Re: What age do you think children can consent?

Which is why it's important to teach people of all ages to make a point of saying "no" to a person making advances to them if they do not want those advances, so that no ambiguity is present. Also, guys need to be taught to stop making advances on girls (or other boys) if they do not react in a favorable way but otherwise do not protest, but just sit there.

Yes, I agree. It still won't fix all the problems though. Sometimes rape results from miscommunication, not from some asshole just out to get it no matter what. But this will go a long way.

And this usually happens when kids are not given a choice in the matter. They rarely, in practice, follow expectations that they are compelled or coerced into following, and sexual activity if hardly the one major exception to this rule. Kids are notorious for not doing what they are expected to do, when they are expected to do it. If they blindly followed expectations as often as some people seem to think, the detention room at schools and the truancy rate would never have been as large as they were, because kids would be overly concerned about losing the respect and approval of their teachers.

Are you kidding? Kids frequently follow expectations when they are coerced. How do you think most parents control their kids? I'll give you a hint: it ain't by promising them a pony. I don't know, maybe in the big city parents are different, but out here in country parents mostly use coercion to get kids to do what they want them to do.

Some kids are notorious for defying adults, and some kids are notorious for doing whatever adults tell them to do (for the most part.) I was such a child. I never openly defied my parents (and rarely broke any rules even behind their backs), or any other adult, nor did most of the kids I grew up with. I didn't sass my parents or anything of the kind. I had enough problems just being myself without deliberately adding more to them. There are a lot of kids like me, Dissident. They are a very diverse lot. Your argument breaks down when you make those kinds of sweeping claims, and you are bound to contradict yourself, which you did in this post, as we'll see in a minute.

And for the record, you know I have never been supportive of simply overturning the laws, and nothing else. I have always discussed at great length the many things that I think need to be done.

I don't believe I claimed you did.

That said, I do not believe that people of any age are ever truly better off with less civil rights rather than more, because the greatest amount of abuse and coercion is able to go on in the absence of rights, not the other way around. Too many people in our own community ignore the strong casual relationship between the power our society gives to adults over kids, and the very thing that leaves young people most vulnerable to abuse of all sorts.

Really? People of any age? So you think babies and toddlers would be better off on the whole if we just allowed them to wander wherever the hell they damn well pleased and get into whatever they wanted to get into? Hmmm . . . Moreover, I don't think anyone here ignores the extant power dynamic between adults and kids and how that plays into abuse. In fact, I've personally expounded on it a number of times (giving the specific example of how my young cousin was manipulated into sex with a threat of being exposed to her dad for sexting pics to her bf.) The problem is, we are genetically programmed to look after our young for a time while they are perceived as vulnerable. You cannot simply undo that with social policies no matter how much you want to. You're up against millions of years of evolution there and I guarantee you're going to lose that battle every time.

What you have to do is convince parents (and thereby society at large) that it benefits children to be able to emancipate themselves at some point. Not all at once, but when the child is ready. And you're going to have to demonstrate exactly how it will benefit them in the long run. That won't be easy; people are notoriously short-sighted and fickle when it comes to social planning. Look how our society constantly volleys back and forth between liberal and conservative politicians. We will have our work cut out for us just getting to that point. Think about how that will be perceived. Parents will say, "You arrogant bastards believe you know what's better for my children than I do?" It will take finesse and compromise to deal with that, not beating the war drums, which is an arrogant action and which far too many people in this community do as a matter of course. We will get exactly nowhere with that line of logic.

And yet people cling to it like its Divine Providence or something that the kids be freed at once, and how dare parents stand in the way of progress! My, my. And people here wonder why things seem to be getting worse rather than better. Well, it's no mystery to me. If I was a non-MAP parent and happened upon this board, it would likely scare the ever-loving shit out of me, and I too would dig in my heels.

I have told you numerous times what a ridiculous statement this is, and it's notable that you make it so often. So again, I remind others reading this, since you may never choose to "get" this yourself: there are important and very obvious legal reasons why young people cannot take to the streets and demand their rights in "proper" political fashion. They are not legally permitted to rebel in most positive ways. Currently, they cannot legally form protest groups, or register said groups with the system in any way, or acquire a city license to hold rallies and parades of their own, and they are being increasingly segregated from adults who may be able to help them do so as a result of the limited participation they are allowed on socnet sites and other online forums--at least in the sense where they can be open about their ages.

You misunderstand the point, not to mention (here it comes . . .) contradict your point above about how willful and defiant kids are. This picture of kids completely and absolutely cowed by the law is quite a different picture from the mighty rabble-rousing lot you describe above, isn't it? Funny how that works. It's not like it's convenient for your argument or anything. Oh wait, yes it is.

