Different views on what consent is (poll)

[Brain O'Conner]

Something I was reading today got me thinking I wanted to try to clarify what consent means. I worked out roughly two categories of autonomy:

desire-based autonomy (i.e. when a person chooses something because they desire it happening), and
understanding-based autonomy (i.e. when a person chooses something happening having understood it).

Understanding-based autonomy breaks down into two further kinds:

informed understanding (i.e. where someone develops the understanding to make a decision due to being educated), and
developed capacity for understanding (i.e. where a person develops the understanding to make a decision due to becoming more mature)

I think people often blur the lines between the two. For example, antis often invoke horror stories of coercion, but then if you ask "what if a child
wants sexual contact", they switch back to emphasizing understanding as a necessary condition for consent.
Of course, without being informed, there is a major danger of exploitation, but I think it's still possible for an uninformed decision to be meaningful.

What do you guys think?

I agree with what you're saying overall; however, your emphasis on developed capacity for understanding does not make sense and is inaccurate in a way. In other words, it comes off as a kid at a specific age can only understand a specific thing or a specific thing at a particular level only at a certain development of their brain, which would not only be scientifically inaccurate, but makes you sound like an anti and thus debasing. If someone gains the knowledge to understand something, and applies that understanding to make an informed decision, then that is maturity. That is how one matures regardless of age or "brain development", whether that would be emotional, academic, or many other forms of maturity. Also, the thing about brain development is that although there are fixed elements such as brain size, synaptic pruning, brain development in the womb, and a few other things, brain development is mostly fluid. In other words, brain development matures through the experiences that one is given depending on the environment one is put in, and not necessarily as a result of fixed stages of the brain. This is reflected through the myelinization the brain undergoes which strengthens the axons with a fatty substance called Schwann cells which forms the myelin sheath around the axon for faster connections from one neuron to another. This is important to know, because this kind of development is not fixed and there are adults that have connections in the prefrontal cortex area that are not is strong or myelinated and there are teens and younger kids that have greater maturation indexes in either that specific area of the brain or other parts.

[Naugahyde]

The concept of informed agency within sexual consent poses an intriguing paradox. It suggests that before engaging in sexual activities, individuals must possess comprehensive knowledge about potential outcomes. However, this ideal raises significant concerns as it overlooks the intrinsic value of exploration and risk-taking, which often lead to profound experiences.

One fundamental issue with the fully informed consent model is its impracticality. Human nature is inherently curious and adventurous, driving us to explore uncharted territories. The sexual realm is no exception; many individuals have found great satisfaction in experiences that initially lacked full understanding. This does not imply recklessness but rather a willingness to encounter the unknown, which fosters personal growth.

Furthermore, the notion of desire itself challenges the premise of fully informed consent. Desire is often spontaneous and transformative, driven by internal forces beyond conscious awareness. It's this dynamic quality that makes sexual experiences rich with potential, yet also inherently uncertain. Attempting to regulate these movements in the name of full information risks stifling the very qualities that make human connections unique.

Moreover, the emphasis on being fully informed can paradoxically hinder intimacy and trust. If every sexual encounter must be preceded by an exhaustive review of potential outcomes, it could lead to a climate of suspicion or hesitation, eroding the spontaneity essential for genuine connection. Trust and vulnerability are integral to meaningful sexual interactions, which are jeopardized when every detail is scrutinized.

It's crucial to recognize that informed consent is not about perfection but harm reduction. While it's essential to ensure that participants are aware of potential risks, it's equally important to acknowledge the imprecision of such knowledge. No one can know everything before engaging in a sexual encounter; such omniscience is humanly unattainable.

Thus, we must strike a balance—one that allows for exploration without negating the importance of awareness. This balance should encourage open communication and mutual consent but not require absolute information as a precondition. It's about fostering safe spaces where individuals can navigate their desires with a healthy degree of risk-taking, knowing that personal growth often emerges from stepping into the unknown.

In conclusion, informed agency in sexual consent should aim for a nuanced understanding that respects both the inevitability of exploration and the necessity of protection. By embracing this balance, we can honor the complexity of human desire while safeguarding the essential qualities that make our experiences truly human.

