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Notes -
Thuletide on Fertility
According to Thuletide, the age gap «pedophilia» moral panic, spawned by feminism and kicked into overdrive during the #MeToo era that began circa 2017, is a potentially civilization-ruining phenomenon. He is, of course, not referring to very real problems, like grooming gangs in Britain, but the fact that 18-year-old boys are frequently accused of being an "Epstein diddy blud" merely for talking to 17-year-old girls. If you wanted to vaporize our already plummeting birth rates, stigmatizing any age gap larger than that between identical twins is a great way to do it.
From Thuletide's Telegram:
From his Twitter, he cites the following. Older-male age-gap relationships produce more children, with total lifetime fertility peaking at +7 years (although the variation from +3 to +13 years is very small). The negative fertility effect of older wives begins immediately at +1 year and declines linearly; at +3.5 years, couples produce 0.5 fewer children, on average. Obviously, this is due to women's limited fertility window, which is much smaller than commonly believed: by age 31, around 10% of women are sterile and around 50% are subfertile (they have difficulty conceiving, decreased egg quality, etc).
He concludes on Telegram:
Sounds like a better plan than complaining about phones to me.
His argument would go down much better if he did not say this. It may be objectively the case, but holy shit does it make him sound like a pedophile. It generally reflects quite poorly on people when they sexualize those who are legally and popularly regarded as children.
"An 18 and 16 year old having a sexual relationship should not be discouraged" is one thing. "It is ephebophilia not pedophilia"is quite another and makes it sound like what he really wants is for himself to have sex with 15 year olds without risking punishment.
If setting the facts straight "reflects poorly on people", that's a major issue with the conversation that's important to push back against. Pointing out something is incorrect is always a valid addition to the debate, and tabooing the truth is never justifiable.
Or maybe he just doesn't want to be shamed for his perfectly normal sexuality? "It's not pedophilia" is just correct, and implies nothing about what kind of relationship should be appropriate. You can perfectly well be aware that a normal heterosexual man will find 15 year old girls attractive, and this is not inherently a problem, but still think he should wait until she's older, and if he doesn't, then it becomes a problem.
What I quoted is the kind of thing people say when they are trying to push an agenda. Specifically the agenda that older men should be allowed to sexualise and have sexual relations with people under the age of 18. There is a clear taboo against this in modern society, and for good reason. So when someone starts to undermine this taboo through their arguments it is going to result in alarm bells.
This is a very online thing, where people conflate the indeed very sharp and absolute threshold of 18 for porn, with the age of consent for sex that isn't recorded and distributed. In many European countries the age of consent is 14, in some it's 15 or 16. Of course there are other constraints like being in a teacher or similar role, in which case it will not be allowed.
Very online people are simply unable to tell the two apart because they rightfully know that in porn it would be the absolute toxic sludge and nuclear waste to come into contact with such material, and they generalize this to IRL relationships.
So, again, people are allowed to sexualize and have sexual relations with people above 14 in much of Europe. It may be disapproved socially by people in their lives, but it isn't disallowed per se.
Sure, but the reason for the low age of consent in Europe is generally not so that grown men with careers can have sex with high schoolers. It is to decriminalize sex between teenagers. The social convention for adults not to abuse this is quite strong, so it is pretty rare that it happens.
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What's your evidence for this? Because I don't think you need an agenda to want to set the facts straight, especially if the wrong claim unfairly demonises you.
Declaring something sacred and therefore any opposition to related claims automatically invalid and evidence of bad faith is not valid epistemics. You can be wrong while thinking it's for a good cause, and people can correct you without being motivated by a bad cause. I don't believe in taboos. If the reasons for the taboo are good enough, the position will be able to withstand counterarguments and the taboo isn't needed.
It's not like the age of consent is a law of nature either. In Germany, for example, it's 16 (with the exception of power-imbalanced relationships like teacher/student), and it's a priori not clear that's a worse solution. Or the 17 in some US states. If you want to argue 18 is the right number, that needs to be based on facts, not bulverism.
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