The Siren Song of Sex with Boys

The researchers questioned the practice, common in many studies, of lumping all sexual abuse together. They contended that treating all types equally presented problems that, they wrote, "are perhaps most apparent when contrasting cases such as the repeated rape of a 5-year-old girl by her father and the willing sexual involvement of a mature 15-year-old adolescent boy with an unrelated adult."

In the first case, serious harm may result, the article said, but the second case "may represent only a violation of social norms with no implication for personal harm."

They suggested substituting the term "adult adolescent sex" for child abuse in some cases where the sex was consensual.

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A Famous Sex Scandal between a woman and a boy:
34-year old Mary Kay Letourneau and her 13 year old lover Vili Fualaau

While most people looked at Vili and saw the kid as a kid, Mary Kay apparently saw him as an adult in a boy's body. She would say, "He dominated me in the most masculine way that any man, any leader, could do. I trusted him and believed in him and in our future." Others would wonder about the psychological maturity of a 34-year-old woman who was "dominated" by someone barely in his teens....

...The case of Mary Kay Letourneau and her 13-year-old lover focused attention on questions of sexism, gender bias, and biological gender differences. Many observers thought the elementary school teacher was getting far more public sympathy than a man would who committed a similar offense. Her insistence that she did not deserve punishment for a sex act motivated by love grated on the sensibilities of those who believed a man who made such an excuse would be laughed at.

On the other hand, some pointed out that the case is far different from that of an adult man having sex with a 13-year-old girl in one very vital respect. Vili did not get pregnant and go through birth and never had any possibility of doing so. Mary Kay did. Regardless of age differences or anything else, the female alone bears the child and the physical and psychological costs of pregnancy itself. As a woman who knew the principals in the case commented, "A 13-year-old girl getting pregnant is a heck of a lot different physically than a 13-year-old boy getting someone else pregnant."

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