In a debate concerning zoophilia…

This is a long post, and if you’re still interested, here are the contents:

An introduction…

I’ve recently had a rather interesting (and rather annoying) debate in a forum on one of Sweden’s larger newsletters, in the comment section of an article about a woman who have been collecting signatures from the locals in order to make “tidelag” illegal. Tidelag is the Swedish word for the act of a human having sex with animals. It wouldn’t be quite correct in translating it to “bestiality” for some reasons, mainly that if you have some insight in the matter you’d know that there are two poles of the whole animal-sex-loving spectrum – zoophiles, who claim they love animals, and bestialists who the zoophiles claim only see animals as sex objects, not really caring whether the animal wants or likes the sex or not.

Tidelag does not mean “sexual abuse of an animal”, something that the opposition usually try to claim. Just like gaming doesn’t mean “accumulating fat and ruining your physical fitness” or just like driving a car doesn’t mean “deliberately polluting the environment and killing the rainforests”. Tidelag means “sex between human and animal” and nothing more. Even though many are pursuaded by this sort of intentional fallacy, it must be pointed out that it is indeed a fallacy and as such has no weight in a serious debate.

Yep, it’s one helluva infected subject and as with many other things in today’s society, you shouldn’t think or reflect on things like this for some reason. Questioning some morals and stereotypes makes you evil, it seems. But, I don’t care, and if a subject is labeled “Don’t Reflect Upon This Yourself!” then of course I’ll have to do just that.

Though my views can’t be other than (until I’m somehow convinced otherwise), my own sexual preference is not on debate here. Defending a minority doesn’t automatically make you part of the same minority.

In Sweden, sex with animals isn’t illegal. However, cruelty to animals is illegal. In this debate, I’m questioning the reason behind wanting to make tidelag illegal, because if – as my opposition claims – tidelag is cruelty to animals, then the law is redundant since we already have a law against cruelty to animals.

I’m taking a defensive stance towards the zoophiles (link contents subject to change) who love animals and would go great lengths to ensure that their “partners” don’t get hurt, but instead enjoy their time. As I’ve gotten explained to me; a true zoophile loves, meaning that if the animal doesn’t like sexual contact or may get harmed by it, then that zoophile will respect that. Just as one of us wouldn’t rape our lover if he/she stated that she didn’t want to have sex. From all I’ve seen in the years, I know for a fact that animals may even like having sex with humans. And, they may very well not. The important thing to understand is that it’s not a black and white subject. While some people are totally disrespectful to others, some are the absolute opposite, as with all groups of the human species.

[ Added ] An interesting thing about sexual minorities or subjects like these are that the ones who should have the best knowledge are never asked; in this case the animals and the zoophiles, nor in many cases veterinarians. As soon as you have been witness to, or experienced, animal sex and thus can claim you know what you’re talking about, then you’re excluded from the ones allowed to speak. In media (and sadly in the ruling circles of a society), those whom the subject refers to are seldom those who get to speak to give their side of the story. That’s not democracy, that’s censorship and on the border to dictatorship. It’s, in every case, not fair. If you are really sure that you are right, then you shouldn’t be afraid that someone else got to question you.

Keep in mind that you’re free to comment on this blog. Keep to the subject though, and no flaming or trolling or any sort of attacks on my or anyone else’s person. I believe in democracy, not in censorship. But I also believe in valid arguments; arguments that are not based solely on opinion.

The primary fallacy

After a long while of debating, she usually claiming that tidelag is always cruelty to animals, and me claiming that it doesn’t have to be cruelty and if it was, it would already be illegal, I asked a simple and non-retorical question for her. Twice… since she couldn’t give a straight answer the first time. It was in Swedish, so the direct translation might make it look weird.

Do you think our justice department would have more cases to take care of if tidelag were made illegal?

It’s a very simple and very relevant question. But, as I mentioned, she couldn’t give me a straight answer for it but dogded it completely. I then asked again, pointing out that it wasn’t retorical (as she seemed to want me to think that she thought it was). A whole day went by and I finally got her answer, of which I wasn’t surprised at all. Let’s look at the possible answers for this question…

Yes! - Of course, those who burn for making tidelag illegal claim – no they know that tidelag is cruelty to animals! The natural answer for them would be “Yes”, since now they can catch all those who do this evil thing. Right? Well, the more absolute they can shout this “Yes”, the more they shoot themselves in the foot. Cruelty to animals is already illegal in Sweden. If they stand by their belief that they still would get more cases, then they automatically admit that tidelag doesn’t always have to be cruelty to animals since that’s already illegal.

No. - Well, simply put, then it’s a reduntant law.

Maybe… - Uhm, well, if you really want to make a change to the law – the force that ultimately controls our society – then you have to be damn sure, and not try to slither yourself out of it.

What did she answer, you ask? She said yes, of course, in capital letters…

Animals can’t speak?

Well, the debate went on forever, covering subjects like “animals can’t say no”… well, yes they can. Animals are masters in showing when they don’t like something, or if they indeed like something. If you have an animal and can’t understand that simple communication, then I wonder why you have an animal in the first place. “But they can be trained!” well yes, but does trained automatically mean that they suffer? We train animals all the time to do things for us, to pull or lift heavy objects, to be sent after violent criminals and apparent danger, is that cruelty to animals? No, that’s apparently somehow justified. Do you want to give your faithful dog a handjob, to relieve some sexual tension that you know he’d appreciate? No, that’s not justified, that’s cruelty!

Try it yourself! To clearly illustrate that animals can say No with a capital “n”, try gently grabbing and holding the tail of a cat (preferably a non-castrated cat or female cat) for a couple of seconds. Still saying that animals can’t say “No”, or that they can’t defend themselves if they wanted?

