Instigator / Pro
0
1494
rating
3
debates
50.0%
won
Topic
#3520

Is Child Sexual Abuse Harmful by Itself? V2

Status
Finished

The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.

Winner & statistics
Better arguments
0
0
Better sources
0
0
Better legibility
0
0
Better conduct
0
0

After not so many votes...

It's a tie!
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Standard
Number of rounds
5
Time for argument
Two days
Max argument characters
30,000
Voting period
Two weeks
Point system
Multiple criterions
Voting system
Open
Contender / Con
0
1890
rating
98
debates
93.37%
won
Description

Pro argues that the vast majority of the harm that is correlated with kids having sex with adults stems from the stigma against it and failing to control for other confounding variables.

Con argues against this view.

DEFINITIONS:
Child sexual abuse: A person that is under 18 years old having sex (that they chose to have) with someone that is five or more years older than them.

Round 1
Pro
#1
I will forfeit this round as con already seems to be familiar with my starting argument that I put forth in V1 of this debate.
Con
#2
Resolved: Is Child Sexual Abuse Harmful by Itself?

Overview 
  • Pro is arguing that the sexual abuse of children is not harmful in any capacity. For me, as the contender, to win this debate, I must simply exhibit that it is harmful. 
  • I have no particular idea as to why pro is trying to direct our attention to their argument in another debate. This should obviously be ignored. Evidently, as pro has not made a constructive case, con will simply resolve this round as an extension of our opening parameters. 

Definitions 
  • Analyzing the sole definition in the description, pro has given us a definition of child sexual abuse that seems to be incorrect (mostly because abuse doesn't tend to be a choice). I suggest rather than using fake and/or made up definitions we use real ones. 
  • Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) labels it as: Child sexual abuse is a form of child abuse that includes sexual activity with a minor.
  • Wikipedia defines it as: a form of child abuse in which an adult or older adolescent uses a child for sexual stimulation. 
  • Either one of them should suffice, but the goal here is simply to establish one that is not fundamentally incoherent. In addition:
  • Harmful: causing or likely to cause harm.
  • Harm: physical or mental damage or injury : something that causes someone or something to be hurt, broken, made less valuable or successful, etc.
  • injury, damage, or problems caused by something that you do

Burden of proof 
  • The Burden is somewhat shared, however pro bears the larger burden in proving that child's sexual abuse isn't harmful. 

Round 2
Pro
#3
Semantics
I'm not going to waste time arguing about semantics. If you don't want to argue about child sexual abuse as I defined it than you should not have agreed to this debate.

The Burden of Proof (Somewhat) lies With You
If you are familiar with philosophy then you have probably heard something like "the burden of proof lies with someone who is making a claim, and is not upon anyone else to disprove. The inability, or disinclination, to disprove a claim does not render that claim valid, nor give it any credence whatsoever." - https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/burden-of-proof. This burden of proof lies with the person who is making the claim about something existing in the world. It is the person who makes the claim about something existing in the world to prove that the claim that they are making about something existing in the world is true. You are saying that something is existing in the world. You are saying that adult-child sex is harmful by itself. I am not saying that something is existing in the world. I am saying that something is not existing in the world. I am saying that child-adult sex is not harmful by itself. Granted, there is more to my argumentation than that and for those other parts of my argumentation the burden of proof lies of me rather than you. That other argumentation is that the stigma, the betrayal that results from the stigma, and the other confounding variables causes harm. For that argumentation the burden of proof lies on me. I have to "prove" that I am correct about those claims about things existing in the world. However, for that one part of my argumentation, for the part of my argumentation where I say that child-adult sex is not harmful by itself, the burden of proof lies with you. You have to show that adult-child sex is harmful by itself because it is a claim about something existing (rather than not existing) in the world.


There are Many Societies Where Children Have/Had sex With Adults and it Seems to not Harm the Children. Therefore Child-Adult sex is Likely not Harmful by Itself
[I'm not going to assume that you know what a confounding variable is so I'll give you an example of confounding variables. Let's say that you're conducting a study to see if ice-cream somehow causes people to get more sunburns. You find out that the more ice-cream people eat in any given day the more sunburns they get so you conclude that ice-cream consumption does cause sunburns. However, ice-cream does not cause sunburns. What did you, the conductor of this study, do wrong? Why did you reach the false conclusion that ice-cream causes sunburns? At least some of the confounding variables are that people like to eat ice-cream on hot sunny days and people like to go outside and have fun on sunny days more than cloudy days and when they do so they are more likely to drive/walk/bike/travel past ice-cream shops that sell ice-cream and then think about the possibility of getting ice-cream become enticed by the ice-cream and decide to buy some. People would be less likely to think about the possibility of getting ice-cream and be enticed by it if they did not decide to go outside because it was a sunny day because going outside greatly increases their chances of seeing an ice-cream shop. You reached the false conclusion that ice-cream causes sunburns because you did not control for these (and maybe other) confounding variables. The confounding variables are what caused people to become sunburned. Peoples ice-cream consumption did not cause them to be sunburned. If you do not control for one single confounding variable then you might reach the false conclusion that ice-cream eating causes sunburns.]

[Here is another example of confounding variables.] "You find that babies born to mothers who smoked during their pregnancies weigh significantly less than those born to non-smoking mothers. However, if you do not account for the fact that smokers are more likely to engage in other unhealthy behaviors, such as drinking or eating less healthy foods, then you might overestimate the relationship between smoking and low birth weight. [The confounding variables are the unhealthy behaviors (such as drinking and eating less healthy foods) that smokers are more likely to engage in than non-smokers.]" - https://www.scribbr.com/methodology/confounding-variables/.

[Now let's get back to talking about what causes the harm to children who have sex with adults. Here is an important question: Is the harm caused by the children having sex with adults itself or is their confounding variable(s) that are causing the children to appear to be harmed by the sex when they are actually harmed by the confounding variable(s)? Here are a few possible confounding variables that could be causing children who have sex with adults to be harmed more than the general population: Stigmatization, shaming, the police getting involved, societies reaction to the adult-child sex, ect. All of these confounding variables could cause children who have had adult-child sex to experience harm that is not a result of the adult-child sex but is a result of the confounding variables, the factors that are tied to adult-child sex in our society.]

[Humans are all pretty much the same. Therefore if adult-child sex is openly practiced in some societies and if it seems to not harm the children who participate in the it in those societies then adult child sex must not inherently harm children throughout the whole world who participate in adult-child sex. If adult-child sex is openly practiced in some societies and if it seems to not harm the children who participate in the it in those societies then if children appear to be harmed by adult-child sex in other societies (ex The United States) there must be some confounding variable(s) that are causing children to appear to be harmed by adult-child sex even though they are not inherently harmed by it. If the confounding variables like let's say stigmatization ("it's terrible that that happened to you, I would be traumatized for life, ect"), guilt, and shame associated with adult-child sex were eliminated then adult-child sex would not cause children to be harmed. All in all this is why I will quote and write in my own words that there are many past and present societies where humans have adult-child sex, it is socially accepted, and it seems that the children are not harmed from it.]

[There are an absolutely mountainous amount of accounts of adult-child sexual relationships between both humans and monkeys and other animals that I could not include because of the character limit. However, I can provide links to that information. The following five links show that minor-adult sexual relationships happened and were accepted throughout many cultures between humans, monkeys, and other animals. To my knowledge there was no visible harm resulting from it. It seemed to be accepted and seen as just another form of sex in many cultures:
Humans:

These links lead to concise historical accounts. I don't feel the need to modify the writing in them because they are concise and to the point and I only have room for 30k characters.

Evidence that Confounding Variables are the Cause of the Harm to Children who Have had sex With Adults
<--> Coffey, P., Leitenberg, H., Henning, K., Turner, T., & Bennett, R. T. (1996). "Mediators of the long-term impact of child sexual abuse: Perceived stigma, betrayal, powerlessness, and self-blame," Child Abuse & Neglect, 20(5), pp.447-455
"Regression analyses entering only the level of sexual activity to predict the mediator variables found that level of sexual activity was related to stigma [...] The level of sexual activity was also a direct predictor o1 the GSI when entered into a regression as the sole predictor [...] However, when level of sexual activity and the mediator variables were used in combination to predict GSI, this analysis yielded an X2 of .33, F(5,168) = 16.71, p < .0000 and the only predictors that accounted for unique variance in the GSI were two of the mediators. They were stigma (B = .36), F = 17.04, p < .001 and self-blame (B = .25), F = 11.99, p < .0007. The level of sexual activity was no longer a significant predictor of the GSI score when the mediators were entered into the equation. The results of this path analysis therefore indicate that the only mediational paths in predicting adjustment on the GSI were for level of sexual activity via stigma and self-blame. [...] Because the path analysis tests a particular mediation model it is also fair to say that these results support the hypothesis that stigma and self-blame may underlie the long-term negative impact of a child sexual abuse experience. [...] Clearly feelings of self-blame and stigma regarding child sexual abuse can linger long into adulthood. This sense of feeling ashamed, tainted, and blameworthy regarding the abuse may impact adjustment by affecting the survivor's core beliefs about their worth as a person. Struggling with these feelings may result in heightened levels of psychological distress. These findings further suggest that feelings of both stigma and serf-blame in adulthood are particularly affected by the level of sexual activity involved in the abusive experience. It may be that higher levels of sexual activity result in an increased sense of being "damaged goods" and tainted due to a greater sense of personal and societal violation. Certainly society considers intercourse to be the most taboo form of sexual contact with children."

