Re: Sex & Violence
 

Simply to claim to embrace evil, just the claim, disturbs me. Every satanist on earth could pick flowers and feed the poor and give all their cash to charity, and their existence would still be repugnant.

In much the same way that someone saying, "I personally don't molest children, but what's the problem if other people want to screw their own children?" would horrify me.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

Well, that is just it. They **don't** claim to embrace evil. What they claim is that Satan is the good guy and that god is the one that is evil. That's rather different. And, again, its the other side that is insisting that everyone that isn't one of them is "choosing evil, instead of the lord". Or have you missed all the talking heads in this recent election run up that are babbling that BS? lol To them, not being on their side automatically means you are picking evil's side.

For that matter, if you want to get technical, Satan "wasn't" evil until a) they needed something appropriately bad to cast pagans as, so invented the whole horns and a tail version, recasting the pagan god Pan as Satan and b) some other wacko figured that wasn't good enough, and made up the whole story about a war against god, to give them a reason to claim he was evil, and not just going around testing people's faith "for" god, like he did in the OT. Some, and I mean Christians, flat out refuse to accept that the OT and NT gods are even the same god. The OT version is a selfish, egotistical madman, who arbitrarilly uplifted or killed people he didn't happen to like that week. Without "Revelations", which is real easilly to argue as nothing but an extension of the demonization of pagans and a way to scare people to faith, the two are night and day. One about endless tribal war, other other peace, even with your enemies. Yeah, can't imagine *why* Satanists would claim, as part of their official views, that the god everyone else follows is evil. lol

Re: Sex & Violence
 

But how do you know what is good, and what is evil? Not to mention that good and evil might not exist.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

Well back on topic... Shadowfyr and others have actually made a number of good points for letting children 'see' naked people and the like in muds. But what would happen if any MU*(s) went out on a limb and did this, I mean scaled down violence and scale up nudity without changing an age limit. Think about it depending on the size and popularity of that MU* the news would be out in weeks or a month at most, then what? Would he very same minority that Shadowfyr argues so passionately against not rise up and denounce that MU*- Maybe all of Mudding society as a bunch of pedophiles? And damn it if the world listened to them before it'll probably listen to them again- What would happen to Mudding then.
Its all very well discussing it and I'm completely convinced that showing a 10 year old ANY couple having sex is far better than showing the same child ANY 10 people being massacred, but what can we do? Even if the whole mudding community stood up a said that if violence is acceptable to show to children then so is sex would just mean serious damage to the whole mudding community.
So would acting on this discussion actually change things for the better?
I think no, you've got to pick your battles and this one looks far to daunting at the moment.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

That is true; and it's precisely the reason why children need to be exposed to realistic portrayals of sex and its consequences as much as possible.

You really only have to look at the difference between a country like Britain and a country like the Netherlands. Here in Britain we are incredibly uptight about sex, almost as bad as the US; consequently Britain has one of the worst teenage pregnancy rates in the developed world, and the US is worse still.

In Holland the rate of teenage pregancy rate is barely a third of what it is in Britain. And it's certainly not because Dutch children are shielded from the evils of sex. On the contrary, the Dutch take sex education very seriously indeed. Children are taught about the realities of sex over and over and over again until it becomes no more fascinating and mysterious than any other aspect of everyday life.

The consequence is that Dutch teenagers start having sex later, and rates of pregancy and STDs are far lower.

It isn't just a lack of knowledge that is dangerous. Children and teenagers are inevitably fascinated by things that are forbidden. Put a child in a room full of toys and say "you can play with any toy you like except that one" and the one forbidden toy will be the only one that holds the slightest interest as soon as your back is turned. If a child has no access to nudity, he'll find a way; children have been playing doctors and nurses for as long there have been doctors and nurses. I was never interested in that as a child because my family were naturists and so I had absolutely no curiosity at all about the naked body: I'd already seen thousands. And thousands of real bodies doing real things too - walking, chatting, swimming - not the odd, half-idealised, half-brutalised images one finds in magazines.

"As officially recognised" surely means "The Official Church of Satan", as established by Anton LaVey. They have a website, naturally:



But I don't really recognise the Official Church of Satan from your description. It isn't really a religion at all, in the conventional sense, in that there is no underlying belief in supernatural phenomena; instead it is a conscious attempt to adopt all of the ceremonies and trappings of a religion for non-religious purposes. In a way it's a worship of humanity. The philosophy is based on the notion that nearly all conventional religions ultimately come down to suppressing and mortifying instinctive desires and behaviour i.e. the goal is to make people as miserable as possible and ban anything fun. But most religions have some kind of opposition deity (Satan in the Christian religion) who espouses the idea of self-gratification. So LaVey's version of "Satanism" is all about doing what you actually want to do and what actually makes you happy rather than trying to deny your true nature. And the ceremonies have the form of religion but the goal of them is rooted in LaVey's somewhat unconventional take on Psychology.