And of course, opposite of what some have tried to claim, animals can also say “Yes” – they have definately a will of their own, as opposed to just acting on instict like robots. Meaning they can actively show what they want, and strive to do so. An example is when I was with a friend who just got a new cat. I had the balcony door open as to get some fresh air into the room, and the cat tried to walk out on the balcony to explore. I wasn’t really comfortable with that because of the risk of him falling down (or simply jumping away) so I turned him around before he got the the door and pushed him into the room. About 10-15 times or so, until he realized that it wasn’t going to happen. So, instead of going straight for the door, he made the effort to go around the whole room, behind as many things he could find as to avoid being seen by me, until he got to the door. That’s not just “acceptance” or “instict“, that’s wanting to get to the door. So of course, an animal can both say “yes” and they can say “no”, and they can work hard to enforce either one of those answers.

[ Added ] But say you still believe that this isn’t enough proof that animals can express their wishes; you may claim that even though animals have a clear body language, you can never be sure what they really want. That is true; but you can easily say the same about humans. What someone says doesn’t necessarily have to mean what they want, we humans can even sign contracts “proving” that we want something, when we in fact might not want to sign it. So, using the “you can never be sure even though someone clearly says yes/no”-reasoning, we should ban all interaction with others, humans and animals alike, due to the fact that we can never be sure.

But of course, the stereotypical difference between bestialism and zoophilia is that the first simply doesn’t care about what animals say. When you don’t care, you can hurt someone both physical and mentally, and that’s cruelty to animals – but that is something that is already illegal.

The pedophilia comparison

Something that I found totally irrelevant was my opponent’s comparisons with a child and the animal getting “sexually abused” (her words, not mine) – that the two are the same and must therefore suffer the same. They can never be the same, and here are some of the reasons:

1. A child is weak, and cannot defend itself. An animal can usually defend itself pretty well.

2. A child isn’t a sexual being yet. An animal is a sexual being (if it’s adult, ofc).

3. A child is small, and may very easily get physically injured. An animal is adult and can cope with sexual activities.

4. A child is a human, and destined to grow up in a society where pedophilia is demonic and the victims for pedophiles are Victims with a capital V. If the child didn’t mentally and/or physically hurt at the time of the incident itself, the risk is almost infinite that the child will suffer from it as it grows up and learns how much of a victim it really was (I’ve mentioned the victimization by society in this post, when talking about my own sex debut).
An animal doesn’t learn things like these, they simply don’t share the same values as us humans and never needs to live in a society where things like these get taught or even makes a difference. They don’t learn the obligatory human response that nakedness or sex is shameful, they never get told that they’re “victims” of anything, they decide all that for themselves. They (usually) don’t need to be told what’s right and wrong, because it makes no difference for them, only for us. Do I like this? Yes, then it’s good. Do I dislike this? Yes, so I’ll try to avoid it. And in some cases… Does my alpha/leader like me doing this? No, then I should try to avoid it. Yes, then it’s good, because then I prove I’m needed.

Of course there are other cases where (1) the animal may rendered defenseless and unable to say No and (2) the animal may be a cub it’s not yet a sexual being and (3) the animal may be small and get hurt – in which case it’s a clear case of cruelty to animals, which is already illegal. However, if the animal is in fact adult and big enough, it may like the sexual contact, to get relieved of sexual tension when pets and similar usually cannot. Point 4 is what truly separates humans from animals, and makes it impossible to really compare pedophilia to zoophilia.

The common double-standard

Another thing in the debate that I found interesting was that when I asked one of my most active opponents if she thought that mass breeding animals for slaughter was cruelty to animals (since death is, and I think most would agree, the ultimate abuse) and she answered that there was nothing wrong with killing animals, with the argument that we “need” meat. That is a lie; humans don’t need meat, we can get all we need from plants, just ask a vegetarian or a vegan. This sort of double standards is rather common. You may mass breed for the only purpose of killing them, but don’t you dare give them sexual pleasure!

Many who are against tidelag actually get surprised and puzzled when they are told that this way of thinking is double standards and that it doesn’t make sense (some even try to claim that the point is irrelevant). Well, of course it surprises them – they have never thought about it! Most haven’t thought about the subject much at all, as I’ve mentioned before, because some things aren’t meant for you to think about in our society. You must not think or reflect upon the subject yourself, but you’re supposed to express these intensely burning opinions as if they were your own (and you get applauded for it). Let’s take these double standards and make an easy to understand example out of it:

Human: Hi there. Hm, what shall we do…
I was thinking about sex, how does that sound?
Hm? Oh, darn I just remembered,
I can’t have sex with you, I’m sorry.
Heh, yeah, I’m sorry for proposing something as absurd as that!
How about I just kill you instead?
*sound of bolt forcing its’ way into someone’s brain*

… or even more simplified [ Added ] …

Someone: Can I put my penis in this animal’s vagina? (Or vice versa)
Double-standard: No, that would be animal abuse. How could you even think such a thing, you sick bastard, you should be put to jail and had your privates removed with a rusty knife.
Someone: Ok, but can I put this steel bolt through its’ skull/knife through its’ throat/high voltage electricity through its’ body toasting his/her brain while he/she slowly dies?
Double-standard: Yes of course! Everybody knows that we need meat (just ask a vegetarian)!

…[ Added 6/3-08 ]

Someone: Can I relieve this animal’s (and perhaps my own) sexual needs?
Double-standard: No, that’s animal abuse! Cut off its’ genitalia instead!

The “not natural” argument

Another argument (used fairly often in this discussion) is that tidelag/zoophilia is wrong, because it’s not natural for the animal. That it puts the animal in a situation that isn’t natural for it, and hence it’s very important that we protect them from this unnatural injustice.

