PhilGoetz comments on Closet survey #1
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I don't know if I actually believe this, but I've heard reports that cause me to assign a non-neglible probability on the chance that sexual relations with between children and adults aren't necessarily as harmful as they may seem. For instance, see the Rind et al. report:
Similarly, I've heard second-hand accounts about people who report that they actually had loving relationships with pedophiles as kids. That didn't traumatize them, but the follow-up "psychological care", where the psychiatrists automatically assumed that the experience must have been horrible, did.
It would seem reasonable, on the face of it. There's no automatic reason for why we should assume sexual relations with children must automatically be harmful and unpleasant to the kids, if not for the cached thought of all sexual relations being abuse. And in the current political climate, just about nobody will have the courage to voice such an opinion in public, so studies such as these should carry extra weight.
I am also "in the closet" on this. Sex is generally pleasurable; postulating a magic age or stage of development before which sex must be traumatic seems implausible on its face, without some other evidence. Coercion and intimidation are well-known to be damaging, but I don't understand how merely convincing a 10-year-old to let you stick something up her vagina (and then doing it) is going to do any more harm than, say, spanking her. Furthermore, looking at the historical record, the ancient Greek custom of pederasty (sexual/romantic relationships between adolescent boys and adult men) doesn't seem to have resulted in widespread trauma.
There are very few places in which it would be safe to propose this hypothesis, though.
Not "generally" over the domain in question. The pleasurability of sex is supported by brain-specific hardware that has no particular evolutionary reason to be active before adolescence.
Without taking a stance on the question of child sexuality - what you say is true, but is there any particular selection pressure for it to be off, either? Evolution goes for the simplest solution, and "always on" seems to me simpler than "off until a specific age, then on".
Of course, that's an oversimplification. The required machinery may simply not be developed yet, in the same way that you need to first grow to be four feet tall before you can grow to be five feet tall. But then, when you reach the size of four feet, you already have four fifths of your five feet-tallness in place, so it stands to reason that that at least part of what makes sex pleasurable will be in place before adolescence. Whether it's active is obviously a separate question, but I don't think "has no particular evolutionary reason to be active" tells us much by itself.
Anecdotal: I don't remember having the slightest concept of sexual interest in anything before puberty.
Anyone got trustworthy better data, go ahead (but we have reason to suspect political interference, which is why I go so far as to cite my own anecdotal memory).
I personally know one girl whom, when she was 8, actively went into sex chat rooms and flirted with older men (anywhere from 16 to 40). I don't think she actually had physical sexual experiences with anyone, though.
I personally know two girls who have had sexual intercourse with adults, one when she was aged 5, the other 8. It was rape in the sense that they were explicitly nonconsentual (they explicitly said didn't want to do it), but it didn't traumatized them. One theory might be that "doing stuff you don't want to do, but adults tell you to do, so you do them anyway" is pretty common at that age (e.g. being forced to clean your room).
I suspect the sex act itself isn't "pleasurable" for them, but having "sexual relationships" with adults may be pleasurable (since the first-mentioned 8 year old sought it out). It may be seen by many of them as a neutral act (like the 5 and second-mentioned 8 year old) and a form of curious exploration.
This is assuming, for lack of a better term, "gentle loving pedophilia". The way pedophilia is often portrayed by mainstream media is violent rape, with screaming, kicking and blood. While I don't personally know of any girl who actually experienced "violent rape pedophilia", I think it's safe to assume that they don't find this pleasurable at all.
Anecdotal also, I clearly remember watching the same movie (Star Wars) before and after teenage - the sexual tension passed me by completely as a child but was obvious a few years later.
However, I don't have evidence that I'd not have enjoyed sex. The desire instinct was offline, that's all I could swear to.
Personally, there's a certain fetish that I have, and I remember it causing me erections even before puberty. However, as far as I can recall, the experience didn't feel like anything that I'd call sexual these days. It was something that was pleasant to think about, and it caused physical reactions, but the actual sexual tension wasn't there.
