Media exposés on pedophilia have never really done it for me. They're invariably overwrought and smarmy, following the same predictable narrative path, with minimal variation thrown in for local color: "my uncle/neighbor/ski instructor asked me to lunch/help clean the gutters/stay after class, and then he touched my hand/head/elbow." Cue the creepy music and the grainy video, and tell Ms. Walters she's on in five.
Of course, in all these cases, the adults are men. We know perfectly well that in the handful of cases where women are the "sexual predators", the young boys they've slept with are greeted with barely concealed locker room glee. Yeah, when Geraldo arrives, they try to tell the same story of victimization, but off-camera we know that their dads and friends and dad's friends are all, like, "Gimme five, Marvin! Big ups for gettin' hot with teacher, buddy!"
My biggest problem with all these stories is that the kids in them take very little responsibility for their actions and the media let them off easy: that is, little Timmy refuses to admit that he's a walking erection and that he really wanted to fool around with the hot, studly football coach after the game and that he enjoyed it so much he kept doing it for years, and then Katie Couric lets that side of the story drop. (Of course, it's obvious I'm not talking about rape scenarios here--that's an entirely different ball of wax. No, I'm talking about sex that was, at the time it occurred, consensual, but since then the teen has had homosex remorse and has begun screaming "victim.")
I'm sure some of you are wondering why the hell I'm talking about underage sex at 8:00am on a Monday. Well, over coffee this morning, I stumbled across this piece in the New York Times, and although the written article is pretty typical of the genre (hello, the word "sordid" is in the headline?), the accompanying video begins rather interestingly. The Lolito in question seems reasonably self-aware and in control, comfortable with the fact that he is a sexual being and even more comfortable with the fact that not so long ago, he was making bejillions of bucks from his naughty webcam. A few segments later, though, the schmaltziness of reporter Kurt Eichenwald begins to take its toll, and by the end, the boy's calling his former sugardaddies "bad people," and claiming that they made his remarkably well-funded adolescence a living hell.
Now, I know not every kid is ready to start getting busy when he or she is 13 or 14, but c'mon: some certainly are. Hell, I know I was a little more precocious than most kids my age, but surely I wasn't the only person in America taking comfort in the arms of friends and strangers--some of whom were considerably older than I...