…so, is it natural for an animal to wear a leash?
…is it natural for an animal to be confined into appartments, or into small fields with electrical fences, or into cages making it impossible for them to move anything but their head – completely stealing away their freedom?
…is it natural for an animal to be taught that its’ alpha leader is a human, and not someone of its’ own kind?
…is it natural for an animal to eat its’ food out of a bowl each day and never get to hunt; something that’s imprinted in their very genes?
…is it natural for an animal to get trained to do tricks?
…is it natural for an animal to get strapped up to pull literal tons of cargo through difficult terrain?
…is it natural for an animal to have its’ sex drive repressed, leading most pets to never get to experience sexual pleasure even once their entire lives?
…is it natural for an animal to get its’ genitals cut or hormones controlled, just because we aren’t sometimes comfortable with letting them have their natural sex drive?

Answer – no, it’s far from “natural”. So shouldn’t all these things be banned too? No, because apparently, these things are totally fine compared to having sex.

Animals don’t have sex for pleasure

You hear this quite often. Ok, I have a hard time figuring out how someone have come to this conclusion, but I guess that one can make qualified assumptions from studying their behaviour in certain situations. Let us just assume that it is true. Animals (apart from certain species apparently such as some apes and dolphins) don’t have sex for pleasure, meaning they don’t seek out sex for pleasure in their natural environments.

This is used when claiming that animals can’t feel pleasure when having sex with a human (regardless of who is “on top”, on the “giving and receiving end”, so to speak). This is a faulty argument however – a fallacy. Why? Well, from what I have read and heard about this theory/report, it says just that “animals don’t have sex for pleasure“.

What it does NOT say is “animals feel no pleasure from having sex“.

I think it is quite safe to assume that both animals and humans, considering our reproductive organs work and look more or less the same, feel pleasure from having sex. Some argue that from an evolutionary perspective, feeling pleasure from sex is a really good trait. Most “normal” human without much artificially added substances (drugs, etc) would probably say that sex is the ultimate short-term physical (and in some cases mental) pleasure, and some that the lust for it can be near overwhelming when put in an erotic situation. I have a very difficult time thinking that animals don’t feel pleasure from sex, from what I have both seen and read.

Animal welfare… or zoophilia hatred?

Something I realized quite early in the discussion but didn’t mention is that this woman (and many others who argue just like her) claims that she argues for the sake and welfare for the animals. If she cared that deeply, she’d be a vegetarian or even vegan, completely against those points I just mentioned because they are unnatural for the animal, they steal away their freedom, and can very well cause suffering in form of frustration and anxiety, if not pain and plain death. The true subject is her hate against zoophiles – which she proves by claiming that zoophilia should be illegal when cruelty to animals already is illegal. If zoophilia is cruelty to animals (her words), then zoophilia is already illegal – something that I’ve tried to explain to her over and over without any success. Add to this that she doesn’t think killing an animal has anything to do with this discussion.

And here are some facts

The “animal protection” insitution in Sweden sent 1600 surveys to vets, police and many other animal care centers and experts. Their survey asked for cases where animals had come in, hurt, from humans having had sex with them… during the last 30 years. They found… 209 cases. That means maybe 6-7 cases per year. And, most of those 209 cases apparently, are cases where horses gets cut in their sex organ areas (don’t ask me why anyone would do that, or why anyone concluded that it had anything to do with sex), but those cases are completely illegal since they’re 100% cruelty to animals. So, they end up with the number of ~10, in 30 years. Yeah, frightening numbers. I would guess that many more than ~10 animals per day in Swedish meat industry die a painful death. Not to mention those hundreds who are killed, by bolts or electricity, suffocation, throat-slitting and so on (which are common ways of slaughtering animals for the meat industry).

Listen to SR’s report (Swedish Radio) by following this link. Note that it’s only in Swedish.

They also mention that for some, touching a horses butt is sexual abuse, while jacking off stallions to inseminate mares is completely fine, which is a standard procedure. When asked about it, K.A. (a woman working for the animal protection institute) hesitated for about 10-15 seconds, then more or less stuttered ‘uh… well… it has been found that it is just an accepted way of using animals’.

Comment on this blog

Feel free, as always, to comment on my blog. You can find a link at the bottom of the entry called “comments”. Click it, and you will be taken to a page where you can enter a comment. Feel free to discuss, as long as you can base your arguments on something other than your opinion. Meaning, it’s completely irrelevant and uninteresting that you think tomatoes taste bad with the argument that they’re nasty; because then you’d have to define “nasty” and we’d just end up discussing individual opinions, not facts. Trolling, flaming, name calling and insinuating things about my (or any other commenter’s) personal lives, has – of course – no place in a serious debate. But I won’t delete your posts just because you disagree with me and can give valid arguments for doing so.

I don’t believe in dictatorship where some people’s voices are quieted, and I don’t believe in having a comment section that gets moderated in advance. Many blogs I’ve seen utilize some some sort of “I’ll decide whether I want your comment or not” attitude, which means that anyone who disagrees with them won’t get heard – only those who agree.

Let’s make one thing very clear: I’m very much against cruelty to animals, and I’ve said it many times that if I ever see someone being deliberately cruel to an animal, I’d probably get to spend a long time in prison. Absolutely nothing angers me more than disrespect and cruelty to animals. But I don’t see true zoophilia as animal cruelty, quite the opposite in many cases.Oh, and I’m not an internet troll. Anything I stand for in text, I stand for in real life. The only thing I seek to provoke, if anything, is thought.

