Equality is neat

So with that in mind, you really can’t make any kind of claim about the Greek and Roman gods like that they had no morality or were supposed to represent something, because the poets, sculptors, artists, scribes, and so forth had absolutely no intention of being consistent across the hundreds and hundreds of years that these stories were told - it’d be like trying to make a claim that was true of every iteration of a Spiderman comic, if most people sang Spiderman comics and didn’t write them down, there had been hundreds more authors over hundreds more years, Stan Lee had never written down or been in video saying anything about his intentions with Spiderman, and you were looking back at it hundreds of years later. Like, just look at Zombie!Spiderman from Marvel Zombies, Spiderpig, all that stuff, and imagine if somebody from a couple thousand years in the future was looking and that and trying to figure out who the fuck Spiderman is. To be completely honest, without knowing the intentions of each author, and every step in the game of Chinese Whispers that is Greek and Roman mythology, we don’t always know for certain how A became Z. However, we do know that (like was said in the post that started me talking about Greek mythology last night, and like the point I was making in OP) the characters aren’t progressive, perfect beacons of feminism… the times weren’t like that and so their stories weren’t like that, and there are plenty of examples of stories where the characters do things that would be beyond fucked up through a modern lense. So it’s historically inaccurate for people (as they tend to do on this website) to misrepresent those stories to paint them as whatever suits that person’s morality and ideology, because of some shallow fascination with the surface level of Greek mythology, but no actual desire to delve deeper into it and drop your moral judgment for the sake of learning.

What we do know is that a lot of the adaptations (like the Medusa one) that featured female monsters being remained as beautiful rape victims or envied by female gods for their beauty came from Ovid and other Roman poets, and seemed to follow a period of female monsters being painted and sculpted with more attractive faces than their initial monstrous depictions when they were simply titans - whether there was also a gradual shift in the story telling is hard to tell, it’s likely, and it’s likely that these Roman poets didn’t just decide overnight to entirely redo the backstory and everybody went “This version is better.” - it was probably somewhat of a gradual change, but it does seem to show a difference between the Roman versions (which are often the ones that are more well known today) and the original Greek ones, which seemed to often be, at least in part, them making sense of things about the world (like the fact that we’ve found what could’ve been the inspiration for the Theseus and the Minotaur story, in the form of a complex labyrinth). From my own Classical Civilization classes and Philosophy classes, I’d say that Greek mythology is better understood as a combination of folklore, urban myth, and entertainment, with religion not being the main essence of it (although, obviously, there were religious elements), instead of thinking of it as their equivalent to how a Christian might view and experience Christianity. These were stories that you would hear being sung by poets in the street, they were cautionary tales at times (like how people in the middle ages may warn children of the werewolves and river dwelling creatures in the woods to stop them going into the woods or the water, while also likely believing in said things themselves because of sightings and previous unexplained events; and like how even some modern stories have morals and messages), they were entertainment at other times, they were elements of worship at other times, and they were ways to explain the strange and complex features of the world that they didn’t understand, to ease the fear of death, to give strength and bravery to those about to charge into battle, and so on. It wasn’t just about making people behave themselves (Dionysus and his original rebellious wine cult, who were pretty dead set on doing the exact opposite of “behaving themselves” or “staying in their place”, are a pretty good testament to that), and it probably wasn’t even mostly about making people behave themselves, because they were sung by poets, crafted by artists - they weren’t the creations of the people with political control (hence the common theme of said people being greedy assholes who suffer for it; and hence the common themes of adventure and wanderlust, with adventurers being rewarded and made legends, rather than a theme of staying home and obeying the ruler - dissent against gods, broken promises, and the like led to hardship, but the heroic adventurer usually won and succeeded in some way in the end), and so they weren’t created for political control (at least until you get to Rome and some later parts of Greece, where the state seems to get more domain over the mythology and you do see more shifts towards that sort of thing - like threats of Dionysus removing you dick if you don’t attend his festivals and theater shit). These stories are closer to Shakespeare’s plays than they are to holy books.

Greek mythology is such a weird thing to talk about overall though because at the end of the day, I don’t think anyone knows the original myths, and they’ve been re-adapted so many times, over and over again. And people gotta remember that, while I’m sure some of the female mythological figures who deserved better have been re-adapted before to show that, most of the time the female figures got fucked over so damn much in most of what we know.

