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Arbitrary line.
How is this different than the usual courting of women by well-off men?
Okay, then prosecute for forced rape then. If it's not forced rape, what is the issue? Even causing emotional damage, feelings of powerlessness, lowered self-worth is not a felony level harm. Intelligent motte commenters and society make me feel like that all the time. Am I raped?
So is every other law. That doesn't mean they're not useful or worth keeping around.
An adult doesn't place the same value on gifts as a child would. A child would do literally anything for a copy of the latest hot video game franchise they enjoy. An adult knows there's more to life than shiny video games and if given the same gift, sure they might feel obligated to do something in return (such as sex) but it's not as overwhelmingly likely as a child would. In other words, an adult is mature.
Rape, by definition, is forced. There's no such thing as "non-forced" rape. This is a confusing term to use.
I don't think Motte commenters and society in general would cause (to a reasonable person) the extreme level of emotional damage, powerlessness, and lowered self-worth that someone gets from being raped. Is it a nonzero amount? Sure. Is it close in orders of magnitude? Not even in the same ballpark.
They vary in their cost/benefit and arbitraryness, and my position is this law is all cost, no benefit, and the most arbitrary one every dreamed up. So it's not worth keeping around.
Okay but then I wasn't a child at 14 because I wasn't like this.
Then there's no victim and no crime.
How would you know? How did you measure feelings? The one study on this topic says trauma from consensual sex is fake.
The benefits are that 14 year olds don't get raped. What are the costs, exactly? That adults don't get to fuck 14 year olds? I think most adults are fine dating someone their age and not having sex with children. I don't think that people are entitled to sex in general nor should they be.
Society and laws are not like math where if you find one counterexample the entire premise is invalid. If you weren't like that at 14, then good for you. You were still a child, though, and that doesn't mean that the vast majority of children aren't susceptible to grooming tactics.
The good thing about having a standard based on a reasonable person is that there's no need to measure the feelings of anyone to prove that a crime happened, we can just refer to what a reasonable person would feel instead. So if someone gets raped, we don't have to attempt to measure how exactly raped the victim was feeling by using brain scans or whatever science you think is applicable. We just say that a reasonable person would feel extremely traumatized and emotionally damaged from rape, and prosecute the crime accordingly.
Which study? And just because there may be only n=1 study in a topic doesn't mean it's accurate or reliable.
But we already have laws against real rape.
Innocent people are put in prison for doing nothing wrong, more people are discouraged from reproducing. The main cost is to young men. People put in prison for this are mainly under 21 (!), and almost all are under 25, so, basically kids themselves, just older. And they are put in prison because following the law can be costly for them: if you are a 20 year old man, and you have the preference that your mate be younger than you, which is a pretty universal preference, you face an extremely unnaturally restricted pool of available mates. The most fertile age gap in marriage is 6 or 7 years, so in nature, 20 year olds will date down into the early teens. In many places, they are restricted from going 18, and they face reductions of more than 50% of their dating pool in most places, even if they can go slightly under 18. Whereas for „creepy old men,“ the law is extremely lenient. They can be in their 50s and date their daughter's high school friend, as long as she turned 18 a few months ago. Then it's all clear!
They are if the laws and society are reasonable. If they are fundamentally unreasonable, then yes, they lack that property. But laws that are unreasonable are unjust and a society that is unreasonable is wicked and stupid and should lose political power.
I haven't seen any evidence that the vast majority of 14 year olds are susceptible to grooming tactics. The only evidence I'm aware of regarding this was denounced by the US Congress for showing that sexual trauma from underage sex is a myth. Isn't weird that a bunch of politicians thought they could denounce an empirical study? Might as well denounce 2+2=4 or the existence of matter. It was published back in the 90s I think in a leading psychological journal by real academics. Since then, no evidence to the contrary has been produced. Do you know what that looks like?
I don't think a reasonable woman feels raped from voluntary sex at 14. Tons of people agree with me, which is why the majority of polities on Earth allow 14 year olds to consent to sex with somebody. Some let it be anybody, most allow a small age range. If she isn't traumatized by banging a 16 year old then she won't be traumatized by banging a 20 year old. If anything, 16 year olds treat girls like shit while 20 year olds commit more.
It was an N=8500 meta-analysis. Yikes.
