Only Looking (2)
And in, er, child-molestation-fantasy news:
A professor of Ethics at Oslo Metropolitan University in Norway has called to legalise AI-generated child pornography, claiming that paedophilia should be seen as an innate sexuality that requires destigmatisation. Ole Martin Moen, a gay man who identifies as “queer,” currently serves as a member of the advisory board on Norway’s Patient Organization for Gender-Incongruence (PKI), a social and political lobby group for trans rights. […]
Moen details arguments for and against “adult-child sex” before ultimately coming to the conclusion that “adult-child sex is not categorically very harmful” but may result in “risks” of children being harmed… Moen also argues that paedophiles who do not sexually abuse children should be “praised” for their “admirable willpower,”
Not raping children – so far, that is – but really, really wanting to and thinking about it a lot – is praiseworthy, you see.
Update, via the comments:
If readers will forgive a little paraphrasing:
Frisky Nonce: “I didn’t utterly ruin a small child’s life today. I wanted to, quite a lot, but I didn’t.”
Woke Academic: “Oh well done. Have a sweet. And some more child-abuse pornography.”
We could, I think, paraphrase a little further:
“I didn’t stab any random passers-by in the face today.”
“Oh well done. Here are some pictures of random people being stabbed in the face.”
Farcical as it sounds, the dynamic is not entirely dissimilar.
Update 2:
Aside from the more bewildering claims – that “the mental state of finding children sexually attractive is very common,” for instance, or that 11-year-olds’ crushes on other 11-year-olds are somehow equivalent to creepy 40-year-old men ogling kiddies – Dr Moen has other odd thoughts. We’re told that “most adult-child sex… does not involve violence or penetration,” merely “cuddling, caressing, and genital fondling,” and that penetration “occurs most commonly when the child is well into adolescence.” So, hey. No biggie.
We’re also told that we mustn’t assume that paedophiles “desire to harm children,” even though their desires, when enacted, via secrecy and deceit, do harm children, often catastrophically, and even though their enacted desire is, by definition, a violation, a betrayal, an act of monstrous selfishness. “There is no reason to posit intentions to harm, disrespect, or expression of ill will on the part of all or even most paedophiles,” says Dr Moen. This is despite acknowledging that such experiences leave a majority of victims with “psychological disorders… increased likelihood of drug dependence, alcohol dependence, major depression,” etc. And despite the fact that these consequences are very widely understood, at least in simple terms. And despite the fact that many paedophiles have been subjected to similar abuse themselves and therefore know first-hand the likely consequences.
Hence the stigma, of course. The stigma that Dr Moen finds so problematic.
Our educator then entertains the conceit that paedophilia is only harmful to its victims “because of society’s way of viewing and handling sexual contact between adults and children.” As if the only disagreeable aspect of being raped as a child were the subsequent embarrassment. Not the actual, you know, violation. This, remember, is in the same essay that acknowledges the “psychological disorders” and “major depression” that are frequently the result for children who’ve been sexually assaulted. To say nothing of all the oddly unmentioned consequences that may manifest later in life, including, for some, transgenderism and/or paedophilia, and none of which are generally regarded as life-affirming.
Update 3:
In the comments, Mags quotes Dr Moen’s deep musings:
“Many of us have been paedophiles at one point,” Moen argues, adding “When you were 11, it is not unlikely that you were sexually attracted to prepubertal children.”
She adds,
That’s not paedophilia. Couldn’t he find a dictionary?
Well, quite. And Dr Moen’s readiness to build a rickety argument on the blatant misuse of basic terms – carefully omitting the obvious adult-child power dynamic – does rather cast some doubt on his motives. The attempt to equate the ill-defined crushes of middle-school children with some creepy middle-aged man perving on those same middle-school children is, I think, telling.
We’ve been here before, of course.
Via pst314.
OK…call me a heretic here but AI generated child porn, or anything else that does not involve the harm of actual, real children I don’t see as a problem. If it keeps these people otherwise…occupied that’s not a concern.
I also suspect that there is something either genetically or otherwise wrong with these people such that they cannot control their desires. Not their actions mind you, specifically their wants. Actions can most definitely be controlled.
Having known a couple of them, one was as normal a person as you would ever meet. Funny, popular, had a wife and two kids. Women liked him. Reliable employee. Moderately good pickup basketball player. I don’t know that he ever touched a child but he was caught on camera exposing himself to a schoolyard of them. He didn’t do such a thing because he had no other outlets or social skills. It had to be something innate, for lack of a better word, that drove that.
The other guy did enormous damage to several people I know or their children. A personable, likable guy but there is no hell hot enough for that SOB.
“We’ve been here before” refers to the pedophile information exchange which was at one time affiliated to and supported by the national council for civil liberties (NCCL). Alleged involvement in this shameful affair, as detailed by wiki, proved no barrier to enjoying a long and distinguished political career.
