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Old 09-25-2007, 06:11 AM   #61
Xerihae
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Re: Sex & Violence

I'm quite impressed with this discussion!

The one thing I'd ask, however, is if you're roing to quote figures to support your points then please leave some form of reference as to where you're getting them from so you can't be accused of "pulling them out of the air". A link to the relevant website ought to do it.

I think shasaraks point is well made. We've ALL had thoughts that would be considered illegal, immoral, or just downright weird if other people knew about them whether we admit it or not. I don't think we should now, or ever, get into a position where we convict people based on what they're thinking alone, regardless of whether we find such thoughts repugnant. Thoughts and deeds are two different thing, and just because you have a thought/fantasy does not automatically mean you're going to act on it.

I've had numerous thoughts about Kirsten Dunst, Liz Hurley, and others over the years. Should I be put in jail because I didn't have their consent to do so?
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Old 09-25-2007, 07:21 AM   #62
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Re: Sex & Violence


I agree on the first part- if anythings going to be done its going to have to be done in small steps. But how small can we make these steps, what if we make one step to big? Is it really worth the risk? Unfortunately I am rather unlearned about the US legal system but what small steps could we make that would not violate at least one states law? Insist that Mu*s with any sort of violence have an age tag on them?

As for your wall analogy I don't suggest we move walls as per say just get more people throwing grenades. Face it; to face up to 'these few people' we need more people. Yes what I'm saying is we cower until someone bigger and better comes and takes the battle, or we end up like the Poles near the end of WWII getting crushed in Warsaw by the Germans while the red army sits at the sidelines and refuses to help. This issue is potentially damaging to the whole of the mudding community and if protecting it means doing things the way *they* say for now while making the least noticeable changes we can then so be it. Even if now be a century or forever.
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Old 09-25-2007, 07:54 AM   #63
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Re: Sex & Violence

What's your alternative hypothesis? Critically low levels of testosterone in the Dutch population? The possibility that all Dutch teenagers are permanently too stoned to have sex?

If Dutch teenage girls are not getting pregnant then either they're not having sex, or they are but (compared with those in other countries) they use contraception far more frequently and effectively. If that it isn't a "cultural" difference, how else could you characterise it?
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Old 09-25-2007, 08:43 AM   #64
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Re: Sex & Violence

The is in Dutch but it should be understandable for English readers. The header states: Estimated abortion ratio based on generation and lineage, 2001-2005
(per 1.000 women aged 15-44 years).

Depending on the specific immigrant group the ratio was 3 to 13 times higher in 2005.

You'll burn in hell for approximately 27 days, and 18 hours per indecent thought

There's this rumor that hormones from anti-conception pills are contaminating the drinking water in Holland and subsequently have a biological impact. Given it's widely known and scientifically proven I guess it's not too politically incorrect to say that there are racial differences in testosterone levels, I'm however uncertain if that'd have any part to play when it comes to teenage pregnancies. Dutch teenagers also smoke less pot than American teenagers, so I don't think that theory holds, unless being stoned or drunk increases the risk of unwanted pregnancies, which seems a plausible theory.

I've ran across statistics that indicated that circumcised groups/populations are less likely to use condoms (no solid proof though) which would increase the risk of pregnancy (the pill is only 99% effective) and the spread of STDs. Circumcision has a higher occurrence in Anglosaxon nations than mainland Europe.

Then there's the conscientiousness factor of the personality scale which might differ for populations through either genetic or cultural reasons, which might not be easy to point out because they might be unrelated to obvious differences.

Another factor is which IQ tests try to measure. Given IQ correlates with academic achievement, academic achievement correlates with the delaying of child birth, and abortion negatively correlates with IQ, it's safe to assume that high IQ populations have less abortions. From what I gathered Holland has a higher average IQ (6 points) than England.
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Old 09-25-2007, 03:23 PM   #65
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Re: Sex & Violence

Once again, I never said ANY of these things.

