comment #1

actionman says ...

I've sort of been waiting for you to make a post about this, Wells. And I am in total agreement.

"But if you're a 15 year-old teenage boy (or 14 or 16 or whatever), you automatically get down on your knees and give thanks to God if an older woman wants to go to bed with you. No ifs, ands or buts -- it's a golden gift from heaven. If a woman in her 20s or 30s or even her 40s had been interested in yours truly when I was 15 or so, I would have turned out a much happier person -- certainly a more optimistic one. There's no way in the world I would have ever been screwed up or even moderately traumatized by such a blessed event."

I agree completely. And a blessed event it most certainly was. My first major sexual experiences were with a woman much older than I was at the time. I turned out just fine. It works differently for guy and girls when they're in their formative years.

comment #2

actionman says ...

And while I'm at it, I should add that while she was no Kate Winslet, the home ec teacher at my high school was pretty hot.

Lord knows I should probably be doing work instead of reliving my past.

comment #3

The InSneider says ...

Older women rock my world on a consistent basis and you can quote me on that. No shame in admitting it.

comment #4

actionman says ...

Yes, it's amazing how much sexier older women can be.

comment #5

btwnproductions says ...

Even if the older woman is married, a teacher or an authority figure? A friend's mother? These scenarios rarely seem to pan out too well in the real world, with heavy collateral damage. Even if the seducer is a carefree single, I'd question the motives of a woman drawn to a teenage boy as much as I'd question those of a man drawn to a teenage girl. Why are the moral issues different? And how can you know with any certainty that if wouldn't have affected you badly? Sorry to bust up the fantasizing, but there is another side to this.

comment #6

kintnerboy says ...

Boy, Thelma Adams is an angry woman. She didn't so much take issue with the film's subject as she did with the filmmakers producing, in her opinion, "child pornography", which, considering the fact that everyone involved is over 18, is a bit hysterical.

Something tells me there is probably either some abuse in her background or else maybe she was slightly titillated by the film and is angry at herself?

comment #7

lazarus says ...

Not to defend male statutory rapists, but I'm having a hard time buying that only 15 year old boys are eager to get it on with someone who knows what they're doing. Especially considering how much faster kids are growing up these days (from a physical standpoint, at least), and how girls tend to mature mentally before boys, it doesn't seem like much of a stretch.

The problem isn't so much the mental state of the younger person involved, it's with the older party, where it's a lot harder to excuse. There's pretty much no other angle other than one of perversion. I can't imagine an older man OR woman making a case for why it's okay that they pursue someone so much younger. It really has to be a case where the adult is seduced by the teenager, though I guess Humbert Humbert would make the same argument.

Great, now I'm on some watch list.

comment #8

actionman says ...

Or maybe Thelma is a little lonely...

Just a thought.

comment #9

YRG says ...

"...if you're a 15 year-old teenage boy (or 14 or 16 or whatever), you automatically get down on your knees and give thanks to God if an older woman wants to go to bed with you. No ifs, ands or buts -- it's a gleaming gift from heaven."

This doesn't explain why Ralph Fiennes's character is so mopey... lamenting his lost love and youth?

comment #10

DarthCorleone says ...

I dunno...I do agree I would have been thrilled to have been seduced by an older woman at that age. However, I'm not sure that specific impulse is that much different from my general impulse to simply want sex period (an impulse which hasn't changed in the least since my teenage years).

I'm also not sure I can say with certainty what the emotional and psychological fallout would have been. Would it have affected my ability to have what I consider "healthy" relationships down the road? Sex-eager though I might have been, in hindsight I'm satisfied with the way that my early sexual relationships went, and those were all with women of about my same age.

Additionally, I do think that there are probably some teenage girls who are emotionally equipped to handle hooking up with older men.

I think the reason your theory makes some sense is that men often are more purely sexually driven than women (that's not to say that women don't enjoy sex), and thus it's more likely that the older man in such a dynamic could be assuming the role of sexual predator.

I guess the problem is that life is full of greys and lines need to be drawn somewhere. There might very well be perfectly appropriate relationships out there between 16-year-old girls and a 24-year-old men (and vice versa), but those do represent the minority experience. I think the onus is on the older party - man or woman, regardless of how bad the boy wants - to be the bigger person (an adult, no less) and not even initiate a situation that would call it into question. Drawing lines in the sand for our societal morality is the only way to be safe.

Anyway, there was a very funny South Park about this double standard in which toddler Ike gets seduced by his teacher, and virtually no one but his older brother Stan has any moral qualms about it.

comment #11

actionman says ...

That ep of SP is indeed pretty brilliant.

comment #12

arch451 says ...

Although a 15 year-old male would enjoy the experience, the older woman would still be a scumbag.

comment #13

alynch says ...

Nice.

comment #14

hcat says ...

Based on what I know of the story, Winslet's charactor sleeping with a 15 year old is hardly her biggest moral shortcoming.

comment #15

Joshua Mooney says ...

I get what you're saying, Jeff, but the law is the law, and we've seen adult women go to jail for bedding underage boys. Is there a bias in favor of women who commit these crimes? Sure, but that's the human nature of Western Civilization, based on history, religion, and all the other shit that seems silly by my standards. Good Christ, they stone pubescent girls to death in non-Western countries for getting raped! Right? Right. By the way, Humbert Humbert wasn't attracted to teenage girls. Lolita was a pre-teen; they upped her age for the movie. The whole point of the novel was that Loilta had not yet "blossomed." Had she, Humbert would not have been interested. Finally, I'll say what's been said many times before, which is that the reasons a 30-year-old woman fucks a 15-year-old boy are a lot different than the reasons a 30-year-old-man fucks a 15-year-old girl. Hello?

comment #16

DarthCorleone says ...

