Human sexuality and age of consent

skepticdude
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Human sexuality and age of consent

I post a good argument, but this type of subject has the distinction of being beset with heavy emotion even by those who profess to work dispassionately.  So let me calm the predictable response "are you a child molester?" by answering truthfully: "no."  I only chose this ultra-forbidden topic because it is, after all, ultra forbidden. 

Since this topic rouses so much emotion, it will be a good way to test our ability to analyze something objectively, and set ourselves apart from the rest of society that is largely led more by emotion than critical thinking.

Without an absolute standard of morality, what criteria do you use to determine the proper "age of consent"?

And can you admit that, in the absence of an absolute morality, you are never going to prove that any age is too young?  All you are going to do is find a whole bunch of people who agree with you, which accomplishes nothing more than what the world has already given us; a bunch of people who disagree on the minimum age-of-consent.

My own position on the matter is that our current laws don't reflect reality.  The popular Mary K. Letourneau matter is a case in point: The boy that got her pregnant does not give any sign of having been more negatively impacted psychologically or physically because of his having sex with an older woman while he was a young teen, anymore than your average 18 year old guy would have been in the same, eh, "position" Smiling

They are now happily married with kids, even though they were separated by her 7 year prison sentence.

If we really wish to say that a 34 year old woman having sex with a 12 year old boy is "wrong", aren't we morally obligated to show why?

Most acts called crimes in criminal law are so designated because they "harm" other people, agreed?

Yes, there is a difference between Fualaau's case, and the case of an older man with a younger girl, but what if the girl consented, and there was no physical rape or other use of force?  The only evidence I'm able to marshal to show that the girl is being traumatized, even though she consented, is the subjective opinion of the outraged emotional community, who, like most people, are sure that 13 is just too young, and have zero proof for it.

Here are some questions to consider:

Suppose a girl aged 17 years and 364 days, gives consent to an adult male to have sex.  They begin around midnight.  She changes her mind, and has him prosecuted.  The state is able to prove that the sex began actually at 11:59 p.m. when the girl was yet 17 years and 364 days old.  The man is convicted of statutory rape and must now carry this stigma around for life.  One minute is the difference between rape and legal sex, right?  A single minute is the difference between the girl not being able to give informed consent and being able to give it, amen?  Hopefully you see the relativity.

For the adult men here:

Suppose you have a picture of a 25 year old woman whom you are sexually attracted to.  Suppose you are now married to her, and she had 9125 pictures of herself (roughly one picture of her for every day of her life since birth).  What is the earliest picture of her that you could honestly say she started to become sexually attractive to you?  Would you say that she had no sexuality about her whatsoever when she was 17 years and 364 days old, and then the very next day, suddenly, she was sexually attractive?  

Suppose you like boobs and butts, and you are shown 10 photos of different women with boobs and butts that you like....but their faces are blurred.  Would you be unable to be aroused at this sight because you are not able to decide whether you are looking at early-developing junior high school girls or full grown women? 

For the adult women here:

Suppose you are a schoolteacher, and you fulfill the fantasy of one of the 12-year old boys in your class.  In your best estimation, he had a real good time and is hoping for more.  How would you argue that this act of yours caused him any kind of physical or psychological damage whatsoever?

For all adults:

Lots of adults do role-playing games during sex.  Lots of adult women like to pretend they are underage girls and have their male partner play the role of the "older man", pretending to coerce them gently into sex.  Some women have rape fantasies.

Similarly, there is no shortage of guys (usually submissives) that want to play the part of the young schoolboy while the wife or girlfriend or prostitute plays the part of the older female schoolteacher, during sex.

Why?  Were all such people raised the wrong way and so cannot find fulfillment with "normal" sex"?  Could you prove that people who have "wild" sex all come from broken dysfunctional homes?  What's normal sex?  If you often want your husband to hold your hands down to the mattress with force while in missionary position, are you thus in need of psychotherapy?

The point I wish to make is that it is impossible for atheists who deny absolute morality, to yet speak in public as if the age-of-consent was an absolute moral.  Christians will quickly pounce on this as an inconsistency, and they would be right.

What the atheist should do is affirm that the world does not agree on the age of consent, proving that the laws we now deem to be normal and acceptable in America are nothing more than social conditioning.  The "age of consent" controversy provides a good opportunity for the atheists to demonstrate the power of social conditioning, and that the particular age of consent in the fundamentalist Christian's county or state of residence are clearly not "gospel". 

