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800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
Kaitlyn Hunt who was 18 and her underage girlfriend was 14, thus Romeo and Juliet laws didn't apply. Just as a point of curiosity, how would you feel about a relationship between an 18-year-old boy and a 14-year-old girl? Kind of creepy and wrong or just good clean fun?
Hunt also got a pretty sweet plea deal from the authorities that avoided jail time, but that carried a stipulation of no contact with the 14-year-old, a stipulation that she was unable or unwilling to abide by. She ultimately served four months in jail for her abject stupidity.
youtube.com/watch?v=ZxJk59E_SMs
Finch @2, I was wondering what the ages were. The letter suggests that the incident took place three years ago. A "game" like that is different from 9 to 13 to 16.
keshmeshi @4, did she get sex-registered?
For a civil suit, the minor's claim usually can be pursued up to and even for a year or more after the minor turns 18. As far as a criminal suit goes, it seems unlikely that a prosecutor would want to pursue such a minor incident more than three years after the fact, and would probably use prosecutorial discretion to drop the matter.
I think what the lw's daughter needs to do, even at this late date, is acknowledge the inappropriateness of this "game" and sincerely apologize.
Listen, SSSS, kids do stupid things. They experiment with words, with social cues, and their inexperience with both means that they *will* make mistakes. How you *handle* the mistakes that they will, without any question, make - that is what determines whether you did the right thing, not whether you knew through your crystal ball what your kids would do and coach them to avoid making mistakes. That will never happen.
If the girl who wasn't in on the 'joke' (and it is a feeble one, for sure, and inappropriate as hell - you did talk that through with your kid, right?) is still uncomfortable YEARS later, then here is what you didn't do: provide an example that your child could follow in making up to her for the mistake that your kid made.
It can be painful to go through the process of publicly apologizing, sure, but is it any more painful than trying to avoid someone for years or hoping they relocate to another part of the state?? Maybe if I hadn't grown up in a small town, I might have hoped for that, but it wasn't an option. So, I had to learn to live for a long time with the social consequences of mistakes I made, and mostly people are judged by how poorly they make up for them, not the gravity of the initial error.
So go the parents of the other kid, yes now, and take your kid with you and apologize. Make it heartfelt and brief and sincere, and don't make any excuses, but tell her what was going on, and that you dropped the ball when you didn't come up to her and tell her you were sorry earlier. And that you're sorry she's been afraid all these years because you didn't apologize. Try to put her at ease, and be at ease yourself when you do. Telling her parents first that you really owe them all an apology and that you're planning to deliver it will go a long way. But don't just suffer and wait. Suffering is the long way home. Get it over with, make an example of how apologies work, and then let yourselves off the hook. It is about time.
Somebody noticed that saying “I want to have sex with you” to anyone is weird and funny so it became a kind of in-joke.
Plausible?
RE ages: three years ago they were “both minors,” suggesting that at least one of them is eighteen now. SSSS’s gender-neutral offspring could have been fifteen and the younger girl twelve or thirteen. Gender-neutral offspring: old enough to be told better. Younger girl: exactly the right age to be weirded out, having no experience in asserting herself sexually and telling someone older to piss off.
RE relevance of being bi: SSSS’s offspring plausibly really did want to have sex with the younger girl.
RE relevance of being gender-neutral: SSSS’s offspring is not a girl and may present as a tomboy. This would amplify any perceived or real sexual threat.
But there is a whole wide internet out there, as well as this peanut gallery -- I hardly think Dan needs to provide a glossary.
They seem rather uncaring about their daughter's bad behavior or hurt feelings of the other girl.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfemi…
The letter says this was a game played among friends, so who cares who dumb it was? It also says that she didn't spring it on this younger girl. She didn't proposition the younger girl. She told the younger girl *about* the game. How could that possibly have been traumatising?
Whether or not there is a spurious case to be made up is another question. But nothing bad was done here by this bi teenager.
2. Stay away from fundamentalist (religious, political, etc.). They have serious issues (mental, emotional, etc.) and are a danger to themselves, their children and others.
@19 No offense, but you might want to check your reading comprehension.
First, the most logical construction of the letter is "She said [I want to have sex with you] to a younger girl from a conservative/phobic family and told her she was just joking". It really doesn't make sense interpreting the word "this" as "She said [that she had a game she played with her friends where they would jokingly say 'I want to have sex with you' and laugh] to a younger girl from a conservative/phobic family and told her she was just joking". Clearly, she did proposition the younger girl, whether jokingly pursuant to the "game" or in actuality and then made the "game" up to cover her tracks.
Just as clearly, the event of the letter involved a situation where it wasn't just played among friends, and that is exactly why it matters. It was played to a person, a younger, more naĂŻve and rigid-thinking child, who would believe it to be a proposition and feel vulnerable being the object of it.
Second, some thoughtful commenters here, while disliking the game, are not piling on the girl so much as her parent for failing to properly address the situation when it happened.
