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You make an excellent point. I also want to mention that while it's awful that there are victims of pedophilia, there are hundreds of thousands of times more vi

You make an excellent point. I also want to mention that while it's awful that there are victims of pedophilia, there are hundreds of thousands of times more victims of spanking, which is child abuse just the same, but not a peep about it ever do I hear. So this pedophilia scare is blown out of proportion just so that abusive parents can think "hey at least I'm not abusing my kids". Like people say "I was spanked and turned out fine!". I'm sure between the mindset change from "f%ck anyone" to "only f%ck 18+" there were lots of people saying "I was abused when I was 14 and I turned out fine!". In other words, forget the 10 pedophiles in your area and focus on the 90% of families in your area that treat kids worse than animals. Most families are violently abusing children (making the criminals of tomorrow) and we need to deal with this now. It's easy to be against pedophilia but we must be against all child abuse.

tedks 12y ago
It's pathetic that this is downvoted. Child sex abuse is certainly underreported, but I would have a hard time believing that incidence is over half, whereas about half of parents spank their children. Corporal punishment is known to be counterproductive and harmful to basically the same extent child sexual abuse is known to be harmful to children. If you want to deny the hard science about the negative effects of corporal punishment, you might as well deny the hard science about the negative effects of child sexual abuse as well. In 23 out of 50 states it's legal to spank children in schools. Cursory Google results show surveys and polls where 67% of parents approve of corporal punishment and half of parents spank their children regularly. Calling corporal punishment abuse isn't a misstatement. It isn't hyperbole. If you think you were spanked and "turned out fine," I'm sorry, but the science says otherwise. You don't know how you would have turned out if your parents hadn't hit you, and that's the simple fact of the matter, but the science says you'd be ~10 IQ points smarter and probably a hell of a lot more adjusted. But witch hunts are always easier and more popular than fixing systemic problems.
- JoeAltmaier 12y ago
  10 IQ points is hardly significant. Not as significant as other problems that can be cured - inoculation, diet, safe water etc. A first-world problem to be sure.
- sandworm 12y ago
  "Cursory Google results show surveys and polls where 67% of parents approve of corporal punishment and half of parents spank their children regularly." Polls of parents as people with children, or people who have had children? Most every person I know with kids today is against such punishment. But their parents, those whose "kids" are now in their forties, have radically different views. And there are far more old people who have had kids than parents whose kids are currently under 18. Imho this issue is the quintessential generational device. That 67% will drop as the old people die off along with their antiquated notions of violence upon children.
  - tedks 12y ago
    Do you know anyone who votes republican and goes to church every Sunday? Because that's a plurality and sometimes majority of the United States and I'd bet they're substantially different than the people you know.
- logfromblammo 12y ago
  Correlation is not causation. We don't know for certain whether the kids who are not beaten are smarter because they were raised in a violence-free environment, or whether they are smarter because their parents are smart enough to resolve their problems without resorting to violence. So I would not say that refraining from hitting your kids will make them 10 IQ points smarter than they otherwise would have been if you had beaten them. But the fact that you are even considering it at all probably means you are already smarter than most other parents. That's a bit scary, when you think about it. Spending even a single moment thinking about how you could be a better parent already makes you a better parent than some parents. And that is the reason why child abuse is a problem. That leads into a philosophical question. How willing would you be to allow a possible pedophile to stop parents from hitting their kids? How willing are you to possibly lend a pedophile encrypted space on your hard drive to maybe stop a government from performing suspicionless dragnet surveillance on hundreds of millions of innocent people? What if that surveillance included inspecting all the sexting messages that teenagers send to each other over Snapchat? How badly does the government have to act before we finally decide to rank Pedobear lower than Big Brother on our enemies lists?
api 12y ago
This shouldn't be down voted. It's a good point even though it's a tangent. There is abundant evidence that physical abuse is as harmful as sexual abuse. Why is it okay to hit your child, but you go to jail for hitting an adult?

tedks 12y ago

It's pathetic that this is downvoted. Child sex abuse is certainly underreported, but I would have a hard time believing that incidence is over half, whereas about half of parents spank their children. Corporal punishment is known to be counterproductive and harmful to basically the same extent child sexual abuse is known to be harmful to children. If you want to deny the hard science about the negative effects of corporal punishment, you might as well deny the hard science about the negative effects of child sexual abuse as well. In 23 out of 50 states it's legal to spank children in schools. Cursory Google results show surveys and polls where 67% of parents approve of corporal punishment and half of parents spank their children regularly. Calling corporal punishment abuse isn't a misstatement. It isn't hyperbole. If you think you were spanked and "turned out fine," I'm sorry, but the science says otherwise. You don't know how you would have turned out if your parents hadn't hit you, and that's the simple fact of the matter, but the science says you'd be ~10 IQ points smarter and probably a hell of a lot more adjusted. But witch hunts are always easier and more popular than fixing systemic problems.

JoeAltmaier 12y ago
10 IQ points is hardly significant. Not as significant as other problems that can be cured - inoculation, diet, safe water etc. A first-world problem to be sure.
sandworm 12y ago
"Cursory Google results show surveys and polls where 67% of parents approve of corporal punishment and half of parents spank their children regularly." Polls of parents as people with children, or people who have had children? Most every person I know with kids today is against such punishment. But their parents, those whose "kids" are now in their forties, have radically different views. And there are far more old people who have had kids than parents whose kids are currently under 18. Imho this issue is the quintessential generational device. That 67% will drop as the old people die off along with their antiquated notions of violence upon children.
- tedks 12y ago
  Do you know anyone who votes republican and goes to church every Sunday? Because that's a plurality and sometimes majority of the United States and I'd bet they're substantially different than the people you know.
logfromblammo 12y ago
Correlation is not causation. We don't know for certain whether the kids who are not beaten are smarter because they were raised in a violence-free environment, or whether they are smarter because their parents are smart enough to resolve their problems without resorting to violence. So I would not say that refraining from hitting your kids will make them 10 IQ points smarter than they otherwise would have been if you had beaten them. But the fact that you are even considering it at all probably means you are already smarter than most other parents. That's a bit scary, when you think about it. Spending even a single moment thinking about how you could be a better parent already makes you a better parent than some parents. And that is the reason why child abuse is a problem. That leads into a philosophical question. How willing would you be to allow a possible pedophile to stop parents from hitting their kids? How willing are you to possibly lend a pedophile encrypted space on your hard drive to maybe stop a government from performing suspicionless dragnet surveillance on hundreds of millions of innocent people? What if that surveillance included inspecting all the sexting messages that teenagers send to each other over Snapchat? How badly does the government have to act before we finally decide to rank Pedobear lower than Big Brother on our enemies lists?

api 12y ago

This shouldn't be down voted. It's a good point even though it's a tangent. There is abundant evidence that physical abuse is as harmful as sexual abuse. Why is it okay to hit your child, but you go to jail for hitting an adult?