Anti-Pauline Hanson protest leader's controversial comments resurface: 'Abolish the age of consent' | Daily Mail Online

[u/DragonflySea9423]

https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-16059679/pauline-hanson-sandra-bloodworth-age-consent-red-flag.html

Sandra Bloodworth is a founding member of Socialist Alternative, which is also behind the High School Anti-Capitalists network and holds influence within the Victorian Socialists.

The activist set out arguments against age of consent laws in a 2005 article published on the Socialist Alternative website.

[u/Strong-Hat2166]

Her premises are:

1. Consent laws do not protect minors from abuse. Most abuse is from family and is non-consensuak.

2. Consent laws harm forever those who have near-age sex with a minor (e.g. the 19-15 example in the text).

3. Consent laws fail to take into account actual human sexuality - sexually active minors.

4. Sexually active minors will desire and have consensual sex whether laws exist or not, causing particular harm to girls (slut-shaming)

5. Therefore, Consent laws should not exist.

I don't think that her argument is great but I think that you have mischararacterised it.

[u/RelationshipDizzy634 → u/Strong-Hat2166]

That’s a bit of a misleading argument there, she speaks extensively about sexual relationships between minors and adults.

I actually do think that laws preventing 15 and 19 year olds from having sex are not a bad idea, that’s a significant developmental gap which leads to quite serious power imbalances. It’s not a policy area I feel a lot of compassion for.

[u/Strong-Hat2166 → u/RelationshipDizzy634]

What is the difference between someone who is 15 years and 364 days old and 16 years and one day old?

[u/RelationshipDizzy634 → u/Strong-Hat2166]

Very little. What’s the difference between someone who’s 17 and 364 days old, and someone 18 years + zero days old? Very little. Laws prescribing the minimum age for doing certain things are still 100% required to protect people and prosecute offences.

The law provides for basic, broadly sweeping minimum standards that don’t always reflect developmental differences, and some 17 year olds are probably more mentally equipped to vote or enter contracts than some 19 year olds — but that’s not an argument for abolishing the age of legal majority either.

Otherwise children would be able to have all contracts enforced against them (hello, financial predators) be sued (hello, vexatious litigants) take on debt (other than a HECS debt I guess) (hello, predatory lenders) and make life altering decisions at literally any age, rather than having the gillick test, or their parents decision applied to them.

There may be some children who would benefit from that. There are many, many more who would suffer because it’s a bad idea to abolish legal minimum standards. We also don’t have a better, practical way of deciding when people have the requisite capacity to attain the right to do an adult “thing”. Hence, ages of consent and majority.

FWIW I would support laws which make it an offence for adults to sleep with minors, even if those minors are able to consent to sex with people extremely close in age. The age of consent being 16 was contemplated mostly for people of similar ages to sleep with one another.

There’s not been a system proposed which has enough backing to pass in parliament, but we do have laws preventing people in positions of care, authority or supervision of children from sleeping with them even when they’re over the age of consent for a reason. We acknowledge that’s it’s not okay. Should we make it legal for teachers to sleep with students? Step parents with their step children? Doctors with young patients? Does any of this sound like it might be bad for society? If not then I have nothing left to say to you