[PorcelainLark]

I agree with what you're saying overall; however, your emphasis on developed capacity for understanding does not make sense and is inaccurate in a way. In other words, it comes off as a kid at a specific age can only understand a specific thing or a specific thing at a particular level only at a certain development of their brain, which would not only be scientifically inaccurate, but makes you sound like an anti and thus debasing. If someone gains the knowledge to understand something, and applies that understanding to make an informed decision, then that is maturity. That is how one matures regardless of age or "brain development", whether that would be emotional, academic, or many other forms of maturity. Also, the thing about brain development is that although there are fixed elements such as brain size, synaptic pruning, brain development in the womb, and a few other things, brain development is mostly fluid. In other words, brain development matures through the experiences that one is given depending on the environment one is put in, and not necessarily as a result of fixed stages of the brain. This is reflected through the myelinization the brain undergoes which strengthens the axons with a fatty substance called Schwann cells which forms the myelin sheath around the axon for faster connections from one neuron to another. This is important to know, because this kind of development is not fixed and there are adults that have connections in the prefrontal cortex area that are not is strong or myelinated and there are teens and younger kids that have greater maturation indexes in either that specific area of the brain or other parts.

Fair enough. However had a slightly different intention in mind. I was thinking of a normative remedy to the problem. If an anti says they don't think a child can consent because they don't understand sex, does that mean that with the right sexual education they could consent, or do they mean there's a hard and fast line about maturation (i.e. no amount of education can make a 16 year old educated enough to consent like an 18 year old)? I don't think anyone really believes the former, but I think it's useful to clarify they mean the latter.
I'm try to get at what they mean when they say consent isn't about desire, since it seems obvious if minors desire sex that they could consent to it if desire was the primary condition for consent. The anti view might be completely against science, but I still want to get a clear understanding of what they mean, because if they commit to a position which is scientifically untenable then you can simply point to the science to refute it.

It's crucial to recognize that informed consent is not about perfection but harm reduction. While it's essential to ensure that participants are aware of potential risks, it's equally important to acknowledge the imprecision of such knowledge. No one can know everything before engaging in a sexual encounter; such omniscience is humanly unattainable.

This makes sense to me. So in this view the age of consent aims towards harm reduction? Then is your position that consent is about understanding risks?

[Harlan]

If an anti says they don't think a child can consent because they don't understand sex, does that mean that with the right sexual education they could consent, or do they mean there's a hard and fast line about maturation (i.e. no amount of education can make a 16 year old educated enough to consent like an 18 year old)? I don't think anyone really believes the former, but I think it's useful to clarify they mean the latter.

Antis have three defensive barriers. First they say that minors cannot give consent because they are not informed. But when you tell them that proper sex education will enable them to be informed, literate and responsible, which will make sexual intimacy safer, they hide behind the second barrier - the myth that there is something is missing in the brain of the imperfect for the agreement and awareness of sex. When you explain to them that the brain is already developed enough by the age of 10 to be able to express agreement and disagreement, they hide behind the last third barrier - the imbalance of power. After you break through all three barriers, the antis becomes hysterical and stops accepting arguments and begins to defend himself by accusing his opponent of having a perverted desire to fuck children.

[PorcelainLark]

Antis have three defensive barriers. First they say that minors cannot give consent because they are not informed. But when you tell them that proper sex education will enable them to be informed, literate and responsible, which will make sexual intimacy safer, they hide behind the second barrier - the myth that there is something is missing in the brain of the imperfect for the agreement and awareness of sex. When you explain to them that the brain is already developed enough by the age of 10 to be able to express agreement and disagreement, they hide behind the last third barrier - the imbalance of power. After you break through all three barriers, the antis becomes hysterical and stops accepting arguments and begins to defend himself by accusing his opponent of having a perverted desire to fuck children.

I think unless a person is religious, generally the first barrier won't be an issue; like even if it makes a secular/liberal person uncomfortable, they'll begrudgingly acknowledge sex education is necessary.

