For young people having sex with other young people, I’d say we should have gradations based on age:
a) Legal for someone up to 4 years older to have sex with a 16-17 year old;
b) Legal for someone up to 3 years older to have sex with a 14-15 year old;
c) Legal for someone up to 2 years older to have sex with someone under 14.
For adults having sex with underage persons (outside the limits in (1a) and (1b)), the legal consequences should be more or less severe based on (a) the underage person’s age (and pre/post-pubescent state), and (b) the degree to which the adult was in a position of authority over the underage person.
So, for instance, a 9th grader’s teacher should be looking at a longer sentence for having sex with him/her than some random adult would, because of the abuse-of-authority factor.
Being pre- or post-pubescent should matter. Whether or not we legally regard a post-pubescent child as being capable of giving consent, their voluntary participation should start to be a factor at that point, and continue to matter more as they got older, while with pre-pubescent children, I would want the laws to continue to take non-consent as a legal fact.
I would express this in terms of fairly short maximum prison terms for adults having sex with 16-17 year olds, somewhat longer max prison terms for sex with 14-15 year olds, and so forth. It’s less important to protect 17 year old girls from sex with 30 year old men than to protect 12 year old girls from sex with 30 year old men, and much more important to protect 7 year old girls from sex.
Teenagers are perfectly capable of making their own decisions. I had an apartment with my girlfriend and a full time job when I was 17. I even raised, trained and took care of another life form, our dog, at that time.
How was I perfectly capable of consenting to sex with another teenager, but had she been 25, I would have been some poor manipulated victim who couldn’t think for myself?
I think treating people who make decisions for themselves like helpless rape victims is a whole lot worse than fucking a sexually mature, consenting minor.
Is there much evidence on how (if at all) the age of consent increases the pressure on people to have sex? I think everyone knows some teens will have sex before the age of consent, so it felt like the age was an “average” and that if you didn’t have sex in that first year you would end up on the bad side of normal. I certainly put some pressure on myself to have sex on reaching the age of consent.
Discussions such as these tend to focus way too much on individual anecdotes, while ignoring the larger, more important discussion of the role of criminal law. Most criminal laws in age of consent cases tend to over-protect than underprotect, and I have absolutely no problem with that. For every story about a physically and emotionally mature 14 year old, there is another for a emotionally immature, easily manipulated 16 year old. So, rather than making it legal for anyone to have sex with a 16 year old, most criminal laws make it a crime and deal with it on a case by case basis.
Not to mention emotionally immature, easily manipulated 18-90 year olds. Con men prove it daily, we’re not as smart as we think. If we can make it against the law to defraud people without making all transactions illegal, maybe we can make it against the law to manipulate people into having sex, without making all sexual relationships with minors illegal?
We make a distinction between rape and consensual sex with adults, why can’t we do so with minors? Zero tolerance is just not good policy.
Because minors can’t consent. That’s kinda the whole point of age of consent laws. The law recognizes that younger people generally lack the cognitive abilities, maturity, and thoughtfulness to take certain actions. Consenting to sex is one of them. The mere fact that there exist other people who can’t consent, or that there are people under age who you might consider would be able to, does nothing to change the fact that some/most can’t.
Do you believe minors should be able to enter enforceable contracts, do child labor, join the military, buy and carry guns, or a slew of other things that are now denied them, or is it just sex?
Yes, they demonstrably can. If the law differs here, the law is wrong. Just pick a teenager and ask if you can punch them in the face. They can physically answer yes or no without mom or dad chiming in. That’s consent, or lack of it as the case may be.
Then why does the law have no problem with sex between teenagers? Even the law recognizes that teenagers can consent to sex, so the law is inconsistent here. Teenagers do not become incompetent simply because an adult enters the picture. (Someone in a position of power, such as a teacher or parent, is a different story, by the way.)
Yes, they should have the same rights as you or I, because they’re people. Perhaps there should be some extra protections for minors because, especially in the case of small children, they can’t take care of themselves. Example: higher scrutiny over contracts entered into with minors, tighter restrictions on lying/manipulating/cheating/scamming them. (Which may include prohibiting the type of “lying to get in her pants” behavior that is legal among adults.) Negligence in child care should still be punished, etc.
But we shouldn’t deny them their rights just because we feel they’re stupider than us, That’s discriminatory and wrong. They should be able to vote, drive cars (if they can pass the test), work non-exploitative jobs if they so desire, and make decisions about their own lives as much as possible (for example, choosing the parent they want to live with in custody battles).
Yes, there are certain minors that can. Again, my point was that most of them can’t, and, as a society, we decided that the law should over-protect minors rather than underprotect them.
And, again, because maybe it will sink in this time, the law is made to over-protect not underprotect. The fact you can find underage people who you think can consent doesn’t mean the law should allow all of them to.
