loopie

This is where communication and honesty come in. A lot of problems in relationships aren't anybody's fault, and thinking of them that way puts the focus more on blame than on finding a solution. Relationships change over time because the people in them change, so do the circumstances around the relationship. So couples do need to have honest communication in order to have relationships that are heathly and loving as opposed to a functioning charade. Relationships need to be reevaluated, renegociated, and reworked to match the changing needs and circumstances. And sometimes splitting up is the answer. Divorce doesn't represent a failure or a problem, sometimes it is the solution. I realize a lot of this is easier said than done. A lot of people don't even understand their own motivations and needs, so getting them to comment on them is tricky. If you ask your wife why she doesn't have sex with you anymore, she might not even know the answer, or she might be embarassed to admit it.

I find the strangest thing is how people look at me like I'm the bravest human being alive for living my life inspite of being single. I go out all the time to movies, restaurants, concerts, and I travel alone. When I'm telling somebody about what I've been up to and they ask with whom I did these things, and I tell them I went by myself, the look really astonished. People I know will often state that they would be terrified to do those things alone. I've been able to convince a colleague of mine (a divorced woman) that it is perfectly acceptable to go to the movies alone. She was so convinced that "everybody will stare" and "think you're weird". So now she goes to movies alone and enjoys it, and sounds quite impressed with herself. The even stranger thing is, most of my relationships end because I feel it's my partner who is holding me back and I get frustrated with them. I always want to go out and do things, and whatever woman I am dating just wants to stay in all the time.

My parents are Germans, I have lived in lots of different parts of Europe. These days I spend more time in Europe than I do in Canada, and from my experience I would say the attitudes towards prostitution are fairly similiar. Maybe it's the friends and co-workers I have, but I don't really encounter huge prejudice against prostituion here in Canada. Most people I know accept that there are prostitutes and men who go to see them and are not offended by this. I guess most of you swim in much more conservative circles than I do. However, I would also say monogamy is still the expected norm both here and in Europe. Most people I know expect their partners to be monogamous and would consider it a profound betrayal of trust for their partner to cheat on them with anybody else regardless of whether they are a prostitute.

I don't agree with you on this. Flying to USA, you actually go through an American-controlled security check before you even get on the airplane. Also, I don't think they care about inconveniencing people who they perceive as a threat. It doesn't matter if you've already landed in one of their airports. If they think you are a threat, they will go through the trouble of getting you to go somewhere else.

I don't really discuss my sex life with other people. But I don't have any problems honestly expressing my opinions on the sex trade, which is a topic of conversation that comes up from time to time. I never feel under any pressure to pretend that I am some sort of conservative and condem the sex trade.

I have never been married, but I would have no problem making a formal commitment if I felt I had found true love in a sustainable relationship.

This one fits well with the previous post.

I do want to thank Brad for his well-reasoned response. Of all the people who have disagreed with me in this thread, I think you might the one who best admits that the laws are flawed and you acknowledge the somewhat arbitrary nature of graduated responsibility. And those were two of my main points and my reasoning for disagreeing with age of consent laws. And as far as I know, sex education is part of the current school system curriculum and taught to children before the average age puberty. I have not seen these lessons and I do not know how sexuality is taught to kids so I cannot comment on the methods or information. And yes, I do support sex education in schools.

I think you contradict yourself there. If you forgive a 22 year old who has sex with a 16 year old, then why do you support a law that doesn't forgive him? Do you really think punishing the innocent is an acceptable tactic for intimidating the guilty?

I think drinking, smoking, and gambling are fine for all ages. However, I am also fine with individual establishments setting age of entry restrictions. So if a casino only wants to allow entry to patrons over 20, that is their right. In some cases, age restrictions are the best system I can think of. For example: voting. I thought maybe voting should be dependent on finishing secondary school, but then I reconsidered and realized that would just give schoolteachers the power to determine who's eligable to vote. So until somebody suggest something better, I'm fine with voting being a right one receives at a certain age. I also think you should be at least 18 in order to work as a sex trade worker. I think this because there is more to being a sex trade worker than just willingness to have sex, and some of these things are (or should be) taught in school. And no, I don't think anybody of any age should be allowed to have sex with anybody else of any age. Sex with prepubescents is pedophilia, and pedophilia is wrong. Prepubescents are not sexual beings and being exposed to sexual situations often results in psychological trauma. You don't have to be black to oppose the apartheid, you don't have to be gay to believe in gay rights, you don't have to be a woman to be a feminist. I don't see why one has to be directly effected by an unjust law in order to disagree with it. I disagree with the age of consent laws because it makes no sense to me and because of what I have seen in my life. Allow me to share. When I was in secondary school, a lot of the girls I knew would date men in their 20s. They usually met these guys through their weekend jobs or through older siblings. I was always raised to think of these guys as "creeps". But honestly, thinking back, I never really saw any evidence that these relationships were any different than if these girls had dated boys their own age. Does a 16 year old boy have more "pure intentions" with girls than a 22 year old man? I don't think so. So why make a criminal out of these guys? Another anecdote I can think of is a former colleague of mine (who was about 25 at the time of this incident), who did in fact go to prison. He went to a bar where everybody was checked for identification upon entry. So in my opinion, he should be safe to assume he's in the company of adults. He met a girl at the bar who looked like she was in her 20s and they flirted and went to his place and had sex together. Later that week he was arrested. It turns out the girl had a fake ID and was under age. Her parents had asked her where she had been and got the story out of her and got the police involved. So it's stories like this that make me see the fault in these laws.

