Further on that topic.

Nerve.com featured a movie review today that touches upon something that I often talk about. The review, of a film about a teenage girl who turns out to be an abstract comic seducing and torturing an older man who turns out to be a murderous pedophile, turns out to be a feel-good romp through comforting inaccuracies about teen sexuality.

The reviewer is insightful and honest; she talks about being a teenage girl, even a preteen, with feelings for older men that went beyond the level of a crush. " It was clear that the hot substitute science teacher, or perhaps the dad I babysat for, would be able to see what no one else in my life seemed to have noticed: I was a sexy, mature, brilliant woman trapped in the body of an eighth grader. " she writes, admitting more than sympathy for the first scene of the film, which appears to show a teen girl deliberately pursuing sexual contact with a far older man. However, from there the film goes on to have that the girl was feigning interest in the man, and was only interested in vengeance. This is some kill bill shit right here.

The reviewer rightly mourns that the film could have said something very interesting and controversial; that many teenage girls go through a stage where they long to be the object of affection of a much older man.

I did.

There is something surreal about being a young american teen girl. You feel complex, adult, confused. You're supremely vulnerable to anything that smacks of romance. You consume books and movies featuring highly romantic and highly sexual themes. And you want in.

And you don't want this piddly, high-risk, low-yeild teen fucking puppy love bullshit. Groping in cars. Freshman/sophomore semi-formals, with breathalyzer tests at the door and greasy boys with unwashed hands. Any action judged and reported on to catty, leering peers. Almost criminal sexual incompetance. Parental judgement. It isn't what you want, but it's what's available to you.

It's not what I wanted. It's never been what I wanted. I've always pursued, almost exclusively, men who are far too old for me. The first one to respond in any significant way was sixteen years older than me. I'd been eighteen for less than six months. It was intense. Exciting. Scary. Important. And I pushed things. Not as much as he did, but he would have never started anything without my not at all guileless invitations to impropriety. Nothing in my life had ever been so ...breathless...

And nothing in my romantic life had ever been so deliberate. At that point, my experiences with guys my own age had been sparse, bizarre and haphazard. I didn't know how to date. I didn't know how to date a boy from school. I didn't know what the rules were. How much to be interested. How much to be interested in him. Where to go. How far to (let him) let myself go. And that's been the pattern of my romantic life so far. I am dense, confused, blind to guys I work with, go to class with, sit on the train next to, make friends with. My boyfriend is ten years older than I am, and we've been together for almost for years. It's real, it's sure, it's profoundly nice.

And if I had been able to pursue older men from a younger age than I began to, I would have.

However.

Just because something is easy and feels good doesn't mean that it is a good idea. That's why people wear pants. Not wearing pants is easier than wearing pants, and being pantsless, in general, is better than wearing pants, when weather permits. And yet, it is a bad idea to go out, even to go through the drive through, sans pants.

But just because something isn't a good idea, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Teenage girls will continue to desire attention from adult men. Teenage girls will continue to look enough like the atavistic archetype of ripe fecund potential to tempt even some adult men who know better than to become involved with them. And predatory men, who deliberately choose adolescent girls as partners, due to some mental pathology, will exist. These circumstances combine to form a situation wherein at some times teenage girls must be protected from themselves, at some times adult men must be protected from teenage girls, and at other times, teenage girls must be protected from adult men.

But at this moment, in this Law and Order: SVU world that we live in, the third situation is most comfortable to focus on. The idea is that any adult man who becomes sexually involved with a teenage girl was not just the aggressor, but the predator, is very comfortable and clear cut for parents and media alike. Teenage girls are thought to be blind to the effect their bodies and brassy experimenations may have on these 'predators among us', and accidentally blunder into victimhood when their innocent play becomes masturbatory fodder for the leering perverts who live on the internet. This situation exists, sure. And no girl who is truly victimized did ask for it. However, that does not preclude situations where other dynamics exist.

Adult men should know better than to become involved with teenage girls. Adult people should know better than to get involved with teenagers. Society has evolved many safeguards against this. Primarily, we have statutory rape laws. These provide an incentive to adults not to have sexual contact with minors, even in the absence of immediate evidence of contraindications. Secondarily, we have culture. When I was about thirteen or fourteen, I was watching 'Friends'. (Forgive the network TV reference. At the time, I had neither cable, nor friends) It suddenly occurred to me that even though I was funny enough, and smart enough, to picture myself sitting on that couch, and flirting with a pre-bloated Matthew Perry, it wouldn't work. Because there should be no room in the life of a healthy twenty-five year old for a sexual relationship with a fourteen year old. His friends would shun him. Picking up a girlfriend from junior high, post college, should be humiliating. It just doesn't work. If a co-worker of mine (we are all around 23) began to date a girl of even 19, the social repercusions might prematurely doom the relationship.

So what?

That means two things:
1. Most adult men will avoid sexual contact with teenage girls, for a variety of reasons.
and
2. Most adult men who do not avoid sexual contact with teenage girls will not be normal, as they will have decided to risk social standing and a criminal record to do so.

That simulteneously makes the situation both better and worse. If teenage girls can be successfully convinced that there are almost no exceptions to the second principle, then they will not seek to fulfill their fantasies of romance with an older man. That would leave the only sexual contact between older men and young girls in the strictly predatory realm. However, teenage girls do not believe that any older man that would consider breaking stringent social codes in order to associate with them must be deeply flawed. Because that is terribly depressing. Teenage girls want to beleive that older men, as the author above fantasized, have the ability and insight to see their worth, beyond their age.

