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Notes -
Age Gap Relationships
So its no secret that people, particularly zoomers, like to bitch and moan about age gaps in relationships. Should someone who's 30 date someone who's 18? Does it make you a pedophile if you do?
A lot of this discussion hinges on whether or not these people are actually "adults" that can make logical decisions. I've been pondering this myself so I'm going to run by two hypotheticals (Both for and against 18 year olds or "teenagers" being adults) and see what you guys think:
Case 1
Is it fair to say that you killed a child? Probably not. You killed teenagers? Technically. Did you kill some grown ass man thinking he could jack you? Many would say yes! On top of this, many people would judge these boys as adults, and have them take a prison/jail sentence as adults. It seems that in the eyes of many, if you do adult things, and are expected to take accountability as an adult, we should rightfully call you an adult. Make sense? Maybe lets consider case 2.
Case 2
Now, both Steve & Maddy choose to do an adult action (have sex) with an adult consequence (reproduction), and took responsibility as "adults" (getting married and getting a job). Would we say these 2 are adults? It seems the answer here, for many is no. You shouldn't want teenagers to be having kids: that's what adults are expected to do. That fact that Steve & Maddy have done adult things, and are now taking on adult responsibilities, doesn't make them true adults in the eyes of many.
So far, Im what I'm thinking with both of these cases is that the cognition needed to make adult decisions perhaps simply lie at different ages, based on said decision. Maybe its easier at 14 to know that car jacking & killing is wrong, than it would be to have the knowledge and maturity neccessary to handle a sexual relationship. And that the whole "lets have one universal age of adulthood" is looking at it wrong: Different actions simply have different complexities to them, and thus a universal set age of adulthood ignores those complexities. But assuming this is true, where does sexual relationships lie on the age scale? Is a 16 year old really too immature to date some one who is 19? 20?
If we should have universal age of adulthood, that tracts onto everything (alcohol, crime, sex) where would it be? Currently, all of these have different ages (21 is for alcohol if you are in the US). What do you guys think?
It depends. There are definitely people who are sketch and seem like they'd go a lot lower if only it was allowed and those people are pedos, but actually spotting them vs just finding someone who is on the younger side hot isn't an easy task so people fuck it up often.
A lot of places (including most US states) do have 16 as the age of consent so they could sleep with whoever! And even many of those that don't have "Romeo and Juliet laws" allowing small age differences.
Now legal vs moral are different questions though. I think 16 year olds are generally mature enough to handle body responsibility and should be treated that way both morally and legally for most things. There are some who are still stupid, but a lot of that is just from coddling our kids too much. For example, many parents will get a babysitter for their sixth grader nowadays whereas sixth grade just a few decades ago were the babysitters
Age of adulthood has always been arbitrary, the point of a single age is mostly for simplicity and being consistent. It's way easier to know and enforce the rules when it's simply "18" instead of having to roll the lottery each time if police and a judge disagree with your assessment of maturity. As for that exact age, it's generally between 16-20 in modern culture. Some do go higher and some go lower but it is mostly in that range. Doesn't matter where exactly, just has to be reliable.
Look I don't disagree it's sleazy as fuck but "pedophiles" are attracted to prepubescent kids. Maybe you're right at least some of them might go younger if they could, but a 50yo man dating a 19yo girl is not an act of pedophilia.
I've seen tiktoks arguing we should raise the legal age from 18 to 21 or even 25 and see who gets mad. I'll put up my hand right away, I just turned 25 and I'd hate to just become legal when I'm like 5 years into my career.
Now yes, as you point out moral and lawful categories don't always align, and indeed the idea is that at some point you gotta take accountability for all your decisions, including bad ones.
I also suspect it's gendered, reactions to female teachers having sex with male students tend to be more intense among commentators (especially feminists) than the "victims" involved because the reverse is categorically harmful. But men who engaged in sexual activity with adult women as adolescents describe it more positively and report less trauma. Doesn't mean that it is healthy long term, but there are pronounced gendered differences in psychology and hormonal behaviours reflected in these surveys beyond just "he doesn't know he's a victim".
So this relates to the sibling thread I have, but what is the categorical harm being done when it's a male teacher having (consensual, non-manipulative, insert qualifiers, etc.) sex with female students, and what makes for the gendered difference?
That study you linked only describes public perception of such acts, not the actual trauma from the act.
What you describe is purely abstract and doesn't reflect real life dynamics though. The asymmetry is layered with differences in non-trivial physical risks (pregnancy and greater exposure to physical harm), developmental vulnerability, and reputational consequences borne by female students from both peers and family. The bodily stakes aren't nearly as equivalent for male students in analogous situations. If the adult female gets pregnant, she bears the physical, social and legal risks, not the adolescent. And peer perceptions are the inverse for young boys. Through porn and other media, teenage boys spend their developmental years admiring and fantasising sex with adult women above their own age bracket. So for better or for worse, sex with an adult woman is a status symbol for male students.
Except for "developmental vulnerability", by which I assume you mean damage to underdeveloped internal organs, doesn't everything else (pregnancy, reputation, etc.) also apply to really old geezers dating really young adult women?
Also, I wouldn't be so sure about legal risks, given that even a 15 year old boy was ordered to pay child support to a 34 year old adult woman. But that seems almost tautological: it is immoral to fuck a child because society might hurt the child if you do.
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Those qualifiers reduce this to essentially an empty set. And even if you can come up with some hypothetical where it is possible, there's no way to tell between that and the vastly more common situation where the relationship is manipulative.
The answer to the sibling comment is the same: Given the nature of children, consensual, non-manipulative, pedophilia is essentially impossible, and the weird hypothetical where it's possible is not something you can actually distinguish from the rest.
I already provided an obvious one that myself (and I'm sure millions of other teenage boys) went through: horny 14 year old me jerking it off to a whole lot of different adult women.
Suppose it were somehow made known to me that I could have sex with one of those women, I just have to say the word and she would allow me to have my way with her. The consensual qualifier is already satisfied, so that leaves the manipulation one. Would she be manipulating me by simply allowing the act to happen?
I don't see how this is a weird hypothetical at all. I may not have been exposed to any such situations myself, but given the amount of news articles where an adult woman was caught doing something like this, there are likely to have been far more unrecorded instances of this happening where an adult woman was not being manipulative, unless your definition of "manipulation" is far more expansive than mine.
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