Yes. This is what I said in my post. Our society gives out privledges at certain ages. We don't do this because it makes sense. We do it because it's easy. Rather than assess each person's ability to drink responsibly, we just say that once your 18(Quebec)19(Ontario), you ought to be mature enough to drink responsibly. Discussing the validlity of laws is not the same as breaking them. This isn't about my pleasure. If you read my posts you would've noted that I am not interested in anybody that young.

There's a legal and biological definition of puberty. definition of puberty according to Merriam-Webster 1 the condition of being or the period of becoming first capable of reproducing sexually marked by maturing of the genital organs, development of secondary sex characteristics, and in the human and in higher primates by the first occurrence of menstruation in the female 2 the age at which puberty occurs often construed legally as 14 in boys and 12 in girls. I am aware of what the law is. I wasn't debating what the law is. I was saying that it doesn't really make much sense to me. To my mind, once you cross the line of puberty, you are a sexual being capable of sexual desire and sexual functions and your sexuality should be yours to explore. Our society is one of graduated privledges. We allow people the right to do things (drink alcohol, smoke, gamble, vote etc) at certain ages based on approximations of maturity level. But as we all know, everybody doesn't mature at the same rate. We pick these ages for privledges and hope for the best. Some people are more mature and more responsible younger, and some people will never be responsible adults as long as they live. Applying the graduated privledge mentality to sex doesn't make sense to me.

I see that a number of you have replied to my opinion on this matter. Instead of quoting all of you, I'll try to respond in a general way. Like I said in my original post, I do believe that there should be an age limit for working as a sex trade worker. I think one should be at least 18 years old to do this type of work for some of the reason you have all mentioned as well as age hopefully making one more wise to the dangers that one would face in this occuption. But there is no law that can ever completely prevent people from doing things they later regret. Do I think there is something "wrong" with an adult man who will have sex with a girl under 18? I'll admit, when I was in high school and a lot of the girls I knew would date men in their 20s, my gut reaction was to find those guys "sleazy", and I would probably still react that way today, but when I try to explain what's wrong about it, I come up blank. It's a feeling, but not one I can really defend with any concrete logic. When I think about it, a boy her own age can be just as bad as an older one.

I don't think there is anything wrong with an older man having consensual sex with a pubescent girl. I think many young teenage girls want sex and know exactly what they're doing when they pursue it. I think if a teenage girl wants to have sex, it doesn't make any difference to me whether she has sex with a boy her age, or an old man. However, I still believe in a minimum legal age to work as a sex trade worker. This is mostly for the reasons Penelope mentioned in her post. I realize that in believing this, I am guilty of some of much of the same hypocrisy as those who oppose a legal sex trade altogether. As George Carlin put it, why should it be illegal to sell what you can legally give away? As for my personal tastes, I am a man in his mid 30s, but I look a lot younger. I am a Michael J. Fox type guy who will probably look 15 his entire life. I tend to go for SP's in their late 20s. Yet I in my relationships, I have never in my life had a girlfriend younger than myself. I am full of contradictions.

It makes me sad that Voluptous Vanessa Vale is retiring. Everytime I see photos of her I almost have a heart attack. I hope I can find a time to see her before she retires.

I don't watch tv anymore. But as a kid, my sisters and I really dug this show called 'Catwalk' about a C&C Music Factory type dance group trying to make it big in Toronto. It was totally awesome cheese.

I saw 'Blue Jasmine', the new Woody Allen flick. I really liked it. If you can enjoy movies in which the characters are not likeable, then I would verymuch recommend it. Very good acting all around. And, although it is not a comedy, it has more humour than the trailers would lead you to believe.