This is obviously in response to a recent event, but unfortunately, what I'm going to say is pretty timeless, so I won't bother linking to the specific stories that inspired this post, since it's almost certainly going to apply equally well to whatever recent mass murder has captivated the public eye at the time a reader finds this.
I have something of a history of empathizing with the manifestos of spree killers more than most folks are willing to admit. I look at their arguments and say, "that all sounds reasonable up until the point of the random mass murder". Over and over again. Makes a person a bit paranoid when no one else around you seems to think there's anything but crazy and evil in there.
I have never gone on a killing spree. I have fantasized about doing so. I've been tempted numerous times. The world isn't a just place, and it's easy to just say "fuck it, let's burn the whole thing to the ground" rather than commit to the impossible Sisyphean task of fixing everything that's wrong with the world.
I'm the sort of person who thinks the world ought to be reasonable, equitable, and just. That belief crops up in almost every one of these spree killer manifestos that I see. They look at the world, see that it isn't fair, and can't deal with that fact. This isn't about entitlement, at least as far as their writings go. They don't just think the world's unfair TO THEM, though that's usually what made it impossible to miss that the world was unfair. They think the world's unfair to whole categories of people, and once those proverbial scales have been ripped from your eyes, it's a long journey of seeing all the ways the world is unfair and unreasonable.
I was in elementary school when I got my first taste of this. I noticed age based discrimination. It was compulsory education I noticed first. The problem, as I saw it, was not that I was being forced to attend school. It was that people who lacked the knowledge base that I was supposed to be aquiring in school were not being likewise forced to attend simply because they had passed an arbitrary age line. I considered violent revolution as a potential solution to this problem, since history classes had made it clear that was how you accomplished change on that scale. I lacked both the martial skills and the personal charisma to organize such a revolution while in elementary school, so that plan didn't get anywhere.
The problem I was looking at wasn't just childishy whining that I was being forced to go to school. It was recognizing that an entire category of people, of whom I then happened to be a member, were being systematically discriminated against, and deciding that something needed to be done. I was repeatedly told I'd change my mind as I got older, but the fact of the matter is, I'm still that young boy who saw a problem, and occasionally toys with the idea of violent revolution in order to fix it.
The reason I never went on a shooting rampage is that I came to the conclusion it wouldn't be effective. I've seen so many of these spree killers over the years, and each time it's the same thing. People handwring over "what could have brought this on" and then people utterly ignore the efforts those killers made to explain exactly that, instead preferring to cynically exploit the killing spree as a means of advancing their own pet issues.
I'm still looking for a way to fix the obvious injustices in the world. I've eliminated random mass murder as a likely avenue. Irrationally, I hold out hope that one of these days I'll find a tool that will work.
Showing posts with label youth rights. Show all posts
Showing posts with label youth rights. Show all posts
Monday, May 26, 2014
Thursday, October 10, 2013
Affirmative Consent
Since this concept has been making its rounds on the various boards and blogs I read, it feels appropriate to weigh in, in detail, on this subject.
Affirmative consent is the idea that avoiding a "no" in a sexual encounter is insufficient for true consent. That only a verbalized "yes" to each and every act performed is sufficient.
I'm actually quite fond of the idea.
The biggest stumbling block I run into when quietly contemplating a better legal situation than the current age of consent, or arguing for its abolishment in open forum, is the fundamental fact that our current system of consent for adults is fundamentally broken. We let adults abuse and manipulate one another in ways that should rightly horrify any human being of good conscience. Thus the idea of exposing children to those culturally and legally sanctioned abuses rightly causes us all to recoil from the idea.
I don't like recoiling from ideas. When I get that impulse, I choose to dig deeper. To find out WHY that reaction strikes me. Because if I recoil, I can't learn specifically what about the situation is so inimical to me, and I can't examine if those distasteful parts can be excised.
The way I figure it, if it isn't acceptable to do inflict something on a five year old child, it isn't acceptable to inflict it on an adult either. If you think we need an age of consent to protect children from predatory adults who would lie their way into bed with them, there is no valid justification for treating those same predators as harmless or even admirable just because they're doing the exact same thing to other adults.
Now, that isn't to say there aren't serious flaws with the concept of affirmative consent. Firstly, like all aspects of sexual consent in this culture, it's gendered, in that males need to get consent, and females need to give it, never the other way around. Not a problem specific to the concept itself, but a problem inherent in our culture and one that rightly needs to be called out whenever the subject of changing the standards of consent come up.
Second is that how far it needs to be taken is never sufficiently defined, nor will its proponents ever submit to limiting cases, always shreaking about their "better safe than sorry" nonsense. Under reasonable standards, this practice could force better communication between sexual partners, make everyone take accountability for their own agency in deciding to participate, and reducing the tragedies that currently result from our current standards of "implied consent". If stretched beyond reasonable boundaries, however, it becomes a standard no one can ever live up to, and thus redefines every sexual interaction as rape, with all the gendered and ageist asymetries that go along with rape accusations in our culture.
Some claim that this standard infantalizes women, because it denies their ability to speak up when something is bothering them about a sexual encounter, and instead relies on the man to ask for confirmation. Aside from the obvious sexism in the idea that only a man would need to be held to this standard (not that it isn't an objective fact of our culture that this would be the case), I actually agree that it's infantalizing. That's why I like it so much.
Maybe if we can get the level of discourse and behavior of the general population to a place where a child would have no difficulty navigating it, why would we need the age of consent or anything to replace it?
Affirmative consent is the idea that avoiding a "no" in a sexual encounter is insufficient for true consent. That only a verbalized "yes" to each and every act performed is sufficient.
I'm actually quite fond of the idea.
The biggest stumbling block I run into when quietly contemplating a better legal situation than the current age of consent, or arguing for its abolishment in open forum, is the fundamental fact that our current system of consent for adults is fundamentally broken. We let adults abuse and manipulate one another in ways that should rightly horrify any human being of good conscience. Thus the idea of exposing children to those culturally and legally sanctioned abuses rightly causes us all to recoil from the idea.
I don't like recoiling from ideas. When I get that impulse, I choose to dig deeper. To find out WHY that reaction strikes me. Because if I recoil, I can't learn specifically what about the situation is so inimical to me, and I can't examine if those distasteful parts can be excised.
The way I figure it, if it isn't acceptable to do inflict something on a five year old child, it isn't acceptable to inflict it on an adult either. If you think we need an age of consent to protect children from predatory adults who would lie their way into bed with them, there is no valid justification for treating those same predators as harmless or even admirable just because they're doing the exact same thing to other adults.
Now, that isn't to say there aren't serious flaws with the concept of affirmative consent. Firstly, like all aspects of sexual consent in this culture, it's gendered, in that males need to get consent, and females need to give it, never the other way around. Not a problem specific to the concept itself, but a problem inherent in our culture and one that rightly needs to be called out whenever the subject of changing the standards of consent come up.
Second is that how far it needs to be taken is never sufficiently defined, nor will its proponents ever submit to limiting cases, always shreaking about their "better safe than sorry" nonsense. Under reasonable standards, this practice could force better communication between sexual partners, make everyone take accountability for their own agency in deciding to participate, and reducing the tragedies that currently result from our current standards of "implied consent". If stretched beyond reasonable boundaries, however, it becomes a standard no one can ever live up to, and thus redefines every sexual interaction as rape, with all the gendered and ageist asymetries that go along with rape accusations in our culture.
Some claim that this standard infantalizes women, because it denies their ability to speak up when something is bothering them about a sexual encounter, and instead relies on the man to ask for confirmation. Aside from the obvious sexism in the idea that only a man would need to be held to this standard (not that it isn't an objective fact of our culture that this would be the case), I actually agree that it's infantalizing. That's why I like it so much.
Maybe if we can get the level of discourse and behavior of the general population to a place where a child would have no difficulty navigating it, why would we need the age of consent or anything to replace it?
Friday, September 20, 2013
Reasoning or Rationalizing
There's a difference between reasoned positions and rationalizations. Most of has have both in our mental baggage, myself included.
A reasoned position is one that you take after looking at the evidence and bowing to what the evidence tells you.When you decide on a course of action based on a reasoned position, you combine the knowledge of what the likely consequences of that action are with your own fundamental principles telling you which outcomes you'd prefer to have happen.
A rationalization isn't precisely the opposite of a reasoned position, though it's often presented as such. A rationalization happens when you pick your course of action, and then look at the evidence selectively to find things that tell you that this course of action is in accord with your fundamental principles.
These two modes of thinking can quite often lead one to the same conclusion, but rationalizations suffer from a serious risk that your actions will lead to a world that isn't as closely in accord with your fundamental principles than you would like. On the other hand, establishing reasoned positions is exhausting, requiring constant re-examination of your chosen courses of action, and the occasional devastating moment when you realize that you've been on the wrong path for some time, doing more harm than good, and needing to reverse course.
The saying "you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into" is about this divide between reasoning and rationalization.
I try to limit my rationalizations, even if I'm occasionally guilty of them. I try instead to keep my actions and principles in proper alignment, and often challenge others to do the same. One of the biggest rationalizations I've still got rattling around in my psyche is this one: I didn't reason my way into the position that I shouldn't have sex with kids. I adopted that conclusion then came up with rationalizations for why that is the correct course of action.
The evidence tells me that if I want to normalize adult-child sexual relationships, the most effective way to do so is for as many people as possible to engage in them. Stygma is removed by familiarity, and the world as a whole benefits from the progress made. If those of us who care, and who want compassionate, consensual, loving relationships weren't the ones avoiding relationships, we wouldn't have seceded the field to those individuals who don't care about love, consent, and compassion.
But to follow this course of action requires a sacrifice, and it isn't one I'd be making alone. My hypothetical lover would be put through the wringer along with me, and the idea of asking someone I care about to do that causes a nearly instinctual recoil.
But to shine the harsh light of reason on my rationalization once again, I hold as a principle that competent human beings have a right to make their own decisions, and the evidence tells me that young people are quite competent to do so. They certainly would for anyone I would consider entering into a consensual physical relationship with. So do not my principles demand that I let them agree or not based on their own will, rather than attempt to shield them from such a relationship out of a misguided protective impulse?
I don't have all the answers. I'm still struggling to put words to some of the questions. I know there's something wrong with my thinking on this one, and until I've got it sorted out, I'd rather not act. But isn't that just one more rationalization for what I was going to do anyway?
A reasoned position is one that you take after looking at the evidence and bowing to what the evidence tells you.When you decide on a course of action based on a reasoned position, you combine the knowledge of what the likely consequences of that action are with your own fundamental principles telling you which outcomes you'd prefer to have happen.
