Is a relationship with a mentally challenged person "child sex abuse"?

[SimonDoom]

In Australia it would depend on whether they were being held under various Mental Health Acts. People living in the community can also be under the MHActs so it's not entirely cut and dry. We are talking floridly psychotic or in a full-blown manic phase, not the more common anxiety and depression. I am one who believes the Act is overused around here and am all for giving clients agency.

I can see the inherent sexism around the issue though posted by the OP. Not sure if anyone else has read Colleen McCullough's 'Tim', a story about a middle aged woman who falls in love with the 24yo gardener with an intellectual disability.

Tim was the movie I was thinking about when I wrote my post earlier in this thread.

I think it would be weird and extraordinarily judgmental to say that it would be wrong to write, say, a more explicitly erotic story along the lines of Tim, which was a romance and was not at all exploitative.

 

[RetroFan]

"Aspies" are vulnerable to exploitation, though. It's very commonly associated with social naiveté and being overly trusting, exacerbated by the fact that many autistic people have been raised with the idea that it's more important to appease other people than to protect our own boundaries. https://researchautism.org/too-nice-avoiding-the-traps-of-exploitation-and-manipulation/

For that matter, even purely physical issues like CF can present a risk of exploitation - e.g. if she's dependent on him for medical insurance, she may not feel free to say no.

Virtually every relationship has some degree of power imbalance that could result in exploitation. It comes down to difficult questions of "how vulnerable is too vulnerable?" and a broad-brush label like "Asperger Syndrome"* or "Down Syndrome" isn't enough information to answer that question.

*Side note: "Asperger Syndrome" no longer exists as a diagnosis. Under DSM-IV, AS was its own category, separate from classical autism, but in DSM-V they were merged into "Autism Spectrum Disorder" (sic). Some people still self-describe as Aspies, but others (including myself) have shifted towards just using "autistic", either because we feel that the distinction is unhelpful (cf. my comments earlier on the mild/severe distinction) or because we don't want to be named for a guy who collaborated in the systematic murder of autistic people.

It's the fact that Asperger's/High Functioning Autism people are at risk of exploitation due to struggles with understanding how other people think and their motivation that would make me hesitant to use this in an erotic story.

There was a family who lived up the road from me some years ago with a son and two daughters and one of the daughters - a very pretty girl - had Asperger's syndrome. She couldn't read people properly, was very literal and with little concept of understanding other people's motivations, was very naive and vulnerable. The family always had to be on the watch for unscrupulous boys who would be only too willing to take advantage of her.

Leaving conditions like autism aside, there's lots of subjects that can be okay when played one way, but in reverse is not so okay. Gender would be the main one. One of my post popular stories is 'Mandy Makes A Man of Mark' where a 36-year-old single mother seduces the 18-year-old son of the neighbours. Now flip the genders and have a 36-year-old man seducing an 18-year-old girl. This premise would not be so well received, and many would find it creepy and uncomfortable.

 

[SisterJezabel]

Leaving conditions like autism aside, there's lots of subjects that can be okay when played one way, but in reverse is not so okay. Gender would be the main one. One of my post popular stories is 'Mandy Makes A Man of Mark' where a 36-year-old single mother seduces the 18-year-old son of the neighbours. Now flip the genders and have a 36-year-old man seducing an 18-year-old girl. This premise would not be so well received, and many would find it creepy and uncomfortable.

Have you checked out the Mature section recently? So many babysitter/young daughter next door/innocent 18yo and middle aged (and older men!)

 

[Bramblethorn]

It's the fact that Asperger's/High Functioning Autism people are at risk of exploitation due to struggles with understanding how other people think and their motivation that would make me hesitant to use this in an erotic story.

It can be an issue, but then so are age-gap relationships, boss-employer relationships, and a lot of other things that people explore all the time. "How do I handle this ethically?" can be interesting story fodder in itself. It's something I've been exploring in my current series - the narrator starts out as a tutor to an autistic girl in high school, she becomes a kind of mentor and protector, but over time the dynamic between them changes and becomes more equal as the girl grows up.

