So a bunch of the regulars on Reddit’s Men’s Rights subreddit have their collective knickers in a twist about dudes getting called “pedophiles” just for saying they think 14-year old girls are hot. Because that’s “ephebephilia,” dontchaknow, not pedophilia! And besides, thingsarebad argues
Normal heterosexual males will generally have sexual attraction for pubescent females of child-bearing age, from puberty till they start to get old and gross (late 20s, early 30s usually haha).
That’s pretty much “eww.” But so is the rest of the discussion, really, from this “joke” about all women being as immature as children to this heavily upvoted claim that feminists have created a “pedo-scare … to criminalize healthy and normal male sexuality,” to this Evo-Psych-flavored argument for lowering the age of consent.
Is it just me or are dudes who get indignant when people don’t carefully distinguish between ephebephilia and pedophilia just really really creepy?
Is “the right to lust after underage girls without having to feel icky about it” really a Men’s Rights issue? Why this preoccupation with 14-year-old girls, on r/mensrights and Reddit generally?
Yes, many (but not all, obviously) women find me enormously attractive, especially when considering my intelligence, sense of humor, and charm., but even so I never expected to have a story worth sending into Penthouse Letters….
My wife is 8 years younger than I. I have a friend who’s wife is several years older than he. Everyone is happy, yet no one is 14. Imagine.
@ Pecunium
“Crap, very hard to take.”
Hey Pecunium, from previous experience: I highly recommend this . 😉
qwert666: I don’t quite know what to make of your comment.
To whomever said women in their 30’s have trouble competing with younger women…I’d just like to say that…yeah…no….actually I have NO problem in that department. But then I don’t look at other women as “competitors,” I look at them as individuals. Some of them are younger than I am, some of them are thinner than I am, some fatter, some of them will arouse a man in a way I won’t and I may do the same for a man in way they won’t.
I view women as individuals..and guess what–I view men that way too!
@ Pecunium
“I don’t quite know what to make of your comment.”
It was a joke man. I’m assuming the hyperlink worked?
“Is it just me or are dudes who get indignant when people don’t carefully distinguish between ephebephilia and pedophilia just really really creepy?”
The line between DOING and FEELING does not require one to “carefully distinguish”.
It is the line between the greatest of evil and the greatest of good.
On one side of this line are people (men and women) who do a terrible harm.
On the other side of this line are people (men and women) who feel a terrible desire — but have the compassion, the grace, and the strength NOT to act on that compulsion.
On one side of this line are the people who we should most DISDAIN.
On the other side of this line are the people who we should most ADMIRE.
How many of you could say, with honesty, that you would have the strength and courage to set asside your entire sexual nature, because the desire that you felt was morally wrong and/or illegal?
How many of you who mock and denigrate the heroic struggle of human beings who face the beast within themselves and WIN? I suspect that many of you, faced with the same awful choice, would embrace the evil within yourselves and victimize the young and/or helpless without remorse.
Many of the same people who so pompously proclaim your superiority to the “vermin” who FEEL a terrible desire.
The difference between FEELING and DOING is simply the difference beteen good and evil. There can be no greater difference. If we lose the ability to distinguish between the two, we have truly lost our humanity.
Ok, I rather thought it might be, but it might also have been taken as a dig, and I didn’t want to do you an injustice by supposing the latter, if you meant the former.
Joanna: But if men want to they don’t have to control their polygamy. Polyamory exists, you know! 🙂
@ Pecunium
Yeah, I do remember saying you were full of shit a while back! I guess that confuse matters. If it helps any, I retract my statement that your’e full of shit: but if you genuinely do find it hard to crap then I’d consider popping a few of those dulcoease tablets down your neck. 😉
Antz: No one here is saying one can’t lust after 14 year olds. qwert did a good job of explaining the difference.
As to this: How many of you could say, with honesty, that you would have the strength and courage to set asside your entire sexual nature, because the desire that you felt was morally wrong and/or illegal?
How many of you who mock and denigrate the heroic struggle of human beings who face the beast within themselves and WIN? I suspect that many of you, faced with the same awful choice, would embrace the evil within yourselves and victimize the young and/or helpless without remorse.
