Relationships and Age Differences

[madbunny]

That doesn't qualify as messed up.

Messed up is a 7th grade boy sleeping w/ a highschool sophomore. THAT is FUCKED UP.

How old are they? And how can someone from high school be a sophomore at the same time?

Maybe they're at a 'special' high school, and they have their own olympics and such.

[J-0080]

Messed up is a 7th grade boy sleeping w/ a highschool sophomore. THAT is FUCKED UP.

Uh,

Literrally even.

[OtakuMegane]

That doesn't qualify as messed up.

Messed up is a 7th grade boy sleeping w/ a highschool sophomore. THAT is FUCKED UP.

What sheltered existence do you hail from? That's 3, maybe 4 year difference. One of my ex-gfs was in 6th grade when I was freshman in high school. Nobody had a problem with it, and the area where we lived at the time(and our church) was/is on the conservative side.

Under 18 years, that age difference in a relationship isn't especially uncommon. Least not that I've seen in my life. The issue everyone has is when one person is over 18. See more on this below.

I've known 14 year olds that were quite mature and knowledgeable, and 23 year old people so immature and naive they shouldn't be let outside without parental supervision.

I'll just get this out of my system now. "Universal" age for becoming an adult, or being able to consent to sex, is stupid. It really is. I'm 17 and 364 days, can't look at porn, no credit card, no smoking, can't have sex with anyone older than 18. Then, I turn 18, and wake up the morning of my birthday, and wow! *Magically* I'm mature and responsible enough to smoke, get credit cards, buy porn and have all the sex I want. Yeah, right. That's one of the biggest loads of crap that exists in our society. Same thing goes with age of consent. One day, you aren't mature enough to make decisions about sex. Then the next day, just cause you're one year older, *everyone* is apparently capable of making such decisions.

*pant* *foam* *grrr...sigh* Ok, I'm better now.

But then, isn't there some saying like "god is in all of us"?

"Elvis is in my jeans."

[azulmagia]

One of my ex-gfs was in 6th grade when I was freshman in high school.

Whoa, uh, that's uh

I'm 17 and 364 days, can't look at porn, no credit card, no smoking, can't have sex with anyone older than 18. Then, I turn 18, and wake up the morning of my birthday, and wow! *Magically* I'm mature and responsible enough to smoke, get credit cards, buy porn and have all the sex I want. Yeah, right. That's one of the biggest loads of crap that exists in our society. Same thing goes with age of consent. One day, you aren't mature enough to make decisions about sex. Then the next day, just cause you're one year older, *everyone* is apparently capable of making such decisions.

Yeah, you're right. Y'know, there are websites that count down to the eighteenth birthdays of the Olsen Twins and Lindsay Lohan The Olsen Twins aren't hot in the first place, so in a couple of months they'll lose the only thing that gets guys interested in them (unless they pose for Playboy, which I doubt will happen). As for Lindsay Lohan, I heard her say I few minutes ago on Leno that she's into 24 year old guys. That's like a seven year difference, compared to Amon-Robin's 10 year gap and Kenshin-Kaoru's 12 year gap....

[madbunny]

stuff

Well at some point you have to look at maturity as a function of age over experience, common denomiator being intelligence.

It's like being forced to choose between say, Lisa Simpson and Homer to run the world. In reality you want neither.

Teenagers will always do what they do, no matter what. Usually, since women mature physically (on the whole) more quickly than guys, women will prefer older guys to a point, or so I'm told. Observation bears this out. Since guys are shallow and lust driven, they will typically prefer a younger model, again, observation bears this out.

At some point society as a whole tends to make a distinction between adult and child. In the US we like to think that it's 21, unless you work on a farm, in which case it's 16 apparently. Independence is idealized at 18 oddly enough, so that the years between 18-21 are usually formative.

Does this mean that it's ok for an older man to be with a younger woman? Depends on the degree of maturity (real maturity, not just being smart) and whether or not she has enough ego to avoid being reshaped into something she's not. (same goes for guys, but this is probably less common unless he's got an oedipus deal going on.)

Since we have on the whole a pretty 'outwardly' conservative nature we tend to shelter adolescents and children much longer than other parts of the world, to dubious effect IMO. If a society, lets use Japan, or India for example places a high priority on female purity, then I can guarantee that those children will find a way around it. That's what kids do, they find ways to piss off the parents. This is why the younger generation will always listen to music that pisses off older people. Eventually, every thing being circular, I'm sure some generation will listen to martial music and opera to piss of their parents ala clockwork orange.

The original topic: Age differences in Anime only really reflect the target audience of the anime. While it may be so that Japan has a younger age of sexual consent, last I heard they were pretty secular about it. US soldiers are always getting arrested for problems related to this.

Bottom line: ------------------------------------------
Portray realistic characters and you get weird situations.
Keep it unrealistic like CCS, and I'm cool with it (teacher crush)
Make it manipulative and hurtfull like A Kite, and I'm not cool with it.



