I have a hypothetical question that I’d like to explore with a little more philosophical rigour, and I thought that this might be a suitable place to do so. When I say hypothetical, I mean hypothetical; I must stress that there is nothing of this nature going on in my life, and it’s not one of those ‘I have a hypothetical friend…’ anecdotes. Also, I don’t want to get mired in cross-references to the ‘real world’; some trolls are wont to derail hypothetical discussions by means of statements along the lines of ‘but that’s not the case in the real world’. Such people may take such objections elsewhere. I’d also like to point out that I have no agenda here; I simply want to explore the question philosophically. Unsurprisingly, then, what I will welcome is reference to philosophy (yes, from real-world philosophers, so this constitutes an exception to the no cross-references to the real world provision). I’m sure there are a few axe murderer examples that could be touched upon from Plato and Kant, and no doubt there will be some other relevant considerations.
So, to the crux of the matter. Imagine we are in a hypothetical world in which it has been established unequivocally by science that sexual activity as a child (whether this is with other children or with adults) is not inherently harmful, and that harm only arises where such activity has been engaged in as a result of manipulation, coercion, force, etc. (and even then proportionate to the severity of this manipulation, coercion, force, etc.). However, society has not yet caught up with the science and is deeply anti any sexual activity in childhood, in fact rather hysterical about the whole thing. The result is that children who have engaged in willing sexual activity that they enjoyed and did not experience as negative are exposed to influences that gradually brainwash them into thinking that what happened was the most heinous monstrosity and that they will need lifelong therapy. This process scars them.
A man is approached by a child he has known for many years. She shows signs of wishing to experiment with him sexually. He doesn’t suspect that her curiosity is the result of any abusive event(s) in her life as it seems reasonably consistent with her age and stage of development. She wants to experiment, and he wants to as well. However, he knows that society will damage her.
The knee-jerk response here, one unbecoming of philosophers (I presume we’re all philosophers here, or at least schooled in critical thinking), is to say he should steer well clear. But I’d like to explore it in more depth. Philosophical contributions welcome. What’s your take on this?
Societies are formed by people who judge, condemn, and execute offenders of the intent of the society’s leaders/owners (seldom publicly known). Philosophically speaking, regardless of the potential offensive behavior, one must realize that the tiniest infraction of the ordained opinions of the owners of a society will lead to condemnation of all parties who are viewed as contributing to the event. Such judgments and condemnations are always formed and executed in secret, without the victim’s knowledge nor the knowledge of society in general.
So it doesn’t matter what the alleged offense was. Those deemed evil will be condemned in the most secretively heinous ways, usually causing far greater damage than what was already suspected, and those deemed innocent will be forgiven of all things, regardless of any reality.
Thus the “philosopher’s” advice, is to be ever alert to what is seen or even suspected as evilness by the ambient society. Reality has nothing at all to do with the condemnations of secretive judges. Appearance and suspicions are all that matters to them. And every society has them, and most formed by them.
Void of being within any society (almost impossible today), what should or should not be done concerning such situations is entirely dependent upon who is “experimenting”, the virtues and talents of such a person, and how much they can realistically handle when doing such things in the proposed environment. You have asked a question that cannot be answered with a universal response unless a society is involved. And then the answer is to avoid social condemnation regardless of true justice or righteousness.
Hypothetical questions are best framed with credible premises.
Here’s what I mean…
Let’s say that shooting someone in the head was shown to be un-harmful. Would it be okay to go around with a gun and choosing people to shoot in the head all day long?
Well, arguments against pedophilia that condemn it purely because it harms the child will run into this hypothetical as a reality soon enough.
The other side to it though is that stigma is of course 'harmful', that's why we do it. If we don't want a behavior in our society, we make people feel bad for engaging in that behavior. Making people feel bad is a sort of harm. So if "Nobody should harm anybody" is all we can think of to say about morals, then we are condemning each other to a society in which no standards of decency, ettiquette, custom, or anything else can be enforced.* So plainly there is more to ethics than harm- or at least, every society everywhere has always considered there to be more to ethics than harm. If we go that way, we will be the first, and yes, we'll have to accept pedophilia.
