I don't know if any of you have heard of this society already, but I only read about it today on a philosophy journal and found it interesting - I hasten to add that I don't mean by this I found their ideas convincing - so I thought I'd share. They basically say that giving children a good start in life involves introducing them to sex too, through incest (e.g. a father giving his daughter a good sexual experience gives her a good start in this aspect life, without involving exploitation or sexual disease.)

Obviously our intuitive response to this is that it's abhorrent, presumably one of the first reasons you think of is that it is because it lacks consent. But then, children haven't consented to any aspect of their upbringing; their food preferences, their moral codes, I'm sure you can think of lots more. So why do we still find this particular kind of "initiation" so repugnant? What is it about the particular sexual quality of the experience that makes it worse? And is this worse than normal child abuse?

I ask that because Alan Goldman would say it wasn't, as sex should (according to him, and numerous other philosophers) be judged according to normal moral codes. "Just as the fact that an act is sexual in itself never renders it wrong or adds to its wrongness if it is wrong on other grounds." (From "Plain Sex")

I think the question of whether it is "worse than normal child abuse" or not, is rather irrelevant/unimportant. It's like asking "what's more dangerous, a lion or a tiger".

A child is not emotionally mature enough to deal with sex. Even their bodies aren't well enough developed. A child does not need a parent or other adult to "teach them about sex", most people find out about sex on their own when they are OLD ENOUGH, ie when they're adolescent or young adults. I assume you weren't sexually abused as a child; do you believe you were deprived of something? Obviously not, eh...

This whole thing just reeks of self-rightous perverts who want to justify their behaviour by intellectualising it and projecting it on innocent children.
Giving them the time of day and taking this seriously is kind of disrespectful to all of the people whose childhoods were ruined by incest and sexual abuse.

i'm basically not touching this topic with a ten foot pole

__________________
you'll go to hell for what your dirty mind is thinking

ditto

Sure, I'll bite and take it seriously. Here's my two big thoughts on the matter.

Just phenomenologically, I think sex involves issues of trust on a level that mustn't ever be violated within the family. Platonic relationships are much more stable -- how many marriages become nearly sexless in tribute to this fact? -- and if you lost that with your family it would be incredibly destructive. Anything unsafe within a family is a perpetual source of trauma.

In addition, I don't think you could have sex with someone, abruptly, and then never again, and have it be a good thing. How would you ever feel normal around your father again? Why would it be a "sending off" into your adult life? Wouldn't you wonder why you weren't your father's permanent lover?

I also think that what I'm reading of Goldman's philosophy is completely inept.

I've read some of your posts, sssh. Are you often accused of being too cerebral? You strike me as hermetic in your thought processes, if not your life.

Goldman makes a typical mistake of people who over-intellectualize, in trying to separate out fundamentals. You can't. Sex will never just be sex--his definition of plain sex is plain wrong. And it's likely that food was never just food, either, but animals had no opportunity to elaborate on its significance because they were permanently stuck in survival mode, and the same for the so-called simplicity of their sexual intentions. You can't explore anything, be it technology or plain old salt & pepper, without luxury. Through a certain lens, civilization can easily be viewed as mankind's attempt to procure luxury in order to comfortably elaborate on basic themes of survival, i.e. elaborate sex, cooking, listening, looking, touching... none of which answers your question.

My functional answer would be that as a parent you aren't intended to place your child into extreme violations of their vulnerability--that this ruins a relationship that must be preserved. You are intended to build a safe platform from which your child jumps into extreme situations of their choosing. Sex is always an extreme situation, and if you take your child into that situation you risk damaging your relationship severely. I would venture a guess that, sans the societal taboo (and sans RAPE BY A CREEP which is, of course, what most sex with children currently amounts to), if a parent somehow managed to think benignly of having sex with their kid, they would ultimately get a sensation somewhat akin to throwing their kid into a cave or tying them down at the age of 3 to watch a horror movie. The sensation would creep in that what they are doing isn't right because it lets "demons" in. Sex is, obviously, very phantasmagorical.

If I'm right, then both the daughter and father are in a sense obligated to suppress their attraction to one another, and the taboo is a good one. Most people have sexual dreams about their parents (and I'm betting vice-versa), so it's obvious that some form of attraction to them is normal. But I think it is effectively pushed into the subconscious by the elaborate trust relationship formed during the pre-adolescent years. But now I'm pontificating a bit.

