I raised this question in this thread – http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=346127 – but it was never really answered. Suppose, on the one hand, we have an adult woman who had sex with a 14- or 15-year-old boy, and on the other, an adult man who had sex with a 14- or 15-year-old girl. Should the two cases be treated differently?
Assuming that the only reason for treating such cases as crimes at all is to protect the interest of the minor (and it was not always so – there once was a high social value placed on “family honor,” which attached only to the virginity of girls, but I hope we’re long past that kind of thinking), then it seems to me a relevant answer can come only from psychology. Is it more psychologically damaging to a teenage girl to have sex with an adult than it is to a teenage boy? Or is it not? Do psychologists have an opinion?
For purposes of this debate let us disregard the risk of pregnancy to the girl, and also the question of whether the sex is truly consensual; let us assume it is consensual and no pregnancy results. Should such behavior be discouraged more strongly, should the girl’s lover/seducer/whatever be punished more harshly, than if their genders were reversed?
We know that males are more likely to commit crimes if they are out violating curfews, but it’s not kosher, and should be thoroughly unconstitutional, to punish males more severely if they violate a city curfew during a natural disaster or something. Our legal system punished people for what they did, without reference to who they are. (Reprehensible and indefensible exceptions exist for minors, but that’s no excuse for expanding the discrimination)
Informally, in our own heads?
Well, can’t prevent folks from holding whatever attitudes they do hold, but in my opinion folks who think young females are intrinsically more damaged by sex when they are underage need to examine their own attitudes about sex the activity itself, and sex (gender) itself as well.
I would think that teenage girls tend to bond with someone that they sleep with. From my experience women tend to treat sex as an emotional thing for the most part.
Guys just want to get their rocks off, so to speak.
But do they go through the whole bonding thing because from the time they are very young, they’re told to, or because it’s innately part of being female?
Perhaps if we stopped bombarding girls with the message that they will be damaged by sex with older men, they would not be so likely to be damaged by it.
And it’s not true for every girl that she will bond and go through all that love stuff, some (like me) want to get their rocks off. And some guys are going to bond hard and fast and be very damaged.
Legally I think there’s no benefit in discriminating based on the sex of the teenaged person.
What about if the goal is to punish aberrant behavior? You could argue that female sex offenders are just as sick (or even more so, taking numbers into account) as males and thus should be treated the same. It’s the same crime on their end, whether or not the victim “feels” it as much. If a murderer only targeted the suicidal, would their crime be lesser? Since when should the biological or psychological make-up of the victim count for sentencing? Sounds a lot like the “well, he asked for it” defense.
Also I know that if I had a son and he was molested by a female teacher, I sure as hell wouldn’t be high-fiving him and handing out cigars. I’d be out for blood.
Isn’t it a little disingenous to rule out the major consequences and then try to discuss?
FWIW, I would argue that, even under the above set of rule-outs, males ought to be punished more severely than females for statutory rape. Men tend to be more sexually aggressive, therefore ISTM that you need harsher punishment to deter men from seducing inappropriately young females than you do to deter women from the same. And if you don’t accept the premises as listed above, the consequence of irresponsible sex falls more heavily on females than on males.
Why on earth should punishing aberrant behaviour be a goal?
We’re having a son. If I find out he as a teenager scored a hot twenty year some girl and screwed her brains out, I would say atta’boy. I have daughters, and if I found out some sleazy older man had sex with one of them while they were underage I would seek him out and whack him on the head with a baseball bat – possible kill him, depending on the age of the daughter. Alternatively if I found out some adult man had sex with my underage boy, I would seek him out and kill him.
Yeah. I have double standards. Also in the news: boys are not girls, and girls are not boys. And things that may harm the one, may leave the other unaffected. That’s just my personal opinion, which I realise some feel deeply disgusting, and not something I propose to legislate after.
I am a psychologist. Psychology can provide some of the information you are looking for, but questions about whether these cases should be treated equally, or whether the man should be treated more harshly are more general.
