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I'm sorry, did you read his blog post? It was disgusting. He was trying to argue the subtleties of child rape. There are no subtleties. Minor's cannot consent.

roenxi 7y ago
There are subtleties about what constitutes a minor. The age of consent varies from 12 to 21 depending on the country [0]. That appears to include variation even in the US. On the one hand, the law is very clear because there needs to be a clear line in the sand to decide if people get sent to jail or not. On the other hand, there are clearly open cultural questions about what we should get angry about. Pick any standard you like, and the majority of the world currently disagrees. In my country of Australia we seem to be using 16. So in Australia maybe there was no crime at all. I dunno, I havn't looked in to this sort of law very deeply. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_consent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_consent
- loeg 7y ago
  I mean, the assault in question was non-consensual trafficking in addition to being statutory rape. So like, maybe we don't need to first principle this quite so hard? Don't rape people?
seanmcdirmid 7y ago
Wow, wait. I get what your point is, but minors will continue doing it, and it is only with adults who they can’t consent with. Obviously minors can consent in some contexts, otherwise it would be a huge mess morally and legally (if two 14 year olds have sex, do they both go to jail because neither can consent? Also see the mess we’ve got into with kids sexting each other). Let’s not criminalize kids being kids because of some strict morality code.
- scruple 7y ago
  If one of those 14 year olds sends nude pictures to the other one, is that not distribution of child pornography? I've certainly read that minors have been charged as such, but I'm not capable of verifying the veracity of those charges (I just honestly don't want to Google for this shit).
  - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
    They have been charged but should they? Send the girl to prison rather than, I don’t know, getting her help or something.
    - scruple 7y ago
      I don't have answers or solutions, I rarely do. I think this particular debate lives in water that is far too murky for me to want to wade into. All that I'll say is that I think my answer to your question is something close to, "No. Maybe? I don't know. It depends..." All that I really know is that I am grateful, once again, to have been a teenager in an age before the proliferation of smart phones and social media.
      - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
        If you have teenagers today, it is really important to know the actual laws, nuances and all, and make sure your kid knows them as well.
        scruple 7y ago
        That's fair. Thankfully my children are under a year old, so my wife and I have ample time to prepare.
  - loeg 7y ago
    This is an interesting topic that has become more prevalent with rise of smartphones, but has absolutely nothing to do with an adult statutory raping a minor.
    - scruple 7y ago
      Agreed. I was responding to: > Let’s not criminalize kids being kids because of some strict morality code.
  - DoreenMichele 7y ago
- drdeca 7y ago
  Alternatively, the 2 14 year olds can’t consent to the act, but are also not liable for the act? I think this way of describing it expresses more the position that the occurrence is unfortunate, and all else being equal, best avoided. To say “two 14 year olds had entirely consensual sex with eachother” seems to possibly express that the occurrence described is not unfortunate. Also, If a 12yo and a 15.5 yo did, I think we very well might say that the 15.5 yo committed rape, even though neither person was an adult, Yet if both were 12, people wouldn’t call it that. So, I don’t think it is only if one party is an adult. Also if one party is substantially closer to being an adult.
  - footwo 7y ago
    > To say “two 14 year olds had entirely consensual sex with eachother” seems to possibly express that the occurrence described is not unfortunate. Isn't that just a misreading though? You're applying a connotation that isn't there. Many of us don't associate "consensual" with "A-ok" (e.g. I'm anti-pornography).
    - drdeca 7y ago
      Good point. Though, I didn’t mean to say that there was a clear connotation, just, like, a possible/weak one. Maybe the insertion of the word “entirely” is what creates the weak connotation? And that word wasn’t used in the comment I was replying to, so my comment is probably moot.
  - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
    Except it is also possible for a 14 year old to actually rape another 14 year old, so there is a difference between “cannot consent” and “did not consent” if you believe a 14 year old actually cannot consent.
    - drdeca 7y ago
      This is also a good point. Though the topic is beginning to cause me more discomfort than it was. Guess I wore through my “discuss uncomfortable topics without feeling uncomfortable” reserves. Edit: That isn’t a complaint about what anyone else is doing though. I am merely noting my own limitations, and no one needs to do anything to accommodate them in this instance. Continue on as if I hadn’t mentioned them?
- loeg 7y ago
  Minors having sex with themselves is basically out of scope here. Yes, it varies state by state and some states punish kids for things they absolutely should not be punished for. But we don't need to litigate the nitty gritty details of statutory rape laws. The case under discussion was a minor and some guy at least a decade older; not two minors.
  - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
    Parent said specifically: > There are no subtleties. Minor's cannot consent But, no, there are actually subtleties.
    - loeg 7y ago
      You pulled that quote out of context; preceding it is: > He was trying to argue the subtleties of child rape. There are no subtleties. Virtually everyone knows there are subtleties around statutory rape in general! But you're missing the forest for the trees here. We're not discussing statutory rape in general but the specific instance that Stallman was defending. You're technically correct in that the very last sentence of martinky24's comment was literally inaccurate, but you are wholly incorrect in your understanding of the spirit of the comment and subsequent dismissal of the rest of it. The subjects Stallman was discussing are not ambiguous first principle pseudo-persons of nebulous or similar ages. They are an old guy and a coerced, underage girl. Period. There is no subtlety here.
      - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
        I admitted to getting the spirit of the comment in my first one. But the path the comment went down by being so general exceeded the context if Stallman’s point.
ageofwant 7y ago
A 'minor' is a societal construct that varies over cultures and time. In Biblical Jewish cultures this was set at puberty ~ year 12. In some modern Islamic cultures its may be ~ year 9. In japan it used to be 13. Minors cannot consent because society has removed that right from them. Now I suspect we may agree on the general outcome of these rules, but I do find these 'religious' arguments distasteful, regardless from which camp they get issued.
- breck 7y ago
  > A 'minor' is a societal construct that varies over cultures and time. Agreed. And if a war, plague, or comet wipes out 80% of the population tomorrow, suddenly "minors" will be 13, and no one of these people so adamant here will bat an eye. Here's a chance to have a reasoned debate about an important issue, where constructive conversations and solutions could be devised. But instead, the conversation devolves into a flame war. If anyone is interested in spitballing some type of new novel restrictive grammar to enable having constructive conversations about hot-button issues, I'd love to help: https://github.com/treenotation/jtree/issues/52 https://github.com/treenotation/jtree/issues/52
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
mantap 7y ago
I get what you're saying, but minors can and do legally consent under various close-in-age laws, and the age of consent is usually lower than the age of legal majority anyway. I certainly don't agree with Stallman's comments, but the law is subtle.
jelliclesfarm 7y ago
Ok. I am not sure that I should be writing this response...but with the madness prevalent in the world today, I don’t care anymore that this is on some random online nook..because I want to heard. To say that minors cannot consent is absolutely horrifying to me. I would have felt ‘raped’ of my free agency to choose if I had been told as a minor that I ‘cannot consent’. I was a minor. I consented. I was a sexual being just as I was a human being. Minors have to do non sexual adult things ALL the time. I still see adults well into their 40s and 50s who are immature compared to me when I was a minor. So age is a non-factor. While I DO acknowledge that child sexual abuse occurs as does trafficking and that paedophiles exist out there, when my thoughts and actions and consent when I was a minor is ERASED and my decisions deemed irrelevant, I don’t know how to feel about it. Reactions in the exact order of how I felt when I read ‘Minors cannot consent’ : Confusion. Anger. Understanding. Annoyance. Anger. Some minors do adult non sexual things and make adult non sexual decisions all the time..sometimes because they don’t have a choice. Why is it that when it comes to sexual consent, the same minor does not have any agency? I am trying to understand. It is difficult for me to accept that I am a non-being as a minor. Please don’t start a flame war. I really want to understand why this is so and communicate as to why the blanket ‘minors cant consent’ is disempowering and has not really made the world a better safer place. I also want to know what is a better and more effective solution to child sexual abuse(or any kind of sexual abuse) to replace ‘minors cannot consent’.
- Qworg 7y ago
  Minors cannot consent because they, in general, have a mental deficiency called "being young". They also, in general, are in the lowest power position of any potential relationship. It isn't that minors are non-beings - it is that they're not fully developed yet, so they need protections. Where we draw that line is up to the law and culture of any location, but it exists.
  - jelliclesfarm 7y ago
    It sucks to be the female of this species, let me tell you. When we are minors, we are mentally deficient to be sexual beings. When we are adults, we are also told that we have no control or reproductive choice over what we do with bodies. I hate to sound like this..because I don’t think of myself as a vocal feminist..I have always considered myself a rational being. With that hat on, it seems to me that the female human being has no choice or agency and their physical bodies are mere vessels for the male of the species to fornicate, procreate and to be generally unobtrusively abiding by the rules made by the opposite gender. That’s very upsetting to me.
ravenstine 7y ago
Since the prefrontal cortex doesn't finish developing until the age of 25, do you think that we should change our definition of what a minor is?

