Those are 2 very very very different ideas you’re trying to compare, and feels like poor logic.
Teenagers can absolutely consent to sex, as sex and grooming are very different things. 2 teenagers having sex, normal. Someone much older than a teenager grooming them mentally for years to eventually have sex, not normal.
Lastly, elderly people’s mental faculties declining that hard isn’t guaranteed. Plenty of old people stay mentally sharp and capable of making decisions. Teenagers, though, 100% will have an under-developed brain until ~25, not to mention how little of life experience they’ll likely have.
You may not have literally said that, but it is the logical conclusion from your statement.
Here’s why.
You literally said “One involves someone who hasn’t fully developed their brain being taken advantage of”.
You are asserting that a not fully developed brain, lacks some mental property X that enables the person to be taken advantage of.
In order for this to be a true statement, then it must be the case that elderly must always possess the mental property X, by the simple nature of being fully developed.
If a person has mental property X then by it’s definition, they should be protected against manipulation at least as well as people who do not have it (e.g teenagers).
The problem here is there is an abundance of empirical evidence, that this property X does not confer protection, in fact fully developed brains can easily have worse susceptibility to manipulation.
“Elderly people’s mental faculties declining that hard isn’t a guarantee”
How hard? We aren’t requiring that elderly people be entirely incapacitated, merely that they meet the same threshold of mental capacity as teenagers (who we have already established cannot consent to a sexual relationship with an older person). This may be shocking to you, but many (most?) elderly people are already there, and existing medical conditions tend to worsen mental reasoning abilities.
The reasoning gap between say a 16-year old and a 25-year old, isn’t that large. In fact there is probably more deviation among 25-year olds than 16-year olds and there 25-year old selves.
Additionally one must also recognise that consenting to a possibly manipulative sexual relationship, is essentially provably less consequential than arranging your own premature death. So the mental capacity threshold could be argued to be higher.
“Feels like poor logic”
Does it just “feel like”, or do you have a formal argument? If this is in fact “poor logic” it’s actually trivial to formally prove (at least if you are familiar with analytic philosophy), the reality is that you didn’t think your own argument through and disagree with the logical consequences of your own argument.
I literally never said that…
Those are 2 very very very different ideas you’re trying to compare, and feels like poor logic.
Teenagers can absolutely consent to sex, as sex and grooming are very different things. 2 teenagers having sex, normal. Someone much older than a teenager grooming them mentally for years to eventually have sex, not normal.
Lastly, elderly people’s mental faculties declining that hard isn’t guaranteed. Plenty of old people stay mentally sharp and capable of making decisions. Teenagers, though, 100% will have an under-developed brain until ~25, not to mention how little of life experience they’ll likely have.
You may not have literally said that, but it is the logical conclusion from your statement.
Here’s why.
You literally said “One involves someone who hasn’t fully developed their brain being taken advantage of”.
You are asserting that a not fully developed brain, lacks some mental property X that enables the person to be taken advantage of.
In order for this to be a true statement, then it must be the case that elderly must always possess the mental property X, by the simple nature of being fully developed.
If a person has mental property X then by it’s definition, they should be protected against manipulation at least as well as people who do not have it (e.g teenagers).
The problem here is there is an abundance of empirical evidence, that this property X does not confer protection, in fact fully developed brains can easily have worse susceptibility to manipulation.
“Elderly people’s mental faculties declining that hard isn’t a guarantee”
How hard? We aren’t requiring that elderly people be entirely incapacitated, merely that they meet the same threshold of mental capacity as teenagers (who we have already established cannot consent to a sexual relationship with an older person). This may be shocking to you, but many (most?) elderly people are already there, and existing medical conditions tend to worsen mental reasoning abilities.
The reasoning gap between say a 16-year old and a 25-year old, isn’t that large. In fact there is probably more deviation among 25-year olds than 16-year olds and there 25-year old selves.
Additionally one must also recognise that consenting to a possibly manipulative sexual relationship, is essentially provably less consequential than arranging your own premature death. So the mental capacity threshold could be argued to be higher.
“Feels like poor logic”
Does it just “feel like”, or do you have a formal argument? If this is in fact “poor logic” it’s actually trivial to formally prove (at least if you are familiar with analytic philosophy), the reality is that you didn’t think your own argument through and disagree with the logical consequences of your own argument.