Back in November of last year, I made two posts about most of the age of consent arguments that people spew out and also refuted them (in a dissatisfactory manner, according to myself). Since then, I have thought through all of those arguments (and a few more) and have found even more absurdities and errors within them and I have also thought of new ways to refute them. In addition, I personally found my refutations and explanations to be unclear and incomplete, which is why I have chosen to write one more article on the issue that will go over the same arguments (and a few more) and claims again but will do it in a more clear, concise, and logically destructive manner.
Before I get into the arguments themselves, I want to expose and explain the method of argumentation that I will be using very frequently throughout this post. This is a form of argument known as ''Reductio Ad Absurdum'' or ''Argumentum Ad Absurdum'', which are both latin for ''Reduction to the Absurd'' and ''Argument to Absurdity''. A lot of people use this argument but do so unconsciously, which leads to the negative consequences of them never fully taking advantage of it and to them never being able to easily refute blatantly retarded arguments (like the vast majority of the age of consent ones).
A common example of this argument (and one that people frequently use) would be the reply person A gives to person B after person A claims that they should be able to do X since everyone else is doing it. For example, someone claims that they should smoke weed because all of their friends are doing it. The other person's ad reductio argument would be ''If all of your friends jumped off a bridge should you too?'' The first person is probably inconsistent in their position due to the fact that they probably wouldn't think that they should jump off a bridge just because their friends do it. If they are consistent, this position still leads to practical and moral absurdity (assuming the person's moral system isn't compatible with such a position) since an individual should perform ANY action (murder, theft, child rape, etc.) as long as their friends are doing it.
Before I move on, I want to talk about the most common error people make when responding to an ad reductio argument. They will falsely accuse you of COMPARING two actions, such as murder and jumping off a bridge (to use the example above). Ad Reductio Absurdum is never about comparing two actions or things, it is about pointing out the logical implications and extensions of a position and exposing them as absurd through uncovering contradictions, inconsistencies, or blatant practical absurdities. People usually do this when they found out that their position could be used to argue for and justify an action like murder, rape or another action that is widely regarded as immoral/ethical. It's just a response from cognitive dissonance and is devoid of proper understanding.
The last thing that I want to do before I get into the arguments themselves is have a small rant (it could easily be much longer) about how I feel about this issue and how I feel about the vast majority of the people who ''try'' to talk about or even ''decide'' this issue. First, I don't get emotional about this issue ( or anything that can manifest from it) whatsoever. I find this issue to be just as ''upsetting'' or rage inducing as taking a piss in the toilet. However, what I do find EXTREMELY upsetting or rage inducing is the fact that the vast majority of the fucking people who try to speak about this have the emotional maturity of a 2-year-old and have ABSOLUTELY NO understanding of logic or critical thinking; not to mention the various psychological biases and barriers.
The group of people that piss me off the most are the ones that truly believe that they are anarchists, voluntaryists, or libertarians and then proceed to try and argue their retarded views using GOVERNMENT terminology and arguments that are based on what the government and it's ''laws'' has said about this issue, which is all arbitrary nonsense that doesn't even have actual claims behind it (more on this later). How fucking clueless and oblivious to reality can you be? This is one of the main reasons why the so-called anarchist/voluntaryist community is a complete fraudulent fucking clown show that doesn't even exist.
I'm not writing this for the aforesaid retards that have next to no hope of ever breaking out of their emotional prison and actually admitting that their wrong and that they have been duped by the government, the people around them, and by themselves, most of all; I'm writing this for everyone who is an actual anarchist, voluntaryist, or libertarian. I don't give a rat's fucking ass about your pathetic little fucking feelings or about your deluded and retarded fantasies about ''protecting the children'', especially when those fantasies lead to people getting thrown in a cage over victimless crimes. Lastly, I don't give a fuck how many times your daddy (or whoever) raped or molested you and how traumatized you are when you are falsely accusing people of being pedophiles and sexual predators and are also helping ruin people's lives with those accusations.
