Lutheran pedophiles

[pErvinalia]

Your problem (and rEv's) is that you misinterpret what I write by making specious conclusions and extensions based on your own personal biases rather than objectively examining the statements I make and interpreting them fully and within the context of the reply. Just because I say that people should suffer the consequences of their actions does not mean that I do not also have compassion and concern if those consequences are going to be permanently harmful or fatal.

And likewise, you misinterpret what I say to mean that people shouldn't learn from the consequences of their actions. The conservatives dichotomy. You have to reduce your opponents argument to a binary interpretation, as you can't defend your position otherwise. See how Jim and I repeatedly state there needs to be a line and the only argument is where that line should be? YOU haven't argued the line at all. You have tried to argue in absolutes. It's you who isn't following this debate properly. And, as usual, I suspect you do follow it perfectly well, you just chose to pretend you don't otherwise you'd have to concede points.

I find it astonishing that I have to point out the difference between charitable and altruistic amelioration of particularly harmful consequences of stupid actions by society that leaves the transgressor with an adequately unpleasant set of consequences that will deter future stupid behavior and a mindset that rEv seems to have that teenage girls are entitled to be protected from the consequences of screwing someone for sexual pleasure in an irresponsible and unsafe manner. Having a baby is a potentially life-changing and painful experience, but it is most often not fatal or permanently harmful, and it's a great way to convince girls not to spread their legs for every Tom, Dick and Hairy that comes along promising them a good time.

It's not the baby that is the problem. It is the social stigma and mental trauma (induced by society's prudish and religious attitudes to sex) that come with being potentially taken advantage of by some old lecher. Once again, you don't understand that pain and damage and power etc can be other than physical. Libertarians just can't seem to grasp this. Although, once again, I suspect you grasp it fine, but it rips a giant hole in your ideology.

[Hermit]

YOU haven't argued the line at all. You have tried to argue in absolutes.

Actually, Seth has drawn a line. It amounts to this: As soon as girls are old enough to bleed they are old enough to fuck, and it won't matter who fucks them.

I can't be bothered to say what I think of that just now.

[pErvinalia]

Yeah, I assume the line is a biological adult. But even then, his argument isn't limited to that. He could equally apply his argument for an 8 year old girl. What doesn't kill them only makes them stronger, am i right??

[Hermit]

Yeah, I assume the line is a biological adult. But even then, his argument isn't limited to that. He could equally apply his argument for an 8 year old girl. What doesn't kill them only makes them stronger, am i right??

Exactly. Seth's argument is, to say the least, undermined by this. The fact that almost all the girls listed were raped even if you ignore the age of consent concept does nothing to detract from the absurdity of the claim that puberty is an acceptable criterion for someone to be fucked. Criteria will always have to include emotional maturity and relative power between two persons.

[pErvinalia]

Not in Libboland!!

[JimC]

Seth wrote:

Human beings don't become less irrational if they don't learn from their mistakes, and they don't learn from their mistakes if they don't have to suffer unpleasant consequences of making bad judgments and engaging in careless or bad behavior. I prefer a society made up of people who understand that actions have consequences, some of which are permanent and grievous, because such a society will generally take much more care not to make those kinds of errors, which translates directly into a more responsible, more trustworthy, better behaved and more compassionate society.

Stripped of the unpleasant, absolutist rhetoric, there are some important points raised here. I can agree that it is best that children, as they move through into adolescence, learn important lessons about the consequences of mistakes, and develop a combination of resilience and independence. I have a feeling that some aspects of modern western society, including incompetent parenting and education, work against this.

But this is something that needs to be addressed by education, not political rhetoric. For example, our Year 9 students (boys around 14-15) undergo a tough hiking camp, which really tests their mettle. However, a careful program of preparation guides them to be up for the challenge, and the vast majority, somewhat fearful at first, say that the 6 day hike was something really important in their lives. Tellingly, the Yr 9 staff delay the process of the lads electing their representatives till after the camp - that way, their peers can judge them on how well they met this challenge.

Importantly, the camp is not only about developing resilience and individual skills - it is also about working co-operatively in teams...

