Hey, I was just about to bring that book up! Susan Clancy got a lot of flak for her book, people claiming she was excusing/justifying CSA (despite the fact that she still makes it clear that exploiting a sexual situation involving a minor is ultimately still wrong). Clancy simply argues that those in @TheMaddestHatter 's situation didn’t start classifying their experience as harmful until after being gaslit into believing as such. That it’s ultimately the culture and hysteria surrounding CSA that causes trauma in situations like @Mitchx 's, not the experience itself. I feel like I’ve seen a group (was it here on Prostasia/MSC or was it VirPed? Can’t quite remember…) claim this argument as invalid and give Clancy flak…
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I found a thread about it here
https://forum.prostasia.org/t/contoversial-book-the-trauma-myth/1480?u=elliot
There’s more if you search
https://forum.prostasia.org/search?q=trauma%20myth
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I wouldn’t usually make a comment like this, but honestly, this should be said.
This situation was handled poorly, especially from @Chie and @EthanEdwards.
Instead of listening and supporting a victim of abuse, you guys preferred preaching ideals, which negatively affected this person.
And now, this person is most likely gone, all because you just couldn’t resist doing some preaching.
@elliot is right. Forcing someone to view something like this as “abuse” doesn’t help. In fact, it might just make things worse, as we’ve seen in this situation.
It doesn’t matter what you think, you need to listen to what a victim of abuse wants to say and support them.
If I were you, I would be ashamed of myself.
Think twice next time about what you’re doing in a situation like this.
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Well, this turned into a shitshow, yeesh…
I dunno if this is my guilt complex talking, and I know I only made one other comment in this thread, but if anything I said hurt anybody, I am so, so sorry.
Regardless, I gotta say that this was handled very poorly. I’m real sorry @Mitchx that things got outta hand. Listen, both you and @TheMaddestHatter are 100% valid in how you feel towards your previous sexual encounters with adults, just as @Chie is 100% valid in how he feels about this subject. If Prostasia ever wants to meet their goal of a better world free of abuse and harm, then we must be empathetic! We must see things from another POV, we must understand each other.
Forgive me if I read the situation incorrectly, but I think @Chie was saying what happened to you was “abuse” in the sense that an adult accepted your advances. I’m glad and grateful that your experiences helped you and have molded you into a better person; never lose sight of the positives. But, at the end of the day, your case is rather unique. You were mature enough to understand what you were getting into, but most children are not. Statistics prove this. And any responsible adult would reject your advances for fear of hurting you. He did not “abuse” you, per se (as in hit you or violently rape you). But he was being reckless and irresponsible and should be condemned for it. Do most mistake my condemnation as bloodlust; I don’t want to condemn your friend, I don’t want to condemn ANYBODY. But, his behavior cannot be defended. If we do, others shall seize his example as evidence that child-adult sexual contact is without risk. Despite your making it clear that you still don’t recommend child-adult sex, others will ignore you and extrapolate your experience to falsely claim that “ALL child-adult sex contact is good for them!” They will use you to gaslight others into accepting their “love”, that there’s something wrong with their victims:
“C’mon kid, @TheMaddestHatter loved it! If YOU ain’t lovin’ it, then you’re the problem! Now get over here or so help me God I’ll…”
I think @Chie just wants to be cautious about predators using you to gaslight others. But I don’t wanna put words in his mouth. I just hope we can come to an understanding. Nobody has to agree on everything, but they should at least try to understand each other.
I’m deeply sorry, truly apologetic if my words here cause harm or upset anybody. It is not my intent, but tensions are high right now, so I fully understand. If I said anything that would get me banned or anything, I accept that. Prostasia helped me after my suicide attempt (August 2021, almost shot myself in the head…), but if banning me is the most correct option, then I won’t fight it. I’ll probably still lurk about if you ban me, tho…
Regardless, I wish everybody here safe, free, joyful lives. Including your friend, @TheMaddestHatter. I personally don’t approve of what he did, but the best part about that is you don’t have to give a hoot what I think! So I wish you and your loved ones safety, freedom, and joy. Again, my deepest apologies for how hostile things got.
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I don’t think there’s a need to ban anyone (saying this as a mod). Tensions got heated and it’s possible staff will go through later and do some cleanup to help keep the conversation more focused and constructive moving forward, but we generally only ban for malicious behavior and advocacy that opposes Prostasia’s mission of child protection.
