>>496711For one thing, such claims carry the implication that young people, including those who are empowered with their rights, are easier to coerce and intimidate into lying on behalf of adult rapists than other adults are, which is an ageist attitude against young people. Such claims are also invoking negative stereotypes and unreasonable distrust of adults by making the strong implication that adults who have a romantic/sexual interest in younger teens are very likely to be unscrupulous. This is a similar sentiment to what I often hear from anti-choice MAAs when they argue in favor of retaining AoC laws: an extreme, paranoia-laced mistrust for adults, with an accompanying belief that society is filled to the brim with adult rapists and potential rapists who are just sitting back and waiting for the AoC laws to be lowered, and will then emerge in mass numbers to pounce on unsuspecting minors, threaten and coerce them into having sexual relations, and then taking advantage of the AoC laws being lowered to intimidate these minors into saying that the rape was actually consensual. I wish people who make such claims would seriously think clearly about what they say before saying it, because they would look far less foolish and totally out of their minds with paranoia if they did so.
In a democratic nation, misanthropic attitudes that presume the world is filled with evil people, and passing laws based on this assumption, are frowned upon with good reason. We cannot pass laws based on what are clearly assumptions about what people might do based on a cynical dislike for the human race and still remain even a nominally democratic nation that is based upon socially progressive values. Yes, there are some evil adults out there who would indeed try to take advantage of young people, but I challenge anyone to prove that these adults exist in such great numbers that they justify oppressive laws that are based upon totally arbitrary assumptions, and which necessitate throwing large amounts of innocent people in prison to make sure that every single truly evil or guilty person gets punished right away. Yes, evil adults doing such things can happen and indeed have happened before, but I think it's nothing less than totally hysterical and even ageist to suggest that huge numbers of younger people lack the fortitude and strength of will to report to friends, family, and the authorities when an actual case of rape occurred regardless of what threats the hypothetical adult rapist made towards them. And yes, it is possible that if the AoC laws were lowered a few adult rapists (and older teen rapists, of course) will on occasion successfully intimidate a younger person into claiming that an actual rape was consensual, and that this will result in the guilty rapist going free temporarily. However, I strongly doubt that every single young person such a rapist does this to will capitulate to their threats no matter how intimidating the rapist happens to be, and sooner or later (and much more likely sooner) one of the victims of such a rapist will speak up, and this will result in past victims gaining the courage to come out of their silence and do the same, thus resulting in damning evidence against the rapist in court (such things happen all the time with women victims who previously stayed silent for whatever reason). Hence, the occasional rapist who temporarily goes free will not be operating for very long.
Also, young people can be educated into spotting various warning signs of both peers and adults who may be dangerous, and I do not think too many genuine rapists can successfully hide their true natures from every single person in a young teen's life, including the large number of adults who truly care about them, caring adults who would likely not be in their life if the AoC laws were left intact. Further, it should be noted that adults outside of the home or boarding school who target specifically kids for rape are extremely rare (contrary to popular belief), and I see no evidence to suggest that there are huge numbers of potential rapists who are presently invisible to society's radar simply because they are deterred from acting on their sociopathic impulses by the AoC laws. Such a common claim from both the "child advocates" and the anti-choice MAAs borders on non-nonsensical, not to mention hysterical, and is not backed up by any evidence. It's instead based on a cynical and very negative mistrust of humanity in general.
When I say all of the above, defenders of the AoC laws (both outside and inside of the MAA community) will attempt to counter with a response that is just as hysterical and utterly undemocratic as any previous response I mentioned: they will hit me and other pro-choice activists with the "even one is too much" argument, where they will say that even if one single real rapist of young people goes free as a result of intimidating the youth into claiming a sexual encounter was consensual when it actually wasn't is still totally unacceptable, and such people must be stopped at all costs, regardless of how many innocent people must suffer for it and have their lives destroyed as a result, and regardless of how draconian such laws will be in regards to freedom of choice and personal liberty of youths. When people say such things, they need to take a deep breath and to take a long and hard look at what they just said, and once they calm down and come back to their senses where their reasoning faculties are again operating, they need to do a lot of research on the differences between democracy and progressivism and a police state and tyrannical authoritarianism, and how the latter can easily develop within the former if lawmakers and citizens are not careful. Once doing the latter research, they will find out that sacrificing freedom for perceived security from some sort of menace has always historically backfired in an enormously negative way on the vast majority of people in society who are not part of the ruling elite. It's totally impossible to completely eliminate all types of risks for anyone in society, including young people. And the legal system of democratic and progressive nations have always held to the principle that it's far more preferable to allow rare instances of a guilty person to occasionally go free than to tolerate even one instance of an innocent person being thrown in prison and having their lives ruined by the legal system, let alone the literally thousands of innocent people who would be thrown in prison if every single adult who has mutually consensual sexual relations with a young person under a certain arbitrary age is indicted and thrown into prison just to insure that absolutely no person who may be guilty of actual abuse ever goes free. It amazes me that certain people who were raised in an even nominally democratic society can give into raw emotionalism and support any sort of draconian measure–even when it comes to protecting those who are perceived to be the most vulnerable in society from harm–and thereby risk bringing their society one step closer to a police state.
