argh I love feminist blogs but then I'll read something...

...totally weird and hypocritical from an otherwise reputable website and I'll get all confused and start to suspect that seemingly enlightened people are actually not self-aware and could even have perpetrated abuse without realising it. It really, really freaks me out and sends me into a confused panic.

So, this is the article I read:
http://www.xojane.com/relationships/im-not-cougar

'It Happened To Me: I Dated An Underage Guy'

Basically, the author recounts that when she was 23 she dated - and, implies, slept with - a 17-year-old. Not only did she do it once, after the end of that relationship she did it again with another high schooler!! I mean, I'm an absolute idiot, who is clearly remarkable good at self-justifying hideous behaviour, but even I knew after dating a high schooler in my early 20s (and I was two years younger than her) that I had crossed an inexcusable line that I would never repeat. And the author writes that it 'happened' to her, as though she wasn't the adult who made the decision to pursue an inappropriate relationship with a child!!

Now, I was expecting that the comments would point out that this is statutory rape and that someone underage categorically cannot consent and, as such, the author is a child rapist and this is a matter for the law. Even not thinking legally, the author writes: "When we broke up, it was brutal. I was a full-blown drunk by then, and I put him through a living hell I think I am still paying my penance for." So, at the very least, it should like she, as an adult woman, subjected a child to emotional abuse.

However, instead of reacting with horror or anger, the vast, vast majority of the commentators said that the age difference was fine and that, in many cases, they had done the same.

This really confused and disturbed and even angered me because it was partly through reading xojane that I came to realise the fully horror and severity of statutory rape and that it cannot be differentiated from any other kind of rape. I'd spent several years making excuses for myself saying 'It's ok that my ex-girlfriend was 16 because it's the age of consent in most of the world and even most of the states and I was only a few years older and she was only a week away from 17 when we actually had sex etc. etc.' But after reading Emily McCombs excellent posts on the subject, I realised all this was #######4 and that if a child is under the age of consent, then they categorically cannot consent, and any 'sex' which would otherwise be consensual, is absolutely not consensual and is rape.

Obviously, no-one wants to be a child rapist, but it is frustrating to think that at 21 I was two years younger than the author of this article and that she is not being labelled as a rapist by an otherwise very progressive community. It's not even that I think that feminists don't believe in female-on-male rape because they obviously do and just get frustrated when men bring it up because that tends to be derailing and men are the abusers in the vast majority of cases, so that is where the focus should currently be (and rightly so).

But this is a specific article from the point of view of an admitted statutory rapist and only one other commentator calls them out for it. erglebergleergleblergle i do not understand this world

Just goes to show not that many people are fussed about "statutory rape" when it's a 16/17 year old. It certainly doesn't raise my eyebrows even slightly (the consensual act of having sex with a 16+ year old I mean). I don't care what the law says, I think 16 year olds are (or should be at least) old enough to consent and, although I tend to be attracted to older women, I wouldn't think anything bad about a guy my age sleeping with a 16 year old.

Ok, I might tease them a bit , but if they're both happy then what harm has been done, seriously?

I just can't get on board with absolutist, purely legal-based judgements. The law is only there to capture the essence of a vague, pre-existing moral consensus, but to do so it must draw arbitrary lines and these lines will always be crossed whether we have the death penalty, or some myopic (and highly lucrative!!!) "Megan's Law" scheme or not.

The important thing to me is that the different categories of rape are clearly defined. I would wholeheartedly welcome a legal distinction between post-pubescent and pre-pubescent rape, for example. No, it's not a nice subject to dissect up like that, but I wouldn't look at someone who has sex with a 15 year old in the same way I would someone who has sex with an 8 year old.

How could I not make that distinction? One is more consensual than the other, surely. That doesn't mean a 15 year old has the FULL capacity to consent, but they without doubt have more capacity to consent and consider the repercussions of their actions than an 8 year old.

If they don't I think it says more about our education system than individual biology and psychology.

Maybe Emily McCombs just doesn't want to admit these real world, non-legal distinctions openly on her blog...

