My Super Illegal Sex-y Sixteen
by Kay Nolan

I watch a lot of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit. Granted, I watch somewhat less of it since someone told Mariska Hargitay it was all  right to not only grow her hair out to an unflattering and ultra-femme length, but also to don poufy velveteen shirts, giant earrings, and eye shadow a disturbing shade of purple. That notwithstanding, I consider myself pretty up to date on what the American public thinks about rape: it's wrong, but the gray area is consent. 

And what the hell is it? Legal systems across the globe have laid out ages of consent for sexual activity – for example, in the United States the average age of consent is 16, but is as low as 14 in some Iowa counties and as high as 18 in California (ha! Californians don't believe in sexualizing youth. Take that, Hollywood.). In Zimbabwe, heterosexual intercourse can be consented to at age 12, as can lesbian contact, but genital contact between men? Illegal at any age.               

So roughly interpreted, the law means that even if you're a 16 year old who wants to have sex in New York state, an 18 year old partner can be charged with statutory rape. At times, “lesser” degrees of sexual contact can also fall under the law, lesser in this case being the label associated with genital contact that doesn't involve a penis's insertionin a vagina (remember, Arizona just repealed its laws against anal/oral sex and “cohabitation” between either hetero- or homosexual pairs in 2001). Bottom line: when you're 16, you can drive a car but might not be allowed to drive stick in the bedroom. 

Is this law necessary for protection, or is it just around to protect  the Victorian-esque perception we Americans have that children aren't  sexual beings? I started to ponder that question back when I was bordering the age of consent myself. In Pennsylvania, where I grew up, the cut-off point is 16. After the quantifiable definition of age goes out the window, a judge can no longer say, “Well, it doesn't matter that the young woman in question was dressed like a dime-store hooker; she's under 16 and therefore the fact that your penis came anywhere near her means that you raped her.” Rape, molestation, and everything else become a whole lot harder to prove. Anyone who's tried to tell a family story at  a reunion barbecue knows one of the reasons why: we all remember things differently, and usually either in our favor or with the super-8 grain of hindsight. 

Hindsight or not, it's hard to deny that older people who have power over you in a daily, non-personal situation (army sergeant, teacher, etc) can easily assume sexual power. Through high school, I was used to deferring to authority figures, at least on the outside (sure I'll do the dishes, but you don't know what I'm thinking/writing during/after. Take that!) When I was about four, I told my mother I'd folded a sweater that hadn't – laundry never having been my strong point. My mother's disappointment was such that you would have thought I'd just been revealed as a hit-toddler for the mob. I was a Good Girl; my cigarettes were sneaked with trembling fingers and I took great precautions to Never Be Caught in my private rebellions. 

Summers, weekends, and some nights I worked in a music store where I scheduled lessons, tuned guitars, and polished flutes. When I was 15 or 16 – a memory that would never hold up in court –  my immediate superiors (Cora, the 21 year old niece of the owner and my mother's friend, and Mark, her 24 year old fiance) began to involve me in consummating their own fantasies of threesomes and voyeuristic twosomes. Over it all hung proffered fifty dollar bills, promised bottles of wine or vodka, and the threat to publicize supposedly surreptitiously snapped photos of me in the compromising positions in which Mark and Cora had placed me. I moved through my whisperingly harassed shifts in the store and my shifts in their house dumbfounded. The only thought that penetrated my clamped-shut mind was guilt over my relationship with another high schooler: I couldn't tell if I was a cheating partner or if I was being molested.               

This went on until just past my 18th birthday. I never told anyone who could have taken any meaningful action; I didn't quit my job; and I didn't drive, so when I'd been taken out to their rural property (days before cell phones, folks) I was stuck there until Mark decided it was time to take me drunkly home. I still wonder exactly what was going on there. Did Mark and Cora pick me because I was attractive, or because I was an easy mark? Did Cora really want a life with (or partially) with a woman? She e-mailed me for a long time after I left town, kept surreptitious conversations with me where she told me she thought of only me when she and Mark slept together. Maybe she was a victim too, one of a system that rewards heterosexual behavior, but I can't forget how shocked I was that not only men could steal your personal solvency.               

Most of all, I wondered if there was something wrong with me for not enjoying the experience. Mark offered time and time again to make me a kept woman – or should I say, a kept kid. Had I been a few years older, I suspect that I would have considered it, or found the experience laughable if not enjoyable – but for a teenager guilt-wrought over her nonmonogamy, nontraditional sexuality...there was no chance. Did my age forgive me my inability to escape? Or, if I had managed to enjoy myself, I mightn't have had to feel victimized. I would have been an empowered woman.               

But at 16, that was still years in the future.

April 2, 2007