Good Morning, Little Schoolgirl
When asked if he was the anonymous sender of a valentine’s card by its young travel-tavern receptionist recipient, Alan Partridge replied, aghast, ‘No, I’m old enough to be your father – or your older brother; either way, it’s incest!’ Yes, older man/younger woman – it can be problematic, if not for the couple themselves, then certainly for the wider society. An age difference between two people intimately involved is evidently irrelevant to the intimate parties or else they wouldn’t be together in the first place; and there’s no reason why the difference should really figure at all if the relationship works. I suppose I’d anticipate many cultural spheres of reference being baffling to both sides in conversation, something that wouldn’t be the case were their respective ages close or the same; but that’s a minor moot point I would imagine.
It’s a curious game, this generation one. A couple can fall in love or lust when there’s upwards of forty or even just four years separating them; but if the girl is, say, a fortnight from her sixteenth birthday and the man is twenty, he’s a predatory paedophile and she’s a vulnerable child. The slight age difference may as well be a vast chasm in such a case, yet move the man on a decade or two and society (not to mention the law) is largely accepting of the arrangement. So, it’s okay for a man to get involved with a younger woman as long as he’s old enough to be her father, even more so if he’s virtually decrepit. Strange moral values we live by.
Billy Joel will be 66-years-old in less than a month. Alexis Roderick, his current girlfriend, is 33. The gap between them is as long as her lifetime. When Joel was the same age she is now, she was…being born. When he reached 40, she was just seven. At 45, she was twelve. When she became ‘legal’, he’d already lived for almost half-a-century. Had he become attracted to her during these phases of her life, the attraction would have been viewed in an altogether different light. Incidentally, Joel’s daughter is four years younger than the woman now expecting his child. Mind you, I’m not singling out the Piano Man for special treatment; he’s hardly unique in the wonderful business we call show. Rod Stewart has a habit of upgrading his girlfriend on average about once a decade; Mick Jagger isn’t far behind either. Ageing rockers tend not to become involved with women their own age, this is true. I don’t know whether it’s mere vanity, emotional immaturity or the nostalgia factor – perpetuating the illusion of eternal youth (despite what the mirror says) by continuing to pursue pretty young girls, as they did when they were pretty young men. But old rock stars don’t have a monopoly on the male menopause.
The freshly divorced man approaching middle-age often tries to turn back the clock to where he was before tying the knot he has just become entangled from. He starts to dress with a little more flamboyance, having shed the sensible sartorial shackles of the husband; everything his wife told him he looked stupid in he is now free to don. He also usually trades in his dull family car for the kind of flashy motor marriage made redundant. In his head, he’s eighteen again, and his biological makeup means he can resume the procreation game, something his female equivalent, on the whole, cannot. Older women do get involved with younger men, of course; but it tends to be more of a rare sight.
Writers as varied as Vladimir Nabokov and Melvyn Bragg have tackled the tricky subject of older men falling for young girls; in the case of the former, his particular prick-teaser is especially difficult for modern sensibilities to deal with on account of her age. And while sitcoms or dramas from the 70s are retrospectively condemned when a male character expresses a yearning for schoolgirls, we are – lest we forget – living through an era that has revived the St Trinian’s series; the fact that Gemma Arterton and Girls Aloud are clearly fully grown women dressed in sexy school uniforms shouldn’t detract from the double-standards on display. Indeed, it’s only a decade or so since the ‘School Disco’ club nights specialised in patrons dressed as schoolboys and girls whilst dancing to crap hits from the 80s.
The schoolgirl has long been a staple diet of pop culture mythology, from the lascivious – The Rolling Stones’ ‘Stray Cat Blues’ – to the lushly romantic – Serge Gainsbourg’s ‘Historie de Melody Nelson’; and it’s only fifteen years or so since ‘American Beauty’ swept the board at the Oscars. Sometimes, the shoe is on the other foot; think of Bobby Goldsboro’s ‘Summer (The First Time)’ or even ‘Maggie May’ (‘It’s late September/and I should be really back at school’). Indeed, the enduring allure of the older woman who makes the boy a man is as perennial as the older man doing likewise to the female ingénue. As an easily aroused adolescent, I showed little interest in girls my own age; most of my fantasies featured their mothers, and I’m pretty damn sure their daughters had similar longings for the fathers of their male contemporaries. Beryl Bainbridge’s early novel, ‘Harriet Said’, features two underage girls who have sex with older men; and then there’s Lynn Barber’s ‘An Education’, of course. It’s a perfectly natural phase of adolescence, whether or not one takes the giant step from fantasy to reality – and let’s face it, most don’t.
Try telling that to our old friend, the Paedo-finder General. He was unswerving in his opinion that Kelly Burgess, a teacher a mere decade older than the sixteen-year-old male pupil she had an affair with, was a practitioner of sexual abuse. Burgess received a ten-month suspended prison sentence last year, found guilty of having sexual activity with a boy aged 13-17. She was also banned from teaching and had to sign the sex-offenders register; yes, that’s right – placing her on the same legal footing as actual abusers of pre-pubescent children, her punishment for engaging in a consensual sexual relationship with someone old enough to have married her if his parents had agreed to it. And was the tender innocent she ‘abused’ traumatised by the affair or had he simply had the best bloody time of his life up to that point? No doubt to the annoyance of Mark Williams-Thomas, the ‘victim’ publicly stated he disagreed with the verdict and declared his relationship with Burgess had indeed been consensual. But what would he know? After all, he was of an age to join the army and learn how to kill, but apparently not of an age to fall in love and learn how to f**k.
