Prepubescents
First, there is no evidence that I’ve been able to find that sexual contact itself is harmful to children, even in research focusing on CSA.1 The harm is generally found in the framing. That said, I don’t think—even in the most ideal setting—that an adult should initiate AMSC with a child. I think to guide a child towards one’s own sexual gratification is a misuse of power, not to mention the secondary harm that comes from the societal setting.
Here’s a link to a collection of excerpts I compiled from The Trauma Myth, a book by a researcher of CSA who had spent years interviewing victims. She does not advocate for AMSC, to be clear. She’s very against it. But her findings (both in her own study and in reviewing other studies) are that AMSC is not psychologically harmful itself.
The psychological harm comes from three places:
- Feelings of betrayal later in life
- Feeling guilty/wrong for going along with it
- Negative reactions from others
In most instances of CSA, the child is confused but consents—consent outside of a legal setting means agreement—they don’t resist, they participate. They also have not been informed about sex. In fact, most often in America, adults have been hiding sexuality from them intentionally. As a result they have no idea what’s happening or why. They can usually sense something is “wrong” based on how the adult acts (such as speaking quietly), but they don’t understand why it would be wrong. They’ve also been told to listen to adults, and it’s almost always an adult they trust. The result is they go along with it.
Later on, they learn about sex, and they also learn sex is something they aren’t supposed to do. The message children are taught about sex is “it’s harmful and dangerous. You should wait until you’re an adult,” or in religiously influenced settings, “Sex outside of marriage is a sin.” This comes along with another message “If an adult touches you, they don’t care about you, they’re a predator and they’re just using you. If this has already happened, you have been wronged and damaged.”
At this point the event is reconceptualized, and this is when, according to researcher Clancy, the event becomes psychologically damaging. Before this point, children do not feel victimized. The event is often unremarkable, strange, maybe unpleasant, maybe enjoyable—not psychologically damaging. After all, if they don’t know it’s considered wrong, or why, and they don’t feel they’re being harmed, why would they be distressed? Where would the harm come from?
After learning about sex and societal attitudes, children learn what happened was wrong, that they reacted incorrectly, that they were not cared for (this may or may not be entirely true), and that they are damaged—probably for life. They feel like there is something wrong with them for not reacting “appropriately,” and they also feel betrayed. Of course they would feel betrayed; They were. They didn’t know what was happening or the social consequences of it—an adult kept all of the relevant information from them, and likely used that ignorance to assure willingness.
Because of misconceptions about CSA (that children are usually scared/traumatized in the moment) and because of the demonization of pedophiles and sex offenders—Upon a victim telling their family there’s often reactions of disbelief or minimization. There’s usually an unwillingness to consider that a person they knew and respected would do such a thing, so therefore the victim must be lying. Many victim’s claim that receiving a negative reaction upon disclosing the event was more damaging than the initial event.
So, the damage is in the betrayal and in the societal framing. Let’s reframe both.
A child grows up in a sex-positive environment; society itself views all consensual sexuality positively. Sex is openly spoken about rather than hidden from children.2 Access to sex education is easily accessible both in and outside of the home. The child is also treated as an equal person, they aren’t told to listen to authority “just because,” they’re taught the importance of saying “no” even to trusted adults.3 They’re taught the importance of advocating for their own autonomy.
They aren’t taught sex is forbidden and harmful, they also aren’t told they’re broken if they have a sexual encounter with an adult. They’re taught so they are informed, and they can choose consent if they wish—and in that society, there is nothing considered wrong with that choice. In this setting, on what basis would the child have to feel betrayed or victimized? What reason would they have to feel there’s something “wrong with them”?
I’m not saying that it isn’t wrong of adults to initiate sex with a child—particularly when children are sheltered from information about sex, and particularly in a sex-negative society that will shame them or victimize them. That is a betrayal. Power dynamics and dependency play a role in compounding betrayal—but if power dynamics alone led to inherent harm and inherent feelings of betrayal, then positive recollections of AMSC from the youths perspective would not exist. Only an individual can (or should) determine if they’ve been harmed by something. People are different, there is no default script by which everyone will conform.
Another concern—coming from the power dynamic—is fawning behaviors. Children look to adults to understand the world and to feel secure within it. Children are also reliant on adults. Even if a child is raised knowing they are an equal human being, they still rely on the adults around them for shelter, sustenance, and love. This power dynamic may lead to a child “going along with” something they may not actually desire.