SO I think the upshot here is that pedophilia (or rather, the condemnation of it) disproves that sort of strict anti-harm utilitarianism.
In conclusion, "Society will harm her" is A reason to not engage in the act, but it's not a sufficient reason to condemn pedophilia, as in every other case where stigma was the only harm, the argument has been successfully advanced that we ought to then erase the stigma.
*At least in theory- the political factions that say things like that will of course still make masculine men, thin women, white people, Christians, and etc. feel bad whenever they can.
A more profound insight into the predator’s mind is the neurotic preference for children’s immature bodies. The predator is non virile and mentally unstable, with a range of distorted cognitions as well as an empathy deficit. “Pedophiles showed verbal deficits, left hemispheric brain dysfunction and right hemispheric visual spatial deficits” Brown and Brown 1997. Human science researchers have begun to regard certain characteristics as defining hallmarks of the pedophile. What is common is the pedophile tends to blame children, insisting they were seduced by their victims, ignoring their own modus operandi with their stalking behaviours, pampering and seducing children in order to gain their cooperation to sate a secret pursuit of their voyeuristic pleasures. What is vital to this success is the hidden sexual training the child is subjected to by these sordid people.
Pedophiles can be likened to rock spiders, spinning and weaving their webs while lying in wait for their victims, ‘victims’ being the operative word, “the most important word in a phrase, which explains the truth of a situation”
This is not a philosophical question. It’s a legal, psychological and ethical one.
How many years, exactly has he known her? How old is the “child”? How physically developed? How old is the adult? There is a world of difference between 8/35 and 15/16.
How does the “approach” take place? What kind of experiment is she interested in? Why did she choose him? Has he made advances to her in the past? Is there something in her past experience that orients her toward old guys instead of her peers? Is she already damaged?
Why does the adult wish to experiment with a child? Hasn’t he got any adult experience? Why not?
If he knows that there are social and psychological consequences for the younger person, while he gets off without damage, and he goes ahead, he’s a bastard.
And presumably by society’s leaders/owners you don’t necessarily mean a small subset of individuals, especially if the mores and interests that are the subjects of someone’s transgressions are born of mass consensus?
Returning to the hypothetical question, the girl might be deemed innocent but nonetheless end up being damaged by society’s messages for the sake of upholding society’s narrative. In which case, guilt or innocence are at best secondary considerations; what counts is preservation of the said narrative.
Quite so.
Would that be one’s only duty, if it may be deemed a duty? To return to the hypothetical question once more, is there no duty, on the part of the man, to defend the girl’s ‘right’ (if such a thing exists) to experiment, to express herself, by somehow challenging society’s attitudes? Because if he merely dovetails with convention and says ‘no’ then he is inflicting repression. (Granted, this may be the lesser of two evils, and granted, any efforts to challenge society’s attitudes would not succeed with sufficient speed to make any difference in the case at hand.)
I don’t see the relevance of this analogy, because it couldn’t be proven that shooting someone in the head is not harmful. It invariably is, whereas sexual activity engaged in as a child (which almost all of us have experienced to some extent or other) is not invariably harmful.
This is true, and something I omitted to consider, probably because I wish to focus on his duties to the girl. For the sake of simplicity, and to refocus the discussion on the effects on the girl, it might be best to assume that legislation has caught up with the science even though society’s attitudes have not. In other words, he wouldn’t go to prison. I admit that that’s fraught with problems (why would legislation be amended on the basis of science alone when public opinion would be hostile?), but it’s the only way of focusing on the effects on the girl.
Certainly. I’m familiar with a lot of the arguments in the pro and anti camps, and there are some terrible ones. For the sake of accuracy, however, I’d like to point out that paedophilia refers to preferential or exclusive attraction to prepubescent children rather than to an action. The act of engaging in sexual activity with a prepubescent child (or, indeed, anyone under the age of consent in the relevant jurisdiction) is referred to as child molestation or child sexual abuse.
If, as in the hypothetical example, science had conclusively proven that sexual activity engaged in as a child was not inherently harmful and that any harm caused was due to manipulation, coercion or force and, of course, the subsequent stigma, then yes, we would have to accept that and deal with it maturely. For the purposes of the hypothetical question, however, society has not yet accepted the science and dealt with it maturely.