Leaving conditions like autism aside, there's lots of subjects that can be okay when played one way, but in reverse is not so okay. Gender would be the main one. One of my post popular stories is 'Mandy Makes A Man of Mark' where a 36-year-old single mother seduces the 18-year-old son of the neighbours. Now flip the genders and have a 36-year-old man seducing an 18-year-old girl. This premise would not be so well received, and many would find it creepy and uncomfortable.

FWIW, I would be a lot more comfortable with the story the OP's outlined if it was the young DS guy telling his side of things.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I don't want to make any inappropriate observations about your situation, but I'll note that I would never have guessed that you are autistic from your writing.

It's a major theme in "Anjali's Red Scarf".

The person I refer to, also, is a very good writer, and I don't think anyone would guess that this person is autistic judging from the writing alone. I wonder whether you think that writing is a particularly good avenue for an autistic person to pursue as a way of communicating with the world in a way that eliminates some of the communication miscues that occur in person-to-person communication.

For me, writing has a couple of big positives: no body language (other than what we intentionally add , and (usually) asynchronous, so I can take time to fuss with the wording - I often need a while to collect my thoughts. But it does take a lot of time; there's a reason why my best pace for stories here was about 200 words/day. My reply to EoN above probably took an hour or two to compose.

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

Probably every autistic person will give a different answer to this; I'm replying for myself and don't speak for everybody...

That was tremendously helpful. I think the social mode of disability is very important as a perspective, despite its limitations. But, the world of intelligent spoons? That's perfect! I always enjoy an analogy, and that one is particularly good, not to mention entertaining.

Terminology is always problematic. "Disorder," "disability," "deficit" and terms shaded by norm-conformative judgment. On the other hand, something like "differently abled," ignores the difficulties faced by people with the condition. To my ear, it sounds a bit condescending. I'd be happy to use whatever term is referred by the people to whom it's applied, but there's understandably no consensus on that either. It's an example of a particularly pernicious cycle of attitude shaping language, shaping attitude.

Even among neurotypical people (new vocabulary phrase for me!), the focus on semantic content varies a great deal and can be a big source of frustration. Perhaps it's like a tiny peephole view of the panorama of potential frustrations for someone whose brain doesn't automatically shade language with intent.

I wonder if the "appropriate" listening behavior is something that also varies a great deal, even among neurotypical people. Personally, I prefer not to make eye contact while listening. It's uncomfortable, distracting, and unnecessarily fatiguing. I also prefer that people don't look at me while they're listening - maybe so I don't have to look at them while I talk? Not sure why that is. As you are all too aware, it doesn't really matter what I want. I'm going to have to artificially maintain eye contact or people will think I'm not listening. I can't very well tell people not to look at me when I talk to them. Nobody can tell I'm uncomfortable with it, which makes me wonder how many other people are uncomfortable with it. Maybe less people prefer full-facing direct eye contact than is generally realized.

You've offered a lot to think about and it's very helpful. It's not easy to understand a brain that operates one way, using a brain that operates another way.

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

...My reply to EoN above probably took an hour or two to compose.

I'll try to make very good use of the investment.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

This is an absurd interpretation of what I wrote.

If my daughter truly had the mental capacity of a child, of course that would bother me.

But it's not "child sex abuse." She's not a child; she's an adult with a developmental disability. Sex with her would not be statutory rape or pedophilia. It would be wrong, but it's not legally the same thing as sex with a child.

And, regardless, that has nothing to do with whether the stories should be allowed. I believe they should be, and I see no good reason why Literotica should ban them UNLESS it's one of those stories as Lovecraft described where the "over 18" designation is a fig leaf and it's for all intents and purposes a true underage story.

A story about a 40 year old man with a child's mental capacity would not be a story about a child, for erotic purposes.

Well, it is just my opinion, but it's wrong and illegal to have sex with someone who isn't competent enough to consent. Sex with a woman who is drunk is illegal as she doesn't have the capacity to consent. The same goes for those with mental disabilities.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

I don't think this necessarily has to be the case. Ever read 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'? It's been more than 20 years ago for me, but if I remember well, there was one part about a prostitute and a psychiatric patient, and I don't remember being appalled, when reading it.

