So a bunch of the regulars on Reddit’s Men’s Rights subreddit have their collective knickers in a twist about dudes getting called “pedophiles” just for saying they think 14-year old girls are hot. Because that’s “ephebephilia,” dontchaknow, not pedophilia! And besides, thingsarebad argues
Normal heterosexual males will generally have sexual attraction for pubescent females of child-bearing age, from puberty till they start to get old and gross (late 20s, early 30s usually haha).
That’s pretty much “eww.” But so is the rest of the discussion, really, from this “joke” about all women being as immature as children to this heavily upvoted claim that feminists have created a “pedo-scare … to criminalize healthy and normal male sexuality,” to this Evo-Psych-flavored argument for lowering the age of consent.
Is it just me or are dudes who get indignant when people don’t carefully distinguish between ephebephilia and pedophilia just really really creepy?
Is “the right to lust after underage girls without having to feel icky about it” really a Men’s Rights issue? Why this preoccupation with 14-year-old girls, on r/mensrights and Reddit generally?
Can we PLEASE bring To Catch a Predator back?!
So I take it all these guys were perfectly happy when they were 14 and old men perved on them.
In a way, “ephebephilia” bothers me more than pedophilia.
Because pedophilia, that’s a real deviation. That’s something unchosen and weird, as mysterious to me as “why do some people have foot fetishes?” or “why do some people have latex fetishes?” (Not to say those are equally evil–there’s no ethical problem in loving feet/latex however you like!–but they’re equally outta-nowhere.) In this case it happens that it would be hideously wrong to ever actually engage with your fetish object, but I see it as coming from the same weird fetish-place. I don’t think the desire is reasoned out or under their control.
Whereas a lot of the purported “ephebephilia” seems to be guys with perfectly normal sex drives who simply prefer someone who won’t hold them to the same standards as an adult woman. They want a post-pubescent body–because their innate desires are not for anything unusual–but not an adult mind.
(And to pre-empt Our Good Friends in this comment section, by “standards” I don’t mean “sit up and play fetch,” whatever the fuck that even means.
I mean things like “the sex has to be consensual and pleasurable for me” or “I can’t be with you when I have to work or do schoolwork” or “if you want me to love and admire you, I need you to show love and admiration for me.” All of which are things it’s a lot easier to browbeat a teenager than a grown woman into compromising on.)
The fear of an adult mind isn’t a fetish. It’s just laziness, cowardice, and selfishness. It’s not the desire for someone “sexier,” it’s the desire for someone who hasn’t learned to stand up for herself.
As a former fourteen-year-old girl, I’d like to point out that I was never attracted to slavering old men. So what do they want exactly? The right to look on in unreciprocated lust? They already have that. Or do they want the right to rape, coerce, and threaten? I had some bad times as a girl with grown men who wouldn’t leave me the fuck alone. They aren’t going to find many untraumatized teenage girls that want anything to do with them.
It’s funny that they go on and on about how much hotter teenagers are than women, but it’s really just that teenagers are easier to control. I was a pretty teenager, but I’m more attractive as an adult woman who knows what I want. Most teenagers are gawky, zitty, making poor fashion choices, and still growing into their features. Is that really the appeal, or is it the insecurity, lack of life experience, and naivitee that make them fantasy objects? Teenagers are presumed easy to impress, so these guys who can’t get a date with an adult woman, focus on girls they hope will be easier to manipulate and control.
Hmmm…that picture really speaks to me.
Yeah! Those old hags at 36, 39 and god forbid, 44, are truly disgusting!
They must shake with rage every time they watch a “Mad Men” episode, because…Christina Hendricks. That is all.
(Yeah, Spearhafoc beat me to it, but it’s a fact, goddamn it!)
Ah, in many parts of Europe (and many other parts of the world), this would be a non-issue, as it’s legal to have sex with 14-year old girls in many countries there (and in many other parts of the world). Really, it’s only the Anglosphere (US, Canada, UK, Australia, NZ, even South Africa) that has by-and-large criminalized and demonized male heterosexual ephebophilia/hebephilia for the most part. Must be that combination of the Far-Right Puritan/Victorian sex-phobia mixed with 20th Century Far-Left Feminist Misandry, in the remnants of what was once the British empire, as you don’t see this in the remnants of other European colonial empires …
“Is “the right to lust after underage girls without having to feel icky about it” really a Men’s Rights issue?”
Yes.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/05/manga-porn/
“Ah, in many parts of Europe (and many other parts of the world), this would be a non-issue, as it’s legal to have sex with 14-year old girls in many countries there (and in many other parts of the world). Really, it’s only the Anglosphere (US, Canada, UK, Australia, NZ, even South Africa) that has by-and-large criminalized and demonized male heterosexual ephebophilia/hebephilia for the most part. Must be that combination of the Far-Right Puritan/Victorian sex-phobia mixed with 20th Century Far-Left Feminist Misandry, in the remnants of what was once the British empire, as you don’t see this in the remnants of other European colonial empires …”
So, you’re for ephebophilia? And you blame it on both a male order and a supposedly powerful female order?
