Children Fucking Children
| October 19th, 2007In light of the articles passing ’round about a school that’s giving contraception to twelve-year-olds (for instance and this post and this comment thread), I have to confess that I’m really surprised at the level of vehemence in the liberal blogosphere against twelve-year-olds having sex with other twelve-year-olds.
I don’t necessarily object to individual parents being worried about their individual children. They understand the context of their own individual child’s situation. What I object to are remarks indicating that, without context, it is universally true and observable that any twelve-year-old child is too young to be enjoying his or her sex organs with another twelve-year-old, and which ground the argument in that supposedly objective truth.
Personally, I didn’t fuck until I was legal, but let me be the first to confess that there was some prudery in that. It’s not like I wasn’t having orgasms; I was just having them in private. At the same age as I was when my fingers and I were having an exclusive relationship, my fiance started trading oral. He licked his first pussy in his early teens, but saved the PIV until he was twenty. Is he less implicated in the prevalent tut-tutting because he restricted his activities to tongue and hands, or is he to be condemned for the bad decision of starting to cuddle up with his best friend’s slightly older sister?
At twelve, I wasn’t dating. I resented the slow encroachment of sexuality on my sheltered little life. I have a memory of viewing girls who wore make-up as traitors. Heck, even when I was sixteen — at which point I had started dating — I carried a strong prudish streak like a chip on my shoulder. My twenty-seven year old brother brought home a woman his own age who he hadn’t been dating very long, and they slept together in his bedroom. A few weeks later on a shopping trip, I observed to my mother, “I don’t disapprove of premarital sex, but I think people should know each other longer before they do it.”
She gave me a pitying look and said, “When I was a bit older than you, I used to think sex was a natural out-growth of conversation…”
Back to junior high: my parents would rent R movies, often videos that I myself had picked out because I thought the plot summaries looked interesting. We’d settle down to watch them together. My parents would get interested, and I’d get annoyed. I wasn’t disturbed by the sexual content. I was fucking bored out of my skull watching Jennifer Aniston and male lead trade innuendos, and so after half an hour of mind-numbing tedium, I’d go into my room and read a book.
Sexually, I grew up slowly and out of step with my peers. When I was twelve, I clearly wasn’t ready for sex. So I didn’t do it. All the birth control opportunities in the world could never have changed my mind. As a matter of fact, I had as much opportunity as I needed: I’d been told that when I wanted to become sexually active, I was to inform the parents and be given birth control. My reaction to this was along the lines of, “Ugh, no thanks, I don’t plan to have sex in high school.”
Which was a resolution I kept to. It wasn’t until I got to college and decided I was done being self-righteously virginal that I started fucking.
I was chaste and judgmental, but certainly not morally superior to my happily-sucking and -fingering fiance. We grew up differently. Neither of us made bad decisions. We made the right decisions for ourselves. He was ready for phsyical intimacy with another person his own age, and I wasn’t.
Not every child has the benefit of making the right decision for himself or herself. As people have pointed out on these threads, the likelihood of young girls having their first sexual experiences after being coerced into sex by older men gets higher the younger thant the girls are. This is a tragedy. Other children make errors about what they want. Maybe they think they’re ready for sex when they aren’t and they end up doing something they regret. Some children undoubtedly pressure and exploit other children, and this is also a really big problem that stems from our culture’s fucked-uppedness about consent. But it’s exploitation or making the wrong decision that’s the problem. Clinging to virginity, or slipping early into sexual exploration, are not themselves the indicators of either a good or bad decision.
Two enthusiastic twelve year olds pressing together their sticky bits? Let me sum up the depths of my not caring. Help them be safe and let them make each other happy, and then do what I did when my parents were watching an R-rated movie: go read a book.
October 19th, 2007 at 3:38 pm
I couldn’t agree more. Christ almighty our culture is terrified of sex.
This comment was written by Myca.Report this comment to the moderators
October 19th, 2007 at 4:33 pm
I don’t approve of, but can understand and accept, providing barrier methods to middle-school-aged kids. That’s what this school (and many others) have been doing.
The new policy will provide hormonal birth control - the pill - without seeing the kids’ individual doctor, without direct parental involvement, to school kids. That seems problematic; hormonal birth control isn’t Tylenol. It has major effects on the body.
Parents have to sign a consent form for the kids to use the clinic - but the consent form doesn’t give permission for specific areas, it’s an all-or-nothing. So if you want your kid to be able to go in and get a splint from the nurse, you also have to open the door for them to be able to get birth control pills. Other commenters have noted the class privilege manifest in this; poor parents who want help for their kid lose the ability to monitor their health decisions with the “context of their own individual child’s situation”, while rich parents don’t need the clinic. Rich parents get to be the gatekeeper for their children; poor parents get to choose between that or letting their kids go without medical help.
I have no illusions that parents always make the right decisions for their kids, but I also think that for an 11 or 12 year old, the parent needs to be the primary arbiter. This policy completely undermines that, and puts the state in the role of health care gatekeeper to children.
And that’s unacceptable.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
October 19th, 2007 at 4:48 pm
I’ve been working with 12 and 13 year olds, since I am ultimately interested in teaching those ages, and they don’t have the maturity to be sexually active. I do not think this because I’m a prude, but because they are emotionally developing, and sex is a confusing thing. Just like I really don’t think 12 year olds are emotionally and intellectually mature enough to responsibly have credit cards, or vote, or drink, or drive, I don’t think they are ready to have sex, either.
That being said, I know some of them DO have sex, and they should be taught about safe sex and have access to the services they need. But I think it’s beyond the pale to state that generally, it’s okay for 12 year olds to have sex, and we should rather consider it to be a case-by-case thing if it’s NOT okay for them to have sex.
But children and teens (heck, and adults) need boundaries and expectations, and call me a prude, but I am 100% okay with saying that, “No, you should not be having sex at 12″ should be one of them.
This comment was written by exelizabeth.Report this comment to the moderators
October 19th, 2007 at 6:19 pm
Unacceptable? Funny, the lack of that is exactly what blighted my life when I was that age; I had no access to mental health care or social workers because my father was the primary arbiter and he didn’t want me to have that. I suffered in silence for a little over seven years because that primary arbiter cared far more about his ego than his children. I’d be in favour of all children having direct access to healthcare, advice, and mental health support when they needed it, whatever the issue. What you’re saying there, after all, is that the problem is when poor kids get BC when their parents would rather they didn’t - those privileged kids not getting BC because their parents say otherwise is just fine, you say?
Mandolin: I was a self-righteous virgin too - at first religiously, later due to personal choice, and I honestly don’t think I was being in any way a prude. I think I just instinctively knew that what I was being told sex looked like (woman=body, man=eyes and [disembodied] cock) was not something I wanted. I still don’t want it. I stopped being self-righteous when I finally found out, through reading, stumbling and luck, that there were other sorts of sex.
Have those 12-year-olds had that opportunity to learn what sort of sex they want? Maybe what they’re doing is learning. I’d still hazard it’s wiser to encourage them to leave the practical until after they’ve got the theory test down pat.
This comment was written by Thene.Report this comment to the moderators
October 19th, 2007 at 6:31 pm
It’s such a sticky situation, really. I don’t think it is a good idea for people to have sex before they are ready- but they do. I don’t think birth control is going to mess up too many women- but it could. I think they both are adult decisions that young people are still going to make for themselves. In my opinion, it is better to err on the side of handing out the birth control than restricting it- better to have it in the hands of too many rather than too few.
Kids are having sex, and we need to accept it.
I was the self-righteous virgin (and pro-lifer) as well until my college sexual awakening. I get a little sick when I think about how contemptful I was back then.
This comment was written by JenLovesPonies.Report this comment to the moderators
October 19th, 2007 at 6:39 pm
What you’re saying there, after all, is that the problem is when poor kids get BC when their parents would rather they didn’t - those privileged kids not getting BC because their parents say otherwise is just fine, you say?
Yes.
Someone has to have the final say for children, and that someone should be the parents. I believe that the net harm of that system is less than the net harm of any other system.
But I am really sorry that you went through what you did.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
October 19th, 2007 at 7:42 pm
I was wondering how the sexually active boys were being treated, and discovered on one of the sites I found about the story that the clinics at all three of the middle schools in Portland have been making condoms available for the past seven years.
It seems that didn’t do the job, although I’m glad to know they at least tried that first before trying to offer contraceptives to barely pubescent girls.
But now I have all these other questions.
Did they make the condoms available to both boys and girls? Did they offer sex ed starting in the 5th grade? That’s 8 or 9 years old for most kids, but 10 for some.
Also, how old were the partners of the girls who got pregnant? Were they having sex with their age peers, or boys 2, 3 or 5 years older? Or even older than that?
If indeed the boys were much older, I can see a lot of reason for taking bigger steps to do whatever the schools could to protect the girls from conceiving. But in that case, how much of the experience for these girls was concensual, and how much of it was coerced? Were any of the girls sexually assualted by a family member or family “friend”?
And in that case family consent to participate in the school clinics would be highly problematic, espcially if the custodial parent was also the perpetrator.
If any of this is possible for me to imagine, it’s possible that any or all of the above is part of the posted story’s narrative. In which case, the greatest good is to protect the girls enough so that they can be girls, not premature women, for as long as they need to be. So they CAN decide to be sexually active with someone they genuinely have feelings for when and IF they go to college.
Meanwhile, if the girls and boys ARE age-mates, they should still have the full compliment of contraceptives available to them, if for no other reason than to prevent STDs, because I’d imagine they are not all exclusive relationships, and we all know (but they might not) that the higher the number of sexual partners, the higher the chances of catching STDs.
I’m with the schools in the supporting their students the way they’re doing. I am curious what kind of health and social support outside of contraceptives is available, though, and why those supports don’t seem to be having enough of an effect.
Meanwhile, whatever socio-economic bracket the parents fit into, if they aren’t protecting their girls from way-too-early pregnancies, something is wrong and somebody needs to do something about it.
This comment was written by Eva.Report this comment to the moderators
October 19th, 2007 at 8:15 pm
Really? Then I don’t think I’d ever have had sex. Sex itself was what taught me what sex was. Fun but fairly silly, not some kind of moment out of a book.
(Just in case I misread what you were saying, I wanted to clarify: I don’t think I should have had sex, at twelve or before I did at all. I just don’t have a problem with kids experimenting and enjoying their bodies, together or separately.)
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
October 19th, 2007 at 8:29 pm
I couldn’t agree with this post more. I would prefer my 12 year old was not having sex at that age, but if they were, I would hope to hell there was a place that they could go to act responsibly about their choices and prevent unwanted pregnancies. Offering birth control isn’t going to make anyone who doesn’t want to have sex take it. In actuality, it will allow kids who are making “adult decisions” to act responsibly and that’s a really good thing… taking ownership over your own actions. It will only prevent the pregnancies that would already be happening, and also offer a method of monitoring students who are engaging in sexual activity. If a student is getting birth control from a school health center, they can also be given std information, annual exams, relationship violence… ect.
Also, per your other post about many young girls being involved in abusive relationships where their young male partners were actively trying to get them pregnant, this would be a good way for the girl to take control of her own life and body and act to prevent that pregnancy, without the embarassment of telling her parents or having her boyfriend find out.
That, in my book, is win/win.
This comment was written by dylan.Report this comment to the moderators
October 19th, 2007 at 8:37 pm
Deep Thoughts
by Jack Handey
I believe in making
This comment was written by Megalodon.the world safe for
our children,
but not for our
children’s children,
because I don’t think
children should be
having sex.
Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2007 at 8:18 am
I don’t think 12 years olds should have sex.
By and large, they’re not ready to do so. Are there some who are? Sure–but so what? The harm from having sex too soon vastly exceeds the harm of delaying sex for a little while. It’s not as if they have to wait very long. If I were to name an “acceptable” (don’t LIKE it, but seems more acceptable) it would be, what, 15? 16? That’s far from a lifetime.
I think most parents agree.
So then what? I balance my desire for an outcome (no 12 year olds having sex) with the benefits conferred by birth control. And I would support it: the BC benefits exceed the BC harms. So sure: give the BC to the kids
BUT I am still vehemently opposed to a general rule that says it’s OK for 12 year olds to have sex. those aren’t opposites.
This comment was written by Sailorman.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2007 at 8:57 am
I have two young daughters. When they’re 12 I definitely want to be part of the decision on whether they take hormone based BC.
I don’t want someone else telling them that they CAN I don’t want someone else telling them that they cannot.
In general I’m very skeptical about any rule that says other’s are better able to make decisions, especially medical decisions, for children than their parents. I think a 12 year old should be consulted but I don’t think they should have the final say.
This comment was written by joe.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2007 at 9:03 am
The post does not argue that people are being hypocritical for approving of the BC and not approving of the sex. Actually, I don’t think it argues anything about the BC, other than that the “making BC available will force 12-yr-olds-to-fuck!!!” meme is stupid.
I just think y’all are het up over very little cause, and generic terms like “too immature” and “not ready” and “it’s wrong” aren’t going to do much to change my mind. I’m not particularly convinced by harm reduction either; I think a society that discourages early sexual play is also, as Myca says, a society drenched in sexual shame, and sexual shame *is* damaging in the long term.
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2007 at 10:24 am
Two enthusiastic twelve year olds pressing together their sticky bits? Let me sum up the depths of my not caring.
Let me see if I follow your logic: Mandolin was unnecessarily prudish as a young’un, so it’s OK if twelve-year-olds fuck?
We’re not talking about masturbation or looking at pictures of naked people; we’re talking about involving another human being in sexual activity that carries certain risks and requires a certain amount of responsibility and maturity.
I imagine most of us would be indignant at a right-winger who said that 12-year-olds ought to be tried as adults. Why, then, do you insist that we should assume 12-year-olds have the judgment to understand and accept the risks of sexual activity?
On the middle school in question, we’re not talking about handing out condoms, but about dispensing prescription hormonal medication, correct?
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2007 at 10:36 am
In case you were referring to me, i didn’t think you were making a hypocrisy claim in the first place.
But I think you’re using the word ‘force’ to cheat a little. Obviously, making BC available won’t “force” anyone to do anything.
