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Sexually abusing a child while Female

Arcade22 said:
According to many laws prohibiting the production of "child pornography", a 16 year old taking pornographic pictures of themselves would be guilty of a criminal offence, even if they never shared said pictures with anyone else.
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sadhatter said:
I'm an adult, I then employ a 15 year old to distribute child porn for me.
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These are not equivalent situations.
 
Craig4 said:
I don't know the laws everywhere but in the US you can leave it against the law and not prosecute. If the guidelines say don't prosecute unless **** you can go after the organized offenders and let schools and parents deal with other cases.
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Police are already making bad decisions in this regard. It really should be decriminalized for kids to take naked pictures of themselves. I would be OK with slapping them with a fine (ie, civil offense) to discourage that behavior, but giving them a criminal record and having them register as sex offenders is a perversion of justice, and the laws should be amended to prevent such miscarriages, because events have already proven that we can't trust prosecutors with that discretion.
 
Craig4 said:
The effort should be in writing prosecutorial guidelines. Forget the police. Focus on what gets prosecuted.
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Police matter too. If a 15 year old kid gets his phone confiscated and naked pictures of himself viewed by strangers and even thrown in prison, it's not OK just because the prosecutor decides not to pursue the case.

Prosecutorial guidelines are useful because they can be amended more quickly than legislation can be written and passed, but the law should still change.
 
sadhatter said:
If the do all end all is the kid saying " I liked it, I wanted it" and you still feel this is icky. Maybe admit there is something to be said for arbitrary lines?
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Back at you. If you can't work up the outrage without lying about the labels maybe admit there isn't much to be outraged about. Please turn your icky meter off at the arbitrary line, wherever it is and that includes the arbitrary line for paedophilia. Just because you think it is icky for the woman to have an affair with this 14 year old, she isn't a paedophile. And neither is anyone who wants to let the 14 year old decide for himself if he is a victim or not.
 
ahhell said:
Largely nonsense, most reasonable jurisdictions have exemptions for partners of similar ages.
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Define "most." A lot of countries don't have such exemptions, even though they probably should. It's only relatively recently (2003) that the UK addressed the issue, and even then they actually managed to newly criminalise some close-age activity in the process.

In any case, I was addressing Checkmite's specific blanket assertion that any "adult" having sex with someone under the age of consent if worthy of being labelled a sex offender.

I'm curious what the solution to the arbitrary standard is. Any age based standard is going to be arbitrary. I hope we can agree that infants shouldn't be sexually, toddlers, and, 10 year olds shouldn't be having sex and that adults who do have sex with them should be sanctioned in some way. If we do, then were to we draw the lines? This is an easily handled red herring. Almost nobody thinks a 17 year old should be jailed for sexing up a 16 year old, except for the occasional parent of a 16 year old.
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In most of Europe they couldn't be jailed, because it wouldn't be illegal. In most of Europe a 14 or 15 year old and someone of any age over 18 would also be legal.
 
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isissxn said:
Logically, I know we shouldn't infantilize teens or their sexuality, but urrrrggghhh. It's a tricky issue. I bet a lot of the people who freak out about it are in a similar boat as me - they're thinking about their own adolescent experiences with an adult mindset, and they're really not enjoying the results. So they fly into "protect the children!" mode. It's definitely gotten out of hand when kids are going to court for having pics of their own bodies. Talk about defeating the purpose. The worst punishment a teen should get for something like that is a stern lecture on responsibility and maybe a grounding.
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I certainly think that adults take the wrong lessons from their own experiences as children/adolescents. Either they react out of personal guilt (got up to stuff and regret it), jealousy (didn't get up to stuff and thinks nobody else should), or naivety (didn't get up to stuff and think that anyone who does is being exploited by default). In the midst of all that, those who are ambivalent - whether through personal experience or not - get drowned out.
 
When I was in my early 20's, my friends and I used to talk about making a website called "ImNeverGoingToBeASenator.com." This site would be a compendium of nudes of ordinary people, self-submitted of course. The utopian ideal we were pursuing was that if damn near everybody has nudes on the net, suddenly it's not such a big hooting deal anymore. "Oh gee, I wanted to hire you to be my hedge fund manager, but I see you took a shot of your tits when you were 16 and it made it to 4chan. So that's that! Have fun flipping burgers." We heard all the kids getting threatened with the horrible, unlivable, lifelong consequences of sticking a pixelated image of their unclothed body in cyberspace (even once over the age of consent, I mean), and it pissed us off.

