Skip to content

On the celebrities shagging kids stuff

I dunno, I just don\’t.

From the early 60s through to what, the mid 80s? we seem to have had celebs thinking that they can have any piece of young flesh they want willing or unwilling. And they\’re all being called out on it now in the 10s.

And here\’s what I\’m not sure about.

Did this always go on but no one cared about it very much in the past? Stories of Victorian child prostitutes: and I can never remember whether it was Palmerston or Melbourne who shagged a maid on the billiards table. Whichever one it was also fathered a child in his late 70s on a maid. Do these stories mean it always did go on and it\’s only now that societally we think it\’s wrong?

Or, there\’s an alternative.

Such things did go on and do go on: paedophilia, ephebophilia, rape, sexual assault, they do still exist. But that there was a marked rise in these things in that period 60s to mid 80s. Some combination of the breakdown of the previous sexual mores but not yet the establishment of new ones. Now that it was all free love celebrities, those with the social power to take advantage, did.

I guess the first question to ask is whether there was more of this going on in that time period than in others. Not something I expect we\’ll ever get an answer to.

I really don\’t know which is the answer. But I have my suspicions that there\’s a good dose of the second in what happened.

106 thoughts on “On the celebrities shagging kids stuff”

  1. “I guess the first question to ask is whether there was more of this going on in that time period than in others.”

    Given that the definition has now shifted from ‘this person has made an allegation which has been tested in court and proven’ to ‘this person has made an allegation’ how can we ever know?

  2. The greens were aggressively pushing a pro-paedophilia agenda back then. Even here, where news from the anglosphere sometimes seems to take years to get through, it is coming back to haunt them. Look up Mr. Cohn-Bendit and what some are describing as his non-denial denial.

  3. The 60s did see the start of celebrity worship (groupies) so I suppose it did lead to an increase in the number of people who believed they were entitled to behave in this fashion without any consequences.

  4. So Much For Subtlety

    “Stories of Victorian child prostitutes”

    There was a huge interest in child prostitutes in the Victorians period and presumably we know because people did care about it. A lot. Both in the sense they wanted to do it, and in the sense that they wanted to stop them doing it.

    “and I can never remember whether it was Palmerston or Melbourne who shagged a maid on the billiards table.”

    Palmerston surely? But was the maid under age? Rape not pedophilia?

    “Now that it was all free love celebrities, those with the social power to take advantage, did.”

    Mary Eberstadt has an interesting article called Pedophila Chic which she later used in one of her books. She points out all the people who said nice things about man-boy love. She claims that it was part of the general sexual liberation of the 1960s, but that it was too good a stick to pass up when it came to bashing Catholic priests – although it is still clearly fine for an artist like Pasolini to sexually abuse children, but not for anyone with any link to the Church. Others have claimed that the Gay movement is seeking middle class respectability so that people like Peter Tatchell, who was soft on pedophilia and dismissive of marriage, now strongly support Gay marriage and condemns man-boy love.

  5. To answer your questions:

    1) I think its always gone on.

    2) If there was more of it going on in the 60s-80s then I doubt very much that it had anything really to do with changes in sexual mores or public morality.

    There have always been some people with the socio-economic power to take advantage of their position in order to satisfy their sexual predilections. What changed, from the late 50s and early 60s was simply that a number of new avenues for attaining that kind of power opened up, broadening the range of people to who the opportunity to exploit others became available.

    Were it possible to map periods when there was suddenly ‘more of it about’ than was previously the case, I suspect you’d find those periods coincide pretty closely with periods of socio-economic change in which new classes of people were able attain positions in which at least some were able to operate with near impunity in the face of both the law and public morality.

  6. Surreptitious Evil

    Palmerston surely? But was the maid under age? Rape not pedophilia?

    It doesn’t need to be either – shagging the maid on the billiards table isn’t evidence that she didn’t consent. The chances are, anyway, that if the maid was young it was natural ephebophilia rather than deviant pedophilia.

    Also, we need consider that the age of consent wasn’t raised from 13 until after Palmerston’s death so it is unlikely it was even illegal (unless it was rape …)

  7. So Much For Subtlety

    JamesV – “Look up Mr. Cohn-Bendit and what some are describing as his non-denial denial.”

    “in a collective discourse of a new sexual morality yet to be defined.”

    As denials go, it really is not much of a denial.

    JamesV – “The advert for Vietnamese brides on this page seems somehow appropriate.”

    Isn-t that Wwwaaacist?!

    4SimonF – “The 60s did see the start of celebrity worship (groupies) so I suppose it did lead to an increase in the number of people who believed they were entitled to behave in this fashion without any consequences.”

    Start? Women used to rent the hotel room Hitler stayed at so they could sleep in the same bed. I think this sort of thing long pre-dates the 1960s.

    No Rolling Stone arrested yet. It is not as if Bill Wyman was exactly hiding what he was doing. Nor has either Jimmy Page or David Bowie been questioned over Lori Maddox.

    So it seems to be that you are only at risk if you are a naff star. Not if you are cool.

  8. So Much For Subtlety

    Unity – “There have always been some people with the socio-economic power to take advantage of their position in order to satisfy their sexual predilections.”

    Except we do not see a lot of people using their socio-economic power. Rock stars are shagging groupies without offering them any money or using any position of power to force the issue. Rather the young wanted to sleep with them and those adults responsible for regulating their behaviour did nothing to stop them.

    7Surreptitious Evil – “It doesn-t need to be either – shagging the maid on the billiards table isn-t evidence that she didn-t consent.”

    That is true, but either way I hope it was worth it because if it was rape, charges would be hard to press:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brocket_Hall

    Palmerston died at Brocket while still in office, reputedly on the billiards table whilst in the embrace of a chambermaid

    “The chances are, anyway, that if the maid was young it was natural ephebophilia rather than deviant pedophilia.”

    I am not comfortable with the word ephebophilia being applied to chamber maids. Given the general human predeliction for women within a range which at the lower end would be under what has been until recently the age of consent.

  9. Well, of course it’s always gone on. But the late 60s – early 80s were different. But I don’t think you can treat the country uniformly. The earlier years of the period put me in the right place, Central London & peripheral to some of the people hitting the headlines now. Quite honestly, could have exceeded the famous Clegg lifetime score in a busy month. You met someone, you shagged ’em. It was expected. And that expected bit is what’s causing problems now. It was a culture in London & some of the bigger cities. It began percolating into the universities. But outside of it, not nearly so promiscuous. So now you have youngsters from the sticks coming to the big city, attracted by show biz & the arts & the general buzz. The pressure to conform’s enormous. This is what the happening people do. And they don’t take no for an answer
    What’s amusing is the participants at the time later became the cheerleaders of the new puritanism. (A certain Guardian columnist often featuring in posts here, springs to mind. ). And now the new puritanism has gotten around to chewing on them.
    Sweet justice.

  10. Looking back at Unity’s submission, made whilst I was writing mine. No, it wasn’t just a power thing. It’s that people like yours truly, who did their own share of dubious things, don’t get remembered 40 years later.

  11. It’s always gone on. Even before Victorian times. And it will always go on in the future. It’s human nature.

    As to the recent spate of arrests. It’s a sign that society has changed. We are in the new puritan age. In the past it was as illegal as it is now. But then people didn’t care. Now they do. But the reason it went on in the past was people didn’t care. Now that they do, they are acting retrospectively and applying our current mores onto actions carried out in the past under different mores.

  12. JamesV, the adverts shown on this site, and any other site that uses Google, are based on the reader’s preferences and activity. So I get adverts from Curry’s since I’ve recently been looking for USB TV receivers. Though some adverts are shown when nothing else can be selected, and adverts for brides come into this category. So I know that you haven’t been looking for a brides recently! 🙂

  13. Surreptitious Evil

    I am not comfortable with the word ephebophilia being applied to chamber maids. Given the general human predeliction for women within a range which at the lower end would be under what has been until recently the age of consent.

    Don’t confuse technical terms with legality or morality. Otherwise we’ll begin to think you’re a Daily Hate journo.

    I really don’t think the question of whether you fancy people with or without overt secondary sexual characteristics should be considered dependent on their, or your, job. That’s a matter for those other regulators on our sexual behaviour (social, moral and legal).

    Of course, you could have reasonably queried the concept of consent, as applied between a young and very junior servant and their employer, who was also Prime Minister of the day.

  14. SMFS:

    “Except we do not see a lot of people using their socio-economic power. Rock stars are shagging groupies without offering them any money or using any position of power to force the issue.”

    You’re being a little obtuse here in ignoring the role of status, which is – of course – closely related to socio-economic power.

    Rock stars, by and large, don’t need to make overt use of the socio-economic power because of the things they get from it is status, and its that which attracts the groupies.

