this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2025
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Not everyone reaches their peak at 13 like you do. Most need some time to mature before understanding the difference between what they're into, and what the raging hormones in their body are just compeling them to do. That's why these laws exist, because 13 year olds don't know what they want, and predators can easily con them into believing it's them. Because predators aren't all exclusively 40 year olds with visible red flags.
What about the rest?
Rest of my comment:
In short, there are no "rest." No human has magically become mature while their body is full of puberty hormones compelling them to be an idiot. You become mature through experience. That's it. That's the only thing that does it.
So if you have enough sexual experience by the time you're 13 to be "mature" enough to know what you want, then you've been molested. Otherwise it's a bunch of hormones telling you what you want, not "maturity."
Everything sexual at that age sounds appealing when you are full of those hormones AND HAVE NO EXPERIENCE to tell what the good choices are from the bad.
When considering the cause and effect of sex - PREGNANCY - I think it's better to make sure immature people cannot get pregnant at 13 and ruin their future before they've lived it.
pregnancy is a worst outcome but it is not the only one. maturity for sex varies wildly across people and some are ready earlier. i understand now how big the differences between people are, and everybody thinks their own experience is universal, and that leads to misunderstanding. i hope my report will demonstrate another viewpoint.
Pregnancy is THE ONLY biologically intended outcome of sex. Humans are mammals. Sex is how they reproduce. It isn't anything more than that no matter how good it feels
Maturity for sex does not vary wildly. You are conflating cultural acceptance, and age of consent for something it is not: maturity. Otherwise, state the name of the culture that believes 13 year olds are mature enough to raise children. Because no culture believes sex doesn't lead to pregnancy. That's something immature people tell themselves to justify their mistakes.
You are doing an incredibly awful job of convincing me or anyone you are mature. I don't care how old you are now, you shouldn't have kids if you are willing let them fuck whoever they want at 13 because you think they MIGHT be mature enough to not get pregnant.
Thats not just immature, it's flagrantly stupid. You'll be a grandma in your 30's, and still not be mature enough to understand why that's a bad thing.
I'm sorry but this is an attack that i don't take well.
Humans are mammals, yes, but you're missing a whole lot of cultural layer here. Humans have physical contact to show affection and close-ness, or why do you think (some) people hug? I'm not advocating for teenage pregnancy, just to be clear here. I'm not even advocating for teenage sex, in fact. I'm advocating for letting people think for themselves and taking the demands of teenagers seriously.
All too often i see the fear of teenagers having sex weaponized to prevent teenagers from having romantic relationships. It happened to me. Teenagers need exposure and experiences to grow up, or they're never gonna mature.
I completely agree. I just think those experiences work best when they are safe from easily preventable trauma - like what having a child at 13 can turn into.
I'm not advocating for teenagers to not think for themselves, I just don't think they're old enough to be parents.
That is the very likely consequences of sex by our biological design. And there's less options to prevent it than ever.
Teenagers do not have the maturity to understand the consequences of sex, just the extreme desire to have it.
And through the smallest mistake a teenager can turn into a parent with parental responsibilities. 13 year olds can't hold a good job, let alone raise a child on their own.
Protecting that from happening used to be a regularly accepted American cultural goal. And I agree it's one that certainly got warped into something weaponized, but the point was to protect childhoods from unnecessarily becoming parenthoods.
I'm sorry about that. To be clear, what I meant by "if you're having kids" is "if you're having kids as a teenager because you're just okay with that." (it was a hypothetical, not a direct comment at you)
Clearly I don't think teenagers should.
Yes, I agree that the weaponization of sex against teens can fuck up their personal lives. (It admittedly also did mine.) But there's certainly a middle ground between that and giving them complete freedom.
Finding a balance between safety and experience isn't easy, but erring on the side of caution is best. It's what provides teens the opportunity to gain maturity rather than force it on them.