What do you mean?
Are you asking if I (since I can’t answer for anyone else) think I could resist a pretty young thing who was actually too young to give legal consent?
Yes. I’ve done it. Some years ago (when I was younger) there was a young women I took to be about 16 (I was just shy of 20). She was young, but 16 is liminal, (and I was younger too). She flirted with me (and with a number of other men; it was that sort of environment). She was, however, coy about her age. Some weeks went by (we were working an event that lasted over 6 weekends, plus the rehearsal time, which was when we met).
At some point some one else found out how old she actually was (the context of the event was such that markers of age, such as school, companions, etc. weren’t present). She was 13.
A little later she made a pass at me.
And I turned her down. I had another (14 year old) make a pass at me (a couple of years before that. Perhaps I was a prettier teen than I thought at the time; or perhaps I treated them as human beings, I don’t know). I turned her down too.
They were both attractive. I know they were both sexually active at about 16. I could probably have seduced either of them, at that point. But the age gap (because of experience), and the emotional advantage (because of their prior crushes) made it something that, no matter how charming the idea of a few hours of slippery fun might have been had (and probably enjoyed by all) the morality of it was wrong.
I’d have been taking advantage of them.
Not taking advantage of them wasn’t heroic. It wasn’t something to be proud of, nor to boast of. It wasn’t some great moral victory. It was just the right thing to do.
That you see it as some great struggle, a day to day fight between good and evil; an ongoing trial to “face the awful beast”, says a lot more about you than I wanted to know.
qwert: Thanks. I’ve been impressed with the way you’ve dealt with the way your words are (and have been taken). I didn’t want to chime in at the time, because I didn’t want to seem to be either crowing, nor piling on.
The points you make about desire/action are valid.
It comes up a lot, actually, when talking about looking at people. Being attracted isn’t objectification.
Thinking a young person who is attractive, is attractive is fine.
Trying to get them into bed, not so fine.
When I was 15, I had boyfriend–for a short time–who broke up with me because I was too young. He was 21, and while he apparently thought I was very cute, the idea of making out with a 15-year-old skeeved him out a bit. He kinda broke my heart, but I reckon he was acting honorably. It DOES happen.
“That you see it as some great struggle, a day to day fight between good and evil; an ongoing trial to “face the awful beast”, says a lot more about you than I wanted to know.”
If you think I have terrible impulses that I control through force of will, then perhaps you should thank me. A little compassion would probably also be appropriate.
As to your example, it makes no sense. Based on your description of events, I conclude that your feelings of attraction for women are mainstream. Some women in their early to mid teens can look 18, so you acted with caution, which is the appropriate thing to do. So what? None of this is unusual or noteworthy.
Do the reverse. Imagine an 18 year old woman who (biologically) looks very YOUNG for her age. Imagine that she also acts, and dresses, like a 12 year old girl. Anyone looking at her would THINK she is 12. Now imagine a man who is strongly attracted to her BECAUSE of her pre-pubescent appearance. THIS is the man I am talking about. THIS is the man who I admire (assuming he does not act upon his desires).
The point is, no FEELING is ever wrong. Only actions can be wrong. When we start making feelings illegal or immoral, we forgoe our humanity. This is why the “manga” example is so important. There is no victim, no abuse, no wrong is done. And yet, men are going to prison. For looking at CARTOONS. This happens because of the kind of moralizing “thought police” thinking that I see here. It does not matter what a man DOES, only what we think might be going on his head.
No. The line between moral and immoral is clear and crucial. To intentionally blur it, as many are doing here, is to do a terrible wrong.
Arguments from nature invariably fail for three reasons:
(1) they are based on the assumption that nature is magical and has a mind and a plan;
(2) they emphasize certain aspects of nature while ignoring others; and
(3) to the extent that forming societies with rules, and for those societies and those rules to change is natural, the line between nature and culture gets exceeding blurry.
