Leave rapists alone!

WD40 wrote:

Just my personal opinion but in both these scenarios the parts where it's wrong and the part where it's pretty dumb overlap so much it's still a good idea to not do it.

I agree.

Also, anyone who cannot tell where the line is between "buzzed" and "impaired judgment" should probably not be having sex with either, IMO.

Reepicheep-chan wrote:

WD40 wrote:

Just my personal opinion but in both these scenarios the parts where it's wrong and the part where it's pretty dumb overlap so much it's still a good idea to not do it.

I agree.

Also, anyone who cannot tell where the line is between "buzzed" and "impaired judgment" should probably not be having sex with either, IMO.

See, you're being picky again. How do you know by definition, that someone is buzzed or impaired judgementally? Where should we draw the line? no drinks? half a drink? one drink? a drink and a half? Two? Different amounts and/or body types mean different abilities on how they handle alchol. But we should go ahead and assume that everyone knows how someone else acts because EVERYONE acts the same after they're drun- oh wait.
Now, I'm not saying anyone is wrong (or isn't fucked up who's considering these ideas for that whatever teen's party) But still, I have friends who get judgementally impared after half a class of alchol, and others who can quite literally drink me under the table and still be mentally and cognitively decisive and know exactly what they should and shouldn't be doing. then again, I suppose getting a bit tipsy after 5 beers means I'm a light weight

Jay/Cris wrote:

Cyberwulf wrote:

See, it's really easy not to have sex with someone who's underage. Don't have sex with total strangers. If you know someone for a while, you'll find out how old they are either directly or by context (if your crush asks you to pick him up from school, and you're in your twenties, maybe put the brakes on till you find out more info).

By the way, no-one should be having sex with drunk people either.

Oh, yes, because that's how it always works. Some people like the thrill of having sex with strangers. It's not, per definition, wrong.

Then you accept a conviction for statutory rape as a risk of that activity, and stop complaining. You don't change the age of consent and allow loopholes for abusers just to minimize the risk to you. And I didn't say having sex with strangers was wrong. Just that it's easy to avoid accidentally banging someone underage by avoiding having sex with total strangers.

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Also, what's drunk and what isn't? If I saw a guy take some vodka, does that mean I can't take him home? Should I be asking him to blow -- y'know, into one of those gizmos that measures the amount of alcohol in someone's blood? Should we enforce sex as a sober activity only?

Reidmar wrote:

How do you know by definition, that someone is buzzed or impaired judgementally? Where should we draw the line? no drinks? half a drink? one drink? a drink and a half? Two? Different amounts and/or body types mean different abilities on how they handle alchol. But we should go ahead and assume that everyone knows how someone else acts because EVERYONE acts the same after they're drun- oh wait.

See, sometimes it's obvious. If someone's staggering, vomiting, or passed out, clearly they're not in their right state of mind. If they're rubbing up against you but calling you someone else's name - yeah, they may not know exactly where they are or who they're with. If you're not sure about someone the safest thing to do is not have sex with them. Forget the possibility of being hauled up on rape charges for a minute. Why would you want to risk that person waking up in your bed with no memory of how they got there and no idea what they did, and all the mental and emotional turmoil that goes along with it? Is your orgasm that important?

I'm a bit disappointed in people here going "oh what, do we need ID checks, do we need a breathalyser now" when most of this is common sense.

Cyberwulf wrote:

Is your orgasm that important?

I apologize for just being your parrot here, but this. Completely. This is what I was trying to say, err on the side of caution, srsly, you are not going to die if you do not get laid.

Cyberwulf wrote:

I'm a bit disappointed in people here going "oh what, do we need ID checks, do we need a breathalyser now" when most of this is common sense.

Absolutely.

Reepicheep-chan wrote:

WD40 wrote:

Just my personal opinion but in both these scenarios the parts where it's wrong and the part where it's pretty dumb overlap so much it's still a good idea to not do it.

I agree.

Also, anyone who cannot tell where the line is between "buzzed" and "impaired judgement" should probably not be having sex with either, IMO.

Wait, what? So, say, you're 22 at a club in Europe, and a pretty, mature-looking boy flirts with you. You've both had some drinks, and you decide it'd be fun to bang him. He seems into it. The club is 18+, so what, right?

The next morning, he turns out to be seventeen. I'm not sure how this would make you unforgiving stupid.

Cyberwulf wrote:

Jay/Cris wrote:

Oh, yes, because that's how it always works. Some people like the thrill of having sex with strangers. It's not, per definition, wrong.

