So someone on Reddit posted a video showing time-lapse video of a girl from infanthood to 12 years old. Naturally, Redditors responded with creepy pedophilia jokes, and one Redditor (speaking for many, judging by the numerous upvotes) took the opportunity to complain about just how hard it is for dudes to not have sex with underage girls. Apparently these girls deliberately develop earlier than boys as part of an elaborate plot to entrap guys and send them to jail.
Thanks to ShitRedditSays for pointing me to this latest bit of egregious Redditry.
Thanks David 🙂
This topic always gets me since I had a lot of experience with it, and saw such a dramatic change when I was finally “legal” despite now actually being in situations where I would interact with more adults.
For what it is worth, few states have laws about consent that make sex with all minors illegal for all adults. I don’t know the minutia of all of the laws, but most of the time there is a legal age range for teens that extends past 18 (it is often 4 years but sometimes more, so a 16 year old can legally date a 20 year old and so forth). Also many place have laws that make it legal with parent’s permission no matter what age (see child marriage laws).
The fact is, there are few places where a young man in his early twenties has sex with a 17 year old and risks going to jail (presuming full consent etc). Here is a list http://www.cga.ct.gov/2003/olrdata/jud/rpt/2003-r-0376.htm
I do think that it would be beneficial to have a consolidated law taking into consideration the averages, 13/14 would be the age of limited consent with a 5 year limit and 17 would be the age of full consent (or something like that). Another thing to look at is the significant differences in punishments state by state. Some states give only 1-2 years for statutory rape (presuming it was not otherwise violent or under age 13) while other give 20 years to life. On these issues I don’t know if there is a one size works for all solution, but some consistency would be nice.
I think the variation in laws and punishments for the crime feeds the narrative that there is a lot of grey area and confusion about having sex with minors. It shouldn’t be a confusing topic morally, but legally it is. I also think that full and comprehensive sex education is key to
giving minors legal ability to consent to sex. They need to be educated about sex, their bodies, their rights, their choices and healthy relationships to be able to fully consent to sex imo.
But I don’t see that happening any time soon (I’m look at you Utah).
Soooooo … do people who aren’t PUAs talk about things like how the bonding phase comes after the initial attraction phase?
I have so many questions.
Despite the fact that her claims are theater-level projection, I think the comments on Ruby’s relationship with her husband are uncalled for.
*to clarify, I meant comments about how sad her relationship must be, which are only like two or three
it is kind of adorable that two complete tools managed to overcome their lameness and find love, i guess
i feel like what i said counts as one of those and i want to clarify that i was more talking about the fact that being the kind of flaming wingnut ruby is basically amounts to erasing everything worthwhile from humanity
it’s basically the same as being an mra, you turn into an obsessive little hate golem constantly blaming whatever problems you see in the world on other people’s perceived inadequacies. the fact that ruby doesn’t pick up on this is kind of hilarious.
Maybe it would be uncalled for be if she didn’t project her relationship standards onto everyone else. That’s seriously not ok to do.
Shadow, are you talking about what I’ve said? Because I do think the idea that women are only attracted to men for their money and men are only attracted to women for their physical looks, and that these two states are the only states that exist in terms of physical attraction of people to one another is indeed sad and pathetic. If that is uncalled for then I would ask you to explain all the other people in the universe for whom that is not the case which seems to be pretty much everyone.
@Sharculese
Personally, I don’t think your comment was attacking her relationship so much as it was attacking her worldview (like you said). I don’t have anything against calling her on/ laughing at her because of the many, many, MANY ridiculous things she said, I just felt like ridiculing her relationship was too personal an attack.
@jumbofish
Yeah, but she hasn’t ridiculed anyone’s relationship or claimed specific people were lying about their relationships. She’s just sat there saying the same thing over and over again like a really annoying parrot. But that’s just how I feel.
@Snowy
No, I was talking more about comments like Jean Renee’s. I also felt that the jokes about her husband divorcing her were a little mean, but she brought that on herself with her ridiculous essentialism. I just didn’t want my comment to be a call out, so I didn’t refer to specific comments.
Shadow, I don’t understand why holding someone to the same standard they seem to apply to everyone else in the world would be mean. I happen to agree that marrying someone for their ability to make money is a very sad thing to do. If you don’t want your comment to be a call out why would you make a vague call out the way you did? Either call out people comments or don’t. There’s nothing wrong in calling out something you thing is wrong. I call people out all the time.
@ Shadow,
Did you think I was being sarcastic? Ruby’s relationship with her husband may in fact be the happiest, most fulfilling relationship any two human beings have ever experienced and I would never begrudge them that. But the fact that the relationship appears to be dependent on one party’s ability to provide saddens me. That just doesn’t seem like a healthy mindset.
But she has even if it’s done in a passive way. She said all women and goldiggers and you know there is women here on the thread. She means them too. She is talking about their relationships. They aren’t magically excluded in her list of all women.
