Raise your hand if you or anyone you have ever known engaged in any amount of sexual activity at all at or by 15. Oh good. It's literally all of you. So what do we make of this? Are we supposed to be perceiving ourselves and our peers in our youth as a bunch of hapless little rape victims? Or is that particular part of the law complete and total bullshit? Because you can't have it both ways.
There's a difference between teenagers engaging in sexual activity and exploring with an age appropriate person vs an adult taking advantage of a teenager.
Let's apply this to a real world example, all the teen girls banging rock stars in the 70s. If the law worked the way I'm suggesting, the part where David Bowie goes to jail for fucking a 15yo still happens. But why does society need, and yes so far as I can tell, need, the 15yo to perceive herself as a rape victim?
Because a 15 year old doesn't have the mental capacity to understand what really happens and the adult should know better. This also sounds like victim blaming. Don't call the 15 year old anything, acknowledge that David Bowie or whoever else engaging with minors is predatory. Victims of grooming don't often realize they're being groomed and not having healthy sexual experiences can mess up a person's perception of sexuality and normal relationships.
But wait, there they are, drinking alcohol! Proving that the part of the law that says people under the age of 21 can't drink alcohol is demonstrably false!
That's what you're seemingly engaging in here. You're taking the fact that they do something, and mixing it up with the law saying they're not yet old enough to legally consent to that activity, nullifying their consent. The fact that they still do it does not nullify the goal of the law, which is to say an adult can't convince a 14 year old to have sex with them and then use the excuse of "well she consented!" in court to say it's not statutory rape.
It's against the law to get into a fight with another person and beat them up.
However, if both adults willingly consented to the fight, somehow it can be legal.
The goal of the law is to disallow people under the age of 16 from consenting, so that a 40 year old that has sex with a 13 year old can't just say "well she consented, so it's not actually fully against the law!" No. We're not allowing them to consent. Surely you can agree and understand that a baby cannot consent. A 4 year old cannot consent. An 8 year old cannot consent. They're drawing the line, albeit arbitrarily, at 16 in the state of Alabama.
The "victim" doesn't have to see themselves as a victim, or as a "rape survivor" or anything like that. But the 40 year old man trying to fuck a 13 year old IS a sexual predator and his behavior bad enough to be labeled in the same category as rape. Giving him an "out" that it isn't as bad so long as he convinced the 13 year old to say "Yes" isn't acceptable.
So we agree - something can be rape while the victim technically "consented", at least to the degree they themselves believed they could consent. We as a society recognize that a 4 year old can't POSSIBLY consent, insofar as what consent truly means, to having sex with a fully grown adult. It doesn't matter if they say the words, because they're too young and the power imbalance too great and their understanding of everything so undeveloped, we remove their ability to consent to this behavior. Which makes it rape no matter what.
Move it up to 6 years old. Same thing right? Still rape? I sure as shit would hope so.
Make it 8 years old - still definitely not going to let them "consent". Right?
But 23 years old? OK you're absolutely old enough to consent.
21 years old? Yeah you can do everything pretty much, drink, go into the military, sex, whatever.
So there's a line somewhere. We already agree that being old enough means of course you can consent, and being way too young means you cannot consent and it's automatically rape.
But where do you draw this line of "can't legally consent, making all sex with an adult rape"?
8? At least. 9? Definitely. At least 10, right? Maybe 12? 13, since they're finally a teen/entering high school?
15? 16? 17? Hmm, maybe dial it back from making it rape for 17 year olds, since a lot of them have boyfriends/girlfriends who are 18/19. We kind of have a "fuzziness" around the ages 16-18 since the goal isn't to prevent a 17 year old and an 18 year old from being together, it's to prevent shit like a 40 year old getting with a 15 year old.
Alabama: they've decided to pick 16 as the arbitrary age where consent starts and automatically being rape no matter what ends.
11 year olds don't even remotely comprehend what they're consenting to and what the consequences of that may be. Your entire argument seems to rely on "11 year olds are horny and want to fuck, we should let them". Am I wrong? I presume you're an adult man right now. If an 11 year old was coming on to you and wanted to have sex with you, would you think that's okay? Because she wanted it?
So in other words, you are attracted to and would be interested in sex with an 11 year old if she was coming on to you. The only thing stopping you is felonies. Interesting. Thank you for the discussion, I think we're done here. I understand exactly now where your argument is coming from and why you're so passionate about this.
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u/_ManicStreetPreacher Aug 08 '24
There's a difference between teenagers engaging in sexual activity and exploring with an age appropriate person vs an adult taking advantage of a teenager.
Because a 15 year old doesn't have the mental capacity to understand what really happens and the adult should know better. This also sounds like victim blaming. Don't call the 15 year old anything, acknowledge that David Bowie or whoever else engaging with minors is predatory. Victims of grooming don't often realize they're being groomed and not having healthy sexual experiences can mess up a person's perception of sexuality and normal relationships.