It is a metaphor from the animal kingdom. Carnivores hunt weaker animals that they kill and eat. "predator" has nothing to do with human sexuality. But it is a great term for fear-mongering and drumming up hysteria.
Puberty is the transformation of the entire person. Body and mind. 14 year olds finishing puberty have adult brains.
Becoming an adult has nothing to do with anything legal, mathematical, linguistic, or economic. Children become adults when nature puts them through puberty. It is biology. It's that simple.
You can easily cherrypick the data and say "Wow! 45 year old brains are so much different from 35 year old brains!" "So 35 year olds are Adolescents!"
Right wing morons scream "Sexy Gay Stuff Must Be Banned From TV!!!! Kids watch that!!!!"
and left wing morons respond "All Sexy Stuff Must Be Banned From TV!!!! Kids watch that!!!!"
Maybe we could just stop the Sex-Phobic Hysteria altogether.
The definitive study of age-gap relationships was done by these UMass researchers. It is a thorough and comprehensive meta study. They found nothing alarming about teens sometimes having sex partners 10 years older than themselves.
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When men see these women do they instantly sort out which are over 18 and which under 18 before they allow themselves to get an erection?
For the record, just because something is arbitrary doesn't mean it's bad.
Just because something is random doesn't mean it's bad.
I was once randomly assigned a phone number which was awesome. It was quick to say and easy to remember.
In my country 17 year olds are allowed to join the army. That's an arbitrary age limit. It's oddly uncontroversial. That's because things are not bad because they're arbitrary.
Things are bad, when they are harmful.
This is a very important point. So I'm going to repeat it.
*Things are bad, when they are harmful.*
If someone has evidence that letting 17 year olds join the army is harmful, then they should present that evidence and we'll change the rule.
Treating teenagers like children is bad because it's harmful. Demeaning, degrading, deriding, insulting, and infantilzing young adults (aka teens) is bad because it's harmful. We should stop that. Read More »
We have pretty wildly exaggerated the importance of age with regard to this issue.
As an Age of Consent 18 is brand new. It was never 18 anywhere in the world until 1924 when California set theirs, but then didn't enforce it, so nobody cared. Some African countries have recently set their ages at 18 under pressure from the UN. They're also unenforced.
Our young adults aged 14-18 have never been safer. Life was much more dangerous in the old days in every way. There were far more things one had to be careful of. Now we got student loans. In the old days it was bears and wolves and bandits. Life is not more complicated now, it is much simpler..
The overpopulation crisis began before I was born. There's too much carbon dioxide because too many people burned too much coal and cut down too many forests. Literally every problem we have was directly caused or greatly exacerbated by overpopulation.
We want to blame youth for being bad, or blame their hormones or brains. We hate the idea that we put them in a bad situation causing them to suffer and so they're lashing out. So we lie to ourselves.
by far the biggest change in the brain happens during puberty, which is, oddly enough, totally logical. Nature gives you an adult brain along with your adult body.
You think two 14 year olds can consent to each other but not to people who are older, right? How big an age gap negates consent? What is the biological mechanism that creates this change? Can you send me a link to the science that shows age-gaps erasing consent?
Right wing authoritarians think that fathers should control young women's sexuality.
Left wing do-gooders think politicians, sheriffs, and prosecutors should control young women's sexuality.
Any decent rational person who thinks it thru knows that young women should control their own sexuality.
From like 16 to 46 you lose a lot in creativity but the things your brain does often, it does faster so, it's better and worse. and experience helps older people compensate for slower brains.
The close-in-age exception in Texas law is both 3 years and 5 years depending on the precise crime being charged. but sometimes it is 0 years. If two 14-year-olds are having sex, and one of them turns 15, the older is now a child rapist in the eyes of the law.
"Let's put people in prison for X, because I don't feel that I was mature enough for X when I was [age]" is the stupidest argument ever. Blanket prohibitions of totally normal behavior always end very badly.
Yesterday I saw this sentence:
"...you know, the definition of a child changing due to life expectancy..."
What kind of insanity is that?
