Embed Notice

This is necessary context, please read it first
https://plma.plus.st/notice/AMjg5hfCbcMb1DwaYK

@kaia@brotka.st suggested that she give @nyla@brotka.st a voice on her server, brotka.st, because I have no control over it. We went through a multi-step verification process to prove to Kaia I do not own that account; what that account says are Nyla's own words. We connected Nyla's previous fedi profile to a GitHub profile that includes commits from before we started dating with "Signed-off-by: {email address}" trailers. Kaia sent the account credentials to that address and Nyla replied from it, further confirming its authenticity. Please read their posts before continuing.

Kaia's verification post:
https://brotka.st/notice/AMlAPSNRFzcWETcuwq

Nyla's split posts:
https://brotka.st/notice/AMlER681Lc2ncpS9nk
https://brotka.st/notice/AMlESH2CHhlFjuI2MK

Now for my posts.

When we first started talking on fedi, I was not aware of her age. She was a developer of some software I was using and had expressed interest in assisting me if I had any issues. She was very helpful and kind and patient. After a little while, she asked if there was somewhere off-fedi that we could chat because DMs were awkward, so we moved the conversation to Telegram. She immediately enabled auto-deleting messages with a week-long retention period, and at the time, I didn't think anything of it; she's very privacy- and security-minded and it makes sense that she wouldn't want messages to stick around. Later on, we moved to XMPP.

When she mentioned that she was 16, I immediately paused and said we needed to talk about that. After a long, multi-day discussion, we decided to continue with the relationship. Prior to this, we had already established that there was no chance of doing anything physical for a couple of years and I didn't mind waiting, so legal ages of consent for sexual activity were moot. However, as the fediblock post addresses age of consent, I will too. In my state, it's 16. In her state, it's 18. If we had been together physically in my state, it would have been completely legal. If it had happened in her state, it would not. But again, legality of physical sexual activity is a moot point because nothing physical occurred. The actual issues at hand are the cultural moral and ethical concerns with a 22-year-old dating a 16-year-old and the inherent relational power imbalance.