Infantilizing young adults (aka teens) doesn't help them. It disempowers them.
Long before they started using the word "cancel" for this we used to say "boycott"
and boycotts have been around since Charles Boycott was a massive dick to everybody 150 years ago.
before that people were ostracized for all sorts of reasons.
There is *nothing* new here.
#SPR860
Serious question:
Some say "Teens cannot consent to someone above a certain age."
In Kentucky the close-in-age exception is 10 years.
In Idaho it's 3 years.
In Illinois it's zero.
Which gap is correct?
and where's the evidence showing what the correct gap is?
#SPR860
"You're old enough to have sex, but only with other teenagers,
because people over X years of age have mind control power over mentally feeble kids like you,
and they always implement that power to abuse you"
is just a shockingly stupid thing to tell our sons and daughters.
#SPR860
_"We spend millions on revenge, and we spend pennies on prevention" James Cantor
#SPR860
Rape is rape. It doesn't become rape or stop being rape depending on the age of the perp or the victim. #SPR860
From a decades old L.A. Times article: "Experts also believe the new study supports the notion that aggressively pursuing all statutory rape cases--as proposed by some policymakers--might not be the best way to prevent teenage pregnancy." What a radical idea! Putting men in prison is not the best way to prevent unplanned pregnancies? Are we sure about that? #SPR860
There are some things people just always believe. True or not. If crime is rising or falling or staying the same, everyone always believes it's rising. and they always believe the youngest generation is the worst and the most lazy, wild, undisciplined, etc. #SPR860
All the talk about "hook up culture" implies that the young are promiscuous. Every generation always believes that the previous one was much more prudish than them. Currently the opposite is true. Gens Y and Z are sex-phobic Puritans. #SPR860
Cancel culture is as real as the epidemic of flag burning that nearly destroyed America in the '80s. #SPR860
Excellent 2003 documentary "Capturing the Friedmans" about pedophilia, accusations, prosecutions, etc. It's really worth watching. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0342172/reference/ #SPR860
It never works to say "In ancient Hebrew tradition 12 year old females are women, therefore we'll uncritically accept that as true"
but as a way of opening our minds, something to consider, what if they got it right and we got it wrong?
1)
This woman says her 11 year old daughters are in puberty.
So in the old Jewish tradition their awkward adolescent phase would last about a year, until their bat mitzvah.
but since she lives in 2022 America they will likely be considered children for at least a decade.
2)
#SPR860
Teen brains perform best on several types of cognitive test. Like better than any other age group. Mostly your brain declines after age 13. We compensate by gaining experience, so nobody notices much, but 25 and 35 year olds actually learn slower than teens.
#SPR860
Sales clerks are instructed to card everyone who looks like they might be under 25, precisely because young adults aged 14+ are indistinguishable.
With a little hairstyle, makeup, and wardrobe you can make 25 look 15 and vice versa pretty easily.
#SPR860
We should lower the voting age. Today's 10 year olds will have to live with the consequences of the decisions our governments make today. They should be voting. No one over 70 really has any right to do so, however. They got no skin in the game.
More information is simply better. It's good to know when something is harmful, but also very good to know when it is harmless.
I really think we should talk about these things. Wet orgasm can be surprising, and even scary if you don't know what is happening. That is needless fear and shame. Overall orgasms that intense are a really good thing. A little extra clean up afterwards is not a big deal.
things women should talk about...
during particularly intense orgasms pelvic muscle contractions can squeeze the bladder and pee comes out
it's not uncommon (or harmful in any way)
some porn stars learn to do this intentionally and there's some slang name for it. some perverted men search pornhub for it.
most women are really embarrassed when it happens and rarely talk about it. so it's understandable that some of the public doesn't even know it's a thing.
How we got teen pregnancy totally wrong, created dysfunctional solutions, and made everything much worse
Statistically poverty, substance abuse, and dysfunctional families often correlate. Domestic abuse is in the mix too. No one can isolate one single cause, because the world doesn't work in the oversimplified way we'd like it to.
Imagine you're a girl in a poor abusive household. There's really not much you can do but pray for a better future. Then you hit puberty, and you become sexually attractive to the men in town. This may be the first power you have ever had.
Some peeps are endowed with the power to physically or psychologically dominate their peers with implied threats of violence. Others are gifted with natural leadership abilities. But not all. Then there's a group that is simply pretty and sexy.
If you are this poor young woman from an abusive family, and by chance, nature gives you a sexy body that men like, why wouldn't you start flirting with a man who treats you nicely and makes you feel loved? And wouldn't it be even better if the man had a job and a car?
Your way to get away from your hellish home on a Saturday night may literally be the vehicle owned by your new boyfriend, but your ticket to a better life could definitely seem like a serious relationship with a somewhat older man.
Young adults (aka teens) from poor families tend to have more unplanned pregnancies than their peers from rich families. There are many possible reasons for that. Better access to contraception being the most obvious one.
Young adults (aka teens) from rich families also have much better access to options for terminating an unplanned pregnancy than their poor counterparts. So statistically teenage mothers tend to be much less wealthy than older first time mothers.
There was a famous study done by Darroch in the 90s. (see below) It shows a lot of what I have outlined here. When California Gov Gray Davis saw the study, however, he ignored all the relevant data, and decided that the CAUSE of all these problems was statutory rape.
His plan was to get the cops & prosecutors to put more of the boyfriends with jobs & cars in prison as a way to solve the teen pregnancy problem. This was, of course, illogical to the point of batshit crazy. Smart people at the time pointed that out.
So people in the 90s screwed up. Big deal. Who cares?
The main issue here, is that Gov Davis's batshit stupid thinking went mainstream, and dominates our discourse to this day. Big TV personalities like Oprah picked it up and spread it generously.
The goofy myth based on contorted logic took on a life of its own. The general public, who never spend a lot of time digging into the research or thinking things thru, started to believe that the causation runs opposite to the reality.
That is to say, people now believe that teenage women dating men 10 years older than them causes them to be poor and show the symptoms of an abuse victim.
The obvious reality is that poverty and dysfunction is what led them to choose that partner in the first place.
Criminalizing a young woman's choice of boyfriend isn't the way to make her life happy and healthy. Incarcerating the father of a young woman's baby is one of the worst things you can do to her and her infant. We need to bring a little common sense back to this discussion.
*Gen Z nephew mocks me for using outdated slang.*
Me: Do you have sexual fantasies?
Gen Z: *baffled look*
Me: Do you always have consent of the people you fantasize about?
Gen Z: *begins sobbing*
Me:
Gen Z: I'm not a bad person!
Me:
Gen Z: *runs away*