You voted "better arguments" for con even though you wrote that cons argumentation "didn't clash with mine" (or in other words con had no coherent arguments) just because I dropped two arguments (which happened automatically because I was on a trip without wifi or cell service btw). All of that considered, maybe you could vote better conduct for con but voting better arguments for con (while saying that none of his arguments poked holes in my arguments) doesn't make any sense.
I just got back from a trip where I didn't have any cell reception or wifi. Didn't plan for that. Although the last two arguments that mall made were automatically dropped because I was on the trip I don't think that mall has made any new arguments that could be mistaken for poking a hole in my argumentation so there is nothing to respond to.
I feel like my writing would be more inflammitory if I called it 'consensual child-adult sex' rather than child sexual abuse and I don't want to get banned... Plus, if your issue with my definition is you assuming that kids can't consent (as is simply have the sex willingly without resistance) then I have empirical evidence for you to take a look at...
"To argue a child cannot then be raped with proper education"
I never said that.
"Should women not care if they were raped if the man is appealing to them?"
If they were raped and they enjoyed it and it didn't harm them then the rape should not be done in general because whoever raped them didn't know if it would harm them (and seemingly in all liklihood it would harm them). They should care as a measure to protect other people but if it didn't harm them then it didn't harm them.
"if you think children can consent to sex if taught properly, you should also support children being able to get their drivers license at any age. If a child can consent to sex, do you also support children being able to work in steel plants and salt mines?"
I'm not convinced that minor-adult sex is as dangerous and hard to take the needed precautions for as driving and working in steel mines/salt mines.
"Are women incapable of knowing who they do and don't want to have sex with without being told?"
Obviously they are capable.
"What I'm getting at is that if children can consent to sex with the right socialisation and only feel raped because of socialisation. Can you not use this same argument and say women can only feel raped to begin with due to socialisation? I will gladly accept this debate if you wish to do it. You have a massive burden of proof criteria to fulfil."
I don't have the empiricism to back up this view but I do think that it is perhaps possible. However there is a natural selection argument that being rape-averse is an adaptive trait because basically it makes women pick who they have kids with more and therefore makes them have more intelligent/strong/healthy kids. This is because when someone rapes someone it tends to be someone less well off in terms of their DNA raping someone who is more well off in terms of their DNA I guess. Anyway, I currently don't have the empiricism to back up that view so i'll pass up that debate. It is something that I have thought about though. An interesting one it is.
I agree that it may be impossible to prove that it is not harmful in of itself. I'm not too worried about that as I am looking for revealing debate more than trying to win the debate. Also the burden of proof... Anyway, if child-adult sex is proven to be a harmless activity without confounding variables (that can be done away with) and given the right precautions (such as wearing a condom) that children would follow given the right education then children would not have to be so developed mentally to make that decision. Making such a decision would be like any other harmless task ex tying your shoes or whatever. So if I can prove that it is harmless (with such followed precautions and no confounders) then I don't have to answer the question of whether they can make an intelligent and informed decision to consent. Intelligent decision making involves weighing the pros and cons of a particular decision but if there are no cons to a decision then why must one be equipped intellectually to go through with it? Although I can think of some data that is probably coherent in showing that they can consent enough but I'm not focused on that type of research right now. However, in general children cannot consent as much as adults can consent.
Then you should debate me because it will be an easy win. Or you could not debate me and therefore show that you are incapable of countering my arguments.
I'll say that psychological defense mechanisms exist in general. I'll give you that. I didn't think that specific (and pretty tiny) part of my argument through but the rest of my argumentation still stands.
The burden of evidence is on you to prove that psychological defense mechanism are used by victims when they go along with having sex with an adult. Also, the burden of evidence is on you to prove that people even have psychological defense mechanisms that cause things to not be mentally harmful at the time but then they are mentally harmed later in the first place. You are saying that something exists in the world. The only empirical "evidence" that you have given me to back up this claim that psychological defense mechanisms are used by victims when they go along with having sex with adults is your own experience of being tortured which could is a very different experience. Torture is obviously very physically painful while CSA is not physically painful when it happens (according to the victims in Clancy's sample). The experiences are very different from each other but you assume that CSA has the same effect of defense mechanism repression (another assumption in your argument). You are committing the burden of proof logical fallacy (https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/burden-of-proof) as well as perhaps the appeal to emotion logical fallacy (https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-emotion). On the other hand I obviously have plenty of evidence to back up what I am saying (at least compared to you). You counter argument against my evidence is pretty much just assumptions.
