Here’s a little video that takes a look at some PUAs and MRAs who share a great love for underage girls … and a hatred of the word “pedophile.” If some of the quotes in the video look familiar, that’s because they’re from a creepy mini-manifesto called “Age of Consent is Misandry,” which we examined here not too long ago. The rest are from a thread on Roissy’s Citizen Renegade blog that really has to be read to be believed. You’ll notice one, er, interesting comment from a guy calling himself “Welmer.” That’s our good friend W.F. Price from The Spearhead.
Enjoy?
Let’s take someone who is obviously a child — a ten-year-old. I remember myself at ten. Not only did I already have periods and noticeable breasts, I was actually quite mature in a lot of ways. I read very grown-up books. I was a walking encyclopedia of esoteric knowledge. I talked like a grown-up. I was very serious. I had some very grown-up responsibilities. I felt very comfortable in grown-up company, and in social situations, grown-ups generally treated me as one of them, at least as far as I could tell.
So — was I mature enough then, at ten, to consent to have sex with a 30-year-old? I have to say, in all the ways that count when it comes to sex, I was a child, period. For one, at that age, I still had not begun to wrap my mind around the fact that some people will go out of their way to hurt you as bad as possible just for the hell of it, that the nature of hatreds and motivations for hurting others is far more complex than childish reciprocity. At ten, I still mostly judged grown-ups by their appearance. Oh, sure, I knew factually that appearances could be deceiving, but at ten, I simply hadn’t yet learned how to observe people’s behavior — to ascertain not whatever image they tried to convey, but whatever it was they were trying to hide. I still perceived all grown-ups, with the narrow exception of hobos, as authority figures and people I could rely upon. It gave me pleasure to get a grown-up’s approval, and I didn’t give much thought to the ways in which that approval was obtained. Luckily, my parents watched me like hawks, but would have been very easy for a thirty-year old to shame or manipulate me into sex and make me believe I freely consented to it. Which is the reason why it doesn’t surprise me, misogynists’ complaints about age-of-consent laws. I bet they would like nothing better than to be able to bully a child into doing what they want.
And sure, all ten-year-olds are not the same. People regardless of age have different levels of maturity. I get that. But the law must balance common sense with prevailing trends and practicality of enforcement. I’d be safe in guessing that the overwhelming majority of ten-year-olds are immature in precisely the same way that I was immature, regardless of background or intelligence. (After all, there is a reason why ten-year-olds can’t enter into contracts either.) Age-of-consent laws provide easy, bright-line rules. Don’t sleep with anyne under 16. Is it really, REALLY too much to ask? Too hard to abide by?
The alternative is to allow anyone to have sex with anyone, provided both parties are sufficiently “mature”. Of course, from a legal standpoint, that’s an extremely vague standard, and in criminal law, vague standards hurt defendants the most. Trust me guys (and girls): it’s much easier to avoid having sex with minors than it is to argue someone’s state of maturity in court.
If they don’t want to be called pedophiles so bad then stop making such comments about teenage girsl! Also btw David i know the creator of that video really well. he is one of my friends on Youtube!
Along with what Amused said–there’s no reasonable scenario in which we have NO age of consent laws. That would make it legal to fuck gradeschoolers.
(“Mature” can’t be a legal standard because it’s way too subjective–prospective Romeos and Juliets would have no way of knowing what a judge would think of their particular situation. It’s the same reason the speed limit isn’t “don’t go too fast.”)
There has to be a line somewhere. The only reasonable question is where, not if.
@ Plymouth
“…Aren’t all the trolls boycotting…”
No. I am still here.
Yes, oral and anal sex are treated differently from PIV intercourse when it comes to age of consent in many US states. The same goes for mandated child abuse reporting for consensual sex between minors. As a mandated reporter, I don’t have to report two 16 year-olds engaging in consensual sexual intercourse; the same two 16 year-olds engaging in anal or oral sex would mean a mandated report. This also has the effect of criminalizing/making reportable most gay and lesbian sex acts between under aged teens. It’s completely stupid,but so far no one has challenged it here in CA.
For what its worth, I don’t consider you a troll magdelyn. 😛
Sorry, but I have to disagree with the “age of consent should be sixteen” here. What’s really the different between a sixteen-year-old and a fifteen-year-old? Grade ten and grade eleven. You can’t vote at sixteen, you can’t smoke, you can’t drink, you can’t watch certain movies, you can’t enter into certain stores, you can’t fight for your country, and you can’t participate in pornography. Why should the age of consent be sixteen? No, I’m completely in favour of the age of consent being eighteen. You’re much more likely to be out of high school by then for one thing, plus you’re allowed to do all the aforementioned things with the exception of drinking and smoking (which should be lowered to eighteen anyway). There should certainly be close-in-age exemptions, I’m not debating that, but a thirty-year-old raping a sixteen-year-old should be jailed. Period.