If anything I said about upsets you to the point where you can't think logically about what I'm about to go over, get the fuck off my page. I'm not here to placate or appeal to the emotions of emotionally immature and/or traumatized retards who want to project their trauma onto other people and make up slanderous shit up afterward (These people deserve ABSOLUTELY no respect). I'm all about truth, logic, and reality if you want your emotions appealed to go tell someone who actually gives two fucks. I could go on and on about the aforesaid sacks of shit, but that will be for another post. Now for the actual arguments.
THE GOVERNMENT'S CLAIMS AND THE ARGUMENTS BASED ON THEM
The people who are actually anarchists and voluntaryists will obviously reject every single government ''law'' and all of the terminology that is attached to them, but it's still important to understand all of the logical fallacies and absurdities that will inevitably follow from using government-based arguments. For starters, all of the claims that are made by the government are claims that are being made by other human beings and like all claims, they must be backed up by evidence or strong argumentation at the very least. Obviously, simply asserting claims over and over or making up unique terminology and/or definitions and asserting them over and over does not constitute an argument or objective truth. In the case of this topic, giving the word ''minor'' a unique definition and ascribing it to someone does not manipulate or alter physical or actual reality whatsoever. In order for that to have any basis in reality beyond language or communication, there must be evidence presented that supports the claim that is behind that terminology or definition.
The claims that are presented (the government's claims) behind that term are ones that state someone under a certain age can't ''legally'' consent to certain activities and that someone under a certain age is ''legally'' considered a ''child''. First, the term ''legally'' or ''legal'', in this context, are terms that are assumed to have inherent legitimacy, due to the fact that the people who first assert them are assumed to have inherent ''authority'' or legitimacy. They are also repeatedly asserted and that are used to try and justify the prohibition or the allowing of certain behaviors by individuals that either commit the appeal to authority fallacy, appeal to the majority fallacy, or the ad baculum (appeal to force) fallacy when they attempt to use that terminology as an argument (anarchists and voluntaryists should know this). However, those fallacies come after another fallacy, which is begging the question or when someone assumes their conclusion and it's veracity in their premises without supporting their premise or premises with evidence or logical support.
The government and all of its supporters commit this fallacy (and all of the following aforementioned fallacies afterward) whenever they assert the aforesaid (and any other ''legal'' or ''illegal'' claim) claims and arguments since their premise (government or the people calling themselves that are inherently legitimate or have inherent truth in their claims) is not supported and can't be, logically speaking. Therefore, any of the ''legal'' age of consent claims and laws (and any other laws) are based on a false premise.
Now, we can go on to the claims that other people make about the age of consent laws and the laws that are related to that. The arguments other people make about these laws have to do with people's actual mental capability and capacity, unlike the government's claims, which are baseless assertions that don't make any claims about people actual mental ability (research the history of the age of consent laws to verify this). First of all, when people talk about consent they almost always use the fallacious and unfounded ''legal'' version of it, which obviously leads absolutely nowhere except into the realm of delusion and illogic. When it comes to actual consent, it's true nature, and requirements, most people come nowhere close to addressing it, especially when discussing this issue.
Actual consent is a mental process that only requires desire and the capacity to understand the particular activity that is being desired for. For example, if someone wants to engage in the game of basketball, they simply need a desire to participate and the mental capacity to comprehend information about that activity (and obviously the physical capacity to play as well). This is true of every single other activity, including sex. There is not a magical or superhuman requirement that someone must have in order to consent to sex, regardless of what many mentally handicapped individuals believe. Sex is a very primitive and base desire that has been around since the days of cavemen, which means engagement in it doesn't require very much mental capacity AT ALL. However, the modern puritanic mindset would lead you to believe that it requires you to be superhuman, at least if you don't have the label ''adult'' ascribed to you by the government.
When it comes to any claim that is actually questioning a person's mental ability, there obviously has to be evidence provided, but people don't understand what that would look like in the context of this issue (mainly because they are using the government's version of consent). The first thing people need to understand is the difference between deductive and inductive evidence. The deductive evidence is evidence that presents a definitive and concrete answer or conclusion. The inductive evidence is evidence that presents a probabilistic or likely answer or conclusion. It's impossible to provide deductive evidence for consent or lack-there-of due to the fact that is a very specific mental process that would obviously a very detailed reading of someone's brain and would require wild advancements in neuroscience.
