When I was 15, I was a deeply unattractive specimen. I featured most of my current drawbacks – the arrogance, the lack of height, the fact that without serious gym work, my body tends towards the Tony Hancock look more than the Daniel Craig look – but without the positives that have come with age, wisdom, wealth and Internet celebrity.
[yes, quite.]
But I was also friends at school with a fair number of young gentlemen who weren’t relying on “maybe at sixth form, liking the Smiths will impress some girls” for their romantic lives. Rather, they had Pretty Girlfriends, and recounted their Mostly Made Up Tales Of Sexual Awesomeness for the delectation of us lesser beings.
And in either case – whether it was one of the boys of my caste, or one of the boys of the “has actually put his finger in a girl’s parts” caste – if we’d scored with a reasonably attractive lady in her 30s, that would have been a SUPERDOUBLETURBOMEGAWIN. Kudos would have been given, right up until the end of time.
So I find cases like this one deeply curious. OK, 15-year-old boys are actually pretty revolting specimens; 15-year-old girls only score with them on the grounds that they’re mildly preferable to creepy paedos, and everyone grown-up is embarrassed by the fact that they were once one, or that they scored with one on the grounds above. So a 30something lady fancying 15-year-old boys is a bit weird.
But hell. If we’re going to have any kind of harm-based justice system, which I’m assuming is roughly what a justice system should be (I know that the War On Some Drugs is a counterexample, but even that has a vague deterrent philosophy that “if people are thrown in jail for choosing what to do to their bodies, it’ll deter them from putting stuff in their bodies which turns them into mad granny-robbing loonies”), then how on earth does nicking someone just for having the insanely niche taste of “spotty boys who don’t really know what they’re doing” fit? They’re delighted; their mates are amused and jealous; and nobody else in their right mind gives a fuck.
In short – 15-year-old JB getting some action from a medium-attractive 30something Asian babe – hell yeah. On the other hand, if the woman in question would have gone to jail for the action she gave me, then I’d have been pretty distraught. At 15, everything feels like your own fault; indeed, the main thing you haven’t mastered at that age is “realising that the world is way beyond you, and that you don’t really matter all that much”.
So what we have here is the law taking something odd but harmless, and turning it into something which not only ruins the life of the woman concerned and her kids, but that will also shroud the boys involved in a cloud of depression and guilt forever.
And even Bystander, who isn’t usually an idiot, has fallen from the We Must Destroy The Children In Order To Protect Them bullshit on this one, and thinks that jailing the woman in question is fair play. All very odd. Given that your average 15-year-old boy would fuck the crack of dawn if it had hairs on it, a (bizarrely) willing older lady seems like a reasonable induction, all things considered.
I'll ask the obvious question then – what punishment (if any) would you bestow on a 30 yo male teacher who sleeps with 2 of his female 15 yo students?
A harsher one. Girls and boys are different, and pretending otherwise for pseudofeminist reasons doesn't help anyone.
"Girls and boys are different, and pretending otherwise for pseudofeminist reasons doesn’t help anyone."
Agreed, however you can't just use it for this one instance, if it so then it should be applied across the board.
***wishing anyone actually doing this the best of luck and ear protectors against the screams of righteous rage***
Not much hope for sensible reform of these laws soon. Ed Vaizey was in Parliament yesterday defending the Harman's Law Extreme Pornography claptrap.
Coalition #fail.
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John B :
A harsher one. Girls and boys are different, and pretending otherwise for pseudofeminist reasons doesn’t help anyone.
That's what I thought. And I don't (really) disagree. BUT. Once you start saying its OK for a woman to to X (or its not OK, but its not really that bad), but its wrong for a man to do X, you open a whole can of worms.
We have had 40 years, nearly, of sexual equality. 40 years of the idea that men and woman should be treated equally in all things, and laws have been passed to enforce that. Now I'd be quite happy if all that was thrown in the bin and we could go back to realising that men and women are not basically the same, but with slight physical differences, but are in fact very different, and will see things in very different lights, and to try and legislate to iron out those differences is absurd.
Is that what you're suggesting? Or are you just suggesting that women get a free pass when it comes to having sex with minors (and any other area of life that takes their fancy), but in all others can enforce rigid sexual equality laws?
I thought all your Public school boys like each other mostly anyway. Speaking of which what about a gay man and his fifteen year old conquest ? They are actually the people who make a lot of noise about this (Peter Tatchell recently for example on the Telly)Is that a boys are different or girls can do no wrong case?
Heterosexually speaking I would be inclined to forgive an older man. That is if a pert ripe frisky bright eyed schoolgirl precociously aware of her,all to obvious sexuality , were attractive. As they are not the question does not arise . Natch.
I think setting the precedent that "adults having sex with kids is okay" is not a good one to start laying down.
"I thought all your Public school boys like each other mostly anyway."
Actually we can't stand each other. When we do get together it's purely sexual.