First off, I NEVER said you should treat furries like rapists, I said I personally feel that fantasizing about having sex with animals is wrong. Where did I ever tell anybody how to treat them? I said how I feel towards them, and I never dictated to others how they should act towards them.

Second off, having sexual attractions to somebody who is not attracted to you and having sexual attractions to children are completely different things. Once again, it is not my responsibility to tell anyone else what's right and what's wrong, it's an individual's responsibility to determine their own moral compass.
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Old 09-25-2007, 03:38 PM   #66
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Re: Sex & Violence

I think there was a Dutch student who got kicked out of school (some children related study) for being outspoken about being sexually attracted to children and claiming that 'consensual' sexual relationships with adults isn't harmful to children. I'm somewhat divided on the issue because there's a difference between attraction and molestation, not to mention the violation of freedom of speech.

I'm of course all in favor of a proctologist being fired for being an outspoken homosexual.
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Old 09-25-2007, 11:28 PM   #67
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Re: Sex & Violence

Yeah, they have an advantage. Its called group dynamics. It has **zero** to do with the content of the belief system and everything to do with tribalism. You survive better "if" you belong to a group, and all groups develop rules that govern, as well as explain, accepted behavior. Some of us just have a real hard time comprehending why, if we can manage to derive such rules without magic beans and fairy wands, other people think those things *by themselves* are an evolutionary trait. Mind you, we quite well understand *why* people follow them. For the same reason that 5 people will talk each other into driving 50 miles to buy an ice cream, which they used to do when they *lived* 50 miles closer to the store. Groups don't think like individuals, and we desperately want to be part of a group. Some people are so desperate to be part of groups that they are actually nearly incapable of making decisions without a group to guide them. In extreme cases is considered a psychological disorder, because it means they can't function on their own. Most people fall between the extremes. They feel real uncomfortable being alone, but are not so obsessed with the group that they can't make their own choices, which includes abandoning the group for another, if needed. However, it hasn't been **until** this last 100 years or so that religion of some form has not been the core of such ideas. Even in the times of Plato, Aristotle, etc. it was the idiocies of the clergy and the absurd antics of gods that where questioned by them, not the *existence* of such things.

Believe me, most people don't *ever* think about what religion is, does, came from, or how it connects to the way our culture or brains work or formed. There are those that do, and do so *widely* within all contexts that religion exists, and not in the narrow and obsessive definitions of one sect or overall concept. Such people, quite often, started out as evangelicals, or fundamentalists, then had a crisis of conscience, where something about what they where told was true just couldn't be. They spent years reexamining their views, then branched off into exploring other faiths, in an attempt to find one, any one, that made more sense, only to find the same basic things, both the good and the bad, and the same crazy excuses for why it is somehow impossible to get the "good" parts without believing it something. Invariably, such people come to realize that religion is just an edifice of justifications for the things that the group feels it "must" do to protect itself from foreign or dangerous people/ideas, and a list of excuses for why all the shared ideas, concepts and perceptions that *everyone* forms through their lives (if raised with some sense of decency at all) are somehow *not* shared. That those universals, which arise out of our being human, are *only* possible via their specific religion and that everyone else is either faking it, pretending at it, mimicking it, or (and this is the silliest argument) may be doing the same things as everyone else, but are not *truly* doing them, because its only real if you believe in some divine force that makes it real.

One may as well argue that there is an evolutionary advantage to playing computer games, based on the fact that everyone *evolved* a tendency to play them in the last 20+ years. It misses the point entirely. Yes, there may be an advantage to competition, but that is not the same as claiming, 2,000 years from now, that video game playing, by itself, evolved. There is an advantage to being in a group, with set and clear rules, where there is some promise for betterment of oneself and ones position, if you follow them. That isn't the same as saying that the promises and gains made by being a church member makes believing *its* rules, promises or proposed gains is itself an "evolved" trait, any more than dressing boys in blue or girls in pink is an "evolved" trait, instead of simply an odd reversal of a trend that, in 1918, placed boys in pink and girls in blue. Its really not a good idea to confuse the prevailence if something that is undeniably cultural with evolved systems, which are generally never so exact or specific as to demand that people be, by nature, driven to "believe" things.
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Old 09-26-2007, 12:35 AM   #68
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Re: Sex & Violence

