Try to guess what the blogger at The Truth Shall Set You Free, a blog that describes itself as “an examination of all issues related to comparative religion and the attempt to find truth in the world today” is talking about here. (Hint: It’s not drugs.)
“We are going to let drug dealers set up stands on every street corner, with glitzy advertising, and they will be allowed to offer their illegal drugs, for free, to anyone who walks by. But if anyone takes them up on their offer of free drugs, we will arrest the receiver and send them to prison. Even if the seller advertised a legal drug, but the receiver took an illegal one unknowingly.”
Well, I probably gave it away with the title and the illustration, but yes, he’s talking about age of consent laws. We’re back on that subject again, thanks to the inability of manosphere douchebags to stop talking about it in extremely icky ways. The “dealer” here is, of course, the underage girl. The drug in question … is also the underage girl. The unwary buyer? The poor, helpless, and outrageously oppressed male of the species. I’ll let our high-minded Christian blogger explain:
Criminalizing consensual sex with willing 16 year olds is absurd. Consent is consent.
The bias of the law is revealed by considering this: If both parties consented to breaking the law, why aren’t both parties punished? …
Uh, because the law is designed to protect underage girls and boys from older predators? Because we as a society recognize that consent is really not consent when one of the “consenting” partners is underage and the other is much older?
But no, our thoughtful student of comparative religion seems convinced that the purpose of the law is, well, I’m not sure what he thinks the purpose is other than to harsh the buzz of older men in thrall to evil, devious, conniving teenage girls.
In his mind, teen girls are the equivalent of drug dealers and older men are hapless, helpless addicts:
-The dealers (young women) are allowed to advertise (through clothes, makeup, body-language) an extremely valuable and addictive commodity (sex), and in fact, they can give it away totally free, without fear of any penalty…
–but if a customer (man) takes that heavily-advertised and freely-given valuable commodity, he is committing a felony.
And that’s the case, he complains, even if the girl lies about her age!
–even if he had no knowledge that her drug was illegal (underage), even [if] she misrepresented the commodity as legal, he is solely at fault.
–The consumer (man) is sent to prison, and forced to register as a sex offender FOR LIFE
–The dealer (young woman) is allowed to walk free to continue to entrap other potential customers of her illegal commodity.
A clearer example of the infamous “pussy pass” couldn’t not be conceived. What these laws are really doing is punishing men for girls being sluts and/or liars.
And so the oppression of men by evil women and girls continues apace. But there is, our blogger insists, a simple solution to this terrible injustice:
Punish the girls who are providing!
Clearly it is unfair to expect men to be able to resist the lures of these conniving Lolitas. We must do something to protect innocent men from underage sluts slutting it up in public!
@Holly- I totally agree, but I don’t think that’s a good response to guys like truth shall set you free, because as soon as you suggest that it’s maybe partially a cultural thing that’s just going to get woven back into their grand conspiracy theories about how society is taunting them with sweet underage fruit.
[quote]society is taunting them with sweet underage fruit[/quote]
bleh, bad imagery. *shudders*
damn tag fail again. I’m stuck thinking in bb code.
@ Nobinayamu
“So how young? Seriously, if the age of consent being as low as 16 and 17 is just so ridiculously unfair, how low does it need to be for these people?”
Puberty. You know, that magical age when girls are totally ready for sex with anyone at all. Or earlier, if the girl shows any interest in sex, like asking where babies come from. Or just, you know, any age as long as she doesn’t really strongly object when someone tries to have sex with her. And if she does then she’s just a bitch anyway. Damn four year old teases.
@ Holly Pervocracy
“I think most of these guys are drastically overestimating the number of 16-year-old girls who want to have sex with them, anyway.”
Nonsense. By existing, girls are clearly advertising their wares. Obviously that means they want to sell them to whoever can afford to buy them. Age of consent laws are the ONLY thing keeping these shy, hopelessly romantic Romeos away from their pubescent Juliets.
