stropa wrote: Tue Nov 19, 2024 9:30 pm
My argument pertained to legal consent which
is a binary concept.
[...]
And the definition of legal consent is a chosen point on that spectrum such that all consent before that point is considered non-valid and all consent after that point is valid. Therefore it's binary.
You argue that legal consent is inherently binary, but this doesn’t address the crux of my critique: why this binary approach should apply to all cases without consideration of context or individual capacity. Saying "it’s legally defined as binary" is descriptive, not justificatory. It merely restates the status quo rather than defending its validity or addressing its flaws. Laws are created by humans and can be amended when they fail to capture nuance—something we’ve done countless times in history, such as with laws on hate crime laws, anti-sodomy laws, the age of majority, etc...
Further, laws around consent already acknowledge nuance in some jurisdictions, such as close-in-age exemptions. If exceptions exist in some cases, why not expand this principle to create a more comprehensive system that reflects the varied capacities of individuals, regardless of age?
How do you define an exploitative relationship?
You suggest that my arguments fail because I don’t provide a concrete definition of an exploitative relationship. But there are better ways to address exploitation than simply leaning on an age threshold rigidly. For instance:
- Exploitation could be defined as involving coercion, manipulation, or abuse of power dynamics (power imbalance =/= abuse of power).
Laws targeting coercive behaviors or significant power imbalances could address exploitation directly, without penalizing consensual relationships where no such factors exist.
A context-based approach better addresses actual harm rather than assuming exploitation purely based on age, which risks overgeneralization and unjust outcomes.
Voluntary relationships between legal adults should not be forcibly ended because one's emotional maturity isn't technically up to par. If two legal adults are cognitively mature I don't think anyone else has the right to stop it if it's voluntary.
But that's precisely one of the main justifications for the age of consent: Someone a few months shy from eh age of consent doesn't have the "emotional/mental/cognitive/neurological maturity" to handle a personal relationship with an adult even if the age gap is small.
You defend the restriction of some relationships because minors, in your view, can’t make autonomous decisions. Yet autonomy isn’t a binary state that suddenly materializes at 18 or at some random age arbitrarily decided by the state. Cognitive and emotional maturity develops gradually, and not all minors are equally vulnerable. Denying this nuance simplifies human development to an arbitrary cutoff, ignoring the capacity of many older adolescents to engage in consensual, informed relationships. Again, the law already recognizes this in some cases with
Romeo and Juliet laws, so the precedent exists to expand these principles further.
I did not mean it was morally justified, I meant it was legally permissible because of the fact that they are minors. Again I am not going to get into an argument on whether minorhood is justified or not.
You admit minorhood isn’t necessarily morally justified but rely on its legality as a defense. This is circular reasoning: minorhood is enforced because the law permits it, but the law itself is the result of human decisions. The legitimacy of minorhood as a concept should be open to critique, especially when it underpins laws that restrict autonomy without clear justification.
Additionally, your argument conflates protections meant to aid minors (e.g., guardianship in medical or legal matters) with restrictions on personal autonomy (e.g., prohibitions on consensual relationships). These are separate issues and shouldn’t be treated as equivalent.
Minors rely on their legal guardians to make informed decisions on their behalf. This applies to every legal decison a child can make unless there are provisions in the law that say otherwise. Throughout all of this, there is no concept of a child legally consenting in this relationship. The guardian is allowed to make decisions that go against the preferences of the minor.
If this model were to be applied consistently to sexual behavior, a child's guardian would need to control and be responsible for the sex lives of their children, including legally consenting on their behalf. This would introduce many ethical problems given the overwhelming risk of abuse and exploitation this would carry.
The age of consent removes this power from guardians. Once they reach the legal age of consent they are able to consent independently from their guardian's power. To me this is a clear justification for age of consent given the system we currently live under.
Your claim that shifting control from guardians to minors creates ethical problems fails to consider the practical realities of the current system. Age of consent laws already remove a minor’s ability to make decisions, placing that control in the hands of the state rather than the individual or their guardian. After all, under the current age of consent regime common across the western world and in the global south, it's up to the courts to decide if an intimate relationship partaken by the minor was legal or not, regardless of the minors' actual willingness.
This doesn’t solve the ethical concern—it merely shifts the power dynamic without addressing whether the individual is actually harmed in consensual cases.
Further, your argument presumes guardians would need to "control" a minor’s sex life if more nuanced consent laws were implemented. This is a slippery slope fallacy; there’s no evidence that allowing context-based evaluations of consent would result in guardians controlling a child’s personal relationships.
Because of the ethical issues inherent with adults having the power to consent on the minor's behalf. Because adults do not need permission from other adults to take legally binding actions.
You argue that allowing adults to consent on a minor’s behalf creates ethical concerns. But this doesn’t directly refute my critique: if the concern is exploitation or abuse of power, then laws should target those behaviors explicitly rather than relying on age thresholds as a proxy. Blanket age-based restrictions often fail to capture the complexity of real-world relationships and can unjustly penalize individuals in consensual scenarios.
It's not circular at all. As I said before it's legally permissible because the state is allowed to make laws in the interest of protecting minors. The concept was created for that purpose.