Interesting facts; this blog entry has both scared someone (which only tells me that someone who doesn’t agree with me thinks I’m dangerous because my words carry weight against his, otherwise he would just have ignored it), and is according to the same person apparently full of double standards. And, someone wanted me to give sources for my claims that children are small, that animals have claws and teeth and that animals actually do have a sex drive. Someone also claimed that my arguments here were somehow too long to be relevant. Also, the same lady I had the original discussion with finally, after being cornered, claimed that even defending zoophilia should be illegal. So much for democracy and free speech! Dictatorship, anyone?Now when she cut off all respect by trying to ban free speech, I’ll finally post the link to the original article (you can try the link, but it seems the article got pushed out of their system the 6th of November 2007) itself where you can read the comments on your own. What she says now, or not, I care nothing about, after proving she’s defending her double standards and wishes to silence those who don’t share the same values. Note that the article and its’ comments are all in Swedish.Finally someone else found her way to the newspaper homepage and started discussing. The reason to why not many people express themselves in that forum is that it’s just the commentary section of a now a two week old article, sadly. In a similar discussion that emerged a week after the news article was posted, many more people have vented their opinions in the subject and to my content, most people seem to reason more or less like I do. Then there are a few others who give the standard arguments against tidelag, and when they get any opposition, they scream and shout “you’re stupid and sick”… Well, not strange, because they simply can’t defend their claims when they’re full of double standards. Unless they claim that forcing animals to do dangerous work and being bred and kept in minimal spaces only to be slaughtered isn’t in any way abuse or cruelty towards animals… something which a certain woman actually does.[ Added ] Another article (Swedish) sprung up on the same site. This time simply explaining that someone had sex with a horse.Other sites of interest:….. “Animals can approach humans for sexual reasons too. Ever owned a dog? They’ll come right up to you and start poking at your crotch. What if you don’t have pants on at the time? And what if you maybe enjoy a little complication-free oral sex? You go to jail for it? It’s not like you shoved your meat into their face and raped them. The animal isn’t hurt, so animal abuse doesn’t apply.”
- Skatje Myers (in English.)….. “Vidare accepteras av alla en platonisk kärlek mellan människa och djur (hur mÃ¥nga pussar inte sina hundar), men steget över till en sexuell relation ses mindre roat. Argumentet brukar vara att samtycke saknas, men när gav hundar och andra djur senast samtycke till kastrering, märkning, insemination och avlivning?Man kan tydligen handskas hÃ¥rdhänt med djur pÃ¥ en mängd olika sätt som inte väcker folks anstöt, men sÃ¥ fort sex kommer in i bilden blir det annat ljud i skällan. Detta kan inte vara av omtanke av djuren, utan har helt andra grunder, att det handlar om människans välbefinnande, att slippa se sÃ¥dant.”
- Blogge Bloggelito (in Swedish. Read at your own risk; there are disturbing images embedded in the blog)

….. “Indeed, we may be a small minority, scorned by the majority who may consider our movement to be immoral or perhaps even twisted. But who is truly twisted and immoral, those who yearn to live with animals as partners and love them as equal creatures, or those who violently abuse nature, raise themelves above the rest of creation and, for their perverse comfort, destroy everything and everyone around them?”
- Equality for All (english site, trying to show how zoophilia is love, and not hate as some tend to believe)

Links relevant to this blog post:

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This blog is registered in Skövde on bloggkartan.se (a geographic map of blogs in Sweden)

Tags: right and wrong by KarmaSlave
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Anti-pedophile propaganda helps pedophiles?

I’m a member of a gay-friendly community on the internet, where it’s rather common to see people expressing their hate towards pedophiles. In this community you can write a presentation text about yourself and you can chat in open forums and start clubs with different names where other community users can become members. There are several “hate pedophiles” clubs, several threads in the forums where people state that “It’s enough! Down with the pedophiles!”, and “It’s enough! Down with the child pornography!”. Some claim that the child pornography is everywhere, and that pedophiles are everywhere too. These threads are usually open for anyone to read, and the clubs usually have public member lists for everyone to see. Then there are clubs with the purpose to say that all pedophiles aren’t evil themselves but the act that some of them do is; something I agree with, but that’s a whole other discussion than the one I’m about to adress here.Before I continue I must clarify that I of course admit there are pedophiles on this community, as much as there are pedophiles working for the church, the local food stores, the railroads, the schools, and so on. In other words, they are everywhere, as there are people of other sexual preferences everywhere. Some pedophiles act upon their sexuality, but many suffer from it and wouldn’t do anything to a child in real life. This post isn’t to argue that there are no pedophiles.

Then we have the curious fact that out of 100.000 registered community members, 230 members are registered as below the age of 15. If you’re 15 or above (in Sweden) it’s not pedophilia; it’s just morally wrong to some, which is not the same as pedophilia regardless of what people may think – some actually believe that the age difference is more important in deciding whether or not someone is a pedophile than the actual ages themselves and may very well pounce a 40 year old for being in love with someone who is 20. Well, 230 members out of 100.000. It’s an estimate, because there are no guarantees that members state their correct ages, though most do. Counting all children currently registered on the site, then aproximately 250 people might have been contacted the last year by someone on the community that per legal definition was an active pedophile looking for children. Others of other ages may have been contacted by someone somehow claiming to be a pedophile too; but it’s probably extremely rare since it’s probably nothing you’d say to anyone.

Another curious fact is that I don’t know anyone who has ever seen any member upload child porn on that community, and from the looks of it, so haven’t most others on the community either. How do I make that assumption? Well, there is a trend among these “pedophile haters” to put a little snippet of text in their presentations. It goes something like “Stop the child pornography! If you see any, report it immediately to http://www.rb.se/hotline”. Plenty of members have had this text on their presentations for years, but the thing is that if you click the link and take time to read what the page says, rb.se/hotline stopped taking reports since january 2005. That’s more than two and a half year ago. So probably safe to say, none of the many people who have this link on their sites have seen child porn on the community in the last two and a half year. Yet, the same people scream and shout that it HAS TO STOP NOW! …as if it was an actual problem. I think it’s more a case of people rallying eachother; someone says “it’s gotta stop” and immediately another bunch of people listen and think that it’s actually a real problem, they follow suit and scream “yeah it’s has GOT TO STOP” and more and more people join in some crusade against a foe that didn’t exist in the first place.

The philosophy of making these clubs and threads is good in general, I guess. People don’t want children to get abused sexually by adults. However – I wonder if these clubs and forum threads actually help anyone but the active pedophiles, those pedophiles that actually search out physical contact with children.

