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Inspired by a sex scandal and some conversations elsewhere, here's my first poll. I'm just curious what the norms for these things are in my social group. I'd prefer only people I actually know to fill this out, but I'm leaving it open to all so that you can fill it out anonymously if you choose.

[Poll #451985]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

cognative.livejournal.com

I said yes there is an age. I don't know what it is, and it may vary. So maybe I should have said no. Clearly at some age people aren't really equipped to make good decisions. 9 year olds don't choose what to eat, otherwise it would be all candy and ice cream. That's really my only concern.

Yes the bases is not the best sex metaphor. Although the way I know it is not really heteronormative, but we may know slightly different versions. In college we came up with a much better "dot system" but that's another story...

I'll admit to doing things totally out of order. Pretty much backward. (3,2,1,4 I think).

From:

eirias.livejournal.com

So I'm not sure what it means to say, "yes there's an age," independent of having an actual, nonvarying age ;).

Perhaps what you mean is that there's a maturity level one should reach first. I definitely agree with that, and I have to tell you there isn't a lot of support for it in the broader culture. At least, there's not a lot of support for the notion that readiness may vary.

From:

kirin

It's always fascinatingly disturbing how many things that are glaringly obvious to me have "not a lot of support in the broader culture".

Although I wonder, is it *really* true that most people don't believe that readiness may vary at all, or is it just that there's an implicit unquestioned assumption that you have to pick an age so that you can legislate/make rules/etc.?

From:

eirias.livejournal.com

That's not quite what I meant. What I meant was that many people assume that there are ages below which having sex means that there is something wrong with you, and also that there are ages above which not having sex means that there is something wrong with you. I guess it's not necessarily that people have hard age limits - but their willingness to tolerate deviance outside of a particular range, maybe 15 for the lower and 21 for the upper (at a guess), seems to me to be quite low. (Then again, my experiences are guaranteed not to be a random sample, &c &c.)