    That said, this can sometimes lead to a few unintended and unintentionally funny consequences. Many years ago, I worked in a rock night club which rans gigs on weekdays and the club had its own resident bunch of die-hard groupies who would turn up to gigs religiously in the hope snagging a musician for the night.

    On one memorable occasion, we had a new and relatively unknown Swedish thrash metal band playing at the club and, as always, our resident groupies turned up nice and early for the gig in the hope of meeting the band before the show, only to be a little disappointed as the band resolutely chose to stay in the backstage area (a closed-off bar) until show time.

    What our merry band of groupies didn’t know, until the band went on stage – and we deliberately made a point of not telling them – was that it was an all-female band.

    To be honest, the band were pretty crap, but the look on our resident bunch of groupies’ faces as they walked on stage was absolutely priceless, not least because the bouncers had tipped off a few of the regulars about what was going on, so about the punter in the audience were looking out for their reaction to the band.

  15. Et tu Tim?

    A few points.

    Firstly, there is the fact that none of these claims are being tested in court. In the case of Hall, he appears to have done a plea bargain (“confess to everything in return for leniency”) so we’ll never know which if any of the claims are true. The claims there are are mild- touched a leg, etc- and show a normal sexual age interest besides one bizarre outlier that he excused himself from a dinner party to “molest” the hosts’ nine year old daughter(!).

    Secondly, the fact that you have reports of *several* perpetrators of a particular crime in a given time period hardly tells you of a particular crime wave. If I told you that there were, say, ten muggers in the period 1965 to 1980- even prolific ones with numerous victims- that would hardly be remarkable, would it?

    Thirdly, to reiterate, there is nothing even slightly abnormal about fancying a fifteen or seventeen year old, so “paedophilia” does not apply. The term “ephebophilia” is so weak as to be meaningless. Back when Sam Fox was the nation’s darling, we were all “ephebophiles”. Or none of us were. In the case of celebrities of this type, many of the available women were at the younger end of the range, that’s all.

    Fourthly, during the period in question, the Anglosphere was in an intrapuritan period and had significantly relaxed back to a relatively sane attitude to sexuality, which it took the subsequent couple of decades of bizarre moral panics (starting with SRA), the promotion of the “trauma” narrative from therapists via Oprah Winfrey, intensive campaigning by the pincer movement of Bible bashers and radical feminists, etc, to reverse.

    The creation of a “dead zone” between puberty and the age of consent was a Victorian (first wave Feminist) creation and people of a liberal mind saw it as as much of an anachronism as the anti-gay hysteria; as such it was disregarded and expected to be discarded, as were the angi-gay laws. Anyone in 1975 predicting the current state of hysteria (more intense, even than was achieved during the First Wave) would have been laughed at. It wasn’t until the 80s that the new Puritanism descended; which is also around the time that our celebrity scapegoats appear to have tempered their activities. Seen in that context, even taking all the allegations (leaving Savile out of it, since there seems to be such a cloud of absurdity around his case as to defy analysis) at face value, they amount to no more than a number of unwanted advances, which is a situation as old as humankind. A man putting his hand on a woman’s leg and getting told to sod off, or a slap in the face, is hardly remarkable or serious. It only becomes serious if you believe that any such experience causes irreparable mental ruin the only cure for which is generous compensation.

    It is worth bearing in mind that this was an age when millions of ordinary Britons thought the funniest thing in the world was a sexagenerian Sid James acting in precisely this manner towards nubile young women (or, Joan Sims playing 20 years older than she should have been. Carry On Camping appears to be a Saga Holiday in casting terms). What we now characterise with the generalised damnation word “abuse” was at that time considered merely inappropriatness or rudness, to be dealt with with refusal, a put down, a slap in the face or, if an attendant protector-male was present, a smack in the mouth. Any woman saying that “X touched my bum and I’ve never got over it” would have been considered basically feeble minded and told to pull herself together. But that was before emotive wallowing became a badge of pride via the therapy industry and, as said, Oprah, Rikki, et al.

    The current puritan wave is probably the most intense, in sexual terms, ever to afflict the Western World. Possibly the most pernicious of its rules is a new one, which makes us all pretend that as we get older, our sexual tastes should naturally turn to older people. This is not true and never has been. The target ages remain the same however old we get. Not just for men, either. Susan Sontag admitted that her primary reason for being “lesbian” as she got older was that she could no longer attract the young men she found attractive (so made do with Boston Marriages).

    If any of these scapegoats did commit rape, that should be condemned, though should also be beyond prosecution; we desperately need a Statute Of Limitations, of which in the current hysteria there is no chance. But hunting down these elderly former celebs for a grope here and a snog there, decades ago, is barbaric. It is also ludicrous to try to draw an imaginary lesson about this “philia” or that “philia” from it.

    Also; had a long discussion last week with my sister about this (she was furious beyond belief about the targetting of Rolf Harris) since we both started in the entertainment biz in the period in question (her, late 70s, me, 1980). I remember once trying to describe to various neopuritans here that to understand the culture you had to be there. It would take a lot of writing to explain it again. But I tried to explain that different environments have different moral standards, and it is simply wrong to try to fit what is acceptable in a staid office environment today (or even back then) to the liberal environment in (in our case) theatre, a world where queens screamed at each other, everyone was very tactile, groping was horseplay indulged by male and female alike, actors tried to put each other off by flashing from the wings, in which teenage dancers desperately flung themselves at older actors and I used to let the theater manager give me a goodnight kiss (I was well below the age of consent for bumbuggery back then) because he fancied me and I saw no harm in it.

    Oh wait, I just realised I’ve been traumatised all these years. Can I have some compensation, please?

  16. “die-hard groupies who would turn up to gigs religiously in the hope snagging a musician for the night”

    That would be one of those American religions?

  17. Just to clarify; the reason I said the current wave is “probably the most intense” is that although the stated rules of the Victorian Wave were in many ways more intense, there was also a lot of pragmatic turning of a blind eye. Under the current wave, as we see now, there is no hiding place.

  18. I also predict that there’s a good chance that, if we all live to be old enough, we’ll see some future Prime Minister granting posthumous apologies and saying “must never happen again” and “lessons must be learned” and so on, and people will be writing books and articles about the madness that eclipsed the Western World at this time.

  19. I have a theory that it’s always gone on, based on the fact that Henry Tudor’s mother was 13 at the time of his birth. Back in the days before baths and showers and dentistry, the most desirable women would be those who have recently hit puberty: after that, it’s all downhill from there. So if you wanted somebody pretty, clean(ish), and not like a wizard’s sleeve, then you were hunting out the girls in the early teens.

    As things improved, the period of a woman’s desirability increased into the 20s and 30s, and nowadays 40s and beyond (I doubt there were many MILFs in ye olden days). And as women in their late teens and 20s became shaggable, the desire to pester 12 and 13 year olds likely waned (most men would prefer a 20 year old over a 14 year old, even if the former were legal). There then came the (quite reasonable) suggestion that if women can be shagged for 20+ years of their lives, how about leaving them alone for 4-5 years whilst they finish their childhood?

    So it’s always gone on, but modernity has made it less necessary.

  20. The target ages remain the same however old we get.

    Curiously, that’s not really been the case for me. I’ve always liked women roughly my own age. I’m mid-30s, and don’t find women under 30 as attractive as those over 30.

  21. the period of a woman’s desirability increased into the 20s and 30s

    Not really. Older women have always got married, if not snapped up earlier (or, as was common, they were widows by their 20s). What’s of interest is a woman’s peak attractiveness, and that hasn’t changed much. Glamour models continue to be in the 18-25 range, and only the New Puritanism Act 2003 stopped them starting that at 16.

    All that actually “changed” was a ferocious campaign by upper class women in the Victorian Era attempting to impose “male chastity” and knock younger competitors out of the sexual market, which was what the age of consent was all about. Hence the introduction under first wave political correctness of redefining teenagers as “children”; when people talk of Victorian “child prostitution” (grossly exaggerated by campaigners, then as now) they’re referring to teenagers, not infants. The same as “child brides” meaning girls of 13, 14 etc, rather than 7 year olds.

    Some lucky few women hang onto their looks as far as their 40s. Hence, with a global pool to draw from, those few can be indentified as “milfs”. Choosing smoebody arbitrarily, Chloe Vevrier is doing remarkably well looks-wise into her 40s. And women in general these days have better cosmetics and cosmetic surgery, botox etc to help offset ageing somewhat. But human biology has not changed.

  22. I’m mid-30s, and don’t find women under 30 as attractive as those over 30.

    *raises eyebrow*

  23. Older women have always got married…

    Well, yes. But we’re talking here about which women are considered the pick of the bunch by those men lucky enough to have first dibs.

    I’m mid-30s, and don’t find women under 30 as attractive as those over 30.

    There’s more to attraction than looks. I’ll stick you in the company of a very pretty 22-yo Russian girl for a week, and then come and tell me you want to continue hanging out with her. I used to date these girls in Dubai, I liken it to having a stroppy teenage daughter. I had much the same experience with a very attractive 23-yo Brazilian-American girl.

