Recent LJ events and people got me thinking...

[hazliya]

At what point does sexual deviance become immoral?

Sparked by elenuial's post here, I didn't want to clog his comments and just brought what my sentences were thinking into a post or two. This first one is a question posed to all of you, behind the cut.

Warning: Not sure it's for the faint of heart. This section is about sexuality and age. Power play will (hopefully) be touched on later.


The first entry about this, regarding thought vs. deed: Of the following, which are immoral? Which aren't? (assuming the subject is an adult)

1. Having sex with a 13-year-old
2. Fantasizing about having sex with a 13-year-old, but not ever doing it
3. Seriously considering going through with #1
3. Thinking about having sex with 13-year-olds when having sex with adults
4. Thinking about having sex with adults when having sex with 13-year olds
5. A therapist having sex with a consenting adult patient
6. A therapist having sex with a patient as part of their therapy program
7. A therapist having sex with an underage patient to have him lose his virginity in a safe and familiar environment
8. Having sex with an impressionable, sheltered virgin 19-year-old
9. Having sex with a previously sexually active, consenting 14-year-old
10. Being a willing participant in (controlled) ageplay
11. A teenager lying about their age (going younger) to get an adult to have sex with them/buy them things
12. Having sex in front of children
13. Letting children/adolescents watch porn
14. Not having sex with underage girls, but frequenting and buying from lolita cons and sites
15. Dressing up as an adolescent/pre-pubescent during sex
16. Having your partner do #15
17. Creating lolita/pre merchandise (photos, costumes), but not actively touching the subjects
18. Creating lolita/pre merchandise by dressing up 18-year-olds in costumes
19. Hiring prostitutes over 18
20. Hiring prostitutes between 13-17

Something in the gray area?



So, I guess in short: Does only the deed make the person immoral? Like if we had mind-reading machines to help us make arrests. What about intention to do so, but before they do? Are they still condemnable? What about getting off on something, but never doing it?

Just for safety's sake, a disclaimer: I do not do, intend to do, or condone any of these things. This is a hypothetical question.

And before anyone asks, there are documented cases of all of these.

These are only suggestions. You don't have to answer all of them. Or any at all. I just want to know what you guys think.

-Haz

Comments

[jalawingedone.livejournal.com]

On the difference between deed and thought. What we hold close, what we cherish inside of us, is going to effect us, somehow, eventually, often without us realizing. Thoughts have power. Obsessive thoughts in particular have the power to control us. However, only actions can and should be enforced by law. As for the person who obsesses but does not act? They are treading a fine line with disaster on either side. I don't consider it healthy to nestle so close to a line one cannot cross, but there's no responsible way to punish someone for what they might do. That way goes to tyranny.

[relique.livejournal.com]

i have an entire day of annoying and busy things ahead of me------- but here we go:

Things are immoral when you overstep the boundary of personal free will and hurt other people. Thinking about hurting other people is fine, and doing really bizarre sexual things where everyone has the ability to consent is fine, a lot of other things are obviously not fine.

The more difficult part is defining "able to give consent"--- A very sexually experienced 17 year old can consent better than a sexually confused 17 year old, but i'm pretty sure a 13 year old really can't ever give real consent to an adult.

And I should probably define consent too...... It'll involve maturity, it'll involve full knowledge of deciding factors, it'll involve sanity, it'll involve what kind of trust/power relationship you're in.

So, the sexually experienced 17 year old with complete knowledge that his/her boss likes it when he/she masturbates where he can watch (but their relationship is more like a coworker thing than a boss thing) --- if these two people were to do something........... I probably wouldn't have a problem.

MORALLY, there's a lot of gray area when it comes to sex. Legalities really can't so much have the gray area required to deal with my ideas on morality. So there are either going to be lots of things i think are immoral that are legal, or lots of things i think are moral be illegal, or both.


having a one night stand with a virgin where you give them an STD (and maybe get them pregnant) and have given them a fake name and never see them again? Clearly immoral. Not illegal.

Anal sex (recently) used to be illegal. Often not immoral.

Maybe more later--- that's more likely if people respond....

[elenuial.livejournal.com]

But age and consent is such a vague thing, especially when you bring "maturity" into it. After all, maturity means different things to different cultures -- even within the US. Some Latino cultures in New England ghettos raise their young boys on the mythology that they can't be a man until the impregnate a woman -- and similarly a girl is not a woman until she's pregnant. You may not agree with that, but to that culture maturity is inescapably tied to sexuality.

Not only that, but different standards of maturity may still render someone incapable of making particularly good decisions about sex. A single white woman is in her twenties, supports herself with a fairly affluent urban lifestyle through an office job where she is well-respected and makes major and timely contributions. She also has a habit of going out to bars on the weekend to flirt and meet guys, and has frequent sex with near strangers, but never before consuming at least three beers. Mature by most any standard. Not very good at making sexual decisions.

So there really can't be any standard which the legal system can apply to a person to gauge whether they're mature enough to handle sex. And even then, I don't think it's the legal system's place to make such judgments -- and most professionals involved therein would agree. But the law can and should protect its citizens where it can, and the only real litmus test they can have is by setting an arbitrary age, which they've done. How good a job it does at protecting people, who can say? But, legally, that's the best we've got.