I really like McCombs as a writer, but I think she extrapolates somewhat from her own horrible personal experiences. It sounds like the men who she slept with as a teenager really were predatory, but in the cases of statutory rape she endured, she was 13, not 17, and they sounded horrific and non-consensual even irrespective of her age. It's been incredibly courageous for her to address her experiences as a young teen and I think part of being a good blogger is being able to use striking rhetoric and I think this is one of the reasons why 'xojane' gets the attention that other blogs don't. There are shocking columns and gossipy columns and it's all just far more readable than 'Yes Means Yes' or even 'The Curvature', but it's more committed to feminist than 'Jezebel'.

It frustrates me that as a writer McCombs can say things like 'every man who slept with me as a teenager was a paedophile', but then publish work like the above. I thought her article on predatory artists was pretty amazing, but I also wasn't sure if it was right to categorize, for instance, Polanski, Elvis, Rob Lowe and Dickens in the same boat. I think Polanski did something evil, forcefully raping a 13-year-old child against her will after drugging her and plying her with alcohol and it upsets me that so many people are willing to give him a free pass (even if, admittedly, the whole case was handled very badly by the judge and Polanski has legitimate demons). He should have been put away for a long time. Elvis clearly had a fixation on younger girls, generally around 14. I don't think this was appropriate, but the accounts from all the women I have read (recounted in Baby, Let's Play House) suggest that he wasn't so much as interesting in sex as he was cuddling. He basically liked slumber parties. The man was strange, certainly, but I don't get the impression that he ever raped anyone, unlike Polanski, although one might consider the early relationship with Priscilla to be a form of grooming. Dickens' mistress was 18 so she was - certainly by Victorian standards - a young adult. I think Dickens was a jerk (especially for his shoddy treatment of his wife) and that a man in his late 50s should never be shacking up with a woman of that age, but I also think there is a massive difference between an 18-year-old and a 13-year-old and that it is disingenuous to conflate the two. Rob Lowe was scuzzy to record himself having sex with two young women on a one-night-stand, but since he picked up the girls at an over-18s club, I don't think that the fact that one of the girls turned out to be 16 makes him a child predator. Deeply regrettable and stupid, certainly, but I think his lack of intent matters morally, if not legally.

I believe ideology is useful and that it is totally understandable to be very unwavering when it comes to rape and child abuse. But I think that if, as a writer (or indeed, as a society) one is to take that stance, then it is important to be consistent. Personally, I don't think that Bree Davis did something monstrously awful. Ill-advised, probably, and that the break-up with her first 17-year-old boyfriend was awful testifies to that fact. I certainly wouldn't want to have her thrown on the sex offenders register for life based on her own account given here! But McCombs writes so stridently about the issue of statutory rape, that it seems like a massive oversight for the article to be published uncritically on xojane. I suspect, in fact, that Emily recognises that what happened to her a a young teen was far more horrific and unforgivable than anything perpetrated by Bree Davis, which will have informed her choice to publish. But I think her ideological alignment means that she wouldn't voice that openly.

as you say, 'No, it's not a nice subject to dissect up like that, but I wouldn't look at someone who has sex with a 15 year old in the same way I would someone who has sex with an 8 year old.' I feel very strongly that my relationship with a 16-year-old was unacceptable, but in my heart I don't think that the relationship was anywhere near as traumatic for her as if she had been an 8-year-old. Moreover, my ex has stated herself that she doesn't feel like a victim of child molestation. As someone who was turning 17, she seems to feel that she was able to make her choices, which while ill-advised, weren't simply a case of adult manipulation.

Personally, i take some small comfort from the fact that a lot of psychology and sociology journals seem to define 'child abuse' as being under-16 with a greater than 5 years age difference. Since my ex was 16 / 17 and we were within 5 years of one another, our relationship wouldn't be counted within that data, in spite of the legal classification of statutory rape. Some days that does help keep me going.

It's tricky, as I can totally understand why people are vary wary to make any distinctions between different kinds of rape or abuse. But I also feel like a lot of people who say 'Rape is Rape' have different conceptions of what rape is. I should imagine that some people who say that (particularly male activists) may have committed statutory rape themselves or put emotional pressure on a partner to have sex with them when younger. There have been people on Tumblr who talk about torturing all rapists to death and then when anyone user has asked whether they would include statutory rape of older teens by partners who were close in age, they're like, "What? No! Of course not."

Everyone assumes that everyone else is on the same page and using language in the same way as them.

Yes it helps if we're all on the same page when discussing these issues.

