To say that minors cannot consent is absolutely horrifying to me. I would have felt ‘raped’ of my free agency to choose if I had been told as a minor that I ‘cannot consent’.
I was a minor. I consented. I was a sexual being just as I was a human being. Minors have to do non sexual adult things ALL the time. I still see adults well into their 40s and 50s who are immature compared to me when I was a minor. So age is a non-factor.
While I DO acknowledge that child sexual abuse occurs as does trafficking and that paedophiles exist out there, when my thoughts and actions and consent when I was a minor is ERASED and my decisions deemed irrelevant, I don’t know how to feel about it.
Reactions in the exact order of how I felt when I read ‘Minors cannot consent’ : Confusion. Anger. Understanding. Annoyance. Anger.
Some minors do adult non sexual things and make adult non sexual decisions all the time..sometimes because they don’t have a choice. Why is it that when it comes to sexual consent, the same minor does not have any agency?
I am trying to understand. It is difficult for me to accept that I am a non-being as a minor.
Please don’t start a flame war. I really want to understand why this is so and communicate as to why the blanket ‘minors cant consent’ is disempowering and has not really made the world a better safer place.
I also want to know what is a better and more effective solution to child sexual abuse(or any kind of sexual abuse) to replace ‘minors cannot consent’.
It isn't that minors are non-beings - it is that they're not fully developed yet, so they need protections. Where we draw that line is up to the law and culture of any location, but it exists.
When we are minors, we are mentally deficient to be sexual beings. When we are adults, we are also told that we have no control or reproductive choice over what we do with bodies.
I hate to sound like this..because I don’t think of myself as a vocal feminist..I have always considered myself a rational being.
With that hat on, it seems to me that the female human being has no choice or agency and their physical bodies are mere vessels for the male of the species to fornicate, procreate and to be generally unobtrusively abiding by the rules made by the opposite gender.
That’s very upsetting to me.
I could tell a five year old that if they do something Santa will bring them gifts. That could be something completely reprehensible but they have no sense of right and wrong besides what I might tell them at that age.
At age ten, they are more capable of deciding that on their own. As you get older you become better at that and more autonomous. But at a young age the only things you know are what adults tell you is true. That's an extreme amount of power the adult has.
At some point we call people adults because we expect them to now have this responsibility and decide for themselves what they think is best for them because at a certain age we believe a majority of those young people should be autonomous. But that age is a guess and fairly arbitrary. Is it 17? 18? Probably somewhere around there. Is it 5? Nope.
So you have to draw the line somewhere. It sucks if you're an incredibly mature 16 year old, but if you are, then waiting two years to have sex with someone much older than you shouldn't be an overwhelming burden if the social benefit is greater for those less mature or in potentially abusive situations.
I see no problem at all with a rational, vocal feminist. Many people enter the latter category after considering the issue with rationality. It would be insulting towards those people to assume they didn't enter into it rationally.
Being young is not a mental deficiency. There are 17 year olds smarter than a legion of 70 year olds will ever be. Saying all young people have a mental deficiency has no bearing on reality.
I don't event want to weigh in on the age of consent debate here, I've just always hated the constant shitting on young people and their intellect just because their young. I hated it when I was young and grown adults who weren't that smart were clearly threatened by me, and I still hate it now that I'm older.
So you can say that 17 year old exceeds some adults and it may be true, but current neurological science suggests that 17 year old has not yet reached their full mental capacity.
The natural next question is, "where's the line?" A 20 year old and a two year old is obviously wrong, but a 25 year old and a 75 year old seems okay, if a bit weird. And yes, not every person the same age has the same amount of experience and maturity.
But here's the thing: the law can't take that into account. The law needs a bright and clear line, so you can know how not to break it. And so even though there's not really a difference between 17 years 364 days vs. 18 years, one can consent to sex with an adult while the other cannot. Just like one day makes the difference between being able to vote, or drink, or get a driver's license.
