this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2025
718 points (98.1% liked)
Political Weirdos
1068 readers
2 users here now
A community dedicated to the weirdest people involved in politics.
- Focus on weird behaviors and beliefs
- Follow Iemmy.world TOS
- Don’t be a jerk
founded 11 months ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Growing up in a state where the legal age was 18, we heard "16'll get you 20" back in the 70s and 80s.
So no idea where this nonsense about the 90s started.
Prolly she grew up in the 90's, fucking older men, and only later has had people go "oh that doesn't sound healthy" and presumes that there just was no judgement at all from anyone when she was actually doing it, just because she didn't witness any personally.
Presumably.
In California, the age of consent was 18 by 1920. In the 1960s and 1970s when I became sexually active, almost nobody I knew was 18 or over at the time of their first sexual experience. It was a widely-ignored law, selectively enforced. When I was under 18, most of my partners were of similar age (and on the Pill).
In the 1880s, the age of consent in California was 10. That was typical for most states in that era. The increase to 18 was driven by the same odd alliance of progressive eugenicists and Christian reactionaries who brought us Prohibition.
The widespread belief in the US that two 17-year-olds having a screw should be subject to prosecution seems insanely punitive and contrary to human nature.
It's 16 in the UK, which in my view makes better sense. All of the EU countries set the age of consent somewhere in the 14-16 range.
Lots of places have romeo and juliet clauses for this. I.e when it's two 16 year olds, it's fine. If it's 16 and 25, it's not.
16 is bordering fine, but anything below that is too low IMO. Again, the so called romeo and juliet laws are important here. It means that even if the age of consent is 18, teenagers can still do it among themselves and if you're 15 and your 17 year old partner suddenly turns 18, that usually isn't a big deal either. Let's protect teenagers from grown ass adults, but let them sleep with each other because that's going to happen anyway, teenagers are crazy filled with hormones - so they should be able to get contraceptives and stuff without any worry of legal repercussions if anyone finds out.
The startling part for me, having grown up in an 18 state, is that the majority of US states are 16.
When I heard that for the first time I was like "Oh, that can't be right..."
Yup. 30 states = 16, 8 states = 17, 12 states = 18.
https://versustexas.com/blog/age-of-consent-by-state/