Shadow, pointing out to her the end logic of her own statements is a little mean? While it is true that if her husband bought the best pretty he could afford does not necessarily mean that he will divorce her the moment she turns thirty, I think that showing her where his supposed shallowness (as its her that came up with this nonsense) will land her is entirely fair. She has stated that men are only concerned about a womans looks, not say…men will put looks in the top five things they look for in a wife.
If she says “everyone wants a relationship like mine” and we say “your relationship sounds miserable,” that seems perfectly on-topic to me.
On the other hand, I’m sure we can all think of places and situations where a woman may need to rate a mans ability to provide much more highly.
I’ve seen nothing from Ruby, however, to give me reason to think this is the case. She speaks about meeting her husband at work, so she’s not as likely to be a member of a religious group that insists a womans proper sphere is in the home.
@Snowy
I do call things out if I think it’s wrong, and I’ve even called out comments here. In this case though, it’s just a vague feeling of some people crossing a line that I wouldn’t cross. Therefore it’s not something that I think deserves a call out, no one’s required to adhere to what I think is too mean. There’s also the fact that Ruby’s statements don’t affect me the way they affect others because a) I’m not in a relationship, so they don’t attack anything going on in my life right now and b) I’m not queer, so it’s not my sexuality that’s being erased by her comments.
@Jean Renee
Fair enough
@everyone
Fair enough. Like I said, it felt a little too mean to me. On reading your responses I get what you mean, and it doesn’t feel as uncalled for
Well Shadow, my remarks have been mean. And you know what? Living and working with people who think this way is pretty shitty. I personally am beyond tired of being told I’m only worth the amount I approach the beauty ideal and I’m furious with the number of times I’ve been explicitly or implicity told I’m shit because I’m a single mom. I’m considered a very attractive woman/employee/tenant, right up until I mention I have a daughter. Because women need good providers for their children/goldigger and that child going to cut into my rightful time/money.
Given that Ruby’s premise implies that any woman who doesn’t admit that she’s a golddigger is lying, I can’t say that I feel too bad about people sniping back at her in return.
@Cassandra and pillowinhell
Yeah, I can understand that. That was actually the third reason I didn’t think I had cause for a callout. Telling me that I’m going to go for the prettiest face around is nowhere near as offensive as saying that women are going to go for the richest dude around (with a side helping of “women can’t provide for themselves” being intimated).
ronalon42 I think it’s important that we all keep in mind that in the US, parents are legally responsible for minors, usually until 18, generally. That means that we parents need to have a measure of control if we’re to be held responsible. If my minor has a child, guess who will be responsible? Me. That’s the first part of what I want to lay as groundwork. The second is that police and the state are not out hunting for relationships between 17yr olds and 19 years olds to bust, and I’m not sure the penalty is that large. When you’re in front of a judge, they have discretion. The larger penalties would be for circumstances where it wasn’t a good situation, and likely the age difference and nature of the relationship is all considered.
Having said that, my point is that these laws are so parents have recourse IF NEED BE. They’re not laws used to proactively sweep the community. If someone imposes on my teenager, do I, as a parent have legal recourse. Yes, I do. And the penalties likely aren’t that severe, and sometimes, I would guess are referred to civil litigation. In the case of a man that I knew that left child and pregnant wife to be with a 16 year old girl, her mother should have but did not pursue any legal charges. Her schooling was messed up and he was abusive. The police dealt with them on a trespassing issue and found bruises on her, just like on the ex wife. The age of consent law comes in handy when you’re protecting your child form someone like that. And like I said, I’ll bet the judges take the entire nature of the relationship into consideration come sentencing, and level appropriate penalties.
The other side of this, is how put out are people over 18 to mind their P’s and Q’s. Not that put out, simply put. So this is not some horrid injustice anyone needs to spend any amount of time on. There are ways to improve things here and there, but remember that minors are the legal responsibility of their parents.
Ruby: Just because women are attracted to men who make good providers
Citations needed.
I am so confused. I’m attracted to people who are neither conventionally attractive (I like ’em chubby and geeky) nor good providers (I like ’em poor and artistic).
Kyrie: Yeah, classist. 🙂
Plato was very feminist for his time: he believed that although most women were inferior to men some weren’t and should be educated equally to men and given equal rights to participate in politics. Given that he lived in a society in which citizen women were often kept isolated indoors and not taught much beyond how to do common household chores, I think he gets points.
I am about to run out the door, so I don’t have time to read through all the comments, but somehow I get the feeling that Ruby has been evopsyching again. So Ruby, if you’re reading this: I seem to recall that the first time you started in with this biologically determined gender essentialism schtick, people suggested a number of excellent books and articles that you should read. In fact, I recommended a couple myself. PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF CTHULHU’S BETENTACLED MAW, GO BACK TO THAT THREAD, FIND THE STUFF PEOPLE SAID YOU SHOULD READ, AND READ IT.