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.
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”
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.
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.
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)
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 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.