The French Age of Consent Laws
So, I've come back to ostensibly address this in spite of that I kind of think that the whole dialogue has been somewhat sensationalized and that it's not really worth talking about, but, the French age of consent laws seem perfectly reasonable. Foucault seems to have assumed that the laws somehow created a special class of citizens who were to be regarded as sexual criminals, believing for them to be specifically directed against homosexuals, which may be true, but, the letter of the law does actually seem to be designed to prevent sexual acts with those who can not possibly consent. Age really is just a number, but 15 is really just one year beyond where anyone could ever reasonably expect for anyone to be able to responsibly consent. Surely there are outliers, but I honeslty suspect for the French petition to have been motivated by a persecution complex on the part of French intellectuals who were unwilling to deal with some of the more lecherous habits of their peers.
Comments (54)
After a quick read of the wikipedia page, I am not sure who is going to disagree with your assessment.
In America, one at least needs to get parental consent before marrying and raping 12 year olds :grimace:
Deleuze and Guatarri sort of let me down on this. I can understand Foucault's argument, but I just don't know what else could possibly be happening. They just needed to stop listening to Yé-yé records, it seems. From what I know, in the States, you have to be 18 to marry unless you're in Nebraska where you have to be 19. I can see why they'd do that in Nebraska. Give them a year in college, y'know? The age of consent is sort of absurd, but I honestly can't see how the fuss about it is motivated by anything other than that a person either is or knows some unscrupulous characters.
This is false. No state allows 12 year olds to marry. Massachusetts has no specific minimum age law for marriage, but a judge must decide. Since the limitation on judicial discretion isn't set by statute, prior precedent set by ancient common law would control, so one could argue that 12 would be the youngest a girl could marry. There are no cases of 12 year old marriages though, and one would expect one wouldn't be upheld as valid if a wackadoodle judge allowed it.
Hahaha.
Quoting thewonder
Yes, you have to be 18 to marry, but there are huge loopholes, so that if certain criteria, including parental consent, are met, then 25 states actually have NO minimum age. You can find examples of 10, 11, and 12 year olds married within the last 20 years (no, it is not common, but still - check the wikipedia page for "child marriage in the united states" - egregious example, three 10 year old girls were married to men aged 24-31 in 2001).
Quoting thewonder
I am guessing this will be a quiet thread as everyone will agree, but I suppose we will see.
Quoting Hanover
You sure? How new are the laws? I can find 10 year olds married in 2001, and an 11 year old in 2006.
Again, wikipedia page is called, "child marriage in the united states".
My view is that lots of arrangements aside from the one we have ARE POSSIBLE, but would require pretty large changes in our sexual behavior from childhood up.
I've forgotten the details, but I read an anthropological study of a tribal group where sexual contact between persons in the tribe were acceptable from childhood on up. Children tended to have sexual contact with children, adolescents with adolescents, adults with adults. The upshot was that children, adolescents, and adults had pretty clear ideas about what sex was like, what were reasonable expectations of a partner, and so on.
Our society does its best to hinder free and open sexual experimentation among children and adolescents, and sex is maintained more on a scarcity basis than on a free and plentiful basis. We are not ready, even remotely, to emulate the open sexual habits of the tribe described above. It would be like letting a starving crowd into a grocery: instant destructive chaos.
I think it's frankly disingenuous to pretend the imposition of any of these kinds of restrictions is anything other than adults imposing their particular view of the way things should be on a demographic too disempowered to do anything about it. Adolescents are the only group left who still suffer taxation without representation... you know, the right revolutions have been fought over.
What we should be doing is empowering young people to make their own decisions. We should be encouraging their latent abilities to make rational, informed choices, supportively creating an environment where "no" means no, not telling them they're too stupid to decidewhat they do with their own bodies, too gullible to be trusted with anyone other than their own peers.
I would perhaps have more sympathy for the intentions of the lawmakers if they weren't the same group condoning placing children in isolation rooms for having the wrong haircut. It's hard to see they've got the child's best interests at heart. A lot of the legislation around children is more aimed at getting them to conform than it is about their protection.
