Debunking myths about statutory rape, race and class: Part 2 of 3

by Racialicious special correspondent Latoya Peterson

Continued from Part 1

“But girls lie about their age to date older guys, right?”

I am aware that some girls do lie about their age to date older guys.

When I was twelve, my best friend at the time had met a guy and lied to him about her age. She told him she was sixteen and she did have the body to back it up. The guy sleeping with her accidentally would make complete sense – except for the fact that guy was twenty-five. He eventually slept with her, taking her virginity, even after he figured out how old we were. After all, it’s kind of a dead giveaway if you’re picking your girlfriend up at a middle school.

They stayed together for a few months. She eventually tried to set me up with his twenty year old brother.

Now, in the comments on the feminist sites, I noticed that a few people argued that teenagers should not be in adult places. They mention fake IDs and older ways of dressing that allowed them to gain access into clubs and go home with college guys.

The first friend I referenced, dating the twenty five year old? She met him at a local park. You know, a park with swings and a seesaw and a merry-go-round? Yeah, that one. That park also had a basketball court where guys our age and older would go to play basketball.

I had another friend. We met in eighth grade, she was thirteen and I was twelve. My friend shocked me one day after a guy (man really) walked past us and she broke down into a sobbing heap where we stood. She confided in me that when she was eleven she had a child, but her mother had forced her to put the child up for adoption. The baby’s father was the guy who had non-chalantly passed her by on the street.

Later, I found out that she was at school when she met her future abuser/baby daddy. He was aware she was about eleven – what other age group is enrolled in Middle School? At the time, this guy was about nineteen. He strung her along in this grand relationship fantasy, helping her to cut school as they drove around and had sex in the back of his car. When she got pregnant with his child, he dropped her. However, living in the same area means she would run into him about once a month, normally leading to an outburst of tears or screaming fits on her end and cool indifference (with the occassional “you were just a slut anyway”) from him.

Some of the comments at Feministe and Feministing assume that stautory rape is a one time “oh, I met this girl at the club and slept with her – I didn’t know she was fourteen!” These were ongoing relationships.

Any male with basic logic and reasoning skills will be able to pick up on the fact that they are dating a teenager. School books, curfews, teen conversations – it isn’t hard to tell. What I have more of a problem with is the men who know and do not care that the girl is underaged. In my experience, this tends to happen a little more to young women of color than it does to young white girls. Most of my Asian and Latina friends at that age also have stories of being harassed by men who were significantly older. But more on that a bit later.

“Have you seen young girls these days after they hit puberty? No one would be able to tell that they were they age!”

Emma Rose (commenting on Feministe) adds her perspective to the discussion, noting:

God, I was totally one of these girls with big tits pretty young, pretty precocious, and I got a lot of attention from older men. Interestingly, I still have the same breasts and get LESS attention from men. Which leads me to think that it’s not that men who prey on young girls are unable to judge ages, but they they are actively interested in adolescent women BECAUSE they have fewer social skills and less personal power (some girls, anyway). I know I didn’t have the social skills or boundaries to get men away from me when I was in middle school or early high school. As soon as I gained those skills, they stopped sniffing around.

Emily Rose nails one main component of this type of harassment. The fact of the matter is while we would like to think that men are only attracted to teenage girls because they don’t know better, the reality is that the men who are willing to court someone drastically younger than they are is because that’s what they want. Some people say it is because they can’t deal with the requirements of adult relationships. Others will say it’s because young girls are dumb in the ways of the world and end up being easy pussy.

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