I also recall a friend mentioning a pre-pubescent boy who'd had a habit of masturbating when there was snow outside, because he thought the snow was beautiful. (I'm not sure if she'd known the boy herself or if she'd heard it from someone else, so this may be an unreliable fifth-hand account.) If it was true, then it sounds (like my experience) that part of the hardware was in place, but not the parts that would make it sexual in the adult sense of the word.
Googling for "child sexuality" gives me a report from Linköping University which states on page 17:
It does, however, also remark that child sexual abuse often causes sexualized behavior in children, and that very little is known about what is actually normal child sexuality. Interestingly, as it relates to the original topic, it also mentions a study that found one third of abuse victims to show no symptoms at all.
I wonder what kind of controls they had (ha, ha) that let them say that it caused the sexualized behavior, rather than just letting the children know about sex. I mean I was entirely ignorant of sex until I was 12. I knew it existed by reading and hearing references to it, and I had seen Playboys and the like, but I didn't have any idea of what sex was.
Also anecdotal: I have liked girls continuously since the age of 4. I do not recommend this....
Maybe no interest in anything in particular, but what of the sexual gratification itself ? Children do masturbate, it's a known fact. Though maybe it's not universal. But the brain-specific hardware seems to be in place already at any rate.
http://www.med.umich.edu/1libr/pa/pa_bmasturb_hhg.htm
This is also my experience.
I could be confusing Freudian stuff with real experimental results, but I seem to remember that children go through a stage up until about 6 where they're somewhat sexual, and then between that age and puberty the sex drive switches off or even into full reverse. This is the reason that young boys tend to think girls have cooties and are gross, and vice versa. It's evolution's way of saying "Not yet".
I can't find the article now, but an evolutionary-psychology noticed that the "cooties" concept seems to exist across all cultures (though obviously not always given the name "cooties"), and furthermore noticed that children often don't consider their siblings to have cooties. I.e. boys will feel that most girls have cooties, but not their sisters.
The psychologist offered this as an explanation: We evolved to find the people we grow up with to be not sexually attractive. This is a mechanism to avoid incest (which can result in genetic problems). However, if you live in a society, you don't want to find people who grow up with you, but who do not share genes with you, to be sexually unattractive (or else you might find no one within your whole society attractive), and thus this "cooties" sensation was placed by evolution so that we can avoid people of the opposite sex during this critical period so that later on, as adults, we may be sexually attracted to them.
That "explanation" sounds awfully just-so-story to me.
That's probably the case. In western societies, it's an orthodoxy, a moral fashion, to say that sex between children/adolescents and adults is bad. This can be clearly seen because people who argue against the orthodoxy are not criticised for being wrong, but condemned for being bad.
Even if the children themselves after the fact don't consider the sexual abuse harmful, it may be considered wrong by the humanity as a whole. The babyeaters prefer eating their children, but humans would like them to stop doing that. Drugs addict continues to take drugs even if they lead to decay of his personality and health, but other people consider it a wrong thing to do. Even if it turns out that with (consensually) abused children the moral line is closer to acceptance, I still expect it to be way below the acceptance level.
The babyeater question would be substantially changed if the children didn't mind being eaten and didn't take harm by it - more or less from a moral crusade into parochial squeamishness. Eliezer went a long way out of his way to avoid that in the story, but here we can't dodge it with a rhetorical flourish.
If as it turns out, kids enjoy consensual sex and take no harm by it, on what basis can society consider it wrong? There has to be a reason. Societies can't just create moral crimes by their say-so.
Edit: downvoted why, please? If you don't say what you think I got wrong, I can't fix it.
(Edit) During this entire thread I was misusing the word "coerce." I meant something more like "entice." Thanks Alicorn.
I always assumed that part of the problem is that it is easier to coerce children. If I kidnap a child and do nothing but feed them ice-cream and take them on a tour of the zoo it is still wrong, even if they liked it and no harm was done.
If I seduce a child and do nothing but feed them ice-cream and have sex with them... is it still wrong? Even if they liked it and no harm was done? There are certainly risks involved and assuming things will be okay is naive. But is assuming things will be bad/evil/gross just as naive?