That obviously means that the evidence would have to be inductive and would be specifically for someone's ability to consent or for someone's inability to consent. At this point, the vast majority of people will be completely lost and will pull random numbers out of their ass (probably 18) and think that they are presenting an actual argument like they always do. One of the claims people make is that 18 years of age is the cutoff point and that a 17-year-old is suddenly incapable of consent. Is there any evidence of this on any level? If we take an average 18-year-old and an average 17-year-old with no significant IQ difference and study their body language, speech, and lucidity in terms of their overall communication, will there be any significant difference or significant signs that the younger ones has considerably less mental capacity than the older one? We can also give each of them a test about sex and see if the younger one does significantly worse (this will obviously need to be repeated many times with different people in order for it to be considered strong evidence).
The reason why this is a good way to gain inductive evidence for someone's ability or inability to consent is because of the fact that someone's body language and lucid ( or lack-there-of) communication are the things that are closest to the deductive point (being someone'brain or mind) and because of the fact that gauging someone's ability through other means (through a separate non-related activity) will be farther from the deductive point, which mean it will be weaker inductive evidence. As I said above, this will have to be repeated with many different individuals and should ideally be done by objective and non-biased psychologists in a scientific setting\study, but it can obviously be done by an objective individual in regular situations. This same process can be done for any other activity and for determining if an individual can or cannot consent to a specific activity.
So, is there any evidence for the aforesaid claim? I certainly haven't seen any and the people who make the claim certainly haven't presented any. You can use the same process for claims about any other age groups that people make baseless claims about (14,15,16,17, etc.). Aside from people who are pre-pubescent (they don't have a sex drive so they don't have a desire to consent) or strongly mentally disabled, I don't see any strong evidence (deductive or otherwise) for anyone's inability to consent to sex, only the emotional retardation of people who probably shouldn't even be alive (no that's not a threat).
THE APPEALING TO ''CHILD'' ARGUMENT
This is the argument (if you can call it that) that says that someone is unable to consent and that someone is a ''pedophile'' for being sexually attracted to such an individual because they have the word ''child'' ascribed to them. First, the people who make this argument are appealing to the government's version or definition of the word ''child'', which is obviously based on nothing except the word of the people behind the label ''government''. It is also inconsistent since the law known as the ''age of majority'' (the age where someone is ''legally'' an adult) is not 18 in all of the states and is not 18 in other parts of the world as well. This is an easy argument to use ad reductio absurdum on since you can just point out that someone is considered a ''child'' in Mississipi until they are 21, so if someone moves to that state they are magically unable to consent and if someone is sexually attracted to that person they are magically pedophile, even though they wouldn't be if they were in the previous geographical area or state. By the way, ignoring exceptions to a general rule is known as the Accident fallacy.
The same goes for Alabama, a few other states, and many areas of Canada where the ''Age of Majority'' is 19. Now to address the ''child'' thing in terms of actual consent, it is a begging the question fallacy since it assumes the conclusion (Individuals with the word child attached to them can't consent) in the premise without supporting it with any evidence that actually shows that the individual with that word ascribed to them doesn't have the mental capacity to consent. It's the same type of flawed thinking that people used when they said that women couldn't vote. That conclusion was assumed to be true based on the fact that those people had the word ''woman'' attached to them instead of ''man'', not that they didn't actually have to mental capacity to comprehend politics. The same flawed logic is used now but between ''child'' and ''adult''.
