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Our Weird and Inconsistent Views on Sex and Consent
I have been sitting on this post for quite a while, but the Roy Moore accusations really bring the lie to our stupidity when it comes to teenagers, sex, and consent. In many ways, this involves many issues. It has been my contention for a long time that treating teenagers like kids makes them ineffective adults. Why do we treat teenagers like kids? Because their brains are going through huge developmental changes.
Yet those huge developmental changes don’t keep us from saturating in-utero fetuses, babies, toddlers, and preschoolers with a smorgasbord of information and education: classical music, books, mathematics, languages … you name it, we throw it at them. Why? Because some insane amount of the brain is developed by the age of three or four. Neural plasticity thinks that what’s baked into the process makes kids more likely to succeed in those areas later in life.
Ok, but teenagers can’t? When we talk about what happened to our young adults, maybe it shouldn’t be too hard to show that this concept of adolescence has had a huge detrimental effect on them. They aren’t children. They are adults in training. And everyone knows this. How do I know everyone knows this?
Because when someone brings up teaching teenagers abstinence, we think those stupid fuddy-duddies have their heads in the sand. “Don’t you know they are doing it anyway?” we say, derisively. Hmm … do you think its ok for children to be having sex with children? What’s your limit? When is it to early for kids to have sex with kids? Can we get all Brave New World and go with three-four year olds? Or does that offend your sensibilities a little too much? The Germans did it. We like emulating Europe, right? Oh, but its Germany. They disqualified themselves on moral uprightness with Nazis. So maybe eight? Eleven?
According to one of our members, pediatricians comment with complete neutrality on how she should expect her 11-year-old daughter is having sex. Really? I could have sworn the age was 15. At least it was when I was a kid. I was still playing with dolls at 11. My sex fantasies at that age involved dreaming of a girl in the 1860s, sleeping by the fire in a heavy dress, with some cowboy cuddling her. Everyone is fully dressed, FYI. Boom, pregnant. How’s that for 11-year-olds and sex?
Oh, I had it all figured out by the time I reached puberty. Don’t let my innocent, childlike fantasies fool you. I most certainly was a child at 11. And I’m quite certain I was a child at 13 and 14, too, albeit a pretty mature one. When I was 15, I had a crush on my softball coach. I remember my sister confiding in me on how hot Coach H was. Oh, absolutely, I agreed (I was 16, by then … my sister had just started high school). “Which one do you like?” she asked. <Blush> You see, the coach I had a crush on was the 50+-year-old history teacher who had been coaching softball and teaching for nearly 15 years. My sister was talking about his college-aged twin sons who helped coach.
But I didn’t hit on him. I didn’t flirt with him. I had myself together. Does that mean I didn’t know other students who did flirt with teachers? Oh yes, I did. I also knew girls in high school dating much older men. Willingly. You see, if you accept that they are old enough to be having sex, then you are expecting them to be old enough to make life-changing decisions. But we, the real adults in the room, don’t actually think that. But that is the message you give teenagers.
What exactly is the benefit to making life-changing decisions with a fellow teenager stuck in high school and still having to complete four to six years of college to get a decent job? Are you seriously telling me you think girls (who carry the majority of the risk in sexual relationships) are going to be ok with that dynamic? No. Seriously. Tell me. You really think girls are going to be okay having sex with someone who isn’t financially secure? Girls think guys in high school are stupid and not worth their time.
<Insert a Clueless movie clip here.>
So we came up with these laws of legal consent. We knew young, sexually mature girls would be interested in having sex with older people. So we told the older people, the onus is on you — you can’t do anyone under this age. Different states, different rules. My state is 18, with some Juliet laws at 16. Some states have 16.
So for that moving target of adolescent sexual maturity, we have a legal age. Roy Moore allegedly took advantage of that legal age. And in three out of four cases, he engaged in a chaste relationship lasting several months (according to the girls). The fourth one (with a 14-year-old) is the problem, but the people who are out to burn Moore* (who I know nothing of other that the 10 Commandments and this episode) think all four are the problem.
Some of those people who think all four are the problem would be totally cool with their 16-year-olds having sex with their irresponsible 16-year-old boyfriends. Heaven forbid they share a kiss or two with a 32-year-old man!
These are some weird, bizarre, and completely inconsistent views on sex. And I’m not going to claim any kind of moral superiority here — I’m confused as hell, too. On one had, we have teenagers reaching physical and sexual maturity who haven’t a clue how to be mature because we don’t think they are capable of it. On the other hand, we have cultivated an idea that it is ok for children to be having sex (if you are ok thinking teenagers are children and that teenagers have sex, you are good with children having sex).