A bit of a non sequitur from the op's link.
Before pontificating about the invariable capacities of adolescents, have a little look at the kind of shit that goes down.
Well, in my impression young girls actually are indeed too stupid for that. Furthermore, they get badly manipulated by school and media into doing things that they will bitterly regret later on.
In a situation where men have seventeen times more testosterone in their bodies than women, access to sex is a traded by women in exchange for something they want. Ultimately, they will end up wanting commitment. However, if the girl has given out sex to previous men without requiring their commitment, then the next one will use that fact to demand commitment-free sex too ("Why all of them and not me?"). Therefore, as soon as they have sex with one man, it becomes increasingly difficult to demand commitment in return. That phenomenon is known as hopping from cock to cock on the cock carousel. Commitment-free sex is an ambush for young girls.
If a girl wants to get anything valuable or even meaningful out of sex, she will have to withhold it until she can somehow land a good deal. Unfortunately, she will have to do that at a time when she is too young to know how to do that. So, without parents and family assisting her, she will generally not be able to land a good deal but end up on the cock carousel instead.
Furthermore, cock-carousel veterans mostly end up single and alone in their late thirties, with three or four decades of solitude ahead of them. They live off antidepressants and alcohol, typically in that order.
If I linked to a description of sex trafficking rings and debt-prostitution rackets with adult women would that suggest we should make it illegal for women to have sex too?
Well, if you have any evidence whatsoever for any of that, it would certainly make an interesting read.
You have a strange view of women's sexuality. They can enjoy it for its own sake just as men can.
Your question is a bit of a feeble rhetorical gimmick, when there are extremely serious issues to be considered, as my link was intended to highlight.
There is a lot of literature about the "cock carousel". Google search has a lot of hits: https://www.google.com/search?q=cock+carousel. There are also other search terms that are more neutral and that will yield similar literature.
The main issue in this subject is that experimentally testing anything is not possible.
It is like experimentally testing that hiv causes aids. You see, it is absolutely possible to inject 1024 individuals with the hiv virus, check out what happens next, and then faithfully record what you have seen. It can obviously be done, even trivially, but they will either not do it, or else, they will do it, but not publish the test report. Truly scientific evidence is most likely illegal.
It is also possible to collect all kinds of numbers, and to speculate about why these numbers are the way they are, but that practice is not a legitimate substitute for experimental testing. This kind of questions do not belong to the scientific epistemic domain. This kind of questions is out of reach of any knowledge-justification method. In that sense, you are simply meant to believe what you want to believe about it.
With 17 times less testosterone in their blood, women obviously do have a different sexuality. It is incomparable, actually. Their sexuality is obviously less "urgent", while potential consequences are much more serious. Therefore, the idea that there would be no difference between male and female sexuality amounts to ignoring pretty much the essence of the matter.
It's clear you haven't the faintest idea of what you're talking about.
Really, what 'biology' would this be?
Quoting unenlightened
I can assure you that I take the attempt to suppress the autonomy of an entire demographic on spurious 'biological' grounds very seriously indeed. As should anyone with any experience of the kind of bullshit that was spewed out to defend the oppression of women on the same 'biological' grounds. There are some appalling things done to children, as there are to adults. We respond by making the appalling thing illegal. We do not respond by removing the autonomy of an entire swathe of the population over their own bodies, just as a precaution.
Well actually we do both. The biology is that humans are born helpless and remain vulnerable and inarticulate for some time. They have a very limited autonomy such that they cannot survive without help. This also goes for almost all adults in almost all circumstances incidentally, but to a lesser extreme. The induction into our complex society, that we call education also takes some time and is also a survival requirement.
Your outrage is spurious - children need protection and are not autonomous.
I already explained the epistemic conundrum surrounding this type of questions. It is obvious that, in classical epistemic terms, everybody is merely conjecturing on the matter.