Huh. At least you’re kinda right (and no, not about the Misandrist Feminazi conspiracy thingy).
Juan – How much does this actually happen, though?
In how many parts of Europe and whatnot do 14-year-old girls actually walk down the street happily holding the hands of their 35-year-old boyfriends, flush with the joy of (half-)young love?
I think most sex involving 14-year-old girls in those countries is either:
A) With 14-year-old boys
or
B) Motivated (on the 14-year-old’s side) by something other than attraction or affection.
Even when they have fully-formed, attractive women’s bodies, there’s something about 14 year-olds girls that puts me off from desiring them sexually. Oh, that’s right: IT’S BECAUSE THEY’RE ONLY 14!
AntZ – I actually support, on principle if reluctantly, the right of creepos to distribute and read child porn in which no actual child is involved.
However, once you get real people involved, that’s a totally different thing. Your “right” to a girl’s teenagerish innocence does not supersede her right to her teenagerish innocence.
“Yes.
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/05/manga-porn/”
Except that’s an issues pertaining the FICTIONAL portrayal of such a thing. I mean, yeah, granted the whole issue gives me headaches. I mean, for the love of god, I can pick up copies of Lolita and Let the Right One In, both of which portray pedophilia and the latter being HORRIBLY GRAPHIC in it’s portrayal, but a manga portraying that? BAN IT! Just a personal grievance, though, and hey, I could be wrong.
So, yeah, that’s different, Anthony. These guys are talking about doing that sick stuff to 14 year olds in REAL LIFE…and when they can’t or are called out on it, it’s somehow an injustice. Really, man, if that type of stupid shit continues to fly, the MRM will never grow to be a beneficial movement, let alone a legitimate one.
Yeah, what Holly said.
These guys are talking about doing that sick stuff to 14 year olds in REAL LIFE…and when they can’t or are called out on it, it’s somehow an injustice. Really, Anthony, if that type of stupid shit continues to fly, the MRM will never grow to be a beneficial movement, let alone a legitimate one.
Yeah, honestly, Anthony Zarat and JUANDELACRUZ, You’d rather have sex with a 14 year old girl than the 36 year old Christina Hendricks? I mean, just from a purely lust-filled, objectifying perspective, wouldn’t you rather have a woman who’s, you know, finished “rising in the oven”, as it were?
The fact that Salma Hayek is the same age as I gives me hope. I’m not sure why, but it does.
Now they will tell us what’s wrong with Christina Hendricks. And it won’t be disingenuous at all.
It’s not just bodies that rise in the oven.
Again from a purely lustful perspective–a lot of teenage girls, I can tell you firsthand, don’t know how to give a blowjob or think it’s “icky,” are completely neurotic about their boyfriends seeing them naked, and would have complete oh-my-god-you-are-soooo-gross conniptions if you wanted to do anything “weird” in bed.
Do factor this into your lust for innocence. If all you want is to get off (unless you’re into 14-year-old girls for their scintillating conversation?), why are you discounting the women who might actually know how to get you off?
Because a woman who knows how to get these guys off would also know her own mind, and we all know THAT can’t happen.
Holly: why are you discounting the women who might actually know how to get you off?
Just a theory mind you but I’m betting that its because those women would actually expect to get off as well (that whole equal access thingy we’re all so bitchily insistent upon in these days of feminist dominnion)!
And the guys donwanna.
@Juan de la Cruz: You’re an idiot. Huge swaths of even europe don’t permit sex til 16. It seems that it’s there, or higher, in most of the developed world. Doesn’t it tell you something that the ones that don’t have it at least 15 are behind the curve? Also, to claim feminists are misandristic is stupid on two levels; first, only a handful of feminists have actually been anti-male, especially in comparison to the sum and total of the feminist movement. Compared to the rate of misogynists in the MRM… chump change. Second level, is that feminists do not and can not enact structural biases against men. You’re still the majority, in sociological terms. Men still hold the majority of the political power. Even if we wanted to, and we don’t, it just couldn’t be done.
@Zarat: Actually, I’m fine with child porn that doesn’t involve actual living children. But it isn’t a men’s right’s issue, it’s a free speech issue. And if you actually take it farther, to be fine with actual children involved, you’re a horrible, horrible person.
There’s probably some slut-shaming in here too–an older woman is more likely to have been with other guys, and that’s…
…I’m not sure why that’s a problem, actually. But it seems to be.
Some combination of objectification (“ew, a used woman!”) and self-centeredness (“how dare she sleep with guys who weren’t me!”) and confusedly half-assed old-fashionedness (“I believe a lady’s ‘morals’ reflect upon her character… except she gotta be sexy and put out when I want her to”), is my current best guess.
Plus a god complex–they want to be adored by someone who doesn’t know better. She’ll grow up and all, but they don’t think that far ahead.
I’ve been reading these guys long enough to know it comes down to “she won’t know I’m awful in bed or I believe my penis is small and she won’t know”.