As for the ''pedophile'' thing, for starters, a lot of people who say this stupid shit are pretty much calling themselves one as well due to the fact that 17 year old don't have a radical or even noticeable (especially with clothes on) body change when they suddenly turn 18, just like they don't have a radical mental change. This means if someone is sexually attracted to the body type of the average18-year-old, they will also be attracted to everyone else who has that same body type, especially in terms of their secondary sexual characteristics AKA their ass, breasts, chest, shoulder width, etc. These retards are too detached from reality to realize that the average 17-year-old will look identical to the average 18-year-old in terms of their body size, especially if they see them out in public with clothes on. Then there is the fact that people who are even younger can have larger and more prominent secondary sexual characteristics than people in their 20's, even though they aren't fully developed. There is also the fact that a lot of the fucking idiots are attracted to a very popular section of porn called ''petite teens'' or ''tiny teens'' who are 18 but have the body size of the average 13 or 14-year-old. These fucking retards truly believe pedophilia is about a number or the word ''child''. There is a reason why the original definition of pedophilia is ''attraction to pre-pubescent children''. If you don't want to look like a total fucking idiot at least try to use the the terms hebophilia and ephebophilia. You might want to open up a book on basic biology and learn that being sexually attracted to beings that can reproduce is the exact opposite of mental illness.
THE POWER DIFFERENTIAL ARGUMENT
This is another easy argument to use ad reductio on since it assumes the manifestation of coercion or harm based on abstractions that aren't necessarily acted upon. It's also a good way to expose logical implications most people won't agree on, which will leave them with a contradiction or inconsistency in their position. The argument states that a sexual encounter between an older person and younger person is inherently unethical, coercive, harmful, and that the younger person can't consent. First, there is an implicit special pleading fallacy in here since the argument implies that only a sexual encounter is harmful. In order for it not to be this fallacy, someone has to name the trait that is present in sex or sexual activity that is relevant to the original argument and that is not present in any other activity. So someone would have to name a trait that is relevant to a power differential and that is exclusive to sexual activity, which can't be done without going off on a non-sequitur that has nothing to do with consent or power differentials.
The ad reductio for this position is exposing the logical implications and extensions of it and showing that this logic would mean that all parent-child activities are inherently harmful, unethical, coercive, and that parent's child can't consent to any activity with him or her due to the power differential (the largest one of any relationship too). This also applies to any other relationship with a power differential, which would probably be most. Even if someone is consistent with this position and bites the bullet on the aforesaid implications, it is still blatantly absurd because a power differential isn't an inherently harmful thing. For that to be the case, it would require a separate harmful or coercive action in order for any type of negative physical or mental effect to manifest. Yes, this remains true regardless of how large the age gap is (15-yr-old and 70-year-old). If you are going to accuse someone of coercion or predation, provide evidence of that or evidence that shows one or both of the people can't consent if you are going to make that claim. Otherwise, it will end up being the absurd argument above.
THE RESPONSIBILITY AND BRAIN DEVELOPMENT ARGUMENT
Believe it or not, this argument is a complete non-sequitur and doesn't actually have anything to do with someone's ability to consent. This is because consent only requires the ability to conceptualize, comprehend, or understand information. Whether or not someone actually thinks through that information, weighs the pros and cons of an action, and ultimately makes a good decision on it, is irrelevant to consent. The pre-frontal cortex is about impulse control, emotional regulation, and good decision making. These things aren't required for consent and in any other context besides the ones that have something to do with a person below 18 or 25, no one seems to care. Obviously, people of all ages make impulsive and irresponsible decisions when it comes to sex and many others things, despite their brain being fully developed. In short, if you are going to argue for prohibiting teenagers or people in their early 20's from being able to consent to sex because they make bad choices or are less capable than an older person, the logical implications are prohibiting anyone who makes or has made bad choices and anyone who is less capable of making good choices (below average IQ). I'll re-post the section about brain development from my past posts since it still has many good points, but a lot of it is unnecessary since the effects of having an underdeveloped pre-frontal cortex aren't relevant to consent.
''They can't consent because their brain isn't fully developed'' This is usually how this argument is made and I'm going to go into pretty deep detail in order to fully expose the ridiculousness of this argument. When people talk about someone's brain not being fully developed they are referring to a specific part of the brain called the pre-frontal cortex, which is the part of the brain that is responsible for supporting things like strong impulse control and long-term decision making. The one thing people should understand is that something like IQ or general intelligence is separate from this and that someone can still be highly intellectual/intelligent, even more so than an older fully developed person, and still have an underdeveloped pre-frontal cortex (that's how child geniuses exist).
