"I don't see how it's a virtue to ignore the reality that hundreds (?) of people are likely to read a thread. (It might even be considered a bit self-indulgent to ignore that.) I take the same approach on the VP board too, figuring that if I only want to talk to one or two people I'll do it privately."

Facetious and you know it.

Witness the use of nicks instead of real names.

The question is, who do you write to and why?

"My participation here does not match your polemic characterization at all. I do not repeat passages,"

LOL.

RLY?

That recent top-threaded repost sounded EXACTLY the same as when we heard it before.

And that's when you aren't returning the convo back to talking points whose factuality was debunked or whose logical fallacy was revealed. Folks engaged in a convo with another person they hope to persuade learn from their errors. You need never learn because its the conversation with the imaginary audience which matters more. A talking point which you've lost to everyone involved can still be imagined to be successful to that figment in your head.

"It's convenient to try to dismiss my views as not genuine for some reason or other"

I don't need to. Give you enough rope..............

You're the one who decided to tell the press and the public that they are your primary audience. I just have to wonder why it took a reposting of a PR piece for you to admit it here too.

"Generally it's possible for regular posters here to maintain the view that the pro-contact position is clearly right because challenges always fade. "

There's that broken record again.

Fade, do they? Is there any evidence that people arriving at GC have been unexposed to the belief that adult/child sex is wrong?

Its as if we hadn't already had this very convo a few months ago.

Perhaps you're terrified of memories fading because the patently absurd ideas you float ( like the Pedo who arrives at GC with pro-choice societal baggage ) are ones which would never occur to anyone who was addressing reality. The real and the factual may be rediscovered from time to time. But biases, and the erroneous thinking which support them, are not found in nature, and do not renew themselves spontaneously.

The study of anthropology shows just how unique the pathologies in Western society which support the need to suppress the sex-play of children are. This holds true for individuals as well who need to sell Anti arguments. They may hold the majority in society. But the illogic required to support this nonsense tends to vary from person to person. ( Because there is NO public conversation even about reasons and logic. ) So each anti-choicer pretty much has to make this sh*t up for themselves. ( This gives rise to the belief that the confluence of evidence and logic among the opposition must arise from "groupthink." It cannot be that the same logical coherence and support from the facts would be rediscovered by different seekers after truth. )

"Those who don't accept them either keep quiet about it or go away because of the hostility, and leave this little world safe in its views. I gather that in the past some other posters generated significant controversy, but then they left."

RLY? Speaking FOR the imaginary again?

Unfortunately for your assumptions, some of us have been around long enough to remember other reasons than the ones you propose in complete ignorance.

One thing you MAY want to take into account in your concern over prevention of harm is the historical correlation in previous GC posters between those who were "anti-contact" ( I'll use their preferred term here ) and who didn't "leave" GC but were jailed due to contact offenses against minors.

Now correlation does not imply causation. But it still seems clear to me that you've got the course of events wrong in your scenario about the prevention of harm to girls. As you would have it, a struggling Pedo on the verge of offending stumbles across GC by accident, reads an Ethan post and sees the light. Unfortunately it appears as though history is trying to tell us that the acting-out may be tied to self-loathing narratives which turn love into an "unfortunate burden" consent into something adults decide FOR children and self-control from an assumption into a heroic struggle against an imposing foe. The party on the verge of offending may stumble upon GC. But he is likely to arrive here to harangue others, become increasingly as negative as his narrative and possibly succumb to the demon he has invented for himself.

A lot of others became increasingly incoherent, resorting to profanity and death-threats before being banned. This is what happens when an idea which depends on argumentum ad baculum in the larger world is forced to abandon the cudgel at GC. When the bully is deprived of cronies he is often reduced to incoherence. Inheriting an argument and support from a bully leads to a similar end.

We remember how the anti-choice departed. But just keep telling yourself that your unfounded speculations are more valid.

"So far I haven't let the hostility drive me away. Letting my hair down is hampered to some extent by the hostility."

You arrived here with a negative message representing a site which already maligned dissenters.

And you chose to, time and time again, focus on this one message to the exclusion of everything else GC might offer. Even during a brief cooling-off period where you were precluded from this barrage of negativity the offer to join ANY OTHER convo was pretty much rejected.

That you participate to repeat your one message clouds your ability to see any other. You think that talking about your idee fixe is something WE do more than any other activity. But a scholarly lurker proved that this theme which defines GC for you is a very small subtopic at best.

Its still up to you.

Believe me, you aren't an isolated case. If I confined myself solely to trying to persuade Markaba to give-up Utilitarianism or solely to arguing Kapitalism with Dissident, I could blame the negativity in my posts on a failure of either to cave-in.

Its the rare poster who hasn't disagreed with someone here about something. But its a big forum with a lot of new threads going on all the time. Most of the topics wont further the goals of someone who came to GC to wallpaper the hoardings with posters advertising their views to those outside the forum. But if you want to join something else its up to you.

Nobody can make you cease your negativity but you.

Dante