Canadian mother-of-three, 23, is jailed after having sex with American man in bar bathroom on Norwegian Cruise Line ship in the Bahamas - before learning he was only 15

I mean, they're not mature enough to use alcohol "with adults" but how about tomorrow we make it legal to let them use alcohol with other minors, just as long as they aren't doing it with adults?

Because surely they aren't mature enough to drink with adults, but with others their own age there's no problem.

If you don't like that analogy, how about driving? We don't allow teens under a certain age to drive on the road with adults in the passenger, but if we could section off some roadways "just for teens" where teens could drive with other teens in the passenger seat, would driving suddenly become acceptable? Or would that be adding fuel to the fire of people of limited brain power being even more distracted and incapable of good decision making?

You're asking us to believe that teens are incompetent to make sexual decisions with adults, but are more competent to make the same kinds of decisions with people who are just as bad at decision making themselves? Or are you merely saying that "sure, its bad and harmful they have sex, but the harm is not nearly as bad as any harm that would come from punishment, therefore it should be legal for underage teens to screw"? Because if the latter, it must not really be that harmful at all for the underage to have sex with someone else, so where does it come into being a horrific crime when they do it with an adult?

Either its all off the table or its all on the table, because you can't have someone be a potential victim only because someone is too old on the other side of the table.

[–]v573v 1 point2 points3 points 9 years ago (2 children) | Copy Link

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[–]JebberJabber 0 points1 point2 points 9 years ago (6 children) | Copy Link

[–]mwobuddy 0 points1 point2 points 9 years ago* (5 children) | Copy Link

Even R&J las still punish the minor. Its just a misdemeanor instead of a felony. Don't get caught is the message to underage teens.

As far as age difference goes, if we really believed power imbalance was a core issue (power imbalance being a central feminist/SJW tenet to describe oppression), we would make it illegal for people of far differing ages past 18 or for people of far differing physical appearance or personal wealth.

Lets say there's a homeless 18 year old, and the 40 year old is trading housing for sex. We necessarily think of that as exploitation. There's a power imbalance not just because of age but also because of wealth. It even be capably legally argued as rape or prostitution. In the former, because its coercion into sex, in the latter, because its atransaction of a service or good in exchange for sex (we're all prostitutes but only the most basic forms of it are illegal).

Now in that example, did you immediately perceive the 18 year old to be a female and the 40 year old to be male? Because that's wrapped up in this issue. The age of consent is and always has been primarily because male sexuality is considered predatory and female sexuality is considered oppressed and helpless, and females themselves, by feminist standard, are considered too weak to to play on an even playing field sexually with men.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/5ox61b/thanks_to_donations_from_mensrights_austin_a_teen/dcpgy5l/

The radfems, the ones that even created the concept of power imbalance, would call this rape. If you are with a 10 and you're a 4, you're much less powerful in the relationship because you have more interest in the relationship surviving, in general. Men and women want the hottest they can grab, even if they say they're in in for love. Its a slight of hand mental trick in subordinating their base desire by having blinders up to all the less attractive people (why can't I find a good man), and being able to believe what you're really saying.

So anyway, the person with least interest in the relationship has all the power. That's the basis of PUA and of guys that appear to magically get more attraction from women. They don't give a shit, and that not giving a shit comes off as confidence and gets them more women than the thirsty. What's the point here? Well, if you really don't want to lose something, you come off as more desperate, and the more desperate partner has far less power to negotiate. If you want to think of it as a person in a desert dying of thirst, they'll trade away a flatbed of gold just for a cup of water. They have zero power compared to the person that has water. A power imbalance.

This last bit is why I think its farcical for anyone to think economics is fair. Take what you can get and try to beat the competition. Only way to grow, because you need food and a place to sleep far more than employers need you specifically, and thus pay you far below what you "should get".

We live life in the presence of power imbalances all the time.

