So for those of you unaware, last night someone claiming to be a long-time poster confessed to being in a sexual + romantic relationship with what turned out to be a minor 15 years his junior. (Here is the post for additional context.) Several people - myself included - failed to immediately condemn the relationship and in fact sympathized with OP and put blame on the kid for lying to and manipulating OP (who claimed to be unaware of the kid’s actual age until the cops told him), completely ignoring the fact that a 15-year-old cannot consent to such a relationship. Even if he jumps through a bunch of hoops to illegally get into a kink space and fabricates an of-majority-age persona in order to get with a much older man. In my own case, I believe that my own perception of the situation - not helped by OP’s way of telling the story - was warped such that the sexual side of the relationship was sidelined in favor of the more emotional side, as well as having an incorrect perception of consent as it pertains to teenagers going in. Either way, I admit that my gut reaction was wrong both legally and probably morally, and that I clearly have much to learn about consent and sexual laws and norms (from harassment to rape.)
My recommendation to the mod team would be to permaban all people whose first reaction was to side with OP (yes, including me), and have a stern discussion with the site about the gravity and absoluteness of consent, especially with respect to children and teenagers (to cover the rest of your asses.) Advice on further steps to be taken would also be appreciated.
Shout-out to u/BeamBrain for shaming me and setting me straight. I hope the few others who sided with OP have also come to realize the error of their ways.
MULTIPLE PEOPLE IN THIS THREAD ARE TALKING ABOUT REPORTING THEMSELVES TO AUTHORITIES OVER THESE POSTS?!
get a fucking grip please!!
this kind of post is why other people make fun of hexbear lol
I still can’t believe people fell for the old “they lied about their age” sob story. And after falling for it, want to report themselves to the police.
What planet are people living on? Does anyone here have any actual life experience?
leaving the news mega is always a grave mistake
There’s a lot of good reasons to make fun of this site
yeah i think this is a serious misstep. getting yourselves on a list or arrested isn’t going to make you better people. the people in question need to reconsider everything they believe about these kinds of situations.
martyrdom isn’t repentance. they need to improve themselves so the next time something like this happens (whether here or elsewhere), they’re useful to the victim instead of the fucking rapist.
i really want to know what exactly the report would be about. no crime occured on hexbear, having a bad take is not illegal. what op did was illegal but local cops at least already arrested him so nothing to be accomplished there. im concerned about the idea that a comrade would, through guilt or embarrassment about cringe posting, inform the feds or whoever about posts on hexbear.
need to be banned for being terminally online weirdos
sad detachment from reality honestly.
If the context was any less severe, I wouldn’t have voiced that possibility.
what were you thinking you would report? and to who?
They need to be reporting to me. I will sort this out.
Hoping someone answers this.
I can’t see anybody’s comments on the thread, as they aren’t loading, but I’ll say this. No one should be banned simply for sympathizing with op. That is a very confusing post about a very bizarre and fucked up situation, and I can’t blame people for not immediately having the one correct take or whatever. Furthermore, I would even more strongly urge you not to report yourself to any authorities except in certain very extreme and particular circumstances. I don’t know what country you live in, but legal authorities are not trustworthy nor on the right side. If you give police information, in a best case scenario they will ignore and equally likely they will use it against you or people around you.
Furthermore, I would even more strongly urge you not to report yourself to any authorities except in certain very extreme and particular circumstances.
I can’t believe that needs to be said here.
, 1312, All Cats Are Beautiful FFS! Did you mess up like bad with giving shit advice and having disgusting opinions and so you need to do some serious fucking self crit right now? Yeah, probably, it sure looks like it. In fact you should get on that now, if it means hashing it out with trusted comrades, or doing deep, painful, quiet, but honest self reflection, or going to a trained therapist yeah, go do THAT.But calling “the authorities”? “Turning yourself in?” For fucking what? Having a really bad take as your gut reaction to an emotionally complex and arguably manipulative post? No. No, calling the authorities would very clearly do nothing but pile on more shit decisions and faulty thinking to what you’ve already done, oh and maybe give you some sense of atonement or some shit? I don’t know, maybe not on that last one, since I don’t know what your motives are that deep down. But don’t fucking report yourself for having the wrong reaction to a post.