The third barrier seems to be less of an obstacle, but still rarer than the first. I'm thinking of the discourse about whether celebrities should be allowed to have relationships with fans; it's controversial now, but not so much in the past, and there are still people today who won't make that big of a deal out of it. Plus, it's pretty easy to illustrate the absurdity of it - most women are physically weaker than most men, so unless we're going to say the majority of heterosexual relationships are unethical because of power imbalance, it's hard to hold this position consistently; and the majority of people aren't going to accept that restriction anyway.

The second barrier seems like the major one to me. I think when antis say children can't consent to sex, I think they rely on the children not making responsible decisions which in turn relies on a lower level of neurological development.

I don't know though. If you took an example of two 8 year olds doing something sexual together without any adult influence, would an anti say that's morally equivalent to an intergenerational sex act? Is the sexual act the root of the harm, or is it who is doing it? I think they would say it's who is doing the act that is the locus of the harm, so we would be back at the issue being power imbalance.

The easy answer would be to say there's degrees of power imbalance. A billionaire has more power in a relationship than a suburban breadwinner, so the issue isn't the power imbalance itself, but the degree. It fits with the idea of Romeo & Juliet laws.

My instinct is that sex just isn't such a big deal that we need all this hand wringing about it's morality. I feel like the abuse of power has a great deal to do with privacy and laws about public indecency. Contrast with certain indigenous people that live together in communal huts, and who have sex in those contexts; it's pretty clear that rape or sexual exploitation would be harder if sex wasn't a private act. Even in Western culture, it's a pretty recent development that we all have separate rooms. I wonder if the neurosis about sex is directly tied to the growth of privacy?

[Fragment]

The more I think about it, the more I wonder if consent is just an ideology and, while being a good approximation of potential harm ends up being prized over the actual dynamics and outcomes of a relationship.

If you ignore someone's "no" but they end up having a good experience and the relationship is undamaged then you did take a foolish risk and things could have gone poorly, but I don't think you've actually done anything immoral.

I'm not sure if I actually agree with the above statements. But it's one angle I've been considering.

[PorcelainLark]

The more I think about it, the more I wonder if consent is just an ideology

This is why I'd be really curious to see some cognitive science on consent. My main original motive for getting involved in the MAP community was trying to talk about consent as something to be empirically studied. I don't think it would settle everything, but it would seriously tip the scales if the cognitive capacity to consent was the same in children as adults or vice versa.

and, while being a good approximation of potential harm ends up being prized over the actual dynamics and outcomes of a relationship.

"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." Goodhart's law.

If you ignore someone's "no" but they end up having a good experience and the relationship is undamaged then you did take a foolish risk and things could have gone poorly, but I don't think you've actually done anything immoral.

Also, it makes everything so stilted and awkward when every possible sexual relationship framed by whether it is consensual. You can never really enjoy unguarded intimacy under this ethic, because you always have to be hypervigilant to a partner potentially withdrawing consent. You can never say you know him or her well enough to know what they want. It's all quite weird, to be honest.

[Harlan]

When you try something for the first time you are not informed enough and have no experience, all this appears after the attempt. A person consents to try something or repeat it if the first experience was not critically negative. Consent is a constant check of sensations in the process of activity. If the activity was unpleasant, then the person expresses this with many signals and stops consent. When someone consents to try a unknown dish, he is not informed enough, and he gains experience after he tastes it. If the food is hot, he doesn't try to stuff it into himself, but waits for it to cool down; if it tastes disgusting or doesn't satisfy his expectations, the person refuses to eat it.

How is "sex" different from any other activity? Children are not fools and they understand perfectly well that sex is hidden from them and one way or another they communicate with older children and learn the details. They develop a natural and physiological interest, and the first thing they discover is masturbation. What harm can come from masturbation alone or with someone ?

[Naugahyde]

It's crucial to recognize that informed consent is not about perfection but harm reduction. While it's essential to ensure that participants are aware of potential risks, it's equally important to acknowledge the imprecision of such knowledge. No one can know everything before engaging in a sexual encounter; such omniscience is humanly unattainable.

This makes sense to me. So in this view the age of consent aims towards harm reduction? Then is your position that consent is about understanding risks?