If it keeps these people otherwise…occupied
The problem is, we don’t know. The vast majority of time (I speak anecdotally based on the prosecutions I’ve encountered) sex-abusers of kids are found with huge, huge quantities of child p0rn. This is not the “oops, I clicked the wrong link and have an image on my harddrive” stuff. We are talking giga bytes on the computer and more stashed on storage devices.
Obviously, even that amount of stuff didn’t quite keep them occupied.
One of the more interesting cases in my office was the 18 y/o high school senior who was arrested for molesting a couple of pre-pubescent neighborhood kids. He didn’t have a computer or smart phone (this was years ago) but they found at his home and in his school locker notebooks/scrapbooks made of all manner of pictures of children in swimsuits, underwear, etc, cut out of clothing advertisements from places like Walmart and Sears circulars. Even totally innocent images were being used to fuel fantasies he eventually acted upon.
IMHO giving a legal freebie even on AI created child p0rn is not a solution.
If it keeps these people otherwise…occupied
As Darleen comments, we don’t know. Now, the reason that child porn was made illegal is that making it was itself a gravely serious crime. So I have read that some people have argued that AI or cartoon porn should be legal. I don’t know; that question gives me a headache so I’ll set it aside for the purposes of this blog post.
But what outraged me was the professor’s statement that “paedophilia should be seen as an innate sexuality that requires destigmatisation”. That is insane: “Innate” is irrelevant to questions of right/wrong. Some researchers say that sociopaths are “born that way”, so by this professor’s “reasoning” we should “destigmatize” sociopathic disorders. “He tortures kittens? No big deal, he’s just born that way.” Maybe instead we should stigmatize morally obtuse professors.
Professors are rewarded for clever arguments that undermine traditional ideas.
Professors are not rewarded for arguing in favor of old established moral truths and traditions.
WTP: “as normal a person as you would ever meet” … “he was caught on camera exposing himself to a schoolyard of [children]”
I think your judgment needs questioning.
And I really don’t care what a popular, funny guy he was, or whether he was born or made that way. He needs to be removed from society.
The harm and the risk to be determined on a case-by-case basis by experts using fact-based best practices and with a holistic intersectional risk assessment factoring in not only the risk to the child, but the risk of hate/stigma/vigilantism/populism against the child-ogling community.
In Ronald Blythe’s book Akenfield, a 1960’s oral history of a Suffolk village many of whose inhabitants seem to have been living in feudal squalor right up past the 1930’s, a lady magistrate talked about the “weird innocence” of some of the child-sex cases she came across…
The magistrate’s sexual morality not being harm-based, she can safely say this has to be stopped without making an individualized case that marginal harm has been done. The moral condemnation is on the disordered environment with no boundaries, so there’s no need to dwell on the unsurprising consequences. The concern is to preserve the innocence of the unfortunate young person, and not to destigmatize the abuser or relativize the wrongdoing.
But if your morality is harm-based and about not judging lifestyles as disorderly and immoral, then there are consequences to making it a matter of expert opinion about whether harm is caused in individual cases.
We’ve been here before, of course.
From David’s link:
That.
I think your judgment needs questioning.
I suspect WTP would happily change “normal” to “seemingly normal”.
In Ronald Blythe’s book Akenfield, a 1960’s oral history of a Suffolk village many of whose inhabitants seem to have been living in feudal squalor right up past the 1930’s…
So much, once again, for Rousseau’s fantasy of the noble savage.
Is anyone else getting occasional random errors when clicking “Preview” or “Post”?
For instance:
Your comment could not be posted. Error type: undefined
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The requested URL /.services/json-rpc was not found on this server.
Dammit, David, hump fat is not suitable for hamsters. I told you that you should not sell your surplus to your hosting service.
Firstly…
I think your judgment needs questioning.
No. I think you are fear reality. I’m pretty damn confident in my judgement, as much as anyone can be, because I hate damn near everyone. I think others here can vouch for that. I notice you omit/gloss over “Funny, popular, had a wife and two kids. Women liked him. Reliable employee.” He was known and liked by the virtually everyone I worked with. Men, women, older folks, younger folks. THIS is the thing. You cannot accept this possibility. To do so is quite terrifying. However this is how a good number of these people are. It is what makes them that much more dangerous.
The problem is, we don’t know. The vast majority of time (I speak anecdotally based on the prosecutions I’ve encountered) sex-abusers of kids are found with huge, huge quantities of child p0rn. This is not the “oops, I clicked the wrong link and have an image on my harddrive” stuff. We are talking giga bytes on the computer and more stashed on storage devices.
A bit to unpack here but this was about 35 years ago. A good bit before such things were so wide spread via digital communication, etc. His wife, a very personable, rational, decent lady, would have noticed. They were friends with a professional baseball player for the Huston Astros and after she and the kids left the area, pretty much disappeared, I took the opportunity to ask him about her when he was signing autographs. I didn’t come out an mention anything but his and her names. The ballplayer…let me look him up…Casey Candaele…was caught a little off guard but he assured me that he had heard from her and that she and the kids were OK. Her husband is still living in the Cocoa Beach area, last I heard anything about him. And as far as I know, has not had other issues. I would think that the wide net of people whom I know would have passed it through the grapevine.
