two questions
Do you think that there is more age-gap sex in Portugal, where it is legal, than in, say, California, where it is not? Do you think that telling teens they are idiots who will get groomed and sexually abused makes their lives better?
Do you think that there is more age-gap sex in Portugal, where it is legal, than in, say, California, where it is not? Do you think that telling teens they are idiots who will get groomed and sexually abused makes their lives better?
Sensationalist media, Chris Hansen types who make piles of money drumming up hysterical fear, love to use words like "predator" and "prey on" because it evokes images that stick in the mind. It gets people emotional. Having a calm rational public is not profitable for them.
A Martian is interviewing an American: "If their brains don't function until they're 25, wouldn't that be the right time to *start* their education?"
Michelle Oberman of DePaul University "drawing a connection between enforcing these laws and lowering adolescent pregnancy rates flies in the face of everything we know about why girls get pregnant and why they choose to continue their pregnancies. The problem is much more complicated than simply older men preying on younger women."
full text:
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So many Americans have internalized the idea that under 18 = underage and therefore that's the normal natural age of consent all around the world
When in fact 18 as an age of consent is a strange outlier.
The vast majority of cases of "statutory rape" do not involve children.
There's a lot of self-righteous patronizing going on. "We have to protect these helpless innocent teens, as they are too stupid to understand. They are so vulnerable. We MUST take away all their rights and freedoms, and criminalize their sex lives."
If you live in a society that has trained 16 year olds to be vulnerable to abuse, then that society has to radically change the way it raises its children. 16 year olds are not vulnerable by nature. Bad parenting causes that.
Young adults (aka Teens) manipulate their parents and teachers, and *each other*. Parents and teachers manipulate young adults too. Everybody is always manipulating somebody. It is not a function of age. There are bad people of all ages doing bad things to people of all ages.
The vast majority of brain development happens before you're 3 years old or during puberty, ages 9-13. 13 year old brains are largest, and perform best on many types of cognitive test. We make up for it with experience, but after age 13 or so, our brains are decaying.
Young adults aged 14-19 deserve bodily autonomy. They deserve the right to choose their own girlfriend or boyfriend. The idea that idiot politicians should be making laws about their private lives is totally insane.
Europe's very low teen pregnancy rates, nice low numbers of teens with STDs, and low ages of consent do not cause each other. Europe's respectful attitude toward young adults aged 13-18 cause all three.
Neurologist Kate Mills says "we still don’t have a good indication of what maturity even looks like"
How long would it take to find some cocky internet rando who's damned sure he knows how to define "maturity"? :-D
and that same clown will of course claim he's only citing the science.
Puberty exists to prepare the organism for adult life. It would make absolutely no sense for nature to develop the body, get it ready to choose a mate and reproduce, but leave out the brain "Oh, we'll develop that 10 or 15 years later"
Here's a podcast about the disastrous results of sex offender registry laws.
(spoiler: no, they don't actually protect anyone)
and stop infantilizing them.
Teenagers are not children.
If the pre-frontal cortex were really important, it would develop before we become fertile.
This is not hard. You just have to be willing to think :-D