Adult/Teen Romantic/Sexual Relationships
To start off with something personal, as I said before, I consented to sexual and romantic relationships with adults as a teenager. Despite most of those sucking, I also don’t feel traumatized by it. I was the initiator and later the terminator of those relationships. I would also make the same choices as a teenager now—though perhaps I’d be bolder. I regret that I didn’t get to have more sexual experiences with adults. I think the way society limited my ability to do so was an unfair overreach against my autonomy. Which is exactly how I felt back then as well.
Mainly I wish I had had better options, adults who were interested in sex, romance, and saw me as an entire person. I had the starts of something with one cool adult friend I had made, but they backed off because I was too pushy. Still, I appreciated having those adult friends more than the guys who just wanted to see me naked, which is why ultimately I was satisfied. At least to the point where I stopped seeking out men for sexual attention.
In contrast to my sexual experiences with adults, as a slightly younger teenager I was also sexually abused by a peer. This did have negative effects. Admittedly, some of that was also caused by secondary harm rather than the sexual abuse itself. I felt like because it happened, I had to be damaged, because that’s how you’re supposed to react to sexual abuse! I also had a turbulent relationship with that person. They were my best friend and had unrequited love for me. I enjoyed the friendship in some ways, but they were always pushing their feelings onto me and making advances. This, rather than the sexual stimuli, was why I was impacted negatively.
Links to research, opinions, and personal stories will be at the bottom of this page.
With that out of the way, lets explore some ideas and arguments:
A teenager rapes an adult. Who is at fault? Who has done the wrong thing?
I think we aren’t so far gone into our collectively delusions of teenage innocence that anyone will answer “it’s the adult to blame and the adult who deserves to be punished.”
So then, if a teenager rapes an adult—or even another youth—does that not imply a teenager has sexual agency and the mental capacity to choose? Doesn’t it imply they know their desire enough to fulfill it, to the extent they can (and sometimes do) break the law to do so? They’re aware it’s considered wrong and that they could be punished, and they still choose to act.
>They’re too young to know what they’re doing! They’re acting on a sexual impulse.
Doesn’t that imply we shouldn’t punish young people who commit crimes or who abuse others? Even though the age of consent has risen in recent history we’ve also started punishing young people legally more strictly, sometimes even trying them as adults. This is a contradiction in how we view the responsibility and agency of young people.
This line of thinking—“They don’t know better and it’s not their fault”—Suggests that we shouldn’t punish youth for crimes at all. How is it fair to punish someone who is so mentally incompetent they can’t be held responsible for their decisions? And how far does this extend? If a young person is not competent to make good choices, and therefore can’t be blamed for bad choices, isn’t it unfair to punish youths who murder? They aren’t capable of good decision making—which makes self-control reliant on that decision making impossible, right?
It’s also apologetic of rape culture—“boys will be boys” comes from the same place.
Additionally, since this is the argument I’m using, I want to make clear that like I showed on page 4, teenagers are not more likely to commit violent crimes (which includes rape). Adults are more likely to rape than teenagers are, and if age is the base we’re using to judge impulse, this makes adults more impulsive than teenagers.
Moving on from that one, let’s address positive experiences of teen/adult sexual relationships. Research has shown that such experiences aren’t rare (in fact positive recollections are common for boys!) and outside of reading studies, I’ve met many people who had enjoyable sexual and romantic relationships with adults when they were minors.
>They were manipulated and gaslit into feeling that way! An adult used the social and developmental power dynamic to manipulate them into thinking they enjoyed it!
There are multiple flaws with this argument. It’s frustrating that an argument that tries to claim to know someone else’s experiences for them has become a default argument, and it shows just how much we belittle the experiences and perspectives of young people. We speak over them and for them, and deny lived experiences we don’t like.
To be clear: This argument projection, it’s doing exactly what it claims the adults in those relationships did. To rewrite someone’s experience for them is gaslighting—it’s manipulation. “This didn’t happen as you experienced, it happened this way, because I say it did. I know how you feel and what you experienced, you don’t.”
Because the idea of a young person having a healthy and enjoyable sexual (or even romantic) relationship with an adult challenges their established worldview, people will outright deny the existence of such experiences. We aren’t mind-readers, nobody can decide for someone else how their experience effected them, and to try is to gaslight and manipulate—because you want someone to conform to your worldview instead of challenging it.
It’s disrespectful to young people to invalidate their emotions and perspectives. If you have trouble swallowing this, I encourage you to look back on your own childhood and consider when adults have been wrong and told you something along the lines of: “I know better than you do, because I’m older.” They might have been completely incorrect, but they just weren’t willing to hear why or how. Instead of letting their perspective be challenged, they shut down your perspective instead—probably without any adequate argument for doing so. I’m going to guess that justification never felt right back then, because it wasn’t, and it’s not right now either.
The perspectives of young people matter, whether they conform to adult views or not. And if adult’s were always wise and correct, we wouldn’t have so many problems in the world. Age alone does not grant wisdom. Adult failures are precisely why we should consider the fresh perspectives of the young, and reevaluate based on those perspectives.