Another thing that is important to understand is that just because someone's pre-frontal cortex isn't fully developed, doesn't mean that they are completely incapable or don't have the capacity to make good choices or that they can't control their impulses. This seems to be a common myth among certain people that love to make this argument but it's obviously false once you realize that if that were true there would be chaos everywhere by everyone under the ages of 23-25. Human behavior and psychology is obviously far more complicated than this, especially when you look at the overall output of behavior from people in their 30's, 40's, and even older. Many of these people act far more irresponsible, impulsively, and immaturely than people in their early 20's and even a lot of teenagers (probably most).
Why do they act that way if their brain is supposedly fully developed? The details are complicated and even unknown in a lot of cases but when you look and learn about the environments these types of people grow up in and often stay in through their whole life, it's pretty obvious. Growing up in an environment that is both poor economically and morally speaking, contains violence both in the household and the neighborhood, contains hard street drugs, has street gangs roaming around nearby, and has the majority of the population in that community behaving just as poorly as the individual will when they grow up in an environment like this, will more than likely produce a completely dysfunctional person that will miss out on the positive effects of a fully developed brain either because of brain damage, arrested brain developed, or the effects being overridden by social conditioning from their environment.
Now that that's out of the way, now we can get into the actual argument. So can someone with an underdeveloped brain consent to sex or anything else? Well, if you haven't figured it out yet, the most important thing to look at when trying to determine that, are the actual practical effects or consequences (or lack-there-of) that are presented through someone's overall behavior and actions. Obviously, this is the important thing here and just spewing out incomplete arguments like ''their brain isn't fully developed'' goes nowhere and requires another premise that is about the actual consequences or effects of that condition. Saying ''their brain isn't fully developed'' is like says someone is drunk but not assessing the effects or severity of that state by examining the effects that are being externalized through someone's body language and speech. Just like with brain development, it's not a black and white thing since someone can still consent if they are in what you might call ''stage 1'' of being drink (impulsive and hyper) as opposed to later stages where they can't stand up straight, have slurred and unclear speech, and may even be passed out on the floor.
Anyway, let's say we have someone who isn't going to have a fully developed brain until 25 but they are an average 24-year-old who comes from a healthy environment right now. If we take that person and then take an average 25-year-old who also comes from a healthy environment and is fully developed, and observe their overall behavior in terms of their choices and actions, are we going to see any major differences? Well, I'm not sure since there haven't been any studies on this, but according to the geniuses that make the aforesaid argument, the 24-year-old can't consent but they need evidence to back this up and saying ''their brain isn't fully developed'' isn't evidence of their lack of ability to consent it is evidence their brain matter isn't as large as the 25-year-old. As a quick side note, if someone is going to make the argument that a person with an underdeveloped brain can't consent to sex with someone with a fully developed brain, it will lead to the same absurdity that I went over under the ''Power Differential'' section and as an addition to that, it will also mean that someone with a 100 IQ can't consent to someone with a 99 IQ since the lower IQ person is technically less intelligence and is unable to make good choices as well as the higher IQ individual.
In terms of the quality of the evidence or proof that is needed, deductively speaking, it's impossible to prove that ANYONE can or cannot due to the fact that technology in the field of neuroscience isn't even close to being at the point where it can provide a detailed analyzes of someone's brain and definitively prove what a person can or can't comprehend on a cognitive/intellectual level. In terms of inductive evidence, which is what we have to go with, it obviously needs to be as strong as it possibly can, which means accurately ascertaining the quality of people's behavior is paramount. The second thing that is paramount after that is understanding the logical consequences or implications of making the judgment that certain individuals can't consent.
For example, saying that it's reasonable to assume that someone can't consent because they immature or are making poor choices in their life on a financial and personal level, will mean that many people (not just young underdeveloped people) will have to have their freedom taken away if we wish to be logically consistent. This obviously doesn't just apply to young people who aren't fully developed but will also apply to the types of people I wrote about near the beginning of this section and probably many other people in the general population. From a voluntaryist perspective, this is a complete absurdity, a deplorable position to hold, and not an argument we want to standby.
