Re: My last words

"Are you up for defending him again, Baldur?"

Yes.

Naturally I am not in agreement with much of what Lateralus says, and where I do agree about a statement of fact that does not mean I interpret its meaning in the same way. Nonetheless, GirlChat is about supporting our people, and Lateralus needs our support as much as anyone else here. He has had a long row to hoe.

That said, I will note a couple points where I agree with him:

(1) Do posters here give preference to pro-contact arguments, even when they are muddled or meaningless?

Yes, we do.

Not universally, of course, and it isn't necessarily troubling. Every movement will have members who don't quite understand the intellectual arguments but want and need to fit in by affirming the common beliefs of the group. One of GirlChat's purposes is to provide support to girl lovers, without respect to whether they understand every detail of common intellectual positions here. Therefore, frequently we ignore poor argumentation supporting common positions held here, even as there are plenty of posters willing to rip to shreds any anti argument that is presented. We know that not all of our posters are intellectual giants, and it would serve no good purpose to attack the people who need our support just because they are not 100% up to defending our common beliefs. On the other hand, this board does in fact have some intellectual giants, and I have not found them relying on poor arguments.

I believe this dynamic is also responsible for Lat's ideas about GC being cult-like, although by such criteria virtually every group would be a cult.

(2) Do posters here have ulterior motives for supporting youth liberation?

Yes, some do.

In virtually every debate, the participants have ulterior motives, to a greater or lesser degree. Our enemies certainly have such a motive. I happened to see something on television not long ago, about the Fritzl case in Austria where a man kept his own daughter locked up as a sexual slave. He claimed that he did it to "protect" her from the outside world, and one of the commentators on the program noted that it is common for those who wish to control others to claim that they merely want to protect them. I would rather have the ulterior motive of wanting to be able to love a girl and have that love freely returned, than to have the ulterior motive of wanting to control children for my own benefit or to glorify myself, as many antis do. Fact is, even if we change the cultural attitude towards intergenerational love within our lifetimes, many of us will probably be too old to benefit much - but we still want kids to be free.

Of course, some ulterior motives are honorable, and some are dishonorable - and there are certainly some degree of both on both sides of this argument. I imagine that the average anti on the street, who has not considered the arguments much, believes that the laws are genuinely there for the benefit of children even if they personally do not want to control children to benefit themselves. They have been fooled by Fritzl-like persons who have their own personal agendas.

But it is also noteworthy that whether a person's ulterior motives are honorable or not is in some ways immaterial. Selfless intentions sometimes lead to bad results, and selfish intentions often lead to good results. This is why we try to engage our brains as well as our emotions.

In this case, even if the intentions of pedophiles are entirely selfish, the benefits of youth liberation will accrue to all.