It's a weird thing I come cross in the "discourse" about this, people saying 18-25 year olds aren't "real adults", at least for the purposes of sexual consent, but then when I say "okay if that's truly the case we should probably change age of consent laws to reflect that", people suddenly get angry for some reason.

I don't get the draw back here? If they're not really adults then adults should be barred from having sex with them by the law. The only somewhat reasonable objection I've seen raised is that this would mean restricting other legal adult activities for 18-25 year olds. But...

  1. We already have a system of varying ages for different activities, age of consent varies state to state, you are legally an adult in terms of sex at 18 but in terms of drinking at 21, so you have have different age requirements for different activities.

  2. Well, yeah if you don't think an 18 year old is capable of consenting to sex with someone 7 years their senior, they probably shouldn't also be allowed to buy a home, start a business, enlist in the armed forces, buy cigarettes, take out a loan...

Mind you, I am not PERSONALLY taking a position on this, I haven't made up my mind on the topic, but it just seems weird to be to arguing that a 25 year old having sex with an 18 year old is MORALLY pedophilia but shouldn't be LEGALLY pedophilia.

  • BigLenin [none/use name]
    ·
    14 days ago

    For example, one partner earning substantially more money than the other is also an unbalanced power dynamic.

    Key differences here.

    Age is easily calculable and society already legislates around age, so there is a discourse to be had about what the exact "rules" should be, whereas other "power dynamics" are more complex and nuance, it wouldn't really be possible or desirable to have the police monitoring people's financial status to make sure they weren't sleeping with people significantly poorer than them.

    Also, with age and sex, everyone (besides AnCaps) seems to recognize that there is definitely such a thing as a "child", as in someone too young that adults shouldn't be having sex with them (and for very young children just shouldn't be having sex at all), age gap discourse just seems to be an extension of the general cultural debate about where exactly that line is drawn.