Some Young Women Can and Do Consent to Sex

I welcome comments, including ones disagreeing with what I write. But in commenting, someone may expect a response, sometimes in the form of a whole new entry. This is one of those times.

Anonymous left a comment on this entry, which is one about the "Steve Wilkos Show" featuring a father-daughter couple.

As I wrote in that entry…

Britney was 18 when she began having sex with Morgan after being reunited with him. That makes her an adult. She can consent to have an abortion at an age younger than that. She can sign up to serve in our armed forces. Either we take the age of consent laws seriously or we don't. Either we say an adult woman can make her own decisions or we don't. Either we take the freedom of consenting adults seriously or we don't. Which is it going to be?

Macha made a great comment...

I think this is partly rooted in the prejudiced and false belief that women (especially young women) don't want and aren't interested in sex, so if a younger woman is in a sexual relationship with an older man, she must have been coerced, ergo the man is just an abuser. Our society doesn't want women to have the power to consent. We perpetually deny the possibility that women have the ability to make conscious and deliberate choices about their sex lives, infantilizing them from womb to tomb.

Now let’s look at the comment left by Anonymous…

Essentially, you guys are supporting incest with the justification of "love".

We support the rights of an adult to share love, sex, residence, and marriage with ANY consenting adults. Consensual interactions between adults should not need justification. Those who want to restrict such interactions should be the ones explaining why such restrictions are necessary.

Regardless of how big your hearts are, and how unprejudiced your flawless opinion is, "I side with freedom. I side with love", there is a line that should not be crossed, particularly when this barrier is highlighted in nature when these chemical bonds malfunction and produce children prone to retardation.

So, it would be okay with Anonymous if this was a father-son couple? Or if he had a vasectomy or she had her ovaries removed?

Most sex does not result in a birth. Most people do not believe sex is only for reproduction.

Some bigots try to justify their prejudice against consanguineous sex and marriage by being part-time eugenicists and saying that such relationships inevitably lead to “mutant” or “deformed” babies. Most births to consanguineous parents do not produce children with significant birth defects or other genetic problems; while births to other parents do sometimes have birth defects. We don’t prevent other people from marrying or having sex or deny them their reproductive rights based on increased odds of passing along a genetic problem or inherited disease. It is true that in general, children born to consanguineous parents have an increased chance of these problems than those born to nonconsanguineous parents, but the odds are still minimal. If a natural talent of gift runs in the family, the children will also be more likely to inherit and manifest that beneficial result as well; there are increased odds of problem with births to older parents, too. There's no stigma assigned to that. These days, older women having children is actually especially celebrated, at least in the US. There is certainly no law against it.

Unless someone is willing to deny reproductive rights and medical privacy to others and force everyone to take genetic tests and bar carriers and the congenitally disabled and women over 35 from having children, then equal protection principles prevent this from being a justification to bar this freedom of association and freedom to marry.

She is more then old enough to consent to sex and so he is, though they both acknowledge that what they're doing is sick as a father-daughter thing, but they can't help it because they're in "love".

To this day, a lot of people in love with someone of the same sex feel dirty and sick. Maybe if people stopped bullying them about the people they love, they wouldn’t feel like that.

Let's also consider the fact that she was greatly abused, and her consent is somewhat tainted by child hood trauma.

So she can’t ever consent to sex with anyone? Or she can’t ever consent to anything? Where is the line drawn, and why?

Love does not justify everything, your ignorance astonishes me - A biological, sexual relationship is one that should not exist.

My ignorance? What has Anonymous written than I haven’t read before? Anonymous ends with and assertion, without giving a good reason to accept that assertion. Nor does Anonymous make sense; we all have a biological relationship… how close is too close for Anonymous? First cousins? And what other consensual relationships would Anonymous ban? The fact is, there are happy, healthy, lasting relationships that include sex, right now between close relatives. What should not exist is prejudice and interference in the love lives of others, certainly not in law.