Rehabilitation 11.2: Trip to Tartarus
"Harry, I've seen many abused children in my time at Hogwarts, it would break your heart to know how many." -Professor McGonagall, HPMoR Ch6
"As it stands, you are being ill-served by your willful ignorance of all human nature you deem unpleasant." -Professor Quirrell, HPMoR Ch73
"There were a few people that did better than everyone around them, and they were exceptionally good. But the ones who just accepted what everyone else thought weren't exceptionally evil. The sad fact is that most people just don't notice a moral issue at all unless someone else is pointing it out to them; and once they're as old as Salazar was when he met Godric, they've lost the ability to change their minds." -Harry JPEV, HPMoR Ch47
"...and I just couldn't believe it," said the griffon petitioner. A rarity, but one that Luna welcomed. The problems of pony petitioners are often boringly tame. "She was so hysterical and over-the-top. It just didn't make sense to me."
Luna, after listening intently, asked, "What did the mother do, precisely?"
"She got furious at me just for writing down the incidents after they happened. She was constantly saying 'You must have done something to her, what did you do?' But with a lot of these special ed chicks... I mean, speaking as a special ed teacher of twenty years... there's just no way to know when they'll go off, or why. I mean, I didn't touch her daughter at all, her daughter saw a bag she liked and asked if she could have it, and I said no, and even when she was pecking and clawing at me, I didn't hit back, all I did was write down the details afterwards. Her mother saw what I wrote, and then she was screaming at me and calling all my superiors and everything, and I just sat there in shock. I just... I'm retired now, it's been years since then, but I still don't understand it. I get wanting to protect your chick, but this was so over-the-top..."
When the petitioner trailed off, unable to come up with more to say, Luna spoke. "I have a theory. It doesn't mean I'm right, it is just a theory, but... in Griffonia, the laws and norms against chick abuse are... not as thorough as Equestria, correct?"
The griffon nodded hesitantly.
Luna continued. "In my experience... that is, my thousand-year-old experience, I have not seen it in Equestria since my return, but back in my day... it was often the case, I think, that some mental disabilities... what you call 'special ed' foals... in particular the ones pertaining to personality more than intelligence – violent mood swings, no attention span, that sort of thing – those cases were often the result of abuse and violence at home. Which is to say those behaviors were imbibed from the environment in one way or another. So when the chick's mother was shouting at you, asking what you did to set her chick off... I would call that projection. In the mother's experience, her chick explodes in the face of violence and other highly negative experiences, likely perpetuated by the mother herself, so she believed the only way her daughter could have reacted that way was if you did what she typically does to her daughter. And she was calling your superiors and trying to put the blame on you because she doesn't want anypony examining her own relationship with her daughter too closely. If you felt like she was putting on a show, like she was acting, like her hysteria was too over-the-top to be real, that might have been because it was too over-the-top to be real. She was putting on a performance, manipulating the situation, trying to achieve a specific effect."
"Bad actors tend to overact to compensate for lack of skill," Riddle contributed.
"Precisely," said Luna, though she gave him a look that combined her thanks with a request for him to let her continue alone. "From your perspective," Luna said to the griffon, "nothing came of the wild accusations aside from stress and a waste of time, but from the mother's perspective, all of the authorities looking at you instead of her could have been an arrow dodged, if you see what I'm saying?"
"I... I never thought of it that way," said the griffon, sounding distant. She repeated that phrase many times that night.
The conversation lasted longer, went into other topics, but eventually, the night's only petitioner left Night Court looking like she'd been exhausted, not relieved, by the truth. But she was not ungrateful, thanking Luna profusely before exiting the room.
"If only I could have petitions like that every night," Luna sighed.
"That would take some doing," said Riddle. "Advertising in Griffonia, perhaps."
"Mmm," said Luna. She looked about to close her eyes to dream-walk.
But a comment from Merlin had gotten Riddle thinking, and once the idea was in his head, it wouldn't leave until he had an answer. Now seemed a good time to ask.
"Does Equestria have a cultural taboo against homosexuality?"
For he has yet to see or even hear about a single same-sex relationship since his arrival here. Not that he had been actively looking for them, but in magical Britain you can't go overlong without encountering the topic in one form or another, from Quibbler headlines to the giggled gossip between girls, especially in Ravenclaw.
Riddle wondered if he had finally found a subject that wizards back home, from Lucius Malfoy all the way to Madam Longbottom, would fully and unanimously believe themselves to have the moral high ground over ponies. Part of his own side's propaganda had been that muggles and muggleborns are so stupid, primitive, and backward that they hate homosexuality and other forms of sexual deviancy. Like all propaganda, it was slightly exaggerated for effect, but it was still true. And he had not expected to encounter pony stupidity and primitiveness in this topic, of all places, given how 'loving' and 'tolerant' they seem to be.
"I asked the same thing of my sister soon after my return," said Luna, sitting straighter in her throne. "Taboo is… not quite the correct word. Do we have a taboo against alcohol? For adults, not at all. Drink to thy heart's content; it is your body, after all. On the other hoof, is excessive drinking and addiction a sign of trauma and pain, past or present? Most often yes. Homosexuality, like drinking, is not a taboo. It is not a topic-which-must-not-be-named like it was in the very distant past, nor is it illegal for consenting adults. But it is a potential red flag. Or perhaps I should say it was a red flag. The problem to which it pointed was addressed long ago, and the worries associated with homosexuality have largely disappeared. I think at this point it is simply less common, and thus less thought about. Soon after the Three Tribes period, the rate of homosexuality was around one in fifty. Now it is lower."
"Were there legal or cultural pressures to reduce it?" he asked. "Did ponies view it as unnatural and disgusting?"
"Not directly. There were legal and cultural efforts to eliminate foalhood sexual abuse, not homosexuality, and as you may or may not know, the two are often linked."
"Based on what evidence?" he said at once. For he has personally known sexually abused children who did not grow up into homosexual adults. Bellatrix being the most prominent example.
"My sister's scholars gathered the evidence," said Luna. "Once they knew the right questions to ask. Though the suspicion existed earlier than that. After seeing the pattern so many times in my Night Court sessions, I began to suspect that certain sexual behaviors were closely tied to the rate of foalhood sexual molestation. After my banishment, my sister set her scholars to investigation, and they discovered the very ugly statistic that 1 out of every 3 fillies and 1 out of every 14 colts were sexually molested before adulthood."
"Most ponies would consider that far too high to be likely." Although he didn't. It sounded about right for magical Britain. But most wizards and witches don't like to think about such things, and most wizards and witches aren't nearly cynical enough to predict the reality around them.
"It certainly is too high to be 'likely' in this day and age. Far too high."
Riddle shook his head. "Even back then, I imagine there was extreme doubt and disbelief about those numbers."
"Indeed," said Luna. "The earliest estimates were lower, but those estimates were based on questionnaire surveys, which were inaccurate due to a reason that was only obvious in retrospect. For it is a sad fact that proficient abusers lure their victims into emotional or resource dependency before engaging in abuse, so as to reduce their chances of being reported to the guard and going to jail. In a world without Obliviation, the smartest criminals turn their victims into their most ardent public defenders the old-fashioned way: manipulation, bribery, threats, and all the other things that I'm certain I needn't explain to you of all ponies. The comparatively pessimistic numbers on foal molestation were eventually proven true, and it only took so long to prove it because motivated actors were explicitly trying to prevent data collection."
"Criminals fear the spotlight of scrutiny like cockroaches fear light," he allowed. "But what does any of this have to do with homosexuality?"
"Well, in their efforts to uncover the truth, and with my sister guiding them using some of the things I learned in Night Court, my sister's scholars eventually confirmed a strong correlation between sexual abuse early in life and sexual deviancy later in life."
"Correlation does not mean causation," he said at once. "And what qualifies as 'sexual deviancy'?"
"Anything that deviates from the norm," Luna answered. "Interest in promiscuity and cheating, interest in open relationships instead of monogamy, interest in the same sex, interest in strange and often disgusting 'kinks', like feces, and especially interest in foals. The further the sexual deviation, the more likely it was preceded by sexual abuse during foalhood. That was the base discovery. It is not mere correlation, it is a predictable pattern. Or it was prior to its elimination in Equestria. Griffonia is still working on it."
"If it is so predictable, how come sexual abuse does not reliably lead to homosexuality? I know an abused woman who had no interest in other women."
"And was her approach to sexuality what most ponies would call 'normal' or 'healthy'?"
