If the legal age of consent in a given country is 10 (for example), that doesn’t mean 10 year old girls are more mature in that country. Even in Japan, which famously starts school earlier and high school is optional, where at that age boys and girls can opt to enter the work force and high schools are applied to like university and college in the UK and US, that doesn’t mean the young lady is mature enough to consent to sex with a man twice her age. It just means that hypothetical country lacks the morals in its governance to protect young women better.
So a higher age is more moral? We should ban sex until what 25 maybe when the brain is fully developed? And does this only count for women in your morality guide?
Clearly 10-yo’s are too young and any situation with significant power inequality dynamics are immoral, but picking acceptable ages and situations are always going to be somewhat arbitrary. The West seems to be rather hung up on sex, and who can fuck whom, maybe we should just chill out a bit more?
Yeah I do agree that there’s a bit of an arbitrary hangup on age specifically, but that’s simply because some sort of line has to be drawn to protect people who are incapable of protecting themselves.
There will always be people who are more or less mature (mentally). Some will never be mature enough to understand consent entirely, whilst others can be shockingly adult for their age.
If I were to design a system it’d probably be a sliding scale. Something like a 2 yr upward age gap 12-13, 3 yr 14-17 and then free for all from the age of majority. Even though I personally would find some relationships icky, at some point people have to be “adult” enough to be responsible for themselves.
In my country the age of consent is 15. Doesn’t make dating teens socially acceptable for adults though.
And it’s hard to get a better proxy for maturity than age without opening the door back up for eugenics. Historically a lot of people have been sterilized because “they aren’t mentally advanced enough to understand consent/care for their child properly/etc” based on their lives being ruined by white supremacist oppression.
If the legal age of consent in a given country is 10 (for example), that doesn’t mean 10 year old girls are more mature in that country. Even in Japan, which famously starts school earlier and high school is optional, where at that age boys and girls can opt to enter the work force and high schools are applied to like university and college in the UK and US, that doesn’t mean the young lady is mature enough to consent to sex with a man twice her age. It just means that hypothetical country lacks the morals in its governance to protect young women better.
So a higher age is more moral? We should ban sex until what 25 maybe when the brain is fully developed? And does this only count for women in your morality guide?
Clearly 10-yo’s are too young and any situation with significant power inequality dynamics are immoral, but picking acceptable ages and situations are always going to be somewhat arbitrary. The West seems to be rather hung up on sex, and who can fuck whom, maybe we should just chill out a bit more?
Yeah I do agree that there’s a bit of an arbitrary hangup on age specifically, but that’s simply because some sort of line has to be drawn to protect people who are incapable of protecting themselves.
There will always be people who are more or less mature (mentally). Some will never be mature enough to understand consent entirely, whilst others can be shockingly adult for their age.
If I were to design a system it’d probably be a sliding scale. Something like a 2 yr upward age gap 12-13, 3 yr 14-17 and then free for all from the age of majority. Even though I personally would find some relationships icky, at some point people have to be “adult” enough to be responsible for themselves.
In my country the age of consent is 15. Doesn’t make dating teens socially acceptable for adults though.
And it’s hard to get a better proxy for maturity than age without opening the door back up for eugenics. Historically a lot of people have been sterilized because “they aren’t mentally advanced enough to understand consent/care for their child properly/etc” based on their lives being ruined by white supremacist oppression.
If MAGA could read, they would be offended