[This Article Of Mine Below Is A Customized Re-post From My Steemit Channel.]
During all four years that I was in high school, I shared a tight friendship with this one girl named Lisa. She and I never fell in love with each other, but we trusted each other probably more than we had ever trusted anyone we had become romantically interested in during our teenage years.
I was 13 years old when I first met Lisa in high school. Actually, I was about to turn fourteen, and she was the same age as me. She was in my Earth Science class in my freshman year of high school. What was so interesting about Lisa was that she was always classy in every way. It was not until a year later that I found out that her father worked as a butcher at a local grocery store, but it did not lessen my opinion of her and it shouldn’t have. She spoke eloquently and handled situations much more maturely than other girls her age.
When Lisa and I got to be 17 years old and we were in our senior year of high school, Lisa admitted to me and other friends of hers that she would like to date a 25-year-old man in spite of the fact that she was still a minor and that he would be nearly a decade older than her. When she told me this one revelation about herself, it only heightened my opinion of her inasmuch as it indicated to me that she was mature enough to handle a loving relationship with an adult man significantly older than her. I knew her better than anyone else in my school. Therefore, I make this statement with confidence herein.
When I was a teenager, my buddies and I had a few moments of laughter when we would crack jokes about a dirty old man chasing after a high-school or middle-school girl. However, when Lisa told me that she would like to have dated a 25-year-old man when she was 17 years old, I felt very impressed with her and that she owed it to herself inasmuch as she was much more mature and sophisticated than most of the boys in our school. In fact, many of the boys in our school were absolute jerks and thought nothing of it whenever they hurt some innocent, young girl’s feelings or even got one into trouble.
Nevertheless, neither my classmates nor I ever thought that there would have been anything morally wrong with Lisa having dated a 25-year-old man before her eighteenth birthday. I believe that, at the time, the statutory age of consent in our state jurisdiction was 18 years old, but don’t hold me to it. However, whether or not any law stood to be broken upon her dating a 25-year-old man never crossed my mind, because she always had a certain degree of dignity in how she conducted her personal matters. I had known for a fact that she would not have been looking for a one-night stand; and if she had started dating a 25-year-old man in high school, she probably would have made him wait until their wedding night before having sexual intercourse. Moreover, I would never have thought of such a boyfriend of hers to be a pedophile or a child molester, because Lisa was no longer a little girl at that point in time and I felt that she had the right to choose whom she dated regardless of his age.
A slang term has been floating around on the Internet and gaining popularity in its usage. The slang term is known as “pedo-shaming.” What it means is when someone shames or humiliates another individual verbally for being a pedophile. Now, it does not mean that the person being pedo-shamed is necessarily a pedophile. It could be true or untrue.
Nevertheless, probably a more accurate term to describe someone falsely accusing another individual of being a pedophile and shaming him for it would be “mendacious pedo-shaming.” “Mendacious” is an adjective to describe something that is a lie; and if someone subjects another individual to mendacious pedo-shaming, then he or she is shaming that individual for being something that he is not, which is a pedophile.
An anonymous female writer from the writing site called The Overtake engages in mendacious pedo-shaming in her online article titled “Age gap relationships involving teenagers are gross.” Now, if she feels that adult/adolescent romantic relationships (“adult/adolescent relationships”) are gross, she is entitled to her opinion. It doesn’t mean that any of us have to agree with her; but after many of you read her article, I’m sure that you are going to disagree with her.
I frankly believe that people who choose to live in a make-believe world of age-appropriate perfection are gross and pathetic, and it appears that this same anonymous female writer does so. In any event, where this anonymous female writer goes terribly wrong in her article is that she engages in mendacious pedo-shaming in that nowhere in her article does she give any examples of any adults sexually molesting a prepubescent child. Her article, therefore, is mostly a biased opinion editorial that offers no really valid arguments or information to support her contention.
I completely understand that this anonymous female writer was in a less-than-perfect relationship with a middle-aged man when she was 17 years old, and I realize that such a fact adversely affects her overall perspective on whether adult/adolescent relationships can really work or should even be allowed to exist. However, she takes her article way too far when she goes off on a tangent and accuses adult men of being pedophiles simply for having non-Platonic feelings for adolescent girls. She makes an unfair and inaccurate generalization that all adult/adolescent relationships are predatory and exploitative.
