This calling it ‘sex’ when it is ‘rape’ just has to stop. From I Blame the Patriarchy we have another doozy:
It wasn’t a rape, it was a ‘rape’. No wait, it was an “encounter,” editorially downgraded to “having sex,” because one mustn’t discount the likelihood that the kid made up the rape part just before offing herself because she was a tarty bitch and all sexy little girls are lying suicidal sluts.
With your keen eye you will perceive that the sentence in the second quotation is structured to ascribe the agency to young Cherrell; the 39-year-old rapist is just her sex partner, a passive bystander.
Both versions of the article undeniably use the trial as an excuse to pander to reader prurience with a lurid teen sex scandal and its sensationally tragic consequences. It’s not just the Daily Mail, either. WalesOnline is happy to accommodate Dude Nation by consulting Cherrell’s 18-year-old ex-boyfriend (one begins to grasp that this poor kid never had a chance), who also romanticizes the rape as an “an affair.” The boyfriend (who wasn’t there, but he’s a dude, so he’s completely authorized to make this call) also refers to it “sexual intercourse” and “a fling.”
Tell me. How the hell can a 13-year-old kid have an affair? If there exists a more disenfranchised group of human beings than teenage girls I’d like to know about it.
The absurd and dangerous conflation of rape and sex and children and affairs reflected by these news stories would all be completely unnecessary if female persons enjoyed anything remotely resembling the agency men wield all day long.
This makes me want to cry. I recall a conversation with a male teaching colleague (who I had once respected) about whether a teenage girl could ever be the seducer in a teacher-student ‘relationship’ and the male teacher the victim. He said they could. He tried to use as ‘evidence’ the ‘fact’ that when the student is male and the teacher is female, the woman teacher is usually afforded more sympathy than if the genders were reversed. He said this proved that teenagers could be the agressors and the more worldly partners in a sexual liason. As if that’s relevant when it comes to adults breaking the law. And worse.
“How the hell can a 13-year-old kid have an affair? If there exists a more disenfranchised group of human beings than teenage girls I’d like to know about it.”
Agreed. Have a similar view of them “having a consensual jaunt through the world of posing nude in dark, intense photos” and still haven’t gotten over the number of people I otherwise respect who got lost in arguments about what is or isn’t art.
Wasn’t an attempt to troll, btw, I can’t even remember what your position was on that one, bluesey.
Armagny – Considerate of you to check but I linked to your own post on that whole “dark, intense photos” bizzo, so I was definitely thinking along similar lines to you. Definitely didn’t see your comment as trolling.
[…] February 26, 2009 by blue milk More of my value-not-particular-adding posts. […]
I read about this case in the paper a few days ago and was absolutely livid that they called it ‘underage sex’ and an ‘affair’ instead of rape. In what sick, twisted world can a 13-year-old be a predatory seductress who gives fully-informed consent to sex with a man more than twice her age? Oh, and then tops herself for the ‘shame’ of it all. I sometimes wonder if rape deniers have two brain cells to rub together.
a 39 year old man sniffing round teenagers – the power differential is obscene.
Fridge. tied to ankle, off bridge.
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