So, is Jamie Spears allowed on the adult grid now?

by the looks of it tonight doesnt look like anyone is allowed on secondlife

Maybe you should look at the residents online count perhaps, seems to be plenty of people in here.

Hmm , tough crowd here tonight :/

Your example is only anecdotal

There are plenty of cases of women getting married at 16 who were taken advantage of by their older husband.

The fact that it worked out for your mother does not mean that 16 necessarily is old enough for a girl to have informed consent with regards to a sexual relationship with an adult.

There are situations where 13 year olds were married to 30 year old men and it worked out, are there many who would not consider that child abuse today?

If its child abuse today, then it was child abuse then, even if it followed societal norms.

I do not think a 16 year old having cyber sex is going to ruin them, but it is neither here nor there as far as whether it should be condoned.

It is the dried up old prunes that worry me when I meet them

Sorry Collette but I'd have to disagree with this statement. You simply can't compare today's society with how things were earlier.

The world was a harder place to live in, medical practices weren't up to the standard we have today, many deaths then that wouldn't happen now etc. Life expectancy was rather shorter than now as well. If thought about in today's terms, yes, the girls were unacceptably young. But you can't think about it in today's terms. You simply can't.

People then grew up much faster because they had to. They had to be involved in things our children wouldn't even think of because of necessity and this encouraged maturity. It was a matter of survival.

A whole list of reasons that children of the time didn't remain children and were quite capable of maturing at a much faster pace than we 'allow' our children to mature.

~B

You can not tie the ability to provide informed consent to a learned behavior.

Because then you could say it would be possible to teach a bright child of any age to provide informed consent.

It was child abuse and sexual exploitation to use 13 year olds for marriage stock.

The survival point is debatable, population growth rates far exceeded replacement rates during most of human history after we ceased being hunter gatherers. It was largely a economic boon to have more workers - IE exploiting children for labor in Agricultural societies.

But even if you are right, just because it was necessary for survival didn't mean those young girls were more capable of making informed sexual consent with adults than girls of the same age are today.

And again I say you simply cannot look back and judge using today's society as the gauge. It simply doesn't work. To honestly form an opinion of those practices you would need to look at the whole from their point of view not ours.

~B

I disagree.

Forcing children to work was exploitation.

For example my Grandfather was put to work in a coal mine at age 12.

Even were it necessary for his families economic well being - it was still exploitation. He was 12, a child.

Bearing children and sex are also included in this. Since girls at 13 were marriageable age, many prostitutes in the same societies were also early teens.

cultural relativism is all well and good, but it shouldn't be used to excuse certain practices.

For example, I am certain in 200 years History will judge US harshly for the amount of mood altering drugs we give our grade schoolers. (Ritalin).

In my opinion it would not be valid for someone on that future date to say something like, "but look at the stress those teachers and parents were under, you have to see it from their perspective"


---------------------------
In relative terms you are arguing it wasn't exploitation because times were different.

In absolute terms I concede times were different but it doesn't change what was done to those people.

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The case of the 16 year old if more difficult - since there is less difference between a 16 year old and an adult than a 13 year old. 16 is legally old enough in many places to form sexual relationships with adults of any age.

Is that right? hard to say. How can you even perform an unbiased study? Any researcher will be biased by the norms of the society in which he was raised. They don't want to call their own society sick.

I imagine researches from 1700 would have told us 13 year olds were adults. While researchers today will tell us somewhere closer to 18, and researchers 100 years from now may tell us 22 or even 25.

I have a lot of experience with 2 teenagers, 15 and 17. In my opinion neither is mature enough to decide what to do about college much less enter into a sexual relationship with an adult.

I have a hard time believing their brains would have developed faster on the poorer nutrition available in 1700.

Both have IQs over 140, so I doubt it would be a lack of knowledge leading to their immaturity. More simply they are too young to know what it is they want from life balanced against the reality of life.

If Jamie Lynn's sister is any indication she surely isnt ready to be a Mom. And her comment that she was "surprised" she got pregnant would support that.

Of course in 1700 im sure there were plenty of 16 year olds surprised they were pregnant, and really wished they would get more out of life than playing out the role of a housewife.

/me cheers

I LOVED THIS POST. Thank you, Sweet, for typing it all out. You rock!

Collette,

Going through the world saying your way is not our way and our way is the right way isn't a very good basis of judgment IMO.

And what it boils down to is this is my opinion, as it is yours. There is no possible way you can possibly look back and say anything like you are saying with any real knowledge but your own judgment. A judgment based in today.

For what it's worth, my girls are a little older than yours so I too have a basis of reference you see. I can also look at our history with objective eyes and see why things were the way they were, I may not like what I see but it is the understanding of it that I think is the difference here.

Anyway, since I can see signs of it becoming personal (which is a pity) I'll leave it at that.

~B

Boys also do not really reach full physical developement until about 25, when testosterone production peaks - up until this point, their physique is still developing (at a much slower rate than in their teens, I grant you) also. I also know plenty of girls whose bodies were still growing in their mid 20s, particularly secondary sexual characteristics (a polite way of saying boobs!). Are you suggesting then that 25 should be the age of consent?

