On a side note, at some point our society is going to have to reckon with the issue of child sexuality. Kids can and do have sex quite young. They mature and start caring about sex and expressing themselves sexually at a fairly young age (expressing themselves as sexual beings, not just having sex, for example through how they behave and dress). Age lines vary and are clearly somewhat conventional, not based in any clear biological or psychological line that is definitely and obviously crossed at a certain point. And, having torn down so many of the taboos around sex and argued that any sex is good sex, and holding up sexually permissive societies that treated sex as no big deal, at some point people will start asking, then why this inconsistency?

If all that is the case, look at some of those societies. Sex with young people was fine, it was no big deal, because apparently sex wasn’t a big deal. And even in sexually restrictive societies our taboos about adolescents and teenagers having sex with older people were often absent. In fact in some societies they would have been quite difficult to maintain, considering how short the life expectancy was (as low as 18 during the Black Death). So why are we still acting like it is a huge deal in this and other areas? Do the lines we draw have a clear rationale behind them? Or are they just more arbitrary restrictions on something that doesn’t need it any more?

If sex is just like breathing and you should be able to embrace it without concern, shame, consequence, or arbitrary restraints, why do we still have so many hangups about sex? Why do we act like casual sexual advances are akin to war crimes? Why do we act like it’s such a terrible thing for a child to be sexualized (until they’re 18 then they should definitely do absolutely whatever they want and anything is fine and screw anyone who tells them otherwise). What kind of sense does that make? What magical line is crossed? This is also a question that’s going to have to ask about polyamorous relationships. Given the arguments about sex, and assuming that you accept them, why not be fine with polyamory? What magically makes it bad? We’re already fine with serial polyamory, why not have concurrent polyamory? Especially if that’s what some people want? And, after all, love is love. And maybe there is a dearth of good mates for a particular sex in one area or another, meaning you’re better off sharing that going without. Or maybe there is simply an excess of good partners and there would be no reason to deprive yourself of more opportunities for love. Why not have more of something that is an absolute, unrestricted good? To quote Shatner, what could be more than more? If X+Y is a net gain, and X+Y, X+Y, X+Y in series is perfectly fine, and even X+X, X+Y+Y, Y+Y, X+X+Y, (Y+Y), (X+X), and (X+Y)+(X+Y) are not really so uncommon and are also perfectly fine, and there’s nothing especially special or exclusive about the value of (X+Y), by which parentheticals I mean a more stable, permanent, or semi-permanent pairing/relationship, then why have some hangup about (X+Y+X)? Or even (X+@), that being a different substitute, for example a technological substitute, which is something people are anticipating becoming more common). If you’re not even sure that x and y are even real, stable, exclusive values, and that therefore there should be no difference between x+y and x+yformerlyx, then what sense at all does it make arguing that any of these equations have inherently more or less value in their products than any others? That is the essential argument. That x and y are arbitrary and equivalent values, and that any pairing between them always results in a positive (and equal) product. That is the agument expressed in terms of math.

If I had to modify this argument for the youth problem, you might ask, what is it about X+Y that makes it so perfectly fine in all cases, and yet makes x+y somehow worse, and makes X+y or x+Y so absolutely terrible in all cases, if the above arguments are fundamentally true? What magic line is crossed between x and X on some particular date that transforms the math so that all those possible pairings that were absolutely all terrible are now all absolutely acceptable and equivalent? It’s not that I don’t doubt that people would argue that there is a line or a standard that makes (X+X+Y) and X+y unacceptable, it’s just hard to see how it can be consistent, given the arguments advanced. And it’s hard to see how they won’t inevitably be toppled, or at least pushed farther back, as so many previous forbidding were toppled. If anything, they rest on shakier ground than that already covered and fall more under “clean up” and fringe case additions. Once the liberalization of the math has occurred, it’s just a matter of waiting for it to trickle down so that it gets applied consistently at every level. Once the dsm of deregulation has been breached, it’s just a matter of time waiting for the waters to spread to every part of the landscape the opening allows. And that is all determined by your starting principles, your premises. And we already laid those out: x and y are arbitrary and equivalent values, and any (voluntary) pairing between them always results in a positive (and equal) product.

The easiest way to modify that calculation to correct for a prejudice against sex with children (or adolescents, or younger teens) would be to argue that they aren’t capable of the “voluntary” part. And somehow when they turn 18 they are. And they are somehow able to do it voluntarily before the age of 18 among themselves (and even with themselves, and with whoever among themselves they want, as many as they want, inside or outside a relationship, with the same sex or opposite), so long as the other person is also younger than 18.