<--> Childhood and adolescent sexual abuse of community women: mediated effects on psychological distress and social relationships: Link: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15612845/ DOI: https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-006x.72.6.980
"Possible mediators of sexual abuse severity were tested on the basis of D. Finkelhor and A. Browne's (1985) traumagenic dynamics model . . . . Severity was level of force, number of perpetrators, relationship to perpetrator, and age at first assault. As expected, structural equation modeling showed powerlessness, and stigmatization largely mediated the effects of sexual abuse severity on women's psychological distress in adulthood. Powerlessness also mediated the effects of severity on maladaptive social relationships. The expected path from betrayal to relationships was nonsignificant. Overall, the results support extension of D. Finkelhor and A. Browne's model."

<--> McNally, Richard J., and Geraerts, Elke (2009). "A New Solution to the Recovered Memory Debate," Perspectives on Psychological Science, 4(2), 126-134.
"Only 2 of 27 subjects remembered the experience as terrifying, overwhelming, or traumatic. The other subjects remembered it as weird, confusing, or uncomfortable. Moreover, only 2 subjects understood the experience as sexual at the time it occurred. [...] However, after recalling their experience during adulthood, and viewing it through the eyes of an adult as sexual abuse, many subjects became highly distressed. In fact, 7 met symptomatic criteria for current PTSD, and all the participants believed that the abuse had multiple adverse effects on their lives. Retrospective reappraisal of the abuse as a trauma, after subjects recall it during adulthood, may render the memory pathogenic later in life."

--> Effects of "CSA" - ethnic factors (Q)
The harm of CSA varies significantly between ethnic groups, presumably due to cultural differences. This is the closest substitute to comparisons between societies for which data is available.

<--> Roosa, Mark W., Reinholtz, Cindy, and Angelini Patti Jo (1999). "The relation of child sexual abuse and depression in young women: comparisons across four ethnic groups," Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 25:65-76.
"This study has shown that severity of CSA was a significant predictor of depression scores among young non-Hispanic white and Mexican American women after controlling for background factors. [...] CSA was not a significant predictor of depressive symptoms for African American or Native American women."

[Why would the negative effects that are correlated with CSA differ so much between ethnic groups? If ethnic groups are truly almost identical to all other ethnic groups in terms of intelligence, mental traits, physical traits, ect then the children of different ethnic groups would not experience more harm that is inherently a result of adult-child sex compared to other ethnic groups experiencing harm that is inherently a result of adult-child sex. Therefore this study suggests that children are not inherently harmed by having sex with adults. However, the children in some certain ethnic groups who have/had sex with adults experience more harm as a result of child-adult sex compared to the children in other certain ethnic groups who have/had sex with adults. Therefore there must be a confounding variable that is causing children of some certain ethnic groups who have/had sex with adults to be more harmed/less well off than other children of other certain ethnic groups. So, what is this confounding variable? By answering this question we can have a possible explanation for the results of this study and from that the study will be more likely to be legitimate from our perspective. The confounding variable that is harming some children who belong to a certain ethnic group more than other children who belong to a different certain ethnic group could be that differing levels of stigma around CSA adopted by different ethnic groups. Perhaps the more stigma against adult-child sex an ethnic group has the more that the children who have sex with adults who are a part of that ethnic group tend to suffer.]

<--> The Trauma Myth: The Truth About the Sexual Abuse of Children
Wylted said: "I am watching interviews with the writer of the "Trauma Myth" and she thinks that child sexual abuse is very harmful. If I limited my response to Susan Clancy quotes it would be enough to win this debate. She is concerned about the myths of how sexual abuse effects victims prevents victims from being recognized and coming forward."

My response: What Clancy thinks about how child sexual abuse is is more nuanced than that. You're not wrong that she says that she thinks that child sexual abuse is very harmful. However, she does not necessarily say and/or imply that she thinks that child sexual abuse is harmful by itself. When she says that it is very harmful she might mean that it is harmful in our current society because of confounding variables that are tied to sexual abuse in the current state of our society. She also could be lying and intentionally implying that sexual abuse is harmful by itself to avoid irreparable damage to her career because the victims from her sample tell a different story. I'll use Clancy's own verbatim words from her book called The Trauma Myth to make this argument:
"In my study—no differently from other research— the exact amount of time it took for victims to reconceptualize what had happened to them varied. It depended on the individual victims, on how old they were when abused, what educational and life experi- ences had taught them about sex, and what kinds of cues had triggered their thinking about what had hap- pened and recognizing it as abuse. Victims described the point of realization in different ways: “A light went on.” “It was like, aha!” “I said, ‘Oh my God.’” For more than a few it was “like a bomb went off. . . . Holy shit! I was abused!” For many, the realization was a “long, drawn-out process” that slowly built up to a new per- ception of the abuse. One thing did not vary: only at this point—when victims understood the abuse as such, once they had reconceptualized these formerly ambiguous and confusing events—did the experience become psychologically traumatic and begin to exert its negative effects. . . . It is the retrospective interpretation of the event that mediates subsequent impact . . . . there is almost always a period in which the victim reports a lack of awareness that they were abused and then subsequently reconceptualizes the experience . . . ."

"As I discussed at length in chapter 2, according to victims, they did not experience the abuse as awful when it happened because most simply did not understand clearly the meaning or significance of the sexual behaviors they were engaging in. That being said, at some point later on in life, they do. Over time, the “cloak of innocence lifted,” as one victim described it. Victims reconceptualized the formerly “confusing and weird experiences” and understood them for what they were—sexual in nature and clearly wrong. Only at this point—when the sexual abuse is fully apprehended— does it begin to damage victims. . . ."
In summary, the CSA victims from her sample (or at least the vast majority of the CSA victims from her sample) said that they were not mentally or physically harmed by sexual abuse at the moment when it was happening to them but after (and often long after) the sexual abuse happened and they reconceptualized the sexual abuse and that lead to the betrayal and feeling not cared for and other mental harms. Keep in mind that this is the victims themselves saying this. It is not anyone's opinion.

Clancy and I (and the CSA victims in her sample) agree that the reconceptualization of the sexual abuse is what causes the harm to children who have been sexually abused. However, in The Trauma Myth Clancy has never directly said what she thinks causes the reconceptualization. Though according to a verbatim quote of hers she has possibly indirectly implied that the reconceptualization of the CSA (which is what harms victims of CSA) is caused by culture (I'm not going to attempt to find that quote). My belief, what my intuition strongly tells me, and what makes since based on evolution is that the reconceptualization of the child-adult sex that causes the harm to victims of CSA is caused by societies strong and almost universal stigma against child-adult sex. This stigma manifests itself in the form of people saying that adult-child sex is harmful to children and so on. Why would humans evolved to be damaged by something only after the fact if that something caused the damage? Pain is a part of us that the human body evolved to make humans stop doing certain things. However these children "consented" and went along with the child-adult sex. If the child-adult sex caused children pain then wouldn't that pain be caused right when its happening? How else would pain result from adult-child sex that would make sense from a perspective of natural selection?
Con
#4
Overview
  • My opponent cites (for essentially all their claims) a literal pedophile website. I am not joking or exaggerating; it openly states that they are a community for people sexually attracted to minors and show several sexually explicit images of children. This is disgusting. I will not link it but it is within my opponent's round one ("BoyWiki") and is also mentioned in the comments section. 
  • The debate art code of conduct states: "you may not post or link to pornography or other explicit adult sexual material."
  • This is not to be accepted as a valid source for our debate as it violates the code of conduct. All of my opponent's claims with this source should be dismissed. My opponent's account should be banned for this talk less of even having this debate.

Burden of Proof
If you are familiar with philosophy then you have probably heard something like "the burden of proof lies with someone who is making a claim and is not upon anyone else to disprove.
  • Pro is claiming that child sexual abuse is not harmful by itself and con is arguing against this. 
  • In the description, pro states "pro argues that the vast majority of the harm that is correlated with kids having sex with adults stems from the stigma against it and failing to control for other confounding variables," and that con simply "argues against this view." 
  • Looking at pro's own words the burden of proof is easy. Pro holds the larger burden of proof and con's burden is simply to argue against pro's view. It is essentially a shared burden where pro as the instigator holds a larges BOP. 
I am saying that something is not existing in the world.
  • So in the same way, if you claimed water does not exist in the world, you are burdened to prove this. 

