Why is adults having sex with children harmful?

[pedo233]

Maybe i am slow, but i dont understand the logic at all, i just accept it as a truth but i dont understand the logic behind it. My understanding is that children cannot consent to having sex with adults because they are too mentally immature to understand the consequences of sex.

However, in hunter gatherer societies, children who haven't hit puberty often have sex with each other or with adults, and i dont think they are mentally impaired by this experience.

For some reason, it only becomes traumatic and damaging when it involves an adult, but i was wondering why does this happen? People say its because the adult is more experienced and mentally mature than the child, therefore its abusive. But how? Why is this abusive unless there is physical or verbal abuse involved?

[OnionPetal]

[...] My understanding is that children cannot consent to having sex with adults because they are too mentally immature to understand the consequences of sex. [...]

Legally they cannot consent. And the basis for those laws is a kind of mental incompetence that minors supposedly only have in regards to sexual activity. But philosophically and theoretically, in a society where minors were more informed and educated, who is to say what they could and could not consent to?

[NeverLoseKibou]

It isn't necessarily harmful, there are countless examples of it happening with no harm.

The argument against it is this.
1. Children lack the mental capacity to consent to sex.
2. Therefore children can't have sex
3. If a child has sex then they couldnt' have consented because of 1, so it's rape, sex without consent.
4. So the children is treated as a rape victim and their partner as a rapist. This is highly traumatic to both, creating the after effect to support the trauma argument.

It's nonsensical of course.
The medical profession knows it's nonsense, that's why there are tests such as the Gillick competence test to allow a young person to choose to have medical treatment. A young person can have the mental competence to choose life changing treatment, this is why the Gillick competence test exists, and yet they can't have the mental competence to choose a sexual partner or relationship? If a young person commits a crime, they have the mental capacity to be held accountable in the law, but not to choose a sexual partner? A parent who doesn't listen to their child, talk to their child, reason with their child, take into account their child's needs, thoughts and feelings is considered neglectful. But the same child is incapable of choosing a sexual partner?

The whole thing is bonkers and I think the legal and medical profession knows it is bonkers but they're trapped in a way by a mix of scale and counter emotion. Scale, since there are a lot of young people in the world, so applying something like the Gillick competence test to young people having sex would be too time consuming. Young people seeking medical intervention is a small scale activity, if every young person who wanted sex wanted the same test then the courts would grind to a halt. So they go for the simplest of blunt instruments, an age test, even though they know it's the wrong test. As for counter emotion, we've got to a place where there are a small number of loud anti's who love to shout about this stuff and it just creates an environment nobody wants to walk into with logic, looking for something like the Gillick competence test that could be applied quickly and easily and at scale.

[Meiwaku_Mailing_Girl]

However, in hunter gatherer societies, children who haven't hit puberty often have sex with each other or with adults, and i dont think they are mentally impaired by this experience.

Most people aren't aware that not all cultures have a taboo on adult-child sexual contact. Most people assume "pedophilia" has aways been illegal and hated in all human societies and cultures.

Why do some people believe sexual contact between adults and children cause harm to the child? Well it depends on the person's believes. Some will argue it has to do with children not being able to give informed consent. Some base their thinking on the idea that children are pure, innocent, asexual beings and that being exposed to sexual content and acts will corrupt and scare them. They assume that a child could never enjoy sexual acts or be a willing participate.

[MAPallmylife66]

I don't believe that an adult having sex with a child is harmful, so long as both parties are consenting to it, and there is no physical abuse. Children are just as capable of having loving, caring, intimate relationships as adults are. They are feeling beings. They feel love, they feel attraction, they feel desire, and as has been proven, they also get horny, just like adults do. I see no reason whatsoever, why if a child, who is educated on what sex is, and the consequences of it, and wants to have sex with an adult, they shouldn't be permitted to. Sex is one of the strongest, and most natural human impulses. To deny someone that which they want, because they aren't adults, is ludicrous.

[Bookshelf]

Most people aren't aware that not all cultures have a taboo on adult-child sexual contact. Most people assume "pedophilia" has aways been illegal and hated in all human societies and cultures.

This is one of the most bizarre rationalizations we can witness among people when talking about AMSC or age gap relationships. Through almost all of human history, we've had no concept of an age of consent and we have tons of evidence that many cultures engaged in AMSC freely... are we to believe that everyone else got it wrong, and somehow we're the truly gifted culture that got it right?

You can see how some younger people view even their grandparents' relationships. It was trending on social media a little while ago for people to talk about how their grandparents met. How they realized how "problematic" it is that their grandmother told a romantic story about how she started dating their grandfather while she was still in highschool and he was in his 20s or something. Every generation before us got it wrong and now suddenly we figured it out.

How on earth did we survive this long as a species when everyone was getting so traumatized all the time through what they all believed was just normal human contact? We sure are fortunate we're putting a stop to it now, hundreds of thousands of years in. Close one guys. Almost went extinct there.