Children/minors can consent.

A frequent argument in all sorts of discussions about sexual ethics, whether that is about having sex with children/minors, or also non-human animals or the mentally handicapped is that they are too unintelligent and immature to give consent, thus it is unethical to have sex with them, it tends to be the main focus of the discussion leading to a lot of confusion.

Consenting to something for the most part ultimately just implies willingness, being fine with something or not. When we talk about whether or not you consented in a sexual context, what is meant is usually just whether you wanted it to happen or not.

You can’t consent to get raped or be a slave for instance, it’s an oxymoron, if you wanted it it wouldn’t be rape or slavery anymore, what may be meant by ”wanting/consenting to get raped” is that you want someone to fuck you who doesn’t care whether or not you want to get fucked, but you still wanted it either way.

Children/minors are capable of agreement, they agree or don’t agree to do things every single day. Agree to eat food or not, agree to ride a bicycle or not, agree to be hugged or not.

A child can be willing, consenting to sexual pleasure too, I think that if we were to really steelman (as in, opposite of strawman, lay their view out as robust and coherent as possible) the pedophobes, what they really mean most of the time when they’re talking about consent is the child’s intelligence and maturity, foresight, i.e ability to plan and think ahead, understand consequences and ramifications of actions, this is something children are less capable of until a certain age, sometimes their foresight will be impaired.

Unless the pedophobe is some religious fanatic who thinks children don’t have erogenous zones and are innately asexual, what they are really saying is probably that a child may be willing, consenting to receive sexual pleasure, but that there are certain, potentially harmful consequences to that sexual pleasure that the child would not understand yet, in their disgust they automatically equate all sex in childhood with certain harms like anal rape, STDs, early pregnancy, etc.

That’s why even when you point out to them that the minor wanted to engage in some sort of sexual act with the older person, they act outraged and say it’s no excuse, even when the child supposedly wanted it, as if there is something innately harmful about sex that this poor child would just never agree to if they only knew about it.

These harmful consequences they automatically think of are not inherently connected to all sexual acts between children/minors and pedophiles/adults, so it doesn’t logically follow that just because someone isn’t intelligent or mature, they can’t consent to the sex act.

• Whether or not you need a great future concept/advanced foresight depends on the future consequences of that act.

A greater foresight, intelligence and maturity are only important factors if there are potential negative consequences to your actions that you may fail to appreciate, if the act is harmless anyway, you don’t need high intelligence or maturity to process it.

If the sexual pleasure is indeed the only consequence of the sex act and there is no secondary unwanted consequence that the child didn’t want, then yes, all that can be objectively stated is that said child indeed consented to be sexually stimulated.

• Example:

Let’s say a young child that doesn’t understand traffic rules yet and/or is too immature to take them seriously, this child wants to ride a bicycle.

• Should we allow this child to consent to riding a bicycle?

The answer is that that entirely depends on the environment and its consequences. On the freeway with many cars driving around rapidly? No. In a largely safe and harmless environment with no cars driving or definitely slow enough to notice the child? Yes.

Whether or not the child has a great concept of the future, can think ahead is completely irrelevant in this scenario, because it is a harmless environment with no cars driving anyway, so the child doesn’t need to be able to think ahead because there’s about zero chance that they’ll get hit by a car anyway, all that matters is that the child wants to ride the bicycle, wasn’t forced to do so at gunpoint.

And the same consistently applies to sex, if a child found out about sexual pleasure by rubbing their private parts against things, but doesn’t understand possible risks of sex like STDs or different sexual practices like anal sex yet, that doesn’t automatically mean they can’t consent to any sexual act.

That means that they should not be engaging in the type of sex that has these risks they are unable to understand, but that is simply not all sex.

If the child for instance just wants to rub themselves against a pedophile’s leg for the exact same pleasurable sensation they received from rubbing themselves against a pillow, where none of these potential complications (like STDs, pregnancy, penetrative sex, etc) could even possibly exist, then indeed, all that can be objectively stated is that by all evidence the child consented to be sexually stimulated. It was wanted, and there was no future consequence to it that was unwanted either.

• If the child wanted to ride the bicycle, and there was no consequence to riding the bicycle that the child did not want – the child consented to ride the bicycle.

• If the child wanted to have the sex, and there was no consequence to having the sex that the child did not want – the child consented to have the sex.

The fact that children may not understand the consequences of their actions as much as adults yet is only a problem if those consequences are actually present, if the negative consequences don’t exist in a given scenario, there’s no problem. And just like in other scenarios, the responsibility should be on the adults, including the pedophile of course to make sure there are no negative consequences for the child (like STDs or pregnancy), instead of just forbidding the child to have sex. You don’t forbid the child to ride the bicycle at all, you just make sure it’s as safe as possible.

There’s no age restriction for children eating broccoli for instance, and that is because if the child consents to eat broccoli, it’s unlikely that there is any long term consequence to eating broccoli that the child will later on not consent to, so there’s no reason to stop this child from consenting to eat broccoli.

There’s an age restriction for alcohol and cigarettes on the other hand, and the idea there is that although the child may agree to drink a bottle of whiskey, they may not consent to the future consequences that could have on their body, but is not aware of that to the same degree as someone with a more mature understanding of future consequences, then able to weigh the pros and cons.

This argument similarly applies to humans that are perhaps on the same intellectual level as children, some intellectually handicapped individuals perhaps go their entire lives engaging in all sorts of recreational activities without fully understanding them to the same degree as someone who isn’t severely intellectually disabled, does that mean they cannot express their preferences to any degree? No, it simply means we sometimes have to take extra cautionary measures to ensure their safety, we can use a similar example here.

• Another example:

Let’s say there’s a mentally handicapped person that likes to collect blue marbles, but they have a tendency to swallow said marbles sometimes and are too handicapped to understand that that’s bad, they can only say ”blue marble me feel good good”.

• Does that mean that they just per se can’t consent to play with blue marbles?

No. Under the supervision of someone who makes sure they don’t swallow them and choke on it, there would be no problem with it. Completely alone in the house, probably a bad idea.

Same exact standard can then again consistently be applied to sex, so let’s say there’s a mentally retarded female on the intelligence level of a 5 year old, interested in sex but unaware of what STDs are.

Whether or not it would be responsible to allow her to consent again depends entirely on the consequences. If her partner has no STDs and takes care of the contraception process and all that the sexual encounter thus consists of is the desired exchange of sexual pleasure, there’s no problem, no reason to say she couldn’t consent.

Now if her partner has AIDS and doesn’t use protection, she doesn’t consent to get the AIDS but isn’t aware of that, so at that point it’d be sensible to intervene for us to prevent her from receiving the AIDS from the other irresponsible party.

• Sex is not such a complicated act that always results in harm no matter what, so there’s no reason to assume one necessarily has to have a great future concept/advanced foresight to engage in it.

So if a child actually wants to receive sexual pleasure from rubbing herself against a pedophile’s leg instead of a pillow, wasn’t manipulated in some way to do so and there is absolutely nothing in that scenario the pedophile does that the child would later on not want, like anal rape or whatever pedophobes imagine to always happen, the question really becomes:

• What is the supposed future consequence in sex that this child fails to take into account due to their childishness, that they need to be protected against at all costs, that they simply can never understand until the child is no longer a child?

The child cannot give consent they would claim. Why not, where is the harmful future consequence in leg humping as opposed to pillow humping that the child subject simply fails to take into account due to their childishness? What is it?

What is this magical consequence that supposedly exists for everyone under the holy age of consent when they have sex with someone over the holy age of consent that the child would need to be informed about for consent to be possible, but simply can’t because the child is not an adult yet?