I think some plausible points have been made here. It focuses solely on the cultural and societal aspect of it, however, there is not any psychoanalytical information regarding emotional and mental development that has been taken into account here, and the effects this might have on the adolescent mind. I cannot claim to be able to speak on this though.

wow

It was 14 in Renessiance Italy. Girolamo Riario wanted to get busy with Caterina Sforza before that but he wasn't allowed.

Here is a little education on the US and aoc - The age of consent was raised in the US due to pressure from the Women's Christian Temperance Union. Their goal was no sex until marriage but they knew they couldn’t pass that. So they pushed to raise the age until they could get no sex until marriage laws passed. By 1920, legislators had responded to their pressure by increasing the age of consent to 16 years and in some states even as high as 18 years. At this time in our history women/girls were thought of as property belonging to their father/husband. Taking a girl’s virginity was thought of as stealing their virtue (something that belonged not to the girl/woman but to the father and future husband). No scientific reasoning was made in raising the age, not for physical maturity nor mental maturity. In fact 18 isn’t an age for either of these arguments. Woman are physically capable of giving birth at 15 with no increased risk to mother or child. As for mental maturity, the human brain isn’t fully developed until we are in our mid 20s (in a more recent scientific study, early 30s is thought to be when our brain becomes fully developed). So unless someone’s argument is for 15 or 25 their argument holds no merit. Their opinion on this matter is biased, based upon an upbringing they have decided is correct, without doing an critical thinking of their own. Everyone should know, just because you were brought up a certain way, that doesn’t mean everyone has to live that way. This idea that we wait for full mental development isn’t applied to anything else we do in life and is actually at odds with a healthy developmental process. The Problem is when people conflate their religous beliefs and personal opinions with societal morality. Well, why is it okay to get married at 15 (with parental consent) or 16 and have sex but not okay to consent if you're not married? Simple, it's your religion, "sex after marriage is okay". So who are they kidding, this argument against allowing teens to consent has nothing to do with what's best for teens! Also, explain to me why the age of consent at the Vatican was 12 till very recently (yes, it's been changed under pressure fairly recently)? Isn't this more about people finding it icky that teens do it because of their own upbringing, than actually protecting teens? Yes, pregnancy and disease are serious issues, do you know what the answer is? It's education, not criminalization... and not judgmental biased abstinence only education, but rather comprehensive non judgmental fact based education! Don’t claim you’re protecting teens if your answer is jail and prosecution for consenting teens having sex with other consenting teens, because you’re not protecting anyone (you’re actually harming them). Stats vary but in the US about half of teens have sex, so half should be in jail? No, of course not and if anyone answered yes; you’re the problem not the teens themselves! Let’s be clear, I am only taking about teens consenting with other teens, not adults and teens and not teens being pressured or manipulated by other teens. Yes it's time to change the laws, when laws harm those they are supposed to "protect", it's time to change them!

Modern society is reluctant to admit the reality that young teenagers are sexual beings and have a libido. Until society accepts their to be a differents between childhood and adolescence we will continue to make criminals out of teenagers whom engage in consensual sex together.

+Madhavi Pothukuchi man it was fucking annoying

There is always that one person in audience...

An audience member with a soupçon of emotional intelligence would have left the Common Room immediately to return only when the cough had subsided.

age has a lot to do with it, what are you talking about? the younger the person, the more easily it is to manipulate them. Saying "i didn't feel manipulated" doesn't mean you weren't. That certainly doesn't mean every adult tries to manipulate younger people.

@@wordcaqwert if the younger person is about 13 or 14. Then the argument is valid. If your talking about adults in their 20s that’s a different story.

@@lubu2960 age doesn't have nothing to do with jt

Yeah…. Younger people like children are very prone to manipulation and power imbalance. I’m not sure why many people believe otherwise. And I have concluded my suspicions that frostblox might’ve been groomed for two years to believe that it’s no big deal.

@@darthplagueis3488 bro is making random stuff up if anything you've been manipulated or groomed or whatever

And you know what happens to people like them... esp when they are away from the spotlight. .. Do you live in perpetual fear of things, or do you prefer being a Schindler, or do you simply not think about being? Just curious.

Give me a break. Get over orgasms. Chill out and clean your house.

@@gordonm7038 spoken by an incel? To simply 'get over the orgasm' is to simply forgo sex. Fuck that.

I would agree if he didn`t pretend that all Catholic priests who had sex with teenagers were violent rapist, (I think the priests who did that deserve to rot in prison), but it seems like an odd double standard. Same with Dawkins who talked about gentle paedophilia and criticised overreactions to it, yet compared pederast priests to the Holocaust, or the amazing atheist who said the age of consent should be 13 or 12.. under his laws what most priests did would simply be legal.

Nnn

You really are blind to the agenda, aren't you? no hope for you ignoramus.

I detect tin foil.

