Stunning comeback for a great champ

He’s done it again! Supergeek Bruce Rind, chess master, stats wizard, revered within the research world but reviled by know-nothing politicians, has hammered yet another nail in the coffin of the CSA trauma thesis, in what I believe will ultimately be regarded as by far his most important paper ever.

Yes, yes, I can hear your scepticism already. Don’t get too excited, you will say. We have learnt the hard way that people are swayed by stories, not statistics, so whatever Rind says will either be trashed or ignored. Intellectually, the trauma thesis has been in the coffin for years but its undead power to terrorise has never been more potent.

True, but for how long? As I argued last year, things can change very quickly in the face of the unexpected, such as a pandemic coming out of the blue. When the time is right real facts will start to count, and prophets who were not honoured will come to be heeded.

And don’t knock the numbers too much. Remember, the antis were in such a panic over the fabled pre-millennium Rind et al. meta-analysis that the paper was condemned by both chambers of the United States Congress, in a unique act of anti-research vandalism never seen before or since in those houses. This devastating verdict proved all but a knockout blow to the careers of Rind and his colleagues.

But Rind is one helluva fighter. Soon back in the ring, he has been quietly boxing his way back up through the ranks over the years. Bout after bout, paper after paper, his reputation as a smart mover and a hard hitter has been unstoppable. Sure, the fight promoters (who award the research grants, the professorships, the conference platforms, the whole apparatus of academic career advancement) still shun him as box office poison, but talent will always have its day in the end.

Also, this time Rind has a positive story to go with his numbers. Ironically, considering the fuss it caused, the notorious meta-analysis was intrinsically quite limited. It’s core message was that CSA is not usually very harmful. Big deal! Hardly compelling enough to bring age of consent laws tumbling down like the walls of Jericho.

By sharp contrast, researchers such as Theo Sandfort, Paul Okami, and Allie Kilpatrick have been saying for decades that good research would not start from the assumption child-adult sexual encounters are harmful, or predefine them as “abuse”. Likewise, interest should not be confined to what type of harm had been caused, how severe, in what circumstances, how to prevent contacts, etc. Instead, they have insisted, there is a need to look across the whole range, from encounters being experienced as “very negative” at one end of the spectrum, through milder middling positions to “very positive” at the other end.

Rind was himself fully onboard with the full-spectrum approach but the big problem was always going to be getting hold of the data. To be convincing you need large, expensive-to-conduct surveys. But the funders, mainly via government grants, were bound to be commissars of the child abuse industry – people whose careers depend on persuading “victims” they have been traumatised and on then being funded to fix things through needless drugs (anti-depressive, etc.) and therapies. So official backing for the best kind of research was never likely to be forthcoming.

One way around this problem was to forget trying to do research from original surveys. Instead, you could hunt around for large studies of a general nature that had already been completed, ones uncontroversially covering a wide range of sexual activity. Re-analysis of these studies might yield previously unnoticed information about childhood sexual activity, including with older partners. For Rind, the classic surveys by Alfred Kinsey and his colleagues turned out to be the most significant case in point. The Kinsey data indeed turned out to be a rich source, yielding important new findings published in three papers appearing from 2014-16 with co-author Max Welter.

But Kinsey’s work had been conducted many decades earlier, based on childhoods as experienced very differently, up to a century or more ago; and Kinsey himself became a controversial figure after his death. What was now needed was a more up-to-date big database, and one of impeccable authority.

Such was the Finnish Child Victim Survey published (in Finnish) in 2014, an enormous population-based sample of sixth and ninth grade schoolchildren (aged mainly 12 and 15) in Finland. Participants were given personal privacy. In the first survey they answered questions via paper and pencil in a room alone, while in the second two surveys they answered in classrooms on computers by accessing a website.

In Rind’s paper,  three samples were merged and analysed from Finnish victimization surveys conducted in 1988, 2008, and 2013. Each sample was nationally representative of Finnish students in the selected grades. There were 32,145 participants in the pooled sample. Collectively, 5.1% of them reported relevant early sexual experiences with someone at least five years older.

One great thing here is that the Finnish research was so unimpeachably official. Funded by the government, it had the involvement and backing of the country’s national police college. The survey covered children’s experiences of all sorts of crime, such as theft and violent assault. But on the sexual side they were able to describe their experiences without having to self-label as a “victim”. Also particularly informative was the fact that the children were asked about their responses to sexual contacts with their peers as well as with people significantly older than themselves. This enabled important comparisons to be made.

A few years ago I focused on the results of this study and other Scandinavian surveys that were pioneering what had previously been almost unthinkable: actually asking the kids themselves about their experiences. The results I foregrounded were amazing, as many heretics here will be aware. But what Rind has dug out of the Finnish goldmine is vastly more so, and not just for the numbers: in my view he has also managed to give a compelling narrative about those numbers, including a strong account of how the CSA industry has been misleading the world for decades.

The bottom line is that the findings – yes, I know I’m keeping you waiting for them but the conclusion is even more important than the details – strongly validate the view that children can consent, can take a lot of pleasure and satisfaction from doing so, and that it is willing participation that overwhelmingly makes the difference between being harmed and not harmed. As Rind says, there have been hints of such validation from a number of studies in recent years, notably in a doctoral thesis by Nathan Daly that was discussed briefly in the comments here. But the new findings from Rind are more convincing. So let us at last turn to them.

Starting with the boys, no fewer than 78% reacted positively at the time to their first “minor-older” sexual experience, a figure similar to that for boys sexually involved with peer-aged partners (77%). In retrospect,  the rate of positive reactions to minor-older sex dropped somewhat to 69%, but so did the rate for boy-peer sex (67%).

Rind noted that for boys in the general population — as opposed to clinical or forensic cases, or selected anecdotes — sexual events with significantly older persons are mostly not experienced as a unique ordeal, characterised by such conditions or responses as “toxic stress” or “anxiety, hostility, and suicidality”, as CSA researchers have commonly asserted over the last four decades. He said the data on positive reactions suggest that these sexual events are “more often perceived as appetitive than aversive” by boys in the general population. In other words, they like it and want more.

Girls sexually involved with older persons, by contrast, stood out among the four participant-partner age-class groups as most prone to react negatively. Nevertheless, half did not react negatively at the time, while over a third reacted positively, which as Rind said, “is inconsistent with the trauma view of unique ordeal”.

So far, so startling, especially as regards the boys. But when we come to Rind’s analyses of “personal and situational factors” his findings become revealing in a more fine-grained way. Mainstream CSA research, he points out, has entirely ignored considering what characteristics might enhance positive reactions. His work identifies them.

Starting with personal characteristics, he finds that the age of the younger person does make a difference, but not entirely along the lines that might be expected. While the students in general reported a higher level of positive response with increasing age, boys aged 12-14 in the minor-older group had the highest rate of positive reactions among all groups (75%).

Rates of positive reactions were very similar for girls with partners 5–9 years older (52%) and girls with peers (48%). When their older partners were identified as friends, rather than relatives or strangers, girls reacted positively in two-thirds of cases. This age difference of 5–9 years in girl-older sex, along with the older partner being a friend, Rind comments, “conforms to the pubertal marriage arrangements that were normative throughout most of human history before modern complex societies”.

As for type of sexual activity, full sexual intercourse is often described as the “most severe” form of “abuse” that can be inflicted on children, leading to the greatest trauma. But that is not how the Finnish youngsters reported it. For them it emerged as the least negative and most positive form of sex. It was a finding that prompted Rind to suggest that future discussion should abandon the false “severest” concept and move on. Instead, studies should focus on why intercourse is reacted to so positively. Reasons might include that achieving intercourse in minor-older sex normally depends on “greater comfort in the interaction”. In other words, things don’t go that far unless the partners have a real rapport.