In absence of formal knowledge-justification methods, we can still fall back, however, on traditional transmission of knowledge. Why do primitive tribes know that a particular type of fruit is poisonous? Well, because their elders transmitted that to them, who got it from their own elders, ad nauseam.
The traditional view, as transmitted for millennia (as far as can be checked), on premarital sex, i.e. the "cock carousel", is very, very negative. I can confirm with you that here in SE Asia, most people consider that practice to be avoided at all cost. People living at over ten thousand miles from each other, independently from each other, transmitted that view for thousands of years.
With so many questions epistemically undecidable, I believe that the traditional transmission methods of knowledge are seriously underrated. In the end, these cultures survived for thousands of years, if not longer, while there is no reason to believe that modern western decadence will last even for just one more century. I think that it will be game over long before that.
I'm confused by this. Are you saying that we have no means to learn about the sexual behaviour and attitudes of women (or men?) and so much accept what we've been taught?
I don't even know where to start responding to that. :brow:
No - we don't, that's the point. We do not do both with any other section of the community, so I'm asking you why it's OK with adolescents. It's not OK to protect women from rape by making them dress more demurely. It's not OK to protect blacks from racial violence at football games by telling them not to go. So why is it OK to protect adolescents from predatory sexual activity by telling them not to have any sex at all?
You've not provided any evidence at all that children need the level of control we exert over them. The mere fact that "humans are born helpless and remain vulnerable and inarticulate for some time." has no bearing whatsoever on the matter of when an adolescent can freely choose who to have sex with without fear of legal reprisals. Nor, for that matter on the long list of other stuff we restrict them from doing.
Babies need 100% care (they don't get it most of the time, being dumped in cots and left to cry themselves to sleep, but apparently we don't give a shit about that). As babies grow up, they need less care and control until they reach 25 when the brain seems to finally settle down. The mere existence of a scale of care doesn't automatically justify any intervention we decide to make, it must be proportionate to the care required so as not to treat autonomy without due importance.
Ages of consent vary dramatically throughout the world from 11 to 18. There is no conclusive evidence in the psychological literature that this makes any difference at all to children's welfare. So we justify telling 15 year olds what to do with their own body how exactly?
There's actually a quite simple solution: take a woman's word for it.
Anyone who lacks the capacity to vote will be taxed without representation, which would include children, the intellectually disabled, certain emotionally disabled people, and then there are those who have lost their right to vote, as in felons. It's not just an attack on children, but it's based upon the principle that those lacking the competence to make decisions be restrained from making decisions., Quoting Isaac
All you're saying here is that you believe that those minors who are capable of making rational decisions be empowered to make them, which is simply to argue that you believe the current standards limiting sexual consent are too restrictive. This is not a departure from the status quo, except that you're asking for a reduction in the age of consent, or perhaps allowing decisions on a more case by case basis. I say that because I'm assuming you're not suggesting 3 year olds be empowered to consent to sexual activity with their parents. One hopes there is a boundary to your position, even if you do maintain some concerns that the 3 year olds will begin dumping tea in the harbor in protest.
As a society we must create rules to protect our vulnerable citizens, and how we do that will necessarily be arbitrary and imprecise to some degree. If we're going to prohibit sexual activity between minors and adults, what is a legislature to do? Does it make a law that errs on the side of caution and make the age of consent high, or does it err on the side of freedom of expression and make the age of consent low? It seems different states see things differently, but there is a rationality either way. If you want to allow judges to decide on a case by case basis, do you truly believe we have enough Solomon like judges to make consistently good decisions?
Assuming we agree upon the laudable goal of protecting children, which I hope we do, I'd suggest an approach better than offering children advice on how to best decide whether to have sex with adults, is that we advise adults of the risks they are likely imposing on children by becoming sexually involved with them and we further advise them of the consequences of exposing these children to those risks. The risks of such sexual involvement to the children are well documented, as survivors of such abuse are left with a myriad of relationship and sexual issues. The risks to the adults, of course, involve significant prison time, which one would hope would be an adequate deterrent. As a society, we no doubt imprison too many people generally, but to the extent we need to build more prisons, it should be for those who abuse children. For those folks I fear we have not enough beds.