So, I agree there is a potential danger if a society does not promote independent skills in children, wraps them in cotton wool, or leaves them with a mentality of excessive dependence on others. But the answer is not libertarian rhetoric, it is pragmatic educational programs, designed by people who know what they are doing, to allow adolescents to grow as individuals, and be able to make more and more mature decisions.

[Seth]

Society has a duty to protect adolescents from sexual predators, at least to the extent of punishing those who offend in that way as a deterrent to others. There is room for argument about ages and circumstances, rather than a one penalty fits all, but generally I support the laws as they exist, and an happy to see them applied to sleazy adult predators.

Why not protect kids from sexual predators by teaching them how to recognize and avoid them, and how to disable or kill them if they are attacked? That's a better way to deal with sexual predators.

But then again I'm not talking about sexual predators, I'm talking about consensual sexual relationships between persons of widely differing ages, and I'm asking why, specifically, it should automatically be a crime for an older and younger person to have sex when it's not a crime for two younger people to have sex, presuming that in both cases the act is consensual and non-coercive?

[Seth]

Seth wrote:

Human beings don't become less irrational if they don't learn from their mistakes, and they don't learn from their mistakes if they don't have to suffer unpleasant consequences of making bad judgments and engaging in careless or bad behavior. I prefer a society made up of people who understand that actions have consequences, some of which are permanent and grievous, because such a society will generally take much more care not to make those kinds of errors, which translates directly into a more responsible, more trustworthy, better behaved and more compassionate society.

Stripped of the unpleasant, absolutist rhetoric, there are some important points raised here. I can agree that it is best that children, as they move through into adolescence, learn important lessons about the consequences of mistakes, and develop a combination of resilience and independence. I have a feeling that some aspects of modern western society, including incompetent parenting and education, work against this.

But this is something that needs to be addressed by education, not political rhetoric. For example, our Year 9 students (boys around 14-15) undergo a tough hiking camp, which really tests their mettle. However, a careful program of preparation guides them to be up for the challenge, and the vast majority, somewhat fearful at first, say that the 6 day hike was something really important in their lives. Tellingly, the Yr 9 staff delay the process of the lads electing their representatives till after the camp - that way, their peers can judge them on how well they met this challenge.

Importantly, the camp is not only about developing resilience and individual skills - it is also about working co-operatively in teams...

So, I agree there is a potential danger if a society does not promote independent skills in children, wraps them in cotton wool, or leaves them with a mentality of excessive dependence on others. But the answer is not libertarian rhetoric, it is pragmatic educational programs, designed by people who know what they are doing, to allow adolescents to grow as individuals, and be able to make more and more mature decisions.

That's a fine example of how it should be done. I went through the same sort of thing at a technical climbing summer camp from 13 to 16. We had wilderness survival training each year, which culminated in a "solo" experience in the woods where we were required to spend time alone practicing our skills. Overnight for the first year, then two days, then five days. We were supplied with basic rations and appropriate clothing but had to find and purify our own water. On my first solo I decided to test myself by not taking a sleeping bag and taking only a Space Blanket, one of those thin mylar reflective emergency blankest to sleep under.

What I learned was that you can use one to help you survive, but you'll do damned little sleeping under one unless you're absolutely exhausted.

Decision, action, consequence. I learned a hell of a lot from spending a sleepless, shivering night alone in the Colorado high country...like how much wood it actually takes to keep a fire going all night long...and it's a lot.

We were all carefully, but covertly monitored by camp counselors, one of whom did come in to my camp to check on me about midnight. I was miserable but declined to take the sleeping bag he brought with him.

Please note that I don't generally advocate unmitigated consequences where such consequences are permanently harmful. That doesn't mean that I mind them if they are unpleasant or stressful, even in the long term.

But codding kids is creating a generation of pasty, flabby, incompetent, dependent nominees for the Darwin Awards, and I loathe the notion that America is becoming so weak and ineffectual because of this liberal infantilization of our youth.

[Seth]

It's not the baby that is the problem.

Well, that's good to hear. This must mean you no longer think at-will abortion for juveniles is necessary. Adoption being the appropriate remedy.

It is the social stigma and mental trauma (induced by society's prudish and religious attitudes to sex) that come with being potentially taken advantage of by some old lecher.