Then again, what would have happened if no one had ever taken a stand against Senator Joe McCarthy because they were too frightened of the consequences?

Re: Sex & Violence
 

I never said anybody has to be punished. It's not my job to sort out punishments in life.

I just said I had to draw a line in my mind that defines what's right and what's wrong, and to me personally, grown adults having sexual fantasies about little children is wrong. Maybe that's just me, but those are my beliefs.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

A question once asked by Socrates in ancient times too. Is a thing good because the gods say so, or because it is? And if it is good anyway, based on your own observation of the world, then why do you need gods? But, if its only good because they say so, then its wholly arbitrary, since in principle they could change their minds at any time. Kind of a chicken and the egg issue. lol They had him kill himself using hemlock, using a logic trap which basically placed him, in the position of denying everything he said, while refusing to take it, or taking it, and standing up for everything he said... He, unfortunately for his health, had a habit of pulling the rug out from under people's feet in such a way that they where upside down and facing the wrong direction when done, with no means to give a self consistent and rational response that didn't undermine their own assertions. Modern unthinkers are mostly immune to this tactic, since they just insist they where always facing that direction and liked standing on their head, then repeating the same silly assertions all over again, as though you never said anything at all. Its... both fascinating and disturbing to see.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

1. Depends.. Its possible to make "small" strides and gain ground, since the number of wackos is small. However, you could run into the BS nonsense you get with video games. AO games are rarely made because, "No one buys them". only **they are rarely made, so there are few good ones to buy**. Not a huge problem, except that those small groups have a lot of people in power right now (they have been pushing to get them in since long before the 1950s, when the whole BS about nuclear families got shoved onto the TV), so because those games are "interactive" they get an AO rating for content that, if it was in a movie, would be NC-17.

2. We have been "picking our battles" all along, at least as a nation. Some have fought hard against the downward spiral, unlike the silent majority, but most of the time its not been the game maker who just wants to add realism to a game or big companies that wants to kiss the ass of everyone, so they can maybe get a few thousand more copies sold. No, the people choosing to fight this trend have often been ones like Rockstar Games, which none of us, if we had the guts ourselves to do something, would want on *leading* side. Not because they are wrong per say, though they kind of do go overboard, but simply because, when the game industry is in the Elvis stage, and lots of morons are calling it devil games (just like they called rock devil music), you don't intentionally dig up a Marilon Manson look alike to represent your concerns.

The problem is, if *you* don't pick the fight, then who will? Well... They will, they have been picking the same fight since the days when a women showing her ankles at the beach was pornographic and punishable by law in some places. They have mostly been losing, because society as a whole has moved away from their idiocies. But we have lost out courage. We would rather, "wait until its the right time to do something", and blog about it, than go out in the real world and do the equivalent of burning bras. They however never have, and never will, stop fighting the battles we won't, with 180 degree opposite goal in mind from what we think is reasonable. You don't win a war by retreating from every battle. And make no mistake, these people and their thinking, has been with us for centuries, and while the battle lines have shifted, they have *never* once stopped long enough to smell a flower or look at a painting, without, in the back of their minds, thinking of some way they might use the existence of flowers or the content of the painting to wage war on people who don't believe as they do.

We are very tolerant, even those of us that are also strident and loud about our opinions. They **literally** think that tolerance means, "We won't actually make it illegal for you to think that we are wrong, but if you don't **act** like you agree with us 100%, you are not being tolerant of us, and we will cry persecution." How is, "picking your battles", going to do anything? They are already lobbing grenades at the wall, and you want us to what, pick a wall that has fewer holes in it? Forgive me if, while I do agree taking the extreme path to fighting the battle is not a good thing, that doing nothing, because they *might* personally take notice of you, instead of attacking the fools that are fighting, is an unsound and dangerously stupid tactical choice when *they* are the ones picking the battles and the battle fields.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

Have you never in your life had a sexual fantasy about a person who was not actually attracted to you and would therefore have been distressed by you making real sexual advances towards her? Surely that is also "wrong"? If you have had such a fantasy, but chose not to act on it, should we treat you in the same way as we would treat a rapist purely because you have had those thoughts?

Re: Sex & Violence
 

2/3rd of the teenage pregnancies in Holland are from non western immigrants, who make up about 10% of the population, so teenage pregnancy rates of the natives are more than ten times lower, so I don't think culture is the only explanation, especially when a small group can boost the statistics with more than 50%.