Definitions
I'm not going to waste time arguing about semantics. If you don't want to argue about child sexual abuse as I defined it then you should not have agreed to this debate.
  • I don't see any rules that hinder the Kritik of definitions. 
  • According to the code of conduct, these tend to manifest themselves as good and productive practices. 
  • Now we are debating the sexual abuse of children. One of the reasons your definition is insufficient is the basis that children often do not choose to be abused. Choice in itself as I argue harm exists as is a continuum. There are degrees to informed choices stipulated by the subject's ability to rationally consent to actions, especially actions that impact their own body. Because of this, pro's definition doesn't even make coherent sense. I am arguing that it must be replaced because it is incoherent. 
  • I extend my previous proposed definitions:
      • Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) labels it as Child sexual abuse is a form of child abuse that includes sexual activity with a minor.
      • Wikipedia defines it as a form of child abuse in which an adult or older adolescent uses a child for sexual stimulation. 


The ontology of harm 
  • Harm as we have established is physical or mental damage or injury. 
  • I posit as anyone that harm exists as a continuum in the natural world. A continuum is a continuous sequence in which adjacent elements are not perceptibly different from each other, although the extremes are quite distinct. This means there are simply put, different degrees of harm. 
  • To further illustrate the continuum of harm: Biting your tongue is harmful by itself—it causes a painful experience and damage to an organ. But it isn't as harmful as stubbing your toe. Stubbing your toe is harmful, it causes horrendously negative physical sensations of pain. But it isn't as harmful as being, for example, stabbed with a knife. I illustrate this as harm to express that any level of damage or injury is harm in itself. 
  • My eagerness to accept the debate is now apparent. Nearly everything we do as humans is harmful by itself. I mean this, nearly everything. Pro, unfortunately, commits himself to argue that there is absolutely no harm from the action of sexual abuse of children. Nothing that would even fall within the continuum of harm.
  • I conclude: now that we understand what harm is and how it exists, we see pro's position as untenable and it becomes a daunting task for pro to uphold their side of the burden of proof. 

Constructive
Consent
  • Child sexual abuse is the involuntary imposition of the will of innocent children. Children have underdeveloped brains [5] and cannot be considered rational or even fully moral agents. I argue that children do not have the ability to give rational consent to actions that involve their sexual subjugation of them. 
  • This is intrinsically harmful to their perceptions. The damage is the illusion of choice, the facade of a cognitive ability to make intimate decisions about your body and psychology. This, while it on the surface seems more mundane, is a form of slavery. 
  • The inability to give proper consent is a form of psychological harm when taken advantage of in the same way that forcing a child into a simulation against their will is classified as such. 

Physical harms of sex
  • We have established a continuum-based existence of harm in the natural world.
      • p1. Any action that is physically painful is by itself harmful.
      • p2. Sex is often physically painful 
      • c. Sex is often harmful by itself 
  • Premise one is a truism. A painful experience causes not only psychological damage but physical damage while invoking negative and torturous physical sensations.
  • Premise two is also simply a fact: "3 out of 4 women have pain during intercourse at some time during their lives" [2]. This comes to a rate of about 75%. 
  • The conclusion is thus justified. 

Unwanted/unplanned Pregnancy
      • p1. An action that causes unwanted/unplanned pregnancy is by itself harmful.
      • p2. Child sexual abuse causes unwanted/unplanned pregnancy.
      • c. Child sexual abuse is by itself harmful.
  • Premise one of course is a truism. Pregnancy is an extremely taxing process that has evident and dramatic physical and emotional impacts [3]. It causes pain, mood changes, body changes, psychological impacts, etc. Pregnancy causes harm and most self evidently falls within our continuum.
  • Premise two is also a truism. 48% of pregnant adolescent children reported sexual abuse [1]. This is even more prolific in less developed countries. In Africa for example "children who undertook the research discovered that when girls became pregnant, it was often as a result of sexual abuse by an adult, including school teachers" [4]. 
  • The conclusions soundly and validly follow from both premises. I also will add that this argument applies to all pregnancies as well and not just unplanned instances of such. 

Rebuttal
The following five links show that minor-adult sexual relationships happened and were accepted throughout many cultures between humans, monkeys, and other animals. To my knowledge, there was no visible harm resulting from it. It seemed to be accepted and seen as just another form of sex in many cultures.
  • "To my knowledge" doesn't mean anything. 
  • Pro has shown examples of societies where child sexual abuse has been practiced but has not demonstrated that there was no harm resulting from it. We can essentially just discard this claim because "to my knowledge," is not acceptable evidence. 
  • Pro divides this section into humans and animals with assorted citations to each category. In humans, two of the links are links to old web archives and they don't even open. We can simply discard these sources. 
  • In fact, nearly all of my opponent's sources are simply links that don't work, and the ones that go straight to the aforementioned pedophile website that breaks the rules of this website and may not be used. 
  • Ultimately, none of my opponent's arguments refute my cases. All of my arguments refute pro's position because pro is arguing that no harm exists from the action itself. Absolutely no harm. I shall engage with subsequent and larger rebuttals in the next round.  

The Trauma Myth
  • Weirdly my opponent chose to respond to something the user Wylted said in the comments section of a different debate and here they go on a random tangent, but in essence, repeat what has already been stated, 

Sources
  1. https://www.guttmacher.org/
  2. https://www.acog.org/
  3. https://www.uow.edu.au/
  4. https://www.wvi.org/newsroom/
  5. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/

Round 3
Pro
#5
I was not aware of any "sexually explicit" images on boywiki until recently. The only "sexually explicit" image that I saw on boywiki was one with a boy with his shirt off (which didn't even seem to be sexualized as in they weren't posing sexually or whatever). If there is illegal imagery on there please let me know because I don't want to be browsing a website like that. I'll assume that you were reffering to the picture of the boy with his shirt off.

There was no "sexually explicit" material in the webpage in boywiki that I linked to. To see any of the "sexually explicit" material (which is just the boy with his shirt off from what I have seen) you have to go to the homepage of boywiki. So I surely did not link to "sexually explicit" material material (at least by no means directly).

Just because boywiki is a pedophile advocacy website does not mean that what the website repeats from valid sources is wrong. First of all you are assuming that either a) pedophiles decieve others to make them think that pedophilia is okay/pedophiles are evil (assumption) and therefore boywiki cannot be trusted (assumption) or b) boywiki is particularly motivated to convince people that pedophilia is okay (not an assumption) and therefore it cannot be trusted (an assumption). You're assumptions are not very coherent as they are just that: Assumptions, speculations, suspicions. You're assumptions surely could be true though.

However, if I was a staunch pedophilia advocate I could also say that whatever claims you make are false just because I assume that since your claims are from an anti-pedophilia website they are bogus just because my preconcieved views made me assume so. So your saying that the claims from the sort of pro-pedophile website (that's boywiki) are false is meaningless in a way. Hopefully that was clear.

Anyway, good thing that I don't have to worry about your assumptions being true or false because for the webpages on boywiki.com that I linked 99% of the text is derived from other sources that those webpages on boywiki link to. Additionally, 95% of the text from those webpages on boywiki is quotes from those sources that those wbepages on boywiki link to. Therefore for 95% of the claims made on that website it is particularly easy to verify them since one only needs to copy the quote from boywiki, go to the source that the quote is from (which is easy to find as the sources are right under or on top of the quoted text), press control F (on windows PC), and then paste the quote into the control F box to search for it in the source that boywiki cited. I have done this testing for 8-10 randomly picked quotes on the website and they were not modified in boywiki compared to the source that boywiki cited as stating those quotes.

As a general rule of thumb websites/information that is 95% supposedly verbatim quotes from their sources and make the sources easily accessible are very trustworthy in terms of those supposed verbatim quotes because if they were fabricating quotes it would be very easy for people to find this out as they made the quotes so easy to verify. One could also say that they wouldn't make empirical claims so easy to verify if they were misrepresenting their sources (but perhaps they were extremely foolish and not worried about this).


Now we are debating the sexual abuse of children. One of the reasons your definition is insufficient is the basis that children often do not choose to be abused. Choice in itself as I argue harm exists as is a continuum. There are degrees to informed choices stipulated by the subject's ability to rationally consent to actions, especially actions that impact their own body. Because of this, pro's definition doesn't even make coherent sense. I am arguing that it must be replaced because it is incoherent.

