Age of Consent

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- gal_from_usa
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Age of Consent
OP - December 22, 2014, 05:13 AM

Hey all,

As an asexual, I have no personal experience in the field of sexuality, so I'm not really sure about the accuracy of my beliefs about age of consent. So I thought I'd put them out there, and maybe you allosexual people can chime in on how accurate they are or aren't.

Lots of criticisms of Islam surround Aisha being 9 and that being the age of consent in some modern countries as a result. Current age of consent laws in most other places tend to be between 13-18 (depending mainly on the economic development of the country you're talking about). I am not sure that there is a specific age or level of physical development (ie physical signs of puberty) that automatically qualifies a person as able to give informed consent, and as such, I think consent should be viewed on a case by case basis, and not all by one rule.

For example, an extremely developmentally disabled person or severely mentally retarded person may never be able to give informed consent, no matter what age they are. So a person whose physical development age is 25 with the intellectual capacity of a two year old could never consent, despite their level of physical development. Conversely, someone like Lina Medina who is too young to even understand what sex is but is physically developed enough to become pregnant is also unable to give consent. Similarly, certain psychological or physical conditions may temporarily or permanently take away a person's ability to give informed consent. A person who is having a psychotic episode or who has been brainwashed to believe something (such as that a particular person is divinity incarnate) is probably not able to consent, because they are in a mental state so significantly impaired that they do not fully understand their actions. Physical conditions that can impair ability to consent include being given a date rape drug or being unconscious or asleep. Brain damage or stroke can also impair ability to consent.

So there so many other factors at play besides age and level of physical development that I don't think we could ever make a "one-size-fits-all" perfect rule about who can and cannot give consent. As annoyingly impractical as it sounds, I think we must treat every case individually.

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- asbie
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Age of Consent
Reply #1 - December 22, 2014, 06:11 AM

Age laws prevent obvious abuses though, which is I think why they are in place.

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- bogart
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Age of Consent
Reply #2 - December 22, 2014, 11:41 AM

A case by case investigation is a burden on limited resources. It just adds a layer of bureaucracy which is unnecessary. The state would be required to rule on which individual is an adult or child as it is the state which doles out rights. The system would become clogged with cases. Case from parents applying for this change of status, horny kids and dubious cases. Worse the state could mandate annual examines. It seems far to Big Brother-ish to me. A general age range covers a majority so individuals need not apply for a status, it becomes granted. It is the exceptions and minorities which require involvement. Laws are prescriptive not descriptive. X is illegal not X is illegal unless you happen to be A or believe in H.
- suki
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Age of Consent
Reply #3 - December 22, 2014, 12:19 PM

Also there's no law in most countries against consenting under age adolecents, so that covers all the grey areas.

Edit: actually there is a law against two under 16 year olds having sex, dont see the law being applied though.
- laico
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Age of Consent
Reply #4 - December 22, 2014, 01:52 PM

you are right but as Bogart pointed out, it's just not practical to judge case by case.
- gal_from_usa
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Age of Consent
Reply #5 - December 22, 2014, 05:36 PM

I know that it's infuriatingly impractical. Age of consent laws are useful only insofar as we can say that the majority of people above or below a certain age will probably be able to consent, but it's impossible to say if it's going to be true of everyone, so I don't think that there is a magic age that we can make a cut off point globally for all time.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for I have a sonic screwdriver, a tricorder, and a Type 2 phaser.
- dr_sloth
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Age of Consent
Reply #6 - December 22, 2014, 05:50 PM

i thought this was a quite good comment from reddit.

http://www.reddit.com/r/exmuslim/comments/2o76tc/modern_science_has_determined_that_at_whatever/cmkgjpo

Most people accept that whatever age the law says is to some extent arbitrary. Nobody really thinks its the perfect age, or that there is such a thing. It is simply the best system we can come up with, and it just happens to be better than what Islam came up with.
- laico
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Age of Consent
Reply #7 - December 22, 2014, 10:43 PM

I personally think 16 is the best age limit. Granted my view may be a little biased because that's the age of consent where I grew up.
- three
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Age of Consent
Reply #8 - December 23, 2014, 03:04 AM

I grew up with a girl who looked seventeen at age nine. Nine was not an age for her to consent, no matter where her body was in development.
In fact, I have not yet met a nine or eleven or thirteen year old who should have been considered consenting. I met a lot of thirteen year olds who were doing it when I was kid, but that didn't make it okay.
In my state you can consent with someone of the same age at fifteen. If one partner is two years older or more, it is a crime and the elder partner is charged. If you are eighteen and the consenting individual is sixteen, you go to jail. Eighteen and seventeen usually gets a pass.
Of course, all bets are off in the case of the impaired or with abuses of power.
Most of the women I knew in the Muslim community I was involved with were married off at thirteen or fifteen.

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- bogart
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Age of Consent
Reply #9 - December 23, 2014, 11:03 AM

I am not fan of cultural relativism in regards to Aisha. Puberty takes years to complete. She would have started puberty at 5-6 to even have it finished at age 9. The major issue is Mo is supposed to be a figure to follow and one with God's ear. God should know the system he designed better. The fact that Allah does not is another point to Allah being a fiction. As a figure to follow this makes Mo a failure in respect to marriage. Islams guideline are far to close to "Old enough to bleed, old enough to breed". I no more make exceptions for people that have done this in Europe or Asia. However, again, none of these people are paragons of humanity as Mo is claimed to be.
- NeoApostate
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Reply #10 - December 24, 2014, 09:41 AM

bogart
It's a little off-topic, but sometimes I feel that Aisha's age was misrepresented in books of history etc. to enhance her status as the favorite wife of the founder of islam. After all, she was the most controversial of them all - she led a bloody rebellion that caused the community enormous losses, she had long-running feuds with figures like Ali and Muaviya (yes, she hated Muaviya for having murdered her brother Mohammad) - In fact she was anti-Uthman as well, until his murder in a popular rebellion. Still, since Sunni islam needed a powerful female role model to rival the central figure of Fatimah as developed by the Shias, we see her glorification in hadith and history. We all know she couldn't bear children, so the best way to counter this presumed deficiency would be to portray herself as a child! in a virginity-obsessed culture, she was singled-out as the only virgin who the prophet married, hence her superiority over khadija, the mother of Fatimah.
- bogart
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Age of Consent
Reply #11 - December 24, 2014, 11:14 AM

Could be a possibility. Placing questionable figures as paragons of questionable virtues is not uncommon in religion.
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