  24. Tim,

    We’re only talking about physical attractiveness here, not “relationship attractiveness”. A celeb shagging a groupie is not interested in falling in love with them.

    I’m 47. I can’t imagine having a relationship with, say, a 20 year old. We’d have nothing in common, culturally, and she’d want to go clubbing while I want to sit at home listening to my Hawkwind albums. Such a relationship isn’t even on my wish list. But in purely physical terms, what do I prefer, a perky 20 year old or a saggy 40 year old? The former.

    There is more to relationship attractiveness than looks, indeed. But all we’re interested in here is looks.

  25. There is more to relationship attractiveness than looks, indeed. But all we’re interested in here is looks.

    Well, not quite. We’re talking about sex, and there is more to sex than looks. I figured out the difference between being pretty and being sexy very early on. That stuff they call “chemistry” does play a part.

  26. It is worth bearing in mind that this was an age when millions of ordinary Britons thought the funniest thing in the world was a sexagenerian Sid James acting in precisely this manner towards nubile young women
    ………………………………….

    But it wasn’t, Ian. Carry On (Almost But Not Quite) Fornicating was a child of the music hall. Tell me the one Carry On film anyone ever got laid in. Late 60s >early 70s was Hair, Oz, the Lizard King flashing his dick on stage, Behind The Green Door. We didn’t do comedy. We took ourselves far too seriously. We did satire. And we were all desperately pretending to be Americans.

  27. Tim, we are in danger of disappearing up our mutual backsides here. The crux of the matter is whether it’s normal or not for a man of whatever years to find a teenager sexually desirable, not what you or I think is an ideal relationship.

  28. BIS-

    Off top of my head, Up The Khaiber. Sid James, “tiffin”.

    The point is that back then, the old (and often frankly decrepit) male lusting after nubile females was a narrative staple.

  29. @Ian B

    Are you serious?

    “he appears to have done a plea bargain (“confess to everything in return for leniency”) so we’ll never know which if any of the claims are true. ”

    Here’s a clue – he pled guilty.

    More strongly he pled guilty to a range of charges that would destroy his reputation and cause people to despise him.

    You might or might not have a point about some people over-therapising some mild sexual contact, but you seem to be missing a big point. Sexual assault and rape, especially on minors and children, can traumatise – not in the ridiculous ‘I’ve had such a traumatic day’ way, but in the ‘cowering in the corner of life and outrageously self-medicating’ way.

    The nature of the crimes can be such that the victim has no ability to speak of it or address it until much later in life.

    So we pursue these criminals long after the crimes have happened. Seems reasonable to me.

  30. The crux of the matter is whether it’s normal or not for a man of whatever years to find a teenager sexually desirable, not what you or I think is an ideal relationship.

    Who mentioned relationships? My point, a simple one, is that I find women about 28-30 more sexually desirable than teenagers, and I suspect I am not alone.

  31. A third option: It’s the internet wot’s done it.

    It’s always gone on but only in the last few years has the extent of it become apparent. Forums, websites etc. have given victims access to other victims’ experiences and they have realised that the pain they still experience is not just something that everybody has, it’s damage – and they are no longer alone.

    I reckon it really is as simple as that – the power of the web and generally it’s a good thing.

    And of course the Brits not having a statute of limitations about this. That’s something to be proud of as a Brit.

    Of course the media have taken advantage on it to get readers – that’s what the media does. But the media hasn’t created this, it’s just followed the new awareness that the web has facilitated.

  32. Doug Young-

    Think of this. You’re elderly, and picked up by a witch hunt. Some of the allegations are true. You did try it on with one girl, grope another, and so on. The Yewtree bods offer you the option of going to trial, losing, and rotting in jail, or admitting guilt to everything in their dossier, and they’ll drop that spurious rape charge, and you’ll get leniency.

    What choice would you make?

    Everyone these days recognises that confession under torture is rendered worthless. They are less willing to recognise that a confession under threat of future greater punishment is rendered worthless for exactly the same reason. This corrupted form of acquiring guilty pleas, the plea bargain, has become endemic in America. God help us if we go the same way.

    For Yewtree- a collection of evangelical police and feminist wonks via the NSPCC- collecting scalps is absolutely essential at this stage to justify their witch hunt. Anyone sensible should be treating this with utter suspicion.

    One other anecdotal thing. My father is in his 80s. My sis and I have noticed how, of late, despite having all his faculties, he is so much less mentally resilient than he was. He just moved residence, and a large part of that was us “managing” things to reduce his stress level. He just can’t cope like he did in the past. Imagining him in a police situation like this, he would just crumble, mentally.

    And-

    Sexual assault and rape, especially on minors and children, can traumatise – not in the ridiculous ‘I’ve had such a traumatic day’ way, but in the ‘cowering in the corner of life and outrageously self-medicating’ way.

    Yes, but we’re actually talking about, so far as we can tell, some groping. This kind of hyperbolic description of “trauma” has spiralled completely out of control.

  33. Who mentioned relationships? My point, a simple one, is that I find women about 28-30 more sexually desirable than teenagers, and I suspect I am not alone.

    Good for you Tim, now are you going to address the fucking point?

  34. @Ian B

    “What choice would you make?”

    Well, I’d fight it if I was innocent. And if I had a moral code (which like most of us I flatter myself I do).

    Your father, bless him, would not have the extremely high-price lawyers inspecting every aspect of the case, and looking for every possible get out – including possible witch hunts, police over-zealousness…

    Plea bargains? Possibly – my understanding is that they don’t really exist in the UK. Reduction for pleading guilty yes, but that’s hardly a plea bargain.

    Stuart Hall, unlike your dear Dad, had the best lawyers money could buy as well as family support and he pled guilty. I really don’t think there’s much evidence that he’s not guilty.

    And we really don’t know the full extent of his crimes. One was putting his hands up a child’s skirt and digital penetration. Doesn’t sound like groping to me.

    Yes, ‘trauma’ is far too over-used, but clinical trauma is very very bad – look at the poor souls coming back from Afghanistan with its after-effects. So some people use it inappropriately – so what? The vast majority of victims use it appropriately I would suggest, and are aware of its nuances.

  35. Well, I’d fight it if I was innocent.

    Really? When you’ve little hope of winning in a climate of hysteria, when the rules of evidence are so relaxed that convictions will occur on mere emotive testimony, when the whole establishment are against you, when the media are baying for blood, when fantastical nonsense about “trauma” is routinely believed? When the police have trawled up a huge dossier of claims, and can cherry pick the ones that will play best in court, that they can mine for spurious “patterns” to use as “proof” against you? Are you sure?

    I doubt I would. I’d probably take being a pariah outside jail over being a nonce in jail until my death. This is the nature of the plea bargain extracted confession; it’s a choice of the lesser evil.

    And, finally, you might like to consider the relative level of trauma from being sent to war, people shooting at you, watching your friends’ limbs blown off, watching them killed, with that of somebody touching your bottom, in terms of degree.

    Even among people who suffer enormous war trauma, strong psychological “trauma” reactions are rare. Of the men who survived the carnage of WWI, only a minority suffered PTSD. Most came home and got on with their lives. And of women? Who suffered bombings and the loss of menfolk, starvation, all manner of privations and, often, systematised rape by conquering armies, again, most suffer no severe trauma symptoms afterwards. Humans have been suffering horrific things for all our history. We are resilient. We have to be, to survive.

    And yet, thanks to political correctness, we are expected to believe that a girl who was groped is suffering some terrible anguish 30 or 40 years later. This is insane.

  36. Good for you Tim, now are you going to address the fucking point?

    I did, in my original post. Then you decided to make it all about you, as fucking usual.

  37. Just to add; even if this ludicrous Californian pop pyschology were true, nobody (outside a few therapists) believed it in 1975. Nobody had heard of it. The term sexual harrassment had not yet entered the lexicon, nor was “abuse” widely used as it is now, nor the word “paedophile”. A man groping a nubile filly in those days could not thus be expected to take this purported future damage into account when considering his actions, since neither he nor anyone else knew anything of it.

    Which is why there should be a statute of limitations. People can only act on the knowledge they have at the time.

    Let’s do a bit of futurism. Right now the Radial/Union Feminism axis are quietly working hard to deprecate anal sex. They are claiming it is an act of violence (whether consensual or not), women only suffer it due to coercion by The Patriarchy, motivated by porn, which is all conceptually rape, etc. Now currently, this particular act is quite popular among gays and straights alike. Indeed, there has been quite a movement in the past to promote it as spicing up one’s sex life by various sexologists.

    Now, suppose thirty years from now the Feminists have won another victory, and anal sex has been recriminalised. Would you hunt down everyone who currently practises it? Would that be just?