You dismiss the critique of circular reasoning by reiterating that minorhood is legally permissible, but you miss the point. The critique isn’t about legality—it’s about justification. Laws must be evaluated on their moral and practical merits, not merely their existence. Saying "the state allows it because they are minors" doesn’t explain why the law is justified in treating minors differently in all cases.
Your initial comparison was a strawman to begin with, as I did not say that the age of consent should be high enough to apply to cognitively mature individuals.
You concede that comparing a 10-month-old to a 20-year-old was a strawman, but this undermines your earlier argument. It’s disingenuous to generalize about “minorhood” when the term encompasses a wide range of developmental stages and age brackets, from infancy to adolescence. Treating all minors as equally incapable of consent ignores the significant cognitive and emotional differences between, for instance, a 12-year-old and a toddler.
If you’re willing to admit these differences exist, then the law should reflect them by focusing on factors like maturity, context, and the presence of coercion rather than enforcing a rigid age threshold.
No, and I don't think there iis (sic) any compelling reason to consider variations in maturity of 10 month olds either.
Stropa, your reply sidesteps the critical distinction I was making between situations involving cognitively mature older adolescents and those involving very young children, such as a 10-month-old. My point was not to argue about the maturity of infants, but rather highlighting the absurdity of treating such vastly different scenarios under the same legal framework without accounting for context or individual capacity, as is the case in Alabama and a number of other jurisdictions. Shifting focus to whether 10-month-olds have varying levels of maturity is a red herring. The inclusion of a 10-month-old in the example was intentionally extreme to demonstrate the flaw in applying a one-size-fits-all standard. Dismissing this as “not compelling” avoids grappling with the core issue of variability in cognitive and emotional development across the broad category of "minors." If you acknowledge that a 17-year-old in a consensual relationship is fundamentally different from a 10-month-old in an exploitative scenario, then it follows that the law should reflect those differences. However, blanket age-based rules erase these distinctions, creating unjust outcomes for older adolescents who are cognitively capable of consent, ergo the problems with absolutist laws that rely on age thresholds, such as the age of consent.
But let’s set aside the extreme example of a 10-month-old and a 17-year-old, and instead focus on a 12- or 13-year-old, ages that have historically been treated differently by legal systems and remain the lowest ages of consent in some jurisdictions, like Argentina and certain Mexican states (e.g., Puebla). For much of history, ages around 12 were considered the threshold for legal consent in many cultures, such as medieval England and ancient China. The current push toward higher blanket age thresholds reflects modern shifts in societal values but doesn’t erase the fact that these standards are culturally and temporally contingent and doesn't necessarily imply that the trend will always by upwards, as shown by the examples of Austria, Brazil, and Peru. Russia is a poignant case as, after 1991, it adopted an age of consent of 16, only to lower it to 14, and back to 16 again under Putin.
If a consensual relationship involves a 12- or 13-year-old who is cognitively and emotionally mature enough to understand the implications of their actions, why should this be treated in the same legal category as cases involving coercion or exploitation of much younger children? Here’s why this matters:
- The very first ages of consent, going back to English common law, were set at around 12, specifically for girls. If the argument is that minors under 18 are categorically incapable of consent, how do we reconcile this with the legal traditions and current laws in some jurisdictions that recognize 12- and 13-year-olds as capable of providing consent in certain contexts? Clearly, there is no universal agreement on the exact age at which a person can consent, which highlights the arbitrariness of setting rigid thresholds.
- Treating a consensual relationship involving a 12- or 13-year-old as equally exploitative as one involving a 5-year-old or 10-month-old ignores developmental variability and context. It risks criminalizing situations where no exploitation or harm occurs while failing to address the power dynamics or coercion that can exist at any age.
- As the earliest laws were designed to regulate the sexual autonomy of pubescent girls, the historical intent was more about control than protection. Modern laws have shifted focus toward safeguarding children from abuse and exploitation, but they often fail to distinguish between situations where harm is present and those where it isn’t. By applying the same standards to all cases involving minors under 18, these laws erase critical nuances that should inform our understanding of consent.
- What’s considered acceptable varies widely across cultures and time periods. For instance, in countries where the age of consent is 12 or 13, there is recognition that some adolescents possess the maturity to consent under certain circumstances. While you may personally disagree with this, it shows that the capacity for consent cannot be universally pegged to a specific age.
While protecting minors from exploitation is a laudable goal, we must balance it against the risk of infringing on their autonomy. A blanket rule that fails to distinguish between a voluntary relationship involving a 13-year-old and an abusive relationship involving a prepubescent child undermines this balance, leading to unjust outcomes.
Key Questions for you:
- If the law once recognized 12 as an age of consent and still does in some places, does that invalidate the argument that minors under 18 are universally incapable of consent?
- How does a system based solely on rigid age thresholds address the nuances of cognitive and emotional maturity among individuals in early adolescence?
- If blanket rules result in unjust criminalization of voluntary relationships, how can we justify such overreach as being in the best interest of minors?
We will agree to disagree on the rest.
Still no excuse to resolve underlying tensions tho.
