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Talk about "lowering the age of consent" does largely seem to come from posters (like, respectfully, yourself) who claim to be attracted mostly to boys within a couple of years of the existing age of consent. Or, as TPKA Django candidly if inelegantly calls them, "gays with a low bottom." bLs whose attraction is mainly to younger boys - and those younger boys themselves - do not seem to figure at all in these kinds of calculations. The hypocrisy in the air on BC is so thick that you could cut it with a knife. Well, quite. Look, bLs are people who have nothing in common except one thing (and often barely even that). One person's moral intuitions and perspective on reality are not another's. We have vastly differing ideas here about childhood, about sexuality and about gender. We do not have a shared moral or political platform. A bit of mutual tolerance might be in order here. I broadly agree with you about tolerating greater gender diversity among boys (not that I think this view needs much championing these days - it is practically a commonplace), and I disagree with your assumption that such differences are innate or immutable. I agree that laws around the age of consent should be liberalised, but not retaining the same framework of ideas around consent and merely drawing the line a little bit lower. I think children's choices and autonomy should be respected, but I also think we need to acknowledge the cultural, political and economic context in which such autonomy is exercised - because not all decisions may be equally good or advisable. These are complex issues on which people may legitimately disagree. It doesn't help to accuse other people of being hypocrites - even if most of us probably are some of the time. As a wise man once observed, hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue. |