Umm. Would, "Its being flushed down the toilet by an increasing number of right wing appointed judges, who tend to side with the lunatics, instead of with common sense.", give you an idea. lol Seriously though, the latest tactic is to have some large well funded church group or "family values" organization raise a huge stink and/or sue someone that doesn't have the time, ability or money needed to defend themselves. This invariably leads to lots of out of court settlements, which the fundigelicals can then parade around as "proof" of how much better a bully they are than last year.

People are fighting, and in greater numbers, but you a few serious problems:

1. Moderates that don't want to take our side, because it might inconvenience them and they are not 100% on our side anyway.

2. Apologists, that like to insist its only a few bad apples the nuts are going after, not everyone, even while all evidence is to the contrary.

3. Appeasers, who figure that playing along will get us farther than pushing (never mind that we have been playing that game for the last 50 years and are now, at least according to one article I read in like Scientific American or something, second only to Islam in the level of radical authoritarianist lunacies some of our political groups believe in. But, heh, as long as you are not an abortion clinic, you don't have to worry about *our* radical lunatics blowing you up...

4. Those that think that pushing too hard will hurt the cause.

Well.. The first group are not going to budge until they realize that they are being duped and the consequence of not acting is *way* higher than they think. The second group... are just deluding themselves. The third group is what allowed the nuts to get elected officials into office and, via them, political appointees into positions that can endanger rational policies, in the first place. And the last group completely fail to grasp that a) you can't fight for something until/unless the majority find it at least "not completely objectionable", and that isn't going to happen if you don't push it out where people can see it, and where they can learn that its not dangerous and b) the people pushing that edge are "not" the ones trying to carefully nudge things in the right direction. They are the ones *making* people see it, and challenging the common held belief that its a bad thing in the first place. This isn't to say that we must "all" be pushing the edges that much. It does imply that you need to show some guts and not assume that you are alone. Example: Where I live the conservative city council and "some" people backing them pushed to ban toplessness and enforce nudity laws on the lake. I know of **no one** including one evangelical lady I know, who is, being such, a bit nuts in other ways, who actually think that the real problem had anything to do at all with nudity or women without tops on. Its probably 1% of the city pushing it. Another 50% probably don't care, and the rest think that the city is bloody stupid and clueless, and shouldn't be making out police waste time chasing breasts, when the *real* dangers are drug dealers and drunk boaters. But, everyone I know *thinks* that they are part of a minority, with no power, who can't do anything about it.

I just got an email indicating that one group I belong to has signed its 360,000+ or something member. 90% of the people I know on other sites *hate* the name of the group, calling it arrogant and refuse to belong. Think about that. If it has 360,000 members, and 90% of the people I know don't want to be part of it, because they think the name sounds stupid and arrogant. That is, in theory, about 3,240,000 people that might be out there that never the less *support* their positions, even if not all of them join. How the heck many do you need to not be "alone"? And think of this. There are about 3 billion people in the US, of which maybe 80% are old enough to be invovled in this issue, of which maybe 0.1% of them *belong* to these ultra radical groups. That would be what, 2,400,000 people? Its not how many of them there are that is the problem. Its that we are idiots when it comes to presenting our causes in a way that people can understand, and they have spent **decades** perfecting the hypnotizing speal of rhetoric, Bible quotes and anecdotal BS they use to promote that they are the ones in the right.

