Amos had a live debate earlier. It was quite painful to watch. I was disappointed in his performance, but I can’t blame him. Debating is hard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmbZf_8k7JU

People, I have wonderful and joyous news to bring to you – ANTIPEDOPHOBE AKTION YOUTUBE CHANNEL IS BACK!!! 🙂
I still can believe my eyes, but here it is, one of the two very best pro-MAP You Tube channels (Cartograph’s one being the second one), with all its videos (as well as some new additions):
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqpGPc4NSxMIJRPP9fmXm1Q
Tom, haven’t I just said that your blogroll is exactly as long as it should be, and no new additions is needed… Well, I was just a small bit wrong: there is still a place for one last link – the Antipedophobe Aktion. Once had it on your blogroll – remember it? – and now it’s time to put it back there. It deserves it.

On the topic of techno-tethering: https://tomocarroll.wordpress.com/?s=techno-tethering, I see from Steve Diamond’s blog OurLoveFrontier that the State Department announced on October 30th that passports of people who are required to register as sex offenders because of an offense involving a minor will be marked with a “unique identifier” that will read:
“The bearer was convicted of a sex offense against a minor, and is a covered sex offender pursuant to 22 United States Code Section 212b(c)(l).”
The article here: narsol.org/2017/11/passport-identifiers-will-not-accomplish-intended-purpose/goes on to say: “Ostensibly, the rationale underlying International Megan’s Law and policies like it, such as its namesake, Megan’s Law? – ?the legal and pseudo-colloquial term for the sex offender registry? – ?is this: those on the registry have a high rate of re-offending; therefore, their international movements ought to be tracked and destination counties put on notice when those on the registry travel abroad.”

Check this out, About a disabled man who was banned from having sex with his partner…A sure sign of the times. The case where a man with the mental age of 8.5 comes to mind:http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/the-disabled-man-banned-from-having-sex/20235#.WZ2sLvl96Uk

******LIBERATION OF THE YOUNG. PART 1: CHILDREN******
Once I promised to post a long essay about child liberation on Skeptiko forum. Being currently unable to do so because of unfriendly reception of my pro-intergenerational sexuality views, I decided to turn it into two or three guest-blogs for Heretic TOC. These blogs would not be published as an uninterrupted sequence – each one of them takes a lot of time and effort to formulate, and I have other projects to pursue, so the next part will not be too soon (probably, in several months). I encourage all readers of this essay here to express their opinion about what I wrote – especially the ones who are raising (or have raised) children of their own. Learning from the parents critically-thinking and open-minded enough not to succumb to a pervasive anti-child sexuality (and anti-paedosexuality) hysteria would be very useful before my future attempt to publish this essay, in its full version, on Skeptiko forum.
***To what degree can a child be free?***
To be free is to be able to enact one’s will without restriction. This freedom of volition is universal to each and every person, no matter of what age. So, a complete freedom for children would be a freedom to act entirely at their own self-determination, without any adult interference. But is such absolute freedom viable in their case? Hardly so, for two main reasons.
First, this freedom does not manifest itself in a void. Its manifestation occurs within an already-existing structure of physical circumstances, social networks and cultural models. Of course, this structure is not permanent; every person – including every child – can and should participate in restructuring of the structures which are already in existence. But to change a structure, children should first enter it and master it, and this entrance and mastery always starts on a local level. They should learn how to act in specific environment they encounter, how to deal with other people and groups they meet in the neighbourhood, how to work with the basics of cultural legacy provided by them by the previous generations in order to criticise, confront and reshape the circumstances that already exist.
Second, the inexperienced nature of children’s actions may easily put them in danger; to leave young children entirely alone, without any attempt to prevent the danger they may evoke by their own activities, is hardly a reasonable choice. Some restriction of actions of young children is simply a necessity.
But this two inevitable limits of children’s freedom should themselves be very strictly limited; without such limitation, they would easily turn into oppression.
First, while children’s engagement with the world they live in starts on a local level, it quickly outgrows and outreaches it. The older children are, the wider is the circles of places they visit, the acquaintances they find and the interests they pursue. It is crucially important that they are not artificially prevented from this natural widening of their activities by adults fearful of the world, people and ideas beyond their immediate reach.
Second, while some safety restrictions on the activities of young children have to be imposed, this restrictions should be adequate, protecting a child only from the actual dangers, not imaginary ones invented by anxious adults. Even protections from actual dangers should never be excessive, and the older – and, subsequently, more experienced and able – the child grows, the less stringent the restrictions should become. And such restrictions should not be exclusively defined by adults; children themselves should participate in formulating them, as much as they are able at their stage of development.
