I was 16 when I lost my virginity to my 19-year-old boyfriend who I was with for about 9 months. He turned out to be a total asshat but he was never pressuring. Nothing happened without my informed consent.

When I was 17 I started seeing a 26 year old. My parents met him, approved of him, and my mother is a damn good judge of character. We were together again about 9 months, and broke up because he moved away and I didn't want a long distance relationship. Again, there was no pressure on his part. There were occasions when I turned him down, and he accepted with good grace and didn't even try asking me to "finish him off" or anything.

However - my ex who I was with 18 - 21 (nearly 22), who was the same damn age as me? Complete asshole. He pulled some crap that, looking back, I should have a) dumped him b) thrown him out of our apartment and c) probably prosecuted him for. His favourite trick was to grope and finger me when I was still "asleep". I'd wake up and get out of bed, and usually get the fuck out the house until I could face seeing him again. I think a lot of the problems with getting rid of him stemmed from it being the first time I'd lived on my own, away from my parents. Strangely enough we broke up over my return to University, I think now its because he realised he wouldn't have a hold over me any more.

Out of my previous relationships, its the one with him that I regret the most. However, I'm not saying everyone my age is a screw up - my fiance is six months younger than me, knew each other from college (16-18 not the US type of college) and he's a total sweetie who'd probably move heaven and earth for me if I asked. I don't regret the relationships with my first love (even if he turned out to be a bit of a dud), or with someone nine years older than me. I know I wasn't his "trophy" girlfriend because like me, he was a bit of a geek with no real male friends he'd want to "show me off to", we just happened to share a lot of mutual interests, and we're still on speaking terms. Heck, he plays on the same bloody Warcraft server as I do! Well, one of them, but that's a tangent ;)

So, getting back to my original point, I just don't know how to feel on this. I do know, if the age of consent here was 18, I probably would have still slept with my first boyfriend, but I also probably wouldn't have dated the second boyfriend because I wouldn't have wanted him to get in trouble because of me. If he hadn't moved before I turned 18, I'd like to think we would have gotten together then, but I ain't psychic.

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I didn't know what to do, either. I wasn't "raped." I had no proof. I was wasted. And even worse, even my boyfriend didn't believe me. What is there to do when even your boyfriend thinks you are lying? I still don't know if I would report it if it happened to me again today. The grey areas are just so complicated.

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Maybe prosecution doesn't do a stellar job at preventing recidivism in most cases, but in cases of statutory rape, I don't really care. In the case of statutory rape recidivism, some guy (or woman, but statistically a guy) is probably repeatedly having sexual relationships with different underage people; that's not True Love or True Sexual Connection with one underage person who can handle it, that's preying on a variably mature and exploitable group. If recidivism were just the reunion of some Romeo and his underaged Juliet, that would be one thing, but I've known too many 20+ guys who repeatedly exploit underage girls for relationships. I don't know if the courts are the best way of dealing with the issue, but I think there needs to be an institutionalized reason why statutory rape should be avoided.

"It's just slapping a Band-Aid on an arterial bleed rather than trying to stop the person wielding the machete." That's true for basically all crime: we need to address the culture that leads people to kill, or steal, or torture, or whatever else. But does that mean we need to abolish the court system? Slapping a Band-Aid on an arterial bleed and trying to stop the person wielding the machete are the roles of two different entities (the judicial and the social). I think this is an issue where it's easy to conflate them, but I don't think reducing statutory rape is the sole charge of either the legal system or us as a extrainstitutional society. I think it's a task for both, and if the job of reducing statutory rape is solely the responsibility of society (which already encourages so much other fucked up behavior) I think we're fucked.

(Tl; dr.)

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IMO, boys and young men need to be taught about rape in a similar manner to the way girls are warned about it. So much of the stigma around rape is propagated by men, intentionally or not. Yes, this is a man's world, so they should be actively concerned about preventing the crimes they treat so dismissively.

