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Pedophile activism

Dear me! Why Pedophile activism is redirected here? Many pedophile activists don't endorse the age of consent reform and most of reform promoters don't sympathize with pedophiles. Pedophile activism has many more fundamental themes than to change some legal age limits. --ŠJů (talk) 09:37, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Very good question. All sorts of similar titles and other title related to pedophilia seem to redirect here, many redirected by user:Jack-A-Roe in around March/April last year. There are a tangled web of moves and redirects, that make finding discussions hard (look in what links here and then page histories to find content), but from what I have found there was no discussion anywhere about redirecting any of them to this title, and where there was discussion about deleting and merging some topics there was never any consensus or there was consensus against the move. None of this is helped by the apparent inability of some editors to see that a neutral article about people or movements that advocate paedophilia does not equal advocating paedophilia. I don't have time to investigate further now (and probably wont for several weeks), but it is definately worth looking into. As for now, I would not object to retargeting Pedophile activism to Pedophilia, at last in the short term. Thryduulf (talk) 11:52, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
There was discussion and clear consensus for the re-direct, on the talk page of the prior location of the article. Every one of the three editors who opposed the merge has since then been banned for disruptive editing on pedophilia-related topics. There was one opposing comment added a half year after the redirect by an IP editor. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 19:02, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
FYI... there was a problem with the talk page archives of the prior page location. I requested assistance and they have been repaired, per the note at the top of this page. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 08:41, 21 February 2010 (UTC)
I've reviewed the histories and considered this further . It turns out there already is a section in the Pedophilia article on pedophile activism, so it would be OK with me to redirect Pedophile activism to Pedophilia as Thryduulf suggested. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 19:56, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
In my view, the "pedophile activism" or related movements (as well as anti-pedophile activism) are very different themes from the pedophilia itself. And the notability is evident. As I can see, censorship and viewiness spree here firmly. --ŠJů (talk) 20:53, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
The problem is there are no sources for "Pro-pedophile activism" (where the page was located previously), or for "pedophile activism". There are a couple sources that mention the term "pedophile movement" in passing, but nothing substantial enough for an article. There are sources for a few of the pedophile advocacy groups that used to exist, as noted in this article. Some of those groups or individuals may have been notable enough to have separate articles (and some of them do), but to gather them together into one article and call it activism is original research because it's not verifiable. --Jack-A-Roe (talk) 23:39, 20 February 2010 (UTC)
I think it would be helpful to have a timeline of what happened when regarding all these articles with links to the current location of their talk pages, to make it easy to follow what has happened, when and why. This shouldn't be here, probably a subpage of the the Paedophilia Article Watch project would be the most sensible. I don't think I'll have to time do it myself though. Thryduulf (talk) 02:46, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

re connection between LGBT liberation and pedophile advocacy

An editor is wanting to add the following passage:

"and although pedophile organizations were originally part of the gay/lesbian coalition..."

I'd say this passage is open to interpretation, and I guess a couple of interpretations would be:

  1. Some pedophile organizations attached themselves to the early inchoate gay liberation movement, or tried to.
  2. The gay liberation movement from its inception included pedophile organizations as a considered policy.

The first is trivial if true, and the second is explosive if true. In my mind the second interpretation is implied or may be reasonably inferred, so this is explosive. For a claim of this nature -- essentially, that gay liberation and pedophile "liberation" are conjoined, or were -- we would need proof, AAA-level refs and lots of them. I would want to see material from (let's say) the New York Times or whomever, thoroughly investigated and fact-checked showing this connection between gay liberation and pedophilia to be incontrovertibly proven. And then some more refs of similar veracity.

The editor has instead provided as source for this material a monograph by a Harris Mirkin which is stated to have appeared in Vol. 37, No. 2 of "J.Homosex" (which I assume, without being certain, is the Journal of Homosexuality). This was hosted at the IPCE web site and this was rejected as IPCE is not a good source, but there is another copy hosted at a site called gilhardwick.com, here.

I haven't read through the monograph or vetted Harris Mirkin and don't intend to, having neither the time nor interest. However, I'm rejecting this edit because this is an explosive claim that would need a very high level of proof (similar to what would be needed for "Aliens have visited the Earth" let us say) rather than a single obscure monograph. Herostratus (talk) 18:16, 29 June 2011 (UTC)



WHY was my edit changed, those were factual statements:

ILGA DID have three pedophile activist member groups: NAMBLA, MARTIJN, US-based Project TRUTH, they did kick them out in 1994. This is an example of the gay/lesbian movement rejecting the linkage is it not? Isn't this info also on the wiki articles about ILGA and NAMBLA?