Here we come to the most important moment: development of child’s abilities is gradual (there is no definite line separating childhood from adolescence and adolescence from adulthood), complex (a particular child may develop intellectual skills much earlier than social ones, or vice versa) and individual (the pace and form of development is unique to every specific child). Because of it, I think that the current “fixed age” approach – the notion that children should be forbidden to participate in some activity before they reach a precise age – is wrong and should be abandoned. Instead of it, I prefer the “ability, not age” approach which was once advocated by radical child liberationist organisation Americans for Society Free from Age Restrictions (ASFAR): children should not be deprived of any liberties solely on the basis of their age, and no fundamental status separation between “legal minors” and “legal adults” should be enforced. In principle, children should be entitled with all the liberties that adults have. Yet the enactment of these liberties, while primarily decided by the children themselves, may be limited by necessary restrictions imposed by the adults from their families and communities as long as a particular child is evidently unable to safely engage in a specific activity, to the extent it is needed to ensure safety. The degree of such restrictions should be determined together by adults and children in every concrete case.
***Open family in an open community***
There is one thing that should be stated clearly: I think we cannot completely eliminate familial structures in society. Family-like structures are the best for child-rearing, at least the early one. These structures do not need to resemble modern nuclear family. It may be gay and lesbian families, or polyamourous families with more than two people living together in a loving relationship, or extended families that include relatives beyond the initial couple, or commune-like families with close friends being invited in the family circle. But no matter what exact form will familial structures take, they still should be a relatively small groups of people living together, bound by shared a sense of kinship and – most importantly – by children they may rear. There could hardly be better people to provide the initial environment for the child development than the primary familial caretakers since they have the strongest bond to the children they rear, and the strongest interest in raising them. They also know their children better than anyone else, and therefore best of all able to evaluate their children’s development, and decide what restrictions may be needed. These caretakers may be child’s biological parents, but it is not necessary; yet, further in the text, I will refer to them as to “parents”, just for the sake of simplicity.
While family, with the parental love and help children receive within it, is the best place for their first years, it also contain in itself an inherent threat that should not be forgotten – a threat of love turning into excessive desire for control and misguided fear of danger. These passions, if dominating parents’ minds, may become a hardest obstacle on a children’s path of learning and development. There is two best precautions against such irrational and counterproductive tendencies. First is knowledge and goodwill on the parents’ own part: they should understand their children’s needs – physical, social, sexual, intellectual – and respect their freedom to fulfill these needs themselves as much as they can, fighting back their own baseless anxieties. The second is openness of the family – internal one, in the form of communication and cooperation between children and parents, and external one, in form of parents allowing children (and themselves) to engage in an environment, as well as communal and informational networks, beyond the family. The latter precaution works much better, of course, if these communal and informational networks are themselves based on freedom and equality, rather than on hierarchical subordination and ideological censorship; otherwise, they can become an impediment in parents’ self-understanding and self-restriction, rather than a beneficial factor.
***Internal openness of the family
and children’s participatory activities***
I want to begin this section with a shortened quote from Tom’s “Paedophilia: the Radical Case”. Here is a description of a practice adopted by family therapist Larry Constantine and his wife in relation to their two daughters, four and six years old:
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“Does Joy have a right to decide on her own bedtime? Well, the way to test that is to ask whether by choosing her bedtime there are any dire consequences against her own best interests, or against the legitimate rights of her parents. Is it going to make her tired, irritable and generally a pain in the ass to herself and her parents next day? In the case of the correct bedtime for Joy what happened was that she was given the opportunity to stay up late. She did get irritable. She was a nuisance. But at least she realized it and was persuaded by her parents as to the source of the problem. Nevertheless, she still didn’t go to bed at a sensible time. In the end she asked to be put to bed at a ‘sensible’ time even against her own protestations. Her sister, just two years older, had no such need to be given a set time, enforced by her parents. She was able to see the problem in going to bed late and duly packed herself off. The moral of the story is not that children can always arrive at a solution in this way: if Joy had claimed she was old enough to ride her bike out on the roads, Dad couldn’t reasonably take the risk of letting her find out her limitations. But it does show that a certain reluctance to use arbitrary authority can reveal that it may be appropriate, for instance, to accord a right to a six-year-old that a four-year-old is not really capable of using properly.”
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This example shows how children and adults may work together in a familial setting to formulate some rational and moderate rules: by allowing children to “test the limits” in not-too-dangerous way, if they are determined to do so. Of course, it is a proper activity for parents to prevent distress for their progeny, and they should try to persuade the kids not to try something that may hurt them. But if the kids insist to have the things their way despite parents’ arguments, they should have a chance to try and learn by their own experience, even if unpleasant one – as long as such attempts of learning are leading just to passing discomfort, but not to severe and lasting harm (in such cases, parents may justifiably forbid the activity). Beyond allowing kids self-learning, such acceptance of “limit-testing” may show the parents that they were underestimating their children’s abilities – it is possible that a child is able to handle difficulties effectively. In such cases, parents should accept that were they were wrong and their children were right.
