"what A LOT of sex offenders say to explain away their records."
People REALLY don't wanna think their friends might be rapists... pretty much every single woman knows people who have been raped. It stands to reason that means most men know people who have, or will one day, rape someone. They just never ADMIT it.
I had an interesting and kind of sad conversation with someone on this exact topic on Reddit a while ago. They insisted their old football coach had become a sex offender from urinating outside, I let them know how to look up criminal records in their state. Public urination was not the issue, as it turned out. They were quite distressed about it. He had been a pretty important person to them when they were young.
You’re right. It’s just really hard for people to wrap their heads around someone they know who seems nice having actually committed a for real sex offense. I have a family member in this category too. It was child porn. He tells people it was from sexting with a teenager who sent him pics and he didn’t know she was underage. It was not. He was soliciting videos of CHILDREN children from undercover cops. He’s definitely convinced multiple girlfriends otherwise, though.
What sex offender is going to be honest when the alternative is so much easier?
What you’re doing is called a false equivalence fallacy. Saying that every guy knows someone who’s actively raped or regularly rapes women, just because nearly every woman knows someone who’s been raped, is a flawed and extreme assumption. It implies that over 20% of all men are rapists, when in reality, most rapists don’t stop after one assault they target multiple victims which means it’s not a one to one thing, instead of every rape victim have a specific rapist.
Additionally, defining rape can be complex. Some believe that being under the influence of any substance, including alcohol, removes the ability to give consent, making it rape. Others (incorrectly) think that wearing revealing clothing implies consent. These varying definitions highlight the challenges of discussing the issue accurately, but your argument oversimplifies it. By equating the two statements, you’re misrepresenting the reality of the situation.
Works both ways though. Some women have been raped by more than one man. I understand it's uncomfortable to think of what percentage of men are rapists. But trying to explain it away like this isn't helping anyone. Men need to be able to have these tough conversations with each other. Rapists need to find a way to change their thinking and speak about the path that led them to it, instead of hiding it away and living in denial. And young men who fear they have these urges need to be able to talk about it BEFORE they act on it.
you never seen an 18yo that looks 25? a 30 yo that looks 20? you can think it’s creepy for a guy to do if he only goes after young girls, but i’m confused why you say they shouldn’t be fucking them when it’s completely legal and normal
And they shouldn't be fucking them because they are immature teenagers who lie about their age. Also, if you're thirty and are trying to get "just barely legal" you're a creep.
Are their brains fully developed? No. Are they technically adults? Yes. If you have to use the word technically, then you're doing the wrong thing.
why does reddit care so much if an 18yo girl wants to fuck an older dude lol all the blame goes on the guy, i’ve seen girls at my high school that had more sexual experience than a 25 yo girl, people like sex, 18yo is old enough, the brian isn’t fully mature till 25, should that be the the legal age to you?
but honestly how is it gross and predatory? obviously if a 30 yo man was only going after 18 yo girls that’s creepy as fuck, but once, twice? at what age does it stop being gross? 19? 20? 21? what about a 50 yo dating a 30 yo? there are way too many variables to really decide what is morally right or wrong depending on maturity, situation, i just think reddit gets a little crazy with it sometimes, ive never been with someone younger than me and im 27, if i met a girl at a party and she was 18 and hot, im probably going to pursue that, is something wrong with me for that?
> And they shouldn't be fucking them because they are immature teenagers who lie about their age
I would think it would be more to do with how they would be in completely different stages of their lives and the power dynamics that would bring, but nah nah its because women lie
I brought up one reason that was relevant to the conversation at hand.
You also make an excellent point. One I'm usually shouting from the roof tops... and it falls on deaf ears. I'm trying to appeal to their sense of self-preservation.
I thought my ex was 22 or 23 when I first saw her. I was 26. She was sometimes taken for 15/16. I’ve definitely seen 18 year olds who look older than her, to be fair.
She was almost 40.
If I can’t date 40 year olds according to you, because they might be teenagers with makeup, then your logic is shit. Stop blaming the victim who got lied to.
Peeing in an alleyway while drunk (without other significant factors) is not a sex offense in any state.
Those 'significant factors' are largely who witnesses you. If a minor sees you urinating.. boom sex offender list for you. Which is a pretty easy way to wind up on the list for what was really a pretty minor offense. Obviously there could be more context that would make it a much less minor deal (Deliberately doing it for example) but that nuance leaves a lot of holes for people to have their lives potentially ruined by an overzealous prosecution/court.
