Libertarians should abandon the Right
I explained that there is no harm in a teenage relationship, by saying that girls mentally mature faster than guys, so the two people in the relationship have a smaller difference in their mental age than in their biological age. I'm not sure in how much detail you expect me to explain. For example, girls' orbitofrontal cortex has a higher relative volume than boys'. The orbitofrontal cortex is very important in impulse control (and emotional intelligence in general) and decision making. The limbic system also develops faster in girls than in boys.
And are you arguing that the laws should only change for relationships involving older males and younger females? And why are we moving younger girls up and not older guys down?
What's incredibly frustrating is that none of that is ever taken into account.
Government bureaucrats decide they can interfere with the natural bonding between teenagers and send them to prison with no evidence that any of what those teens do is harmful to anybody.
Originally Posted by nih.gov
Negative effects of early sexual debut on academic outcomes can extend beyond secondary school, although concurrent changes in other psychosocial risk factors have not been investigated. Data from three waves of a longitudinal survey of Scottish teenagers were used to examine associations between early sexual debut (first heterosexual intercourse) and both expectations for (N = 5,061) and participation in (N = 2,130) tertiary education at college or university. Early debut was associated with reduced tertiary education, after adjusting for academic performance and wave 1 confounders relating to social background, attitudes and behaviours. Pregnancy/partner pregnancy did not explain all of this finding, as many sexually experienced teenagers opted out of tertiary education after leaving school early for other reasons. Changes in other psychosocial risk factors between waves 1 and 2 mediated much of the association found. Early sexual experience may predict disengagement from tertiary education, although further research is needed to explore causal pathways.
These laws can ruin lives, agree? This isn't about "crushing" each other in interwebz debates.
Originally Posted by Me
It's fine to talk about 'taking subtleties into account', it's another thing altogether to devise a workable method of doing so. These abstracted general statements aren't advancing the discussion.
Of course you can. Men with a pathological attraction to younger girls very frequently disregard restrictions on their behaviour and seek out ways to bypass them. The fact that he re-established contact with the girl and resumed having sex with her despite having spent a year in prison is actually a huge red flag, whether you realise it or not. It's far from conclusive, but it's not the innocuous irrelevancy that you're making it out to be, either. The amount of risk someone is prepared to accept to achieve a given end is surely proportionate to their desire to achieve it, no? He could have just waited.
I thought we were having a normal conversation. "Crushing" you hadn't really crossed my mind. But this at least reveals your mindset.
I explained that there is no harm in a teenage relationship, by saying that girls mentally mature faster than guys, so the two people in the relationship have a smaller difference in their mental age than in their biological age. I'm not sure in how much detail you expect me to explain. For example, girls' orbitofrontal cortex has a higher relative volume than boys'. The orbitofrontal cortex is very important in impulse control (and emotional intelligence in general) and decision making. The limbic system also develops faster in girls than in boys.
http://www.pnas.org/content/107/39/16988.abstract
What's incredibly frustrating is that none of that is ever taken into account. Government bureaucrats decide they can interfere with the natural bonding between teenagers and send them to prison with no evidence that any of what those teens do is harmful to anybody.
These laws can ruin lives, agree? This isn't about "crushing" each other in interwebz debates.
I explained that there is no harm in a teenage relationship, by saying that girls mentally mature faster than guys, so the two people in the relationship have a smaller difference in their mental age than in their biological age. I'm not sure in how much detail you expect me to explain. For example, girls' orbitofrontal cortex has a higher relative volume than boys'. The orbitofrontal cortex is very important in impulse control (and emotional intelligence in general) and decision making. The limbic system also develops faster in girls than in boys.
http://www.pnas.org/content/107/39/16988.abstract
What's incredibly frustrating is that none of that is ever taken into account. Government bureaucrats decide they can interfere with the natural bonding between teenagers and send them to prison with no evidence that any of what those teens do is harmful to anybody.
These laws can ruin lives, agree? This isn't about "crushing" each other in interwebz debates.
Now, one paper cited by this paper does provide evidence of what you were hoping to show:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...53811907002340
This paper takes a coarser look at the differences in the maturation of the brain in males and females as they age. The brain features they looked at were much larger than the paper you cited, but they did observe time offsets between the way certain features grew and then shrank in males and females. But get this: the size of the offsets varied by feature, but typically 3 years, and always under 4 years (some features didn't show a significant difference at when changes happened at all). Your argument that a 19 yo male is at the same maturity level as a 14 yo female is not supported by any data presented so far. Indeed, the rate at which the volume of brain features decreases with maturity tends to accelerate from the onset of puberty up to age 18 or so (true for both sexes), it seems likely that the 19 yo would have a significant advantage in maturity compared to a 14 yo girl.
Of course you can. Men with a pathological attraction to younger girls very frequently disregard restrictions on their behaviour and seek out ways to bypass them. The fact that he re-established contact with the girl and resumed having sex with her despite having spent a year in prison is actually a huge red flag, whether you realise it or not. It's far from conclusive, but it's not the innocuous irrelevancy that you're making it out to be, either. The amount of risk someone is prepared to accept to achieve a given end is surely proportionate to their desire to achieve it, no? He could have just waited.
