Posts by Lucy Stewart
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Up Front: It's Complicated, in reply to BenWilson,
You totally misunderstand the point of my story. I could have said nothing at all, and maybe got laid. I only said something because of my understanding of the severity of the law regarding underage sex (like practically everyone I didn’t know that it might have not even been technically against the law).
Then you did the right thing, and didn't get the outcome you wanted. That sucks, but it happens.
.I may have deeply held feelings about Croatians, too, but that doesn’t mean someone who is Croatian should have to tell me that they are one.
Ethnicity and age are really, really not the same thing, primarily because everyone older than fourteen was fourteen once themselves.
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Up Front: It's Complicated, in reply to BenWilson,
No, I don't know if it's inevitable things would have gone badly; all I'm saying is, per your own story, she cleared off when she found out your real age, which might have been because of the legal ramifications or might not. Personally, I would be out of there so fast if it turned out a guy I was chatting up was that much younger than me when I was in my early twenties, whether the gap affected legality or no, and whether he physically looked like an eighteen-year-old or no.
If you think it would have been good for you, you're the best judge of that. I'm not saying it would have been damaging, I'm saying it could have been *super awkward* for the lady involved . Absent the law, you don't know what her personal feelings were or would have been about sleeping with a 14-year-old. Like it or not, age matters socially, never more so than at the stages of life when you can't wait to be older. Framing the story as "oh, if only it wasn't for the legal age of consent, I could have got laid!" seems a little simplistic.
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Up Front: It's Complicated, in reply to BenWilson,
But like a fool, I let it slip that I was 14 (too honest for your own good, you idiot, my friends said), and she freaked out and took off. I was routinely mistaken for 18-20 at that age, until I opened my mouth. The cool kids knew when to shut up. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have been deeply traumatized that evening if something that I know to be extremely pleasant had ended up happening to me.
Maybe not, but it sounds like *she* would have been traumatized if she'd found out you were 14 later on in proceedings. Whatever the reasoning for that, it probably wouldn't have been pretty in practice.
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Up Front: It's Complicated, in reply to Keir Leslie,
And if you rape an under-16, that’s a different (more serious) crime, and presumably if the young person consented to sex, that would be a defence though haven’t checked.
Which brings up another complication: "statutory rape" (and I agree with Graham, that's a terrible descriptor) seems to be quite often used in cases of rape where proving non-consent faces all the usual difficulties, but proving the rapist knew the victim was under the age of consent is possible. (I have no citation, here, it's just an impression from reading media reports over the years.) That muddies the water even further.
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Up Front: It's Complicated, in reply to Moz,
Whereas I agree with her, because the girl did commit rape. And that should not be trivialised.
See, I think that is a perfectly valid argument (especially considering attitudes about men always being “up for it”, etc.) But that was diametrically opposite to the argument they were making, and IIRC they explicitly rejected the idea that exploitation could have gone in that direction.
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Up Front: It's Complicated, in reply to James Butler,
I thought the law was “half your age plus 7”? That’s what my my classmates at high school said.
The surprising thing about that piece of received wisdom for me is how accurate it actually is to what are generally considered acceptable age differences in Western society (quirks of gender aside). (The graphical representation is always useful.)
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Can age of consent law be done well at all, when age is the only signifier of maturity and power dynamic we can use? What’s its purpose?
I ended up in a very bizarre argument a while ago on a feminist website about an episode of Glee, where, as it was related by the site (I gave up on Glee years ago) an under-eighteen-year-old girl was depicted socially coercing an older (over 18 by some amount) boy into sex. The blogger was outraged that Glee was using "rape" (their description, due to the age-of-consent issue) in a titillating way. I objected to their description, on the grounds that sex involving someone below an age of consent was not automatically rape, and shouldn't be described that way. There was...extended objection on both sides.
The one thing we could agree on, sort of, was that American media often uses the age of consent - always 18 on TV, despite its variance between states - in a creepy way, creating a fantasy of illegal sex. I think perhaps if 18 was not seen as such a hard line as an age of consent, there'd be less ability to hide what is often a nudge-nudge wink-wink evocation of non-consent and objectification behind a facade of worrying about law. The focus would be less on "is this woman (always a woman, of course) 18 or not?" and "is she someone who's appropriate for *you* to view/approach sexually?". Which is, of course, a much more difficult question that requires thought about consent and judgement and those other, more complicated things.
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Hard News: Dressing for the Road, in reply to Christopher Dempsey,
I bought panniers after about 6 months of using backpacks when I first got my bike. All I got was a sweaty back no matter what I did. Panniers are great and I’m never going back. I have 4 now; 2 Deuter round town panniers, and 2 Ortlieb touring panniers.
I am seriously looking into panniers now I've seen so many of you recommend them for round town. I love my Kathmandu backpack, but in midsummer - which here can easily mean 30C+ temps and high humidity - it's no fun.
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Hard News: Dressing for the Road, in reply to Natalie H,
Because bike-specific clothing is ideal for riding in. That's what it has been designed for! It's comfortable, it doesn't flap around or get caught in the moving parts of your bike (no need for trouser clips), there are zips so you can respond to temperature changes while riding, and pockets to carry your pump/work swipy card/whatever in.
Sure, but it's still a whole extra change of clothing. Other people's mileage may vary, but I'd rather deal with the minor inconveniences of biking in work clothes than have to a) buy a set of special bike clothes, b) launder a special set of bike clothes, and c) change my clothing twice a day. If I biked for exercise, sure, but as my main method of travel to work, it needs to be as low-effort as possible. Otherwise I'll just give up and catch the (free, every 15 min during term-time) bus.
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Hard News: Dressing for the Road, in reply to BenWilson,
I know it’s as ugly as sin, but I just tuck my pants into my sock, on the right side. I’ve always got them, and it keeps the trouser even cleaner than a clip.
Ah, but they have to be appropriately elasticated socks. Otherwise, to pull a purely random example out of the air, your trouser leg falls out half-way to work and gets covered in grease and you roll it up your leg to stop it getting even greasier and get stains all over your lower thigh which don't wash off for a week and make people think you have horrible bruises when you wear a skirt and pantihose. For example.
In general I'm a big fan of wearing what you're going to wear all day to cycle to work - I definitely practiced this in Christchurch - and my six km, only gently rolling commute allows this most of the year in New England. Helps that the accepted mode of dress where I work is jeans and a t-shirt and variations thereof. Now I've picked up sewing as a hobby I'm looking into making some cycling-friendly skirts, but I'm definitely planning on buying bike shorts to go underneath. I have a Goretex-type rainjacket and waterproof trousers for wet conditions, though all the buses around here carry bikes, so if it's pouring I chicken out and only bike from the bus stop to the house (still the better part of a km.)
The exceptions to street clothes are when the temperature is over 20C when I leave the house in the morning - I usually switch to a tank-top of some description and keep my work shirt dry - or in mid-winter, when you need a careful balance of not freezing to death and not getting sweaty. Gloves are a must below 5C, and not fingerless either. You can actually get away with just a jacket down to about -1C, but below that long johns and a warm hat (below the helmet) start to be a requirement, though you're still better off with just a decently warm jacket and t-shirt up top. Below -8C I just give up biking altogether more than a kilometer or so, and below -15C I don't bother getting out the bike at all, because the bike racks tend to freeze to the bus. But that's rarely more than a couple of weeks a year. There's always some hardy soul biking out and about even in the very cold weather, but they're always in full lycra kit.