William Saletan makes me sick.
Published by Lisa Kansas November 13th, 2008 in Historical Wankery, Media hackery, My Brain Hurts, SexI’m not kidding. Every week, day in and day out, I see his articles on Slate; I usually manage to restrain myself from clicking on them—on the rare occasions I fail to do so, I’m almost always sorry. Past failures of cognition on his part have included this fine series on how black people are genetically stupider than white people and how wrong it is to pillory scientists who take this as their conclusion and then creatively deconstruct as much data as possible to support that, for instance. Or this one, where he pooh-poohs the notion that it might be humiliating or even detrimental to your health to have your contraceptive prescription refused and praises “crisis pregnancy centers,” which have a well-known history of tricking women inside by pretending to be Planned Parenthood and offering both medically unnecessary ultrasounds and no trained medical advice whatsoever.
What I’m saying is, I knew better but I clicked on the link to his latest masterpiece (entitled “Rethinking the age of sexual consent”) anyway. And yep, barely got into the thing before I happened across this gem:
The original age of consent, codified in English common law and later adopted by the American colonies, ranged from 10 to 12. In 1885, Britain and the states began raising the age to 16, ostensibly to protect girls’ natural innocence.
Let me be blunt, Mr. Saletan: It’s not only a shame that a dumbass like you actually gets paid to write articles, it’s unbelievable. Do you ever conduct any research outside of the confines of your tiny brain? Here, let me do your work for you–and oh, my God, I have to say, as a working journalist (which I am not! yet I knew about it) you really, really ought to have heard about this at least one time in the whole course of your professional life.
History lesson, buttwipe. Not to mention an example of truly heroic journalism (painful contrast!):
In the summer of 1885 when the Criminal Law Amendment bill languished in the House of Commons after two years of half-hearted debate, Britain was outraged by the exposé of London’s sexual underworld. Just as Parliament was about to disband for the break on May 22, the Home Secretary, Sir William Harcourt, moved for a second reading. Though the measure was debated until the assembly adjourned, no vote was taken. Fearing that the bill would again be put aside, Benjamin Scott the following day went to W.T. Stead with lurid stories of sexually exploited children. He convinced the journalist to agitate popular support for protective legislation. During the next week, Stead spoke with a former director of criminal investigation at Scotland Yard to get first hand information; he later expanded his interviews to include active and retired brothel keepers, pimps, procurers, prostitutes, rescue workers, and jail chaplains. Yet he wanted a dramatic example of the ease with which vice could be obtained. Stead decided that he would purchase a girl to prove it was possible to do so and then write about the experience.(17)
Readers of the Pall Mall Gazette had been given “a frank warning”(18) by the editors two days before and on July 6 Stead published the first installments of the “Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon.” Taking up six whole pages, Stead attacked vice under such headlines as “Five pounds for a virgin warranted pure” with subheadings that publicized “The Confessions of a London Brothel Keeper.” Over the next several days, Stead delineated the entire process of procurement from pick up to seduction and told lurid tales of young girls being sold for continental “pleasure palaces.” He also criticized obstructionist members of Parliament and hinted that they might have personal reasons to object to any changes in the law.(19)
London was in an uproar. Fearing riots on a national scale, Home Secretary Harcourt asked Stead to stop publication of the articles; Stead replied he would do so only if he were assured that the bill would be carried without delay. Because Harcourt could not make that guarantee, Stead ordered the Pall Mall Gazette presses to continue until paper ran out.(20) The news agents W.H. Smith & Sons, who held a monopoly of all the newstalls, refused to sell the paper because of its lurid and prurient content. Nonetheless, newsboys and Salvation Army members worked feverishly to distribute copies. Demand for the paper was so great that by the end of the day, black market copies sold for a shilling–twelve times the normal price.(21) Shocking the nation, the “Maiden Tribute,” via telegraph, swept the Continent and even America. Stead boasted that his “revelations” were printed in every capital as well as by “the purest journals in the great American republic.”(22) Furious members of Parliament demanded that the paper be prosecuted under the obscenity laws and indignant families canceled their subscriptions.(23) Nonetheless, Stead’s campaign prompted the co-operation of the government for by Wednesday, Parliament was ready to resume the debate over the Criminal Law Amendment Bill.
Stead and most of Britain credited his “Maiden Tribute” articles with hastening the passage of the Criminal Law Amendment Act. While this controversy focused upon the vices of child prostitution and white slavery, the new laws and the publicity of Stead’s investigation seem to have had a far greater effect upon the reportage and prosecution of sexual assaults upon minors. A survey of The Times’ criminal trials and police columns between January 1884 and September 1886 indicates that the reporting of criminal assaults, indecent assaults, and rapes enacted against minors increased dramatically after the publicity of “The Maiden Tribute” and the passage of the Criminal Law Amendment Act. Where only five sexual offenses against minors were reported between January 1884 and the end of July 1885, The Times lists sixty-five cases between August 1885 and September of 1886. In the space of nine months after the passage of the Criminal Law Amendment Act, twelve times as many cases were reported as in the previous year and a half.
The menace exposed by Stead in “The Maiden Tribute” was not the only aspect of exploitation prevalent in late-Victorian Britain. Only two of the sixty-five cases concerned Stead’s dreadful child prostitution–most involved girls molested by neighbors or members of the household. Furthermore, the section of the act that seems to have made the greatest impact applies not to white slavery but to the testimony of young children under oath. Because of this addition, more cases of child sexual abuse and molestation were brought to the legal authorities’ attention. Thus the new laws of 1885, in their application, can be seen as less a restriction to sexual activity than a means of prosecuting gross indecency against children.