Why? Well, most clubs and threads (and those “stop child porn”-text snippets) serve no other purpose than to gather people of the same philosophy so they can, put frankly, pat eachother on the shoulders for thinking the right thing and standing up for the children. The purpose is mostly that – to shout out their hate against pedophiles. Nothing more. Some, but suprisingly few, actually take matters in their own hands and try to help the children that are or might become victims to rape. If someone takes it really seriously they should study to become an IT-police.

In other words, the clubs and threads are usually there for people to look good for others with the same point of view. Of course they would report pedophiles or child porn if they saw any, but as I’ve explained, most apparently never come in contact with it. So, who does these clubs help the rest of the time? The children? Hardly. The pedophiles? Probably a lot more than the children, because the active pedophiles may now easily see who they’re not supposed to contact more easily by looking in these anti-pedo clubs or threads. Those who shun the light stay out of the searchlight. Pedophiles need friends too (assumption) and adult contacts, and being able to clearly spot those that hate them is definately a great tool when looking for like-minded people.

I’d say that if you want to catch a potentially dangerous active pedophile, don’t paste “hate pedophiles” on your forehead (at least paste a working reporting site if you have to). You’ll never encounter a pedophile that way, and they will hardly dissappear only because you wish them to. It’s the same as if you were to hunt deer by running around in the woods screaming “come deer, I want you to come to me and die”. What you should do is to keep low and wait.

EDIT: Some think that this community does nothing to work against pedophiles, probably based on the simple fact that the community crew never mention it. The fact is that they do actively work against it by themselves and with the police when needed. The reason to why people seldomly hear of anything is that they probably don’t want their community to get “pedophile hangout place” stamped all over them. Sure, they could say things like “We’re fighting diligently to report all active pedophiles that reside here!”. Does that sound good? Well, imagine an adventure family bath stating the same. They’d probably lose a lot of customers – not so much the pedophiles as the families. Does it still sound that good? Being in any way connected to pedohilia in the press is always bad. To even state that you’re fighting pedophiles in your community indirectly also mean that there are pedophiles in your community – that you’re hosting pedophiles.

EDIT 2: In some ways, this sort of propaganda might not only help the active confident pedophiles in a way, but also make it more difficult for the insecure pedophiles that don’t want to have their sexual urges towards children to reach out and get official help. By shouting that the people with these urges are disgusting, evil and compare them to massmurdering demons, the probability of these people actually gathering courage to talk to a professional about getting help to resist the urges may diminish greatly. So not only might it help the active pedophiles that like what they do, but it may also cause those pedophiles that want help not to dare to get help. Far from all pedophiles are evil; they’re just cursed with a very unfortunate sexual preference. Some can resist the urges, some can’t, some don’t want to, and some once wanted to resist, couldn’t, and now it may be too late for them – and in extension the children getting raped by them.

So, will you continue shouting “hate all pedophiles”?

NOTE: No I have no numbers showing that this is true, but that’s only to be expected in a case where the “numbers” pretty much want to stay hidden. It’s just a theory, from someone looking at it from another angle.

Tags: right and wrong by KarmaSlave
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Sex before age of 15

Note: I do not endorse pedophilia. That is not what this blog post is about. I’m against active pedophilia, as you would know if you read my Right and Wrong post. And also, someone fresh out of arguments in a zoophilia debate recently claimed that I want to lower the “legal age of sexual intercourse” which is simply a lie and nothing I’m interested in. Apparently I have said that in a public debate, but stranegly no traces of that debate or my claims can be found nor can anyone else remember that I had said such a thing.

 

It is interesting… I just read a few articles about a swedish politician named Thomas Bodström, who really is one of those people with power you would like to catch some really bad disease and… caugh, really really much. Sadly, he isn’t very old yet so there’s probably no change for nature to take its’ course anytime soon. Oh, and he probably wants texts like these to be considered equal to attempted murder.

 

He is, for example, trying to change the laws so that the police may bug your phone if they as little as suspect that you’re going to do any sort of crime, and that police may enter your appartment at any time without a warrant and without any obligation to tell you that they’ve been there. Big brother society? Well, apparently there’s a term for his dictatorship – a “Bodströmsamhälle” (Bodström Society). He also pushes for a change in the child pornography laws so that even virtual children (not children at all, just virtual representations, avatars, played by adults) will be illegal. May I ask, who in the name of everything that is holy does that protect? No one! At all! Supress the pedophiles! Don’t let them even think about children! It has nothing to do with protecting actual children anymore, it’s about criminalizing the mind and fantasy of some people. Well, snuff movies are illegal, so why don’t make virtual snuff (horror movies) illegal too? That will protect the actors from getting virtually killed. Oh yeah. The justice!

 

He’s one of those people with the philosophy I truly hate. The philosophy is to criminalize things that doesn’t ever hurt or harm anyone. Their grounds to forbidding things is simply that they don’t “want” the perticular thing in “their world”. It’s all in black and white. If I can go without this and that, then so can everybody else – and if not, let’s just criminalize and mold people to think just like me. Yeah, that’ll be nice. A perfect world.

Anyhow, this is a small reference to my post about “Right and Wrong“, where I mentioned my sex debut at 7-8 years of age. One that I had full control of and consented to very much. The thing is that in 2005 or so, Bodström imposed a change to the law saying that without any exception, sex with someone below the age of 15 is rape. According to his law, you cannot at all possibly consent to having sex if you’re below 15 years of age. Oh?