A rationalization isn't precisely the opposite of a reasoned position, though it's often presented as such. A rationalization happens when you pick your course of action, and then look at the evidence selectively to find things that tell you that this course of action is in accord with your fundamental principles.
These two modes of thinking can quite often lead one to the same conclusion, but rationalizations suffer from a serious risk that your actions will lead to a world that isn't as closely in accord with your fundamental principles than you would like. On the other hand, establishing reasoned positions is exhausting, requiring constant re-examination of your chosen courses of action, and the occasional devastating moment when you realize that you've been on the wrong path for some time, doing more harm than good, and needing to reverse course.
The saying "you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into" is about this divide between reasoning and rationalization.
I try to limit my rationalizations, even if I'm occasionally guilty of them. I try instead to keep my actions and principles in proper alignment, and often challenge others to do the same. One of the biggest rationalizations I've still got rattling around in my psyche is this one: I didn't reason my way into the position that I shouldn't have sex with kids. I adopted that conclusion then came up with rationalizations for why that is the correct course of action.
The evidence tells me that if I want to normalize adult-child sexual relationships, the most effective way to do so is for as many people as possible to engage in them. Stygma is removed by familiarity, and the world as a whole benefits from the progress made. If those of us who care, and who want compassionate, consensual, loving relationships weren't the ones avoiding relationships, we wouldn't have seceded the field to those individuals who don't care about love, consent, and compassion.
But to follow this course of action requires a sacrifice, and it isn't one I'd be making alone. My hypothetical lover would be put through the wringer along with me, and the idea of asking someone I care about to do that causes a nearly instinctual recoil.
But to shine the harsh light of reason on my rationalization once again, I hold as a principle that competent human beings have a right to make their own decisions, and the evidence tells me that young people are quite competent to do so. They certainly would for anyone I would consider entering into a consensual physical relationship with. So do not my principles demand that I let them agree or not based on their own will, rather than attempt to shield them from such a relationship out of a misguided protective impulse?
I don't have all the answers. I'm still struggling to put words to some of the questions. I know there's something wrong with my thinking on this one, and until I've got it sorted out, I'd rather not act. But isn't that just one more rationalization for what I was going to do anyway?
Saturday, August 3, 2013
Why I Haven't Killed Myself
It's hard to start writing about a suicide attempt, because every time I put metaphorical pen to paper, I'm reminded of all the wonderful things in my life, and all the ways I have it easier than other people. That doesn't help the depression, indeed, the guilt at feeling depressed in spite of those things only deepens the depression and the sense of worthlessness.
It's only years later that I've been able to contextualize what happened and recognize that's precisely what it was, a suacide attempt.
A bit of background. I've always been hyperaware of the legal situation that young people are in, and this dates from my time resenting it from well on the other side of the age line. My parents were and are wonderful people, but that didn't change the fact that they wielded arbitrary power against which I had no legal recourse. They weren't perfect, obviously, but if they had been less wonderful people... well, the stories are in the news all the time. Teachers were where I got a taste of what it feels like when someone with that kind of arbitrary power wants to use it against you. Again, it was never as bad for me as some, but it did happen, and the psychological pain was quite real.
Meanwhile, I was also quite isolated from my peers. I'm a natural introvert. To this day, after spending time among friends who's company I genuinely enjoy, I need to take time alone to decompress, unwind, and recover from the social activity.
When I was bullied, I was never able to view it as a temporary condition. The old "tell an adult" advice was tried, then rejected when the best outcome was the immediate cessation of hostilities, followed by a worse and more persistent campaign the instant the adult's back was turned, and the worst outcome was the adult disbelieving my words and heaping additional scorn on me, followed by a ramping up of hostilities from the initial bullies in retribution for trying to tell on them. I saw no value in the "fight back" school of thought, because I knew that if I hurt them, all that would mean was added motivation for them to hurt me even worse.
I decided fairly early on, as a result, that the only way anything would actually change would be if I fought back hard enough and vicious enough that whether they were willing to come back later and resume and redouble their torments would be irrelevant, because they would be physically unable to do so. Basically, the only way to ensure any permanent change to the status quo would be to kill one of them. I didn't have it in me to do that, which I spent considerable time berating myself over. Whether by nature or nurture, I couldn't bring myself to try to kill someone in cold blood, no matter how airtight the logic I presented myself with.
I considered just killing myself. I was quite capable of self-harming, even if I couldn't direct those destructive impulses outward. But suicide was something I realized I'd have to get right. The idea of suicide as a "cry for help" made zero sense to me. Everyone who actually gave a shit about me was presumably doing what they could already, and everyone else wouldn't care anyway, so who was going to listen to a "cry for help" suicide attempt? The only two outcomes in my mind were that I would successfully die, or that I would fuck it up, the normal bullying would continue as before, only now I'd have to deal with whatever potentially crippling injuries I'd inflicted on myself during the botched attempt.
I can easily see why people going on antidepressants are at higher risk for suicide. I didn't kill myself during that period because I was convinced I'd fuck it up and only make things worse for myself. If I had enough hope that I could do it right, or maybe that something would change after the attempt if I did botch the job, it's easy to see myself moving forward with it.
Things did eventually change for me after what I now recognize probably qualified as a suicide attempt. I was attacked in the school hallway, and I snapped. The only coherent thought in my mind through the red haze of anger was that one of us was going to die there, and I didn't care who. Either I'd end his life and thus make sure he at least, could never hurt me again, or I'd make him kill me to stop me. I was well aware that the later outcome was far more likely, as evidenced by my inability to land a single punch, even as most of the bones in my face were shattered by repeated blows to the head.
Of course, the fact that I'm able to write this should be proof enough that I failed. Some of the staff pulled us apart, and that was when things got interesting. The school attempted to downplay the incident, even as I was hospitalized, requiring reconstructive surgery. My parents pushed and the courts were eventually involved. I don't know for sure what happened to the bully who attacked me, only that he wasn't in the school after that.
After that object lesson in how vulnerable I was, and how little the school could or would do to protect me, my parents got me involved with martial arts, which helped both my actual safety, and my sense of security. I've never had to use it since I began studying nearly two decades ago.
This incident happened before I'd worked out my orientation, so this incident was there in the background as I was coming to terms with the prejudice I was going to have to deal with for the rest of my life. Since then, tons of people have tried to goad me into suicide and self-destructive behavior. I can't imagine why they think I'd even consider it knowing they'd count it as a win.
It's only years later that I've been able to contextualize what happened and recognize that's precisely what it was, a suacide attempt.
A bit of background. I've always been hyperaware of the legal situation that young people are in, and this dates from my time resenting it from well on the other side of the age line. My parents were and are wonderful people, but that didn't change the fact that they wielded arbitrary power against which I had no legal recourse. They weren't perfect, obviously, but if they had been less wonderful people... well, the stories are in the news all the time. Teachers were where I got a taste of what it feels like when someone with that kind of arbitrary power wants to use it against you. Again, it was never as bad for me as some, but it did happen, and the psychological pain was quite real.
Meanwhile, I was also quite isolated from my peers. I'm a natural introvert. To this day, after spending time among friends who's company I genuinely enjoy, I need to take time alone to decompress, unwind, and recover from the social activity.
When I was bullied, I was never able to view it as a temporary condition. The old "tell an adult" advice was tried, then rejected when the best outcome was the immediate cessation of hostilities, followed by a worse and more persistent campaign the instant the adult's back was turned, and the worst outcome was the adult disbelieving my words and heaping additional scorn on me, followed by a ramping up of hostilities from the initial bullies in retribution for trying to tell on them. I saw no value in the "fight back" school of thought, because I knew that if I hurt them, all that would mean was added motivation for them to hurt me even worse.
I decided fairly early on, as a result, that the only way anything would actually change would be if I fought back hard enough and vicious enough that whether they were willing to come back later and resume and redouble their torments would be irrelevant, because they would be physically unable to do so. Basically, the only way to ensure any permanent change to the status quo would be to kill one of them. I didn't have it in me to do that, which I spent considerable time berating myself over. Whether by nature or nurture, I couldn't bring myself to try to kill someone in cold blood, no matter how airtight the logic I presented myself with.
I considered just killing myself. I was quite capable of self-harming, even if I couldn't direct those destructive impulses outward. But suicide was something I realized I'd have to get right. The idea of suicide as a "cry for help" made zero sense to me. Everyone who actually gave a shit about me was presumably doing what they could already, and everyone else wouldn't care anyway, so who was going to listen to a "cry for help" suicide attempt? The only two outcomes in my mind were that I would successfully die, or that I would fuck it up, the normal bullying would continue as before, only now I'd have to deal with whatever potentially crippling injuries I'd inflicted on myself during the botched attempt.
I can easily see why people going on antidepressants are at higher risk for suicide. I didn't kill myself during that period because I was convinced I'd fuck it up and only make things worse for myself. If I had enough hope that I could do it right, or maybe that something would change after the attempt if I did botch the job, it's easy to see myself moving forward with it.
Things did eventually change for me after what I now recognize probably qualified as a suicide attempt. I was attacked in the school hallway, and I snapped. The only coherent thought in my mind through the red haze of anger was that one of us was going to die there, and I didn't care who. Either I'd end his life and thus make sure he at least, could never hurt me again, or I'd make him kill me to stop me. I was well aware that the later outcome was far more likely, as evidenced by my inability to land a single punch, even as most of the bones in my face were shattered by repeated blows to the head.
Of course, the fact that I'm able to write this should be proof enough that I failed. Some of the staff pulled us apart, and that was when things got interesting. The school attempted to downplay the incident, even as I was hospitalized, requiring reconstructive surgery. My parents pushed and the courts were eventually involved. I don't know for sure what happened to the bully who attacked me, only that he wasn't in the school after that.
After that object lesson in how vulnerable I was, and how little the school could or would do to protect me, my parents got me involved with martial arts, which helped both my actual safety, and my sense of security. I've never had to use it since I began studying nearly two decades ago.
This incident happened before I'd worked out my orientation, so this incident was there in the background as I was coming to terms with the prejudice I was going to have to deal with for the rest of my life. Since then, tons of people have tried to goad me into suicide and self-destructive behavior. I can't imagine why they think I'd even consider it knowing they'd count it as a win.
Saturday, June 1, 2013
We Can't Be Associated With You
I've mentioned before that I get barred from a lot of online forums. I am a pedophile who doesn't see anything wrong with my sexual orientation, and I am a vocal and unapologetic advocate for the rights of young people.