>Okay, but the power dynamic! It’s inherently abusive even if they feel positively!
I have more respect for this argument, even though it still has flaws. At least this argument doesn’t generalize all experiences into one. It recognizes young people are individuals who can think and feel differently. But like I said, there are still flaws.
1. The power dynamic is not so straight forward.
On the surface the power dynamic argument seems simple, but it’s really not. Firstly, because of youth oppression, adults do generally hold some social power. But this is not innate or unmoving—it’s flexible based on the circumstances and individuals involved. We consider teenagers rebellious by nature, until it comes to sexual or romantic encounters with adults, and then we forget all about rebellion and claim they’re innately submissive to adults.
Consider this: A teenager under the age of consent and adult date, who stands to lose everything if that relationship gets out? In such cases, teenagers hold significant power. I once had a friend tell me a teenager threatened to claim he was sexually abusing them if he didn’t draw them something. He didn’t, and it was fine, but consider the possibilities if a teenager is serious. After all, teenagers are entirely capable of being abusive! Abusive behavior doesn’t come with age, it’s often learned from the family environment growing up.
Because of that power dynamic, adults who date teenagers are often paranoid about discovery. And yes, it’s their own choice to put themselves in that position. And I don’t think it’s a wise decision to make. But if someone is afraid of exposure or blackmail, they might be afraid to assert their own boundaries or end a relationship.
So what about physical power differences? Well… That might work with teenage girls and adult men, but it doesn’t work at all with teenage boys and adult women. Plus you have people who are naturally shorter or taller regardless of sex. And in the cases of teenage girls and adult men, depending on the age, a young woman might be fully physically grown! In which case age makes no difference to the physical power difference.
2. Power dynamics are innate to all relationships!
Consider the classic traditional heterosexual relationship between cisgender people to start with. Men are generally considered to have more power physically and socially than women. Socially, men internalize masculinity, which demands leadership and dominance, and women tend to internalize femininity, which entails submission and docility. This isn’t universally true of course, but it’s a generalization that exists in varying degrees in nearly all men and women.
If power dynamics inherently equal abuse, then we have to abolish heterosexual relationships. Especially marriages, which you could argue keep people trapped in unequal relationships. That’s the natural conclusion of the power imbalance = abuse argument. And of course, it’s ridiculous. Because people have autonomous rights! It shouldn’t be the place of strangers to determine whether a relationship should exist. This extends to youths. If you think teens are specifically less competent than adults to make choices, read page 4.
As I said, power dynamics are present in all relationships. Someone might have more financial stability than their partner. Perhaps their partner even stays at home and relies on their income. That’s a power imbalance. Someone might be neurotypical and have a neurodivergent partner who struggles with a variety of mental illnesses. That’s a power imbalance. Interracial couples also have social power imbalances. Someone who is very tall dating someone who is very short has a physical advantage, which could lend to abuse—that’s a power imbalance.
If you think we should be controlling the consensual relations of others to the point of banning everything that appears to be unequal, I think you probably don’t know what a healthy relationship actually looks like. Which leads into the next point:
3. Abuse is a matter of mistreatment. Recurrent psychological or physical harm.
By fixating on power imbalances we direct away from understanding what abuse really is. Power dynamics play a role in abuse, they are not, in themselves, abusive. If they were, we could not allow heterosexual pairings, or interracial ones, or couples with different incomes, or pairings between people of different neurological makeups, etc. Everyone would have to partner with only those as close to themselves as possible. That would be the only way to avoid power imbalances—at least on the surface.
Because the surface-level power dynamic fixation ignores the more important aspect of abuse: personalities and stressful circumstances. A power dynamic based in destructive and self-destructive personalities can be inherently abusive, unlike external power dynamics. For example, even if you have two neurotypical women with the same exact income in a relationship, power can still be imbalanced based on the personalities of those women and how they each deal with stressors. In fact same-sex relationships may have a higher rate of abuse than heterosexual ones! The best theory for why this is is the minority stress model, that queer people experience more stress in general due to minority status and internalized stigma. The point is: even if the power dynamic appears even, abuse can, and often does, still occur.
To understand abuse we need to look at individuals and circumstances. Power differences may exacerbate abuse, but they don’t cause it. Mistreatment does.
>What about situations where someone has been clearly harmed but doesn’t see their abuse as abuse, because they have stockholm syndrome or are otherwise in denial?
This is where things are pretty tricky. Over all, it’s not our place as outsiders to define how someone feels about their own circumstance and relationship, but there will inevitably be cases where someone is mistreated and doesn’t recognize it because they’re in denial.
I don’t think the answer to this problem is to start claiming anything with a power imbalance is abusive, or to label people victims without asking any questions as to the actual nature of their relationship, or to invalidate the individuals feelings and experiences.
I think the best way of handling it is to ask questions, respect the perspective given, and try to encourage someone in a safer direction if the answers they give are concerning. The questions to ask are not “what’s the age gap,” or “are you over the local magic number?” it’s “how are you being treated in this relationship?” And to analyze the situation based on the answers to that question.
