Why is sexual abuse of boys not taken seriously

As if to prove my point about abuse not being taken seriously -- these are from the comment section following one article about this woman:

as the owner of this place your opinion on the right of all comers to speak and be heard is critical. Hopefully you support free speech, which is the right to speak and be heard. How the speaker is dealt with is another matter.

A lot of virtual space owners are not in favor of free speech, and do not allow it. If you would have finished the popularity programing of this site you would have diminished free speech because its method is to bury speech that is not desired. However, with that being unfinished and with many people refusing to use the popularity sifting settings that are in place this place is currently a shrine to free speech. It is the one saving grace of the new a2k.

Argote left because someone tracked him down and posted a link to his MySpace page.

I agree with Robert about Agrote. No matter what you thought of him he did present his well thought out arguements in a rational way. Discussing it with him dispassionately made him rethink the issue; the name calling and insults made him stick to his guns. You can't scream people into agreeing with you.

How predictable--having expatiated at length upon the superiority of his position, RG no longer wishes to discuss it. There is no basis upon which one can trust that Agrote's remarks were sincere--they may have been, but it just as well could have been a case of him wishing to appear agreeable so as to make his position less uncomfortable.

What originally set RG off was my having written: ". . . it is a hopelessly stupid position to take, and one which suggests that anyone taking that position is profoundly ignorant about sexual." That statement characterizes an idea as stupid, not any person. It accuses anyone making such a statement of ignorance, which is a condition from which all humans suffer, all of their lives. There is patently no personal insult in what i wrote.

I'm sick and f*cking tired of RG's moral superiority stance. If no one were ever to characterize another point of view as stupid, it might make the playground a happier place and we might all rest easier during nap time. But it sure as hell wouldn't qualify as debate.

Grow up, RG. Just because you don't like an individual doesn't mean that everything said individual posts is automatically worthy of condemnation.

And just to make sure that my point is not diluted by RG's self-congratulatory drivel--If there is anyone who claims that the sexual abuse of boys can only occur if they are anally sodomized, it is a hopelessly stupid position to take, and one which suggests that anyone taking that position is profoundly ignorant about sexual abuse.

There is no screaming involved in that statement, and it attacks the idea, not anyone personally.

Jeez. Defensive, much?

One round of arguing about how to argue can be informative.

Going round and round about it, after everyone has explained their position, is profoundly stupid.

See? I described a behavior, not an individual.

That's fine with me, and i don't intend to let RG get away with characterizing what i've written in a false manner, especially when it appears that he intends to demonstrate his own moral superiority in the process. That will remain my intention, without regard to whether or not you agree with it, or think that it is useful to continue the discussion.

I like arguing, I actually do want to discuss it.But I'm trying to respect the OP's wishes and not turn this into a big argument about my dim view of your method of "debate". I've taken too many threads too far off topic doing that and have grown to see it as an exercise in futility.

My comments here up to this point contained no condemnation and judgment about you. I was trying a different tactic of appealing to your reason. I still wish you'd consider trying to discuss things with dispassionate reason instead of strength of conviction. I think it would be more successful.

Make up your mind hawkeye. When the software was released you went on and on about how it was impeding free speech. Now you are saying it's because the software isn't finished, but you have no idea what remains unfinished. This is your usual baseless claim again.

Free speech means that you aren't going to be censored by an authority, that doesn't mean that you won't be censured (and the voting and criticism is censure). The reason I spend so much time appealing to more civility these days is because we don't censor as much of the incivility anymore (it would take an awful lot to get a post removed on those kinds of grounds). So instead of what we used to do, which was censor it I spend some time criticizing it.

Anyway, if you want to pick the whole software fight again, I wish you's start another thread about it, or revive one of the many places where we've discussed this and you've slunk off.

I don't want to turn this particular thread into these arguments about free speech and civility, but I'm more than happy to discuss these issues at length on a more appropriate topic.

In fact, this was the sequence of posts:



By which, from the post to which you responded, i took it to mean that "they" were likely to remain ignorant. (Although there was no "they," but rather i was responding to a specific post of David's.)

When i responded to that, this what what you had to say:



"It" may have come with no judgment, but judgment is implicit in that post. There is no vitriol in asking if the intent were to suggest that child sexual abuse of boys can only take place if there is anal sodomy. There is no vitriol in stating that that is a stupid position to take. There is no vitriol in stating that that is indicative of ignorance. There were no insults in what i had posted.

Saying that someone is ignorant verges on tautology, in that everyone is ignorant all of their lives. Expressing the opinion that what someone has said is stupid, or that it is stupid if it intends to make a contention with which one disagrees for either obvious reasons (this case) or reasons upon which one is prepared to elaborate does not constitute a personal insult. If i had said that David were stupid, that would be an insult. I did not.

