follyjam-blog

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out an airplane window

The light exists only to remind us how total and deep the darkness really is. So we don’t get used to it. Original sin is an idea exploited by the Abrahamic religions, and others I’m sure, but it is merely an indicator of a stupefying conflict latent in our terrible meat. Each one of us is not only capable of evil, but daily metes out myriad harm against our brothers and sisters. We are casually vicious. 

Yet even so, we are not the worst of it. The jungle is trying to kill you. Our species only barely escaped total annihilation at the hands of our cruel mother. But for a time we have triumphed, dominated her, made her submit nearly totally. We have covered her entirely, tasted every high peak, and penetrated her every depth. And yet we see already that she laughs at our success. Were the oil fields laid there by her to tempt us to self-destruction? Will our taste of the atom, as it splits, be the last we know? Ultimately, she wins either our obedience or our nullification.

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The problem with the problem with Roy Moore

(source for above)

Now that you know what I’m referring to, let me tell you the better title would be “The problem with the problem with wanting a 14 year old.” This is because the problem people have with Roy Moore is a misshapen amalgam of transgressing consent, and of desiring that which should not be desired.

First, let me be clear that individuals who are younger than 18 (or sometimes 16) years old in the United States are unable to provide legal consent, and generally that I think this is perfectly appropriate from the standpoint of cognitive and social development. Second, let me be clear that Roy Moore is a piece of garbage who should have been abandoned long ago by any person claiming moral standing on the spectrum on the better side of reprehensible. Roy Moore can go to hell.

But the #MeAt14 reaction is misguided at best, and at worst detrimental to the core progressive mission of female sexual empowerment. You’ve probably seen it on the social medias: a photo of an adolescent girl, often from a yearbook or otherwise anodyne source, captioned with references to favorite childhood activities (like skipping rope), and sometimes an explicit rejection of sexual desire (boys were yucky). Often the posts are by people old enough that the image is of a scanned 35mm drugstore photographic print.

https://twitter.com/Alyssa_Milano/status/929537951796690945

https://twitter.com/SandraLondino/status/929713682883457024

https://twitter.com/LFinnlnf1964/status/930104793787523072

This side of the hashtag projects an image of 14 year old sexuality that is alien to me, lopsided with retrospective and selection biases, and puritanical. Let’s really go back in our memories and think about this age. At age 14, in the US, most people are transitioning between 9th and 10th grade (in the US). Even 20-30 years ago, by this age most boys and many girls (if they were lucky enough to be raised in a sexually liberated household) have masturbated. As illustrated by the teen-magazine advice letter above, many adolescents this age have more than a passing familiarity with deep, urgent, physical and emotional desire. In my personal experience as a 14 year old, I felt these desires, and I noticed their presence explicitly in the behavior of others. In my 20s, and in my 30s, my interactions with adolescent girls and boys has not revealed my personal experience to be idiosyncratic. I think it’s safe to say that on average, age 14 is not a time of sexual innocence. Of course there is a distribution of experiences, and I wonder if many of the #MeAt14 posters were on the low end of the desire curve, or if it is mostly their adult perspective rewriting their naivete as innocence.

The confusion of naivete and innocence is perhaps the reason the #MeAt14 campaign is sending a disempowering message more appropriate to 1950s and ‘60s America. Obviously the depth of emotional and sexual experience of any 14 year old is paltry, and this is one of the primary reasons for protecting young people from the much-higher-caliber wiles of adults. But consider what a girl of 14 might infer from the focus on the idea that innocence, aka sexual dormancy, is the thing that ought to protect adolescent girls from the likes of Roy Moore. If she, as in the quote above, doesn’t feel at all virginal because she sometimes fingers herself, then perhaps she infers that it is the fact of her abnormal sexual desire that has caused the unwanted attention of much, much older men. Or perhaps she infers her innocence is spoiled enough that she can consent after all, and maybe even has! Perhaps she infers these things and begins to feel both responsible, and like a freak.

And now what if this hypothetical girl is actually attracted to older men? This hashtag is yet another source of information telling her not just that sexuality at age 14 is wrong, but that her particular desire, as a class, is especially wrong. If she dares to explore it, and finds herself in danger because an older man with no moral compass tries to take advantage of this, is she going to feel comfortable asking for help? Does any of this “14 is an age of innocence” messaging contribute in any way to a young woman’s development of sexual agency and autonomy? 

No, it doesn’t, and it can’t, and that is why this aspect the of the #MeAt14 campaign is utterly broken, reproducing outdated and oppressive gender roles that progressive political ideologies purport to denounce. 

The problem with Roy Moore is not that 14 year old girls are, or are not, sexual beings. It’s not even that someone like Moore would perceive a 14 year old as sexually attractive. The problem, as is often the case, is about power, and consent. Age-of-consent laws are about protecting the naive and the vulnerable.

Though I initially focused on the part of this campaign that I think is really off-base and counter-productive, there are also many posts that detail rape and sexual abuse. This is where the #MeAt14 reaction gets it right. These posts underscore the fact that adolescent girls are raped and abused, often by adult males, and that Roy Moore is likely a criminal regardless of the age of the women he harmed because his power and their vulnerability (by way of their relative naivete) make it impossible to imagine a situation in which, even given a radical view of adolescent agency, they could consent.

What would this campaign look like if we did take adolescent sexuality as legitimate, and adolescent agency as, if not fully realized, at least recognizable? We would be able to tell girls that it’s okay to get hot for whoever you get hot for, regardless of anyone’s age. We would be able to tell them that no matter the circumstances, they are in control of their own sexuality, and that means never having to endure discomfort, regardless of the dirty, delicious, sexual things they have thought or done. We would be able to give them open and safe spaces to experiment with and discuss their sexuality so that they could develop their agency and autonomy through experience and knowledge. 

After talking to her friends, Corfman says, she began to feel that she had done something wrong and kept it a secret for years.

We would be able to make it clear in no uncertain terms that the criminal transgressions of adult men have absolutely nothing to do with anything a 14 year old girl might do, think, or feel.