A human rights focus is central to Prostasia’s advocacy, so we try to promote free speech to the extent we can while preserving this forum’s value. There are also many moderation options available to us, and a permanent ban is probably the least-used one when dealing with legitimate members acting in good faith, which I believe describes everyone involved in this thread.
I know some people are feeling upset about things that were said, and that’s understandable. If you feel the need to step back from the forum for some time, we hope to see you back soon. If you have further thoughts and a constructive way to discuss them here, you’re welcome to keep the conversation going. I’m also open to receiving DMs if you have thoughts that you would like to share privately (whether that’s because you’re not comfortable with a certain member seeing them or you just need to express your feelings without risking another debate).
I’ve raised some suggestions to forum admins about options for providing survivors with a more private way to seek support from others without risking off-topic conversations going forward, and a staff member will share more details about that if we decide to make any member-facing changes as a result.
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I think I’ll just link this article:
https://prostasia.org/blog/non-carceral-approach-csam/
EDIT: Since you bothered editing your post, I’ll add something to mine.
If you’re on another forum, one that you feel comfortable with, why come here at all in the first place?
I noticed on your profile that you state that you’re a member of VirPed and MSC. Are either of those the “forum” that you’re talking about or is it something else?
Whatever the case, I agree that the situation in this thread could’ve been handled better. I criticized the handling of the situation by some people in my first post on the thread, but I said everything that I wanted to say. There’s nothing else that needed to be added.
The situation is over. We have to accept that these things happened and it’s time to move on.
Nobody is perfect. People make mistakes, it happens. But, they can learn from them.
You’re entitled to your own opinions and beliefs, but don’t expect people to agree with you on those here.
All Freyr said was “CSAM is illegal and there’s a good reason why”. Why is it a problem that Freyr is respected on the forum? Or, anyone else here for that matter? I don’t see how anyone could be getting any clout here. This isn’t Reddit.
Also, why call out Freyr at all? Was it because of the post responding to you?
You got offended by a post made by someone who didn’t even have anything to do with this situation. You had multiple options. You could’ve ignored them, for instance, but this is how you chose to respond.
Think about that for a bit.
Thanks, Eliot. I appreciate the thoughtful words. If your friend wants to contact me, I’m at redacted
Mitch
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I don’t want to get too involved in this argument either lol, but I did think the wording was a little harsh too.
However, I think I understand why @anon25021728 got upset and they do kinda have a point. Zurc literally told us their story of abuse and how they were blackmailed into doing things they didn’t want to do which (to me) feels like quite a brave thing to share because it must be very difficult to tell people something so personal about yourself, especially on a public forum. I can imagine it can make you feel quite vulnerable being in this sort of position but their whole story seemed to be disregarded completely by @freyr’s comment (Not saying this was their intention) but if I try to look at it from Zurc’s perspective it does feel unsupportive if people zero in on the one thing they disagree with and don’t mention the rest of the post at all.
I think at the very least we should acknowledge a survivors story before we make a comment like that in the future but thats just my opinion. I hope no one gets offended by this either because that is definitely not my intention 
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[quote=“elliot, post:2, topic:3131, full:true”]
I’m sorry you’ve been made to feel like you’re somehow in the wrong for how you were affected by that experience. A child who is introduced to sex in that manner is at a very high risk of being harmed [/quote]
For those who feel like they were not harmed by an early sexual experience, it is surely a positive step to tell them their experience is valid. But it is also less than validating to feel they are extremely rare. Are they extremely rare? “Very high risk of being harmed” is not quantitative, but it certainly leaves open the interpretation that they are so rare as to be, well, freaks. Speaking as co-founder of Virtuous Pedophiles, we have said from the start not that adult-child sex is always harmful, but that it always carries a serious risk of harm that can never be ruled out in advance, but we have never tried to assign a number to it. Do people have data on the risk of harm? The latest studies I am aware of are the Rind et al meta-analyses, starting in 1998. Although there is a lot of controversy over various aspects and their interpretation, I don’t think anyone has credibly challenged a sort of minimum like “At least 25% of CSA victims feel they were not harmed”. Is there evidence challenging a minimum like that? If those who believe they were not harmed can feel like they are in a group that is at least 25%, then they can shake off any potential fear of being so rare as to be freaks.