All I have to add to this is that while my gut instinct is also to feel sympathy in situations like this, I have a very hard time feeling sympathy for a 30+ year old who thought they were “only” banging an 18 year old. I spent some time hanging out with an 18 year old stranger not long ago and I had fun but they definitely hit my “child” radar and I’m only 24. Would never have considered climbing into bed with them. If a friend around my age told me they recently had sex with an 18 year old my first response would be along the lines of, “yikes, are you sure about that?” If I were ever considering banging someone who could plausibly be a teenager, even if they said they were 20+, I’d be very cautious about it. Like, legitimately no joke show me your fuckin ID sort of territory.
Yeah, while I feel a fair amount of sympathy, it’s absolutely the responsibility of the older party in situations where it’s even remotely plausible the person is under 18. You should adopt the bottleo rule “If you look under 25 you’re getting carded” (Age of drinking is 18 here). Dude fucked up bad and it is his fault. You’re an adult, do the adult thing. And the adult thing is to make sure you don’t get into shitty situations like this.
Even then, if you’re over 25, having a relationship with anyone who hasn’t gotten a bachelor’s degree (or worked for an equivalent time) is a little sus. I’m not gonna disallow it because there are shitty social consequences from going too far with that, but it is a red flag that needs a whole heap of green flags to overcome.
deleted by creator
I know that this is very serious, but in the interest of brevity (since you all know what I mean) this situation is an opportunity to appreciate the :volcel-police: culture on the site.
I’m incredibly thankful that this isn’t something that transpired between two people on this site, cause it could easily happen in a lot of online spaces and really fuck shit up. II think it’s a bit harder of an environment here for that sort of thing to pop up, and I think we should keep it that way.
It’s also worth reflecting upon in offline interactions. Let’s do good things for people in our community and not get distracted by all kinds of “fucking” drama. Easy for me to say, but sure, I have my own issues that hold me back (we can get into drug and alcohol use etc… as well). Just saying the post has me reflecting and writing some neo-Maoist comradely wisdom into my “Little Red Book 2nd Edition”. Maybe it’s trash anyway.
Removed by mod
If only you were with u/theghostofwhoiwas as he was entering that kink space for the first time…
God damnit, Mods delete the bot reply pls
Not sure the mods are around right now, I’d have expected them to be here by now.
trying to catch up on context now. initial thoughts: not planning on banning anyone for sympathizing with someone
There’s nothing wrong with empathizing with someone in a crisis, but the posts which supported OP by deflecting responsibility onto the child involved left a very bad taste in my mouth and I’m glad this is getting looked at and is recognized as an issue. Also absolving someone of all responsibility for actions which, even unintentionally, caused significant harm can send a dangerous message, both to the person and, in a public forum, to others as well, that the behaviour is condoned.
Just a chapo mod, not sitewide.
The original post is up, but none of the replies are loading for me. I don’t really have any clue what happened in the thread but to me, its apparent that the OP should have at the very least definitely been asking more questions than they were.
I’m not currently in contact with any admins, and I will leave any sort of continuing plan of action to them. That said, I will definitely state that rape apologia here won’t stand, not anywhere on this site. The user ghostofwhoiwas was wrong, and any sort of “just asking questions” about the culpability of people who fuck teens will result in a ban from here on out. Previous posts have been removed without bans.
u/GorbinOutOverHere is a ban evasion account for @AmericaDelendeEst@hexbear.net that comments about evading the ban here (https://hexbear.net/comment/2837010) and there’s a removed comment in the old ban appeals mega
now supporting child abuse in addition to the previous report abuse, anti-veganism, and “Constantly spreading disinformation and misrepresenting events. Repeatedly baiting out drama” that caught a ban in the first place
hopefully admins will take a second look at this, with the new 2 year ban from this comm and the reasons why, to at least consider further disciplinary action
I literally came here just to be like “you know it’s been forever so I don’t even remember what their first account was, but they were already permabanned and for good reason so I’m glad to see them finally gone again” lol
Hopefully their next ban evasion accounts actually get banned on the basis of being ban evasion accounts and they either give up and go somewhere else or thoroughly change their behavior
Those two accounts are obviously from a user that was banned long ago, everyone knows who they are and I’m actually surprised they were not banned for ban evasion sooner, if that’s what the mods are doing now. I was under the impression that they were allowed back on hexbear as a sort of “you’ve learnt your lesson now” type deal.