As a clinical psychologist, I would first note that one would need to approach, at least therapeutically, such issues on a case by case basis. I’ve seen a range of reactions, but it is not uncommon for such circumstances to result in no noteworthy difficulties or impairments for the adolescent. The literature focusing on statutory rape is somewhat thin, because greater concern is given to other forms of rape and sexual abuse, but some evidence suggests that boys and girls suffer equally in terms of consequences. One study of girls whose first sexual experience was with a much older man found that when the girl was 11-12 years of age, she tended to experience more problems later on, but when she was between 13 to 15, the problems were fairly mild (consisting primarily of truancy) and for those above 15, there were no significant problems reported.
Speaking for myself, I cannot say that differences in societal responses to statutory rape between genders should be any different on the basis of the potential for harmful psychological or behavioral outcomes for the individual.
Girls are not boys. While this may seem obvious, let’s spell out a few things explicitly: boys tend to be taller, stronger, and mature slower. I don’t think it’s unreasonable, in either a moral or legal sense, to have differing rules for girls and boys in general. I don’t have a problem with having a lower bar of proof when a man hits a woman than when a woman hits a man. I don’t have a problem with having stricter rules against underage sex with girls than underage sex with boys.
But I do raise two objections to the current system.
The first is on a practical level - I disagree with this sort of “magical day” rule where all of a sudden a female changes from a girl (who must be protected against evil males looking to take advantage of her) to a woman (who has every right to make her own decision). I much prefer rules that have some sort of age gap to ensure that an 18.1 year old sleeping with a 17.9 year old doesn’t turn into a legal quagmire. Yes, I realize that laws need hard dates, but we can soften the transition, by, for example, saying that an age gap of, say, 3 years or more would require a low bar of evidence to prosecute, an age gap of 2 years or more would require a high bar of evidence to prosecute, and an age gap of under 2 years would essentially be legalized.
(Note: I believe some states already have this sort of age-gap system, but not my state)
The second is more on a moral level - the law doesn’t really address the problem, which is that older men (and women) behave like a ravenous pack of wolves lurking around the sheep pen. The current laws do nothing but build walls around the sheep, and do very little to combat the fact that there are wolves lurking around at all. I have no good suggestions on how to solve this problem, but until it’s solved, I don’t think any sort of law will really help. You can lower/raise the age of consent and all it will do is make a different group of people the forbidden fruit.
This is a tendency, some boys are going to be as girly as the girliest girls and vice versa.
You’re also talking about by birth. Height is a difficult one, but there is no law that says a person cannot consciously change his or her own personilty or have it changed for them by upbringing. Both me and my brother are very different people from when we were young and for both of us, I know, this was due to personal choice not just a change in hormones.
So saying that the sexes probably are different still doesn’t have much to do eith anything in a country which wants to allow for individuality.
In general the victims of these wolves are the ones who may become wolves when they grow up. The more you can cut down on their number, the fewer the number of wolves there will be in the next generation.
Anyways, as a response to the OP itself: Legally, as stated, I don’t see any feasible way to treat the cases differently. As to whether it would be more important to protect young girls than young boys, I would vote for a toss-up. Young girls may feel more powerless, tending to be smaller and more caring than a boy. However, they will also generally tend to be more mature and more likely to have talked about sex, having sex, or what had happened to their female friends. Boys may talk about sex in a bravado “Yeah man I’m going to peg me some poosay!” but not really ever discuss with each other the more realistic physical and emotional realities of it. So if a boy is seduced at too young an age, he might be less intimidated by it, having the whole bravado “Yeah baby!” thing going, but anything that does bothers him and that he can’t deal with yet at his maturity level (again, which is lower than a girl’s) is going to sit there and gnaw at him without him having any way to dispell of it except to punch things.
Yeah!! It’s really like super cool you know. I know it’s news to you and will probably surprise the heck out of you, but Wendy doesn’t have a small weiner like Peter. She’s got this little crack instead, which you can stuff things into. Real practical and all, especially when you’re having a picnic. You should check it out someday. It’s super cool.