Not in the slightest, he thought, a mental image of the Lestrange brothers coming to mind. "No," was what he decided to say. "She was close to a prostitute, I suppose." For she would bed whomever he bade.
Luna nodded. "That was another common consequence. I once made it a point to ask every voluntary prostitute I met the very simple question of 'What was your earliest sexual experience?' and I did not like what I learned. 'Tis fascinating what the simplest questions can reveal. Asking that very same question of sexual deviants of any kind often leads to similar answers. In any case, you must turn the problem around. It is not the case that you can reliably predict future sexual behavior based on past abuse. It can deviate from the norm in any number of ways, or not at all, for the evolutionary impulse to normalcy is strong. But it is the case that you can somewhat reliably predict the existence of past sexual abuse based on current deviant sexual behavior. Do you understand?"
"I understand the argument," said Riddle. "Can you reliably predict if a rectangle is a square, just from being told it's a rectangle? No. Can you reliably predict a square is a rectangle, just from being told it's a square? Yes."
"Exactly!" Luna applauded. "Although of course real life is not nearly so absolute as math. Perhaps less than one in three sexually abused foals grew up to exhibit significantly deviant sexual behaviors. But well above two in three sexually deviant adults experienced sexual abuse as foals. Not most abuse victims become 'bent' adults, as the slang used to go. But most 'bent' adults were abuse victims. And it only takes one predator to make many victims."
"And that meant a ban on the behavior?" Riddle predicted. Because criminals are just so keen on respecting what the government says they can and can't-
"Not a legal ban," said Luna. "Well, not between consenting adults. After the base discovery, my sister primarily ensured that clinicians and therapists knew to regard sexual deviancy of any kind as a significant potential warning sign of past sexual abuse. Careful inquiry was made of ponies who displayed it, and the guard would get involved if it was abuse, and that was enough to set the country ablaze with cultural turmoil, according to Tia. There were many ponies attempting to resist the spread of knowledge, with efforts effective enough that Tia clearly remembers them to this day. Catchphrases and hysteria and distractions, all of which were highly persuasive to ponies who wished to be seen as good more than they wished to be good, and I wonder if your cynical mind can see the reason behind it all."
Riddle didn't need even one second. If homosexuality became probable cause to investigate for signs of childhood sexual abuse, if it actually was probable cause, if the entire medical establishment was told that, and legal consequences were suddenly a very real possibility…
"The molesters were worried that the evidence they were leaving in plain sight was finally being noticed for what it was," Riddle offered. "And they were desperately trying to cover their tracks," he added.
Similar to the squib situation, he supposed. The proud pureblood witches cheating on their proud pureblood husbands with handsome muggles would use any means at their disposal to discredit Mr. Silver if he ever tried to publicly explain how their squibs had really been born – as a result of sexual union between wizard and non-wizard. Always. No exceptions.
That turbulent political and social controversy would be extreme enough, and it's just adults cheating on other adults with a result that factually argues against some of the tenets of blood purism. Throw victimized children into the mix, and a much wider cultural consensus to be argued against…
"Indeed," said Luna, her expression growing cold. "Most ponies who repeated mantras like 'born that way' and 'love is blind' were unaware, or unwilling to consider it, or willfully ignoring it. But the ones who made those mantras in the first place... or rather, the ones who most vociferously voiced them… again, not all turned out to be abusers, some were simply idealists wearing rose-tinted goggles, but others…" Her expression grew even colder. "Others were professing their amazingly virtuous tolerance towards all forms of sex and romance with a different goal in mind. Their motive was simple: they were pedophiles trying to decriminalize their own degeneracy."
"Now that," Riddle said, "is catchy in translation." He'll have to remember it. Decriminalization of degeneracy… it's certainly less crass than 'normalize their nutting'. "And your sister noticed the pedophile angle without your help?"
"Only because she knew the truth ahead of time, I think, for I told her before my banishment. But yes, she noticed their tactics without my active help, given that I was not there. The louder a pony proclaims their own virtue, the more likely it is to be a cover for evil. Especially for the topic at hoof. Those who decry their selflessness turn out to be the most self-serving. Those who claim to be defenders of love turn out to be extremely hateful. Ponies like that are just about as immoral as you can get, using moral language in the same way my father did, the same way Ms. Cole did – as camouflage for their many misdeeds."
The Riddle of four years ago would have said that all moral language was used that way, but the Riddle of today had been given reason to doubt his old perspective. To universalize truths about all of reality from personal experience is, at the end of the day, motivated reasoning based on anecdotes.
"If this happened in the past," Riddle said with a frown, "does that mean there is a cultural taboo against homosexuality now?"
This was what he really wanted to know, to see the difference between modern Equestrian and wizard perspectives, for ponies seemed like they wouldn't be the type to judge or criticize based on romantic interest.
Luna tapped her chin. "Mm… not quite. That cultural conflict occurred almost a millennium in the past. The root cause was addressed long ago, and the scars of society have healed."
"How so?"
"Through knowledge," said Luna. "Most ponies once had flowery mental images of gay relationships. Through ignorance and projection, ponies who were both good and naïve imagined gay couples to be almost exactly the same as their own romances. According to my sister, most ponies did not react well when they learned what the majority of homosexual relationships actually involved – rampant promiscuity, disease, physical pain and scarring, hedonism, mind-affecting substances, sometimes bestiality, and an all-too-common desire to 'mentor' younger ponies into the lifestyle. Like excessive smoking and drinking, all but the last two were viewed as things that consenting adults may do if they wish, though it was also viewed as unhealthy and a sign of deeper problems, and finally, it was, at the end of the day, not viewed as the full fault of the adults who engage in it. It was the fault of their past abusers, if abuse was indeed the cause. So long as they did not do it in front of foals, or try to push it onto foals, it was tolerated."
She sighed.
"Is what I would like to say, for that is how I viewed it, how my sister viewed it, how the healers viewed it. But that is not how most ponies reacted. So yes, there was outrage. There was fear and disgust and unjust discrimination on one side, and defensiveness and self-righteousness and justifications and excuses on the other. In a few brief decades, sexual deviancy went from something that everypony should accept because love is love to a sign of a damaged soul because lust is lust. All black and white, little nuance. Such is the way of public politics, by which I mean mob mentality."
"And today?" Riddle reiterated for the third time.
"Time and understanding have done much healing since then. The behaviors of the gay 'community', if it can even be called that anymore, are no longer a hundredth as unhealthy as they once were, and homosexuals today are almost never the result of child abuse. In the modern day it is viewed as a rare and strange but ultimately harmless quality, so long as the obvious potential cause has been ruled out and all parties are consenting adults who keep their fornication private, especially from foals. And since that same rule applies to straight fornicators, it cannot be said that there is any unfair treatment going on."
"So there is no discrimination?"
"Not as such. Homosexual ponies might not be doing their evolutionary and societal duty of becoming parents…" she shrugged. "But neither do some heterosexual ponies. And in any case, it is uncommon enough that most ponies hardly think about it." She huffed in amusement. "'Tis more likely a fuss will be caused by a pony having hippogriff offspring with a griffon, and even that is hardly contentious unless the griffon parent is not well-adjusted. My sister assures me that interspecies relationships do not produce a tenth of the tensions that the homosexuality hysteria once did."
"And did you ever share that hysteria?" Riddle asked. "Did you have a phobia of the 'deviants'? If, say, your sister was gay, would you freak out?"
"If I was that kind of pony," Luna said without seeming to take offense, "I would not have had so many long, deep, heartfelt conversations with so many prostitutes, homosexuals, bisexuals, fetishists, and everything else under the moon and stars. My first instinct is to question and discover root causes. If the root cause is not abuse, and if no abuse is going on in the relationship, then I do not criticize. I know for a fact that my sister was not sexually abused, nor would she abuse her partner, nor choose a partner who would BE abusive, so I would not mind if she found mares attractive."
"You do not mind the gay lifestyle?"
"Today? Not at all."
"And in the past?"
"In the past, I minded the patterns that I eventually began to see. I minded the self-destructive behaviors – spouse-on-spouse violence, shouting, drugs and addiction, cheating. If the couple I was speaking to, gay or straight, engaged in those behaviors, I would speak out against the negative aspects, and it was only through repeated experience that I saw how much more likely it was in the relationships that were not straight. I minded the pattern of sexual abuse being an extremely common denominator among the most hardcore and destructive deviants, which in retrospect is exactly what you'd expect, given that self-destructive and addictive behaviors are the most common ways in which ponies self-medicate for past trauma. But the sex itself? Their bodies, their bedrooms, their property, their choice. So long as it is consensual, of course."
