*trigger* talking to people in denial about child abuse
I was reading a political discussion forum today when somebody posted that a prominent figure had connections to NAMBLA. To what will be my everlasting shock, some people actually tried to defend NAMBLA. Here's part of what I posted in response. I could use some sympathy, but I'd also like to have a strategic discussion about what we should say when somebody says something so stark raving bonkers.
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The kind of denial in this thread is a big part of why child sexual abuse continues to happen even though there are typically some pretty obvious signs.
It's easy to problematize age of consent laws. Every now and then you hear about a ninteen-year-old being prosecuted for sleeping with a sixteen-year-old or something similarly silly.
There's nothing wrong with fantasy--people are responsible for what they do, not what they think about.
There are adults who are too vulnerable or immature to meaningfully consent to sex, and there are people below the age of consent in a given place who are perfectly capable of consent.
None of this changes the fact that NAMBLA wants no legal restrictions whatsoever on sexual contact between men and boys of any age as long as the men get the boys to say yes first.
That's just as crazy as it sounds. Anybody with a degree of emotional intelligence can get a ten-year-old to say yes to anything, given some time to build trust. NAMBLA really does want the legalization of child abuse. They want a kind of fascism and should be treated accordingly. It's not complicated.
And I'm probably going to get a bunch of non sequiturs in response to this, because nobody wants to think about child rape, how common it is--all over the world and throughout history--and how complicit we all are in it.
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In case you're wondering, I really did get some red herring responses to that. Ah, the internet; where people will argue anything.
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The kind of denial in this thread is a big part of why child sexual abuse continues to happen even though there are typically some pretty obvious signs.
It's easy to problematize age of consent laws. Every now and then you hear about a ninteen-year-old being prosecuted for sleeping with a sixteen-year-old or something similarly silly.
There's nothing wrong with fantasy--people are responsible for what they do, not what they think about.
There are adults who are too vulnerable or immature to meaningfully consent to sex, and there are people below the age of consent in a given place who are perfectly capable of consent.
None of this changes the fact that NAMBLA wants no legal restrictions whatsoever on sexual contact between men and boys of any age as long as the men get the boys to say yes first.
That's just as crazy as it sounds. Anybody with a degree of emotional intelligence can get a ten-year-old to say yes to anything, given some time to build trust. NAMBLA really does want the legalization of child abuse. They want a kind of fascism and should be treated accordingly. It's not complicated.
And I'm probably going to get a bunch of non sequiturs in response to this, because nobody wants to think about child rape, how common it is--all over the world and throughout history--and how complicit we all are in it.
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In case you're wondering, I really did get some red herring responses to that. Ah, the internet; where people will argue anything.