Roman Polanski arrested (discuss)...

[Kevin_Lowe]

Then don't reply.

Social attitudes to young people and sex are a fascinating and divisive topic. From NAMBLA at one lunatic-fringe end of the spectrum to self-appointed "think of the children!" crusaders at the other lunatic-fringe end of the spectrum, all sorts of people have enormous emotional attachments to positions on this issue which have nothing to do with the available evidence.

Not only is it an area in dire need of an evidence-based approach purely for its own sake, but it also regularly pops its head up into civil liberties issues, particularly with regard to internet regulation. When attempts are made to censor or control the internet the standard justification, along with cracking down on terrorists, is cracking down on child pornography and/or paedophiles stalking children via the internet.

I'd prefer to be able to discuss these important issues from a skeptical, evidence-based perspective without malignant idiots accusing me of being a paedophile-supporter every time the topic comes up. Thus I no longer ignore such attempts to defame me, since the effect of ignoring them just seems to be that the idiots convince each other even further than I must be a paedophile-supporter, because otherwise why would all their buddies be making those accusations? I tried ignoring the idiots and their lies and it didn't work. I'm trying a new approach, which is confronting them and challenging them to back their lies up with facts or retract them.

 

[johnny karate]

Now you're just repeating yourself, and even if you had a point then you would still be making a purely semantic argument which gets us nowhere with regard to how we should actually judge the Polanski case. I'm dropping this subthread as unproductive.

My argument is not semantic, it's actually legal. I'm not arguing what words mean, but what certain legal terms mean under the law.

You're the one claiming Polanski didn't commit rape, when under the law he most certainly did. If you want to drop it now, that's fine by me, but let's not pretend you were anything but wrong.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

And yet all your talk about consensual, non-distressing and safe-sex with 13 year olds is still irrelevant to the case.

You don't know that the sex involved was non-consensual or distressing, because there is no corroboration for that claim. That allegation has not been proven in a court of law, nor does the medical evidence we've found corroborate it, nor do you have any special knowledge of the matter.

You're welcome to think it is likely that Polanski raped the alleged victim, but stating it as a fact is false and since you've been told that repeatedly I suspect by this point you are merely trolling.

 

[shuize]

You don't know that the sex involved was non-consensual or distressing, because there is no corroboration for that claim. That allegation has not been proven in a court of law, nor does the medical evidence we've found corroborate it, nor do you have any special knowledge of the matter.

I know Polanski agreed to a $500,000 civil settlement. But, hey, maybe he offers that sort of cash up to all the 13-year-olds he has "consensual" sex with ...

 

[Region Rat]

I know Polanski agreed to a $500,000 civil settlement. But, hey, maybe he offers that up to all the 13-year-olds after giving them alcohol and drugs so they can have "consensual" sex.

Hmmmmm....... If he gave her $500K for consensual sex, then wouldn't that make her a [very high priced] prostitute?

 

[applecorped]

Social attitudes to young people and sex are a fascinating and divisive topic. From NAMBLA at one lunatic-fringe end of the spectrum to self-appointed "think of the children!" crusaders at the other lunatic-fringe end of the spectrum, all sorts of people have enormous emotional attachments to positions on this issue which have nothing to do with the available evidence.

Not only is it an area in dire need of an evidence-based approach purely for its own sake, but it also regularly pops its head up into civil liberties issues, particularly with regard to internet regulation. When attempts are made to censor or control the internet the standard justification, along with cracking down on terrorists, is cracking down on child pornography and/or paedophiles stalking children via the internet.

I'd prefer to be able to discuss these important issues from a skeptical, evidence-based perspective without malignant idiots accusing me of being a paedophile-supporter every time the topic comes up. Thus I no longer ignore such attempts to defame me, since the effect of ignoring them just seems to be that the idiots convince each other even further than I must be a paedophile-supporter, because otherwise why would all their buddies be making those accusations? I tried ignoring the idiots and their lies and it didn't work. I'm trying a new approach, which is confronting them and challenging them to back their lies up with facts or retract them.

Okay. Good luck.

 

[Checkmite]

"Which insinuations?", he asked innocently...



Here's you're implying that those are my positions. This is a lie.

We had a long and acrimonious thread about age of consent laws not too long ago, and the available evidence based on studies of people involved in underage sex showed that consensual sex could not be scientifically linked to any harm even if one or both participants were underage.