As a side note, just like genes - religions are subject to environmental pressure and selection as well - hence it's logical (to me at least) that religions must have an evolutionary advantage that warrants their existence. While it's easy to bash religion just for the sake of bashing them, there must be more to it than meets the eye.

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?

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.

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?

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.

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.

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. ;)

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.

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

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).

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!

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.

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 .

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.

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. :D

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:

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.

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 = mp²

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.

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.

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.

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?

Re: Sex & Violence
 

Oh, right. That I heard about. :)

Another odd feature of British age-of-consent law that I've just remembered is that is one of the few instances where you can be prosecuted for doing something in another country that is completely legal where you're doing it. For example, it's illegal to smoke cannabis in Britain, but it's legal to smoke it in certain coffee shops in Holland. If someone smokes cannabis in a Dutch coffee shop, he is not committing any sort of crime anywhere. But if a British 18-year-old travels to a country where the legal age of consent is 15 and has sex with a 15-year-old girl who lives there, he is actually committing an offence under British law, even though he is thousands of miles away from Britain and what he is doing is legal where he's doing it.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

Sorry Shadowfyr I'm not quite sure that I got all your points clearly- first off you say that we need to do something because everybody thinks they're fighting the cranks alone: fair enough. I don't know much about this so you'll have to tell me:
Would muds showing support for this particular cause be a unifying factor that all other people fighting the cranks on this particular issue would rally round?
Would muds showing support for this particular cause be a unifying factor that all people fighting the cranks on every issue would rally round?
If the answer to either of these questions is yes then you've convinced me (though that would mean very little)- even though I still would one or two concerns- and you'd have only another few hundred of the right people to convince and some sort of action could be taken!

Now there's the bit after that, it seems to be yet another attack on the cranks, very similar to some of your earlier posts. Not that I'm comparing you as how you describe these cranks of course just that you may already be falling to one of the 'unethical' ways to fight back.

By the way, I may not have made this clear but I would have supported any move in that direction as soon as it had gone through even in my earliest post, it wouldn't even have been because I support the cause. It would have been because the irreversible (after a couple of weeks) would have been done and if anything was to be lost it would already beyond me bringing back so I would stick by the cause that I said as I believe because (selfishly) I would feel that they was nothing more for me to lose in this fight. But never the less I will do my utmost to stop any MU* from taking such an action.

Oh by the way Romans didn't stop killing Christians because they martyred themselves in the thousands- it was because an Emperor had a dream, so sometimes just being a martyr for a cause isn't quite enough- and yes I'll find something to back that last bit up just as soon as I have time.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

The media isn't overly happy to report on that, nor are people happy to read about it, because it doesn't fit into the modern day worshiping and western state agenda of cultural diversity. Hallelujah.

Of course the claim that 'all morality is subjective' is in itself an objective law defining morality, and hence a logical fallacy. Logic and objectivity doesn't seem to appeal to the masses however as of late. So what's your logical motivation for trying to reason with an illogical person? In my opinion it's a tiresome and very unrewarding activity.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

It can be an accurate description based on actual factual evidence actually. All morality *is* subjective, because despite lots of people that insist there is some objective and undeniable morality, when you can manage to get them to describe to you the means by which they concluded it was moral, instead of merely spouting assertions, you find that a) none of it just landed in their laps, but they learned it by practice, and b) not one of the various groups that claim an objective morality can agree among themselves precisely what the boundaries are for it, never mind between two different groups, who insist *they* are the only ones that know what the one true universal moral code is.

Morality is a label for two things, 1) instinct driven behavior, which makes it possible, unless we have a defect in our brains from birth, to process information in predictable ways and specific ages. I.e., a 6 year old can't tell you mean him to say that the "doll" represents him/herself, and thus ask him what happened to him/her, by using a doll as an example. A younger child may not even understand that the doll is an inanimate object, or meant to represent something that normally *is* animate. Teens, as a rule, lack the gut level reactions to things that adults have, so, as many studies have shown, actually *overthink* situations, leading them to make logic based choices based on if the benefits from doing something risky *seem* to outweigh the risks. Adults tend to already have clear emotional concepts of what risks are too high, compared to benefits, so act based on what they "feel", not what they logically assess. Its seems contradictory, but brain scans and detailed studies of how teens make choices don't lie.

2) Learned social behavior, which can enhance, undermine, replace or distort the instinctual behaviors. This means that if your instinctual behavior is to make friends, someone *can* warp your perceptions sufficiently to make you distrust other people and avoid friendships. It means that if "normal" behavior is to trade favors (and I mean that in all senses of the word), social constraints can introduce learned aversions to some *kinds* of trades, or even warp your perceptions so badly that you take from everyone, because the world owes things to you, or refuse any help or offers, because owing anyone something is abhorrent. One could easily argue that "both" of those extremes are unreasonable, but its not impossible to find societies where having one of those extreme traits, within a small subset of societies, is considered a sign of sanity, even while the rest of society considers you weird or crazy.