Is a measure of puberty sufficient to give consent? I am not saying that it is..but perhaps it’s closer to a better situation.
Older societies had coming of age ceremonies and welcoming pre pubescents into young adulthood. Perhaps there was more value in the old traditions and rituals that we have given up in our modern times. It clarified to a young adult the changes that happen physically and hormonally..an opportunity to talk about things and take personal responsibility. A responsibility that means freedom as well as risk.
I am just throwing this out there..we have handed over societal bonding over to the state and legal system. It has certainly made us weak. And allowed more predation of the truly vulnerable while curtailing the freedom of those who are aware of risks and responsibilities.
> Is a measure of puberty sufficient to give consent? I am not saying that it is..but perhaps it’s closer to a better situation.
The problem is, how do we measure "sufficient"?
If we just mean people's opinions, we can be more nuanced — for example, I think a grown person who has sex with an 18 year old is just as gross as one who has sex with a 17 year old, but I don't have an exact line in my head as to when it would become okay. Everyone's exact line will differ, and that's okay too!
On the other hand, if the law is trying to measure "sufficient", then we need something objective because people need to know when they would be breaking it. "Puberty" is pretty squishy — for example, do we count when a boy's voice deepens? When he starts growing facial hair? Whereas if we measure an objective fact like age, then if I know that fact I can be 100% sure whether or not I'm allowed to have sex with this person.
I agree with you that age an imperfect measure of maturity, which is what we really care about. But it seems to be the best measure we can come up with that's both objective and correlated.
Why?
> The law needs a bright and clear line, so you can know how not to break it.
Why does that need a "bright and clear line"? There are plenty of things that are illegal where there is no "bright and clear line" in that same sense, and that seems to work just fine, and actually even better in many cases. Like, I dunno, tax fraud is in principle tax fraud even at a single cent, but it's absolutely not "you paid all the taxes you owed, you are fine, you under-reported one cent of your income, now you lose your job and go to jail".
> And so even though there's not really a difference between 17 years 364 days vs. 18 years, one can consent to sex with an adult while the other cannot.
Which seems to be the case. Now, why is that a good approach?
> Just like one day makes the difference between being able to vote, or drink, or get a driver's license.
So, maybe we should fix those as well? Why shouldn't you get a fractional vote starting at age 10, increasing linearly to a full vote at 18, say?
There is absolutely a bright and clear (albeit very complicated) line for tax fraud. The IRS probably won't go after you if you underpay by a penny — but you're still breaking the law if you do it intentionally.
>> And so even though there's not really a difference between 17 years 364 days vs. 18 years, one can consent to sex with an adult while the other cannot.
> Which seems to be the case. Now, why is that a good approach?
Because — with regard to statutory rape — if I know someone's age I can be 100% sure whether or not I would be breaking the law by having sex with them.
We don't give 12-year-olds a 2/3 fractional vote because a) that introduces a ton of complexity for not much gain, and because b) children are essentially legally "owned" by their parents so the odds of their compulsion to vote a certain way rise dramatically. (Some people didn't want to give women suffrage last century because they figured it would just double the exact ratio of the existing men's vote tallies. And now a century later we have wives that still vote only to please their husband.)
Some things might work -- I don't think this would fly in the US but maybe you could allow 19-year-olds to buy beer (not liquor) like in some states in the 70s.
But how does that work for kids and sex? You want to embed the "first base, second base" junior high sex metaphor into the LAW? A 19-year-old can fondle a 16-year-old's breasts but not her genitals?
Again: "bright" and "clear" have legal and common-sense context here.
Two common exceptions are: 1) similarity in age, and 2) sex with spouse, if married.
Exceptions can have their own exceptions. For example, if a 17 year old has sex with a 25 year old, it may be legal for an exception based on similarity in age. However, the law may also prohibit that exception if there is sex between a teacher and a student in the teacher's class.
So martinky24 was wrong in writing "Minor's cannot consent". It's an understandable wrong, as those exceptions aren't really that relevant to the topic at hand.