Again the article refers to the last part of what Mirkin says [note #25] "in the course of time those movements universally rejected this linkage" but the poster ignores the FIRST part of what Mirkin says about this on the same page “Pedophile organizations were originally a part of the gay/lesbian coalition” Bottom of page 9, see note 35 for further references http://gilhardwick.com/reports/Child%20Abuse,%20Sexuality%20and%20Violence/The%20Pattern%20of%20Sexual%20Politics.pdf Harris Mirkin, The Pattern of Sexual Politics: Feminism, Homosexuality and Pedophilia in the Journal of Homosexuality Vol. 37 No. 2 (1999)

on the other part,

"The age of consent reform efforts of paedophile advocacy groups such as the Danish Pedophile Association and the North American Man/Boy Love Association did not gain any public support and today those groups that have not dissolved have only minimal membership and have ceased their activities other than through a few websites. Beginning in the 1990s, public focus on and disapproval of paedophilia resulted in more stringent legislation and stronger criminal penalties regarding child pornography, child sexual abuse, and use of the internet to facilitate these offenses. The groups have been raided as they facilitate crimes against children."

That last line makes it sound like it might be refering to DPA and NAMBLA, but the note is a reference to boylovers.net. Couldn’t this be a little more specific? Aren’t there several pedophile advocacy groups (including NAMBLA) that discourage it’s members and pedophiles from breaking the law? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jack567la (talk)


OK, I'm the wrong person to ask about this since I've retired from this content area. However, I would say regarding the statement "Some activists tried to link their goals with those of the early LGBT social movements, but in the course of time those movements universally rejected this linkage" that it would be very surprising if this was not true.
(If the statement is not true, then something approximating one of these two statements must be true: either 1) "Some activists tried to link their goals with those of the early LGBT social movements, and those movements generally accepted this linkage" or 2) "Activists did not generally try to link their goals with those of the early LGBT social movements out of a high-minded desire to avoid embarrassing those movements". And it would be very surprising if either of those statements were true.)
So for the statement "Some activists tried to link their goals with those of the early LGBT social movements, but in the course of time those movements universally rejected this linkage", I would say that since common sense tells us that it is extremely likely that this is true, the level of reference required to support that is not as high, provided no other editor objects. (I'm not sure what any of this has to do with Age of Consent reform, but then this article was originally written and intended as a polemic and I'm not convinced it should even exist. At any rate there are articles, not sure of the titles but probably something like Pedophile activism or something where all this is or should be better covered.)
I dunno. You could post a note at Wikipedia:Content noticeboard and get some more input. (N.B.: this comment was made by User:Herostratus in (I think) spring of 2011, but the sig was malformed.)

What Pedophile Activism article? That doesn't exist anymore it just takes you to Age of Consent Reform, it's one small section thats ALOT smaller than the original, but they still have the ANTI-Pedophile Activism article. How can you have Anti-Pedophile Activism WITHOUT Pedophile Activism? Seems odd to me. It's just information.
The problem, Mr. Jack, is that the people behind these groups often encourage people not to "not offend", but rather "act in the dark" and maintain an apparent good face. In order to survive, they put masks to hide what they do. Police operations have been carried out against several sites with that stuff, and hundreds of kids were trapped and used for illicit purposes. Negativecharge (talk) 09:38, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Georgia Reform

The age of consent is still 16 in Georgia so I think it was ok that I added that the issue has been dropped since that was 5 or 6 years ago but if anyone has objections note them. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.50.131.225 (talk) 03:51, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Fall 2011 developmental editing + place of pedophile advocacy groups

This article has just gone through some significant editing, basically by User:RJR3333, adding and subtracting material. I just want to check in here on that. I consider these changes to be improvements, and if any one disagrees here's a place to say so.

I did add back in some of the material that User:RJR3333 redacted, particularly on the place of pedophile advocacy goups. I'm of two minds about this. On the one hand, these were really really small groups. They did get some press, essentially for the shock value of covering them, I suppose. On the other hand, if we are going to include these groups, we need to make clear that they never came close to getting any kind of real support.