Much of this is to say that the laws do not regulate children; they regulate adults. I ask you as an adult not why children should be permitted to have sex with adults, but why you wish for there to be a greater right for adults to have sex with children? What is it that you, not the children, are suffering from?
"If you’ve spent any time at all observing misogynists online, you are no doubt familiar with the concept of the “cock carousel” — a vaguely poetic way of referring to the allegedly vast number of men that the average woman is said to have sex with in her “prime,” from the moment she first starts having sex in her teens up until she “hits the wall” somewhere between age 25 and 30, immediately rendering her too old and ugly to be appealing to most men. (Allegedly.)
Since the myth of the cock carousel is such a key component of the ideology of the so-called manosphere, I thought I’d devote a post to tearing it down completely."
http://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2018/11/13/why-the-cock-carousel-is-bullshit-according-to-science/
The three main, accredited knowledge-justification methods are:
As soon as you stray from those, your justification will be attacked and rejected on those grounds alone. Only few conclusions on the subject of sexuality can be reached by experimental testing. In my impression, most propositions in the subject will be conjectural. You can still try, but it is a hornet's nest.
You have the notorious example of Sigmund Freud and especially Alfred Adler whom Karl Popper so unceremoniously slags off in Science as Falsification:
Once, in 1919, I reported to him [Adler] a case which to me did not seem particularly Adlerian, but which he found no difficulty in analyzing in terms of his theory of inferiority feelings, Although he had not even seen the child. Slightly shocked, I asked him how he could be so sure. "Because of my thousandfold experience," he replied; whereupon I could not help saying: "And with this new case, I suppose, your experience has become thousand-and-one-fold."
And as @Artemis has said, you can ask women their reasons for having sex.
This is a really weird thing for them to say, as if it's mathematically possible for women to have a greater average number of male partners than men having female partners (given the roughly 50:50 ratio of men to women).
The most straightforward way to decide this is to ask which the greater social evil is, that adolescents and those who would have sex with them for whatever reason be denied those opportunities, or that children, who are less mature and more prone to being manipulated— especially by adults—be unprotected from potentially damaging early sexual experiences.
I don't see any compelling reason why the former evil should outweigh the latter. First do no harm and so on.
(i.e I agree with @Hanover and @unenlightened).
It's theoretically possible given the one-sided time qualification "in her prime", but regardless of logical considerations, it's of course, empirically, nonsense.
No it isn't, otherwise they'd be a competency test to entitle one to vote. There is an estimation of competency made in some case, but not in the case of adolescents. 16 year olds are allowed to vote in Scotland but not in England. Are Scottish teenagers more competent than the English? No. Is Scotland collapsing under the strain of so much incompetent voting behaviour? No. So why are English 16 year olds not allowed to vote. Its not competency is it?
Quoting Hanover
It really is not that complicated. There already exist countries in which the age of consent is 14. Are those countries collapsing under the burden of psychologically damaged teenagers? No. So when a country chooses 18 its not doing so on the basis of the child's welfare is it. It is evident from entire countries like Germany, Italy, Portugal etc that no endemic problems result from this, so states in America where it is set at 18 can't claim to be 'erring' on any side, its not guesswork, we have whole sections of Western Europe proving it's fine.
Quoting Hanover
So the whole of Germany, Italy and Portugal are overrun with damaged teenagers, I'm surprised no thing's turned up in the literature.
Quoting Hanover
I agree entirely, but I fear my definition of abuse would not be the same as yours. I tend to include such trivial matters as detention without trial, isolation, assault, psychological abuse and forced labour. All of which are simply considered fine below 16 in most countries.
Quoting Hanover
This is just more of the same patronising stuff. Of course the laws regulate children. There are two partners in a sexual relationship and few people are so callous as to just take whatever they want so long as the consequences fall on someone else, particularly if that someone else is their sexual partner.
