14, that’s around the age most teenagers (I know of) actually started messing around, and if you’re going to just mess around, I think you should be covered for going all the way, too.
I’m OK with that having an age-difference thing built in for a couple years, but I think by 16 that should fall away.
Voted sixteen but let’s face it, that’s probably because I grew up in the UK with that as the age of consent and as such it feels “right” to me.
I’d support some kind of law so a sixteen year old doesn’t get banged up for having sex with his fifteen year old girlfriend.
I agree. I do think that such a relationship is inappropriate but I don’t think it’s so bad that the boy should have to go to prison and register for life as a sex offender - that is going way too overboard. Now, for a 25 year old and a 13 year old - throw the book at him and make sure it’s dipped in acid first.
By the restrictions of the OP (no restrictions on partners) I had to vote 16, since they would really rather have a number.
In reality though the age of consent should be rolled out, starting at 14, and gradually upping the age of acceptable partners until 16 at which point the person is considered a physical adult capable of making their own sexual choices.
14 year-olds can consent to sex with partners 18 and under. 15 year year-olds can consent to sex with partners under 21, and at sixteen all legal restrictions should be lifted. This is not a perfect solution and there will be some abuses and power imbalances, but these relationships happen anyway and the system is doing more harm then good IMHO.
Sixteen. Eighteen is far too late and simply means the law will be broken all the time. Sex=! pregnancy, and the emphasis on birth control should be much, much stronger. Hell, I’ve been a proponent of putting teenage girls on the Pill, as long as their systems can handle it. Why the hell not? It’ll help with their periods and it’ll avoid unwanted pregnancies.
If you insist on a number, 14. People of that age will be having sex whether it’s illegal or not, so criminalising it is insane, and a holdover from dangerous protestant moralism (see also drug laws). I’d prefer no number, and taking each case on it’s merits, though.
The problem, of course, is older men pressurising teenagers into sex. The only real solution to this is to stop making sex seem dirty and dangerous, and to accept that people can and will have it when they choose, and will be able to say no if they don’t so choose - and be able to tell people what has happened if they feel pressured.
That is, if your 14 year old daughter says that she was on the internet talking about sex with someone she thought was 15, but turns out to be 50, the response should not be anger or disgust at HER - which is what actually happens - but to rationally help her be safe whilst finding people her own age. Predators rely on the shame and secrecy to get what they want.
Completely agreed.
Statutory rape laws can, sometimes, be unnecessary hard in such cases.
I think a person of absolutely any age should be able to consent with a partner who is not significantly older as a percentage.
care to explain your method for calculating the percentage?
I actually like the law in Canada.
AoC is 16. This is when you can have sex with whomever you choose. However, for ages 14 and 15, you need to be within 5 years. For 12 or 13, within 2 years. Under that, it’s illegal (okay, that part makes no sense but whatever).
Teenagers will have sex with each other. It should not be a crime.
I’m for making a standard legal age for everything, from driving to drinking, to voting to serving in the military. Which I think should be 18. So I voted to put the age of consent to 18
In general, how about 20%? Six year olds can make a pass at 5 year olds but not 4 year olds.
I’d be more stringent when the age diff also crosses the barrier-line between legal adult and legal juvenile though because with adult status comes power. Seventeen year old and fourteen year old? Yes. Nineteen year old and sixteen year old? A bit more problematic.
I was halfway through my senior year when I heard it was 16 in Massachusetts; I had thought it was 18 until then!
16 with a Romeo and Juliet law of three years. 16 and 13 would be weird and horrible, but 16 and 19? Not so much.
Most of those earlier ages of consent are provisional, though, including in Germany.
So what’s the deal with the power thing? Why is the power difference enough to make it illegal? I asked this before, but not a single person ventured an answer. Here, I’ll just restate the question verbatim:
Could people explain why they think the age difference is so important? I know that on a visceral level we are all bothered by the idea of a 50 year old man with a 15 year old girl, when we wouldn’t be as bothered by the idea of an 18 year old man with a 15 year old girl. But, on an intellectual level, where exactly does the trouble lie?
Is it solely the fact that the older man is “taking advantage” of his “position of power”?
This can happen among fully legal adults too (there are so many different kinds of power and so many situations where an unequal power balance could result in a sexual relationship.) Why should it only be illegal if the power differential is based on age?
Can someone provide a better answer to why it is always wrong for a middle aged adult man to be sexual with a teenage girl, other than “it’s creepy”?
Argent - I’m with you on this, I don’t think there’s anything intrinsically wrong with it. On the contrary, it’s quite natural (in the sense that we’re programmed to want to) for men to desire young women as that’s when they’re most fertile. In terms of it being socially acceptable, I think our culture is quite clear that girls at the age of 15 or around that tend not to be able to make the best decisions about something like sex, which can carry the extremely heavy price of getting pregnant.
Furthermore, when you’re dealing with an age gap of 50 and 15 the only possible reason someone that old could want to have a relationship with someone that young is for sex, and that isn’t in the best interests of the younger participant who isn’t going to be able to recognise that they’re being used that way. It’s not in their best interests to consent to such a relationship, hence why the law prevents them. If the younger party was over the age of consent and dating someone considerably older, well, I think the parents should discuss this with them very carefully but ultimately it’s the younger party’s choice.
So whilst it isn’t wrong necessarily for such a big disparity to exist in a sexual relationship, it’s not ideal, particularly for the younger party (and they’re the person who needs protecting more).
I think it’s partly that most people think that kids shouldn’t be having sex (wherever their cut-off line for ‘kids’ is), but we understand that sometimes kids that age do want to have sex, and that they don’t suddenly become sensible when they hit the magic number of the age of consent. So when it’s two teenagers within a couple of years of each other then they’re both excused for making a bad decision because of their age. A 50-year-old, though? He should know better.
Pretty much. I sort of include “consenting person lacks the ability to understand what is being proposed” under “power difference”, since if the person making the proposal is equally ignorant I don’t see it as exploitative. 11 month olds on the changing table are equally oblivious to the complexities of sex, sexuality, boundaries, and so on, and if one reaches out to grope the parts of the other, the lack of understanding on the part of the second doesn’t make it exploitative. The act itself doesn’t damage people, COERECION does.
Were it not for power diff, I’d say toss the age of consent entirely out. Let 7 year old boys consent to sex with 90 year old crones. You’d be allowed to say “Yecch!” but you wouldn’t be allowed to intervene, none of your business, etc.
The default position on any prohibition of human conduct is, or should be, that we don’t interfere with people. “Age of consent” is explicitly about "the so-called ‘consenting’ person cannot, for one reason or another, understand what is being consented to and/or is potentially under duress due to power imbalance that they can’t be considered free to decline or refuse.
You should not grope your interns. You shouldn’t feel up the kids that you’re babysitting. Those things are true even if for some reason the interns or the babysat are older than the supervisor or babysitter. You don’t diddle with children unless you’re a child of proximate age yourself. It’s power.
There was a saying back in Texas: “If they’re old enough to go to the store, they’re old enough to get bread.”
Why yes, there was smoke coming off my heels as I skeedaddled from that state. Why do you ask?
What part of “under 12 it’s illegal” doesn’t make sense?
I dealt with a pregnant 10 year old when I was doing my internship in Social Work. She didn’t even have breasts yet. The guy who knocked her up was her mom’s 20-something “boyfriend”. If her child had lived, it would have had a half-brother that was it’s step-brother.
Child protection laws exist to protect children. Sometimes from themselves.