SuperDicq on Nostr: Stallman has the firm belief that teenagers are mentally the same as adults and ...

Stallman has the firm belief that teenagers are mentally the same as adults and treating them like children is infantilizing. This is a viewpoint that is very relatable for a lot of neurodiverse people, including me.

A lot of high functioning (not sure if that is the correct word) neurodiverse people are often said to be "very mature for their age" and that is true. As such my decision making and self sufficiency did not significantly change during puberty, as I could in fact already be considered "mentally adult" as a teenager. It's very likely that Stallman was once of also one those children who fits into this category because I can relate to a lot of arguments Stallman makes quite well.

For example I thought it was stupid that I had to wait until 18 to be allowed to vote. I was definitely already mentally mature enough to make an informed decision on politics way before that time, this is proven by the fact that most of the political ideals that I've had since being a young teenager have stayed pretty consistent with me throughout my adulthood.

I know people don't like to hear this, but you can apply the same reasoning to sexual consent. Some people are mentally mature enough to be able to make informed decisions when it comes to sexual consent before they reach their respective region's acceptable age of consent. They will then feel infantilized by the system and I think those feelings are valid.

There are also definitely cases where a relationship between a teenager and an adult work out completely fine. For example my father started dating a 15 year old teenager at age 27. This was definitely not considered socially acceptable at the time, but they have been together for nearly 25 years now.

Anyway back to the point, I am aware that age based laws and regulations exists because not every teenager is mentally mature enough like I was. We as a society decided to make some kind of cut-off point to protect the ones that aren't ready yet so teenagers do not make decisions that they regret or get taken advantage of.

I personally do not think this is the best solution, because I agree that this way of thinking does unfairly exclude mentally mature enough teenagers from a lot of things that life has to offer (like voting, driving a car, viewing certain types of media and having consensual sex).

I don't try to argue against this as harshly like Stallman does, because I consider the current solution imperfect but still adequate for the problems we're trying to solve.

Anyway back to the point I think Stallman, due to his neurodivergence, probably has an underdeveloped ability to look at situations like this from the viewpoint of other someone else's experience being a teenager.

He probably assumes that all teenagers are as mentally mature as he was back then and that's probably where most of his viewpoints come from.