some proposals for more sensible age laws

[aronarchy]

I feel that in a lot of legal and social discourse there’s major ambiguity, confusion, and arbitrary standards which make some people stake out their positions on not really great stances because it’s assumed that you either support one or the other of two not-great options. also a lot of gaps and loopholes in places. here is what I believe if there are legal age-based regulations existing:

• age of sexual consent should be equal to the age of majority, if there already is one, at when someone becomes an adult, and should not vary between individuals or based on changes in cultural or biological trends. however, aoc applies to sex with (significantly) older individuals; sexual activity between minors where one is ~3 or fewer years older than the other is not criminalized. there should be no way to legally penalize the younger party in an aoc-violating sexual situation for it.
• also does not make much sense to set a minimum aoc near the beginning of or in the middle of adolescence or something like that just because adolescents might engage in sexual activity with each other; it implies that some prepubescent children aren’t also sexually interacting with peers, and it’s not really logical to think aoc is something that (inherently) regulates sex with peers in the first place.
• minors cannot be criminalized for creating or distributing sexual images of themselves unless it is a context of them using it to sexually harass or abuse another minor. this would protect minors from threats of criminalization for “possessing CP” if they experience or report CSEM victimization by an older predator. it would also protect minors consensually sexting with each other in private. if a minor posts a sexual image of themself in public where adults can see or access it, in a non-harassing/abusive context, they still shouldn’t be criminalized for their own exploitation, and instead platforms should be held responsible for removing such content as much as reasonably possible. adults should not be allowed to save or distribute sexual imagery of minors. someone else resharing in a nonconsensual context a sexual image of a minor is considered to be perpetrating image-based sexual exploitation, even if it was initially made or shared consensually by the subject, and third parties saving or redistributing it should still be prohibited.
• the age of sexual images of oneself being ok to be shared without age restrictions should be equal with the age of consent to sex.
• “sexual imagery of minors” applies exclusively to photographs, videos, etc. of real, living minors; similar regulations should exist for photorealistic computer-generated imagery, as well as non-photorealistic sexual imagery intentionally made and known to be of a specific, identifiable minor. there should also be some regulation on the use of AI to deliberately produce sexual imagery in either of the latter categories.
• the age of marriage should be equal to the age of sexual consent. adults who marry minors should be criminalized, as well as any other adults who facilitate such marriages. “arranged marriages” of persons of any age (i.e. any which override the wishes of any party to be married/do not involve their own choice) should be illegal. minors who marry other minors should not be criminalized themselves, but parents, religious institutions, judges, economic/legal bureaucracy, and other adult individuals should not organize or facilitate them or have the ability to make such marriages economically/legally/officially binding or contractual.
• it should be illegal for adults to non-sexually date/engage in deliberately romantic activity with minors (unless there’s only a small age gap between them) as well, if such an offense could be clearly and reasonably defined in a legal context.

also some other smaller things, e.g. if an age of majority has to exist somewhere under a certain legal system and one is just working with what they already have, and they also have to have a legal drinking age, then the drinking age should not be higher than the age of majority; age at which one can start paying taxes or join the military should not be lower than the voting age, and so on. there’s not any good rationale for that.