If we wanna talk about feminism and Greek mythology, we should talk about how completely unfair the treatment of women–even BY other women–tends to be, and how that was reflective of the times in which the Greek myths started, how the times have gotten better and in modern times, we ourselves have the power to write our own adaptations of these characters where they are treated better. Medusa definitely being one of them if we go by Ovid’s version of her story.

And yeah, people are wholly welcome to reimagine things and write their own stories - but making claims about the original stories and their intentions that are obviously misrepresenting them, just because they have a surface level enjoyment of the mythology but don’t want to delve deeper into it or learn about it without moral judgment, and would rather it simply morph to suit their interests instead of them taking an interest in it, isn’t how people should go about discussing these things or the morality of them through a modern lense.

They also had slaves, second class citizens, indentured servants…

Scylla was another fucked up story - some creepy fish-man named Glaucos thought she was hot and she wanted nothing to do with him, he went to a witch named Circe for help but Circe liked Glaucos and turned Scylla into a horrifying monster out of petty jealousy.

- It’s not cool or edgy to have sex in a church, it’s disrespectful to a place that means profound things to some people

- It’s not kind or loving to pray for somebody who was abused by religion if they tell you that it’s triggering for them for you to do so

- It’s invasive to go around knocking on people’s doors or stopping them in the street to try to convert them, they have busy lives

- It’s not clever to tell random people online that their prayers for disaster victims are pointless, they’re literally trying to get help for those people, even if you don’t believe that help exists, they do

- It’s not funny to steal or vandalize displays put up on church grounds, often those displays are made by children, and you’re forcing the church to replace it and waste the money that they collected for other things like charity

- Telling somebody that you genuinely believe that they should burn in hell is the cruelest thing that you can say to a person, you are wishing infinite suffering on a person so it’s infinitely worse than any earthly pain that you could wish upon someone

- Acts of terror in the name of religion are disgusting and should never be praised

- Atheists can and do have morals, and asserting otherwise is just irrational

- If somebody prays before dinner and you interrupt them or laugh at them, you’re being incredibly rude and disrespectful

- Standing on a street corner and yelling about how the world will end can be triggering, especially to people with delusions about that sort of thing, and can scare children, it’s not a nice thing to do

- Calling the people who wrote religious texts uneducated savages is incorrect and makes you look historically illiterate

- Debates about religion should simply be debates, if you carry that into your everyday life and start talking down to people incessantly who are just trying to live their own life and probably not thinking about this stuff, you’re rude

- Many heathen and pagan religions were crushed all over the world, and just because one group that worshipped a polytheistic religion oppressed Christianity at one point doesn’t mean that the loss of completely different pagan people’s culture, places of worship, and even lives was at all okay

- Salem wasn’t the only witch trial, the witch trials in Europe lasted centuries, it’s hard to know how many people died and suffered, but estimates range from tens of thousands to a million, and this included a lot of men and children too

- To some people a dead body is sacred in all manner of ways, and it’s a very western thing to be disgusted by the dead and feeds into our aversion to considering our own mortality

- No matter what you believe, consider how you want your body to be treated, make official plans, and save for it, because planning and funding a funeral while in a time of grief is a painful and difficult endeavor

- Religion can help people, and calling it nothing but a force for evil will be easily disputed

- Religion isn’t the only way to help people, and you shouldn’t use somebody’s moment of need as an opportunity to convert them

- The word delusion is a psychological term, and while it has a colloquial use that differs somewhat, it’s still disrespectful and incorrect to call people’s religion a delusion

- Not all religions are cults, and although some sects and some religions are cults or do exhibit some cult-like tendencies, you shouldn’t use the word flippantly to just describe any religion

- Pagan, polytheist, and other religions can be abusive, cults, or cult-like too, they’re not exempt

- Somebody voicing that they’ve been abused within or by your religion’s institutions or members is not a personal attack on you, nor is it an opportunity to “win them back”

- “Agnostic” does not mean “convince me”

- MKUltra actually happened, this means that there were actual victims, this is something that you should be very aware of when using that event in your conspiracy theories or fantasy writing