(Just to head off one inevitable response, underage pregnancy and STDs cause harm. Feel free to criminalise impregnating or infecting underage people. Sex does not, so criminalising it cannot be justified).

From here.

Based on your opinion as posted in the forums in the past, the original prosecution of Polanski is unjustifiable since the victim did not get impregnated or infected.

Can you link to or cite evidence that shows that a twelve year old with helpings of T&A and an independent interest in sex (as described in DD's specific reply) would be likely to be seriously harmed by having sex1 with DD?

Since you've worked in this area, and a single such cite would knock DD's case down, you would seem to be the person most likely to know of such a cite and most motivated to track it down.


1 Don't bother trying to run evidence of harm due to STDs, pregnancy and so on past us. Assume DD takes sensible precautions.

From this thread. Wherein you attack someone's being repulsed by a statement from Danish Dynamite that if conditions were to his liking, he would have sex with a 12-year-old. Actually, that thread is full of all sorts of examples, starting from page 5. I actually felt compelled to start a thread apologizing to the forum for helping perpetuate that debate with you.

...so you are stating that whenever I join a thread involving sex and minors in any way I ignore what a child molester did and/or claim that there's nothing wrong with having sex with a 13 year old if she consents. This is also a lie.

No. You simply claim that there's no evidence that an adult having consentual sex with a minor is harmful. Repeatedly and insistently, and dismissing first-hand accounts (even while insisting upon cites of studies, which are nothing more than collated sets of first-hand accounts) which suggest otherwise. Typically followed at some point by an innocent "I'm just pointing it out, not taking a position!" disclaimer that never fools anyone. This is demonstrated thoroughly and repeatedly in that second thread I linked. You even go as far as dismissing someone's personal account of abuse between the ages of 8 and 14 as useless because her having been molested at age 8 made her dislike of the sex she had at 14 somehow no longer count.

Here you are claiming that in the past I've dragged this out over a dozen or more pages of hints, vague references and subtly-directed responses. I'm guessing this is going to be your escape hatch when you get called you on your slime: You'll say "Of course I can't prove Kevin ever said anything like that, he cunningly hid it in a dozen pages of hints, and only with my brilliant deductive skills did I figure out he thinks forty year olds should be able to screw thirteen year olds".

You've said plainly that criminalizing sex with minors is unjustifiable when no harm (for values of "harm" you're willing to accept) is done.

Here's an unsubtle and specific response: Back your defamatory claims up, by linking to specific posts of mine and explaining in your own words (1) exactly what I'm claiming and (2) why it is bad. Do it here or do it in a thread of your own making, I don't care.

Done.

If you can't back them up then retract them and apologise. I'm through tolerating this sort of treatment from people like you.

Not going to happen.

 

[shuize]

Hmmmmm....... If he gave her $500K for consensual sex, then wouldn't that make her a [very high priced] prostitute?

Well, I guess that's one way to look at it: Polanski was only about two decades late in agreeing to pay possibly the most expensive 13-year-old prostitute in the world. He never stiffs a whore, you see ... except maybe in this case where he agreed to pay the slut but then made her have to sue him to try and get the money. Ha. Ha. He sure showed her.

Of course, there's the much more likely version: The half million dollar civil settlement serves as acknowledgment that the sex with the 13-year-old child was not entirely "consensual" or "non-distressing" after all.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

From here.

Based on your opinion as posted in the forums in the past, the original prosecution of Polanski is unjustifiable since the victim did not get impregnated or infected.

Firstly, as I've said twice already, the state of human knowledge has moved on since then. There's now tolerably solid evidence that sex does correlate with poorer life outcomes for young teens, even when you control for social status, family status and so on. It's not a hugely strong effect and the chain of causation is unclear to say the least, but it's there so on balance I now support efforts to discourage young teenagers from becoming sexually active and to discourage adults from having sex with them.

Secondly since neither version of events mentions a condom, in my ideal world Polanski would still be punished (or punished more harshly than otherwise) for having unsafe sex with her, regardless of whether or not she actually caught anything and regardless of whether or where he climaxed.

Thirdly while I don't support laws that impose heavy sentences for consensual sex, because I don't think the evidence of harm justifies them, fifty or ninety days in the clink seems well within the realm of what is reasonable and that's what Polanski got.

