From: asar.196@wpi.wpi.edu (Prisoner)
Subject: Re: For Sim
Organization: Not the Anonymous Posting Service @ WPI
Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1992 05:29:10 GMT

In article <6APR92.14251053@enh.nist.gov> aberson@enh.nist.gov writes:
> If you fear being cast out for breaking rules, maybe the place you fear
> being cast out of isn't for you in the first place.  You need to find
> a place where you would feel more comfortable?

I wish. The problem isn't the place, it's me. I feel as I
don't belong, anywhere. I feel as if there's something wrong
about me, such that regardless of where I am and what I do,
I'll do something wrong, I'll BE wrong. There's nothing I
can do about that feeling, but I can attempt to circumvent
it, by giving it nothing objective to hang onto. For me
"comfortable" means that I've run out of reasons for
believing that I might be rejected. I'll still have the
fear but I might be able to act in spite of it. At worst,
I'll be able to confront the fear without having to also
deal with all the specific fears that it causes.

> |>I don't see it that way. I think the whole power/consent
> |>thing is bogus. The way I see it, it doesn't make a
> |>difference whether the child's sexual partner is another
> |>child or not.

> I have trouble believing that sex between say an adult, 21 yo, and
> a child, 7 yo, can be right.  Between 7 and 13 is probably a different story.

Supposing the possibility that a 7 year has any business
having sex in the first place, I would think that it would
be better that his partner be an adult.

Here's my reasoning. First, the main reason I disagree with
the power/consent thing is that it is based on an
misunderstanding of the authority an adult has over a child
and what it means. An adult has authority over a child in
several ways. The two most important ones are
moral/intellectual and physical. Adults serve as the
child's initial measure of true and false, right and wrong
where complex matters are concerned; the child can't avoid
making some use of a adult's authority in dealing with,
e.g., religion, sex, or self-esteem. Similarly, an adult
has physical authority in that he can physically dominate
the child or deny the child the physical necessities of his
existence. (You might suppose that a adult has emotional
authority over a child but you'd be wrong. Such as he has
is derived from his moral/intellectual authority; the adult
can't by himself will a child's emotions.)

We grant that it is proper for an adult to exercise
authority to the benefit of the child and to the extent that
it is necessary to prevent the child from doing wrong to
others. On the first, an adult might well force a child to
go to a dentist, even if the child hates it. On the second,
an adult might well simply pick up a child who is throwing a
temper tantrum in a mall and take him home. Those are
legitimate examples of adult authority over children.
Outside of these two categories, an exercise of authority by
the adult is abusive.

The reason it is abuse has to do with the proper development
of a child. The child's task as a living being is to develop
autonomy. Autonomy is the ability to be self-willed, not in
the sense of being driven by one's emotions, but in the
sense of being able to choose from a clear moral sense, by
means of understood principles, with reference to what the
person actually knows, and independently of such
considerations as "what will the neighbors think" or "if I
do that, my friend/lover/wife/father/etc. won't respect me".
An exercise of authority necessarily interferes with a
child's autonomy in the short term (with the one exception
being when the child is evading his autonomy in the first
place). Accordingly, authority may not be legitimately
exercised unless it is beneficial to the child or is
necessary to prevent the child from doing wrong to others.

For absolutely certain, authority may not be exercised by
the adult solely for the adult's pleasure, and that is
independent of whether that pleasure is sexual or not.

The power/consent view ignores two things. One is the
(admittedly very remote) possibility that there could be
legitimate reason for a parent to require that the child
have sex (that is deliberately unqualified, I'm not talking
specifically about sex with an adult). The other thing is
the actual authority/autonomy relationship. They suppose
that the MERE possession of authority, NOT its exercise,
entails the diminishing of the child's autonomy. Besides
the obvious, that children DO show a certain degree of
autonomy even in the presence of adults who are exercising
authority, there is no reason to suppose that a child loses
his autonomy merely because of the presence of an adult.

(I do have to point out one thing: an abused child lives in
a world where adults are threatening in their very being.
These children DO have their autonomy suppressed by the MERE
presence of an adult. That is hardly a healthy state for
anyone. However, that observation may well account for the
opinion widely expressed in this newsgroup that the
possession of power negates consent: for the abused child,
it DOES.)

With that aside, IF an adult can have sex with a child
without compromising the child's autonomy, the
considerations that remain are those that would apply
between any two people who were considering sex.

Let's get back to our hypothetical 7 year old. I'm
supposing, for the sake of the discussion, that there is no
compromise of the child's autonomy and that any other
conditions necessary for sex to be proper are met. Let's
pose the question: who is more likely to make the child's
sexual experience a positive one, the 13 year old or the 21
year old? Absent ANY further information than the ages of
the hypothetical sexual partners (including their cultural
background other than to suppose that it is such that sex
could be proper), I'd bet on the 21 year old. In addition,
which one is most likely to be aware the he could be
compromising the child's automony? Which one is more likely
to recognize a problem if it occurs and to deal with it to
the child's benefit? Again, I'd bet on the 21 year old.

