This essay first appeared in Cliterati on September 29th; I have modified it slightly to fit the format of this blog.
I’ve often written about the Cult of the Child, that strange remnant of the Victorian Era which teaches that children (and their definition of the term extends far beyond that Nature uses) exist in what cultists term “innocence”, a state which they seem to equate with “purity” and Divine grace, but which in actuality means ignorance and sexual repression. It’s easy to tell when a writer adheres to this strange belief system: she tends to depict teenagers as blameless angels absolutely nothing like any young person who exists in the real world, seems unable to remember what she and her friends were like when they were that age, and expresses surprise and confusion when a young person resists being treated like a convict, an infant or a potted plant:
A 15-year-old prostitute has left a Tulsa [Oklahoma] shelter and is back on the streets, saying she prefers the illegal sex-trade business to her home life, [police] spokesman Mark Woodward said…”She was in protective custody and doesn’t want any help…There is no indication of a drug history. That’s the life she preferred. There is no telling how much money she was making….She doesn’t like her family, and she didn’t want us to contact her family,” he said…
The story treats this as though it were something remarkable, but it is nothing of the kind; the majority of underage prostitutes (or as they’re now labeled, “sex trafficking victims”) in the US have been in the “foster care” system at one time or another, and in the UK about 90% of teen sex workers who are forced into the system will escape at the earliest possible opportunity (though their agency is denied by the myth-makers, who claim they are “tracked down by their traffickers and disappear from care”). So entrenched is belief in the incompetence of young people, and so tenacious the need to believe in their asexuality and “innocence”, that child cultists prefer to imagine young sex workers as doggedly pursued by ninja “pimps” who can undetectably spirit them away from houses and institutions without ever getting caught, rather than recognize the obvious fact that they simply prefer self-reliance to regimentation, surveillance and virtual (or actual) imprisonment. As I wrote in “Too Young To Know”:
With rare exception, teen runaways leave home for a reason; they’re not lured away by “bad influences” or abducted by “traffickers”, but rather pushed away by factors such as physical or sexual abuse or parental rejection of their homosexuality or transsexuality. But because our laws define people under 18 as chattel, they can be arrested by cops and forced back into the situation from which they fled, or else sentenced to “child welfare” systems so horrible many of them return to the street as soon as possible. Child labor laws keep them from getting regular work (and such work would expose them to capture by police anyway), which leaves them with roughly three alternatives: theft, begging or prostitution; the latter is nearly always the easiest and most lucrative…the child cultists want to believe teenagers could never think of prostitution on their own, but this is total nonsense; teen runaways don’t need to be forced or indoctrinated into a form of exchange which predates the human species, and in fact (as revealed by a recent DoJ-funded study) 90% of them are not. Yet, nearly all current programs for dealing with teen prostitutes are based on exactly the opposite assumption, and if such a girl denies she has a “pimp” she is assumed to be lying.
The latter assumption is even more destructive than you may realize: it is entirely possible that some of these girls would be content to remain in custody and even submit to the (usually religious) brainwashing procedures such programs generally include, were it not for the repeated pressure from “authorities” to identify a “pimp” who exists only in their twisted minds.
The notion that young adults are more like children than they are like other adults, with its corollaries that they are ignorant, incompetent and infinitely malleable, is of very recent vintage; throughout most of human history people assumed adult responsibility as soon as they were able (usually about 14), and there was no such thing as “adolescent rebellion”. As psychologist Robert Epstein explains, “infantilization makes many young people angry or depressed…they can’t do anything meaningful without parental permission…and…the more [they] are infantilized, the more psychopathology they show.” Teens who are at least treated well are usually content to put up with the restrictions, the arbitrary rules and other such annoyances in exchange for the privilege of living at home and not having to work, but those who are abused and/or rejected see no reason to do so…and who can blame them? Once they get a taste of self-ownership, even at the cost of a dirty, dangerous, precarious life in the street, is it any wonder they reject attempts to cage and collar them again? The dogma that most of them are “controlled” by “pimps” is literally 180 degrees from the truth: they reject institutionalization precisely because they aren’t used to being controlled by anybody, and have no desire to be.
Excellent. Representative of my entry into prostitution at 15. No pimp needed. 100% Agency. Hustling skills transferable to many other settings. Retagged on CV as ‘ingenuity,’ ‘ability to exceed performance goals within diverse work settings’ and ‘ability to negotiate under stress.’
It’s all in how one puts it. 😉
It’s just HARD for me to go here. I don’t want to disagree with you because all your points make sense. The problem is … this is a 15 year old girl and I can’t get by that fact.
Who are these motherfuckers who want to have sex with a 15 year old girl? I would like to take them into a dark alley from which, they will never exit.
I’m not one to coddle children either – nor am I one to attempt to protect their innocence – in a lot of ways … I agree with you on this.
But man – it’s just hard for me to ignore the fact that this girl is 15. I have a bit better time with 16 year olds and I have no problems with 17 year olds – but 15? I can’t go there. My sense of chivalry – which I think is what civilizes men – just can’t handle it.
O/T but – if anyone was wondering why I doubt “science” all the time … and why I place so little faith in “studies” … this bullshit is why …
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/racist-white-americans-guns-study-article-1.1503060
Bogus statistical manipulation can make virtually anything appear to be correlated with virtually anything else. I will defer to either Kevin or Hal to take a look at this one for us. Gents?
Just on the surface, they presented a specious argument – that because mainly blacks get shot and mainly whites own guns, that it’s whites shooting blacks. I mean, there’s a BIT of a disconnect there.