From this thread. Wherein you attack someone's being repulsed by a statement from Danish Dynamite that if conditions were to his liking, he would have sex with a 12-year-old. Actually, that thread is full of all sorts of examples, starting from page 5. I actually felt compelled to start a thread apologizing to the forum for helping perpetuate that debate with you.

Under sufficiently unusual circumstances I wouldn't have moral objections to letting a twelve year old have a drink, or drive a car, or shoot a gun at someone, or share an orgasm with someone. It should go without saying that the conditions and the twelve year old would have to be quite unusual, but I've got no absolute philosophical objections.

However we can't write and enforce laws that allow people to decide for themselves that a given twelve year old is ready for that stuff. It's simply not practical. In these cases all we can do is draw a bright line in the least worst place and enforce it. It sucks for the people on the wrong side of the line, the unusually mature youngsters and the unusually irresponsible adults, but it's the best we can do.

No. You simply claim that there's no evidence that an adult having consentual sex with a minor is harmful. Repeatedly and insistently, and dismissing first-hand accounts (even while insisting upon cites of studies, which are nothing more than collated sets of first-hand accounts) which suggest otherwise. Typically followed at some point by an innocent "I'm just pointing it out, not taking a position!" disclaimer that never fools anyone. This is demonstrated thoroughly and repeatedly in that second thread I linked. You even go as far as dismissing someone's personal account of abuse between the ages of 8 and 14 as useless because her having been molested at age 8 made her dislike of the sex she had at 14 somehow no longer count.

At the time there was no such evidence that any of us had been able to find, and not for want of trying. Since I proportion my belief to the available evidence I believed at that point there was no reasonable basis for thinking that sex in and of itself was harmful.

As you should know if you are posting here, anecdotes aren't evidence. The claim that epidemiological studies are "nothing more than collated sets of first-hand accounts" shows such an enormous lack of understanding about research methodology that all I can say is: you're just wrong. Peer-reviewed studies are evidence good skeptics take seriously, and individual anecdotes are not.

As for dismissing someone's personal account of abuse as a young person as useless, as I said at the time it was absolutely consistent with the evidence which existed then (and now) that distressing, long-term sexual abuse as a child is highly likely to screw you up. However it was indeed completely useless as a data point about whether non-distressing, voluntary sexual contact in the early teens caused any harm. Anecdotes, particularly irrelevant ones, don't magically turn into evidence just because the anecdotes involve serious crimes or horrible suffering.

You've said plainly that criminalizing sex with minors is unjustifiable when no harm (for values of "harm" you're willing to accept) is done.

Sure. Criminalising anything is unjustifiable to my mind if it does no harm to make it legal. Currently it looks like it would do harm to make it legal so I'm against making it legal. If more and better studies were published in the next few years that show the opposite I'd go back to being in favour of decriminalising it. That's because I proportion my beliefs to the available evidence.

What part of the above, if any, do you take issue with?

 

[varwoche]

No. You simply claim that there's no evidence that an adult having consentual sex with a minor is harmful. Repeatedly and insistently, and dismissing first-hand accounts (even while insisting upon cites of studies, which are nothing more than collated sets of first-hand accounts) which suggest otherwise.

Worse. He dismisses studies out of hand, using the same sort of evasive tactics on display here.

Kevin, I suggest you drop the semantic games and take responsibility for your words.

 

[gtc]

You don't know that the sex involved was non-consensual or distressing, because there is no corroboration for that claim. That allegation has not been proven in a court of law, nor does the medical evidence we've found corroborate it, nor do you have any special knowledge of the matter.

You're welcome to think it is likely that Polanski raped the alleged victim, but stating it as a fact is false and since you've been told that repeatedly I suspect by this point you are merely trolling.

We know it was distressing. We have her testimony, the testimony of the other witnesses and his settlement agreement. We know it was not safe sex for the same reasons. We know it wasn't consensual by dint of the fact that according to all the research cited and the law, informed consent is not possible for a 13 year old child. That is before we weigh his version against her testimony.
Why are so desperate to believe elsewise?

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

Worse. He dismisses studies out of hand, using the same sort of evasive tactics on display here.

Kevin, I suggest you drop the semantic games and take responsibility for your words.

You have ducked half of my challenge. You have linked to my posts but you have not stated what I was claiming in your own words and explained why it was objectionable. I suspect this is because you cannot do so.

You have also failed to apologise for your previous lies.