Then you accept a conviction for statutory rape as a risk of that activity, and stop complaining. You don't change the age of consent and allow loopholes for abusers just to minimize the risk to you. And I didn't say having sex with strangers was wrong. Just that it's easy to avoid accidentally banging someone underage by avoiding having sex with total strangers.

Which carries some implications, but fair enough.

Cyberwulf wrote:

See, sometimes it's obvious. If someone's staggering, vomiting, or passed out, clearly they're not in their right state of mind. If they're rubbing up against you but calling you someone else's name - yeah, they may not know exactly where they are or who they're with. If you're not sure about someone the safest thing to do is not have sex with them. Forget the possibility of being hauled up on rape charges for a minute. Why would you want to risk that person waking up in your bed with no memory of how they got there and no idea what they did, and all the mental and emotional turmoil that goes along with it? Is your orgasm that important?

And, sometimes, it's not obvious. Sometimes, your own judgement is impaired and you think the right thing to do is to take this person home. There is leeway in these kind of situations, which means a hard and fast line is hard to take.

I'm not disagreeing: sometimes, iffy stuff can happen, and I'm not against the current age of consent, but it's not as black and white as you make it seem.

Cyberwulf wrote:

I'm a bit disappointed in people here going "oh what, do we need ID checks, do we need a breathalyser now" when most of this is common sense.

Oh, yes, because you never take refuge in hyperbole. And, well, most of it is common sense. Just not all of it, and that's what makes enforcing this kind of stuff tricky. There's blurred lines.

Everything boils down to how little we talk to adolescents explicitly about consent. We don't want to think of them as sexual beings, but the choice of whether or not to have sex comes across much earlier than the age of consent allows. We're talking 12 year olds and, on the occasion, much younger. Blah blah blah. You cats know this.

That being said, it is important to talk to kids about assertiveness and the courage to say no. For girls and women especially, but boys and men struggle with this too, we are taught to not get involved, not to stir up trouble, and as someone who has felt that powerlessness in the workplace regarding sexual harassment, I could only imagine what it's like when you're put in a situation where you're in danger and aren't sure how to say no... Or are too embarrassed to say no.

For those who think consent is tricky, well, I have just the thing. MORE EDUCATION FROM THE BEGINNING. Haha! It is just as important to teach people how to protect themselves from being in a situation where the line is blurred and make safe choices. ... But then again, that would be forcing us to admit that teenagers have sex.

That is good point. I think that how little children are taught about consent and what it means is downright terrifying, really. I am pretty sure all we got on the matter was a run down of the many reasons why you might not want to have sex and a sort of general "do not do anything you are not comfortable with" message that did not really tell us anything about how that works in the real world.

More importantly than teaching children the best ways to avoid being victims, however, is teaching people from childhood how not to victimize others. I worry that the over-emphasis on the former can make the latter difficult. It is a hard thing to tell a person they should do this and not do that to avoid being raped without them hearing that if they do it wrong than they deserved to get raped. Or someone else hear that if a person does not do this but does that then they must really want to get fucked even though they do not want to.

tl;dr version: teaching kids not to get raped is ok, but it is way more important to teach them not to rape.

Reepicheep-chan wrote:

That is good point. I think that how little children are taught about consent and what it means is downright terrifying, really. I am pretty sure all we got on the matter was a run down of the many reasons why you might not want to have sex and a sort of general "do not do anything you are not comfortable with" message that did not really tell us anything about how that works in the real world.

More importantly than teaching children the best ways to avoid being victims, however, is teaching people from childhood how not to victimize others. I worry that the over-emphasis on the former can make the latter difficult. It is a hard thing to tell a person they should do this and not do that to avoid being raped without them hearing that if they do it wrong than they deserved to get raped. Or someone else hear that if a person does not do this but does that then they must really want to get fucked even though they do not want to.

tl;dr version: teaching kids not to get raped is ok, but it is way more important to teach them not to rape.

There's a lot of debate over sex ed. and whether knowing that sex exists will make kids have sex (American culture is remarkably prudish). I've met parents who were outraged that the library contains books on birth control and STDs, being of the opinion that their children knew nothing of sex before they read these books. (Trust me, kids know about sex. They discover their genitals in infancy and their curiosity grows from there. Sex is a basic part of life, and the sex drive is one of the two most powerful urges existent in living things--the other is eating.) It's especially lolworthy when the parents of a pregnant teenager insist that birth control information is the reason their daughter is pregnant (think about that for a minute).

