I recently found out that not only are we lumping into the same category sexually abusing a 5-year-old and a 17-year-old and a 19-year-old having consensual sex, but apparently, indecent exposure, aka peeing in public, can also designate you as a sex offender. I think there should be gradations of statutory rape by age, not gender. Under 12 is very different from 14+ or 16+.

News flash. Teenage girls are every very bit as horny as teenage boys and their bodies are every bit as primed as boys are to have sex. The real difference is that boys are taught to accept their feelings and actively pursue their urges. Girls are taught to supress their urges, to be the one to say stop when everything inside of them is screaming go and most importantly to feel shame, because decent girls don't get the hots for a cute guy; they are waiting for THE ONE.

So of course most teenage boys would feel lucky, not used if a hot older women wanted them, precisely because they have been socialised to believe that being sexually desireable is a plus. Girls on the other hand are taught the sexual desirablity to an older man is a given and that something must be wrong with them if they could enjoy sex with him. So of couse girls are much more likely to be emotionly scarred by sex and sublimate whatever pleasure they may have felt into feelings of being victimized. In the end we are left with the same old double standard. Boys want sex and girls aren't allowed to want it.

In reading all of these letters of men who say having sex with an older women would have made their day as a teen, I find it deeply ironic. So young boys want older women and grown men want young girls? And they say women are perverse?

the focus on the mind-set of the teenager is so beside the point! so what if teenaged boys and girls are all walking around in a permanent state of heat? of course they are...that's hardly a news flash. so most teenaged boys and many teenaged girls would get an ego-boost and probably a technically superior sexual experience from engaging in sex with an older person? yeah, of course.

but what i keep coming back to, and what i still find so disturbing, is what's going on with a significantly older adult (not an 18 or 19 or 20 year old) who thinks it's okay to have sex with a minor. when a thirty year old has sex with a fourteen or fifteen year old, there is something wrong with that adult. there is something wrong with his or her judgment and self-control. there is something going on there that needs to be addressed. and it simply doesn't matter if the minor on that situation wants sex, or would get off on the sex. as a society, do we really want to make it okay for adults who have pedophiliac tendencies to exercise their desires as long as the young person involved is eager for sex? doesn't it occur to anyone that an adult man or woman who has sex with a fourteen-year-old is not so far away from thinking it's okay to have sex with an eleven or twelve-year-old?

...not even this one. Each person's response to sexual relationships and events is unique. When one person has too much power over another, the sense of being subjugated to another's will can permanently affect the weaker party's self-image. But there are all sorts of power. A man is usually bigger and stronger than a woman; if we're talking about a grown man and a young girl, that effect is amplified and is combined with disparate levels of knowledge, experience, and maturity. A boy of fifteen, however, may be twice the size of his female teacher. He may already be an aggressive male of the species, and can see his teacher as the first of many conquests. It is she who can go to jail over this, and her self-image is not yet bullet-proof, despite her advanced age. It's also a recent idea, historically, that fifteen is too young for sex or marriage. I recall how I felt at fourteen; I was no more afraid of women than I was of girls my own age. I could have been "taken advantage of" (but what advantage, exactly?) just as thoroughly by an agressive thirteen-year-old girl as by a woman twice as old. Anyway, I suspect that most of the damage in these situations isn't inflicted at the time, at all; it becomes a guilty memory only later, when society tells a woman that her feelings were invalid, that her acceptance of a man's advances was wrong. At any age, the right to say no must be respected above all else; but it's difficult to respect "no" if we don't recognize a right to say "yes". I might have said yes enthusiastically at fourteen, and I seriously doubt that I would regret it today - unless the law got involved! But it isn't possible, as yet, to wisely consider every case individually; until that can be done, we're stuck with laws that over-generalize.

I personally believe that the age of consent should be lowered to 16 at the present time, while keeping the door open to lowering it again in the future. It is true that there is an acute psychological difference between a teenager and an adult, but that difference does not imply that the teenager will be harmed by sexual relations with that adult. Teenagers are perfectly capable of making moral and social choices for themselves and I see no reason why they shouldn't be making those choices and exploring their sexualities when they are good and ready to do so. Certainly we should punish any coercive relations, but I don't think we as a nation should make a blanket statement about the inappropriateness of these relations just because of an age differential. Human psychology is so complex and individualistic that reducing the rightness or wrongness of a relationship to one factor is utterly appalling.

One might say that teenagers aren't equipped with the necessary tools to avoid coercive situations -- and that may be true. However, I don't believe that teenagers lack these skills because they are somehow incapable of being instructed in these matters. Rather, I believe that the misguided notion that children are somehow more innocent than adults (despite being less socialized) is ultimately to blame. We cannot assume that a 14-year-old is some bastion of purity that is necessarily violated by sexual relations with an older person. Our teenagers need a thorough and formal sex education. Oftentimes, sexual relationships are initiated by the younger party and are a result of developmental exploration. Kids need to define themselves as sexual as well as social beings. If they choose to do so with someone who is older than their peers, within a consensual setting, and without the threat of physical harm, who are we to judge?