Overall, I would say that you continue your track record of embodying the kind of hateful, dishonest irrationality that this board, on its good days, stands directly opposed to.

We know it was distressing. We have her testimony, the testimony of the other witnesses and his settlement agreement.

Link please. I previously linked to Polanski's statement (which I think was submitted in 2007 or 2008) which claimed that the girl was not distressed at the time. I am unaware of any other relevant witnesses to the events that took place.

We know it was not safe sex for the same reasons.

If I state that this is true three times will you stop acting as if someone has said otherwise? Four? At what point do you actually acknowledge what I have written as opposed to engaging with straw men?

We know it wasn't consensual by dint of the fact that according to all the research cited and the law, informed consent is not possible for a 13 year old child.

The same goes for this half-truth. How many times do you need to be corrected? Just tell me the exact number and I'll cut and paste however many repetitions is required to make it sink in. The consent of a thirteen year old in California has legal weight - it's the difference between an unlawful sex charge and a rape charge. It's just not the difference between a rape charge and a legal liaison. If she consented she consented, and Polanski is legally up for unlawful sex. If she didn't consent Polanski is legally up for rape.

That is before we weigh his version against her testimony.
Why are so desperate to believe elsewise?

You're projecting your own desperation I think. I just don't think the available evidence rises to the standard of proof beyond reasonable doubt.

 

[Checkmite]

Firstly, as I've said twice already, the state of human knowledge has moved on since then. There's now tolerably solid evidence that sex does correlate with poorer life outcomes for young teens, even when you control for social status, family status and so on. It's not a hugely strong effect and the chain of causation is unclear to say the least, but it's there so on balance I now support efforts to discourage young teenagers from becoming sexually active and to discourage adults from having sex with them.

So in this case, 10 million fans just happened to be right. I'm glad you finally realize this; curious how, as staunchly as you insisted upon the opposite, your grand epiphany and the methodologically-approved study that provoked it never merited a retraction in any of those so hotly-contested threads, thus, your position reversal is a brand-new development.

Secondly since neither version of events mentions a condom, in my ideal world Polanski would still be punished (or punished more harshly than otherwise) for having unsafe sex with her, regardless of whether or not she actually caught anything and regardless of whether or where he climaxed.

That's great. I wasn't able to read your mind and had only what you actually wrote to judge your thoughts by.

Thirdly while I don't support laws that impose heavy sentences for consensual sex, because I don't think the evidence of harm justifies them, fifty or ninety days in the clink seems well within the realm of what is reasonable and that's what Polanski got.

No - it's what he would've got. In reality he only served forty days and then skipped the country before the rest was imposed. And I disagree that time served is enough for him, because he also fled justice - an act which itself is a crime and demands a sentence of its own.

Under sufficiently unusual circumstances I wouldn't have moral objections to letting a twelve year old have a drink, or drive a car, or shoot a gun at someone, or share an orgasm with someone. It should go without saying that the conditions and the twelve year old would have to be quite unusual, but I've got no absolute philosophical objections.

That's not what you said at the time. Your qualifiers weren't very exhaustive at all.

However we can't write and enforce laws that allow people to decide for themselves that a given twelve year old is ready for that stuff. It's simply not practical. In these cases all we can do is draw a bright line in the least worst place and enforce it. It sucks for the people on the wrong side of the line, the unusually mature youngsters and the unusually irresponsible adults, but it's the best we can do.

You never had a problem with the fact that the drawn line is arbitrary; you just took issue with which arbitrary line was the "right one".

At the time there was no such evidence that any of us had been able to find, and not for want of trying. Since I proportion my belief to the available evidence I believed at that point there was no reasonable basis for thinking that sex in and of itself was harmful.

Not for want of trying on whose part? Yours? I don't remember spending any time searching the web trying to supplicate your demands for evidence; I doubt many did.

As you should know if you are posting here, anecdotes aren't evidence. The claim that epidemiological studies are "nothing more than collated sets of first-hand accounts" shows such an enormous lack of understanding about research methodology that all I can say is: you're just wrong. Peer-reviewed studies are evidence good skeptics take seriously, and individual anecdotes are not.

Are you saying such studies are not collated sets of individual anecdotes?