 

EDIT: Some claim that kids below 15 shouldn’t have sex/can’t consent to sex because they don’t know fully what sex is about. I didn’t know exactly what sex was about when I was 8-9 I admit, but I knew that it felt good, was for procreation and that if done unprotected you could get AIDS. Well, even though I today know that the person you have sex with needs to have AIDS/HIV in order for you to get infected, it’s kind of still the same today. Sex feels good, heterosexuals can use if for procreation and if not protected you may get sexually transmitted diseases. Hell, that’s more than many other care about – some never give the STDs a second thought.No, you probably don’t know all there is to know about sex when you’re below 15, but most people don’t know all there is to know about sex their entire lives. Yeah you learned about overies and testicles and stuff when you were in school, but unless you’re truly interested in the workings of the human body and procreation organs, you’ll forget about all that in a week or two, and remember only the truly most important things there is to know about sex: that sex should feel good, sex should be fun, and that you should protect yourself to avoid diseases and unwanted pregnancy.You don’t need to know how the internal organs work. I sure don’t. I fuck you, you fuck me, it feels good. We go and comfirm that we’re free of STDs, come back, and throw away the condom.

 

Well, I understand the idea – to prevent rape of children. That is all well. But, recently there was this case of two 25 year old boys having sex with someone below 15; and the judgement was that the girl actually consented partly, making it less of a rape and more of taking advantage sexually of a minor. I know for a fact that you can consent to sex when you’re under 15, and I know for a fact that sex below 15 isn’t automatically painful or scarring and can be quite the opposite. It can be scarring, but so can sex in any age if done wrong.

But – apparently, Bodström shuts his eyes and ears to the possibility of consent before the age of 15, as he now wants to retry the law (case?), somehow making it clear to everyone that sex with anyone below the age of 15 is nonconsentual rape. In his world, a child cannot possibly be a sexual being. I find that more of a romantic dream of purity rather than seeing the facts. Just take a look at Japan where the legal age of intercourse is 13, and apparently it works for them. The island hasn’t been swallowed by the sea yet. Ah, but I guess the genes of Sweden automatically and flawlessly activates our will at the age of 15, turning us from the numb, quiet and fully gullable zombies we were before the age of 15 into concious human beings. It can’t be that you have an own will before that age. Oh what a load of bull…

How can someone who so clearly fights against democracy and personal integrity, and does it with such prejudice, be let to continue in politics? I guess that’s the price of democracy – everyone has equal right to speak their minds, which is good, but it may actually result in some idiot like him trying to remove everybody else’s right to speak.

He’s a perfect example of those people who thinks that they possess the ultimate “common sense”, and what they think and believe is the universal truth. Just because their philosophy fits perfectly with their lives doesn’t mean it will fit everyone’s. Laws have to keep some space to move around, some flexibility. He’s trying to make laws absolute – a system with no sense at all, just cold hard rules, black and white.

Oh, and sorry to break it to (some of) you, but if you think you’re reading between the lines, then you’re most probably very wrong. The world isn’t as black and white as you may have wanted it to be. If you didn’t try to read between the lines, then I salute you.

 

An interesting note (added 2007-11-22):
On a Swedish community I’m a member of, someone started a thread on the public forums, asking when was the first time other members had ever had sex. Many started to answer, as usual, and the answers were ranging from the usual 14-18, to 20, even later than that, and as expected, there were answers ranging from 14 and down to 4-5 years of age. For me, this isn’t really strange – I had sex with someone else at the age of ~7, and compared to today, it was pretty much the same thing and physical mechanics involved.

 

But, the most interesting part is that some people tried to tell us that we were wrong – that we couldn’t possibly had sex at that age. That our actions must have been led by an adult, or that you can’t possibly have an erection before puberty (which is simply a lie), and so forth. When told that I did what I did back then with a boy my age, all on our own by our own will, they went on to say that it couldn’t have been sex because you can’t get an erection and all that, and when countered, they went on to say that it can’t have been sex because you’d have to have orgasms too… which I personally had years before I had sex with another human. After that, those claiming that “it can’t be!!!” went completely silent.

 

Some people are so… bent on denying some things. They try every possible argument to keep being able to deny something, and if the argument is countered, they quickly try to find some other argument. Is this a fear of realizing the truth? Is it really that horrible to grasp that the world isn’t exactly what you thought it was? And why is it so hard for them to just accept that what is “normal” is “normal” and does not define anything other than “most frequent occurance”? And what’s with people’s inability to admit that they have been wrong, to admit that they’ve actually learned something? Is it so terrible to show that you evolve?

 

Why is it so horrible to accept that someone, at an age of 5-7, can happily have fullblown (yet probably without real sperm for some time) sex, pursuing pleasure and ultimately an ordinary orgasm? I know for a fact that this is completely possible. I was there. Telling me that I’m wrong is just plain stupid.

As mentioned earlier, this is partially a follow-up of the post “Right and Wrong“.

Image: personal photo

Tags: right and wrong by KarmaSlave
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Parents and their Good Intent

IMPORTANT:
Read the entire post before commenting, please. I’m tired of people reading posts halfly, not getting the point, and then going on with mistargeted flaming.
I had to hang up the phone in the ear of my father the other day. I did warn him however, that if he would intrude into personal parts of how I decide to run my life, I’d hang up. Yet, he goes on, knowing I’d be offended, and I hung up the phone.

I’m 24 years old, have lived away from home for the last 6 years, studied at a university among other things, and done it well. I’ve even had a job in game design during this time. But, he has this need give advice – some that he must know just questions my intelligence and personal judgement completely, like he doesn’t trust myself to lead my own life. Small details; things that he just doesn’t have anything to do with. I respect his advice as long as I get to ask for it myself; and trust me – I would never ask him about his opinions regarding how I should or should not dress myself. I would never try to tell him how or how not to live his life, so why does he try that on me from time to time?Some would shrug, smile a little, sigh lightly and say that parents will always be like that. Be like what? Unrespectful? Choking? Just because parents will always be like this, does that automatically mean that the sons and daughters of them have to put up with crap; of parents crossing every line and border of privacy, just so that they may feel a little better inside?

