MAP Forum

They will say that people under the age of 18 can't consent until the cows come home, but not a single one of them can ever tell me why or how that is. The only thing that claims people under 18 can't consent is the law (at least where I live, I know it differs), but we all know law does not define morality. The same law that says kids can't consent once claimed homosexuality to be an immoral sin deserving of jailtime, yet everyone who isn't a boring prude would know that's not true. There's not a single scientific study or backing in sight that supports the claim of minors being unable to consent, either. If anything, biology proves that kids, once they've reached the age where they naturally feel sexual attraction, CAN, in fact, consent. If kids really can't or shouldn't have sex, then they wouldn't start wanting to bump uglies until they're adults. But noooo, some dipshits decided that if even if an incredibly horny teenager who can't keep their hands off their own genitals says "yes" to sex with an adult, it's still rape because "tHeY wErE a MiNoRrRrRrrr".

"But, but, kids aren't mature enough to consent!" Then by that logic, anyone under the age of 25 can't consent to sex either, because our brains don't fully develop until that age. Yet, when a 18–24 y/o has a good ol' romp in the hay with someone above that age range, it's a-okay, because a piece of paper said so! Who decided that 18 was the adult age, anyways? But in the world of the antis, who cares, right? They'll just be good little boys/girls/androgynes who follow the law and don't question anything because doing so would make them uncomfortable! If you ever wanna speedrun making me facepalm, just start whining about how a 22 y/o had sex with a 17 y/o.

I'm sure if the law randomly decides that 19 is the new age of consent, then the flock of sheep we call "antis" will suddenly flip their narrative and be like "18-year-olds can't consent!! Anyone who has sex with an 18-year-old is a rapist!!" as if they weren't acting like 18-year-olds were fully capable adults just last week, in this hypothetical scenario. By the way, calling an informed and consensual encounter between an adult and child "rape" is just so fucking rude to victims of ACTUAL rape. If you were to ask me if I'd rather be "molested" by my favorite Youtuber (whose videos I literally masturbated to) as a 12 y/o girl or get forced upon by a man at the age I am now, I'M CHOSING THE FIRST OPTION. In fact, I think kids who had consensual encounters with adults only feel like victims because society grooms them into thinking such. If people could just shut the fuck up and let people be happy (as long as no one is getting hurt), then we wouldn't have a bunch of kids feeling like victims of rape when in reality, they just got some baller head from an adult.

Honestly, I have a sneaking suspicion that there is a good number of antis who do raise an eyebrow at the whole "kids can't consent" thing but are too afraid to question it publicly because they know they'd get attacked for it. Everyone wants to talk about how "we sometimes need to have uncomfortable discussions" until it's time to have an uncomfortable discussion. LOL it's so funny when I see YouTube videos talking about MAP's with some cheesy-horror editing style, acting like people being attracted to children is the scariest thing ever when for me, that's just a normal Tuesday! (And Wednesday... and Thursday... and Friday...)

On top of that, there's just so many better groups of people to hate on. In America, literal children are getting rounded up by glorified thugs and being sent to what are essentially concentration camps for the "crime" of being brown and not having a piece of paper that calls them a US citizen... or just being brown. Yet if anyone should find out that this immigrant-respecting woman (me!) is attracted to children, suddenly I'm a bigger monster than those people who treat Hispanic children like cattle to be rounded up. Like holy shit guys, we have bigger fish to fry. What if instead of being a vigilante pedo-hunter, you hunt down people who are violent racists, animal abusers, or I dunno, child rapists - like, ACTUAL child rapists, not society's bullshit definition of what being a child rapist is. But no, MAPs are low-hanging fruit (not just low-hanging at this point, we're literally on the ground) when it comes to spreading hate, so...

It's just so frustrating to think that we're viewed as sub-human because western society just grabbed onto the "kids can't consent" thing and ran with it. It's safe to say that if the future is bright for MAPs, then that future is pretty damn far away from now. This whole age of consent thing is exactly why we need scientific evidence to back the choices of those in power. Of course, if I were to tell anyone the ideas I laid down in this post, I'd probably get hit in the face... or slowly backed away from, at best.

Stay safe out there, my fellow kiddo connoisseurs!

Kids are allowed to consent to many other things, playing, video games, etc. Unless the parent or one(s) in charge are evil people who want to strip their child of any consent, kids are allowed to consent...but NOT when it comes to sex.

Makes it seem very hypocritical doesn't it?

People are so willfully irrational it's hard not to feel self-righteous, at times. It means nothing to claim that children can't consent to sex. That people genuinely maintain that 15-year-olds aren't capable of consenting to sex is one of the most shocking things (it might not be the greatest tragedy or injustice and there are other equally irrational beliefs I can complain about but the mental gymnastics required to convince yourself that this is objectively true, I just can't process it). Rational consent requires the ability to imagine or consciously conceive of various alternative options and to select one upon reflection rather than impulse. Infants and most non-human animals probably can't 'consent' to sexual contact, or anything else, although they can express desire or tolerance. The argument works by conflating prudent or wise decision-making with a literal capacity to consent or make choices which we understand children are perfectly capable of doing in their day-to-day lives (do you want the red ball or the blue one? Sex has special status because of the meaning we project on to it, but objectively it is physical contact even if we're wired in such a way that it can have certain emotional consequences).