I'm not sure they fit in here at all, and it'd be arguably OK to just delete the entire section, or reduce it to something like

"During the late 1950s to early 1990s, several paedophile membership organisations advocated lowering or abolishing age of consent laws[29][30][31][32] to legalize sexual activities involving an adult and a child. This advocacy did not gain any public support[29][32][34][38][39] and today those groups that have not dissolved have only minimal membership and have ceased their activities other than through a few websites.[32][39][40][41]"

The way I see it, the article is titled "Reform" and to be considered reform (or even a valid if unsuccessful attempt at reform) one has to be a reform movement, which is a recognized type of social and/or political movement. I guess (not being an expert on the subject) that there have been three movements:

  • The movement (even if sporadic) to establish in law the concept of "age of consent" at all. There must have been one, but we don't have any coverage of it. We should.
  • The movement to raise the age of consent to (usually) 16. This is and was a real reform movement and (thanks to User:RJR3333) we now have some coverage of it.
  • The Romeo and Juliet exemption movement. This is a real political movement and we now have some coverage of it.

I don't see where the pedophile advocacy stuff fits in here at all. I hate to throw away accurate material, but since it doesn't really fit my inclination is to either remove this material or reduce it to a couple of sentences. (I'm not too concerned about potential lack of coverage on this topic in the Wikipedia generally -- we have plenty, such as the article Party for Neighbourly Love, Freedom, and Diversity, a party which had three members but nevertheless has an article. The René Guyon Society had, apparently, one member and has an article.) Herostratus (talk) 15:14, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

My edits to this article were a mess, not to mention the fact that no age of consent for people below 18 exists, that is a misconception. I regret editing here and putting false info here, this entire article needs to be changed to remove what I wrote. --RJR3333 (talk) 05:43, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
What do you mean "no age of consent below 18 exists"? That is not a misconception. Age of consent is set below age 18 all the time. The Age of consent and Ages of consent in North America articles are examples of this. Flyer22 (talk) 06:26, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Malke_2010#Age_of_Consent_Chris_Hansen Then why won't this editor allow me to edit based on a claim that that's not true? Clearly Malke is correct. --RJR3333 (talk) 06:31, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

I have no problem with the topic of this page at all, but I do object to the very serious inaccuracies. The "Close-in-age exemptions" section implies that the "Romeo and Juliet laws" have specific things in common, i.e. that they "provide that a teenager can legally have consensual sex with a 14 or 15 year-old provided that he or she is not more than a given number of years older".

In the next paragraph, it is pointed out that Florida passed a "Romeo and Juliet law" in 2007. However, the provision passed in 2007 only allows for convicted persons to petition the court to be removed from the sexual offenders list if the victim was close in age. By some definitions, this is a Romeo and Juliet law, but it's not what they've just described as a Romeo and Juliet law.

It's true that the citation to the "laws.com" website supports some of these claims. Whether laws.com is otherwise a reliable source of legal information or not, it's clearly not trustworthy in this case.

Unless somebody is willing to clean up this and remove these blatant inaccuracies, I would vote to remove this page. Fabrickator (talk) 03:36, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

You are correct, and thanks for pointing that out. The problem is, Florida's law is called by the state and others the "Florida Romeo and Juliet Law" (I don't think that that's its actual name, but that's what it's called). But it doesn't decriminalize these encounters, only allows the the convicted person to not also be subject to listing on the sex offender registry (maybe). I could have changed the article to point this out, but since this is such weak tea I just removed Florida from the list. (Interestingly, it appears the de facto age of consent in Florida is 18 UNLESS the other person is 23 or younger, if I'm reading this correctly.) If there are any other specific errors, feel free to fix them or point them out. Herostratus (talk) 05:05, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

grammer

in line 5 of close in "close in age exemptions" wouldnt it make more sense to say controversial instead of non-contreversial or is it their just to imply some kind of tone? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.194.218.190 (talk) 00:52, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

No. Read it again. It clearly means "not without controversy". (Could be that'd be a better way to put it...) TREKphiler any time you're ready, Uhura 00:21, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Pedophile groups

SqueakBox, an editor I'm familiar with because we have worked on pedophile matters together on Wikipedia, removed a section about pedophile groups; he cited WP:FRINGE for the removal. But, like I stated, in this edit summary, "Considering that this matter is a significant interest to pedophile groups, as documented in various WP:Reliable sources, some material about that should be in this article. It's already noted in the lead." And per WP:LEAD, the lead should summarize the article's most significant aspects. Now we have a lead that mentions the pedophile aspect, but no material lower in the article for detail on that. And if the material is removed from the lead, I don't agree with that either. The Pedophile advocacy groups section might have been too long with regard to WP:Undue weight, but I don't think it should have been completely cut. Flyer22 (talk) 22:40, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