They even do it with the founding fathers. Their **#1** quote claiming that Jefferson was pro church is something a judge would throw out of court as unusable. Its a letter from some Baptist minister, who claims that some friend of his, 20 years earlier, when a child, once ran across Jefferson, who made some positive comment about churches. 100% of everything the man ever wrote himself called churches a bane on humanity and nothing more than a place for the power hungry to drive gullible ignorants into doing what the priests wanted, yet, the words of some child, quoted second hand, by a priest, is their entire basis for the idea that he supported a state religion... WTF? But its *exactly* how they do everything. Anecdotal stories, claims that, if you look hard enough, the Bible can explain everything from toothpaste to heartburn, and the claim that only they know the truth, so you had better not try to figure anything out without consulting them first.

The quote(s) supposedly supporting this, and their dissection:

In short, one part is pure hearsay, the rest is a silly exaggeration of what, had it been any *less* religious, would have practically been a college frat party. lol
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Old 09-26-2007, 05:24 AM   #69
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Re: Sex & Violence

I wasn't referring to your comments about furries, only to your comment about a person who has fantasies about children but does not act on them.

Why are they completely different? Both would cause massive harm if acted upon, and neither can possibly cause any harm at all if not acted upon. What's the difference?

Sure, but unfortunately your responsibility doesn't end there. You also have a responsibility to ensure that your "moral compass" actually makes logical sense. It doesn't have to be consistent with anyone else's compass, but it does have to be logically self-consistent. If it isn't, you have a responsibility to do something about it. (Unless your compass tells you that hypocritical double-standards are acceptable; I guess then it's okay).

I submit to you that it does not make logical sense to dissaprove of or have negative feelings towards something which cannot, by definition, ever cause harm to anyone. (The "something" in question being fantasies that a person never acts on, regardless of the target of the fantasy).
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Old 09-26-2007, 05:37 AM   #70
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Re: Sex & Violence

Those are two very different things, of course; the first is simply about thoughts and feelings, the second could well be preparing the ground for actions.

The issue of whether it is 100% impossible for any form of sexual contact between an adult and someone below the age of consent ever to be anything other than life-destroyingly traumatic is an interesting one; regardless of one's point of view, I do think it's a shame that it is, to all intents and purposes, forbidden even to ask the question. Whenever anyone presents something to me as "so obvious that no one could ever possibly disagree with it" every alarm bell in my brain starts ringing.

There's no question in my mind that, legally speaking anyway, the status quo makes no sense at all. In Britain, for example, an 18-year-old man can have as much consensual sex as he likes with his 17-year-old girlfriend, but if he takes a photograph of her with no clothes on he becomes guilty of manufacturing child porn and can go to prison. Similarly, if the two have sex, it's legal; but if, after sex, he takes some money out of his wallet and puts it down beside the bed, that makes him a sex offender. It's even the case that a picture of a woman aged 30 can legally constitute kiddie porn if she looks like she's under 18, or even if it's blindingly obvious to anyone that she isn't under 18 but (in the opinion of the jury) she is trying to look like she is. They're now seriously debating whether someone should be thrown in prison for sexually abusing an underage cartoon character - something that is already illegal in Germany, I believe.

Laws like this come about because people aren't thinking straight. The stance is effectively "we have to be able to catch this particular type of criminal before they commit any crimes" - as if that actually made perfect sense. And to hell with the Presumption of Innocence!
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Old 09-26-2007, 06:52 AM   #71
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Re: Sex & Violence

The situation you describe is illegal in many parts of the US. Does that make us Britons a nation that supports child molestation in the eyes of Americans? Who is right? Who can even consider themselves able to make that decision for everyone?

Interestingly, it seems the cultural "drift" of the UK to be more in-line with the US has affected this as well. In 2003 it became illegal over here for anyone over the age of 18 to have sex with anyone under the age of 18, effectively raising the age of consent if you're over 18 years old. There was some mutterings about protecting 16/17-year-olds from teachers or care workers, but this largly passed unnoticed to the general UK public. I only found out about it a month ago.