Before Kelly Burgess, there was the case of the male teacher who ran away to France with his female pupil until he was tracked down and dragged home to face Great British Justice. The age difference between him and her was hardly as great as the one between Billy Joel and his latest, but he was painted as no better than Ian Brady or Ian Huntley. Yes, the law is the law, even if some of us might be surprised to find being sixteen appears to be legally no different to being fifteen when it comes to getting your leg over; but surely it is in dire need of revision if post-pubescent teenagers between 16 and 18 are regarded as being on the same playing field as children between six and eight, which is clearly ridiculous.
For centuries, a girl was regarded as a woman as soon as she started menstruating; in the days when life was considerably shorter than it is today and anyone not married by their mid-twenties was sentenced to the shelf, dynastic betrothals were arranged during childhood and marriage could follow not long after. It took hundreds of years before the current ages of consent were established, and I for one think sixteen is about right; but then, I personally have no interest at all in women younger than me, let alone schoolgirls, so I should be safe. Perhaps the schoolgirl could be superseded as a time-honoured erotic icon by the granny? After all, they can always remove their teeth if they feel like a quick…
Nuff said.
Petunia Winegum
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April 19, 2015 at 9:13 am -
“Good Morning, Little School-girl” – a click-bait title if ever there was one. Worked for me.
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April 19, 2015 at 5:04 pm -
Was a great song by Alvin Lee of Ten Years After.
RIP Alvin Lee a real axeman-
April 19, 2015 at 5:31 pm -
And done by The Yardbirds before him, as well. Mind you, it’s probably an old blues standard, I would imagine.
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April 19, 2015 at 6:20 pm -
Yeah , shows a different era, imagine a group coming out with a song about school girls now!
Rod Stewart’s Maggie May is also about young old love. -
April 20, 2015 at 1:30 pm -
If so, it was probably first written and performed in a State where the age of consent was 13.
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April 19, 2015 at 6:23 pm -
Makes me think of Jethro Tull’s “Sitting on a park bench, eyeing little girls with bad intent”.
They have surely had the Yewtree knock by now?
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April 19, 2015 at 7:48 pm -
Yeah he had a paedo suit on him and had a flute
What more evidence does Yewtree need?
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April 19, 2015 at 9:45 am -
When I discovered I could NOT have abused someone over a three day period in the 1980s, as I was in America, the CCRC said “it’s not when but whether something happened” and refused to send my conviction appeal to the court. Yet the age of consent law means one second is the difference between a crime and innocence. Alice has truly moved Through the Looking Glass.
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April 19, 2015 at 9:47 am -
It’s a weird situation, on the one hand there is an age of consent set in law. This, although probably inconsistent and illogical at times is there to protect the young from being exploited, making decisions they will later regret, and so on. But on the other hand pretty much everything the State says and does, in schools, in Rotherham, in the health services, encourages under aged sex.
Cases involving teachers and pupils are the exception, not the rule.-
April 19, 2015 at 6:27 pm -
The main problem is the current law just doesn’t fit with the age at which puberty currently arrives for most.
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April 20, 2015 at 10:45 am -
My take on the “Age of Consent” was always that if the girl (never thought of it being a boy in my day) wasn’t consenting, the law gave her the whip-hand if she complained. This perforce meant that the male (of whatever age) had to be very very sure that the object of his ardour was not going to regret it afterwards. It’s not hard to see however that the law has been tweaked now so that it is simply illegal for any person under the age of 16 to engage in any penetrative sex, and that includes French Kissing, which I vaguely think I first did at a spin-the-bottle party aged about 12 or maybe 13. That I had to stand on the first step of the staircase in order to reach the tall girl merely made it seem more likely that I was the victim being groomed. I do recall some lads and lasses seeming to make it known at school that they had engaged in body-based sex when we were about 14. The proudest boasters were the girls and they all seem fixated on the same (very good-looking) boy. I think this sort of sex between the recently-pubescent remains acceptable amongst most of the professionals. It is where a full adult is one side of the relationship that “paedophilia” rears it’s head. The Canadians seem to have adopted a sensible approach and have stipulated laws where “age differences” apply to try and more clearly define what is and isn’t acceptable to society.
The internet seemed to change the entire balance in Britain and I would guess that in the past, local neighbourhoods and restricted access meant unfortunate relationships were fairly unlikely, but the internet allowed every angst-ridden young teenage to potenetially be accessed by every seeker of the ingenue. The old laws were very stringent about pre-pubescent sex, but it is apparent that even the earliest internet paedo’s were not looking for “children” but very young, pubescent but virginal girls. The search for virgins has an ancient human value.
