thread: why don't anti-cs talk about the age of consent?

## thread: why don't anti-cs talk about the age of consent?

#### 9 October 2019
from twitter and bluesky threads

### bly

| It's taboo to start a discussion about this among anti-contacts. Here's why. THREAD: Why do anti-contacts generally stay away from the age of consent question? It's not like we're not aware there is a degree of subjectivity in the concept. Actually, everyone knows this and it's proven by the fact that ages of consent are not consistent everywhere... > > However, they always float between the age of puberty onset and full physiognomic maturity (so not entirely arbitrary as pro-cs try to claim). Everyone also understands that different people mature at different rates and that not every case of age difference is the same in > > its meaning. Gender can be a factor. Formal relationships (work or learning) or familial/domestic relationships can be too. The age of consent itself can be a factor in that laws can create secrecy, and secrecy affects the power dynamic. All these things we can know, but > > still, I generally think it's better for anti-c MAPs not to pronounce views on the age of consent. Here are some reasons. 1) Minor attracted people are biologically given to a worldview where we can see age differences and sex as consonant things. It's a cognitive > > bias we all have. Yes, we can overcome it by exercising thought but that doesn't make it vanish. There's a risk for us in how we might intuitively view such questions. 2) For the same reason, minor attracted people have a credibility problem on this one. People don't know > > our motivations for wanting to disuss nuance in this area. Is that fair? Maybe not but it should give MAPs pause for thought. Unless you're a credible expert in the topic, does the world need your view on it? 3) If you speak up on the issue, pro-cs will pop up and drag > > you into the mire of hypothetical debate. You won't get far and they will believe what they want to believe. One problem with not naming a figure on age of consent and supporting current laws is that it can enable pro-cs to strawman what they assume is your position. They > > might assume from your support of current age of consent laws that you consider there to be no distinction whatsoever between the capability for consent between (say) a 15 and 364 day old person and a very young child. Or they might say that you think a British > > 16 year old has a better ability to consent than a South Korean 19 year old. And of course that's not true, but this is the mire. But there is an escape. > To me, there are some implicit ideas behind anti-c support of *an* age of consent that don't require anyone to believe absurd things about overnight or cross-border changes in capability. Wherever the age of consent is set (and where staggered), there is an underlying notion > > of "progressive capability", where we understand that over the course of a lifetime, people acquire more and better capability in such things as "knowledge of my own body", "understanding my own feelings", "understanding the feelings of others", "estimating the unseen > > motivations of others", "knowledge of the meaning of consent", "understanding of subtle problems around consent", "attraction to others", "ability to make compromise decisions on attraction", "physical capability for sexual feeling", "confidence in solo sexual behaviour" > > "confidence in sexual behaviour with another" and also "ability to understand the implications for self and others of a consent age". None of these things develop simultaneously, and nobody (except extreme pro-cs) is pretending they do. The point of a rule that says > > "after this age, meaningful consent is possible" is to have a workable legal definition of how, on average, we assume all those factors develop in the average person. And part of 'workable' is how it establishes parameters for how MAPs can behave and how > > society will treat us based on a factor that can be measured and that a jury can know and assess. There are upsides to this and downsides. Anti-contacters basically believe that the existing compromises on age of consent are made in roughly the right area, and that > > if minor attraction teaches us anything, it's that consent is fraught: there is *always* reason to stop and think *in the round* about what *could be* our coercive sexual behaviour, not hyper-focus on exactly what day in a young person's life our sexual interest in them > > becomes a practical matter. Pro-contacters on the other hand, take a keen interest in the age of consent for reasons including (in my opinion) misplaced idealism, self-interest and cognitive bias leading to cherrypicking certain ‘children’s rights’ over others. When these > > debates begin on what number should be picked or whether there should be a number, it’s tempting to leap up and engage with the subtleties in order to counter pro-c canards. But > > I think anti-contact MAPS achieve the most by pointing out to whoever is reading (a) not all MAPs are seeking to lessen safeguards for minors (b) not all of us spend our days looking for legal and moral loopholes to facilitate our desires in the real world. I mean, > > we shouldn’t be against logical thought on this; maybe one day there will be enough interest in the world in what MAPs have to say on the placing of the age of consent. Maybe that will make it worth us holding specific, worked out views on what the number(s) should be. But > > until then, I personally intend to read, learn, form my own views and keep my counsel on the age of consent. I really think there’s no shame in that, nor any cowardice. I actually think it's the most appropriate thing I can do. :: About the author: I have been writing and talking about the experience of being a pedophile since 2017. Once on twitter until my account was banned in 2020, I co-led Virtuous Pedophiles from 2021 to 2025. I now continue to look for ways to improve the lives of pedophiles, but never at the expense of harming children. I have never viewed illegal material, and never sought or engaged in sexual activity with any child. The rest of my life is countryside walking, friends, Radio 3 and feeling doleful about ageing. |

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tags for this item

censorship36
ethics of attraction32
social media37

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