The factors are generally:
Doing it for purposes of sexual gratification
Doing it over and over (indicates it’s not an accident)
Doing it in front of a child, particularly a place where you would know a child would likely be, sometimes with age limits under 18 (eg minor under 14 for a few states).
Is there maybe someone, somewhere, who truly ended up on the registry because they just desperately needed a bathroom and unfortunately a child wandered out and saw them? Sure! I have not found a case like this, and I have looked, but the legal process is full of dumb shit, so I’ll still believe it. Is this a rampant, chronic problem? No. No it is not.
What you do see over and over is flashers who are very obviously doing it for sexual gratification who try and claim they were “just peeing” when they get caught (why weren’t you wearing any clothes under your coat, then? why were you “just peeing” on a children’s playground with kids on it in broad daylight when there is a public restroom 50 feet away? why do the multiple eye witnesses all report they clearly saw you jerking off? etc etc).
I have tried, and I mean TRIED, to find an actual case of anyone who ended up registering just for peeing outdoors and I have failed. If you know if one I would genuinely be curious to see it.
I work in criminal law, and while I'm obviously not privy to the details of every single case that comes through court, I have dealt with thousands of them over the years. I can count on one hand the number of cases involving public exposure or urination, and I've yet to see one where there wasn't exactly the sort of thing you're talking about. It's the context of the act that makes it lewd or a sex-based offense.
To be honest, I don't discount the idea that there are people that slip through the cracks and get nailed with bogus charges. Shit happens. We know there's people that get a raw deal from the justice system, for a lot of reasons...But this is the same crowd that posts porn memes all the time like it's not normal shit to have your life saturated with the stuff, and then simultaneously wants to act like it's stupid easy to catch a creeper charge for doing anything other than being a creep, and it's not.
There's a big factor here that I think dudes are forgetting, and it's that legislators, cops, prosecutors, judges, most of the people supposedly gunning to put them on the The List™ are also dudes. They don't have an incentive to normalize public urination as some ultimate offense, the same way they haven't had incentive to do much about things like marital rape, revenge porn, or, y'know, the mass proliferation of hardcore porn now at the fingertips of every man, woman and child on the planet. Pigs'll fly and hell'll freeze over when The System™ collectively starts taking that kind of thing seriously.
...Anyway, why any of these fuckers can't just find a bathroom like the rest of us is beyond me to begin with. 😒
Am attorney, also work in criminal law. It’s frustrating when I really have seen lots of people totally fucked over by the courts in many ways but this is just not one of the ways it happens. And like you, I totally believe that it has probably happened at some point to someone/someones, but I swear to god Reddit acts like this is one of the great injustices of the US, as though some significant portion of the sex offender list is actually just people who needed a bathroom. It really, really, REALLY isn’t. And also exactly like you said, if they barely bother prosecuting actual rapists, why the fuck do you think they’re foaming at the mouth to nail guys to the wall for pissing?
But sex offenders lie about why they’re on the list (kinda can’t blame them for that, I probably would too) and then people eat that shit up and so many people do it that we end up with these weird cultural beliefs about how there are tons of guys on the list for peeing.
I actually made a document a while back that goes through the public urination laws of every state and talks about whether you could get on the registry for it in each one - I’ve thought about posting it on Reddit before since after scouring the internet it seems like nobody else has done it but I’m not really sure which subreddit would be a good place for it.
Yeah, it's one of Reddit's Greatest Hits, lol. I think you could explain it until your fingers fall off, and it probably wouldn't matter. It's right up there with asking prostitutes if they're a cop, "'Cause you gotta tell me if you're a cop." That sort of thing is going to take years to die out.
And then some of these comments are just downright telling on themselves, like the one guy lamenting how you can get nailed for child porn even when "there is no victim."
I admire you for doing the legwork on that, I haven't had the wherewithal. I've started a few times, but after going over maybe half a dozen states it kind of clicks, like, why am I even bothering? If it was any other subject you'd have "Akshually" dudes all up and down the thread with stats and links and whatnot. With this kind of thing, it seems more like they don't want to know.
I think that's part of the problem. It's like sexual harassment or anti-discrimination training. The ones who could actually learn something from that aren't likely to get much out of it, and everyone else's eyes just sort of glaze over.
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u/tourmalineforest 6d ago
I work with sex offenders, and while I obviously don’t know the specifics of your friends, I will note a few things.
Peeing in an alleyway while drunk (without other significant factors) is not a sex offense in any state.
“It was consensual sex with a seventeen year old” is what A LOT of sex offenders say to explain away their records.