Therein she states:
Child brides make us feel h---- uncomfortable. Though weirdly, that the bride is a child isn’t what makes our skin crawl — we never feel a shudder when we see children play “weddings” or have a “boyfriend” or “girlfriend” in their class. In fact, couples who met and fell in love in childhood and are still together 20 years later are generally considered super cute.
The reason child brides feel inherently grim is the creepy and harmful power imbalance. It’s an adult man with a young girl. We know that’s f------ up. When one partner is more naive and has considerably less life and relationship experience, there is nearly always a power imbalance. One person’s “teaching”, “guidance” and “knowing what’s best” is another person’s manipulation and pressure.
Okay, Ms. Know-It-All. Femi-Nazi extremists and the likes, including you, never seem to have any problem with hypergamy, and hypergamy promotes power imbalances in marriages regardless of the ages of the partners as I described in my previous Hive-Blog article titled “Say NO To Pedophile-Panic Propaganda!” Therefore, all of you women who may be angry and frustrated really don’t have very much moral high ground to preach about power imbalances in adult/adolescent marriages or relationships in general. Moreover, your definition of a “child bride” is inaccurate. A 15-year-old married girl is a teenage bride, whereas a “child bride” is a little girl who weds at, say, 8 or 9 years old. There is a major difference between both scenarios.
Also, Ms. Know-It-All? Why are you bringing the subject of underage marriage into your article? I thought that your article was supposed to be specifically about teenage girls dating older men, before they are legally old enough to vote. You need to stay focused, Ms. Know-It-All, and be more specific about the topic of your article instead of flying all over the place with your arguments and making very little or no sense. Like so many other femi-Nazi extremists, Ms. Know-It-All, you take a predilection of using the F word in your writing. That is very unprofessional on your part, and your grammar and punctuation also leave so very much to be desired.
Nevertheless, power imbalances can easily be evened out in adult/adolescent relationships. If the adult partner really wants for the relationship (or the marriage) to work with his adolescent partner, he can even out any power imbalances by driving the extra mile to help his girlfriend or wife to prosper into a well-rounded woman. For example, he can pay to put her through college, and I have come across true stories about such scenarios taking place.
Readers? Don’t let this anonymous female writer fool any of you with all her doom and gloom about adult/adolescent relationships. Only because she had a bad experience with an older man when she was 17 years old, everyone should not have to suffer. It is like this one proverb that warns all of us that misery loves company. This anonymous female writer is the proof for you that it does.
Ms. Know-It-All? I do agree that couples who met and fell in love in childhood and are still together 20 years later are generally considered super cute. A second cousin of mine and his wife fit that same description. However, I also believe that society makes the mistake of believing that such couples are infallible and even incapable of committing heinous crimes. In a previous Hive-Blog article of mine, I offered a reasonable amount of information to show that many individuals from relationships that fit this same description like Josh Duggar, Levi Johnston, Isaac Frausto and especially Toby Willis were really circus freak shows instead. At the end of the day, in figurative language, the in-crowd has its fair share of both good apples and bad apples exactly as the out-crowd does.
In her above-described article, the anonymous female writer states:
It’s unsurprising that multiple studies have linked this kind of power imbalance to abuse and violence. In fact, the more vulnerable the girl is, the more likely this is to happen. For example, relationships with large age gaps are also more likely to occur where the individuals are poorer and less educated. Teens who were survivors of sexual assault are also more likely to date older men, according to US reproductive rights group the Guttmacher Institute.
Notice that nowhere therein does the anonymous female writer provide a link for any of these statements of hers to an actual website by the Guttmacher Institute where her readers can verify whether or not she is really quoting actual information from a research study. In any event, there are many educated and knowledgeable individuals who disagree with her school of thought regarding adult/adolescent relationships with significant age gaps.