I'm looking for something. You made a claim which is quite baseless so far. Why do you think 15-year-olds are unable to consent?
But I'm mostly on board with all that.
The scenario, though, that la6ki is upset about is now a 14 year old and an older teenager. That's not something that the older teenager was unaware of. Age of consent laws are not an overreaction to an isolated crime.
His rhetoric about "bureaucrats" telling you who you are allowed to love or whatever is not only disturbingly similar to the rhetoric you'll find on NAMBLA's website(and LirvA posts, the dearly departed even had the same pouty teenager tone), it's an attack on the very idea of "statutory" rape being a crime at all. Not "some" or "many" instances, he appears to be upset at the idea of criminalizing consensual sex due to an age difference.
(Though, as with the buying/selling stuff earlier, what la6ki says now and what he'll claim to believe later can diverge).
Assuming the law was harshly enforced, then I'd imagine people currently classed as 'sex addicts' would break that law with much higher frequency than the population as a whole.
Their lack of physical and social development. It's cool, you don't have to accept my premise. I'm probably not going to be able to do the research today for you. I get that the line is going to be arbitrary, but I am fine with that. 18 is a good cutoff because 18+ means you should be out of high school at that point. It's a decent enough line to draw when it comes to statutory rape.
Your argument that a 19 yo male is at the same maturity level as a 14 yo female is not supported by any data presented so far.
Oh, but they aren't. That blog's cartoon was about how apparently innocuous activities might be criminalized due to regulatory overreach, or how overreaction to isolated crimes causes counterproductive zero tolerance policies. Those aren't really the same thing, the cartoon kinda lost focus and became a list of bad things the government does.
But I'm mostly on board with all that.
The scenario, though, that la6ki is upset about is now a 14 year old and an older teenager. That's not something that the older teenager was unaware of. Age of consent laws are not an overreaction to an isolated crime.
But I'm mostly on board with all that.
The scenario, though, that la6ki is upset about is now a 14 year old and an older teenager. That's not something that the older teenager was unaware of. Age of consent laws are not an overreaction to an isolated crime.
His rhetoric about "bureaucrats" telling you who you are allowed to love or whatever is not only disturbingly similar to the rhetoric you'll find on NAMBLA's website(and LirvA posts, the dearly departed even had the same pouty teenager tone), it's an attack on the very idea of "statutory" rape being a crime at all. Not "some" or "many" instances, he appears to be upset at the idea of criminalizing consensual sex due to an age difference.
(Though, as with the buying/selling stuff earlier, what la6ki says now and what he'll claim to believe later can diverge).
(Though, as with the buying/selling stuff earlier, what la6ki says now and what he'll claim to believe later can diverge).
'Mental age' is not a well-defined concept in your argument. Girls may make fewer impulsive decisions. This does not mean they are in a position to make fully informed decisions. The standard by which this is measured is the capacity of an adult, not that of a child of similar age but the opposite gender.
And are you arguing that the laws should only change for relationships involving older males and younger females?
And why are we moving younger girls up and not older guys down?
Even the article you linked to mentions that many places do have 'Romeo and Juliet' laws, which mitigate the problem as you initially presented it. Those laws probably won't cover an 18-yo and a 14-yo, though. And I'm fine with that, to be honest. Let's say half of such cases are starry-eyed innocents and half are guys who figure a younger girl is more likely to let him do whatever he wants. I think preventing the latter is worth more than facilitating the former.
Do you know there's no evidence, or do you just know of no evidence?
There's the usual disclaimers about more investigation, etc, but a correlation certainly exists.
The above problem isn't going away. I mean, for the sake of argument, let's say you've convinced me, and I'm all aboard the la6ki teen-sex Orient Express. Where do we go from here? How do we distinguish the lovely natural harmless stuff from the nasty exploitative harmful stuff?
Cool story? There still seems to be a significant difference in the maturation of their brains, on average, and as such, restrictions on 18 yos screwing 14 yos still seem appropriate.
Do you understand what I'm getting at? In this case, we have an 18-year-old defendant who had sex that was, in point of fact, consensual with a 14-year-old victim, an act that is defined ex officio to have been non-consensual. As a matter of law, he undoubtedly committed a crime, but that doesn't say anything about whether, in point of fact, his behavior is substantively abnormal, or whether he has certain psychosexual proclivities. Those are sociological and psychological questions that have empirical answers. The same is true with the fact of his having violated the court order, since arguing that his behavior is pathological based on his willingness to violate the order assumes that the behavior the order was designed to prevent was pathological in the first place. Otherwise, you're simply arguing that the legal definition alone is enough to establish that what he did was severely abnormal.
