[ruytlm]

If you flip the sexes, would you still be 'very hesitant' to go after these guards as rapists?

If we were talking about 13 year old girls in detention having sex with adult male guards, and someone said "for the girls they don't have opportunities other than possibly these guards.. for some of the guards the situation might not be that different", would that be okay with you, or would you consider that rape?

Because I'd argue that there is only one word for a guard having sex with a 13 year old who is their prisoner, and that is rape. The sex of the guard or the prisoner should be irrelevant.

When it comes to statutory rape, it is the 'informed' part of consent that is missing; as a society we have agreed that people under a certain age have not developed the skills or life experience to identify and understand a coercive relationship, or to recognise that they are being taken advantage of.

So even if the victim is an enthusiastic participant, the reason we as a society consider this rape is because these are children who don't have the life experience or maturity to make an informed decision, and that full-grown adults should not be taking advantage of them.

When you add in the outrageously unbalanced guard-prisoner power dynamic, it is extra inappropriate.

[rixed]

> If you flip the sexes, would you still be 'very hesitant' to go after these guards as rapists?

I understand there is a variant of feminism that would consider this flip a no-op that leaves the whole situation unchanged. This viewpoint is that of the famous "rape" book, for instance, which in my opinion completely fails to substantiate this viewpoint with convincing arguments when data to the contrary abounds.

[foolinaround]

>If we were talking about 13 year old girls in detention having sex with adult male guards,

Would you have male guards for 13 year old girls? If not, why have female guards for teen boys?

[ipaddr]

I think both sexes exist as guards in female prisons. You would not manidate all guards to be under 13 for fear of underaged sex.

The entire ordeal brings up a different point. What if the guard had a baby. Would the state be forced to pay child support?

[throw9x8away12]

Replying with throwaway because this is a contentious topic, but the issue with the approach to consent in English speaking countries isn't as nuanced as it should be. Most people would agree that a 13 year old having sex with an adult is unacceptable, however, maturity is different when someone is closer to 18 (17 for example) and isn't that different from a prison guard who might be 22. While the majority of cases in the article might involve guards well past 18, we don't know that for sure. Also, while in theory the sex of the victim shouldn't matter, especially in the society we live in today it certainly does.

[timwaagh]

My view on it is quite different. You have this idea of yours, you have the historic idea that children are still property of parents in an important way, there's the historical guarding of female chastity/purity and you have the idea that its a protection against very likely abuse of power. I don't take a gender neutral view on this issue either so a male doing this would be quite different. But society unnecessarily creating these circumstances would still count as alleviating.

[danbolt]

> I don't take a gender neutral view on this issue either

Why is that? Just curious; like a biological prescriptivist sort of thing? Or something else?

[hattmall]

Not OP but probably because it's prudent not to ignore the obvious gender differences. Promoting gender neutral views surrounding situations that are very gender relevant is willful ignorance.

[timwaagh]

Not for any single reason. There's the law of the excluded middle, a principle from logic. There is evolutionary thinking. There are anecdotal accounts of transexuals of the difference in sex drive. There's the physical size and strength differential. There is the historical thing of protecting women. I take all of these into account and try to form some sort of guess of what is likely.