New Posts
By:
Filters
  • Hi there guest! Welcome to PoliticalJack.com. Register for free to join our community?

Statutory Rape

Arkady

Arkady

President
Now for something completely different....

Slate has a story about an 18-year-old woman fighting sex-offender charges based on her consensual affair with a 14-year-old girl on her basketball team:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_...with_a_14_year_old_girl_the_florida_teen.html

The Slate story recounts some even harsher examples, like a 17-year-old boy given a mandatory ten-year sentence for consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old classmate. There are issues of homophobia and racism wrapped up in those stories, but I'd like to focus on just the plain question of how statutory rape laws should be structured.

First, a quick bit of biography. I've been both the victim and the perpetrator of something that might be called "statutory rape" using the strictest of definitions. When I was a freshman in high school (13 years old), I dated and had a sexual relationship with a girl who was a junior, and 17 years old. Under some laws, this would have been criminal. However, I was both physically and mentally precocious. Physically, I was a 5'11" 200-lbs football player, and mentally I was years beyond my girlfriend: I was academically past her in most subjects, and had lived all over the world, whereas she was just an innocent small-town girl. Yet, in the eyes of some laws, she was taking advantage of me.

I was on the other end my freshman year of college. I was still dating my high school sweetheart (a different girl), at the time, and I turned 18 three months before she did. For those three months, under some laws, I was an adult man and she was a minor, and our sexual relationship had become criminal.

I don't think either of those situations should have been regarded as criminal. I think that the laws should be set up such that actual consent can be treated as legal consent between two mentally healthy and sober individuals so long as their ages are close enough together. When I say "close enough," I'd go with a shifting gap. For example, an 11 and a 12 year old are OK, a 12 and a 14 year old are OK, a 13 and a 16 year old, a 14 and an 18 year old, a 15 and a 20 year old, a 16 and a 22 year old, a 17 and a 24 year old, and an 18 year old with anyone older. Age differences that are HUGE, in developmental terms, early in life, are diminishingly consequential later in life, such that the two-year gap between a 16 and 18 year old isn't even close to as meaningful as a two-year gap between an 11 and 13 year old.

Interestingly, I see that my own list would actually make that relationship I had when I was 13 criminal, even though I don't regard it as such. But I might if the genders were reversed. That seems sexist, but I think there is a difference, if only in terms of relative physical power. The fact I was a lot bigger and stronger than my girlfriend, despite her age advantage, made me feel more in control than I might have if she dwarfed me in size as well as age.

What do people here think? And should it matter what the genders involved are? For example, is an older-male situation inherently more coercive than an older-female situation? What about homosexuals?
 
Such things get dicey. 18 year old with a 17 year old could "technically" go the way of "statutory rape"...regardless of gender or orientation.

Naturally the homophobes will LEAP on it..."Predator lesbian seducing a poor innocent 'confused' girl". Doesn't matter if the girl was already openly gay and it was consensual. Or the fact they are both essentially teenagers.

Sexism too.....if it was a 18 year old girl and a 14 year old boy?...nobody would care. In fact, I'm sure many of the guys here would go "Attaboy" at the 14 year old.



((BTW, given the Subject Line....I fully expect Drummy to show up on this and launch into her continuing smear of LeRoy. Let's see if DC can even resist when I predict his next move? LOL))
 
ark -

this is one of those situations where its a judggement call about how much of an "adult" a child is.

most people are going to throw a penalty flag when any adult (18 or over) is preying on a 14 year old, irrespective of gender or sexual orientation. targetting kids only advances the meme that perverts get some added thrill from seducing kids who don't have the intelligence or social skills to resist the situation.

most states allow someone over 16 greater leeway. but some - especially cities - are now attempting to address the epidemic of "20 something men" who are impregnating high school girls (or dropouts) then abandoning them. statutory rape charges are being brought in ever more cases when the victim is under 18 and the agressor is over 21.
 
I am of the opinion that "statutory" rape isn't rape at all. Adults seem to have a habit of pretending that they don't remember the sexual aspects of their lives as children once they reach adulthood. Maybe some are embarrassed by those memories?
 
as seen on tv said:
ark -

this is one of those situations where its a judggement call about how much of an "adult" a child is.

most people are going to throw a penalty flag when any adult (18 or over) is preying on a 14 year old, irrespective of gender or sexual orientation. targetting kids only advances the meme that perverts get some added thrill from seducing kids who don't have the intelligence or social skills to resist the situation.

most states allow someone over 16 greater leeway. but some - especially cities - are now attempting to address the epidemic of "20 something men" who are impregnating high school girls (or dropouts) then abandoning them. statutory rape charges are being brought in ever more cases when the victim is under 18 and the agressor is over 21.
Click to expand...