Suppressing the moral gag reflex is hard to do. I do not know if I can answer the question objectively. I know if I had kids I do not want anyone coercing them into having sex.
Well yes, because kidnapping involves taking a child from their parents unannounced, possibly against the child's will too, possibly also asking for ransom, etc. Those are separate harms that happen even if the child enjoyed the ice-cream and the trip to the zoo.
But what are the separate harms of sex? There are health risks, but they don't hugely exceed the risks in other common childhood activities such as tree climbing.
No ransom and not against the child's will. If the reason kidnapping is wrong deals with parental consent, does the same thing apply to sex?
This is actually irrelevant for the point I was trying to make. Kidnapping, with no harm done, is still very much illegal. Should it be?
Removing a child from a parent is a harm (as witness the panicked parent). It's not so much a matter of consent, as of making people worry and separating them from their family. The parents have a protective interest in the child, which is harmed by their non-consent to the zoo trip. This is the very thing that makes it "kidnapping" and not "visiting with friends". It is a separate harm, which is why the distinction I drew is relevant.
BTW, this line of argument doesn't get you to "no sex", it gets you to "no sex without parental consent". Fair enough, now what if they say "yes"?
If the child is returned before the parent knows they are missing? I am not understanding why the correlation is so hard to see. It is an analogy, not a mirrored situation. Kidnapping is not seducing. There are differences. The original point was that seduction involves coercing children. Kidnapping can do the same thing. So can brainwashing. All three of these (kidnapping, brainwashing, seducing) can produce harm but may not and arguing about exactly when "harm" happens is not really useful. The relevant question is exactly this:
I am not arguing for any particular stance. I just saw an interesting correlation between seduction and kidnapping that involved coercion. If I remember correctly, the laws in some states get remarkably relaxed when minors have their parents' consent. I could not tell you specifics, however. If you find this sort of thing interesting I am sure it is relatively easy to find information about sex with parental consent.
The bottom line: A child will do an awful lot to please someone. Is it okay to coerce them into doing something? Does it matter if they enjoy it? Does it matter if there is harm? Does it matter if they want to do it?
All of this also assumes "seduction" instead of a real, true romance. I would assume that a real, true romance has less coercion. (Or, at the very least, thinks it has less coercion.)
Perhaps we're being confused by your use of the verb "seduce", since to me that doesn't include non-consensual means - it usually implies cunning trickery at worst and goal-directed charm at best. Can you restate without using it?
You can replace the word "seduce" with "get them to have consensual sex with you." "Get" in the context I am using basically implies "coerce." The point does rely on the possibility of convincing someone they want the same thing you want. The catch is that such a sexual encounter satisfies the term "consensual sex." They completely, and of their own volition, consented to having sex.
The original point asks if there is validity in condemning sex with children because they are easy to coerce. In other words, is the criterion of "consensual" too easy to manipulate?
I find it ironic that 'notmyrealnick' got 34 points for this comment. But I suppose there are repercussions other than bad karma for posting unpopular views...
You believe that the idea of adult sexual relationships with a child being bad might be a cached thought?
Except for the fact that many, many kids grow up and report that it's harmful. These accounts are painful, emotional, sincere. So if the victims say that it is harmful, why don't you believe them?
I didn't say sexual relationships with children couldn't be harmful; I only said that not all automatically are. For instance, rape is obviously always harmful, and AFAIK a large fraction of such relations consist mainly of rape - but not all.
Here's a theory as to why: the experience may indeed be painful in the psychosocial context of our present society, but perhaps only in that context, or more specifically, because of that context.
That is, we have ideas of shame—that certain things are, or are not shameful—that are culturally based, and when we do things that offend our (learned) sense of shame, we feel, and remember, the associated negative emotions, without necessarily remembering their cause. We associate the negative emotions with the circumstance, instead of the long-gone prior that caused us to feel shameful in such circumstances. In some religions, you can feel shameful working on the Sabbath; in our society, you feel shameful having sex when society says you aren't "ready" to. (I admit that that's a bit of a stretched analogy.)