wasn’t gorbin the rowing machine poster? i liked those posts. sad
There are a few users who have names that kind of flaunt the fact they’re evading an old ban. (coughzedcough. excuse me, getting over covid again.) I took it the same way you did, that mods knew what was up, but were just like “don’t do it again and we’ll let it slide.” Fair enough, the way I see it, especially when they consistently post good takes… mostly. But then there are also sometimes prolific people who come back immediately after a recent ban with an obvious name and still expect mods not to do anything about it. Keep that popularity contest shit out of here, I would say.
Thank you for your service
a minor 15 years his junior.
So OP basically r-word someone young enough to be their nephew.
me, who had no idea about any of this until 5 minutes ago
yeah that was a super dicey situation
I was there, my only contribution was as neutral as I could make it, but I’m truly not sure that was the right way to engage. The main issue in my mind is as follows: it’s clearly a morally wrong act that OP committed, but it’s also morally wrong (and not constructive) to dogpile a person expressing suicidal ideation and also having recently attempted suicide, for something they knew was wrong and did through poor choices/ignorance and not malice (not an excuse, but background that should inform the response).
Separate from the response to this incident, I think we might need to examine the rules of /c/mentalhealth and maybe the site as a whole in regards to talking about questionably illegal or fully illegal activities. While it’s nice to have a space where people can talk about their deeply troubling personal issues with a sympathetically leftist cohort, that post and the engagement it got was really a lot for the community to deal with, and might even attract undue law enforcement/fed eyes on hexbear in the near future. That post was also potentially in violation of comm rule 1, “We are not a crisis service.”
I think we might need to examine the rules of /c/mentalhealth and maybe the site as a whole in regards to talking about questionably illegal or fully illegal activities
No shit, especially when it comes to egregious stuff like that.
might even attract undue law enforcement/fed eyes on hexbear in the near future
That’s why I’m advocating for an extremely harsh response, even at my own expense. (Including bringing up the possibility of turning ourselves in.) Also, our enemies elsewhere on Lemmy and on Reddit would love to know about this incident and use it to smear not only Hexbear but also communism as a whole and the non-binary (read: trans) community. Given that the original post is still up after 24 hours, I wouldn’t be surprised if some
has already detected blood in the water.I appreciate your proactive action here but I deeply strongly advocate against anyone turning themselves in over this - one, because if we don’t want fed eyes on hexbear, we should really avoid someone going to the alphabet boys and saying “hey I did a sex crime on this communist message board”, and two, because no commenter committed a sex crime. It’s not a sex crime to write words of support to someone in crisis for mahing a shitty non-malicious choice that they regret deeply enough to attempt suicide over. Might be illustrative of a need to self crit, but definitely not any form of crime.
And besides, we’re about rehabilitative justice here. If we genuinely believe that, we know that the rehabilitation we can do ourselves with a struggle session about it is more than the rehabilitation that will be given by anyone turning themselves over to the feds over what amounts to far less than what the average NSFW artist probably has public on twitter
turning yourselves in to who? for what?
Yeah I definitely think that my gut reaction was also wrong. I like not being banned so I would say I personally don’t want to be banned but if the mods ban me I won’t die since hey it’s just a website.
We are not immune to
propagandasob stories from a sex pest
i touched grass yesterday and i’m worse off for having read the referenced post
Discord ERP in my chapo.chat? It’s more likely than you think.
Obviously a 15-year-old can’t consent to sex with a 31-year-old, and we should ban people who disagree. However, we cannot hold someone morally culpable for an action they were unaware of committing, unless they were deliberately closing their eyes to facts a reasonable person would have correctly interpreted. In situations where someone is reasonably deceived - you’re 21 and drunk, they’re 17 and snuck into a bar; you’re one of the people Traci Lords gave a fake ID and birth certificate to - all we can clearly point to is the requirement that once you find out you have to take corrective action (stop what you’re doing). Seems like OP wasn’t reasonably deceived, but he’s not gonna tell us that outright. The confusing narration may explain some takes you did not like. The first time I read it I thought they had only sexted, which makes a story of deception more believable. I had to read it twice to realize that they actually met up irl, which makes it hard to understand that OP didn’t notice that “Jenny” was apparently (a) a pre-HRT trans boy in girlmode and presumably (b) acting like a high school sophomore’s idea of a college freshman. BPD and/or impossible naïveté and/or lies.
