Ephebophilia Is Not Better Than Pedophilia, but it’s also not the same as pedophilia

Ephebophilia is not better, or more forgivable, or more understandable or less evil, it is just as bad. And before I go on, so that you don’t jump down my throat for having an opinion on something I have no experience with, let me say, I was a teenage girl who experienced sexual aggression from adult men, online and in real life, and I’m pisssed that I have to talk about my history of that and reveal myself in a way I find uncomfortable to talk about something I think is important.

I hate it when people assume that “Well if you say it’s not bad thing X, you must think it’s better than bad thing X” like when I tell people ISIS aren’t fascists, they often get all “You’re apologizing for ISIS” and I’m like “No, ISIS and fascism are BOTH VERY VERY BAD THINGS, but they are different bad things, not the same bad thing, they’re both murderous, evil, shitty and terrible, but fascism is a specific ideology and that’s not what ISIS is.” A pit full of hungry alligators and a pit full of spikes are different things, but you don’t want to be dropped into either one.

And let me also tell you that ephebophilia is an important term to me, because of being targeted by adult men as a teenager. Whenever adults called those men pedophiles, it felt like an adult misconception of the situation, the men were creepy and gross but the situation didn’t feel the same as it would have for a pre-adolescent child. I was sexually active and sexually aware. I experienced sexual desire, and definitely didn’t feel like a child in those situations. Adolescents aren’t children, they’re in a different developmental stage, but that doesn’t make it even a little okay for adults to fuck them. Only after I had a different terminology that allowed me to differentiate between people who prey on children and people who prey on adolescents could I express how fucked up it felt. I wasn’t a child, but I didn’t have to be a child for what happened not to be ok.

I think that A: victims of pedophilia and victims of ephebophilia will need different treatment because they were at different developmental stages when trauma occurred, B: pedophiles and ephebophiles operate differently, and so we should understand the differences to be able to detect and deal with them effectively C: children are too young to be having sex with ANYONE, teenagers are too young to be having sex with adults, most teenagers are sexual beings, adults are inherently in a position of power over them because of their greater knowledge and experience as well as their position in society. Like, we understand that having sex with your adult college students as their professor is rape and is wrong because of the position of power but they can have sex with each other, and we understand that NO ONE should be having sex with someone who is passed out drunk, because yeah, and that these situations are equally wrong but also differ in their circumstances in ways that mean their prevention requires different tactics D: The fact that we consider separating the two to diminish the wrongness of adults fucking adolescents is indicative of how deeply ingrained the idea that it’s ok for adults to fuck adolescents is E: I think putting adolescent victims in the same category as child victims actually insidiously implies that ‘if you weren’t a kid anymore, if you were experiencing sexual desires at that point, if you weren’t ‘pure’ then your victimization doesn’t count.’ F: Denying that teenagers are sexual beings, with sex drives just serves to reenforce the idea that someone having and/or expressing a sexuality of any kind whatsoever means it’s ok to take sexual advantage of them

I mean teenagers are VULNERABLE, they’re incredibly sensitive to other people’s opinion of them, their self preservation instinct is essentially closed for renovations, they often have incredibly powerful sex drives which can be used to manipulate them and aren’t used to adult manipulation tactics and thus don’t have defenses against them. They are capable of being sexually attracted to adults, which makes them extremely vulnerable to the advances of predators.

Ephebophilia is also socially sanctioned in a way that pedophilia is not, the 16 year old girl sexually desirable to adult men is an acceptable character in media, the 6 year old girl? Not so much. Pretending it’s all the same thing is dangerous and harms victims.

Also I Think That Drunk People’s and Adolescents’ ability to consent to sex is a lot like their ability to consent to get a tattoo

It won’t turn out as an awful traumatic thing you regret for the rest of your life in every single case, sometimes you actually did want to get a full face tattoo of spiderman’s mask and you’ll be incredibly glad you did it, but we don’t let drunk people and teenagers get tattoos because there’s a great enough risk that their decision making is compromised (by alcohol or the power an adult has over a kid or whatever) that we make them wait until they’ve slept it off, or until they’re a little older to do the thing, because we just can’t tell if it’s the booze/awe/desire for adult approval talking or them, and it would be unethical to take the money and do the tattoo. This is the same reason an adult who has sex with an adolescent, or a person who has sex with someone intoxicated is at best extremely irresponsible and unscrupulous, and at worst actively malicious and taking advantage of someone in a vulnerable position.

And so like even if Lori Maddox is completely psychologically unscathed and really enjoyed losing her virginity to Bowie, it was still utterly wrong and fucked up of him to have sex with her, similarly, no matter how much you still love the ink your cousin’s shady friend gave you when you were 14, he was still a bad dude. She doesn’t have to be damaged for him to have done something really really bad by putting her wellbeing at risk like that.

I had sexual experiences as an adolescent with people older than me that I regard as consensual even now, like they didn’t damage me, I had fun, but it was still wrong for the people older than me to agree to do that with me.

Like sometimes drunk people and adolescents do give genuine consent, but the problem is there’s literally no way to tell the difference between legit consent and not-actually-consent, so you just shouldn’t go there. You see what I mean? And even if it turns out fine, and the person turns out fine, you were still putting them in danger and that’s still very fucked up.

Basically my point is: A: If consent is blurry, then it doesn’t count, even if it turns out later it was real consent and B: Even if a victim comes out unscathed the perpetrator still did something very wrong, like it doesn’t matter that she says she had fun, even if that’s true, even if she’s not covering up some damage done by the incident, it doesn’t make what happened ok

(Yes I also do know that alcohol is a blood thinner which result in problems with tattooing, but you see my point)

Like Can You Imagine A Society Where Teenage Boys Were Treated As This Ultra Tempting Forbidden Fruit

With their squeaky ass voices, and face grease and waaaaay too much body spray.

Cause like we treat teenage boys attempts at seduction as laughable and teenage girls attempts at seduction as supremely polished and effective, when in reality they’re just as clumsy and goofy as their male counterparts.

Like our society treats teenage girls as shitty and incompetent and clueless in every other area of life from their taste in music to their ability to drive to their knowledge of political issues, but when it comes to seducing adult men suddenly they’re sophisticated sexual rocket scientists? I don’t buy it.

What Really Fucks Me Up About The Whole Bowie Thing Though

The whole Bowie/Lori Maddox gross fucked up shitty thing. Is that I was a sexually aggressive teenage girl, a groupie, I was the one who’d lie about my age to sleep with men who were too old for me, and what fucked me up then and still fucks me up now is that men didn’t say no to me when they found out, and if they made half an attempt, I’d find away around it.