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I’m begging to know why you’d ask that in a child protection forum with victim/survivors present, however you view it, OP.
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Hi @EthanEdwards! 
Yes, I also wonder how often this occurs too especially after this conversation lol 
Like I think if this situation happened to occur to a child or someone you know or even yourself perhaps then I feel like most people would be a bit more relieved knowing that the consequences aren’t always life ruining even if they were in a potentially dangerous situation.
That doesn’t mean that those kind of relationships are acceptable but it seems like there might be a lot more people than we think who have had positive experiences but perhaps many of those kids (who are now adults) feel silenced by people & support groups and don’t want to say their experiences because people take it out of context to make it sound like an endorsement of those kinds of relationships or try make them look like an abuser themselves sadly 
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I certainly don’t view abnormality as a bad thing, and I’d hope that most people in the forum for a non-profit that actively works to protect minority groups wouldn’t either. The abnormality has relevance to what the law should say about such contact, it shouldn’t affect how survivors feel about their experiences.
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It’s not one of those things that they’ve been able to quantify with things like double-blind studies, considering the nature of it all, but it’s estimated that roughly less than 10% of individuals who’ve had such experiences walked away from them without such harm, a number mostly quantified by clinical findings.
This isn’t to say that those who’ve had such experiences aren’t valid, it just means that they’re not representative of the overall figure, and, if it weren’t, the severity by which a child or teen suffers harm from the experience warrants prohibition.
Referring to adult-child contact as ‘abuse’, though, is not something that we should be willing to bargain on. It IS abuse, but how people respond to that determination is something we need to figure out how to deal with going forward.
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I would love to see references to the scientific papers. We’ve had a couple people here express their passionate conviction that what happened to them was a good thing, but there is presumably a bigger class of people who just never go to a clinician about it at all because they don’t experience a problem, so it’s hard to see how clinical studies could count them properly. Community samples of the kind that Rind et al used in meta-analysis have a good chance of counting them.
I absolutely agree that whether the unharmed are 1% or 25% or even 75%, this question in no way justifies any abuse, because the consequences are often extremely serious. Your chances of being unharmed even in Russian Roulette are 5 in 6, but no one is ever going to say it’s an OK game to play just because the chances of harm are low.
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Abuse is a very challenging thing to study and measure, whether it’s domestic abuse or sexual abuse. We’re dealing with experiences that are very personal and emotionally taxing on both subjects and researchers alike to deal with, to relegate such experiences to a numbers game. I know it’s not a very scientific thing to say, but the evidence is there. Ask any clinician who specializes in treating victims of CSA or any group of such specialists and they’ll tell you that no one attempts to minimize what had happened to them, at least, not on a massive enough scale to warrant consideration.
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This thread was a tough read, as I am one of that percentage that never has and never will consider the sexual activities that I personally was involved in as a child, to be abuse. Illegal, yes. Immoral, maybe. However, I was not abused.
I refuse to go into details or argue about it.
Having met as many MAPs as I have over the years (mostly in role play communities), I know there are many others who feel the same way about their experiences and still do not act upon their attractions to children.
I happen to know TMH from another forum, he is a good person, and I am saddened by all that has transpired in this thread.
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I’m sorry, @Stargazer and to all the others in this thread, including the OP.
It’s great that you do not perceive them as abuse, but that’s largely irrelevant to the grounding rationale that justifies the designation of adult-child sexual/romantic conduct as a minimum criteria.
A child or young teenager whose brain has not reached the stage of maturity where their ability to engage with and the extent to which they are able to understand, let alone have these feelings is inherently limited in relation to that of someone who is significantly older and more experienced.
You may not agree with the fact that you were abused, but that feeling does not negate the designation of exactly what these acts are, nor does it discount the worth of value of your own feelings regarding the matter. You do not have to feel bad about them if you sincerely do not, in fact, that’s ultimately a good thing, but what matters is the designation itself and how it relates to other people.
I am locking down this thread.
We will be creating a new section on the forum for those whose experiences are more nuanced, that way discussion can be had with more privacy and without the risk of upsetting those whose views do not align with one another.
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