markfiend wrote:boudicca wrote:Paedophilia provides no benefit to us - it is not a "bond-strengthening" exercise as with some other mammals, on the contrary... with our complex psychology, high intelligence and the length of time it takes for our young to mature mentally as well as physically, it is positively damaging. Therefore we abhor it, instinctively.
I deny that distaste for paedophilia is instinctive. You probably feel that your distaste for cannibalism is instinctive too, but the likelihood is that your great-great-great (etc.) grandpa back in palaeolithic times was a cannibal.
You assume I have a distaste for cannibalism...
If my Easyjet crashes down in the middle of a remote forest, I would sooner resort to cannibalism than die. The only people I would never consider munching, if it came to it, are loved ones. The instinct there is one of self-preservation.
In cases of cannibalism in a tribal context, this could be said to be one group's attempt at preserving their genetic legacy. It's stupid in my opinion, but conflict and war between different societies is nothing bizarre in my book.
Gratuitous cannibalism (say, if I was to kill someone and eat them now for kicks), is - I would guess - evidence of a psychopathic mind, and I think the typical disgust most human beings feel towards someone like this, who poses a genuine threat to them, is fairly easy to understand on an instinctual level.
markfiend wrote:[Indeed, until only a few hundred years ago, a girl's marriagable age was most likely calculated by that old saying "if she's old enough to bleed, she's old enough to breed" and any ideas of consent be damned.
Well I'm certainly not going to start arguing in favour of sex without consent (whoever it's with), but there is sound reasoning in the idea that a girl is old enough to have sex when she starts menstruating.
Bit misguided, though, females are not 100% sexually mature at that point, it takes another couple of years for the pelvis to widen so that any child that is conceived can be carried with fewer complications.
But essentially it's a valid point. Boys and girls go through puberty at varying times, this is the real issue, rather than a fixed number laid down by law.
The question should be, is the "victim" pre -pubescent at the time of the offences being committed? If yes, then you are dealing with a paedophile.
You could find someone of the same age who was sexually mature, and could seem to the casual observer to be 5 or 6 years older. I've got to say, if I had had sex with a guy in his 40's when I was 13, it would have been my choice. I could have borne his child, and I can't really say that I would have been a "victim". At least not in a criminal sense.
I must say I react very differently to a story of a man having consenting sex with a physically mature 14 year old, compared with stories of the rape of toddlers. The first guy may well be a bit of a pervert, a pathetic character who can only feel like a big man by deflowering an "innocent" teenager. And the minor in this case could well be a victim in the psychological sense... looking for a father figure or something like that. But the second guy is something else entirely. I could use words but there's a swear filter and no words suffice, anyway.