JuliusHackebeil said:
I am not much of a butt-guy myself, but you are totally right. And stuff like that is not the least family friendly in Harry Potter by a long shot. Having said that, this makes me think about the arbitrary boarders we set for wehn people are coming of age. Why 18 and not 17, or 19? In Austria you can drink alcohol at 16. I think this is actually a problem and alcohol is more dangerous than people givie it credit for. In movies it seems to me age restrictions up to 16 can involve some of the most cruel violence imaginable. But if it contains a sex scene that is not completely vanilla, 18 and up. Why is that? Why is sex less palatable than violence? And how did we set those particular ages for alcohol, consent, other drugs, voting, etc? |
Well, any number we set would be ultimately arbitrary. For example, suppose I have a liquor store. The law is, "You can't sell alcohol to anyone unless they are mature enough to drink responsibly." That would be non-arbitrary, but how exactly could I follow that? I can't really judge the maturity of every person who comes into my store or anything. We need to set some kind of hard number to make any kind of restriction enforceable. Age seems like the only viable option. Ideally, the number would be based on some kind of science backed data. As for why it's 18, I imagine that came to be because it roughly coincides with the end of puberty for most people.
