Sexual Urban Legend

By Tracee Sioux

Everyone has heard this urban legend . . .

I have a cousin (or uncle or brother or dad or son) who was only 18 (19, 20, 21, 22) and his girlfriend was 14 and she totally seduced him and then when he broke up with her she had him arrested for statutory rape. Now he’s on the sex offender list for the rest of his life and won’t ever be able to work with children and I don’t think that’s fair at all. I mean, she totally wanted to do it and she was seducing him. He’s a good guy and this just shouldn’t follow him all his life. It’s not fair, she’s just a slut.

Yeah, I’ve got that cousin too. He’s my favorite cousin, always has been. And it sucks for him that he’ll have to pay for his mistake all his life.

And I’ve been that 14-year-old girl.

Now I won’t claim to know what went on in every single one of those rooms with your “innocent” uncle, brother, father, son or cousin. Perhaps if you knew the details you would still believe he was innocent of any wrongdoing.

I’d have to fiercely disagree.

I’m 33 now and I’ve started volunteering as a mentor with four 14-year-old girls.

Here’s what I have learned THEY ARE CHILDREN!

I occurs to me now that no matter how much I would have sworn that I was ready for love and sex, that I was “mature” and should be legally allowed to consent to sex with a boy four or five years my senior – I was a naive and delusional child. I thought I was so grown up. I thought I was so ready for all of adulthood.

Children make bad decisions, it’s in their nature. Not to mention that I had zero sexual education and was therefore unprepared to make any kind of educated decision about whether or not I was ready.

What I really was ready for was for a boy to like me. I was ready for a little romantic involvement. I was ready to experiment with my self as a sexual being – preferably with boys my own age who were also into experimenting with the new world.

My innocence should have been protected by the law, by my parents (they tried to talk me out of it, but did not involve the law), and most of all by that 19-year-old pervert who spoon-fed me seductive crap about how “mature” I was and how “different” I was from girls my age and how he preferred hanging out with me to “high maintenance” girls his own age. READ: You’re an easy target and girls my own age are too hard to f***.

Looking back I know that in his innermost being that guy was a coward. He didn’t dare date girls his own age because they were mature enough not to take his crap. Had it been a severely punishable offense that was frequently (rather than almost never) prosecuted he wouldn’t have had the guts to pursue a child for his perverted and deviant hobby.

My point here is that your uncle, brother, cousin, father or son is not entitled to a free pass at our teenage daughters. As an adult he should know better and should be held to a higher standard than a child in regards to sexual responsibility.

For much too long we have been offering our teenage daughters as some sort of sacrifice on the alter of a man’s uncontrollable (what crap!) need for sexual gratification.

Our teenage daughters deserve legal and social protection. They deserve to be able to experiment with their provocativity and sexuality without an adult man taking this as a viable invitation or seduction. My five-year-old often experiments with looking sexy or provocative – all little girls do. This doesn’t give anyone permission or a legitimate excuse to molest or rape her. Not now and not when she is 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 or 17.