roenxi 7y ago

There are subtleties about what constitutes a minor. The age of consent varies from 12 to 21 depending on the country [0]. That appears to include variation even in the US. On the one hand, the law is very clear because there needs to be a clear line in the sand to decide if people get sent to jail or not. On the other hand, there are clearly open cultural questions about what we should get angry about. Pick any standard you like, and the majority of the world currently disagrees. In my country of Australia we seem to be using 16. So in Australia maybe there was no crime at all. I dunno, I havn't looked in to this sort of law very deeply. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_consent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_consent

loeg 7y ago
I mean, the assault in question was non-consensual trafficking in addition to being statutory rape. So like, maybe we don't need to first principle this quite so hard? Don't rape people?

seanmcdirmid 7y ago

Wow, wait. I get what your point is, but minors will continue doing it, and it is only with adults who they can’t consent with. Obviously minors can consent in some contexts, otherwise it would be a huge mess morally and legally (if two 14 year olds have sex, do they both go to jail because neither can consent? Also see the mess we’ve got into with kids sexting each other). Let’s not criminalize kids being kids because of some strict morality code.

scruple 7y ago
If one of those 14 year olds sends nude pictures to the other one, is that not distribution of child pornography? I've certainly read that minors have been charged as such, but I'm not capable of verifying the veracity of those charges (I just honestly don't want to Google for this shit).
- seanmcdirmid 7y ago
  They have been charged but should they? Send the girl to prison rather than, I don’t know, getting her help or something.
  - scruple 7y ago
    I don't have answers or solutions, I rarely do. I think this particular debate lives in water that is far too murky for me to want to wade into. All that I'll say is that I think my answer to your question is something close to, "No. Maybe? I don't know. It depends..." All that I really know is that I am grateful, once again, to have been a teenager in an age before the proliferation of smart phones and social media.
    - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
      If you have teenagers today, it is really important to know the actual laws, nuances and all, and make sure your kid knows them as well.
      - scruple 7y ago
        That's fair. Thankfully my children are under a year old, so my wife and I have ample time to prepare.
- loeg 7y ago
  This is an interesting topic that has become more prevalent with rise of smartphones, but has absolutely nothing to do with an adult statutory raping a minor.
  - scruple 7y ago
    Agreed. I was responding to: > Let’s not criminalize kids being kids because of some strict morality code.
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
drdeca 7y ago
Alternatively, the 2 14 year olds can’t consent to the act, but are also not liable for the act? I think this way of describing it expresses more the position that the occurrence is unfortunate, and all else being equal, best avoided. To say “two 14 year olds had entirely consensual sex with eachother” seems to possibly express that the occurrence described is not unfortunate. Also, If a 12yo and a 15.5 yo did, I think we very well might say that the 15.5 yo committed rape, even though neither person was an adult, Yet if both were 12, people wouldn’t call it that. So, I don’t think it is only if one party is an adult. Also if one party is substantially closer to being an adult.
- footwo 7y ago
  > To say “two 14 year olds had entirely consensual sex with eachother” seems to possibly express that the occurrence described is not unfortunate. Isn't that just a misreading though? You're applying a connotation that isn't there. Many of us don't associate "consensual" with "A-ok" (e.g. I'm anti-pornography).
  - drdeca 7y ago
    Good point. Though, I didn’t mean to say that there was a clear connotation, just, like, a possible/weak one. Maybe the insertion of the word “entirely” is what creates the weak connotation? And that word wasn’t used in the comment I was replying to, so my comment is probably moot.
- seanmcdirmid 7y ago
  Except it is also possible for a 14 year old to actually rape another 14 year old, so there is a difference between “cannot consent” and “did not consent” if you believe a 14 year old actually cannot consent.
  - drdeca 7y ago
    This is also a good point. Though the topic is beginning to cause me more discomfort than it was. Guess I wore through my “discuss uncomfortable topics without feeling uncomfortable” reserves. Edit: That isn’t a complaint about what anyone else is doing though. I am merely noting my own limitations, and no one needs to do anything to accommodate them in this instance. Continue on as if I hadn’t mentioned them?
loeg 7y ago
Minors having sex with themselves is basically out of scope here. Yes, it varies state by state and some states punish kids for things they absolutely should not be punished for. But we don't need to litigate the nitty gritty details of statutory rape laws. The case under discussion was a minor and some guy at least a decade older; not two minors.
- seanmcdirmid 7y ago
  Parent said specifically: > There are no subtleties. Minor's cannot consent But, no, there are actually subtleties.
  - loeg 7y ago
    You pulled that quote out of context; preceding it is: > He was trying to argue the subtleties of child rape. There are no subtleties. Virtually everyone knows there are subtleties around statutory rape in general! But you're missing the forest for the trees here. We're not discussing statutory rape in general but the specific instance that Stallman was defending. You're technically correct in that the very last sentence of martinky24's comment was literally inaccurate, but you are wholly incorrect in your understanding of the spirit of the comment and subsequent dismissal of the rest of it. The subjects Stallman was discussing are not ambiguous first principle pseudo-persons of nebulous or similar ages. They are an old guy and a coerced, underage girl. Period. There is no subtlety here.
    - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
      I admitted to getting the spirit of the comment in my first one. But the path the comment went down by being so general exceeded the context if Stallman’s point.