What morals are not is some ingrained, preprogrammed code of conduct. One can have "general" codes, like sharing is good, and what neurologists call "plasticity", where that can be *shaped* to say anything from, "Sharing everything, to the extent that you have no money or possessions is good.", to the opposite extreme of, "Sharing is only good if you can see a direct and obvious personal benefit from it." The irony is, we call the later sociopathic, while the former is simply considered an odd religious view some small number of people practice... Its literally *unacceptable* to suggest, as far as most people are concerned, that *both* extremes are fundamentally irrational, not evolved, and basically deviations from the baseline behaviors that "do" exist in the brains genetics, which only "allow for" such drastic differences, rather than making them happen.

Worse, one could argue, and it can be shown, that how you use language can effect what things you "can" perceive. Basically, a program can only do what it has been taught to do with new data, even if the data implies something different than the program was ever intended to handle. That's a simplistic way of looking at it of course, we program ourselves, so its "possible" to learn different language, and with that different concepts, which can lead to a reexamination of our perspectives. But, its probably pretty dang accurate when describing the sort of people that, as an example, only listen to evangelical preachers, only watch Fox news, only read news papers that present right wing views, etc., just as those people on the other side of the fence, who only read rag magazines, horoscopes, Hollywood opinion magazines, alien abduction accounts, etc., etc., are *not* going to learn how to think any differently about their perceptions of what is really going on. To do that would require learning *how* to think like their opposite number, or, at least, why, in what way, and to what extent they mean different things, when using the same words we do.

But that is sort of the point. We are not trying to reason with the illogical and irrational people. They are impervious to it. Most people are not that far gone though, and can have their opinions changed, because they use language in ways that allow them to understand both sides arguments (well, most of the time). The point is to make it very clear that the only real difference that **should** exist between something that thinks god personally gave Pat Robertson a TV show, so he could bash gay people, talk about assassinating foreign dignitaries and help prepare the true believers for the end of the world (possibly by convincing them to cause it), and someone that think that Jesus was a space alien from Cignus Prime, who used lost Atlantian technology to broadcast healing rays into people's bodies is that there must be a shortage of tin foil hats to go around. lol

And to answer Mithras' questions, If you want to wait around until you are "sure" someone will rally to your cause, then you have already lost, but seriously, its not like nudity or sex in muds is some unique and specific thing, devoid of all connection to anything else, and thus must stand or fall on its own. Its not. Such content on muds is just the smallest corner, and probably silliest, of a much bigger problem, which ranges from people insisting that schools ban books about the "risks" of sex for teens, based on the fact that the book "describes" teens having sex, and the consequences of it, all the way up to the absolutely absurd fact that we once had a strip club here where I live, and it was driven out because "some" land owners thought it might impact the number of old people that would retire here, where I am sure they all want to, instead, spend their last years complaining about the thousands of 20-30 year old boaters that drink beer, play loud music and, in the case of the women, get by with not being nude by using pasties (a small decal like object, which you glue over the nipple and its darker surrounding parts, which if anything makes **more** people stair at them.

I am not advocating every muds introducing stuff into them. I am not even advocating them doing so in a way that will "immediately" get them into trouble. I am just saying, if you have a fracking Sistine Chapel in it, don't cave in so badly that when everyone types, "look adam", you get a description that says, "complete with fig leaf". Its insulting to a) the intent of the design (both the mud and the original art work, b) the intelligence of the players and c) any sense of ethics that demands respect for truth, intended meanings or other people's work. Mind you, I could make a good argument that none of those three things are of any value at all to anyone who thinks that they have a strangle hold on right and wrong, let alone any absolute concept of what those *must* be.

And no, I don't think its something that all of them are going to rally around, certainly not if you insist on defining it as some narrow thing only involving muds, but more to the point, what part of "herding cats" did you not get. ;) But, sometimes you can get all the cats to agree that they really truly don't like some more generic things, like stuff that makes loud noises, even if *your* can doesn't have a problem with a vacuum cleaner, but does with the engine noise from large trucks. The point is to find to larger issue and make it clear that your issue is just one in a long list of stupid BS effected by that "one" larger issue. Some might think it quite silly, by itself. As one of 900 idiotic things that wackos don't like, because they think they *might* do more damage to some kids psyche than leaving them stupid and ignorant, its an entirely different matter. But yeah, one has to assess the risks "individually", and consider if its better to push the barrier, or just make it a point to rather loudly protest that it exists in the first place.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

It's the same kind of fallacy as the question 'Can God create a stone he cannot lift'. Regardless of the answer it proves that God cannot be all mighty. In the same manner 'all morality is subjective' is an objective moral law if true, and hence a fallacy.