Obviously, our idea would not have worked in any significant way (which is why we never did it). And it has nothing whatsoever to do with the unfair legal consequences being rained down on some of these teens. I just remembered the idea when people were talking about nudity taboos a page or so ago, and I got a nice wave of nostalgia. If the site existed, I could go to protests and run around screaming, "ImNeverGoingToBeASenator.com! ImNeverGoingToBeASenator.com! Join the revolution! ImNeverGoingToBeASenator.org! They can't keep us down! ImNeverGoingToBeASenator.com & .org!" in the manner of Alex Jones.
 
bluesjnr said:
This is a really interesting and honest post and what comes through to me is that you probably didn't see yourself as "stupid" back then and I suspect you felt that you were able to arrive at the stage of consent as an informed young lady. I'm glad to read that nothing bad happened.

That places your experience, according to others, as perfectly harmless - you consented and weren't hurt.

Except that is now, not the case. You, by your own admission, have some regrets over your choices and dare I say, some, perhaps minor, issues with that part of your past.

The exact opposite of Darat, I admit, but very telling also and something that should be borne in mind by those with a more... shall we say... "liberal" approach here.

Thank you for sharing.
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Thanks. :)

It was definitely a bit stream-of-consciousness, but this thread has got me thinking. This is exactly the kind of social problem that interests me the most, because I have to sort of peel back multiple layers of my own issues before I can examine it correctly and rationally.
 
Information Analyst said:
I certainly think that adults take the wrong lessons from their own experiences as children/adolescents. Either they react out of personal guilt (got up to stuff and regret it), jealousy (didn't get up to stuff and thinks nobody else should), or naivety (didn't get up to stuff and think that anyone who does is being exploited by default). In the midst of all that, those who are ambivalent - whether through personal experience or not - get drowned out.
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You pretty much nailed it.

The best part is, I absolutely KNOW that parents being draconian about sex makes the problem worse. My parents would have literally sent me to military school or something if they'd caught me fooling around. It would have been a world-changing disaster, no exaggeration. So when I examine my feelings now, I have to wonder - how much did that extreme guilt and fear I continually felt affect my processing of the experiences? In other words, maybe the reason they seem icky to me now is because they happened under icky, sneaky circumstances. I knew I was doing something my mom called filthy and awful. I also knew I was doing something my school taught was a sin. I didn't exactly believe it, but the atmosphere was there, and it was thick. That had to have affected me, whether I directly realize it or not.

So, no matter how much the idea of my hypothetical kids becoming sexually active might twist my gut, trying to shelter them and scare them off sex would probably just mess them up more. It's some kind of delicate balance that needs to be struck when people are at vulnerable ages (mentally) but still experiencing normal adult desires.
 
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sadhatter said:
I'm an adult, I then employ a 15 year old to distribute child porn for me. I've now found a loophole as long as I make sure the pictures are of local kids.
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Except for the fact that it would still be illegal for a 15 year old to distribute child pornography, with the caveat here that the images must either depict people who have not completed puberty or that they are identified as being underage.

In practice this prevents "sexting" images and pornographic images of teenage youths, especially those above the age of consent, from always being treated as equivalent to images of young children. The purpose was to deter people from spreading images of sexual abuse against young children or participating in the trade of those kinds of images, not images depicting teenage youths that were old enough to consent to sex.

You would do better to think of the consequences, versus just attempt to enact changes you would like.
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I don't have to enact anything because it's already how the law works where i live. On the other hand it seems like some people don't want everyone to be completely happy.
 
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Ziggurat said:
You said, "The proper thing would be to make it illegal to coerce or force someone to take or share intimate photos of themselves (irrespective if their age)". That sounds like you meant that there should be no age at which it's categorically illegal to take pornographic pictures of someone. And it doesn't match up at all with what you're now describing. If your point is simply that the ability to consent to sex should also confer the ability to consent to porn, or that the proper age of consent for porn should be below 18, that didn't come through at all in your previous post.
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I guess i should've been more specific in that regard. Yes, if it's illegal to have sex with someone under a certain age then it seems quite straight forward for it to be made illegal to make or distribute images depicting them having sex or being in a sexual situation. Although i should note that there still is a legal exception in case the person who takes the photos are close to the same age and development as the underage person being depicted, so that even in principle there's no possibility for someone to be punished for taking benign images of their boyfriend or girlfriend.

Generally speaking, with a few exceptions, sexual abuse and rape committed against those at least 15 year old are treated the same as they would with adults. For example: raping a 15 year old typically falls under the criminal offence of "rape", as opposed to "rape of a child". Note that this also applies if the rapist wasn't aware that their victim was under 15 at the time, although in terms of sentencing this changes nothing.