I am honest enough to admit that I think having sex with a 13 year old girl, even with her consent, is immoral, but only because I've been conditioned by my environment to believe that way, not because there is any evidence that such an act is necessarily harmful or psychologically traumatizing to the girl.  If I had been born and raised in certain tribes in Africa, I might feel that having a 9 year old girl for a wife is par for the course of life, and that her protests to having sex are just because she is rebellious to the gods.
 

By the way, I've done extensive debating on the issue of sex in the bible; God's word condemns many petty crimes like lying, stealing, loaning money at interest to fellow Israelites, swearing, cussing, etc....but it both advocates sex between adult men married to female children, and never condemns this practice.  I'll debate any Christian here who thinks otherwise.

What does it mean if an "underage" child consents to sex with an adult, the act is never forced, and thereafter, shows no signs of psychological trauma consistent with typical rape?  Is there a reason criminal law distinguishes regular rape from statuatory rape? Is it because sex with an "underage" person cannot always be proven to result in harmful effects on the child, and so the state feels compelled to step in and arbitrarily assert this act must have harmful effects even when it doesn't?

British society regards the statutory presumption in American Law,  that teen kids cannot meaningfully consent to sex with an adult, as a legal fiction.

If Fualaau endured no harm, does that mean the "statuatory rape" laws need serious revision?

A related debate is just how much the state should feel itself compelled to legislate morality.

See Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex, by Judith Levine

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If we look at sex purely

If we look at sex purely from a reproductive standpoint we would have to say when a person is able to conceive a child they are also ready for sex. The problem is sex is obviously not purely for reproduction, neither for mankind nor for a significant proportion of the animal kingdom. Setting an arbitrarily defined age of consent is on one side ridiculous but on the other essential in maintaining a healthy society. At its core sex should have no age barriers the only barrier should be one of awareness and consent. Is the person able to fully understand what the act entails and the possible consequences? Is the person at a level of maturity at which they have the capacity to consent? I see no issue with a 20 year old man having sex with a 12 year old girl if the 12 year old girl has the maturity to fully understand what sex is. The problem is that at 12 the rational part of a person’s brain is under developed so a 12 year old cannot truly grasp the reality of sexual intercourse and its consequences. The rational part of the brain completes development at age 23 but obviously we have the capacity to understand and consent to sex before 23.

As a society we can pick a middle ground which represents the average age at which a normal human is mature enough to fully understand and consent to sex. Again though the age you pick would be arbitrary at best as maturity levels differ greatly in people of the same age. Personally I would say on average a person has the capacity to fully understand and consent to sex at about age 15. However some people can be mature enough at 13 and others not until they are 17. I really do not like the idea of an age defining an individual’s capacity to consent to sex but how else can we measure it?  As far as I know we cannot truly measure an age of maturity so setting an age in years is the best option.

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I agree that setting an age

I agree that setting an age as an arbitrary limt is unsatisfying but there's really no other way. Are we going to make everyone take some sort of test for maturity? It would be too compley any other way - and then we also need to look at the difference in age between the 2 people.

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I don't feel like re-reading

I don't feel like re-reading the whole thread to see if anyone's mentioned this, so I'll just mention it.

Part of deciding on the age of consent necessarily has to do with the ability of someone that age to be a fully capable parent.  Many states have laws that prohibit people under the age of 16 or 18 from certain "adult" activities, including most of the good jobs, and the ability to sign leases or mortgages.  If a person can't reasonably assume the role of parenthood, they aren't legally ready to consent to sex with someone who can.

 

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Thomathy
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skepticdude wrote:plenty of

skepticdude wrote:
plenty of people have answered or tried to answer those "convoluted" questions before.  I suspect don't really think they are convoluted questions, they are simply very tough questions that force you to acknowledge that even your most sacred morals are not absolute.  My purpose with the OP was to expose your sacred morality to the sort of criticism a Christian could launch against it, leaving you unable to provide a rational defense for relativistic morality.  You are gonna die fast and quiet in a debate with a Christian if you insist that adults having sex with kids is absolutely immoral.  You have to be honest and upfront and admit your moral viewpoint, however strongly held, isn't absolute.
It's a good thing my morality is not sacred and that I've not suggested that an adult having sex with a kid is absolutely immoral.  I would not insist such a thing.  I understand the purpose of your thread, that's why I evaded it.  I'm not defending the age of consent law in Canada from a moral standpoint at all.

Quote:
What minimum criteria must a person fulfill to be ready for sexual relations?  You'll have a difficult time with that question, since what constitutes "sex" is not defined.
I fully indicated what the minimum criteria are.  What constitutes 'sex' does not need to be defined.  The law specifically refers to sexual activity.  Sexual activity is a rather broad category and includes 'sex'.

