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An adult is defined as someone who is 18 years or older in my country. Not sure how you guys handle it. And yes, we're dealing with a legal and a physiological definition, but the legal one is the dominant one, seeing as it's the definition that lands you the title of sexual predator, not to mention jail time and a psychological diagnosis. You're a legal child at age 17, but not a physiological one (girls complete puberty at age 15-17).

Note: Since the age of consent and minor/adult ages do not coincide here, it is technically legal to have sex with a child...

Edited, Nov 30th 2013 2:11am by Mazra

Pretty sure it's how we've evolved to be. The healthiest, youngest, and most fertile group of mates.

It's not really twists and turns, it's just that AoC laws aren't relevant to state tobacco laws or voting laws or driving laws or drinking laws or financial/banking laws, etc.

That's generally the case here although it's worth noting that there's no sweeping legal definition of a "child" per se, but rather a "minor". So setting AoC laws to 16 doesn't mean it's legal to "have sex with a child" but that the 16 year old is a legal minor adult for purposes of that law. The legal definition of "minor" is "under the age of competence" so if you're over the AoC age, you're legally considered "competent" to consent to sex even if you're not considered competent to vote or drink.

By age 18, you've cleared almost all the various state and federal hurdles for driving, making your own educational choices, sex, marriage, incarceration, ability to enter contracts, voting, etc so you're considered an adult (aside from drinking) but that doesn't mean someone under 18 is a child but rather it becomes a case-by-case issue.

Honestly though, that's where I feel that we make the dual mistakes of over protectiveness and overly broad labeling. There is (or should be) a massive difference between sexual activity between an adult and a 10 year old, and an adult and a 15 year old both psychologically and legally. And in fact, there is a massive difference in terms of charge (child molestation versus statutory rape in most cases). The problem is that we've broadened the label to call both of those sex offenses and those who commit them sex offenders, complete with outraged citizens demanding stiff penalties and listing of names on registries. We then mistakenly call the person who committed the latter offense a pedophile, not because it's remotely accurate, but because as a society we tend to desire to use the most strongly emotional label in preference to the accurate label.

I think it's important to make that distinction though, and I also think it's important to try to get people to not just acknowledge after the fact that technically they really are two very different things, but to not use the incorrect label (and everything that goes with it) in the first place. I know that I personally have brought this up several times on this forum over the years, and each time everyone agrees that of course there's a difference, but then inevitably someone will use the pedo label incorrectly the very next time the same subject comes up again.


And before someone jumps in with some witty remark about how I want to downplay the harm of adults having sex with teenagers or to protect those who engage in such behavior, let me make plain that my motivation isn't about minimizing that crime, but about wanting to not minimize the crime of child molestation/rape by applying the same label to something that isn't nearly as "bad". My objective here is to make sure that every single time the word pedophile is used every single person who reads/hears it knows that we're talking about someone who is sick in the head and desires to or engages in sexual activity with prepubescent children.

Using it in any other situation leads people to not be sure whether we're talking about that, or some 18 year old who made out with his 16 year old girlfriend and didn't realize that this was technically against the law in whatever jurisdiction he happened to be in at the time.




Yup. Hence my point about this being about a mental condition, not a legal one. Having or not having a mental condition can't be (or shouldn't be) contingent on the legal jurisdiction you're in). Thus, it has to be purely about the physiological state of the other person.