“As the law currently stands, the maximum sentence for unlawful sexual intercourse with a girl under 13 is life. But for having sex with a girl aged 13 to 16 (the lawful age of consent) it is just two years. The girls groomed over the internet by Wheeler were 13 when he had sex with them, so the judge had a maximum of two years at his disposal. In this case, he sentenced Wheeler to 15 months for each charge. Police believe Wheeler knew about the crucial sentencing change at 13 and deliberately waited until his victims turned 13 to make his move.”
http://jimcannotfixthis.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/no-sex-please-were-british.html
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April 19, 2015 at 9:58 am -
Much wisdom here. I remember Anna writing of the general reaction of the French to the case of the teacher who ran away to France with his 15 year old schoolgirl. General Gallic shrug of the shoulders seemed to sum it up. These crazy Rosbifs, getting themselves in a tizzy about sex again. I don’t like older men who prey/hit on teenage girls, as i can recall happening from my youth. I can also recall that – speak it not lest you are arrested and hung out to dry! – that some teenage girls were mature beyond their years and sexually aggressive and manipulative. There is no one size fits all (phnaar phnaar”) solution.
I have more or less given up on the dating and mating game these days. It doesn’t mean I can’t still appreciate the company and grace of the fairer sex. There was a strikingly bonnie girl who worked in a cafe in the village, fiery orange-red (dyed) hair which went appropriately with her Irish temperament. She was kind and funny too, and she seemed to like my albeit limited wit. She’s half my age, and we had lunch once. Good for my eg0, and she seemed pleased by the attention of a “gentleman”. Was there a bit of flirting going on? Probably. Nothing came of it, nor did I want anything to. A pleasant day was had, memories made, and some reawakened. We stay in touch as friends (she’s abroad at the moment I expect after writing that an entire task force of South Yorkshire police will be assembled in multiple personnel carriers to raid my house whilst the Sky News helicopter hovers above.
Meanwhile in Rochdale, Rotherham, Sheffield…-
April 19, 2015 at 10:00 am -
Please insert “).” at the appropriate line 4 up from the bottom!
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April 19, 2015 at 10:02 am -
After all, he was of an age to join the army and learn how to kill, but apparently not of an age to fall in love and learn how to f**k.
*nicks that quote*
But it isn’ t actually an ‘age thing’ . Teachers act in Loco Parentis (latin for ‘insane parent’ I think). A teacher of whatever gender who starts an affair, consensual or otherwise, with a pupil OF WHATEVER AGE, is committing incest. It is that simple. In Germany and other funny foreign parts for example, a 6th form tutor would still be charged, and are regularly, for having a consensual affair with a 18 year old .
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April 19, 2015 at 5:13 pm -
Loco parentis means in place of your parents. You want your kids to be taught by the teacher, not bonked by them.
If you are a teacher you know that getting involved with the kids is a no no and you should have enough professionalism to say no. -
April 19, 2015 at 6:32 pm -
New Labour introduced a special crime of sex between a teacher and a pupil. The current situation here is the same as in those funny foreign parts you mention and it is regarded as ‘controversial’ to suggest that those conviced should not go to jail:
http://www.theguardian.com/education/mortarboard/2008/oct/06/teacher.pupil.sex.offencePlato, of course, reckoned eroticism was all part of the educational process – but I guess we can leave that for another day …
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April 19, 2015 at 10:17 am -
Passing through the passion pit which is Rotherham a few days ago I saw huge posters on the side of their bin lorries. These stated that “Together we can safeguard our children”. Just when you think you couldn’t write this stuff you find that someone already has . . .
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April 19, 2015 at 10:55 am -
In loco – more precisely:
“Teachers’ professionalism was recognised by the courts in 1962, where the ‘standard of care’ expected of a teacher was held to be that of a person exhibiting the responsible mental qualities of a prudent parent in the circumstances of school, rather than home life. ”
See page 3, point 5:
http://www.teachers.org.uk/files/the-law-and-you–8251-.pdf -
April 19, 2015 at 11:09 am -
A couple who are friends of ours have been married over 20 years. She was his student – at university. I suppose that because she was over 18 when they fell in love it is legally allowed. Their age difference is greater than that of the teachers and students mentioned in the article.
I have also heard (second hand) of a 15 year old seducing her father’s employee. The employee resigned when the girl’s father found out. The girl was known by everyone else in the company to be a flirt. The employee who resigned was the unlucky one who couldn’t resist even knowing the risk of the girl’s father founding out. All the other men had some self control.
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April 19, 2015 at 11:13 am -
I think the issue is crystal clear to a parent.
I don’t think many of us can let reason influence the desire to protect our children, regardless of their sometimes challenging shortcomings. I suppose it’s what used to be called unconditional love; I’m sure the more knowledgeable (is that spelling right?) have some scientific explanation.
Just a view, but I have taken direct action when I thought necessary.-
April 19, 2015 at 6:34 pm -
If any female (or male, I suppose, these Sodom & Gomorrah days) had fallen in love with one of my teenage not-yet-16-years-old sons at school I would have expected her to have the strength of character and the professionalism to recuse herself, change schools and wait for the day he turned 16 before sleeping with him….at which point they could have all the freaky-deaky monkey sex they wanted, hell he could move in with her for all I’d care….just so you know I’m a lousy parent.
If some other woman, say mid 20s, had fallen in love with one of my kids pre-16 but wasn’t his teacher (or in another ‘loco’ role) then I would have wished said son the best of luck and told him he was a lucky man. Like I said, lousy parent.
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April 19, 2015 at 6:36 pm -
*edit If any female teacher(or male
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April 19, 2015 at 10:32 pm -
Agreed.
When I was in my early/mid-teens at an all-male boarding school, a predatory (we would have called it “obliging”) older female teacher was something at the top of most pupils’ wish-list.