In the realm of unambiguous knowing actions, kicking off an intense D/S romantic and sexual relationship with a much-younger person that you barely know seems dangerously indifferent to the risk of harming a young person. Still bad even if they turn out to be 19, you know? Agree with BeamBrain’s rule of thumb: don’t fuck people who look young enough you need to check their ID.
At the moment, I don’t support bans for people who said stuff like “if what you said was true I’m sorry that happened”. In fact you could read the /c/mentalhealth sidebar rule 8 as telling users not to be critical of people’s sob stories. Maybe there’s a way to change that while keeping it a safe space.
e: egg on my face, BeamBrain points out that statutory rape is generally strict liability. removed the mens rea stuff
Obviously a 15-year-old can’t consent to sex with a 31-year-old, and we should ban people who disagree. However, we cannot hold someone morally culpable for an action they were unaware of committing,
There’s also zero chance a 31 fucking year old wouldn’t have an inkling that the 15 year old is underaged. OP probably was actively looking for college aged people (18-22) to date, and they fucked up. They fucked up by being the 30-something-year old in a crowd of young 20-something-year olds, and they really fucked up by hooking up with a goddamn teen who’s young enough to be their nephew. This is why 30+ year old shouldn’t be dating people who look like they’re still in college because some of those people might not actually be college aged. They can try to do their due diligence and perform a serious background check, including but not limited to asking others to verify that person’s age, or they can just say, “you know, instead of accidentally r-wording an underaged teen, how about I just don’t date people who are under 25.”
I would like to add a personal anecdote to this. I was at a house party and this beautiful girl started getting real comfortable with me. Like when I was rolling a spliff she was basically sitting shoulder to shoulder almost leaning on me and being pretty flirtatious, but I could tell she was probably at least 10 years younger than me, and while flattered I didn’t reciprocate in anyway I was just chatting with the DJ about communist shit.
Anyway the next day I learned that this girl was fuckin 17. And no I had no way of knowing that specifically at the time, the vibe check was immediately failed. I cannot fathom any instance in which I “accidentally” hook up with a fucking teenager.
Yes the situation as they described sounds very fucked but honestly none of that matters. They should have known or at the very least been suspicious enough to enquire further.
Hell I even have had similar things happen with girls in their early twenties. If you’re 15 years younger than me, I’m gonna fuckin know.
related minor tangent, this is why i fucking loathe the “power dynamics” jokes you see around here sometimes. the idea that someone can be in their 30s and have a healthy, normal romantic/sexual relationship with a teenager is beyond vile and i’ve seen people here make that claim and similar ones in the past with little pushback. cries of “but that’s morality policing!” absolutely ring hollow because providing cover for this kind of shit is the alternative.
there is never an excuse for getting involved with someone that much younger than you, especially a teen. i was groomed by several different adults who 100% knew better and should have been shot for their interactions with me, no matter how much i may have wanted it at the time. a teenager isn’t manipulating an adult into shit. “b-but i’m a gormless dipshit and they’re a genius-level master of social interaction!!” you shouldn’t have been in this position to begin with. it is still 100% your fault
the OP of that thread shouldn’t have been shown sympathy, they should have been shown the fucking wall.
I thought the OP of the original thread was full of shit and purposely omitting details that so obviously points to an underage person, but it was posted in /c/mentalhealth, so I didn’t know how to respond that isn’t just saying “OP, you’re full of shit lmao”
purposely omitting details
i’d bet my eyes on it. i’m still torn on whether or not OOP was sharing a real story or writing a fantasy with one hand down their pants or even just baiting the site with an incredibly volatile subject, but i am immensely disappointed in the responses in that thread. i understand the comm rules forbid calling bullshit. because of that i think the best response would have been none at all. no validation, no reassurances, no nothing. i don’t give a shit how suicidal some pedo may have been about their crimes, they should have been shunned at the minimum.