Well we could change the lead? I perhaps edited the article against my better judgement but I was looking at it on another issue. I do believe this is such a fringe viewpoint it should go into an article on pedophilia, sure, but not this article. Fringe noticeboard for more opinions? Or perhaps just a one liner not in the opening?. Thanks, ♫ SqueakBox talk contribs 22:43, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
Hey, SqueakBox. Per above, I don't feel that there shouldn't be any mention of this in the article. Perhaps it should be mentioned somewhere in the article without being in the lead or without being placed in its own section because perhaps doing either is giving the material WP:Undue weight. But, yes, it is already mentioned in the Pedophilia article. Flyer22 (talk) 22:49, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
I've tried to meet your concerns. How does it look?. Thanks, ♫ SqueakBox talk contribs 22:53, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
Yeah, I saw that you went ahead and took the initiative here and here. However, because sections consisting of a single sentence are usually discouraged, per MOS:PARAGRAPHS, it's probably best to move that material up to the Initiatives to change the age of consent section...immediately under the first paragraph without it being its own section (meaning without it being a subsection). Flyer22 (talk) 22:59, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
I have made it a sub-section. I dont believe putting it above the countries sub-sections would be helpful, though, due to WP:WEIGHT issues. Thanks, ♫ SqueakBox talk contribs 23:07, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
I understand. It's still better not to have a section or subsection that consists of a single sentence. However, your addition isn't the only section like that in this article. So thanks for working with me on this. Flyer22 (talk) 23:17, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
Note: I tweaked this part of my comment above because I realize that you may have read that as me suggesting a subsection, and someone else probably would have as well. Flyer22 (talk) 23:22, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

These redirect pages are equating age of consent reform with pedophile activism. Are these topics really one and the same?

Many of this article's redirect pages are essentially equating age of consent reform with pedophile activism, which seems to be a biased description of this topic. Should these redirects be kept this way, or should they be re-targeted to another article that actually discusses this subject in detail? Jarble (talk) 13:20, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Pedophiles have had a lot to do with age of consent reform (their attempts to lower the age of consent and continual advocacy of lowering the age of consent no matter what part of the world). And considering that there is a section on it in this article, which used to be significantly healthier than it is now (per the #Pedophile groups section above), it was not inappropriate to redirect those terms here. You should know by now that many redirects point to articles because those articles also deal with the subject, not always because those articles are mostly or only about that subject. Sometimes that article is the best redirect for the term/concept and it is therefore often not "potentially misleading," certainly is not equating the whole topic with that term/concept or necessarily biased. And when it is obvious that the term redirects there because the article is clearly covering the subject, readers don't need to be told with a hatnote that the term redirects there. Not to mention that it's clear the term redirects there anyway. That stated, in this case, the Pedophilia article is the better redirect for those terms. Not only because it is the main article about pedophilia, but because it currently covers the topic significantly more than this one does. I'd already redirected pedophile activism and pedophile advocacy to the section in the Pedophilia article about the topic before reverting you at this one. The other terms and spelling variations about pedophile activism should be redirected to that section of the Pedophilia article as well. Flyer22 (talk) 13:45, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Meaning

"Age of consent reform are efforts to change age of consent laws, whether to raise... the age of consent"

I think an effort to raise the age of consent is better termed "counter-reform", not "reform". YOMAL SIDOROFF-BIARMSKII (talk) 15:17, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

But "reform" stems from "re form" which means "change". Not all changes are necessarily reforms, but changes which fit broadly under the rubric of social reform as generally understood certainly are. "Reform" does not mean "Changes which I like". Herostratus (talk) 02:50, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

USA

"However, feminists and children's rights activists began advocating raising the age of consent to 16 wanting to ultimately raise it to 18 and by 1920 almost all states had raised their age of consent to 16 or 18." In the linked source, the advocates were "Women reformers and advocates of social purity". XorFish (talk) 19:00, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

Good point. It's not clear to to me if "woman reformers" may or may not be reasonably characterized as "feminists". Certainly woman-led reform movements in 19th century America were proto-feminist. But the term "feminist" antedates that (I suppose) so maybe not a good term to use. I changed the passage to be in line with the ref. Herostratus (talk) 02:50, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

Gap Finder

  • I was trying out the new Gap Finder tool [1] to find articles popular in other languages not existing on English Wikipedia, and came across (using de.wiki) de:Pädophilenbewegung. This appears to be some sort of crazed pro-pedophile movement. I assume we don't have a corresponding article here for a reason. Its not inter-wiki linked to this article, but this seems the closest analogue.--Milowenthasspoken 16:22, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