There is definitely a societal factor that causes young girls to tend to feel insecure without wearing fashionable clothing and at least a bit of makeup. It’s what’s on tv, in magazines/adverts, and it’s what most girls are used to seeing amongst their peers.
I highly doubt that a teenage girl dons a tank top & short shorts, puts on eyeliner and so on for the purpose of getting a thirty-something’s attention. As other posters have pointed out, it’s in part to attract guys (or other girls, whatever the case may be) who are roughly their own age, and to look relatively “normal” (whatever that means). Not to say that teenage girls are a bunch of conformists, though (although many if not most adolescents tend to prefer to fit in at least a bit than to be ostracized or outcasted). I consider the weather also to be a factor. When it’s in the 80’s or 90’s, it’s not unreasonable to wear more revealing clothing for comfort’s sake.
And if there really are so many teenage girls out there looking to nab an older adult male (which I highly, highly, highly doubt), I don’t think the answer is to punish them. Teenagers are considered different from adults for a reason–for many reasons, actually. One of those reasons is that they have not fully developed their capacity for reasoning, critical thinking, and decision making. We don’t let teenagers smoke or drink alcohol because they might see it as fun and cool in the short term, without seriously regarding how it impacts their health in the long term. We mostly don’t give minors as harsh of punishment for committing crimes (unless it is a majorly fucked up crime, anyway) because we don’t perceive them as completely “getting” the ramifications of their actions.
Ergo, why should we punish teenage girls for being sexually involved with adult men? If this is *such* a huge problem as the MRAs are making it out to be (which again, I really doubt), the answer isn’t punishment, it’s education. Maybe place a little more focus during sex ed on what can legally (not to mention psychologically and emotionally) happen if the age of consent law is violated. Every state is different though; here in Ohio, they were pretty cut-and-dry on what could happen if an older man was found to be having sex with a girl under 16. I’m aware that states differ on how archaic their sex ed curriculum are.
The more I read about MRAs, the more I’ve come to think that they don’t really see women as people. The analogy used in the OP, in particular, is telling. Sex isn’t an experience two people share; it’s a commodity. These guys desperately want it, yet they are prevented from having it (with underage girls) by mean old feminists and their age of consent laws (never mind whether feminists are actually the ones responsible for those laws). The health, psychological well-being, or ability to consent of the girls in question is irrelevant.
Does this person (and i use the word loosely) seriously believe that there are droves of little girls begging older men to stick their dicks in them?
Yus. And the reason is b/c THEY are attracted to them, and their make up, etc etc.. must be done FOR them… so therefore they want them to look at them, therefore they want them to have sex w/ them >_> A lot of the times, w/ the victim blaming in how survivors dress, and how girls these days are dressing, etc.. it’s this idea of “if I notice them, they must want ME to notice them”… so it makes sense to them that all these girls WANT them too…
16 is deemed ok in Europe, but we are not so hysterical and puritanical about sex.
What Shora said. If these guys weren’t so obsessed with banging the youngest chicks they could get away with banging, they wouldn’t have to worry about miscalculating and overstepping the legal bounds
yeah that part is confusing me o_O Why is that so? Like the age in a lot of places right now is 16. If they finally realize that, will they start to complain it’s not 15? then 14? o_O
Do they think btw that if the age of consent was lowered, it’d unleash a flood of girls wanting to bang them? xD also, I can see a situation where a girl lies about her age (or doesn’t say it), b/c she wants to have sex w/ the guy and the guy happens to be over 18, and then her parent catches her or something… but are there a lot of situations where girls do this maliciously not for sex (or love or w/e), but just to put older men in jail? xD Cuz this seems to be the situation they’re talking about o:
So, you DO think men are animals! Misandry!
I remember when I was 13 and all the old pedos that would hit on me I was always sooo grossed out. Some of them looked well over 40, just ewwww.