The more common reply to your argument, though, is that the children are reassigning a negative emotional weight to their memory of the experiences, after the fact, because the therapist/parent/whomever is expecting the experience to be negative. They don't have to prompt for this verbally; they may be using completely neutral language, or simply asking "what happened?" Either way, their body language will show their emotional reaction to every word (and if a horse can do math based on our observed body language, we're obviously not very good at concealing it.)
To demonstrate my meaning: If one of my friends punched me in the arm, I'd interpret that as playful at the time. If a stranger did it, I'd interpret it as hurtful. I literally feel more pain in the latter case, because of this expectation. Now, if, some time later that day, my friend insulted my race, or some other category to which I belong that implied that he just wasn't my friend any more, I'd re-think that punch. I'd remember it hurting more.
Child abuse recountings are extreme versions of this. If you demonize the adult in the child's mind, everything they do is going to take on a negative connotation. They're going to start looking for the negative angle: a hug was really a rough squeeze; a toussle of the hair was really a hair-pulling, and so on. In this light, of course sex was a bad experience—it's extremely physical with all sorts of pleasurable/painful connotations which can be switched around or played with to no end (for example, BDSM is simply a shared agreement on a set of altered connotations.)
Let's see... My original question was, "if the children said they are harmed then why don't you believe them?" Your answer sounds very much like it isn't that you don't believe them, but that the harm is discounted because it's society's fault.
Yet the original question posed was whether children are harmed or not, not whose fault it was.
Suppose that all the harm (all the "psychosocial" bad feelings) is an artifact of society, rather than society's way of preventing the bad feelings that are a natural result of sexual abuse. What then? Is it more important for a child to experience sex with an adult than being well-integrated into society? In fact, one of the most painful aspects of sexual abuse is the child's realization that the adult was deliberately creating a relationship outside societal norms that would alienate them from society.
Secondly, saying that the harm is caused by society and not by sexual abuse is not relevant if your intention is to keep a child from harm. (Sounds more like a rationalization of someone trying to get away with doing harm: I didn't hurt his feelings! Society did!) In this absurd hypothetical scenario where harm is just an artifact of society, you might have three options if you want to actually prevent the child from coming to harm: prevent sexual abuse, remove the child from society (only a monster would do this), or significantly change society. Good luck with the last bit, as
But this was obviously a response to that question. derefr suggested that when someone asks the child about the abuse, it's asked in such a way that the child remembers it as abusive. This isn't a statement about society, but about why the child's memory is not necessarily reliable.
And yet, other things that cause children as much or more harm (such as emotional abuse) are not similarly outlawed. This raises a strong suggestion that this has more to do with parents' interests than childrens' interests.
Evolutionarily, parents have a strong incentive to exert influence over their childrens' choice of sexual partners. Actually, they have strong incentives to exert influence over their childrens' choices, period, but this is especially true for children's sexual choices... which is why teenage girls are now getting slapped with "sex offender" and "child pornographer" labels for sending naked cellphone pictures to their boyfriends.
It it more important for them to be a rational thinker than to be well-integrated into society, whatever that means? Are we abusing children by teaching them to be atheists?
I don't have any answers to these questions; I'm just pointing out that your reasoning here is suspect. If we were to determine the legality or morality of relationships on the basis of possible emotional harm or social approbation, nobody would be in a relationship at all. Yet, people often choose relationships with others who their family, friends, or entire society are against.
(If we substitute e.g. "Is it more important for a person to have sex outside their race/gender/religion than to be well-integrated into society", the fallacy is even clearer.)
An argument against large age gaps in sexual relationships due to consent issues, however, is a different kettle of fish. If we say that children below some age can't reasonably consent to a particular activity due to lack of self-control or adequate contextualization ability, that's a bit more reasonable, although you then get into a lot of line-drawing arguments about how young is too young. (Some people, OTOH, will likely never be mature enough to have a decent relationship, but at some point you've got to let it be their responsibility.)