Overall, most of the harm is societal, but that doesn’t mean that adults should be initiating AMSC with a child either. For one thing, society is still sex-negative. For another, younger children are in an easily exploitable position. This is compounded by youth oppression.
Adolescents
Moving onto teenagers, the case for “sex is harmful” makes even less sense—Including for intergenerational relationships. Evidence shows age plays much less of a part in whether sexual experiences of youth are considered positive or negative than gender does. Gender plays a bigger role, with boys having more positive first sexual experiences than girls. Some evidence also shows more negative reactions to sex between younger and older minors than for sex between minors and adults. Age gaps do add a power imbalance, but only to an extent, and not universally.
Age gaps aren’t inherently abusive either. Abuse is defined by actions and impact, not dynamics. Heterosexual relationships also have a significant power imbalance that very often leads to abuse, yet heterosexual partnerships are not inherently abusive. Every relationship is different. The harmful nature of a relationship should be determined based on the details of the relationship itself, not whatever dynamics are present.
How do they treat each other? Is the relationship fulfilling, or is it restrictive? Happy or unhappy? These are the kinds of questions we ask to determine abuse, not “how big is the age gap?” or “Have they reached the (unscientific) arbitrary magic number decided by the local AoC law?” And then drawing assumptions about the relationship based on that answer alone.
I think the focus on age just dilutes understanding of what abuse actually is. You can have a relationship that’s stereotypically “normal” in every sense of the word. It can be traditional and can be between people of the exact same age, and it can still be abusive—Because abuse is in actions and codependency, not in surface-level dynamics like sex or age. Those things can have an impact, but they aren’t determining factors.
I think some of this focus on age is projection and deflection. It may be more appealing to simplify abuse down to surface level traits that can be judged in others—traits that can easily be avoided in one’s own relationships. If abusive relationships “look a certain way” and my relationship doesn’t look that way, that must make it healthy. If abusers are “that type of person” and I don’t fit that image, then I am not an abuser. “Am I abusive?” “Am I being abused?” Those are uncomfortable things to consider, so demonizing relationships that look a certain way may reinforce a false comfort that aids in avoiding those questions.
To come back to the argument of societal harm, here’s a quote I found reading Harmful to Minors by Judith Levine:
“‘There is often as much harm done to the child by the system’s handling of the case as the trauma associated with the abuse,’ the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect reported in 1978. . . . When the youngster has had what she considers a relationship of love and consensual sex, it does no good to tell her she has been manipulated and victimized. ‘To send out the message that you’ve been ruined for life and this person was vile and they were pretending to care–that often does a lot of damage,’ commented Fred Berlin, a psychiatrist at John Hopkins University and a well respected expert on treating sex offenders.”
Research also finds children competent at decision making (the basis for consent) at 12 and 14. The idea that young people are incapable of making decisions is mainly based in compulsory education and youth oppression. Young people can learn on their own (and from others) without rigid curricula. In fact, the way compulsory education is set up is not only impractical for real learning, it actively prevents the development of critical thinking. You can read about this in Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto.
As far as my personal experience goes, the worst part of dating adults as a teenager was the kinds of adults that were willing to take the risk were generally not in a good mental place to begin with. This wasn’t because of their age, or because of my age, it was because people who are unwell and struggling in life tend to take more risks. The adults I wanted to date most were often those who had stable lives and were less willing to take risks that might ruin that.
I ended up dumping every adult I dated eventually, because teenagers are not helpless—I knew I deserved better. This isn’t to say there are no teenagers who are vulnerable to latching onto abusive relationships (there are also adults who struggle with that same issue), but it’s ridiculous to imply all teenagers are helpless and incapable of knowing their own desires. Historically, humans didn’t live very long lives—as a result, teenagers did the most fucking. Our adolescent years are quite literally when our biological clocks are timed to breed. Culture is not nature. Culture is not always based in what’s best for everyone.
In conclusion: Like I’ve said before, my practical stance is pro-reform, which is focused on 12 and up. I don’t believe willing sex is harmful, and there is no empirical data I’ve seen so far to suggest that it is. Everything suggests the harm is caused in the aftermath by societal factors. But we also still live in this society whether we agree with it ideologically or not, and I believe it’s unfair to children to rope them into something likely to lead to feelings of guilt and shame.
I am still against the practicing of illegal and unethical AMSC. Legal systems can cause harm to both parties. There’s also the attached stigma that can lead to one or both parties suffering even in a loving and consensual relationship.
