Post a response:
|
We're having a disagreement that involves parsimony and ethics. About the parsimony, let's imagine a man who has been sexually involved with ten young boys, and they have all come out of the experience having been treated quite well, receiving personal pleasure and good sports experience. Maybe some were a little ticked at being told at a certain age that now they'd have to find new partners, but many were realizing they were more into girls anyways so that they could naturally move along in that direction. In this scenario, social pressures are ambivalent on whether the gay aspect is good, but pressures are really mounting that the underage aspect should be seen as exploitation. How many of these ten well-treated and well gratified young men are going to snap and call themselves victims? People are all different, so I can see one or two going that route, especially since many came from troubled backgrounds and may have had other problems. But what are the chances that among the whole lot, there isn't a group, large minority or small majority, who have the spine and character (especially now as young adults) to stand up for what was beneficial for them? How can each one of these well treated boys become a socially malleable coward and betray their great friend and partner? Have you ever read Kirk Read's 'How I learned to Snap?' Now, there's an autobiography written by a young man who had a young adult lover at 12 and is intensely grateful and loyal. And that's even though the relationship wasn't especially profound - Kirk became much more attached to the 40-something boyfriend he found when he was 16. Would a couple of shrill therapists and journalists be able to convert Kirk to calling himself a victim? Read the book and you'll see that this is laughable. He would simply tell them they are barking up the wrong tree. I find it extremely improbable that Sandusky would have an 8 - to 10 -membered string of venal, malleable cowards as former partners. I find it far more probable that he inveigled reluctant people into doing things that they were never better than ambiguous about - a common experience for kids - for example, I was forced to take part in sports like basketball myself - but at least those annoying pastimes didn't reach too deeply into my personal intimacy. Still, given the reasonable premise that, in the end, Jerry had no right to bring the boy's testicles into his personal ball game unless the boys spontaneously volunteered their use, the now-grown boys would surely, uniformly decide that he had taken advantage of them. Holding Jerry to be culpable removes the need to imagine that humans in general are completely disloyal, readily socially corruptible, and greedy in a way that overcomes all past outreaches of good faith. What a cynic about the human race you'd have to be to imagine that all those boys, rather than Jerry, were the abusers. Of course, BLs may think they have good reason to be that cynical, but to me, that's taking valid education about prejudice and turning into to a self-defeating vision of a totally degraded, hopeless humanity. I'm leaving that to Scraps. It's not my vision of the human race. I think there are a lot of Kirk Reads out there, or at least people with that much character, and any conscientious boylover, if he takes up illegal sexual expression, would mostly meet such people if he truly took pains to identify the partners who were genuinely interested in him sexually. There'd be the occasional backstabber, to be sure, but not 10 out of 10. About the matter of ethics, Jerry obviously approached boys and used economic and social leverage. No problem with that if, in sexual matters, he let them do all the approaching, so that he could really know that they were spontaneously interested and weren't being quasi-morally compelled to return the favors given them - but not one person has said 'well, actually, it was me that suggested the sex.' How do you think you will manage to convince me, Shrink, that Jerry wasn't the person who put through the sexual agenda in these cases? As a backgrounder for those ethical comments, see the link if you haven't already. [@nonymouse] [Guardster] [Proxify] [Anonymisierungsdienst] |