zinniakid:

queeranarchism:

sereverenity:

thesallowbeldam:

queeranarchism:

darkness-infear:

normanbates:

normanbates:

it makes me upset that gay people want film representation so bad that they’ll overlook a film (call me by your nam.e) that’s clearly pedophilic because like they want to look past it and it’s going to bother me the entire time people are talking about it because people are absolutely going to make justifications for it and think a relationship between a 17 year old and a 24 year old is okay when it isn’t. it’s not okay with a straight couple, and it’s not okay with a gay couple.

yeah i’m going to be annoying and fight this at every step because i know it’s going to be a great critical success and all that shit

aaand i forgot that it already is a critical success so yeah this is a huge problem

… I was 17 when I entered a relationship with someone who was 23. We had known each other for a while though, and the relationship lasted 3 years. It was the best and most respectful relationship I had ever been in. I’ll probably be hung for this comment, but yeah. I understand it can definitely be or lead to something bad, but not every single case?

Yeah, this.
What is up with American Tumblr throwing a huge fit at a 17 year old and a 24 year old dating? Is that really so scandalous in American culture? To the point of accusations of pedophilia? What? 
Like, it is an age difference but its not exactly a huge unacceptable age difference by the standards of most European countries. Over here it’s pretty widely accepted that a 17 year old can make their own choices like this if there are no other red flags that the relationship is unhealthy.
So to see US Tumblr flip out over this Italian film is just weird to me.

17 is underage in half our states.

It’s statutory rape in half our states.

We’re not ‘flipping out,’ we’re uncomfortable celebrating a film that celebrates a relationship that half our country has decided constitutes rape lmao.

Um, most of our states Age of Consent is 16 or 17, you know that right? Only 11 states sees the age of consent as 18. Also none of you ppl on tumblr know what pedophilia is so

& like, I hate the words ‘statutory rape’. The concept of calling all consentual sex that is illegal due to the age difference ‘rape’ is fucked up in itself. It totally undermines all consent based education.

Like, how can you teach a seventeen year old that all the loving, consentual, happy, feeling-good-about-this-forever sex they had with their early-twenties partner is rape and then act surprised when that same seventeen year old does not know how to speak up for themselves when someone actually really rapes them? 

That is a horrible way to teach teenagers what rape is and to deny their ability to trust their own experiences. That is so so so fucked up. 

Okay I have some 2 cents on this n I haven’t n won’t see the movie but

what fucks me up about relationships in that gray zone is the power dynamics beyond age. If they’re both just meandering through life, finding themselves, are both in similar situations emotionally and fiscally (ie boundaries and needs are communicated clearly as well as expectations, one isn’t holding resources that the other could only get through a romantic relationship with them) then. Who gives a shit.

I know a dude in his early twenties with a wife and kid, a steady job, a degree, and I found out recently he has a crush on a girl he works with who’s seventeen, just moved into the area and he was going to introduce her to folks and opportunities there. She found out (he told mutual friends who told her) and got extremely uncomfortable because now she was forced to navigate her work and social life knowing her main connection within it was a married man who she quite frankly didn’t know well enough to trust wouldn’t exploit her.

When I was her age and even “legal” I entered romantic relationships with not-too-much older partners because I wanted the freedoms associated with that. They could drive me places and give me a break from my abusive household, feed me when I couldn’t afford or make my own food, and in one particular case they came with friends and if I upset them or fucked up relationships with them then I would risk my friendships and safety.

The problems there weren’t age. They sensed I was desperate and used that. They got intimacy from me and some of those relationships hurt me deeply.

That is not always the case. A relationship can be healthy with that age gap, but sometimes other factors like abuse and even just the way age is handled in the US fucks us up. I don’t think 18 is the Absolute Biological Age of Adulthood, but the stigma and conditioning assigned to age in our country can really fuck with someone’s ability to think of themselves as a human being who matters and has agency. I could probably write a 10 page thesis on this but I’m head out cause I got errands

THANK YOU. You are so right. CONTEXT MATTERS. 

And when we pretend that teenagers are utterly vulnerable powerless innocent children one day and Real Grown-up Powerful Adults the next we do not equip them with the tools to judge real life situations for themselves and to tell good relationships from bad ones.