Fry also said this... “It’s a great shame and we’re all very sorry that your uncle touched you in that nasty place - you get some of my sympathy - but your self pity gets none of my sympathy,” he continued. “Self pity is the ugliest emotion in humanity. Get rid of it, because no one’s going to like you if you feel sorry for yourself. The irony is we’ll feel sorry for you, if you stop feeling sorry for yourself. Just grow up.” Fry is also in a relationship with someone who's about a third of his age. I suffered continual child sexual abuse, so i'm the last person you should listen to, because its effected me, I'm scum and I know its not very politically correct of me but I personally am against pedophilia.

Fry was talking about censorship in that interview you quoted. Fry apologised and clarified what he was trying to say. Here, he is addressing age of consent. The age gap between him and his partner is irrelevant.

Fry said what he said and in any context it shows he's a pedophile advocate. He didn't apologize he said the reaction about his comment made him feel terrible. But if you think that accusing anyone who was upset by his comments of being nasty to him is an apology. I don't think the gap is irrelevant. He would go out with someone as young as he could get. You see people like him on the gay scene all the time with 11 and 12 year old lads and when you call it for what it is people say you're intolerant. Damn right i'm intolerant of pedophilia. Fry is intolerant of kids getting upset by being raped and therefore a pedophile advocate with clear pedophilic tendencies. And you think he's the right person to listen to about the age of consent. The thought sickens me to my core. Fry is abusive and sociopathic. I don't care what argument you've got, or how bad you think I am for saying this but raping children is wrong.

He’s a pedo fuckwit that needs to be thrown in jail

@@Faeden Where did the bad man touch you?

magicpony9 I don't think you really listened to his answer because you essentially just agreed with him completely

+magicpony9 I don't think that's the implication at all--He NEVER alluded to an idea that a 10 or 12 year old WOULD consent. I think he's more concerned about the hypocrisy of drawing the line between say a 15 year old (a minor) and 16 year old (considered an adult in some places.) For example (and there are MANY) say you have a 16 year old male and he is dating a 15 year old girl. They have sex.-- consensual sex (and we all know this happens all the time.) The parent(s) of the girl find out and are outraged. They file charges and the young man is arrested. Is this right? Now, say it's a 30 year old man instead. The law, as it is written, applies equally to both the 16 yo and the 30yo. Is this right?

Yes, menarche can come early. It is not a sign a child should be having sex. It only makes it more disastrous as a pregnancy at an immature age will wreak havoc. As for mental maturity, it's now claimed that we're all adolescents until we're 27, but it would be ridiculous to say we can't have sex before that age.

@@mariannehancock8282 that's the point: its more a cultural thing, in the wild nature I don't think that the age of consent would be as high as 18 or even 16. more like 14 and it would be considered normal.

Inderd

As I have said before, It needs to be judged on personal discretion, rather than cultural discretion. So yes, I would agree.

How is this more severe than murder 😂😂😂?

If we're to say that under 16s' capacity to decide on sex is vastly reduced then they can't be allowed to make other important decisions they're currently entrusted to make e.g. deciding GCSE subjects or being criminally responsible. There are aspects of the law that are far more complex than sex (one of the simplest things in life - it's relationships that are complicated, not sex) yet in England 10 is the age of criminal responsibility (it is even lower in Scotland).

I otherwise agree but I would argue that you cannot define age in years and claim that those apply to each individual. The neurological development happens without predefined schedule in each individual and if we want to define abilitity to give true consent, we would need psychological evaluation tests, not checking date-of-birth. And yes, psychological evaluation tests are very expensive to arrange for everybody so it makes sense to define one age (e.g. 18 years) where everybody is developed enough to assume that they would pass psychological evaluation test if one was arranged. However, even that would still be only statistical assurance, not a truth about a given individual.

Well said!

Couldn't have said it any better.

A salad of words.

I do not see much wrong in the physical desires of people who are post pubescent-because guess what, a lot of 'pedophilia' is attraction to younger looking girls who are post pubescent, not little children, but teenagers.

A rent boy can be a child or a young adult.

Sally Baddeley that's actually a very sound a logical kind of thinking mate...

I disagree, I think when children are being raped looking at them with pity, telling them to grow up and/or hating them doesn't help. I know my views are pretty much different from the worlds today, but I honestly think children in this situation desperately want help to stop the rape from happening. Afterwards, I think it's wrong to judge the child as evil and have no judgment towards the adult that raped them. I think they are the pitiful ones, not the child victim.

Amazing, the thoughts here make BLM look like utter pansies, considering most have never experienced being any type of victim. There is a fine line with sympathy and enabling. Too much self pity enabling, reduces any healthy resiliency learning.

@@sallybaddeley6060 Have you heard about the 14 yo who hired a prostitute? He got caught and is considered a "Victim" the girl went to prison. Enough evidence to say that teens have consent

its a mental disorder

Unfortunately, these degenerates will come up with every excuse and a shitty attempt to justify it. This guy needs to have his hard drive looked at.

That's incredibly resource heavy and can possibly result in making more victims.