Once again, you don't understand that pain and damage and power etc can be other than physical. Libertarians just can't seem to grasp this. Although, once again, I suspect you grasp it fine, but it rips a giant hole in your ideology.

Let's see, half of all children 12 and over are engaged in sexual activity, girls give boys blow-jobs as a routine thing because it's "something nice we can do for a boy we like" (see "Sexy Baby"), they have sex with each other and it is far from uncommon for a horny girl to be the aggressor with an older man she admires and she's being "taken advantage of?"

Really?

Maybe so, but as I've said, if there's coercion, force or fraud involved there's an appropriate legal remedy. Social stigma and the resulting "mental trauman" (read "shame") is a non-fatal consequence that is very effective at producing more responsible behavior for those girls who actually give a fuck about social approval in communities where fucking older men is actually stigmatized socially, which isn't everywhere. In many coteries fucking a desirable teacher or some other admired older man (or woman for that matter) is a symbol of victory and pride among peers, so your supposed moral opprobrium is hardly as routine or damaging as you claim it is.

What does not kill them, makes them strong. Sometimes the weak ones succumb to their mental weaknesses, and they need to be cared for and counseled and brought around to understanding that getting fucked by, and even getting pregnant by an older man (or a peer) is not the end of the world, it's just unpleasant.

But if she voluntarily made the choice to do the act, her partner should not be made to suffer for her indiscretion.

[Seth]

Yeah, I assume the line is a biological adult. But even then, his argument isn't limited to that. He could equally apply his argument for an 8 year old girl. What doesn't kill them only makes them stronger, am i right??

Exactly. Seth's argument is, to say the least, undermined by this. The fact that almost all the girls listed were raped even if you ignore the age of consent concept does nothing to detract from the absurdity of the claim that puberty is an acceptable criterion for someone to be fucked. Criteria will always have to include emotional maturity and relative power between two persons.

Trust you to cite the exception as justification for the rule. Your argument is completely destroyed by the very fact you cite that the girls were all raped.

Puberty is merely the milepost. Consent is always a required element.

[Hermit]

Yeah, I assume the line is a biological adult. But even then, his argument isn't limited to that. He could equally apply his argument for an 8 year old girl. What doesn't kill them only makes them stronger, am i right??

Exactly. Seth's argument is, to say the least, undermined by this. The fact that almost all the girls listed were raped even if you ignore the age of consent concept does nothing to detract from the absurdity of the claim that puberty is an acceptable criterion for someone to be fucked. Criteria will always have to include emotional maturity and relative power between two persons.

Trust you to cite the exception as justification for the rule. Your argument is completely destroyed by the very fact you cite that the girls were all raped.

Puberty is merely the milepost. Consent is always a required element.

Exceptions to what rule? Anyway, there are well over a hundred individuals listed, and they are just the ones between 5 and 11 years of age, and they only the ones that got pregnant and only the ones that got to the stage of giving birth, and only the ones that have actually been reported, and only the ones whose reports were found by someone who collated them in that Wikipedia page. There must be a whole lot more girls who have reached puberty well before the age of consent. The fact that the listed girls were raped is irrelevant. You said any girl is ok to fuck provided she has reached puberty and has consented. Would this not mean that it's ok to fuck any of them provided she consents?

[pErvinalia]

It was good for them, Hermit. What didn't kill them made them stronger!

[Seth]

Puberty is merely the milepost. Consent is always a required element.

Exceptions to what rule?

The rule that horny teenage girls like to fuck.

Anyway, there are well over a hundred individuals listed, and they are just the ones between 5 and 11 years of age, and they only the ones that got pregnant and only the ones that got to the stage of giving birth, and only the ones that have actually been reported, and only the ones whose reports were found by someone who collated them in that Wikipedia page.

And how many billions of girls are there on the planet, pray tell? I don't think I have enough zeros in my computer to place after the decimal point and before the numeral representing the percentage your examples represent.

Just go online and take a gander at the Skype and video-chat examples of EMO girls and adolescents of every age, shape, size, sex and description jacking off their boyfriends, masturbating, inserting sex toys, performing oral sex, getting naked and engaging in all kinds of overt sexual behavior on line and then try to tell me with a straight face that teenage girls don't like to fuck and that they are being "taken advantage of" by creepy old men.

