Re: The Draft Argument for 12+

I've been following the Mu forum and will probably get signed up there soon. Thanks for the reminder, though. The language I came up with was purposely vague about addressing power imbalances. I don't think MAPs should be responsible for doing that, or for figuring out how to do that. To me, the point of bringing up sex between women and men is that society is full of unequal power relationships and that these never justify blanket prohibitions on mutually desired sexual behavior between specific groups. Historically in the US, both women and Blacks were disempowered groups (I would argue they still are, but this is hardly a consensus position for us). Sex between the races was prohibited at one time, but this was not at all based on a theory of protecting Blacks from sexual exploitation by whites. Like the age taboo, it was based on public disapproval of such relationships. Nobody anywhere seems to have seriously proposed banning male-female sex, for obvious reasons, no matter how much exploitation there might have been or still might be. If unequal power was a basis for laws banning sex between groups, wouldn't rich and poor be a prime candidate? But this does pose a problem for the essay, in my view one that inheres in the whole idea of a 12 yo AOC. Defending that proposal naturally inclines you to contrast the vulnerability of teens with that of pre-teens. But once you have conceded that power differentials justify a ban on sex with 11 yos, dealing with the issue for at least younger teens becomes unavoidable. Better, in my view, to point out that throughout human history plenty of people with unequal social power have nevertheless managed healthy sexual relationships, so the equation between power differentials and exploitation is a false one. This doesn't mean exploitation doesn't occur, but a person's right to form sexual relationships is too basic for banning them to be a reasonable response to this problem. The main risk of sexual exploitation of kids, whether younger or older than 12, comes imho from sexual ignorance, so the primary remedy would be better sex education. That, however, suggests that youth liberation may have to come before MAP liberation -- a perspective that runs counter to one of your major premises, which is that age of consent is less firmly established than other aspects of ageism and therefore can be contested separately, with other aspects of youth liberation to come later. hugzu ;-p