Wanted to respond to more of this but I don’t have time now. Maybe tomorrow. But to be clear, re-read what I wrote. I do not in any way support nor excuse this guy. That he was a friend at some time in the past is irrelevant to my feelings about him now. He is in no way someone I am making excuses for. I am simply trying to relate clear facts as I know them. You can hate the sin and the sinner but that doesn’t absolve you from dealing with the realities in order to better understand and deal with the realities of this very dangerous problem.
WTP: Summarize in just a few words as “normal people can do evil things”? Like the stories I heard of Nazis who were entirely normal neighbors and family members but who, in their day jobs, exterminated Jews and Slavs and other “undesirables”?
Relating this discussion to my wife…she pointed out that this guy passed a secret security clearance. As she just said, he was an easy person to work with, unlike a shit ton of people in that domain at that time.
I’m well into a glass of wine and a pretty thick martini right now but think about what pst just said…assuming I read that right.
“because I hate damn near everyone.”
Maybe it’s the martini but let me rephrase that. Since approximately March of 2020, and certainly since the summer of 2020, I hate damn near fucking everyone. Certain present company excepted. Judge of character my ass.
Summarize in just a few words as “normal people can do evil things”?
I think Solzhenitsyn says it well:
Most of us are probably familiar with that quote. But he goes on to say:
This is where the professor of “ethics” loses the plot. We should seek to contrict the evil within in each person not change the frame of reference of what is good and evil. Acknowledge evil but never normalize it. Seek to constrict it always.
Normalizing things: this is just the demand that no one be judged, no one be made to feel bad about their choices. Not for being obese, not for being attracted to children, not for shoplifting or assault, not for being homeless, not for being crazy. All should be accepted and praised. Kumbaya.
Except rayyycists–they should feel bad for all eternity.
I am constantly asking myself at what point do people like this professor start being ostracized. When does he start getting spit on or even beaten up when encountered in public? Where is the line? I’m not condoning such but when do people start saying these kind are not welcome here? Fortunately for my staying out of jail, we don’t hav these types in my area but we, as a society, need to make these people unwelcome. It’s time to push back.
Yes, the left judges people all the time. So, once again its demands should be met with derision and contempt.
And in, er, child-molestation-fantasy news:
Related, those of us who not clapping (or making jazz hands) like the politboro at a Stalin speech for pedophilia are just …uneducated swines…[sic]
are just …uneducated swines…[sic]
What stands out for me is that the pedophile claiming the “gay culture” supports him and his urges.
I believe a significant number of gays and lesbians may have a problem with that claim.
cartoon porn should be legal. I don’t know; that question gives me a headache so I’ll set it aside for the purposes of this blog post.
It is legal in most western countries. I know it is in Canada and the US, at least, and the issue has been settled in superior courts. I believe Japan recently outlawed it, but they don’t have absolute freedom of speech enshrined in law so it’s less of a legal issue.
CP is one of those things the professors of constitutional law wrangle over because it’s one of those things that everyone agrees should be illegal but it’s hard to do under a strict originalist interpretation.
I don’t know what differentiates “AI-generated” CP from regular hand-drawn CP; all the AI image generators I know of have to be trained on massive quantities of real images before they can produce anything useful. Which rather brings up other questions about “AI-generated” CP.
That.
That.
We could, I think, paraphrase a little further:
Farcical as it sounds, the dynamic is not entirely dissimilar.
Professors are rewarded for clever arguments that undermine traditional ideas.
Professors are not rewarded for arguing in favor of old established moral truths and traditions.
That, as they say.
From many, many moons ago.
“Have a sweet. And some more child-abuse pornography.”
The story is told. And I don’t have references for this, sadly. Tricky Dick Nixon, during his foreshortened term at the U.S.’s helm, stood-up a commission to evaluate pornography* in America. It was said that his hidden agenda was to establish that pornography promoted deviancy and sex-crimes, as a pretext for cracking-down on it. And he was most unhappy and more than a little furious when the committee returned the exact opposite finding – pornography functions as a safety valve to the sickos among us; they can get their jollies staring at a computer screen, rather than stalking the streets looking for a live victim.
Fast-forward a few years, to Ronnie Ray-gun – one of the States’s most successful Presidents but one who shared Tricky Dick’s biases. He stood-up a commission to study the same topic, but he cherry-picked his commissioners a little more selectively and they returned the “porn is evil!!!” findings he craved.