If I were to make this same judgement in relation to today's
culture, I'd say that the 7 year old will be harmed by sex
because of the nonsense that he's already been taught (and
so have sex with neither) and that I'd bet on a 13 year old
doing less harm than a 21 year old. But that is only because
the 13 year old is less likely to have had his sexuality
corrupted than the 21 year old and would be less inclined to
act as an authority and so would be less likely to be
treating the 7 year old as an object.

> |>For example, the child should
> |>NEVER feel shame for any part of his or her body or for any
> |>pleasures he may derive from it. This is a special case of a
> |>general principle: that mental health depends on
> |>awareness and acceptance of what one is.

> The same applies to adults.

Yes, that's what I was referring to when I spoke of the
general principle. That principle applies to all people,
regardless of age or circumstance.

> |>Oh, certainly! It is much easier for me to think than to
> |>feel, and much easier for me to relate my thinking than my
> |>feeling.

> I'm glad you realize that.

I can go further than that. Harder even than relating my
feelings is asking for what I want. I can say "I want to be
held" but if I really want it I can't say to someone, or
even imply, "I want you to hold me".

One of the feelings I have a lot of the time is, when put
into words, "if I want it for me and it has to come from
someone else, I may not have it". It's an intense feeling of
wanting coupled with tbe bone-deep knowledge that what I
want will be denied to me.

This has really made hash of my life. It prevents me from
seeking comfort from anyone, from asking my wife to have
sex when the reason is solely my desire, from walking up to
a group of people whom I might wish to be a part of and
trying to join in, from asking a woman I'd like to skate
with if she'd like to. You name it: if it involves something
I want from someone else for ME, I'm paralyzed.

All this talking about my thinking and feeling is, in
itself, of little value; until I can look at someone and
with full intention say "I want <this> from you", where
<this> is something having to do with my emotional needs, I
will remain "Prisoner".

> |>I don't think I can at this stage. Right now, I think I need
> |>still to keep a safe distance. You think I'm difficult over
> |>the net, imagine my reactions to my fears when I have to
> |>deal with both them and a real, live person! At any rate, I
> |>believe that as I am, this is unresolvable.

> It may be unresolvable now, but maybe not later.  I think a lot is
> just the fear of changing, which makes you feel things are
> unresolvable.  If you put your mind to it, you could work on this yourself.

Uh, that is why I'm here and what I'm doing.

> You're going to have to find this somewhere with a real, live person.

I know. :-(

> What a way to start dealing with your trust issues.  Remember, once you
> start on this, you can always say no, you can always stop.

No I can't and that's part of the problem. In theory I can,
but the practice is that once I let go, I really do let go,
all the way. One of the things I need to trust in is that
if I find that I can't stop that whoever it is won't abandon
me because he can't handle it, that I can let go all the way
and find where my limit is, and not find myself left alone
and with my emotions raw and bleeding.

> |>|> Here I disagree somewhat, since you knew they would be affected, since
> |>|> you were affected yourself in various ways by people abusing you.  Does
> |>|> this make sense?
> |>
> |>Unfortunately, no. There seems to be a logic gap there and I
> |>can't figure how to fill it in. Would you try to say it
> |>another way?

> With the knowledge, assuming you had that knowlege at the time, of how
> such behavior affects people in today's society, you should have known
> that such behavior could be harmful.  Is that better?

Ah. At that time I did not have any such knowledge. At the
time, the sum of my knowledge about sex and children could
be held in one sentence: "people believe that doing that is
immoral". Not "harmful", just "immoral". Since I'd long
before learned that "moral" and "immoral" were merely
synonyms for "what one was told one should/should not do",
that knowledge was of no significance. (I don't believe that
anymore, but my concept of morality is very different from
most people's.)

>                                                        I have the flu
> right now, so I may be unclear.  That is also why this post is much
> shorter than previous ones, and probably doesn't say as much.

Sorry about the flu and no need to worry about how much
you've said.

> |>I'm feeling wryly amused right now: recall that girlfriend
> |>who was the first person I had sex with? She was 17 and I,
> |>21. However, it was me being abused, not her.

> I'm not sure what this means.  In my mind both of you were adults.

But we weren't. Both of us were children in everything that
mattered. But the point of it was that, by convention, I
was an adult and she was a child, yet the abuse (on the
sexual side, anyway) was done by her to me.


APS-Name: Prisoner
ap.3029@layout.Berkeley.EDU