Today, a trip down memory lane to revisit an until-recently lost classic of modern misogyny: Jay Hammers’ “The Age of Consent is Misandry.” The piece, originally published on Jay Hammers’Men’s Rights blog, inspired some heated discussions amongst MRAs online, with some harshly criticizing the piece as an apologia for pedophilia and others hailing it as a “politically incorrect” masterpiece. Stung by the criticism, Hammers ultimately took his blog down. But the piece has since been resurrected on the Human-Stupidity blog – another blog that seems rather unhealthily obsessed with the supposed injustice of men not being allowed to fuck underage girls.
Here are some of its highlights (that is, lowlights); the headlines are mine.
ALL ABOUT THE MENZ
The arbitrary age of consent is not about protecting women/girls. It is about valuing females and their virtue over males and their freedom. The intent of the laws is to stop older men from having sex with younger women and that is how it is enforced. It was never intended to stop younger men from having sex with older women.
MORE BETA BLUES
Age of consent laws are designed to punish beta males. A beta male in his 20s, unsuccessful with women his own age who are infused with a sense of feminist entitlement and deride all but the top alpha males who take interest in them, who seeks companionship with a younger, sexually mature female who desires him, should not go to prison for acting on that which is normal male sexuality.
FEMINISTS WHO SUPPORT AGE OF CONSENT LAWS ARE TREATING WOMEN LIKE CHILDREN
If we are to treat women as children then we should be consistent. Young women who have sex with older men are as much victims as women who have sex with a pick-up artist after meeting at a club. In both cases, feminists are angry because the woman has been “fooled” into having sex with a less than ideal mate in terms of value. …
This is what makes feminists angry and this is why age of consent exists still today, because it is assumed women are not mentally mature enough to give consent AND because older women want to limit men’s options to increase their own value in the sexual marketplace.
BUT WOMEN ARE CHILDREN, BASICALLY
Older women … are generally not of a much higher intelligence level than teenage girls. The big difference between the two is that older women are less attractive and that is what makes them so damn angry. …
Females generally do not significantly mature mentally past puberty so it should always be illegal for any woman to have sex or it should never be illegal for any woman to have sex. There is no arbitrary age where females suddenly become self-aware, realizing the consequences of their actions, and stop seeking out alpha males. Thus there must not be an arbitrary age of consent for sex.
A MODEST PROPOSAL
If anything, it should be illegal for women to have sex with men until men have been educated on the truths of women, Marriage 2.0, Game, feminism, and men’s rights.
Discuss?
Amiangel, I don’t think you’re trolling. The thing is age of consent laws are arbitrary. And I think that, regardless of discussion, they always will be. Because people are not all at the same. Levels of maturity vary, family relationships vary wildly, parent/child relationships do not all follow the same clear paths. My sister sees patients that are 16 years old and have paws tattooed on their boobs. On their boobs. She asks them -well she used to ask them- how they were able to get a tattoo and they say that their mom/dad gave them permission.
She’d look over at the parent in question and they’d give her the Kanye shrug. They did give permission. If I’d asked my folks for a tattoo when I was 16 they’d have laughed in my face. That doesn’t make my parents good or bad. Doesn’t make the parents of the 16 year old with the boob paws tattoo good or bad either. Not necessarily. There are so many factors.
And, yeah people like NWO and the dude from the original post don’t really care about these factors or the implications. They want to have sex with 14 year old girls. They’ll tell you with a straight face that girls as young as 12 used to be married off and it was perfectly normal. The myriad ways in which our society has advanced since the days when 12 year olds were routinely married off will never enter their thought process. Let alone where we begin to define autonomy.
So, it’s complicated. And I certainly don’t mind the idea of having a reasoned and reasonable discussion.
@Pecunium oddly I posted the age of consent for Canada and all of the states that had 16 as the age of consent, as well as the wiki article outlining the age of consent laws for NA and the various exceptions to them… and yet a lot of this argument has been as if most of the states is 18 o_o;; also love.. which as I said above, amuses me xD
It’s Sailor NWO! xDDD
Ami, I was literally just drafting a comment to say what you wrote! Age of consent & personal autonomy is an extremely sticky issue. Weird things can happen, like a case I read about a few years ago where two 16-year-olds had consensual sex and were charged with raping each other (?!), and the mess when schools and lawmakers were trying to deal with sexting.
