that he even recognized there was "race." He saw black kids, white kids, brown kids -- to him they were all kids. But it wasn't until I had to put him state-run schools that he told me, "Did you know there are black people?" He literally had no concept of "race" until I had to put (forced) him into school.

I find it a bit hard to believe that you would think it acceptable for my son at six can meaningfully consent to sex with adults.

No, parents do NOT have the right "to bring up children as they see fit" - children are human beings, not their parents' private property.

This quote contradicts this one:

Neither are they public property

You are advocating for children to be pubic property owned by the State. If children can't be raised by their families, the ones who nursed and loved them (most families, I know there are terrible families out there), then you are advocating for the State to raise them.

But then you say this:

- "social servants" and "state agents" of all kinds have no right to treat kids like objects as well.

But you are treating them like objects to be used by adults for sex or by the State.

Children have agency and liberty of their own.

Little kids have agency... Ugh. I hate the term "agency" since it has been so abused. Children have liberty -- to be children without too much interference, and to be free from abuse and coercion, and hopefully live in loving homes with adequate food and shelter.
 
I saw an article (I think on reddit) this weekend about some city in the US where a large number of child sexual abuse cases had been reported, but had never made it to any kind of prosecution. Did anyone else see this?
 
Why is the "left-hand-path" so closely associated with ritual child sex abuse? ...intentionally antithetical to the taboos ...a special type of consciousness energy resource ...a brotherhood of criminality and method of control (blackmail)?

I believe it's all of those.

We see all these when Dark Occultists are caught abusing children, except the David Icke type energy vampirism. That one is almost impossible to prove.
 
I really don't know how to respond to the writing of Vortex, who I certainly respect, on the autonomy of children. If we let our kids be completely autonomous many would be killed on the roads simply because they don't comprehend the destructive power of a motor vehicle.

I think he would maybe change his views if he had children of his own.

I NEVER said that children should be COMPLETELY autonomous, especially young ones. They should be allowed as much autonomy as they can handle without putting themselves into severe danger - protecting kids from real, non-imaginary perils is a necessary activity of both immediate family and general community. The problems are the imaginary nature of many alleged "dangers", severe underestimation of children's competence (it is not unlimited, of course, but it is usually higher than commonly thought), and gradual, development-adequate increase of autonomy as they grow, without it being artificially restricted until some arbitrary "age of majority" is reached.

But this is a topic of my upcoming long post, which I will write some day... but not soon. I need some time to engage in other topics and debates, and to formulate my position in comprehensive way.

What is intersting, however, is the tendency to "read in" the most extreme imaginable position into the text of anyone who support child liberationism - the position which never was there in the first place.
 
I really don't know how to respond to the writing of Vortex, who I certainly respect, on the autonomy of children. If we let our kids be completely autonomous many would be killed on the roads simply because they don't comprehend the destructive power of a motor vehicle.

I think reasonable people can start with a few sensible axioms and reason their way into an absurd position. Anything good can be carried to an extreme which becomes the opposite.

Freedom is a good thing. Pure freedom is no structure and that is chaos. Pure freedom for an individual can only be good if that individual has developed internal structures to govern the self. A lack of internal structure is insanity. We require external structures like a scaffold to build internal structures. Good parenting develops stout structures in kids that enable them to be free and enjoy their freedom as adults without ruining themselves through too much chaos.

The trick to an interesting life and to good parenting I believe (though I'm not yet a parent) is to surf the wave on the boundary between structure and chaos which is where curiosity draws us and where creation happens. Parents have to steadily remove their external structures and gradually introduce kids to the chaos of the world in order to keep the kids developing their own internal structures.
 
I NEVER said that children should be COMPLETELY autonomous, especially young ones. They should be allowed as much autonomy as they can handle without putting themselves into severe danger - protecting kids from real, non-imaginary perils is a necessary activity of both immediate family and general community. The problems are the imaginary nature of many alleged "dangers", severe underestimation of children's competence (it is not unlimited, of course, but it is usually higher than commonly thought), and gradual, development-adequate increase of autonomy as they grow, without it being artificially restricted until some arbitrary "age of majority" is reached.

But this is a topic of my upcoming long post, which I will write some day... but not soon. I need some time to engage in other topics and debates, and to formulate my position in comprehensive way.

What is intersting, however, is the tendency to "read in" the most extreme imaginable position into the text of anyone who support child liberationism - the position which never was there in the first place.
I certainly understand. I just presented the obvious case because the whole idea of autonomy is a continuum. My issue with what we are talking about is that an adult is coming at the situation with a mindset and possibly expectations that would be completely foreign to a child. It seems to me in some ways you are idealizing this "adult" who is somehow joyfully engaged in this pure and unadulterated sense of discovery and wonderment with a child. Sex is rarely about that. Sex is more often about control and gratification. Sexual gratification should, in my mind, never be a part of a relationship with a child. And I am talking about children. I don't condone relations between older adults and teenagers. But that is a whole different subject.
 
I NEVER said that children should be COMPLETELY autonomous, especially young ones. They should be allowed as much autonomy as they can handle without putting themselves into severe danger - protecting kids from real, non-imaginary perils is a necessary activity of both immediate family and general community. The problems are the imaginary nature of many alleged "dangers", severe underestimation of children's competence (it is not unlimited, of course, but it is usually higher than commonly thought), and gradual, development-adequate increase of autonomy as they grow, without it being artificially restricted until some arbitrary "age of majority" is reached.

But this is a topic of my upcoming long post, which I will write some day... but not soon. I need some time to engage in other topics and debates, and to formulate my position in comprehensive way.

What is intersting, however, is the tendency to "read in" the most extreme imaginable position into the text of anyone who support child liberationism - the position which never was there in the first place.

I think reasonable people can start with a few sensible axioms and reason their way into an absurd position. Anything good can be carried to an extreme which becomes the opposite.

Freedom is a good thing. Pure freedom is no structure and that is chaos. Pure freedom for an individual can only be good if that individual has developed internal structures to govern the self. A lack of internal structure is insanity. We require external structures like a scaffold to build internal structures. Good parenting develops stout structures in kids that enable them to be free and enjoy their freedom as adults without ruining themselves through too much chaos.

The trick to an interesting life and to good parenting I believe (though I'm not yet a parent) is to surf the wave on the boundary between structure and chaos which is where curiosity draws us and where creation happens. Parents have to steadily remove their external structures and gradually introduce kids to the chaos of the world in order to keep the kids developing their own internal structures.

Hurm, did you read what I said above before you posted this?

And my future post will address the issue of chaos and order, too.
 
But this is a topic of my upcoming long post, which I will write some day... but not soon. I need some time to engage in other topics and debates, and to formulate my position in comprehensive way.

I get where you're coming from....maybe.

It's hard to talk about such a topic without threat of excess emotion really, and it is on a fine line which is probably difficult to put into words acceptable to all readers without raising levels. I think that having kids of your own might automatically raise your drawbridge somewhat. Maybe not?
 
Hurm, did you read what I said above before you posted this?

And my future post will address the issue of chaos and order, too.

I did not. But I did thoroughly read your long post and based on that, I came to the conclusion you had reasoned your way into a position that is untenable by axiomatically placing a higher value on freedom at too early a stage in life.
 
I don't think worry about the sex issue is about the children so much, as about adults. Maybe in the future when consciousness is raised and ego not so 'in control', your ideas may become more 'acceptable', I don't know.

For now this remains a topic that, for better or worse, I'd rather not discuss.
 
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