# Okay for a 14 year old boy and 23 year old woman to have sex?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/okay-for-a-14-year-old-boy-and-23-year-old-woman-to-have-sex/252804>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [June 30, 2004, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/okay-for-a-14-year-old-boy-and-23-year-old-woman-to-have-sex/252804 "2004-06-30T01:03:47Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 237

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**Author:** ![Ms2001](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ms2001/32/18463_2.png) [@Ms2001](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ms2001)\
**Post date:** [July 2, 2004, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/okay-for-a-14-year-old-boy-and-23-year-old-woman-to-have-sex/252804/237 "2004-07-02T04:52:57Z")

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> [@Zagadka](#):
>
> And your expertise in child psychology makes you qualified to state when a person is capable of making a rational decision starts… where?

I don’t need a degree in child psychology to share an anecdote about my own youth, do I?

> [@](#):
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> No, by “child” I mean minor. The little girl of 12 you want people to pork, which she wants because she wants to be popular. Then the little kid she’s going to have by the time she is 14. Those children.

So you think an adult’s mere say-so can convince any minor to say yes? What is it that magically happens at age 18 that gives people the ability to say no?

> [@](#):
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> You think the altar boys were capable of saying no? Were they coerced? Proving that line is awfully hard, isn’t it?

I think they probably were coerced. If they were, there’s probably some testimony or evidence to back it up.

Putting people in jail isn’t supposed to be easy, and if there’s no evidence to prove that someone was raped, setting the alleged rapist free is part of the price we pay for having a fair justice system.

> [@](#):
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> The study where they are not harmed by “consensual sex” does not mean “coerced into consent by adults in positions of power.”

Of course. Coerced sex is not consensual, by definition. I support consensual sex, but I do not support coerced sex, or any other nonconsensual sex. Is that so hard to understand?

> [@BoringDad](#):
>
> So his post that you are responding to does not read to me "…magically know that children having sex with adults is perfectly OK. " It reads to me “There is some percentage of 14 year olds who will be perfectly OK with sex with an adult, but that is too hard for society to determine, so we have determined an age limit that is a surrogate for the factors we cannot measure. And I don’t like that.”

> [@](#):
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> However, Mr2011 does fail to mention a way to test for the ability to handle such a relationship.

That’s the tough part. First we’d need to decide what the criteria are for that ability - what do you need to know, and what mental faculties do you need to have, in order to say you can handle a sexual relationship?

As **Zagadka** points out, I’m not a psychologist, so perhaps I’m not the best one to answer the second part. As for the first part, I’d say you need to know about fertility and pregnancy, contraception, STDs, and have some idea of how sex is perceived differently by men and women and the effects it can have on a previously nonsexual relationship.

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