What is this obfuscation? Are you saying that kids can't consent so the defintion of CSA used in this debate should be changed? Are you saying that kids somtimes consent and sometimes don't consent so the definition of CSA in this debate should be changed?

We are debating about willing non-coerced sexual relationships between minors and adults. Nothing else. I am not changing the definition of CSA. That would change the entire debate. I don't want to change the entire debate.

"My eagerness to accept the debate is now apparent. Nearly everything we do as humans is harmful by itself. I mean this, nearly everything. Pro, unfortunately, commits himself to argue that there is absolutely no harm from the action of sexual abuse of children. Nothing that would even fall within the continuum of harm."

No. From the description of this debate: "Pro argues that the vast majority of the harm that is correlated with kids having sex with adults stems from the stigma against it and failing to control for other confounding variables."

"Vast majority" is vague. It could be anywhere from 70% to 95%. I define it as 75%. In fact the whole quote is vague.

"Child sexual abuse is the involuntary imposition of the will of innocent children. Children have underdeveloped brains [5] and cannot be considered rational or even fully moral agents. I argue that children do not have the ability to give rational consent to actions that involve their sexual subjugation of them."

If the children were not made less well off from the sex (or the lack of them being able to do something better with their time) then I don't care. That is how my morals work. I am a consequentialist. You won't convince me otherwise.

"This is intrinsically harmful to their perceptions. The damage is the illusion of choice, the facade of a cognitive ability to make intimate decisions about your body and psychology. This, while it on the surface seems more mundane, is a form of slavery."

Lmao. So by that logic everything that kids do is damaging to their phycology because the don't really make real choices and every choice that they make is a form of slavery. Omg lool. You're really making me want to break the rules about staying civil right now.

"The inability to give proper consent is a form of psychological harm when taken advantage of in the same way that forcing a child into a simulation against their will is classified as such."

So by this logic everytime an adult makes a decision for a kid the kid is being phycologically harmed. I can't...

"48% of pregnant adolescent children reported sexual abuse [1]."

This does not mean that they got pregnant from or because of the sexual abuse. They could have gotten pregnant more often than non-CSA victims because kids who are more promiscuous in general more often choose to have sex with adults. In other words they could have become pregnant because of having sex in general more and not necessarily because of the CSA.

""To my knowledge" doesn't mean anything."

I should have been more specific. I mean't that I had read through 100% of the boywiki links and I did not find anything that showed that the minor-adult sex was harmful. Those links contain many societies that accepted adult-minor sex. Same with GUS. Didn't find anything that shows that it was harmful to the kids in the different societies from what I've read from it. But I only read roughly 1/10th of it because it is an absolutely massive resource.

"Pro has shown examples of societies where child sexual abuse has been practiced but has not demonstrated that there was no harm resulting from it. We can essentially just discard this claim because "to my knowledge," is not acceptable evidence."

This is a valid point, as I am pretty sure that I mentioned. However, why would adult-minor and minor-minor sex continue to be permissible and practiced by kids in any society if it was harmful

"Pro divides this section into humans and animals with assorted citations to each category. In humans, two of the links are links to old web archives and they don't even open. We can simply discard these sources."

One of the links doesn't work but it doesn't matter as it is kind of a duplicate link (it's just a webarchive version of another link). The other link is not exactly broken. You just have to copy the *entire* link, then paste it, and then search it. Didn't notice that.

"In fact, nearly all of my opponent's sources are simply links that don't work."
This is blatantly not true.

"All of my arguments refute pro's position because pro is arguing that no harm exists from the action itself. Absolutely no harm."
Lol.
Con
#6
Overview
  • Pro admits that:
  1. They used a pedophile source. 
  2. The source has literal child pornography on it. 
  • Both extensively violate our code of conduct and thus, this source is discarded in its entirety from our debate. 

Burden of Proof
  • Tentatively dropped

The ontology of harm 
  • Dropped
  • We have established a continuum of human harm that stems as a baseline from the most minimal forms of bodily damage, pain, and injury, to the most excruciating forms of it. Harm exists in nearly everything humans do but to differing degrees. Minimal harm is still harm, and harm exists in a range of severity. 
No. From the description of this debate: "Pro argues that the vast majority of the harm that is correlated with kids having sex with adults stems from the stigma against it and failing to control for other confounding variables." 
  • Right, so pro must argue that in the vast majority of cases pro must argue that there is absolutely no harm associated with child sexual abuse. 
"Vast majority" is vague. It could be anywhere from 70% to 95%. I define it as 75%. In fact, the whole quote is vague.
  • This was not predefined. I define it as 95%.  

Consent
Lmao. So by that logic, everything that kids do is damaging to their phycology because they don't really make real choices and every choice that they make is a form of slavery. 
  • It would be an obvious hasty generalization to say "everything," but we can first try to extrapolate certain harms that can register on our previously established continuum so this point is understood. 
    1. Giving a child an unhealthy diet would harm them in the case where they can't consent. 
    2. Not teaching a child forms of hygiene such as brushing teeth would harm them. 
    3. As we continue to extrapolate harms that exist on different degrees of our continuum, forcing a child into sexual intimacy without their rational ability to agree to this is perceptional and psychological damage. Slavery is simply treating another human as property and this would be equivalent to making them a sex slave. This means 100% of child sexual abuse is harmful. 

Physical harms of sex
  • All premises dropped. Extend.
  • I already showcased in round one that 75% of women experience pain from sexual activity. Other sources label it as very common. I simply argue that the majority if not all of sexual activity is harmful in some way that would register on the continuum of human harm. This itself disproves the resolution. 
  • In addition, I argue: 
        • p1. Having sex before your body develops is painful/harmful
        • p2. Children have underdeveloped bodies 
        • C. Child sexual abuse is harmful 
  • Premise one is a truism. Engaging in such before-developed bodily is physically painful. The rest follows conclusively. 
  • Ultimately, all sexual intercourse comes with a form of physical harm even if minimal. It still exists on our continuum. This makes the resolution fail inherently as it indicates close to 100% of child sexual abuse is harmful.

Unwanted/unplanned Pregnancy
  • Pro here implicitly concedes every premise of the argument and thus the argument itself. 
  • They only object to the number of children that may get pregnant.


Rebuttals
Re. ""To my knowledge" doesn't mean anything."

I should have been more specific. I mean't that I had read through 100% of the boywiki links and I did not find anything that showed that the minor-adult sex was harmful. 
  • This means absolutely nothing.
I only read roughly 1/10th of it...
  • An admission that my opponent has hardly read their own sources. Extend my argument. "To my knowledge," means nothing. "I think," means nothing in the rationally based preponderance of evidence expectation. Con somewhat concedes this point in its validity below:  
This is a valid point, as I am pretty sure that I mentioned. However, why would adult-minor and minor-minor sex continue to be permissible and practiced by kids in any society if it was harmful
  • Non-sequitur. The argument pro makes is that if something is harmful it would never continue ot be permissible. Slavery was harmful and it was permissible for thousands of years, same with human sacrifice and other forms of torture. 
  • Many harmful things continue to be permissible in different societies. This is a fully incoherent objection. 

Dead links
  • Starting from "humans" 4/9 of my opponent's sources are just dead links and unavailable sources.

Sources
  1. https://familydoctor.org/


Round 4
Pro
#7
First of all, you still have not responded to my conversation with wylted about the trauma myth that I posted in round two. That is by far my most coherent argument in terms of being in support of adult-child sex not being harmful by itself.

  1. The source has literal child pornography on it. 
No, I never said that. I sure have not seen any and I highly doubt it. All I saw was a boy with their shirt off on the home page (which was not sexualized). This is not child pornogaphy.

  • Both extensively violate our code of conduct and thus, this source is discarded in its entirety from our debate. 
Why does using a "pedophile source" violate the code of conduct? What specific quote(s) from the code of conduct can you give to support this claim. You have not provided proof that this violates the code of conduct. Also, using the code of conduct to try to censor your opponent is a slimy move.

"We have established a continuum of human harm that stems as a baseline from the most minimal forms of bodily damage, pain, and injury, to the most excruciating forms of it. Harm exists in nearly everything humans do but to differing degrees. Minimal harm is still harm, and harm exists in a range of severity. . . . I simply argue that the majority if not all of sexual activity is harmful in some way that would register on the continuum of human harm. This itself disproves the resolution."

If you want to make this argument, you can since technically, I didn't make the description specific enough to ward against someone making such a pointless argument (ex there is .0001% of harm when children have sex with adults so technically there is harm) for no good cause except for winning the debate. I am not going to try to argue against this argument because I find it to be a waste of time, I simply don't care about it, and this is basically not what I meant to debate about.

Readers, if you want to vote for him for making such a pointless argument then I can't stop you, but I would personally look at this from a perspective of whoever shows that minor-adult sex is not harmful 'within reason' wins the debate. That is how I interpret the description of this debate.

