Imprison The Children To Protect The Children
Conveniently going along with the “protect the younger woman” theme we’ve been having here lately, there’s a news story that’s very instructive on the destruction culture causes to innocent people when we get all uptight about sexual issues. I will summarize what happened…
Two high school girls in Florida, ages 17 and 14, were dating.
The split second the 17 year-old girl turned 18, the parents of the other girl (now 15) instantly filed criminal charges against her. After all, she’s 18 now, she’s an “adult” now, and she’s having sex with a “minor” who is “only” 15. OMG That’s RAPE!  That evil adult is RAPING that poor innocent child. Something Must Be Done™. To Protect The Children™.
The 18 years-and-one-day-old girl, not even done with her senior year in high school, was handcuffed, arrested, and thrown in jail. She is now facing criminal charges. Her “reduced” plea deal includes the fact that she will now forever be registered as a sex offender. That means she will never be able to teach or volunteer with children, cannot live near a playground, etc.
For the rest of her life.
Not to mention the fact that if this had happened a few miles away in South Carolina, where age of consent is 16 instead of 18, all of this would have been perfectly fine and perfect legal.
This is the evil that occurs when people get all freaky about PROTECTING THE CHILDREN™.
This is what happens when good, honest, “evolved”, progressive people get hypersensitive about underage people having sex. This is when liberals (and conservatives too, but most of this outrage comes from liberal moms) end up looking like the Puritans of the 1600s. (Though even the fucking Puritans were more liberal. Puritan women were getting married at around age 13. )
As I’ve said before, we love to pat ourselves on the back about how “evolved” we all are compared to those cro-magnon religious conservative types of yore. Yet, as I’ve demonstrated before, in many ways we’re actually worse. More conservative. More uptight about sex.
This “underage” thing is a perfect example. If you’re 17 years old and have sex with a 15 year old, totally fine. But the split second a certain date passes on the calendar, now you’re a criminal and a sex offender. Same goes for if you’re a twenty-something guy. Touch that woman who is 17 years and eleven months old, you’re a criminal and a pervert and a god damn sex offender, you sick twisted fuck. But just wait a week or two until her 18th birthday, then fuck the shit out of her in every orifice. Totally acceptable, totally legal, good job, high five.
It’s insane, we all know it, but no one will lift a finger to change it, because society has become a bunch of politically correct pussies.
Here’s what should be done:
1. First item, top of the list, everyone needs to calm the fuck down. The majority of people these days start having sex around age 14. I’m not saying you have to like it, but I am saying you have to accept it and deal with it.
I speak here as the father of a 15 year-old girl. She’s going to be having sex very soon (if she hasn’t already). If I can learn to deal with that reality (and I have), then you can too. If your teenage daughter has consensual sex with a 16 year-old guy, or a 19 year-old guy, or a 22 year-old guy, or a 25 year-old guy, or 19 year-old girl, none of that makes any difference. The ages and genders are all irrelevant. It’s sex.
Calm down. Deal with it. It’s okay. The world will not come to an end. No one is going to be irrevocably hurt or damaged assuming the sex was consensual, and it always is in these stupid statutory “rape” cases. (Yes, pregnancy could occur, but I’m more against teenage pregnancy than you are, and I’ve already covered that topic in detail. We’re not talking about babies here. We’re talking about sex.)
2. Legal age of consent should be 16. Having age of consent at age 18 is simply insane. These days, by the time the typical girl turns 18, she’s already had multiple sexual partners, and is more sexually experienced than I was at age 30. Again, there is nothing you can do to stop this reality. It’s happening whether you like it or not, whether it’s legal or not.Â
So let’s be adults about this and have laws that make sense in the real world. Age of consent at age 18 is just as stupid as having marijuana illegal. All it does is waste taxpayer dollars, waste government resources, bring horrific pain and suffering to a lot of innocent people who are harming no one, and let a tiny handful of uptight anal-retentive assholes to use the force of government to oppress everyone else.
3. Have several legal categories that are less than “sex offender”. Right now, there is literally no legal status less than “sex offender” in these cases. You’re either 100% innocent, or you’re a SEX OFFENDER for the REST OF YOUR LIFE. This is insane. (I’m using that word a lot today, aren’t I?)