As for dismissing someone's personal account of abuse as a young person as useless, as I said at the time it was absolutely consistent with the evidence which existed then (and now) that distressing, long-term sexual abuse as a child is highly likely to screw you up. However it was indeed completely useless as a data point about whether non-distressing, voluntary sexual contact in the early teens caused any harm. Anecdotes, particularly irrelevant ones, don't magically turn into evidence just because the anecdotes involve serious crimes or horrible suffering.

But your request was flawed. You wanted anecdotes from people who enjoyed sex in their early teens without any problems, so that you could prove people who enjoyed sex in their early teens without any problems...didn't have any problems. You wanted a sample base that supported an already-reached conclusion and essentially said "anyone whose account wouldn't support this conclusion need not reply". The fundamental problem is that there is no necessary difference between "distressing" and "non-distressing" sex outside of an individual's mind. There's no way to take "this kind of sex" and simply call it non-distressing by objective definition. And that's one of the reasons why the rest of us don't believe sex with a kid is okay in ANY circumstance. Because there's no way of telling until after it's done whether it was "distressing" for a particular child or not - and by then if it does happen to be distressing, it's too late - the damage is done. And there's individuals' lifelong mental development and health at stake, not merely the design of some product or the winning of some academic haggling contest.

Sure. Criminalising anything is unjustifiable to my mind if it does no harm to make it legal. Currently it looks like it would do harm to make it legal so I'm against making it legal. If more and better studies were published in the next few years that show the opposite I'd go back to being in favour of decriminalising it. That's because I proportion my beliefs to the available evidence.

What part of the above, if any, do you take issue with?

I've said what I've said. And I'm fairly certain - well, hopeful - that you no longer expect any kind of retraction.

You said you're tired of being treated the way you are by "people like" me. Well, I treat you the way I treat you based on your words that I've read - and nobody owns responsibility for those except you. And the fact is that there was a time when you wrote volumes in tacit defense of decriminalizing sex with minors. I'm glad if you've changed your mind on the matter but as far as I'm concerned that yet remains to be seen, so you'll just have to deal with my attitude until "the evidence" convinces me.

 

[Checkmite]

Link please. I previously linked to Polanski's statement (which I think was submitted in 2007 or 2008) which claimed that the girl was not distressed at the time. I am unaware of any other relevant witnesses to the events that took place.

There was Huston, who said that immediately after the sex the victim was "sullen".

But that still doesn't matter. Her testimony doesn't matter any more than Polanski's does, because the only person who is qualified to determine whether the victim was distressed is the victim. And she says she was.

 

[terrekain]

Well, I see that this thread has petered out.

But one last time back to the original purpose of this thread:

What do you guys think? Free Polanski or off with his head?

In a just world, he would be hauled off to an American prison. Criminals on this side of the Atlantic regard child-rapists as less than human. As a result, paedophiles have a short life-expectancy in American prisons.

Polanski won't last a week.

And his Hollywood supporters know it.

Anyone see the Hollywood documentary slant piece on him "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired"? Purportedly the judge and prosecutor were in collusion and reneged on the plea bargain they made with Polanski, therefore he fled.

What are your thoughts?

As I've already mentioned, the documentary is a proven fraud.

The facts are these:

The record shows that the only guarantees Polanski received was that Judge Rittenband would dismiss the charges except for statutory rape. There is nothing in the record that he would get off scott free after the evaluation.

In fact, the transcripts are CLEAR that he would be sentenced AFTER the judge heard the evaluation.

Even if the judge HAD made a NON-BINDING, NON-LEGAL promise to give Polanski time served, that "promise" has absolutely NO legal weight whatsoever.

There is no record.

There is no documentation.

And in such a case, the testimony of a single witness (who pleaded guilty to child rape) that such a deal existed is less than worthless.

And even if he was taken at his word and this went to court, the only likely result would be that Polanski and his cohorts would be further charged with perjury. Because the record all points in one direction: No such "deal" ever existed.

That's why Polanski has never DARED challenge Judge Rittenband's "misconduct" in an appeals court:

He'd lose.

Because it never happened.

It's also why Wells recanted.

As a lawyer, he knows full well that making the same false statements he made in the documentary is fraught with danger when translated to a court of law . And since Wells is no fool, he'll fess up now rather than go to prison later.

So Wells, the one witness on whom the entire premise of the documentary hinges, admits that the documentary is one big lie.

He has no choice because people will either discover the truth now, or - if he foolishly tries to tell his lies contrary to the evidence, they will find out later when Wells joins Polanki behind bars.