As far as people's sexual desire inclinations, we can prove people want the hottest they can get by the studies which show that the rise of social media and Tinder have decreased the variability of partners in looks. People are hooking up with people on the same attractive level as themselves rather than far below. But we'll still lie to ourselves culturally and say its all love based.

In marriage relationships where hugely disparate amounts of money are involved, the only way to correct that power imbalance has been to level the threat of divorce alimony against men in favor of women (huge fucking hint right here).

If we aren't legislating to keep 18 year olds away from 40 year olds, then this talk of age based power imbalance is bullshit. If we aren't legislating to keep people of different economic power away from each other, then this talk of power imbalance in general is bullshit. It is not reasonless, in light of how we BELIEVE age differs from the previous centuries, to cordon off each group within a respective age range, rather than leave 18 open to 40-60 year olds, if you really think power imbalance is a thing that can be erased, and that matters so much in sexual relationships.

16 to 24, 25 to 35, etc.

Power imbalance is a meaningless placeholder for what you REALLY mean. You find it 'icky', but you have no way of justifying it through basic harm/improvement models.

If we could prove tomorrow that sex between "underage" and adults isn't any more harmful than sex between two "underage", would you still find it unacceptable?

[–]JebberJabber 0 points1 point2 points 9 years ago (4 children) | Copy Link

I agree with almost everything you wrote.

The hotness variability study was interesting. The one I saw compared people who met by dating strangers e.g. Tinder and other photo - heavy online methods (and pickup bars?), against couples who knew each other before they started dating. There was much less variability in the hotness of the people who started their romantic or sexual relationship as strangers.

So I don't know if the change affects anybody except the online daters and the people who use casual sex with strangers or acquaintances as a way to find romantic partners.
.

If we could prove tomorrow that sex between "underage" and adults isn't any more harmful than sex between two "underage", would you still find it unacceptable?

Ickyness is the problem of bystanders not the participants. I think the law should be purely about the risk of harm to the participants, to any baby they may have, and to the parents and the state who have to pay for and support the baby and kids.

Underage kids are extra vulnerable to damage because they lack maturity to handle their emotions, and to make decisions about contraception, and to parent a baby.

It is not practical to use the law to try to handle the abuses of power that can be associated with the various things you mentioned. Age is practical because it can be absolutely defined to the day, and because the kids are not legal adults.
When you reach 18 you enter the wild west and have freedom to mess up however you want. You can be borderline mentally incompetent and can marry a 40 year old drug addict with a history of violently abusive and exploitative relationships, nobody can stop you or them.

The law is an exceedingly blunt instrument for this, all it can do is set a boundary to limit the worst of the damage. Social disapproval etc is much more nuanced so we use it for the vast majority of social control.

[–]mwobuddy 0 points1 point2 points 9 years ago* (2 children) | Copy Link

It is not practical to use the law to try to handle the abuses of power that can be associated with the various things you mentioned. Age is practical because it can be absolutely defined to the day, and because the kids are not legal adults.

http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/scientists-confirm-people-age-different-rates/

http://www.livescience.com/51506-aging-in-young-people.html

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jul/06/old-before-your-time-people-age-at-wildly-different-rates-study-confirms

https://www.yahoo.com/health/science-confirms-that-people-age-at-dramatically-123473662872.html

We've all heard of man/woman-child, arrested development. Honestly, I believe that if anything, my experiences watching juvenile behavior from so called 22 year old adults in college protesting about all kinds of things with their safe space, coupled with the way 40-50 year old men and women behave in bars and life (losers with kids, single, getting drunk on a weeknight to meet up and fuck), are indicative of delayed development, if we gauge proper development by the archtypical standard everyone has in their head.

On the other end of the spectrum you have guys like Tony Robbins, or Scott Devine, or Ben Shapiro, people who were hard working at their crafts from 17 and working within the purely adult world. They still can have fun, laugh, and be open to experience, but they're not childish.