As I said earlier, I’m open to changing my mind if given reliable data that supports the argument that sexual encounters with adults are inherently harmful to youth. I don’t want to support an argument that harms youth, but I believe the current narrative in society already does that. Here’s a compilation of excerpts from Harmful to Minors by Judith Levine, which goes over the various ways the current narrative about youthful sexuality, including consensual AMSC involving teenagers, harms young people. I recommend the chapters Crimes of Passion, Therapy, and Expurgation of Pleasure.
4 responses to “My contact stance for AMSC”
Some unstructured thoughts:
“That said, I don’t think—even in the most ideal setting—that an adult should initiate AMSC with a child. I think to guide a child towards one’s own sexual gratification is a misuse of power, not to mention the secondary harm that comes from the societal setting. […] I’m not saying that it isn’t wrong of adults to initiate sex with a child—particularly when children are sheltered from information about sex, and particularly in a sex-negative society that will shame them or victimize them. That is a betrayal.”
I’d say people of different ages interact all the time and they aren’t being altruistic 100% of the time but sometimes care more about their own wishes. But that’s totally fine as long as the other person isn’t significantly impacted by it. So e.g. you may cheat a bit during a video game for your own gratification of victory, or you may eat some of the cake in the fridge despite being not 100% sure if it belongs to you and if the person who bought it might be disappointed when they see a piece of the cake is missing.
I think in an ideal setting , sexual things wouldn’t be treated differently than non-sexual things. Sexual/food/video game gratification would be seen as quite similar. Of course, in an ideal setting there’d be a lot of communication on boundaries. I also assume a lot of communication would be informal and non-verbal.
I’m not sure what exactly is meant by “guiding a child towards one’s own sexual gratification is a misuse of power”, it seems to me to be a bit of unclear language. If “guiding” here means pressuring a stranger into agreeing to penetrative sex, then that’d appear to me to be quite clearly unethical. On the other hand, if an adult (or classmate, or whoever else) invited a younger person to swim together at the beach, then I don’t think that’d be unethical, even if the only reason for that invitation the other person has would be the sexual gratification of seeing the younger person more or less naked.
IIRC the philosopher Martha Nussbaum has written some stuff about sexual objectification, and how using a partner as if they were an object is ethical as long as this is done only temporarily and with some sort of agreement by the partner. So e.g. using someone’s leg as a pillow for your head would be non-sexual objectification and probably ethical, and perhaps some might say consensual somnophilia could be viewed as sexual objectification.
“Even if a child is raised knowing they are an equal human being, they still rely on the adults around them for shelter, sustenance, and love. This power dynamic may lead to a child “going along with” something they may not actually desire.”
Adults rely on other adults for shelter, sustenance, and love as well. The only exception to that would be the rare cases of people (including teens and perhaps also preteens) being stranded on a lonely island. Society often subtly or not so subtly creates a binary of the oppressor as independent and the oppressed as dependent (adults/kids, males/females, rich/poor) so it’s important to question that binary. A lot of anti-ageist activists often seem to focus on questioning the dependence of kids (sometimes in ableist way by e.g. emphasizing how “smart” kids are, i.e. as if intellectual abilities should be used to determine how many rights a person has), but I believe sometimes it’s worth to focus a bit more on how adults are just as much or more dependent on society and other than kids are despite the myth of adult independence.
Like the idea of adults being rational and independent agents is of course also vital for capitalism.
I believe research from Theo Sandfort showed that often the power dynamics between boys and older adult males were different from what society expected, with the boys having more power than the adults or teens in many ways. So e.g. the older partner going along with doing a lot of things they actually didn’t want to do because they feared otherwise the boy might end the relationship or punish them by not having sex for a while. And of course, in current society the older partners in such a relationship are also in a weaker position in regards to the younger partner being able to cause extreme legal and social consequences for their older partner. There are e.g. laws in the US and elsewhere which say that adults who were raped by non-adults are guilty of rape, and adults have been arrested because of such laws.
There’s also a book by a BL who travelled across the globe in the 50-80s or so. I can’t remember its title right now, but he wrote that when he travelled to Berlin the cops actually warned him and other BLs about visiting certain places because a lot of boys had robbed BLs there (and maybe even done worse). So even the cops saw the BLs as potential victims and the boys as being the ones with more power. After all, something as ordinary as a knife can easily switch the power dynamics between two people.