Wyndol Furman, B. Bradford Brown, and Candice Feiring edited a book titled The Development of Romantic Relationships in Adolescence, and therein they state:
[A]n adolescent who can choose to date either same-age or adult partners may prefer to form friendships with the former while dating the latter. It should not be forgotten that among heterosexuals and sexual minorities alike, older dating partners confer a coveted sense of status or maturity on adolescents. Thus, researchers should not assume that . . . adult-adolescent relationships constitute a de facto danger for the adolescent . . . [S]uch relationships offer both benefits and drawbacks, and the resulting balance depends on the individual adult an adolescent meets.
Therefore, this piece of knowledge demonstrates that the previously-described anonymous female writer’s outlook of doom and gloom on age-gap adult/adolescent relationships is not necessarily the word of the wise. There are many adult/adolescent relationships and even marriages that do have their happy endings.
It becomes evident that the anonymous female writer of the article titled “Age gap relationships involving teenagers are gross” is likely a British woman, because she spells the word “pedophile” as “paedophile.” I will not generalize about British people, because many of them are very astute and learned on topics of this nature. However, I will highlight the fact that mendacious pedo-shaming appears to be an even bigger problem in the United Kingdom than it is here in the United States of America.
I have come across droves of statements made by British nationals in which they misused the term “pedophile” or “pedophilia” in a way that was mendacious and defamatory against others. Other British people will likely agree with me on this point, because, like me, they are probably concerned about the overwhelming amount of pedophile hysteria going on in their nation and in other English-speaking nations.
I don’t completely disagree with the above-described anonymous female writer’s statement that relationships with large age gaps are also more likely to occur where the individuals are poorer and less educated. It is no secret that in Third World nations, there are more Loretta-Lynn-style marriages and early marriages in general than there are in industrialized nations. I even know of two Hispanic women from a while back who got married right out of high school inasmuch as they could not wait to get away from their parents and their life of poverty before they went to live in the continental United States of America. However, it does not mean that such marriages or relationships are necessarily going to end in tragedy, and many of them do have happy endings.
In her article, the anonymous female writer states:
But when it comes to the entirely fictional trope of the confident, sexually-aware teenage girl who thirsts after middle-aged men — something perfectly deconstructed in this piece by Anna Leszkiewicz — we have a huge societal cognitive shift. As soon as we get a hint that the girl is aware of her sexuality, we so often perceive her as having the wisdom and authority of a grown woman too; as if the minute you notice you have breasts, you become magically impervious to manipulation.
Okay, Ms. Know-It-All. Perhaps there are not as many teenage girls who fall in love with middle-aged men as there are ones who fall in love with men in their twenties, but they do exist. I read Anna Leszkiewicz’s article and it amounted to nothing more than a femi-Nazi extremist manifesto that represents how insecure unattractive middle-aged women feel in the presence of sexually precocious teenage girls.
Whenever you see some middle-aged woman interviewed on television and she is complaining about movies that depict exotically beautiful teenage girls vying for the affections of a significantly older man, that middle-aged woman is seldom ever a blond-haired bombshell over 40 years old like Drew Barrymore or Reese Witherspoon. Usually she is a homely, hefty hag who bears a strong resemblance to a gargoyle, and you can clearly see that she is acting on her sexual insecurities. I’m not trying to be shallow, but facts are facts.
You never hear or read about these same middle-aged women complaining about the 1971 movie titled Summer of ’42 or the 1981 movie titled Private Lessons, because, like men their age, they also have their forbidden fantasies that involve partners significantly younger than them who are often in their teens. Of course, they have this pipe dream that every man over 40 years old should be a clone of Tony Danza. Of course, their expectations of how the ideal man their age should be is highly unrealistic.
There may be no substitute for life experience. However, family members of mine from older generations than mine have stressed to me that teenage girls of today are much more knowledgeable about sex and relationships than they were back in the 1950s and the early 1960s. The above-described anonymous female writer does her readers no justice in attempting to put diapers on adolescent girls as old as 17 years of age.
In her article, the anonymous female writer states:
As a society, we’re more aware of child molestation than ever before and yet in 2017 we’re still subjected to these misogynist, one-dimensional characters. In (the allegedly problematic) comedian Louis CK’s film I Love You, Daddy, Chloë Grace Moretz plays a 17-year old temptress. Meanwhile, Woody Allen, who is still inexplicably making films, is currently filming A Rainy Day in New York, in which middle-aged Jude Law has sex with a 15-year old girl. I hope the character will be exposed as the paedophile he is but, knowing Allen’s own history of (at the very least) fetishising children, that seems extremely unlikely.