Bringing the full range of factors together in the Discussion section, Rind sets out three scenarios showing combinations of younger and older partners in different circumstances that illustrate the likelihood of things going well or badly, based on his statistical analyses:

  • A minor under age 12 with a male relative older by 20 or more years, who uses coercion to achieve sexual touching, in a one-off incident in recent times. The chance of the minor reacting positively is 1% for both boys and girls. This scenario, says Rind, illustrates the incest model, which was built on the rape model (involving men with women) in the 1970s, and which soon became the standard model for understanding all minor-older sex. “The near-zero likelihood of reacting positively,” he says, “is consistent with the trauma view, where negative reactions are expected in nearly all cases.”
  • The second illustration is taken from the Sandfort study, in which Dutch boys in the early 1980s, who were mostly pubescent (12–14), were involved multiple times (more than 10) generally in sexual touching with adult male friends often 10–19 years older, who were the initiators of the sex but used no coercion. Here, the chance of a boy’s reacting positively would be 56%. When boys were the initiators, the likelihood would rise to 81%. This scenario is “highly inconsistent with the trauma view”.
  • Thirdly, there is a situation like the one portrayed in the film classic Summer of ’42, in which a 15-year-old boy in 1942 is strongly erotically attracted to an adult woman 5–9 years older, with whom he becomes friends. Sex eventually ensues, with vaginal intercourse once, in the absence of any coercion. The likelihood of subjectively reacting positively here would be 99%. If this scenario had been a 15-year-old girl with a young man instead, the likelihood would fall to 21%. But if the intercourse had been frequent (more than 10 times), the likelihood would rise to 85%.

In short, he says, the analyses indicate that minor-older sex is not utterly different to other sexual encounters and inevitably worse. It actually works in a similar way to minor-peer sex. Minor-older sex is not uniformly the ordeal implied in the incest model; rather, subjective reactions to it vary by context – and there are plenty of contexts in which it can be a positive, even very positive, experience.

All in all, Rind does a great job. The “purity” of the Finnish dataset has helped enormously, enabling him to expose clear sets of probabilities. The 1998 meta-analysis, by contrast, had been based on aggregating numerous early studies that had used a variety of different methods, making comparisons difficult, such that important conclusions – especially as regards the difference consent makes – could be made only tentatively, as a hypothesis not a firm finding.

As you might expect, though, I have a few reservations. It is unfortunate that relatively little emerged from the data about sexual experiences in early childhood, leaving the impression that these are very likely to fit the incest/trauma model, especially if the dyad is a girl of single-digit age with an adult male old enough to be her father or grandfather. But this is clearly not true, as Susan Clancy demonstrated in her book The Trauma Myth. In all circumstances, the bottom line is that adults, and even older children, should not impose themselves on younger kids. Loving, respectful, invited intimacy (that might start by a kid coming for a cuddle or just grabbing your dick: it happens) is always going to be another matter though. Every case should be judged on its merits, not on dogma.

adultadult2.png

Rind’s Finnish study powerfully compares minor-peer relations to minor-adult (“older”). Missing from this work, though, is any comparison of minor-adult with adult-adult relations. But his earlier papers with Welter did include this dimension, as shown in this wonderful graphic, which is based on these papers. A key feature here is the “Females with Males” response. The low rate of positive recall by girls who had sexual contact with a man (17%), looks a very poor advertisement for this type of contact. But the positive response rate of grown women to their sex with men (18%), is also very low, apparently showing they take a dim view of their heterosexual experience regardless of age! As men have complained possibly since our species evolved, females are mysterious and hard to please! This is an important issue, certainly, but not one with any clear bearing on ages of consent.

 

 

 

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Cyril

according to a new study, “More than half of the victims did not label their experience as sexual abuse, and this apparent lack of awareness about what constitutes abuse was particularly evident among male victims.”

Cyril

63 genes are found to influence the brain development alteration during and after “child abuse” (whatever it means):

  • Tian et al., 2022: “Genetic influence on brain volume alterations related to self-reported childhood abuse” in the Front. Neurosci., Sec. “Neurogenomics”, doi: 10.3389/fnins.2022.1019718
Cyril

in a new study (“both childhood and adulthood”) “sexual trauma (…) was not associated with the predicted blunted affective profile” and with “Left amygdala” changes:

Cyril

the main thing here is that “Left amygdala habituation to threat associated with repeated trauma (i.e., “repeated ST in both childhood and adulthood”) but not ST”, so that one may suppose that childhood sex experience was not traumatic at all. On the other hand, “Developmental timing of ST did not influence startle magnitude.”

Cyril

the experience of CSA does not predict alcohol/marijuana use in manhood: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chiabu.2022.105859

Cyril

a new classification of CSA: https://doi.org/10.1080/24732850.2021.1999055

Cyril

a new study (Ruiter et al., 2022) revealed that among the other forms of “child maltreatment” sexual abuse is the least predictor of psychopathy. The only statistically significant correlation is sexabuse-lifestyle (it does not contain zero in confidence interval, see Shadish & Haddock, 1994) which is small (r = .09, just as in the Rind et al., 1998, meta-analysis): https://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0272704

Cyril

a new study Diana E. Peragine, Malvina N. Skorska, Jessica A. Maxwell, Emily A. Impett, Doug P. VanderLaan, “The Risks and Benefits of Being “Early to Bed”: Toward a Broader Understanding of Age at Sexual Debut and Sexual Health in Adulthood,” The Journal of Sexual Medicine, 2022, ISSN 1743-6095, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsxm.2022.06.005 (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1743609522014874) has revealed that:

When defined narrowly as first sexual intercourse, earlier sexual debut was associated with adverse sexual events, including non-volitional sex, pregnancy termination and/or loss, and reproductive illness, infection, or injury affecting sexual activity. However, it was also related to healthier sexual function, including less pain during vaginal penetration, better orgasmic functioning, and lower sexual inhibition. When sexual debut was broadened to include pre-coital experiences, earlier sexual contact, like earlier sexual intercourse, was associated with non-volitional sex. However, earlier sexual stimulation and orgasm were unrelated to adverse outcomes. Rather, these related to fewer sexual desire difficulties, and greater sexual excitation. Exploratory mediation analyses revealed later sexual intercourse and orgasm were connected to sexual difficulties through higher sexual inhibition and lower sexual excitation, respectively.

JSM

This is a great and fairly succinct analysis of Rind’s Finnish study. It’s results like these that those “researchers” clinging to the trauma caused by “child sexual abuse model cannot and will not face” because they are too heavily invested in a typically Western sex-negative and life-denying mindset. And these are supposed to be scientists. Maybe we are too close to see it but popular culture seems to be moving in a MAP direction and in spite of its obvious moral message the popular TV series Euphoria is a huge step in the right direction. Airing this show ten years ago would have been unthinkable.

Prue

I mentioned this important study a few blogs ago: Reamy, Kenneth J., and White, Susan E. (1987). “Sexuality in the puerperium: A review,” Archives of Sexual Behavior, 16(2), 165-186 https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01542069&gt
It included overt passages about how “Lactating mothers reported sexual arousal, often to plateau levels of response, during nursing,” and so on.

I’ve just found an interesting qualitative supplement to that:

Lynda Marín, ‘Mother and Child: The Erotic Bond’, from Mother Journeys: Feminists Write about Mothering (1994). You can find a pdf of the chapter at the webpage below:

https://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/MaCTEB.html

Further evidence that there have been some more open-minded, honest and less bigoted feminists, as I’ve started to document by adding some citations to Newgon https://www.newgon.net/wiki/Feminism

Zen Thinker

Just have to put my latest thoughts out there… 🙂

If a revolution in social thinking is to occur, it will almost certainly be via technology.

The public performative aspects of children’s social media are on an accelerating path, towards some kind of highly stylised, sophisticated aesthetic and ideal. It shocks me how rapid the transformation has been towards the child as public performer and public ideal of beauty.

This has profound implications for the minor attracted adult as the child is becoming, performatively, a kind of ersatz supermodel figure who is at the cutting edge of fashion, with an avant-garde good taste and decorum that implicitly suggests wisdom and maturity even at very tender years. This will, in time, deal a crushing blow to the “weak, immature, fragile” child thesis that underpins victimology and the sad self-defeatism of “absolute child purity” narratives.

I am noticing a rapid progression and development on social media towards the beautiful, sophisticated, autonomous child, almost as a staunch, somewhat decadent individualist figure, with power and self-determinism, not victimhood and fragility.

The newfound maturity of the child paradigm will feed into mainstream society and lead us to ultimately question our societal relationship to the child: namely, is a sexually charged feeling or emotion towards the child legitimate, possible, morally acceptable, speakable in polite society? Is the child a kind of passive fragile rag doll who is easily damaged by the adult sexual gaze, or is the child instead a confident independent societal player who welcomes the adult gaze with a kind of casual arrogance and bold self-assurance? Because be sure, the very notion of childhood is changing, and technology is a relentless catalyst of this.

