Smells Like Teen Spirit... (Or Something)

nihpuad · 18-04-07 05:48:56

I originally wrote this as a reply (to Xantar) in the First Time thread, but I realized it was really political and not at all in that thread's spirit of erotic personal memoir. So here 'tis, in its own topic:

xantar wrote:

My first time was with a 17 y/o girl I knew in high school, but that may not be appropriate to post as it was the age of consent in my state, but I know it's not kosher to talk about it on the internet since it would be illegal in most places.

I'm not a lawyer (and I don't play one on TV), but AFAIK what you describe is probably not illegal -- or at least not actionable, even if technically illegal -- in most places, as long as you were also a high school student at the time.

First, don't confuse the definition of "minor" for purposes of pornography with the age of consent for actual (private, nonpublished) sexual activity. I believe in most U.S. states, the age of consent is less than 18 (according to this wiki, the overall median age is between 14 and 16), which is otherwise the typical dividing line between minors and adults. In addition, age-of-consent laws are often not enforced to the letter WRT teens of similar age, and some jurisdictions have explicit exceptions relating to people close in age.

This is more of a political question than a personal one for me: I'm a middle-aged guy with a middle-aged wife, and I'm never in my life likely to need to know the fine points of this area of law... but as part of the lamentable social conservative movement in the "U.S. and A," there's been a recent surge in efforts to regulate, stigmatize, discourage, and prohibit young people's natural expressions of their own sexuality. In one notable instance, the Kansas Attorney General (a staunch conservative) tried to enforce a particularly strict interpretation of Kansas' already-strict age-of-consent law, effectively declaring that any "sexual interaction" -- presumably including French kissing and "heavy petting" -- between teens was automatically criminal. Is seems that his real intent wasn't to put a bunch of horny teens in jail: Instead, but declaring all physical intimacy between teens de facto child abuse, he triggered all sorts of public reporting laws, which in turn gave him access to medical records -- which otherwise would have been covered by medical privacy laws -- relating to teens' requests for contraception and abortion. <sigh>

Look, nobody countenances the sexual exploitation of children, but treating the sort of normal, mutually agreeable, noncoercive sexual exploration that commonly occurs between teenaged peers as felonies is just bizarre. IMHO, of course.

Of course, lots of conservative social policy positions touching on sexuality strike me as bizarre. JOOC, do we 'Mericans look as hung up and prudish to the rest of the world as I fear we do?

Last edited by nihpuad (18-04-07 05:49:57)

The_West_Wind · 18-04-07 08:23:20

According to that Wiki the age of concent in Japan is 13.
Thats... kind of creepy. But then again, it explains the Japanese obsession with school girls. I cant see it.

In interesting thing to come out of this was a story from the mid early 90's where a Japanese housewife caught her husband having an affair with a school girl. In retaliation to this the wife took a lover of her own, said to be a highschool boy. When the media got wind of this, it sparked a trend of Japanese women taking teenage boys as their bit on the side.

*sigh* Humanity, gotta love it.

#1 18-04-07 05:48:56

Smells Like Teen Spirit... (Or Something)

#2 18-04-07 08:23:20

Re: Smells Like Teen Spirit... (Or Something)

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