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drethelin comments on The Phobia or the Trauma: The Probem of the Chcken or the Egg in Moral Reasoning. - Less Wrong
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The rule : "Do not have sex with children", is not made into a bad rule by the possibility of a child having sex with an adult and not being traumatized, in the same way that the rule : "do not lash people with a whip" is invalidated by the existence of masochistic people.
There were times when a nobleman forcefully taking a peasant woman was not stigmatized and Indeed, if the noble offered, she might even "consent", due to her poor position in life, and the chance at making it better. Yet I do not think this is a state of affairs we would prefer to exist today. There were times when a father was the one person who decided who his child would have sex with, and when, and this was seen as the norm, as right and proper, and yet I'm sure it lead to many an unhappy marriage.
The pedophilia problem is not just one-pronged. The persecution of pedophilia is not the main and only cause of it being bad. Sexual relations between people with drastic power imbalances are rife with opportunities for abuse or coercion. This is not something we want to proliferate, even if there is a chance it can go just fine. We stigmatize pedophilia for the same reason we think it's wrong for bosses to have sex with their employees or doctors to do their patients.
I think that there must be something more going on memetically than just an aversion to relationships with power imbalances. Only the most conservative individuals seem to object to the idea of a wealthy middle aged CEO watching legally produced pornography featuring eighteen year old actresses, but most individuals seem to have an aversion to anyone who watches pornography which simply simulates children in sexual situations through animation or computer graphics (I haven't read any opinion surveys on this, but there is an OkCupid question asking whether it should be illegal to look at animated or otherwise artificial porn of children, assuming it can be absolutely proven that no real children were harmed; most people regardless of political affiliation answer yes.)
Pedophilia is stigmatised far worse than sex between bosses and their employees or doctors and their patients. The distinction is important: people seldom feel seriously traumatised after having sex with their bosses, and when both involved parties are consenting nobody is thrown to prison.
Also what Will Newsome has said. The reasons why pedophilia is stigmatised are probably not identical to rationalisations made around it.
Clearly it was an example of kind and not of magnitude. Car theft is punished for the same reasons as petty theft, but to a much greater extent
The reasons for difference between car theft and petty theft are clear. Not so in the discussed case. The original post claimed not to defend pedophilia, which I interpret as not saying that the rule "do not have sex with children" is bad, but that the social stigma associated with it is far greater than it reasonably should be.
Comment generally seemed reasonable, but the quoted hypothesis seems highly unlikely. (One could argue, I'm not sure how convincingly, that "this is how we tend to justify our moral stance even if it's not what caused our moral stance.")
I agree. What I meant to say is we SHOULD stigmatize, not we stigmatize. thanks for making me rethink it.
Does stigmatizing harmful social acts reliably lead to a reduction in their incidence or in the harm they cause?
I can't quote a study but I would bet sure stigmatizing racism directly led to a reduction in racist remarks and actions. People are impressionable and are strongly influenced by the society around them.
But only a reduction in racism against beings that were nearly indistinguishable from the racist humans in the first place.
I don't disagree, but i think the situation becomes drastically different when we are talking about sexual desires. Again, I don't have anything better than moderate familiarization with Kinsey to back that up.