Even if that was the case, she as an adult should have shown the proper intelligence and responsibility to say no. When I was 13, I wanted to schtupp the girl’s basketball coach. And pretty much every other adult woman whom I wasn’t related to.
slight hijack:
Anyone remember that episode of the Beverly Hillbillys were they decided Ellie Mae was an old maid because she turned 16 and she wasn’t married? They tried to marry her off, but of course it didn’t work. Didn’t they realize she was a lesbian?
Slight Hijack?!?
Don’t shoot, what country do you want to go to?
Just to throw in a comment about the Constitutional aspect of this. Courts have upheld the notion that allowing female prison guards to strip-search male inmates can be permitted, even if male guards are not permitted to strip-search females. The logic was that male nudity before females has been been historicaly treated differently than female nudity before males, and has different cultural implications.
If, as some posters suggest, the same is true for minor sex, than it would seem possible that it is constitutional to discriminate based on the same logic.
Jack Batty,
Some country where people realize that when kids hit puberty it’s natural for them to want to have sex.
Hell, the kid could probably legally own a firearm in this country. If you say he had the moral wherewithal to take the life of another human being (or animal for that matter) you probably deserve to be shot by him.
If only we had a constitutional right to get laid!
Jack Batty wrote:
Well, that presumes that this 20-year-old woman was intelligent and mature. I’m not sure we can presume those things under the circumstances. There are plenty of stupid and immature 20-year-olds in the world, aren’t there?
Suppose for the sake of an argument that this was a mature, precocious and calculating 13-year-old hitting on an insecure and not-too-bright 20-year-old. Would that change your view of the situation?
We’ve been talking about this in purely sexual terms, but let’s reintroduce an emotional element:
Is it possible for a 20-year-old woman and a 13-year-old boy to fall in love? Does that matter to those of you who want to throw the woman in jail?
(How old were Romeo and Juliet supposed to be, by the way?)
Short answer: no.
It seems to me that 13-year-olds should not be taken advantage of by 20-year-olds. Regardless of the genders involved. I remember being 13. I want to get laid, I felt I had a right to get laid. But, that being said, it doesn’t mean that I, or most 13 year olds, in my opinion, are emotional capable of handling that kind of situation.
If that “not-too-bright” 20 year old broke any other law, he would still be guilty. Unless we want to get into insanity defenses, which I don’t think we do.
Would you feel moral outrage if this was legal? In spain the age of consent is 12. I’m sure this kind of thing happens in Spain all the time. Does anyone have a problem with what happens it Spain.
I feel no moral outrage. It doesn’t matter to me what the ages of the participants are as long as they are both past puberty.
I think i’ve told this story before but…
In the 1930s when my grandfather was 13 his father (my great-grand father) died. My grandfather dropped out of school in the 7th grade to get a job and support his mother and 3 sisters. Twelve years later, when he was 26 he married my grandmother who was 14 at the time. They stayed married their entire lives and had 3 children.
I know this exact thing happened to by brother twice. Once when he was 14 he got a 30 year old girl to sleep with him by getting her drunk, and once when he was 16 he got a (really dumb) 26 year old girl to sleep with him by convincing her he was a college student.
And yet, ironically, in each of these situations, it is the woman who is risking jail time.
(Depending on the state. Some states have 18 as the age of consent.)
In your OP you mentioned sexual predation as a motive for the law. If you’re trying to argue here that sexual predation is only criminal when one gender pursues it, I’d say that’s incredibly sexist, even ignorant.
Suppose, for the sake of argument, it was a mature, precocious and calculating 13-year old girl hitting on an insecure and not-too-bright male 20-year-old. We expect the male to be careful about ascertaining the age of the girl involved, so I think it’s perfectly reasonable to expect women to do it to.
I was sexually active with girls my own age before I was 16, so I guess that makes me guilty of statutory rape. I suppose I’m not the only one that violated the law in this manner! But this wasn’t sexual predation of any kind. As a 15-year-old, i’d have considered lowering the age of consent pretty reasonable. If I had 15-year old kids, I think I’d feel differently.
Sex laws aside, you seem to be trying to make the case in general that in some cases the law is inadequate to the situation. I think this is true for a lot of laws.
I’d think, though, that we’d want to make a case for modifying the law to handle these situations rather than just ignoring it.
Most states have rules that prevent teenagers having sex with each other from going to jail for it. In Texas they have something called ‘The 4 Year Rule’ - if the participants are 4 years apart in age or less, they don’t get prosecuted - so if you are 19 and have sex with your 15 year old girlfriend, it’s OK.
