*In defense of young women who know what they like*

In Vermont, the age of consent for men is 18, and for women, it is sixteen. This is not considered to be exploitative of young women, or wasn't when I was a girl in the 70s. It was because physically, neurologically, and emotionally, girls tend to mature earlier.

As my father once said at our church youth group, "None of you are smart and steady enough to be president until your mid-thirties, so don't imagine eighteen is something magic. You'll be growing up your whole lives, if you're lucky."

So, I have the stellar memory at one Balticon of having a young man literally kneel at my feet and sing me the serenade from _The Student Prince_. Operatic light baritone.

Best. Pickup. Line. Ever.

We talked all evening and into the wee hours. Art. Theater. Philosophy. History. Politics. Just everything. At one point, he was a bit stunned at how much I knew about just about anything and asked what year I was in school. I told him I was a sophomore, which impressed him.

Probably it would have impressed him a bit more if he'd realized I meant high school.

Long story short, in a post prandial conversation around dawn the question of where I was going to college came up, and the poor guy jumped away as though he'd been stung. Apparently in NY age of consent was 18, and in his book, well...

From my point of view, his reaction was damned condescending. Sure, he was a decade older than me, but there was no doubt in my mind we were emotional and intellectual peers. And, I will pretty much hold to that, looking back. This is not necessarily normal for 16 or 28 year olds, but we were not particularly typical. wedding outfits for mature women

Regardless, I talked him down. Some years later, he proposed to me, but I declined. Might have been fun.

Around that time I had one other lover with a similar age gap. Big brains are sexy. Most of the boys my age (and in a small town, it's thin choices) were immature and/or completely did not "get" me at all.

When we talk about people who have relationships with teens, we often forget that many teens are pretty fully realized adults. Sex involving a teenager is not always nonconsensual, legally or in practice.

My family, the women mature early. I hit menarche at 8.5 years old. Everything matured early, not just tits but cognition, judgment.

You can't form law for outliers. But you can recognize that not everyone who breaks a law is an abomination. My lovers from my teens who were over 18 were not only not breaking the law, they were not exploiting me. They were not child molesters in any sense.

But today, the mere statistic of our relative ages at the time could derail their careers.

Without my consent.

No one should approve of that message.