The notion of a sharply demarcated childhood social category is arguably receding, and the child is becoming an adult in miniature. The upshot is that the child rises to meet the adult gaze, and instead of shrinking away or feeling damaged, the child as performative extrovert “artist” welcomes attention and admiration. This will play out in the technological sphere. And this in my opinion is the key opening towards a reevaluation of the legitimacy and decorum of adult attraction for children.

The crushing and perverse narrative of the CSA industry will begin to crumble in the face of a new social reality of the self-determined child. And new possibilities will emerge regarding the sexual status of childhood, in the light of all we know abstractly from Freud on up combining to defeat the fragile victimology thesis.

NaughtyFox

It is necessary that minors advocate for liberation and emancipation. Politicians use the voice of the minors on the rostrum of the UN, but are suppressed during their romantic relationship with someone over 18.

Last edited 2 years ago by NaughtyFox
Zen Thinker

>romantic relationship with someone over 18

Haha the legalisation of minor-older sex, as Rind would put it, is a considerable way off in my opinion. There are many degrees of change before we reach that point.

  1. The reification of the concept of the desirable and desiring child
  2. Increased involvement of children in the public square, especially the virtual public square
  3. A shift in social attitudes. The elephant in the room, as until social attitudes change conditions will continue to be impossibly grim for MAPs. Luckily (1) and (2) will favourably impact social attitudes
  4. Decriminalisation of child nudity. This is still a fair way off but must occur before any AoC related decriminalisation
  5. Saturation of glamorous children in the public consciousness through virtual spaces, which will become increasingly important and dominant in our lives, and impact eventually on (4).
Stephen James

I think (2) is particularly important. At present, it seems young people are only outspoken in public if they are backing up a stance which has already received ‘official’ approval, such as acting on climate change (Thunberg) or girls’ education in highly patriarchal societies (Yousafzai). We never (or hardly ever) hear from them defending highly controversial positions such as a lower age of consent or a better deal for MAPs, presumably because if would take much more courage to do this. Until that changes, it will always be easy for the larger society to dismiss radical MAPs as merely self-serving.

Fata Morgana

presumably because if would take much more courage to do this

Or because the topic is so taboo that they don’t even realise that they’re entitled to challenge the prevailing orthodoxies. Or because they themselves wouldn’t be at risk of serious legal sanctions and so don’t give the matter too much attention. Or because the taboo adds to the thrill of having a relationship with an older partner. And so on.

Stephen James

That’s right. The VPs often ask ‘If change is so vital, why aren’t kids themselves clamoring for it?’ I actually hadn’t realized how many answers we could give them!

Fata Morgana

I think I’m the only VP defector other than Eddie. My gripe with their stance is that it’s immoral. It puts the well-being of MAPs above the well-being of children by refusing to discuss sociogenic harm, as doing so would rock the boat and get in the way of efforts to encourage society to accept us. I’m all in favour of trying to get society to accept us, but that has to come second to children’s well-being.

Dissident

Hi, Fata, and welcome back to the pro-choice side of the fence 🙂 It would be interesting to hear why you and Eddie (Ed Chambers?) defected, as you call it, from VP. Please feel free to email me at dissident57@protonmail.com to discuss it if you’re so inclined.

Now, as for the policy of “putting children” first, I think mainstream society has used that canard as the excuse to justify just about every type of civil rights violation on other demographics that you can think of. Yes, it’s noble and romantic, etc., but I do not think any one group needs to put any other ahead of them in order to benefit the former, because both groups can and should benefit together from every truly progressive policy. Our situation is so inextricably linked with that of kids that we rise and fall together, because restrictions on them automatically claim us as collateral damage, and any any restrictions reputedly targeted at us for the “benefit” and “safety” of kids invariably put the chain of the police state further around their necks.

Last edited 1 year ago by Dissident
Fata Morgana

Sorry, Dissident. I have only just seen your comment. Eddy’s story is entirely separate from mine. I know the official VP version of events but it’s his story and up to him whether he tells it to anyone.

My story, in a nutshell, is that I took the view (and expressed it openly) that I felt VP’s position is immoral, because it refuses to acknowledge the possibility of sociogenic harm. If society has a role in creating or aggravating any harm, then that needs to be studied and addressed so as to prevent the creation or aggravation of harm. VP’s sweeping it under the carpet as part of an assimilationist strategy to gain acceptance is understandable (assimilationism is the fast track to acceptance), but it also put MAPs before children’s well-being. I was uncomfortable with that. I’m also a fence-sitter on the pro-contact versus anti-contact issue. My stance is quite nuanced.

The final straw came when I identified four or five VP members’ (including Ethan’s) real-life identities from things they’d said. I felt it was respectful to tell them I’d identified them because if I had managed to do so (with benign intentions, and purely out of casual curiosity and a love of puzzles), then people with malicious intentions would be able to do so too. I think it’s fair to say that I rocked the boat.

Sayaka Fermi

And don’t forget the “spiral of silence” effect. Because an anti-ageist position is so rarely heard, each child who’s thinking it fears he’ll be alone with a highly unpopular opinion if he voices it.
I speak from experience. As a child (a long time ago), I never felt the prohibition on my being sexual was fair, but thought this was just another of those adult condescensions that I couldn’t do anything about.

Last edited 2 years ago by Sayaka Fermi
Zen Thinker

No, children’s minds are highly controlled. But look at the massive focus on fashion and beauty at increasingly younger ages. What is the obsession with beauty except to appeal to others as desirable?

And actually the cohort who would be in the best position to speak out would be young teens, who I have no interest in. The 18-30 bracket is attractive to me and the 3-10 bracket is uniquely beautiful, but 11-17 are something of an empty void to me, funnily enough.

And I recognise the fundamental societal impossibility of any social contact with the 3-10 bracket, purely from the nature and structure of society. Nor do I think I would welcome it, at present.

A better deal for MAPs means first empowering children to have a public voice and a public presence. I could never pretend that a legalisation of sexual contact was anywhere even remotely on the horizon, but I can live with that.

What I gain a kind of private joy from is seeing girls in the virtual spaces that are afforded to us today. And my social commentary is based on my observations, especially the obsession with fashion, beauty and aesthetics among a significant segment of quite young girls. And this simply suggests to me that young girls, even little girls, are changing rapidly in a self-conscious, non-traditional and socially progressive way, at least in the vanguard of the Instagram and TikTok crowd, and this will have deep societal implications going forward, even quasi-sexual implications.

hikari

Yes King!! (Saying that to both you and Rind! ☺) That was a fascinating summary, thanks for sharing. Will definitely be taking a look at this new study (as well as the Welter research) in more depth. I was always curious what would happen if you compared adult-adult relationships to adult-minor ones. Now I guess I have an answer. Regarding the “females with males” percentage, it reminds me of something I read in “The Tragedy of Heterosexuality” by Jane Ward. She makes the argument that historically, relationships between men and boys were more characterized by love and affection than heterosexual relationships were. Seems like this is still possibly true!

Last edited 2 years ago by hikari
hikari

That might be interesting 🙂 I didn’t read the book till the end, but you’ve motivated me to pick it up again and finish it. However, the comparison of adult heterosexuality to pederasty is only mentioned once in the whole book as far as I can tell. I’m wondering if it’ll have more comparisons of heterosexuality to lesbianism, since they seem to be winning 😀

alex

You reminded me of a wonderful scene from For a Lost Soldier, where the soldier and boy were happily kissing and sharing chocolates after having sex. A young woman enters the room in tears after clearly having had sex with another soldier. I think that was a powerful and true act of symbolism in the movie.

Dissident

She makes the argument that historically, relationships between men and boys were more characterized by love and affection than heterosexual relationships were. Seems like this is still possibly true!

Lest anyone get the temptation to conclude that man/boy love is inherently morally superior or noble than traditional heterosexual love, let us understand the complex political, social, and economic expectations that have characterized heterosexual relationships throughout recorded human history.