@@deathbyunicorn5213 Are you arguing that having potentially more true victims would be a reason not to have understanding evaluated for real? I agree that such evaluation would be expensive which is why it would make sense to define some age each individual is assumed to be fully developed. I think this could be around 21 years or so. And in addition, you could take *optional psychological evaluation test* at younger age to declare yourself able to give consent and to make contracts *if you don't want to wait until you're 21 years old.*

@@MikkoRantalainen Yes, let's make kids pull out a consent card so they can get groomed by adults using questionable metrics for what is mature enough to consent, while wasting billions on nationwide infrastructure just to solve an issue that plainly doesn't exist.

Most British people suspected Jimmy Savile had some dirty tenancies and was responsible for some dodgy business. He always came over as creppy but few thought he was as dirty as it turned out he was.

I agree it’s not just a number but you have to draw the line somewhere.

Yes, but most of those countries only allow sex at that age as long as the other person is within an age range: ie ok for 12 as long as the other person is 12-14 or 14 if the 'other' is 14-16/17. NOT if the other is over 18.

​@@ayrshireman1314 as far as I understand German law the age of consent is fourteen but with a maximum gap of five years. Therefor a fourteen year old is legally entitled to engage in sex with any over fourteen but anyone over 19 would be breaking the law by engaging in that sex act. Anyone over 22 would be committing a crime if they engaged in a sex with anyone under 17. Seems like a sensible piece of legislation.

@@davidvarley1812 Are you the guy who said he was doing grown men when he was 13?

@@Dennis-nc3vw yes, I had encounters with men as a young teenage and never objected to it and don't view it as abuse.

@Ω 🐈 facts😭💔

@@nickzobel9922omega kitten is a hack, she’s probably been groomed and brainwashed by chomos near her.

***** Yes. But make it a continuum.

What do you mean by making it a continuum?

Gavin Boutdy It's a process take voting for example: 16 year olds: Local elections 18 year olds: Provincial/State elections 20 year olds: Federal elections

Gavin Boutdy For sexual consent add in a close-in-age exemption.

I suppose that makes sense. It still just seems a bit arbitrary to me.

I feel like it's appropriate to get mad at somebody saying they should be allowed to fuck 12 year olds, Dennis

@@GiantSandles It is appropriate, but I just can't bring myself to do it.

If consensual sex between a 15 year old and a 22 year old illegal, then it should also be illegal for that 15 year old to post highly sexualized content on Tik Tok. That app is a pedo's wet dream of underage people doing sexual gestures over sexual pop songs, how on earth is this not wrong? It's okay to take the wrong path in our judiciary systems but at we should at least seek some sort of consistency in our wrongness. We prohibit certain things and allow others which should absolutely be forbidden by the same standards we apply on other laws. I'm more for the decriminalization of such things and using our brains on case by case scenarios even though that would be more complicated and time consuming.

The biggest issue I see is in our hast to “protect” teens we make them the very targets of prosecutíon and being put on predatør lists. Which isn’t ok, teens consenting with other teens should never be a críme. Targeting the adults is a better way to actually “protect” teens.

@@CosmicTeapotthere is no such thing as 15 and 22 being consentual. The 22 year old should be thrown in jail.

+KreeZafi People can still be sexually assaulted at any age though, not just when they're children or if they do/don't have any understanding of sex. I do agree Sweden's age of consent is much more sensible, but it's a tricky subject when it comes to how you define power or authority. People can be very persuasive or convincing to get what they want. I think if a person is manipulative, and the person they target may not realize they're being emotionally manipulated, for example, it's obviously abuse, but you won't always see it. Teenagers especially are susceptible to this, as they are more emotional than most, and I think more likely to defend their abusers. As you said though, it depends on the circumstances and context. I think we need to expand our understanding of these concepts, but unfortunately it's not something many people would find comfortable having a discussion about. Can teenagers have consensual sexual relations with adults? Yes. I've known a few who have. A friend of mine years ago when he was 16 would frequently meet men online who were around his father's age. That's the only reason I can agree with everything you're saying, because most teenagers are old enough to be responsible for their own actions and to learn the consequences. Centuries ago, even up to 150 years ago, they would lie about their ages and go into brutal battles and get married very young. But this is a new culture we live in, one where we like to baby our young for as long as possible and pretend they don't know what sex is. I think this leads to us psychologically "victimizing" them in a sense, before they're actually victimized. A great many indie films in recent years have sparked my interest because they make light of this social problem. Kids getting in trouble who are more than ready to deal with consequences, yet it seems that we as adults--not being ready or willing to watch our kids grow up--are the ones who aren't truly ready for them to accept those consequences. It has a very psychologically hindering effect on teenagers, I think. Back in the old days, they learned and were expected to learn on their own. We rarely allow them that freedom anymore. We like to think we know what's best for kids, and usually we do, but once they're teenagers, I think it's better to pull back and let them do more things they'd like to do, and just remind them of consequences and teach them to be mindful of their actions.

