Souseiseki wrote:you don't need to countenance it. you just don't need to bring it up.
There's no moral or legal problem with arguing in favor of "maybe sixteen year olds shouldn't be sexualized." That's not going to lead to people being sexually abused. That's not going to lead to the sorts of people who groom children coming to our website. There is a moral and legal problem with arguing in favor of "maybe people under eighteen should be sexualized." That's going to lead to people being sexually abused. That's going to lead to the sorts of people who groom children coming to our website. Both are probably going to be banned under the moratorium because even discussing the topic attracts pedophiles and their supporters but I see no reason to ban signature-based activism, petitions, and links that support, say, not allowing child marriage when child marriage as routinely practiced is a degenerate practice that hurts children, especially girls.
Child marriage is evil and/or irresponsible. Full stop. No compromises. No debates. If you don't believe that, you're wrong. We shouldn't ban people from broadcasting their support for a morally virtuous cause because it upsets people who in technical terms are pedophiles or supportive of pedophiles. It's the pro child marriage side of this argument that poses a danger to other people and to the community, not the anti child marriage side. We have a pretty good idea of who we wouldn't want to leave a fourteen or fifteen year old child around. Hence why I don't really see a reason to ban the anti child marriage side from having signatures that read #18NoExceptions or whatever. It's not inviting a conversation and, to be frank, it actually sends the message that pedophiles aren't welcome here a lot more clearly than treating both sides as equals. Again, we should be honest about who precisely are the problem here.
Gio's signature is not the problem. It doesn't make people we actually want here feel unsafe. It supports a good cause. It doesn't allow for any conversation because it's not a post in a thread that other people can respond to. That's why I don't see any reason to ban it. Because, again, I see no reason to treat the sides as equal here. They're not equal on any moral level. And, in many relevant places, they're not equal on any legal level.
No offense, but NSG, in my experience, doesn't tend to take the approach that both sides of an argument are automatically kosher. You're not allowed to post links to certain sites that have been deemed as misinformative or caustic. You're not allowed to misgender people even if you're transphobia leads you to believing it's acceptable. You're not allowed to make rabidly Antisemitic or racist arguments, even if you're arguing in good faith. A lot of those things come across as trolling in part because they're deeply offensive and/or insensitive. Why shouldn't we pick a side on this one too? Offense given in response to arguments about sexualizing children and adolescents is no less valid than offense given because somebody is a raging racist. "I think child porn should be legal" should elicit the same level of outrage as "I think black people should be re-enslaved because white power." Both are pretty vile.
I think, at the end of the day, we have to ask "Do we want to create an environment that attracts unsavory sorts and predators to our Australian book website where we have high school class rooms doing political simulators?" The answer to that should be pretty clear cut.
