I’ve been the 15 year old girl in that scenario, so I know whereof I speak. It was a blast. One of the my favorite sexual memories. (And to be perfectly accurate, I was just past 16 and I think he was around 33) Absolutely nothing negative to report.
So yeah, sometimes it’s just fine.
You were exploied. It wasn’t just fine.
What about 14? Is that ever ok? What about 9?
You are entitled to your beliefs, Dio. But they are just beliefs based on your biases, they have nothing to do with reality, because you don’t have any idea what the reality is.
But I have actual experience to draw from. I’m a 52 year old woman; I know who I am, who I was. I have thoroughly reviewed my past and my psyche, with and without professional assistance, and I am crystal clear about which of my relationships and life experiences were good, were bad, and were neutral.
And what I know is that my affair with Graham, the delicious red-headed and freckled Brit, was completely positive in every way, and in spite of being brief, our relationship had a critical and long lasting impact on my life that I wouldn’t trade for anything. The gifts he gave me were priceless, and I’m not talking about tangible things. He was smart and affectionate and respectful, and he made me feel very good about myself. We had a marvelous time, WAY better by every measure than most of the sexual experiences I had between age 16 and 22, most of which were with boys and men much closer to me in age.
About the only negative thing that happened was the weird way he reacted when I lit a cigarette while we were walking down the street after dinner. He thought it was tacky for some reason, I don’t recall why.
So it doesn’t matter what label you want to give it, the results are what counts, and from the results I can tell you: the sexual relationship between that particular 16 year old girl and 33 year old man was a very good thing.
To give you your due, Dio, you are correct that the human brain is actively developing while in our teens, even into our twenties, there’s no question about that at all, actually.
Where your assertions fall apart is when you extrapolate from this fact the foolishly simplistic assumption that it is impossible for a 15 or 16 year old to make a valid decision about their sexual behavior, at least, not if it includes having sex with someone twice their age. And that’s just silly.
The gaping hole in your belief system, Dio, is in your passionate conviction that human beings have an incredibly narrow range of possible realities, when simply looking around the room should tell you how ludicrous that is. We can generalize, certainly, and we must in order to function, but the variety of human experience is astonishingly wide. My own experience of being the 16 year old girl to a 33 year old man was excellent. But I still don’t think it should be something we regularly recommend, because as a general rule it’s probably not a good idea. But neither am I going to say that because it’s generally not a great idea that my own experience was some kind of delusion.
Loosen up your mind, Dio, if for no other reason than you’ll probably enjoy your life more.
What I’m saying is that it’s impossible for a 15 year old to be cognitive peers with a 30 year old, therefore no sexual relationship of that nature can be equal, and they are inherently exploitive. It is also true that 15 year olds to not have the same ability to understand their decisions as 30 year olds.
How about if it’s a 33 year old and a 13 year old? Do you have any line at all? How about a 4 year old?
And I’m saying that these are perfectly useful and valid generalizations, but that’s all they are, that there is no hard and fast reality that applies to every single human being aged 15 vs. every single human being aged 30, and I can’t believe that YOU believe that. I’ve met 30 year olds that, in spite of not having any obvious deficits like autism, aspergers, or other detectable deficiencies, were barely qualified to decide what to have for dinner.
And I’ve met 14 year olds and 16 year olds that I would turn to for advice about a lot of things, because they were incredibly wise for their years.
People are different, and while most fall within a fairly narrow range, and therefore constitute the “average” there are always outliers, and since there are what…3 plus billion people on earth? Or is it now 6?.. there’s a decent number of outliers.
(I also take issue with the very notion of sexual relationships being “equal”. What does that even mean? In my considerable experience, both personal and observed, to the extent that it does have meaning, genuine equality is rarely true in any relationship.)
Yes: the hard and fast, completely uncrossable, unexcusable line is puberty. Anything sexual that occurs prior to puberty can only occur with other pre-pubescent people and can only be accepted if it is normal childhood exploration. (i.e., a sexually abused 7 year old attempting to act out their abuse on friends is not healthy and must be addressed. Two normal, unabused pre-pubescent children playing doctor is fine.)
Beyond that, I’m not going. I won’t answer any “What about this age and that age” questions. I’ve made my point of view clear, and I’ll sum it up: I agree that there are general guidelines we should start from, and that most people shouldn’t be having any kind of sex at all before they are at least 16 or 17, no matter who it is with. I agree that sexual relationships between very young people and people significantly older is generally not positive and should be discouraged. But I know for a fact that there can be and are exceptions to these good rules.
