I think one of the issues is that the attorney didn't define "having sex," and no one asked her to clarify what she meant.

Given that this attorney is representing a clinic that specializes in matters of sexual development, identity and health, it's worrying to me that she wasn't more precise. Even your term "playing with each other's genitals" is too vague in my opinion.

I find it similarly alarming that an attorney for a part of the NHS focusing on child development is lumping together kids of 12/13 as though they are one and the same. Fact is, kids start puberty at different ages, progress through it at different rates; and regardless of when an individual starts puberty, it usually happens for each young person in fits and starts rather than at one continuous, consistent rate.

Clinicians working in child development and their legal advocates should know full well that if they were to compare any two 12 year-olds or two 13 year-olds to one another, they'd find that two kids of the same exact age often are at very different stages developmentally. Moreover, most kids at 13 are noticeably changed compared to how they themselves were a year earlier. In the tween and teen years, a few months can make a huge difference in each individual child's development, physically, emotionally and intellectually. The people at the Tavistock and their legal team should know this!

Back to the topic of whether kids at 12 or 13 are too young to be "having sex," I think that depends on what we mean by "having sex." I agree kids at that age shouldn't be shagging with peers or even engaging in acts like blow jobs, cunnilingus; it's probably too young even for hand jobs or fingering each other. But there's quite a few sexual activities that lots of kids at 12 and especially at 13 will be engaging in with peers that don't involve contact with bare genitals, penetration or even touching the genitals with the hands: necking, above-waist petting, frottage, for example.

(It doesn't really matter whether adults think it's wise for 12 or 13 year-olds to be doing these things, some certainly are doin' 'em anyways. And at 13, a lot of kids especially nowadays feel pressure to be doing more, as Catherine Hardwicke's excellent film "Thirteen" showed.)

Also, I think we need to keep in mind that most young people start engaging in sexual activities with peers in a gradual and graduated, step-by-step way, rather than starting off "playing with each other's genitals" or "going to home base" all at once. Or at least that's how it used to be when I grew up and when I raised kids; now in the era of constantly available internet porn, which kids are being exposed to at younger and younger ages, it might be different.

This reminds me: when I was in Catholic school in the the US in the 1960s, there were elaborate rules about what was permissible and what was going too far. For example, first there was kissing, then there was French kissing, but in both cases "making out" or "snogging" was confined to the head and neck (hence "necking"). And whilst this usually involved considerable above-the-waist holding and caressing, a clear distinction was made between that and the kind of caressing that involved touching of a girl's breasts. Which was known as "feeling up." (As opposed to "feeling down" which in this context didn't mean being sad or bummed out - it meant below the waist petting.) Lots of kids did lots of "making out" and caressing without the girl getting felt up.

What's more, even the "feeling up" that (some) girls (might have) permitted boys to do was further broken down into distinct types done usually done in stages rather than all at once: over over (hand over your clothes), under over (under the shirt, but over the bra), under under (hand inside bra) and under under undone (bra clasp unhooked). There was gatekeeping and much discussion over each step, and BFs had to earn the right to get to the next step...