We also understand that people can meaningfully consent to experiences for which they have no personal reference for and when they can't predict emotional (or general) consequences and in the absence of some kind of deception, we accept that consent is meaningful when people are aware of their own ignorance (e.g. I've never tried this food, I don't know how it will taste or if I'll like it or how it might affect me; I might be allergic, but no one was lying to me about what it is objectively). People will often use other values to defend unrelated values that they hold, they are opposed to AMSC fundamentally but frame the argument, effectively, as a question of protecting children's autonomy which is laughable because adults have given themselves the authority to inhibit children's autonomy in ways that they assume are beneficial or neutral (if you deny that children are autonomous beings to begin with you're only arguing against the idea of statutory rape), and they further defend the perceived inherent value of AMSC by attaching it to a concern for children's emotional well-being (i.e. we oppose it because we want to spare children trauma and the emotional damage of sex with an older party but the same outrage exists when you pose a hypothetical scenario in which children enjoy the intimacy and are not ultimately traumatized by it. I can write a children's story that takes place in a world where gravity behaves differently, it might be a common past time for parents to playfully throw their children out of windows but it's a game that they enjoy, knowing that they'll shoot up into the air or wiz around or remain suspended and are in no danger. You can pose this hypothetical scenario without triggering the emotional response that people often have to a depiction or defense of AMSC in fantasy scenarios where it's a source of pleasure for children who aren't ultimately traumatized by it because, whatever people claim, it's not ultimately about protecting children from psychological harm, OR thwarting a property violation because if one can't form a legitimate desire to engage in some highly complicated interaction they can't truly understand they likewise cannot form a legitimate desire to avoid that same interaction. Simple logic).

Again, it's especially hard to process when it comes to pubescent and post-pubescent adolescents (especially or at least if they have started menstruating or are capable of ejaculating) because it's harder to deny that they have sexual feelings, they can know who they feel attracted to and understand the feelings the other person has toward them and if they've masturbated they have a basic idea of how orgasm might affect them. What new information about sex can they acquire that won't come from actually having sex? It's complete madness. This is the logic that you rely on to justify ruining people's lives? Really? Why does no one care about objectivity in ethics?

They are all just trying to defend intuitions they already have that they're emotionally invested in. My ideals contradict my intuitions, they require more from me than I can or would naturally be inclined to give. I'm sure I'm wrong about some implications of my worldview here and there (in terms of practical application at least, if not ideologically) or some detailed arguments I might make could be lacking but I can't possibly be wrong about everyone's/only happiness/suffering being intrinsically good/bad (it cannot conceivably be the case that emotional distress is objectively neutral despite our experiencing it as inherently bad because, unlike memory or sensory perception, it doesn't simulate some separate reality that it might misrepresent. If happiness/pain feels inherently good/bad, denying its inherent value is tantamount to denying that it exists at all) so, by extension, AMSC should be celebrated insofar as it can be a source of happiness for people and discouraged only insofar as it causes felt emotional distress, or deprives people of happiness. The devaluing of children's sexual happiness and the happiness of the adults who are sexually interested in them is undeniably immoral (this is true even if we do have good reason to discourage AMSC in practice, out of risk aversion, which is realistically not what the conventional argument against AMSC can be boiled down to. Most people want children to be asexual on principle, they are fundamentally opposed to children, minors and young adults or the prospect of intimacy with them being a source of sexual pleasure for older people).

I've also wondered what's so special about the number 18. It might be that 18 is when boys are supposed to have completed puberty (semenarche might be considered delayed at 16 so if a boy has it at 15 he should complete puberty at 17. I've read, from some sources, that semenarche happens for boys in Tanner stage 3 whereas for girls it's typically stage 4, even though the rule seems to be that male milestones occur a year after their female equivalent. Forgive me if I'm completely misinformed. It's also not clear to me what goes into considering puberty 'delayed' at any given age. I've consistently read that thelarche is considered delayed at 13 and menarche at 15, some sources claim 16. Does this necessarily imply that the absence of menarche at 15 implies some underlying medical issue, like malnutrition, or might some healthy people just naturally mature later than usual? Is it based on what's normal, because that seems to require an arbitrary cut off. I know that researchers often consider a trait abnormal if it occurs in 5% or less of a population but it seems to me that any point between 49-1% would be arbitrary. Most girls, in developed countries or when malnutrition isn't an issue, have had their first period by 14; 90% by 13.75. I'm also not sure if each Tanner stage; as in 2-3, 3-4 and 4-5, would take no more than a year to complete or if full sexual maturity would occur two years after basic reproductive ability/semenarche or menarche). I think it's worth noting that there's still a serious stigma when it comes to men in their 30s, 40s, etc. (maybe even late 20s) dating legal adults who are in their late teens or early 20s which further suggests to me that consent is not the real issue, although people might double down and insist that one cannot consent to something that they shouldn't (i.e. a power imbalance, which they wrongly believe is inherent to age-gaps; and they have no issue with other power imbalances like a woman dating someone with a lower IQ or body builders dating scrawny women, etc.).

Honestly, I have a sneaking suspicion that there is a good number of antis who do raise an eyebrow at the whole "kids can't consent" thing but are too afraid to question it publicly because they know they'd get attacked for it.

I would assume this as well, because the idea is so preposterous.

Everyone wants to talk about how "we sometimes need to have uncomfortable discussions" until it's time to have an uncomfortable discussion.

Yes, and how we should respect people with different beliefs (e.g. 'liberals think we're evil, we just think they have bad ideas'), question what we take for granted, etc. but they'll always draw some self-serving line when it comes to applying that principle (obviously, I didn't mean people who think THAT. I meant people with acceptable positions, like mine).

I don't want to address the rest, I wrote this out before finishing the post. One thing I'd add is that 25 is not the standard age for prefrontal cortex development, this has been debunked repeatedly, it was based on an assumption made by Jay Giedd whose research spawned the meme. People's pfcs develop at very different rates.