That said, I still don’t find the proposition that there is an elevated concentration of gun-ownership among racists to be at all surprising. Racists are afraid of the other. If you’re afraid of the other, getting a gun seems like a natural step to take.
There are of course many other reasons to get a gun, so to the extent that they draw the reverse conclusion they’re treading on air.
*flies in*
The short-version is that the authors did a survey of Americans and correlated a bunch of factors together; the survey itself is well-done as far as I can tell without spending too much time on it. The authors tested the hypothesis that having racist views was correlated with gun ownership (measured by owning a gun in the home) and policy preferences vis-a-vis guns (i.e., not supporting a ban on handguns in the home and/or not supporting limits on concealed carry permits).
Their measure of “symbolic racism” was taken from a scale, which had such questions as, “Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for blacks to work their way out of the
lower class” (reverse scored); in effect, if you endorse such items, your symbolic racism score goes up. Whether you think ‘symbolic racism’ is a worthwhile concept is really up to you. Someone high in symbolic racism isn’t a member of the KKK, they could just be someone who believes that there are systematic differences between Whites and Blacks that are attributable specifically to race, rather than the different histories/laws of the races.
The statistical tests are straightforward and appropriate for what they’re doing. Symbolic racism is plainly associated with gun ownership in the home, even after adjusting for a host of other variables. This means that, all else equal, people who score higher on symbolic racism are more likely to have a gun in the home than those who score lower; it doesn’t say “gun owners are the racists!!!”, just that “people who have really subtle racist beliefs, as we’ve defined them here, are more likely to own a gun.” That’s all.
The authors then go on to test whether symbolic racism is associated with policy views on guns; it is, until you adjust for gun ownership. After you adjust for the fact that people who are high symbolic racism are more likely to own a gun, you can see that symbolic racism has no significant association with supporting laxer gun laws in and of itself. Being a gun owner (and a few other not-racism-related variables) does all the heavy lifting in terms of explaining people’s views on gun laws.
I would note that in Table 3 of the study (looking at associations with supporting concealed carry laws), the authors mark the adjusted association between symbolic racism and support for concealed carry as significant, yet the 95% confidence interval includes the null (no effect) value of 1.0; so far as I’ve ever learned, it can be a significant correlate or the interval can include the null, but it can’t be both. This could be a type.
Either way, my take-away would be that the claim that people prone to having subtly racist views (to whatever validity you put in that measure) are more likely to have guns in the home is plausibly true, but that the claim that subtly racist views influence gun policy preference is less likely to be true. Predictably, the authors and to a greater extent the media appear to have run away with it, screaming, “RACISTS OWN GUNS, GIVE UP YER GUNS YOU RACISTS!!!!!!!!”
*flies off*
WHOOOOSSSHHHH!!!
Statsman! My hero! 😉
Please don’t be ridiculous. When I was 15, nobody ever carded me; I bought liquor for friends, slept with university guys and otherwise behaved like an adult woman. And if I had wanted you to sleep with me, you would’ve. A 15-year-old woman in not naturally a “child”; her parents and her society have to hopelessly coddle her into being one. And once that’s done, merely achieving the mystic Age of Shazam will not magically confer womanhood upon her; only time and experience will do that. And if the infantilization is bad enough, not even those will accomplish it and she goes through life as the kind of entitled child-woman which is so common nowadays.
Remember – the drinking age was 18 when you were 15 – so you were passing for 18, not 21. Which – I know you weren’t trying to say, but for everyone else out there it’s important to understand because most 15 year olds don’t look like 21 year olds. As a doorman in a bar – I have carded thousands … and I can always tell when someone is under the age of 21. You would not get a 15 year old girl past me.
As far as me sleeping with you when you were 15 – sure, I was only 19 then (if I have the delta between our ages correct). I would not have actively sought you out though. You’d have had to come on to me … and I’m sure you could have melted me down, because I’ve never had much of a “defense mechanism” against pretty girls … well, even non-pretty ones too if they behaved the least bit receptive.
Please don’t call me ridiculous. I said I agree with you … but I can’t dump the notion that she’s 15. It’s not totally logical – I KNOW. Yes, you can have the demeanor and emotional maturity of an adult at 15 – but I don’t think most young women do. I don’t really favor setting standards and policy based on the minority.
Arbitrary “shazam” moments – quite frankly suck – but what’s the alternative? Comprehensively testing each child to ascertain their emotional maturity? Maybe some should be able to vote at the age of 13 then?
Men who have sex with 15 year olds. This was a big discussion on ECCIE and I got my ass handed to me by all the men. The providers agreed with me though … I think men who have sex with 18 year olds have a screw loose too. I’m not talking about 20 – 25 year old men here. However, if a guy is 51, like me – he should not be seeing 18 year old girls unless he can VERIFY the girl is 18. You and I know – in the world of escorting – this is impossible for the client to do.
Now – a 19 year old girl DID get ahold of me at the German FKK I visit annually. I thought she was 20 – but in any case, the FKK verified her age as 19. She’s 21 now and I see her every time I go there – she’d be upset if I didn’t and we’ve already done the deed so I don’t think I’m compounding the problem, especially since she’s older now.
I just wish that young girls could have a “girlhood” … and enjoy their teen years doing stupid ass shit like drooling over ONE DIRECTION … cheerleading … going to dance class and doing shit that teens do. I think it’s an important part of emotional development. I know – that a lot of girls don’t get that opportunity because they have no-load asshole parents. I wish we could deal a little justice out to those parents – but apparently we can’t.