- Believing antisemitic conspiracy theories is actually antisemitic

- There actually are good, heartwarming, and moral stories in a lot of religious texts, and calling them simply evil books ignores that a vast array of things are written within, often by multiple different authors

- It’s not cool or edgy to have sex in a church, it’s disrespectful to a place that means profound things to some people

- It’s not kind or loving to pray for somebody who was abused by religion if they tell you that it’s triggering for them for you to do so

- It’s invasive to go around knocking on people’s doors or stopping them in the street to try to convert them, they have busy lives

- It’s not clever to tell random people online that their prayers for disaster victims are pointless, they’re literally trying to get help for those people, even if you don’t believe that help exists, they do

- It’s not funny to steal or vandalize displays put up on church grounds, often those displays are made by children, and you’re forcing the church to replace it and waste the money that they collected for other things like charity

- Telling somebody that you genuinely believe that they should burn in hell is the cruelest thing that you can say to a person, you are wishing infinite suffering on a person so it’s infinitely worse than any earthly pain that you could wish upon someone

- Acts of terror in the name of religion are disgusting and should never be praised

- Atheists can and do have morals, and asserting otherwise is just irrational

- If somebody prays before dinner and you interrupt them or laugh at them, you’re being incredibly rude and disrespectful

- Standing on a street corner and yelling about how the world will end can be triggering, especially to people with delusions about that sort of thing, and can scare children, it’s not a nice thing to do

- Calling the people who wrote religious texts uneducated savages is incorrect and makes you look historically illiterate

- Debates about religion should simply be debates, if you carry that into your everyday life and start talking down to people incessantly who are just trying to live their own life and probably not thinking about this stuff, you’re rude

- Many heathen and pagan religions were crushed all over the world, and just because one group that worshipped a polytheistic religion oppressed Christianity at one point doesn’t mean that the loss of completely different pagan people’s culture, places of worship, and even lives was at all okay

- Salem wasn’t the only witch trial, the witch trials in Europe lasted centuries, it’s hard to know how many people died and suffered, but estimates range from tens of thousands to a million, and this included a lot of men and children too

- To some people a dead body is sacred in all manner of ways, and it’s a very western thing to be disgusted by the dead and feeds into our aversion to considering our own mortality

- No matter what you believe, consider how you want your body to be treated, make official plans, and save for it, because planning and funding a funeral while in a time of grief is a painful and difficult endeavor

- Religion can help people, and calling it nothing but a force for evil will be easily disputed

- Religion isn’t the only way to help people, and you shouldn’t use somebody’s moment of need as an opportunity to convert them

- The word delusion is a psychological term, and while it has a colloquial use that differs somewhat, it’s still disrespectful and incorrect to call people’s religion a delusion

- Not all religions are cults, and although some sects and some religions are cults or do exhibit some cult-like tendencies, you shouldn’t use the word flippantly to just describe any religion

Pascal’s Wager states that if you believe in God and you’re right, your afterlife will be ∞ (heaven, an infinite positive). It states that if you’re an atheist and you’re wrong then your afterlife will be -∞ (infinitely negative, hell). And the other possibility is that the atheist is right, we cease to exist, we feel nothing, and the afterlife is neutral: 0.

I think we can all agree that your experience in life could be a positive or negative number, whether you believe in God or not - it depends entirely on circumstances, on you as a person, on what’s available to you, your mental health, etc. But it can never be ∞ because life is finite.

If we use W as the possibility that you’re wrong and R for the possibility that you’re right (with each potentially being 1 or 0), and we use N for that finite, less than infinite number (because formatting fucks up if you use a less than sign… thanks Tumblr) that represents your life’s experiences, the equation you need looks like this:

Theist: R(∞ + N) + W(0 + N)

Atheist: R(0 + N) + W(-∞ + N)

On the theist equation, even if R is 0 and W is 1 (if they’re wrong), the theist still has N, their life experience. But if R is 1 and W is 0 (if they’re right), they have ∞.

On the atheist equation, if R is 1 and W is 0, the atheist has N, their life experience. However, if R is 0 and W is 1, the atheist has -∞.

The argument mathematically states that an atheist has the potential for infinite suffering, but not infinite happiness, while the theist has the reverse - and thus the maths dictates that the potential outcomes are best if you believe.

