To be disgusted that Dr Christian Jessen considers some kinds of child rape to be morally excusable on cultural grounds

[frankexchangeofviews]

I’ve just seen this exchange between ‘tv celebrity’ doctor Christian Jessen and an other Dr who is a spokesman for the Green Party on twitter. Are they saying what I think they are saying? Child’s marriage is recognised as a crime worldwide that needs to be stopped , not condoned on the basis of cultural relativism. Maybe they think african girls don’t mind as much???? Or are happy to be mothers at 13. I can’t get my head around it at all.

Since ‘paedophile’ means person that is attracted to children then yes, they are a paedophile. Whatever led upto that question doesn’t really matter, he still asked it.

Education is a key part in this. I do have to add @BarbarianMum your post comes across as victim blaming to me.

A grown man knows exactly what he is doing when he marries a 12 year old girl.

Well, Charleston , I suppose you could have been referring to women, although you don't actually say the word.
But you could also have been referring to girls.
Since the whole thread is about girls.

We all know it’s traditional within certain cultures, so is FGM. We know why they happen. Doesn’t make it ok

It doesn't, no, but good luck if you tried imposing this belief on a different culture ... the screams of "little colonialist" would be instant

Interesting piece here: www.ageofconsent.net/highest-and-lowest

Wtf?

"@TerfinUSA You’ve just condensed a conversation to fit your narrative"

Er, no. That's the entire exchange verbatim, follow it for yourself

twitter.com/DoctorChristian/status/711205104511295490

I can’t stand that fucker. He’s not on any specialist register with the GMC yet acts like a GP on tv

So we have two privileged white men, excusing other men for raping young black girls? How “woke”.

For those saying it’s their “culture”, it’s MALE culture. Has anyone asked the young victims if they’re ok with it, or does only the male perspective matter?

It doesn't, no, but good luck if you tried imposing this belief on a different culture ... the screams of "little colonialist" would be instant

Who gives a shit? Men always try and shut women up and get them to accept their oppression for some reason or another. It’s time we really stop caring so much about what they think.

It’s not that teenage marriage is their one big problem Barbarian it’s one of many. But we can’t tackle them all at once. This discussion focuses on early marriage as an international issue of itself just as other discussions focus in FGM.

As high as the general mortality rate is in West Africa - marrying young increases it nonetheless - childbirth, untreated STIs, cervical cancer etc

Child marriage is very high in India - but it’s falling fast. It’s a criminal offence there.

Essentially girls are seen as an economic burden and families are keen to shift the responsibility onto the husband.

But then again this also happens in America.

Barbarian I agree with your points about girls needing more opportunities and education, but we need to be careful saying they want to marry.

Of course they may want that. In my experience of being 13, 13 year old have some amazingly stupid ideas. At that age we do not always understand what is best for us, why we shouldnt drink, smoke, have sex. Its why we dont allow 13year olds to consent to sex.

The children do not have a choice. Because they willing to go along with it, doesnt excuse it in any way.

Barbarian lots of Maasai girls were keen to be cut as it brought status, even though it also meant the end to school and being ready for marriage.
But this doesn't mean it's right.
And it was only when one girl stood up to THAT that more girls could go on in education.

Use of teenagers and pre teens for sex happens in the UK as well.

Let's not be coy regarding the 'marriage' word shall we?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploitation_scandal

Also

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_child_sex_abuse_ring

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22522232

Uncomfortable truths about sexual exploitation of children in the UK

13 year olds want want their parents and culture and religion want for them.

I don't know why all these people go on twitter. It rarely does them any good and seems to lead to loads of trouble. It's best avoided.

We might want to include the women from those cultures in the discussion though - and not just that handful from the educated elite? And listen to them, and their lived experience, rather than telling them that they are victims/stupid/backward

A very worthwhile suggestion, though I wonder how their joining the discussion would be viewed by some of the menfolk. IME it can be hard enough to engage people in the UK, so it's not hard to see how such an initiative might be viewed elsewhere - especially if it was painted as "filthy westerners coming to corrupt our women"

That doesn't mean we should ignore the problem, of course, only that it's worth bearing in mind the possible reaction

Xenia Twitter might be handy if you want to shame a CEO into changing a policy in their company regarding the taste of a certain soft drink, but heaven forbid it's used to out professionals who should know better.

Perhaps a hold on tweets after 11pm should be mandatory - with thanks to Mary Berry for this suggestion.

It also lowers in some respects it - better access to food, esp protein, more likelyhood of access to medical treatment. And giving girls access to education absolutely does not protect against HIV in many communities, it increases their risk. The prob with the stats are they don't compare like with like - they compare the longevity of girls/women with access to education/medical care/choice to those that have none. Or look at how many 13 year olds die in childbirth but not how many die because nobody thinks they're worth a short course of chloroquine (32p a tablet).

^^All this sounds like I'm for early marriage, I'm not. But I despair at the sheer lack of understanding or interest there is about the reality of absolute poverty. So we can all have a righteous froth about evil men marrying girls with absolutely no understanding of why this happens or admission of our own role in it.

Well done @barbarian. But as one of the few posters on here who actually has lived insight into the culture you can be expected to be politely sidestepped while the keyboard warriors carry on.

The age of consent in vietnam is 18

Imagine vietnamese people coming to the uk to proclaim we are a nation of sexual perverts allowing adults to have sex with 16 year old children

I would say that it's best to just let other cultures and countries get on with their lives and worry about our own first.

But then I think about how we've let 10,000 young people be abused and raped in this country by "sex gangs" and realise that we're far more concerned about being or appearing to be politically correct then actually caring about our children.

And to me that indicates that the country is in fact, fucked.

The girls in my village (well the ones from 2 particular tribes anyway) wanted to marry. Because being the first or often second wife to an older man they had often never met was often better than the life they had. And because, for them, there were no alternatives. Obviously had their lives been less harsh, or had there been alternatives, they may have thought differently. But they weren't and there weren't.

So who gets to decide if something done in another culture should be allowed?