Quite often, the ban comes in the form of a fairly obvious and unapologetic expression of disgust at my views, positions, and/or existence. The runners of said sites establishing themselves as effectively declared enemies, and acting on the sincere belief that I'm evil and need to be silenced. In a strange way, they're some of the most respectable sorts who act to silence me, since their intentions are clear and displayed in the open for all to see. So certain of the righteousness of their position, they often hold no fear of leaving what I've already said as a matter of public record, and allow that record to speak for itself, which suits me just fine.
Slightly less often, legalistic loopholes are used to justify the bans, citing some rule or another that's been deliberately written in vague language for the sake of later selective enforcement. These are the sites that pretend to uphold a standard of free speech and pretend that censorship isn't a part of their ideology or mission statement. These are the places that tend to have drawn out exit processes, since almost no one on the internet has thought to prohibit the sorts of things I want to say. As a result, most of that overbroad language isn't actually broad enough on a simple reading, and the staff at such places is very reluctant to actually invoke and use the "we can ban anyone for any reason" clauses that are always a part of the boilerplate. They recognize that censoring me is admitting that they can't defeat my ideas in a free marketplace, and so a ban is an admission of failure on their part. These are actually some of the most satisfying notes to leave on, since typically by the time they've rewritten their rules for the purpose of getting rid of me, I've emboldened others who'd previously stayed silent.
It's only in recent years that I've encountered a peculiar third group of censors. This one actually seems to understand how public relations works, and as such, I've come to the conclusion the are the most threatening and insidious of the lot. They communicate via emails and private messages, away from the public eye, that they are oh so sympathetic to what I'm saying, but that they can't risk the public blowback of being associated with me or my ideas, before imposing secret restrictions on my posting or jumping straight to a ban outright.
In a sense, it's easy to empathize. After all, I know full well what the risks are of being associated with me. I am me, after all. Merely by letting me speak, when so many places engage in outright bans, does come across as a tacit endorsement of my words in the eyes of some idiotic members of the public, so one can see what they would have to fear.
The problem is that they're liars.
I take no issue with forums where the subjects I care about are censored entirely. Where the entire conversation simply is not allowed to happen, and anyone bringing it up is told to knock it off and/or banned. That is not what happens with those sites who utilize this friendly public relations tactic.
When you censor only one side of an argument, and allow the other free reign, that is what an actual endorsement of a viewpoint looks like. Just because the site runners and administrators don't join in on the pile-on doesn't change the fact that they've taken a side and acted as an enemy. What makes them different and worse than the first group is that they've chosen not to declare hostilities, preferring to pretend to their readership that the site is actually an open forum and that the apparent homogeneity of opinion is a fact of life rather than a product of their censorship.
These are the sites who will most often retroactively wipe away the record of any argument that didn't go their way, while leaving dozens of threads where they believe their preferred viewpoint came off better intact.
The fact of the matter is that even at my most aggressive, I don't go where I'm not invited. I never bring up pedophilia or youth rights subjects in a space where no one had breached the topic first. I do care about, and respect the fact that not every space is appropriate for this conversation. But when the conversation is happening, when someone has brought up the subject, and it's continuing, someone needs to step in and say something, speak unapologetically for the opposing point of view. The risk otherwise is that those who thoughtlessly follow the crowd will leave the mainstream viewpoint unexamined, and those who fear reprisal will be cowed into silence, creating the illusion of consensus when the truth is anything but.
I don't recall if I've said this before in one of these posts, but I care as much as I do about putting forward the idea that there is nothing wrong with pedophiles because when I was younger and figuring out my sexuality, I desperately needed to hear it. I needed to have the point that pedophiles are not the same thing as child molesters stated loudly and unapologetically, because I was afraid of what I was feeling and what the cultural gestalt told me that meant was coming. When I saw someone stand up to the crowd, that helped me, and since then, I've tried to become that voice for the next person who needs to hear it.
Quite often, the ban comes in the form of a fairly obvious and unapologetic expression of disgust at my views, positions, and/or existence. The runners of said sites establishing themselves as effectively declared enemies, and acting on the sincere belief that I'm evil and need to be silenced. In a strange way, they're some of the most respectable sorts who act to silence me, since their intentions are clear and displayed in the open for all to see. So certain of the righteousness of their position, they often hold no fear of leaving what I've already said as a matter of public record, and allow that record to speak for itself, which suits me just fine.
Slightly less often, legalistic loopholes are used to justify the bans, citing some rule or another that's been deliberately written in vague language for the sake of later selective enforcement. These are the sites that pretend to uphold a standard of free speech and pretend that censorship isn't a part of their ideology or mission statement. These are the places that tend to have drawn out exit processes, since almost no one on the internet has thought to prohibit the sorts of things I want to say. As a result, most of that overbroad language isn't actually broad enough on a simple reading, and the staff at such places is very reluctant to actually invoke and use the "we can ban anyone for any reason" clauses that are always a part of the boilerplate. They recognize that censoring me is admitting that they can't defeat my ideas in a free marketplace, and so a ban is an admission of failure on their part. These are actually some of the most satisfying notes to leave on, since typically by the time they've rewritten their rules for the purpose of getting rid of me, I've emboldened others who'd previously stayed silent.
It's only in recent years that I've encountered a peculiar third group of censors. This one actually seems to understand how public relations works, and as such, I've come to the conclusion the are the most threatening and insidious of the lot. They communicate via emails and private messages, away from the public eye, that they are oh so sympathetic to what I'm saying, but that they can't risk the public blowback of being associated with me or my ideas, before imposing secret restrictions on my posting or jumping straight to a ban outright.
In a sense, it's easy to empathize. After all, I know full well what the risks are of being associated with me. I am me, after all. Merely by letting me speak, when so many places engage in outright bans, does come across as a tacit endorsement of my words in the eyes of some idiotic members of the public, so one can see what they would have to fear.
The problem is that they're liars.
I take no issue with forums where the subjects I care about are censored entirely. Where the entire conversation simply is not allowed to happen, and anyone bringing it up is told to knock it off and/or banned. That is not what happens with those sites who utilize this friendly public relations tactic.
When you censor only one side of an argument, and allow the other free reign, that is what an actual endorsement of a viewpoint looks like. Just because the site runners and administrators don't join in on the pile-on doesn't change the fact that they've taken a side and acted as an enemy. What makes them different and worse than the first group is that they've chosen not to declare hostilities, preferring to pretend to their readership that the site is actually an open forum and that the apparent homogeneity of opinion is a fact of life rather than a product of their censorship.
These are the sites who will most often retroactively wipe away the record of any argument that didn't go their way, while leaving dozens of threads where they believe their preferred viewpoint came off better intact.
The fact of the matter is that even at my most aggressive, I don't go where I'm not invited. I never bring up pedophilia or youth rights subjects in a space where no one had breached the topic first. I do care about, and respect the fact that not every space is appropriate for this conversation. But when the conversation is happening, when someone has brought up the subject, and it's continuing, someone needs to step in and say something, speak unapologetically for the opposing point of view. The risk otherwise is that those who thoughtlessly follow the crowd will leave the mainstream viewpoint unexamined, and those who fear reprisal will be cowed into silence, creating the illusion of consensus when the truth is anything but.
I don't recall if I've said this before in one of these posts, but I care as much as I do about putting forward the idea that there is nothing wrong with pedophiles because when I was younger and figuring out my sexuality, I desperately needed to hear it. I needed to have the point that pedophiles are not the same thing as child molesters stated loudly and unapologetically, because I was afraid of what I was feeling and what the cultural gestalt told me that meant was coming. When I saw someone stand up to the crowd, that helped me, and since then, I've tried to become that voice for the next person who needs to hear it.
Friday, May 24, 2013
News Commentary: Kaitlyn Hunt
I don't do a lot of news commentary here on this blog, because I feel that the issues I'm talking about are fundamentally timeless. That said, I'm pissed enough about the case of Kaitlyn Hunt to break from that just this once.
For those unaware, Kaitlyn is a young woman who turned 18 recently, and is being prosecuted for her sexual relationship with an underage girl from her high school. The media is painting this as anti-gay discrimination, and the conversations that have started because of it need to be addressed.
Let's start with the idea that this prosecution is because the girls are in a homosexual relationship. Yes, the parents of the younger girl are alleged to be prosecuting because the older girl "turned their daughter gay". That doesn't make the prosecution a case of anti-gay discrimination. Every high school boy who has ever been prosecuted and had his life destroyed because of the overprotective parents of his lover can attest to the fact that this is a shining example of equality, at least in the fact that the law is prosecuting.
There is some discrimination here, though. And it's the media who's doing it. No one gives a shit about the excesses of age of consent laws until it's a photogenic young woman who's suffering because of it. And once the media uproar inevitably subverts the legal system and ensures that this woman will escape punishment, everyone will go back to not giving a shit about the awful age of consent laws that will still be in place.
As I've said elsewhere on this blog, I do not support the age of consent. Kaitlyn should not be prosecuted or punished for a consensual relationship. I take Kaitlyn's lover at her word that the relationship was consensual, since she is the one who ought to get to decide that.
The conversation has also spawned much hand wringing about why this isn't covered under the "obvious" Romeo and Juliet clauses many states have in place for just this set of circumstances. First off, not every state's age of consent has an exception for minors who are close in age to one another. Secondly, no state should have such an exemption.
By setting an age of consent, the state is declaring that everyone under the line is incapable of consent, and it is under that justification that individuals who have sex with them are prosecuted. As such, whether Kaitlyn is an 18 year old from her same school or a 70 year old, what matters is that her lover is legally declared incapable of making her own choices about sex.
The very idea that you can be competent to consent to sex with teenagers but not to consent to sex with adults would be laughable if it were not the explicit law of the land, punishable by sentences harsher than some murderers get.
What these laws do is say "this group is particularly vulnerable, so let's create an entire class of people who are only legally allowed to fuck people in that particularly vulnerable class."
Either Kaitlyn's lover is competent to make her own decisions about her own body and who she shares it with, or she isn't. I think she very much is competent to make that decision, whether the person she decides to have sex with is a photogenic young woman or not.
Update:
Kaitlyn has accepted a plea bargain that nets her less than a year in jail and no need to register as a sex offender. We can all stop panicking now. The photogenic white woman won't suffer the insane consequences we always intended only for those evil, creepy men. Words cannot adequately express my disgust at the national dialogue. Though one emotion I can put into words is "unsurprised".
For those unaware, Kaitlyn is a young woman who turned 18 recently, and is being prosecuted for her sexual relationship with an underage girl from her high school. The media is painting this as anti-gay discrimination, and the conversations that have started because of it need to be addressed.
