What about an 18 year old and someone who is 30 doing consensual sexual activities together? They are both adults according to law. I am legitimately interested in people’s thoughts here. 30 seems to be the most common example, for instance.
There’s not much to discuss. The vast majority of the time it’s creepy grooming and we all know it.
It’s technically legal and there may be cases when it’s genuinely a case of consent and mutual attraction but those are the exceptions.
Attempts to find the exact line are futile. “Half your age plus seven” is a rule of thumb, not a clear border.
I mostly want to have these discussions because there has been such pushback from the right in the areas of relationship equality, marriage, age of consent, etc. I want us to be able to look at people who have been convinced and really be able to say, “Well no, because of this reason.” Maybe I’m wrong, though I do feel there’s some merit to making things clear for those who don’t see it in the same light.
There is no single reason. It’s the sum of many reasons. They’re too many to list exhaustively but when we see a concrete example the vast majority of people come to the same conclusion on creepy vs appropriate.
When there isn’t a clear line, trying to define one is misleading. You can always find some couple somewhere on earth with an arbitrarily large age gap where people will agree that it’s the result of informed consent. People then try to make the argument that this justifies all relationships with that age gap even though most relationships don’t have whatever extenuating circumstances made the one example palatable.
Large age gaps are creepy. Whenever someone has to ask if a particular age gap is also creepy the answer is almost always, “Yes.”
For the sake of expanding the discussion:
What about an 18 year old and someone who is 30 doing consensual sexual activities together? They are both adults according to law. I am legitimately interested in people’s thoughts here. 30 seems to be the most common example, for instance.
There’s not much to discuss. The vast majority of the time it’s creepy grooming and we all know it. It’s technically legal and there may be cases when it’s genuinely a case of consent and mutual attraction but those are the exceptions.
Attempts to find the exact line are futile. “Half your age plus seven” is a rule of thumb, not a clear border.
I mostly want to have these discussions because there has been such pushback from the right in the areas of relationship equality, marriage, age of consent, etc. I want us to be able to look at people who have been convinced and really be able to say, “Well no, because of this reason.” Maybe I’m wrong, though I do feel there’s some merit to making things clear for those who don’t see it in the same light.
There is no single reason. It’s the sum of many reasons. They’re too many to list exhaustively but when we see a concrete example the vast majority of people come to the same conclusion on creepy vs appropriate.
When there isn’t a clear line, trying to define one is misleading. You can always find some couple somewhere on earth with an arbitrarily large age gap where people will agree that it’s the result of informed consent. People then try to make the argument that this justifies all relationships with that age gap even though most relationships don’t have whatever extenuating circumstances made the one example palatable.
Large age gaps are creepy. Whenever someone has to ask if a particular age gap is also creepy the answer is almost always, “Yes.”