Jeffrey Epstein and All the Others: An Explainer
by Kay Hymowitz.
The neglected truth is that for most of recorded history, sexual relations with girls barely past puberty was widespread.
https://quillette.com/2019/08/06/jeffrey-epstein-and-all-the-others-an-explainer/
The truth is the attraction of older males to young females on the cusp of maturity is not so much the story of rich capitalist scumbags exercising droight du seigneur, as it is a universal urge for reproductive success likely grounded deep in our primitive brains.
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The neglected truth is that for most of recorded history, sexual relations with girls barely past puberty was widespread.
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At puberty, children graduated directly from childhood to sexual maturity much as in the animal kingdom; in many cultures, girls were, and in many pre-industrial groups still are, being readied for a marriage bed. Never mind consent; their own desires were often of little consequence.
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English common law introduced the idea of statutory rape and criminalized sex with young girls as early as the 13th century. The British colonists imported these protections to America. (They would do the same when they settled in India in the 19th century, though the laws, violating ancient local traditions, were ignored especially in rural areas and among the poor.) Progressive as they were for their time, laws in early America were hopelessly lax by modern standards: they did not include slave girls and they deemed 10 and 12-year olds, depending on the state, capable of consent. Brides of 13 and younger were not uncommon in the 19th and even early 20th century, particularly in the Southern states.
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It wasn’t until the later 19th century, that the sexual vulnerability of adolescent girls got the sort of attention that is a moral imperative for us. That attention, again primarily in England and the U.S, took the form of the very quaint sounding “Social Purity Movement,” whose membership eventually joined ranks with the better-known temperance and suffragette activists. The movement consisted of church leaders, early feminists and other moral reformers. Their goal was to attack “male depravity” by ending prostitution and by raising the age consent to 18; in both countries, resistance was strong enough that crusaders were eventually forced to settle for age 16, the most common age of consent in the United States today.
Most of the purity warriors were women from the ranks of America’s growing middle class.
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But since the sexual revolution of the 1960s, the taboo against sex with minors has had to wrestle with the sometimes-foe of sexual liberation. Some sexual revolutionaries took the new freedom as permission to enjoy time with “jailbait,” a term that would take on an ironic tinge as norms liberalized.
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In 1977, Michel Foucault, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Derrida, Simone de Beauvoir and dozens of other French intellectuals lobbied the French government to abolish age of consent laws and to decriminalise ‘consensual sex’ between adults and minors under the age of fifteen. In response to a trial of three Frenchman accused of having sex with 13 and 14 year old boys, 69 French intellectuals signed a petition arguing for their release. German radicals, including Daniel Cohn-Bendit, now a prominent EU politician, said kindergarten teachers should encourage sexual exploration. “You know, a child’s sexuality is a fantastic thing,” Cohn-Bendit said on French television in 1982 according to Spiegel Online. “When a little five year old girl starts undressing, it’s great, because it’s a game. It’s an incredibly erotic game.”