Take the idea that men are “naturally polygamous”. It’s premised on the notion that men propagate their genes by inseminating as many fertile women as possible. The problem is, this is not the only sensible reproductive strategy. After all, the evolutionary imperative isn’t just to shoot one’s load, but to ensure the survival of one’s offspring long enough for that offspring to be capable of reproduction. Sure, the upside of screwing everything that moves is that if you put your semen in lots and lots of women, statistically, odds are you’ll have some offspring who will themselves survive to reproduce. The downside is that children conceived this way have tremendously great odds of being aborted or dying young. In many ways, the better reproductive strategy for a male is to have children with one female or a limited number of females and to expend his energies on nurturing and protecting his offspring, so that they survive to successfully reproduce themselves. And that is precisely why humans — and we are not the only animals to function this way — are drawn to forming long-term, stable diads. Viewed from that angle, men can be characterized as naturally monogomous.
We encounter the same problem when MRA’s argue that rape is “natural”, and that men are evolutionarily driven to force themselves on attractive women. In fact, rape is a terrible evolutionary adaptation, because since prehistoric times, children conceived as a result of rape have had significantly increased odds of being aborted, killed at birth or not cared for adequately enough to ensure their own reproduction later on. And what do you know, extreme stress actually lowers a woman’s fertility. My grandmothers, who lived through World War II in Europe, told me that it was astoundingly common in war time for even young girls in their reproductive prime to just plain stop menstruating, even if they weren’t malnourished.
I think the most accurate way to consider the role of nature in all this is to acknowledge that human beings, like most other complex animals, are subject to complicated and potentially conflicting drives that sometimes pull us in different directions all at once. We’ve evolved to survive under vastly different circumstances — adaptability being THE most important evolutionary advantage — but that means that we can argue about what’s “natural” and what’s not till the cows come home. It’s important for us to pass on our genes, so we (both men and women) feel the pull of sex whenever we see another attractive member of the species. But it’s also important for us to ensure the survival of our genes in our offspring and their offspring, so we also have a strong pull towards cultivating and preserving committed relationships. We enjoy different and sometimes mutually exclusive things. The interplay between different reproductive imperatives is very complex, far more complex than simply saying that men are “naturally” polygamous, but women are “naturally” drawn to wrinkles and sagging flesh on one, and only one, billionaire.
Do the reverse. Imagine an 18 year old woman who (biologically) looks very YOUNG for her age. Imagine that she also acts, and dresses, like a 12 year old girl. Anyone looking at her would THINK she is 12. Now imagine a man who is strongly attracted to her BECAUSE of her pre-pubescent appearance. THIS is the man I am talking about. THIS is the man who I admire (assuming he does not act upon his desires).
She is old enough to consent.
No problem, no matter what she looks like.
I don’t have any philosophical problem with manga either.
I don’t have a problem with someone who looks at 14 year olds and gets turned on.
But that’s a far cry from people (like TAB, juandelacruz, NWO, etc.) who say the law needs to be changed because some people like children.
Um…no, AntZ, some feelings are unquestionably wrong. It is wrong to want to go out and beat people to death because of the color of their skin or their sexuality. It is wrong to want to rape every woman you see. It is wrong to think that mass genocides are necessary for any reason. There are a lot of feelings that are wrong.
Not acting on those feelings does not make them less wrong. A person does not get a pat on the head and a fucking cookie because they refrain from acting like a total monster.
“they value hot bodies and cute faces, which are indications of fertility and good DNA”
Go back to biology class, sweetheart.
“As to this: How many of you could say, with honesty, that you would have the strength and courage to set asside your entire sexual nature, because the desire that you felt was morally wrong and/or illegal?”
So when did you start cheating on your wife again?
Seriously what the hell, you’re asking us if we can stop ourselves from having sex that’s morally wrong. Without qualification. That’s what it means.
“How many of you who mock and denigrate the heroic struggle of human beings who face the beast within themselves and WIN? I suspect that many of you, faced with the same awful choice, would embrace the evil within yourselves and victimize the young and/or helpless without remorse.”
So not only can you not defend your position, your best argument for it is a fictional tu quoque fallacy. That’s impressively bad.
RuteeL I think he’s asking for sympathy. He has drives, and he is suppressing them.