It has nothing to do with “he asked for it”. Let’s assume that following a relationship with an older person, a teen happens to be happir and more balanced. Where is the “aberrant behavior” here? The adult should be punished for the awful crime of making himself/herself and his/her partner happier?
If relationship with minors is punished, it’s beause we assume that it’s likely to cause harm to them, and that supposedly, we’re unable to tell apart the cases where harm was done and the cases where no harm was done (including potential long-term damage). So, if an adult is punished (even in an hypothetical situation where the relationship was beneficial to the minor), it’s indeed in order to protect the minors (either the one involved because s/he doesn’t know better, either other minors who would easily preyed upon and be harmed by similar relationship with adults.
If you think that the punishement is enacted because the behavior is “aberrant”, then you’re punishing on the basis of the “eek factor” (a 15 yo sleeping with a 40 yo? That’s disgusting!!). “I think it’s aberrant” isn’t a basis for punishment lacking evidences that the behavior is harmful or at least potentially harmful.
As for the OP question, I believe that either every specific case should be judged on its own merits or all cases should be judged in the same way. If you want the adult not to be charged with statutory rape (for instance, the jury can choose between statutory rape, some other kind of minor sexual offense or acquital) when the minor was enthusiastically consentant and obviously not harmed, then fine but the sex of the victim/perpetrator shouldn’t be the basis of it (all males assumed to be enthousistically consentant when they had sex with an adult, all females assumed to be helpless victims of abuse in the same situation). The basis should be the actual situation and circumstances presented to the court.
Then, given that males generally have a more agressive behavior, should they also be punished more harshly than females for essentially all crimes (murder, assault, even speeding on the highway…)?
Besides, I can’t agree with this principle. I’m quite not agressive, and I don’t see why I should be punished more harshly because you and some other guys are. That’s your problem, not mine. People’s punishment should be dependant on actual actions, not on them belong to a subset of the population which, on average, has a greater tendancy to be involved in criminal behavior (I suppose you can easily imagine what kind of consequences such a principle could have).
And what if your daughter is enthousistic about the experience (and in previous threads on the same topic, a number of female posters mentionned they had sexual experience with older men that they didn’t regret one iota) and your hypothetical son felt into depression 6 months after the facts (As a teenager, I never had any interest in any older woman, regardless how attractive. They were just plain old past 18 or so. I remember a female math teacher in high school who heavily flirted with some of my peers during a school trip. I found that creepy)?
On the basis of “boys are not girls, and girls are not boys”, would you tell your daughter : “Shut up! You’ve been severely harmed, you just don’t realize it, and stop crying because the guy you love is going to jail!” and your son “Shut up! Be a man and enjoy the experience instead of pretending you’d rather not have it! And stop crying because you’re distressed that this creepy woman is still teaching your class!”?
Can’t it occur to you that people are different and not all males and all females (be it the adult or the teen) have the same motivations and behaviors and react in the same way in similar circumstances?
Since you think that boys and girls shouldn’t be treated the same and that boys mature slower, shouldn’t you state that sexual misconduct with a minor boy should be punished more harshly (since he’s more immature, hence it’s easier to take advantage of him) than sexual misconduct with a minor girl (more mature, hence more able to decide for herself)?
I’m not sure how being taller and stronger is relevant regarding consensual sex…
What if some sleazy older woman had sex with your son, while your daughter scored a hot twenty year some guy and screwed his brains out?
Not every female who has sex with minors is a hot 20 something, not every male who has sex with minors is a sleazy 40 year old. Also, I’m not sure the attractiveness of the aggressor is very relevant to the potential harm done by it.
There was an odd article about this issue in Sunday’s New York Times. It addressed women sleeping with underage males and stated that many psychologists do not think consensual sex is harmful. They noted that the legal age of consent was not based upon any psychological factors.
The oddity was that it did not address men sleeping with underage women except in passing, even though the thrust of the article made addressing that issue logical. I have my suspicions why they did not.
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