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Good point. So your model is what exactly? All or almost all men are ephebophiles, and all or almost all women oppose this? What percent do you think? I just haven't seen strong evidence of sex polarization on this topic, in data, so I wasn't thinking of a massive gender effect size when reasoning.
Most men are ephebophiles, some women oppose this out of naked self-interest, most women oppose it out of a tendency towards groupthink, women have extreme social leverage over men, and there's a baptists-and-bootleggers coalition between feminists in the muck of the groupthink and conservative parents who have no personal interest in finding a partner but do have an interest in marginally protecting their daughters' chastity.
How do you know these things? Interesting hypotheses, although I have seen data to the contrary ... in particular I have seen data indicating most men prefer women over 20. More interesting to me is your model of woman's social leverage and groupthinking. What are you basing that on? You sound very sure of yourself there with all these details. How do you know these things? It sounds like a compelling model to me, basically that the age of consent is high because of spiteful women and bad parents. The groupthink part could be correct but I want to be careful about not assuming too much and making excuses for people's actions. Ultimately each individual is responsible for their own beliefs and actions. While they will be influenced by the input of others, this is only ever partial, and they are still responsible for how they respond to peer influence. And furthermore the average direction of peer influence should precede peer influence, naturally.
Most data I'm familiar with on female attractiveness shows a peak in the mid-teens, despite a strong social desirability bias to the contrary (which I think readily explains the minority of exceptions). Moreover the historic and current reasoning behind the age of consent is well-documented; you can just go out and look at what rhetoric is raised in its defense, who supports it and why. Your model, conversely, is completely alien to me; I'm not sure how one winds up imagining a world where men selected an age of consent based on what they find attractive.
That 4chan chart with the loli cartoon girls touching the bars? That was fake. You never checked the citation? It was fake.
I have tried to have debates on it and I can't. There are no good arguments in favor of high ages of consent as far as I can find. Just a bunch of people who threaten to kill you for looking like an ephebophile (it seems like a strangely g-loaded topic, unlike race differences where a lot of smart people will insist on the blank slate). Your bias towards «every man is secretly an ephebophile» is probably right on smart people forums.
There is no reasoning in books or legal documents. I read through US court opinions and found that the laws are vitiated by modern norms, in that they were original passed for chastity purposes around 1900, and they tended to have lower age limits. They also only applied to girls, and had no close in age exemption, since most of the point was not allowing the girls to be ravished by teenage boys. They also always had marital exceptions. They no longer satisfy chastity purposes, with close-in-age-exceptions and the general decline of chastity's salience in public morality, so their current aim remains mysterious, despite the ramp up in their age limitations and enforcement. At the same time marriage ages go higher, the target being 18 and no exceptions. So it would seem the point is to have girls be run through by schoolboys before marriage age, while arresting any man barely older who might be in the position to marry her, as the age gaps are comically and unnaturally small. Basically they allow her classmates to exploit her while forbidding her to date a 20 year old of good character. It has been demonstrated scientifically the optimal age gap for fertility is 7 years, with most normal human relationships being between 3 and 10 years of age gap. Yet close in age exceptions are often only 3 or 4 years, distorting most normal monogamous human relationships that should occur.
I tried reading intellectual discourse on the topic and the best I could get are European memoirs. Needless to say there was nothing systematic or impressive here -- Vanessa Springora in «Le consentement» is mad her adult male lover cheated on her when she was 15. So that means we must raise the age of consent? Doesn't follow.
Jiro recently mentioned the American idea of «trauma» which is present in the folk-feminism which persecutes Epstein, but Rind et al eviscerated that idea a quarter of a century ago. When I replied with a four point explication of the faults of «trauma» , Jiro immediately dipped. No debate was had. I conclude it cannot be had.
It's easy. We live in a democracy. High age of consent people have no good reasons, so that leaves aesthetics. Data shows low gender effects for age of consent opinions. Attraction data shows adult men prefer 20-somethings.
Meanwhile you are operating off of potentially fake data, projection, and groupthink/social desirability bias as a vague god of the gaps for when it doesn't exactly add up. To paraphrase how I see your reasoning:
«we live in a democracy, but people secretly disagree with the law, but they don't vote it out because ... groupthink. no further mechanics given, just somehow a minority can mind control a majority. idk. anyway, I get to feel like everyone around me is also significantly attracted to this boyish 12 year old girl and are just lying when they say I have an unusual attraction complex.»
I will be honest with you. Even when I was a schoolboy I liked girl over 16 the most. Even when I was only 16. No lower age gap preferred. Now I am older and I genuinely think 19 or 20 year olds are much more physically attractive than 16 year olds on average. You really cannot argue I am mindcucked because I argue for lowering the age of consent, since it disgusts me how awfully they treat people like you for having historically normal romantic relationships. Just like how I am not actually pragmatically racist but I am attracted to the ideas of HBD. I am a taboo-poker and justice seeker. A lie exposer.
Likewise there are men who definitely like them older than me. They like them «busty» and 26, 27, or 28 years old. I used to assume they were coping but I think it's genuine now. It's a simpler model that predicts more. Humans vary a lot.
Kohlberg IV is a thing, and a thing most people never move past. Kohlberg IV morality is based on the law, in a direct inversion of the correct relation that the law is based on morality. This makes removing unjust laws really hard, because the Kohlberg-IV people will defend the law because it's the law.
Most people are icebergs. What you see is the most socially-desirable part of them. If they see that you have a larger amount of stuff showing than they do, they usually conclude not that you are made of styrofoam instead (that you are more honest), but that your iceberg is much larger (that you have far-worse stuff that you're not sharing).
I'm sure you can sketch out how both of these relate to the difficulty of rolling back age of consent laws, particularly since a politician has to publically propose lowering them.
We have an empirical example that is related: LGBT rights. Considering they could get sodomy legalized, surely normal straight men can get romantic relationships with postpubescent females legalized right? It surely can't be as bad as coming out of the closet in 1960, to come out as straight, right?
My point is your reasons do not explain why there is a force pushing the age of consent up. If there were no such force, you might be able to explain why it doesn't decay instantly with these factors (insofar as there is evidence for them. I agree with the first one, mostly. The second, I don't know where it comes from or how to prove it). But it's not decaying, it's increasing in strength. Only I so far am explaining why that might be.
IIRC Japan's basically the only Western country to have actually raised the age of consent in the last 100 years, although I could be wrong.
Victorian prudishness is, of course, legendary.
Oh, and I forgot, there's the "overprotective parent" voting bloc opposing lowering the AoC.
Trivial example: Canada.
However, I posit that across the entire West the age of consent is mostly a distraction. It is currently "infinite"- for consenting to sex is impossible if you are permitted to revoke that consent retroactively, which is law in basically every country, including the US.
All sex is sex work to a feminist, and once you notice these are sex worker protection laws the reasoning becomes a lot clearer. What worker protection law has become weaker in the West in the last 100 years? (And sure, there's always offshoring where you have sex, but at least one Commonwealth country claims extraterritoriality for violating minimum-age laws, because of course they do. They don't do that for worker protection laws re: offshoring, but gynosupremacists by definition take for granted the work the male sex does.)
Traditionalist fathers create feminist women, feminist women create traditionalist fathers.
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