But IMO, there is a time in folks’ lives where they don’t know much about sex. And at that point (which often though not always encompasses age 12) there probably IS some correlation between teaching them how to do it, making it safer for them to do it, acting on the assumption that they’re doing it… and actually doing it.
To use a random parental example, most kids will eventually want to stop shitting in their pants, all on their own. But if you make it easier for them to stop, and treat them in a manner that assumes they want to stop… they’ll get toilet trained earlier.
12 year olds aren’t three year olds of course. So perhaps a better analogy would be this, in a very general sense, illustrated with POSITIVE examples:
If we treat 12 year old children as if they are going to do something (be successful),
and if we make it easier for them to do it (by removing some of the barriers to success),
And if we teach them skills which they will need if they eventually start doing it (by teaching skills which successful people need to children who may not be successful yet)
we IMPROVE THEIR CHANCES of being successful.
i’m not sure why the same analysis doesn’t apply here.
Fair enough–”wrong” is pretty much a value call. What would change your mind?
This comment was written by Sailorman.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2007 at 10:39 am
“Let me see if I follow your logic: Mandolin was unnecessarily prudish as a young’un, so it’s OK if twelve-year-olds fuck?”
There are definitely no anecdotes involving other people in my essay, so this is an entirely valid conclusion that erases no other discussion whatsoever.
“I imagine most of us would be indignant at a right-winger who said that 12-year-olds ought to be tried as adults.”
Sex is the same as a crime?
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2007 at 10:40 am
“i’m not sure why the same analysis doesn’t apply here.”
I’m not sure who you think I’m arguing against… there are a certain number of right wingers who do think that children are being forced to have sex. I don’t vastly disagree with your position.
“Fair enough–”wrong” is pretty much a value call. What would change your mind?”
I’m not sure; I haven’t seen it yet. I know that’s unhelpful, but I’m not trying to be snarky. I just haven’t.
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2007 at 10:56 am
Robert writes:
Robert, is there any mainstream news source documenting this aspect of the new rule?
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2007 at 11:05 am
The news story that Shakes linked to.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2007 at 11:25 am
Sex is the same as a crime?
12-year-olds have the maturity and judgment to choose to have sex, but they don’t have the maturity and judgment to refrain from, say, throwing rocks through their math teacher’s window? “We can’t treat them like little adults! Well, except when they’re fucking.”
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2007 at 11:49 am
Your argument sounded pretty reasonable to me at first glance, Robert. But then I did a bit of research, and it turned out that you’re mistaken about some essential facts.
Robert wrote:
For many of the kids who use the clinic, the clinic doctor is their individual doctor.
This is absolutely untrue. The school nurse, who provides emergency medical care such as splints, is separate from the clinic. See here, and here. Parents who choose not to allow their kids to use the city health clinic located in the school are not cutting their kids off from splints or other typical school nurse services.
Again, not true. A child in Maine can go to any doctor at all, public or private, and have the legal right to have their reproductive health treatment kept private; it’s illegal for Maine doctors to disclose such things without the minor’s explicit permission.
So rich kids, who can come up with the money to pay a doctor or go to Planned Parenthood on their own, already have the ability to get birth control without their parents knowing. All this policy does is extend the same ability to kids without money — and then, only if their parents agree to let them use the clinic.
This comment was written by Ampersand.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2007 at 11:56 am
Robert:
I’m lost. How is the ‘net harm’ of children being able to, say, access mental health care without their parent’s knowledge, greater than the net harm of making the parent the arbiter? Or does that only apply to decisions about sex?
This has been a bit of a deal in the UK lately wrt abortion. It’s legal (also free) for an under-16 to have an abortion without her parents’ knowledge. A mother challenged this in court, saying that she had a ‘right to know’ if her daughter aborted. She lost. I’m still not seeing why a parent should know, especially in a society where contraception and sexual health advice is legal, confidential and free at the point of use. You seem to be implying that the mother did have a right to know - and a right to stop the abortion if she chose? I can’t imagine how giving parents ultimate control is going to help anyone.
If you’re sorry, could you explain how, if parents are the arbiters of medical and psychological care, you’d go about stopping what happened to me from happening to other children too? Do you see it as an unfortunate downside of your system (all systems have downsides, no need to pretend they don’t), or as something which can be fixed from within that system?
Continuing the driving test analogy, I don’t think it’s safe to be behind the wheel until you know the basic rules of the road. You can learn by experimenting, but if you’ve never been taught about contraception and about consent, or if you’ve been constantly told something that’s not true (like that it’s wrong for girls to feel desire), you are relatively likely to suffer, or cause, an accident. Of course you can never understand sex without having it, but I can’t easily believe that many 12-year-old really have a good grasp of the rules of the road. Is it ‘wrong’ for them to try it out? I wouldn’t say so. It’s just often going to lead them toward harm.
It’s often suggested that in cultures that are more open about sex - such as the Netherlands - children are likely to postpone sex longer than in cultures like the USA, because in an open, shame-free culture it’s easier to be sexually curious without fucking, and given the free choice between the two options, a large proportion of young teenagers would rather just look at porn. Some wouldn’t. But given that we don’t have that openness at King Middle School Maine, which is where it matters, I’d err on the side of recommending more theory.
This comment was written by Thene.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2007 at 2:48 pm
Amp - You’re right. I was misinformed about the specifics of the program. You can get nurse services w/o opening things up further. I withdraw the class privilege portion of my concerns.
Thene -
I’m lost. How is the ‘net harm’ of children being able to, say, access mental health care without their parent’s knowledge, greater than the net harm of making the parent the arbiter? Or does that only apply to decisions about sex?
I believe that if children make all the decisions, the total number of children harmed and the magnitude of those harms will be some sum X. If parents make all the decisions, the total harm will be some sum that is less than X. In any specific person’s case, there is probably one person or the other who will make the best decision (whether that’s the parent, the child, the doctor, or some random bureaucrat) - but “let the person who will make the best decision decide” isn’t one of the options we have.
If you’re sorry, could you explain how, if parents are the arbiters of medical and psychological care, you’d go about stopping what happened to me from happening to other children too? Do you see it as an unfortunate downside of your system (all systems have downsides, no need to pretend they don’t), or as something which can be fixed from within that system?
Unfortunate downside, mitigated (broadly) by helpful counsel from other family members, teachers, health care providers, clergy, etc. (That might not have been able to help you; I don’t know the details of your story.)
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2007 at 2:58 pm
I think a society that discourages early sexual play
‘Sexual play’ is not the same as having sex with another human being. You don’t need the Pill for heavy petting.
I really resent the paleocon argument that if one is for a more sexually open society, one is in favor of no boundaries at all and think everybody should be fucking in one great orgy. I don’t like it much better coming from the Left.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2007 at 6:40 pm
In all fairness, you DID say (emphasis added:)
which is why I assumed you weren’t talking about the right wingers.
So to alleviate my confusion, who are we talking about? Left wingers like me, who think 12 years olds having sex is generally a bad idea? Left wing people who think it’s a REALLY bad idea? Or the right wingers?
This comment was written by Sailorman.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2007 at 6:56 pm
The essay is critical of left wingers, including yourself.
The essay wasn’t about BC pills, specifically, except in asmuch as it argued against “BC pills force 12 yr olds to have sex!!!” meme, which is largely propagated against right wingers.
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2007 at 9:18 pm
And again, I’m wondering what the basis of that criticism is. It seems to be that Americans are pretty uptight about the idea that children do not remain utterly ignorant of anything related to sex until the moment they turn 18. I still don’t see how that means it’s no biggie if twelve-year-olds are engaging in sexual intercourse.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
October 20th, 2007 at 11:54 pm
Mandolin:
“Sex is the same as a crime?”
Yes.
It is called soul murder.
Not every human being on this planet reacts the same way towards the sex act. And that it is called the sex act, and not intimacy (you hear practically NOTHING about intimacy, just rutting with each other like beasts), says alot about how so many people approach the issue of sex.
Dirty.
Filthy.
Nasty.
Hide it away in shame.
Do it quickly, especially with someone you give not a damn about, just as long as you get your gratification and give not a damn about the other person as a human being with feelings.
Grown men having coerced sex with young girls are committing more than just statutory rape (and that goes for female teachers who have sex with their male students).
These predator adults (male/female) are taking away a child’s innocence.
I can think of no 12-year-old child who is possibly ready for sex. Hell, there are some ADULTS at age 25-,35-, who are not ready for sex.
Yes, children will experiment. Children are curious. But, do I let a child (if I had one) run out all hours of the night because The johnsons down the street let their children run out all night? No. Do I just sit back and not be a part of my child’s life and leave EVERYTHING up to the school? No. Society? No. If I had a child, I would want the very best for that child, and hiding them from the joys (YES, THE JOYS) of sex would be a cop-out on my part. It would be my duty as that child’s parent to calmly and intelligently talk to them about intimacy (not just sex, big difference):
-I would talk to my child about the human body and all its mysteries;
-I would talk to my child about BC and all the many types, the failure rates, the success rates depending on the type of BC used;
-I would talk most especially about how the act of INTIMACY should be paramount in all people’s approach towards merging their bodies (and hopefully hearts and minds) with another human being.
But, I would also truthfully tell my child that there are predators AND loving humans out there in the world. I would do all I can to prepare my child for a world, and a country, that really does not care very much for its children. A country that merely gives lip service to what is supposed to be good for the children of this nation. A country that shows so little regard for its littlest citizens.
I would not want my child, if I had one, to start early on sex.
Play with the toy trains (and yes, girls can have toy trains instead of dolls. We need more female locomotive engineers, anyway), do girl gossip with your friends, go to chaparoned parties (yes, I am that archaic), and by all means, READ LOTS OF BOOKS.
This country has turned sex and intimacy into acts of perversion with its hypocrisy concerning sex:
-movies sometimes so explicit in the showing of sexual intimacy, that the movie borders on an NC-17 rating
-pornography
-near-pornography ads for products
-the perversion of interracial sex during slavery/segregation
-the mindless using of women/girls’s bodies to sell products (as if the damn product cannot sell itself on its own merit)
This country that shrieks so much against sex, but is the first to sneakaway and indulge itself in the most basest and hideous forms of mockery against one of the most beuatiful acts of human behaviour that God sought to give humankind—the act of intimacy.
“Sex is the same as a crime?”
Yes, ma’am.
It certainly can be.
Men (and women) who greedily use the body of another human being to satisfy their sexual lust, HAVE committed a crime.
A crime of the mind, a crime of the heart.
There are enough walking wounded among us, Mandolin, because some selfish sex-pig thought of no one but him/her-self. The damage that is done to people because of the callous disregard done in the name of sexual gluttony is appalling. You can tear a person apart (via this assault upon their mind) by having sex with them by thinking of yourself and your own pleasure, only, then casually disregarding that person the next day as if they are less than an animal.
Happens more than it should.
There are crimes committed against the statutes on the law books.
But, there also crimes committed against the souls and psyches of human beings; crimes that you cannot see nor put your finger on. They may not be man’s laws, but, they are God’s laws. Not ALL crime is what you see or read about in the papers.
Using sex for selfish pleasure and considering nothing for the feelings of another human being is a monstrous crime in and of itself.
Not all crimes involve just wrongs committed upon someone’s body. Not all crimes make the nightly news or the newspapers.
There are crimes committed against a person’s psyche.
Not all crimes are tangible.
Many crimes, Mandolin, are intangible.
Selfish, sex-gluttons who use young girls for sex have committed the worst crime (next to pregnancy or rape) that can be committed against a 12-year-old minor.
You ( in the plural sense) do not only harm a person’s body when you lay down with them. You can also harm their mind.
Just because the minor did not get pregnant, or does not catch an STD does not mean that a crime has not been committed.
Sex is when people just do it because they want to get it over with; because everyone else is doing it; because, “if it feels good, do it”.
Intimacy is caring enough for that other person and how they may react to this new experience.
And sometimes, NOT having sex with a person can be the ultimate act of love towards that person.
And no 12-year-old is that experienced to know what they are doing no matter how much America just luvs to treat her children as if they are pint-sized adults.
They are not.
They are children.
They deserve to remain children as long as they can, with the help of responsible, loving adults.
Let them stay children as long as they can.
Life, and the real world, will intrude soon enough upon them.
But, by all means, do prepare them for the real world and all of its pitfalls, snares and traps, as well as the love that can await them when they ARE ready for sexual intimacy.
I know your post is about 12-year-olds having sex with each other, and you did mention older males corecing girls. And yes, I know that there are some 12-year-olds having sex before they should. But, I would rather help any child I had to be forearmed by being forewarned. I would not shy away from telling my child about the birds and the bees, as well as about the wolves and the liars out there in the world. But, on the other hand, I would not give up on them and just let them be at the mercy of the world and all of its hells.
On the issue of a child if I had one.
Well, the following would be my child’s daily routine:
-get up go to school
-come home from school, do your homework
-wash the dishes
-read
-sweep the kitchen floor
-watch ONE HOUR OF TV, preferably the discovery channel, or PBS, etc.
On weekends:
-help with the gardening, cut the grass
-rake the yard, help plant/prune the citrus trees (depending on the season)
-go to the library
-go to a movie (with me OR a TRUSTED ADULT/RELATIVE)
-do volunteer work (definately mandatory in my house)
And those are just a few things I would do with my child if I had one.
Guess that would make me a very draconian parent. Well, so be it. Having children comes with tremendous responsibilities, and those responsibilities should not be taken lightly.
Giving children knowledge of BC is not forcing nor making them have sex. Giving children ammunition to go out prepared into the world, is not harming them. Talking to children about sex DOES NOT MAKE them rush out and jump on the nearest child. Didn’t do it with me. if anything, NOT TALKING to your chidren about sex, and hoping that sex will just go away is not only foolish, but, deadly wrong for your child. Hiding the knowledge of sex from your child will not make them think less of exploring sex; if anything, it will make them want to explore it more, and often with the wrong person.
The surest way to get someone to do something is to tell them NOT to do it. The surest way to make a person want something is to ban it, taboo it, wrap it up and hide it away, hoping that the child will just forget all about it.
Won’t happen.
Better to sit down and do all you can to explain sex and intimacy to your child before someone else with none of your child’s best interests in mind gets to them first before you do.