  38. I’ll stick you in the company of a very pretty 22-yo Russian girl for a week, and then come and tell me you want to continue hanging out with her.

    No, actually that was you.

  39. Let me remind you of what you said *first*:

    The target ages remain the same however old we get.

    I told you this was not necessarily the case, and you started raising eyebrows. So I repeated that, in my case, it isn’t true, and you went off thinking I was talking about relationships and explaining how, despite being 47, you still prefer teenage girls. Or something.

    This may come as a surprise to you, but not all of us whack off over pictures of teenage girls.

  40. I think the difference is that it was considered as a matter of parental responsibility in the past, even into the 1980s. People looked down on people who had let their daughters out on their own as irresponsible and well, what do you expect if you do that?

    And I suspect the police saw it as a bit of a nonsensical crime, and perhaps used it where a rape conviction couldn’t be easily obtained. In the case of consensual sex, the worst thing was the girl got a broken heart.

    Watch how that woman talks about Savile, how exciting it was to go to London with him and meet famous people and so forth. She’s not angry at having been violated by Savile. She’s angry because she thought she would get more out of it – he was ultimately a cad.

    Then the collapse of the hard left, to be replaced by the soft left and Princess Diana led to the cult of victimhood. People no longer had a bad experience and tried to bury it and move on, or to learn from it and grow, but instead, were victims of a crime (and if we can’t think of one right now, we’ll trawl the books to find one). The soft left view is about letting people fester in their misery, and for society to support that festering.

  41. Oh, and just to further support my theory that men a lot of prefer women older than teenagers given a free choice, I happen to spend a lot of time in Thailand where one can pick up a girl of any age for a quick shag for £20 without so much as asking her name. And it is not the case that the 18 and 19 year olds are highly sought after and those who are in their late 20s are left fighting for what’s left of the customer base. Far from it. Most guys get the older women because, as any fella knows, girls who are 18 are usually too much hassle compared to one whose got a few years under her belt – even if we’re only talking about a quick shag.

    So sorry, I reject absolutely the notion that men of all ages are mostly interested in girls in their late teens. Most blokes over 25 I know or have observed go for women in their mid-late 20s.

  42. Tim,

    For fuck’s sake, we’re not remembering a conversation here. The whole thread is above you, cast in HTML stone, for you to read. You started off about your own personal tastes when I was talking about yourself and your general tastes, then went off about fixing me up with a Russian girl for some reason. For crying out loud.

  43. I edited the above into incoherence (more than usual). Should read-

    You started off about your own personal tastes when I was talking about general tastes, then went off about fixing me up with a Russian girl for some reason.

  44. Ian B,

    Now, suppose thirty years from now the Feminists have won another victory, and anal sex has been recriminalised. Would you hunt down everyone who currently practises it? Would that be just?

    The difference is that anal sex is legal (although between consenting heterosexuals, only since 1989).

    I suspect we’re headed for a new establishment sometime soon. The state of the economy means that the boomer era is going to be over soon, their views and economics razed to the ground. They went from being the progressives, to being the mainstream, to being conservative, and they did it by simply holding their views as the world changed.

    The current generation of women look at current feminists with the same contempt that modern, progressive women in the early 70s looked at Mary Whitehouse.

  45. No publicity agents in the Victorian era, nor Red Tops willing to pay large wads for exclusives.

    No ‘I’m a paedo’s victim get me out of here’ TV fame.

    No celebrities either in the sense we now know them to be dragged through the media.

    We only hear now of these traumatic goings-on when there is a ‘name’ involved.

    People have managed to soldier on through the wreckage of their blighted lives having had a buttock or breast fondled at a tender age, or even a kiss full on the lips (yuk) but after 30 or 40 years, and with crystal clear memory, it is at last time to get the weight off their poor shoulders and get ‘closure’ and justice… and a nice dollop of compo, not that that is why they are doin it.

    Please don’t think I am being cynical.

  46. As Gandhi said:

    “Crazy American social developments: first we ignore them, then we laugh at them, then we fight them, then we do them more enthusiastically than they do”.

  47. TheJollyGreenMan

    The fact that males get reported and prosecuted 40 to 50 years later is all that is new.

    If you cast your mind to Lourens van der Post, one of the gurus that the Prince of Wales adores, he seduced a 15 year old daughter of a friend on the boat trip from South Africa to England. The Union Castle lines that had the mail-ship contract between the UK and South Africa stopped the service in the early 1970s.

    And then there is Christiaan Barnard, the Cape doctor that did the first human heart transplant, serial seducer of you females in the circle of his friends, he married and dumped them at regular intervals throughout his life.

  48. You started off about your own personal tastes when I was talking about general tastes

    Yes, because it was not at all clear to me that your “general tastes” were, in fact, general. I brought up the example of fixing you up with a Russian girl in a vain attempt to make you understand that a lot of men don’t choose their sexual partners – even one night stands – on looks alone.

  49. And I still don’t know why you’re making that point, Tim. People choose all kinds of things for all kinds of reasons. The only point I was making is that on average, young women are more physically attractive than old ones. Which is why a male with access to many females will tend to choose the younger ones over the older ones; and that a social expectation that men should prefer older women over younger ones as they themselves get older does not fit with anything we know about human sexuality.

    I wasn’t talking about *my* general tastes, but “general” as in, well, “general”, like, everyone in general.

    Except you who, when you’re sixty, will be enraptured by wrinkly oldies rather than pert young fillies. And good for you. Womankind’s appreciation of you is truly unbounded, and you shall be rewarded with many sheep and camels, unto the tenth generation.

  50. And I still don’t know why you’re making that point, Tim.

    The reasons are contained in my first post on this subject.

    The only point I was making is that on average, young women are more physically attractive than old ones.

    Yes, but it does not follow that men find women of 16-18 more sexually attractive than women who are 28-30.

    I wasn’t talking about *my* general tastes, but “general” as in, well, “general”, like, everyone in general.

    No, I think you’d be quite surprised that a lot of men do not immediately go for women in their late teens over women in their mid-late 20s. *This* is where I believe you to be wrong, and I bet I’ve been in one hell of a lot more environments where women of all ages have been throwing themselves at all-comers than you have (bearing in mind that I’ve lived in Russia, Thailand, and Nigeria since 2006).

    I think *you* prefer teenage girls (probably having not been in the company of one in decades) and assume that everyone else does. Really, I cannot see too many guys making the effort to bed an 18-yo when there is a perfectly attractive (and less fussy and more experienced) 27-yo available.

  51. I’m assuming our current attitudes – relative to the 60s or 80s – are a feature of the pendulum thing. There’s probably a little further to go before public opinion usurps the Puritans and the pendulum begins to swing in the opposite direction.

  52. Jeebus, but there’s some pretty scary pseudohistory being voiced in this thread.

    For the record, the Victorians did not impose a ‘dead zone’ between puberty and sixteen when they set the age of consent at that age.

    At that time it would have seemed eminently reasonable for them to set the age of consent to sixteen because, particularly amongst the urban poor whom the law was intended to protect, the average age of first menarche in females was between 15 and 15 1/2 years of age. What the Victorians didn’t realise at the time was that the average age of first menarche had actually risen considerably over the preceding 2-3 centuries as people moved or were forced off the land into the towns and cities.

    Why?

    Poor nutrition – the diet of the Victorian urban poor was much worse than that of their rural ancestors, a situation that has, of course, substantially reversed over the last century.

    And although its true that what passed for a legal age of consent was tied to puberty in the middle ages, it is nevertheless a myth that this meant that young women were routinely married off at the age of 13 or so. 13 year old brides were actually rather rare during the medieval and Tudor periods, accounting for around 1 marriage in 1000, while most women married at between 19 and 22 years of age.

    In Elizabethan England, for example, it was widely believed that early motherhood (at or before the age of 16) was dangerous – and given the state of medicine during that period, I expect it genuinely was – so it was held that 18 was the minimum respectable age for women to be having children while 20 was, for a woman, thought to be the ideal age to marry.

    Even in Romeo and Juliet, Capulet tries to persuade Paris to put of his suit of Juliet, hence “She hath not seen the change of fourteen years, Let two more summers wither in their pride, Ere we may think her ripe to be a bride”.

  53. Tim, I don’t know why you are getting so personal- thanks for the snidey-

    I think *you* prefer teenage girls (probably having not been in the company of one in decades)

    -by the way, much appreciated, you ass. So I’m going to repeat my point, calmly again, and try to avoid your barbs. It is that women acquire their physical attractiveness in their teens, that it peaks in the teens to mid twenties, and then fades away at various rates. There is nothing controversial about this. It is not me, some crazy old pederast (go on, call me one, you know you want to) coming up with shit off the top of my head. It’s not only standard from an evolutionary point of view, but from so much diverse everyday evidence that denying it is a sheer denial of reality. It is why whenever women are chosen for their looks- models, dancers, pop singers (trading on looks) etc- it is in this age range. Page 3 girls aren’t 40, or 60, they’re 18+, and were 16+ until that was banned. It is why there is a vast beauty products market full of products that women hope will slow or hide the ageing process. It just is.

