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.
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.
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.
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