I've lived in countries where the age of consent is 15 and 16, and the number of teens dating people twice their age is very small even there.

Maybe we should discuss our society's frequent Hypothetical Moral Panics.

In the 80s I talked to a trad who was adamantly opposed to legalizing prostitution. He was sure that such a change would dramatically increase the number of men paying for it. (we have lots of data proving that false)

In the 80s I talked to lots of trads who firmly believed that if we legalize marijuana everyone will be stoned all the time, no one will go to work and the economy will collapse. (we now have lots of data proving that false)

There was a similar panic about the end of all marriages if we let the queers have weddings.

Now peeps are terrified that the State isn't doing enough to police the bodies of young women who might decide to make love to an "age-inappropriate" partner.

It's a simple matter of fact that most 15 year olds don't have sex anyway, and sex being legal or not isn't the deciding factor for them.

A change in the law, quite likely, wouldn't change anyone's behavior at all.

There would be a psychological boost tho'

Lowering the age of consent would send a positive message of "Hey, they treat me with a bit of respect"

#SPR860

Just by looking at her, it's not clear if a little romp in the hay with her makes a guy a sex offender or not.

Imagine your brother, 22 years old, is at a music festival. He gets a little drunk, and meets a hot chick like that, she's a little frisky...

She has to say she's 21 because they officially only let over 21s into the event.

So she and your brother enjoy great sex in addition to the great music and everybody's happy 'till her dad finds out and your brother gets arrested, and the headlines read LOCAL MAN RAPES CHILD

Tatiana was 17 when that photo was taken. She was not a child by any stretch of the imagination. But the Hysteria requires that we ignore reality, and make sure that the entire world thinks your brother is a pedophile sex predator.

#SPR860

There are NO other options.

The 1960s were all about tearing down taboos. The 2000-2022 era is all about building up new ones.

https://youtu.be/dsc3DaT9fCo .#SPR860

Nobody cares about this, but I think it is interesting and important. It's about the way we use language to describe ourselves.

Charlie's Angels was a hit TV show in the late 70s.

I looked at the transcripts of 17 episodes broadcast in 1978. 1)

The show is about 3 women in their late 20s. The actresses are in their late 20s. So logically we should hear the word woman, or women, a lot, right?

Women 27 times in the singular and 15 times in the plural. 42 times altogether. 2)

The word girl, however appears 120 times, with the plural form showing up 61 times, for a grand total of 181 instances.

I watched all 17 of these episodes. There are no females who even remotely qualify as girls. There are no children. There aren't any women under 20. 3)

In all of those instances the word girl is being used to describe an adult woman.

This was a mainstream show. It was seen by lots and lots of people. It was not an outlier. This was normal television. 4)

The original pilot, broadcast in 1976, has a scene where one character tells another "There's a young girl at the door"

The character was clearly an adult woman in her late 20s. The actress playing her was 31 at the time. That qualifies as "young girl"?!?! 5)

It's never about 5 or 10 year olds. It's never about children. It's never about pedophilia. It's always about young adults 14+ 1)

Half the peeps respect teens' right to control their own bodies, and half the peeps furiously demand we treat teens like toddlers. 2)

Peeps over 40 remember a time when teens dated, and had sex with 20-somethings all the time, and nobody batted an eyelid. It was not abuse. It was normal romantic love-making. We old folk remember. We lived it. We know there's nothing wrong with that. 3)

Since dumb urban myths and very sketchy pop "science" reclassified young adults aged 14-20 as children, suddenly literally all men are pedos. 4)

and I mean that seriously. Real pedos are attracted to children 12 and under. Normal hetero men are attracted to young women post-puberty (they've got boobs and hips etc) Normal gay men are attracted to young men post-puberty (they've got muscles and body hair etc) 5)

No sexual attraction ever depends on arbitrary legal definitions. Nobody starts or stops being attracted to someone on their 18th birthday. Nobody chooses who they are attracted to. Literally all men are sexually attracted to minors. 6)

and that's what creates the vicious debate. Puritans are furious that someone might have lewd thoughts about a "child" Large numbers of people have been fooled into thinking that completely normal sexual attraction is a dangerous perversion which leads to violent rape. 7)

It's absurd, of course. Tucker Carlson can watch Miss Teen USA and think that the hot 15 year old is appealing and not rape anybody. It is not at all dangerous to admit that beauty pageant contestants are pretty or sexy. Tucker's commentary did not harm anybody. 8)

but the extreme anger directed at Mr Carlson is sure to prevent him from ever telling a simple truth like that again. American men are now forced to pretend that teenagers are not fully sexually developed people and so attractive to non-pedos. 9)

Gays in the 50s were forced to hide their sexuality, never admit the truth. Homosexuals are 4% of the population. Today men are forced to hide their sexuality, never admit the truth. Men are 50% of the population. 10)

Many gays in the 50s loathed themselves. They had internalized the hate directed at "deviants" and "perverts" We are repeating exactly the same thing today, but with 1/2 the population. 11)

Men see sexy teens every day. Often they feel sexual arousal when they see them at the mall or the swimming pool, or watching porn featuring 18 year olds.