"Hm," Riddle said, his attention half elsewhere.
He considered her wider perspective. He had little capacity to judge if all that he'd just heard was a 'moral' or 'immoral' stance. It seemed more like a controversial logical one than anything, and he would have to double-check the numbers himself… or maybe not. He didn't really care. But he at least knew that…
"Well," he said. "It is a good thing Equestria is divorced from Earth," he remarked. "I believe our current rate of homosexuality is close to one-in-fifty, and I can imagine how your perspective would go over with wizarding culture." Or muggles, for that matter. Mr. Potter once remarked that the muggles have 'progressed' in that way, to some degree.
Luna gave him a stern look, then sighed and shook her head. "You will likely be doing far more than imagining how the perspectives clash."
"You intend to come along when I return?" he asked, for he could not see any other reason why the perspectives might clash. He didn't intend to bring it up.
"I'm not sure if I will even be able to," she pointed out. "But now that you know what a homosexuality rate of one-in-fifty means, you cannot unknow it."
"I still doubt it means what you think it does," Riddle observed. "There is no guarantee that sexual abuse had exactly the same effect on human statistics. Perhaps the natural prevalence of homosexuality in humans is higher."
"...Perhaps," said Luna after a pause. "Now that you mention it, I believe the natural prevalence is higher in griffons and dragons. Not as high as one in fifty, but not as low as one in one thousand, or even one in five hundred, if I recall correctly, though the numbers won't be finalized until they fully eliminate abuse within their boarders. Across species and nations, out of all sexual behaviors it was prostitution and pedophilia that were most strongly tied with early sexual abuse, along with extreme and destructive sexual behaviors in general, and that's certainly not exclusive to homosexuality, it was just more prevalent there. Straight couples are not immune by any stretch of the imagination, nor should general statistics ever be used to make judgements about individuals, as the general public did during the homosexuality hysteria. In the end, the effects of eliminating abuse are not always predictable in a case-by-case basis. I can only say how it happened in Equestria, and even then I must go by the accounts of my sister and her researchers."
"Then why bring up exact numbers at all?"
Luna considered the question. "A good point. Truthfully, I forgot about the species difference. In the future, I will try to avoid conclusions that are not mostly consistent across all Equestrian species. Which means I will not avoid saying that early trauma creates hidden ripple effects on every aspect of society, in some areas more than others. I can't imagine humanity will see exactly the same results we did, but I can say in a general sense that the cultural shifts will be shocking and downright offensive to the majority of ponies in the moment. As a mare who came from the distant past herself, I have been occasionally offended by what I've seen in modern Equestria, though it is infinitely preferable to the alternative. But the point remains that when you leave this realm, the knowledge of evil's prevalence on Earth will haunt you until you do something about it, even if it takes generations to address, and even if you have to defy cultural norms to fix it, just as you always must do for major moral advancements."
He kept most of his skepticism from showing. He doubted that would ever happen. People have an impossible enough time supporting the 'good' side when there is an obvious and evil threat like Voldemort. To spend his centuries 'fixing' subtle, ingrained, controversial problems that don't significantly impact his survival or the survival of the species sounds far too annoying. Especially if he can't even rely on Equestrian statistics to be comparable for humanity.
He allowed his thoughts to cumulate into a single question: "Why would I do that?"
"Why would you do something about a foalhood molestation rate of 1 in 5?" she asked rhetorically, not quite keeping her voice neutral, though she tried. "Because one who can cast the true Patronus would never let that abide."
It took some time, and more digressions into Luna's conceptions of morality, for him to steer the conversation back to topics he was a bit more inclined to discuss: namely, the Stone and phoenix immortality.
Even after learning how he obtained the Stone – i.e. by theft – Luna did not object to his claim of ownership, since he stole it from a thief. And that means his Stone, his choice what to do with it. She had a similar stance on his rituals: his labour, his choice what to do with it. To take the Stone would be theft. To force him into action would be slavery.
He asked if the constant deaths of her subjects constituted emergency ethics, now that it has been revealed death by old age can be gainsaid.
Some may view it that way, she answered, and rightfully so. Perhaps even she views it that way. But she has been Vowed to not use his secrets against him. She promised not to do so. What is she to do, even if she could? Go back on her solemn word, betray a close pony, steal that pony's property, all because it's in her own perceived interest to do so?
Obviously, Riddle had said.
She shook her head. Even if she was willing and able, what then? Attack him and steal the Stone? Force him into compliance and ruin everything she has worked towards thus far? Even if she succeeded, what next? That is always the question that must be answered. What next?
If the Stone is misplaced, or stolen, or destroyed, or ceases to function – and that last one is the most important – her desperation will come back to bite her. She will have irreparably hurt the one who was best able to help, and she would be left with nothing. His caution about the danger of haste was valid.
Except that he wasn't even doing the opposite of haste, she amended. He wasn't moving carefully and slowly on the Stone problem, he was doing nothing at all. That is the only thing that is truly bothering her.
She did wish he would at least lend the Stone to Ms. Sparkle for examination and research, and she would like him to at least tell Celestia of the phoenix ritual, even if both were under strict contracts of silence.
Riddle said he might not be opposed to the research proposal in the future, but Twilight was a bit too reckless and magically inexperienced. As for Celestia, absolutely not. He's not in the mood to be condescended to. Not by her.
Luna – by Vow or by values, he did not know which was pulling her strings – accepted his stance, if not his reasoning.
Even ideas can be property, she acknowledged, though it took time to adjust to that modern perspective. Not much time; in retrospect she's extremely happy about the legal/moral advancement of intellectual property.
The Stone is his property. How he uses it is his property. His knowledge of rituals is his property. And as the Equestrian saying goes: his property, his choice. Conditional on him respecting the property of others, of course.
She did point out that if somepony else independently invents the idea for those rituals and acquires the ability to perform them, he does not have the right to stop them, nor complain that he did not capitalize on his current market advantage. Intellectual property must not be a restriction on the originality of others.
Aside from the ambient noises of the train, the ride was comfortably silent. Unlike on the last prisoner escort with Discord, Sombra had been muted, blackened, and dispelled. He was utterly unable to perceive or interact with the world beyond his cage in any way; he was only physically able to interact with the cage itself, and that would get him nowhere.
Riddle read a book to occupy his attention.
"Um…" said the only other pony in the cabin. "So… how have you been?"
Riddle looked up and beheld Twilight Sparkle, his fellow guard on this trip to Tartarus, who didn't seem to have brought a book of her own. Or perhaps she did, but preferred conversation.
"Better than expected," he answered with practiced honesty. He vanished his book into his robes and met her nervous gaze with a disarming one. She didn't quite seem to be talking to him because she wanted to. "How goes your own ambition, Ms. Sparkle?"
"Not well," the purple mare huffed in frustration. "I'm going to need basically unlimited magic to cut through Time and Space, but I don't have unlimited magic. I think it might be possible to channel unlimited magic, but the problem is getting that magic in the first place, and that means I have to unravel the whole nature of magic, and that's where I'm stuck."
Good luck, came the reply in his mind. Most prominent wizard scholars have tried. None have succeeded. He didn't say it out loud, recognizing it as one of the many habits that drove others away from him.
Twilight continued, unaware of the unspoken sarcasm. "Everything I really want to try would be way too dangerous, and everything I actually try doesn't work." Twilight's frustrations then seemed to lessen. "So I've been researching dragon magic while I try to think of another angle. I've gotten pretty far, too. What about you?"
"I have a ways to go in my own main task." He paused as a thought came to him.
"What's your main task, if you don't mind me asking?"
"Achieving happiness," he answered, though his mind was elsewhere. Then he made his decision. "Ms. Sparkle," he said formally and seriously. "There is something I'd like you to examine and replicate. If you succeed, you will help all of Equestria. But if you do not succeed, you must never speak of it. Are you willing to abide by those terms?"
Twilight blinked. "I… um… maybe?"
Riddle withdrew a magical parchment from his robes, composed a contract, then floated it to her.
He had not planned to do this so early, but he decided it was time.
I will not try to take the Stone. I will give it up at a moment's notice when Riddle asks for it. I will not risk destroying the Stone on any experiment that might do so, unless Riddle gives me leave. I will tell no one else of the Stone or any conversations involving it unless Riddle gives me leave. I will do nothing with this information unless Riddle gives me leave.