"This was not predefined. I define it as 95%."
Fair enough.

"Forcing a child into sexual intimacy without their rational ability to agree to this is perceptional and psychological damage."
I specifically excluded forced CSA in my definition of CSA. Also, you got a source for that?

"Engaging in [sex] before-developed bodily is physically painful."
I have read through cons entire source that they cited to "backup" this statement. There are only two quotes that could be (mistakenly) thought of as backing this view. Those two verbatim quotes follow:
  • "Having sex before your body develops can physically hurt.
  • Emotional pain. Having sex before you’re ready can make you feel bad about yourself. This also causes anxiety."

The authors of the article do not cite any sources to backup this claim. We cannot assume that the authors are not a) lying, b) assuming, c) hearing from someone else and assuming that it is true, d) writing because it confirms their anti-minor sex ideology, e) writing because they think that no one would question is because such a "fact" would explain some of the social resistance to child sexuality, f) misremembering. Also, I can imagine that the reviewer of the article would not want to say that there is no evidence of "having sex before your body develops can physically hurt" and the other quote because that comes off as creepy and it is very normalized to not question these type of things from my experience. But all of that isn't even necessary to say to show that what they said has any basis in reality whatsoever because they did not provide a primary source or even say that their view was obtained from observing the world/people (ex studies observe the world/people).

"Pro here implicitly concedes every premise of the argument and thus the argument itself. They only object to the number of children that may get pregnant."
You are misunderstanding what I argued or are misrepresenting it. I will write the argument here again:
[Novice ll said:] "48% of pregnant adolescent children reported sexual abuse [1]." This does not mean that they got pregnant from or because of the sexual abuse. They could have gotten pregnant more often than non-CSA victims because kids who are more promiscuous in general more often choose to have sex with adults. In other words they could have become pregnant because of having sex in general more and not necessarily because of the CSA.

[I said:] "I only read roughly 1/10th of it..."
[Novice ll responded:] "An admission that my opponent has hardly read their own sources."
You conveniently left out the whole quote that I said. The full quote is:
"I meant that I had read through 100% of the boywiki links and I did not find anything that showed that the minor-adult sex was harmful. Those links contain many societies that accepted adult-minor sex. Same with GUS. Didn't find anything that shows that it was harmful to the kids in the different societies from what I've read from it. But I only read roughly 1/10th of it because it is an absolutely massive resource."
but one could say that excluding the full quote is a manipulative tactic. And I will reiterate that it is an absolutely MASSIVE resource. That is why I have not read all of it.

"Non-sequitur. The argument pro makes is that if something is harmful it would never continue to be permissible. Slavery was harmful and it was permissible for thousands of years, same with human sacrifice and other forms of torture."
I actually agree. Didn't think that one through. However, if it was harming them then you would think that they would stop doing it to themselves.

Again, you still have not responded to my conversation with wylted about the trauma myth that I posted in round two. That is by far my most coherent argument in terms of being in support of adult-child sex not being harmful by itself.
Con
#8

Code of conduct
Why does using a "pedophile source" violate the code of conduct? What specific quote(s) from the code of conduct can you give to support this claim.
  • Already shown in the first round? 
  • p1. "The debate art code of conduct states: "you may not post or link to pornography or other explicit adult sexual material."
  • p2. BoyWiki as a pedophile source (with sexually explicit depictions of children) is explicit adult sexual material. 
  • c. BoyWiki violates the code of conduct
No, I never said that. I sure have not seen any and I highly doubt it. All I saw was a boy with their shirt off on the home page (which was not sexualized). This is not child pornography.
  • It shows a depiction of a naked child playing an instrument under the "boy lovers" (pedophiles) hyperlink and "boys" (innocent minors) hyperlink after that.

The ontology of harm
If you want to make this argument, you can since technically, I didn't make the description specific enough to ward against someone making such a pointless argument (ex there is .0001% of harm when children have sex with adults so technically there is harm) for no good cause except for winning the debate. I am not going to try to argue against this argument because I find it to be a waste of time, I simply don't care about it, and this is basically not what I meant to debate about.
  • Pro has conceded my argument on the ontology of harm saying they "simply don't care about it," and that they won't even try to argue against it. 
I would personally look at this from a perspective of whoever shows that minor-adult sex is not harmful 'within reason' 
  • All harm is within reason. I made a rationally structured argument on the continuum of harm concerning human senses, perceptions, and experiences. This is irrefutably how harm exists in the material world. So my argument is perfectly within reason frankly, it is the most reasonable assessment of the ontological nature of harm.

Vast majority
"This was not predefined. I define it as 95%."
Fair enough.
  • Pro agrees, thus we have set the baseline for the "vast majority," at 95%. Pro must argue that 95% of child sexual abuse isn't harmful. I only need to show that over 5% is harmful and as I have already shown that 100% of it is harmful, I have already won this debate. 

Consent
I specifically excluded forced CSA in my definition of CSA. Also, you got a source for that?
  • My argument was that the imposition of such actions upon an individual who cannot rationally consent is a form of force or coercion. 
  • Also, what do you require a source for? I am arguing that this is damage to the child's perceptions because it stipulates the involuntary imposition of the will of innocent children, (already said in round one), especially in actions that relate to their intimacy and the violation of their body. Have you even rejected any aspect or premise of my argument thus far? (The answer is no)
  • Regardless, this shows that 100% of child sexual abuse is harmful. 

Physical harms
The authors of the article do not cite any sources to back up this claim.
  • Um, what? The website is the source. It is literally run by the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) and the information was reviewed by a medical doctor (Deepak S. Patel, MD, FAAFP, FACSM- viewable on the source), so this is clearly not only valid but an extremely credible source for this debate. 
    • Extend my argument on physical development. 
  • You also dropped my previous point that showed 75% of women report experiencing pain from sex as well as the feeling being very common
  • In addition, sex has side effects like discomfort, exhaustion, tensed muscles, and cramps, that can be somewhat temporal or lasting [1]. 
  • I will also add that "STIs are extremely common, with roughly 1 in 5 people in the U.S. having a sexually transmitted infection at some point during the year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)" [4]. It is a truism that such diseases are harmful. Upon all the harm I have given around 20% of people will contract such diseases through sexual contact. 
  • All these arguments show that in some way, the major overwhelming majority if not all sexual activity is harmful.

Pregnancy
You are misunderstanding what I argued or are misrepresenting it. I will write the argument here again...
  • Right...so you are conceding that my argument, as in, the two premises and its conclusion are both valid and sound. 
  • You are only objecting to the number of children who actually get pregnant from child sexual abuse, correct? You are not objecting to the premises and conclusion. I am only saying you conceded the argument, which is true. 
  • You also dropped my point on less developed countries: This is even more prolific in less developed countries. In Africa for example "children who undertook the research discovered that when girls became pregnant, it was often as a result of sexual abuse by an adult, including school teachers" [4 round 2]. 
  • I already showed that 48% of pregnant adolescent children reported sexual abuse [1 round 1]. This may not mean the child sexual abuse caused the pregnancy but it certainly gives us a figure of the impact abuse has on pregnancy. 
  • In addition, for every report of child sexual abuse, 2 more go unreported" [2], meaning that the figure for pregnancy is a lot higher and more unprecedented than we could imagine. Combine that with extreme rates I have shown in less developed countries as well.

Dead Links
  • Dropped. Extend that half of my opponent's links are dead.

Rebuttal 
"you still have not responded to X, Y and Z"
  • Well, first of all, you are using a pedophile source which is against the code of conduct, secondly literally half of your links are dead, thirdly a lot of your case is irrelevant because we are debating whether the majority of child sexual abuse is harmful at all. 
  • I don't need to respond to 100% of what you say. My arguments show that close to 100% of child sexual abuse is harmful so I have already won the debate with my contentions. Realistically, you need to refute my arguments. 

The cultural practice of harm
I actually agree. Didn't think that one through.

Round 5
Pro
#9
Again, first of all, con has not responded to my conversation with wylted about The Trauma Myth (book). This argues that, based on what the CSA victims in the authors sample say, CSA is not harmful by itself and it is the reconceptualization of the CSA that causes victims to be harmed rather than the CSA itself. This reconceptualization of the CSA as a bad thing is the result of the extreme stigma against CSA throughout the world. Therefore, the stigma combined with the CSA harms victims but the CSA by itself (without the stigma against the CSA) does not harm victims. This argument is intended to be my main argument bar none and con has not responded to it. This argument was introduced in round two so con had all of the time in the world to respond to it but instead he has attempted to dodge/ignore it this entire time.

Pro agrees, thus we have set the baseline for the "vast majority," at 95%. Pro must argue that 95% of child sexual abuse isn't harmful. I only need to show that over 5% is harmful and as I have already shown that 100% of it is harmful, I have already won this debate. 
That is not what I meant. I stand by my vast majority means 75% but you can think it means 95%.

