koods said:

We walked to school alone in the first grade. We took off on a two day hike along the railroad tracks to see a dead body we overheard my brother talking about.

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natedawgnow said:

Were you river pheonix or corey feldman?

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TNK said:

Well the question is where do we draw the line?

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MagicMush123 said:

The number of children getting molested in  the way in you described  is so low that it's not even worth mentioning. Not one person is talking about all 20 people in  the states with such mental retardation. You're just grabbing at straws trying to defend paedophiles.

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RJ Tubs 202 said:

TNK said:

Well the question is where do we draw the line?

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It's interesting to look at some assumptions we hold. We appear to view sexually abusing a child as worse than chronic physical and emotional abuse that many kids experience. Should we draw that line, and if so why? We view abuse of children differently than that of adult or elderly victims. We claim childhood abuse is especially horrendous because kids are helpless and innocent. But isn't the rape of an 80 year old lady equally as reprehensible? Don't get me wrong, emotionally I react much stronger to child abuse, but intellectually I don't see much difference. The argument the child victim will pass on their suffering to more people, such as their kids, as opposed to the 80 year old is interesting. But many kids who are abused don't grow up to be abusers.

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The Ecstatic said:

I’ll probably never have kids this world sucks. Procreating is child abuse at this point

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The Ecstatic said:

I’ll probably never have kids this world sucks. Procreating is child abuse at this point

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TNK said:

. . . I would be more on board if it was also prescribed by a mental health specialist who believed it was essential to keeping the patient from becoming a repeat offender.

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RJ Tubs 202 said:

TNK said:

. . . I would be more on board if it was also prescribed by a mental health specialist who believed it was essential to keeping the patient from becoming a repeat offender.

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I have zero confidence that anyone, including mental health specialists, have the ability to predict future behavior. That said, we can administer sedatives and tranquilizers to violent people to the point they will not harm anyone. Part of the issue is, we call almost everything a "mental health" problem and view it as a medical issue. We refuse to acknowledge that most pedophiles, serial rapists, and mass shooters don't have a biological defect. Someone told me recently, "Pedophilia must be a disease because nobody would ever choose to be a pedophile." That type of thinking ignores the motivations at the root of the behavior.

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RJ Tubs 202 said:

TNK said:

Well the question is where do we draw the line?

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It's interesting to look at some assumptions we hold. We appear to view sexually abusing a child as worse than chronic physical and emotional abuse that many kids experience. Should we draw that line, and if so why? We view abuse of children differently than that of adult or elderly victims. We claim childhood abuse is especially horrendous because kids are helpless and innocent. But isn't the rape of an 80 year old lady equally as reprehensible? Don't get me wrong, emotionally I react much stronger to child abuse, but intellectually I don't see much difference. The argument the child victim will pass on their suffering to more people, such as their kids, as opposed to the 80 year old is interesting. But many kids who are abused don't grow up to be abusers.

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Brian Jones said:

I'm an existensialist so sexually abusing a child is emmensely worse than doing it to an 80 year old unless the kid dies within a year or two.

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Kryptos said:

Calling it a mental health issue, while still a cop-out, is less of a cop-out than simply locking them in the dungeon. It implies that society is not at fault, yes, but treating it as a medical issue allows us to say that the person isn't entirely at fault either. They couldn't help it. They have a disease which makes them criminals.

This is why I think it is a step in the right direction. Not because it's a chemical imbalance, but because it is the beginning of realizing that nothing happens in a vacuum.

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Kryptos said:

Society will always treat someone unfairly. Society is, after all, fundamentally based on controlled exploitation.

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RJ Tubs 202 said:

Brian Jones said:

I'm an existensialist so sexually abusing a child is emmensely worse than doing it to an 80 year old unless the kid dies within a year or two.

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So with this line of thinking, you'd say sometimes it's worse and sometime it's not, right? If you're making this distinction by quantifying suffering following abuse (unsure how you measure that!), children who survive abuse better than adults are not congruent with that rationale. And I guess "worse" is a moralistic term so considering my personal philosophy (I tend to not rank suffering) maybe for me it's a moot point. I guess punching someone in the face is "better" than shooting them.

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RJ Tubs 202 said:

Kryptos said:

Calling it a mental health issue, while still a cop-out, is less of a cop-out than simply locking them in the dungeon. It implies that society is not at fault, yes, but treating it as a medical issue allows us to say that the person isn't entirely at fault either. They couldn't help it. They have a disease which makes them criminals.

This is why I think it is a step in the right direction. Not because it's a chemical imbalance, but because it is the beginning of realizing that nothing happens in a vacuum.

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There are many factors that shape and motivate physical and cognitive behavior. But when people are slapped with a mental illness label when there is no science supporting it, the negative repercussions are enormous. This isn't about hating Pharma, this is about the fact psychiatry has hijacked and bastardized science. Can't we look at a criminal or pedophile and realize there are factors that led to their behavior that aren't rooted in a medical problem? We've entered an age where we pathologize everything!   

Kryptos said:

Society will always treat someone unfairly. Society is, after all, fundamentally based on controlled exploitation.

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Nature and all of life is "unfair". We're living in a fantasy to not realize that. The human mind is build to generalize and discriminate and lie and cheat and steal and exploit when necessary. Natural selection has shaped us to do so. Yet we flog ourselves with self-loathing for our sins.

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