Lastly, I think it’s also important to be aware that people of pretty much all ages can commit sexualized violence. IIRC, peers (e.g. classmates) have always been the most frequent perpetrators of sexualized violence for non-adults, followed by family members (which are sometimes incorrectly labelled as the most common source), and strangers being the least likely danger (but very often incorrectly seen as the most common source). For example, although nowadays a lot of different things can cause a person to register as a sex offender in the US, 14 has been the average age of sex offenders for quite a while, with many preteens registering as sex offenders as well, either for being in consensual relationships with slightly younger peers, for producing illegal images of themselves, or for commiting sexualized violence.
Of course, young MAPs are particularly vulnerable to sexualized violence by peers, perhaps even more so than other queer youth. I think there’re studies on the b4u-act website that show this. Society sees MAPs as always being the ones in power, never as people who can be the target of sexualized violence. Young MAPs may have internalized this view more strongly than adult MAPs (who might’ve had some more time to deconstruct it). So some young MAPs might experience extreme amounts of sexualized violence, yet struggle with seeing the other person(s) as being at fault. They’re probably often gaslit by society on being always the ones at fault, and if they have come out to their partner(s)s or others, then those people might gaslight them as well if they have internalized the image of MAPs always being the perpetrators of violence.
A lot of this of course also applies to adult MAPs as well. I’ve heard from a lot of non-exclusive MAPs that they can only ever imagine to date other MAPs for reasons that sound similar to me to the reasons many trans people state they don’t date cis people, i.e. that as a MAP or tran person you’re so low in the social hierarchy, that having a romantic/sexual partner who doesn’t share you identity and is therefore likely much higher, creates a power imbalance that is too large for them to deal with because they’re unable to trust a person with so much power over them. After all, a MAP in an illegal relationship with a younger person is often literally trusting their own life to their younger partner, which is pretty much as extreme as power imbalances can get.
In addition, particularly young exclusive MAPs might often desperately seek any romantic or sexual interactions with peers they find attractive since as adults they won’t be able to have such experiences legally. They might therefore force themselves to enter or stay in terrible relationships where they are physically/sexually/verbally attacked by the other person(s) because they believe this may be better than turning 18 and realizing now they won’t be able to choose anymore between this and loneliness (unless they break laws or there are law reforms).
Personally, I think I like NAMbLA’s approach the most, which I’d summarize as neither encouraging nor discouraging illegal relationships:
“It’s hard to recommend affectionate and sexual man-boy relationships today in the West given the terrible, irrational, and unjust consequences upon discovery. NAMBLA does not encourage anyone today to make themselves or boys whom they love vulnerable to the vicious predations of the state. We urge them to remain within the confines of laws as they exist today simply because the consequences of breaking those laws are so ruinous, both to them and to boys. […] What you won’t hear from us is condemnation of these relationships. Man/boy relationships happen and have been happening since there were men and boys. We understand when they do happen even if we feel them to be ill-advised in today’s climate. This is a time when the culture demeans the lives and feelings of men and boys, regarding them largely as problems to be “managed.” If one cares about males of any age right now, the first duty is to protect them from the forces that would gleefully and instantaneously destroy them for expressing what are natural feelings and affections. […] NAMBLA has consistently held that relationships mutually desired and freely engaged in are the business of those in that relationship, alone and are of no business of the government.” https://www.nambla.org/answers_to_questions.html
The way I see it, only the people who are in the relationship can really judge what is ethical and what isn’t. Outsiders are always going to lack very important information. Which isn’t just the case for illegal relationships that are intergenerational, but all kinds of other illegal relationships. So e.g. gay adults in Russia or North Korea. What if one of the gay adults in a relationship is mentally ill? Can they then decide to start such an illegal relationship despite life-threatening consequences or should the other person(s) wait until the other person has better mental health? What about gay kids in such places? From an ageist perspective, kids have no or very little ethical agency, and so a gay kid wouldn’t be blamed for starting an illegal relationship with another kid, even if that potentially leads to both of them then experiencing extreme social and legal trouble. But from my own perspective, only the kids themselves can know if they have communicated with each other enough, not outsiders.