This strikes me as a reasonable assessment.
This strikes me as an unreasonable response, based as it is on the ad hominem-style junk science that has focused solely on sex offender populations. According to FBI-commissioned studies, c. 90% of child molestors are not paedophiles but so-called ‘situational offenders’. Drawing conclusions about paedophiles on the basis of studies of convicted sex offenders is therefore akin to drawing conclusions about heterosexual men on the basis of studies carried out on convicted rapists. Let’s return this to the hypothetical scenario and assume that the gentleman in question is attracted to the girl to an extent that he would like to yield to her advances, but has sufficient empathy and impulse control that he would be considering the types of things we are discussing here.
To play devil’s advocate, are there not areas of philosophy that consider such matters (jurisprudence, ethics, etc.)?
I agree that the age and development of the child are relevant. For the purposes of the hypothetical question I had no specific age in mind, though I stated that her sexual curiosity could be assumed to be congruent with her age and stage of development. What interests me about the above part of your response is that you raise the issue of the age of the man. I’d like to respond to that, though not necessarily to address the point I know you’re trying to make. Let me pose a question: is it reasonable for us to assume that a 35-year-old man’s intentions when engaging in a (willing) sexual encounter with, say, a 13-year-old girl would be any more or less ‘predatory’ than the intentions of a 17-year-old boy engaging in the same encounter? Obviously I’m hoping for more than a yes or a no in response to this.
Your practical considerations are certainly germane, but I want to keep things hypothetical. Let’s keep it broad by saying she has known him since a very young age, was always very physically affectionate with all adults, but he is more responsive than most, and due to the naturalness of their physical interaction she is comfortable trying to push the boundaries of that physical affection as her sexual curiosity grows. He has not made sexual advances to her ever, though he has never discouraged her physical affection on the grounds that he enjoys it, she enjoys it, and he doesn’t wish to make her feel guilty for her natural way. As I stated in my original post, there is no suggestion that she has been abused.
Again, let’s keep it broad and hypothetical. He has ample experience with adults. He finds girls in general attractive (physically and romantically) and finds this girl in particular very attractive. Nonetheless, he is not the type to be steered by attraction alone, and were he real he would want to read this thread and consider things from all angles.
Your answer, as formulated ^here, is ‘not a bit philosophical’; the question, however, is. I have alluded to two philosophers who have considered similar problems. The man knows that damage will be caused to the girl, not by his actions but by the actions of others. If we could write off such dilemmas with ‘if action X, then perpetrator is a bastard’, we’d have no need for some of the texts of Plato and Kant and a whole host of other philosophers. Let’s be a bit more philosophically rigorous.
Had a friend who got raped and was fine with it till she was 15. one day she had to attend a rape seminar and a police officer told the class about rape culture and what not. she felt so ashamed she had a mental breakdown. before that day she was okay with it.
puberty creates a hormonal bathe of emotional vunerability and hellish thoughts.
If you are also asking if I can imagine pedophilia being accepted and legalized, I answer no. Whether or not pedophilia is bad, human beings in general have a historically conditioned opinion about pedophilia, and this opinion cannot really be undone… not even by a new scientific or philosophical view of pedophilia.
I believe at the core of the contempt for pedophilia lies this association: if she were my daughter, one thinks, I would under very, very, very limited circumstances be willing to let her have sexual relations with an adult male.
I mean we’d have to be talking about a lot of money…
I jest.
That is the instance of the good will toward men, the want to extend and acknowledge a kind of connection and contract, a general sense of civility, and respecting another as an approximate equal for mutual purposes.
Until you let your prepubescent daughter have sex with an adult male, you should be able to switch perspectives and put yourself in the shoes of the father who’s daughter just had sex with an adult male because you condone pedophilia. This thought might stop you if you do condone it.
On the other hand, speaking as a soft-ephebophile (this means I am attracted to post-pubescent adolescent females but not exclusively. I am also attracted to adult females), I am in a more peculiar position to make this judgement.
I should not want my adolescent daughter to have sex with a middle age man, but as a middle age man, I would have sex with somebody’s adolescent daughter.
