H for consent - an implication

[Treaclewell]

The other day my housemate and I were talking about the age of consent, and when it changed. I don't know why it came up, and I spent too much time at first chasing though the "cockney" alphabet, to find the reference - which I knew I had always thought was a bit off. See title.
I eventually came across a page from an organisation called Law Shun which was pretty exhaustive.
https://lawshun.com/article/when-did-age-of-consent-laws-start-uk
But as I read I found myself becoming uneasy. There was something missing, a vast gap where there shouldn't be, underlying all the history, like an amorphous blob.
The people whose consent was being discussed weren't there. It was all from outside the women and girls, they were things. Especially when the age under discussion was pre-pubertal. It was as if the consent being discussed was the consent of male society to the abuse of half the human race. (Can a ten year old ever truly consent to having a penis thrust inside? Grammar constructed to include boys.)
It struck me that if law can discuss women's rights like that, it's not surprising that the law can ignore them in other cases as well. We are expected to consent once at that age, not to say no. And the lawyers can't see what they are leaving out.
And H for consent? Making a joke of the right to say no, and that to be accepted. No.

I don’t understand what you are saying. I’ve read the page and it makes total sense. At no point is there an expectation of consent, only that consent cannot be given at certain ages.

Asking for non-Cockneys, what's the H reference about?

Having now read part¹ of the article, the group they appear to have left out is - unusually - men. Specifically gay men.

¹ Iit seems to be one of those auto web-scrape ones that repeats everything 14 times, so I couldn't get all the way through. And I therefore wouldn't assume anything is meant by the choice of language - it's had minimal human input.

The amusing alphabet which goes - read out loud
The versions vary, and this one does not have H for consent and other variations. There are a lot available on line. I think I've seen S for Rantzen, and heard N for Hodjer, which dates it. Some are more forced than others.

I had K for restaurant
P for relief
U for me
E for brick
Y for mistress
C for yourself

A for 'orses (hay for horses)
B for mutton (beef or mutton)
C for 'th highlanders (Seaforth Highlanders)
D for 'ential (deferential)
E for Adam (Eve or Adam)
F for 'vescence (effervescence)
G for police (chief of police)
H for respect (age for respect)
I for Novello (Ivor Novello)
J for oranges (Jaffa oranges)
K for 'ancis, (Kay Francis)
L for leather (Hell for leather)
M for 'sis (emphasis)
N for 'adig (in for a dig, or infra dig.)
O for the garden wall (over the garden wall)
P for a penny (pee for a penny)
Q for a song (cue for a song), or Q for billiards (cue for billiards)
R for mo' (half a mo')
S for you (it's for you)
T for two (tea for two)
U for films (UFA films)
V for La France (vive la France)
W for a bob (double you for a bob?, as in gambling)
X for breakfast (eggs for breakfast)
Y for Gawd's sake (why, for God's sake?)
Z for breezes (zephyr breezes, see West wind)

Sorry, but what the hell are you on about. What's the alphabet thing? What relevance does it have to Cockneys? So many questions....!

Right, it's really about the age of consent and how the history of that has not really addressed the females supposedly granting the consent. At one stage about 7. Jokingly I referred to one entry in what is called the Cockney alphabet - look it up, it probably has nothing to do with Cockneys, but that's what it's called, because I felt that it wasn't a subject to joke about. I falsely assumed others would have heard about it, when they hadn't I posted the whole thing L for leather.
For the majority of the time the subject was discussed, the idea that a child could consent to sex was ludicrous and permissive of abuse. Girls were not considered. And that continues with modern women being expected to consent to changing with men, sharing intimate places with men, etc. It's women blindness and deafness. It was extended to the under age girls in Rotherham and other towns.

It’s about criminalisation. It’s not about victims.

So at what point is your action a crime. So it’s always going to be about perpetrators.

Given that the age of consent has been at least 12 in this country for at least 750 years, What's the relevance of a ten year old to the discussion?

As far as women and girls not being considered when the age of consent was being set - the Act of Parliament that in 1885 raised the age of consent from 13 to 16 was titled '"An Act to make further provision for the Protection of Women and Girls" and was passed due in large part to the advocacy of feminists such as Josephine Butler and of the newly-formed Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (now the NSPCC). The welfare of girls was a central concern in amending the law.

It is when women involve themselves in the matter, in the 1800s that the needs of women and girls are seen. Before that, they are not.
And well done the man W T Stead for exposing child prostitution and going to jail for his work, when none of the people concerned did, but he was an agent for the raising of the age of consent.
Girls were told they could consent to be raped and paid, or not consent, still be raped, and put penniless of the streets.

If you say H for consent in a cockney accent it sounds the same as "age for consent". It's wordplay.

I think I see the point you are making. The 1800s was the first time the harms done to girls (all girls) was really discussed in conversations about age of consent etc. There were decent men as well, but women were pivotal.
I think, although individual women can be awful, where women have more of a role in public life and decisions you tend to see more protection of children from sexual predators. That's quite consistent. The flip side is the characature of an overly moralistic "won't someone think of the children" moral panic over song lyrics. But actually, often you do need someone to think of the children.