Yes, because the avoidance of pain is exactly like the complex thinking and cognitive reasoning that goes into decisions like entering a contract, selling yourself for labor, or having sex. :rolleyes:
Because the law also considers the offender, not just the victim.
Yes because age of consent laws are about punishing the victims by denying them the right to have sex with older people. You’re on a roll here.
Luckily, most of society disagrees with you, and instead recognize that most minors don’t have the maturity to make those kinds of decisions. C’est la vie.
Why do you think that someone who starts puberty at a younger age is more able to consent than someone who starts puberty at an older age? In other words, why do you think that physical development is tied to emotional maturity?
The way sex offender registration laws have been written seems to indicate that society does not see these kind of acts in degrees, but has a zero-tolerance attitude. People who get caught stealing $500 can do their time and regain most, if not virtually all, of their status in society if they work hard and stay clean, and do that quicker than someone who stole 10 million, because society considers the incidents to not be equivalent in severity.
One of the things that irks me about the way we treat sex offenders is that the so-called “sex offender treatment” programs that are typically made a requirement of probation or parole are based on the idea that the person cannot control their outrageous sexual behavior and need help. Seems to me, if a person really and truly-o can’t control their behavior enough to avoid diddling kids, they should be found Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity and committed to a hospital for treatment, then released when they have their behavior under control, not treated like criminals now and like patients later. Yes, you chose to commit a crime, but you can’t control your choices… Once they regain control of their behavior via therapy or whatever, if they then make a free-will choice to do a kid, then treat them like a criminal who chose to rob that bank or trade on that insider information, a criminal who knew what they were doing and whose mind was firing on all cylinders.
One idea could be to have some sort of “sex license” that children could apply for and would require some sort of maturity evaluation. The obvious problem with this is that implementing it would be a political nightmare. Those responsible would be vilified (They want to give our kids licenses so they can go to bed with them!), and people could never agree on just what the qualifications for such a license should or should not involve. Do you have to pass a multiple choice test on positions? Convince a psychiatrist of your sincerity? Get more than a certain cutoff score on an IQ test?
Oh come on. We all know that a vast majority of sexual contact that occurs in this world only occurs after mutual questionnaires are filled out, references are checked, and a pro/con list is completed (in triplicate), properly weighted, and analyzed while completely sober and rational.
I liked the rest of your post, but this part doesn’t sit right although it is a common standard used in current law. If a 20 or 21 year old is considered part of the adult community, what sense does it make to say they are in a special category that other adults are not in?
Also, what do you think of my proposal in borderline (post-pubescent, high school aged teens) cases to require parents to warn off the older person and give them a chance to back off before getting them arrested?
Right. And since the modern psychological definition of adolescence extends to age 22, we are going to have to raise the age of consent quite a bit if we want to base it on that.
One more point, on the idea that men having sex with postpubescent girls (“young teens” as it were) is evidence of their having a psychological disorder of some kind. It strikes me as overwhelmingly likely that until just a few generations ago (a blink of an eye in the grand evolutionary scheme of things), every mammal on the planet had sex at an equivalent stage of development. Now it’s every mammal on the planet except for humans in some countries. We need to face the fact that the legal prohibition *enforces *unnatural behaviour rather than *prohibiting *it. Which is not to say this is not how the law should work, as a civilising agent; just pointing out that we are getting the basic framing wrong.
I read recently that human brains are not fully formed until the age of twenty-five. It was formerly thought to be around the age of sixteen.
Sorry, that makes no sense to me. If people can’t control their urges to have sex, they need to be in therapy or in an area where they are restrained.
I think the age of consent should be eighteen. Your body may tell you that that is unreasonable, but the consequences need to be considered by at least an almost fully-developed brain. And the consequences for girls is different from the consequences for boys.
No teacher should be allowed to marry or have sex with a student, no matter what the age. It’s against professional ethics for a reason. It causes trouble for both participants on many levels.
No they aren’t. Their brains aren’t fully formed and they are unable to be responsible for providing a home and parenting.
But again: you do recognise that 99.999%+ of their antecedents did not refrain from sex at that age? To go against one of the most powerful and fundamental evolved drives may well be possible or even desirable, but you blithely shrug it off as though it is trivially easy.
And in areas today where it is common for young teens to marry, maternal mortality is through the roof, girls education is terrible, and women face generally poor life prospects. In the past, losing a wife or two in childbirth was no biggy, and women weren’t expected to have many other goals the having kids. Things have changed.
Sven, please note the word I wrote before “but” and read my subsequent caveat in that context.
Still, there is more ways than one to skin a cat. We can try to clamp down on adolescent sexuality, or we could be more supportive of teenage parenthood and not treat it as inevitably the end of someone’s prospects of a good life. I have made a similar case when discussing adoption and abortion: I wish a progressive, affluent society would try better supporting pregnant teens (with childcare, social work, alternative routes to education and career training, etc.) rather than only providing a paltry version of those things and mainly just dealing with the issue via access to abortion or adoption.