To me, consent is more about allowing experiences than assessing potential risks. Unlike risk assessment, which focuses on possible harm, consent should be more viewed as granting permission for an experience. The field of sexual ethics could benefit from this distinction of consent, emphasizing a shift from focusing on merely preventing harm (by judgements of consentability) to actively reducing it (by judgements of the actual sexual interplay). The specific use of language in "Age of Consent" suggests that consentability is dependant on age, dependent on mental faculty and proper risk assessment; but consent isn't about that. Consent in this instance is an approval to initiate an experience.

The current age-of-consent (AoC) laws serve as a good example of how rigidity can become ineffective over time. Just as antibiotics lose their effectiveness when repeatedly applied without considering bacterial adaptation, these laws have let outlawed sex evolve in ways that make the law start to hinder rather than help, leading to cultural extremes and resentments, such as those felt by the queer population. Outlawed sexual interplay could generally be more boundless and unstable due to a more troubled psychological attainment of the unlawful taboo; on the contrary, if AMSC was lawful, this transgressive mysticism that attracts taboo-related sexual intensities wouldn't be as potent. This outlines an important aspect on the impotence of AoC laws.

A radical shift to address unethical behaviors without falling into the pitfalls of rigid categories may be direly needed, because the cultural extremities surrounding pedophilia may be at the fault of its prohibition. A dynamic approach that respects individual autonomy by reducing harm while allowing flexibility could be a more effective path forward. This would involve moving beyond outdated tools (of AoC) and fostering a nuanced understanding of consent, by educating people on ethical sex and its policies and using more flexible moral judgements, ensuring that each situation is considered on its own merits rather than through one-size-fits-all approaches. In other words, we simply cannot use age as the go-to band-aid solution for age-difference specific sex crimes anymore.

In this context, the lawful indication for age of consent needs to be reevaluated. Though, firstly adjusting the age of consent to 12 could help partially resolve some issues related to limited puberty, while acknowledging the complexity and uniqueness of each individual's experience otherwise. While I believe that this isn't the whole step forward, it's still a good intermediary solution.

[Brain O'Conner]

I agree with what you're saying overall; however, your emphasis on developed capacity for understanding does not make sense and is inaccurate in a way. In other words, it comes off as a kid at a specific age can only understand a specific thing or a specific thing at a particular level only at a certain development of their brain, which would not only be scientifically inaccurate, but makes you sound like an anti and thus debasing. If someone gains the knowledge to understand something, and applies that understanding to make an informed decision, then that is maturity. That is how one matures regardless of age or "brain development", whether that would be emotional, academic, or many other forms of maturity. Also, the thing about brain development is that although there are fixed elements such as brain size, synaptic pruning, brain development in the womb, and a few other things, brain development is mostly fluid. In other words, brain development matures through the experiences that one is given depending on the environment one is put in, and not necessarily as a result of fixed stages of the brain. This is reflected through the myelinization the brain undergoes which strengthens the axons with a fatty substance called Schwann cells which forms the myelin sheath around the axon for faster connections from one neuron to another. This is important to know, because this kind of development is not fixed and there are adults that have connections in the prefrontal cortex area that are not is strong or myelinated and there are teens and younger kids that have greater maturation indexes in either that specific area of the brain or other parts.

Fair enough. However had a slightly different intention in mind. I was thinking of a normative remedy to the problem. If an anti says they don't think a child can consent because they don't understand sex, does that mean that with the right sexual education they could consent, or do they mean there's a hard and fast line about maturation (i.e. no amount of education can make a 16 year old educated enough to consent like an 18 year old)? I don't think anyone really believes the former, but I think it's useful to clarify they mean the latter.
I'm try to get at what they mean when they say consent isn't about desire, since it seems obvious if minors desire sex that they could consent to it if desire was the primary condition for consent. The anti view might be completely against science, but I still want to get a clear understanding of what they mean, because if they commit to a position which is scientifically untenable then you can simply point to the science to refute it.

Go read the post I made about universal maturity. It sums up nicely of what I'm trying to say here: https://forum.map-union.org/viewtopic.php?t=1943. Comment on the post so I can know your thoughts on it.