This nation is getting eaten up by this single-parent paradigm. We are not raising young men and young women correctly. We do not teach them honor and responsibility anymore. There is a large number – almost a majority of Americans now who don’t pay federal income tax because they either don’t work or make too little. A LARGE number of those people come from single parent homes or were raised in single parent homes. While I admire single mothers, I just don’t feel most of them are “superwoman” enough to do the job of raising correctly – especially when they also have to act as provider.
So I think this kind of justifies what I’m saying a bit here – because doing away with these “arbitrary” ages and “shazam” moments will only exacerbate this problem.
I hear what you are saying, and I have some of the same visceral reaction, made worse by being married to a woman who suffered from childhood sexual abuse. But there’s the rub. If the alternative to sex work was the idealized Riverdale Hight teen life with Archie and Betty and so forth, then we’d be right. But it ain’t. And if the choice is being an unpaid drudge for verbally abusive parents (let’s leave incest out of it, shall we?) or buffing strangers and being relatively independent, I’m not ready to tell a 15 year old girl she’s wrong. Yes, she may come to a time in her life when she deeply regrets what she did in her teens. I think most of us do.
Good point – and yeah – I certainly don’t blame her and yeah – what choice does she have. I just wish we could do her a better deal as a society. We’ve failed this girl.
@krulac: “We’ve failed this girl.”
WE’VE failed this girl??? Who we??? I don’t even know her.
It is not society’s job (who or whatever “society” is) to look after every last waif in every last unhappy or dysfunctional home, much less my or any other citizen’s job to do so. There are those charged with doing so, and unfortunately they all too often not only fail in their charge, they add to the problems and the dysfunction.
” . . . what choice does she have.”
Whatever choices she has, they are her choices, not yours, mine, or society’s, and she may or may not make the best one for herself. But they are hers and she’ll most likely pick the one she thinks best. Let’s not make it worse for this “poor” girl, whoever she is.
You sure sound more like a bleeding heart liberal than a libertarian.
More and more – I’m realizing I’m not really a “libertarian” but some kind of strange hybrid between a conservative and libertarian. I just made an arguement for societal molding – which no real libertarian would do. But I can’t shake it – I think some amount of societal construction is necessary to live in a civilized world.
Liberals have a strange faith in the perfection of the future. Conservatives have a strange faith in the perfection of the past. libertarians have a strange faith in the perfection of the common man.
I’m a Crank.
I disagree with that, at least with regard to my flavor of libertarianism. It is precisely because I recognize all human beings, including myself, as 100% corruptible by power, that I absolutely believe that NOBODY should have any more than the most minimal power over others. And furthermore, even that minimal amount should be restricted and watched over by many, many others.
Here, here! Well said! But that comes as no surprise . . .
There’s nothing strange about a Conservative/Libertarian hybrid. It’s quite common (I’d say Heinlein probably qualified, for instance, or George Will in recent years, or Barry Goldwater). There are also a lot of Liberal/Libertarian hybrids, as well as Middle-of-the-Road/Libertarian hybrids, and others. Altogether, I’d say the various types of semi-Libertarians outnumber the ‘pure’ types by a large margin. And this is mostly likely true of most other political philosophies as well.
FWIW, I agree with you, Krulac–maybe it’s just because I teach teens (undergrads) and now that I’m ten years older than them, I’m feeling a little protective of them. I think it’s normal to feel that way towards younger people. And it’s not because I’m controlling or threatened by significant age differences in relationships (I’ve had years-long relationships with men much older than myself), or freaked out by teenage sexuality.
It’s normal to be sexually attracted to youth and beauty…but I volunteered at Planned Parenthood, and a lot of the young teenage girls who came in for pregnancy counseling and STI treatment were not having sex with their peers, they were getting knocked up by MUCH older men (like Mom’s boyfriend, BARF BARF BARF BARF), and regardless of whether the sex was consensual or even desired, I cannot feel but that the men were total fucking scumbags.
All the way back in 1996 Mike Males pointed out in Scapegoat Generation that “teen pregnancy” is a bit of a misnomer, as it might just as well be called “middle age impregnation.”
{insert standard Sailor Barsoom speech about young people being awesome}
And since they are so awesome, the parents must not be doing that bad of a job.
BTW, fifteen year old Tracy Lords would have got by you as an eighteen-year-old, though maybe not as a twenty-one-year-old. She got by the DMV and the State Department.
Can you really tell whether a teen is 15 or 17? Appearance varies more between individuals than with age… And you only know how mature they are after talking with them.
@Maggie: cashiers might be more suspicious now than they were when you were 15 (they’re probably carding people who look in their early 20s)
I looked much older than my age as a young woman. I used to decompress at a bar after performances. I never got carded. I’ll never forget the glare I got from the bar’s owner when I mentioned in passing that it had been my birthday the previous week and he asked me how old I was… I replied “21” and he realized I’d been underage the whole time. 🙂
That bar, the lamented Mad Hatter on the East Side, was also where I met one of my longest-term lovers: a 52-year-old retired Air Force general. He was thirty years older than I was. My bartender became, amusingly enough, a fairly well known sex counselor.
Would you email me and explain to me how you felt about sleeping with a guy 30 years older than you, please? Did you advance on him or he you?What is this thing with young women that they like men in their 50’s. I’m getting this at the bar a lot quite frankly and I don’t know how much longer I can fight this off. Girls as young as 22 come on to me. It’s flattering … but it’s spooky at the same time.
As a young man – I had my virginity removed from me by a 35 year old woman when I was 17. I was ecstatic about her and to this day she is one of the true angels of my life. But – she wasn’t 30 years older than me – and she was HOT. I remember thinking about sleeping with women in their 50’s when I was in my early 20’s and the thought, quite frankly – disgusted me. I guess it’s not the same for girls?