ageofwant 7y ago

A 'minor' is a societal construct that varies over cultures and time. In Biblical Jewish cultures this was set at puberty ~ year 12. In some modern Islamic cultures its may be ~ year 9. In japan it used to be 13. Minors cannot consent because society has removed that right from them. Now I suspect we may agree on the general outcome of these rules, but I do find these 'religious' arguments distasteful, regardless from which camp they get issued.

breck 7y ago
> A 'minor' is a societal construct that varies over cultures and time. Agreed. And if a war, plague, or comet wipes out 80% of the population tomorrow, suddenly "minors" will be 13, and no one of these people so adamant here will bat an eye. Here's a chance to have a reasoned debate about an important issue, where constructive conversations and solutions could be devised. But instead, the conversation devolves into a flame war. If anyone is interested in spitballing some type of new novel restrictive grammar to enable having constructive conversations about hot-button issues, I'd love to help: https://github.com/treenotation/jtree/issues/52 https://github.com/treenotation/jtree/issues/52

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

mantap 7y ago

I get what you're saying, but minors can and do legally consent under various close-in-age laws, and the age of consent is usually lower than the age of legal majority anyway. I certainly don't agree with Stallman's comments, but the law is subtle.

jelliclesfarm 7y ago

Ok. I am not sure that I should be writing this response...but with the madness prevalent in the world today, I don’t care anymore that this is on some random online nook..because I want to heard. To say that minors cannot consent is absolutely horrifying to me. I would have felt ‘raped’ of my free agency to choose if I had been told as a minor that I ‘cannot consent’. I was a minor. I consented. I was a sexual being just as I was a human being. Minors have to do non sexual adult things ALL the time. I still see adults well into their 40s and 50s who are immature compared to me when I was a minor. So age is a non-factor. While I DO acknowledge that child sexual abuse occurs as does trafficking and that paedophiles exist out there, when my thoughts and actions and consent when I was a minor is ERASED and my decisions deemed irrelevant, I don’t know how to feel about it. Reactions in the exact order of how I felt when I read ‘Minors cannot consent’ : Confusion. Anger. Understanding. Annoyance. Anger. Some minors do adult non sexual things and make adult non sexual decisions all the time..sometimes because they don’t have a choice. Why is it that when it comes to sexual consent, the same minor does not have any agency? I am trying to understand. It is difficult for me to accept that I am a non-being as a minor. Please don’t start a flame war. I really want to understand why this is so and communicate as to why the blanket ‘minors cant consent’ is disempowering and has not really made the world a better safer place. I also want to know what is a better and more effective solution to child sexual abuse(or any kind of sexual abuse) to replace ‘minors cannot consent’.

Qworg 7y ago
Minors cannot consent because they, in general, have a mental deficiency called "being young". They also, in general, are in the lowest power position of any potential relationship. It isn't that minors are non-beings - it is that they're not fully developed yet, so they need protections. Where we draw that line is up to the law and culture of any location, but it exists.
- jelliclesfarm 7y ago
  It sucks to be the female of this species, let me tell you. When we are minors, we are mentally deficient to be sexual beings. When we are adults, we are also told that we have no control or reproductive choice over what we do with bodies. I hate to sound like this..because I don’t think of myself as a vocal feminist..I have always considered myself a rational being. With that hat on, it seems to me that the female human being has no choice or agency and their physical bodies are mere vessels for the male of the species to fornicate, procreate and to be generally unobtrusively abiding by the rules made by the opposite gender. That’s very upsetting to me.

ravenstine 7y ago

Since the prefrontal cortex doesn't finish developing until the age of 25, do you think that we should change our definition of what a minor is?