 

[terrekain]

Enjoy your meaningless rationalizations Polanski-fans.

In the end, you never had any control over events because you never understood the underlying, immutable facts behind the case.

Your bewilderment and confusion is - in a way - understandable, although it is simultaneously comical.

It really has been a good laugh.

Good night.

 

[Kevin_Lowe]

There was Huston, who said that immediately after the sex the victim was "sullen".

But that still doesn't matter. Her testimony doesn't matter any more than Polanski's does, because the only person who is qualified to determine whether the victim was distressed is the victim. And she says she was.

Yet again you are having trouble with the idea of proof beyond reasonable doubt. The fact that Huston thought she was "sullen" does not lead inescapably to the conclusion that she'd just been raped. Nor does uncorroborated testimony rise to the level of proof beyond reasonable doubt, especially since the forensic evidence supports Polanski's account better than hers.

So in this case, 10 million fans just happened to be right. I'm glad you finally realize this; curious how, as staunchly as you insisted upon the opposite, your grand epiphany and the methodologically-approved study that provoked it never merited a retraction in any of those so hotly-contested threads, thus, your position reversal is a brand-new development.

Even a stopped watch is right twice a day, as they say. It's a stupid argument though. Sex, like marijuana, red wine, coffee and television, is bad if the evidence says it's bad and not otherwise. If popular prejudice gets it right once in a while, in general direction if not in degree, that doesn't give us reason to suppose it's going to be right next time.

As for my "grand epiphany" it wasn't all that grand. I saw some reports of new research and looked over the abstracts, decided they looked pretty solid and addressed the major methodological complaints I had with previous efforts, and accepted their conclusions. That's what I do with research areas I'm mildly interested in. I might have posted something about it if I'd had the free time to obtain the full papers and sit down with them for an afternoon or two to develop a properly informed opinion about them, but I'm not dumb enough to start a thread like that without all my ducks in a row, and duck-row-making time has been short lately.

ETA: Check the dates on those posts - those threads have been dead a long time. At the time I found the newer studies there was no ongoing discussion and there had not been any for some time.

That's great. I wasn't able to read your mind and had only what you actually wrote to judge your thoughts by.

What I wrote here you mean?

No - it's what he would've got. In reality he only served forty days and then skipped the country before the rest was imposed. And I disagree that time served is enough for him, because he also fled justice - an act which itself is a crime and demands a sentence of its own.

I'm comfortable with Polanski serving the remaining 50 days or whatever he would have gotten at the time, plus whatever you get for skipping the country to avoid such a sentence.

That's not what you said at the time. Your qualifiers weren't very exhaustive at all.

My view was and is that the laws against sex with underage people are not there to prevent them having healthy, equitable, mutually enriching sexual relationships with older people. It's there to prevent them being exploited by sleazebags, and assumes that in almost all cases the adults seeking to boink underage people are exploitative sleazebags.

As i understood DD's statement, he was saying "Well I'm not an exploitative sleazebag, so if a willing, eager, implausibly physically mature twelve year old wanted to boink me, I don't see the harm".

At the time I wasn't aware of any hard evidence showing that such boinking led to harm, and was aware of reasonably solid evidence indicating it did no harm. (Given that real-world data is, I venture to assume, mostly going to reflect the effects of crappy relationships with sleazebags, I'm not sure even today we have any hard data about highly unlikely corner cases where adults who aren't nutjobs have fulfilling relationships with implausibly mature twelve year olds).

DD got completely dogpiled for his philosophical point, which I think most of the lynch mob failed to understand, and the malignant idiots I may have mentioned earlier have taken great glee in bringing up their "triumph" as often as possible since then. DD pretty much stopped posting after that, and I can't blame him. He trolled the boards for a while and then vanished entirely, and we lost a good poster. I don't consider it the JREF forum's finest hour.

You never had a problem with the fact that the drawn line is arbitrary; you just took issue with which arbitrary line was the "right one".

I accept drawing a bright line as an unpleasant necessity. I have a big problem with idiots who work themselves into a frothing rage when someone's toe crosses the line, and who are convinced (utterly without any evidence) that the bright line drawn in local law represents some divine moral truth, despite the fact that the line is drawn in all sorts of places all over the globe and evidence that any one line is better than another is very thin indeed.

