Is the AoC just a convenient number? Will any number do? Say, 2 or 35?

I believe that the AoC at the present centers in adolescence because of its putative link to sexual development.

Further I believe that traditional cultures have situated it earlier because while the end of adolescence is ambiguous, menarche isn't.

And yet, no matter how we root it in biology, the indisputable truth is that boys start later and finish later in all sexual development.

Despite the sheer number of things we individually test to determine responsibility and comprehension ( scholastic testing, driving skills &tc, ) settling on a "magic number" is overwhelmingly the preferred approach for all systems creating a binary partition to distinguish a threshold for the onset of sexual activity.

While some societies were OK with setting a different magic number by gender, those we are presently engaged with wish to settle on just one.

The problem here is that with a few years lag between boys and girls; we can't help but notice that the number arrived at is inevitably a number coinciding with either the onset of male puberty or the end of male adolescence.

Clearly girls are being held back because the only numbers which matter are male; and this despite the fact that the evidence of spermarche depends on either voluntary effort or fortuitous accident; whereas the evidence of menarche is undeniable even in the girl who has never achieved orgasm.

If only this occurred to the Feminists.

Dante