Problem is, our main opponents on *here* frame it with so many other scary ideas about a woman’s place in the world that we can’t have a real discussion. : /
@Ami:
I don’t think anybody thinks you’re trolling. And I for one would like age of consent for nearly everything to be settled once and for all, and to not continue lugging the baggage of ancient prejudice and ignorance around. So yeah, the issue needs discussing, but NWO is obsessed with a particularly black-and-white interpretation of the world, and we’re having fun mocking him for it. 😛
@Nobinayamu but that’s w/ parental consent : What if the parent doesn’t consent, or wants something done to the child that everybody agrees is good but the child doesn’t? For tattoos it’s trivial, but there are other things that are not trivial and has lasting consequences for that person and their body (and future body) :
The funny part of the “in the past daughters were married off at 12/14 etc” is that it belies the whole “you’re condescending girls, you dun think they can make their own decisions!” b/c being married off to a person that a parent chose for you is the opposite of arguing that young ppl should be able to make their own decisions and not have their autonomy restricted by parents, authority, etc xD which does imply the important part is “I want to have sex w/ whoever want” and not body autonomy xD
NWO, please show evidence of the people who routinely post on this board stating, unequivocally, that women should not be harshly punished for having sex with underage boys (I love how they’re boys, but 14 year old girls are women). Show me, unequivocally, where regular posters have said that if a 30 year old high school teacher has sex with a 14 year old student, and gets pregnant, that child should be on the hook for child support.
Today has been fun; it’s rare that I’m ever able to follow a thread this closely. But you have been wrong about nearly everything you’ve said and it is stunning.
I’m not sure why NWO thinks the phrase “power dynamic” is absurd. I think every relationship has a power dynamic; but in healthy relationships it’s close to equal (or it’s explicitly negotiated, which is definitely not something teenagers are up for). It’s impossible for two people to do things together without disagreeing on some things, and how those disagreements are resolved requires there to be some sort of power dynamic in place.
…And if you just “never disagree,” that’s the scariest power dynamic of all.
Ami, until we started this discussion if someone had asked me what the age of consent was in *any* state, I prolly would have pulled “18” out of my ass. I guess I’ve never needed to look it up? 😛
I don’t find a lot of the discussions on here as fun as, say, Kirby might, but it does make me realize the kinds of assumptions I make about laws.
@Kirby yeah that’s my point… so many of our age of consent laws were either made in a completely different time, or comes from religious or cultural place, often from a very long time ago.. or from tradition as you said… or from ignorance and fear.. or close mindedness… : Or they’re ad hoc, thrown in place for the specific situation ignoring all the other situations relating to when people are considered mature enough legally to make their own decisions and body choices 😐 And we’re constantly working as if this framework is some sort of default, or something that SHOULD be unless we can make an argument why it shouldn’t be, rather than “let’s start from scratch and figure this out for our society and the people that are living in it with what we know now” :]
@Molly Ren most of the fault of that is the way the news media writes about these issues (they may not say that legally it’s 18, but they may for example, write as IF 18 were the age of consent) and the other place, I think is TV and movies, which pretty much act like it’s 18 everywhere, and it’s a hard cap.. like SVU…
When the age of consent was 14 in Canada, even my friend who was in Criminology didn’t believe me when I told him, just b/c we all grow up “knowing” that it’s 18 everywhere. It’s one of those things we just “know” : That’s also why I think an honest complicated discussion is needed, so that we’re not choosing 18 for everything just cuz it’s the one we grew up w/ and it’s something we “know” and are “used to” and feel is just “right” for no other reason than it’s the narrative that we were taught :
Ami, no you’re right. Tattoos are relatively trivial; possibly not the best example. I worry about reproductive freedom when it comes to the age of consent. Should a sexually active 17 year old’s parent be able to prevent them from using hormonal birth control if that’s what she thinks is best? Should her parent be able to force her have a depo-implant?
And forget for a moment about teenagers and sex. What about parents whose religious belief systems dictate that certain, potentially life saving, medical procedures not be administered to their children. This does actually happen and doctors, in these cases, are forced to make decisions that could get them or their hospital sued. What then? Should a parent be allowed to deny an eight year old chemotherapy? The child is, after all, a minor without autonomy.
I don’t have all the answers just a lot of opinions. I think that in most cases the age of consent laws are written as broadly as possible with an attempt to be reasonable. But certainly there are laws that belie this idea. The drinking age at 21 in the U.S., comes immediately to mind. Elizabeth Dole did that almost single-handedly and, in essence, black-mailed the states into adopting the law by holding their transportation budges over their head. That isn’t especially measured or reasoned.
I think we can all agree that the whole “you’re condescending too girls” thing is just a pathetic red herring.
I know there has been a lot of conversation since it was mentioned, but how could anyone not think people mature emotionally to some degree between 16 and 18 and to an even greater degree between 16 and 30. Shoot, I am 22 and I am massively more mature than I was a 16. If you haven’t matured since 16, NWO, that sounds like a problem specific to you, because most of the rest of us do.