You could say, well, thats just the rule, that’s what we’ve decided. But considering all the other deeply embedded social restrictions on sex that have fallen already, it’s hard to see any argument that openly arbitrary lasting in the long run. It’s always necessary to push into new territory, after all, and Cuties certainly shows that. The top searched terms for pornography in 2019 were Japanese and Hentai, which is a fairly diverse and extreme category that portrays sex with cartoon characters, monsters, tentacles, anthropomorphic animals, quite a bit of pedophilia, violence, and just about every crazy thing you could possibly imagine. It’s sex untethered from any direct connection to reality or real people. It’s the epitome of sexual freedom, in a way. Freedom even from the limitations of reality and actual people. Considering what those search terms reveal about the interests of actual humans (who made roughly 39 billion searches on Pornhub in 2019, from which this data was taken), people are very interested in exploring the far reaches of sexuality and not particularly interested in arbitrary (or even apparently necessary) restrictions. So the will is there. The demand is there. Still, the instinct to protect children is still likely to make this a slow barrier to fall. It might remain intact, but it’s hard not to see it as inconsistent prejudice when all the other messages about sex in society all serve to reduce barriers to sexual access and encourage experimentation and deregulation, including among under-18s.

And if we’re willing to use surgery and hormone therapy and hormone blockers to deliberately influence the sexual development of xs and ys, how is that consistent with our forbidding against sexualization of and adult interference with people below a certain age? Surely this already crosses some of those barriers and arguments against sexualization of the young. In what world is it more consistent and ethical to pharmaceutically and surgically alter a child’s sexual organs, and even whole body (with their consent) than it is to participate (with their consent) in a sexual relationship with them?

So, if a kid gives you their consent, it’s definitely OK to remove a boy’s testicles, split, hollow out, and invert his penis and shove it inside his body, dissect his scrotum and reassemble it to form the appearance of labia, block his body’s hormone production, dose him with artificial estrogen, perform skin and bone alterations, and inject artificial fat deposits. And, if she gives you consent, it’s definitely OK to take a girl and remove a strip of skin from her arm, fashion it into a tube, attach it to her pubis, surgically remove her breast tissue, remove her feminine fat deposits, insert masculinizing bone sculpting in her face, stimulate her muscles and hair with testosterone injections, surgically or hormonally disable her reproductive functions, sculpt a scrotum out of spare skin, and insert a pumping bulb into the scrotal sac and an inflatable bladder into the penile tube made from arm skin so it can be erected and deflated.

Now, whether you’re for or against the value and effectiveness of such body modifications for treating certain psychological issues, they’re a pretty extreme measure to take, with an enormous effect on the body and mind and both daily and lifelong experience. You’re buying into a lifetime of extensive effects even if you restrict yourself only to hormone therapy. But we let children do it, on whom the long term effects will be most extreme. Or rather, we do it to children after having them give consent.

So children are definitely able to make a “voluntary” decision to let a legal adult do all that to them. They’re definitely able to make voluntary body and life altering decisions like that before age 18. In fact lately we praise and encourage it. But that same child is not capable of making a voluntary decision to have a consentual sexual liason with a legal adult that likely has fewer (and much less extreme and dangerous) long term consequences for their life and sexual future (at least according to our existing premises about sex in general). There’s definitely no inconsistency in that.

I’m not arguing in favor of either practice, I’m merely arguing that it isn’t, on the face of it, an obviously consistent position. And you could certain be forgiven for wondering why, if one is ok, the other isn’t, apart from some arbitrary hangups and traditions. “If I can do this, why can’t I do that?” is a question most young people can’t help asking.

Are kids kids or are kids adults? Are they able to give meaningful consent about their sexual identity and experience or not? We treat them like adults sometimes, as in this case. And sometimes we treat them like adults with regard to legal status in the prosecution of crimes. And sometimes we don’t in either of these cases and deny them adult responsibility and adult freedom. So why, when it comes to extreme body modification, crime, or a bit of harmless fun, love, pleasure, and self-expression with someone a bit older or younger (and has a good amount of historical precedent across many cultures and eras) is the last of these the most restricted and taboo and problematic, and the one that dissolves most easily upon crossing some seemingly arbitrary age barrier?

Again, I’m not advocating for the normalization of sexual liaisons with children in our culture, I’m just raising the specter of a problem that will eventually need to be faced, given our cultural assumptions. The issue of polyamory, since it lacks even the injunction against potentially harming children to restrain it, seems like it should largely solve itself. There really isn’t any good argument against it, given our premises. The main holdup is likely just a matter of having enough people who are interested, and having enough examples of it in our purview to normalize it. So in theory it should gradually drift into normalcy. The main limiting factor to its adoption is most likely that people are less and less likely to engage in formalized relationships in any capacity these days. When fewer and fewer people are even bothering with one spouse, why add a second? Most people will just have relationships in succession or on the side, rather than in an open, formal agreement.

So it’s unlikely that polyamorous marriages will ever become much of an institution, simply because the institution itself is already in decline and its already hard to keep even a single long term relationship together for very long. But on a casual, colloquial social level, monogamous relationships will probably continue to decline in significance and some version of polyamory will become more and more usual and accepted, just as premarital sex, non-marital cohabitation, and serial monogamy became conventional and accepted in their time. People will learn to live with it and be used to it. In some cases they already are.