Marriage has been considered all-important throughout that time right up to the present as primarily a means of passing down property to an heir. As a result, such liaisons were often taken by people of all economic classes on that basis rather than for love. In fact, the concept of marriage for love alone is a relatively new concept, and despite all the romantic lip service and literature given to it we still live in a world where money is the driving force of human existence. Hence, women are still expected to “marry up” financially speaking, and men are still expected to be the “breadwinner” who takes on the burden of financially running a household. These factors create all kinds of expectations, taboos, and situations that taint the possibility of love and stability in normative heterosexual relationships.

This was even the case with man/girl relationships throughout history. Men weren’t simply expected to be mentors to girls, as men were with boys. Unlike the latter case, in the former case men were expected to marry girls they were interested in and take care of them and a resulting family financially; and a girl was expected to choose an adult male partner less on the basis of love and more on the basis of his financial capabilities.

Man/boy relationships lacked much of these expectations and stresses, and could thus allow love to often be the main reason they came about. This wouldn’t even have been the case for adult male homosexual relationships throughout history, because even where such relationships were tolerated adult men were still expected to engage in heterosexual marriages to produce an heir and pass down the property. Hence, choosing a partner for love was often off the table, and homosexual men would have to conduct said relationships in clandestine fashion lest they insult the wife.

Prue

Should hate crime law apply to pedophiles?!

I just discovered an interesting paper which’d be a useful citation for those of us writing about intergen issues, by a current Oxford criminology student Laura Haas (https://www.law.ox.ac.uk/people/laura-haas-0) arguing that yes, it should!

The paper can be found in the journal here:

https://broadstreethumanitiesreview.com/issue-6-boundaries/

or as a pdf here: https://broadstreethumanitiesreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/BSHR-VI-Haas.pdf

Title: The boundaries of victim protection criteria: should the victimisation of people with paedophilia be recognised as a form of hate crime under criminal law?

Abstract:
“People with paedophilia are a highly stigmatised group – even more so over recent years in which reports of child sexual abuse have risen, and sensationalist media coverage intensified. For people with paedophilia, whom many assume to also be sex offenders, the risk of exposure to prejudice-driven crime is high. In this article, I pose the question of whether people with paedophilia should be included in hate crime legislation across the world. I conclude that they should be included under the so-called vulnerability-and- deinvididualisation approach that I suggest in this paper. According to this approach, groups should be protected by hate crime legislation, if they are discriminated against significantly more often than groups who only experience prejudice-driven crimes on a rare basis (vulnerability). Furthermore, they should only be protected if the crime is targeted towards a whole group instead of a specific individual (deinvidualisation). However, via a subclause, this approach excludes certain groups who would fall under the two outlined premises but whose attributes harm the ideals of a pluralistic society that hate crime legislation seeks to foster. I conclude with broader implications on victim inclusion criteria.”

There’s a lot of legal-talk in the bulk of the piece, so you can read the start and the end to get her argument 🙂

Fata Morgana

Will this paper be condemned by Congress?

Zen Thinker

Maybe Democrat views are shifting to increasingly liberal social attitudes, especially under the influence of the Progressive Caucus. Conservative media was outraged tonight that the Florida Governor’s bill to outlaw sex and gender education for K through 3 (ages 5-7 I think) was getting significant pushback: Democrats called it the “don’t say gay” bill, and Democrat lawmakers resorted to chanting “gay, gay, gay” down a hallway to emphasise their point. Conservative talking heads agreed that teaching anything about sex to a Kindergartener was “sexual abuse” and the teacher “should be arrested”. But perhaps the more surprising thing is that Florida is the exception and sex, orientation, and gender is ordinarily taught from grade K onward throughout most of the country.

It’s a slight leap from this to Rind’s study on minor-older sex, but Democrats are, whether consciously or unconsciously, preparing the ground for a more congenial climate for the kind of study undertaken by Rind. It is in my view a process of social and cultural preparation, as I say either deliberate or unguided, towards a more liberal attitude in general regarding minors and sexual matters.

So no, I don’t think this paper would be condemned, as we’re in a completely different cultural climate now.

Fata Morgana

Interesting take on it, ZT. The only thing I’d add (to play devil’s advocate) is that the conservatives’ reaction exemplifies what typically happens when a paradigm shift is under way in social discourse: resistance from team status quo ante. Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing. One benefit of team status quo ante speaking up, however vociferously, is that they have to pit their previously uncontested arguments against the new order, which either reveals the status quo ante as being reliant on ipse dixits or forces a honing of the previously uncontested arguments to render them less readily assailable. Hopefully, the end result here will be increased recognition of the ways in which not educating kids about sex and sexuality can be harmful too.

Densetsu

Back then, the study had to be condemned as there was still somewhat of a public discourse about pedophilia, that – compared to today at least – threatened the narrative the GAM(Government/Academia/Media) had been summoned into being.
The late 70s/early 80s is where the discourse had been coopted by vested interests, namely the abuse industry and post first wave feminism. Since then at least one generation of people has been born and raised to believe about minor attraction exactly what the official ‘common sense’ stance is.

There is no need to make another example right now, as the status quo is further form being threatened than ever. Some might argue that more and more data is coming out questioning established wisdom about CSA and minor attraction. While that is true, the actual danger to the establishment from this information is much lower than it was in the late 90s.

The media 20 years ago had not yet fully adopted the tactic that the best way to suppress an idea is to omit talking about it. Hungry for profit, they used pro pedophile news as outrage fodder much more frequently than today, which naturally – aside form reinforcing the majority’s beliefs, also ended up also inspiring a small percentage of viewers to dig deeper into the issue and do their own research. Diversity of thought is not what you want if you care to maintain a set of beliefs among an entire population. I don’t just mean a country’s population, but an entire cultural hemisphere – the West.

In an age where word of mouth has become a lot more important with the rise of social media, you have to make sure the discussion about a topic you want to suppress is so poisoned with negative assumption that even mentioning it by name summons extremely hostile emotions in as many people as possible. The GAM were successful in this decade long propaganda war for conquering people’s minds about pedophilia.

If you bring up new findings or studies to today’s average joe, he will immediately resort to ad hominem attacks against you or the ones responsible for the information to discredit your argument, and today, that’s all that’s needed. The narrative indoctrination has been so successful, that even the media itself can get away with using completely misleading terminology to report on pedophile related news.

On the other hand you have people, who instinctively use ad hominem against you or the author of the information you want to argue with, condemning the data and anyone associated with it just like congress did all those years ago.

Pedophile hatred has become a self supporting social mechanism, which is fueled by any mention of any aspect of it, whether negative, positive or neutral. The media just sits back and reaps the rewards by getting hate views reporting on individual incidents and efforts to stamp out the problem. The abuse industry sits back and enjoys receiving research grants and support for making troubled people realize that every psychological issue they have is based on a sexual experience in their youth. The government enjoys being able to dismantle privacy without noticeable backlash in the name of hunting predators and child porn rings, while politicians use the public’s hate to champion themselves.

You really don’t need congress to condemn anything pedo related. The public will do that for them.

Last edited 2 years ago by Densetsu
Zen Thinker

Yeah we all know that attempting to speak out on minor attraction with our real identities would result in vitriol, abuse, hatred and social exclusion 🙁

Sorry but I will never speak out on this subject using my real identity until (or if) the social climate improves.

But as you say, it is a manufactured social climate brought about by government, academia and media, all colluding to destroy and vilify a massive segment of the population.

Prue

2020 article about lack of regulation around “pedo hunters” I stumbled on: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/342262775_'Paedophile_Hunters'_Criminal_Procedure_and_Fundamental_Human_Rights

‘Paedophile Hunters’, Criminal Procedure, and Fundamental Human Rights

“Paedophile hunters’ have attracted global media attention. The limited literature on paedophile hunters, which documents their emergence in contemporary liberal democracies, pays scant attention to how their use of intrusive investigative methods may threaten the procedural rights of suspects and undermine the integrity of the criminal justice system. This article fills this normative ‘gap’ in the literature. It draws upon media coverage, criminal procedure jurisprudence, and criminological scholarship to analyse the regulation of paedophile hunting in English and Welsh law. The article suggests that domestic law does not afford adequate protection to due process and the fundamental human rights of those falling under the paedophile hunter’s purview. Unless paedophile hunting is constrained by a narrower and more robustly enforced regulatory regime, it should not be permitted, let alone encouraged, in contemporary liberal democracies.”