Before I end this, I would like to go back to the hypothetical I gave about the 24 and 25-year-olds so I can finish refuting the original argument. If it is true or at least reasonable to assume that someone can't consent if their brain isn't fully developed, then the overall behavior of someone who isn't fully developed and someone who is should be drastically and noticeably different. Has there ever been any strong evidence towards that of any kind? No, and linking studies that are done about the pre-frontal cortex not being fully developed aren't evidence because those studies aren't about the specific effects (or how severe they are) of having an underdeveloped brain at certain ages or whether or not someone can still consent to certain activities or not. They don't even have the word ''consent'' in them.
Yes, I realize that brain development and human development overall is a continuum, but the reason I'm only going one year below the fully developed mark is because that is all that it takes to refute an absolutist argument like that. I have actually addressed other ages below that when I was rambling about earlier about people being brought up in certain environments and the logical consequences of saying people who are immature and make bad life choices.
GASLIGHTING
This is about the claim of ''This person can't consent to sex because they aren't emotionally ready''. All I will say is PROVIDE EVIDENCE that shows that the individual isn't ready This will have to be inductive evidence in the form of the person's say so, evidence that the person has a legitimate mental disability or evidence that the person doesn't have a sex drive. Otherwise, you are a gaslighting sack of shit that probably has the label ''mom'' or ''dad' attached to you.
PROTECT THE VULNERABLE CHILDREN ARGUMENT
This is a really bad argument that is usually presented as an appeal to emotion but can be turned into an argument. Apparently, anyone under the age of 18 is significantly more vulnerable than anyone that is 18+ and need immediate protection from the numerous sexual predators that surround us. Yes, this goes back to one of the terrible arguments from above, but it's actually even worse than that. By this logic, we can also make a case for banning parents from having children under the age of 18, especially since children are the most vulnerable when they are with their parents from the beginning since they are at their youngest, the power differential is the largest one out of any relationship, and most parents cut part of their child's penis off at birth, which seems like an act of sexual predation since it involves their penis and cutting part of it off. So yeah, there's that absurdity and the fact that the 18 thing is completely arbitrary and has no evidence to support it.
THE CLASSIC STATIST ARGUMENT
This is a very popular argument statists like to use when they are arguing for their ''laws'' and why it's to have them and why it's okay to use coercion and force on innocent people. ''This bad thing COULD and does happen with some people so we need to use coercion and violence against everyone in the population if they don't follow the law so that society or most people don't do those acts'' For starters, the COULD in this is not based on any strong evidence or likelihood since the number of people who are performing the bad actions are usually in a minority. There is also the fact that these people are holding a position that could be used to throw hundreds of thousands of people in a cage if they don't follow certain laws (that are probably victimless crimes). The inductive evidence for the claim that society or most people would start doing those aforesaid bad acts (that comes in the form of a minority performing certain immoral actions) or for the claim that ''we need laws to protect us" is certainly not strong enough to warrant a position that could be used to justify using coercion and violence against most of the population. This position could also be used to argue for (and make a stronger case for) making laws against people having children and becoming parents since MOST of them perform bad actions on their children. '' Since a smaller group of people are doing bad things we need to hold a position that it's okay to do bad things to most of the population.'' This is obviously an absurd position and it obviously applies to the age of consent nonsense too.
SEX IS HARMFUL TO CHILDREN WHEN THEY DO IT WITH ADULTS
Once again, the term ''child'' is from the aforementioned government gibberish. I see this stupid claim made here and there on sites like Youtube and on certain blogs, but there is never any evidence shown that demonstrates that sex between a 17-year-old and someone older is inherently harmful. We are not talking about harm from an STD or pregnancy, we are talking about sudden, magical harms that manifests after the younger individual has sex with the older individual. I would love to see an actual scientific study or trial that was done on this where they got a 17-year-old and a 30-year-old (for example), got them to have willing sex, and then assessed the mental condition of the younger person afterward. I would also love to see how they repeated this experiment multiple times with different people of different ages so that. I would love to see how they controlled for the social or environmental variables that would come in the form of being judged by society and/or family and the following emotional turmoil that could very well come from that. Yeah, it hasn't happened (and probably never will) but that is the type of evidence someone would need to provide if they want wild claims like that taken seriously by anyone with an IQ above 50.