My argument was that the imposition of such actions upon an individual who cannot rationally consent is a form of force or coercion.
First of all, the notion that kids cannot rationally consent is a complete assumption. However, for the sake of argument let's say that this is true. Now by that logic kids cannot rationally consent to anything. Everything a kid does is now coercion (or "slavery" as you said earlier). So by that logic everything a kid does is wrong/harmful to themselves. Clearly, cons argument is absurd. Additionally, I will present studies below that bring serious doubt to cons assumption that kids cannot rationally consent (that con has not provided any evidence to back up). I will provide evidence to support the notion that kids can rationally consent whereas con has provided no evidence whatsoever that supports the assumption that kids cannot rationally consent. Here it is:

  • Epstein, Robert (2010). "Adultness," Teen 2.0, 148-157."After reviewing the relevant scientific literature, interviewing many adults, and consulting with three other psychologists and two psychiatrists with expertise in adult development issues, we concluded that there are fourteen different skill-sets or "competencies" [love, sex, leadership, problem solving, physical abilities, verbal and math, interpersonal skills, responsibility, managing high-risk behaviors, work, education, personal care, self-management, and citizenship] that distinguish adults from non-adults. [...] For three of the competencies--love, leadership and problem solving--we did find statistically significant differences between the mean scores of teens and adults, with adults outscoring the teens. But the absolute differences were small. [...] On two other scales--work and self-management--the differences between the adult scores and teen scores were marginally significant (at the .05 level), again in the adults' favor, but the absolute differences were less than 4 percent. On the other nine scales, we found no significant differences at all between the adult and teen scores. [...] fifty five of the adults in our sample were college graduates--more than double the rate of college graduates in the United States."
  • Epstein, Robert (2007). "The Myth of the Teen Brain," Scientific American Mind, April/May, 57-63."Visual acuity, for example, peaks around the time of puberty. "Incidental memory"—the kind of memory that occurs automatically, without any mnemonic effort, peaks at about age 12 and declines through life. [...] In the 1940s pioneering intelligence researchers J. C. Raven and David Wechsler, relying on radically different kinds of intelligence tests, each showed that raw scores on intelligence tests peak between ages 13 and 15 and decline after that throughout life. Although verbal expertise and some forms of judgment can remain strong throughout life, the extraordinary cognitive abilities of teens, and especially their ability to learn new things rapidly, is beyond question. And whereas brain size is not necessarily a good indication of processing ability, it is notable that recent scanning data collected by Eric Courchesne and his colleagues at the University of California, San Diego, show that brain volume peaks at about age 14."
  • Waber, D.P., et al. (2007). "The NIH MRI Study of Normal Brain Development: Performance of a Population Based Sample of Healthy Children Aged 6 to 18 Years on a Neuropsychological Battery," Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, 13(5), 729-746."Perhaps most intriguing are the age-related trajectories for raw score performance. For most tasks, proficiency improved dramatically between 6 and 10 years of age, leveling off during early adolescence (approximately 10 to 12 years of age), suggesting that for many neurocognitive tasks, children approach adult levels of performance at that age. For a few measures, scores increased linearly throughout the age range. These were tasks that assessed basic information processing, such as Coding, Digit Span, and Spatial Span. Still others were associated with a non-linear component during adolescence. Some showed a flattening of the curve followed by another period of acceleration, suggesting another spurt in mid-adolescence. Verbal learning actually reversed direction with performance declining in later adolescence."
  • Adler, N.E., & Matthews, K. (1994). "Why do some people get sick and some stay well?," Annual Review of Psychology, 45, 229-259."However, empirical tests show that adolescents are no less rational than adults. Applications of rational models to adolescent decision-making show that adolescents are consistent in their reasoning and behavior after the salient set of beliefs is assessed (Adler et al 1990). Quadrel et al (1993) demonstrated that adolescents are no more biased in their estimates of vulnerability to adverse health outcomes than are their parents."
  • Weithorn, L. A. & Campbell, S. B. (1982). "The competency of children and adolescents to make informed treatment decisions," Child Development, 53(6), 1589-1598."In general, minors aged fourteen were found to demonstrate a level of competence equivalent to that of adults. [...] The ages of eighteen or twenty-one as the "cutoffs" below which individuals are presumed to be incompetent to make determinations about their own welfare do not reflect the psychological capabilities of most adolescents."
  • Offer, D. (1987). "In defense of adolescents," Journal of the American Medical Association, 257, 3407-3408.Mike Males describes this study: "Northwestern University psychiatrist Daniel Offer, the nation’s leading researcher on adolescents, studied 30,000 teenagers and adults from the 1960s to the 1990s. He and his colleagues found 85% to 90% of teens held attitudes and risk perceptions similar to that of their parents, were not alienated, did think about the future, were coping well with their lives, and did not display psychological disturbances. "Decision making for adults is no different than decision making among teenagers,” Offer reported in 1987 in the Journal of the American Medical Association."
  • Offer, D., and Schonert Reichl, K.A. (1992). "Debunking the myths of adolescence: Findings from recent research," Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 31, 1003 1014."[T]he effects of pubertal hormones are neither potent nor pervasive (Brooks-Gunn and Reiter, 1990). [...] Adolescence does not occur in a vacuum and is significantly affected by the sociocultural context in which it occurs. A recent investigation by Enright et al. (1987) illustrates this point. This study was based on the careful reading of 89 articles in the Journal of Genetic Psychology for the past 100 years. The articles were rated for their conceptions about the nature of adolescence. Enright et al. demonstrated ideological bias in approaches to understanding adolescent psychology, specifically in relation to economic conditions. Specifically, in times of economic depression, theories emerged in the literature that portrayed adolescents as "immature, psychologically unstable, and in need of prolonged participation in the education system" (p. 553). In contrast, during wartime, the psychological competence of adolescents was accentuated. The authors point out, "The field of adolescent psychology is not free from the societal influences that impinge upon legislators, educators, and parents in shaping American adolescents" (p. 554)."
  • Quadrel, M. J., Fischhoff, B., & Davis, W. (1993). "Adolescent (in)vulnerability," American Psychologist, 48, 102-116."Three groups of subjects were asked to judge the probability that they and several target others (a friend, an acquaintance, a parent, a child) would experience various risks. Subjects were middle-class adults, their teenage children, and high-risk adolescents from treatment homes. All three groups saw themselves as facing somewhat less risk than the target others. However, this perception of relative invulnerability was no more pronounced for adolescents than for adults. Indeed, the parents were viewed as less vulnerable than their teenage children by both the adults and those teens. These results are consistent with others showing small differences in the cognitive decision-making processes of adolescents and adults. Underestimating teens' competence can mean misdiagnosing the sources of their risk behaviors, denying them deserved freedoms, and failing to provide needed assistance."
  • Haidt, J. (2001). "The emotional dog and its rational tail: A social intuitionist approach to moral judgment," Psychological Review, 108, 814-834."Turiel (1983) has shown that young children do not believe [that actions are wrong just because they are punished]. They say that harmful acts, such as hitting and pulling hair, are wrong whether they are punished or not. They even say that such acts would be wrong if adults ordered them to be done."
Additionally,  kids can undeniably give willingness (also known as simple consent) to sex with adults.

The trauma myth: The truth about the sexual abuse of children
"This is a book about child sexual abuse. It is based on interviews with adults, all of whom were victims of sexual abuse as children, who participated in research studies at Harvard University. . . . In their own words, they “participated,” “consented,” and “allowed it.” In fact, of those who sensed the behavior was wrong, only 5 percent tried to stop it—by saying no, running away, or telling a parent."

Also, what do you require a source for? I am arguing that this is damage to the child's perceptions because it stipulates the involuntary imposition of the will of innocent children, (already said in round one), especially in actions that relate to their intimacy and the violation of their body. Have you even rejected any aspect or premise of my argument thus far? (The answer is no)
You are making an assumption. You need empirical evidence to backup assumptions for them to amount to anything. Assumptions on their own, without empirical evidence to back them up whatsoever, mean absolutely nothing. This characterizes your assumption. Your assumptions mean nothing. Also, I have rejected just about every "argument" con has made thus far.


Um, what? The website is the source. It is literally run by the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) and the information was reviewed by a medical doctor (Deepak S. Patel, MD, FAAFP, FACSM- viewable on the source), so this is clearly not only valid but an extremely credible source for this debate.
I already argued against this earlier but I will extend this argument. I don't trust that information since the author does not link to a study or any source whatsoever to backup their claim. I am not going to blindly trust their claim. They don't even make any mention of how their claim was empirically ascertained. Additionally, from my experience people make all kinds of assumptions when it comes to child sexuality. I honestly would not be surprised if they simply assumed that that was true and wrote it down.