It is a stupid game and the girl who made the other uncomfortable should apologize. The father should explain to his daughter that you can't joke about certain things w/o being absolutely 100% certain you are speaking the same language and it does not make someone represesed or phobic because they don't want to play. Sometimes they don't want to play. And sometimes they don't want to play WITH YOU. That does not make them "wrong" in this scenario.
#7 is a little right. There are things hat are popular with people trying to assert a sense of identity (usually one directly at odds with what they feel is expected of them), and right now gender/sexuality are popular amongst that crowd. The girl who has to let everyone know how bi she is, complete with hypersexuality, is just as annoying as the guy who suddenly develops a lisp, sprouts rainbows, and has to let everybody know how gay he is. It's one of those things that people outgrow if they mature emotionally.
This doesn't sound like a major legal problem. If it were going to become one, it would have already. If LW finds himself around the "phobes" in an appropriate context he should apologize, and can quite possibly smooth things over with some noises about how teenagers can be. If his daughter still thinks pushing people's boundaries is a funny game, that's more a question of how to parent a teenager who's trying to assert their identity in unproductive ways.
I agree with 23, though. If the young, protected girl had been joke propositioned by a boy, does anyone think we would be talking about it? This bisexual teenager did something which (I now see!) was wrong, but the reaction is completely unjustified.
Really? No one here can imagine how this might a recurring joke/game among a group of adolescents? Or said to someone just for the thrill of transgression?
My childhood and adolescence were filled with in-jokes and games that wouldn't make sense out of context. Assuming you had something resembling a childhood, so were yours.
If the younger girl was in fact traumatized by this incident, her parents are to blame for utterly failing to teach her any coping skills.
The best advice for this family / parent is to teach their daughter / gender-neutral child to be a bit more assiduous in making friends. Some people are best avoided, and it's a life lesson worth learning as a child. Luckily the whole dressing 'gender neutral' thing should make it easier to avoid the people not worth knowing. A more precise piece of advice about comedy is that timing and context is everything. All the kids involved are immature; they are kids. Eventually, "I want to have sex with you" is something that becomes serious, and you hope the person you say it to does not laugh in your face.
And also agree that the 'traumatized' daughter may be playing up their revulsion to not dare disagree with their controlling, weird parents.
problem. solved.
Could be that the parents have made too much of this to her. Could be that it was part of a larger pattern of bullying, of which SSSS only knows (or admits as possibly upsetting) this one incident. Could be that, memory being what it is, this one frightening weird incident has stood out while other things blur, the way both our happy and sad memories have more to do with a coming together of small pieces that make them emotionally resonate. Could be that 'traumatized' means the younger girl flatly refuses to be at event where she'll have to deal with bi-gn girl (and her band of merry older friends?) and is willing to state that, in which case good on her. Even if that makes SSSS uncomfortable.
Let's say this is now of concern because bi-gn daughter is 17. Incident was 3 years ago, so she was 14. Other child was younger, so perhaps 12 or 11. (13 at most, but I doubt 'younger' would be a strong factor if the difference was 1 year.) Any bets on how SSSS would feel if his 12 year old bi-gn daughter was approached by a larger and older child who isolated her, climbed into her personal space as a means of intimidation (which at minimum is what happened physically, since bi-gn will cop to that) and explained his or her desire to have sex with daughter? "Ha ha these kids sure are light-hearted! Rest assured, parents of 14 year old large boundary-violating person that I am not some conservative phobic person who sees any problems here! I'll make sure to insist she be alone with your kid to show how she's totally over this! Go on, honey, if you complain they might think we're phobic!"
I don't see a court case going anywhere. I do agree with those saying that the thing to do, at the time and now 3 years later, is apologize. If your daughter (or you if she won't) can manage a real one, for trying to freak out an 11 or 12 year old with sexually-tinged bullying that clearly really hurt. Not for being bisexual, gender-neutral, progressive, and not phobic.
I sprung a thing like that on a sheltered friend once. I had a friend in high school who was completely Mormon, and we took her out to lunch one afternoon -- stopping along the way to torch a joint. She completely withdrew and never spoke to any of us again. Young people can be insensitive and forget to watch out for others, it happens. I do think the other girl might be carrying it too far forward though. Maybe she plays it up to keep her parents concerned for her?
Also love how they sanctimoniously classify the family as "phobic". Fuck these parents.
I would add that, as inappropriate as the game sounds -- at least when directed at kids outside her group of friends -- I have a universe of non-sense and ordinarily unfunny in-jokes I share with my friends.
So, "Marry Me." -- Maeby Funke
Usually "gender neutral" as something that a person would say they are is more on the 'gender identity' or 'gender expression' scale, but since we're getting the info from the father we don't know exactly how the daughter would use it. Either way it is nothing like asexuality, which is more on the "how much do you want sex" spectrum than it is on the "with whom would you like to have sex" scale. You can be straight or gay and asexual.
So if I hear my kid play this "game" with kids who do not want to play, I'd tell him or her to knock it off, to respect the other's space and to apologize. Said another way, as others have, if it is a boy (say a member the "Rape Posse" in the news a year or so ago) going around telling girls, "I want to fuck you" or "I want to have sex with you" and adding a "ha ha ha", we'd be stumbling all over ourselves to condemn the behavior.
