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Comment by timwaagh | Hacker News Reader

Well if two people are stranded for some time on a deserted island and one is male and the other is female then they will probably have sex. For the boys they don't have opportunities other than possibly these guards. As any male who has been through puberty knows, juvenile delinquents are probably old enough to want those opportunities. For some of the guards the situation might not be that different.

I'd be very hesitant to just go after these guards as rapists. The way to solve the situation would instead be to do the obvious thing and simply require male guards for male prisoners, as old-fashioned as such a provision might be.

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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.

> 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.

>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?

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?

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.

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.

> 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?

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.

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.

It is the responsibility of an adult not to have sex with minors that they have complete control over, even if the minor is trying to flirt with or otherwise attempts to solicit sex. If they cannot do this, the adult shouldn’t be allowed to be employed where they will be in close contact with minors that they are responsible for.

I'd agree. They should not hold such jobs anymore. But I'm more concerned with prevention.

The counterpoint (not that I am saying everything is fine) is that there are often many minors the responsible adult can try to have sex with, at least one of which will probably be receptive. It's not clear that in every case there is coercion as most people would observe and define it which is why it's taken so long to start a discussion about female on male rape.

The counterpoint is that no responsible adult tries to have sex with minors.

100000BC to the 1980s would like to have a word with you?

My point here isn't necessarily to defend it but to demonstrate that you need to be trying harder to avoid dogmatic thinking. Parts of the world still happily practice child marriage, how are you going to convince them?

I would be inclined to add, "in modern society" to that phrase and leave it at that. No need to excuse or condemn the past or cultures that still haven't gone through the humanitarian enlightenment of western society.

It's pretty interesting to assert that ~100k years of doing things a certain way is wrong. Do you have the evidence to assert such a thing?

The posts above talking about reversing the genders are kind of right, but that does already exist: it's pretty common for lower class middle school/highschool aged girls to sell their bodies for drugs, alcohol, or just money. This is tolerated in those communities and is seen as "the thing you do while growing up."

simply require male guards for male prisoners, as old-fashioned as such a provision might be.

So we change the problem from women raping boys to men raping boys? That's not a great solution.

It's impossible to be perfect but what matters is changing the odds. Only around 1.5% of the population is lesbian gay or bisexual. If that translates to prison guards we should see a pretty major improvement.

Or perhaps a better system in which rapists in positions of power aren't routinely given poorly supervised access to children. I think I'd prefer that, rather than just hoping that a job involving poorly supervised access to children doesn't attract people who'd take advantage of that.

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