One exception that rule is that, while it's absolutely illegal to "promote or exploit the fact that a child under fifteen years old performs or participates in sexual posing", it only applies to those above the age of 15 "if the posing is intended to harm the child's health or development." In practice this would apply to strip clubs for example, or if they have been threatened, pressured or forced into it. It doesn't apply at all to adults.

A two year old can consent to sexual relations?

No. No, they cannot. There isn't a two year old in the world prepared for that.
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Children includes everyone under the age of 18, although i realize that some people use this only to refer to young children which is still a very vague term.

By saying that children can consent to sex I'm not saying that all children of any age can consent to sex, I'm merely saying that there are children that can consent to sex as opposed to saying that no child can consent to sex, which is what you seemed to be implying.

I'm fine with debating where exactly the line should be. But there's still got to be a line, which your prior post seemed to argue against.
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I wouldn't necessarily argue against a legal red line. I would argue against said red line not only determining whether something was a crime, but also it determining whether any and all acts that crossed said line are inherently abusive and exploitative. I don't need to assume the latter to justify the former.
 
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Arcade22 said:
Children includes everyone under the age of 18, although i realize that some people use this only to refer to young children which is still a very vague term.

By saying that children can consent to sex I'm not saying that all children of any age can consent to sex, I'm merely saying that there are children that can consent to sex as opposed to saying that no child can consent to sex, which is what you seemed to be implying.
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Then you need to be more precise with your terms if you do not wish to be misunderstood; which is why we use terms like "pre-pubescent", "adolescent" and "post-adolescent" when discussing these issues; rather than vague catch-all terms like "children". And, incidentally, at least in the English speaking world, "children" commonly refers to pre-pubescent and mid-adolescent (up to about 12 years old) individuals; anyone older than that is commonly referred to as a "teen" or "teenager".
 
luchog said:
Then you need to be more precise with your terms if you do not wish to be misunderstood; which is why we use terms like "pre-pubescent", "adolescent" and "post-adolescent" when discussing these issues; rather than vague catch-all terms like "children". And, incidentally, at least in the English speaking world, "children" commonly refers to pre-pubescent and mid-adolescent (up to about 12 years old) individuals; anyone older than that is commonly referred to as a "teen" or "teenager".
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In the UK, at least, child has a specific, legal definition:

"In England, Northern Ireland and Wales, a child is someone who has not yet reached their 18th birthday. Once they turn 18, they are legally an adult"

https://www.nspcc.org.uk/preventing...efinition-child-rights-law/legal-definitions/


The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child defines child as "a human being below the age of 18 years unless under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child#Legal_definitions


Children all over the UK are having legal, consensual sexual relations every day.
 
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Seems mostly like a way to facilitate generalizations like "adult-child sex can be perfectly fine" to bait people into predictable reactions and then cover yourself with "oh I only mean children 15 or older".
 
Arcade22 said:
I guess i should've been more specific in that regard. Yes, if it's illegal to have sex with someone under a certain age then it seems quite straight forward for it to be made illegal to make or distribute images depicting them having sex or being in a sexual situation.
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I think most people are on board with that position.

Although i should note that there still is a legal exception in case the person who takes the photos are close to the same age and development as the underage person being depicted, so that even in principle there's no possibility for someone to be punished for taking benign images of their boyfriend or girlfriend.
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I'm not sure that I agree on this part. The trouble is that sexual images of a minor, even one who can legally have sex, are not necessarily benign, regardless of the circumstances of their generation. The possibility always exists that the pictures could be spread, and the internet is forever. If naked pictures of you are floating around the internet, you might be prohibited from certain jobs (such as grade school teacher) for the rest of your life. There's a risk with images that doesn't exist with actual sex. So I don't think it's unreasonable to be more restrictive of who can have sexually explicit images taken of them than who can have sex.

That said, even in a situation where we decide it shouldn't be legal to take sexually explicit images even though the people can legally have sex (say, two 16 year olds taking pictures of each other or themselves and sharing with each other), it doesn't make sense to treat it the same as, say, a 40 year old taking sexually explicit images of a 16 year old and sharing it with other 40 year olds. I would advocate for a small civil penalty for the former to discourage it without threatening to ruin the lives of the participants, but I'm happy to make the latter criminal.
 
Some posts moved to AAH.

This is obviously a very emotive subject for some; please keep to the topic and refrain from attacking one another,
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: zooterkin
 
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