I am, actually, for the most part down with a 17 year old and a 14 year old having sex. I think there's a reason older cultures - including some of the retrograde South, and bar|bat-mitzvah-ed jews - recognizing that after puberty children have achieved a kind of sexual maturity. I'm quite well aware - having once been married to someone 22 years my senior for 16 years - of the pitfalls of march-november (may-september?) romances and the various inequities of experience. Having sex or a romance are the least of the concerns. Pregnancy and marriage are bigger issues.
Kaitlyn was a fool (and yes, kind of an asshole @7) - as most teenagers are, which is entirely unsurprising. But the worst consequence of her dalliance with that other girl was entirely artificial: it's the threat of being on the sex-offender registry for the rest of her life. No other consequence of that relationship, had it been permitted unchecked, would have been as bad - no pregnancy, and even if the younger girl found out later she was really straight, no inability to change teams.
It's a bit like the war on drugs: the worst consequence of smoking marijuana is the legal consequence, not what the drug does to you.
A: "I want to have sex with you"
B:
A: "haha just joking"
B: "haha you're such a joker"
A: "I want to have sex with you"
C: "oh yeah?"
A: ".... maybe... not joking?"
C: "lets talk about this more..."
I assume pretty much everyone in the situation is not telling the whole story but on the face of it it seems like someone who was not emotionally ready for such a 'game' was drawn into it and reacted poorly. The lw child reacted as they normally would by trying to laugh it off but the other child treated it seriously and after telling her parents about it the situation apparently became worse.
So conservative parents freak out about a semi serious proposition and probably further traumatize their child rather than teaching them how to cope with propositions and rejecting advances. LW and their child have doubtlessly learned that there can be serious consequences to any expression of feelings and such things should not be taken so lightly.
I don't understand how an apology would not already have been made judging by the letter "the girl's father expressed his displeasure, and my daughter avoided the girl the rest of the time we were with this family" How could you possibly have that conversation without an apology being offered?
Was the advance inappropriate? Hard to say from the details given. Obviously it was unwanted judging by the reaction. But you can't find out that someone isn't interested until you express an interest in them. If there was actual bullying or power dynamics involved (ie babysitting type situation) then it would be inappropriate but we have no evidence of that being the case.
Honestly, this "game" sounds a whole lot like harrassment, especially when played with those who are not in on the joke, as with this other girl. Fingers crossed that the LW's daughter doesn't continue playing this game once she's in college or the workplace. Or hell, even when she's out at a bar, if only for her own safety.
Also, fuck this other girl's family (not literally, of course). They've got their own problems, and while badmouthing your daughter is probably at the top of their list, it should be at the bottom of yorus. This is a teaching moment. Use it.
The main lesson here is to keep your kids away from neurotic, sex-negative people and their kids.
As to the traumatized child. Well, yes, the parents almost certainly made it far worse with how they responded to the incident. But this is all the more reason to be careful who you say sexual things to. Because it's going to be a lot harder to help this child grow up to not be homophobic than if this incident hadn't happened. So, you gave the parents a tool for strengthening their bigotry. Good job there.
The whole letter screams cognitive dissonance. The letter writer had two incompatible beliefs: "my daughter is a darling angel", and "my daughter significantly traumatized a younger girl, something only evil people do". He chose "my daughter is a darling angel" and THAT means he has to rationalize away why the other family is so upset: it's because they are conservative and phobic (whether they're actually conservative and phobic or not), and THEIR daughter is a liar, not because his darling angel did anything wrong.
SSSS' bias is most blatant at '"They claim" my daughter put her arms around the girl' Seriously, if someone's going to lie about you, they're not going claim you put your arms around them and... nothing more. And, in my experience of being 12 and trying to justify to my parents why they shouldn't leave me alone with certain larger, older people who wanted to play sexual "games" with me, with or without my consent, I understated what the larger older person had done as much as I could. I could, you know, simultaneously understand that the larger, older, person was, like me, curious about sex and not want them to get into trouble for that, at the same time as I didn't want them to have another chance to be curious about sex with me. So, I'd guess that the older girl put her arms around the younger, by force, as a minimum, and quite possibly there was more than that, that younger girl hasn't told her parents.
In contrast, darling angel has every incentive to lie, to stay out of trouble, and SSSS has to lie to himself because the alternative is admitting that darling angel is a human being who occasionally, like the rest of us, fucks up.
The dad left very important information out of his letter. I don't know whether that was accidental, or whether he's trying to make his daughter seem better than she is.
@40 "Was the advance inappropriate?"
Yes, "I want to have sex with you" is an inappropriate advance, especially for a minor, or with a large experience difference, or with little familiarity, or directed toward a prepubescent. If an adult friend of mine played this with me, they'd get a middle finger unless I was really interested, but I wouldn't risk doing this with a stranger at a bar, that's insane.
"But you can't find out that someone isn't interested until you express an interest in them."
Whatever happened to "you're cute". Or "I like you a lot."
Maybe an apology, instead of a lame excuse, (directed by you as soon as you learned about it) would have smoothed things over?