Re: Depends on what you mean by 'accepted'

Willfully agreeing to keep quiet on a platform as important on many levels as youth lib not only makes us look like hypocrites, but it also means giving into fear. In fighting for change, I have agreed to work within the law and in a manner completely in harmony with the democratic principles I hold dear, and as such, if society sends the gestapo after us simply because we support a certain set of civil rights for a specific group of people, then they are effectively dropping their veneer of being civilized, and when that happens, they will end up losing many allies among the general public.

Okay, so are you telling me you're not afraid of a pedo genocide? That you're not afraid of being outed by your enemies and targeted for harassment, etc.? Because I don't see you outing yourself on here or anywhere else. As I've said numerous times, it's easy to talk big when you're an anonymous nick on the Net. Look, don't get me wrong: I'm not questioning your judgment in not outing yourself, but it's a little fishy for you to call me a hypocrite when you talk about having courage from behind an anonymous nick. Talk about hypocrisy . . .

Social progress and the advancement of any minority cannot occur with some degree of risk. There is an old saying that may apply here: "fortune favors the bold."

Yes, I agree. If you'll recall, I outed myself long before PJ came along. I took the risk. But with PJ and the like here, we live in a different environment now. It is stupid not to weigh the risks and realize that the current zeitgeist is much more hostile to us than it was when I joined GC. That's a nice saying, but it's not always true, is it? In fact, it's rarely true. History is littered with the corpses of people who were bold but got crushed under the heels of those far more powerful than they.

And that is precisely the pro-choice point: despite the differences between all of these minority groups, there are nevertheless many parallels as well, and all of their struggles for emancipation followed recognizable patterns. You readily acknowledge the differences between the blacks, women, and gays in their respective struggles, but never do you suggest that these differences automatically cancelled out any similarities, nor did they suggest that any one of these emancipation struggles was any less valid than any of the others.

Yes, I agree there might be a faint pattern that echoes through the various minorities' fight for their rights, but there is one resounding difference: where are the large numbers of kids fighting for their own rights? Because, other than a handful, I don't see them. And don't compare them to slaves, which I know you're going to do. Slaves could be killed for rebelling against their masters; you can't kill kids for rebelling, or beat them too badly, or put them in chains, or make them work for 16 hours a day. Kids are adored by their parents, for the most part, and have good lives. I don't see child rebellions in the same sense there were frequent slave rebellions. Children can be defiant, yes, but I don't see them challenging the paradigm of parental guardianship.

That is total and utter nonsense. Society may indeed feel that way, but no one in this community that I am aware of are supportive of non-consensual sexual activity. In fact, it's quite obvious that the word "rape" is often misused by the law and the media.

You're missing the point, or more likely playing the willful ignorance card. The legal, social and scientific evidence suggests that kids' brains are still developing, which makes it hard to determine whether they fully understand the implications of consenting to something. You cannot be expected to consent if you don't know what you're consenting to. This is why consumer protections are a good idea, and other such laws. Why wouldn't we also apply this to minors? I agree with you that society vastly overcompensates, but I think MAP activists tend to vastly overcompensate in the other direction, or perhaps undercompensate is the better word here.

Actually, the real red herring in your above argument is when you imply that not enough research has been done to suggest that youths and MAAs/MAPs should be awarded their full rights without violating the safety of younger people. When you say that giving full rights to MAAs would violate the "rights" of children, you are twisting the term "rights" to mean what are often referred to in progressive circles as negative rights, i.e., freedom from rather than freedom to; it's actually the negation of rights, not the protection of them. Enough studies have been done which make it clear that consensual sexual activity between adults and younger people are not typically emotionally damaging to the younger person and MAAs/MAPs are not, by and large, dangerous, unbalanced, or manipulative individuals and are often quite gentle and caring--not always, of course, but more than often enough to suggest that across the board prohibitions aimed at all of them because of how a few may act is far from justified.

This is not a red herring. Where are all these studies you speak of? And for every one you can produce, I can find at least two that counter it. The fact is, we just do not know enough to make an informed decision, and we will not know enough until society pulls its collective head out of its ass and takes a more-or-less impartial view of the issue. Good luck making that happen. No, I'm not twisting the word rights, because in some cases people--adults and children--need to be protected from their own ignorance.

I'll wager you support consumer rights like full disclosure, etc. Why would you do that unless you recognized that sometimes we can fall victim to misinformation, lack of information and the like? You can educate adult consumers with information, but even then lawyers can twist things to make them confusing. We have or should have laws for that as well: simplifying things in the banking industry so we don't have another housing crisis and the like. Kids can only understand so much; below a certain age they're incapable of parsing out abstractions in thought. You know this. Who's to say that in the system you want adults won't be talking over kids' heads in order to "educate" them so they can legally consent, when in reality the adults are just manipulating them?

There is also much evidence based on objective studies and various actual cultural examples (e.g., the Sudbury school environments) that children and teens alike have much greater capabilities than are currently recognized and accepted due to the societal conditions and strictures they are presently forced to live under, and that much of their perceived inherent limitations in terms of competence are based on the manner in which they are currently raised and forced into dependence, much as the differences between women and blacks in comparison to white men were once thought to be far more pronounced than they are today due to the way those groups were raised in society. These are things that you and others on your side of the issue should consider but always seem to (conveniently) overlook.

There is evidence that some kids have much greater capabilities then they are expected to have, but I can tell you based on a lot of personal experience with kids that many are operating at the level of expectation or lower. Also, kids can be advanced in one area of their life and regressed in another. The best possible solution that I can see is what I proposed: a system of tests in which kids must earn their rights. Rights are a privilege anyway; they are not pre-existing in nature. Fore example, no animals have a right not to be slaughtered by other animals (except in some cases if the slaughtering animal is human.) We invented rights; they are not inherent. We should have to earn them, I think.