@ Jumbofish
“Who’s that tripping over my bridge? Oh, it is you Jumbofish. Now, I’m coming to gobble you up.”
Sharcluse: Genarlow Wilson, He was a college student of a friend of mine, actually.. It’s, perhaps, significant that he’s is black, and his girlfriend wasn’t.
re marriage in the past: Most of the ideas of early teen marraige are based on dynastic marriages in the aristocratic classes. When one looks at non-aristocratic marriages in the west one finds both an age disparity (most of the men being mid/late twenties, with the women being 18-22), and that the controlling/limiting factor was financial. When a man had financial stability, he got married.
Since the powerful were looking to secure/cement their social position, they arranged to marry off daughters as early as they could, because that would create the familial ties needed in societies which were controlled by associational/familial relationships.
We hashed all this out before. There is no way to not have a “bright line” statute. Because there will be a significant number of children who aren’t able to give an informed consent. The things to do is decide where the break-point is at which point society can assume the overwhelming majority of people have attained the maturity to make that decision. Most states have made that age 16. Given what I was like at 16, and the things I see of 16 years-olds I know today, that seems the lowest limit I would be willing to set the age of consent (and really, I have no problem with setting it at 18).
I’m generally in favor of minors being allowed to fool around with each other, and were I being put in charge of the age of consent it would be 18, for absolute consent, and something like 15, with a two year proviso for for minors. The sticky part is ongoing relationships where the age of one party crosses the bright line.
*shrug* The age of consent is 16 here, and I was wayyyy ready for sex when I lost my virginity at 17 (he was 18). I don’t really know what I think the age of consent should be…
A period and a C cup breast is natures way of saying you are ready to have a baby?
No! Nonononononono!
A girl who still depends on her parents is NOT ready to have a baby. A girl who hasn’t finished school yet is NOT ready to have a baby. These laws aren’t there solely to punish men who are too pathetic to get someone their own age. They are there to protect young girls. Girls need to mature mentally (and horny is NOT a mature mental state) to prepare them from the big bad world. For god sake we’re not animals. Our society is far too complex to just revert back to meaningless sex.
I’ve never understood people in their 30’s who want to have sex/relationships with teenagers – and I knew someone, a guy (36), who actively tried to do just that with a teenage (15) girl I knew. In her own words, she just had a crush on him, and it was more like a “father figure” thing than real romantic or sexual feelings about him. She was creeped out by it, saying, “Why would he want me? I’m a teenage girl! He’s old! There’s no one his age that he wants to date?”
He would often lament about she was sending mixed signals and bitch about other bullshit – I found this to be epically gagworthy, so I just said, “She’s a teenager. Don’t you remember being a teenager and all the idiocy that entails? The drama, the really incredibly stupid decisions, the fluctuating hormones making you nuts? You’re looking for something that will never happen.”
Luckily, he did end up considering this and backing off somewhat and eventually ended up dating someone else. And it’s not that she didn’t have sex – she did, just with guys her own age. I still don’t get the appeal – teenagers have different brains, and even as mature as I was when I was a teen, I still did stupid, cringeworthy shit, made really stupid decisions, and held some ignorant and naive beliefs. I don’t care what the reason is – banging hot, young things or otherwise taking advantage of young people – what it comes down to is that a person is actively seeking an adult relationship with an underage person who doesn’t necessarily have the capacity to understand what that entails.
I figured out the problem. The brains of these particular MRAs stopped developing at age thirteen.
Sometimes, I really think that’s the case.
When I was 16, I wound up on dates with two different guys who ten years older than me. One of them really was 13 at heart, and during the year that we dated, we’d run around in the woods with flashlights and the boy scout troop he headed and do other goofy but fun things. He also never did more sexually than kiss me and hold my hand, and (30 years later) we stay in touch.
The other guy…only seemed to want to date me because he thought 16 would be easier sexually than women his own age. He did too much touching on the first date, and was already pressuring me for sex by the second date and I chose not to see him again.
The first guy and I did well together because I was just as playful and goofy as he was, and I truly don’t think it wouldn’t have mattered if I were 16 or 36 (his later dating/marrying choices have gone along with that — the playfulness was the paramount thing for him).
There’s something more wrong with those MRAs than arrested deveiopment. Thirteen year old boys, or even adults who act like them, don’t always have a lot in common with those people.
I do not consider what Genarlow Wilson and his friends did to the 17 year old to be a statutory rape issue. That was just plain old rape.
http://www.whataboutourdaughters.com/waod/2008/4/21/alternate-ending-to-the-genarlow-wilson-case-what-if-she-did.html
Warning to the girls at Genarlow’s college: You might not want to drink around him or his friends since they believe that is consent to group sex. Another rapist that got away with it.
