this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2024
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I would agree with a small portion of it, but pedophilia, no, no way.
Though I do have something to share on the subject. I used to go out with this girl, I was 19, she was 17. We had sex and all that (willingly, of course). Legally speaking, I was a pedophile, but let's take a look at the age gap and how old I was.
Anyway, I wasn't that into this girl, so I break up with her. I did know that she kinda had a crush on me, but I didn't think it was that serious. Three weeks pass after the breakup and her dad shows up at my doorstep with 2 other guys (his relatives... or at least I presumed as much) accusing me of raping his daughter... I tried to explain that there was no such thing and that yes, we did have sex, but at no point was it against her will. Sure, I might have been the one that instigated the intercourse, but it wasn't like she didn't like it. Regardless, her dad was pissed as hell and even threatened to submit this to the DA π±... I was about to be taken to trial and very possibly go to jail for what? A girl that I broke up with that was probably deeply hurt (I am sorry for that, but you can't force someone to love someone else) and wanted to get back at me, so she involved her parrents in the ordeal, not thinking things through (of course, she's young) how this might affect the other person and stain him FOR LIFE.
Luckily, things cooled down, I went to talk to her parrents about this, I said I was sorry and I shouldn't have had sex with her, but the truth of the matter was that, I didn't rape her! They also called her to confront me on this, we had a long converstaion with her parrents present, she was furious, lying through her teeth, portraying every single time we had sex as rape. I think her parrents saw through this, since there were personal insults at my expense, not to mention that "why did you break up with me!?" was mentioned quite a few times throught the conversation and that kinda sealed the case that this was nothing more than a broken heart. I promised them I'll never contact her again, for her sake (and mine as well), and to let her heal, and I never did.
My point is, things could have ended up being A LOT worse for me. I think that me showing up alone at their house kinda made them think about the whole situation and that maybe our daughter is actually lying to us (why would I show up there and risk getting my head chopped off if I really did rape her, right). Just goes to show you that people can be mean, take advantage of a certain situation and portray it as something completely different.
I always asked a partner's age after that, ALWAYS. Unless it was blaintly obvious she's not a minor.
I was 19, she was 17.
Still, if he's talking about cases like mine, yes, I can get onboard with that. But with an age gap of 10+ years, no, I really can't.
My mom was almost 20 years younger than my dad m, but she was 27 and he was 46. That may seem weird, but both of them are adults.
When I read your story originally I remember that I had mixed feelings. But lately I've been reading some of the lies that RMS haters tell about him and his views on sex. Reading his blog posts changed my mind about some things and now I've realised that you were right and that RMS has a similar opinion.
Richard Stallman was criticised for saying that it's normal for teenagers (Stallman defines them as people that are at least 14 years old) to have sex with adults. He believes that the laws that call sex with children or teenagers "rape" are dishonest and that the definition of rape shouldn't depend on someone's age. His haters criticised him for that too, but your story shows how crazy such laws are.
When he made that statement about pedophilia, I think he was just trying to extend the rights that teenagers normally have onto children (Stallman defines them as people that are 13 years old or younger). I think that he meant well and he really didn't realise that pedophilia is harmful.
I've been thinking about the age gap argument and that's also something his haters like to point out. I think Stallman doesn't believe that an age gap itself is wrong. So I'm curious why do you think it's wrong? I couldn't think of a logical reason and I realised that I'm unable to define what the acceptable age gap should be. Because as you pointed out, big age gaps seem weird even when both people are adults:
This is unusual, but it's not wrong. So why would big age gaps be wrong for a teenager and an adult? After all we accept that teenagers should be able to have control over their own bodies (at least in most of Europe and most of US). So shouldn't it be their decision?
Sorry for posting such a long comment on an old post. I just realised how insane the whole hate campaign against RMS was, because he is right about most of the things he was criticised for.
Most teenagers are too young at 14 to know how the consequneces of their actions might reverbirate in their lives. Sure, they might feel up to the task, but ask any saman of any tribe, 18, 19 is the age when you actually get to be called an adult. Yes, they still lack eperience, by they make up for it by having youth. You put tyem in risky situations so they learn. Old people aren't wiser, they just have more life experience.
So, my conclusion would be, 14 is too young (in general, doesn't mean there aren't 14 year olds thinking like 20 year olds). 16... depends, but with proper guidnace, a lot better than 14. So... yeah, I would be willing to lower the bar, IF parrenting wasn't seen as a role, but as a duty (this is a diffeent converstaion).
The reasons I explained above: not enough life experience.
That "control" is mostly imaginary (as it should be), They THINK they're in control, but when pushing comes to shoving, they always call the parrents (again, as it should be). There is nothing wrong with that, their parrents know them best (or at least how things should be) and they probably know why they did what they did (again, in this world, this is a best case scenario... these things should be REALLY, realy analyzed by people far smarter than me). So, the assumption is, shit happened, they're young, they can lie out of spite, which makes thigs even harder... let's find out what happened π€·.
As I said, I would agree about SOME of the things (I would call them sane defaults) he said, but not everything. 14 is too young in most cases. 16... I could probably start debating in that.
Thanks for the answer. So it's not really about the age gap itself? You just think that the age of consent should be 16 or higher? Or is it both?
Is it possible that you are thinking that, because age of consent is very high in your country? I imagine that people who live for example in Germany, where age of consent is 14, might not think the same. In most of Europe it's 14-16. In some countries teenagers can even get an abortion.
16 or higher, yes. But, the age gap shouldn't be too big at that age as well. My personal opinion, 10 years at that age, max. Anything above 25, add whatever age gap you wan't, they are adults in the true meaning of the word.
Hm... maybe. After all, I was raised that way.
But still, I've seen how much teenagers at that age have going on up there, they're just thrill seekers at that age, they really don't know anything about life, they could easilly be fooled by someone older than them.
You are right about teenagers, but on the other hand not all people are the same. For some reason we've decided that they are competent to make those kinds of decisions and to do other things like driving a car. So even though they are not adults, we don't think of them as children either. There is probably no simple answer to this question, though.
Suddenly reminded about Shurigina.
This wouldn't be illegal in the UK or many countries. Age of consent is 16 here. From what I've read, USA is an outlier that infantises young adults to impose mortality.
Always weird because the music videos exported by the US are often soft porn and the music industry has a thing for barely legal girls.
In Russia too. Until 2003 it was 14.
I don't live in the US BTW. I said "the DA" to conform to what most of the viewers on Lemmy are used to (most are US citizens). In reality we don't have a district attourney, you involve the police and the state takes care of things onwards.
Which just goes to show you that that "imposed morality" thing isn't really working... in the US or anywhere else. The US is somewhere at the top by number of pedophiles vs. number of population.
Out of curiosity, where are you from?
Macedonia, the Balkans.
Ah cool. I do like that Lemmy feels more distributed than Reddit. Too many Americans on it.
Yeah, it kinda feels that there is more diversity here, but still, I do belive the majority is from the US, so I sometimes cater in my comments to that part of the population, just to cut down on explaining myself afterwards.