B

[Rorschach]

I wrote a little about this subject when I did my own Onegai Teacher AMV. (It's "ONEGAI Teacher," you revisionists! "Please Teacher" sounds so... so... translated.) Something interesting I've learned is that the good ol' much-maligned Catholic Church set the minimum age for marriage at 15 for boys and 12 for girls back in the medieval age. In the old fairy tales (the ones that haven't been cleaned up for modern consumption), a lot of the heroines get married at 16, which was indeed a standard age to marry for many back when the tales were first being told.

Of course, there's some difference between the marriage and the consumation of it. In some kingdoms, the parents were getting their kids engaged when they were infants! Also, as late as the Victorian age in England, some guys did propose to girls as young as ten, though it was understood the girls would have to grow a few more years before the actual marriage could take place. Here in America, Edgar Allen Poe married his 13-year-old cousin.

What I make of all this is that there's no magic boundary between childhood and adulthood that can establish an absolutely proper age of consent. I think the new custom of making people wait until they've been through school to get married (and making them attend those schools for so long) is a rather bad idea on the whole, but with the rise of treacherous and lecherous pedo groups like NAMBLA, I'm not too eager to see the legal age of consent come down, either. If we had a culture like the Japanese one, I wouldn't mind a lower age of consent so much, but we've got enough sexually exploitive people in our nation as it is, not even counting the pedos and other criminals. If we're going to loosen up those laws, we'd better make sure people are really getting committed to each other, not just finding convenient excuses to screw.

I swear, if the sexual scene here gets one iota worse, I'm going to see if I can't find a sensible young girl from Japan to marry...

[Nestorath69]

"Hey, girl, how old are you?"
"Fiv-"
"Eighteen?! Wow, is this my lucky day or what?"
"Mommy, He's scaring me!"
"I can see I'll be giving you my other real name..."

Sensible girl from japan yeah right. If she's so sensible, why is she curb crawling for school supply money and cellphone expenses?! HUH?! I ASK YOU THAT!

(deep breath)

...yeah.

[Rorschach]

Sensible girl from japan yeah right. If she's so sensible, why is she curb crawling for school supply money and cellphone expenses?! HUH?! I ASK YOU THAT!

(deep breath)

...yeah.

Ah, yes... enjo kosai. Since you ask, the reason little girls are out selling themselves is simply that for all the abstract philosophizing you see in the animes, the Japanese are actually amazingly materialistic and have imparted this materialism to their children. The perverts and pedos of Japan pay more money than your average lemonade stand customer and the kids are out to score a lot of easy money.

Morality is presented mainly as a social matter over there and a lot of the authorities have been slacking off at arresting the molestors, so what's a girl to think? Breaking an abstract moral code that no one much seems to care about to score a lot of quick cash makes sense from her twisted point of view.

Anyway, that's not the kind of Japanese girl I'm talking about. I was thinking more of girls like Makino Tsukushi from Hana Yori Dango: well-raised, decent, and hard-working, but also unabashedly feminine, like the girls we used to have in America back before women's lib and the pornographers took over.

[bazanime]

Sensible girl from japan yeah right. If she's so sensible, why is she curb crawling for school supply money and cellphone expenses?! HUH?! I ASK YOU THAT!

(deep breath)

...yeah.

Ah, yes... enjo kosai. Since you ask, the reason little girls are out selling themselves is simply that for all the abstract philosophizing you see in the animes, the Japanese are actually amazingly materialistic and have imparted this materialism to their children. The perverts and pedos of Japan pay more money than your average lemonade stand customer and the kids are out to score a lot of easy money.

Morality is presented mainly as a social matter over there and a lot of the authorities have been slacking off at arresting the molestors, so what's a girl to think? Breaking an abstract moral code that no one much seems to care about to score a lot of quick cash makes sense from her twisted point of view.

Anyway, that's not the kind of Japanese girl I'm talking about. I was thinking more of girls like Makino Tsukushi from Hana Yori Dango: well-raised, decent, and hard-working, but also unabashedly feminine, like the girls we used to have in America back before women's lib and the pornographers took over.

ah the good ol' days!! "baz!!...get over here now" "uh..yes dear"

[Nestorath69]

also unabashedly feminine, like the girls we used to have in America back before women's lib and the pornographers took over.

What Puritan era did you just step out from, buddy? Women's lib has been around... prolly much longer than you've been alive, so complaining about a lack of subservient women is the dumbest thing I've heard today. Before women's lib, there wasn't any real rights for a woman. how fucking stupid was that? I'll tell you. It was the ignoramuses that thought women were like possesions. And if you still think along those lines, I hope to god every woman you're around shows you who's owned.

Secondly, WTF does pornography have to do with this? The fact is, it doesn't objectify women... I'm sure the poor, helpless defenseless women who are getting PAID to have their pictures taken and airbrushed and processed and sold are crying buckets. I think you're confusing objectifying women and objectifying the sexual acts they portray as the same thing.