Don't dismiss what people are saying as just being a reaction to opposition. When you do this, it informs us that while you see that you're being opposed you are not understanding our reaction and choosing to obnoxiously ignore what we're telling you as clearly as we can spend the energy or emotional resilience explaining.

I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say here (sorry about that). You're right that I see myself being opposed, and chances are that I don't understand your reaction (as is apparent from my trying to explain why it's misplaced), but it's not that I dismiss what any of you are saying; I do read what you say, I just disagree with some views, and with some interpretation of my own views (which I ought to know pretty well). I'm not sure if that addresses my ‘dismissing what people are saying as just being a reaction to opposition’.

[…] It is black and white in terms of whether or not this is appropriate. Who cares if a shade of black is blackest and which black is just "demi-black"? If you really want to stick around in a place that is against pedophiles and pedo apologia, it is inappropriate to split hairs on such a topic because it is a pathway to excusing pedos and nothing else.

There is no "kinder" version of pedophilia, and there is no room for analysis on the variations of it when it really doesn't matter once you've crossed the line into abuse.

I do know that I disagree with you on this. If the nuances between ‘black’ and ‘demi-black’ do exist (as I have argued), then they may be observed and distinguished between. I am not saying these nuances are always relevant and appropriate to be taken in consideration, but there may very well be numerous situations in which they are (because considering any set of real differences as irrelevant in every situation would be blatant ignorance—which I am pointing out for contrast, not accusing you of it).

And I still firmly believe that the situation in which I spoke of child abuse was one of such situations, where it was relevant and appropriate. If we are to talk about the extent of harm done to children in sexual acts, it only makes sense to examine these nuances, without which it is impossible to determine the extent.

Now please do note that the original point I discussed was not how good or bad paedophilia was; I believe I have presented no stance on that matter. What I did say was that the effective harm caused to children by paedophilia could vary substantially, and that we could observe some instances of paedophilia to be less or more damaging, based on the amount of harm done to the victim. I have not ever suggested that it should be used to determine whether paedophilia could be acceptable or excusable.

If you're just a contrarian, I would back off from defending subtleties in topics that only serve to negotiate the morality of pedos based on the interpretations of feedback from unwitting and tricked victims.

That is a good point. I have defended subtleties (though depending on how broadly we define ‘paedophilia’ for our use, they could very well be substantial differences in the topic of harm caused by paedophilia) for the very reason that they exist and could be useful in various situations, and therefore shouldn't be dismissed. My aim was not exactly negotiating morality of paedophilia as a whole, and if my arguments serve ill purposes, this criticism is entirely valid, and I thank you for getting it across.

You keep saying that you never said "that pedophilia is ok or acceptable" but when you give examples you include descriptors like "kind approach". Having the perspective that there could be any amount of "kindness" in this situation is the part that is being called "apologia".

(Note: The one following paragraph contains vague descriptions of violence, seeing as some people prefer to know beforehand.)

Well, once again, I am not talking about the state of things as a whole. Any complex act, including sexual abuse, can be decomposed into smaller ones, which together make up the whole. For instance, were I do kidnap some innocent person and murder them, there are countless ways I could do that. I could tie them up in a dark basement, leave them locked up without food or water for three days straight, then beat them up, do some horrible things to them, and finish them off in some slow and painful way. Or I could lock them up in a basement, give them a last meal, assure them their loved ones are in no danger, and finish them off in the quickest and least painful way I could think of.

Now, is either of those okay or acceptable? No, in both I would commit horrible acts by restraining someone's freedom and then taking their life. I did something bad based on that fact alone, and how I did that doesn't change anything about it. But the differences are there nevertheless, and shouldn't be discarded! They may be irrelevant to the question of whether what I did was good or not, but they may be very relevant to the question of how much suffering I caused to the person. In the first case, I made them suffer a lot for my own twisted sadism. In the latter, I went out of my way to minimise the suffering they had to go through. This way, even if the whole act is unquestionably terrible it itself, you can find semblance of kindness even in there. That's not saying the kindness will be significant to all or many purposes, but it is there, we can find it, and we can name it and talk about it. We can dispute whether doing so would ever be useful, and if so, when, but it's not what I would call ‘apologia’. And to make sure this isn't our central point of disagreement: Is that what you would call ‘apologia’?

(Note: I wrote in first person as an example. I have no inclination towards doing anything like that.)

Honestly, the best thing that you can do right now is apologize for trying split hairs about "different shades of morality in pedophilia" and forcing everyone to have to spend time educating you on disturbing topics where your side would ultimately would ever serve pedos. […]

I retain my position that this ‘splitting hairs’ is quite alright, at least if we agree on which hairs we are splitting. If the hair is bad indeed, then no amount of splitting will change the fact, but it can be quite helpful if you're trying to examine the structure of hair, or understand someone else who's been splitting them. From this position I also find that examining hair will only serve understanding, and not child abuse, unless we tangle it into distraction.

With that written, I will not apologise for splitting hairs, but I will apologise for any tangled hair that any clumsy handling on my side may have caused to be. And sorry to those I may have caused to spend time and effort educating me on disturbing topics I didn't specially need education on. As for those who did let me know something new and useful, thank you; that was useful by definition.

(As for the transphobia, it is indeed probably wise not to deal with it right here, so I'll retain my comments.)