You also dropped my previous point that showed 75% of women report experiencing pain from sex as well as the feeling being very common.

Yes, I don't care for arguing against this. Maybe it is true. Maybe it is not. Also, when I said that I argue that "the vast majority of child sexual abuse is not harmful" in the description of this debate I meant that it is 'overall' not harmful. I did not mean that no harm can be experienced from it. In case you try to make this argument, if you were to say that since "75% of women report experiencing pain from sex as well as the feeling being very common" child-sexual abuse is harmful overall 75% of the time than you would also be arguing that adult-adult sex is harmful overall 75% of the time which is obviously false.

In addition, sex has side effects like discomfort, exhaustion, tensed muscles, and cramps, that can be somewhat temporal or lasting [1]. 

I will also add that "STIs are extremely common, with roughly 1 in 5 people in the U.S. having a sexually transmitted infection at some point during the year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)" [4]. It is a truism that such diseases are harmful. Upon all the harm I have given around 20% of people will contract such diseases through sexual contact. 

All these arguments show that in some way, the major overwhelming majority if not all sexual activity is harmful.
You are arguing against people having sex right now. You are also arguing against your version of my argument from the description of this debate. However, as I have said many times, I disagree with your interpretation of my argument and I don't intend to argue against all of sex. I intend to argue that child sexual abuse is not as bad as people think it is. I thought that that would be obvious but perhaps it is not obvious to you or perhaps you have decided to pretend misunderstand what this debate is supposed to be about and interpret it in your own way to more easily get your internet points.

You are only objecting to the number of children who actually get pregnant from child sexual abuse, correct? You are not objecting to the premises and conclusion. I am only saying you conceded the argument, which is true.

Of course there are some amount of people who get pregnant from CSA. However, for each sexual incident (in terms of both CSA and adult-adult sex) there is not necessarily more pregnancy from the CSA than from the adult-adult sex.  This is because a causal relationship between child sexual abuse and teen pregnancy has not been established because of the possible presence of confounding variables. These confounding variables could include 1) kids who have experienced CSA being more promiscuous as this could be why they have CSA in the first place, 2) perhaps kids who experience CSA live in more impoverished areas and factors of poverty (ex less healthy food, less fun, more neglect, less opportunities for a bright future, less good sex education about how early pregnancy is probably not a good idea for one) causes more teens to become pregnant. Additionally, in support of the former confounding variable, research has shown that kids who experience CSA are far more promiscuous than kids who do not experience CSA. This research is verbatim quoted from below.

First Sexual Intercourse in the Irish Study of Sexual Health and Relationships: Current Functioning in Relation to Age at Time of Experience and Partner Age
"Both boys under 16 with adults [who are 5 or more years older] and boys with peers [who are within 4 years of the boys age] had greater frequency of recent sex than adults with adults (Table 2)."

You also dropped my point on less developed countries: This is even more prolific in less developed countries. In Africa for example "children who undertook the research discovered that when girls became pregnant, it was often as a result of sexual abuse by an adult, including school teachers" [4 round 2].
Education, condoms, contraceptives, pills, maybe abortion.

Dropped. Extend that half of my opponent's links are dead.
The links that were dead are not important for making my points. If anyone finds a dead link that they feel is important just request an unbroken one and I will provide it.

Well, first of all, you are using a pedophile source which is against the code of conduct, secondly literally half of your links are dead, thirdly a lot of your case is irrelevant because we are debating whether the majority of child sexual abuse is harmful at all. 
"we are debating whether the majority of child sexual abuse is harmful at all."
That's not what I am debating nor intended to debate and I made that clear from the start of this debate etc.

Again, first of all, con has not responded to my conversation with wylted about The Trauma Myth (book). This argues that, based on what the CSA victims in the authors sample say, CSA is not harmful by itself and it is the reconceptualization of the CSA that causes victims to be harmed rather than the CSA itself. This reconceptualization of the CSA as a bad thing is the result of the extreme stigma against CSA throughout the world. Therefore, the stigma combined with the CSA harms victims but the CSA by itself (without the stigma against the CSA) does not harm victims. This argument is intended to be my main argument bar none and con has not responded to it. This argument was introduced in round two so con has had all of the time in the world to respond to it but instead he has attempted to dodge/ignore it this entire time. Here it is, for the third time, below.

Wylted said: "I am watching interviews with the writer of the "Trauma Myth" and she thinks that child sexual abuse is very harmful. If I limited my response to Susan Clancy quotes it would be enough to win this debate. She is concerned about the myths of how sexual abuse effects victims prevents victims from being recognized and coming forward."

My response: What Clancy thinks about how child sexual abuse is is more nuanced than that. You're not wrong that she says that she thinks that child sexual abuse is very harmful. However, she does not necessarily say and/or imply that she thinks that child sexual abuse is harmful by itself. When she says that it is very harmful she might mean that it is harmful in our current society because of confounding variables that are tied to sexual abuse in the current state of our society. She also could be lying and intentionally implying that sexual abuse is harmful by itself to avoid irreparable damage to her career because the victims from her sample tell a different story. I'll use Clancy's own verbatim words from her book called The Trauma Myth to make this argument:

"In my study—no differently from other research— the exact amount of time it took for victims to reconceptualize what had happened to them varied. It depended on the individual victims, on how old they were when abused, what educational and life experiences had taught them about sex, and what kinds of cues had triggered their thinking about what had hap- pened and recognizing it as abuse. Victims described the point of realization in different ways: “A light went on.” “It was like, aha!” “I said, ‘Oh my God.’” For more than a few it was “like a bomb went off. . . . Holy shit! I was abused!” For many, the realization was a “long, drawn-out process” that slowly built up to a new perception of the abuse. One thing did not vary: only at this point—when victims understood the abuse as such, once they had reconceptualized these formerly ambiguous and confusing events—did the experience become psychologically traumatic and begin to exert its negative effects. . . . It is the retrospective interpretation of the event that mediates subsequent impact . . . . there is almost always a period in which the victim reports a lack of awareness that they were abused and then subsequently reconceptualizes the experience . . . ."

"As I discussed at length in chapter 2, according to victims, they did not experience the abuse as awful when it happened because most simply did not understand clearly the meaning or significance of the sexual behaviors they were engaging in. That being said, at some point later on in life, they do. Over time, the “cloak of innocence lifted,” as one victim described it. Victims reconceptualized the formerly “confusing and weird experiences” and understood them for what they were—sexual in nature and clearly wrong. Only at this point—when the sexual abuse is fully apprehended— does it begin to damage victims. . . ."
In summary, the CSA victims from her sample (or at least the vast majority of the CSA victims from her sample) said that they were not mentally or physically harmed by sexual abuse at the moment when it was happening to them but after (and often long after) the sexual abuse happened and they reconceptualized the sexual abuse and that lead to the betrayal and feeling not cared for and other mental harms. Keep in mind that this is the victims themselves saying this. It is not anyone's opinion.

Clancy and I (and the CSA victims in her sample) agree that the reconceptualization of the sexual abuse is what causes the harm to children who have been sexually abused. However, in The Trauma Myth Clancy has never directly said what she thinks causes the reconceptualization. Though according to a verbatim quote of hers she has possibly indirectly implied that the reconceptualization of the CSA (which is what harms victims of CSA) is caused by culture (I'm not going to attempt to find that quote). My belief, what my intuition strongly tells me, and what makes since based on evolution is that the reconceptualization of the child-adult sex that causes the harm to victims of CSA is caused by societies strong and almost universal stigma against child-adult sex. This stigma manifests itself in the form of people saying that adult-child sex is harmful to children and so on. Why would humans evolved to be damaged by something only after the fact if that something caused the damage? Pain is a part of us that the human body evolved to make humans stop doing certain things. However these children "consented" and went along with the child-adult sex. If the child-adult sex caused children pain then wouldn't that pain be caused right when its happening? How else would pain result from adult-child sex that would make sense from a perspective of natural selection?

In addition, I will add the following verbatim quotes from The Trauma Myth (book) to the argument to make the argument more clear:

The Trauma Myth: The Truth About the Sexual Abuse of Children

"If you experience psychological distress after sexual abuse, then the sexual abuse must be the cause[, right?]. But it is not actually that simple. What, specifically, about the abuse has triggered the distress? Does it have to do with objective characteristics of the abuse (for example, how many times it happened or whether penetration was involved)? Does it have to do with subjective characteristics about the abuse (how painful, frightening, or shocking it was)? Perhaps it has less to do with the actual abuse and more to do with, say, the particular child (how old he or she was and how genetically predisposed to long-term psychological problems) or the environment. the abuse occurred in (one characterized by poverty, physical abuse, or neglect). Maybe it has to do with the cognitive or social consequences of the abuse (how the victim’s family or health professionals handled it or how the victim understood or conceptualized it later on in life). There are numerous ways to understand how and why sexual abuse damages victims. [In other words there are many different theories that claim to know why when a child has sex with an adult the child is harmed in the short term or in the long term.] For decades, however, the main focus has centered on one—the incident itself. . . .

