The idea that a 18 year old can handle decisions like joining the army or starting a family, but can't be allowed to do dangerous things like drink a beer or have sex with a MILF is stupid beyond belief.
Some societies empower their young adults.
Our society disempowers them by explicitly denying their adulthood, and barring them from adult spaces. So of course they can't gain experience as adults. They're prohibited from even beginning that process until they're 18 or 21.
The goofy refrain about sex education being a form of grooming comes from the Cons' overall belief that knowledge is dangerous, and so the way to protect children in their eyes is to keep the young ignorant. Do we really believe that ignorance is power?
People are confused about what the age of consent is.
The age of consent is NOT the age at which society thinks *you should be having sex*.
The age of consent is the moment when the state stops deciding for you and you become responsible for making those decisions for yourself.
people grow at varying rates depending on their environment. if you lock up your young adults aged 14-18 and never let them try anything, they'll learn nothing and be VERY undeveloped. if you have high expectations and give tons of freedom and support you get very different results
"Seeing nudity is not damaging to kids. Seeing nudity in contexts that violate their agency, *is* damaging to kids. Adults who freak out about kids seeing nudity *are* damaging kids by inducing trauma where there would otherwise be none."
Aella
"guys id like to remind yall I was raised to believe gay ppl were sinful, and I had a disgust reaction against gay people.
Luckily, I questioned my disgust response. I needed a concrete, clear harm in order to justify it.
If you don't operate like that, you're the kind of person who would have held horrible beliefs throughout history"
Aella
"Since the nineteen-nineties, the proportion of American high-school students who are virgins has risen from forty-five per cent to sixty per cent."
The New Yorker Magazine
2022-04-11
"How Everyone Got So Lonely" by Zoë Heller
Respecting young adults (aka teens) means you don't criminalize their choice of romantic partner. Nor do you put them on a sex offender registry for life with no possibility of appeal for the heinous crime of photographing their own body.
They have been forced into an artificially extended childhood. In the last 30 years tons of restrictions have been put on young adults aged 14+ in order to "protect them" from the dangers of adult life. The end result being they stay children in many respects.
For centuries bigots been using "their brains are defective" to justify horrendous treatment of women, Africans, etc
They always use pseudo-science to back up their obnoxious claims
Today they use *exactly the same* shit arguments to demean and degrade young adults (aka teens)
America has never abandoned its bizarre, stupid, and destructive Puritan roots. The hysterical overreaction to Janet Jackson's boob is an example. Nobody ever stops to ask "Who was actually hurt?" So there is no reasoned discussion. There is only taboo and insanity.
"Bridget!!! You don't believe that rape is awesome."
"Sure I do. Think about it. Teens are children. Children can't consent. Sex without consent is rape, and I gotta tell ya, I enjoy it every time. Dirk is the best."
--Redefining rape was a terrible idea.--
He can:
drive a car
quit school
work full time
get married
have children
join the British Army
be tried as an adult
be put in adult prison
buy a gun
but:
It's illegal for him to make love to smby over 18
Bc that's the really dangerous thing
Nature put them in adult bodies with adult hormones so of course they are attractive and attracted to other adults,
but they hear only
"You're a CHILD!"
"You're too stupid!"
"They'll groom you, because your brain is deficient!"
It's a recipe for disaster.
A: "Prefrontal cortex! Irrational child brains! No one under 25 should have the right to vote!"
B: "If they have child brains we can't let them work in factories, or any place where there's danger. They gotta be removed from the workforce, and of course free from taxation."
Does it matter if Buffet has $55 billion or $56 billion? Well, it matters to the tax payers who have to make up the funds that he's not paying. That money comes right out of their bank accounts.
So I try to watch a video about a woman who broke an age of consent law. It's 6 minutes long. I hear lawyers, journalists, cops, everybody's got an opinion. but the ONE AND ONLY opinion that matters is what the young man says about what happened.
I have zero patience with know-it-all pricks opining on it.
Unless the "news" is willing to present the clear complete verbatim unvarnished statement of the "vicitm" they should just STFU.