Let's start with the idea that this prosecution is because the girls are in a homosexual relationship. Yes, the parents of the younger girl are alleged to be prosecuting because the older girl "turned their daughter gay". That doesn't make the prosecution a case of anti-gay discrimination. Every high school boy who has ever been prosecuted and had his life destroyed because of the overprotective parents of his lover can attest to the fact that this is a shining example of equality, at least in the fact that the law is prosecuting.
There is some discrimination here, though. And it's the media who's doing it. No one gives a shit about the excesses of age of consent laws until it's a photogenic young woman who's suffering because of it. And once the media uproar inevitably subverts the legal system and ensures that this woman will escape punishment, everyone will go back to not giving a shit about the awful age of consent laws that will still be in place.
As I've said elsewhere on this blog, I do not support the age of consent. Kaitlyn should not be prosecuted or punished for a consensual relationship. I take Kaitlyn's lover at her word that the relationship was consensual, since she is the one who ought to get to decide that.
The conversation has also spawned much hand wringing about why this isn't covered under the "obvious" Romeo and Juliet clauses many states have in place for just this set of circumstances. First off, not every state's age of consent has an exception for minors who are close in age to one another. Secondly, no state should have such an exemption.
By setting an age of consent, the state is declaring that everyone under the line is incapable of consent, and it is under that justification that individuals who have sex with them are prosecuted. As such, whether Kaitlyn is an 18 year old from her same school or a 70 year old, what matters is that her lover is legally declared incapable of making her own choices about sex.
The very idea that you can be competent to consent to sex with teenagers but not to consent to sex with adults would be laughable if it were not the explicit law of the land, punishable by sentences harsher than some murderers get.
What these laws do is say "this group is particularly vulnerable, so let's create an entire class of people who are only legally allowed to fuck people in that particularly vulnerable class."
Either Kaitlyn's lover is competent to make her own decisions about her own body and who she shares it with, or she isn't. I think she very much is competent to make that decision, whether the person she decides to have sex with is a photogenic young woman or not.
Update:
Kaitlyn has accepted a plea bargain that nets her less than a year in jail and no need to register as a sex offender. We can all stop panicking now. The photogenic white woman won't suffer the insane consequences we always intended only for those evil, creepy men. Words cannot adequately express my disgust at the national dialogue. Though one emotion I can put into words is "unsurprised".
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
You'll Understand When You're Older
Of all the prejudiced, dismissive remarks and thought-terminating cliches I've ever been exposed to, none has stoked the fires of my righteous outrage more effectively than "you'll understand when you're older".
Even such gems as "because I said so" can't manage to match the level of dismissive arrogance as "you'll understand when you're older".
Implicit in the statement is the absolute certainty that whoever you're talking to is inherently inferior to yourself. That the gap between you is so great that there is no possible way you can explain your side of the argument to the other person, because they would be completely incapable of following your inherent brilliance.
Make no mistake. This is not about experience. That's what "when you have kids, you'll understand" is about. "You'll understand when you're older" is a statement that denies any experience could possibly make the slightest bit of difference. That there is nothing you can do about this inherent inferiority you have to the other party that could possibly bring you up to their level.
And of course, it's a go-to excuse for stupid people who don't have an actual argument to pretend that the reason they aren't presenting one is that they're actually far too superior to the other party, not the truth, that they have no argument that could stand up to the slightest bit of scrutiny.
There's an old saying among scientists. "A theory that explains everything, explains nothing." In other words, if you can use the exact same argument for any position at all, then it isn't an argument that's worth anything, because it's just as effective at arguing for falsehoods as it as at arguing for truths. That's the reason lists of logical fallacies get linked to so often on debate boards.
Still, never let it be said that I refuse to test the assertions of others against the objective standard of reality, no matter how much I disagree with them. I was told quite often when I was very young that all the age-based discrimination I noticed and complained about was something I would "understand when I was older". I'm older now. I have a better vocabulary for expressing my views, and I've got a broader education in the social justice struggles of yesteryear. But all those things I said were wrong back then, are still things I say are wrong today.
The truth, I think, lies with an absolutely wonderful quote from Albert Einstein. "If you cannot explain something to a six year old child, you don't understand it yourself."
Even such gems as "because I said so" can't manage to match the level of dismissive arrogance as "you'll understand when you're older".
Implicit in the statement is the absolute certainty that whoever you're talking to is inherently inferior to yourself. That the gap between you is so great that there is no possible way you can explain your side of the argument to the other person, because they would be completely incapable of following your inherent brilliance.
Make no mistake. This is not about experience. That's what "when you have kids, you'll understand" is about. "You'll understand when you're older" is a statement that denies any experience could possibly make the slightest bit of difference. That there is nothing you can do about this inherent inferiority you have to the other party that could possibly bring you up to their level.
And of course, it's a go-to excuse for stupid people who don't have an actual argument to pretend that the reason they aren't presenting one is that they're actually far too superior to the other party, not the truth, that they have no argument that could stand up to the slightest bit of scrutiny.
There's an old saying among scientists. "A theory that explains everything, explains nothing." In other words, if you can use the exact same argument for any position at all, then it isn't an argument that's worth anything, because it's just as effective at arguing for falsehoods as it as at arguing for truths. That's the reason lists of logical fallacies get linked to so often on debate boards.
Still, never let it be said that I refuse to test the assertions of others against the objective standard of reality, no matter how much I disagree with them. I was told quite often when I was very young that all the age-based discrimination I noticed and complained about was something I would "understand when I was older". I'm older now. I have a better vocabulary for expressing my views, and I've got a broader education in the social justice struggles of yesteryear. But all those things I said were wrong back then, are still things I say are wrong today.
The truth, I think, lies with an absolutely wonderful quote from Albert Einstein. "If you cannot explain something to a six year old child, you don't understand it yourself."
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Treating "Yes" The Same As "No"
There is an incredibly harmful narrative that's wormed its way into the mainstream discussion about sexual consent. The idea that we should ignore "yes" and "no" when it comes to sexual consent.
What's that? That isn't mainstream, you say? That's rapist talk? Why yes, that is rapist talk, but that doesn't mean it isn't mainstream.
I am, of course, talking about those underage individuals who desire and pursue sexual relationships with older individuals. The very fact that the age of consent exists as a law is proof of the existence of such individuals, since you don't make laws against things that never happen.
The politically driven policy is to treat the kids who said "yes" exactly the same as the ones who said "no". I'm not talking about the adult not having sex with the kid, for those of you still unsure where I stand on that. I'm talking about how society is to treat those kids who did end up having sex with someone in violation of the age of consent.
What happens when you treat someone like a rape victim? They start acting the part. So much of the trauma that comes from rape stems not from the mere act of forced sex, but from the societal reaction. To take one example, the feelings of bodily impurity that may come about naturally when someone is forced into sex are added to by a cultural narrative that says that a person who has been raped will never be the same again. If the person didn't feel violated or sullied before, the cultural narrative can do the job of making them feel violated retroactively all on its own.
By treating "yes" the same as "no", we make damn sure that everyone who said "yes" and meant it ends up exactly as traumatized as the ones who said "no" and meant that. The pattern is so consistent, an alien observer would be forced to conclude that was the point.
The virgin/whore false dichotomy is at the root of a lot of harmful ideas the mainstream of society has about sexuality, and here we have yet another example. The people pushing the agenda of treating those young people who honestly and enthusiastically said "yes" precisely the same way we treat those who've been the victims of force or coersion aren't doing so because it's healthy for those kids. They're pushing that agenda because in their narrow minds the only other option is to call the kid a slut and move on with their day.
There is no inherent need to make such a child devalue his/her own choices and judgements. There is no value in making that child feel vulnerable and exploited. If we were actually concerned with the health and sanity of those kids, we would be looking for any way to make them feel safe and empowered, rather than deliberately imposing a victim narrative on those who haven't reached that point naturally.
The crime of rape is the crime of ignoring another person's explicit consent. Whether they said "yes" or "no", the rapist does what he/she was going to do anyway. Consent is all about the importance of that distinction. By ignoring that "yes", we're making sure that whether they said "yes" or "no", someone is going to ignore their opinion on the subject and mistreat them accordingly.
What's that? That isn't mainstream, you say? That's rapist talk? Why yes, that is rapist talk, but that doesn't mean it isn't mainstream.
I am, of course, talking about those underage individuals who desire and pursue sexual relationships with older individuals. The very fact that the age of consent exists as a law is proof of the existence of such individuals, since you don't make laws against things that never happen.
The politically driven policy is to treat the kids who said "yes" exactly the same as the ones who said "no". I'm not talking about the adult not having sex with the kid, for those of you still unsure where I stand on that. I'm talking about how society is to treat those kids who did end up having sex with someone in violation of the age of consent.
What happens when you treat someone like a rape victim? They start acting the part. So much of the trauma that comes from rape stems not from the mere act of forced sex, but from the societal reaction. To take one example, the feelings of bodily impurity that may come about naturally when someone is forced into sex are added to by a cultural narrative that says that a person who has been raped will never be the same again. If the person didn't feel violated or sullied before, the cultural narrative can do the job of making them feel violated retroactively all on its own.
By treating "yes" the same as "no", we make damn sure that everyone who said "yes" and meant it ends up exactly as traumatized as the ones who said "no" and meant that. The pattern is so consistent, an alien observer would be forced to conclude that was the point.
The virgin/whore false dichotomy is at the root of a lot of harmful ideas the mainstream of society has about sexuality, and here we have yet another example. The people pushing the agenda of treating those young people who honestly and enthusiastically said "yes" precisely the same way we treat those who've been the victims of force or coersion aren't doing so because it's healthy for those kids. They're pushing that agenda because in their narrow minds the only other option is to call the kid a slut and move on with their day.
There is no inherent need to make such a child devalue his/her own choices and judgements. There is no value in making that child feel vulnerable and exploited. If we were actually concerned with the health and sanity of those kids, we would be looking for any way to make them feel safe and empowered, rather than deliberately imposing a victim narrative on those who haven't reached that point naturally.
The crime of rape is the crime of ignoring another person's explicit consent. Whether they said "yes" or "no", the rapist does what he/she was going to do anyway. Consent is all about the importance of that distinction. By ignoring that "yes", we're making sure that whether they said "yes" or "no", someone is going to ignore their opinion on the subject and mistreat them accordingly.
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Age Appropriate Content
I am a hardcore believer in the idea of free speech, open exchange of ideas, and the fundamental goodness of knowledge. Censorship in all its forms is anathema to me. The best use I can think of for a time machine would be to go back and save copies of the books that were burned throughout history.
I'm also a person who believes that children are people, and deserve to be treated like human beings. These two passions of mine combine whenever the phrase "age appropriate" is uttered to send me into a sputtering, incoherent rage. Thank goodness for the written word, where I can be articulate even in moments like these where I can't vocalize anything beyond threats and obscenities at best and animal snarls at worst.
