Kids get toy cars before they're old enough to drive, toy phones before they're old enough to get a cell phone account, toy ovens before they're old enough to play with fire and combustible gasses and even toy guns before they're too young to get a hunting license. So why can't teenagers who are old enough to engage in sexual activity get their hands on a few sex toys?
Seems kind-of fucked up when you consider that the legal age for consensual sex is under 18 in most places, but to enter a sex toy shop one needs to be at least that age. (Interesting aside: the legal age of sexual consent in Canada is 16 while the legal age for anal sexual consent is 18.)
Says one columnist in Canada:
"It sends a clear message to young people: Having sex with someone else is acceptable, but exploring your own body by masturbating with anything more than your own two hands is not."
Though the sale of sex toys is a states issue here in the United States, it's pretty much the same situation: it's legal to have sex at 17, it's just not legal to buy sex toys.
We can't begin to know the laws regulating the sale of sex toys to minors (or to now one, ahem, Alabama) in each state. But our friendly neighbors to the north have no laws on the books restricting the sale of sex toys, sold as “adult novelty items,” to anyone under the age of 18, yet stores will only allow those 18 and over to enter.
“I don’t think it’s an intentional double standard… They think they’re following the rules, is my hunch,” says Carlyle Jansen, owner of Good for Her.
Jansen says her understanding of the law restricts the sale of pornographic imagery in any medium to minors. “But sex toys, there don’t seem to be any regulations around who can purchase those and not. For example we allow people to bring their kids into the store or some people will come in and buy their daughter or son their first vibrator.
“I think the double standard comes out of the fact that we sort of ignore youth.”
So maybe that's why they're all turning up with STDs and/or babies in them?
[XTRA: Teens get shaft in struggle for sex toys]
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