Not for want of trying on whose part? Yours? I don't remember spending any time searching the web trying to supplicate your demands for evidence; I doubt many did.

There were plenty of posters back then who were doing then what you are doing now. Granted they didn't come up with much good evidence, but then again neither did I because I'm not sure it existed. I'll err on the side of charity and assume they looked.

Are you saying such studies are not collated sets of individual anecdotes?

I'm saying that if your sample size is one your p value is not even worth the time to calculate, and if you don't have p<0.1 at the very worst then you don't have evidence.

But your request was flawed. You wanted anecdotes from people who enjoyed sex in their early teens without any problems,

You were doing well for a minute there, you'd hardly misrepresented me at all for several whole paragraphs.

I wanted hard evidence, not anecdotes. Who said I ever called for anecdotes? Anecdotes are worthless. Only people too dumb to understand the difference between anecdotes and evidence like anecdotes.

so that you could prove people who enjoyed sex in their early teens without any problems...didn't have any problems. You wanted a sample base that supported an already-reached conclusion and essentially said "anyone whose account wouldn't support this conclusion need not reply". The fundamental problem is that there is no necessary difference between "distressing" and "non-distressing" sex outside of an individual's mind. There's no way to take "this kind of sex" and simply call it non-distressing by objective definition. And that's one of the reasons why the rest of us don't believe sex with a kid is okay in ANY circumstance. Because there's no way of telling until after it's done whether it was "distressing" for a particular child or not - and by then if it does happen to be distressing, it's too late - the damage is done. And there's individuals' lifelong mental development and health at stake, not merely the design of some product or the winning of some academic haggling contest.

What are you on about? Thirteen year olds are generally pretty good at telling whether or not something is fun or distressing and communicating their feelings about it. This particular point you are making makes no sense to me at all. I suspect you didn't actually read the evidence we were discussing in that thread that showed that children are much more resilient than you seem to think even when subjected to distressing, unwanted sexual abuse. Long-term abuse often screws people up for life but kids bounce back from individual sexual assaults, which is an excellent reason to have measures in place to detect childhood sexual abuse and step in fast when it's detected.

The idea that one bad sexual experience screws you up for life is not supported by the evidence. A childhood full of sexual abuse, definitely. One bad experience, no. It's the difference between growing up being constantly physically abused and being punched up once after school - getting punched up isn't pleasant and will cause short-term problems but it's not going to ruin your whole life.

I've said what I've said. And I'm fairly certain - well, hopeful - that you no longer expect any kind of retraction.

Well, no, if I'm being honest, I don't expect a retration. I gave you the benefit of the doubt but my opinion of you has sunk to the point where I don't expect that kind of honourable behaviour from you.

Still, if you lifted your game I'd be pleasantly surprised and accept your apology.

You said you're tired of being treated the way you are by "people like" me. Well, I treat you the way I treat you based on your words that I've read - and nobody owns responsibility for those except you. And the fact is that there was a time when you wrote volumes in tacit defense of decriminalizing sex with minors. I'm glad if you've changed your mind on the matter but as far as I'm concerned that yet remains to be seen, so you'll just have to deal with my attitude until "the evidence" convinces me.

As I think I've shown repeatedly, this is not true. You don't treat people based on what they actually post and the evidence for it. You take an inaccurate guess at what they said, another inaccurate guess at what they meant, and then you take it upon yourself to outright lie about them. If you're comfortable being that person, I can't stop you living your life that way.

 

[Belz...]

Don't be silly.

I promise I won't if you do the same. Statutory rape is a legal term that has "rape" in it.

I hope you now understand this distinction.

I do, but I don't see how this relates to what I said. What, exactly, is Polanski accused of doing that you feel isn't already shown to be true ?

 

[Belz...]

You don't know that the sex involved was non-consensual

Excuse me, but I don't think you've been following the thread very well. Minors are legally unable to give consent.

 

[applecorped]

Yet again you are having trouble with the idea of proof beyond reasonable doubt. The fact that Huston thought she was "sullen" does not lead inescapably to the conclusion that she'd just been raped. Nor does uncorroborated testimony rise to the level of proof beyond reasonable doubt, especially since the forensic evidence supports Polanski's account better than hers.



Even a stopped watch is right twice a day, as they say. It's a stupid argument though. Sex, like marijuana, red wine, coffee and television, is bad if the evidence says it's bad and not otherwise. If popular prejudice gets it right once in a while, in general direction if not in degree, that doesn't give us reason to suppose it's going to be right next time.