"What stone?" asked Twilight after reading it.
"Sign the contract," said Riddle, "and I will tell you." He glanced at the cage. "On the way back." Just in case.
"Is the stone magical?"
"Ancient and powerfully so."
She signed the contract.
The rest of the trip was uneventful, including the sub-task he had mentioned to Luna. Tartarus seemed secure as far as Dementorless magical prisons go. It might be vulnerable to Dementors, but just about everything is weak to that which can end life, drain magic, and eat matter away to nothingness.
In one cell, a being was frowning in concentration. His eyes were closed, his four legs were folded on the ground beneath him, his arms were crossed over his chest. Slowly, he made mental adjustments. Carefully, he progressed to perfectly internal consistency, made all the more difficult by the joint venture, the two sacrifices, the two purposes. Patiently, he allowed his two intentions to stabilize in his imagination…
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A/N: Long notes incoming, skip if you want. TL;DR at the bottom.
The hard numbers of childhood molestation presented in this chapter were based off of U.S. studies, but it's important to note that the numbers vary from study to study. One says 1/52 boys and 1/9 girls are molested – that study specifically referred to molestation by adults, and went off of interviews/surveys/questionnaires, i.e. self-reporting. A different study extrapolates from data from Child Protection Services and came to the conclusion of the numbers I presented, 1/3 for girls, 1/14 for boys, for a combined average of 1/5 children experiencing molestation of some kind before reaching adulthood. There are more extreme estimates than that as well.
I took the slightly more pessimistic estimates because I'm trying to correct for bias, hopefully not because I'm biased. To say nothing of infant rape that cannot even be remembered, one study claimed the majority of known and certain victims (over 80% of boys) do not even consider themselves to be victims after the fact (due to Stockholm's Syndrome and other forms of ex-post-facto justification, 'I was mature enough, I wanted it,' etc.), which argues against data collection efforts of the questionnaire survey kind. If you think the numbers are too high, I recommend you do the research yourself and come to your own conclusions.
As for the correlation between sexual abuse in childhood and sexual deviancy in adulthood, which can be an even harder pill to swallow, the most relevant stat I found was this: "Cameron, Proctor, Coburn, Forde, and Cameron (1986) found in a random sample in five US cities, that 77% of lesbians/bisexuals claimed sexual activity with an adult as a child, compared to 15% of heterosexual woman". Think of it like the "All Dark Lords are Slytherins" conversation with Hagrid in HPMoR. Most Dark Wizards are from Slytherin. But not most Slytherins are Dark Wizards; there aren't many Dark Wizards, so not most Slytherins can be one. It seems to be the case that most adult non-binaries (though of course not all) who actually engage in the behavior as a lifestyle choice (i.e. not just porn habits and/or signaling on social media, but ACTUALLY seeking out that kind of sex) are victims of child sexual abuse, though NOT most victims of child sexual abuse become sexually non-binary as adults.
Studies on this are scarce because this topic is UTTERLY radioactive and career-suicidal in academia unless the 'researcher' is extremely tepid and tame in all claims, or are plugging their ears and going 'la la la, it's not happening, only evil extremists think otherwise'. It's the same with race and IQ. To so much as humor the hypothesis will bring ridicule, because insulting an idea feels like bringing evidence against it.
Some people of certain political (and religious) persuasions will be tempted to believe this is the ONLY thing, the only reason for sexual deviancy, that all homosexuality is either evil or the result of evil, that not being straight is the result of being bent by an outside source. Some people of other political (and cultural) persuasions will be tempted to deny it wholesale, that there's no connection with child abuse, that it isn't worth mentioning in the same sentence as LGBTQ, that it's something only a bigot would think. Both of these positions are extreme. Both are examples of politics killing the brain's ability to think. Being abused in the past is never a guarantee of the future, but it's also not completely irrelevant either. It's an indicator, a red flag, an increase in likelihood. And being sexually deviant in the future is not a guarantee of past abuse, it's just a warning sign, and signs can be wrong. We're dealing in averages, not absolutes.
If nothing else I hope you found this trip to hell educational. On an uplifting note, one that might be sorely needed at this point, here's one of my favorite HPMoR quotes, first spoken by Dumbledore in chapter 17 and later revised by Harry in chapter 45:
It is a common misconception that all the best rationalists are Sorted into Ravenclaw, leaving none for the other Houses. This is not so; being Sorted into Ravenclaw indicates that your strongest virtue is curiosity, wondering and desiring to know the true answer. And this is not the only virtue a rationalist needs. Sometimes you have to work hard on a problem, and stick to it for a while. Sometimes you need a clever plan for finding out. And sometimes, what you need more than anything else to see an answer, is the courage to face it…
It's easy to say that about a position you agree with, like humanists staring down death, even if death is scary to stare down. But if you want to apply this wisdom in your personal life, courage isn't primarily needed to face the facts that you already agree with, no matter how ugly or scary. Courage is truly needed to face the truths you've been trained by those around you – especially authorities above you – to disbelieve. In that sense, Draco Malfoy showed more courage than any single other character in all of HPMoR, including all of Gryffindor. And what most people really don't want to consider is that they might be the Draco Malfoy of their life's story, or worse, the Salazar Slytherin: propagandized by politics and in need of enlightenment, yet so certain that they can no longer change their minds.
The final thing I'll say is that if Yudkowsky can use HPMoR to peddle pet-perspectives on decision theory that aren't discussed or considered by most 'experts' in academia, then I can do something similar. What matters at the end of the day is rationality, not consensus.
TL;DR – Reality is ugly. Mirroring and modeling successful members of the species is how we evolved. Behaviors of those in positions of authority often beget more behaviors of the same kind in those beneath them, especially child victims. This evolutionary reality does not turn off for sexual behaviors.
I had no problems with this chapter.
Keep in mind, that one of the things you establish early (earlier) on: the change over the last thousand years comes from elimination of foal abuse. Having a chapter that looks at foal abuse, backed up by real world statistics, is not wrong nor out of place.
If anything, I found this easier to read and take in than the Stanford Prison Experiments / Azkaban chapters of HP:MoR.
Second time I did not make it through the chapter. While I praised you a few chapters ago for making me think, it is clear that your personal biases are very much entering this fic in full force. The use of vague wording that can be twisted to mean anything you want (sexual deviancy) is a clear indication of that. As is the use of statistics that can be very easily cherry picked ("there are 3 types of lies..."). The strongest indicator however is how much you take things out of context at the start of this chapter when it comes to sexual preferences. Practically asserting that sexual deviancy is a sign of abuse when even calling it a correlation is very much a stretch. And more importantly, you're committing a massive fallacy of division when it comes to sexual deviancy. Even if some sexually deviant behaviour tends to be the result of abuse, that does not mean that all sexually deviant behaviour is the result of abuse.
The brain is not a computer. It does not work under the principles that a given input always results in a given output, even when accounting for genetics. The brain is an organ. And as a result, is just as susceptible to chemical reactions during both development and life as a whole as any other part of the body. This is one of the main reasons that psychological fields of study are a soft science. You cannot get further than correlation at best when it comes to the brain because every brain is different and subject to so many variables that it is impossible to design a study that is not subject to confirmation bias and societal bias.
And just is case you're planning to use this defence (I doubt you will but I'm acting on it regardless), the argument that this is what the characters are saying does not apply here. You set up the conditions for this chapter and made the characters say those words. The story does not naturally flow towards the conversation that this chapter starts with. You pushed it in this direction. And you pushed it hard.
Hysteria makes Phobias easier to spread, and triggered phobias cause hysteria?
Unlimited magical energy, hm? Too bad Discord has much less excess energy now. Though wrangling with chaos magic might be just as hard as trying to find a different source. Or duplicating the stone.
And that sounds like a ritual Sombra is trying to create at the end there. But to what end? A modified lich ritual (Rehab 7.2), trying to sacrifice the others in the train car? As Riddle pointed out when the ritual was brought up, 10 sacrifices is excessive. Though I suspect that, unlike Riddle, Sombra hasn't designed his ritual to fail safe...
Jeez, and, again, I've thought I was joking about stalinism.
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This Cameron?
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I'd recommend reading the comment I posted immediately after posting the chapter, as it goes over most of the logical problems you bring up. My intial instinct was to put it in the author's notes of the story, but note how long it is. I'm perfectly happy to discuss this, but please go over the information I posted that was meant for those who WANT to discuss it. The most important part of any good-faith debate is to familiarize yourself with the other side's arguments prior to responding.
