We are so delusional about this that that between a 20 year old that didn’t enjoy her first sexual experience, she had only to impress someone or because she was tricked into it or because of low self-esteem, with a guy that treated her a like a sex object the whole time AND a girl of 12 who chose to have sex, with a boy she liked and who was gentle to her, and that considered her desire to have sex with more maturity and responsability than the 20 year old taking precautions and enoying the experience; we might actually think that the better example and experience is the first one… just because the second one was “too young” no matter how factually good and positive the experience was and how objectively mature and responsible the girl was.

I will never understand how can people choose to function at such a low intellectual level to really convince themselves that a simple number determines how ready you are to make a choice and how that choice will turn.

This stupid belief also underestimates the struggle of over 18
Not only people believe that before a certain age every choice you make will be the wrong one and will have negative consequences but they also believe that after a certain age every choice you make will be the right one and everything you do will have positive consequences and you don’t need protection from friends or well-meant people.

And actually from my example the 20 year old girl needed more protection, help in making a choice and more maturity to take a decision than the 12 year old.

I’m very worried that we’re so preoccupied with the superficial details of something that we ignore the substance and the content, I’m very worried that we are more preoccupied with telling kids to wait X age to make whatever stupid thing a human being might want to do, rather than making them understand that it’s the HOW that it’s important not the WHEN.

The wrong thing is not any less wrong because a 30 year old does it.
And the right thing is not any less right because a 12 year old does it.

I can’t believe how certain parents prohibit their children from doing anything untile age 18 but are perfectly fine with them making all the things they wanted them not to do as long as they’re 18 and older. Which is like saying that those parents were not really interested in educating their children and shaping their character so they would be kind and honest individuals, they were more worried about conforming them to the imaginary myth of the innocent kid so has not to be judged as bad parents.

This is actually the opposite of education.
The idea that as long as you’re older than 18, this number is a social invention without meaning, you will better at everything, you will make better choices and task will be easier (think of the nonsense teen-pregnancy scare where they pass on the ridicolous idea that as long as you 18+ parenting is easier and less of a struggle) is asinine to say the least.

Expecially if compared with the empirical truth of how immature and irresponsible most adults are and how more closed minded, rigid, absolutist and naive they have become by growing older; indeed following a common path of the mature self-thinking teen conforming into a dull, unthinking and immature adult.

Raping has absolutely nothing to do with sexual awareness and feelings since the victim of a rape could be anyone. In fact preventing rape has a lot to do with information; talking about rights and talking about unwated sexual contacts and wanted sexual contacts. Going the paranoid and irrational way and claiming that whatever feeling, whatever urge and whatever touch is evil and immoral just makes it a lot harder to protect kids and even young adults from abusive sex.