Somehow the adults of this society have fallen into thinking that information about sex has the same effect as cracking open Lovecroft's Necromonicon. I mean this quite literally with numerous pieces of propaganda being spread that claim that children "exposed" to "age inappropriate content" display the same symptoms as those who were directly sexually abused. If I believed for one second that molesting a child would do no more harm than them seeing a RedTube video, I would have done so ages ago.
Since the dawn of the internet, an enormous industry has sprung up to censor it. Governments try to block content they don't like, and not just dictatorships like China. The likes of Sweeden have gotten into the act of censoring explicit sexual content for everyone "for the children". Home based firewall solutions have been the flavor of choice for the rugged individualists in the United States, but whether the nanny is the state or the parent, the internet is being censored.
The censorship efforts don't stop at blocking the content itself, however. After all, if the consequences were really so horrific, it would be criminally irresponsible to stop there. No, efforts are made to ensure that young people never develop the knowledge base to frame the questions that might lead to them seeing something "age inappropriate" in the first place.
Avoiding the subjects of sex and sexuality isn't a silent, seamless act. A five year old can tell when you're dancing around a subject you don't want to talk about. That's where shaming starts. They know that whatever it is you don't want to talk about, it's shameful and taboo. That is, in fact, the first thing they learn about it when you behave this way. This discourages them from asking questions, because that would mean violating the taboo they've already learned is in place.
Of course, discouraging questions is more thorough than that. When adults do respond to questions about sex, they always give as little information as possible. The idea, of course, is that they should only give them as much information as they explicitly ask for, lest they be "exposing" those children to sexual knowledge. The trouble with this method is, again, a five year old can figure out that you don't want to give a complete answer for some reason, and will thus be discouraged from asking those followup questions that this method theoretically relies upon.
If you're old enough to ask the question, you're old enough to know the answer. The whole answer. If you can articulate the question of how to define acceleration mathematically, you're old enough to learn calculus. If you're old enough to ask about sex, you're old enough to get a thorough overview of the subject matter.
But what of that most universal followup question to the clinical minimalism so many people prefer? "Why would anyone want to do that?" It's the most important question in any discussion of sex, and it's the one that's explicitly left out of sexual education curriculums and parental lectures alike. Surely answering that question will just make them go out and do it, right?
They asked the question. They're going to want to know the answer, and it can either come from you actually answering the question, or it can come from them experimenting in whatever unsupervised time they have available. And they'll wait for the unsupervised time because, again, by not answering the question, you're communicating that the subject is taboo and that any further attempts to get answers should be hidden from you.
I'm not above exploiting the violent hysteria and frothing hatrid people have for my kind in order to advance my causes, and this is one that matters to me. The children who are most vulnerable to child molesters are the ones who are most ignorant and have been taught most thoroughly that sex is a taboo. If they don't know what sex is, they've no reason not to believe that this new "game" is legitimately just that. Your efforts to silence their awkward questions also silences any hope of them telling you they've been molested.
I'm also a person who believes that children are people, and deserve to be treated like human beings. These two passions of mine combine whenever the phrase "age appropriate" is uttered to send me into a sputtering, incoherent rage. Thank goodness for the written word, where I can be articulate even in moments like these where I can't vocalize anything beyond threats and obscenities at best and animal snarls at worst.
Somehow the adults of this society have fallen into thinking that information about sex has the same effect as cracking open Lovecroft's Necromonicon. I mean this quite literally with numerous pieces of propaganda being spread that claim that children "exposed" to "age inappropriate content" display the same symptoms as those who were directly sexually abused. If I believed for one second that molesting a child would do no more harm than them seeing a RedTube video, I would have done so ages ago.
Since the dawn of the internet, an enormous industry has sprung up to censor it. Governments try to block content they don't like, and not just dictatorships like China. The likes of Sweeden have gotten into the act of censoring explicit sexual content for everyone "for the children". Home based firewall solutions have been the flavor of choice for the rugged individualists in the United States, but whether the nanny is the state or the parent, the internet is being censored.
The censorship efforts don't stop at blocking the content itself, however. After all, if the consequences were really so horrific, it would be criminally irresponsible to stop there. No, efforts are made to ensure that young people never develop the knowledge base to frame the questions that might lead to them seeing something "age inappropriate" in the first place.
Avoiding the subjects of sex and sexuality isn't a silent, seamless act. A five year old can tell when you're dancing around a subject you don't want to talk about. That's where shaming starts. They know that whatever it is you don't want to talk about, it's shameful and taboo. That is, in fact, the first thing they learn about it when you behave this way. This discourages them from asking questions, because that would mean violating the taboo they've already learned is in place.
Of course, discouraging questions is more thorough than that. When adults do respond to questions about sex, they always give as little information as possible. The idea, of course, is that they should only give them as much information as they explicitly ask for, lest they be "exposing" those children to sexual knowledge. The trouble with this method is, again, a five year old can figure out that you don't want to give a complete answer for some reason, and will thus be discouraged from asking those followup questions that this method theoretically relies upon.
If you're old enough to ask the question, you're old enough to know the answer. The whole answer. If you can articulate the question of how to define acceleration mathematically, you're old enough to learn calculus. If you're old enough to ask about sex, you're old enough to get a thorough overview of the subject matter.
But what of that most universal followup question to the clinical minimalism so many people prefer? "Why would anyone want to do that?" It's the most important question in any discussion of sex, and it's the one that's explicitly left out of sexual education curriculums and parental lectures alike. Surely answering that question will just make them go out and do it, right?
They asked the question. They're going to want to know the answer, and it can either come from you actually answering the question, or it can come from them experimenting in whatever unsupervised time they have available. And they'll wait for the unsupervised time because, again, by not answering the question, you're communicating that the subject is taboo and that any further attempts to get answers should be hidden from you.
I'm not above exploiting the violent hysteria and frothing hatrid people have for my kind in order to advance my causes, and this is one that matters to me. The children who are most vulnerable to child molesters are the ones who are most ignorant and have been taught most thoroughly that sex is a taboo. If they don't know what sex is, they've no reason not to believe that this new "game" is legitimately just that. Your efforts to silence their awkward questions also silences any hope of them telling you they've been molested.
Saturday, February 23, 2013
Star Trek TNG: Rascals
I love Star Trek: The Next Generation. I can and have spent hours discussing my favorite episodes and interesting aspects of the setting with friends and family. And like everything we love, there are some things about it that drive me absolutely crazy.
Star Trek as a whole has developed a reputation, deservedly or no, for being willing to tackle issues other programs won't touch. I'm not going to get too deep into the behind the scenes aspects and decision making process, because my approach to fiction is very much in the Death of the Author camp. I am far more interested in the in-universe claims of utopia and having gotten beyond primitive ideas like prejudice than I am in the real world conflicts between writers, show runners, and network censors.
And it is through that lens that I see the episode Rascals, which shows quite plainly that even in the utopian 24th century, ageism is apparently alive and well.
The premise of this episode is that through a transporter mishap, Captain Picard, Ro Laren, Guinan and Keiko O'Brien are physically transformed into children while retaining their adult minds.
One of the first things that happens after the transformation is that Picard faces prejudice from his crew. Despite the medical staff confirming that he is the same person, and that his mind was unaffected, his crew is hesitant to follow the orders of a man who looks like he's twelve.
While initially confident he can get through the initial discomfort his subordinates feel, his friends and confidants manage to convince him that his career is, if not over, absolutely going to need to be put on hold until he looks the right age again. He could possibly retain his rank in an honorary fassion so long as he goes and sequesters himself away back in school, but he won't be able to command a ship.
By the episode's end, Picard agrees to a risky procedure with a not insignificant chance of scattering his molecules across three lightyears for the chance to return to normal. Let's go over what that means, because it isn't immediately obvious. Not only was the procedure itself risky, but even if it worked perfectly we need to remember what the intended outcome was.
The medical staff had confirmed early on that if they did nothing, everyone who had been transformed would age normally from that point and would be perfectly healthy if they went that route. The procedure to return them to their normal ages by design takes years off their potential lifespans. Picard's case in particular is significant because he actually has a physical disability in his older form. A finicky artificial heart that nearly kills him twice in the series.
So, to reiterate, the man would rather lose decades of life, reacquire a preventable physical disability, and risk dying in an experimental medical procedure to bring all this about, rather than continue to live under the restrictions and prejudices he would face as a result of looking like he was a child.
Keiko O'Brien's struggles during this were more personal, but no less telling. Her husband Miles is deeply uncomfortable at the transformation, and pulls away both physically and emotionally when Keiko needs support. By the end of the one scene this conflict is allowed, the characters are already mourning the loss of their marriage.
For context, the marriage of the O'Briens has survived multiple instances of demonic possession, losing their daughter in a timewarp, two decades of false imprisonment and a subsequent suicide attempt, the entire Dominion War, and the most severe demotion in observed Starfleet history. They survive all that, but Miles can't bring himself to stand by his perfectly rational, mentally adult partner just because she's currently inhabiting a prepubescent body.
This all needs to be looked at in context. The Enterprise is an interstellar starship with a mandate to seek out new life and new civilizations, dispatched from a government encompassing a diverse array of species with radically differing biology and social customs. This is not, by any stretch of the imagination, the weirdest thing that has happened to these people. None of this can really be put down to shock when they've reacted with professionalism in the face of godlike beings summoning Mariachi bands, crew members mutating into spiders, and the entire concept of cause and effect breaking down before their eyes.
Now, so there are no misunderstandings, these two scenes are my favorite part of the episode. I adore the emotional impact of those scenes and the way this utterly-insignificant-in-the-grand-scheme transformation threatens to destroy Picard and Keiko's lives in ways they couldn't have imagined previously.
What bothers me about this episode is that those two scenes were all we got addressing these issues, and so much about the context of the situation that I discussed up above was nowhere to be seen in the episode itself. The episode wastes time on wacky hijinks while ignoring both the emotional core of the story and social commentary it was right on the edge of.
Star Trek as a whole has developed a reputation, deservedly or no, for being willing to tackle issues other programs won't touch. I'm not going to get too deep into the behind the scenes aspects and decision making process, because my approach to fiction is very much in the Death of the Author camp. I am far more interested in the in-universe claims of utopia and having gotten beyond primitive ideas like prejudice than I am in the real world conflicts between writers, show runners, and network censors.
And it is through that lens that I see the episode Rascals, which shows quite plainly that even in the utopian 24th century, ageism is apparently alive and well.