Often worded as something like “You can only lose finite things by believing, but you stand to gain or lose an infinity.” or “Atheists only get a neutral or bad afterlife, Christians only get neutral or good.” or simply “What if you’re wrong?”

On the surface, it seems like a pretty good mathematical argument for pragmatic belief… however, you may have noticed that a few variables are still missing.

What if the theist is wrong, and a different God exists who will punish them for believing in the wrong God? What if the atheist is wrong but the God that exists isn’t one that will punish you for being an atheist, and will instead reward them?

Essentially there are actually three possibilities: either we all cease to exist at some point, and therefore have a finite existence and a zero afterlife (even if there are more finite lives between now and that zero, such as in something like reincarnation, the lives are still finite), or we have an infinite afterlife that is negative (resulting in a negative infinite, no matter how severe the negative aspect is - a runny nose for all eternity is just as infinite as a flaming pit, when you present it mathematically like this), or we have an infinite afterlife that is positive.

All of these possibilities remain suggested on the table and should be represented in the equation, regardless of which one you believe will happen to you.

So let’s add Z for the possibility that you’re wrong in a different way, and factor this into the risk equation:

Theist: R(∞ + N) + W(0 + N) + Z(-∞ + N)

Atheist: R(0 + N) + W(-∞ + N) + Z(∞ + N)

Pascal’s Wager is only an argument for belief if there’s only one potential belief system to choose from. When it artificially removes the risk of a believer going to a “hell” or an atheist going to a “heaven”, of course it ends up showing that one has worse options than the other. But that’s not the actual wager, because even the believer is still betting against the risk of his own God just sending him to Hell anyway (God’s been shown to be pretty fickle and pedantic if you’re talking about the Abrahamic one, not to mention all the different sects and interpretations), let alone the risk of there being a completely different God or set of gods.

If it turns out that the theist was a Christian, but the Islamic God is the true one, then R and W become 0, and Z becomes 1, resulting in -∞ for the Christian.

If it turns out that there is no God and no afterlife, what happens to that N number, the finite number, the less than infinite number, that now defines all of our lives? How much has it been lowered by religious persecution, by people being killed, shamed, or otherwise tormented while alive? If the W is the 1 for the theist, how many people have lost out in the hopes that there was an infinity waiting for them? How many people has that N been a minus number for, because they were physically tortured or killed in the name of a God?

Finally, I’d like to address “[…] a rational person should live as though God exists and seek to believe in God. If God does not actually exist, such a person will have only a finite loss (some pleasures, luxury, etc.), whereas he stands to receive infinite gains (as represented by eternity in Heaven) and avoid infinite losses (eternity in Hell).”

Living as though God exists has led to witch hunts, terror attacks, murder, and other atrocities. It’s still a negative, even if it’s not an infinite negative - the wager prioritizes the length of time over the level of suffering, an eternal runny nose would rate as worse than being stoned to death.

Those finite losses are also people’s whole lives. They might be finite, but if they were all there is for that person then that’s a sad state of affairs. Nobody’s life should be just suffering on the off chance that there might be a fantastic afterlife waiting for them - we should be making life better on the off chance that there isn’t an afterlife waiting, that this is all we have, that you’re wrong and a God isn’t going to swoop in and make it all better after people suffered or struggled while betting on a good afterlife.

Even if that finite number that represents our life gets dwarfed by infinity, it’s still all we have right now, and it may remain all we have, so I think it deserves a little more weight than it’s given.

and i want to remind u all that nobody is entitled to knowing your romantic, sexual or gender orientations. nobody. you have no moral obligation to share that information if youre not comfortable with doing so

youre not “lying” by not telling people or “hiding”. cause its honestly no ones business but your own

you come out on your own terms when you feel safe and comfortable doing so!! or you can come out to a few trusted people if you want before telling a larger group

Heteromantic asexuals and heterosexual aromantics are part of the LGBT+

You have such amazing reading comprehension skills. You know that?

I’m not defending pedophiles. I’m saying they should be kept away from children and if they refuse then they should be locked up.

Personally, I disagree with the sex offender registry altogether (for a number of reasons, but I won’t go on that tangent here). It’s just a means for vigilantes to prey on people - including people who were wrongly accused, or just put on there for public urination, etc. So I definitely disagree with Flare’s comment that people who haven’t done anything should have to register as sex offenders and put themselves at risk like that.

