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Sex is the natural means of reproduction for humans. That's what it evolved for. Sexual activity that isn't between an adult (hit puberty) male and adult female or does not involve the male penentrating the female's vagina when she's fertile cannot fulfil the primary evolutionary purpose of sexual activity, reproduction. So such sexual activity is traditionally seen as pointless, and just a way for STIs to spread. And when childhood got extended well past the onset of puberty, this made it socially problematic for adolescents to reproduce. Even though most people are hitting puberty before they're even teenagers, things like child labour laws and compulsory education laws don't make it easy to be a young parent. They force young parents to depend on their own parents, and this means the offspring of adolescents end up being raised by their grandparents. But the grandparents don't choose to have a grandchild, so it's not seen as right to have a baby if you're too young for the baby to be your responsibility. And parenthood, particularly motherhood! (see, feminists should support youth liberation), has become a greater responsibility than it should be thanks to adultism. Kids being denied autonomy means more pressure is put on their parents, especially their mothers. If they had more autonomy, then the village could raise the child. Kids could choose which adults they want to engage with without those adults necessarily being approved by parents or having institutionalised authority over them. And of course when adolescent reproduction is problematised, adolescents having sexual relations gets problematised by extension. So it's not that kids "can't consent" to sex because it's dangerous. They "can't consent" to it because they might have a baby, and that's not right whether they wanted to or not. And if they can't have a baby, it's still not right because what if they did it with the opposite sex, or when they hit puberty? |