>It makes you sick to the bone whenever you see self-proclaimed feminists campaign issues that purport to protect women and girls, yet that campaign is going to make it worse for women and girls. Here’s one from Constance Singam, ex-President of Aware.
Constance’s argument is that the Statutory Rape Law, which protects young girls from sex predators, should be amended because young underage girls today are having sex consensually with equally young underage boys.
Boy oh boy, what a short sighted Feminist she is. I will come to that later.
Time to review the statutory rape laws
It is time that our laws recognize that all young people need protection from sexual predators, that boys need as much protection as girls.
Existing laws on statutory rape were formulated in the 18th century and are not adapted to a situation in which young girls of 12 years or so are having sex, consensual sex, with boys of the same age (ref ST. 9th Feb 2010).
Laws must protect young people from the sexual predations of adults.
Absolutely. And the rationale behind the development of statutory rape laws was that the power disparity inherent in a relationship between a juvenile and an adult translates into a juvenile’s inability to resist an adult’s coercive influence.
These initial prohibitions were gender specific, restricting only a male’s sexual relations with young females, and were intended to “protect a father’s interest in his daughter’s chastity.” He can then marry her off more easily.
The most historically consistent rationale for statutory rape laws is to protect juveniles, generally from the coerced activity that they are not mature enough to refuse.
But the current reality is that young girls mature earlier than boys of the same age group. They do not live cloistered lives, as they did when the rape laws were introduced in the 18th century Today’s young girls are quite capable of seducing young boys, as evidenced by recent newspaper reports on teenage sexual activities and abortions.
In the 1970s, a new generation of feminists recognized that gender specific statutory rape laws perpetuated negative stereotypes regarding the vulnerability of women. They did not call for the abolition of statutory rape laws, but instead called for reforms to make the laws gender neutral and thus remove the implication that only females are inherently vulnerable, but rather all juveniles are in need of protection. I think this is a progressive approach and protects both vulnerable girls and boys.
The many laws regulating the sexual conduct of young adult and adolescent peers need to be reformed.
Constance Singam
6th March 2010
So young girls do not need the stat rape law to protect them because they don’t live in cloistered lives anymore? Hellloooo?
Isn’t it because they don’t live in cloistered lives anymore, the more reason they need to be protected? At least if they had been cloistered at home, for sure they won’t be preyed upon.
So what’s this ex-President of a Feminist Movement thinking?
Here’s what can happen in the so called “Uncloistered, Modern Day Society” we are in today.
Boys, 10 and 11, tried for rape
May 13, 2010
LONDON: Two boys aged 10 and 11 went on trial in London yesterday for allegedly raping an eight-year-old girl.
The boys are accused of forcing the girl to have sex with them repeatedly, in a hallway, a lift, a dustbin store and in a field near where all three children live in Hayes, West London, last October, the Times of London reported.
The girl later told her mother what had happened, jurors at the Old Bailey heard.
The boys looked tiny sitting in the middle of the court between their mothers and solicitors. They deny two charges each of rape and two charges each of attempted rape of a child under 13.
All three, who knew one another, cannot be identified because of their youth.
Prosecutor Rosina Cottage was quoted by BBC News as telling the court: ‘This case concerns rape by two boys still at primary school of a girl even younger than them.
‘They took her to different locations near where they lived in order to find a sufficiently secluded spot to assault her.’
Miss Cottage told the court the girl’s mother went looking for her after the girl’s younger sister, who she had been playing with, returned home without her.
They bumped into the mother of the younger defendant and a five-year-old boy, who said the 10-year-old boy ‘was in a nearby field and that he was with (the girl) and he was hurting her’, said Miss Cottage.
When the girl’s mother found her, the woman ‘could see things were not right with her daughter’, Miss Cottage said.
The mother went to see the boys’ parents, who were not in, but spotted the older boy. She asked him what happened but he replied ‘nothing’.
The younger boy joined them, and allegedly said, without prompting: ‘I didn’t touch her.’ The older boy was said to have added: ‘It wasn’t me. It was (the other boy).’
The girl was then taken to hospital because she was complaining of pains in her stomach, the court heard.
The court was played the girl’s video interview with specially trained police officers the day after the incident. She is seen clutching and playing with her teddy bear as she tells how she was led by the two boys into the hallway of a block of flats where, she said, she was assaulted.
Speaking in hushed and hurried tones, the girl said she was taken to a bin shed and assaulted before being taken to the bushes and then a garden area where she was assaulted again.
Mr Justice Saunders sat where the court clerk normally sits so that he was on the same level as the boys. The jury was told that the court’s sitting hours had been shortened and other steps were taken because the defendants were so young.
The trial continues.
Well, if the stat rape law had been amended in UK such that underage boys are exempted, the above crime would technically not be a crime. That means the boys would be let off scot-free.
Who’s the loser now? So is Constance Singam’s lack of foresight very clearly damning?
Never mind. Ever since the Aware Saga, I never really had any more faith in feminists doing a good job.
Oh by the way, The Online Citizen, as always, panders to the Gay/Feminist propaganda. Note the very similar stance to Constance Singam’s “today’s children are more open to sex and hence we should abandon old practices”. Statutory rape law – a paternalistic anachronism