It sounds an awful lot like bait, especially the gender identity reveal at the end. But of course you can’t really call that out on the mental health comm.
gender identity reveal at the end
Yeah that is why I was suspicious the whole thing may have been concocted (yes even their posts on their main account about the relationship). Feels like a really high effort attempt to bring heat on the site.
And as others have said I am deeply disappointed with the responses from some posters here.
the OP of that thread shouldn’t have been shown sympathy, they should have been shown the fucking wall.
Let it be known that although I was among the people who initially showed sympathy for the offender, I am rather disappointed in Carcosa’s half-measure of just banning u/GorbinOutOverHere and “keeping an eye on” the rest. Especially in a case like this where 1) the action was morally and legally an absolute atrocity and 2) the site’s reputation as a whole could be ruined by one post about this elsewhere on Lemmy or Reddit, not to mention the potential for unwanted eyes from the feds. Given your status on the site, I would request that you lobby for fully upholding TC69 Thought.
while i do agree that a sterner response to the sympathizers in that thread would be ideal, my main concern here is that they felt inclined to sympathize in the first place, rather than how it looks to outsiders. i’m not going to name names or call anyone specifically out, but i seriously want those of you who chose to give a child rapist pats on the back to have a long, serious think about why you thought that was an acceptable response. then, fucking change.
I suppose the biggest question I have is how to square the circle of people who would never themselves knowingly violate a child (or anyone, really) but still not realize the gravity of a situation like this and side with a child rapist for even a second (such as myself, I’m sure there are others.) Would you - as a victim yourself - be inclined to have them preemptively put on a list just in case? And, considering that they’re not so far gone as to need “why pedophilia is bad 101” lessons, how exactly would you go about reforming them, or see them fucking change?
(This is intended as a good faith question, please don’t kill me)
my main concern here is that they felt inclined to sympathize in the first place, rather than how it looks to outsiders
Of course, I just felt it necessary to point out that this could make the entire site look bad (to pressure the mods into not implementing any more half measures.)
Right. Like I said, he admits to the intentional bad act of a very large age gap relationship. That’s bad primarily because even a 19-year-old is gonna be hurt by such a relationship, not because of the risk of committing statutory rape. I find it hard to believe that he met up with a 15-year-old without reasonably suspecting their age, but we don’t even need to critically read OP’s story to condemn his behavior.
Yeah I’m gonna be real here, that whole post sounded a bit contrived, I didn’t want to jump in at the time because it felt like a sensitive subject I was not qualified to address being in a state of falling asleep and having drank a bit.
Something I think went unaddressed is that the OP subtly invoked “gay panic” when they included the totally unnecessary fact that this hypothetical underage person not only tricked them into illicit acts with a minor but that they also were “pretending” to be trans.
I didn’t want to interrogate someone in the moment that might be going through a severe mental health crisis but with some sleep and sobriety behind me this whole thing looks more and more sus whether it happened or not.
I don’t know exactly what if any of it happened but I can’t shake the feeling OP is lying about all of it.
Of course this doesn’t change the fact that some posters here responded in not great ways whether any of it was true or not.
I can’t shake the feeling OP is lying about all of it
I personally can’t shake the feeling the post was a trap set by reactionaries looking for even just one of us to take the bait so they can get proof that communists and non-binary (read: trans) folk are actually okay with child rape.
op is the alt of a user who’s posted on and off here for three years, i recognize some of the content and style from some posts that stood out to me about a month ago. it’s not a one-off troll
it’s real, in the sense that a real person wrote it believing it to be true. they’ve posted about the relationship for months on their main account
I knew the story sounded familiar, but I don’t remember how said it.
it’s pretty distressing how op repeatedly emphasized how they were doing very hardcore kink, with bold and everything.
I upvoted their posts out of sympathy with their mental health crisis but I was way too drunk to read into anything deeper than what that user literally said. Still don’t fully understand wtf happened but that situation is fucked.
I think I’m gonna take a break from the site for a bit. I’m not in a good state rn.
Okay ive read about this for like 2 minutes, my conclusion is that if youre over 30 why the fuck would you even engage with someone who’s 18? Thats sketchy in itself.
