sry ik this is a hard question to deal w and i understand it might b outside ur scope but im strugging a lot with the definition of csa as being any adult and any minor, and the idea that child consent in sex is Inherently Fake. bc i feel like in the (i think technically csa) situation where it was online and low emotional engagement (i wasnt super ties to anyone), so much of the material harm was suspended or irrelevant. but it feels bad and difficult to look back on, and i was a teenager. i was barely 16. i was too young to be engaging like that with adults who were in their late 20s and 30s by all accounts. but its hard to say i didn't want it or that i didnt consent. this is kind of a mess but how do u reconcile that w youthlib/the ability of kids to consent?
this is something i've been asked a lot of times and it's been hard to put together my thoughts about it, but i think i'm finally ready to try.
children and teens are not sexless beings. when we say minors can't consent, it doesn't mean they are incapable of wanting sex. the thing at issue is the massive, massive legal/social/economic/political power imbalance in between adults and minors, which makes it impossible for minors to engage in sex with adults as equal & autonomous human beings.
this power imbalance applies to any adult and any minor. it's not limited to parents & their kids, the way a lot of people on here say it is. parents are by far the most likely source of sexual abuse, and the most likely to get away with it because of the amount of power they hold over their kids. but it's extremely, extremely, extremely common for kids to try to escape the brutality of one abusive situation at home by making a connection with another adult whether in person or online, only for that adult to exploit them sexually. (this happened to me, too.) i understand that to a child or teen trying to gain any level of control they can over their own experience, describing this situation as inherently exploitative can feel infantilizing all over again. the scripts we have around this are infantilizing towards minors, a lot of times, because adults often don't want to undermine the naturalization of the power we hold over kids by naming it and therefore opening it up to questioning.
i wholly reject the idea that this is not material harm or that it is less materially harmful. how can you quantify material harm when it comes to rape and sexual abuse? when i was raped, the material harm was not just from vaginal bleeding or genital injury or risk of STDs. that was resolved in a couple weeks. the stuff that stuck with me for years and years was the panic attacks and nightmares, the way it affected my relationship with sex and romance going forward even in healthy relationships, the way it affected my relationship with my body in general, the way i couldn't trust myself or my own experience or anyone around me, the way i couldn't receive real care without feeling nauseous and uncomfortable, the shame, the shame, the shame. that IS material harm. it is not lessened by the fact that i agreed to the encounter that led to the rape - in many ways, the shame was amplified because of it.
and all of that stuff can and regularly does happen from being groomed & exploited online as well. just because it's a group of faceless adults working in tandem to exploit kids, instead of doing it one on one, does not lessen the material harm being done.
age of majority/consent laws are not the only source of this power imbalance. even in a so-called perfect youthlib society where there are minimal legal/political/etc. restrictions on children, i believe this power imbalance will still exist because of the imbalance of life experience. even in societies where children have more structural support, their primary role is to learn from & serve adults. that makes them vulnerable to exploitation by adults. they do not have the same ability to say no, or to dictate the terms of the relationship, or to walk away.
i believe the frameworks and tools we have to deal with this reality are inadequate. but i don't believe that sexual exploitation of children by adults will ever, ever, ever be revolutionary or subversive. (the history of childhood is a history of child sexual exploitation by adults.) i don't think this is a cognitively dissonant position to hold at all.
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