Kids should be taught early on that they have the right to say no to anything they're not comfortable with (sexual or not), and also that they have to respect the right of other people to say no, no matter how much they want them to say yes. They should also have age-appropriate sex ed., because they will learn things anyway, but the information received from peers is often of dubious accuracy (to say the least). (An example of age-appropriate sex ed. is what my sister has taught to her two little girls--they know the proper names for the genitalia, that boys have different genitalia than girls, that babies grow inside mothers--and kick them, something that my older niece found fascinating when her mother was pregnant with her younger sister. They also know that baby birds hatch from eggs, that when the goldfish bump and splash against each other in the summer, they're laying eggs, and that when a bee emerges from a flower covered in a powdery substance and flies to another flower, it's pollinating the flower so it can make a fruit. They don't yet know about menstruation, intercourse, or more than the basic details of how a baby or a fruit are made, but those will come in their time. They don't know about homosexuality or heterosexuality, either, but they do know that some families have two mommies or two daddies, and other families have a mommy and a daddy, and some families have only a mommy or a daddy.)

People in Britain seem to think that going with their friends to Benidorm or Majorca, or the like, is a right. They go in a group, get up at late morning, go to the beach and sit in the sun in a way that almost guarantees they'll end up with skin cancer at a later age. Then they get dressed up and go clubbing. On the pull, some guys in these resorts claim they can bed five girls a night.

Having sex on drink/drugs is stupid. But good luck in trying to stop young people doing it. Having sex with strangers is stupid. Ditto.

Annecdotes time! Feel free to skip.

I hit puberty at nine. While that's not uncommon now, back then it really was. When I went to the loo and there was loads of blood, I was terrified. Thankfully, it happened at home. My mum, (in my opinion, the best person in the world), sat me down and took me through the facts of life and I was always able to go to her for advice. You can imagine how amusing it was to have sex ed. at eleven. 'One day you girls will have a period'. No, really?
Well, well.

The best advice I had from my mum about sex was that it was alright the first time, but after that it got pretty dull. It took the glamour out of it and I was in my twenties when I lost my virginity. With the same guy I'm still living with. I'm in my forty-fifth year.

Annecdote over!

I agree that the age of consent is necessary and should be enforced. Loads of girls are getting pregnant under that age, so it's okay for a boy of fifteen to knock up a girl of fourteen, but if a guy of sixteen does so to a fifteen year old, he's a rapist?

From this Observer article

Quote :

I was a teenager in the Eighties: aren't British kids far more sexually speedy these days? In fact, the most recent National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles shows that about a quarter of British girls and a third of boys have had full sex by the age of 16. Maybe you think that's a lot, maybe you think that's not many. The fact is, they're doing it.

Indeed. Sex is for grown ups, teens desperately want to be grown up. We want to protect them for their sake, but the fact is that some of them will go ahead.

From the same article:

Quote :

Here is another factor: if the man is under 24 and can prove that he thought that the girl was 16 - maybe she looked older, maybe she told him she was - then he has a legal defence. But if she is under 13, in which case the offence is absolute - and the maximum punishment life imprisonment - that defence doesn't apply.

So even the law recognises shades of grey.

I agree it's up to adults to take responsibility. Just how I feel that it's not just people in a relationship who need to be faithful. If someone is in a relationship, it's everybody's job for them to be faithful. If they've made a commitment, you stay away. But when is adult? We all know of people who are still childish to the extreme way beyond twenty five.

Do you wish to also have murder as murder? If a woman kills a partner after years of abuse that's the same as a sadistic killer, because the law says murder is murder? If a guy goes to a dorm party and has sex with a girl who says she's nineteen, looks nineteen and, hey, it's a student party, then it turns out she is the fifteen year old sister of one of the students, that's the same as a guy who has a taste for popping the cherries of little girls?

Surrounded by adverts, movies and TV shows that show the epitome of love and romance as falling into the arms of a stranger, I agree that sex education needs to be explicit in not just the plumbing of sex, but the choices and the fall-out.

Tl:dr. The world is not perfect and people of all ages make dumb decisions. A culture of going out and getting drunk as the passport to adulthood is not going to help in giving girls the tools to make the right choices. Even the best sex ed. and supportive parents/guardians will fall away after a few tequila slammers.

Summercorn wrote:

Having sex on drink/drugs is stupid. But good luck in trying to stop young people doing it. Having sex with strangers is stupid. Ditto.

[snip]

Tl:dr. The world is not perfect and people of all ages make dumb decisions. A culture of going out and getting drunk as the passport to adulthood is not going to help in giving girls the tools to make the right choices. Even the best sex ed. and supportive parents/guardians will fall away after a few tequila slammers.

