Comment by DiscourseFan | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DiscourseFan | Hacker News Reader

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Allow me to say something rather contraversial, but this sort of thing has been around for a while in the American unconscious (in an interview somewhere, Nabakov says he wrote Lolita in part to make Americans uncomfortable), and Instagram and the NYT has just brought it into the forefront of the collective psyche.

We have to understand that our concept of pedophilia and childhood sexuality is very recent, and though sexual attraction to young girls in the 18th century and earlier in Europe was considered strange, it wasn't a crime, and the average marriage age of women around the world was still 14. As capitalism developed, that age continued to increase, until today when woman in advanced capitalist economies aren't expected to marry until their late 20s, and the late 20s is the age when we consider someone to be a fully mature adult, though we say that 16 or so--around there on average--is old enough to make decisions about ones own sexuality.

I am not an advocate for removing the age of consent or any radical policies that would resemble those that came out of western Europe in the late 60s, but merely pointing out that the entire moral component of the issue is deeply intertwined with contemporary history, and we can't forget that when examining the impact of technology on society.

> it wasn't a crime, and the average marriage age of women around the world was still 14

That’s just as outright false as it gets. Average marriage age was never that low going back to the middle ages (ancient Rome/Greece were different). Of course it varied a lot. e.g in Northwestern Europe back in the 13-14th centuries (specifically in Britain, although IIRC Northern France wasn’t that different)it was the most common for women to marry somewhere between 18-22 while in Italy 16-18 was more usual (which is why I assume Romeo and Juliet made any sense to English audiences).

A few centuries later mid 20s became a lot more common in Britain (and I think in the US). In fact the average marriage age in the 1960s was lower than it had ever been in centuries:

http://www.wivesofjosephsmith.org/Age.htm

Europe is a special case, the average age in, e.g. China may be lower, though maybe not 14.

The concept of the Germ Theory of Disease is also relatively recent. Just because paedophilia and paederasty have been practised since time immemorial doesn't make them good.

Regardless of what may have happened historically (and your claims are dubious, as others have pointed out), it really doesn’t make sense to suggest that the average person is capable of the degree of consent necessary for a long term relationship in their teens.

It’s one thing to acknowledge that we begin to develop a sense of sexuality and gender identity in our teenage or even preteen years, and to foster acceptance of that identity. It’s another matter entirely to suggest that this identity coincides with maturity and ability to consent. At that age, we’re still developing our sense of self and don’t fully understand the various components of intimacy, including consent.

It’s the difference between sex-positivity and sexualization. For whatever reason, our society seems to have a hard time understanding the difference beyond a few well-established scenarios. We understand that it’s healthy for parents to discuss sex and gender with their children: “use a condom,” “understand and respect that others may have different preferences than you, and that’s okay—likewise, you don’t need to follow the crowd,” “consent while intoxicated isn’t consent.” We also understand that it’s not healthy for parents to be actively encouraging their teens to get married.

But we seem to have trouble extrapolating that line into technology: is it okay for parents to be running these accounts? Are the children they represent capable of consenting to these images being published? Do we care that some of the consumers of these images are treating them as sexual? If there’s a likelihood that the images will be sexualized by some subset of the audience, is that a good reason to avoid posting them, and, if so, where is that line?

The average age of marriage was not 14. That’s a myth.

Okay? And life expectancy *around the world* most likely was a lot lower than the modern world's life expectancy. People grew up faster. There is nothing deep about that. 14 then does not mean 14 today.

Also it was mostly false in the west at least. The Average marriage became lower, not higher in the 20th century before it began increasing at a very fast pace in the 70s:

http://www.wivesofjosephsmith.org/Age.htm

Depending on the area between the 1600s and 1800s it was not uncommon at all for women to marry in her mid-20s. Even in the middle ages in North Western Europe the average age never dipped much below 20

Average life expectancy was highly skewed by the huge number of infant and child deaths from infectious disease and accidents. People who survived to adulthood had a reasonable chance of living to old age, even hundreds or thousands of years ago.

> People grew up faster.

In some ways, without a doubt, but in others, maybe not. There's evidence kids reached puberty later in pre-industrial society. This seems pertinent.

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