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Is there any reason the age of consent should be higher than 15 in the United States? I've concluded from Twitter that it's extremely difficult to find and good arguments against this. Meanwhile there's a lot of evidence for the position. Academics seem to agree with an age of consent around 15 while 18 seems to be more of a grassroots idea.
The arguments for an age of consent of 15 are multitude. First there's evospych; studies show most men in their twenties are attracted to 15 year old girls. Then there's ancient demography; the median age of marriage ranged from 16 to 18 for girls until 1600 AD and the minimum legal age of marriage ranged from 12-14 in most societies. Next there's the psychometric evidence: 15 year old girls demonstrate adult intelligence, while little children would be considered handicapped by adult intelligence standards, meaning the former should be able to understand sex and its consequences while the latter likely cannot. There's contemporary cross cultural evidence, specifically from Europe, which shows that wealthy modern countries can do just fine with age of consent set at 14 or 15. Example countries right now include France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Austria, Hungary, Estonia, and more.
All of this evidence points to 9 being too young, but 18 being too high. It seems like 14 or 15 is the optimal sweet spot. This is important right now as we can't properly judge Epstein without thinking scientifically about the age of consent. All of his victims were over 14, and that's not underaged everywhere. It's probable he would he charged with prostitution in Europe, but seeing this as a pedophile situation is not necessarily the right way to look at it.
The counter evidence I have been shown is essentially nil. It usually is just a death threat, actually. The best evidence is that the brain develops until 25, but then why not have an age of consent of 25? Why not let 24 year olds date 15 year olds? It doesn't really matter logically when the brain is mature, just when it is mature enough, given that 18 year olds brains are still maturing but they are seen as mature enough by these people.
The other main piece of objective evidence is that fecundity peaks around 20. The issue with this is that sex and dating do not mean pregnancy. Furthermore ancient demography shows that teen pregnancy is good enough anyway. Finally, the data don't seem to indicate that teenage girls are too young for pregnancy; the negative causal effects on their pregnancy are extremely mild and don't justify banning a 20 year old from dating a 15 year old.
Finally there's subjective evidence, lived experience. Interlocuters swear up and down that they weren't mature enough to date at 15. Well, that's not my experience and the experience of a ton of other people, including entire countries with nuclear weapons. I'm not sure who is wrong here, or if it's just something that genuinely differs between people. Still, lived experience is really not how I hand out felonies to loving couples. I find that idea odious. Especially when the girl and her family testify that their lived experience is different from the American norm.
Studies also show that men are more aggressive than women. That doesn't mean we should legalise assault.
Assault is legal in some cases, such as self defense, plus it's not a felony to get in a fight, and on top of that if I punch someone, they're more of a victim than a 15 year old girl who loves her 20 year old boyfriend. Yet, the crime is less severe. That's illogical.
The law makes a very clear distinction between the two such that self-defense is not assault.
In many jurisdictions, it absolutely is.
A "15-year-old girl who loves her 20-year-old boyfriend" is not the same as "a 15-year-old victim of statutory rape".
It would be even better if the law made a distinction where a loving relationship involving a 15 year old between could never be statutory rape. Only people who actually victimize should be prosecutable.
I guess in mine it's not, because human nature is violent and we don't want to make every man who gets in a fight a felon.
It is if they have sex, even if she wanted it and is not victimized by it.
Does the law ever pass judgement on which relationships are "loving" and which aren't? How would it even go about doing this? I know that in custody disputes between divorcing parents the judge may well take the respective parents' apparent affection for their children (and concern for their welfare) into account, but my understanding is that this is only one factor of many taken into consideration: if forced to choose between granting custody to one parent who really loves his children but is a heroin addict, and another parent who doesn't seem that invested in them but isn't addicted to heroin and always feeds and clothes them, I imagine most judges would choose the latter parent. Offhand I can't think of any instance in which the legal system adjudicates on which relationships are "loving" and which are not. Still less can I think of any crime which is not considered a crime provided the perpetrator and victim love each other. We used to recognise such categories (domestic abuse, marital rape), and it was considered a major feminist victory when we no longer did so. I, for one, would not like to go back to the world in which it is legally impossible for a man to rape his wife.