Oops. Kyle - not Stan. Forgiveness from the South Park fans, please.

comment #17

mtgilchrist says ...

I'm curious how many commenters have actually seen the movie. (i have.) while i would argue that the sexual component of their relationship is the least troubling, the film is about the way in which a woman fairly mysteriously seduces a young boy, behaves very mercurially to him during their relationship, and then sends him packing when she goes off to another experience. the effect this produces is lifelong uncertainty in the boy/man, and a sense that his first, immature love was never satisfactorily resolved (he never came to terms with it) and as a result it severly impacted every subsequent relationship he had. i don't doubt that getting boned by winslet wouldn't be an awesome prospect for a 15-year old, and sexual discovery is an essential part of the maturation process, but i would argue that her behavior to him could legitimately constitute child abuse because he wasn't intellectually or emotionally sophisticated to understand the situation and she exploited that to get the companionship and sex that she wanted.

furthermore i think it's short-sighted to assume that one wouldn't be affected by an experience like that. much like some kids are just programmed to enjoy and indulge in horror movies while others are terrified by them, it's a mystery of human chemistry to know with any certainty at that age how well a situation might be handled. you can certainly speculate with the benefit of hindsight but i think it's impossible to "know" how that experience would impact you and your subsequent relationships.

comment #18

huntermdaniels says ...

The 30-year old man who sleeps with a 15-year old girl does so under the guise of lies and deceit claiming a plan for a long lasting relationship while playing off of the fact that most every 15-year old girl is convinced that she (unlike her peers) is truly cultured and worldly and ready for such things. She is 15 and doesn't know what a relationship is supposed to be like so if he takes her out to The Olive Garden during endless pasta week, she doesn't know that it's a cheap date. When he tells her about his plans for their future, she doesn't know that they are absurd. In short, he preys upon her desire to be "free" which is simultaneously linked to her fear of the unknown. Add to that some daddy issues and you're ready for some good ol' fashioned statutory rape.

The 30-year old woman who goes to bed with the 15-year old boy is similarly emotionally stunted as 30-year old male counterpart. She is hiding away from intimacy and yes, she is using the boy. However, because of the social construction of masculinity for an adolescent male, the damage is significantly smaller. The adolescent boy has been trained for years to whoop and holler at girls. To desire the female form for purely sexual reasons. Thus, when he is offered a 30-year old woman, it is the heighth of male fulfillment fantasies. Which, it is of note, are every bit as stupid and naive as those of the boy's teenage female counterpart.

So, while the acts are the same, the consequences are wholly separate because the boy has been trained to look for only sex, and so an offer of sex is reasonable, whereas the girl has been trained to look for "love" so the older male deceives her.

Of course, this is not universal and there have no doubt been cases of December/February romances that were enduring and "real". But I believe that the above is true for many as it is what I noted in high school (where it was always the dimmest girl who was dating the man twice her age) and my own experience with older women.

comment #19

K. Bowen says ...

This reminds me of a story I once covered a year or two back - an 18-year-old male high school student was caught allegedly having an affair with a 25-year-old teacher. The thing was, the teacher was a former Miss Texas pageant contestant. Nobody was crying for him.

On the female side, I had a flirty but ultimately friendly relationship with a 17-year-old girl a couple summers back. Nothing sexual ended up happening. I don't think my motives were impure, dishonest, or predatory. She was simply my type in a very young form. If I would meet a 30-ish year old with the same personality, I'd hope to marry her.

comment #20

Ray says ...

Well, it's not that older men cannot "rock the world" of teeneaged girls. I'm sure there are older men who can certainly bring underaged girls to extreme moments of pleasure.

The problem lies with society. SOCIETY has a double standard that says that older men should not sleep with younger women, while older women ar ealmost ENCOURAGED to do so. The idea of an old man fucking a young girl is repulsive to society; it has nothing to do with his sexual abilities, which may in fact be enhanced by his age.

BTW, I am not advocating such things; I think it's gross for an adult to fuck a child ... but I'm just sayin'.

comment #21

sumo-pop says ...

Yeah, I would have loved to slipped it to my 6th grade teacher, and I certainly wouldn't have wanted her to go to jail for it. I remeber watching Notes On A Scandal and thinking that I would've killed for a roll by the railroad tracks with Cate Blanchett. Hell, in the right/wrong frame of mind I could kind of see her as the victim much the way Humbert is in "Lolita." Sick and wrong but whatever.

comment #22

Doug says ...

I remember being really annoyed watching the film "Tadpole." Oh, how delightful, Bebe Neuwirth's character is a fun-loving, bantering statutory rapist.

comment #23

Yuval says ...

Please keep explaining to me, wise one, what about gay teenagers, should they get down on their knees and stay there while they're at it? What about lesbian teenagers?
This type of full-of-itself sexism is as idiotic as the racists that say "I don't get what the problem is, I was giving your people a compliment". The female sex wants to thank you for taking the blame on the sexual predator issue.
I'm sure you feel your life experience has taught you so much about this ethical issue that you've grasped its basic morals. I hate to break it to you, but your thoughts on morality based on "what I would have felt like if" aren't basic morality. You have a very narrow viewpoint, accept your limitations.
The people who voted for Prop. 8 also thought they were protecting basic morals. I mean, if you were taught something and your parents felt the same way, then it must be a universal truth.

comment #24

scooterzz says ...

as someone recently said on the chelsea handler show: 'there's a name in the gay community for men who like younger men. it's called.......EVERYBODY'
that would be my politically incorrect contribution for the evening......

comment #25

Griff says ...

"I've explained this a couple of times since the dawn of Hollywood Elsewhere in August '04, and I'll probably have to keep explaining it. If an older man takes a 15 year-old girl to bed, he's an animal and a scumbag who deserves to go to jail."

Roman Polanski?