|
timmy
|
 |
Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13818
|
|
|
I've been watching and sometimes even contributing to what ought to be a sensible discussion at Wikipedia.
In a nutshell, and unsurprisingly, and wholly supportably, Wikipedia does not want to be in any way associated with anyone who advocates paedophilia. That's fine and I support that completely. But the weirdness is their (the editors, folk like you and me, who create bureaucracy there) inability to understand what they are discussing and their inability to let their personal distaste and disgust over paedophilia be separated from writing a valid policy against it.
Because this organ is edited by all sorts of individuals ranging from the bewilderingly bigoted to the wholly liberal they manage to discuss the wrong things almost all the time. How lucky they don;t run the world, but what a shame some of them have the right to vote! And how scary that some own guns and others can drive cars!
Quite sensibly they will block indefinitely the edits of anyone who advocates paedophilia. But they also go too far. They will also block anyone who is identified as or who self identifies as a paedophile, whether that person has any intention of acting on that or not. And they appear to define paedophilia by the popular definition of sex under the age of majority, not sex with a child.
The half amusing thing is that there is no reasoning with a bigot. Of course, it's very easy, wise even, to argue that paedophilia is all shades of disgusting and disgraceful. It's fine to have personal disgust. But is it fine to block someone who says "Gosh, yes, I'm attracted to under age kids, but I will never, not ever, act on that attraction"?
And what if you edit an article that handles paedophilia, or, more properly, pederasty? If oyu edit it there do you then get accused of advocating it?
Now, before you raise your hands in horror and say that I am off my chump and I should be supporting all efforts to block paedophiles there because you and I consider it an immoral and improper practice, I'd like you to think hard.
If Wikipedia had been around in 1960, would it have said the same about homosexuals?
If Wikipedia had been around in 1930, would it have said the same about black people?
And yes, there is a difference between homosexuals, black people and paedophiles. But not as great as you might at first believe.
By the way, Wikipedia does not block thieves, embezzlers, murderers, fraudsters, burglars, rapists, even when they are convicted. It does block those who advocate such behaviours. It may not be used for unlawful purposes. So why does it create a policy to block a paedophile who refuses to act on their attractions and who does not advocate paedophilia?
[Updated on: Sat, 03 July 2010 12:10]
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
|
] 
A Place of Safety
Search
Help
Register
Login
Home