The premise of this episode is that through a transporter mishap, Captain Picard, Ro Laren, Guinan and Keiko O'Brien are physically transformed into children while retaining their adult minds.
One of the first things that happens after the transformation is that Picard faces prejudice from his crew. Despite the medical staff confirming that he is the same person, and that his mind was unaffected, his crew is hesitant to follow the orders of a man who looks like he's twelve.
While initially confident he can get through the initial discomfort his subordinates feel, his friends and confidants manage to convince him that his career is, if not over, absolutely going to need to be put on hold until he looks the right age again. He could possibly retain his rank in an honorary fassion so long as he goes and sequesters himself away back in school, but he won't be able to command a ship.
By the episode's end, Picard agrees to a risky procedure with a not insignificant chance of scattering his molecules across three lightyears for the chance to return to normal. Let's go over what that means, because it isn't immediately obvious. Not only was the procedure itself risky, but even if it worked perfectly we need to remember what the intended outcome was.
The medical staff had confirmed early on that if they did nothing, everyone who had been transformed would age normally from that point and would be perfectly healthy if they went that route. The procedure to return them to their normal ages by design takes years off their potential lifespans. Picard's case in particular is significant because he actually has a physical disability in his older form. A finicky artificial heart that nearly kills him twice in the series.
So, to reiterate, the man would rather lose decades of life, reacquire a preventable physical disability, and risk dying in an experimental medical procedure to bring all this about, rather than continue to live under the restrictions and prejudices he would face as a result of looking like he was a child.
Keiko O'Brien's struggles during this were more personal, but no less telling. Her husband Miles is deeply uncomfortable at the transformation, and pulls away both physically and emotionally when Keiko needs support. By the end of the one scene this conflict is allowed, the characters are already mourning the loss of their marriage.
For context, the marriage of the O'Briens has survived multiple instances of demonic possession, losing their daughter in a timewarp, two decades of false imprisonment and a subsequent suicide attempt, the entire Dominion War, and the most severe demotion in observed Starfleet history. They survive all that, but Miles can't bring himself to stand by his perfectly rational, mentally adult partner just because she's currently inhabiting a prepubescent body.
This all needs to be looked at in context. The Enterprise is an interstellar starship with a mandate to seek out new life and new civilizations, dispatched from a government encompassing a diverse array of species with radically differing biology and social customs. This is not, by any stretch of the imagination, the weirdest thing that has happened to these people. None of this can really be put down to shock when they've reacted with professionalism in the face of godlike beings summoning Mariachi bands, crew members mutating into spiders, and the entire concept of cause and effect breaking down before their eyes.
Now, so there are no misunderstandings, these two scenes are my favorite part of the episode. I adore the emotional impact of those scenes and the way this utterly-insignificant-in-the-grand-scheme transformation threatens to destroy Picard and Keiko's lives in ways they couldn't have imagined previously.
What bothers me about this episode is that those two scenes were all we got addressing these issues, and so much about the context of the situation that I discussed up above was nowhere to be seen in the episode itself. The episode wastes time on wacky hijinks while ignoring both the emotional core of the story and social commentary it was right on the edge of.
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
Bullying and School Shootings
I've been bullied.
I know that there are those among you who will take the opportunity to use this fact against me, to use it to discount my arguments, and to attempt to perform the closest approximation of violence available through a text based exchange. I know that will be the result because that has been the result countless times I've brought this fact up. If you think any of that is going to silence me, I'll again direct you to reread the introductory post, and you ask yourself why you think you can hurt or intimidate me into silence after I opened with that.
Bullying is my top youth rights issue. More than voting, more than age of consent, more than property rights. So if I care so much about this one, why wait so long to post anything about it? Because the problems associated with this issue are so painfully obvious not one of them would need to be said out loud in a sane universe. And as such, this post requires I put into words basic human decency. And because the heartbreaking consequences of people so universally failing to act on this issue mean I tend to get omnicidal when I resume thinking about it, and that isn't conductive to careful, thoughtful analysis or persuasive writing.
Social rules are a series of lines we draw between ourselves and others. Boundaries need to be agreed upon, and thereafter respected. Much bullying is crossing one or two of those boundaries by just the tiniest degree. Once that's been done, the bully relies on the fact that the infraction was small to shield him/her from consequences, then does it again. And again. And again.
Bullying is not a single incident. It isn't one kid beating you up, or stealing from you. That isn't what it is at all. Bullying is a pattern of such incidents. Bullying is a prolonged campaign of physical, psychological, and social attacks, each individually below the threshold that the authorities would care about, but collectively adding up to be too much for the victim to handle. Bullying is slow torture, and needs to be treated as such.
So much advice we give kids fails to take this pattern into account. We tell them to "tell an adult", but when a kid comes to an adult authority figure with a minor complaint, the adult is frustrated at the kid's inability to deal with something so minor. So that adult says "just ignore it", not recognizing that this is a pattern, perpetrated by someone who will delight in the victim bottling up their obvious discomfort as they proceed to escalate the violence while the kid still has that "just ignore it" advice ringing in their ears.
Which brings us to the "fight back, bullies are cowards" advice. There's only one healthy response to a prolonged campaign of torture that's being actively ignored by the authorities. Whatever it takes to make it stop. And a victim can't simply match like for like. Repaying each small violation with a small violation of their own against their tormenter. The tormenter will simply delight in their ability to provoke this new response. So when we tell the victim to fight back, the only answer for them is to make it stop by any means necessary. If that means someone ends up hospitalized, so be it, if that means someone ends up dead because the authorites refused to intervene when the situation was minor. So. Be. It.
That's why everyone knows that it's the victims of bullying who get into trouble and the bullies themselves are left to roam free. Bullies know exactly where the line is between their victim being comfortable and not, and they also know exactly where the line is where their activity is too minor for any single incident to be responded to meaningfully by the authorities. When a victim fights back, they don't keep that line in mind, because they've learned that the authorities aren't an issue, because the authorities have been ignoring months, or years of torture right in front of their eyes.
Of course, it isn't always that way. Sometimes we have a real simple case for the authorities to handle. A good old fashioned beating incident where the victim is attacked and left bloody. And again the authorities fail. What happened here is called "assault and battery". It is a criminal offense. The appropriate response to it is a criminal trial and criminal penalties.
That is the social contract every citizen is included in, adult or child. Instead, authority figures in the school cover it up. They minimize the incident to the parents, using phrases like "boys will be boys". They pressure parents not to press charges. And they again teach the victim that their pain will be ignored, and that the bully can act with impunity. That the social contract does not protect them, and will only ever be used to hurt them.
Shootings aren't a cry for attention. The victims who snap and start shooting people don't want attention. They know attention won't fix anything. They've been taught that the social contract doesn't apply to them, and that the only way that anything will ever change for the better is if they, on their own, make it impossible for things to continue as they had.
What these people are doing is solving problems in a perfectly natural way. Without the social contract, this is the standard way human beings settle disputes. We created the social contract in order to prevent incidents like this. That is the only reason we have the social contract.
Given how utterly useless the social contract has been in protecting tormented minors who are forced, day in and day out, to spend the majority of their waking hours in close proximity to their tormentors while authority figures ignore and minimize the abuse they're suffering, you should all feel blessed that shootings are as unfathomably rare as they are.
I know that there are those among you who will take the opportunity to use this fact against me, to use it to discount my arguments, and to attempt to perform the closest approximation of violence available through a text based exchange. I know that will be the result because that has been the result countless times I've brought this fact up. If you think any of that is going to silence me, I'll again direct you to reread the introductory post, and you ask yourself why you think you can hurt or intimidate me into silence after I opened with that.
Bullying is my top youth rights issue. More than voting, more than age of consent, more than property rights. So if I care so much about this one, why wait so long to post anything about it? Because the problems associated with this issue are so painfully obvious not one of them would need to be said out loud in a sane universe. And as such, this post requires I put into words basic human decency. And because the heartbreaking consequences of people so universally failing to act on this issue mean I tend to get omnicidal when I resume thinking about it, and that isn't conductive to careful, thoughtful analysis or persuasive writing.
Social rules are a series of lines we draw between ourselves and others. Boundaries need to be agreed upon, and thereafter respected. Much bullying is crossing one or two of those boundaries by just the tiniest degree. Once that's been done, the bully relies on the fact that the infraction was small to shield him/her from consequences, then does it again. And again. And again.
Bullying is not a single incident. It isn't one kid beating you up, or stealing from you. That isn't what it is at all. Bullying is a pattern of such incidents. Bullying is a prolonged campaign of physical, psychological, and social attacks, each individually below the threshold that the authorities would care about, but collectively adding up to be too much for the victim to handle. Bullying is slow torture, and needs to be treated as such.
So much advice we give kids fails to take this pattern into account. We tell them to "tell an adult", but when a kid comes to an adult authority figure with a minor complaint, the adult is frustrated at the kid's inability to deal with something so minor. So that adult says "just ignore it", not recognizing that this is a pattern, perpetrated by someone who will delight in the victim bottling up their obvious discomfort as they proceed to escalate the violence while the kid still has that "just ignore it" advice ringing in their ears.
Which brings us to the "fight back, bullies are cowards" advice. There's only one healthy response to a prolonged campaign of torture that's being actively ignored by the authorities. Whatever it takes to make it stop. And a victim can't simply match like for like. Repaying each small violation with a small violation of their own against their tormenter. The tormenter will simply delight in their ability to provoke this new response. So when we tell the victim to fight back, the only answer for them is to make it stop by any means necessary. If that means someone ends up hospitalized, so be it, if that means someone ends up dead because the authorites refused to intervene when the situation was minor. So. Be. It.
That's why everyone knows that it's the victims of bullying who get into trouble and the bullies themselves are left to roam free. Bullies know exactly where the line is between their victim being comfortable and not, and they also know exactly where the line is where their activity is too minor for any single incident to be responded to meaningfully by the authorities. When a victim fights back, they don't keep that line in mind, because they've learned that the authorities aren't an issue, because the authorities have been ignoring months, or years of torture right in front of their eyes.
Of course, it isn't always that way. Sometimes we have a real simple case for the authorities to handle. A good old fashioned beating incident where the victim is attacked and left bloody. And again the authorities fail. What happened here is called "assault and battery". It is a criminal offense. The appropriate response to it is a criminal trial and criminal penalties.
That is the social contract every citizen is included in, adult or child. Instead, authority figures in the school cover it up. They minimize the incident to the parents, using phrases like "boys will be boys". They pressure parents not to press charges. And they again teach the victim that their pain will be ignored, and that the bully can act with impunity. That the social contract does not protect them, and will only ever be used to hurt them.