I don’t understand why … because most men in their 50’s are more disgustingly out of shape than the women in their age bracket.
Tarnished Sophia had a very interesting post and comment discussion about the different ways men and women approach and define “attractiveness”, and whether attraction leads to love or vice versa. My thoughts on the subject can be found therein. If you need further clarification, just ask.
I am sure you are already aware that some escorts have a minimum age limit for clients – many young men are just too much trouble. There are amateurs with similar preferences, as well.
Absolutely not. I’m 25, and people sometimes confess that they thought I was still in high school >_>, and I have a friend who is four years younger than me and he has never been carded in his life (as in, he was buying alcohol at 16).
Correct – now this is where I DO get fooled as a bouncer. I’ll card someone that looks 15 and find out they’re 22 or some shit. I carded a 47 year old woman because she looked “close” – I figured she was at least 21 but felt it worth my time to check to make sure. There ARE these people out there.
But I have never been fooled by a younger person trying to pass him or herself off as being 21. I KNOW before they even hand me their ID.
The question is not the difference between 15 and 21, but the difference between 15 and 16, or 17, or 18. Unless you have a birth certificate handy there is literally no way to physiologically place someone at 15 vs 18, ask a doctor to identify age based on what the person is physically, you’ll get a range of “between 15 and18”
Honestly, rather than ridiculously arbitrary ages, it should be based on puberty, which for girls is a pretty definite shazam! moment (hehehe)
@Storm Daughter: “Honestly, rather than ridiculously arbitrary ages, it should be based on puberty, which for girls is a pretty definite shazam! moment (hehehe)”
Agreed, and at least that provides a pretty definable (more or less) event that makes a lot more sense than a hodge-podge of arbitrary AOC laws, some of which need an attorney to even decipher. And, in fact, some countries and jurisdictions do set the age of consent at exactly that — puberty.
I’m sure they are. I was carded for the first time in the spring of 1996, when I was 29 years old, because the “crackdowns” had started by then. However, the fact remains that from the time I was 15 until the time I was about 35, whenever anyone guessed my age the estimate was invariably “about 25”.
Don’t think most people can distinguish between the late teens with much accuracy, and 15 is too old to pass for a pedophile special, so she’d probably claim to be at least 18 if asked
==Science Bit==
Given good nutrition in the 21st century, especially in the First World countries, a young woman of 15 could have completed puberty at that point, and indeed be, biologically, a mature female homo sapiens sapiens.
That’s just a biological fact. 15 – 17 for completion of female puberty is the scientifically accepted age range, which is influenced by a good standard of nutrition underpinning physical development.
However, the percentage prevalence of that event (sexual maturity AT 15) is not documented; what can be said is that by 17 almost all young women & men are just that: physically young Adults.
The above makes no attempt to assess their intellectual or emotional maturity, of course, just the biological facts.
==end of science bit==
Here in the England it is commonly acknowledged (and embedded into our consent laws) that by 16, young adults are deemed to be able to have consentual sexual relations, unless their partner is 18 or over AND in a position of trust (teacher, social worker, etc) which is a specific offense.
This consent age is not gender specific, nor action-specific.
There is a prosecutorial guidance concerning sexual partners who are both under 16 which acknowledges that where both are agreed, no prosecution should take place; the laws are designed & intended to protect young people from predatory adults. I imagine that can get very tricky where he’s 17-18 and she’s 15 (cf biology above, both could be physically adult).
Do you have issues with the methodology of the study? It’s data basis? Do you feel that the researchers failed to account for extraneous factors?
I remember being 15. There was no purity involved.
“ninja pimps” hehehe
The Victorian notions of purity and innocence appeared at roughly the same time that compulsory schooling was introduced (in the UK). Are these phenomena connected causally; or is there a further explanation? It could be argued that schooling delays adulthood; a chicken and egg situation, or is there more to it?
Foucault discusses these kinds of things in The History of Sexuality vol 1.For example, the architectural layout and rules of discipline of schools that show a preoccupation with children’s sex.
Well first of all JR, allow me to say I am impressed. Alfred North Whitehead and Michael Foucault. I must admit that I have not read much of either, and more Foucault than Whitehead.
I have been busy attempting to study and understand the three most difficult and important philosophers of the 19th Century: Hegel, Marx, and Nietzsche, together with Kant. Marx I understand, but then he is the clearest writer of the four, and has the best translations of his works. Nietzsche, I’m about half there, but the way his sister screwed around with his writings after his death makes it difficult to find the ‘real’ Nietzsche among all of her anti-Semitism and Nationalism. Hegel is difficult, I want to ask him questions in person. And I am now taking my third swing at the “Critique of Pure Reason.” Every time I read that massive run on sentence masquerading as a book,I find more insights, and more questions.
Unless they have changed the law why i wasn’t looking, I don’t think that website is correct. For years it has been a three year, not a ten year difference, starting at age 15, but I will double check.
Anyway, great writing, hope to discuss with you again.
@freefirard: I assume from your reference to Whitehead and your oblique reference to the close-in-age exceptions in Colorado’s age of consent law that a portion of this posting is in response to some things I have posted later in this thread.
You don’t need to take the exceptions on faith. That link in my posting includes the Colorado statute citation. You also can read the actual law here, and you will see that those are, in fact, the close-in-age exceptions:
http://www.justdetention.org/pdf/legalresources/Colorado%2018-3-402.pdf
Your doubts about the facts of your own state law are typical. I have seen so many people who don’t know their own state’s or country’s AOC law, with the default being that many people assume the local age is 18, when often that is not the case. This further underscores the arbitrariness of such laws and the difficulty in understanding and adhering to them.