Now how am I to defend this. I suppose I will feel that an adolescent girl would have a fuller comprehension of what she was doing, than a prepubescent female. At such an age I would justify sex with her by believing she was able to make a choice competently and independently of her father’s will.
But wouldn’t that also hold true for my own daughter? What’s the difference between my daughter and his daughter?
Now it gets complicated, and I don’t know how to explain anything without coming off as extremely arrogant, so I should digress. I would have to somehow believe a man was less than me to be comfortable with having sex with his daughter. I couldn’t look a father in the face, point to his fifteen year old daughter and say “I just had sex with her”, unless I thought him my unequal. See, I told you. Arrogant.
In any case last week I worked setting up a huge cheerleading competition event at a convention center. Trusses and lighting, staging, spring boards and mats, speaker system, etc.
After the competition we came back to break it all down, and a few cheerleader teams were there in the auditorium hanging out in their uniforms. About fifty or sixty. I was surrounded by an entire herd of high school hotties. The thoughts that ran through my head, you have no idea.
I would have them all in my harem, and we would have an enormous heart shaped bed the size of a swimming pool with twenty-seven pillows and red silk sheets.
They would be assigned numbers until I could remember names. An arm band or something for identification.
Is it one’s duty to defend a woman’s right to drive on the wrong side of the road?
A significant part of everyone’s “duty” (to themselves as well as others) is to not change what is until they are certain of what will come of it, or at least certain enough to know that they are not causing more harm in the long run than good. Very few people are in that position. Children generally have no rights to draw outside the lines (some these days now being expelled from school with large fines upon their parents for them literally drawing the wrong kind of picture after being asked to draw an ambiguously defined scene). It is up to adults in a society to adjust or erase the lines. Removing all lines destroys the society and the people within it.
What is the difference between repression and self-discipline?
Jurisprudence and ethics are not in the same etc. Philosophy must first outline the general principles upon which it then frames ethical guidelines according to which legislators pass appropriate laws and supreme court judges examine those laws for constitutionality.
Assumed by whom? What makes him an expert on the sexual development of young girls? In any case, a six-year-old may well be curious, but is in no sense ready for physical intimacy.
Yes, in general way, we can assume that a mature person wouldn’t have much in common besides physical attraction. A 15-year-old girl is as mature as a 17-year-old boy, and they live similar lives: it’s quite appropriate for them to fall in love. An older man may be fond of a young girl, and there may be Sundays and Cybele type exceptions, but it’s far less likely to be a profound relationship.
There is a cultural component, as well, in a pubescent girl’s expectations and attitudes. Thirteen is pushing the limit, though, even in Asia.
We still haven’t got down to brass tacks. Stroking? Kissing? Full penetration? The girl’s age and relative innocence are crucial. She may imagine sex one way and experience it quite differently. The adult is expected to understand this; the child is not.
Okay, but he only has access to the one angle: his own. So, is he planning to marry the girl when she’s of age? That would make me a little less suspicious of him. In fact, I had an acquaintance once who had to wait four years to marry his student - but he kept the relationship chaste till she turned 16.
Oh yes. That was just my opinion. If you want a bit more intellectual rigour, I’d say society works better when its strong and experienced members protect the young and weak; are aware of the risks of long-term damage in impulsive youthful behaviour, as well as by the environment, the culture and other people. As long as children are dependent, what they perceive as their rights are trumped by what we perceive as their welfare.
Sometimes, adults should say No, even if it’s inconvenient and unpleasant. That’s just an ideal. I guess that makes it philosophical-ish.
Well, no, I’m not asking that and I’m keen to stick to the hypothetical question only so as not to end up with manifold tangents within the thread. That said, you raise some very interesting points that I’d enjoy discussing.
Just to address your points generally in a way that is of some relevance to the hypothetical question at hand, your highlighting of the double standard (i.e. one’ willingness to engage in sexual activity with girls younger than the age at which one would allow one’s daughter to engage in sexual activity) surely teases out some political dimension to protectionism. Having recently read Matthew Waites’ excellent book The Age of Consent, which shows how informed consent has only properly become part of the equation in ‘age of consent’ legislation in the past few decades, there is certainly a strong motive to control and police underlying a veneer of protectionism. To bring this back to the hypothetical question, perhaps such considerations should inform the man when it comes to him considering the tensions that exist between protectionism and youth rights, even if his ultimate decision (whether or not he yields to the girl’s advances) doesn’t cohere with his conclusion with respect to that issue.