Or the boys, amirite? And what, pray tell, are the 'right choices'? Is the girl who had four beers and takes that hot tourist from Germany home making the wrong choice? Is she stupid? I'm sorry, but I have a hard time buying that. But hey, it seems you're having fun being reductive, so...

Of course boys are stupid for getting drunk and having sex with strangers. They can catch STD's and die from them. They can find themselves fathers when they are not emotionally capable of dealing with it. Both boys and girls are stupid for going on booze-filled holidays and sleeping around. But if a girl gets pregnant she has to deal with that, whether she chooses termination or otherwise. She might not even be aware of the father's name, or have any real recollection of what he looked like.

While both partners for a night might die of AIDS related illness, the child too might do so. Like it or not, for a woman, getting drunk and having stupid sex has bigger consequences. Even if she is on some kind of birth control, they don't always work. Prophylactics rarely play a part in teenage drunken holiday sex.and STD's can hinder her fertility years down the line.

I apologise if I seemed to be 'having fun'. Most of this thread has been of younger girls and older men so I was going with that. In the UK there is no age of consent for boys, so a seventeen year old girl sleeping with a thirteen year old boy is not a crime. I find it sad that boys aren't protected.

Summercorn wrote:

. Loads of girls are getting pregnant under that age, so it's okay for a boy of fifteen to knock up a girl of fourteen, but if a guy of sixteen does so to a fifteen year old, he's a rapist?

OK, first of all I have no idea where you are getting 15-year-old + 16-year-old = rape because I am pretty sure there is no one in the thread arguing for that counting as statutory.

2nd of all, and here is a real fun fact I bet everyone year will enjoy, the vast majority of teen girls get "knocked up" by adults. According to Wiki "In the UK 72% of jointly registered births to women under the age of 20, the father is over the age of 20, with almost 1 in 4 being over 25" and "Studies by the Population Reference Bureau and the National Center for Health Statistics found that about two-thirds of births to teenage girls in the United States are fathered by adult men age 20 or older" Oh and as a bonus, " A Washington State study found 70% of teenage mothers had been beaten by their boyfriends, 51% had experienced attempts of birth control sabotage within the last year, and 21% experienced school or work sabotage." Wow, that sure is a scary statistic considering how many of those "boyfriends" were in their twenties, huh?

So, IDK, I am sort of thinking that focusing on educating potential victims is fighting a tornado with a desk fan. Hey, you, little girl completely dependent on adults for your survival and future, have you ever considered... not getting beat by your adult "boyfriend? Maybe if you just stood up for yourself and made the right choices you would not be pregnant and dropping out of school right now. Hey, you drank that beer he bought for you so clearly this is all your fault.

I mean, yeah more can be done to get the message across that you are the only one who gets to say you can touch your body, an emphasis on stuff like "just because you let a person touch you here or here does not mean you cannot tell them not to touch you somewhere you are less comfortable with" since as-is sex ed seems to just lump all of "sex" together as something you either agree to or do not agree to, but at the end of the day there is not a lot a child can do to protect themselves. It is not really a matter of making the "right choices."

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They can catch STD's and die from them.

You've got it wrong, silly. Sex makes you pregnant and THEN you die.

Quote :

Indeed. Sex is for grown ups, teens desperately want to be grown up. We want to protect them for their sake, but the fact is that some of them will go ahead.

Sex is for everyone of all ages. Children have sexual experiences, but no one wants to talk about that. Who really cares if teenagers have sex with each other? I'm puzzled as to how you're relating this back to age of consent laws because it sounds like you're using this to try and justify having sex with a teenager.

Quote :

If a guy goes to a dorm party and has sex with a girl who says she's nineteen, looks nineteen and, hey, it's a student party, then it turns out she is the fifteen year old sister of one of the students, that's the same as a guy who has a taste for popping the cherries of little girls?

Ok, I keep seeing this classic as if there are just gads of teenagers without baby faces, but with bomb-ass bodies and the ass of your favorite stripper.

Reepicheep-chan wrote:

According to Wiki "In the UK 72% of jointly registered births to women under the age of 20, the father is over the age of 20, with almost 1 in 4 being over 25" and "Studies by the Population Reference Bureau and the National Center for Health Statistics found that about two-thirds of births to teenage girls in the United States are fathered by adult men age 20 or older" Oh and as a bonus, " A Washington State study found 70% of teenage mothers had been beaten by their boyfriends, 51% had experienced attempts of birth control sabotage within the last year, and 21% experienced school or work sabotage."