“It’s all in good intent”. My intentions are good when I intrude into your personal sphere, tell you that what you’re doing is wrong even though it clearly works for you, and try to force upon you my way. That’s not good intent, that’s not trusting a person to live his or her own life. Most socially sane people knows better than to butt in and try to control someone else’s life. How come that parents, even when their sons and daughters are adult, seem to think that these social borders and norms don’t apply to them? That their offspring must automatically and obediently listen and obey to everything they say, to let them get under your skin, into your mind, pull your private strings and try to control and enforce their will, to say that your ways are less worth than their ways? …a manic need of control? Saying it’s in good intent is just a really bad and washed out excuse.

I can definately say I can’t see the cute side of it that some mention. It’s torture. It’s one of the reasons I moved out at the age of 18 and would never in my life stay home for more than a few days in a row. I’m no rebel – I just need my own mind for myself.

So what was it about then? Well, my father thought it was very important to tell me (for the 10th time so far) that I must wear shoes if I were to go to a job interview. The reason to why I got so upset isn’t that I do as I want, or that it’s up to me if I want to be barefoot, or that I can use my own judgement and actually use shoes for such an occasion – the reason is that no one other than myself has anything, ever, to do or say when it comes to how I choose to dress, except perhaps my employers who might want to enforce a dresscode! If problem arises, it is my problem, no one elses, and stepping in between me and my business is nothing other than saying “I don’t trust you to live your own life, let me control it for you“.

Believe me what I say that this isn’t the first time I’ve had to defend my privacy. For many years I’ve had my life questioned and “corrected” by my father – how I study, how I talk, how I walk, how I dress – and regardless of how calmly I try to explain to him that I feel bad when he does that, he goes on about his It’s All Just In Good Intent. This is not just a one time occurance (in which case even I would think I was either a psycho or utterly dependent on principles) – this was just the final drop.

Tags: right and wrong by KarmaSlave
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No Right To Be Proud?

Many people who belong to minorities say that they’re proud of their heritage, or proud of their sexual orientation, or proud just to belong to whatever group they belong to. That’s fine, I think, as I myself can say that I’m proud of who I am and what I do, my sexual orientation, my kinks, my interests, my lifestyle, my motto. It’s an easy thing to say, to be proud of those things.

However, some have started to actually fight (and some rather militantly so) people’s right to say that they’re proud of, for example, sexual orientation. Their argument is that you can’t be proud of something you’ve had no hand in, that you can’t be proud of something you haven’t choosen for yourself. That you can’t take credit for something that you personally haven’t caused – like your sexual orientation.

What I think those people tend to misunderstand is that those who are proud are probably not at all saying “I’m proud that I choose to be gay/lesbian/bisexual/heterosexual”. As far as I know, most gay people agree that sexual orientation isn’t something you choose. It’s an assumption, most oftenly, that sexual orientation is out of your control. And, I think most can agree that you can’t be proud of an accomplishment that just doesn’t exist (in this case, choosing your sexuality).

So, why do people say that they’re proud of their sexual orientation anyway? Or heritage? Or color of their skin? I’ll take sexual orientation as the main example, though the theory and conclusion is rather applicable on the other examples too.

My conclusion is that the pride is not about the sexual orientation itself, but about personally having fought and conquered all the problems and difficulties that arise from being part of the said minority. Being gay or bisexual is in many societies and communities very difficult. People hate and condemn, and make life very difficult for some of us. Sometimes, we make our own lives difficult by hating ourselves based on others opinions. For example; my mother often said straight out that gays were disgusting if we ever saw two men kissing on TV and so on. Add to that all the standard fag-hating remarks and jokes, and stereotypes, and if you don’t have enough self-respect, you’ll start hating yourself as a child. At the ages of 13-15, I tried becoming straight.

I didn’t like the fact that I was gay, but I knew from the bottom of my young heart that I was completely and utterly in love with boys. I tried to change, which led to a rather painful period of self-separation and depersonalization, self-hate, shame. At the age of 16 or 17 or so, I finally decided to let the hate go, to love myself for a change, and let me be me, accepting my bisexuality as I saw it back then. It was a hard decision to accept at first, but one day, I did it. From that moment, I embarked on a rather chaotic journey in my life, to find out who I was, to merge my mind and body again, to start loving myself as a whole again. I can easily say that I didn’t do this completely until earlier this year, at the age of 23.

When I say that I’m proud to be gay, it’s just short for saying that I’m proud to stand up to myself, that I’m proud of conquering the hell of hating oneself at a young age when the body and mind are in enough turmoil as it is. I’m proud that I found strength to ignore the flood of negativity against me to strive to reach that tiny drop of warmth that was my happiness, that I decided to listen to my heart and feelings instead of my mother’s rantings, or my friends hate against homosexuals, that I stood up to myself when a nazi threatened my physical health just because he didn’t like gay people, that I’ve been my own and only support for several years. I’ve fought hell on Earth to accept myself and to be accepted for who I am, and I’m damn proud of it. But explaining everything in detail is just too much to say. That would be recapping 16 years of my life.

So, my conclusion is that I can simply just say I’m proud to be gay. I understand what people mean when they say that they are proud, and the thought of them meaning anything else than their struggle to stand up to themselves never really occurs to me. They aren’t proud of choosing what they are, they’re proud of fighting for who they are. A huge difference.

Understandably, most of those that I’ve heard saying that “you can’t be proud to be gay” just haven’t gone through many difficulties themselves. Some simply grow up in an open-minded family where they can easily be themselves without shame, building up the self-confidence and strength, and delivering the support needed for them to be strong and believe in themselves and their feelings. They never had much problems with their sexuality, and thus for them, it’s not a big deal. What they don’t understand is that others had to start off in an underworld of prejudice and hate and dig themselves up with their bare hands and nails.

You have all the right in the world to be proud of standing up to yourself.