In a mutual fashion 'all truth is subjective' is a fallacy as well, and it's probably easier for most people to see why it's illogical to state so.

Just because various groups claim their often awkward and contradicting objective moral laws are correct isn't an argument for the non existence of objective morality.
It at best proves that the subject of morality is a highly complex matter.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

I've never had much sympathy with that argument. I realise that what you're supposed to say is along the lines of "if the answer is 'yes' then there is something God cannot do (lift the stone) and therefore He is not omnipotent, but if the answer is 'no' then there is something He cannot do (create the stone) and therefore He is not omnipotent". But frankly I think that's rubbish. :)

The answer to the question is clearly "no", and that doesn't set any limits on God's omnipotence because the concept of "a stone that is too heavy for an omnipotent God to lift" is meaningless. It's like suggesting that God is not omnipotent because He can't create a triangle with 4 sides. Clearly, He can create triangles, and He can create things with four sides, and He can even simultaneously amend every single person's grasp of English in such a way that the phrase "four-sided triangle" actually makes sense. But to say that He can't create a four-sided triangle is no different from saying that He can't create a habbityglabbityglibbityglotchet. It is possible to string together individually meaningful words in English in a way that is grammatically consistent but which makes the whole phrase semantic gibberish; "four-sided triangle" and "a stone too heavy for an omnipotent God to lift" are prime examples.

While we're at it, obviously the egg came before the chicken - unless you're a creationist, in which case the chicken came first.

(Actually that reminds me of a cartoon: chicken and egg in bed together, chicken happily smoking a cigarette, and the fed-up looking egg muttering "well, I guess we figured that one out.")

Re: Sex & Violence
 

What you're saying is that God is bound by the limits of logic. If that's the case omnipotence is an illogical concept since it implies transcending the boundaries of logic.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

True, as far as it goes. But the problem isn't that many groups have mutually contradictory views on what it is. The problem is that its a linguistic construct, layered on top of a system (the brain), which is 500 times more universal a machine than any computer. And trying to claim that there is a single objective moral code is a bit like insisting that there is one true operating system, of which all existing systems are just weak copies. Worse, with the brain, the hardware changes "as" the OS is built, so the only claim you can logically make about moral codes, and how objective they are, end up being 100% based on the "current" state of the brain, at the time you examined the moral code inside it. Otherwise, its quite meaningless with respect to any other living person.

At best, one could say that there is a **statistically** objective moral code of some sort, which maximizes freedom of action, while allowing for acceptable risks. The problem of course being that some people don't see some things as risks, including the imho damage caused by forcing strict patterns of thought on them, others consider some risks irrationally higher than they truly are, and more time gets spent either justifying those positions (by making up fake research based on the "current" state of things, which doesn't say anything about if that state is valid to start with), or argue against other positions. One of the fundamental ironies of having morals and ethics is that most everyone agree that creating experiments to **actually** test if changing a particular moral stance has a negative or positive impact is unacceptable, so in the rare cases someone does come up with a vague test, like for the effects of violence on kids, you get the equivalent of, "If someone eats, do they stop being hungry?", to which the only answer you can arrive at logically is, "Yes, until they get hungry again." Yet, when discussing something like violent behavior, the fact that only a fraction of people in real life *act* in such a manner, despite similar levels of exposure in their lives, is ignored, in favor of, "Do kids get violent after watching violent stuff?", to which they *project* the delusional answer, "Yes, and it isn't just temporary." Huh??? How do you know, without breaking your own code of ethics, by running long term tests? You can't.

And, just to be clear, its worse with nudity, porn, etc. Its considered, by the vast majority, unacceptable to even *try* to run a simplistic experiment on those subjects, so **all** of the so called studies are little more than made up rubbish where some clown asks leading questions of adults, then extrapolates what they "think" it did to them, while, again, ignoring the **huge** number of people exposed to either the same thing, or more (nudists/naturists anyone...) with no negative outcome at all. But then, this is what can be expected. The sort of people pushing the idea that nudity is worse than violence have shown not the slightest abhorrence to the idea of lying outright, misquoting real science, or just making up a mix of unprovable (never mind simply verifiable) anecdotal stories and statistics based on nothing but numbers they "imagine" are true, based on their personal level of fear about the subject.