I can put myself in all shoes here. I would not let my prepubescent girl engage in sexual activity with an adult male. I’m familiar with (but to a large extent disagree with) the pro-contact argument in this regard: parents treat children as possessions, extinguishing their right to self-expression (here: sexual expression) in the name of preserving pristine innocence, innocence that is not natural but a construct.
Well, you wouldn’t have to tell him. Could it not also be that you believe your assessment of her readiness trumps his assessment, which may be simply be a visceral reaction, or society’s assessment, embodied in a blanket one-size-fits-all prohibition? And how can we relate this to the position our hypothetical gentleman is in?
I hear you, but I’m not sure I’d agree. Take, for example, the case of an oppressive monarchy, under which people are being executed for whimsical reasons. Overthrowing the monarchy would have uncertain outcomes, perhaps resulting in a power vacuum ultimately filled by a bellicose dictator. The only certainty would be that the existing monarchy would be overthrown; the rest is about hope for a better world.
There are two ways in which I see this relating directly to the hypothetical question. Firstly, the man may have more ‘duties’ towards the girl than simply yielding or resisting her advances, namely attempting to adjust or erase the lines. Secondly, there is the issue of whether erasing certain lines would really be a matter of ‘removing all lines’. For example, if one of these lines were an age of consent law, and this were to be abolished (not something I’d be in favour of, incidentally), then would that constitute ‘removing all lines’ or could we still have adequate anti-rape laws in place?
Self-discipline is self-imposed. I presume you mean the difference between repression and discipline? Well, that’s a matter of perspective. Speaking as someone in therapy for the emotional abuse inflicted upon me by parents who wanted at all costs to extinguish my sexuality from the moment it properly awakened (just before ten years of age) until I moved out (aged seventeen), I have first-hand experience of deeply abusive behaviour carried out in the name of protection.
Yes, laws ultimately have a philosophical basis, which means that questions that entail a legal aspect (here our hypothetical question certainly does, but is not restricted to the legal aspect) can be framed philosophically.
Assumed by me when formulating the hypothetical question. This makes it transferable; we can choose any age for her and assume different degrees of sexual curiosity, making it less two-dimensional than a question that assumes a specific age, a specific stage of development and a specific degree/type of sexual curiosity.
Does it not depend on the type of physical intimacy. The only type of physical intimacy a six-year-old would currently enjoy with an adult would be parental-style cuddling and kissing. It should be obvious to all that they’re not ready for penetrative intercourse, but in what sense are they not ready for, say, romantic caresses on the cheeks, the forearms? I would conceive of this as ‘sexual’ in the broadest sense, and would disapprove of someone touching a six-year-old in such a way, but if the child was very physically affectionate and actively sought out this more-intimate-than-purely-parental physical affection then I’m far less averse to that because I find it more age-congruent.
But we’re not talking about falling in love and profound relationships. We’re talking about sexual activity that is mutually willing and enjoyed. Is a hormonally charged 17-year-old boy less likely to use a girl for sex than a man in his 30s?
Innocence is often merely a euphemism for enforced ignorance. I agree that a child might imagine sex one way and experience it another way, but this is always going to be the case for one’s first time, irrespective of age. What matters, surely, is whether or not the child was being used or was being treated with genuine tenderness and affection. Which is why I was careful to state, for the purposes of the hypothetical question, that science had established that manipulation, coercion or force were the relevant harm factors.
Which would be why he would want to read this thread.
Let’s say for the purposes of the hypothetical question that he does have strong romantic feelings for her and would love a relationship, but doesn’t see it as likely given her age as well as the fact that even young pubescent teenagers can be extremely fickle when it comes to relationships. But he does like here enough to want a relationship, and isn’t interested purely in sex.