If we age at different rates on the outside. who's to say all of us age the same on the inside, and isn't that what the issue is about?

As you say, its an exceedingly blunt instrument, especially as it is strict liability (a judge can't just release someone because they made an actual judgement call, minimum mandatories ftw), so then "immature late bloomers" will get in trouble for fucking someone their "mental age similarity", and have their lives ruined, and be considered subhuman trash, while precocious types still in high school will take advantage of and coerce the developmentally delayed ones on the aging factor and get away with it if its legal in whatever state allows it as exemption. I don't see how either is ethical or fair.

Lets talk about underage for a moment, because each group decides when that is. It is not scientifically or universally legally agreed on, which is why we have 2 year spreads for age of consent in the U.S. If the lower age is too low, thats a human rights problem, like allowing rape of specific subclass of people. If the higher age is too high, that's a human rights violation because it is arbitrary and incorrect, and dehumanizes and tortures individuals caught by that law.

On the issue aging, they really aught to find the mechanism that makes people align more to specific individuals as "age peer", because I have a thought that it has to do with the so called immortal cells of the brain stem or wherever they are, which keep the human body clock.

[–]JebberJabber 0 points1 point2 points 9 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

[–]mwobuddy 0 points1 point2 points 9 years ago* (0 children) | Copy Link

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauren_Southern

https://youtu.be/gGpZSefYvwM?t=82

She looks bout 25, sounds about 30 (not just voice but cadence and word choice), you'll be surprised as to her actual age.

Here's an even better video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCnYFbvG_pk

She's just like Ben Shapiro. He had his own fucking newspaper column at 17, wrote his own books during college years 18-22, and has been on the political speak circuit for years.

Tony Robbins, around 16 or 17, driving around and some shit car building his career as who he is today.

Scott devine, around 16-17 same story.

There's huge and extremely visible variations in age based on behavior and known activities of the individual alone.

Meanwhile there's some 16-17 year olds that are still uncomfortable with sex, find it icky, and have no idea what they want to do with their lives and truck along in life just point pointed in a general direction by adults because they otherwise would just screw around as they are extremely "immature", and I'm willing to bet $1000 that this immaturity is based on the delayed development relative to the people I just named above.

There's no need for "psychiatrist formal diagnosis". In this case you're talking something so far outside the normative range that it is clearly obvious they're of diminished capacity and wouldn't survive on their own.

[–]mwobuddy 0 points1 point2 points 9 years ago* (0 children) | Copy Link

I can still remember the embarrassment I felt at going into Toys R Us at age 13-14, even though I still did like legos ( and was masturbating almost daily), I still remember my sexual escapades with girls my age at that time. Did we rape each other? Was a I a victim?

Children is a glorious weasel word. Ever see a puzzle, a metal or plastic paintable mini, or a coffee maker/electric water heater?

Plastic minis say not for children under 14, but I was perfectly safe with legos from around age 6. I might've destroyed a few, but I never swallowed them or shoved them up my nose or any of that bullshit. I also played with micromachines and those small hard plastic transformers without incident around 6+ age.

For the purposes of sex, people consider under 16 a child, or under 18, depending on state age of consent. You're a Schrodinger's "rape" victim, depending on the arbitrary line. People say that if someone has sex with someone under the age of consent that's rape because they're just a child, and people say that consistently (mostly because they're parroting things they've "learned" by absorbing common refrains).

An electric water heater or coffee maker tells you not to allow children to use it. I guess 15-17 year olds can't use these devices and should be kept away from them. After all, they're just children.

Children is a glorious weasel word.

Would you let your 10-13 year old cook on the stove, even under your supervision? Or bake in an oven? I was able to do all that shit for 4-H and I'd routinely cook eggs for myself for breakfast. Never burned down the house or myself.

But I'm sure ovens would say "don't let children use" in their instruction manuals, just like coffee makers and water heaters. As an aside, I also used to drink black coffee since around 12.