+TEGDHaze He did not say more severe punishment For children under 18, he said "more severe punishment for sexual abuse of children (under 18)." "how do you define abuse of "children" under 18?" Forced "consent", manipulated "consent" or no consent at all for starters. As life itself isn't black and white, we can only draw grey lines for this sort of thing and by that I mean besides those three cases, it will depend on individual situations because not every case is the same. The natural line (puberty kicking in) seems reasonable enough as well.

***** Well the goverment set up the 18 mark so I dunno, but when someone hits 18 they are usually quite a bit more mature than a 14 year old for example. Being 18 is in some countries means being legally mature at least on the paper and you're not a minor. I think he advocated for more severe punishment for abuse of children because well they are children. They are still developing humans while they might give consent they may not know everything, sort of like the Jehova's baptize 13 year olds by peer and social pressure while not telling them exactly what that will mean for their lives, so they use that and their lack of knowledge and experience in life. Cases like that could happen, not saying all would be like that. But when you're 18 you're nearing the end of your growth process so people anticipate a person of 18 to be less susceptible to "lack of knowledge" and are expected to know what they are doing more than a 14 year old. Then again, a young kid may know more than one could guess, so it always depends. It can be and is confusing and odd I must say, but simply putting the 18+ or ABUSE AND RAPE is not the way to go about it if you ask me, I think you'll agree.

***** Agreed.

+KreeZafi "I think "age of consent" is a silly concept." I actually disagree, it's an important concept. What I think is silly is a "fixed age of consent" where there is one age where everyone is seen to be mature enough to have sex and anyone under that age can't consent, even if they're close in age (within a 1-5 year age bracket), it criminalizes teenagers!

He didn't actually say that. He's saying that the line drawn for the age of consent is arbitrary.

But that's an immensely difficult thing to determine, and largely a matter of opinion. People would not know whether or not they were breaking the law with a system like that.

14 year olds are not children 14 year olds are adults.

@@johnm84 If they are adult, why dont they make the age of consent 14?

@@ballayran9321 The age of consent is 14 in lots of countries.

@@ballayran9321 Germany's is 14, and that's because what is, is not what's right my arse.

Lol

+Jairzinho121 The line should be at nonconsent.

+Mea Culpa that is also a problem, because the reason children are generally considered off-limits is that they don't have the ability to consent therefore making it rape. So they could say yes, but really that could be you making them say yes out of fear or simply not knowing it is wrong

Line should be at 18 years old.

Because it's 50 year old priests doing it with ten year old boys.

@@joepublic3933 He defended Oscar Wilde doing it with boys under 16. He defended grown men in their 40s and older sleeping with bys 15 and younger. Many priests did stuff with boys 13 or 14. Was that ok?

@@reviewreviewer1 It certainly was not ok! I don't know what he said about Oscar Wilde; I haven't seen that speech, so I can't comment on that, but I remember the Catholic church one. I very much agree with him on that.

@@reviewreviewer1 Stephen Fry is weird and creepy.

@@reviewreviewer1 I don't think there was ever evidence of Oscar Wilde having sex with young people under 16 years old and the then-current legislation defined 16 years as the age of consent (and a few years earlier the age of consent had been 13 years, an another arbitrary age limit, so you have to know when each accused event happened to know what was the official age of consent for that year). As I see it, Oscar Wilde was having more trouble because of his homosexuality, not because of having paid sex with young prostitutes. You have to remember that all homosexual activity was still strictly illegal in UK until year 1967, nearly 70 years after Oscar Wilder died.

Ha! Your surname sounds like an errect penis! Haha!

Uh...pretty sure his husband is well over the age of consent of any country you could care to mention.

I said he looks 15. i think its kind of strange a guy in his late 50s would marry someone 30 years younger than them who looks younger again, then feel the need to justify sex with someone well bellow the age of consent. way too much of a coincedence imo

huba tongk I watched the video, and couldn't find where he justifies sex with people under the age of consent. Wanting to raise the issue of arbitrarily defined age limits and problematize our view of sexual maturity does not equal looking to justify having sex with children (by whatever metric we determine who is a child). I think your attitude is a solid example of why these questions are so rarely discussed, some people want to jump to conclusions and demonize people who just want to have an intellectually honest discussion. I don't think that's a very good attitude to have towards difficult issues.

the age of consent is there to protect people that could be vunerable based on their age because of the brains devolpment in adolencence which isnt complete until somone is 25, overwhelmingly. that means that having the age at 18 IS a compromise, between the time a person reaches physical fertility, maturity and mental capacity. though in almost all those cases they havnt reached everyone of them yet. i understand what stephen fry is saying and im sure hes aware its been debated since the beggining of time. so im looking at why hes saying it . to justify his own murky feelings on the subject by refering to it as vauge (it isnt ,i beleve based on above) .looking into his life and work then at the man behind the words, i have my answear .its his fetish. thats my beleaf ,some people are that way, im sure he wouldnt like to hear me saying it but that dosent stop me beleaving it. thats my truth. (sorry about the spelling, im not educated)

Well, why isn't the age of consent 25 then?

Presumably the hour+ long interview before the Q&A?? What kind of idiot are you?