The whole issue is a mess anyway. For instance, in most countries it's considered wrong for a 30-year-old man to have sex with a 13-year-old girl (something I personally agree with) but what happens if it's two 13-year-olds? They're just experimenting. Assuming they've been taught the dangers and are taking steps to avoid them, and both consent to it, why is it wrong? Over here (I believe) the boy gets in trouble with the law and not the girl for some strange reason. While I agree that younger children need to be protected from exploitation by older adults, I don't think punishing a couple of 13-year-olds for experimenting is the right way to do it. As my mom used to say, they're going to have sex when they feel like it whether you try and stop them or not. We should be doing our best to educate them of the dangers, not yelling DON'T DO THAT and trying to forbid them from it. Forbidden fruit = all the sweeter.
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Old 09-26-2007, 08:20 AM   #72
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Re: Sex & Violence

As should go without saying, someone who values morality above reason will end up with unreasonable morals.

Sherman Hawk has written some interesting stuff regarding morality in his book .
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Old 09-26-2007, 10:17 AM   #73
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Re: Sex & Violence

Really?! Any chance of a link? I'm fascinated that they managed to pass that law without anyone complaining.

(engaging "devil's advocate" mode...)

I wasn't going to bring this up, but since someone else almost has: if it is possible for a 13-year-old to "experiment" with another 13-year-old and for the result not to be emotionally damaging or traumatising, then why is it impossible for the same 13-year-old to "experiment" in a physically and emotionally identical way with an adult, with a result that is equally non-damaging? If anything, one could argue that "experimenting" with a responsible adult who knows what he is doing and understands the need for (e.g.) contraception is less likely to be damaging than experimenting with a clueless kid who will just charge in there without any forethought.

People will no doubt complain about the motivations of such an adult - how can he possibly have any kind of emotionally meaningful relationship with a 13-year-old? - but one has to ask: what proportion of consensual sex between adults actually involves meaningful emotional attachments? You don't throw people in prison just for having one-night-stands.

There are clearly limits to this if you thinking only about actual penetrative sex - to take an extreme example, there's no way an adult man could have penetrative sex with a 7-year-old girl without causing physical injury - but if you take penetration out of the equation, what then?

You also have to ask, why consider only thirteen-year-olds? I used to have an american friend who, at the age of only five, had full penetrative sex with a seven year old boy and she loved it. I've known a number of women who have been masturbating to orgasm since the age of 7 or 8. The capacity to experience sexual pleasure does not begin at puberty.
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Old 09-26-2007, 10:50 AM   #74
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Re: Sex & Violence

Looks like I'm a 3 and a 4. Well actually in this case I'm a four its just that 4's the closest thing to what I'm thinking. I'm more concerned about the medium than the cause because I like muds and I wouldn't like to risk them for anything. Heck I wouldn't risk any chance of muds being despised now (and I'm talking things 1:10000 chances here) to save the world in a hundred years. Yes it is selfish but damn me if I'm not just that.
Anyway if a mud was to take policies such as showing nudity while still claiming to be child friendly there is a chance (I admit its an off chance but its still a realist chance) that public opinion could be turned against all MU*s, which will lead to a plummet in playing numbers, especially the shrinking of the number of new players coming in. And if I can help it it would be nice to prevent any chance such a scenario, don't you think?


I was also thinking of something else, even within this thread there are people who disagree with the idea of letting children 'see' naked people on muds. I've got no accurate way of telling what kind of relationship there is between those that support the idea and those that not but if Shadowfyr is to be believed it is small (because there either the 'loonies' or the people that believe them) . Added to that are the moderates, apologists and appeasers who would constitute a larger percentage (because if we (the appeasers etc.) didn't then there wouldn't be a problem apparently.) So if any major change in this sort of thing was to go through, even in one or two muds those people who didn't want any change to happen for any reason would be in one way or another affected, whether because they are not sure if they are role playing a scene that they think is inappropriate children with children with the very same children or because they don't have any MU*s to play at all.