You guys know that I support rehabilitation instead of the prisons we have now, and I only support lifelong imprisonment in cases of repeated serious offenders (eg serial killers) who are also resistant to treatment - and in those cases I think prisons should not be for profit and should simply be a place for those people to live safely and comfortably and away from the general populace. I most certainly do not support prison for somebody who hasn’t committed an offense, so again, I disagree with what Flare said on that post.

“Guess what. There isn’t a single person who has ever walked the earth that hasn’t had a desire to do something evil. It’s a part of human nature. We should support and try to correct each other instead of jumping right to “let’s murder somebody because they guiltlessly have twisted sexual fantasies.””

This person was closer to how I feel about it. We all think awful things from time to time - maybe not that bad, maybe worse, but we all have thought about doing something that would hurt somebody else - and very few people actually go on to murder, rape, torture, etc.

If somebody doesn’t hurt anybody, then the task at hand is to help them maintain that state; if somebody does hurt somebody, then the task at hand is to help them become better and not do that again; vengeance is just adding pain to an already painful situation, and prison how it is just produces radicals and re-offenders anyway.

Yes, I agree with preventative measures - like having access to therapy, like having a good support network, like being self-aware and taking responsibility. But “stay away from kids” isn’t possible (there isn’t some kidless village 1,000 miles from civilization that accepts all refugees from our disgusting kid-filled world), nor will it actually prevent actual offenders - people need the internal strength and certainty and so on to genuinely control themselves, because no matter where you live or where you work, you can still drive and access the internet.

Plus ultimately, if any attempt to get help and improve their fortitude is met with sex offender registries, vigilantes, and potentially prison, when they’ve committed absolutely no offense or harm, then they’re going to keep quiet and suffer in silence without help - it’s just going to stop people coming forward, stop people getting help, and hinder prevention efforts.

“ARE YOU FUCK WITS STILL DEFENDING PEDOPHIES?”

I mean, officially we’d dropped the topic. I don’t know why Flare brought it up.

But if locking up people who refuse to flee their house when they’ve nowhere else to go just because kids move in next door, or refuse to drop out of school because they as a teen discover that they have attractions to substantially younger people, or refuse to have an abortion when they’re pro-life and a condom ripped, or whatever - when they haven’t committed an offense and they haven’t harmed anyone - is “defending” those people, then I really don’t wanna know what anon’s idea of attacking is.

“GOD, I WISH YOU GUYS WOULD JUST SWALLOW SOME TAPEWORMS,”

I heard that’s good for weight-loss?

“YOU FUCKING PEDO LOVERS AND DDLG/CGL SUPPORTERS SHOULD GET SENT OUT BACK AND GASSED”

Nobody should be gassed. Advocating for murder isn’t a good look, anon. Especially when your methodology is a throwback to one of the darkest periods in human history. It’s not intimidating, because I know that you can’t act on it - it’s just pathetic and ugly. And frankly, anon, if measures were put in place to start killing people for their unsavoury thoughts, this one would land you on the guillotine with the rest of us.

I find it kind of disappointing though that Flare went for the “I’m not defending them” retort, rather than “I don’t deserve to die for my opinions”.

Also CGL and DDLG are kinks, they are not pedophilia, they are adults engaging in a consensual relationship. Any argument against CGL and DDLG boils down to the equivalent of “Kids wear t-shirts, and the woman you like is wearing a t-shirt, therefore you’re a pedophile.” and you’re fucking stupid for not only lumping it in with pedophilia, but for wishing death upon people who merely defend the right of adults to engage in consensual sex with other adults.

“LIKE THE NAZIS YOU ARE”

You… just advocated… for gassing people… and you’re calling other people Nazis? Well, I’m not a Nazi, and I don’t think the Nazis agreed at all with my stances on capital punishment - I’m pretty sure you and they had a more similar stance on murder and how to go about murdering.

