Guest post: Still utter shite
Originally a comment by Freemage on Even dangerous ideas.
Above and beyond the offensiveness of the position, it’s a crap job of philosophy. I read the article in Daily Nous, and it contained a fairly extensive breakdown of Kershnar’s position, which while more nuanced than the clips being touted by the right wing social media ring, are still utter shite.
He has two prongs to his discussion–he says that sex with minors should be illegal if it is harmful or against their will, but then posits that since it isn’t always harmful or against the minor’s will, there might be cases where it shouldn’t be illegal.
This, frankly, shows a grotesque ignorance of both human psychological development AND legal theory.
First off, there’s an entire body of law that exists not because of the certitude of harm, but because of the extended probability of harm–every OSHA regulation in existence, most driving laws, etc, are all based on the idea that when a particular course of action has a heightened chance of harm (even to oneself–see seat belt laws for adults), it is reasonable for the government to enact regulations and prohibitions when necessary. The fact that some 14-year-old might’ve had sex with an adult and turned out okay despite that does nothing to mitigate the fact that there is a very great risk of harm to the child, which the adult is completely and recklessly ignoring in order to sate their own desires.
As for “against their will”, it’s like the man never heard of age-of-consent laws outside of the context of sex. The fact is, adolescents are not fully formed psychologically, and therefore cannot consent to a great number of things, including signing contracts. Therefore, to talk about ‘against the will’ of the child in this context is absurd–under the law, minors have no ‘will’ to speak of, and duty of care is bestowed on their parents for that reason.
So, fine, he has a free speech right to make these arguments, but by doing so he is demonstrating his complete incompetence as a man who is paid to think things through.
Freemage, according to Weinberg, Kershnar DOES think it should be illegal.
I think I made a comment a few days ago about consent and what it might mean and how we might view it. I didn’t really focus on age much, but even within the us the age of consent – unrestricted by age difference or position of authority – ranges from 16 to 21, with Federal laws adopting 18 *. Worldwide the range is from none (but must be married) for a bunch of muslim states through to 21**, with an average age of 15, although at a glance the median looks like it might be 16.
So, when we talk about this and say ‘below the age of consent is wrong’, we have to acknowledge what and where we mean that. We also need to accept that age of consent is a negotiated number dependant on the society at the time it was codified, not some universal correct age for everyone, everywhere.
By and large we seem to muddle through this with ages in the 16-18 range and a strong social stigma against wide disparities in age, although I’ve certainly met people in their late teens I thought weren’t emotionally ready. Conversely I’ve never met a 14 year old that struck me as ready to start having sex with adults. Maybe I’ve lead a sheltered life. It’s also not something I actively go around contemplating.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_consent_in_the_United_States
** https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/age-of-consent-by-country
Rob,
I remember that comment thread, and I recall typing out a few lines of a comment along these lines, exploring why we have such a strong prohibition against all adult-adolescent sexual intercourse below a certain age — at least across most of the West — as a lead-in to a broader discussion about consent and harm and the messy realities of adult-adult sex.
But I wound up re-drafting and then discarding the entire in favour of getting back to work, at least in part because of the suspicion that even discussing ephebophilia in the abstract as a run-up to a wider discourse on consent and harm exclusively among adults would open me up to accusations of sympathy for legalising pedophilia and derail the entire discussion. And perhaps one day I shall write down this meditation on consent and harm, if I can finesse it right, but that will take more time and words than even I devote to my comments here.
But this ties in rather well with the theme of this guest post’s parent; from what I can tell, Professor Kershnar’s entire point is that grounding our moral intuitions for how we treat one another entirely on a consent-and-harm model leaves those moral intuitions open to criticism and risks undermining them in the long run, just as Freemage posits. I suspect if Freemage and Kershnar got together to have an amiable discussion (at least one where Kershnar didn’t use too many philosophical shortcuts and actually spoke clearly rather than obscurantistly) they would find they agree far more than they disagree on this issue.
Is the adult/child classification binary? I mean is a person either an adult or a child in this context, without an in between option?
The adult child cutoff is rather arbitrary, since it actually doesn’t reflect a realistic change. The brain is still not fully developed at 18 or 21; it is not fully developed until 25-28 (and for some people, never?). The decision to set age of majority at 15, 16, 18, or 21 was at least in part based on a distaste for premarital sex. The thinking was that if you set the marriage age younger (like 16), girls would be less likely to have sex before they were married, thus bringing their “pure” body to their husbands.
