click here to return to the Calico Cat homepage

Teenagers, sex, popularity, statutory rape, and Heinlein

There’s some interesting stuff about teenagers at Instapundit. Glenn Reynolds references his teen sex article at Fox News.

Kimberly Swygert from Number 2 Pencil, one of my favorite bloggers, writes bout nerds.

And she refers to an essay about nerds written by Paul Graham in which I disagree with most of what he says about nerds, but his analysis of non-nerds seems spot on. He has the following insightful analysis about teenagers and popularity:

Paul ends with the following paragraph that seems relevant to these related posts:

At the Volokh Conspiracy, Eugene Volokh is looking for thoughts on statutory rape laws.

And now for my opinions on all of this.

Glenn Reynolds is right, people tend to act the way they are treated. If you treat someone as if they are immature, they will tend to act immature. That’s what we do with teenagers.

No one brought up the drinking age, but it’s ridiculous that one has to be 21 to drink when at 18 you can serve in the army and die in Iraq.

Popularity is the most important thing for teenagers; it’s how they develop self esteem. Intelligence doesn’t seem heavily related to popularity. Intelligence is a highly undervalued attribute even among adults, but among adults being smart helps you make more money, but teenagers’ money generally comes from their parents, so having rich parents will help your social standing more as a teenager than earning potential based on your intelligence.

Glenn Reynolds wrote that some kids perhaps shouldn't be in school and should be working instead. I have written before that too many kids are going to college. Glenn takes that a step further and says too many are going to high school. Maybe he has a point.

Statutory rape laws are based on the premise that people of a young age are too young to consent to sexual activity. The age of consent tends to vary from 16 to 18 in most states in the U.S., but it might be as low as 14 somewhere.

If I remember my statutory rape law correctly, there are some places where if two 17 year olds have sex then they have both committed a felony. This is ridiculous. And it’s not enforced in those circumstances, but I am strongly opposed to laws that everyone breaks and that are not enforced. That’s what my post about speeeding was trying to get at.

At minimum, laws should reflect how people actually behave, so if 18 year olds routinely have sex with 17 year olds, then that shouldn’t be a felony on the part of the 18 year old. I’d say that at the very least, statutory rape shouldn’t be a crime so long as the age difference is less than four years.

Finally, this topic made met think of the Robert Heinlein book The Door into Summer in which the protagonist seems to have an inappropriately close relationship with his friend’s young daughter. Through the magic of time travel, he is able to travel to the future where she is old enough for him to marry.

posted Friday, July 02, 2004