I like that you're calling up psychologists who have experience in CSA though. I respect the effort.
I'm sorry that that happened to you. I hate to ask this but do you really mean that someone "literally tortured" you as in they physically hurt you like cutting into you or something? The way that I see it you could mean that you were sexually abused as a child? And if so then did you go along with it or were you forced because there is a big difference there. The effects of being forced are a lot worse than when kids go along with it (I assume that we can agree on that). Also if you were actually physically tortured then being physically tortured is a very different thing from having sex with an adult as a child.
As for you thinking that the children who have sex with adults are not harmed by it at first because of defense mechanisms the victims themselves did not say that they were not harmed by it because of defense mechanisms. They said things more like "I didn't realize that it was abuse so I didn't think of it as wrong" and "the only reason that I knew that it was wrong is because he tried to hide what we were doing when the door opened" and "and when the cops started asking me about what happened i guess that's when I realized that it was abuse." Those are just the anecdotes. They are real quotes but they are not completely verbatim. According to at least the vast majority of the victims the sex was not harmful to them at the time that it happened. You are trying to say that the victims, the people who experienced the abuse, are lying about their own experiences (or in effect that is what you are saying whether you mean't to say so or not). Or you are more likely saying that the defense mechanisms make victims not be harmed by it at the time. Not only is this an assumption that you appear to have no evidence for but the victims themselves contradict you. Whoever had a experience knows what the experience was like better than any theorists can guess with their assumptions (likely and in my opinion) biased culturally created projections of what they assumed that whoever lived the experience experienced. The victims say the reconceptualization of the CSA is what harmed them.
Let's say that I assume that you were sexually abused as a child. The collective self-reported experiences of CSA of Clancy's sample is a much more sure way of knowing the truth about how harmful CSA is by itself for CSA victims in general than your single self-reported experience.
Wylted said: "I am watching interviews with the writer of the "Trauma Myth" and she thinks that child sexual abuse is very harmful. If I limited my response to Susan Clancy quotes it would be enough to win this debate. She is concerned about the myths of how sexual abuse effects victims prevents victims from being recognized and coming forward."
My response: What Clancy thinks about how child sexual abuse is is more nuanced than that. You're not wrong that she says that she thinks that child sexual abuse is very harmful. However, she does not necessarily say and/or imply that she thinks that child sexual abuse is harmful by itself. When she says that it is very harmful she might mean that it is harmful in our current society because of confounding variables that are tied to sexual abuse in the current state of our society. She also could be lying and intentionally implying that sexual abuse is harmful by itself to avoid irreparable damage to her career because the victims from her sample tell a different story. I'll use Clancy's own verbatim words from her book called The Trauma Myth to make this argument:
"In my study—no differently from other research— the exact amount of time it took for victims to reconceptualize what had happened to them varied. It depended on the individual victims, on how old they were when abused, what educational and life experi- ences had taught them about sex, and what kinds of cues had triggered their thinking about what had hap- pened and recognizing it as abuse. Victims described the point of realization in different ways: “A light went on.” “It was like, aha!” “I said, ‘Oh my God.’” For more than a few it was “like a bomb went off. . . . Holy shit! I was abused!” For many, the realization was a “long, drawn-out process” that slowly built up to a new per- ception of the abuse. One thing did not vary: only at this point—when victims understood the abuse as such, once they had reconceptualized these formerly ambiguous and confusing events—did the experience become psychologically traumatic and begin to exert its negative effects. . . . It is the retrospective interpretation of the event that mediates subsequent impact . . . . there is almost always a period in which the victim reports a lack of awareness that they were abused and then subsequently reconceptualizes the experience . . . ."
"As I discussed at length in chapter 2, according to victims, they did not experience the abuse as awful when it happened because most simply did not understand clearly the meaning or significance of the sexual behaviors they were engaging in. That being said, at some point later on in life, they do. Over time, the “cloak of innocence lifted,” as one victim described it. Victims reconceptualized the formerly “confusing and weird experiences” and understood them for what they were—sexual in nature and clearly wrong. Only at this point—when the sexual abuse is fully apprehended— does it begin to damage victims. . . ."
