Posts by Emma Hart
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Hard News: The United States of Surveillance?, in reply to Bart Janssen,
I loved that logo. It screamed to me of some of the actual geeks (the ones doing the work) designing a logo by which everyone in management would ultimately be embarrased.
It looks remarkably like a Paranoia role badge.
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Up Front: It's Complicated, in reply to "chris",
And I’m not having a go Emma, I’m attempting to make a genuine contribution.
No, I understand that, that's why I asked for clarification on your earlier comment. I'd assumed you were talking about teenagers. You appear to be talking about children.
if we have a nine year old legally able to consent to sex who then becomes pregnant, who makes the decision to have an abortion or any other related treatment?
I don't believe that anyone is advocating that. What I wanted to do was peel the discussion on age of consent back to fundamentals: examine what it's actually supposed to do, and whether it's doing that. Also, I'm not terrifically happy with this example, tbh. The number of nine-year-olds physically capable of becoming pregnant is vanishingly small. This exaggerates the difference between physical and mental maturity to an extreme I personally find really unhelpful.
Also, let's never ever forget that, no matter how old you are, you can't legally "make a decision" to have an abortion in New Zealand.
So hypothetically how does the child in your example benefit from laws that would enable their parents to give birth to them without allowing them to leave school (quality time) or hold down full time employment (provide for them)?
Age of consent laws are not contraceptives. They can't, and very obviously don't, stop under-age people having babies. So in a decent society we provide things like creches in high schools, and training allowances for people on the DPB.
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Up Front: It's Complicated, in reply to "chris",
Are these not of equal seriousness, polar almost?
No. No, they're really not.
pregnancy is reversible, but who’s to make that decision
Are you seriously asking this question? Because there is only one morally-defensible answer, and I'd hate for you to accidentally get this particular can of whoop-arse opened on you.
and who’s to provide for that child if that decision is not made
Its parents, and if its parents cannot, the state. Because a child is not a punishment, it's a human being. It's part of the society we all belong to, and therefore it's in all our collective interests for that child to be adequately provided for.
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Hard News: Media3: We have much to discuss, in reply to Matthew Poole,
What's scary is that this proposal would make it illegal to produce an explicit version where the leads simply look under 18, regardless of their actual age.
No. It increases the penalty, but this is already the law.
Our laws ban material that encourages the sexual exploitation of children. If pornography involving only actresses aged 18+ encourages the sexual exploitation of children (for example, by using actresses that look younger than 18, in situations that suggest they are younger than 18), then it will fall foul of the law.
What would protect any production of R+J that went further down the Zeffirelli line would be the view that it was primarily artistic rather than pornographic
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Hard News: Media3: We have much to discuss, in reply to Chris Waugh,
Didn't Australia recently have that problem, trying to ban explicit images of females under a certain bra size in case they were minors?
A while back, but yes. And the law is the same here.
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From I/S:
As the RIS points out, the proposal to increase penalties creates a perverse situation whereby making or distributing indecent material carries a higher penalty than the physical crime it depicts. For example, performing an indecent act with a child under 12 currently carries a penalty of 10 years imprisonment. Under the bill, filming it (or importing or distributing a depiction of it) will carry a penalty of 14 years. Sexual connection with a child under 16 carries a penalty of 7 years. Mere posession (a strict liability offence) of a depiction of it will send you to jail for 10.
It should also be noted that the 'child' only has to look like they're under 16. This also applies to cartoon fantasy characters - fairies, centaurs, dragons, etc, who look like they might be minors.
And I'd be madder about the 'penalty for distribution worse than penalty for commission' if it wasn't already illegal to distribute images of things it's perfectly legal to do.
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Up Front: It's Complicated, in reply to Lucy Telfar Barnard,
Also, I was under the impression that when you would have been 14, there was no “age of consent” for boys for heterosexual sex.
This is true. However, almost nobody knew this, so it wouldn't have affected many people's decision-making.
People should always try to make sure their partners are over age. We should also ask our partners about their STI status, but we pretty much don't. A scary amount of our sexual decisions are based on assumptions. I don't think anyone should ever deliberately deceive a partner. I have this thing where I never want to have sex with someone who's in a closed relationship, but I have, because I wasn't told. I also didn't ask.
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Up Front: It's Complicated, in reply to Keir Leslie,
You’d think so, but also you’d imagine that it’s pretty rough to criminalise someone in such circumstances…
And we're pretty much all in agreement at least about this? That the best thing about our law in this area is that it's not often enforced?
it is not invariably necessary to make a direct inquiry of the young person
I am boggled. I would have thought that was why "reasonable steps" was there as well as "reasonable belief". Not getting independent verification, sure, but not asking? What, short of asking, could constitute a "reasonable step"? Genuinely asking; I can't think of anything.
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Up Front: It's Complicated, in reply to Keir Leslie,
Over sixteen is referred to, particularly when making international comparisons, as "the age of consent" because it's the age at which only consent matters.
If you look at s134A, you see that the law has a concept of “consent” for those under 16. It just doesn’t think that’s hugely important.
No, it doesn't think consent is relevant, unless you also thought they were over sixteen. To be a defence;
(a)before the time of the act concerned, he or she had taken reasonable steps to find out whether the young person concerned was of or over the age of 16 years; and
(b)at the time of the act concerned, he or she believed on reasonable grounds that the young person was of or over the age of 16 years; and
(c)the young person consented.If you thought they were sixteen, because you had reasonable reason to, but they said no, that doesn't constitute a defence. If you have consent, but you know they're under-age, that's not a defence. If a person is under sixteen, their consent only counts if you thought they were over sixteen. If you knowingly have sex with someone under sixteen, their consent is irrelevant.
Slightly tangentially, by my reading of this, the consensual sex I had at fifteen with my seventeen year old boyfriend was a crime. We were both in fifth form, we were in the same circle of friends before we starting going out. He genuinely believed I was sixteen: I know this because when I told him I was fifteen he fell off his chair. But he'd taken no "reasonable steps" to find out how old I was. Ergo, my having consented would not have been a defence. If I had been sixteen, our mutual consent would have been all that mattered.
I agree the terminology is confusing. I don't see that we have anything better, though.
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Up Front: It's Complicated, in reply to Myles Thomas,
But who is really creating the damage here? How are the media treating this case?
The media hype has largely been generated and actively courted by Kaitlyn's parents, which is another thing that makes me make my 'conflicted' face about this case. But before the circus hit the road a couple of weeks ago, Kaitlyn had already been thrown off the school basketball team and then expelled from her school. The plea bargain she was offered - their attempt at sense prevailing - was two counts of child abuse, which is still a felony. For a start, given she lives in Florida, that conviction would have meant Kaitlyn never getting to vote. Even without a sex offender registration, the child abuse convictions wouldn't exactly enhance her chances of pursuing a career as a paediatric nurse.
I am concerned about the damage the publicity is doing to the younger girl. But the potential damage to Kaitlyn from the conviction is much greater than that from the publicity.