I think the reason why we are seeing this hypocrisy in this thread is that people think of sex as something the male wants and the female gives in to - a 20 year old male with a 13 year old girl is seen as rape, while a 20 year old female with a 13 year old boy is just a case of a boy getting lucky.
For those of you who think it was OK because 13 year old boys are always eager to have sex, how would you have felt about it if it was a 20 year old man with a 13 year old boy? Most gay men know they are gay before puberty, so it stands to reason a 13 year old boy might be very willing to have sex with a 20 year old man, is that still acceptable?
Growing up, I knew lots of people in their late teens or later having sex with people in their early teens. I knew a girl who was 12 but very mature for her age who would actively pursue older boys, and would lie about her age (usually claimed to be 16). I knew a 19 year old guy who defended his having sex with an 11 year old by saying ‘she looked 13’. I knew a mother in her thirties who seduced many of the teenage boys in the neighborhood, including one who was 14. It happens all the time and though the laws do get used sometimes, they aren’t preventing it - but as long as they ARE being enforced, they need to be enforced fairly. She needs to go to trial. The judge may decide she doesn’t deserve the full penalty because of certain circumstances, just as a judge can decide a 20 year old man might not deserve the full sentence for having sex with a 13 year old girl - but it would be wrong for her to not go to trial.
It’s really tricky to set age limits in our laws, but it is somewhat necessary - true, one could get rid of the laws saying a minor cannot give consent and only press rape charges when it is obvious that the younger party was forced into it, but there will always be another case with an even younger participant who gave consent - hell, I was capable of having an erection when I was 11 and would have been easy to manipulate into the sack, would that have been OK? Best we can do is set a standard and be fair about it.
From my neighborhood, several groups, from school, camp, even my relatives, were urging me to have sex with someone This occured from the age of 10 through my adulthood. That’s right, starting at 10 years old. Today, it is generally well-known in my neighborhood that I’m still a virgin at my adult age, and 9 year-old kids would laugh at me about it as I walk by. I would ask them, “Aren’t you virgins, too?”, and they would say, “Hell no.”, then recount their escapaes in school. I just have to shake my head and move on.
ren wrote:
Sorry, but men and women are different. We can try to make them the same under the law, we can rear them in the same environment, but men and women still are different. Ask my sister, who tried to raise her kids without imposing traditional gender roles on them. The girl still wound up choosing to play with dolls, and the boys still wound up playing army.
Men are more agressive (on average). (There are exceptions, of course.) I would argue that men are much more likely to engage in predatory sexual behavior than women. Compare the number of sex crime convictions and you’ll find that the offenders are overwhelmingly male.
Your error is in presuming that just because the woman is older, she is the agressor, and that she is engaging in “predation.” I would argue that, given the aggressive nature of men generally, it is just as likely that the boy initiated the sexual conduct.
Oh, and as for the “ignorant” crack, lets drop the ad hominem attacks and try our hands at logical argument, shall we? Come on. You can do it.
Men and women, of course, are different emotionally and mentally, however, I have known many a woman to aggressively pursue sexual contact.
The judge does have the option to buffer any punishment, but there will be some, unless the charges are dropped. However, if the parents of the boy have not pressed them, the DA will. When I was in HS, it was the ‘in’ thing for girls in junior high to go after guys in senior high or college. I even recall many a movie of the times being based on themes of high school girls falling madly in love with or gaining status by dating college guys.
The rule of thumb used to be for a girl to find a guy 6 years older than her, supposedly in order to match maturity levels.
Times change.
spoke-, of course men and women are different. And I fully agree that, in general, men are more sexually aggresive than women.
If you were just trying to make the point that the younger of the two could be the more aggresive/predatory, I also agree with that possiblity.
My point is, so what if it’s possible, or even more probable, for the male to have made the first move. That doesn’t mean women can’t, or should be given more leeway, or treated as though it was a special case, or have any less responsibility to look out for this situation than men do.
I’m not sure you’re actually saying that sexual predation is only criminal (or even just more criminal) when one gender pursues it, so maybe I’m overreacting, but if you are, I stick by what I said: I think that’s incredibly sexist, even ignorant.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by iampunha *
Newsflash: men can be raped. By women.
if he was “raped” by this woman, how could she become pregnant. I understand that Males have to have an ERECTION before penetration can occur. If this be the case, and and young male was “raped” by this woman, would this not be consenting sex; albeit that the male was under the age of LEGAL consent?
Men can and have been forced to have an erection at gunpoint. So an erection does not automatically mean the man was not raped.