I don't see any comments defending pedophilia in the comments here.
Whatever else the young woman was - trafficked, coerced, abuse - she was reportedly 17 years old.
The moral view will be understandably quite varied, especially because Epstein himself did abuse younger girls, and the 17 year old may not have been free in her decisions.
But lawmakers around the world and throughout the USA have set a standard to work with if we are talking about age.
Within that standard, 17 is fully legal, above the age of consent, to consent to sex with another adult with no upper age limit on the other adult, in most countries and in 74% of the states of the USA (37 out of 50). Indeed, 16 is also fully legal in the majority of the US.
So when people imply we should all be outraged that someone may have had sex with a 17 year old on the specific grounds of statutory rape, that is highly location-dependent.
Calling it pedophilia is something else again. The young lady in question was significantly older than the age where it's appropriate to call something pedophilia, under any official classification of pedophilia.
As Wikipedia puts it: "Pedophilia (alternatively spelt paedophilia) is a psychiatric disorder in which an adult or older adolescent experiences a primary or exclusive sexual attraction to prepubescent children. Although girls typically begin the process of puberty at age 10 or 11, and boys at age 11 or criteria for pedophilia extend the cut-off point for prepubescence to age 13."
So far as I can tell, nobody is defending or promoting pedophilia in these comments.
> How do we find a constructive path forward with a group that is unwilling to condemn pedophilia and child abuse or those who advocate and defend it.
It's hard to imagine a constructive path forward with that kind of argument.
Whatever else it was, it simply was not pedophilia, not even a little bit.
In my view, if you are genuine with your stated intent not to troll, you failed with this one.
I imagine you probably think I'm a pedophilia apologist as well now. Which is why I've posted under a throwaway handle, like a lot of people. It's really striking how many people in this HN thread appear to be afraid of having their actual name associated with their comments, including well reasoned and fact based comments. I think that it is not because they are embarrassed, rather it is because they see how angry and inconsiderate people are, being happy to throw out heinous false accusations that ruin lives, so it's smarter to stay anonymous on this topic.
I believe the default state is to be moved by what you can perceive as a more immediate danger. This doesn't stem from some underhanded camaraderie, one's mind is just more attuned to what can directly affect it.
Here, the gender split already makes HN more likely, when all comments are summed into a chaotic generalized opinion, to defend RMS by default. He's a man, he's a hacker, he's at the root of many things we take for granted.
The gender split is just some context (and not even the most important piece of context — if I had time to discuss this at length, I would posit that if HN or tech in general were evenly split, it would have the same lack of empathy, just manifested differently.) for the next paragraph, which is the real problem: pretending feelings, emotions and perceptions can be discarded. Which is what makes me resent HN sometimes, as the parent says:
> I'm not really sure why you're expressing derision towards people that don't want sexual assault trivialized. I dunno, I feel like reading these types of posts, which are prevalent in this thread, that I have less and less in common with people on Hacker News
Once emotions are discarded, you can justify even genocide as long as you can convene an outcome that is favorable to a majority.
I don't know what your point is, but smearing all of HN based on the fact that it is a predominantly male environment isn't some kind of constructive path forward.