Anyway, I feel I didn’t make myself completely clear. My stance is that anyone who refuses to stay away from children and seek help as well as make it known should be the ones locked up. AKA, the offenders. Those who offend and harm children need to be locked up to keep children safe. It is, ultimately, not defending people who harm children. (in response to @unhappy-opinions with this as well since I just saw their response)

Those who seek help, who do what they can to keep children safe, who avoid places with children, ect are the people who I’m defending. 

Big mood, every time I open my big mouth xD

“anyone who refuses to stay away from children and seek help as well as make it known should be the ones locked up. AKA, the offenders”

I don’t think that not going to therapy, not avoiding kids (by this I mean not moving house if kids move in next door, not dropping out of school, still going to the shop at normal hours, etc), and having ethical discussions on tumblr count as offending, and definitely not worthy of prison - but I agree that some level of intervention needs to be done if somebody is going to NAMBLA protests, hanging around parks with the intent to stare at kids, etc. So I think we mostly differ on the levels of intervention required and the times that the intervention is required.

Like, if somebody has murderous thoughts I believe that’s something worth talking to a therapist about, but I don’t think that they should be put in prison if they currently can’t do that when they haven’t hurt anyone - even if they talk about those thoughts.

I think that therapy needs to be more accessible, therapists need to be better informed on how to deal with more unsavoury things, and mandatory reporting laws need to be removed, with therapists instead advised on where to refer somebody and who to talk to for rehabilitation or more intensive prevention efforts in the event of intent to commit or actually having committed a crime.

Mandatory reporting and other overreactions (including to things that have no link whatsoever to pedophilia) can really harm innocent people and dissuade people from getting help for fear of being victims of that harm. If you haven’t hurt anybody, and know that you won’t, and have the strength not to, getting therapy for a little further help to your own mental state, at the risk of having your entire life ruined and being put on lists that direct vigilantes to your door, isn’t going to be worth it to you.

From the outside it might look like “I’d go through that to keep kids safe.” but if you woke up tomorrow exactly as you are but with that attraction, knowing full well that you wouldn’t hurt kids because you’re still you and you’re still against that… would you really put yourself at risk for prison or being a victim of vigilante murder, just to assure other people that you’re lessening a risk that they claim is there, but that you know isn’t there at all, because you know yourself and you know that you wouldn’t hurt anyone? You know that going through that won’t keep kids any safer than you just not hurting kids, but it will hurt you, maybe kill you, maybe break you to the point where you do become misanthropic and cruel and dangerous.

Even violent intrusive thoughts can get you put through hell if your therapist misinterprets them as violent intent, and people are afraid of speaking up and actually getting help because they could be sectioned or arrested, even though they know that they would never act on their unsavoury thoughts because they don’t want to hurt anyone.

I think that we need to create a system where people can safely get help and safely go about their lives, because otherwise the choice that you’re presenting them with is “Keep quiet about it and hope the system changes”, “Go to prison/die”, or “Maybe go to prison/die”, and I think self-preservation is going to make the first option seem the most appealing.

They are people with minds and self-control, and I do think that they are as capable as you or I of not harming anybody - they know that, even if we as outsiders don’t, so they’re weighing up the options in a completely different context to us. Ultimately, they’re the ones who choose whether they tell anybody, because we can’t read their minds - we can’t force them to reach out, we have to create a system where they can safely reach out.

Remember, many offenders, and according to research the majority of offenders, aren’t even pedophiles - anybody has the potential inside of them to do awful things, and there are many risk factors that can lead to it, and the best way to combat it is to address those risk factors and help sufferers.

Locking people away isn’t currently working, and we aren’t capable of using telepathy to seek out anyone with risk factors and contain them… and if we did that it would be cruel, because we’d be harming those who have not harmed. A risk factor isn’t a “they will”, it’s a risk factor, but there are other factors and self-control that can prevent someone from ever enacting that risk Harming the innocent isn’t “playing it safe” in my opinion, it’s a dangerous precedent and cruelty that will be further abused.

“Those who offend and harm children need to be locked up to keep children safe”

Again, I support rehabilitation, and I believe that our current prison system is ineffective at preventing re-offending and at reducing suffering, as well as the fact that it is often radicalizing people, worsening people, or enacting vengeance and suffering upon people - including the falsely accused and including people who could be rehabilitated.

You have such amazing reading comprehension skills. You know that?

I’m not defending pedophiles. I’m saying they should be kept away from children and if they refuse then they should be locked up.