A 23 year-old guy having consensual sex with a 17-year-and-eleven-month-old girl is not a sex offender or child molester or a threat to his community. Nor is this poor girl this news story is about.
Have penalties for violation of age of consent (which should be 16!), be a sliding scale, starting with a very light slap on the wrist when the younger person is almost age of consent. Have punishments get more and more harsh as you approach age 13 or 12. Hey, if you fuck a 12 year-old, then yeah, you’re a fucking sex offender and a creepoid. I agree. But a consensual 17 year-old who already fucked eight other guys? Uh, no.
4. The gender of the offender or “victim” should not matter in any way whatsoever. In many states, including California, the gender of the party actually changes the punishment and the crime. To quote NWP, one of our resident attorneys over at Sedfast,
In California, 2 minors having sex is a crime, with the statutory rape charge filed against the minor who was born with a penis (even if he is younger than the minor girl), and a charge of “unlawful sexual conduct” filed against the minor who was born with a vagina. Your respective crimes depend on how you were born!
Again, insane. No law should treat men and women differently. (I’m pretty sure the Constitution has an amendment about that…something about “equal protection under the law”….oh wait….liberals and conservatives both hate the Constitution and only pay attention to the parts they like….yeah, I forgot….okay, never mind.)
This gender thing directly affects this news story. This girl is getting a lot of positive support from all over the internet (including from the Anonymous hackers). This is good and I support it. However! The only reason she’s getting this help is because she’s A) a girl and B) a lesbian. If this news story was exactly the same in every way except she was a boy, no one would give a shit. People would either shrug or look down their noses at that “sick bastard”. And he’d wind up in prison or wearing an ankle bracelet. And he’d be a “sex offender” for the REST Â OF Â HIS Â LIFE.
In many ways I’m happy about where society is going sexually. But in a few other ways, we’re regressing the other way.
Want over 35 hours of how-to podcasts on how to improve your woman life and financial life? Want to be able to coach with me twice a month? Want access to hours of technique-based video and audio? The SMIC Program is a monthly podcast and coaching program where you get access to massive amounts of exclusive, members-only Alpha 2.0 content as soon as you sign up, and you can cancel whenever you want. Click here for the details.
The sad part about this case, is that I think the real reason why the parents of the 15 year old girl pressed charges is because they probably can’t stomach the fact that there “precious-little-snowflake” is a possible lesbian or bi-sexual. This case has absolutely nothing to do with right or wrong. It’s all hurt feelings and “what-will-the-neighbors-say” nonsense.
Where is THE LAND OF THE FREE? Not on this planet.
And it all begins with the parents…
You’re wrong when you say she would have been fine in South Carolina. The age of consent in South Carolina is 16, like you said. But this girl is 15, so the 18 year old would have gotten into just as much trouble up there.
Pure insanity!
“Insanity” is exactly the right word to use for this stuff.
The sad thing though is that in a lot of cases, these laws were made because an adult man did something pretty horrible to child. The problem happens when society overreacts and creates black and white, strict liability* laws that end up being used in ways no one ever intended. Like Gandalf said in Lord of the Rings “Even the very wise cannot see all ends.”
Some other ridiculous examples:
-13 year old girl has sex with 12 year old boyfriend in Utah. Since it’s illegal to have sex with anyone under 14, they are both offenders and victims of the same “crime.” Looking on the bright side, at lease they were both charged and not just the boy like in California…
-14 year old girl in New Jersey takes nude photos of herself and uploads them to MySpace. As a result she gets charged with child pornography which could result in being labeled a sex offender.
-Similar situation in Pennsylvania when teenage girls took pictures of themselves in underwear during a slumber party which ended up on classmates cell phones. They were threatened with child pornography charges (even though no one was actually naked).
*Strict liability the part that scares me the most. From what I understand, that means you could be guilty of statutory rape even if a girl lies about her age and you thought it was legal.
From what I understand about the story you mention about the lesbian girl, when it actually started the younger girl was 14 and maybe the older was 17. In any case, the term “sexual battery” was used in the news article I read and that was one of the charges against her. That’s different from statutory rape and makes me wonder if there wasn’t some element of force.