Jake Mixon defending pedophilia is insane and rude to victims/survivors

I don't entirely agree but the whole "power imbalance" thing really burns me up. If teenagers were tapioca brained robots in the presence of someone older, they'd be easy to parent and the best employees, but anyone who knows anything about teens knows they are the opposite. Teenagers are often talked into doing stupid things, but just as if not more often by their peers. Maybe being older gives you MARGINALLY more power to psychologically abuse someone, but I'm sure its offset wildly by the fact you'd be less inclined to. Research shows a man 17 - 20 is twice as likely to abuse his partner as a man 25 - 28.

Your assuming all teenagers whom have sex with adults or perhaps other teenagers are victims of sexual abuse or rape. I was sexual active from about 13 onwards with various older teenage boys and men and it was always consensual. Even at 13, UK law stipulated that I was a criminal for having sex if it was homosexual in nature but not criminal if it was heterosexual in nature. For me the idea of criminalising someone whose only a few days, weeks or months even a couple years older than their sex partner is obscene. Teaching teenagers that below an arbitrary age they are forbidden from engaging in sex or that someone over that arbitrary age can't bring them consensual sexual pleasure is obscene. The judicial system should be their to prosecute those whom abuse others, not those whom engage in consensual sex.

Just because money is exchanged between a man and a teenager doesn't automatically make it rape. Many teenagers enjoy being prostitutes and their clients shouldn't fear criminalision for purchasing pleasure.

Stop acting like modern legal definitions of adulthood are based on the laws of nature. No one in the world genuinely believes that. If you think sex with people below a certain age is unethical, fine, but stop hiding behind the "OMG they're children" defense. For 99% of human history adulthood was somewhere between 12 and 15. That's where Bar Mitzvahs and Quincineras come from.

I wouldn't question the validity of that statement lol

@magellan-made-maps. everything

@EllenHoe-hm5rlchomo detected

If you want to stop the spread of pedophilia, real pedophilia, not the modern bastardization of the term, stop letting people deny biology and reduce the issue to "minors can't consent". This makes society's taboo on pedophilia seem cultural and arbitrary. But the truth is sex with pre-teen children was a serious crime even in Ancient Rome, which was a pervert's paradise.

No, there is no inconsistency. Because we know that most people actually quite enjoy their lives, only a minor share of the population deems life to be so cruel that they commit suicide. It is ludicrous to state that birth creates conditions for suffering, as it creates conditions for enjoying stuff as well, and the enjoying part of life far outweighs the suffering part of life. In the case of child abuse however, we know that persons that were abused at a young age actually did not enjoyed that very much, and their suffering is very apparent. And that is the very reason for the existence of an age of consent. In the case of birth we can assume that almost all persons would be happy to live. In the case of child abuse, non-consensual sex, we know that the majority is not quite happy with it.

Ultimately you have a legitimate point. It needs to be more about just "people under this age can't consent" because children can't consent to medical procedures yet its hardly abuse to perform certain surgeries on the child. It's really about "will they come to regret this."

@Fuckur Censorship You were unable to respond to any of my points. Shame.

It looks that way

Go watch fox news and your puritan bullshit.

One of the things you realise is that no issue is ever "settled" in politics. The fight against paedophilia must continue to be fought.

Ok

Good. AoC laws sat around 12 pretty much everywhere for all of human history and never onced caused and social problems. We don't even have any records of anyone complaining about it, either. Then, overnight, due to an intense moral panic/mass hysteria in Victorian london in 1885 induced by a fictitious article in a tabloid newspaper, the AoC was spiked way up to an unnatural age of 16 and has been doing nothing but causing social problems ever since.

Who is being labelled a hateful bigot? The age of consent is 14 in Germany, 15 in France, 18 is a very recent, and not necessarily right idea.

Then people should stop whining about Catholic priests. Richard Dawkins compared Catholic priests having sex with teenage boys to the Holocaust.

We kinda need the age of consent to tell whether someone is being molested.....

Dumbest comment I have ever seen in my life, your condoning rape, grooming ect what a sick twisted naive veiw. I hope that's not your argument when you get caught molesting kids ( she consented so I believe it's fine even if she is only 6) that's your argument?

What if a 6 year old consents to sex because she's told they're "playing games" or "tickling on the inside"?

You creeps make me sick

If anything, the age of consent should be over 21+

So a 54 year old should go to jail for having a relationship with a 30 year old? You might say, well then have an upper limit like 18.... ah, but then we're back where we started.

The point is that turning a certain age doesn't automatically make you less vulnerable over night. You can have an immature irresponsible 18 year old and meet a responsible mature 16 year old. His point is that it aint clear and warrants continious discussion if you want to live in a free society

Im 13 and i think it should be abolished. Discrimination calling us immature when the same fools don't even act or know what maturity is

@@frostbl0x544 can u rephrase that

@@frostbl0x544 well, you know what they say. Be careful what you wish for.

@@cochxite don't need to

Eh, sexual activity should be strictly for adults only

@@darthplagueis3488 what's an adult?