Personally, I disagree with the sex offender registry altogether (for a number of reasons, but I won’t go on that tangent here). It’s just a means for vigilantes to prey on people - including people who were wrongly accused, or just put on there for public urination, etc. So I definitely disagree with Flare’s comment that people who haven’t done anything should have to register as sex offenders and put themselves at risk like that.

You guys know that I support rehabilitation instead of the prisons we have now, and I only support lifelong imprisonment in cases of repeated serious offenders (eg serial killers) who are also resistant to treatment - and in those cases I think prisons should not be for profit and should simply be a place for those people to live safely and comfortably and away from the general populace. I most certainly do not support prison for somebody who hasn’t committed an offense, so again, I disagree with what Flare said on that post.

“Guess what. There isn’t a single person who has ever walked the earth that hasn’t had a desire to do something evil. It’s a part of human nature. We should support and try to correct each other instead of jumping right to “let’s murder somebody because they guiltlessly have twisted sexual fantasies.””

This person was closer to how I feel about it. We all think awful things from time to time - maybe not that bad, maybe worse, but we all have thought about doing something that would hurt somebody else - and very few people actually go on to murder, rape, torture, etc.

If somebody doesn’t hurt anybody, then the task at hand is to help them maintain that state; if somebody does hurt somebody, then the task at hand is to help them become better and not do that again; vengeance is just adding pain to an already painful situation, and prison how it is just produces radicals and re-offenders anyway.

Yes, I agree with preventative measures - like having access to therapy, like having a good support network, like being self-aware and taking responsibility. But “stay away from kids” isn’t possible (there isn’t some kidless village 1,000 miles from civilization that accepts all refugees from our disgusting kid-filled world), nor will it actually prevent actual offenders - people need the internal strength and certainty and so on to genuinely control themselves, because no matter where you live or where you work, you can still drive and access the internet.

Plus ultimately, if any attempt to get help and improve their fortitude is met with sex offender registries, vigilantes, and potentially prison, when they’ve committed absolutely no offense or harm, then they’re going to keep quiet and suffer in silence without help - it’s just going to stop people coming forward, stop people getting help, and hinder prevention efforts.

“ARE YOU FUCK WITS STILL DEFENDING PEDOPHIES?”

I mean, officially we’d dropped the topic. I don’t know why Flare brought it up.

But if locking up people who refuse to flee their house when they’ve nowhere else to go just because kids move in next door, or refuse to drop out of school because they as a teen discover that they have attractions to substantially younger people, or refuse to have an abortion when they’re pro-life and a condom ripped, or whatever - when they haven’t committed an offense and they haven’t harmed anyone - is “defending” those people, then I really don’t wanna know what anon’s idea of attacking is.

“GOD, I WISH YOU GUYS WOULD JUST SWALLOW SOME TAPEWORMS,”

I heard that’s good for weight-loss?

“YOU FUCKING PEDO LOVERS AND DDLG/CGL SUPPORTERS SHOULD GET SENT OUT BACK AND GASSED”

Nobody should be gassed. Advocating for murder isn’t a good look, anon. Especially when your methodology is a throwback to one of the darkest periods in human history. It’s not intimidating, because I know that you can’t act on it - it’s just pathetic and ugly. And frankly, anon, if measures were put in place to start killing people for their unsavoury thoughts, this one would land you on the guillotine with the rest of us.

I find it kind of disappointing though that Flare went for the “I’m not defending them” retort, rather than “I don’t deserve to die for my opinions”.

Also CGL and DDLG are kinks, they are not pedophilia, they are adults engaging in a consensual relationship. Any argument against CGL and DDLG boils down to the equivalent of “Kids wear t-shirts, and the woman you like is wearing a t-shirt, therefore you’re a pedophile.” and you’re fucking stupid for not only lumping it in with pedophilia, but for wishing death upon people who merely defend the right of adults to engage in consensual sex with other adults.

“LIKE THE NAZIS YOU ARE”

You… just advocated… for gassing people… and you’re calling other people Nazis? Well, I’m not a Nazi, and I don’t think the Nazis agreed at all with my stances on capital punishment - I’m pretty sure you and they had a more similar stance on murder and how to go about murdering.