Alas, it remained just a dream…
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April 20, 2015 at 8:26 am -
At the tender age of 19, I was ‘Mrs Robinsoned’ by an enthiusiastic female work-colleague aged 39 – was I abused in those tender naive years? Certainly didn’t feel like it at the time. Had he known, I suspect my father too would have quietly approved of this source of free education.
A once-in-a-lifetime ‘double-age’ experience I now accept, considering that any lady of a similar relative age-percentage would now need to be well over 120 and I reckon neither of us could summon up much enthusiasm for a repeat performance, even if we could still remember why.-
April 20, 2015 at 3:21 pm -
For me it was literally day after my 18th birthday. I’d gone with my (divorced) mother to visit her sister in another city, along with my brother and his fiancée, and it was decided that we’d all go out to dinner with a few friends of my aunt’s. When one of the latter turned up, a divorced lady of 38, she – I think half-jokingly – asked my mother if I could accompany her to the restaurant. My mother laughed and said that would be fine, as long as my aunt’s friend was gentle with me, on account of me not having much experience of women. “Well, we’ll see about that,” the friend said. And she did. And we eventually had a great night, once we’d extricated ourself from the restaurant and gone back to her place. She made it clear that it was completely no-strings arrangement, and we had what could be termed a mutual enjoyment of each other. At the time and now more than thirty years on, I feel not a jot of either shame or regret.
At the other end of the scale, my wife is fourteen years younger than me. We shared a flat completely platonically for four years – initially starting as complete strangers – before she unexpectedly made the first and very direct move. We do occasionally get surprised reactions from some people, but given I generally look younger than my years, and she acts older than hers, we usually get away with it!
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April 19, 2015 at 11:20 am -
Petunia wrote:
>It took hundreds of years before the current ages of consent were established
The present age of 16 is not necessarily “established” in the sense of being settled, unlike the earlier age of 12 which ran for some 700 years in England, following the precedent of Roman times when that was traditionally the age of eligibility for marriage. Actually, the age was just 10 from Tudor times to early Victorian and it only applied to girls.
>I for one think sixteen is about right; but then, I personally have no interest at all in women younger than me, let alone schoolgirls
Quite. A greater interest would perhaps lead you to question a few assumptions as to how children can be protected without increasingly draconian laws, law enforcement and an ever rising tide of abuse hysteria. As the panic is cranked up, so are the miscarriages of justice, including kids themselves being branded as sex offenders.
The idea that the current law is “established” suggests we used to have problems but now they’ve been sorted. On the contrary, this panic is not coming out of nowhere: it reflects the breakdown of a society based on traditional religion and family stability. Some good has come out of this, but an absence of clear values has encouraged a superficial blame culture, with minor-attracted people being the big loser: we are such an easy target for scapegoating, obscuring the problems kids face through family breakdown.
Children are genuinely traumatised when their parents fall out and their future is insecure. Guilt-racked parents are the very ones most likely to scream at “paedophiles” for hurting their kids. They should look in the mirror.
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April 19, 2015 at 11:22 am -
When I was young I hoped for a liaison with an older woman who would teach me in the ways of love making. When I was older I hoped for a liaison with a younger woman that I could teach in the ways of love making. Neither happened.
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April 19, 2015 at 1:43 pm -
Quite!
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April 19, 2015 at 6:38 pm -
A boy in my brother’s class slept with a temporary drama teacher when he was seventeen and people still remark in impressed tones on this achievement more than twenty years later.
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April 19, 2015 at 11:26 am -
Another one bites the dust – 24 yr old pillock (and he will be a pillock despite being a ‘choirmaster’ as nobody that age is capable of becoming a useful adult) jailed for consensual sex with a 16 year old http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3044676/Choirmaster-29-000-year-private-school-took-teenage-pupil-s-virginity-office-confided-d-abused-teacher.html
The products of childhood sexualisation will all end up either ‘victims’ or ‘abusers’ and they do not possess the ability to undo their conditioning and think laterally.
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April 20, 2015 at 3:25 pm -
Actually, he was 23 at the time, and as the latter was the summer of 2013, he had probably only just turned that age.
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April 19, 2015 at 11:38 am -
“As an easily aroused adolescent, I showed little interest in girls my own age; most of my fantasies featured their mothers…”
Me too! The morning paper-round was a delicious daily torture, a prayer offered up at the top of each pathway to the letterbox:
‘Dear Lord, please let THIS be the day.’The absolute yearning for the static-crackle of a nylon nightie brushing up against the net-curtain, swishing open to reveal… aaargh, any woman at all! Mother, auntie, even a young granny! It never happened, of course. Bah! Bloody milkman probably got there first!
Regarding the criminalization of youthful hormonal activity there was a recent case where a judge vented her fury at the ridiculous case even being brought before her:
“I have to deal with this on the basis that a 17-year-old had sex with a girl who was almost 16, and they had both had too much to drink. What are we doing here? But still the prosecution wanted to press on. I don’t know what the world has come to when I am asked to deal, in a serious criminal court, with two teenagers who got drunk and had sex.”
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April 19, 2015 at 12:28 pm -
Like most people I find an age difference of more than about 15 years to be too much. Having said that, Ritchie Blackmore and Candice Night are a truly staggering exception:
http://celebrities.wikinut.com/The-Music-Of-Ritchie-Blackmore/3ifka2e6/
A union made in Heaven for all lovers of great music.
