Handy, to respond to your comment earlier, I would have no problem with repeating what I said to the OP(er) of the thread you referenced to a boy of the appropriate age whose parents had permitted him to be in my company, if he should happen to (embarrasedly) raise the question in the OP of that thread. I would probably mention having done so later to his parents if circumstances permitted, and try to make them permit, from concern that they be apprised of his state of entering puberty and having questions and that I had fielded one of them.
IMHO, his parents permitted him to be in our virtual company by allowing him to join this board or to surf the Net without their supervision and hence join this board. And I treated him the same as I would any adolescent with concerns about his life – answer fairly and honestly with an eye to his/her age and what I knew of his/her family’s preferred dealings with such topics (nothing in this particular case).
Well, OK, there’s no physical proximity like in the street… but otherwise, I think a message board is EXACTLY like the street.
We have way too many cases of people acting like a Message Board is a private conversation, who then come whining or crying when they realize that it is a public forum.
Irishman, when I lived in Japan, your age was one when you were born, so they were effectively one year ahead of the U.S. style. A 13 year old there was what would be regarded as a 12 year old here. I have no idea if that is still the practice over there.
The age limit of 13 is likely based more on presumptuous “privacy” law than any maturity guideline.
Under many cultural and religious traditions in theory more than practice protected by our 1st and 14th Amendments, puberty or 13 are often treated as the start of sexual adulthood, contrary to most majority laws. The fact that US states have so many divergent sexual age of consent laws reflects how out of touch with human reality denying sexuality prior to statutory majority is. OTOH, in a techno-culture, 18 is barely enough to be educated in the needs of our economic industrial systems, which factor needs to be better reconciled with sexuality as a normal part of our humanity.
Statistically, 5% of 12 year olds and 50% of those age 17 have been sexually active. Law cannot change that, though it can do strange things preying on civil rights.
“Harm to minors” criteria used by our courts are incredibly screwed up, and based on common perceptions of institutionalized bigotry. As a culture, we need to treat teaching kids intolerance for the rights or others, and parental withholding of related diversity coping skills, as child abuse, not normal parenting. Dysphoria is a real underlying issue to emotional child abuse, but over that we need to distinguish respect for neighbors merely exercising rights we find strange as our own issue to deal with, versus acts that are outside the rights of others of are actually predatory rather than merely triggers to arbitrary personal perceptions.
Absent a LOT of progress in that direction, it’s impossible to have realistic laws about how humans progress to adult maturity and awareness.
Redboss, in the thread that Handy reported, I noted that I’d had to change one line from my draft answer – which referred to “our youngest male members” – for what giggles you can get out of that line!
It’s amazing – this thread has had substantive discussion on a significant issue (underage posters and expectations regarding them) that is legitimately ATMB fodder, and shows no intentions of dying as most ATMB threads do.
One of the things I’ve been toying with lately is that there’s a real lack of what I call “adult space” in our society.
Adult human beings are sexual beings, they ought to be able to express themselves sexually, and on sexual issues, without it being a big deal. But the “who’ll think of the children?” crowd has so circumscribed adult conversation that it’s almost impossible for people to express themselves freely.
The Internet is what makes me think of it – it’s one of the very few non-commercial venues where adult conversations may be carried out. I’m not talking about “adult” as in “adult XXX movies” I’m talking about “adult” as in speaking frankly on any issue whatever, including sexual ones.
The other thing that’s made me think about it is SF cons, where a lot of younger men and women walk around in public wearing sexy and sometimes revealing costumes. I think they do it because it’s a safe venue – there’s a wide range of ages and experience in attendance at the cons, so they don’t have to be worry about the sort of behavior you find in, say, mosh pits.
Where sexual issues are openly discussed, there’s a tendency for commercial interests to hijack the venue, as in the Internet’s porn sites or strip clubs.
I think Americans may be starved for a forum for public expression of adult ideas because of these trends.
I haven’t really thought the idea through much farther than that.
In respect to the topic at hand, perhaps it’s a good thing that there’s a place where a kid can ask people about the normal length of a penis. While I’m comfortable with the idea that the rights of the parents should be paramount in raising their kids, we all know some parents are so fucked up that their kids learn some pretty wackadoodle stuff about sex, and it’s good that they can eventually unlearn it.
That’s because (IMHO) the “children” are just an excuse for the bluenoses to squash something they, themselves, have a problem with. It isn’t about the “children” at all. If there were no children, if humans were all whisked away to a separate nurturing facility from birth to age eighteen, these types would find some other reason to frown on discussion and distribution of sexual subjects and material.
As for why, well, that’s a Great Debate, isn’t it?
I was wondering – Traci Lords is coming out with a tell-all autobiography where she talks about being an underage porn star.
Could she be accused of doing child porn, since she’s writing, presumably rather explicitly, about a 15-year-old girl having sex? Even though she’s writing (presumably) truthfully about her life?
Just where to The Powers That Be draw the line here?
I mean where DO they draw it. I understand the First Amendment to mean exactly what it says, so I have some very clear ideas about where they SHOULD draw it.