We should be grateful to him, instead we are saying that having these drive (which he striving to suppress) is wrong.
I’m sort of confused though… if they’re not wrong, why does he need to suppress them?
“We encounter the same problem when MRA’s argue that rape is “natural”, and that men are evolutionarily driven to force themselves on attractive women. In fact, rape is a terrible evolutionary adaptation…”
The desire to rape is psychological and more to do with repressed anger than needing to “spread one’s seed” so to speak.
“3 clinical classifications of rape are proposed in which the aim of the rape is the differentiating factor: (a) aggressive, (b) sexual, and (c) sex-aggression diffusion. The aggressive rapists use sex as an expression of their anger to humiliate and defile the victim, who is always a stranger. They tend to have a long history of difficulty in heterosexual relationships, early sexual traumata involving an older woman (frequently the mother), body narcissism, and an absence of depth in their relationships. 3 cases are presented illustrating sexual traumata and their relationship to subsequent rape. The sexual rapists use minimal violence and no brutality in their attacks. They are generally defending against homosexual feelings, attempting to escape the passive-feminine resolution, and denying feelings of impotency. 2 examples of this type of rapist are described. The sadistic rapist is unable to experience sexual excitement without violence. A case is described indicating the paranoia, sexualization of aggression, and violent histories of such men.”
On the subject of the Titanic, MRA historians now have indisputable evidence that it was not an iceberg that did the good ship in, but rather a solid block of congealed feminism, planted by suffragist agents in the pay of Woodrow Wilson’s wife. This goes deeper than we ever suspected…
Maybe I’m just a big, hairy mangina, but the way I think about a women affects whether I am attracted to her. There have been many times when my feelings of attraction for a beautiful woman have taken a nosedive after she opened her mouth and said something stupid (like quoting Rush Limbaugh). Similarly, wit and intelligence in a woman have the effect of increasing my feelings of attraction. By the same token, when I find out that an otherwise attractive young woman is really a girl of 14, my feelings of attraction largely diminish. The very idea squicks me out, and that’s not sexy.
Now, since I’m so relieved I’m not married to you, I’m going to go give my husband a hug and a kiss. Because I hate men so very, very much. All men. Even my husband. Who I have sex with. Who I’ve been with for four years. Wow, man, your logic is breaking down pretty fiercely now, isn’t it?
You guys have no idea how hard I hug my husband after reading threads like these.
Quick pro tip for the group: when someone starts making up evo-psych explanations for why certain physical features are attractive, especially if they use phrases like “signs of fertility” or “signs of health,” you can trust you’re dealing with someone with no understanding of genetics. The idea that attractiveness always serves a practical purpose, like signifying fertility or health, was debunked years ago. Attractive features are evolutionarily useful because they attract. That’s their purpose.
For instance, evolutionary biologists used to think that male peacocks grew those big tails as a sign of good health: if they could afford to expend calories building big tails, they must be stronger, healthier, and more fertile than the competition, right? Then they actually checked and discovered that the peacocks with big tails were less healthy than the ones with smaller tails. Peacocks sacrifice overall fitness to grow big tails. For whatever reason, peahens like the big tails, so big tails help a peacock pass on his genes. And that’s good for the peahens who mate with the big-tailed guys, because it makes them likely to produce male offspring who will get laid.
In other words, attractiveness isn’t a sign of other desirable genetic traits; the attractiveness itself is the desirable trait.
Yeah, I graduated summa cum laude too. And this one time, I totally slept through a class, but I hella aced it anyway. And my IQ is in the 99th percentile and I was the brains on every project I worked on because everyone around me is so dumb and hey, come back, I haven’t told you how witty and charming I am yet!
Hee.
Forget all the knowledgeable and well-argued crap in the rest of your comment; this shit is convincing! Can I have all your babies? I can tell you have DNAs like whoa!
I dunno about my IQ, but my SATs were in the 99th percentile! We should have so much sex and stuff right now, and then our kids can be in the 9999th percentile!! OMG I’m turned on just thinking about how hungover and sleepy they can be in class!!!