Sorry, Google garbled up that link. Here is the correct link:
http://www.justdetention.org/pdf/legalresources/Colorado%2018-3-402.pdf
Yes, they have changed the law sometime in the last 12 years when I wasn’t watching. I just don’t trust Wikipedia for a number of reasons. Thank you for the other URL.
My comments about Whitehead and Foucault were intended to be complimentary. I appreciate anyone who takes the time and effort to actually study philosophers, not just parrot a line or two they find in Bartlett’s. I started with Aristotle and his Politics in 10th grade, and have been working ever since. Marx is simply the most recent one I can say I have mastered.
I stumbled across your blog and has to applause it for its clear, blunt honesty which I have to say I’ve rarely seen in the states. Prostitution is such a sensitive topic here that even the slightest rationing about the possibility that one — even under aged ones — might be choosing this style of life — due to willing choice or as the best of all evils under one’s current circumstances are fiercely scorned upon. I believe in no one should be forced or sold to sex trade — but I have to disagree that every one (or every under aged one) in the sex business is forced or coerced into it and therefore needs to be “rescued” out of it by the greater public. There are far more scary and disgusting things in life than providing sex in exchange of money — like hunger, not having anywhere to sleep, physical sickness, being abused by parents, not having a means to support oneself at all, etc. For those who argue we should rescue child prostitutes out of their trade and help them, I will say that AT LEAST the method is not keeping on putting them back to the life they may have taking great pains escaping, and to provide them with skills and opportunity of employment, letting them choosing how they want to make a living themselves. Since our current child welfare system totally lacks the means or will to srovide such long-term solution, I will say a simply “rescue” in such situations are at best comparable view to a pro-life person’s zealot passion to an unborn until the the minute it is born into this world, after which no one seems to care how its welfare and fate would be, born possible to someone who may be simply not a fit or capable parent. Applause for laying out the facts and pointing out the elephant in the room. I’ve become a big fan of yours.
Thanks very much, Arena; comments like this are exactly what keep me going at this pace. 🙂
I suppose Traci Lords is the cultural exemplar here. She started her porn career at 16, and fooled a lot of people in the porn industry who had every reason not to want to be fooled. And I never heard of any outcry from porn viewers … “I KNEW that girl was 16!” if it was at all easy to tell age differences between 16 and 18, I think there would have been more of an outcry.
And of course, this did not deter the cops from prosecuting the porn filmmakers who made porn films with Traci while she was 16. But they were basically persecuting the filmmakers because they were in the sex industry, I don’t think they ever managed to get a conviction of anyone.
However, I’m with Krulac, it’s just wrong for guys past 30 and prolly past 25 to be knowingly going after 15 year old girls. There has to be a limit, and it does have practical use for some women. I asked my wife, who developed large breasts early on and used to get hit on by much older guys a lot, how she felt about the 18 year old limit. She said she had been glad of it back then, because it gave her an easy defense from older guys who hit on her: “I’m underage, can’t do that.”
Now I know some of you had no use for that defense, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t useful for a lot of other women.
“I don’t want to do that” should be defense enough. And if the guy doesn’t take no for an answer, he might not be stopped by this either.
It SHOULD but in the real world it does not all the time. And the “I’m not old enough,” is just a subtle way of saying, “I know I’m jailbait, now you know I’m jailbait, and anything you do from here on can and will be used against you in a court of law.” Much scarier than “I dont want to do that” which merely invites further persuasion.
It’d be scarier if it was added to “I don’t want to” rather than replacing it.
First, kudos to Maggie for re-publishing this and standing by it. It needs no further comment from me.
@krulac: Now with you, on the other hand, I hardly know where to start. What guys want to have sex with a 15-year-old? Plenty. I would venture, given half a chance and if they were honest, most would cop to it. So to you they have a screw loose, but you have “a bit better time” with having sex with 16- and 17-year-olds? And you did a 19-year-old, and continue to do her, even though, gee, world of difference, you thought she was 20. Big whoop. All you do with these emotion-based arguments is show how arbitrary the whole issue surrounding age of consent is and how inconsistent your own arguments are.
In a number of countries, the age of consent is set at 12, 13, or 14, or puberty (and a few have no age or definition). They are mostly Catholic countries since the Holy Church wanted girls — in effect, women — procreating as soon as possible. Even our staunch neighbor to the north only in 2008 raised the AOC from 14 to 16, and great controversy surrounded that move.
As for “carding,” what self-respecting teenager, at least in the U.S., doesn’t have a false ID, or at least access to one? When I was posted to Brazil back in the ’90s, every one of our State Dept. interns had false IDs (for use in the U.S., Brazil really didn’t much care — Delaware was the state of choice). That was nearly 15 years ago, and supposedly the cream of the college crop.
And why would a teenage girl or one in her early 20s want an older man? Any number of reasons. For one, most guys her age are asstards and haven’t a clue what they’re doing. She might respect the experience and maturity that comes with age. She might just want a better sexual experience. Or maybe she’s just hooked on “daddy” and it tugs her boat. Who are you to pretend to know what motivates people? I can speak from experience, and am not ashamed to do so, that I had a 21-year-old girlfriend when I was 58, and it was the hottest and most intense thing either of us had experienced. And we got along just fine, thank you. In fact, most of my serious relationships have been with much younger women. And I still look to that age range for my relationships because most people my age — men and women — are jaded and cynical and just plain boring, boring, boring. Now when I was that age, I looked for older women — as apparently did you. Go figure? Yeah, exactly.