I understand the point of these “age of consent” laws — at least I think I do. It’s to protect children who reach sexual maturity at incredibly insane ages, like five to eight. But our teenagers are getting mixed messages. Ask me how I know. (I grew up in it!)
So, figure it out. Do age of consent laws mean anything?
*This isn’t about Moore. It’s about how we talk about each of these cases. Three were perfectly legal, but we want to claim that there’s something wrong with them. He wasn’t their teacher, so you don’t get to fall back on that tired line. Either they are old enough to consent or not.
Published in Culture
The Beatles would be going to jail today.
Great post, Stina.
My daughter’s adolescence coincided with the fraudulent and dangerous Gardasil era. Girls had to get this series of expensive and painful injections, because otherwise–like 90% of the sexually active adult population–they might someday get HPV. Of course, most cases of HPV resolve on their own–but if they don’t, you could get cervical cancer, or your oral sex partner could get throat cancer! My daughter was ( there’s no other word) grossed out when her pediatrician advised us at her 11 year old visit, that it was time to get those shots in case she was sexually active. “Mom! I’m not having sex!” wailed my poor child in unmistakeable shock and embarrassment, and the good doctor reluctantly gave her one year’s reprieve.
(i don’t blame the pediatrician , a colleague and friend of my husband. He was just following the standard of practice. )
Great post. I’d like to consider a similar issue. As others have pointed out on this website, proponents of SSM argued that gays are born homosexual and it’s a violation of their rights to deny them marriage (note, the far left mayor of NY is married to a former lesbian). Now we’re told that XX can become XY and XY can become XX and we’re bigots if we think biology is destiny. The Left can easily believe six impossible things before breakfast.
When humans reach sexual maturity, they are ready for reproduction and no longer children. The concept of an extended childhood, made longer by Obamacare, works against nature. The culture has sexualized the prepubescent, and infantalized the young adult. So you are right, we have developed a schizophrenic view of children and sexuality. Feminists wanted sex to be unconsequential, just a feel good activity, reducing sex to animal like behavior. Perhaps many men were too eager to take women up on that idea. I’m waiting to hear of a female predator. I’m sure they are out there. Our local city had a scandal with a lesbian police chief harrassing a female officer, so I’m sure we’ll get a famous woman who went astray. Then we can have a better dialog about the role of cultural boundaries.
Children a hundred years ago and before, were producers in the family more than consumers. Today’s children are consumers. People work for them, and the extended time in school is for their benefit. To enter adulthood at 26 today, is when a young man a century ago would have been working for a decade. I would say as long as you are a dependent, you are a child. No sex for college kids 26 years old. Haha. Nature doesn’t care, and so we have college kids demanding free birth control. Having their cake and eating it too.
I read that Luther thought women should be married as soon as possible after puberty to keep them out of trouble. If he didn’t get burned in the 1500’s, feminists would burn him today.
I have a female ancestor who married at 14. And I live in the north. It was not scandelous.
It seems like at some point we need an amnesty and a new start with feminists leading the charge to make sex sacred and special again.
I’m getting so numbed by the cultureal insanity, that my response isn’t even outrage, just yea, yea, yea; ho hum.
An age of consent of 16 isn’t about two 16 year-olds having sex; they will regardless of the law. It’s about the 16 year-old having sex with a 20 year-old, or 30, or 40, or 50.
I would say you don’t get to fall back on the tired line “It was perfectly legal” either. We have many perfectly legal activities today, e.g., abortion, that many of us feel are morally wrong. And I question a 32 year old man who prefers females who are teenagers on many levels, regardless of whether the relationships were legal and consensual. So, yes, I believe it is fair game for people to question Mr. Moore and his defenders on this one.
@ralphie, I think you are so right. I don’t like your comment, I love it.
thanks
I used our convoluted conception of consent as fodder for a post about libertarianism a couple of years ago. I stand by my proposition that age of consent laws are both arbitrary and good at the same time.
Me too, especially about “we’ve sexualized the prepubescent and infantilized the young adult”. Exactly!
When my daughter and her friends were 11, we were told they’re all having sex. Don’t even try to interfere, it’s just a big stew of polymorphous perversity. Just encourage them to make it “safe”( ???safe sex, there’s an oxymoron!) Which btw is the same thing as encouraging them to do it.
But then they attain 18, the age of consent. Adulthood for almost all purposes.
and suddenly, these experienced, nay, jaded, young persons have no idea what to do. They have to be given courses in sexual harassment, date rape.
The girls, free sexual agents at 11, are now suddenly presumed incompetent to consent to sex, or even to endure a lascivious but chaste touch, a suggestive comment!
The boys, equally innocent and blameless in the sexual mélée a few short years ago, are suddenly treated as dangerous predators, feral beasts who have no idea of their own strength. Aaaaaagh! Be very afraid!
Is this just because at 11, girls are very often bigger than boys? Or what?
If these kids have been wanting, and having, sex since 11, and have been encouraged to decide for themselves whether they want to do it–
why are they so instantaneously clueless when they reach young adulthood, the time in their lives when sex is totally appropriate biologically necessary, behavior?
Food for thought (and discussion), Stina. Thank you!
If an 11 year-old girl is having sex, one thing you can guarantee is that the guy isn’t 11.
Stina, you’re my friend, so I will be blunt.
The problem with this post is that you are taking the result of the incident and saying nothing happened. So let me ask you: If the 14-year-old – you’re damn right that I consider her a child – had not yanked her hand away after he put it on his erect penis, and then demanded to be taken home, what do you suppose would have happened next? Heavy petting? If this story is true, and I stress the IF part, I see a child-molesting predator trying to seduce a child after meeting the child away from her home and taking the child to his home where nobody could interrupt them. This is a definite child-molestation pattern here, IF it is true.
To Ricochet readers, if you do not know what I am talking about, stop and read the article so at least you can understand the allegations.
No, see, my point is, we were told they were having sex among themselves, with their peers, they were all doing it.
I would not, all others things staying the same, lower the age of consent. I’m glad it exists, and if anything, I would raise it to twenty-one.
Most of Socrates’ (Plato’s) concerns and most of the Bible’s concerns revolve around imposing order and civility upon our physical proclivities. :) This issue is not different from all of our other body-centered issues. Maturity is about delaying gratification.
It may be very natural for us human beings to do a lot of things that are not in our ultimate best interests.
Drugs and alcohol are out there too for kids, but we don’t want them to have those substances until they have some judgment too. Wise parents who have loved their children have always tried to arrange the lives of their children such that their temptations are ameliorated by circumstances (schools segregated by sex) and distractions (fun or interesting activities). Wise and wealthy parents tried to create protected environments for their children through the age of twenty-two. That age break makes a lot of sense to me after having watching my own three kids grow up. It matches pretty accurately the developmental milestones young people actually pass through.
The post is right that kids have all kinds of things on their minds. But we hope to keep them busy doing other things until they reach a mature age. Many ten-year-olds have the ability and intelligence they need for driving a car, but most of those kids do not have the judgment that we, other drivers on the road around them, need them to have. Two-year-olds will charge out into a busy street if we let them.
As a society, we need to be very careful to be tolerant of some things while not encouraging them. It’s a difficult but essential balancing act.
The adults have been going the wrong way on this issue since the 1950s. They say, “It’s happening anyway. Let’s say it’s okay. Then we lazy adults don’t have to do anything to prevent it.” I disagree with that viewpoint strenuously. What’s best for the teenagers is the only issue that should be important.
When you force children to spend the vast majority of their time at unproductive study, extracurricular activities, and now, hundreds of hours of involuntary volunteer work, all of which is absolutely necessary to get a merit scholarship to defray the insane cost of college you make it impossible for them to get the knowledge and skills they will need to find a job after graduation. No job=infantilized dependence.
Then you give to foreigners (here or, primarily in East Asia) all of the jobs in which young people have a comparative advantage. Again, no job=infantilized dependence. I’m young enough to know the frustration of being young in our modern era, so I get my dander up a little when I hear older people talk about how soft and dependent young people are nowadays. I’d like to tell the members of a certain, large, spoiled post-war generation that maybe they should have pursued opportunities for their kids instead of pursuing labor cost advantage and consumer indulgence. There, I said it.
I’m in favor of an age of consent law, that is the same as the age for adulthood, drinking, driving, contracts, responsibility for insurance, voting… all of it. You’re either a child or an adult.
I agree 100 percent.
You’re kidding, right?
There are stories almost weekly of female teachers having sex with male students.
To test his claim that he was really talking to the Almighty, the hero of the movie Oh, God (1977) is locked in a hotel room with dozens of questions from clerics written in Aramaic. The Lord, played by George Burns, starts to wade through the questions.
”Did Man fall from grace in the Garden of Eden?” I’ll tell you something never came out. I made Adam 17. Eve was 15, 16 tops. I figured then 16, 17 was middle age, you know. Who knew people would live so long?”
In most high school freshman English classes, the works of Shakespeare are usually introduced by reading Romeo and Juliet. The Bard makes it clear in a discussion between Lady Capulet and the nurse that our heroine is almost, but not quite, 14. Romeo’s age is never quite specified but it is assumed he is much older.
I bring up these two cultural references became they highlight a basic conundrum of the age: The culture has been shifting but not in a unified way. And it’s a mess.
For some time now we have been glorifying youth, sex and youthful sex while marriage is denigrated and commitment comes later and later. The average age for a first marriage for women in 1960 was 20. By 1990 the needle moved to 23. Now it’s 27 and moving further out. (Germany holds the West’s top spot at age 33.) Legal abortion lessened the amount of shotgun weddings and for those that decided not to terminate the welfare state lessened the need for men to take responsibility.
Legally we’re all over the map. One morning when my 2nd son was 16 his employer sent him, unannounced, to a company training session 65 miles away and in the company of an older man I knew absolutely nothing about. I was told by the state that I had no say in the matter.
I’ve been told now for decades that my children needed signed permission to take a school field trip but that the school system could hand out contraceptives without my consent, including providing invasive medical procedures.
Now that they’re older, my children’s universities can come after me for payment but the school is not allowed to talk to me about their progress.
In the UK, Labour is pushing to lower the voting age to 16. In the United States we’ve pushed dependency to 26 under the AHCA. The West can’t decide if adulthood should come earlier or encourage a prolonged adolescence.
I have seen the face of this beast and his name is “Confusion.”
The Washington Post won’t let me read their articles. Pay wall. Not going to subscribe.
FWIW, you get 9 free articles a month. If you’ve already used up your nine, simply open in private/incognito mode and you can reset the counter and read the article.
This one did not require me to pay:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/woman-says-roy-moore-initiated-sexual-encounter-when-she-was-14-he-was-32/2017/11/09/1f495878-c293-11e7-afe9-4f60b5a6c4a0_story.html?utm_term=.7db6bff15cd5
Given the arbitrariness of the exact age chosen – we choose an age because it’s a convenient bright line, not because it’s really reflective of maturity – I’m alright with there being some variation in which age is used for what. It’s only outliers that really stand out to me, like 12, or 26.
If a compelling case can be made for cost-savings and efficiency in having the same age of majority for everything, OK. But I don’t consider it a moral necessity. Morally, the greatest benefit of any age of majority is that it obviates prying: the state won’t have to ask whether this or that young ‘un was really ready for X, Y, or Z, just ask for the young ‘un’s birthday (cases of those mentally incompetent even past that age hopefully being outliers). The prying is obviated even if the age of majority isn’t exactly the same for everything – though one wonders why there’d ever have to be more than a decade’s spread in the various ages.
I mean, except for renting cars. But that’s the rental companies’ business, which they no doubt work out pretty carefully with their actuaries.
How do you do that?
At one time the Federal standard under the UCMJ was 16 but in reality was 12 because “she looked 16!” was considered a reasonable defense. Even today, the last reworking of the code carries three levels of offenses: 11 and under, 12 to 16 and over 16. That’s crazy. Rape and assault is rape and assault.
What browser are you using? First, you should copy the link to the article.
In safari (which I’m using on my iPad), I click the change tab icon and I tap “Private”, which switches me to private mode and displays the tabs I have open (I seem to always have tabs open in private mode).
In Chrome, I think you click something like “Open New Incognito Window”
Once you are in private/incognito mode, simply paste the link and read the article.
FWIW, I try to only view certain sites, eg, Drudge, in private/incognito mode because they seem to be the source of a lot of viruses.
Hmmm. Interesting. I never knew about that. I am using Safari. Thanks for the info. Obviously not a big tech geek here. My husband is much more so than I am, but he didn’t share this bit with me!
My mother was married at 15 (Dad was 18), and had the four of us before she was 20. She is now 79 and, because she started early, she is proud to know and celebrate all the birthdays each year of 4 children, 18 grandchildren, around 50 great-grandchildren, and I think a couple of great-greats. (I don’t know for sure because I am not as awesome at remembering the extent of this mob as she is.)
This stuff happened (if it happened) to Moore forty years ago. It doesn’t seem to have continued once he settled down with a family – he’s no Carlos Danger.
By today’s standards he would be arrested; back then the disapproving parents simply said back off, she’s too young for you. And he did. Seems like it was handled appropriately and according to the customs of the time and place.
(I’m glad nobody told my Dad to back off.)
Things change: Always have, always will. One thing that doesn’t change, however, is that parents are responsible for their children. That isn’t a responsibility they can give over to the State. But when we give the State that responsibility, which is what we seemingly have done, they are bound to make one size fits all rules, they are bound to make mistakes and the consequences are going to multiply.
Let the state decide how old is old enough; let the state take care of educating my children. Why worry?