The point about teens working also applies more broadly to how Westerners think about "sweat shops" (in quotes to represent a wide range of theoretically exploitative labor practices in developing countries). If you talk to people in those countries, they will not ask to be saved from exploitation by banning companies from employing them, which would make them even poorer. The tradeoff is very obvious to them and nobody is getting tricked into anything. Coerced by circumstance, sure; to fix that, you need to provide an actual better alternative, not just "can't" the thing you don't want to think/know about.
The counterargument would be that the sweatshop owners are unfairly taking advantage of someone's bad bargaining position; the sweatshop would still be profitable if the workers were paid more and/or had better and safer working conditions (so some Westerners claim) so the factory owners should be forced to let the workers claim more of the surplus generated by the combination of their labor and the factory owner's capital.
(I neither endorse nor anti-endorse this particular argument, including whether the relevant empirical claim is, in fact, true in the real world.)
In the specific case of mentally disabled people and sex: yes, it's certainly bad for the mentally disabled people, but given the relevant power imbalances, how can we actually tell the difference between freely given consent and exploitation via manipulation or coercion?
(Other categories of people legally unable to give consent because of power imbalances are prisoners that cannot legally consent to sex with a prison guard and soldiers who cannot legally consent to sex with superior officers.)
(The anger in the below response is not directed at *you*, Doug)
How about we leave them the fuck alone instead of considering it OUR business? The problem here is the one-two punch of "every bad thing must be prevented" + "I, who have no actual skin in the game, get to make decisions to make it so." It's a nefarious setting-of-the-zero-point that conveniently puts all the costs on the disabled person while delivering all of the power into the hands of the controlling agent.
The people who pat themselves on the back for forcibly depriving the disabled of what little agency and sovereignty they DO have, and who consider themselves angels for their self-appointed prison guardery, are among the worst of the worst.
"Eh, better to deny them a central aspect of the human experience FOREVER than to risk the mere *chance* that some bad thing might happen. What's that you say? Actually check? Nah, that's too much headache. I'd rather take enough responsibility to deprive them but not enough responsibility to actually navigate the situation. After all, then *I'd* be on the hook."
Huge "hey what the fuck gives you the right?" In a better world, such people would themselves be jailed.
I think in practice what happens a lot is that people with problems bad enough to cause long-term institutionalization often end up having sex with each other with the staff not enforcing rules against it, but I could be wrong.
The point about teens working also applies more broadly to how Westerners think about "sweat shops" (in quotes to represent a wide range of theoretically exploitative labor practices in developing countries). If you talk to people in those countries, they will not ask to be saved from exploitation by banning companies from employing them, which would make them even poorer. The tradeoff is very obvious to them and nobody is getting tricked into anything. Coerced by circumstance, sure; to fix that, you need to provide an actual better alternative, not just "can't" the thing you don't want to think/know about.
The counterargument would be that the sweatshop owners are unfairly taking advantage of someone's bad bargaining position; the sweatshop would still be profitable if the workers were paid more and/or had better and safer working conditions (so some Westerners claim) so the factory owners should be forced to let the workers claim more of the surplus generated by the combination of their labor and the factory owner's capital.
(I neither endorse nor anti-endorse this particular argument, including whether the relevant empirical claim is, in fact, true in the real world.)
In the specific case of mentally disabled people and sex: yes, it's certainly bad for the mentally disabled people, but given the relevant power imbalances, how can we actually tell the difference between freely given consent and exploitation via manipulation or coercion?
(Other categories of people legally unable to give consent because of power imbalances are prisoners that cannot legally consent to sex with a prison guard and soldiers who cannot legally consent to sex with superior officers.)
(The anger in the below response is not directed at *you*, Doug)
How about we leave them the fuck alone instead of considering it OUR business? The problem here is the one-two punch of "every bad thing must be prevented" + "I, who have no actual skin in the game, get to make decisions to make it so." It's a nefarious setting-of-the-zero-point that conveniently puts all the costs on the disabled person while delivering all of the power into the hands of the controlling agent.
The people who pat themselves on the back for forcibly depriving the disabled of what little agency and sovereignty they DO have, and who consider themselves angels for their self-appointed prison guardery, are among the worst of the worst.
"Eh, better to deny them a central aspect of the human experience FOREVER than to risk the mere *chance* that some bad thing might happen. What's that you say? Actually check? Nah, that's too much headache. I'd rather take enough responsibility to deprive them but not enough responsibility to actually navigate the situation. After all, then *I'd* be on the hook."
Huge "hey what the fuck gives you the right?" In a better world, such people would themselves be jailed.
Point taken. (And tone disclaimer acknowledged.)
I think in practice what happens a lot is that people with problems bad enough to cause long-term institutionalization often end up having sex with each other with the staff not enforcing rules against it, but I could be wrong.