And believe me, the consequences will often be less deadly if you (in the plural sense) do your job first and foremost as a parent.
Preparing children for every aspect of life—marriage, love, work ethic, civility, critical thinking—are just some of the things a parent does to the best of their ability to prepare their child to be a responsible, capable adult.
Truth be told, no parent wants their child to begin sex until that child is at least 35 YEARS OLD.
But, in the real world, many parents will just settle for their child experiencing as little hurt, harm and hell as much as possible.
Sorry for the long-winded comment.
But, it breaks my heart the way people in this country treat sex as some diseased hot-potato that should be shunted behind a veil of secrecy and shame.
Sheesh.
You would think someone like me would have the stuck-up prudish attitude towards sex.
But, for some weird, whacko reason, the sexually active people seem to have the most messed up mentality concerning sex/intimacy.
At least from what I’ve seen out ther in the world.
Thanks for allowing me to speak my peace.
This comment was written by Ann.Report this comment to the moderators
October 21st, 2007 at 12:23 am
The post specifically specifies two enthusiastic twelve year olds. Your bile against predators is understandable, but misdirected.
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
October 21st, 2007 at 12:09 pm
The post specifically specifies two enthusiastic twelve year olds
Right. So both partners having sex are children without the sufficient maturity to appreciate the potential risks and necessary precautions.
Obviously that doesn’t mean “well they shouldn’t be allowed to have contraceptives then”–for one thing, seeing a health professional in a confidential setting means they might get some sound education about sex. But I can’t think of any reason for the laissez-faire approach other than contrarianism.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
October 21st, 2007 at 1:53 pm
Robert:
The person who makes the decisions is the doctor. That goes for adults as well as children. This is not about who makes the decisions, it’s about access. Contraception does tend to be one of few areas where the patient often picks out their preferred treatment, but especially for someone so young, they are going to be getting a lot of information and advice before making that decision. Even when I was 19, I got a lot of pressure from a gyno because the contraception I’d picked wasn’t, in her eyes, ideal for my profile, and if I hadn’t been absolutely sure of myself I would’ve gone with her suggestion instead.
So this is about access. I can think of a lot of reasons a child might want medical access without parental knowledge; abuse and/or a requirement for privacy being involved in all. Suppose a child was being harmed by someone outside the home, and couldn’t face telling their family, but could approach a doctor? (And of course, suppose they were being abused within the family? Can you really say ‘hey, this is great for most of the kids with nice families, so we may as well tell the abuse victims to stuff it’?)
I’ll ask you again; should a parent be allowed to stop a child from having an abortion? I really would like a direct answer to that question. I know it’s an extreme case, but the extreme cases that are the only ones that matter. No one’s going to want to get past their parent to pick up flu medicine, are they?
(My problem was simply that I had only one parent, who was a paranoid right-wing fantasist who wanted to deny me access to necessary mental health care and to social workers because it didn’t fit with his politics. I eventually got help from one of the other health care providers you mentioned - I was referred for counselling by my GP seven years later, because I had severe insomnia; until then, my problems had been ignored by the teachers, and there were no other family members or clergy to intervene. I might add that asking me to rely on clergy is abominably shortsighted and ethnocentric, and makes it sound like you’re not that good at imagining how other people’s situations might look from the inside.)
This comment was written by Thene.Report this comment to the moderators
October 21st, 2007 at 2:21 pm
“But I can’t think of any reason for the laissez-faire approach other than contrarianism.”
I agree that sex is potentially dangerous in terms of disease and pregnancy. These things can be addressed.
I disagree that sex is inherently dangerous because of emotional entanglement … blah blah. There’s just nothing that special about sex.
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
October 21st, 2007 at 3:01 pm
There’s just nothing that special about sex
Is this the NYT Journalism Approach? I don’t feel that way, therefore nobody does and they’re just silly if they claim they do, even if they’re children and therefore emotionally immature on top of everything else?
Saying that problems with sex “can be addressed” (clever use of the passive, btw) is another way you keep skating by the issue. Still not seeing much to your argument other than Look At Me! I’m Shockingly Contrary!
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
October 21st, 2007 at 11:55 pm
12 year olds should not be having sex. Period.
My take on it is this: your old enough to fuck when your old enough to pay your own bills ( which includes rent/morgage for the home your fucking in., ), afford to pay for your own abortion ( if that is what you would want to do in case of an unplanned pregnancy), or pay to raise your own kid ( if you would not be comfortable with an abortion).
And lets not even get into the emotional damage that can come from forming an emotional attachment to the other person during sex.
Basically, you need to be an adult mentally, physically, and emotionally. 12 year olds fulfill none of the requirements for adulthood.
Now, when I meet a full-time working, bill paying, emotionally mature 12 year old, he/she will get the green light from me to fuck all he/she wants.
This comment was written by Jamila Akil.Report this comment to the moderators
October 21st, 2007 at 11:59 pm
I would also like to say that schools like this are a large part of the reason that I will be homeschooling my kid. I don’t want teachers or counselors passing out contraception to her without my knowledge and I definitely don’t want her learning sex-ed from someone who would imply that there is no serious danger of emotional entanglement from fucking.
I hope the parents take a long hard look at their school and either accept the fact that their kids are getting contraception or take steps to bring the actions of the school back in line with their preferences.
This comment was written by Jamila Akil.Report this comment to the moderators
October 22nd, 2007 at 12:02 am
Jamila, you’re on really thin ice with me, just so you know. I’m not thrilled with what you do to threads, here or elsewhere. If I feel you bring more heat than light, I am going to ask you to stop commenting on my posts. For the record, implying I, or anyone who disagrees with you, is therefore unfit to be around children = heat.
Anyway, go ahead and explain why emotional entanglement is a serious danger. Not in serious danger of occuring — explain why emotional entanglement itself is a serious danger to children. And, while doing so, explain why emotional entanglement is a more serious danger when it comes to sex than it is a danger when it comes to allowing children to love family members, or trust clergymen or teachers, or make friends — or any of the other numerous activities we allow children, in which they grow emotionally involved — all of which are fully capable of betraying trust and injuring children.
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
October 22nd, 2007 at 12:25 am
Mandolin,
1) I never said or implied that you are unfit to be around children, so don’t even mangle my words by insuating that I did.
2) I said that I don’t want someone with your view of sex teaching my kid about sexuality or giving her contraception. That is my right as a parent. I am in no way obligated to approve/disapprove of your view of sexuality and I am also not obligated to allow you, or someone else with your views, to teach my kid.
3) What you teach your own kids ( if you have any, I don’t know) or what other folks allow you to teach their kids is none of my business, has nothing to do with me, and is a subject that I probably couldn’t care less about.
4) The parents who are living in this school district should have the final say on what is appropriate for the school to do, since it is their children, not mine and not yours, that are being given contraception without parental ok.
This comment was written by Jamila Akil.Report this comment to the moderators
October 22nd, 2007 at 1:05 am
First, let me start by saying that children should be shielded from as much emotional upheaval as possible. If parents are divorcing and there are young children involved, the transition should be made as painless as possible. If there is a death of a close loved one in a family, everything that is possible should be done to ease the emotional trauma that a child might feel. I think we can agree that children are all better off when they are in an emotionally stable environment.
Sex is the same as the other emotional involvements but at the same time it is different. In all emotional attachments there is the chance for deep hurt, but when you have sex with someone that you also have feelings for, there is an added dimension to your attachment for that person. Not only does the emotional attachment have to be broken but so does the physical one; and, this is part of the reason that people have sex in the first place–because it deepens and strengthens our attachment to the person we are having sex with by adding a physical connection to the already present emotional connection.
Once you break up with someone you loved and were physically intimate with, you not only have to get over the feelings that you have for them but you also have to get over the way that they made your body feel–their kisses, their caresses, the particular way in which that person touched you.
It’s like the withdrawal that drug addicts go through. Many people start using drugs to blot out the pain that they feel in another area of their lives ( the emotional part) and after a while they find that they are addicted ( the physical part). In order for a drug addict to get off drugs they not only have to deal with the emotional issues that led them to use drugs in the first place but they also have the added problem of ridding themselves of the physical addiction.
Sex can sometimes make you believe that there is an emotional connection when all you really have is a physical connection. You think that because you just had a mind-blowing orgasm the other person sees you as more than a means to their physical pleasure when they really don’t. Just like the drug addict thinks that his problem is solved because he is too high to care about what is really bothering him.
The emotional attachments that we form in our youth to loved ones like family members, clergyment, teachers, friends etc., is the training that we need for the more mature attachments that we are to form as we grow older; we need this training in our youth of exclusively handling emotional attachments before we accept the added stress and responsibility of adding emotional/physical attachments to our repertoir.
For anyone, 12 year old or 40 year old, to take on more stress and responsibility than they have been prepared for is just a disaster waiting to happen.
The kids that don’t learn how to effectively navigate and deal with emotional attachments sans sex in their youth are just going to grow up and have all sorts of problems navigating emotional relationships that involve sex when they get older.
This comment was written by Jamila Akil.Report this comment to the moderators
October 22nd, 2007 at 1:55 am
I think mythago had a good point up thread. We don’t expect a 12 year old to be an adult. They break the law, maybe hurt people and we (generally) cut them some slack because they’re children.
A sexual relationship is complicated. It takes maturity and consideration for the feelings of your partner. I don’t think 12 year olds can be expected to have that maturity. We don’t allow 12 year olds to drive, or hunt with guns in many states, because the harm from a bad decision can be severe. Same thing here. I know your post stipulates two enthusiastic participants, but I don’t think that’s what you’d always get.
Also, i have to agree with Jamila, if you’re COMPLETELY unable to deal with the consequences you shouldn’t be having sex.
2nd best solution would be BC. So I’m happy that’s available. But in general I’d rather 12 year olds not have sex.
Also, i didn’t read her as saying you were unfit to be around children.
This comment was written by joe.Report this comment to the moderators
October 22nd, 2007 at 2:35 am
I apologize for misreading you, Jamila.
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
October 22nd, 2007 at 4:43 am
Mandolin,
up in your original post you said, right at the end:
I’d like to dig into the “making the wrong decision” part.
Do you think that the consequences of a bad decision are tha same, whether the person has sex (when they shouldn’t have done so) or remains a virgin (when the needn’t have done so?)
I’m exposing a bit of my own bias by using “shouldn’t” as opposed to “needn’t.” this is deliberate: I can see situations where a 12 year old COULD have sex, but i can’t think of any realistic situations where a 12 year old NEEDS to have sex. And of course, i can think of all sorts of situations where a 12 year old *shouldn’t* have sex.
But my bias aside, can you elaborate on how you’re analysing this?
This comment was written by Sailorman.Report this comment to the moderators
October 22nd, 2007 at 4:51 am
Sailor, will email.
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
October 22nd, 2007 at 6:47 am
With regards to sex (and a whole lot of other things, for that matter) people shouldn’t have the freedom to commit an act unless they can take responsibility for at least the first-order/immediate consequences of that act.
Twelve-year-olds can’t do that. There’s the emotional attachments that can be formed that no twelve-year-old can deal with adequately. There’s the possibility of pregnancy - neither one of them can deal with that, there’s a rather good possibility that carrying a child to term can harm the girl’s body, and having her get an abortion (a 12-year-old is not mature enough to make her own decision on that) carries emotional baggage as well.
Maybe because this has nothing to do with politics. Why should liberals and conservatives see this differently? Summarizing this issue as being one of prudery or hypocrisy or religious belief appears to me to be trying to fit a round peg into a square hole. You want to talk about whether or not one opposes a couple of unmarried 21-year-olds from having sex, fine. All those may or may not apply. But thinking that the responsible way to deal with 12-year olds having sex is to provide them with birth control seems highly inappropriate to me and borders on child neglect.
To involve politics in this so as to favor facilitating 12-year olds having sex approaches using or even abusing children in the name of promoting a political agenda.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
October 22nd, 2007 at 7:25 am
I have to agree with some of the other dissenters here - I think the problem that people have with underage kids having sex with each other is the same as we’d have if they were driving, or handling guns. Let’s be blunt: sex is DANGEROUS. You can get a terminal disease, or a pregnancy, if you’re not careful. And you can also be severely emotionally screwed-up by it. Adolescents are not careful, either with their bodies or with the emotions of themselves or others.
It’s not out of some sense of prudery that I want to keep 12-year-olds from having sex, but simply out of genuine concern for their safety (since I’m well-aware that they have none of their own).
Then again, who knows? Maybe getting it on at a young age would get them to stop simultaneously worshiping and fearing sex like we adults do. But it’s pretty bizarre uncharted territory that I’d rather not have my own kids wander into.
This comment was written by Silenced is foo..Report this comment to the moderators
October 22nd, 2007 at 7:44 am
Maybe I’m unnecessarily prudish, but I absolutely do not think 12 year olds have any business whatsoever having sex. Period. And I don’t know the details of this particular story (I’ve largely been ignoring them), but if Robert is right and the school is handing out hormonal BCPs to 12 year olds without consulting their physicians and without parents there to provide a complete and total medical history, well, that’s just plain dangerous.
I don’t think providing birth control will make 12 year olds have sex. I don’t especially have a problem with early sex ed, the importance of proper condom use, etc being provided by schools. BUT, I do not think 12 year olds should be having sex. There’s absolutely no question in my mind that the relative harm of early sex for children is outstanding and not something I’m going to condone.
12 year olds have a lot of other things going on without adding the incredibly complex world of sexual relationships. It is not an objective truth, but then, there are really very few objective truths in this world. In this society, at this particular point in time there are an awful lot of arguments that support the notion that it’s BAD for 12 year olds to have sex. Just like I care about the fact that I think it’s BAD for 12 year olds to be smoking pot, or smoking cigarrettes or drinking alcohol to excess. Forget about legal implications for a moment, there are a lot harms that come from 12 year olds being involved in that stuff. There is a significant qualitative difference between a 12 year old and an 18 year old. It’s not “just 8 years” it’s a meaningful 8 years and the 8 years of waiting to engage in a lot of the above can mean the difference between healthy and happy outcomes for people and bad outcomes for people.
