But as people get more and more frustrated they start to devolve into the usual homophobic, female-phobic tropes, and they start using the same insults as conservatives. So we get JD Vance prettied up as a fat woman drag queen. Other stuff that implies Trump’s toadies are effeminate. And the one that’s currently irking me, that Epstein, Trump and the others were pedophiles.
The definition of paedophilia is a sexual attraction to prepubescent children. That means BEFORE PUBIC HAIR. That is very different to the age of consent and it’s an important difference because being attracted to someone who is under the age of consent is not a mental illness. Being attracted to undeveloped and hairless children IS a mental illness. They are both illegal under the law, but they are not the same thing. But you wouldn’t know it anymore, based on the constant screaming that both Epstein and Trump are pedophiles.
They weren’t pedophiles — although I wouldn’t put it past either one to actually try it out. Epstein was a sex trafficker. Trump had sex with women under the age of consent. Those are crimes, but not crimes of pedophilia. I have yet to see a single accusation of trafficking or having sex with prepubescent child. (Epstein trafficked girls as young as 14, [and I recently read 12, but I haven’t been able to verify it with accurate info] but because girls start puberty as young as 8 and sometimes 7, and menarche happens generally around 12, 14 is still probably not prepubescent.)
The age of consent exists because we recognize, in this supposedly advanced society we live in, that young people are not capable of making a consensual decision. This always comes up when, like in the brilliant Todd Haynes movie “May December,” the victim says he wanted it or that he was in love, at the age of 13, with the older woman. Young people do not have the legal right to make that decision, even if they are precocious and horny as hell. They do not have the right to choose a sexual partner until they reach and pass the age of consent.
Even then, if a young woman has reached the age of consent (over 18 — but I’m not even sure if that’s the age) — and decides to become a boy toy for wealthy men like Epstein and Trump — people will still refer to her as underage or to the men as pedophiles or child rapists.
Woody Allen, for example, ended up getting into a life-defining mess by marrying his girlfriend’s daughter. She is constantly referred to as his “step daughter.” (She never was. She is, in fact, Mia Farrow’s adopted daughter with Andre Previn. Her full name was Soon-Yi Previn. Additionally, but irrelevant, Mia Farrow destroyed his marriage and Soon-Yi’s mother went into an almost suicidal depression. because of it.) Soon-Yi was 22 when they began to date, but Allen is still referred to as a pedophile or child molester. He was never married to Mia Farrow and in the 12 years they were “together,” they never lived in the same place. They also, apparently, had a pretty awful relationship. But none of those details matter anymore, when people talk about Woody Allen or Soon-Yi. He’s a pedophile who married his wife’s daughter; or he’s a child molester who married his step daughter. He made a somewhat lame joke with Kathy Griffin when they were sitting next to her and he said, “This is my child bride.” (Soon Yi is in her 50s now.)
I think this tendency to label everything pedophilia is ultimately the vilification of the older man who dates or marries a younger woman. Women hate this — they call it creepy. However, it happens all the time, hence the jokes about “Who is Leonardo DiCaprio dating?” “Someone under 25.” Or the greatest offender of all time, I suppose, Jerry Lee Lewis.
[And as far as Leo goes, he has stated repeatedly that he does not want a family or children. Almost universally, around 25 or 26, women start demanding marriage, family and children. So of course he has to break it off with them. I also read from an extremely reliable source, ages and ages ago, that he’s gay but like Tom Cruise, they are too famous for the truth to ever be told. Who knows, but this person had listed just about every single gay actor/actress in Hollywood, many before it was known, like Zachary Quinto. I’ve never been able to find that site again.]
Anyway it’s also, I suspect, an easy way to vent rage and anger that doesn’t, in fact, force you to choose a side. You can be progressive or ultra conservative, neutral or an independent with or without leaning to one side or the other — you can be anywhere on the political slide ruler — and be opposed , even violently, to the molestation and sex trafficking of children. If you have a violent nature, or if you have some sort of Travis Bickle like need to rescue someone, making that victim a child, instead of a young teen, is almost a no-brainer. It’s one of the reasons I hate what Taco has done, with apparent ease. To bring down the level of discourse from one of simple disagreement, to something that resembles one of his favorites venues, the staged wrestling match. He’s said as much, in interviews, that he wasn’t a good student and the only thing that he enjoyed was when the boys got into fist fights.
Anyway, the blurring of the definition of sexual predation downward to pedophilia, plus the retreat to homophobic taunts and queer baiting, plus the usual mysogyny — insulting men by implying there is something girlish about them — and the almost ubiquitous “fat shaming” they do of Trump is a sad reminder that no matter how far we think we advance, we can always be brought down to name calling and childish insults.