# Law & Ethics: Adult-Minor Sex **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 17, 2009, 8:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/law-ethics-adult-minor-sex/510426 "2009-09-17T08:27:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Cesario](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecae2f/32.png) [@Cesario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cesario)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2009, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/law-ethics-adult-minor-sex/510426/41 "2009-09-22T03:20:05Z")
> [@fuzzypickles](#): > > Precocious sexuality is almost exclusively a symptom of past or ongoing sexual abuse. In other words, no child actively solicits sex from an adult unless an adult seeks sex from them first. (And FTR I’m specifying prepubescent children, not adolescents, which is a completely different matter entirely.) While it’s often the case, there’s a major problem in our culture to misidentify normal sexual behavior as precocious. Normal child sexuality is not no sexuality. > [@fuzzypickles](#): > > Ever hear of positive reinforcement? It works wonders, when applied correctly. I’m not saying getting kids to do what you want is impossible. Just that it isn’t so easy it can just passively happen as is often assumed (like when you start talking about subtle signals you don’t realize you’re sending). My preffered method of getting kids to do what I want is to give them valid reasons for doing something. Treating them like people. I find that works pretty well. > [@fuzzypickles](#): > > Just verifying that you indeed talk the talk, that’s all. For what it’s worth, I hope you stick around for a while. If you really are curious about the answers to these questions, we can discuss it via PM. I assume the mods don’t have a problem with that medium. > [@Mtgman](#): > > Let’s start with these Were there others? You say “start with these”, but are there others that you feel are a problem? If so, would you mind pointing the rest of them out? > [@Mtgman](#): > > The overarching objection to the test is that it requires first person experience. Reading case studies and pointing out various mistakes in judgment and possible instances of manipulation or misleading affection doesn’t cut it. Humans have proven time and time again that what they recognize in others they’re blind to in themselves. Witness the number of women who take self defense classes but submit to domestic abuse. The number of people who know the dangers of smoking, or illegal drug use, but do it anyway. The number of people in abusive/controlling relationships who are rationalizing it to themselves even though they would pass a test on the signs of an abusive relationship in a classroom setting. It’s like the difference between theory and practice. In theory there’s no difference, but in practice there is. So are you suggesting that someone must be immune to manipulation and bad decision making before we can allow them to consent to sex? I think you’re trying to hold children to a higher standard than you hold adults to. The idea has never been to ensure only perfect people immune to bad decisions are allowed to consent. The idea is to make sure that people have some minimum level of understanding of how the world works, and some minimum level of logical reasoning capability. We can’t legislate that people must always use their brains. We’re just trying to require that they prove they are capable of doing so. > [@Mtgman](#): > > Thus my understanding of the only way to implement this test as being one of experiences, not theory, and if we can’t agree on this, there’s really no point in going further. I’d like to go further anyway, since, while we don’t agree on this point, I think we might still find some common ground down the line of the conversation thread. > [@Mtgman](#): > > So what does it mean, and how would you test, these factors? Many of the read like truisms, not empirically testable and the “test” for some of them would seem to be monstrous. You see them as truisms because you’re a developmentally normal adult. Part of the point was to create something that would be trivially easy for what we think of as a “normal adult” to pass, because the goal was to make this test reflect the standards we think we’re applying through the age of consent. For children who haven’t reached those developmental benchmarks, it’s litterally not possible for them to pass. Take requirement 3, which you’ve got on your list of objectionables. There is a point in a child’s development, before which, they are litterally incapable of grasping that other people have different knowledge and experience than they do. They have no capacity to understand that people lie to one another. We have pre-established psychological tests to determine when someone’s gained this capability, and it was judged (by the people working with me to develop this test) that this ability was important to consent. > [@Mtgman](#): > > How do you test if the subject can reject unwanted advances? The only way I can think of is to make unwanted advances and see if they’re rejected. If the subject fails this test, you’ve essentially victimized them during the testing process. You think that hitting on someone when they aren’t intersted is victimising them? The test doesn’t need to go past that point. And honestly, it doesn’t even need to be tied in to sexual advances if you’re worried that specific subject is inherently soul-destroying to touch upon. The point is that they need to be able to turn people down, but there’s no reason the proctor has to exploit that lack of rejection (and indeed, it’d be illegal for them to do so for obvious reasons). > [@Mtgman](#): > > 2b is something many adults can’t do reliably, and almost all of us fail at some point, so this is not a reliable indicator. There is no requirement of infallability. The point is someone must be able to do it, not that they must always do it. > [@Mtgman](#): > > 4 is a non-starter. Understanding the concepts and dealing with an actual rejection are completely different things. Are you going to have someone seduce the subject and then break their heart during the testing process? Why? Do you think it’s important that they have their hearts broken already before we accept that they understand the concept? Seems to me that understanding the concept is enough. It’s all we can really hope for anyone to start out with, and the rest will come in time on its own. You can’t gain experience when you’re being denied access to experiences, after all. (Unless you’re an advocate of a system where everyone must break the law before we grant them legal rights?) > [@Mtgman](#): > > 2c is another of those whose likely test leaves the subject either as passing, or as a victim of the test. Either we lie to you and you figure out we’re lying, or you are deceived during the test and fail because we lied to you. What are you talking about? Are you honestly telling me you’ve never had a test in school where the correct answer was “not enough information to solve the problem”? It’s a pretty standard point you’ll get in pretty much any decent math class, for example. > [@Mtgman](#): > > As for the levels of education, should the subject demonstrate an awareness and understanding of how brain chemistry and hormones play in human relationships? If so it will be a long time before anyone passes because these are only vaguely understood now by the field’s top scientists. Even then, understanding that your judgment is likely to be impaired by a rush of norepinephrine and dopamine is very different from exercising good judgment when the actual neurotransmitters are running rampant. So, again, you think we should hold them to a higher standard than we currently do for adults? > [@Mtgman](#): > > I’m a believer in people being allowed to live up to their potential, even from early ages. Thus the current system which emancipates minors only by age, not by ability, is a source of irritation to me. I’m glad we have this much in common. > [@Mtgman](#): > > This test doesn’t seem to be the right path forward though. If we’re going to structure an emancipation program for minors it should not focus on sexuality. If you’re going to form a romantic relationship it should encompass the whole person, not just their awareness and judgment regarding sexual matters. > > Enjoy, > Steven This particular proposal is about sex because I was asked about sex. I’ve got a more comprehensive set of views on a mutitude of other youth rights issues. I’m thinking of starting a new GD thread for dealing with those ones. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/law-ethics-adult-minor-sex/510426.md?page=2)