Oh, and just wondering, why is it that both the web sites and emails from these sorts of people almost always in Comic Sans and/or using nearly random font sizes and clashing colors? If that isn't a sign of insanity in and of itself, I can't imagine what is. And they manage to show their insanity through this sort of stuff *even* when they manage to write coherently (which in the case of email from them is rare indead). lol I am serious, they really do this, though I can't find one of the examples at the moment. Its just nuts.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

So if the universe is such a logical place, why has logic failed to explain morality clearly?

Re: Sex & Violence
 

Here is the thing about why having thoughts of pedophilia, rape, or beastiality etc, are repugnant - antisocial behavior escalates. Before someone goes out and rapes children, they fantasize about raping children. Eventually, the fantasies become compelling. Many child rapists feel very bad after.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

I've no doubt that murderers have violent thoughts before they actually commit murder too. The problem is, if you lock up everyone who has ever had violent thoughts, you'd have to lock up the entire population. The vast majority of people who have violent thoughts do not go on to commit murder, and to treat everyone who has ever had violent thoughts as a future murderer is not only stupid, it is profoundly wrong and unfair.

It also makes an absolute nonsense of the whole concept of individual responsibility. Have you ever looked at something in a shop that you couldn't afford and wished you had it? Would it make sense to lock you up for shop-lifting just because you've had those thoughts? Clearly not; wanting something and actually taking it are two completely different things. If you treat wanting something and stealing something as equally morally reprehensible, that means that actually stealing it is no worse than wanting it. Surely you don't believe that?

Similarly, virtually every human male on the planet has, at one time or another, had sexual thoughts about a person who is not, and could not ever be, attracted to them, and would therefore be upset if the male in question actually made sexual advances towards them. Most of those males have not gone on to actually commit rape. Again, it would simply be daft to lock up every single person who has ever had a sexual thought about someone who would be harmed if they acted on those thoughts; the difference between fantasising about someone and actually trying to rape them is rather an important one.

My suspicion is that an equally tiny minority of those who have sexual feelings towards children ever actually act on those feelings, and it is wrong to condemn someone as a future rapist, either of adults or of children, simply because they have fantasies. If they ever try to act on those fantasies and rape someone, fine: lock them up and throw away the key. But you're on a very slippery slope indeed if you start to lock up people because of their thoughts.

A person's thoughts are his own and no one else's; and should remain so.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

Most likely for the same reason few people truly understand the theory of relativity, especially the math that is involved.

If theoretical morality is as complicated to grasp as theoretical physics you'll find very few people capable to formulate moral laws. They could pass their practical moral knowledge on to the masses, but the masses wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the real deal and bullocks.

Not to mention that if someone came forward with a solid logical foundation for morality he'd be ridiculed as much as Darwin was when he first published his theories, especially when the conclusions are completely different from main stream religious and political believes.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

1 in four girls are sexually molested , and 1 in six boys. So, if those who are abusing children are only tiny minority of those fantasizing about, almost everyone must be fantasizing about it.

Additionally, some of those fantasizing about it are supplementing those fantasies with pornography, so while they may not be personally molesting anyone, but they are monetarily supporting the abuse.

I agree, that thought should not be legislated. But to say that people are entitled to think what they like, and there's no harm in thought is disingenuous. People should censor their own thoughts. Then maybe they'll stop touching their little nieces in nephews in inappropriate places. (30-40% of abused children are abused by family members.)

Thought leads to deed. We're responsible for our deeds and our thoughts. The correlation is direct.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

The link above was the first on the page when I did a google search for statistics on sexual abuse. Lest you think I hunted to find the figures, take a look at the other 2,150,000, links. The numbers above are not out of line with the sites I checked - actually lower than I expected. I remembered the figure 1 in three. Though, granted, I only checked ten of the links. not all two and one eighth million.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

Yeah. Its a cycle. I once heard someone that was not that far gone (they would have never had thoughts of those three things, but where into a range of things that are fringe). They described it like this - If you have problems having normal relationships, then you start imagining abnormal ones. Once you are finally able to have a normal one, for most people, the stranger and less accepted fantasies get replaced with normal ones. Now, obviously for some people, who have impulse control issues, or other problems, this can escalate out of control, but no more so than any other such behavior, nor in stable people. Just as some people can hunt all their lives and never go wacko, but some people start with pulling legs off insects, escalate to killing the neighbors cat, and *eventually* end up killing people. Its only a fraction of the populace that does that, and usually there are either issues of abuse in their childhood background, or literal physical defects in their brain, which result in them mis-processing the behavior in the first place. You don't generally hear of someone with a normal childhood, unless they later suffer certain types of head injuries, one day deciding that they like the sound people make when being killed, and starting a murder spree, for example.

While you are correct in how things tend to escalate, its more complex than that, and not any where close to as black and white.