God only knows where Saletan got that “protecting girls’ natural innocence” bull, unless it’s an idea he salivates over in the dead of night when he’s all alone with his internet connection. No, I have no idea what the rest of his article says. It was so crappy so early on, I figured that folding the rest of my laundry was a far more valuable activity. I may read the rest of it someday, or I may not; it’ll probably depend on how delicate my stomach is feeling at the time. If not, I really doubt I’ll have missed a thing.
Later today I will be attending a protest in Ankara regarding a journalist who raped an 11 year old girl, and his (successful!) defense was that she had had her period, so it was ok. A quick glance at that article indicates that’s exactly Saletan’s line of reasoning:
A guy who goes after a womanly body that happens to be 13 years old is failing to regulate a natural attraction.
Yea, and a woman who goes after a rapistly brain that happens to belong to a mental midget such as Saletan with a pick-axe is also failing to regulate a natural abhorrence for shitheads. I’m sure Saletan will agree that she doesn’t need to be locked up for such an understandable hardly-even-a crime!
I don’t understand how these asshole rapist men can think like this. I wonder if, according to this reasoning, a man becomes impotent, does that mean he should legally revert to childhood? Someone needs to hit these men with a clue by four so they realize that you know, women are PEOPLE, and their consent or non-consent cannot be divined by looking at them or knowing anything about their biological processes (other than those which take place IN THEIR HEAD). Idiots like this believe rape is something men should hash out among other men, and that a mere woman’s opinion is of no bearing. They have no idea what makes rape traumatic or hell, wrong, and so they are very, very dangerous people indeed.
My faith in humanity…I miss it.
Even Stead’s agitation and the legislature’s response is really centered in male sexuality and power. The focus—both in the exposes and the article—seems to pretty clearly highlight the women and girls’ loss of virginity, purity, and innocence—all qualities that women ought to have, of course, to sexually please the men who would later
ownmarry them! Since that’s what women do, naturally.Of course, today, we recognize that women have agency, and so if they’re prostituted, they should obviously be punished—the sluts!—for luring men into sin.
Truly, we have come so far.
“History lesson, dickwad.” Is such gender-abusive language really helpful? Might you better have used “twat” on a man?
Salten is a certified idiot and this is a good example of that, but is is such a stretch for him to presume “protecting girls’ natural innocence” had something to do with the agitation in what after all was VICTORIAN England? Since there was no mention of the little boys being trafficked?
Er, Jim2, how is twat a better word to use then dickwad? They’re both gendered. If your issue is with the gendered nature of the word, wouldn’t something gender neutral, like asshole, be more appropriate?
Besides, as I understand it, dickwads generally contain both female and male genetic material, in just-about-equal proportions.
Jim2,
I wasn’t consciously thinking of gendered language; my preferred abusive language is “dumbass” but I’d already used that one earlier in the article. Your objection is noted; he is now referred to as “buttwipe.”
As for the rest of your comment, desist or be Hypnotoaded. I will remind you this once, and this once only, to reread http://punkassblog.com/2008/10/24/the-derailing-train-stops-here-folks-or-how-to-get-banned-from-commenting-on-lisas-blog-posts/
laterose, but that is an insult to assholes, a useful part of the human body. I prefer to call him an ignoramus of gigantic proportions- or a simple asshat will do.
“Er, Jim2, how is twat a better word to use then dickwad? They’re both gendered. If your issue is with the gendered nature of the word, wouldn’t something gender neutral, like asshole, be more appropriate?”
That was my point - both are equally gendered and I don’t lime either, and I think asshole or jerk is better.
And Lisa, I was just giving you a dig in the ribs; “dickwad’ is not so horrible, or “twat’ for that matter, but i do like “buttwipe” better.
Saletan is so obnoxious that I stopped looking at his crap two or three years ago. Whatever he might have to say, soemone else could be trusted to say better. So good for you for mionitoring him; someone should be doing it.
Sorry for what I guess looks like tit-for-tatting. The point I was trying to make Saletan may have stumbled on to saying that in the period when the law was passed, there was no distinction between putting females on a pedestal and trying to protect them, and that’s just historically true. The reference to boys was only to use comparison as a tool. I could just as well have pointed out that there was likewise no interest or mention of non-white girls being exploited this way elsewhere in the British Empire, but I was trying to keep the reference to Britain itself, where there were hardly any non-whites at the time. The point is that all the agitation and anger was only about white females and their victimization, and that that was a function of Victorian attitudes about women and girls - retrograde and patriarchal.
Jim2,
Fair ’nuff.
I have to tell you, commenting on blogs has really improved what writing skills I have, and I owe most of it to criticisms like yours. Maybe next time I will make myself clear the first time around.
LOL, I totally know what you mean. Watch out, though–if you get too good at commenting you’ll end up just outright writing for somebody’s blog–that’s what happened to me.
Should a 17 year old be punished for having sex with a 15 year old?
Or an 18 year old and a 16 year old?
Saletan (with bad logic and offensive writing) questions the grey area of ‘dating couples’ who are close in age and have sex when one of them is beyond the boundary of legality and the other isn’t.
His history isn’t very good though.
*some of his conclusions are pretty dumb regardless of my opinion that teens close together in years should be able to do as they like, since they’re mentally/developmentally close enough. 35 and 15? Ew, no.
Unfortunately, I’m going to have to force myself to read the rest of his article before I can answer your comment. Bleh.
The worst is when they arrest kids for having sex when they are BOTH underage. I’m pretty sure there are some states that do that.
And I mean even if they are the exact same age. Of course 17-year-olds should be arrested for messing around with prepubescents.