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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   25275 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 26, 2024

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Of course they're capable of deciding to have a little fun with some friction on the bits.

Just not with adults.

Kid on kid is fine, obviously.

Why not? They "can't consent", he said. What is it about the second player (or maybe second and third, if they're a kinky kid) that somehow converts their inherent ability to consent from a "can't" to a "can"? How does this work? And if there are cases where there's a "can consent", why didn't you jump in to tell @Harlequin5942 that he's just wrong about his broad claim that they "can't consent"?

I’m highlighting that tension between “able to consent” and “but not if an adult is involved” and the giant gray ball of arbitrary murkiness there.

There aren’t clean cut lines here in nature, but we have to have them in the law if we are going to have them.

we have to have them in the law if we are going to have them.

Big Laconian "IF". Hilariously, also a Big Lacanian "IF".

But you've kind of proven my point. You don't really have any way to justify this sort of boundary. So, when they come and ask, "Why can't children consent?" I guess, you're gonna be like, "Well they can, but I have a giant gray ball of arbitrary murkiness, if you'd like to look into it!" And I mean, uh, they're not going to give much of a shit about your giant gray ball of arbitrary murkiness; they're going to hear that you said that children can, in fact, consent, and they're going to view your giant gray ball of arbitrary murkiness as just some superstitious, sex-negative, religious prude bigot weirdness that they can safely ignore, because, "Ew."

Life is full of murky areas where we make arbitrary cutoffs.

We have to make such decisions over what “consent” even means in any given context. “One drink” is a standard some places for lacking the ability to consent, for example.

I’m not trying to defend the specific one here as it is, or attack it, I’m pointing out something like an age cutoff is basically inevitable and that “consent” is both complicated and insufficient as a principle.

Age of responsibility/adulthood issues are their own mess before you even bring in the separate mess of consent.

“consent” is both complicated and insufficient as a principle.

Congratulations! You appear to not be a subscriber to a consent-only sexual ethic. Unfortunately, this probably means that you're a bigot. Right-thinking people know that consent-only is the proper sexual ethic, because that is how we justify our other political positions. As soon as you start letting concerns other than consent into the picture, it's harder to smugly say that any concerns other than consent are just some backwater religious shit.

You are now no longer even relevant to the conversation when they ask the question, "Why can't children consent?" because as soon as you try to pipe up with, "Uh, actually, I have other concerns for my sexual ethic than just consent," you will immediately be deplatformed as an obvious bigot, and the public conversation will just be between people who can at least try to maintain some message purity on the basics of the movement.

The funny thing here is you’re blatantly wrong about the present dynamic among progressives/youngins.

Go read about age gap discourse and get back to me.

Also, progressives already don’t live by a strict consent-based moral framework. They frequently believe the right of consent should be taken away (organ donation for money, and anything else they perceive as involving a potential power imbalance that could involve “exploitation” of the oppressed).

Why not with adults? There's nothing wrong with adults playing tennis with kids, is there?

That is my point yes.

We have drawn arbitrary lines around “adult” and “kid” and there’s no way around the fact that children develop their abilities gradually and not at the exact same rate.

The potential side effects of sex and potential for manipulation/abuse/exploitation of younger people explain the rules we have and why we have them; not some absolute concept of “consent.” Obviously, plenty of young people who are adults still have such things happen to them, but so it goes with adulthood and drawing lines somewhere.

Teenage marriage to an adult is of course legal in most places with appropriate permissions.

The comment you're replying to is filtered.

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