I admit to the error in saying he said that it shouldn’t be illegal in some cases. Rather, this is the line that got me going:
“His view, then, is that a blanket claim that adult-child sex is wrong is mistaken.”
In this case, my brain substituted ‘wrong’ for ‘should be illegal’, and that was obviously incorrect. That said, I still feel the above statement has the same issue–namely, that the ‘wrongness’ of an action needs to factor in not just the final outcome, but also the likely potential outcomes. And the risk of` harm in such an instance is so great that I have no issue with declaring the action to be wrong, even if everything turns out okay.
A good example of this (and really, one of the few well-documented cases of it) would be Lor Mattix, who had sex with David Bowie when she was 14. By all accounts, she turned out fine and wasn’t harmed by the encounter, but that doesn’t mean Bowie wasn’t absolutely wrong to not put a stop to things.
Der Durchwanderer #3
Your suspicion was well-grounded.
I dislike the tendency to lump all sex between (legal) adult and minors together as “pedophilia”. (I once tried to argue as much in a Facebook group and was accused of “sympathy for legalizing pedophilia” or worse.)* I think it muddies the waters in discussions like this.
Seems to me there are obvious and important differences between adults having ANY sexual contact with a pre-pubertal child, and sexual activity between adolescents and adults. Age-of-consent laws are important and should be respected, even if they’re necessarily a bit arbitrary. Kids who’ve been through puberty are better able to defend themselves, for one thing (better able, not entirely able,) and they are sexual beings with desires of their own. Little kids aren’t.
And there are gray areas where the difference in ages is not great. I used to work as a clerk in an Own-Recognizance office for a California county, and every now and then a young man of 18 or 19 would be arrested for having sex with his underaged girlfriend. The kids would be up from some small town in Mexico where they marry young, they’d have been going together for a couple years already, they’d be engaged–but the law’s the law. I believe California law now carves out exceptions for cases where two young people are fairly close in age and the sex was consensual.
I hope you do; I would like to read it.
* Somebody remarked, “We see you,” which was very creepy. I felt like I was being accused of being a pedo. I blocked her and gave up the conversation.
(Have I said lately how much I appreciate B&W?)
Der Durchwanderer @3, I hear you! As I was finishing the comment I got the wobbles a bit and wondered if people would think I was advocating or supporting adult-adolescent sex. For the record I’m not, but I’m highlighting that there is no universally agreed bright line test, let alone one that is ‘correct’ when applied to individual circumstances. At the end of the day we have to accept that the laws are to some degree arbitrary and are certainly a negotiated thing. If you ever refine your comment and views I’d be interested to read them.
As Lady Mondegreen says, these laws should be respected, largely because as Freemage says the consequences of the possible adverse outcomes. That, and it’s just plain creepy as fuck when older adults seduce young people who don’t necessarily appreciate how they are being manipulated and haven’t developed the tools to defend themselves adequately. True love might provide the odd exception, but there are too many (especially men) who just toy with adolescents because they’re easy pickings and ‘fresh’.
Lady Mondegreen and Rob,
It is now provisionally on the list of topics that I will get around to blogging about at me own, once I have finished the final two instalments of my introductory series. (I am not sure why I have an aversion to writing out of sequence, but I always have, and will probably continue to do so.) But indeed this is one of those “dangerous” topics that people can get quite persnicketty over, involving at least two levels of discourse — moral revulsion at the topic itself, and suspicion of the writer’s underlying motives or even the unintended consequences of their writing.
I will say that the grey zone cases where adolescents who happen to fall on either side of the line can be quite sad, such as one I recall from my own time in high school where a boy no older than 19 was arrested on school grounds after his relationship with a girl of at least 14 came to light. I did not know either party involved terribly well, and cannot recall the details of their ages specifically, but the entire situation was simply…sad, as I said. And though I am not certain, it would hardly surprise me if the boy was arrested because the girl’s parents discovered the relationship and disapproved of their daughter being sexually active before marriage, and so they could well have used the law on the boy to punish both him and their own daughter for the crime of disobeying their wishes.
The man that that boy became has no doubt suffered greatly for the mistakes of his youth, and while it is possible that the woman that that girl became was unalterably injured by the relationship itself, it is at least as likely that she was deeply hurt by the state handcuffing her boyfriend and marching him through the school doors and into a more brutal phase of his life. It is possible there was something more sinister involved — as I said, I didn’t know the parties well, and I never saw the boy again after his arrest — but, given the givens, there was almost certainly a more productive way to resolve the situation for everyone involved.