Age gap relationships where one person is a teenager are not healthy. Even putting aside relationships where the girl is under the age of consent, it’s dangerous to normalise these large age gaps as these films do.
Ms. Know-It-All? What does any of what you’re describing have to do with child molestation or pedophilia? I am not someone who encourages a 15-, 16- or 17-year-old girl to hook up with an older man, particularly an older man over 40 years old. However, you do not have the right to conflate an adult/adolescent relationship of a noticeably significant age gap with a dangerous serial child rapist grabbing a toddler off a playground and committing unspeakable atrocities against that innocent. The two scenarios simply have nothing to do with each other. Moreover, you are normalizing pedophilia by implying that it is no different for a middle-aged man to violate a 6-year-old girl with his genitalia in every orifice of her fragile body than it is for a 16-year-old girl and a 30- or 40-something-year-old man to fall in love each other and later marry as John Derek and Bo Derek did.
Conventional wisdom holds that adult/adolescent relationships like the one of John Derek and Bo Derek at its outset are far more similar to teleiophilic relationships than they are to episodes or acts of pedophilia. In fact, adult/adolescent relationships like the one of John Derek and Bo Derek at its outset bear no resemblance to any episodes or acts of pedophilia. Pedophiles who sexually molest small children are not looking for long-term relationships or even marriages with their victims. They are simply looking to use up their victims and throw them away after they become too old for their sexual desires. Read the Diagnostic And Statistical Manual Of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (“DSM-5”), Ms. Know-It-All, and you will realize that you are very very wrong about everything that you state in your article regarding pedophilia or rather your erroneous perception of what it is.
I read the article about the film titled A Rainy Day in New York to which you linked your article, Ms. Know-It-All, and the role that Elle Fanning plays in that movie is ambiguous regarding her actual age. She was 19 years old when she played the role. However, in the movie, her character argues that she is 21 years old rather than 15 years old. Such a scenario has nothing to do with pedophilia, because a prepubescent child would not be a 15-year-old girl who is trying to pass off for 21 years old or a 21-year-old woman who is being mistaken for a 15-year-old girl. I am not a big fan of Woody Allen, and I am in no way condoning any transgressions of his from the past. However, that movie of his has nothing to do with child molestation or pedophilia. Therefore, the character in that movie played by Jude Law cannot be exposed for being something that he is not, and he is not a pedophile.
Ms. Know-It-All? I agree that age-gap relationships where one person is a teenager can be unhealthy, but not for the reasons that you believe so. I believe that they can become unhealthy when society treats them with disdain and does not give such adult/adolescent couples the opportunity to prosper in their mutual journey. If Doug Hutchison and Courtney Stodden had been living in Southern Europe or in the 1970s United States of America, it is my solid belief that their marriage would have lasted indefinitely. However, because of all the hate they got from strangers who didn’t even take the time to understand what they had together, their marriage needlessly suffered and eventually fell apart.
Sadly enough, Doug Hutchison and Courtney Stodden’s marriage got more hostile publicity than even Toby Willis did for raping his own daughters from the time they were toddlers. The major difference between the two scenarios is clearly easy to see. Doug Hutchison and Courtney Stodden never committed any crimes and they never hurt anyone. They got married so that their relationship would be within the confines of the law, and they did so in hopes that the public at large would take them seriously as a couple. The press and the media here in our nation behaved toward them in an unacceptable manner. On the other hand, the Toby Willis crime story disappeared from the American press and the American media as quickly as it made its way into the public eye by those same means despite that it dealt with a seriously reprehensible matter.
Further on in her article, the anonymous female writer describes her unsuccessful relationship as a 17-year-old girl with a married man who was nearly 40 years old. Now, I don’t mean to get up on my moral high horse, but even my friend, Lisa, knew better than to get involved with a married man of any age when she was 17 years old. Therefore, I have to state that the anonymous female writer destroyed any chances of such a relationship becoming a success before it even had a chance. However, I would have to state the same if this woman had gotten involved with a 19-year-old married man. As you can see, the age gap here really wasn’t the main problem. The fact that this woman was getting herself involved in a love triangle with a married man was.