Shootings aren't a cry for attention. The victims who snap and start shooting people don't want attention. They know attention won't fix anything. They've been taught that the social contract doesn't apply to them, and that the only way that anything will ever change for the better is if they, on their own, make it impossible for things to continue as they had.
What these people are doing is solving problems in a perfectly natural way. Without the social contract, this is the standard way human beings settle disputes. We created the social contract in order to prevent incidents like this. That is the only reason we have the social contract.
Given how utterly useless the social contract has been in protecting tormented minors who are forced, day in and day out, to spend the majority of their waking hours in close proximity to their tormentors while authority figures ignore and minimize the abuse they're suffering, you should all feel blessed that shootings are as unfathomably rare as they are.
Sunday, December 2, 2012
The RMSC
Some time ago, I was involved with the creation of this proposal. It came about as the result of a back and forth between myself and another individual going by the handle PoeticVengence. I asked what the function of Age of Consent was. I asked what people who were under the magic age line supposedly lacked that people above the magic age line supposedly had. The feedback PoeticVengence and others provided, both during and after this initial back and forth, served as the base for this proposal.
Proposed Relational Maturity and Sexual Competency (RMSC) testing schema:
In order to be declared mentally competent to engage in consensual sexual activities (rather than having had a certain number of birthdays) under the proposed system, the test-taker proves his/her mental competence by passing a test.
The testing requirements include:
1.) Factual knowledge about sex, sexuality, reproduction and STDs.
1.a.) Subject must understand the mechanics of sexual intercourse. Sexual anatomy, some common intercourse activities (at least the big three oral, anal and vaginal), masturbation, and outercourse activities (mutual masturbation in its various forms) should all be understood at a mechanical level.
1.b.) Subject must understand the mechanics of human reproduction. Ejaculation, sperm fertilizing egg cells, warning signs of pregnancy including missed periods, a basic understanding of the nine month gestation period, childbirth, and the intrinsic physical risks of pregnancy. (Including factors that can increase those risks, ie low body mass and lack of physical development.)
1.c.) Subject must understand his or her options in terms of preventing pregnancy. Subject must be aware of the existence and usage of barrier methods like condoms, hormone options like birth control pills, sterilization procedures like vasectomies, spermicide options, and demonstrate an understanding of the relative failure rates of these products. While it is not necessary to be able to prattle off statistical failure rates, an understanding of which are most and least effective must be demonstrated, as well as the understanding that they can be more effective when used together.
1.d.) Subject must be aware of abortion, what it is, the legal status of the procedure locally, and, if legal, the risks inherent in this procedure.
1.e.) Subject must know about STDs. Subject must be aware that exchanging bodily fluids, particularly sexual fluids runs the risk of transmitting diseases. Subject must be aware that some such diseases are incurable. HIV in particular should be understood in terms of its transmission methods, and its effects.
1.f.) Subject must know where to go for testing and medical advice regarding STDs.
1.g.) Subject must be aware of methods besides abstinence for preventing STDs, in particular the efficacy of barrier methods and the risks of multiple partners and anonymous sex.
2.) the capacity to use critical thought to judge situations (consequence acknowledgment, goal setting, etc)
2.a.) Subject must understand that actions have consequences.
2.b.) Subject must be able to use prior experience and provided factual information to select the course of action leading to the best outcome in a hypothetical situation.
2.c.) Subject must be able to recognize when there is not enough information provided in a question to provide a meaningful answer.
3.) Ability to identify the fact that people lie to and use each other, and be able to judge (to a certain extent) when that's occurring in certain examples.
4.) Understanding of the concepts of rejection (both non-personal caused and personal caused rejection, as well as being able to reject people themselves).
4.a.) Subject must understand that not everyone wants to have sex with them.
4.b.) Subject must understand sexual orientation, and that some people just don't want sex with certain categories of people.
4.c.) Subject must recognize that some people do not want to have sex with them personally.
4.d.) Subject must be able to reject others.
5.) Understanding sexual ethics (like how rape is considered wrong, using sex to hurt people is considered wrong, etc. All because these hurt people for no justifiable reason.)
5.a.) Subject must be able to differentiate between rape and consensual sex in examples.
5.b.) Subject must understand that rape is illegal.
5.c.) Subject must be able to recognize sexual abuse other than rape in examples.
5.d.) Subject must understand that sexual abuse is illegal.
5.e.) Subject must understand the consequences and implications of using sex as a commodity.
5.f.) Subject must be aware of how to report the crimes they were required to be able to identify.
5.g.) Subject must understand that they have the right to request any potential sexual partners be tested for STDs before consenting to sex.
5.h.) Subject must be aware that they can insist upon a partner using adequate means of prophylaxis (STDs, pregnancy)
The proposed testing format is as follows:
Use a review board, and allow researchers to propose alternative testing methods, approved by the review board, and allow anyone applying to take the test to use whichever approved test they wish. (I should point out the need for an oral test, under the assumption that even illiterate adults or children could potentially have the necessary skills and knowledge even if they lack the skills and knowledge of reading and writing. And, of course, the need for a version of the test to be available in multiple languages so as not to discriminate against non-native english speakers.)
At the testing facilities, social workers will be present to evaluate and ensure that test takers are here by their own free will. Abuse intervention programs and counseling services will be available at testing centers.
On site sex education classes will be available in order to help prepare test takers for acquiring the factual knowledge required for requirement two. This should help alleviate the imbalances in educational backgrounds of test takers.
Upon having passed the test, a picture ID is issued indicating you are competent to have sex. Having sex with an unlicensed individual is treated as statutory rape. Test status will be hidden from third parties (First is Child, second is Government) unless the first party decides to tell someone (Ostensibly to prove sexual legality).
If there is reason to suspect that an individual is trying to "play the system" (by deliberately remaining untested despite being actually competent in order to maintain access to partners unable to offer meaningful consent or by deliberately failing the test), the court could order that the parties involved be tested, and dealt with accordingly in terms of the results. (A stripped down version akin to current criminal responsibility tests should be used in order to prevent deliberate failing.) If one party is found be capable and the other not, it should serve as compelling evidence that this was a case that should be treated as statutory rape, and the now competent party would have to prove in some way that they only gained this competence in the intervening time between the act and the sexual encounter. If neither party proves competent, there's nothing to be done, regardless of ages involved. If both parties prove competent, they should both be held criminally responsible, but not to the same level as if they were the only one involved who was competent. Likely a fine of some sort would be the best choice for such an infraction.
A grandfather clause is included in this proposal, such that anyone who is over the local age of consent at the time this proposal goes into effect will not need to be tested so long as they wish to be sexually active only with other individuals who were also grandfathered out of the program. If they wish to be sexual with someone operating under the new system, they must submit for testing, and thereafter abide by the new system as though they had not been grandfathered out of it.
Conclusion:
The primary difference is that actual competency as determined by the test, rather than assumed competency based on age is the primary determiner.
Thoughts? Additional testing requirements you feel are important?
Proposed Relational Maturity and Sexual Competency (RMSC) testing schema:
In order to be declared mentally competent to engage in consensual sexual activities (rather than having had a certain number of birthdays) under the proposed system, the test-taker proves his/her mental competence by passing a test.
The testing requirements include:
1.) Factual knowledge about sex, sexuality, reproduction and STDs.
1.a.) Subject must understand the mechanics of sexual intercourse. Sexual anatomy, some common intercourse activities (at least the big three oral, anal and vaginal), masturbation, and outercourse activities (mutual masturbation in its various forms) should all be understood at a mechanical level.
1.b.) Subject must understand the mechanics of human reproduction. Ejaculation, sperm fertilizing egg cells, warning signs of pregnancy including missed periods, a basic understanding of the nine month gestation period, childbirth, and the intrinsic physical risks of pregnancy. (Including factors that can increase those risks, ie low body mass and lack of physical development.)
1.c.) Subject must understand his or her options in terms of preventing pregnancy. Subject must be aware of the existence and usage of barrier methods like condoms, hormone options like birth control pills, sterilization procedures like vasectomies, spermicide options, and demonstrate an understanding of the relative failure rates of these products. While it is not necessary to be able to prattle off statistical failure rates, an understanding of which are most and least effective must be demonstrated, as well as the understanding that they can be more effective when used together.
1.d.) Subject must be aware of abortion, what it is, the legal status of the procedure locally, and, if legal, the risks inherent in this procedure.
1.e.) Subject must know about STDs. Subject must be aware that exchanging bodily fluids, particularly sexual fluids runs the risk of transmitting diseases. Subject must be aware that some such diseases are incurable. HIV in particular should be understood in terms of its transmission methods, and its effects.
1.f.) Subject must know where to go for testing and medical advice regarding STDs.
1.g.) Subject must be aware of methods besides abstinence for preventing STDs, in particular the efficacy of barrier methods and the risks of multiple partners and anonymous sex.
2.) the capacity to use critical thought to judge situations (consequence acknowledgment, goal setting, etc)
2.a.) Subject must understand that actions have consequences.
2.b.) Subject must be able to use prior experience and provided factual information to select the course of action leading to the best outcome in a hypothetical situation.
2.c.) Subject must be able to recognize when there is not enough information provided in a question to provide a meaningful answer.
3.) Ability to identify the fact that people lie to and use each other, and be able to judge (to a certain extent) when that's occurring in certain examples.
4.) Understanding of the concepts of rejection (both non-personal caused and personal caused rejection, as well as being able to reject people themselves).
4.a.) Subject must understand that not everyone wants to have sex with them.
4.b.) Subject must understand sexual orientation, and that some people just don't want sex with certain categories of people.
4.c.) Subject must recognize that some people do not want to have sex with them personally.
4.d.) Subject must be able to reject others.
5.) Understanding sexual ethics (like how rape is considered wrong, using sex to hurt people is considered wrong, etc. All because these hurt people for no justifiable reason.)
5.a.) Subject must be able to differentiate between rape and consensual sex in examples.
5.b.) Subject must understand that rape is illegal.
5.c.) Subject must be able to recognize sexual abuse other than rape in examples.
5.d.) Subject must understand that sexual abuse is illegal.
5.e.) Subject must understand the consequences and implications of using sex as a commodity.
5.f.) Subject must be aware of how to report the crimes they were required to be able to identify.
5.g.) Subject must understand that they have the right to request any potential sexual partners be tested for STDs before consenting to sex.
5.h.) Subject must be aware that they can insist upon a partner using adequate means of prophylaxis (STDs, pregnancy)
The proposed testing format is as follows:
Use a review board, and allow researchers to propose alternative testing methods, approved by the review board, and allow anyone applying to take the test to use whichever approved test they wish. (I should point out the need for an oral test, under the assumption that even illiterate adults or children could potentially have the necessary skills and knowledge even if they lack the skills and knowledge of reading and writing. And, of course, the need for a version of the test to be available in multiple languages so as not to discriminate against non-native english speakers.)
