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You must further describe "assent" and "dissent".

If waving or making a funny face can be considered assent, then that needs to be added into the definition. Is "being drunk" or having impaired functions automatic dissent? And if so, then why?

And in reality, where can you separate assent and dissent from reactions and instinct (like pulling your arm away from something that burns you or crying when injured)?

If you are simply being reacted upon, you are not able to give consent. Consent comes BEFORE action.

I posit that you should change the following experiment:



Instead of this, I would like you to imagine that we take the average baby and the average adult (are you saying that adult retards and babies are the same? Why not simply an actual fully functional adult? Why can you not prove that the consent of a baby and the consent of an adult are universal?)

And then you get your lit cigarette.

And then, you ask the adult, "Would you like me to put this cigarette on your forearm and thereby extinguish it?"

The adult will likely give you consent or dissent based on how he or she feels about your action.

Now let's go up to the infant and say the same thing. Chances are, the infant will try and make a GRAB for the pretty, burning thing (I've seen plenty of infants and toddlers do it to candles on birthday cakes). This does not mean that the baby is interested in burning his or her hand. And this certainly does not mean that it's consent for you to turn your baby into an ashtray.

Similarly with your dog or your cat. If the animal does not HATE what you're doing to it, it must be consent? That means that any rape victims who feels pleasure, but still feels violated was actually not raped at all.

And following your logic further, you're saying that people should just do whatever they want to children, and then if the child reacts negatively that you have to stop. So you're basically talking about preemptively raping people before they can make any decision beforehand (ie: cigarette to arm instead of ASKING or TALKING about whether or not the other party wants a cigarette on their arm).

Not only is this fallacious, but it is dangerous too. In your example and your argument, it's ok to potentially rape anyone and everyone you want to have sex with (or literally do anything to) until they tell you to stop. This includes punching someone in the face randomly on the street until they tell you to stop, trying to make out with someone else until they tell you to stop, and basically preemptively invade other's spaces by assuming that not saying "no" is equal to consent.



Once again, I have to ask, what is the definition of innocence? And what is the definition of child sexuality?

Today, gay marriage is a hot topic. You have thousands of people, gay and straight, marching on the capitol about it, and making flyers and distributing leaflets and writing their congressmen.

Where is the 10,000 child march? Where are the hundreds of thousands of children rallying for their rights to have sex with adults, or sex with anyone? If the best you can do is post ***** websites and testimonials (which are about as reliable as an infomercial or a tabloid) then you have not proved your point, but simply tried to make something an issue because you have SOMETHING TO GAIN from it (especially if your "preemptive consent" clause ever makes it onto the books).



What I need is the proof that knowledge of sex is directly related to psychological and physical need for penetrative sex (especially with an adult). I had knowledge of sex when I was a child. After all, we all watch Nature and National Geographic from time to time, and watch the monkies or wildabeast humping. Did that make my body, or my pscyhe ready for penetrative sex with an adult or anyone else? Nope! Oh, right, and I was also one of the many children who finds out about masturbation at a young age. Does that mean that some adult gets to come over and start having sex with me because I *know* about sex and have knowledge of sexual pleasure through masturbation? NO!

If you know anything about basic Bodily Domain rights, you'll know that doing things to others and assuming consent is a big big no-no.

It's not about "innocence" (unless you use it to mean that kids are pretty much ignorant about a lot of things and therefore they take in lots of knowledge in the order of survival to luxury, and yet it certainly doesn't change their bodies or even the development of their minds and make it ok to just go around putting out cigarettes on them because they're not flinching away. And it's certainly not about "protecting children from seeing gross stuff"...it's more about keeping children (who are still in training to become adults) away from adults who would exploit them, and then, when we feel they've been training (ie: taking the time to learn) enough, we let them have both the privileges and the responsibilities of sex, drugs, alcohol, etc etc etc.

After all, it's much more important to learn how to look both ways before crossing the street, and how to be kind to others, and how to eat food that's good for you, than it is to have sex with an adult as a child.

The people with the priorities mixed up are the adults who would want to dump even MORE crap (that really is not needed) on a learning kid's head. It's like trying to explain how to do your taxes to a five year old. They'll be spending the majority of their lives doing that too, but I don't see you on the bandwagon to make all infants and toddlers and children pay taxes too.

What we really need here is priorities. The priorities of ***** is to get access to having sex with children (and if I do say so myself, JD's cigarette example is the perfect analogy to what ***** do to children: they ******** first, ask questions later). The priorities of children? They want a doll, and then they want to only eat strawberries, and then they have to learn how to go to the bathroom and not s**t themselves. And then there's tying your shoe, learning how to get dressed, and learning how to deal with your peers in your own age group.

If we let kids "make their own decisions" and "give them complete freedom" what would happen is by and large NEGLECT, because most kids are STILL LEARNING. We are not like wildebeast, who come out of the womb running and ready to be an adult. We are not like dogs or cats who become independent after a few weeks. We have minds and bodies that mature slowly for a reason, and that's mostly due to our social upbringing and the sheer time commitment it takes to take an infant and teach him or her to be a productive member of society. Children aren't just little adults sitting around waiting to be ******** and itching to do their taxes. They're adults-in-training, and I think that people don't really realize this, or give credit to these kids for what they're doing.

So the next time you think that consent is the equivalent of acting on others until they say "no", think about the difference between asking an adult and asking an infant about placing a cigarette on their arms.