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Part of the problem is that the American age of consent is a bit ludicrous - by the time you're 18 you've already spent a third of your life sexually aware, and most people lose their virginity long before then. So it's very important to clarify whether one is talking about a) actual rape of prepubescent children, or b) mutually consensual sexual encounters that are biologically normal, legal in most of the world, and just happen to be called "statutory rape" in America.
I find it particularly concerning that progressives hold the position that teens are capable of deciding they're trans (complete with devastatingly life-altering physical interventions) when they're young but not capable of deciding they want sex (which is a hell of a lot safer, done responsibly). This just seems incoherent.
Keep in mind that the American age of consent is mostly fairly sensible in most places, but California's uniquely insane "18 or illegal, no exceptions" rule is the only one people hear about because Hollywood.
I think 18 has become the dominant cultural age of consent in America, even if there are lower legal ages in some places. I think it's partly Hollywood as you say, and partly from the ubiquitousness of porn where 18 is the hard limit.
On Reddit it's so ingrained that in discussions people simply refuse to believe it's ever under 18. They say that those laws only apply to 16-17's sleeping with each other, not adults, and that gets upvoted, while any correct comments get downvoted to oblivion.
Most places. Per wikipedia, he only states with it 18, without exceptions for people of similar age, are Arizona, California, Idaho, Oregon, and Wisconsin. That's less than a fifth of the population of the United States, I believe.
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The Junior Anti-Sex League's position is fundamentally "straight men having sex bad"; I feel to see how their pro-eunuch stance (intentionally uglifying men and women alike isn't increasing the above, that's for sure) or their other attempts to problematize straight sex is inconsistent with that outlook. The first clear modern example of this bloc gaining power is the imposition of an "age of consent" concept in the first place.
Newspeak; it's an attempt to conflate "non-coercive" with "doesn't offend the sensibilities/interests of the above group".
To be clear, you are saying that wokeism is why an age of consent exists in the first place? This is the exact opposite of the claim others are making in this thread, that wokeists are secretly paedos who want to abolish the age of consent.
I think it would be more accurate to say that wokeists are responsible for the age of consent increasing over time but simultaneously want activities traditionally seen as sexual that they believe shouldn't be considered sexual to be free from that restriction.
In a vacuum, woke is responsible for the AoC increasing over time when it's a hetero pairing and the younger of the two is a woman (they aren't, for instance, particularly concerned with the definition of rape being a crime women cannot commit in the polities where this is true). This tracks given what we know about the demographics of progressives (a majority female movement concerns itself with imposing female sexual dynamics- what a shock), and
if restated as "want activities traditionally seen as sexual to enjoy the plausible deniability of being sexual when it suits them", is an accurate description for how that demographic functions in the sexual marketplace.
I don't think progressives care that strongly about what the AoC should be when the younger of the two is a man aside from adding an extra layer of defense on top of the above special privilege/needing to pretend they care. Which was why NAMLBA was even tolerated in the first place back in the '70s (you really think one focused on girls would have gotten that far?) and why all the sexual "experiments" (like that German 'let's place kids with rapists and see what happens' one) never involved girls.
I would characterize 'wokeists' as a recent evolution of progressives that is distinct from those who tolerated NAMBLA in the '70s and other groups that did in fact argue against the AoC including for hetero pairings featuring older men and younger women (famously Foucault et al in France). I think they do care about the AoC when the younger of the two is a man, but this is counter-acted by their (charitably) unrecognized biases in recognizing behaviors toward men as being sexual.
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I think that's a fair restatement. To build on that, I'd say a key difference between 'wokeists' and other branches of progressives is how they approach the intersection of power and sex. The woke from my perspective see sex as a tool for power, and their policies reflect a desire to control and wield that power while denying it to their opponents whereas other progressive groups have been more focused on freeing sex from such power plays.
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Yes; I've covered this point and the reasons why I think this doesn't make sense/is missing the point many times before. This also lines up with what the actual pedos (who post here from time to time) have to say about the matter.
On one hand, they're secretly pedos. On the other hand, they're fighting for 25 and ex post facto rape laws.
The traditionalist outlook on sex (dominant here, as this is a traditionalist forum) is fundamentally incapable of unpacking that statement because it appears to start from the same uncritical "sex = bad" viewpoint that the progressive one does, just with the valence switched.
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