Have you changed your opinion since Laurel's post? The wording she mentions leads me to believe it was the author's intent was to skirt the under age thing.

 

[SimonDoom]

Well, it is just my opinion, but it's wrong and illegal to have sex with someone who isn't competent enough to consent. Sex with a woman who is drunk is illegal as she doesn't have the capacity to consent. The same goes for those with mental disabilities.

Sex with a woman who is drunk is not illegal. I don't think any state in the United States says that. If that were true, a huge percent of the sex that happens in this country would be illegal.

It is not true that being somewhat drunk renders one unable to give consent.

It is true that if someone is SO drunk that they do not know what they are doing, and someone takes advantage of that fact and has sex with them, an illegal act may have happened because of the lack of consent.

It's not either/or, just as with people with mental disabilities it's not either/or. It's on a sliding scale. One can have some degree of disability and still be able to consent to sex. This is the reality, just as it is reality that people get buzzed from drinking and have sex and it's not illegal.

We should be careful about making sweeping statements about categories of people and human behavior and forming sweeping rules, because those sweeping rules often are based on erroneous assumptions about people.

 

[BelleCanzuto]

My comment was a general one, not about the story of the OP. With the limited info I have, I still think that the story of the OP is a bad idea, but I shouldn't judge before I know more about it. But I disagree that it looks like skirting the under age rules; my problems (with the story I haven't seen yet) are more in line with taking advantage of mentally disabled (not sure about this description) people. Even when it's made clear that the boy/man was 19 years old, I still wouldn't consider it a good idea.

What I was trying to express is that I don't automatically consider sex with mentally disabled people to be abuse.

This is Laurel's response:

Hello, and I hope you and yours are well.

Nowhere within the body of the story in question do you list the male's age. In the first paragraph, he is described as "mentally challenged boy in our neighbourhood who had just Became mature" - suggesting a person going through puberty. In the next few paragraphs, he is referred to as "a good boy" and "their child".

Additionally, the story is just under 600 words long. Stories must be 750+ words long, excluding author's notes.

If you have any other questions, please contact me via Private Message.

Thanks again, and take care.

So, clearly, she hadn't even considered the developmental disability aspect when she rejected it.
Given the notes she made, she'd reject *any* story with these problems.

 

[SimonDoom]

That's correct; Laurel 's objection seems to be about the indications she'd picked up that the boy was under age. And the story length. According to Lit's rules, such stories are always rejected. Nothing new. The way I read Laurel 's comment is, that development disability isn't necessarily a reason to reject a story.

That's how I read her comment as well.

 

[yukonnights]

That's correct; Laurel's objection seems to be about the indications she'd picked up that the boy was under age. And the story length. According to Lit's rules, such stories are always rejected. Nothing new. The way I read Laurel 's comment is, that development disability isn't necessarily a reason to reject a story.

I could even read in it that the story would be accepted if the author deals with those issues. I wouldn't necessarily support that decision, but it's Laurel's site.

I'm onboard with both statements. My concern about writing a story like this, even if it passes muster on the age issue, is: It would take a person who is well educated in the nuances and scientific facts about mental development issues to properly write such a story. Just the shared information on this thread makes it clear that it's not so simple for a person without such education to have the knowledge to do it correctly.

That said, such a story written by someone who does have the education and background could be a valuable contribution to the world. A sensitive depiction of the human need for intimacy could probably educate as well as entertain.

This is pretty much the same for all stories; If you don't know what your writing about…

 

[kissedcherry]

Sex with mentally challenged people

[Personal attacks and/or accusations/insults against other Literotica authors and trolling prohibited per our AH Forum Rules]

 

[KeithD]

Banning all sex for mentally challenged people would be hard on liberals. They are already frustrated and uptight. Depriving them of sex would just make them more crazy.