I understand that the anonymous female writer of the above-described article was young, and we all made our fair share of mistakes when we were teenagers. However, even when I was 12 and 13 years old, I knew that getting involved with a married person was a recipe for disaster right from the beginning. In fact, adultery made me furious when I was an adolescent in middle school and in high school. Then again, if I had known someone like this anonymous female writer when I was a teenager in high school and she was a close friend of mine, I would likely not have passed judgment on her and I would have done everything I could to talk her into breaking up with this married man.
Upon reading the above-described article, I can frankly state that the story that the anonymous female writer tells about her romance with an older man when she was 17 years old brings to mind the lyrics of the song “Better Love Next Time” by Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show. Here is the song.
The Song Titled “Better Love Next Time” By Dr. Hook And The Medicine Show
A man who cheats on his wife is not going to be the best romantic candidate for a 17-year-old girl. An adult woman would not benefit from such a relationship either. Therefore, I don’t know what this anonymous female writer hoped to get out of this relationship, because eventually he would go back to his wife and leave her high and dry. However, this same scenario could have happened to her if she had gotten involved with an 18- or 19-year-old married man. Many young male newlyweds cheat on their wives; and when they do, they don’t treat their mistresses much better than their wives. It is apparent that the anonymous female writer uses the whole “age gap” excuse as a smokescreen to hide the fact that she should never have gotten involved with a married man of any age.
In her article, the anonymous female writer states:
As it happened, all my female friends at school were confused but accepting, because I surrounded myself with mature, loyal and broad-minded girls. But the boys were openly disgusted. They were kind-hearted, smart boys — and I wish I’d have realised at the time that their reactions weren’t only based on jealousy. On the other hand, the man’s friends seemed to think it was great (their eyes were wide when we met and I could practically see them salivating, which freaked me out, even then), though admittedly he probably only introduced me to other borderline paedophiles.
Nope, Ms. Know-It-All! There were no borderline pedophiles involved in your forbidden relationship with a married man. There was only 17-year-old you and the married man. You were old enough to know better than to get involved with a married man, but you made the choice and now you have to live with it.
Teenage boys from most English-speaking cultures do tend to get openly disgusted whenever men from older age groups cross over into their territory in the romance marketplace. Many teenage boys think nothing about sneaking around with their best friend’s mother, but they will not stand for an adult man to have any kind of romance with girls their age on their watch.
Okay, perhaps I’m not being completely fair. If I had known a girl like this back in high school, I probably would have been openly disgusted; but I only would have been so, because I would not want this female friend of mine to get hurt and humiliated. Of course, when I was 17 years old, I was more compassionate about such situations than other boys my age were.
Nevertheless, when I was 17 years old, I also knew that there were adult/adolescent relationships that led to happy marriages and “happily-ever-afters.” “Pedophile” and “pedophilia” were not words that I used in my vocabulary until I was 19 years old. Back then “child molester” and “child molestation” were not words that I used in my vocabulary unless I was actually describing an adult man or even a teenage boy who had sexually molested a little girl or a little boy still in the playground phase of their life.
In her article, the anonymous female writer states:
Most of the research that’s available about the impact of teenage girl and adult man relationships is from the US. Planned Parenthood, the American Journal of Public Health and the Journal of Adolescent Health have all published data showing teenage girls in relationships with adult men are more likely to have sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and get pregnant.
Once again the anonymous female writer does not provide any links to any articles containing such claims. If a teenage girl gets involved with an adult man who is either an incel or a perma-virgin, it would appear that she would be much less likely to contract a sexually-transmitted infection from him than she would from a sexually promiscuous boy her own age; and probably many of these older men that these teenage girls are hooking up with are ones who have never had girlfriends in their lives inasmuch as these romantically inexperienced men have a difficult time relating to women their own age who are much more romantically experienced than them. Therefore, where would these teenage girls get their sexually-transmitted infections or rather how would they do so?