I care a GREAT DEAL about whether or not my 12 year old has sex. But, I also care a great deal if other 12 year olds are having sex, just like I would care if 12 year olds are not getting a good education, experimenting with controlled substances, etc. I kind of think it’s irresponsible NOT to care.
This comment was written by Kate L..Report this comment to the moderators
October 22nd, 2007 at 10:32 am
No problem. Apology accepted.
This comment was written by Jamila Akil.Report this comment to the moderators
October 22nd, 2007 at 11:05 am
Sidestepping the “should 12 year olds have sex” debate, I think a bigger concern is the Pill, actually. Unless there is some kind of preexisting condition, wouldn’t any kind of hormonal BC screw up your kid’s hormones? Maybe other children aren’t as sensitive to the effects of messing with their endocrine systems because we already poison them with who-knows-what.
This comment was written by Meep.Report this comment to the moderators
October 22nd, 2007 at 5:50 pm
But thinking that the responsible way to deal with 12-year olds having sex is to provide them with birth control
Nobody (I hope) is saying that the only thing we should do if a 12-year-old has sex is to give them prescription contraceptives. The debate about the ethics of a clinic providing medical care, including prescriptions, without a parent’s permission is really different from Mandolin’s glib assertion that it’s no big deal if 12-year-olds fuck.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
October 22nd, 2007 at 5:58 pm
“Mandolin’s glib assertion that it’s no big deal if 12-year-olds fuck.”
Which, ftr, is what I’m asserting, not that 12-yr-olds should have sex. I just think it’s a moral neutral, or a moral “would you please close the door to your room?”
Much like my friend’s 5-yr-old son who is quite fond of groping his penis. “Honey, it is okay if you touch yourself in private, but right now your door is open. And you’re supposed to be doing your homework.” “I needed to write my name!” “With your penis?” *small child giggling*
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
October 22nd, 2007 at 6:54 pm
Mythago said:
Nobody (I hope) is saying that the only thing we should do if a 12-year-old has sex is to give them prescription contraceptives.
What Mandolin proposed was to help them have sex safely and happily and then go read a book while they’re having at it. So perhaps I summarized a bit, but I think the spirit is the same.
I was sitting in a hotel bar in Japan talking to a couple of Scouters from other countries about our mutual issues in dealing with Venturing Crews. A Venture Crew is a Scouting unit formed up of young men and women ages 14 - 21. Take a group like that out into the woods, get them running around in all that fresh air and certain complications can ensue. The rules say “no sex” in all our countries (unless the couple involved in married, at least in the U.S.). My question was, how do you guys handle this. I was told that “the official word is ‘no sex, no drugs’, but if it appears that a particular couple’s getting together is inevitable, we give them condoms.” It’s definitely not official policy, though, even overseas; that was more ‘here’s how I would handle it’, not ‘here’s policy’ or ‘here’s what everyone else does’. And that’s for older kids. God knows if I got caught doing that and word got back to the Council office, I’d be out of Scouting. If I got caught doing that for 12-year-olds I’d probably get arrested, and deservedly so.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
October 23rd, 2007 at 8:30 am
I just think it’s a moral neutral, or a moral “would you please close the door to your room?”
And, again, why? Because people who think otherwise are big old prunes?
No, it is not like your friend’s five-year-old masturbating. Do you also think it’s no big deal if five-year-olds fuck? All sex play is one, right?
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
October 23rd, 2007 at 11:23 am
Jamila, some of the bloggers here can’t entirely afford to pay their own bills. They’re not ready to have sex? Many people have some parental support all the way through their PhD. Celibate to graduation, you say? There are people on public assistance or reliant on charitable contributions the world over; some people will be their entire lives. Do you think they need to do without? Should homeless people be fitted with chastity devices? Were you engaged in hyperbole, or were you actually making the argument that readiness for sex is dependent on financial means?
This comment was written by Thomas, TSID.Report this comment to the moderators
October 23rd, 2007 at 11:29 am
(FWIW, I don’t think 12 year olds are ready for intercourse either; and I’m generally in favor of a longer developmental timeline of partnered play before PIV or PIA intercourse, the latter two being freighted with more physical consequences, and for some people more emotional ones. However, the idea that we should be using ability to pay the bills as a proxy for maturity strikes me as the most … ill considered idea I’ve seen floated here.)
This comment was written by Thomas, TSID.Report this comment to the moderators
October 23rd, 2007 at 12:12 pm
I had sex with a very young teenager when I was myself a very young teenager. It was probably the least fraught or scaring sexual relationship I’ve ever had. But it was also kind of an ideal universe in which i had access to condoms and birth control and a lot of sex ed; so much that when I realized that PIV sex didnt really do much for me the first time I put a six month moratorium on it until my partner and I figured out how to work all the parts better.
I agree with Mandolin, in part, because I think that the ways sex hurts young teens has less to do with sex per se thank with the damage caused by having experiences that are out of your control, and result in consequences you couldn’t anticipate due to lack of knowledge and/or psychological development. There are ways to limit these harms and we should.
When I say I agree with Mandolin, I mean that I agree that I’m not promoting 12 year olds fucking, but I’m unwilling to say its alway harmful and never ok or positive.
This comment was written by curiousgyrl.Report this comment to the moderators
October 23rd, 2007 at 12:23 pm
I’ve spent some time trying to write a really good, all-around response to this post and thread, and you know, I’m just giving up and posting as stream of consciousness. There are so many interlocking pieces here that I think it would take a far better writer than I to express my thoughts. But I’ll try to be coherent!
1. This school has a city clinic in it. This says to me that the vast majority of the students do not have easy access to good medical care. Therefore I suspect, even if the article doesn’t say so explicitly, that the doctor(s) at the clinic are the primary care providers for most of the students who use the clinic. Also, if this clinic runs the way many clinics I know of do, the primary care providers are notified of medications and so on by the clinic, if the parents have provided that authorization. So even if the parents don’t know about the BC, the health care providers do, most of the time.
2. The only problem I have with the parents not knowing about their children using hormonal BC is that, in an emergency situation where the child may not be capable of communicating, the parents would not be able to give the health care professionals a complete list of medications. (This might also be a problem if the parent is big into over-the-counter remedies or natural medicine.)
3. I grew up in a small, rural/suburban community. My class size was about 200. In 5th grade, I knew of 3 couples who were having sex on a regular basis, at 10 years old. Also, in 6th grade, there were 2 girls who began having sex with older boys. So I was not shocked to hear that this school was providing condoms and hormonal BC. Due to the high rates of child abuse in this country, I believe there are preteens and young teens from all different backgrounds who are having sex, even if it’s not good for them, and my first thought when I heard this story on the radio was that the school authorities must be aware of a staggering amount of child abuse in their community to take this step. It might not be an optimal solution, but at least these girls won’t be getting pregnant at 12 years old.
4. Parents ought to be the people who know what’s best for their children. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. Just as there are curious kids who explore sex, there are adults who are too messed up (pick your definition of messed up) to do right by their kids. There are parents who don’t tell their girls about menstruation, so the girls think they are dying. There are parents who tell boys their penis will fall off if they masturbate. There are parents who have sex with their kids, or sell sexual access to their kids, or use their kids as bait to gain sexual access to other people’s kids. Letting a kid go to a clinic and get BC without notifying the parents could be the difference between a runaway or beaten child and a student who stays in school. Just because you (believe you) are a good parent doesn’t automatically mean that bad parents are the rare exception - to me that attitude stinks of privilege, and it smells a lot like white middle-class male privilege.
5. 12-year-olds having sex happens, just like 12-year-olds getting drunk happens. In a good and perfect world, it wouldn’t happen very often. I would prefer that adults do their best to make sure said 12-year-olds understand about sex and alcohol to the extent that they choose to wait until they’re older and better able to handle it, but I think we also have to be aware that said 12-year-olds may not be making the decisions on their own and need to be cushioned from the consequences of adults or older kids doing stuff to them.
‘Nuff said for now. I’m still wrapping my mind around the angles.
This comment was written by Original Lee.Report this comment to the moderators
October 23rd, 2007 at 12:24 pm
But it was also kind of an ideal universe in which i had access to condoms and birth control and a lot of sex ed; so much that when I realized that PIV sex didnt really do much for me the first time I put a six month moratorium on it until my partner and I figured out how to work all the parts better.
I’d love to know what your parents did so I can replicate it. I hope my kids are that mature about sex in their teens.
This comment was written by Thomas, TSID.Report this comment to the moderators
October 23rd, 2007 at 3:34 pm
The only problem I have with the parents not knowing about their children using hormonal BC is that, in an emergency situation where the child may not be capable of communicating, the parents would not be able to give the health care professionals a complete list of medications.
Parents ought to be the people who know what’s best for their children. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. Just as there are curious kids who explore sex, there are adults who are too messed up (pick your definition of messed up) to do right by their kids.
The only way I could approve of the first scenario is if there is proof of the second scenario.
Just because you (believe you) are a good parent doesn’t automatically mean that bad parents are the rare exception - to me that attitude stinks of privilege, and it smells a lot like white middle-class male privilege.
Are you saying that you believe that only white middle-class males make the presumption that they are good parents? Do you believe that non-white middle-class males don’t presume they are good parents? Do you believe that non-white middle-class males cannot be presumed to be good parents? What are you saying here?
12-year-olds having sex happens, just like 12-year-olds getting drunk happens. In a good and perfect world, it wouldn’t happen very often.
In a good and perfect world, it wouldn’t happen at all.
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
October 23rd, 2007 at 3:42 pm
“I needed to write my name!” “With your penis?” *small child giggling*
O.K. Political joke, feel free to substitute your own favorite politicians in it:
President Clinton look out a window of the Oval Office one fine January day and sees “Clinton sucks!” written in the snow in a yellow script. He calls the Secret Service and asks them to investigate who did it. He figures he could get them on vandalism, trespassing, etc., etc.
The Secret Service comes back and says, “Mr. President, we have some bad news.” “What?” “Well, we did a DNA analysis of the urine, and we found it it was Al Gore.” “Oh!” But he thinks to himself, well, that’s not so bad, he’s just jerking my chain. Then the Secret Service man says, “Mr. President, we have some other bad news.” “What’s that?” “Well, it’s Hillary’s handwriting.”
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
October 23rd, 2007 at 4:24 pm
I hate to raise the most common complaint here on Alas, but isn’t that a bit of a straw 12 year old?
I and others who are not in favor of 12 year old sex do not (generally) think that it’s NEVER ok, or that it’s ALWAYS a bad idea, or ALWAYS harmful. Always and never are pretty limiting terms and there are very few human interactions–if any–that are so polarized as that.
I don’t need to think “all” 12yosex is bad to be against it in general. i simply need to think (as I do) that some of it is fine and some of it is bad–and that the harm is worse than the good, generally speaking. As I do. Are there exceptions? Sure! But exceptions don’t drive the rule.
This comment was written by Sailorman.Report this comment to the moderators
October 23rd, 2007 at 4:37 pm
There’s a difference between being in a position to easily do something and being able to do it at all. A grad student can drop out of school and find a job to support their family. It might not be what they want to do, but it’s an option. 12 year old doesn’t have that option.
This comment was written by joe.Report this comment to the moderators
October 23rd, 2007 at 6:01 pm
Joe, are you really arguing for a financial means test? Because there are elderly people, disabled people, and just plain poor people who are not self-supporting at all. Should they be celibate?
Further, you say no 12 year old can self-support. False. Scottish parliamentarian Kier Hardy helped support his whole family at age 7, and don’t think there are no kids today who make their way with hard work and their wits by themselves now.Beg, steal, scam, turn tricks, deal … I knew a fourteen year old who occasionally ran away and lived like that for months. Mike Oher, the subject of the book Blind Side and a D-1 offensive lineman at Ole Miss now, lived essentially without parental support for years.
Seriously. Fucking means test for sex. Seriously.
This comment was written by Thomas, TSID.Report this comment to the moderators
October 23rd, 2007 at 6:15 pm
Jamila’s just coming from that libertarian/Objectivist viewpoint that says if you don’t produce your own wealth, and if you ever openly rely on help from anyone, you’re not one of the Elect.
Original Lee, I’m not arguing against children getting health care. But what you’re saying is that it’s racist and classist for a parent to say “I would like to be involved in my child’s health care, and I don’t think my kid is mature enough to, say, give a comprehensive and useful medical history,” and that because some parents suck all parents do.
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
October 23rd, 2007 at 7:19 pm
Thomas, no I’m not arguing for a financial means test for sex. I’m pointing out that in general a 12 year old is not going to be able to care for and raise a child. Are you actually arguing against that?
Seriously. Fucking 12 year olds as the ideal parent. Seriously. (I know that’s not what you said but I didn’t propose a financial means test for sex either)
Also, from what I know of the pill, it works best if taken at the same time and in the absence of other medication. I think that 12 year olds are less likely to use it in the most effective way than a older person. I think this is more true if they’re hiding it’s use from their parents.
I don’t think that (in general) 12 year olds are responsible enough to have sex. I think 12 year olds (in general) are too influenced by what they think they should be doing. I think that (in many cases) 12 year olds don’t have an adult’s sense of self confidence. I think that this will combine to make it hard (in general) for (most) 12 year olds to resist the idea that they should have sex with their significant other because they’ve been dating for what seems to them like a long time. From what I remember of being 12 there was a strong desire to start being a grown up. I don’t think it’s societally beneficial to tell young, impressionable people with an underdeveloped sense of self; “Yeah, you’re old enough to have sex. Go ahead.” That message won’t come in a vacuum.
Also, in my experience, children at the age of 12 are still very selfish and focused on their own wants. I think that in our current society telling 12 year old boys and girls that they’re too young to have sex will help prevent a lot of 12 year old girls from having pretty bad experiences.
I know that the post stipulated two enthusiastic participants. I think that situation would be the exception, not the rule.
This comment was written by joe.Report this comment to the moderators
October 23rd, 2007 at 10:42 pm
Mythago, I wasn’t trying to say it’s racist and classist to say, “I want to be involved in my child’s health care.” I was trying to take the Nice Guy(TM) entitlement riff and apply it to parental notification, but I guess I didn’t articulate it very well. Maybe I should have dragged in an abortion analogy more explicitly.