    Now that does not mean that every man is somehow obligated to automatically pick the younger woman. There may be all kinds of reasons why some man may prefer the 27yo over the 18yo. But it does mean that we should not be the least surprised that he chooses the 18 yo, regardless of his own age. She has better skin, perkier boobs, a shapelier bottom (on average) than the older women; she has all the evolutionary signifiers of maximal fertility. This isn’t me talking, it’s pretty much any evolutionary biologist. Or, if you want, you can find any number of women writers complaining about precisely how quickly age lowers their pull; there was an article just a few days ago (can’t find the damned thing now, sorry) by a female writer noting that now she’s over 30, she has to lie about her age on dating sites or get few replies.

    It’s just the way things are. At what age does that attractiveness first flower? That’s very variable. But by 15, most girls are physically womanly and sexually motivated. It’s certainly not the case that men are automatically going to choose a 15 over a 20, even if we imagine all else being precisely equal (e.g. imagine the same woman, at the two ages), but we should not consider that there is something abnormal about him if he does. But (I repeat in purely physical terms) overwhelmingly either of them will be in better physical nick than when she is 30; and by 40 it’s pretty much all over for most women, in a physical sense. Which is cruel, and many women resent that, and many men trying to be kind pretend it isn’t true. But it is. It just is.

    And, getting slightly personal, you’ve said you’re in your mid 30s. That means that your reasonable target range without raising eyebrows still covers women in their golden years (e.g. you 35, woman 25). When you’re 60, you may think rather differently at the sight of the grey haired grannies you’re supposed to admire.

  54. At that time it would have seemed eminently reasonable for them to set the age of consent to sixteen because, particularly amongst the urban poor whom the law was intended to protect, the average age of first menarche in females was between 15 and 15 1/2 years of age.

    Two things;

    Firstly, the age of consent law was fiercely contested and did not seem “eminently sensible” to everyone at all; it was a Socail Purity Movement campaign and only got through parliament because the first tabloid journalist, WT Stead, invented a sensational kidnap of a girl into “white slavery” and plastered it all over the Pall Mall Gazette. It then transpired he’d made the whole thing up, procured the girl himself, and went to prison for it. But the law had passed.

    Basically, same basket of lies as the current “sex trafficking” piffle.

    Secondly, we ought to be cautious about these age of menarche statistics. Victorian medicine was hardly reliably collecting statistics at the time and, since we know that girls were going into prostitution in the early teens (hence, the law from the Social Puritans), it seems debatable whether they were pre-pubescent. If there was a much higher age of puberty (some people put it as high as a ludicrous 17 or 18), it may have been a transient anomaly among certain social classes (who could afford doctors) and who may have been deliberately erring on the side of lateness for reasons of propriety.

    It really has to be remembered that Victorian attitudes to this kind of subject were just as mired in propaganda and ideology as today’s are, and that most of the statistics were compiled not for sober scientific reasons but, just as today, by campaigners trying to effect “social change”; this goes for other statistics too like ludicrously high estimates of the number of prostitutes, average lifespan for death-by-ruin of a prostitute, etc.

  55. If even Tim is wavering then the femminazi fun and games are doing their dirty work.

    First–set up the hysteria/witch hunt with Saville. He is dead so no chance of any refutation from his lawyers. (He said/she said situations are now automatically decided in the woman’s favour but lots of Saville’s accusers have made stupid mistakes in their stories which can and hopefully will trip them up).

    Then arrest a bunch of old farts on a trawl for dodgy accusations.

    Pick the oldest (Hall is the oldest of the first batch). Tell him that unless he can categorically prove he did not do it then he will be convicted, the book will be thrown, and he will live out what life he has left (at Hall’s age you would not buy green bananas) as a nonce on the lowest level of the UKs lovely prison system until he dies in jail, alone and far from whatever loved ones he has left. Not being a moral super hero like Doug Young , Hall decides that, even tho’ he will be a despised sex crim forever and all his life to date made a travesty, he would rather be in the sunshine and he gives.

    For the fems and their cop enablers it is lovely. They have bogus vindication and can use Hall’s crumble to pressure the others. Meanwhile the femmis can spit venom about the sexual wickedness of the past and how those attitudes are still there and must be rooted out –“institutional racism” ring any bells?. The power of a second element of the left over the police will be cemented. After the Stephen Lawrence caper ordinary coppers know to keep their opinions to themselves and ambitious coppers who want to rise know they have to kiss socialist arse to do so. From now on, any copper who casts doubt on any sex accusation, no matter how dodgy will be a pariah, and those who want to join the boss class will know that any accusation, no matter how old or unlikely will mean they need to send their troops after some pensioner with the same energy as if he was an active knife and ski-mask rapist.

  56. “The target ages remain the same however old we get.”

    Kingsley Amis had a theory that they start older and get younger, so as we men age we move from Mrs Robinson fantasies to chasing young girls.

    I think one of his books had a formula; man’s age + twice ideal girl’s age = 100, or something like that.

  57. It is that women acquire their physical attractiveness in their teens…

    Once again: we’re talking about sex, and there is more to sex than looks.

    Let me know when it sinks in.

  58. Tim, you’re talking about… I don’t know what you’re talking about… you’re just a sort of circulating slogan machine. Really, I haven’t got a clue what point you think you’re making, and I don’t think you have either.

    You seem to be at best trying to argue in a confused and tepid manner that men shouldn’t be attracted to women below some age (27? who knows?) but since you know that would be silly, you’re not coming out with it. I mean, if I or anyone else had said that there isn’t more to sex than looks, you might have some kind of point, but since I’ve said that there is indeed more to sex than looks, we seem to be at an impasse.

    Once you’ve figured out what your point actually is, please let me know.

  59. Except it isn’t is it, Tim? I am not going to repeat the facts I’ve laid out above; the ages of models and pornstars and dancers and any woman hired for looks. I could add the well known stereotype of old tycoons marrying young beauties, and ditching old wives and girlfriends for younger ones. Oh, well, I just repeated a bit.

    The definition of beauty is independent of the particular observer. It is why women go from “hot” to “still hot” to “looks great for her age” to “well preserved” to “used to be beautiful”. It is why so many women are distressed by ageing, and why actresses find the lead roles drying up as they age. There are not many more ways I can add to say this simple, obvious, fact; that throughout humanity and history, beauty has been directly associated with youthfulness. As I said, it just is.

  60. Except it isn’t is it, Tim? I am not going to repeat the facts I’ve laid out above; the ages of models and pornstars and dancers and any woman hired for looks. #

    Yes, looks. Now I’ve said this twice already, and that I have to say it thrice is making me wonder if you are right in the head: we’re talking about sex, and there is more to sex than looks.

    Sunk in yet? Or do you need it a fourth time?

  61. Tim. I have already said more than twice I’m sure that I am not disagreeing with that. But looks are really important; a central determinant of sexual attraction, which is why we care about them and, all that stuff above what I wrote. The only way you’re gong to get anywhere with this line of what I presume you like to call “reasoning” would be to say that looks don’t matter.

    Which would be awfully PC, and it’s the person inside that counts, and all that. And entirely divorced from reality, also.

    Look, you know why girls have breasts? It’s to attract males. You know why males prefer firm breasts? Because they indicate youth and fertility. Yes?

    What? No? Oh right, Tim Newman prefers ancient baggy ones she can flip over her shoulders. Okay, righty ho Tim, that’s you, fine. Good for you.

  62. Oh right, Tim Newman prefers ancient baggy ones she can flip over her shoulders.

    Firstly, nowhere did I say I liked ancient women. I recall saying I liked women around 30. Hardly ancient. You’re making stuff up. Secondly, I’m glad you said it. Why? Because now I can say the following without feeling I may be kicking a man when he’s down.

    Look, you know why girls have breasts? It’s to attract males. You know why males prefer firm breasts? Because they indicate youth and fertility. Yes?

    Yes, they do. But when it comes to having sex with women, blokes who are past about 27-28 care only that the woman is above a certain subjective standard: they do not give a shit that they are not of the same beauty as a 17 year old in her prime. They look for a shitload more, even if it is on a one night stand. And they tend to find that in women who are *not* in their prime of beauty, i.e. not teenagers.

    I actually have experience, real world experience, of what guys go for. And I have noticed that the age of their targets *does* change, getting progressively older from teenagers through mid to late twenties topping out at around early-mid 30s. One of the main reasons why 40-yo guys don’t want to be shagging 18 year olds is because often they have daughters that age. As I said, there is more to sex than looks, and pointing to models and porn stars and equating them with the age of women we all want to shag flies in the face of who we’re actually shagging. It flies in the face of which clubs we’re frequenting, FFS!