Infact, female hormonal developement continues until the mid-30s. So perhaps 35 should be the age of consent.


The ability to procreate does not mark the end of the physical development of young people - but it does mark an important watershed moment.

Seriously this statement is slightly misleading, please let me amend it:

"There are plenty of cases of women getting married at >ANY AGE< who were taken advantage of by their younger/older husband."

Age doesn't have anything to do with maturity or for that matter when you have sex. I personally never considered myself mature until well into my early 30's and god sometimes i worry about myself now nearly 20s years later. And to be really really honest I don't think I could have waited that long to have sex, in fact if I did I would probably have become a very very creepy kind of person.

In my opinion SL is banning the innocent to protect the right of the 'mature' guilty to stalk the streets of SL.

Still not quite there - but closer.

"There are plenty of cases of people getting married at >ANY AGE< who were taken advantage of by their younger/older spouse."

yup thanks for the correction

I think we make a mistake attributing human motives and emotions to celebrities. The blessed foetus in this case is almost certainly the product of a publicist, regardless of who the sperm donating "father" is fabled to be. I mean, who ever even heard of this "Jamie Lynn Spears" creature till this happened? No such thing as bad publicity.

And she'll be on the Teen Grid exactly when and if her agent thinks it would advance her little career.

It completely escapes me how any of this makes an argument for or against universal precocity.

Did she not know what caused it? If so, then she does have a problem!

Well to go with another religious example mohamad married a 6 year old and politly waited until she was 9 to concomate the marrige. Now acroding to muslim teaching anything mohamad did is right and it has been practiced my some muslim communities in the time since therefore 9 year olds should be alowed to have sex. Or are we going to go with different ruled for now then in the past?

Oh, well now I know who she(!) is, here's my opinion:

I don't care. She's a nothing relative of a nobody.

She just turned 16 in April and she's 3 months along. They've been dating each other for 2 1/2 years now. Have to be pretty sure something was going on even before April which it looks like she follwing right a long in her sisters foot steps.

E-gads...have we lowered ourselves to discussing celebrities here....wait...she's not a celeb...ok....carry on......

I dunno....i think we have sort of shot ourselves in the foot in our culture with regards to this issue. There was a time in our history when girls were married and bearing children at 15..... people worked hard.....life was lived in the shadow of responsibility and survival. A 24yo woman was looked upon with pity if she had not married yet.....

Ok...so times were hard and children had to grow up fast and learn how to get along in the world......now times are not so tough and we like to shelter our children and keep them 'young' as long as possible.....we want them to have a childhood....we want to spare them some of the grief of 'growing up'. This is noble and certainly makes sense.....but has it backfired in our society to some degree I wonder?

This is such an incredibly huge source of controversy for us all..... some kids just DO mature faster than others.....some of us never grow up..... but I know of more than a few people in my own personal life who have been crippled by that philosophy of 'let them be kids as long as they can'. The only way for society to reasonably deal with the issue as a whole...is to lay down some basic ground rules about when a human being should be allowed certain adult responsibilities. Doesn't mean that there is some magic age portal we all pass thru to emerge suddenly as fully capable adults..... what is really means is we really don't have a clue....so we end up protecting the masses to save the 'few'.

Jamie Lynn may well prove to be a finer mother than her sister......perhaps observation has given her the determination to do it 'right'. Or maybe not..... who knows. I'm not gonna sit here and judge the kid when my own grandmother had her first child at 15 (no, she was hopeless as a mother, but she managed to have some dam fine children anyway)

I have a 14yo nephew.....I would not be comfortable with him on the main grid in SL..... not necessarily because I don't think HE could handle it.....but more because I don't trust all the people he may come into contact with in the adult grid. I think, more than anything....that is the concern.... you can let your kid watch a R rated movie or play a graphic video game...and none of the characters are gonna develope a possibly influencing relationship with him/her.....but in SL....that's got to be considered. I'm not a mom......sadly, I never will be..... but I certainly do understand where there's a very fine line in what we can and cannot guard our children from. I was given adult responsibilities very early in life.....because my mom could see i could handle them......but I was also given rules and boundaries.... because I needed to learn the value of setting limits....of understanding my own boundaries and how to keep them in check so the big bad world didn't cross them while I wasn't looking. That's all we can do, try to guide...and hope like hell we've made the right choices.

Isn't that a bit harsh? I get annoyed at the condemnation of children/relatives of people who have "fame" - being a celebrity does not mean relinquishing being a human being.

Back in the day, starting a family early to help the family progress, or extra hands for the farm was required... Unfortunantly a lot of kids don't need to work anymore..

wait, what was the question?

/me walks off confused

Sometimes. But some conduct themsleves in such a manner where they have so little respect for themselves or others, that they don't merit any from me. But that holds true for "regular" people too. Trash is trash, no matter how fancy the can is.

Who cares?

Sides, as I'm sure someone else on this thread has already said, jes cuz she's gonna have a kid dun make her mature. Heck, one could prob'ly argue the opposite, beings she prob'ly didn't have a good grasp of "cause > effect."

Still, SL doesn't have a "you are on the main grid till you get preggers" policy. It is as trictly age-based one. Therefore, she's be on the TG. Not even worth discussing past dat point.

Mari

QFT.