And theres another thing, if the movement against these radicals is so strong then why don't we sit back and let the big guys take care of it and reap the benefits? Its hardly as if our moderately sized but divided (That doesn't mean all MU*s wont be lumped together once it comes to the chopping block, it just means we don't have as much weight to throw around.) community will tip the balance, or will it? I'm doubting it but I've got no evidence so you can say what you want on that last bit, and all the other bits if you want.
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Old 09-26-2007, 02:05 PM   #75
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Re: Sex & Violence

My bad (don't trust everything you read unless it's official) as it seems only to apply if the person older than 18 is in a position of trust over the 16/17-year-old (teacher, care worker, etc).

Link to official guidelines:
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Old 09-26-2007, 02:21 PM   #76
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Re: Sex & Violence

That's your opinion. I don't have ANY problems with disapproving of something even though it can't hurt anyone, the potential for physical harm is not the basis of my morality. It may not make logical sense to you, but it does to me.

For example, if I knew someone that thought forks were called knives, it would bother me. It doesn't bring physical harm to anybody, but it's wrong. Why is it wrong? Because I believe forks are called forks, and knives are called knives. I could be wrong, but where I come from, that's what they're called. In his culture he may be right and I may be wrong. But if he and I are both set in our beliefs based on our upbringings and accepted ideas, no one would ever change their mind.

And that's where this dialogue is getting us. Nowhere.

Last edited by Ilkidarios : 09-26-2007 at 02:26 PM.
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Old 09-26-2007, 04:13 PM   #77
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Re: Sex & Violence

It's a quite natural human response which can be explained in a somewhat logical fashion.

Give a random person some power, lets say by moderating a message board, and instantly that person will start subjecting people to his or her morality, whether that be banning (or not banning) someone claiming forks are knives, or my personal favorite, someone claiming to be the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler. Effectively this means that morality plus power equals doing good, or more scientifically: g = mpĀ²

Obviously Ilkidarios's view of doing good is to show his disapproval. Given the nature of morality, morality itself doesn't need to be logical, though when manifested as a power it applies to evolutionary pressure, whether that be 6 million Jews being toasted, or democratically choosing which of the two nitwits becomes president. So from that perspective it makes sense to be logical about your morals if you desire them to be effective.
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Old 09-26-2007, 11:31 PM   #78
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Re: Sex & Violence

This is actually a *huge* mess in the US. Depending on state, the age of consent can be anything from 13 (Hawaii) to 19, if you are a) the wrong gender and b) with the same sex. It all depends on if you are being prosecuted (persecuted?) by the individual state you live in, the state you made the mistake of entering before doing it, or some federal government ape, since the feds I think have the 18 year rule, which they can opt to impose, *if* they deem its suddenly a federal case, instead of a state one. How they determine that is a tad vague, and may depend on if state lines where crossed or not, but not always, since you could, I presume, also get nailed if they caught you at it while in the middle of a different case that also has federal involvement. Its quite mad, irrational, arbitrary and stupid, given that less than two hundred years ago 13 was OK for everyplace and people used to live in single room houses, and even share beds with the kids, there being no way for the average person to afford extra rooms. Go back farther and its wasn't uncommon practice for a couple to share the bed of one of their parents, there being no other place to sleep, not just due to the size of the residence, but also because grandma, every brother and sister, and half your cousins lived in the same building.

We have gone from the extreme of not questioning if harm could be caused, to presuming that we can arbitrarily define when the line can be drawn at when harm can happen, then backfill the holes with lots of hypothesis, paranoia and baseless assertions of what constitutes harm, how you can tell, and what the result will be. Just look at what happened with child molestation cases where they questioned the children using dolls. Turns out, for 90% of them, at the ages being interviewed, they don't *yet* have the capacity to extrapolate from themselves to something "symbolic" of them. In other words, ask them if someone did X, Y or Z to the doll, and they will play what they think is a game, with no clue that the doll is supposed to actually represent them in some tangible fashion.