A. Take this stuff to the political board, not here.

B. Banning all sex for mentally challenged people would be unreasonably hard on the mentally challenged people. These are waters that need to be navigated, not avoided altogether.

 

[SimonDoom]

B. Banning all sex for mentally challenged people would be unreasonably hard on the mentally challenged people. These are waters that need to be navigated, not avoided altogether.

Agreed.

The notion that stories about this subject matter are not "appropriate" for Literotica and should be removed seems totally misguided to me for exactly this reason.

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

Agreed.

The notion that stories about this subject matter are not "appropriate" for Literotica and should be removed seems totally misguided to me for exactly this reason.

First of all, at least in the United States, nobody has banned or is discussing banning mentally challenged people from having sex. That's not a real thing to hook an argument to.

Second, since nobody is suggesting such a ban, there's no need to "navigate" the subject unless you're implying that it should be considered.

Third, if such a ban were indeed under consideration, I really don't think erotic stories are a medium for discussion of such a serious and complicated issue. Erotic stories cannot be bent into shape for every conceivable purpose, nor can every issue be fashioned into an argument for a lack of restrictions on writing. Both discussions suffer when the two are muddled.

 

[SimonDoom]

First of all, at least in the United States, nobody has banned or is discussing banning mentally challenged people from having sex. That's not a real thing to hook an argument to.

Second, since nobody is suggesting such a ban, there's no need to "navigate" the subject unless you're implying that it should be considered.

Third, if such a ban were indeed under consideration, I really don't think erotic stories are a medium for discussion of such a serious and complicated issue. Erotic stories cannot be bent into shape for every conceivable purpose, nor can every issue be fashioned into an argument for a lack of restrictions on writing. Both discussions suffer when the two are muddled.

People within the scope of this thread have said or suggested that a mentally challenged person cannot consent to sex. This isn't about US law. This is about people in here making empirical assumptions about the world "out there" -- wrong ones, I think -- and using those assumptions to limit what people should be able to write about "in here." I've been engaging in these forums for about three and a half years, and I've seen these kinds of arguments made time and again, with regard to multiple categories of stories (including nonconsent stories, which you write), and as far as I can tell they are never well founded and nobody who makes these assumptions wants to be bothered to defend them in a rigorous way.

The real argument, although it's never phrased this way, is, "This bothers me, and I wish Literotica wouldn't allow it."

People have suggested that because a mentally challenged person cannot consent to sex, or can be exploited, that this is not an appropriate subject for Literotica stories.

I believe all of this is completely and totally misguided and wrong. I believe erotic stories are, absolutely, 100%, an appropriate medium for whatever agenda an erotic story writer wants to write about, and it's nobody's place to tell that erotic story author otherwise. I believe that Literotica would be doing itself, and its readers, a significant disservice if it took a different attitude. Content restrictions should be interpreted narrowly, and outside these very narrow restrictions Laurel should allow the maximum possible range of expression for Literotica authors. My sense is that, while the restrictions sometimes get enforced in an uneven manner, she more or less agrees with that, and I applaud her for that.

There is no limit whatsoever to the human imagination, and to the shapes into which erotic stories can be bent for whatever purpose. I guess you believe otherwise, but you haven't explained why, other than making extremely vague -- and, I believe,empirically unsound -- arguments that people can be offended or exploited or that something bad might happen, so responsibility requires that we rein these stories in. I don't agree.

 

[KeithD]

People within the scope of this thread have said or suggested that a mentally challenged person cannot consent to sex . . .

I agree with this post. I think there's a sliding scale from "yes this particular individual can" down that can only be determined in the specific story, not in some sort of sweeping aggregate--and is judged by the submissions editor.

Over the last couple of weeks I've seen several sweeps through here by morality police on what one should/should not write on Literotica. I think they are out of place here. Laurel determines what can be posted to the Literotica file, anything she lets through has a readership, and those who don't like that topic/treatment could just read/write in some other aspect of Literotica--or chose not to participate on the site. There are a couple of very popular categories here I'd prefer not to see written, but they are accepted here, and I can just go elsewhere in the file.