Without even going into the emotional and mental development destruction/disruption and possible accidental pregnancy, nature and society like to prevent malformed inbred babies I like to think. They dont make for the "healthiest stock."

Not outright, but I imagine people will have thought it. I just think that you have to stop that initial "eeew" feeling, in order to understand a notion without letting the intuitive response control you. Though obviously intuitive responses are valuable and we have to think why they have developed.

I totally agree about Goldman, and feel the same about all the other philosophers I've read who have tried to limit sex to one thing. But on the other hand, it makes for a dull philosophical theory if you write a paper called "Y'know, Sex is Pretty Different For Everyone and That's Just Fine"; philosophers do have to try and reduce things to their essentials.

Ok, but isn't this saying that it would be impossible because parents are culturally conditioned to believe this? I do think it's weird that there is this magical aura around sex, but not around so many other things that parents teach their children. You say in your first post that sex involves "issues of trust", but isn't this the same indoctrination/induction into moral and social practices? Doesn't that involve implicit trust between parent and child, the vulnerable child trusting that the parent will educate them in a fair way? Why is this trust different?

Do you mean that trust is one thing that is particularly important sex, one of the things inherent in all forms of sexual activity? I'm also curious about that. There are lots of other things in life that involve trust - opening a joint bank account or telling someone a really personal secret.

I don't know if everyone would agree that once you have had sex with someone you can never have a good friendship with them again, but I think this is a good point.

The reason I was suggesting it is I just wanted to put the idea out there and see what people on KR thought. Thanks for taking it seriously Serge, I did intend it that way.

I think the society were advocating sex before the children reached fertility.

Well, not really. I think quite a lot of people would agree that although it does depend upon the individual circumstance, a father raping a child a few times is going to cause greater repercussions in its adult life than if he hit them a few times. Clearly I'm not saying that either is ok; it is very relevant to my post, since I was trying to get to the nature of why sex is different. Both are violent, physical crimes.

Again, I'm not advocating it, you're misunderstanding my point. And that is only when our culture judges them to be "old enough" - not so long ago in the UK, girls were married by the time they reached fertility (which we'd find positively paedophilic) and I assume they grew up "normal" in relation to the definition of that, by society of the time.

I agree that the people who are members of the society seem pretty weird from the webpages I've read, but this is a harmless intellectual discussion sparked off by their views since I found them curious - not propaganda for them, or anything like it. Would you ban discussion of the root causes of paedophilia? Would you like to explain how that would really help anyone?

Reminds me of moral philosophy seminars...the easy response of people who didn't want to debate properly was to be emotive and shout "nazi!" at whoever made any tentative support of utilitarianism, or whatever we were talking about. Which is unhelpful.

I don't get why those are the only options. You can't reduce things to essentials if you can't handle the multiplicity that pops out of them. If you are going to do it, you have to push everything back in the jack-in-the-box, you can't just cut off the head and then shut the lid.

In other words, I think that's a decent attitude to have toward getting the most out of bad philosophers--that they are clumsy and have reduced things to essentials just to try and argue their point--but is a terrible rationale for philosophy to ever adopt. And it's a very abusive way to talk to a reader, in my opinion.

Anyway I've digressed.

You're making an assumption that moral & social practices came first when, really, instincts based on nature most likely came first. If this wasn't the case, a civilization would probably have successfully experimented with incest. As for why the trust issues you're naming are different, I will give an example below. But the short answer is that sex is unique among other social experiences.

I do think sex is fundamentally different, yes. Is that the question you want answered? I think there are many ways to approach this, and all of them probably contribute to nature culminating in a disapproval of incest. (And I think you have to look at it evolutionarily, because the earliest lifeforms, of course, quite happily practiced incest without a second thought. It didn't matter because they weren't complex organisms.)

One such obvious reasoning is that someone you build a trust bond with from the point of view of total submission (e.g. when you were a baby and they were an adult) is not someone you should have as a sexual partner, since sexuality represents adulthood physiologically and psychologically. I hope you understand that I am completely understating the psychological effects of this... I'm assuming you're intelligent enough to view that power imbalance as vast. There are few things more implacable than the nature of a parent-child relationship. And I'm assuming you get what I mean by "represents adulthood" -- that is also a vast concept which I'm understating.