Also, as a 22 year old, I don’t have much trouble not having sex with people under 18, and I certainly don’t have trouble not having sex with 14 year olds.
Though teenagers always think they are more mature than they actually are (even those who are relatively mature for their age think they are even more mature). Seriously, how many people here when they were thirteen did not think they were a super adult who could do anything and who should be allowed to do whatever they wanted because they could handle themselves? How many people in hindsight would actually let their thirteen year old self do those things?
Hey… ION: Is ngz3110 being sexist in tone?
When I was 23 I was seeing an 18 year old. She was interested in me, I decided I was interested in her. We talked on the phone. We spent time at her house. What we didn’t do was have sex (oh no Ion…. am I offending your Wa? I mean it might been seen as bragging about my “performance” that I didn’t have sex with someone).
Why? Well, for the first part there was my sense of the age difference. In the second part she didn’t want to. We went out for about a year and a half. I’d say, all in all, it was a lot better than the relationship I had at 19, with a 22 year old; which probably colored my thinking (one, it made the idea of being involved with someone that much younger than me seem a bit less problematic, and two it informed my idea of how sex might change the nature of things).
Hey Bee, I think we cross posted basically the same idea. And yeah, NWO is pretty much a titty-baby.
@Holly
I think the reason NWO feels the phrase “power dynamic” is absurd is because he’s too stupid to understand it.
@Nobinayamu:
The way I’ve always thought about the case with minors (never mind how its defined), religious parents, and medical treatment is that parents do not own their kids. Thus, parents do not have complete control over what they do to their children. In cases where medical treatment exists (even when a cure exists, like for the flu), I think there are cases where doctors can and should step in and treat the child against the parent’s wishes. But, again, its really hard to come up with a general case because every case is different.
@Molly Ren
Problem is, our main opponents on *here* frame it with so many other scary ideas about a woman’s place in the world that we can’t have a real discussion. : /
Yeah : Exactly… cuz it’s being framed as “this is all about me and my want to have sex with the youngest ppl possible b/c i think they would be less likely to say no” the whole thing becomes about these older men and what they want, and this big fight and etc… when it’s not about us adults at all.. but I rly get how b/c of these types of guys (like the OP) and how they conflate this (when they dun rly care about the autonomy of young ppl at all xD ) so that it becomes that you can’t question 18 as the age ppl can sign contracts, or consent or have bodily autonomy, etc or else you’re saying yes to these other ideas of women’s place in the world as you said : and when that happens it gets rly emotional and heated and triggering and what I think is the main part of this (body autonomy, freedom and when ppl should have it) becomes lost in the creepy :
I always am wrong Nobinayamu. Why? Because you said so.
“The myriad ways in which our society has advanced since the days when 12 year olds were routinely married off will never enter their thought process. Let alone where we begin to define autonomy.”
So has society progressed because of this? Fathers routinely marrying off 12 year olds. Prolly not that young I’d imagine but the hatred men and illusion of womens eternal oppression must be maintained.
Ami: “the main part of this (body autonomy, freedom and when ppl should have it) becomes lost in the creepy :”
Yeah, when I think about “body autonomy, freedom and when ppl should have it”, I often think of the BEST case scenario (people are educated and mature and not usually malicious!). Then I read the stuff on here and see the absolute worst… >>
How does he know nething (forget w/ this much certainty) btw if he doesn’t believe in science, or anthropology, or statistics and all history is written by the feminists? o_O Is he much much much much much older than we think he is? XD
Graham…. “I think the reason NWO feels the phrase “power dynamic” is absurd is because he’s too stupid to understand it.”
No the problem is I want to know how to cash in on this power dynamic and really enjoy my white male privilege so I can more effectively oppress women and minorities.
“I always am wrong Nobinayamu.” – NWO
I think this is about as much as NWO is able to add to the conversation, really.
I really need to start working the term “titty-baby” into my conversations.
@Molly Ren but sometimes the worst happens : even for adults (in a mild case, like.. getting a tattoo you hate, or a piercing that gets infected or causes problems… more serious ones, botched cosmetic surgeries, signing contracts that you regret, casting a vote you regret, the whole song and dance from religious conservatives about queer ppl not rly knowing what they want, or that trans ppl might regret their transition, or that ppl will regret their abortion, etc) It’s about when we think ppl can make those decisions, are mature enuf and can make informed choices :]
NWO: “No the problem is I want to know how to cash in on this power dynamic and really enjoy my white male privilege so I can more effectively oppress women and minorities.”
Fuck, I wanna know what happened to *my* pussy pass! Did it get lost in the mail? Do I just suck at being female because I’m not a CEO yet??? Why did none of you other vagina-bearers tell me about the free food? o.O