From pages 73-74 of Lethal Exposure by Lori Wilde: "He'd lost his virginity on the commune. To one of Aunt Bunnie's hippie friends. He'd been sixteen, the woman a good twenty years older. He'd gone into the barn that day a boy and walked out a man."
Does that bother you?
Would it bother you any more or any less if it read: "She'd lost her virginity on the commune. To one of Uncle Barney's hippie friends. She'd been sixteen, the man a good twenty years older. She'd gone into the barn that day a girl and walked out a woman."
4 comments:
In a benign paragraph like that, you're basically looking at the same thing. Doesn't matter if it's a boy or a girl. On the other hand if it had been decribed as a rape, it would have bothered me more if it was the girl. Somehow a girl being forced to have sex by a man seems more of a crime than a boy being forced by a woman. Not that it doesn't happen, but a male almost has to be more of a participant than a girl.
A male does not almost have to be more of a particpant than a girl. True, while male anatomy may become more easily physically aroused, this does not support consent to emotionally engage in sexual activity. Rape is not only a violation of another's body, it is also an emotional violation, in which case, it is gender blind.
Rape is rape--regardless of the gender.
As to the actual text--it bothers me no matter which gender is the victim.
The phrasing is just a bit purple, but in my observation the situation is typical of real life. I'm not bothered by either.
Until about twenty or 25 years ago, many states recognized the age of consent to be sixteen: California did when you were sixteen, for example, although the law was later changed to reflect a uniform age of majority of eighteen for everything but drinking alcohol.
(Missouri law in the '70s was weird in that the age of consent for women was sixteen provided she wasn't a virgin, but the first guy at that age was a statutory rapist. I don't know if anyone was ever prosecuted on that basis or not, but that's how the law read.)
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