As for pushing it, yes, I pushed it as hard as I pushed the 'child sexual abuse led to bowel problems' part, and as hard as I pushed the four other rehab chapters that seemingly have little to do with the story's plot other than as rehab points for Riddle. Same thing here, more or less. I said the brocolli would be followed by a bitter pill, and this was it.
It likely would have been better from a continuity standpoint as a standalone chapter like the rest of the broccoli. You're right about that. I wanted to have a strong plot hook at the end, a symptom of my nature as a serial writer.
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Probably that Cameron; but looking to Wikipedia as an unbiased source of information on modern controversial people is like looking to Hollywood as an unbiased source of information on culture. I noted that the topic is radioactive to careers, or at least reputations, and Yudkowsky himself is the one who points out that insulting an idea feels the same as bringing evidence against it. Looks like that's in full effect here, as it typically is on Wikipedia when it comes to this sort of thing. And in social sciences in general. Just because wikipedia SAYS "These have been heavily criticized and frequently discredited by others in the field," does not mean that the informtation is wrong. I fully expect social 'scientists' to heavily criticize and try to discredit findings like this, but I DON'T expect their methods to be evidence-based.
As a side note, Wikipedia says the same thing about Race and IQ and Charles Murray: "a view that is now considered discredited by mainstream science." And to that, I point people to this video. It's a Lex Fridman podcast, if you know who that is. If only a similar video or article had been made about the topic at hand, I'd link it. But if one has, I haven't come accross it. Hopefully you see the parallels, if you watch the video.
When you have social scientists getting involved in controversial cultural issues, the LAST thing you're typically going to find out of any mainstream institution is rationality, reason, truth, and evidence. You're going to get shouting matches. And anybody who brings hard numbers into the mix, who tries to do REAL science on the issue, is going to be the MOST villified. Not that I'm saying Cameron did or didn't bring real numbers, but I trust those in mainstream institutions even LESS, at least on topics like these.
As for Stalin-esque prosecution, yes but not quite. Stalin was prosecution for political purposes, pure and simple. Celestia engages in moral prosecution, which is closer to what the law is ACTUALLY supposed to do. Or Celestia DID engage in it until Harry went off on her, at which point she might have refined her methods to be less reminiscent of Stalin. Haven't decided yet. Point is, even with someone like Celestia at the helm, I can't imagine getting to a society of no child abuse without strong, careful, and thorough legal crackdown on the abusers, and that's bound to look like Stalin in some aspects. Unless you come up with an omnipotent magical interdict, but Merlin said he was doing things the 'right' way with Celestia, i.e. NOT encouraging her to mind-slaving her nation with magic.
The problem with some political ideas and institutions is that they're founded by well-intentioned, mildly competent people who actually accomplish at least a little of what they set out to do, but when those people die out, the institution remains and is quickly corrupted by power-seekers. And the problem with the rest of the political ideas and institutions is that they're founded by the power-seekers in the first place. I guess one thing this story explores is what happens when the founder DOESN'T die out, doesn't power-seek, and remains competent and motivated in her original mission. To quote Huey Freeman, "it's fun to dream", and that's what fiction is for.
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Couldn't have said it better myself. The best salves are knowledge, empathy, and time, though you need at least two of them working in tandem.
Okay i just read the first part and I got to point out.
Homosexuality is not deviancy,
Even making that connection is borderline hate speech.
Second, like the vast majority of known animal species, humans are usually bi sexual. Being totally straight or totally gay, is rare, but even that isn't caused by molestation.
It's genetic, not environmental, saying otherwise isn't "Politics" it's bigotry. It's closed mindedness. Hell I'd go so far to call it willful ignorance.
Hell they even know what Clusters of genes cause Homosexuality. Granted it's not one gene, but does occur when a combination is found.
I suggest you read this
https://theconversation.com/stop-calling-it-a-choice-biological-factors-drive-homosexuality-122764
The vast population becoming straight, was a result of the Church's influence. Who wanted more followers, and therefore wanted more babies. Despite population control being just as important to a species as having kids.
Before Jesus, who never said homosexuality was bad mind you, that was all the church hundreds of years later, it is historical fact, most people were bi. Look at Ancient Greece and the Romans, the biggest examples. They considered it weird to be 100% straight.
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Homosexuality is, factually speaking, deviation from the norm. Evolutionarily at the very least. And statistically. I'd recommend reading the first comment I posted that went into more details. Here's a quote that directly addresses your reply:
"Some people of certain political (and religious) persuasions will be tempted to believe this is the ONLY thing, the only reason for sexual deviancy, that all homosexuality is either evil or the result of evil, that not being straight is the result of being bent by an outside source. Some people of other political (and cultural) persuasions will be tempted to deny it wholesale, that there's no connection with child abuse, that it isn't worth mentioning in the same sentence as LGBTQ, that it's something only a bigot would think. Both of these positions are extreme. Both are examples of politics killing the brain's ability to think. Being abused in the past is never a guarantee of the future, but it's also not completely irrelevant either. It's an indicator, a red flag, an increase in likelihood. And being sexually deviant in the future is not a guarantee of past abuse, it's just a warning sign, and signs can be wrong. We're dealing in averages, not absolutes."
I'll also mention that I wouldn't place blame on "the Church" or any other individual institution for suppression of homosexuality. For one, which Church? Islam is far less kind to homosexuals than Christianity in the modern day, to say nothing of all the other religions of the world. But even ignoring that, North Korea doesn't even have a word for homosexuality (they don't have a word for a LOT of things that they don't want their people to even be able to conceptualize). And ANY church's influence on NK would be minimal, past or present, except that I heard they turned Kim Il Sung into a Jesus-like figure in their propoganda.
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Portraying disproven pseudoscience, while twisting what actual science says to fit your own views, is not a "Political opinion", it's justifying your own bigotry.
The article I posted is literally called "Stop calling Homosexuality a choice".
Truth is, it doesn't matter what I say, because I could point out every article and scientific research that proves it's genetic, and has been recorded in hundreds of other animal species.
But you wouldn't be willing to accept it.
You aren't giving an enlightened opinion.
You're giving the same argument many people have used, before committing hate crimes.
You're spreading and encouraging hate, while claiming the high road... which is what most bigots do.
So go ahead, delete this post, and claim I'm being the unreasonable one. Because that's what all people like you do.
Fact is, you're a bigot, disregarding proven science, in favor of whatever pseudoscience that justifies your preexisting prejudice.
Then claiming it's a political opinion. You don't even realize how harmful this is. You might as well be telling people to inject themselves with bleach, to cure the plague.
Dear God, I've actually been promoting your story in multiple places, including in the "gay community" which you claim shouldn't even exist.
It doesn't matter.
I won't be promoting a bigot anymore. Not thet that will make any difference... it never does.
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I've only ever deleted one post that wasn't my own, and it was because it was a dual-post, where he posted the same exact thing twice, probably clicking the "post comment" button twice.
Your comment sounds like massive projection. I'm not interested in suppressing counter-opinions by deleting comments, like you probably want to delete this chapter. And note that I never called homosexuality a choice at any point in this chapter, or in my replies. I called it a potential (not guaranteed) response to past trauma.
Once you have your preferences, you have them, as far as I can tell. The question is why. Yes, I know about the genetic component, and yes, there are genes that make homosexuality more or less likely in an individual. But the question arises why those genes aren't a guarantee, why you can't reliably predict a person's future preferences based ONLY on their genetic make-up.
The answer comes as it almost always does in biology: adult human beings are a mix of genetic AND environmental factors. Those environmental factors don't HAVE to be trauma, but they CAN be. And when 77% of lesbian/bisexual women claim to have had sexual relations with an adult as a child, as compared to 15% of straight women, that's an important data point, one that SUGGESTS sexual trauma might be one of the triggers for those 'gay' genes to fully manifest.
I'll also mention that attempting to engage in emotional manipulation and guilt-tripping will get you no-where. Argue against what I've actually said, not straw men of what you THINK I've said. The more you whine about bigotry, the less seriously I take your opinions as a rigorous thinker. Ad Hominem is the first logical fallacy for a reason.