There’s also of course the question of the harm of sexual and romantic rejection. This harm is even acknowledged by people who are very anti-c when they assume all MAPs to be exclusive and ask “But what if the boy gets older and the pedo then ghosts him?”. I assume this might be a rare scenario, but to highlight that this rejection can cause quite significant negative effects on mental health, what if a kid asks an adult for a relationship, the adult rejects the kid because they are concerned for the safety of the kid, and then the kid commits suicide because of the pain of rejection? Or to use another quite rare example, what if a kid has cancer or another conditioning that potentially shortens their life significantly, and the adult is likely their only potential sexual/romantic partner for the few months or years they have left? If the adult is concerned about their own safety, that’d be an understandable reason to reject being in an illegal relationship I’d say. But if the adult’s reasoning is “You can’t know the harm society is going to do to you if our relationship gets discovered and so for your own good I reject this relationship. Plus, you’ll probably find someone else sooner or later, and your future self will be thankful for not having started an illegal relationship.” that’d sound like quite ageist reasoning to me.
Another perspective I find interesting is that of young MAPs. When I was ten years old and realized I’m not into adults, I thought about contacting pedos online to let them have sex with me. I’ve heard from other MAPs that they had similar thoughts around that age when they realized their orientation. Like, I was terrified of the extreme loneliness that I was going to experience if I was indeed not attracted to adults (I was doubting myself because I had never heard of pedos as young as me, only of stereotypical 40-80 year old pedos). But at the same time I wanted to make other pedos happy, maybe in the hope that once I was an adult then this would give me hope that a young pedo boy would contact me and let me have sex with him. It was a somewhat weird idea of pedo kids and pedo adults having ethical sex with each other caused by me not really seeing myself as a kid anymore once I realized I was a pedo. I guess my point is that there are young pedos who are aware that they could make other pedos very happy, and would gladly do so. I never did, but I have heard of other MAPs who told me they actually did something like that and met with adult pedos, even if they were exclusive and therefore only had sex with them to make the adults happy.
In any case, I think it’s impossible for a person at any age to make a “rational” decision on if they would like to start, continue, or end an illegal relationship. It’s possible to increase one’s awareness of the risks such a relationship can have in current society, but nobody can probably truly understand what it means to be arrested, get ostracized, thrown into prison, and then register as a sex offender without actually having experienced all of these things. So I’m very hesitant to judge people having illegal sex for these reasons, and I’m even more hesitant to judge people in illegal relationships. And I won’t ever judge relationships where the partners say they love each other. I won’t judge love, that’s just not something I can do. Like, telling a kid and an adult that what they did or what they adult did was somehow wrong despite both of them enthusiastically saying they love each other.
Thanks for the detailed comment! I appreciate it!
> “I think in an ideal setting , sexual things wouldn’t be treated differently than non-sexual things. Sexual/food/video game gratification would be seen as quite similar.”
I can agree with this, I don’t think sexual stimulation is more significant than anything else. I think sex-negativity influences this a lot. Consider how often sex crimes and sex offenders are regarded as worse, somehow, than violent criminals. Someone will likely get less social stigma (and lighter sentencing) for hitting their partner than they will for rape or sexual abuse, even if there’s no actual violence. I’ve also found studies showing emotional abuse generally has more worse effects than sexual abuse (the main study focused on over 5,000 youth) https://www.complextrauma.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Pathways-1-Joseph-Spinazzola.pdf And yet emotional abuse doesn’t have nearly the levels of stigma or punishment as sexual abuse does.
>”I’m not sure what exactly is meant by “guiding a child towards one’s own sexual gratification is a misuse of power”, it seems to me to be a bit of unclear language. If “guiding” here means pressuring a stranger into agreeing to penetrative sex, then that’d appear to me to be quite clearly unethical. On the other hand, if an adult (or classmate, or whoever else) invited a younger person to swim together at the beach, then I don’t think that’d be unethical, even if the only reason for that invitation the other person has would be the sexual gratification of seeing the younger person more or less naked.”
Here I meant the standard CSA scenario, of an adult guiding an uninformed child into sex. I don’t see any issue with someone enjoying seeing people in swimsuits, regardless of the ages involved. I just meant explicit sexual contact.
In regards to the comment about adults relying on other adults, I agree, but I think its a bit different for young children who don’t yet have the skills (though this is partially limited by capitalism, compulsory education and modern expectations) to rely as much on themselves as adults can. Adults still rely on other adults, but they tend to have more options. Though I guess this artificial limiting of options is also societal, the construct of the “family” over the community. It’s supposed to take a village because young people deserve a village of options. This opinion (that young people are more reliant on adults) is very much based in the society we live in now.