Images: personal photos

Tags: right and wrong by KarmaSlave
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Traditions

Traditions and stereotypes are fine as long as they don’t stand in the way of someone’s happiness. I don’t believe in traditions dictating right and wrong. Stereotypes and traditions are created when something occurs many times, a sort of statistic norm and shouldn’t be seen as anything other than that.

Yet, many people seem to think that traditions and norms are rules to follow and obey, and that if you don’t follow the norms, you’re doing something wrong. Is it so wrong to break the norms and traditions to pursue happiness, if it doesn’t hurt anyone? We aren’t figurines created from the same old molds, we’re all individual creatures.

Tags: right and wrong, short by KarmaSlave
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Right and Wrong

 

I follow a very simple motto which perfectly and flawlessly describes my views towards everything. I live by this motto, and in my opinion, I need no other rules or norms to help me decide whether I think something is wrong or right.

My motto is:
Nothing is wrong as long as no one is harmed against their will.

Simple, yet extremely powerful, and applicable to life, sexuality and really everything.

As long as noone gets hurt against their will, you can do whatever you want. If you want to love someone who loves you back, and have sex with that someone and spend your life with that someone, do so. If you want to smear yourself in honey and roll in the grass a hot summer day just because you like the tickle of bees on your naked skin, then why not. If you’re a dendrophilia and really have a crush on that old oak in the back yard, why not rub yourself against it? Do you really like to lick the cows in your barn, then why not? Or, do you want to make a living out of having sex? Well, as long as you like it, I can see no reason why someone can forbid it, it’s your body. No one gets hurt. You may get some splinters from the tree, or stings from the bees, or silly cow-behind-bacteria on your tongue, but it’s your choice.

Some old fart once told me that my motto was vague and very irresponsible. That my motto makes me “passive” and that I find everything Ok. One of his examples were that my motto would make me think that it’s Ok to, for example, ban homosexuality. Don’t ask me how he reasoned, really, but banning something that doesn’t hurt anyone sounds awfully wrong to me. Though, his belief was apparently that I thought that the banning of homosexuality didn’t harm anyone. Well, yes I do believe it does. It takes away the freedom to love and live of many people. But not banning homosexuality wouldn’t hurt anyone. Not directly. Everyone would be able to choose the paths of their own lives.

Of course, one can always say that some are “hurt” by the fact that others live their lives the way they want to. That some get “hurt” because some people doesn’t fit into their fantasies of a perfect world. I say it’s their own problems that hurt them. If you want to live in an ever-changing world with as many lifestyles and sexualities and feelings as there are human beings, you have to learn that everyone is indeed different. Believing otherwise is only hurting yourself, and hurting yourself is just stupid unless you like that perticular sensation…

Sometimes, it’s a grey line though, the definition of “hurt”. What harms someone and what doesn’t? I would dare to say that in some cases, people aren’t harmed by certain actions but instead the victimization that the society projects upon them. A simple example; you get your pants pulled down in front of lots of people when you’re 5 years old. At that time, it might mean nothing to you. Why bother? However, as you grow up and is told by society that being naked in public is wrong, bad, dirty, shameful, you may think back at that memory and suddently feel bad about it. You’re indirectly harmed, not by the situation/action performed to you at that time itself, but by society telling you that you should be harmed, that you should be ashamed. Why do society do that?

Another example is my own sex debut. My first time was when I was about 7-8 years old, with a boy my age. It was on my initiative, and we were both consenting. Sure, we didn’t know everything there is to know about sex at that point, but we didn’t need to know much either. We were experimenting, learning, trying things, and had fun. We were both boys, no one could get pregnant and STDs were miles away. A while ago though, when I and a couple of friends were talking about sex and slipped into the subject of “legal ages” and someone mentioned that in Japan, the legal age of sex is 12 (for girls), I said that I didn’t find it that strange, and I told them openly about my sex debut. I figured I know these people, I can be honest with them. Then, an interesting thing happened – they looked at me, and started saying how traumatized I must have been, and how much it must’ve hurt me somehow, how wrong it must have felt. The most intruiging thing with it all was my own reaction to that – I actually suddently, 16 years after my first happy experiences, began thinking that yeah maybe it hurt me, maybe it’s damaged me somehow, and I felt a ashamed, a bit dirty. Those who were happy memories for me, suddently got questioned and my best friends started telling me that these memories and experiences were evil and ugly and dirty!

Luckily, I snapped out of it. No one is going to victimize me. I wasn’t a victim of anything! I had sex and I was a child. Apparently, that just can’t be positive in some people’s eyes. For me, those memories are some of the fondest and dearest memories I have.

It’s interesting – people seem more likely to conclude that I’m hurt by the experiences, that I am a victim, than they are to just ask me how I feel about it.

No one got hurt, but by trying to convince someone that a good feeling actually is bad and shameful is hurting someone. It’s not the actual action that is shameful, it’s you trying to convert good to bad that should really be ashamed, because it’s actually you who cause the pain.

 

Don’t hurt anyone. Think of what your actions may cause. But, using my motto, one could easily come to the conclusion that I have no problems with adults having sex with little children. Why? Well, an adult doesn’t have to actually harm the child. Small children wouldn’t know the difference of a standard lap-ride and an naked lap-ride where daddy has his tool between little one’s thighs, and would probably just have fun. No pain, just playing. All’s well? No. As I’ve just described, even though no pain or harm was done at that time, it is most likely that society’s norms and standards will teach that child that what happened was very wrong, very shameful and very damaging. Thus, even if the action itself wasn’t harming the child directly, it did through the invervention of our lovely society.

Before anyone even thinks the thought; of course I’m aware of rape of children and nonconsentual rape of adults and animals, and if you’ve understood anything of what I’ve written here, you’d know I’m against it.

Partly continued in the post “Sex before age of 15“.

Images: Po Ju (manga), personal photo

Tags: right and wrong by KarmaSlave
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