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April 19, 2015 at 5:17 pm -
she must be a strange kinda woman
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April 19, 2015 at 7:31 pm -
I find there is a lot of resentment in some statements on this issue. I doubt people would be protesting if they were in Michael Jagger’s shoes.
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April 19, 2015 at 7:57 pm -
Ritchie Blackmore co wrote Strange kind of Woman
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April 19, 2015 at 11:46 pm -
Candice Night is an extraordinary kind of woman; if Helen of Troy was the face that launched a thousand ships, Candice is the US Navy and then some.
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April 19, 2015 at 1:05 pm -
I agree with PW about the current obsession with sex on the cusp of adulthood. Society sexualises kids and then wonders why these behaviours happen in contravention of our laws. We let it happen a lot, then turn a blind eye. It becomes established behaviour then suddenly it is all wrong. Some poor lad is criminalised. No wonder the judge was exasperated. As a community midwife I met a 21 year old couple and delivered their 4th child. They were underage for first child. They were suberb parents. the house was pristine, children happy. Husband running his own shop fitting business. A 15 year old single mum on her 2nd child was another fantastic mum. Turned up years later as the strictest of mums on her fifth baby and married. Running an employment agency very successfully. I dealt with mums twice as old who were abysmal partners and fumbling mothers. Everyone is so different in mid teenage years. Sirens and nuns. Wanting sex and running a mile from sex is perfectly normal. I recall social services involvement, just watchful interest. No police involvement in these cases. No one was smeared with stupid overused words. Sometimes assertive girls in mid teens are old headed for their age. They get what they want, a baby, or an older man, or out from under cold abusive parenting. This teacher business is getting stupid too. It never was the rule about older pupils. No one turned a hair if a sixth former later married the French master, as in our grammar school. Lawyers and compo are running this nonsense.
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April 19, 2015 at 7:36 pm -
The ‘society sexualises kids’ line ignores the fact that Petunia makes so well: we are talking about adolescents not pre-pubescent children in these cases. As you say many fifteen year olds can be precociously mature and one could equally say that many people well into adulthood can behave like children (not least that thirty year old teacher who eloped with a fifteen year old last year). There comes a point at which the law’s protection of the vulnerable becomes legalistic nonsense. The problem is nobody anywhere in society is in a position to exercise discretion
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April 20, 2015 at 1:52 pm -
” The problem is nobody anywhere in society is in a position to exercise discretion”
Ain’t that the truth.
Everything has been codified in rules, regulations, protocols, codicils, etc, and over it all loom the spectre of credentialism and the tyrannies of targets, box-ticking, and ass-covering.
And then we wonder why the result is sometimes absurd and damaging.
We (or rather tptb) seem to have forgotten that people are better than rules.
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April 19, 2015 at 1:42 pm -
I quite agree with you Petunia; we have to accept that there is a grey area regarding the issue of child abuse and while I’m not in favour of lowering the age of consent, as some such as Barbara Hewson are, we have to accept that in the past things are different. You do not mention the late John Peel in your article, but I think it’s worth mentioning that during his lifetime he openly admitted accepting sexual favours from groupies and in the words of the song ‘Stray Cat Blues’ ‘not asking for proof of ID’ when it came to sex.
In the aftermath of the post-humous revelations about Savile a former groupie came forward confessing to having had a sexual relationship with the late DJ at the age of 15 and was perfectly adamant that it was not abuse and was against any attempt to have a wing of the BBC renamed in honour of him (the article can be read by clicking the following link:- http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2264836/Leave-man-Let-BBC-honour-DJ-John-Peel-says-woman-affair-15.html).
None of this stopped the Daily Mail from labelling Peel a sex predator in the following article two years later, however (the article can be read through clicking the following link: – http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2794855/by-honouring-sex-predator-like-john-peel-bbc-shows-s-learnt-jimmy-savile-says-stephen-glover.html). When it comes to different standards in a different era, it seems nothing can be allowed to get in the way of a bit of Beeb bashing.
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April 19, 2015 at 1:51 pm -
It came as no great surprise when certain sections of the media belatedly latched onto Peel’s first marriage in the US, marrying a fifteen-year-old in a State where that was the ‘legal’ age. Peel never hid the fact that his bride was fifteen, but that doesn’t matter when it comes to such revelatory and retrospective ‘evidence’ of his perversity.
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April 19, 2015 at 7:39 pm -
When Yewtree blew up I was amazed that it took years before any of the papers noted that he frequently mentioned his favourite tune of all time was ‘teenage kicks’.
Perhaps it is significant that none of the witchunters was a Peelite …
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April 19, 2015 at 2:20 pm -
Was talking to my daughter just the past week, her friends husband is 20 years or so older than she. Words like “Creepy”, “Perv” and “Daddy issues” were bandied about. Now why is it that older men with younger women are seen as pervy, yet when it’s older women with younger men, it’s all “You go girl”?
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April 19, 2015 at 2:59 pm -
It’s a strange, and varied, topic isn’t it?
Wasn’t it ‘always’ that a typical age difference was seven years? That the man would have time to ‘establish’ himself to be able to provide etc., or was there a tacit recognition that girls mature more quickly than boys?
