I get a big case of cognitive dissonance from how easy it is for cops and prosecutors to call for trying juveniles as young as 11 as adults for crime but scream bloody murder for anything relating to sex. Benign things like a mild sext between kids who are the same age can result in obscenity charges. It seems to me that a kid who can go to an adult penitentiary for stealing a car should be old enough for a lap dance.
@8: When you're right you're right. When we charge teenagers as adults it seems to have as much to do with displaying anger for their seeming betrayal of the way we see them as it does punishing them for doing something wrong.
In many countries in the world 16 is the minimum age you can vote. It used to be the age a person could hold property or run a business. A 16 yr old girl in Shakespeare's day was an old maid on her way to spinsterhood.
This "extended childhood" bullshit where we can't vote until 18, and can't drink until 21 has got to stop. Let's encourage greater responsibility at 16 again. Perhaps the entire country would eventually grow the fuck up and stop whining (e.g Tea Baggers).
Yes also to what @8 said. Pick a standard and stick to it. And then stop shaming people for sex... (bucha uptight authoritarians...)
@2 yeah, I can imagine it, but I don't get it there either. When I was a 16 year old girl I'd have loved a lap dance from a male stripper, and been none the worse off for having received one.
@13, I read that as 'this side of the double standard', as in 'of the two ways to respond, this one is the right one.'
Not implying that the double standard itself is correct, but acknowledging it exists, and being relieved that there's not the moral panic, hysterical, what-about-the-children freakout.
Who the hell knew you could have strippers in a bowling alley? These people are geniuses. Still, I would feel a little awkward getting a lap dance at 16 with my mom there.
Yes I can, and I'd say the double standard is the right standard in this case.
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Sounds gay...
This "extended childhood" bullshit where we can't vote until 18, and can't drink until 21 has got to stop. Let's encourage greater responsibility at 16 again. Perhaps the entire country would eventually grow the fuck up and stop whining (e.g Tea Baggers).
Yes also to what @8 said. Pick a standard and stick to it. And then stop shaming people for sex... (bucha uptight authoritarians...)
Imagine the freak-out if it was boys with male strippers, too. Is the double standard still okay?
I'd have enjoyed that for my 16th...
Not implying that the double standard itself is correct, but acknowledging it exists, and being relieved that there's not the moral panic, hysterical, what-about-the-children freakout.
Amazingly...that never, ever happens.
Just so we're clear, Dom, why shouldn't we regard paid sex acts performed on underage male people as Criminal?
Is it perhaps because you believe males, of whatever age, can not possibly be victims of sex crimes, because they are male, QED?