    Which is why I made that remark about you not having been with a teenager in decades. Seriously, I don’t think you have. Despite all your talk about how they represent, for you, the pinnacle of your desires I count you in the minority amongst 47 year olds I know because all the others would steer well clear of a teenager, even on a one night stand. You keep mentioning porn and models, which have nothing to do with sex unless being alone in your room jacking off counts. Each to their own as far as porn goes I suppose, but somebody in their late 40s who thinks their ideal target for actually having sex – given a choice of anything – is a teenager is either unlikely to be having sex with anyone or has issues of some kind.

  63. So Much for Subtlety

    Surreptitious Evil – “Don-t confuse technical terms with legality or morality. Otherwise we-ll begin to think you-re a Daily Hate journo.”

    Well I am always open to a job offer if anyone from the Daily Mail is reading. But it is not that. It is the medicalisation of normal life. The Americans insist on putting a label on everything and making it a medical condition – I was intrigued to see that if you are sad for more than two weeks after your wife-s death, you are clinically depressed for instance (at least so says the DSM-5). This one ought to be fought. I remember Sam Fox. I do not think that any who appreciated her form has some sort of medical illness.

    “I really don-t think the question of whether you fancy people with or without overt secondary sexual characteristics should be considered dependent on their, or your, job.”

    Not sure of the origins of this, but I might in the right circumstances. Anyone who fancies some person on the basis of their lack of secondary sexual characteristics has a problem and on the whole should not work with children. YMMV.

    “Of course, you could have reasonably queried the concept of consent, as applied between a young and very junior servant and their employer, who was also Prime Minister of the day.”

    Indeed. The different approaches of the time are interesting too. The Victorians tried to push for a general moral awakening which would prevent men from doing this. We have drummed up a lot of work for the medical and legal profession by suing everyone in sight. Not sure the Victorians were wrong.

    16 Unity – “You-re being a little obtuse here in ignoring the role of status, which is – of course – closely related to socio-economic power.”

    No I am not. Rock star status has nothing to do with socio-economic power. It is usually based on a specific rejection of socio-economic power. The Stones looked scruffy and could hardly afford the bus ticket to the gig but still got lots of groupies. The wealth came later.

    “Rock stars, by and large, don-t need to make overt use of the socio-economic power because of the things they get from it is status, and its that which attracts the groupies.”

    But a status that comes from deeper biological urges in the women. Not from their wealth, as they have none when they start out.

  64. So Much for Subtlety

    Incidentally whatever else you can say about Hall, he does look a little fitted up – if the Mail has been reporting the best allegations against him.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2318565/Stuart-Hall-Two-girls-reveal-spoke-40-years-bring-justice.html

    Hall then tried to convince Susan, who had never experienced alcohol before, to have another drink, but she refused and pleaded with him to take her home.

    Back in the car she felt [incredibly nervous] but Hall tried to relax her by making light conversation about his daughter, Francesca, who was seven at the time.

    [All of a sudden he brought his left hand over my right leg and then moved his hand up my skirt and started touching me,] said Mrs Harrison. [I was so shocked and terrified. I couldn-t do anything as I had frozen – it went on for a couple of minutes.

    [But then I quickly moved to the left of the car away from him, squashing my legs together and just sort of curling away from him.]

    And

    So she was surprised when he returned alone and said: ‘Hi Kim.’

    [He slid his arm around me and then, without a word, squeezed my breast,] said Kim, now 55. [He didn-t just do it and let go, he kept his hand there. I immediately told him to get off and pulled away.

    Everything happened so quickly and I thought, [Dirty old man]. He acted as if nothing had happened and just walked off without saying a word.

    [I didn-t complain because the culture was different then.

    I mean for crying out loud. This is traumatic sexual assault? I feel the need to quote Littlejohn.

  65. SMFS-

    Anyone who fancies some person on the basis of their lack of secondary sexual characteristics has a problem and on the whole should not work with children.

    And this is the whole definition (or was) of paedophilia, which has been entirely lost in the current hysteria. It is an attraction to the absence of characteristics which normal men are attracted to. Which is why I’ve futilely been trying to point out that a man who goes after a physically developed teenager may be many things we can criticise, but isn’t showing paedophilic tendencies.

  66. So Much For Subtlety

    Tim Newman – “But when it comes to having sex with women, blokes who are past about 27-28 care only that the woman is above a certain subjective standard: they do not give a shit that they are not of the same beauty as a 17 year old in her prime.”

    Sorry but may I ask why you believe this? I do not want to get involved in what looks like a rather silly dispute, but how do you know? If you take a man with options, Donald Trump for instance, he has married a 28 year old, a 30 year old and a 34 year old. Not a lot of movement over the course of 30 years. Also every one of those relations began earlier. Men-s preference for swimsuit models is fairly consistent – 16-24.

    “And I have noticed that the age of their targets *does* change, getting progressively older from teenagers through mid to late twenties topping out at around early-mid 30s.”

    But one of the reasons for that may be a society that shames men for seeking every younger women. You do not know for sure.

    “One of the main reasons why 40-yo guys don-t want to be shagging 18 year olds is because often they have daughters that age.”

    On what basis do you make this interesting claim?

    “pointing to models and porn stars and equating them with the age of women we all want to shag flies in the face of who we-re actually shagging.”

    It is not unreasonable to point to a Ferarri and say it is a car that most men would like to drive. Even if the vast majority of men do not. We are with whomever will take us. Not necessarily the women we would choose given our druthers. Which means it is worthwhile pointing to the models and porn stars. Because they are the women that most men pay to see. They are the women that excite men sexually. Now perhaps they would be useless at late night talks about 70s prog rock, but when it comes to what men like, clearly they do not pay for videos of those sort of talks.

    “I count you in the minority amongst 47 year olds I know because all the others would steer well clear of a teenager, even on a one night stand.”

    How do you know? Society shames men who openly do this. What do you know what they would do if they could do it in private? Again, few prostitutes working past 35 I would guess – and I would be willing to bet their income declines rapidly with age.

    “You keep mentioning porn and models, which have nothing to do with sex unless being alone in your room jacking off counts.”

    Sorry but that is absurd. Sex is obviously linked to what men like in porn. If they liked women talking about Heidegger, that is what porn would show. Men do not. They like young women.

  67. So Much For Subtlety

    Tim Newman – “Oh, and just to further support my theory that men a lot of prefer women older than teenagers given a free choice, I happen to spend a lot of time in Thailand where one can pick up a girl of any age for a quick shag for £20 without so much as asking her name.”

    Sorry but are you talking about girlfriends or prostitutes now? One thing Thailand has got going for it is an endless supply of poor teenagers which means rather horrible European men flock there. If they were so into women over 28, they would not have to go so far would they?

    “So sorry, I reject absolutely the notion that men of all ages are mostly interested in girls in their late teens. Most blokes over 25 I know or have observed go for women in their mid-late 20s.”

    Reject away. In the meantime here is a great article from OKCupid that talks about what men actually say in private and what they do:

    http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-case-for-an-older-woman/

    As you can see, a man, as he gets older, searches for relatively younger and younger women. Meanwhile his upper acceptable limit hovers only a token amount above his own age. The median 31 year-old guy, for example, sets his allowable match age range from 22 to 35—nine years younger, but only four years older, than himself. This skewed mindset worsens with age; the median 42 year-old will accept a woman up to fifteen years younger, but no more than three years older.

    But that is what they admit to. What do they do?

    No matter what he’s telling himself on his setting page, a 30 year-old man spends as much time messaging 18 and 19 year-olds as he does women his own age. On the other hand, women only a few years older are largely neglected.

    A woman’s desirability peaks at 21, which, ironically enough is the age that men just begin their “prime,” i.e. become more desirable than average.

    And there is evidence that women know this too. You ask them about Threesomes and oral sex and guess what happens? Younger girls are more reluctant, older women are more open. For oral sex, older means 31 at that link. As their lookis decline they have to offer more and more extreme services or they would, presumably, get nothing at all.

    Now your experience may be different, but there is a vast body of evidence out there that Ian B is on the money. Women-s attractiveness peaks very early. Men are more or less the same in preferring women in, at most, their early twenties. Not everyone, not all the time, but on average.

  68. Well, insomnia, so I’ll add a couple of points to SMFS’s comprehensive replies to Tim.

    The first is to reiterate that you’re (Tim) confusing what men go for with what men would go for ideally. Mating/dating is a market, and people in that market need a realistic appraisal of what they can “afford” based on their own value. Males lose value as they age too (later than females though, see SMFS, and somewhat amenable to compensation with status) and need to adjust expectations accordingly. Pursuing a woman who is out of their range is likely a waste of effort which could be more successful with somebody older and less attractive. And here, Tim, you basically admit this-

    But when it comes to having sex with women, blokes who are past about 27-28 care only that the woman is above a certain subjective standard: they do not give a shit that they are not of the same beauty as a 17 year old in her prime.