Which gives actual predatory older men a ready-made expressway into the Junior's Lingerie section. They know what girls want to hear, and they know the argument that will be made against that argument. And they know that their argument puts the girl in the better light. So she may be convinced.

So what is to be done?

First, parents need to make sure that just because it is terribly uncomfortable to think that little Cindy's crush on her soccer coach may be more serious than her crush on Scott Baio in the second grade, they need to address those feelings. They need to explain to her that while it's fine and natural for her to be attracted to older men, it's best that she never act on those feelings, at least until she's older herself, because any older man that would be involved with her is not one that she should be involved with. Like old Groucho said "I wouldn't join any club that would have me as a member."

Second, society needs to back up off teenage girls for a minute. They've got fifty million messages coming at them about who they need to be. (And feminists, shut up for a minute - "Be Thin!" isn't the most toxic message out there) They've got no messages coming at them telling them how quickly they're going to be adults, and how normal it is to feel sexual, to feel deeper than everyone else seems to be, to want to be friends with older adults of both genders. Sometimes teenage friendships are so toxic that it seems like there is no respite. Forging equal friendships with older adults who are not parents and are not romantic partners may provide much-needed perspective. Maybe the reason I've always pursued older men and ignored contemporaries is because otherwise, I'd be alone with all these dangerous peers.

I wonder, sometimes, whether my experience with that much older man has had any long-term effect, positive or deleterious, on me. He was my first experience of acceptance on an intellectual level, first experience of direct expression of sexual desire, first experience of rejection. He was the first man to say certain words to me that I can now barely manage even when I'm desperately hammered. I can't ignore that he should have known better than to get involved with me, even as shallowly and tangentially as he did. But I can't ignore that he wouldn't have if I'd even once told him to stay away.

I wonder if, without him, I would have ended up with someone my own age. Or even able to be with someone my own age. If I hadn't used him as my crutch, would I have fallen into a lasting relationship with a college boy, that fall and winter? Would I have learned to treat peers as potential partners?

Who fucking knows. Who cares. Behavior is a mystery, yet all we know is that all non-reflex actions are in some way willful. That means that no person can take responsibility for the actions of another. Anything I do to myself, I have only myself to blame for. I knew what I was doing. No amount of revisionist history can change that. But does that mean that other girls should be just as free to choose so poorly?

"I cling to her innocence"

That's a quote. From a story in today's Boston Globe. A mother is talking about how she'd give her daughter the new h.p.v./cervical cancer vaccine, but not tell her what it's for. This h.p.v vaccine has the potential to prevent thousands of early deaths from a sneaky cancer, that strikes mostly young women.

If there were a breast cancer vaccine, there would be no controversy. Everyone wants to cure breast cancer. Everyone wants to wear a pink ribbon and think about saving people's mommies. And saving people's titties, too. Saving the very essence of femininity. Fertility. Maternity. Mature sexual appeal. That's why breast cancer is so marketable. It's the madonna.

Cervical cancer is the whore. Because cervical cancer, despite striking women at their most marketable age, is a little bit dirty. A little bit bad. Because, unlike breast cancer, mostly, you have to do something to get it. You have to fuck. And not only do you have to fuck, you have to fuck someone who has fucked someone before. Absolute monogamy prevents cervical cancer, but only if the h.p.v naive fuck only the h.p.v naive. Which doesn't happen. Because most people don't lose their virginity to a virgin. That's why no one goes to the hospital seeking treatment for pathologically dilated urethras anymore. So in each pair of fuckers, at least one has been broken in. Or been around the block.

So sex is a risk factor for cancer. But only significantly so for women. It's a perfect threat.

"Darling, your mother and I love you very much, and we want you to listen to us. Sex is a very important part of life, but it's best when saved until marriage. Because if you don't wait, you could DIE OF CANCER. SOON."

"Hey, Tiger. Your mom and I want you to know you probably shouldn't have sex until you get married. Because maybe you'll have sex with some girl, and then another girl, and if the first one had something, the second one might die, while you still know her, and that might be a pain. Maybe. Or you could stop calling her. Whatever. Wrap that shit, I guess."

It reinforces our society's absured purity fetish. Bad things happen to girls who like it, but a man's best protection is still a fake name.

So what happens if condom use and frequent testing remove the threat of aids, hepatitis vaccines prevent that jaundicy drag, anti-outbreak medications attenuate the embarassment of herpes, contraceptives continue to prevent pregnancy, and a h.p.v. vaccine prevents cervical cancer?

The worst thing in the world.

Parents have to stop seeing their daughters as perpetual children, with innocence to be protected, even by threat of death, and begin seeing them as potential adults, who must be communicated honestly with about the role sexuality has in adult life. The woman in the globe article says "I cling to her innocence." I cling. I cling. The parent needs her daughter to remain innocent. As long as possible. For her sake, not her daughter's. Because we've got this fucked up system in this country that makes a daughter's virginity her parent's possession.

From virginity balls, where little girls dance with their fathers who pledge to help them save that blessed cherry for their husbands, to my own graduation dinner on friday, where a freudian slip nearly ruined the evening for everyone. (I'm 24, goddamnit. Mild accidental innuendo should be ignored, not a reason for my father to threaten to snap my boyfriend's neck), the idea that daughters must remain virginal in perpetuity for the sake of the family remains, though it should have gone out with arranged marriages and dowrys.

Do we really want to kill young women because they didn't stay little girls long enough?