I don't think you understood what I was saying--that's like the simplest possible interpretation. It's like you're deliberately not imagining the ramifications. One would automatically wonder all of the MOST crazy thoughts which naturally spring from sex -- questions of ego, identity, trust, love -- with even more intense awareness if one committed the act with one's father or mother. If you can't discuss the phantasmagorical, you can't really discuss sex.

I think there is an extraordinary difference between the side of yourself as an adult, which encompasses sex and many other things you dare to become as an adult, and the weirdly neurotic yet happily simplistic side of yourself you develop as a housemate & child with your family. I would almost say the two sides are deliberately adverse, for the sake of protecting your developing psyche. Both parent & child try not to show weakness, and to have sex with a parent would expose a level of weakness that would be very damaging to the child. Quite humorously, people seem happiest to return to fundamental tropes when spending time with their family.

To answer your question from another vantage point, would I think it was necessarily disgusting or tragic if someone had consensual adult sex with someone else and neither of them knew they were actually parent/child, and never found out the truth? I would only pity them if they had a relationship, since I do believe genetics play a part in personality and that we're here to diversify & learn.

It's interesting to note, however, that even a mere belief in familial relation is enough to trigger attraction (including sexual) -- it is extremely common when you meet a lost close relation (brother, father, whatever) to find yourself sexually attracted to them. It demonstrates very well the power of concepts like FAMILY and ROMANCE. As I've said before, there's obviously something normal about sexual attraction to family members -- but I think it is equally normal to suppress these feelings as a society. And we're mostly OK about it because the platonic relationship you have (i.e. they spend your baby years wiping your shit and you spend your youth ordered around by them and thinking they're boring) helps hinder any romance.

Then, as some would point out, you go find someone similar to something you grew up with and marry that. Life relies on funny little reversals like that.

I am not trying to ban a "discussion of the root causes of pedophilia".
As far as I can see this isn't even about the causes of pedophilia, you asked whether or not it's wrong.


As for WHY people become that way, I have no idea. Look it up in a psychiatric reference work or something.


I'm done with this thread.

Another very simplistic way of stating it would be, "your parents were the sex that you came from--that you are leaving behind; and your lovers are the sex that you are heading toward, i.e. the future."

Asking why sex is unlike anything else and why it has these "rules" around it is like asking why color has rules. The fundamentals are the unattainables. Everything primal has limitations, otherwise there would only be chaos. In comparison to something like sex, learning about money or when to cross the street is a complete banality. It could be understood by a robot.

as an anti child abuse activist,I can assure you that this Rene Guyon society does exist and others such as Martijn.org, .N.A.M.B.L.A. who not so long ago has started an auxillary group called butterfly kisses( an organisation for the acceptance of love between older women and young girls) !!!! It is my job as an activist to keep informed of these heineous organisations parading as do gooders. If you read the latest inteview on Martijn.org ,it is sinteresting how the pewrson interviewd in Italy does not answer questions directly. Sufice to say sadly these organisations are around and have the audacity to camapign for acceptance with even one in Holland wanting to form a party in goverment.

Isn't incestuous experimentation pretty common already? I've got nothing against this really, except that it'd be easy for them to argue that the relative should be an adult (because they know more about sex) which leaves a pretty tricky grey area wide open to abuse by genuine paedophiles.

I can see the potential issue people might have with the idea of our race being on some perpetual learning curve, never learning about sex from anyone with any real experience of it… but then, how much sexual experience do you need to become a parent? Very little, when you think about it! Who's to say that a parent knows the "facts of life" or has any more of a "correct" attitude and understanding concerning sex purely because they happen to be older?

So if we're just arguing that kids need to "learn by doing", there's a strong counter argument that they already do learn by doing, just with each other rather than their parents. After all, if the child's experience is the important thing, what advantage is gain from an adult doing the "teaching"? Frankly, I'd doubt another kid's motive a lot less than I would an adult's, given the evidence available.

Is there much support for such groups? I do wonder. I'm pretty sure trying to ban them or impede them would be pointless, as it would lend them a kind of perverse credibility as "martyrs to freedom of expression" or some stupid thing. But then, I'm assuming that the vast majority of people do regard them as sick lunatics. I've seen some of what they think will be persuasive, and I can't imagine them ever really winning anyone over to their "cause", but I might be wrong. Do you know?