Last edited 2 years ago by Prue
Prue

Was skimming this page https://www.newgon.net/wiki/Age_of_Consent and wondering if anyone has links for / pdfs of these:

Baurmann, M. (2005) “Sexuality, Adolescence and the Criminal Law: The Perspective of Criminology.” Journal of Psychology & Human Sexuality 16(2/3): 71-88.

Mawby, R. I. (1979) “Policing the Age of Consent.” Journal of Adolescence 2(1): 41-49.

Prue

I assumed the Baurmann paper would be hard to find but I recognize the journal issue which carries the same articles of that book about adolescents edited by Vern Bullough. Helmut Graupner and Bruce Rind are there https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/wzph20/16/2-3

Baurmann’s paper is here https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J056v16n02_07

Abstract:

The provisions in the German Criminal Code protecting sexual self-determinationeven after several penal law reforms-are still criminologically not yet coherently structured and carry some contradictions. Recent research implies that in the section of the German Criminal Code establishing sexual offences three very divergent forms of deviant behavior are lumped together in an undifferentiated way: violent offences, infractions of moral norms and commercialization of sexuality (the latter in most cases in the form of organised crime). Some offences lack empirical justification in the sense of a concept of protection, for example due to the fact that damage caused to victims is not proven. In addition the establishment of age limits turns out as a difficult task, i.e., when consensual (love) relations of adolescents and of young adults are concerned. International efforts to approximate (sexual) offences legislation carry the risk that reasoned, criminologically analysed and empirically justified regulations are sacrificed to populistic diffused mainstream-thinking.”

The reason I’m interested in his paper specifically is because, as some heretics may know, Michael C. Baurmann is the author of a massive German study of legally defined ‘sexual assault’ cases reported to police. https://www.ipce.info/library_2/files/baurmann.htm
He’s quoted as reporting:
“Looking at the effects of criminal sexual acts on the declared victim, it turned out that many reported sexual contacts did not cause any harm at all. From this, it follows that the uncritical use of terms like “victim” and “harmed” is, for a large portion of those who are registered as sexual victims, inappropriate […]

Obviously, the words “victim” and “harmed” strongly imply that the person in question has been injured. But for many of the persons interviewed here who became known as victims, these terms just do not apply.
[P. 470]

If one takes seriously the subjective assessments of those most directly effected, one finds that, among reported sexual contacts, based on primary harmful effects to declared victims, there is actually a very large proportion of criminal acts for which there is no victim.”

Fata Morgana

Even more transparently dysphemistic is the pervasive use of the word ‘survivor’ in English-speaking cultures. A 15-year-old girl who initiates mutual masturbation with an adult will be accorded the status of survivor while someone who survives a 6-month coma after a severe beating will be relegated to the status of victim.

Prue

I suppose in the case of a coma you could occupy both the “victim” (from the besting) and “survivor” (living through a coma) subject positions. Though without the beating element you’re right the contrast would hold up and make for good comparison.

How can the expansion of emotive rhetoric be challenged? Or mobilized into a positive force? I’ll hold off saying what I think for a sec as I don’t want to unduly bias your thinking.

Last edited 2 years ago by Prue
Fata Morgana

By calling it out as dysphemistic. You might subsequently face the charge of victim blaming, but then you can call that out as a straw man fallacy.

(I take it as understood that I’m not speaking about CSA where there’s a genuine threat to life.)

Prue

New cases on Newgon I’ve added:

Keith Vacha, Quiet Fire: Memoirs of Older Gay Men, edited by Cassie Damewood (Trumansburg, New York: The Crossing Press, 1985).From 1978-1984, gay writer Keith Vacha conducted interviews with gay-identifying men, mostly in California and Arizona, who were at least 55 years old. Taken from over 100 taped interviews of 2-10 hours, Quiet Fire presents 17 stories of gay men from the pre-stonewall generation. In his summary, Vacha claims to have mixed real names and pseudonyms, and notes “a high degree of inter-generational relationships among the men I met” (p. 217). [Newgon Editors].

[Note this effort is ongoing, I expect to be able to add 1-2 more examples later today! The first, most incredible one, I reproduce below. Early civil rights and LGBT activist Bob Basker! This interview actually contains more info about him than the wiki page on him, so I think I’ll make the effort to scan the chapter and get it uploaded to Newgon].

Bob Basker – Born September 30, 1918 in East Harlem, New York City. Died April 6, 2001. Interviewed by Keith Vacha at age 65.

The youngest of 5 sons, Basker participated in early black civil rights / desegregation and homophile activism. Basker hired a black man and refused to fire him after his superior insisted black workers went against company policy, costing him his job. With his then wife Greta, Basker “became the nominee purchasers to obtain a home for a black couple in Skokie [Illinois], Bob and Mary Smythe” (p. 54). He explains: “All hell broke loose. Our house was firebombed, we had unending obscene phone calls and death threats, and all our bank loans were cancelled” (Ibid). Basker turned to gay issues, and in 1965 became founding president of “Mattachine Midwest,” the first Mattachine Society in Chicago. He also “helped to start the [Miami] Gay Activist Alliance in 1971” (p. 55) and became the Executive Director of Florida’s Dade County Coalition for the Humanistic Rights of Gays (p. 56). He said the following about his young sex-life:

  • “When I began selling newspapers at night, between the ages of eleven and fifteen, I was exposed to a lot of sex in [subway station] tearooms. […] You’d meet people having sex with each other, not always, but often all through the night. Sometimes you’d walk in and they were in the midst of having some kind of sex and they’d look up and say, “Oh, it’s only a kid,” and go right back to whatever they were doing. I was serviced regularly and once in a while I would do the servicing. I met some really nice people who were afraid of being involved with a thirteen, fourteen, fifteen-year-old kid but I did manage to go home with some of them. I was generally the aggressor” (p. 46).
  • “I got to learn something about classical music, ballet, and opera. I am the only “cultured” one in the family […] and I think it’s all because of my association with gay life, when these older men took me home with them. […] I used to cruise the back of the Metropolitan Opera constantly […] in order to meet these men and go home with them. It was never a question of me taking money. It was just a matter of going to a nice man’s home” (pp. 46-47).
  • “I used to hang around the parks in New York City […] a lot of cruising. Sometimes in the movies I’d be picked up by older men, even before I was old enough to have climaxes, and we’d go somewhere and I’d jerk them off. I was fascinated watching them have a climax before I could have one. I’d look at that stuff and wonder, “When is it gonna happen to me?” (p. 47).
  • “I had sex with different people three to four times a week, starting at the age of fourteen. […] [T]hree times a week, fifty weeks a year, that’s at least a hundred and fifty partners. Over a period of twenty years, three thousand partners. That creates a tremendous amount of sophisticated sex” (p. 48).
Prue

Update: lots of intergen with age-disparate partners, but no more minor-older cases. There’s a lot of discussion around pre-pubescent masturbation, however, so I think I’ll put some of that in Newgon’s “youth sexuality” page (which includes pre-pub and infant).

Just remembered that I added a quote to the “secondary harm” page https://www.newgon.net/wiki/Research:_Secondary_Harm

Al Hoskins, interviewed in his 60s by Keith Vacha. At 14: “my mother walked into the bathroom, caught me masturbating, and called my father. He got a big rope and actually started crying because he was so upset. He chased me out on the front porch and started beating me with that rope. He was absolutely hysterical. That incident just reinforced my own puritanical attitudes about sex.” (p. 145).

Prue

I should finally if belatedly give my “take” on this most recent blog and Rind’s most recent publication. First off, what an impressive piece, taking together Finnish data from multiple published studies arriving at a sample of over 30,000! Since getting into this subject I was starting to curse the lack of nationally representative samples. I note that Rind and Tromovitch already published “A Meta-Analytic Review of Findings from National Samples on Psychological Correlates of Child Sexual Abuse” in 1997 [ https://www.jstor.org/stable/3813384 ], that that tends to get overshadowed by the controversy over the 1998 paper. There’s not been as much large data since then, so I was really happy to find Rind’s 2021 nationally representative “Irish health” study [ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32430871/ ], as well as Rind and Tromovitch’s lesser-known (but very valuable) critique of a large N=1793 Australian CSA national sample, where they demonstrate how you can arrive at different results with the same data set depending on the statistical test you conduct: https://www.ipce.info/library_3/files/rind_national_samples.htm

I read the discussion on the new Rind paper over at boychat [ https://boychat.org/messages/1588493.htm ] and wow, it took Bruce 2 YEARS to get this 2022 paper published! What was that about!? Maybe it really is the next bomb under the sex abuse industry! Talk about playing the long game!