* – which is not to imply in any way that I would be in favour of tolerating kiddie-porn; let the sickos get their jollies with consenting adults, not kids who cannot defend themselves and wouldn’t get the money anyhow. An illustration of the difference. Karl Denninger points-out that Ep-Swine could’ve recruited tiny, waiflike 18-year-olds who’d look like kids and ride him all day for a few lines of coke and a luncheon in Paris on the Lolita Express – and indeed, my limited forays into the dark-side suggest there’re plenty of those out there, and they’re monetising their market-share quite enthusiastically. But no, he had to have the “real thing”.
I’m well into a glass of wine and a pretty thick martini right now but think about what pst just said…assuming I read that right.
Jordan Peterson has talked many times about how easily ordinary people can be corrupted into doing evil things. You can easily find some of those interviews on the web, but here is one of his earliest recorded discussions, How Ordinary Men Became Nazi Killers, from his lecture 2017 Maps of Meaning 04: Marionettes and Individuals (Part 3).
That should shake us all up.
I’m well into a glass of wine and a pretty thick martini right now…
I haven’t had my morning coffee yet, so I’m pretty thick myself.
What stands out for me is that the pedophile claiming the “gay culture” supports him and his urges.
I believe a significant number of gays and lesbians may have a problem with that claim.
I continue to worry about that: Just how many gays and lesbians do feel that child molestation is evil? I get the impression that the activist gays and lesbians tend to be quite tolerant of it, when they aren’t fully in favor of it, and I have read that historically children appear relatively frequently in gay porn.
And how about those gay bars in Dallas and New York City which just had drag queen shows for little children–both kids dancing for adults and adults dancing for kids, and dollar bills being tucked into the dancers’ clothing? As far as I am aware, there has been no wave of public gay outrage against those events–or for all those drag queen story hours etc.
Several years ago it was reported that a number of members of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus were convicted child sex offenders. (Five out of Eighty? Not sure.) This is the Chorus that was in the news for their “We’re Coming For Your Children” song which was enthusiastically cheered at Pride events and only got criticism when it was put on the web during the COVID lockdown.
Not only that, the two men who wrote that song also made a romantic movie about the molestation of boys in Afghanstan.
And then there are all those gay intellectuals who molested boys but almost nobody raised public objections. Likewise heterosexual molesters such as Jeffrey Epstein. (What happened to “if you see something, say something”?)
Alfred Kinsey based his claims about human sexuality on research which disproportionately relied on the reports from sex offenders, including child molesters, and he seemed to take a face value the molesters’ claims that the children enjoyed it and were not harmed. (Can you imagine soliciting interviews with child rapists instead of trying to get them arrested and put away?) This, along with rumors about Kinsey’s own kinks, calls into question his integrity.
And then there are the books about sexual customs around the world which one can occasionally find in libraries and used book stores, in which the reports of said customs seem to be presented in so uncritical a fashion as to utterly discredit the authors and raise questions about their true motives.
All this relates to (1) the question of how people “go Nazi”, and (2) how the “thinking” classes lost their way into this cesspool of relativism and self-serving fake morality.
I want to hurt people but I satisfy that desire by killing and mutilating animals. It keeps me occupied… for now. But I still can’t stop thinking about hurting people, especially the most harmless ones. Is that such a big deal if I’m not actually doing it? /s
We don’t have the ability to fix a broken brain and it’s doubtful we ever will. All you can do is medicate it, and at some point it can break through the medication and often does. Many seriously deranged people hide in the open, never seeking help nor are reported by friends, relatives and coworkers because they’re either afraid to say something or think it’s easier to just avoid the person. Mental hospitals are needed now more than ever but they’ve all but disappeared. Just one of the many things we’ve abandoned in the last fifty years or so to the detriment of society.
There are movies and TV shows that are so violent that they seem like violence porn to me. (Remember criticisms of Sam Peckinpah that he wasn’t satisfied to show people being shot but wanted to show the blood splash in slow motion?) I have wondered about people I know who angrily denounce any hit of nudity but who love to watch ultra-violent shows.
You can find experts who say that these violent shows desensitize us to real violence, making us less sympathetic to real-life victims, or even making us more comfortable with committing violence ourselves. But you can find other experts who insist that violence in movies does not adversely affect our thinking and behavior. I don’t know, but am inclined to think that even if those movies do not make normal people more likely to commit violence they must desensitize us to some extent and maybe even make us more likely to accept violence as normal. Damned if I know, but I worry about this. Roman Coliseum, anyone?
Professors are rewarded for clever arguments that undermine traditional ideas.
Dr Moen equates two 11-year-olds fancying each other with a forty-something man ogling children, as if this somehow excused paedophilia, as if it made fantasies of child molestation a humdrum thing and cruelly misjudged.
He’s an educator, you know.
Professors are rewarded for clever arguments that undermine traditional ideas.
Professors are not rewarded for arguing in favor of old established moral truths and traditions.