Oh, and just to be clear, the one reason that I don't think Beastiality "fits" in the category you put them in is that, quite frankly, there are quite a lot of people that engage in it, and the number of people that get caught humping the neighbors poodle isn't that huge. Most engage in the behavior in closed environments, with their own animals, etc. One might compare them with people that go to S&M clubs, more than with the other types of behaviors. And yeah, I know that some people consider S&M anti-social too, but that's beside the point.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

I don't know if s&m counts as anti-social. I mean whatever adults want to consentually do with one another, is pretty much their own business. What they do with their pets, their children, their family's children, theier neighbor's children, that's a legitimate concern for society.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

From a biological perspective a human female becomes an adult at age 12-15 when the periods start. So sexual attraction can be expected and while you could call it child molestation you don't need to be a pedophile to rape a 15 years old.

As should also be obvious humans have many neonatal features. A baby chimp and a baby human look a lot alike, but when the chimp matures it loses neonatal features while humans retain them. This indicates that pedophilia plays a role in human sexual selection, and given that infants have a large head to body ratio that makes sense since selecting for neonatal features would result in larger brains upon adulthood. So humans are pedophilic by nature since men like women who look like babies.

Regarding the statistics, they seem biased. They claim that somewhere around 90% of the molestations aren't reported and that hence 1 in 4 girls are molested. Next there's a rather large age grouping of age 1 to 17, and little information whatsoever about known factors that correlate with sexual abuse.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

Some notes on this, specifically about "Reported cases of child sexual abuse reached epidemic proportions, with a reported 322 percent increase from 1980 to 1990." It was in the 80s that they started to get *a lot* of cases of claimed abuse by uncles, grandparents, etc., and in which the methods used, since no physical evidence existed in most cases, was precisely the sort of, "Here is a dolly, what did uncle Buck do to the dolly? Did he do this?", type stuff. Much of the 322 percent increase was false positives and innocent people being sent to jail, based on questionable testimony from psychologists that where 10-20 years *behind* the curve with respect to cognitive development models and what that said about the viability of *asking* a small child, especially one you just told to "pretend" as part of the interrogation, what if anything someone did to them. There are not *huge* waves running through the system now, as the validity of those tests, the court cases and even the statistics derived from them are called into universal question.

Then you get things like the 1 in 3. Sure, everyone knows they heard it or read it some place, but the fact that you can't has to make you seriously question what the source was. It sounds **very** similar to the statistic used in the TV commercials, referring to child solicitation online. The problem with such statistics is that they are usually traceable to one of those "family values" groups that like to fudge numbers. In the case of the TV commercial, the real statistics where not bad enough when *limited* to solicitation from adults, so they hacked up the study, in order to present a number that, more truthfully, should have said, "One in five children are solicited by other children, or asked if they have had sex yet with their boy friend, or talked to about if they are still virgins, by other kids, while a much smaller number where *actually* approached by an adult playing an being their age." But you know, that just wouldn't create the necessary unrealistic panic they where looking for. lol



"(A "sexual solicitation" is defined as a "request to engage in sexual activities or sexual talk or give personal sexual information that were unwanted or, whether wanted or not, made by an adult."

Using this definition, one teen asking another teen if her or she is a virgin—or got lucky with a recent date—could be considered "sexual solicitation.") Not a single one of the reported solicitations led to any actual sexual contact or assault. Furthermore, almost half of the "sexual solicitations" came not from "predators" or adults but from other teens."

However, given who is currently in charge of "policy" about the sort of information (you know, the guy that ordered the national health organizations to *remove* info on condoms and safe sex, and instead push abstinence on their online websites...), false or not, that we get, its not surprising that finding the real data is far harder than finding an endless run of pages that insist that the made up, exaggerated, out of context or just plain intentionally misinterpreted claims are all accurate. And the news media... When in the last 50 years have they ***ever*** checked their facts beyond determining "if" someone said it, rather than, you know, if the people saying it are telling the truth or not. :(

Yeah. We have a serious problem, but instead of dealing with the "real" predators, and using all our resources to deal with them, we are wasting time and money going after everyone from uncle Fred, whose niece just got ****ed off at him that week because he forgot to buy her a birthday gift, to some harmless guy doing physical studies for art, who had the bad taste of picking someone under 18 to take pictures of, to people *gasp* drawing pictures that, if these people where right, would make 99% of the anime artist and buyers of manga in Japan and the US pedophiles (which would probably be 80% of the entire population of Japan and 50-60% of the nerds in the US). Mean while, the nice guy down the street, who doesn't let his kids go to normal school, and never seems to date much, despite being single, and what ever other warning signs no one is paying attention to, because they are more worried that some 30 year old might put "panties" in the same sentence with "13 year old" on a web page some place, while writing a story or designing a mud, etc.