As a parent myself, I would certainly want to know if any of my children were using BC, especially hormonal BC. If my kids don’t feel they can ask me to take them to the doctor for BC, or if they don’t feel they can talk to me about having sex, not having sex, etc., then something is very wrong. Yet I am all too aware that there are many kids in situations where they cannot safely talk to their parents about these things, and the majority of these kids are poor and not white, and quite a lot of people who don’t want kids to have confidential access to certain kinds of health care are opposing it because they can’t imagine why any kid would need to go behind a parent’s back . Obviously from your posts, this isn’t why you are critical of this school’s decision to provide hormonal BC. But it is why it had a kinda classist and racist flavor to me.
I also think we’re talking somewhat at cross-purposes, because I’m postulating a population of middle-school kids who are having sex primarily with significantly older teenagers and with adults, while you appear to be postulating a population of middle-school kids who are having sex primarily with yearmates. I think you’d agree that these are effectively two different groups of kids. I personally do not think either group should be having sex. I also do not think that making confidential BC services available to them is going to give them the green light to have sex willy-nilly - I think the ones that are gonna, are gonna, regardless of BC availability. (The chaperones for the 5th grade field trip last winter caught 2 kids engaged in “significant foreplay” outdoors in 30-degree weather - however far you can get in about 15 minutes, because that’s how often the chaperones made the rounds - just so you know I’m looking at this not just with anecdotes from my youth.)
A serious question: If a 12-year-old girl went to Planned Parenthood for hormonal BC, would she be able to get it, and would her parents be notified? I honestly don’t know the answer, but I think their policy would inform my position significantly.
This comment was written by Original Lee.Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2007 at 3:32 am
why do you assume this?
This comment was written by joe.Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2007 at 6:45 am
Hey, Joe, I’m not taking up for 12 year olds having sex. I’m taking issue with Jamila’s idea that financial self-support is a prerequisite for sex. If you’re not in favor of her argument (and you’ve said you’re not), I wasn’t talking to you.
This comment was written by Thomas, TSID.Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2007 at 8:02 am
You’re talking to me than because I think the fact that (most) 12 year olds are not in any position to be good parents is an excellent argument that they shouldn’t be having sex. I don’t think that it’s the only argument but I think it’s a compelling one. The financial problems, while important, are not the only reason 12 year olds will (usually) be bad parents.
I would say that anyone who could be no better parent than a (typical) 12 year old shouldn’t have sex until they more able to raise a child. A (typical) 12 year old would just have to wait a few years, so the consequences of telling them to abstain are that they wait.
I don’t think this would includes either the elderly (in general) or most of the disabled.
This comment was written by joe.Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2007 at 9:29 am
Joe, you’re arguing with a position I’m not taking.
This comment was written by Thomas, TSID.Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2007 at 9:45 am
Oh, in that case I’ll stop. Just out of curiousity, what are you arguing?
This comment was written by joe.Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2007 at 9:47 am
There are so many misconceptions flying around here - even from some people with kids - that it’s amazing to me. Some of those include:
1) Parents can stop kids from having sex.
2) if you deny children contraceptives/information (see: Jamila), they won’t have sex until you decide they are ready.
3) If you homeschool children, they won’t have sex until you decide they are ready.
4) parents, who by and large have no medical experience at all, are better decision-makers regarding health care than doctors.
5) parents own their children. Children should not be allowed to control their own bodies.
6) how one person reacts to sex must be how everyone reacts to sex. E.g., if I find that sex is necessarily very emotionally involved, everyone must feel that way.
7) children should be protected zealously from any kind of harm, emotional or phyisical, because any harm at all is Bad, be it a skinned knee or a failed relationship.
Some of the more offensive concepts I’ve seen include:
a) it’s totally ok for people on this thread to make judgments regarding who should and should not have sex. I doubt anyone here would accept another person telling them that they are not allowed to have sex, but several people seem to be under the impression that it’s ok for them to say when it’s acceptable for others to do so.
b) only people who are completely self-sufficient should be allowed to have sex. (i.e. sex is a privilege of the wealthy).
c) if parents deprive their children of health care, that’s just too bad, I guess those kids will just have to suffer, oh well. (See: Robert).
d) children shouldn’t have access to health care unless their parents approve. Likewise, denying children health care is a valid parental choice.
e) telling a person that they are not allowed to have sex is the same as telling them they are not allowed to drive an automobile.
For the record, I think contraceptives should be free to every person in the world, for obvious reasons. I don’t really think it’s my business to say whether a class or group of people should be kept from having sex. That’s a very personal decision and I am not the person. I do have a son, and I am not worried about him having access to contraceptives. I know he’s a smart kid and will make good decisions. Jamila protects her kids by locking them up at home; I think that’s a very foolish tactic destined to backfire unless you have the most whipped, meek, cowed kids ever.
I don’t think parents should be able to make children’s sexual choices for them any more than I think that parents should be able to use their children sexually.
This comment was written by eyelid.Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2007 at 10:08 am
I think they just talked to me honestly about sex from the time I was a toddler, emphasized that sex should be pleasurable, and that you shouldn’t have sex with people you don’t love; not for moral reasons, but because its not as fun. That last bit hasn’t always been my position, but I think it puts the right emphasis on things when I was a kid. She was also very direct about saying that masturbation is how you “figure out what you like,” and making sure I had access to birth control and condoms and understood them well.
All that said, it wasn’t like my mom was thrilled about the idea of me having sex as a young person. She didn’t want to know what was going on, she didn’t let me spend the night with my boyfriend. She just knew that she couldn’t really stop me from having sex if I was going to and was less thrilled about me lacking resources and information and being in danger than about me having sex.
I guess I think this principle applies to all teenagers; we may not like 12-year-olds having sex, but we cant really prevent it. Providing health care and social support and lots of information can help reduce the potential harms of precocious sexual activity. Even if that support decreases the average age of onset for sexual activity (which I have no reason to think it would, just saying), I would still think the overall harms of young people’s sexual activity have probably been reduced.
As for young teens not being able to support children, all the more reason they should have free birth control. This however would probably equally apply to most people under the age of 18, which while it might be desirable if people delayed sex that long, is so far from reality that it wouldn’t be a particularly interesting topic of discussion as far I am concerned.
This comment was written by curiousgyrl.Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2007 at 10:10 am
Do you really mean this? Under any circumstances? If a 12 year old falls in love with a 22 year old the partents should have no right to try and stop them from having sex? I don’t agree with that.
This comment was written by joe.Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2007 at 10:39 am
I don’t really think it’s my business to say whether a class or group of people should be kept from having sex. That’s a very personal decision and I am not the person. I do have a son, and I am not worried about him having access to contraceptives.
How about the class of people “toddler”?
How about the class of people “coma victim”?
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
eyelid, out of curiousity, are YOU a parent?
This comment was written by Kate L..Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2007 at 12:40 pm
Robert, I think you missed the bit where eyelid says decision. Coma victims and toddlers are not capable of making informed decisions. Whether a 12-year-old can is highly debatable, and especially where hormones are involved, I’d hazard a no.
If you’re still around, Robert, I’d like you to address comment #31.
This comment was written by Thene.Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2007 at 1:28 pm
eyelid:
4) parents, who by and large have no medical experience at all, are better decision-makers regarding health care than doctors.
Doctors are better than the average parent at understanding (and hopefully explaining) the technical aspects of “here’s what’ll happen if you do this, here’s what’ll happen if you don’t do that.” But provision of birth control to a 12-year old is far more than a technical medical decision. Provision of contraceptives, etc., is not simply “healthcare” anymore than abortion is. There are moral aspects to it and there are issues regarding the specific emotional and mental makeup of the child. Doctors are nobody special when it comes to evaluating those. They can and should be consultants in the matter, but not the decision makers.
5) parents own their children. Children should not be allowed to control their own bodies.
Children do not start out in life knowing how to control their own bodies. They do not start out in life knowing what’s best for them. It is the responsibility of a parent to teach their children these things, and as long as the parents and the children don’t break the law the State should not otherwise interfere. While the parent is doing this job, the parent has the responsibility to prevent their child from making choices that will (or has the potential to) do lasting harm, physically if necessary. And it’s the parent, not the State, who has both the right and the responsibility to determine what “lasting harm” means.
d) children shouldn’t have access to health care unless their parents approve. Likewise, denying children health care is a valid parental choice.
A parent should have final say over a child’s access to and use of healthcare unless there is an immediate risk to that child’s life.
That’s the law, too. I am often responsible for other people’s children in environments that are generally physically riskier than those kids live in. Yet I have to have a signed document from a parent or guardian to give that kid so much as an asprin or let a doctor or nurse even look at him unless the child’s life is in immediate danger. Yet the proposal here seems to be that the State should be able to supply a 12 year old with birth control or other contraception without even telling the parent, never mind getting their permission.
Again; while contraception and sex definitely have healthcare elements, contraception and healthcare are not identical.
For the record, I think contraceptives should be free to every person in the world, for obvious reasons.
The people who manufacture, sell and distribute contraceptives have to eat. They have to be paid. Now, unless you have a plan wherein the people who end up paying for these contraceptives do so voluntarily, “free” is pretty deceptive. Who do you think should be forced to pay for your plan, and why?
This comment was written by RonF.Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2007 at 1:46 pm
Eyelid, this is really a bit much:
Did you just suggest that restricting your 12 year old’s ability to have sex is in the same category of harm as sexually abusing your 12 year old?
As one of those parents who suffers from “misconceptions” and who may even hold “offensive” beliefs about parenting–are you freakin’ serious? Or is this hyperbole–in which case, would you mind pointing out what else in your post is hyperbole?
Um, yeah, they can do a lot. Not when they’re older (we’re not talking about 16 year olds.) But at 12? That’d be 8th grade-they’re too young to drive, they don’t have a lot of money. Many parents are pretty involved in knowing what their 12 year old is doing.
I didn’t think that’s what Jamila said, so I went back and reread each of her posts to be sure. And hey, that’s not what she said.
See above. You are deliberately distorting people.
Would you mind quoting who said this?
Quotes, please.
To the degree that claim has been made, it’s largely being made by the PRO-kiddie-sex crowd, not by their opponents. Just FYI.
I added the bold text. Is that what you were trying to say? Or are you completely in the wrong thread.
This is just Jamila being Jamila. I don’t think anyone else has really agreed and I think she’s even backed off it a tad.
Oh hell, I can’t bear to respond to the rest.
This comment was written by Sailorman.Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2007 at 2:26 pm
It depends. Could these same bloggers come up with the funds to pay for an abortion if they wanted one in the case of an unplanned pregnancy? Would these bloggers be able to rally for the resources that they need to raise a child with the help of family and friends? Is not being able to afford to pay their own bills a temporary circumstance or a long-term problem?
I would have to know the details of the particular bloggers’ life before I could suggest whether or not they need to lay off of the sexual activities for awhile.
If someone is pursuing a PhD then this person is definitely able to take care of themselves, but with the help of their family, they have decided to forgo the world of work temporarily. There’s nothing wrong with that.
A 12 year old is not able to take care of themselves. They can’t get jobs. They can’t drive. They can’t vote. They can’t join the military. The pots they piss in were bought by other people and the window they throw it out of is owned by their parents.
There is a difference between being able to take care of yourself and not being able to take of yourself.
Again, I would have to know the specifics. Are we talking about people living in poverty in a third world country or are we talking about folks living in the lap of luxury on someone else’s dime in the first world? Are we talking about teen moms who made a bad choice or two or are we talking about the mentally and/or physically disabled?
No.
I am making the argument that fitness for sex is atleast partially dependent on being a financially stable adult.
This comment was written by Jamila Akil.Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2007 at 2:35 pm
Just because I am curious. Is anyone in the “it’s not a big deal if 12 year olds have sex” crowd actually a parent, or has ever been one?
Because I feel like a lot of the discussion of “hey, it’s not that big of a deal” is on a pretty theoretical level, and I feel like when you don’t have children of your own it might be a little easier to make this more theoretical.
I would have been against 12 year olds having sex when I was not a parent, but the idea that people think it’s not a big deal is particularly bothersome to me as a parent. And, I guess it is particularly bothersome to me as a feminist parent of a daughter.
Joe said exactly what I was thinking here: “Also, in my experience, children at the age of 12 are still very selfish and focused on their own wants. I think that in our current society telling 12 year old boys and girls that they’re too young to have sex will help prevent a lot of 12 year old girls from having pretty bad experiences. ”
Basically, according to guttmacher, a lot of the sex that young women have when they are young, and especially their first sexual encounters are unwanted sexual encounters. NOt forced, per se, but unwanted. We want to protect 12 year old girls from eating disorders because the influence from their friends can be so harmful and make them make choices that are downright dangerous. If we are to presume that 12 year olds can not make good decisions about their bodies when it comes to eating such that we want to protect them from harm in some ways, then I don’t especially see why that logic is not then extended to sex for 12 year olds. I don’t especially think 12 year old boys are any less harmed by having sex at 12 than girls, I just think that they will be cheered a lot more than the girls would… that’s not nececssarily a good thing.
I can’t adequately articulate my thoughts on this. My reaction to the idea that it’s morally neutral… or not even morally… but not in any way harmful for an average 12 year old to be having sex is so visceral that I can’t quite put my thoughts together.
Masturbation not the same thing as sex. 16 not the same thing as 12 (although I admit I still think 16 is probably too young for a lot of people).
Sorry… I can’t communicate properly…
This comment was written by Kate L..Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2007 at 2:35 pm
I haven’t backed away from it. At a financial minimum I think you should have an emergency abortion fund so that in case the contraception fails you won’t be forced to frantically run around asking for money for an abortion.
This comment was written by Jamila Akil.Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2007 at 2:43 pm
OK, I read through some of the comments on this thread that I hadn’t previously. I’m not going to get particularly involved, but I will say this:
It’s not appropriate to use parenthood as a metric for whether or not one is permitted to have an opinion on this. We were all twelve; we have all experienced parents and other children and other parents. This is not a fiddly, practical detail , nor is it about a period of childhood most of have only fuzzy memory of (e.g. how our parents settled down tantrums when we were 3). People who aren’t parents might have a different perspective than people who are (though I’m not convinced of that — I had a few parents over on my own blog who agreed with my post, and I don’t know that everyone arguing here against it is a parent), but it’s unreasonable to disqualify people’s perspectives on the basis of “you will have a different perspective from mine.”