Such participatory approach works beyond routine problems such as bedtime. It is also useful when children are familiarising themselves with art and literature. While very young kids are usually content with children’s books and movies, older ones will inevitably become curious about the “adult” genres such as action, thriller or horror. Here I can describe my own experience: when I, being about 8 years of age, developed an interest in horror, may parents allowed me to watch a not-too-harsh horror movie with them. I was quite scared and quickly left the room. In the later talk with my parents, we decided together that it is a bit too early for me to watch such frightening movies; yet I was allowed to try again when I would deem myself ready. I tried again being 12 years old, was not scared that time and watched nearly everything since then. Allowing me to test my limits was a useful tactic in dealing with a potential cause of distress. It was also significant for me personally, since confirmation that I was not subjected to arbitrary restrictions upheld my freedom and dignity. And it was personally important for my parents, because they had to check the validity of their own evaluations of my abilities.
Another area where such communication and cooperation between adults and children is strongly needed is education. Learning is one of the primary activities of every child, a willful and exciting one. So, it is important that this natural process of learning is not destroyed by educational methods which is counterproductive in the case of a specific child. So, both the methods of education and the site where it happens (which is the site where the substantial part of childhood is spent) should be a joint choice of children themselves, parents and educators, with children’s rescindable consent being the vital part of it. Such joint effort make the choice properly individualised and suitable for a particular child: for example, some children may feel themselves well in a boarding school, while others will dislike it. Ideally, the process of education itself should be participatory, with children playing a leading role in defining it– with educators as their guides and supporters.
This participatory, inclusive form of familial and educational decision-making allows parents and educators to express their “positive authority” – the respect and sympathy they have in children’s eyes – without turning it into oppressive “negative authority” which ignores children’s own intentions; and it allows them to subject their own notions about children’s abilities and needs to evidential checks. It also provides children with a sense of freedom and dignity; it allows them to learn by experience , to test themselves in practice; and it teaches them to make choices – including collective choices which includes dealing and debating with other people.
So, why adults are so unwilling to make decisions together with children, so reluctant to let kids to take a part in a shared choice-making process? I think that the root of this refusal to give up a “negative authority” is the deep fear of child’s social agency – agency that allows the child to become more than a passive recipient of parental love by questioning and even challenging the parents’ preferences – preferences, which, while being sincerely benevolent, may still be misguided and counterproductive. And, as I said already, the dark side of love is control; we desire power over the ones to whom we feel affectionate, to make them unable to defy or reject the expressions of our affection to them. This desire has to be resisted by any loving person; and to be resisted, it has to be honestly identified and accepted. In the case of modern parents, such identification, let alone resistance, is especially hard because of societal approval – if not enforcement – of such controlling attitudes. But understanding of this shadow side of loving is a crucial step toward adults’ acceptance of children’s agency and liberty.
***External openness of the family
and children’s exploratory activities***
The exclusivity of parental love, however, can – and should – be put under even harsher trial: the initiatory and consensual social and sexual activities of children which involve people outside the familial circle.
But to start discussing this part of children’s liberties, we should first take a look at the most basic liberty which were provided to kids even in the times when the very conception of child liberation was entirely unthinkable and unheard of: the liberty to explore a physical environment, freedom to roam the world outside of home and play there. Until the recent epoch of “child protection”, children’s need to acquaint themselves with the neighbourhood was something too natural to question. This practical acquaintance with the world was one of greatest sources of enjoyment and initial self-actualisation for countless generations of kids. I, myself, recall with warmth my long and adventurous journeys which I had being, probably, just about 7 years of age, in the liberated 1990s Russia. My parents were not much anxious about me; they just told me not to go alone deep into the woods which were nearby our house in the city outskirts, and allowed me to explore any other area. In fact, the openness to the world was a norm everywhere: schools were open to any casual visitor, which were useful to the former, grown-up pupils (it was an old Soviet-Russian tradition to pay occasional friendly visits to your former schoolteachers).
Nowadays, the situation changed completely: children are increasingly bound within the home walls – nearly all the time they are not bound within the school walls, effectively; if they are allowed to play outside, it is usually no further than the local yard, and a supervising adult is oftentimes somewhere nearby. Schools themselves have changed, too; in Russia, they have become little fortresses, with security checks and guards at the entrance, with no adults except school staff and students’ parents being welcome. And this Russian tendency is just a reflection of a general, global tendency to deprive children of the free exploration of their physical environment.