I think you’ve summarized the positive takeaways really well, Tom. I also like the use of “minor-older” – the more we can get away from the now far-too disingenuously expanded anyone under 18 “child” terminology, the better. As much as many MAPs may have some liking for the term as applied to pre-pubescents and perhaps early pubescents, I think we increasingly have to recognize we’re mostly arguing and fighting against to teleiophiles. At least, if we accept that MAPs are (demographically, by number) a minority, then we should be tailoring our rhetoric to be as least incendiary as possible to the masses who are, generally speaking, teleiophiles, even if they may be “non-exclusive” teleiophiles :p At the same time, we should take a leaf out of Harris Mirkin’s 1999 paper [ https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J082v37n02_01 ]: we need terms that demonize the existing order! Feminism has patriarchy, civil rights has racist and white-supremacist: the MAP movement needs its terms! That’s something I recommend other scholars to quietly think about and inject into their future publications…

I’ve informed Rind about recent research by Rachel Hope Cleves and especially the seminal, incredible paper on “intergenerational lesbianism” in the 1970s by historian Amanda Littauer: https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/historical-reflections/46/1/hrrh460107.xml I summarized the new cases presented for Newgon here: https://www.newgon.net/wiki/Testimony:_Adult_Female_with_Minor

My only criticism is that Rind could’ve cited Littauer but he didn’t know about it at the time. Now he does, so I hope to see it cited in his future work. It really is an incredible piece deserving of some kind of award in itself. Rind may be correct that males tend to respond more positively than females, but this isn’t inevitable. Historical work like Littauer’s, in my view, lends credence to the view that females tend to be socialized to care more about social acceptablility and how they appear, but that this can and has been challenged: in this case, by radical feminists who would later come to be massive hypocrites. Victoria Brownworth, for example, is named in the piece as being older engaging sexually with a female minor, and yet she became a classic victim feminist in later years. In other words, Brownworth seems to have been swayed and followed trends in dominant discourse. [Note: a friend of mine has written to Littauer about this, and if they recieve no response I’ll email her].

NaughtyFox

> we need terms that demonize the existing order! Feminism has patriarchy, civil rights has racist and white-supremacist: the MAP movement needs its terms!

Such terms are, for example
youth suppression, sexophobia, or sex fascism.

Prue

I think the term sexual exceptionialism could be useful, at least for academic discussions. Tbf sex fascism (or sex fascist) is a good term that, if used outside the intergen space, could gain currency and traction. The Left are very concerned about the rise in neo-nazis hiding under the banner of pepe the frog and other memes, so if the response to ppl using terms like “perversion” and “degeneracy” for homosexuals – the so-called gay agenda – would be to call them sex fascists, that would be a win and help legitimise the term…

warbling j turpitude

It is very interesting from “my” relentlessly mimetic perspective that everyone, including myself, has swiftly fastened on this potential of how to counter-demonize those who would demonize us. But where can such an impulse ever really go, but headlong towards flushing out evermore recondite and sinister demons…?

I think it far more important that we recall – yea even RE-READ for goshsakes, Tom O’Carrolls essay for Sexuality & Culture, and appreciate that what is of most central concern here is not sexual but ×moral* exceptionalism, the pervasive assumption that sexual encounters of any kind constitute a special – ie exceptional – case of the moral, and are thus subject to judgements of “virtue” not everyday moral considerations…

Last edited 2 years ago by warbling j turpitude
Fata Morgana

Feminism has patriarchy, civil rights has racist and white-supremacist: the MAP movement needs its terms!

Teleionormative?

Prue

Interesting term. How would you define it (even if provisionally)?

Fata Morgana

To adapt the OED definition of heteronormative: ‘Denoting or relating to a world view that promotes teleiophilic attraction as the normal or preferred chronophilic orientation’.

Dissident

Thank you for sharing this, Tom! In regards to studying factors that are most likely to lead to positive outcomes in adult-minor relations (in an alternate reality where they were legal), there are certain factors that would likely explain the low outcomes of positive recall of girls and females in general with males of any age group, all of which are common sense, that I am disappointed Rind did not seem to ask in this paper.

These factors are as follows: 1. Stop slut-shaming girls for sexual activity, so that they feel bad about it after acting on their normal human urges;

2. Educate girls to deal with one-night stands, and not to equate sexual encounters with love (something boys seem to be much better with in general, since they aren’t vilified for acting on their urges like girls are, and are not expected to be in love with their sexual partners). Make it clear to them, as it more often is to boys, to expect nothing other than pleasure from an initial consensual sexual encounter, before getting to know their partner well;

3. Oppose sex negativity in general, which is commonly directed at girls and women much more so than boys and men. And stop promoting the expectation that sexual experiences at a young age will have negative effects, or that a girl’s worth as a female is dependent upon her virginity or how much she constrains herself from acting on her natural sexual desires, something boys are not conditioned to be concerned about (save in some fundamentalist Christian families — and look how messed up they often turn out!).

4. Cease the amount of sociogenic harm done to girls by conditioning them to believe they were “just used” if a male lover did not fall in love with them, or that a boy/man owes them something more than courteous respect and pleasure during and after a sexual encounter. Boys are expected to be stoic if they fall in love and do not receive that in return from a girl they had a sexual encounter with (I know that happened to me with the first girl I ever had sex with, who was a same-aged peer), so girls should not be encouraged to have unrealistic emotional expectations or to be emotionally fragile. People of both genders will tend to develop behavior that society expects of them and conditions them to develop during their formative years.

Fata Morgana

In his view, females are bound to be more choosy and more orientated towards love and commitment from the outset. They are the ones, after all, who get pregnant and literally carry the responsibilities thereof. So they have a profound interest in choosing a mate who will look after any offspring.

From an evolutionary perspective, it would make sense for parents and communities to police girls’ sexual activity more closely than boys’ sexual activity for the same reason, because groups have a vested interest in what genes get injected into the group. So the instinct to police and coerce makes sense, but in an age in which the consequences of sexual activity (pregnancy, STDs) can be mitigated or averted, it would make sense from a purely logical perspective to recognise our instincts and put them to one side. Easier said than done, of course.

Is that last purple table in your article from the latest Rind study, Tom? It’s very interesting that rates of positive experience between males and females are virtually identical in adult-adult and adult-minor pairings. The fact that underage girls are no more or less likely to respond positively to sexual activity than fully grown women surely serves to show that sexual activity between adult males and underage girls (average age 13.2, according to the table) is no more or less inherently harmful than sexual activity between adult males and adult females, even with the increased risk of sociogenic harm in the mix.

There are also implications for close-in-age exemptions. I’ve always criticised these on the grounds that they undermine the trite rationale for AOC legislation (‘children under that [arbitrarily selected] age are incapable of giving informed consent to sexual activity’) by suggesting that sometimes children are indeed capable of giving informed consent to sexual activity, with this capacity being contingent not on their own psychological development but rather on the chronological age of their chosen partner. Well, this Rind study appears to show that the chronological age of their chosen partner has no bearing on the likelihood of harm. At last we have permission to drop that charade.

Stephen James

Hitler was a big fan, although (swinging back towards fairness) so were many respected intellectuals earlier in the century.”

Also, ‘Hitler believed that p. Therefore p is false’ is not a valid inference.

Fata Morgana

On the implications for close-in-age exemptions, the following extract suggests that society ought to view minor-adult encounters more optimistically than close-in-age encounters:

It was of interest to assess whether minors involved with older minors reacted more favorably (i.e., less negatively, more positively) than minors involved with adults. For reactions at the time, boys having an adult partner reacted more favorably than boys having an older minor partner, χ2 (2)=6.69, p < 0.05. In post hoc analysis, boys with adults reacted negatively at the time (9.8%) significantly less often than boys with older minors (28.6%). They also reacted positively at the time more often than boys with older minors (83.0% vs. 66.7%), although this difference was not significant. For reactions in retrospect for boys, no association occurred between older partner age group (minor under 18 vs. adult 18 and over) and reactions, χ2 (2)=0.00.

