Is there a universal age of consent?

What is consent?
The age of consent is not set in stone so the question begs, what age is acceptable and can we arrive at an objective rational outside of the generalized ethics of a society? First, we need to address the issue of consent.

It should be self-evident that what the majority within a country or society think about someone's ability to consent to sex has no basis on whether that individual can or cannot consent in objective reality as the truth remains the truth regardless of someone’s ability to recognize or accept it.

Consent merely means having the cognitive capacity to understand what one is agreeing to and accepting these terms voluntarily. Most individuals well before the legal age of consent in their country are able to consent however finding a definitive age is not possible as everyone develops at a different rate.

From a biological perspective, most children hit puberty between the ages of 9 - 15. Men are considered capable of procreating upon their first ejaculation which occurs 1-2 years after they hit puberty. If a woman is menstruating, they are ready to have sex and procreate.

In regards to whether an individual is at an appropriate level of self-autonomy or brain development.
Many teenagers from the age of 13 display high IQ's well above the normal range of 'Adults' and are responsible for many ground-breaking discoveries e.g. 15 year old Jack Andrake responsible for inventing a pancreatic cancer detection tool and 13-year-old Terence Newton who invented a free energy device under $15. Should people that are retarded in their mental capacity showing IQ’s lower than 70 be restricted from making decisions concerning themselves?

The Morality
Like homosexuality, regardless of if you deem an act as inappropriate or there being too large a gap in the power dynamic. If the parties are consensual and have self-autonomy, is it not immoral to violate their freedom because you want to protect them? Is it acceptable to protect the cultural fabric or an individual when we don’t believe them to know what's best for themselves?

If so, an Atheist could make the argument that Catholics and religiously minded individuals do not have an adequate level of self-autonomy due to their erroneous understanding of reality and therefore lack the ability to consent to sex or vote on matters of politics. Inversely, a Christian could maintain that individuals that do not have Jesus within their heart, lack the proper spiritual guidance and should be restricted from making decisions concerning the community.

In nearly every culture and society, 13-18 was considered adulthood and it was considered the norm for a younger woman to be married to an older man. Aristotle, one of the most revered philosophers of the ancient world, wrote that ideally a woman of 16 should be married to a man of 33. People within western society seem to have little problem with someone who is legally underage having sex with another underage party. However, it somehow mystically becomes a life destroying experience if one person was composed of cells that have survived a larger amount of time than someone else’s.

The issue of the Age gap between parties has no logical consistency unless you bring in the magic subjective buzz word 'exploitation' in which case both parties are exploiting each other.
About 100 years ago the age of consent in California was 10. The age of consent in Bahrain is 21, 9 in Yemen and averages out at 14 around the world. It's interesting to see what passes as the norm in different parts of the globe and at different times.

Perhaps it’s time to stop broadly using the term "child" in an issue that is extremely complex and nuanced.

The Reality
A girl's modelling career typically finishes at the age of 18-19 and most of the models around the world are young nubiles because they're ostensibly considered to be more desirable by the market.
Although contemporary moralists tend to proclaim that a couple should be of similar age, background, financial circumstances and religious beliefs, the historical precedence has been for men to marry younger women to provide more offspring during their more fertile and healthy years.

The reality is most men are biologically attracted to younger women and being able to distinguish a women’s age is not always the easiest task, despite ignorance not always being a justifiable defense regarding the legal ramifications of this.

Many people falsely attribute pedophilia to anyone under the age of 18 not realizing the actual definition of pedophilia is the primary attraction towards prepubescent children i.e children that have not hit puberty. Historically, biologically and sociologically speaking, there is a clear basis for young men or women having sex with older men or women despite it generally being considered abhorrent in our current system. Like our standards of beauty, our standards of what is socially acceptable have changed due to social conditioning.

The provocateur and alt right activist, Milo Yiannopoulos, recently argued that some teenagers that are below the legal age of consent are able to consent, which, of course, makes sense because not everyone develops at the same rate, however, he was publicly ostracized for the statement.

The current basis we have for Age of Consent laws around most countries are not grounded in objective ethics or science and often reflect values of the Elizabethan era where women needed to be protected from exploitation and marriage outside of wedlock. Although humans naturally have it within themselves to protect their young and those deemed as lacking wisdom, do we have the right to prevent them from enacting their free will?

If one owns themselves and is capable of exercising dominion over their body and their mind, the harsh truth is one cannot restrict their capacity to make voluntarily decisions about what they do with themselves without violating their rights as sovereign beings.