i'm not saying that age of consent isn't convenient but with the way that maturity sufferage/equality sexuality and property ownership have all changed over the years it's difficult to justify adhering to age of consent laws when they might as well be pulled out of a hat and vary too greatly on a national basis to justify any sort of consistency nowadays. if it were up to me age of consent as a concept wouldn't exist and we'd go back to good ol' fashioned psychoanalysis of victims to determine maturity and understanding of sexuality
because things change, and practices which should probably be considered archaic are now evolved from what they were and celebrated in their new forms, e.g. marriage
when countries started upping the age of consent from the ridiculously young levels to 15-16, it wasn't in the context of oppressing women. it happened late 1800s when people started to consider children as something precious and worth protecting. coincidentally occurred at the same time that education was becoming viewed as a right, child labour laws were being enacted, and welfare for children was being considered and instituted.
age of consent as a concept was popularized when women were still viewed as property and was utilized primarily to dehumanize women's ability to consent and instead give a black-white system that men could determine sans input from women. so idk why yall still rely on that archaic stuff but that's just me.
