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Loaded question, they don't.
Anti-progressives keep acting as if "adults having sex with children is okay" must follow from "adults providing children with info about sex is okay" even as all trends point to high-and-increasing discomfort with the former idea among the modal progressive. It's motivated thinking. Meanwhile the most conservative societies on Earth generally appear to be very comfortable with adults fucking minors (child marriage in the open, child prostitution on the down low).
You're missing the point, which is: why? If "sex is just like tennis" what exactly is the issue? If I accuse you of liking to play tennis with children, even if you don't, are you going to get outraged, and ask me how dare I make the insinuation?
It's not that it must follow, but surely you can understand people's suspicions when the "info about sex" includes all sorts of kinks and fetishes.
Oh please, and this isn't motivated reasoning? I can also cherry-pick things like the Taliban's reaction to Bacha Bazi and contrast it with various child sexualization initiatives of the progressives.
This is a bad-faith gotcha.
To use the tennis analogy, you would probably find something at the very least off if Serena Williams casually challenged a middle-school aged boy who was curious about tennis but had no real awareness of it beyond theoreticals of how to play, then proceeded to destroy him because she's that much more experienced. Something about that would strike most people as fundamentally different and possibly bullying, since the absolute destruction he faces might turn him off from the idea altogether and leave him upset. But if the same boy played someone only slightly more experienced, that would not necessarily come off as problematic.
Likewise, sex between children amongst themselves might not be a pro-social thing, but it's not wrong because it's unlikely either is that much more cognizant of what they are doing than the other. Ditto on predation, both are probably just fumbling and curious without any intent to exploit the other.
On the other hand, if Serena Williams taught a middle-school aged boy how to play tennis by playing with him, I would find that wholesome. I would think the same if whoever hell is the male best player did the same with a girl. By contrast I can't concoct a scenario when anyone would teach a child about sex, by having sex with them, without the whole thing being predatory.
It is not a gotcha, it is not bad faith. It is a valid analogy/question.
Why can't there be a teacher, acting in good faith, showing a child/teenager how to use a condom or what a birth control pill looks like? Maybe even outright demonstrating sex to show how this looks in practice.
Put another way, the suspicion on any adult talking sex to a child seems like a practical line drawn to make the best of an imperfect reality. I think if we had a surefire way of knowing a person's intent, we would absolutely not have a problem with some people getting to depict graphic sex to children on the basis of teaching them what it's actually like.
Because it violates the terms of the analogy. That's like teaching tennis by explaining the theory, demonstrating proper forms with videos and mannekins, or whatever. It can be a lot of things, but what it is not, is teaching tennis by playing with them.
Sure. What is fundamentally predatory about adult-child or adult-teenager sex which couldn't be negated if neither party is sexually interested in the other?
I hope that I'm not badly misunderstanding you... you're saying it would more acceptable to have sex with a kid, if neither party is interested?
The idea of having sex with someone I'm not interested in at all sounds vaguely traumatic, as an adult. For a kid, it sounds like it would completely mess up their view of sex and relationships generally.
Also we've had people here argue that most child molesters aren't pedos, I'm not sure I buy the argument, but if it's true, wouldn't the majority of child molestation be non-predatory in your book?
It's a thought experiment. We're trying to figure out how something works, why it's like that, so we ask - how does fire work? Would fire burn without air? This doesn't mean we want to burn everyone.
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