Some uncomfortable thoughts about the history of the number 18, and its significance as the age of adulthood.

and I’m not only talking about sexual consent, though that is one of the big issues. I’m talking about things like voting, and living on your own, and having the right to decide your own medical treatment (including trans-affirming treatments!) and being held responsible for crimes you’re accused of, and so on

to make this very clear: This is one of my “Only Problems, No Solutions” posts. I do not know if there is any actually good solution to the problems I bring up here. I don’t even know what my own opinion is on all of this

I’m exploring the issue and the various ways it’s not as simple as the volatile opinions that many people have on it. For whatever that does or doesn’t contribute to the discussion.

So there is a very strong feeling, generally, about the importance of that Legal Adulthood milestone. And people get very very strongly opinionated and very angry about it

and in those expressions of anger, we tend not to treat becoming an adult as a slow gradient. It tends to be treated as a very sharp border between vastly different states of being

meaning that the two statements: “legal adults should have the right to choose whatever they want for their own lives, full stop!!” and “allowing an underage child to make this decision is absolutely inexcusable!!”

are equally, violently outraged expressions of anger

with only the number 18 separating them.

For example, I saw one interaction– I think it was between someone who felt that people in their early twenties were too young to consent to sex, and someone who vehemently disagreed with that

And the first person said something like, “let’s raise the age of consent to 19, and see who gets upset so we know who the perverts are”

And the other person said something like, “everyone who cares about human rights should get upset about that! because everyone should care about the right of LEGAL ADULTS to do what they want with their own bodies”

And both sides seemed wrong to me.

Because 1. I don’t think changing the age of consent to 19 or higher would help, at all. For sex, or for any other aspect of adult rights.

But 2. if it did happen, it would not be withholding rights from legal adults– it would be allowing exactly the same rights to legal adults, while changing the definition of that category.

So the second person was making the mistake of treating “currently legal” as “objectively ethically right”

which, as many have discussed elsewhere, is a dangerous habit to get into.

Except they did not think that “legal” would still equate to “right” if this law was changed.

So it seems that their own sense of ethics attached special significance not to a legal status, but to the age of 18, in particular.

And the number 18 (age of legal majority for most purposes in the USA) is… sort of arbitrary.

It’s not based on anything scientifically known to happen to human bodies or brains at that age. And societally, the only significance is that, in the USA, it’s about the time that you’re finished with high school. Not even exactly. Most high school students turn 18 partway through their last year.

And I suppose that is related to the military side of things.

If i remember my history correctly, a big part of the origin of 18 as the most-purposes age of majority is because that was the age when the military could draft you into a war.

and since the draft had exceptions for college students finishing their education, I guess for high school students they just went with the earliest age at which they could usually argue that a student was pretty much done, enough to get drafted

And since 21 was the voting age, there was a lot of protest against this…. arguing that it was unfair to get drafted into a war you had no chance to vote for or against.

This eventually resulted in voting age being lowered to 18.

(Have heard some similar points about the drinking age of 21. I’ve heard people argue that it’s ridiculous to say an 18-year-old can die in battle, but having a beer would be too dangerous.)

(Those arguments haven’t been effective. The only change I remember happening since I heard them was that the legal age for smoking tobacco was raised from 18 to 21, to match the drinking age.)

So I don’t know.

I understand that for legal purposes there basically has to be an age of majority, at least with the way everything else in our society works

And I don’t think changing the age of majority in either direction would help.

But I also don’t think that the age of 18 really has all the importance that people assign to it

And I don’t think anything about it fully explains that sharp divide we see people’s reactions to those who want to change it in either direction.

(The divide between “you’re a pervert who wants to corrupt children” and “you’re a fascist who wants to take human rights from legal adults”)

I don’t think this arbitrary age justifies such a sudden, polar flip in opinions about individual freedom and safety, at that point in particular.

But I don’t know what should happen instead. Or what would justify it.