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shadowfyr · 09-16-2007, 03:46 PM

See. There are two serious problems here. The first is, its not a sudden prevalence of child predators that is a problem, its that they are now so obvious. Bear with me, I will explain what I mean by that. My uncle was one, and he was molesting his daughter ***way*** before the news media was babbling about how many there are, or for that matter, well before we supposedly "lost our way", according to some others. There are two fundamental problems here. The first is a shift in views about predation, which has actually gotten more conservative imho, the other is a willingness of various clueless "family values" groups to harp on how much better the world was. Well.. 200 years ago you could marry and/or sleep with someone that was 12-13 and no one would bat an eye. Arranged marriages often happened as far back as when they where 7-8, and they only waited until menstruation happened before making it "official". The rules about age limits where not imposed until like 1885 in England, and then it was "10", the US had a defacto standard of 10, but not legal rule for it, until roughly the same time period, the *end* of the 19th century. Sorry I can't give a clearer date, but trying to Google the right article would take me ages, since most pages involve "current" ages of consent, which can range from 13 in Hawaii, to 19+ if you are the wrong sex and gay (loved that one. Women could have lesbian sex at like 17, but gay men had to be at least 19, or something like that...), in other places.

In any case, 90% of what we call pedophilia today was nothing of the sort until near the start of the 1900s, and it wasn't until the advent of TV that it become something that could be dumped on the news, in the homes of every single person in the country, the moment some wacko, in some obscure neighborhood or town, chased some 14 year olds.

Like many things, its not an *increase* of these things that is at issue, its a distorted view of history and what people cared about in the first place, combined with easy access to information. Same with the stuff like school shootings. The happen about once a century, followed by a few copycats. The only thing that has changed is the excuses people come up with to absolve the parents and school, and the number of other nuts that hear about it, and become tempted to try the same thing.

Its as Lasher says. We have this fictitious view of what "innocence" means, and some people, who have a lot of money, free time, and influential organizations, want to propagate that silly definition, and all the bad, incorrect, mangled or just made up history they spout to defend it (i.e. "golden age" when these things didn't happen gibberish), in the delusional belief that ignoring real history, failing to provide kids with real facts, and demonizing everyone/thing that they don't personally like, will "fix" the problem. Usually, it just makes it easier for the predators to hide (like some priests I can name), leads people to consider useless solutions (which assume the made up utopian history is true) and exaggerate any and all real problems. And of course, being as this is dogma to them, the single worst thing in the universe isn't the predators they inadvertently protect/enable through this ignorance by doing this, its the people that call them fools and tell them they got it all backwards.

09-16-2007, 03:46 PM	#24
shadowfyr Senior Member Join Date: Oct 2002 Posts: 310	Re: Sex & Violence See. There are two serious problems here. The first is, its not a sudden prevalence of child predators that is a problem, its that they are now so obvious. Bear with me, I will explain what I mean by that. My uncle was one, and he was molesting his daughter *way* before the news media was babbling about how many there are, or for that matter, well before we supposedly "lost our way", according to some others. There are two fundamental problems here. The first is a shift in views about predation, which has actually gotten more conservative imho, the other is a willingness of various clueless "family values" groups to harp on how much better the world was. Well.. 200 years ago you could marry and/or sleep with someone that was 12-13 and no one would bat an eye. Arranged marriages often happened as far back as when they where 7-8, and they only waited until menstruation happened before making it "official". The rules about age limits where not imposed until like 1885 in England, and then it was "10", the US had a defacto standard of 10, but not legal rule for it, until roughly the same time period, the end of the 19th century. Sorry I can't give a clearer date, but trying to Google the right article would take me ages, since most pages involve "current" ages of consent, which can range from 13 in Hawaii, to 19+ if you are the wrong sex and gay (loved that one. Women could have lesbian sex at like 17, but gay men had to be at least 19, or something like that...), in other places. In any case, 90% of what we call pedophilia today was nothing of the sort until near the start of the 1900s, and it wasn't until the advent of TV that it become something that could be dumped on the news, in the homes of every single person in the country, the moment some wacko, in some obscure neighborhood or town, chased some 14 year olds. Like many things, its not an increase of these things that is at issue, its a distorted view of history and what people cared about in the first place, combined with easy access to information. Same with the stuff like school shootings. The happen about once a century, followed by a few copycats. The only thing that has changed is the excuses people come up with to absolve the parents and school, and the number of other nuts that hear about it, and become tempted to try the same thing. Its as Lasher says. We have this fictitious view of what "innocence" means, and some people, who have a lot of money, free time, and influential organizations, want to propagate that silly definition, and all the bad, incorrect, mangled or just made up history they spout to defend it (i.e. "golden age" when these things didn't happen gibberish), in the delusional belief that ignoring real history, failing to provide kids with real facts, and demonizing everyone/thing that they don't personally like, will "fix" the problem. Usually, it just makes it easier for the predators to hide (like some priests I can name), leads people to consider useless solutions (which assume the made up utopian history is true) and exaggerate any and all real problems. And of course, being as this is dogma to them, the single worst thing in the universe isn't the predators they inadvertently protect/enable through this ignorance by doing this, its the people that call them fools and tell them they got it all backwards.