I agree, but I think we should be careful not to be blinkered about the causes of the long-term damage. In the hypothetical question, science has established that sexual activity engaged in as a child is not inherently harmful. Any damage caused is due to manipulation, coercion, force or society’s stigma. As a society, if we have a duty to protect young people from harm, and if we take that duty seriously, then we would have to abolish the stigma rather than just say ‘men, keep your hands off anyone under an arbitrarily defined age threshold’. Until that point, we’d be remiss in our duty of protection.
…the Devil’s delight. “That damn leaky roof!! Burn the house down. Maybe a better one will take its place. I know I don’t like this one.” Follow those who only know how to destroy and you get … Judaism, Islam, thousands of years of conflict and cruelty, and … ?
One can always find a reason to desire something better. The grass is always greener.
Then he is taking on the challenge of refuting the regime. He is not the one who owns the society, yet is presuming to redesign it. If you don’t know precisely how to make it definitively better, it isn’t yours to tamper with.
I was merely noting that to remove all lines, complete anarchy, is a bad thing.
No. I meant “repress”, not “oppress”;
And I take it now that you had meant oppression. A society imposes oppression upon individuals, often in the form of emotional guilt, so as to repress itself (the entire society as a whole). The idea of which is to encourage self-discipline; removing an unruly desire as a willing option by each individual and thus the society as a whole.
No matter what rules are imposed in a society, it is pretty easy to get some people, often very many, to desire to do something different, to feel the urge to rebel. Religions have been formed by merely that one formula. Thus regardless of any particular set of rules attempted, it is required that self-discipline be encouraged, else every society will either be highly unstable or be owned by the bedeviling leaders of a foreign nation or religion (the whole point in international terrorism).
Sure, but isn’t that a recipe for apathy? It is at least fatalistic. As a general principle, I can accept it, but I’m sure you wouldn’t apply it universally. We don’t merely accept any suffering that comes our way because we subscribe to a blanket ‘grass is always greener’ principle.
I’d argue that almost all of an electorate don’t understand how to make society definitively better, and neither do most politicians. I find this fatalistic again – we can’t know such and such, ergo what’s the point… But the point is not at issue; it would be to eliminate suffering, whether that suffering is caused by an orgasm experienced before the threshold of puberty or by social stigma. Surely a noble point is worth pursuing even if the methods of doing so are not absolutely crystal clear?
I agree. I just wonder whether the ‘lines’ that are in place are genuinely serving protectionist ends.
Well, both actually. I mean society’s oppression causing people to repress their desires, ostensibly in the name of protection but actually to control who gets to have sex with whom. Self-discipline here would be a euphemism for the repression one inflicts upon oneself in response to this oppression.
Of course. The terms of the social contract need to be enforced, and the best way to get people to adhere to them is to make them want to do so, through scarring guilt if necessary. Again, I think self-discipline is euphemistic. It’s all about controlling what other people can get up to and ensuring maximum pliability of the rules in your own case, as shown by the discussion above about wanting to sleep with the other’s guys daughter at an age at which one would not want one’s own daughter to be having sex.
I have a case study at hand, an interesting non hypothetical situation, where, the limits of duty of the older man were tested, both by the actions of the participants, and, the opinion and the ruling of the court.
My nephew was a fatherless child, whom I helped occasionally to help alongside my own little son born exactly the same year. he never could meet up to expectations as far as being able to develop a stick to-it-ness, and he drifted out of jobs,mother military and relationships. he was using, and in the last relationship he had, in addition to fathering his own child, he tried to parent his step daughter who was thirteen years old.
One thing led to another, and although the court’s decision ruled against him, by imposing a five year incarceration, it was understood by his family, that the so called rape of a minor, for the most part, consisted of the girl actually invading the father 's bed at a time in the morning when said father had a noticeable unconscious state of arousal. in addition, further records of conversation with family members showed, he was still half asleep.
The girl was mature beyond her age, and was thought the difference between right and wrong. She made rape claims, to cover her own guilt over initiating a shameful relationship.
He was supposed to be paroled last year , due to good behavior, but was denied, upon the hearing of the mother, who insisted of her husbands violence and incorrigible nature.
the point is, that legal precedents are stacked strongly against the adult in cases like this. Upon last hearing, it was learned that the young man, my nephew, has become hardened in criminality, as he was severely maltreated in prison.
This is not an isolated case, for society is,littered with the effects of mistaken and biased opinions of