Rape is rape, but not all rape is the kind you want someone hanged for. Some rape is at most a "tuttable" offence (e.g. 25 on 16, consensual).

Personally, I don't want to see the predatory rapists hanged. I want to see them helped as far as possible. But that's a whole other debate and I'm not likely going to have many sympathise with what many colourfully refer to as a "bleeding heart liberal" position.

It sounds like a good portion of the feminist blogosphere has been plagued with hypocrisy and/or double standards. I'm sure the same can be said for the socialist blogosphere, or wherever there is a cause that attempts to so strictly regulate the most undesirable yet irresistible impulses that exist in human nature - control, power, lust, greed, debauchery...

A lot of progress has been made, but I don't assume for one second that those who sincerely aid that progress are infallible.

Progress and hypocrisy can co-exist, so I have no worries about that, but if we do stand for a cause and want to get on the defensive (whether for the sake of our cause or our ego), let's not react so blinded by emotion that we lose our sense of critical thinking. Let's be honest.

Honesty like: rape comes in all different shapes and sizes. They are not all the same. Not all legally defined rapists deserve to be put on the sex offenders register. Not all legally defined rapists are any more danger to your daughter/son than the neighbour next door. Not all legally defined rapists are sexual perverts, promiscuants or predators.

As I've said before, the numbers are numbers. The real particulars of each individual situation determine the morality of the act. And the two guys the lady describes in the article are, if the author can be trusted, relatively in control of their situations.

I do believe some of the commentators are biased because of the whole gender roles thing, but ignore that. It's not relevant.

Honestly, the lesson here isn't some melodrama about how society or the legal system have flaws in their judgments (the absolutely do and always will), but rather that the specific individuals and circumstances matter.

Even relating this to my own situation, when things started and I was introduced to the guy I would later send to jail, I was hoping he was going to be an upstanding gentleman and a nice guy. But I asked him some questions, got him talking, and dissected that he was exactly the predatory mess nobody wanted but everyone expected.

Thanks guys. I mean, reading Bree Davis' article, it's not like I thought: "She deserved to be killed! Or tortured!" ... My reaction was far more, "Hmm that sounds somewhat inappropriate, but probably basically ok. She should take a bit more responsibility for her actions though, rather than writing as though dating two 17-year-olds in her 20s just happened to her". And, of course, I felt annoyed and upset (and kind of personally hurt because her articles prompted a lot of self-reflection) that Emily McCombs, as editor, would allow the article on xojane without some kind of disclaimer or comment, consider her previous writing on statutory rape.

I think what I find hard is that I believe a lot of people do make intuitive distinctions (I mean, not even thinking about my own relationship; I have remained friends with people who slept with 14-year-olds when they were 16) when it comes to statutory rape, but feel very anxious about admitting this. Like, I think it's possible for two crimes to be taken seriously without them being conflated. I wouldn't judge a teenager who murdered their bully in the same way as I would judge someone who tortured a small child to death, for instance, even though both would be premeditated murder. Similarly, I would judge someone in their early 20s in a relationship with a 16 or 17-year-old far less harshly than if they believed themselves to be in a “relationship” with a 12-year-old, which would very likely prompt me to call the cops.

I'm not good at applying these distinctions to myself though. As previously mentioned, one of the only things that gives me some respite from the anxiety is the fact that a lot of psychological and sociological research defines child abuse as being perpetrated upon children younger than 16 with the perpetrator 5 or more years older than the victim. Since my girlfriend was turning 17 (and then, of course, 17) and I am less than 5 years older than her, that provides me with a little reassurance. Having another 'official' discourse (science and academia, in this case, rather than law) define my actions as less monstrously evil... not that peep-on-peer abuse isn't awful in-and-of itself, but it certainly seems less irretrievably monstrous than child rape... is somewhat useful for calming my mind.

I wouldn't quite agree with the sentiment that “Some rape is at most a "tuttable" offence (e.g. 25 on 16, consensual)”, partly because the law defines consent (the notion of 'de facto' consent is problematic, although the fact that the majority of 16-year-olds are legally deemed able to consent, makes me feel that AoC laws should be universal across a country) but also because I think rape is always a serious crime. That said, I do tentatively agree with that concept that “not all rape is the kind you want someone hanged for”. I would not like to see Bree Davis hung and, in my heart, I don't really feel that I deserve to be hung either (either though I believe my ex was probably more uncomfortable in the relationship than Davis' two partners, though the break-up fuelled by drinking sounds worrying at best). I'd like to think that the majority of the public wouldn't want to see me executed or tortured either. I'm not very good with not knowing.