    Your friends are following a rational strategy, seeking a high probability of success with someone “who’ll do” rather than low probability of success with a more ideal target. If you’re a fortysomething dustman with moobs and a combover, it’s probably not worth holding out for Cindy Crawford.

    Secondly, because there is a strong, and increasing, distrust of large age gaps (as evidenced in your own posts), males will feel pressurised to conform and not seek socially unreasonably young females. They may well even feel ashamed of themselves for fancying an 18 year old, and tell themself that they really do prefer an older woman, even if their loins tell them something different.

  69. SMFS:

    Sorry but may I ask why you believe this? I do not want to get involved in what looks like a rather silly dispute, but how do you know? If you take a man with options, Donald Trump for instance, he has married a 28 year old, a 30 year old and a 34 year old.

    You’ve answered it yourself: Trump didn’t marry a 17, 18, and 19 year old, did he? He married a 28, 30, and 34 year old. My point being that, all things being equal, men past 35-40 prefer women who are not teenagers.

    On what basis do you make this interesting claim?

    I’ve already answered that: I live in places *full* of middle-aged men shagging younger women, and this is one of the lines I hear most.

    It is not unreasonable to point to a Ferarri and say it is a car that most men would like to drive. Even if the vast majority of men do not. We are with whomever will take us.

    I’ve answered this already. I live in places where 18 year olds are available, so it’s not a case of “whomever will take us”. I did already say this.

    Sex is obviously linked to what men like in porn.

    I beg to differ. What’s the saying? If it exists, there is porn of it? I don’t see many people shagging female hobbits in real life. Porn is largely fantasy.

    If they were so into women over 28, they would not have to go so far would they?

    Well, yes they would. Because boring 50 year old men generally cannot pick up women of 28 unless they are very wealthy. As I said – and I actually live there part time – most European do not come to Thailand to shag teenagers.

    But that is what they admit to. What do they do?

    You’re using the data from internet dating as representative of all men? Good luck with that.

    Ian B:

    Your friends are following a rational strategy, seeking a high probability of success with someone “who’ll do” rather than low probability of success with a more ideal target.

    No, I’ve addressed this 3-4 times already. When in environments where very attractive teenagers are available (Russia and Thailand) men still prefer the women in their 20s. The older guys pick them up in late-20s, early 30s. So it’s *not* a question of maximising chances.

  70. Just to summarise my point here (in the unlikely event anyone is still interested):

    1) Most men I know over the age of 25 find teenage girls to be an immature pain in the arse who aren’t worth the trouble – even for a one night stand. They prefer to deal with women a few years older.

    2) In the situations I’ve been in where men older than 25-30 have the opportunity of picking up teenage girls, they generally prefer women a few years older. The phrase “Nah, she’s too young” is heard a lot, for various reasons, not all of them to do with how society will view them.

    3) I do not believe that *most* men prefer teenage women over those a few years older, all things being equal.

  71. I’ll bet there are any number of fortysomething dustmen with moobs and a combover who are saving their virtue for Cindy Crawford.

    And I have to say I find that a very sensible evolutionary strategy.

  72. Surreptitious Evil

    I do not believe that *most* men prefer teenage women over those a few years older, all things being equal.

    Except in the limited sense of looking at pictures of them …

    When I were a young lad, I helped at my god-daughter’s 14th birthday party. I was staggered (and slightly horrified) at how attractive I thought her friends were. By the time my daughter was a similar age, I had got well past finding teenage girls, in person, at all attractive. Usually rather annoying, really.

    But there is no fundamental contradiction between Ian’s commercial experience that blokes prefer their pictures before the flaws of age set in (or with those flaws either not depicted in the first place or carefully airbrushed out) and Tim’s practical experience of dodgy night clubs and even dodgier oil-industry ‘executives’ that a decade worth of personality development and sexual experience makes for a more attractive opportunity for a shag.

    Especially with night-club lighting 🙂

    Disclaimer – I may have, once, snogged a girl younger than me.

  73. So Much For Subtlety

    Tim Newman – “You-ve answered it yourself: Trump didn-t marry a 17, 18, and 19 year old, did he?”

    But he did buy the Miss Universe pageant or whatever it is so he could hit on them.

    “He married a 28, 30, and 34 year old. My point being that, all things being equal, men past 35-40 prefer women who are not teenagers.”

    After dating them for a while. Presumably the marriage was about children.

    “I-ve already answered that: I live in places *full* of middle-aged men shagging younger women, and this is one of the lines I hear most.”

    I understand the logic of the line, but given the social stigma of dating the very young, and the even greater shame of admitting you could not pull it off, perhaps they are not being honest?

    “I live in places where 18 year olds are available, so it-s not a case of [whomever will take us]. I did already say this.”

    Available but at what price? It looks like those men did follow their preference and dated the younger girls, but then realised they could not compete. So they settled for someone older. In the West they would have to settle for someone even older still. But that would not mean they would prefer someone that age.

    “I don-t see many people shagging female hobbits in real life. Porn is largely fantasy.”

    I bet most people do not see people shagging female hobbits in porn either. You can see this with so-called MILF porn. Which still uses 25 year old “mothers”.

    People buy solely because it turns them on. Not for the plots or the acting. But because it gives them a hard on. There is no other reason. Thus it reflects what they find sexually attractive.

    “Because boring 50 year old men generally cannot pick up women of 28 unless they are very wealthy. As I said

  74. After dating them for a while. Presumably the marriage was about children.

    So if he met them at 18 he would have been dating them for 10, 12, and 16 years respectively? Sounds unlikely. I think it is more likely they were in their mid-20s when he first met them, i.e. not teenagers.

    I understand the logic of the line, but given the social stigma of dating the very young, and the even greater shame of admitting you could not pull it off, perhaps they are not being honest?

    No, anyone could pull it off in Thailand, and any wealthy chap in Russia. They choose not to.

    Available but at what price? It looks like those men did follow their preference and dated the younger girls, but then realised they could not compete.

    No, I’ve already told you that this is not the case. There are teenagers available, but men *choose* to go with somebody older. It’s not a question of not being able to compete.

  75. Been following this with interest, keep at it, lads.

    FWIW, my own taste tends towards women over 30. I’m 41. I’m in what some may regard as the fortunate position whereby women under 30, sometimes significantly under 30, occasionally, erm, advertise themselves to me in no uncertain terms.

    One thing that does occur, which I don’t think has been mentioned, is that women between about 35 and 45 will tend much more quickly to want to know what a chap’s intentions are. So with girls of that age you’re going to be confronted by life-changing decisions quite early on.

  76. Pingback: Racist Claptrap | Longrider

  77. I think there is an element of arguing past each other here. For me the crucial point is that in the absence of any other factors, then yes, men would tend to choose women at the peak of their sexual attraction, ie 18-20 I’d guess, with outliers either side of that range. As an example I suppose one could look at the King of Swaziland – when he chooses a new wife its an 18 year old, not a woman of 27. As an absolute monarch he can choose as he pleases, and even though he is 45, still chooses a young girl.

    But in the actual world we live there are other factors ie personality, compatibility, social acceptance regarding age differences etc. And those factors can easily be more important than having a woman at the peak of the sexual attractiveness. Hence why a man in his 30’s or 40s would be happy to date a woman in her late 20s, as she has lost little of her sexual allure, but gained considerably more in other factors, not least that of social acceptance. I’m 42 but have dated a woman over 10 years younger than me, which no-one batted an eyelid at. If it had been a 10+ year gap from 18 to 30 that would have been less acceptable.

    And I have also dated a woman over 10 years older than me, from my mid 30s to her late 40s, and in a purely sexual attractiveness sense, older is not better! Harsh, but unfortunately true.

  78. Well, I think this thing has pretty much run its course.

    The interesting part for me really is how the statement of something very simple and which should be uncontroversial causes such rabid denunciations and fury. In general, the more politically correct/liberal the person is, the more furious the said denunciations.

    The first time I really came across this online was in a discussion on usenet, when I made the fairly harmless (I thought) observation that it’s a pity Linda Carter was now too old to play Wonder Woman on the big screen, because she was perfect in her heyday. The result was a furious argument like this one, from particularly hysterical “white knight” types declaring that she’s even more beautiful than she ever was, older women are much superior in every way, etc, how dare I say such a thing.

    And you know, I really don’t think even Carter herself would want to put on the swimsuit these days, or pretend she is as attractive as she was then. It really is a very mundane observation that youth and beauty are strongly linked; and that point is in no way weakened by observations (including from myself, ignored by noble Tim) that other factors also play a part, not least social approval and realism about one’s own “league”.

