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00:52:09] TR :: I am terribly concerned about the great number of people who are either in prison, or have an ankle bracelet on, or can't get a job, or simply just they're pariahs in their community, and it's eternal, it's for the rest of their lives.
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00:52:30] TR :: I think part of that problem, a lot of that problem, is that I think that our age of consent law might be too high and I would like, maybe, maybe, I'm not even sure, maybe to move more toward the European models.
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00:52:45] EB :: OK, that's not bad, I get what you're saying.
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00:54:29] EB :: Are we speaking under the context of the way the law currently is, and in which state, or are we speaking under libertarianism, or speaking under An-Cap-istan (anarcho-capitalism) …
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00:54:47] CR :: It seems as if it's a statist paradigm, because if we're talking about age of consent being a law, that's a statist solution. You're going to have a hard-and-fast rule across the board, that at a certain age it's OK, and at a certain age it's woodchipper.
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00:55:04] TR :: And it applies to everybody, that's to me another problem, one-size-fits-all when human development, child development, radically varies across people.
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00:55:10] EB :: And I agree with you there, I do agree with you there.
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00:55:29] EB :: I think that that where … the conversation you're trying to have it, is in an almost like an An-Cap society, and folks are not there.
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00:55:43] EB :: Are you trying to have a conversation about what you want the world to be, or are you trying to have a conversation about the way that the world is?
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00:55:49] TR :: I want to have to have _the first_ conversation, right? - and I think this is the problem - and I don't have answers. I don't have an age, I don't have a law. I'd rather not have laws, but they may be necessary, like I need to put my people in the concentration camps, so that's probably a law.
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00:56:19] TR :: Where it started was, is that I have known, and you have probably known, and Clint has probably known, many many many people, women and men, over the years, many of them I've known extremely well, 'cause I was dating them or married to them, who had their first sexual experience as a 12, 13, 14, 15-year-old with an adult. And they, across the board, don't feel like they were victimised at all, and these are people that are now like my age, in their 50s, and they still think this. They don't think there was a victim, they don't think the guy deserved anything - yeah it was always a guy because a lot of gay men have this, it's very common among gay men. It's what Milo (Yiannopolous) was talking about, he's just stating a fact that a lot of gay men have their first sexual experience with a man when they were technically children, and I've talked to so many of them who've said this to me: "Not only was it not bad, it was a wonderful experience", and what do we do with that?
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00:57:16] TR :: I was with a woman for a long time, we were the same age … and her first relationship started when she was 15 and it was with her high-school English teacher, and it lasted for three years, I think he was in his 30s. 1000% illegal, everybody on Twitter tells me they would put him through a woodchipper. And I'm telling you that she never once has thought about the relationship as anything other a relationship. So for him to be put in a prison, or killed, or even ostracised would make no sense to her, and I'm pretty sure she would see it as a terrible injustice.
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00:58:03] TR :: And I can tell you stories of many many other women and men who have told me just that, and that raises a really hard question, I'm not saying this is an easy answer.
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00:58:17] TR :: It is a question we have to deal with, because a lot of those people do in fact end up in prison, or killed, and do we really want that to happen, especially retroactively. If you have a woman turns out, she's 50 years old, but she was 15 when this happened, do we really want to go get that guy and stick him in Attica?
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00:59:01] EB :: It requires a lot of nuance, and especially it comes down to how the child feels, when we see something like how the child feels that's going to be a red flag for grooming behaviour.
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01:00:12] EB :: We can always talk about how we feel, or we can talk about everybody as a whole, right? So let's talk about the problem as whole, not how one person feels.
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01:00:33] EB :: So let's pretend like we all have our utopia, so if I could answer this in Utopia, in my like perfect An-Cap utopia, each community … so it would be each caregiver, parent and community, including teachers, potential faith leaders, and neighbours, will decide if the child is ready to consent, and look at the child's behaviour. Do they have a job? How is their education going? Are they cognitively available to have sex with this individual? And then, look at the history of this individual as well, so does this individual have a history of abuse, and you go from there.
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01:01:23] EB :: In different cultures, you cannot turn your back on different cultures and you have to respect them. But in an An-Cap society you have to expect that if someone engages in a relationship where it's not seen by the community, by the very small community, as agreed upon, you have to expect the consequences.
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01:01:47] TR :: I agree with everything you just said 100%.
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01:02:36] EB :: Do I feel that some minors are more equipped to engage in sexual activity with adults than adults? Yes.
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01:02:39] EB :: So when we set those numbers (age of consent?) we set them for life expectancy, so life expectancy has changed, also in different countries, different children have different things expected upon them. So children can be expected to clean, work, maybe not even getting educated because they're expected to raise their siblings, because their parents are working in fields. So when we're comparing to other countries we have to put that all into the play.
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01:03:07] TR :: In some countries they're expected to get married when they're 12.
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01:03:15] EB :: In a society when we're all living like An-Cap I'm expected to live as neighbours with folks who might marry at 12. And then … the way that that works is that you decide if your neighbour … so eventually, if you decide "This community over here is on some heavy exploitation of children", then as a community, as a neighbour, you you would take over that community.
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01:04:13] EB :: I think what we're missing in this conversation is that also force parents to be a part of their children's lives … if you are responsible for deciding whom a young person engages in intercourse with, then I think that you would be a little bit more involved in that child's life. And that comes down to teachers, neighbours, caregivers, sports teachers … so I think that would be ideal.
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01:05:08] EB :: So the community and the caregivers would decide if the child is being groomed, manipulated and coerced. The child doesn't decide necessarily, and at what do they decide maybe we could debate on cognitive ability.
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01:05:47] CR :: Can a kid … can they consent? Whether or not they feel OK about it once they become an adult, can they consent really?
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01:06:00] TR :: It's tough, right, is it tough?
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01:05:59] EB :: (Shakes head) Well, no, because I think when we look in history, when we look at life expectancy, like before … I probably would have already been dead, I'm a 40-year-old woman so I probably would have already been dead at many points in history. So I would have had to have had children earlier.
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01:06:21] EB :: In the past, I would have had to start having intercourse earlier, and that would have required me to start around the time of menstruation. And sometimes children can menstruate around uh twe- uh very young. I think that it depends on the culture.
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01:06:43] EB :: We're speaking in the context of like total An-Cap environment, we're not speaking under the context of the laws as they're written right now … so we're talking in a totally different universe where we're not ran by the state.
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01:07:10] EB :: I think that the community and the child, if the child so desires to have intercourse with an adult, the parents, caregivers and anyone that's … and I mean it's just what I just said, that would be up to if the child has the desire and the community also decides that the person that they're supposed to have intercourse with is not using force, fraud, coercion, manipulation.
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01:07:46] EB :: Who am I to say and push my morality on another person, that's not how we do life.
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01:07:54] TR :: That's beautiful.
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01:07:53] EB :: So if someone comes from a culture, so if someone comes to An-Cap-istan and moves in next to me, and they're used to children procreating from a very young age, it's not for me to push my morality on them, it's for us to decide as a community.
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01:08:11] EB :: If life expectancy is longer, I don't a need to procreate and I think most communities would decide, and most caregivers would decide, y'know the 12-year-old, 13-year-old, 14-year-old probably doesn't have the cognitive ability to have sex with this 40-year-old, and maybe we need to further educate this children on the ramifications of procreation, of what it looks like to have a child.
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01:08:42] EB :: This is, of course, is in my fantasy world. This isn't like the world we live in now … maybe fantasy is the wrong word for this. My _ideal_ world!