The posturing, hypocrisy, prejudice, just plain nonsense — and maybe even a tad of jealousy, might I dare say — that surrounds this age issue is rampant. And it is all that.
I could not agree more that so much of the dysfunction of youth stems from treating them like imbeciles and children and cogs on a wheel, and much of the acting out we see at that age stems from utter frustration — frustration with being so treated, as well as of the sexual kind.
We should respect young people, even children, as the individuals they are. And while demanding responsibility of them, we have the responsibility to accord them their rights as human beings and individuals. But as Maggie points out, we even treat adults as children in this society, so why not children and adolescents, too?
And you claim to be a libertarian, krulac. Really?
I just one to clarify one thing in my posting just now. It comes across a bit as a rant on age of consent, when that was not the intent. The issue really was age, plain and simple, and I just used the AOC issue to illustrate my point on the arbitrariness of age. To this end, I would re-word the last sentence of my second paragraph to read:
“All you do with these emotion-based arguments is show how arbitrary the whole issue surrounding age is and how inconsistent your own arguments are.”
“most people my age — men and women — are jaded and cynical and just plain boring, boring, boring. ”
And brain dead.
And why would a teenage girl or one in her early 20s want an older man? Any number of reasons. For one, most guys her age are asstards and haven’t a clue what they’re doing. She might respect the experience and maturity that comes with age. She might just want a better sexual experience.
Frank Y for the win.
Thank you, Sasha (blush-blush).
I see we are fellow freedom lovers. And that’s really where it’s at.
And, an older man can probably afford to spend more money on her than a teenage guy can. Teenagers seldom have a lot of money to throw around. Even in the current debate over minimum wage, one of the biggest debating points is whether or not most minimum wage workers are teenagers or not. Because if most of them are teenagers, then we don’t need to pay them a decent wage, right? It’s one of many ways that we quite legally screw young people, and often.
That may be true about an older man having more to spend on a young woman than a teenage guy, but it takes more than money to attract most women and, in fact, it sometimes has the opposite effect. I know I didn’t spend a dime on my 21-year-old (who I had when I was 58) and not a helluva lot on the other young women I’ve been with. I’m not into the sugar daddy thing, and that hasn’t proven to be an obstacle.
“It’s one of the many ways that we quite legally screw young people, and often.”
Really? Isn’t it called starting out? Learning and gaining experience? Giving someone a chance? Maybe the company should just make that 16-year-old counter server CEO and pay him or her a couple million, right?
I know I was paid $1.35/hour (less than the minimum wage at the time) by the university when I worked as a server in the dining hall as a 17- and 18-year-old, and was happy to get it. And later, in my ’20s, I voluntarily worked for $.50/hour for a crazy bike shop owner, just to get experience in a field I wanted to learn. One can choose to look at life as a series of screws, or a series of opportunities. I think I know which attitude is more likely to lead to success, not to mention happiness.
I doubt that an attitude of ‘I’m the sort of person who it’s OK to pay less than another sort of person doing the same job’ is liable to lead to success. However in the case of the ‘sort of person’ being a teenager, it’s an attitude that he will literally outgrow, and if he isn’t as happy to work for less than others when he’s a twenty-something, he has plenty of time to earn what he’s worth. I just don’t like arguments in favor of low wages based on the idea that it’s OK to pay those people less, whoever those people happen to be.
I don’t mean so much that a young women says to herself, “I want a rich old guy because he’ll spend lots of money on me!” Rather, it’s just more fun to go out dancing, or to a nice restaurant, or to a first-run movie than to McDonald’s or the Dollar Twin Theater. Also, it’s nice if you can spend the night with your sweetie and not worry about his parents walking in on you. Things like that.
@Sailor Barsoom: No one is arguing that it is OK to pay any “those people” less than any other “those people.” The fact is, under minimum wage, entry-level people, whether they be 17 or 27 or 57, often are paid minimum wage — the same minimum wage. Someone with more competence, experience, or ability to get the job done usually will start out above, or move up from, minimum wage, or they’ll move on to greener pastures — whether they’re 17, 27, or 57 (and this reminds me of the opposite side of age discrimination, but I’ll stick to the instant topic and not open that can of worms).
The teenager devising some amazing new app in his or her garage or who is a prodigy at something or other is not likely to be flipping burgers or checking out at Wally World anyway, so minimum wage is largely irrelevant to them. And might I point out that Germany, arguably Europe’s most prosperous economy, has (with a few exceptions and at least to this point) no minimum wage.
Anyway, this argument is veering seriously off the topic of the OP and I am going to stop with my share of the hijacking of it. Besides, I’d much rather be discussing screwing teenage girls in the Biblical sense than the financial sense, anyway.
Germany has a prosperous economy, but many people working full time in Germany are not themselves prosperous. Also, Germany is soon to implement minimum wage.
Anyhoo, I wasn’t arguing about whether or not there should be a minimum wage or what it should be. I was objecting to one specific argument: that it shouldn’t be raised if most of the people earning it are teenagers. No. We should either raise it or we shouldn’t, but which we do should have nothing to do with the percentage of teenagers earning it.
As for teens and sex: yeah it’s one of my favorite subjects too. They know what they want to do, and who they want to do it with. We shouldn’t be so quick to assume that we know better. I suspect that there is little daylight between us on this.
Dear Sailor Barsoom, but don’t you know what happens where there’s a minimum wage? The prices on EVERYTHING then go up! It’s an automatic where there’s a minimum wage. Glooooom & doooooom!