I agree. So perhaps we can now start to have that debate about where and how to draw the inevitably arbitrary line so that it approximates to proportionality. You seem to think 15 is too high, I think 12 is too low. The way I see it, we set the age of consent above the literal ability to speak "yes" or "no", in large part to protect children from being pressurised or otherwise manipulated by adults, and obviously some adolescents are much more vulnerable than others at any given age, and some social conditions make one more vulnerable all else being equal.
Yes, but as I've just pointed out above, we don't really need to have a big discussion. The age of consent is 14 in Germany, they're fine, job done. Anyone wanting to set it higher will have to point to some clear evidence of harm in Germany, otherwise its sounding more like an excuse to moralise than a concern for their welfare. Likewise with voting, 16 in Scotland, there's been no constitutional collapse, so there's absolutely no excuse for it being any higher anywhere else in the world. Likewise with alcohol, 16 in Germany, no major problems among teenagers, so the 21 in the American Bible belt is unjustifiable.
If one wanted to argue lower than these ages, that would be a different matter. Not impossible, given that we have to guess anyway, but certainly a discussion to be had. But where there is clear evidence from entire countries full of teenagers, I really don't see it's even a matter of debate.
It's a bit more complicated than that. You haven't provided any evidence that they are 'fine' in Germany or that being 'fine' in Germany translates to being 'fine' everywhere else or even what 'fine' is in measurable terms and how we get from 'fine' to 'not fine' (e.g. are things not 'fine' as they stand in the UK? Why not?). It's as if you're claiming that any social policy that doesn't cause such obvious harm that it would be general knowledge to a foreigner must be a good idea and must be a good idea universally.
Further, to un's point: Why 14 and not 13? Why 13 and not 12? Is it that you share the same concerns as others but simply make different presumptions about the level of maturity of children of a certain age? If that's the case, shouldn't figuring the ideal level out and how generalizable it is cross-culturally be the focus re international comparisons? Anyhow, to clarify, where would you set the age of consent and why?
Quoting Isaac
Because the voting age is arbitrary, set by a decision of the democracy. It makes no more sense to make it 16 or 18 or 21, but there is an advantage to having a clear rule. Laws are as much based upon pragmatism as they are on precision. Whatever problems might exist in Britain or in the US are doubtfully the result of their respective voting ages, meaning 18 works in the US and 16 in Britain. Might 15 work in Timbuktu, sure. Quoting Isaac
And there are states where 14 is legal. As I've noted, there's a difference in quibbling over the arbitrary age we choose and arguing that minors have some inherent right to have sex with adults regardless of age. The age a society chooses for anything is based upon democratic and political reasons. No where does it say that a properly running democracy must base its decisions upon some scientific reason. If Montana wants to set the speed limit to 100, it can, maybe because it doesn't care about highway deaths, maybe it doesn't care about saving fuel, or whatever. You act like some study should be the controlling factor in what priorities a society wants to create.
Quoting Isaac
You really need to clarify your position. Are you simply asking that the age of consent be lowered from the fairly standard 16 in most US states to 14 (which does exist in some US states)? It seems you're asking for something more.
A specific question: Should a 6 year old be permitted to consent to sex with an adult?
Quoting Isaac
A child who has sex with an adult does not face any societal condemnation or prosecution. The adults are regulated. Before I feel sorry for the poor children who are left wanting because the adults were deterred from having sex with them, I think it's fairly clear that the real societal consequences will befall the adults. Why then can't an adult simply choose someone else to have sex with if society is telling them not to?
Is it really the child who is being victimized here in your opinion, or do you really believe there are adults being victimized because they are limited in who they can have sex with?
During the 1968 student uprisings in Paris and Berlin, students threw copies of The Mass Psychology of Fascism at police. I am excited out of my skin by the nonpareil strategy of Parisian students. Would such a tactic work here? Where can one buy many inexpensive copies of his book?
