It's not illegal, but it's still weird, creepy and potentially harmful and no amount of lambasting about "the problematic age gap discourse" will make it not true.
It's not illegal, but it's still weird, creepy and potentially harmful and no amount of lambasting about "the problematic age gap discourse" will make it not true.
Says who? My understanding is that in a large population, certain specific structures in the brain were observed to slow their rate of change around the age of 25. Other parts of the brain continued to change forever. Certain people may experience the changes earlier or later. If you really believe that the problem with an age gap relationship is physical differences between the brains of the partners, do you also think that neurodiverse people shouldn't be able to consent at all?
A 26 and a 19 year old are still gross tho.
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What's the difference tho? It's not like you can see your brain.
maturity? ability to handle tough situations? think clearly before acting? the parts of the brain responsible for these things are very much underdeveloped in teens, whether they're 17 to 19.
Suppose you got a brain scan, and it turned out you have the frontal lobe of a 15 year old. Would you relinquish all responsibility and become a ward of the state because you didn't believe in your own ability to decide anything?
Obviously younger people have less experience to draw on when making a decision. Most likely, they also have physically different brains. Using those two facts as a justification for denying their autonomy is wrong.
no one's denying their autonomy. people under 18 cannot consent because they're not adults. we, as a society, recognize that they need to be protected from predatory adults. that doesn't disappear because they've turned 18. they still need to be protected from predatory adults.
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i couldn't quite articulate my genuine feelings on it so the developmental argument felt like an appropriate, convenient stand-in. absent evidence to the contrary, i do think there's a difference between change (the ongoing process of adapting to new stimuli) vs. development (growing the structure to maturity in the first place) but i don't actually know anything about the brain or its development so i could be dissuaded from this.
yes, that's right. you heard it here first, my fellow NDies. join me now as we all crawl into our Chastity Crates.
on this, at least, we are in full agreement.