What I don’t understand is why so many of you are obsessed with the age of consent.
This topic comes up again and again and again, and quite frankly I think we spend a little too much time discussing a topic that doesn’t and shouldn’t marginally affect us in any way. I also don’t understand why so many of you are intent on justifying sexual relationships between adults and children. Why, exactly, do some of you focus your attention on this topic so often?
My point is simple.
There are some things that 13-year-olds generally aren’t allowed to do, like:
- File a lawsuit
- Drive a heavy goods vehicle
- Drop out of school and enlist in the Navy
I don’t see why we can’t add:
- Consent to a potentially exploitative sexual relationship with someone significantly older
It is NOT "agecucking" to recognize that social and brain development occurs at different phases through life; it's just scientific reality. At the same time, governments have a compelling interest to protect minors, and part of that protection is to limit the range of decisions that they (and, by extension, the adults around them) are allowed to make. I think that the existence of a minimum age of consent is not unreasonable as part of the delicate balancing act between individual freedom and the state's paternalism. I'm not sure at which exact point the AOC should be, as that's a question that is best left to the scientific community, but I know for a fact that a minimum AOC should exist.
Look, as a committed civil libertarian, I'm not here to police your freedom of thought. If you like to think about kids, that's OK. If you like to draw pictures of kids having sex, I think that's a little fucked up, but that's OK because you're not hurting anyone. If you like to spend 8 hours a day jerking your pp off to Teengallery in the privacy of your bedroom, that's also a little fucked up, but hey, there's no nudity involved and it's nothing worse than what you see at a public beach anyway, so that's OK.
Physically molesting a kid? Not OK.
None of this is necessarily a defence of the status quo, or a suggestion that the status quo is perfect. There are a lot of valid discussions we can have about how the criminal justice system and society at large treats sex offenders and their civil liberties.
Vigilantism (including shows like TCAP) is unhelpful and erodes procedural due process and the right to privacy. Publicly accessible sex offender registries do very little to actually safeguard the public; the U.S. should shift to a U.K.-style system where sex offender registries are only accessible to law enforcement. Unduly harsh sentencing guidelines, again, do little to safeguard the public, and often disproportionately punishes offenders from low-income backgrounds. Violence directed against sex offenders in correctional institutions might sound good to normies, but they actually foster a culture in which all inmates are taught that violence is a desirable element of conflict resolution, and in the long run, decreases the chances that prisoners can smoothly reintegrate to society. You could write a long essay about each of these points.
But whether you can normatively justify an adult engaging in sexual activity with a child really isn't a matter up for debate. I don't see why that's the case here on the forum.