Quote:
What criteria do you use to determine when non-immediate harm has been done?
The matter of harm not being immediately apparent should be obvious.  The criteria for determining the harm before it happens are studies that explain the effects of sexual activity on people not ready to experience them or who experience them in a traumatic or otherwise damaging way.  In this sense the law is preemptive since the effects may not be immediately manifest.  Was that not clear?

Quote:
what constitutes "dubious maturity..." ?
I apologize for my sloppy wording.  Someone of dubious maturity would be someone who could be considered, based on the factor of their age, to be potentially immature in all the categories I mentioned.  I hope you're aware of the literature that speaks to the reasoning ability of people aged 5 or 10 or 14 compared to that of an adult, or of the literature that outlines the typical ages of sexual maturity in humans, or that which speaks about a child's ability to deal with emotional stress as compared to an adult and finally about when children are formally educated sex (if they ever are) or the average age at which knowledge about sex becomes of interest and fact seeking is initiated.

Quote:
If that 7th grade girl does nothing more than masturbate the guy, do you regard that as sex, and how would this experience harm her?  Again, I don't advocate this, but this is exactly how a Christian would debate you, hoping you'll admit that you believe such act is absolutely immoral, without having an absolute standard, so they can then accuse you of inconsistency.
You'll have to reword this before I can actually answer the question you mean to have.  A grade seven girl is not at an age where she can consent to sex with anyone over the age of 16.  She's free to masturbate with anyone younger.  Obviously, if she is more than two years older than the boy she's masturbating with there could be some consequences.

Quote:
So you would approve of a 30 year old man having sex with a 7th grade girl, as long as there was no sign the girl was harmed in any way?
What I approve of is unimportant.  The affair you describe is illegal, no grade seven girl (unless she's been held back three years) is old enough to consent to sex with anyone older than 16.  If you mean a grade nine girl, then no, as she meets the criteria for age of consent; she is 14.  Still, what I approve of is unimportant.  If you were to ask me if I thought the act was distasteful, I would say yes as I've never found people much older or much younger than myself sexually appealing.  Obviously, what I find sexually appealing is no good ground on which to judge age of consent or to judge people who simply have different sexual tastes than myself.  Arguably, the Canadian law doesn't concern itself with personal sensibilities as I suspect there are a great number of people who would find sexual relations between a 14 year old and a 30 year old more than distasteful.

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I wouldn't say there is a

I wouldn't say there is a proper age of consent, it differs according to different people, in society with have fully sexually developed people who fall below the age of consent. I suppose its just a general  consensus that 16 to 18 generally tends to be the age of blossoming maturity  (granted its not true in all cases) but society needs set rules to work from and cant progress if it takes into account other factors such as the physical and mental states of the "children" which can vary endlessly . I think we can all agree "she has big tits" wont hold up in court.  

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inspectormustard wrote:Age

inspectormustard wrote:

Age is a crappy qualifier for anything. I've been drinking since 15 (secretly until around 17, when my parents didn't care) and I've actually been more responsible about it than most of the people I know who started at 21.

I'm a test person. We have driving tests; we ought to have tests for sex, drugs, and all other possibly-detrimental-if-not-handled-responsibly activities.

Personally, I'd sooner see a drug-handling test than anything else simply because I know of a lot of psychadelics that are less dangerous than alcohol, and I'd rather take them than booze it up. Individual tests for individual drugs when a medical workup is done, a sanity test, and then a "medicated" observation to make sure that the testee is safe and (relatively) reasonable on that particular drug. End of drug war.

A psychological test could be used for sex. Does the tester understand the responsibilities? With such a license (heheh, a license to fuck, hee hee hee) the results of whatever the tester did would be their own, with their parents free of any liability.

Finally, what goes with sex and drugs? Why rock and roll of course! This test would require the participant to display some level of compitence in the works of Led Zeppelin, The Doors, Jimmi Hendrix. . .

 

The problem with tests for these things is that kids know the answers. It's their judgement that is lacking. They often don't see the "big picture." They tend to be short-sighted and not see things from every perspective. There is also some feeling of invincibility in that they know what might happen, but don't think it would really happen to them. 

 

The posts have all been so long, I may have missed it, but one important thing is biological attraction and the law. Even though biologically, the average height of attractiveness for the female in our culture is between the ages of 15-24, laws are in place not because the person looks "too young" but because of their decision making abilities. I think most people forget this when scolding others for admiring the attractiveness of a teenager.

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