It does tend to be the case that someone will ask a really vague question like "do sex offenders deserve a second chance?" and of course we (and dare I say most people with two brain cells to rub together) know that "sex offender" covers everything from child rape to peeing in public, whereas there will be some who automatically picture the predatory pervert hiding in the bushes, prompting a response of something along the lines of: "SECOND CHANCE? HELL NO!!11!1".

Basically, the kind of hysterical nonsense over which the "Pedogeddon" Brass Eye special so bravely attempted to raise our consciousnesses.

I actually find myself getting quite irate at these people. I just can't help it.

And then there is the inevitable call for medieval style capital punishments. It's just pathetic that we can't seem to have a reasoned, rational discussion about this subject without punishment coming up. The US has a serious prison overpopulation issue and very little in the way of science based, rehabilitative programs. The UK isn't much better. We seemingly refuse to take lessons from countries that have the lowest recidivism rates (Norway, Sweden, Netherlands).

Everyone seems to have a "throw away the key and let em rot" mentality. I honestly feel like I'm going insane sometimes.

Does anyone actually care about the real, evidence based causes of and solutions to crime?

The part of me that likes to believe that people write and think in good faith believes that the calls for harsh retribution involving torture etc. comes from a desire to 'do right by' the victim i.e. that sexual offences are so uniquely hideous and so shattering for a survivor, that it is only right to make the perpetrator suffer equivalent to what the victim has suffered, if whatsoever possible.

This doesn't really explain the fixation with Hell that some people have since, as we've discussed before, Hell is always an infinitely harsh punishment for finite crimes. Sometimes I think that maybe some people just don't engage with what Hell entails i.e. they can only imagine the limits of human pain on a mortal realm and can't comprehend the notion that in a metaphysical realm such pain could be amplified infinitely. Likewise, they may not fully engage with the notion of temporal infinity. Personally, I just can't imagine anger and justice winning out over entropy over billions and billions of years.

Anyway, a bit of a digression. People probably like the idea of Hell because it puts everything in its right place. The deserving go to Heaven and the undeserving get their just desserts.

The problem is it seems rare for a person to self-identify as a criminal or a sinner, especially if they evade justice and thus evade labeling. It seems like there are a lot of self-styled 'good guys' who are not above coercing or emotionally bullying a partner into sex, but will never see themselves as abusers or rapists. My current partner's ex - without going into any details - treated my partner very badly. I consider him a worse human being than me and I do not make that judgement lightly. Yet online he characterized himself as the victim in the relationship, sold down the river because he simply loved too much... it was all really gross and ridiculous. He is staggeringly self-aware, but it is frustrating to think that he'll probably never do anything explicitly violent enough to secure him with a conviction, so he can continue seeing himself as a good guy, when he is anything but. I am glad that you docked the bloke in your story, Ashlar, since maybe it'll force him to a realization that he's a creepy and predatory jerk.

Maybe if people aggressively judge others they can put off judging themselves?

I do like that Brass Eye episode. I think it misses the mark a few times and has some daft and some plain offensive jokes, but its main satirical points still stand. I like that Jez North clearly isn't much of a risk to anyone after being released from prison, since he's essentially brain-dead, but the crowd still burn him alive despite. Also, the 'Not Ready Yet' song at the end is especially cutting as I suspect the young woman who is 'ready' at the end is deliberately modeled on Charlotte Church due to the grotesque way the tabloid press sexualised her while she was still underage and kept talking about the time left until she turned 16. I guess I used to believe that 16 was the magical turning age between childhood and young adulthood, but that's because I grew up in Britain... if I'd grown up in America, I would have seen the age as 18, I imagine.

For the record, my favourite Brass Eye episode is probably 'Drugs'. Not that I'm particularly interested in drugs, but I think it had the a high density of jokes and the hoax went the furthest (all the way to parliament!)

-- Thu Jun 26, 2014 3:16 am --

Gah I am an unhappy soul sometimes.

-- Thu Jun 26, 2014 3:16 am --

Well, quite a lot of the time.