There must be a whole lot more girls who have reached puberty well before the age of consent.

I would say that there are a lot of girls who have reached puberty before they ought to give consent, but my whole point is that there is no "age of consent" in biology, there is only reproductive capacity and sexual desire in biology, and it's up to the parents and the girl herself to determine when indulging those sexual fantasies is appropriate.

The fact that the listed girls were raped is irrelevant. You said any girl is ok to fuck provided she has reached puberty and has consented. Would this not mean that it's ok to fuck any of them provided she consents?

The fact that they were raped is entirely relevant. Rape is a crime. Consensual sex is not, or should not be a crime. It wouldn't be a crime if most of those girls had consensually had sex with a male partner who was an age-peer. It would be passed off as "child's play" gone wrong. If it's consensual, it's consensual, regardless of how long the penis has been around. It may be socially unacceptable and it might lead to opprobrium against both parties, but that's fine with me because it's not the government interfering in a private matter.

Imprisoning an older man for having consensual sex with a younger woman is no more morally supportable than stoning an innocent female rape victim to death because she can't provide three male witnesses to her rape so she is convicted of adultery.

The key is, and will always be consent. If an older man has sex with a mentally-retarded girl who is mentally incapable of understanding what's happening and giving consent, which to be valid has to be informed consent as to the nature of the acts, that's rape.

But you can't tell me that some teenager in hot pants and a cut-off tee with no bra who teases and fondles an older man and asks him to fuck her isn't giving informed consent to that act. It just wouldn't meet the basic test for rationality or logic.

[JimC]

Seth wrote:

...But you can't tell me that some teenager in hot pants and a cut-off tee with no bra who teases and fondles an older man and asks him to fuck her isn't giving informed consent to that act. It just wouldn't meet the basic test for rationality or logic....

Careful, your Lolita complex is showing, you might need to wipe the drool from your chin...

[Hermit]

It seems to me that biology has provided an excellent indicator of the change between a protected child and a presumptively sexually mature young person: for girls it's menarche

I vote for the good old days when [...] you were a woman when you became capable of having babies.

I would say that there are a lot of girls who have reached puberty before they ought to give consent

Your latest post doesn’t seem consistent with some of your earlier ones, but never mind, we now agree that menarche is not sufficient to declare a girl to be fuckable.

there is no "age of consent" in biology

Perhaps I’m wrong, but I can’t recall anyone other than you saying it is.

Anyway, I suppose we now agree that puberty may be a necessary precondition for fucking, but it is not a sufficient one. What we could do next, is to either quibble over the age of consent or if one across the board age can even be defined, and here I agree with you. The fact that the age of consent in various jurisdictions is pegged at anywhere between 12 and 21 years is pretty strong indication that at least some of them are just wrong, and there are reasonable grounds to argue that all of them are. The most obvious weakness, as has been pointed out previously, is that a teenager is incapable of consenting to having sex one day before reaching the age of 16, but 24 hours later that is no longer the case. To my knowledge nobody has ever been able to explain how the stroke of midnight marking the day a person turns 16 suddenly causes an ability to consent to sex.

Looking at the relevant laws in more detail, at least here in Australia, it turns out that nobody even pretends that age of consent laws are a hard and fast rule based on hard and fast facts. The judgements in court cases prove that. Individual circumstances pertaining to any and every case of alleged underage sex are always taken into account in order to come to an appropriate verdict. The verdicts range from a crime not even being recorded despite the fact that the accused has (or have) entered a guilty plea to charges of having had sex with a ten year old girl to the handing down of the maximum possible period of incarceration of someone who has plead not guilty to having had sex with someone under the age of consent.

So, why have them at all? The laws are guidelines, the aim of which is to minimise cases of child abuse much the same way our blanket definitions of what is a safe speed in a vehicle on a public road. Everybody knows that it is not necessarily unsafe to travel at, say, 75 km/h on a road signposted with 60 k speed limit, and the smarter drivers are fully aware that under particular conditions it is not safe to drive along the same stretch 10 km/h below the speed limit. We have these unreasonable and arbitrary speed limits because without them there'd be a lot more accidents, injuries and deaths