In summary, the CSA victims from her sample (or at least the vast majority of the CSA victims from her sample) said that they were not mentally or physically harmed by sexual abuse at the moment when it was happening to them but after (and often long after) the sexual abuse happened and they reconceptualized the sexual abuse and that lead to the betrayal and feeling not cared for and other mental harms. Keep in mind that this is the victims themselves saying this. It is not anyone's opinion.
Clancy and I (and the CSA victims in her sample) agree that the reconceptualization of the sexual abuse is what causes the harm to children who have been sexually abused. However, in The Trauma Myth Clancy has never directly said what she thinks causes the reconceptualization. Though according to a verbatim quote of hers she has possibly indirectly implied that the reconceptualization of the CSA (which is what harms victims of CSA) is caused by culture (I'm not going to attempt to find that quote). My belief, what my intuition strongly tells me, and what makes since based on evolution is that the reconceptualization of the child-adult sex that causes the harm to victims of CSA is caused by societies strong and almost universal stigma against child-adult sex. This stigma manifests itself in the form of people saying that adult-child sex is harmful to children and so on. Why would humans evolved to be damaged by something only after the fact if that something caused the damage? Pain is a part of us that the human body evolved to make humans stop doing certain things. However these children "consented" and went along with the child-adult sex. If the child-adult sex caused children pain then wouldn't that pain be caused right when its happening? How else would pain result from adult-child sex that would make sense from a perspective of natural selection?
Will I get banned if I plagiarize for this debate? I prefer to quote primary sources verbatim to make my argumentation more coherent so I will probably use little of my own writing for this debate.
Sure they said that. But the data (ex Clancy's sample from the book The Trauma Myth (very misleading title btw)) shows that children consent to sex with adults the vast majority of the time. By consent I mean agree to having sex and do so without being forced. When i say that a kid consented to sex with an adult i do not necessarily mean that they were informed about the possible consequences of sex or that the kid had a developed enough prefrontal cortex to make the best possible decision about whether or not to have sex. Besides, I don't want to waste time arguing about semantics.
Virtually all sources on CSA are biased one way or the other.
Can you post the decision in a comment here anyway (if you still have it written out somewhere)? I would like to read it. Thx
You voted "better arguments" for con even though you wrote that cons argumentation "didn't clash with mine" (or in other words con had no coherent arguments) just because I dropped two arguments (which happened automatically because I was on a trip without wifi or cell service btw). All of that considered, maybe you could vote better conduct for con but voting better arguments for con (while saying that none of his arguments poked holes in my arguments) doesn't make any sense.
I just got back from a trip where I didn't have any cell reception or wifi. Didn't plan for that. Although the last two arguments that mall made were automatically dropped because I was on the trip I don't think that mall has made any new arguments that could be mistaken for poking a hole in my argumentation so there is nothing to respond to.
I feel like my writing would be more inflammitory if I called it 'consensual child-adult sex' rather than child sexual abuse and I don't want to get banned... Plus, if your issue with my definition is you assuming that kids can't consent (as is simply have the sex willingly without resistance) then I have empirical evidence for you to take a look at...
If you (or anyone else) want(s) to debate me about the "is sexual abuse harmful by itself" argument then I'm down though.
"To argue a child cannot then be raped with proper education"
I never said that.
"Should women not care if they were raped if the man is appealing to them?"
If they were raped and they enjoyed it and it didn't harm them then the rape should not be done in general because whoever raped them didn't know if it would harm them (and seemingly in all liklihood it would harm them). They should care as a measure to protect other people but if it didn't harm them then it didn't harm them.
"if you think children can consent to sex if taught properly, you should also support children being able to get their drivers license at any age. If a child can consent to sex, do you also support children being able to work in steel plants and salt mines?"
I'm not convinced that minor-adult sex is as dangerous and hard to take the needed precautions for as driving and working in steel mines/salt mines.
"Are women incapable of knowing who they do and don't want to have sex with without being told?"
Obviously they are capable.
"What I'm getting at is that if children can consent to sex with the right socialisation and only feel raped because of socialisation. Can you not use this same argument and say women can only feel raped to begin with due to socialisation? I will gladly accept this debate if you wish to do it. You have a massive burden of proof criteria to fulfil."
I don't have the empiricism to back up this view but I do think that it is perhaps possible. However there is a natural selection argument that being rape-averse is an adaptive trait because basically it makes women pick who they have kids with more and therefore makes them have more intelligent/strong/healthy kids. This is because when someone rapes someone it tends to be someone less well off in terms of their DNA raping someone who is more well off in terms of their DNA I guess. Anyway, I currently don't have the empiricism to back up that view so i'll pass up that debate. It is something that I have thought about though. An interesting one it is.