Also, whenever you read stories in the newspaper or on the Internet about girls as young as 13 or 14 years old hooking up with men in their forties or even older, somehow these young girls never seem to get pregnant. I described one such scenario in my previous Hive-Blog article titled “Abusive Law-Enforcement Officials Face Prospective Backlash For Frivolous And Malicious Statutory-Rape Cases Against Americans,” and the 14-year-old girl who began having sexual relations with a 49-year-old schoolteacher back in 2008 never got pregnant. On the other hand, the Internet is inundated with true stories about deadbeat teenage fathers, but somehow society tends to believe that these punks can do no wrong despite the problems that they have caused.
It would be out of character for the United States Planned Parenthood to make any negative remarks or so-called findings about adult/adolescent relationships, because there was even one point not too long that this same institution was covering up prospective “statutory-rape” cases. There was a major to-do about it too. Therefore, I would have to question where the anonymous female writer is getting her information.
In her article, the anonymous female writer states:
It’s not patronising or ageist to warn girls about adult men. Seeming to have some level of maturity or confidence doesn’t negate vulnerability. In fact, it’s sometimes the most vulnerable girls who look the most in control. That’s exactly what went wrong and is still going wrong in Rotherham, when police and social services decided these outwardly confident girls didn’t need protecting from sex offenders. It’s no different when girls are over the age of consent either. There’s no switch that gets flicked on your 16th birthday that turns you from prey to predator.
Ms. Know-It-All? It’s not patronizing or ageist to warn teenage girls about deadbeat teenage fathers either. I have never been to England, and I cannot speak for anyone who has experienced the way of life there in either a positive or negative manner. However, Ms. Know-It-All, you make no sense in some of your statements. What do you mean when you state that there’s no switch that gets “flicked” on your 16th birthday that turns you from prey to predator? Why would someone be turned from prey to a predator?
Ms. Know-It-All? I’m also sure that bad things do happen to girls over the statutory age of consent as well. However, raising the statutory age of consent in your country or in any state jurisdiction of my nation is not going to turn any place into a better culture with a better society. If you were above the statutory age of consent when you got involved with that married boyfriend of yours, you really shouldn’t be implying that he or anyone his age who may have been taking a non-Platonic interest in you would have the same internal wiring as a serial child rapist. The Rotherham case that you describe in your article has nothing to do with your relationship with a married man back when you were 17 years old.
Quite frankly, I do not believe that there is any such thing as a 16- or 17-year-old child molestation victim. I can also be rest assured that there are more people in this world who share my opinion in that regard than there are ones who disagree with me.
Therein she states:
While I was generally unharmed emotionally (I wasn’t beaten, I didn’t become pregnant or get an STI), this relationship still affects me years later in ways I don’t expect or anticipate; I burst into tears halfway through American Beauty when I watched it for the first time a few years ago. These days, if someone says the title of that film now or I see the iconic poster parodied, I get a sudden knot in the pit of my stomach.
I can always be thankful that my experience was relatively fleeting. I’ve never felt I was robbed of my teenage years, but there are plenty of now adult women who are unable to say that.
Instead of normalising and glamourising the behaviour of child molesters and predatory adults, we need to start to see the reality of these relationships through the eyes of the teenage girls, who so often don’t get a voice.
So, Ms. Know-It-All? You really don’t have much to complain about. You need to get yourself beyond the past and look in the future. You watch way too many movies. You need to get out more often. You need to move on with your life and stop dwelling on the past, because you cannot change it.
Ms. Know-It-All? You are the one who is normalizing and glamorizing the behavior of child molesters and predatory adults by conflating them with adult men who have been involved in benign relationships with teenage girls. Your assertion that teenage girls don’t get a voice regarding any sexual experience they’ve had outside their age circles is without basis of fact. All over YouTube and even the Internet, you will find women talking about how their relationships were with older men during their adolescent years. Some of them have had good experiences, whereas others have had bad experiences. There is no one-size-fits-all to this situation as you apparently believe, and you are only promoting hatred against innocent individuals.