As for the power dynamic stuff, yeah I agree with that. I only touched on it briefly in one of the bullet points on the first page, but youth can hold power in the relationship. Especially so when you consider the laws in place in most places. Its an adults choice to enter into that, sure, but the power young people can have in that dynamic can be immense. It can easily allow for blackmail. And then theres of course the sense of duty adults have to take care of young people, sometimes at their own expense. And the other example you gave about sex.
Power dynamics are much more complicated than age, and it’s silly age is the sole thing people focus on. There are clear contradictions to that narrative if you look into it at all.
> “I assume this might be a rare scenario, but to highlight that this rejection can cause quite significant negative effects on mental health, what if a kid asks an adult for a relationship, the adult rejects the kid because they are concerned for the safety of the kid, and then the kid commits suicide because of the pain of rejection?”
This is a good point and something I have seen and thought about, except not to the extent of suicide. I was suicidal when I was younger over the inability to be with the men I really liked (I was suicidal for a multitude of reasons though) and I currently know young people who face rejection like that and I see how it hurts them. There is definitely potential psychological harm in repeated rejections, and feeling like you’re unable to have what you know you want, and that you don’t own your own autonomy. That messed with me a lot and I hear similar sentiments from young people now.
I havent thought much about the ways in which young MAPs can be exploited, I’ve thought about it a little but certainly havent read anything about it. When I found out I kept it to myself for years, and I was also an AAM more so than a MAP, so I was more focused on adults to begin with.
I concur on the last paragraph as well. I feel the same there. I wont encourage, but I also wont judge people negatively for chasing love and consensual pleasure when that’s a very human thing to do, even if it is irresponsible in this cultural climate.
Here are some thoughts from Judith Butler on age of consent laws that may be interesting. Although Judith Butler has expressed themselves positively (though subtly and briefly) about intergenerational relationships at various points (e.g. in Undoing Gender and Against Proper Objects), they somewhat paradoxically have also called pedophilia an “illness that must be condemned” in at least one interview on YouTube.
“We’re used to hearing that there are consenting adults, and then there are those who are incompetent to consent, and most age of consent laws try to decide what are the conditions of competence; who is competent to consent and who is not. But perhaps incompetence is part of the very process of yes-saying. We’re not competent to know all the future consequences of the sexual relations to which we say ‘yes’ or to which we willingly or ambivalently echo ‘yes’. […] Perhaps the opposite of the subject of consent is not the subject who is too young or who is too inexperienced or the subject who suffers incompetence, although there are cases where it is legally right, to be sure.”
https://wiki.yesmap.net/wiki/images/Judith_Butler_-_2011_-_Sexual_Consent_-_Psychoanalysis_and_Law.pdf
There’s also a lecture where Butler reads parts of their text: https://vimeo.com/22547545
“How can Butler help? To begin with, like Miriam (2012), she has recently offered a critique of liberal discourses of consent. But Butler’s critique does not depend on a normative vision of the embodied self as coherent, integral and unviolated—quite the opposite. Considering public debate over the age of consent, she points out that a liberal model of consent is not very helpful in understanding what takes place in a sexual encounter, whether for adults or children. This is because both sides of the debate perpetuate a certain model of the consenting subject. While differing about where children fit on the scale, they assume that there is such a thing as a subject who can know her own desire in advance. For Butler this is simply unrealistic, given the difficulties that even adults often have in knowing their desire, because of: ‘… the social formation of desire, the psychic repercussions of ambivalence, shame and unknowingness, and the particular tensions that can and do emerge when one wants what one does not choose, one chooses what one comes not to want very much, or when sexuality is itself animated without knowing precisely what or how one wants.’ (Butler, 2012: 14) In other words, the discourse of consent makes no allowance for the likelihood that a subject’s desires may change, that s/he may not be fully aware of what the experience will be like, or that the relationship itself may affect the consenter’s subjectivity in unpredictable ways. Consent, under liberal understandings of the subject, is (a) assumed to be a decision made by a transparent, self-understanding subject that has full knowledge of its own desires, and (b) understood as a single act, rather than as a way of entering into an ongoing relationship. Butler gives familiar examples here of cases where people may give consent to sexual activities with the best of intentions, only to discover later that they are unable to tolerate these actions in practice. What Butler calls for, then, is a critique of the implicitly self-transparent subject that underpins liberal debate on consent” https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/bc7e/309d9e5822ddf1a2aeb268c2d8f6261222f7.pdf
Here are my views in the same subject, largely the same as yours.
https://pedrapapeletesoura.wordpress.com/2011/10/21/sexualitytheageofconsentandthebrazilianlaw/