@@AtheosATFive someone over the age of 18

​@@darthplagueis3488 why 18? I disagree it's somebody who's at least 21 years old.

@@AtheosATFive I know, I wish we raised it to 21.

Aeroldoth3 I believe in some countries the age of consent is 15(maybe as low as 14?) and others 18. In England you're a right lad if you pull a 17 year old but in other countries you'd be a "nonce". It's a very fine line. I see school girls who would pass for 18 but my niece who is 16 is very small and a bit immature and looks about 13. Seems odd to draw a definite line but I suppose there isn't much choice. Not affect me anyway lol I'd be lucky to attract a 25 year old these days.

It's my view that laws should be addressing harmful elements in society, but not punishing people when there is no harm. Here in the US, we have a massive incarceration problem. This includes things like mandatory minimum sentencings as well as private prisons with quotas that gvmts have to fill. Discussions around adult/child sex however are almost impossible to have though, because if you're not 3000% against it, people will call you a sick pedo molester that nobody should listen to. Can't have a productive conversation then.

Aeroldoth3 nah fam... I don't know about you but where I'm from parents would never let their kids fuck regardless of age or maturity but we do it anyways 😂😂😂.

Define ‘child’?

@D M Well I didn't and that has fucking nothing to do with this convo. A movie about TEENAGERS is not a child. Nor is it adults having sex or grooming kids. 👌

@@thatlady4189 Teenager: between thirteen and nineteen.

@@joepublic3933 thats still a kid SIR

@@jefferylimestone6920 19 is a kid?

It's funny though that the law then says that actually a 12 year old both can and cannot consent at that age, depending on who they're consenting to with. Surely they either know what they're doing or they don't. I understand why the law exists and why it would be too difficult to do it any other way, but it's curious that it's entirely dependent on the age of the other party, and not based on the 12 year old's maturity.

David Iliff I agree. How would you structure the age of consent system?

ill tell you one thing, if someone slept with my 12 year old niece, theyre dead. i dont care if the boy was 9 lol

+Brien Eaton funny that you think of it as someone sleeping with her rather then her sleeping with someone else. Even if it's a 9 year old. ;)

thats a good point. all the more reason to give them a good warning when you first meet them :p

"It would change to state 16 can decide or 14 can decide which is wrong as fuck and there is a reason why no one uses these examples, even though any age of consent change would support all ages because old men tend to like children 16-18 because grooming is easier" -- you don't get to say idiotic thing like this based on ignorance and complain about people making dumb arguments based on ignorance. Like, you seriously think granting 14 YOs the basic human right to be with whom they want magically make them attracted to old men? You think a 50 YO can just walk up to a 14 YO, wave a magic wand, and get her to go on a date, much less have sex with him? If a 14 YO gets with a 50 YO, it's either because she is really into guys that age (some are), or she's using him as a sugar daddy to buy her whatever she wants.

"Grooming" is just our excuse to throw people in jail for being gross and creepy. Teeangers are often talked into stupid decisions but its from their peers most of the time. If teenagers were tapioca brained robots in the face of someone older, they would be really easy to parent and really good employees, but they are the polar opposite. Even if older people have a greater ability to "groom" teenagers, I'm sure this is more than offset by the fact they are less likely to be abusive. Research shows a man 17 - 20 is twice as likely to abuse his partner as one 25 - 28.

What has that got to do with child predators and the law not protecting children?

@@user-bv4hc1dz5v he was speaking about Oscar Wilde as well as modern child sexual exploitation. If you don't think my comment relates to the topic, ignore it.

@@davidvarley1812 ok…. Don’t pretend to care about children if you think adults should be touching 14 year olds

@magellan-made-maps.uh, no. They don’t. I’ve worked in an elementary school cafeteria for a brief time, and the only thing those little freaks do is either ask if we are serving their favorite foods or complaining about not being able to get two slices of pizza or something from the adult food line.

@magellan-made-maps. Christ almighty, that’s a creepy revelation. I hope you haven’t touched any of the kids in any way. Kids are naive little goobers, and like I said, they DON’T engage in any “sexual” advances at all. The only thing they see you is like a friend, not some lover. And as how I saw the kids in service times, it basically goes like this: they come into the cafeteria, those little balls of energy grab their trays and milks, I have their food already prepared, they come up to get the food, and I give them the food they want. Then, I point them away to the side bars with salads, fruit, or sometimes packed raisins. I only see them as slightly annoying little customers with below average hygiene skills.

You really are a ridiculous excuse for a human aren't you. You judge people by their place of birth in society rather than whom and what they do.

Labienus Is Fry's argument that Wilde only had consensual sex with youngish rent boys? So he thinks children can give consent? No amount of philosophisizing is going to make me okay with that :(

HeadLikeOrange His argument was that he didn't know. He said there was a point at which 'younger' children seem 'older' in their mental capacity than others who are actually physically older than them, and as such drawing the line and saying 'from this point on' is both necessary and almost impossible to truly get your head around when you really start thinking about it. By 'children' in the context of what he said, he seems to mean it of being around 14-16 and as such that they might be even more mature and in control than those older than them, but are yet to hit the arbitrary cut off of legal age. I shouldn't wonder if there was any evidence that Wilde had sex with 'children' i.e. pre-teen, then he would be mortified as any of us would. His point, and it's one I agree with, seems to be that having a cut off point of 16 and saying 'absolutely anything before this is automatic filth' is one that throws up more problems than it solves.

