12 isn't pedophilia, hebephilia.
I was debating lowering age of consent from 16/18 down to ~14 and I realized that most people really don't understand pedophilia,: they conflate it with "minor" and they don't understand the historical age of consent in USA or Europe.
1. "
In 1880, the ages of consent were set at 10 or 12 in most states" Modern age of consent @ 16/18 is a modern
feminist policy and it's only existed for about 100-120 years. Until American feminists decided to raise age of consent, no one thought that 16-18 yrs were children. Even if we lowered age of consent back to 12, that still wouldn't be pedophilia and it would be historically normal. In the Roman Empire "The age of lawful consent to a marriage was 12 for girls and 14 for boys." I think these are fairly reasonable ages to use as age of consent even today.
2. Scientists classify human development by 3 stages:
Child: pre-puberty, no sexual development, ages: 0-10(f)/12(m) = Pedophilia
Teenager: puberty, partial sexual development, ages 10-14(f), 12-16(m) = Hebephilia
Adult: puberty, full sexual development, 14/15(f), 15/16(m) = Ephebophilia aka Jailbait
Most people think pedophilia means "sex with a minor" and this is 100% not true.
3. What is the problem with 16 or especially 18 as age of consent?
A. Criminalizing normal human relationships that have been common for all of human history that likely lead to stable and successful marriages e.g. 13-17yr old women + 18-22 yr old man.
B. Women notice that men are attracted to them sexually at age @13/14 or so and if you say "they're off limits" that means all these men are pigs, immoral for being attracted to fertile women. This is mentally confusing for women and it hurts gender relations.
C. Arrested development / peter-pan syndrome. People think 15 yr old = child and they treat these young adults as children rather than young adults which slows their mental development.
To recap, I do think age of consent is a problem and if you do the research and think about it then you'll probably also conclude that age of consent should be lowered to 15 max. if not lower 13/14 for women. I don't think age of consent is the BIGGEST problem facing western civilization but it is a problem, part of the feminist package, and will eventually need to be corrected to match human biological sexual development. Lastly very important to understand that pedophilia means under age of ~10/12 and not conflate with hebephilia or ephebophilia. if you see groups pushing to get rid of age of consent entirely or lower it below 10/12 then get worried.