Lucy Berliner and Jon Conte in their 1990 study noted that a majority of the children they interviewed reported not knowing initially that they were being sexually abused. Berliner and Conte quoted victims as saying such things as . . . . “I didn’t know there was any- thing wrong with it, because I didn’t know it was abuse until later. I thought he was showing me affection.”10

More recently, two cognitive psychologists, Michelle Epstein and Bette Bottoms, specifically hypothesized that due to the confusing and secretive nature of the abuse, many victims may fail to understand the meaning of the sexual acts committed (and subsequently forget them for periods), but then, at a later point, come to “relabel” the experiences as “traumatic.”11

In my study—no differently from other research— the exact amount of time it took for victims to reconceptualize what had happened to them varied. It depended on the individual victims, on how old they were when abused, what educational and life experiences had taught them about sex, and what kinds of cues had triggered their thinking about what had happened and recognizing it as abuse. Victims described the point of realization in different ways: “A light went on.” “It was like, aha!” “I said, ‘Oh my God.’” For more than a few it was “like a bomb went off. . . . Holy shit! I was abused!” For many, the realization was a “long, drawn-out process” that slowly built up to a new perception of the abuse. One thing did not vary: only at this point—when victims understood the abuse as such, once they had reconceptualized these formerly ambiguous and confusing events—did the experience become psychologically traumatic and begin to exert its negative effects. . . . It is the retrospective interpretation of the event that mediates subsequent impact . . . . there is almost always a period in which the victim reports a lack of awareness that they were abused and then subsequently reconceptualizes the experience . . . ."

Con
#10
Code of conduct
  • Effectively dropped. It has been proven that my opponent used a pedophile source that contains child pornography on it, something that undoubtedly violates the code of contract for this site. Predicated upon this:
      1. Anything pro states with this source is effectively discarded.
      2. I appeal to a sense of obligation to the site and the rules placed to guide the conduct of interactions within it. Posting websites with literal child pornography on them should by truism warrant a conduct violation. 

The vast majority
That is not what I meant. I stand by my vast majority means 75% but you can think it means 95%.
  • If you have not defined vast majority at this point of the debate, here you are essentially giving voters the discretion to use my estimate over yours. For a more objective source, it typically means 80 to 90% so 85% would be the average of both modes. 

The ontology of harm
  • Dropped/ Conceded: as my opponent stated "I am not going to try to argue against this argument."

Consent
You are making an assumption. 
  • I am not making an assumption, I made a rationally structured argument with premises and a conclusion as well as scholarly sources. To quote my argument: " I am arguing that this is damage to the child's perceptions because it stipulates the involuntary imposition of the will of innocent children, (already said in round one), especially in actions that relate to their intimacy and the violation of their body."
  • So I made an argument as to what stipulates the perceptional harm, that being, the involuntary imposition of will. You have not rejected a specific premise of my argument at all. You simply asked for a source, which again, is not necessary for my argument as I specifically outline what entails perceptional harm. 

However, for the sake of argument let's say that this is true. Now by that logic kids cannot rationally consent to anything. Everything a kid does is now coercion (or "slavery" as you said earlier). So by that logic everything a kid does is wrong/harmful to themselves.
  • This was already responded to previously, right? What is the sense in repeating the same thing? We can obviously find harms that arise from a child's interaction with others in their ability to consent such as an unhealthy diet under the guise of an irresponsible parent, but for the ontological assertion of slavery, we reserve this for impositions that violate the bodily autonomy of individuals or de facto treat them as property such as child sexual abuse. 

con has provided no evidence whatsoever that supports the assumption that kids cannot rationally consent.
  • False. I clearly provided a scholarly source from the National Library of Medicine for this claim written by psychologists and Ph.D. doctors, and I cited this specifically next to my claim in the first round. I politely ask voters to deduct or consider deducting conduct points for pro openly lying about my case. 

  • The ability of children to consent: Pro here brings up several new points in the final round to argue that children can rationally consent. Many of the sources are behind paywalls and are otherwise unaccessible such as #5. Without this, we can make no claims with respect to the sources. The issue with pro's case is that none of his sources analyze prefrontal development. As demonstrated
Although the overall size and gross organization of the brain is similar in adolescents and adults, dynamic changes in brain structure, function, and features of neuromodulatory systems are occurring throughout adolescence. Structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies have revealed developmentally normative reductions in the volume of gray matter across adolescence [1,2] that are thought to reflect experience-dependent pruning processes. Lagged structural development of the prefrontal cortex, particularly dorsolateral regions, has been linked to a number of functional outcomes during adolescence, including continued improvement in impulse control [3], working memory [4], and complex reasoning [5]. As such, late development of the prefrontal cortex could constrain components of decision-making that rely heavily on deliberation or integrating complex sources of information.

By contrast, certain properties of dopaminergic signaling exhibit adolescent-specific peaks. Structurally, there is a proliferation of D1 and D2 receptors in various targets within the mesolimbic dopamine system, which prune 50% or more from the transition of adolescence to adulthood [6] paired with a peaking tissue concentration of dopamine [7]. Corresponding studies in humans using functional MRI have demonstrated an adolescent-specific exaggeration of response to various forms of reward [8,9**] and stronger parametric tracking of expected value [10] in the ventral striatum, a key target of dopaminergic signaling.
  • Conclusively "Although adolescents appear to have full access to many of the cognitive foundations of decision-making, several aspects of decision-making such as intertemporal choice, prospective evaluation, and integration of positive and negative feedback are not yet tuned to typical adult levels" so children cannot consent.
  • Secondly, 34% of child sexual abuse occurs before the age of 12, much before the age pro's sources even dispute consent so we can conclusively say that even if we assume all pro's sources are correct my argument would prove that 34% of child sexual abuse is harmful and that in of itself is enough to win the debate.

Physical harms
if you were to say that since "75% of women report experiencing pain from sex as well as the feeling being very common" child-sexual abuse is harmful overall 75% of the time than you would also be arguing that adult-adult sex is harmful overall 75% of the time which is obviously false.
  • Absolutely. Adult sex is harmful to some degree in almost every case just like child sex. But in addition, remember all the side effects of sex I have shown and the risk of contradicting infections as well as the commonality of other pain which cumulatively indicate that all sex is physically harmful in some way.
You are arguing against people having sex right now.
  • Incorrect, I am arguing that all sex is ontologically harmful in some way. My argument does not stipulate any action upon people. This claim can be considered discarded. 
I intend to argue that child sexual abuse is not as bad as people think it is. 
Verdict: I believe I have won the debate on this point alone. Pro does not even object to this contention. I have shown that children who have underdeveloped bodies experience harm from sex, I have shown that sex comes with side effects like discomfort, exhaustion, tensed muscles, and cramps, that can be somewhat temporal or lasting. I have shown that pain from sex is very common for all people. On top of all of this, I showed that there is a significant risk of STDs from sex as well. This contention seeks to establish that all sex is harmful in some way by itself and refutes pro's case that child sexual abuse is not harmful by itself. 

Pregnancy
Of course there are some amount of people who get pregnant from CSA. However, for each sexual incident (in terms of both CSA and adult-adult sex) there is not necessarily more pregnancy from the CSA than from the adult-adult sex.  
  • No one is saying there is necessarily more pregnancy than adult sexual abuse but that sexual abuse results in child pregnancy frequently and therefore is harmful in and of itself. As cited, when accounting for less developed countries this is much more frequent and common. 

Other rebuttals
Dead Links
Pro: Dropped. Extend that half of my opponent's links are dead.

Con: The links that were dead are not important for making my points. If anyone finds a dead link that they feel is important just request an unbroken one and I will provide it.
  • It is not anyone's responsibility but your own to provide sources for your arguments. If you fail to do this it not only impacts your case but casts doubt upon the veracity and legitimacy of your arguments. 
  • Half of my opponent's construtive links are dead. This they do not even deny nor try to amend. Conclusively, that gets rid of half of your respective claims in addition to the discarded one that makes use of a source that violates the code of contract and contains sexually explicit depictions of children. 

The trauma myth
Again, first of all, con has not responded to my conversation with wylted about The Trauma Myth (book)
  • I have, just not directly. My arguments all respond to this contention in its entirety because I have shown that literally, all sex is physically harmful in some way and that children can't rationally consent thus stipulating the involuntary imposition of will upon them, etc. So my contentions entirely refute the notion that child sexual abuse isn't harmful if they already prove it is.