Mr.Doobie wrote:

Quote :

If a guy goes to a dorm party and has sex with a girl who says she's nineteen, looks nineteen and, hey, it's a student party, then it turns out she is the fifteen year old sister of one of the students, that's the same as a guy who has a taste for popping the cherries of little girls?

Ok, I keep seeing this classic as if there are just gads of teenagers without baby faces, but with bomb-ass bodies and the ass of your favorite stripper.

Yeaaaah. See, I kinda don't believe that there are hordes of fifteen year olds lying about their age to have drunken sex with twenty-somethings, and so what's really important is to amend the laws so that they can't "cry rape" and have the twenty-somethings thrown in jail the next morning. Seems to me the problem (and indeed the reason for consent laws at all) is older people preying on younger, vulnerable teens.

Summercorn wrote:

Do you wish to also have murder as murder? If a woman kills a partner after years of abuse that's the same as a sadistic killer, because the law says murder is murder?

Courts actually don't look as kindly as you think on women who murder their abusive partners, mostly because such murders rarely take place during or shortly after a particular act of abuse ("in the heat of the moment" as it were) and involve a certain amount of premeditation.

@ cyber: How is someone say, 20 preying on someone who lies about their age after both of them are shit faced and it IS in a 18+ or 19+ establishment? Cause from what I see, it's not really an older person preying on a younger if the younger already has lied to their faces about how old the are.

Cyberwulf wrote:

See, I kinda don't believe that there are hordes of fifteen year olds lying about their age to have drunken sex with twenty-somethings, and so what's really important is to amend the laws so that they can't "cry rape" and have the twenty-somethings thrown in jail the next morning.

Incidentally, is there any reason for adults not to card people they do not know and are going to sleep with? I mean if they are that worried about being arrested, why not? Even if the ID is fake you could probably get out of a rape charge if you could prove the victim wanted it bad enough to produce a fake ID. Assuming that this is a real thing that actually happens and not a fairy tale invented to enable rapists.

Read? What's that?

Summercorn wrote:

Of course boys are stupid for getting drunk and having sex with strangers. They can catch STD's and die from them. They can find themselves fathers when they are not emotionally capable of dealing with it. Both boys and girls are stupid for going on booze-filled holidays and sleeping around. But if a girl gets pregnant she has to deal with that, whether she chooses termination or otherwise. She might not even be aware of the father's name, or have any real recollection of what he looked like.

Yeah, but this is the first time you're actually linking 'sex with strangers' to 'being piss-assed drunk'. Of course it's not a particular smart plan to have sex with strangers when you can't really see other people's faces anymore. It's not a particular smart idea to do anything when you're that drunk, except sleep it off. However, people can (and usually have) sex with strangers without being absolutely smashed, even on these booze-filled holidays you seem to be so afraid of. And I'm not sure how this works where you come from, but here, all teens who travel off to Malta, Crete or Spain carry a whopping load of condoms in their carry-on when they embark on these holidays, so...

Mr.Doobie wrote:

Sex is for everyone of all ages. Children have sexual experiences, but no one wants to talk about that. Who really cares if teenagers have sex with each other? I'm puzzled as to how you're relating this back to age of consent laws because it sounds like you're using this to try and justify having sex with a teenager.

I wouldn't have sex with someone in their twenties, because I would consider them too young for me. The thought of having sex with a teen, even a late teen, makes me feel queasy. I hope that's completely clear.

So if you weren't trying to justify people having sex with teenagers what was the point of all your finger-wagging?

Eh... Teenage girl bashing. That's what that finger wagging was. I see it all the time, especially when a majority of the people bashing on teens in online news articles about date rape/teen pregnancy/etc. are adults regardless of gender. It's like taking the social climate's temperature using the yahoo.com comment section. The results are in! We have a pretty poor and subversively alienating view on teenage girls, and the ones screaming and yelling the loudest are grown-ass, democracy demonstrating men and women.

Summercorn wrote:

Mr.Doobie wrote:

Sex is for everyone of all ages. Children have sexual experiences, but no one wants to talk about that. Who really cares if teenagers have sex with each other? I'm puzzled as to how you're relating this back to age of consent laws because it sounds like you're using this to try and justify having sex with a teenager.

I wouldn't have sex with someone in their twenties, because I would consider them too young for me. The thought of having sex with a teen, even a late teen, makes me feel queasy. I hope that's completely clear.

I think you're taking this too personally and getting the "I personally am not a slut!" part conflated with the whole blaming teenage girls for whatever horrible fate can befall them. Nobody is blaming you and nobody is confusing you with a "giant underage slut."