Human Stupidity: Irrationality, Self Deception

I know there’s a lot wrong with the child pornography legal structure in Western societies. Some of it undoubtedly does actually protect children from harm, but I believe most of it is there to serve the interests of the parents, which is to preserve the status quo of sexuality in adolescents. The first obvious thing is the age of majority, which needs to be lowered or the law amended in some way. As it stands, the law groups the 17-year old and the 1-year old in the same class of people, i.e. children but obviously a 17-year old is much more likely to make more informed decisions about sex than any 1-year old will. It makes further no sense to remain nonchalant toward the currency of adolescent sex yet continue to prosecute graphical depictions of it as child sexual abuse. Next, is our attitude toward adolescent-adult sexual relations. You’ll have referenced Bruce Rind in one of your articles. Let me cite him from another paper he wrote titled, “Social Response to Age-Gap Sex Involving Minors. . .”, where it was found that most college students who had experienced underage sex before with an adult did not find the experience traumatizing or abusive. He also has this to say about common misinformed beliefs about adolescent-adult sexual relations in the paper “An empirical examination of sexual relations between adolescents and adults. . .”: “Either the proposal is misinformed in the ways just discussed, or it is disingenuous in alleging to protect sexually mature persons when in fact it is intending to control them.” Of course, that’s not saying all adolescent-adult sexual activity should go free, only the consensual ones. Then proponents for the ban on child porn will argue that children can’t consent to sexual activity. 2 problems with this. Children referring to child porn is anybody under 18 years old. The age of majority is an arbitrary standard of maturity that does not fit well with the individual’s actual ability to consent. Certainly pre-pubescent children can use a much higher level of scrutiny in the law but not pubescent adolescents. Second is that adolescents already consent to sexual activity with each other and this has been really ignored by the law.