Not just a matter of "intelligence or social skills to resist", ASOT.......I think a lot of cultural observers will conced there has been an "aging-down" of sexualization of younger people. (Many blame movies, TV, etc....others bio-chemical changes in the environment....but it's another debate). You've got girls in 6th grade dressing like Katy Perry and singing "Teenage Dream". Boys too are thinking about sex at a MUCH younger age than 40-50 years ago.
The "girls are yucky" stage in boys is practically non-existant.
 
as seen on tv said:
ark -

this is one of those situations where its a judggement call about how much of an "adult" a child is.

most people are going to throw a penalty flag when any adult (18 or over) is preying on a 14 year old, irrespective of gender or sexual orientation. targetting kids only advances the meme that perverts get some added thrill from seducing kids who don't have the intelligence or social skills to resist the situation.

most states allow someone over 16 greater leeway. but some - especially cities - are now attempting to address the epidemic of "20 something men" who are impregnating high school girls (or dropouts) then abandoning them. statutory rape charges are being brought in ever more cases when the victim is under 18 and the agressor is over 21.
Click to expand...

I suspect one of the reasons this is difficult is because our biological drives, forged through tens of thousands of years of evolution in pre-historic times, are profoundly at odds with the prolonged adolescences that the complexities of modern society necessitate. Nature sets us up to be sexually receptive in our early teens, and probably the most "natural" pairing, in a primitive society, would be between a male in his early 20s (having established himself in the tribe and being at his physical peak), and a female in her early teens (having become fertile, and not yet having paired off with someone else). Because it takes so much longer to come of age in a social sense, in a modern, complex society, we really don't like the social power differential between those two, and so we set up rules against it, but we also don't like the idea of rules that make a huge number of people violent criminals on the basis of natural, consensual, and loving interactions.
 
Throw in the fact that there are studies that indicate that environmental factors may be driving the on-set of puberty down, typically in girls.
 
GordonGecko said:
Not just a matter of "intelligence or social skills to resist", ASOT.......I think a lot of cultural observers will conced there has been an "aging-down" of sexualization of younger people. (Many blame movies, TV, etc....others bio-chemical changes in the environment....but it's another debate). You've got girls in 6th grade dressing like Katy Perry and singing "Teenage Dream". Boys too are thinking about sex at a MUCH younger age than 40-50 years ago.
The "girls are yucky" stage in boys is practically non-existant.
Click to expand...

I'm not convinced there's been an aging down. Teen pregnancy is at an all-time low. And in prior generations, teen brides were not terribly uncommon. Jerry Lee Lewis married a 13 year old. Juliet, in Romeo and Juliet, was 13, and Shakespeare has a character point out that by her age many girls are happy mothers made. When you look at ancient traditions, adulthood often started at age 12 or 13 (like the Bat and Bar Mitzvah ceremonies), and the age of consent was often twelve or even younger... even through colonial times in America. As late as the late 19th century, age of consent in the US was typically 10-12. So, I think there's really been an "aging up" of sexualization of younger people in recent generations.
 
as seen on tv said:
ark -

this is one of those situations where its a judggement call about how much of an "adult" a child is.

most people are going to throw a penalty flag when any adult (18 or over) is preying on a 14 year old, irrespective of gender or sexual orientation. targetting kids only advances the meme that perverts get some added thrill from seducing kids who don't have the intelligence or social skills to resist the situation.

most states allow someone over 16 greater leeway. but some - especially cities - are now attempting to address the epidemic of "20 something men" who are impregnating high school girls (or dropouts) then abandoning them. statutory rape charges are being brought in ever more cases when the victim is under 18 and the agressor is over 21.
Click to expand...

You know I had a real problem when Dwayne Wade, who is 31, showing up for a high school prom. Admittedly, after seeing the photos, the girl didn't look 17, but that's beside the point. The same for Joe Haden, he's 24 and taking and 18 year old to her prom in his Lamborghini. Come on man!

Then you have the women, like Nina Agdal and Kate Upton, at least they are close to the boy's age, but it's still wrong. I mean the dude might get a slow dance or two with them, but he will be going home alone.
 
The only thing I can think of is this: What if the older person was a boy?

If it were a boy..the question wouldn't even have been asked.

He'd been in jail right now.
 
Some states offer exceptions where both participants are below the age of consent, or where there is only a year or two difference in their age. Some states don't. I've read about prosecutions for statutory rape that I thought were ridiculous.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Back
Top