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2007 at 2:51 pm
Jamila, #80
…or, you could campaign for universal health care to be free at the point of use so that anyone who needs an abortion, be they 12, 16, homeless, a PhD student, a married homeowner with a decent job, or whatever, can have one. Alternatively, you could make your arguments a bit less US-centric. I’ve always had access to free abortion - does that mean it would’ve been okay for me to have a lot of sex when I was 16 (or 12?), but not okay for a American kid of similar age and of similar personal resources (ie. not a lot)?
RonF, #76:
Thanks, but that’s why I had to wait 7 years to get the mental health care I needed. Why should I not have been able to access that resource by myself when I was 11? Was my life not at risk enough? If, say, I’d had the same difficulties but expressed them through severe self-harm or a suicide attempts, would I have been more deserving of access to healthcare?
This comment was written by Thene.Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2007 at 2:58 pm
I’m opposed to universal health care, partly because I don’t think that people who believe abortion to be an abomination should be forced to have their money taken away from them to fund the procedure for someone else.
This comment was written by Jamila Akil.Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2007 at 3:26 pm
This is my most favorite argument ever, because it is always applied equally across the board, and I certainly never fund anything with my taxes that I believe to be an abomination.
—Myca
This comment was written by Myca.Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
I’m morally opposed to roads, entitlements, debt servicing and defense spending. I’d like my taxes reduced by the percentage of the federal budget associated with those items.
(that’s not actually true, but it would be nice to ride free.)
This comment was written by joe.Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2007 at 4:15 pm
Jamila, I’m morally opposed to the war on drugs. I don’t want to fund enforcement of drug prohibition. I’m morally opposed to wars of imperial conquest, so I want my share of the Iraq war funding back.
We can play this game all day.
When if comes down to it, you said that being financially self-supporting is a factor in whether an adult ought to have sex, and you said you meant it. For everyone that does not already sing in your choir, you’re done; so I’m done.
This comment was written by Thomas, TSID.Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2007 at 4:19 pm
Jamila, I’m with Joe, Thomas and Myca on that one - I’d add that if I think my tax money is being spent on something I find abominable, I’d be more interested in campaigning to change that spending democratically than to stop a whole load of other, morally necessary spending just in case. I would like to know your thoughts on my general question, though - given that my country has democratically decided that abortion should be legal and free, would it have been okay for 16-year-old-me (or, indeed, 12?) to have had sex, but not okay for a 16-year-old US dweller to have sex?
This comment was written by Thene.Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2007 at 4:24 pm
As far as I’m concerned, this is not a game. If you are morally opposed to those things then why don’t you concentrate on trying to get taxes reduced, get politicians in office who want to reduce the budget, etc., instead of just trying to increase federal entitlements that will make others feel miserable paying for stuff they don’t want–the same thing that is happening to you and to me.
I also hate the war on drugs, don’t want to fund ridiculous drug enforement laws, and oppose wars of imperial conquest. So what’s your point?
This comment was written by Jamila Akil.Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2007 at 4:31 pm
Thene,
I’m not opposed to funding things that I deem “morally necessary”.
I might need you to clarify what you mean if I don’t answer your question fully.
I don’t think that in most cases 16 year olds should be having sex either. Doesn’t matte to me whether they are in the US or elsewhere. My thoughts on this also depend on context. If a sixteen year old is living on his/her own anyway, or maybe married, or maybe they are off at college supporting themselves, then I could see feeling differently about the question; it depends on the situation of the 16 year old.
There are places in which it is normal for 16 year olds to get married and maintain their own households, in which case they are considered adults.
This comment was written by Jamila Akil.Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2007 at 4:33 pm
Fair enough, Jamila, but are you opposed, across the board, to all Military funding because you don’t believe that Jehovah’s Witnesses or Quakers should be forced to fund things that they consider abominations?
Do you oppose all funding for the interstate highway system because you don’t feel that Luddites should be forced to fund things that they consider abominations?
—Myca
This comment was written by Myca.Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2007 at 4:44 pm
The person who makes the decisions is the doctor.
No, it isn’t.
An individual may recognize that they do not have the competence to make a particular decision, and decide that they will do what the doctor recommends. This is a common, and sensible, decision to reach in many contexts, not just health care. My mechanic tells me what needs to be done, and I say “ok, do it”.
But it isn’t the expert’s decision. The expert is a paid tool.
Suppose a child was being harmed by someone outside the home, and couldn’t face telling their family, but could approach a doctor? (And of course, suppose they were being abused within the family? Can you really say ‘hey, this is great for most of the kids with nice families, so we may as well tell the abuse victims to stuff it’?)
I’m not sure where I’m doing that. And if a child has the courage to approach a doctor, then they have the courage to approach a nurse or a teacher or a principle, too.
I’ll ask you again; should a parent be allowed to stop a child from having an abortion?
Yes.
I might add that asking me to rely on clergy is abominably shortsighted and ethnocentric, and makes it sound like you’re not that good at imagining how other people’s situations might look from the inside.
I didn’t ask you to rely on clergy. I suggested clergy as one possible avenue, among many others. As for “ethnocentric”, what, you belong to the Kalumba people, who have a genetic aversion to professional religious? As far as I know, religious leaders serve in social welfare roles among every people on Earth.
If you meant, “Robert, you didn’t work on the assumption that everyone in the world is a secular hyperrationalist who scorns the notion that a spiritual leader could provide help in a crisis”, then yeah, you’re right, I didn’t do that. Because it would be stupid to do that.
Sorry I didn’t respond to this before your explicit request. I didn’t see it.
This comment was written by Robert.Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2007 at 5:05 pm
No, I don’t oppose all military funding. What would happen if another Hitler took control of a country and there is no military anywhere else in the world to stop him/her? A military should be used to defend a nation or, I believe, to stop genocide from occuring in another part of the world–basically a military should only be used for purposes that virtually everyone agrees are absolutely necessary, purposes which private enterprises cannot or should not handle.
I oppose wars for imperialism, nation building, oil, Saddam Hussein tried to kill your Daddie….
If the Luddites will absolutely never make use of the highway system for any reason then I don’t see why they should be forced to fund it.
But for practical purposes, a highway system is like a military, in that everyone will probably need it at one point or another. You’ll take the highway to work, the goods you get from the grocery store were driven there on the highway, when you take a roadtrip to go visit someone across the country you’ll be using the highway, if an ambulance needs to come get you because you had a stroke then you are indirectly using the highway…
This comment was written by Jamila Akil.Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2007 at 5:54 pm
Wow. I go away for what, two hours? And all of a sudden the (interesting) 12-year-old-sex thread is a tax-debate thread. Sigh; I liked the original topic better, and I would have liked it a LOT better when I was 12.
This comment was written by Sailorman.Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2007 at 7:07 pm
It’s not appropriate to use parenthood as a metric for whether or not one is permitted to have an opinion on this. We were all twelve; we have all experienced parents and other children and other parents.
The issue is not being “permitted” to have an opinion; it’s whether somebody who bases their entire understanding of childhood development and maturity on What I Was Like At That Age, and/or who has no stake at all in policies affecting children (hey, I don’t have a kid, not my problem) is talking out of their ass.
There’s a saying that everybody is a perfect parent until they become one. That doesn’t mean if you’re not a parent, you should STFU. But it does mean that perhaps the best approach to the subject of childhood maturity is not “You parents are all control freaks with bad intentions and I know because I was that age once.”
Original Lee, I don’t think that many parents who are against the distribution of contraceptives truly can’t imagine why any child would not talk to their parents. They probably know that there aren’t too many parents who would say “Oh, you’re having sex with other twelve-year-olds? Whatever. Here’s $20 for your Pills.”
This comment was written by mythago.Report this comment to the moderators
October 24th, 2007 at 7:15 pm
In my view, if you don’t know enough to use condoms and buy your own birth control, you’re too young to be having sex. I’m guessing that the school has a problem with unwanted pregnancies and in that case, I can understand why it’s being given but it in no way means that they are prepared for sexual relationships. That being said, there are plenty of older people who are emotionally crippled and thus should not be in sexual relationships.
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October 24th, 2007 at 10:27 pm
I have a young teenage brother who called me to say “I lost my virginity!” and who has asked me to help him get condoms and emergency contraception. I helped with that and also had a long talk with him about the importance of not pressuring girls for sex, not viewing girls solely as providers of sex, ways he might try to be sure that his partner is enjoying sex, and reasons a girl might agree to sex even if she really doesn’t want to. I don’t think my brother is particularly mature for his age, and I dont especially like the idea of him having sex, but I thought my response was better than “no I’m not buying you condoms, don’t have sex and lets never speak of this again!”
I also agreed not to say anything to our parents; this was easy as I knew he would do it anyway, which he did.
All that is to say I think I do have some experience despite not being a parent, and I think you are talking out of *your* ass!
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October 25th, 2007 at 3:02 am
Thank you Mythago.
Mandolin, I wasn’t suggesting that if you are not a parent it means you are not permitted to have an opinion… I was simply postulating that perhaps it is easier to think of this idea as abstract if you are not a parent, and I often find when discussions go to the abstract, theoretical level and sort of become disembodied they lose a lot meaning… sigh, like I said, I’m not articulating myself well here.
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October 25th, 2007 at 3:10 am
I’d prefer it if you’d address the ideas, rather than the background they came from, since this is an arena in which everyone has some experience.
Also: the tax digression may be over now, but in case it wanted to resurrect, let me mod it away. Poof. That aspect of the objectivist/virgin argument is clear, and now we shall move to others.
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October 25th, 2007 at 7:11 am
Jamila:
You’re right, it was clunky. I’ll try again. I was referring to a couple of things you’d said previously:
Excepting the four months I spent living in the USA, I have never had to worry about an emergency abortion fund. (And even then, I could’ve come straight back home if I’d had to.) It’s always been there for free. Does that mean teenage-me was more ready for sex than a US teenager? And if it doesn’t mean that, why are you mentioning the cost of abortion at all? That cost is an artificial barrier, one that the young citizens of most developed nations don’t have to worry about. It can’t be used as a reason to delay sex, because it’s not intrinsic to the situation. It’s just an unusual feature of US society. For most people in the world, when we think of child on child sex, the cost of abortion is not a consideration.
I think I wasn’t clear there either - I was thinking it was strange to, say, oppose the government providing free vaccinations to all children on the grounds that the same universal system might provide abortions. It’s strange to oppose free hip replacements for all elderly people who need them, or free emergency care for people who’ve been hit by cars, because the same system might let some people have abortions. It’s really strange to oppose free contraception and contraceptive advice because the same system might give free abortions, seeing as those things would reduce the abortion rate drastically. I find universal health care as a whole morally necessary, and if I don’t agree with some of what it does, I’ll argue that one out with my political representatives rather than deny ALL health care to other people.
Robert:
That’s not necessarily true, because medical contact (at least where I come from) is legally confidential in a way that contact with other professionals is not. They also may be approached from necessity in a way the others may not. You might have to go tell a doctor long before you’d ever get brave enough to go tell a teacher.
The place where you’re telling abuse victims to stuff it is in the idea that their (for the purposes of this example, abusive) parent can control their access to a bare necessity. You’re basically saying that it’s okay for a parent to break a child’s fingers and then prevent them from accessing a doctor, or rape them and then prevent them accessing a doctor (or having an abortion, should it be necessary). You cannot assume good faith on the part of the parents when such a huge proportion of abusers are parents (or step-parents that share that parental responsibility). Saying that because most parents are good it’s alright to have such faith in parenthood that the child should never need to reach out for care alone is inconsistent with reality and I think it compounds abuse.
That’s forced pregnancy, just as it would be if a male partner, or a court of law, forced a child to go through with a pregnancy. I can’t condone any position that leads to that result. I couldn’t condone any position that forced people (of any age) to have abortions either. We’ll have to agree to disagree on that point.
No, I called you ethnocentric because in my society, as in most Western European societies, fewer than 10% of people attend a weekly religious service. That regular contact with religion is a feature of some societies but not others. Having spiritual leaders within your general society doesn’t mean that they are part of your personal society - doesn’t mean they have a thing to do with you, or that you have any reason to approach them. (I also found the word you used, ‘clergy’, offputting - I’ve never heard that word used for anything other than a Christian religious hierarchy, so any non-Christian use of the term is a pure theoretical for me. It might be used for other groups, but I’ve never seen it done, so it sounded off to me. Sorry if this was a misunderstanding on my part, but I could not imagine your words were, from your POV, referring to anything other than a Christian officiary, with any other meaning having to be ‘translated’ from your culture into another.)
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October 25th, 2007 at 8:49 am
Can I just call this “kid sex” for short, and refer to 12 year olds as “kids?” because typing “12 year olds having consensual sexual encounters” all the time makes my finger sore.
Ok then. The defenders of kid sex seem to be making five distinct points.
First, that things like access to doctors/BC/sex ed are necessary for kids, and that denying them to kids is a big problem.
Second, that providing kids with access to doctors/BC/sex ed, and/or treating kids as if they are assumed to be sexually active, has little to no effect on whether or not the kids actually have sex.
Third, that parents’ attempts to control their kids’ sexual activity is essentially pointless (at the good end) or actually counterproductive (at the bad end.)
Fourth, that it’s wrong for parents or anyone else to even want/attempt to control the kids’ sex lives.
Fifth and finally, that there is no real harm from kids having sex.
Am I getting the major ones? If not, I’m hoping someone (mandolin et al) will correct me.
Now:
The first issue (BC) has been conceded by a variety of people, including me. IN THE END, it may be worth providing BC and/or sex ed to kids. I’m happy to concede that possibility, and I think that it’s one of the pro-kid-sex folks stronger arguments.
The second issue (does availability of BC etc affect behavior) has been addressed by the anti-kid-sex side. I’ve written, for example, on why I think that treating kids differently can lead to changes in their behavior. the pro-kid-sex side hasn’t really addressed this much, I don’t think. I’m hoping you’ll do so.