Also very important to consider is this extremely cogent point raised against the all too often heard justification for retaining a high AoC that I tackled up above, courtesy of my friend and a comrade after reading the initial version of this essay:
>"Regarding their argument that if the age of consent were lowered, some adults would threaten a child into saying it was consensual[…]>"As the laws are now, if an adult has sex with someone below the AoC, what do they think is stopping that adult into threatening a child into not telling anyone that a sexual act occurred at all? '>"If they're willing to threaten them into saying it was consensual, they're probably willing to threaten them into total silence.>"Why can't they understand that the AoC is quite irrelevant?"To use a bit of popular slang…it would appear that my friend just totally pwned the purveyors of that tired old justification for keeping a high AoC by showing how inimical to common sense and utterly useless the AoC laws are for protecting minors from genuine abuse (as opposed to simply denying them their sexual rights by criminalizing sexual activity that is entirely consensual), and why the laws against actual forcible rape and sexual harassment are more than sufficient to deal with any actual rapists, sexual harassers, or stalkers on their own, just as they do for people above the AoC.
It can be readily observed that whenever a single draconian law is passed to solve a perceived problem, such a law is inevitably and inexorably followed by more and increasingly greater draconian laws, each one more hysterical, outrageous, and undemocratic than the previous ones. Please note how the various Western governments, in their ongoing endeavors to prevent the sexual abuse of minors, goes from criminalizing all sexual contact between minors and adults regardless of whether it's consensual or not, to criminalizing the mere viewing of pictures and videos of minors in sexual situations, to the criminalizing of viewing pics and vids of nude kids even if they are not in sexual situations because some adults may still get aroused by them, to criminalizing pics and vids of fully clothed minors because they might still arouse an MAA, to criminalizing drawings and CGI generated images of nude minors, to criminalizing sexually explicit pics and vids of adult women who are pretending to be minors, to criminalizing sexually explicit pics and vids of adult women with small breasts because images of such women might be used by MAAs as a proxy for fantasizing about minors, to…I think you get my point. Do we even want to know where these laws will go next? Could all pornography featuring adults be next?
Or, as another example, laws that criminalize online cyber-sex between adults and minors then leads to the criminalization of any and all online communications between adults and minors based on the assumption that such convos might lead to cyber-sex and perceived "sexual exploitation" of the younger person by the adult. Where does it end? What is the logical conclusion of such increasingly draconian laws? How can we ever justify the passing of such a law when we consider the historical precedent of doing so? As the old saying goes, "If you give someone an inch, they take a yard." That is why it's foolish to assume that just one draconian law passed within a democratic framework will not lead to more and more increasingly undemocratic and outrageous encroachments on democratic freedoms, or that any such law can ever be justified as a "necessary evil." No draconian law is ever beneficial to society no matter how great the perceived threat within the society may be. This is why, as I said before, I lost all respect for a former MAA ally of mine that I know from the Girl Lover sub-community when he suddenly and abruptly went from one of the most staunch pro-choicers in the community to a shameless defender of the AoC laws and actually said that he supports these laws and doesn't care how draconian they are (yes, he actually used these words). He and others like him seem to feel that the need to protect minors from abuse is so overwhelming that absolutely anything goes in doing so, no matter how many innocent people may suffer, no matter how hysterical and outrageous these measures become, and no matter how many freedoms and civil liberties are sacrificed as a result. There is nothing honorable about such measures to "protect" minors, because they pander to a police state mentality and ultimately everyone in society, including the young people they purport to protect, suffer from these rabid encroachments on our basic civil liberties. This is something that is clearly evident by the current crop of such laws putting young teens in prison and on sex offender registries for taking nude or provocative pics of themselves and sending them to friends via their cell phones, or uploading such pics on socnet sites. Need I say more?
In a democratic society that is based on a system of progressive values, it's unfortunately necessary to allow the occasional guilty person to temporarily go free in order to insure that no innocent people are thrown into prison and having their lives destroyed, and to insure the full freedom and liberty of all people, including younger people. It's totally impossible to create a system (at least within the context of our current class-divided system) where 100% of minors are never abused, even within a police state. Those who are truly concerned about enormously decreasing the number of kids who are abused, as are youth liberationists, should spend their efforts targeting the places and institutions where kids are subjected to genuine abuse in by far the greatest numbers, which is within the home or other institutions (such as boarding schools, particularly religious boarding schools) where kids are under the greatest amount of control by adults, as opposed to targeting adults who do not live within the home or have a great and direct degree of power over kids, and who thus commit crimes of actual abuse against kids only on rare occasions. AoC laws clearly target the latter individuals and sensationalistically overstate the degree of danger to kids posed by adults outside of the home or other authoritarian institutions who may engage in romantic/sexual relationships with youths, and utterly fail to address the places where kids are abused most often. As noted before, the AoC laws also result in huge amounts of innocent people being thrown into prison, not to mention the suppression of the sexual choices of youths under a certain arbitrary age.
In summation, despite the opposition by the typical hysteria-mongering elements that benefit from the proliferation of the sex abuse industry, it's extremely refreshing to see Peru and other Latin American nations take a genuinely progressive stance against the current insanity by actually rolling back some of the draconian laws that spawned and support the sex abuse hysteria rather than adding new laws of that sort to increase the Orwellian encroachments on what few rights youths currently have in modern society, and which slide all democratic societies further towards a police state. Hopefully, the example taken by these courageous and progressive lawmakers in Peru and other Latin American nations will encourage the progressives in America, Canada, England, and Australia to develop some spine and to do some serious objective research (as has Judith Levine and Robert Epstein), and to live up to their principles by opposing the sex abuse hysteria rather than helping to add to it at every opportunity in order to avoid being called names by the conservatives. In fact, the mainstream progressives should be totally shamed by the fact that certain prominent conservatives are actually doing more to advance the cause of youth rights in America than the progressives are, as evidenced by the recent support given to Robert Epstein's work by Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich, which speaks quite poorly of the current crop of progressives in America and other Western nations.