@ami – yeop, their line of reasoning is basically well if you can have sex with 16 year-olds you’re still in danger because what if she’s 14 and looks 16, and then what if she’s 12 and looks 14 and I like to hope that most of them are at least going to draw a line there, but it’s hard to tell with some of these guys.
From the comments, jfr says: “I read a story the other day about a guy charged with pedophilia for doing a 13 year old. Pedophilia? I’ve know a few 13 year old girls that if you put a bag over their heads they would be just like a 20 year old. If the definition of pedophilia is the attraction to prepubescent girls or boys, how is this crime pedophilia?”
So don’t fucking put a bag over these children’s heads. Problem solved!
Bee – Oh god is that a telling comment.
Dudes. It is not about what you see in the kid. It is about how the kid sees the experience.
Holly, you are assuming they care how she sees the experience. I think most of them could not possibly care less.
I recall the flip side of this, actually; a woman was arguing that Playboy was a pedophiliac magazine. She said that if you masked out the bodies of the Playmates, they looked like little girls.
To which Playboy said, “the men aren’t here for the faces”.
The point is, the men in this sort of thing aren’t in it for the women. They see them as not really people. Sex, as someone said, is a commodity. Perceived fertility = “fit to fuck” and anything outside of apparent nubility is immaterial.
I suspect it really is the case they have a hard time getting adults to have sex with them, and they figure they can dazzle the children with money and, “sophistication”, and then score. If we, as a culture, dealt with sex differently age of consent would be less of an issue. Iceland, as I recall, has a much lower age of first sexual behaviors than we do. (NWO still won’t answer my questions to him [though I keep answering questions of his), about whether he’d like to live there, what with divorce only being 1.7 per thousand). They aren’t, however, possessed of the same parent culture we have.
But we don’t. We put sex as a thing, “grown ups” do, and despite most places being 16, the federal resrictions on erotic descriptions of sex, make 18 seem to be the magic number. The Mann Act (which makes it illegal for someone to transport a minor across state lines for “immoral purposes”: and has the odd effect of making it illegal to cross a state line, to do something which is legal in both the state one left, and the state one travels to) adds to that.
Are young people sexy? Yes. I like going to places where women are walking about in skimpy clothing. I’ve seen some really attractive females whom I knew were too young to fool around with. Why? Because they aren’t mature enough to fuck me for fun, and we have nowhere near enough in common to make a relationship work.
So being simple playmates is out, and having a romance is out. One, or both of us, ends up hurt. Which makes it morally wrong. Are there some who might be able to just fool around with me? Sure, but I can’t know who they are.
My experience makes it impossible for me (as a 44 year old person) to know. I am skilled at explaining myself. I know what sex is. I am not able to know if I’ve ended up manipulating them. It’s unknowable to me what the motivations are when someone that young (and nationwide, “that young” probably means 15) is responding to flirtations.
So I don’t. It’s not so much the law, it’s common decency.
I found that this really shook me, so thanks Holly. Though I’ve always rolled my eyes at these asshats, I just realized that I myself could have been seriously taken advantage of as a teen.
You see, I was 15 and when a 21-year old at church expressed interest in me – the first guy EVER to do so, btw – I was totally floored. I mean, to this day, despite being happily married and having 3 kids, I still dream about him sometimes. That’s how obsessed I was. I wrote three journals FULL, trying to figure out a.) if he likes me (despite him saying so) and b.) analyzing every word we exchanged to find out a.) and of course, make sure he never found out that I actually was crazy in love with im.
I turned into a bumbling mess whenever he was around, so completely overwhelmed that my heart would feel like it’d burst out of my chest like an alien – unless the bats in my stomach killed me first. I couldn’t talk to him at all when we were face to face, although we spent hours upon hours on the phone, chatting.