Dynamics can play a role, but we should be realistic about it—how much does the power dynamic play a role, vs the personality and habits of the abuser and the abused? I think financial differences where one partner is dependent on another is a much more valid power dynamic to be concerned about where abuse is concerned. Many people stay with abusive partners because they don’t have their own financial stability.
Over all, what matters is the feelings and treatment of the people in the relationship. If you have genuine concern, that will be your focus. If your interventions directly undermine the feelings of the person you claim to want to protect, then you don’t really care about that person. You’re just adding stress to their life, disregarding their agency, and sacrificing their emotional well-being to satisfy a misguided savior complex.
Also, if you demonize someone’s relationship and devalue their feelings and agency, they will probably not go to you for support! If you think they’re being abused, approaching in that way will push them further into relying on their partner or those who support the relationship. People don’t listen to those that don’t listen to them.
About Development
This is a newer section coming after reading some of Jean Piaget’s work (Six Psychological Studies). To summarize, children at 11 have developed all the same psychological processing abilities as adults, but there is still one area where they’re lacking and vulnerable.
Personality. Personality is always developing, but most of it is developed during adolescence. Or at the very least, the base of your personality is developing then. This is also when you’re likely to develop a personality disorder.
You’re figuring out your place in the world (which you’ve just started to understand beyond yourself!) and you still look up to adults, but you also want to prove yourself to them. Of course every teenager is different, but this is apparently a trend. It’s a trend I can see in myself and most others.
It just makes sense: The young are figuring out who to be, and they have to look to adult examples–but they also question those adults. Wanting to change the world is a big focus of the adolescent years, and something I think should be nurtured instead of squashed due to the idea of youthful inferiority.
With all this in mind, I do believe adolescents are more vulnerable than adults. I do believe this factors into the power dynamic (even if you remove youth oppression, but less so in that case). This doesn’t mean no relationship can ever go positively, though.
The question it brings me to is: Does vulnerability mean we should protect from experiences, or that we should help with those experiences? In a safer environment, would direct sexual guidance and experiences of romance be beneficial rather than harmful? Currently it’s usually harmful, even with mutual love.
I don’t have the answer to this, but it is something I think is worth thinking about.
Even if we settle onto the idea that adult-teen sexual/romantic relationships are always bad, as I brought up in the AoC section, there are also harms to how we handle these relationships when they do, inevitably, happen. The punishments are already severe, and I don’t think making them more severe would eradicate the issue. As long as teenagers and adults exist, I believe there will be those who fuck around or fall in love.
The biggest question then, is how do we handle those situations in a way that reduces harm without piling on more?
On to some reading material.
I’ll add things here as I come across them, this is just what I’m already aware of.
Research, studies and analysis that cover positive AMSC experiences:
Reactions to Minor‑Older and Minor‑Peer Sex as a Function of Personal and Situational Variables in a Finnish Nationally Representative Student Sample Brude Rind, 2021
A meta‐analytic review of findings from national samples on psychological correlates of child sexual abuse Bruce Rind and Philip Tomovitch, 1996
Going All the Way: Teenager Girls’ Tales of Sex, Romance, and Pregnancy Sharon Thompson, 1995
Long-range Effects of Child and Adolescent Sexual Experiences : Myths, Mores, and Menaces Allie Kilpatrick, 1992
The Limits of Sexual Autonomy for Minors: Debating Age of Consent Laws Hoko Horii, 2022
Law’s drawing line: Legal discourse of consent in child sexual abuse cases in Japan Hoko Horii, 2024
Because of adult assumptions about the youth’s perspective in AMSC—in that it is always harmful—many studies focus only on negative AMSC. By defining something as abusive you already reach the conclusion that it’s always abusive, and inevitably ignore and exclude all cases contrary to that view. Research that covers both negative and positive experiences are fewer in number, but are also increasing thanks to some very brave researchers.
Personal experiences:
A website that collects positive stories.
A page on Newgon that lists some positive stories and other sources.
A free book that is a collection of positive stories.
Book recommendations:
Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children From Sex by Judith Levine (excerpts)
Very thorough book that covers the history of youth, childhood and teenagehood sexuality, adult/minor relationships, the pedophile and satanic panics, and more. Also sex-positive.
The Scapegoat Generation: America’s War on Adolescents by Mike A. Males
A book that covers research on adolescents and adults, focuses on the pathology of adolescence, youth oppression through biological determinism, and the assumptions that teenagers are a “high risk” group.
This paper by Mike A. Males, more recent and shorter. Covers the same topic as his book.
The Trauma Myth by Susan A. Clancy (excerpts)
By a CSA researcher who has worked directly with victims. She makes her stance against AMSC clear, but the findings of her research support the findings on secondary harm. Covers children more than teenagers, but it’s still important information to have to understand CSA.
Other things:
16/12: Pro-Reform’s position on AMSC article by MU