Does statutory rape need a double standard?
Since Google Analytics tells me that my top keywords are “fetish pron,” I’d better keep those hits coming by introducing a New York Times story called “The Siren Song of Sex with Boys”. It’s not about NAMBLA; it’s about a recent rash of women convicted of sleeping with underage guys. NYT indulges in a little sexploitation with its photo of recent perp Pamela Turner:
The photo raises an interesting question, though, which the article goes on to address: is sex with an older woman harmful for a teenage boy? Or is it just hot? To teacher Sandra Geisel (like Turner, quite attractive), the judge said her 16-year-old lover was raped in the legal sense, but “he was certainly not victimized by you in any other sense of the word.”
Looking back on the boys I grew up with, my sense is they’d fight each other for a night with Turner or Geisel. And they’d wear it as a badge of honor well into their thirties. But when I think of sixteen-year-old girls having sex with male teachers, my stomach turns.
One clear reason for the double standard is the simple fact that a woman can’t physically rape a man. But the other reasons are a lot fuzzier. Are girls more sexually fragile than boys? Are they more likely to be scarred by early sexual experiences? Are they more likely to be victimized by older partners? Like they say in The Onion, what do you think?
December 16th, 2005 at 7:57 am | Promoted
I am a volunteer with a rape crisis center in South Carolina. It is completely possible for a woman to rape a man, just as a gay couple can rape each other. Anything that can be inserted into the various cavities of the body can be used as an instrument of rape. Rape against men can include everything from a dildo to a broomstick. The double standard is because women are seen as fragile and therefore more vulnerable to the wiles of older men.
December 22nd, 2005 at 10:20 am
Based on my extensive knowledge of Law and Order SVU, when a relationship between a man and a woman who is a minor is viewed by both parties as “consentual,” the girl may have some deep seeded emotional problems related to fatherly neglect/abandonment/abuse/etc. The sexual experience may not be the disease but the symptom.
I guess one could argue the same about men.