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

People within the scope of this thread have said or suggested that a mentally challenged person cannot consent to sex. This isn't about US law. This is about people in here making empirical assumptions about the world "out there" -- wrong ones, I think -- and using those assumptions to limit what people should be able to write about "in here." I've been engaging in these forums for about three and a half years, and I've seen these kinds of arguments made time and again, with regard to multiple categories of stories (including nonconsent stories, which you write), and as far as I can tell they are never well founded and nobody who makes these assumptions wants to be bothered to defend them in a rigorous way.

The real argument, although it's never phrased this way, is, "This bothers me, and I wish Literotica wouldn't allow it."

People have suggested that because a mentally challenged person cannot consent to sex, or can be exploited, that this is not an appropriate subject for Literotica stories.

I believe all of this is completely and totally misguided and wrong. I believe erotic stories are, absolutely, 100%, an appropriate medium for whatever agenda an erotic story writer wants to write about, and it's nobody's place to tell that erotic story author otherwise. I believe that Literotica would be doing itself, and its readers, a significant disservice if it took a different attitude. Content restrictions should be interpreted narrowly, and outside these very narrow restrictions Laurel should allow the maximum possible range of expression for Literotica authors. My sense is that, while the restrictions sometimes get enforced in an uneven manner, she more or less agrees with that, and I applaud her for that.

There is no limit whatsoever to the human imagination, and to the shapes into which erotic stories can be bent for whatever purpose. I guess you believe otherwise, but you haven't explained why, other than making extremely vague -- and, I believe,empirically unsound -- arguments that people can be offended or exploited or that something bad might happen, so responsibility requires that we rein these stories in. I don't agree.

"Banned" has a very specific meaning, and it's a legal one. Someone in this thread arguing that a mentally challenged person cannot consent does not provide the basis for a ban or a discussion of a ban. The term "mentally challenged" here, which is obviously intended to be sensitive, is very problematic. It doesn't have a specific meaning. Only an intellectually disabled person who meets certain objective criteria (although measurement of those criteria can be somewhat subjective) can be incompetent to give consent.

You can't use a purely legal construct (banning) and then reasonably say it's not a legal issue. Frame the issue to make the argument you want to make. What you've done is adopt someone else's misstatement of fact and supported it with arguments related to the point you want to make. The casualty, for everyone who reads this and thinks there is a ban on "mentally challenged" people having sex, is the truth. You and I disagree on fundamental issues, but I would think that we can agree that a discussion or even an argument has to rely on truth and accuracy. I'm not suggesting you set out to mislead anyone, but when you adopted that inaccurate statement and its implications to support your argument, you contaminated the point you meant to make.

That's what my points 1 and 2 were about.

Point 3 is what I think you actually want to address. The dig about the story category I write in is beneath you. If you actually read my stories, you'd realize that they are not non-consent. They are in the non-consent/reluctance category. I could have submitted them in another category and I believe they would have been accepted there. I choose to place them in the non-con/reluctance category because I believe it is responsible to place anything that might be a trigger to someone's bad experiences safely in a category where they will not come across it by mistake. If you're looking for hypocrisy from me, I'm sure you can find some somewhere since I am quite fallible, but you're going to have to try much harder than that, and you're going to have to do your homework.

The category I write in has nothing to do with your point. Your point is that the subject matter of my writing should be unrestricted. Yet, you'd like to attack me, rather than my argument, by pointing to the category I write in. Since I took some time clarifying the actual nature of the stories I've written, I should also say that I'm not disavowing the non-con part of the non-con/reluctance category. It would be pointless to go into the value of the category here because that's not really what your argument is about. Should you ever want to have that discussion, I'll be happy to do so.

There is a huge distinction between the non-con category and writing about sex with a person with an intellectual disability that renders them incapable of consent, and I don't think I've quite managed to communicate that to you in previous attempts. The reason we can all, or practically all, agree that erotic stories about children should not be allowed, regardless of whether they are legal in the country of the author's origin and regardless of the platform, is that children are a protected class of people. They are protected because we as a society recognize their vulnerability and our responsibility to protect them. People with intellectual disabilities severe enough to render them incapable of consent are also a protected group that society deems vulnerable and for which society recognizes a special responsibility of protection.