I still don't know why you keep qualifying it with "real" rape. What kind of rape isn't real rape? All of the rape I'm talking about is real. Regardless, society has found that general laws against rape are insufficient to protect children from being raped, so it has enacted more. It's no different than having male and female-only locker rooms to prevent sexual harassment, even though sexual harassment is already prohibited. I don't think there's ever been a society that has found it so virtuous to have the fewest laws possible, and I don't think such a society would be workable in the long run.
This does not match the cases I've seen. Almost all of the cases I know of regarding people that have been put in jail for having sexual contact with a minor are pedophiles who are older than 30. I'm also curious to see exactly which cases you would point to to support the assertion that innocent people have been put in prison for doing nothing wrong, because I suspect that they, in fact, have done something wrong.
If you're college age, you're probably dating other college age adults and at basically any college you have a sufficiently big dating pool of them. I don't think this is an actual problem.
How? Are college students regularly meeting and talking with high schoolers or something? Why can't they just date other college students?
Is this a problem for you? I thought by your position that you would be celebrating this fact.
I don't think there has ever been a society that operated this way, even despite the massive amounts of people who want it to work that way. For example, the death of George Floyd resulting in the rise of calls to abolish the police. The police wasn't really abolished anywhere (thankfully) because we don't operate on the principle of "fuck up once = your institution/law gets abolished".
I think it should take a lot more than one counterexample before we declare a law unreasonable and unjust and the society that enforces that law unreasonable, wicked, stupid, and ought to be losing political power.
What kind of evidence would convince you? Have you tried, you know, interacting with them?
There are entirely valid reasons to dismiss empirical studies. It's not even nearly the same as denying 2+2=4 or the existence of matter. I don't think citing studies is quite the slam-dunk argument you make it out to be. There are many ways to go wrong with studies and this is especially true in the social sciences.
That doesn't mean any adult is allowed to have sex with 14 year olds. I also don't think the standard by which we should have laws is "what are the other nations on Earth doing?"
This seems like a severe and unjustified leap in logic. 20 year olds are a lot more mature, and it's easier for them to manipulate a 14 year old than a 16 year old could. It's not as if the 20 year old is just the 16 year old but with "+4" added to the age. Getting older changes people and makes them different. Age is not just a number.
A 20 year old guy "committing more" to a 14 year old girl just means he's grooming her.
First, even the Wikipedia page you linked lists rebuttals and criticisms of the study, including studies that contradicted it. Beware the man of one study. Again, I don't think that citing studies is the slam-dunk argument you think it is when there are so many ways to go wrong with studies. I don't think this is a question that can be resolved with "just one more study, bro."
So-called statutory rape. Which is not even its name in most places. Usually it's something like sexual misconduct with a minor.
So, for 14 year olds, which society are you talking about? My society has an age of consent of 14.
Apparently Anglos think it is a problem, since they have tried to make it a „felony,“ as you say.
Yes, well, I don't like to abridge liberties based on vibes. Some are smart, and some are dumb. I wouldn't oppose granting adulthood based on IQ. But if we can't do that, I want the least intrusive age limits possible, so high IQ people aren't impeded unnecessarily. Dumb people can fend for themselves and beg to be restricted based on low IQ if they don't like it.
It's too bad, because such places exist and continue to exist, and most people are in them, including people on this forum. Sorry not everywhere is some backwards American state.
I highly doubt this actually. Rather I think the 20 year olds just more attractive.
What if he marries her?
Looking into those, the critiques are that the sample was all university students, and that scoring the experiences as negative, neutral, or positive was reductive. These aren't compelling critiques. We know rationally that people are going to be motivated to generate bad critiques of this study if they can't find good ones. That's probably what's going on. The best critique would be that a lot of the participants who said it was positive were teens when in happened. Therefore, the study doesn't show that real pedophilia isn't harmful, but it does show that an age of consent of 18 is too high. Obviously when you are 14 and horny, voluntary sex is not going to be „traumatic“ at all. Negative experiences will be caused by non-sexual events in a relationship, like being dumped, lied to, or cheated on.
That doesn't mean it's not real rape, it's still rape. We have statutory rape laws to cut the Gordian Knot and head off arguments about whether a raped child really consented, because they almost never do but can be tricked into saying they did out of fear, trauma bonding, or both. We hold adults to a higher standard in adult-minor interactions because they are the older party and are more mature, have more strength, and have more accountability, so it's going to be hard to make the case that an adult truly did nothing wrong by having sex with a minor. If you want to convince me otherwise, then you should cite cases where completely innocent people have been imprisoned under age of consent laws, which I notice you have yet to do.