For the parents to press charges usually its more than just an issue of two teens having sex. I do know a guy who is a registered sex offender and went to prison when he was 21 for sleeping with a 14 year old, that was his girlfriend at the time, because her parents pushed it. I was having sex with him back in the day too (he’s less than a year older than me) so I have mixed feelings about it but I’ve also been there in the house when he was sleeping with other girls that age and over 18 and nothing was ever done about it.
It’s one of those laws that lays on the books so that they can use it against someone in cases where there are other things and reasons involved for parents to be upset. Very few people give a fuck if a 15 and an 18 year old are having sex with each other, unless there is more to it than that. Some states even have laws where it is a lesser crime if the perpetrator is within a few years age difference than the minor and I think that makes more sense. I think those laws are often for parents too, so they can retain some control over the child living in their home. Remember, we get blamed for any way our kids fuck up until they are over 18 and held responsible so it’s like a way to divert that responsibility.
So in that sense, I agree with you. It’s not really the fact that two kids are having sex, that are only a few years apart, that is the problem. The real issue of “statutory rape” is often when a much older perpetrator coerces a child to have sex with him in some way or another and because rape itself is often so hard to prove and when she’s actually agreed, because she’s young and easily manipulated or afraid to say no, rather than because she WANTS to do it, they get him for “statutory rape”.
I was dating a guy, when I was 17, who was 22. He cheated on me left and right and finally with a 12 year old girl, that he got pregnant. We broke up because he not only admitted to doing this, but was rubbing it in my face and telling me she was “wild in bed”. Makes it sound like it was consensual, doesn’t it? Yet, is it really okay for a 12 yr old and a 22 year old to be having sex? Even if she wanted to? Is she old enough to make this decision responsibly? I don’t think so, and clearly neither did her parents, because they pressed charges, but nothing ever came out of that. He went to prison on some totally unrelated things. Go figure.
So I still think there should be SOME limits. Dropping the age of consent to 16 might be okay, if it’s limited to sex with individuals that are also under 21, or something like that. I’d be really leery of “allowing” 45 yr olds to have sex with girls that age if only because a lot of times it’s NOT really consensual when they do. Rape itself is hard to prove in a lot of cases and men get off scott free when they shouldn’t. So “statutory rape” helps sometimes with those cases.
Also, if you have a child gone wild, that is under 18, you are still responsible for all their fuck ups, so if they are allowed to make their own choices regarding things like sex you really have to allow them to be able to live on their own and give them more responsibility for their own actions. As it stands its the parents who have to deal with it all. If a parent is telling their teenage daughter, no you need to do xyz and be home at this curfew and whatever and her 45 year old “boyfriend” is undermining that, what can they do?
Thinking of another recent situation, my ex husband lives with his girlfriend who has 3 daughters. The youngest, who is 13, kept running off with a 30 year old man and finally was put in detention to keep her from doing so. This guy kept getting her to run off with him, because he was older and had a lot of influence. He was also a total thug, running drugs. So finally he snuck in her bedroom window when the mom was home and she caught him and was chasing after him,telling him off and he pulled a gun on her. So now that he got caught, one of his charges is “statutory rape”. He was in her bedroom having sex with her, invited, by the 13 year old.
So yeah, kids that age can want to have sex but they are irresponsible and still under the authority of parents, or supposed to be. Parents sometimes need the law to back them up on things and its often that sort of scenario that causes “statutory rape” charges to be pressed.
I had sex with plenty of over age guys when I was underage and some of it was consensual, some wasn’t. Still I never pushed a rape charge of any kind and most people don’t. The time people need it is mostly when an adult is doing like this guy that kept getting a young girl to run off or he is getting a teenager pregnant and her parents are having to deal with the consequences.
The initial reports on that story turned out to be incorrect … the details changed in subsequent stories. Kaitlyn was already18 when she began this relationship, the other girl 14. Also, she may be able to avoid registration as a sex offender because it was only a four year difference. See here:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-57585885-504083/kaitlyn-hunt-update-fla-teen-charged-over-same-sex-underage-relationship-speaks-out/
A19-year old in Florida was charged for “sexual battery” by his 17-year old ex because she was pissed off after the breakup. So “sexual battery” means nothing other than being on the wrong side of the age limit.