I don’t that man businesses would use an increase in minimum wage as an excuse to raise prices. But the smarter ones will not. For instance, if MW goes to $10.10 and McDonald’s promptly raises prices but Burger King does not, guess who will see business go up, and who will see it go down.
And besides, it isn’t the end of the world if a Whopper or a Bic Mac goes up two dimes and a nickle. Not that it will: a burger costs the same in states with a higher MW as it does in states with a lower MW.
But of course you knew all that, didn’t you? 😉
Good response to Krulac, Frank Yacenda! I am a relatively young guy but I completely agree with you. If I live to be 100 years old and a young woman with a grandpa fetish comes on to me, I think its no one’s business but ours how we conduct ourselves.
Thank you, Stephen.
I’m with you on that. Both the part about the young woman with the grandpa fetish and — the real issue — that it’s no one’s business but our own.
Dear Sailor Barsoom, yes, I knew that & use the information I’ve found through research to go against the ###*** about the minimum wage online.
Wrong discussion, Laura. Sailor Barsoom’s hijacking of this previously very interesting thread to get into an economic discussion, as ill-informed as it is, is above. I’ve dropped my participation in the hijacking, though there is much I could say, but I am holding my tongue.
I answered him here because there was no more room to reply right after what he wrote. I know him and I MUST be EEEEEEVIL because we don’t go along with the “hating all government” and “hating everything from government” mentality that you revel in. HIDE US from ourselves! LOL. Also LOL at calling him ill-informed when you have no idea what research he did on the minimum wage. Keep up the great work of ASSuming things about people without making the effort to find out why they have certain views, etc.!
@Laura: “Keep up the great work of ASSuming things about people without making the effort to find out why they have certain views, etc.!”
Against my better judgment, I am just going to say that you have just done what you criticize me for. No surprise there. And I’ll add that your basic premises as stated in this posting are so absurd and incorrect that I won’t grace them with a response and further take away from the main thrust of the original thread.
Rant all you want. I’m done with this off-topic sidetrack.
{sigh}
I was writing about teenagers, how many of them do not have much money to throw around, and various ways in which our society does not treat teenagers well. As an example, I mentioned that one of the arguments against raising the minimum wage is that most of the people making it are teenagers, and that I don’t find that particular argument to be legitimate. Knowing the population of this blog as I do, I very deliberately did not say that the MW should be raised, that it should not be raised, whether or not there should be a MW in Germany or what it should be in Germany, or if the US should do away with it altogether. No, all I said was that one of the arguments against raising it here is that hey, they’re teenagers so we shouldn’t. And I do not find the argument of “they’re only teenagers” to be legitimate. There are other arguments for and against raising MW, and I got into NONE of them.
I was writing about teenagers and how they are treated. But of course it was a mistake for me to mention MW at all on this blog, because of course people who are not me were going to grab that and make it the main subject. And it’s my fault for not anticipating that.
I want to thank my sweetie Laura for her spirited defense of me, but Laura, that post was rambling, ranty, and hostile. Please know that I love you, that I appreciate your desire to defend me, and that my critique is one of style, not of motivation.
Dear Sailor Barsoom, I was talked to in a harsh arrogant way to begin with along with you for daring to talk at all about the minimum wage (hide us from ourselves!). I could be a lot worse than I am when I answer this stuff. I don’t fully agree with you on what you think of how I answered but in the whole scheme of things it’s not worth going on and on about. I love you too.
“No surprise there”-thanks for the compliment! An FYI, I said what I did based on your comments on here about government especially the comments you made not long ago when I answered “thequietman” on if there’s any US govt. programs that truly help those in need. “I won’t grace them with a response”-I’m upset! I love hearing from those who have their noses in the air because they’re not part of EEEEVIL government things like wanting minimum wage, govt. healthcare, FMLA, etc. “Rant all you want”-thanks for your permission! I’m honored because those that pride themselves on not having anything from government CAN see into the future and KNOW they’ll never become disabled, never need some kind of government healthcare AND live a great life while making minimum wage or less.
The above was my last post on this subject on this thread. I won’t go around and around because don’t want to regress to where I used to be in this type of thing.
@Laura: “I was talked to in a harsh arrogant way . . . ”
Not by me, you weren’t. I may be direct, but I endeavor to be polite and avoid ad hominem attacks when I respond to posts. Your approach, on the other hand, seems to be to use sarcasm and to belittle those who don’t agree with you, as little as you seem to grasp the points they are making.
@Laura: “FYI, I said what I did based on your comments on here about government especially the comments you made not long ago when I answered ‘thequietman’ on if there’s any US govt. programs that truly help those in need.”
Nice trick, to pull something out from another thread altogether, and expect that readers of this thread will even know what you’re referring to. But that aside, you seem to have completely missed the points I made in the posting to which you refer, which would tend to undermine the credence of much of what you say if that is the level of your understanding.
For those who care to read what I had to say in my posting in response, not so much to Laura in particular as to the whole argument about the role of government in general, you can see it and judge for yourselves:
http://maggiemcneill.wordpress.com/2014/01/20/imagine-the-sky/#comment-79056
In light of Laura’s initial accusation that I am of the mindset that hates all government and sees no role for government to play, I just offer this one quote from the cited posting:
“It is absurd to argue that government has no role to play, just as it is absurd to argue that all government does is valuable, useful, or proper. Or that there are not serious downsides and both unintended and politically motivated intended negative consequences to many government programs, or that government does not over-reach.”
@Laura: “The above was my last post on this subject on this thread.”