I'm not saying that intellectually disabled adults are children. That's far too complicated a medical issue for me to hold forth on. What I'm saying is that it is a similarly protected status. Adults without such disabilities neither benefit from the advantages of nor suffer the restrictions of those heightened protections. That's why comparing restrictions designed to protect a group with special protections (the severely intellectually disabled) cannot fairly be compared to restrictions on a subject matter (rape or dubious consent of adults, or depending how far you want to push the argument, reluctance). They aren't analogous and the don't operate on similar principles.

You're already familiar with my response to your argument that someone has to show actual harm in order for you to consider considering something a problem. You don't have to see a pedestrian get hit by a car to understand the potential for a car to injure a pedestrian. It's also not entirely true that nobody has told you how some of these things can hurt people. There was one particular issue where I explained to you exactly what the problem was and how I knew it was a problem.
Of course I didn't give you victim names.

But you've heard those arguments before. I'll ask a different question instead. If I could prove to your 100 percent satisfaction that someone suffered real harm as a result of a story about sex with an intellectually disabled person, would it make a difference to you? If I could prove to your 100 percent satisfaction that someone suffered a real harm as a result of some of the other issues you pull into the freedom-to-publish-on-Lit argument, treatment of transexual gender identity, for example, would it make a difference to you?

The statement that "There is no limit whatsoever to the human imagination, and to the shapes into which erotic stories can be bent for whatever purpose" is a high-flown statement that sounds good and is mostly true. It's also taken badly out of context. I was referring to shoehorning every conceivable type of erotic fiction into an argument for freedom to publish on Lit. My point is that when you do that, you've weakened the quality of the discourse about the subject matter and the quality of the discourse about your issue - the freedom to publish on Lit.

Poking at the imagination I use or the imaginative purposes to which I put my stories is probably something you should attempt only if you have read them. I'll give you a hint, though. Mine are not about stats. Nor is artistic betterment.

I seriously doubt that this is the last time we'll disagree on whether or not somebody should publish or host a type of story. I'd think we ought to be able to confine ourselves to the facts when we have the discussion, though.

 

[Bramblethorn]

First of all, at least in the United States, nobody has banned or is discussing banning mentally challenged people from having sex. That's not a real thing to hook an argument to.

Not all mentally challenged people, but there certainly are laws about the capacity of intellectually disabled people to consent to sex: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_abuse_and_intellectual_disability#Capacity_to_consent

 

[DarkPleasures]

It can be criminal if there's a question of ability to consent.

Exactly.

 

[Enchantment_of_Nyx]

Not all mentally challenged people, but there certainly are laws about the capacity of intellectually disabled people to consent to sex: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_abuse_and_intellectual_disability#Capacity_to_consent

There are, and that's a big part of my point. It is a legal construct, and it's a construct that depends on identify the subject correctly. The law only places restrictions in the case of people whose intellectual disabilities meet the criteria of a specific test. I actually addressed some of those laws briefly in another post, but they vary from state to state, and different states have different definitions, but they do all have actual definitions, and there's no blanket "ban" on mentally challenged people having sex. Someone should not walk away from this thread thinking that there is a ban on mentally challenged people having sex.

There's a Constitutional component to this argument that's addressed fairly well here: https://socialchangenyu.com/review/to-the-right-to-intimacy-and-beyond-a-constitutional-argument-for-the-right-to-sex-in-mental-health-facilities/ The article is about people in mental health institutions, but it's about the principle of the right to sex and how that balances against the necessity of requiring capacity to consent.

 

[lovecraft68]

[Discussions promoting and/or accusations involving pedophilia and/or child sex abuse - or advocating under-18-year-old sexuality - prohibited per our forum guidelines.]

 

[shewantsmore]

The whole idea is a minefield of problems, surely its not worth it.. The best option and simplist is just dont do it