But jelliclesfarm is also wrong in thinking the argument is that minors are "non-beings". Minors are beings with fewer freedoms than adults. Depending on their age, they can be forced to attend school and to follow juvenile curfew laws. They can be prevented from purchasing alcohol, and from driving vehicles, or having a full-time job.
All of these remove some of their free agency. Just like restrictions on who minors are free to have sex with.
In most states, the law is not written "it's illegal to have sex with a 15-year-old PERIOD." Instead, the law is usually "it's illegal FOR AN ADULT to have sex with a 15-year-old."
You are correct that -- for states that a) don't have the "for an adult" clause and b) don't have "Romeo & Juliet" clause -- the law as written DOES imply both kids are guilty. And I'd bet the cost of a nice dinner that, in some of those jurisdictions, both kids in a case like that WERE charged.
The bottom line is that your agency wasn't removed as a minor, you were just left with the same choice as many other minors, to obey the laws regarding drinking, smoking, pornography, etc. Or to break them in order to gain whatever you felt you were being denied. The laws were written to punish people who exploit minors, and the consequences of those crimes pretty much always fall on the adult in the situation (for good reason).
When I was 17, and unable to vote or see certain movies, or 20 and unable to legally buy alcohol, I definitely felt like my freedom was abridged, but it didn't make the laws behind those immoral, it just made them slightly unfair. And that was for some low stakes stuff compared to sex trafficking or adult exploitation of children.
1. I don’t want anyone to be ‘raped’ by ‘free agency. I was speaking of consent. Can someone be raped while being a minor? Of course. Age has nothing to do with whether one can be raped. One can be raped as a minor just as a 50 y/o ..dare I say..male can be raped. Age also has nothing to do with sexual desire or urges either. A 12 year old boy can be horny and a post menopausal woman can snap shut at the rumor of sex.
Rape should be about consent. Not age.
2. It is infantalization of young adults and taking away their instincts and consequently the ability to provide consent that is confounding to me. Biologically, sexual instinct begins way before puberty.
3. Creating ‘laws’ is a symptom of a society failing to manage itself. Shame and shunning used to work before. Every law automatically includes a legal loophole. Laws make society weaker, not stronger. It is the mass handover of power to the state..power we should have over ourselves as citizens and society.
Human beings may be holding super computers in the palms of our hands, but our instincts are still cave man instincts. The human instinct that seeks sexual pleasure also seeks justice and revenge and disgust.
How many rape victims have been screwed over by the ‘system’ that the law is supposed to uphold?
4. So something is wrong with the legal system that lets more people slip through the cracks by ‘failing’ them. I am not condoning rape.
I am just saying that it is wrong that minors should be deemed ‘mentally deficient’ to give consent.
5. When my body says that I am ready for sex and the law says no, I am being denied my right.
6. Jewish infants are circumcised without their consent. Is that sexual assault or rape? Young girls suffer genital mutilation in the same name of religion. Why doesn’t the law step in and make it illegal?
7. Voting or alcohol consumption are not biological imperatives. Children are..to an extent..property of parents until they can fend for themselves. To curtail freedom to consent by law is actually also curtailing freedom of ownership of their instincts. When did the courts and the state start taking over the role of parents?
8. Let’s take Greta Thurnberg. She is a child instructing adults. Some of us are ok with that. Others aren’t. The same girl if she had consented to have sex with a non-minor while she was a minor in the USA would have been considered ‘mentally deficient’ to give consent.
9. I am not..for even a second..condoning rape. I am just concerned that the advent of an biological instinct when it is earlier than the age of consent is a handicap to a young adult.
What are you thoughts and I hope I had clarified my position.
Your argument might well be that the age of consent is too high. That's fine, it's arbitrary. But there does need to be one to prevent all sorts of horrible things from happening.
And no, the laws don't prevent everything but that's not an argument that they shouldn't exist at all.