1968, eh? A bit too much autonomy maybe. There is this, for example:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/feb/24/jonhenley
"Now an MEP for the French Green party, Mr Cohn-Bendit has been severely embarrassed by the resurfacing of an article he published in 1975 about the "erotic" nature of his contacts with children at an alternative kindergarten in Frankfurt, where he lived and worked after being kicked out of France for his part in May 68.
"Certain children opened the flies of my trousers and started to tickle me," he wrote. "I reacted differently each time, according to the circumstances ... But when they insisted on it, I then caressed them."
Cohn-Bendit denies the above actually happened. Nevertheless, he did write that it did.
No, it's a legal fact. Otherwise, it wouldn't be worth arguing over.
The voting age in Scotland was lowered from 21 to 18, in 1970. The voting age of 16 was used once for the Scottish Independence Referendum in 2013.
I don't know what the average level of political literacy is in Scotland, but I have a hard time imagining the average 16 year old in the US making sensible voting decisions--or the average 35 year old, for that matter. A good share of the population display a reasonable level of political literacy, but there are a lot of adults whose political thinking is just screwy.
Screwy thinking coupled with a rigged political system...
Right, the 1960s (running into the 1970s) are not the 2010s. Given episodes of more recent mass hysteria about pedophilia, his story and his denial of its veracity are not going to fly in some quarters.
Wilhelm Reich died in an American prison in 1957, not for child abuse, not for rape, but for promoting his corny invention, the "orgone box" which was an adult-sized box in which one could accumulate orgasmic energy. The government said it was a medical fraud. They could have said the same thing about the then dominant practice of psychoanalysis, but the couch was in, the organ box was out.
Unfortunately for us all, Reich's really excellent ideas got buried along with his sillier ones.
Is it hysteria or just a realization that there was previously inadequate protection of children?
I would not expect the kindergarten children of Frankfurt to be fondling adults unless that was something taught them by adults.
I do know that Frankfurt (at least today) has a thriving red light district right down the street from the train station where all the friendly visitors can visit.
I wish I knew much more about the why; so do a lot of other people.
One can sift through the election results, electoral college strategy, demographic analysis, and so on. The answer lies in the foundational delusions of our political system which are operating now, in the run-up to the next election as much as they were operating in the last election.
The foundational delusions are that the two parties are fundamentally different; that the two candidates represent real alternative futures; that the Presidency determines whether the economy will do well or not; that representatives, senators, and the president valiantly strive to perform the will of the people.
It's a fraud in ever so many ways, and I wish I understood why the fraud is not recognized. But as you say, it's a topic for another thread.
Thanks.
Why does evil, no matter how small, taint everything a man does while the good, no matter how great, fails to achieve such a feat.
a small evil
great goodness unravel
great goodness feats
small evil defeats
I think you and I might be working from different principles of justice. I don't think we should be taking anyone's freedom away without pretty overwhelming evidence that doing so is necessary for their wellbeing. A reckon isn't enough, a reversal of the burden of proof isn't enough. If, for you, it is necessary to prove lack of harm beyond the level of a functioning social system, then I presume you would have been against lowering the age of consent for homosexual sex, since no such evidence was presented there.
As I said earlier, we do not, in other circumstances, simply restrict freedoms based on some guesswork about what might be in people's best interests, so why are adolescents made an exception to this rule? Quoting Baden
Ag good idea? No. Since when have we made laws restricting people's freedom on the basis of "a good idea". It's undoubtedly a good idea to eat less bacon, should we legislate against that? No, my argument is that it is not demonstrably a sufficiently bad idea to warrant restricting someone's freedom in such an intrusive way.
Quoting Baden
It's not a presumption, given the approach I've outlined above. 13 may well be fine, but we've no real way of knowing so there I think debate (among experts) is warranted. 14, we actually have the evidence of three European countries from which we can collect data (and we have done so many times). If there's a lot of call from 13 year olds to be allowed to have sex, then it might need to be considered, likewise 12, but I can't see it really. There's a biological limit below which it's simply not normal to want sex and never will be. It's not a slippery slope.