HeadLikeOrange Clearly I have the same problem with it-and with Fry-me thinks he doth protest too much. Yes, not all the rent boys were under age, but many were, but he doesn't address the non-rent boy relationships Wilde had with young boys. The maturity argument of particular youngsters has a certain complicated validity, especially if the age difference is not that great,but a 44 year old man with a 16 year old boy, rent boy or not, cannot be taken lightly.

Egregious No, his argument is not that he didn't know, but that we are applying "our' moral standards to the Victorian age, and as you get into, why shouldl there be an arbitrary age of consent if a particular boy has a different level of maturity. The morality argument is terribly weak. So we should be more tolerant of behavior of the past-slavery, race relations, gay persecution, anit-semitism, etc.-because it was accepted in an earlier age. Legal systems have to work with an agreed upon mark that constitutes the infraction or criminal behavior. How else could it work? So if the legal drinking age is 18, or 21-younger people can,drink because they appear more mature? Or you're stopped for speeding and explain that, yes, you were over the limit, not by too much, but you're an exceptional person and must be free to make your own judgments......etc. etc. As I first said-sometimes people close to the legal age are exceptionally mature-and is it a crime a week before one's birthday?-but that is not what Wilde was engaged in. We have little legal trouble if there is sexual activity among minors, but sometimes the law can be blind to a particular situation though. A recent case where a boy friend ?girlfriend of long standing, where the boy was somewhat older, and the girl not quite 18 resulted in the prosecution of the boy-but again that was not Wilde's situation. You seem to be explaining Wilde's behavior as if it were this one situation between a mature 16 year old and this much older man-but again, that was not the case with Wilde. Since reading the Ellman biography, and maybe before I had great sympathy for Wilde's plight ( keeping in mind his own statement in I guess in De Profundis about what the world did to me, and what I did to myself), and still believe it a kind of tragedy-however the reality of his behavior, and the new evidence that has come out in recent years, certainly tarnishes his reputation.

Labienus When I said 'he didn't know', I wasn't referring to Fry claiming that Wilde didn't know what he was doing or anything like that, I was saying it was Fry himself claiming 'he didn't know' in as much as he didn't have it all in a neat little bundle to answer the questioner. I'm not explaining Wilde's behaviour as anything, the man himself claimed how much he loved much younger men in a less than platonic way, I'm not saying that's a good thing. Fry would be the first to admit the Wilde was nothing if not a deeply flawed and imperfect individual, and the hero worship of him done by some as if he never did any wrong is certainly not a healthy thing. Though I agree Fry dodged the point with this one, I understand why he wouldn't want to have to deal with the notion of ''my lifelong hero was a peado'' or something, certainly in front of a room full of (apparently TB ridden, if the coughs are anything to go by) students, but, the facts are the facts. It's something Fry is often seen doing, when an issue touches him more than he's willing to expose to an interviewer or a crowd he'll take refuge in a coldly distant intellectual analysis of an issue rather than spit out plainly what he really feels.

And emotional abuse can be just as damaging long term.

I think this illustrates how 'consent' is so difficult to determine. A 16 year old will tell you s/he is able to decide and has given consent, but it is not uncommon for an older person to manipulate the feelings of someone so much younger and less emotionally mature - particularly if there are emotional issues at play that the 'child' has to deal with (unhappy home life or whatever). Frankly, I find it hard to believe that anyone in his mid-twenties can find all that much in common with a teenage girl that their 'love' would be legitimate. My instinct is that in that circumstance, consent or no, there's something not altogether healthy going on, probably on both ends.

Very reasonable statement!

This is why personally I think the whole age of consent thing should be relative to both partners, so say for example if one partner is 17 or younger, the other partner can't be more than 4 years older than them. Obviously there are exceptions, but in relationships between a teen and someone in their 20's there is usually just a massive power imbalance between the two, because the older partner is so much more emotionally mature and knows more about how the world works, and so it's very easy for them to manipulate the younger party, whereas if they're both in their teens the whole manipulation is less likely to happen. It's a minefield of a topic, but those are my two cents anyway.

ELEMTEY and teenage boys also can’t be emotionally manipulative and only interested in one thing? What about the fact older men are more inclined to have knowledge of and take the responsibility to use protection? Also the science that boys’ brains mature more slowly, a girl in her late teens is more likely to be on the same wavelength as an guy in his 20s than her contemporaries. By all means argue girls can be manipulated at a certain age but then you have to argue why a close-in-age exception would make any difference as boys their own age can also be manipulative, perhaps more so owing to peer pressure etc.

child-bearing is also traumatic and something an adolescent is not prepared for. there may have been a time in caveman days when having the option of impregnating girls as soon as they were fertile was an evolutionary advantage and helped our species survive, but that doesn't mean it's appropriate in modern society.