Also: The entire educational establishment works to discourage and exclude conservatives, while encouraging and facilitating radical leftists: All through the education pipeline, from grade school through grad school, leftists are praised and encouraged while conservatives and ridiculed and discouraged. Leftists get mentoring and all the benefits of an old boys network, while conservatives are excluded. Conservatives are even officially barred from various degree programs if they refuse to publicly sign on to leftist agendas, and are more quietly excluded if they fail to display sufficient enthusiasm for leftism.
The result: An education establishment which is corrupt to the core. A criminologist once said that maybe one percent of the population is seriously inclined to criminality. I would estimate that the fraction of academia which is now inclined to evil is much, much higher.
Change “a criminologist once said” to “I once read an essay by a criminologist”, and once again I cannot remember who. Dammit.
But if your morality is harm-based and about not judging lifestyles as disorderly and immoral…
That, as the kids say.
I am not big on comic book movies, but having watched the first two seasons of “The Boys” on Amazon, I thought I’d give the third a go. Opening scenes, some guy (Guy1) with the power to make himself, apparently, any size snorts coke with another guy (guy2) Whereupon Guy2 invites Guy1 to make himself tiny and go up his urethra to his prostate. This is of course shown, but Guy 1 sneezes inside the urethra of Guy2 which makes Guy1 go to full size and blows Guy2 in half, again shown with great detail.
I am by no means a prude, but am left wondering what sort of depraved mind would ever think of such a thing, let alone the actors, director, producer, and all the other executives who greenlit this mess nodding and clapping about what a great idea this was.
There has to be a line somewhere.
Milo Yiannopolous, who at one time was a powerful and effective conservative media presence, was swiftly de-platformed (admittedly by both sides of the political spectrum) for discussing his own sexual initiation while under age. Yet another example of the double standards applied to left and right.
You can’t keep a good man down forever and after his period in the wilderness Milo is now reportedly working for the reliably provocative Marjorie Taylor Greene. Future press releases and, more likely, social media comments should be all the better for his presence.
Farnsworth:
Yes we’ve come a long way from Fantastic Voyage when the miniaturised submarine managed to escape the body* into which it had been injected just before returning to normal size.
* Via the tear duct. Being rather young at the time this made more of an impression on me than crew-member Raquel Welch in her undoubtedly tight-fitting uniform. I was a very late developer.
John: Any future worth having includes beautiful women in tight-fitting uniforms/space suits/etc.
As for Milo, I never paid much attention to him, so I am unclear on what he actually said about his sexual initiation.
Argh: When clicking Preview on the previous comment, I once again got this message:
Your comment could not be posted. Error type: undefined
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The requested URL /.services/json-rpc was not found on this server.
What are they feeding the hamsters?
beautiful women in tight-fitting uniforms/space suits/etc.
Did you see that link in this week’s Ephemera?
The foundation we are seeing today could be called “ruling class and perverts first”.
Did you see that link in this week’s Ephemera?
You mean “Tight dress, big breasts”? If you claim that is beautiful, I have some Thorazine for you.
Lots and lots of Thorazine.
There is not enough Thorazine in existence to make that beautiful.
We must normalize STD’s! Why? Because “I am not permitted to have only one sex partner at a time.”
Organizing for Pride? More like hubris which led to nemesis.
I wonder how many other members of the organization knew about his proclivities and what he was doing.
Oh–and by the way, he was a judge. Isn’t that special?
We must normalize STD’s!
To think just a short while ago I was wondering about depraved minds.
However, you are just syphiliticphobic.
Think of all the new stripes on the “pride” flag, pinkish gray for condyloma, neon green for gonorrhea, white wavy line for syphilis, pale yellow green for chancroid, pink with black dots for pediculosis, the possibilities are as myriad as they are glorious.
“We’re here, you see, it burns when we pee, get used to it!”
“What can we do to increase the youth LSMFTWTF+%& community…”
Good question, keep pushing, marketing…
Meanwhile in the marketing department.
We must normalize STD’s!
To think just a short while ago I was wondering about depraved minds.
Not to beat a dead horse (I may have mentioned this before) but I used to know people who had that “normalize STD’s” attitude: They thought that catching an STD was no big deal, because you could “just get a shot” and be cured. Never mind the social aspects of being a slut, what about the medical aspects? I kept trying to get them to understand that bacteria and viruses mutate, that drug-resistant strains are appearing and are only going to get more dangerous, but they refused to listen. They refused to listen even though even serial monogamy outside of marriage is very effective at preventing outbreaks.
There’s a lot to be said for ostracizing certain kinds of people.
I don’t know what differentiates “AI-generated” CP…
That phrase caught my eye as I was scrolling up the page, and the first thought that jumped into my mind was “AI-generated Communist Party”.
Well, some commies have longed for AI as a solution to the knowledge problem that makes socialism so unworkable. (Dream on, fools.) But if we did have an AI-generated CPUSA, it would presumably run on Google’s servers.
normalize STDs: herpes has no cure. If you don’t get treated for syphilis you go blind and then insane. Other stds are very painful and can make you sterile (esp. women). Sure tots normal.