I find it ‘interesting’ that in almost all the cited cases of older men/younger women the man is, whilst not only older but often old, also has status and lots of money (I doubt the occurrence of older unemployed/minimum wage man and young girl is particularly common, do you? The joke that “Fifty Shades of Grey was only a romantic fantasy because Mr. Grey is a billionaire. If he’d been unemployed and on benefits it would be an episode from Criminal Minds instead” rings true to an extent, no?).
You’d think the opposite, older woman/younger man, would be rarer and yet from the news articles from The US of hundreds of women (overwhelmingly teachers) being charged with statutory rape (on boys ranging from 17 down to 10/11) perhaps shows that it’s only that such ‘liaisons’ were previously ignored or, more likely, no one complained (parents and ‘society’ seeing girls needed protection/were family assets whilst boys … or is there a touch of competitor/peer jealousy … or even financial gain involved?).
Whilst the older male ‘events’ seems to be based on how much status/money he has the female seems to be actual cases of ‘having power/influence over’, the one a ‘attractive’ and voluntary, if doubtful decision, the other considerably more questionable (which is why I view the behaviour of that male teacher as entirely inappropriate and yes, criminal. You both want a relationship? Then wait until she is no longer ‘under your influence’ and a more appropriate age – the past is littered with many such instances of teacher/professor and student, as has been mentioned, but ‘they waited till she was no longer a student before … consummating/legitimising the relationship, no?). And yes, it’s neither male or female exclusively in either case, for every Billy Joel there’s an Elizabeth Taylor.
What are we attracted to in the opposite sex? For most men it is, substantially, the characteristics that encompass youth. Women, the same (I’ve known way too many ‘older’ ladies eyeing a ‘nice pair of buns’ to believe otherwise) but, when younger also tinged with a healthy (even primarily) dose of hypergamy thrown into the mix. And yet … when both are consenting adults who find the other attrcative for whatever reason why do we still, to an extent, feel that ‘there is something wrong’ or that it is any of our business?
As to the ‘age of consent’, I believe that the current age is about as good a compromise as is possible with, perhaps something similar to the Gillick Competencies, allowing some minimal judgemental ‘leeway’ (if that’s not asking too much from the modern SS, public and judiciary as I fear it is) although (being cynical) I suspect most (both men and women) would not be able to prove competency even into their nineties.
The sexualisation of the young is, I’m afraid, to an extent an (un?)intended consequence of radical feminism (free love, special and preferential treatment, etc.). Women have always, and remain, the ‘gatekeepers’ and when there are no consequences, and what many see as actual rewards (free housing, never having to work …), for early and promiscuous behaviour … well, unsurprisingly, you get more of it. (To an extend this could also partly explain the negative and derogatory opinions of men from women, in particular feminists. Chivalry was a system which imposed roles, rights and restrictions on both genders. Men would act with respect towards women, provide and protect, whilst women would … only have relationships with those men who did, shunning the ‘bad boys’ remaining chaste until finding a good man and having the contract of marriage. Now? Only 20% of men sleep with 80% of women. They have sex with whoever, whenever without consequence should ‘they’ so choose (contraception, adoption, abortion have ensured that ‘no’ woman since the 70’s has a child unless she unilaterally ‘chooses’ to). They ‘choose’ the ‘bad boys, rewarding behaviour they say they dislike, and then both continue demanding chivalry whilst denigrating the very types of behaviour they flock to).
Me, I’m friendly with a number of younger ladies, but thankfully (not being rich, famous, and being ‘aesthetically challenged’ my entire life) I’m the ‘friend’, ‘advisor’, ‘shoulder to cry on’, ‘someone to scare off unwanted attention from others’, well that and having a relationship with someone half my age with the attendant ‘go to a gig’, ‘party’, ‘dancing (does anyone still waltz?)’ is my personal idea of hell. That and the fact that I don’t see many women my own age (mainly because I suspect most aren’t still independently ambulatory) mean I shall remain, contentedly single, for the foreseeable future … well, until I win the lottery and then there’s the really attractive, funny, intelligent young brunette ….
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April 21, 2015 at 7:14 am -
Ah, Gillick competence! That wise, graded and considerate examination of the capabilities of a particular individual, bearing in mind their calendar age, but calibrated to their own situation. This legal notion seems altogether too civilised for these times, where we reach for simplistic solutions. Have we lost some layer of our collective brains, or is our civilization just going ragged, so soon after we make these humane social inventions?
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April 19, 2015 at 3:06 pm -
A couple of these cases involve a person “in a position of trust” and a “child” aged 16/17. In my youth, a male teacher forming a relationship with, and sometimes subsequently marrying, a sixth form girl was no big deal. (Schoolmistress/boy was much rarer.) Criminalisation came in 2000, in the same legislation that equalised the age of consent for gay men.
Incidentally, PW is quite right about the attitude of earlier ages. The cathedral in Rimini, known as the “Tempio Malatestiano”, is a kind of stone poem commemorating a great renaissance love affair – that between Sigismondo Malatesta and Isotta degli Atti. Isotta caught the ducal eye aged 12 – when he was 28 – bore him their first child at 14 and eventually married him when she was 23, after Sigismondo’s missus obligingly died.
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April 19, 2015 at 3:16 pm -
And of course Juliet of ‘Romeo and…’ was thirteen in the original play.
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April 19, 2015 at 5:22 pm -
Quite
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April 19, 2015 at 11:58 pm -
“And what was it that attracted you to the millionaire Paul Daniels?”
