Comment by _f1dq

I made sure my demands were reasonable and gave them options. If they didn't want to bathe that night, they had to pass a sniff test. If they didn't want a haircut, they could grow their hair as long as they wanted so long as they kept it clean.

For eating, I made healthy foods available that they liked. This worked really well. One son has two conditions that can land a child in in-house hospital treatment for aversion to eating and he never had issues like that.

For trying new foods, they had to try it, not finish it. I never made them do things like clean their plate. Instead, I planned ahead for how much I expected people to eat at the meal.

I always had a good reason for what I was asking and it very rarely came to "because I said so." On the rare occasions where it did hit that point, they went along with it because it was rare, so they were convinced I had a good reason even if I couldn't get them to understand it.

> Did you ever deal with an instance where your kids started telling you "no" in response to demands you felt were reasonable, twisting your original explanations to use against you, for things like eating, cleaning up or hygiene?

As a parent of teenagers... omg, yes. LOL. I think it's as much because they're teenagers preparing to leave the nest as much as anything.

My grandma had a campfire saying that "smoke follows beauty." I realized many years later as an adult that it was part of a subconscious family mythology, handed down for who knows how many generations. If you're pretty, it's your fault for unwanted attention (smoke).

At least here in California (and presumably much of the US) the threshold isn't merely intoxication. It's intoxication to the point that someone is incapable of consent. Not impaired judgment or above the legal driving limit, but drunk to the point that they are not even capable of giving a yes/no. If two people are drunk and have sex, evidently at least one of them was capable of consent because they had the capacity to initiate sex.

Pretty much, yes. Women are held to the same standard as children in situations like. Sharing a room with a male stranger? How could she possibly know something was wrong. Poor, sweet, innocent woman.

The man is expected to be the adult.

It's not supposed to be fair, the women are always right

Consent is too often treated as this magical concept that makes everything right when it's present in some form. Many people seem to think of consent as a "yes" when often it's more a lack of "no". Someone not protesting or going along with something doesn't absolve the other party of responsibility. Heck, even explicit consent doesn't do that. Would you accept someone repeatedly offering another person in their company drugs when that person hasn't outright refused them but not really shown interest either?

When someone goes along with something but ends up feeling uncomfortable or even resentful about it, they can talk about it with the other party. And that party should acknowledge it. They may have meant no harm or even be surprised or feel hurt, but a decent person would consider the other's feelings and admit they may have had poor judgement. This Jon Pretty guy allegedly has a pattern of maneuvering women into vulnerable positions, inappropriately bragging about his "conquests" and from what multiple sources confirm shows a bunch of telltale signs of an emotional abuser and manipulator. It wasn't one instance of them being drunk, it was an extensive period of pushing boundaries, coercion and probably gaslighting.

You'll always hear questions along these lines. "Why did she stay around him if she was uncomfortable/mistreated/abused?" "Why did she wait so long to talk about it if it bothered her so much?" "Why didn't she collect proof?" "Why didn't she just say no?" These questions interpret the situation as far too simple. Abusers are great at creating doubt. They do something wrong, they make their victims feel as equal accomplices. Good and fun times are alternated with bad ones. They don't outright break the law or force someone but will push boundaries and wear someone down repeatedly to get their way despite the discomfort of the other.

That's why it's so hard for a victim to come forward. It's exactly because everyone says "well you didn't set hard boundaries, did you?" It's because maybe no crime was committed according to the letter of the law so they don't feel like they really have a case to make. It's because the victim initially feels like they share as much responsibility or it's their own fault and they should have known better. Abusers are great at walking that line where they get what they want while still maintaining plausible deniability, making it impossible to fully dismiss the argument that the other person is responsible too. It lets them justify their actions to themselves and others, believing it was as much the agency of the other party as their own. Meanwhile they're constantly using a position of power and a victim's weaknesses to manufacture precisely the situation they want.

They call them predators for a reason. It's cause they seek out prey. They know what to look for in a potential target. Don't blame a victim for being possibly naive, inexperienced or easy to sway when those were exactly the preconditions to be taken advantage of. It doesn't justify someone doing just that.

Yes

No, why on earth would it?

And an abused boy could well become an abuser in the future. Sad but true

Are you talking sexual abuse? If so, then references please.