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It’s not Sombra at the end… Four legs AND two arms…
Hmm there is one OTHER thing that is not that sound…
Evolutionary speaking monogamy is not the best strategy… typically the best strategy for a female is getting it on with the fittest male…
Then you have the issue (specific to Equestria) of the sexes imbalance, it appears to have a ratio between one male every four to ELEVEN females… with THAT ratio monogamy goes straight out of the window…
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Monogamy is the most desired strategy for human females, not so much males. It is NOT advantageous to a female if the male pumps and dumps and then fails to provide resources, attention, and example to her children. The argument in HPMoR goes that in ancient hunter-gatherer societies, humans didn't marry, they paired up until the children were raised. And while that may be true, like many things about hunter-gatherer tribes - slavery, human sacrifice and superstition, no unemployment because the unemployed starve to death - a return-to-form might NOT be in humanity's best interest. Rape and pedophelia were viable evolutionary strategies, and there's a reason good people want those to fall by the wayside as well.
Regarding the show's male-to-female ratio, I thought of that, but decided not to make it canon in this story, though I haven't explicitly stated that in the story yet. Equestrians are meant to be the trapped Atlanteans. Unless the mirror intervenes, they're going to have close to the same ratio as humans.
Hello, this is a throwaway account.
I created it to speak about the thesis on "sexual deviancy" from this chapter and the ensuing discussion in the comments.
While I have no desire to really engage in debate, I do think I can make multiple useful remarks on the topic. My hope is to help improve the quality and tranquility of discussion on this topic.
If I can help two disagreeing people understand eachothers better I will be happy.
I will split my remarks in multiple comments.
Remark on the form of the discourse of The Guy Who Writes
On the flow of ideas
It seems to me that the flow of the chapter is ill suited to presenting a mindkilling idea.
The thesis presentation starts with the following passage:
This text implies that what follows will have a negative view on homosexuality before it gives reasons.
For people who often have do deal with stupid and agressive prejudice it might be easy, after that point, to feel like they are reading "more of the usual bullshit".
Perhaps this is an issue with the dialectic form in fiction. Luna doesn't really need to be careful about the order in which she introduces her points. Hence it might be difficult to change the flow of ideas in a way that corrects this issue.
But I do think it could be done and maybe you should try it. Perhaps if the griffon petitioner spoke of a real case of abuse?
On the notion of deviancy
I understand your point that the definition of "deviancy" fits with what you want to say. Nevertheless the word is culturally charged. It can be said to have a history of hatred in that it is now associated with people who feel hatred directed at those they call "deviants".
It is a bit like the words "jay", "commy", or the word-in-N-thou-shall-not-use. You might consider them as purely descriptive, but most people will treat them like insults and assume you also use them as insults.
In what follows I will use "nonstandard" instead.
My understanding of your notion of "deviant" (and thus my notion of "nonstandard") is that it roughly means: anyone that feels sexual attraction other than heterosexual, has an unusual view of their own gender, or is a fetichist.
It is not clear to me that these notions should be bundled together. Maybe some of your claims only apply to some of these subgroups.
I think to justify the use of a concept that covers all these subgroups you need to prove that your arguments apply to each subgroups. Otherwise any of these subgroups could claim to have been accused of what applies to another.
On clarity
As with many -if not all mindkilling topics- clarity is important and it is easy to missunderstand one another. I hope I understood you well.
Core claims and reasoning of The Guy Who Writes
Claims
Here are your claims as I understood them.
First claim: prevalence of abuse in the general population
Seems right.
Second claim: correlation between abuse and nonstandard sexuality
I think this is the most important of your claims. It is surprising to me, but that does not have to mean it is false.
You cite a study from someone with a bad reputation in accademia (according to wikipedia). You are completely right to be suspicious of unfair criticism, simply because the topic is "radioactive". The wikipedia page gives some pretty weak arguments against Cameron.
The page also says "Cameron has asserted that 75 percent of gay men regularly ingest feces". If true I think this discredits him as a source of information, though you might disagree. Wikipedia's source is a book (not by Cameron) called "The anti gay agenda", which I cannot access.
Anyway, I find this claim surprising and weakly defended. It might simply be wrong.
Third claim: causation
Highly reliant on the previous claim. But even if the correlation above exists it might not be the case that nonstandard sexuality (homosexuality in particular) needs abuse to be as prevalent as it is right now.
The most intuitive explanation is certainly "people are very rarely nonstandard by default. The damage caused by abuse changes that". But there are alternatives.
Here is an example: we might think that society supresses nonstandard sexuality and that this effect is weaker on people who were changed by abuse. In other words, abuse would have the side effect of protecting the victim from some forms of influence.
Fourth claim: generalization to subgroups
Not much to say, this claim is at the most implicit. But I think that if it is not true then the use of the word "deviant" instead of speaking of specific subgroups was a disservice to the argument.
Fifth claim: unhealthy lifestyles
I take this claim from
My knee jerk reaction is that this sounds like a generic stereotype. I do not think you gave a source.
This is also not true of the people with nonstandard sexuality I know. But there is an obvious heavy bias in this. I have no junky friends.
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Hm, true. I overlooked that. A centaur then? Tirek comes to mind. He's the main MLP centaur I remember, and HPMOR centaurs don't seem like the type to use rituals. Tirek having ancient lost lore (his energy drain) would also fit with him having knowledge of rituals.
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On the article
I read the article you linked and it says "they concluded that genes account for between 8% and 25% of same-sex behavior". I am not sure what this means precisely.
I am also not sure whether you claim that homosexuality (or nonstandard sexuality) is fully/mostly decided by genes (see bellow).
In any case this article does not seem in my eyes to support that claim.
How to tie two of your claims together
There are two of you claims that I did not manage to make sense of together:
If I undertood you correcctly, this means:
There was a time in which, in Europe, a large portion of the population was not heterosexual. The Catholic church then acted to change this fact. They succeeded through cultural change. The vast majority of the population in Europe is now heterosexual as a result of this action.
If I undertood you correcctly, this means:
Whether a person is heterosexual or not is almost fully decided by their genes
As they stand I do not see how these two claims are compatible. But I also do not see what else they could mean. Could you clarify?
Remark that I assumed you spoke of the European population (which became the US's population) because it was the obvious one for which the time window made sense to me. Perhaps that was wrong.
On bigotry
Maybe you are applying an idea of the "general bigot" to someone who does not deserve it.
It seems to me that The Guy Who Writes has a sincere opinion/theory grounded in reflection, contrary to if he was purely trying to rationalize an emotional position.
His opinion might be wrong, and in fact I suspect his core assumptions come from trusting bad studies. But I see no reason to doubt his commitment to truth.
About harm
There is something you did not say but that I think you implied. Apologies if you did not mean to.
It might be paraphrased as:
Public discourse with negative ideas about a part of the LGBT+ community is dangerous and harmful. The first reason for this is that its members have often been subjected to discrimination and hatred, this makes them more likely to suffer psychologicaly from these ideas. The second reason is that the public discourse about them is not currently stable, and if it shifts in a "bad" way LGBT+ people are likely to suffer.
I think there is truth to this. An maybe this is enough to justify that they should not be discussed within fiction.
However I sincerely do not think this justifies a full taboo on the topic. There is an internet tendency to narrow the overton window on these topics to a single view. I would argue the average discours on the topic is poorer for it, not better.
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I just took it for granted it was Tyrek. But it feels weird for him to do advanced mental planing. Maybe another one of the same species?
Didn't you have something with Sparkle and the magic bags about that?
11540530
Thank you for breaking it down precisely. Very true to your name.
The most important part of this entire argument is, as you point out, claim #2, that sexual abuse at a young age can lead to nonstandard sexual interests. This isn't information you'll be able to easily confirm or falsify based on middle to upper middle class America, partly because abuse is less prevalent there, and partly because polite, well-off people are less honest about what happens behind closed doors, especially when abuse is involved. Gay strip bars, or strip bars in general, brothels, prison. These are the places you're more likely to get honest answers. But these are also the places where the more extreme behaviors manifest, making the middle ground even harder to examine.
It's fairly undisputed even in academia that female sex workers usually suffered sexual violence in childhood. Where this question hasn't been expanded upon is everywhere else. In my initial comment, I said "those that actually engage in the lifestyle, as opposed to porn habits," and this is more or less what I meant. It's one thing to jerk off to incest, prostitution, furry porn, loli, and any number of other things that would be criminal in real life. It's another thing to actually engage in it in real life and seek it out.
