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I remember. And what it taught me is that in the eyes of society at large I wasn't a real person until I was 21. It also taught me that society may PUNISH adults who try to treat people under 21 as though they're real human beings. You see, that's (not really) "GROOMING". Also, in any case other than violent criminality, any action a human being takes under the age of 18 is attributable to their guardians, "because they don't understand what they were doing". But the acts of violent criminality? Tried as an adult "because they clearly had to have understood what they were doing".
Look. I hate it, but: we treat children like second class citizens, like pets, like slaves, because it's dangerous to do otherwise. Children are a fucking minefield of legal grey areas and drastically accelerated consequences. The shit you and I live through on a daily basis gets brushed off as "that's just life" but if it happens to a fifteen year old "ARE YOU CRAZY THEY'RE ONLY A CHILD". And I'm not so sure I'd be able to meaningfully or successfully argue against that if I ever found myself in a position where I'm found culpable for someone of that age group.
Gods help me I think I'd rather die than have children of my own, but if I ever did, I'd have to be honest with them about all the terrible features of the society in which we live:
"To me you're a person, and if you ask anyone else you're a person, but if the shit ever went down the law would treat you as though you are a pet. I want you to feel secure in your privacy, in your autonomy, in your possession of material objects, but if anything happens that forces the law to cast its glaring gaze upon our lives they have the power to take everything from both of us.
"It is NOT your fault, but nevertheless we are both hostages until you are emancipated either by the clock running out or by legal declaration. I tell you this not to demoralized you but to prepare you. I do not want you to roll over; I would hope that you might find some way instead to steal your resolve. But the fact is, the society in which we live creates a toxic power dynamic between us. They stand above us, point at me, and command that I must be an adversary to you lest THEY need to step in and become your adversary, and they will be much more painful to deal with than me. This world is a prison and has forced upon me the role as YOUR warden, and if I fail to perform that role to the satisfaction of the authorities, they WILL punish us both.
"I need you to be vigilant. I need you to take care around me. I need you to minimize our household's exposure to liability. But as long as you do that, I will endeavor to stay out of your business. As long as I am not provided a motive upon which I am forced to act, I would like to never have to go into your room or go through your personal effects. I need plausible deniability so that I do not haver to LIE at a jury trial when a judge turns to me and asks 'and you knowingly let this happen under your own roof?' - and even then it's almost equally damning if the legal system has any excuse to accuse of me 'you didn't know this was happening right under your nose!'. But until or unless our camouflage is compromised, I will ensure that you have access to shelter, sustenance, privacy, and dignity."And if your reaction to the prospect of admitting all this to "just a child" is revulsion and dread... THAT very reaction is why we don't treat children like people.
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Yeah, this is the first I've seen someone else weirded out by the constant push to up the age you're considered a 'real adult'. I've seen people arguing for the age of consent to be set to 25 and treating people in their 20's like they were 12 year olds.
Like I'm not arguing that old men dating young women isn't gross, but that doesn't make those young women in their 20's children. There's this dehumanizing element to the conversation that's really concerning to me, but the whole sexual abuse aspect of it overshadows the extremely troubling language they're using, so you can't address it.
You can acknowledge inherent power imbalances without resorting to treating the younger party like a kid.
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God, the "age of consent" being at 25 freaks me out.. If I didn't become legally an adult when I did I don't know if I would have been still alive today
These thoughts about consent and everything are all well and good as long as you assume a perfectly healthy family. But what if it's not? What if it's dysfunctional? Or abusive? What if the environment you're in is straight up unhealthy for you?
It really feels like child abuse is very much an afterthought. Despite it being much much more common than people in the past thought. And child abuse is something that comes along with you through your entire life, and if you don't at least try to handle it, you're just left a broken person further harming yourself in ways that society is not kind towards, and we're left with what society considers to be "problem" people.
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I'm truly sorry you went through that. I think there's room for taking the environment into consideration regarding emancipation. In a decent society there would be healthy families willing to foster young people who were dealt the shitty care givers card.
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We really need a middle zone... Human brains don't reach full maturity until around age 25 when the prefrontal cortex is done developing, and quite frankly I think it could be argued that the thing that makes a human a human is the prefrontal cortex. However, that part of the brain "turns on" at the onset of puberty. It takes about 12 years for the human brain to really master the whole controlling a human body thing, and another 12 for it to master the whole thinking and conceptualizing and thinking ahead (and a bunch of other stuff). That second 12 year span should be treated differently than both the first span and adulthood.
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Actually that "brain stops developing at 25" is a misconception, the study that spawned it just ran out of funding when the subjects were 25 and didn't see the brain development slowing down, iirc (no source on hand it's past midnight here).