Which jurisdiction would that be?
No, it's not. If a fifteen-year-old girl loves her twenty-year-old boyfriend, but they have a celibate relationship, no crime has been committed. If a fifteen-year-old girl has sex with her twenty-year-old boyfriend, in some jurisdictions he will be considered a statutory rapist. The extent to which she loves him simply doesn't enter into it. We're not criminalising loving relationships, we're criminalising the sexual exploitation of minors, and as with literally every law in the history of the human race there are bound to be weird edge cases where it could plausibly be argued no real harm has been done.
You're not criminalising sexual exploitation of minors. Exploitation means to use someone unfairly for benefit. There is no clause in the law that the girl must be used unfairly, even though this would be easy to demonstrate. For example, if a man makes promises to her over text, has sex with her, cheats on her, and then dumps her, that would qualify as sexual exploitation. Indeed, at the very least, if criminalising exploitation were the goal, there would be no close-in-age exemptions for teenage boys, and testimony from the girl that she loves the man would ruin the case. And it's not a weird edge case. In every case I've studied, either no harm is done, harm does not rise to the level of a felony considering the values of society (heartbreak doesn't cut it for me, I demand my heart to be protected too and otherwise I'm not willing to put the mere feelings of teenage girls over the mating interests of young men), or the case is an easy way out after a rape or abuse allegation, which is a de facto violation of the 5th amendment of the bill of rights, which states:
If the case is known to really be about a rape, and the sentence and punishment is proportional to that effect, but a lesser crime is prosecuted, yet the worse crime is in fact the motivation for it, then the right to not be "eld to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury" as well as the right to "be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law" has been violated. In other words, the state must prove the real crime, not pass unjustifiable laws and then use excessive punishment for the crime as written described, because "everybody knows it's really about rape or exploitation."
As written, statutory rape punished as a felony with prison time also violates 8th amendment rights.
If a man is convicted of statutory rape, then he had consensual sex with a teenage girl. If "everybody knows" he's a rapist, too bad, he committed an unserious crime per the letter of the law. That crime being a felony or requiring "sex offender" status seems excessive and cruel and unusual to me. Considering that as written, the crime has no victims, jail time also seems cruel and unusual. The state has the hard job of proving the real crime, not bypassing the Bill of Rights with a funny trick.
Ah. Are we getting to the real nub of the argument now? And how many 20 year old men want to have babies with their 15 year old girlfriends, as opposed to getting to stick their dick into a hot, wet hole?
If we're going to argue old-timey laws and customs, seduction was also a crime, my friend, and that includes making a girl think she's in love with you and you're in love with her.
You've discounted feelings there, and that's the rationale of the laws around statutory rape: it used to be argued "it wasn't rape, she consented!" even in cases where it was clear the girl wasn't able to consent or was not mature enough to consent, and secondly the law is dealing in reason not feelings. It's bad for society when minors are exploited, even if minors consent to the exploitation and feel they are not being exploited and that they really do love the guy.
You don't believe the testimony of those who said they were not, in fact, old enough at the time:
But why don't you? These are people who are now older and mature and more experienced, saying "yeah gosh back then I thought I knew it all but I had no idea" and I think most of us find that out as we get older. The things we thought we understood and were equipped to deal with with, we had no real idea of what was involved.
Plenty I'm sure. But how many 15 year old girls want to have babies with their boyfriend, as opposed to getting their hot, wet, well I'll not finish this, but you know what I mean? Are you saying 15 year old girls date for marriage at a higher rate than older women?
They want to convict people of felonies based on their experience. But it's canceled out by mine and others, plus lived experience isn't enough for what they want anyway.
What do you mean by exploitation exactly? How is this bad for society, even if it makes minors happy?
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