(A) An adult who engages in an act of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor less than two years younger than the adult is liable for a civil penalty not to exceed two thousand dollars ($2,000).

didn't read this part correctly. The "three years older or younger" looks like it is meant to cover cases between minors, e.g., a 17 and a 13-year-old. If I understand this right, this $2000 penalty, while kind of paltry under circumstances such as these, looks like it's a felony conviction, right?

A quick Google has told me that the age of consent in California is 18. This girl was 17.

However, here is the law (found at moraloutrage.net, I am not any kind of lawyer myself):

261.5. (a) Unlawful sexual intercourse is an act of sexual intercourse accomplished with a person who is not the spouse of the perpetrator, if the person is a minor. For the purposes of this section, a "minor" is a person under the age of 18 years and an "adult" is a person who is at least 18 years of age.

(b) Any person who engages in an act of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor who is not more than three years older or three years younger than the perpetrator, is guilty of a misdemeanor.

(c) Any person who engages in an act of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor who is more than three years younger than the perpetrator is guilty of either a misdemeanor or a felony, and shall be punished by imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year, or by imprisonment in the state prison.

(d) Any person 21 years of age or older who engages in an act of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor who is under 16 years of age is guilty of either a misdemeanor or a felony, and shall be punished by imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year, or by imprisonment in the state prison for two, three, or four years.

(e) (1) Notwithstanding any other provision of this section, an adult who engages in an act of sexual intercourse with a minor in violation of this section may be liable for civil penalties in the following amounts:

(A) An adult who engages in an act of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor less than two years younger than the adult is liable for a civil penalty not to exceed two thousand dollars ($2,000).

(B) An adult who engages in an act of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor at least two years younger than the adult is liable for a civil penalty not to exceed five thousand dollars ($5,000).

(C) An adult who engages in an act of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor at least three years younger than the adult is liable for a civil penalty not to exceed ten thousand dollars ($10,000).

(D) An adult over the age of 21 years who engages in an act of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor under 16 years of age is liable for a civil penalty not to exceed twenty-five thousand dollars ($25,000).

So if any of the guys were 21 or older, it looks like they have a case regardless of consent. Otherwise, the best they can get is a misdemeanor.

Though walking into a room with ONE guy is not consent to have sex with ten of his best friends, even if you are foolish enough to go near frat parties. So it seems like someone would have had too see her willingly accompany all of them, doesn't it?

I do sympathize with Anonymous, having been in similar straits in a philosophy department (which is mostly reasoning about words. Go figure). The problem isn't that the statistics don't reflect anything real; it's that they are GENERALIZATIONS. It is incredibly frustrating to have your reasoning ability or your communicative ability judged in terms of statistics about your gender.

The fact that 50%, 60%, or 70% of women score lower than the average man on some test does not mean that I or Ms. Anonymous must assuredly be one of them (I beat the average male score on the spatial test by two items, BTW, and I'm convinced it's because I SEW). Knowing nothing about me but my gender, one could only say that there is a 50%, 60%, or 70% chance that I would score lower than the average man. No one is going to know squat about what I actually do unless they pay attention to me as an individual, which my department chair was in an excellent position to do, but mostly didn't (I actually overheard him say that he thought women and minorities should be in the department because "tolerance is an important virtue". Asshole).

I hate these studies because they feed into people's lazy tendencies to want to treat each other as "man" or "woman" first, and as individuals with widely varying interests and abilities second. That doesn't help anyone: not me, not Ms. Anonymous, nor any of the men I know who face very real obstacles in the female-dominated areas they participate in.

Two things: the headline is totally misleading, and the article itself comes to some conclusions that seem hyperbolic when compared to what the actual research seems to suggest

Also, if someone really wants to know if there are gender differences when it comes to reading maps, why not design a study in which people actually get to read some maps and use the information therein to navigate? The framing of this particular problem seems weird to me.