The third issue has been also a bit ignored, or perhaps mistreated. The claim by the anti-kid-sex folks is that parents can AFFECT behavior of 12 year old children. The claim is NOT that parents can control the behavior 100%, or that it will work for all children, etc etc. Speaking for myself, I don’t think the prosexers have really addressed this complaint.
There seems to be a moral split on the fourth issue. I might understand it better if folks put some limits on it. I’ll take a stab at it myself and say that there’s a gradual transition of parents’ “right” to have any say in their kids’ sex lives over the ages of, oh, ten to eighteen or so, and that at age 12, they still have a lot of right to control based on the kids’ presumed immaturity. I’d appreciate it if the “parents have no rights” folks could elaborate: does this start at age 12? Age 11? Is it lifelong?
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October 25th, 2007 at 9:17 am
Sailor, you’re asking for way more moral absolutes than I’m ever going to give you. Context, context, context.
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October 25th, 2007 at 9:38 am
Mandolin said:
~I disagree that sex is inherently dangerous because of emotional entanglement … blah blah. There’s just nothing that special about sex.~
I was with you up until that point. I agree with Mythago–it’s great that you have a normal healthy attitude towards and with having sex. But that in itself is rare these days. I wish that everyone could be as healthy talking about it as you are. But they aren’t. But I don’t wish everyone felt like you do—Sex is very Special. Especially between the right people. There are emotions involved in sex, whether we want them to be or not. And the majority of 12 year olds cannot handle all of what’s involved at that age.
I think the program is attempting to stop unwanted pregnancy. A noble attempt, sure. What folks should really be up in arms about is that the SCHOOL has to step in and take action, because the family is not. Parents should be doing this, but they haven’t so the school has to parent the child. Which puts too much responsibility unfairly onto educators. But hey, such is the society we live in. Want to change it? Be a mentor or have your own kids to ensure there will be some normal ppl left in the world.
I agree with Jamila. 12 is too young to have sex. Period. In my world, it’s too young for petting, heavy or otherwise. My son is soooo going to hate me when he hits puberty (which will be too early, thanks to all the rBST hormones in our milk, chicken and beef, but that’s another post) because I will be ON HIM like white on rice–like my mother was on me. Sure, I got curious, but my Mom kept me on lockdown. And on the few times I escaped her watchful eye, 1. Neighbors told on me and 2. I got the whupping/beating of a lifetime, which kinda discourages you from skipping track practice to hang out with a boy. Never did it again after that. Yes, I did eventually do the do my senior year, with some undeserving twit of a penis–I know parents can’t be everywhere. But while she was playing Gestapo with me, I got LOTS of lectures–to the point where I’d ask for a whupping instead of the lecture so it would be over with–so I knew all about BC and didn’t get pregnant. However, I also knew it wasn’t for me, and didn’t have sex again until soph year of college.
I really loved Ann’s post on the topic. Predators aside, I think too many of us of-age adults use sex as a weapon. Not even in the context of rape. I think sex for money between girlfriends/boyfriends, guys looking to be seen as cool, girls trying to achieve intimacy through intercourse, guys saying “I don’t want a relationship but I will fuck you”…knowing good and well once you do that, you know she will want one. I think it does take it’s toll on your emotions, if not your soul. But I guess that’s just me and Ann…I am a bit of a fantasist.
Basically, the program is probably a good thing. It sucks though, that it has to exist. And Mandolin, I think you might be trivializing the situation just a wee bit. Sex, whether between same age-12 years olds or older folks and 12 years old is a big deal. Sex is a big deal. Probably too big for kids that young. But…
Also, I don’t know what Jamila has done in the past, but wow. I’m almost scared to agree with her. I said almost. Call me guilty of the theory that if it worked for my mom and I came out decent, it works for me. You are NOT grown at 12 or 16 (in most cases) So yep, my body and actions belonged to and were controlled by my parents. Mostly mom, as she was the disciplinarian. You want something? Get a job and get it. Something that didn’t upset me as a teen, I concurred and went and got a job. I also got the “Until you can take care of yourself and a baby, NO SEX” speech. It seems just as reasonable to me now as it did then. I saw many girls in my high school destined to a life of food stamps–which was very humiliating to me because we had them too–because of having babies in junior high. It never occurred to us (me and mom) to use BC in school, because I understood that BC is never 100% effective. There are slipups. So the talks about BC were for when I went to college–which, BTW was another foregone conclusion kids didn’t argue in my household. In college, I’d be a bit more mature to handle any possible slipups than I would be in junior high or high school.
This comment was written by Ms. Tatisha Jackson.I mean, honestly, I understand some folks come from the “Kids are people too” stance, but I think that standpoint sucks most of the time. Sure, every now and again you get a kid wise beyond their years. But for the most part, kids NEED parents to set the boundaries and the rules for them. And then they needs those rules enforced vigorously in whatever way works for that family. Kids may not always obey, but they do listen and take those lessons (when taught correctly–you know, in a loving respectful manner) to heart. We remember that stuff when out at 3am with some dude trying to get our panties off. Well I did.
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October 25th, 2007 at 10:09 am
Thanks for the response, Ms. Johnson.
Personally, I see sex as just a part of life that doesn’t require all the specialness and ritual we’ve built up around it. Kids are kids, but I don’t think sex is such a heavy burden. It has a real mythos which creates mystery and shame, and I feel like the best way of destroying that mythos is just to have sex, and discover that it’s like any other human activity — weird, funny, pleasurable, heavy on the weird again.
I mostly trust kids to set their own pace in regard to that kind of thing. Does this reflect how I was raised? Absolutely. I was trusted to set my own pace in almost everything from the time I was three on, and as a result — I did. I see the same phenomenon in a lot of kids from anti-authoritarian households. Where trust exists, kids meet it. And where that doesn’t happen, there’s hopefully a flexible enough model to rein them in.
I can’t tell you how many disasters I saw growing up were caused by a mythos around sex, caused by its mystification and demarkation as something Special and Dangerous. Lots of my female friends who were raised in a vacuum about sexual information were raped as a consequence. Others were more easily controlled by abusive boyfriends who wanted to get them pregnant. The children I was raised around whose parents were open about sex, and had an “eh” feeling about it, mostly we waited. Sometimes we didn’t. We were less likely to end up in trouble that could be compounded by ignorance.
There are healthy atmospheres for sexual experimentation and unhealthy ones. There are people who react well and people who don’t.
That’s where I’m saying that I trust most parents to know when *their* kids *aren’t* ready for sex. Kids in general? Are just an enormous population. There are so many different environments and potentials and contexts.
There are also parents who I don’t trust to know jackshit. Thene’s experience growing up is, unfortunately, not rare.
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
October 25th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
Mythago, my comments are based on my experiences in the community I grew up in. Many parents considered their children extensions of themselves, and the fathers especially considered their children like property. I have heard many otherwise rational adults voice surprise that their children would: 1) even dream about having sex (because they haven’t told them about it); 2) do anything they wouldn’t hear about (because they’d punish them twice as bad if they found out from somebody else); and 3) ever be in danger of any kind from anybody else (because everybody is just like them, and they’re a terrific person). There were also parents who were scarily self-centered and turned their kids loose to finish raising themselves when they were 10 or so, and far be it for them to think about other people’s children, let alone their own. One egregious example: One classmate was raped by her stepfather on a regular basis from the age of 11 so that her mother would have babies in the house to fuss over, and until people knew that the stepfather was the father of her children, many people were praising her mother for not kicking her out of the house and being willing to raise her grandbabies. So I’m not making this cohort up. I regret that I don’t have the time to write as coherently as I would like to, because I really think I’m not expressing my point at all well, so I’m just going to have stop posting for a while.
Ms. Tatisha Jackson and KateL have made a number of statements with which I heartily concur. I just want to make it clear (if I haven’t already) that I am not pro-kid-sex.
This comment was written by Original Lee.Report this comment to the moderators
October 25th, 2007 at 1:16 pm
??? I just reread my post, and I’m confused about your reply.
Two of those questions (#2 and #3) are completely factual in nature.
Two of them (#1 and #5) were intended to be primarily factual though they have a moral component (the “harm” in #5 was intended to refer to emotional harm to the child in question, not some sort of amorphous untraceable ’societal harm’ which may or may not result from kidsex.)
Only one (#4) is really a moral question.
And for all five questions, I thought I made it clear that i’m talking about 12 year olds having consensual sex–you know, the topic of your post. And I think you and everyone else here have plenty of context in the previous 104 posts to know what I mean. Don’t you?
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October 25th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
Sailorman;
I think you’ve correctly characterized my position on points one and two, and I’m about 70% on point three. I think its good for parents to have rules that attempt to keep thier kids out of situations said kid cant handle–like parents can say no dating, no sleepovers no whatever. But sometimes those rules don’t/won’t work, and when that is the case, the emphasis should be on protecting the kid and helping them, not on denial and punishment. I don’t agree with number four and have never said anything close to that. I think parents should say “I think you are too young to have sex” if they think so, and why they think that.
As far as number 5, I agree that sex can–and is even likely to be–harmful to young kids. Much of that harm, however can be prevented by support that includes direct discussion and access to birth control, despite the fact that doing so is uncomfortable, complicated and difficult for parents . I also believe supportive parents can meliorate the remaining harm, should it occur.
This comment was written by curiousgyrl.Report this comment to the moderators
October 25th, 2007 at 4:24 pm
No, Sailorman, obviously I don’t. I mean that my answers to your questions would be context-dependent, not abstracted.
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October 25th, 2007 at 4:44 pm
Thene Writes:
If your abortion would have been funded as a part of UHC then it wasn’t exactly free. It was free at the point of service, but that is only because you and others pre-paid for it in the form of taxes.
A teenager in America who depends on their parents who to pay for their abortion is no more mature than a teenager in another country who depends on a UHC to fund their abortion; both teens are ultimately dependent on someone or something other than themselves.
People in countries with UHC have just decided to collectively bear financial responsibility for each other’s mistakes, whereas in America you are moreso expected to bear a more direct responsibility for your choices.
I don’t think the question of “are people with UHC who agree to collectively pay for abortions more mature than the people without UHC who have to directly pay for their own abortions?” can be answered.
I’m speaking from the perspective of someone living in a non-UHC country, where people are expected to pay for their own abortions, rather than paying taxes so that the procedures can be collectively funded.
All barriers are artifical if there is someone out there who can remove it for you. My barrier to wealth is artificial, if Oprah would only give me a million dollars. My barrier to a college degree is articial, if the university I attend would just grant me an honorary degree.
There will always be barriers of some sort to anything that we want, so I don’t see how a difference between “artifical” and “real” barriers bears any significance. Are real barriers only physical barriers, such as a young girls body being too immature to bear a child or a male being too young to make live sperm?
It all depends on how much responsibility for each others lives the people in a given country are willing to collectively bear.
I oppose UHC because I don’t find it to be morally necessary and instead I think that a free-market health care system is far more moral than any UHC. But this is a whole nother topic…….
This comment was written by Jamila Akil.Report this comment to the moderators
October 26th, 2007 at 5:13 am
Jamila, I feel like you’re dancing around my point. If you’re “speaking from the perspective of someone living in a non-UHC country” I hope you at least realise that your words become nonsense in the ears of someone from a UHC country (and most developed countries have UHC of some sort). You also seem confused about the meaning of ‘non-UHC’ as applied to the USA; Americans put huge amounts of tax money into Medicare, Medicaid and other collectively funded healthcare. Collective funding occurs in both systems. The difference isn’t the tax funding, which occurs at a similar level in both systems, it’s the ‘free at the point of use’ part. And if my abortion is free at the point of use, your assertion that I shouldn’t have sex until I can afford to buy an abortion is nonsense, and would have no effect on teenage-me’s behaviour. So why shouldn’t teenage-me have sex? When does it become okay for me to have sex, if money is not a barrier?
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October 26th, 2007 at 8:54 am
Again, can we wander gently away from tax/UHC?
I don’t mind if Jamila answers Thene’s question, but I don’t want any more declarations of free market sensibility, etc.
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
October 26th, 2007 at 8:57 am
I missed the post where you said that.
Don’t worry, this is my last post.
This comment was written by Jamila Akil.Report this comment to the moderators
November 1st, 2007 at 1:06 pm
Time to raise this thread from the dead.
First, a caveat: I am most certainly not not not trying to attribute the below issues to anyone who commented above.
New question., brought to mind by this revolting situation: http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2007/10/31/woman-recieves-no-punishment-for-nonconsensually-piercing-her-13-year-old-daughter%e2%80%99s-genitals
I’m wondering if a general sense that 12 year olds are “ready” for sex or that it’s “OK” for them to have sex would have a negative impact on the ability to convict folks for statutory rape. I get a gut feeling that it would.
Why? Well, there are two ways to look at it. One way is to define kidsex as “kidsex”, i.e. something that’s different from “real” sex.
But if you define kidsex as merely a certain type of “real” sex, then you’re saying it’s OK, generally speaking, for kids to be having sex. Which makes it harder IMO to convince people that kids (who are often the target of rape, esp. acquaintance and interfamily rape) weren’t acting consensually.
If kids are “nonsexual” then they don’t (can’t) consent. If kids are sexual beings–getting condoms, on birth control, making sex their own choice–then obviously they can consent in theory. The question then becomes WHO they consent with, as opposed to whether they can consent at all. And “they didn’t consent because it’s the wrong age of sex partner” is much more difficult to sell than “12 year olds do not consent to sex.”
It’s almost like spin. Because laws and this sort of thing affect juries, like it or not. Is it worth discussing as a cost?
Again, let me make it crystal clear that I do not attribute this goal to anyone here, including those folks who supported kidsex above. But it is more than a side note I think, and worth considering.
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November 1st, 2007 at 1:59 pm
I see where you’re coming from, and I don’t think it’s a crazy or unreasonable concern, but I think that in the end, it’s a wash.
After all, if it’s never okay for kids to be having sex, no matter who it’s with, then that just lends credence to (to use the mother’s argument from the other thread) the whole, “She’s out of control! I had to do something!”
“But . . . she was being raped by your boyfriend.”
“Yeah! AND she was having sex with a kid her age! Out of control, I tell you!”
