That's what you take away from this?

[trinityvixen]

Say there's a sex scandal with a politician that only involves sex. No laws broken, no marriages ruined, just sex that happened. Unusual sex, perhaps, according to some, but sex that was consensual if clandestine. The worst that happened was the the one partner covered it up--again, without necessarily breaking any laws in so doing. Now that partner has come under serious heat for conducting this affair, which turns out to have been with an almost-minor.

What sort of lesson, what sort of cultural wisdom are we meant to absorb from this public humiliation? That anyone having sex ever does so with the understanding that if it doesn't fit into exactly ONE condition (which would be heterosexual marriage) is worth censure? Is it that our continued cultural obsession/denigration of gays makes perfectly legal sex seem taudry? Is it that we can't stand lying, whether no one gets hurt or not, period?

No. According to this blogger on The New York Times' website, the lesson is this:

Nobody at age 17 knows what they are doing, which is why they should never be having sex with middle-aged men, especially those in powerful positions.

So instead of drawing a conclusion about the culture that responds so vehemently to this story, you were supposed to generalize about all teenagers' attitudes towards/ability to handle sexual relationships. By all means, let us belittle and patronize young people. Because that will show that we trust and respect them. It's bad enough that they are treated as criminals despite steady drops in juvenile crime, bad enough that we believe every hyperbolic e-mail forward about sex parties that kids are having every weeknight even though kids are no more sexually active/promiscuous than in decades past. Let's just really pick up and run with this shit and declare they are unfit for all kinds of human interaction entirely because they Just Don't Get It. Especially when it comes to sex.

Two things:

1) We draw age lines for consent at convenient, arbitrary estimates of when people can/can't understand what fucking is. This helps to penalize predators, sure, but also catches the odd teenagers who just want to bone each other and have one or another parent disapprove of that. Most rational people recognize that people come into maturity about sex and relationships at vastly different ages. (Some before that line, some long after it, if ever.) The line exists only to have something to use against malicious offenders, not to prove anything about the maturity of people on one side or the other. We say people are adults at 18. Just 'cause.

2) The only way one becomes sexually mature is through, well, having sex. This is a little more controversial than what point #1, but it's the truth. Unless you get Vegas-odds-against lucky on your first go-around, or you believe the bullshit that the abstinence-only fuckers spew and think that marriage = perfect sex, perfect relationship, you're not going to develop a comfortable balance between your emotional attachments and sexual desires without practice. You need to have a relationship to know what to do in a relationship that works for you. Advice helps, but you won't know what YOU need until you do. Ditto orgasms.

Now, suppose you are attracted to older folk--happens all the time. How will you be able to work out whether that's a kink or a requirement in your relationships if you don't investigate? I'm not saying you have to have sex with someone twice your age. But you should be able to see them romantically if you're mature enough to understand the difference between their interest and yours in the relationship. That maturity doesn't come at 18 as regularly as a draft card, but some manage it. In which case: go right ahead, nubile young men and women and bone your elders.

Shorter TV: People should fuck who they want to fuck and whomever they are emotionally able to deal with fucking. All arguments against maturity based solely on arbitrary determinations of who is/is not able to deal with fucking are bullshit. Go away.

Comments

[gryphonrose.livejournal.com]

I will agree with that, with the obvious caveat--below a certain age people simply don't know and are incapable of knowing exactly what they want and what they can handle. Seventeen? For some, sure. Twelve? Damn near universal.

I also have issues with the idea that if a seventeen-year-old and a sixteen-year-old have sex, it's exactly the same legally as a fifty-one-year-old having sex with a twelve-year-old--it's still statutory rape. That's ridiculous. The former is two kids experimenting. The latter is seriously f*cked up. And no one's going to convince me that the twelve-year-old is mature enough to know what he or she is getting into there.

[avram]

And some states take that into account. I just looked up Oregon's age-of-consent laws, and it's a defense there if the two people are within three years of age.

Which doesn't help in the Portland mayor case, which involves an 18-year-old intern and a 40-year-old mayor.

And man, a guy named "Beau Breedlove" being involved in a sex scandal makes me feel like I'm living in a piece of fiction. It's like when the two politicians holding up campaign finance reform were named "Doolittle" and "Delay".

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Gotta love these scandals and their crazily-named participants. Beau Breedlove was destined to be a star in some sordid fantasy or another.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Are their some ages you can generalize about? Absolutely. Anything pre-pubescent is out of bounds, no question. But puberty can start as early as nine and no one is advocating that nine-year-olds have sex. There is some recognition that ages before about 15 are pretty much off-limits, even when its sex between two pre-15-year-olds. But it's a gray area that is limited by our understanding of the mental states of kids that age, a; their individual levels of exposure to concepts and practices when it comes to sex, b; and their ability to communicate their desires when they're not even sure what they are, c. Experimentation is key, but so is communication. With perfect communication and an ability to work past embarrassment and prudishness, kids as young as fourteen could, to my mind, have sex with each other or older kids and it wouldn't necessarily be harmful. Again, it depends on the kid and it definitely depends on the partner.

And count me in on the "sixteen-on-seventeen is not statutory rape" bandwagon. That is the downside of drawing a protective boundary to keep predators out: people who technically run afoul of the law can suffer if one or another of the guardians of that person decide to make an issue out of it. And some do. There was a case of a woman in Georgia maybe having to lose her house because of a Megan's Law-like statute that said sex offenders couldn't live within yay-many feet of a school. She happens to be registered because she was busted as a teenager for having sex with a younger teenager. (Like less than a year younger, not that the law cared.) That's regoddamneddiculous. But it exists as a threat parents can wield if they really think they want to control their kids' sex lives. Sad, really.

[edgehopper.livejournal.com]

I agree with everything you said, with the caveat that I have severe misgivings about relationships between older employers and much younger interns (but that wasn't what the NYT blogger focused on). If he was sleeping with an 18 year old boy he met at, say, a gaming convention, I'd have absolutely no problem with it. When you combine power indifference with age indifference, it starts to look a lot more like abuse of power.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I don't like people in power abusing those working under them either. It is a dangerous precedent and extremely indicative of what kind of manager we're talking about this guy being. That sort of thing should not be tolerated, I definitely agree.

[oblvndrgn.livejournal.com]

Ehh, I agree that a 17 year old isn't necessarily (or likely) any less mature/aware than an 18 year old, but that's cause I don't think 18 year olds are all that smart either all the time.

You can definitely be a 15 year old totally capable of making these decisions, no question. You can be a 20 year old who quite frankly isn't. I support age of consent laws in general if we can play the odds, more people at this age are, more people at this age aren't. Maybe it's 15, maybe it's 17, maybe it's 18, I don't know.

I think in a perfect world there would be a more objective measure of whether someone can or can not properly give consent and then we'd use that instead of some arbitrary measure. The sex of the people involved does not and should not matter (and I didn't even catch on to that until I reread one of the comments here since I didn't read the original article). I also agree with edge that the how bit about being an intern is way more significant.

I don't know Oregon laws but in NY 16 on 17 -isn't- statutory. Most states have a 2-3 year age difference allowance where it's okay.

The big concern we should have is statuary rape. Pigeons have feelings too.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

The big concern we should have is statuary rape. Pigeons have feelings too.

Ack, I read this and I was looking for a typo in my post. Dur.

[lizzatherussian.livejournal.com]

Totally agree. Thanks for giving voice to my feelings on boning my elders!

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

You go and make with the mighty boning. Tis your right. And if and when you return the favor to the youngin's remember the campsite rule: always leave the younger person as good as or better than you found him/her!