    One thing that did cross my mind though after yesterday’s arguing here was that there’s a bit of a hint of “protesting too much”. There seem to be various claims that all young women are ghastly company on a personality level, and no older man would want to associate with them. This is really rather strange, and overdoing it, I think. Young people are often perfectly good company. It made me think of the 17 year old (male) YTS student back in my theatre days who was so sensible and competent that, during a time of staffing stress (my deputy was off sick and I’d worked seven day weeks for months) we once left him effectively in charge of the (lx department) of the theatre for a day while I had a day off. Mind you, I never wanted to fuck him, so maybe that’s different. I just am not convinced that there is such an impenetrable social barrier between young people and older people. Are there really no 18 year old females that are bearable company for a (say) 35 year old? I really doubt that, really I do. Like I said, it sounds a bit too much a protest to me.

    Just about to post, it’s just occurred to me that maybe it depends who you’re mixing with. Theatre was (past tense, because it was years ago for me) a young person’s game. At the time I was in the West End, a rapid series of retirements of old HoDs led to a lot of very young new ones. I was 21 when I became Chief LX. Which looking back was indeed, too young; but nonetheless this was an environment where a lot of young people were doing very responsible jobs. And maybe that’s the thing; people who are doing a proper job are going to grow up fast than people who diddle around as overgrown schoolchildren at university into their mid-20s. If you’ve had the pressure of getting an enormously expensive show on for the first preview (whether in a senior or junior post), that’s going to make you rather different to somebody still in education.

    So maybe the demographic thing here is that middle class people aren’t finding women’s personalities grown up enough until they’ve left Uni and entered the real world, because they’ve retained a kind of neotenous juvenile character. Indeed, one of my general libertarian arguments against widespread university attendance for crap degrees is that it tends to produce people who are child-adults; juvenile, entitled, dependent and rather institutionalised.

    I remember a while back, my father mentioning the son of a friend who had just left teacher training college after university, and my dad saying, somewhat disparagingly, “27 years old and never done a day’s work in his life”. Whatever the merits of higher education, that isn’t a recipe for maturity.

    Just a thought.

  79. I remember once trying to describe to various neopuritans here that to understand the culture you had to be there. It would take a lot of writing to explain it again. But I tried to explain that different environments have different moral standards, and it is simply wrong to try to fit what is acceptable in a staid office environment today (or even back then) to the liberal environment in (in our case) theatre, a world where queens screamed at each other, everyone was very tactile, groping was horseplay indulged by male and female alike, actors tried to put each other off by flashing from the wings, in which teenage dancers desperately flung themselves at older actors and I used to let the theater manager give me a goodnight kiss (I was well below the age of consent for bumbuggery back then) because he fancied me and I saw no harm in it.

    It’s as if you don’t think anyone should mind being sexually assaulted because you didn’t mind being sexually assaulted. Women should, say, have to put up with being groped if the”office environment” is one that supports women being groped.

    I think I remember the conversation with “various neopuritans” to which you refer. It was in relation to Liz Kershaw’s complaints about being groped by a colleague in yesteryear; he groped her breasts while she was trying to work. She objected to it to him and to their boss but it didn’t make a difference. Apparently you were annoyed that she didn’t just accept it as part of the “office environment”. People should put up with being sexually assaulted if that is the “office environment”. Anyone who disagrees is a puritan.

  80. So Much For Subtlety

    ukliberty – “People should put up with being sexually assaulted if that is the [office environment]. Anyone who disagrees is a puritan.”

    Well almost by definition people who object are puritans. I do not think it is just a swear word. But that is probably not the question we should ask. We should ask what we can do about it.

    I would think that being the innocent victim of a complaint – and God knows there is plenty of room for misinterpretation in the rules we have – is at least as bad as someone groping your breast. But as they say, YMMV.

  81. During my first University summer holiday, I worked in a leisure centre, putting out the badminton nets and such.

    One pretty 14 year old found out it was my (19th) birthday, and asked if she could give me a birthday kiss. The ensuing kiss was considerably more friendly than the peck on the cheek I had expected.

    One wonders how the consensual groping that followed in the weeks before I went back to uni, would be viewed were I to suddenly become famous now I’m in my forties.

  82. So Much For Subtlety

    CorvusUmbranox – “One wonders how the consensual groping that followed in the weeks before I went back to uni, would be viewed were I to suddenly become famous now I-m in my forties.”

    The two complaints mentioned in the Daily Mail against long-time Labour stalwart Stuart Hall involved older girls, and much less in the way of groping.

    So you would be doing time. Step away from the computer, place your hands behind your head, a car is on the way.

  83. CorvusUmbranox,

    One wonders how the consensual groping that followed in the weeks before I went back to uni, would be viewed were I to suddenly become famous now I

  84. CorvusUmbranox,

    One wonders how the consensual groping that followed in the weeks before I went back to uni, would be viewed were I to suddenly become famous now I’m in my forties.

    No-one would care unless the woman complained, in which case the CPS would consider if there was an element of exploitation or corruption or breach of trust; the emotional maturity of the alleged victim; whether she encouraged you in any way. They would also consider whether there was a public interest in prosecuting a case where the alleged victim willingly participated (even though minors cannot legally consent).

    SMFS,

    The two complaints mentioned in the Daily Mail against long-time Labour stalwart Stuart Hall involved older girls, and much less in the way of groping.

    So you would be doing time.

    The CPS charged Hall with 14 offences against 13 unwilling victims, not two offences or victims. The offences occurred between 1967 and 1985 – Hall would have been between 37 and 57. The girls were aged from nine to 17. It’s hardly equivalent to what CorvusUmbranox outlines – a five year difference between willing teenagers. So no, highly unlikely CorvusUmbranox would do time.

  85. Look, I’m not worried – it’s been over 20 years, it was a relatively innocent teenage thing – I was a very young 19 – and her parents were aware of the relationship and had me round for dinner twice.

    I was just trying to make the point that if I was in the media eye, something that was really nothing more than a couple of kids who got quite fond of one another, could easily be twisted into something sinister in the current climate.

    See Ariel Winter and Cameron Palatas for a high-profile contemporary example.

  86. We can only speculate about how relatively innocent stories might be twisted in the present climate of alleged exploitative, abusive, and predatory offenders.

    My point is, we should be cautious about unproven allegations against alleged sexual predators but not so much that we start fearing relatively innocent people will be charged with engaging in consensual (in fact*) sexual activities.

    *as opposed to legal consent.

  87. UKLIberty-

    The point was that many people chose to work in a liberal environment like theatre precisely because it was that way, women just as much as men. The Progressive Project is to impose one standard on all of society, exposing anyone who acts differently, poking the hegemony into every last nook and cranny.

    The problem with this is that people are not all the same. Such a society only suits one type of person.

    The obvious example here is that entertainment was accepting of gays, when the Progressives were still pursuing them with every legal means possible. Different moral standards in different places are a good thing.

    What is ignored is that which the Feminist/Progressive axis ignores; many women are liberals too. Many women actually like to indulge in horseplay of a mildly sexual kind. As I said before, the environment I experienced was not one in which men victimised women. It was an evironment in which both genders (and both “sexualities”) were more liberated than the grey world beyond the theatre walls.

    But, I doubt that anything I say will make you reconsider. A moralist starts from the position that their own value system is objectively correct, and thus anyone with a different one is either evil, or coerced, or brainwashed. Nothing I say will change that.

  88. UKLiberty- regarding your #98 (not quoting because I’d be quoting the whole thing)

    If you read it back, you’ll realise thatwhile you are tyring to give the impression that CorvusUmbranox is not at risk, in fact what you have said is that if Ms X, all these years later, decided that she was unhappy about what had occurred, and the CPS decided that at that age she was not sufficiently “emotionally mature” to make sexual decisions (which they may well might) then he would indeed be at risk of prosecution.

    There is no objective measure of “emotional maturity”, nor of “exploitation or corruption or breach of trust”. These are subjective judgements, based on an individual’s ideological biases. The more that Feminists dominate the bureaucracy and legal system, the more that events like Corvus’s will be likely to be judged abusive, and the more men fall into the frame; it must be remembered for instance that to a Feminist, it is inherently impossible for a woman to not be “exploited” because society is The Patriarchy.

  89. Ian B @102, I have no objection whatsoever to consensual horseplay. If a particular woman is fine with horseplay, then horseplay away. If another woman doesn’t like horseplay, then don’t horseplay with her.

    @103, in the UK, any person who engaged in gay or straight (but not lesbian) sexual activity with someone under 16 two decades ago is at non-zero risk of prosecution. That’s because the law said decades ago (and says now) that under 16s can’t consent to any sexual activity. But whether the risk of prosecution is significantly more than non-zero we can only speculate. Who knows, as you suggest, if the evil moralist feminist puritan hegemony that has taken over the CPS will turn its attention from predatory celebrities to innocent teenagers?

  90. So, if Corvus’s young lady friend were, these decades later, to report him to the authorities, and the CPS decide to prosecute him, you’d be all in favour of that then?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *