It Doesn't End with the Epstein Class (What Is a Child?)

All the hype around the Epstein files in the past year has focused on the billionaires, the celebrities, and the politicians. Americans salivate over any detail we can get from the limited public release of tthis salacious information. Will any of our heroes will be brought low by their misdeeds? Will we receive confirmation the public figures we hate are terrible people? How many powerful men will be willing to pay money to sexually abuse teenagers?

The consensus about the "Epstein Class" seems to be that powerful men with money feel even more powerful when they can exploit society's most vulnerable people and get away with it. When you're wealthy enough to buy every imaginable luxury, you have to find new ways to amuse yourself, so you fall back on illegal sexual deviance.

It's all about the billionaires finding a new class of people to exploit. Wealthy and powerful men (and probably a few women as well) get a thrill from committing heinous acts against the weakest members of society and get away with it because of their money. Billionaires have been conditioned to have no empathy. This is about power as much as it is about sex. Right? Isn't this the narrative?

I'm not so sure. 

I recently watched a local production of Arthur Miller's play A View from the Bridge. It's central character is a working-class, Italian-American longshoreman. His circle of friends and family consider him a good and honorable man. He is the guardian and father figure to his wife's niece, who is about to turn 18. She adores him. He is also sexually obsessed with her - so much so that he doesn't have sex with his wife anymore.

The narrative of the play is that he is so obsessed with this young woman that he takes drastic steps to prevent her from marrying the young Italian immigrant who fell in love with her. He ruins lives in the process and eventually loses his own. The young woman seems ignorant of her uncle's feelings for her. There are times the relationship seems a little inappropriate, but if it's all she knows, how could she tell? 

But let's remember, he should have known better. What would have possessed him to have such feelings for a young woman who is under his care? 

Decades after Miller wrote this play, Donald Trump declared on national television that if Ivanka weren't his daughter he would be dating her. He pointed to a child on an escalator and said he would be dating her in ten years. Americans laughed - sometimes uncomfortably - but they laughed.

I think it's time to reckon with the fact that our culture will always sexualize young women and justify it. If a girl has gone through puberty and thus sexually capable, she is fair game to whomever wants her. 

According to too many men, a sexually mature body = adult woman.

This isn't only about sex either. We see this often in fundamentalist families who start making their teenaged daughters take on part-time parenting duties for their younger siblings. Children are married off as soon as they reach voting age. They claim the "teenager" is a modern invention and that minors are ready for adult responsibilities at an early age. 

Did you know the human brain does not finish developing until the early-to-mid twenties? If teenagers are equal to adults, why do we make them stay in school throughout their teens? That implies we don't trust minors to be able to learn everything they need to know to become functional members of society without adult guidance. We bar them from driving cars below a certain age. We limit how old they can be before they drink alcohol because they may not be able to make wise decisions requiring mind-altering substances. We also don't want to damage their developing brains. We don't allow them to vote because we want them to have developed the mental skills to make reasoned and informed decisions. Many right wing groups feel teenagers are unable to make decisions regarding their gender identity or their sexuality. 

Despite the number of advocates who say children need to be protected from the ills of society, when it comes to sex, marriage and pregnancy, there is a segment of US society out there who argue a teenager is equal to an adult. 

What about marriage? Most states legally require the marriage age at 18, but that is without parental consent. What if there is parental or judicial consent? Two states have a minimum age of 15. Twenty states have a minimum age of 16. Eight states have a minimum age of 17. There are four states with no minimum age at all. 

In many strict religious communities, parents will marry off their kids as young as possible (although many of them will at least make the kids wait until they are 18 for the sake of optics). Let's not forget that a child who is impregnated is clearly old enough to sustain the pregnancy and give birth, even if she was impregnated against her will.

That brings me to my next point. At what point can we say a girl is having sex against her will? We have Age of Consent laws in every state. They vary from age 16 to age 18. We have these laws because a minor (whose brain won't be fully developed for several more years) may not be able to make informed decisions about what she (or he for that matter) is doing to her body or the risks she might be taking. Not everyone agrees with this principle.

Remember the late Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty? He began dating his wife when they were in high school. They married when she was 19. However, he would have been happy to marry her even younger. He had this to say about marriage.

They got to where they’re getting hard to find, mainly because these boys are waiting ‘til they get to be about 20 years old before they marry ’em,. Look, you wait ‘til they get to be 20 years old the only picking that’s going to take place is your pocket. You got to marry these girls when they are about 15 or 16. They’ll pick your ducks.

While Robertson did say you should clear the marriage with your parents (legally you must), he made it clear it's best to marry when a woman is young, vulnerable, and unworldly. A younger woman is easier to manipulate, easier to control, and less able to stand up for herself. She's less exposed to different types of men who might be a better match for her. She is less educated and less able to stand on her own. Robertson didn't say that, but all this is implied. 

It's easy to fall into the trap that anyone who considers a girl who has passed puberty to be fair game must be some right-wing religious nut, but I have personally seen this isn't the case. I have talked to reasonable, moderately religious, even somewhat liberal men who don't see a problem with a grown man having sex with a minor.

For example, I once belonged to an online forum that was made up of several from several different viewpoints, religions, and political affiliations. One member of the group who was rather sleazy and had right-wing political affiliations would often express a preference for teenage girls. (I don't think he ever managed to sleep with one, but he was super creepy about them.) While many of the men on the forum (mostly in their twenties and thirties) called him out for his predatory behaviors, most of them didn't question his preferences. Some of them supported it. They believed that a sexually mature girl was capable of consent and there was nothing creepy or unethical about her being in an intimate relationship with a man in his twenties or thirties. They didn't think that it would cause any sort of power imbalance, or that a man might be taking advantage of her lack of experience or lack of good judgment. In fact, one man in the group said I was betraying my feminist beliefs by saying young women were so "weak minded" that they would only be having sex with an adult because she was being manipulated into doing so.

One of the men in that group summed it up by saying younger women were more "open minded". What does it mean to be open minded when it comes to your relationship? Does it imply that a girl hasn't learned from experience? Does it mean she isn't going to judge you against what she already has learned about relationships? Does it mean she will go along with whatever you say because she doesn't know better? 

I suppose you could argue the attraction to young women has more to do with their bodies. Young women are thinner and firmer. Their boobs and butts ride high. Their stomachs are flatter. Nothing sags yet. They haven't put on the Freshman 15 at college yet. They don't have cellulite or stretch marks. They don't bear the hallmarks of childbirth. That makes some sense, but plenty of women in their thirties and beyond manage to maintain firm and taut figures. For example, a childless Jennifer Aniston has managed to maintain a body considered to be society's ideal for decades, but if she weren't rich and famous, plenty of men would likely choose a teenager over her.

That forum wasn't the only place where I have heard similar arguments. Over the years I have often had conversations with seemingly normal, reasonable men in their twenties and thirties who wouldn't turn down a younger woman for dating and more. "Age is just a number," they say. A woman willing to enter into a relationship with an adult man could be mature for her age and is making a rational, informed decision. There doesn't have to be a power imbalance. A girl doesn't suddenly mentally change at the age of 18 and become ready for an adult sexual relationship. She can be every bit as ready at 17 or 16. 

Do young women magically become mature enough to have relationships with adult men at age 18? There are many men online who do "countdowns" where they count how many more days it will be before some pretty teenage celebrity will be old enough to have sex with them. The sex becomes legal, but is the 18th birthday an immediate passage into full adult maturity?

For the men who say, "Age is just a number," why doesn't is work in reverse? If a woman who is 18 is as mature as a woman who is 28, why is the 18-year-old more desirable? If you go back to the argument that being young makes her, "more open minded," then age is not only a number, is it?

I'm sure many of the men who partied with Jeffrey Epstein saw no wrong in what they did. The girls who were present on the island appeared to be there willingly. They were having a good time being showered with attention and the trappings of wealth. Epstein was giving girls with few options to better themselves a chance to experience a better life. It was their choice to be there. They were getting a job and plenty of networking out of the deal. They had choices. They wouldn't be there is they didn't want to be, right? Maybe some of the sleazier men at the party were being rude or abusive, but I'm sure many of them felt they were being respectful and kind. They probably thought they made sure the girls enjoyed the sex too. 

The evil Megyn Kelly said the quiet part out loud. She defended the Epstein Class by saying it was not such a big deal for grown men to be having sex with these girls. There was a big different between a fifteen-year-old and an eight-year-old. Essentially she was saying it's not a big deal if the girl in question had gone through puberty and was sexually available.

Megyn Kelly has a fifteen-year-old daughter. I wonder how she would feel if an established businessman or politician was partying with her and getting sexual favors from her. 

I don't have kids. I know if I had a fifteen-year-old daughter - or son for that matter - I would not be keen on them having sex at all. There is a lot of physical risk and emotional baggage that comes with sex. I would prefer they have more emotional maturity before taking those risks. However, I remember what it's like to be a horny teenager and horny teenagers are going to do what horny teenagers do. If that were the case, I would want my children having sex with their peers - other horny teenagers close to their age. I wouldn't want them to be in a relationship where there were power imbalances and different expectations. Let two stupid teenagers enjoy being stupid together and leave the adults out of it.

I think to move forward with this we need to acknowledge the uncomfortable truth that there is a large group of men - across all socio-economic classes and political affiliations - who find teenagers sexually desirable and have no qualms about pursing them. They will do anything in their minds to justify the relationship (or attempt at a relationship) and will not consider it inappropriate, nor will they consider the emotional immaturity of teenagers to be a reason not to have a relationship. For them it's a feature and not a bug. Even if that naivete wasn't part of the attraction, they don't question why a teenage girl would be willing to have a relationship with a man twice her age.

We also need to take a long look at what society considers appropriate for children. If a Quiverfull family thinks a teenage girl is able to take on parental duties to her younger siblings or wants to marry their children off before they are out of their teens, if a rabid anti-choice activist thinks a girl whose age is barely in double digits should be forced to carry a pregnancy, then they need to stop the hypocrisy Don't tell me a teenager is ready for adult responsibilities one minute, and then say that the same teen is too young to read certain books or consume certain media. Don't tell me that teen can't make decisions about her gender and sexuality, or is too young to make decisions about birth control. Don't tell me teens will somehow be corrupted by spending time in the company of drag queens. If Megyn Kelly thinks a fifteen-year-old girl is old enough to give a middle-aged man a massage, was a twenty-two-year-old Monica Lewinsky too young to give Bill Clinton a blow job?

If we want to protect children from harm, let's all agree on what a child is and protect them all equally.