this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2024
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yeah because children are so calculating...
Someone else in the thread has posted an article. They married in 2011, she completed highschool in 2007. She must have been 21-22 when she married. Not really a child (but also nothing tells us she is in for the money, obviously!).
Edit:
https://prospect.org/politics/how-republican-rep-john-rose-found-his-wife/ The article above reports she is from 1989, apparently.
if you've been groomed from childhood it doesn't really matter at what age you get married. you've still been manipulated and one can hardly assume real agency is involved. mind that people usually don't say "let's get married" and do it that year. the idea of marriage was likely discussed and decided on way earlier.
OK, but it's a big IF, it's as much as a conjecture as assuming she is in for the money. We don't know when they actually started having a relationship, we don't know if any "grooming" happened, nor to what extent, we don't know when they decided to get married.
Also, they seem to have met when she was 18. That's already not a child (which means it can hardly be called grooming). Plus, grooming is not like a lifetime spell, it's something that victims blames themselves for usually, but not something that they never realize.
To me it seems they simply have a very big age difference.
this is like a notch above "it's ephebophilia actually"
they meet when she was 17, in highschool. he was not. a couple years later he gave her a scholarship for college and later they got married.
no it's not a big conjecture. considering he's an anti LGBT republican makes it almost a guarantee actually.
To me it sounds like a conjecture based on prejudices. Also, I think that women are not necessarily dolls completely subjects to the will of men simply because they are older (and therefore capable of who knows what long-lasting convincing), but humans with autonomy, capable of taking their own decisions.
I don't see what his shitty political views have to do with the lack of information we have to judge the specific dynamics of their relationship.
The only argument here really is a moralistic one (big age gap), which is something I would expect from conversatives, not from progressive people. Instead I see moralism and infantilization under the pretence of protecting "children".
it is a conjecture; i just said it's not a big one. a safe bet, you could say.
if you don't see what kind there is between right wing religious cunts opposing lgbt rights in the name of family and children and child predation then I can only wish you a quick recovery from your decades long coma.
also you're going super hard on this not being about children (or "children" to use your scare quotes) is weird. giving big "but she looks mature" vibes. the only argument isn't the age gap. it's that one was middle aged and the other was a minor when they met, and they got married a few years later.
I disagree with your safe bet then.
I also don't think child predators end up marrying and making children with their victims (or at least is uncommon?). I am very aware of the relationship between religious people and abuses. This has very little in common with it: it is right there in the open, it is a long-lasting relationship, she was not a child (although much younger), we don't have any pattern (as usual comes up in cases of abuse) etc.
Your argument is literally about the age gap, rephrasing it as "middle-aged and minor" doesn't mean much (also at 18 she was not a minor and you don't know when they actually started a relationship, do you?). Also I didn't say anything about what she looked (strawman), I just said that at 18 you are not a child anymore, let alone at 22. You get the right to vote and to do what you want in many countries, in many places at 19-20 people already have kids and are married (especially in rural areas). These are mostly social convention that have to do with how society function and is organized.
Again, I find this depiction of people at 18 as children an unnecessary infantilization of the population.
Also mine are not scare quotes, are a way to signify that I am using that term without really meaning it, which I think is what quotes are sometimes meant to be used for.
The fact is, the "limit" above which the age gap becomes creepy/predatory is arbitrary, it's cultural, it's based on moral stances but it's not in any case objective, and personal situations can anyway vary (I.e. some people at 18 are very mature, other are very immature). Where do you put the limit? Tom Haverford rule (half the age + 2)?
i don't want to keep going back and forth saying the same stuff over and over, so we disagree.
i just wanted to point out the way you used the quotation marks is called scare quotes. weird name but that's what they're generally called.
i think it is called that because the author is afraid to use the term directly so they use these quotes to signal they don't mean the contents, but aren't necessarily quoting anyone either.
They're making any argument that avoids addressing the intent and involvement of a 40 year old man with a high school girl. There isn't anything to salvage from the topic.
So where would you put the limit? If I had to guess your position, you think age limits to be arbitrary and useless?
I don't know, that's my point. I guess I would consider what is generally the law, plus if I had to pass jusgement I would want to know more on a case-by-case basis.
I suppose there are cases where 20-25 is already a huge age gap that I would consider creepy. People are wildly different.
Yeah its safer to not make any guesses I suppose. We would have to get that information either from the supposed victim or the abuser though, and there would be questions about how trustworthy that is.
I guess if we had like surveillance and communications that showed behavior like that.
This is true, there is barely any info about this situation and people instantly accuse him of grooming. Age difference is probably why people are sour, it is easier to call it grooming and call him a pedophile.
Also the point you made about grooming not being a lifetime spell is important, as the whole point of grooming is to normalise sexual abuse with a minor, now she wasn't a minor and there isn't any proof he sexually abused her so where are the assumptions coming from?