It's sus and it's why i use a vpn. Not illegal in the US, just sus
I agree that it may be impossible to prove that it is not harmful in of itself. I'm not too worried about that as I am looking for revealing debate more than trying to win the debate. Also the burden of proof... Anyway, if child-adult sex is proven to be a harmless activity without confounding variables (that can be done away with) and given the right precautions (such as wearing a condom) that children would follow given the right education then children would not have to be so developed mentally to make that decision. Making such a decision would be like any other harmless task ex tying your shoes or whatever. So if I can prove that it is harmless (with such followed precautions and no confounders) then I don't have to answer the question of whether they can make an intelligent and informed decision to consent. Intelligent decision making involves weighing the pros and cons of a particular decision but if there are no cons to a decision then why must one be equipped intellectually to go through with it? Although I can think of some data that is probably coherent in showing that they can consent enough but I'm not focused on that type of research right now. However, in general children cannot consent as much as adults can consent.
Sure will do
Edit: Done.
Seems like you might want to debate me? Prove me wrong?
Then you should debate me because it will be an easy win. Or you could not debate me and therefore show that you are incapable of countering my arguments.
I sent you a debate request.
Then let's debate.
I'll say that psychological defense mechanisms exist in general. I'll give you that. I didn't think that specific (and pretty tiny) part of my argument through but the rest of my argumentation still stands.
The burden of evidence is on you to prove that psychological defense mechanism are used by victims when they go along with having sex with an adult. Also, the burden of evidence is on you to prove that people even have psychological defense mechanisms that cause things to not be mentally harmful at the time but then they are mentally harmed later in the first place. You are saying that something exists in the world. The only empirical "evidence" that you have given me to back up this claim that psychological defense mechanisms are used by victims when they go along with having sex with adults is your own experience of being tortured which could is a very different experience. Torture is obviously very physically painful while CSA is not physically painful when it happens (according to the victims in Clancy's sample). The experiences are very different from each other but you assume that CSA has the same effect of defense mechanism repression (another assumption in your argument). You are committing the burden of proof logical fallacy (https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/burden-of-proof) as well as perhaps the appeal to emotion logical fallacy (https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-emotion). On the other hand I obviously have plenty of evidence to back up what I am saying (at least compared to you). You counter argument against my evidence is pretty much just assumptions.
I like that you're calling up psychologists who have experience in CSA though. I respect the effort.
I'm sorry that that happened to you. I hate to ask this but do you really mean that someone "literally tortured" you as in they physically hurt you like cutting into you or something? The way that I see it you could mean that you were sexually abused as a child? And if so then did you go along with it or were you forced because there is a big difference there. The effects of being forced are a lot worse than when kids go along with it (I assume that we can agree on that). Also if you were actually physically tortured then being physically tortured is a very different thing from having sex with an adult as a child.
As for you thinking that the children who have sex with adults are not harmed by it at first because of defense mechanisms the victims themselves did not say that they were not harmed by it because of defense mechanisms. They said things more like "I didn't realize that it was abuse so I didn't think of it as wrong" and "the only reason that I knew that it was wrong is because he tried to hide what we were doing when the door opened" and "and when the cops started asking me about what happened i guess that's when I realized that it was abuse." Those are just the anecdotes. They are real quotes but they are not completely verbatim. According to at least the vast majority of the victims the sex was not harmful to them at the time that it happened. You are trying to say that the victims, the people who experienced the abuse, are lying about their own experiences (or in effect that is what you are saying whether you mean't to say so or not). Or you are more likely saying that the defense mechanisms make victims not be harmed by it at the time. Not only is this an assumption that you appear to have no evidence for but the victims themselves contradict you. Whoever had a experience knows what the experience was like better than any theorists can guess with their assumptions (likely and in my opinion) biased culturally created projections of what they assumed that whoever lived the experience experienced. The victims say the reconceptualization of the CSA is what harmed them.
Let's say that I assume that you were sexually abused as a child. The collective self-reported experiences of CSA of Clancy's sample is a much more sure way of knowing the truth about how harmful CSA is by itself for CSA victims in general than your single self-reported experience.
Because...?