Of course you can. Men with a pathological attraction to younger girls very frequently disregard restrictions on their behaviour and seek out ways to bypass them. The fact that he re-established contact with the girl and resumed having sex with her despite having spent a year in prison is actually a huge red flag, whether you realise it or not. It's far from conclusive, but it's not the innocuous irrelevancy that you're making it out to be, either. The amount of risk someone is prepared to accept to achieve a given end is surely proportionate to their desire to achieve it, no? He could have just waited.
Considering the fact that by definition that itself doesn't make me a 'pedophile', please explain based on what you think that guy had a pathological attraction to young girls and not simply be in the same situation as me. And I guarantee you that nobody (unless somebody incredibly spineless) will abandon his girlfriend because a weird judge told him so, nobody! So?
Anyway he had a huge crush on the girl I mentioned. Definitely a little weird - but she was into boys big time and he was a pretty immature junior. I'm pretty sure nothing ever happened. But do I think the guy was a predator who should have been locked up and labeled a sex offender for life if something happened? No. He was just a stunted kid and she was pretty advanced.
So anyway - yeah I agree it's a grey area. I don't mind it being against the law for him to mess around with her. But sex offender for life is too severe imo.
The same is true with the fact of his having violated the court order, since arguing that his behavior is pathological based on his willingness to violate the order assumes that the behavior the order was designed to prevent was pathological in the first place. Otherwise, you're simply arguing that the legal definition alone is enough to establish that what he did was severely abnormal.
It can be reduced to this: One whose behaviour is pathological is more likely to risk imprisonment to engage in that behaviour than one whose behaviour is not pathological.
Surely you don't disagree?
Here's where we differ. This is not what I'm arguing. What I'm saying doesn't require the assumption that his initial act was pathological and it isn't aimed at establishing that, either. All it requires is that you acknowledge the possibility. Given the possibility, the fact that he violated a court order to continue the behaviour increases the likelihood that his behaviour as a whole is pathological.
It can be reduced to this: One whose behaviour is pathological is more likely to risk imprisonment to engage in that behaviour than one whose behaviour is not pathological.
Surely you don't disagree?
It can be reduced to this: One whose behaviour is pathological is more likely to risk imprisonment to engage in that behaviour than one whose behaviour is not pathological.
Surely you don't disagree?
What? The argument was, I thought, that the punishment of that particular defendant was unjust, i.e. that he in particular should not have been punished for statutory rape, because his conduct was not morally culpable, and moreover not within the scope of what of what the statutory rape laws were designed to prohibit (sexual relationships between a predatory adult and a child too young to consent).
So two people love each other but can't be together because of a court order?
Government bureaucrats decide they can interfere with the natural bonding between teenagers and send them to prison with no evidence that any of what those teens do is harmful to anybody.
Do you understand that nobody has the right to get between those two people?
Originally Posted by DrModern
Admittedly I didn't read the entire exchange. If his argument is really that persons of all ages should be understood to be capable of consent, and all consensual sex between persons of all ages should be legal, I retract what I said in his defense.
Originally Posted by la6ki
Do you understand that nobody has the right to get between those two people?
Not necessarily.
What would it mean to move older guys down? To criminally prosecute a 20-year-old woman having sex with a 17-year-old dude?
Why do you think that's your decision, seriously? I mean, don't you feel a little uncomfortable at least sitting in front of your computer and making these judgments about other people's lives which quite often have dramatic effects?
I know there's no evidence regarding the ages per se. They don't really mean anything from a developmental point of view (they are quite arbitrary, rather). The only thing one could say is "people mature as they age", but that's obviously pretty useless. I could decide to make the legal age of consent 30, since then the women/men will have matured even more...!
And what do people usually say about correlation? What doesn't it imply?
I have a radical idea. How about we use our brains and look at each case separately, rather than vote dumb and blind laws which have the potential to crush lives?
b
Of course he should disagree. It depends entirely on what the behavior is. If one risks going to prison for stealing a pack of gum from a store (but I really wanted that gum!) then obviously this is pathological. If one risks going to prison for being with a person they love, then there certainly isn't anything pathological here. In fact, as I said in my previous post, there would be something pathological if he didn't try.
A) Avoid the girl altogether
B) Maintain contact while refraining from sex, or engage in a one-time contact to vow to wait for each other
C) BAM-CHICK-A-WAH-WAAAAHHH
He went for C). Priorities differ, sure, but one way in which priorities can differ is by the behaviour of the person in question being pathological. And risking prison for sexytime should raise the probability estimate. That's all I've been saying.
Here's where we differ. This is not what I'm arguing. What I'm saying doesn't require the assumption that his initial act was pathological and it isn't aimed at establishing that, either. All it requires is that you acknowledge the possibility. Given the possibility, the fact that he violated a court order to continue the behaviour increases the likelihood that his behaviour as a whole is pathological.
It can be reduced to this: One whose behaviour is pathological is more likely to risk imprisonment to engage in that behaviour than one whose behaviour is not pathological.
Surely you don't disagree?
It can be reduced to this: One whose behaviour is pathological is more likely to risk imprisonment to engage in that behaviour than one whose behaviour is not pathological.
Surely you don't disagree?
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