Mind 741 Bank it's quiet simple really, if it wasn't appropriate for now as it was the we would have evolved so that we reach the sexual stage at a younger date. It's little more than government believing it knows better than nature which to any rational person would be seen as a horrifying thing.

Biology and Ethics are two different subjects. Most organisms of species of animals can give birth relatively quickly. This is a benefit for the cases of if we don't survive long enough. But life has changed dramatically, especially for humans... ... ... I was gonna explain furthermore, but that would take time and effort, and I'm not willing to waste that for stubborn people. (you can bring horse to water, but can't force it to drink) So I'm just going to take a "you either get it or you don't" mentality to this instead. If you don't understand that mind is a factor in this other than just body, then I truly hope that you allow your 12 year old daughter to fuck as she'd like. I sincerely do, unless you're a retarded hypocrite and wants to go back on your own words. Because your argument is that the ability to be pregnant means they should fuck as they'd like.

*T'was an old username and I'll change it soon.* Why does the OP have so mamy videos of tits and..."Pretty Baby"? Uhmmmmmm...

@@pheurangtchi9754 Because I like tits. Do you have a point?

Actually that's not what he said or argued. He was saying it was wrong to criminalise a teenage for having consensual sex with a teenage because the so called victim might be psychologically more mature than the accused.

As well you shouldn't, either. Fry is a reprobate.

Alan Parkinson he answered the question 1 second after it was asked. "i don't"...

Yes. He dances around the term non-consensual. Basically, he’s advocating an elastic age of consent or none at all, and is suggesting slyly that if the child looks mature and agrees to sex, then all is fine.

There's no higher faculty a man can achieve than shedding his fear of being labelled a creep.

@@Dennis-nc3vw Few will understand what you mean. But I do.

@@IsaacAsimov1992 Anyone who's into their late 20s or beyond knows what I mean lol

I agree Stanley.

The hell?

@@darthplagueis3488 You honestly think that kind of thing is rare?

+Sam G you clearly didn't listen to what he was saying

+Jamie Measure-Hughes well you certainly cleared it up for me. Thanks Jamie!

no worries man! glad i could help

+Jamie Measure-Hughes lol

+Sam G I think the point was that it *is* a difficult topic and so the one thing an honest, thoughtfull answer can *not* be is simple. It's also an absolute minefield of a topic, and you could see that Fry was jumping about trying not to blow himself up with this or that forbidden opinion, leaving him with, in the end, not as much to say as he perhaps could have.

What's evil?

@Mustafa Aziz 🤨

@@joepublic3933 Obviously Mustafa thinks Stephen's opinions are evil, and I do think that Stephen is creepy.

There's always a power imbalance. Generally women seek men who are stronger, wealthier and of higher status than them - the more imbalance the more they are drawn. Seethe and cope.

In UK that's not how the law works. In the Britian a defendant must have a guilty mind (mens rea) which means a defendant can argue lack of mens rea in almost every criminal case and can't be convicted if mens rea is believed to absent at the time of the offence.

Wait, what? What's that all about?

Jacqueline Brunder The banning of gay practice and homosexuality is not protecting children

+Richard Blackmore So, I have the tendency to play Devil's Advocate, especially in situations where people are strongly convinced of their own unquestionable judgement, and when the intended consequences are so dire. Indulge me, for a moment... at the risk of drawing the ire of every justice warrior on the Internet (and thanks, Google, for forcing me to use my real name to post these comments!). And let me preface this by saying that I'm assuming by 'someone who hasn't gone through puberty' you mean teenagers, not actual children. Can you not imagine *any* situation in which a child could benefit from a sexual experience with an adult? Is it *always* 'rape'? Is there nothing useful to be learned from adults about sex, and is it truly best to let the young and immature amongst us just fend for themselves and experiment with each other without any instruction or training or knowledge of what safe, enjoyable sex is like? Or *not* experiment and grow increasingly more frustrated and angry with the world? (...might be speaking from experience with that last one... >_>)

Simon Belanger Most boys and girls go through puberty by the time they are 12, or 13. So I mean someone under age 13. For me it gets pretty questionable at age 14. Still questionable at age 15, less so as a person gets older. I assume some few 14 year olds might be ready for sex, but not most. So, how do you determine when it is appropriate? But ( IMO ) it shouldn't be legal if the person is unable to legally enter into a contract and the adult in question has power over the other ( teacher, priest, guardian, etc).

+Richard Blackmore Ah, see, that's why I stated my assumption, which was about the age *during* puberty, not the age at which it starts. A range made much more sense in your context than a single point in time. Per Wikipedia: On average, girls begin puberty at ages 10-11; boys at ages 11-12. Girls usually complete puberty by ages 15-17, while boys usually complete puberty by ages 16-17.

***** You keep believing that if it makes you feel better.

***** Do you?