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this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2023
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Unpopular Opinion
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Very good comment all around, I just have a nitpick to this section:
This is actually called hebephilia/ephebophilia which is in the general public treated very similarly and often subsumed under the term pedophilia. It is considered it's own thing though. To quote Wikipedia:
My guess for why it is more tolerated than straight up pedophilia is that they have reached a more mature body, that shows some/most properties of a sexually developed person. So while it's still gross and very likely detrimental to the child if pursued (depends on the age in question, 16-18 is pretty close to adulthood), there seems to be more of an understanding for it.
Being attracted to a pre-puberty or early-puberty child is not only considered wrong because they can't consent, it's also considered abnormal because they do not share any features of what a "normal" person would be attracted to, namely developed physical sexual traits. I don't think there is anything being muddied here.
The physical attraction part gets muddier the more puberty progresses. There isn't really an age limit for this as puberty works differently for everyone. The psycological/consent part gets muddier the more the age progresses combined with the changes puberty does to your personality, but it also depends on a ton of other factors, like the kind of upbringing in terms of sex-ed. There is a reason that the age of consent differs vastly even between US states and even more so internationally, even if you only include western europe.
So this might be your opinion, many other people would say otherwise, it's not a hard fact. Especially if you go up to 16 where we allow people of this age to do all sorts of things. In USA you can drive a car, in germany you can buy and consume alcohol, they are sometimes already in an apprenticeship to get into a job. People generally start becoming people and stop being kids somewhere in that range.
So while bringing this distinction up muddies the water, it muddies the water only so far as it is already muddy, and this needs to be part of the conversation if it should have a relation to reality.
So in conclusion I don't fully agree here. It's not the same, one is way worse than the other. That doesn't make it ok to get what you want through abuse from a 16 year old or wherever you want to set the age limit. Or from anyone for that matter, but younger people need to be better protected, because typically they are easier to abuse. Where that age limit is exactly, is somewhat a matter of opinion, as the different laws show.