Wylted said: "I am watching interviews with the writer of the "Trauma Myth" and she thinks that child sexual abuse is very harmful. If I limited my response to Susan Clancy quotes it would be enough to win this debate. She is concerned about the myths of how sexual abuse effects victims prevents victims from being recognized and coming forward."
My response: What Clancy thinks about how child sexual abuse is is more nuanced than that. You're not wrong that she says that she thinks that child sexual abuse is very harmful. However, she does not necessarily say and/or imply that she thinks that child sexual abuse is harmful by itself. When she says that it is very harmful she might mean that it is harmful in our current society because of confounding variables that are tied to sexual abuse in the current state of our society. She also could be lying and intentionally implying that sexual abuse is harmful by itself to avoid irreparable damage to her career because the victims from her sample tell a different story. I'll use Clancy's own verbatim words from her book called The Trauma Myth to make this argument:
"In my study—no differently from other research— the exact amount of time it took for victims to reconceptualize what had happened to them varied. It depended on the individual victims, on how old they were when abused, what educational and life experi- ences had taught them about sex, and what kinds of cues had triggered their thinking about what had hap- pened and recognizing it as abuse. Victims described the point of realization in different ways: “A light went on.” “It was like, aha!” “I said, ‘Oh my God.’” For more than a few it was “like a bomb went off. . . . Holy shit! I was abused!” For many, the realization was a “long, drawn-out process” that slowly built up to a new per- ception of the abuse. One thing did not vary: only at this point—when victims understood the abuse as such, once they had reconceptualized these formerly ambiguous and confusing events—did the experience become psychologically traumatic and begin to exert its negative effects. . . . It is the retrospective interpretation of the event that mediates subsequent impact . . . . there is almost always a period in which the victim reports a lack of awareness that they were abused and then subsequently reconceptualizes the experience . . . ."
"As I discussed at length in chapter 2, according to victims, they did not experience the abuse as awful when it happened because most simply did not understand clearly the meaning or significance of the sexual behaviors they were engaging in. That being said, at some point later on in life, they do. Over time, the “cloak of innocence lifted,” as one victim described it. Victims reconceptualized the formerly “confusing and weird experiences” and understood them for what they were—sexual in nature and clearly wrong. Only at this point—when the sexual abuse is fully apprehended— does it begin to damage victims. . . ."
In summary, the CSA victims from her sample (or at least the vast majority of the CSA victims from her sample) said that they were not mentally or physically harmed by sexual abuse at the moment when it was happening to them but after (and often long after) the sexual abuse happened and they reconceptualized the sexual abuse and that lead to the betrayal and feeling not cared for and other mental harms. Keep in mind that this is the victims themselves saying this. It is not anyone's opinion.
Clancy and I (and the CSA victims in her sample) agree that the reconceptualization of the sexual abuse is what causes the harm to children who have been sexually abused. However, in The Trauma Myth Clancy has never directly said what she thinks causes the reconceptualization. Though according to a verbatim quote of hers she has possibly indirectly implied that the reconceptualization of the CSA (which is what harms victims of CSA) is caused by culture (I'm not going to attempt to find that quote). My belief, what my intuition strongly tells me, and what makes since based on evolution is that the reconceptualization of the child-adult sex that causes the harm to victims of CSA is caused by societies strong and almost universal stigma against child-adult sex. This stigma manifests itself in the form of people saying that adult-child sex is harmful to children and so on. Why would humans evolved to be damaged by something only after the fact if that something caused the damage? Pain is a part of us that the human body evolved to make humans stop doing certain things. However these children "consented" and went along with the child-adult sex. If the child-adult sex caused children pain then wouldn't that pain be caused right when its happening? How else would pain result from adult-child sex that would make sense from a perspective of natural selection?
Will I get banned if I plagiarize for this debate? I prefer to quote primary sources verbatim to make my argumentation more coherent so I will probably use little of my own writing for this debate.
The definition has to stay because that is what the debate is about. I can call the definition something besides child sexual abuse if you like.
Then what do you suggest that I change the title to?
All fixed now.
Sure they said that. But the data (ex Clancy's sample from the book The Trauma Myth (very misleading title btw)) shows that children consent to sex with adults the vast majority of the time. By consent I mean agree to having sex and do so without being forced. When i say that a kid consented to sex with an adult i do not necessarily mean that they were informed about the possible consequences of sex or that the kid had a developed enough prefrontal cortex to make the best possible decision about whether or not to have sex. Besides, I don't want to waste time arguing about semantics.
Sure, I made the changes that you requested.