I called out homosexuality in particular for three main reasons: (1) Shock value, like Yudkwosky's rape thing in Three Worlds Collide. (2) I couldn't very well have Luna and Riddle use phrases like LGBTQ - I had to use terminology that would have been prevelant prior to 1993. (3) I myself hadn't yet fully formulated the equation in my mind. I don't have the luxury of standing on the shoulders of giants here. Thank you for being a reasonable voice of skepticism.
Now that I've had time to reflect and listen to counter-arguments, I think I should rephrase it to: self-destructive, addictive, and/or violent manifestations of sexual interests typically stem from abuse. Just like most other self-destructive, addictive, and/or violent behaviors. A homosexual relationship in a stable, middle-class family that more or less reflects a straight relationship isn't likely to be this way. Or, not any more likely than a straight relationship of similar income and social standing. Probably. Again, hard numbers on this subject are hard to gather without being subject to the kind of data collection biases that overlook low-income households anyway, and if the numbers of academia and private researchers are in doubt due to strong biases on both sides and a lack of true scientific inquiry, then looking for numbers in any case will be a mission in confirmation bias. I'm not working from bad studies, or good studies, or any studies at all, save the one I quoted. A lot of this is extrapolation from extremes; unarguably so in the case of prostitution, less obviously in other places. I've been personally working on restoring my vision to 20-20 the natural way, improving the strength of my visual cortex by ditching my glasses entirely and stimulating my vision with bright, natural scenes outside, and discovering how the Achoo Syndrome plays into it, and that can't be found in studies either.
So, fully and finally: Self-destructive, addictive, and/or violent manifestations of sexual interests are likely to stem from abuse. The more extreme the behavior, the more likely it is to be a result of abuse. It's not exclusive to homosexuality in particular, it literally applies to all relationships. I first learned about this connection when a talk-therapist equivalent successfully made an advance prediction that a man had been sexually abused as a child by an uncle just from hearing he was interested in an open relationship and tried to convince his girlfriend to try it. He went into his reasoning, explained how many times he's personally seen the pattern of abuse predating unhealthy sexual interests, and I extrapolated from there.
Finally, I'll admit to pre-existing biases of my own influencing my work - and not where you'd think it came from. Back in my teens, I probably listened far too much to a gay commentator who was heavily involved in the 'degenerate' side of things - cocaine, orgies, partying. He was intelligent, well-spoken, speaking from personal experience, and went into significant efforts to rebut the idea that gay relationships are 'normal' like hollywood was (and still is) trying to push, for he himself was involved in many parties in hollywood and saw first-hand how massive their hypocrisy was. I now realize that listening to him skewed my own perceptions too far; I knew the media-pushed and cultivated image was a lie, but not to what degree. Again, hard numbers unreliable, bad actors don't want it to come out, and so on. It's a question of whose anecdotes you believe, and I chose to believe the guy who had a decade of personal experience in the scene that nobody else was talking about.
I still stand by the statement that far too many people wear rose-tinted goggles about LGBTQ as a whole - there's an over 50% infidelity rate in gay male marriages, lesbian marriages statistically contain the most domestic violence, you probably wouldn't believe me if I told you about the gay men who are deliberately trying to spread the AIDS virus as far and wide as possible, so I'll include a link if you're brave enough, and de-TRANSition stories can be utterly harrowing, the more so if it was actual surgery, and if it was prior to the age of consent - but I myself likely committed the Quirrell fallacy of being too cynical anyway.
The extremes don't define the middle. But if the causal relationship between abuse and deviancy exists at the extremes, it's not unreasonable to suggest it exists to a lesser degree in the middle. If you're looking for evidence in numbers, as I said it's a mission in confirmation bias. Modern academia won't produce fair studies on the subject. We'll have to wait for a Bell Curve equivalent, where the scientists involved are truly devoted to the scientific method, but that's unlikely to happen in THIS subject like it did with IQ.
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Biased or not, Wikipedia states (with link) that dude was kicked out of APA (and other organizations) for wingnutting, cites judge's opinion that dude brazenly bullshat the court and links to a few of dude's own woks. More of which can be found on Google Scholar and contain among other things following gems (titles and short excerpts from abstract or beginning):
"Social psychological aspects of the Judeo-Christian stance toward homosexuality"
"Effect of homosexuality upon public health and social order"
"Do homosexual teachers pose a risk to pupils?"
(It was published in 1996 for context)
What Causes Homosexual Desire and Can It Be Changed?
(Yes, he conducted poll among "general population" and they didn't like this shit)
Sure, it doesn't guarantee that he also made that one paper up, but that's a very good reason to take it with a grain of salt. Like this one:
2.bp.blogspot.com/-OpZSlwlccfE/VhlMxKavVmI/AAAAAAAAGlo/GwRd0E2GQZg/s1600/Halite%2Bcubes%2Bof%2Bsimiliar%2Bsize%2Bhas%2Bbeen%2Bfound.jpg
That different ethnic groups demonstrate noticeably different average performance in tests was well-established long time ago. Surely, Murray's book was criticised for that specifically?
Seriously?
Exactly like comrade Stalin! I think I've already mentioned that, but Marxist-Leninists saw everything societal as different facets of great underlying Battle Between Good guys and Bad guys --- which other folks may call moral conflict (although Marxists themselves would probably say that all that talk about morality is Bad guys trying to dupe you. Maybe about politics too. Or maybe they'd say that everything is politics and thinking otherwise is bad guys duping you).
And Comrade couldn't imagine getting to a society of no exploitation... Thing is you instate vague alternative perfect reality you want to live in, you instate impossibility of reasonable disagreement, you instate enforcement system that knows better, better equipped to get to the objective truth and strictly accountable to their bosses (and so on until the biggest boss) under threat of severe punishments, you approve reporting neighbours to authorities and punish "false reporting" --- you get consequences. Or everyone else gets consequences, to be precise. The only thing we haven't seen yet is KPI-s for numbers of caught.
Russia's legal system is still partially like that (even before latest shit-show).
You mean absolute monarch for >kiloyear?
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Of effin course there's a correlation. Remember average attitude towards people of "nonstandard sexuality", especially in the past or outside first world countries.
I can not find paper about eating shit specifically, but this one (it's dude's own website, just in case) claims 17% for "scat", 42% for anal fisting, 92% for "oral anal contact" (although, it's pretty high for non-gays too) and 85% for STD (even higher than wiki). That's if I'm reading the table correctly --- it's a bit mangled.
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You are very welcome. Thank you for the fic!
On your claims and sources
I find this claim much more intuitive than the intial one. It might be false but I would not be surprised if it was true, at least for any of the three broad groups "self-destructive", "addictive", and "violent".
There is of course some room left for interpretation in the exact meaning of the terms at hand, but that tends to be the case with these topics. The definition of abuse, for example, likely varies along with social norms.
I also suspect you might have more luck finding studies on this claim. For example, there are probably studies on the correlation between being a victim of abuse and becoming a perpetrator. Likewise for the correlation between abuse and drug use. These topics feel much less ``radioactive'' to me.
I think this constitutes a strong improvement in terms of how the claim is stated and a good general update on your part.
Admitting bias is not easy, especially when making a claim outside of the overtone window. Thank you for this!
Well this might be my own bias talking but I expect a large presence of many forms of nonstandard sexuality in the hollywood elite, especially drug use during sex, orgies, and parties involving prostitutes and fetichism. This is because I expect ``maximized'' hedonism by default in groups that are wealthy, high status, and not selectionned for intellectual qualities or views. This is however largely an uninformed view.
In any case I do think Hollywood (both the moviemaking industry and the place) is quite a special case. I wouldn't generalize from it.
On the inclusion of homosexuality
Your notion of "deviant" includes both destructive sexuality (of the self and others) and homosexuality. As I wrote before, it is not obvious that the two need to be discussed together.
Reading your additional comment and if I exclude Cameron's study, I see no reason to speak of homosexuality at all in your argument.
I guess that there is often at least a weak positive correlation between any two behaviors shunned by a society.
The main reason for is that, holding predisposition constant, people are more likely to exhibit behaviors shunned by society if they are resilient to social pressure. So these behavior should correlate simply because they will almost all be disproportionately present in the subset of people with a strong resilience to social pressure.
Anecdotically, it seems to me that people with a high degree of education are more likely to be homosexual and in general to have nonstandard sexualities. This would fit the theory, if you grant that these people are often somewhat resilient to social pressure.
A secondary reason is that I also guess that people who are nonstandard in some important way have reduced incentives to conform to social standards. They think that they will never be ``normal'' and so are less likely to try.