Yeah, we are going to get *real* far in reversing the trend, when all the real predators need to do is keep their heads down and go unnoticed, while the "family values" people are dunking the rest of us in the local river, to see if we will float like a duck, or sink and drown like an innocent.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

Was in a discussion a while back about the issue and I still don't see a rational explanation for why pets *do* fall into a category of "society needs to care about it". Seriously, the only arguments that hold water at all are a) harm to the pet, b) harm to the person doing it and c) lack of consent. A is absurd, as is C, in the case of any animal of sufficient size to survive an attempt. Why? Because animals are, in general, less likely to allow something they don't like and far more well equipped to point this out to you, in a very painful and possible lethal way, than people are. IF your doing it to an animal too small to survive, you are way sicker than just being into animals. As for B... Any damn fool that wants to try to force themselves on something that can bite, scratch, kick or even strangle them to death, when it gets ****ed off at what is going on, deserves what happens to them imho. I suppose one could call it, "protection of idiots from endangering themselves", but there are about a billion other far stupider things that people legally do all the time, and we don't stop them from doing those things. The animal rights people know that B isn't a valid argument at all, which is why they never use it. Their argument is always that the "poor helpless animal that usually outweighs the person, is naturally armed, and lacks the self control to not lash out when they don't like what is being done to them, is going to be hurt in some fashion, because they can't 'consent' to it." Well, I don't know about you, but being able to refuse violently *sounds like* lack of consent to me. lol

Any other argument just amounts to "Ewe yuck! Well of course people *should* have some say in if you do *that*in your home." Same argument once used, and still used in some parts of the country, to declare certain sexual positions and/or toys illegal to use, or in the later case, buy or own (if you do something dumb, like having a house fire, so the *authorities* stumble across the collection you snuck in from the store in the next state).

"Ewe yuck!", is not a valid qualification for something to be, "important for society to stop people doing.", if it was, (and there are those that would have such be the case), damn near everything from what paintings you where allowed to have on your walls to how many feet from the shower you walked before you had to be dressed would be on the list of, "Ewe yuck!", stuff you where not allowed to do. All you have to do is look at existing and defunct state laws to see the kind of insane BS you get when that becomes the criteria.

Re: Sex & Violence
 

You'll note the absence of small-print at your link. If you find figures like that on sites where there is small-print, you'll find that the figure is calculated by including things like boys at school trying to look up your skirt in class or (particularly) your parents obliging you to kiss an elderly relative when you don't want to as part of the family gathering at Christmas. Of course the latter is not exactly a joyous experience, but it isn't exactly life-destroying either.

There is some debate on this point, naturally. From wikipedia (link: ):

(emphasis added)

You also need to remember that, even in cases of genuine sexual abuse, this is including a large number of cases where the abuser is roughly the same age as the child at the time - or at any rate well below adult age. I'm not sure to what extent it makes sense to lump cases like that into the same classification as cases where the abuser is an adult. An abusive 11-year-old boy may grow up to be an abusive adult, but that doesn't mean that the victims of his abuse will still be 10-year-old girls; they're more likely to be adults.

On top of that, as shadowfyr has explained at some length, certain investigative techniques result in a vast number of false positives being reported when it comes to child abuse. There was a famous case in England in 1987 (in Cleveland, specifically) where a doctor named Marietta Higgs decided that Reflex Anal Dilatation (i.e. the spontaneous opening of the anal sphincter in response to gentle spreading of the buttocks) was a completely reliable indicator of anal abuse. She, a fellow doctor, and social services managed to get over 100 children taken into care as a consequence, without ever stopping to ask how many of them might simply be constipated.



In 1991 there was an even more absurd scandal in Orkney where a large group of children were supposed to have been subjected to "ritual satanic abuse". It was subsequently demonstrated that there was not a single shred of evidence to back the claims. A supposed hoodd rope, for example, turned out to be someone's graduation gown. One memorably "non-leading" question asked by a social worker of a child in that case was "when were you given the orange drink that made you sleepy?" - this despite the fact that the only thing the child had said about the drink was that it was "orange".



What if they don't pay for it? More importantly, what if the pornography doesn't actually involve any real children?

Another thing to question is the rather curious notion of child sexual abuse being performed on an industrial scale purely in response to financial demand - i.e. the idea that people who have no sexual interest in children suddenly decide to abuse to children solely because there is money to be made from doing it. I find this idea rather questionable. I think it's much more likely that when children are abused on film they are children who would have been abused anyway; the fact that there might be money to made might encourage someone to capture the act on camera rather than keeping it secret, but I doubt that it results in more children being abused. The only difference is that it makes it easier to catch the abusers.

It's a lot more than 40%.