smallcreature

slowly recovering from birdsite

autistic queerthing from france. kitty fighting the puppy allegations. Asks welcome!

Icon: Komugi from Wonderful Precure
Header: Whisper of the Heart



wiggles
@wiggles

so many people have constructed magical beliefs about turning 18. everyone loves the idea that 18 years old is exactly when everyone becomes an adult because it gives you easy answers to a bunch of thorny questions about statutory rape and grooming but it simply does not line up with reality. there is no special significance to "being alive for 18 years" that makes people adults who are able to have healthy balanced relationships with other adults. there is not a discrete cutoff after which a person is "ready" to date adults, or have sex, or anything else. it's all contextual, it's all individual, it's all culturally defined. instead of trying to simplify your ethics down to mathematical equations and numerical constants, consider using your brain!


wiggles
@wiggles

the idea that if you show a 17 year old your boobs it's an Evil Unforgivable Sex Crime but if you show an 18 year old your boobs it's just normal intimacy between adults is patently absurd on its face, and yet a huge amount of people take it as an unassailable fact when constructing ontologies of "good" and "bad" sex acts!


morine
@morine
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in reply to @wiggles's post:

I think the concept of 'rape culture' has played an important role in developing our societal understanding of sexual assault in recent decades. I think we need to have a similar reckoning about 'pedophilia culture', because pedophilia is normalized and enabled by so many institutions and norms around us. Obviously the worst thing about pedophilia culture is the abuse of children, but one of its other effects is that it makes any kind of public conversation about the "age of consent", sexual activity amongst similarly-aged teenagers, and sex education incredibly difficult, if not altogether impossible.

I almost feel my point here is reinforced by how eggshell-tiptoe careful I was with my wording while I was writing this. Again, this is far from being the most pressing issue in this area, but we find ourselves in a cultural moment where (especially as a guy and ESPECIALLY as a guy on the internet) one cannot reasonably expect strangers to assume one is not a pedophile.