The big omnibus crime bill the conservatives want to pass includes, among many many things, raising the age of consent from 14 to 16.
I am strongly, almost viscerally, opposed to this.
As with most issues involving children, I look at this by putting myself in the kid's shoes and remembering my thought processes at that age. I was not yet ready to have sex on my 14th birthday, but I was ready to have sex before my 16th birthday. However, and this is the important part, on my 14th birthday I was perfectly capable of deciding for myself that I was not yet ready to have sex. Apart from medical advances in the past 12 years, I had the same information then that I do today, and was able to use the same reasoning then to determine that I was not yet ready for sex as I use today to determine that loving sex with mi cielito is a good idea while jumping the homeless guy who shouts stuff at me is a bad idea. This reasoning has served me well - I've never had sex that I ended up regreting - so I have no reason to believe that 14- and 15-year-olds are incapable of deciding for themselves whether to consent to sex.
They say the purpose of raising the age of consent is to protect kids from sexual exploitation, but it's degrading and paternalistic to do this by passing a law saying that people are not capable of making a decision they are perfectly capable of making. The existing law already raises the age of consent to 18 for situations in which one party is in a position of power or authority, rape and pimping (I forget the the legal term) and other similar stuff are already illegal - surely any capable legislator can close any existing loopholes without declaring competent people legally incompetent.
But the weird thing about this issue is it's very difficult to speak out against raising the age of consent without sounding creepy. I've heard other people do it, and they almost all came across as creepy, like they wanted to have the right to have sex with grade 9 students for their own personal purposes. So because of this, even though I'm so strongly opposed to raising the age of consent, I'm very hesitant to speak out. I don't even know if I've managed to succeed in not coming across as creepy here, I only dare speak out here because I'm not using my real name and I have a proven track record of prudishness. I just wish it were easier and more appropriate to speak out against.
6 comments:
I saw your profile by chance and read that you like translations.In which languages do you translate?
Your thoughts on the age of consent are absolutely spot on. People are afraid of having rational discussions about "difficult" subjects, so they don't talk about them. Anyone in a position of responsibility or authority who tries to discuss them gets shouted down as a paedophile or a pervert or other such playground-level taunt. Which, given that the topic in discussion is about maturity and consent, is rather ironic (not to mention sad)
Professionally I do French to English. My other languages are Spanish, German, and Polish, but I don't work in them.
They say the purpose of raising the age of consent is to protect kids from sexual exploitation, but it's degrading and paternalistic to do this by passing a law saying that people are not capable of making a decision they are perfectly capable of making.
I don't know. I have seen girls of 16 (here in the U.S that age is about equivalent to a high school sophomore) being easily seduced by boys only a couple or three years older who show them even a slight bit of interest or attention. I could be wrong, but we can probably guess the first thing many of these boys have in mind when they decide to go out with 16- (or 14-) year-old girls.
The girls may be perfectly capable of making the decision at either age or somewhere in between, but that doesn't necessarily mean they aren't being exploited.
You did succeed.
Unfortunately your fears of speaking out are well founded.
A friend of mine from writerly and pro-choice things was attacked as a pedophile, her books burned and banned, over a similar issue.
The book is called "Harmful To Minors - The Perils of Trying to Protect Children from Sex". You can go to judithlevine.com for info, or Google her for a lot of crazy stuff.
The publicity ended up helping her, of course, but it was very bad for a while.
I don't see the age of consent as being to protect people from smooth-talkers, I see it as being there to protect people who don't understand what sex is - like they don't know that those body parts can be used that way and have no idea that they're engaged in a sex act.
Actually, the rest of what I was going to see here plus what I found when I googled Judith Levine is turning into a whole new post with a mind of its own, so that will be up when I manage to impose some structure on it.
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