Mrs Merton to Debbie McGee
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April 19, 2015 at 6:03 pm -
There’s a movement now in Australia, led by Hetty Johnston, who’s trying to stop young teenage girls from being with anyone who is more than 10 years older than them. This is madness, for at 16 there are many young girls who fall in love with men over 26…and vice versa. These folks won’t be happy until life is continually like school, and everyone lives within their own age group. It’s madness.
And…talking of madness, hold on to your seats, folks! :0)
I speak as the daughter of my Darlin’ Dad, who was 17 years older than my mother and who married her when she was 19, thus they must have known each other when she was around 17/18. They remained married their whole lives long, my Dad loving her to the day he died.
My mum had a relationship with my brother’s best friend, when I was around 14. The young man, as he was then, was around 19/20, Mum would have been 43/44 ish…. (shit happens, folks)
The man I have loved most in my life was 13 years younger than me, and because of Mum’s history, I held back and did everything I could to talk him out of wanting to meet me (I was 58 at the time)…although he’d actually lied about his age, telling me was 9 years younger, only later telling me the truth. Even at 9 years younger though, I worried and turned myself inside out…I did finally give in though, and literally fell into him in a moment, never having felt so close to someone in my whole life, feeling I’d found the other part of me, the person I’d been missing through the centuries..and every other odd and weird emotion that only *other* people have, not me…..
It was instanteous…and he, having an older Mum, (far older than me, I hasten to add) had so many of my memories, even those of my ex-mother-in-law, whom I care for, who’s 100, (!!) able to converse with her with absolute ease…
Sadly, he had many emotional problems caused by a very unhappy start in life and it left deep scars inside him, so he struggled in many ways and it was not to be. But, even to this day, after so much misery, I have never felt so close to another human being before, age meaning nothing, disappearing entirely when we were together…I looked a little younger than my years back then, he looked older, due to the stress of his life…..but for a while, our hearts were exactly the same age….and nothing else mattered at all.
This world seems, to me, to becoming almost autistic now, driven by rules and regulations to keep folks ‘safe’, to ensure that no-one steps out of line, so that those with autism know how life is supposed to be, as in lived their way, with their outlook, rather than The Free Range Way it’s been lived for centuries, people being together at all sorts of ages, wanting to be so too, hugging, touching, flirting, laughing, loving…Cheeky humour abounded and fun…but now, so many folks take everything so literally (another sign of autism) becoming SO upset about the slightest insult or words which have been misinterpreted, (another sign) that it is becoming impossible to laugh and love as we once did….men now having to get proof of consent in the UK, which will soon become like parts of California perhaps where every stage ‘along the way’ must be proven to have had consent given….
I mean, WTF?
Personally, I think we should all go back to The Seventies and laugh and love again, accepting that many 16 year olds (and younger) were after older men, looking far older themselves, behaving that way…and they loving every moment of it, instead of this Holier Than Thou moment in history, where people call so many paedophiles, whilst they buy tickets for their kids to watch Miley Cyrus and Robin Thicke acting out anal sex on stage, thinking it’s all perfectly normal, as they pole dance with their kids and lend them their book of ’50 Shades of Grey’ whilst taking more selfies of their boobs to stick on the internet….
All the men I dreamed about when I was a young teenager were far older than me, of an age where, at 14/15 I’d have been deemed far too young for them, but in later life, no-one would have even blinked an eyelid had I ended up with Pete Duel or John Denver or Howard Keel or Clark Gable… :0)
Beam me up, Scottie, for being a tactile, loving, huggy person, I find living in this New Super Sterile, Man-Hating, Odd-Woman-Driven world really quite disturbing….
Oh..and bring back Wolf Whistling too! :0)
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April 19, 2015 at 6:25 pm -
Yeah back to the 70s for me Rave shirts , afghan coats and my trusty Capri 3000
Bring it on!
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April 19, 2015 at 6:10 pm -
And yes, there were times when I would think “Cripes, being 13 years older than him means that when he was 7, I was 20!” He saw nothing wrong in our age difference, neither did anyone else….but it worried me to start with..
The other thing is that if a man is the far older partner, he’s now deemed to be a pervert, almost instantly, but if the woman is FAR older, like Madonna and her toyboy, then she’s deemed to be some kind of heroine.
Why, you’d think this was all Feminista driven, wouldn’t you? ;0)
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April 19, 2015 at 6:20 pm -
Sixteen seems to me too high and most places in Europe do have lower (fourteen or fifteen typically). Our age of consent would have been lower if it wasn’t for a yellow press media storm (plus ca change there then) about ‘child exploitation’ at the time the legislation was going through. It is wonderfuly satirised in Tom Stoppard’s play ‘The Invention of Love’. One important point to note is that puberty is now several years earlier than it was at the time the current age was set. A differential system, such as some other countries have, seems the only way to get around criminalising youths for exercising their natural impulses.
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April 19, 2015 at 11:52 pm -
Sixteen is okay. I’d like to see it raised to 21 or at least 18 for queer sex. Boys need protecting too.
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April 20, 2015 at 6:33 pm -
If it was me I’d outlaw bum sex entirely with some sort of corporal punishment for those found guilty.
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April 20, 2015 at 6:44 pm -
Some would enjoy a bit of corporal punishment, just as some would enjoy a bit of bum sex!