As far as the matter of Agrote, leaving aside the point i made to the effect that you cannot know to a certainty that you got through to him, i was able to get him to admit that harm can still be done to a child or someone who when as a child had been photographed while being abused sexually even after the images have been created when those images are made available online or by other means. I cannot know, of course, that the point really sank in with him--it may well have been a case of him agreeing to the point just to avoid the prolongation of the discussion of a point with which he in fact continued to disagree. I could argue that speaking to him abusively snapped him out of his smug assumptions about the proliferation of images of child sexual abuse on the internet. Once again, though, neither you nor i know if he actually took the matter to heart, or was simply attempting to mollify his critics.

In fact, i've been making an effort for the last several months to avoid flame wars, whether you have recognized it or not, or whether you agree with that statement or not. But to say that someone is being insulting for calling an expressed opinion, or the inferential conclusions of an expressed opinion stupid is simply false, and reminds me of Fox and others who just start shouting "ad hom, ad hom" whenever someone tells them that they have posted something stupid. In the case of members such as her, its an excuse not to face the implications of what she has posted. We pointed out that poverty has been cut in half in the United States in the last 50 years, and she responded by posting the same data i and others had posted. She then said that if what we were claiming were true, she would expect to see child poverty reduced in the United States. The sources we posted, and that she posted, showed that in 1959, the standard applied (125% of the poverty level or less) to 32% of the population, and that as of 2002, it applied only to fractionally more than 16% of the population. Her response was to claim that she was being personally attacked and to refuse to continue to discuss the point. That's a very convenient way to avoid acknowledging one's failure to understand the terms of debate and the evidence presented, but it is not an example of rhetorical debate.

At another board at which i have posted since before this board existed, the rule, very frequently stated by members there, is that one can attack the post, but not the person. Saying that something David implied is stupid may be unpleasant, but it does not constitute a personal attack, and it only constitutes an insult to someone who never wishes to be disagreed with.

Can ya'll continue that over PMs?

Well, since I contributed in starting this I'll respond. But I'm going to try to restrain myself to this, not because I want to have the last word and end the discussion, but because I really do want to try to keep the topic from devolving into ego clashes. If you'd like to respond to me that's fine, but I'm going to do my best not to reply if it means I'm just going to repeat myself.



I was speaking both about David and Hawkeye. In David's case I think the dispassionate stuff was getting through to him, and in Hawkeye's case I think that by going over the top on him (stuff like calling him "rapist boy") he gets to pretend to be reasonable in the face of illogical passion. I don't think being reasonable would make much difference in his case except to deny him this bit of posturing of being assailed by an angry mob. It just plays into his man apart complex and my qualm has nothing to do with him being insulted so much as thinking it plays into his style very well.



I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on what constitutes vitriol. I don't think it was that bad at all, and I wasn't condemning you for it. I mean that sincerely. I have been being rude to you, trying to make the point that you don't like how you treat others. I should take my own advice here, and try a more emotionally intelligent tactic. That was my aim. I was trying to appeal to your reason and sympathy instead of getting pissy with you to make a point through trying to be as caustic.

I can't really say that one method is superior to another except in that I think one method works a lot better than the other if your goal is to change hearts and minds. Others are perfectly in their own right to find this to be a silly objective and have other motivations. I can't say that one is morally superior to another, I just think one works a lot better for the objective that I have. Which is, by the way, to change this kind of thinking as much as possible.



I get what you are saying, and used to live by it quite a bit on a2k. I would be very scathing in my attacks on an idea, and feel above those who attacked the person. From a logical perspective there's a lot of merit to the distinction. But I wasn't arguing about logic so much as emotional intelligence, both can be uncivil even if logically sound. I think David responds very well to an archaic style of civility and becomes quite stubborn when people are caustic with him (regardless of the distinction of attacking him versus the idea).

There are times I'm frustrated with his social views, and my mind boggled by how much information is missing on some of these issues but instead of focusing on the paucity of the knowledge my goal is to try to get him to absorb it instead of reject it. I think he's been open-minded here when spoken to civilly. I think he's been mind-numbingly stubborn when not spoken to civilly.



In regard to the former, I hadn't seen such a thing. I saw the "angry mob" being something that he felt justified his position. His nature is such that a lot of people are going to be viscerally oppose things about himself that he may not be able to change. What I saw was him spinning this anger into thinking that society is just not as accepting of his kind in a similar way to how they weren't about homosexuals. I didn't see the vitriol get through to him myself, but I did see logic get through to him. Perhaps you might have had logic he was able to recognize despite vitriol but I don't know exactly what you are talking about so I can't comment much on it.

As to the latter, I don't think he cared about mollifying his critics myself, I think he relished the anonymity that allowed him to be polemic. But yes, we can't tell to what degree those things really sank in, but if he's saying yes I was wrong I think that most of the time we can't do anything but take it at face value. No matter what anyone says there's the possibility that they are misrepresenting their opinions.



Here I deliberately tried to avoid it. And I am not pulling an ad hominem card on you. I think you know me well enough to know that I understand what it means very well. An ad hominem just doesn't mean an insult. It doesn't even mean to attack the messenger. It means something a lot more specific in logic. It means to attack an argument on the basis of the messenger.

So even if you were to directly insult someone it wouldn't be an ad hominem if it weren't being used as an argument that the person's stated position is wrong.

In short, I'm not pulling an ad hominem card on you at all and as to Foxfyre I almost never see her posts (they all seem to be on a couple of threads that I don't visit) so I can't comment on those exchanges myself.



Well here that used to be my stock and store and what I used to justify what I now see as my emotionally unintelligent methods of debate (and I might add that I'm still prone to such things and will likely be guilty of it in the future), but I'm not trying to assert any rule is being violated here. I think you are perfectly within your rights as far as the site rules are concerned.



If your point was that it wasn't the logical fallacy of an ad hominem I agree completely. My point was that it can still be unpleasant, and still be a less than optimal way of speaking to him if your goals are to change his mind.

I'm not saying that you weren't within your right to say that. I'm not saying that you insulted David the person (but I do note that if you think my comment had "implicit" judgment then I think you might consider the same in this case). And I'm not saying that one way is morally superior to another. I think you said what a lot of people would instinctively think. It was surprising that what was explained even had to be explained.

All I am saying is that I think that being more pleasant makes for more fruitful discussions. We'd get less side tracked on ego and bickering, and do more thinking about the actual issue.

Now I get that me incessantly talking about this is annoying. I feel like a self-righteous twit myself often. But if we aren't going to censor the site like we did in the past it is up to us to try to maintain its standards. What I'm doing is trying to advocate better discussions. I'm not very good at it, and I'm sure a lot of times it's just annoying but that's my fundamental motivation. It's not dislike for you, it's dislike for shitty internet discussions.

Anywho, I'm going to try to make an effort to be more civil in my own appeals to civility. I think I could have taken my own advice a lot of times. Sometimes I get like a dog with a bone about things and won't let go. I feel I've said more than enough about it here so would like to get off my soap box and try to get out of the way of the discussion now (and again, I'm not trying to have the last word, feel free to respond if you'd like. I'm just going to try not to repeat myself any further if I can help it).

I don't really use PMs, but I will try to comply with the spirit of the request. Sorry for the disruption.

Well, i'm not sorry for the disruption, nor do i think it constitutes much of a disruption in what had become essentially a moribund thread, until Boom posted her last news item (NB: see the Wabbit's [caustic?] response to it). I would not participate in a separate thread on this topic, nor wish to provide my legion of "i hate Setanta" fans a venue for their pettiness--so it may as well be discussed here as elsewhere.

What you alleged to be David's adherence to an antique civility is a sham. He had made a snotty remark to me about being on my knees begging for my life before an armed intruder, and i started to refer to him as "I'mSickDavid," and giving him as good as i got. I saw precious little civility in him. Nevertheless, i offered to bury the hatchet. He accepted, and within days, was referring to supporters of gun control as enemies of freedom, cowards and whiners--as though it were civil because he didn't name specific names. Since i responded to that in the same tone and spirit, he has put me on ignore.

David's civility is false and hypocritical. My comment about his anal sodomy remark was perhaps not the soul of civility, but it's a damn sight more civil than the phony civility David touts, and practices only as and when it suits his polemic with those with whom he disagrees.

The problem is that the subject of the thread interests me. When someone posts to the thread, I check if it is something about the original subject.

Perhaps I'm the only one that does this, but I suspect not.

So basically, by continuing to derail the thread you're contributing to the "I hate Setanta" sentiment.

Let it go, already. You've said your piece. Robert's said his piece. You will likely continue to disagree on who did what to whom, and the rest of us could give a damn.

As president of the "I Hate Setanta Club", I'd like to take this oppurtinity to announce our weekly meetings will now be held on Saturday afternoon, instead of on Sunday....this is due to some arcane law about burning effigies on Sunday being illegal.

I'm glad to announce that we have merged with the "I Loathe Setanta Club", so let's all welcome our new brothers and sisters to the fold.

Member #32 reported that he was able to spit on every post Setanta made this week....good work #32!!!....and I'll remind the rest of you that there are still some post dating from May 4th - June 17th, that were somehow passed over, and have not yet been spat upon. If anyone has any extra spit, please take care of these posts asap.....let's not be sloppy in our hatred/loathing.

Getting back on subject, I had sex with a 32 year old woman when I was 16. I do not feel that it harmed me in any way. As a matter of fact, I was walking around with a smile for a week. I look back on it fondly. Of course, today, if she's still around, she'd be past retirement age.

Good man with the sardonicity, that 2packs.

I get the expressed points of view of all of you on the subject at hand and on the sub-subject of the nature of argument - am enjoying this thread, even if enjoy is an odd word for such a main subject. I surmise a lot of us are following the discussion and can see the sub-subject, which is interesting, being carried to another thread another day. Uh, please.

how would you have felt if agents of the collective found out, and she had spent three years on legal limbo, spent $20+ k to defend herself, ended up with community service, counseling, was forever more on the sex offenders list....?? Would you be better off or worse off??

That is what a guy who had your experience is looking at in this "enlightened" age.

OH, and she got jail time and probation, lets not forget the really GOOOOD parts....