Look, nowhere in that post did I ask kids to literally march in the streets, so let's put that straw man to bed right now. But kids now have access to the public forum more than they ever have before, via the internet. This generation of kids could, if they so desired, coordinate something. Besides which, that never stopped kids from protesting in the '60s. A large component of the hippie community was kids under 18. It could be done. At any rate, if kids are as defiant and self-assured as you claim they are above (and some of them certainly are), then they wouldn't let a little thing like the law stop them. It's not like it stops kids who really want to drink or do drugs or get into such mischief. If they really wanted it, they would find a way to do it. Kids are nothing if not resourceful and creative. And the kids who have that thrill-seeking personality generally find ways to do the things they want to do. I want to see large numbers of them at the very least putting up a verbal fight on the internet, where they can do so completely anonymously if they so desire. I want to see them ask challenging questions of adults in power. there's no legal consequence for kids writing their politicians and saying, "Hey, why can't I vote?" Or whatever it is they want to do that they cannot currently do because of the age restriction.

Yet they do display their defiance of expectations in many ways however they are able to, with the powers-that-be continuing to come up with excuses to limit their ability to do so. Go on YouTube and watch many younger people creating channels and making videos and even series in defiance of what society expects of them, going against all of the popular culture paradigms of today. And they do this despite the mean, unsupportive comments left by adult viewers, who often say things like "Where were the parents?" Moreover, youths display their dissatisfaction with their status in many negative ways, such as the huge rate of kids who run away from home, commit suicide, or rebel in an extremely anti-social manner, since they are denied the legal outlets to protest that are usually open to adults.

Yes, that is exactly my point. They can make videos showing themselves doing goofy dances or lip-syncing to Justin Bieber and manage to upload it to YouTube for the amusement of thousands of people, but apparently it is beyond them to make videos asking challenging questions or demanding rights because they are cowed into submission, the poor dears. Kids have more opportunities and venues to express their wishes and views today than they've ever had before. If they really wanted it, they would do it.

Also, it's important to remember that kids are conditioned from the time of their birth not to see themselves as a distinct minority group, but to perceive their oppression as part of the "natural order of things." The same situation existed for blacks and women for a very long period of time, and it was numerous generations before they began to question society's expectations of them in large numbers; in fact, the oppression of youths as we know it today is a fairly recent phenomenon in world history, yet we already have a fledgling youth liberation movement that is proceeding precisely the way the abolitionist and women's suffrage movements did in their early days. How often in the pre-Civil War days did you see black people en masse questioning their status as slaves, or walking around the plantations where they were the legal property of their white masters carrying protest signs? There were a few notable slave rebellions here and there, but they were often thwarted in part by slaves loyal to their white masters who fully accepted their lot in life. Initially, the abolitionist movement was filled mostly with whites, just as the women's suffrage movement was not filled with women in large numbers during its early days, and it was heavily marginalized for a long period of time, with many prominent voices in society, including many women, arguing over whether it was truly a bad thing for women to be held in subservience to men. The situation that youths find themselves in today is very similar to previous emancipation movements, and the fact that a growing number of prominent adults on both the Right and the Left are starting to openly embrace it--including Michael Moore starting a section of his website dedicated to giving high school students a voice in political matters and a platform to fight for their civil rights (including Moore's vow to print letters written by students for their high school newspapers that the principal demanded the censorship of)--is a sure sign that in the future more and more younger people are going to grow an awareness of themselves as a minority group, and as they begin to study history in greater numbers they will discover that this is not the natural way of things in human history, thus prompting even more of them to action.

So then, if your view of history holds up, kids will eventually begin to demand their rights. At which point I'll be happy as a pig in slop. That's what I want to see. I want you to do something for me, Diss: think about Iraq and Afghanistan for a minute and America's need to "liberate" them from their "backward" culture. Now apply that to kids. Do kids really want the liberation we envision for them, or are we just projecting what we want onto them? Put aside your trusty copy of Dissident's Complete Question and Answer Guide for All Things Minor-Attracted for a second and really think about it carefully before you answer. Do kids really want what we're offering them? How can we be sure? Is it our place to impose that on them, or should they make it known in a big way before we rewrite the rule book? These are questions that do not have simple and decisive answers, as much as some here would like that to be the case.

What you do not like to admit is that due to a combination of personal factors and the fact that you were born and raised in this time period, you find yourself having difficulty shedding your loyalty to the present status quo, which is hardly an unusual phenomenon even amongst members of minority groups during a time of their oppression. You also do not seem to realize that emancipation movements take time, and they usually tend to occur in steps, not overnight.

