why in the name of god am i thinking about this?

I hate hypotheticals. They always put me in a position of measuring my ethics against my imagination. Remember when Rodney was so frustrated with the team with the train and baby thing? I would be the one with a pencil and paper explaining how it is totally possible to do both. With stick figures and stats from www.outofmyass.com. Seriously.

But this came up on one of the snark communities in a link. Links under the cut.



Original Hypothetical

From booju_news: So a drunk girl and a not drunk guy go to a party....

Um, skip the comments. A few are kinda rage inducing.

For the first time, I took the thought from the opposite direction; if someone accused my son of raping their daughter when she was drunk, what would I do?

TL;DR

I posted one answer to a different comm that I'll paste here, but I'm still thinking on it:

I'm taking the thought from a slightly different direction since I don't have a daughter and that would be slightly too theoretical.

I--think I'd ask charges be filed on my son, to be honest. If the situation is as stated, at a three year difference, with a drunk girl, and possibly junior high girl to a junior boy in high school, or a freshman to a senior, that's not just irresponsible, that's a failure on my part to clarify what is ethical behavior and a completely failure of ethics on his part. That's not something I want to reward in any way.

In theory, that is; I have no idea of the reality I'd react to, or if I'll actually become one of the apologista parents that can't imagine their special snowflake could do wrong. I'm not *now*, but his worst behavior is poking his cousin and pretending he didn't, and it's fairly easy when it's minor behavior. I don't like the idea of my son ever coming home saying he banged a drunk girl at a party like this is an accomplishment, that this is something to be proud of, or something that's ever, ever acceptable.

Hmm. On the stat rape; my sister was involved in that with an older guy, along with two or three of her friends (not all at the same time), and there was a conviction. I think it was thirteen to seventeen in that case, and the boy had dropped out of high school, but that was a decade ago and I didn't live at home at the time to know the exact details. I'm pretty sure at the time of the original contact, he was seventeen and by the time of trial, either late eighteen or early nineteen. It *was*, for the value of a thirteen year old's ability to give consent, consent for all of them. And no, there is no way I'm asking my parents about that one.

Yes, tl;dr, totally.

Correction: One of the four was thirteen/fourteen at initial contact the others fifteen while he was eighteen and nineteen respectively. I was a year off on age.

I was thinking about how true my answer is; hypotheticals are so clean-cut. I keep debating which is more horrifying: letting my son get labeled as a sex offender, or letting my son become a potential rapist. One of them is easy for me because it's not something I'll probably ever know about until the trial faced with x number of sobbing girls. Or all my life, with x possible victims who never speak. And a child who is a monster and I love him anyway.

I love my son more than anything in my life, more than I've ever loved anyone ever. Loving him isn't an optional thing; it was inevitable. I love him enough to teach him to not hit his cousin, not to lie, not to steal; I have to reconcile loving him enough not to want him to become a monster, to want more for him. It's my duty as a human, to try and train my child to do more good than harm in the world, and my duty as a woman, that he always, always understands both equality and the fact his sex in society gives him a de facto advantage that he needs not only to be aware of, but also work against, and as a parent, to give my child the best of what I have and what I've learned. This isn't one of the things he should have; damaging another human in so personal a way, damaging himself by being party to it.

I'm a parent, though, and I love my child, and I wonder if belief he *couldn't* do such a thing, would take precedence over what I know is right. I suspect it's something I won't know unless I lived it, and I think I can live without knowing for sure.

I wonder if I'll feel this when he's seventeen, when he's eighteen, if it'll be that easy. It's so much easier to apportion blame fairly when neither party are your own.

It's also a lot easier not to think about, but this, I think, is going high on the list of conversation topics soon, I think.

Comments

[silviakundera.livejournal.com]

This is TMI, but: I'm one of the "did it at 14" persons... and most of my friends at that age, that's when they started having sex as well. (all of us with other 14 yr olds, though, not older teens) I think we all came out unscarred. I don't know if it would be/should be deemed wrong or right, or how one defines such things as healthy or unhealthy. But I don't remember any sort of drama or heartbreak coming out of it. *shrugs helplessly* But I think environment can be a big influence on this - I grew up in big city where kids started first pairing off bit by bit and actively dating in 6th grade. Me and other students had been discussing sex topics pretty casually for a couple years by 14 (straight sex and queerness), and all knew about safe sex.

I do think it's a whole different ballgame, though, when people are intoxicated [i.e. unable to make decisions as they would normally do so] and/or 1 person is several years older. I'm not trying to say that, oh, 18 with 14 isn't questionable. Not that I have ANY idea of what I was trying to say at all. Don't think I actually have any sort of point. oh well!