… catching an STD was no big deal, because you could “just get a shot” and be cured…
So no need for masks, even? Or whatever those rubber things are called. [Consults DDG]
OK, so back and sober…well kind of anyway. But I digress…
IMHO giving a legal freebie even on AI created child p0rn is not a solution.
It’s not meant to be a solution. Though see Y. Knot’s comments regarding the Nixon commission. But ask yourself how you are going to enforce such a law? Hugh Heffner and even others before him destroyed any conceivable fundamental basis for prohibition of pornography. See also D.H. Lawrence, etc. in regard to the printed variety. AI, cartoons, drawings, etc. of CP are indeed creepy and a red flag. But in and of themselves, while immoral and disgusting, are not evidence of any direct harm done to a real human being. Pictures of actual, real naked children are however. Well, are in the context of sexualization. The polaroids or whatever of the past and the digital pictures of the present are hard evidence of a crime and possession of such is much easier and more logical to prosecute. Which I now see pst314 addresses…by sidestepping it but I get it.
But to As Darleen comments, we don’t know. Well that’s just it. We don’t. I have seen many explanations for this abhorrent behavior but nothing definitive. One line of reasoning is that the perpetrator was himself a victim of child sex abuse. This would not excuse his (or her) behavior but if true could lead to better prevention. Further, do you see the danger of pre-crime in this reasoning? Similar if a person possesses images of racist or fascist behavior, groups, etc. or even violent images, should the possession of such be itself considered a crime? We have a lot, waaaay too many laws on our books that are ridiculous and unenforceable. The unenforceable nature of many of them water down the power of the law to deal with the real, the concrete, which are far more important.
I suspect WTP would happily change “normal” to “seemingly normal”. Yes. Missed that in my rant yesterday.
I want to be very clear here. I am in no way justifying the moral behavior. But morality is a separate issue from legality. We do agree here, correct?
I am constantly asking myself at what point do people like this professor start being ostracized. When does he start getting spit on or even beaten up when encountered in public? Where is the line? I’m not condoning such but when do people start saying these kind are not welcome here?
Well this. Why not condone ostracizing these people? I would. Though I’m kinda into ostracizing damn near everyone but that’s another story…If professors such as this had to put up with a lot more criticism, I seriously doubt they would have the energy/reason to pursue justifying these greater absurdities. And if society cannot do so on this subject is it any wonder we are chopping the dicks off of our little boys to sew them onto our little girls?
And I see Daniel Ream raises some similar points in regards to the law. And yes, all the AI image generators I know of have to be trained on massive quantities of real images before they can produce anything useful. Which rather brings up other questions about “AI-generated” CP. This would be an interesting point in a lot of regards well beyond this topic. I’ve dropped out of that (approximate) business but depending on the various problems a given AI is trying to solve, how homogenous or heterogeneous the training set is opens its own Pandora’s box of potential issues.
I used to know people who had that “normalize STD’s” attitude: They thought that catching an STD was no big deal, because you could “just get a shot”
Heh. Reminds me of the time a co-worker was relating an old joke many years ago regarding condominiums to wit, “What’s the difference between Gonorrhea and a condominium?” Before he could deliver the punch line, “With shots you can get rid of Gonorrhea” my other co-worker piped up, “I’ve never had a condominium?” This in the presence of most of the ladies on our team. Ridin’ in a Stutz Bearcat, Jim, those were different times….
some commies have longed for AI as a solution to the knowledge problem that makes socialism so unworkable
On a completely unrelated note, I watched the Buck Rogers in the 25th Century pilot the other day for kicks and was jaw-droppingly surprised by how sensible and accurate the depiction of Earth in the “25th century” were. Twiki is Buck’s personal aide. Dr. Theopolis (literally “God of the City”, you magnificent bastards) is one of a group of AIs that collectively run the arcology operations and is the result of multiple generations of AIs programming new AIs. In 1979 the writers predicted generative adversarial networks and robot servants.
“Homosexual”, they are just making crap up as they go along.
Damnit, “Homoflexible”.
I believe the young lady is in fact “queer” in the old sense of the word–strange, odd, abnormal. How could a ten year old think they are bi? What would that even mean to them? And if in fact someone is bi, that does not require clown makeup.
normalize STDs: herpes has no cure.
When I first started having those arguments I’d never heard of herpes (or Hepatitis as an STD) and AIDS was many years away. But there were occasional articles in the news about antibiotic-resistant syphilis and gonorrhea coming from Asia. Somehow those nasty stories made no impression on my onetime friends.
Which I now see pst314 addresses…by sidestepping it but I get it.
Yes, there was just too much to deal with in one or two comments. Thanks for taking it up.
But there were occasional articles in the news about antibiotic-resistant syphilis and gonorrhea coming from Asia. Somehow those nasty stories made no impression on my onetime friends.
Reminds me of a story from many, many years ago…
Hopefully CavScout will not have to worry about this sort of thing in Ukraine.
