On the Concept and Practice of Jailbait

Ah, jailbait. Hot, underage tail, ready for the taking. For much of the world, what greater joy could there be than bedding some sexy young thing? If you’re already well-aged yourself, the pleasure of getting something in it’s mid-teens into the sack can make you feel young like nothing else in the world! As the Florentines in the 1480’s used to say, “If you crave joys, tumble some boys!”

Yes, whether you’re a teacher, another teacher, a third teacher, or a Congressman, what can be more fun than a roll in the hay with someone a third your age? Bedding someone underage is one of the greatest taboos in our culture, but one that’s broken more often than perhaps any other than drug use.

History is loaded with examples as well of pederasty including such notable figures as Walt Whitman, William S Burroughs, E M Forrester, Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky and F W Murnau (killed when his fourteen-year-old lover/driver accidentally crashed their car. As one of my friends said, “Never let the jailbait drive.”)

In my life I’ve known a great many people, most of them not ephebophiles. However, of the people I’ve know, I can think of three women and at least nine men who have slept with underage teenage boys or girls. In every case, the younger person consented to the activity, and seemed to enjoy it to no end, but it was still illegal. These weren’t horrible deviants or the sort of person you’d expect to see as a sex offender, but technically all of them were. Sure, they were sleeping with teenagers and not little kids, but as far as the legal system is concerned the difference is minimal, and if any of them were convicted, they’d have to register as a sex offender.

It’s interesting to consider the prevelance of jailbait desire in our society. Heck, the fact that we even have a half-playful term like “jailbait” to describe it is interesting cause it recognizes how desireable the underage can be, even to women. Works like Lolita and people like Britney Spears (in her younger days, of course, before she got all, you know, Paris Hilton-y), also show a certain level of tolerance, but the tolerance is only for looking. You can look all you want. You can desire all you want. But God help you if you act on it! That makes you even worse than Hitler!

This is largely because we have this whole “Madonna/Whore” complex going on when it comes to teenagers. I spoke about it briefly in my review of the book Harmful to Minors. What it boils down to is that we heavily sexualize teenagers, but we also view them as sweet, innocent and untouchable. This is something of a mixed message.

People say that minors can’t really give true consent to sexual activity involving adults. That any activity between adults and minors is always abuse. Period. I don’t know if I buy that. I mean, surely it must depend on the people involved and the circumstances of their cases. I’ve known a great many guys who have told me that when they were teenagers they had a thing for older men. This is not at all uncommon in the gay community, but if the older men the boys lust after actually do anything with the boys, the men can end up in prison, even if the boy initiates the activity. This seems unfair.

Setting an arbitrary age seems even stranger when you look at the ages of consent around the world. In the United States, the age is 16 is about 27 states and usually 18 in the others. This leads to odd situations where, apparently, sixteen-year-olds who live in Washington (where the AOC is 16) are smarter and more capable than kids the same age who live in Oregon (where the AOC is 18). If you’re a hot 16yo living in Vancouver and looking for a good time with an older person, don’t go looking in Portland! If you’re already in Portland, don’t go across the border to get some, cause the person you go to see could be guilty of violating the Mann Act.

If you look worldwide the situation with the age of consent gets even more weird. In Europe, for example, you can get situations in Spain where the age of consent is thirteen, in several countries where the AOC is fourteen, fifteen in a few others, sixteen in very few and seventeen in even fewer. Cyprus is particularly interesting, cause there it’s seventeen for most activities, except, apparently, boy/woman anal intercourse, where the AOC is thirteen. So, hey, any boys who are hot for teacher, now you know where to try to go for your next field trip.

In Asia you can legally sleep with thirteen-year-olds in places like Japan and South Korea, which aren’t exactly known for horrible human rights violations or exploitation of children (lolicon and shotacon not withstanding). Of course, if you’re an American traveling to Japan or South Korea with the thought of sleeping with minors, better hope no one here finds out about it, cause you can be prosecuted for it here in the states. Yes, that’s right. For doing something that isn’t illegal in the country you were in, you can be prosected here in the USA.

The variety of differences in the age of consent laws worldwide seem, at least to me, to invalidate the entire concept of having a blanket age. I seriously doubt thirteen-year-olds in Spain, Japan and South Korea are in general that much more savvy about sex than their counterparts here in the USA. I’m sure they’re more educated about sex, since they don’t use ineffective, stupid, abstinence-only programs like a lot of places here in the USA do. Telling kids to avoid sex until they’re married only works in cute little fantasy worlds and not in the real world. In the real world, it leaves them ill-prepared to face the possible dangers of sex, and such programs certainly don’t address things like safe-sex practices for gay kids (but as we all know, all children are straight until they get recruited by gays… which reminds me… where’s that toaster oven I’m owed?).

Age of consent laws are also known to trip up teenagers who aren’t that far apart in age. Consider the famed case of Genarlow Wilson, where a seventeen-year-old got a blowjob from a fifteen-year-old and ended up doing serious prison time for it (ironically if he’d just fucked her, it wouldn’t have been such a big deal). Many states have what are called “Romeo and Juliet Laws” which are designed for such cases, but as the Wilson case shows, they don’t always work.

I see only one fair solution to the situations caused by age of consent laws, and that’s elimination of them. That’s right; ditch them completely! Replace them with a case-by-case system where if the younger partner or their parent files a complaint, the courts then determine if the minor in question was truly able to give informed consent. If they were not, then the older person gets charged. Yes, it’s a bit more cumbersome and requires actual thought and understanding of the various nuances, but so what? When it comes to something like labeling someone as a sex offender for the rest of their life, I think it’s worth a little extra time and trouble to find out if the younger person was actually capable of giving real consent or not.

If nothing else, I have to ask the question, “If a minor and an adult have consenting sexual contact with each other, where’s the harm?” Yes, if it’s heterosexual contact, pregnancy can result, but that’s why there’s birth control. Sure, there’s possibilities of STDs, but condoms can help prevent that, and adults are more likely to require them than teens are. There’s also the possibility of physical harm, but that seems to be an issue that needs to be addressed on its own, and not as a package deal. As far as the emotional issues, well, if a minor consents to sex with an adult, and then gets their heart broken, that’s part of life and something everyone needs to learn to deal with. If they suffer serious emotional trauma, then probably something different was going on and, again, that needs to be addressed seperately.

It is important to remember that not all sexual contact between minors and adults is abuse. Yes, a good portion of it is, but that needs to be address by itself. Criminalizing the conduct in general does nothing good, and can create some pretty bad situtations.

While there have been calls for changes to these laws, none of them are really taken seriously in the USA, or any other place for that matter, which is too bad. I certainly recognize that we need to protect our children from the dangers of sexual exploitation, but blanket age of consent laws with arbitrary ages are not the way to do that. We need something that’s a lot more fair, both to the minors and to the adults.