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I've always found this an awkward topic [message #64209]

Mon, 04 October 2010 19:56

timmy

Has no life at all

Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13818

It's a serious discussion and one not to be dismissed lightly based on prejudice. So I will reveal my prejudice first and answer the topic second.

My views on relationships between older and younger, especially those above and those below the age of consent are coloured by my own physical revulsion as a teenager for considering any approach by an older boy, let alone an adult. I would have run a mile, screaming, had a boy physically older than me even come on to me. Such relationships are not right for me

That out of the way I recognise that there are boys who wish for, perhaps crave, the attentions of an older person, and I recognise that these boys are sexual beings and have considered, albeit within their shorter lives, the ramifications of such a relationship. Indeed for such boys the relationship will be good. But this does not excuse the adult who coerces, manipulates or grooms a child for sexual purposes, nor one who lies and says "But he wanted it."

I am most worried for the younger person when the relationship is consensual. The older is not always the initiator, and is by no means morally criminal whatever the law may say.

Take a situation where there is true mutual consent and the sexual acts are discovered by a parent. One is 14, the other 20. The 20 year old is jailed. the 14 year old is labelled a victim. And the 14 year old loses his lover and blames himself, the more so if he initiated the events.

Society has ruined two lives.

I find that hard to live with, yet I also recognise that we need rules.

I have had http://iomfats.org/resources/ageofconsent.html on the site for many years which addresses some of this.

[Updated on: Mon, 04 October 2010 23:22]

Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School

		I've always found this an awkward topic By: timmy on Mon, 04 October 2010 19:56
		Re: I've always found this an awkward topic By: saben on Tue, 05 October 2010 07:27

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