OT: Child sex robots

I'm guessing he's referring to the Antinatalism debates on IMDb. I didn't participate and don't remember who was on what side (as I just skimmed them); but rabbit almost certainly knows I didn't take part, so his grouping me in with that "aborting 18 month-olds" comment is just more evidence of HIS dishonesty. 

I don't know if I ever said all of this in in one post, but the overall gist of my opinion was: from what I knew of the research, which wasn't much, all suggested it was harmful; but that research had not met the criteria that Eddie had advocated for determining what the source of the supposed harm was (eg, if it was socially motivated/stigmatized), and I admitted that if we changed/removed certain variables, like the stigma factor, then I didn't know if it was be as harmful. Of the anecdotes I knew about it, likewise, the vast majority spoke of it as something extremely negative, and the neutral/positives were pretty rare by comparison (the Takei/Milo storeis). But I also remember supporting Cine's statements about certain physical sexual acts being pretty innately harmful to children just through the sheer bio-physics of it (prepubescent vaginas don't lubricate; anal sex can be painful for adults in the best of situations; etc.), so I also thought it likely harmful from that perspective. I've also been pretty consistently in the "this is a situation where I'd rather be safe than sorry" camp. It just seems to me that the value in fulfilling a sexual desire couldn't outweigh the very likely potential harm done to the children, and it's not something I'd want to risk to find out.

Plus, and I think this is a point I never really got around to making, I do very much disagree with Eddie over the idea that children aren't more pliable than teenagers and adults. I still basically resent the fact that I felt "brainwashed" by my parents into believing in God throughout my childhood based on nothing more than my blind faith in them. Stuff like that and kids' tendencies to believe in things like Santa Clause pretty much prove how easily manipulated children are into believing and doing stuff. Do I think many adults are naive and easily manipulated too? Sure. But not to the degree that you can just tell most of them "there's a fat guy in a red suit that delivers presents to every child in the world over the course of one night" and they believe it just because you said it. So given that, I'm very leery of the notion of children being able to consent to sex, especially since sex between people is generally something people only have interest in past puberty because of hormonal/sexual urges. The kind of sex children experience (that I've mentioned throughout this thread) is more of the non-fantasy, non-sex-hormonal, self-pleasing variety. The "i rub my penis/clitoris because it feels good" not "I rub my penis/clitoris because I wish I was fucking Scarlett Johansson/Brad Pitt... and it feel good." When kids imitate more interpersonal sexual activities (kissing, playing house, etc.) it's more out of curiosity and a desire to imitate adults ("monkey see, monkey do") and also not due to sexual urges. It doesn't feel right to me that any supposed "consent" would likely be out of a desire to blindly please an adult, or imitate adult behaviors without the adult urges, while in all likelihood the adult would undoubtedly have much more power in manipulating this consent than you would see in most any adult/adult consent situation. 

EDIT: I might add that I have a lot of reservations and misgivings about how sex is viewed in the west in general. Basically, I think there's still far too much of the Puritanical and Christian "morality" that rears its ugly head in a variety of ways, even among those that claim to be liberal and progressive when it comes to such matters. I also think that part of that mentality that I dislike crops up in these pedophile debates, and it's often that I find myself reacting to. Like, I find it odd that these sexual subjects--and we saw the same thing with homosexuality when it was even more controversial--seem to elicit a kind of reactionary moral outrage in a way that other subjects don't. While I disagree with scienceisgod on just about everything, I can't help but agree that it's weird that there's this almost universal outrage over pedophilia, but comparatively little over circumcision. And, yeah, if you think about it: "cut my penis without my permission = OK, but stroke my penis with or without my permission = most horrible thing in the world" seems like a strange mentality. Similarly, I rarely even see murder cases yield the same kind of outrage. Even on a completely different level, there seems to be less outrage over Global Warming--something that can literally destroy the entire planet and life as we know it--and those that are denying than on these sexual subjects. I... just don't get it. None of that equals out to me supporting pedophilia in the end, but it is a pretty good explanation of what my various concerns are. 

More like it would be freedom for everyone and consequence for some, and in either case the two are not the same, despite your attempts at conflating them.

Nope, can't make heads or tails out of this.

And as I've stated many times, the assertion that they need to have completed this criteria clearing is relevant to the question of whether they are "actually" subject as opposed to just being "potentially" subject. If you go back to the beginning of this discussion, you'll see it was only ever the actuality I was disputing since theoretically they all would be.

Nope, virtually no more than they'd need to wipe their butt first. It's a complete non-consideration. But as you say, maybe just maybe the "stigma" is the crux of the problem. 

The "emotional/puritanical" seems to crop up in a lot of sex-related subjects and the form it takes with pedophilia is basically identical to the form it takes (or took) with homosexuality. This in no way suggests that they are both right, both wrong, or that one was right and the other was wrong; what I find so disturbing about the whole "emotional puritanical outrage" stance is precisely that it doesn't distinguish between differences. The appearance is identical. The roadblocks it puts up towards productive rational arguments is identical. The blatant irrationality it fosters is identical. You're a perfect example, as pretty much everyone who's commented on this thread recognizes (of course we're all "friends:" which is the Erjen "you're all against me and my campaign of righteousness!" mentality). 

For more evidence of that, just look at your flippant reaction to the circumcision comparison: after all your responses to Bryce about the morality of taking advantage of the naive, immature, and vulnerable... and then to act like the the only moral consideration is the harm done. Apparently, taking advantage of the vulnerable is bad, but taking advantage of the completely defenseless without any kind of consent is OK, as long as it doesn't harm them. Which, by that logic, if you hypothetically had sex with an infant in a way that didn't physically harm them, then you wouldn't have harmed them (because they certainly wouldn't remember it and carry any emotional scars). Rabbitlogic.