A friend of mine (I'll call her E.) is going to testify on behalf of her childhood friend at the parole hearing of said friend's molester. The girl's molester was her brother and he molested her up until she was 12 years old (their parents weren't around and he was her gaurdian).

The problem is E.'s boyfriend also grew up with this molested girl and is aware of the whole situation, but he refuses to testify at the hearing. The boyfriend says he doesn't feel "comfortable" with being "responsible" for putting this guy in prison, despite the fact that he knows this poor girl was abused so bad she actually stopped physically developing. He says "who's to say the law is really fair…10 years (how long the molesters been in prison) is a long time." How can this ostensibly nice young man SIDE WITH A MOLESTER over a girl he was friends with?

Men don't understand or don't want to understand the pain and injustice perpetrated on women. Men protect their own, apparently even in the worst circumstances. And the goddamn of it is if he actually testified his word would probably carry more weight than anything a woman had to say, because everyone knows how silly and sensitive women are about rape. If a man speaks out, it must be serious.

Men need to be raised to abhor and reject violence against/rape of women. That deficiency is largely responsible for the whole problem--the actual act of rape and the handling of it thereafter.

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However, a huge flaw is present here: "my contention that statutory rape laws, which criminalize consensual sexual behavior when one participant (usually the woman) is deemed too young to know better, are more or less part of the culture that fetishizes virginity and seeks to "protect" women from their own desires."

An eleven-year-old girl is not a woman. And if you think statutory rape laws are part of the problem, where would you suggest drawing the line, if at all? If an eleven-year-old girl is (emotionally, physically) old enough to consent to sex, why isn't a nine-year-old girl? What about a six-year-old? Do you think countries without these laws are any better off, where 8 year old girls have to marry and sexually subject themselves to 50 year old men with no legal recourse? Isn't virginity still fetishized, if not more so, in those places?

Furthermore, when I lost my virginity at 15, albeit not quite consensually, I wasn't nearly emotionally prepared enough. I'm not saying, had it been consensual, that it should have been illegal. But the fact that laws protecting "young women" aka little girls from their "desires" aka confusion happens to "fetishize virginity" to scumbag creeps is not my concern. A man who would do anything described in this essay would do so whether it was legal or not, perhaps even more boldly, and until we live in a world where girls and women can stand up for themselves and make their sexual decisions wisely and with preparation, and until this kind of behavior is deemed socially despicable among women AND men, I'm all for protecting women from this by any means necessary.

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As for the older guy/younger girl thing:

I think my mom put the issue the best way that I could understand it as a young teenager. When a couple of girls at my school were dating boys 4+ years older than them (and it seemed cool, because their boyfriends could drive), my mom said that you should always question the motives of those guys. What's wrong with them that they can't get the attention of girls their own age? If those girls didn't want them, why should I? Would I want to date a boy much younger than me?

Making them seem pathetic rather than cool was a really good way to keep me wary about older boys.

Yes, women should be able to be sexual - if that's what they want - in their teenage years. But to look at an 18 year old boy with a girl of 14 or younger? Or worse, a guy in his twenties? I don't care how much her body and her mind want to have sex, there's something exploitive about that. The same way it's exploitive for older women to date boys. Statutory rape laws mean that we don't have to drag more young women into court to say that they really didn't want to go as far as their older boyfriends made them.

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Something tells me that message is lost on the crazy yelling guy jacking one off in the subway to the sight of a 12 year old.

And I agree that being grown now and smack-talking with more ease helps in warding off ill-intentioned comers, but self esteem won't help jack shit when I'm alone against a group of 20-something guys in a train and GROWN MEN are stoically looking on ignoring what goes on behind them.

Expose that shit. Bring it to the light. Shame people publically. Do it online if you must (like that website that features mobile pics of wankers on the subway in NY?).

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I know we as a society in America aren't big on crime prevention and treatment, but I have to say I am getting progressively more uncomfortable with the progressively harsh punishment for sexual predators. I mean, is it working? Or does it actually deter some reporting, because some victims thinks, "Well, I want him punished, but I don't think he deserves to have to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life."

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