There are a lot of ways that abuse goes down the generations. For example girls who were abused are more likely to get together with abusive men as adults. But I've encountered zero evidence that victims of pedophiles are particularly likely to become pedophiles themselves when they grow up.

I have personal reasons to be interested in the topic, so I spent a lot of time at one point looking for evidence that sexually abused boys were likely to become sexual abusers as adults. I have concluded that such evidence both doesn't exist, and it isn't true. Had I known that when I was younger, I could have avoided a whole lot of guilt and self-hatred.

This isn't true and looks to be a statistical issue. And the myth that you'll become an abuser is terrible one that haunts many abused individuals to this day.

To expand on this the two reasons for this myth are abusers tend to lie about their childhoods to gain sympathy. And basically there are a bunch of confounds that both increase the likelihood you will be abused and that you will be an abuser but there's no real causation.

I can play devils advocate a bit on this topic, because sadly there's no real "rules" for being a parent other than "don't let your kid die".

I am lucky to have a mother who never hid the harsher realities of life from me; She taught me how to understand what "no" means, because it's easy for horny young boys growing up to hear "no" as "No, I want you to try harder" or "No, I am a good girl and I do not want to look like a slut by giving in", so, she said "no means no because the risk of hurting her is much higher than the reward of getting your way".

I don't want to blame the media for putting this in our heads, because it _is_ a real thing (that women are sometimes bashful and may expect men to be a bit more pushy to show that they are serious) but because it's so nuanced and difficult it's better to play it safe, because you really _need_ to be _looking_ for the nuance and looking out for clues they're not into it and I don't think people (especially men) understand that.

And even then it's not a given that we're taught to look for it; and even if we are: it takes time even if you _do_ look for it, it's MUCH better to play it safe.

Anyway, my point is, parents don't _necessarily_ teach men or women what consent actually means, the media doesn't help.

A good example, of course, is: Silence is not consent. Which is a very difficult concept to grasp given that it leads to weird thoughts about "it's not romantic to ask if she wants to have sex" but it's not just about not asking, it's about looking for non-verbal cues which could be easily missed if you're aroused.

Please don't put words in other people's mouths either. I think it's clear from GP's post that that's NOT what they were implying.

> Overcorrect if necessary.

Hell no, that’s what all our legal systems are not about and there are also provisions against this sort of zealotry.

And rightly so, it’s such a historically proven road to hell and unintended consequences.

Still dumb. We've known for thousands of years not to let non-married couples be alone together, let alone sleep in the same bed.

I've walked down the street before and not stolen things from people's houses. I assume you leave your front door unlocked at night?

My parents didn't really need to tell me. I've got all of society left, right and centre, telling me I'm a monster with a penis. You'd have to be thick as shit not to get the message.

But it always, always has to be "the boys need to learn". Women are treated like children: nothing is ever their fault and they're easily manipulated. Men are held to a much higher standard. Anything happens it's their fault, always.

Asking for that doesn't take away the fact you decided to focus on how the victim's parents could have prevented that instead of focusing on the crime itself. It's an indirect way of blaming the victim instead of the accuser. We see this all the time when women get killed and someone says "we have to tell people it's not safe to go around alone at night". First, let's try to fix the real issue and then we can focus on stuff like that. And again, I know it wasn't your intention, but sometimes the impact is more important that the intention and this is still the first comment in the thread. People come, read this and then the idea of parents educating their kids lingers instead of how to stop predatory behavior from men.

> Marriage has nothing to do with it

Of course it does. Marriage means responsibilities and protects rights, and no one night stands. Just because abuse happens in some marriages does not mean that we should leave sexual relationships to happen adhoc. Limiting sexual relationships to contracts (marriage, not prostitution) is the solution that has worked forever basically. The widespread of STDs, not to mention children out of wedlock, not to mention the mental tolls that come out of easy relationships is already documented, and the society is paying the price.

The incident in very article you're replying to would have been avoided had there been no casual interaction with the man, let alone sleeping with him in the same room.

> your point is clearly proven wrong by and large.

Quite the contrary. We're already seeing the effects on conservative societies that have "westernized", and normalized sex outside of marriage. The effects have been catastrophic to say the least at every level: mental, societal, familial, health, financial. The society in its entirety is paying the toll.