You said earlier it was based on competence, now you're saying it makes no sense. Which is it?
Quoting Hanover
That may well be the mechanism, but it doesn't have any bearing on the presentation of moral or scientific arguments to that demos in order to try and persuade them of a better course of action. Their choices may be the final arbiter, but they are not arbitrary.
Quoting Hanover
One cannot permit consent. Consent is an expressed state of mind. One can treat consent as sufficient justification or not, usually on the basis of whether such consent is sufficiently informed and not coerced. I can't see any way in which a six year old could be either. I have a hard time indeed believing a 14 year old has neither, and if they do, it is more likely the result of society's error in their upbringing, which is what then needs adjustment, not their freedom.
Quoting Hanover
Really? This is, I suspect, at the root cause of much of this moralising. The treatment of children like they're mindless property without any genuine feelings. "Choose to have sex with someone else"? Since when do we just 'choose' who to have sex with, like some supermarket shelf. Imagine talking to an adult couple like that. "Having trouble with your sex life, why don't you just choose to have sex with someone else?". Apologies if romanticism is a bit passe here, but in my world people fall in love (or at least in lust) and have sex with the object of their carnal affection, it's not a game of musical chairs.
Not someone I've read. To be honest, despite the subject matter, sexual autonomy isn't really my main gripe, it's autonomy in general. I dislike the way that a requirement for care becomes a rope with which to restrain. I don't think it's healthy for the children or the adults doing the restraining.
But I'm always keen to try new authors, so thanks for the name.
Both. Here is a good summary of a sex hysterical sex abuse case in Jordon, Minnesota in 1983-84: http://www.minnesotalegalhistoryproject.org/assets/Olson%20Sex%20Ring2.pdf
If there was a valid case against one individual to start with, the number of accused ballooned, and after causing much damage to innocent people. The Scott County prosecutor, Kathleen Morris, whipped up hysteria and ruined a number of innocent people. Instead of 1 sound case, she created a case of three dozen which was in the end thrown out by the court.
The article is also a review of the book, We Believe the Children: A Moral Panic in the 1980s by Richard Beck. He covers a number of sex abuse hysteria cases from the period. I have not read the book.
The notion that there's anything difficult or sophisticated required to consent to sexual activities is bizarre.
We expect teenagers to understand far more complex ideas than what's required for sexual consent.
It's a bit more complicated than just a blanket "14 is the age of consent" in Germany. It can still be considered rape if the other person is over 21 and if the 14 year old felt exploited, for example. There are also laws giving special sexual protections for children up to 18.
Basically, like with their ages for alcohol (16 for beer and wine, 18 for hard liquor), Germany gradually gives children responsibilities and freedoms as they age. Which, at least with the alcohol, has been shown to be more effective in preventing tragedies than some total, overnight shift in one's rights.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_consent_in_Europe
Yes, this, I think, is a really good way of balancing the duty of care with a minimal imposition on freedoms. We allow adolescents to do whatever they want with their own bodies, but we recognise that they may need some special protection whilst doing so, like riding with stabilisers.
I passed that age, whatever it is. The significant law for me is that the city fathers decreed that children ought to be allowed to bicycle on sidewalks, but adults, not. At age 50 I bought some children's bike, with 20 inch wheels. Because the lawmakers (I guess the law was a city-by-law) in their inifinite wisdom (must have been lawyers) decided that AGE is hard to ascertain in the absence of a document, and kids don't carry documents; so the law was made so, that no bicycles were allowed on city sidewalks that were over 20 inches in diameter.
This not many new, but I read the applicable laws.
And you must know that bicycling on Toronto city road arteries is next near to suicide attempts.
So I happily bicycled all over the sidewalks, being 50 and / or over, riding small children's bikes.
=====================
In this spirit, the city fathers ought to replicate this example with marriage licence issuing. If a man (regardless of age, since it's hard to ascertain in the absence of documents) has a penis less than 20 inches, he is considered boy, and can't marry. 20 inches and over, he is a man. No arguments, this is the law.