Cheap Trick are good guys as shown by their obvious enjoyment when playing alongside the great Roy Wood in several memorable YouTube videos.
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century
Speaking of women in tight-fitting costumes……..
He’s an educator, you know.
Hard drive check.
Not raping children – so far, that is – but really, really wanting to and thinking about it a lot – is praiseworthy, you see.
Computer says no.
While I enjoyed Cheap Trick’s music back in the day, they are as reliably left as most others in the entertainment industry.
@WTP, http://baencd.freedoors.org/Books/Grimmer%20Than%20Hell/0743435907__13.htm is a story written by a former lawyer around a world where you have so much knowledge that you cannot enforce all the laws such as those currently on the books. There’s two other stories in the series (and they are available around the above link); not so long ago, I would have claimed his world was more horrible than ours.
Computer says no.
Aside from the more bewildering claims – that “the mental state of finding children sexually attractive is very common,” for instance, or that 13-year-olds’ crushes on other 13-year-olds are somehow equivalent to creepy 40-year-old men ogling kiddies – Dr Moen has other odd thoughts. We’re told that “most adult-child sex… does not involve violence or penetration,” merely “cuddling, caressing, and genital fondling,” and that penetration “occurs most commonly when the child is well into adolescence.” So, hey. No biggie.
We’re also told that we mustn’t assume that paedophiles “desire to harm children,” even though their desires, when enacted, do harm children, often catastrophically, and even though their enacted desire is, by definition, a violation, a betrayal, an act of monstrous selfishness. “There is no reason to posit intentions to harm, disrespect, or expression of ill will on the part of all or even most paedophiles,” says Dr Moen. This is despite acknowledging that such experiences leave a majority of victims with “psychological disorders… increased likelihood of drug dependence, alcohol dependence, major depression,” etc. And despite the fact that these consequences are very widely understood, at least in simple terms. And despite the fact that many paedophiles have been subjected to similar abuse themselves and therefore know first-hand the likely consequences.
Hence the stigma, of course. The stigma that Dr Moen finds so problematic.
Our educator then entertains the conceit that paedophilia is only harmful to its victims “because of society’s way of viewing and handling sexual contact between adults and children.”
The story providing that quote was written in the early 1970s. Time flies when you’re having fun.
While I enjoyed Cheap Trick’s music back in the day, they are as reliably left as most others in the entertainment industry.
Beg to differ. And funny you should mention. While not a huge fanboy, of anybody…though they are the only band I have seen four times…on purpose anyway…damn you Joan Jett…I recall an interview not too long ago, gee wiz, odd that I cannot find it now…where Rick Nielsen expressed some very conservative opinions. Might have been pre-Trump. James Brown aside…and dead…they are about the hardest working band in show business. Rock and roll anyway. Searching now I see interviews where they were asked to play for the GOP in some fashion and made, or the journalist inserted, the usual fascist/nazi dismissive comments. I would say they’re chickenshit little coward conservatives… “conservatives”. Or at least Nielsen is. But that’s pretty much par for the course in entertainment…”entertainment”. Even country music for the most part. Odd that the subject even comes up though.
As for is a story written by a former lawyer around a world where you have so much knowledge that you cannot enforce all the laws such as those currently on the books.
Thanks. But right now my HOA is going through a Kafkaesque nightmare…well as if a collection of people can have nightmares that most of them don’t know about…yet…but likely soon will be paying for. I don’t think I can bear reading fiction regarding the vile scum. This reality, and what it entails/implies, is likely far worse.
WTP: Good luck. 🙁
Our educator then entertains the conceit that paedophilia is only harmful to its victims “because of society’s way of viewing and handling sexual contact between adults and children.”
I used to encounter the claim that it was harmful only because society’s “taboos” led the victims to feel shame–and therefore, removing the taboos would eliminate the shame and hence all the harm.
I assume that the same argument is still being made by the usual bien pensant suspects. (As for evidence to support that claim, the only evidence I can recall being cited were travelers’ tales of primitive or third world societies where they witnessed or learned of such practices. But the credulous Margaret Mead was discredited long ago, and as many other tales have been shown to be fabrications or so distorted as to amount to fabrication. I eventually came to believe that the sorts of people who made these expeditions were highly biased to prefer such societies and were searching for the things that they “found”.)
So, hey. No biggie.
It’s always refreshing to be reminded that we belong to the same species that produced Witchfinder Generals.
That’s really what Moen is, albeit a looking glass variant.
I assume that the same argument is still being made by the usual bien pensant suspects.
As if the only disagreeable aspect of being raped were the subsequent embarrassment. Not the actual, you know, violation.
As if the only disagreeable aspect of being raped were the subsequent embarrassment. Not the actual, you know, violation.
I was never molested, but like most people I have occasionally been manipulated into something that I later regretted. (Crap products sold by clever salespeople, “friends” persuading us to agree to things that benefit them but not us, politicians with more charisma that morals, etc.)