(The level of obsession here from my over-dramatic teen self is not a little creepy, I’ll freely admit)
Luckily for me, he was really a good guy, just clueless. He realized I was years too young for a real relationship and he bailed (which left me heartbroken and pining in silence for years). The point is I was so head over heels for this guy that he could have done anything he wanted with me without me objecting. Luckily, like I said, he was actually a really nice guy and we were all pretty damn innocent, never even kissed (church group!) and it all worked out for the best.
The point is, it’s really hard to express how vulnerable a teenager can be when confronted with these things and lacking experience in dealing with them, how completely crazy teenagers can be. That’s why teenagers sould experiment their awkwardness and cluelessness and borderline stalkish behaviour on each other, where everyone’s kind of awkward and insecure and scared to death of rejection and so on.
Sorry, wanted to add, I never thought of that (non)relationship framed in this way, so thanks for making me think about it.
I think decency is another concept that misogynists have trouble with.
I think they make that quite clear. Women are just vaginas, that they may or may not want to fuck and that they may or may not get to.
Women are not people, with, you know, thoughts, dreams, emotions, desires, desires, etc. of their own.
Here’s why I hate MRAs and the like:
I know this guy who got “oopsed” by what he thought was a 20 year old woman. When she rushed him into marriage, he THEN found out she was 16. Their entire marriage consisted of her being a physically abusive jerk, and he didn’t fight back because she was smaller than he was and he believed it was immoral to hit women. He supported her financial COMPLETELY, and then she cheated on him, got pregnant, left him, and then turned around and tried to keep him from his kid as well as accuse him of abuse. LITERALLY every single bad thing that a woman could do a man, this horrible woman did.
And then you know what? He met a wonderful woman who stood by his side, married him, got a job, fought all charges, got him custody of his child, and now they’ve been married for 17 years. And he is still the sweet, kind, wonderful guy he always was, a fierce feminist, and very protective of his wife, and me, his daughter. And he’d be repulsed by the MRA crap.
Yeah, there’s a lot of creepiness here, from the outright objectification of women to the deep denial in the phrase “consent is consent”, when the issue is informed consent.
I get the impression MRAs dislike the consent requirement to begin with, and are even more annoyed by factors that limit or negate consent. Things like coercion, duress, intoxication, and mental state all must seem like unreasonable hurdles. Of course, the notion that consent can be withdrawn must really honk them off too. And yet I wonder if it might be possible to get them to see the issue on this point…
What’s the appeal of a 16 year old girl versus an 18 or a 20 year old girl? It’s not the body; porn reminds us that there are lots and lots of physically impressive 18-21 year old girls. So what’s the appeal of a 16 year old? Is it that they’re “inexperienced” with relationships, that they don’t have perspective? That they’ve probably never lived independently, that they’re probably financially dependent on someone else? I doubt MRAs would be so honest.
So what’s the appeal? If an MRA were to show up and answer that, I think just a little digging would get us to “16 year olds are appealing because mentally and emotionally, they’re not as demanding or challenging as an adult woman”. Now, if the argument is that they’re appealing because they’re not mentally the same as an adult woman, is it really such a huge leap to point out that lack of mental capacity means an inability to provide meaningful consent?
Or is all that just a smokescreen for MRAs who just want what they want and don’t see a 16-year-old girl as anything but an interactive RealDoll?
I didn’t get my first period until I was 15, so at 13 I would have been considered prepubescent. I wonder what they think about that.
It’s all about privilege. Men think they have a right to a womans pussy. Sheesh, what 15 year old girl could ever have a crush on a 25 year old man? Wake up men, it’s not all about you. When will men learn no means no. If a 15 year old girl says to a 25 year old I want to have sex with you, he should know that yes means no. Take some responsibility for your action why dontcha?
Hey, NWO, the age of consent is 17 in the state of Texas. How many of the 17 year old girls there are approaching you with amorous intentions? Have you tried hanging out at a local high school and asking any of the girls out on dates?
Or is Texas just horribly unfair by not making the age of consent 15? If all the states made the age of consent 15, would 14 year olds be the new fruit dangled above your head?