Good. Now we can both shut up on this (off) topic.
Dear Hotlix, I owe you an apology. Reading over all this later I see I did ASSume some myself. You’re NOT totally anti-government. I’ve gotten way better on this over time (posting when angry, etc.) but there’s still some work to do on it. Please know that work is being done and I’ll make the goal I’ve set of never doing this. I have some health problems that are a contributor to this but will never quit working on those either (get as close to cured as I can). Again, I apologize. Take care.
@Laura: Thank you for your apology and for taking the time to review my earlier postings that were the subject of your assumptions. I do appreciate that.
I have no problem with disagreements, whether with me or over the issues being discussed, but it is helpful if the starting point is the points actually as stated, and also to keep the discussion to the issues and not the posters.
I wish you well in resolving your health problems, and I’m sure we’ll see each other again around the Maggie campus.
I’m replying to my own posting rather than yours since the system won’t let me reply to your posting. I guess we exhausted the “reply quota” for this sub-thread.
Apology accepted, and you, too, take care.
Well said, Frank!!
Thank you, JR.
In part, the whole “protection of children” motif arises from the whole child labor problem that we had up until the 1930’s. There are good reasons to limit child labor, the two biggest being; 1) education of the child in public schools so they can climb out of the grinding poverty that often forced young children (6 or 7 years old) to work in dangerous circumstances for lower wages than an adult doing the job; 2) it prevents the child taking a job from an adult who needs it to feed his family. As usual, the good intentions got overborne by Victorian morality, raising the age of consent from 14 or 15 to 18 in most states, except in the South, where Victorian morality was overwhelmed by hard-nosed reality among poor whites and blacks.
@freegirard: Actually, only 10 states — three in the South, two in the upper midwest, and the rest in the Rocky Mountain and Pacific states — have a general age of consent of 18. Some of those have close-in-age exceptions, and in many other states 18 applies only in cases where the older party is in a position of authority over the younger one, or special cases like electronic solicitation, which also applies federally. In the rest, the age currently is 16 or 17, although before the last century ages as low as 12 existed in the states.
In general, we have seen a special “child” class emerge from the time of, as korhomme notes, the emergence of compulsory education, and also the emergence of the industrial state. Today we may have freed most children in the country from, as you note, grinding, dangerous industrial work. Instead, we prefer to train our young people to be good commuters and employees rather than thinking, sentient, independent beings, and generally failing at both objectives, but by far the latter.
I can’t argue argue your comment about thinking, sentient, independent (human) beings. But it used to be forty, fifty years ago, up until about the time Reagan started hacking away at education in the 1980’s, our public schools did a pretty good job creating just that sort of person, as evidenced by the young people who rose, in a generally peaceful fashion, against segregation and the war in Vietnam. They changed our nation for the better.
And yes, i know I used a broad generalization on age of consent, but for example, here in Colorado if the girl is under 18 and you’re over 21, well “Fifteen will get you twenty” as the saying goes.
@freegirard: I am of the generation of which you speak, though I don’t think my education — until university, not in the public system — is typical. I do remember reading Alfred North Whitehead’s “Aims of Education” in high school (on my own) in the late ’60s and starting an organization to promote “mental activation and learning,” and not being terribly satisfied with the encouragement of free thinking at that time. It has been in steady decline ever since. Today it would take more than a gun at my head to put a kid in public, and most private, schools in this country.
That saying is clever, but the age of consent in Colorado is 17. There are close-in-age exceptions that allow a 15- or 16-year-old to engage in sex with someone less than 10 years older, or someone under 15 to engage in sex with someone less than four years older. But there is a “position of trust” rule where the age is, indeed, 18. You can see more about AOC in Colorado here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_consent_in_North_America#Colorado
I don’t want to belabor the AOC thing since that was not the main thrust of my posting. It is just one more example of the absurdity of trying to legislate when one is, or is not, ready for sexual activity.
Actually, Bruce Rind and a colleague have an upcoming paper in which they use some of Alfred Kinsey’s data to examine kids reactions to first postpubescent coitus, and it very much backs up what you are saying here, Maggie.
In fact, they found that females who had their first episode of coitus between the ages of 11 and 14 reacted as positively as females who had intercourse for the first time as adults (Or, more accurately, reacted more positively; it was actually one percent higher.)
The same was true for boys, but even more so, especially as “The highest rate of positive reactions among all groups was among younger adolescent boys aged 10 to 14 with adult women…”
Of course, the fundamentalist feminists object to the idea that harm has to be present for a particular sexual act to be condemned. Incidentally, Rind has challenged that idea, too, but in a previous paper: “Like Schmidt, Finkelhor argued that harm is not needed to establish the immorality and unacceptability of adult-child sex. Instead, Finkelhor continued, the unacceptability is based on the child’s inability to consent, because he does not know what he is getting into and cannot say no. A critic then complained that, if it is true that children cannot make judgments about sex, how can they judge among rival claims of the various religious sects (e.g., agree with an adult to be taken to one church rather than another or none at all)? Finkelhor responded that it is different with sex, because sex is more likely to be harmful. His argument is circular– the issue falls back to harm, even harm is claimed to be unessential to the point.”
Monica and I had to quit playing our little game because we got caught. Monica was at least twelve, and might have been as old as sixteen. I think of her as fourteen. I was at least six, and might have been as old as almost-nine. I think I was seven. The reason we got caught was because one of us tried to take the game further. Me.
Many would insist that I was harmed by this and that Monica was a monster, not due to any evidence of harm but because I must have been harmed. It’s in the script, damn it! Well, I wasn’t.