A different subject I’d like to talk about

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That’s kids for ya!

Mine’s 11 right now…

Varies considerably. Try working trains and working out who should genuinely be travelling on a child fayre and who is not a child? It seriously varies from person to person as some adults look like children and some children look a lot older than they are and it is really hard to tell, and many of these youngsters will lie about their age.
I once had a young couple with two children on the train . One child was two and the other was a baby, and both parents were under the age of 16 and could prove it. Both children were theirs. Four years may seem visually different at that age but with some it is not.
Never forget years ago when one of the church youth group who one had to look twice at before picking him out was a very short man who was in his early 80's, and because he was so short, people did not seem to notice his age! Mentally he was more like a teenager than an adult to be honest! Nice man though. Just used to get up to mischief. Once had to talk him out of going on a day trip to Italy from Wales, UK because he reasoned a day trip would be cheaper than paying for a hotel. I asked him how much time he would get. If all planes were on time it would have given him a single hour, and the actual journey would be well over 24 hours in all as it would take him an extra half a day each way to get to the airport and back from the UK side. He was often doing things without thinking them through!

Last edited by Mountain Goat on 04 Jul 2022, 9:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Good luck with that.
You're just heading into the fun stuff.

That’s really sad.

Children raising children.

Because they've proven what you've said?

It's perfectly fair to reject that argument as a legal defence on the basis that every accused has an interest in claiming it whether or not it's true, but that doesn't mean it can't also be true.

I still stand by that the most severe punishments should be reserved for the most severe, malicious offenders. A system that fails to do that might not be viewed as failing in your eyes but that's not the hill I'd choose to fight on.

I've been in at least one relationship that would have made me the 'victim' of this depending on the AoC (which changed here when I was still a teenager, although after that relationship), she's (still) married to a friend of mine she also 'victimized'.

I've known a few people who've been on one or both sides of relationships of this sort, but since some of them were in those relationships when the law changed, did things morally change somehow because the law changed?

I think if you're going to insist that everyone who's been in that situation was victimized you're denying people agency when you may not actually be in the best position to judge that matter. If you're going to insist on speaking on people's behalf you oughta get their opinion first or at least consider how you'd feel if someone insisted on speaking on your behalf without consulting you.

Here's another story:

My daughter was around 14.
I got a phone call from Customs and Immigration at the airport.
Some 19 year old woman had flown from Europe to meet her.
They were online friends.
I'd never heard of her.
My address was given as the contact info for admission to the country.
I had to decide if she should be allowed into the country or not.
Anything she did wrong would be my responsibility as guarantor.

I don’t need to speak on people’s behalf. The legal system, in this regard, seems to be operating just fine without me.

How did you handle this situation?

Panic attack.
Meltdown.
More panic attack.
Lots of tears and apologies from my daughter.

The choice was to send her back to Europe or deal with it.
They didn't give me much time to decide.

I allowed her into the country.
She stayed at a hotel that was quite far away.
She didn't have a car and I made her walk (like two hours) to meet us.
In retrospect that was pretty cruel of me.

She visited the house briefly but I didn't leave them alone for a second.
She always slept at the hotel.
I took them on site seeing tours and chaperoned.
She was very nice, but the situation was ... so bizarre.

I was really overwhelmed with all the sudden responsibility.

They're still friends eleven years later.

At least legal systems now have a degree of nuance on those issues.

My friend Tamara claimed to have ended up registered because she sent a dirty video to a classmate (who got the same outcome) who sent it to a bunch of people. A few years later reforms occurred there (after her and I had lost contact) but I hope that isn't still following her.

Imagine spending your life as a child sex offender where you're both the victim and the perp. How the hell does someone who isn't entitled to consent also able to be held responsible as an offender, especially when they're also the victim?

It would be almost impossible to actually account for everyone's maturity and development (especially mental) a system that's intended to be compassionate and return people back to being functional members of society needs to be able to apply at least a degree of nuance in how it pursues criminal cases against people who are still developing, especially if there's concrete evidence of factors that probably should be considered as mitigating.

We don't live in a perfect world but as far as I know we're still allowed to discuss flaws, right?

You literally have by insisting I'm not entitled to decide whether or not I was victimized. Please don't gaslight me on this any further.

How bizarre!

I have never mentioned your situation (let alone “insisted” upon it). Why are you making this about you?

I’m talking about this problematic article.

I’m extremely perplexed.

I wasn't making it about me until you tried that specific argument and I've mostly avoided making it about me except for to specifically call you out for doing something you were trying to deny doing.

You made a blanket statement about a cohort of people that includes me, I'm entitled to point out that you're not entitled to speak on behalf of that cohort given that no individual person within that cohort can and even more certainly, no people who aren't within it can.

I'm not sure where that leaves you but either way you're still trying to speak on behalf of people that might not agree with what you're saying and you're not actually entitled to do so, at least not with any weight.

People can disagree with me if they want to. I’m just stating how I perceive things and how the law perceives things.

People are free not to like it, but that’s not going to change my stance (or the law’s).

I am entitled to speak my opinion, and in doing so, I am not trying to gaslight anyone. Disagreeing with you is not equivalent to gaslighting.

If the law's understanding deviates from what actually is, that's a flaw and not something we should praise. If the law insists on treating people who are not victims as victims and refuses to consider anything but, that's not a positive. That's an action that actually does victimize those people -

- especially if it has actual, concrete negative outcomes on other people who maybe don't need to have those additional hardships in their lives if the details are considered in more depth than just simply comparing against a rubric. That's not a positive, that's something to condemn even if it's unlikely to be fixed in the short term or is unlikely to become a priority.

But hey, you made a strong point with naninanibooboo nothing's ever going to improve.

There's lots of flaws within our system, including some that involve less than sympathetic people but that doesn't make it unreasonable to point them out or reasonable to act like they're positives.

Statutory rape is a crime that does victimize people according to research which is why it is (and should be) a crime.

You don’t know whether or not the victims here felt victimized. You are just inserting your own personal feelings and biases.