As for my "grand epiphany" it wasn't all that grand. I saw some reports of new research and looked over the abstracts, decided they looked pretty solid and addressed the major methodological complaints I had with previous efforts, and accepted their conclusions. That's what I do with research areas I'm mildly interested in. I might have posted something about it if I'd had the free time to obtain the full papers and sit down with them for an afternoon or two to develop a properly informed opinion about them, but I'm not dumb enough to start a thread like that without all my ducks in a row, and duck-row-making time has been short lately.

ETA: Check the dates on those posts - those threads have been dead a long time. At the time I found the newer studies there was no ongoing discussion and there had not been any for some time.



What I wrote here you mean?



I'm comfortable with Polanski serving the remaining 50 days or whatever he would have gotten at the time, plus whatever you get for skipping the country to avoid such a sentence.



My view was and is that the laws against sex with underage people are not there to prevent them having healthy, equitable, mutually enriching sexual relationships with older people. It's there to prevent them being exploited by sleazebags, and assumes that in almost all cases the adults seeking to boink underage people are exploitative sleazebags.

As i understood DD's statement, he was saying "Well I'm not an exploitative sleazebag, so if a willing, eager, implausibly physically mature twelve year old wanted to boink me, I don't see the harm".

At the time I wasn't aware of any hard evidence showing that such boinking led to harm, and was aware of reasonably solid evidence indicating it did no harm. (Given that real-world data is, I venture to assume, mostly going to reflect the effects of crappy relationships with sleazebags, I'm not sure even today we have any hard data about highly unlikely corner cases where adults who aren't nutjobs have fulfilling relationships with implausibly mature twelve year olds).

DD got completely dogpiled for his philosophical point, which I think most of the lynch mob failed to understand, and the malignant idiots I may have mentioned earlier have taken great glee in bringing up their "triumph" as often as possible since then. DD pretty much stopped posting after that, and I can't blame him. He trolled the boards for a while and then vanished entirely, and we lost a good poster. I don't consider it the JREF forum's finest hour.



I accept drawing a bright line as an unpleasant necessity. I have a big problem with idiots who work themselves into a frothing rage when someone's toe crosses the line, and who are convinced (utterly without any evidence) that the bright line drawn in local law represents some divine moral truth, despite the fact that the line is drawn in all sorts of places all over the globe and evidence that any one line is better than another is very thin indeed.



There were plenty of posters back then who were doing then what you are doing now. Granted they didn't come up with much good evidence, but then again neither did I because I'm not sure it existed. I'll err on the side of charity and assume they looked.



I'm saying that if your sample size is one your p value is not even worth the time to calculate, and if you don't have p<0.1 at the very worst then you don't have evidence.



You were doing well for a minute there, you'd hardly misrepresented me at all for several whole paragraphs.

I wanted hard evidence, not anecdotes. Who said I ever called for anecdotes? Anecdotes are worthless. Only people too dumb to understand the difference between anecdotes and evidence like anecdotes.



What are you on about? Thirteen year olds are generally pretty good at telling whether or not something is fun or distressing and communicating their feelings about it. This particular point you are making makes no sense to me at all. I suspect you didn't actually read the evidence we were discussing in that thread that showed that children are much more resilient than you seem to think even when subjected to distressing, unwanted sexual abuse. Long-term abuse often screws people up for life but kids bounce back from individual sexual assaults, which is an excellent reason to have measures in place to detect childhood sexual abuse and step in fast when it's detected.

The idea that one bad sexual experience screws you up for life is not supported by the evidence. A childhood full of sexual abuse, definitely. One bad experience, no. It's the difference between growing up being constantly physically abused and being punched up once after school - getting punched up isn't pleasant and will cause short-term problems but it's not going to ruin your whole life.



Well, no, if I'm being honest, I don't expect a retration. I gave you the benefit of the doubt but my opinion of you has sunk to the point where I don't expect that kind of honourable behaviour from you.

Still, if you lifted your game I'd be pleasantly surprised and accept your apology.



As I think I've shown repeatedly, this is not true. You don't treat people based on what they actually post and the evidence for it. You take an inaccurate guess at what they said, another inaccurate guess at what they meant, and then you take it upon yourself to outright lie about them. If you're comfortable being that person, I can't stop you living your life that way.