Children is a glorious weasel word. It means whatever people want it to mean, it exists (or more likely, is abused) to evoke emotional response. It is that very logical fallacy.

https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/29/Appeal_to_Emotion

(also known as: playing on emotions, emotional appeal, for the children). Description: This is the general category of many fallacies that use emotion in place of ...

Bam. First google search of appeal to emotion fallacy, and it identifies the "for the children" argument.

The entire point of my arguments is to use the logic and lack of evidence inherent in all the claims made in support of age of consent and to condemn and dehumanize anyone over 18 that has sex with someone underage (again, Schrodinger's victim, as they're either a victim or not by state and the person over 18 is either a "child rapist" or not by state, and thus a horrible non-human thing or an average individual who still deserves their freedom). If sex is de-facto damaging and dangerous, then it doesn't matter if the participants are both underage, and the lack of understanding that they're mentally scarring someone should not be a defense (although should weigh in the prison sentence length) against being charged with 'child rape'. The UK actually agrees, as do multiple states in California.

If it isn't always damaging, then we should figure out the factors. People when faced with arguments of logic usually refrain to "it could be potentially abusive, and has a much higher likelihood of this (kind of like the 1 in 4 rape myth, no evidence), therefore it should be illegal". Teens can abuse each other and we all know it. Yet all the ways in which people exhibit depression, suicidal behavior, or other negative functions are never hinged on sexual behavior in the teen years. In fact, I explicitly know one woman who was maltreated by her parents and then went on to be in abusive sexual relationships in her teen years with guys that just wanted to fuck her, also underage. She's still pretty messed up. Was it the sex? Was it the parents? A combination of both? But no one is going to point at the teen relationships to say "this is why we need to not have R&J laws, and we need to punish any underage having sex with each other". Rather, people are VERY permissive about underage promiscuity if its with another underage actor.

But here's the thing: people can be abused like this overage as well. The law simply says "well, at 17 or less, you can lock someone up and society will torture that person forever until they die, and that's justice for you if you're a victim of sex, whether or not abuse occurred". But at 18, or 25, or 40, hey, all bets are off. You can be abused in sexual relationships in the exact same ways the age of consent is there to prevent and its all fine, regardless of the negative repercussions to your mental state. People can lie about being in love with you, or treat you like a piece of meat, and you're supposed to be adult enough to take it.

I think its some place like More's Furniture lately that has built brick and mortar stores which have a "kids and teens" section (See, the point here is about infantilization, when do we stop getting the blocks with different letters, each of their own primary color? I remember having those when I was six years old, but here is the ASSOCIATION of TEEN with TRAINING BLOCKS for LITTLE CHILDREN), and the coloring and font of that is like Toys R Us, each letter a different color. I'd feel embarrassed to be associated with kids while a teen. I was embarrassed to enjoy pokemon at 13-14, and kept it a pretty well hidden secret, especially watching the series up to 17 years old. I could cook for myself from 12 at least. I could use coffee makers safely. I could masturbate and enjoy "sex-play" with others. Should I feel ashamed or abused for having been doing "adult things" as a child?

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Because when people are in the age group of 15-25 it can be really hard to tell their real age. Young adults just look like young adults. There isn't this magic moment when a person hits 18 and turns grey and grizzled. Real 25 year olds are often as immature as 15 year olds. And teenagers who are underage frequently lie about their age. I want to see a girl's driver's license regardless of whether I met her somewhere that is -supposed- to only let in adults because if she will lie to me she will lie to anyone and break any other rule too. Bars, clubs, casinos, etc. are exactly the places where teenagers that lie about their age like to sneak into. Teenagers probably won't lie to you about their age at church. 15 is pretty young for this to happen. Normally it would be more like 17, but whatever. There are outliers. Apparently he was a big guy with a beard. Although I find it hilarious how they insist on calling him a "man". Like they would ever call a 15 year old girl a "woman".

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