Ah, arsenic-spiked well water. My favorite! Yummy! Whatever personal reservations I may have (and I don't I have them) have no bearing on the questions I posed above. These are big issues that cannot be encompassed by pat and simplistic replies. Sorry, Charlie. And, au contraire, I DO seem to realize that the emancipation movement takes time. That is kind of my point, or at least an aspect of it. It takes time because it is something that has to occur organically. It cannot be forced. Kids will stand up for their rights when they are ready to, when they desire to and have sufficiently educated themselves. We serve both them and ourselves better by not monkeying in their affairs and focusing instead on making the world a better place for us in the short term, and we do that best not through political means but through cultural ones. This is how it's always been done. All viable human rights movements took root first in a cultural understanding and embrace of the oppressed group. You can trace them all back to that in some form or other.

Which is why freedom and liberation are rarely given away due to mere generosity, but instead tend to be fought for and taken by demand rather than asked for nicely and politely, which was the basis of every civil rights movement in history. This tendency to resist oppression and eventually overturn it is another powerful aspect of human nature pervasive throughout human history, but one that cynics like to ignore because it doesn't help validate their worldview;

First off, that doesn't address my point at all. Secondly, in order to fight with any chance of victory, you have to do so from a point of strategic equality or damn near it. You can't do it from where we are right now. It's suicide, as the fact that we are not gaining legal ground but losing it proves.

We are like one naked man facing an army of angry, irrational, beefy, well-armed (and well-armored) adversaries. All we have in our defense is a book of logic, and we're holding it up and screaming, "By the authority of this book, I demand you back down!" It's laughably absurd, to the point of being Fellini-esque. We're not helping our situation at all; we're just making it worse on us. And then, on top of that, our naked man ropes a child into the battlefield (who may or may not want to be there--who can say for sure?) and then says, "I am fighting for this child, dammit, and see? She is fighting with me! Now, lay down your arms, you ignorant goons!" And the soldiers--who might once have cared about that child--are willing to sacrifice her now . . . for a principle, an idea. Now, those soldiers might have eventually slaughtered her anyway, but as for me, I will not be the one that puts her in harm's way over an abstract principle. Moreover, I'm not going to put me (me in this case meaning the MAP community) in harm's way over an abstract principle. I'm just not gonna do it. People are more important than principles to me.

whenever they say "I know human nature," they always define it as a tendency for humans to do bad things.

Who is this 'they'? Apparently all 'cynics' are alike, then. And that's not what I meant at all. (Die, ye scarecrow! Die, die, ye lanky straw bastard!) I meant exactly this: I know human nature, the good, the bad and the ugly, so to speak (filtered through my values, of course.) I know humanity is capable of great things, but I also know that, left to their own devices, people tend to revert to their innate animal tendencies, which are neither good nor bad in themselves (since morality is not innate to the universe) but generally bad for humanity, or at least certain factions of it. Nothing we do is ever entirely motivated by selflessness, but our selfish natures (which can be beneficial to humanity in certain contexts and are almost always beneficial to us) tend to become exaggerated in times of change and uncertainty. We all fear getting bumped down the ladder of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.

Couple that with the fact that a suddenly liberated group will now be accessible to the group that most has an interest in their liberation (aside from kids themselves) . . . it'll be like a dehydrated man crawling through the desert for two days without liquids suddenly coming upon an oasis: gulp gulp gulp! And you know that if we are the group fighting hardest for their liberation, no small number of MAPs will be there saying, "Aw, come on, I helped you get liberated. You owe me, girlie . . ." Yeah. We should expect that, and be prepared for it.

To do otherwise would be to note the potential that humans have to overcome great odds and improve themselves, and a cynic has no place for such acknowledgement in their world. The reason that kids are ill-prepared to meet certain expectations of freedom is due to the fact that we raise kids a certain way and only allow them to receive education that benefits the gerontocentric aspects of society and the status quo as it presently exists--which is precisely why youth libbers put so strong an emphasis on fighting for educational rights and freedom of access to information for kids.

Like I told Gatekeeper, been there, done that, got the bumper sticker, and um . . . well, let's just say it didn't work out so well. And hey, my dad has been trumpeting the positive attitude schtick for years now and claims it will help him win a million dollars because that's how the universe works, you know. Yeah, he's still waiting on his cool mil to arrive at his doorstep. There's a difference between being pessimistic ("Nothing we do will ever work, so let's just give up on the whole idea." and "This is bound to go wrong every time, nothing you can do about it but accept it.") versus being realistic ("There are some things that will work and some things that probably won't--let's focus on the things that are most likely to work." and "There's a distinct possibility this could go wrong in a big way, so maybe we'd better prepare ourselves for the worst case scenario--that way we'll know what to do if it does happen.") Educate yourself, m'boy!