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25 isn't a hard line. The reality is that our brains continue to change forever. But, to use a metaphor, around our mid 20s is when it's done "cooking", but just like you might let meat "rest" on the counter for a bit after it's done cooking, your brain keeps changing, just not to the same degree. Maybe some day if brain scanning technology gets better, and we have a real healthcare system, people could get scans to see when their brain seems to have reached full maturity, especially if they've committed a crime. Of course "full maturity" will always be sort of an arbitrary choice because as I said, our brains are never truly finished.
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I know that you mean well, but honestly, I’m really getting quite tired reading this particular piece of misinformation about brains maturing at age 25.
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25 isn't a hard line. The reality is that our brains continue to change forever. But, to use a metaphor, around our mid 20s is when it's done "cooking", but just like you might let meat "rest" on the counter for a bit after it's done cooking, your brain keeps changing, just not to the same degree. Maybe some day if brain scanning technology gets better, and we have a real healthcare system, people could get scans to see when their brain seems to have reached full maturity, especially if they've committed a crime. Of course "full maturity" will always be sort of an arbitrary choice because as I said, our brains are never truly finished.
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Thanks for the reply, I apologise if I come across as rude, I have been personally affected quite a lot by the whole ‘brain development’ conversation because I am disabled and I have had this kind of thing used to take away my human rights. So I find it a little bit upsetting to talk about - which probably means that I shouldn’t talk about it to preserve my own well-being, but I find it really hard to just let discourse that I feel is really harmful to persist in our society.
Some people might be ‘cooked’ at 16, others might not be done until they’re in their 30s. Some are never finished no matter how long they’re in the oven.
The root problem is that we’re desperately trying to find a correlation between “number of years alive” and “level of responsibility” where one doesn’t really exist.
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I'm sorry you're going through that, that sucks.
I think we're trying to find a level of neurological development that describes a level of consciousness we'd mostly agree is sufficient to warrant responsibility for ones actions... For instance if a toddler shoots and kills someone, we know there's no way it was intentional, it was an accident or at least there's no way the toddler knew what they were doing or could grasp the consequences. But at some point in the development of that brain something changes. At puberty a whole section of the brain starts developing rapidly, and it just so happens it's the part that processes decision making. Exactly the part that changes us from what kids are to what adults are. So figuring out what a fully developed vs not yet fully developed one looks like seems pretty important. Then making scans regular procedure for when you need to determine if someone is developed enough to be responsible. But like you said, when a particular person gets there varies a lot, based on a lot of factors. I would hope a simple scan could help you prove you don't need your rights taken away.
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And what it taught me is that in the eyes of society at large I wasn't a real person until I was 21. It also taught me that society may PUNISH adults who try to treat people under 21 as though they're real human beings. You see, that's (not really) "GROOMING".
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Grooming has a pretty widely understood meaning. If you believe you've been incorrectly accused of that please take a moment to reflect on why that might be.
Edit: it's been pointed out to me the "groomer" has be co-opted (cynically I'd say deliberately)
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Grooming has a pretty widely understood meaning. If you believe you've been incorrectly accused of that please take a moment to reflect on why that might be.
You're being a bit overdramatic with that red flag.
It might be because they suggested that kids ought to be allowed to walk down the street without a chaperone.
Or because they were caught having a perfectly normal conversation with a minor they don't know. Not about anything remotely sexual, just talking to them at all.
It might also be because they're gay. Or trans. Or a drag queen. Or tried to keep books on any of those groups from being banned from the library. Or admitted in the classroom that any of them even exist.
Grooming used to have a widely agreed upon meaning. These days (in the US at least) it's more often used as a political term to demean and other whoever the right wing doesn't like.
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It might also be because they're gay. Or trans. Or a drag queen.
Ah fuck, you're right, I didn't consider that.
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My dad treated me like that. After my mom died, my dad treated me like a small adult over whom he had no authority for the entirety of my teenage years, didn’t go through my room, didn’t tell me what to do, but tried to reason with me and convince me.
It didn’t work out well, because I was a child. I was nowhere near mature enough to handle that responsibility (my siblings and I were three stereotypes of too much freedom when we were younger- a recovering alcoholic, a born again Christian, and a kleptomaniac) and it made me feel unloved and like a burden. He does love me and was living the golden rule, but it turns out it’s not universally applicable.
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Hence the impasse we find ourselves upon...
I would be ethically unable to treat a human being like a subhuman pet even though, as you said:
(...) to reason with <children> and convince <children> (...) didn't with out well, because <they are> children.
... and that they are not adults.
Nowhere near mature enough to handle that responsibility.
To NOT treat them as equal, to acknowledge their incompleteness as sapient beings, puts me in an impossible position. Parenting makes hypocrites of us all. Some of us can't do it. I would be unable to do it. I know better than to try. It's simply not within my capacity to undermine the autonomy of a being without feeling like I'm punishing them. To do so to a being that has not done anything wrong is corrosive to my humanity.
You have my sympathy that it was so difficult for you to go through. I endeavor to NEVER put someone through that.
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