That doesn't mean any 20 year old can just hit on a 14 year old and have sex with them with no repercussions. The 20 year old would still face negative social consequences for doing this since 20 is viewed as a mature adult and 14 is not. Sure, there probably wouldn't be any legal consequences if 14 is the age of consent, but it's still not a good idea. A society is more than just the laws on the books, it's also the culture and social norms surrounding it. Hence why I'm not very convinced by the typical cultural relativism-esque arguments pointing to the different legal ages of consent in jurisdictions around the world.
The "problem" I was talking about (and argued was not an actual problem) was the one you said was a problem, where you argued that age of consent laws result in an "extremely unnaturally restricted pool of available mates". Your response here confuses me. Are we talking about the same thing? It's not a felony to have a restricted dating pool.
Whose liberties are being abridged here, exactly? For people to have liberties in the realm of sex, it has to all be consensual. Therefore, no one is entitled to sex, because "no" is always a possible answer to consent. If you want to fuck, but the answer is "no", it's not your liberty that's being abridged, but rather it is the liberty of the nonconsenting party that is being protected. So you can't just fuck whoever you want. You especially shouldn't be able to fuck people who don't understand what's going on, who may feel coerced or fearful or as if there is no other choice, or who are otherwise unfairly disadvantaged, such as developmentally disabled adults... or, you know, children.
I'll spell it out explicitly. If you're prevented from fucking children, we don't consider that abridging your liberty, any more than we would characterize preventing you from punching a stranger (without good cause) as abridging your liberty either. In fact, if you're allowed to fuck children (or punch a stranger for a bad reason), it's the other party's liberties that are being abridged, namely, by you.
How does that help your argument? If a 20 year old is more attractive doesn't that give them an easier ability to manipulate a 14 year old?
He's... still grooming her? I don't approve of child-adult marriages either.
Why not? I think it's valid to point out the sampling bias. If you only looked at university students, then you're not looking at the CSA victims too traumatized to go to college. There are also the other contradicting studies and the failure to replicate which you didn't mention.
As I said earlier, studies are not a slam-dunk argument. Especially when you cite only one study, especially when that study is hugely controversial (because ideally studies should at least have consensus from the scientific community at large) and has multiple criticisms, contradicting studies, and fails to replicate. I don't think you need studies to prove that harm exists. I think you only need to look at what the victims have testified to to know that they have been harmed.
I think if you ctrl-f 14 and replace with 7, or 10, or 12 for that matter, then I agree with your reasoning everywhere. Except for your position on the study.
There are myriad cases where so-called victims testify in favor of their so-called abusers. This is brushed off as the „child“ not knowing what is „good for them.“ When they testify against their ex-lover, it is usually because he abused her in another way, by beating or cheating usually, or even forceful rape, but the government takes the easy route of applying the easy-to-prove charge of sexual misconduct with an underaged person. While this has its upsides, it's a civil liberties disaster, because it allows the no-victim cases and it bypasses the accused's right to a fair trial. It's directionally the same thing as making speeding a felony, but pinky promising to not prosecute the good people. A lot of times, somebody who everyone thinks is a burglar is sentenced to 10 years for going 90 in the 80, because it's much easier than going through the motions of finding fingerprints or DNA inside a burglary scene, which might not be successful, and then having witnesses scrutinized based on their eyesight and biases by the defense. It's much easier to show, here he is speeding on a camera, we all know he's a bad guy, let's throw the book at him for this pseudo-crime.
So, funny and cute little bypass to the justice process you have there. Sadly, I value liberty over your safety, so I can't stand for it and I don't care how instrumental it was to getting bad guys off the street. This speeding felony atrocity has got to go.
Your retort amounts to, actually, that going 90 in an 80 is empirically tantamount to manslaughter. Driving is dangerous. In other words, you write about 14 year olds like they are 7. I concur that going 200 in an 80 could be tantamount to manslaughter. But nobody does that.
I cite studies supporting my empirical position on speeding, and you reject the scientific method and stick with the civic myth of speeding taboo. If you don't accept scientific studies as a way to bridge this gap, I don't think it can be bridged.
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