Puritans want those men to believe that that makes them disgusting creeps. 12)

Puritans call them pedos to try to induce deep feelings of shame and self-loathing. A brand new taboo has been born just in the last 15 years.

It's amazing. 13)

It is very much like the witch trials of old.

There is no logic. There is no evidence.

but there is enough fear to generate the hysteria needed to convince large numbers of people that they are facing pure evil which must be brutally suppressed. 14)

and since this fake "pedophilia" is pure evil then anyone who questions the fight against pure evil is also pure evil.

this is all the more terrifying as literally half the population is guilty of feeling normal sexual attraction to post-pubescent men and women. 15)

No one dares speak out against the hysteria, because anyone who does will immediately be accused of being a pedo themselves.

Why else would anyone defend pure evil?

It's exactly like the witch trials.

and it's happening in the USA in 2023. 16)

A few months ago I saw a graph showing how many more teens were employed in the 1980s than in the 2000s and 2010s. (sadly I can't find it now)

I think this trend toward teens working less contributes a lot to the hate everybody piles on teenagers.

Back in the 80s young adults aged 14-18 socialized with older adults sometimes. Maybe with neighbors, their parents friends, during church or scouting activities, while cheering for a local football team, but mostly at work. Usually in the service industry.

Restaurants, and retail outlets had staff aged 16 to 65. They mixed. They got to know each other. They communicated. They learned from each other. In those days NOBODY had an official mentor. But everybody had half a dozen unofficial ones.

Chatting about the world with coworkers of various ages and backgrounds was Very Healthy for us. It's so much harder to hate people you've gotten to know. Fewer teens in the workplace is a sad development. It makes our society worse.

#SPR860

Nobody ever talks about the vicious hate teenagers face on line.

Bigots abuse and harass them simply because of their age. It's vile AF but everybody just acts like it's normal.

#SPR860

Why do so many people so desperately cling to the obviously false belief that 17-year-olds are children? a thread 🧵 1) Very lucrative television fear-mongering has, over the last few decades, ginned up so much hysteria that large portions of the general public now believe that sex crime is rampant. 2) They are thoroughly convinced that sex predators are everywhere. At the same time they are sure that anyone under age 18 or 25 is totally helpless against the magical brainwashing powers of "groomers" 3) In their minds teens can easily be raped and traumatized for life by these perverted sex-crazed psychopaths without ever even realizing that they're being permanently psychologically damaged. Teens are normal humans who like sex. So sometimes they have sex. 4) In the deranged minds of the fear-addled public however, it's very important to make sure that teens cannot legally consent. Otherwise how could you get a rape charge to stick against the alleged sex predator, with whom the young adult made love? 5) It is crucial to the fight against the mythical monsters that teens have no right to consent, and no right to control their own bodies or sex lives. 6) This is problematic because we spent the last 50+ years repeating the axiom "What 2 consenting adults do in the privacy of their own bedroom..." 7) Therefore adulthood simply must be denied to biological adults who don't meet the age requirement. Anything else would be an endorsement of their rape and traumatization by evil sex monsters. 8) Their fear-addled minds are really convinced that anyone who acknowledges the fact that 17-year-olds are adults has no motivation other than the legal sexual exploitation of defenseless feeble-minded 17-year-old children. 9) The whole thing is completely insane on every level. but nobody is thinking. everyone is fearing. the rational got tossed out the window long ago. the only thing left is hysterics. 10)

Pleasantly surprised to see how good this old forgotten video of mine is

https://youtu.be/GIrTW5OE2ck

#Rewatch #Nostalgia #SPR860

#SPR860

The fact that people believe in teenhood or "adolescence" is pretty amazing. Some "experts" talk about adolescence ending at age 14, others say 25 or 30. Since the concept has zero scientific basis it's impossible to prove any of them wrong (or right). Social media is full of people screaming that 19-year-olds are children, especially if they suspect one of having sex with the "wrong" person. If that were true we'd have a massive child labor problem. Right now we have about 8 million 14 to 18-year-old young adults who have been forced into a kind of unnatural artificially extended childhood. They work, drive cars, join the military, some even start families, but society insists on infantilizing them, and criminalizing their sex lives. Not to mention the segregation. Barred from bars and night clubs, they're not allowed to socialize with anyone over 21. No society has ever done this before. It's a big experiment and so far the results are horrible. Youth suicide is at record highs. Doubling down on this tragic mistake is the dumbest thing we could do right now.

The point of an age of consent is to send a message to a (in Poland for example) 15-year-old that "Now the state no longer decides for you. You are old enough to choose. You have the right and the responsibility to control your own body."

When you add age-gap exceptions to the law, the message becomes "You may be old enough to choose. It depends. You sometimes have the right to control your own body, but obviously you're too stupid to consent to people of a certain age who can brainwash you."

The later is a demeaning, disempowering, counterproductive message.