What does puberty have to do with emotional or cognitive development? That is an extremely irrational criterion. Puberty can happen at 8 or 9. Does that mean a pubescent 9 year old is fair game?
Incidentally, you have not met 14 or 15 year olds who have the cognitive development of 30 year olds. That’s not biologically possible.
Biological development and emotional maturity may be correlated, but they are not one-to-one. I for one have met some 14 year-olds with more emotional maturity than some 50 year-olds. And in some cases it’s not even a close call. Unfortunately there is no good quantitative proof of this in any particular case, so I can’t say I disagree with a hard age limit when it come to legality.
They have not had full cognitive development.
You’re being deliberately obtuse, and this is what gets you tuned out. See, I give you credit for being smart enough to know what you’re doing, Dio, which is why it’s so annoying when you do it. If you were really stupid, that would be ok.
People who are not looking for something to argue with understand my post. I did not say that anyone who has been through puberty is fair game, you asked if I had a line that could never be crossed, and I told you what it was. I know you know that that is not the same thing as saying that anyone who is on the other side of that limit is ok, and it’s particularly not the same in the context of my entire post.
I really can’t fathom what you get out of being this way, Dio, it just seems sad, not funny or fun. But I’ve given you the most respectful answers I can, and I’m not going to waste my time with more of this game. Because again, I give you the respect of believing you are smart enough to be completely aware of being a total pain in the ass.
Bye.
You’re avoiding the question. “Puberty” is not a line. Is there an age at which you think an equitable sexual relationship with an adult is never possible.
Without having read the topic, here is my own contribution to the ah, fervor surrounding statutory sexytimes.
When I was 18 and a senior, I went out with my first boyfriend. He was very mature, a great clarinetist (I was the sax section leader), cute, and hilarious. He was also a 15 year old freshman.
I mean, I met his parents several times and they seemed to like me a lot, and were ok with our dating (I also always looked younger than my age so maybe they didn’t know, I’m not sure what he told them). And my parents knew his age but um, it just never came up as an issue. To be honest, we never did anything more than kiss and heavy petting anyway… although we did spend a lot more time together than typical kids that age because we were on band field trips a lot. All of the adult chaperones knew we were dating (because we made out in the back of the bus), and so did our band director.
But I never got pulled aside or advised that what I was doing was immoral or potentially illegal. Still, I feel it’s something that, were the sexes reversed, could have gotten an 18 year old in a lottttt of trouble (FTR this happened in 2002/2003).
No, I’m rejecting the question, because it’s part of your lame game that I’m also rejecting.
Why not?
How are you defining cognitive development? Be precise, lest your argument be fruitlessly annihilated.
Not necessarily - when I was a freshman in high school around the same time, three of my freshman friends (14&15) had fairly serious relationships with seniors (age range 17-19) and another friend started dating a guy who did not go to our school, who was 20 - she ended up dating him for the rest of high school, when they broke up she was almost 19 and he was 26. Most of them were having lots of sex with these at-least-3-years-older guys. No one raised any fuss, all parents knew who their daughters were dating. And these were all smart girls from upper-middle-class Jewish families, FWIW.
I’ve always thought young men being prosecuted for statutory rape was fairly rare. Certainly many, many men I know are guilty of it (as young men, with girls 3-5 years their junior), but as far as I know none have faced legal action.
Because it varies to much to be meaningful and ends up being even more arbitrary than an age limit.
That’s exactly why it’s an asinine standard for deciding when it’s ok to fuck children.
So what? What the fuck does that have to do with anything? Is a 40 year old man who fucks a pubescent 9 year old any better than one who fucks a prepubescent one?
Because it’s not consistent. It’s random and it’s fucking stupid to say that it’s ok to fuck 7 year olds as long as they’ve hit puberty.
Use a fucking dictionary.
[QUOTE=iamnotbatman]
How are you defining cognitive development? Be precise, lest your argument be fruitlessly annihilated.
[/QUOTE]
Heavens to Betsy! This is an example of not being precise! But if you insist:
–noun
the process of acquiring intelligence and increasingly advanced thought and problem-solving ability from infancy to adulthood.
(from here)
So you argument is the following (I will insert the definition in brackets into your quote):
Your argument is that no one should have sex until they are dead.