The failure of the “thinking classes” to
understandadmit this is powerful evidence of their moral bankruptcy.This, remember, is in the same essay that acknowledges the “psychological disorders” and “major depression” that are frequently the result for children who’ve been molested. To say nothing of all the oddly unmentioned consequences, including, for some, transgenderism and/or paedophilia, and none of which are generally regarded as life-affirming.
the “psychological disorders” and “major depression” that are frequently the result for children who’ve been molested.
The younger the victim, the greater the trauma. We all know about adults who were permanently affected by a betrayal of some sort, so it is no surprise that children would be even more afffected. And because we are physical beings, a betrayal that involves physical touching has a greater effect.
Children are innocent and need security. They cannot respond to or comprehend sex and should be left alone.
In other news, Gina McCarthy, US climate change guru and former head of EPA under obama, has stated that social media should shut down people who question the gov solutions to climate change–by which I assume she means solar/wind and shutting down oil/gas/coal. Add to this, calls from the Surgeon general to censor people who disagree with the CDC about covid and masks and calls to censor people who say anything about voter fraud and we have a real totalitarian thing brewing. I am only slightly encouraged by the incompetence of these same people.
we have a real totalitarian thing brewing
I wonder if my liberal “friends” will ever notice/admit what is happening. Not optimistic. In answer to Dorothy Thompson’s “Who goes Nazi?” the answer is “nearly all so-called liberals”.
Yeah. Well we’re Dorothy Thompson here today, I would bet she would be all-in on locking up political opponents, squelching free speech, and encouraging any other such fascist behavior. Because, gotta stop them GOP Nazis. The Dunning-Kruger Effect was lost on Dunning…or was it Kruger..bah, probably both.
The Progressive Dorothy Thompsons never recognize the fascistic tendencies of other Progressives. Or at least almost never. My evidence? An example: Note how extremely rare were the liberals who spoke on behalf of James Damore, Jordan Peterson, and others who dared to dissent from leftist dogma.
The Progressive Dorothy Thompsons
Band name.
Marketing says the name is too long. Suggests “Nazi Bints”.
Nazi Bints
Heh. Made me think of the DK’s “Nazi Punks”. Had to look up the lyrics as all I remembered was the…uh…chorus. As I’ve likely run through my allotment of F’s for the month/year, omitting the chorus I find these rather interesting. Of course they were oriented to the hard left but some of this I found amusing today…
Bah…still juvenile lies, BS, and hard leftist dogma but…amusing.
[ Wracks brain for a way to provoke another round of comments. ]
England vs. Italy, an objective comparison.
England, reheated.
I found David’s Lair of Evil.
Our educator then entertains the conceit that paedophilia is only harmful to its victims “because of society’s way of viewing and handling sexual contact between adults and children.” […] I used to encounter the claim that it was harmful only because society’s “taboos” led the victims to feel shame–and therefore, removing the taboos would eliminate the shame and hence all the harm.
If this were true, then adult Afghanis who were subjected to the common Afghan practice of being used as catamites would not demonstrate the characteristic signs of complex PTSD. And yet, they do.
There is ample evidence that early sexualization has permanent effects on a human being’s psyche, and those effects are largely detrimental to what the Western world considers a successful, happy life.
LA “Pride” Show, famous singer gives family friendly performance.
Manson family, maybe.
LA “Pride” Show, famous singer gives family friendly performance.
But don’t dare call it grooming.
Theodore Dalrymple:
“If we know about something that ought not to be, we feel it is unethical simply to ignore it, so we find a way not to know about it.
…
High levels of education are perfectly compatible with, if not actually conducive to, certain kinds of blindness. The educated are often snobs who look down on the uneducated not because of their actual behavior, which like anyone else’s behavior may be good or bad, but ex officio, simply because they are uneducated and do not discuss things in the abstract. Hamlet therefore knows that Polonius will be outraged at being mistaken for a fishmonger; but Hamlet also knows that a fishmonger is more likely to be an honest man than a courtier, if for no other reason than that his livelihood is not likely to survive dishonesty, whereas it is actually a requirement of the courtier that, metaphorically, so many of us have become.“
https://www.takimag.com/article/blind-and-blissful/
I have some sympathy for these people. I went through a period in my life when I was strongly sexually attracted to 12 and 13 year olds. I attempted to act on these feelings several times.
Of course, I was 12 . . .
an objective comparison
A serious omission – no black pudding!
As an aside, when I was a pre-stripling in the 1940s I had a great-aunt who whose husband and son were the local pig stickers so she had a ready supply of blood. I used to see her making black pudding, cooking on the living room fire. It put me off eating it for a long time. When I had grown more sensible years later and actually tried the stuff I suddenly realised the gourmet treat I had missed all those years.
As well as blood, of course, an ample supply of the essential lumps of fat and intestines for the casing.