Oh, yeah. I though you were just asking about age of majority.
When you're talking age of consent...
I have absolutely nothing to back this up, but I think porn is the reason age of consent drifted up to 18, which has to do with labor laws and being able to sign legally binding agreements for yourself (signatures from minors are not legally binding).
And since porn was 18, anything below that was taboo and too young, and that idea became the norm.
I've done some more research. Age of consent laws being pushed to age 16-18 seems to predate the porn industry, which wasn't legalized until the 1970s. Indeed, it was not illegal to have minors in pornographic productions until 1978 largely because porn itself wasn't legal until shortly before that, and a "minor" was considered anyone under the age of 16. This was not increased to age 18 until reforms made under Reagan in 1984.
Age of consent laws existed in some places in the 11th and 12th centuries, but they were much lower than 18, and generally coincided with the age of marriage, which in turn generally coincided with the age of puberty. It was hard to enforce anything on the basis of age back then, though, since age often wasn't tracked accurately and there weren't always birth records.
It wasn't until the last couple hundred years that the age of consent laws started creeping higher, and it was due to outrage against young girls being sold as prostitutes. According to Wikipedia, English common law generally set the age of consent to between 10-12, but an investigative journalist by the name of William Thomas Stead exposed what was happening with the underground prostitution of young girls and the "respectable middle-class" was so horrified by reading his accounts that they pushed for reforms, including increasing the age of consent to 16 in 1885. The US followed, with laws in various states raising the age of consent to 16-18 by 1920.
In my opinion anything under 16 is almost categorically disgusting, but the age is indeed arbitrary. Some objective way of determining the ability to give informed consent would be far better. Children develop this ability with different things over time. Even people 40 years old can't give informed consent about things they are not informed on and able to make rational choices on. An objective standard would be nice to have, but it is difficult to determine, especially in a culture that doesn't respect individuals and individual differences, which is most cultures extant. That is why the cutoff is an arbitrary age, instead of an objective measure more closely related to the ability to give informed consent.
I am glad you can so easily tell the difference between a 15 year old and a 16 year old and with such certainty that you can find the idea of being attracted to a 15 year old "categorically disgusting."
In my experience, it is damn difficult to guesstimate age after 13 or so. Some 18 year olds through early to mid 20s look way younger, while some 14-15 year olds look much older.
You are likely more disgusted by the idea of being attracted to a 15 year old than by actual 15 year olds. Put a more well-endowed 15 year old and a less well endowed 18 year old next to each other clad in their bikinis for a swim, without telling you which is which, and you'll find your dick betrays your sensibilities.
The ability or inability to express informed consent is more of an indictment of our culture prolonging childhood into adolescence and adolescence into mid to late 20s, in my opinion. There is no reason, other than avoiding giving an individual the information because they are "too young" that a young teen can't give informed consent, assuming some form of coercion didn't take place.
Most cultures in history have considered adulthood to begin sometime between 12 and 15 years of age. It has only been in the last couple centuries that sensibilities around this have changed. Interestingly, it has coincided with having public school available for all young people up through... wait for it... age 18. The standardization of K-12 education played a major role in society's perception that young people are still "children" until age 18, in my opinion.
I didn't say being attracted, dipshit. I wasn't extremely clear, but I was saying setting the arbitrary age of consent below that, that's what I would find disgusting. I was agreeing with you about how stupid the arbitrary age of consent is, and you projected bullshit into my mind instead of trying to get my point. Go fuck yourself if you're so damn paranoid about how you'll be perceived that you can't listen when someone is even AGREEING with you. Pathetic.
Here and I thought we were having a substantive and respectful discussion. Guess not...
I am at a loss as to what would make the idea that a 15 year old can have informed consent "categorically disgusting" when the idea that a 16 year old expressing the same consent would not be. Is there something particularly informative to a young person's mind between those ages?
That is why I shifted to the subject of attraction. I wrongly assumed that is what you meant when you mentioned below 16 being "categorically disgusting." The option of it being about the ability to have informed consent simply didn't seem like it could be what you were talking about, since there is nothing fundamentally different about a 15 year old's ability to be informed compared to a 16 year old.
You still don't understand. I want the age of informed consent bullshit to disappear entirely, with a more ethical standard put in its place. Some 15 year olds can legitimately consent, in my mind. Yet to set the bar to 15 or lower and make no other changes would be a severe error. That would be disgusting. Age of consent is a terrible idea whether high or low, and must be replaced with a better standard.
I do not claim to know for sure what that standard would be and how it would be determined in precise detail of all the specifics, but it must be something logical that is normalized and enforced by social pressures, by law, and by the market for protection. A natural order could do such a thing where the most basic standard is consent and self ownership.
It's a difficult problem, for sure. I don't know that there CAN be an objective standard, because people are too individual. Some parents are very frank with their children or they actually find decent information on the internet, and they would be equipped for making informed decisions much earlier, while others get very little information except what they glean from their peers, much of which is bad information.
Laws, however, have to be pretty black and white in order to be effectively enforced. That's assuming one believes there should be a government enforcing laws in the first place. A lot of people here are anarcho-capitalists. I can't see that ending well, just letting the market decide on this issue.
I'm one of those anarcho-capitalists. I'm a crab after all, I have to be as capitalist as they come. The market can and will enforce laws better than any government, especially when there is a general consensus that violations of consent, in anything regarding a person's property, of which their body is the most obvious part, are bad. It's precisely government that makes laws arbitrary.
And anything that requires a subjective valuation, which honestly everything kind of does, can be handled in a more nuanced way in a free market.