Beyond this general weak effet I personnaly expect no specific connection between homosexuality and:
If such a correlation exists for points 2 and 3 above, I predict that it is cultural and does not replicate across cultures past and present.
Your initial point would be much less controversial if it was instead about people with self-destructive, addictive, and/or violent sexualities. Note that these are not necessarily the same as ``just'' having an extremely hedonistic life centered on sexuality.
I think the followings need to be strong parts of the arguments or to be removed:
I do think the chapter would benefit from that change.
Hopefully this does not come of as too authoritative. I am not trying to force you to do anything.
Maybe Luna could introduce her own vocabulary, given that she herself certainly would have had to make these distinctions.
On wearing rose-tinged goggles
Agreed as a general statement. There is a tendency for people who want to defend a group under attack to refuse to acknowlledge negative arguments and facts of any kind about said group. Argument are soldiers, yada yada.
It does seems like this effect is stronger on the topic at hand than with any other one I know of. Not sure why, but it does makes debate all the more difficult.
A quick google search gave 20% of cheating for men and 13% for women. Let's assume independance of the two, which is certainly wrong but allows us to make calculations.
The math comes to a 1 -(1-0.2)(1-0.13) = 30% infedility rate in marriages.
For male-male marriages, the formula becomes 1 - 0.8*0.8 = 36%.
A jump from 36% to 50% is significant but not that big. Especially if we take in account the reduced presence of children and religion in gay marriage, two factors which encourage stability.
Maybe because it is the situation in which domestic violence is the least likely to cause long term damages? Not sure.
I chose not to click the link. I will read it if you think it is important to the rest of the conversation, but I try not to make myself angry without a good reason to.
Anyway, evil behavior is a part of humanity. With large populations any group is likely to contain a subgroup of cartoonishly evil individuals. Of course some groups will produce more evil than others (for a given definition of evil), it is not like they are all equals.
But for any large group we should expect by default that it presents enough examples of despicable evil to overwhelm the human intuition. This is a part of why anecdotes gathered from the general population lose in value as population increases.
PS: I had initially decided to keep this a relatively short comment. Utter failure! But I do not want to make more cuts.
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On vilification
To some extend the vilification of one's opposition is a defense mechanism. It makes sense that the defense be stronger against genuin treats to a position/theory. There is also the effect of meme toxmoplasmose, which might be stronger on intelligent and scientific discourse.
It seems extrem to say these people are actually the most villified. But I do expect that they get a stronger negative reaction than if they held the same views without justification.
On Cameron (first comment)
The quotes you give do paint the picture of someone with a strong personnal distate for homoesexuals. His implicit assumption seems to be that homosexuals are weird and repugnant, the only question being wether they are also dangerous. I perfectly understand why that makes you dislike Cameron. Outside of efforts for neutrality, parts of his ideas are funny to me.
But I do not see anything to make me think he makes up statistics or conducts surveys so baddly that they are pointless.
The quotation closest to do that is the one from "Effect of homosexuality upon public health and social order". But he uses the word ``more'' everywhere, which does not mean ``a lot''. If the effect is very small then the description he gives is missleading but that does not mean he is lying.
Another one is
But a general sentence like ``it's fine if you feel attracted to other men/women'' might count toward this question.
On cameron (second comment)
Ok, I think this is enough proof of Cameron giving values too absurd to be taken seriously. Your reading of the table is correct in my eyes.
I also notice 19% of bestiality for bisexuals. That's 1 in 5, which I think is much less likely than Cameron being untrustworthy.
On abuse
You mean child abuse caused by the child being homosexual / nonstandard? You are right.
I realise I have been using abuse to mean ``being a victim of sexual assault as a child''.
But if we include all forms of strong abuse on minors (including after puberty) the causality could perfectly be that nonstandard sexuality causes abuse.
If we restrict ourselves to abuse of chidren, before puberty, then I am not sure. It depends on whether children usually exhibit clear signs of their future sexuality, especially homosexuality. Dunno.
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I'm inclined to think you're correct on every point. I was already making adjustments to the chapter, and I'll take your recommendations into account. The broader point I was making was that child abuse can manifest in places people would never have considered, places people actively don't want to consider, and that eliminating it entirely will likely have significant impacts that modern society can't imagine - similar to the point Yudkowsky was making with the rape thing in Three Worlds Collide. Future, improved societies will almost certainly have moral standards that will shock, offend, and likely outrage most modern people. I should definitely make this more explicit in this story, as it was in Three Worlds Collide.
The link between child abuse and addictive behaviors - and negative life outcomes in general, actually - is a place where I could get much more solid and simultaneously less controversial numbers. I think I remember where to find the research that rank orders ACE scores - short for Adverse Childhood Experiences - with things like cigarrette use, alcohol use, drug use, significant health problems (physical and mental, and obesity in particular), average life expectency, and a bunch of other important life factors. Whenever I use the term 'child abuse' beyond the context of sexual abuse, I'm referring to ACE's, so it would be prudent to make that clear in the story.
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Glad to be of help. I am looking foward to the revised version.
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"de-TRANSition stories can be utterly harrowing, the more so if it was actual surgery, and if it was prior to the age of consent - but I myself likely committed the Quirrell fallacy of being too cynical anyway."
It's not entirely clear to me how trans people are relevant to this discussion when they're only tangentially related to sexuality, which is itself only tangentially related to what you're actually talking about. Regardless, I think your fallacy here is less related to being too cynical and more just based on misinformation.
This meta analysis finds an overall regret rate of 1% for transgender surgery and, though admittedly I wasn't able to find data on surgery on minors, probably because it's a lot rarer than the media tends to make it out to be. For context, overall regret rate for medical surgery is 1 in 7 according to this study and the rate is even higher for cosmetic surgery. I don't think it's "wearing rose-tinted goggles" to consider such a low regret rate impressive. On the contrary, focusing on the incredibly rare cases of cis people receiving transgender surgery and regretting it over the far more common cases of trans people needing surgery and not being able to receive it, often leading to depression and suicide, seems extremely disingenuous.
this is the kind of chapter that will scare most people as it has so much truth in it.
and i love it. 👍
When I first read this it seemed blatantly wrong to me, but recently I thought of another example that brings strong evidence for his claims:
pederasty in ancient Greece. If, as people today claim, homosexuality is a pretty much purely biological trait affecting a couple percent of the population (the Kinsey report said 10% but later studies keep finding that it's actually more like 2-3%), then how was it that pederasty was so common in ancient Greece that at places and times the actual MAJORITY of adult men considered sex with boys in controlling, dominant circumstances to be the ideal of sexual relations, and sex with women was a relatively more annoying thing to do for children? According to the Wikipedia page, this was called "the principal cultural model for free relationships between citizens." and had official recognition in Sparta's constitution.
Ironically, this only applied to pedophilia: adult men who wanted to "receive" penises from their equals were still considered deviant (which does imply that these might be caused by separate things). Still, the claim that sexual abuse is the main cause of homosexual desires does have some real weight to it.
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Yep. The modern world has plenty of societies that abuse children, some systemically, but it's often hidden or downplayed. Ancient societies were blatant, open, and FAR more prolific about it than most modern abusers would ever even DREAM of, so they're often useful places to look for this sort of thing.
The wider insight I was trying to convey is that a lot of strong behaviors and impulses can be explained by significant childhood experiences. The narrow skill I was trying to teach was how to recognize that pattern, even (or perhaps especially) in areas you are afraid to look. "Afraid to look" is itself often a result of abuse, a point which Yudkowsky really tried to hammer home in his depiction of the Chelliax girls in planecrash, and Peranza in particular. Most people are afraid to look in the places that powerful forces don't WANT them looking, precisely because those powerful forces don't want anybody connecting any dots and rebelling against them.
So while a useful question to ask is always "What do I think I know and how do I think I know it? Why do I believe what I believe?", the far more DANGEROUS question to ask is "Why am I having trouble looking at this issue clearly? Who doesn't WANT me looking there? Who might have intended for me to believe what I currently believe? What else might I believe because of them? WHY don't they want me looking there? Where ELSE might they want me 'not looking'?"
TL;DR - I'm curious about your "When I first read this it seemed blatantly wrong to me" remark, in that I'd like to know, or more accurately I'd like YOU to know, WHY it seemed blatantly wrong to you. Can you point to a single person, or a group of people, or a specific political movement, or a wider cultural pressure responsible for that initial feeling of 'seemed blatantly wrong'?
Something humans leadership still need to learn respect!