Well...

Seems to me this was all about PROTECTING females, as usual. More misandry via feminazistic thought (even though I believe feminism did not at all exist back that far). From what I've heard, back then age of consent laws were not about prohibiting anyone from having sex... they were about protecting those outside of the legal age of consent from being charged with anything sex-crime related. So it was about protecting girls from such charges, not boys, since after all we all know that girls aren't sexual any way, and would never do anything wrong!

I've also heard that the age of consent we know today, the way it's applied, was originally written the way it was to appease women who were jealous of their husbands soliciting sex from very young female prostitutes. That made child prostitution illegal, as well as any sex with females below the legal age of consent.

So it's back to the very common basics: persecuting men for their (natural) desires. It's a psyop.