Why the parents’ and educators’ fears concerning children’s safety has grown both so strongly and so quickly? Modern kids are hardly less able to handle themselves on a street. And, if they do face some difficulty, there are always some adults in the vicinity who may consult and assist children if the need arises. Yet this unsupervised children’s social contact with the adults outside of the familial and educational circles is exactly what makes modern parents and educators so afraid and anxious, since it may lead to a sexual contact between them. And long-term relationships formed by children with the adults not being specifically socially authorised to deal with them are even more terrifying, since the possibility of such relationship being developed into inclusion of sexual activities is much higher than the one of transitory contacts. The sheer horror of child sexuality – leading, in turn, to the horror of intergenerational sexuality and paedosexuality – is both the primary obstacle to the child’s exploratory activities and, if the intergenerational sex is being discovered by the general society, the justification of cruel, sometimes truly devastative repression of all participants, adults and children alike.
This horror, however, as all Heretic TOC commenters know well for themselves, is baseless; the actual evidence strongly points to the possibility, and prevalence, of the consensual and harmless sex-including relationships between adults and children. Repeating this evidence here is not necessary, since it was discussed on this blog countless times. What is necessary is to describe the possible scheme of interaction between parents and children’s adult friends and lovers.
Nowadays, any consensual sexual activity between children and adults have to be kept in secret, since the disclosure will almost certainly lead to the forcible destruction of both sex-including relationships and the lives of all who participated in it. Yet, if the society and culture will change for the better – and they will, sooner or later, since neither repressive ideologies nor witch-hunts they ignite are immortal – it may become possible for children adults to engage in friendships, including sexual friendships, openly. In such saner and more humane world, it would be a common ethical demand for a children’s adult friends to disclose themselves to the children’s parents, so the latter would be aware where and with whom their children are. If the intergenerational friendship include sexual elements, children’s parents should be informed about their existence by their children’s adult lovers as well. After that, parents would be able to monitor their children’s condition and reaction to these friendships, sex-including or not, and to interfere if the genuine threat of physical or psychological violence arises. And, as we can say with our knowledge of the modern child-adult friendships, sexual and non-sexual alike, such threat, and the real need to interfere, would be a rare exception rather than a general rule.
Such monitoring of the children’s relationships need not turn to an pervasive and intrusive surveillance: what is needed is mutual trust and open dialogue between children and parents, so any actual or potential distresses may be disclosed by children themselves, and discussed between them and parents.
This trust-based, rather than supervision-based, approach to safety of children will have all the positive features I described in the previous part about the participatory decision-making in the familial and educational settings. The same trust-based relationships can, and should, be the basic principle of the communal life and interaction. In such atmosphere of mutual friendliness and openness, rather than covert hostility and isolation, it would be easy to parents to acquaint themselves with their children’s adult friends, and understand whether are they the suitable persons to engage with their kids. And such informal, non-obtrusive monitoring is not limited to the parents; it may be easily performed by a community in general, so cruel or reckless deeds towards children won’t be something easily hidden.
There is no objective reason for parents to preemptively prevent children’s willing self-socialisation and sexual playfulness, including the one involving adults. Yet there is a powerful and hidden subjective reason for that – another dark side of love beside control, the possession. It is simple jealousy, I think, which lies at the root of rejection and suppression of both child sensuality and sociality. Parent-child relationships – and I mean entirely standard relationships, not the ones involving explicit incest – are sensual as well as social. Mutually pleasant bodily contacts between the infants and their caretakers are the first links to someone besides themselves that infants experience, the first interpersonal bond they feel; all further sensuality and sociality grows from these first fundamental contacts. These first contacts are also the initiatory stage of parental love. Yet infancy passes quickly, and in childhood the exploratory activities of kids transcend the family limits; these activities can and should lead to the formation of the new social and sensual links and bonds, now by the children themselves. It is necessary for parents to understand and to accept that, and to share their love and tenderness towards their children with the persons of children’s own choice.
When the modern Western culture will overcome its irrational fear of child sexuality (and this time will inevitably come, sooner or later), social engagement of children will be greatly improved. Being no longer forced to remain within the limits of familial and educational relationships, children will freely engage in a communal life and activity, which will diversify and intensify their physical, emotional and intellectual development, will allow them to choose from a variety of environmental, social and cultural options presented to them. And, as children will grow and turn into the adolescents, it help them to formulate their own worldview that will not be limited or restricted by the one of their family and their teachers. These worldviews may lead to the truly painful conflicts between them and their caretakers – the conflicts which will be the topic to the second part of my essay, the one concerning much more difficult and complex problems of adolescents and their liberties.