We have lots of people asking "when" the age is that sex or other such things won't harm someone, and lots of people giving made up answers. No one is asking, "What are the psychological frameworks or developmental capacities that *must* exist in someone, before the conduct produces positive outcomes, instead of negative. Or, in other words, not, "What arbitrary point do we *assume* they can handle it?", but, "What characteristics does someone have that *can* handle it?" See, drawing an imaginary line means you don't have to ask the later question. Its hard to answer, and even if you had an answer, it would be different for **every single person you examined**. And, the last thing anyone wants a school, hospital, psychologist, etc. to tell *them* when *their* kids are ready for something that most parents would just as soon didn't happen until their kid was 30.
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Old 09-27-2007, 12:01 AM   #79
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Re: Sex & Violence

Several reasons. One is, strength in numbers doesn't mean a damn thing if 90% of the people in that mass think they are alone in the fight.

Two, there is a phrase, "herding cats". Loonies are either of one mind about the same ideas *or* of one mind about hating the rest of us. There is even on part of the definition for "Crank", given here:



which basically states, "One attribute of a crank is that it doesn't matter of other cranks have completely incompatible and even almost totally apposed ideas about how something works, just so long as *both* agree that the rational people are wrong." They will literally defend each others views as "good alternatives" to ours, right up until the moment we are no longer relevant and they have to turn on each other.

Finally, *we* are often bad at organizing, bad at getting out points across in ways *their* followers could understand or accept, and we have a sense of ethics that prevents us from using their biggest tactics - laying about what their opponents say, lying about what they actually know (as in insisting they have all the answers and us not having them is a "weakness", even if they can't actually provide any answers), and quoting quotes of quotes of other people's quotes, without ever risking things like... telling someone where the original quote came from, so they can check if it really says what they claim. We don't have the organizations, the tools, the lack of ethics or the obsessive certainty that we *must* be right. And we have spent decades hoping that their obvious insanity would eventually do away with them for us, while failing to notice that they have evolved their tactics, while we sat in our homes, labs, offices, etc. and said, "I don't have time to deal with this BS."

They *use* fear to control people and undermine their opponents, we use it to excuse ourselves from the risks associated with actually doing something about them. Its about time we use it to get angry. Its the only *ethical* way you can fight against an enemy that has most of the weapons, nearly all of the organization and too much of the power. The irrational way to deal with it is to hide, and hope that someone else does something about it, *or* result to their tactics, or worse, to force changes. And, its telling that many of them, when they come on science blogs to babble about how wrong everyone else is, claim we would use such inhuman and unethical tactics.

Seriously, how hard is it for them to get that beliefs die a far more long lasting death when ridiculed to death, than burned on a bonfire or locked up in some modern dungeon, for disagreeing with the established order. Jokes don't drive people to insane acts, but martyrs though do all the time, which only shows how irrational "forcing" people to conform, instead of just showing everyone how stupid they are acting, really is. But showing requires willingness to either take risks, or vocally support those that will take them.
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Old 09-27-2007, 06:46 AM   #80
shasarak
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Re: Sex & Violence

Well, you're right, it doesn't make any sense to me. What is the logical basis of your moral system, then? Or doesn't it have one?

Note also that I most emphatically did not say "physical harm", I just said "harm". Something can be directly or indirectly damaging in many ways other than physically. Indeed, the principal objection to, say, rape is not that it is physically damaging; it can be, but that is a secondary concern; the real problem is the massive psychological or emotional trauma that it causes. Normally people's objection to underage sex is that it must, by definition, be abusive, and must cause massive psychological harm.

The problem with that example is that you're using the word "wrong" in a completely different context, now. You're now describing something as wrong in the sense of "something that is semantically or factually incorrect" which is a completely different thing from "something that invites moral dissaproval."

So if, for example, certain groups in Africa and Asia believe that a girl cannot grow up to be a clean, properly female adult without being subject to genital mutilation as a child, are you saying they're right to believe that? If the Sambia tribe of New Guinea maintains that it is desirable for boys between the ages of 8 and 13 to fellate older boys and swallow their semen, because not to do so would prevent them from developing into properly male adults, and that anything up to and including physical force is appropriate to persuade the younger boys to suck when told to, are they right?
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