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Reverted edits

Addressing reverted edits by Crossroads. Firstly, in future can you please just revert edits you disagree with, not just mass revert all my edits, as some such as correcting the link to Age of consent reform in the United Kingdom and saying there have been cases to lower the age of consent you provided no arguments against. As for the other information, what makes it WP:FRINGE? I copied this across from the page Age of consent reform in the United Kingdom, where it is long standing cited information from reliable sources. The first paragraph is from Oxford Brookes University and Blackwell Scientific Publications, hardly fringe sources. While the second paragraph uses citations such as that of The Daily Telegraph, a mainstream British newspaper that is also regarded as a reliable source to use for citations on Wikipedia. Helper201 (talk) 16:56, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

I didn't know you copied that from another article. Per WP:COPYWITHIN, you have to say that you have done so in your edit summary and link to the article in the edit summary. We don't need excessive detail on the UK in this article per WP:Summary style. Crossroads -talk- 01:28, 5 July 2020 (UTC)
Crossroads, apologies, I should have signified that. However, I still think the information I added should be included. It’s not a huge amount and adds more recent information. What is currently listed in the UK section is very old information, only going up to 1976. The stuff I added includes information from the 1990s and the 21st century. Helper201 (talk) 12:01, 6 July 2020 (UTC)
Then replace some of the 1970s stuff then. Crossroads -talk- 16:23, 10 July 2020 (UTC)
I don't believe that the results of a twenty-year-old non-scientific Internet poll represents the type of content that is appropriate for an encyclopedic resource. See, e.g., WP:WEIGHT. If there is a good argument for retaining that information in the article, I would welcome a discussion. Arllaw (talk) 12:18, 13 July 2020 (UTC)
Agreed. It represents teenage girls as having a certain view but is based on a non-scientific internet survey, so it's undue weight. Crossroads -talk- 14:53, 13 July 2020 (UTC)
Yeah, I'm not seeing that this is needed. Flyer22 Frozen (talk) 02:34, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

19th and 20th centuries Age of consent reform

Text states that "In 1880, 37 states had an age of consent of 10 years, 10 states had an age of consent at 12 years, and Delaware had an age of consent of 7 years." However there were only a total of 38 states in 1880. Zoar-bellevue (talk) 02:37, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

Hi, you are welcome to check the sources and try to fix it accordingly. Crossroads -talk- 06:02, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

Pedophila advocacy section

I changed "Groups" to "Past groups" because VM has been defunct for at least six years and NAMbLA hasn't been organized in even longer (according to the articles on Wikipedia, anyway).

To be frank, I'm not sure organized pedophile advocacy even exists today—unless you count groups that advocate for the treatment and destigmatization of non-offenders, but those groups do not seek to lower the age of consent. While I think this section could be expanded with historical information, currently it reads as though pedo advocacy is an actual thing with at least fringe public support. This feels more like fearmongering than accurate reporting.

If I'm incorrect and there is actual pedophile advocacy out there today supporting downward AoC reform, a citation should definitely be added. I'm not personally interested in trolling the dark corners of the internet to find it. TricksterWolf (talk) 15:32, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

@TricksterWolf: In light of your statement that NAMBLA is no longer active, how do you explain the existence of their home page ("nambla" + ".org") being live?
Well, anybody can put up a web page. And there are zombie web pages where they bought the 25-year package I guess, or there's an automatic annual withdrawal of $25 or something from a still-active bank account.
I'm not saying this is the case here, but maybe. THo I do see a couple entries dated 2021. Herostratus (talk) 18:52, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Possible additions to See also section

There are several relatively obvious omissions from the "see also" section, but rather than suggest a minimalist set of additions, I am offering this fairly "expansive" set of possible additions to the "see also" section. Hopefully we could get a consensus of which ones should actually be added.

Fabrickator (talk) 04:55, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

Netherlands

The section in this article on the Netherlands describes the situation from 1990 to 2002, but does not say what happened in 2002 to change this, nor what the situation is now. This information should be included in the article if anyone knows the answer. It would also be interesting, but a lesser priority, to hear about how it worked before 1990. Credulity (talk) 15:16, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

"Marriage (sexual intercourse)" in the history section

This seems awkward phrasing; should I adjust to "marriage (then required for sexual intercourse)" (in the first instance) and "marriage"? Ellenor2000 (talk) 08:56, 27 January 2023 (UTC)