At the testing facilities, social workers will be present to evaluate and ensure that test takers are here by their own free will. Abuse intervention programs and counseling services will be available at testing centers.
On site sex education classes will be available in order to help prepare test takers for acquiring the factual knowledge required for requirement two. This should help alleviate the imbalances in educational backgrounds of test takers.
Upon having passed the test, a picture ID is issued indicating you are competent to have sex. Having sex with an unlicensed individual is treated as statutory rape. Test status will be hidden from third parties (First is Child, second is Government) unless the first party decides to tell someone (Ostensibly to prove sexual legality).
If there is reason to suspect that an individual is trying to "play the system" (by deliberately remaining untested despite being actually competent in order to maintain access to partners unable to offer meaningful consent or by deliberately failing the test), the court could order that the parties involved be tested, and dealt with accordingly in terms of the results. (A stripped down version akin to current criminal responsibility tests should be used in order to prevent deliberate failing.) If one party is found be capable and the other not, it should serve as compelling evidence that this was a case that should be treated as statutory rape, and the now competent party would have to prove in some way that they only gained this competence in the intervening time between the act and the sexual encounter. If neither party proves competent, there's nothing to be done, regardless of ages involved. If both parties prove competent, they should both be held criminally responsible, but not to the same level as if they were the only one involved who was competent. Likely a fine of some sort would be the best choice for such an infraction.
A grandfather clause is included in this proposal, such that anyone who is over the local age of consent at the time this proposal goes into effect will not need to be tested so long as they wish to be sexually active only with other individuals who were also grandfathered out of the program. If they wish to be sexual with someone operating under the new system, they must submit for testing, and thereafter abide by the new system as though they had not been grandfathered out of it.
Conclusion:
The primary difference is that actual competency as determined by the test, rather than assumed competency based on age is the primary determiner.
Thoughts? Additional testing requirements you feel are important?
Criminal Responsibility
Whatever your position on this subject, it is a fact that in the United States, and many other parts of the world, people of differing ages have differing access to the criminal justice system.
The defense of infancy in Common Law holds that an individual under a certain age cannot be found criminally guilty due to it being presumed impossible for them to have understood that their actions caused whatever harm it was they would have been punished for had they been adults. For example, an infant, having somehow gotten its hands on a gun, and shooting its parent in the head would be subject to neither murder, nor manslaughter, nor even criminal negligence prosecution because the courts (rightly) assume that the infant had no way of knowing that in playing with the gun, the death of the parent was a risk.
In between that age, and having full access to the criminal courts, many places have a juvenile court system. The specifics of such courts vary considerably from place to place. In some ways, the courts in the US treat juveniles with more leniency (lower caps on sentences, etc.), and in some ways some of them treat juveniles more harshly (no access to juries).
A long-standing problem with this system is how one is classified as an "infant", "juvenile" or an "adult". One common choice in this is to use age lines. These lines, while simple to implement, leave much to be desired regardless of which of the underlying reasons for having such divisions one subscribes to.
If one is most concerned with the understanding of the criminal, as is the presumed case with the defense of infancy, mental competence to stand trial serves as a much more effective and accurate metric than an age line. Not that said assessment of competence need be particularly sophisticated in the case of actual infants.
Concerns about the possibility for reform, often cited as the reason behind so many of the differences in sentencing at the juvenile level seem to practically beg for a mental health treatment of the criminal behavior rather than a criminal justice treatment in the first place. As such, a mental health style evaluation regarding the likelihood of reoffense and treatment course would serve better this goal than drawing an age line and saying that people below it can be completely reformed, but people above it cannot.
Muddying the waters still further is the concept of trying juveniles in the adult court system. When the crime is severe enough, a juvenile will occasionally be tried "as an adult", losing access to whatever protections their local juvenile court laws afford. This practice puts juvenile offenders in the worst of both worlds in terms of their ability to defend themselves, when it is the prosecutor, not the defense who gets to make this determination. Either they are denied the full slate of due process protections present in the adult court system, or they are denied the sentence caps of the juvenile court system, depending on the assessment of the prosecutor of the strength of his case.
The defense of infancy in Common Law holds that an individual under a certain age cannot be found criminally guilty due to it being presumed impossible for them to have understood that their actions caused whatever harm it was they would have been punished for had they been adults. For example, an infant, having somehow gotten its hands on a gun, and shooting its parent in the head would be subject to neither murder, nor manslaughter, nor even criminal negligence prosecution because the courts (rightly) assume that the infant had no way of knowing that in playing with the gun, the death of the parent was a risk.
In between that age, and having full access to the criminal courts, many places have a juvenile court system. The specifics of such courts vary considerably from place to place. In some ways, the courts in the US treat juveniles with more leniency (lower caps on sentences, etc.), and in some ways some of them treat juveniles more harshly (no access to juries).
A long-standing problem with this system is how one is classified as an "infant", "juvenile" or an "adult". One common choice in this is to use age lines. These lines, while simple to implement, leave much to be desired regardless of which of the underlying reasons for having such divisions one subscribes to.
If one is most concerned with the understanding of the criminal, as is the presumed case with the defense of infancy, mental competence to stand trial serves as a much more effective and accurate metric than an age line. Not that said assessment of competence need be particularly sophisticated in the case of actual infants.
Concerns about the possibility for reform, often cited as the reason behind so many of the differences in sentencing at the juvenile level seem to practically beg for a mental health treatment of the criminal behavior rather than a criminal justice treatment in the first place. As such, a mental health style evaluation regarding the likelihood of reoffense and treatment course would serve better this goal than drawing an age line and saying that people below it can be completely reformed, but people above it cannot.
Muddying the waters still further is the concept of trying juveniles in the adult court system. When the crime is severe enough, a juvenile will occasionally be tried "as an adult", losing access to whatever protections their local juvenile court laws afford. This practice puts juvenile offenders in the worst of both worlds in terms of their ability to defend themselves, when it is the prosecutor, not the defense who gets to make this determination. Either they are denied the full slate of due process protections present in the adult court system, or they are denied the sentence caps of the juvenile court system, depending on the assessment of the prosecutor of the strength of his case.
Suffrage
The 26th Amendment to the US Constitution reads:
While this amendment represented, at the time, an important recognition that citizens should not be subject to being drafted into a war by a government which was unaccountable to them, it largely ignores the larger issues involved with the existence of a voting age.
The United States government style is described as a representative democracy, and that says something about the nature of what it means to be granted the vote. The entire point of sending representatives to make decisions on our behalf rests on the idea that citizens aren't able to spend the needed time to educate themselves on every issue of significance to them. So instead, they appoint someone who's sole job is to become educated on these issues, and to make decisions in the place of the citizens who they are representing. The representative is intended to be someone who's judgment the citizens trust, as that representative is, ideally, acting on what the citizen would be acting on had the citizen had the time to properly review an issue.
I felt it important to go over the basics of representative democracy because I feel it's important to a common argument for why people under 18 ought to be denied the right to vote. The common argument is that people under 18 aren't educated or informed enough to have sufficiently developed political opinions on the relevant issues of the day.
The problem with this reasoning, is that, as I outline above, the whole point of having a representative rather than a direct democracy is that we already assume the voters are uninformed. It is an implicit assumption written into our form of government. The governing system is explicitly designed to handle uninformed voters. That's the whole point of it.
Another common argument for denying the vote to individuals under the age of 18 is that they are too strongly influenced by their parents, and this would effectively be giving parents more votes than the childfree, and parents of larger families more votes than those who have smaller families. On that front, I submit that the problem doesn't exactly go away when someone crosses the magic age line.
Individuals under the age of 18 are subject to the laws of this country. They are required to pay taxes on any income earned, and they are punished by the legal system when they violate laws made by individuals they had no part in electing. This is an immoral state of affairs, and one rather important American war has been fought over the very issue of taxation and legal responsibility without representation.
The 26th amendment forbids states from denying people over 18 the right to vote, but that is a minimum standard. States are free to grant the vote to minors as they see fit.
Suffrage has taken a long, difficult road to reach its current levels, gradually including non-land-owners, blacks, women, but we've still got entire groups of people denied basic representation. The way our representative democracy is supposed to work, a person deserves the right to political representation once they've reached the point that they can articulate an opinion, and age should not be a factor.
Quote:
The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age. Congress shall have the power to enforce this law through appropriate legislation.
While this amendment represented, at the time, an important recognition that citizens should not be subject to being drafted into a war by a government which was unaccountable to them, it largely ignores the larger issues involved with the existence of a voting age.
The United States government style is described as a representative democracy, and that says something about the nature of what it means to be granted the vote. The entire point of sending representatives to make decisions on our behalf rests on the idea that citizens aren't able to spend the needed time to educate themselves on every issue of significance to them. So instead, they appoint someone who's sole job is to become educated on these issues, and to make decisions in the place of the citizens who they are representing. The representative is intended to be someone who's judgment the citizens trust, as that representative is, ideally, acting on what the citizen would be acting on had the citizen had the time to properly review an issue.
I felt it important to go over the basics of representative democracy because I feel it's important to a common argument for why people under 18 ought to be denied the right to vote. The common argument is that people under 18 aren't educated or informed enough to have sufficiently developed political opinions on the relevant issues of the day.
The problem with this reasoning, is that, as I outline above, the whole point of having a representative rather than a direct democracy is that we already assume the voters are uninformed. It is an implicit assumption written into our form of government. The governing system is explicitly designed to handle uninformed voters. That's the whole point of it.
Another common argument for denying the vote to individuals under the age of 18 is that they are too strongly influenced by their parents, and this would effectively be giving parents more votes than the childfree, and parents of larger families more votes than those who have smaller families. On that front, I submit that the problem doesn't exactly go away when someone crosses the magic age line.
Individuals under the age of 18 are subject to the laws of this country. They are required to pay taxes on any income earned, and they are punished by the legal system when they violate laws made by individuals they had no part in electing. This is an immoral state of affairs, and one rather important American war has been fought over the very issue of taxation and legal responsibility without representation.
The 26th amendment forbids states from denying people over 18 the right to vote, but that is a minimum standard. States are free to grant the vote to minors as they see fit.
Suffrage has taken a long, difficult road to reach its current levels, gradually including non-land-owners, blacks, women, but we've still got entire groups of people denied basic representation. The way our representative democracy is supposed to work, a person deserves the right to political representation once they've reached the point that they can articulate an opinion, and age should not be a factor.
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