For me, I think of this the same way I think about rape. Saying that it’s okay for women to have sex with whoever they like whenever they like shouldn’t weaken protections against rape . . . because it’s about consent and power and abuse. Same thing here.
—Myca
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November 1st, 2007 at 2:38 pm
I don’t know about that. Oh, I agree with you that it shouldn’t happen, but sometimes–and especially when it comes to protecting children–I’m more in the camp of “face reality, and work with it.”
And reality is that societal attitudes have a lot to do, IMO, with how people approach these things.
Take the “women are free to sleep around” thing. Clearly women ARE free to sleep with whoever they want. Women SHOULD BE free to sleep with whomever they want, at any time–or not.
But the “she was a slut anyway and asked for it” defense was actually a horrifically effective defense, because of the way people think. And to the degree people buy into the “an average women is perfectly likely to be trolling bars for hotties, just like an average man” belief, I think they’re more likely to believe the rape defense of “it was consensual.”
For adult women, it’s totally not my call; they’re adults, and I (hope) made it clear that I think they are free to do whatever they want, and it’s really not my business. I’m just using your example to illustrate the kid issue a bit better.
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November 1st, 2007 at 2:49 pm
Right, and I see what you mean, I’m just saying that the folks who want to justify victim blaming will find a way to justify victim blaming . . . because it’s not about anything but blaming the victim.
This comment was written by Myca.Report this comment to the moderators
November 1st, 2007 at 3:15 pm
I don’t think we disagree, really.
It’s actually a fascinating subject, and I”m trying (semi successfully) to write a post on it that’s not 10 pages long. I think of it as the
“Should we take account of people’s really shitty behavior when we make decisions, and if so, how much?”
question.
This comment was written by Sailorman.Report this comment to the moderators
November 2nd, 2007 at 1:19 am
I wanted to followup on the consent thing, since I think it’s explosive.
Talking about children sexing each other brings out something that’s bugged me for a while. As a society, we’re happy to put adults who have non-overtly-coerced sex with teenagers away for long prison sentences. We label them sex offenders, and generally wreck their lives. We do this because we think the younger parties can’t meaningfully consent and because we think that even if the younger party believes they have consented, they haven’t.
If twelve year olds can’t ever consent to sex, then twelve-y-olds doing eachother is rape. Maybe not prosecutable because of age, but still rape. If they can sometimes consent, that offers a very powerful defense for conduct we don’t want to make defensible.
I think you get into enough logical tangles once you start down that path that we as a society prefer to make that sort of thing unthinkable — or at least, we as individuals often try not to think about it. I suspect that’s part of the horror that the topic induces in many discussants.
This comment was written by Ari Rabkin.Report this comment to the moderators
November 2nd, 2007 at 2:19 am
“We label them sex offenders, and generally wreck their lives.”
No rape apology in the thread. Thanks.
The difference between the two scenarios is ‘power.’ I’m not going to be super patient on the issue of “oh, teh poor adults who sex up 12 yr olds, how we ruin their lives,” so you might want to go into lurker mode if this still isn’t making sense. I’d rather not derail.
This comment was written by Mandolin.Report this comment to the moderators
November 2nd, 2007 at 1:14 pm
I hope that isn’t rape apology. I consider a person going to jail both a wrecked life (if even only for the time involved) and a just punishment. If he’s going to wreak my life with rape, label him a sex offender and wreak his life, please.
I think the point Ari was making is that the basis of statutory rape is that a 12 year old can never consent. If at any point, including in this situation, we say that a 12 year old can consent to sex, we might need to be concerned whether it will make the statutory rape legal definition blurry. Power is certainly an issue, but I’ve yet to see a statute that specifically talks about the definition of power rather than the definition of consent.
I suspect this is a valid concern. New York may provide a good example regarding this issue. In New York, the age of consent is 17, but there is an exception:
“It shall be an affirmative defense to the crime of rape in the second degree as defined in subdivision one of this section that the defendant was less than four years older than the victim at the time of the act.” (see link)
In this case, it looks like a state has defined when a minor may or may not consent to sex, without gumming up statutory rape definitions.
(And regarding the original post, I still think that BC to twelve year olds without specific parental consent is way too tricky. Depending on the BC used, it needs to be taken responsibly every day, and I doubt the clinic would be able to oversee the child’s use of the medication every day. I can’t imagine responsibly prescribing anything but an injection or an implant to someone that young.)
This comment was written by Kata.Report this comment to the moderators
November 2nd, 2007 at 2:55 pm
I suspect that rape apology is a term of art around here; just to clarify my views:
We as a society are very punitive towards convicted sex offenders, above all those whose crimes involved children. I believe we’re much tougher on them than any other western democracy. We sentence them to very long prison terms, and significant deprive them of civil rights afterwards. Those are simply statements of fact, without moral judgment. They don’t necessarily imply that we have a more just society in general, or even an adequate determination to supress sex crimes.
Most of this toughness is because of tough-on-crime posturing by politicians: virtually nobody is willing to defend adults who have sex with children, no matter how harsh the penalty assigned to them, so they’re an easy class of offenders to beat up on.
I mention these facts not to apologize for rape, or to argue that our laws are fine as written, but rather as evidence for what society’s view of sex with children is. The extravagant penalties and oppobium we dispense demonstrates that our society’s consensus view is that sex with children is never justified or excused. We treat it as settled that children under 16,17,or 18 [depending on jurisdiction] cannot consent.
Saying “12 year olds can sometimes consent” undermines that consensus and it’s therefore sufficiently spooky that people don’t want to consider the possibility. The issue, to be clear, is that this would philosophically undermine our notions of statutory rape, not that it would immediately undermine it in court.
This comment was written by Ari Rabkin.Report this comment to the moderators
November 2nd, 2007 at 5:22 pm
We treat it as settled that children under 16,17,or 18 [depending on jurisdiction] cannot consent.
The laws are actually much more complicated than that. Depending on your state, children under 13 are treated differently than children 13-17, and offenders who are closer to the victim’s age are also treated more leniently (in some cases, not as criminals at all).
After all, if it’s never okay for kids to be having sex, no matter who it’s with, then that just lends credence to (to use the mother’s argument from the other thread) the whole, “She’s out of control! I had to do something!”
No, it really doesn’t. The point of the other thread is not that the mother had a justifiable concern about her child’s sexual activity; it’s that the mother reacted by sexually mutilating her daughter, and apparently ignoring the fact that her own boyfriend was raping her child.
Would you claim, Myca, that a person who said “Toddlers shouldn’t pick up and eat bugs off the sidewalk” is ‘lending credence’ to a mother who tried to control her toddler’s stuff-everything-in-my-mouth habits by sewing the child’s lips shut? Especially if the mother’s boyfriend were feeding the kid beer?
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November 2nd, 2007 at 6:20 pm
Okay, Ari. You’re being very snide in your response. I’m going to assume that you understand that I am the author of this post. If you don’t, please understand it now.
I’m asking you not to post in this thread again until you’ve been hanging around a bit more, and are a little more familiar with the terminology and dynamics. Thanks in advance.
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November 3rd, 2007 at 7:27 am
As I see it, the concept of “kid shouldn’t have sex because they cannot consent to sex “goes more to the conclusion of “… therefore this was even more clearly rape,” and not at all to the conclusion of “…therefore her batshit crazy mother should have performed her own brand of FGM.”
Because I think it’s an important perspective, and because I think we always need to consider the collateral effects as well as the direct effects of changes, I’m thinking about it like this:
Say the rape case happened in this Maine town discussed in this very thread. Say the jurors on that case read the article linked above. Say the victim in the rape/fgm case was at that same school.
Would the jurors be less likely to convict the rapist? Would they be more likely to see the girl as sexually receptive, even to a much older man?
I think they would.
Now, this doesn’t mean that the conclusion should be “…therefore we should not give birth control to 12 year olds.” In my opinion, the cost/benefit ratio is still in favor of BC.
It’s more of a reminder that we need to consider and prepare to deal with the collateral damage that may happen even from things which are overall a GOOD idea. Maybe giving BC and teaching sex ed will mean that we simultaneously need to be even more careful than before of whether or not young children are pressuring each other into sex, for example. Or that we need to focus more on potential juror bias.
This comment was written by Sailorman.Report this comment to the moderators
January 30th, 2008 at 10:42 am
[...] When I read this excellent article by Amanda Marcotte, I couldn’t help think of Mandolin’s post last October, “Children Fucking Children“. [...]
This comment was written by Alas, a blog » Blog Archive » Yay For Teen Sex!.Report this comment to the moderators
February 3rd, 2008 at 1:50 am
parents should teach kids practically how to have safe sex
This comment was written by john.Report this comment to the moderators
February 3rd, 2008 at 10:47 am
“I agree that sex is potentially dangerous in terms of disease and pregnancy. These things can be addressed.
I disagree that sex is inherently dangerous because of emotional entanglement … blah blah. There’s just nothing that special about sex.”
I completely agree. The only reasons why sex might damage kids emotionally is caused by the taboos and stigmas that society places on it. Without these taboos and stigmas, sex would be nothing more than an enjoyable thing to do that could also potentially
cause disease and pregnancy.
OR it could damage kids because of their emotional entanglements with that person. But it is not the act of sex itself that causes this, it is the relationship with the person.
Let’s say two 12 yr olds are dating. They don’t go past holding hands and kissing on the cheek, but they break up, leaving one 12 year old in an emotional entanglement.
Yes, sex can cause emotional entanglements but it is not the act itself that does this, it is the situation. A relationship gone bad could just as easily cause an emotional entanglement, but does that mean we should not allow 12 year olds to date? Or have friendships? Because those can cause emotional entanglements as well. Does that make these things morally wrong? Should we not approve of kids engaging in these activities because they could potentially cause someone to get hurt? Of course not!
This comment was written by FGW.Report this comment to the moderators
February 23rd, 2008 at 10:22 am
[...] is why I have trouble with Mandolin’s argument last year - which goes further than even the Netherlands parents in this particular survey seem to - that [...]
This comment was written by Noli Irritare Leones » Blog Archive » … that kids can’t fall in love and feel the same.Report this comment to the moderators
February 25th, 2008 at 8:54 pm
Here’s an idea, people:
No sex until you can understand the consequences, for better and for worse, of doing so.
Some 12-year-olds can. Some can’t. Some 30-year-olds still can’t. I love my father, but his ‘love-’em-then-leave-’em’ behavior before and after I was born is still pretty common in the American black community, where a strict, repressive upbringing is often the norm. Men become ‘players’ as a way of avoiding all that pesky emotional entanglement that some in this thread are positively afraid of preteens learning to negotiate — their parents usually forbade any discussion of sex, owing to a lot of religious shame.
So where do they go to learn about it? Where does any kid whose parents never talked to him about sex go for information? Their friends, who are often just as uneducated about sex as they are. This is where fatuous ideas like ‘You can’t get a girl pregnant if you have sex standing up’ come from.
Then the consequences of their actions and this avoidance later bite them in the ass: wage-garnishment for child support; having to deal on a frequent basis with women they no longer care much for because they were ignorant enough not to use condoms.
Women in this situation have it pretty bad as well: not enough knowledge about their own bodies to say no when they don’t want to, or knowledge about alternatives to pregnancy to avoid producing children they aren’t mature enough to care for, as well as STDs and other problems.
How is all this avoided? By making kids aware of the consequences of sexual behavior, good and bad, as soon as they hit puberty. Tell them that it can be fun. Tell them that it’s one small aspect of self-knowledge. Tell them also that it’s not paranoid to ask their partners to be tested for STDs before they engage in any sexual activity. Tell them about the financial and emotional costs of raising children. Balance is essential — too many sex-ed programs in this country focus entirely on the negative costs of sex.
Twelve years of age is about the right time to make condoms available, as well as information about the pill (not so sure about actually distributing the pill to middle-schoolers, though. I don’t think young bodies need to have their stabilizing hormones screwed with. Just tell them to ask their family doctor for more information). Kids need to know what those funny feelings are, and how to deal with them, from people who can give them accurate information. To those fearful of letting children experience ‘emotional entanglement’? Friendships, and the loss of friends, also provide some practice in dealing with this.
Trying to keep children sexually ignorant for as long as possible doesn’t produce mature adults. It makes crippled adults who have trouble making informed decisions.
This comment was written by franklyoddgirl.Report this comment to the moderators
July 12th, 2008 at 11:34 am
Sex is definitely not for the twelve year olds, but sex education is.
It is the time when children start exploring thier bodies and get curious about each and every change that takes place. It is the time they should be given proper knowledge, both at school and home. Of course, I do not say that they should not experiment. They are free to experiment on thier own organs and learn in the process. But I don’t think that the 12 year olds will be able to handle contraceptives and STDs properly only with peer information, wihout formal knowledge. But if you can keep yourself only to oral or fingers and nothing more, then it will serve all purposes- learning, experimenting and pleasure.
And finally, you can make condoms available to 12 year olds, but will his little organ fit in?
This comment was written by Nicole Finn.Report this comment to the moderators
July 12th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
OK, cut the crap.
One of my male cousins at 12 years old was 6′ 2″. Another male cousin was 5′ 10″ at that age.
Hell, I was 5′ 8″ when I was 14. And I’m female.
Not all children mature physically at the same rate.
Not all genetics are the same.
This comment was written by Bonnie M. S..Report this comment to the moderators
July 15th, 2008 at 9:56 am
I guess I experienced, and was a witness to too many coercive situations at a young age. It’s not that I don’t trust kids to take precautions. I just don’t trust them to do so in a non-coercive, emotionally, respectful manner. Peer pressure is just too big of an influence at that age.
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April 13th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
I having been a twelve year old previously, think it is ok for people over the age of twelve to have sex if they are taking measures to keep safe. I also believe that many children are embarrassed about sex and their body. This is the reason they don’t confront their parents at an early age, but think back to when you were twelve and what you thought about sex and confronting your parents about it. Now think about you today and if you had the chance would you have talked to them about it sooner. I think that school clinics should be made available to all students and that parents need not be directly informed about their child’s usage of “The Pill” or condoms. If the parent were to ask the nurse or principal in person I believe it would be good to keep those things on record.
This comment was written by Zach Burnfeild.Report this comment to the moderators