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April 21, 2015 at 11:30 am -
So, pray explain in the light of the foregoing, what was wrong with sending homosexuals to prison where they could pick up the soap in the showers all they wanted?
Just asking.
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April 21, 2015 at 12:01 pm -
I thought that that was what the Navy was for.
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April 21, 2015 at 12:15 pm -
Gay sex isn’t all about anal sex, any more than straight sex is all about vaginal sex.
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April 21, 2015 at 12:14 pm -
Why do 16 year old boys need more “protection” than 16 year old girls?
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April 21, 2015 at 12:17 pm -
16 year-olds need no protection except from their teachers. It’s the 15 year-olds.
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April 19, 2015 at 9:40 pm -
Some may remember the ‘Mrs. Merton’ interview with Debbie McGee: “What first attracted you to millionaire Paul Daniels?”
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April 22, 2015 at 4:20 pm -
… and yet they are still together and have been for nearly 30 years.
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April 19, 2015 at 11:51 pm -
I almost forgot, in 1986 I lived with a woman who was over 30 years my senior, but it wasn’t that sort of relationship. Mrs Jefferies was a widow, her daughter was an academic who married a fellow academic who was much older than her; they had a son, and as far as I can tell it was a happy marriage. I think I met them once, or her daughter Rosemary at any rate.
I’m not so sure relationships work the other way around, when the woman is much older.
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April 20, 2015 at 9:23 am -
At an animal level, the age of consent could be fixed at the menarche, or shortly thereafter. This would give a period of 9 months for the girl’s body to further develop an ability to give birth (width of pelvis etc) and to be able to feed the child (development of breasts etc). As the age of menarche becomes earlier and earlier, this time period is not enough, and the age of menarche is too early.
Secondly, and more importantly, although humans are animals, they are not all mindless. Hence, we also have to give our attention to the needs of the girl to ‘grow up’ mentally to fit into our society as well as physically to perform the function in greater safety.
When the age of consent was fixed at sixteen – fair enough say I – boys and girls often left school at fourteen and had 2 years of work before they reached the AoC, and approaching 3 years before the birth.
Perhaps it should be older now!
We shouldn’t forget elder predators from whom the vulnerable need protection, but I suggest that they are vastly outnumbered by the exploitative minxes full of hormones who see early pregnancy as a route to a life of idleness, if not exactly luxury.
A solution is to make it clear that the responsibility for a young person’s pregnancy lies firmly with her parents if her partner is unavailable to provide that support.
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April 20, 2015 at 11:51 am -
58 Comments, and so far no one’s mentioned: “Young Girl” by Gary Puckett and The Union Gap
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April 20, 2015 at 1:44 pm -
April 20, 2015 at 2:47 pm -
Here are a few more you might want to purge from your record collection!
http://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/9-creepy-pop-lyrics-youd-never-get-away-with-today
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April 22, 2015 at 2:11 am -
Back in the 80s I had a copy of “Virgin Killer” with that controversial cover; can’t see that happening today.
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April 20, 2015 at 3:35 pm -
A relative recently told me of a case she’d heard of from a police officer she knows. The officer said that they’d received a complaint from a woman in her late-twenties that she had been “abused” by a friend of her father’s when she was young. The officer and a colleage trotted over to collect a statement from the woman, who tearfully recounted how she had been tormented over whether or not to make the complaint, but had been encouraged by her partner, who in turn keenly expressed his wish that the “abuser” be identified and prosecuted. The woman said that she had willingly had sex with the man at the time, but now knew that she had been taken advantage of. While the officers were trying to establish when the “abuse” had happened, the woman freely admitted that she was over 16 at the time. The officers exchanged incredulous glances, and one of them – as gently as possible – pointed out that in that case no crime had been commited, as she had already said she had consented. Both the woman and her partner were equally incredulous at being told this, and seemed surprised that the mere age difference was not sufficient to make it a crime.
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April 23, 2015 at 9:49 am -
Only in historically SeX-craZed modern Fascist phoney-Anglophonia UK/US/CA/OZ/NZ/SA/IE.
Having ruled the World’s Music, Entertainment & Spooky Showbiz for 90 years. They STILL seem to be ‘wide eyed & legless’ with mock-SHOCK HORROR at a long known mere FACT.
That since the Roaring 20s Rudy ‘Swoony’ Valentino, Flirty 30s Rudy ‘Valentine’ Vallee, Naughty 40s Frankie ‘Bobbysox’ Sinatra, Rockin 50s Elvis ‘Pelvis’ Presley, Swingin 60s ‘JellyBaby’ Beatles, SeXy 70s David ‘Do Me’ Cassidy, Fraud Market 19Hateys-Naughty 90s BoyBands/SpiceGirlz, Numpty Noughties ‘Boy’ Beiber YT-Hits – ongoing unchecked all in One-Direction.
MILLIONS of proactive NON-victim fans have been aMused-not-aBused by pre-legal mere SeX with the STARS!
But, hey, please don’t tell BIG Pedo King El-fans, dumbed-down MWTwat & Prats. They might burst out crying and have to be consoled by their own uncontrollably laughing, skoolyard wized-up lil kids!
E.G. Stern, Pure Coward/PC parent, “Johnny & Jenny, that 18+ vid’s not for U! It contains Vile-ence, SeX, Bad Language.”
“Wot? Like in our skoolyard!”
Bwah, HaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHa……
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