Ms. Know-It-All? I saw the 2009 British film titled An Education about a 16-year-old girl who gets involved with a man nearly twice her age, not knowing that he is really married; and if that had been the case with you when you were 17 years old, I would respond that this man did you a major injustice. However, you went into the relationship, knowing that he was a married man. Therefore, you really don’t have a very good excuse to ask others for a pity party. As a 17-year-old girl who became sexually active on her own volition, you would also clearly not qualify to be a child-molestation victim either. Because you were above the statutory age of consent in your nation, you would not even qualify to be a statutory-rape victim.
One spring when I was 18 years old, I went to work as a service assistant in an Italian food restaurant. The pay wasn’t all that great, but it was an adventure for me inasmuch as it was really the first job I had ever had beyond doing yard work, mowing lawns and babysitting. One of the managers of this restaurant was a 44-year-old woman named Sandi. Sandi was always polite to me, and she never imposed her authority on me as my superior. Sandi had a very unusual background in that she had been married four different times. It could explain why she seemed to have the best of everything, because she likely married men with money and we lived in a community property state. Therefore, she made out good in her divorces.
Later on, it became known to me that Sandi was having sizzling sexual affairs with the young male employees at that restaurant. One of her suspected affairs was a 16-year-old boy named Christopher and another one was a young boy named Tony who didn’t look any older than, say, 14 or 15 years old.
Sandi never made any passes at me. As a teenage boy, I had no interest in becoming sexually involved with a woman in her mid-forties. At the same time, I was able to understand why so many young boys became interested in her. She did not look young for her age. However, she did always present herself as someone distinguished with much class and sophistication. She had a refined way of holding a cigarette and drinking her bloody Mary or martini whenever I saw her sitting down at one of the tables discussing business with anyone.
I always got the sense that Sandi had been waiting for me to hook up with her, but I had no desire to take our relationship beyond that of a business one. When I was a teenager, older women were simply not my scene, even though I knew that there were many boys my age and even younger who got all excited about hooking up with an older woman. I eventually became like the young rose that Sandi simply could not have. However, because of it, she developed a very strong respect for me; and after I was no longer working at her restaurant, she gave me an outstanding recommendation when someone contacted her regarding a job I had applied for in the city. I ended up getting that job too.
Later on, I got wind that the waitresses and other female employees, many of whom were the girlfriends of these same male employees, at that Italian restaurant got into a fight with Sandi. My father even told me that one night he drove by her restaurant and saw her sitting down at the bottom of the hill from the parking lot with a despondent look on her face. I suggested to my father that it might have been on that day that the waitresses and other female employees had gotten into a fight with her. That place was like an ongoing soap opera drama until it went out of business a few years later.
I had no problem with Sandi or any of the young boys who were having sexual relations with her. I had felt that it was their business. I never hung out with any of these boys or young men, because I didn’t want to get involved in that whole situation with Sandi. I didn’t want any of them pressuring me into having sexual relations with her.
I was only one year older than what the above-described anonymous female writer was when she had her relationship with a significantly older man and I handled the situation beautifully by not getting involved with my female superior. Everybody has a mouth when they are 17 or 18 years old. They only have themselves to blame if they do not use it. Moreover, I never viewed Sandi as being a child molester or a pedophile. Every young man and boy, of age and underage, who had a sexual relationship with her knew exactly what they were doing. None of them were victims as far as I am concerned.
By the same token, the anonymous female writer falls critically short of proving that she was a victim in her forbidden relationship with the older married man when she was 17 years old. She clearly had a choice in the matter, and no laws were even broken.
Mendacious pedo-shaming constitutes defamation just like any other form of libel or slander does. Unless a professionally ethical mental-health professional formally diagnoses someone with pedophilia, it is wrong to accuse that individual of being a pedophile and it is blatantly unethical to shame that person for being one when he really is not one.
Women will have their sob stories from their adolescent years about forbidden relationships with older men gone wrong. However, it does not give any of them a license to modify and expand the definition of pedophilia that appears in the DSM-5. The decision to change the definition of pedophilia lies with the American Psychiatric Association. Furthermore, all adult/adolescent romantic relationships are not misogynistic as femi-Nazi extremists aggressively accuse.
It was mendacious pedo-shaming that got Elon Musk into serious trouble. At the end of the day, mendacious pedo-shaming is a civil liability and it should be a crime.
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