For girls for reactions at the time, no association occurred between older partner age group and reactions, χ2 (2)=3.39, p>0.10. On the other hand, for reactions in retrospect, a marginally significant association did occur, χ2 (2)=5.51, p=0.06, in which girls involved with adults reacted negatively significantly less often (34.0%) than girls involved with older minors (52.8%) in post hoc analysis. They also reacted positively more often (42.4% vs. 27.8%, respectively), although this difference did not reach significance.

In short, for both boys and girls, sexual involvement with older-aged minors compared to adults was not associated with any kind of more favorable reaction. In half the analyses, relations with adults were significantly more favorable.

NaughtyFox

the social hypocritical censorship. YouTube is full of skydiving videos with girls 5-13 years old. They were NOT forcibly dragged into the plane and forced to jump. They give consent. But people continue to claim voluntary erotic acts require some special mental abilities than agreeing to a dangerous parachute jump or driving a bicycle.

If a minor, by his/her own desire records his/her masturbation on his/her own camera, then such a video is deleted in order to hide evidence of manifestations of sexuality and support the myth of asexual children

Nada

Males and females have asymmetric mating strategies. Thinking long-term, it’s certainly not obvious why we should favor meddling with them, e.g. attacking the family, forcing girls to switch to a short-term mating strategy (“one-night stands”), or indoctrinating children, to the extent possible, to favor this.

Zen Thinker

I like the broad sweep of your thinking here. Technological progress has an incalculable effect on the structure of societies, which is fairly obvious, but it’s not so obvious just why people are so easily wrongfooted by change, or fail to see the implications on the horizon.

Nada

Not only does the Patriarchal hypothesis make no biological sense (consider the sex ratio of offspring), it also misrepresent monogamy. E.g, both sexes engage in mate guarding, not only the male, as females are not keen to see resources, which could be allocated to them and their offspring, be allocated to other females and theirs, should the male be tempted to stray from a strictly monogamous strategy.

The main alternative to monogamy is polygamy, where a few males tend to monopolize females. As observed in human and non-human animals, this leads to more competition and violence, as males tries to gain status to be able to find a mate at all.

The other alternative is rape, bypassing female choosiness.

Females can attract a higher status male by offering sex without commitment, while males can increase the probability a more beautiful young female will chose them by offering to commit to her.

What I’d do is base the analysis on biology, which give rise to the preferences and strategies sketched above. I don’t put much stock in economic excuses for clearly political choices.

Zen Thinker

The trauma thesis of sexual relations is almost universal. It is so deeply entrenched in the modern West that it needs countervailing forces to undercut it.

Child sexuality and free self-expression are being acted out radically and platformed by the Internet Age. It might take a very long time for governments to reject the trauma thesis, but meanwhile it will in fact be powerfully undercut by the emerging Metaverse, where children will have unprecedented access to public reach and scrutiny. No-one has yet fathomed the sheer radicalism of children with current social media, where children are brought outside of the family and become public figures for the first time. This will be vastly accelerated with the Metaverse.

Already many children have vast public reach, and the range of their self-expression and self-fashioning is unprecedented – the Internet has powerful “adultifying” tendencies, or rather, children are borrowing heavily from adult culture while fashioning their own unique paradigm.

Expect the Metaverse to 10x this trend. With the emergence of the child as a public figure, performing a civic role as mythos and Type of the glamorous, wealthy and desirable influencer, children will grow into their cultural function and with increasing bombast and confidence, the trauma thesis will be severely undercut as a stereotypical image of the powerless and passive child without any agency or motivating force. The Metaverse, as a more effective welding of real life and virtual spaces, will obviously reappropriate the image and mythos of the child in a radically liberalising way, and this more than anything will dent and ultimately powerfully shatter the trauma thesis and its Type of the “broken child”.

instead, children will be seen as powerfully affirming, confident, and as sensually attuned as an adult, with a quasi-sexual function as an object of admiration and positive desire, i.e. what we consider presently as an “influencer”, but who will come to combine a public role and a private individual persona in increasingly intimate and personal ways. This is in many ways a revolution that has only begun recently but I fully expect the momentum of this social and technological change to undercut the prevailing sexual thesis of the “passive, vulnerable, almost inert” child, and replace it with a more positive and realistic model of children’s desires and desirability. This is my conclusion after careful societal observation at least.

Prue

You might be interested in this article “Metaverse app allows kids into virtual strip clubs,” where the British BBC continues its legacy of having staff pose as minors, going into sexual spaces and complaining about it. See https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-60415317

Yure

A positive reaction rate over 70%, this is the highest I have seen so far. I’ll add a reference to this to the MAP Starting Guide, if I have not already.
I recently did a clean up in my blog and removed a lot of stuff that I deemed low quality, but I left the two synthesis up. Thanks for breaking this study down for us, since I could not yet read the paper myself. I had a feeling it would be pay-to-read, so I didn’t look into it… or is it free?

hikari

Hey, Yure! Could you please send me an email when you have a chance? 🙂 I wanted to ask you something, but I don’t have your email anymore. 🙁

PAT

“How the CSA industry has been misleading the World for decades”….Indeed, its not just about proving how there is no innate evidence of harm but to also go on the attack and highlight their mendacity. Here is an interesting video doing the rounds: I thought more of these people, they are deep thinking and well read on other matters:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2QJPZV4i6k

Prue

I had to hold back laughing about half way through this “crappy little emotive vid.” The very notion that academics or journalists, anybody really, feels threatened into being sympathetic to MAPs, non-stigmatizing or, dare we dream it, picks up a book by Stephen Kershnar, an article by Terry Leahy or Agustin Malon, because THEY’RE afraid of appearing exclusionary: ridiculous!

As the Allyn Walker controversy shows, anyone who researches MAPs takes on great professional risk, even if, unlike Rind, they stay well-clear of challenging the CSA industry or creating “the bomb underneath the sex abuse industry.”

Having read parts of Walker’s book, I do think it’s actually very subversive. The language of “coming out” and presenting narratives where MAPs who came out to their parents and friends were accepted, is something that could be built on. Their discussion of “pro-choice” VS “anti-contact” in chapter 4 is reasonable at this present time, and can also be built on.

Allyn describes being personally moved by meeting MAPs, and I can tell you that personal experiences go a long way.

Liberal anti-stigma academics aren’t threatened by MAPs, they’re threatened by Antis who want to shut down research and get them fired.

Stephen James

The irony of course is that Weinstein and Heying could themselves be described as very prominent ‘liberal anti-stigma academics’, or rather ex-academics, having been hounded out of Evergreen State College in Washington for defying the antics of over-zealous ‘woke’ students there (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreen_State_College#2017_protests). I think the stand they made was admirable and I have often found their videos interesting. However, I agree this one was appalling, not least in view of the fact that they could hardly bring themselves to say what they were opposing. Did they, for example, dispute the suggestion that marginalizing MAPs leads to more suicides or might even make ‘CSA’ more likely, something they presumably would want to avoid? They gave the impression they found the whole subject just too horrible to allow them to make any useful distinctions. A terrible piece.

Anyway, I gave the video its one dislike (so far). A voice in the wilderness, though, compared with its 7.2K likes!

Strat

I wouldn’t worry about that – YT no longer publishes a count of the dislikes.

Stephen James

Ah, yes, that is true, actually. Pity, really. It would be nice to know whether there was any other opposition.

PAT

I was talking about their ignorance on the subject matter. he is an Evolutionary psychologist so I hoped he would be a bit more open minded on the subject.

Ed Chambers

They may be well read on other matters, but their dumbfuckery on topic is obvious with there fear mongering in this cringeworthy video. Perhaps they could be directed here in order to peruse the latest re Rind (?) although they may have some sort of simultaneous aneurysm if they did. It’s quite possible they hit the meth pipe after they made this vid, and were filmed having withdrawals.

Zen Thinker

Excellently argued Tom, and I agree with much of your reasoning. I suppose I must at this stage reveal a bias: as a Christian, I innately believe in human exceptionalism through the uniqueness of the human soul, and indeed human uniqueness through all religious traditions (for example in Buddhism the human realm is separate in the six realms of existence, and reckoned the most favourable for Enlightenment). I prefer to follow World Tradition in this way.

