This was just something that came to mind when I was reading over those posts (which I do plan on making something else later, as some other things came to mind that I wanna address later), but to keep to the title of the post, I do honestly feel like we're just throwing the word loli at anyone under the age of 18 in an anime when that has never been the case.
Kanna Kamui, from Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid, is a loli.
Anya Forger, from SPY X FAMILY, is a loli.
Eri, from My Hero Academia, is a loli.
Genshin Impact specifically has a 'short female' model, which nine playable characters have, and eight of them would be lolis, using the actual definition pre-'New Right' era (Diona, Kachina, Klee, Nahida, Qiqi, Sayu, Sigewinne and Yaoyao).
Why am I going through these examples? Mostly because I want to show people what characters fit under the classical definition used before the past few years of the anti-anime movement trying to use 'language creep' to muddle the definition.
I don't care which side of the argument you're on, I just wish that people would at the very least use the actual definitions of words because saying that Satsuki Kiryuin, Ryuko Matoi, Marin Kitagawa, among many other 'under 18 but visibly not like the kids I mentioned above' characters are lolis is rather bullshit and only serves to work against the right.
Just my two cents on the topic, but overall, whether or not things become legal or illegal, I am hoping that people are at least able to actually work with the true definitions of words rather than abusing language to get whatever they want. Attempts to ban Eastern media isn't going to make people suddenly love current Western media, it's going to make people further check out of society.
In a normally functioning culture it's uncontroversial to say a developed teenager is attractive, but that's based on adults respecting decorum and not being habitual line steppers.
Male sexuality completely unregulated by culture or law (in other words, by other men) is often predatory. See Pitcairn Island (pop. 35), where the Polynesian-white population was dominated by a few men that raped girls as soon as they turned 12. This became completely normal for the whole island. Or certain strains of Mexican culture that overlook your uncle or older cousin touching you.
It's pretty much established fact that women skyrocket in attractiveness around the time they hit puberty. Actually, I recall some graphs that suggest the peak (as identified by men submitting ratings anonymously) is actually before 18. Unfortunately don't have access to it on my phone at the moment though.
Not saying I think it would be good or healthy for society for grown men to hit on 14 year olds, but I'm not going to participate in the performative pearl clutching at the mere thought that girls under 18 can be attractive.
The point I was making is that puberty is around 12 to 14 for girls. It's pretty well established that, when anonymous and free from repercussion, guys will rate 14 year olds as relatively quite attractive, even compared to ages like 24 or something.
Sexually mature healthy adults are "sexy". This is based on hormones over time, which has variance person-to-person, but has general rules to it, one of which is that it takes between one to two decades to reach "full" sexual maturity in a biological sense (closer to two than one, but there's weird fringe cases when people got exposed to growth hormones at very young ages, or don't produce enough and have a delayed-onset growth), and we in general err on the "safe" side and legalistically push it to the far side of that, for the mental and sexual safety of those undergoing this maturation.
It's not about finding or not finding a 17.99999 year old "sexy", it's about their mental welfare and well-being and to not abuse the societal trust in safekeeping the youth and stability of society. Any needling and poking about a 17 year and 364 day teenager versus a 18 year and 0 day teenager in terms of general moral stance is just sophistry, the law exists to err on the side of caution and to institute broad general CLEAR rules, which is reasonable when society is so large that "the side of caution" will be many people who are successfully protected.
If there's some human who, by birth certificate timing turns 18 at 1:30AM, and you start having sexual relations with him/her, and then you look up a half-hour later, and "Oh no! It's Daylight Savings switchover today, it's actually only 1:00am, still a half hour away!"... but then cheer because you're having sex in a moving truck which just crossed state lines to one with an AoC of 16, but as you're crossing the state line barrier, a shake happens and sexual contact occurs in a questionable point in crossing the state line at a questionable timeframe, to illustrate the point with the most absurd possible example, it's the exact same thing plus or minus Daylight Savings, and no one cares from a moral standpoint. Most people would point at you and call you a retard for setting up such a scenario, not a predator, because you WOULD be a retard, not a predator in a moral sense, but legalistically speaking you did a no-no and those laws exist for a reason. Now, in that particular case, the judge would probably have a stress migraine and throw everyone out of the courtroom, but law's the law, and while morally it may be a shrug, if they DID throw the book at you, well, you were in a stupid scenario and did fall afoul. That's not attraction or non-attraction, maturity or non-maturity, it's simply a general guideline case applied to a specific circumstance that isn't the exact same shape.
EDIT: And all this stated, this applies to humans. Doing human things. We don't demand that a dildo a woman is using be aged 18 years from factory production before it can be used, because it isn't a human, it's a piece of plastic. It feels weird to need to add this addendum, but yet, so many online commentators somehow can't seem to grasp that a dildo is not a thinking, growing, living, soul-having human.
The societies that had high societal trust and carekept their youth did indeed do well those 9900 years. The ones that harmed them wantonly... Well, they didn't last to showcase any advancements.
They've studied it a lot and generally most men will call women around 14-18 the most attractive when there aren't any visible signs of their age, meaning its as close to "without judgement, objective" as we can get. That's just how our brains are wired, they are at their youngest, healthiest and capable of bearing young.
That doesn't mean its okay for him to act on that, because there is a lot more to society and women than purely breeding them like livestock. They are still young, stupid and not really mentally capable of raising those young very well, as well as the litany of grooming power grown men can abuse over them. Those things used to be balanced by fathers having to give their daughters and multiple generations in home to help teach them while providing support, but neither of those are true anymore in the slightest so we need to compensate for it one way or another.
I don't mean to really defend women, but people treat the "age of consent" as a magical thing about physical development and attraction, when that's probably the least important part of the equation in why its important to maintain to some degree.
And its also why there are three fucking different categories of philia used to denote attraction to those under 18~, with pedophilia being the one with literally zero basis beyond a broken brain and an evil heart.