The Genarlow Wilson case was more complicated than a teenaged boy having sex with his teenaged girlfriend. He was at a party where he had sex with a girl who was incapacitated by alcohol and drugs — and this act was videotaped. The jury found him not guilty of raping that girl, but because the sex he had with the 15 year old was oral and this is the state of Georgia, they gave him that heavy sentence. If he’d merely had intercourse with the 15 year old his sentence would not have been as severe. I know it’s not a popular opinion, but I don’t sympathize with him. He raped a semi-conscious girl and got away with it. The prosecution went after him for the 15 year old because he wasn’t convicted with the 17 year old girl.
Xtra, we were typing at the same time. My apologies for just repeating what you said.
Quite alright Andrea. The issue of race in the Genarlow case is an interesting one. I can only infer the 17 year old was also black, meaning she was not the right type of victim. It makes me sad, a girl makes one wrong decision–underage drinking—and it’s just free reighn for a rapist to do whatever they want. What makes me mad is Genarlow hiding behind race to get away with what he did and get sympathy he doesn’t deserve.
Ion
I’m sorry if my question came off as hostile – I genuinely thought that I was just asking a reasonable question.
Given that there’s no country in Europe that I can think of where your scenario makes sense, that in at least 39 states of the US your scenario automatically fails, and that in the remaining 12 US states with nominal ages of consent of 18, at least 4 of them have specific exemptions that automatically fail the scenario, and in a number of the remainder there are a variety of hedges that would seem to, again, automatically fail the scenario, it seems to me that we’re down to something that is near chimerical. Whilst I accept that this may make me a pedant, I prefer to deal with what actually happens in the real world.
That said, I think that you’re correct in noting that there needs to be some degree of rationalisation of age of consent laws across the US to iron out the bizarre legal anomalies that can crop up, that eliminates the vestiges of discrimination against non-heterosexuals, and that removes the legal stupidities regarding marriage exceptions.
What I don’t think is an issue is MRA’s whining about age of consent laws potentially interfering with their droits de seigneur to whatever fresh teenage poonani they believe they’re entitled to; first and foremost, age of consent laws are, or should be, about the protection of minors from abuse and exploitation.
The Genarlow Wilson case was more complicated than a teenaged boy having sex with his teenaged girlfriend. He was at a party where he had sex with a girl who was incapacitated by alcohol and drugs — and this act was videotaped. The jury found him not guilty of raping that girl, but because the sex he had with the 15 year old was oral and this is the state of Georgia, they gave him that heavy sentence. If he’d merely had intercourse with the 15 year old his sentence would not have been as severe. I know it’s not a popular opinion, but I don’t sympathize with him. He raped a semi-conscious girl and got away with it. The prosecution went after him for the 15 year old because he wasn’t convicted with the 17 year old girl.
Did not know all of this. I was mostly just going off my hazy recollection based on what I heard on the news. Thanks for clarifying things.
So…the nine year olds that have their period are fair game because it’s more historical-full?
Oooooookay, then, wacky misogynists.
Ugh. I always find this topic especially horrifying as a mother and also an aunt (to a young teen girl).
I was wearing a bra in the 2nd grade and had my period by age 11. I was FAR from understanding sexual responsibility or being ready for it. These men are absolutely disgusting and ARE, indeed pedophiles (or at least, wanna-be-pedos if such a thing exists). There is nothing “natural” about older men checking out pre-teens and children.
I first had sex at age 13…but with a 14 year old boy. Was that traumatizing? No, of course not. It was two kids experimenting (and I stress the word KIDS…)
But if it had been with a grown man?? It would have absolutely been rape, pedophilia, and certainly traumatizing.
These guys seriously need to be caged and collared. It’s absolutely terrifying that these “people” are free and loose on the streets.
I got my period at nine, and the rest of puberty followed close on its heels. I guess those adult men that catcalled me when I was a fourth grader were really just expressing their natural urge to get into a mutually consenting relationship with an obviously fertile woman? And expressing their love of historical re-enactments?
summer_snow said:
I got my period at nine, and the rest of puberty followed close on its heels. I guess those adult men that catcalled me when I was a fourth grader were really just expressing their natural urge to get into a mutually consenting relationship with an obviously fertile woman? And expressing their love of historical re-enactments?
Exactly! I remember being absolutely terrified when men would catcall me as a middle-schooler (right away thinking of all those warnings from parents and teachers about being kidnapped or murdered by “strangers” and such). I had no idea why they were yelling things at me or what it meant. These men who claim it’s “normal” are well aware that they are scaring and harassing young girls/children, but they simply don’t care.
They claim that young girls dressing and acting “sexy” means they’re ready for sex with adult men, but the fact of the matter is that young girls want to emulate grown women much like dressing up your barbie dolls. It has nothing to do with sex or asking for sex. It’s girls liking traditionally “girl stuff” and men wanting to see something more sinister to excuse their criminal urges.