However I accept that for atheists or people not wedded to tradition like me, the argument for human exceptionalism collapses due to both the theory of evolution of course, and cutting edge research into the intelligence of animals, such as the book you cited.

I strongly believe in animal welfare, but of course human exceptionalism is written into our laws and constitutions, and were we to entirely jettison human exceptionalism as a meaningful concept, I think this would be an act of self-sabotage on our civilisation.

However intellectually and in the abstract, and especially scientifically, there is no clear demarcation between humans and other animals. Atheists with an inclination to postmodern thought are perhaps the most likely to draw inferences from this, while I would prefer to take a cautious approach as I have a strong proclivity towards the world’s spiritual traditions, which have all emphasised the unique status of the human being.

Your point about aesthetics also agrees with something I read about the origins of music lying in human observation of birdsong.

warbling j turpitude

Regarding the Susan Clancy link, whch having failed to find the relevant blog post(s), then led me to consult the Wiki page on her, contains quotations (from interviews conducted some time after Trauma Myth’s publication) whose assertions reveal levels of cognitive dissonance (is wilful CD possible?) so extreme as to even suggest some degree of schizophrenia at work within Clancy? To wit:

“Sexual abuse is never OK. No matter what the circumstances are, or how it impacts the victims, sexual abuse is an atrocious, despicable crime. Just because it rarely physically or psychologically damages the child does not mean it is OK. Harmfulness is not the same thing as wrongfulness. And why is it wrong?

Because children are incapable of consent”

WHY do so many find themselves enraptured, even mentally transfixed by that concluding maxim/mantra/dogmatic piledriver?

Then, further on in the Wiki account, we are treated to this slice of tortured reasoning, taking Clancy’s professional cog diss as it does clear into the stratosphere:

“What therapists in the sexual abuse field refer to as repression is actually simple forgetting. Most children who get abused don’t understand it at the time. Thus, it is not a significant experience when it happens — it’s weird, perhaps — and so they forget it, like we forget so many aspects of childhood. Later on in life they may be asked by a therapist, “Were you sexually abused as a child?” and this question will cue a memory. When this happens it is not an example of a recovered memory.

It is an example of normal forgetting and remembering.”[6]

I can only muster an emoji at this point

Last edited 2 years ago by warbling j turpitude
sugarboy

Later on in life they may be asked by a therapist, “Were you sexually abused as a child?” and this question will cue a memory. When this happens it is not an example of a recovered memory.

Sounds like the main problem is not sex, but therapists… Stay away from them, and everything will be allright!

Ed Chambers

Some very good advice.

sugarboy

Remember that Clancy is herself a therapist. Moreover, she doesn’t specify what she means by “will cue a memory”.
If the therapist asks “Were you sexually abused as a child?”, the person might as well answer: “No, no, I was not abused. Actually, when I was 9, I had sex with my 80-years old friend, but notwithstanding my efforts, there was not much he could accomplish – maybe because of his age, who knows… But it was pleasant anyway.”

Christian

Both the Kinsey and Finnish study suffer from a geographical bias, they were made in countries influenced by US-UK puritanism, for Kinsey the USA just coming out of McCarthyism, and Finland in Wester Europe after 45 years of anti-paedophile hysteria. A study in a country like Brazil or the Philippines might give even better results.

Concerning the low positive rating of girls with men (at the end), you invoke the “mysterious and hard to please” female sex. But you also say “If this scenario had been a 15-year-old girl with a young man instead, the likelihood would fall to 21%. But if the intercourse had been frequent (more than 10 times), the likelihood would rise to 85%.” So it looks like that for a girl, “the first time” is painful, and it gets easier afterwards. This is especially true for penis in vagina, defloration can be painful, and I have read that women need some prolonged sexual experience to appreciate vaginal sex. Another factor might be that girls need more time to get used to sexual intimacy, they are slower than boys in learning to appreciate it.

Note also that the rate of positive response if higher with friends than with strangers and relatives, so maybe many negative experiences come from abuse of authority in families, or assault and seduction by strangers, while with friends the consent is more genuine.

We need also to take into account the historical context of centuries of repression of female sexuality in Western Europe and Northern America. During the European Middle Ages, women were often considered as being overtly sexual. The famous witch-hunter’s manual Malleus Maleficarum (The Hammer of Witches), published by the Dominican inquisitor Heinrich Institoris in 1487, posits the insatiable sexuality of women as one of the roots of witchcraft. In it, Question 6 asks “why a larger number of sorcerers is found among the delicate female sex than among men,” and it concludes:

Conclusion. Everything is governed by carnal lusting, which is insatiable in them (next to the last chapter of Proverbs [30:15]: “There are three insatiable things . . . and a fourth that never says, ‘It is enough,'” namely the opening of the womb) and for this reason they even cavort with demons to satisfy their lust.

Zen Thinker

Excellent comment Christian. The carnal proclivities of the female sex were of course known in Classical times too, with for example Zeus claiming females and Hera claiming males enjoyed sex more – in the end Zeus won that argument. And of course mythology such as wood nymphs and water nymphs who were apt to engage lost men in sex, and of course the dreaded succubus who seduced men in their dreams.

Also Part 2 of The Faerie Queene, a Renaissance epic published in 1590, is about the hero defeating the witch Acrasia in her Bower of Bliss:

“Upon a bed of Roses she was layd,
As faint through heat, or dight to pleasant sin,
And was arrayd, or rather disarayd,
All in a vele of silke and silver thin,
That hid no whit her alabaster skin,
But rather shewd more white, if more might bee:
More subtile web Arachne cannot spin,
Nor the fine nets, which oft we woven see
Of scorched deaw, do not th’aire more lightly flee.”

Females have a long and complex history of attitudes to sex. As for Rind’s study, it is certainly interesting, but seems to be a voice crying in the wilderness, arrayed against all the might of political power and consensus. Not to overstate the case, but Galileo had a hard time persuading the status quo! People don’t like inconvenient truth.

Ed Chambers

Great post Tom, thank you.

> the funders, mainly via government grants, were bound to be commissars of the child abuse industry – people whose careers depend on persuading “victims” they have been traumatised

This is why I am so very sceptical about any research on topic. It is all funded by puritanical fanatics, virtue signalling in order to promote themselves a nanometer further up the order in a smug, pretentious, mindless race to total subservience.

PAT

That channel four documentary seems like ages now….Glad you are doing OK. Pat.

Stephen James

A useful and readable summary of a very important piece of work. And I particularly liked your remark early on: “When the time is right real facts will start to count, and prophets who were not honoured will come to be heeded.” Indeed, let’s play the long game!

warbling j turpitude

What struck me first of all was the odd contradiction seeming to lurk within the opening portrait of someone “revered within the research world” and the subsequent portrayal of a research world “dominated by the CSA industry”. I”m also not quite getting how such papers manage to achieve their notoriety, coming all the way to the attention of Congress for example, rather than being subject to what i would’ve thought would be their much more likely fate, being all but ‘buried’ by the very machinations of aforesaid industry?

If TO’C or anyone here can direct me to anything that might document some relevant details along such lines in the earlier Rind case, i’d be appreciative. Meanwhile thankyou for a great post Tom and apologies upfront to anyone who might be wearying of seeing the same damn names dominating the commentariat hereabouts of late!

warbling j turpitude

Bonza, super helpful reply Tom. Consider me enlightened.

Bjmuirhead

These days meta – analyses are regarded, more often than not, as a jolly good place to commence research and gain a reasonable working overview of a specific research area. Or, at least, so I was informed as a part of the psychology degree I was pursuing a few years ago.

Bjmuirhead

Yes, this is true, and meta-analyses are more difficult to read and understand but both are valuable as beginning places.

sugarboy

What I don’t understand is why the Congress, before issuing the condemnation, didn’t even bother to hear Rind et al., who were the subjects directly involved? And when Ulrich et al. replicated the meta-analysis in 2006 and reached essentially the same conclusions, why did the Congress not revoke the condemnation?
Oops… I almost forgot that we are talking about Amerika, never mind…

sugarboy

The CSA people tend to publish in journals with titles such as Sexual Abuse and the Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, where commitment to the “abuse” paradigm is upfront.

What about a prestigious “Journal of preteen’s resonant orgasms”? If I remember correctly, it was psychiatrist John Money that complained about the fact that there are no advice centres specifically dedicated to children’s sexuality.

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