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pinksugarsub -> RE: 19 year olds in the lifestyle (6/5/2008 4:16:55 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: tsatske
First of all, this is not another 'how can a person this young be a Dom, a Mistress, actually submit, know what they want?' thread.
On a local list that i subscribe to, which is for people who attend a local dungeon ( okay, not super local, i live in little house land out here! but, about as local as it gets) there is a discussion of age limits for attending munches, classes, dungeons, parties, conventions, whatever.
I have said many times before - someday we (BDSMers in general, as a subset of society) will 'grow up' enough (by which i mean, become mainstream and accepted enough, so i am kind of talking about everybody else growing up, not us) to start thinking about what the gay culture already deals with - young people. Young people who already know that they carry alternate sexual identities are in need of socialization and help to get safely through adolescence, and yet, they are not in need of being exposed to a lot of potential perps looking for some young stuff!
There are, of course, early bloomer munches in most bigger cities - you still have to be over 18, but usually it is only for the under 30 or 35 crowd, so it is a safe place to get to know other young people without anyone trying to get into your pants just cause your young and hot, and without anyone telling you that you are too young for all this, and without anyone getting jealous of your youth.
At what age should young people be welcomed to conventions, seminars, classes, public information meet and greets, dungeons, parties, demos? is it different for different events?
The thing that really got me to start the thread was, someone on the local list suggested a reasonable standard age limit - maybe 21 or 22 - with exceptions made for anyone over 18 but under the age limit who was willing to jump through several 'hoops' - like accepting being assigned a mentor, attending a certain number of munches and classes before being allowed at a party or dungeon event, ect.
What do you think?
i did some legal work for a budding TheNextGeneration group in Detroit, and i advised that age 18 was legally sufficient for a TNG member -- so long as there was no play. Play, i thought, raised risks a TNG group should avoid.
There are risks any group would have to shoulder if it admitted teens that older (over 21) members would not pose.
There are other considerations when a gathering of D/s P/pl, no matter how loosely arranged, takes place, as to admitting teens. As the Op points out, it may expose an immature and inexperienced teen to an older, predatory type..and possible liabity might attach to the group or its members if the teen was harmed.
That's just one example of risks; i can think of others.
Yet, i think there is an obligation to reach out to teen D/s P/pl and try to include T/them somehow. i guess what i would most emphasize is that teens should not be admitted to dungeons, play parties or otherwise 'encouraged' in any way to play with A/anyone, publically or privately.
That doesn't mean teens should be left out of dinners and munches and such; just that the group should take special care when doing so.
IMO, most teens -- D/s or not -- are best served by intimate relationships with P/pl T/their own age, especially when first beginning a sexual life.
pinksugarsub
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